President Obama has been slow to respond to General Stanley McChrystal’s request for an escalation of troops in Afghanistan. Actually the request is based on the president’s own strategy which he described last March, to concentrate on protecting the Afghan people, train Afghan security forces and build the economy. Vice President Joe Biden, on the contrary, who visited the area recently, suggests a scaled back military force, focusing instead on taking out al-Qaeda cells through unmanned drone strikes and special operation raids in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s mountainous area, which have been relatively successful, although they infuriated the local populations because civilians were killed. America’s major problem, as the former ambassador to Iraq, David Crocker, explained in Newsweek is underestimating local rivalries and resistance to occupation – whether by Russia, Britain, or the US foreign forces have never brought peace to Afghanistan. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, never had a strong central government. Internal conflict is endemic and to most Afghans, regional identity is more important than central government. The country has always been governed by local rulers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested the National Security chief, General Jones, and the new British Army chief, General David Richard, would be for nuclear arms to fall into the hands of terrorists, which could happen if Afghanistan is not defended and the Taliban and al-Qaeda overrun nuclear-armed Pakistan. “Even if only a few of those weapons fell into their hands, believe me, they would use them,” said General Richard in a press interview. General Jones told Christian Amanpour on CNN that it was “his biggest nightmare.”

That thought should inspire Europeans to maintain present troop levels and for NATO and the EU to increase their contribution to training Afghan army and police forces to handle their own security. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggests in an editorial in the New York Times, that there should be a coalition of NATO, EU, and Afghan’s neighbors to seek international commitment to a non-terrorist Afghanistan.