OTAN (Continuación)

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Today's Europe is an island of stability in a sea of conflict. To the east, Russia has added its own military forces to the separatist conflict that it manufactured in Ukraine. To the south, growing instability and extremism are fuelled by fragile states and sectarian strife.

Nato greatest responsibility is to guard and defend our allies the 28 member states against any attack. We also need to strengthen our capacity to deal with crises, and to operate with partners to preserve the international rules-based order.

As we gather for our summit in Wales subsequent week, our response to Russia aggression and to the crisis in Iraq will be crucial topics on the agenda.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Vladimir Putin is placing a cynical bet that he can invade Ukraine just one week before a NATO summit — and that NATO will do nothing to stop him. The alliance must prove him wrong.

Despite sharp words from Brussels, Washington, London and Berlin, the Russian president believes that NATO lacks the will to challenge his dismemberment of Ukraine. By sending troops, tanks and artillery directly into the Ukrainian fighting, Putin is making a point: He will fight for Ukraine, and NATO will not. He is calling NATO’s bluff.

The Western response will be read carefully from Kiev to Tallinn to Moscow.…  Seguir leyendo »

As NATO withers, whither NATO?

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As world leaders gather for the NATO summit in Wales during the first week of September, they’ll need to do some collective soul-searching on the alliance’s future.

NATO served its original purpose in preventing the Soviet Union from overrunning Western Europe, but the world isn’t much safer today. Everywhere we look, deadly threats abound — from radical Islamist terrorist groups and a future nuclear-armed Iran to a resurgent Russia focused on restoring an empire to the rise of China, and more.

Despite these shared security challenges, the continued alliance isn’t guaranteed as most member nations balk at budget expectations equaling 2 percent of national gross domestic product, while sharply disagreeing on policy matters, including what constitutes a mutual threat.…  Seguir leyendo »

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When NATO’s leaders gather in Wales in early September, they will address several issues critical to the alliance, including Russian adventurism in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, members’ contribution to collective defense, the adequacy of individual national defense budgets and plans for supporting the people of Afghanistan. In the course of their deliberations on these issues, however, they also should reaffirm the value to the alliance of the continued presence of the modest number of U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe. We believe this is necessary because we are again hearing calls for the United States to unilaterally withdraw its small arsenal of forward- deployed nuclear bombs.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Avec l'apparente lenteur qui lui est coutumière, l'OTAN s'achemine vers une modification de sa posture à l'égard de la Russie. Celle-ci avait déjà évolué après le conflit russo-géorgien de 2008. Les signaux envoyés à Moscou s'étaient traduits par une réorientation des exercices militaires et des planifications vers le traitement des menaces continentales, mais sans changement de posture. La situation pourrait évoluer, le premier ministre britannique, David Cameron, ayant appelé l'OTAN à repenser sa relation avec la Russie et à la considérer comme un adversaire alors que le secrétaire général de l'OTAN, Fogh Anders Rasmussen, a évoqué la préparation de nouveaux plans de défense.…  Seguir leyendo »

Will NATO end with a whimper?

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April marked the 65th birthday of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed at the height of the Cold War to stop the huge postwar Red Army from overrunning Western Europe.

NATO in 1949 had only 12 members, comprising Western Europe, Canada and the United States. Its original mission was simple. According to the alliance’s first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, NATO was formed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Western Europeans were terrified of the Soviet Union, which had just gobbled up all of Eastern Europe. They feared that the American Army would go home after World War II, just as it had after World War I, consistent with its isolationist past.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Russian and Western perspectives on the crisis in Ukraine are bound to diverge, but the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 should bring us together. This is not only because we can appreciate and feel saddened by the scale of the human loss, but also because the incident is a harbinger of the wider danger we are in. Of profound concern is the possibility of an unintended escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation. To avoid such a development, policy makers need to relearn some important crisis management lessons from history.

Just consider that even before the Flight 17 disaster, we had seen a huge deterioration in mutual trust between Russia and the West.…  Seguir leyendo »

Longtime Scotland resident J.K. Rowling has emphasized the economic downsides of a divorce from the rest of the United Kingdom. (Lefteris Pitarakis / AP)

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Novelist and longtime Scotland resident J.K. Rowling did not mention national security issues when she recently donated 1 million pounds ($1.71 million) to the Better Together Campaign, which wants Scottish voters to reject the independence option in the Sept. 18 referendum. Rowling — creator of Harry Potter and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft — did emphasize the economic downsides of a divorce from the rest of the United Kingdom. But if her funds and celebrity status help "no" voters carry the day, she will share the credit for a real-life geo-strategic feat: saving Britain's nuclear deterrent.

The pro-independence leaders of the ruling Scottish National Party have pledged to terminate arrangements, dating from the 1960s, for basing British ballistic missile submarines and their nuclear warheads at Faslane and Coulport on Scotland's west coast.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In reacting to Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, President Obama has reassured exposed NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of firm U.S. support, but he has shown little inclination to show needed leadership by putting another integral element of NATO policy on the agenda of September’s Cardiff summit: enlargement of the alliance. Obama’s hesitation, which has allowed NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to put off the question of enlargement until next year, is unwise and unnecessary.

NATO enlargement, a bipartisan effort that has spanned the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, has been one of the most successful U.S. foreign policy achievements of the past two decades.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The centerpiece of President Obama’s recent trip to Europe was a $1 billion program of new military exercises on land, at sea and in the air, to reassure our friends and allies of America’s commitment to their security. That may sound like a lot of money, but in terms of military spending, it’s not much at all.

More important, the so-called European Reassurance Initiative has failed to impress America’s Eastern European allies. Polish officials, for instance, quickly labeled it insufficient.

Instead of spending money to transport troops and equipment in and out of Eastern Europe, President Obama should adopt a bolder strategy: American and NATO forces should have new, permanent bases in Poland and elsewhere on the territory of NATO members in Central and Eastern Europe.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Tema: Los días 4-5 de septiembre de 2014 tendrá lugar la Cumbre de la OTAN en Gales. Lo que en principio parecía una reunión de trámite se ha convertido gracias a la crisis de Ucrania en una Cumbre donde los aliados tendrán que pronunciarse sobre algunas cuestiones fundamentales que planean sobre la Alianza desde hace tiempo sin resolverse.

Resumen: Las expectativas de la Cumbre de la OTAN en Gales cambiaron radicalmente por la crisis de Ucrania. Si antes de ella el problema de la agenda era encontrar un orden del día capaz de atraer la atención política y mediática en un clima político, económico y de opinión poco favorable a cuestiones relacionadas con la Defensa, ahora se trata de evitar que la crisis ucraniana acapare la agenda de la Cumbre.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Casi al mismo tiempo que Rusia se apoderó de Crimea, el ex primer ministro noruego Jens Stoltenberg fue elegido nuevo secretario general de la OTAN. La Alianza Atlántica y su nuevo líder se enfrentarán a dos problemas complejos. Primero, cómo responder si Rusia utiliza medios violentos en su política de reconstruir un espacio económico pos-soviético. Segundo, qué hacer con las operaciones militares fuera del área tradicional de la OTAN.

Rusia puede generar gran inestabilidad si reivindica la defensa de las minorías rusas en países que fueron miembros del Pacto de Varsovia. La OTAN intervino en 1999 apoyando el secesionismo kosovar. Moscú ha comprobado en Crimea que Estados Unidos y Europa no están dispuestos a usar la fuerza para sostener la soberanía de Ucrania.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The Russian military incursion into Ukraine has focused renewed attention upon the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Sixty-five years after NATO’s founding to counter Soviet expansionism and 26 years after the collapse of the Soviet empire, it is back to the future for NATO. The organization must now take the steps necessary to deter and counter Moscow’s objective of regional domination.

Critics have contended that NATO, a security alliance founded in 1949 that binds the United States with 26 European nations and Canada, is irrelevant to 21st-century international politics. For example, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass in June 2011 contended that “If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it?…  Seguir leyendo »

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Russia’s annexation of Crimea is unlikely to lead to a new Cold War; Russia is simply too weak to compete on a global level. But there is a serious risk that the United Nations could revert to Cold War-era gridlock.

In the euphoria of the Cold War’s end, Presidents Mikhail S. Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush envisioned a “new world order” in which the United Nations would emerge as the guardian of global security. Even during the low points of their relationship, the United States and Russia have kept this vision alive by preserving the United Nations’ role as a convener of collective action.…  Seguir leyendo »

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NATO’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drawn a red line, but it is one that leaves Ukraine militarily isolated, fending for itself. If the West’s economic and diplomatic sanctions are to deter Moscow from further military aggression, they must be complemented by a robust defensive strategy to reinforce Ukraine’s armed forces.

When Russia invaded Crimea, it mobilized 150,000 troops along Ukraine’s eastern frontier. Most of those forces still menace Ukraine, with some 20,000 troops still occupying the peninsula while provocateurs sent by Moscow continue to stir unrest in the country’s eastern regions.

NATO’s response has, by contrast, been underwhelming.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In response to Moscow’s slow-motion annexation of Crimea, some have called for the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to place trainers and advisers in Ukraine to act as a “tripwire" against further Russian incursions. The idea is that the risk of setting off a conflict with the West would tame Russian President Vladimir Putin's expansionism. "That is something the most rabid Soviet expansionist never risked," writes the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer. "Nor would Putin."

Actually, Putin himself has twice risked a direct confrontation between NATO and Russian troops in order to defend against what he perceived as the alliance’s encirclement of Russia.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The causes of the unfolding crisis in Ukraine are many, but most fundamentally its roots can be found in an enormously consequential decision made by the United States and its allies in the early 1990s. Faced with a strategic challenge of constructing a new security architecture for post-Cold War Europe, the decision was made to embark on a program of gradual NATO expansion to the east.

A first round of accession took place in 1999, with membership for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. That was followed in 2004 by membership for Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, and in 2009 by membership for Albania and Croatia.…  Seguir leyendo »

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En contra de lo que piensan quienes afirman que no corren buenos tiempos para la defensa antimisiles, existen motivos para pensar que tiene y tendrá una importancia creciente. Las declaraciones del ministro de Exteriores ruso, Sergei Lavrov, según el cual el acuerdo interino alcanzado entre el P5+1 e Irán eliminaba cualquier justificación que pudiera tener la OTAN para desarrollar su sistema antimisiles, fueron un tanto prematuras. Por otro lado, en los últimos tiempos se han producido dos acontecimientos que han alimentado el debate sobre el sistema de defensa antimisiles aliado del que forma parte la base naval de Rota: por un lado, la elección de China como proveedor de un sistema antimisiles a Turquía, y, por otro, el anuncio ruso de que desplegará misiles tácticos Iskander en su distrito militar occidental.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Rota, en la costa atlántica española, es la primera vez que un barco de la Armada de Estados Unidos equipado con el avanzado sistema de defensa antimisiles Aegis estará estacionado en Europa en forma permanente.

El USS Donald Cook es el primero de cuatro destructores de la marina estadounidense que, con alrededor de 1200 marineros y otros miembros del personal, cumplirán un papel central en el sistema de defensa antimisiles de la OTAN. Pero la misión de estas naves no se agota allí: también participarán en operaciones de seguridad marítima, ejercicios conjuntos (bilaterales y multilaterales) y otras operaciones y despliegues de la OTAN, entre ellos el Grupo Marítimo Permanente de la OTAN.…  Seguir leyendo »

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En 2014 se cumple el vigésimo aniversario del conocido como Partnership for Peace (PfP), un programa de cooperación bilateral entre la OTAN y los veintidós países integrados en el llamado Euro Atlantic Partnership Council. El lanzamiento de este programa supuso un hito en la historia de la Alianza, puesto que materializaba en la práctica el nuevo marco de cooperación Este-Oeste surgido tras el desmembramiento de la antigua Unión Soviética. En la actualidad, participan en este programa las repúblicas ex soviéticas –Rusia incluida- países de la antigua Yugoslavia, así como Austria, Irlanda, Finlandia, Malta, Suecia y Suiza. La mayor parte de los países del Este de Europa que estuvieron bajo la influencia soviética también formaron parte del PfP en su momento, pero en la actualidad ya están completamente integrados en la OTAN.…  Seguir leyendo »