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Outside View: Military principles, politics

Absent Ashton under fire from EU defence ministers
Palma De Majorca, Spain (AFP) Feb 25, 2010 - Europe's top diplomat Catherine Ashton attracted more flak on Thursday for failing to attend a meeting of EU defence ministers. French Defence Minister Herve Morin set the tone, berating the EU's High Representative for foreign and security affairs for opting out of her first chance to attend a get-together of the 27 European defence ministers. "Isn't it rich that this morning, to display the ties between NATO and the EU, we have the NATO secretary general (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) here but not the high representative for the first meeting since the Lisbon treaty came into effect," said Morin, referring to the text which created Ashton's post as the EU's foreign affairs and security chief. Ashton herself was in Moscow on Wednesday before representing the European Union at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday in Kiev.

A total of 21 of the 27 EU nations are also NATO members and the two organisations cooperate over Afghanistan, Kosovo and Somalia. At the end of two days of talks in Palma de Majorca, Spanish defence minister Carme Chacon repeated Ashton's "excuses." But it appeared more will be needed to mend bridges between Ashton and the ministers she failed to meet. Dutch counterpart Jack de Vries, in a Twitter comment, said "Madame Ashton was notable by her absence" adding that predecessor Javier Solana always managed to find space in his diary for the EU defence ministers' talks. "In future she will have to organise her time better," one German diplomat said.

Another diplomat present at the closed-door defence talks said that several ministers had made cutting remarks about Ashton's absence. Spain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency for the first half of the year, has made the relaunch of a European defence strategy one of the "fundamental" objectives of its six-month tenure. Participants at the Spanish meeting had been hoping to hear her state her intentions as the first holder of the beefed-up foreign and defence job. It's not the first controversy to dog the English baroness since she assumed the new job this year. She was criticised for vague answers and a lack of diplomatic experience during her initial job interview in front of the European parliament.

She received further brickbats for failing to rush to Haiti after it suffered a devastating earthquake on Janury 12. This week France and Sweden took exception to the way the EU's new envoy to Washington was picked. Joao Vale de Almeida, a close ally of EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, secured the coveted post, though Ashton insisted she had picked him. Daniel Korski, defence analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was sympathetic to Ashton's plight. "She has so much on her plate that it is frankly impossible for her to go everywhere and see everyone in the way that Javier Solana did," he told AFP. He added though that "she hasn't really shown herself to be particularly interested in the defence portfolio."
by Lawrence Sellin
Helsinki, Finland (UPI) Feb 25, 2009
In my 29-year U.S. Army career I have met my share of lap-dog generals and Defense Department officials. I recently noticed that one prominent example was just promoted. Well done. The system worked. With some notable exceptions one does not rise to that level in the military without political acumen, risk awareness -- if not risk aversion -- and a "get-along-by-going-along" attitude.

I often wonder why there are so few general officer resignations on principle. It is certainly true that the U.S. military is subordinate and receives its orders from the civilian executive leadership and rightly so. It is part of the military's constitutional obligations.

Nevertheless, one cannot help but question whether this also a convenient excuse for the consummate careerist military-politician. The statements of these "leaders" on controversial issues are often so vague that they easily transition, for example, between administrations with such extraordinarily divergent views of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It is difficult not to conclude that they are just taking the easy way out.

A cynic might conclude that many of the best in the military have been weeded out when they are ultimately confronted by a definitive choice between principle and politics, between innovation and playing it safe, between embracing command responsibility or finding scapegoats among subordinates when operations fail and soldiers get killed.

The dirty little secret in the military is that general officers take care of each other, "choose" each other for promotions and, when things get messy, often keep each other "out of the bursting radius" of plans gone sour. Handing out reprimands to a junior officers or senior enlisted preserves the status quo and ensures that unpleasant news evaporates from the news cycle quickly.

The last major resignation on principle was Matthew P. Hoh, former senior civilian representative in Zabul province, Afghanistan. Hoh, a relatively minor State Department official, resigned Sept. 10, 2009, because he "lost an understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan." As he stated in his letter, he failed "to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war."

One can respectfully argue with Hoh's conclusions, but, unless I've misjudged him, not his sincerity, courage or adherence to his principles. He is no longer even a remote blip on the media's radar screen. Unless he writes a book, we may not hear from Hoh again. I've kept a copy of his resignation letter as a rare act of principle in public life.

The last such military event was the so-called Revolt of the Generals in September 2006 during the Bush administration. Some of these generals were already safe in retirement, some perhaps retired early to join the public protest. Even so, it demonstrated a rare act of defiance against the Bush administration and, in particular, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld while U.S. forces were engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the retired generals, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of the 1st Infantry Division directly criticized Rumsfeld as "not a competent wartime leader." According to Batiste, Rumsfeld made "dismal strategic decisions" that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of both U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians.

The "Revolt of the Generals" simmered in the media through late spring 2007 and was described as unprecedented in U.S. history. There is little doubt that the stinging rebuke of former senior military officers led to a re-evaluation of military, political and diplomatic policy regarding the conduct of the war in Iraq. It is difficult so conclude how much impact the "Revolt of the Generals" had on the eventual resignation of Rumsfeld, the naming of a new commander in Iraq and the change in policy, which led to the troop surge and increased focus on counterinsurgency. It is not a great leap in logic to say it did.

Nevertheless, these publicly displayed acts of principle are rare events. There are more frequent quiet and unpublicized acts of courage in the ranks, which sadly, more often than not, lead to frustration, admonition and early retirement. In this way the military is often its own worse enemy, stifling innovation and progress in military strategy and tactics.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq . The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army or government.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)



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THE STANS
NATO moves to limit night raids in Afghanistan: US officials
Washington (AFP) Feb 24, 2010
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