"For his ideas and diplomatic accomplishments, he has been decorated by the U.S. Department of State as well as the governments of Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden." [22]
The Washington Post published his article "Contain Iran: Admit Israel to NATO" on February 21, 2006 which contained these recommendations:
"The best way to provide Israel with that additional security is to upgrade its relationship with the collective defense arm of the West: NATO. Whether that upgraded relationship culminates in membership for Israel or simply a much closer strategic and operational defense relationship can be debated."
"Several leading Europeans have called for NATO to embrace Israel, but this debate will not get serious until the United States, Israel's main ally, puts its weight behind the idea. The time has come to do so." [23]
Earlier in the month he co-authored a lengthy piece called "Does Israel Belong In the EU and NATO?" with Bruce P. Jackson. Jackson was the founder and head of the U.S. Committee on NATO/Expand NATO and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq set up four months before the invasion of the nation and is on the Board of Directors of the Project for the New American Century. Asmus and Jackson wrote that "what some Israeli strategic thinkers are starting to discuss - and what we are addressing here - is...an upgraded strategic relationship between Israel and EuroAtlantic institutions like NATO and the EU that would lead to increasingly closer ties and could include eventual membership." [24]
The third leg of the Israel-NATO integration stool is Ivo Daalder, until recently Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and now the new U.S. administration's ambassador to NATO where he has a free hand to implement his projects.
In the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, he and co-author James Goldgeier, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote an article called "Global NATO" which included this excerpt:
"With little fanfare - and even less notice - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has gone global."
What Daalder had in mind had been adumbrated two years earlier when he wrote "We need an Alliance of Democratic States. This organization would unite nations with entrenched democratic traditions, such as the United States and Canada; the European Union countries; Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia; India and Israel; Botswana and Costa Rica." [25]
NATO will be the framework for a new U.S.-led global order with the United Nations reduced to a mere handmaiden and cleanup service.
In March of 2006 James Jones, then military chief of the Pentagon's European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe and now U.S. National Security Adviser, commented on another advance in NATO-Israeli military integration, the first deployment of NATO AWACS to Israel for a military exercise "apparently as a signal to Iran":
"We've had NATO AWACS deployed to do some demonstrations in Israel, and we do have an active dialogue with the Israeli defense force in terms of
interoperability, and particularly as it regards the security of the Mediterranean basin at sea." [26]
In May, eight NATO warships docked in the Israeli port city of Haifa "which the military said was an indication of strengthening ties between Israel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation" preparatory to the Israeli Navy "tak[ing] part for the first time in a NATO naval exercise in the Black Sea in June...." [27] That month the Israeli navy missile ship Achi Eilat left Haifa with its NATO counterparts to join in Operation Mako, "a ten-country joint training exercise in the Black Sea led by NATO-Mediterranean Dialogue countries." The war games also included ships from "Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Albania, Algeria, Georgia, the United Arab Emirates and others." The event marked "the first time that an operational unit of the IDF will fully participate with NATO in a military-like operation." [28]
(By way of follow up, on January 11, 2010 Focus News Agency in Bulgaria revealed that the Israeli Air Force plans to use bases in that country for training exercises.)
NATO reported on the exercises, especially in reference to the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, that "over 2000 personnel and some 25 ships from NATO and Partner countries are rehearsing joint operations at sea in and around Constanta, Romania" where the U.S. and NATO have subsequently acquired a strategic military base.
"Nine NATO countries are taking part (Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom), four Partner countries (Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia and Georgia) as well as two Mediterranean Dialogue countries (Algeria and Israel).
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