NATO Summit 2013

[Turkey (Dax)]

The time is upon the perennial alliance for a major Summit of NATO nations. This summit may prove to be one of the most crucial in the alliance's history, with a rapidly changing and highly fluid geopolitical situation. Recent years have called into question NATO's relevance and future as an effective organization, leading to fractures and a general lack of cohesiveness in the alliance's ranks. With such issues of critical importance at hand, the United States and Turkey, during a recent state visit, together called for such a summit to take place to discuss the future of NATO and it's continued role in the world.

Turkey has expressed immense interest in hosting such a summit in Erzurum, as a means of reestablishing the country's commitment to the alliance after nearly a decade of distance and opacity surrounding the country's future direction. Turkey is eager to host the summit and would be honored to do so. The location gained the support of US President Ron Paul during a recent visit. However, ultimately, the alliance can and should decide.

[[All cities determined using a random number generator and list of largest cities in America and Europe. Please vote for one city. If your nation is listed and you do not wish to host the summit, please state so and endorse another city in which all of your votes will be delegated. Poll will remain open for 24 hours, and summit will likely take place 2q2013.]]

[United States (Fish)]

America votes for Erzurum, Turkey.

[Iceland (Ranger)]

Iceland casts its vote in favor of the Turkish City of Erzurum.

[Italy (Tiberis)]

Italy must refuse its bid for hosting the 2013 NATO Summit. We will put our support behind Ezurum, Turkey.

(OOC: Are we not counting NPC votes? )

[United States (Fish)]

I probably should have mentioned earlier, with our endorsement of the Turkish hosting of the event the United States withdraws its campaign. Indianapolis will be considered at a future date for a further NATO summit as are likely to be required as a result of these reforms up for discussion.

[Turkey (Dax)]

Concluding the vote, Turkey is more than honored to have been chosen for the location of this critical summit, and looks forward to seeing all NATO allies represented in Erzurum.

Ankara has concluded the date for the summit to be 14 May 2013 [[2q2013]], in Erzurum, Turkey, in the large conference room of Atatürk University. Throughout the conference, a simultaneous gathering of military commanders and Chiefs will take place at Incirlik Air Base, headquarters of NATO's Allied Air Component Command*. The theme of the conference has been dubbed "NATO's Evolving Global Role". The agenda which Turkey would like to set at the present time is as follows:

• NATO's future role in the world;
• Revisiting the North Atlantic Treaty;
• Defining Collective Security in the New World Order;
• Defense structure integration;
• Future composition, members, and force organization

Additionally, Turkey will be organizing a lower-level summit of the NATO-Russia Council, which will take place in at the Istanbul Congress Center, Europe's largest and newest Convention Center, located in Istanbul*.

Additionally, the Turkish government would like to formally announce the invitations sent to the following nations and organizations to attend the summit in some capacity:

• The Republic of Georgia semi-participating member**;
• The European Union Observer;
• The State of Japan semi-participating member;
• The Commonwealth of Australia semi-participating member

Any other topics which fellow NATO members wish to discuss, please make them known in advance [[by posting here]], and any other special invitations extended, please have the appropriate officials obtain visas from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in advance. [[Just post who they are here.]]

*I do not intend for this to actually be three summits. It's more just for grandeur. There will be one NATO summit to take place in this thread, while the NATO-Russia Council mini-summit can take place in the sub-forum simultaneously. Really, the meeting at Incirlik will more be for generals and chiefs of staff to tour facilities, observe procedures, training, and operations, etc. and does not have to be RPed.
**Semi-participating members are permitted to speak on topics that directly concern them, at the discretion of the Turkish hosts.

[United States (Fish)]

US Core Delegation
President Ron Paul
SECDEF Jim Forsythe
Ivo Daalder (US PerRep to NATO)
GEN Martin Dempsey (Chairman Joint Chiefs)

Daadler will travel to London and rendezvous with Air Force One before traveling out east with the remainder of the core delegation. Military flights using their private jets will run extra missions to ship in the usual number of senior officers and so forth. The USS Mount Whitney, flagship of the 6th fleet shall move to Turkey for the duration of the event including training exercises and port calls with Turkish and other allies.

[Turkey (Dax)]

[[Good idea. Mine is obviously larger, being the host.]]

Turkish Core Delegation
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Minister of National Defense İsmet Yılmaz
MoND Undersecretary for NATO Operations Tesisleri İşletme
Turkish Armed Forces CoGS Necdet Özel
Hüseyin Diriöz, Turkish ambassador to NATO

Erdogan will be co-chairing the North Atlantic Council Summit in Erzurum alongside US President Ron Paul and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. MoND Yılmaz will be coordinating military exercises with visiting navies, particularly the USS Mount Whitney, and other assorted ships expected to arrive from Britain, Greece, Italy, and other local navies.

Undersecretary of NATO Operations will be charged with coordinating policy and chairing a working group on joint training and integration; İşletme has also been ordered to approach the British regarding joint-training possibilities. CoGS Özel will be responsible for heading the delegation to Izmir and hosting the inter-commander conference at Incirlik. Finally, Hüseyin Diriöz, Turkey's ambassador to NATO, will head a foreign/defense ministry delegation to the NATO-Russia Council summit in Istanbul.

[Iceland (Ranger)]

(Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea are all invited as a matter or protocol and all have their own Ambassadors to NATO. I know Brendan Nelson a major Liberal Leader served as Australia's one for awhile.)

Bjarni Benediktsson, Jr. (Prime Minister) and Petur H. Blondal (Minister for Foreign Affairs) will join Iceland's NATO team, including Thorsteinn Ingolfsson the Permanent Representative, for the trip to Turkey. Observers from the ICRU and ICG will fly out as well to observe military exercises.

[Australia (TheOne)]

Australian Core Delegation
Prime Minister, The Honourable Julie Bishop
Minister of Defence, The Honourable David Johnston
Ambassador to NATO, Dr Brendan Nelson
Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley

[Italy (Tiberis)]

Italian Core Delegation
Prime Minister Mario Monti
Minister of Defense Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola
NATO Deputy Secretaries General Claudio Bisogniero
Italian Chief of Defense Biagio Abrate
Italian ambassador to NATO Stefano Stefanini

[United Kingdom (Bugs)]

Her Majesty's Delegation
Prime Minister David Cameron
Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond
Permanent Ambassador to NATO Mariot Leslie
Chief of the Defence Staff David Richards
Air Chief Marshal Simon Bryant

[Georgia (Zodiac)]

OOC: Since I've been invited

Georgian delegation

Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri
Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia
Foreign Affairs minister Grigol Vashadze
Chief of Joint Staff Major General Devi Chankotadze

[Turkey (Dax)]

The Grand Banquet Hall of Atatürk Üniversitesi had been extensively and elaborately set up in the weeks leading up to the 14 May summit in an effort to imitate the NATO headquarters in Brussels. The summit and consequential arrival of the extensive delegation of NATO country leaders represented the single largest diplomatic gathering ever held in Turkey's Eastern Anatolia region, and the government had gone to great lengths to do the occasion justice. Security was high in the run up to the summit, as per usual. When Istanbul hosted its first NATO summit in 2004, extensive protests in the city against the Iraq War and George Bush's foreign policy had caused massive upheaval and no small amount of embarrassment to the government. Such mistakes would not be repeated.

As the assorted Presidents, Prime Ministers, and delegations assembled in the hall, and after the appropriate press coverage and photo ops had taken place, Prime Minister Erdogan opened the summit. He had been seated alongside American President Ron Paul and NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the head of the council.

"Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to Erzurum, and thank you on behalf of The Republic of Turkey for allowing our great nation the honor of hosting the 2013 NATO Summit. I hope that this summit can be billed as great success and that we can cement a future for the North American Treaty and this grand organization here in Erzurum. I would like to begin today by opening this summit with an explanation of the Summit's theme, 'NATO's Evolving Global Role', which I consider to be a central issue for the future of this alliance's structure and indeed, existence.

"The past twenty years have been a tumultuous time for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and indeed much of the western world. Formed between Britain and America during World War II as an anti-Nazi pronouncement and continuing throughout the following five decades as an anti-communist, anti-Soviet alliance, NATO experienced a tremendous upheaval in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union. While the organization transitioned seamlessly into the role of cleaning up the 'messes', so to speak, of the fall of Communism, including facilitating an orderly collapse of several regimes propped up by the Soviet Union -- Yugoslavia, namely -- the alliance further faced an existential transition after the events of September 11th, 2001. In Prague in 2002, the alliance continued this evolution by fundamentally changing it's mission from containing communism and the Soviet Union to facilitating global security and fighting various threats from non-state actors and Islamic fundamentalism.

"The past decade has been a difficult time for the alliance. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have strained inter-alliance cohesion and relations, while intervention in Libya and the election of Ron Paul to the Presidency of the United States further complicate the alliance's already ambiguous mandate. An ever-evolving global landscape has fundamentally altered the global power structure. The world is no longer divided between free-markets and democracy on one side and authoritarianism and socialism on the other. Indeed, the hegemonic role of the United States is increasingly questioned by the rising of China, India, and Brazil, while even Russia has become resurgent in the form of a new, near-ultra-capitalistic energy giant. Extremism in all forms still constitutes a threat, though radical groups in the Middle East and elsewhere remain confined to remote hideouts, unable to commit feats of spectacular threat on the scale of 9/11. These threats are contained by national police forces, and their influence diminished by rising incomes, standards of living, and worldwide economic prosperity on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

"Simply put, the events of the last decade have created such a situation that many members of this alliance increasingly question the need for such an alliance, and reevaluating the role of a defensive alliance in the absence of a clear or imminent military threat has been a central platform in many of member nations' national elections and political discourse even as countries such as Finland Georgia, Albania, and Macedonia continue to desire membership. It is clear that there is still a great demand in the world for something akin to the NATO organization, though in what capacity... that is the question. Therefore, it is the opinion of the Turkish government that a fundamental re-structuring of the North Atlantic Charter is in order. The North Atlantic Treaty must be re-written to better reflect its role in the new world order, and ensure its continuing relevance in the post-communist-cum-Islamist era.

"In a recent meeting between Turkish President Abdullah Gul and his American counterpart, the concept was born of a truly global security alliance; an organization which would be the center for security initiatives, defense industrial capacity, and global training and crisis response activity. This new concept disbanded outdated concepts of imminent threat and 'the security of Europe', and sought to redefine global security in an evolving world. Under this new mandate, NATO would effectively cease to be a defensive alliance of states against common threats -- for no longer do the members of this alliance face a clear, definable, common threat unique to the western hemisphere. Indeed, the entire world faces a collective common threat -- that of instability, poverty, political despotism, and nuclear proliferation. NATO no longer possesses a common enemy unto itself, but the world faces a common enemy collectively. If NATO wishes to remain relevant in the global order, it must evolve and adapt to the changing times, as it has done in the past. In the future, it is not unfeasible that a new, re-defined NATO could replace organizations such as the OSCE, G-8, and even the UN Security Council.

"Such adaptions begin right here within the alliance. In order to maximize the effectiveness of this alliance and its member-states, a fundamental shift in relations between its members and its relationships with nations such as Russia, Australia, Japan, Africa, Brazil, and others is in order. NATO must begin to focus on further integration of its defensive structures to adhere to this new ideology, and expand its operational mandate to new partners and new members."

[Georgia (Zodiac)]

In lack of any one else speaking Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri took the oppertunity to speak up "First of all, I would once again thank our Turkish hosts for allowing my country to attend. Secondly as a country looking inside the window so to speak, Georgia see's the NATO alliance as a source of world security. While fundimentally different from the UN the NATO Alliance has been at the call of the UN security council more military assignments in the Region. The First such situation in resent history was the Former Yugoslavia. However as pointed out in the opening remarks NATO has changed in it's global prospective. However the Alliance has not changed with it, far from it. From what I've gathered from my own meetings with the NATO-Georgia council one of the biggest stepping stones NATO has to overcome is its own fear of change. This fear in my opinion comes from burracratic bickering and uncertainties from various NATO countries wanting the Alliance to go different directions. Just like an aging soccer team NATO requires new blood to get an look from outside the box on what it needs to do. One positive change Georgia would like to see comes from our experience with working along side NATO in Afgahnistan. NATO members sent their troops but also stated where they wanted them to go. As a result we saw major NATO countries like France and Germany in the more quiet north and west. Meanwhile The United States, Canada, Great Britian, NATO countries took the brunt of the combat and the Casulties in fights against the Taliban. I see this as a problem, because politics is interfering with NATO's ability to fight effectively.

In order to change this I propose a different set up, where NATO countries will send X number of personal equipment and such to an operation however it's those in command on the ground who determine where the resources need to be. Via the chain of politicians would get reports from NATO, and no longer micro manage their forces. Taking the politics out of NATO's military side I believe would make NATO more effective as an organization."

[Spain (JCU)]

Prime Minister Rajoy stood.

"NATO is inherently a defensive organization. It is the opinion of the Spanish people that it should remain as such. The mutual defense clause is the cornerstone of virtually all member states' defense doctrines, and Spain would oppose any amendment to the Charter that diminishes the significance or effectiveness of Article V.

There is a reason that prospective NATO members undergo such a rigorous process before being granted admission to this alliance. It is imperative that all NATO members be able to make meaningful contributions to the security of the alliance as a whole, while meeting our strict standards of inter-operability and democratic principles. These conditions are what separate us from other regional defense frameworks, and what have elevated NATO to the most powerful military alliance for peace in the history of the world. And they are incompatible with the idea of a truly global security organization at this point in time. We do not, as I'm sure my American counterpart agrees, want to codify this alliance as a "world police" organization in the NATO Charter.

The reforms our gracious host has advocated for, namely security initiatives, defense industrial capacity, and global training and crisis response activity, are all laudable goals. Spain also supports reaching out to our perennial democratic allies, such as Japan, Australia, and even Brazil, and exploring the possibility of a more formal level of cooperation. But none of these courses of action require a paradigm shift on the part of this organization. Lest we forget this alliance still faces important challenges and opportunities closer to home, specifically missile defense, combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and joint modernization. By addressing these and other issues we can remain relevant in the 21st century while not gutting the very institutions that have made NATO the greatest force for good on the planet."