The tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan shows the futility of Nato

As leaders of the G7 prepared for their “virtual” summit this week, Boris Johnson made a very public plea for the US to extend its presence in Afghanistan beyond the agreed 31 August deadline. This always seemed very unwise. There were simply too many reasons why an extension, however modest, was not going to happen.

All countries engaged in the evacuation from Kabul have been living on borrowed time, with the tragic results of the twin explosions at the airport highlighting the danger involved in the operations. Their operations depend not just on the security provided by US forces, but also – humiliating though it is – on the cooperation of the Taliban victors. The US had agreed the August deadline. For president Joe Biden even to hint at a change could be seen as disrespectful by a movement, now a de facto government, acutely sensitive to honour; he would have been tempting fate in a wholly irresponsible way.

Elementary diplomacy advises that you should never ask in public for something you are unlikely to get. But this is not the main criticism of Johnson following his abortive request. It is rather that he was too optimistic about the UK-US relations, sparking a new bout of soul-searching about the state of the supposed “special relationship”. Does it really exist? (Only in the eyes of some, mostly on this side of the Atlantic). What use is it, if it can’t be invoked successfully in an emergency? (Not much – and not at all if the US sees its own national security under threat.) Does the UK have more clout in Washington than other allies? (Less and less.) Has Brexit altered the balance of the relationship, making the UK at once more needy and less useful to the US as a bridge to Brussels? (Probably)

These are all valid questions, with answers that for many convinced Atlanticists will be dispiriting. What has happened, and is still happening, in Afghanistan, however, goes much further than the “special relationship”. What has happened is a colossal defeat for 20 years of policy, precipitating what is still known as “the west” from Cold Wars days, suddenly in to play.

Every Friday something called the “Nato update” lands in my email inbox, with a rundown of what the alliance wants journalists and other interested groups to know. Two weeks ago, that is Friday, 13 August, I opened it up expecting to find Nato’s take on developments in Afghanistan. After all, major Afghan cities had been falling one after another through that week, and it was – although we did not know this – just 48 hours before Kabul itself fell to the Taliban without a fight.

I read the “update” twice, thoroughly, and in some disbelief. There were the usual reports on how the alliance was addressing Russia’s general badness, defending the Baltic and the rest, but there was not a word, not one mention, of Afghanistan. Even if the email is set-up in advance, this was the very day, it is worth recalling, when the Foreign Office had woken up to the absence of the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and suggested he might return to his desk. The gravity of the Afghan situation for that country’s western patrons was by then more than clear.

There has since been a flurry of statements and briefings, including several from Nato’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, in person. And Stoltenberg was quick to tweet his condemnation of the attack in Kabul, adding that the “priority remains to evacuate as many people to safety as quickly as possible” But it is hard to escape the impression that the west’s major defence alliance was entirely missing from the action as the west effectively lost Afghanistan.

At which point it is only fair to mention a few mitigating factors. The most obvious is that the United States, with its then President, Donald Trump, negotiated its departure unilaterally with the Taliban. It did not consult individual allies or Nato as such, nor did it involve them in the talks – and that included those allies, such as the UK and Germany, with troops still serving in Afghanistan who would be directly affected.

It is also true that, as the Taliban advanced in recent weeks, Nato as such had no presence in Afghanistan. In a terse explanatory note, it explained that: “In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. On 14 April 2021, recognising that there is no military solution to the challenges Afghanistan faces, the allies decided to start the withdrawal of RSM forces by 1 May 2021.”

RSM stands for Resolute Support Mission – described as a Nato-led training and assistance mission that had operated in Afghanistan since 2015. It succeeded the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) campaign, which was declared completed the previous year.

To an extent, you could argue that the small print lets Nato off the hook. Trump had effectively circumvented the alliance by dealing direct with the Taliban and when it announced its withdrawal, the United States was going it alone. Both the ISAF and RSM were also always described as “Nato-led”, allowing some leeway for the national forces involved. Nato’s absence from the Afghan defeat is thus no reflection of its capability as an alliance.

But this disregards some much bigger realities. Nato was identified with the west’s military involvement in Afghanistan at least as much, if not more, than it was with almost any other operation after the end of the Cold War. The atrocities of 9/11 had prompted Nato allies to invoke its famed Article 5 for the very first time – which designates an attack on one as an attack on all. Nato had also retained its branding of Afghan operations, even after Osama bin Laden had been killed and the mission had shifted towards development and “nation building”.

And this highlights the problem that the past few weeks has exposed. The US so dominates western security that the nation and the alliance are hard to disentangle. By negotiating a bilateral agreement with the Taliban, the United States left not only its allies, but the alliance itself, in the lurch. When the UK Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, disclosed that he had tried, and failed, to muster allied support for remaining in Afghanistan after the US had left, he effectively admitted that the alliance is as nothing without the United States.

The UK and France should have learned this in 2011, when they had had to call on the US to assist their intervention in Libya, but 10 years would seem to be a long time in global, as in domestic, politics.

It is hard now – or at least it should be – to view Nato as anything other than a proxy for US power; a defence grouping that gives the US multilateral cover for pursuing its own interests. And this leaves some choices. One option is for the European allies to leave things be and persist in what has long been the illusion of a genuine alliance. Another is for the Europeans to encourage Emmanuel Macron and others in their quest to form a meaningful defence grouping, if only, in the first instance, as a far more equal pillar of Nato.

There is, though, a third option that should be preferred in the wake of the Afghan debacle: a thorough re-think of European, if not global, security arrangements. Since the end of the Cold War, which is three decades ago now, Nato has been casting around for something useful to do. In a more rational world, it would have declared victory in 1991, followed the Warsaw Pact into history, and helped draw up a new security system to include Russia.

Instead, it conjured up a new Russia threat from the Soviet ruins and, as if this was not enough, is now looking to extend its reach to Asia.

If anything exposes the irrelevance of the north Atlantic alliance for today, the Afghan defeat, coupled with plans for a lunge against China, surely has. Now, having long outlived its purpose, Nato may find its demise forced by defeat.