“Be sure your sins will find you out.” These are the full findings and conclusions of my doctoral research that assessed the effort by the world’s Free Democracies to protect and build the new Democratic State of Afghanistan, and simultaneously counter and neutralise Islamist Terror Forces, in the ground-zero GWOT battleground of Afghanistan. The PhD research in the domain of Defence & Strategic Studies was the first, in-depth, academic examination of the classified and sensitive issue of politico-military ‘national caveats’ (ROE constraints or government ‘reins’ on military forces) and their effects on allied multinational security operations. It focused on: (1) the extent of the “caveat problem” in the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan; and (2) the tangible impact of these ISAF national caveats on the ISAF’s prosecution of security operations and the overall operational effectiveness of the entire counter-insurgency mission to secure and stabilise Afghanistan.

As this blog will show, this ground-breaking research, drawing from multiple primary and secondary sources including the once-classified U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, has exposed the critical politico-military problem of ‘national caveats’ in modern multinational warfare. In short, national caveats have undermined, eroded, countered, crippled, sabotaged and needlessly elongated the international effort made by many of the world’s leading Free Democracies to effectively and successfully wage war against Islamic Extremists in Afghanistan, in defence of their own national security as well as in protection and support of their own fundamental, cherished, and collective beliefs and values. In this way, these government national constraints – that have been deliberately and repeatedly imposed on national military forces by NATO and Partner nations contributing forces to the ISAF mission from 2001-2014 – have actually acted as guarantors of ‘disunity of effort’ and ‘operational ineffectiveness’. These caveat ‘flies’ in the ISAF ointment have led to widespread and repeated failures at the PRT, Regional Command sector, Operational, and Strategic level – delaying, eroding and even halting progress across every pillar of the COIN strategy, and frustrating both the key objectives and the overall aim of the entire mission.

An unending ‘Cycle of Caveat Ineffectiveness’ has existed for the duration of the mission. Lack of political will and resolute commitment at the highest political levels in European and global Capitals – as plainly evidenced by the pervasive, continuous and widespread imposition of risk-averse and self-protecting national caveats on military forces – leads to disunity of purpose and effort, handicapped or anaemic security and combat forces and operations, security disasters, unwilling rescuers or reinforcement among allies, increased military and civilian casualties, slowed progress, loss of native support, loss of time, and unwise desperate measures – which all work together to decrease political will and commitment in international Capitals even further. In other words, national caveat constraints are both a symptom of disunity among allies and a recipe for failure in every multinational or allied security campaign in which they are present.

The research findings also hold grave implications for: Multinational Operations (MNOs) generally; the Democratic State of Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror (GWOT); the NATO Collective-Security Organisation in North America and Europe; and for the large and critical ‘Caveat Gap’ that exists in academic research and scholarship in the domains of both Defence & Strategic Studies and Political Science & International Relations on the serious and extremely negative role, impact, and effects of national caveat ‘ROE red-tape’ within important security operations conducted in the interest of securing national, regional and/or global security.

However, overall, two conclusions are very clear – as the long NATO-led mission in Afghanistan has plainly shown, in the most painful way, and in the midst of the most critical of wars waged to protect and safeguard national, regional and global security worldwide. NATO today is in fact an obese, heavy, unwilling, and clumsy, fraud of a fighting machine for the wars of the 21st century. And most of the Free Democracies of the world have lost their faith, will, heart and stomach to fight and die for the causes they say they most believe in, stand for, and prize.