Another Coalition of the Leaving: America Yields in Battle for NATO Troops

[tekisui]

Source: Times Online

AFTER repeated rebuffs, America is preparing to abandon its insistence that Nato allies commit more combat troops to Afghanistan, despite fears the Taliban are gaining strength.

The climbdown comes after Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, made a last-ditch appeal for more troops at a two-day meeting of Nato ministers in Krakow, Poland, last week, and received a cool response.

“I think he was going through the motions,” said Steven Clemons, a foreign policy expert at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Gates was obliged to appeal to America’s allies to help with more “soft power” projects such as rebuilding roads, combating the drugs trade and training the Afghan national army and police. “I hope that it may be easier for our allies to do that than significant troop increases, especially for the long term,” he said.

President Barack Obama’s administration announced last week that it was sending an extra 17,000 troops to join 32,000 already in Afghanistan, but European countries have yet to pitch in more than a few hundred.

“The price of defeat on the military requests will be disproportionately greater requests for financial assistance and help with civilian projects,” Clemons said. “We’re not going to say we’ll just shoulder it all.”

American security and defence officials have been laying the ground for a U-turn in advance of Nato’s 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg in April. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer based at the Brookings Institution, has been appointed to lead an interagency review of policy on Afghanistan at the White House ahead of the summit.

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5780436.ece

[jody]

1. Obama approves 17k of the 30k troops requested for his War in Afghanistan with more needed to

conquer and subdue the Pashtun People in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

If Obama wins, he will be the first invader to do so in several millenniums.

ON EDIT ADD Signe Wilkinson's Editorial Cartoon from the Washington Post