Afghanistan
George Robertson
On the edge of a precipice
The former Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, delivered the Christopher J Makins Lecture at the Atlantic Council of the US in Washington DC earlier this month.
We are on the edge of a precipice looking down on a world of growing disorder and discontent and only blunt talk and straight language will save us from falling over. Is this too apocalyptic? Dangerous scaremongering? I'm sad to say that I don't think that I'm exaggerating.
The recent decision by the Dutch to withdraw their troops by this year-end from NATO's mission in Afghanistan throws into stark relief the nature of the Alliance's crisis. The Dutch, and the Canadians who also say they will leave this year, have both made valiant contributions to what has to be done in Afghanistan and there have been awful sacrifices with it, so I cast no aspersions on them alone. But if these two robust allies and those who may be thinking of doing the same, and additionally those who contribute less than they should, can all shy away from their obligation stemming from the decision taken unanimously in 2003, what is it other than a crisis?
We all knew why we went in. We knew our own safety was at stake if the Taliban continued providing a safe haven for the bloodthirsty criminal killers of Al Queda. That's why the decision was taken in the first place to go to Kabul to take over ISAF, and then to extend out via the provincial reconstruction teams in the regions. And surely we all now realise what will happen if we leave prematurely, without a sustainable Afghan state in place.
Rest assured, if the Taliban and their allies can defeat the most successful defence alliance in history, why should they stop at Afghanistan? They won't. We all know all that, so why can't we join the dots between going in and getting out?
The Netherlands is just one fallen government, one divided parliament, one polarised people, and one bemused army. But they are not alone. Public opinion in Germany, in France, in Italy and Spain and even in the UK is all swinging to troop withdrawal and the raising of hands. And why? Why is there such a wobbling of commitment among these European countries, many of whose very survival and freedom today depended on allied solidarity only a couple of generations ago? I will tell you why I think it is. It is because governments do not explain with sufficient force and passionate conviction why being in Afghanistan, and winning there, matters to the peace and security and safety of people a continent and a half away.
It is a stark fact that we could lose to the Taliban in Afghanistan and let loose the hosts and apologists of AQ with all that means simply because governments in the NATO countries will not spell out what the high stakes are for all of us – we who will be the next target set of the extremists. It is not enough for the NATO Secretary General alone, still less for an ex-Secretary-General, to tell the people of allied countries how ruinous and disastrous it would be if we left Afghanistan with the job unfinished. Political leaders right across the Alliance need to do it – and they need to do it urgently.
I ask you for a moment to recall the spring of 1940 in Europe. The Nazis had swept though the Low Countries and into France. The British expeditionary force had been defeated and had retreated from Dunkirk with most of Britain's fighting equipment left on the other side of the Channel. The US government was still refusing to intervene, the US ambassador to London, JFK's father, resolutely oblivious to the Nazi menace. There were no other allies of consequence, and the British cabinet was split with a significant appeasement faction led by the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, wanting to sue for peace.
At that moment, chronicled in John Lukacs' brilliant book 'Five days in London, May 1940', Hitler was winning and Britain was defeated. On paper, that is. The fact that we are free people today is due mainly to the fact that Winston Churchill inspired the British people to not accepting or even contemplating defeat. He made it clear that Britain would fight on and that the Nazis would be defeated. It was a triumphant psychological approach which simultaneously rallied the people of Britain and rattled Adolf Hitler and it transcended the facts on the ground which looked so bleak. We should take note today.
Closer to this generation was NATO's campaign in Kosovo 11 years ago. We were up against a well-armed opponent using methods frighteningly different to our own and capable of sitting us out. We won, in 78 days, not because of superior military might but because we never contemplated defeat and because we persuaded Milosevic and his generals that we would never give up. We ran a military campaign and in parallel we ran an information campaign. Both were professional and focused but it was, to my mind, the information campaign which won it.
Every day, every single day, in the British Ministry of Defence, we ran a world-transmitted press conference. We dominated the British and world media. Our daily press conference was followed each day by one at NATO HQ in Brussels and then in the Pentagon in Washington. Publics across the world got the message that we meant business and that we were absolutely committed to achieving our objectives summed up succinctly as 'NATO in, Serbs out, refugees home'. The Kosovars watched and were reassured by our resolution and in Belgrade the generals and the Serbs generally began to understand that once NATO had taken on a mission, it was simply not going to fail. And as they got that message their resolution crumbled and even though their immediate military advantage remained, they gave up. NATO went in, the Serbs cleared out, and the refugees went home and, along with the genuine Kosovo Serbs, they now have their own nation state. And Milosevic died on trial in the Hague court.
Why, I ask you, knowing the force and effectiveness of such psychological warfare do Alliance governments today stay on the back foot? The Taliban watch and monitor and superbly use the old and the newest media. They calibrate their intensive IED attacks with the fragility of our public opinion. They mobilise money on the ground to outspend us and it is they, not us with our demands for pullout dates, who say they will continue till they win and throw us out.
The fact is that in Afghanistan we can make it work, or we can let it fail. Our choice. But if we want it to work we must bring the same professionalism to the reconstruction, development and information task as we do to the military effort. And we need to show the people of Afghanistan that when this great Alliance takes on a task it does not ever contemplate losing. If that message gets into the minds of the Afghan in the street and the mosque and into the twisted minds of the extremists then, and only then, will we prevail. We should perhaps always remember the words of Leon Trotsky, who once said wisely about another time, 'We may not be interested in this war, but this war is interested in us'.
So that is one of my lateral thoughts. So long as we speak learnedly to each other inside our bubble and our opponents talk to the world and the impressionable, they will get their message over and we will stumble. The public relations team in NATO HQ is quite brilliant. It is well-equipped and its product effective and persuasive. But imagine how successful we could be if allied governments multiplied that effort, spent more, spoke more, persuaded more and actually acted as if we were in a war we had to win? So long as Alliance governments remain feeble, reactive, preoccupied and paralysed in their commitment then so long will we be in trouble.
My next lateral thought is this. Exhortations to burden share are as old as NATO itself. But they still remain a struggle. Cost sharing whether on operations or on programmes remains a time-consuming and spirit-sapping routine. It's time to find a new mechanism. In the end the key allies bear the burden not just of costs but also of responsibility. It's time for the devolution of some of these responsibilities. The North Atlantic Council should say that individual nations should take the lead in some of the Alliance's key efforts.
One nation, for example, could carry the initiative in relation to the Mediterranean countries. Another for relations with the membership applicant countries. We should revisit the idea I encouraged about lead nations driving the sharing of missing capabilities like heavy-lift aircraft and helicopters. I am in favour of challenging the nations to take a lead and accept the heavy responsibility for success and failure in the areas NATO has collectively deemed a priority. The concept worked when we set up the mobile chemical biological and radiological battalion and the Czechs, with a history in the Warsaw Pact of both offensive and defensive CBW, accepted the lead responsibility for the historic first iteration.
My next lateral thought is that it is also time for a less gentlemanly approach to capabilities. When we are talking about life and death on a real NATO battlefield, the time for peacetime politeness is a dangerous luxury. At the moment the country chapters on NATO force planning are published but not debated. The time has now come to be honest and brutal in saying what is needed for NATO missions and what is a pure waste of taxpayers' money.
You have heard this from me before, and you will again, but why is it that we have 10,000 main battle tanks in NATO counties when their role in any conceivable future conflict is negligible? These tanks with all the costs and manpower they generate are an inexcusable drain on the scarce resources which are needed for more deployable troops, more helicopters and more combat support and of course, AGS – Alliance Ground Surveillance. And this scandal – because that is what it is – applies as well to our European surplus of unusable fast jets and undeployable conscripts. So let's have a grown-up argument round the NATO table on what is vital and what is dispensable in capabilities and stop the pretence that what was right for the long-gone Cold War is good enough to fight the Taliban.
The final lateral thought I want to offer you is that of youth. What does this great Alliance mean to the younger generation and how do we connect with them and their counterparts in the fragile and failed states who will incubate and spread the disorder we should fear? In the Middle East 65% of the population are under 30, with 25% of them unemployed – how do we reach them?
We made a great mistake to my mind, and I accept my partial responsibility, in allowing the religious fanatics to use Iraq as a platform to electrify the young Muslim generation against NATO and the West. We have utterly failed to get over the fact that when Muslims in Bosnia were under assault from Milosevic's ethnic cleansers it was NATO, the instrument of the so-called 'West', which saved them. We failed once again to take enough credit among those impressionable young Muslims, and others, when it was only NATO's intervention which saved the lives and homes of predominantly Muslim Kosovo Albanians. We made much too little of NATO and the EU stopping a civil war in Macedonia in 2001 where Albanian Muslims felt constitutionally disadvantaged.
The idea that the West is anti-Islam in the light of that record is just fraudulent – but it is peddled relentlessly without the high profile rebuttal and contempt it deserves. We need to get up to date in getting over our message. The race for space in a media-crowded world is being won only by the nimble. In Tehran we have seen on the world's TV a courageous younger generation which cannot be cut off from the world as Albania's population was under communism. The mobile phone, the internet and digital cameras have irretrievably broken down old borders and barriers.
The wave of sorrow about the death of Michael Jackson may have mystified those of us over 50 but the world-wide tsunami of feeling must have seriously frightened those hard-line Mullahs with their Marie Antoinette-type appeal to the young 'Let them eat faith'. I recall visiting the mixed village of Tearce in Macedonia after the conflict of 2001 was over. Children (and criminals too) rarely get caught up in ethnic rivalries, but my overwhelming memory was seeing the number of Manchester United and Juventas shirts being worn by the kids. Strange how Western 'culture' crosses the boundaries of adult hate. We need to challenge the corruption of expectations sold by the fanatics. Young people have universally common expectations – of a job, family, music and sport – enjoyment. Cater for them and the attractions of the explosive belt will fade and die. The first Grand Prix in Bahrain two years ago was the biggest sporting event ever held in the Middle East and a new generation of motor sport fans was born. So successful was it that Abu Dhabi followed last year.
Are we capable of being as nimble, or indeed more nimble than those who seek to confront us? Do we know what to offer in terms of argument and substance to persuade the potential adversaries, as well as our own youngsters, that our Alliance, which has done so much for former generations, can produce a vision of a better, safer, more prosperous world for those whose history started with the invasion of Iraq? People like Christopher Makins kept the flame alight for a mighty Alliance which changed the world. The task which now faces us, and those who care about what the Alliance can now do for the world, is how to be inventive and think laterally and deeply to make sure the next generation also feels the Alliance flame worth carrying.
Rt Hon Lord Robertson of Port Ellen was Secretary-General of NATO between 1999 and 2003. He was Secretary of State for Defence, 1997
to 1999. |
