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NATO Overreaching Itself Globally

The emergence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops in Afghanistan and the rapid expansion in the scope of its moves have shown a new trend in the process of its hastened shift toward globalization, and this has drawn extensive concern of people worldwide.

NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a long-term partnership agreement to boost bilateral ties on September 6, one month after the NATO took over from the United States the command of troops in southern Afghanistan. And from September 2, the International Security Assistant Forces (ISAF) led by NATO launched repeated, large-scale military actions against Taliban in the southern part of Afghanistan. Owing to frequent assaults from Taliban, says a NATO official website, the number of NATO soldiers to be stationed in Afghanistan is expected to reach up to 18,500 by the end of this year from 8,000 as originally planned.

NATO has intensified its interference in the affairs of major "hot spot" regions in recent years. It took over the command of troops from the U.S. and led forces from 37 counties in six provinces in southern Afghanistan in late July. Meanwhile, NATO continues to carry out its peacekeeping mission in Kosovo; it partakes in the reconstruction of Iraq and help train 1,500 officers for Iraqi security forces. In Africa, following a request by the African Union (AU), NATO has, since July 2005, helped the AU expand its peacekeeping mission in Darfur region of the Sudan by providing airlift for additional AU peacekeepers into the region and by training AU forces, and continued to offer logistical support to AU in transport and communications fields.

The frequent appearing of its troops in the "hot-spot" areas is closely related to the growing strategic functions of the NATO. In 1999, it released a new strategic document, namely, the Alliance's Strategic Concept, which translated the NATO's main task from "collective defense" of the cold war era into "the defense of the common concept of value", explicitly suggesting that NATO should undertake the function of safeguarding global security.

Since September l1 attack in 2001, NATO has taken anti-terrorism endeavor as another strategic goal. The Christian Science Monitor of the U.S. acknowledged in a commentary that NATO "has been working to transform itself from a cold-war, Europe-focused bulwark against a Communist threat to a military and political alliance relevant to the world of the 21st century."

NATO's Prague summit held in 2002 adopted a resolution to form a 21,000-member rapid response force in four years, to respond to any possible global terrorist activities and other related threats at any time. NATO had established a rapid response force of 17,500 servicemen by October 2004 and, by October this year, the number of the force will increase up to 20,000 people. The ministerial meeting of NATO members passed a "guideline" for military actions, under which NATO is entitled to deploy 300,000 troops to the maximum to carry out eight military missions globally and simultaneously whenever it deems necessary.

Manned with such a rapid response force, the NATO will naturally step up its effort to expand its domain and the scope of its moves. It launched military drills in Cape Verde, western Africa in June this year, the first of its kind ever held in Africa, and it plans to propose at another summit a plan for global partnership in November, which is aimed to enhance its cooperation with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, while working to expand the extent of its cooperation with such "democratic nations" as Brazil, India, South African and the Republic of Korea.

The greatest force at core driving the NATO to overreach itself worldwide comes from the United States on the other side of the Atlantic. The American Journal "Foreign Affairs", which is quite influential to the US foreign policies, carried an article entitled "Global NATO" in early September, which says that "NATO's next move must be to open its membership to any democratic state in the world that is willing and able to contribute to the fulfillment of NATO's new responsibilities", and to establish a global partnership council so that the NATO partners will be across the world.

In the late stage of the recent Lebanon-Israel conflict, the United States once attempted to follow its Afghan mode by empowering NATO to dispatch troops to take charge of security matters in southern Lebanon and monitor the implementation of the relevant truce agreement, but met with strong opposition from other NATO member nations. Consequently, NATO is still facing lots of restraints, difficulties and challenges if it really wants to "go global" from the continent of Europe.

Original article posted here.