Word: nato
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...first blush, the same old depressing script. When U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a major speech on the need for NATO members to step up their efforts in Afghanistan at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy last week, a quick scan of the headlines would have made you think we were back where we were five (or, to be honest, 25) years ago. That is to say: an American policymaker comes to Europe and lectures the Allies on the need to recognize that it's a dangerous world out there, that the comfortable folk on the eastern...
...Gazprom's decisions in the marketplace are often tied to Kremlin concerns, and there could be several political and economic reasons behind the new pressure on Ukraine. Russia is unhappy at the restoration to power of Yuschenko's pro-NATO coalition following last year's snap legislative election. It is also irked by Ukraine's imminent accession to World Trade Organization membership, which would improve Kiev's ability to stand up to Russian blackmail by giving it the means to block Russia's own, coveted but much postponed entry into the organization...
...elections next year. France is considering the request but any decision to dispatch more troops will likely be tied to a greater role in strategic decision-making. Other countries such as Italy and Spain have also been approached, but they aren't aren't responding with the alacrity NATO feels is called for in its biggest and most dangerous deployment ever...
...Part of the problem that NATO is experiencing are so-called "caveats," or restrictions that member states have placed on where and how their troops can serve in Afghanistan. When Germany approved its mission, for example, the Bundestag stipulated that German soldiers could not be sent to the volatile southern part of the country. Most of Germany's 3,200 troops are, as a result, deployed in the more stable north. NATO troops in the south, including British, Dutch and Canadian forces, have taken correspondingly more casualties. Canada has lost 78 soldiers since arriving in 2002. Most...
...troops out of Afghanistan altogether by early next year if allies do not agree to send more troops to the embattled Kandahar province, which stretched Canadian troops now on patrol. "Kandahar is the center of the Taliban insurgency," he told reporters in Ottawa last month. "If NATO cannot put all the necessary troops and equipment in Kandahar province, I don't think it's ultimately going to do it anywhere...