Daily Archives: January 14, 2022

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was the heart of the U.S.-led, anti-Soviet military alliance during the decades of the Cold War, and remains central to Western diplomatic and military cooperation.

Like many of the key institutions in international power politics, NATO has its origin in the years after World War II. The treaty for which it is named was signed in 1949, initially by the United States, Canada and 10 countries in Western Europe, with several other European powers and Turkey joining over the next few years.

Of the treatys 14 articles, the most critical is Article 5, which declares that an attack against one member state is an attack against them all.

That article committed the NATO countries to mutual defense, placing Western Europe under U.S. protection in the face of a Soviet Union that was cementing its domination over Central and Eastern Europe and appeared then only to be growing in power and ambition.

After the Soviet Unions collapse in the early 1990s, the alliance took on a wider role. NATO forces made up of troops volunteered by member states operated as peacekeepers in Bosnia in the 1990s, and bombed Serbia in 1999 to protect Kosovo, where the alliance still has troops.

The first invocation of Article 5 came in defense of the United States, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. NATO countries joined in the invasion of Afghanistan, where for more than a decade the alliance played a major role alongside the United States in the war that followed. The organizations headquarters are in Brussels, and it carries out missions around the world, basing Patriot surface-to-air missiles and AWACS surveillance planes in Turkey.

Over the past three decades, more than a dozen countries that belonged to the Soviet sphere during the Cold War have become first partners and then members of NATO. It now has 30 members, including three Baltic states that were once directly part of the Soviet Union.

In 2008 it promised membership to Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet republics bordering Russia, though without a timetable for achieving it. In 2011, the alliance bombed Libya with the aim of protecting civilians from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which paved the way for rebels to depose and kill him.

But the expansion of NATO has increasingly generated pushback.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently accused NATO countries of freeloading on American military spending, told aides he wanted to withdraw from the alliance. And President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has portrayed NATOs growth as both a betrayal pointing to warm words from U.S. officials in the dying days of the Soviet Union and a threat.

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What Is NATO? - The New York Times

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Moscow has run out of patience after diplomatic talks fail to produce a breakthrough.

Russia has strongly repeated its demand that NATO will not expand eastwards, despite the rejection of that by the military alliance amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine.

It added on Friday that it would not wait indefinitely for the Western response.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described Moscows demands that NATO will neither expand nor deploy forces to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations as essential for the progress of diplomatic efforts to defuse soaring tensions over Ukraine.

He argued that the deployment of NATO forces and weapons near Russias borders poses a security challenge that must be addressed immediately.

We have run out of patience, Lavrov said at a news conference. The West has been driven by hubris and has exacerbated tensions in violation of its obligations and common sense.

Lavrov said Russia expects Washington and NATO to provide a written response to its demands next week.

Amid the tensions, Ukraine sustained a massive cyberattack on Friday, which hit websites of multiple government agencies.

This weeks negotiations in Geneva and a related NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels were held amid a significant Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that the West fears might be a prelude to an invasion.

Russia, which annexed Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014, has denied having plans to attack its neighbour but warned the West that NATOs expansion to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations is a red line that must not be crossed.

Washington and its allies firmly rejected Moscows demand for security guarantees precluding NATOs expansion, but Russia and the West agreed to leave the door open to possible further talks on arms control and confidence-building measures intended to reduce the potential for hostilities.

The negotiations took place as an estimated 100,000 Russian soldiers with tanks and other heavy weapons are massed near Ukraines eastern border.

The United States and its allies urged Russia to de-escalate by pulling troops back to their permanent bases, but Moscow has rebuffed the demand, saying it is free to deploy forces on its territory wherever it deems necessary.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday that troops stationed in eastern Siberia and the far east region have been scrambled for movement across the country as part of snap drills to check their readiness to perform their tasks after redeployment to a large distance.

The ministry noted that special attention will be given to the assessment of the countrys transport infrastructure to ensure the movement of troops, adding that the troops will conduct drills involving firing live ammunition after the redeployment.

Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula after the removal of Ukraines Moscow-friendly leader and in 2014 also threw its weight behind a separatist armed uprising in eastern Ukraine. More than 14,000 people have been killed in nearly eight years of fighting between the Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces.

Link:
Russia demands US, NATO response next week on Ukraine - Al Jazeera English

Mr. Putins insistence that NATO stop enlargement and remove allied forces from member states bordering Russia would draw a new Iron Curtain across Europe, and that threat has concentrated minds. It may be just what a lagging alliance has needed.

NATO relies on momentum, and a lot of the momentum is generated by a sense of threat and fear, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior intelligence officer dealing with Russia, now with the Center for a New American Security.

After last years fiasco of Afghanistan and the humiliation of France in the Australian submarine deal, she said, We were all thinking that we have serious problems in the alliance, and we might need to rethink the foundation of this relationship.

But in talks this week with the Russians, NATO leaders spoke with exceptional unity for a 30-member alliance whose commitment to collective defense was increasingly in question.

The talks allowed Mr. Putin to revisit Russian grievances over how the Cold War ended, in hopes of placing them back on the table for renegotiation 30 years later. His deputy foreign minister, Aleksandr V. Grushko, even warned the alliance off a policy of containment of Russia and insisted that free choice does not exist in international relations suggesting that Ukraine would have to bow to Russian wishes.

But the more the discussion evoked the Cold War with its firm dividing line through Europe, and its competing Russian and Western systems and spheres of influence the more it reminded European and American allies of NATOs purpose.

Deterring Russia is in the DNA of NATO, because Russia is what can bring existential threats to European nations, said Anna Wieslander, chair of Swedens Institute for Security and Development.

That threat now is more than territorial, she said. Russia is also trying to undermine NATOs democratic cohesion. Russia is targeting our elections, our social media, our parliaments and our citizens, and it is become more obvious now that Russia is not part of our value system, Ms. Wieslander said.

As it drafts a new strategic concept to be ready this year, NATO is concentrating on resilience against new hybrid and cyberthreats, highlighting its defense of the democratic institutions of member states, not just their territory.

NATO is its member states, and its what allies make of it, said Sophia Besch, a defense analyst in Berlin for the Center for European Reform. Its not out of business because we didnt let it, and weve changed its raison dtre to what are the major strategic concerns of the day.

The old joke was that if NATO is the answer, what is the question? Ms. Besch responded: Weve changed the question over the years to make NATO the answer. And now were back at the old question again, where NATO is more comfortable.

NATO is especially important now for those states bordering Russia, like the Baltic nations and Poland, a country which has had deepening strains with its European partners over the protection of core democratic principles, which Brussels has accused the government in Warsaw of eroding.

But the current crisis is a reminder, even in Poland, of the importance of the alliance as a whole, and not just the countrys bilateral relationship with the United States, said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Ukraine has proved especially vulnerable to Russian threats perhaps precisely because it is not a NATO member.

In Poland there was concern that NATO would lose its focus on Russian security threats, but now its obvious that this is the only framework that can protect us and provide long-term security, Mr. Buras said.

There was also anxiety that President Biden, in trying to stabilize relations with Russia to pivot toward China, would bargain away forward-based NATO troops in Poland and the Baltics that were deployed after 2014.

But there is no sign that the United States will give in on fundamental issues to NATO, like its open-door policy and its right to deploy forces in any member state, Mr. Buras said, and Washington has been rigorous in briefing its allies about all of its discussions with Russia.

Still, he said, the current crisis is a very clear consequence of the U.S. pivot to Asia and the realization of Russia that it might now take advantage of that reorientation of U.S. fundamental security interests, he said. And that issue will not go away soon.

Russia will continue to press for a new security framework in Europe, and Europe without the United States is not prepared to play any significant role, he said, so for Poland, NATO is the key and irreplaceable element.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

Even as Polands battle with the European Union over the rule of law still festers, it is not an overt issue in the military alliance of NATO. But it was very noticeable that as the crisis over Ukraine mounted, President Andrzej Duda of Poland chose to veto a law, criticized by Washington, which would have stripped majority ownership of an independent television station from an American company.

As the security situation in Central Europe has worsened with Russian aggression and threats, Poland got what we finally wanted when we joined NATO, which is allied and American troop presence on our soil to finally bring NATO deployments beyond Germany, said Michal Baranowski, who heads the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund.

That is precisely one of Russias current demands that those deployments in Poland and the Baltic States be removed, a demand rejected by Mr. Biden and by NATO, to Polands relief.

Still, Mr. Baranowski said, the Russians have mobilized the largest military force in Europe since 1989, and thats scary. The alliance, he said, is closer to military confrontation, but at least we have not folded.

But the crisis has also highlighted the continuing dependence of NATO on Washington. For Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, what is striking is how much this is the old NATO, where the U.S. is the glue, linchpin and indispensable leader of the alliance, bringing allies together, informing them and putting on the table the strategy we will pursue.

What is extraordinary, he said, is that more than 70 years after the alliance was founded, there appears to be no independent European strategy or even a European point of view different from what Washington brought to the table. NATO has divisions, of course, Mr. Daalder said. But all the divisions are dissolved, at least for today.

Whether that unity will last should Mr. Putin move farther into Ukraine is yet to be seen, said Kadri Liik, an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. She sees an unwillingness in Europe to understand that the world is shifting.

The wider public is not prepared for any change in the arrangements weve lived with for the past 30 years, she said. People think we can still sanction Russia into obeying the European security order, and that all it takes is Western unity and principles.

But the United States is leading the world differently, Ms. Liik said. Im just not sure we can expect to continue to live in the world that corresponds to rules and norms and expect America to enforce them.

That applies to Russia and Europe, too, she said. Were slowly headed back to a world of confrontation between systems with different views about obeying the rules and the use of power and force.

Ms. Kendall-Taylor believes that Mr. Putin saw an opportunity to take advantage of a shakier trans-Atlantic alliance, a divided Europe and a polarized America with a weakened president.

NATO unity is real but untested, she said. Its too early to declare all restored, because Russia not done anything yet, Ms. Kendall-Taylor said. Its a bit the calm before the storm.

Read the rest here:
Fear of Russia Brings New Purpose and Unity to NATO, Once Again - The New York Times

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, to NATO headquarters on Thursday (13 January 2022).

He praised Estonias contributions to the Alliance, including for hosting one of NATOs battlegroups in the Baltic region, its leadership in defence spending, and the vital role it plays in strengthening the Alliances cyber defences.

The two leaders discussed the security situation in Europe, including Russias military build-up in and around Ukraine. The Secretary General underlined that during yesterdays NATO-Russia Council meeting, Allies made clear that any further aggression against Ukraine would carry a heavy price for Russia. He added that Allies have also expressed willingness to engage in further dialogue. The Secretary General went on to say, our goal is real de-escalation from Russia and engagement in good faith and on substance, in the interests of everyones security and he stressed that we will never compromise on fundamental principles of European security.

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NATO Secretary General discusses the security situation in eastern Europe with the President of Estonia - NATO HQ

For decades, Stanley R. Sloan has belonged to the small group of NATO-watchers who offer eminently readable accounts of where the Alliance comes from and where it is going. US historian Lawrence Kaplan calls Sloan the most important American authority in the field of NATO historiography.

Sloan worked in the Congressional Research Service for 25 years as the senior specialist in international security policy. His work for Congress, for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and for the Senate NATO Observer Group makes him a seasoned observer of transatlantic security affairs scene. Through several books, numerous articles and countless public speaking engagements on both sides of the Atlantic, Sloan has become the grey eminence of NATO affairs.

After having reviewed the first edition of Sloans Defense of the West some years ago, the second edition warrants another look. The reason becomes clear when one compares the sub-headings. In the first edition, it reads NATO, the European Union and the transatlantic bargain. By contrast, the second edition reads Transatlantic security from Truman to Trump. The reader can guess the reason for this change. In the second edition, Sloan covers the Donald Trump presidency a presidency that challenged NATO in unprecedented ways. Since the main part of the book is largely identical to the previous edition, this review focuses mostly on the new material.

Defense of the West is the fifth book of a series that started in 1984, with Sloans NATOs Future: Towards a New Transatlantic Bargain. In this book and in many that followed, Sloan effectively built on former US NATO Ambassador Harlan Clevelands description of NATO as a transatlantic bargain. That bargain was the United States commitment to the rebuilding of Western Europe after the devastation of World War II, in exchange for Europe gradually organising for its own defence. In Clevelands view, the bargain worked because the bargaining goes on within a framework of common interest, perceived and acknowledged. Cleveland acknowledged that burden-sharing issues would remain difficult, even labelling NATO an organized controversy about who is going to do how much, yet he insisted that no matter how much the bargain changes, the constant is a consensus among allies that there has to be a bargain.

In Sloans view, a new transatlantic bargain would include greater European responsibility as well as continued North American engagement in European security affairs. Such a bargain was neither to come about overnight, nor was it to be measured merely by comparing defence expenditures. This becomes clear throughout the main part of his book, which offers a solid history of NATO. By contrast, Trumps transactional view of NATO reduced the transatlantic bargain to a mere business deal and a bad one at that, as the Europeans, in his view, were freeriding at the expense of the US taxpayer. Sloan agrees that many Allies did not spend as much on defence as they should have. However, Trumps insistence that the Allies owed the US past dues was, as Sloan points out, completely inconsistent with the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty and the allies practice over the past 70 years.Sloan puts the Trump disruption in its broader context: the rise of illiberalism and populism in many Western countries, the global financial crisis, and the Brexit shock had shattered the Wests optimism in the attractiveness of its own political and economic model. He clearly shows that Donald Trumps political rise was not a singular event. Still, with his unique personal style, Trump confronted NATO with a major challenge.

While Trump did not spare with criticism of NATO, he refused to criticise Russia and its aggression against Ukraine. At the Brussels Summit in May 2017, he avoided any direct reference to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the crucially important clause that postulates an obligation to help an Ally in case of attack. A few weeks later, in a speech in Warsaw, Trump finally committed to Article 5, but the damage had already been done. The US seemed bent on abdicating its leadership of the Western Alliance.

Sloan praises NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, who had followed a deliberate strategy of continuously complimenting allies for their accomplishments urging them to do more, and praising Trump for having produced whatever progress had been achieved. Stoltenbergs panache in handling the US President did not go unnoticed. He was invited to address a joint session of the US Congress the first head of an international organisation ever to do so. This invitation demonstrated that despite Trumps unilateralist mannerism there was still another multilateralist United States out there.

Sloan contends sarcastically that Trump helped unite the Europeans, but he largely united them against the Unites States, rather than behind it. While Sloan admits that Trump (and Brexit) did compel the EU to agree several steps toward closer security cooperation, he views these steps less as being within the logic of a new transatlantic bargain, but rather as expressions of scepticism about the future of this very bargain. In combination with the global decline of the public image of the United States under Donald Trumps presidency, Sloan worries whether the damage done may even be beyond repair. He concludes his analysis of the Trump years with a blunt verdict: On balance, by 2020 Donald Trump had done more to weaken American leadership of the West than even his most severe critics might have anticipated before his inauguration.

So far, so bad. And now? Can the Biden Administration which came into office after Sloans book was released repair the transatlantic relationship? In the final part of his book, in which Sloan sets out the numerous external and internal challenges that the West is facing, it becomes clear that meeting them will require much more than a more cooperative and conciliatory US Administration. As far as external challenges go, Sloan notes a revisionist Russia, conflict and instability in the Middle East and North Africa, the continuing fragility of Afghanistan, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber threats, information wars, and the Chinese challenge. He also mentions the pandemic and environmental challenges, although only briefly.

Sloan starts his list of the Wests internal challenges with the ambivalence surrounding the future of US leadership. He is worried that a polarised dysfunctional American political system will not generate the political continuity that Washington needs if it wants to be an effective leader. Other internal challenges arise from inadequate European defence spending, European economic and political vulnerabilities, and insufficient cooperation between NATO and the European Union. The latter is particularly dear to Sloans heart.While he has discarded his earlier idea of a Transatlantic Community Treaty, which was supposed to bring together all NATO and EU member states in one unifying framework, he realises that the comprehensive approach to meeting modern security challenges requires more NATO-EU cooperation. This cooperation would focus on the external threats to transatlantic security and values rather than on competing philosophies and organizational structures.

Overall, compared to his previous books, Sloan appears more pessimistic about the future of the transatlantic security relationship. In part, this is because of the shock caused by President Trump, who at times seemed to be willing to withdraw the US from NATO altogether. But Sloan is also concerned about the West getting it wrong more broadly, notably by not standing up to defend its values. Perhaps the future of the West, he contends, comes down to a very fundamental choice: Should the United States and its European partners acquiesce in Russias geopolitical demands for a buffer zone between Putins kleptocracy and the democratic West or should they assert with actions as well as words, the liberal values that they hoped would shape post-Cold War Europe? It is clear how Sloan would answer this question, but he is less sure how some parochial Western democracies would answer it.

Like the previous version, the book is clearly aimed at a student audience, as demonstrated by the questions for discussion at the end of each chapter. This comprehensiveness is also a weakness, however. There is a considerable amount of repetition, and while some issues are discussed in depth, others are just briefly touched upon, as if the author did not have the time to analyse them in greater detail. Still, Defense of the West is an impressive volume: it offers a well-informed, jargon-free history of NATO, as well as some almost philosophical reflections of a seasoned observer of the transatlantic community.

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NATO Review - Review of Stanley R. Sloan, Defense of the West (2nd Edition, Manchester University Press, 2020) - NATO HQ

Iowa National Guard Adjutant General Ben Corell

Iowa National Guard Adjutant General Benjamin Corell has alerted several units that they are likely to be called to active duty this year. It includes a mission in support of NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as fears rise about a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We anticipate we will deploy members of the 209th Medical Company from Iowa City and members of the 1133rd Transportation Company from Mason City to support Operation Atlantic Resolve in Poland, Corell said yesterday. Atlantic Resolve is part of the Deterrence Initiative focused in Eastern Europe. This enables the U.S. to provide deterrence to adversaries while supporting our NATO partners.

In 2010, Corell was the commander of Iowa National Guard soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. He said this summers withdrawal was very difficult to watch.

I take solace knowing that I, along with those that served beside me, did everything in our ability each day that we served there to achieve an outcome different than what exists today, Corell said.

Corell delivered the annual Condition of the Guard address to legislators yesterday and that was his only direct reference to the end of the war in Afghanistan. Last year, more than 1600 Iowa Guard soldiers and over 200 Iowa Airmen were deployed to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

We have a new generation of heroes in our midst. The men and women who returned home after serving in the Global War on Terrorism are carrying freedoms torch in the same proud tradition as veterans of previous conflicts, Corell said.

As Radio Iowa reported yesterday, about 80% of Iowa Army and Air National Guard members are fully vaccinated, but Corell said the Secretary of Defenses order that all soldiers and airmen get Covid-19 shots is creating dilemmas within the ranks as unvaccinated members retire or await Pentagon decisions on religious and medical exemptions.

Excerpt from:
Iowa Guard units likely going to Poland, in support of NATO - Radio Iowa