NATO’s new threat

THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. Because there’s not much danger of the Red Army marching on Paris anymore, the alliance’s mission has understandably changed over time. It’s unfortunate that some European members now seem to be retreating from their commitment to a re-energized NATO.

The Bush administration is rightly trying to lead NATO down a new path, hoping to turn it from a Eurocentric and defensive force into one capable of going on the offensive against threats to the West. That is clearly in the interest of the U.S. because American forces are badly overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is just as much in Europe’s interest. The bombings in Madrid and London show that terrorism is not just an American problem. A stable Afghanistan, for example, should be just as high a priority for Europeans as it is for Americans.

That’s why the soul-searching by the Dutch parliament over its military role was distressing. NATO agreed in December to increase the number of its troops in Afghanistan from 9,000 to about 16,000, and to expand its mission into the southern part of the country, which has been beset by violence. This will allow the U.S. to withdraw a few thousand of its troops and to focus others on the eastern region. The plan was jeopardized when objections arose in the Netherlands, whose parliament Thursday finally agreed after weeks of debate to send 1,400 Dutch troops into greater danger.

The Dutch are usually reliable U.S. allies; if it had been, say, Belgium getting in the way of a key NATO initiative, it would have been neither surprising nor significant. So the Dutch reluctance was especially worrisome. Though the left-leaning D66 party that led the anti-Afghanistan charge ultimately lost, it reflects popular attitudes in the Netherlands, where half the respondents in a recent poll opposed the deployment and only 38% favored it.

It’s hard to know whom to blame more for this: the Dutch, who apparently fail to recognize their own exposure to terrorist threats, or the Bush administration. Europeans are concerned about Washington’s unilateral approach to foreign policy, which has turned Dutch sentiment against the once-noncontroversial Afghan mission.

But in the end, it’s important for Europeans to acknowledge that their continent is not a secondary theater in the war on terror -- it’s center stage.