Tuesday, December 09, 2008

NATO to ADCAT

I recently read an article that argued that NATO expansion was not justified, since Russia is no longer the threat that the USSR was, for which NATO was originally organized, and that NATO actions in Afghanistan and other non-European theaters are beyond its mandate. For some time, I have thought, perhaps in view of the corruption of the UN, that there should be an organization that brings all democracies together for the purpose of fighting international terrorism. Certainly NATO is never going to fulfil this function, since it is primarily a military organization, and nor is the UN itself that includes most of the terrorist nations in the world (Iran, Syria, N.Korea, etc.).
I foresee an organization called the Association of Democratic Countries Against Terrorism (ADCAT). This would be a voluntary association of countries that are democratic and that support democratic principles, and that are prepared to organize together against the scourge of terrorism. This would of course be lead by the USA and the EU countries (that must be democratic to join the EU), but also India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and so on. But, it would exclude all those countries that presume to oppose terrorism, such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, but are not democratic and/or are not committed to the fight against terrorism.
One of the functions of this organization would be to allow these countries to share intelligence in a much more efficient and open way than they do today, and because of this it would be important not to allow any potential enemies within the organization.
It is clear that India was in no way prepared for the assault on Mumbai. Even if we acccept that there were only 10 terrorists, they caused a huge amount of death and damage and brought a huge city to a standstill. Such an organization as ADCAT would help countries such as India prepare for potential terrorist attacks, for example by advising it on how to prepare sufficient naval defenses and how to train its elite commandos, not only to be capable but also to be available anywhere in the country at short notice.
Among the mistakes the Indians made, although they tackled the terrorists bravely, were they had no defense at sea or along the coast of Mumbai, the elite commandos were in Delhi and took 20 hrs to arrive in Mumbai, the leader of the anti-terrorist police in Mumbai went to the scene and was shot, the three or four different police/army forces acted independently, there was no attempt to find out where the hostages were and rescue them, rather they fired back at the terrorists, and so on...In order to overcome these deficiencies in future attacks (and there will be more) there must be improved training and tactics, and of course better intelligence and taking intelligence seriously to try to prevent future attacks. Such an organization as ADCATcould help us all to take a serious stand against terrorism just as NATO did against communism.

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