The fighting is not yet over in Afghanistan. But the outcome, in general terms at least, is clear. The Taliban regime has been smashed; the various Moslem fundamentalist terrorist networks which it had been sheltering - or, perhaps, by which it had been commandeered - are now left to try to evade pursuing western and Northern Alliance forces. World financial and commodity markets are already poised for an upturn. After all, the good guys have won, and the paralyzing uncertainty is over.
Curiously, it is only now that most European nations are arriving at decisions about contributing their own troops to this effort. France has only recently approved the dispatch of some of its units to the war zone. The Netherlands has decided to send two frigates to join the international fleet congregated off the Pakistani coast (alas, Afghanistan lacks one), and has contributed military personnel to AWACS aircraft - flying to the west, not to the east, to help stand watch over American airspace. But this was only after heated discussion in the Tweede Kamer, over whether the freedom of action to support the American military effort which the cabinet demanded would be acceptable to leftist and other elements. In Germany the determined effort by Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder to make 4,000 German soldiers available for the Afghan theater almost toppled his government via a confidence vote in the Bundestag. Due to numerous defections from the ruling coalition parties, it survived by only a couple of votes. That SPD-Green Party coalition may still break-up, as the Greens themselves remain seriously split between their pacifist and non-pacifist factions.
The big exception to this record of hesitation and half-measures, of course, has been Great Britain. Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11 set the whole train of events in motion, Prime Minister Tony Blair has been more energetic than any member of the Bush administration (the president included) in his widespread efforts to spread the anti-terrorism message and hold together a world-wide political coalition for military action which includes (to varying degrees of enthusiasm) a number of important Arab states. Likewise, British military assets have been integrated from the very first into the American-directed military campaign. This is nothing new; the ease with which British forces merge their operations with the Americans whenever the occasion requires stems from common training exercises, similar organization, and a recent history of close cooperation in combat operations that goes back through Kosovo and the Gulf War, to the Falkland Islands campaign of 1982, when American strategic intelligence assets were integrated into British planning.
What is really remarkable about this is the ready-made consensus within the UK electorate that makes such close cooperation possible time after time. It’s no less than a conviction among the British that, when the chips are down, they must reflexively join ranks with the Americans. After all, the terror attacks of September 11 were not necessarily Britain’s fight, or anyone else’s - only America’s. It was American airspace and American symbols, and no one else’s, which were so suddenly and viciously attacked (and thousands of American lives which were lost, but hundreds of foreign nationals at the Twin Towers as well). In the US national consciousness this immediately ranked as an outrage on par with Pearl Harbor. America was going to have its retribution one way or another, wherever and at whatever cost, but that didn’t necessarily have to include anyone else.
Still, the British unhesitatingly and immediately joined the campaign, with real actions and on-the-ground resources. The rest of America’s NATO allies also made it their fight - or at least so it seemed in the week after the terror attacks, when Article 5 of the NATO treaty was invoked for the first time in history, designating the attacks on New York and Washington as attacks on the Alliance collectively and therefore calling for a united military response.
However, in this light the actual track record of European (other than British) action to provide this response has to be judged as rather disappointing. Airplanes slamming at top speed into non-Western European buildings turned out not to be any direct challenge to the welfare or security of most Western European states who happen to be America’s NATO allies. They showed that their preferred response was not to spring into action to avenge these acts, and so make it more improbable that anyone would dare to do them again. Rather - with the legacy of the thousands of men and women trapped high up in burning skyscrapers appealing for vengeance like the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father - their preferred reaction has instead been precisely that of Hamlet: namely, plenty of high-minded philosophizing about violence in the world of modern politics and the citizen’s responsibility to his conscience versus his responsibility to actually act. In broad historical terms, this is probably some sort of progress, as over the past centuries Europe has certainly shown rather too much willingness to resort to war, whether to enforce religious or ideological orthodoxies or merely to gratify the egos of ruling monarchs. Still, one wonders whether the pendulum has not swung too far the other way.
Ultimately, all of this may not matter. International military action may be well on the way to becoming something much too important to be left to the Europeans. Here, the striking contrasts between the Afghan campaign (21st century version) and that last international military crisis, over Kosovo, are instructive. The former has seen quick, clear accomplishment of mission; the latter saw victory only after a protracted period of doubt and crisis. But Kosovo was the nearest thing the world has yet seen to a NATO-run war (despite the non-invocation of Article 5 that time) - a war run by committees, with inadequate, lowest-common-denominator military compromises often needing to be arrived at simply to maintain the collective will of all alliance-members to continue waging it.
The military operations against Afghanistan, in contrast, have been an American show, with British supporting role. Only at a relatively late point, and more for political reasons rather than any attempt to bolster the military assets available, has the American administration welcomed participation from its other allies. This fact does not excuse their political reluctance to contribute militarily - in too many countries that effort has skirted too close to political stalemate, resulting in no contribution at all whether it was welcomed by the Americans or not. Rather, it suggests that out of the successful fight against terrorism and the Taliban, the ultimate casualty may turn out to be NATO.