NATO: Alliance Of the Unwilling

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And though the war in Afghanistan never met the visceral opposition in much of Europe that the Iraq war did, support for the Afghan operation has fallen. In 2002, for example, 51% of Germans approved of German participation in the Afghan war; by late last year, just 29% approved. More than one half of respondents in a recent poll by the Allensbach Institute said they believed that German participation undermined German security by drawing unwanted attention from would-be terrorists. In Spain, according to a 2007 survey by Instituto Opina, a Barcelona-based polling group, over 51% said that they wanted to get Spanish troops out of Afghanistan altogether.

In most European nations, defense spending has been falling for years. Starting in 1985, through the decade after the cold war ended, it was reduced 40% in the U.K., 15% in Germany and 7% in France. Only seven out of NATO's 26 members meet the alliance benchmark of spending 2% of their GDP on defense — compared to 3.8% in the U.S. — and in most cases, those percentages are falling. The result is sharply diminished capacity, even in those nations that are ready to field troops to fight.

Among those that are not, the result is no serious capability at all. The most recent parliamentary audit of German preparedness, for example, found problems ranging from a lack of spare parts for armored vehicles to uniforms that are insufficiently camouflaged. German soldiers have taken to buying their own gun holsters because the army-issue variety do not fit properly under their bullet-proof vests. German helicopters, according to a source at the International Security Assistance Force (NATO's military arm in Afghanistan), can't fly at night because they do not have the required navigation equipment. "They are fundamentally good helicopters," says the ISAF source, "but they are fundamentally useless." Then there is training: one in four German soldiers, according to a recent parliamentary report, do not exercise. Some 40% are overweight and 8.5% are obese.

Germany has the third largest contingent in Afghanistan. But by an act of the German Bundestag, those troops are confined to the comparatively peaceful northern part of the country, where they are engaged in reconstruction efforts. From Washington, Gates has urged Berlin to lift the restrictions on German troops, but any such change will have to wait at least until after elections in 2009 — and probably longer. "Only through a great political effort will we be able to convince the German public that we are engaged in Afghanistan in order to protect our security in Germany," says Ruprecht Polenz, Christian Democrat chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag. And even if that effort succeeded, there is the awkward question of whether more German troops would help out in the south. "What's the use, given that the German army is a conscript army, and they only have a few professionals?" says the ISAF source in Afghanistan. "What use is that kind of army to us down south?"

It is not just Germany, however, where the political will to fight is lacking. Spain, which has some 750 troops in Afghanistan, is not expected to up that contribution substantially any time soon. "[The Spanish] supported Afghanistan when they understood the mission as humanitarian," Robert Matthews, a researcher at Madrid's Foundation for International Relations and Foreign Dialogue, explains. "But as the operation has become more military in nature, support has dropped." Even in France, which has superb armed forces held in high regard by the public, and which is on the verge of cementing its "reintegration" into NATO's command structure, there is still concern about answering NATO's call for more troops in Afghanistan. "It's a question of political acceptability," explains François Heisbourg, a special adviser at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris. Any spike in French casualties, he says, could produce "a real change in public perception."

To Fight, to Build, or Both?
Despite the americophile tendencies of Sarkozy, many French — like other Europeans — see NATO and the Afghanistan operation as an endorsement of a U.S. agenda. More than that, they see NATO's role in Afghanistan as a manifestation of a particularly American way of solving problems, one that puts too much emphasis on combat at the expense of nation-building. The European dream is that its armed forces can specialize in development without having to pick up a gun. "The question is not which of the NATO countries is the toughest, but which strategy is most effective — and that isn't always going into battle," says the Bundestag's Polenz. "The problem," says the ISAF source in Afghanistan, "is that there are those who did not sign up for this. They signed up for something else; for a nation-building, peacekeeping and humanitarian mission. So it's no good saying you have to go down south and fight. They just aren't going to do it. They can't. Their governments would fall."

That analysis would not be so devastating if the war in Afghanistan was plainly being won — so that many of those in uniform could spend all their time building schools and giving vaccine shots. Indeed, in the most recent issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army's professional journal, Zachary Selden notes that "Many of the capabilities required to transform the current security environment ... are no longer military but civilian. Europe has latent civilian capabilities that ... would make NATO more balanced."

But such capabilities need the right culture in which to thrive, and Afghanistan, today, is not it. Last year was the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with 6,500 deaths, according to the Associated Press — mostly insurgents but also civilians. Coalition forces, which include non-NATO countries such as Australia and South Korea, suffered 232 casualties. Opium exports have skyrocketed. Retired Marine General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander in Europe until 2006, now at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a think tank, told Congress in January that there is "a loss of momentum in Afghanistan" that could lead to "backsliding" if the initiative is not regained. "Make no mistake," he concluded in a report. "NATO is not winning in Afghanistan. Unless this reality is understood, and action is taken promptly, the future of Afghanistan is bleak."

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