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There are people to carry on the torch of world leadership – ex NATO boss
Published: 29 September, 2010, 12:10
Edited: 30 September, 2010, 13:36
TAGS: Military, NATO, Nuclear, Russia, Politics, Human rights, Terrorism, North Korea, Iran, Iraq
After the Cold War ended conflicts in the world went down by 80% so the world now is a much better place to live in, believes former NATO boss George Robertson, who was the alliance’s Secretary General in 1999-2004.
However, modern conflicts are quite different, so NATO – as well as Russia – has to adapt to new realities – not to fight the last war – in order to be able to confront those new challenges, he said, adding there are too many ghosts of old conflicts and groundless fantasies ruling the political agenda instead of focusing on what people are really concerned with.
“NATO’s enemy is instability. It is global terrorism, it is armed insurgents, exactly the same as Russia’s enemy is. We are not talking about NATO being Russia’s enemy or Russia being NATO’s enemy. The fact is that we have got to deal with these problems,” Robertson stated.
There is no reason to be afraid of China with its biggest army in the world because “China faces the same problems.”
“The neighbor of China is North Korea. North Korea has got nuclear weapons and it is the craziest state. Crazy people run that state so that is a threat. And it is much more closer to China than to New York City,” Robertson evaluated.
He named NATO “the greatest and most successful defensive alliance the world has ever known,” because it thrives due to being “not just a military organization, but an alliance of values, a belief in democracy.”
“Russia needs to be a part of this community of values,” he said, adding, “today’s world is about defending the order states against the disorder parts of the world and bringing stability to these parts of the world as well.”
Answering a question about plans of attacking Iran, Robertson mentioned that “Iran is not a normal country seeking to acquire nuclear weapons,” and since Iran has expressed desire “to wipe one of its neighbors off the map” and advances in developing ballistic missiles – it is a danger to its neighbors, Russia included.
As for the never found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which served as a cause to go to war on the country, Robertson said “we know that no, we did not know that then,” but “Iraq and Iran are not the same” because Iraq once attacked neighboring Kuwait, used chemical weapons against its own people in the Kurdish area and the US had a good reason to believe, even if the intelligence was faulty, that “Saddam was up to something and it was only a matter of time before he would again threaten his neighbors in the region.”
Iran is not a fundamentalist dictatorship and “we need to be more sympathetic to the good, honest, decent, peace-loving people in Iran and encourage them to stand up to those who would oppress them and seek to destabilize the region.”
“I’m an ex [NATO] Secretary General, but there are people who must carry on the torch of leadership in the world today,” Robertson concluded.
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4 comments
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Nato the UN military has always create the imagine as peacekeepers "Ah but wait a minute for since the time of the league of nation a formula was being develop to create the World order via many wars along the way. What democratic right is that when foreign nations go into any sovereign state and force it's leaders to be exile or force the groups that have join them to the execution of the leader of the country (such be the known case of Sadam). The deception of the UN and it,s military Nato will come to a peak as it is clear it has backfire in many country and now especially the United States. The mass,s sense it with this recruitment of billions of dollars spend on homeland security which by the way many Nato troops are offer a job as a law enforcement officer in exchange for a US passport and plus some. Now this false flag of Democracy seems to be slowly burning and only the ash,s of the past tragedies of war will be in some book of an historian. In the end the Central bankers will and still are the winners. Where is the french revolutionary,s today?
The number of the conflicts DECREASED since the end of Cold War? One really wonders at such people and their freedom to say any nonsense they choose. Far from it. The number of conflicts has increased dramatically, and the global security dangerously diminished. Instead of striving towards consensus through UN, the unilateralism has prevailed. Instead of working with UN, coallitions of the "willing" replaced the UN consensus. And on it goes. Security should be INDIVISIBLE, and should not be guaranteed only to those within blocks. That is what NATO does not want to understand. Now, every excuse is good enough for a military action. Once started, it spreads on neighboring countries and spreads instability. Drugs, terrorism, human trafficking, arms trafficking --- are all consequences of destabilized international security. National governments are weak and are made even weaker though little respect for their sovereignity. The result are failed states, and misery for millions of people. Not much to proud off.
By 'torch' is he referring to the cities NATO burns?