ANALYSIS: Gates, Soft Power, and Afghanistan

Via the SWJ Blog, a great analysis by Col. Robert Killebrew (ret.) of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' shift towards soft power. Killebrew is correct--Gates' constant agitation for the expansion of non-military forms of influence is unprecedented within the Defense Department, and in many ways the United States government as a whole.

However, Gates' recent heckling at NATO to send more troops to Afghanistan is a poor example of this new soft power at work.  There is little chance of Europe making a substantial commitment to counterinsurgency in the near future. Trying to guilt them into it with talk of a "two-tiered" NATO will only harden their already potent intransigence.

The war in Iraq still occupies the lion's share of American resources, providing Europeans with some justification for their reluctance to commit to a bruising counterinsurgency in the  Taliban-dominated south. As Matthew Yglesias argues, we haven't shown a great deal of concrete (as opposed to rhetorical) symbols of commitment to the struggle in Afghanistan.  The Iraq war has also worsened the traditional European domestic opposition to sending their troops to foreign locales and anti-war parties have exploited this rising discontent.

Additionally, as Andrew Bacevich notes in today's Los Angeles Times, NATO itself is structurally unsuited to this kind of war. Many European nations lack the military reserve,  equipment, and public will to commit to expeditionary guerrilla warfare. And for good reason, as NATO's original role was to deter Soviet aggression and build a common European defense architecture. Trying to force it into the role of Eurasian counterinsurgent is wrong-headed.

Bacevich sarcastically notes that NATO nearly fractured over the 1999 Kosovo conflict, which was a cakewalk compared to Afghanistan. If the alliance barely held it together during a European collective security mission, what chance does NATO really have of being the expeditionary force of Washington's imagination?

I am not totally cynical. Unlike Iraq, we may still win Afghanistan. But such a victory will likely be due to a wholesale overhaul of current strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not any infusion of NATO troops.

Comments

[subadei]

Adrian and I are having a similar debate [1]. I'd originally offered that NATO was outmoded but am increasingly inclined to agree with Adrian's unsaid conclusion: that NATO was never a realistic and cohesive alliance beyond principle. At best, when kinetic reality comes to be, NATO has proven a fragmented alliance.

1. http://soobdujour.blogspot.com/2008/02/nato-reminder-article-5.html

[A.E.]

They also arguably would have failed at their main mission, given the massive Soviet conventional forces.

[A.E.]

Soob, I left two comments on this, but somehow my software ate it up. What I said was that NATO probably would have failed its main mission (beating off the Soviet conventional strike through Fulda Gap)--its main utility was cosmetic (as well as serving European integration).

[Wiggins]

"...NATO itself is structurally unsuited to this kind of war. Many European nations lack the military reserve, equipment, and public will to commit to expeditionary guerrilla warfare. And for good reason, as NATO's original role was to deter Soviet aggression and build a common European defense architecture."

We need to distinguish between two related issues: (1) European anti-guerilla capabilities and (2) NATO anti-guerilla capabilities.

It may well be that NATO is structurally unsuited for anti-guerilla operations, but that doesn't mean that European states shouldn't have adapted their defense capabilities to the current security environment.

The security interests of European states are, after all, larger than NATO.

[A.E.]

Wiggins, I would be interested in seeing you expand this into a larger post.

[jim]

"Unlike Iraq, we may still win Afghanistan."

But a.e., what do we win, if we win? This is not the Superbowl, where numbers are projected on a screen.

Why would NATO want to fight a guerrilla expeditionary war? What is the benefit to the member nations? The fact that they don't want to fight these type of wars was the post-WWII foreign policy goal of America anyway.

All of our efforts were aimed at minimizing militarism in both Europe and Japan. We were highly successful, and now Gates is bemoaning this fact.

There is no definition of victory that justifies this phony war.