Global Research

The Pentagon’s number two official, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, was in Brussels, Belgium on September 15 to address the North Atlantic Council – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top civilian body – and the private Security & Defence Agenda think tank.

His comments at the second event, hosted by the only defense-related institution of its type in the city that hosts NATO’s and the European Union’s headquarters, dealt extensively with what Lynn referred to as a “cyber shield” over all of Europe, which he described as a “critical element” for the 28-nation military bloc to address and endorse at its summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 19-20.

Lynn added that “The alliance has a crucial role to play in extending a blanket of security over our networks,” and placed the issue in stark perspective by stating “NATO has a nuclear shield, it is building a stronger and stronger defence shield, it needs a cyber shield as well,” according to Agence France-Presse. [1]

The Security & Defence Agenda website states that it “regularly brings together senior representatives from the EU institutions and NATO, with national government officials, industry, the international and specialised media, think-tanks, academia and NGOs.” [2]

It is, in short, one of dozens if not scores of trans-Atlantic elite planning bodies, quasi- and supra-governmental alike, on both sides of the ocean, ones which demand to be addressed by leaders of what style themselves model open and transparent societies. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations is another instance of the practice and the principle. [3]

In fact, Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn has an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled “Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon’s Cyber Strategy.”

Pentagon, State Department and White House officials – and their European counterparts – enter and leave government service but maintain lifetime memberships in organizations like the Security & Defence Agenda and the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Brussels-based think tank lists among its partners, in addition to NATO and the Mission of the United States of America to NATO, American arms manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and United Technologies as well as their European equivalents.
   
William Lynn came to his current Pentagon position from that of senior vice president of Government Operations and Strategy for the Raytheon Company.

Corporate leadership posts with weapons firms, membership in private trans-Atlantic planning bodies and top positions in national governments are all but interchangeable roles, held either successively or simultaneously.

Lynn’s comments before the Security & Defence Agenda gathering also included the demand that NATO apply the concept of “collective defense” – which is to say its Article 5 military intervention provision – to the realm of information technology and computer networks, as seen above at the same level of seriousness and urgency as maintaining a nuclear arsenal and constructing a global interceptor missile network. In his words, “The Cold War concepts of shared warning apply in the 21st century to cyber security. Just as our air defences, our missile defences have been linked so too do our cyber defences need to be linked as well.” [4]

As with stationing nuclear warheads in Europe, as far east and south as Turkey, and the “phased adaptive approach” multilayered missile shield in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Seas, building a cyber warfare system – for that in truth is what is being discussed – in all of Europe as part of an even broader – global – project depends upon the compliance and complicity of NATO’s 26 members and 13 Partnership for Peace adjuncts in Europe.

U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Belgium (20 bombs), Germany (20), Italy (50), the Netherlands (20) and Turkey (90) – the numbers are estimates, only the Pentagon knows the true figures and of course will not divulge them – were brought into and are kept in Europe under NATO arrangements. The affected countries have never conducted referendums to determine whether their citizens support the basing of American nuclear arms on their soil notwithstanding NATO’s claim to be a “military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America.” No European population is clamoring to be saved – from whom? from what? – by the Pentagon’s nuclear gravity bombs. Or its interceptor missiles. Or its cyber warfare operations.

No more than the citizens of 35 European nations that have supplied troops for NATO’s war in Afghanistan were consulted on whether sending their sons and daughters to Asia to kill and die guarantees the security of their homelands.

“Speaking at his residence in a luxurious suburb of south Brussels, a day after returning from a meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington” earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a major British newspaper that “If Iran eventually acquires a nuclear capability that will be very dangerous, and a direct threat to the allies. That is the reason why I am now proposing a new and effective Nato missile defence system.”

If Iran acquires a nuclear capacity….As Washington uses NATO to stationed 90 nuclear bombs in Turkey, a state bordering Iran. Weapons that have been stored there for several decades.

The same newspaper quoted Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, offering a rare ray of truth on the matter: “Missile defence is more about shovelling money to American contractors than protecting people in Basingstoke.” [5]

After meeting with NATO’s North Atlantic Council in Brussels on September 15, Lynn said, “I think at Lisbon we will see [a] high-level leadership commitment to cyber defence. It’s the foundation for any alliance effort….I was very impressed with the unity of purpose and the similar vision that most nations in the alliance seem to have towards the cyber threat.” [6]

Neither the Pentagon nor NATO will be starting from scratch.

This May 21 Lynn’s superior, Pentagon chief Robert Gates, announced the launching of U.S. Cyber Command [7], the world’s first such multi-service military command. On the same day Lynn “called the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command…a milestone in the United States being able to conduct full-spectrum operations in a new domain,” and contended that the “cyber domain…is as important as the land, sea, air and space domains to the U.S. military, and protecting military networks is crucial to the Defense Department’s success on the battlefield.” [8]

The website of the Security & Defence Agenda reiterated the last point in reporting on Lynn’s speech at the Hotel Renaissance in Brussels on September 15. The address called for “[p]rioritising cyberspace as an additional domain of warfare (beyond land, sea and air) in which America must be able to operate freely and defend its territory.” How defending mainland America, or even its farflung Pacific island possessions, is achieved by a cyber warfare dome over all of Europe is not explained, anymore than how nuclear bombs in Europe or Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Standard Missile-3 anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and Romania protect New York City or Chicago. The report reminded its readers that “the Pentagon has built layered and robust defenses around military networks and inaugurated the new U.S. Cyber Command to integrate cyberdefense operations across the military.” [9]

The U.S. military has been consistently blunt in defining the purpose of CYBERCOM as being to “deter and or defeat enemies” [10] in the words of its commander, General Keith Alexander.

The use of the word defense in regard to U.S. and NATO cyber warfare operations is the same as it was when the United States Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense in 1947. And in reference to what is called missile defense. A euphemism and a disguise for aggression. The Defense Department has waged war against and in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq and launched attacks inside Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in a little over a decade.

NATO has been working on complementary operations since the beginning of the century, long before the cyber attacks in Estonia in 2007 which led to accusations in the West against Russia and calls for NATO’s Article 5 war clause to be invoked.

The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in the Estonian capital of Tallinn was established five years before, in 2002, and formally accredited as a NATO Center of Excellence in 2008.

In fact NATO’s North Atlantic Council implemented the bloc’s Cyber Defence Programme in 2002 and “In parallel, at the Prague Summit the same year, heads of state and government decided to strengthen NATO’s capabilities. This paved the way for the creation of the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) in 2002 as a part of the Cyber Defence Programme.”

The Cyber Defence Management Authority “is managed by the Cyber Defence Management Board, which comprises the leaders of the political, military, operational and technical staffs in NATO with responsibilities for cyber defence. It constitutes the main consultation body for the North Atlantic Council on cyber defence and provides advice to member states on all main aspects of cyber defence.” [11]
 
In August of 2008 NATO began extending its cyber warfare capacities beyond its 28 member states and created the (North Atlantic) Council Guidelines for Cooperation on Cyber Defence with Partners and International Organisations, which was followed in April of 2009 by the Framework for Cooperation on Cyber Defence between NATO and Partner Countries. In the Alliance’s own words, “NATO should be prepared, without reducing its ability to defend itself, to extend to Partner countries and international organizations its experience and, potentially, its capabilities to defend against cyber attacks.” [12]
   
The Lisbon summit will inaugurate a new NATO military doctrine for the next ten years. It will confirm the bloc as a 21st century expeditionary force without geographical or thematic limits, one which will seek any opportunity to intrude itself anywhere in the world under a multitude of subterfuges. [13]

The summit will voice unanimous support for a U.S.-led interceptor missile system to cover all of Europe. It will maintain the position that American nuclear weapons must be kept on the continent for “deterrence” purposes. And it will authorize the subordination of nations from Britain to Poland and Bulgaria under a common American-dominated cyber defense structure for war in the “fifth battlespace,” for “full-spectrum operations in a new domain.”

Notes

1) Agence France-Press, September 15, 2010
2) Security & Defence Agenda
   http://www.securitydefenceagenda.org/AboutSDA/tabid/586/Default.aspx
3) Global Grandiosity: America’s 21st Century World Architecture
   Stop NATO, September 13, 2010
   http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/global-grandiosity-americas-21st-century-international-architecture
4) Agence France-Press, September 15, 2010
5) Daily Telegraph, September 11, 2010
6) Agence France-Press, September 15, 2010
7) U.S. Cyber Command: Waging War In World’s Fifth Battlespace
   Stop NATO, May 26, 2010
   http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/u-s-cyber-command-waging-war-in-worlds-fifth-battlespace
8) U.S. Department of Defense, May 21, 2010
9) Security & Defence Agenda       
http://www.securitydefenceagenda.org/Hiddenpages/EventMgt/tabid/542/EventType/EventView/EventId/508/AConversationonCybersecuritywithWilliamJLynnIII.aspx
10) Associated Press, May 5, 2010
11) North Atlantic Treaty Organization   
    http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49193.htm
12) Ibid
13) Thousand Deadly Threats: Third Millennium NATO, Western Businesses 
    Collude On New Global Doctrine
    Stop NATO, October 2, 2009
    http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine