Nato irresponsible behavior on Afghanistan

international

NATO Allies went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, to ensure that the country would not again become a safe haven for international terrorists to attack NATO member countries. Over the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In April 2021, NATO Foreign and Defense ministers decided to withdraw all Allied troops from Afghanistan within a few months.

after the 9/11 attacks on America, Nato’s article 5 — which says an attack on one member is considered an attack on all — was invoked for the only time in its seven-decade history. When US forces began military action against Afghanistan, British and other Nato troops joined them. America’s withdrawal 20 years later, giving Nato allies little option but to pull out, delivers a double blow to the alliance. It has simultaneously laid bare the extent of Nato reliance on the US — and raised doubts about future American willingness to provide support to its allies. President Joe Biden’s withdrawal announcement presented an uncomfortable fait accomplice to other members of the international coalition — many of which saw their presence as a sustainable bulwark against the risks of terrorism and migration from Afghanistan. It also delivered worrying lessons about the new US leader. The Afghan pullout, and the White House’s reasoning, have demonstrated a continuity in foreign policy from the previous administration. European Nato members had hoped Biden would repair the damage inflicted by Donald Trump, who had questioned the alliance’s usefulness and threatened to pull the US out. They also saw today’s president as a foreign policy expert committed to breathing new life into the international community of democracies. Yet Biden’s history of support for ending the Afghan war is no secret. His administration’s reasoning and its foreign policy priorities in Asia are well known. The fact and the execution of the US retreat from Afghanistan are unsettling. Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence secretary, has disclosed that he tried to rally Nato allies on ways to keep some troops in place to stabilize Afghanistan. This was deemed impossible without US military infrastructure, notably air support from Ba gram air base north of Kabul. Strikingly, there appears to have been no discussion on ways of keeping open Ba gram — from which US forces slipped away overnight in July without notifying its Afghan commander — or the prospect of maintaining US intelligence and logistical support, from outside Afghanistan, to enable a continued European presence. The Baltic states may now question how the US would respond to a triggering of article 5 in the event of a Russian attack. Beyond Nato, Ukraine sees parallels between Afghanistan and its own reliance on explicit and implicit US backing to prevent a return to Russian dominance. Yet this should also be a time for some European soul-searching — and shouldering of blame. However diplomatically inconvenient, Trump was correct to note that many European Nato members still fall well short of the goal of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defense. The only tripwire against Russia that matters has long been US forces. Efforts to build an independent European defense capability — encapsulated most recently in French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for “strategic autonomy” — have come to little. The debacle of the Afghan pullout could yet have some positive impact if it prompts more serious and co-ordinated efforts by the EU and European capitals .