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Bring on the Afghan Study GroupDefeat in Afghanistan could be even more harmful than failure in Iraq.

By Frederick KempePosted Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006, at 6:13 AM ET

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Fix a dysfunctional multilateral system. International operations in Afghanistan operate under a G8 mandate, executed by U.N. bureaucracy, relying on troops under NATO command. It sounds like a good model, but many of those involved say it doesn't work.

At the moment, the United Kingdom has lead responsibility for drugs, the Italians for judicial reform, the Germans for police training, and the United States for military training. That leaves the critical drug war as too low a priority for too many countries. A senior U.S. official complains that the U.N. operation has been focused more on establishing a bureaucracy that can perpetuate itself than making it produce results.

Fix the NATO-EU rivalry. NATO badly needs to better tap the European Union's proven expertise in nation-building. The problem is that the two institutions, though both headquartered in Brussels, work poorly together because of historic rivalries, lack of tested institutional ties, and personal animosities. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and European Union foreign-policy czar Javier Solana are on bad terms. The European Union considers Afghanistan a NATO mission. Though many EU members are in NATO, most view their first priority as the European project. This West-West dispute is unfortunate in peacetime and dangerous when fighting a war.

Fix how NATO works. The alliance responds less to operational imperatives than to bureaucratic need and national sensitivities—Turks who aren't ready to shoot members of the Taliban, and Germans who, until the Riga summit, had a "caveat" on their deployment that wouldn't let them leave the relatively safe Afghan north for the more violent south. Italy and Spain have the same restrictions. NATO has insufficient intelligence capability and struggles to make quick political or acquisition decisions. One commander complained that he has been trying for years to acquire a tracking system that would protect his troops from friendly fire, because the alliance turned his need into "a 26-country industrial competition while people die on the ground."

Countries balk at their troops' use in rapid-response situations, because a lack of common funding means the countries that make physical sacrifices also foot the bill.

The fixes here can only be achieved if there is political will to provide troops without restrictions on their use, increase common funding, and, ultimately, move away from consensus decision-making to some form of majority voting that would take away veto power on NATO flexibility and effectiveness from the country that uses it most—France.

Press Pakistan to stop abetting the enemy. It's time for Washington and its allies to be clear that they will no longer tolerate Pakistan's continued failure to check the Taliban. Thus far, the West has balked at pressing the regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, needing him too badly for other priorities, but Europe and the United States must send a clear, unified message that he must do more to help when our soldiers' lives are at stake.

NATO must turn back its enemies in Afghanistan or expect Islamic extremists to march on—a nuclear-tipped Iran, a Hezbollah-run Lebanon, a failed Iraqi state spawning global terrorists, and knock-on dangers in places like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

During the Cold War, NATO triumphed over Soviet Communism because it was ready to fight a war that never came. In the 21^st century, NATO will succeed only if it can remake itself to fight a war that's already under way.