They are playing hardball to bring a reluctant Musharraf to come to the NATO camp. Now the pressure is on NATO itself.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed as an anti-cimmunist military pact against the Soviet Warsaw nations. Today in its first hot war and first deployment outside Europe it is facing huge morale issues becuase of the impending defeat in Afghanistan.
Areas of Afghansitan barely under NATO
The area under the Taliban keeps on growing
Europeans are sick and tired of fighting the Global War of Terror (GWOT). German kids do not want to die in the Hindukush, they want to drink Bavarian Beer and enjoy Oktoberfest and drive on the Autobhans.
British kids dont want to remember the battle of Maiwind, they want to ride the tubes and dance to the tune of Britannia in Trafalgar Square. Other Europeans want to stay in the comfort of their colder climates.
Gates said, NATO could not exist in two parts one which supports the war in Afghanistna and the other that does not. Gates threatened NATO with extinction if it was unable to come together and send about 13000 more troops. This is highly unlikely
Gates warns European public of high stakes in Afghan fight
Munich (AP): U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday sought to convince a skeptical European public of the threat to their security posed by extremists based in Afghanistan, and warned that a continued failure of some NATO nations to send more combat troops threatened the existence of the Atlantic alliance.
“We must not _ we cannot _ become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not,” he told a gathering of the world’s top defense officials. “Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance.”
While the U.S. and Russia have clashed recently over Washington’s plan to build parts of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Gates did not touch on the issue. Meanwhile, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov simply emphasized that Moscow would like to see a new multilateral approach to nuclear arms control to replace old U.S.-Russian agreements.
He also sought to allay fears that Russia’s burgeoning economic power could represent a threat, saying that although Russia expected to be among the world’s five biggest economies by 2020, “we do not aim to buy the entire Old World with our petrodollars.”
Gates’ speech to the Munich conference wrapped up a week of U.S. efforts to persuade key European allies such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey to send more combat troops to fight the resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
He issued a strong appeal to the people of Europe, saying a failure to defeat the extremists on the Afghan-Pakistan border would pose a direct terrorist threat to their cities.
“Many Europeans question the relevance of our actions and doubt whether the mission is worth the lives of their sons and daughters. As a result, many want to remove their troops,” he said.
“So now I would like to add my voice to those of many allied leaders and speak directly to the people of Europe: The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real _ and it is not going away.”
Faced with widespread public opposition to the fighting in Afghanistan, governments in Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey have repeatedly resisted U.S. pressure to send combat troops to the Taliban’s southern heartland. They face public pressure to withdraw the troops they have supporting reconstruction efforts in the relatively stable north and west of the country.
Sixty-three percent of Germans do not think the Afghan mission is in the country’s interests, according to a poll released Sunday by Focus news magazine. The Feb. 6 and 7 poll by the TNS Emnid agency queried 1,001 people; no margin of error was given.
France, however, has indicated it may be prepared to revise its refusal to deploy combat troops to the southern front lines, saying it is prepared to help Canada which is appealing to allies to send 1,000 troops to help its 2,500 beleaguered soldiers in Kandahar province. The refusal of European allies to come to Canada’s aid has added to public disenchantment with the NATO mission in that country as Canadian casualties have risen.
Gates said a persistent refusal of some allies to take on the more dangerous mission risked fatally undermining allied unity.
“In NATO, some allies ought not to have the luxury of opting only for stability and civilian operations, thus forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of the fighting and the dying,” he said.
Gates said terrorist plots uncovered in Europe could be traced back to extremists in Afghanistan and said Europeans had to be made aware of the direct security threat emanating from the region.
“The presence of safe havens, combined with a lack of development and governance, allow Islamic extremists to turn a poisonous ideology into a global movement,” he warned. Adding to that, failure to develop a peaceful Afghanistan would also perpetuate the flow of narcotics from a country that already provides 90 percent of the world’s heroin supply.
The message was taken up by independent U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman who said Europeans should not let their difficulties with the Bush administration prevent them from throwing their full weight behind the Afghan mission.
“This is one of the unusual cases in the United States today where there really is bipartisan agreement,” Lieberman said.
Gates stressed the urgency of appointing a high profile international envoy to coordinate civilian and military efforts to stabilize and develop Afghanistan. He said the international community today should not repeat the mistakes of the United States in the 1990s by failing to back up military support to the Afghan resistance with development aid when the Soviets withdrew.
The solution
Withdrawing NATO and handing the area to Pakistani troops
