"[T]he security implications of climate change need to be better integrated into national security and defence strategies - as the US has done with its Quadrennial Defence Review. That means asking our intelligence agencies to look at this as one of their main tasks. It means military planners should assess potential the impacts, update their plans accordingly and consider the capabilities they might need in future."
He additionally advocated the inclusion of the over forty nations the 28-member bloc has individual and collective partnerships with in adding, "We might also consider adapting our Partnerships to take climate change into account as well. Right now, NATO engages in military training and capacity building with countries around the world. We focus on things like peacekeeping, language training and countering terrorism. What about also including cooperation that helps build capacity in the armed forces of our Partners to better manage big storms, or floods, or sudden movements of populations?" [5]
Rasmussen's Pandora's box of NATO concerns were for years adumbrated by his predecessor, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who two years ago said that "[T]he subjects that the Alliance leaders are expected to discuss at the Bucharest Summit (Spring 2008) [are] NATO enlargement, missile defence, military capabilities, energy security, maritime situation awareness, cyber defence and other new security threats" [6] in one statement, and in another in the same period "emphasised the importance of such issues as enlargement, partnerships, energy security, the fight against global terrorism, energy security, cyber and missile defence which he expects to be discussed at the Bucharest summit." [7]
In March of 2008 Scheffer was quoted in a news report titled "NATO Chief Calls for 'Atlantic Charter' to Define Strategy" as saying, "Challenges are multifaceted, interlinked and can arise from anywhere. We need to do a better job of scanning the strategic horizon. We can't just be reactive....If NATO is to be capable to act anywhere in world, we will need more global partners." [8]
During a visit to Israel this past January Scheffer expounded on the theme: "NATO has transformed to address the challenges of today and tomorrow. We have built partnerships around the globe from Japan to Australia to Pakistan and, of course, with the important countries of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. We have established political relations with the UN and the African Union that never existed until now. We've taken in new [countries], soon 28 in total, with more in line....[W]e are looking at playing new roles, as well, in energy security and cyber defence...." [9]
In a speech on March 22, "The Future of NATO," he spoke of "long-term, costly and risky engagement far away from our own borders" and interventions "to cover a wider range of concerns and interests - from territorial defence, through regional stability, all the way to cyber defence, energy security, and the consequences of climate change.
"From just 12 member states we went to 26 - and soon 28. And from a purely 'eurocentric' Alliance NATO has evolved into a security provider that is engaged on several continents, working with a wide range of other nations and institutions." [10]
His earlier reference to the African Union is to NATO's deployment to the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005, its first African operation, and that to "political relations with the UN" to a backroom deal reached in September of 2008 between Scheffer and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that bypassed permanent Security Council members Russia and China.
Indeed, the growing list of excuses for NATO involvement and intervention, that of Scheffer and now of Rasmussen, is a dangerous arrogation of responsibility and functions that are properly those of the UN and not that of a non-elected military cabal whose combined member states' populations are a small fraction of the human race.
NATO's expansion and its progressively broader operations over the past ten years indicate in a glaring manner the Alliance's intention to circumvent, subvert and jeopardize the very existence of the United Nations, a theme dealt with in a previous article, West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO. [11]
In addition to "guaranteeing energy security" by establishing military beachheads in the Balkans, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea and retaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe and participating in the American-led drive for a global missile shield, NATO has claimed for itself the exclusive mandate to address virtually all problems confronting humanity. In conjunction with Western arms manufacturers and the likes of Lloyd's of London and Royal Dutch Shell.
1) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 16, 2008
2) NATO, October 1, 2009
3) The Telegraph, October 1, 2009
4) NATO, October 1, 2009]
5) Ibid
6) NATO, October 9, 2007
7) NATO, October 9, 2007
8) Bloomberg News, March 15, 2008
9) Haaretz, January 10, 2009
10) NATO, March 22, 2009
11) Stop NATO, May 27, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154
