Daily Archives: May 22, 2017

European leaders will sit down with President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.

High on the agenda will be how the new US administration and its European partners cooperate on counterterrorism. That conversation should include how to ensure that torture has no place in counterterrorism efforts.

The NATO treaty played a little-known role in the dark history of post-9/11 US-Europe counterterrorism cooperation that permitted CIA secret detention and torture on European soil.

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The day after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration invoked the collective self-defence clause in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Within a month, Europes leaders had agreed to give the US military and intelligence agencies blanket overflight clearance and unlimited use of airports for refuelling.

A Swiss senator who later investigated the programme for the Council of Europe was never allowed to see that agreement, but he concluded that Europes approach had been permissive and that the arrangement facilitated CIA covert operations.

Why bring all this up now? We are now in a world in which European leaders have to talk about a shared approach to counterterrorism policy with a US president who promised during his election campaign to bring back waterboarding and a helluva lot worse.

Had there been full accountability for Europes role in CIA torture, we wouldnt be having this conversation. But there hasnt. In addition to coming clean, European states that were involved in abuses should say clearly: we will not allow torture again. We wont allow it on our soil, and we will work to prevent it elsewhere.

A U.S. Navy doctor displays a restraint chair in the detainee clinic in the 'Gitmo' maximum security detention center on October 22, 2016 at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. John Moore/Getty

The European Court of Human Rights has found in a series of cases involving Macedonia, Italy and Poland that European intelligence agents enabled the CIA to abduct national security suspects from Europe, and bundle them onto aircraft to be tortured elsewhere, or to fly detainees captured elsewhere to secret detention centres set up in Europe where they were subjected to terrible, prohibited, abuse. Cases against Romania and Lithuania are still open before the court. And two UN Committees have condemned Sweden for its role in the rendition of two Egyptian asylum-seekers in 2001.

The European governments involved have done little or nothing to hold those responsible to account.

Italy has gone furthest, convicting Italian and US agents, the latter in absentia, for kidnapping a man who was sent to Egypt and tortured, but some of those deemed criminally responsible have since received a presidential pardon. Every other criminal investigation in Europe into European complicity in Poland, Lithuania and the UK is stalled or has been shelved.

The UK government has shelved the work of a judicial inquiry into allegations of complicity in rendition and torture, and instead handed over the task to a parliamentary committee that lacks necessary independence.

Successive investigations into European complicity by the Council of Europe and European Parliament faced obstruction from most of the governments under investigation. None of the bilateral deals between the US and each individual European state involved in these abuses has ever seen the light of day. We still dont know who in Europe authorised them.

Days after Trumps inauguration, newspapers published a leaked draft Executive Order suggesting that the new US president was considering reopening the CIAs high value detainee programme. A White House spokesman said that the draft order was not a White House document.

Those plans thankfully seem to be on the back burner. But the risk of a return to torture lingers, particularly if a new attack took place and altered the presidents thinking.

Some European leaders have already signalled that if the US resumes abusive security practices it would hurt relations. The German defence minister has stated clearly that there is no room for torture in US-German relations. UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said that the UKs ability to cooperate on intelligence matters with a state that practised torture would be limited. Donald Tusk, EU Council president, listed worrying declarations by the new American administration as one of the key external threats to the EU.

It is vital for European leaders continue to make clear to the Trump administration that there would be negative consequences if Washington resumed secret detention, rendition and torture. Even if the goal of such a programme is to outsource torture to repressive regimes elsewhere and never touch down at a European airport, Europes leaders should be no less vociferous in their objection to such illegality.

NATOs founding charter says that its members are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.

As they begin their relationship with a new US administration, European states should be clear that the shared values of the alliance preclude intelligence and security cooperation that would lead to renewed torture and secret detention. And they should come clean about their own role in CIA torture in the past.

Kartik Raj is a Europe researcher for Human Rights Watch.

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Will Trump Ask NATO to Bring Back Torture? - Newsweek

General Jack Keane said President Trump's landmark visit to the Middle East appears to be creating an Arab NATO to combat terrorism.

Trump is meeting with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad of Bahrain, President El-Sisi of Egypt and several other Mideast leaders.

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Keane said Trump is "revitalizing" America's relationship with Saudi Arabia and other friendly Arab countries, which those nations see as a change from being "abandoned" by President Obama.

"The Sunni Arabs feel largely abandoned by the Obama administration," he said, noting that Obama instead worked with Shiite-majority Iran.

Keane said Trump's dealmaking on the trip has the hallmarks of a "framework of an Arab NATO... ready to counter the Iranians" and radical Islamic terrorism.

"We can't just shoot our way out of this problem," Keane said. "They need U.S. leadership... we are a unifying effort here."

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Jasser: Trump's Saudi Trip Must End Obama-Era 'Iranophilia,' Appeasement

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Gen. Keane: Trump Creating 'Framework of an Arab NATO' to Combat Terror - Fox News Insider

The European Union will launch a joint military headquarters next week despiteconcerns that it will undermine NATO.

The Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) facility will employ 30 people to coordinate EU countries military structures. MPCC will initially oversee three missions to train government forces in Africa.

The U.K.remains skeptical of the developments, as it fears it will undermine the role of NATO in the future.British Defense MinisterMichael Fallon has promised to veto any plans to form a European army as long as the country remains a member of the EU.

This is inevitably part of a wider ambition to really create a separate defense capability, an EU army in short,Geoffrey Van Orden, a former British Army brigadier and Conservative Party member of the European Parliament, told The Telegraph Saturday. That would be detrimental to NATO because it would be a complete distraction and would create divisions between Europeans and North Americans among others.

Sylvie Goulard, Frances new armed forces minister, said Saturday that closer military cooperation within the EU is a priority moving forward.

I am attached to making European defense projects move forward, she said in her first address to military and civilian personnel Saturday, according to Reuters. Some elements already exist, but others still need to be conceived and developed to better ensure our security in these times of interdependence. To achieve this effort, work with Germany will be decisive.

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EU Launches Military HQ Despite Concerns It Undermines NATO ... - The Daily Caller

A curious op-ed appeared in The National Interest, penned byHans Binnendijk and David Gompert, adjunct senior fellows at the RAND Corporation. Titled, NATOs Role in post-Caliphate Stability Operations, it attempts to make a case for NATO involvement everywhere from Libya to Syria and Iraq in fostering stability in the wake of a yet-to-be defeated Islamic State.

The authors propose that NATO step in to fill what it calls an impendingvacuum left as the caliphate collapses,heading off alternatives includingchaos or Iran, backed by Russia, filling the void, with great harm to U.S. and allied interests in either case.The op-ed never explains why Iran, neighboring Syria and Iraq, is less qualified to influence the region than the United States which exists literally oceans away and shares nothing in terms of history, culture, language or shared interests in stability and peace.

The op-ed would literally claim:

NATO is the only security organization with the skills and breadth to take on this task. The U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition of 68 partners is ill equipped to engage in this complex task. A more cohesive organization such as NATO should lead, but in ways that allow continued Arab participation. A creative version of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition could provide the answer.

It was an interesting choice by the authors to showcase one of NATOs most stupendous and continuing failures in Afghanistan with mention of the ISAF, a force that not only has failed to bring stability to the Central Asia nation in over a decade and a half of occupation, but has presided over the emergence of the Islamic State there where previously it had no presence.

The reality of what NATO is versus what The National Interest op-ed attempts to pass it off as, resembles more of a sales pitch for a shoddy product than a genuine attempt at geopolitical analysis or problem solving. But the truth goes deeper still.

NATO is a Global Wrecking Ball, It Cannot Create Stability

The op-ed focuses primarily on proposing NATO roles for a post-Islamic State Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Libya is perhaps the most tragic of the three, with NATO having used direct military force in 2011 to topple the government of Libyan leaderMuammar Gaddafi in support of known extremists passed off at the time by both NATO spokespeople and the US-European media as moderate rebels.

The predictable fallout from this military campaign was the collapse of Libya as a relatively stable and unified nation-state into warring factions. The instability became fertile grounds for extremism, with many of the groups backed by NATO evolving into what is now the Islamic State.

The National Interest op-ed also makes mention ofArab participation.It should be remembered that the most extreme factions fighting in Libya were not only aided by direct NATO military intervention, but were armed and funded by Persian Gulf dictatorships as well, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

A similar pattern of sowing instability has unfolded in Syria, leading to, not averting the rise of the Islamic State.

And Iraqs instability is a direct and lasting consequence of the US military invasion and occupation of 2003.

If nothing else, this exposes NATO and its members as a collective, global wrecking ball. Just as a wrecking ball cannot be used to construct a building on a vacant lot, NATO cannot be used to construct the conditions for stability across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Really Stopping the Islamic State Means Really Stopping Support for It

Ultimately, what the op-ed calls for is the permanent occupation of the three nations by NATO forces ranging from special forces in Libya to the formal occupation of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Interestingly, the op-ed suggests that the NATO occupation force in Syria should not only be used to combat the Islamic State, but to alsodeterSyrian military thrusts,referring to the armed forces of the actual and only legitimate government in Syria.

This last point exposes fully what NATO is really interested in, and what this sales pitch is really advertising. NATO is not in MENA to defeat the Islamic State, it is merely using the Islamic State as a pretext to project Western hegemony across the region.

The closing paragraph states:

This NATO strategy cannot, and should not be expected to, settle the Syrian civil war, bring ethnic and sectarian harmony to Iraq, or create an effective Libyan state. What it could do is create conditions of stability in which lasting solutions at least have a chance. It can do so only if the U.S. is ready to call upon NATO to join it in filling the post-ISIS void and for the European allies to answer that call.

Certainly, NATOs presence in Syria, Iraq or Libya will not bring any sort of stability. NATO has proven its absolute inability to achieve this in its 16 year occupation of Afghanistan. Claiming NATO occupation willcreate conditions of stability in which lasting solutions at least have a chanceis merely NATOs way of ensuring no matter how the chaos it itself has created across MENA, it will hold a stake in the outcome if for no other reason because it has literally taken and occupies territory within the post-war region.

It is interesting that the Islamic State rose in the wake of US-led, NATO-backed violence stretching from North Africa to Central Asia and only began to suffer setbacks upon greater and more direct Russian and Iranian intervention.

The bombing of Islamic State and Jabhat Al Nusra logistical lines emanating from NATO-member Turkeys borders by Russian warplanes, for example, inevitably led to huge gains by the Syrian Arab Army including the eventual liberation of Aleppo, the containment of Idlib and a significant retraction of Islamic State-held territory in eastern Syria.

The torrent of supplies feeding Islamic State and other fronts of extremist militancy flowing from Turkey is the admitted result of Persian Gulf sponsorship, which in turn, serves as an intermediary for US and NATO support for whatthe US Defense Intelligence Agency called in 2012 (.pdf)a Salafist principality.

The specific purpose of this Salafist principality, admittedly backed by Persian Gulf dictatorships, Turkey and what the US DIA refers to asthe West,was toisolate the Syrian regime. Clearly then, were NATO genuinely interested in defeating the Islamic State and undoing the damage it has done, it would begin by withdrawing it and its allies own support of the terrorist organization in the first place.

In short, if NATO truly wants to create stability across MENA, it merely needs to stop intentionally sowing instability.

Of course, a unilateral military bloc intentionally sowing chaos across an entire region of the planet is doing so for a very specific purpose. It is the same purpose all hegemons throughout human history have sought to divide and destroy regions they cannot outright conquer. A destroyed competitor may not be as favorable as a conquered, controlled and exploited competitor, but is certainly preferable to a free and independent competitor contributing to a greater multipolar world order. NATO, by embedding itself amid the chaos it itself has created, as it has proven in Afghanistan, only ensures further chaos.

Within this chaos, NATO can ensure if its own membership cannot derive benefit from the region, no one else will. A call like that featured in The National Interest for NATO to bringstabilityto the MENA region stands in stark contrast to the reality that everywhere NATO goes, chaos not only follows, it stays indefinitely until NATO leaves.

The best thing NATO can do for stability across MENA is to leave.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.

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If NATO Wants Peace and Stability It Should Stay Home - Center for Research on Globalization

The chief of NATO says he's in touch with both Germany and Turkey regarding their latest dispute over visiting rights to a Turkish air base where German soldiers are stationed.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told German daily newspaper Bild on Sunday he's focused on finding a solution and won't speculate over hypothetical questions, including a possible withdrawal of German troops from the Incirlik air base.

The German government said last week it was considering withdrawing the soldiers from Turkey.

Turkey recently blocked a request for German lawmakers to visit their country's 270 soldiers at the Incirlik air base. The moved raised the possibility that Germany might relocate planes supporting a multi-national campaign against the Islamic State group.

Stoltenberg says he regrets the quarrel between the two NATO partners.

A similar standoff between Germany and Turkey over access to German troops at the base happened last year.

Originally posted here:
NATO chief in talks with Germany, Turkey over air base spat - ABC News

by

May 21, 2017, 8:01 PM EDT

Lawmakers from nations in theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization are warning that global warming will lead to mass migration and conflict in the Middle East and Africa, another reason President Donald Trump should stay in the Paris climate deal.

Climate change will lead to dire food and water shortages in the region, according to a draft report presented Monday to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Acting as the ultimate threat multiplier after decades of resource mismanagement in the region, extreme weather and rising seas would likely lead to volatile food prices and increased competition, according to the report by Osman Askin, a member of the Turkish Parliament.

His country is host to more than 3 million refugees and asylum seekers, according to the report, and the surge in migration in Europe in recent years was a key reason for the U.K. voting to leave the European Union. Migration was an important plank of Trumps presidential campaign last year, and he pledged to build a wall along the 1,900-mile (3,050-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico border.

The report, to be discussed this week in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, urges all 146 countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement to live up to their pledges, including providing climate finance for developing countries.

Trump, who will attend his first meeting with leaders of the Group of Seven Countries this week, has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Accord, end climate financing and is reviewing the Clean Power Plan -- a key policy for cutting pollution introduced by his predecessor Barack Obama. Hes postponed a decision and its now expected by the end of May.

The report adds to pressure from Trumps daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who have been urging the president to remain in the Paris deal. Several of Trumps top advisers are pushing for an exit, including chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

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NATO Lawmakers Warn Global Warming Will Trigger Food Shortages - Bloomberg

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

NATO to Back Trump Call for More Spending Wall Street Journal (subscription) BRUSSELSThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization, under pressure from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, is planning a new spending initiative that will use additional money to fill armament gaps, according to a draft of the proposal ...

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NATO to Back Trump Call for More Spending - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

NATO on Saturday pushed back on a report claiming the groups secretary general said President Trump has a 12-second attention span following a meeting in April."

.@politico stop spreading this false quote. #NATO SG @jensstoltenberg did not say this, nor does it represent his views. Check your facts.

.@politico the quote attributed to #NATO SG @jensstoltenberg is false.He's never said this & it doesn't represent his views.Pls correct asap

Politico Magazine reportedFriday that a former senior official claimed Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg criticized Trump's attention bandwidth.

The president of the United States has a 12-second attention span, Stoltenberg reportedly said, Politico reported.

The senior official, according to the report, added that the president appeared unprepared for his meeting with the Norwegian Stoltenberg. He reportedly brought up recent events surrounding North Korea, which does not involve NATO.

Politico acknowledged in its published piece that a NATO spokesman denied Stoltenberg said this, telling the newspaper that "the secretary general never said this and it does not represent his views.

"[W]e informed them that the Secretary General never said the quote attributed to him, and it does not represent his views," a NATO spokesperson said in a statement Saturday in response to the Politico report.

Trump repeatedly ripped NATO during his presidential campaign, complaining it depended on the U.S. too much while many other members fail to reach their financial commitments on defense funding.

During a White House press conference in April, Trump appeared to change his position after the organization began to combat terrorism.

I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete, he said.

Stoltenberg, during aCNN interview, said Trump has always been very consistent in his support of NATO.

For me, the important thing is that [Trump] has been very consistent when it comes to NATO in all my interactions and conversations with him, Stoltenberg said.

In the 28-member group, the U.S. is one of only five countries to meet the two percent GDP percentage target for NATOs defense spending.

- Updated: 1:49 p.m.

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NATO denies chief said Trump 'has a 12-second attention span ... - The Hill