Michael Hughes
September 19, 2024

In his farewell address as NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg suggested the weakness of the Afghan central government was decisive in the coalition failing to win the war against the Taliban, and undermined the alliance’s mission, which was justified in pursuit of countering international terrorism.

“After 20 years we were still not winning the war. The Taliban were gaining ground and there were no united Afghan authorities that could take responsibility when we left. The fact that the Afghan Government and the security forces collapsed so quickly, demonstrated why it was right to leave,” Stoltenberg said in remarks at NATO headquarters in Brussels on August 19.

Stoltenberg argued that after the shocking realization the Afghan central government was weak, it was futile for the coalition to stay two more decades.

“What should have been a stable and strong state structure was a house of cards – there was no reason to believe that staying another 20 years would have provided a different outcome,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg, however, claimed the mission “was not in vain” and the coalition’s invasion of Afghanistan was the right thing to do in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Moreover, the US and NATO intervention had a clear UN mandate and won political support from every alliance member, he reasoned.

The departing NATO leader at least had the humility to acknowledge the aspirations were a bit too auspicious. The Afghanistan mission lasted too long, he said, and strayed from the original goal during his tenure at the coalition’s helm.

“When I arrived at NATO in 2014, the plan was to end our military presence in a couple of years, and transition to a political partnership,” Stoltenberg said. “What started as a focused counter-terrorism operation became a large-scale nation building mission.”

The NATO chief claimed the West learned some valuable lessons from the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The primary lessons learned are right out of military strategy and COIN doctrine 101, albeit a course rarely followed to the end. A democratic and united Afghanistan with equal rights for all, although a worthy goal, he said, was too ambitious. And the alliance paid “the cost of mission creep.”

“So the lesson learned is that the purpose of any future military operation outside NATO territory must be clearly defined and must be honest about what we can and cannot achieve,” Stoltenberg said.

Although they failed to win the war, Stoltenberg, apparently with a straight face, said the NATO mission “degraded al-Qaeda and prevented Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists.” This of course is the mantra the West likes to tell itself as a “cover” when in reality the mission was a complete failure, including with respect to the goal of preventing Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist sanctuary.

The NATO chief forgets, however, that the alliance actually wanted to extend its stay even with the Kabul government implosion imminent, according to a U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee investigative report released earlier in September. In 2020, Stoltenberg himself rebuked then-U.S. President Donald Trump for proposing to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan rapidly. The NATO chief was in favor of a more gradual timeline akin to Biden’s. One could argue that Trump’s swifter timeline, which Biden delayed by months, could potentially have avoided much chaos.

Moreover, Stoltenberg also forgets his own words, such as in a statement in 2014 when he had the gall to indicate the mission in Afghanistan was a “great success.” Back then, Stoltenberg announced that the NATO mission achieved what it set out to do. NATO successfully “made Afghanistan stronger,” he said, by building up, from scratch, strong security forces. NATO last year in a review of its own role in Afghanistan admitted failure, partly driven by ignorant, ambitious, and poorly-planned state-building endeavors. The largest factor in the failure was the utter neglect for the people and society of Afghanistan, which the Taliban exploited.

“Without political buy-in by a large segment of the Pashtun population, an inclusive, democratic and self-sustaining Afghanistan was not an attainable goal,” the assessment published in June of 2023 said. 

NATO conceded the conditions were never present for victory. Kabul was plagued by grievances driven by poor governance while safe havens across the region made the adversary unreachable. Instead of abandoning a futile mission in the face of these enduring challenges, “NATO stayed the course, widened the scope of its strategic planning and deepened its engagement.”

Yet, in the end, the NATO alliance was more of an accessory to the disaster. Another of Washington’s toys. The responsibility rests in the hands of officials in the U.S. political-military establishment, for they are largely responsible for implementing weak puppet governance in Kabul. In fact, the American-installed Afghan central government was a house of cards from day one.