Summit Fails to Overcome NATO-Pakistan Divisions

Pakistani President Zardari has left Chicago without agreeing to allow NATO supply convoys through Pakistan to restart.

Zardari met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and raised a number of issues that are important to Pakistan.  He said that before convoys can resume that the US must apologise for the cross border attack at Salala last year, which killed a number of Pakistani soldiers. He also said that US drone attacks against Taliban and other targets inside Pakistan must stop, as they violate Pakistani sovereignty and are causing political and social problems through the civilian casualties they bring. Finally, Pakistani sources said that the government wants $500 per truck compensation when convoys restart, although some sources have mentioned figures between $2500 and $5000 per truck.

Reports have said that the President framed these as issues of rebuilding trust:

In his nearly hour-long meeting with Clinton, Zardari said that the goal of establishing a long-term, sustained and durable Pakistan-US equation would remain elusive till the issue of trust deficit continues to haunt the relationship, said the presidential spokesman, Farhatullah Babar. 

"Bridging the trust deficit, the president said, was a must for Pakistan re-joining counterterrorism cooperation with the international community," Babar said after the meeting between Zardari and Clinton on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Chicago, which is being attended by leaders of more than 60 countries.

Following the meeting with Clinton, President Obama refused to meet with President Zardari, as did NATO Secretary General Rasmussen. NATO Monitor cannot understand why they would do this. The Guardian reported the White House as saying this was normal:

The White House national security spokesman, Ben Rhodes, asked at a press conference if Zardari had gone to Chicago under the misconception he would see Obama, replied that Obama's schedule was busy. He said issues such as the reopening of supply lines were not normally dealt with at presidential level. Rhodes said: "The invitation to attend this summit was extended by Nato of course. We obviously supported that. It's important for Pakistan to be here because as we contemplate the future of the region, they are obviously going to be a part of that picture.

Bringing the President of a country important to your war aims halfway round the world, only to refuse to meet him, can only be described as crassly bad diplomacy. It will weaken Zardari at home, and inflame anti-NATO and anti-US sentiment there. The US knew what the demands were before asking Zardari to fly to Chicago, so why were they so unprepared to meet them. Better that President Zardari had stayed home than this be the outcome.

NATO needs the Pakistani supply routes open now to save money, but in a few months time they will need them to bring soldiers and equipment out of Apkistan. Undoubtedly the price just went up steeply.

BBC Summary of NATO BMD Programme

Johnathan Marcus of the BBC has written a good summary of some of the issues surrounding NATO's BMD programme. You can read it here. It contains a great quote from Professor Ted Postol about the lack of missile threat to Europe:

However, a leading expert on missile defence technology, Professor Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that this potential threat has been much overstated. 

"The fundamental long-term threat from Iran is from nuclear weapons. But for now Iran does not have the bomb. A ballistic missile without a nuclear weapon," he says, "is like a terrorist bomber without an explosive vest."

AP - NATO Summit in Three Paragraphs

The AP summarises the NATO Summit in three paragraphs. Good job!

Turkey Stands up for Itself in NATO

Turkey came close to blocking EU reps Jose Manual Barroso and Herman van Rompuy from attending the Summit in Chicago. The two received very invitations, but even now they are restricted to sections of the Summit dealing with Afghanistan, reports VOA.

Clearly Turkish anger at continued blocking of their negotiations to join the EU was behind this move, but it wasn't their first piece of muscle-flexing in the run-up to Chicago. Previously AFP had reported that Turkey refused Israel a place at the Summit:

The Turkish official, who requested anonymity, told AFP earlier Monday: "We have not agreed to this. We don't think Israel should take part in such a forum," adding: "NATO is an alliance to which Israel does not belong." 

Turkish press reports said Israel wanted to take part in the key summit as a participant in the Mediterranean Dialogue cooperation programme with NATO.

This was denied by NATO spokespeople who claimed that there had never been any intention to invite Israel, despite their place in the Alliance's Mediterranean Partnership. However, it is clear that there was at least the possibility that Israel would be represented at the Summit, even if no official invitation was ever sent. This row is the latest manifestation of the declining relationship between the two previously close partners.

It has also been reported recently that important Turkish politicians have publicly advocated Macedonian membership of NATO in the face of continued Greek refusal to countenance such a move.

It seems that these might be signs of Turkey's importance to the Alliance in a vital neighbourhood, and of the increasing confidence of the current government in NATO.

Are NATO's Global Partnerships the Way to Relevance?

George W Bush didn't really believe in NATO. After 9/11, when the Alliance announced it had invoked its Article V common defence clause for the first time, he (and the rest of America) essentially took no notice. What he believed in was coalitions of the willing. So, instead of letting NATO go to war with the US in Afghanistan, an informal coalition of allies did. The result was the sidelining of the Alliance, and a United States that felt it didn't have to listen to anyone before using military force. The same was later true of Iraq, although it is very doubtful that NATO would have agreed to that particular venture, and the US learned the limits of supposedly unfettered power in a very hard way. Bush's attitude fit the unipolar moment, at least for the right, and was symptomatic of how large Empires behave.

By the time President Obama was elected that moment had subsided and NATO ISAF was running security forces in Afghanistan (although notably not US counter terrorism operations). NATO Europe hoped it would be seen as more relevant. But ISAF was never NATO alone, many more countries were always involved. And European nations were both generally unwilling and also unable to project enough power alongside the US to be the only global allies.

Now the US is selling a vision of NATO where it will operate globally, with different partners for different missions. On May 17, James J. Townsend Jr., deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy, told Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service reporters about the partnerships plan:

The summit also offers a chance to celebrate NATO partnerships outside the alliance, which greatly extend the organization’s reach, he said. 

“NATO has established partnerships globally that not a lot of people know about,” Townsend said. “Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea have been very helpful to the alliance, particularly in Afghanistan, and in other places.”

The DoD reports Secretary Rasmussen as saying:

Tomorrow, on the second day of the summit, Rasmussen said, “we will meet 13 of our most active partners around the globe, from Europe to Asia and the Middle East, because today’s security challenges are global and they need global solutions.” 

NATO will continue to cooperate with partners from around the world, building on successes “so that we can provide more security for NATO, for our partners, and for the world,” he added.

Fred Kempe of the Atlantic Council of the US certainly believes that the creation of a web of partnerships around the global hub of NATO is the way forward. He has written recently that:

The expected discussions of NATO leaders this weekend about how best to wind down their decade-long Afghan military operation and about how to maintain sufficient defense capabilities, despite growing budget cuts, risk leaving the impression of an alliance in retrenchment or decline. That’s hardly an inspiring or helpful message for a U.S. president heading home to Chicago at the beginning of his re-election campaign. 

By contrast, NATO’s efforts to broaden and deepen cooperation with capable partner nations can be rolled out as a pro-active, forward-looking initiative that has NATO going on offense for a new era. So that no one misses his notion of NATO at the core of a global security network, President Obama and his allies will stage an unprecedented summit meeting with 13 partner nations – from South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia in Asia-Pacific to Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East and North Africa. Also present will be five European states that aren’t members of the alliance but routinely contribute to alliance activities – Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. 

What they’ll be trying to do is give teeth to an agenda for NATO that I first saw discussed in detail by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in a major Foreign Affairs article in October 2009. He argued against those who wished to expand NATO into a global alliance of democracies. He said that would dilute the crucial importance of the U.S.-European connection, which still accounts for half of the world’s economy, and that none of the world’s rising powers would be likely to accept membership in a global NATO. An ideologically defined democratic alliance would needlessly draw institutional lines between the U.S. and, for example, China. 

“NATO, however, has the experience, the institutions, and the means to eventually become the hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional cooperative-security undertakings among states with the growing power to act,” he wrote. “In pursuing that strategic mission, NATO would not only be preserving transatlantic political unity; it would also be responding to the twenty-first century’s novel and increasingly urgent security agenda.” 

It would also rescue the alliance from geostrategic irrelevance.

There is no doubt that NATO's international command structures have been flexible enough to incorporate troops from many other nations in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and in Libya. But the real question is political. Do NATO nations want to carry on doing this kind of mission. Very few wanted to participate in Libya, and even support for an Alliance role was very grudging. Afghanistan has come close at times to breaking Alliance unity for good. the caveats that some nations have placed on troop use have been deeply resented by those that played a fuller part. Some, such as Canada and the Netherlands, have terminated their participation there in frustration.

And the truth is that the more NATO strays from the defence of Europe, the less its member states have in common politically. Their goals are simply not the same. And that shows in what states are willing to do. the unity of the Cold War, when the mission was clear, and everyone understood it in simple terms, has long gone. Even the defence of Europe looks very different in Tallinn than it does in London or Lisbon or Ankara.

NATO is a finely honed military tool looking for a rationale to stay in existence. And this partnerships arrangement shows how difficult that search is proving.

Rasmussen on Summit Agenda

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen spoke on his way into the start of the NATO Summit in Chicago earlier saying:

Our summit has three key priorities. Keeping Afghanistan secure now and in the years to come. Keeping NATO strong and capable in the 21st century. And keeping our global network of partners solid.Today, we will focus on security in an age of austerity.  We will ensure that the Alliance has the capabilities to deal with the security challenges of the future – even as we tackle the economic challenges of the present.We will adopt a concrete package of multinational projects which can provide greater security for all our citizens at lower cost. We will embrace a renewed culture of cooperation, which we call Smart Defence. And I expect we will take the first step to make our missile defence system operational.

NATO Monitor will discuss some of these issues in later posts.

Pakistan at the NATO Summit

Afghanistan is the major topic for the Chicago Summit which gets underway later today, and it would have made no sense to deal with that topic with Pakistan absent. But, until earlier this week, that is what may well have happened. NATO-Pakistan relation shave been bad since the NATO attack on a Pakistani border post that killed several Pakistani soldiers last year. However, earlier this week Pakistan signalled that it might be willing to reopen the NATO supply routes into Afghanistan that were shut down after the air attacks, and NATO issued a formal invitation to President Zardari to attend the Summit along with other partners to ISAF.

Negotiations on the conditions for a restart of Pakistani cooperation with NATO continue. Voice of America reports that:

The United States and Pakistan are engaged in intense negotiations to finalize a deal to end the blockade. Prime Minister Gilani said he has instructed concerned ministries and departments to conclude the talks as quickly as possible.Pakistan is seeking heavy taxes on future NATO convoys, a condition diplomatic sources say is hindering the talks. Pakistan's Junior Communications Minister Dost Mohammad Mazari defends the demand. “For the last 10 years, NATO supply has been going on from [the southern port city of] Karachi to different places into Afghanistan,” said Mazari.  "There were some damages to our [road] infrastructure. The damages what we have gathered from our resources and staff is $1.5-billion.” The minister says Pakistan has proposed a levy of $2,500 per truck, suggesting the amount could be negotiated down during talks with the United States. Pakistani officials also are seeking an unconditional U.S. apology for the deadly border strike and are demanding an end to drone strikes that American officials say target Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding in Pakistan's northwest, along the Afghan border.

According to other sources Pakistan first proposed a fee of $5000 per truck which was swiftly ruled out. But whatever the levy it will be a significant revenue source for the Pakistani government, although with attacks by the Taliban the convoys are also a source of instability and danger inside Pakistan.

The convoy fees are also an internal matter in Pakistani politics, reports show (see here for example) that some Baloch politicians have called for direct investment of the revenue received for the development of Balochistan.

Whatever decisions are made in Chicago, the Pakistani government insists that it will not reopen NATO's supply lines without the approval of parliament. And while NATO has managed to maintain supplies through northern routes for the past few months, with the withdrawal looming it will need southern exit routes to bring  the huge amounts of equipment, vehicles and supplies home as combat operation end.

Why Not Let Macedonia into NATO?

General James Jones has argued that the Chicago Summit should allow Macedonia into the Alliance, even while he acknowledged that it will not. He has written a piece for the New Atlanticist blog and Roll Call explaining why Macedonia has done all it should do to be allowed to join, and argues that continued exclusion risks renewed instability in the Balkans.

NATO Monitor basically agrees, although it does seem that fears of instability in Macedonia because of continued absence from NATO fora is a little overblown. That said, one of NATO's more valuable roles in the post-World War II world was to integrate national defence forces into a multilateral structure and make war much harder. It can perform much the same role in the Balkans.

However, the only real block on Macedonia joining NATO is a political objection from Greece. So, when Macedonia erects a giant gold statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje, and names its international airport after him, how can they be surprised that Greece continues to block entry into NATO - however daft those objections are. Political symbolism runs deep here, and it seems that Macedonian politicians prefer playing games to being part of NATO.

Human Rights Watch Report on Civilian Deaths from NATO Bombing in Syria

Human Rights Watch has published a report with detailed analysis of 8 bombing raids by NATO which resulted in 72 unacknowledged civilian deaths.

The small number of these incidents with which HRW finds issue is a testament to the lengths that NATO went to in Libya to attempt to avoid killing civilians. However, since the purpose of the mission was, under the UN mandate, protection of civilians it is incumbent on NATO to do its utmost to investigate these bombings, compensate families where appropriate, and instigate changes in targeting policy and practice for future missions to minimise these risks. NATO has said it will investigate if asked, but will do nothing proactive for the Libyans it promised to safeguard.

There is something that struck NATO Monitor, given our past analysis of NATO's Libya operation. At least three of the bombing missions were attacks on towns that supported Colonel Gaddhafi to the end- Bani Walid and Sirte. It has been the Monitor's contention all along that the NATO mission evolved from protecting civilians to offering air support to the rebel forces, and this report offers some confirmation of that. There can be no excuse for using the UN mandate to attack targets where there is no threat to civilians, and in these two towns there was none since they backed the government wholeheartedly. The threat to civilians there came from the rebels and from NATO.

If NATO is to repeat its role as military supporter of a UN mandate for POC, it will have to learn the lessons of Libya. It can't do that without understanding the fundamental difference between pursung foreign policy through military means, and the protection of civilians. Clearly, it hasn;t got it right yet.

Giles Fraser on guns, fear and NATO!

Giles Fraser, who resigned from the staff of St Paul's Cathedral over their treatment of the Occupy the Stock Exchange protestors, now writes for the Guardian, and is a vicar of a South London church. His column today is thought provoking. NATO Monitor was struck by this section:

Fear justifies the need for security. And the need for security justifies more spending on guns. For Nato, it used to be the Russians, but now it's Iran.

The problem with this logic is right under the noses of Nato leaders, should they venture out of their compounds. The murder rate in Chicago is up 54% this year. The Windy City now has more murders than New York which has more than twice the population. This is mostly down to the fact that the place is awash with guns and fear, with each of these continually justifying their own existence with respect to the other.

It is an interesting link between the US gun culture which believes (in the face of all the evidence) that arming as many people as possible will enhance public safety, and those who follow the same plan in national security.

NATO Monitor argues for dialogue, confidence and security building measures, combined with reduced levels of arms. It is precisely those policies which have enhanced security and reduced fear in Europe. NATO needs ot look to its past actions to build better policies for the future.