Immediately after President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 1 that he would deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared that the alliance would also step up with a miniature surge of its own. While Rasmussen’s announcement may have been a deft political move, many of the 7,000 troops he cited were pledged well in advance of Obama’s West Point speech, with some of those forces already on the ground. Also, the figure does not take into account planned near-term withdrawals by frontline contributors like the Netherlands and Canada. Finally, although the specific country-by-country breakdown [...]
In case you missed it, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher was in Poland yesterday to sign a Status of Forces Agreement. The forces in question are the U.S. troops that will be stationed there to service the Patriot missile batteries that have replaced the “hard” missile defense installations that so riled Russia. In other words, Poland got what it wanted all along, which was an American troop presence, if a less permanent one, to create on-the-ground commitments on the part of the U.S. The fact that Poland has also committed more troops to Afghanistan suggests that whatever offense was taken [...]
Here are a few of this week’s highlights from WPR’s video section: -Romanians are discouraged by their choices for the next president as election day approaches. The Wall Street Journal reports in this video. -Kosovo meets resistance in its fight for independence. This Al Jazeera video shows the push back coming from Belgrade. -Residents of Gyumri, Armenia’s once-prospering second city, contemplate the significance of an open border with Turkey in this WSJ video. -United NationsSpecial Representative in Iraq Ad Melkert discusses the political climate in Iraq in this New America Foundation video. And if you missed our Afghanistan strategy video [...]
