There were signs of the PR ground being prepared for a Spring Offensive in Afghanistan well before the current round of critiques of the conduct of the War that have so upset the US Senate.

These critiques have raised issues of whether the West has any chance of winning without radical changes in its strategy and more resources. The problem for political analysts is that too many battles are now being fought out simultaneously in the media.

There is the one in Washington between the current politico-military leadership and its critics. There is the one between that same leadership and the rest of NATO. There is the rather forlorn one for ‘hearts and minds’ in the West.  And then and only then, there is the one against the Taliban and for Afghan ‘hearts and minds’.

The whole operation has become a political mess with major sub-plots involving Karzai’s successful manouevre not to have a NATO viceroy imposed on him, the UN’s increasing nervousness at becoming the ‘soft power’ wing of Western liberal expansionism and the extremely delicate business of getting the Pakistani Army into play against the rebellion without creating yet more mayhem in the run-up to the forthcoming Pakistan Elections.

On top of this, the West has just 'discovered' Afghan tribal politics, giving it a new problem. One of the justifications for the war that won over Western liberal hearts and minds was the chance to bring universal values to a primitive society that oppressed women.  Now it seems that the West requires the help of the most primitive of those tribes (the sort that trade women as cattle to resolve inter-tribal disputes) to defeat the Islamists.

The media insists on calling the enemy, the ‘Taliban’ and ‘Al-Qaeda’ but we might now better regard it as a widespread Pathan nationalist rebellion whose enemy is both liberalism (that's us and Karzai) and the tribalists who will not accept the universalism of Islamism.

An odd result is that 'universalist' liberals are in danger of getting into bed with the rummest traditionalists of all on the grounds that my enemies' enemy is my friend.

Meanwhile, the ‘Taliban’ is not only holding off attempts to split its unity through bribes but has brought the war ever closer to Kabul with some startling suicide missions, including one that almost took out a whole NATO country mission in the best hotel in the country.

The war is now degenerating into murderous assaults, with the usual collateral civilian damage, whether by missile (from the West) or by suicide bomb (from the Taliban), on key upper mid-level individuals in the respective elites – a deputy governor, an overseas foreign minister, a ‘leading Al-Qaeda figure’.

The precedent has been set for targeted assassination on both sides and Paddy Ashdown was probably most wise not to risk his person under such circumstances.

Mis-directing the Media 

As always caution is required about the material being presented to us through ‘embedded’ Western media. It probably over-promotes the competencies, integrity and popularity of pro-Western Afghans and underplays the discipline and abilities of the leaders of the Pathan revolt.

Nevertheless, given the relative success in stabilizing Iraq through similar methods to those being proposed by the Pentagon, the chances of success for the US are not negligible, especially given the volume of money being thrown at the task.

But cash is one thing, manpower another, and the danger is that, as in Iraq, the US is being left to sort the problem out without effective allies in an election year. State Department officials seem cautious, citing Iraq, that stabilization is not victory without an adequate long term national strategy. The army are tired of pointy-headed thinking and just want to get on with the job.

There are three aspects to the case that seem salient to us but our analytical problem remains that public domain information has to have the propagandistic element filtered out, especially where the authorities are engaged in misdirection.

The first aspect is that, given electoral and nationalist sensitivities and mid-level Pakistani Army concerns about co-operation with the Americans against their own people, the process of building US-Pakistani co-operation is being managed in stages so as not to frighten the Pakistani electoral or nationalist horses.

The misdirection is the probable extent of co-operation which may be tentative but is probably much more determined and based on high level US-Pakistani military agreements in principle than we believe is being advertised.

The second aspect is that the US has decided that co-ordinating its disorganized allies is getting to the point where it is no longer worth the time and space being devoted to it when there is a war deadline to meet.

The decision of Paddy Ashdown not to become imperial viceroy for the West, after criticism of the British from Karzai, has pushed the ‘national strategy’ plans of the diplomats into the long grass.

This has allowed a US military newly confident in its counter-insurgency strategies to just go ahead and cut a deal with the Afghan pro-Western element surrounding the President and get the show on the road.

It is this second aspect that is at the heart of the battle in Washington. The extremely robust exchanges between Secretary of State Gates and his German counterpart on the lack of European support for American efforts have not come out of the blue.

The tensions were in-built in an operation that was never fully explained to the European public at its inception and which became much harder to explain after the US’ unilateral actions surrounding Iraq and its sabre-rattling on Iran.

The Europeans, timid and without resources, have not delivered because politically they cannot deliver.

The third aspect is a corollary of the second - that NATO, bluntly, no longer matters outside Europe. It tried and it failed to develop its own global police role under Atlanticist European leadership, but the too-obvious European purpose to contain the US within an old model depended on the Europeans delivering something to the party. They have not done so.

For US strategists in the first half of the Bush Administration, it was persuasive that NATO might take on more of the burden in defending against a weakened Russian bear and collaborate in extending Western hegemony in what then appeared to be a vacuum in return for the maintenance of the US strategic nuclear umbrella.

Unfortunately for the Alliance, European diplomats made promises that they were in no position to keep. The US military and political class has lost patience and NATO will move towards the April 2008 Bucharest Summit humiliated despite whatever ‘patch-ups’ we are presented with in the meantime.

The media misdirection in these last two cases is not just that NATO matters but that it has had a material effect on defeating the insurgency. With so many dead already, it is politically unacceptable to tell the truth back home and the US' and Karzai's assaults on British and European military capability are unanswerable.

The Pakistani Contribution 

Musharraf’s tour of Europe from Davos to London and then onwards adds little to the story other than to ensure editorial attention is temporarily deflected from events within Pakistan. He has seemed both obsequious to the West and contemptuous towards his own people.

Little of the violence in Waziristan has been reported outside the BBC, although a curious hostage incident was widely noted. However, on 29 January, reports came of a missile strike in Waziristan that appeared to come from US bases in Afghanistan, suggesting that the US-Pakistani joint assault on the militants has started unannounced.

Pakistani officials denied any knowledge of an attack which might otherwise be interpreted as an assault on Pakistan sovereignty. Either the Pakistanis were trying to pretend it was not happening or were complicit at a higher level than the man who briefs the media. We incline to the latter interpretation. 

Higher level secrecy and deniability about co-operation is less about denying intelligence to the enemy and more about not provoking the mid- and lower ranks of the Army who are not very happy with a policy of collaboration with the US against the tribesmen.

Secretary of State Gates had already suggested that the US would be prepared to conduct ‘small-scale’ (aka discreet) joint operations in Waziristan if requested by Islamabad in what can only be interpreted as a ‘test of the water’.

Everyone is adamant that no such ‘request’ has been made so what we are probably seeing now is gently escalating rhetoric and incursions designed to see what the US can do to help the Pakistan High Command (and vice versa) without inspiring widespread public reaction in the days leading up to an Election - and also to establish some impetus and precedents after the Election when we believe that it is logical for serious anti-Taliban operations to take place.

Musharraf rebuffed in public the direct suggestions of Admiral McConnell (US Director of National Intelligence) and General Hayden (CIA) that they should expand covert and joint operations, but our guess is that he is being disingenuous.

Musharraf is allowing himself personal deniability for a co-operation programme that is being constructed under the aegis of pro-Western military chief Kiyani. Pakistan has 120,000 men deployed along the Afghan border to stop flows of insurgents but they are otherwise being defensive and largely ineffective. This may or may not change on political developments in mid-February but the intention (we believe) of the Pakistani military is to act and act vigorously.

The War Preparations in Afghanistan

The ground is being prepared for the Spring Offensive through PR activity in the West. Most of what we see now was probably planned on the assumption that Paddy Ashdown would be instituted as Viceroy but the US and NATO have no option now but to make the best of things and proceed with their story lines.

It is not just that we are seeing a sudden ‘surge’ in stories but that the stories themselves are coming from the US side of the military effort and strongly emphasise a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy that would have been unthinkable in the days of Rumsfeld.

Secretary of State Gates and the Petraeus Strategy in Iraq have had a material effect on US tactics in dealing with both insurgents and with political discontent back at home.

The tactics are as yet unproven in Afghanistan (and this is what the Spring Offensive will be about) but it is true that adventures overseas have not become the critical factor in the Presidential electoral cycle that might have been expected only two years ago. A great deal of this is down to the more sophisticated strategies of Gates, Petraeus and the military professionals.

Let us take the page devoted to 'Counter-Insurgency (in a deliberate move away from the tainted term ‘War on Terror’) in the Financial Times of 30 January. A journalist was ‘embedded’ (which raises its own questions about the depth of access to full facts) but the contents can be summarized easily enough and the facts, as facts, seem reliable:-

• US military management of Khost Province is presented as a model of non-confrontational counter-insurgency based on reconstruction and civil society promotion
• US military funding of religious schools is taking place to capture control of the young before they fall into the hands of Islamists
• The negative attitude of the US and the Afghans to the British and other Europeans’ performance in the war is reported
• The drive to get Germany to deploy forces to replace the outgoing Norwegian contingent is noted.

There is a lot of meat in these articles and you are referred to them but we see two lines of reportage that converge to set the tone for the coming offensive.

First, the US is taking full charge with a sophisticated strategy supportive of the pro-Western Afghan political class through massive politically-directed reconstruction expenditures that by-pass the diplomats’ preference for a ‘national strategy’.

Second, the alliance approach to the insurgency has failed (bar the shouting) and the US military want its allies to be direct, ‘national’, committed and well resourced and not be answerable to a ramshackle and under-resourced political coalition.

The bottom line is that the US is now taking charge of a failed NATO operation and is adopting a fairly sophisticated ‘hearts and minds’ approach, based on significant reserves of cash, a clear presence to the locals, improved cultural awareness, support for Islam and close co-operation with the pro-Western Afghans.

It is as if everything that has been learnt from the Iraq disaster has been analysed and re-packaged for this second run at dealing with Afghan insurgency. Patience with political analysts and diplomats has run out – just as it did in Iraq.

NATO As Universal Liberator - In Your Dreams! 

A corollary of this is that NATO appears tired and under-resourced, without the muscle to deliver either funds or troop presence. It is as if the US wants the ‘failed Europeans’ out from under their feet and with new allies, preferably German, and, across the border, Pakistan, in place to start over again.

State Department officials are specific (in dealing with Senate concerns) that US troop increases are designed (they say) to ‘leverage’ similar commitments from Europe but we see signs that the US military has had enough of dribble-drabble coalitional politics that suit the theorizing pointy-headed strategic policymakers but do not deliver the goods.

The State Department and diplomats may constantly assert the need for a ‘national Afghan’ strategy but no such strategy has appeared since 2006. 

Those allies that did take a political risk out of principle and loyalty to the US have also had enough. For example, Canada has now reasserted its position that it will withdraw its troops in 2009 if NATO does not send more troops to Kandahar, adding further to pressures on an organization that is really no longer ‘fit for purpose’.

It is to be doubted that the British could send more even if it wanted to – its armed forces are close to collapse in terms of trained manpower and equipment. The French and Japanese governments are sympathetic but their hands are tied by political opposition, risk and other commitments.

The Southern Europeans and most of the developing world are not particularly sympathetic and are only interested in reconstruction support under conditions where no-one gets shot. This really only leaves a Germany that has its own vigorous anti-US Left, strengthened in the recent Hesse regional elections.

As we have often noted, the collapse of NATO’s plans to shift from a defensive model against communism to an offensive model designed to extend Western values was really an attempt to make it useful in a world where Russia had become just another sovereign state instead of an ideological enemy. It was an old man trying to make himself useful again by refusing to consider his own retirement and starting on a new project for which he had no talent.

The proponents of NATO as first bastion of the West (notably the UK but also the Netherlands and Norway) have always had this ulterior motive of wanting the US to stay in place as strategic umbrella for the Atlantic alliance - and, in some quarters, avoiding the formation of an independent Franco-German dominated European Defence Force.

The constant reinvention of Russia as enemy from London is part of this process of trying to halt the inevitable - the re-orientation of American strategy from a concentration on European defence to one of global hegemony through regional pivotal states.

But Americans always saw through the whole manouevre and tried to trade NATO into becoming a post-Soviet hegemonic vehicle (extending Western informal imperial boundaries to the East far beyond what most of Europe finds comfortable) in return for its strategic umbrella.

Unfortunately, there is no political will in Europe for this role as local sheriff in an American-led global policing strategy, while the Americans now see (in terms of actual resources delivered) a raggle-taggle bunch of unco-ordinated and politically unreliable allies whose demands for a say on policy are disproportionate to their effort and usefulness.

The arrival of Paddy Ashdown was to be the last shot at putting together a central command for NATO in Afghanistan that would deliver what the State Department knew was necessary to square itself with the Pentagon and its requirements.

Germany, with as many political difficulties as Japan but as determined to help at its elite level, is the main political target for the US. The logic for the US is of a US-European alliance that is really a US-German alliance.

A possible revival of the French idea of a Franco-German European Defence Force that can partner the US more effectively is now on the cards (or so President Sarkozy hopes and the British fear).

The critical event is the April 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest. It will be a major test of who has the domestic political will and base to buy into the US global system on US terms. It can no longer be NATO per se because NATO per se scarcely exists as anything other than the traditional defensive operation against Russia.

There is a further logic that dictates that the Russian-fearing middle classes of East and Central Europe might be driven to the US agenda by Germany to the extent that the German Right can ensure a domestic political base for US support (not a ‘given’ by any means’).

Central and East Europeans might well accept German leadership in organizing their defence against their visceral fear of Russian recovery, based on Russian dominance of energy. This is what is behind the current US-German lovers’ spat – the US is pushing the envelope, demanding that Germany do more of the house work and get a grip on its centre-left opposition.

The possibility of a shift in NATO's centre of gravity from the West to East has serious long term dangers to peace, as the defence of Western liberalism (the historic position of the West European allies) moves back towards the containment of Russia, Reagan-style. It threatens to revive old imperial antagonisms derived from the defeats of 1945 and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

NATO will be allowed to ‘save face’ in Afghanistan by the US because it remains a useful vehicle but the UK’s worst nightmare, an expensive European Defence Force rummaging dangerously around the ethnic squabbles on the EU’s Balkan and Eastern borders and demanding ever more money from the British taxpayer, is becoming more real by the day. 

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