The Reorientation of ISAF

Abstract

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at the time of writing constituted the largest ongoing deployment of European armed forces. In the autumn of 2010, EU member states contributed over 30,000 troops out of a total of 130,000. While the NATO operation in Afghanistan is principally led by the US, the sheer size of the European contribution alone — relative to their other engagements — more than justifies the inclusion of ISAF in a study of European crisis response operations (cf. Williams 2011: xi and Korski 2009). As a NATO operation, it illustrates the way the Alliance works as a platform for planning and conducting operations. For historical reasons, NATO procedures form the inspiration as well as the benchmark for the vast majority of military doctrine in Europe. Yet ISAF is not just a simple example of how NATO goes about its business. It constitutes an operation that by the end of 2007 hit a crossroads. While ISAF was originally conceived as a stabilisation operation, this mission was becoming increasingly untenable. Step-by-step, it transformed into a counterinsurgency operation. Although this was a US-driven process, it also illustrates how European states have been trying to come to grips with a rapidly deteriorating situation. As King (2011) has convincingly argued, the ‘ISAF experience’ is transforming European militaries like no other operation.