Abstract
When examining the implications of 9/11 for the alliance, it seems intuitively sensible to focus on the intervention in Afghanistan. By the end of 2014 NATO will have been involved, for over a decade, in one of the most complex, multifaceted conflicts it is possible to imagine. It has witnessed the deaths of thousands, including high numbers of troops from NATO states; the expenditure of billions of dollars; contributions, in one form or another, from virtually every NATO member; participation from a significant number of ‘partner’ countries; and deep political controversy within and between alliance members. Surely, it is reasonable to suppose that a detailed study of NATO’s exertions in Afghanistan will allow us to answer fundamental questions about how 9/11 has impacted on the alliance and on the future direction of NATO, and will also teach us compelling lessons regarding theoretical and policy approaches in international research on the alliance.
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Notes
See Thom Shanker and Steven Erlanger, ‘Blunt U.S. Warning Reveals Deep Strains in NATO’, New York Times, 10 June 2011.
For good analyses of ‘transformation’ see Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II (London: Atlantic Books, 2006);
Steven Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2008);
Thomas Adams, The Army After Next (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 32.
Edgar Buckley, ‘Invocation of Article 5: five years on’, NATO Review, Summer 2006.
The most complete accounts of the CIA and Special Forces activities in Afghanistan in the initial intervention can be found in Gary Schroen, First In (New York: Presidio Press, 2007)
Gary Berntsen, Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and Al Qaeda (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005).
For more detail on the campaign in the south and the east see Tim Bird and Alex Marshall, Afghanistan: How the West Lost Its Way (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 82–89.
See William Maley, Rescuing Afghanistan (London: Hurst & Co, 2006), p. 23
For a first-hand account of the Bonn Conference see James Dobbins, After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2008).
For a detailed examination of the Bush administration’s deliberations in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 see Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (London: Pocket Books, 2004).
See Toby Helm and Ben Fenton, ‘Germany and France warn Bush on Iraq’, The Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2002;
Steven Weisman, ‘US Set to Demand that Allies Agree Iraq is Defying UN’, The New York Times, 23 January 2003.
Phrases included but were by no means restricted to ‘cheese-eating surrender-monkeys’ and the ‘axis of weasels’. For an indication of how all this was viewed in France see Nicole Mowbray, ‘Cheese-eating Monkeys and Gallic Merde’, The Observer, 16 February 2003.
See Toby Helm and Toby Harnden, ‘American Fury as German Justice Minister Compares Bush to Hitler’, Daily Telegraph, 20 September 2002.
See Elaine Sciolino, ‘Europe Assesses Damage to Western Relationships and Takes Steps to Rebuild’, The New York Times, 2 April 2003.
For a good overview of the effects on NATO and the wider intra-alliance issues see Terry Terriff, ‘Fear and Loathing in NATO: The Atlantic Alliance after the Crisis over Iraq’, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol. 5 (3), September 2004, pp. 419–446.
For detailed accounts of the political machinations see Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War: America, Europe and the Crisis over Iraq (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004);
Elizabeth Pond, Friendly Fire: the Near Death of the Transatlantic Alliance (Washington, DC: Brookings/EUSA, 2003).
See Michael Gordon, ‘NATO Chief Says Alliance Needs Role in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 21 February 2003.
Craig Smith, ‘NATO Runs Short of Troops to Expand Afghan Peacekeeping’, The New York Times, 18 September 2004
See Judy Dempsey and David Cloud, ‘Europeans Balking at New Afghan Role’, The New York Times, 14 September 2005.
The 2007 figure comes from Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Opium: Uncovering the Politics of Poppy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. xiii, 37–8. Total global opium production in 2006 was 6,610 tonnes.
The quote from General Sir David Richards appears in, James Fergusson, A Million Bullets (London: Bantam Press, 2008), p. 172.
See Julian Barnes, ‘US calls Iraq the priority’, Los Angeles Times, 12 December 2007.
David W. Barno, ‘Fighting “the other war”: Counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, 2003–2005’, Military Review (September–October 2007), p. 43.
The most comprehensive account of the debates within the Obama administration over Afghanistan can be found in, Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (London: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Paul Rogers, Losing Control. Global Security in the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edition (London: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 173; and Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War.
See Timo Noetzel and Benjamin Schreer, ‘Counter-what? Germany and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan’, RUSI Journal, Vol. 153 (1), 2008, pp. 42–6.
See Sten Rynning, NATO In Afghanistan: the Liberal Disconnect (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 57–58.
See, for example, Roland Paris, ‘Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism’, International Security, Vol. 22(2), Fall 1997, pp. 54–89.
On this ‘liberal security problematic’, see Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War. Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
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© 2013 Tim Bird
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Bird, T. (2013). ‘Perennial Dilemmas’: NATO’s Post-9/11 Afghanistan ‘Crisis’. In: Hallams, E., Ratti, L., Zyla, B. (eds) NATO beyond 9/11. New Security Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391222_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391222_6
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