Over the past two years, the U.S. has completed the dramatic shift in military priorities away from Iraq and towards Afghanistan, providing reinforcements to allies who courageously had been holding the line in the south. These new resources - combined with a new strategy - have decisively changed the military momentum on the ground, with the Taliban ejected from their former strongholds.
While President Obama is still considering the size and pacing of the troop drawdown beginning in July, I can tell you there will be no rush to the exits. The vast majority of the surge forces that arrived over the past two years will remain through the summer fighting season. We will also reassign many troops from areas transferred to Afghan control into less-secure provinces and districts.
As the Taliban attempt their inevitable counterattack designed to increase ISAF casualties and sap international will, now is the time to capitalize on the gains of the past 15 to 18 months - by keeping the pressure on the Taliban and reinforcing military success with improved governance, reintegration, and ultimately political reconciliation.
Given what I have heard and seen - not just in my recent visit to Afghanistan, but over the past two years - I believe these gains can take root and be sustained over time with proper Allied support. Far too much has been accomplished, at far too great a cost, to let the momentum slip away just as the enemy is on its back foot. To that end, we cannot afford to have some troop contributing nations to pull out their forces on their own timeline in a way that undermines the mission and increases risks to other allies. The way ahead in Afghanistan is "in together, out together." Then our troops can come home to the honor and appreciation they so richly deserve, and the transatlantic alliance will have passed its first major test of the 21st Century:
* Inflicting a strategic and ideological defeat on terrorist groups that threaten our homelands;
* Giving a long-suffering people hope for a future;
* Providing a path to stability for a critically important part of the world.
Though we can take pride in what has been accomplished and sustained in Afghanistan, the ISAF mission has exposed significant shortcomings in NATO - in military capabilities, and in political will. Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform - NOT counting the U.S. military - NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25- to 40,000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more.
Turning to the NATO operation over Libya, it has become painfully clear that similar shortcomings - in capability and will - have the potential to jeopardize the alliance's ability to conduct an integrated, effective and sustained air-sea campaign. Consider that Operation Unified Protector is:
* A mission with widespread political support;
* A mission that does not involve ground troops under fire;
* And indeed, is a mission in Europe's neighborhood deemed to be in Europe's vital interest.
To be sure, at the outset, the NATO Libya mission did meet its initial military objectives - grounding Qaddafi's air force and degrading his ability to wage offensive war against his own citizens. And while the operation has exposed some shortcomings caused by underfunding, it has also shown the potential of NATO, with an operation where Europeans are taking the lead with American support. However, while every alliance member voted for Libya mission, less than half have participated at all, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission. Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there.
In particular, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets are lacking that would allow more allies to be involved and make an impact. The most advanced fighter aircraft are little use if allies do not have the means to identify, process, and strike targets as part of an integrated campaign. To run the air campaign, the NATO air operations center in Italy required a major augmentation of targeting specialists, mainly from the U.S., to do the job - a "just in time" infusion of personnel that may not always be available in future contingencies. We have the spectacle of an air operations center designed to handle more than 300 sorties a day struggling to launch about 150. Furthermore, the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country - yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference.
