DEFENSE SECRETARY Robert Gates unintentionally caused a spat among NATO allies last week. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he observed that "most of the European forces, NATO forces" fighting against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan "are not trained in counterinsurgency; they were trained for the Fulda Gap" - the corridor from East to West Germany where NATO once planned to counter a Soviet-led invasion.
Gates later tried to explain that he did not mean to criticize particular countries. But his impolitic comments - and the rancor they aroused among some NATO allies - expose a deeper issue. Ever since the Cold War ended nearly two decades ago, the proper purpose and ground rules for the NATO alliance have been still up in the air, and the debate is unlikely to be resolved soon.
To be sure, the defense secretary should have been aware that some allied governments that sent soldiers on combat missions to Afghanistan have faced vehement domestic criticism for doing so. Britain, the Netherlands, and Canada are the countries with the most troops in the south of Afghanistan. The last thing their officials want to hear from Gates is public comments that can be construed as denigrating their soldiers.
The Dutch defense minister called in the US ambassador for what is called in diplomatic lingo a clarification. A spokesman for the Dutch conservative party's parliamentary defense committee fulminated: "We've just signed on for another two years, and I'm not going to let anyone talk to me like that."
Patriotic pride, democratic accountability, and perhaps also an unspoken belief that the Afghan conflict is more America's war than Europe's - these are some of the factors explaining this expression of Dutch indignation. Another is that two Dutch soldiers had just been killed in Afghanistan a few days ago.
Gates is right that much has changed since the days of the Fulda Gap. But training and tactics are not the only artifacts of that era. Another is the principle of deterrence that once made NATO perhaps the most successful alliance in history.
Alliance members took an all-for-one and one-for-all pledge that as soon as one was attacked, all would come to its defense. The military response to Soviet aggression in Europe was to be automatic - without having to be approved by parliaments or presidents. This compact for collective retaliation guided the training of NATO forces and its command structure. The Kremlin, knowing that politicians would not decide about retaliation against a Red Army attack, could not hope to divide or intimidate the alliance. That was the deterrence power of NATO.
But today in Afghanistan NATO operates on a different principle. The Dutch complain that German, French, and Italian troops are confined to relatively safe sectors in the north of Afghanistan. Each government sets out its own special conditions for sending soldiers. Some will not fight at night, others will only do humanitarian relief or reconstruction.
Gates should be calling not simply for NATO training in counterinsurgency but for the forging of a new NATO compact, an alliance shield as impermeable as the one that defended the Fulda Gap.
