Afghanistan as Pretext for NATO Change: 2003 and Now

Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy.  He reiterated Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent comments in London that NATO is at risk of collapse if member nations fail to meet their military obligations in Afghanistan.

In this diary we look back at the NATO takeover of leadership of (International Security Assistance Force) ISAF-Afghanistan in 2003, to see what US officials were saying at the time.  What we’re going to find is a continuing insistance from the US that the very viability of NATO depends on commitments to security in that non-NATO country.  Again and again, we see evidence that the real point of this near-hysterical rhetoric is to solidify a US-urged change in NATO’s mandate, from Eurpoean defense to world-wide interventionism.

Starting with Gates’ remarks today in Munich, we see a strange-seeming doomsdayism about the importance of NATO participation in Afghanistan.

Gates Challenges European Military Leaders on Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Says NATO’s Stability Is at Stake

By Craig Whitlock

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, February 10, 2008; 7:07 AM

MUNICH, Feb. 10 – Defense Secretary Robert Gates challenged the European military leaders and lawmakers Sunday to revive flagging support for the international mission in Afghanistan, warning that if members of NATO were no longer willing to shoulder the burdens of war equally, it “would effectively destroy the alliance.”

— snip —

There was some concern in the audience that Gates was singling out Germany for its recalcitrance.  Gates assured them he wasn’t naming names.  But earlier, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was less circumspect.

In an interview published Friday by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich-based newspaper, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns singled out Spain, Italy, France and Germany as NATO members that needed to either provide more troops or loosen restrictions on their ability to fight.

“We need those countries to take their share of the responsibility,” he said.

Remember that name, Nicholas Burns.  He’ll come up later.

A few days ago, similar rhetoric came from Secretary Rice at a stop in London as she was on her way to a surprise visit to Afghanistan.  She characterized NATO commitment to ISAF as a “test” for member nations.  In particular, she emphasized the importance of member nations not bowing to popular — that is, democratic — pressure to keep out of Afghanistan.  Very interestingly, she characterized this test as not just being about Afghanistan, but  about whether NATO countries could get “our populations” to accept the new NATO mandate to intervene around the world as part of the war on terror and more generally the wider scope of post-cold war interventionism.

Rice made the argument that Afghanistan represents a defacto expanansion of NATO’s mission.  Even though no one voted on it, NATO now has a new calling:

We used to have extensive arguments about out of area and would NATO ever go out of area. Well, we’re out of area in a very big way, but that says that NATO has made a transition from a Cold War alliance to a 21st century alliance. It’s not come without difficulty. It’s not come without some growing pains.

What I want to point out right now is that news accounts of Gates’s and Rice’s recent push for more troops in Afhganistan have made it seem like this “test for NATO” rhetoric is new.  It is not.  The US has been using the Afghanistan mission as a pressure point for expanding NATO’s mission all along.

Back to this Nicholas Burns person.  In 2003, he was the US ambassador to NATO.  In August 2003, NATO took over ISAF-Afghanistan leadership from the UN.  Burns wrote some op-ed columns at the time.  Here is what Nicholas Burns wrote on the day of the takeover in the Wall Street Journal.  (Warning PDF).

NATO Gets Serious

Publication: Wall Street Journal

Date: 08/11/2003

Author: Nicholas Burns

Is U.S. Ambassador To Nato

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization rewrites history today when it assumes the lead for the U.N.-sponsored force providing security for Kabul. It is the first out-of-Europe operation in NATO’s 54-year existence. In parallel fashion, the U.S. is working closely on the ground with international partners to help construct Afghan institutions. A notable example is our cooperation with France and other countries in building the new Afghan National Army.

By taking over the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, NATO shows it is serious about a transformation that has been in the works for almost two years. The ISAF operation is an expression of our new emphasis on confronting global terrorism and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.

Note the rhetoric.  Member nations of NATO had not been “serious” prior to agreeing to an escalated mission in Afghanistan.  By agreeing to it, member nations are implicitly agreeing to a shift from a cold-war defense footing to a broad interventionist policy.

Crossing into South Asia represents further evolution for NATO toward the modern, transformed Alliance needed in our dangerous international security environment.

Compare that to Rice’s recent comments, above, about the defacto change in the NATO mission.

On May 24, 2003, Nicholas Burns offered similar words of praise for the expected (but not yet enacted) NATO expansion.  (Warning PDF).

NATO has committed itself to going wherever it is needed to defend its members against the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The down payment on that promise is NATO’s historic decision last month to take over the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul in August. NATO’s new leading role in Afghanistan – the alliance’s first military operation outside Europe – will give it a key mission on the front lines of the global war on terror.

N. Burns went on to note that some “unilateralists” in Europe don’t want to see NATO succeed.  Indeed, those “unilateralists” would like to see Europe form its own internal defense pact, to set up a countervailing force to US dominance.  Burns writes that the mission in Afghanistan represents a rebuke to those who would shun the US-led defense pact.

Some Europeans, on the other hand, think they can create a unified continental foreign policy with opposition to the United States as its raison d’être. They call for Europeanonly military headquarters that would needlessly duplicate what NATO already offers and have zero real utility, unless the objective is to weaken our ability to work together. Their vision of Europe as a countervailing power to the United States is one that would destroy the cooperative spirit that has held us together in NATO.

These U.S. and Continental unilateralists present us with a false choice, one that would weaken NATO’s preeminent role in tying North America to Europe. Fortunately we don’t have to play by their zero-sum rules.

This is very significant.  It indicates that US doomsday rhetoric about the failure and the “test” and the “viability” of NATO is meant to stave off the threat of a rising European military alliance and more general failure of US control.  The mission in Afghanistan, then, is largely meant to solidify the status quo and the expansion of the US-led NATO mission around the world.

Gates, today, said:

“Some allies ought not to have the luxury of opting only for stability and civilian operations, thus forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of the fighting and the dying,” he said. He repeated comments made in Washington last week that NATO risked becoming a “two-tiered alliance” if certain countries, which he did not name, continued to shy away from combat.

Seen in context, this rhetoric, tying Afghanistan to NATO member loyalty and commitment, is not new, and makes more sense.  

The Bush administration is using Afghanistan to alter NATO culture and policy, in ways that may last beyond his presidency.  If this change is not welcomed by (to use Rice’s phrase) “our populations”, then they need to be better educated and informed.  This is disturbingly anti-democratic and indicates, too, another example of Bush Administration attempts to increase US government dominance over its own citizens, Europe, and the rest of the world.

(Crossposted at Daily Kos.)