NATO has a major training center in Poland, the world's first multinational strategic airlift operation at the Papa Air Base in Hungary, and de facto possession of a former Soviet air base in Lithuania. After meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier in the month, Lithuanian Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene announced that the Pentagon chief confirmed U.S. support for a permanent military base in the Baltic Sea region where NATO warplanes have been conducting air patrols since the induction of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the bloc in 2004.
The Lithuanian defense chief also said the Pentagon wants to extend NATO air patrols in the area "till 2018 and beyond."
Washington plans to establish a missile shield communications center in the Czech Republic, where Britain is currently leading multinational
air combat exercises, Operation Flying Rhino 2010, with 2,000 foreign and 1,000 Czech troops.
Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were employed for the attack on and invasion of Iraq in 2003 and have been used regularly for the nearly nine-year U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.
After the invasion of Iraq, new NATO members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland sent troops to the country, as did then NATO candidates and partners Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.
Offering Washington troops for the war in Iraq was a prerequisite for advanced NATO partnerships and eventual full membership. Nine of the above nations were awarded the second in return for their services. Bosnia, Macedonia and as of last year Montenegro have been granted Membership Action Plans, introduced at the 1999 NATO fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. as the penultimate stage of full integration. Georgia and Ukraine were presented special Annual National Programs by NATO shortly after Georgia's war with Russia in August of 2008.
All twelve new Eastern European NATO members have troops in Afghanistan, as do prospective members Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Georgia, Macedonia and Montenegro.
NATO has taken over the former Warsaw Pact and former Yugoslavia, in the first case without firing a shot. In the second through two bombing campaigns (Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia in 1999) and three deployments of ground troops (Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999 and Macedonia in 2001).
All ex-Warsaw Pact nations outside the former Soviet Union now have soldiers killing and dying under NATO command in Afghanistan, as all but the erstwhile East Germany did in Iraq, though none of them did under Warsaw Pact obligations during the ten years of Soviet involvement in the South Asian nation. Seven of fifteen former Soviet republics also have troops serving under NATO in the Afghan war zone.
The U.S. and other major Alliance powers conduct regular multinational Partnership for Peace military maneuvers in all three former Soviet Republics in the South Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - and have held comparable exercises in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
The major purpose of the war games and other drills is to prepare the militaries of the host and participating nations for interoperability in military, including combat, missions abroad, most prominently in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past few years.
Georgia had 2,000 troops in Iraq in 2008, at the time the third largest foreign contingent, although its population is only slightly over four million, a fraction of that of the U.S., Britain and other major troops providers.
Most of those troops were flown back to Georgia on U.S. military transport planes during the five-day war with South Ossetia and Russia in August of 2008. Georgia will soon have almost 900 troops in Afghanistan, the largest per capita contribution of any of the 50 nations supplying soldiers to NATO for the fighting there.
During the 36 years of the Warsaw Pact member states aside from the Soviet Union rarely deployed military units outside their borders and never overseas.
In the past decade all non-Soviet members and all former Yugoslav republics but Serbia have had their sons and daughters deployed by NATO to such frequently far-flung war and conflict zones as the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq and adjoining countries like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan (Germany) and Kuwait. Over a hundred Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Slovak soldiers have returned to their homelands from Afghanistan and Iraq in coffins.
When the Soviet Red Army left Bulgaria in 1947 no foreign troops were stationed in that nation until U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited it two years after its NATO accession to sign an agreement on three military bases there: The Bezmer Air Base, the Graf Ignatievo Air Base (recently certified as meeting "100% compliance" with NATO requirements) and the Novo Selo Training Range.
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