"There is a great hunger for American values, ideas
and security. They want to see Americans, they
want to be touched by Americans," Clark said.
---Washington Post har publisert en lang informativ artikkel om USAs iherdige arbeid for å knytte tette militære bånd med Øst-Europeiske land i Russlands tidligere innflytelsesfære. Deler av dette arbeidet foregår utenfor NATO.
"The goal of the American effort is to create "a security sphere across Eastern Europe," Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's top commander and the head of the U.S. European Command, said in an interview.
The result is an informal alliance that parallels NATO but is more acutely reliant on its American benefactor."
Artikkelen er skrevet før bombingen av Jugoslavia, men den inneholder likevel mye interessant stoff, sammenfattet på et sted, og er nettopp lagt ut i sin helhet på TFFs sider.
Øistein Holen
---------- http://www.transnational.org/features/2000/usmilitaryalliances.html "(...) Although U.S. foreign policymakers kept the Slovak government at arm's length for several years to show displeasure with the slow pace of democratic reforms, the U.S. military has been intimately involved in remaking the 42,000-strong Slovak army. In twos and threes, hundreds of American officers have come each year to help the Soviet-trained force shrink to an affordable size, decentralize decision-making, accept a rational budget system and submit to control by civilian leaders.
The U.S. military is doing the same thing in 13 countries across Central and Eastern Europe, with plans to expand into the Caucasus and the recently independent states on Russia's southern border. Once the target of U.S. nuclear weapons, these countries are now the site of the most far-reaching new U.S. military-to-military contacts anywhere in the world. (...)"
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