NATO

""During the 1990s, the Polish American Congress (PAC) led a successful effort to convince the White House and the U.S. Congress to support Polish membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The lobbying effort by the “federation of all major Polish ethic organizations, some of them more than 100 years old” resulted in their ancestral homeland, newly liberated from communist rule, joining what political scientist Samuel Huntington has been called “the security organization of the Western civilization.” In large measure the umbrella organization was credited for that success—hailed as “the most important accomplishment of the PAC since its inception”—having sought to mobilize its membership, the Polish American community as a whole, and other Central and Eastern European ethnic groups in support of NATO accession.

Analyzed from the perspective of ethnic identity politics, and how changing conceptions of that identity affected the sense of responsibility by immigrants and their descendants to their new and ancestral homes, the PAC’s NATO campaign offers insight into questions about the changing construction of ethnicity and ethnic politics in the United States, and how the NATO marketing campaign affected the understanding of Polish Americans of their social, ethnic and national identity. It will show what role ethnic self-perceptions played in shaping and informing strategy and what the types of messaging by an important ethnic community were used in the political milieu. The paper also examines how the NATO campaign both dominated and changed the organization’s ethnic agenda. The tactics used over time by the PAC as an ethnic organization in pursuit of political goals is examined from the perspectives their effectiveness and their ability to be reproduced in other contexts, and a comparative perspective is offered about ethnic identity and issue lobbying. ...
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© 2008 All rights domestic and international reserved. May be quoted or cited or reproduced with credit to Martin Edwin Andersen and "Rallying Polonia: Impact and Transformation in the U.S. Fight for Poland’s Accession to NATO of the Polish American Congress"""

"This article presents an overall assessment of the effects based
approach to operations. This operating concept emerged during the 1991 Gulf War as a new approach to military targeting; but it evolved as a revolutionary methodology for the planning, conduction and assessment of operations based on the integration of diplomatic, informational, military and economic instruments. Encumbered as one of the guiding principles of the military transformation processes, this operating concept was employed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Lebanon. However, its limited applicability, its mediocre results and the development of new models for the management of complex crisis have entailed its disappearance of the world’s transformational agendas."

The crisis management operations, post-war stabilisation and nation-building that has taken place since the end of the Cold War has all highlighted the extreme need to harmonise multinational and inter-agency cooperation in order to increase the coherence and effectiveness of the operation. That is the basic principle of Comprehensive Approach, which is defined as the coordination of strategies and actions of the participating actors in crisis management and at all levels, stages and planes of same. The NATO has also incorporated these advances into the area of crisis management, as a result of which, since 2006, it has been defining its own concept of Comprehensive Approach for non-Article 5 missions, and as a central theme in its political-military strategy for the present and immediate future.

"The article is aimed at analyzing the Allied military transformation from its beginnings in
2002 to the current day. Ten years after the launch of this ambitious initiative, the Allied military
transformation is at a difficult crossroads: the process has lost its original guiding principles; it has not
helped to bridge the gap between the divergent strategic cultures or to reduce the rising capability gap
between both shores of the Atlantic; is has demonstrated its inability to respond to the operational
challenges caused by the Allied campaign in Afghanistan; and the 2010 Strategic Concept does not
provide a clear political guide to lead this process for the forthcoming years."

"Today the power and influence of the EU is growing in the UN. On the othe hand, UN provides legitimacy and authority for the EU military operations. However, is it necessary to obtain permission and command from the UN in case of threat against peace or can the EU manages a military operation without any UN resolution? This issue continues to cause debates over legal basis for the EU rapid reaction forces. In this study is argued the question of “how act the UN and the EU in state of emergency” explaining the EU’s military revolution. In addition to this, in which scope and in accordance with which rules is EU operations managed, and
which targets does the EU want to reach in world politics in future whereby Europe’s military reform, is emphasized. In this regard, aim and extent of UN operations are expressed. Basic principles of EU and UN peacekeeping operations which is in scope of UN Charter and legal basis for this operations are analyzed.

Keywords: Military Intervention, EU Military Operations, UN Charter, Peacekeeping, Crisis Management."

The on-going conflict in Syria, the anti-American nature of protests in the Middle East, increased Green on Blue attacks, among other issues has created a new set of geopolitical challenges. Could these challenges be better pre-empted by channelling smart defence through a more robust Germany-Turkey-United States partnership in order to advance NATO states’ collective interests?