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21st Century Strategy: Militarized Europe, Globalized NATO

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Clinton, Rasmussen, Albright, Jones and Daalder alike made claims for NATO's global role, but the address by Pentagon chief Robert Gates was in some ways the most blunt and revealing of all.

The website of The Australian gave the title "Peace culture weakens NATO" to an account of his comments, which included his boast that "more than 120,000 troops are serving as part of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and thousands more are on their way," and his insistence on "the expectation that everyone will fulfill their Article 5 responsibilities and duties." [21]

The following are further excerpts from his address:

-At the strategic level, the greatest evolution in NATO over the last two decades is the transition from a static, defensive force to an expeditionary force from a defensive alliance to a security alliance.

-It is clear that our security interests are no longer tied solely to the territorial integrity of member states, as instability elsewhere can be a real threat. Just consider the types of missions undertaken by NATO over the last two decades from Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Kosovo, to counter-terrorism in the Mediterranean and counter-piracy in the Gulf of Aden, to the massive, multi-faceted stability, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.

As Rasmussen and Clinton both mentioned alleged threats to Estonia where the only nation presenting them could be Russia, so Gates targeted the same country in his stressing "the core goal of defending the territory of member states from attack a point made more relevant after Russia's invasion of Georgia and its recent military exercises on NATO's border, the largest of that type since the collapse of the Soviet Union."

The "core goal" he spoke about is that addressed in NATO's Article 5, which states:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Gates like the other American speakers at the seminar invoked Iran as the justification for interceptor missile deployments, but repeated mention of Estonia and Georgia pertain exclusively to Russia.

He then launched into a diatribe against a fictitious peace contagion enveloping Europe - when almost the entire continent is now absorbed by NATO and practically every nation on it has sent troops to a war zone in Asia, "5,000 kilometers from NATO headquarters."

Indicting European NATO allies' unwillingness to match U.S. military spending - slated to reach an unprecedented $708 billion next year - Gates said, "Since the end of the Cold War, NATO and national defense budgets have fallen consistently even with unprecedented operations outside NATO's territory over the past five years."

If anyone still cherishes hope for a peace dividend a generation after the end of the Cold War, Gates has nothing but contempt for them:

"These budget limitations relate to a larger cultural and political trend affecting the alliance. One of the triumphs of the last century was the pacification of Europe after ages of ruinous warfare. But, as I've said before, I believe we have reached an inflection point, where much of the continent has gone too far in the other direction. The demilitarization of Europe where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st."

A cultural infection of pacifism. A non-existent demilitarization of Europe which threatens peace. Sentiments of this type have not been voiced in Europe itself since the late 1930s and early 1940s, when like now most of the continent was united under one politico-military power.

1) NATO Expansion, Missile Deployments And Russia's New Military Doctrine
Stop NATO, February 12, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/nato-expansion-missile-deployments-and-russias-new-military-doctrine
2) United States Department of Defense
http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1423
3) Remarks at the NATO Strategic Concept Seminar
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Washington, DC
February 22, 2010
United States Department of State
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/02/137118.htm
4) On New Global Doctrine
Special Briefing on the Future of NATO
Ivo Daalder
Permanent Representative to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Washington, DC
February 23, 2010
United States Department of State,
http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2010/137121.htm
5) Atlantic Council, February 24, 2010
6) Remarks by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the fourth
Strategic Concept Seminar on Transformation and Capabilities, Washington DC
February 23, 2010
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_61647.htm?selectedLocale=en
7) Speech by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at Georgetown
University
February 22, 2010
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_61566.htm?selectedLocale=en
8) International Herald Tribune, October 12, 2006
9) Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006
10) West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO
Stop NATO, May 27, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154
11) Reuters, February 7, 2010
12) Ibid
13) Voice of Russia, February 18, 2010
14) Russia Today, February 18, 2010
15) Afghan War: NATO Builds History's First Global Army
Stop NATO, August 9, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-builds-historys-first-global-army
16) Michel Chossudovsky, Europe's Five "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17550
17) NATO's Secret Transatlantic Bond: Nuclear Weapons In Europe
Stop NATO, December 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/natos-secret-transatlantic-bond-nuclear-weapons-in-europe
NATO's Sixty Year Legacy: Threat Of Nuclear War In Europe
Stop NATO, March 31, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/natos-sixty-year-legacy-threat-of-nuclear-war-in-europe
18) Thousand Deadly Threats: Third Millennium NATO, Western Businesses Collude
On New Global Doctrine
Stop NATO, October 2, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine
19) Remarks by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the fourth
Strategic Concept Seminar on Transformation and Capabilities, Washington DC
February 23, 2010
20) Speech by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at Georgetown
University
February 22, 2010
21) NATO Strategic Concept Seminar
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, National
Defense University, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1423

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Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/
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