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NATO's help comes with a price
tag
By Ehsan Ahrari
The
obdurate nature of the security situation in Afghanistan
and Iraq is pushing the Bush administration to seek
increased assistance from its North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) allies. That is also an outcome of
Washington's failure to get commitment of forces from a
number of countries after the passage of UN Resolution
1511. Now, about the only other option to enhance
multinational troop commitment to Iraq is by going to
NATO with hat in hand. During the first week of
December, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and
Secretary of State Collin Powell did just that during
that alliance's meetings of defense and foreign
ministers. The scope of NATO's current level of
involvement in Afghanistan will continue; however, its
increased participation in Iraq is likely to have a
price: the willingness of Washington to accede to a
number of political demands of its member countries.
NATO has not yet recovered from a major crisis
of its existence, when a number of its leading members
strongly opposed the US invasion of Iraq. The second
round of that opposition surfaced in the refusal of
France and Germany to commit peacekeeping troops to
Iraq, even after the passage of the aforementioned
resolution, unless the US demonstrated a willingness to
transfer in the short run the sovereignty to Iraqis, and
earnestly sought a heightened role for the UN in
nation-building operations. At first Washington
dismissed those suggestions as "unrealistic". But
considering that the security-related imbroglio remained
obdurate, the inner sanctum of the Bush administration
had a sudden change of heart in the form of the
"Iraqification" policy. The US is now poised to transfer
sovereignty to an indirectly elected body in the next
few months.
NATO faced another potentially
divisive issue, a common defense policy for Europe,
which would have further complicated intra-alliance
relations. The original version of that common defense -
which France Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg actively
supported - would have established full-fledged military
headquarters for the European Union for crisis
management missions. Washington viewed that version as
aimed at undercutting NATO's primacy. Even that issue is
now resolved as a result of a compromise involving
France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In addition, the
European ministers assured the US in the December
meetings that they would take no action that would
undercut NATO. These issues behind, Washington felt
enough at ease to push its own agenda on the alliance -
the eventual complete takeover of the peacekeeping and
nation-building operations in Afghanistan and an
increased role in Iraq.
Regarding Afghanistan,
NATO countries appear quite amenable to the proposition
of increasing their role. But a lurking question is the
exact meaning of that expanded role, and how it would
affect the US commitment to Afghanistan. Naturally, NATO
countries would not want to expand their commitment and
the scope of operations in Afghanistan so that the US
extricates itself from those responsibilities. As things
stand, Washington seems to be moving precisely in that
direction. It has recently transferred the
responsibility of one of its four areas of involvement
in the provisional reconstruction team to German
command. Washington insiders are betting that the Bush
administration would disentangle itself from the
intricate and potentially nettlesome responsibilities of
nation building long before the next presidential
elections.
NATO's International Security
Assistance Force in Afghanistan is busy restoring
security in Kabul, assisting the Afghani authority to
write a constitution, and planning to expand the scope
of the legitimacy of the government of interim President
Hamid Karzai beyond the capital city. This last measure
is of immense significance, since the Karzai government
has performed miserably in this regard. The blame for
failure should be placed squarely on the US's
distraction from Afghanistan to Iraq since late last
year.
The gravity of the security situation in
Afghanistan was highlighted by a bomb blast in a bazaar
of the southern city of Kandahar on December 6, injuring
20 people. According to a spokesman from the Taliban,
the target of that attack was American troops, who were
shopping nearby, but reported to have narrowly escaped
any harm.
Given its mounting commitment to
peacekeeping and nation building in Afghanistan, NATO
has remained cool to Powell's suggestion that it expand
its activities in Iraq. Powell sweetened his call by
adding two variables that are consistently demanded by
France and Germany. The first one was his willingness to
allow the UN play a prominent role. Second, the US has
already committed itself to transferring sovereignty to
the Iraqi Governing Council by next June. Since no
European minister spoke against his suggestion, Powell
construed that as some sort of a tacit "yes". He said:
"What strikes me today is that, as we discussed about
the possibility of NATO taking an enhanced role in Iraq
- taking a new kind of role in Iraq - not a single
member spoke against it or talked about reasons not to
do it. The question really was, should we not in the
interim, in the immediate near term, focus on
Afghanistan and think about what we might be able to do
in Iraq in the coming months, and something perhaps next
year."
But the European willingness to
participate in peacekeeping-nation building in Iraq
might require more concessions than Washington is
presently willing to offer. Even though such
"requirements" are not publicly aired, one is also
already well known: the transfer of authority from the
Coalition Provisional Authority to some sort of a "high
commissioner", who reports to the UN, not Washington. In
this regard, Senator Joseph Biden, ranking member of the
US Senate's prestigious Foreign Relations Committee, has
already sided with the Europeans. He has been publicly
calling for just such an office. Whether or not the
European-Biden vision of a UN high commissioner for Iraq
materializes any time soon depends very much on the
security situation in Iraq. The Bush administration has
an established record of offering concessions
willy-nilly, and only when forced by the deteriorating
security situation in Iraq.
In all likelihood,
NATO will expand the scope of its involvement in
Afghanistan. It might even eventually participate in the
reconstruction of Iraq. On this last issue, NATO's
participation has a price. Whether or not Washington
would be willing to pay that price will be determined by
realities on the ground in Iraq. Projecting on the Bush
administration's attitude based on the current
situation, the chances are that the alliance would see
virtually all its demands fulfilled in Iraq.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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