Author: Anatoly Orel Director General, Center for International and Comparative Studies
Immediately after the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan the world's leading broadcasting companies showed pictures, where Afghan women, happy, dropping filthy burkas, came out on the streets of Kabul with open faces. And recently the family law was adopted in Afghanistan, which allows for a man to starve his wife to death if she refuses to perform her marriage duties. The draft law was authorized by Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, who is supported by the international community...
What principles and ideals do the Western world and its "military face" – NATO - support today in Afghanistan? It seems that few people can answer the question. Recently, Mr. David Kilcullen, US State Department and NATO adviser on counter-terrorism and internationally recognized expert in this field, compared Karzai with South Vietnam dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. As it is known, the assassination of the latter on the U.S. connivance was the beginning of the end of Saigon regime.
It is already clear to many that the war in Afghanistan, as it was the case with the Vietnam war and with the Soviet Afghan war, can not be won. However, both the U.S. and their European allies are reluctant to order troops withdrawal from the country. Despite the fact that July and August 2009 beat all records of previous years by the number of soldiers killed...
The point is that, unlike in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is not led by the "willing coalition", but by the military alliance of the Western world, the NATO. Unlike in Iraq, where the Bush administration has become a generally acknowledged scapegoat for the all campaign errors, inevitable defeat in the Afghan war will mean a deep crisis and the political death of the NATO itself.
It is perfectly understood in Europe. Back in July this year, Mr. Lucio Caracciolo, one of the leading and respectable Italian foreign policy experts and the editor of geopolitical magazine "Limes", wrote in the "Repubblika" newspaper: "Aspirations (of Italian Government. - Author) to satisfy American friend are not the goal itself, but aimed to rescue NATO. Because if we suffer defeat in the war in Afghanistan, we will lose our alliance. The NATO as an organization can live a long time on paper. But as geopolitical alliance, since its victory in the Cold War, it had been in the desperate search for other goal than support of military campaigns, planned by Washington. From a strategic point of view, NATO has been dead for long".
NATO's expansion to the east, aimed to reinvigorate the Alliance, has met final defeat. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia, nor even perhaps Macedonia will become members of the alliance in the foreseeable future. NATO enlargement to the east by Ukraine and Georgia was a strategic mistake, Mr. Pierre Lellouche, French State Secretary on Europe, officially declares today.
Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former NATO Secretary General, said in one of his last speeches: "I sincerely believe that NATO can not succeed as an organization that tries to tackle too many separate simultaneous threats... Otherwise …we can get into the trap of an old Irish saying: if you do not know where you go, all roads will lead you there. " This prophecy comes true.
The defeat in Afghanistan will be NATO's most painful road to political oblivion. A particularly severe blow will hit the transatlantic relations, which had not been bright in recent years and did not become much warmer after Obama’s advent.
The world is entering an era when U.S. relations with Europe will remind U.S. - China relations: a mixture of pragmatic cooperation and competition, but no partnership on value basis. There is no common military adversary, in 20 years nobody has replaced the Soviet Union in that capacity. And economically the U.S. and the EU are direct competitors.
The world is entering an era when "tough" multilateral organizations, founded in the twentieth century, lose their strength. By the way, trends to the east of the Ukrainian borders prove this: all attempts to create structures like EU or NATO on the post-Soviet space bring no success.
The world is entering an era when states are brought together on the sole basis of converging pragmatic interests.
What does this mean for Ukraine's nearest geo-political environment?



