It was a very busy weekend on Global Dashboard. So in case you missed it:
News is emerging this morning of a militant attack on NATO supply containers in Pakistan, where they were awaiting onward shipment to Afghanistan. CNN has details:
A security guard was killed and two employees were wounded in the attack on the Faisalal terminal just outside of the city of Peshawar, according to officials. Companies hired by NATO to drive fuel, food and other supplies to troops fighting the Taliban use the terminal to park containers waiting for convoys across the border into Afghanistan. The fire started by the attackers destroyed 62 containers, according to Peshawar Senior Police Superintendent Kashif Alam.
This latest attack follows another a week ago, and plenty more in the preceding months. It’s still only a few weeks since Pakistan’s army chief did a big presentation in Brussels vowing to keep NATO’s supply lines to Afghanistan open:
“We will do whatever is possible, whatever is within our power to ensure that this line of supply is open,” Kayani told top officers in Brussels, according to Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, head of NATO’s military committee. “We understand how critical it is to Afghanistan … and because we want Afghanistan to succeed we would harm ourselves if we did not do our best to ensure that,” Di Paola quoted Kayani as saying.
But can he deliver? AP flags up the key statistic: “up to 75 percent of the supplies for Western forces in [Afghanistan] pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi”.
This may have escaped people’s attention (it did mine), but Ukraine and Georgia were told they couldn’t join the NATO club this week, and Georgia was given a bit of a ticking off for its abrupt and dumb escalation of the North Ossetia conflict in August.
The NATO communique said: “we remind all parties that peaceful conflict resolution is a key principle of the Partnership for Peace Framework Document.”
As Liz Fuller writes for Radio Free Europe:
“Translated from diplomat-speak into plain English, that reads “The use of heavy artillery against civilians asleep in their homes in Tskhinvali just hours after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire was a crude violation of our basic ground rules, and one we cannot overlook.”
Fuller adds:
“Equally, if not more damaging to Georgia’s NATO aspirations was the spectacular ineptitude of its armed forces, which proved anything but battle-ready. The country’s two crack U.S.-trained brigades were serving as part of the international peacekeeping force in Iraq during the August war. According to a new International Crisis Group report, “the [Georgian] armed forces and military infrastructure sustained heavy damage during the Russian invasion, revealing flaws in planning, supply, coordination, air defense, and combat communications systems which contributed to quick demoralization of the troops,” who abandoned the strategic military base in Senaki without firing a single shot.
“Never let Germany walk alone”, Francois Mitterand apparently used to tell his military commanders. But two decades after the end of the Cold War, Germany has slipped away not only from France’s embrace, but also from its traditional role within the EU. On a range of issues, Germany is going-alone, even if doing so is detrimental to Berlin’s own interests and corrosive of alliance relations.
On Russia, for example, Germany has been almost hysterically concerned that the Baltic states would push the EU towards an anti-Moscow stance. In NATO and EU discussions, it has often been German diplomats who have debased the debate, accusing those, like Britain and Sweden, who want a tougher post-Georgia policy towards Russia as wanting to start a new Cold War.
To The Economist, these mishaps are a function of Germany’s political situation. Facing a general election next year, Chancellor Angela Merkel is locked in a battle with the SDP’s likely front-runner and current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, making every foreign policy issue a battle for domestic advantage. Things have not been helped by the notoriously poor relationship between Mrs Merkel and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who’s frenetic diplomatic style cuts against the German chancellor’s measured ways.
But the problem runs deeper and may not be solved by the future German elections or the recently held U.S ones. For while the polls show the CDU in the lead, they are sufficiently tight to be able to force another so-called “grand coalition” between CDU and CDU, which would see a re-run of all the foreign policy battles.
The election of Barrack Obama in the U.S is also unlikely to make a big difference. On Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq — trouble-spots that will to occupy the Obama administration’s time —Germany’s position is at best awkward. Germany’s industry still has strong links with Iran; last month Germany’s ambassador to Iran, Herbert Honsowitz, told his Iranian hosts not to worry about Berlin’s announcement that it would reduce trade links as German companies would use the United Arab Emirates as a middleman for more than $4 billion in commerce.
And everyone expects President Obama to ask Germany to send more troops to NATO’s Afghan mission and deploy some of those 4500 soldiers already there to the war-torn south. German diplomats are furiously compiling arguments that would counter such a request –- and may offer police officers instead — but these are unlikely to make too much of an impact when President Obama makes the public case and Secretary Clinton does the follow-up.
Then there is climate change? Mrs Merkel was once seen as of the key reformers, even at one point dubbed “the climate chancellor”. But she is now pushing for parts of Germany’s industry to be exempted from emissions trading. This may put her at odds not only with the Obama administration, but also Congress, now that Democratic congressman Henry Waxman has taken the reigns of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Running through all these issues is one big question: what role does Germany want to play in the world? Does it want to be a large Switzerland – unarmed, mediating between all sides, but unwilling to take bold positions, devote resources and make sacrifices? Or does it want to be a key ally for the U.S, Britain and France, a motor of the EU and a pillar of the Euro-Atlantic community?
On my recent visits to Berlin I have become convinced that many of Germany’s politicians know current policy is not working. They also know that many of the world’s problems –- from Russia to Iran –- can only be solved by Germany’s active involvement. However, a large proportion of the public does not want to accept the price that has to be paid for Germany’s freedom, security and prosperity. And German politicians of all hues have been unwilling to make the case as forcefully as required, in part –- but not exclusively — because of the political situation. However, neither Germany nor its allies can afford for Europe’s largest country to walk alone.
In the last couple of weeks there has been more attention heaped on little Bosnia than has been the case for years. First, Paddy Ashdown and Richard Hoolbroke argued in The Guardian that the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Immediately afterwards, William Hague travelled to Sarajevo to see things for himself followed by Foreign Secretary David Milliband.
Now the NATO Deputy Secretary-General is touring Bosnia-Herzegovina while the EU’s two foreign policy supremos -– Enlargement Commissioner Oli Rehn and Javier Solana, the foreign policy “czar” — have issued a document that underlines the bloc’s determination to “sort out the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina,“ while double-hatting EU Miroslav Laj?ak as head of the European Commission office too.
Though this renwed attention on Bosnia is welcome, a new report (pdf) by the Democratization Policy Council makes clear more will have to be done to put Bosnia back on the right track.