Искаме наши разузнавачи в НАТО

+ Историята на НАТО

Българската армия е изпълнила основните военно-технически аспекти за членство в Алианса. След 5 години членство в НАТО, 46% от българите не се идентифицират с Алианса. Учудващо е неразбирането, че “ние сме НАТО”, че нашата сигурност е част от общата сигурност на алинса и затова отговорността на всяка страна-член е огромна. Няма някой “трети” към който да прехвърлим проблеми за решаване.

Българската армия е изпълнила основните военно-технически аспекти за членство в Алианса. След 5 години членство в НАТО, 46% от българите не се идентифицират с Алианса. Учудващо е неразбирането, че “ние сме НАТО”, че нашата сигурност е част от общата сигурност на алинса и затова отговорността на всяка страна-член е огромна. Няма някой “трети” към който да прехвърлим проблеми за решаване.

София, 1 октомври 2009г. Правителството измени две решения на Министерския съвет вчера, които се отнасят до участието на страната ни в Координационния център на НАТО за специални операции (NSCC)1 и в Центъра за обединяване на разузнавателна информация (IFC)2 на Алианса, съобщи правителствената инфорвмационна служба. С измененията заместник националният ни представител в Щаба на Върховното главно командване на Обединените въоръжени сили на НАТО в Европа (SHAPE)3 следва да подпише меморандумите за сформирането на тези структури поради изтичането на мандата на националния военен представител на страната ни в Щаба.
В периода на поканата за членство в Алианса България унищожи 3 ракетни комплекса, което беше изрично изискване за покана и пълноправно членство. Ракети оценявани като годно и добро оръжие. Бяха съкратени над 15 000 военнослужещи. Построиха се военни бази. Известно е, че България и Румъния станаха източна, съответно България югоизточна граница на НАТО. А сега и на ЕС. И това стратегически е от изключително значение. В ЕС няма нито предприсъединителни, нито структурни фондове за отбрана и сигурност, а се иска качество. Достъпът до информация в НАТО се гарантира чрез непринадлежност към бившите служби на Държавна сигурност и сродните. Сега имаме ново правителство и то гарантира това. Дали ще получим желаното е отделен въпрос. През 2004 г., вноската на бъдещите страни-членки бе за 8 календарни месеца, като размерът й за България бе около 2 220 000 евро, по думите на тогавашния министър на финансите Милен Велчев. За следващите години се плаща около 630 хиляди за Цивилния и 2 милиона и 100 хиляди евро за Военния бюджет.

В периода на поканата за членство в Алианса България унищожи 3 ракетни комплекса, което беше изрично изискване за покана и пълноправно членство. Ракети оценявани като годно и добро оръжие. Бяха съкратени над 15 000 военнослужещи. Построиха се военни бази. Известно е, че България и Румъния станаха източна, съответно България югоизточна граница на НАТО. А сега и на ЕС. И това стратегически е от изключително значение. В ЕС няма нито предприсъединителни, нито структурни фондове за отбрана и сигурност, а се иска качество. Достъпът до информация в НАТО се гарантира чрез непринадлежност към бившите служби на Държавна сигурност и сродните. Сега имаме ново правителство и то гарантира това. Дали ще получим желаното е отделен въпрос. През 2004 г., вноската на бъдещите страни-членки бе за 8 календарни месеца, като размерът й за България бе около 2 220 000 евро, по думите на тогавашния министър на финансите Милен Велчев. За следващите години се плаща около 630 хиляди за Цивилния и 2 милиона и 100 хиляди евро за Военния бюджет.

Координационният център на НАТО за специални операции е международен военен щаб. Общо 23 страни от Пакта, сред които и България, са изразили желание да участват в неговото учредяване. Присъединяването на България към дейността му ще допринесе за интегрирането на нашите специални сили в процеса на коалиционното планиране на въоръжените сили, обучението и бойната подготовка. IFC е международен военен щаб, който действа от октомври 2006 г. Разположен е във Великобритания и осигурява Върховния главнокомандващ на силите на НАТО в Европа (SACEUR)4 и структурите на Съюзното командване по операциите с пълния спектър разузнавателни продукти и аналитични способности за планирането и воденето на операции.
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1)The NATO Special Operations Coordination Centre (NSCC) is the centrepiece of the NATO SOF Transformation Initiative (NSTI). It provides focused Special Operations advice to the SACEUR and the NATO Chain of Command and provides on a collaborative, inter-dependent platform to enhance the Alliance SOF network. Through the NSCC, NATO is transforming the current NATO SOF capability, i.e. leader education and development, doctrine, training and planning, information systems and infrastructure.The NSCC was established at SHAPE in Casteau, Belgium in June 2007. This location strongly affirms the NSCC's function and support in providing Special Operations advice to SACEUR. The NSCC is assigned to SHAPE, under operational command (OPCOM) of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR). The NSCC Director reports directly to the SACEUR who establishes NSCC tasks and priorities in accordance with political and military decisions of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) and NATO's Military Committee (MC). The NSCC coordinates the execution of tasks directly with the appropriate command or nations. As the SOF Coordination Centre, the NSCC interacts with national SOF Commanders and representatives as well as other NATO bodies and nations such as the European Union, nations involved in Partnership for Peace and, NATO Partner and Contact Countries.
2) The Intelligence Fusion Centre In Support of NATO (IFC) was officially opened 2006 by Mr. John Colston, Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning at NATO HQ in Brussels, the Honorable Adam Ingram, British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, and General James L. Jones, Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander of Allied Command Operations (ACO). The IFC is a significant resource that will share global intelligence information among NATO Allies and Partner nations thereby improving intelligence support directly related to ACO.  This will be particularly important when rapidly deploying the NATO Response Forces.
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3)Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) On April 4, 1949 - 12 nations from Western Europe and North America signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C. A key feature of this treaty is Article 5, in which the signatory members agreed that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Initially, however, the alliance was not very well prepared to carry out the mission of defending its territory. In addition to grave shortages of troops and equipment, there was no command structure to direct the overall defense of Western Europe.
All this changed after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 in which fears where raised s that a similar threat could soon face Europe. The nations of the alliance agreed to increase their defence efforts began working on the creation of an integrated military command structure with an overall commander for NATO forces in Europe.

Selecting the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) was easy, since everyone’s first choice was the popular and respected U.S. Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had led allied forces in Europe during World War II. On December 19, 1950 the North Atlantic Council announced the appointment of General Eisenhower as the first SACEUR.

Gen. Eisenhower arrived in Paris on January 1, 1951 and quickly set to work with a small multi-national planning group to devise a structure for the new command, Allied Command Europe (ACE) and its new headquarters, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

This “SHAPE Planning Group” worked in a temporary headquarters located in the Hotel Astoria in central Paris while construction of a permanent facility began at Rocquencourt, just outside the city.

The SHAPE planners benefited greatly from the existing plans, headquarters, and personnel of the Western Union Defence Organisation (the military arm of NATO’s European predecessor, created by the Brussels Treaty of 1948), which were all incorporated into ACE, so within a few months the basic plans for ACE were ready.

On April 2, 1951 General Eisenhower signed the activation order for Allied Command Europe and its headquarters at SHAPE. On the same day ACE’s subordinate headquarters in Northern and Central Europe were activated, with the Southern Region following in June. In July 1951 SHAPE’s new headquarters complex in Rocquencourt opened for business. When Gen. Eisenhower left SHAPE in May 1952 to begin his successful candidacy for the presidency of the United States, much progress had already been made and there was a new, optimistic mood in Europe.

Just a few months earlier the North Atlantic Council, meeting at Lisbon, had agreed to very ambitious force structure goals that included a total of up to 90 divisions for NATO, but these goals were never achieved as the alliance soon began to look for less costly ways to defend Europe - the so-called “New Approach” - that relied more on the use of nuclear weapons.

These changes began under Eisenhower’s successor, Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who had gained fame as the commander of United Nations forces during the Korean War and they continued under Gen. Alfred M. Gruenther, who became SACEUR in July 1953 after having served as Chief of Staff for both of his predecessors. By 1957 the switch to the doctrine of “massive retaliation” in the event of aggression had become officially recognised in NATO’s new strategy document, MC 14/2.

During this period ACE grew larger as three new members joined the Alliance - Greece and Turkey in 1952, followed by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. History was made in 1956 when the first Air Force officer, General Lauris B. Norstad, became SACEUR. General Norstad skilfully led ACE through a difficult period marked by a dangerous Cold War confrontation in Berlin that began in 1958 and reached a high point with the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.

Оne of the most significant events in the history of Allied Command Europe is France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military structure, which made it necessary for SHAPE and several other ACE headquarters to leave French territory.

The split between France and NATO’s military structure had been developing for a number of years, as successive French governments had become increasingly dissatisfied with what they perceived as Anglo-American domination of the command structure and insufficient French influence throughout the command.

By late December 1965 French President Charles de Gaulle was ready to take action. He had just been elected for the second time, France had acquired its own nuclear capability, his attempts to establish a Franco-British–American Security Directorate and gain some French control over American nuclear weapons based in France had failed, and he sought a more independent role for France in order to maximise its global influence and status.

President de Gaulle also disagreed with the United States’ intention to replace the strategy of “Massive Retaliation” with “Flexible Response” because he believed that this meant a weakening of the U.S. commitment to defend Europe with nuclear weapons. Increasingly critical of the developments in NATO, he described the military integration practised at SHAPE and its subordinate headquarters as obsolete and said that it was designed to ensure French subordination to U.S. policy.

In February 1966 President de Gaulle stated that the changed world situation “stripped of justification” NATO’s military integration and that France was therefore re-establishing her sovereignty over French territory.

The Netherlands was selected to host AFCENT and Belgium became the host nation for both NATO and SHAPE. Gen. Lemnitzer had hoped that SHAPE could be located near to NATO Headquarters, as had been the case in Paris but the Belgian authorities decided that SHAPE should be located at least 50 kilometres from Brussels, NATO’s new location.

In 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and overthrew the reformist government of Alexander Dubcek. SHAPE monitored this crisis closely and advised NATO Headquarters about the military implications of the Soviet invasion, which increased the number of combat ready Red Army units deployed very close to the Federal Republic of Germany.

By the late 1970s the Soviet Union had greatly improved its military capabilities. NATO responded in December 1979 by adopting its “Dual Track” policy, under which NATO would modernise its theatre nuclear weapons with American Cruise and Pershing II missiles to be based in Europe but would also actively seek to negotiate an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, which if successful would make it unnecessary for NATO to deploy those missiles. The initial result of this decision was a worsening of relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact rapidly worsened and massive anti-nuclear demonstrations in some NATO countries.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposal to eliminate INF missiles evoked strong criticism from SACEUR Rogers, who feared that it placed NATO on “the slippery slope of de-nuclearization” and rendered it more vulnerable to blackmail or attack by the Warsaw Pact. Gen. Rogers’ opposition to the proposed INF agreement played a major role in his retirement in 1987.SHAPE now entered one of the most remarkable periods in modern European history.

SHAPE helped NATO respond to a series of extremely complex and momentous changes: the end of the Cold War marked by the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the unification of Germany one year later, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the break-up of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, rapidly improving East-West relations, the “Springtime of Nations” in Eastern Europe, Military Cooperation with former members of the Warsaw Pact, and calls for a “Peace Dividend” and the transformation of NATO itself. Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, SHAPE implemented precautionary measures to ensure the security of NATO’s Mediterranean members and prevent the spread of tension and conflict.

Soon after the end of the Gulf War, a new crisis broke out within Europe itself. The multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia began falling apart, and fighting broke out in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. The region quickly was caught up in a paroxysm of nationalism, hatred, violence and atrocities unseen in Europe since the Second World War.

The reorganisation of SHAPE and ACE was implemented in 1993. Europe’s greater voice within the alliance was symbolised by German Gen. Peter Carstens becoming the 1-st European Chief of Staff at SHAPE, a new regional command called Allied Forces Northwest Europe, which comprised the United Kingdom and Norway, was also established the same year. Against the background of the deteriorating situation in Former Yugoslavia, SHAPE continued implementing the major changes underway in ACE during the tenure of the tenth SACEUR, U.S. Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili. Shortly before Gen.l Shalikashvili relinquished command to become chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, SHAPE and AFSOUTH completed a plan for NATO Close Air Support to UN forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. NATO was thus prepared to take military action if UN peacekeepers were threatened or to conduct a major peacekeeping operation itself if an agreement could be reached to end the fighting.

During the early to mid-1990s SHAPE became more operationally oriented and busier than at any other time in its history. Soon after U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan became SACEUR in 1993, the situation in Bosnia Herzegovina worsened and NATO became increasingly involved in supporting international efforts to stop the fighting.

rom late August until mid September 1995, NATO aircraft attacked Bosnian Serb military targets to force them to withdraw heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area. NATO’s forceful action contributed to the Bosnian Serbs’ decision to enter into peace negotiations, and in November 1995 the warring factions signed the Dayton Peace Accords. At the same time NATO agreed to assume responsibility for leading an international peacekeeping force to implement the peace accords in Bosnia Herzegovina.

SHAPE and its subordinate headquarters quickly produced NATO’s military plan to implement the Dayton Accords, and on December 20, 1995 responsibility for peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina transferred from the UN to the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR).

The IFOR mission was the largest and most complex military operation in Europe since the Second World War. Nearly 50,000 troops from NATO and 17 Non-NATO countries, including Russia, deployed to the region, and Gen. Joulwan’s unifying slogan for the force was “One Team, One Mission”. The participation of so many non-NATO nations required the development of new co-ordination and command and control arrangements, and one of the most difficult ones to negotiate was with Russia, NATO’s historic Cold War opponent.

After high level diplomacy failed, Gen. Joulwan’s personal negotiations with senior Russian officers proved more successful, and in another historic first for NATO, a Russian general became SACEUR’s deputy for Russian Forces in IFOR, and a Russian delegation joined the IFOR Co-ordination Centre established at SHAPE.

U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark became SACEUR in July 1997, and almost immediately afterward the NATO Summit at Madrid invited three nations - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - to begin accession talks for membership in the Alliance.

Soon afterward NATO found itself involved in its first actual conflict in support of the international community’s efforts to stop the harsh oppression of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

On June 9, 1999 Serb and NATO officers signed an agreement for the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and the entry of an international NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) into the province. The following day NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana announced the suspension of NATO’s air campaign.

The Balkans remained an important area of interest under the next SACEUR, General Joseph W. Ralston, who took up his duties in May 2000 as only the second Air Force Officer to serve as SACEUR.

In November 2002, shortly before General Ralston stepped down as SACEUR, the leaders of the NATO member nations met at the Prague Summit and decided upon a wide-ranging and ambitious transformation of the Alliance.  In terms of structures, there would in the future be only one command with responsibility for all NATO operations – Allied Command Operations with its headquarters at SHAPE – while the new Allied Command Transformation headquartered at Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States, would be responsible for developing the doctrines and tools that NATO would need in the 21st Century. During General Jones’s tenure as SACEUR Allied Command Operations became increasingly busy as the number and size of NATO operations increased steadily.  As tensions in the Middle East once again increased prior to the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition, NATO conducted Operation Display Deterrence from 20 February to 16 April 2003 to strengthen Turkish defences against a possible threat from Iraq.  In the Balkans KFOR continued its vital peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and successfully withstood a major challenge to stability in March 2004, when widespread ethnic violence was accompanied by attacks on international organisations.

nato bg stampDuring General Jones’ tenure as SACEUR, the Alliance added seven new members – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - bringing the total number of countries in the Alliance to 26.  As an interim measure to assist some of these new members in securing their airspace, NATO nations have provided air policing.

On 7 December 2006 General Jones turned over command of Allied Command Operations to General John Craddock, United States Army.  Afghanistan was naturally a key area of interest during General Craddock’s tenure, because ISAF had taken over responsibility for the whole of the country just a few months earlier.

The Balkans also continued to be an important area of interest for General Craddock, as Kosovo and NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) both underwent significant changes.  In Kosovo NATO had to deal with the challenges posed by that country’s unilateral declaration of independence and the resulting stand-down of the Kosovo Protection Corps and the stand-up of the Kosovo Security Force.

During General Craddock’s tenure as SACEUR two more nations – Albania and Croatia – joined the Alliance in April 2009, bringing the total number of NATO members to 28.  Once again, air policing is being provided by other NATO members until the new members develop their own capabilities.

On 2 July 2009 General Craddock was succeeded as SACEUR by Admiral James G. Stavridis, US Navy, in a ceremony marking a historic first in NATO’s history – the first admiral to serve as SACEUR.