The initial force is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad August 6, and is expected to be enlarged quickly. “It will certainly grow into the hundreds very rapidly in the early autumn,” said U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns. “The NATO flag is definitely going to be in Baghdad,” he added.

Agreement to deploy the force was reached at a July 30 meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels, one month after the NATO summit in Istanbul, where Washington had won only vague backing for its proposal that NATO train and equip the Iraqi military.

During and after the Istanbul meeting, Paris and Bonn had insisted that any such training should not be based in Iraq and proposed it be carried out at NATO bases in Italy and Germany. The French and German rulers seemed convinced that the dispatching of such a NATO force would not proceed without their forces taking part and worked to block it. They failed.

The training will now take place inside Iraq without the participation of either French or German troops.

The Brussels decision was reached after a contentious debate between Paris and Washington, where it was clear the French rulers were on the losing side. Consensus was reached after the French delegation declined to exercise its veto. The envoys did postpone until September 15 a decision on the command of the NATO force. Paris objected strongly to Washington’s proposal that NATO troops be under the command of Gen. George Casey, who is in charge of the U.S.-led forces occupying Iraq. But it is likely that a U.S. general will end up doing that in any case.

NATO officials also put off until later another dispute, over whether the mission should be commonly funded by all member states, as is the case in Afghanistan, or only by those sending troops.

This turn of events further tilts the balance of forces among the main competing imperialist powers toward the Anglo-American bloc and adds to the tensions between Paris and Washington.

“I think France, for the very sake of the alliance, doesn’t want NATO to take every curve and change of direction of the U.S.,” said Benoit d’Aboville, French ambassador to NATO, according to an article in the August 2 Wall Street Journal. “Therefore it’s true that on many issues we will be, at least at the start, on the opposite side from the U.S.”

In July, after the NATO envoys returned from a visit to an aircraft carrier where they saw jet fighters catapulted into the air, “d’Aboville joked to colleagues that Washington likewise is trying to catapult NATO into Iraq,” the Journal said. That did happen.

Thomas Steg, deputy spokesman for the German government, said August 2 that Berlin will not dispatch troops to Iraq as part of the NATO mission. His government has only agreed to provide training for Iraqi officers at military schools in Germany, he said. Unlike Paris, which has the strongest military in Europe along with London, the German armed forces are not a well-oiled fighting machine. The German government, while siding with the French in the disputes inside NATO, has taken a sideline approach to the matter.

The Atlantic imperialist alliance was founded by Washington after World War II, when the U.S. rulers emerged as the main victors from the world inter-imperialist slaughter. From the beginning, its formation registered Washington’s immense military and economic superiority in Europe.

In 1966, French president Charles de Gaulle pulled Paris out of NATO’s integrated military structures and evicted NATO’s headquarters from the French capital. Ever since, the French government has maintained limited participation in the Atlantic alliance and its stance has been consistent with its growing competition with Washington over domination of world markets and resources.

Paris and Berlin objected to the timing of the invasion of Iraq and its domination by Anglo-American forces last year. The U.S.-led war resulted in the French rulers losing all their Iraqi investments and being replaced by their U.S. competitors as the dominant force in that part of the world.

The French and German rulers, who have been leading the imperialist bloc competing with the Anglo-American group of imperialist powers over world domination, see the expansion of NATO’s authority beyond Europe—first to Afghanistan and now in Iraq—as a further strengthening of U.S. power.

Shortly before the imperialist invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Paris blocked a NATO consensus to dispatch alliance forces to Turkey allegedly to help defend Ankara from possible attacks by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Washington, however, bypassed the French veto by using a NATO body where Paris doesn’t have a vote, because of its 1966 pullout, to drive ahead with its proposal. The U.S. government has moved since then to strengthen this body, as part of ensuring that Paris can’t stop U.S. initiatives within the imperialist alliance. This precedent may have been a factor in Paris declining to exercise its veto at the July 30 Brussels meeting.

NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels July 30 that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq “will give protection” to the initial NATO force. The first task of the 40 NATO officers in Baghdad will be to train Iraqi officers how to run and coordinate their own command and control system, he said.

NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones, is now assigned to come up with a recommendation by September 15 on how the Atlantic alliance’s force will be commanded. The U.S. proposal for Casey to command the force had the backing of the majority of the 26 NATO member states, 16 of which have troops in Iraq already as part of the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing.”
 
 
Related articles:
Powell to U.S. allies: ‘don’t get weak in knees’
Australian rulers close ranks on Iraq
Labor Party drops call for Iraq troop withdrawal, affirms alliance with Washington  
 
 
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