The Nato Revamping Club

Feb 10, 2007 — MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer opened a potentially fierce tug-of-war over the future of the alliance on Saturday, urging members to agree by 2009 on a new "strategic concept" for the body.

NATO's strategic concept is its core mission statement and the current 1999 version was drawn up before the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, which Washington and others insist show the alliance must tackle emerging security threats wherever they arise before they lead to attacks.

(NATO unaware 9/11 an inside job.)

It also predates the alliance entering Afghanistan — its first peacekeeping mission outside the Euro-Atlantic area it was set up to protect.

(They need a new mission statement to go where no NATO has ever gone before.)

De Hoop Scheffer told a security conference in Munich the 26-member alliance should work better with the United Nations, the European Union and non-NATO partners, and offer itself more widely as a military trainer in the Middle East and beyond.

"We have learned fundamental lessons from our operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo," he said of NATO's two largest current operations.

"Those are the lessons of 21st security. We need to enshrine them in our guiding documents so that they are implemented in practice," he told the conference, adding that he wanted NATO leaders to agree on a new strategic concept by a 2009 summit.

Many of his proposals already enjoy strong U.S. backing, with Washington for example long urging NATO to offer itself as a security trainer across the world, and invite "global partners" such as Australia and Japan to help out in missions.

De Hoop Scheffer also said the new strategic concept should confirm an informal target for all NATO nations to spend 2 percent of their national income on defense — something that all but half a dozen of them currently fail to do.

---- In the last couple of years club NATO has taken on at least 7 new member countries with more candidates applying for membership.

Alliances for 21st security training. That's 21st century I presume. Future power struggles – will Club UN or Club NATO get lucrative peacekeeping mission. Stay tuned to see which Club wins the right to call airstrikes on emerging threat in country X, Y, or Z.