To insure that the message of Washington's emissary and intermediary Rasmussen didn't fail to get through, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, deputy commander-in-chief of "the world's sole military superpower," arrived in Brussels on May 6 to meet with Rasmussen and to address the European Parliament.
His comments while in the Belgian capital included:
"The United States and European Union have stood side-by-side to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons....In the face of the threat that Iran poses, we are committed to the security of our allies."
He also said that "Washington remains determined to deploy its planned anti-missile system in Europe to counter the danger of Iran's nuclear program and its long-range ballistic missiles."
After Biden met with Rasmussen - the agenda was on "Afghanistan, missile defense, NATO's Strategic Concept...Pakistan, Iran, counter-terrorism, climate change and energy security" [8] - NATO spokesman James Appathurai stated: "They both share the same view. They believe that NATO should take on territorial missile defense as a NATO mission at the next summit." [9]
On the occasion of his European visit Biden released an article called "Advancing Europe's Security" that was dutifully (one could say slavishly) published in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times for readers on both side of the Atlantic.
The piece included these excerpts:
"The United States and Europe...have built the most successful alliance in history....NATO is revising its 'strategic concept,' which contains the guiding principles for NATO's strategy to deal with security threats, to prepare the alliance for the challenges of the 21st century....[W]e have to devote more attention and resources to deterring and combating security threats to Europe that come from outside Europe.
"[T]oday the Continent faces new and pernicious threats: the spread of weapons of mass destruction to rogue regimes with access to ballistic missile technology, the ongoing threat of terrorist attack enabled by havens in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the prospect of cyber-attack by criminal networks and other actors, and significant energy security challenges....[We] need a more effective conflict-prevention, conflict-management, and crisis-resolution mechanism to defuse crises before they escalate. The Russia-Georgia crisis in August 2008 reminded all of us that we cannot take security in Europe for granted or become complacent.
"[W]e must affirm...the right of states to choose their own security alliances. The indivisibility of security...means that all European countries must abide by certain shared rules: above all, a commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the right of all countries to choose their own alliances freely. And most importantly, we cannot permit the re-establishment of spheres of influence in Europe." [10]
The last allusion was of course to Russia. Washington will not permit it to have any influence in nations neighboring it, even those that had been part of Russia for centuries and which have large ethnic Russian populations.
There is only one sphere of influence in Europe from the North Sea to the Black Sea: That of the U.S. and NATO.
On the two days during which Rasmussen gave his monthly address and began his visit to Romania and Biden visited Brussels, May 5 and 6, the defense chiefs of 49 nations met at a gathering of NATO's Military Committee in Brussels. The countries involved were NATO members states, partner states and other non-NATO nations contributing troops to the war in Afghanistan. (In addition to the 49 national contingents officially serving under NATO as troop contributors, Afghanistan and Pakistan work with NATO and nations like Bahrain, Colombia, Egypt and Jordan also have military personnel in the war theater or on their way there.)
The bloc's two top military commander - U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and French General Stephane Abrial, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation - were in attendance, as was General Hakan Syren, Chairman of the EU Military Committee.
The defense ministers and NATO and EU military commanders discussed operations in three continents - Asia (Afghanistan), Europe (Kosovo) and Africa (Somalia) - as well as the NATO training mission in Iraq "in support of Iraq's Security Forces" [11], the ongoing Operation Active Endeavor naval mission in the Mediterranean, Ukraine becoming the first former Soviet state to join the NATO Response Force, the new Annual National Programs for Ukraine and Georgia, transformation and modernization of the Georgian armed forces, and the integration of NATO and EU missions in Europe, Asia and Africa.
NATO's 21st century military doctrine - expeditionary, global and aggressive - will leave few parts of the planet unaffected. The 900 million inhabitants of Alliance member states evoked by Secretary General Rasmussen are slightly over one-eighth of the human race, but the leaders of those nations gathered collectively in NATO presume to determine developments in dozens of spheres throughout the entire world. With only 13 percent of the world's population but over 60 percent of its military spending.
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