A report in The Times indicates that tempers are flaring among some NATO members in response to angry demands by US defense secretary Robert Gates for them to contribute soldiers to the combat zone of southern Afghanistan.

“An unusually stern letter from Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, to his German counterpart about the role of Germany’s troops in Afghanistan caused anger not just in Berlin but elsewhere in the alliance.

Washington has taken the lead in putting pressure on Nato with a warning that the credibility of the alliance is at stake. But Mr Gates’s latest intervention seems likely to cause more division.

His letter to Franz Josef Jung, the German Defence Minister, went to the heart of the problem that has faced Nato since its mission expanded throughout Afghanistan, and in particular to the southern provinces where the Taleban are concentrated.

German diplomatic sources said the letter from Mr Gates had been harsh, although they would not divulge the contents. Mr Jung replied in similar mode with a “direct and stern” letter to Mr Gates, according to Suddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper.

The whole question of burden-sharing in Afghanistan — in particular sharing the burden of combat — is due to come up at Nato’s next summit in Bucharest in April. One Nato diplomat said: “I think Mr Gates’s intervention is more about domestic politics than anything else but sometimes I wonder whether the US realises the negative impact these spats have outside America.”

The Guardian reports that the dispute has gotten so bad that Condoleeza Rice has been dispatched to Europe, “to tackle an escalating row over Nato troop reinforcements for Afghanistan, amid worries that the entire international stabilisation strategy is in danger of failing.”
“Conservative MPs are starting to question the wisdom of continuing to support the president [Karzai]. Ministers are braced for another critical report from the Commons international development select committee amid concern that popular support for the war will start to wane, especially as Karzai adopts an increasingly independent view.”
NATO is ill-suited to the role in Afghanistan now foisted on it by Washington. It was never intended to be America’s Foreign Legion and the grousing of its member states isn’t helped at all by the incompetence of the White House and Pentagon leadership. This is a particularly bad time to be asking countries like Germany to make commitments that could serve as obligational precedents when a presidential election looms that could see the United States take a sharply different course in both Iraq and Afghanistan.