NATO and Afghanistan: Equitable Burden Sharing

Location:
RESERVE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES
One Constitution Avenue NE
Washington DC 20002

Less than 100 days into his Presidency and preceding NATO's 60th Anniversary Summit in April, Barack Obama announced the deployment of an additional 17,000 U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan, and 4,000 trainers. However, this U.S. surge was not reciprocated by the majority of NATO's European allies at the Summit. In total, Continental European nations announced that they would commit around 5,000 non-combatant troops, 3,000 of whom will deploy solely for the August election in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries continue to hamper the NATO mission with highly restrictive national caveats on their deployments. And their training missions have been bedeviled by failure, too.
Please join The Heritage Foundation and the Reserve Officers Association of the United States as General John Craddock explains the current posture of the NATO Alliance and its partners in Afghanistan.

General John Craddock was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Commander of United States European Command from December 7, 2006 - July 2, 2009. Highlights among a distinguished military career include command of deployments to Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Kosovo.