ed316
12-04-2006, 03:40 PM
In Afghanistan, NATO tests its relevance
Canadian prime ministers usually appear at NATO summits as part of the chorus. Stephen Harper attended his first NATO summit in Riga this week in a lead role.
The prime minister rightly sought a more even distribution of risk among alliance members in the dangerous south of Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban aims to capture Kandahar, the city where they began their takeover of the country in 1994.
The summit's official spinners feigned a moderate success, allowing that in urgent situations, NATO commanders have to be able to move forces around the country. And while they renewed vows to prevail in Afghanistan, they did not lift national caveats on soldiers being put in harm's way.
Critics say NATO risks failing an existential test in Afghanistan.
The outcome could be that NATO cannot fulfil its post-Cold War role as an international security organization able to intervene when requested by the United Nations, as was the case for Afghanistan.
The time is right to take a look at NATO, and its relevance today, in light of its past.
After the Cold War
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the alliance believed, like a graduate being handed a diploma, that its tests were over.
The high point occurred in December 1991, when NATO invited the countries of the Warsaw Pact inside the sanctum of NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first "partnership" council. Generals from Poland and Czechoslovakia who had trained their whole lives to defeat NATO looked around the council chamber where they had always tried to place spies, with a mixture of awe, bemusement and professional envy. They speedily pocketed their NATO rollerball pens.
Then an amazing thing occurred. The representative of the Soviet Union had been popping out to take repeated calls from Moscow where President Boris Yeltsin was pulling the rug out from under Mikhail Gorbachev and the whole Soviet Union. At about noon, the ambassador returned to the council meeting and shakily asked for the floor. He explained he had been instructed to remove from the table the plaque bearing the name of his country, the U.S.S.R.
Thus, NATO's arch-enemy of more than 40 years disappeared — not after ferocious tank battles on the plains of Prussia, but on a point of order.
But what is next for NATO?
Though they talked of "transformation," member states never took seriously the notion that it was time to close the alliance down in victory.
Organizations have their own life force. Moreover, NATO was a key junction between the United States and Europe. The Warsaw Pact republics wanted membership in an expanded NATO to verify their Western identity. They also wanted NATO as a hedge in case the Russian bear came back.
No global challenge
But NATO had no global challenge as a second act.
NATO did engage in the Balkans, and a NATO air campaign succeeded in 1999 in bombing Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia out of Kosovo, but only just.
So when al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked the United States on Sept. 11 2001, NATO members saw it as a global threat against all, and offered a NATO-wide response under Article 5 of the founding treaty.
In its anger and pain, the United States initially declined the offer and moved into Afghanistan on its own.
Several hundred CIA and special forces operatives pursued al-Qaeda with partial success, and in the process broke up and chased away the Taliban government that had hosted al-Qaeda and supported their jihad against the West.
When the United States ask NATO allies for help in coming months, it was to provide security around Kabul, while Washington, in collaboration with local warlords, continued its search-and-destroy mission in the south.
At that time, NATO never acknowledged a moment's doubt about the necessity of helping convert Afghanistan into a secure and functioning society, nor that this task would require much more than military action.
Much has been accomplished since — elections to a Parliament including 25 per cent women, adoption of a constitution, the re-opening of schools. But Afghanistan is very complicated. Its regional strongholds have been quasi-independent for hundreds of years. The writ of parliament or government does not extend very far outside Kabul.
Iraq war shifted focus
But at a crucial moment in Afghanistan's developmental process, the United States invaded Iraq. The shift of focus of the over-extended U.S. military finally did confer on NATO key responsibility for military operations in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban began to re-group in safe havens across the Pakistani border in the south — partly financed with drug money — in order to return to fight efforts to create a stable Afghan democracy, it was up to NATO to resist.
Thus, NATO undertook in Afghanistan the first ground combat operations in its history.
Of course, instead of confronting their military mirror image as represented by the Warsaw Pact, NATO faced a network of agile mujahadeen guerrillas in an “asymmetrical” war. NATO was possibly not yet prepared.
Canada elected in 2005 to be in the vanguard of these operations in the south, when the security challenge was interesting to keen military commanders but manageable.
It became progressively more dangerous, and by the time of the Riga summit, 36 of 51 NATO fatalities this year had been Canadian. (The Americans lost 61 lives, but most are in the parallel counterterrorism activity under separate American command.)
The issue of the restrictions or "caveats" several other NATO countries had placed on the roles which their national contingents could play in Afghanistan, effectively keeping them in safer areas, became the issue Harper had to address. He was supported by U.S. President George W. Bush and leaders of other countries engaged in the dangerous south.
Their efforts seem to have come up short. "PM gets little help at NATO," the Globe and Mail headlined on Nov. 30. Why?
Afghan mission seen as a discretionary
In some European capitals, where electorates are split and governments unpopular, the Afghan mission is not seen with the same intensity as in Canada. It has been downgraded to the status of a somewhat discretionary action.
Other deployments, as in Lebanon, are viewed as more critical to global outcomes. Even in Washington, Afghanistan is still a sideshow to the much darker political drama being played out over the fiasco of Iraq. American news outlets hardly covered the Riga meeting.
The Taliban may be local in that their leader, Mullah Omar, knows or cares nothing of the world. But they support jihad, and home-grown jihadists such as those who bombed London on in July 2005. The defining case is that if Afghanistan fails again as a state and becomes a platform for jihadists, all NATO countries are threatened. Sept. 11 was not a war-game scenario, and the cancer of jihadism has metastasized since.
There is still a positive scenario possible.
If the Afghan public is convinced NATO members and other countries are committed to more and better aid, they will shoulder the sustained investment in security; they will insist on better governance within Afghanistan; they will seek the co-operation of Pakistan and Iran, and they will resist the Taliban.
If Afghanistan falls again, it will be NATO that fails its existential test. If NATO is not for this, what is it for? And if not NATO, then who?
But is there the political will in NATO capitals to look beyond the short-term electoral fortunes of weak governments? There is in some, including France, but seemingly not in others, such as Germany.
The Riga summit's answers were unconvincing. The diplomacy from this point on has to be strenuous to bring out the best in NATO at a time of diminished leadership in the alliance. Harper should not relent for a second.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_kinsman/20061204.html
Canadian prime ministers usually appear at NATO summits as part of the chorus. Stephen Harper attended his first NATO summit in Riga this week in a lead role.
The prime minister rightly sought a more even distribution of risk among alliance members in the dangerous south of Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban aims to capture Kandahar, the city where they began their takeover of the country in 1994.
The summit's official spinners feigned a moderate success, allowing that in urgent situations, NATO commanders have to be able to move forces around the country. And while they renewed vows to prevail in Afghanistan, they did not lift national caveats on soldiers being put in harm's way.
Critics say NATO risks failing an existential test in Afghanistan.
The outcome could be that NATO cannot fulfil its post-Cold War role as an international security organization able to intervene when requested by the United Nations, as was the case for Afghanistan.
The time is right to take a look at NATO, and its relevance today, in light of its past.
After the Cold War
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the alliance believed, like a graduate being handed a diploma, that its tests were over.
The high point occurred in December 1991, when NATO invited the countries of the Warsaw Pact inside the sanctum of NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first "partnership" council. Generals from Poland and Czechoslovakia who had trained their whole lives to defeat NATO looked around the council chamber where they had always tried to place spies, with a mixture of awe, bemusement and professional envy. They speedily pocketed their NATO rollerball pens.
Then an amazing thing occurred. The representative of the Soviet Union had been popping out to take repeated calls from Moscow where President Boris Yeltsin was pulling the rug out from under Mikhail Gorbachev and the whole Soviet Union. At about noon, the ambassador returned to the council meeting and shakily asked for the floor. He explained he had been instructed to remove from the table the plaque bearing the name of his country, the U.S.S.R.
Thus, NATO's arch-enemy of more than 40 years disappeared — not after ferocious tank battles on the plains of Prussia, but on a point of order.
But what is next for NATO?
Though they talked of "transformation," member states never took seriously the notion that it was time to close the alliance down in victory.
Organizations have their own life force. Moreover, NATO was a key junction between the United States and Europe. The Warsaw Pact republics wanted membership in an expanded NATO to verify their Western identity. They also wanted NATO as a hedge in case the Russian bear came back.
No global challenge
But NATO had no global challenge as a second act.
NATO did engage in the Balkans, and a NATO air campaign succeeded in 1999 in bombing Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia out of Kosovo, but only just.
So when al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked the United States on Sept. 11 2001, NATO members saw it as a global threat against all, and offered a NATO-wide response under Article 5 of the founding treaty.
In its anger and pain, the United States initially declined the offer and moved into Afghanistan on its own.
Several hundred CIA and special forces operatives pursued al-Qaeda with partial success, and in the process broke up and chased away the Taliban government that had hosted al-Qaeda and supported their jihad against the West.
When the United States ask NATO allies for help in coming months, it was to provide security around Kabul, while Washington, in collaboration with local warlords, continued its search-and-destroy mission in the south.
At that time, NATO never acknowledged a moment's doubt about the necessity of helping convert Afghanistan into a secure and functioning society, nor that this task would require much more than military action.
Much has been accomplished since — elections to a Parliament including 25 per cent women, adoption of a constitution, the re-opening of schools. But Afghanistan is very complicated. Its regional strongholds have been quasi-independent for hundreds of years. The writ of parliament or government does not extend very far outside Kabul.
Iraq war shifted focus
But at a crucial moment in Afghanistan's developmental process, the United States invaded Iraq. The shift of focus of the over-extended U.S. military finally did confer on NATO key responsibility for military operations in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban began to re-group in safe havens across the Pakistani border in the south — partly financed with drug money — in order to return to fight efforts to create a stable Afghan democracy, it was up to NATO to resist.
Thus, NATO undertook in Afghanistan the first ground combat operations in its history.
Of course, instead of confronting their military mirror image as represented by the Warsaw Pact, NATO faced a network of agile mujahadeen guerrillas in an “asymmetrical” war. NATO was possibly not yet prepared.
Canada elected in 2005 to be in the vanguard of these operations in the south, when the security challenge was interesting to keen military commanders but manageable.
It became progressively more dangerous, and by the time of the Riga summit, 36 of 51 NATO fatalities this year had been Canadian. (The Americans lost 61 lives, but most are in the parallel counterterrorism activity under separate American command.)
The issue of the restrictions or "caveats" several other NATO countries had placed on the roles which their national contingents could play in Afghanistan, effectively keeping them in safer areas, became the issue Harper had to address. He was supported by U.S. President George W. Bush and leaders of other countries engaged in the dangerous south.
Their efforts seem to have come up short. "PM gets little help at NATO," the Globe and Mail headlined on Nov. 30. Why?
Afghan mission seen as a discretionary
In some European capitals, where electorates are split and governments unpopular, the Afghan mission is not seen with the same intensity as in Canada. It has been downgraded to the status of a somewhat discretionary action.
Other deployments, as in Lebanon, are viewed as more critical to global outcomes. Even in Washington, Afghanistan is still a sideshow to the much darker political drama being played out over the fiasco of Iraq. American news outlets hardly covered the Riga meeting.
The Taliban may be local in that their leader, Mullah Omar, knows or cares nothing of the world. But they support jihad, and home-grown jihadists such as those who bombed London on in July 2005. The defining case is that if Afghanistan fails again as a state and becomes a platform for jihadists, all NATO countries are threatened. Sept. 11 was not a war-game scenario, and the cancer of jihadism has metastasized since.
There is still a positive scenario possible.
If the Afghan public is convinced NATO members and other countries are committed to more and better aid, they will shoulder the sustained investment in security; they will insist on better governance within Afghanistan; they will seek the co-operation of Pakistan and Iran, and they will resist the Taliban.
If Afghanistan falls again, it will be NATO that fails its existential test. If NATO is not for this, what is it for? And if not NATO, then who?
But is there the political will in NATO capitals to look beyond the short-term electoral fortunes of weak governments? There is in some, including France, but seemingly not in others, such as Germany.
The Riga summit's answers were unconvincing. The diplomacy from this point on has to be strenuous to bring out the best in NATO at a time of diminished leadership in the alliance. Harper should not relent for a second.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_kinsman/20061204.html