THERE is bad news and good news for NATO as it prepares for its 60th anniversary summit meeting on April 3-4. Hosted jointly by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit of the Atlantic Alliance will be held at Strasbourg in eastern France and also at Kehl, a small German town opposite it across the Rhine. The bad news is that NATO is losing the war against the Taleban in Afghanistan. It is by no means certain that the ‘surge' of 17,000 extra troops, demanded by CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus, will be sufficient to contain the Taleban's expected spring offensive. A new strategy is urgently required in the crucial Afghan-Pakistan theater, but there is as yet no agreement among NATO allies on what this should be. The good news is that France is rejoining NATO's integrated military command structure after a 43-year absence. When General de Gaulle announced France's withdrawal from the military command in 1966, his political bombshell was intended to signal France's defiant independence from the United States. President Sarkozy has now sought to square the circle by declaring that rejoining the command will strengthen both the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance, the ‘two pillars' of French and European security. “Yes, we are allies of the United States,” Sarkozy declared in an important speech on March 11, “but friends that stand upright, independent allies, free partners.” France, he added, would retain control of its independent nuclear deterrent and would be free to decide where and when to deploy its troops. The French military is said to be happy with Sarkozy's decision. They will secure two senior operational command positions within NATO, as well as jobs for some 800 French officers. A recent poll suggests that 58 percent of the French people are also in favor. But the move has been opposed by the French Socialist Party, by leading figures on the right, such as former prime ministers Alain Juppe and Dominique de Villepin, and by diehard Gaullists. An immediate headache for NATO will be the choice of a new secretary-general to replace the Dutchman, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, whose mandate expires on July 31. A decision is expected to be made before the April summit. Britain, France and Germany are said to favor Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, who won points by taking the controversial decision to send Danish troops to Afghanistan. The US is said to prefer Canadian defense minister Peter MacKay, while the Baltic States have backed the candidature of Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski. However, now that NATO is seeking close cooperation with Moscow, Sikorski's hard-line views on Russia may not enhance his prospects. Engrossing as they are, these diplomatic skirmishes among the allies have little impact on the dangerous – and worsening – situation in Afghanistan. General Petraeus's strategy seems to be to attempt to seize the military initiative from the Taleban so as to create a position of strength from which to negotiate with ‘moderate elements' in the insurgency. But are there any ‘moderate' Taleban? The movement is by no means monolithic, but it seems to be united around a determination to drive foreign forces out of the country. The US and NATO face two very serious problems. The lesser of the two is how to secure their logistical communications into Afghanistan. They have suffered several recent setbacks. A vital bridge in the Khyber Pass, through which much of the military traffic from Peshawar climbs up into Afghanistan, was destroyed – evidently blown up by the Taleban. A second blow has been the decision by Kirghizstan to evict the Americans from the important Manas airbase – a vital Central Asian hub for supplies to Afghanistan. The Americans are to be replaced by a rapid deployment force from the Community of Independent States, under Russian command. Moscow is thereby signaling its determination to bring the republics of Central Asia – part of its ‘near abroad' – back into its strategic orbit. A more fundamental problem is the relationship of the US and NATO with Pakistan, and especially with the Pakistani armed forces, which form the backbone of the country and are the custodians of Pakistan nuclear arsenal. Pakistan may be in political chaos – with President Asif Ali Zardari fighting for political survival against his principal opponent, Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). But the key figure in the background is the Army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. General Kayani is said to be pro-West. But, whatever he may say publicly, he almost certainly shares the view of most senior Pakistani officers – and of the powerful inter-service intelligence agency, the ISI – that the Taleban and other Islamist groups are essential tools of Pakistan's regional policy. Pakistan does not want to see the Taleban defeated or the US establish long-term bases in Afghanistan. In its contest with India, Pakistan sees Afghanistan as its ‘strategic depth.' It does not like the way President Hamid Karzai has opened the door to Indian influence in Afghanistan. In a word, Pakistan would probably prefer to see a Taleban government in Kabul under its own influence, rather than the present Karzai government under Indian influence, propped up by the US and NATO. If these are indeed the goals of Pakistan's military chiefs, they run counter to those of General Petraeus and NATO's military planners. Something like a tug-of-war is taking place. If the US and NATO put additional pressure on the Pakistan military to extend their authority over the Taleban ‘safe havens' on the Pakistan-Afghan border, they risk on the contrary inciting Pakistan to increase its covert aid to the Taleban, in defence of its own national interests. This then is the fundamental puzzle with which NATO must wrestle: it needs Pakistan's aid for supply routes and for operations against the tribal insurgents, but NATO political and strategic goals are not those of Pakistan. In any event, missile strikes by CIA drones into Pakistan's North West Frontier Province – and their inevitable toll of civilian casualties – are profoundly resented by the Pakistan military and by the population at large. Meanwhile, allied casualties mount in Afghanistan: 61 foreign soldiers have been killed since the beginning of this year including 29 Americans. Britain has lost 152 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001, Canada 112 and France 26. The public in most NATO countries does not understand in what noble cause its young men are being killed.
