#38 ISAF National Caveats in Afghanistan:
Summary of Research Findings & Future Implications
– Dr Regeena Kingsley
* This blog is a reproduction of the concluding chapter of Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research thesis in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014), entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012.”
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build…a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”
– King Solomon the Wise [1]
“There is a time to make peace, there is a time to make war. It is even necessary, sometimes, to do both at the same time, but not by halves.”
« Il y a un temps pour faire la paix, il y a un temps pour faire la guerre. Il faut parfois tenter de faire les deux à la fois, mais pas à moitié. »
– Pierre Servent [2]
This research has investigated the national caveat impediment within the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan, in order to determine whether national caveats have had a significant impact on the overall operational effectiveness of the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, and if so, in what specific ways. In pursuit of this aim, the study addressed two primary research questions: firstly, ‘What is the extent of the ‘caveat problem’ within the NATO-led ISAF multinational mission in Afghanistan?’; and secondly, ‘How have the caveats tangibly impacted on the ISAF’s prosecution of security operations within the COIN mission?’. The results of these caveat inquiries were then assessed in relation to the ISAF mission’s overall effectiveness, using as an analytical lens the fundamental military principle of ‘unity of effort’ as the critical means for attaining operational effectiveness within multilateral security campaigns.
In this conclusion to the research, a summary of the research findings will be provided and then followed by a discussion of the implications of this research on:
(1) the future prosecution of MNOs in general;
(2) the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, in addition to the global campaign against Islamist terror;
(3) the NATO collective-security organisation; and lastly,
(4) future academic scholarship.
ISAF Caveats: Summary of Research Findings
The Extent of the ISAF Operation’s Caveat Problem
Research question one, as to the full extent of the caveat impediment within the ISAF, was addressed in Chapters 8-10 of Section III.
Chapter 8, in conjunction with APPENDIX 2 and 3, provided an introduction to the mission’s caveat problem, and showed that caveat-imposition has been an ever-present issue within the mission over the past decade from 2002-2012. In addition, the analysis demonstrated that caveat-imposition within the mission grew worse over time as TCN governments expanded the range of restrictions imposed on their ISAF forces and as new countries joined the mission, only to similarly impose political restrictions on their forces constraining what they could do within the Afghan theatre. Furthermore, the chapter showed that numerous efforts by NATO, ISAF and government officials, to persuade, pressure, warn and even shame national governments into removing their caveats on national contingents, failed to eliminate the caveat problem from the mission, with only a small group of nations agreeing to become completely ‘caveat-free’ in Afghanistan over the course of the mission. While the ever-strengthening Afghan insurgency has added increased urgency for caveat elimination, and correspondingly led to increased political pressure on caveat-imposing TCNs to reduce or remove national caveats on national forces, the growing insurgent threat to stability and security in Afghanistan has nevertheless failed to galvanize a resolution to the caveat dilemma within the mission. The caveat problem within the ISAF has been, indeed, an intractable one – with no real prospect of resolution.
Chapter 9 pursued this examination further by investigating the total numbers of caveat-free and caveat-imposing TCNs within the ISAF mission between 2003, when NATO first took command leadership of the mission, to the end of the research period in 2012. The caveat data collected during the course of this research was quantified to present overall numbers and percentages of both caveat-imposing and caveat-free TCN ‘camps’ within the mission and displayed side-by-side in data tables. This numerical analysis indicated that a large majority of ISAF coalition nations have almost consistently been caveat-imposing force contributors over the time period, regardless of the growth in size of the ISAF coalition over the decade.
The chapter then qualified this numerical caveat data by identifying the nations represented by the numbers of caveat-free and caveat-imposing TCNs. This examination revealed several caveat-related trends over the research period. Firstly, only a small group of nations have operated free from caveat restraints in Afghanistan, a minority group that grew in waves from 3 in 2003 to reach a peak of 22 TCNs in 2009 as Italy, France, Bulgaria, Norway, Denmark, Portugal and Hungary finally eliminated their caveat constraints from national contingents. Secondly, a large group of TCNs – including many NATO nations such as Germany, Turkey and Spain – have remained firm caveat-imposers on their forces for the duration of the mission regardless of the many urgent entreaties by NATO, the COMISAF and even other NATO allies. Thirdly, a significant number of TCNs have vacillated between the two caveat camps over the time period, with 9 TCNs imposing, eliminating and then actually re-imposing caveats as the years passed.
In Chapter 10, the focus was narrowed to the caveat issue in itself, to investigate: (1) the actual proportion of the ISAF force affected by the political constraints in their operations within Afghanistan; (2) the total known numbers of caveat rules imposed by ISAF TCNs over the research period; and (3) the range of the known caveats, in terms of the content of the national restrictions. The subsequent analysis revealed, firstly, that approximately one quarter (between 22-30 percent) of the entire ISAF force have been restricted in their ISAF activities by national caveats over the course of the mission, representing some 9,000-29,000 forces between 2007-2012.
Secondly, these forces have been constrained by high numbers of caveat rules, with official numbers of ‘declared’ caveats peaking at 102 by mid-2007, while total numbers of undeclared and de facto restrictions remain unknown. An indication of the true scale of national caveat imposition within the ISAF mission can nevertheless be seen in the total number of caveats discovered to have been in force on ISAF personnel during the course of this research. Indeed, this research alone has discovered a total of 215 separate caveats that have been imposed on ISAF national contingents at various times over the past decade.
Thirdly, ISAF caveats have encompassed a very wide range of rules in terms of their content. In fact, the national restrictions could be divided by ROE content into 21 different caveat categories, as demonstrated in APPENDIX 6 (List 1) in Volume II. These caveat categories include: (1) mission caveats; (2) theatre of operations caveats; (3) geographic caveats; (4) regional caveats; (5) AO caveats; (6) force numbers caveats; (7) command caveats; (8) weaponry and lethal force caveats; (9) general operations caveats; (10) ground combat operations caveats; (11) ground security operations caveats; (12) air combat operations caveats; (13) MEDEVAC and other air operations caveats; (14) time-related caveats; (15) weather-related caveats; (16) counter-terrorism caveats; (17) counter-narcotics caveats; (18) ISAF cooperation caveats; (19) ANSF cooperation caveats; (20) PRT security operations caveats; and lastly (21) PRT stability operations caveats.
The Tangible Impact of Caveats on Security Operations
The second research question, as to how these caveats have tangibly impacted on the ISAF’s prosecution of security operations within the COIN mission, was examined in depth in Chapters 11-13 of Section IV.
Chapter 11 demonstrated the way in which national caveats have negatively impacted on the planning and execution of security operations by ISAF commanders and security forces during each phase of the COIN strategy – ‘SHAPE, CLEAR, HOLD, BUILD’. This reality was demonstrated by the extensive list of known caveats, imposed by all of the ISAF’s TCNs within the mission over the research period, provided in APPENDIX 7(b). Tangible on-the-ground examples were also provided where available, to more fully demonstrate this negative caveat impact within the ISAF’s Regional Commands. The chapter showed decisively that national caveats have had a tangibly visible negative effect on the ability of ISAF security forces to conduct the full range of security operations within the overall COIN strategy. This in turn has led to insecurity in large swathes of territory in Afghanistan between 2006-2009, especially in RC-North and RC-West under the command of caveated NATO Lead Nations Germany and Italy respectively.
Chapter 12 subsequently focused more closely on the ISAF mission’s combat forces tasked by the COMISAF with conducting combat operations against anti-Government insurgents. To aid this examination, a table and list of known caveats as they have applied to the various ISAF force units was supplied in APPENDIX 8(a) and 8(b). An additional table displaying the caveat-free or caveat-fettered status of major and minor combat manoeuvre units contributed by ISAF TCNs between 2007-2012 was also provided in APPENDIX 9. The analysis revealed that combat caveats imposed by various national governments have seriously impeded the effectiveness of ISAF combat forces and combat operations within the Afghan theatre, and in many instances largely negated the ability of combat forces to achieve their primary security objective: to ‘Degrade Insurgent Capacity’.
More specifically, Chapter 12 found that the imposition of combat caveats on the ISAF’s combat forces have: firstly, severely diminished the mission’s overall combat capability; secondly, compounded ISAF under-resourcing, with shortages in manpower and equipment diminishing further the ISAF’s ability to prosecute effective combat operations – even with regard to the key priority of training ANSF forces; and thirdly, directly aided and enabled the Taliban and other Enemy forces operating within the Afghan theatre, affording them a degree of freedom that – if not for the caveats – they would not enjoy. In short, caveat restrictions have presented real obstacles for the effective prosecution of combat operations along the security LOO within the COIN campaign, leading directly to a loss of progress and Afghan support.
Chapter 13 addressed another major caveat-related issue affecting the ISAF mission’s combat forces – that of inequitable and disproportionate burden-sharing amongst ISAF national contingents. This fundamental inequality between multinational combat forces has been brought about chiefly by: (1) combat caveats, which have inhibited the ability of many combat manoeuvre units from actually conducting combat (producing an oxymoron of ‘non-combat capable combat forces’); and (2) geographical caveats (reinforced by regional and AO caveats) which have prevented combat forces from ever being deployed to conduct combat operations against the Taliban and other insurgents in the mission’s volatile and unstable southern and eastern Regional Commands.
The worst offenders in this regard have been NATO nations and ISAF Lead Nations with hefty security responsibilities – Germany, Italy, Turkey and France. In short, thousands of Lead Nations forces have been prevented from participating in combat operations within the ISAF mission, as shown in APPENDIX 10(a). By contrast, caveat-free contingents – especially those of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands – have been forced by their NATO allies to bear a disproportionately large share of the fighting and the dying for the success of the ISAF security mission in RC-South and RC-East. This inequality has been the cause of dissension, division, frustration, and anger within both the ISAF coalition and the NATO alliance, and ultimately led to the early withdrawals from the ISAF mission by the Netherlands and Canada (the former brought about by the collapse of the Dutch government over the issue in early 2010).
APPENDIX 11 and APPENDIX 12 further investigated this issue further by examining three factors which have played a large contributing role in exacerbating this burden-sharing stale-mate between the ISAF mission’s coalition members. Firstly, APPENDIX 11 demonstrated that this inequality has been driven by the fact that a large majority of ISAF TCNs – including significant and enduring majorities within both of the two ‘camps’ of NATO and Partner ISAF nations – have used caveats to constrain the activities of their forces within the Afghan theatre over the duration of the mission. Secondly, the disproportionate combat fighting has been augmented by a puzzling disproportionality in military contributions between the caveat-free and caveat-imposing TCNs within the mission. In short, many of the strongest, wealthiest and most militarily-capable countries have opted for fixed caveat imposition, while smaller, poorer and less militarily-capable nations – including several Partner nations without NATO membership – have to the contrary eliminated all of their national caveat exemptions to render their ISAF forces robust, flexible and caveat-free within the mission.
Lastly, APPENDIX 12 analysed the third factor to exacerbate the combat burden-sharing issue – the reality that a majority of the ISAF’s eight Lead Nations, principal NATO nations with leadership and command responsibility for various Regional Command sectors within the mission, have been imposing caveats on their forces for a significant period of time. Indeed, France and Italy remained heavy caveat-imposing TCNs and Lead Nations over a period of seven-and-a-half years from 2001-2009. Recalcitrant NATO nations Turkey and Germany, meanwhile, have obstinately continued to impose strict and numerous caveat fetters on their ISAF contingents for the duration of the mission – a period of eleven full years within the operation from 2001 until at least 2012.
The Impact of Caveats on ISAF Operational Effectiveness
Finally in Section V, Chapters 14-15 addressed the overall aim of this research: to determine how national caveats have impacted on the overall operational effectiveness of the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.
Using the military principle of ‘unity of effort’ as an analytical lens, Chapter 14 demonstrated that national caveats have crippled unity of effort within the ISAF mission. Indeed, not only has ISAF caveat-imposition led to disunity of effort within the mission, but it has also scuttled the three underlying military constructs critical to generating and maintaining unity of effort in any MNO, namely those of: (1) unity of command, (2) cooperation, coordination and consensus, and (3) unity of purpose. In short, national caveats within the ISAF mission have weakened every link in the chain leading to unity of effort and have thereby served to guarantee disunity of effort within the ISAF mission, with obvious negative ramifications for operational effectiveness.
Chapter 15 subsequently analysed the impact of ISAF caveats on operational effectiveness itself over the research period, by assessing the impact of abiding national caveats on the two yardsticks of successful and effective MNOs – the timely attainment of mission objectives, and the effective prosecution of the campaign. As anticipated in the research hypothesis outlined in Chapter 5, this examination demonstrated that the mission’s caveat problem has indeed had a negative impact on ISAF operational effectiveness. ISAF caveats have: (1) prevented the timely attainment of mission objectives (chiefly through the loss of at least two-and-a-half years of progress between 2007 and mid-2009); and (2) hindered and frustrated the successful prosecution of COIN within the mission.
In sum, national caveats, imposed by coalition members of the NATO-led ISAF mission over a decade of warfare between 2001-2012, have utterly undermined the ability of ISAF forces to achieve their mission and secure and stabilise Afghanistan from extremism. In so doing, caveats – and the governments that have imposed them on their ISAF contingents – have effectively sabotaged the mission’s prospects of success. This finding confirms the hypothesis of this caveat research: it is certain that national caveats within the ISAF have indeed impacted negatively on the effectiveness of ISAF security forces within the mission, and thereby, have also had a significantly detrimental impact on the effectiveness of the ISAF operation overall.
In fact, the ISAF’s caveat quandary has continued to obstruct, delay and constrain the mission to secure and stabilise Afghanistan from the very outset until the present day of writing in July 2014. The caveat issue consequently remains an unresolved problem within the Afghan multinational security operation. It seems that the caveat ‘cancer’ within the ISAF will only be expelled from the mission as caveat-imposing TCNs actually exit the Afghan theatre and withdraw all their forces from the country during Phase V – Redeployment. As Jacobson argued early this year: ‘Experts [have] agreed that the question [of caveats] is either moot already, or soon will be…Restrictions on fighting no longer make much sense, as the ISAF combat force is due to withdraw over the next 24 months. Canadian, French and Dutch combat troops are already gone’.[3] According to Jacobson, this tacit agreement to resolve the caveat problem by means of exit strategies equates to a ‘compromise’ between caveat-imposing and caveat-free TCNs. [4]
However, redeployment does not equate to a real resolution of the caveat impasse that has so persistently troubled the ISAF mission. Indeed, such a short-sighted remedy signifies that the underlying caveat predicament hindering the ISAF mission has the potential – as an inadequately treated security phenomenon – to revisit other multinational missions in future years. Like the UNPROFOR and KFOR caveat legacies which have reappeared within the ISAF operation, the Afghan mission’s caveat dilemma is similarly likely to re-emerge in future security operations. To illustrate the point, new fears have already been voiced that the ISAF’s caveat impediment might actually be continued and carried into the planned post-ISAF NATO-led mission, ‘Resolute Support’, scheduled to begin in January 2015.[5] Consequently, there is no end in sight for the problem of national caveats frustrating military efforts within the Afghan theatre of war.
It seems evident that a lack of true political will towards the success of the mission, among participating TCN NATO and Partner nations, has been the engine that has generated the caveat impediment within the mission. This shortage of genuine political will and commitment amongst coalition members has become the catalyst for a negative ‘cycle of caveat ineffectiveness’, a cycle, moreover, which has worked to erode political will even further over the past decade. Indeed, this study has highlighted the fact that if political commitment to a mission is not robust among force contributing nations, caveats are highly like to be imposed by the latter on national security forces – restrictions that represent a conflict of interests between national force contributors and multinational mission command. Negative political interference will begin on the operational chain of command and on the key principle of unity of effort, via erosion: of: (1) unity of command; (2) intra-coalition cooperation, coordination and consensus; and (3) unity of purpose. Where caveats are present, especially in high numbers and by a majority of the coalition, a negative downward trajectory will inevitably follow within the security mission. Consequently, political will is the baseline, the heartbeat, and the true determiner of the failure or success of any multinational military campaign.
More generally, this study has also underscored the inescapable reality that national caveats, imposed by contributing governments on their national contingents deployed to MNOs, are highly likely to produce negative outcomes within all international military security campaigns. It is conceivable, in fact, that caveats are the great operational inhibitors within MNOs – potential guarantors of disunity of effort and operational ineffectiveness within every multinational mission in which they exist.
Implications: The Prosecution of Multinational Operations
Indeed, it follows that there are manifold implications of this caveat research on the future conduct of multinational military operations. This research has shown that national caveat imposition within a MNF produces at least seven detrimental effects within an international security campaign, which are outlined below.
1) Caveats Generate Operational Ineffectiveness
First of all, this research has concretely demonstrated, as stated above, that national caveats are quite feasibly the great ‘operational inhibitors’ within MNOs. Caveats are also potentially guarantors of operational ineffectiveness in every multinational military campaign. This is because national caveats undermine each link in the chain that generates operational effectiveness and ultimately the successful conclusion of multinational missions. Unity of command, cooperation, coordination and consensus, unity of purpose, unity of effort, operational effectiveness, the timely attainment of objectives, and the effective prosecution of the campaign – all are undermined within a multinational mission by the presence of national caveats within a multinational military force.
When this detrimental process is translated from the abstract theoretical domain to the concrete realities of on-the-ground security operations, several tangibly negative outcomes have been revealed by this research and are described in the following.
2) Caveats Waste Effort & Time
Caveats lead to a waste of effort and of time, especially on the part of multinational commanders along the full chain of command, who must navigate a maze of bureaucratic red tape in order to prosecute operations they deem necessary for the success of the campaign. Above all, caveats severely impede and waste the time and effort of the Operational Commanders, presenting them with additional planning complications that lead to great frustration – especially with regard to non-declared and de facto restrictions within the multinational force, of which they likely have no knowledge at all. Moreover, as Chapter 11 demonstrated, even where the Operational Commander does possess knowledge of the existence of national caveats within certain national contingents, this knowledge alone does not assist him in utilising his forces to the best possible advantage.
3) Caveats Cripple Security Forces
Caveats effectively neuter security forces within a multinational mission, constraining security forces to the point of absurdity. This is perhaps best demonstrated within the ISAF mission by Germany’s caveats which have kept thousands of German forces effectively confined to their bases in RC-North (including one Special Forces unit which never once deployed out of its base to conduct a single mission during a three-year tour in Afghanistan), and by Icelandic forces who in the course of their security tasking have been forbidden by caveats to carry weapons or wear military uniforms within the mission. Caveated – and therefore anaemic – security forces within multinational security missions are, quite simply, an operational non-starter. The emergence of caveat-bound, non-combat capable combat forces, furthermore, seems ludicrous in MNOs – like the ISAF – which seek to establish and maintain security in the face of violent opposition, such as that mounted by the Taliban insurgency.
In short, the mere presence of national security forces within a mission is not enough. For any national contribution of security forces to be effective and of value within a multinational security campaign, they must ipso facto be permitted to conduct their assigned security tasking within the mission. As Barno, a former commander of the U.S. multinational OEF mission, has also expressed on this point, the view taken by many of the ISAF TCNs that the mere presence of national security forces within the mission renders their contribution a success is ‘absurdly below par’. As he states:
What presence becomes success? Again you get into this, “If I’m there, therefore I’m successful and I’m contributing”, and that’s not what we need. We need completely effective troops with all of their capabilities being able to be used by the commanders in flexible ways on the ground and maximize their impact against, you know, whatever very adaptive enemy we’re going to face. When you suboptimize your troops, by limiting what they can do, their value in coming to the operation at all starts to be called into question…Presence does not equal success. [6]
4) Caveats Lead to Security Deteriorations
The imposition of national caveats on multinational security forces can also frequently lead to the deterioration of emergency security crises – the latter demonstrated not only by the unravelling emergency situations within the ISAF described in Chapter 14, but also in earlier years by the dramatic deterioration of security within the KFOR mission at the time of the 2004 Kosovo Riots. In this way, there is a direct link between caveated forces which can not deploy to render security assistance on the one hand, and the loss of life and destruction of property, on the other hand, that results due to this failure to respond appropriately. Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark stationed in RC-South – with the highest casualty rates per capita within the ISAF – could well further extrapolate on this point. Indirectly too, caveats on ISAF forces have led to casualties among the very civilian population multinational forces have been deployed to protect, not least by forcing an over-dependence on air power as a substitute for truly capable and flexible ‘boots on the ground’. When all of these factors are combined, one can argue that national caveats actually lead to a loss of support, not only by the in-theatre local population (which in COIN is a critical factor in operational success), but also by the domestic population in the home countries of non-caveated forces, on whom the heavy caveat repercussions fall.
5) Caveats Prevent Unified Action
National caveats work against true collectivity within multinational military campaigns by eroding unity between TCNs. As the present research has shown, national caveat imposition can divide the actual coalition or alliance that has embarked on the multinational security endeavour, causing disunity, dissension and fragmentation between allied nations. Indeed, in Afghanistan the caveat issue has divided the ISAF coalition of the willing into ‘willing’ and ‘unwilling’ camps with regard to combat operations, thereby creating a second ‘coalition of the un-willing’ within the voluntary ‘coalition of the willing’ entity. Furthermore, the caveats have fragmented the NATO organisation into two or more ‘tiers’ or strata of nations, based on the willingness of members to actually allow national armed forces to conduct the hard war-fighting of ISAF combat operations.[7]
6) Caveats Create Burden-Sharing Inequalities
Disproportionate burden-sharing amongst the forces of allied nations contributing to a MNO is likely to appear as a key symptom of this caveat-generated division, especially with regard to security operations and offensive combat operations. Inequitable burden-sharing creates an imbalance within multinational campaigns, in terms of both combat tasking and casualties. This in turn can lead to even greater disunity, dissension and outright friction between the mission’s TCNs, with deleterious consequences for both the mission and the coalition.
This was clearly demonstrated with regard to the NATO allies within the Afghan campaign, whereby the forces of the caveat-free few have become over-burdened while tens of thousands of caveated forces remain largely out of combat and out of harm’s way. This unequal distribution of labour and risk-taking among the members of an organisation supposedly committed to common security through collective defence – including through waging conventional, if not nuclear, war – has led to serious political and military consequences.
In terms of the ISAF mission, skewed burden-sharing has resulted in disjointed and uneven progress on-the-ground within the operation, especially with regard to the security LOO and the execution of both offensive combat operations and robust security patrols to ‘protect the population’. In this way, the caveat-generated inequality has hindered the successful execution of the COIN strategy. With regard to the coalition, furthermore, disproportionate war-fighting has created anger and bitterness between the ISAF allies, which has fragmented the coalition. The on-going discord over the issue ultimately resulted in the early withdrawal of the entire Dutch contingent and most of the Canadian contingent from the Afghan theatre, with grim ramifications for security in Afghanistan’s most volatile and important southern sector.
Lastly, in terms of the mission’s leading entity, NATO, the reality of disproportionate burden-sharing between NATO members has created controversy and splintered NATO into factions, further undermining solidarity. Indeed, such burden-sharing inequalities contradict the very raison d’être of NATO as a collective security organisation. As the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, remarked as early as 2007: ‘Many allies are unwilling to share the risks, commit the resources, and follow through on collective commitments to this mission and to each other. As a result, we risk allowing what has been achieved in Afghanistan to slip away’.[8]
7) Caveats Aid & Embolden Enemy Forces
Caveat-generated division within the coalition or leading entity of multinational military campaigns is a weakness that Enemy forces can easily exploit to their own advantage, especially by means of targeted attacks on the national contingents of particular countries at times of political domestic crises. This has occurred in Afghanistan, at a minimum with regard to the Canadian and Dutch contingents. Furthermore, national caveats can in themselves prove an advantage to Enemy forces opposing the success of a multinational campaign, as has occurred with regard to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other anti-Government Enemy forces operating within the Afghan theatre of war. Caveats have created patterns of action – or indeed, inaction – that have been easily discernible to the Enemy, which in turn has created opportunities these Enemy forces have been able and willing to exploit to the detriment of the ISAF campaign, often over substantial periods of time.
In RC-North, for instance, Taliban insurgents, criminals and other forces of instability in the region have taken full advantage of the abiding reality, for over a decade, that the thousands of German Lead Nation forces stationed at ISAF military bases and PRTs have not been permitted to deploy during the night. Hungarian forces in RC-North have likewise operated under this constraint to the current day. This caveat alone has fuelled the expansion of the insurgency in the Afghan north, and allowed the Enemy not only to move and to recruit freely with impunity, but also to threaten, intimidate and attack the local populace. In addition, a Hungarian caveat restricting national forces to security patrols ‘only on main roads’ has created another clear opportunity for the Enemy with regard to optimal paths for IED-mining. In short, the caveats have harmed the ISAF and helped the Enemy. In the same way, caveat- imposition within other MNOs create the potential for other such negative scenarios to play out in other conflict theatres around the world.
Implications: Afghanistan & the Global Campaign against Terror
This research also holds implications for the ISAF mission as a whole, with regard to its bid to secure and stabilise Afghanistan from the Islamist extremism that instigated the global campaign against international terrorism.
ISAF Caveats Have Hindered Mission Success
As demonstrated in Chapters 14-15, the ISAF mission has been seriously undermined by caveat imposition on national ISAF contingents. Not only have the caveats directly contributed to mounting ISAF, ANSF and Afghan civilian casualties, but they have furthermore caused the loss of two-and-a-half years of progress between January 2007 and June 2009 – a critical window in the COIN campaign that can not be recouped. Indeed, one could further argue that the caveat impasse within the mission has directly contributed to the way in which the mission has floundered in attaining its mission objective – to secure and stabilise Afghanistan from Islamist extremism in the form of the Taliban, insurgents, and Al-Qaeda foreign jihadists – and has thereby jeopardized the overall success of the ISAF mission. In point of truth, there have been scores of comments made publicly by NATO, ISAF and government officials on this very point, to the effect that the ISAF mission is ‘not winning’ or succeeding in Afghanistan, and that as a result, the future security of the country and of the Central Asian region – including nuclear Pakistan – remains in jeopardy.
It was this very fact of heavily caveated ISAF forces which led to the switch in focus during 2009 to an ‘Afghan solution’, whereby hurriedly building the capacity of the ANSF became the ISAF’s exit strategy. This change was largely due to continued recalcitrance on the part of caveated Lead Nations Germany, Turkey, Italy and even France to bear their fair share of the combat burden to secure the country. When caveats interfered even with this solution, however, an ‘American solution’ became the only answer to save the ISAF mission from failure. In this sense the influx of 30,000 American forces to the mission in 2010 can be regarded as a U.S. move to ‘rescue’ the ISAF ‘rescue operation’ of Afghanistan.
Half-Hearted Commitment Has Jeopardized Afghanistan’s Future
Despite the fact that the ISAF mission is a critical campaign in the Global War against Terror, with far-reaching ramifications for world security and international terrorism, it seems that many of the ISAF contributing nations have not been fully committed to the success of the mission. The high number and expansive range of national caveats presented in this research, combined with the high numbers of caveat-imposing TCNs within the coalition – within both the NATO and Partner nation camps of TCNs, leads one to this inescapable conclusion. In the final analysis, a majority of ISAF nations have shown themselves unwilling to pay the cost – in terms of effort and blood – to secure Afghanistan, and thereby the world, from the scourge of global Islamist terrorism. This raises the question, of whether the ISAF has, in effect, been squandering the most important bid in current history to usher in peace and security in this generation?
This half-heartedness on the part of many ISAF force contributing nations towards actually securing Afghanistan from radical Islam may also hold important – if tragic – implications for the country of Afghanistan itself and its approximately 32 million inhabitants.[9] The historic enterprise of assisting Afghanistan to become a modern, democratic and developed country may become void if the NATO-led ISAF operation fails to achieve its mission to assist the Afghan government to become an independent, self-sufficient country, with robust security forces that enable it to protect its citizens and its own territorial integrity in the face of the Taliban and other forces of insecurity and instability. Indeed, at the time of writing in July 2014, the future of NATO engagement in Afghanistan hangs in jeopardy, as negotiations stall between the governments of Afghanistan and the United States with regard to the prerequisite bilateral agreement (a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’), vital documentation necessary to authorise the continuing presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan post-2014. There are warnings that all ISAF forces may have to be fully and permanently withdrawn by the end of this year, if the bilateral MOU is not mutually agreed upon.
Such a precipitous, full-scale withdrawal from Afghanistan would place 13 years of international assistance to the country – including 8 years of COIN – in great peril, with potentially calamitous outcomes for Afghanistan and for Islamist radical extremism within the region. Indeed, experts are predicting that a full withdrawal of ISAF forces in December 2014 would result in the Taliban retaking control of the entire south and east of Afghanistan, in addition to mounting a full-scale Taliban assault on the Capital Kabul, within a period of less than one year.[10] In such an event, multiple Afghan towns and districts now experiencing security and stability in RC-South and RC-East – a security hard-won at significant cost to national treasure and human life within these restive, borderland territories – would effectively be surrendered back to the control of radical Islam and its exponents.
The series of vicious attacks mounted by extremist forces on the Afghan Capital in June last year, on and around the day of the official total handover of security responsibility from NATO to ANSF forces, well exemplifies the abiding strength and intent of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda within Afghanistan.[11] So too do the attacks that have continued to destabilise the Capital in the early months of 2014, for instance the Taliban gunmen attack on the Serena Hotel in March, the continued rash of suicide-bombings against Afghan civilians, and the most recent Taliban attack on NATO fuel tankers.[12] In June 2014, moreover, massive Taliban days-long offensives took place against ANSF and ISAF forces in southern Afghanistan – the Taliban’s heartland – thereby further illustrating the real and ongoing danger posed to Afghanistan in 2014.[13]
ISAF Caveats Have Undermined the Global Campaign against Terror
Such a dire prediction – given after 12 years of ISAF presence in the country – is alarming. It raises the question, how secure and stable is Afghanistan? And how much real security assistance did the international ‘security assistance’ force provide during this period, if the country is expected to quickly and easily fall back into the control of this extremist Enemy? This question seems even more critical when one considers that it was to prevent and render impossible such a return to power of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda associates, for the safety of the region and the world in the global campaign against international terrorism, that the ISAF force was assembled and deployed to Afghanistan.
One journalist writing for the New York Times describes the very real prospect of a regression to past realities in Afghanistan as a ‘particularly bitter pill’ after the blood and sweat expended in the past 13 years of war. [14] Or as one U.S. Pentagon official expressed on this point: ‘After all of this effort and all of this sacrifice and all of this progress, you’re back to a new safe haven for terrorists? It’s like, it just makes no sense’.[15] Certainly, the failure of the ISAF mission in Afghanistan would have serious consequences for Afghanistan and the global campaign against terrorism. As NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer once expressed emphatically on such a prospect:
Central Asia would see extremism spread. Al-Qaeda would have a free run again, and their terrorist ambitions are global. This is not conjecture. This is fact. Those who argue otherwise – who say we can defend against terrorism from home – are simply burying their heads in the sand.[16]
One thing is clear: should the worst case scenario materialise into a reality in Afghanistan, and the country does fall back into the hands of Islamist radicals and terrorists, stubborn and heavy-handed national caveat imposition within the NATO-led mission – especially by a number of its large militarily-capable NATO Lead Nations – will have played a vital role in this demise. In the quest to secure and stabilise Afghanistan, ISAF national caveats have wasted effort, progress and most critical of all – time.
Implications: The NATO Collective-Security Organisation
NATO Solidarity
This research also holds implications for the NATO collective-security alliance. First of all, this study of caveats within the NATO-led ISAF mission has shown clearly and dramatically that there is no real collectivity or true solidarity between NATO allies, especially with regard to security operations within its multinational missions. The principle of ‘collective security’ for the mutual defence of all has not at all been visible amongst the allies in their effort to secure Afghanistan. In many cases, the political rhetoric and commitment to the Afghan mission aired publicly at yearly NATO summits and meetings has not been borne out by events on the ground.
This is evident not only in the matter of NATO’s chronic under-resourcing of the mission for the duration of the campaign – in spite of the existing military capabilities resident in many NATO countries, but also in regard to widespread and heavy caveat-imposition among most of the allies within the NATO-led mission, directly against the wishes and advice of NATO and ISAF high command. As the years have passed and the caveat problem has intensified, NATO has also failed to achieve the total elimination of caveat constraints among the NATO nation contingents within the ISAF force, despite many determined efforts over the past decade.
Indeed, even with regard to solely the small group of eight NATO Lead Nations with lead command responsibilities and hefty force deployments within ISAF’s Regional Commands, NATO command has failed to achieve the elimination of national caveat constraints. The fact that NATO Lead Nations Italy and France continually resisted NATO pressure to eliminate their caveat restraints until mid-2009 – eight years into the mission and a full two-and-a-half years after NATO leadership and ISAF commanders argued this elimination was critical for success – is a telling indication of this. So also is the fact that NATO nations Germany, Turkey, Spain and Greece have remained obstinate caveat-imposing TCNs for the duration of the mission even up to the present day – a period of more than 12 full years – in spite of, and in defiance of, NATO leadership over the mission.
It is clear that NATO’s power of persuasion has been insufficient for the demands of ISAF leadership: the free, sovereign will of member-nations, enshrined in the NATO Charter, has repeatedly trumped the requests and needs of NATO command. The NATO allies have failed to act in a collective, unified manner on this important issue, thereby revealing that the national political interests of NATO member-nations are in reality overriding – and even obstructing – the needs and interests of the NATO organisation, as well as the ISAF military campaign to secure and stabilise Afghanistan.
The Use of Lethal Force
Secondly, as similarly highlighted within the UN during the diplomatic Iraq Crisis of 2002-2003, when the Security Council became starkly divided over the issue of whether, and when, lethal military force ought to be employed against Iraq after a decade of non-compliance with UNSC Resolutions, the ISAF mission has exposed a fundamental divide amongst NATO-members with regard to the general use of lethal force by national armed forces against anti-Government insurgent forces in Afghanistan. Within the ISAF operation, this divide has become especially visible between ISAF TCNs the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and a number of small Eastern European nations such as Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia on the one hand, and a large group of principal Western European NATO nations on the other hand, which includes ISAF TCNs Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey. On-the-ground in Afghanistan, this fundamental division on the use of lethal force has manifested itself most demonstrably in the form of the burden-sharing crisis, whereby the latter group of NATO nations have over many successive years objected to participating in robust security operations and any use of force in an offensive capacity, including through combat, counter-terrorist and counter-narcotics operations against insurgents.
Offensive Combat Operations
Thirdly, the lack of unity and solidarity existing between NATO contingents within the ISAF mission has been driven particularly by the irresponsible positions taken on combat against anti-Government Enemy forces, by a large number of continental European nations and NATO-members – principally Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Spain and Greece. As McNamara has concluded:
For too long, ISAF has been short-changed militarily and politically by Continental Europe. The United States and the United Kingdom have been forced to shoulder an unfair share of the burden for the mission in Afghanistan, losing disproportionate amounts of blood and treasure…Several Continental allies have hidden behind pretexts and excuses, forcing other members to carry unfair shares of the burden. Since the beginning of the Afghan campaign in 2001, the United States and the United Kingdom have committed disproportionate amounts of blood and treasure to uprooting radical extremism at its source, taking the fight to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain can no longer hide behind political pusillanimity or stall for time.[17]
In this sense, the so-called ‘leap of faith’ taken by the United States in handing security responsibility for Afghanistan to a multinational coalition involving a preponderance of European nations – a decision made for various reasons, including heavy engagement in the Iraq War (in fact NATO’s only experience in conducting security missions has occurred at the behest of the United States, in Kosovo, Serbia and Afghanistan) – has not been well rewarded.[18]
A Fractured, Multi-tiered Alliance
Fourthly, this fundamental division within NATO on the use of force and combat, played out so visibly within the Afghan mission, has had the effect of fracturing the NATO alliance itself into fighting and non-fighting factions. At NATO meetings in both February and April of 2008, two years after the burden-sharing inequality for combat operations had become evident within the mission, NATO officials warned that such an on-going divide on the use of force within the mission risked splitting NATO into a ‘two-tier Alliance’.[19] However, these warnings went unheeded and by 2009, the disconcerting prospect had become a reality. British Defence Secretary, John Hutton, subsequently publicly blasted the continental European allies for failing to ‘step up to the plate’, stating that: ‘Freeloading on the back of US military security is not an option if we wish to be equal partners in this transatlantic alliance. Anyone who wants to benefit from collective security must be prepared to share the ultimate price’.[20] It has even been suggested, further, that the combat impasse in Afghanistan has created a ‘multi-tiered alliance’, based on the degree of risk that NATO members are willing to expose their forces to in the course of their operations in Afghanistan.[21]
A Re-Evaluation of ‘Allies’
Fifthly, this debilitating fragmentation of NATO during the course of prosecuting the Afghan mission has caused a re-evaluation of both the integrity and reliability of certain NATO allies, especially those with long-standing membership in comparison to relatively new members. This reassessment has been driven by the striking paradox within the ISAF whereby the smaller, poorer NATO nations with small militaries are proving to be better and truer allies with respect to combat operations, than their larger, wealthier and more militarily-capable counterparts. These small allied nations have included Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Even Georgia, a non-NATO nation aspiring to join NATO and enter the membership action phase, has proved a better ‘ally’ in Afghanistan in this sense, than many of NATO’s confirmed, permanent members. To illustrate the point, Georgia has recently taken security responsibility for the volatile Helmand Province, with thousands of Georgian combat forces currently filling the security gap left by the Dutch and the Canadians after their precipitous, but well-earned, withdrawals from the mission.[22] In so doing, this small country has made a gesture never made by principal NATO nations Germany, France, Italy and Turkey in over 12 years of engagement in the Afghan mission. Despite this act of good faith, however, NATO recently announced in June that Georgia will be denied the opportunity to formally begin the membership process via MAP at the upcoming summit in the United Kingdom during September 2014.[23]
This raises the important and inescapable question for large NATO nations like the United States, Canada and Britain: Who are the ‘real’ allies within the collective-security alliance? The willingness of small Eastern European nations in this group ‘to do their fair share’ in Afghanistan, and thereby side with countries the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada on the combat issue, suggests new developments may be afoot for the NATO alliance. Indeed, as McNamara has expressed, this new reality presents an opportunity for the smaller and newer members of the alliance ‘to take the initiative within the alliance and shape their standing within NATO’. [24]
Insufficient Political Will
Sixth, this research has shown that, across the board, insufficient political will to achieve mission success in Afghanistan has been prevalent amongst most of the NATO members engaged in the mission. This is in spite of the fact that the ISAF mission is NATO’s most important military undertaking to date and critical for its transformation in the current security climate. It has been this lack of true political will within many NATO nations that has led to such widespread caveat imposition on national forces. Widespread caveat-imposition, in turn, has generated the negative cycle of caveat ineffectiveness within the Afghan mission, described in Chapter 15, which has year-by-year jeopardized the success of the entire mission.
Indeed, the downward caveat-generated trajectory has led to accusations of NATO nations ‘flag-flying’ in Afghanistan, whereby national forces have been deployed to the Afghan theatre for ulterior political motives rather than for any genuine commitment to the success of the Afghan campaign itself. These ulterior motivations include: (1) the desire to maintain good relations with the U.S.; (2) the fact that many nations are duty-bound to contribute to the mission as members of NATO; and (3) the wish to provide a public sign of national commitment to the fight against international terrorism. Ironically, the shortage of true political will for the success of the mission amongst the ISAF TCNs, resulting in the half-hearted commitment so visibly exemplified by the caveat fetters, has actually harmed all three of these underlying agendas: (1) relations between heavily-caveated nations and the U.S. have deteriorated over the issue; (2) the NATO organisation has been clearly divided into two or more ‘tiers’ of nations based on their willingness and capability to engage in combat; and (3) the Afghan mission – once described by COMISAF David Richards as the ‘front line against terror’ – has been seriously hindered, not least by the loss of two-and-a-half years of progress.[25]
NATO’s Loss of Credibility
Seventh, NATO has, not surprisingly, lost a great deal of credibility over the caveat issue in Afghanistan. Just as the UN was discredited in the eyes of many over the interpretation of ‘all necessary means’ and the onset of the 2003 Iraq War, NATO too has shared the same fate with regard to the Afghan War, having substantially lost kudos and international standing as a result of its Afghan struggles.
In fact, the whole caveat crisis in Afghanistan suggests that traditional recourse to collective decision-making and action, via the ‘multilateral approach’ in times of conflict, may have suffered as a result of this persistent operational malady. In the future, when the necessity for war arises, large countries like America and Britain – and even smaller ones like the Netherlands, Croatia, Latvia and Estonia – may prefer to take the ‘coalition of the willing’ route, rather than that of established institutions like NATO or the UN in which they hold membership. Indeed, as early as 2008, this was the prognosis made by the U.S. which warned that NATO failure in Afghanistan could in future render nations less likely to turn to NATO in times of crisis, leading to a ‘moribund Alliance…reduced to geopolitical irrelevancy and marginalization’.[26] Ad hoc coalitions, whereby military campaigns are waged by select countries that can be trusted to exhibit full political and military commitment to the success of a military campaign, may well be the way of the future for several large NATO nations and a preferable option to intra-NATO squabbles and politicking.
One outcome of this loss of credibility is certain – America’s relationship with and reliance on the NATO Alliance has been materially damaged. As U.S. Defence Secretary Gates stated emphatically in 2011, America’s engagement with NATO faces a ‘dim, if not dismal’ future, particularly given the way in which European nations have shown themselves unable to go to war with the U.S. in a coherent way.[27] Indeed, according to Gates, NATO’s very viability is in question: (1) ‘weaknesses and failures’ have become evident with regard to both Afghanistan and Libya; (2) there is a shortage of political will and an abundance of penny-pinching among its members; (3) and many of the allies have proved ‘unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense’.[28] ‘To avoid the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance, member nations must examine new approaches to boosting combat capabilities,’ Gates concluded. ‘Emotional and historical attachment [to NATO] is aging out…The drift of the past 20 years can’t continue’.[29]
Questioning NATO Ambitions
Eighth, there exists a contradictory mis-match between NATO’s political goals and the political will and momentum amongst its members to attain these goals. As one commentator concluded in 2009, with regard to NATO’s ambition to be the ‘Preeminent Transatlantic Security Institution’ in the domain of world security: ‘The crux of NATO’s operational problems is that its ambition outstrips its political will’.[30] NATO’s lofty rhetoric is not being matched by practical, concrete realities on the ground. This contradictory position is being driven by one fundamental and important source: public opinion against involvement in conflict theatres within the NATO countries. More specifically, this concerns modern attitudes within the current generation with regard to: (1) war and the use of force generally by national military personnel; and (2) sustaining casualties from military enterprises conducted to ensure national security.
According to Barno, the prevailing myth within modern society today is that war is – or ought to be – ‘bloodless’.[31] This attitude has been brought about by the military technological revolution that in its early phases caused the quick and decisive victories seen in the Gulf War of the early 1990s, and led to false expectations that common security objectives can be attained rapidly at a minimum or near negligible cost to national lives and treasure. However, this attitude is an ‘historical anomaly’ compared with any other era in human history.[32] Wars are never bloodless, even in the modern era. Moreover, the reality is that, despite climbing casualty figures in Afghanistan, total military fatality rates in Afghanistan are relatively small in comparison with the numbers killed in other campaigns such as in both World Wars, the Korean War or even the Vietnam War. To exemplify the point with reference solely to American military fatalities, the United States sustained a total of 2,156 fatalities in Afghanistan over the period 2001-2012, in contrast to a total of 36,574 fatalities during the Korean War (1950-1953), and a total of 58,220 fatalities during the Vietnam War (1964-1973) (see endnote for total non-U.S. figures).[33] Indeed, Barno considers the current generation to be ‘extraordinarily lucky’ to have sustained such comparatively small casualty rates overall in the Afghan War, a war that has now been prosecuted for over 12 years.[34]
A recent UN report has also underscored this problematic modern attitude towards the use of force in a study of the deportment of UN forces in eight current UN operations around the globe. The report found that many nations contributing peace-keepers to the mission considered the risk of the operation to their forces to be ‘higher than they would accept’, and consequently absolutely prohibited their forces from ever taking recourse to the use of force.[35] Other nations have made the use of force a ‘paper option’, constraining their troops with ‘operational and political constraints’ – that is, national caveats – that have been ‘at odds with their legal authority and mandate to act’.[36] Even where nations have allowed their forces to use force in the protection of civilians, moreover, the report found that UN personnel intervened in only 20 percent of the attacks on civilians (101 of 507 incidents), being predominantly either ‘unable or unwilling to prevent serious physical harm from being inflicted’.[37] Even in cases of intervention, however, UN forces were motivated to use force primarily in the interest of either their own self-defence or the protection of UN personnel and property, rather than purely that of providing protection for the civilians themselves. [38]
At the national political level, this prevailing attitude within modern society towards military personnel ‘dying for one’s country’ in the line of fire is problematic for any multinational military campaign involving the use of force against Enemies. The by-product – heavily-caveated national combat forces – is indicative of two-mindedness, whereby nations are committed to a certain objective in the interests of their own security, yet are not necessarily willing nor prepared to pay the price to achieve it. Germany – the strictest and most notorious caveat imposing nation within the ISAF – is a case in point in this regard. In fact, in 2008 one German politician went so far as to state that the very prospect of German military personnel ‘killing and being killed’ could put the whole German deployment to Afghanistan at risk (see endnote for an overview of new developments with respect to this traditional German stance).[39]
The crisis over caveat-imposition within the ISAF mission is the inevitable outcome of such a prevailing view, what Hunter has described as a full-scale clash between ‘the need for tactical flexibility’ in Afghanistan and the preeminent ‘desire of allies to limit casualties’.[40] Indeed, it is aversion to casualties that is at the heart of the caveat problem – an aversion brought about by a shortage in political will or fortitude to sustain casualties in the course of achieving necessary security goals. One is reminded of the old adage: ‘He who dares wins, He who hesitates… is lost’. It is also this single truth that has fed into the controversial burden-sharing crisis within NATO, which, as described above, has divided the alliance into two or more distinct factions. Nations contributing to the ISAF mission have simply not been willing to deploy their forces to regions of Afghanistan where the potential for casualties of war has been high. Widespread aversion to casualties among the ISAF coalition members have forced a small group of more willing and self-sacrificial nations to bear a disproportionate cost in lives lost amongst their military personnel, in order to achieve the collective mission objective of security and stability in Afghanistan. Amongst the military forces of this small group of nations, anger, resentment, bitterness and a sense of betrayal have risen correspondingly to climbing casualty figures.
NATO’s Uncertain Future
Ninth, as a direct consequence, this research concludes that the future of NATO is at risk. At the end of the Cold War when Russian geo-political designs – which had once been the key catalyst in the creation and cohesion of NATO – were no-longer considered to pose a real threat, NATO’s purpose was thrown into question. It became clear that for NATO to maintain its relevance it had to adapt itself to the new intra-state security threats to international stability, including a capacity to conduct expeditionary operations out of its traditional trans-Atlantic AO.[41] In this sense, NATO’s involvement in the genocidal civil wars in Bosnia and Kosovo helped to secure the organisation’s pivotal security role in European affairs, along with its transformation in the new and ever-globalising security environment.[42] As Warren states: ‘The Alliance showed resilience under strain…NATO was still the only guarantor of collective security for its members, and it felt intuitively comforting to keep this arrangement.’ [43]
However, NATO’s recent involvement in Afghanistan has told a different and disconcerting story, which has both exposed and underscored the lack of true allied solidarity and unity in the field. Caveats have crippled the mission, dividing the ISAF into ‘many hard-to-manage pieces’, and creating rancour and resentment between the allies.[44] The ISAF’s caveat affliction has cast grave doubt on the ability of NATO to be a truly effective expeditionary force with the capability for tackling new non-conventional threats to world security, including outside its traditional AO. It has also created uncertainty with regard to NATO’s ability to be an effective international peace and security operator in the modern security environment. Furthermore, the performance of NATO nations within the ISAF mission has placed question-marks over the real-life commitment of NATO nations to the foundational NATO principle of collective security, encapsulated by the maxim ‘all for one, and one for all’. In short, collective, unified action has not been visible on-the-ground in Afghanistan.
This misgiving with regard to NATO’s future is further amplified by the fact that even in other collective security missions prosecuted by NATO in recent years, the national caveat impediment and its resultant force divisions have continued to reappear. Simply stated, the national interests of NATO Member-States have continued to trump collective interests during on-the-ground security campaigns. In December 2008, for example, British defence officials reported with regard to NATO’s naval anti-piracy mission around Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, that the mission not only lacked sufficient numbers of ships, but also that disparate and clashing rules of engagement between NATO participating forces were creating additional difficulties.[45] In several cases, the officials reported, the mandates governing national naval forces were not appropriate for the task in hand.[46]
These divisions were even more visible during NATO’s involvement in Libya during the uprising there in 2011, an issue which created a controversial and very public fracas between principal NATO members the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Turkey over the extent of NATO’s involvement in the mission (this was in addition to heated disputes over what the mission objective should actually be). According to the Atlantic Council, an important factor adding to the contentious issue of whether NATO ought or ought not to take leadership command of the military operation there, was concern that ‘a NATO operation would limit the operational flexibility of commanders to execute the mission’.[47] In a word – caveats.
These NATO realities taken together suggest that NATO may soon be compelled to take an alternate route from its strategically planned agenda in terms of transforming its future role on the world stage to that of a security mission operator in ‘out-of-area’ operations. Indeed, due to these ongoing trans-Atlantic divisions, NATO may well be relegated to conducting ‘the softer kinds of roles’ such as more traditional peace-keeping operations and training missions, rather than overt COIN or war-fighting campaigns like that conducted under the NATO banner in Afghanistan.[48] The question is, what kind of instrument is NATO really in the security environment today? And what can this instrument be used for most effectively? Interestingly, this essential question – heightened so dramatically by the Afghan mission – was earlier raised by a journalist of the The Wall Street Journal in October 2004. As he then perceptively remarked:
Is NATO an appropriate instrument for tasks that resemble reconstruction, election-monitoring, police-like patrolling (as in Kabul), logistical support, and training constabulary-type Afghan troops? To be sure, such a mission is neither beyond NATO’s range, nor beyond NATO’s means. But is this the kind of mission that would demonstrate NATO’s continuing military ‘Relevance’? (This is the R-word in allied deliberations). In sum, such a mission would be neither A Bridge Too Far, nor a Mission Impossible, but it would become a Mission Irrelevant, if it is undertaken without adequate resources or political commitment [emphasis added].[49]
Unfortunately, it is the latter which has proven true within the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
New Exigencies: Russia & ISIS
Nevertheless, recent developments have highlighted the need for, and importance of, NATO within the current world security framework. In 2008 Russia – the old enemy against which the collective-security alliance was originally formed – reasserted itself as a force of aggression in Europe. Under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, Russia unilaterally invaded and annexed the province of South Ossetia in Georgia, the location of a Western-backed ‘Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan’ (BTC) oil pipeline pumping fuel from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean Sea by way of the Georgian Capital.[50] The international community did little either to prevent the annexation, or in later years to restore this stolen territory to Georgian sovereign control.
In a move strongly reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s National Socialist annexations in the late 1930s, Russia has in recent months mounted a second invasion into territory belonging to another Eastern European nation, this time the Crimean Province of the Ukraine, which is also the location of an important naval port on the Black Sea. Once again too, in a striking parallel to the pattern of German aggression in the 1930s, both of these territorial annexations in Georgia and in the Ukraine have been conducted by strategic Russia under the pretext of concern for ethnic minorities. In recent weeks, furthermore, U.S. and Ukrainian defence officials have found Russia complicit in shooting down at least five aircraft as they flew within Ukrainian airspace, among them four Ukrainian military aircraft operated by the Ukrainian military (one transport plane and three fighter jets), and also a civilian passenger airliner operated by Malaysia Airlines (killing all 298 people aboard).[51] These actions could well be considered ‘acts of war’ against the Ukraine.
Whatever the outcome of these alarming events, the rise of a newly aggressive Russia has called attention to NATO’s original purpose as a collective security organisation against Russian aggression, and once again highlights NATO’s continuing relevance and military importance for the defence of Europe – as well as the importance of ‘real’ combat-capable allies within the Alliance.
Further, new radical Islamist insurgencies have erupted in the Middle East, most notably and violently in Syria and Iraq. This development underscores once again the threat of Islamist extremism and terrorism to world stability and security. In particular, a radical Islamo-fascist terrorist group, known as ‘The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS), has been active in Syria and Iraq in seeking to establish a militant Islamic empire (or ‘caliphate’ under Sharia Law) that will straddle both countries. This is also one of the expressed goals of Al-Qaeda, which the latter has already attempted without success in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the years since 2001.
The violence and atrocities committed by the militant Islamist ISIS jihadists within Syria and Iraq has led to the displacement of millions of people within the region and to the destabilisation of neighbouring countries Lebanon and Jordan.[52] Indeed, the UN expects that Syria will soon become a divided, failed state like Somalia, to become another potential sanctuary for breeding and exporting Islamist terrorism.[53] In Iraq the threat is even more immediate: ISIS jihadists have seized two prominent northern Iraqi cities, Tal Afar and Mosul, killing thousands of Shi’ite Iraqi civilians in the process (including through grisly massacres and decapitations), and as of late June were poised to march on Baghdad in order to incorporate the Capital by force into its new Islamist empire within the Middle East.[54]
In fact, at the present time of writing, the ISIS jihadists control 90 full miles of territory that stretches across the Iraq border into Syria, territory that encompasses six Syrian oil and gas fields – the revenues of which will undoubtedly be used to fuel further bloody Islamist conquests within the region.[55] In having already attained its goal, the ISIS has in one sense already succeeded where Al-Qaeda has failed. This fact strongly suggests that the ISIS has become a more dangerous and threatening Enemy to world security and stability in recent years than even Al-Qaeda. In short, after achieving relative stability in the late 2000s, the Middle East has once again been reignited as an active theatre for forces of terror and Islamist extremism, thereby confirming Kilcullen’s arguments on the ‘global insurgency’. [56]
These events highlight the critical need for NATO to have at its disposal an effective COIN capacity among its member forces – and importantly, NATO forces free from the caveat fetters that have proven to be such visible and harmful impediments to success within the COIN campaign in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is of paramount importance in this now tense security landscape that NATO urgently and promptly addresses these divisive caveat and burden-sharing fissures relating to war-fighting, if it is to show true solidarity and collectivity at the critical hour.
Implications: Caveats & Future Academic Scholarship
Finally, this ISAF caveat study has revealed new possibilities for academic research on national caveats and their effects within MNOs.
Addressing the ‘Caveat Gap’ in Academic Scholarship
Firstly, the significantly large ‘caveat gap’ within academic literature, especially in the domain of Defence & Security Studies, needs to be more adequately and systematically addressed by defence scholars. In terms of caveat theory, for instance, there needs to be a more rigorous examination of rules of engagement in themselves, and the role of caveats within these rules, especially in regard to the way in which caveats impact on and impede ‘mission accomplishment’ rules. In addition, further caveat-related research needs to be undertaken in this important area in relation to the general effects or outcomes of national caveat imposition within multinational security operations.
The Need for Benchmarks in Future MNOs
Secondly, the ISAF mission suggests that closer attention must be paid to the ‘all welcome’ approach often employed in the organisation of a coalition to conduct a collective, multinational military campaign. This approach has not proved conducive to an effective or successful operation in Afghanistan. In short, national caveats within the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan have hindered the ISAF security and stability mission, helped the Enemy, hurt the ISAF coalition, and seriously harmed NATO. This unhappy scenario well illustrates the dangers of ad hoc coalitions as an instrument in the serious enterprise of warfare, even when this coalition is subordinated under the leadership of a more permanent entity or organisation like NATO.
The caveat situation in Afghanistan has been allowed to develop in part by the failure of NATO to enforce ‘benchmarks’ – qualifying restrictions or criteria – for nations joining the ISAF as force contributing nations. The consequences of this permissive and rather unwise approach is clear – a quarter of the entire ISAF force has been constrained from conducting the full range of tasks expected from them by the COMISAF for over a decade of warfare. Thousands of deployed ISAF military forces have been compromised by their government-imposed caveats. The case of the ISAF mission strongly suggests the need for greater selectivity in the coalition-forming process with regard to all multinational missions in future years. Future coalitions of the willing need to be assembled more selectively, on the basis of the willingness of nations to allow their military forces to engage in offensive warfare. Some offers of military assistance may need to be rejected at the outset, in order to avoid the problems so clearly visible within the assorted, militarily unbalanced and dis-unified ISAF coalition of the willing in Afghanistan.
In particular, the research underscores the importance of global PSO operators setting benchmarks for nations wishing to contribute forces to future MNOs, whereby nations are admitted to an operational coalition based on their willingness and capability to allow national forces to conduct a list of required tasks. This is an idea advocated by Barno, as a senior U.S. Army commander with experience conducting tens of thousands of international military forces. As he explains in his own words:
One of the going-in positions should be: any nation that signs up for this will permit their soldiers to do the following, you know, 25 things – that’s the benchmark for entering this operation. If you’re going to contribute troops, your troops can do all 25 of these tasks. If they can’t, they don’t come. End of story.[57]
It might even be possible to set a ‘no-caveat’ ban as one of the operational requirements during this coalition-assembling stage of a MNO, thereby removing altogether in one fell swoop the problematic issue of military forces bound by national caveat prohibitions and limitations from future international security campaigns.
If selective criteria are not employed during the assembling stage of international coalitions, and as a result caveat-imposing nations are permitted to join a MNF, then at a bare minimum governments contributing forces to a MNO should be required to: (1) impose only written national caveats that have been officially documented in their ROE, rather than unwritten de facto restrictions; and (2) officially and fully declare their national caveats to the commanding body of the operation at the very start of the mission, thereby avoiding the secrecy and caveat knowledge-gaps that are so harmful for the planning and execution of operations on the ground within the mission.
Caveat Coping Strategies
Thirdly, the alarming caveat-generated reality within the ISAF also points to another important area for consideration by military practitioners and scholars. Namely, in cases where benchmarks or criteria have not existed to govern TCN force contributions from the outset, what steps can and must be taken within a pre-existing multinational mission, when members of the coalition of the willing prove substantially unwilling to conduct the hardest but most essential military tasks, and then reinforce this position by heavy-handed imposition of national caveat restrictions on their forces? More generally, furthermore, what coping strategies can and must be devised to better manage and mitigate the negative caveat effects within international security missions today, given the now prevalent norm of caveat-imposition by national governments contributing forces to MNOs? This will require some hard thinking on the part of political leaders and strategic military commanders, ideally to occur in the planning phase of any multinational mission rather than, as has occurred in Kosovo and Afghanistan, as an unplanned, reactive process.
Command Design & C²
Fourthly, the ISAF’s caveat problem also reveals the need for a re-examination of the politico-security arrangements made, and the command design selected, during the pre-deployment stage of planned MNOs. This research suggests that a multi-parallel Lead Nation design may not be the optimal choice of command structure, in cases where those Lead Nations are likely or inclined to impose caveat restraints on their national forces. In such a scenario, caveats will inhibit the Lead Nation’s ability to show leadership, especially in terms of security tasking along the security LOO within the mission. It seems that a more centralised command design – and one which firmly establishes unity of command under the Operational Commander – may be a more highly preferable option in attaining improved operational effectiveness within future multinational campaigns.
In addition, rigorous analysis might also be conducted with regard to the effects of national caveats on C² within MNOs, for instance with regard to MNOs other than the ISAF mission, in order to clarify further the full range of effects generally caused by TCN caveat imposition on the command and control of multinational forces, at the strategic, operational and tactical levels.
Unity of Effort & the Principles of War
Fifthly, the criticality of ‘unity of effort’ within multinational missions, combined with the overriding predominance of the multilateral warfare format within the international system, suggests the need for a re-evaluation of the traditional Principles of War guiding armed conflict in the current security environment. Heretofore, unity of command has featured largely in discourse on the military principles of war, the latter being predominantly oriented towards conventional means of warfare. This has caused substantial neglect of the critical principle of ‘unity of effort’ within non-conventional military campaigns – the outcome of unity of command and/or cooperation, coordination and consensus. Indeed, inadequate attention has been paid in the academic sphere to: (1) the centrality of unity of effort to the success of multinational security endeavours; and (2) the reality that unity of command and cooperation, coordination and consensus within MNOs are both means by which this essential unity of effort and action towards collective goals may be fostered towards mission success within MNOs.
Numerous studies over the last 20 years have advocated the need for the addition of a further principle of war to the standard list – that of ‘unity of effort’. Though the terminology for this concept has varied – appearing alternatively as ‘flexibility’, ‘unity of effect’, ‘cooperation’ as well as ‘unity of effort’ per se – each of these studies essentially amount to the same thing: the fundamental and universal principle of unity of effort is currently missing from modern military lists, despite the criticality of unity of effort for attaining operational effectiveness in both unilateral and multilateral forms of modern warfare, and within the context of both conventional and non-conventional war.[58] Indeed, the present research has demonstrated that unity of effort has been critical for success within the ISAF Afghan mission. It follows that the principle is also fundamental for the success of all military campaigns, no-matter the design, command framework or objective of the mission. This suggests that a new re-evaluation of the principles of war is both required and well overdue.
ISAF: Caveated Lead Nations & their Regional Commands
This research is the first academic endeavour to systematically address the extent of the issue of national caveat imposition within the NATO-led ISAF mission, and its tangibly negative effects on both security operations and overall operational effectiveness within the mission. However, many gaps remain with regard to caveats and the Afghan mission specifically, which were beyond the scope of the present research. Therefore, sixth, further analysis of the ISAF’s caveat issue with regard to the various TCN contingents would be valuable, especially with regard to Lead Nation caveats and their effects on: firstly, subordinate supporting nations; and secondly, on the overall security diminutions within each of the ISAF mission Regional Commands over the years 2006-2012. Furthermore, analysis of the tangible effects of caveat-removal or caveat-elimination by Lead Nations within the security sphere, which examines improvements in combat capability and flexibility in creating and maintaining security – especially with regard to the Netherlands in RC-South from 2006-2012 and Italy in RC-West from 2009-2012 –would be a further valuable line of enquiry.
ISAF: Reasons for ISAF Caveat-Imposition
Seventh, the relationship between politics and security affairs suggests another area of exploration in future research in this domain of national caveats. An investigation of the political, military, historical and domestic social factors that have influenced decisions by national governments to impose the caveat fetters on their national forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere seems especially of value. In particular, a study of these factors in relation to the NATO allies and ISAF Lead Nations Germany, Turkey, Italy and France, which have each been so uncompromising on the caveat issue over many successive years, would be highly insightful (especially with regard to France and Italy which, despite these influences, nevertheless altered their position to become caveat-free within the ISAF during 2009).
Auerswald & Saideman have recently begun pioneering analysis along this vein of thought within the domain of Political Science, by undertaking an investigation of the political sources of the various national caveats imposed on Canadian, French and German national contingents within the ISAF operation. They propose that political institutions within the three countries under examination (i.e. coalition, presidential and majoritarian parliamentary governments) offer a better explanation for these nations’ observed behaviour of caveat-imposition within the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, than other earlier explanations focusing on public opinion, threat perception or military strategic culture.[59]
Since, as shown by this research, political will seems in fact to be the real bottom-line in the decision to impose or not to impose national caveats on national ISAF contributions, which also simultaneously generates the ‘cycle of caveat ineffectiveness’ identified and described in Chapter 15, a political study that traces levels of political will and commitment to the Afghan mission alongside their record of caveat-imposition, removal and elimination would also be a worthy enterprise.
ISAF: Caveats & COIN Warfare
Eighth, more comprehensive research needs to be undertaken with regard to the relationship between caveats and COIN within the ISAF mission. As shown in this research, national caveat imposition within the ISAF has gone a long way in undermining the effective prosecution of COIN in Afghanistan, actually serving to invert COIN theory by losing – rather than winning – the support of the local Afghan populace to the ISAF cause and the central Afghan government. A more thorough COIN-focused study that would highlight national caveat pitfalls with respect to COIN would prove useful in future multinational COIN campaigns. Indeed, in light of the ‘global insurgency’ described by Kilcullen, and the reality of Islamist insurgencies occurring in multiple global theatres today in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, the Sudan and even Nigeria, new COIN-oriented multinational military operations may soon become necessary in future years.
Other MNOs: Potential Caveat Case-Studies
Finally, other multinational missions are also worthy of academic caveat examination and analysis, in particular the caveat-related incidents that occurred during: the UNAVEM II operation in Angola (1992); the UNPROFOR operation in Bosnia (1992); the UNAMIR operation in Rwanda (1994); the UNTAET operation in East Timor (2000); and finally, the KFOR operation in Kosovo (2004).
The need for greater attention to the caveat impediment within international security missions is amplified by the recent, ground-breaking ruling by the Netherland’s Supreme Court in September 2013 that the Dutch government must pay compensation to surviving family members of three victims of the Srebrenica massacre, who were slaughtered when Dutch peace-keeping forces – bound by strict caveat restraints – failed to protect them within the Dutch designated safe-haven during the Bosnian mission in 1995.[60] This historic ruling has set a new precedent whereby nations that have contributed forces to international security missions – present or historic – may be legally and financially held accountable and liable for the misconduct of their deployed forces and overall ‘failure to protect’ during these multinational missions. If legal action was taken with regard to caveated-forces within the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan, financial penalties could be hefty for a large number of countries, especially Germany. Interestingly, since November 2006 when the Dutch government eliminated its caveats from its ISAF contingent, Dutch military forces in Afghanistan have been given great freedom and flexibility – even to the point of being enabled to engage in counter-terrorist operations and to kill terrorists outright on sight.[61] The lesson of Srebrenica had perhaps not taken full effect within the Dutch government until this point of time during the Afghan campaign.
Investigations also need to be carried out not only with regard to the issue of caveat imposition in itself within these MNOs, moreover, but also in relation to inappropriate mandate design at both the international and national level for the mission in hand. Dame Margaret Joan Anstee, the UN Special Representative and Head of Mission in Angola who survived the 1992-1993 security disaster that followed the break-down of the Angolan Peace Process, has argued exactly this point.[62] In her book, Orphan of the Cold War, Anstee argues that the negotiation of a mandate may well be a masterpiece of diplomacy, but it serves no purpose if it is not workable on the ground.[63] Further examination of mandate design – including rules of engagement – within multinational security missions must be properly and rigorously undertaken in the academic domain, for the benefit of future policy-makers and operational planners in both the political and military spheres.
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, there has been an enduring sensitivity and resistance, over the past two decades, to examining and discussing the issue of caveat imposition and its detrimental effects within multinational security operations on the part of many national governments within the international community. This widespread unwillingness to examine the impact of national caveats on operational effectiveness within MNOs has directly led to the caveat-generated stalemate within the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan, a situation that has resulted in a range of negative effects for the success of the mission over the past decade from 2002-2012. Effort has been wasted, time has been lost, progress has been delayed, COIN has been compromised, and military and civilian casualties have increased as a result of this network of ISAF national caveats. Both unity of effort within the ISAF force, and the resultant operational effectiveness of the mission, have been seriously undermined by the presence of national forces fettered by government-imposed caveat restrictions, leading to the delayed attainment of mission objectives and the poor prosecution of COIN. These findings do not bode well for the success of the ISAF mission.
Despite the overwhelmingly negative effects that national caveats have generated within the ISAF mission, restrictive rules of engagement have already reappeared in other MNOs around the world, most notably within NATO missions in Somalia and Libya in recent years. National caveats are also expected to be imposed by national governments on forces yet to be deployed to Afghanistan to conduct the post-ISAF mission ‘Resolute Support’ in 2015.
It seems obvious that unless this thorny issue of national caveats is dealt with properly within the international community, and avoidance, management and compensatory coping strategies formulated within security institutions in direct response to this Afghan caveat crisis, national caveat imposition will continue to be seen as a viable option for sovereign governments deploying national forces to future multinational military operations, whether under the NATO, UN or other organisational banner. It is highly likely that national caveats will continue to hamper security operations during future decades of multinational warfare. The same symptoms of disunity of effort observed within the ISAF mission in Afghanistan – namely, unfair burden-sharing and operational ineffectiveness, along with resultant deleterious security ramifications for both military personnel and the local civilian population – will consequently continue to emerge within future international security missions, wherever they take place around the world.
In short, there is a desperate need for this issue of national caveats to be openly and frankly addressed within the military sphere, and for this neglected but critical area for MNO effectiveness to be examined more rigorously by both academic scholars and military practitioners. This thesis is intended as the first contribution to this important field of study, and it is hoped that other such caveat-focused research undertakings will follow, in relation to the ISAF as well as other multinational security campaigns – past, present and future.
One thing is abundantly clear: if this important issue of national caveats within MNOs is not promptly and properly addressed by defence scholars, future caveat-generated calamities are highly like to reoccur within other international campaigns in future years, with potentially drastic and unforeseeable consequences for international security in the modern era.
* For more information on the extent and impact of national caveats on the NATO-led ISAF Operation in Afghanistan, see Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices (including ISAF national caveat lists), which can be freely viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984
Endnotes:
[1] King Solomon the Wise, Book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
[2] Pierre Servent, a well-known French military commander, military strategist, author and journalist.
[3] L. Jacobson, ‘U.S. had some success in curbing restrictions, but point is mostly moot now’, Tampa Bay Times, 14 January 2013, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/164/work-to-end-nato-restrictions-on-forces-in-afghani/, (accessed 23 March 2013).
[4] Ibid.
[5] United States Department of Defense (U.S. DoD), The Pentagon, Report on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan’, Report to Congress in accordance with section 1230 of the National Defence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (Public Law 110-181), as amended and section 1221 of the National Defense Authorizations Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Public Law 112-81), December 2012, p. 16, from http://www.defense.gov/news/1230_Report_final.pdf, (accessed 14 January 2013).
[6] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 26 August 2010, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Washington D.C., United States.
[7] G.W. Bush, Decision Points, New York, Crown Publishers, 2010, p. 212; S. Sloan, ‘NATO in Afghanistan’, UNISCI Discussion Papers, Redalyc,Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Espana/University of Madrid, no.22, (Enero-sin mes/January-March) 2010, pp. 51-52.
[8] K. Roberts, ‘Gates asks European armies to push politicians on NATO’, Reuters, 25 October 2007, http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL25597869, (accessed 18 November 2009); Pessin, ‘Gates Blasts NATO Members’ Afghan Policies’, VOA News, 25 October 2007 http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-10/2007-10-25.html, (accessed 18 November 2009).
[9] U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (U.S. CIA), ‘Afghanistan’, CIA – The World Factbook, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html, (accessed 8 July 2014).
[10] H. Cooper, ‘Hard Talk Aside, Little Desire by the West to Leave Afghanistan’, New York Times, 26 February 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/world/asia/hard-talk-aside-little-desire-by-west-to-leave-afghanistan.html?_r=0, (accessed 28 February 2014).
[11] ‘Bomb blast hits Afghanistan on security handover day’, Deutsche Welle, 18 June 2013, www.dw.de/bomb-blast-hits-afghanistan-on-security-handover-day/a-16888374, (accessed 24 June 2013).
[12] J. Donati & H. Shalizi, ‘Kabul’s Serena Hotel Attacked by Gunmen’, Huffington Post, 20 March 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/kabul-serena-hotel-attack_n_5001566.html, (accessed 8 July 2014); ‘Taliban launch rocket attack on Kabul fuel tankers’, BBC News, 5 July 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28173990 (accessed 8 July 2014); Q. Sediqi & J. Mullen, ‘16 killed in Taliban suicide attack in Kabul’, CNN.com, 2 July 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/02/world/asia/afghanistan-violence/ (accessed 8 July 2014).
[13] C. J. Williams, ‘Scores dead as Taliban wages offensive in southern Afghanistan’, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2014, http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-afghanistan-taliban-offensive-20140625-story.html (accessed 25 June 2014).
[14] Cited in H. Cooper, ‘Hard Talk Aside, Little Desire by the West to Leave Afghanistan’, op. cit.
[15] Cited in H. Cooper, ‘Hard Talk Aside, Little Desire by the West to Leave Afghanistan’, ibid.
[16] ‘Afghanistan failure would give al-Qaeda free run, warns Nato head’, The Telegraph (U.K.), 21 July 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/5876339/Afghanistan-failure-would-give-al-Qaeda-free-run-warns-Nato-head.html, (accessed 5 June 2014).
[17] S. McNamara, ‘Backgrounder #2347: NATO Allies in Europe Must Do More in Afghanistan’, The Heritage Foundation, 3 December 2009, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/12/nato-allies-in-europe-must-do-more-in-afghanistan, (accessed 26 July 2010).
[18] P. Wells, ‘NATO Getting Jittery over Canada, Netherlands Leaving Afghanistan’, Maclean’s Magazine (Canada), 6 August 2007, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/macleans/nato-jittery-over-canada-netherlands-leaving-afghanistan, (accessed 4 August 2010).
[19] United Kingdom House of Commons (U.K. Hoc), Defence Committee, The Future of NATO and European Defence, Ninth Report of Session 2007-2008, 20 March 2008, p. 28, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdfence/111/111.pdf, (accessed 31 January 2013).
[20] United Kingdom House of Commons (U.K. HoC), C. Taylor, ‘SN/IA/5227 Military Campaign in Afghanistan’, International Affairs and Defence Section, U.K. House of Commons Library, 14 July 2010, p. 11, http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn05227.pdf, (accessed 17 January 2013).
[21] Sloan, ‘NATO in Afghanistan’, op. cit.
[22] A. J. Rubin & T. Shah, ‘Taliban Attack Kills 7 Georgian Soldiers in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 7 June 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/world/asia/taliban-attack-base-guarded-by-georgians-in-afghanistan.html, (accessed 14 June 2013).
[23] A. Croft, ‘NATO will not offer Georgia membership step, avoiding Russia clash’, Reuters.com, 25 June 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/25/us-nato-enlargement-idUSKBN0F00IJ20140625, (accessed 8 July 2014).
[24] McNamara, ‘Backgrounder #2347: NATO Allies in Europe Must Do More in Afghanistan’, op. cit.
[25] D. Richards, ‘NATO in Afghanistan – Transformation on the Front Line’, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal, vol. 151, no.10-14, (August) 2006, p. 13.
[26] U.K. HoC, The Future of NATO and European Defence, Ninth Report of Session 2007-2008, op. cit., p. 29.
[27] ‘Gates: NATO Alliance ‘Dim, If Not Dismal’ (VIDEO)’, Huffington Post, 10 June 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/10/gates-nato-alliance-dim-i_n_874715.html, (accessed 5 June 2014).
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] A. de Borchgrave, ‘Commentary: NATO Caveats’, United Press International (UPI),10 July 2009, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2009/07/10/Commentary-NATO-caveats/UPI-47311247244125/, (accessed 7 October 2009); U.S. Embassy Vilnius (released by Wikileaks), Cable 06VILNIUS1032, Lithuania Looks Towards Riga Summit, 16 November 2006, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2006/11/06VILNIUS1032.html, (accessed 12 July 2012).
[31] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 26 August 2010, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Washington D.C., United States.
[32] Ibid.
[33] United States Library of Congress, S. G. Chesser, ‘Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians’, Congressional Research Service, 6 December 2012, pp. 1-2, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41084.pdf, (accessed 1 May 2015); United States Library of Congress, N. F. DeBruyne & A. Leland, ‘American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics’, Congressional Research Service, 2 January 2015, pp. 3, 9-10, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf, (accessed 1 May 2015).
These strikingly disparate numbers are also reflected in non-U.S. fatality rates during these wars. For example, excluding all American fatalities, there have been 1,059 coalition fatalities in Afghanistan over the period 2001-2012. In contrast, the UN coalition sustained a total of approximately 64,700 fatalities during the Korean War, excluding all American fatalities, over a three-year period between 1950-1953 (United States Library of Congress, S. G. Chesser, ibid., pp. 1-2; J. W. Chambers II, ‘Korean War’, The Oxford Companion to American Military History, 2000, Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Korean_War.aspxEncyclopedia.com, (accessed 1 May 2015)).
[35] M. Nichols, ‘U.N. study finds peacekeepers avoid using force to protect civilians’, Reuters.com, 16 May 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/16/us-un-peacekeepers-civilians-idUSBREA4F0M220140516 (accessed 17 May 2014).
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] U.S. Embassy Berlin (released by Wikileaks), 08BERLIN1542, Germany Remains Stubborn On MAP And Additional Troops For Afghanistan, 14 November 2008, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/11/08BERLIN1542.html, (accessed 11 July 2011).
It is interesting to note, however, that in 2014 attitudes within the German government have begun to change with regard to Germany’s obligations to world security. Reappointed German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and new Minister of Defence, Ursula von der Leyen (the first female in German history to head the German Defence Ministry) have this year begun advocating an end to the ‘mantra of “restraint”’ advocated for German forces by Merkel’s former Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle. Both Ministers have rejected this ideology, which many have regarded as ‘Germany shirking their global responsibilities given its pivotal position at the heart of Europe’. Von der Leyen wishes Germany to become ‘a framework nation’ and is promoting a greater role for German national forces in military interventions in accordance with the principle of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’. German commitments on the world stage must ‘come earlier and be more decisive and substantial’, Von der Leyen has argued. ‘Indifference is not an option for Germany…Germany can’t look away when murder and rape are taking place daily’ (Cited in D.W. Wise, ‘Germany’s New Hawks’, RealClearWorld, 6 February 2014, http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/02/06/germanys_new_hawks.html (accessed 9 February 2014).
[40] R. E. Hunter, ‘NATO Caveats Can Be Made To Work Better for the Alliance’, European Affairs, vol. 9, no. 1-2, (Winter/Spring) 2008, http://www.europeaninstitute.org, (accessed 17 May 2011).
[41] T. D. Warren, ‘ISAF and Afghanistan: The Impact of Failure on NATO’s Future’, Joint Forces Quarterly, vol. 59, (4th quarter) 2010, http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/images/jfq-59/JFQ59_45-51_Warren.pdf, (accessed 15 August 2013).
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] U.S. Embassy London (released by Wikileaks), Cable 08LONDON3218, Somali Piracy: Industry Uncomfortable With On-Board Security Teams, 29 December 2008, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/12/08LONDON3218.html, (accessed 11 July 2011).
[46] Ibid.
[47] J. Joyner, ‘NATO Libya Roundtable: Command and Control’, Atlantic Council in the United States (ACUS), 28 March 2011, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-libya-roundtable-command-and-control, (accessed 30 March 2011).
[48] P. Wells, ‘NATO Getting Jittery over Canada, Netherlands Leaving Afghanistan’, op. cit.
[49] V. Socor, ‘Raising NATO’s ‘Relevance’ Question In Afghanistan’, The Jamestown Foundation, 15-17 October 2004, www.jamestown.org/…/Raising_NATO_s__Relevance__Question_In_Afghanistan.html, (accessed 24 March 2014).
[50] M. T. Klare, ‘South Ossetia: It’s the Oil, Stupid’, Huffington Post, 14 August 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-klare/south-ossetia-its-the-oil_b_118717.html (accessed 2 August 2014).
[51] C. E. Shoichet & A. Fantz, ‘U.S. official: Missile shot down Malaysia Airlines plane’, CNN.com, 18 July 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1, (accessed 18 July 2014); V. Butenko, L. Smith-Spark & P. Black, ‘Ukraine: Two military jets shot down over Donetsk’, CNN.com, 23 July 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/23/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/index.html?hpt=hp_c3, (accessed 24 July 2014); ‘Obama administration: Russia firing artillery at Ukraine military targets’, FoxNews.com, 24 July 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/24/obama-administration-russia-firing-artillery-at-ukraine-military-targets/, (accessed 25 July 2014).
[52] S. Koelbl, ‘Syria Will Become Another Somalia’, 11 June 2014, Der Spiegel, http://www.iht.com/2014/06/11/syria-will-become-another-somalia/, (accessed 21 June 2014).
[53] Ibid.
[54] M. Tawfeeq, Y. Basil, A. Fantz & M. Morgenstein, ‘Terrifying execution images in Iraq; U.S. embassy relocates some staff’, CNN.com, 16 June 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/15/world/meast/iraq-photos-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1, (accessed16 June 2014); B. Brumfield, ‘300 U.S. advisers heading for Iraq, but what will they actually do?’, CNN.com, 20 June 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/20/politics/iraq-advisers/ (accessed 21 June 2014).
[55] H. Yan & S. Said, ‘Floodgates open as ISIS takes over swaths of both Syria and Iraq’, CNN.com, 8 July 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/syria-civil-war/ (accessed 9 July 2014).
[56] See David J. Kilcullen’s ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 28, no. 4, (August) 2005, pp. 597-617 and ‘Counter-insurgency Redux.’ Survival, vol. 48, no. 4, (Winter) 2006, pp. 111-112.
[57] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.
[58] T.J. Pudas, ‘Preparing Future Coalition Commanders’, Joint Forces Quarterly (JFQ), (Winter) 1993-1994, p. 41, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA528835, (accessed 25 June 2013); R.S. Frost (LTCOL), ‘The Growing Imperative to Adopt “Flexibility” as an American Principle of War’, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks (15 October 1999), http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ssi/principles_of_war_frost.pdf, (accessed 25 June 2011); C.J. Dunlop, Jr. (BRIG), ‘New-Strategicon: Modernized Principles of War for the 21st Century’, Military Review, (March-April) 2006, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/dunlap.pdf, (accessed 25 June 2013); J. Howk, ‘Cooperation or Bust: A Case for Adding “Cooperation” to the Principles of War’, Small Wars Journal, 8 December 2011, http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/cooperation-or-bust-a-case-for-adding-%E2%80%9Ccooperation%E2%80%9D-to-the-principles-of-war, (accessed 25 June 2013).
[59] See D.P. Auerswald & S. M. Saideman, ‘Comparing Caveats: Understanding the Sources of National Restrictions upon NATO’s Mission in Afghanistan’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 56, 2012, pp. 67-84.
[60] O. Bowcott, ‘Netherlands to pay compensation over Srebrenica massacre’, The Guardian, 6 September 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/06/netherlands-compensation-srebrenica-massacre, (accessed 7 September 2013); ‘Dutch state ‘responsible for three Srebrenica deaths’, BBC News, 5 July 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14026218, (accessed 7 September 2013).
[61] U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv (released by Wikileaks), Cable 06TELAVIV2915, Peretz calls for MNF able to block Hizballah, 15 March 2011, http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06TELAVIV2915_a.html, (accessed 12 June 2013).
[62] ‘Guest Speaker Details: Dame Margaret Anstee DCMG’, Noble Caledonia , http://www.noble-caledonia.co.uk/information/guest_speaker_detail.asp?id=1, (accessed 20 March 2014).
[63] See M.J. Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process 1992-93, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 1-596.