The adoption of the Strategic Concept included a number of innovative initiatives and elegant political formulations and was seen as a major achievement. For example in a surprising and bold initiative, NATO’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen invited Russia to cooperate with NATO on missile defence and other areas of shared interest. Moreover the Alliance decided at Lisbon to undertake a comprehensive review of NATO’s defence and deterrence posture, including a review of the role of nuclear weapons in Alliance strategy, including the really difficult issue concerning the fate of the remaining (approximately) 200 American-owned non-strategic nuclear weapons based in Europe. In addition, the Strategic Concept elevatedCrisis Management and Cooperative Security to core tasks on a par with the traditional main task – Collective Security.

The Chicago Summit seems an excellent opportunity to reflect on what the Alliance has achieved in these two new core tasks – notably as a crisis management actor in Libya and as a cooperative security actor through new strategic relationships with emerging powers, international organizations and with Russia. In addition the expectation has been raised that the Chicago Summit would provide the occasion for the Alliance to produce a comprehensive outline of what the alliance considers the appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defense forces to maintain a credible defense and a credible and relevant policy of deterrence, as well as demonstrating progress on the initiative to cooperate with Russia on missile defense.

Whether the expectations generated at the Lisbon Summit will be met is however today in question. NATO will certainly still be able to take stock of the mission in Afghanistan and a new (albeit rather vague) partnership policy has also been adopted. However, there has not been much progress on any of the other, originally assumed, key issues, such as a revision of NATO’s defence and deterrence posture, cooperation with Russia on missile defence, alongside increased cooperation with other international actors. This is a problem because these are precisely the areas where NATO has the greatest need for change if the Alliance is to remain relevant in the looming conditions of a ‘post-western’ international system.

No doubt NATO will do its best to brush over the original intentions behind the Chicago Summit and will seek to present the agenda as consisting of the most important issues facing the Alliance today. This is likely to be successful because NATO does have an extremely able diplomatic bureaucracy – expert in presenting even mediocre achievements as outstanding successes and with the benefit of operating in an environment with a short memory span.

Moreover, NATO has had plenty of time for planning and for NATO’s international staff to formulate an agenda, which appears to follow the original plan set out in Lisbon. However although the gain may be a smooth Summit (which in a bureaucracy such as NATO counts as a success), the longterm costs of not grappling with the difficult issues now, may be a less relevant future NATO.

A streamlined agenda

The Chicago Summit seems likely to have only three main topics – Afghanistan; defence capabilities, including the proposal for ‘smart defense’; and partnerships. The other issues introduced at Lisbon have now been relegated to secondary headings, which will appear in the communiqué, but which are unlikely to have a high public profile. Moreover, the Summit seems likely to maintain a ‘deafening silence’ about the most fundamental questions raised in connection with the launch of the new Strategic Concept – namely, whether the new NATO will remain relevant in a changed world where America’s attention will pivot towards Asia, while Europeans will increasingly be expected to ‘keep their own house in order’.

According to senior NATO diplomats the absolutely central issue at the Summit will be the transition towards a non-combat role in Afghanistan. The Alliance will use the Summit to reaffirm NATO’s continued support for the Afghan people. NATO will naturally do everything to present the outcome of the Afghanistan mission in a positive way, but behind the rhetorical niceties, there will also be a firm determination to reach some form of agreement on the funding of Afghan security forces after 2014. The ambition is to secure a contribution of 1 billion Euros, which under prevailing economic conditions seems to be a pretty ambitious goal.

The second main theme is capabilities – including Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s initiative for a so-called ‘smart defense’. Although ‘smart defense’ may just be a clever way of saying that NATO must spend less without compromising NATO’s abilities, the initiative could have potentially far-reaching consequences. What is certain is that ‘smart defense’ will be the key word heard in public, whilst other less rhetorically appealing forms of capabilities such as air policing, intelligence, surveillance, drones and reconnaissance will be on the working agenda. In addition NATO will announce that the missile defense that was agreed in Lisbon in 2010 is now operational in the first phase – albeit without the planned cooperation with Russia in place.

Tucked in the summit communiqué there is also likely to be a statement that NATO supports President Obama’s stated aim of a world without nuclear weapons, and that NATO will seek reductions – preferably through negotiations with Russia on non-strategic nuclear weapons located in Europe and western Russia. It seems unlikely however that the Summit will produce the originally intended statement on what the Alliance considers to be ‘an appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defense forces’.

The third item on the Chicago Summit agenda is partnerships. On this topic NATO has actually agreed a new NATO partnership policy, which includes an aim to develop new strategic relationships and a greater focus on differentiation between different partners according to the needs and shared interests of prospective partners. Moreover, NATO has agreed that those partners who contribute to Alliance operations need to have increased influence and increased access to information. However, it remains unclear what NATO might be able to contribute to partners. The problem is that even though NATO’s new partnership policy is a good start, the precise contours of the policy remain vague and the issue that contributing partners may expect something in return for their contributions is not a question which NATO so far has been willing to address.

Rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic

Unfortunately, the summit agenda seems to be composed solely of topics that are important internally to NATO as a security Organization. It is however equally important to address issues that are important outside the NATO framework, especially topics that are important for NATO’s existing and prospective partners and especially to the leading member, the United States.

Since the launch of the strategic concept in 2010, NATO has been the subject of a growing debate over whether the Alliance can remain relevant in a world where focus is increasingly directed towards Asia and where the European member states have been reluctant to participate in the very missions (Afghanistan and Libya) that endow the alliance with relevance. The question that should be asked in Chicago – and which is frequently discussed in the corridors of NATO – is what is needed for NATO to remain relevant in the world order characterized by a waning interest in European security challenges. The problem here is that the questions that will be on the agenda at the Chicago Summit are the least important in relation to the issue of relevance. Granted, it is important to ‘wrap up’ properly on more than a decade spent in Afghanistan, and who can be against ‘smart defence’? It is also positive that NATO now has a partnership policy, and the Alliance will be able to declare an interim capability on missile defence. The problem is that these are all Alliance focused issues. Yet, if NATO cannot remain a relevant security actor in relation to a number of other actors in a changing international system, the initiatives on the agenda for the Chicago Summit will matter little more than rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

The big question is whether there is a need for an organization like NATO in a ‘post-western’ world. NATO’s Strategic Concept of 2010 pointed to several security challenges in which NATO could play a role as a relevant security actor in relation to both maintaining member states’ security and in relation to ensuring accessibility to resources, keeping open and secure trade and communication routes (including cyber security), and contributing to regional stability. In addition, the mission in Libya showed that NATO is the only security Organization that can be sent out at short notice when the unexpected crisis occurs.  This is of tremendous importance because in a post-western world, NATO’s relevance is not only dependent on the ability of the Alliance (with substantial US support) to defend its members. A relevant NATO in a post-western world, is a NATO which new and emerging powers want to partner; which the existing power centre (USA) still wants to nurture; and which those without power still deem appropriate to turn to when the crisis happens. Sadly the agenda for the Chicago Summit does not seem to strengthen NATO along these three dimensions.

Chicago – a missed opportunity?
 

The last 18 months have demonstrated that although most Alliance members are aware that NATO ^↑ must change, a few member states continue to hamper NATO’s ability to undertake the necessary transformation. Unfortunately the streamlined Chicago agenda seems likely NOT to include three crucial issues areas, suggesting that NATO will miss this opportunity to ensure its own relevance.

Firstly, it is unfortunate that NATO has not been able to agree on a revision of the nuclear strategy that was formulated during the Cold War and which rests on the assumption that US ‘nuclear protection’ is best ensured through the stationing of US non-strategic nuclear weapons on European territory. NATO has already disposed of approx. 90 percent of these weapons, but there are still around 200 aging free-fall bombs of the type B61 left in Europe. Since the delivery systems (Tornado and F-16 aircraft) are coming up for replacement, the question of what to do with the European-based nuclear capability cannot be put off for long.

Secondly, it is also unfortunate that NATO and Russia have not been able to agree on a programme for cooperation on missile defence. The establishment of new strategic relationships with a wide variety of different actors, who may or may not share the values of the Alliance will be an increasingly important precondition for relevance in an international system where power will be more evenly distributed and where shared interests will not necessarily follow shared values. There is still potential for a changed relationship with Russia, but NATO must agree as an Alliance on whether Russia is cast as a potential adversary or as a potential partner. At the moment NATO (and Russian) rhetoric oscillates from one to the other.

Finally, despite clear signals from the United States that European allies can only remain relevant to the United States if they are willing and able to contribute to NATO missions, several NATO members seem not to have taken the hint. NATO is no longer just about the US protecting Europe – Europeans must also support the United States. Nevertheless, the European allies flocked to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible and NATO could only muster 8 members (out of 28) in the mission in Libya. Moreover, although the United States has reassured the Europeans that Europe remains America’s main ally, one cannot ignore the fact that the focus on Europe has diminished and that prominent American analysts are talking about a significantly reduced US role in Europe. A NATO acting on the basis of ‘coalitions of the willing’ cannot remain cohesive for long.

It may therefore prove to be the case that despite a successful Summit in Chicago at the end of the week – NATO will not be a particularly relevant security organization at the end of the decade.

Originally published by Open Democracy

Note that there are 1.5 billion Muslims and only 310 million Americans, and Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia are now in the G20, so this is not a fight you’d want to pick with the Muslim mainstream.

Spencer Ackerman of the Wired War Room reported on the course and also shared some of its powerpoint slides on line.

Aljazeera English also received material and broadcast on the controversy:

What is odd is that the US military is deeply dependent on Muslim allies, and Muslim officers train all the time at places like Ft. Bragg, where I have met them. That is, American officers and Muslim ones are most often colleagues and do a lot of things together. How could they sit there and listen to Lt Col Matthew Dooley’s bull crap?

In my experience, the US officer corps is made up largely of very bright people and most of them are well informed, about the Muslim world and many other subjects. I’ve had the privilege of addressing them myself at think tank events in Washington DC on subjects such as al-Qaeda’s recruitment videos and the fringe groups’ ideas about cosmic war. But since there are lapses in any Organization, here are some helpful suggestions to the military about courses on Islam:

1. Such courses should be taught by people with academic credentials in the study of Islam. Many officers do a Master’s degree in Middle East studies at major universities (I’ve taught them at Michigan). They have the training to teach. But why not also bring in civilian university teachers with Ph.D.s from good universities?

2. Bringing in the Imam of the local mosque, or better, doing a field trip to a mosque, should be an essential part of such a course. Meeting living breathing American Muslims is necessary if Americans are to understand Islam.

3. Some bigot who happens to have been stationed somewhere in the Muslim world, has read Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes and Brad Thor fiction, and has a lot of crazy ideas is not a proper teacher of such a course.

4. The less our officer corps sounds like Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, the better.

5. Deliberately killing civilians is a war crime. Officers who openly advocate such a course of action should be cashiered.

6. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt now has the largest number of seats in parliament in Egypt. It is not an extremist, violent Organization, and US political relations with Egypt now depend on Washington getting up to speed in understanding it. A kindred group, the Nahdah or Renaissance Party, has the prime ministership in Tunisia. Officers who provoke international incidents with foreign governments by making false allegations against their parliaments should be drummed out of the service.

7. If you can’t say it about Jews or Catholics, you can’t say it about Muslims.

8. The one thing that would guarantee a century-long war of religions and massive terrorism against the United States would be for it to bomb Mecca. Why Muslim-haters are fixated on this tactic baffles me. Would Christianity disappear or be weakened if someone nuked the Church of the Nativity? Sunni Muslims don’t have a pope-like figure or a central bureaucracy, and neither is at Mecca. It is just a place they visit on pilgrimage. The Kaaba or cube-shaped building that they walk around has been destroyed many times by flash floods and they have just rebuilt it. By destroying it, you’d just enrage them (the very threat enrages them) and provoke them to revenge on the US, without weakening them in any way.

9. If intelligent officers sit through a course in which the teacher seems to be a maniac and says hateful and implausible things, they should, like, object.

10. The Iraq War is over. The Afghanistan War is winding down. The US military is unlikely to be fighting ground wars against Sunni Muslims in the next decade. Turkey is a NATO ally that the US is sworn to defend from attackers. Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bahrain and Afghanistan are non-NATO allies of the United States. An officer advocating war on mainstream Muslims is making policy that only a president and a Congress can make. He should be drummed out of the service.

Originally published by Informed Comment

Both governments faces a plethora of socio-political problems and, specific to Iran, an economic crisis; for each then, it is currently highly beneficial to direct the attention of their populations outside their own borders. Precisely how long such a policy will last depends largely on both domestic and international developments.

The domestic benefits of the Iranian nuclear crisis

Contrary to most reports, the clash between Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become quite transparent in the last thirteen months. This is evident not only in their rhetoric but from their growing disagreement on a political level. While in the past few months the supreme leader has attempted to impose his will on the government, just last week Ahmadinejad declared ^↑ ↑ that his administration will suspend those laws that are not of benefit to his government.

Since the 5+1 group (the UN Security Council permanent members and Germany) recommenced nuclear negotiations with Iran in mid-April in Istanbul, the interior conflict has escalated to a higher level. Last month an editorial article ^↑ ↑ ↑ in the government’s official newspaper, IRAN, accused the supreme leader’s allies of sending a separate and different message to the west in its coverage of the negotiations. It is crucial to register that, for the first time, Istanbul’s summit took place under the supervision of the supreme leader’s special representatives rather than the Iranian government. Although there is no doubt that Iran’s nuclear strategy is determined by the supreme leader and top-ranking Revolutionary Guard generals, it seems that there is a general consensus among Iranian decision-makers that Ahmadinejad’s ambitions should be curbed. Despite the fact that Ahmadinejad’s government has been elected and shaped by the Revolutionary Guard (almost all of his ministers including himself are members of the militia) and backed by the supreme leader, Khamenei nonetheless attempts to curtail his influence in both interior and exterior affairs.

The ongoing tension between decision-makers has filtered down into Iranian society. On the one hand, the socio-political situation has spurred resistance from the Iranian people. Iran maintains the highest rate of execution and imprisonment of journalists in the world. As Ahmed Shaheed, the UN human rights advisor has reported ^↑ ↑ ↑ , hundreds of Iranians have been sentenced to execution for thoughts and gestures construed as oppositional, many without court hearings or access to lawyers. On the other hand, the economic crisis has increased the discontent of the people and placed the Islamic state in a critical situation. While the green movement represents the middle class opposition, economic difficulties facing the lower class have the potential to unite working class desperation with the green movement’s political ideals. In an attempt to quell popular resistance, the Islamic regime is searching for a new model to control both domestic and international unrest.

This amalgam of middle class socio-political opposition and economic dissatisfaction among the working class has prompted the supreme leader and his allies to send a new message to the west. What the Islamic regime currently pursues is (i) the reduction of conflict between top level decision-makers, (ii) the shift of the world’s concerns about Iran to its nuclear programme, and (iii) the suppression of domestic opposition in the name of the possibility of war. This is perhaps why they responded positively to the west in the Istanbul meeting and hinted at a possible change to their nuclear policy. Indeed, the main agenda of the late May summit in Baghdad is the halt or reduction of uranium enrichment within a given timeline. And yet in spite of the seemingly yielding stance taken by the Islamic regime as of late, Khamenei stated ^↑ ↑ ↑ in his last speech on Thursday that the regime will never trust ‘the West’. To quote Major General Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr on the subject of North Korea (an enduring model for the Islamic state): “North Korea never halts its nuclear programme, thus their political system remains intact. Libya, however, has ceased its unclear programme and look where Muammar Gaddafi is now.”

To comprehend the whole picture, though, it is necessary to consider Iran’s economic situation in some detail. While the past five years of the UN sanctions on Iran have been to the detriment of Iranian society more so than the state, new term sanctions by western countries targeting Iran’s oil industry and international finance system have put the regime itself in a more fragile condition. The consequence of the three devaluations of Iranian currency over the last two months, according to the Central Bank of Iran’s report ^↑ ↑ ↑ , is a 156% increase in the cost of living. This has for the first time led the supreme leader to publicly demonstrate his dissatisfaction with his former ally Ahmadinejad. Contrary to the Islamic state’s claims, almost all studies and statistics underline the depth of the impact on Iran of the UN sanctions. Last week, Mohammad Khosh-Chehreh, Ahmadinejad’s former financial adviser, confessed ^↑ ↑ ↑  that the impact of the economic situation on the Iranian people was dramatic. The outcome of government policy, he claims, is a chasm created between the small sect tied to the government and its oil revenue, and the rest of society that cannot hope to survive under these conditions.

The situation of the working class is under the most pressure since the 1979 Revolution as a direct result of Ahmadinejad’s administration. Contrary to some western reports, his policies are not and never were in favour of the working class. Based on Iranian Labour News Agency’s, ILNA, report ^↑ ↑ ↑ , more than more than80% ^↑ ↑ of workers live under the poverty line. During the last ten months alone, 44,525 workers were dismissed ^↑ ↑ ↑ from factories; more than 56% of factories have declared bankruptcy ^↑ ↑ ↑ . Over 1200 workers’ protests have been reported. Human Rights Watch states that in 2012, the Iranian working class and its activists face more suppression than ever before. While the Islamic parliament declares ^↑ ↑ ↑that the rate of inflation has reached its greatest height since the Revolution at 40%, and the rate of unemployment is almost 23%, independent researches ^↑ ↑ ↑ suggest that the actual numbers are in fact much higher.

The Islamic regime may well benefit from a resonating Israeli threat in these circumstances. While sending a new and more amicable message to the west to reduce the “actual” military threat, they retain the rhetoric of war in order to take advantage of any effects that this “threat” may have on the people. There is a Persian phrase that lies at the heart of the Islamic regime’s policy: to export your crisis you need an enemy. Although of course any threat of war or other military option is very serious, at this moment the Islamic state may be keen to reduce the level of military threat but not eliminate it completely. The shadow of war allows the regime to sidestep its internal responsibilities just a little bit longer.

Similar gains for the Israeli government?

While last week Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency,accused ^↑ ↑ ↑ both Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak of exaggerating the effectiveness of a military attack on Iran and suggested that a strike might actually accelerate the Iranian programme, interestingly his criticisms were entirely ignored not only by the Israeli government but also by the Islamic regime. “They are not the people that I personally trust to lead Israel into such an event” Diskin said. Although this has been welcomed, if cautiously, by activists, it seems that the main reading of this message from official figures in both countries is to reduce this criticism to the level of personal opinion. An almost identical reaction occurred when last month Shaul Mofaz, former military chief and defense minister, stated ^↑ ↑ ↑ that threats of an imminent military strike are actually weakening Israel. Although what he proposes is that any military option against Iran must be fully coordinated with the USA, it seems that Obama’s policy in his last months of presidency do not support an immediate ^↑ ↑ ↑ military operation. A recentsurvey ^↑ ↑ ↑ , conducted by the Israeli Dahaf agency for the University of Maryland, suggested that 81 percent of Israelis oppose a solo attack on Iran. Therefore, as some analysts suggest ^↑ ↑ ↑ , although the people of Israel are constantly subjected to their government’s propaganda, they do not currently demand a war with Iran.

To comprehend Iran-Israel relations after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, one should consider the Shah’s stance toward Israel as an illegitimate nation. There is no doubt that this propaganda aims to unite Iranians and Arabs as guarantors of Muslim rights in the Middle East. Iran’s support of both Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Bashar al Assad’s government is in keeping with this policy. More than twenty years after the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) there has emerged some vague but significant evidence, as articulated by some top-ranking Revolutionary Guard generals as well as high level officials’ memoirs, which suggest that Iran was assisted by the Israeli government to win that war. Documents show that during the last few years Iran has in fact traded with Israel on several occasions. Tons of fruits^↑ ↑ ↑ with Israeli labels filled Iran’s marketplace two years ago. The Islamic parliament initially reacted to this matter but ultimately ignored the case. Last Wednesday the judicial system accused ^↑ ↑ ↑ some officials in government of a secret and illegitimate contract worth more than € 100 million with one of Israel’s transmission companies. Yet most Iranians who witnessed Ahmadinejad’s first term campaign still remember that his major promise centred on Iran’s economic situation and his top issue was the previous governments’ financial corruption. In spite of this supposed focus, immediately after his election he organized an infamous international conference on Zionism in which he attacked Israel and denied the Holocaust.

To maintain their supremacy and impose their sovereignty with minimal opposition, both the Islamic state and Israeli government choose same tactic: widespread propaganda about a powerful enemy who threatens to annihilate their country, notwithstanding the fact that this may affect the precarious balance of power and transform the potentially lethal situation at any moment.

Originally published by Open Democracy

Originally published by Dawn Pakistan