We still need NATO?

Oh so true...

I was not blowing them off, I said that precisely because they are billions they are not common occurence in the world, and therefore, the rules are different for them. The foreign policy we talked about is easier forced upon a nation of 20 million than one of 1 bn.
Therefore, India and China, choose what system they want, without fearing loss of independence or falling in line... they are nuclear powers too.

Sure, sure, we know these "lines". Hey, dont blame Marx because you were sold Soviet imperialism under the heading "worker's democracy" etc. etc.
I have nothing against democracy, I'm just saying its a beautiful story, like socialism was. In the real world we're talking about economical and political subordination. For small countries at least. Which is nothing new, so dont get this as an angry complaint, anti-americanism etc. I just like to tell it as it is.

Telling the truth may not help much, but it sets us free.

"We still need NATO, because, NATO thing causes technology advance. "

One of the deepest conclusion, this year, generated by a hormonal problem

Iama


Launch of NATO’s Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) Programme


Source: NATO


"NATO’s Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) Programme has reached a key milestone in Alliance efforts to field an Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) capability by 2010.

As a practical example of the ongoing transformation of NATO’s military capabilities, on 11 March 2005 the North Atlantic Council approved the Charter for the ALTBMD Programme Management Organisation (PMO). This decision launched the Alliance’s ALTBMD Programme, which will provide protection against the threat of ballistic missiles to our soldiers deployed on NATO missions.

The importance of being able to defend deployed troops against theatre-range ballistic missiles, such as SCUD missiles, was made apparent during the 1990s. As a number of foreign nations continue working on ballistic missile programmes, as well as developing chemical, nuclear, and biological warheads for those missiles, the need for effective defences has increased.

To counter this threat, NATO has, for the past several years, worked to design a battle management system for theatre missile defences. The system will be able to integrate different TMD systems (such as PATRIOT, the NATO MEADS system, SAMP-T) into a single coherent, deployable defensive network able to give layered protection against incoming ballistic missiles.

The detailed specifications of the NATO system were agreed by Defence Ministers in Istanbul last June. With the approval of the Charter, the NAC has formally established the TMD Programme Office, paving the way for the financing and purchase of the NATO TMD system.

The launch of the TMD program is the result of a decade of work by NATO in the theatre missile defence area, and provided to the Alliance a new collective capability for common defence. "


Iama

I sleep better at night knowing Romania has my back. You guys are some tough sons of bitches and your women are very pretty!

I'm not knocking you guys, I'm a bit drunk and it seems funny. No offense intended from the drinking idiot downn in Texas!

i do not think we are that tough....

Maybe this is the best thread in which to note the passing of George Kennan, who died last week at age 101.

(He) ... "was "the nearest thing to a legend that this country's diplomatic service has ever produced," the historian Ronald Steel has said. He was the man who proposed "containment," the cornerstone of the cold war, as a way to oppose the Soviet Union.

The idea of containment was worked out by Mr. Kennan in 1946, when he was the chief of mission in the United States Embassy in Moscow. The State Department had asked for help in understanding the Soviet state, to which he responded with an 8,000-word cable, known as the "Long Telegram," which offered a detailed psychological, historical and political interpretation of the Soviet Union."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/weekinreview/20word.html

Significantly, for this thread, Kennan argued lately that expanding NATO to Russia's borders was a biiiiiggggg mistake! He thought it likely to increase Russsian antagonism to the West, promote a pulling inward likely concomitant with a reassertion of more typical Russian authoritarian government. In that, it looks like he was correct once again as he was over much of his career.

IMO, it's significant he was making these arguments at age 100 or so; something we should all here be able to do: I'm sure it's a side effect of spending time thinking and writhing about this stuf, hahah.

fyi, his fascinating obituary which recaps much of the history of the cold war along the way is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18kennan.html

Very interesting stuff. I didn't even know of this guy.

ha!!! and u call yourself EUROPEAN!!!!


to flyboy: well of course he was right about many things, he worked in moscow, remember? he knows the russian mind better than those" experts" at the pentagon or whereever. fortunately, Dubya listened to him carefully. like Clinton did, and like reagan and Bush senior did....

We are happy to cooperetate with our Big Brother. It is crucial for his role.

International Cooperation 'Crucial' to U.S. Defense Policy


Source: US Department of Defense


"WASHINGTON --- The United States can’t win the global war on terrorism all by itself, a senior DoD official noted here today, drawing on conclusions from recent discussions among the department’s top policy specialists.

“Much of what the United States wants to see done in the world for our own national security purposes, and specifically with regard to the war on terrorism, are things that can be done as a practical manner only by other countries,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

Feith and Navy Rear Adm. William Sullivan, vice director of the Joint Staff’s strategic plans and policy shop, rolled out the department’s new National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy.

The NDS is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s guidance to the department, Feith said, on how to support and implement President Bush’s National Security Strategy established in September 2002.

The NDS, Feith noted, also forms the basis for the department’s Quadrennial Defense Review process. The QDR examines the types of military capabilities needed to support the NDS. The next QDR is slated for completion in February 2006.

The armed forces’ National Military Strategy supports the NDS and contains both secret and unclassified material, Feith explained. Feith noted the new NDS contains three main ideas:

-- the need to deal with strategic uncertainly that has followed the end of the Cold War;

-- the value of early measures and actions that can prevent crisis from becoming wars; and

-- the importance of building partnerships with other countries.

Some nations friendly to the United States have terrorists within their borders, Feith pointed out. Under this scenario, he noted, “the only way that action can be taken effectively against those terrorist enemies is if it’s taken by the governments of the countries where they are located.”

In fact, “international cooperation is crucial to our fighting the war on terrorism,” Feith asserted, noting it’s important for the United States to reach out and seek dialogue with nations with terrorist problems and to offer assistance.

Such assistance, he said, may involve law enforcement, civil administration or intelligence assets, as well as military training and other aid.

The U.S. government, Feith pointed out, “has an interest in helping enable these other countries to be able to work with us” in defeating global terrorism.

DoD’s new strategy documents, Feith said, will assist the department in safeguarding Americans’ freedom and way of life.

Later in the day at an interview with the Pentagon Channel, Feith expressed hope that DoD planners “are doing as good a job on the strategy level as our forces are doing out there on the front lines, because they’re doing a brilliant job.” "

Iama

Illuminated heads had a forum debate on this topic. Hey, there are members here?

Meet Focuses on NATO-EU Defense Efforts


Source: Deutsche Welle German radio
issued April 13


" A conference on European security has opened in Berlin. It's focusing on ways to effectively strengthen European defense efforts with a view to improving joint missions in crisis areas on the continent and elsewhere.

The two-day conference in Berlin has drawn high-ranking politicians, NATO officials and EU defense experts and aims to highlight efforts to further harmonize defense cooperation within the North Atlantic Alliance and the EU's own defense initiatives.

It's being held at a time when both the EU and NATO are in the process of building up rapid reaction forces, or battle groups, as European strategists prefer to call them. Both organizations are potentially drawing upon the same pools of soldiers which indicates that rivalry can never be ruled out.

But in a bid to further heal transatlantic relations after the controversy over the US-led war in Iraq, assurances are being heard ever so often that the EU’s own security efforts are invariably intended to complement -- not duplicate or rival --NATO.

"It would be totally wrong to view the development of European defense capabilities separately from advances within NATO," said Germany's Social Democrat Defense Minister, Peter Struck (photo). He added that both NATO and the European Union are currently making efforts to be better prepared for out-of-area missions in a bid to adapt to a fast changing security environment.

"NATO must be open to reform"

There can be no doubt whatsoever that in future NATO has to be the place where dialogue on transatlantic security strategies must be intensified, Struck added. "The alliance has to be open for reform," Struck added.

This is what German chancellor Gerhard Schröder demanded at a recent security conference in Munich, and his words are being taken seriously by NATO leaders.

Struck’s message to the conference was taken up by Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, deputy secretary-general of NATO. He made it clear that it had been wrong to try and sweep different threat perception levels on both sides of the Atlantic under the carpet and demanded that a fresh initiative be made to debate security strategies more openly within NATO.

"We need to understand that NATO is not only a forum for action. We must also understand that it’s a forum for debate," said Minuto Rizzo. "During the Iraq controversy, NATO was manifestly under-utilized as a consultative forum, and we paid a high price for that," he said. "I’m confident that we’ve learned our lesson. If we want to preserve NATO as a central framework for effective multilateralism, we must engage in multilateral debate."

Focus on rapid response forces

Defense minister Struck said it would be in the interest of all to see the European Union reinforce its own military capabilities alongside those of NATO.

He pointed to the EU’s successful peace-keeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of Africa. He announced that Germany would be willing to contribute 50 military observers to the 250-strong EU contingent to become active in Sudan soon.

The chairman of NATO’s military committee, General Harald Kujat, himself German, left Mr Struck’s remarks uncommented and focused on the capabilities of NATO’s future rapid response forces instead.

"A great proportion of the alliance’s forces will need to be deployable well away from their own territories and have the flexibility to switch rapidly between war fighting and peace keeping," Kujat said. "Future forces must be more capable of operating within a networked environment. There will be a greater need for specialist skills in areas such as engineering, communications, special operations, civil-military cooperation, logistics, medical services and intelligence."

More money needed

Several speakers complained about EU defense programs being gravely underfinanced.

They noted that the 16 European NATO member countries together currently spend only $200 million on defense capabilities annually -- which amounts to only half of the US defense budget. "

Iama