There are two broad options: work harder to save the alliance, or turn inward and opt for self-reliance. In practice, we are likely to see elements of both, as different countries hedge their bets in different ways.

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May declared that Britain and the US are "united in our recognition of NATO as the bulwark of our collective defense," while the President nodded alongside her in agreement.

On the other hand, the UK believes that to keep Trump on its side, it will also need to persuade other European nations to contribute more to the alliance in the form of higher defense spending.

Higher defense spending serves two purposes. For some, like Theresa May, it will help to neutralize Trump's charge that allies are merely free riding on American efforts. After all, even those NATO allies most skeptical of the President are not ready to give up on America.

If President Trump himself has been amongst those who would weaken NATO, who is left? One answer is Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired general who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander of Transformation between 2007 and 2009. Another is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who gave a calm, assured speech on his first day in the office. European states hope that Mattis, Tillerson, and others will prove a moderating influence on President Trump.

However, Europeans also realize that this may not be enough. Mattis and Tillerson can be sacked, and the President has shown a willingness to treat the very closest of allies, like Australia, with open hostility.

Higher defense spending therefore serves a second purpose: it increases Europe's safety net, should the US indeed weaken its commitment to the continent's defense.

That safety net is not very strong. While Europe's collective defense spending is around four times that of Russia, European militaries duplicate a lot of spending, and would be constrained in a crisis by the need for political approval from dozens of different capitals.

One answer to this is more cooperation. But should this cooperation be within NATO, the EU, or something else?

But NATO's Supreme Allied Commander is always an American, and the US continues to provide some of the key supporting capabilities, such as refueling aircraft and airborne radar, without which it would be very hard for even Britain, France, and Germany to act on their own.

Some European powers have therefore pushed for the EU to further develop its own defense institutions.

In September, France and Germany -- backed by Italy and Spain -- proposed a permanent military headquarters to plan and run the bloc's military missions, as well as a medical command, a logistics hub, and common officer training. These plans were later diluted, but it is clear that EU defense policy is receiving more attention in Brussels.

Here, the UK is a wildcard. The UK was once a major advocate of European defense cooperation, signing the landmark Saint-Malo declaration with France in 1998. But it has since grown warier of European defense integration, arguing that these efforts distract from NATO and encourage wasteful duplication.

Given Theresa May's eagerness to prove NATO's worth to the new leadership in Washington, she is likely to worry that such steps by the EU will encourage the US to walk away. But Britain is leaving the union and can no longer block what the EU does in the future.

At the same time, the UK is the largest military power in Europe, and far outstrips its allies in some areas, such as signals intelligence.

Any EU military institution that did not include the UK would have a very limited capability. Other European countries, like Poland and Slovakia, also share the UK's view, and would prefer to focus on strengthening NATO.

The first test for Trump's credibility on the issue of European security will come over Ukraine, where fighting between Russia-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government has escalated.

Many feared that Trump might reverse sanctions on Russia, without securing Moscow's compliance with a ceasefire agreement.

However, on Thursday, the US ambassador to the United Nation delivered a stinging, and surprising, rebuke of "Russia's aggressive actions." This will reassure European allies for now, but they will continue to watch how the White House deals with Russia in its first months, and its approach to military allies in Asia.

Speaking in Malta, French President Franois Hollande echoed Europe's fears. "We must have a European conception of our future. If not, there will be -- in my opinion -- no Europe and not necessarily any way for each of the countries to be able to exert an influence in the world."

Europe cannot be complacent about the Trump administration. But if European leaders push too quickly on defense cooperation outside NATO, they risk widening a rift with the region's largest military power, the UK, and encouraging those who believe that the European security order established after the Second World War is indeed over.

Europe is right to think about greater self-reliance in defense, but it should make every effort to work with those in Washington and in the Trump administration who understand the unique role of NATO.

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Can Europe still rely on NATO? - CNN

Thousands of Nato troops have amassed close to the border with Russia as part of the largest build-up of Western troops neighbouring Moscows sphere of influence since the Cold War.

The Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria are hosting soldiers from across Natos 28 member states, with more than 7,000 troops deployed in countries bordering Russia.

The UK is the lead nation in Estonia, where 800 soldiers are based at the Tapa base, about 50 miles from Tallinn, helped by French and Danish forces.

British soldiers are also deployed in Poland as part of a US-led Nato mission numbering some 4,000 troops, which is supported by the Romanian army.

Poland's leaders hold ceremony to welcome US troops as part of Nato build-up

In Latvia and Lithuania, around 1,200 troops from Canada and Germany (respectively) are deployed alongside forces from across Europe.

Tanks and heavy armoured vehicles, plus Bradley fighting vehicles and Paladin howitzers, are also in situ and British Typhoon jets from RAF Conningsby will be deployed to Romania this summer to contribute to Natos Southern Air Policing mission.

This map, produced for The Independent by Statista, illustrates the scale of Nato's military build-up in Eastern Europe.

In the far north of the continent, more than 300 US marines are also on rotation in Norway, which shares a border with Russia inside the Arctic Circle.

Kremlin officials claim the build-up is the largest since the Second World War.

The extensive troop deployment comes as defence budgets in the Baltic States continue to rise.

Combined, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania spent little more than 900 million Us dollars on defence in 2005.

Fast forward to 2019 and that figure will have more than doubled to a little over two billion dollars.

Chart showing defence budgets rising in the Baltic States (Statista)

According to research by the US-based think tank Heritage Foundation, between 1950 and 2000 on average 22 per cent of all US troops were stationed on foreign soil.

The low point for US soldier deployments abroad came in 1995 as East-West tensions began to subside, with just 13 per cent of Americas armed forces serving abroad.

Now, Russia believes the US and its Nato partners are expanding.

The US is also increasing its presence in the Black Sea and in Western Europe at bases in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Tensions between Russia and the West have been heightened since the annexation of Crimea and the war in Syria, which put Washington and Moscow on opposing sides.

Russia blames the West for worsening relations and says the build-up of Nato troops in the Baltics is a provocation.

Moscow has criticised recent deployments as truly aggressive.

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The map that shows how many Nato troops are deployed along Russia's border - The Independent

U.S. Secretary of Defence James Mattis broke bread with his Canadian counterpart at the Pentagon on Monday, as President Donald Trump warned that countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must pay their fair share of the alliances costs.

The tte--tte between Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Mr. Mattis the first in-person meeting between members of the Trump and Trudeau cabinets took place mere hours after Mr. Trump told American troops that he would make his countrys allies pony up more to cover defence costs.

Canada currently spends about 1 per cent of GDP on defence, half of what NATO asks for.

Its been very unfair to us. We strongly support NATO, we only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing, Mr. Trump said at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. Many of them have not even been close. And they have to do that.

Despite this tension, Mr. Mattis and Mr. Sajjan put on a chummy show for the cameras as they greeted each other in a white-walled, blue-carpeted meeting room on the third floor of the Pentagon.

Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star general who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, praised Mr. Sajjans service as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Then he cracked a joke about dont ask, dont tell, the U.S. militarys former policy that banned gays and lesbians from serving openly.

The Princess Patricias Light Infantry were the first troops that came in to reinforce us at Kandahar, and they were a welcome sight, he said. There was dont ask, dont tell in those days, but I was hugging and kissing every one of your guys coming out of the plane.

Mr. Sajjan responded that Canada and the United States have a relationship forged on the battlefield together.

The pair, each with a six-person entourage, sat on opposite sides of a conference table for a 45-minute formal meeting, followed by dinner.

Mr. Sajjan refused to answer questions about the meeting.

In a written statement issued by his office, the minister dodged the matter of Canadas NATO spending, saying only that he discussed Canadas willingness to lead troops in Eastern Europe. The alliance has been building up its presence in Ukraine and the surrounding countries in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putins expansionist designs in the region.

Secretary Mattis and I discussed multilateral issues, including our pledges to lead battle groups in support of NATOs enhanced forward presence in Eastern Europe, the statement read.

His spokeswoman played down the question of NATO spending. In an e-mail, Jordan Owens wrote there was a brief discussion about defence investments and the need to continue to invest at the meeting.

Mr. Sajjans statement said the two also discussed Canadas training missions in Ukraine and Iraq, and that Mr. Sajjan emphasized the importance of NORAD, the bilateral system for protecting the continents airspace.

The statement also avoided any reference to Canadas long-deferred decision on sending peacekeepers to Mali. Ottawa committed last summer to deploy 600 more peacekeepers around the world, and the United Nations has signalled it would like Canada to send troops to Mali, where more than 100 peacekeepers have been killed since 2013 trying to contain an Islamist insurgency.

But Canada has refused to make a decision, choosing to wait until Mr. Sajjan can find out what the new administration in Washington wants of Canada militarily.

Sources told The Canadian Press last week that, because of Ottawas vacillation, Canada lost its chance to command the Mali mission.

Ms. Owens said Monday the decision on peacekeeping deployments would be made by the entire government, not solely Mr. Sajjan, but confirmed Canada wants to know more about the U.S. plans before making a decision. It was unclear whether this decision was any closer to being made as a result of Mondays meeting.

She said the tone of the meeting was positive, and Mr. Mattiss staff even brought out a cake at the end to celebrate Canadas 150th birthday.

Follow Adrian Morrow on Twitter: @adrianmorrow

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Sajjan meets with Mattis as Trump warns NATO members must step up defence spending - The Globe and Mail

Donald Trump shocked foreign-policy professionals and observers when he remarked to The New York Times that if he were president, the United States might not come to the defense of an attacked NATO ally that hadnt fulfilled its obligation to make payments. The remark broke with decades of bipartisan commitment to the alliance and, as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic, aligned well with the interests of Russia, whose ambitions NATO was founded largely to contain. One Republican in Congress openly wondered whether his partys nominee could be seemingly so pro-Russia because of connections and contracts and things from the past or whatever.

Its not unlike Trump to make shocking statements. But these ones stoked particular alarm, not least among Americas allies, about the candidates suitability for the United States presidency. So whats the big deal? What does NATO actually do?

It's Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formedthree years, two months, and 10 days after Donald J. Trump was bornto keep peace in post-World War II Europe. But Lord Hastings Ismay, the alliances first secretary general and a friend of Winston Churchill, is said to have remarked that the alliance really had three purposes: to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

The treaty had evolved out of an initiative of the so-called Benelux countries (the vertical stripe of Europe comprising Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), who were worried above all about keeping Germany down after World War II. In signing on, the 12 original members who joined in 1949 agreed to uphold peace and international law among themselves. And importantly, they agreed to Article 5, which can obligate member states to come to one anothers defense should one of them be attacked in continental Europe or North America (or in territories north of the Tropic of Cancer). An additional 16 countries have joined since the alliances founding.

During the Cold War, though, keeping Russia out became priority one. It stayed a priority, to one degree or another, even after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 2014, with Russias invasion of Ukraine raising concerns that a NATO state could be next, the alliance made its most formal statement about minimum defense spending obligations each member owed. Each country, the alliance stated, should try to meet the goal of spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense within a decade. It was those obligations Trump was referring tobut unlike the Article 5 collective-defense requirement, the spending target is not legally binding.

Trumps comments throw the keeping America in function of NATO into question for the first time. I asked Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies, who is an expert on NATO and American foreign policy, what it would mean if Trump put his ideas about the alliance into practice, and about what role the alliance has played historically. Mandelbaum is the author of Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era. In addition to detailing how NATO has helped constrain European nations from fighting among themselves, Mandelbaum followed up after our conversation to note one more benefit of the alliance: NATO has been an effective measure against nuclear proliferation. Security guarantees may have helped prevent countries like Germany and Japan from seeking their own nuclear weapons (a legacy Trump has also questioned). Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Nicholas Clairmont: If a NATO country were invaded [and invoked] Article 5, and the other member states didnt come to its defense, what would happen?

Michael Mandelbaum: Well, they would be violating their treaty obligations. And so you would have to assume that the North Atlantic Treaty and NATO as a military organization would become null and void.

Clairmont: One of the positive effects of NATO that is sometimes touted is that NATO countries generally don't go to war with one another. Is that valid?

Mandelbaum: That has generally been true. You might make an exception for the Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus.

NATO turned out to part of the solution to the problem that had bedeviled and in some ways devastated Europe for 75 years, between the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War and the end of World War II. And that is the German problem, which was how to fit Germany into Europe in a way that was acceptable both to Europe and to Germany. Dividing Germany, and enveloping its two parts in military alliances led by a stronger power, turned out to be a stable solution. So, it did serve that purpose. And it certainly helped to deter the Soviet Union. Theres a lot of debate about whether Stalin or Krushchev was ever really serious about invading. But its an unanswerable question even with the Russian documents, and we don't have all of them. And its particularly unanswerable, if I can use that ungrammatical construction, because we dont know what Soviet attitudes would have been if there had been no NATO.

Clairmont: What do you think about Trumps comments about NATO in general? Do you think making them was a good idea?

Mandelbaum: Well, they were certainly irresponsible. Although you have to qualify that, because to call them irresponsible might imply that Trump really had an understanding of what he was doing. And I dont get the impression that he does.

I think his two defining features are his temperament, and his ignorance.

Clairmont: His claim is: Its bad for the U.S. to go on sustaining NATO, because we pay a great deal more for our defense, by percent, than do a lot of other NATO members. And thats the only reason the alliance is sustainable, and that we need to make a credible threat that America is willing to walk away and stop basically footing the bill for NATO, in order to get everyone else to pay up. One of the things Im exploring is that he has not understood how much value NATO provides to the United States.

Mandelbaum: He looks at everything as a real estate dealthat we're not getting enough.

I would make two points. One is that, although the burden of the common defense is a bit lopsidedwith the United States paying more than what American administrations have considered our fair shareits not as lopsided as Donald Trump seems to think. Americas allies really do make contributions. Especially in Asia. And, it also must be borne in mind that the United States has a global military. So, a lot of the American defense budget, and the budget that can be assigned to NATO or to Japan, is naval and air force. Which, presumably, the United States would want to have anyway. Maybe not to the same extent, but the Navy is a senior service. Weve had one since the early 19th century. We're not going to give it up. So that's the first point.

The second point is: I do think that one consequence of what Trump has been saying, and what Obama said in the Jeffrey Goldberg interview [for The Atlantic cover story The Obama Doctrine], is that whoever is elected, there will be pressure to get the Europeans to pay more. If Mrs. Clinton is elected, she will feel that pressure, because its been placed on the national agenda as an issue.

Clairmont: Do you see a connection at all between Trumps equivocation about honoring NATO Article 5, and Obamas distinction between core and non-core interests, and [his discussion of] free riders, in The Obama Doctrine?

Mandelbaum: Well, they're connected by inference. But if you have signed a treaty to protect a country such as Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, that would seem to make it a core interest.

Clairmont: Russia has made military incursions in Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, all non-NATO countries. And one gets the sense that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has designs on Estonia [as well as the other Baltic states Latvia and Lithuania], which are NATO countries. But he hasnt done anything in those countries. Is this because NATO, so far, works?

Mandelbaum: I think the fact that Ukraine and Georgia were not in NATO certainly made them attractive targets. And now the Baltic states are in question. Theyre not defensible, at least not with the force the United States and NATO have there. So they are in some sense the equivalent to the Cold War status of West Berlin. But Putin has lots of ways to harass the Baltics: cyberattacks, stirring up ethnic Russians. So, he could make a lot of trouble for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, without having Russian troops cross the border between them and Russia.

When NATO expansion was proposed it was presented by the Clinton administration as being a way to unite Europe. And those of us who were opposed 20 years ago said: To the contrary, this is going to create a line of division in Europe. And so it did. It would have been a line of division if only Russia had been excluded. But for various reasons Georgia and Ukraine were also excluded, and now they are in no-mans land.

Clairmont: Walter Russell Mead, the foreign-policy writer and my former boss, sometimes says that if you put up signs over one half of a lake that say no fishing, people are going to make an assumption about the other half of that lake.

Mandelbaum: There is something to that.

I think that although NATO expansion was a terrible mistakeand a very costly one, in that Russia might well have a different foreign policy than it does if not for NATO expansion and all that followedprecisely because of what Russia has become, there is a need for NATO. Europe is important to the United States. But its true that the Europeans pay less than what every American president since Eisenhower regarded as their fair sharePresident Obama called the Europeans free riders, and to some degree indeed they are. They have been for over 60 years, dating back to 1952 and the Lisbon Agreement [on NATO Force Levels]. The idea was that NATO should have many more ground troops than it had, and they would come from the Europeans. But the Europeans never stumped up.

Clairmont: Can you tell me more about the Lisbon Agreement? The discussion of force levels did not begin until after the treaty was inked in 49?

Mandelbaum: No, it was a few years afterwards. And there was another, later point at which the Kennedy administration, because of changes in the nuclear balance, adopted a policy of flexible response, which meant that there needed to be more NATO ground troops. And the Europeans agreed in principle, but never supplied them. I wrote about this in the first book that I ever published, called The Nuclear Question.

Clairmont: So, is the requirement to spend 2 percent as binding as the Article 5 collective self-defense requirement? Is it legally required as a term of membership?

Mandelbaum: No, it is not in the treaty.

Clairmont: Do you have any closing points?

Mandelbaum: The Europeans have been not quite been free riders, but they pulled less than their weight. And the case that we are paying an inordinate amount for collective defense is sort of true in the Pacific with Japan. Although, the United States does get economic benefits. That is, the Japanese pay a lot of the cost of the bases, and if we wanted to base American troops in the United States rather than overseas, it would be expensive. So NATO is not exactly a paying proposition, and its not intended to be a paying proposition.

But simply abandoning NATO would be costly, just in economic terms. And it would be very costly in geopolitical terms.

Clairmont: Is NATO worthwhile? Is the world a better, more peaceful place for America's being in NATO and being willing to honor Article 5?

Mandelbaum: Yes, it is.

Christopher I. Haugh contributed reporting.

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Why Donald Trump's Recent NATO Comments Caused Such an Uproar ...

BRUSSELS European leadersgrappled with the jolting reality of President-elect Donald Trumps skepticism of the European Union on Monday, saying they might have to stand without the United States at their side during the Trump presidency.

The possibility of an unprecedented breach in transatlantic relations came after Trump who embraced anti-E.U. insurgents during his campaign and following his victory said in weekend remarks that the 28-nation European Union was bound for a breakup and that he was indifferent to its fate. He also said NATOs current configuration is obsolete, even as he professed commitment to Europes defense.

Trumps attitudes have raised alarm bells across Europe, which is facinga wave of elections this year in which anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic leaders could gain power. Most mainstream leadershave committed to working with Trump after his inauguration Friday, even as they have expressed hope that he will moderate his views once he takes office. His continued hard line has created a painful realization in Europe that they may now haveto live without the full backing of their oldest, strongest partner. The European Union underpins much of the continents post-World War II prosperity, but skeptics have attacked it in recent years as a dysfunctional bloc that undermines finances and security.

We will cooperate with him on all levels, of course, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. But she said Europeans will need to take responsibility for themselves.

We Europeans have our destiny in our own hands, she said.

The full ramifications of apotentialbreakdown in transatlantic ties are so extensive, they are difficult to total. U.S. guarantees form the backbone of European security. The United States and the 500-million-people-strong European Union are each others most important trade partners. For decades, European nations and the United States have worked tightly together on issues of war, peace and wealth.

Trumpappears skeptical that the European Union matters to American security or economic growth.

People want their own identity, so if you ask me, others, I believe others will leave, Trump said of the European Unionina weekend interview with the Times of London and Germanys Bild newspaper. He said he did not care about the E.U.s future. I dont think it matters much for the United States, he said.

You look at the European Union, and its Germany. Basically a vehicle for Germany, Trump said, meaning Germany had used the free-trade bloc to sell its goods to the disadvantage of others. He added that Merkel had made a very catastrophic mistake in opening Europes doors to migrants and refugees.

And he offered no special credit to European nations for being long-standing U.S. allies, saying he will trust Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin alike at the outset of his presidency.

I start off trusting both, he said. But lets see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all.

Trump offered mixed messages about the NATO defense alliance, which is dominated by the United States, calling it obsolete and saying it is very unfair to the United States that most nations are not meeting their voluntary defense spending commitments. With that being said, NATO is very important to me, Trump said.

(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

The Kremlin embraced Trumps comments, with a spokesman agreeing that NATO is obsolete. British leaders also welcomed Trumps willingness to negotiate a trade deal in the wake of their nations departure from the E.U.

But among most U.S. allies, Trumps attitudes caused astonishment and excitement, not just in Brussels, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters Monday in Brussels, where he was meeting with other European foreign ministers at a previously scheduled gathering. Coming directly from a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Steinmeier said NATO had listened to Trumps comments with concern.

The incoming U.S. president is the first American leader since World War II not to support European integration. The European Unionhas long been considered to be in the U.S. interest, since it created a unified market for U.S. businesses, provided a bulwark against communism during the Cold War and helped quell the bloody slaughter that cost U.S. lives, among others, in the first half of the 20th century. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the European Union expanded eastward into formerly communist nations, a development that leaders there say helped bring rule of law and stability as they modernized their economies.

Steinmeier said Germany is trying to assess what U.S. foreign policy will actually be.For example, James Mattis, the retired Marine general nominated to be Trumps defense secretary, offered straightforward support for NATO and skepticism of Russia at his confirmation hearing last week.

Other leaders said Europes future does not rise or fall based on attitudes in the White House.

What we are looking for is a partnership based on common interests with the United States, E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. We always like to be in good company, but we determine our policies by ourselves.

Some analysts noted that after Britains vote last June to leave the European Union, support for the E.U. in other nations increased. They wondered whether Trumps frontal challenge to the bloc might have a similar effect. But one said that if global instability rises as a result of Trumps unpredictable policies, the stress could weigh on the already taxed European Union.

Over the last decades, the United States has played a huge stabilizing role. And when this stabilizing role of the U.S. around the world falls away, because theyre doing transactional deals, that will create lots and lots of messes which will implicate European interests, said Stefan Lehne, a former Austrian diplomat who now works at Carnegie Europe, a Brussels-based think tank.

One prominent U.S. advocate of European unity was concerned about Europes ability to weather the Trump tsunami.

As the European Union battles skeptical forces, U.S. cheerleading and support has been welcomed, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Anthony Gardnersaid last week. If there isnt someone like a [Secretary of State John F.] Kerry or an Obama ... reminding people of the importance of the European Union, then theres a vacuum.

French leaders, who face tough presidential elections in April, also appeared to be scrambling to handle the fallout. Trump allies have expressed support for the anti-E.U., anti-immigrant National Front party, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is doing well in opinion polls. Le Pen lunched in the basement of Trump Tower last week in the company of a man who has served as an informal conduit for Trumps contacts with Euroskeptic European leaders, although the Trump transition team denied any formal meeting with the French politician.

The best response is European unity, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. As with the case of Brexit, the best way to defend Europe is to remain united. This is a bit of an invitation that we are making to Mr. Trump. To remain a bloc. Not to forget that the force of Europeans is in their unity.

But the most wishful approach to Trumps declarations may have come from Luxembourg, where the nations top diplomat said he hoped Trump was still in campaign mode.

One must hope that the statements of candidate Trump starting Friday will go in a different direction, said Luxembourgs foreign minister, Jean Asselborn. If the risks are summed up, it would be very destabilizing, which is not in the interest of America.

Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.

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European leaders shocked as Trump slams NATO and E.U ...

Speaking in Brussels before a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested the alliance was rattled by the remarks by Trump.

In a joint interview with the Times of London and the German publication Bild, Trump signaled that US foreign policy in a range of areas could be turned on its head. He suggested that sanctions imposed after Russia's annexation of Crimea could be eased in return for a deal to reduce nuclear weapons, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had pursued "catastrophic" policies on refugees, and that his son-in-law Jared Kushner could lead a Middle East peace effort.

Speaking in Berlin, Merkel shrugged off the interview, saying she would make no substantive comment before Trump was inaugurated.

NATO said it was "absolutely confident" that the US would remain "committed" to the organization

Trump used the interview to restate his doubts about NATO. "I said a long time ago that NATO had problems," he said in the interview.

"Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago.

"Number two the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to be paying," adding that this was unfair to the United States.

Steinmeier said he had spoken with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, "who is concerned that President-elect Trump regards NATO as obsolete."

He also noted Trump's position was "in contradiction" to that of James Mattis, Trump's nominee for defense secretary.

NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu pushed back against the comments. "A strong NATO is good for the United States, just as it is for Europe."

But Dmitry Peskov, the press spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, agreed with Trump's assessment of NATO, saying on Monday that "the systematic goal of this organization is confrontation."

Trump suggested they could be eased in return for a nuclear weapons deal.

"They have sanctions against Russia -- let's see if we can strike a few good deals with Russia. I think there should be less nuclear weapons and they have to be reduced significantly, that's part of it.

"But there are these sanctions and Russia is suffering lots from it. But I think there are things, which lots of people can profit from. "

Responding to Trump's comments Monday, the Kremlin said that "sanctions are not a question on our agenda, neither internally, nor in discussions with our international partners."

"Do you know what? Jared is such a good guy; he will conclude an Israel agreement that no one else can do. You know, he is a natural talent, he is amazing, he is a natural talent," Trump said, according to Bild.

Trump set his sights on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling her "by far the most important leader" in Europe while tearing into her immigration policies, labeling them "catastrophic."

"I have great respect for her, I felt she was a great leader, I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all these illegals and taking all these people where ever they come from and nobody really knows where they come from."

Merkel, who will run for a fourth term in elections this year, has stood firm on Germany's position of accepting nearly all asylum seekers found to be legitimate refugees.

Germany took in more than one million refugees in 2015, making it the most open country in Europe to asylum seekers.

Speaking at a joint press conference with New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English on Monday, Merkel said she would not comment before Trump's inauguration.

"We have known what his position is for some time, and my position is also known," she said.

An enthusiastic Trump praised Britain's impending exit from the European Union as being "so smart."

"I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing," Trump said to his interviewer from the Times, Michael Gove, one of the former leaders of the Brexit campaign, and a sitting member of the UK Parliament.

Asked why he thought the UK's Brexit campaign was successful, Trump blamed loose borders and concerns about the effects of immigration. He also tied it to US security concerns.

"Countries want their own identity. The UK wanted its own identity. I do believe this, if they hadn't been forced to take in all of the refugees so many, with all the problems that entails, you wouldn't have a Brexit... it probably could've worked out."

According to the Times, Trump would offer Britain a "fair" trade deal with America within weeks of taking office. (In fact, Britain will not be able to begin negotiating new trade deals until the Brexit process is complete).

Trump said he will immediately take action to tighten US immigration restrictions once he's sworn in.

"This country we're going to go very strong borders. From the day I get in. One of the first orders I'm going to sign. Day one."

Trump reiterated plans to implement what he calls "extreme vetting" of people from the Muslim world, according to a Bild transcript translated into English by CNN.

"There will be extreme security vetting, it won't be like it is now. We don't have any proper security controls for people entering our country, they don't really exist at the moment, like it has been the case in your country at least in the past."

"That could happen. But we will see," he said.

Trump also touched on the Iran nuclear agreement but declined to say whether he would demand changes to it.

"Well I don't want to say what I'm gonna do with the Iran deal. I just don't want to play the cards. I mean, look, I'm not a politician, I don't go out and say, "I'm gonna do this" I'm gonna do, I gotta do what I gotta do . . . But I'm not happy with the Iran deal, I think it's one of the worst deals ever made," he said, according to the Times.

Republican members of Congress have sharply criticized the deal since it was announced in 2014.

Trump said he doesn't intend to lay off Twitter once he's in the Oval Office and will keep his @realDonaldTrump account, according to the Times of London.

"I thought I'd do less of it, but I'm covered so dishonestly by the press so dishonestly that I can put out Twitter and it's not 140, it's now 280 I can go bing bing bing . . . and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out this morning on television, Fox 'Donald Trump, we have breaking news.'"

CNN's Nadine Schmidt, Gregory Krieg, Sara Mazloumsaki and Laura Goehler contributed to this report.

Continued here:

Trump rattles NATO with 'obsolete' blast - CNNPolitics.com

The Associated Press U.S. Tanks were unloaded in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, Friday Jan. 6, 2017. Ships loaded with U.S. tanks, self-propelled howitzers and hundreds of other fighting vehicles have arrived in the northern German port en route to Eastern Europe to bolster NATOs deterrence to possible Russian aggression. (Ingo Wagner/dpa via AP)

BERLIN Ships began unloading U.S. tanks, self-propelled howitzers and hundreds of other fighting vehicles Friday in the northern German port of Bremerhaven, to be moved into Eastern Europe to bolster NATO's deterrence against possible Russian aggression.

Some 3,500 troops from the 4th Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado, will join up with the equipment, which includes 87 tanks and 144 Bradley fighting vehicles, over the next two weeks.

The deployment marks the start of a new phase of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which foresees the continuous presence of an American armored brigade combat team in Europe on a nine-month rotational basis. The mission is meant to help allay concerns from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and other NATO allies over an increasingly unpredictable and bellicose Russia.

The new forces will gather first in Poland, then fan out across seven countries from Estonia to Bulgaria. A headquarters unit will be stationed in Germany.

When he announced the move last year, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the forces would take part in regular military exercises across the region with NATO allies. At that time, U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges called the deployment the "embodiment of the United States' commitment to deterring aggression and defending our European Allies and partners."

The U.S. also plans to move in a combat aviation brigade with about 10 Chinook and 50 Black Hawk helicopters and 1,800 personnel from Fort Drum, New York, and a battalion with 24 Apache attack helicopters and 400 personnel from Fort Bliss, Texas. They'll be headquartered in Germany with some aircraft positioned in Latvia, Romania and Poland.

Other NATO members are also increasing their presence, with Britain sending fighter jets to the Black Sea area, while a battalion of troops, tanks and light armor will deploy in Estonia in the spring, backed by French and Danish troops. Germany also plans to send troops and tanks to Lithuania.

Albania, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovenia are also playing roles in what NATO has dubbed its Enhanced Forward Presence. The U.S. plans to relocate a Stryker unit from Germany to Poland as part of that group.

NATO has already started positioning equipment and ammunition in Eastern Europe to reduce the time it would take additional units to deploy if needed.

Here is the original post:

US tanks roll into Germany to bolster NATO deterrent

Operation Allied Force Part of the Kosovo War Novi Sad on fire, 1999 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Belligerents

NATO

Wesley Clark (SACEUR) Rupert Smith Javier Solana

Over 1,031 aircraft[11][12]

Human Rights Watch verified that around 500 civilians died as a result of air attacks, nearly 60% of whom were in Kosovo.[16][17] Serbian sources estimated between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian deaths.[16]

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force; the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil,[18] while in Yugoslavia the operation was incorrectly called "Merciful Angel" (Serbian Cyrillic: ), as a result of a misunderstanding or mistranslation.[19] The bombings continued until an agreement was reached that led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo and the establishment of United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

NATO claimed that the Albanian population in Kosovo were being persecuted by FRY forces, Serbian police, and Serb paramilitary forces, and that military action was needed to force the FRY to stop. NATO countries attempted to gain authorization from the United Nations Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia that indicated they would veto such a proposal. NATO launched a campaign without UN authorization, which it described as a humanitarian intervention. The FRY described the NATO campaign as an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign country that was in violation of international law because it did not have UN Security Council support.

The bombing killed between 489 and 528 civilians, and destroyed bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, private businesses, as well as barracks and military installations.

The NATO bombing marked the second major combat operation in its history, following the 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the first time that NATO had used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council.[20]

Moscow attacked it as a breach of international law and a challenge to Russia's status.[21]

After its autonomy was quashed, Kosovo was faced with state organized oppression: from the early 1990s, Albanian language radio and television were restricted and newspapers shut down. Kosovar Albanians were fired in large numbers from public enterprises and institutions, including banks, hospitals, the post office and schools.[22] In June 1991 the University of Pritina assembly and several faculty councils were dissolved and replaced by Serbs. Kosovar Albanian teachers were prevented from entering school premises for the new school year beginning in September 1991, forcing students to study at home.[22]

Later, Kosovar Albanians started an insurgency against Belgrade when the Kosovo Liberation Army was founded in 1996. Armed clashes between two sides broke out in early 1998. A NATO-facilitated ceasefire was signed on 15 October, but both sides broke it two months later and fighting resumed. When the killing of 45 Kosovar Albanians in the Raak massacre was reported in January 1999, NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force to forcibly restrain the two sides. After the Rambouillet Accords broke down on 23 March with Yugoslav rejection of an external peacekeeping force, NATO prepared to install the peacekeepers by force.

NATO's objectives in the Kosovo conflict were stated at the North Atlantic Council meeting held at NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 12, 1999:[23]

Operation Allied Force predominantly used a large-scale air campaign to destroy Yugoslav military infrastructure from high altitudes. After the third day of aerial bombing, NATO had destroyed almost all of its strategic military targets in Yugoslavia. Despite this, the Yugoslav Army continued to function and to attack Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) insurgents inside Kosovo, mostly in the regions of Northern and Southwest Kosovo. NATO bombed strategic economic and societal targets, such as bridges, military facilities, official government facilities, and factories, using long-range cruise missiles to hit heavily defended targets, such as strategic installations in Belgrade and Pristina. The NATO air forces also targeted infrastructure, such as power plants (using the BLU-114/B "Soft-Bomb"), water-processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster, causing much environmental and economic damage throughout Yugoslavia.[citation needed]

Commentators[who?] have debated whether the capitulation of Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War of 1999 resulted solely from the use of air power, or whether other factors contributed.[clarification needed][citation needed]

Due to restrictive media laws, media in Yugoslavia carried little coverage of what its forces were doing in Kosovo, or of other countries' attitudes to the humanitarian crisis; so, few members of the public expected bombing, instead thinking that a diplomatic deal would be made.[24]

According to John Keegan, the capitulation of Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War marked a turning point in the history of warfare. It "proved that a war can be won by air power alone". By comparison, diplomacy had failed before the war, and the deployment of a large NATO ground force was still weeks away when Slobodan Miloevi agreed to a peace deal.[25]

As for why air power should have been capable of acting alone, it has been argued[by whom?] that there are several factors required. These normally come together only rarely, but all occurred during the Kosovo War:[26]

On 20 March 1999 OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission monitors withdrew from Kosovo citing a "steady deterioration in the security situation",[38][39] and on 23 March 1999 Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed.[40] Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency citing an "imminent threat of war ... against Yugoslavia by Nato" and began a huge mobilization of troops and resources.[40][41] On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Wesley Clark, to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."[41][42] On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.[43][44]

NATO's bombing campaign involved 1,000 aircraft operating from air bases in Italy and Germany, and the aircraft carrier USSTheodore Roosevelt stationed in the Adriatic Sea. At dusk,[when?]F/A-18 Hornets of the Spanish Air Force were the first NATO planes to bomb Belgrade and perform SEAD operations. BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines. The U.S. was the dominant member of the coalition against Yugoslavia, although other NATO members were involved. During the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force, this mission was its first conflict participation since World War II. In addition to air power, one battalion of Apache helicopters from the U.S. Army's 11th Aviation Regiment was deployed to help combat missions. The regiment was augmented by pilots from Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne Attack Helicopter Battalion. The battalion secured AH-64 Apache attack helicopter refueling sites, and a small team forward deployed to the Albania Kosovo border to identify targets for NATO air strikes.

The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslavian air defences and high-value military targets.[citation needed]

NATO military operations increasingly attacked Yugoslavian units on the ground; as well as continuing the strategic bombardment. Montenegro was bombed several times, and NATO refused to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Miloevi leader, Milo ukanovi. "Dual-use" targets, used by civilians and military, were attacked; the targets included bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, telecommunications facilities, headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Miloevi's wife, and the Avala TV Tower. Some protested that these actions were violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. NATO argued these facilities were potentially useful to the Yugoslavian military and that their bombing was justified.

On April 14, NATO planes bombed ethnic Albanians near Koria who had been used by Yugoslav forces as human shields.[45][46] Yugoslav troops took TV crews to the scene shortly after the bombing.[47] The Yugoslav government insisted that NATO had targeted civilians.[48][49][50]

On May 7, NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists. NATO had aimed at a Yugoslav military target, but navigational errors led to the wrong building being targeted.[51] The United States and NATO apologized for the bombing, saying it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the Central Intelligence Agency. The bombing strained relations between the People's Republic of China and NATO, provoking angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing.[52]

Solana directed Clark to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Clark then delegated responsibility for the conduct of Operation Allied Force to the Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces Southern Europe who in turn delegated control to the Commander of Allied Air Forces Southern Europe, Lieutenant-General Michael C. Short USAF.[53] Operationally, the day-to-day for responsibility for executing missions was delegated to the Commander of the 5th Allied Tactical Air Force.[54]

The Hague Tribunal ruled that over 700,000 Kosovo Albanians were forcibly displaced by Yugoslav forces into neighbouring Albania and Macedonia, with many thousands displaced within Kosovo.[55] By April, the United Nations reported 850,000 refugees had left from Kosovo.[56] Another 230,000 were listed as internally displaced persons (IDPs): driven from their homes, but still inside Kosovo. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed the refugee crisis was produced by a Yugoslav plan codenamed "Operation Horseshoe".

Serbian Television claimed that huge columns of refugees were fleeing Kosovo because of NATOs bombing, not Yugoslav military operations.[57][58] The Yugoslav side and its Western supporters claimed the refugee outflows were caused by a mass panic in the Kosovo Albanian population, and the exodus was generated principally by fear of NATO bombs.

The United Nations and international human rights organizations were convinced the crisis resulted from a policy of ethnic cleansing. Many accounts from both Serbs and Albanians identified Yugoslav security forces and paramilitaries as the culprits, responsible for systematically emptying towns and villages of their Albanian inhabitants by forcing them to flee.[59]

Atrocities against civilians in Kosovo were the basis of United Nations war crimes charges against Miloevi and other officials responsible for directing the Kosovo conflict.

An important portion of the war involved combat between the Yugoslav Air Force and the opposing air forces. United States Air Force F-15s and F-16s flying mainly from Italian air force bases attacked the defending Yugoslav fighters; mainly MiG-29s, which were in poor condition, due to lack of spare parts and maintenance. Other NATO forces also contributed to the air war.

Air combat incidents:

By the start of April, the conflict seemed closer to resolution. NATO countries began to deliberate about invading Kosovo with ground units. U.S. President Bill Clinton was reluctant to commit US forces for a ground offensive. At the same time, Finnish and Russian negotiators continued to try to persuade Miloevi to back down. Faced with little alternative, Miloevi accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish-Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.

On June 12, after Miloevi accepted the conditions, KFOR began entering Kosovo. KFOR, a NATO force, had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end, its mission was only peacekeeping. It was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armored and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west while all the other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and US Army brigades. The U.S. contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the U.S. 1st Armored Division. Subordinate units included TF 135 Armor from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the U.S. force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanized Infantry Battalion. The initial U.S. forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroevac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months the start of a stay which continues to date establishing order in the southeast sector of Kosovo.

The first NATO troops to enter Pristina on the 12th of June 1999 were Norwegian special forces from FSK Forsvarets Spesialkommando and soldiers from the British Special Air Service 22 S.A.S, although to NATO's diplomatic embarrassment Russian troops arrived first at the airport. The Norwegian soldiers from FSK Forsvarets Spesialkommando were the first to come in contact with the Russian troops at the airport. FSK's mission was to level the negotiating field between the belligerent parties, and to fine-tune the detailed, local deals needed to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.[77][78][79][80]

During the initial incursion, the U.S. soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and throwing flowers as U.S. soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages.[citation needed] Although no resistance was met, three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives in accidents.[81]

Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and seized Pristina International Airport.

In 2010 James Blunt in an interview described how his unit was given the assignment of securing the Pristina in advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and the Russian army had moved in and taken control of the airport before his unit's arrival. As the first officer on the scene, Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially violent international incident. His own account tells of how he refused to follow orders from NATO command to attack the Russians.[82]

Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Preevo Valley by Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping efforts in the Russian Sector. Operating under the support of 2/3 Field Artillery, 1st Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate a Firefinder Radar which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in the Sector and the Preevo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.[83]

While not directly related to the hostilities, on 12 March 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO by depositing instruments of accession in accordance with Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty at a ceremony in Independence, Missouri.[84] These nations did not participate directly in hostilities.

A large element of the operation was the air forces of NATO, relying heavily on the US Air Force and Navy. The French Navy and Air Force operated the Super Etendard and the Mirage 2000. The Italian Air Force operated with 34 Tornado, 12 F-104, 12 AMX, 2 B-707, the Italian Navy operated with Harrier II. The British Royal Air Force operated the Harrier GR7 and Tornado ground attack jets as well as an array of support aircraft. Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Turkish Air Forces operated F-16s. The Spanish Air Force deployed EF-18s and KC-130s. The Canadian Air Force deployed a total of 18 CF-18s, enabling them to be responsible for 10% of all bombs dropped in the operation. The fighters were armed with both guided and unguided "dumb" munitions, including the Paveway series of laser-guided bombs.[citation needed] The bombing campaign marked the first time the German Air Force actively participated in combat operations since the end of World War II.[85]

However, NATO forces relied mostly upon the Americans and the proven effectiveness of its air power by using the F-16, F-15, F-117, F-14, F/A-18, EA-6B, B-52, KC-135, KC-10, AWACS, and JSTARS from bases throughout Europe and from aircraft carriers in the region. The American B-2 Spirit stealth bomber also saw its first successful combat role in Operation Allied Force, all while striking from its home base in the continental United States.

Even with this air power, noted a RAND Corporation study, "NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the enemy's radar-guided SAM threat".[86]

Operation Allied Force incorporated the first large-scale use of satellites as a direct method of weapon guidance. The collective bombing was the first combat use of the Joint Direct Attack Munition JDAM kit, which uses an inertial-guidance and GPS-guided tail fin to increase the accuracy of conventional gravity munitions up to 95%. The JDAM kits were outfitted on the B-2s. The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) had been previously used in Operation Southern Watch earlier in 1999.

NATO naval forces operated in the Adriatic Sea. The Royal Navy sent a substantial task force that included the aircraft carrier HMSInvincible, which operated Sea Harrier FA2 fighter jets. The RN also deployed destroyers and frigates, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) provided support vessels, including the aviation training/primary casualty receiving ship RFAArgus. It was the first time the RN used cruise missiles in combat, operated from the nuclear fleet submarine HMSSplendid. The Italian Navy provided a naval task force that included the aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, a frigate (Maestrale) and a submarine (Sauro-class). The United States Navy provided a naval task force that included the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, USSVella Gulf, and the amphibious assault ship USSKearsarge. The French Navy provided the aircraft carrier Foch and escorts. The German Navy deployed the frigate Rheinland-Pfalz and Oker, an Oste-classfleet service ship, in the naval operations.

U.S. ground forces included a battalion from the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. The unit was deployed in March 1999 to Albania in support of the bombing campaign where the battalion secured the Tirana airfield, Apache helicopter refueling sites, established a forward-operating base to prepare for Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) strikes and offensive ground operations, and deployed a small team with an AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radar system to the Albania/Kosovo border where it acquired targets for allied/NATO air strikes. Immediately after the bombing campaign, the battalion was refitted back at Tirana airfield and issued orders to move into Kosovo as the initial entry force in support of Operation Joint Guardian. Task Force Hawk was also deployed.

Human Rights Watch "concludes that as few as 489 and as many as 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed in the ninety separate incidents in Operation Allied Force". Refugees were among the victims. Between 278 and 317 of the dead, between 56 and 60 percent of the total number of deaths, were in Kosovo. In Serbia, 201 civilians were killed (five in Vojvodina) and eight died in Montenegro. Almost two thirds (303 to 352) of the total registered civilian deaths occurred in twelve incidents where ten or more civilian deaths were confirmed.[87]

Military casualties on the NATO side were limited. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities from combat operations. However, on May 5, an American AH-64 Apache crashed and exploded during a night-time mission in Albania.[88][89] The Yugoslavs claimed they shot it down, but NATO claimed it crashed due to a technical malfunction. It crashed 40miles from Tirana,[90] killing the two crewmen, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin Reichert.[91] It was one of two Apache helicopters lost in the war.[92] A further three American soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by Yugoslav special forces while riding on a Humvee on a surveillance mission along the Macedonian border.[93] A study of the campaign reports that Yugoslav air defenses may have fired up to 700 missiles at NATO aircraft, and that the B-1 bomber crews counted at least 20 surface-to-air missiles fired at them during their first 50 missions.[91] Despite this, only two NATO aircraft (one F-16C[94][95][96] and one F-117A Nighthawk[97][98]) were shot down.[99] A further F-117A Nighthawk was damaged[70][71] as were two A-10 Thunderbolt IIs.[100][101] One AV-8B Harrier crashed due to technical failure.[102] NATO also lost 25 UAVs, either due to enemy action or mechanical failure.[103]

In 2013, Serbia's then-Defence Minister Aleksandar Vui announced that Yugoslavia's military and police losses during the air campaign amounted to 956 killed and 52 missing. Vui stated that 631 soldiers were killed and a further 28 went missing, and that 325 police officers were also among the dead with a further 24 listed as missing.[104] The Government of Serbia also lists 5,173 combatants as having been wounded.[105][106] In early June 1999, while the bombing was still in progress, NATO officials claimed that 5,000 Yugoslav troops had been killed in the bombing and a further 10,000 wounded.[107][108][109] NATO later revised this estimation to 1,200 soldiers and policemen killed.[110]

Throughout the war; 181 NATO strikes were reported against tanks, 317 against armored personnel vehicles, 800 against other military vehicles, and 857 against artillery and mortars,[111] after a total of 38,000 sorties, or 200 sorties per day at the beginning of the conflict and over 1,000 at the end of the conflict.[112] When it came to alleged hits, 93 tanks, 153 APCs, 339 other vehicles, and 389 artillery systems were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty.[113] The Department of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff had earlier provided a figure of 120 tanks, 220 APCs, and 450 artillery systems, and a Newsweek piece published around a year later stated that only 14 tanks, 18 APCs, and 20 artillery systems had actually been obliterated,[113] not that far from the Serbs own estimates of 13 tanks, 6 APCs, and 6 artillery pieces.[114] However, this reporting was heavily criticised, as it was based on the number of vehicles found during the assessment of the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, which wasnt interested in the effectiveness of anything but the ordnance, and surveyed sites that hadnt been visited in nearly three-months, at a time when the most recent of strikes were four-weeks old.[114] The Yugoslav Air Force also sustained serious damage, with 121 aircraft destroyed.[115]

Operation Allied Force inflicted less damage on the Yugoslav military than originally thought due to the use of camouflage. Other misdirection techniques were used to disguise military targets. It was only in the later stages of the campaign that strategic targets such as bridges and buildings were attacked in any systematic way, causing significant disruption and economic damage. This stage of the campaign led to controversial incidents, most notably the bombing of the People's Republic of China embassy in Belgrade where three Chinese reporters were killed and twenty injured, which NATO claimed was a mistake.[51]

Relatives of Italian soldiers believe 50 of them have died since the war due to their exposure to depleted uranium weapons.[116]UNEP tests found no evidence of harm by depleted uranium weapons, even among cleanup workers,[117] but those tests and UNEPs report were questioned in an article in Le Monde diplomatique.[118]

In April 1999, during the NATO bombing, officials in Yugoslavia said the damage from the bombing campaign has cost around $100 billion up to that time.[119]

In 2000, a year after the bombing ended, Group 17 published a survey dealing with damage and economic restoration. The report concluded that direct damage from the bombing totalled $3.8 billion, not including Kosovo, of which only 5% had been repaired at that time.[120]

In 2006, a group of economists from the G17 Plus party estimated the total economic losses resulting from the bombing were about $29.6 billion.[121] This figure included indirect economic damage, loss of human capital, and loss of GDP.[citation needed]

When NATO agreed Kosovo would be politically supervised by the United Nations, and that there would be no independence referendum for three years, the Yugoslav government agreed to withdraw its forces from Kosovo, under strong diplomatic pressure from Russia, and the bombing was suspended on June 10. The war ended June 11, and Russian paratroopers seized Slatina airport to become the first peacekeeping force in the war zone.[122] As British troops were still massed on the Macedonian border, planning to enter Kosovo at 5am, the Serbs were hailing the Russian arrival as proof the war was a UN operation, not a NATO operation. After hostilities ended, on June 12 the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne, 2505th Parachute Infantry Regiment entered war-torn Kosovo as part of Operation Joint Guardian.

Yugoslav President Miloevi survived the conflict and declared its outcome a major victory for Yugoslavia. He was, however, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia along with a number of other senior Yugoslav political and military figures. His indictment led to Yugoslavia as a whole being treated as a pariah by much of the international community because Miloevi was subject to arrest if he left Yugoslavia. The country's economy was badly affected by the conflict, and in addition to electoral fraud, this was a factor in the overthrow of Miloevi.

Thousands were killed during the conflict, and hundreds of thousands more fled from the province to other parts of the country and to the surrounding countries. Most of the Albanian refugees returned home within a few weeks or months. However, much of the non-Albanian population again fled to other parts of Serbia or to protected enclaves within Kosovo following the operation.[123][124][125][126][127] Albanian guerrilla activity spread into other parts of Serbia and to neighbouring Republic of Macedonia, but subsided in 2001. The non-Albanian population has since diminished further following fresh outbreaks of inter-communal conflict and harassment.[citation needed]

In December 2002, Elizabeth II approved the awarding of the Battle Honour "Kosovo" to squadrons of the RAF that participated in the conflict. These were: Nos 1, 7, 8, 9, 14, 23, 31, 51, 101, and 216 squadrons. This was also extended to the Canadian squadrons deployed to the operation, 425 and 441.

Ten years after the operation, the Republic of Kosovo declared independence with a new Republic of Kosovo government.

Those who were involved in the NATO airstrikes have stood by the decision to take such action. U.S President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide."[128] On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing. ... They may have been murdered."[129] Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing".[130] Later, Clinton said about Yugoslav elections, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Miloevi ordered in Kosovo. ... They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed. ..."[131] In the same press conference, Clinton also claimed "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[131] Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort."[132] President Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest up to that time in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloevi."[133] The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. In May 1996, Defense Secretary William Cohen suggested that there might be up to 100,000 Albanian fatalities."[134]

Five months after the conclusion of NATO bombing, when around one third of reported gravesites had been visited thus far, 2,108 bodies had been found, with a estimated total of between 5,000 and 12,000 at that time;[135] Serb forces had systematically concealed grave sites and moved bodies.[136][137]

The United States House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution on March 11, 1999 by a vote of 219191 conditionally approving of President Clinton's plan to commit 4000 troops to the NATO peacekeeping mission.[138] In late April the House Appropriations Committee approved $13billion in emergency spending to cover the cost of the air war, but a second non-binding resolution approving of the mission failed in the full House by a vote of 213213.[139] The Senate had passed the second resolution in late March by a vote of 5841.[140]

There has also been criticism of the campaign. Joseph Farah accused the coalition of exaggerating the casualty numbers to make a claim of potential genocide to justify the bombings.[141] The Clinton administration were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.[142]

In an interview with Radio-Television Serbia journalist Danilo Mandic on April 25, 2006, Noam Chomsky claimed that Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State under President Clinton and the leading U.S. negotiator during the war, had written in his foreword to John Norris' 2005 book Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo that "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians", but rather "It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated".[143] On May 31, 2006, Brad DeLong rebutted Chomsky's allegation and noted that in the original passage which Chomsky had cited,[144] Talbott claimed that "the Kosovo crisis was fueled by frustration with Milosevic and the legitimate fear that instability and conflict might spread further in the region" and also that "Only a decade of death, destruction, and Milosevic brinkmanship pushed NATO to act when the Rambouillet talks collapsed. Most of the leaders of NATO's major powers were proponents of 'third way' politics and headed socially progressive, economically centrist governments. None of these men were particularly hawkish, and Milosevic did not allow them the political breathing room to look past his abuses."[144][145]

The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which, in general, need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council. The issue was brought before the UNSC by Russia, in a draft resolution which, inter-alia, would affirm "that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter". China, Namibia and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass.[146][147][dead link]

On April 29, 1999, Yugoslavia filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague against ten NATO member countries (Belgium, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United States) and alleged that the military operation had violated Article 9 of the 1948 Genocide Convention and that Yugoslavia had jurisdiction to sue through Article 38, para. 5 of Rules of Court.[148] On June 2, the ICJ ruled in an 84 vote that Yugoslavia had no such jurisdiction.[149] Four of the ten nations (the United States, France, Italy and Germany) had withdrawn entirely from the court's optional clause. Because Yugoslavia filed its complaint only three days after accepting the terms of the court's optional clause, the ICJ ruled that there was no jurisdiction to sue either Britain or Spain, as the two nations had only agreed to submit to ICJ lawsuits if a suing party had filed their complaint a year or more after accepting the terms of the optional clause.[149] Despite objections that Yugoslavia had legal jurisdiction to sue Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Portugal,[149] the ICJ majority vote also determined that the NATO bombing was an instance of humanitarian intervention" and thus did not violate Article 9 of the Genocide Convention.[149]

Amnesty International released a report which stated that NATO forces had deliberately targeted a civilian object (NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters), and had bombed targets at which civilians were certain to be killed.[150][151] The report was rejected by NATO as "baseless and ill-founded". A week before the report was released, Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had told the United Nations Security Council that her investigation into NATO actions found no basis for charging NATO or its leaders with war crimes.[152]

A majority of U.S. House Republicans voted against two resolutions, both of which expressed approval for American involvement in the NATO mission.[153][154]

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NATO bombing of Yugoslavia - Wikipedia

After retiring from NATO as its second highest military official in 2014, Gen. Sir Richard Shirreff penned the ultimate war game: A 500-page fictionalized account of a war between Russia and NATO, titled, simply, War With Russia. The book, in the style of anti-appeasement tracts before World War II, is a plot-propelled warning about the dangers of Western acquiescence complete with romances, a Russian president with a pale, bloodless face (known only as Vladimir Vladimirovich) and a group of bumbling, self-interested NATO ambassadors that cant ever seem to agree on a course of action soon enough.

While the story may seem farfetched, key plot points look awfully similar to some real life geopolitical mischief weve observed in the past couple of years, like Russias sowing of misinformation to rile up public sentiment and justify military action. The basic plot of the book begins with a Russian invasion of Ukraine, followed by invasions of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. At each aggression, NATO members debate over how to respond, and every response is not enough to stop escalating Russian aggression, until, eventually war breaks out.

Story Continued Below

Since Shirreff published the book in May, several geopolitical earthquakes have upended our understanding of what the future might look like. Some of those events have taken our world closer to his fictionalized onelike Brexit, which he predicted in the book, and an increasingly aggressive Russia. And some of those events have surpassed his wildest scenarios, like Russias hack on the Democratic National Convention, an attempt to manipulate the U.S. election that even Shirreff concedes goes further than what he could have imagined a year ago. He also didn't imagine a President Trump, who is far less supportive of NATO and far friendlier with the Russian president than the no-nonsense, relatively hawkish woman who is elected in the United States in the book's fictional 2016 election.

Given how much the world has changed, we thought it was worth sitting down with Shirreff to ask how this fictional universe that he has spent so long creating has changed in just a matter of months. If the scenario he predicted was bad before, he's feeling less optimistic now with a Trump presidency, an apparently emboldened Russia and a NATO he says might not survive for even five more years.

(This conversation has been condensed and edited.)

***

Katelyn Fossett: In the beginning of the book, a new U.S. president reverses the previous presidents hands-off approach to Russia; she arms Ukraine and is committed to standing tough against Russia. This doesnt really sound like Trump.

Richard Shirreff: No. This is absolutely the antithesis of Trump. [In the book] we have an American president who is absolutely unequivocally prepared to lead NATO and to lead the free world.

What weve seen with Trumpand rightly, actually, in Trumps case, rightly for Americas case, he called out European members of NATO for not stepping up to the mark in terms of defense spending and being dependent on America. But Trump is not alone in saying that; secretaries of defense and secretaries of State have said that over the last decade or so. The really scary thing about Trump is what he said about not necessarily coming to their aid if a NATO member is attacked. In a stroke, that undermines the credibility of NATOs collective defense under the founding principle of NATO, Article 5, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all. That is scary because the defense of Europe since 1949 and the establishment of NATO has depended on the total certainty that whatever American president is in the White House, America will always come to their aid if a NATO member is attacked.

And his recent appointment of Tillersonhere is a man whos got an order of friendship from Vladimir Putin. So, you know, this isn't a man who is necessarily going to stand up to Russia.

The whole principle of collective defense and deterrence is to raise the bar of risk sufficiently high to any decision-maker in the Kremlin so that biting off a chunk of the Baltic States is not worthwhile.

But after Trumps inauguration in January, Putin might think its worthwhile because he knows that America may not come to the aid of Baltic States if attacked. So he may just get away with it, and thats why this is so dangerous.

Fossett: So, looking five years down the road, what do you think is the future of NATO? Does it survive a Trump presidency?

Shirreff: Well, if on the 21st of January, the new president makes a strong pitch for America as NATOs leader, an absolutely resolute declaration of the lasting importance of Article 5 and of Americas commitment under his presidency to collective defense and to defend any NATO member of attack, then NATO will survive a Trump presidency. It might even prosper under a Trump presidency. But if he doesnt, and if he continues to undermine the credibility of collective defense, as he has started to do as a candidate, then NATO won't survive five years.

Fossett: How do you think that starts, the end of NATO? Is it a show of aggression and NATO fails to come to the defense of a Baltic country, and then it happens again, and it just becomes clear through Putins actions or somebody elses actions that NATO is just not taken seriously?

Shirreff: Well, NATO is an alliance based on principles of democracy and individual liberty and rule of law, but its also an alliance based on trust; what keeps it together is trust. Its not an alliance based on a transactional arrangement between member states. I mean, a statement of attack on one is an attack on all, it's a very idealistic statement.

If you have a leader of NATO taking a transactional approach saying, Well, let me come to your aid if youre prepared to pay for American troops in your country or whatever, that trust goes, and so the centrifugal forces that pull nations apart will predominate over the forces that bind them together. So I think thats the concern, and it may not need an attack on the Baltic states for NATO to lose credibility and to unwind.

Fossett: Americas willingness to step up militarily is a crucial decision point throughout the book. If you were to write that today, now that Trump is president and with Rex Tillerson possibly as our next secretary of State, how do you think those things would change?

Shirreff: Well, it would make it easier, much, much easier for Vladimir Vladimirovich to launch the attack. As you know, hes got to be increasingly sure that hes not going to be haunted by anything, that America wont step in, and he knows that NATO will not do anything unless America is prepared to take the lead.

The second thing is that Americas failing to underwrite collective defense and the defense of Europe in Article 5 will most certainly cause the collapse of NATO because NATO needs to believe Americas credibility.

And I think a third thing is, if you read to the end of the book, you know, it ends not quite happily ever after, but it does end on a high. And however fantastical that might appear, it won't end on a high if America fails to step up under Trump. It will be a disaster. It will be a catastrophe.

Now, Im not saying were going to be seeing Russian soldiers marching into Paris. No, far from it. But, once again, what we will see iswell, in the words of Putin, what well see is a new Yalta descend on Europe. It will be a 21st century Yalta. It won't be enslavement under Communism, but it will be effectively seeing both former republics of the Soviet Union, the three Baltic States in particular, fall increasingly under Russian influence, and as I said, a collapse of NATO and a reversion, I think, to nationalism. Its still under the surface of Europe and then will come out of the woodwork. So I think we will be in for a very, very uncertain mood for the century.

Fossett: So, in the U.S. right now, everyone is talking about the alleged Russian hack of the DNC. Can you talk about the role that cyber operations play in the book and whether they would factor in more heavily if you wrote it today?

Shirreff: Yeah. Well, it has changed my expectations. You know, this is the scary thing: When I started writing this book at the beginning of last year, at the beginning of 2015, I painted a picture that for many people would have seemed pretty fantastical. But I fear now that that picture appears all too vulnerable, given what has happened since then.

I think one assumed that cyber would play its part in hybrid asymmetric warfare, exactly the sort of thing we saw in Crimea. How do you undermine the integrity of a state from within, so it collapses without necessarily you having to invade formally?

But I would have expected one of the Baltic States to be the target. I would never have expected that Russian intelligence services, no doubt authorized by Putin, would have deployed cyber operations to manipulate the American presidential election. That is bare-faced, in your face. That is an extraordinary step to take by one state or another in so-called peacetime.

But we have to remember that the Russians do not believe they are in peacetime. The Russians believe theyre at war. The Kremlin totally has believed it has been at war since 2014, and thats not me saying that. Its the words of Dmitri Trenin, who runs the Carnegie Moscow Center, which is a very respected think tank. There is a man with close links to the Russian regimeand thats what he believes.

Another thing is: What should we be doing about it? Number one, we should be taking it seriously, unlike Mr. Trump who denies it, as we heard the other day, [claiming] that it could be some kid somewhere, it could be the Chinese. Well, you know, I think I believe the CIA on that one. But also, we should contest the cyberspace. We should contest the information space. We should not let Russia get away with asymmetric warfare willy-nilly deployed against us, deployed against our democratic institutions.

We should be putting the boots in for the cyber enterprise, and I think it shows extraordinary weakness that were not, that America has not on the face of it deployed any form of defensive cyber against Russia to send a warning shot. And the United Kingdom could be doing the same as well because weve both got more than enough capabilities to take down the Russian banking system for 24 hours, just as a warning shot, just to make it clear: Dont mess with us. If you do mess with us, you're going to get a bloody nose.

Fossett: Disinformation campaigns factor really heavily into the book. Theres a school takeover in Donetsk, which Russia stages and uses as a pretext for military intervention, for instance. How have the past couple of years changed how you understand these kinds of vintage Russian disinformation campaigns, in the era of social media and unverifiable news, and what do they expose about our vulnerabilities?

Shirreff: Well, as you said, these are classic techniques of Maskirovka [Russian and Soviet military deception], but 21st century media capabilities allow for much more effective application of these sorts of techniques.

I guess in the last couple of years, its just highlighted the extent to which the Russians are really ahead of the game in the sophistication of their approach, the sophistication of their techniques.

What does it say about the West and NATO? Well, its difficult, but weve got to find ways of stopping the chaos, as it were. Youll never control it, but youve got to find ways of turning it to our advantage in a way that Russia has proved itself able to turn it to its advantage.

Fossett: The calculus of avoiding nuclear war is throughout the book, too. Has a Trump presidency changed how you think of a possibility of nuclear war? There have been reports hes asked advisers why we dont use them.

Shirreff: Well, yeah, it does because, again, if youve got a president in the White House who says, Why the hell dont wewhy dont we just use them? ... And I am tempted to say the Chinese had it right when they described these interventions of Taiwan as the actions of a child. I mean, its an infantile approach to the complexity of deterrent theory, and so the lack of any formal understanding of deterrence and why the way to prevent wars is to build capabilities and thentheres got to be a degree of credibility about potential use of them. But its also got to be that such Armageddon-creating capabilities require the toughest possible control and seriousness about the nature of circumstances in which they might one day be used.

I think by the loose talk about why dont we use nuclear weapons, it breeds lack of credibility. It sends a message about a failure to understand, which again, thinking about the mind of your opponent or your potential aggressor, creates a situation where he might just think he can get away with it.

Its also the unpredictability, I think. I think deterrence depends on If you do this, were going to do this. Thats predictable, OK? [If I'm clear on the consequences,] Im not going to do it.

Fossett: Why do you think fiction was the best vehicle for this warning?

Shirreff: There was a book called The Third World War by General John Hackett. It was written and published in about 1977, 78, and it made a big impression on me about the time I left the university and I went into the Army.

I was thinking it was time for another similar predictive history, as it were, and then what changed things was the invasion of Crimea and the dynamic that Putin had started there. And I felt that this was really, really dangerous, and so now was the time put pen to paper and start to write a book about a new, as it were, Third World War.

Katelyn Fossett is associate editor at Politico Magazine.

Read more:

Is NATO Doomed? - POLITICO Magazine

NATO flag

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.

The organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium.

Decades of economic and political turbulence across member states have left NATO weakened, and facing a strategic paradigm shift. With CSAT political and military influence dominating from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, NATO seeks to consolidate their diminished forces around traditional strongholds. As tensions continue to grow in the east, a US-led joint NATO-AAF peacekeeping force stationed on Stratis - Task Force Aegis - is in the middle of a staged draw-down.

NATO forces consisting of elements from the Army of the Czech Republic and German Kommando Spezialkrafte were sent to Takistan to assist the US Army.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) makes up of Arma 3s "western" forces, including many elements from the US Army and multi-national unit called CTRG.

NATO forces are sent to Tanoa in that same year.

US Army and British UKSF soldiers are very similarly equipped, as part of an international effort to standardize NATO equipment. Both sub-factions use Carrier Rigs (Crye Armor Chassis), ECH helmets, and are equipped with MX series service rifles. US Army units wear MTP Combat Fatigues (Crye G2 pants and combat shirts, Ringers gloves, as well as Lowa boots), while British UKSF wear similar uniforms with a Triangular Dazzle pattern. US Army gear is often brown or green with numerous variations, while British UKSF wear coyote-brown vests and headgear sprayed over with snakeskin.

The MX 6.5 mm, designed by CMMG, Inc. chambers the 6.5x39 mm non-case round. The MX series rifle is standard issue for NATO forces, and comes in 4 versions: a standard rifle (with an optional underslung 3GL), a carbine for non-combat personnel such as officers and vehicle crew, a squad automatic rifle, and a marksman rifle. The P07 is the standard sidearm for NATO units. The MXM 6.5 mm is used as a NATO marksman rifle, alongside the Mk18 7.62 marksman rifle.

NATO forces use the Hunter as a standard ground utility vehicle. It is a medium sized MRAP made for multipurpose use and comes in unarmed, RCWS HMG, and RCWS GMG variants. The HEMTT is an 8-wheeled truck used for multi-purpose roles such as troop and cargo transport. Special operations and utility units use quadbikes for general transport and other roles.

For combat the M2A1 Slammer (Licensed copy of the Israeli Merkava MBT) functions as NATO's Main Battle Tank for ground combat operations in the region. The AMV-7 Marshallis used as an amphibious APC for ground troops, in addition to the IFV-6c Panther(Licensed copy of the Israeli Namer IFV)Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The IFV-6a Cheetah serves as self propelled anti-air support, while the M4 Scorcher and M5 Sandstorm MLRS platforms are used as mobile artillery systems.

NATO aircraft are mostly American and utilize geometric stealth radar-resistant technologies. NATO helicopters include the AH-99 Blackfoot light helicopter gunship (revival of the prototype RAH-66 Comanche), MH-9 Hummingbird and AH-9 Pawnee (both updated versions of the Littlebird family), the CH-67 Huron (modernized stealth variant of CH-47 Chinook) and the UH-80 Ghosthawk (stealth variant of the UH-60 Blackhawk). NATO fixed-wing assets include the A-164 Wipeout (updated stealth version of the A-10 Thunderbolt).

NATO Naval forces seen in the Altis Conflict consist of Speedboats, Assault Boats, and SDV (Swimmer Delivery Vehicle) submersibles. British UKSF are seen to operate from the HMS Proteus, an Astute-Class Submarine.

NATO forces operate the Stomper UGV as both an unarmed logistics platform and an armed combat vehicle, mounting a 12.7 mm HMG and a 40 mm GMG in a RCWS. NATO troops also employ the AR-2 Darter Mircro-UAV and the MQ-4A Greyhawk UCAV.

NATO special operations deployed to the Republic of Altis and Stratis theater consist of reconnaissance, aquatic, and sniper teams.

Sniper teams are usually fielded in groups of two, made up of a sniper and a spotter. Said personnel make use of Gillie Suits based off of standard MTP Combat Fatigues, Chest Rigs, and Balaclavas. Snipers are armed with camouflaged M320 LRR sniper rifles and suppressed P07s, while spotters field suppressed MX rifles and suppressed P07s. Snipers are equipped with Rangefinders, while Spotters carry Laser Designators. Scout-sniper operations usually consist of very slow, stealthy movement and can last days on end. Tasks include observing and relaying enemy movement, as well as engaging high value targets or providing fire support for friendly forces in the vicinity.

Recon teams are equipped with lighter gear than standard infantry. Booniehats, Beanies, and other light head-wear along with Chest Rigs without ballistic protection are the norm. Recon teams deploy with suppressed weaponry.

NATO divers are equipped with SDAR underwater rifles and suppressed P07 pistols. They use Rebreathers and wear black Wetsuits.

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NATO | Armed Assault Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April 4, 1949, which sought to create a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II. Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Joining the original signatories were Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); and Albania and Croatia (2009). France withdrew from the integrated military command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the organization; it resumed its position in NATOs military command in 2009.

The heart of NATO is expressed in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, in which the signatory members agree that

an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in 2001, after terrorist attacks organized by exiled Saudi Arabian millionaire Osama bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., killing some 3,000 people.

Article 6 defines the geographic scope of the treaty as covering an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America. Other articles commit the allies to strengthening their democratic institutions, to building their collective military capability, to consulting each other, and to remaining open to inviting other European states to join.

Barkley, Alben W.: North Atlantic Treaty signingEncyclopdia Britannica, Inc.After World War II in 1945, western Europe was economically exhausted and militarily weak (the western Allies had rapidly and drastically reduced their armies at the end of the war), and newly powerful communist parties had arisen in France and Italy. By contrast, the Soviet Union had emerged from the war with its armies dominating all the states of central and eastern Europe, and by 1948 communists under Moscows sponsorship had consolidated their control of the governments of those countries and suppressed all noncommunist political activity. What became known as the Iron Curtain, a term popularized by Winston Churchill, had descended over central and eastern Europe. Further, wartime cooperation between the western Allies and the Soviets had completely broken down. Each side was organizing its own sector of occupied Germany, so that two German states would emerge, a democratic one in the west and a communist one in the east.

In 1948 the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which infused massive amounts of economic aid to the countries of western and southern Europe on the condition that they cooperate with each other and engage in joint planning to hasten their mutual recovery. As for military recovery, under the Brussels Treaty of 1948, the United Kingdom, France, and the Low CountriesBelgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourgconcluded a collective-defense agreement called the Western European Union. It was soon recognized, however, that a more formidable alliance would be required to provide an adequate military counterweight to the Soviets.

By this time Britain, Canada, and the United States had already engaged in secret exploratory talks on security arrangements that would serve as an alternative to the United Nations (UN), which was becoming paralyzed by the rapidly emerging Cold War. In March 1948, following a virtual communist coup dtat in Czechoslovakia in February, the three governments began discussions on a multilateral collective-defense scheme that would enhance Western security and promote democratic values. These discussions were eventually joined by France, the Low Countries, and Norway and in April 1949 resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty.

Spurred by the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, the United States took steps to demonstrate that it would resist any Soviet military expansion or pressures in Europe. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leader of the Allied forces in western Europe in World War II, was named Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) by the North Atlantic Council (NATOs governing body) in December 1950. He was followed as SACEUR by a succession of American generals.

The North Atlantic Council, which was established soon after the treaty came into effect, is composed of ministerial representatives of the member states, who meet at least twice a year. At other times the council, chaired by the NATO secretary-general, remains in permanent session at the ambassadorial level. Just as the position of SACEUR has always been held by an American, the secretary-generalship has always been held by a European.

NATOs military organization encompasses a complete system of commands for possible wartime use. The Military Committee, consisting of representatives of the military chiefs of staff of the member states, subsumes two strategic commands: Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT). ACO is headed by the SACEUR and located at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau, Belgium. ACT is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. During the alliances first 20 years, more than $3 billion worth of infrastructure for NATO forcesbases, airfields, pipelines, communications networks, depotswas jointly planned, financed, and built, with about one-third of the funding from the United States. NATO funding generally is not used for the procurement of military equipment, which is provided by the member statesthough the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force, a fleet of radar-bearing aircraft designed to protect against a surprise low-flying attack, was funded jointly.

A serious issue confronting NATO in the early and mid-1950s was the negotiation of West Germanys participation in the alliance. The prospect of a rearmed Germany was understandably greeted with widespread unease and hesitancy in western Europe, but the countrys strength had long been recognized as necessary to protect western Europe from a possible Soviet invasion. Accordingly, arrangements for West Germanys safe participation in the alliance were worked out as part of the Paris Agreements of October 1954, which ended the occupation of West German territory by the western Allies and provided for both the limitation of West German armaments and the countrys accession to the Brussels Treaty. In May 1955 West Germany joined NATO, which prompted the Soviet Union to form the Warsaw Pact alliance in central and eastern Europe the same year. The West Germans subsequently contributed many divisions and substantial air forces to the NATO alliance. By the time the Cold War ended, some 900,000 troopsnearly half of them from six countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands)were stationed in West Germany.

Frances relationship with NATO became strained after 1958, as President Charles de Gaulle increasingly criticized the organizations domination by the United States and the intrusion upon French sovereignty by NATOs many international staffs and activities. He argued that such integration subjected France to automatic war at the decision of foreigners. In July 1966 France formally withdrew from the military command structure of NATO and required NATO forces and headquarters to leave French soil; nevertheless, de Gaulle proclaimed continued French adherence to the North Atlantic Treaty in case of unprovoked aggression. After NATO moved its headquarters from Paris to Brussels, France maintained a liaison relationship with NATOs integrated military staffs, continued to sit in the council, and continued to maintain and deploy ground forces in West Germany, though it did so under new bilateral agreements with the West Germans rather than under NATO jurisdiction. In 2009 France rejoined the military command structure of NATO.

From its founding, NATOs primary purpose was to unify and strengthen the Western Allies military response to a possible invasion of western Europe by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. In the early 1950s NATO relied partly on the threat of massive nuclear retaliation from the United States to counter the Warsaw Pacts much larger ground forces. Beginning in 1957, this policy was supplemented by the deployment of American nuclear weapons in western European bases. NATO later adopted a flexible response strategy, which the United States interpreted to mean that a war in Europe did not have to escalate to an all-out nuclear exchange. Under this strategy, many Allied forces were equipped with American battlefield and theatre nuclear weapons under a dual-control (or dual-key) system, which allowed both the country hosting the weapons and the United States to veto their use. Britain retained control of its strategic nuclear arsenal but brought it within NATOs planning structures; Frances nuclear forces remained completely autonomous.

A conventional and nuclear stalemate between the two sides continued through the construction of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s, dtente in the 1970s, and the resurgence of Cold War tensions in the 1980s after the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1980. After 1985, however, far-reaching economic and political reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev fundamentally altered the status quo. In July 1989 Gorbachev announced that Moscow would no longer prop up communist governments in central and eastern Europe and thereby signaled his tacit acceptance of their replacement by freely elected (and noncommunist) administrations. Moscows abandonment of control over central and eastern Europe meant the dissipation of much of the military threat that the Warsaw Pact had formerly posed to western Europe, a fact that led some to question the need to retain NATO as a military organizationespecially after the Warsaw Pacts dissolution in 1991. The reunification of Germany in October 1990 and its retention of NATO membership created both a need and an opportunity for NATO to be transformed into a more political alliance devoted to maintaining international stability in Europe.

After the Cold War, NATO was reconceived as a cooperative-security organization whose mandate was to include two main objectives: to foster dialogue and cooperation with former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact and to manage conflicts in areas on the European periphery, such as the Balkans. In keeping with the first objective, NATO established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1991; later replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council) to provide a forum for the exchange of views on political and security issues, as well as the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program (1994) to enhance European security and stability through joint military training exercises with NATO and non-NATO states, including the former Soviet republics and allies. Special cooperative links were also set up with two PfP countries: Russia and Ukraine.

The second objective entailed NATOs first use of military force, when it entered the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 by staging air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions around the capital city of Sarajevo. The subsequent Dayton Accords, which were initialed by representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, committed each state to respecting the others sovereignty and to settling disputes peacefully; it also laid the groundwork for stationing NATO peacekeeping troops in the region. A 60,000-strong Implementation Force (IFOR) was initially deployed, though a smaller contingent remained in Bosnia under a different name, the Stabilization Force (SFOR). In March 1999 NATO launched massive air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to force the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Miloevi to accede to diplomatic provisions designed to protect the predominantly Muslim Albanian population in the province of Kosovo. Under the terms of a negotiated settlement to the fighting, NATO deployed a peacekeeping force called the Kosovo Force (KFOR).

The crisis over Kosovo and the ensuing war gave renewed impetus to efforts by the European Union (EU) to construct a new crisis-intervention force, which would make the EU less dependent on NATO and U.S. military resources for conflict management. These efforts prompted significant debates about whether enhancing the EUs defensive capabilities would strengthen or weaken NATO. Simultaneously there was much discussion of the future of NATO in the post-Cold War era. Some observers argued that the alliance should be dissolved, noting that it was created to confront an enemy that no longer existed; others called for a broad expansion of NATO membership to include Russia. Most suggested alternative roles, including peacekeeping. By the start of the second decade of the 21st century, it appeared likely that the EU would not develop capabilities competitive with those of NATO or even seek to do so; as a result, earlier worries associated with the spectre of rivalry between the two Brussels-based organizations dissipated.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization: flag-raising ceremony, 1999NATO photosDuring the presidency of Bill Clinton (19932001), the United States led an initiative to enlarge NATO membership gradually to include some of the former Soviet allies. In the concurrent debate over enlargement, supporters of the initiative argued that NATO membership was the best way to begin the long process of integrating these states into regional political and economic institutions such as the EU. Some also feared future Russian aggression and suggested that NATO membership would guarantee freedom and security for the newly democratic regimes. Opponents pointed to the enormous cost of modernizing the military forces of new members; they also argued that enlargement, which Russia would regard as a provocation, would hinder democracy in that country and enhance the influence of hard-liners. Despite these disagreements, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted in 2004; and Albania and Croatia acceded to the alliance in 2009.

Meanwhile, by the beginning of the 21st century, Russia and NATO had formed a strategic relationship. No longer considered NATOs chief enemy, Russia cemented a new cooperative bond with NATO in 2001 to address such common concerns as international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and arms control. This bond was subsequently subject to fraying, however, in large part because of reasons associated with Russian domestic politics.

Events following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 led to the forging of a new dynamic within the alliance, one that increasingly favoured the military engagement of members outside Europe, initially with a mission against Taliban forces in Afghanistan beginning in the summer of 2003 and subsequently with air operations against the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya in early 2011. As a result of the increased tempo of military operations undertaken by the alliance, the long-standing issue of burden sharing was revived, with some officials warning that failure to share the costs of NATO operations more equitably would lead to unraveling of the alliance. Most observers regarded that scenario as unlikely, however.

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | Britannica.com

ANTALYA, Turkey Preoccupied for more than a year by the Ukraine crisis, NATO foreign ministers meeting in Turkey this week will focus on instability on the alliances southern flank, ranging from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to turmoil in Libya.

By meeting in Turkey, which shares a 1,200 km (750-mile) border with Iraq and Syria, NATO hopes to show it is responsive to the concerns of its southern members, as well as reinforcing eastern European allies worried by Russias actions in Ukraine.

"Turkey is the only country which neighbors areas under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in the southern city of Antalya before the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday.

"This is not sustainable, and a big threat to Turkey. The summit will be an opportunity to share these views."

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute described an "arc of instability" around the east and south of the alliance, with the "maybe failed state of Libya" a funnel for illegal immigration from states such as northern Nigeria, Mali, Niger and Somalia.

"Youve got, to the east, to the southeast and to the south, pretty fundamental security challenges for NATO," he told reporters at a briefing late last week.

Libya has descended into lawlessness since rebels overthrew strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 with the help of a NATO bombing campaign.

NATO as an organization has not been highly active militarily in the south recently, although all of its member nations are part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State. It also sent Patriot anti-missile systems to defend Turkey from possible attack from war-torn Syria.

The alliance is considering a request from Iraq for help training its army. But it says the security situation in Libya must improve before it could help train Libyan security forces.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is expectedto brief the NATO ministers on the EUs proposals for a military mission to capture and destroy smugglers boats used to ferry migrants on perilous Mediterranean crossings from Libya.

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May 9, 2015: Russian army soldiers march along Red Square during the Victory Parade marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II in Moscow. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

NATO reportedly has moved to expel dozens of suspected Russian spies from its headquarters in Brussels in the latest sign of a renewal of tensions between the western military alliance and Moscow.

The Guardian reported that NATO decided last month to mandate that all non-member state delegations reduce their staff to no more than 30 people. The new rule only affected Russia, though estimates of the exact number of Russian delegates vary. The Kremlin says it has only 37 people accredited to work in Brussels. However, a diplomat from a NATO member state told The Guardian that in fact 61 people were part of the delegation. Other NATO sources told the paper the number was as high as 90.

Regardless of the number, the paper reported that NATO diplomats estimate that approximately half of the Russian contingent was working on behalf of Moscow's intelligence service. In practice, the paper reported, only Russia's ambassador to NATO, his deputy, his secretary, and his driver, were allowed to traverse the alliance's offices without being escorted.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied in an interview that the new rule specifically targeted Russia, saying, "With the Russians we have decided to suspend all practical co-operation but to maintain the channels of political and military dialogue and contact. A delegation of 30 is more than enough to do that."

The Guardian also reported Sunday that NATO has revived the Cold War-era practice of using hotlines to the Kremlin and the Russian general staff in an effort to reduce the chances of military confrontation. Stoltenberg disclosed that NATO jets had intercepted an increasing number of Russian planes in recent months over the Black, Baltic, and Norwegian seas.

"Its important to have contacts military to military in a normal situation so that if something not normal happens, youre able to clarify misunderstandings, to avoid situations out of control," Stoltenberg told The Guardian.

NATO foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, were due to gather for a meeting Wednesday in Antalya, Turkey. The meeting would come one day after Kerry planned to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

However, while the State Department said Monday that Kerry would meet Putin and Lavrov, the Kremlin said Putin's attendance had yet to be confirmed. The Russian Foreign Ministry also blamed the U.S. for the ongoing civil war in Ukraine.

"The Obama administration chose the path of scaling back bilateral relations, proclaimed a course of isolating Russia on the international arena and demanded that those states that traditionally follow the lead of Washington support its confrontational steps," it said in a statement.

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