NATO struggles as global cop

"A formal NATO role" in training, even if marginal to the Iraqi government's current security problems, "makes the political point that the allies are together" after the explosive differences over the war in Iraq that tore NATO apart last year, says Dana Allin, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

"NATO cannot give more than a political signal because there are no troops to be deployed," adds Burkhard Schmitt, an expert at the EU Center for Security Studies in Paris.

That is partly because Europe's small armies find themselves already overstretched by peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Africa, and partly because governments simply have not budgeted for more peacekeeping activities.

The most dramatic illustration of this shortcoming is Afghanistan, where NATO took over management of the 6,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul last August, promising to augment it and extend its influence beyond the capital.

The alliance has failed to do so, installing only one small team in a city outside Kabul, while the Taliban and warlords reestablish themselves in wide areas of the lawless country. Two female election workers on a voter registration drive were killed Saturday when their bus was blown up, underscoring the uncertainty surrounding the planned vote.

The alliance is expected to announce in Istanbul the creation of five Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and their deployment in the North and West of Afghanistan. This is far less than UN officials and aid workers in Kabul say is needed and comes only after the NATO secretary general has spent months cajoling member governments to come up with troops and equipment - a few thousand men, a few dozen helicopters, and other assorted pieces of military hardware.

"Whenever we enter into a political commitment to undertake an operation, we must have a clear idea beforehand as to what forces we have available to honor this commitment," de Hoop Scheffer said in a recent speech. "I don't mind taking out my begging bowl once in a while. But as a standard operating procedure, this is simply intolerable."

One problem, says NATO spokesman Robert Psczel, is "the legacy of the cold war." Governments are quick to come up with resources, he says, if the threat is a traditional "armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America," as the NATO Treaty's crucial Article 5 puts it. "But for non-Article 5 operations, nations have given what they feel like," he complains.

Since such operations are expected to be NATO's bread and butter in the post-cold war world, member governments have to re-think how they plan and finance them, argues de Hoop Scheffer, who is expected to raise this question at the Istanbul summit.

"There are going to be other interventions, and in principle NATO provides an organized place to generate forces and train them for demanding postwar situations," says Mr. Allin. "Afghanistan is the next test of whether NATO is relevant or important."

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