Monthly Archives: May 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (in black dress shoes) walks with U.S. Army leaders across a NATO logo last month as he arrives at Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan. Jonathan Ernst /AP hide caption

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (in black dress shoes) walks with U.S. Army leaders across a NATO logo last month as he arrives at Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Public support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has generally improved in the U.S., Europe and Canada, according to a newly released poll from the Pew Research Center.

The uptick in support comes in the wake of the turbulent U.S. presidential race where then-candidate Donald Trump called NATO "obsolete," prompting European leaders to express alarm.

Then, after an April meeting with NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump declared: "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete."

But as NPR's Tamara Keith reported, "he still wants its members to pay their fair share, as he puts it, meaning that they should spend a larger share of gross domestic product on their own national defense, as the NATO charter calls for."

The U.S. has seen a jump in support for NATO of 9 percentage points in the past year, up to 62 percent. But that's fueled by a growing partisan divide on the issue a 6-percentage point gap last year now stands at 31.

Support among Democrats has rapidly climbed, from 58 percent to 78 percent. At the same time, support among U.S. Republicans has slightly dipped, from 52 percent to 47 percent.

The researchers polled NATO member countries Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.K., along with nonmember Sweden. Support for NATO is up in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. "And after a steep decline a year ago, most French again express a favorable view of the security alliance," the report reads.

Do the United States' NATO partners trust the alliance to come to their aid if attacked by Russia? A median of 66 percent in the seven nations that participated said yes.

In the U.S., 62 percent of respondents "are willing to use military force to come to their ally's defense." That's more a result of shifts in U.S. Democrats than Republicans, the report states:

"Today, there are no partisan differences on living up to America's Article 5 commitment [that commits members to defending an ally if the ally is attacked]. But in 2015, the last time Pew Research Center asked this question, Republicans (69%) were far more likely than Democrats (47%) to back aiding allies in a confrontation with Russia. Since then, such Republican sentiment, now at 65%, has not changed much. Democrats' willingness to offer military support (63%) has increased 26 points."

But willingness in Europe to come to a NATO ally's defense against Russia varied widely: Germany (40 percent); U.K. (45 percent); Spain (46 percent); France (53 percent); Canada (58 percent); Poland (62 percent); and the Netherlands (72 percent).

Pew interviewed 1,505 people in February and March of this year for the survey.

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Poll Shows Increased Support For NATO On Both Sides Of The Atlantic - NPR

Turkey is blocking Nato cooperation with more than 40 partner countries in a diplomatic row with Austria, it has emerged.

Austria has been prevented from taking part in exercises or future operations with the alliance despite the fact it has more than 400 troops serving alongside Nato forces in Kosovo.

Other partner countries such as Finland, Sweden and Ireland have also been affected by the ban, along with several former Soviet states.

Austria on Tuesday accused Turkey of endangering the security interests of Europe and branded its action as irresponsible.

The Turkish government is believed to be acting in retaliation for Austrian moves to block it from joining the EU.

Austria is among President Recep Tayyip Erdogans most oustpoken EU critics, and has called for accession talks to be formally ended.

But while it can block Turkish accession to the EU, at Nato the roles are reversed. With the second largest military in the alliance, Turkey is a full Nato member while Austria is only a partner country.

I strongly condemn Turkey's course of action in Nato. It is irresponsible behaviour against Austria and strengthens my position that Turkey is very far from being part of the EU, Hans-Peter Doskozil, the Austrian defence minister, told the BBC.

"In this, Turkey is endangering the security interests of Europe. The blockade has a long-term impact on the peace missions in the Western Balkans.

Turkey is understood to have been blocking cooperation with Austria and other partner countries since November last year.

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Turkey blocks Nato partnerships in row with Austria - Telegraph.co.uk

Foreign Policy (blog)

The Message NATO Needs to Hear From Trump Foreign Policy (blog) Last July, the 28 leaders of NATO's member states met in Warsaw, Poland, to confront the most severe challenges to security in Europe since the end of the Cold War. A series of disorienting events began in 2014 with Russia's illegal annexation of ... Hepburn: NATO must offer an ultimatum to Russia Get out of UkraineOttawa Citizen all 3 news articles »

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The Message NATO Needs to Hear From Trump - Foreign Policy (blog)

Before taking office, President Trump repeatedly questioned the utility of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, calling the military alliance that has been a bedrock of Western security since 1949 obsolete.

Trump, who plans to attend his first NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, has since voiced strong support for the security pact, and public opinion of it here in the United States has also improved, according to a poll released Tuesday.

More than 60% of Americans surveyed hold a favorable view of NATO, up from just over half a year ago, the Washington-based Pew Research Center found. Support is stronger among Democrats than among Republicans, it said.

The Trump administration has continued to assail NATO allies for not spending more of their own money on defense and has also pressed them to do more to fight terrorism. Just five of the 28 members the U.S., Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland currently meet the alliances target of spending at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

Still, most Europeans surveyed appear confident that the U.S. would honor its commitments under the NATO charter, which states that an attack against one member should be viewed as an attack against all. A median of 66% of those interviewed in seven European nations said they believed the U.S. would come to the defense of a NATO member if it were involved in a serious military conflict with Russia.

Asked about their own countrys obligations in such an event, more than half of respondents in the Netherlands (72%), Poland (62%), Canada (58%) and France (53%) said they believed their government should fulfill its commitment to mutual defense. But in Germany, which has the fourth largest defense budget in NATO, just 40% of respondents said they would back such assistance, Pew said.

The findings are based on interviews with 9,761 people in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Britain that were carried out between Feb. 16 and April 10.

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Public opinion of NATO is improving in the US, poll finds - Los Angeles Times

The ISIS attack on the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, was a strike against both the British people and a symbol of American culture timed to coincide with President Trumps visit to the Middle East and Europe.

None of this was coincidental. And it comes at a time when there is already much discussion and controversy in the United Kingdom over the national security course it needs to chart as it implements BREXIT.

So how do we the British and the Americans fight back?

Part of the answer is to rebuild the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into a NATO 2.0 that is a credible and effective counterterrorism and cyber warfare operation.

Tagged by Donald Trump as obsolete during his presidential campaign because of its lack of focus on terror (he has since changed his position), NATO 2.0 with counter-terror at its center would bring the organization into the 21st century to face 21st-century concerns.

Europe and the U.K. have suffered multiple and severe terror attacks over the past few years, primarily at the hands of ISIS. It is time we use the tools available to us to go after these terrorists on a broader and more effective basis.

NATO 2.0 needs to examine not only strategy and purpose, but technology and practical capability as well. This is not your fathers 1980s air land battle space of the Cold War with the Soviets.

NATO did engage in counterterrorism operations during the 1980s against the Soviet-funded and backed terror organizations such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. It is time for NATO to once again pick up counterterrorism and work it as a primary mission focus.

There are two key areas for NATO 2.0 to solidify and equip itself to meet the terror challenges of today:

First, counter-terror coordination and intelligence sharing, exchange and actions: in other words, enhanced cross pollination of counterterrorism units to take advantage of best practices used by each.

This would include U.S. and U.K. intelligence collection and special operations units, as well as the FBI and Scotland Yard, working together to first identify and then train to enhance on target Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP).

This would also mean having U.S. and U.K. special ops and intel personnel exchange and train for the latest Find, Fix, Finish and Exploit (F3E) processes. And increasing the use of both American and British special operation forces to enhance and support law enforcement activities to both identify early and conduct aggressive counterterror operations to disrupt and prevent attacks.

Second, the effective and tight integration of cyber and strategic communications, information operations and warfare: in other words, a coordinated cyber-information warfare effort with a primary focus on defeating the message and marketing efforts of radical Islam.

The U.S. and U.K. must face this terror threat jointly. And we must see Brexit as an opportunity for an even more cohesive Anglo-American strategy to protect the security of not only the U.K. and Europe but the international community and global stability as a whole.

Retooling NATO to deal with 21st century security challenges and to aggressively counter ISIS is a good place to start.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is Vice President for Operations of the London Center for Policy Research, a New York City-based national security think tank, and is the author of the controversial New York Times bestselling "Operation DARK HEART: Spycraft and Special Operations on the Frontlines of Afghanistan".

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Manchester and NATO 2.0: Why terror must to be the focus going forward - Fox News

The tiny Balkan country of Montenegro will take a huge step towards integrating with the West when it becomes the 29th member of Nato this week, but it risks paying a heavy price for spurning Russia.

For nearly a decade after Montenegro split from Serbia in 2006, Moscow cultivated close ties with the former Yugoslav republic, and money poured in from Russian investors and tourists. It was a love affair underpinned not just by commercial and diplomatic logic but also by historic, religious and linguistic ties between the two Slav countries.

"Back in 2006 Montenegro was advertised as a desirable destination for Russians, because it is a beautiful country and an Orthodox Christian one," says Vadim Verhovski, a Russian investment banker who, with partners, has invested 25m (21.6m) to buy land near the coastal town of Budva.

Now the romance has turned to rancour. Montenegro blamed Russia for an alleged plot to assassinate its prime minister last October which officials said was aimed at blocking its entry to Nato. The Kremlin called that absurd.

In April, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned of a "surge of anti-Russian hysteria" in Montenegro.

The chill is hitting tourism: latest available data, for March, showed Russians accounted for 7.3 per cent of all tourist overnight stays that month compared to nearly 30 per cent in March 2014 and 19per cent in March 2016. Advertising hoardings in Russian, promoting luxury apartments with views of the Adriatic, were once ubiquitous along the coastal highway. Now they have vanished, and Russian-language signs have largely disappeared from shops.

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said a recent Russian ban on imports of wine from Montenegro was linked to its Nato membership. Moscow said it had discovered banned pesticides in the wine.

"We are prepared for any decision [by Russia]and nothing is going to deter us from the path we decided to take," Markovic told reporters. "The Balkans for centuries has been the scene of a struggle between the West and the East. Like other states in the region, Montenegro has strong links with the East, but in the 2006 we made a key decision that we would like to adopt Western standards and values."

For a country of just 650,000 people with 2,000 military personnel and an area smaller than Connecticut, Montenegro has strategic value out of proportion to its size. Its dramatic Adriatic coastline, the source of its appeal to tourists, is also attractive in strategic terms because of its easy access to the Mediterranean. A former senior government official, who declined to be named, said Moscow made an official request in September 2013 to use the Montenegrin port of Bar as a naval logistics base en route to Syria. After pressure from Nato, the government declined.

"The strategic position of our country is important [to Nato]and especially the Adriatic Sea," Markovic said.

When the alliance welcomes Montenegro at its summit in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, it will mark its first expansion since neighbours Albania and Croatia joined in 2009. The country is surrounded by Nato members or hopefuls, except for Serbia, which maintains military neutrality.

"Montenegro may be small, but its presence at the Nato summit as a new member is a message to the Western Balkans to show thatthe path towards Europe is open," a senior Nato official said. "It is also a message to Donald Trump that Nato is growing, it has new friends."

Still, Natois a divisive issue among Montenegro's own people. Many see Russia as a historic friend a traditional ally against the Ottoman Empire, and the first nation to establish diplomatic relations with Montenegro in 1711.

Many remember a 1999 Nato bombing raid that killed 10 people in Montenegro, part of a wider intervention by the alliance to end Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

"A vast majority of peoplesupports Russia, you cannot exclude emotions," said Dragan Krapovic, mayor of Budva, which counts around 1,000 Russians in a population of 16,000. "Russia supported Montenegro's independence referendum, and many people invested money after that. Now they feel cheated."

Since the October election, Montenegro has been in political paralysis, with all opposition parties boycotting parliament. Some analysts fear that Nato membership could deepen the crisis.

"The move could even prove to be destabilising from a domestic perspective, given deep societal divisions on the subject," said James Sawyer of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. "The good governance reforms that are supposed in theory to be part of the Nato accession process have largely been cosmetic, while many other important reforms remain to be done."

Verhovski, the Russian investor, bought 13 hectares of land south of Budva a decade ago, to build a tourist complex including a hotel and villas. Bogged down by the process of getting permits, he has yet to lay a single brick, but he hopes to finally start construction this year.

"There is a lot of potential in Montenegro for investment in infrastructure, for example, or ski resorts. Montenegro has a lot to offer. And we hope that with Nato membership it will become more predictable for investors," he said.

"Russians will continue to come to Montenegro. Maybe in the short run less Russians will come, but in the long run I believe they will continue to come. Where else they would go?"

Reuters

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Nato to welcome Montenegro to the defence alliance in first expansion of membership in eight years - The Independent