A couple of days ago we published a video at PoliGazette of Christopher Hitchens explain to MSNBC why the West should stop obsessing over Afghan farmer who grow opium and should, instead of trying to destroy their crops (which are the only source of income for thousands Afghans) buy them.

It seems that Hitchens’ very reasonable words were not heard by anyone in the White House, or NATO for that matter. Instead the United States has decided to push ‘NATO allies to order their troops to target Afghanistan’s thriving heroin trade in a bid to stem the flow of drug money to the widening insurgency against the troubled international military mission.’ (more…)

‘US Vice President Dick Cheney held talks with world leaders Saturday on the last stop of a four-nation tour in which he pledged US support for ex-Soviet republics after Russia’s conflict with Georgia.’

He met first with Jose Aznar, Spain’s former president. After that meeting he would meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres and British Petroleum and Goldman Sachs International Board Chairman Peter Sutherland later today. (more…)

PoliGazette takes a look at the Russia / U.S. crisis from a Russian perspective. (more…)

In direct response to the Russian invasion of Georgia, the United States and Poland signed a deal on Wednesday. The deal means that Poland will host 110 interceptor missiles just 115 miles from Russia’s Western border.

Russia responded to the plan a couple of weeks ago; a high ranking general said Poland had now become a nuclear target. (more…)

The United States should announce its intention to transfer the entire Europe-based American military establishment to new locations in Central Europe, because many of the EU’s largest states are more interested in avoiding a rupture with Moscow than in protecting the vital interests of the Union’s eastern members, writes Wess Mitchell of the think tank the Atlantic Community in a guest post for PoliGazette. (more…)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, while visiting Europe, that NATO will not allow Russia to succeed in Georgia.

The reaction of the United States was lukewarm at first, but has heated up ever since. Two days after the Russian invasion of Georgia began the U.S. upped the ante by threatening with sanctions and other, unspecified, punishments. Rice’s visit to Europe is part of the American attempt to isolate Russia and to form an international coalition against Russian imperialism. (more…)

Again the Russian and South Ossetian Troops near South Ossetia begin to fire upon innocent Turkish TV Reporters. Georgia has mostly Turkish TV Reporters filming the war because they are the closest to Georgia. It is reported that one reporter was shot and blinded.  There are reports of a Journalist from Holland being killed.

There is video of Turkish TV Reporters being shot:

(more…)

I discuss the possible broader implications of the Georgian Crisis for the future of NATO at RealClearPolitics’ new global affairs site, RealClearWorld.

“President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies,” the New York Times reports. The reality of the matter is that Bush is almost done, he only has 6 months left in office (give or take), and Europe knows it. (more…)

The German newspaper the Spiegel reports that Germany opposes US President Bush’s wish to expand NATO. He “wants to bring more Eastern European countries into the military alliance at the upcoming NATO summit” but Germany “is thwarting his plans, because of concerns about Ukraine and Georgia — and in deference to Russia.” (more…)

The German newspaper the Spiegel reports that “[a] new United Nations study has found that glaciers across the globe are shrinking faster than ever before. The UN says the consequences could be grim for billions of people who depend on glacial melt and urges global leaders to act swiftly on climate change.” (more…)

The Dutch government and Parliament have decided to stay in Afghanistan until 2010. A few months ago, the Dutch cabinet already said that it wanted to prolong our stay in the Afghan province of Oruzgan, but now most other MP’s have agreed to stay in the war-torn country for a couple of years more as well. (more…)

This post is written by an angry European who has had enough of Barack Obama’s silly rhetoric. Perhaps Americans should elect a non-diplomatically disabled person? (more…)

NATO ain’t what she used to be. (more…)

A very interesting and in the end, a very depressing article in The Guardian this morning about some recommendations by a blue ribbon panel of ex-military leaders in NATO who believe that the organization is in danger of becoming irrelevant to the security interests of its members.

In short, they conclude that NATO is not addressing the fundamental security threats facing the organization in a rapidly changing world and that there is a real danger that NATO itself will not survive many of the challenges facing it.
(more…)

US Secretary of State Robert Gates criticized NATO yesterday for not doing what it’s supposed to do in Afghanistan. The troops in Afghanistan need material, but NATO countries also have to send trainers (who can train Afghan police and soldiers). As of yet, many if not most NATO allies aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

Although I understand the frustration - more on that later - I’ve got to point out that there are NATO allies who do their share. It’s important to mention Canada, Britain and the Netherlands for instance. Edit: of course it’s also important to mention non-NATO allies such as Australia. When the average American reads the article in the NYT he or she will get the impression that, once again, Europe as a whole isn’t willing to invest in the security of another country. That’s not true: some European countries don’t want to, others do. (more…)

The Washington Post reports that Russian “President Vladimir Putin signed a law Friday suspending Russia’s participation in a major conventional arms treaty that had limited NATO and Russian military deployments in Europe.”

As the WaPo points out, Moscow “had been threatening all year to scrap the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.” Now Putin has carried out the threat. “The suspension takes effect Dec. 12.” (more…)

Rudy Giuliani made a bit of a radical proposal on NATO yesterday, one that’s been kicking around for the last few years: expand it around the globe.

“We should open [NATO]’s membership to any willing state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness (and) global responsibility, regardless of location. . . . I think we should consider countries such as Australia, Singapore, India, Israel, Japan . . .” 

This is what worries me about Giuliani: I really don’t trust the guy on foreign policy. I’m sympathetic to his desire to create an international alliance that bypasses a China or Russia veto — I think it’s becoming clear that France is fundamentally an ally — but NATO is not the way to do this. Jason’s the IR theorist here, but let me see if I can’t do a little bit of basic foreign policy analysis.

NATO is, above all, a military treaty that enjoins its members to come to the military defense of a member nation who is attacked. This is a problem for at least three of the countries that Giuliani named. Japan is (at least for the moment) constitutionally incapable of fulfilling the terms of the treaty; while their Self-Defense Forces are among the best sailors and pilots in the world, they are not legally capable of discharging the duties of a NATO member (and frankly, if you look back to their constitutional conventions, pretty much everything they’ve done for the last 25 years has been unconstitutional). Israel is already at war; allowing them in would obligate everyone to jump to their defense. There’s something to be said about bringing the Palestinian fight to an ultimate conclusion, but I really don’t think this is the way to do it.

I said three, didn’t I? Who’s left… oh, India. Right. I have an idea: let’s take two countries with nuclear weapons pointed at each other, that throw tremendous fights whenever one of them is preferenced over the other, and then let one of them into the strongest military alliance in the world. Then let’s try to convince the one we just insulted (the one with the inferiority complex to begin with), one of the most critical countries in the world, to be on our side in the war against Islamic radicalism. This is not even considering the odds of Pakistan and India going to war over something entirely different (pick a cause, any cause) and forcing us to fight Pakistan. Does this strike anyone else as a particularly effective way to wage the war on terror? 

The point of the mutual defense pact of NATO was to ensure that any aggressive move by the Soviet Union would be met by collective resistance. By adding in countries that are flashpoints for conflict, we would be dramatically expanding NATO’s role in ways that are detrimental to U.S. interests. And this is why I’m now more hesitant about Giuliani: do I really trust this guy to run a complex and knowledgeable foreign policy?

For a contrary view on at least Israel’s entry, see here.

Great:

Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost Monday, killing seven soldiers in an attack that heightened tension at a time when Ankara has threatened military action against the rebels in northern Iraq.

The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey after guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported.

Soldiers returned fire, killing the driver, the military said…

A pro-Kurdish news agency reported Monday that Turkish troops shelled a border area in northern Iraq for a second day in an attack on Kurdish rebels based there.

Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi, a spokesman for the Kurdish rebel group PKK, told The Associated Press by telephone that there had been artillery shelling from Turkey into Iraqi territory at dawn, and that there had been simultaneous shelling from the Turkish and Iranian sides on Sunday night.

Cernig (as far as I know, the only other reasonably well known blogger who blogs very regularly about the Turkey-Kurdistan situation):

Here’s Bush administration foreign policy at its very worst. They refused to decide in favor of their NATO ally and actually do something about a terror group responsible for 30,000 of that ally’s people being killed. This because they were so determined to gloss over the cracks in their narrative about the final success in Iraq always being just around the next corner.

Sadly, it is not that easy I am afraid. It seems to me that if the US would truly support Turkey in this matter, it would be in the danger of losing the support of the Kurds. That would be disastrous.

On the other hand, of course, having Turkey and Iran attacking Kurdistan is an even worse disaster.

What should Bush have done? He should have convinced the Iraqi government and the Kurdish leaders that the PKK camps in Northern Iraq have to be destroyed. Bush relies on support from the Kurds, true, but just as the Americans need the Kurds, the Kurds need the Americans. It is not a one-way street. If there is any one country in the world that’s able to positively influence the Kurds, it is America.

Besides that, of course, the PKK is a terrorist organization and Turkey is a NATO ally. One cannot allow an ally to be attacked by terrorists operating in / from a country one controls.

This should have been at the top of Bush’s agenda for months. Rice should have traveled to Kurdistan and Turkey a couple of times in the last few months. Heck, Bush should have gone himself. There should been good, mature diplomatical efforts to reduce the stress.

If necessary, the US should even have gone in to destroy the PKK camps itself (after convincing a majority of Kurds that doing so in their own interest).

Iran and Turkey vs. the PKK. The Kurds will now probably unite and consider both Turkey and Iran enemies. The US will be in the middle - it cannot not support Turkey, but it can also not allow Iran to do the same thing Turkey does.

Yesterday I wrote:

My prediction: Turkey will go in, destroy quite some PKK camps and withdraw before things truly get messy. The US will say that Turkey has to withdraw ASAP, behind the scenes, however, Rice et al. will tell the Turks that they have a certain amount of time to do what must be done. Al-Maliki et al. will threaten, but will not do much. Turkey will be out of Iraq within a couple of days time.

That’s the positive version: the negative version is that things will go terribly wrong; that the Kurds will unite and fight against the Turks; that Iraq will declare war; that Iran thinks it can do the same and attack Kurdistan as well; that the US will fight against Iran; that, in the end, we will have US vs. Iran; Iran vs. Kurdistan; Kurdistan vs. Turkey with the US in the middle and Northern Iraq will be destroyed.

And by God, one day later we see my worst nightmare slowly but surely become reality.

For more cold war rhetoric (as reported yesterday), I suggesting reading this article and this one at the Globe and Mail, and this article at the Guardian (h/t Memeorandum).

As I wrote yesterday (many of you do not read blogs during the weekends so I will repeat it today): “European countries will have to invest bigtime in their militaries. We have to make our own militaries bigger, we have to equip them better, we have to be able to defend ourselves. Britain once had the strongest navy in the world. Those days are gone, but Britain can still have an exceptionally strong navy; I suggest Britain looks at its past and rebuilds it navy. The Netherlands is small, but we are rich. We too should invest in our military, especially in our airforce which is strong but small. Let us focus on that. Germany: strong army, ground forces. Germany can and should invest in that. The list goes on and on. Then, we have to let the armies of the different EU countries work together more closely and, if necessary, these forces have to be able to operate as part of one big, international, European army.

“The EU has a stronger economy and more inhabitents than Russia. If Putin wants to get tough, so can we.

“Meanwhile, the US has to do what it has always done: it has to help Europe and invest in us. Do not withdraw bases from Europe: help us get stronger. We have relied on the US for too long; we have to become strong ourselves; but we still have to be allies with the US and the US has to help us when necessary. Together, the EU and the US will be virtually unbeatable.”

Besides that, of course, NATO also has to be able to defend itself against Internet attacks (as we have seen with Russians attacking Estonian websites).

The New York Times reports that NATO forces, together with Afghan troops, killed ‘Mullah Dadullah, the top operational commander for the Taliban insurgency.’

He was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, responsible for numerous assassinations, beheadings and terrorist campaigns, and was thought to be behind many of the suicide bombings that have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans in the last year and a half.

He was seen as probably the most important operational commander, organizing groups of fighters, weapons supplies and finances across much of the south and southeast of Afghanistan.

The spring offensive, the NATO spring offensive that is, seems to be working. The Taliban wanted to start an offensive of their own this spring, instead of waiting for the Taliban, NATO decided to take the initiative and… it’s paying off.

Image: Nos Journaal.

A good article at the Washington Times about the PKK, the Iraqi government, Turkey, the war in Iraq and America. In short: it’s a complicated situation - the Kurds have already killed approximately 30,000 Turkish soldiers, diplomats and, yes, civilians.

More and more Turks are demanding action. How would Americans react if a Mexican terrorist organization crossed the border regularly and killed 30,000 Americans since 1990?

Exactly.

Obviously, a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq would create tremendous problems: it might cause a war between Turkey and Iraq, it will, most definitely, destabalize Iraq’s most stable (and peaceful) region, it will create an immense difficult situation for America, that’s forced to support both Turkey (NATO) and Iraq, in short: potential chaos.

Doing something against the PKK is of the utmost importance, especially considering the fact that the Turkish elections are approaching.