The top military commanders also discussed what in a Pentagon report on the conference was alluded to as Pacific perspectives.
The North Atlantic Alliance in fact has a Pacific strategy. Most of the most recent additions to NATO's Troop Contributing Countries in Afghanistan have come from Asia-Pacific nations: Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea and Tonga. Japan has dispatched military personnel, medics, as well. Australia and New Zealand have had troops, including special forces, engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan for years. With 1,550 soldiers assigned to the International Security Assistance Force, Australia is the largest troop provider to that NATO operation of any non-NATO country.
The Afghan war has been employed by the U.S. and NATO to forge an unprecedented 50-nation interoperable military force and the bloc has formalized the arrangements initiated to that end with its new Strategic Concept adopted at the last NATO summit in Portugal in late 2010. At a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin a year ago the alliance endorsed a new partnership format, a uniform Partnership Cooperation Menu (with approximately 1,600 activities), to strengthen already existing military cooperation programs and to expand its network of military partnerships throughout the world.
In addition to the Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative programs - in Europe and Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf, respectively - NATO has a new category it calls partners across the globe, which as its name indicates has no geographical boundaries.
NATO lists Partnership for Peace members, which with the alliance's 28 members are subsumed under the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, as:
Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Its Mediterranean Dialogue partners are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners are Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, with Saudi Arabia and Oman next in line.
Partners across the globe are, to date, though subject to expansion, Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Korea.
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