Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
February 10, 2008
Pg. 12
By Nicholas Kulish and Thom Shanker
MUNICH — NATO is not devolving into a two-tier alliance of those who fight and those who will not, the alliance’s secretary general said Saturday at an international security conference.
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’s defense of the unity of the alliance follows several weeks of difficult wrangling between the United States, Canada and their European allies over sorely needed troops to help fight the insurgency in Afghanistan.
He seemed to be responding to recent remarks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who warned Congress that the alliance risked becoming a “two-tiered” organization with “some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security, and others who are not.”
“We are not on the brink of falling apart,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer told reporters here, expanding on remarks he made in an address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy.
The secretary general said there had been some recent success in persuading allies to provide more resources for the fight in Afghanistan. Belgium announced recently that it would send four F-16 fighter-bombers to join the effort in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the most violent part of the country. Germany last week agreed to send 200 more troops to the northern part of the country as part of a quick-reaction force.
Despite the Secretary General’s positive remarks, no NATO nation has come up with substantial new contributions for the Afghan mission except for the United States, which has committed to sending 3,200 more marines into southern Afghanistan.
The annual conference in Munich brings together heads of state, foreign and defense ministers and other high-ranking diplomats. Relations among NATO members seemed to be slightly less strained following the two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Lithuania that ended last week.
Mr. Gates, scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Sunday at the Munich conference on Afghanistan, said Saturday that the United States had not issued any sort of ultimatum to NATO allies to provide more troops.
In conciliatory remarks to alliance members, he expressed Washington’s understanding of political pressures within NATO capitals that have made some allies reluctant to join the combat mission there.
Mr. Gates said his recent letters to alliance defense ministers instead “expressed the hope” that they would increase their contributions of combat troops and security trainers for the Afghan mission.
He said American bilateral relations with individual NATO nations would not be harmed if they were unable to contribute more to the mission in Afghanistan. “We have a realistic understanding of some of the political limitations here in Europe in certain countries,” Mr. Gates said.
But the American defense secretary coupled those comments with a clear warning that the alliance itself could suffer if it does not succeed in Afghanistan because only some allies step up to the combat mission.
“It’s a military alliance,” he said. “The members have signed up with certain obligations in this regard. But if it were to become the case that some allies are not prepared to fulfill their military obligations, while others continue to do so, I think that is a very dangerous situation for the future of the alliance.”
Speculation was rampant throughout the day at the conference that Germany would raise the ceiling on its troop deployments in Afghanistan from a maximum of 3,500 to 4,500. But a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said there had been no deliberation of the matter in the chancellery, just discussions among members of Parliament.
Germany has come under significant pressure from the United States to move some of its 3,200 troops from the northern part of Afghanistan to the south.
Polls show a majority of the German public opposes an expanded role for the country’s soldiers in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Munich Conference on Security Policy, which began during the heart of the cold war, is meeting for the 44th time. The conference theme, “The World in Disarray — Shifting Powers, Lack of Strategies,” reflected the air of uncertainty afflicting the alliance, which had a clearer mission when the Soviet Union was the enemy.
The event lacked some of the luster of previous years. Mrs. Merkel was not scheduled to attend. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, pulled out at the last minute because of the demands of his presidential campaign.
The conference also lacked a significant controversy, such as the large protests in 2003 when then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke to what he previously had referred to as “Old Europe” on the eve of the Iraq invasion, or last year’s event, when Russian President Vladimir V. Putin went beyond the usually diplomatic niceties in a speech harshly critical of United States foreign policy.
This year, Mr. Gates and Sergei B. Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, were back to the niceties.
As he entered a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Gates after a series of other country’s speeches that had criticized both American and Russian policy, Mr. Ivanov said, “Everyone pokes his finger at you and us — we are responsible for everything.”
Laughing, Mr. Gates said, “Some things never change.”
February 10, 2008
Pg. 12
By Nicholas Kulish and Thom Shanker
MUNICH — NATO is not devolving into a two-tier alliance of those who fight and those who will not, the alliance’s secretary general said Saturday at an international security conference.
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’s defense of the unity of the alliance follows several weeks of difficult wrangling between the United States, Canada and their European allies over sorely needed troops to help fight the insurgency in Afghanistan.
He seemed to be responding to recent remarks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who warned Congress that the alliance risked becoming a “two-tiered” organization with “some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security, and others who are not.”
“We are not on the brink of falling apart,” Mr. de Hoop Scheffer told reporters here, expanding on remarks he made in an address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy.
The secretary general said there had been some recent success in persuading allies to provide more resources for the fight in Afghanistan. Belgium announced recently that it would send four F-16 fighter-bombers to join the effort in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the most violent part of the country. Germany last week agreed to send 200 more troops to the northern part of the country as part of a quick-reaction force.
Despite the Secretary General’s positive remarks, no NATO nation has come up with substantial new contributions for the Afghan mission except for the United States, which has committed to sending 3,200 more marines into southern Afghanistan.
The annual conference in Munich brings together heads of state, foreign and defense ministers and other high-ranking diplomats. Relations among NATO members seemed to be slightly less strained following the two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Lithuania that ended last week.
Mr. Gates, scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Sunday at the Munich conference on Afghanistan, said Saturday that the United States had not issued any sort of ultimatum to NATO allies to provide more troops.
In conciliatory remarks to alliance members, he expressed Washington’s understanding of political pressures within NATO capitals that have made some allies reluctant to join the combat mission there.
Mr. Gates said his recent letters to alliance defense ministers instead “expressed the hope” that they would increase their contributions of combat troops and security trainers for the Afghan mission.
He said American bilateral relations with individual NATO nations would not be harmed if they were unable to contribute more to the mission in Afghanistan. “We have a realistic understanding of some of the political limitations here in Europe in certain countries,” Mr. Gates said.
But the American defense secretary coupled those comments with a clear warning that the alliance itself could suffer if it does not succeed in Afghanistan because only some allies step up to the combat mission.
“It’s a military alliance,” he said. “The members have signed up with certain obligations in this regard. But if it were to become the case that some allies are not prepared to fulfill their military obligations, while others continue to do so, I think that is a very dangerous situation for the future of the alliance.”
Speculation was rampant throughout the day at the conference that Germany would raise the ceiling on its troop deployments in Afghanistan from a maximum of 3,500 to 4,500. But a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said there had been no deliberation of the matter in the chancellery, just discussions among members of Parliament.
Germany has come under significant pressure from the United States to move some of its 3,200 troops from the northern part of Afghanistan to the south.
Polls show a majority of the German public opposes an expanded role for the country’s soldiers in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Munich Conference on Security Policy, which began during the heart of the cold war, is meeting for the 44th time. The conference theme, “The World in Disarray — Shifting Powers, Lack of Strategies,” reflected the air of uncertainty afflicting the alliance, which had a clearer mission when the Soviet Union was the enemy.
The event lacked some of the luster of previous years. Mrs. Merkel was not scheduled to attend. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, pulled out at the last minute because of the demands of his presidential campaign.
The conference also lacked a significant controversy, such as the large protests in 2003 when then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke to what he previously had referred to as “Old Europe” on the eve of the Iraq invasion, or last year’s event, when Russian President Vladimir V. Putin went beyond the usually diplomatic niceties in a speech harshly critical of United States foreign policy.
This year, Mr. Gates and Sergei B. Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, were back to the niceties.
As he entered a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Gates after a series of other country’s speeches that had criticized both American and Russian policy, Mr. Ivanov said, “Everyone pokes his finger at you and us — we are responsible for everything.”
Laughing, Mr. Gates said, “Some things never change.”