us not happy with nato

US sees coalitions of the willing as best ally
msnbc.msn.com/id/10709916/
Jan. 4, 2006
The Financial Times
Guy Dinmore in Washington

Building on its experience in Iraq, the Bush administration says it wants to be able to form "coalitions of the willing" more efficiently for dealing with future conflicts rather than turning to existing but unreliable institutional alliances such as Nato.

"We 'ad hoc' our way through coalitions of the willing. That's the future," a senior State Department official said in a briefing this week that reflected Washington's search for alternatives to the post-second world war global architecture in the new era of its "war on terror".

Acknowledging that the coalition in Iraq had required the US to "scramble around capitals", he said the Bush administration sought ways of what he called regularising processes and standardising operating procedures and the generation of force requirements.

He did not elaborate and would not say whether such planning was being made with Iran in mind. "We are focused on the enduring dynamics of coalition warfare," the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters late on Tuesday.

Nato would remain a "bedrock alliance, a model and framework", the official said, but he questioned its reliability. He sharply criticised one European government for what he called undermining the alliance by "opting out" of Nato's expansion into possible combat operations in southern Afghanistan.

"Nato has got to look in the mirror as an alliance," he said, asking whether it remained an alliance of "one for all and all for one".

He declined to name the government but observers said he was clearly referring to the Netherlands, which also pulled out its troops from Iraq last year.

The Netherlands has so far been unable to confirm its commitment to send an additional 1,100 soldiers required for a joint British-Canadian-Dutch mission to extend Nato's presence in Afghanistan. Though the Dutch government has made clear it intends to go along with the plans after winning certain "security guarantees" for its troops, it has yet to consult ­parliament, where it could face a hostile reaction.

The US official singled out non-Nato allies in Asia for their support in Iraq, naming Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore. He said that at a meeting at Penfolds vineyard in November, Australian officials had told Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, of their keen interest in expanding intelligence relations with the US.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, will discuss coalition plans in Iraq with her Australian and Japanese counterparts next week. US officials say with the budget running out, the international community, and notably Japan, will play a leading role in funding reconstruction.

Without the explicit support of the United Nations or Nato, the US went to war with Iraq in March 2003 listing 44 countries in its "coalition of willing", plus unidentified others.

Cliff Kupchan, an analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy, said the main lesson from Iraq was that the US as the world's only superpower was still not able to achieve its national interests on its own. "The second lesson is that we can't rely on the Europeans. We can only hope on a 50 per cent recovery of that rift," he commented. "So that leaves us with constructing issue-based coalitions of the willing as the key component of future US foreign policy."

The Bush administration says plans by some of allies to reduce troops numbers in Iraq this year are a reflection of progress and a changing mission, not political fatigue with an unpopular war.