Message from ata president Dr. Karl A. Lamers Ladies and Gentlemen
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Message from ATA President Dr. Karl A. Lamers
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am deeply grateful that I enjoyed the confidence of you, the ATA members, electing me as your new President at the 54th General Assembly in November 2008 in Berlin. Thank you very much! This election means a great honour for me but is at the same time an extensive challenge and responsibility.
Trust and confidence and common values – these are some of the characteristics of NATO, the Atlantic Treaty Association and of our Atlantic Councils all over the world. For more than 55 years ATA has strengthened reliable transatlantic relations and it has helped to communicate about what NATO is and what it does. Today, ATA has 42 members. Many more stand at the door. This is a great development and this shows the tremendous work, ATA and YATA have done.
20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, former opponents are working closely and trustfully together reaching their common goals – strengthening transatlantic relations and building democracy. With the Balkan Mosaic and the Ukrainian Dialogue, with the Young Atlanticist Summit and the Crisis Management Simulations – to mention only a few – ATA and YATA have developed many successful activities.
Beside there is the great work of all our national chapters. I have already visited several ATA-members during the last weeks for attending conferences organized by the national Atlantic Councils. I got an idea of their efforts and their convincing engagement.
And I also determined how important a personal and structural dialogue between all participants is, to overcome potential prejudices and to pursue our common goals. I will therefore visit as many national chapters as possible during my presidency. Much has been achieved during the last years. We can be proud of that!
Nevertheless much remains to be done. New challenges and threats have to be faced. The engagement and commitment of political leaders and the public need to be strengthened to gain a renewed transatlantic community. It is our common task to overcome these present challenges and to cope with our future duties. We need to improve and intensify our efforts together. ATA must have a face and its voice must be heard! Especially this year 2009 will be an important year for NATO and ATA. ATA NEWSLETTER W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 Atlantic Treaty Association/ Association du Traité Atlantique Quartier Prince Albert , Rue des Petites Carmes, 20 B-1000 Bruxelles , Belgique W W W . A T A - S E C . O R G Deadline for Submissions : Please send all articles, interviews, activities and photos to miroslav.mizera@ata-sec.org
Due: 30 April 2009 2 W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 A T A N E W S L E T T E R In April 2009, NATO celebrates its 60th Anniversary with a summit being the first to be held in two countries – at Strasbourg in France and Baden-Baden in Germany, on both sides of the river Rhine. At this summit, two new member states – Albania and Croatia – will be joining the organisation. The historical date, the choice of the location as well as the meeting of then 28 heads of states and governments will initialize a tremendous symbolic significance.
We are looking forward to co-organize a Youth Summit in Strasbourg on the margins of the Anniversary Summit. This event 'NATO in 2020: What lies ahead?' will give us a great opportunity to present our work and to make the goals and activities of ATA transparent. And I am also very much looking forward to the speech of the new President of the United States, Barack Obama, on the NATO Summit. I am convinced that the new President stands for a change in the American security and defence policy and a policy of dialogue and reconciliation. He is aware that no country alone can master the new security challenges. We must all stand together!
As President of ATA, I am convinced that ATA as well as our national chapters and YATA will play this important role. We will stand together and work together!
Best regards,
Dr. Karl. A. Lamers MdB was elected as ATA President in 2008. He is also the Deputy Chairman of the Defence Committee of the German Parliament and the Vice-President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Dr. Lamers studied law and political science at the Westphalian Wilhelm University in Muenster. He obtained a doctorate in law and is a practising lawyer since 2000. A Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a senior civil servant (Ministerial Counsellor) in the Parliament of the state of Baden- Wuerttemberg: Head of the office of the President of the Parliament of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and responsible for fostering international relations. He has been a Member of CDU (Christian Democratic Party) since 1975 and the German Bundestag since 1994.
As Member of the German Bundestag, Dr. Lamers has been the Deputy Chairman of the Defence Committee since November 2006; Chairman of the Sub-Committee “Development of Internal Leadership” of the Defence Committee since 2003; Chairman of the Group of Rapporteurs for Future Air Defence of the Defence Committee, between 1995 – 1998, and Substitute Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs since 1998.
He has also been a Member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA) since 1997, and in November 2006 he became the Head of the German Delegation and Vice-President of the NATO PA. For more than 55 years ATA has strengthened reliable transatlantic relations and it has helped to communicate about what NATO is and what it does...
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, former opponents are working closely and trustfully together reaching their common goals – strengthening transatlantic relations and building... 3 http://www.nato.int/60years/index.html
W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 A T A N E W S L E T T E R NATO’s 60 th Anniversary – Achievements and Future Challenges” By Stefanie Babst, NATO Deputy Secretary General for Public Diplomacy
Ladies and gentle- men, 60 is not a bad age. This year, Adidas and Volkswagen are celebrating their 60 th anniversary, and the German Grundgesetz will turn 60, too. So the Transatlantic Alliance is in good company. But NATO today is no longer the NATO of 1966, say, nor even that of the mid-90s when the Allies deployed their first crisis manage- ment operation in the Bal- kans. Since 1999, when NATO adopted its present Strategic Concept, the stra- tegic landscape has altered considerably – and NATO had to change with it, too.
NATO has gradually transformed itself, towards contributing to international stability and defending the interests of its members far beyond their own borders – in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Af- ghanistan, and also quite recently off the coast of So- malia to combat piracy. For sure, the centres of gravity for NATO have shifted: with greater emphasis on ‘out of area’ and involving new strategic and regional part- nerships with those who have shared interests. NATO’s transforma- tion has not always been easy. No blueprint has ever been written providing a script for how it should change after the Cold War. And while the Allies were adapting NATO’s strategic focus, critics inside and out- side the Alliance repeatedly predicted its demise, argu- ing that the transatlantic security community had lost its reason for being. But here we are: 60 years after the Washington Treaty was signed in April 1949, the political stakeholders of this organisation still see a lot of added value in NATO. One reason for their commitment is certainly that they understand full well that nothing can be taken for granted. Because of NATO’s success, many of its achievements are taken for granted, but they are far from self-evident and deserve to be recalled. Certainly NATO helped to overcome the great power conflict on the European continent; it helped build a permanent transatlantic community of values and interests; it supported the political and economic re- covery of Europe after 1945 and fostered the integration of US, Canadian and Euro- pean military forces and capabilities.
Historians widely agree that NATO’s exis- tence contributed to the peaceful end of the Cold War, that it facilitated the unification of Germany and helped overcome the Cold War dividing lines. More- over, the Alliance built part- nerships with former adver- saries and created a new cooperative European se- curity system; it promoted arms control and disarma- ment and fostered a collec- tive approach to security throughout the entire Euro- Atlantic region. And finally, it was NATO that helped end the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s and reached out to Europe’s neighbours to the East and to the South to promote trust, dialogue and cooperation in security matters. During the past 60 years NATO has estab- lished a unique brand. In the eyes of our public, it stands for transat- lantic solidarity and the pro- vision of security and de- fence; and despite what some public trends tell us about declining support for difficult missions such as in Afghanistan, this brand re- mains strong because past and current generations of people on both sides of the Atlantic want their countries A T A N E W S L E T T E R W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 4
to work together on security
Collective defence is and will remain NATO’s primary task, but Allied se- curity today means that NATO must operate be- yond its borders to tackle threats where they arise and contribute to a more secure international order from which Allies will also benefit. I share the view of many that we are at an im- portant moment of transi- tion as regards how we “do” security in the 21st century.
The reasons are clear. On the one hand we are facing a growing num- ber of new security chal- lenges and threats, ranging from the proliferation of nu- clear missiles and climate change to cyber attacks, energy security and ex- tremism. NATO’s enemies are less clearly defined, lurking in the shadows and hiding in failed states. On the other hand there is a new US admini- stration in office, bringing with it fresh ideas. Russia wants its voice heard, and its interests taken into ac- count, on a growing list of issues. And NATO will soon launch a fundamental dis- cussion on the roles it should play in the 21st cen- tury, in the form of an up- dated Strategic Concept.
The forthcoming Summit in Strasbourg and Kehl will be an important opportunity for the Allies to discuss these and other critical issues. They will certainly take a moment to look back and acknowledge NATO’s past
achieve- ments, but more impor- tantly, they will use the Summit to set the course for NATO’s future strategic direction. cleansing and human rights viola- tions in Kosovo, and later estab- lished a NATO-led force to bring peace to Kosovo and implement UNSC Resolution 1244. Only two years later, NATO carried out a mis- sion to disarm insurgent groups in the former Yugoslav Republic of Ma- cedonia to help stabilise that country. But the Alliance has done more than contribute to crisis management and peacekeeping at its southern bor- ders. Since 2001, NATO has been running a naval task force in the Mediterranean to help prevent terror- ism, as well as a training mission for Iraqi military officers and police in Iraq. In Pakistan, Allies ran a hu- manitarian operation to help that country recover from a terrible earth- quake, and in Africa, we provided airlift support to help the African Un- ion deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur and Somalia. A T A N E W S L E T T E R W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 5
So what will be the key issues of discussion at the Sum- mit and thereafter? I suggest there are four: operations, rela- tions with Russia, the future of partnerships and, last but not least, France’s return to the inte- grated command structure. Over the past 15 years, NATO has carried out a variety of operations to help end crises and conflicts and stabilise fragile re- gions. Each operation and mis- sion is, of course, unique; and each and every operation was and is an opportunity for the Al- lies to learn. Let me just remind you of a few: in the mid-90s, dur- ing the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, NATO enforced a naval embargo in support of the UN in the Adriatic; it guaranteed a no-fly zone and provided close air support to protect UN peace- keeping forces; it conducted an air campaign to break the siege of Sarajevo, and deployed SFOR to implement the Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia- Herzegovina. In 1999, NATO conducted an air campaign to stop ethnic Continuation on page 20-21>>>
A T A N E W S L E T T E R W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 6
For the third year in a row, Latvian Transat- lantic
Organisation (LATO) organised the an- nual Riga Conference which brought together over 180 international pol- icy experts, academics, politicians, representa- tives of NGOs and jour- nalists from all over the world and took forward the tradition established by the NATO Riga Sum- mit - to hold an interna- tional debate on security of the transatlantic com- munity and on foreign pol- icy issues.
The main aim of the project is to make Riga one of the main ana- lytical centres in Europe and to promote Latvia’s image abroad. This year the Riga Conference 2008 “Europe Whole and Free: 90 Years in the Making” took place on the eve of Latvia’s 90 th anniversary, from October 31 st to No- vember 2 nd . www.rigaconference.lv
Besides experts
and politicians, such prominent persons as President of Latvia Valdis Zatlers, President of Esto- nia Toomas
Hendrik Ilvess, President of Geor- gia Mikheil Saakashvili, Deputy Prime Minister for the EU Affairs of the Czech Republic Alexan- der Vondra, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia Maris Riekstins, State Secretary of Ministry of Defence of Latvia Janis Sarts, Deputy State Minis- ter for Reintegration of Georgia David Rakviash- vili, as well as former president of Latvia Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former
deputy prime minister of Russia Boris Nemtsov, Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General
of NATO Jamie Shea and many others participated in the conference.
More than 80 jour- nalists from Latvia and abroad provided a broad coverage of the confer- ence in local and interna- tional mass media.
For more details concerning the conference please visit the website.
Riga Conference brought together over 180 international policy experts, academics, politicians, representatives of NGOs and journalists.
80 journalists from Latvia and abroad covered the conference in local and international mass media. From November 24 th
th Latvian Transatlantic Organisation (LATO) in cooperation with the Georgian NGO “new Gen- eration - new Initiative,” with the support of Ministry of De- fence of Latvia and Ministry of Defence of Georgia, organ- ized an Akhaltsikhe Interna- tional Security Seminar 2008 (AISS) in Tbilisi, Georgia for twenty four youngsters from Latvia and Georgia, which had been postponed from August to November due to the recent conflict with Russia.
The main topic of the seminar
was Russian- Georgian conflict and its im- pact on the Europeans and Black Sea Region Security with the following topic dis- cussed – Russia-Georgia War: Lessons Learned and Future for the EU and NATO, Energy Aspect in the New Se- curity Environment, Black Sea Regional Security and others.
During the seminar youngsters listened to the lec- tures of prominent speakers, participated in group discus- sions with the leadership of international experts, as well as went for study trip to Gori city and villages damaged during the August war.
Several prominent offi- cials and experts participated in the seminar, including Dep- uty State Secretary for De- fence and Planning of Latvia Download 461.08 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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