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NATO is not on a path to victory in Afghanistan. In the face of a rising Afghan insurgency the Alliance is encountering serious difficulties with devising and executing a coherent counter-insurgency strategy. In fact, Afghanistan might become another case where democratic states fail to succeed in ‘small wars.' This time, insurgency's prey might be the world's most powerful military organization.

History tells us that insurgents stand a high chance of winning the ‘political war of attrition' against their militarily superior Western opponents. This seems particularly likely in the current situation in Afghanistan. Not only is the primary goal of the Western security community to end the operation as soon as possible, but the aim of speedy withdrawal also plays into the hands of the insurgents. Western debates about ‘exit strategies' reinforce their commitment to fight since ‘victory' for them seems to be only a matter of time and not of feasibility.

In theory, NATO's strategy in Afghanistan is clear. The Alliance is party to this conflict on the side of the Afghan government. In practice, however, NATO is politically and militarily ill-prepared to agree on and to execute a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Deficiencies at the political level are obvious: already, there are severe cracks within the Alliance, and political support for the Afghan operation is becoming harder and harder to obtain. While it is clear to Anglo-Saxon Alliance members that NATO is confronted with a growing insurgency, countries like Germany still prefer to focus on the concept of ‘post-conflict reconstruction.' In their view, counter-insurgency overstates the military dimension of the campaign.

NATO's political decision-making process and military command structure limit the Alliance's ability to strategize for counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. The consensus-based nature of NATO's decision-making mechanisms provides the insurgency with constant opportunities to influence the NATO decision-making cycle. By selectively targeting individual alliance members with attacks on the ground, they can affect public opinion at home and in turn reduce political willingness to take military risks. Indeed, support for NATO's mission in western societies is declining continuously. Countries such as Germany or the Netherlands struggle hard to maintain domestic support. NATO's structural inability to reverse the course of the Afghan operation is becoming more and more obvious.

On the operational level of the small war in Afghanistan, NATO lacks both military and non-military capabilities to conduct a sustained counter-insurgency campaign. Overall, NATO's force structure is of rather limited utility in the Afghan theatre. The NATO Response Force, a force directed towards conventional high-intensity war-fighting, has become the most obvious symbol for a serious mismatch between force planning and operational reality.

Regarding non-military capabilities the picture also looks bleak. As a military organisation, the Alliance is rather helpless in its calls for a ‘comprehensive approach.' Those international governmental and non-governmental organizations which could provide much needed civilian reconstruction capabilities in Afghanistan are reluctant to invest the necessary resources. Another problem is that military and civilian actors do not conceptualize the conflict in the same ways. The resulting lack of integrated planning prevents a coherent counter-insurgency effort on part of the Western security community.

Surely, the war in Afghanistan still is not lost. Yet chances are high that NATO (and the Western security community) could become the next victim of an insurgency. Some commentators have argued that a failing Afghanistan mission would not constitute the end of NATO as a military alliance. That may well be the case. However, it should not be overlooked that those Western countries who have suffered defeat in an insurgency campaign have been left traumatized for a considerable period and their militaries have taken huge pains to recover. What then would be the impact of an Afghan disaster for NATO? While this is still subject to speculation it seems reasonable to assume that loosing its first major ground war would widen the political rifts within the Alliance and would decrease its potential as a security actor contributing to global stability.

Timo Noetzel and Benjamin Schreer are analysts at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.