The “real meat” of the 60th anniversary of Nato in Strasbourg this weekend was Afghanistan, says The Sunday Times. President Obama had hoped Nato allies would commit 10,000 combat soldiers to match what has been described as his ‘Afghan surge’, an additional 21,000 new troops who are being sent to the country this year to join an existing US force of 38,000.
But he got very little, says Doug Sanders in Canada’s Globe and Mail. Other Nato countries agreed to commit “up to 5,000” more troops, including “200 to 900” from Britain, the second-largest force in Afghanistan. But in reality most of these are either training the Afghan National Army, or temporary forces to provide security for national elections in August.
It’s one thing to wow “adolescents in Strasbourg” with talk of a nuclear-free world. It’s another to get their politicians “to shoulder a fair burden of the fight against Islamist terrorists”, says Irwin Stelzer in The Daily Telegraph.
Obama has planned a reasonable strategy in Afghanistan and been “careful not to ask his Nato allies to join America in attacking terrorist bases inside Pakistan”. Yet he “couldn’t win over European leaders who have learned to free-ride on America”. The lack of support risks “fracturing the alliance”, says Steven Erlanger in the International Herald Tribune. By the end of the year, US troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one, and will be in command in the most dangerous southern and eastern regions, significantly Americanising the fight against Al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors.
The rest of Nato needs to step up, says The Times. It was established 60 years ago to “provide collective security for its members”. It’s all very well to support the US, but rhetoric should be matched by practical help. Obama noted in Strasbourg that Al-Qaeda posed a greater danger to Europe than to the US and “rightly urged a better use of Nato resources in Afghanistan”. “It’s a message that European governments, not least Gordon Brown’s, should heed”.