Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...yardstick by which the success of NATO's summit in the Latvian capital of Riga would be measured was always going to be Afghanistan. By engaging 32,000 troops there - its first full-scale military action outside of Europe - against a now resurgent Taliban, the Western alliance had posed itself a cruel test of solidarity in one of the world's most historically ungovernable patches. Last week it effectively failed the test...
...President George W. Bush and his key allies - Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian leader Stephen Harper and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer - wanted a greater sharing of the burden, and to give ground commanders full authority to deploy troops as they see fit, rather than be required to refer back to defense ministries in Europe's capitals. But the caveats that keep Italian, French, German and Spanish troops out of the heavy combat zones in the south of the country were not significantly relaxed. The Poles offered up an additional 1,000 troops toward...
...NATO in Afghanistan has become an institutional fig leaf for an ad hoc and unstable coalition of the willing. The crux of the Atlantic alliance is its mutual defense clause, the all-for-one principle, in which an attack on any member is considered an attack on them all. But that clause's limitations were first displayed after Sept. 11, 2001, when it was invoked in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, only to be spurned by a Bush Administration set on keeping tight reins on its response...
European leaders expecting a humbled Bush at the NATO summit in Latvia instead got a stout speech in which he rearticulated his foreign policy. "We must advance freedom," he said, "as the great alternative to tyranny and terror." When kids in Indonesia asked his hobby, he replied, "Baseball--sports" and told them to go easy on TV. He got his most enthusiastic reception in Vietnam, as curious onlookers lined the roads and waved at his passing motorcade. There was much the country and the visiting dignitary had in common. Neither has much appetite for looking back at the difficulties...
...Brussels. This opening on Europe may help explain why, after having originally said it was impossible, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyiip Erdogan confirmed Monday that he would in fact meet Benedict on Tuesday afternoon at the Ankara airport, just before the Turkish leader flies off to a NATO summit. Still the most substantial achievements could be made in further healing relations with the Orthodox, a thousand years after the two churches parted ways. Many believe that Benedict can make more progress on this front than John Paul, who was seen by some Orthodox as too aggressive in trying to expand...