NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
Photo: AP
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Anti-Russian Defense System
// American experts call for reexamination of NATO doctrine
The influential nongovernmental organization American Enterprise Institute held a conference in Washington entitled “Beyond Georgia: Securing America’s Allies on Russia’s Periphery.” The topic of discussion was the war in the Caucasus and its consequences for the United States and its NATO allies. Participants in the conference were harshly critical of Moscow and equated its actions in the Caucasus with the beginning of a new Russian expansion into post-Soviet and European territory. Among the responsive measures recommended by the AEI experts for the next American administration was the supply of arms to Russia’s neighbors. Kommersant Washington correspondent Dmitry Sidorov has the details.
The main speakers at the conference were military historian and AEI expert Frederick Kagan and Prof. Stephen Blank of the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, who specializes in national security issues. Kagan set the tone for the discussion with the first words of his presentation criticizing Moscow for its “military invasion of Georgia.” The Medvedev-Sarkozy plan fared no better in Kagan’s eyes. Recalling that one of the clauses in the plan called for international discussion of the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he sarcastically asked how negotiations can be possible after Russia has recognized their independence.
In Kagan’s opinion, events connected to South Ossetia and Abkhazia are developing in a way that will lead to their annexation by Moscow. Recalling the real feeling of alarm that ran through the Western European NATO countries, Poland and the Baltic, Kagan came to his main point: grounds for claiming a new Russian threat. He said that the NATO military doctrine can no longer be based on the principle that there is no longer a threat to NATO members from Russia. Therefore, the alliance’s tasks and goals should be radically reconsidered. The next administration in Washington should consider providing the Baltic countries with an interceptor system for Russian planes, Kagan added. He explained that such a step was necessary because the current NATO concept does not allow the Baltic states to create their own air defense systems.
That was not all Kagan had to suggest. The expert also insisted in his presentation that the management, oversight, communications, planning and intelligence systems of the air forces of all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe had to be improved, airspace observation systems had to be installed, including pilotless aircraft and Georgia and the Baltic countries had to be equipped with Polish-made Grom ballistic missiles.
Kagan was forced to admit, however, that there are at least two impediments to his plans. The first is the schism between eastern and western NATO members. The second is the need for Russia’s cooperation on Iran, although Kagan called this a “myth,” saying that the Russians never cooperated in the solution of the Iranian problem and so the U.S. has no right to sacrifice its allies for it.
Blank have a more general assessment of U.S.-NATO-Russia. He says that Russia’s military and foreign policy doctrines are based on the principle that the U.S. and NATO are its enemies. That is what underlies thesis of the “unipolar world” that featured so prominently in Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent new Russian foreign policy doctrine. Accusing Moscow of trying to exclude the U.S. from Europe and undermine NATO, Blank mentioned Russian arms supplies to Syria that ended up in Iran and in the hands of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and the $3-billion worth of arms Russia has sold to Venezuela. Blank also named the Colombian terrorist group FARC among the recipients of Russian arms.
Blank said it has to be understood that Russia is the enemy, just as it considers the U.S. its enemy. In that connection, Blank holds that the next U.S. administration has to keep in mind that Russia is a global threat and to concentrate on measures to deter it.
Unlike Kagan, who began his presentation with Georgia, Blank ended with Georgia, saying that, in spite of the Russians’ triumphant chauvinism after their invasion of Georgia, the war will cost them dearly. “They don’t understand that they lost,” Bland concluded.
Dmitry Sidorov
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 08, 2008
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