Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan

South Asia

Oct 1, 2009

Page 2 of 2
If Afghanistan is its test, NATO is failing
By John Feffer

Washington will certainly continue to maintain key military bases in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany and has been setting up new ones in Bulgaria, Romania, and Kosovo (that just happen to be closer to the energy resources of Eurasia and the Middle East). Turkey and possibly the Balkans are slated to become important locations for a more advanced version of the missile defense system that Obama recently canceled for Poland and the Czech Republic, bases which once figured prominently in the Bush administration's plans for Europe. In sum, US forces and resources once available to NATO's European operations have been rapidly dwindling.

At the same time, in the Bush years Washington chose to push the alliance to expand beyond its traditional focus on Europe and

think global, focusing on terrorism, piracy, nuclear proliferation, and other international threats. In this way, the United States imagined that it might be able to place some of the financial burden for its own self-appointed global mission on its European allies. The Afghan War and reconstruction effort, an out-of-area operation with global significance, was clearly to be the test case for Washington's version of a new and improved NATO.

On the other hand, the newest members of the alliance from Eastern and Central Europe wanted the focus to remain on threats to Europe itself (that is, to them). They continued to be purely Russia-focused. The leadership in Poland and the Czech Republic, in particular, were eager for the recently canceled missile defense bases not because they particularly believed in, or cared about, missile defense per se, or feared a future Iranian first strike, but because they were eager for proof of Washington's willingness to counter Moscow. For these Europe Firsters, Afghanistan has been nothing but a distraction from the essential mission of keeping the Russian bear at arm's length.

This, then, is the tug of war within NATO: between the Europe First faction and the Go Global faction. Oddly, both sides appear on the verge of falling into the mud. Now that the Obama administration is making nice with Russia, the Europe Firsters don't have a threat to stand on. For the Go Global faction, meanwhile, victory within NATO requires victory within Afghanistan, which is why, in 2007, future US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke declared that "Afghanistan represents the ultimate test for NATO".
If Afghanistan is the test, then NATO is flunking. The Taliban has made a steady comeback since its rout in 2001. More American soldiers, as well as more soldiers from the other coalition partners, have already died in 2009 than in any of the previous eight years. The number of civilian casualties - 2008 was a record year and 2009 will likely break that record - fly in the face of NATO's "responsibility to protect" guidelines.

There aren't anywhere near the number of troops necessary for an effective counter-insurgency campaign, if such a thing were even possible in distant Afghanistan, and what troops are there have proven ill-trained for "hearts and minds" work. Nor are there sufficient Afghan troops trained, almost eight years after the initial invasion of that country, to "Afghanize" the NATO side of the conflict.

As for the grander projects of democracy promotion and nation-building, Afghanistan's rudimentary economy remains heavily dependent on opium poppy production and its political system suffers from rampant corruption of which the irregularities of the most recent presidential election represent only the tip of the malfeasance.

No wonder, then, that the Europeans are thinking seriously about how to get out. After a suicide attack in Kabul killed six Italian paratroopers in mid-September, for instance, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced that "we must bring our boys home as soon as possible".

The war also suddenly became a major issue in Germany on the eve of national elections when a German commander called in US air strikes on those two stolen fuel trucks in Kunduz. The attack, which killed an unknown number of Afghan civilians, has driven home to the German public that its mission in Afghanistan qualifies as neither a humanitarian nor a stabilization effort, and anti-war sentiment is rising accordingly.

Moreover, the bombing has caused an unusual upsurge in bickering between Germany and the United States over responsibility for the incident and overall strategy. Just over the summer, the British lost 40 soldiers in the conflict, and a majority of Britons now want their troops withdrawn right away, which is likely to mean that the government's reported decision to send yet another 1,000 troops to Afghanistan will go down very poorly indeed with the voters.

How can NATO go global when it can't even pass its first major test in Afghanistan? "It is of course possible that NATO can survive Afghanistan even in the absence of total success: it depends on the extent of its failure," Danish security analysts Jens Ringsmose and Sten Rynning have written. "What seems certain is that failure in the Hindu Kush will constitute a serious blow to global NATO."

With NATO having to downscale, like the rest of us in these recessionary times, forget the notion that the alliance should mount out-of-area operations, argues former US diplomat David T Jones for the conservative think-tank Foreign Policy Research Institute. "Aggression, terrorism, piracy, and human rights debacles need be addressed, but NATO is not the hammer for these nails. The United States needs to be more discerning about using this stiletto to chop wood. A 'coalition of the willing' is a tarnished term, but NATO is verging on becoming a coalition of the unwilling."

"NATO often seems to be an organization that is permanently in crisis, but it always seems to bounce back," argues Ian Davis of NATO Watch. "This is partly because collective defense/security solutions continue to make sense, not least to: prevent a renationalization of defense in Europe; to lock-in US administrations (as far as possible) to multilateral and law-based approaches; and to provide sufficient security guarantees to enable nuclear disarmament to proceed, and for likely recessionary conventional disarmament to take place without causing instability." But will these workaday goals be enough to keep the institution afloat?

Fine-tuning the prime directive
In 2010, NATO will update its prime directive for the first time in a decade, and the Go Global faction will battle with the Europe Firsters for the driver's seat. Neither group is likely to gain enough power within the organization to steer it alone. Undoubtedly, a compromise will emerge.

For instance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser and consummate geopolitician, argues in a recent Foreign Affairs essay that NATO should focus on building security relationships with the world. In this scenario, NATO emerges as more of a grand facilitator than a robust fighting force.
If, on the other hand, Afghanistan truly takes the fight out of NATO, the more radical proposals of the Citizens Declaration of Alliance Security, which calls for a more defensive military posture at lower levels of spending, while restricting out-of-area operations to UN-authorized missions, might come into play.

All institutions have a strong survival instinct, if only to continue providing salaries to their employees. NATO will surely outlive its strategic planning process, its failures in Afghanistan, and its adjustment to new global threats. But it may survive in name only. If it shrinks to the role of grand facilitator or United Nations handmaiden, it will have effectively ceased to be a trans-Atlantic collective security organization. The US will then lean toward ad hoc coalitions to achieve its military objectives, while Europe builds up its independent military power.

Initially, Europe began to beef up its collective military capabilities to acquire a voice in the international community commensurate with its economic power, as well as to send a not-so-subtle message to the unilateralist Bush administration. Today, the European Union maintains two rapid-deployment battle groups of 1,500 soldiers each and expects, in the near future, to pull together another 10 or so battle groups from existing national armies.

These forces have already conducted missions in more than 20 countries. Europe's military-industrial complex, meanwhile, is trying to push up military budgets and aggressively market European arms in overseas markets. All of this still represents a far cry from what NATO commands, but a signal is certainly being sent: if the United States thinks it can go it alone - or simply dragoon the alliance into its own version of a global mission - Europe will have options.

Even at 60, NATO hasn't quite proven that it can live on its own in a sustainable and responsible manner. Indeed, it is still struggling with a Hamlet-like identity crisis: to attack or not to attack. The Afghan war has only underscored this central paradox. If the alliance doesn't engage in military operations, everyone questions its ultimate purpose. But if it does go to war - and the war is unsuccessful - everyone questions its ultimate efficacy.

Damned if it does and damned if it doesn't, NATO will limp along much as the British and Soviet empires did after their misadventures in Central Asia. These were, after all, dead empires walking. NATO may be in this category as well. It just doesn't know it yet.

Note
1. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an inter-governmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium and the organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. Its members are: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and writes its regular World Beat column. His past essays, including those for Tomdispatch.com, can be read at his website .

(Copyright 2009 John Feffer.)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)

1 2 Back

Head Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East, Central, Hong Kong
Thailand Bureau: 11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110