If you invoke a mutual defense treaty and refuse to fight, means you dont respect the agreement or your allies-- simple, as that. The entire situation strikes me as odd from the moment Schroeder acquiesced to invoking Article 5 to Merkel's current cavalier and dismissive rhetoric about the troop request. This is not Iraq and Hamburg knows how easily a foreigner trained in Afghanistan can blend in the local unassimilated minorities and emerge a destructive force. As long as the Gulf region can pump excess profits into Salafist projects, any safe harbour potentially affects the world.

If Germany would like to become a rich Austria, you are welcome to it. But you will be treated, whenever noticed, like Austrians.

For how much longer can the US refer to article 5?
Isn't there a point in time that you cannot any longer say this is about a response to an attack in 2001? Just legally speaking? Not politically.

In fact, I believe the US government is not telling its allies, listen fellows, you have to send troops because NATO invoked article 5 in 2001.

Of course not, Joerg, that would endanger the NATO alliance. The US if you remember was against the NATO Council voting to invoke Article 5 from the beginning becuase they had an notion some similiar to our present situation might/probably would arise.

As for the legality of Germany's performance, per its treaty obligations, serious public international lawyers do not raise the issue because the NATO treaty does contain a lot of wriggle room. Article 5's mention of the 'use of the force', which is incorporated not created by the UN Charter, is subject to the continuing approval of the SC and the invocation of Article 5 only obligates the signatory State to provide such action as it deems necessary. Moreover, Article 2 and 7 impose an affirmative duty on signatories to act in concert with and according to the positive development of the post UN world political system. http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm.

Outside a Chapter 7 resolution to the contrary, one can not say that Germany has violated its treaty obligations. It has done what it deemed necessary, but are over-flight rights and a few thousand non-combat troops in Afghanistan any type of response from a mutual defense treaty?


I am just asking, whether article 5 is really the basis to make this argument.

Arguing Article 5 publically forces the question of the continued utility and advisability of retaining the NATO treaty to the fore so politicans never raise it. There is no treaty-based mechanism for adjudicating non-compliance with the NATO treaty. Does Germany's meagre participation in Afghanistan feel violative of the mutual defense treaty? Most Americans would say, yes; Germans, probably no. As a corrollary, did France violate its defense treaty with Poland in '39? No. The military build-up in Elsa did tie up some German divisions that otherwise could have gone to Poland, but your average Pole is in no hurry to depend on France to safeguard his national integrity.


Some German politicians and journalists write that Germany shall not send combat troops to the South, because there is not a UN mandate (true?) and article 5 does not work anymore because too much time has past and the Taliban are not running Afghanistan anymore.

There is a UN mandate for NATO participation in Afghanistan. What the German politicans are referring to is an explicit UNSC resolution allowing a German military action in the south. There isnt one to my knowledge; however, considering that there are multiple chapter 7 mandates authorizing NATO military action in Afghanistan is a UNSC chapter 7 resolution really necessary to legalize German military action within a NATO force? I would say no and most people consider that line of reasoning sophistic. However if the German foreign ministry truly believes that their military deployment is constrained, per Article 2 and 7 of the NATO treaty, by the need to support the current interpretation of public international law which demands in their eyes a specific UNSC resolution for every military action, who can say, according to NATO treaty terms, that is incorrect? It is a plausibly legitimate legal argument. Not very convincing, but it gets published.

Article 5 is about defense of NATO territory rather than about bringing democracy and stuff to Afghanistan...
Read Article 5 and 6 of the treaty.