Nato changing to a global corparate force
cw via spacewar | 16.10.2005 21:17
protection racket???
Note:
oil rises in price after terror attacks
Nato history includes
operation Gladio
Nato also to be expannded in Afghanistan
Iraq Next?
while US UK coalition hits Iran/ Syria / etc...
Note:
oil rises in price after terror attacks
Nato history includes
operation Gladio
Nato also to be expannded in Afghanistan
Iraq Next?
while US UK coalition hits Iran/ Syria / etc...
NATO Means Business To Protect Pipelines
By Martin Walker Prague, Czech Republic (UPI) Oct 13, 2005
NATO's top military commander is seeking an important new security role for private industry and business leaders as part of a new security strategy that will focus on the economic vulnerabilities of the 26-country alliance.
Two immediate and priority projects for NATO officials to develop with private industry are to secure the pipelines bringing Russian oil and gas to Europe against terrorist attacks and to secure ports and merchant shipping, the alliance Supreme Commander, Gen. James Jones of the U.S. Marine Corps said Wednesday.
A further area of NATO interest to secure energy supplies could be the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, Jones noted, where piracy, theft, political unrest and tensions between Islam and Christianity combined to present "a serious security problem." Oil companies were already spending more than a billion dollars a year on security in the region, he noted, pointing to the need for NATO and business to confer on the common security concern.
"We need a new alliance and a new awareness of the role of industry and business," Jones told the Program on Atlantic Security Studies in Prague at a conference held alongside former Czech President Vaclav Havel's annual Forum 2000 meetings.
"In the future, we will need heads of industry sitting down with NATO to talk about the security of the industrial base," Jones said, adding he intended to push for these changes at the next summit of the alliance in 2006.
Without specifying which new members may join, Jones told the conference "the future is that the alliance will continue to grow, beyond the current 26 members," and that they would face the complex new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"Terrorism, narco-trafficking, illegal immigration are all closely connected, and you could say that all our NATO members are already under attack," he went on, adding NATO was being reconfigured from the Cold War's purely military machine to the new demands of peacekeeping, preventive and humanitarian operations.
NATO was now able to react much faster, Jones went on, pointing out humanitarian assistance for the U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina was agreed upon and on the way to the region within 24 hours.
NATO assistance for the victims of the Pakistani earthquake was already deployed in the region, he added. Similar rethinking of NATO's traditional role was also required for the post-conflict phase of military operations, he said in what sounded like a discreet comment on the situation in Iraq.
"We have got to have in our planning kit a way that immediately after the conflict to turn the society around and make it better," he said. "You have to have a complete package in the 21st century to deal with the aftermath of crisis."
The NATO commander's remarks, which signal a fundamental new direction for an alliance that for decades was designed to meet a conventional Soviet military threat, came as two former top NATO generals issued a highly critical new report on the military state of the alliance.
The report, issued by former Supreme Commander Gen. Joe Ralston from the United States and German Gen. Klaus Naumann, said Europe's elected leaders had "lacked the political will" to increase defense budgets sufficiently to fund modernization and inter-operability of equipment among the alliance's 26 members. This would have to be fixed fast, the two retired generals concluded in a 97-page report that they have been researching for the past year.
"Failure meaningfully to improve NATO's collective defense capabilities in the coming years would have profoundly negative effects on the ability of European countries to protect their interests, on the viability of NATO as an alliance, and on the ability of Europe to participate in a meaningful way with the United States," the report says.
The report came as the new German government under center-right Chancellor-elect Angela Merkel began grappling with the economic problems of the sluggish German economy with its federal budget now facing its fourth year in a row of breaching the euro-zone official limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product. While U.S. officials and other NATO partners urged Germany to boost its defense spending beyond a very low 1.1 percent of GDP, Merkel has little room for maneuver.
Jones's remarks in Prague should be seen in the context of low defense spending in Europe, little progress on plans for common procurement of big budget military hardware, and the lingering political differences between NATO allies over the Iraq war. Bringing the corporate sector into NATO's councils, if only in a consulting or advisory capacity, could put extra pressure on cash-strapped European governments to increase defense spending in the name of industrial security.
http://www.spacewar.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzzd.html
By Martin Walker Prague, Czech Republic (UPI) Oct 13, 2005
NATO's top military commander is seeking an important new security role for private industry and business leaders as part of a new security strategy that will focus on the economic vulnerabilities of the 26-country alliance.
Two immediate and priority projects for NATO officials to develop with private industry are to secure the pipelines bringing Russian oil and gas to Europe against terrorist attacks and to secure ports and merchant shipping, the alliance Supreme Commander, Gen. James Jones of the U.S. Marine Corps said Wednesday.
A further area of NATO interest to secure energy supplies could be the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, Jones noted, where piracy, theft, political unrest and tensions between Islam and Christianity combined to present "a serious security problem." Oil companies were already spending more than a billion dollars a year on security in the region, he noted, pointing to the need for NATO and business to confer on the common security concern.
"We need a new alliance and a new awareness of the role of industry and business," Jones told the Program on Atlantic Security Studies in Prague at a conference held alongside former Czech President Vaclav Havel's annual Forum 2000 meetings.
"In the future, we will need heads of industry sitting down with NATO to talk about the security of the industrial base," Jones said, adding he intended to push for these changes at the next summit of the alliance in 2006.
Without specifying which new members may join, Jones told the conference "the future is that the alliance will continue to grow, beyond the current 26 members," and that they would face the complex new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"Terrorism, narco-trafficking, illegal immigration are all closely connected, and you could say that all our NATO members are already under attack," he went on, adding NATO was being reconfigured from the Cold War's purely military machine to the new demands of peacekeeping, preventive and humanitarian operations.
NATO was now able to react much faster, Jones went on, pointing out humanitarian assistance for the U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina was agreed upon and on the way to the region within 24 hours.
NATO assistance for the victims of the Pakistani earthquake was already deployed in the region, he added. Similar rethinking of NATO's traditional role was also required for the post-conflict phase of military operations, he said in what sounded like a discreet comment on the situation in Iraq.
"We have got to have in our planning kit a way that immediately after the conflict to turn the society around and make it better," he said. "You have to have a complete package in the 21st century to deal with the aftermath of crisis."
The NATO commander's remarks, which signal a fundamental new direction for an alliance that for decades was designed to meet a conventional Soviet military threat, came as two former top NATO generals issued a highly critical new report on the military state of the alliance.
The report, issued by former Supreme Commander Gen. Joe Ralston from the United States and German Gen. Klaus Naumann, said Europe's elected leaders had "lacked the political will" to increase defense budgets sufficiently to fund modernization and inter-operability of equipment among the alliance's 26 members. This would have to be fixed fast, the two retired generals concluded in a 97-page report that they have been researching for the past year.
"Failure meaningfully to improve NATO's collective defense capabilities in the coming years would have profoundly negative effects on the ability of European countries to protect their interests, on the viability of NATO as an alliance, and on the ability of Europe to participate in a meaningful way with the United States," the report says.
The report came as the new German government under center-right Chancellor-elect Angela Merkel began grappling with the economic problems of the sluggish German economy with its federal budget now facing its fourth year in a row of breaching the euro-zone official limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product. While U.S. officials and other NATO partners urged Germany to boost its defense spending beyond a very low 1.1 percent of GDP, Merkel has little room for maneuver.
Jones's remarks in Prague should be seen in the context of low defense spending in Europe, little progress on plans for common procurement of big budget military hardware, and the lingering political differences between NATO allies over the Iraq war. Bringing the corporate sector into NATO's councils, if only in a consulting or advisory capacity, could put extra pressure on cash-strapped European governments to increase defense spending in the name of industrial security.
http://www.spacewar.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzzd.html
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more on NATO in Afghanistan
16.10.2005 21:24
Thursday 4th August, 2005 - A top NATO commander says international peacekeeping troops under NATO command in Afghanistan will be ready to assume responsibility for security across all of Afghanistan by the end of next year.
The statement comes as Italy has taken over command of the 8,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan for the next six months from Turkey. The commander-in-chief of NATO forces in Northern Europe, General Gerhard Back, says the international peacekeeping force (ISAF) deployed in Afghanistan remains committed to providing support to the Afghan government and the election process in the country.
He was speaking to reporters in Kabul Thursday after the handover of the ISAF command from Turkey to Italy.
The international peacekeeping force plans to increase its size to take over security operations from the U.S. led anti-terror coalition battling militants in the south and southeast of Afghanistan. The United States has long sought such a move, hoping it will free up many of its nearly 18,000 frontline troops to go after al-Qaida and Taleban militants in Afghanistan.
General Back says NATO's plans to expand security operations will mark an import step in terms of commitment and policy toward Afghanistan.
"We are also squaring up to NATO from the [U.S-led] coalition a much greater share of the responsibility of providing security support to the [Afghan] government," he said. "The aim is to take on this responsibility in the rest of the country, probably next year, first in the south and then in the east."
The NATO-led international security force already maintains security in Kabul and across parts of northern and western provinces in Afghanistan.
As elections scheduled for September draw near, there has been increased violence in the country by remnants of the Taleban and al-Qaida militants, particularly in the south and east.
General Back says that there is still much to be done to overcome forces posing a threat to stability in Afghanistan.
"While remnants of the militants continue to seek instability and chaos through fear and intimidation, the main threats to security are now the illegally armed groups, criminality and the all-prevailing narcotics trade," he added.
In another development, the United States and Afghanistan have agreed in principle to gradually transfer most Afghans in U.S custody to the Afghan government. U.S.-led forces have captured scores of suspected Afghan terrorists in operations in the past three years.
A joint statement issued in Kabul Thursday said the government of Afghanistan will accept responsibility for the returning Afghan citizens and will work to ensure that they do not pose a continuing threat to Afghanistan and or foreign troops deployed there. -
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cw
protection racket
17.10.2005 10:04
September 23, 2005 By: Justin Huggler The Independent
Massive increases in drug production have been recorded in regions of Afghanistan where Nato is operating, just as the country counts votes from its first parliamentary elections.
A report from the UN office on drugs and crime recorded an overall decline in the area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan from about 131,000 hectares in 2004 to 104,000 hectares in 2005.
But the document says that the figures mask massive regional differences, with opium production increasing 106 per cent in the north of the country, 98 per cent in the west and 30 per cent in the south. The report is an embarrassment to Washington and London as they claim stability and progress in Afghanistan.
"The strongest increases were in the north and west where Nato is operating," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN office on drugs and crime. "This needs to be brought to the attention of Nato."
Two western military operations are present in Afghanistan. The US-led coalition, which entered the country after the September 11 attacks of 2001, is on a mission to eradicate the remnants of the Taliban in Operation Enduring Freedom. Since December 2003, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has been increasing its presence by establishing so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in the north and west. The UN document shows a 334 per cent increase in production in the region of Balkh, despite the presence of a PRT at Mazar-e- Sharif. The picture is similar in the west with a 348 per cent rise in Farah where ISAF is also present. Meanwhile officials are alarmed at the 162 per cent rise in Kandahar.
Speaking in Brussels after meetings with EU and Nato officials, Mr Costa said: "It looks like the country is dedicating some of its best agricultural land to the cultivation of opium. Is it a coincidence or is it because they feel that they are less threatened by ISAF?"
A Nato spokesman said: "We are aware of the problem and reducing the cultivation of poppy will be an effort of the international community."
cw