Why won’t Europe support the mission in Afghanistan?

NATO

NATO’s battle in Afghanistan is a fight “for the future existence of the alliance itself,” said Richard Beeston in Britain’s The Times. The alliance now has 25 member states, yet only three—the U.K., Canada, and the Netherlands—have any significant presence in the Afghanistan force. When the supreme allied commander, U.S. Gen. James Jones, recently said he needed 2,500 additional combat troops to defeat the resurgent Taliban, more than a week dragged by before anyone spoke up. Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had to make “an embarrassing public appeal for member states to fulfill their obligations.” And even then, only Poland—one of the new, Eastern European members—came forward.

The reason for that is obvious, said Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Western Europeans no longer believe in NATO. Even in Germany, which deeply depended on NATO during the decades of partition, the alliance is rapidly losing support. The percentage of Germans who say NATO is not important to Germany’s security has soared in the past four years, from 22 percent to 41 percent. “Frustration with America’s policies” during the Bush administration is at least partly to blame for the lack of enthusiasm. European nations are simply no longer willing to commit troops to an alliance dominated by the U.S.

Most Europeans now prefer to contribute to peacekeeping missions run by the U.N., over which the U.S. has less influence, said Pedro Marques Pereira

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