NATO wants a winning hand before committing any more to Afghanistan

ï"NATO Runs Short of Troops to Expand Afghan Peacekeeping," by Craig S. Smith, New York Times, 18 September 2004, p. A3.

A year ago NATO committed to setting up provincial military bases around Afghanistan in order to extend the security rule of the governing coalition led by Karzai into the previously ungovernable hinterlands. As of today, almost nothing has happened. Right now it is estimated that 80% of all Afghans live in areas beyond the control of the Kabul-based central government, which makes the planned national elections pretty iffy. Because NATO is begging its members for troops and receiving little in return, it looks like most of the country will be without any external security forces helping maintain order during the elections.

This sort of half-assed effort by NATO is sending all the wrong signals. They have committedóon paperóto staying in Afghanistan at least through 2009, leaving behind a trained indigenous military of 70k men, but so far only about 15k have been trained and there isn't even enough NATO troops to make the upcoming national elections look like a sure thing.

Right now NATO has 27k peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, but because the Sys Admin effort there has been equally weak (after all these years), European countries are wary of stealing from that Peter to pay this Paul.

What is holding up NATO is not the money or the manpower so much as the fear of failure. And watching the U.S. effort in Iraq does not give them any reason to suck it up any time soon, because it seems to say to Europe: If you do well anywhere, the U.S. will just rush ahead and create more jobs for you. In effect, the NATO reluctance to do more in Afghanistan is a no-confidence-vote for our occupation efforts to date in Iraq.

This is why I believe the generation of a truly robust Sys Admin-type force within the U.S. military is THE big bottleneck in this global war on terrorism. We will not move forward until we generate this capability and convince our allies throughout the Core (and not just Europe), that we mean business in shrinking the Gap. No winning hand, no coalition support. It's that simple.