SHAPE/ end of program.

One of the supposed highlights of the program mentioned in the schedule we received before it started included visitng SHAPE headquarters. However, I entered the program without the faintest idea of what SHAPE even was.
However, after several puns about getting "in SHAPE" were stated every time we passed a runner on the bus ride there, I finally learned that it is The Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers of Europe, a military branch of NATO. It is a specialized organization part of the integrated command structure of NATO whose main function is to provide a link between non-NATO European countries and NATO. The headquarters, which were also not that exciting besides the lecture hall we were in being as big as a planetarium, is an operational headquarters of the EU along with NATO. Unfortunately, the representative of SHAPE speaking to us was our worst speaker by far, reading most of his hour-long power point without looking up, and speaking broken English. In his defense, it seemed that he was suffering just as much giving the presentation as we were attempting to sit through it. It being the last day of the program, and all it's members being extremely sleep deprived did not help much either.
So, while I did not glean much from his presentation, one funny thing I noticed walking around the headquarters is that all nations' cameo get-ups are slightly different shades of green. After this presentation and a brief question and answer period that I did my best not to sleep through, the academic portion of the program concluded. On a scale of 1 to 10, on an educational level, i would give it a 9.5 at worst. It's only drawback is that you learn so much in such a short period of time that it's hard to process and understand all that you've learned, and unavoidably some of it is forgotten.

Another couple random thoughts: Chocolate beer was actually better than I expected to be, pretty smooth taste. Also, Brussels is home to a bar called Delirium, the Guinness world record holder for most beers simultaneously on tap at 2,000. Most of the members of the program spent a majority of their nights there, due to it's size, and American playlist. Even in Europe, I can't escape hearing Sweet Home Alabama when I go out.

This program provided with more then I could have hoped for, academically, and socially. Not only did I learn a lot, but I also met some great people. (Specifically Brett Neely, a journalist stationed in Berlin who I promised I would mention) I am now faced with three days of spring break to catch up on 10 days of little sleep, and a return to normal life. If you read this, I hope you learned a few things. As the first blog I've ever done, I learned a lot writing it, and I think I made some progress as I went along. If you have any suggestions, of thoughts, you can comment. I'm glad with my decision to keep this blog, I know I got something out of it, and I hope the readers did too.

NATO operations

Our next speaker was a very entertaining British representative who discussed NATO's current operations. He started with a commentary on America. He said NATO might as well stand for Needs America To Operate, but that; "America is a lot like a Labrador Retriever in a China shop. It gets excited and wags it's tail, and China gets broken, but it has a heart of gold." While NATO has in the past changed to cater to American leadership, it's core purpose has remained collective defense. The new and growing threat of terrorism has provided a challenge for NATO, and are attempting to increase their ability to respond to challenges immediately from wherever they may come. There are three different levels of this which NATO sorts these challenges into: Conflict prevention, Crisis management, and Crisis response operations. To be effective in responding to potentially problems that fall into all of these levels simultaneously, NATO must be very efficient in the use of their resources.
Currently, there are 64,000 troops deployed on NATO operations, 59,000 of which are from the 26 NATO nations. There are 17 non-NATO nations contributing reserves to the NATO response force.
There are four missions in which these troops are involved in. First is Operation KFOR, the Kosovo mission. The key goals for KFOR currently are maintaining a safe and secure environment, maintaining the capability for current and future development, and creating a declaration of independence.
The next is Operation Active Endeavor, which I already gave a general idea for.
NATO is taking part in stabilizing Iraq with a training mission. They have troops in Baghdad who's purpose is to provide strategic training and advice to Iraqi military. They also have out of county training and equipping for high level Iraqi military training. They have thus far trained and equipped over 5,000 soldiers.
Last but not least is the mission in Afghanistan. The goal continues to be to create conditions for stabilization, and retain the resources for maintaining stability once it is achieved. The many issues facing the Afghanistan mission include; Afghan capacity, counter-narcotics, insurgents, borders, and Pakistan.
Another interesting aspect of NATO this guy discussed was it's current struggle for a purpose. NATO is an organization, which, generally, has been searching for an identity since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, and has not found one yet. So, keeping troops deployed has helped keep NATO with a purpose, but one problem facing NATO in the future will be it's ability to stay relevant, and have come up with a useful framework for cooperation with other multi-national institutions like the EU and the UN.

Our last speaker was late, apparently having been held up at lunch with the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. His lecture was about more broad goals, and initiatives taken with the Middle East. NATO is currently attempting to establish ties, and build constructive relationships with governments, academics, and the media in Middle Eastern countries through two major initiatives. The Mediterranean Dialogue is the first, which both Israel and Arab countries are involved in. The Mediterranean Dialogue was opened for countries in the Middle East to discuss security options with NATO and the US. The second is the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) which was launched in 2004. This initiative was developed bilaterally to discuss managing crisis and stability with willing Middle Eastern countries, and to develop a common assessment of clear and present danger in the area.
While we did not get a tour of any high security areas of the NATO headquarters, a long day full of discussions with high-ranking officials provided for a very exciting day.

NATO from a US perspective

After going through extensive security, and getting all of our electronics taken away, our group finally entered NATO headquarters, which is stationed in a suburb outside of Brussels. The building weren't quite as ominous and futuristic-looking as I might have hoped, but then again, we only saw the low security areas of the headquarters.
It was an interesting day to be going to NATO. That morning, NATO troops had been attacked in Kosovo for the first time, and the biggest NATO summit in it's history will be held in Bucharest in two weeks. So, all personell in NATO were no doubt very busy, but all of the speakers we were scheduled to see were still able to make it.
Our first speaker discussed NATO from a US perspective, and focused on what would be discussed in the Bucharest summit. She stated there were three key issues for the US in this summit.
The first was NATO as a global security provider. Right now NATO's biggest security operations are Afghanistan, and Kosovo. The US representative discussed that NATO and the US both believed that the mission in Afghanistan was working, but the US is still pushing other NATO nations to step up and send more troops. Our speaker also hoped that at this summit NATO could come up with a solid public vision document cementing why the are in Afghanistan, to discuss progress, and have a solid vision for where Afghanistan will go. NATO also has 16,000 troops in Kosovo, with the EU nations taking the lead right now. Creating the appropriate link between the US, EU, and the UN in creating a peace force for Kosovo is another important goal for the Bucharest summit.
The second key issue for the Bucharest summit are 21st century security challenges. NATO has been developing different anti-terrorism strategies since 9/11. So far, the most successful of these programs has been Operation Active Endeavor, a naval NATO mission controlling non-proliferation in the Meditteranean Sea. This is an intelligence mission in which NATO nations are able to track and/or capture any ship in the Meditteranean Sea and Suez canal which seems to be acting suspiciously. Other key security issues for NATO to face in the future are Missile Defense, and Cyber Security, and Energy Security. Funding, and placement plans for long, short, and medium-range missile defense are needed. Cyber Security and Energy Security have thus far been national interests, but the US and NATO as a whole both feel they can add value to these programs, especially Energy Security.
The third key issue is making Europe whole and free. The US thinks NATO can continue to bring peace to the balkans, thus enlarging a secure Europe, and eventually, NATO. Beyond Kosovo, resolving the Greece Macedonia conflict is important. NATO is also providing membership action plans for Ukraine, and Georgia. Conspicuously absent from the lecture, but coming up in the question and answer section was the issue of Russia. According to our speaker, Russia is not nearly as much of an issue as it is made out to be in the media. Apparently, Russia's rhetoric against NATO is mainly for political purposes only, and, in acutuality, Russia is an active member of Operation Active Endeavor, and done Missile defense planning with NATO.

Council of Ministers/Embassy/Parliament

Our Monday morning began with unfortunately limited access to coffee and a briefing on the Council of Ministers in the EU. The council of ministers is a hard entity to explain. The thing I can most liken it to in US politics is a House committee. However, unlike a house committee, the council of ministers are not elected officials. Instead they are lackeys appointed by members of the Council (the high legislative body) that are experts on certain issues like climate change, or monetary policy. The council of ministers meets over 2,000 teams a year. Each council contains one representative from each country. Members of the Commission's secretary's attend, and mediate, all of the meetings. The council of ministers is a purely political body, and they have no real power in the system. Their major purpose is to give proposals to the Council members, who can accept or reject it without any consequence. However, more often than not the Council accepts their proposals, since, as stated before, all council's of ministers are made up of experts on the policy being discussed.

Also, according to out speaker, council members have affairs with each other quite frequently, which provides for intense policy discussions. Another random fact, when discussing examples of issues the Council of Ministers may be discussing, Greenland's fisheries were mentioned as a factor in Denmark's decision to opt out of some economic agreement. This was the first time I had heard Greenland mentioned in a political forum, ever.

The afternoon sessions happened to be much more exciting than the morning one, no offense to the Council of Ministers. We were guests at the U.S. Embassy. After an elevator ride down to floor -1, and a ridiculously long wait to get through security (they checked your passport, and took away all your metal devices, including cameras and cellphones) I was ready to walk into area 51, but instead we were led to the most insignificant room we had been in all week. It was quite small with small chairs in rows, a podium, and bare white walls. We were first briefed by a member of the US mission to the EU, which he emphasized was not an embassy. His talk emphasized on the closeness and integration of the European and American economies, as opposed to the perceived competition between them one sees portrayed in the media. The US Mission to the EU has members of all the government agencies in the US, and are all apparently dedicated bureaucrats attempting to work together as much as possible with the EU to strengthen both governmental institutions. He focused most on the TEC (Transatlantic Economic Committee) which had recently made further steps towards integrating the US and EU economies for mutual benefit.

After all of the dense and highly intellectual lectures we had been sitting through all week, the next presenter was a breath of fresh air in that his speech was meant to be serious, but I actually found it hilarious. He was actually our key speaker of the day, being currently a Special Envoy to the EU, and a former ambassador (I can't say his name in print because his talk was officially off the record) and a bitter old man who seems to have lost touch with reality. He walked into the room, and without any introduction of himself asked us “Well, what do you want to know about?” Climate change was the first answer of our audience, since we heard he was an expert on it. Then, the rant began. While I found him quite entertaining, it's quite scary to think of him as the image European diplomats have of Americans if he acts in the same way as he did in our meeting. Questions were asked about Kyoto, and our refusal to sign a treaty with Europe until 2009. He lambasted all of these questions with the response that we were all clouded by the liberal media, and could not believe how Un-American we were for being so critical of out nation. He then continued to lecture in an angry tone how republicans will never get credit for climate change legislation because of the liberal media, and that the democrats don't do anything. Included in this rant were multiple jabs at the French and the British, implying that they knew nothing of American affairs. He seemed personally offended that Reagan does not get enough credit for the Montreal Protocol, and Bush the 1st does not get enough credit for the Clean Air Act. While the jokes he put in his extraordinarily partisan speech were funny, I hope he presents himself in a different manner when speaking to foreign diplomats.

This was a very long day, and our last meeting was with a member of the European Parliament. Just last week, the Parliament celebrated it's 50^th birthday, and the representative started with a quote about this occasion which I enjoyed, and figured I would put down. “At 15, you have a future. At 25, you have a problem. At 40, you have experience. At 50, you have a history.”

This parliament member, Micheal Shackleton, likened this phrase to the parliament, stating that it finally had a history. The parliament's key moment in it's 50 year history came in the early 90's when it was granted the power of co-decision. This essentially turned the European Parliament from an institution on the level of the Council of Ministers with a claim to fame that they were direct representatives of the people, to a body with a purpose. The power of co-decision granted to them in the early 1990s gave parliament the power to veto laws, and allows parliament to negotiate directly with the Council (high legislative body) and the commission (executive). With it's only mode of power being relatively brand new, parliament's main issue today is that average European citizens know absolutely nothing about them. 44% of Europeans do not know whether the parliament sits by party, or by nationality (it's by party), and, more troublesome, 90% of EU citizens do not know the year of the next parliamentary elections (2009). Their main initiative to help this problem now is to create an on-line TV station similar to CSPAN that will broadcast in 22 languages. Judging by the number of Americans CSPAN has turned on to congress, I wish them the best of luck. Off to NATO headquarters tomorrow.

Brussels

Sunday was a day off from academic activities. So, as I anxiously anticipate the unveiling of the brackets taking place later on this evening, I can ruminate a little bit about the city I will be in until Wednesday.

Brussels is certainly not an A-list tourist attraction, but it is in no way a dead city. There are multiple areas full of restaurants, live music, chocolate shops, etc. It is impossible to walk around downtown Brussels and not find a lively pub to walk into. It also seems to be a reasonably safe city. I've heard one police siren the entire time I have been here, and seen women walking the streets alone all hours of the day. The center tourist spot in Brussels, “ Le Grand Place” (saying it with a French accent makes it seem much more special) is an open square surrounded by fantastic baroque architecture as beautiful as any other city I've seen in Europe, besides perhaps Brugge. (These cities include Barcelona, and Helsinki) On one end is a fantastic cathedral, with the rest of the square surrounded by buildings each with their own ornate carvings and designs.

As far as occurrences one sees in Brussels that one would not see in America, there are many, but they are more European than distinctly a character of Brussels. You see narrow streets, cobblestone streets, cobblestone walkways with restaurants on both sides for multiple blocks. Also, Men in three piece suits going to work riding a bicycle, many buses but no taxis, and large statues of ancient leaders. Things Belgium are well-known for across Europe and the rest of the world include chocolate, and beer. I visited museums dedicated to both today and, thankfully, both contained free samples. I am not really a museum person, so I was happy to walk around the exhibits briefly, take the samples, and leave. The chocolate is fantastic, the beer is interesting. Most Belgian beer contains too much flavor for my taste personally. I've had “white” beer which had hints of lemon, and another which contained mint, and I was not a huge of either. Most importantly, however, a culmination of the two; chocolate beer, does exist. I haven't had it yet but I promise to before the end of the trip.

One more thing I found interesting about the night life in Brussels was the variety, or lack thereof, of restaurants to go to for dinner. I would guess that about 85 or 90 percent of the restaurants in Brussels specialize specifically in seafood, or are Asian. The seafood thing kind of makes sense. Brussels isn't on the coast, but probably a couple hours away from the north sea. Most of the seafood restaurants advertise their lobster, but I have not tried any. Partially because I believe New England to have the best lobster in the world, and partially because most places it costs about 40 euros, the equivalent of over 60 dollars. The Asian thing completely perplexes me. I can't really understand why a city on the west coast of Europe who's major business function is to run the European union would have a large Asian population. There are entire blocks that consist of Asian restaurants. Unless European government officials have a notorious appetite for Vietnamese cuisine that I don't know about, this will continue to confuse me.

Brussels may not be the tourist capital of Europe, but I certainly have nothing to complain about.

Brugge

Saturday we took a hour or so long bus-trip to Brugge to see the College of Europe. The College of Europe is an interesting place. It was presented to us as a place one could get their master's degree in 10 months in various European studies. Students from all over Europe and the world are able to study there, but courses are only taught in English and French. We had a session on Monetary Policy in Europe, and the Euro-zone. The lecture was essentially an easier to understand version of Friday's lectures on European economics at the commission. Our speaker went over basic positives and negatives of the Euro since it's conception, why some countries didn't want it (read: the UK) and why some countries were unable to get it. The main positive reasons for joining the “Euro-zone” included stabilizing inflation, and interest rates, easier access to larger markets, and freedom of movement in the Euro-zone among citizens of these countries. The major negatives for countries are more related to economic policy. Since economic policy is decided by an EU institution (the European Central Bank in Germany) they make their policy based on what is good for the Euro-zone as a whole, not any country specifically. For example, if your country's economy needs more liquidity, but the Euro-zone sets interest rates to slow down spending and encourage investment, you're pretty much screwed. Her conclusion, however, was that the Euro, as a whole, has worked not perfectly, but a lot better than most people thought that it would, as the Euro-zone has maintained stable levels of inflation and interest rates.

After the morning session we had lunch in the College of Europe cafeteria (I felt at home again) then were given a walking tour of Brugge. Brugge is hard to explain. It's like Sturbridge village on steroids, and Disney Land at the same time. The inner city of Brugge has intensely restored and maintained all of the buildings built there since 1400 to make it appear as an authentic medieval European city. Yet, it is not really authentically medieval, since, as a tourist destination, it is sparkling clean. The result is you walking down the street feeling like you're in a disney movie, and a wicked witch is about to jump out from the shadows and offer you a poisoned apple. Contributing most to the oddities of the city were the carillian (spelling?) church bells playing Frank Sinatra's stranger in the night. Our tour guide told us they would play Britney Spears if you paid them enough. I was tempted, but I'm running out of Euros. This, however, did not stop the city from being truly majestic. Seeing the house of a king built in the year 1400 is mind boggling to think about no matter how touched-up the outside of it may seem. Brugge also has an interesting role in European history, according to our tour guide at least. He told us a story about how Germany had planned to bomb Brugge in World War II, but the leading German general had such an appreciation for the arts, and history, that he refused to bomb it. This story could be just as unreal as the witches I imagined lurking in the shadows, however, it was a good story none the less. While Belgium is not at the top of anyone's list of countries to visit in Europe, if you're into history, or architecture, Brugge is definitely a city worth visiting.

Progress Report

I have to confess that, after reading over my first few posts, this blog has not really accomplished what I wanted it to thus far. I hoped in the beginning to provide a unique point of view on the lectures and briefings I am attending as the only non-academic there, and focus on my own thoughts and opinions on the process of the seminar as a whole as it goes on more than merely the facts presented to me in the sessions. Looking back I see that I have done the exact opposite, and I haven't even done it that well. Thus far, my posts have been attempts to regurgitate what I learned in the sessions into this blog, but I have not been able to do this clearly, or succinctly. There are many factors that led to this result, including my inexperience in the area of blogging or educating, my poor note-taking skills, lack of sleep, the extreme complexness of the things that are being lectured to me, and thus my lack of understanding of the material I am attempting to explain. If I can barely grasp the ideas of the structure of the European Union, I don't know how I can expect myself to explain it clearly in writing to someone else. (If anyone is reading this at all)

So, From now on I will attempt to shift the tone and content a little. I will focus more on what I personally find interesting and understood, and what I will enjoy writing about, as opposed to forcing out an explanation of international judicial systems that went over my head in the first place. I can't guarantee I'll be successful in making this blog any more interesting, but this is the first thing I've ever done of this nature, and it's a learning process.