NATO's future on the line - by William Pfaff
"The Dutch political class did not mean this to happen, but the parliamentary vote set for February on the Netherlands' participation in the NATO mission to Afghanistan has become a struggle over the character and future of NATO - and possibly of Afghanistan as well. The Dutch are headed for southern Afghanistan, which is not a quiet area. The American troops leaving, expecting to be replaced by the Dutch, have been conducting combat operations there. (And suicide bombings have begun in Kabul.)
Under heavy American pressure, NATO initially sent a contingent of 9,000 troops to the Kabul region to take over peace-support duties. These allowed American forces to move south to fight Taliban militants re-infiltrating Afghanistan, and go on searching for Qaeda leaders and "remnants" moving back and forth from Pakistan's largely inaccessible northwestern tribal territories. Since 6,000 new NATO troops are needed to replace 4,000 American combat forces about to be withdrawn, the last few days have brought anxious urgings from the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, that the Dutch parliamentarians approve the new deployment. L. Paul Bremer, a former U.S. ambassador to The Hague (as well as former U.S. administrator in Iraq), added a warning, saying last Sunday that if the Netherlands parliament fails to approve the NATO mission, "That will be damaging for Dutch interests in the United States." This threat was described in the Netherlands as "bizarre."
NATO's initial agreement to go into Afghanistan was a controversial step on two counts. It took the alliance away from Europe for an "out-of-area" intervention, and it amounted to after-action support for the American invasion that overturned the Taliban government. For Washington, NATO now exists as a stock of individual foreign military units of varying specialties, expected to contribute to the support of U.S. operations undertaken, it is argued, in the common interest. Officially, the United States has high ambitions for NATO. The American ambassador to the alliance, Victoria Nuland, recently published an article that envisaged NATO action "all across our planet ... in the front line in confronting the 21st century."
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