Afghanistan and the Future of NATO
While the war in Iraq has been based on wishful thinking, Western intervention in Afghanistan was necessary and unavoidable, because it was there that the terrorist threat of September 11, 2001, originated. But a lack of commitment and political foresight is jeopardizing the West's successes – and thus NATO’s future as well.
Things aren’t going well in Afghanistan. Sometime at the turn of 2001/2002, the Bush administration concluded that the stabilization and reconstruction of Afghanistan was no longer its top priority and decided to bet instead on military-led regime change in Iraq. Afghanistan can thus rightly be seen as the first victim of the administration’s misguided strategy.