When firebrand Russian politician and ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin last week appeared to threaten to cut off NATO and U.S. military transit to Afghanistan, it was seen as another sign of the recently deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow, and got a lot of attention. But now, apparently, Rogozin is saying he was misquoted.
NATO's foreign ministers are meeting now in Brussels, and a State Department official, speaking on background, says Rogozin has told them he never said he would cut off the Northern Distribution Network:
On the NDN, it’s actually – there was no confirmation. Even Rogozin, who was the one who was quoted, has said – he told us today, but he said all along his was misquoted and they are not linking the NDN to our disagreement on missile defense.
Indeed, if you look at the original story from Interfax (in Russian) Rogozin doesn't exactly spell the threat out, and it seems that Interfax could have put the words in his mouth.
But Rogozin apparently didn't talk to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who, in a press conference at the meeting, said Russian talk of the NDN was "an empty threat":
I think, honestly speaking, that it’s an empty threat because it is clearly in Russia’s self-interest to contribute to a success in Afghanistan. Russia knows from bitter experience that instability in Afghanistan have negative repercussions in Russia as well.
An effort by a U.S. senator to make a renewed push for Georgian membership in NATO has been foiled. From The Daily Caller:
Last week, while most senators were focused on the important national issues of war funding and Americans’ constitutional liberties, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) seemed more concerned with the fate of a foreign country. Behind the scenes, Rubio moved to have a unanimous consent vote that would have hastened Georgia’s entry into NATO. The unanimous consent vote never happened because Senator Rand Paul single-handedly prevented it.
This is not a triviality. Make no mistake: Bringing Georgia into NATO could lead to a new military conflict for the United States, which is why any move that would facilitate Georgia’s entry into the alliance should be publicly debated. Rubio’s attempt to push this through by unanimous consent — that is to say, without any formal debate or vote — is highly suspect and calls into question the senator’s better judgment.
The American Spectator has a bit more detail:
"It called for the President to lead a diplomatic effort to get approval of Georgia's Membership Action Plan during the upcoming NATO Summit in Chicago," a Rubio spokesman explained in an email.
Rubio and Paul are both new senators, elected in 2010, and embody the two poles of the Tea Party's foreign policy: Rubio for a muscular American exceptionalism, and Paul for a small-government isolationism. (Jack Hunter, who wrote the Daily Caller piece, is the official blogger of the presidential campaign of Rand Paul's father, Ron Paul.)
As a result of a NATO attack that killed as many as 28 Pakistani soldiers today, the Pakistani government has closed off NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. From Reuters:
Hours after the raid, NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, officials said.
The border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province was also closed, Frontier Corps officials said.
A meeting of the cabinet's defence committee convened by Gilani "decided to close with immediate effect NATO/ISAF logistics supply lines," according to a statement issued by Gilani's office.
It's not clear how long Pakistan will cut off NATO supplies, but they did it for ten days after another NATO attack killed three Pakistani soldiers last year.
According to the latest data from Reuters, NATO supplies into Afghanistan are roughly divided into thirds: a third goes overland via Pakistan, a third by air and a third overland via the Northern Distribution Network through Central Asia, primarily Uzbekistan. The U.S. had already been trying to increase their share of cargo shipped via the northern route, worried about the reliability of Pakistan. And now with the Pakistan route cut off indefinitely, that will put immediately more pressure on the northern route and Uzbekistan.
Just get in better democratic and military shape and you are almost there, guys, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization told ever-aspiring NATO member Georgia during a November 9-10 visit to Tbilisi. The country may have heard this line before, but, for many Georgians, it still sounds like music to their ears.
"Georgia has come a lot closer to NATO" since the alliance's 2008 Bucharest Summit, asserted NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “Further reform will be Georgia’s ticket to membership. And NATO is here to help.”
Parliamentary Speaker Davit Bakradze took it a notch higher, saying “boldly” (in the words of one Georgian news service) that Georgia is now “closer to NATO than ever.” He expressed hope that the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago would bring Georgia still closer to the military club.
And, to sweeten the pitch, Tbilisi pledged to beef up its military presence to NATO's Afghanistan campaign still further next year, with another battalion. At 937 personnel, it currently ranks as the second largest non-NATO contributor (after Australia at 1,550). Even after the loss of ten personnel, it looks like Georgia wants to top the charts.
But, as it pulls itself toward the alliance -- ever closer, ever closer -- Georgia remains mired in a conflict with Russia and two separatist regions that make NATO accession far from a paint-by-the-numbers project.
Georgia's billionaire/politician Bidzina Ivanishvili has given his first press conference in which he expanded on his views on defense and foreign policy, which have been the matter of some speculation since he entered the political arena.
He reiterated, but in stronger terms, his previous assessment that it was Georgia, not Russia, who started the war over South Ossetia. From Civil.ge's report:
Citing Tagliavini report, Ivanishvili said that it was Georgia, which had triggered off the August war with Russia. He said that President Saakashvili responded to shelling of Georgian villages in the conflict zone in August, 2008 with “absolute recklessness by shelling Tskhinvali.”
He also cited a resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) and said that both the resolution, supported by the Georgian delegation, and Tagliavini report were saying that Georgia started the war. He was apparently refereeing to the PACE’s October, 2008 resolution, which at the time was at the time became an issue for debates in the Georgian politics.
“Everyone in the world knows everything very well. [The Georgian authorities] are trying to mislead the Georgian population; Saakashvili’s [version] is: Russia’s started the war and we have won it… We should learn to face the truth,” he said.
I'll be very curious to see how that goes over in Georgia.
However, if Georgia's Western allies are wondering whether he would continue Tbilisi's strong partnership with them, Ivanishvili said he would maintain Georgia's troop presence in Afghanistan, but was evasive on the question of NATO membership:
The arrival of reclusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili on to Georgia's political scene is big news among Tbilisi's pundits, but it's also sparking some curiosity in foreign capitals, as well. Would be continue the same pro-Western, NATO-oriented foreign policy as the current government. To what extent is that orientation dependent on one man, the current president Mikheil Saakashvili?
His public statements thus far give some clue. He suggests a pro-Western orientation but a less hostile attitude toward Russia.
In one public letter, he refers to accusations that he is pro-Russia, as opposed to the pro-Western Saakashvili, but frames it in terms of politics, not foreign policy:
Quite recently Ia Antadze described me without any arguments as a pro-Russian force, and Saakashvili – as an apologetic of pro-western liberal values.
Ok, I will not take offence at whatever Ia Antadze calls me, but how can one see liberalism and pro-western orientation in Saakashvili, who established an authoritarian regime in Georgia? When you have a reputation, when the society knows you as a highly skilled and honest journalist and when you make such conclusions, such action is already equal to a crime.
(His notion that making such a statement is a crime undercuts somewhat his anti-authoritarian stance, but anyway.)
He also says that it was Georgia who invaded South Ossetia, not Russia (and that he advised against it). That is by now a pretty mainstream view outside of Georgia, but is certainly contrary to Saakashvili's take. Here, in the same letter, he's addressing Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili:
Turkey's collapsing relations with Israel over the past week or so have occasioned a new round of hand-wringing about whether the West is losing Turkey. But that drama has overshadowed another, countervailing, development: Turkey's agreement to host a NATO air defense radar. This has recently been one of the most sensitive Turkey-NATO issues; NATO wanted Turkey to host the system, but Turkey didn't want it to explicitly target Iran, even though it is obvious to everyone that that's the threat the system is intended to protect against.
But for whatever reason, the Turkish government has changed its mind, agreeing to host the radar and even (in a somewhat between-the-lines fashion) acknowledging that it has to do with Iran:
“We are of the opinion that the step taken [in deploying the radar system] is important for our region. That’s why we, as the government, have decided [to station the system in Turkey] after broad consultations,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said late Tuesday.
That has bolstered Turkey's relationship with NATO, argues Lale Kemal in Today's Zaman:
Turkey's decision to host on its soil the radar component of a US-sponsored missile shield project should be seen as a political decision reaffirming Ankara's ties with NATO. This decision comes at a time when the alliance has begun to perceive Turkish foreign policy goals as a deviating from those of the Western club. One Western official commented on the Turkish decision to host the missile defense radar saying, “Turkey is back in the club.”
Azerbaijan's defense minister told U.S. officials that the country was interested in "active cooperation with NATO up to full membership" but couldn't say so publicly, according to a diplomatic cable recently released by Wikileaks. The cable recounts a 2007 meeting between Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and a U.S. delegation from the Pentagon and State Department headed by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Peter Rodman:
Abiyev said that Azerbaijan's cooperation with NATO had a goal in mind. He said that this goal "could not be announced, for certain reasons" at present, but that Azerbaijan sought "active cooperation with NATO up to full membership". He said that the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was the only inhibitor of Azerbaijan moving even more quickly with NATO: "It is time for more serious, more active steps by the US in Minsk Group. Our cooperation with the US and NATO would be more open and more decisive in this case."
There is ample reason for suspicion here. It's not clear what the "certain reasons" for Baku's reticence were, perhaps the fear of a bad Iranian or Russian reaction, an issue that's frequently cited in the cables from Baku. There is reason to doubt the sincerity of that fear (see below). But even if you take the Azerbaijanis at their word, if you can't even announce publicly that you want to join NATO, the obstacles are so daunting as to make any such wish meaningless.
NATO is warning Turkey against buying Russian or Chinese air defense systems, saying that if Ankara does so NATO will no longer share its information about incoming missiles, according to a report in the newspaper Hürriyet Daily News. Turkey, you may recall, has been shopping for a new air defense system, and is considering options from Russia, China, the U.S. and a European consortium. That list of potential partners has made the purchase a sort of bellwether for those concerned about Ankara's geopolitical orientation. But NATO, apparently, is making it known that it doesn't approve of the non-Western sellers:
One Western expert countered that “if, say, the Chinese win the competition, their systems will be in interaction, directly or indirectly, with NATO’s intelligence systems, and this may lead to the leak of critical NATO information to the Chinese, albeit inadvertently. So this is dangerous.”
“NATO won’t let that happen,” another Western official told the Hürriyet Daily News on Monday. “If the Chinese or the Russians win the Turkish contest, their systems will have to work separately. They won’t be linked to NATO information systems.”
This was the first time NATO has strongly urged Turkey against choosing the non-Western systems.
It has never seemed likely that Turkey would buy the Russian or Chinese systems, and it's been suggested that Turkey is just keeping them in the competition so as to draw concessions from either the Western companies or Western allies. So is NATO's warning a way of saying, "There's no way you're buying the Russian or Chinese system, so don't try to use that as bargaining leverage"?
NATO is currently undertaking a review of its nuclear posture, including the status of the tactical nuclear weapons that the U.S. maintains in five NATO countries, including Turkey. Some NATO members -- mainly the Baltics and ex-Warsaw Pact states -- want the U.S. to keep the nuclear weapons in Europe, while others (like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway) are pushing for a dramatic move, including possibly completely removing the nukes from Europe. Turkey falls somewhere in between those countries, but more on the side of maintaining the nuclear weapons, writes Steven Pifer, an arms control expert at the Brookings Institution, in a new paper "NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control."
Turkey has hosted U.S. nuclear weapons since 1961, and currently at the Incirlik air base the U.S. has an unknown, but small, number of tactical B-61 nuclear bombs and fighter-bomber jets that can drop them. (The total number of U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe is thought to be about 200, down from a Cold War number of 7,000.)
The question of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey is one that Ankara has been quiet about, and on which the government hasn't taken a public position. That's not too surprising: according to a 2006 survey, 77 percent of people in Turkey were "very or somewhat concerned about the presence of nuclear arms on their territory," the highest percentage in any of the five countries in which NATO hosts nuclear weapons. (The others are Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.) One would expect, too, differences of opinion between the country's current government (which has been reaching out to improve relations with Middle Eastern neighbors) and the military elite (with a strong Western orientation). And probably neither side sees anything to gain in bringing the issue out into the open.
