Daily Times - EDITORIAL: Will NATO clean up its act?

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EDITORIAL: Will NATO clean up its act?

Before the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit convenes in Riga, the member states should think very hard about its future. And if Afghanistan is any index of things to come, the lack of any new resolution to act with conviction is bound to prove fatal. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has tried to buck up the organisation by saying that NATO will definitely find a ‘joint position on troubled Afghanistan’ at the summit to make sure its difficult mission there will be a success. The statement should help because Germany is one of the member states that haven’t so far willingly sent their troops to the dangerous areas in Afghanistan.

The fact is that those who think negatively about NATO in Afghanistan have some grounds for such thinking. Europe doesn’t think consistently about projecting itself globally in military terms. In fact the EU believes in doing business with the rest of the world without getting too involved in regional conflicts. The old imperial habits have gone and the EU is increasingly an inward-looking body of states. If one can put it like that, while the EU doesn’t have a distinct foreign policy the fact is that any projection of its foreign policy through NATO is clearly guided by the United States. So even if France and Germany, having dug in their heels when it came to invading Iraq, now say they are committed to the Afghanistan operation, the fiasco in Iraq will make it difficult even for the best soldiers in the world to fight in Afghanistan.