Rick Rozoff blog
Stop NATO
November 19, 2010
NATO: Afghan War Model For Future 21st Century Operations
Rick Rozoff
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unveils its first 21st century strategic doctrine in Lisbon this week, its first ground war and war outside Europe is in its tenth year with no end in sight.
The invasion of and subsequent nine years of combat operations in Afghanistan are logical - inevitable - results of the military alliance's last Strategic Concept adopted at its fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. in 1999. At the time NATO was waging its first full-scale war, the 78-day Operation Allied Force bombing assault against Yugoslavia, and had absorbed the first of what are now twelve members in Eastern Europe: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
Launching an unprovoked war of aggression and operating outside the territory of NATO member states - and outside international law without a United Nations mandate - inaugurated the U.S.-controlled military alliance as a global warfighting organization. The war in Afghanistan beginning in the first year of the new century and millennium represented the further implementation of the 1999 Strategic Concept, itself the first since 1991, the year of the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.
As NATO described the last Strategic Concept: "At the Washington Summit meeting in April 1999, the NATO Allies approved a strategy to equip the Alliance for the security challenges and opportunities of the 21st century and to guide its future political and military development." [1]
There are now 140,000 troops (the bulk of them American) from 50 nations serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, more than were assigned to the bloc's previous out-of-area deployments - 60,000 in Bosnia in 1995 and 50,000 in Kosovo in 1999 - combined.
READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment