Bush Supports Ukraine’s Bid to Join NATO - Steven Lee Meyers, New York Times
U.S., Allies Split over NATO Expansion - Jon Ward, Washington Times
NATO: A Robust Alliance - Wall Street Journal editorial
Bush Makes Trouble in Kiev - Boston Globe editorial
NATO: Putin Has a Point - Los Angeles Times editorial
NATO Needs New Lease - Friis Arne Petersen, Washington Times
Redefine the Alliance - Harlan Ullman, Washington Times
NATO Shouldn't Advance Too Far East - Malcolm Rifkind, London Daily Telegraph
Globalize NATO? - Helle Dale, Washington Times
A Two-Tier Alliance - Nile Gardiner, Weekly Standard
NATO Needs New Lease - Friis Arne Petersen, Washington Times

Bush Asks NATO Leaders to Embrace Policies...
The New York Times Wed Apr 02 2008 07:29:26 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...37-7583,00.html

The Australian
March 29, 2008

NATO's road map to nowhere

Patrick Walters, National security editor

FOR the first time an Australian prime minister will sit around the table next week with NATO leaders to discuss war strategy.
Kevin Rudd will make a lightning visit to the Romanian capital, Bucharest, hoping to glean a clearer appreciation of NATO's long-term plans for Afghanistan. On Friday NATO leaders will publicly avow a new direction in Afghanistan, including a modest troop increase.

But their much anticipated new road map won't be enough to disguise that NATO's war is going badly and there is little Australia can do about it.

If Rudd is hoping the Bucharest summit will produce fundamental changes in NATO's flawed strategy in Afghanistan, he will be disappointed. The heads-of-government gathering comes when the 26-member NATO is deeply divided, not just over Afghanistan but over the future expansion of the organisation and how it should evolve in the face of a resurgent Russia. The bickering over member countries' troop commitments to the Afghanistan conflict will be only a small part of a much broader and potentially divisive agenda at Bucharest.

During the past two months Australia has campaigned loudly for a far more integrated political and military strategy for NATO in Afghanistan. We have also demanded a say in the organisation's war planning. Our political leaders have called repeatedly for NATO countries to commit more troops to the fight before Australia could consider any increase in its modest 1000-strong military deployment to Oruzgan province.

No doubt NATO's political leaders, including George W. Bush, will listen politely to Australia when Rudd takes his seat at the table next week. After all, we are the largest non-NATO military contributor to the 43,000-strong NATO-led military force in Afghanistan. But our closest NATO allies - the US, Britain and Canada - could be forgiven for querying our credentials to speak with conviction on Afghanistan.

Unlike Australia, US and British forces have been fighting and dying in significant numbers in Afghanistan for years. The Canadians alone have lost more than 70 in combat operations around Kandahar.

By contrast, Australia's military commitment since late 2001 has been notable chiefly for the political expediency of our off-on deployments despite our stated willingness to stay the course. Our special forces did extremely well when first deployed soon after the September 11 attacks and were then withdrawn a year later on the spurious notion that the "job was done".

For several years we had only a single military adviser in the country before our troop commitment was restarted in 2005 by John Howard, with the special forces this time heading to Oruzgan province.

Once again the SAS performed admirably, only to withdrawn again after 13 months, ostensibly to "prepare for APEC". On the civil side it took until August 2006 - nearly five years after the toppling of the Taliban government in late 2001 - for Australia to set up an embassy in Kabul, long after Canberra's key allies had done so.

Military analysts agree that NATO will have to at least double its troop commitment to Afghanistan if it is to have any chance of successfully prosecuting counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban.

"Unless we change how we are doing business, NATO will lose Afghanistan. We are just drifting," observes one Rudd government insider. But there is no chance that NATO's new road map will produce anything more than a marginal increase in the combat force necessary to defeat the Taliban.

The more Australia demands a greater say in NATO planning for Afghanistan, the greater the political and moral responsibility for us to consider lifting our overall military and civil aid effort.

In Oruzgan province, where Australia's special forces and engineers are based, there is a strong likelihood that we will be called on by key NATO partners to make a stronger commitment in the next three years, particularly if the Dutch withdraw their forces from 2010.

Yet there has been a subtle change in the Rudd Government's rhetoric on Afghanistan in the four months since Labor won the election. We don't hear much these days about Afghanistan being the "cockpit of the war on terror" and "terror central". Nor do we hear much about the need for an open-ended commitment to build a new Afghanistan. Only months ago in Opposition Rudd was happy to state that Labor would look at reasonable requests in the future for additional military help, including the "hard-edged stuff". Now he has adopted a more careful, cautious position.

Rudd and Minister of Defence Joel Fitzgibbon are seeking to circumscribe the extent of Australia's future commitment to NATO's intractable war in Afghanistan.

The Government's refrain is that our military is overstretched in its far-flung deployments across the globe, notwithstanding the imminent withdrawal of our 550-strong battle group from Iraq. It is as if the Government has been warned by its best strategic advisers that the NATO-led war is unwinnable and that it should firmly resist allowing the defence force to be dragged further into Afghanistan's political quicksand.

Rudd has been particularly critical of NATO's failure to devise an integrated political-military strategy for Afghanistan. Here is what the Prime Minister said 10 days ago: "What has staggered the Government generally is that when we embarked on a recommitment of force to Afghanistan some years ago there was no such common agreement between us and the allies."

Rudd stressed that he was going to Bucharest to ensure that NATO had embarked on a long-term strategy to secure success in Afghanistan, which would be measured against fixed benchmarks. "I believe it is only responsible to remain militarily engaged in a conflict ... if you believe it is winnable," the PM added.

NATO's cumbersome bureaucracy makes it well-nigh impossible to prosecute the war in Afghanistan even with Washington in the driving seat. The organisation, designed to fight a conventional European war against the Soviet Union, has no particular aptitude or appetite for counterinsurgency operations in the unfriendly mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. In Oruzgan, Australian forces are doing good work in trying to stabilise one of Afghanistan's most remote and thinly populated provinces.

Our military wins all the tactical battles but winning the war is another matter. The Taliban keeps generating new leaders.

"They just have to outlast us. If you don't reconcile with the Pashtun Taliban, you are going to get beaten. You have to bring them inside the tent," observes one Australian military source.

Australian army personnel are training the new Afghan army and our engineers are building command posts and forts to help defeat the insurgency. But the 200-odd police suffer from poor morale, are ill-trained and infiltrated by the Taliban. Creating a truly combat-effective Afghan army presence able to take responsibility for the province will take four to five years.

Australia could take over the running of Oruzgan province should the Dutch quit in two years. We would have to lift troop numbers and provide additional combat forces, including aircraft and artillery.

But the military operation is only a part of the Afghan story. Winning over local tribal leaders requires a sustained and carefully targeted program of civil aid for townsfolk and farmers. At present NATO has no nationally co-ordinated civil aid program. The US and its close allies are at loggerheads about how best to reduce farmers' dependence on opium poppy crops.

Leaving aside the complexities generated by the continual cross-border flow of insurgents from Pakistan, stabilising Afghanistan will be a 20-year assignment for the international community. It will require extraordinary patience and resolution, more military and civilian aid, careful involvement from the ground up to restore a shattered civil society and consummate diplomatic skills.

So far NATO has manifestly failed in Afghanistan. It has neither the political will to stay the course nor the military resources and organisational discipline considered essential to defeat the Taliban.

Copyright 2008 News Limited

George W. Bush and NATO Expansion

William Pfaff

Paris, April 1, 2008 – The hawks are coming home to roost this week during President George W. Bush's travels. It has been apparent for many weeks that there was little chance for any of his major initiatives to succeed: expansion of NATO, new reinforcements for NATO in Afghanistan, or agreement with Vladimir Putin on missiles in Eastern Europe.

All date from the period in the Bush administration when its members, to use the Leninist phrase, were dizzy with success, and indifferent to criticism or challenge. The assumptions of the administration's foreign policy were that the Afghan and Middle Eastern interventions were successful – mission accomplished! -- and that the time had come to look to Europe, Russia and China.

The neoconservatives and the administration hawks – Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, their acolytes, and most of the Pentagon leadership – considered Russia and China the real obstacles to unchallenged American global leadership.

The most controversial issue the president deals with during his visits abroad this week is the offer of membership action plans, the first stage in preparing a NATO membership claim, to Georgia and Ukraine. Both formerly were part of the Soviet Union. Imagine the reaction of Washington were Mexico or Canada urged to join a Russian military alliance. Or Florida or Texas, after their having declared independence of the U.S.

In cold war Europe, there were important old nations of central, southern and southeastern Europe that had played major roles in the European past and were subjugated by Stalinist Russia after the second world war. These deserved restored independence. Russia acquiesced.

It has not even seriously objected to their joining NATO, notwithstanding the George H.W. Bush administration's assurances that NATO would not be extended to Russia's borders.

Even NATO's extension to the Baltic states has been accepted, although these former Roman provinces, or creations of Baltic Crusader knightly orders, have mixed histories over the ages of Swedish or Russian domination, and only intermittent independence.

In Georgia and Ukraine fundamental internal problems must be resolved before their stability and integrity can be assured. Inside NATO, they risk becoming sources of alliance weakness and internal controversy. Majority Ukrainian public opinion does not favor NATO membership. The country is a divided one, one half Roman (Uniate) Catholic in religion, looking westward towards Poland, and the other half, the poorer half, is Russian-speaking, Russian in culture, and Orthodox in religion.

The governing elite (and their supporters in Poland and elsewhere) think NATO membership is a solution to this internal problem. But if the country is in NATO, the Russian-inclined half of the population will effectively have been subordinated to the other, and a cultural, linguistic, religious and political division that goes back to the 14th century will be envenomed, not settled.

This is neither a good idea for Ukraine nor for NATO, exacerbating internal tensions in Ukraine and involving NATO in a quarrel it cannot resolve, and which weakens the alliance.

Georgia has a better claim to independence as it was a distinct autonomous kingdom as early as the 4th century B.C. Its subsequent history is one of largely unsuccessful struggles against the Persians, Turks, and in modern times, the Russians, to remain independent.

Its difficulties in staying independent have been its small size, predatory neighbors, and most important, so far as NATO is concerned, internal divisions that persist to the present day. Vladimir Putin's Russia supports separatist enclaves that Georgia claims, but that do not wish to be Georgian. Again, whatever sympathy may be felt for the Georgians, NATO membership and conflict with Russia are not the way to solve Georgia's problems.

What is the point of deliberate provocation? The West Europeans generally are against this expansion of the alliance, and they are the ones that have to worry about what turn Russian policy may take in the future.

A favorite refrain in Washington is that the Europeans must build up their military defenses. If the West Europeans do not do so, it is because they do not share the fear that is so marked a characteristic of the United States since 9/11.

The Europeans generally think that now, and in the future, the EU can deal comfortably with Russia on the basis of shared or convergent economic and political interests. If Russia should give sign of becoming a military threat to Europe, which they do not expect, they will no doubt react accordingly. They are much richer, more populous, with a much more powerful and advanced industry and advanced technology, than Russia, and they even have a reputation for a certain military competence when provoked.

Finally, unlike George Bush, most Europeans seem confident that Iran has no reason to fire nuclear missiles at them, and that what happens with the Taliban in Afghanistan does not threaten Europe, nor indeed that it is Europe's business. These views might prove complacent, or even foolish, but that surely is for the Europeans to worry about, which is exactly what Washington still is not ready to accept.

© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.




This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com

Admit Georgia and The Ukraine to NATO
April 01, 2008
Currently President Bush is in Kyiv talking to Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko about The Ukraine's chances of being admitted to NATO and the EU. More

April 2, 2008 NATO Marches Eastward
We're on a dangerous collision course with Russia, no matter who wins the White House by Justin Raimondo The relentless march of NATO, decades after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the death knell of the Leninist project, is surely an object lesson in the real motivations and character of "democratic" imperialism, here and in Europe. The Communist enemy may be long gone, but NATO soldiers ever onward, and ever eastward. Suddenly we're back in the heyday of the Cold War: once again we hear the War Party's clarion call – "The Russians are coming!"

What they really mean to say however – as the video clip above makes visibly and audibly clear – is that the Americans are coming, along with the Brits, actively seeking to delegitimize and destabilize the government still dominated by Vladimir Putin. A new campaign for "regime change" is in the making, this time aimed at Moscow.

When the neoconservatives launched their campaign to exclude Russia from the G-8 summit, in retaliation for their arming of Syria and refusal to get on board the Iraq war-wagon, Russo-American relations took a steep dive. Vice President Dick Cheney was quick to join the refrain, accusing the Russians of using oil as a "weapon" against Ukraine in what is presumably a new cold war. Bush, who had previously gazed into Putin's eyes and found a fellow spirit, is now championing NATO membership for Ukraine and – incredibly – Georgia.

The Europeans are having none of it, with France and Germany opposed outright and several of the smaller NATO members "skeptical," as news accounts put it. That doesn't really matter to the Bushies, however, who are doing this for domestic political reasons, as a show of support to McCain and the McCainiacs.

The links between the McCain campaign and the campaign for NATO expansion, and Russophobic circles in general, are extensive. Randy Scheunemann , McCain's top foreign policy adviser, is a key figure in the NATO expansion campaign: he has been a top lobbyist for British Petroleum, several major defense contractors, and various Baltic and Central European governments. He worked with Bruce Jackson, a former vice president in charge of planning for Lockheed-Martin and Pentagon official, on the U.S. Committee for NATO. Scheunemann has been an American adviser to the Georgian government and a registered lobbyist for Macedonia, Romania, and Latvia, as well as a corporate lobbyist for BP America and Lockheed-Martin. To top it off, Scheunemann was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century and a co-founder and director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is, in short, the embodiment of all the pressure groups and special interests who profit, materially and ideologically, from the renewal of the Cold War.

The old drama has been revived, let there be no doubt. That is the meaning of the U.S.-funded and stage-managed "color revolutions" from Kiev to Kyrgyzstan, epitomized by that whole mysterious business with the alleged poisoning of Victor Yushchenko – an affair that resembled the hokiest sort of Cold War propaganda.

Even more bizarre is the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB spy who supposedly "knew too much" – so much that his former bosses bumped him off by poisoning him with a rare radioactive isotope, a substance that just happens to play a key role in making triggers for nuclear devices. Was it a KGB assassination, or, perhaps, something along the lines of what Sibel Edmonds is describing – an underground network of nuclear smugglers? In any case, it's like something out of a novel by John le Carré, or, perhaps, one of his substandard imitators.

In spite of these histrionics, however, the regnant anti-Russian hysteria – induced and maintained by these sensational stunts, which give every indication of being carefully staged – doesn't have much popular resonance, particularly in the front-line trenches of Cold War II. Ukrainian voters have since turned sour on the "Orange Revolutionaries," on account of their wrecking the country economically and their warmongering Russophobia, especially the radical wing led by the fiery Yulia Timoshenko, the "gas princess," whose ultra-nationalist tirades against Russia are the key to her limited electoral appeal. Support for Ukrainian NATO membership may be popular in Washington, D.C., but it is distinctly unpopular in Ukraine, where only 30 percent are in favor.

In Ukraine, many people can barely feed their families. Why should they care if the Ukrainian air force, such as it is, is being upgraded to meet NATO standards? The real constituency for this is in Washington, where lobbyists for arms contractors – Scheunemann's old buddies at Lockheed-Martin, for one – are delirious with joy at the prospect of more NATO members, all of which will have to be outfitted with and trained to use sophisticated new weapons systems. Guess who rakes in billions in profits, at taxpayers' expense?

Ideological ambidexterity is the key operating principle inside the Washington Beltway, where policymaking is all about corporate socialism for the rich – Lockheed-Martin and Bear Stearns – and social Darwinism when it comes time to foreclose on some poor schmuck's mobile home.

There is also an ideological motivation, congruent with the corporate interest in NATO expansion, and that is the neoconservative insistence on continental hegemony. In practice, this means the maintenance of American military supremacy in Europe as well as the Middle East. An important addendum to this is the extension of American military influence in the Caucasus, and, as usual, McCain has been in the vanguard of this trend. The candidate has been a big booster of Georgia, although he's had no comment on the recent government crackdown on the opposition, the obviously phony elections, and the spectacle of Georgian cops beating peaceful protesters in the streets of the capital city.

McCain once traveled to the disputed region of Abkhazia, whose pro-Russian inhabitants seek independence from Tbilisi and close relations with Moscow, where he declared the Russians must not be allowed to possess one square inch of "sovereign" Georgian territory. As president, he'd have us involved in every territorial dispute along the periphery of the former Soviet Union, from the snowy fields of Latvia to the steppes of Central Asia.

Unlike Bush, who keeps up the insulting pretense that the U.S. is intent on building a missile shield in Poland and the Czech republic to counter an alleged "threat" emanating from Iran, President McCain would make no secret of the real target of this "defensive" weapon – which, for the first time, makes a first strike on the Russians militarily feasible. McCain, the "Atlanticist," is unleashing the most feverish phraseology, describing Russia as "revanchist" and even accusing Moscow of launching cyber-attacks on Latvia – without, of course, any supporting evidence. Perhaps, as president, he would launch a preemptive cyber-strike at the Russians, applying the Bushian-neocon military doctrine to the Internet – and maybe not just there…

As for the other aspirants up for admission into this archaic Cold War conclave – Croatia, Macedonia, and Albania – NATO's secretary-general is cautiously optimistic that at least two out of three will be welcomed into the fold at the Bucharest summit. Macedonia may not make it because of a dispute that gives a hint as to why the word balkanize means to split up into a multitude of irreconcilable camps. The admission of Croatia and Albania, the allies of NATO during the Euro-American war of aggression against the former Yugoslavia, is a reward for their fealty, as well as alms for the American arms industry. It is also insurance that if Kosovo blows up again, the Croatians can repeat their performance in the Krajina, where they slaughtered nearly 2,000 Serbs, burned down 73 percent of Serbian homes, and forced thousands more to flee.

The really bad news is that U.S.-Russian relations are likely to undergo a radical decline no matter which presidential candidate takes the White House. What this means is that McCain's malevolent vision of a "revanchist Russia," backsliding into authoritarianism and a threat to its neighbors, may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the not-too-distant future. In our search for endless enemies, the worst, it seems, are our own creation.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12618

Alliance Invites In Croatia, Albania - Peter Baker, Washington Post
Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia, Ukraine - Erlanger and Meyers, New York Times
Prioritizing NATO - Washington Times editorial
Messages NATO Needs to Ponder - Toronto Star editorial
NATO: No Wonder Russia is Paranoid - Anatole Kaletsky, London Times