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SPIEGEL Interview With NATO Commander John Craddock

'Peacekeeping is a Very Ambiguous Term'

General John Craddock, 57, has been NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe since late 2006. He talks to DER SPIEGEL about Russia's posture towards the Western alliance, the US missile shield and the simmering war in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: This week the Russian General Chief of Staff is coming to Brussels to elaborate on President Putin's threat to end Russia's participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). What do you expect he will tell you? Will there be a new arms race? Will Russia move troops closer to the border?

Craddock: I've been quite frankly surprised by some of the Russian pronouncements lately. At the Foreign Ministerial in Oslo, the CFE announcement was a bit of a surprise. So, I don’t want to speculate on what he will come in and say. It will be more helpful to let him come in and say what it is that's on his mind and then we'll talk about it.

SPIEGEL: Are you afraid of a return to the Cold War?

Craddock: No, the conditions are so different. You don’t see large alliances face-to-face across a border. You don't see this alignment of the world into a bipolar relationship. Those days are over. I don't see that return.

SPIEGEL: Do you have a certain sympathy for the Russians, at least as a soldier? NATO has expanded to their borders, Western forces even use Central Asian bases -- they must feel encircled.

Craddock: If I was encircled I would rather be encircled by democratic nations and I don't know of any nation in NATO that is not a democratic one. So I cannot understand the fear of having a democracy or many democracies on your borders.

SPIEGEL: The Russians say they've decided not to inform NATO anymore about their troop movements.

Craddock: I’ve read that. I would remind you that at Thursday’s NATO-Russia Council meeting in Brussels that all 26 NATO Ambassadors firmly and unanimously rejected Moscow’s position on the CFE. The NATO Secretary General called for more dialogue urging that no unilateral and definitive moves be made.

SPIEGEL: D you see Putin's decision as a political move, more than a military one?

Craddock: I think so. We need to hear why (NATO) is now an irritant, more than it was 6 months ago. What caused this change?

SPIEGEL: The Russians are angry about the American missile defense project. But they're not alone -- there is even a debate within NATO about the system. Why didn't the Americans develop this project within a NATO framework, insted of forming bilateral agreements with individual allies?

Craddock: Probably because the original intent was to protect primarily the United States against an attack by a rogue nation.

SPIEGEL: Don’t you think it is significant that Americans are dealing with new allies in Eastern Europe, whereas the hand-wringing is mostly confined to so-called Old Europe?

Craddock: No, no. You've got to understand the physics and the geometry. That's why those countries (Poland, the Czech Republic) were chosen (to help with the missile shield). It's not because of political considerations. If the geometry was different, it might have to be further west.

SPIEGEL: So, the missile defense project is not just another indicator of NATO losing its importance?

Craddock: No.

SPIEGEL: You've worked closely with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was famous for building ad-hoc coalitions instead of working through NATO. Now that Rumsfeld is gone, has his policy also vanished?

Craddock: In reality both ways were used. NATO is in Iraq doing training. And NATO is now in Afghanistan. So I think it's probably a recognition that the world's changed, and that there will be many means to bring nations together to work in a multinational fashion. Whether it's NATO, the most successful security alliance in the world, or a Coalition of the Willing, as it was dubbed, will depend on the situation and conditions. Maybe how quickly things must be pulled together is also a factor.

SPIEGEL: NATO came to Afghanistan as a peacekeeping force. Now it is fighting a bloody war. What has happened in between?

Craddock: About 60 percent of the country is, on a relative scale, fairly secure. The south and east are in a different situation. There are opposition militant forces, Taliban forces. They want to take Afghanistan back to the oppressive rule that they exercised a few years ago. Peacekeeping is a very ambiguous term. First NATO came in the north and then expanded throughout the country. NATO provided forces in places where there had not been any presence and ran into Taliban forces who had probably operated in very much of a safe-haven fashion, so the Taliban were challenged, and they want to recover lost ground. I would not characterize this as a surprise. I would characterize this as being what we expected.