Claeskrantz.com

Etikett: NATO. Ryssland

  • Dick Cheneys säkerhetsrådgivare i Georgien för anfallet mot sydossetsien

    ”What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels — and then Russian troops? … Joseph R. Wood, Cheney’s deputy assistant for national security affairs, was in Georgia shortly before the war began. But, the vice president’s office says, he was there as part of a team setting up the vice president’s just-announced visit to Georgia. …”


    Från     LA-Times. Tydligen var en av Dick Cheneys säkerhetsrådgivare i Georgien några dagar före det Georgiska anfallet mot syd-ossetsien. Vilket måste vara vad Putin syftar på här när han säger att det fanns amerikanska rådgivare på plats.

    ´“We have serious reasons to believe that American citizens were right at the heart of the military action. This would have implications for American domestic policy. If this is confirmed, we will have grounds to suspect that somebody in the U.S. has created this conflict to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the presidential candidates”

    Nedan finns en text från Cheneys säkerhetsrådgivare’s besök i Georgien 2007. Woods bio finns här. Han är en för detta flygvapnenöverste som arbetat för Cheney sedan 2001 först utlånade av pentagon. Han bio är också intressant med tanke på banden till Frankrike som förutom USA är Georgiens största sponsor. SHAPE är NATO’s ledning i Europa.

    He is a retired Air Force colonel, and his career included
    operational and command fighter assignments in Korea and Europe; a
    faculty position at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the Department of
    Political Science; and duty at the Pentagon as speech writer and
    politico-military affairs officer for the Chief of Staff and Vice Chief
    of Staff of the Air Force. He held temporary assignments in the Joint
    Staff, the U.S. Mission to the Conventional Forces in Europe Talks in
    Vienna, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and SHAPE Headquarters
    in Mons, Belgium. After retiring from the Air Force, he worked at NASA
    and the RAND Corporation before returning to the White House in his
    present position. He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy in
    Colorado and the French Joint Defense College in Paris, and he holds a
    Masters degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where his
    studies focused on security policy and European politics. He is
    married and has two daughters.

    Förövrigt hur många NATO/USA militärrådgivare fanns på plats när Georgien startade sitt anfall? Liksom Israeler? I praktiken gjorde väst allt utom att köra de Georgiska soldaterna fram till anfallet verkar det som.

    Deputy Assistant to the U.S. Vice President at the Ministry of Defence of Georgia

    Deputy Assistant to the U.S. Vice President at the Ministry of Defence of Georgia

    Deputy Assistant to the U.S. Vice President at the Ministry of Defence of Georgia

    Mr. Joseph R. Wood, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs pays an official visit to Georgia. Four-member delegation of the United States of America led by Joseph R. Wood accompanied by the U.S. Ambassador visited the Ministry of Defence of Georgia today. Delegation members were received by the Minister of Defence of Georgia David Kezerashvili and Chief of Joint Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces Col. Zaza Gogava.

    At the meeting the sides discussed Georgia’s contributions to Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. support of Georgia’s NATO membership and Georgia’s ongoing democratic reforms.

    In the framework of the visit, Mr. Wood will meet with President, Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development, Minister of Foreign Affairs and members of Parliament.

    Att den amerikanska militärövning som
    pågick i Georgien knappt han lämna landet förrän den Georgiska
    militären anföll syd-ossetsien och de nära banden mellan Cheneys kontor
    och Mikheil Saakasjvili talar ganska starkt för att Georgien trodde sig
    ha amerikanskt stödd för vad de gjorde. Och att det uppmuntrats från
    Cheneys kontor med eller utan Condi Rice och Presidentens vetskap?

    Dick Cheney som förövrigt anländer     till Georgien om några dagar efter att han hållit sitt tal på det republikanska konventet.

  • Nato, Neocons och Georgia

    Från the Nation. Mer om Nato utvidgning, Neo-konservativa, global korståg för demokrati och Georgiens del i detta.

    Eller visst alla att planerna för en NATO expansion under amerikansk ledning ingick som en del av den nya globala världsordning som de amerikansk neoliberlakonservativa drömmer om. ’Project for a new american century’

    The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded in early 1997 as ”a non-profit educational organization” by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal is ”to promote American global leadership.”[1][2] It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S PresidentGeorge W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration’s development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.

    Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that ”American leadership is both
    good for America and good for the world” and support for ”a Reaganite
    policy of military strength and moral clarity.”

    Vist är världen tryggare under amerikansk ledning.

    Neocon NATO Delusions

    At the recently completed NATO summit
    in Bucharest, the Bush Administration took another step in its
    seven-year effort to transform the transatlantic alliance into an
    organization with a more global mission supportive of Washington’s
    broader foreign policy goals. The Administration was able to win
    approval for an increase in NATO forces in Afghanistan, for its plan to
    deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe ostensibly aimed at a
    future Iranian nuclear threat, and for further enlarging NATO membership
    with the admission of Albania and Croatia and with promises of future
    membership for Georgia and Ukraine. In Bucharest Bush described his
    vision for the alliance in terms that should worry everyone familiar
    with the neoconservative agenda. ”NATO,” he said, ”is no longer a static
    alliance focused on defending Europe from a Soviet tank invasion. It is
    now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the
    world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions.”

    […]

    The main vehicle for transforming NATO into an alliance with a global mission controlled by Washington has been expansion. The Administration pushed for a large NATO expansion in 2001 that incorporated the Baltic states as well as the Central and Eastern European countries not included in the first round of enlargement. It did so in part to dilute (old) European influence within the alliance, since the new members, especially the Baltic and Balkan states, like Poland before them, tend to be more subservient to Washington on military matters.

    Expansion has forced the alliance into a looser military and command structure, allowing Washington to pick and choose its allies in any crisis while retaining the appearance of overall NATO support. This strategy did not help win outright support for the invasion of Iraq, but US courtship of Central and Eastern European countries did buy it some semblance of an international coalition and has facilitated its goal of leaning on NATO to support its war in Afghanistan.

    The enlargement of NATO has done great damage to the cause of effective international cooperation, including on many of the issues that most affect US security. The main damage has been the increasing alienation of Russia, which has vigorously opposed NATO’s push eastward. Russians of all political persuasions have, justifiably, seen NATO expansion as an unnecessary provocation aimed at weakening Moscow’s influence with its neighbors. Moscow has countered this and other Washington moves by suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement, by stepping up the modernization of its nuclear forces and by tightening its grip on the oil and gas supplies of Eurasia.

    Washington’s championing of NATO membership for Georgia, a former Soviet republic that is openly hostile to Moscow, and of Ukraine, a country that is deeply entwined with Russia economically, demographically and culturally, threatens to further damage relations with Russia (it’s also bound to create internal tensions in Ukraine, where a majority of the population opposes NATO membership). This comes at a time when the United States needs Russian cooperation for a wide variety of foreign policy goals, from controlling loose nukes to helping to curb Iran’s nuclear program to containing Islamic extremism. Only the objections of Germany, France and a few other European countries prevented NATO from offering Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan.