Along with news that the last Italian soldier will leave Iraq December 2nd -- and today's story in The Independent that NATO is running "critically short" of combat troops to keep the Taliban at bay, while Italy’s PM Romano Prodi says that more troops won't solve the Afghan crisis and region experts are urging NATO members to "make peace" with the Taliban, which is planning a spring offensive and is now attracting "moderates" to its cause because "it is no longer an insurgency but a war of Pashtun resistance" --
-- the A.P./Forbes reports that at a two-day NATO summit in Latvia this week, President Stay-The-Course-Come-Hell-or-Highwater Bush "hopes to use lessons from NATO's first major combat mission [Afghanistan] to make the case for broader spending" as a reflection of GDP.
The U.S. spends 3.7% of its GDP, most allies less than 2%, on military expenditures.
Analysts say the figures reflect differences in the perception of security threats, particularly in addressing terrorism.
"In the U.S. there is the dominant perception that you can solve terrorist problems militarily and in Europe the belief is that boosting intelligence capabilities and development aid is more important," said Josef Braml, resident fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.
Despite U.S. pressure, some NATO allies have continued to cut overall spending.
"Many of the European nations, particularly the smaller and medium-sized powers, are hitting the budgetary wall," Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said at a briefing Tuesday.
The alliance's mission in Afghanistan has exposed some of the defense shortfalls ...
"We have seen some decisions by European members to step up purchases of armored vehicles and some movement toward helicopters as a result," said Alex Nicoll, director of defense analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. James L. Jones, said last week that calls he made to members in September for an additional 2,500 troops and more planes and helicopters for the Afghanistan mission had gone unanswered.
Jones also stressed the need for nations with troops in Afghanistan to lift restrictions that limit their deployment to particular parts of the country or prevent them from taking on certain tasks.
Leaders of member countries hope to address more of the alliance's weaknesses at the summit, including serious transport deficiencies. Some members have agreed to buy the alliance four C-17 transport planes, according to U.S. officials.
-- From the A.P./Forbes story, "Bush to Press Allies on Defense Spending"
Helle Dale -- director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Heritage Foundation -- in "Why NATO must evolve," a November 21 op-ed for the Washington Times, asks if NATO can "avoid rigor mortis" and argues for NATO's involvement in Afghanistan as "probably only the first of a number of such missions."
In the future we may look at NATO as a global alliance, an idea that is increasingly under serious consideration. As U.S. ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland has stated: "If we can't do missions like that of Afghanistan, then we can't do our overall mission."
NOTE: U.S. NATO Ambassador Victoria Nuland is the wife of Neocon writer Robert Kagan.
Dale continues:
NATO troops on the ground are subject to restrictions on their activities ... by their own national governments. ... As one Pentagon official recently stated in frustration, "This is no way to run an alliance." ...
All 26 NATO countries currently have troops on the ground in Afghanistan, but their numbers vary in the extreme. And it took a good deal of prodding by Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to get the numbers up to the current level of 32,000, ... In some provinces like the border regions with Pakistan, for instance, there are practically no troops from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
[...]
[R]estrictions imposed by various NATO countries limit the areas where troops can be deployed. Only six out of NATO's 26 members have no restrictions ... Germany troops, for instance, are confined to northern Afghanistan, and they are limited to performing construction projects. Turkish troops remain present in the Kabul region, but the Turkish government has rejected committing to any operations in the south.
NATO Secretary-General James Jones has estimated that there are 102 national restrictions out of which 50 were seriously detrimental to deployment. Poland recently announced that it would drop restrictions on the Polish troops, an example others should follow.
All this ought to add up to some serious thinking in Riga on what kind of an alliance NATO wants to be in the post-Cold War, post-September 11 global environment. The answer may be an alliance with global reach that includes other allies, Australia and New Zealand for instance, that consistently can be relied upon to be there when we need them. If NATO is not to atrophy, it has to evolve.
Today's A.P./Washington Post story adds:
Several non-NATO nations are supporting the Afghan mission, including Australia and New Zealand. Some in the alliance want to bring those countries, along with Japan and South Korea, into a "global partnership" to boost political and military cooperation.
France's Chirac is wary:
"To seek to involve the alliance in nonmilitary missions, ad hoc partnerships, technological ventures or an insufficiently prepared enlargement could only distort its purpose," French President Jacques Chirac told a meeting with his country's ambassadors based around the world in August.
Although both sides are keen to lay to rest the ghosts of their Iraq war disputes, France and the United States hold fundamentally different views of NATO's role. Paris is wary of what it sees as Washington's attempts to use NATO to expand its influence at the expense of a more independent EU.
Many blame continued tension between France and United States for the relatively limited ambition of the Riga agenda and expect more for the next summit in 2008, when there'll probably be a new president in Paris, or the one after in 2009, when there will certainly be a new president in Washington.
Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, the former leader of Pakistan's forces in the border areas, is quoted in numerous stories today. From The Australian:
Learn from history and talk peace to Taliban, West told
Christina Lamb, Islamabad | November 27, 2006
WESTERN forces will never win a military victory in Afghanistan and should open negotiations with the Taliban, the former leader of Pakistan's forces in the border areas has warned.
On the eve of a NATO summit in Latvia at which member nations will be urged to send more troops to Afghanistan, Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai said such a move would not resolve the conflict.
"The British, with their history in Afghanistan, should have known that better than anyone else," Lieutenant General Aurakzai said. Lieutenant General Aurakzai led Pakistan's hunt for al-Qa'ida until 2004 and is now the governor of Pakistan's restive northwestern frontier province. ...
[...]
"The reason Taliban numbers have swelled is because moderates are joining the militants," he said.
"It is no longer an insurgency but a war of Pashtun resistance, exactly on the model of the first Anglo-Afghan War (in 1839-42).
"Then too, initially there were celebrations.
"The British built their cantonment and brought their wives and sweethearts from Delhi, and didn't realise that in the meantime the Afghans were getting organised to rise up. This is exactly what the Afghans are doing today, and what they did against the Soviets."
Lieutenant General Aurakzai said no country in the world had a better understanding of the Afghan psyche than Britain, and little had changed in the country in the past two centuries. Rather than fighting, the only answer was to talk to the Taliban, he said.
Lieutenant General Aurakzai has negotiated a series of peace deals in Pakistan's restive tribal areas.
"This is the only way forward," he said.
"There will be no military solution - there has to be a political solution. How many more lives have to be lost before people realise it's time for dialogue?"
"There will be no military solution - there has to be a political solution."
That sounds familiar.