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America yields in battle for Nato troops
AFTER repeated rebuffs, America is preparing to abandon its insistence that Nato allies commit more combat troops to Afghanistan, despite fears the Taliban are gaining strength.
| Might as well, it's clear that the Euros, except the Brits, Poles, and Dutch, simply do not want to help. They're afraid of antagonizing Putin, and they saw what happened in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan as a clear warning. They want the natural gas to keep flowing so they're not going to create trouble in what Russia still perceives as its own back yard. |
The climbdown comes after Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, made a last-ditch appeal for more troops at a two-day meeting of Nato ministers in Krakow, Poland, last week, and received a cool response. I think he was going through the motions, said Steven Clemons, a foreign policy expert at the New America Foundation in Washington.
Gates was obliged to appeal to Americas allies to help with more soft power projects such as rebuilding roads, combating the drugs trade and training the Afghan national army and police. I hope that it may be easier for our allies to do that than significant troop increases, especially for the long term, he said.
| He had to say that but we all know better. |
President Barack Obamas administration announced last week that it was sending an extra 17,000 troops to join 32,000 already in Afghanistan, but European countries have yet to pitch in more than a few hundred.
The price of defeat on the military requests will be disproportionately greater requests for financial assistance and help with civilian projects, Clemons said. Were not going to say well just shoulder it all.
| The Euros have no intention of helping with financial assistance and civilian projects. They don't have the money and civilian projects require security, and that gets us back to the troops issue. Not going to happen. |
American security and defence officials have been laying the ground for a U-turn in advance of Natos 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg in April. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer based at the Brookings Institution, has been appointed to lead an interagency review of policy on Afghanistan at the White House ahead of the summit. The review is expected to provide creative, face-saving ways for the allies to offer considerably more civilian and military help, without providing many more combat troops. It would free US forces to concentrate on fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
| Or it will provide a white paper that Obama can use to tell everyone that remaining in Afghanistan is not in American interests. |
They are not going to ask countries for things they are not going to be able to do, said a Foreign Office source. Britain has been asked by America to join in identifying capacity gaps in Afghanistan and to help persuade Nato allies to fill them.
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, who is close to Obamas national security team, said a priority was to increase the size of the Afghan army and police. The fundamental mistake we have made in Afghanistan is not building an Afghan army sufficient to protect the population. That is going to be the primary task of the next several years and its an area where the allies can help.
| Nonsense. We've been trying since 2002 to build the Afghan National Army. It's 60,000 strong now, and while not enough it's 59,995 more than they had before. These things take time, time that the Euros simply don't want to invest. |
Germany is expected to provide more training for the national army, which is intended to double in size to 120,000 troops, while the Italians may help train paramilitary police.
Obama insisted on the campaign trail that he would oblige Nato to do more. You cant have a situation where the United States . . . and Britain are called upon to do the dirty work and nobody else wants to engage in actual firefights with the Taliban, he said.
However, the Germans refused to accede to Gatess request last week to deploy the Nato rapid response force to help stabilise Afghanistan ahead of the August presidential elections.
| The Germans have no problem with the current situation. If you leaned on Merkel, she'd pro'ly admit that she'd like to get all her troops out of Afghanistan, not find 'creative solutions' to help. |
Britain was only marginally more helpful. John Hutton, the defence secretary, said it was up to the rest of Nato to do more before the UK could increase its 8,000 combat troops, although plans are underway to divert several hundred special forces to Afghanistan from Iraq. There is a strong feeling we are doing more than our fair share, a Foreign Office source said.
The series of rejections has marked the end of Obamas honeymoon with European governments, which had braced themselves to meet the presidents demand for extra troops when he was elected last autumn. Now that Obamas electoral glow is fading, they have found the confidence to say no.
Theyre taking their cue from the Republicans, said Clemons, referring to the Republicans near-unanimous rejection of his economic plan. Obamas mystique of infallibility has been punctured.
| Ah, so it's all the Republicans fault. Wondered when we'd get around to that. Sorta shows how strong Bush was: he got a lot done even in the face of strong dissent from the Dhimmicrats, whereas the weak Pubs have Obama 'punctured'. |
Posted by: Steve White 2009-02-22 |
