ABC Of West’s Global Military Network: Afghanistan, Baltics, Caucasus

(The Intelligence Daily) -- The century’s longest war continues to rage in South Asia with no sign of abating. Instead, the invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 has exploded into endless armed hostilities that have spread across the length and breadth of the nation, with U.S. and NATO military forces fighting an intensified counterinsurgency conflict in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan, now paralleled by equally brutal and even larger-scale combat operations in neighboring Pakistan.

With over 100,000 Western troops and rumors of perhaps a doubling of that number in the works, and with Washington spending billions of dollars in expanding bases to accommodate those reinforcements, the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign under the direction of U.S. and NATO military commander General Stanley McChrystal and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke portends yet greater violence, bloodshed and imperiling of regional stability.

The U.S. lost 22 personnel on October 26-27, making this month Washington’s costliest ever in the deadliest year of a war that is now in its ninth calendar year.

The White House and Pentagon have also extended lethal drone missile attacks inside Pakistan, where they are nearly daily occurrences, and will soon deploy Marines to the nation’s capital in a massively revamped U.S. embassy and army trainers to the Iranian border, “the first foreign forces formally stationed in Baluchistan since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.” [1]

Several million civilians have been uprooted and displaced by Western and Pakistani air and ground attacks.

In addition to being the lengthiest and biggest war in the world, the U.S. and NATO Afghan campaign is the first armed conflict in this young millennium with an international dimension. In fact its global scope in some aspects is grander than those of the two world wars of the first half of the last century.

This is true in two regards. First, in the historically unprecedented number of nations that have been called upon to supply troops for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for the prosecution of the war. And second, in the repercussions of those troop and military equipment commitments on local and regional conflicts in several parts of the world far removed from Afghanistan.

Last week the defense chiefs of several dozen nations met for a two-day conference in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, to discuss NATO’s new Strategic Concept and a host of missions to be subsumed under it, with the war in Afghanistan at the top of the agenda.

The defense ministers and secretaries of all 28 full NATO member states and of 14 partnership (Partnership for Peace, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Contact Country, Adriatic Charter) nations were officially acknowledged to be in attendance.

Information is not available regarding which exact non-NATO nations were represented, but likely participants would have included Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Macedonia, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates.

The defense ministers of Afghanistan and of Armenia, which has now committed forces for ISAF, were reported to have attended the meeting also.

In recent months reports have either verified or speculated that troop continents from several other nations would be recruited by the United States and NATO for the Afghan war front. These candidates include Colombia, South Korea, Mongolia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Montenegro and Moldova in addition to Armenia.

The combined U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan could then include units from fifty nations in five continents, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and Oceania.

No such diverse military force has been gathered for one war in one location at any other time and place in history.

The creation of an integrated, weapons- and warfighting-interoperable global army on the battlefields of Afghanistan has been discussed in a previous article. [2] The current figure for U.S. and NATO-led foreign forces in the country exceeds 100,000, but with regular troop rotations over an eight-year period the total number deployed is several times that.

The other side of the coin is that military forces from far-flung nations brought to fight in Afghanistan will return to their respective homelands with combat and wartime experience under their belts for use in local conflicts and will have secured from the U.S. and NATO a reciprocal commitment to support them in local counterinsurgency and cross-border conflicts.

U.S.-trained Colombian crack special forces will return from Afghanistan to continue their decades-old war against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) resistance in the south of their country.

Georgian troops being trained at this very moment in a two-week exercise by U.S. Marines for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan will upon returning to their homeland be better prepared for the next war with neighboring Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Russia.

In late August, slightly over a year after a previous Immediate Response exercise with over 1,000 U.S. troops was followed by an attack against South Ossetia and a five-day war with Russia, then Georgian defense minister Davit Sikharulidze met with General James Conway, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, and was quoted by the Associated Press as saying “that the training by the U.S. Marine Corps will not only give his troops the skills necessary to fight alongside NATO allies in Afghanistan, but also could come into play if another war broke out between Georgia and Russia.” [3]

Just as the 2,000 Georgian troops stationed in Iraq in 2008, the largest contingent after the U.S. and Britain at the time, gained war zone experience for the conflict with Russia that year, in fact being transported back on U.S. planes during the fighting in the Caucasus.

Comparable statements, if not entirely as brash, have been made by military, defense and political officials in several other nations bordering Russia; for example, Finland, Poland and the Baltic states. That is, that Afghanistan is providing their respective armies their first post-World War II combat experience and helping to modernize and make battle ready militaries in nations not remotely threatened by armed conflict, though in the case of Georgia and possibly others nations planning acts of aggression.

The pattern would be further confirmed if the West succeeds in collecting even nominal military contingents from nations with armed operations within or on their borders, real or presumed, like Djibouti, Ethiopia, Israel, Morocco, the Philippines, Rwanda and Thailand. The Pentagon conducts regular military training and leads exercises in all these nations and in recent years has established a permanent military presence in three of them: Djibouti, Israel and the Philippines.

The U.S. now conducts regular combat instruction in Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania for its own armed forces and those of its host countries for the war in Afghanistan in particular. Training client regimes for military operations at home and abroad takes on a greater degree of realism and effectiveness alike if held in a genuine war theater like that in Afghanistan.

The countries singled out by the U.S. and NATO for their campaign in South Asia and by extension for the development of a multinational, rapidly deployable international military force available for use in conflict zones around the world fall into two main categories.

They are former Soviet bloc nations and new states that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and, largely as a result of the latters’ fragmentation, countries that themselves were recently beset by armed conflicts. Among the world’s most vulnerable nations.

In 2003, of the twenty eight countries corralled by the United States and Britain into the so-called coalition of the willing for the occupation if Iraq – Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine – all but seven of them were at one time in the Soviet bloc or are former Yugoslav republics.

Those twenty one nations had little experience in conducting independent foreign policy and were in the process of building their national militaries. Nine of them – Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia – entered NATO as full members after sending troops to Iraq. Macedonia would have been the tenth if not for the nation’s dispute with Greece over its name. Following last week’s NATO meeting the nation announced it would deploy more troops to Afghanistan. “Macedonia sees its presence in Afghanistan as a good way of maintaining good cooperation with NATO and the United States.” [4]

A majority of those twenty one nations suffered combat deaths in the Iraq conflict. Poland, which lost twenty eight soldiers, ran one of the four occupation zones in the nation, the South Central, assisted by NATO.

The war in Iraq and even more so that in Afghanistan, being a formal NATO operation, have been employed to pull nations in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Asia out of residual Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States orbits and into NATO.

Of those states listed above that have sent or pledged troops for both Iraq and Afghanistan, eight border Russian territory: Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Poland and Ukraine, as do Finland and Norway, both engaged in combat for the first time since World War II in Afghanistan. The two wars have also been used to complete the U.S.’s and NATO’s military takeover of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans as a whole.

The day before the October 22-23 NATO war council in Slovakia the Alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen “sought to re-assure Poland, the Baltic states and other alliance members in eastern Europe that the reform of NATO’s strategic concept planned for next year won’t undermine the allies’ commitment or ability to defend them.” [5]

The nations he mentioned and alluded to are threatened by no non-European nations, surely not by non-existent Iranian long- and intermediate-range missiles, so Rasmussen was referring to a country partially in Europe. Russia.

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden was in Poland for two days last week to also “reassure” his host nation’s government that Washington – and NATO – were steadfast in commitment to the nation’s “defense.” Against Russia.

His discussion included the stationing of American SM-3 interceptor missiles, which will augment the deployment of 92 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, which will in turn be operated by 100 U.S. troops to be stationed in Poland. This represents the first deployment, and a permanent one at that, of American armed forces in the country. Over the last three years the Pentagon has taken similar measures to base an initial force of 4,000 troops at seven new bases in Bulgaria and Romania.

A report on the Voice of Russia website on October 22 referring to the latter deployments bore the headline “The US moving its military bases to Russian borders.”

Later in Romania “Mr. Biden…repeatedly referr[ed] to a central pledge of the NATO pact – that an attack on one member would be viewed as an attack on all members – as a reminder that the United States would not be idle if Russia threatened its neighbors.” [6]

While the American vice president was touring Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania last week and as NATO was holding its defense ministerial in Slovakia, the U.S. Senate held hearings on NATO expansion at which, inter alia, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, now chairing NATO’s committee on its new Strategic Concept, and former ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker and former NATO top military commander General John Craddock testified.

Senator and past presidential candidate John Kerry stated, “I hope we can…use this hearing to address the prospects for future NATO
enlargement to include Balkan nations, Georgia, and Ukraine.” [7]

Earlier last week NATO Secretary General Rasmussen was paraphrased as saying the bloc “would consider staging military exercises in the Baltic Sea states to rebut concerns in the region about the newly reassertive Russia.” [8]

At a conference in the capital of Latvia on October 24 new Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite demanded that “The three Baltic States must act together in requesting their Alliance partners…work out, as soon as possible and taking into account the new threats, NATO defense plans for the Baltics.” [9] She didn’t specify what the “new threats” are any more than did Biden and Rasmussen, but a cursory glance at a map of northeastern Europe would provide the answer.

She spoke for her allies President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, a decades-long resident of the U.S., in stating “Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are full members of the Alliance and active security providers participating in NATO’s operation in Afghanistan and other missions. Therefore, we deserve to have security guarantees and concrete defense plans for our countries.” [10]

The quid pro quo, then, is this: By providing troops to the U.S. and NATO for the war in Afghanistan nations like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland receive in turn a commitment from Washington and Brussels to support them – including with the NATO Article 5 military assistance clause and the American nuclear arsenal – in any confrontations with Russia. A reciprocity that also increasingly exists with NATO partner states like Georgia and Ukraine, both of which were granted an unprecedented Annual National Program by NATO and a complementary Charter on Strategic Partnership with the U.S. in late 2008. In the case of Georgia, within months of its August 2008 war with Russia.

Lithuania’s Grybauskaite was even more urgent in her comments last Saturday, stating “We appeal for and demand security in the form of a NATO emergency plan for the Baltic region.” [11]

Even though NATO, including American, warplanes have flown ongoing patrols in the Baltic region, a three-minute flight from Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, since 2004, and although the U.S. and its allies conducted the Baltic Eagle NATO Response Force multinational exercise in Latvia this past June, the 12-nation Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) war games in the same month, and the Loyal Arrow 2009 NATO military exercises in the Bothnian Bay in the Northern Baltic Sea, which included “the largest display of air power in the area’s history” [12], in yet the same month. {Among several other purposes, the Afghan war is being used to complete the NATO integration of formally neutral Finland and Sweden, both of which have hundreds of troops in the nation and have engaged in combat operations there.)

Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo recently said “that NATO has defence plans in the Baltics….One has to keep in mind that the plans exist on a variety of levels and formats.” [13]

The day before the conference in Latvia the USS Cole, target of a bomb attack in Yemen in 2000, arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. USS Cole, an “Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer, will stay in the Estonian capital until October 27,” it was reported. [14]

On the same day the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Ramage docked in the Polish city of Gdynia on the Baltic Sea. A Polish official stated “that similar visits to Poland by ships from the United States, France or Denmark are rather frequent.” [15]

After the unannounced visit by the top U.S. and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, at the NATO defense chiefs’ meeting in Slovakia last week, the Polish Defense Ministry announced that “Polish authorities plan to send 600 more soldiers to Afghanistan in spring 2010,” raising the nation’s total to 2,800. [16]

Troops abroad and bases and missiles at home. The NATO formula for new and candidate members.

As with the Baltics, so with the South Caucasus, all six nations in both locales providing troops for the Afghan war.

After the requests by NATO chief Rasmussen, Pentagon head Robert Gates and General McChrystal at the two-day NATO meeting in Slovakia last week “Azerbaijan gave an oral agreement to increase its military contingent. According to the agreement, NATO will assume the expenses of the personnel and material-technical provision.” [17]

Azerbaijan’s neighbor and adversary Armenia sent its defense minister to the NATO meeting and has for the first time offered troops for Afghanistan. Evidently the U.S. and NATO are making mutually exclusive promises to Azerbaijan and Armenia, at loggerheads over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, in exchange for sending troops to the Afghan war zone.

Armenia, being one of seven members of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), seen by many as a fledgling counterpart to NATO in former Soviet space, is a more significant acquisition than Azerbaijan (and Georgia), already long in the NATO camp. In Slovakia last week “NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed the [Armenian] Defense Minister and expressed his intention to continue collaboration with Armenia on the Afghanistan issue.” [18]

From October 22-24 NATO held a conference in Istanbul, Turkey on Non-Traditional Security Threats and Regional Cooperation In the Southern Caucasus. “Experts from Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia” participated. [19]

On October 24 in the third South Caucasus nation, Georgia, U.S. Marines launched two-week training exercises ominously codenamed Immediate Response [20] to train the first of 700 local troops for the Afghan war. According to the American embassy in Tbilisi, “The program is specifically designed to enhance Georgia’s ability to conduct joint counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan together with U.S. forces.” [21]

In Bratislava last week NATO chief Rasmussen praised the Georgian deployment as “a very important signal” and “a positive step” towards NATO integration. [22] He also stated “that Georgia might become a member of the alliance without passing through a Membership Action Plan” [23], the traditional path to full membership. As a full member Georgia would be covered by the Alliance’s Article 5.

The past few days were as busy in Georgia as they were in Eastern Europe in the pursuit of U.S. geopolitical offensives.

The new American ambassador, John R. Bass, presented his credentials to President Mikheil Saakashvili on October 16, with his predecessor John Tefft deployed to Ukraine to protect America’s “orange” asset Viktor Yushchenko ahead of a presidential election in which the latter faces a crushing defeat in his reelection bid.

“Bass has previously served as Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, coordinating policy and operational planning for strategic arms reduction discussions with the Russian Federation between 2004-2005. As Talbott’s Special Assistant for Europe and Eurasia (1998-2000) Bass was a member of the U.S. negotiating team that brokered a settlement to the war in Kosovo on NATO’s terms and shaped the composition and command arrangements of the peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

“Bass has also worked widely on U.S. policies and initiatives to convince Russia to accept U.S. missile defence systems….” [24]

On October 22 new U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Tina Kaidanow, previously Washington’s first ambassador to Kosovo after its unilateral declaration of independence [25], paid a visit to the Georgian capital and “met with Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria to discuss issues of the implementation of the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership and bilateral relations….” [26]

During the same period a three week “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield course [was] taught by three U.S. Marine instructors from Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center (NMITC),” which “was designed to help Georgian soldiers hone their intelligence gathering skills” as part of the NATO ISAF mission [27]

U.S Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow arrived in Georgia on October 19 for three days of talks with the country’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the nation’s defense and foreign ministers. At the time it was announced that “The formal purpose of Vershbow’s visit, according to Georgia’s foreign ministry, is ‘to hold a working meeting within the framework of the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership.’” [28]

Vershbow, former ambassador to NATO and to Russia, who in the second capacity was noted for his confrontational and abrasive manner, stated “Georgia’s forward movement towards the NATO is very important for us and we are ready to develop a special program to achieve this goal.” [29]

During the visit Georgian Foreign Minister Alexander Nalbandov was asked about U.S. plans to expand its missile shield system and responded, “If the USA applies to us with this request, we will discuss this issue.” [30] It’s hard to believe that Vershbow didn’t at least broach the subject as on October 19 he said that the U.S. was considering including Ukraine in its missile shield grid.

While in Georgia he did pledge that Washington is committed to the “reform of the defense sphere [of Georgia] to bring it closer to NATO standards that will assist [Georgia's] NATO membership” [31] and added “We do have concerns about the lack of full compliance by Russia with some elements of the August 2008 cease-fire agreement.” [32]

A Russian member of parliament responded to Vershbow’s promise to modernize the Georgian army by saying “Georgia does not need defence at all, because they do not have to be defended from anyone. Nobody is going to attack Georgia and any preparation of a military character will be considered as campaign for attacks on Abkhazia and South Ossetia….” [33]

The upgrading of Georgia’s armed forces, its command structure and its battlefield techniques is already underway. The pretext under which this American and NATO transformation is being conducted is to prepare a comparatively small contingent of troops for the war in Afghanistan, but the objective of the program is much larger.

A STRATFOR report of October 9 included the observations that “In Georgia, Vershbow will be overseeing coordination of an expansion of U.S. training to the country’s troops. And unlike in the past, when such training was small-scale and mostly defensive in nature and mainly meant to train troops headed to Afghanistan and Iraq, this renewed focus will be greater in scope of personnel and resources and will likely include offensive training as well. In Ukraine, apart from the decision already announced of BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] expansion into the country, it is rumored that the United States could encourage the resumption of weapons transfers into Georgia, a very sensitive issue given accusations by Moscow of such transfers during the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war.”

Ahead of the NATO defense ministers meeting last week Vershbow “insisted there was no contradiction between developing expeditionary forces and the continued engagement to defend NATO borders in Europe” and asserted that “At the end of the day we will provide protection for all of NATO Europe.” [34]

Far from NATO’s war in Afghanistan, its first land war and its first war in Asia, detracting from the agenda of surrounding Russia with troops, bases, military hardware and missiles, the two campaigns are inextricably connected.

1) The Times (London), October 9, 2009
2) Afghan War: NATO Builds History’s First Global Army
Stop NATO, August 9, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-builds-historys-first-global-army
3) Civil Georgia, August 21, 2009
4) Xinhua News Agency, October 27, 2009
5) Xinhua News Agency, October 22, 2009
6) Washington Times, October 22, 2009
7) Boston Globe, October 22, 2009
8) Bloomberg News, October 19, 2009
9) Baltic Course, October 26, 2009
10) Ibid
11) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 24, 2009
13) Scandinavia And The Baltic Sea: NATO’s War Plans For The High North
Stop NATO, June 14, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/scandinavia-and-the-baltic-sea-natos-war-plans-for-the-high-north
12) Baltic Business News, October 27, 2009
14) Russian Information Agency Novosti, October 25, 2009
15) Xinhua News Agency, October 26, 2009
16) Polish Radio, October 23, 2009
17) Azeri Press Agency, October 26, 2009
18) PanArmenian.net, October 25, 2009
19) PanArmenian.net, October 21, 2009
20) NATO War Games In Georgia: Threat Of New Caucasus War
Stop NATO, May 8, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/nato-war-games-in-georgia-threat-of-new-caucasus-war
21) Civil Georgia, October 24, 2009
22) The Messenger, October 26, 2009
23) Rustavi2, October 22, 2009
24) The Messenger, October 19, 2009
25) Politicizing Ethnicity: U.S. Plan To Repeat Yugoslav Scenario In Caucasus
Could Cause World War
Stop NATO, August 14, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/politicizing-ethnicity-u-s-plan-to-repeat-yugoslav-scenario-in-caucasus-could
26) Civil Georgia, October 22, 2009
27) United States European Command, October 21, 2009
28) Jamestown Foundation, October 20, 2009
29) Trend News Agency, October 20, 2009
30) Trend News Agency, October 19, 2009
31) The Messenger, October 21, 2009
32) Associated Press, October 20, 2009
33) Rustavi2, October 21, 2009
34) Xinhua News Agency, October 22, 2009

Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East

October 25, 2009 richardrozoff Leave a comment

Stop NATO
October 24, 2009

Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East
Rick Rozoff

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“U.S. efforts in Romania and Bulgaria are part of a global redeployment strategy started in the early years of the Bush administration to shift U.S. forces out of Germany and move them eastward.”

“The number of US military men at the two bases is not going to be large, but who can say that it will not be doubled, tripped or quadrupled in the future? Furthermore, the appearance of NATO bases on the Black Sea coast will come as an addition to the US military [deployments] in the Baltic region. As a result, Russia will find itself trapped.”

“[T]he new land, sea and airbases along the Black Sea will provide much improved contingency access for deployments into Central Asia, parts of the Middle East and Southwest Asia.”
—————————–

Last week was an eventful one in Eastern Europe.

The two top foreign policy veterans in the current U.S. administration, Vice President Joseph Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visited the capitals of Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia. Biden was in Warsaw, Prague and Bucharest to recruit all three nations into the new U.S.-led, NATO-wide interceptor missile system and to make arrangements for the deployment of American Patriot missiles and troops to Poland, the first foreign soldiers to be based in that nation since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact eighteen years ago.

Gates was in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, for a two-day meeting of NATO and partner states’ defense chiefs which also focused on the establishment of a missile shield to encompass the entire European continent as well as the unparalleled escalation of the U.S.’s and NATO’s war in Afghanistan.

A few days earlier the U.S. armed forces publication Stars and Stripes announced that the Pentagon will spend an additional $110 million to upgrade two of the seven military bases in Bulgaria and Romania it acquired the use of in agreements signed in 2005 and 2006.

The report led to political fallout in the two host countries with Bulgarian and Romanian officials scrambling to qualify the news and pretend that somehow their own subservient governments would retain control over the expanded bases. Sofia and Bucharest have no more say in how the Pentagon and NATO have used and will intensify the use of air fields and other bases in their nations than they do in determining which war zones their nations’ troops are deployed to, which of late include Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The NATO defense chiefs meeting in Slovakia on October 22-23 endorsed the demands of the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 85,000 more U.S. troops to be added to the 68,000 American and 38,000 NATO and partner forces already in the South Asian war theater, and Poland immediately pledged 600 more troops with other Alliance states soon to follow. Combined U.S.-NATO troop strength in Afghanistan may reach 200,000.

Even during the peak of the American troop “surge” in Iraq at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 there was a total of 186,000 U.S. troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently there are an estimated 130,000 in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan. In all 198,000. There were 34,000 American troops in Afghanistan on January 20th of this year when Barack Obama moved into the White House; there are twice that many now.

The figure of 85,000 additional American troops is what McChrystal reportedly termed his “low-risk” preference, with 40,000 the smallest and “higher risk” number bandied about in recent weeks.

The recently concluded NATO defense ministerial seems to have put to rest that false debate as well as another that has occupied the U.S. press corps in recent days, whether the dramatically expanding war in South Asia, Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, is to concentrate on “counterinsurgency” or “counterterrorism.” That is, whether the Pentagon and NATO will limit their military actions to hunting down alleged al-Qaeda survivors or wage full-scale warfare against all insurgent forces identified as Taliban on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The second option of course would make the 85,000 figure not only likely but unavoidable.

McChrystal delivered a fifteen minute presentation at the NATO meeting and the Alliance’s secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said “What we did today was to discuss General McChrystal’s overall assessment, his overall approach, and I have noted a broad support from all ministers of this overall counterinsurgency approach.” [1]

The Los Angeles Times of October 24 wrote that “America’s NATO allies signaled broad support Friday for an ambitious counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, adding to the momentum building for a substantial U.S. troop increase.

“NATO defense ministers meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, endorsed the strategy put forward by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and allied commander. The alliance rejected competing proposals to narrow the military mission to fighting the remnants of Al Qaeda.” [2]

Pentagon chief Robert Gates walked away from the two-day conference assured that “a number of allies…were thinking about increasing their own military or civilian contributions.” [3]

As though a war of such monumental proportions was not enough for self-styled 21st Century NATO to manage, its chief Rasmussen delivered an inventory of additional missions while addressing the bloc’s new Strategic Concept, including “nuclear matters,” “cyber defence,” “the difficult economic climate,” “the effects of disruption in energy supply” and “perhaps the most global of challenges – climate change.” [4]

But his main focus was on two related subjects, both with Russia as prime antagonist. On the first topic Rasmussen asserted:

“Energy security is [an] emerging challenge. Indeed, many countries…have already felt the effects of disruption in energy supply, and in the next few years, the competition for energy will only get more intense. This means that we need to think about how to protect our supply lines, our transit routes, and our critical infrastructure.”

His allusion was to collective NATO-U.S.-EU efforts to “lessen Europe’s energy dependency” on Russia and to continue developing alternative routes for Caspian Sea and Middle East oil to enter Europe by circumventing Russia (and Iran). What, if the situation were reversed, would be condemned in Western capitals as an energy war.

In mentioning “the meaning of Article 5,” Rasmussen affirmed that “NATO’s core task was, is, and will remain, the defence of our territory and our populations. For our Alliance to endure, all members must feel that they are safe and secure. NATO has never failed in this respect.”

There is only one nation on earth against whom NATO can “defend its territory”: Russia.

His comments concerning “the challenge of cyber-attacks – which, as we saw in Estonia two years ago, can seriously destabilise a country” made the point even more indisputable.

Rasmussen’s address, finally, rehashed the 1989 George H.W. Bush speech A Europe Whole and Free [5] with the pledge that “our new Strategic Concept must reaffirm a long-standing NATO objective: to help complete the consolidation of Europe as a continent that is whole, free and at peace. NATO’s open door policy will continue. It will continue because it contributes to Euro-Atlantic security, and it provides a strong incentive, for aspirants, to get their house in order.”

The small and diminishing handful of nations in Europe not already in NATO supplying troops and military equipment for the war in Afghanistan and the three countries in the South Caucasus – Armenia’s defense minister was at the NATO meeting to offer troops – are to be dragged into the Alliance, Russian apprehensions and objections notwithstanding.

What being fully integrated into NATO portends for the countries so affected and for their neighbors has been indicated and will be explored in greater depth later with the cases of Bulgaria and Romania.

What it has meant for three other nations recruited into the bloc in the same year, 2004, as Bulgaria and Romania – the former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – was demonstrated earlier in the week when Rasmussen called for “a clear, visible NATO presence in the Baltic states” and said he “would not exclude military exercises in the future” to assert the Alliance’s “visible presence” in the Baltics on and near Russia’s borders. [6]

Recently U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon – formerly of the Brookings Institution, International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and German Society for Foreign Affairs in Bonn and who was “instrumental in developing and coordinating NATO policy in the run-up to the Alliance’s 50th Anniversary summit in Washington, D.C.” [7] – was in Estonia where he met with Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, who “called for Georgia, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to be included in NATO’s Membership Action Plan, a program of assistance to countries seeking to join NATO….” [8]

Nothing on this level of geopolitics – absorbing former Soviet republics and Russian neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine into a U.S.-controlled military bloc – is coincidental. The Estonian foreign minister’s statement was seconded with precise fidelity by Senator John Kerry shortly after his recent tour of inspection of the Afghan war front. Kerry said “[W]hile the world has changed, we are still dealing with some of the same geostrategic and ideological concerns that brought NATO into being in particular, a deep and durable commitment by like-minded democracies to cooperate closely and deter aggression with a promise to rise up in defense of any NATO member under attack.

“I hope we can…address the prospects for future NATO enlargement to include Balkan nations, Georgia, and Ukraine.” [9]

As was repeatedly stated at the NATO meeting in Slovakia, although the bloc is increasingly conducting military operations outside its area of responsibility in the Balkans, South Asia, Northeast and Central Africa and the entire perimeter of the Mediterranean Sea, its “core,” fundamental role remains what it has been for sixty years, confronting Russia.

Which is how Russia and its then president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov reacted to the U.S. takeover of seven military bases in Bulgaria and Romania. In 2007 the first stated “[A] new base in Bulgaria, another in Romania, a site in Poland, radar in the Czech Republic. What are we supposed to do? We cannot just observe all this.” [10]

Shortly afterward the second, Lavrov, stated “Russia finds it hard to understand some decisions of NATO like, for example, the deployment of US military facilities in Bulgaria and Romania.” [11]

Regarding the recent disclosure that the Pentagon is going to allot $110 million to modernize and expand military bases in both countries – “a $50 million military base in Romania that could house 1,600 U.S. troops, and another $60 million facility for 2,500 troops in Bulgaria” [12] – no small sum in the impoverished nations, James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs with the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council think tank, said “the U.S. efforts in Romania and Bulgaria are part of a global redeployment strategy started in the early years of the Bush administration to shift U.S. forces out of Germany and move them eastward.” [13]

The same news source also reported that “the U.S. intends to deploy troops to Poland at some point in the near future,” according to the State Department’s undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Ellen Tauscher. [14]

Bulgaria’s investment in turning its military bases over to the Pentagon and NATO is a bad one, though. While the U.S. is to spend $60 million expanding one of its military bases, the country’s Defense Minister Nikolay Mladenov announced earlier this week that “Afghanistan is Bulgaria’s largest military mission, costing taxpayers about BGN 90 million (about USD 68.7 million) each year.” [15] A net loss of $8.7 million. More if Mladenov delivers on a recent promise to increase his nation’s troop contingent in Afghanistan.

The Bulgarian base that will soon house 2,000 U.S. troops is the Novo Selo Military Training Ground and will be upgraded “so that it could accommodate more rangers and be used for military exercises conducted by several countries, not just US and Bulgarian forces.” [16]

That is, it will be used for multinational NATO combat instruction for current wars, that in Afghanistan in particular, and for potential use elsewhere in the Broader Middle East, in the former Soviet Union and in Africa.

It will especially focus on the integration of expeditionary forces from nations arising from the ruins of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Earlier this month Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov escorted high-ranking U.S. military officers to the Novo Selo base and on the occasion stated “Bulgaria would continue its military cooperation with the USA, and that Serbia and Ukraine had also expressed expressed interest in joint drills.” [17]

During a meeting of the Southeastern Europe Defense Ministerial (SEDM) on October 22 in Bulgaria Defense Minister Mladenov “offered his counterparts from neighboring countries to use the joint Bulgarian-U.S. military training facilities in Novo Selo….The annual meeting was attended by the defense ministers of all countries which have the status of observers – Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia.” [18] Montenegro and Serbia were incorporated as full members of the SEDM during the meeting which was also attended by “representatives of NATO Allied Joint Force Command, Naples, and NATO Allied Joint Force Command, Brunssum, as well as the General Manager of NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency,” according to the NATO Partnership for Peace website. [19]

This year’s meeting of SEDM, which overlaps with other NATO transitional programs like the Adriatic Charter and the Partnership for Peace, also established a Multilateral Peace Force Southeastern Europe. The twelve previous full members of the SEDM are the United States, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

The nations Bulgarian officials listed as ones invited to be trained by the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force – East, about which more later, were mentioned again recently by U.S. Vice President Biden in Romania on October 22, as they were at the same time by Biden’s former Senate colleague John Kerry, in the latter case as future NATO members.

Biden stated in Bucharest, “As President Obama has said, there are no old members, there are no new members of NATO; there are just members. Under Article 5, an attack on one is an attack against all” [20] and “Our military serve together in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the West Balkans zone….” [21]

A Romanian news source quoted the American vice president as also saying, “We share a desire that Romania’s neighbors including Moldova will continue along the path to democracy and…that they will be integrated into European institutions when they are ready. That’s why we have to sustain this bid to economically stabilize Moldova.” [22]

Moldova was the scene of a so-called Twitter Revolution in April of this year, one modeled after earlier “color” uprisings in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2000-2005, and now has a new government ready to merge with Romania, which would mean dragging the former Soviet republic into NATO.

It is that process Biden in bent on completing.

Moldova also has an unresolved, “frozen,” conflict with Transdniester where Russia deployed peacekeepers in 1992 after thousands were killed and injured in fighting between the two states. There are still 365 Russian troops in the republic and last week a Transdniester official requested more Russian forces in anticipation of increased tensions with Moldova’s new pro-NATO government.

Were Moldova to join NATO, either in its own right or as part of an expanded Romania, the Alliance would be in a de facto state of war with Transdniester, which is supported by Russia. Romania is a NATO member and if it intervened on behalf of Moldova against its neighbor could invoke NATO’s Article 5 against Transdniester – where, again, Russian troops are based.

Addressing his Romanian hosts on October 22, Biden said, “In Eastern Europe, there are countries still struggling to establish fully functioning democracies and vibrant market economies. You can help guide Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine along the path to stability and prosperity…There is much work to be done in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.” [23]

The six nations he mentioned are exactly those targeted by the European Union’s Eastern Partnership program to be weaned from the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and integrated into the EU and NATO.

Biden also touched on the main subject of his preceding visits to Poland and the Czech Republic: The European wing of the U.S.’s new global missile shield system.

His comments on that score at Bucharest University included:

“I really appreciate your government’s embrace of the new missile defense architecture we are bringing into Europe. It is a better architecture. It has the benefit of protecting you physically, as well as the United States.” [24]

He further touted a “new missile defense architecture” that “will protect all NATO allies, including all central European NATO members” and would provide “stronger, smarter and swifter defenses.” [25] (Central Europe is the term now used in the West for most of the area referred to as Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The new designation is political and not geographical.)

That Biden laid such particular stress on this topic in Romania indicates that the U.S. has plans to extend its interceptor missile system into the Black Sea region.

The day after the American vice president left Romania a U.S. military official spoke of the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base – where the $50 million investment is to occur and which has been used for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – near the port city of Constanta on the Black Sea and said that it “will become a permanent facility in the spring and be jointly used with Romanian forces.” [26]

The progressively more aggressive U.S. and NATO military penetration of the Black Sea region has been examined in previous articles in this series [27]. A Russian report of October 23 included this background information:

“Over 4,000 US military men are expected to serve at the two bases: 1,600 in Romania and 2,500 in Bulgaria. The authorities of the two nations expect that the US military men will settle there for a long time.

“It goes along with the Pentagon’s intention to cut its 55,000-strong group in Germany and redeploy a part of the troops in several countries of Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria and Romania.”

The same source quoted a Russian analyst:

The relocation of American combat and expeditionary forces from Germany and Italy to Romania and Bulgaria has been underway for the past two years.

In June of 2007 a Bulgarian news agency revealed that “The Bezmer military airport…will be transformed into one of the six new strategic airbases outside US borders.” [29]

Slightly afterwards another Bulgarian source announced that “NATO will move aircraft from the US air base in Aviano, northeastern Italy, to Bulgaria’s Graf Ignatievo air base….” [30]

A year before a third news site in the nation detailed that “[T]he new land, sea and airbases along the Black Sea will provide much improved contingency access for deployments into Central Asia, parts of the Middle East and Southwest Asia.” [31]

Beginning in 2007 the Pentagon’s new Joint Task Force – East (JTF-East), during its formative stage known as the Eastern Europe Task Force, started operating in Bulgaria and Romania and last year established its headquarters at the Mihail Kogalniceanu base in Romania.

Its main purpose is to conduct joint combat training with U.S., Bulgarian and Romanian troops for the war in Afghanistan and for others in the future.

JTF-East has just completed an almost three-month-long series of trainings in Bulgaria and Romania which began on August 7 and ended on October 24. It has two heavy brigade combat teams and the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment assigned to it and may acquire the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team currently based in Vicenza, Italy.

The Stryker is the Pentagon’s state-of-the-art 21st Century armored combat vehicle, first tried out in Iraq in 2003 and introduced in Afghanistan earlier this year. Bulgaria and Romania are its testing grounds.

The two Black Sea nations, in hosting the Joint Task Force – East and the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, are the preeminent “forward operating bases” for the war in South Asia and are poised to play a similar role in conflicts that may erupt in the Black Sea area, the Caucasus and the Persian Gulf.

It was reported that as part of the August-October joint military exercises “Soldiers of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment based in Vilseck, Germany, have been training for the past three months in Romania and Bulgaria as part of their preparations for an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan this spring.

“U.S. Soldiers offloaded 30 Stryker combat vehicles in early August at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airfield in eastern Romania and have since been conducting combined training with their host-nation counterparts.

“Soldiers from the 2nd SCR have been rotating every three weeks to Romania and Bulgaria since the second week of August and will continue through the end of October.” [32]

At the aforementioned Novo Selo Training Area in Bulgaria, “Bulgarian Land Forces and U.S. Army troops demonstrated their interoperability and combat skills Oct. 8 during distinguished visitors’ day here. The training exhibition consisted of both militaries engaging an enemy where the coalition neutralized the opposing force.

“Units of both countries deployed…to enhance their troops’ individual combat skills and improve their coalition cooperation.

“Joint Task Force-East, a combined partnership effort of leaders, special staff and logistics support, facilitates select units rotating through training cycles. The JTF-E exercises consist of tactical field and simulation training including, but not limited to: squad- to company-level size attacks; assault rifle, mortar and rocket-propelled grenade live fire; Stryker and BMP-1 armored infantry carrier vehicle movements and combat lifesaver training.” [33]

An American newspaper account of one of the joint exercises added, “Soldiers from all three countries trained together in individual and company-level movements as well as with armored vehicles, a variety of weapons and combat lifesaving skills. They also practiced the coordination needed to go into and clear a hostile urban area.” [34]

A Bulgarian news story mentioned: “The joint Bulgaria-US military exercise at the Novo Selo ground is part of a three-week long practice to include reconnaissance and target shooting.

“Bulgarian and US soldiers on Thursday conducted a joint drill of fighting the enemy in an urban setting at the Novo Selo training ground.

“[The] drill involved combat tactics used in Afghanistan.” [35]

A Bulgarian news site reported in early October that “High ranking officers from both armies are taking part Thursday [October 8] in the Novo Selo VIP Day and are observing tactical demonstrations of the US and Bulgarian land forces, Black Hawk helicopters, Stryker armored vehicles and Bulgarian armored equipment.” [36]

On the day of Joseph Biden’s stay in the country Romania announced that it had signed an Access Agreement with the Pentagon: “According to a release of the Ministry of National Defense, under this Agreement Romania gives U.S. forces access for use of the facilities approved under Law 268/2006, Annex A, often referred to in foreign and Romanian media as ‘American military bases,’ and not as ‘facilities made available to U.S. forces.’”

Attending the discussions on the agreement “on behalf of the United States were representatives of U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), the U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) Major Command, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAF) and the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest….” [37]

On the same day an international conference on NATO and the New Strategic Concept was held in the Romanian capital. A report of the event stated “Romania wishes the reaffirmation of Article 5 from the North-Atlantic Pact. Another field in which the Romanian side seems to be interested in is energy security.”

One of the hosts of the event said, “Romania is one of the [active] states of the energy security component. For the time being NATO has accepted it and introduced in its final documents specific operations directed to the protection of critical infrastructure on land and water. Currently, some formulas are being planned including other elements of energy security strategy NATO should assume.” [38]

While meeting with Biden the day before, Romania’s President Traian Basescu sounded the same note: “The liquid gas terminal in Constanta is still a common project of Romania and the US, as is the Constanta-Trieste oil pipeline.” [39]

On the eastern end of the Black Sea, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow – former American ambassador to NATO and to Russia – was in Georgia earlier this week to discuss “modernization of defense systems, participation of the Georgian military contingent in Afghan peace operations, security in the region and other urgent issues.” [40]

While in the nation Vershbow stated “Georgia’s forward movement towards NATO is very important for us and we are ready to develop a special program to achieve this goal.” [41]

Frequent comments of a similar tenor by the Pentagon official led a Russian new source to recount that “He said the US administration is helping Georgia to build armed forces that would meet the requirements of the day and would be capable of cooperating with NATO.

“Washington has been doing its utmost to this effect. Hundreds of US experts, including marines, are currently in Georgia training Georgian soldiers who are to join the US-led contingent in Afghanistan on President Saakashvili’s orders. A total of 700 Georgian servicemen are expected to be moved to Afghanistan by early next year at a time when coalition losses grow by the day….It looks like President Saakashvili is prepared to go any lengths, up to sacrificing young lives, to please Washington and get into NATO.” [42]

Four days after Vershbow’s departure, on October 24 U.S. Marines in Georgia kicked off a two-week joint military exercise, the latest one to be code-named Immediate Response, which the American embassy in Tbilisi described as “specifically designed to enhance Georgia’s ability to conduct joint counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan together with US forces.”

Immediate Response 2008, which included the largest-ever deployment of U.S. armed forces to Georgia, concluded on September 4, three days before the U.S.-trained Georgian army bombarded and invaded South Ossetia, triggering a war with Russia. Many of the U.S. troops and much of their military equipment stayed behind after the war games.

The current Immediate Response drills are providing Washington’s proxy army with training for aggression against South Ossetia and Abkhazia – and another armed conflict with Russia – as well as for war in Afghanistan.

The true war theater begins in the Balkans and the Black Sea region and stretches along the Russian to the Chinese border. Bulgaria and Romania are key links in that chain.

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/

1) New York Times, October 23, 2009
2) Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2009
3) Ibid
4) NATO, October 22, 2009
5) http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga6-890531.htm
6) Bloomberg News, October 19, 2009
7) U.S. State Department, March 16, 2009
8) Interfax, October 17, 2009
9) Boston Globe, October 22, 2009
10) New Europe [Belgium], Week of June 2, 2007
11) Standart News, December 7, 2007
12) Stars and Stripes, October 17, 2009
13) Ibid
14) Ibid
15) Focus News Agency, October 19, 2009
16) Sofia News Agency, October 8, 2009
17) Sofia News Agency, October 8, 2009
18) Xinhua News Agency, October 22, 2009
19) Partnership for Peace Information Management System, October 23, 2009
20) U.S. Department of Defense, October 22, 2009
21) Financiarul, October 23, 2009
22) Nine O’Clock News, October 23, 2009
23) Deutsche Welle, October 22, 2009
24) Nine O’Clock News, October 23, 2009
25) Deutsche Welle, October 22, 2009
26) Associated Press, October 23, 2009
27) Black Sea: Pentagon’s Gateway To Three Continents And The Middle East
Stop NATO, February 21, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/79
Black Sea Crisis Deepens As Threat To Iran Grows
Stop NATO, September 16, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/black-sea-crisis-deepens-as-threat-to-iran-grows
Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile Shield South And East
Stop NATO, September 19, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283
28) Pravda, October 23, 2009
29) Standart News, June 6, 2007
30) Sofia News Agency, October 6, 2007
31) Sofia Echo, November 17, 2006
32) United States European Command, October 22, 2009
33) United States European Command, October 13, 2009
34) Battle Creek Enquirer, October 22, 2009
35) Sofia News Agency, September 17, 2009
36) Sofia News Agency, October 8, 2009
37) Financiarul, October 24, 2009
38) Financiarul, October 24, 2009
39) Nine O’Clock News, October 23, 2009
40) Trend News Agency, October 19, 2009
41) Trend News Agency, October 20, 2009
42) Voice of Russia, October 16, 2009