Daily Archives: April 2, 2017

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week holds his first meetings with the full roster of NATO partners, and aides say he will make a concerted effort to press member states to increase their defense spending.

Tillerson was en route to the Turkish capital of Ankara on Wednesday, where he will also discuss strategy in the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials. An offensive to retake the city of Raqqah looms, and Turkeys role could be crucial.

From Turkey, Tillerson on Friday will be in Brussels, headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for talks with foreign ministers of the other 27 member nations, including Turkey. NATO moved the meeting from April to Friday after Tillerson initially said he would not attend because of a scheduling conflict.

The Trump administration has been sending mixed messages on NATO, with the president frequently dismissing its importance, while his top Cabinet members pledge 100% support for the alliance that has been the foundation for peace in the West since World War II.

If NATO allies are expecting soothing words from Tillerson, however, they may be in for a disappointment. While he will say the United States remains committed to NATO, he will emphasize that countries must pay more.

Its no longer sustainable for the United States to maintain a disproportionate share of NATOs deterrence and defense budgets, a senior State Department official said, referring to the portion paid by the U.S. as a burden. We need the allies to do more.

The official, who briefed reporters ahead of Tillersons trip on condition of anonymity, refused to say what steps the administration would take if countries dont spend more. President Trump has hinted he would not comply with the NATO commitment that all nations go to the aid of any member under attack, and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, at a security meeting in Munich, Germany, last month, warned that the U.S. could moderate its commitment.

In 2014, all members of NATO agreed to allocate, by the year 2024, 2% of their GDPs to defense spending, and from that budget dedicate another 20% to military equipment and capabilities such as weapon systems, intelligence and so forth. (No money is actually owed to the United States, despite Trumps erroneous assertion.)

Only five nations have met the spending goal, according to the State Department, with several others close. The Trump administration wants the countries to redouble efforts.

Absolutely, the official said, the administration is pushing allies to do more, faster. Absolutely no apology for that.

Most NATO countries agree they should spend more on defense but many note they contribute to regional security in other ways and have also provided troops to U.S.-led military operations from Afghanistan to Libya. They are concerned that Trump does not appreciate the value of the alliance.

NATO members live and die on the pledge of mutual defense, said a German official based in Washington who asked not to be identified in order to be able to speak candidly. Without that guarantee, Europeans will remain nervous.

Tillersons talks in Turkey will be similarly delicate. In Syria, Turkey wants the Trump administration to make a clean break from reliance on Kurdish militias ahead of any offensive to take Raqqah, Islamic States self-declared capital. The U.S. considers the Kurdish groups among the most effective combatants against the militants, but Ankara sees many as merely an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization based in southern Turkey.

The Trump administration needs Turkeys cooperation but also acknowledges differences over this key issue. U.S. officials say a so-called isolation phase for Raqqah, with several hundred U.S. troops moving into the area and backing local militias, was being accelerated.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has offered Turkish special forces to the battle for Raqqah but only if the Kurds are sidelined. Tillerson is not expected to make that concession, aides said.

A State Department official said Tillerson also anticipates Turkey will raise the case of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the Erdogan government blames for a coup attempt in the summer. Turkey is demanding Gulens extradition, a request that is slowly wending its way through the Justice Department with little chance of being granted any time soon. The official did not say what Tillerson would tell the Turks, but the administration position has been that the request must run its course.

It was recently revealed, however, that Trumps former national security advisor, Mike Flynn, discussed with Turkish officials the possibility of removing Gulen from the U.S. without waiting for the judicial process to end. The conversations took place in September, when Flynn was serving as an advisor to the Trump campaign. He has denied doing anything illegal.

The Gulen case has badly soured relations between Washington and Ankara, which Tillerson hopes to repair. The tensions prompted Erdogan to turn increasingly to Russia, even though Turkey is a NATO member.

Russia will be on the agenda in both Ankara and Brussels. Europe and many in the U.S. military are warning vehemently against weakening NATO at a time of increasing Russian belligerence.

A resurgent Russia has turned from partner to antagonist, NATOs supreme Allied commander, U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, testified before Congress this week. However, he added: Russia does respect NATO. Its one of the reasons that theyre trying to undermine NATO and fracture it.

At NATO on Friday, Tillerson and his counterparts will be joined by representatives from the newest country about to join: Montenegro. The U.S. Senate voted this week to approve tiny Montenegros application, one of the last of the member states to do so. The inclusion of Montenegro, once a part of Yugoslavia and under the former Soviet Unions sphere of influence, is seen as a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who seeks to exert control over parts of Eastern Europe.

Special correspondent Umar Farooq in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.

tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com

For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of NATO's supreme Allied commander, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, as Scaparotti.

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Tillerson will push NATO allies to 'do more, faster' - LA Times

President Trump gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel a staff-created bill for NATO defenses estimated at $377 billion, The Times of London reported on Sunday.

Trump reportedly handed Merkel the invoice during her trip to Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

The Times estimated the bill at 300 billion pounds, which is just over $377 billion at current exchange rates.

The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations, a German minister told the newspaper.

The White House disputed the reports on Sunday afternoon, telling The Hill the story is false.

A spokesman for the German government also denied the claim on Monday.

Trump during his presidential campaign railed against the NATO alliance and has called for member countries to increase defense spending to support the organization.

The Independent reported that the invoice listed a total, as estimated by Trump's aides, to cover Germanysunpaid contributions.

In 2014, NATO countries pledge to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. The Independent reported that Trump told aides to calculate how much German spending fell below that 2 percent mark in the past 12 years backdating the invoice to when Merkel's predecessor was in charge then add interest.

In a joint press conference with Merkel during her visit, Trump told reporters that he emphasized the United States commitment to NATO and the need for allies to increase defense spending.

Updated Monday at 1:14 p.m.

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Trump handed 300B NATO 'invoice' to German chancellor ...

NATO summits normally deal with global threats such ISIS, Afghanistan and Russia.

But when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to his first NATO meeting in Brussels on Friday, America's allies will be focused on what they see as the danger posed by the White House itself, according to experts.

Washington's partners in Europe will have President Donald Trump "at the front of their minds," according to Keir Giles, an associate fellow Chatham House, a think tank based in London

Trump caused alarm by once calling NATO "obsolete" and suggesting he wouldn't protect its members against Russian aggression unless they upped their military spending.

Furthermore, Trump's tweets saying that "Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO and the United States" led many to question whether he understood the alliance's funding model.

All of which will likely come to a head at the summit, according to analysts who said NATO members will likely seek assurances from Tillerson that Trump has their back.

"There is real concern about whether the Trump presidency really does not understand how NATO works and what the implication of that might be," said Giles at Chatham House. "It would be very surprising if they did not want to sound Tillerson out about that."

As the world's most powerful military, the U.S. is the de facto head of NATO. Its members are advised to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, and in return there has always been an acknowledgement that America would defend them in the face of an attack.

However, most of these countries now spend less than 2 percent. And while past U.S. administrations including President Barack Obama have urged countries to up their contributions, Trump is the first to openly suggest breaching the principle of collective defense.

That notion caused "astonishment" and "agitation" among Europe's leaders, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said.

"It will be the job of someone like Tillerson to reassure them that the United States remains committed to NATO," said Jonathan Eyal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

So far, Tillerson has done little to calm fears and initially planned to skip the summit, which originally clashed with Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. To compound the perceived snub, Tillerson said he would find time to travel to Russia for meetings even as the FBI investigates whether Trump's campaign colluded with a Russian government-backed operation to interfere with the election.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks at the Meeting of the Ministers of the Global Coalition on the Defeat of ISIS on March 22 at the State Department in Washington. Cliff Owen / AP

In an about-turn, the State Department announced Saturday that Tillerson would attend the NATO meeting after it was brought forward to later this week a rescheduling that would have required consensus among all 28 NATO member countries.

Trump is correct about allies not paying sufficient dues but the problem is not new, according to Eyal at RUSI.

"The question over contributions is as old as the alliance itself," he said. "Washington is right to feel impatient, but the reality is that the 2 percent is not god-given, and Trump should be focusing on allies making progress on spending rather than an immediate jump to 2 percent."

For Germany to increase military spending to the recommended level from its current position of 1.2 percent would cost it an extra $30 billion on top of what it's already spending on defense, according to Eyal.

"The only way that Europe is going to reach its targets is if they are reassured about the American commitment toward them," Eyal added. "You will not get the Europeans to spend more if there are questions about America's commitment."

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NATO Summit Will Likely Have Tough Questions for Tillerson ...

On Friday (31 March 2017), NATO, in collaboration with Japan, officially opened a new rehabilitation pool at the Ukrainian Research Institute for Prosthesis Design, Prosthetic Building and Work Ability Rehabilitation in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The pool will assist Ukraine in improving its rehabilitation service for wounded and disabled servicemen and civilians. The delivery of the pool also marks the success of the first programme of NATO and Japanese cooperation in Ukraine.

NATOs assistance for the new rehabilitation pool was provided through the Medical Rehabilitation Trust Fund for Ukraine. The Trust Fund is led by Bulgaria and supports Ukraine in treating injured servicemen and women from the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. A particular focus for the Trust Funds work is developing the capacity of its own medical rehabilitation system, in light of the critical need for a long-term solution for the issue of care for wounded service personnel. This includes NATOs provision of specialist rehabilitation equipment to centres across Ukraine, as well as vital training for Ukrainian rehabilitation professionals. The NATO Trust Fund also supports sports rehabilitation camps for injured Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the Ukrainian teams participation in the Invictus games and the US Marine Marathon in Washington.

The Medical Rehabilitation Trust Fund is one of many ways NATO assists Ukraine. At the 2014 Wales Summit, NATO established five Trust Funds to help Ukraine better provide for its security. The Trust Funds are now part of the Comprehensive Assistance Package, which all 28 Allied leaders endorsed at the 2016 Warsaw Summit. The Package aims to consolidate and enhance NATOs assistance for Ukraine to enable it to become more resilient and carry out essential reforms in the security and defence sectors.

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NATO and Japan provide Ukraine with rehabilitation pool for wounded soldiers - NATO HQ (press release)

BBC News

Fallon and Mattis discussing Nato spending BBC News Nato members will be "shamed" into spending more on the alliance, defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon has said. Ahead of talks with his US counterpart James Mattis, Sir Michael said too few of the 28 members were meeting Nato's annual 2% defence ... UK and US demand that other NATO states match their defence spending in bid for "fairer burden sharing"Mirror.co.uk Britain and US tell NATO allies to 'raise their game' on defense spendingReuters UK defence role lies with US, not EU, says Michael FallonThe Guardian Sky News Australia -Press TV -RT all 113 news articles »

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Fallon and Mattis discussing Nato spending - BBC News

The Western military bloc is hiring actors to play Russians in exercises that look to be preparations for an incursion into Russia; there is no reason to be mounting such fire power on Russia's border, says Mike Raddie, journalist and peace activist.

Security in Eastern Europe in the face of so-called "Russia's aggression" and the fight against ISIS are the main topics to be discussed at a meeting of NATO leaders in May.

In fact, NATO seems so sure of a threat that it is offering jobs to Russian-speaking actors to play civilians in future military drills.

RT:The German company Optronic HR confirmed recruiting Russian speakers for upcoming NATO drills involving US troops. What do you make of this practice?

Mike Raddie: Yes, I saw this today. Its interesting the rational the recruitment company has put forward for this. Obviously, NATO, they say that they are looking for actors to play the part of Russians in a realistic exercise. I dont know why they need specifically Russian-speaking actors to do this. It makes me think maybe the NATO troops dont have any imagination at all and they cant accept an exercise fighting Russia if there are no Russian speakers in the facility. So, it seems a little bit odd. I think there are other reasons for this, as well. And maybe well go into those.

RT:What kind of scenarios NATO would be playing out here?

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MR: I think they are modeling incursions into Russian territory. Obviously, we know that NATO troops are surrounding Russia at the moment. All across the Baltic nations, at least 200,000 NATO troops across that border region. But also towards the south, towards Afghanistan. And we know that in the past when there has been conflicts, even when Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, our proxy forces, the mujahedeen, which Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had been arming and supporting for so many years, they made incursions, maybe 20-30 kilometers inside Soviet Union territory at a time. And I think this is a similar exercise. They are looking to make sure that their troops are prepared because it looks like it is either an invasion imminent or they are planning some kind of false flag attack to make it look like Russians were responsible for some military action around in the world somewhere, maybe in Afghanistan, maybe somewhere else when in fact it is NATO forces and US and UK probably doing the incursions themselves.

We know that the Russian military and the Russian president, they are seen as the boogeyman in the West, certainly the Western media. But the global south sees Russia as a defender of human rights around the world. The fact that the Russian government has stepped into Syria and came to the aid of the Syrian government, legitimate Syrian government of President Bashar Assad that is a real stick in the craw for the US. Their plans have been thwarted in Syria, and I think that the fact that Russia has played such a clever strategic game, not just in Syria, but in the region itself, this is not going down well in Washington and London. Their plans have been thwarted and they are having to change their plans all the time because of the diplomacy of Sergey Lavrov and Putin, and also the military strength shown and the solidarity shown with the people of Syria.

I was wondering when I read it that this is a pretty bizarre story. I wonder whether NATO should not rent a part of Russias territory and play it out there in a kind of reality show or something. I cant take it serious. This is ridiculous and this is extremely consuming of taxpayers money to play out a war-like situation with live people that you pay for day to play the role of farmers and shopkeepers. It is signaling that we may need to exercise for a situation when we have NATO troops on Russian territory, or Russian-speaking territory. Its sending a very bad, very awkward, very confrontational and unnecessary signal to Russia. - Jan Oberg, director of Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research

RT:Michael Fallon says theres Eastern threat that needs to be deterred. How does this rhetoric help peace and security in Europe?

MR: Absolutely not. This is the escalation that everyone is fearing at the moment. Fifty or 100 years ago if there was such a build-up of troops, it would be classed as an invasion and the country surrounded would strike out, as it must. Because it would see the security implications. Obviously, when you surround Russia - and it is not just Russia that is surrounded, it is Iran, China, as well - when these countries are surrounded this is not the defense of the West that is at stake here, it is a defense of Russia, China, Iran and SyriaThe Western media portraying this typically as Russian aggression despite the fact that Russia is practically surrounded on all fronts There is no reason for the West to be mounting such firepower on the Russian border if they were not planning some kind of incursion or invasion.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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'NATO calls Russia an aggressor, at the same time Russia finds itself surrounded by NATO troops' - RT