Word: nato
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...American President in front of Queen Elizabeth II, after the official photo op at the G-20 in London ("Mr. Obamaaa! I'm Mr. Berlusconi!") was a lovely Borat moment - harmless, and quite funny. Talking on his mobile while Angela Merkel was waiting for him at the NATO summit? He was just showing off ("I can convince Turkish leader Erdogan to accept Rasmussen as head at NATO. Leave it to me, guys.") And when he told earthquake victims in Abruzzo to think of their situation "like a weekend of camping," sure, it didn't sound good to an outsider...
North Korean forces are invading South Korea. Drug gangs along the U.S.-Mexican border are seizing parts of El Paso, Texas. A nuclear device is floating in waters somewhere near the U.S. And, NATO forces are deploying along the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to quell ethnic violence. American military minds confronted these crises in detail. But don't worry. It's not yet the end of the world. All were of fictional future scenarios from a U.S. Army wargame at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They are designed to help U.S. forces anticipate and prepare...
...conflicts end? At the end of a week of gaming, the results were mixed. In the Central Asian conflict, says Army Spokesman Harvey Perritt, the NATO rapid reaction force coupled with humanitarian assistance was able to decrease the violence along the border between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Korean problem, however, remained largely unresolved. "With the Korean Peninsula," says Perritt, "the problem is bigger than just military." The conclusions drawn from the exercise, he said, were more "informational and cultural." The response to a North Korean attack, he says, would have to require diplomatic, humanitarian and other solutions, including the involvment...
Meanwhile in another wargame panel, NATO forces assembled to quell fighting along the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. In the scenario, violence erupts in the region due to border disputes and ethnic tension between the two states. "We are introducing a NATO response force to help quell the instability and return the situation to an internationally acceptable component," says U.S. Army Col. Matt Dawson, blue team commander and a strategic planner at Fort McPherson, Georgia. "There are some Uzbek nationals of Turkmen descent and Turkmen nationals of Uzbek descent and there have been atrocities that are exacerbating the situation...
News of the latest incident came not long after NATO announced a significant reduction in conflict-related civilians deaths over the first quarter of this year versus the same period in 2007. Gen. Richard Blanchette, the coaltion spokesman, said this was a function of stricter protocols. Since last summer, he explained, the decision-making process down the chain of command has been "reviewed numerous times" to minimize risk to civilians, resulting in more operations cancelled. "But," he pointed out, "you never hear news reports of an airstrike not taking place...