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Saturday, September 09, 2006

Five years after 9/11: The Afghanistan War and the (probably short) future of NATO

The rest of my posts through Monday will involve looking at 9/11 from the perspective of five years later.

The Afghanistan War is one of the most important of those legacies. The policies that led to a much earlier and (to our "press corps", at least) more obvious disaster in Iraq were there on display in the Afghanistan War, basically from day one. The end of NATO is also on display there now, which maybe even our American press will realize in a few years.

The military and political situation in Afghanistan is now deteriorating so dramatically that even the American press finds itself obliged to take notice. The EU countries have troops operating there under NATO command, while the US troops there operate independently. Under the rules of the Cheney-Bush Imperial Government, American troops don't fight under unified command with lesser, vassal nations.

Which I'm sure at this point is just fine with European governments, who don't want to be implicated in some of the practices of the US military, most especially the Cheney-Bush torture policy.

Some notable dissent is beginning to appear in EU politics against the Afghanistan intervention. For instance, in Acebes acusa al Gobierno de ocultar informes del Ejército sobre los riesgos de la misión en Afganistán El Mundo we read:

El secretario general del PP, Ángel Acebes, ha acusado al Gobierno de "ocultar" a la opinión pública el verdadero riesgo de la misión militar en Afganistán — donde, según él, se vive una "guerra asimétrica"— para proteger la imagen de José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero como defensor de la paz.

[The secretary general of the PP [Partido Popular, the conservative party of former president and Iraq War supporter Jose Maria Aznar] has accused the [Socialist-majority] government of "hiding" from public opinion the true risk of the military mission in Afghanista - where, according to him, an "assymetric war" is under way - to protect the image of [President and Socialist Party leader] José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as a defender of the peace.]

The PP is the organizational descendent of Francisco Franco's Falangist Party. But Aznar is given credit for establishing the PP as a genuinely conservative, pro-democracy party. Still, Zapatero's government has been doing a lot of good things both domestically and in foreign policy. I would hate to see the PP discredit them over the Afghanistan and Lebanon interventions.

It's important to keep in mind that the foreign-policy priorities of European democracies are different from those of the Cheney-Bush government. They committed to supporting an intervention in Afghanistan as part of the first and only time that the NATO mutual-defense clause was formally invoked. NATO was established to defend western Europe, and it's quite an irony that the only time the clause was invoked was in defense of the United States.

Since it looks to me like the EU countries will not be able to carry on with NATO as an active organization much longer, it will almost certainly be the only time in NATO's history that the clause will be invoked. It's hard to imagine after how the Cheney-Bush administration treated our European allies in the last five years, that even a major terrorist attack on a grander scale than 9/11 would persuade them to do so again.

EU countries are not interested in serving as vassal states for Rummy's wars. And their publics aren't willing to take foolish risks for the sake of a United States that, under Cheney and Bush, has functioned to a large degree as a rogue state. And they want no part of the Cheney-Bush torture policy.

Jörg Reckmann writes in Die Nato hält sich zurück Frankfurter Rundschau Online 08.09.06 about the role of NATO since 2001, including the building of a larger NATO strike force:

Das Werkzeug für weitere Einsätze ist also vorhanden, aber die Nato steht nun keineswegs wie ein Mann Gewehr bei Fuß, um gegen den Terror in den Krieg zu ziehen. Im Gegenteil, die Skepsis gegenüber dem US-amerikanischen Konzept ist in den vergangenen Jahren dramatisch gestiegen. Während die USA militärische Mittel weiterhin als entscheidend bei der Bekämpfung des Terrorismus ansehen, ziehen viele ihrer europäischen Partner politische, polizeiliche und diplomatische Instrumente vor.

Zwar hatte der Nato-Rat zwei Tage nach dem 11. September unter dem Eindruck der Massenmorde von New York und Washington erstmals in der Geschichte der Allianz den Bündnisfall beschlossen, aber bereits damals fehlte der Ausdruck "Krieg gegen den Terror". In den offiziellen Dokumenten ist vielmehr bis heute allgemeiner von Kampf die Rede. Die Differenzen mit den USA verschärften sich durch den Irak-Krieg, an dem sich die Nato ausdrücklich nicht beteiligt. Auch in Afghanistan überlässt das Bündnis den Krieg gegen den Terror bewusst den Koalitionstruppen aus Amerikanern und Briten und will sich selbst dem militärischen Schutz des Wiederaufbaus widmen.

Auch der Wunsch der USA, das Bündnis solle sich mehr auf Präventivschläge ausrichten, weckt bei vielen Europäern Misstrauen, die das Bündnis weiterhin als Verteidigungsgemeinschaft gesehen. Dieses Misstrauen ist so groß, dass der Vorschlag, die Nato im Libanon zum direkten Teilnehmer des israelischen Krieges gegen den Terror zu machen, zurückgewiesen wurde, noch ehe er die Nato-Entscheidungsgremien überhaupt erreichen konnte. Auch die in Washington gern lancierte Idee, Israel als Nato-Mitglied unter den Schutz des Bündnisses zu stellen, ist derzeit chancenlos.

[The tool for further interventions is therefore at hand, but NATO now definitely does not stand ready like one man, weapon by his side. On the contrary, scepticism about the the American concept has increased dramatically in recent years. While the USA looks largely at military means for fighting terrorism, many of its European partners give higher priority to polical, law-enforecement and diplomatic instruments.

True, the NATO Council two days after the September 11 under the impression of the mass murders in New York and Washington decided for the first time in the history of the alliance to invoke [the mutual-dfense clasus], but even then the expression "war against terror" was missing. In the official documents up until today, the language is much more about conflict. The differences with the USA were sharpened during the Iraq War, on which NATO expressly did not take part. Even in Afghanistan, the alliance consciously left the war against terror to the coalition troops from Americans and Britons and wants to devote itself to the military defense of reconstruction.

And the desire of the USA for the alliance to focus more on preventive attacks arouses mistrust in many Europeans who have continued to see the alliance as a defense community. This mistrust is so great, that the proposal that NATO become a direct participant in the Israeli war in Lebanon against terror was rejected even before it could reach the NATO decision-making committee. Also, the idea that Washington likes to put out there to put Israel under the protection of the alliance as a member of NATO has no chance at this time.]

No, it's not your imagination. I also did a double-take when I saw that mention of "the proposal that NATO become a direct participant of the Israeli war in Lebanon". What the [Cheney]? Could the Cheney-Bush administration really have believed that such a thing was feasible? And, no, even though I followed the Israel-Lebanon War pretty closely, I don't recall seeing that reported in our Potemkin American mainstream press.

Israel as a NATO member? I have heard that idea floated before. But Reckmann gives the impression that the delusional Cheney-Bush administration has been seriously pushing the idea.

The Bush team is, to a shocking degree, unhinged from reality in its war making and war planning. The surprising thing is not that the idea of the EU nations getting out of NATO is popping up more and more. The miracle is that some of them haven't pulled out already.

Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof and Martin Staudinger emphasize in the 09/04/06 print issue of Profil (36-37/2006) what a turning point the Iraq War has been for Europe in "Weltmacht Europa?" They write:

Gerade aber der Irak durfte einen Sinneswandel in den europaischen Staatskanzleien gebracht haben. Die Kaltschnäuzigkeit, mit der die Bush-Regierung ihre Kriegsagenda am Ciolf durchzog, und die Arroganz und Feindseligkeit, mit der die europäischen Bedenken beiseite geschoben wurden, liefien in der EU vielfach die Erkenntnis reifen, dass es nun gelte, sich weltpolitisch von den hegemonialen USA zu emanzipieren und eine eigenstandige Weltpolitik zu entwickeln.

[But Iraq had already brought about a change of attitude in the European state chancelleries. The callousness with which the Bush government pushed through its agenda in the [Persian] Gulf, and the arrogance and hostility with which European reservations were pushed aside, ripened the recognition in the EU many times over that it is now necessary to emancipate [Europe] from the hegemonial USA and to develop a world policy of our own.]

Remember those days just following the 9/11 attacks? When the US was probably the object of more sympathy that it had ever been in its entire history? When ordinary people in Paris and Berlin came to stand at the American embassy to express their support and sympathy to the Americans? Those days that opened up a perhaps unprecedented chance to create a new and productive period of cooperation among the democracies of the world?

Men like Dick Cheney and George Bush and Rummy wanted no such thing. They flushed the opportunity down the toilet. We can never expect to the see the like again in our lifetimes.

The greatest harm Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida could have done to the American position in the world was provoke the kind of reaction that the Cheney-Bush administration provided. 9/11 didn't change the world nearly so much as the Iraq War did.

posted at 8:51:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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