Big Shock! NATO "Wavers" In Afghanistan

Gen John Craddock, the commander of US European Command and the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, laid it on the line in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK. Bluntly, accurately and quite undiplomatically, the General took the position that the political leadership of many (unnamed) NATO members lacked the political will to carry through the effort in Afghanistan.

He particularly took after those countries whose politicos will not allow their forces to serve in the southern, danger-rich portion of the country. He pointedly observed that only a few countries joined with the US in actively taking the war to Taliban and al Qaeda trigger pullers. He specifically mentioned the British, Dutch and Canadian formations.

General Craddock didn't note that Taliban was quite capable of carrying the war and its attendant risks to the troops up north in the "safe" part of Afghanistan. As news out of the Land of Rocks, Mountains and Suicide Bombers showed today, even the danger averse German contingent could be placed in mortal peril. (Two Deutscher truppen KIA.)

There is no surprise in the risk reluctance of many NATO governments. In the whoop and holler days immediately following 9/11 none of the politicians who rushed to the support of the US really expected that the war would last the best part of a decade with no end in sight. Neither did, the Geek is certain, any of the senior military commanders of any of the NATO states including the US.

On paper the operation looked to be a quick, clean, low body count punitive operation. Perhaps some politicians and even a few commanders thought about the days after the victory celebration, but the conventional Western wisdom would not have been far afield of that shown in the US by the Cheney-Bush administration.

The Afghan population liberated from the Taliban oppressors were supposed to rise up from the rubble of "shock and awe" eager to embrace secular, liberal, pluralistic democracy and its handmaiden, a regulated, honest, free market economy.

Now that the truth of the Afghan historical and cultural context as well as complications such as opium and Pakistani border sanctuaries have sunk in, whatever political will which may have existed in various European capitals and politically articulate elites has long left. Long gone with the realisation that the government of Karzai is both corrupt and inefficient, the Taliban is far more integrated with and sensitive to the population and, bluntly, the Afghan population loves democracy and secularism about as well as Dracula loves holy water.

In terms of building a modern nation replete with Western European or American style institutions Afghanistan is and always has been a lost cause. In terms of defeating Taliban and its ilk militarily, the question is still open but the answer continues to tilt in favor of the black turbans.


As has been posted repeatedly here the contest between insurgent and counterinsurgent is one finally of political will. The side that is willing to spend time and accept casualties will prevail over the side that seeks to save time and lives. In Afghanistan the insurgents have always been ahead in that critical category.

Western nations, including the US, have a rather poor record in counterinsurgency over the past century or so. True both the British and the Americans have won a few, but the other NATO members either have a losing record (think France for example) or have not played the game.

Western political elites by and large lack the stomach for counterinsurgency. They cannot accept as justifiable in either policy or moral terms the waste of time, resources and lives. They cannot accept the inevitable cost of lives in the civilian population living in the area of operations.

The military leaders of the relevant NATO nations must now follow up on the honesty of General Craddock. They must tell their political masters in no uncertain terms that more boots must be placed on the ground in harm's way and more bodies in bags must be accepted in order that the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing" might be achieved.

Why?

Simple. Any odor of military defeat to the purportedly strongest military coalition on earth would serve to embolden those hostile entities which hope to displace Europe and the US from their global leadership position. Beyond that the failure to accomplish the minimum strategic goal would undercut the credibility and thus the existence of NATO as a military and diplomatic entity.

To put it simply, a military loss in Afghanistan would serve to so completely discredit NATO as a credible instrument of power that its members would be effectively emasculated in the games of global power.