Yes, We Can . . . Disarm?

It is no fun to be the one who rains on the parade, and, if nothing else, President Obama's trip to Europe has been quite a parade. Or maybe "sold-out concert tour" is the better metaphor. There was a jolly town hall meeting in Strasbourg, France; a wonderful encounter between Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni, spectacular street scenes in Prague. The world's statesmen fell over themselves to be photographed with the American president. During one photo session, the Italian prime minister, Sylvio Berlusconi, howled so loudly for Obama's attention, that the queen of England was visibly unamused. ("Why does he have to shout?" she declared.)

Read More

Nato summit: the truth behind the troops heading to Afghanistan

 The great jumble sale of troop offers made by Nato countries at the summit in Strasbourg to provide security during the election period in Afghanistan was beginning to unravel over the weekend as military chiefs tried to add up the numbers pledged.
President Barack Obama said he was satisfied that a total of 5,000 troops and trainers had been offered, although he made a point of saying he saw the offers as only a “down payment”, indicating he still wanted pledges of long-term troop deployments, not just temporary units for the election force. But there were no offers of extra permanent troops.

Read More 

Unlikely bedfellows in Afghanistan

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is scheduled to hold a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 27, a few days ahead of a similar United Nations meeting in The Hague in the Netherlands. Russia, which holds the current SCO presidency, has sent out invitations to India, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, the Group of Eight nations, the UN, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to what is increasingly shaping up as a landmark event.

Read More

Russia, Allies Offer to Assist U.S. in Afghanistan

 Russia and four former Soviet republics offered to help the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan even as one, Kyrgyzstan, moved forward on a decision to cut off American access to an air base used for war supplies.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the five countries, including the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, are ready for “full-fledged and comprehensive cooperation” with NATO forces in the region. He spoke on state broadcaster Vesti-24 today.

Read More    

More than 160 US, NATO vehicles burned in Pakistan

Militants torched 160 vehicles, including dozens of Humvees destined for U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, in the boldest attack so far on the critical military supply line through Pakistan.
The American military said Sunday's raid on two transport terminals near the beleaguered Pakistani city of Peshawar would have "minimal" impact on anti-Taliban operations set to expand with the arrival of thousands more troops next year.
However, the attack feeds concern that insurgents are trying to choke the route through the famed Khyber Pass, which carries up to 70 percent of the supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan, and drive up the cost of the war.

Read More

NATO scuttles US plan to encircle Russia

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ministers in Brusselshave decided to ignore the wishes of the United States and delay the admission of Georgia and the Ukraine, in effect indefinitely, in what the George W Bush administration is sheepishly trying to claim is a positive "compromise".

The decision, follows the alarm which peaked among European Union member states last August over the prospect of having to go to war with Russia over an erratic leader in the Caucasus who had provoked Moscow into a reaction. 


Read More 

Estonian Spy Scandal Shakes NATO and EU

Communications between the suspected top spy and his commanding officer seemed like a throwback to the Cold War. Investigators allege that in order to send messages to his Russian contact, Herman Simm, 61, used a converted radio which looked like a relic from yesteryear's world of consumer electronics. But there was nothing old-fashioned about what Simm, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Defense Ministry in Tallinn, reportedly transmitted to Moscow over the years. It was the very latest intelligence information.


Read More 

British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed

 Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan has stoked opposition to the allied operation there by reportedly saying that the campaign against the Taleban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a Foreign Office heavyweight with a reputation for blunt speaking, delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan in a briefing with a French diplomat, according to French leaks. However sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador’s remarks.
François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy’s office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard believed that “the current situation is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust”.

Read More

Iraq, Not Georgia, Is What Doomed U.S.-Russia Relations

Ok, so the Bush administration has botched its relations with Russia and its former satellites. No big news flash there. But let's not forget why: the war in Iraq.
Let me explain. I'm not buying the Obama line that Iraq has distracted us from our other foreign policy commitments. Nobody would say that South Ossetia is a strategic priority -- I don't care how much oil gurgles beneath its mountains.
Nor did Iraq anger Moscow that much (although it showed the hypocrisy of our lecturing them about invading sovereign states).
No, the trouble is that Iraq has made Washington indebted to many countries that supplied troops and other support there -- namely Poland and Georgia.

Read More

From Russia with love?

While the bullying of smaller, weaker countries has been a feature of the international system since communities organised into states, it is imperative to determine who started the war in Georgia in order to chart where this conflict is heading. Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, blames the Russians for starting the war by amassing great military power on the border in the beginning of August while he was in Italy.

But many reckon the ambitious pro-Western Georgians started the military escalation and timed it as international media attention was focused on the Olympic games in Beijing.

Saakashvili's "foolishness", says the Economist, has backfired.


Read More

Norway: Russia to cut all military ties with NATO

OSLO, Norway (AP) - Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

The report comes a day after NATO foreign ministers said they would make further ties with Russia dependent on Moscow making good on a pledge to pull its troops back to pre-conflict positions in Georgia. However, they stopped short of calling an immediate halt to all cooperation.

The Nordic country's embassy in Moscow received a telephone call from ``a well-placed official in the Russian Ministry of Defense,'' who said Moscow plans ``to freeze all military cooperation with NATO and allied countries,'' Espen Barth Eide, state secretary with the Norwegian ministry said.

Read More

The Real World Order

After every major, systemic war, there is the hope that this will be the war to end all wars. The idea driving it is simple. Wars are usually won by grand coalitions. The idea is that the coalition that won the war by working together will continue to work together to make the peace. Indeed, the idea is that the defeated will join the coalition and work with them to ensure the peace. This was the dream behind the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations, the United Nations and, after the Cold War, NATO. The idea was that there would be no major issues that couldn’t be handled by the victors, now joined with the defeated. That was the idea that drove George H. W. Bush as the Cold War was coming to its end ....

The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8, 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war

Read More

Nato holds Georgia crisis talks

As Nato's 26 foreign ministers meet in Brussels, the BBC's Jonathan Marcus says there is disagreement among the alliance as to how to respond, so the focus will be on where members can agree.
It is thought that in one camp, the UK, Canada, the US and most Eastern European member states will seek a tough stance on Russia, but most of Western Europe, led by France and Germany, is expected to be more cautious of harming ties with Moscow.
Flying to the Nato meeting, Ms Rice told reporters on Monday: "We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are clearly to undermine Georgia's democracy, to use its military capability to damage and in some cases destroy Georgian infrastructure and to try and weaken the Georgian state."

Read More