nato

Breaking news from The Washington Post:
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban’s rise, said senior [...]

The officers’ involvement signals the debate has moved past a rigid choice between expansive counterinsurgency missions and narrowly tailored efforts to find and kill terrorists.

This news was just released from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO’s command in Afghanistan:
Two International Security Assistance Force service members were reported missing Nov. 4 from a routine resupply mission in western Afghanistan. Afghan and coalition forces are currently involved in an extensive search for the service members.

Minutes after I published that post profiling the hawkishness of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister posted a new video to his NATO blog denouncing the Taliban and saying that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “extra measures” to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan. “This approach has already shown results,” he says. “Too [...]

Last week, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, openly advocated a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan during a NATO defense ministerial conference. It was a curious position to take. The NATO secretary generalship is an institutionally weak position, commanding no ability to order allied countries to do anything, and has traditionally been awarded to [...]

OK, it’s officially NATO-in-Afghanistan Day at The Streak. Matthew Yglesias notes the hawkishness of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, and writes that Rasmussen appears “considerably more hawkish in his rhetoric on Afghanistan than Barack Obama is.” I don’t quite know what accounts for that, but Yglesias reminds us that when Rasmussen was prime [...]

Building on this post, Simon Shercliff is the senior defense adviser to the British Embassy in Washington, and he blogs today about recent conversations he’s been having about Afghanistan along the Boston-Washington corridor. While he doesn’t use the word “counterinsurgency,” it looks a lot like where his head is at.

More on that NATO defense ministerial. Check out Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ take on the mood in Bratislava:
Gates said several allies have indicated that they will, or are leaning toward, increasing their military or civilian contributions, or both. “I find that very heartening,” he said.
He also said he received “mounting endorsements of McChrystal’s approach” during [...]

One consequence of the Obama administration’s weeks-long review of Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy is that European allies are unclear about their role, even as they’re being asked to contribute greater resources. There’s a meeting today in Slovakia of NATO defense ministers, complete with a briefing from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that will address some of the [...]

President Obama, in an interview with NBC News, about the timing of his Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy decision:

“I think it is entirely possible that we have a strategy formulated before a runoff is determined. We may not announce it,” he said.
There is, it’s fair to say, angst among Obama’s supporters in Congress about what his strategy [...]