Category Archives: NATO

NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoan took part in a virtual meeting of the Aqaba Process on Wednesday (2 September 2020). The Aqaba Process is an initiative by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan to enhance global coordination and cooperation to counter terrorism.

The Deputy Secretary General spoke to the meeting of world leaders and representatives from international organisations about the security challenges of COVID-19 and NATOs response to the pandemic. Mr. Geoan praised Jordan as a leader in countering violent extremism and for being a valuable partner of NATO.

The Alliance and Jordan are united in their work to counter international terrorism. NATO and Jordanian forces have a long track record of practical cooperation and have worked together from the Balkans to Afghanistan. NATO has also helped strengthen Jordans capabilities, including cyber defence, border security and countering improvised explosive devices.

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Deputy Secretary General addresses meeting of the Aqaba Process - NATO HQ

Allies condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure, with the use of a nerve agent from the banned Novichok group.

Any use of chemical weapons, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and contrary to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of all chemical weapons.

We are united in our call on Russia, as a matter of urgency, to be fully transparent and to bring those responsible to justice, bearing in mind Russias commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention. In this context, as part of a joint international response, Allies support the important role of the OPCW and urge Russia to immediately disclose any information relevant for its work.

Allies thank Germany for hosting Mr Navalny and the Charit hospital in Berlin for his treatment. Our thoughts are with him and his family. We wish him a swift and full recovery

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Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny - NATO HQ

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tachyum Inc. today announced it is opening a business unit to serve U.S., EU and NATO member government customers of its Prodigy Universal Processor for demanding HPC, artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads.

Although the companys primary market is hyperscale data centers, Tachyums CEO Dr. Rado Danilak recognized that government agencies notably military and intelligence are early adopters of Prodigy. Its ultra-low-power, ultra-high-performance enables and vastly improves next-generation defense systems such as unmanned aircraft and underwater systems, cybersecurity, communications, analytics, and more.

Prodigys unique attributes set the conditions to create a computing architecture fully aligned with the operational and strategic imperatives of our national strategy, said retired Army Lieutenant General Richard Zahner. He is a career electronic intelligence specialist who headed signals intelligence at the National Security Agency (NSA) and ended his career as Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence. The new microchip could help restore Americas technological edge. This sort of re-levels the playing field potentially in our favor, he told the Washington Times.

AI and HPC are strategic to US, EU and NATO members' government, military and intelligence environments, and as demand grew rapidly, we saw the need to organize a separate unit around these projects, said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, Tachyum founder and CEO. Supercomputers, defense, national security, government and intelligence agencies are interested in Prodigy because it will execute human brain-scale AI 15 years ahead of any other technology, achieving breakthroughs other governments cannot.

Prodigy excels in technologies such as edge computing, IoT, HPC, convolutional AI, explainable AI, general AI, bio AI and spiking neural networks. For example, translating between English and Chinese requires a neural network with a capacity of more than 11 terabytes and is an arduous task on currently available supercomputer GPU processors of 20GB each. In contrast, Tachyums Prodigy fits 8TB per chip which is 32TB in coherent DRAM per node.

Tachyums team already includes several personnel carrying top-secret clearances, providing appropriate security levels for developing federal projects. Team members, including Tachyum founders, serving government customers have worked on classified technologies at entities such as Sandia and Skyera, and worked for the U.S. government and/or military.

Demanding AI/ML applications are currently run on specialty, single-purpose chips such as GPU and TPU, while CPUs power conventional workloads resulting in high costs and inefficiency due to dual infrastructures. Instead, Tachyum's Prodigy supports both on a single homogeneous processor platform with its simple programming model. Prodigys ability to seamlessly switch among various workloads dramatically changes the competitive landscape and the economics of data centers.

Prodigy outperforms todays fastest Xeon processors while consuming 10x lower power on data center workloads, and outperforms NVIDIAs fastest GPU on HPC, AI training and inferencing. A mere 125 HPC Prodigy racks can deliver 32 tensor EXAFLOPS. Prodigys 3x lower cost per MIPS and 10x lower core power requirements translate to a 4x lower data center Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), enabling savings of millions to billions of dollars.

Prodigy will enter volume production in 2021. For more information on Tachyum Government, please visit https://www.tachyum.us/.

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About Tachyum

Tachyum is disrupting data centers, HPC and AI markets by providing universality, Industry leading performance, cost and power, while enabling data centers that are more powerful than the human brain. Tachyum, Co-founded by Dr. Radoslav Danilak, and its flagship product Prodigy, the worlds first and only universal processor, begins production in 2021 targeting a $50B market growing at 20% per year. With data centers currently consuming over 3% of the planets electricity, and 10% by 2025, low power Prodigy is critical for the continued doubling of worldwide data center capacity every 4 years. Tachyum has offices in the USA and Slovakia, EU. For more information, visit https://tachyum.com.

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Tachyum Opens U.S., EU and NATO Government Business Unit - Business Wire

President Donald Trump has repeatedly, privately spoken about withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, The New York Times reported on Thursday. And if he wins a second term as president, he may be able to pull it off.

The Times reported that officials in the US and in Europe are worried that if Trump wins another term, he may be emboldened to actually withdraw from the military alliance.

Former senior national security officials in Trump's administration have said the move could be a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who views NATO as a bulwark against his global ambitions.

Trump has a history of being critical of NATO. In December, he undercut one of the alliances' principals when he suggestedthat the US may not defend a fellow memberif it came under attack.

The Times reported that while Congress would probably block Trump's effort to withdraw from the alliance, he could still take other measures to undermine it. He could, for example, loosely adhere to Article 5, which calls for collective defense.

Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said in June that the president clashed with European leaders over his belief that other countries did not spend enough money on defense at a NATO summit in 2017.

Bolton, in his recent book "The Room Where it Happened," also said that Trump repeatedly said he wanted to quit NATO. Last month, Bolton told a Spanish newspaper that Trump could possibly even declare his intent to withdraw from the alliance in October as a promise for his second term ahead of the November election.

John Kelly, a retired general, said "one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO," according to a book published this week from Times reporter Michael Schmidt.

"It is a real risk," Thomas Wright, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, told the Times. "We know from Kelly and Bolton that he wanted to go much further in the first term. If he feels that he has been totally vindicated in the election, and he feels that people have endorsed his policies, I think he could effectively withdraw from NATO."

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Diplomats worry that Trump will withdraw from NATO if he gets a 2nd term as president - Business Insider - Business Insider

ATHENS, Greece (AP) Despite a denial from Greece, the chief of NATO said Friday that Greece and Turkey have started technical discussions aimed at reducing the risk of armed conflict or accidents amid military tensions between the allies over offshore energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

No agreement has been reached from the military-level talks, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

Greeces foreign minister, meanwhile, headed to New York to discuss the regional dispute centered around maritime boundaries and drilling rights.

Neighbors and NATO allies Greece and Turkey have been locked for weeks in a tense standoff in the eastern Mediterranean, where Turkey is prospecting the seabed for energy reserves in an area Greece claims as its own continental shelf.

Ankara says it has every right to prospect there and accuses Greece of trying to grab an unfair share of maritime resources.

Stoltenberg announced Thursday that the two sides had agreed to start technical talks to reduce the risks of military incidents and accidents.

But Athens quickly denied any such agreement, saying Turkey must first withdraw its ships from the area where it is carrying out gas and oil prospecting. Ankara said it backed Stoltenbergs initiative for military and technical talks and called on Greece to do the same.

On Friday, the NATO chief said Greek, Turkish and allied military officers had begun talks aimed at ensuring that some of the standoffs between the two countries armed forces in the Mediterranean dont break out into open conflict. NATO officials said the first talks were held Thursday.

As long as we have so many ships in the eastern Mediterranean, we believe that there is a need to have technical talks on how to develop enhanced mechanisms for deconfliction, Stoltenberg told reporters. No agreement has been reached yet, but the talks have started.

While its relatively rare for NATO to have to step in to reduce tensions between member nations, the military alliance has helped set up similar systems in the past, including communications hotlines for use in case of emergencies.

Stoltenberg underlined that the military-level talks are only aimed at avoiding any incident between Greece and Turkey and are very distinct from the diplomatic efforts to find a long-term solution to the standoff.

These are technical talks rather than negotiations on the underlying dispute between Greece and Turkey and as such they are meant to complement, not replace, the efforts led by Germany for political mediation towards deescalation, he said.

Since Turkey dispatched a vessel accompanied by warships to do exploratory research, Greeces armed forces have been placed on alert. Both countries sent warships to the area and carried out live-fire exercises between the islands of Crete and Cyprus and Turkeys southern coast.

Simulated dogfights between Greek and Turkish fighter pilots have multiplied over the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. A Turkish and a Greek frigate collided last month, reportedly causing minor damage to the Turkish frigate but no injuries.

The crisis is the most serious in the two countries relations in decades. The neighbors have come to the brink of war three times since the mid-1970s, including once over maritime resources in the Aegean Sea.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will focus on issues of international and regional interest, with an emphasis on current developments in the eastern Mediterranean and the Cyprus issue, as well as the role of the U.N.. the Greek Foreign Ministry said.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Dendias would be delivering a letter from him to Guterres detailing what he said was Turkeys illegal activity in the region.

Speaking with Chinas top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Athens, Mitsotakis said Greece faces aggression from Turkey and actions that dispute every rule of the U.N. charter, with a rhetoric that distorts history and changes geography, undermining legality and with actions that are endangering security in the entire Mediterranean.

Mitsotakis said Greece supports good neighborly relations, and noted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is open to dialogue.

And to this I reply with six clear words: The provocations stop, the dialogue starts, Mitsotakis said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu meanwhile accused Greece of lying about the NATO initiative, saying Stoltenberg had consulted with Ankara and Athens and both agreed to the technical talks before making his announcement.

Greece has refuted the NATO secretary general, Cavusoglu told reporters. But it isnt the NATO secretary general who is lying, its Greece itself who is lying. ... Greece has once again shown that it does not favor a dialogue.

Cavusoglu and Stoltenberg later held a telephone conversation to discuss the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said, but didnt provide details.

A Greek Foreign Ministry official retorted that Cavusoglu anxious to shift the focus of the debate from Turkeys illegal behavior, has baptized as talks a NATO proposal on a technical level for a reduction of the tension Turkey itself is causing in the eastern Mediterranean region.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the record on the issue.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for Turkeys ruling party, Omer Celik, said the European Union could no longer count on Turkeys cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe if it goes ahead with plans to sanction Turkey over its exploration operations in the eastern Mediterranean.

I dont expect things to come to the point of sanctions. The EU should not expect cooperation on refugees after that time, Celik said in an interview with Turkeys NTV news channel. They should not think that they can sanction (Turkey) in the eastern Mediterranean and continue to cooperate in other areas.

Earlier this year, tens of thousands of migrants gathered at Turkeys border with Greece, demanding to be allowed to cross, after the Turkish president declared the borders with Europe open to migrants wanting to head into EU nations.

___

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

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NATO: Turkey, Greece start talks to reduce risk of conflict - The Associated Press

According to a top Russian military official, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is massing troops near its border and increasing flights of reconnaissance aircraft. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told reporters over the weekend that NATO plans to redeploy another U.S. military contingent to Poland in the near future, and that NATO Allied Command Operations in Eastern Europe has now surpassed 10,000 troops.

In the near future additional American units are planned to be redeployed to Poland, Shoigu told Tass. Under the pretext of the need to strategically constrain Russia, the United States and other non-regional members of the alliance are bolstering their military presence in Eastern Europe.

Poland, which only celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary of gaining its independence last year, has been a full NATO member since April 1999, and its current Armed Forces consist of roughly 100,000 soldiers. In 1939 the eastern European nation was invaded by Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. During the Cold War it was a member of the Communist Bloc.

Now located on NATOs eastern flank, close to Russia, Poland plays a role similar to that of West Germany during the Cold War. However, Shoigu has seen the NATO build-up as an issue to Russias security, and told Russian state media that the deployment of NATO forces has taken place despite the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, in which NATO agreed not to deploy considerable military forces near the contact line.

The Allied Command Operations exercises near the Russian borders almost doubled in comparison with 2014, Shoigu added. Their scenarios involve practicing the creation of large groups on the NATO eastern flank.

Increased Reconnaissance Flights

The other concern that Shoigu noted was the increase in what he described as spy flights near the Russian border, and the defense ministry said these have surged by one-third since last year.

The North Atlantic Alliances nations have recently intensified their intelligence activities, Shoigu told state media at the conclusion of last months Army Games-2020. The intensity of use of NATO surveillance aircraft close to Russian borders has increased by more than 30% in comparison to last year. There were 87 flights last August and now there are about 120.

Shoigu also noted how at the end of August and into September, the Russian Aerospace Forces scrambled jet fighters at least ten times to intercept spy planes over the Baltic, Barents and Black Seas. This included the scrambling of the Russian Northern Fleets MiG-31 fighters to intercept an Orion maritime patrol plane from the Royal Norwegian Air Force for a third day in a row.

These are just the most recent claims made by Russia, and follows claims made in June that foreign spy planes flew near the Russian border thirty times in a single week.

For its part, Russia has also increased its own reconnaissance and patrol flights, and this has included multiple flights of the Cold War-era Tupolev Tu-22M3 missile-carrying bombers over the Barents Sea and also off the coast of Alaska. Perhaps Shoigu needs to be reminded of those missions.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Reuters

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Russia Claims NATO Deploying More Troops on Border and Increasing Spy Flights - The National Interest

Abdullah Bozkurt

Muhammet Tanju Poshor, a decorated colonel and the head of operations at the Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, was detained while on leave of absence in Turkey and brutally tortured for days by Turkish authorities who wanted to extract a false confession.

Poshor arrived in Ankara on July 14, 2016 from his post at KFOR with a plan to take his family back to Kosovo, where he had rented a house. He was ordered by the deputy chief of staff of the Turkish Armed Forces to take up a short assignment as an observer at a military drill that was scheduled for the next day. At the last minute, the drill was changed to an emergency deployment to respond to the threat of a terrorist attack at the Turkish Radio and Television Broadcasting Corporation (TRT) building by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Shortly after their arrival at the TRT building, the troops came under fire from an unidentified group of civilians who were mobilized to gather there by the government. He was shot in the back while trying to diffuse the tension and rushed to the h

Early on the morning of July 16, 2016 he was unlawfully detained in the hospital while in a hospital gown and about to have surgery for a gunshot wound in his back. The unidentified people stormed his hospital room, started beating him while his back had an open wound and put him in handcuffs without even identifying themselves or advising him of the charges against him.

In court testimony Muhammet Tanju Poshor exposed horrible torture ordeal he suffered under detention:

He was taken to an unofficial detention site in a sports hall where close to 1,000 people were kept in what Poshor described as Nazi camp-like conditions. For 10 days he was subjected to torture and abuse in this hall, where victims were denied food and water for days, not allowed to use the bathroom facilities, beaten regularly by guards and forced to remain in stress positions such as kneeling on a hard floor for hours while handcuffed from behind.

Poshor was separated from the group, blindfolded and taken to a room where three teams tried various torture tactics on him for 10 days. The torture method applied by the first interrogation group was to beat me up, make me suffer by punching sensitive parts of my body and deliberately working especially on muscles until they were torn, Poshor told the court in a subsequent trial.

Another group of torturers took over the shift on the second day, trying to make him to sign a false confession. He was electrically shocked until he passed out. When I was awake, I got used to the pain, but I still havent gotten used to the smell of burnt flesh in a year and a half. This smell also disturbed my torturers and occasionally caused them to vomit, Poshor said of the terrible memories at the hands of his torturers.

A man who appeared to be the head of the guards came and told the torture team, Dont try too hard, bag him and leave him. When Poshor heard what the chief said, he thought they were going to kill him and put his lifeless body in a body bag. But he was wrong. I learned that bagging was another torture technique, not killing. They put me on the floor back first, then a heavy, muscled person sat on my chest, pressed my arms with his two knees, put a bag on my face and pressed hard, while someone else started squeezing and twisting my testicles. I dont know how many seconds this lasted but I really learned the meaning of pain. I was out of breath and fluid seeped out of every part of my body. I swallowed some of my vomit because my face was sealed with a bag, the colonel told the panel of judges in a hearing on May 5, 2018 at the Ankara 19th High Criminal Court.

Turkish Prosecutor included false statements in the indictment to incriminate Muhammet Tanju Poshor:

When the torture session ended, the interrogators asked him to tell everything or face a new round of torture. He said he had already told them what he knew, but his statement was not the one the police were looking for. Another round of the same kind of torture took place. After a terrible ordeal that lasted 10 days, he was taken to a prosecutors office, accompanied by one of his torturers. He saw a bar-appointed attorney for the first time waiting by the door of the prosecutors office. The lawyer asked him to not say anything about the torture. He said, If we talk about torture now, theyll continue to torture you, so lets not talk about it. They didnt let the lawyer into the prosecutors office, so I went in alone, Poshor said.

The prosecutor told him to confess to being a member of a terrorist group, a reference to government critic the Glen movement, which was accused by the government of being behind the failed coup. The movement strongly denies accusations, and the government has failed to present solid evidence to support its allegations. He said if I confessed to being a member of the organization, he would secure my release at the first hearing or he would hold me for another month at MIT [Turkeys notorious intelligence agency]. That was his statement, and I understood that the prosecutor knew about my torture, Poshor remarked.

The colonels recollection of his conversation with the prosecutor suggests that the unofficial detention site was run by the intelligence agency and that police were also there to help in running the center. It was clear that the prosecutor knew about the MIT torture site and was threatening the victim to go along with the government narrative by falsifying his statement.

Then he [the prosecutor] said, You knew youd be tortured, so why didnt you commit suicide? he recalled the prosecutor as saying to him in his office. He leveled more threats and sent him to a detention hall in the courthouse. Poshor thought he had caught a break as no one tortured him there. His relief did not last long. Only two or three hours later, he was taken from there and put in a room where a group of three or four men started beating him. The goal was to make him agree to the false statement in line with the prosecutors wishes. He was forced to sign papers and later referred to court for a 30-second arraignment before a formal arrest order was issued by a judge.

The prosecutor who indicted him later falsely stated that Poshor was detained on July 23, 2016 when he was in fact dragged from his hospital bed early in the morning of July 16. According to Poshor, this was not simply an oversight but rather a deliberate attempt to clear the authorities of violating his rights and cover up the torture evidence. That was not the only factually incorrect statement included in the indictment by the prosecutor. The prosecutor claimed that he confessed to having a conversation at noon on July 14 with Muhsin Kutsi Bar, commander of the Guard Regiment, in his office. However, at the time the prosecutor claimed Poshor had spoken with the commander, he was still in Kosovo. His flight landed in Ankara at 16:00 hours.

His acceptance of a direct order from his commanding officer, then-Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaar Gler, currently chief of general staff, put him in the middle of the chaotic July 15 events. Glers order was for him to accompany the Presidential Guard Regiment on July 15as an observer. He was supposed to compile a report of his observations and submit it to Gler. Although he explained this during the interrogation, the prosecutor removed that part of his statement from the indictment because that would have incriminated Gler as well and the government wanted to protect him due to his involvement in the false flag operation.

Muhammet Tanju Poshor was targeted for an assassination, but he survived:

When Poshor reported that he was ordered to observe the military drill, the commander of the Guard Regiment said he would let him know when the drill started. At around 21:00-21:30 hours, the commander told Poshor that he had received new orders from the General Staff to send reinforcements to state broadcaster TRT in order to secure the building against a possible terrorist attack by ISIS. He did not find the new orders strange given the fact that ISIS and the PKK had carried out terror attacks in the Turkish capital before, and intelligence alerts were arriving regularly to warn the military against possible attacks.

Col. Poshor explained in court that the regiment took a bomb-sniffing dog when they were deployed to TRT and said if this was a coup, the regiment would not have needed a bomb-sniffing dog. When they arrived at the TRT building, he thought he was observing a security operation to protect the building against terror threat. As the troops took their positions inside and outside the building, a group of 40 police officers came and started shooting at them. He went to talk to the police chief and explained to him why they were deployed. The chief told the colonel that they had been ordered to remove the soldiers from the building. It is clear that the false flag planners had mobilized military and police units with completely opposite orders while calling on civilians to gather there.

In order to diffuse the tension and clear the conflicting orders, Poshor said he would take care of the removal of the troops given enough time and returned to talk to the commanders. While they were speaking in a guard building at the entrance, all of a sudden they came under helicopter fire. Many were injured from shrapnel fragments. Posher was also among the wounded, but his injury was different than the others. I wasnt hit by shrapnel. The wound on my back was a 9 millimeter bullet wound, not from the gunfire of the cops, I was shot by one of the civilians in that crowd, and I was deliberately shot by someone who used the helicopter fire as cover, he said.

The full court transcript of the defense testimony of Col. Muhammet Tanju Poshor:

He revealed in court that he later learned that Zekai Aksakall, the commander of Special Forces who worked with the Turkish intelligence agency in executing the false flag coup bid, unlawfully ordered his execution. Aksakall had nothing to do with the Presidential Guard Regiment; yet he was very much involved in steering events at the TRT building. Aksakall was told by his aide that Poshor had been killed when he was being transferred to the hospital in an ambulance. In order to shape public perception, Aksakalls team even leaked the murder to journalist Myesser Yldz, who worked for the neo-nationalist Oda TV, which ran the fake murder story on its website. Poshor claimed he was one of three senior officers who were targeted for execution that night by Aksakall.

Col. Poshor, a decorated officer who was wounded twice in 1994 and 1995 in clashes with militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in south-eastern Hakkari province and northern Iraqs Kurdistan region and received medals for outstanding bravery, suffers from a loss of hearing and vision as a result of the torture he endured in Turkey.

In the coup trial Poshor denied accusations that he was involved in the putschist attempt and testified that he was complying with a direct order from Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Gler. He asked that Gler be compelled take the stand so his lawyer could cross-examine him, but Gler never appeared in court.

The prosecutor asked the court to sentence him to a two consecutive life sentences. The case is still pending.

Related

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Head of operations at NATO-led KFOR tortured in Nazi-like camp in Turkey - Nordic Research and Monitoring Network

Estonias relations with neighboring Finland have been unsettled by late Julys announcement that the countrys ambassador in Helsinki, Harri Tiido, resigned. Tiido cited difficulties in maintaining strong cooperation between Estonia and Finland due to a string of controversial statements attributed to outgoing chairman of the far-right populist Conservative Peoples Party of Estonia (EKRE), Mart Helme. While the global COVID-19 crisis has diverted focus, this controversy links back to December 2019 when Helme, Estonias 70-year-old minister of interior, participated in a radio discussion where he disparaged Finlands newly elected prime minister, 34-year-old Sanna Marin, as a cashier. Helme followed this with a denouncement of Marins Social Democratic Party, which he said leads Finlands governing coalition as reds desperately trying to liquidate Finland. The former is a bizarre reference to Marins student job before she obtained a masters degree and embarked on her political career, the latter has warped connotations with the Finnish Civil War in 1918.

The diplomatic consequences of Helmes comments continue to linger, with Tiido arguing: When diplomats have to ask for some support from Finland, its really difficult to go to the Finns after those kinds of statements. The senior Estonian diplomats public criticism of his government has caused considerable domestic controversy, but Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu has refuted Tiidos claim, saying that relations between Tallinn and Helsinki remain strong at a ministerial level and that inappropriate statements from last year have not harmed [Estonias relationship with Finland], though these [statements] could have been left unsaid. Despite this, Tiidos serious claim that EKRE are reducing, or have already reduced, Estonias room for maneuver internationally is a troubling assessment that requires deeper scrutiny.

Estonias relations with Finland sometimes resemble an unrequited love story. Reinforced by linguistic similarity, it is not uncommon for Estonian leaders to refer to a special relationship between the two countries. Tallinn perceives a close security partnership between Finland and NATO as further benefiting Estonias security. Estonias total defense system, which relies on the large-scale mobilization of military reserve components and civil society to support territorial security, is modeled on the system initially developed by Finland from the Winter War (1939-1940) onwards. Enthusiasm to more closely factor Estonian concerns into Finnish security policy has not been as strong on Helsinkis side. While welcoming broader regional security dialogue, Finnish governments have sometimes interpreted Estonian encouragement on closer Finnish-NATO cooperation as too pushy and out of step with Helsinkis more cautious management of relations with Russia.

Coming on top of other controversies, the saga leading from Helmes comments to Tiidos resignation risks compounding doubts in Helsinki on deepening foreign policy cooperation with Estonia. While most mundane diplomatic matters progress satisfactorily, Estonia-Finland relations have still experienced some uncomfortable moments over recent years. For example, in 2015, Estonias then Foreign Minister Keit Pentus-Rosimannus took an unusually heavy-handed decision to officially summon Finlands ambassador to Estonia. The move was in response to comments from Finlands Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who argued Estonia had left its society exposed to Russian propaganda by failing to offer news in Russian. (This was incorrect, as Estonias public broadcaster has long provided Russian language news programs on TV, radio and online an effort furthered by the dedicated Russian language ETV+ channel launched in 2015.).

Conversely, during the COVID-19 crisis, the Estonian governments expectations of Finnish solidarity were publically dashed when Tallinn expressed its disappointment that Estonian citizens working in Finland were not afforded special treatment and allowed to cross the border for employment purposes. Helsinki restricted international entry until late spring 2020, despite a long-standing tradition of employment mobility from Estonia. With these disappointments and controversies in mind, contrary to an ambitious special relationship in foreign policy based on ever-closer national friendship, some propose that a new realism focused on mutual strategic and economic calculations should instead be the platform to develop Estonia-Finland relations.

As a NATO member fulfilling the alliance obligation to spend 2% of GDP on defense, Estonia had consistently been referred to as a model NATO ally before EKREs entry to the countrys governing coalition in 2019. Until recently, there was little serious discussion on any alternative to Estonias long-term NATO policy, which routinely emphasizes a shared commitment to liberal values as a crucial basis for alliance solidarity. Estonia perceives this liberal values-based system as differentiating NATO members from Vladimir Putins authoritarian politics in Russia. Explaining some recent and surprising deviations from this narrative, political sociologist Tnis Saarts interprets EKREs rise as at least a partial revolt against the [liberal] West. Some Western societies have lately favored enhanced social liberalization, embracing multiculturalism, gender equality and legalized same-sex marriage. Saarts argues that significant conservative sections in East European societies within the EU and NATO are not yet willing to accept the same liberal transformation.

Perceiving ideological convergence, some among Eastern Europes nationalist leaders view the Trump administration as an ally more likely than Western European partners to accommodate their security concerns. During Estonias 2019 general election, EKRE included the audacious campaign promise that it would seek to secure billions in additional defense funding from Washington for Estonia. This fanciful claim came from Leo Kunnas, EKREs unsuccessful candidate for the minister of defense position, and offers some indication of EKREs preference for exclusive bilateral US-Estonia defense cooperation, perhaps envisaging that more engagement with Washington might marginalize some more liberal NATO governments. This worldview contrasts with Estonias long-term security policy consensus perceiving relations with Washington as vital, but still always encouraging support for NATOs collective action. As a far-right party in a governing coalition with the more moderate Centre and Isamaa Parties, EKREs inconsistent outlook risks provoking unnecessary friction with those already supporting Estonias security. As NATO has evolved its Readiness Action Plan (RAP) to the enhanced Forward Presence (eFP), US military rotations stationed in Poland have been reinforced by European and Canada contributions to NATO battlegroups in the Baltic states. European allies dominate the rotations for NATOs Baltic Air Policing.

Estonia is a recipient of security produced in NATOs multinational context, thus some contributing European allies might react with disappointment should they perceive EKRE criticism as directed at them. With Germany as the most prominent target, EKREs leadership has repeatedly criticized European NATO allies on immigration policy in particular. Some of this has also found its way into Mart Helmes remarks casting doubt on Estonias NATO engagement strategy. Before entering government, in 2018 Helme boasted that once Estonia improves its own independent defense capability, Tallinn will be in a better position to ignore the advice of its allies. He added that: A state that hangs all its defense-related hopes on allies is also a toy in their allies hands. Referencing political challenges largely beyond NATOs remit, Helme justified these remarks with the dubious claim that right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland are in a stronger position to refuse EU refugee quotas because both are less dependent on NATO allies for security assistance. The 2015 European immigration crisis started a tense legacy in Estonian politics, but these comments surprisingly contradict the never again alone principle that has dominated Estonias security policy since the restoration of independence in 1991. Weak military alliances are blamed for the countrys loss of sovereignty during World War II and the Soviet period.

Responding to French President Emmanuel Macrons comments on NATO becoming brain dead in late 2019, Helme astonished many when he elaborated that a Plan B for regional collective defense was being prepared by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland as an alternative to NATO provisions. This provoked surprise in Helsinki, with Finlands Ministry of Defense publishing an official statement outlining that it was unaware of any such plan. Helme later claimed that his comments were misinterpreted, nevertheless the mea culpa that his ministry issued was far from a ringing NATO endorsement, containing the line that an independent people and state [Estonia] must also be capable of defending themselves in a situation in which international security guarantees for some reason dont function. Inside Estonias government, Prime Minister Jri Ratas (Centre Party) and Minister of Foreign Affairs Reinsalu (Isamaa) reacted to these remarks by affirming Estonias unwavering support for NATO.

Before EKREs rise, Estonia was the model ally among the Baltic countries. Latvia and Lithuania have not been rocked by the same far-right populist influence. While maintaining consistent approval for strong EU-US relations and NATO, Riga and Vilnius perceive the unpredictable and confused security discourses coming from the Estonian government with concern. Were further loose statements from EKRE to risk increased friction with some NATO members, strategic proximity would inevitably lead Latvian and Lithuanian policymakers to grow more anxious that they might also be affected by any resulting controversy. As EKRE has surged in popularity and entered government, populist statements from within the partys ranks have created a series of unnecessary risks for Estonias security relations with other Baltic states, with Finland and within NATO. Recent experience certainty gives weight to Ambassador Tiidos parting claim that the far-right party has indeed reduced Estonias room to maneuver.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

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Estonia's Security Options Eroded by Far-Right Governing Party - Foreign Policy Research Institute

Patrol ship HMS Trent suffered an engine malfunction after leaving Portsmouth last month and needed to head to Gibraltar for repair, national newspapers claimed.

But the 295ft warship soon left the port and joined Operation Sea Guardian, a Nato task group in the Mediterranean tasked with deterring, detecting and disrupting illegal activity.

As well as scanning the horizon for possible threats, the ships company also played a key role in detecting criminal and terrorist activity in the region.

Lieutenant Oliver Bekier, Trent's e xecutive officer currently in command of the ship, said: The immediate success seen during our first period of operational tasking, and the way in which Trent has quickly integrated within the broader Nato construct, demonstrates the utility of the Batch 2 offshore patrol vessel in serving Britains interests in this area of the world.

Following the end of the exercise, Trent returned to Gibraltar to resupply.

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New Royal Navy patrol ship hit by engine woe on first voyage rises to the task on first Nato mission - Portsmouth News

In January 2018, the German news site Deutsche Welle released a bombshell report. It exposed, in excruciating detail, the degraded readiness of the German military. One year before assuming command of the NATO Very High Readiness Task Force, the alliances multinational immediate response force, the Bundeswehr was forced to admit it lacked basic equipment needed to fulfil its role: spare parts for armored vehicles, night-vision devices, body armor, and even winter clothes and tents. Subsequent investigations revealed similar readiness problems in the nations air and naval forces. In short, NATOs most important European member was not ready for war.

In many ways, the NATO Readiness Initiative, first announced in June 2018 at a NATO defense ministers conference in Brussels, was a response to these issues of readiness across Europes national militaries. Often referred to as the Four Thirties, the initiative calls for NATO member states to collectively maintain 30 mechanized battalions, 30 naval ships, and 30 air squadrons ready for employment by NATO within 30 days of activation. This agreement was part of a package of U.S.-sponsored initiatives which aimed to further increase NATOs ability to rapidly respond to crises by improving military mobility across Europe and expedite the organizations political and military decision-making process. These changes signaled a much-needed realignment towards preparedness for high-intensity conflict against Russia.

Its adoption was hailed as a transformational moment in the alliance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed that the initiative would create a culture of readiness. Others welcomed an initiative that measured readiness beyond spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, a metric that has become, at times, an unhelpful obsession in transatlantic defense.

However, two years after its adoption, it is still unclear if the NATO Readiness Initiative has had any effect. Despite its promise and potential, it may unfortunately remain more an expression of political will than an operational plan to rebuild readiness in the militaries of NATO member states.

To date, apart from a handful of nations announcing their contributions to the initiative, NATO has offered few additional details on this transformative effort. The alliance has not identified which nations are contributing forces which it does for other high-readiness battlegroups nor has it published any details on exactly how the readiness initiative works. Even the announcement of the success of the initiative, defined as contributing nations allocating all required forces to the initiative, was buried on an infographic in the 2019 NATO Secretary Generals report.

When first introduced two years ago, the readiness initiative lacked a clear definition of readiness, a means to evaluate individual units allocated to the initiative, and a routine mechanism to test the responsiveness of these forces. Since NATO defense ministers are still discussing the details of the initiative, it is likely that these fundamental gaps still exist. The initiative still has not been formally tested. Exercise Defender 2020, slated for June of this year, should have been an excellent opportunity to do so. However, the exercise was greatly reduced due to COVID-19, and it would have most likely been an inauspicious start for the alliances latest initiative. NATOs next opportunity will be Exercise Steadfast Defender in 2021, which gives NATO and states contributing forces to the initiative a little under a year to address these deficiencies and ensure the success of this important initiative.

As a first step, NATO should establish oversight on the readiness of national forces allocated to the Four Thirties. Then, the alliance should adopt additional strategies that support tactical readiness for these forces by standardizing training methodologies and establishing their wartime task organization before a crisis starts, not after. Given the challenges associated with NATOs land component, the alliance should start with member states armies rather than the other services.

Mind the Gaps

The NATO Readiness Initiative builds upon NATOs previous efforts to prepare the alliance to defend Europe against threats from Russia to the east and instability and terrorism to the south. However, the initiative differs from previous efforts in two ways: First, the readiness initiative focuses on the readiness of national forces, not those controlled by NATO. In the event of a crisis, NATO will need these forces to reinforce high-readiness spearhead units, with deployment timelines of less than a week, prior to the arrival of the larger, but slower to deploy, NATO Response Force. This multinational formation of nearly 40,000 troops drawn from across NATO member states packs a punch, but could take as long as 90 days before it can be employed. National forces will fill the gap between the two. Second, while past initiatives focused on deterrence through a forward-deployed defense posture to reassure Baltic allies most threatened by Moscow, the readiness initiative complements NATOs shift to a strategy of deterrence through military mobility. Investing in more mobile forces that can respond quickly to a crisis in Eastern Europe, rather than maintaining a large deployment of troops on NATOs eastern flank, lowers costs for member states and creates flexibility to respond to other threats to the alliance (e.g., terrorism).

Since the 2018 Brussels Summit, NATO member states have made great strides towards improving military mobility. Likewise, military mobility has become an important political objective in the European Union. Moving NATO forces in a time of crisis from bases across Europe to potential hot-spots in the east and south is a monumental task that requires detailed planning, something NATO has learned from large-scale exercises such as Exercise Trident Juncture 2018. Since then, NATO and the EU have diligently put these lessons into practice, include reducing border controls and improving infrastructure such as ports, bridges and railways, often at significant cost to individual member states.

Mobility Is Important, but So Is Availability

However, NATO may be putting its proverbial cart before the horse. Military mobility is just one component to ensure collective defense. NATO should first ensure the availability of forces to mobilize. In a crisis, NATOs member states may not be able to generate these forces in the first place. Regrettably, nearly two years after the adoption of the readiness initiative, NATO still lacks operational oversight of forces who, at this very moment, are ostensibly available to NATO within thirty days. Without oversight on the process of force generation within contributing nations, these forces might not uphold their standards of readiness and, as a result, fail to meet the mission assigned to them. In peacetime, failing to meet NATOs readiness standards ends careers. In a crisis, it could make the difference between winning and losing a conflict with Russia. Just as NATO is addressing military mobility now, so too must it address in the lack of oversight and evaluation under the readiness initiative.

Not everyone agrees that NATO should have more oversight of national forces. After all, the alliances strategic framework states that tactical readiness is the purview of individual member states, not NATO. While true, this framework was a result of post-Cold War force generation policies that focused on making global stability operations sustainable for member states. While it functioned well for counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan or the Balkans, it is insufficient for maintaining readiness for high-intensity conflict.

In a way, NATO has needed to repurpose defense concepts that guided the alliance from the past. Under the Cold War strategy of flexible response, national forces held in a high state of readiness were essential to the security of the European continent. Because the threat of Soviet invasion was ever-present, these forces were closely monitored and evaluated frequently to ensure their preparedness. While individual member states were still responsible for the training of their national militaries, NATO ensured compliance through formal exercises and no-notice readiness evaluations, ensuring each nation was accountable for their contributions to the collective defense of Europe.

A Tactical Readiness Initiative for NATOs Ground Forces

To support the NATO Readiness Initiative, the alliance should establish a tactical readiness initiative for European ground forces that supports the alliances broader goal of strategic readiness. There are several reasons to begin with armies. In addition to the sheer size of the land component allocated under the NATO Readiness Initiative potentially up to 15,000 troops ground force readiness presents a unique challenge for NATO. First, while years of insufficient defense spending has affected all of Europes military components, cuts in funding for personnel, equipment acquisition, and maintenance have hit ground forces especially hard. Despite pressure from the United States to increase defense spending and modernization efforts, many European armies still face significant gaps in their conventional capabilities. These problems could limit the quality of forces assigned to the NATO Readiness Initiative. Second, there are issues of interoperability at the tactical level that challenge the ability of these forces to quickly integrate into a single fighting force during a crisis. Member states use different command and control systems, communications devices, and specialty equipment. Workarounds can be found, typically from ground-level soldier ingenuity, but it takes time.

European ground forces each employ their own individual tactics and techniques. Sometimes they are synchronized with their NATO allies, and sometimes they are not. While this may be a minor detail from a strategic perspective, interoperable procedures (e.g., how to mark friendly vehicles during conditions of low visibility) are incredibly important for a multinational forces, especially when a portion of the alliance still employs Russian-made vehicles.

A tactical readiness initiative for NATOs land forces can address these issues of readiness and interoperability by doing two things: First, it needs to establish a standardized system of training and evaluation for each battalion allocated by contributing nations to the NATO Readiness Initiative. NATO should require that they train to NATO standards and use NATO procedures during their nationally mandated training cycle. Similarly, the readiness of these battalions should be evaluated using NATO Land Forces Commands long-standing readiness criteria. This assures that all battalions are better prepared to integrate into multinational formations once their readiness is validated. National land forces already synchronize their major training events at the annual NATO Land Forces Command Combined Training Conference. Were NATO to adopt a tactical readiness initiative for land forces, this venue could be easily adapted to integrate discussions of fully standardizing training and evaluation for battalions allocated to the NATO Readiness Initiative.

Second, NATO should establish the wartime task organization for NATO Readiness Initiative forces in peacetime in other words, before a crisis starts assigning battalions to existing multinational headquarters under the NATO Command Structure. Though divisions will be largely administrative until they are activated, the early integration of these forces provide them the time to form important relationships and address challenges to technical and procedural interoperability. This can take the form of collaborative planning events, or even combined training exercises. Many of the national land force training centers used by NATO member states benefit from advancements in live-virtual training, so even geographically dispersed battalions and NATO division headquarters can train together without expensive deployments to a shared training area. These combined events have the added benefit of serving as routine touchpoints to ensure that battalions are maintaining their readiness.

Looking Ahead

NATO should establish a clear definition of readiness for forces allocated under the NATO Readiness Initiative and adopt organizational structures that allow these units to plan and train together regularly in peacetime doing this during a crisis would be too late. In doing so, NATO can ensure that when needed, the alliance has an interoperable force capable of unified action instead of thirty individual battalions struggling to integrate into the NATO Command Structure under fire.

The alliance should also consider what needs to be added to the NATO Readiness Initiative to fully address tactical readiness in the air and maritime domains. Similarly, additional initiatives may also be required for space and cyber, and for individual warfighting functions like intelligence. NATOs many centers of excellence could be an important asset in determining the details of these domain-specific tactical readiness initiatives before disseminating these standards across national militaries.

Steadfast Defender 2021, a continent-spanning exercise scheduled for next summer featuring tens of thousands of thousands of troops deploying to several different training areas, will be a critical moment for the NATO Readiness Initiative . It will provide the alliance an opportunity to properly test its strategic readiness. But NATO should first ensure a solid foundation of tactical readiness is in place.

Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Tom Goffus put it, NATOs strategic readiness requires, two things together, on the front end is having NATO command and control capability to move the chess pieces around the board, the second is having chess pieces that are ready to be moved. The alliances efforts towards improving military mobility have largely achieved the first objective; now NATO should focus on the second. Adopting a supporting initiative to the NATO Readiness Initiative that directly address the tactical readiness of national forces is the best way to ensure that, if the time comes, NATO will have all of its pieces on the board.

Josh Campbell is an active-duty U.S. Army officer currently enrolled at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University. The views expressed in this article are his alone and do not represent the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

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Why NATO Should Adopt a Tactical Readiness Initiative - War on the Rocks