As was repeatedly stated at the NATO meeting in Slovakia, although the bloc is increasingly conducting military operations outside its area of responsibility in the Balkans, South Asia, Northeast and Central Africa and the entire perimeter of the Mediterranean Sea, its "core," fundamental role remains what it has been for sixty years, confronting Russia.
Which is how Russia and its then president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov reacted to the U.S. takeover of seven military bases in Bulgaria and Romania. In 2007 the first stated "[A] new base in Bulgaria, another in Romania, a site in Poland, radar in the Czech Republic. What are we supposed to do? We cannot just observe all this." [10]
Shortly afterward the second, Lavrov, stated "Russia finds it hard to understand some decisions of NATO like, for example, the deployment of US military facilities in Bulgaria and Romania." [11]
Regarding the recent disclosure that the Pentagon is going to allot $110 million to modernize and expand military bases in both countries -- "a $50 million military base in Romania that could house 1,600 U.S. troops, and another $60 million facility for 2,500 troops in Bulgaria" [12] -- no small sum in the impoverished nations, James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs with the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council think tank, said "the U.S. efforts in Romania and Bulgaria are part of a global redeployment strategy started in the early years of the Bush administration to shift U.S. forces out of Germany and move them eastward." [13]
The same news source also reported that "the U.S. intends to deploy troops to Poland at some point in the near future," according to the State Department's undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Ellen Tauscher. [14]
Bulgaria's investment in turning its military bases over to the Pentagon and NATO is a bad one, though. While the U.S. is to spend $60 million expanding one of its military bases, the country's Defense Minister Nikolay Mladenov announced earlier this week that "Afghanistan is Bulgaria's largest military mission, costing taxpayers about BGN 90 million (about USD 68.7 million) each year." [15] A net loss of $8.7 million. More if Mladenov delivers on a recent promise to increase his nation's troop contingent in Afghanistan.
The Bulgarian base that will soon house 2,000 U.S. troops is the Novo Selo Military Training Ground and will be upgraded "so that it could accommodate more rangers and be used for military exercises conducted by several countries, not just US and Bulgarian forces." [16]
That is, it will be used for multinational NATO combat instruction for current wars, that in Afghanistan in particular, and for potential use elsewhere in the Broader Middle East, in the former Soviet Union and in Africa.
It will especially focus on the integration of expeditionary forces from nations arising from the ruins of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
Earlier this month Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov escorted high-ranking U.S. military officers to the Novo Selo base and on the occasion stated "Bulgaria would continue its military cooperation with the USA, and that Serbia and Ukraine had also expressed expressed interest in joint drills." [17]
During a meeting of the Southeastern Europe Defense Ministerial (SEDM) on October 22 in Bulgaria Defense Minister Mladenov "offered his counterparts from neighboring countries to use the joint Bulgarian-U.S. military training facilities in Novo Selo".The annual meeting was attended by the defense ministers of all countries which have the status of observers -- Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia." [18] Montenegro and Serbia were incorporated as full members of the SEDM during the meeting which was also attended by "representatives of NATO Allied Joint Force Command, Naples, and NATO Allied Joint Force Command, Brunssum, as well as the General Manager of NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency," according to the NATO Partnership for Peace website. [19]
This year's meeting of SEDM, which overlaps with other NATO transitional programs like the Adriatic Charter and the Partnership for Peace, also established a Multilateral Peace Force Southeastern Europe. The twelve previous full members of the SEDM are the United States, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.
The nations Bulgarian officials listed as ones invited to be trained by the Pentagon's Joint Task Force -- East, about which more later, were mentioned again recently by U.S. Vice President Biden in Romania on October 22, as they were at the same time by Biden's former Senate colleague John Kerry, in the latter case as future NATO members.
Biden stated in Bucharest, "As President Obama has said, there are no old members, there are no new members of NATO; there are just members. Under Article 5, an attack on one is an attack against all" [20] and "Our military serve together in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the West Balkans zone"." [21]
A Romanian news source quoted the American vice president as also saying, "We share a desire that Romania's neighbors including Moldova will continue along the path to democracy and"that they will be integrated into European institutions when they are ready. That's why we have to sustain this bid to economically stabilize Moldova." [22]
Moldova was the scene of a so-called Twitter Revolution in April of this year, one modeled after earlier "color" uprisings in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2000-2005, and now has a new government ready to merge with Romania, which would mean dragging the former Soviet republic into NATO.
