NATO cool to hotspots in Afghanistan

Washington Times:

The U.S. has to send Marines to Afghanistan because other NATO members don't want to deploy forces to more violent areas and have not come through on their promises to send troops, congressional critics and intelligence officials say.

The criticisms come while the Pentagon is planning to send 3,200 more Marines to Afghanistan and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is publicly criticizing NATO allies for lack of preparedness.

"I'm worried we're deploying [military advisers] that are not properly trained, and I'm worried we have some military forces that don't know how to do counterinsurgency operations," Mr. Gates told the Los Angeles Times for yesterday's editions.

"Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency; they were trained" for a Soviet army invasion in the Cold War, he said.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer immediately rejected Mr. Gates' remarks, telling reporters yesterday that NATO was up to the task and performing its duties.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee have for months been privately voicing their opposition to sending more U.S. Marines to make up for NATO's flailing contributions in Afghanistan's more violent southern region.

Ranking House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, told The Washington Times yesterday that NATO nations must be willing to commit 3,000 or more additional combat troops or risk losing lucrative "American tax-funded" defense contracts.

"What I'm worried about is what's being pressed on the American forces in Afghanistan, particularly in the southern region with high combat activity," Mr. Hunter said. "The idea that only Americans will be willing to risk their forces, while NATO allies do so little, is remarkable."

Mr. Hunter had sent a letter to Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, in October asking that he not approve deploying Marines to Afghanistan.

"Installation of a new presence in Afghanistan will signal to recalcitrant allies that Uncle Sam is willing to allow them to shirk their fair burden in this war," said the letter, obtained yesterday by The Washington Times.

Several military and congressional sources have told The Times that Mr. Gates is putting a diplomatic face on his public statements, but, behind the scenes, he and other U.S. military officials see most NATO countries as doing the minimum possible and taking on the least-risky tasks.

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Coalition warfare has its problems. This story adds more detail to the dispute that surfaced yesterday with the LA Times article and was also the subject of stories in the UK. I think it has become clear that we can not rely on some NATO countries for much of anything and others are not team players even though they are in the fray. Hunter is wrong to think we can pressure the allies with a passive aggressive approach. It is more important to get the troops that are needed into the battle and destroy enemy operations than to win bureaucratic battles with NATO. Those who insist on coalition warfare must realize the downside of those efforts. We need to incorporate NATO into the counterinsurgency warfare program started recently in the US that has been so successful in Iraq.

Westhawk notes the loss of patience with NATO in Afghanistan. Perhaps Rumsfeld had a point.

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Afghanistan has not been a pleasant experience for NATO. Indeed, it may turn out to be the graveyard for the alliance as a functioning military organization. This is an outcome no one wanted. Fighting global terror networks requires global cooperation, a task NATO seemed perfectly suited for, at least on paper. It is depressing that reality has turned out so poorly. Although condemned for being a “unilateralist,” future U.S. presidents will learn from the Afghan experience that in practice, unilateralism may be the only feasible option. Finding reliable and useful allies for future contingencies will be difficult and will depend on the specific crisis scenario. So much for the usefulness of old-fashioned standing alliances.

NATO is alliance built on the premise of defending Europe. The Europeans could muster enough self interest to get into that project. Terrorism does not seemed to have captured their interest in any large degree.