Allies Wait as US Mulls Afghan Stance

(Oct. 7) - There are plenty of weighty actors in Washington's high-level debate over the future course of the war in Afghanistan: a divided Obama administration, an impatient Pentagon, a fretful Congress and an American public more skeptical than ever about a war that began eight years ago today and seems no closer to a conclusion. But there are also two dozen other countries, which have some 40,000 troops currently deployed in that war, keenly awaiting the outcome of President Barack Obama's deliberations.

"If they don't know where the U.S. is headed -- and right now they don't -- the allies are going to be very reluctant to make their own resources available," says Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now managing director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University. And analysts agree that those resources will be needed to prosecute an increasingly vexing war.

The governments of top allies such as Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany face a dilemma. They have committed considerable political capital to maintaining troops in a war opposed by the majority of their populations. Analysts say an abrupt change to concentrate on al-Qaida alone -- an approach some in the administration and Congress favor -- could leave allied governments in an embarrassing lurch and throw a wrench in trans-Atlantic relations.

At the same time, none of 24 other countries deployed in Afghanistan is in a position to increase its troop contributions significantly, even as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American commander of international troops in Afghanistan, pushes in Washington for just such a surge.

Americans troops have suffered the most allied casualties in the war, with 869 deaths so far, more than a quarter of them this year alone. But others have taken very heavy losses, too. Britain's activities are centered in the southern province of Helmand, where the Taliban's strong and persistent insurgency has killed 220 troops. And Canada, which runs operations in the equally tough neighboring province of Kandahar, has suffered 131 deaths, a sensitive burden for a country with a tenth the population of the U.S.

Many key allies have already decided that for them, the war can't go on forever. Last year the Canadian parliament passed a resolution binding the government to withdrawing all troops by 2011. While Ottawa remains committed to fighting its corner until then, says a top Canadian official, "there are a lot of other countries whose doors you'd have to knock on first to ask for more troops."

The Dutch, who operate in another dangerous province, Uruzgan, have to end those operations by Dec. 1, 2010, to comply with a motion passed this week by their parliament. Dutch troops have been praised for successfully managing to coordinate their military tactics with civilian efforts -- one key element of the new approach McChrystal favors. Yet now the Dutch foreign minister openly frets that his country's troops may be put in the ignoble position of leading the exit of significant allies from Afghanistan.

Britain, which has the second largest military contingent in Afghanistan with 9,000 troops, hasn't set a deadline. But the issue of troop strength was front and center in London this week as the outgoing head of the British army, Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, criticized the government for turning down a request earlier this year for 2,000 more troops. "If you're going to conduct an operation, you're doing it for a reason -- to succeed," he told The Sun. "Don't let's do it with at least part of one arm tied behind one's back." (Later this week Dannatt signed on as an adviser to the Conservative opposition.)

Yet Britain's chief of military staff, Gen. Sir David Richards, sought to dispel any impression that the country's will is faltering in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. "We are up for what it takes; we will do what is asked of us," he said. While he did not confirm reports that Britain could field up to 1,000 additional troops in Afghanistan next year, Richards said, "We can, on an enduring basis, do more. We all know if we get this wrong there are all sorts of implications, not just for this generation but our children's generation."

Even among more dubious European allies, says Julian Lindley-French, professor of strategic studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, "There is a strong sense that this is the last chance to get things moving in a sensible direction." He draws some hope from a narrowing of the trans-Atlantic gulf regarding what constitutes success. "It's not building Switzerland in the Hindu Kush, which is what the Americans once seemed to aim for," he says. "Just something reasonably stable and reasonably free of corruption -- not Switzerland, but maybe Kazakhstan."

Still, key moments like this tend to highlight the eternal tensions in the alliance: The non-Americans feel they deserve respect, but are doomed to relative inconsequence by the sheer size of the American juggernaut. Yet a smaller U.S. presence won't make Afghanistan any more palatable to Europe. "There's never going to be a politically firm commitment unless Obama can figure out a strong narrative of progress," says Lindley-French.

Former NATO ambassador Volker agrees. "The feeling among the allies has always been that it's the U.S. that has to make this work," says Volker. "I don’t think that's going to change."