Russia’s updated military doctrine mentions the “desire of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to provide its force potential with global functions, the implementation of which goes against international law, to bring the military infrastructure of the NATO member countries to the borders of the Russian Federation, including through the means of expanding the bloc.”

In the West, and especially in NATO circles, this doctrinal thesis was received cautiously, and even with some resentment. The present realities, however, speak for the legitimacy of the document.

February 18 marked the 58th anniversary of NATO’s first expansion (initially the military bloc had just six member countries), when Greece and Turkey joined the Alliance in 1952. This event heralded in an amendment to the North Atlantic Treaty, as now documented in Article 6, which reads: “For the purposes of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America…on the territory of Turkey or on the islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer…”

This amendment was made simply due to the fact that Turkey is not a European state. Moreover, Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, according to which only European countries may be members of NATO, contradicts Turkey’s membership in the military coalition.

Turkey’s accession into NATO contradicted Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which strictly restricts the geographical borders of the Alliance.

As for Ukraine, according to sociological surveys, the majority of its population is against the country’s membership in NATO. Nevertheless, according to Mr. Rasmussen, the Alliance has long made a decision that Ukraine will become its member. And that is democracy according to NATO. The people may desire what they may, but decisions will be made in the highest NATO structures, and it is not exactly clear in whose interests.

Clearly, the acceptance of Ukraine into the Alliance is not at all dictated by the desire to spread democracy. The eastward expansion of NATO has already provided the Alliance an ability, with the use of conventional weapons, to make tactical air strikes on Russia’s governmental and military centers, and well as its strategic nuclear forces. With Ukraine’s accession into NATO, which the United States is making significant efforts toward achieving, these abilities will become even greater. For example, Russia’s strategic air base, near the city of Saratov, is located just 600-800 kilometers away from Ukraine’s airports.

The adoption of new states into the Alliance does not so much resemble an expansion of the democratic space in Europe, as an actual encirclement of Russia by the new NATO members, who are ready to comply with any demand made by the leadership of the Alliance. One only needs to consider the secret CIA prisons in Lithuania as proof of that statement.

Read the full story here.

Read Der Spiegel’s piece on inviting Russia to join NATO here.

Check, please.

The bill for the most expensive G8 in history has now arrived totaling a full €512 million . This is the expense that Italy spent for last year’s G8 Summit, which was moved from the island of La Maddalena to L’Aquila. And it was simply due to a PR stunt orchestrated during Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex scandal crisis.

The most incredible thing is that the G8 venue at La Maddalena was already prepared and had been for months… at a huge cost.  New hotels, conference rooms, docks, and streets were built or renovated for a total cost of €327 million. Money wasted. Money which magistrates are now investigating due to an emerging conflict-of-interests scandal which would have seen lucrative construction contracts awarded to the usual “friends of friends”.

Following the polemics over bribes received by the Civil Protection agency, it should not be excluded that something fishy took place even for the G8 preparations.

So, €327million have been thrown away. But why? Because Silvio Berlusconi decided to move the G8 Summit from a renovated and rebuilt La Maddelena to L’Aquila, the city that had recently been devastated by an earthquake. Over a mere few months a new G8 was organized with the government spending further €200 million in L’Aquila.

When the internally displaced citizens of L’Aquila now feel the coming summer heat in their refugee tents, they will remember the millions of euros in frivolities spent for the ‘world’s great leaders’.  Yes, Italy’s G8 farce was an incredible waste of public money and suspicion now falls upon those who may be responsible for such reckless greed.

Read the article here.

One is tempted to look on the latest dramatic developments in Turkey and maintain that there is a serious democratization process underway. But this is Turkey and one has to leave room for doubt in order to get a correct fix on what is going on.

Neither should one take too seriously bleary-eyed Europeans who derive some kind of surreptitious pleasure from seeing the troubles of the Turkish military and the Kemalist camp. While they too believe that a process of democratization is underway, one has to take their often superficial views on Turkey with a serious pinch of salt.

The reason is that Europeans often dig into their bag of clichés concerning Turkey, and produce “overused” views even if these are out of touch with the Turkish reality.

One question that such Europeans have to answer is clearly embedded in the latest “Eurobarometer” poll on Turkey.

That poll shows that the Turkish military is still considered the most reliable institution in Turkey by 77 percent of Turks, while only 52 percent consider the government trustworthy. The same poll also indicates that 68 percent of Turks trust the judiciary, which thus is in second place in terms of the most trusted institutions in the country.

This poll was most probably conducted prior to the latest division that surfaced in the judiciary so it will be interesting to note what the next poll says on this. All of this returns us to a point that we have brought up time and again.

Turkey is too complex a country to be deciphered by means of clichés and preconceived notions. It is because of this that it is not certain whether Turkey is currently undergoing a historic process of democratization, or if it is in the throes of some kind of dissolution, given that the country, including the judiciary now, is seriously divided.

The latest “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) Operation investigation is of course a valid one in essence. It is also a fact that the military has been unable to deny the existence of documents that caused this legal investigation to be initiated.

The military claims that those documents do not amount to a coup plan, but represent a certain scenario for a military contingency. But what serious contingency plan would incorporate items such as the bombing of mosques or the downing of one of Turkey’s own jets over the Aegean, the apparent aim in both cases being to discredit the government and justify a military takeover?

Such documents would be investigated in any country that claims to be a democracy based on the rule of law. However the way prosecutors have been acting in this case points to the fact that there is more than just a simple judicial procedure underway.

Read more here.

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Government officials and aid workers are gearing up to carry out humanitarian needs’ assessments in previously inaccessible areas, thanks to an 11 February truce between Yemen’s army and Houthi rebels in the northern province of Saada which appears to be holding.

“Once security conditions allow it, a comprehensive needs’ assessment will be carried out in all war-affected districts,” Pratibha Mehta, the UN resident coordinator in Yemen, told IRIN.

“This [the ceasefire] will enable humanitarian assistance to reach civilian populations who have been cut off from services since the outbreak of the sixth round of fighting in August 2009,” she said.

Aid workers and local government officials are keen to make the most of the calm, but the track record of such ceasefires is not good, and helping the 250,000 internally displaced persons [IDPs] – scattered in several camps or staying with relatives – is difficult.

According to Saada Governor Taha Hajer, the ceasefire would help the government reconstruct Saada and allow IDPs to return to their homes. “We should put the tragic past [six months of fighting] behind us.”

Read more here.

On Tuesday, the Dutch government announced that it is considering an extension of the current deployment in Afghanistan, which is scheduled to end this year. Nato has filed an official request for this extension. The government said sending instructors for the Afghan armed forces, military or police would be a possibility.

The British Nato general, Simon Levey, offered this option in an interview with the Dutch daily, De Volkskrant, published last Saturday. Instructors are desperately needed all over Afghanistan, not just in Uruzgan, where the Dutch are now based. The international coalition involved in Afghanistan is aiming to increase the number of Afghan soldiers from the current 100,000 to 134,000 by next October. The Dutch governing coalition seems in favour of transforming the current deployment into a training mission, but that does not mean an agreement has already been finalised.

In a radio debate with other political leaders, Mariëtte Hamer, the chair of the Dutch Labour party in parliament, called a training mission an “interesting option”, but she emphasised that she was opposed to a new “combat mission”.

However, for the most part, Afghan security forces are not trained in safe classrooms. This would be pointless, since nine out of ten Afghan soldiers cannot read or write. An Afghan soldier learns his trade during patrols and operations, under the watchful eye of the Dutch Operational Mentor and Liaison Team. They patrol Afghanistan’s valleys side by side with their local recruits, joining them in battle wherever necessary. This is why mainly experienced soldiers, such as marines, are deployed as military instructors. There is no line in the sand separating training duty from combat.

Read more here.

Today Sri Lankans will go to the polls to decide a race that has become too close to call. The election itself has been the most bitterly contested one in recent times. It has also seen the most one-sided utilization of state machinery in favour of the ruling party candidate in a long time. Religious leaders have felt impelled to issue calls for the government to implement the law with regard to the need for balanced and fair coverage by the state media and for all contesting parties to ensure an environment for free and fair elections. The Election Commissioner even removed the competent authority he had appointed to ensure balanced and fair media coverage in the state media and accused the authorities therein of having humiliated his appointee

The blitz in the state media included documentaries on Hitler and Idi Amin and numerous commentaries on the danger of those with military backgrounds getting into politics. There is no doubt that these too were part of the government’s election campaign to dissuade voters from choosing former Army Commander, retired General Sarath Fonseka, who has emerged as incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s main opponent. The state media’s propaganda campaign was further supported by the massive billboard and poster campaign which the law enforcement authorities failed to put a stop to for the most part, despite directions from the Election Commissioner.

In addition to the propaganda abuses, there were numerous occurrences of election-related violence that were primarily directed against the supporters of General Fonseka’s candidature. This also sent a strong message to the electorate that the government was determined to win this election at all costs. However, unlike in the case of the government’s abuse of the state media, to which the opposition activists had no real answer, they had an answer to the election-related violence that was unleashed against them. They too started their own violence, meeting force with force.

The escalation of election violence however was controlled by positive steps taken by the leaderships of the two rival camps. The party secretaries of the two main parties publicly and jointly called for an end to the violence. It was noticeable that the level of election related violence was reduced in the final days of the campaign. The Police began to act more decisively to crack down on violence. But ironically this might also have been due to the fight back of the opposition at the street level. The increased assaults of government supporters by those of the opposition would have persuaded the government to finally crack down on election related violence by getting the law enforcement authorities to act more even handedly.

Read more here.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has praised the Mauritanian government for breaking diplomatic ties with Israel.

During a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran on Monday, Ahmadinejad called the move a valuable step which “should set an example for the rest of the Islamic countries.”

Mauritania cut its ties with Israel during the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war, during which over 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed.

The Iranian president also called Israel the “root of all the corruption in the region.”

Mauritania’s president is currently visiting Tehran with a high-ranking delegation.

Read more here.

The Netherlands hopes to conduct safety checks using special ‘see-through’ security scanners on air passengers bound for any destinations. Currently, these scanners are only used on flights bound for the US.

Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin announced the move to his European colleagues speaking at a meeting in the Spanish town of Toledo on Thursday. The Netherlands is seeking the support of other EU-countries, before implementing the scanners that can see through clothing to detect explosives and other contraband.

EU-countries are currently at liberty to deploy the scanners as they see fit, but Hirsch Ballin pushed for European regulations on the matter, saying they would do much to improve the efficiency of security checks and provide clarity for passengers. The European commission hopes to propose regulations governing their usage to EU-countries this spring.

According to Hirsch Ballin, the security scanners should become mandatory on all European airports. Not all of his colleagues are fully convinced they should be. They want to await the results of a study into the scanners health and privacy concerns. According to Hirsch Ballin, his colleagues were “mostly interested” in Dutch experiences with the technology

Germany, which initially had its reservations, is said to start experimenting with the scanners soon. As soon as a European agreement has been reached, the Netherlands intends to start a phased introduction of the scanners on all flights emanating from the Netherlands. First all flights bound for the US will be effected (requiring 75 scanners in all), the scanners will then be deployed on all intercontinental flights, and finally all intra-European flights.

Hirsch Ballin was unable to determine the number of scanners this would require.

Read more here.

Nairobi, Kenya Image via Wikipedia

Somalia’s insurgent group Al-Shabaab has threatened and also accused neighbouring Kenya of deploying more troops to the bordering towns.

Sheikh Mahammed Arab, an Al-Shabaab administrator in Somali border town of Dhobley, near the Kenyan border said they have received reports that Kenyan military numbering more than 1500 with battle wagons are making military movement along the border.

“We have the information about heavy military movement along the border between Somalia and Kenya. We don’t know the meaning of this but we are warning of repercussions for any aggression,” he said.

Al-Shabaab authority in Jubba regions has early warned Kenya to withdrawal all its forces along the border.

Al-Shabaab militants recently captured the Lower Jubba region in southern Somalia from Hizbul Islam, their former allies.

Kenya has repeatedly in the past refuted of carrying any military operations along the border other than normal border patrols.

The allegations come as a purported Al-Shabaab song released on Wednesday warn Nairobi of retaliation for its crack-down against Muslims.

Read more here.

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