NATO Wages War On Third Continent

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/nato-wages-war-on-third-continent/

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Updates on Libyan war: March 30
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/updates-on-libyan-war-march-30/

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Stop NATO
March 30, 2011

NATO Wages War On Third Continent
Rick Rozoff

At its summit in Lisbon, Portugal last November the North Atlantic Treaty Organization adopted its first strategic concept for the 21st century, one in keeping with its expansion into not only a pan-European but a self-styled international military force.

In addition to subordinating all of Europe to a U.S.-dominated interceptor missile system, complementing the new U.S. Cyber Command in waging cyberwarfare defensive and offensive, and erasing whatever distinction remained between NATO and European Union military functions on the continent and globally, the world's only military bloc endorsed the nearly ten-year-old war in Afghanistan as its prime mission and affirmed its commitment to ongoing operations in the Balkans.

Almost all of the approximately 150,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan are currently under the command of the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force, which is also conducting deadly helicopter gunship raids and artillery attacks inside neighboring Pakistan.

The war in South Asia is NATO's first armed conflict outside Europe and its first ground war. Its bombing campaign in Bosnia in 1995 and 78-day air war against Yugoslavia four years later were its first hostile military actions.

NATO is now waging a war in a third continent, Africa.

The Alliance's summit last year placed particular emphasis on consolidating partnerships with nations outside Europe and North America; military relations and agreements with, counting NATO members and partners alike, over a third of the 192 members of the United Nations.

Mechanisms employed to extend NATO's influence and operations worldwide include the Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, the Contact Countries format, the NATO-Afghanistan-Pakistan Tripartite Commission and the NATO-Russia Council.

Five of the seven members of the Mediterranean Dialogue - Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia - are African states.

With U.S. Africa Command achieving full operational capability on October 1, 2008, the whole continent has been placed under an American overseas military command (Egypt remains in U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility), with plans underway to replicate that arrangement with NATO. [1]

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) assumed control of what is now a 12-day war against Libya, the only North African nation not subordinated to AFRICOM or CENTCOM and to binding NATO obligations, through its Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn.

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