Afghanistan: US/Canada Push for Greater Participation
In yet another US diplomatic attempt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked NATO members for greater participation in all aspects of the war in Afghanistan. This call comes in the background of Canadian President Stephen Harper’s claim that he will withdraw his nation’s troops, which operate in the southern and most dangerous part of the country, within a year unless NATO adds 1,000 more troops. A senior Bush Administration official discussed the problem of differing rules of engagement and mission perception’s between NATO allies in Afghanistan by stating; ‘You can’t have some allies talking about how they’re developers and some talking about how they’re fighters. We all have to be both.”
There are numerous reasons (i.e. domestic politics, US war in Iraq, differing views of the threat level and ways to promote development and good governance) why the US and many of its EU alliance partners don’t see eye-to-eye about troop levels and mission strategies in Afghanistan and these fissures are strongly affecting the military campaign. As Bush’s term winds down, it will be interesting to see just how far his administration will push European NATO members to increase their participation in the country. Judging by Secretary of Defense Gates recent appeals and Rice’s Brussels’ visit, they want to keep the pressure on. EU leaders may just try to wait this administration out and see what the next president’s policy toward Afghanistan and NATO might be.
Can Bush garner greater participation from NATO’s EU states in Afghanistan before his term expires? Or will individual EU nation domestic constraints’ keep them from providing more troops or wider rules of engagement?
March 10th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[…] Patrick Frost reports that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked NATO members for greater participation in all aspects of the war in Afghanistan. Share This […]
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
[…] In my short time as the lead writer for this blog, I have written much about NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, as I believe the nation’s stability and effective governance would do much for Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East regions. On March 10th I discussed NATO troop levels and restrictions. In light of the ongoing NATO Bucharest Summit, Foreign Policy has created The List: Who’s Left in Afghanistan?, which nicely catalogs individual NATO nation troop levels, restrictions of engagement, and provides an outlook into possible changes to these in the near future. The report is rather disparaging to the nation’s who either have very low troop levels or major limitations as to what and where their troops can do and go. The report specifically targets Germany, Austria, and Ireland for consternation. […]
December 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
[…] The year began with Afghanistan’s government and society under a severe and determined Taliban-led insurgent attack. NATO, who was and remains in pursuit of more troops from its members, was actually partnering up with Moscow in Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbor states in order to help supply routes. Now as the year is nearing a close, Russia and the United States are involved in what I would call a ‘mini Cold War’ since the Georgia conflict and this may hinder further cooperation in and around Afghanistan in the coming year. Regarding Russia, the transition from Putin to Medvedev was surprisingly smooth and it now appears that they are indeed sharing power (though it looks like things are being nicely set up for a Putin return to the presidency). Before we leave Russia, the Georgian conflict indeed had immediate ramifications for the region, first at the annual SCO summit where though pressured none of the CA states recognized the two breakaway Georgian states, second in a serious of rapid fire oil/gas dealings by Putin in the region, and the events of last August will probably reverberate for years to come. […]