Democracy Arsenal

« Nouri al-Maliki (and Partition) are Bad for Iraq | Main | Iraq Rx: A Shot of Realism »

November 28, 2006

A Fresh Perspective from NATO Summit
Posted by Lorelei Kelly

One of my favorite Brits, Martin Butcher, moved back to the UK from Washington earlier this year...but lo and behold, he's back online already with some fresh reporting from the NATO summit in Riga....you can see the rest here.

Can NATO transform for the 21st century?

From Acronym Consultant Martin Butcher in Riga, November 27, 2006

NATO heads of State and Government meet in Riga, Latvia, on November 28/29, with many outstanding questions on their agenda. While NATO and national government sources agree that the worst of the conflict from the build-up to the invasion of Iraq has dissipated (and for some in Europe the firing of Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense helped), there is a sense that the organisation is somewhat adrift - carrying out missions from Kosovo to Afghanistan, but with no underlying purpose to tie it together.

The subjects that will be on the agenda at the specially made table in Riga - Alliance transformation, burdensharing, the Comprehensive Political Guidance, and even Energy Security - are far less significant than the subjects that will be overlooked - enlargement, the perennially troubled issues of NATO-EU and NATO Russia relations, and most notably the rewriting of the Alliance's mission statement, the 1999 Strategic Concept, with the role of nuclear weapons in Alliance defence policy at its heart.

All this throws up questions which will have to be answered if NATO is to be an influential and important alliance in the 21st Century - what is NATO's role and how should it accomplish that role. A shiny "transformation" exhibition at the Olympic Sports Complex Summit venue shows what the Riga Summit is meant to be about. But there are those in Riga who fear that the focus on the somewhat loose concept of 'NATO transformation' means less than meets the eye.

Riga 2006 was to have been the 'transformation summit', and settled those questions once and for all. Now, it is merely the latest in a line of summits, leading from Istanbul, through Riga, to another Summit in 2008, followed by a 60th birthday party Summit in 2009. Transforming the Alliance, it seems, is a long and politically contentious process.

read the rest of the article here.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c04d69e200d834ca23c353ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference A Fresh Perspective from NATO Summit:

Comments

NATO has shirked on it's humanitarian / peacekeeping responsibilities. More attention needs to be placed on supporting the globally impoverished and helping them create positive solutions to their struggles instead of the alternative. Supporting the UN Millennium Development Goals are a step in the right direction. Agreed to in 2000 by every nation on earth, the UN Millennium Development Goals focus on curbing global poverty, establishing equality, providing primary education, and controling the spread of disease. All actions that will give the world's poor an alternative to squalor.

NATO was established (1) to ensure that the US could control Europe and (2) to sell more military junk to European armies under the "standardization" rubric. I can assure you that curbing poverty was not remotely germane to the US power elite that instigated NATO.

There are certain things in life related to smoking that simply cannot :)
parça kontör
parça kontör bayiliği
parça kontör bayilik

There is a lot of aion online gold in the game,if you want to have them you can come to play the game. Ilike to earn the aion money,because if i have them i can go to buy equipment and i also can go to buy aion gold. if you want to play it, please cheap aion gold and join us. Please do not hesitate to play the game,i believe you will like it too.

I am so happy to get some Tales Of Pirates gold and the Tales Of Pirates money is given by my close friend who tells me that the cheap Tales Of Pirates gold is the basis to enter into the game. Therefore, I should buy Tales Of Pirates Gold with the spare money.

If you have eve isk, you can get more. If you gave eve online isk to me, I still have my idea to achieve.

Once I played Rom Gold, I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have Rom Gold. He gave me some Runes of Magic Gold.

I buy buy Sho Online gold. you can buy Sho Mun, too.

you must borrow wonderland money from friends, or you
buy wonderland Gold.

I buy buy Sho Online gold. you can buy Sho Mun, too.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Subscribe
Sign-up to receive a weekly digest of the latest posts from Democracy Arsenal.
Email: 
Powered by TypePad

Disclaimer

The opinions voiced on Democracy Arsenal are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.
Read Terms of Use