I have interviewed the Director of the Heinrich Boell Foundation's Kabul office about yesterday's London Conference. Dr. Scheller states that along side security, the international community also needs to strengthen Afghan civil society and that Iraq does not serve as a model for Afghanistan. See video below. More information on Atlantic Community and at the website of the Boell Foundation, which is independent, but philosophically close to the German Green Party, which explains the background colors... The voters of the Green Party are more supportive of continued engagement in Afghanistan than the voters of Germany's other main parties.

On Monday I have conducted another interview: UNHCR: Tweets from the Edge: I was talking to Claudia Gonzalez, who was leading Public Relations and Special Projects at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She was using Social Media to give refugees give voice, allowing people around the world to engage in a conversation about how to improve the lives of those most affected by wars and conflict.

Richard Gowan of New York University and the Global Dashboard blog, has some wise remarks on Afghanistan in The Indian National Interest Review:

The quality of strategic debate on Afghan affairs in EU capitals is far lower than that in Washington. "We ask what pulling out of Afghanistan would mean for the transatlantic alliance," one respected French strategist admits, "but not what it'd do to Afghanistan."

He could go further. Although European commentators are typically well-informed about Pakistan's instability, they rarely put "AfPak" in a wider strategic regional context. How would a NATO failure in Afghanistan affect relations between China and India? What impact would it have on Russia's Central Asian ambitions, or Iran's defiance of the West? These are not questions you are likely to hear seriously discussed in Europe. (.)

European analysts who see Afghanistan in transatlantic terms ("What does this do to NATO?") are in denial on this point. The future of Afghanistan is clearly of far greater significance to the triangular strategic relationship between China, India and the United States than it is to European affairs. But no-one likes to admit they are a second-order issue.

Franz Josef Jung, Germany's former defense minister and current labor minister, resigned on Friday over his handling of a controversial airstrike in Afghanistan. Germany's top soldier Inspector General Schneiderhan and Deputy Defense Minister Wichert resigned on Thursday, reports Spiegel (in English).

The Bundestag's defense committee will most likely establish a parliamentary investigation into the affair, which could erode public support for the Afghanistan mission even further.

The good news is that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's current defense minister, has had a promising start since taking over in early October and has started making the necessary changes. "From referring to the Afghanistan mission as a 'war' to announcing a slight increase in troop numbers, he has gained the support of the military," writes Spiegel (in English) in another article.

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Who is to blame that we are not winning in Afghanistan? Karzai, Obama, NATO, the Europeans, or Jimmy Carter again? Afghanistan's President Karzai was criticized a lot lately. Now the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens comes to his defense and puts the blame on NATO. He makes the dubious claim that:

Matters went abruptly south in Afghanistan after several years in which they had gone swimmingly well under Mr. Karzai, including a thriving economy, girls back in school, people having access to health care and so on. The answer has a lot less to do with Mr. Karzai's performance than with NATO's.

"Abruptly south"? "Swimmingly well"? Oh please! Perhaps Stephens was like most of the US media so fixated on Iraq and domestic politics that he ignored Afghanistan.

Yeah, sure, I wish NATO had been more successful in Afghanistan, but let's not forget that the United States first did not want NATO's help in Afghanistan, because the Bush advisors thought that NATO was not up to it, then they asked NATO to play an ever bigger role anyway because they wanted to focus on Iraq and thought they needed NATO's help in Afghanistan.

If the US had not pulled resources from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, then Afghanistan and Pakistan might be in a better shape today. If this turns into a new transatlantic blame game, the Europeans will focus on US neglect of Afghanistan in the early and very decisive years.

John Hannah blames NATO more strongly in Foreign Policy:

Despite repeated assurances from Washington, the Afghans palpably feared that the transition to NATO reflected the start of America's ultimate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Psychologically, this perception of declining U.S. commitment almost certainly had the dual effect of dangerously demoralizing the Afghan government and people (resulting in counter-productive hedging behavior), while emboldening the Taliban.

Similarly, the Pakistani government -- believing the United States to be once again headed for the Afghan exits -- was encouraged even further in its double game of maintaining an "option" for returning a friendly Taliban to power in Kabul.

Militarily, the shift to NATO, particularly in the south, undeniably resulted in a significant loss of combat effectiveness on perhaps the war's most important front. While America's British, Dutch, and Canadian allies fought valiantly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, they were no match -- frequently by their own admission -- for the extraordinary fighting skills of their U.S. counterparts.  With only some exaggeration, a senior Afghan official once told President Bush that 800 U.S. troops had generated a greater sense of security and well-being among the population in Helmand than 8,000 NATO forces.

Very interesting. (Emphasis was added by me.)

Still, the opposite argument can be made that America's heavy reliance on airstrikes has harmed the US image in the region and contributed to the rising insurgency. Only recently the US reversed its policy from focusing their "extraordinary fight skills" on insurgents to providing security for Afghans. The US army is now doing the kind of "social work," which Europeans got ridiculed by parts of the US media for. It seems US strategy is now more in line with European ideas. Without NATO troops the United States would need to rely even more on airstrikes and cause more civilian casualties.

Former US Ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter and Leo Michel from the National Defense University have written a good reminder on the importance of allies Keeping our Allies on our Side, which starts with a great quote by Winston Churchill: "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies and that is fighting without them."

Hey, hey, believe it or not, Germany is getting tough at the Hindu Kush. The Bundeswehr started its biggest operation yet in Afghanistan. 300 members of the Quick Reaction Force support the Afghan Army against insurgents near Kundus. For the first time, infantry fighting vehicles with heavy firepower have been deployed.

Moreover, the German Army Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan stated in a press conferences that "now is the time to carry out this escalation" because of the upcoming Afghan elections and increase in attacks against the Bundeswehr. He also announced that the rules of engagement are currently being revised. "Escalating" is a normal military term, but I am still surprised that a general is using this phrase in a press conference. It might have been the first time ever since WWII that a German general is publicly advocating an escalation.

I have written a bit more about this on Atlantic-Community.org and would appreciate your assessment of the impact on stability in Afghanistan and the German mindset. Some German papers were talking about a "psychological threshold" being crossed in Germany.

From The Telegraph's (HT: Alex) most popular article today:

German soldiers are softies who lack discipline, hate responsibility and show an inadequate desire to serve their country, according to the army's chief inspector.

Related posts on Atlantic Review: German Soldiers in Afghanistan: Drinking Instead of Fighting and German Beer in Exchange for US Intelligence Information

"NATO offers the United States the useful stamp of multilateral legitimacy without really imposing too many limits on America's foreign  policy," says Dutch political scientist Peter van Ham. In consequence, recent NATO missions have been "devoid of the unity and coherence that the old NATO had" and US, German and Dutch units pursue different strategies in Afghanistan, adds Paul Hockenos, who quotes van Ham in A new Transatlantic Partnership: Rethinking US-Europe Relations.

Hockenos is a US analyst and editor of the German Council on Foreign Relations' journal Internationale Politik Global Edition. He concludes on NATO:

It is questionable whether this new NATO is still a transatlantic institution worthy of the label. Despite its multilateral structure, NATO has become a clearing house for US-led "coalitions of the willing," which alliance members-and non-members-can join on a case-by-case basis. For all intents and purposes, it is a group of like-minded democracies that Washington can call upon á la carte. The Europeans bear none of the roles and responsibilities of even junior partners as they did in the past, but rather serve as occasional helpers, as was the case in the invasion and pacification of Afghanistan. The more nations there are in the alliance, the larger the possible constellation for these pick-up coalitions. This is one reason the Americans above all push for NATO's expansion.

Well, the United States has global interests and ambitions and would like NATO to pursue those interests. The Europeans have much more limited interests and ambitions and are therefore unwilling to give the necessary resources to NATO. The situation that Hockenos and van Ham describe is the result from this mismatch of interests and ambitions. It is not due to some sinister US plan. And Hockenos "partnership of equals" is not the solution, since it won't materialize due to the different capabilities, interests and ambitions.

Since the United States does not get much military support from most European countries, the "useful stamp of multilateral legitimacy" is the biggest benefit for Washington. Although this "stamp" does not have the kind of legal legitimacy that only UN Security Council resolution can provide, it is big enough for each and every US administration to continue to invest plenty of resources into NATO. Never mind how many conservative US bloggers and pundits complain about NATO. These criticism are as old as NATO is.