NATO Smackdown
Canada has had it up to here with many of its NATO "partners" in Afghanistan. The problem? They've saddled their soldiers with so many restrictions and limitations that they can't fight: Canada's Defence Minister is confronting those NATO countries with troops deployed in relatively stable parts of Afghanistan — including Germany, France, Spain and Italy — ...
Canada has had it up to here with many of its NATO "partners" in Afghanistan. The problem? They've saddled their soldiers with so many restrictions and limitations that they can't fight:
Canada has had it up to here with many of its NATO "partners" in Afghanistan. The problem? They've saddled their soldiers with so many restrictions and limitations that they can't fight:
Canada's Defence Minister is confronting those NATO countries with troops deployed in relatively stable parts of Afghanistan — including Germany, France, Spain and Italy — saying they must lift the restrictions that prevent their soldiers from taking on the more dangerous tasks being shouldered by Canadians.
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, put it bluntly in a recent interview. "If you can't fight in the place that produced al-Qa'eda and September 11 and a series of terrorist attacks in Europe," he said, "what is the point?" The reporting I've done leads me to believe that the Spanish, Italian, and German troops in Afghanistan are next to useless (with the possible exception of any special forces units they've contributed). They occupy a base and, I suppose, provide some very minimal deterrent effect. But when it comes to patrolling assertively or confronting security challenges, you'd better look elsewhere.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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