"I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Mr. Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance (NATO), and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters — China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the U.S. and NATO over Afghanistan, and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. European Union countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
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