NATO
is planning to host their annual conference next year in France and
Germany in the cities of Strasbourg and Baden-Baden. While the summit
itself will take place in Strasbourg, the “working dinners” of the
ministers of defence will be held in Baden-Baden, Germany, between
Karlsruhe and Kehl, around 50 kilometres from Strasbourg.

The summit will celebrate the 60th anniversary of this war alliance,
when the member states will discuss NATO’s new strategic direction. As
in 1999 large changes are planned.

In a strategy paper published in April 2007, five former generals
stress the need for a more “proactive approach”, in which the
preemption and prevention of threats are central. To the NATO
strategists an array of threats exist in today’s uncertain world, from
terrorism and transnational crime to unrests following food crises,
social conflicts as a result of climate change and extensive migration
to the countries of the NATO alliance. These
are all central security risks that fall within NATO’s remit. The paper
maintains that proper “defence” requires the concept of “homeland
security”, which entails a “comprehensive approach” of the military,
police, politics, research, academics and civil society and the
continued blurring of internal and external security to build up a
“global security architecture”.

Interior ministers of the European Union have also presented a wish
list for changes in Home Affairs in the EU. For this, they formed the
“Future Group” initiated by the German interior minister Schäuble and
Frattini, the former EU commissioner of “Justice and Home affairs” (JHA),
now the foreign minister in Berlusconi’s government. In Autumn 2009,
under Swedish presidency, interior ministers will meet in Stockholm to
decide the next five year framework on internal security in the EU. In
their paper they focus on more surveillance of the internet, common
access to European police databases, more cross-border police
collaboration to fight “illegal migration” and force countries outside
the EU to take back their citizens who enter the EU without a visa,
making border crossing for EU citizens easier through biometrics and
RFiD, enlarging the competencies of the police agency Europol and the
migration police Frontex. Also, interior ministers see a “growing
interdependence between internal and external security” and argue for
more interventions of the EU in “third countries”.

To draw attention to and campaign against the ongoing melting of
Home Affairs, war and defence and the logic of securitisation, we
propose an action day arount the NATO summit
in April 2009. The action day could take place on the opening day of
the camps against the summit, planned for April 1st, two days before
the summit.

Possible focuses could be

  • the border between Strasbourg and Kehl (to protest against the Schengen Information System (SIS) and Visa Information System (VIS),
    Frontex, border management, the use of drones and satellites to observe
    borders, the exchange of data prior to summit protests, the refusal of
    entry for people participating in protests
  • the Schengen Information System that is located in Strasbourg
  • the European Commission that is responsible for the creation of a European police agency and a European migration police
  • the Eurocorps, a European crisis reaction force that will be able to be deployed under NATO or EU command in future

In Strasbourg there is also a migrant detention centre located on
military territory. There are also companies that are involved in
biometrics, biotechnology and nanotechnology. The French military is
running several bases and the “Legion Etrangére” is based in Strasbourg.

We wish to organize an action day that focusses on the grave changes
in the “security architecture” constructed by politicians, police and
military. There is a shift towards “risk analyses”, that want to
foresee and predict dissent, social conflict and crime. In this logic,
everyone is seen as a possible threat.

We would like to get in contact with groups that are working on
migration, filesharing networks, alternative providers, terrorism
cases, data retention, the Lissabon treaty, antimilitarism, climate and
environment and civil liberties to develop both a radical critique and
strengthen a broad movement to intervene against the security
architecture of globalised war and capitalism."

We will present and discuss this proposal at a preparatory meeting for the anti-NATO
protests on January 17th and 18th 2009. There we want to develop a
proposal to present at the action conference on February 14th and 15th
in Strasbourg.

Gipfelsoli, dissent! France

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