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NATO and Nuclear WeaponsNATO Informal Defence Ministers' Meeting, 7 - 8 February 2008Martin Butcher
NATO Defence Ministers met for an informal meeting, on 7 and 8 February in Vilnius, Lithuania. The bulk of discussions concerned the Alliance mission in Afghanistan, and the continuing presence of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo. There were also talks about the forthcoming NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania, in which the main area of disagreement is still the role that NATO should play in the US missile defence deployments in Europe - and indeed, whether those deployments should go ahead. AfghanistanAs NATO forces in Helmand and Kandahar provinces prepare for the Taliban spring offensive, NATO is experiencing problems at home concerning the Afghan War. Canada has threatened to withdraw its troop contingent if other NATO nations do not contribute forces to the NATO-led International Stabilisation Force (ISAF). There has been a public, and embarrassing, row between US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the German government. The US, UK and France have all committed extra troops to the southern provinces of Afghanistan. This meeting failed to resolve ongoing differences. Although State Department staffers traveling with Condoleeza Rice to Europe and Afghanistan this week raised expectations that additional European forces would be forthcoming in Vilnius, no new nations came forward to offer troops, leading James Appathurai, NATO spokesman, to claim that this was not a "force generation" meeting, and that no new troop contributions had been expected. NATO spokespeople had been quietly briefing that the NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer wanted these public rows to end and that force generation would be dealt with behind closed doors in future. Hopes for the future bolstering of NATO forces in Afghanistan now rest on the Summit of Heads of State and Government in Bucharest this April. Relations with RussiaRussian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was absent from Friday's meeting with his colleagues from NATO countries, ostensibly for health reasons. His inability to attend was only reported to the hosts as the meeting was due to start. He was replaced by his deputy, Alexander Kolmakov. This clear snub to NATO set the tone for the meeting. Ministers reviewed issues such as CFE, missile defence and Kosovo where differences are sharp between the two sides. There were no reported advances on these major issues. NATO sources contacted were unable to even indicate possible routes for future agreement on Kosovo or missile defence. The Kosovo crisis will loom large this week, as Kosovan Albanians have threatened to declare independence this week - a move supported by most NATO nations and vehemently opposed by Russia. In one small sign of progress, the NATO Russia Council (NRC) Workplan for 2008 was finally agreed, having been blocked by the US at the December meeting. The Bucharest SummitMinisters reviewed progress towards the Bucharest Summit. Three main topics were discussed - NATO's role in cyber-security (following the attacks on official websites and banks in the Baltic states last year); missile defence and the status of the NATO Response Force. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer described how the cyber defence proposal would be dealt with: On cyber defence it was discussed not in relationship by the way with Article 5. Article 5 was not mentioned. But on cyber defence itself, you start with a national responsibility and nations have a course a responsibility to protect themselves against cyber attacks, but here again NATO can offer first of all consultations; that is what NATO is for in the case of serious cyber attacks. NATO has expertise to provide to nations NATO has mobile teams, as we have used in the case that Estonia suffered a cyber attack not that long ago. So there is agreement on the concept as far as cyber defence is concerned.[1] This is a new activity for NATO, that is uncontroversial within the Alliance and will be much trumpeted at Bucharest. Missile defence is another matter. Here discussions were much more cautious, advancing little from last June when Foreign Ministers agreed to study strategic missile defence links to NATO's proposed theatre system. De Hoop Scheffer said that ministers were "... discussing this at the political level in answering the question how NATO responsibility for missile defence relates to the so-called U.S. third site."[2] He added that no final decision could be expected from Bucharest. According to Reuters, Czech sources said that there could be a line in the summit communiqué saying an "interconnection of the systems within a European (defense) architecture is expected".[3] However, in the wake of the NATO meeting the Norwegian government announced that it opposes any deployment of strategic missile defences at European sites - which will greatly complicate the NATO debate. The NATO Response Force was at the centre of discussions at the Riga Summit in November 2006. It was declared fully operational during that Summit. However, NATO has had considerable difficulty both in attracting enough troops to keep the NRF fully up to strength, and has no agreement on how the force should be used. Essentially, some wish to break the 25,000-strong NRF down into smaller units for use in peacekeeping or minor combat missions. Others wish to keep it as a unified force ready for a major intervention beyond the NATO area. No indications were given by the Secretary General or other parties as to how these disputes might be resolved in Bucharest. Official documents from the meeting include:
Endnotes[1] NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Press Conference at NATO HQ, February 8 2008. [2] Ibid. [3] Jan Lopatka and Jan Korselt, 'Czechs see NATO carefully backing shield: source', Reuters, February 6, 2008. © 2008 The Acronym Institute. |