Rice to NATO on Educating “Our Populations”

(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

So I’m reading this story in the New York Times and something Rice said interested me.  

This essay has to do with the nature of democracy and the status of NATO.  Specifically, this has to do with what sorts of permanent changes the Bush Administration will manage to effect in the West . . . or what changes they have already completed.

Secretary Rice was in London today and took some questions on the topic of NATO involvment in Afghanistan, along with the British Foreign Secretary Miliband.  The populations of NATO countries don’t particularly want to commit more to troops to Afghanistan.  This constitutes a “test” for NATO, according to Rice.

As Afghanistan Flounders, U.S. Asks Europe for More

By HELENE COOPER and NICHOLAS KULISH

Published: February 7, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan – With criticism of the war in Afghanistan increasing on both sides of the Atlantic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that European governments needed to convince their people that sending troops to Afghanistan – and keeping them there – should remain a priority for NATO.

“I do think the alliance is facing a test here,” Ms. Rice said in a visit to London. “Populations have to understand that this is not just a peacekeeping fight.”

Her comments came before she and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, left for an unannounced trip to Afghanistan, where they intend to meet with President Hamid Karzai to discuss the deteriorating situation in his country. They arrived in Kabul Thursday morning.

That struck me as very interesting.  Populations — that is to say, citizens living in democracies — don’t want to do something, but America wants their governments to do it, and that means the populations need to be educated.  So I went and found the full presser at the State Department website.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) from the BBC. Madame Secretary, Foreign Secretary, you’ve talked about the contribution the alliance has made. You’ve also talked about the situation on the ground. Now, the Taliban is not winning, but it certainly hasn’t – obviously hasn’t been defeated. But many ordinary people think it extraordinary more than six years after 9/11 that the Taliban who sheltered al-Qaida in Afghanistan have not been defeated by this enormous military alliance, within NATO.

Is the alliance simply broken because so few of the powerful nations are prepared to put soldiers into the front line and get involved in combat? How are you going to persuade more nations to come forward with fighting troops? And are you worried that consent, public consent, both within Afghanistan and in your own countries, may simply drain away if this war isn’t seen to be more decisive?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I remember when the President addressed – President Bush addressed the Congress shortly after 9/11 and he talked about the long war that we are engaged in. I think it is really – we shouldn’t expect that one wins counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fights in short order. That’s not the nature of the beast. The fact is that the Taliban is unable to generate the kind of large-scale, very organized offensives against the Afghan army, against coalition forces, that people had feared. Their spring offensive did not materialize. They’ve been beaten back every time they’ve come at the coalition forces in anything that approximates a traditional military structure. And so what they’ve done is that they’ve gone to tactics to terrorize the population with suicide bombings and kidnappings and hit-and-run activities. And it is a sign of a metamorphosis toward something that is different, not less troubling mind you, but different. And that’s a harder fight and it takes a long time to root out counterinsurgency because it does have to be married not just too military force but with governance and with reconstruction.

And as to the alliance, yes, I do think the alliance is facing a real test here. And it is a test of the alliance’s strength. But we shouldn’t underestimate the transformation that NATO itself has gone through in being able to really learn how to fight this fight. This is a different fight than NATO was structured to do. It’s taken some time – it may take some more time – but if the commitment is there and the will is there – and you’re absolutely right about being truthful with our populations. Our populations need to understand that this is not a peacekeeping mission, this is a counterinsurgency fight, and that’s different. The military aspects of this are equally important, the security aspects are equally important with what we do in reconstruction and in governance.

— snip —

The “real test” of the “alliance” is to see whether or not the allied governments can get their citizens in line with US demands.  If the US doesn’t get what it wants then the alliance has failed the “test.”  

NATO needs to understand that even though everyone signed-up to fight the USSR in a ground war that might threaten Europe, it is now a counterinsurgency operation — that is, an alliance meant to fight rebels.

[Rice:] And if we look back on NATO’s history — and I’m an old Soviet specialist, so I have a special perch from which to do that. 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. But I think we’re going to keep working at it. And the long-term commitment of this alliance to the security and prosperity of Afghanistan is essential.

That is, we used to have arguments about what we think NATO should be doing, but thanks to Afghanistan “NATO has made a transition” whether anyone likes it or not.  So there, you democracies.  Argument over.

Hmmm.

Elsewhere in today’s news, we see worries from Democrats that Bush’s “status of forces agreement” with Iraq could tie the next President’s hands — make it impossible to leave Iraq.  This strikes me as an illusory, silly concern.  I can’t imagine any future President saying, “I want to leave Iraq but I can’t because Bush signed something with Prime Minister Maliki.”  In fact, I think this is a case of Democrats in Washington crying “don’t throw me in that briar patch.”

However, one thing the Bush Administration really could do is change the culture of NATO to the point where it is primarily a “counter-insurgency alliance.”  And if that prospect doesn’t make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, then I would suggest attending to the meaning of “counter-insurgency.”  It means, essentially, making NATO explicitly a pan-western neo-colonial force.

If “our populations” — the people of the actual democracies that comprise NATO — don’t want to go along with this, well, then the governments of those democraices need to get “our populations” to understand that this is just what we’re going to be doing.  Failure here is a failure in a “test” that the US is proctoring.  A test, ironically enough, sold as part of the spread of democracy.

How far can Bush morph the nature of NATO before he leaves office; change the nature of international agreements, their meaning as well as their literal texts?  When Democrats worry about Bush “tying their hands” what do they mean, and do they want their hands tied?  How many other countries’ governments are in similar briar patches?

There is a real test of democracy at work, here, but it’s not the one Rice is posing for Afghanistan.  It’s for the people and the democracies of NATO.  Will we let NATO be turned into a 21st century neo-colonial force under our noses, with no say in the matter, or even with our tacit consent?