Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...finally out in the open: French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to send significant troop reinforcements to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. But while his long-anticipated decision to bolster the alliance's struggling counterinsurgency mission will please the U.S., Britain and Canada, which had been urging their NATO partners to do more, Sarkozy's announcement has prompted an unexpected uproar in France. Indeed, some commentators are warning that by expanding France's exposure in a war considered just by a majority of French people, Sarkozy may be undermining public support of the mission...
Reconstruction as a goal is fine, but NATO officials note that it is only possible where there is a peace to keep. As to which, consider this: the Taliban recently ordered four cell-phone companies in the country to shut down at night to prevent the U.S. military from tracking cell-phone-carrying insurgents, although the military says it doesn't actually do so. Zinni puts the situation in context. "European countries saying that, 'We contribute to NATO because we're involved in reconstruction,'" he says dismissively, "is like saying, 'I'm in charge of rearranging deck chairs...
Speaking to TIME, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer denies that the rift between NATO members is "a question of Europe vs. America." De Hoop Scheffer says he will ask for 10% more troops at Bucharest, and stresses that Europeans have suffered casualties. But he acknowledges that he will "keep pushing" all the allies to do more. He needs to. The U.S., its armed forces already stretched like a piano wire, is now being forced to dispatch another 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan. The Canadian government of Stephen Harper took the unusual step of threatening to pull...
...course. There will be a new Administration in Washington next year, conceivably one whose temper and tone will be such that European public opinion will swing behind the need to fund its military establishments properly (though don't count on the latter ever happening). Meanwhile, it is clear that NATO is facing a test in Afghanistan that is unlike anything it has encountered, and one that it may not survive. U.S. frustration with some of its European partners could compel Washington to establish other coalitions of the willing instead, says military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, at the Brookings Institution...
That would hardly be good for Europeans - especially those without military forces large enough to ensure their own security. One of the virtues of being part of an alliance like NATO is that it allows small countries to leverage their capabilities to form part of a coherent whole - provided they are willing to ante up their share of battle-ready troops. "NATO has its problems, of course," says Britain's General Jackson. "But believe you me, there is nothing to match it." Back in Uruzgan, tribal leader Khan would certainly agree. The question is whether Europeans looking on from half...