Yunus Soner, Political Scientist, former Deputy Chairman of Vatan Party (Turkey)
We spoke to Retired Brigadier General Fahri Erenel on these issues. Erenel is also teaching at the Istinye University as Director of the Center for Applied Research on Security and Defense Strategies (GÜVSAM)..
NATO summit was discussed a lot. They decided on a defense concept, 4400 pages long, that we are curious about. Detailed 4400 pages. How did you interpret such a concept decision?
First of all when you include countries like Sweden to NATO, it becomes very difficult to manage a structure of 32 countries. Although you say might speak of NATO culture, it is very difficult to manage so many religions and nations at once.
This concept is what we call a military operation plan, a letter of principles. The most important factor here is the principle of simplicity. The more details you go into in today’s military operation, the more opportunities you create for the opposing side’s counter-attack.
As for the NATO plan you spoke about, the field implementation of such a multi-page plan may obviously be partially regional for armed forces. At the same time, NATO has changed many concepts as you know.
Each time NATO expanded, it prepared a new operational plan. It is never possible for a military unit to adapt to so many operational plan changes in a short time in a multinational structure. There is no successful example of this in history. So as NATO expands, it becomes unmanageable. In fact, Macron emphasized this by saying that NATO was ‘brain dead’. I take it one step further and say that NATO is actually going towards this euthanasia by including Finland and Sweden. […]
Members are obliged to spend two percent of their gross national product on defense, but 8 of ten are still below that threshold. Each of them relies on the USA or other major states. Here we end up with only one thing: Making the American defense industry work. As a matter of fact, a decision was taken to produce joint defense industry projects within this concept or plan. So who will produce? The United States of America.
You know, Truman used the same method in the Marshall Plan. He soled weapons and spare parts for money. Therefore, while all world economies struggled during the second world war, the American economy reached full employment. He has sold over ten thousand tanks, artillery and aircraft.
America’s economic power today owes it to what it sold to warring countries in World War II. Today we have the same picture. I think it is starting the Second Marshall Plan. It wants to set the standard in the defense industry products of this NATO structure. […]
For Biden, the Ukraine war is both an election investment and hope for the revival of the American economy, with the defense industry being the focus.
This plans also brings the Arctic region came into play. Sweden and Finland need to have a structure that can operate in cold climate and weather conditions. In fact, with this new NATO plan, America aimed to provide a force stance by taking Sweden and Finland behind it against Russia, which it was no longer inadequate, because America’s weakest position in the world against Russia was the Arctic region. They wanted to do an exercise in the Arctic 2 years ago and gave up, because there they had no rescue ship capable to break the ice.
America recently opened the base in Alaska, which it had closed years ago, and began to train a division there. But this will take very serious time. That’s why they moved so quickly with Sweden and Finland. Läs intervjun
