From Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Project Syndicate:  Many years ago, I took my children to visit the sites of the D-Day landings in Normandy. I wanted them to understand the sacrifices that others had made so that Europe and North America could enjoy the benefits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We saw the beaches whose names echo through history – Omaha, Utah, Juno. Those beaches remain a memorial to the idea that, together, we can overcome any threat, no matter how great.

We understand the future that could have befallen not only Europe, but the entire world, if North America had not helped Europe in its hour of need. And we know that those landings created a unique bond between our continents.

That bond remains vital for the preservation of our values and our security. But, after the Cold War, many assumed that its institutional embodiment – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – would fade away. It did not, because our bond is based not just on common threats, but on shared ideals. It could no more fade away than our desire for freedom could wane. NATO needed no external reasons to exist. Yet history would provide them soon enough.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO intervened to stop massive human-rights violations. In Libya, we enforced a United Nations Security Council resolution to protect civilians. And in Afghanistan, we are denying a safe haven to extremists.

The Alliance has evolved into a true security-management organization that is flexible, efficient, and cost-effective. The threats have changed, and become more global, and we have changed to meet them.

NATO is developing a ballistic-missile defense capability to protect our European populations and territory against a grave and growing threat. In the Indian Ocean, NATO is working with the European Union and many others to police major sea lanes threatened by pirates. And, in countries around the world, it carries out tasks such as de-mining, disaster relief, advising on how to bring military forces under democratic control, and working closely with the UN to prevent harm to children.

Efforts like these may not make headlines. But security is like health – you never notice it until it takes a turn for the worse. This is why you need insurance. And NATO is the most solid security insurance that the world has. Underwritten by 28 members, it has delivered security benefits to all Allies, year after year, for more than six decades.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been Secretary-General of NATO since 2009. He was previously Prime Minister of Denmark.  (photo: thefrenchwillneverforget.com)

From Hillary Clinton, the Department of State:  Assad will have to go, and the Syrian people must be given the chance to chart their own future.

Given the Assad regime’s record of broken promises, we are proceeding, understandably, with caution. The ministers agreed to remain in close contact in the hours and days ahead. As we speak, our representatives in New York are consulting on a potential UN monitoring mission that would go to Syria under the right authorities, circumstances, and conditions. The United States supports sending an advance team immediately to begin this work. And both will need complete freedom of movement, unimpeded communications, and access throughout the country and to all Syrians, as well as firm security guarantees from all parties… .

[O]ur teams are working in New York on a UN Security Council resolution that calls for Assad to fully comply with all points in the Annan plan and that supports Kofi Annan’s request to send a UN advance team to Syria immediately to prepare the way for a full, robust international monitoring mission. And let me be as clear as I can: That monitoring mission will only be a force for peace and security if it enjoys the full freedom of action within Syria. That means freedom of movement, secure communications, a large enough ground presence to bear witness to the enforcement of the six-point plan in every part of Syria.

QUESTION [Scott Stearns, VOA]: [C]ould you tell us whether you support NATO protecting the border between Turkey and Syria? …

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, with respect to your first question, there is nothing of that nature pending and I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals.

Excerpts from remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of the G8 Ministerial.  (photo: Getty)

From Doyle McManus, the Los Angeles Times:  At a meeting in Istanbul last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced an escalation of U.S. aid to the opposition. In public, she pointed to a doubling of medical and other humanitarian aid, plus the provision of communication equipment. Less publicly, officials confirmed that the new package also includes “non-lethal” help that will go to the Free Syrian Army, the newly formed opposition armed forces, including night-vision goggles and U.S. intelligence information such as early warnings of Syrian troop movements.

And while the United States has decided not to provide weapons to the rebels, it isn’t objecting to military funding or arms shipments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states that would like to see Assad fall… .

If the pace of the killing slows, that could buy time: time for economic sanctions to undermine the regime, time to cajole Russia to switch sides and help pull the rug out from Assad, but also time for the opposition and its new army to organize themselves into a more effective force.

If those measures fail to bring Assad down, the administration appears divided on how quickly to move toward military intervention. The Pentagon is reluctant to get involved in another war, as the Pentagon usually is. Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, has also weighed in against any post-Libya temptation to “militarize” another problem. Clinton’s State Department has sounded the most hawkish notes — in part, perhaps, because it’s Clinton who has delivered most of the administration’s public declarations that Assad must go.

But even the administration’s humanitarian hawks don’t think the moment for U.S. or NATO military intervention has arrived yet.

They’d like the U.N. Security Council to give its blessing first, or — if Russia and China continue to resist — at least NATO. They’d like the Syrian opposition to be better organized, with more assurance that military aid wouldn’t fall into the hands of radical Islamists. They’d like Turkey to establish safe havens for the opposition along its border with Syria.

Eventually, though, the question of military intervention will change from if to when. The United States is already a little bit pregnant — already committed to helping Assad fall. It’s merely looking for the least violent, lowest cost way to get there.  (photo: Getty)

From James Joyner, the New Atlanticist:  General Brent Scowcroft argues that NATO’s Libya intervention may point to the future of the military alliance as the go-to enforcer of UN Security Council resolutions.

Delivering the Atlantic Council’s 5th Annual Christopher J. Makins Lecture at the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates , the National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford andGeorge H.W. Bush noted that he was “not a fan” of intervening in Libya, which he saw as too low a priority for American national security to justify the use of force. Nonetheless, he sees it as a plausible model for the Alliance in which a call for help by regional actors is met with a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing force and then a coalition of the willing of NATO members and regional partners carries out the operating.

He notes that the UN Charter envisions a standing force to serve just this purpose but that it has never come into being for obvious reasons; NATO might become the de facto realization of this vision… .

As to the Alliance becoming the Security Council’s enforcement arm, it’s a notion that Joshua Foust and I mocked as “Team America for R2P” in a New Atlanticist roundtable a year ago. While potentially a recipe for perpetual war, it’s unlikely to materialize any time soon for reasons that Scowcroft highlighted in his post-speech conversation with Atlantic Council president and CEO Fred Kempe: Russia and China are angry that their abstention to allow the passage of a Security Council authorization to protect civilians in Libya was used to justify a regime change mission and won’t let that happen again. We’ve already seen that in Syria, where the humanitarian nightmare far exceeds what was happening in Syria.

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council.

By Alberto R. Coll, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:  Over the past decade it has become fashionable to write off Europe and downgrade its importance to American interests. The arguments are familiar.  Supposedly, Europe is an economically declining and politically dysfunctional entity of increasing strategic irrelevance in a world where the likes of China, India, and Brazil should be accorded a much higher priority. The implication is that the United States should pay less attention to Europe and reduce the diplomatic and political resources it allocates to our transatlantic relationships, including NATO, even as we look for closer alliances with the new rising states. Europe’s current economic woes have only reinforced this view. The post-1945 vision in which Europe was America’s vital ally—and in which the United States actively encouraged closer European integration—has given way to a mixture of indifference, skepticism, and outright bipartisan condescension toward Europe and its apparent inability to get its act together… .

As President Obama has grappled with the question of how to deal with an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, no bloc of nations has been more supportive of American strategy than the European Union. Whether in tightening oil sanctions against Iran, cutting off Iranian financial institutions from the vital Europe-based SWIFT financial network, or increasing the pressure on Iran at the UN Security Council, Europe has been more valuable to the United States than anyone else. Indeed, on issues of grand strategy and global governance, Europe is closer to the United States in its outlook and long-term interests than anyone else in the world… .

In a world of seven billion people and vastly different cultures and civilizations, the nations and people of Europe are closest to us in their values, their preferred rules for global governance, and their willingness to work with us on behalf of our substantial common strategic interests.

In spite of its limitations, Europe remains our single most useful and most important ally. To ignore this is the grandest form of strategic self-delusion.

Alberto R. Coll is Professor of International Law, DePaul College of Law. Dr. Coll was chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, where he also served for five years as dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration.  (photo: EPA/BGNES)

From NATO:  NATO Allies agreed on 19 March to extend the Alliance’s counter piracy naval operation Ocean Shield, which operates off the Horn of Africa to protect merchant traffic from pirate attacks, for a further two years until the end of 2014.

This decision reflects NATO’s enduring commitment to counter the threat of piracy that exists in the Gulf of Aden and in the Western Indian Ocean. Working with the maritime community, individual nations and the US and EU-led counter piracy operations, NATO’s naval effort is making a difference, with the number of successful pirate hijacking down significantly in 2012.

In January of this year there were 4 pirate attacks, all of which were unsuccessful. As a result 80 suspected pirates were captured by counter piracy forces of which 59 were detained by NATO ships. In comparison, in January 2011 there were 29 attacks and 6 ships were pirated.

At the end of November 2011, the United Nations Security Council voted to extend its mandate for those fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa by a further 12 months. The extension of NATO operation to the end of 2014 reflects NATO commitment to an effort that started in 2008. In unanimously adopting resolution 2020, the Security Council stressed the need for the international community to not only tackle piracy but also to deal with the underlying causes i.e. the instability ashore in Somalia, something NATO has been stressing from the beginning.  (photo: Allied Maritime Command HQ Northwood)

From Aida Cerkez, the AP:  “Safe havens” for civilians in Syria? Think twice, Bosnians would warn.

With the U.N. unable to agree how to protect civilians against Bashar Assad’s forces, Western officials are discussing creation of safe corridors to deliver aid to Syrians trapped by the crackdown.

Similar measures failed badly during the war in Bosnia two decades ago that killed over 100,000 people and left millions homeless. The lesson of Bosnia is that without all sides honoring the agreement — and without a robust military response in case they don’t — such measures may have little effect and could actually prolong the misery.

In 1993, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that declared six cities in Bosnia as “safe havens” for civilians and deployed military observers to monitor the situation.

The U.N. protected zones in places like the capital of Sarajevo or the eastern enclave of Srebrenica in effect became prisons, subject to relentless shelling by Bosnian Serb forces that often denied they were responsible. The U.N. never managed to get enough aid through the corridors and smugglers made fortunes… .

Those safe havens actually lengthened the 1992-95 war.

Instead of stopping the bloodshed, they simply reduced it to a politically acceptable level. It enabled both the attackers and the resistance to continue fighting.

Without a quick political settlement, neither side could achieve victory and both staved off decisive defeat. It was not until Serb forces overran Srebrenica in July 1995 that the West could no longer sit and watch and deployed troops to stop the carnage.

The enclave fell after senior U.N. commanders rejected a request by a few hundred Dutch peacekeepers deployed in Srebrenica for air strikes and its Muslim Bosnian residents swarmed a U.N. military base, still believing the Dutch would protect them.

But outnumbered and outgunned, the U.N. peacekeepers allowed the Serbs to separate women and children from men and execute some 8,000 males in what later became known as the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Hans Blom, who oversaw a Dutch government-commisioned investigation into the Srebrenica massacre, said he is “very pessimistic” about what the international community can do in Syria. He voiced skepticism over the U.N.’s concept of “safe zones” or “safe areas,” calling it a very vague notion and difficult to enforce… .

Blom said that for now he doesn’t see a role for international peacekeepers in Syria because there is no peace to keep and any humanitarian workers who were to enter the country would face massive violence. Only a massive military intervention could stop the violence, he argued.

“Only if there is a very determined outside force willing to use military means, it’s maybe possible,” he said. “Interventions are a very complicated thing. And the terrible thing, of course, is that doing nothing is as bad.”

From Emre Peker and Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg:  Turkey called for an “immediate opening” of humanitarian aid corridors in Syria as Russia rebuffed efforts to revive a United Nations Security Council condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian security forces killed 21 people across the country today, including 13 from two families in the Baba Amr area of the central city of Homs, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria said on its website. The conflict has claimed more than 7,500 lives, according to UN estimates.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Syrian government must “really be pressured” to end the violent repression of protests. Syria’s army is “butchering its own people, pointing its guns at the masses,” Erdogan told members of his governing Justice and Development Party in the Ankara parliament today.

In Washington, Marine Corps General James Mattis, head of the U.S. Central Command, said Assad, drawing support from neighboring Iran, will remain in power “for some time.” The conflict “will get worse before it gets better,” Mattis said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee… .

Diplomacy has failed to stop Assad’s military assault against civilians, U.S. Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday.

“The United States has a clear national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria and forcing Assad to leave power,” McCain said, urging the creation of civilian safe havens by using airstrikes against Syrian forces and air defenses… .

Mattis said creating safe havens would require “a significant commitment” of military resources. Syria’s Russian- provided integrated air defense system of radar and missiles would make imposition of a no-fly zone “challenging” he said… .

Mattis said “Syria is unraveling in disarray” and events there “will have strategic repercussions throughout the region.”

Syria has a “substantial chemical and biological weapons” capability, “a significant integrated air defense system, and thousands of shoulder-fired anti-air missiles,” he said.  (photo: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty)

From the Editors of the Los Angeles Times:  War is not something to blunder into blithely, and no country — no matter how powerful — can solve all the problems of all the countries in the world. So when is it right to go to war? We’ve said before that we like the formulation ofRichard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who distinguishes between “wars of necessity” — those prompted by an invasion or other direct threat to vital national interests — and “wars of choice,” which are not inherently good or bad but ought to be rare and ought to be undertaken only if they can be reasonably assumed to accomplish more than they cost.

In the case of a war of choice waged primarily for humanitarian reasons, there are a number of rules that should guide American engagement, in our view. The provocation must be deemed severe enough to justify putting American lives at risk: Genocide, for example, shouldn’t be allowed to continue just because its perpetrator invokes national sovereignty. Before an intervention begins, policymakers should determine that all the alternatives short of war have been exhausted. If the plan is to aid a rebel group, as in Libya or, potentially, Syria, planners should be sure of who those new allies are and what they stand for. Countries should seek the widest possible support before committing troops or resources; Obama was right to insist on the backing of the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League before taking action in Libya. Where possible, intervention should be undertaken by multilateral organizations rather than individual nations. Once war is underway, planners should set narrowly tailored, definable and achievable aims.

As the U.S. has been reminded in recent years, there should also be a credible exit plan and a strategy for a war’s aftermath. Nation-building requires a commitment of time and great resources. Though policymakers sometimes forget it, wars pile on debt for future generations to pay.

These conditions have not been met in Syria. This is not a war of necessity for the United States; our vital national interests are not in danger. To justify American involvement — limited or otherwise — policymakers have yet to answer a number of questions. Have all diplomatic alternatives been exhausted? Can Russia and China be won over? What is the objective, the strategy, the end game?

In recent years, the United Nations has enunciated a doctrine known as “responsibility to protect,” which postulates that the world community shares a responsibility to defend populations from atrocities such as genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We agree, but what’s happening in Syria doesn’t rise to the level of genocide. Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton said this week that Assad fits the definition of a war criminal, and others have argued that he is committing crimes against humanity. Our view is that the international community has a moral responsibility to work urgently to end the violence in Syria, but we do not believe it has reached the point at which military intervention is justified.  (photo: AP)

From Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO:  The Qadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Qadhafi realises that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better — so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.

The Libyan people have suffered tremendously under Qaddafi’s rule for over four decades.  Now they have a chance for a new beginning.  Now is the time for all threats against civilians to stop, as the United Nations Security Council demanded.  Now is the time to create a new Libya – a state based on freedom, not fear; democracy, not dictatorship; the will of the many, not the whims of a few.

That transition must come peacefully.  It must come now. And it must be led and defined by the Libyan people. 

NATO is ready to work with the Libyan people and with the Transitional National Council, which holds a great responsibility. They must make sure that the transition is smooth and inclusive, that the country stays united, and that the future is founded on  reconciliation and respect for human rights.

Qadhafi’s remaining allies and forces also have a great  responsibility. It is time to end their careers of violence. The world is watching them. This is their opportunity to side with the Libyan people and choose the right side of history.

We will continue to monitor military units and key facilities, as we have since March, and when we see any threatening moves towards the Libyan people, we will act in accordance with our UN mandate.
 
Our goal throughout this conflict has been to protect the people of Libya, and that is what we are doing. 

Because the future of Libya belongs to the Libyan people.  And it is for the international community to assist them, with the United Nations and the Contact Group playing a leading role. NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace. Today, they can start building that future.  (photo: NATO)