Suchergebnisse

With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greater Middle East must top President Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda. He will also face critical challenges with Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. To deal successfully with any one he must deal effectively with all. Further, he must decide soon how much permanent US military presence to retain in and near the Persian Gulf and assess how much the American people will support open-ended US engagements in the Greater Middle East. Obama will clearly press for more European support, especially in Afghanistan. He should also foster a new regional security structure, in time involving all Middle East states. It should include confidence-building measures, Standing Military and Political Commissions, incidents at sea and freedom of navigation agreements, 'open skies', and OSCE-like cooperation. NATO and the EU can play supporting roles in training and counseling; and outsiders such as the United States should be prepared to intervene military if need be to keep the peace. (Survival / SWP)

The NATO Riga summit of November 2006 was initially supposed to be part of a three-summit package to set the agenda for transformation, to build on it and complete NATO work of the Bush administration, and a third scheduled for April 2009 to complete transformation regarding 21st century challenges. But agenda-setting in Riga has not been what was hoped, and especially disillusions surrounding the NATO-led military operations left the table bare of future planning and schemes for responsibility devising, risking to turn the 2008 and 2009 summits into hollow shells. Which is not to say that the International Security Assistance Force ISAF is not performing its military tasks well in Afghanistan; it is a testimony to nearly 60 years of NATO cooperation that the processes and procedures, the training of troops and interoperability of equipments, have paid off in Afghanistan. An analysis of the Riga meeting and national caveats of individual allies, second thoughts under increased fire and the US-Afghanistan vs. US-Iraq dilemma and Afghanistan's realm "beyond military". The text suggests that the EU assumes its responsibilities for the critical and failing third leg of the ISAF-Afghan government triangle, which will be the coordination of external aid to Afghanistan. Not only will this help proceedings in Afghanistan, it will also be a demonstration of willingness to assume a major share of responsibility for overall success in Afghanistan. References. O. van Zijl