Task One

You are going to read two texts. For questions 1 to 6 choose the answer (A, B or C), which fits best according to the texts.

Text One

“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics”. Gen. Henri Bentegeat, the chairman of the EU's military arm is driving that message home by calling on member countries to cough up more logistics experts for future operations. In December he chided member nations for their preference to consistently volunteer combat troops to operations rather than logistics experts. His comments came as the European Defence Agency (EDA) announced interest in private firms playing a larger logistics support role in future crisis management operations.

The call for better private-sector logistics comes as European states find it increasingly difficult to deploy their troops and to allow them to fight freely in combat zones. That said, Europe's logistical revolution is long overdue. The continent has been slow to embrace outsourcing when stability operations require prolonged commitments.

Now, EU members must learn from the U.S., where private contractors are now essential to any deployment, but this reliance on civilian personnel has proven more expensive than predicted and introduced numerous legal and financial concerns.

The focus on logistics, however, shouldn't distract attention from the increasing difficulty of getting European nations to provide military forces without national conditions and restrictions about how they may be employed. This is now at the heart of the trans-Atlantic spat within NATO over the need for more troops in Afghanistan.

With the Taliban resurgent, the NATO Secretary General and U.S. Defense Secretary have called for more front-line troops. But member states have balked, arguing their reconstruction role is equally important. True, Afghanistan is a mess and the provincial reconstruction teams deserve credit for their role in rebuilding the country. But without combat operations to counter the Taliban, Afghanistan is doomed.

1. Gen. Bentegeat criticized the EU countries for …

1. not offering enough logisticians

2. not sending enough combat troops

3. not employing civil logistics firms

2. Present conflicts prove EDA's proposed change is …

1. expensive

2. delayed

3. necessary

3. The disagreement within NATO is caused by …

1. differences in priorities among EU members

2. national constraints on troops employment

3. reluctance to involve troops in social projects

Text Two

Work Proceeds on USAF Satellites

Lockheed Martin recently delivered the flight structure for the third space vehicle in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) program to the company's Mississippi facility for integration with its propulsion subsystem. AEHF satellites are designed to provide secure and survivable communications to the U.S. military services.

Over the next months, a team of engineers at Lockheed Martin's Mississippi Space & Technology Center will integrate the spacecraft's propulsion subsystem, which is essential for maneuvering the satellite during transfer orbit to its final location as well as conducting on-orbit operations and repositioning maneuvers.

AEHF satellites will deliver 10 times greater capacity and channel data rates six times higher than that of Milstar II communication satellites, according to Lockheed. The higher data rates, which are top priority for efficient military communication, permit transmission of more accurate tactical military communications such as video, battlefield maps and targeting data.

Lockheed Martin is to provide three AEHF satellites and a command control system to the Military Satellite Communications System Wing at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles.

Production of the first two satellites also is progressing on schedule. Early this year, the propulsion module, already integrated with the first AEHF space vehicle, is scheduled for delivery from Mississippi to Lockheed Martin's facilities in Sunnyvale, Calif.

With the propulsion module and payload in place, the team will begin final assembly in preparation for launch in April 2008. Development of the second satellite is proceeding on schedule for launch in April 2009.

4. The Lockheed Martin's programme is aimed at …

1. improving satellite communication

2. developing new satellite structure

3. upgrading satellite propulsion system

5. AEHF satellites are vital for the military as …

1. they can transmit more precise data

2. they can do maneuvers in the orbit

3. they can receive more information

6. In Sunnyvale, the first AEHF will be …

1. provided with remaining equipment

2. integrated with the propulsion module

3. connected to the command control

Task Two

You are going to read an interview with U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor the incoming Chairman, HASC Seapower Subcommittee. Choose from questions A to H the one which you think fits best each paragraph 7 to 13. There is an extra question which you do not need to use.

7. I'm convinced that the Achilles's heel of American military is fuel. You cut it off and everything stops. But at least with surface ships, it doesn't have to be that way. Yes, a nuclear power plant is going to be expensive, but you don't have the vulnerability of your fuel. And you can stay at the sea longer if you have to.

8. I know they did but you have to remember that they get their money from Congress. One of my goals is to see that there will be a nuclear-powered CG(X) cruiser. I've got to convince the guys from Authorization and Appropriations committees in the Senate and the House that this is the way to go.

9. Restoring the size of the fleet. Getting a nuclear-powered surface fleet. Making good business decisions. And looking out for sailors. And whether it's a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, we have to come up with a strategy to help people from the sea.

10. Meeting the expenses is always going to be a challenge. But when disaster strikes, you've got to have aircraft carriers or minesweepers, you can't go out and rent them. And it becomes my job and my counterparts' in the House and Senate to explain to the American public that implementing this long-term plan is important. No matter what the costs are.

11. Can you think of a single program where the price came in for what they said? I'm going to ask them to show me why things cost as much as they do. I'm going to go to these shipyards and suppliers and look at them. They're going to have to convince me that it can't be any cheaper.

12. I hope not. I don't think the Chinese and Iranians are buying submarines just for the fun of it. They're doing it because they think it's worthwhile, and we need to prepare to be able to respond to that.

13. I've been to the Maersk shipyard in Denmark, in Japan and China. And we can do better. We are keeping six yards around because they are an asset when we need them. And they are great, but they need better equipment to make them more efficient. And I want them to take the attitude that they are going to bring them up to date.

1. What drives your interest in new nuclear-powered surface ships?

2. What are the Navy's top issues?

3. Do you support the acquisition of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle for the Marine Corps?

4. You urge more modernization by U.S. shipyards. What do you base that on?

5. Do you think the Navy's cost estimates for the first Zumwalt-class destroyers are accurate?

6. Will the defeat of Rep. Simmons, a supporter of more submarines, affect the push for them?

7. Is the 30-year fleet plan affordable?

8. Do you realise that the Navy decommissioned all its nuclear cruisers as too expensive in the 1990s?

Task Three

You are going to read a newspaper article. For questions 14 to 20, choose the answer (A, B, C or D), which fits best according to the text.

Chainsaw Diplomacy

When America invaded Iraq five years ago, most of the people who set American foreign policy believed two things. First, they believed that the U.S. military could not lose. From Panama to Kosovo, the Gulf War to Afghanistan, America had continually been winning wars since the late 1980s. Our defeat in Vietnam seemed about as relevant as the War of 1812. Second, the policymakers believed that people in Iraq wanted us to win. Hadn't Afghans cheered the overthrow of the Taliban? The general atmosphere in the spring of 2003 was an intoxicating mixture of militarism and moralism. The Whitehouse believed our troops would destroy Saddam, and Iraqis would take care of the rest.

Początek formularza

Five years later, that combination has blown apart. John McCain is open to bombing Iran, but he doesn't claim the Iranians will thank us for it. Barack Obama wants to restore America's good name, but not with the 82nd Airborne. For the most part, militarists and moralists now occupy separate camps. In the coming years, America will try to export its values and may well use military force. But it won't try to do both at the same time. In many ways, this is what happened after Vietnam.

Underlying that war were the beliefs that the communists in North Vietnam couldn't resist our military power and that the non-communist in South Vietnam wanted to be saved. The war proved both assumptions wrong. On the left, Jimmy Carter responded by making human rights the focus of his foreign policy: America would stand up for liberty - but not militarily. Conservatives insisted that had we used more military force in Vietnam, we would have won. But as the world turned increasingly anti-American, they gave up the idea that when we took up arms, other nations would cheer.

This gap between moralism and militarism narrowed in the 1980s and '90s. Under Ronald Reagan, conservatives grew more optimistic about exporting American values as they saw democracy spread in the Third World. And under Bill Clinton, liberals became more warlike, backing humanitarian interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. This culminated in the era of humanitarianism and the idea of a `just war' which was propagated by the US and its main ally Britain. There was general agreement at the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century that western countries should use their wealth and power to `do right' in the world.

Today, however, it's the '70s all over again. Republicans still assume that force - or at least the believable threat of it - is all that regimes like Iran's understand. But you don't hear many conservatives echoing the grand Wilsonianism of Bush's Second Inaugural speech. In the speech, President George W. Bush claimed that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one." This was similar to the ideas of President Wilson nearly one hundred years before. The fastest-growing species on the foreign-policy right is what National Review editor Rich Lowry calls "to hell with them" hawks: conservatives who don't care how non-Americans run their societies as long as they don't threaten us in the process. The name Hawk describes a tough politician who is only interested in Americans.

Among Democrats, being a hawk is out of fashion, but humanitarianism remains strong. In a Foreign Affairs article last summer, Obama argued that many around the world associate Bush's freedom talk with "war, torture and the changing of political regimes by force." His answer: help freedom's march with money, not arms. That makes sense. Moralism and military force are both necessary to U.S. foreign policy, but the former shouldn't ride the latter into battle. The U.S. military can help stop ethnic cleansing, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, or safeguard the world's oil supplies, as it did in the first Gulf War, but it's not designed to build democracy. You can't do open-heart surgery with a chainsaw.

Building decent, liberal societies requires strengthening parts of the U.S. government that don't carry guns. While our military patrols the world, our embassies increasingly hide behind barbed wire, disconnected from the societies they need to understand and help. America doesn't need to abandon the passion that five years ago helped push us into a disastrous war; we need to redirect it. Using the military for moral purposes has had its day. The test now is whether we can effectively separate the two; carrying a big stick for self-defence but using less blunt instruments to improve the world.

14. In 2003 when the US invaded Iraq …

1. politicians were still haunted by the Vietnam war

2. political opinion was split regarding military success

3. US leaders expected Iraqis to take over after the war

4. many people compared it to the Vietnam war

15. In the future, America will …

1. only concentrate on military objectives

2. keep military and ethical issues separate

3. try to practise peaceful diplomacy only

4. avoid getting involved in Muslim countries

16. The Vietnam war …

1. convinced US politicians that military force is the best option

2. taught Americans not to get involved in foreign countries

3. split opinions about using force to achieve America's goals

4. caused Americans to give up trying to encourage freedom

17. The end of the 20th century saw …

1. a continued split in political opinion

2. opposing groups sharing the same opinion

3. America being isolated from its allies

4. a misuse of the West's power and money

18. Today many conservatives believe …

1. that interests and ideology should be combined

2. ideology is important in foreign policy decisions

3. America should mainly concentrate on its own issues

4. that the ideas of President Wilson should be followed

19. Democrats feel that …

1. the military should be used to encourage democracy

2. financial assistance is a priority in supporting liberty

3. political systems must change for freedom to occur

4. Americans should not be involved in moral issues

20. The last paragraph suggests that the US should …

1. restrict itself to domestic issues

2. be careful about making judgements

3. continue its current policies abroad

4. change the focus of its actions

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