Overstretched U.S. puts pressure on NATO

Simon Tisdall, Guardian News Service, London

U.S. demands on the NATO alliance are growing more onerous as the American military struggles to meet global commitments. And NATO, which lost an evil empire and failed to find a role, is feeling the strain.

This week's U.S. proposal to integrate NATO's peacekeepers in Afghanistan with U.S. combat troops fighting the "war on terror" there is a case in point.

Germany and France, which jointly lead the 9,000-strong International Security and Assistance Force in Kabul, rejected the idea. They do not want their soldiers under U.S. command. And they suspect the U.S. would use a merger as cover for troop withdrawals.

But as usual with its NATO initiatives, the U.S. expects to get its way. Undaunted, U.S. ambassador Nicholas Burns said he wants a blueprint on the table by next February.

The U.S. is also pressing NATO to do more in Iraq. Most members of the 26-nation alliance are already involved in one way or another. But a formal NATO role is a different matter.

After bitter wrangling, a modest NATO training mission to Baghdad has been agreed, beginning this winter. But the Americans want more -- and fast. At last June's NATO summit in Istanbul, President George Bush urged the alliance to take on a much bigger role

Tony Blair said at the time that NATO, confined historically to the European sphere, must be ready to rise to "new challenges and threats beyond its borders". Burns goes further: "NATO must be present on the front lines of the war on terrorism".

The Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, also wants an expanded international military presence in Iraq.

But whether he or Bush occupies the White House, a basic problem remains: How to reconcile America's ever more importunate demands for NATO military backing with a highly political U.S. global agenda which many European members view with deep misgivings.

Despite the end of the cold war, September 11 and the "war on terror", the U.S. vision for NATO has not fundamentally changed since Soviet times. Europeans see themselves as partners. The Bush administration sees them as followers -- or else, renegades.

Immediately after Sept. 11, Bush snubbed NATO's offer to help. Now the U.S. has realized that it badly needs NATO's assistance (and likewise that of the UN).

But its effort to involve both organizations more deeply in Afghanistan and Iraq is "as much an act of desperation as anything else ... to rescue a failing venture", Brent Scowcroft, George Bush Snr's national security adviser, told the Financial Times.

The stresses on NATO do not stop there. U.S. pressure to increase deployable troop numbers, spending and capabilities is unremitting. NATO's 18,000-strong mission in Kosovo is meanwhile held hostage to a stalemated political process. Elections next week in the breakaway Serbian province could be a catalyst for renewed violence.

The scheduled December handover to EU peacekeepers in Bosnia, while promising some respite for NATO, is also a reminder of the competing claims on manpower and resources represented by Europe's advancing military ambitions.

NATO announced in Romania this week that its 17,500-strong response force, another U.S.-initiated project, is now operational. The EU is simultaneously building its own 14,000- strong rapid reaction force, part of an EU "army" mustering 60,000 troops by 2007. But some of these soldiers are being counted twice or even three times.

NATO's headaches arise not just from U.S. pressure but also from U.S. weakness. The U.S. military, with 140,000 troops in Iraq alone, is seriously over-committed worldwide.

A Pentagon panel recently warned that a big increase in total forces was essential unless the number and aims of U.S. war- fighting and stabilization missions were reduced. Kerry says 40,000 more soldiers are needed.

In Iraq, half the U.S. forces are National Guard or reservists, not regular troops; tours of duty have been extended, leading to difficulties in recruiting and re-enlistment. Morale has suffered.

Recently announced U.S. base closures in Germany are not nearly enough. And planned troop withdrawals from South Korea have in any case been postponed because of worries about the North.

This military overstretch is generating intense political, financial and electoral pressures within the U.S. Hence the relentless push for the NATO allies to do more -- whether they want to or not.