With the war in Afghanistan and its expansion into Pakistan, NATO is not only waging an armed conflict in Asia, it is also consolidating military partnerships with nations in the Asia-Pacific area and creating the nucleus of an Asian NATO. [14]
On October 8 Britain's Chief of Joint Operations, Air Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, signed a Memorandum of Understanding at his nation's Permanent Joint Headquarters with the minuscule Pacific island nation of Tonga (which has a population of 104,000) to supply over 200 troops for NATO's ISAF in Afghanistan. The deployment is to occur over the next two years, beginning with a contingent of 55 soldiers to be trained by the British Royal Air Force next month for stationing in Helmand province. Although a news report attributes the move to Tonga's alleged desire to "show its support to the alliance," it also revealed that "the Tongan service members will receive an operational allowance in British pounds in addition to their standard salary for the duration of their deployment." [15]
Tonga has now become the 48th Troop Contributing Nation for NATO's war effort, with reports that Bangladesh, with a population far larger than the island state (160,000,000), is being recruited to be the next by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. [16]
If the latter materializes, the latest five nations offering troops for NATO in Afghanistan will all be from the Asia-Pacific region: Mongolia, South Korea, Malaysia, Tonga and Bangladesh. Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also have troops serving under NATO as do - assuming the broader definition of Asia - Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the South Caucasus. Thirteen Asia-Pacific nations in all would be contributing forces for NATO's first Asian war. [17]
The recruitment of new national contingents and the expansion of ones already in place give the lie to Washington's claim that a transition to Afghan government control of security operations in the nation will begin next July.
Not only is NATO intensifying its involvement in Afghanistan as well as extending its combat operations into Pakistan, but it is preparing more missions of the nature and scope of that in South Asia as part of its 21st Strategic Concept to be adopted next month at its summit in Portugal.
On October 7 Reuters reported in a story called "NATO says must stay capable of Afghan-size missions," that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has emphasized "the need for NATO to retain the ability to mount major missions around the world."
In a speech ahead of NATO foreign and defense ministers' informal meetings in Brussels on October 14, he said:
"No other organization can marshal, deploy and sustain NATO's military power. I am totally unconvinced by the media suggestions that after Afghanistan, NATO might never take on another big mission.
"First and foremost, because I have no doubt that we will succeed in Afghanistan. And second, because there will be other missions in future for which only NATO can fit the bill. We will have to be ready." [18]
A war in its tenth year in which NATO's casualties mount by the day is not sufficient for an increasingly ambitious and expansionist, indeed global, NATO. While attacks on its forces increase steadily and its troop strength reaches record levels - and with at least 170 of its oil tankers destroyed in Pakistan since the killing of Pakistani troops on September 30 - the military bloc is planning new wars on the scale of the one in Afghanistan.
As to where those future operations will be conducted, Rasmussen recently stated in a video post on his blog: "We should reach out to new and important partners, including China and India. We should encourage consultations between interested allies and partners on security issues of common concern, with NATO as a hub for those discussions." Not with the United Nations, not with regional organizations on an equal footing, but with NATO as the initiator of and chief force conducting operations in Asia.
While reasserting that "the 'pillars' upon which NATO was founded in 1949 - including the principle of collective defence, a powerful military capability and strong transatlantic relations - were 'still fundamental,'" the NATO chief advocated that "the alliance also needed to look beyond its borders, as it had done in Afghanistan, where its military mission is supported by 19 non-NATO countries, in addition to the alliance's 28 members."
In Rasmussen's own words: "Defence of our territory and our citizens no longer begin[s] at our borders. Threats can originate from Kandahar or from cyberspace....As a consequence, NATO must build more partnerships and engage more with the wider world." [19]
The American-led military alliance is no longer a strictly North Atlantic one. It is rather only residually based in and controlled from that region of the world. It is no longer confined to the alleged defense of its member states, even the twelve new ones far to the east of NATO's original area of operations.
It is instead the world's first international military formation, one which even aspires to render nations like the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China) junior partners in an international military-security structure. [20]
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