British prime minister David Cameron, American president Barack Obama and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso observe a moment of silence in honor of NATO military personnel that have lost their lives, Lisbon, Portugal, November 19, 2010 (White House/Pete Souza)

The key for the future of NATO is to once again establish a clear strategic rationale for its existence.

This was a relatively easy task during the Cold War, when the threat of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was very real and perceived as existential. In the years since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, this is no longer the case and it has forced NATO to evaluate exactly what role it should play in the twenty-first century.

While it seems that many in Europe and the United States have a desire to turn NATO into some sort of “GloboCop” looking perennially abroad for new monsters to slay, NATO’s actions since the conclusion of the Cold War raise serious questions about the wisdom of such a course. Its use of military force against Serbia during the Kosovo crisis in the 1990s, its extensive work in Afghanistan and, most recently, in Libya illustrate how NATO can work and how it really cannot.

The key question is this: Should NATO in this century be used primarily to defend Europe from external aggression while facilitating intra-European stability or is it to be a platform for external stabilizing missions in other geographic regions, such as the Middle East or East Asia? 


The answer is that it should remain focused on what it can do and do well.

If NATO was largely created “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” as stated memorably by the alliance’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, this should in large measure be maintained as a raison d’etre.

The questions of Russia and Germany continue to be, as they always have been, of paramount importance to European stability. NATO can and should deal with this.

The alliance should remain a serious player in Europe, capable of defending against any potential external aggression. It should also retain the ability to maintain a sense of order in the continually tumultuous southern side of Europe, especially the Balkan tinderbox. 



Meanwhile, NATO must reexamine its capacity to engage in missions outside of Europe and should probably scale back any extra-European ambitions. The fiscal and military resources are not available to engage in global operations and the scarce resources that are available are better spent in the European neighborhood.

Referring again to the Kosovo air campaign, it appears that NATO can use force effectively when deployed against malefactors within the general European area.

By contrast, although NATO has played a significant role in Afghanistan, the ambiguities of general policy toward that nation and the larger issues pertaining in particular to stability in Pakistan have made it a far less successful endeavor.

Granted, much of this is due to internal policy divisions within the United States, which is quite evidently the largest player in the Afghan theater. However, the projection capabilities of NATO are not all that impressive when looking at the difficulty in doing what is necessary to win a small scale conflict beyond Europe.

The Libyan intervention reinforces this impression. Aside from the question of whether the regime crackdown in Syria is of more strategic importance to the region than whatever Colonel Muammar Gaddafi did, the point is, if one is to engage, one must engage fully. That NATO proved only half willing to do so elongated the conflict and could have facilitated the stealing of many weapons that are now finding their way into a myriad of other conflict zones like Mali.

The take away from this state of affairs is that NATO should remain focused on European stability, not out of theater operations. Efforts to use NATO outside of Europe leave much to be desired and fundamentally risk making the Atlantic alliance look weaker, not stronger

Attempting to bolster NATO in order that it essentially becomes some kind of global constabulary force seems unwise. Each region of the world will require its own multilateral (though not panglobal) institutions.

The United States will, for as long as it remains the single most powerful nation in the world, play a key role in each of these regional institutions. Yet these institutions should remain regional, focusing on their own neighborhoods so that they can be more effective, rather than morphing into grandiose institutions with ambitions far exceeding capabilities. That is a sure fire recipe for ineffective institutions that spend more time talking than acting on the imperatives of the moment.

Europe and the United States are the pillars of transatlanticism and the “West” more broadly conceived. They must hang together or they will hang separately. Narrowing NATO’s focus in such a way that it maintains stability in the European heartland is a key step to making sure they hang together even if economic power seems to be shifting eastward in the twenty-first century.

At the end of the day, NATO leaders should say no to “GloboCop” and yes to their own backyard.

This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared at the Atlantic Community, September 3, 2010.

At sunset a convoy of Canadian Light Armored Vehicles overwatches the area near Khadan Village, Afghanistan, January 25, 2010

With American and NATO forces preparing to pull out of Afghanistan in 2014, will counterinsurgency soon be over? No, writes retired United States Army Colonel Robert Killebrew at Foreign Policy. The real counterinsurgency is only just beginning.

Killebrew defines counterinsurgency as the deployment of American power in support of local combat forces. If a foreign army becomes too involved in a local struggle, he points out, it risks “stealing the oxygen” from the essential relationship between native government and the insurgents who are fighting it.

It may be necessary for one of our troops to shoot an insurgent from the next village but killing somebody’s cousin isn’t going to make either us or the local government loved. If there ever was a doubt, look at the celebrations breaking out in Iraq with our departure.

The intense counterterrorism campaign that has been waged in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan for roughly the last two years hasn’t made the United States very popular there. Both Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul and officials in Islamabad have demanded an end to nighttime raids by special forces and aerial bombardments by unmanned “drone” planes in the unruly tribal area along the frontier.

By 2014, American and other Western armies currently fighting in Afghanistan are scheduled to transfer security responsibility to the Afghan forces. “What this means,” writes Killebrew, “is that Afghan forces do the fighting, helped by small American advisory teams embedded in Afghan units, living and fighting alongside Afghan troops, and backed up by US air power and logistics.” No longer would the Americans be perceived as meddling in an internal conflict, rather the central government bears responsibility for ending the insurgency.

“This is not new to us,” writes Killebrew. The United States have worked alongside and supported local troops in conflicts for decades, most recently in Vietnam, El Salvador, Colombia and the Philippines.

In Colombia, a success story, a Colombian general complimented the US for getting it right and “letting us fight our own war.”

Colombia’s guerrilla against the FARC as well as Sri Lanka’s battle against Tamil insurgents provide lessons for counterinsurgencies elsewhere.

Niel Smith wrote about the Sri Lankan experience in Small Wars Journal more than two years ago. The conditions for a successful counterinsurgency, he argued, included an unwavering political will; disregard for international opinion and internal opposition distracting from the goal; no negotiations with the forces of terror and; complete freedom for the security forces.

Smith admitted that, “Most Western readers will find the lack of concern for civilian casualties in this strategy disconcerting.” A “ruthless” counterinsurgency however does resolve a conflict more quickly and therefore incurs less collateral damage whereas a “population centric” approach, aimed at winning the “hearts and minds” of the populace, “while humanistic, takes longer, with uncertain probabilities of success.”

So the question Killebrew raises is whether the Obama Administration, “the Defense Department and the services have the stomach for such a shift to the actual prosecution of a counterinsurgency effort.” This, he admits, is still an open question.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta leaves a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington DC, January 5, 2012

President Barack Obama on Thursday unveiled a new defense strategy that prioritizes air force and navy spending at the expense of the Army and the Marine Corps.

In order to trim military spending by $487 billion over the next decade compared to present budget projections, the Army and Marine Corps between them could lose up to a hundred thousand personnel.

An entire combat brigade is likely be withdrawn from forward deployment in Europe as the focus shifts to the Pacific realm. The Pentagon will lose its theoretical ability to wage two wars simultaneously, instead preparing to win one conflict and deny an enemy victory in another.

How this strategic shift will specifically impact force posture and procurement remains to be seen but with a renewed focus on cyber warfare and unmanned aerial vehicles, there is a clear movement away from counterinsurgency toward a rapidly deployable and flexible air and naval force.

Sea power is certainly critical to American superpower but the era of big naval confrontation, and with it, the era of the supercarrier, may be drawing to a close. Amphibious assault ships, particularly of the landing helicopter dock type, able to deploy fighter jets, helicopters and Marines anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, can project American military force faster and at much lower cost.

Construction of the Nimitz carrier averaged $4.5 billion per ship. The new USS Gerald R. Ford will probably come in over $13 billion. A Wasp class amphibious ship, by contrast, costs $750 million to build while the Navy could buy three America class amphibs for the price of a supercarrier. America is basically a light carrier, the size of France’s Charles de Gaulle.

The recent NATO intervention in Libya was a case in point for the amphibious assault ship. None of the US Navy’s eleven supercarriers was involved in the operation. Instead, the American contribution to Operation Odyssey Dawn was spearheaded by the USS Kearsarge and its four Harrier jump jets. Its capabilities may pale in comparison to the fifty fixed wing aircraft that a carrier brings to the fore but for a military effort that was supposed to be limited in time and scope, it did the job.

Light interventions like Libya are likely to happen again when tumult in failed or failing states threatens regional stability and trade; when nations become a breeding ground for international terrorism; when shipping lanes are menaced.

Nearly all of America’s wars since the end of World War II have been of the light intervention kind or they started out that way. Vietnam and Iraq escalated and became prolonged ground wars. President Obama himself intensified the battle in Afghanistan to wage a deadly counterinsurgency campaign there. Does it make sense to shed the ability to do what used to be called guerilla in favor of a massive Pacific war that’s unlikely to happen?

After Vietnam, the armed forces dismantled their counterinsurgency capabilities. Humanitarian interventions in Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s were handled relatively well in spite of reductions but when the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq morphed into protracted ground campaigns during the middle of the last decade, the Army and Marines had to learn on the job and invest massively in training and rapid procurement to turn the tide of the war.

There is a real danger that if these investments are now discarded to prepare for a war with China that will not happen, they will have to be made again, at far greater expense, if ever an intervention takes longer than expected.

Four US Navy F/A-18 Hornet aircraft fly over mountains in Afghanistan, November 25, 2010 (US Air Force)

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were a watershed moment for American foreign policy. It prompted the United States to assert their influence around the world through both covert and overt military operations in the name of counterterrorism. Ten years later, has the war been won?

There is a good argument to be made that it has. The mastermind of 9/11, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was killed this May by American special forces. His organization has been all but crushed and certainly denied the ability to strike against the American homeland or even against American forces stationed abroad in a concentrated fashion. No terrorist attack against the United States has been successfully carried out in the wake of 9/11.

The uprisings across the Arab world might also herald an end to the War on Terror. As longtime dictators were toppled in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia this year with Syria’s authoritarian regime under unabated popular pressure to reform, there is a chance for democracy and secular nationalism to take root in the region. For youngsters in the Islamic world, Al Qaeda no longer represents an ideology that speaks to their interests and aspirations. They want democracy and economic opportunity—like Westerners do.

Then again, it may be premature to declare the War on Terror won. For one thing, Pakistan, a critical American ally in its war in Afghanistan, continues to consider terror a military tactic to be deployed against neighboring India. Recent attacks in Mumbai and New Delhi may be testament to this strategic mindset.

What is more, Pakistan is providing a safe haven for terrorists who may not pose a direct threat to the United States nor even its troops in Afghanistan but do keep the ideology of violent Islamism alive.

Terrorists don’t recognize the borders of nation states which may be the greatest challenge in fighting them. Previous ideologies that transcended frontiers were at least firmly rooted in some countries. Communism had universal appeal but it was the state ideology of Soviet Russia and China. In fighting the Cold War, Western countries could channel their anticommunist effort against left wing regimes wherever they appeared while weakening Moscow’s influence simultaneously.

Muslim fanatics, by contrast, have no nation they can call home. Terrorism as a concept is even less tangible. The “War on Terror” is ill defined because it cannot target specific nation states. Indeed, like a “war on crime,” it can be waged indefinitely.

Another reason to suspect that the War on Terror might not soon be over is the West’s continued dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The United States’ strategic presence in the region necessitated by this economic reality provides legitimacy to the acts of terrorists who claim to resist a foreign occupation force. Moreover, it enables oil rich nations to funnel resources into the hands of terrorists.

In conclusion, it may be safest to state that the War on Terror still rages and that its outcome remains unclear. Especially if the United States disengage from South Asia as they did during the Cold War, there is a chance that the next terrorist attack against the American homeland will again emerge from the mountainous tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the meantime, the War on Terror continues.

Defense secretary Robert Gates speaks at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, August 9, 2010

Robert Gates, the man who has effectively led and managed the world’s largest military force for the past four and half years, had a simple message as he stepped back into civilian life—the United States may have the most powerful and gifted military on the planet but that power could lose its luster if future presidents plunge the country into “wars of choice.” In other words, if you find yourself a part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or in the inner corridors of the White House, make sure you learn the lessons of the past before sending American soldiers to fight another war halfway around the world.

For a defense official who served Republican administrations for most of his forty-plus years in government, the message may seem strange. The Republican Party, after all, traditionally prides itself on being “tough” on matters related to national security. Yet Gates’ affiliation with Republicans is also why his words should be taken seriously. After a long and hard decade of never ending combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the men and women serving the US military are stretched to the breaking point. Gates may not say it out in the open for fear of being chastised but he clearly recognizes that the United States are not as resilient as they used to be.

Throughout his career as defense secretary, Gates was seen as both a problem solver and a “fixer.” A well established character within the American intelligence community with a solid reputation, he was tapped by President George W. Bush to lead the Pentagon in the midst of one of the most tumultuous times in the nation’s history. By the time Gates was nominated to the post in the autumn of 2006, the war that the Bush Administration had gambled most of its credibility on was spiraling out of control. Thousands of Iraqi civilians, Sunni and Shī’ah alike, became the main victims in a barrage of violence from rival militia groups, predatory policemen and militants affiliated with the Al Qaeda brand. While the Bush White House denied it outright numerous times, Iraq was looking more and more like a civil war. Donald Rumsfeld, who led the Pentagon at the time, seemed detached from what was going on.

The situation, both in Iraq and in the Pentagon, needed to change. And it needed to change as soon as possible. Thus after a tough nomination process in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates went into his office and started the difficult work of turning the war around and rebuilding the strength and soft power appeal of the United States. Generals and commanders who were previously safe from reprimands were fired for poor performance while junior officers who were courageous enough to think “outside the box” were awarded promotions in the hopes of spurring a new wave of innovation within the Army and Marine Corps.

Perhaps more significant than anything else, Gates made sure that he was close to the president but not so close as to jeopardize his credibility as impartial and fair to dissenters. President Bush certainly benefited from Gates’ more temperate demeanor as did Barack Obama.

Gates, of course, was not perfect. For one, he was a main reason for President Obama to sidestep Marine Corps General James E. Cartwright as next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many of the goals that Gates sought to accomplish while at the Defense Department either proved to be too difficult to solve or were left untouched. Although the Pentagon is now starting to find savings in order to cut its $700 billion budget, defense spending is still vastly more than it needs to be at a time when Washington is attempting to cut government spending anywhere it can. Robert Gates also leaves behind three wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya—with the one that he is most identified with—Iraq—still plagued by insurgent violence, suicide bombings and assassinations.

Just as Robert Gates came into the Pentagon with a lot on his plate, so too will his replacement, Leon Panetta. The stereotypical Washington insider, Panetta enters the office facing a host of challenges, many of which will take decades to solve. As Gates found out time and again, trying to break through the status quo, whether by cutting the size of the defense budget or decommissioning a missile defense shield, has the affect of stirring resistance from at least someone on Capitol Hill.

One thing is certain, said Gates. If the United States do not find a way to stop embroiling themselves in war for war’s sake, none of these problems will be as serious as the trouble that could pop up in the future.

President Barack Obama makes a phone call from the Oval Office of the White House, January 25

After a year and a half of commentary and speculation about how many troops the his administration would be moving from Afghanistan, President Barack Obama broke all doubt by outlining his plans to the American people for the next two years of the conflict. All surge troops will be out of Afghanistan by September 2012, with the first ten thousand soldiers leaving their bases over the next few months.

Despite a relatively short speech, Obama’s remarks were clear and consistent with his overall war strategy. The war has always been about making Afghanistan “good enough,” or stabilizing the country to the point where terrorists like Al Qaeda could never again use it to launch further attacks against the US homeland. Evidently, Obama sees that goal nearing its completion after eighteen months of offensive operations. With the death of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda Central is now at its weakest point since the start of the War on Terror nearly ten years ago.

Like Al Qaeda, the Taliban have been hit hard, if not harder, over the past year. Helmand and Kandahar Provinces, the birthplace of the Islamist movement, are now no-go zones for many of its fighters. Kandahar City is a much safer place, with shops reopening, confidence in the local government increasing and opposition to the insurgency growing. And while the Taliban still has the capacity to conduct assassinations on Afghan government and security personnel, the movement’s rank and file have been demoralized by an ramped up “kill or capture” program, courtesy of US conventional troops and Special Operations Forces.

With thirty thousand soldiers now counting down their days in theater, the question becomes whether those military gains will be held and built upon once responsibility for security is transferred to the Afghan army and police.

The Brooking Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon doesn’t think so, especially if all American surge forces are withdrawn in the middle of next summer’s fighting season. Brookings fellow and Washington Post commentator Robert Kagan goes two steps further by labeling Obama’s troop drawdown as a clever political ploy to win votes in the next election season. Max Boot, a national security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, adds his two cents to the mix, arguing that the withdrawal schedule jeopardizes military gains made over the past eighteen months and throws a wrench into the commander’s plans for eastern Afghanistan in 2012-2013.

Yet what all three of these smart guys seem to forget is that the Afghan war is no longer about destroying the Taliban insurgency, nor is it about extending the writ of the Afghan Government. Counterinsurgency may have worked in Iraq during the long haul (although the verdict on that war is still out); the same concept has proven to be virtually impossible in the Afghan context given the 2014 deadline. Better yet, COIN has essentially become a convenient excuse to escalate the conflict in the hopes of leaving Afghanistan on a high note and magically bringing Mullah Mohammed Omar out of his Pakistani hideout waving a white flag.

NATO has achieved a lot over the last year and a half, indeed far more than President Obama could have expected when he announced his surge policy in December 2009. But the same time period has also resulted in a higher price in American blood and treasure and the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Domestic support for the war effort has been teetering below 50 percent for quite some time. The list of lawmakers in the president’s own party who are demanding further troop reductions is growing longer as the war draws on. The Republican Party, traditionally the backbone of Washington’s national security establishment, is now divided among itself over the issue, with some pushing for a quicker withdrawal and others vowing a “stay the course” strategy. Republican presidential contenders for the 2012 election are divided about what the right policy is.

The American people, in short, are tired of the war. Neglecting to take all of these variables into consideration, alongside the recommendations of military commanders, would be a huge mistake for a president who vowed to shift American resources back home.

Taliban leaders can be killed, territory can be seized and held, and institutions can be built, but all of these goals will take years, if not decades, to achieve in a country whose political system is based more on patronage than Western style checks and balances. If the United States had unlimited resources, a meager national debt, a raging surplus, and a public determined to see the war through, then perhaps the military could sustain the Afghan mission indefinitely. Unfortunately, none of these conditions are available at the present time.

However hard NATO tries at a military solution, defeating the Taliban in the conventional sense cannot be done, not because of a lack of effort, but because of a Pakistani safe haven across the border and an Afghan Government unable to govern all of its provinces and districts effectively. Ten years into war, the United States are once again focused on the threat—Al Qaeda—that led them there in the first place.

The Taliban, a nationalist movement, can be contained with the right mix of punishment and incentives. Al Qaeda, a movement that preaches a jihadist ideology that transcends national borders, cannot be contained with the same tools. Good intelligence work, healthy diplomatic relations, dedicated soldiers and a resilient first strike capability will.

After ten years in Afghanistan, American political leaders have come to the realization that the fight against Al Qaeda—the real national security interest of the United States—can be continued without rebuilding a state and reconstructing an entire society.

After a two year investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, including field reports, interviews and budget assessments, the committee has released its own assessment of the effectiveness of American civilian aid programs in the Afghan conflict. Although the the report was a long fifty-one pages, one needs only to read the executive summary to determine that the administration’s civilian strategy in Afghanistan, according to Democratic staff members, is not having much of an effect on the country’s overall progression. In the words of the report, “the evidence that stabilization programs promote stability in Afghanistan is limited.”

Such a public rebuke may not be earth shattering when taking into account Afghanistan’s war ravaged society. Afghans have been living their lives the best they can in the middle of a war zone for the past thirty years, first with the Soviet invasion and occupation in the 1980s, the Afghan civil war of the 1990s and finally the US/NATO international coalition in the 2000s. It is difficult to support your family when bullets fly above your head on a near daily basis. And while the Afghan economy has been growing since the Taliban regime was overthrown in 2001, many in Washington expected that productivity to be higher than it is today.

The Obama Administration says that the Afghan economy has grown by 10 percent annually over the past few years, but most of that growth has been kicked off by donations from the United States and the international community. Most Afghans live not in Kabul but in the countryside where farming is the predominate mode of earning. Scientists only recently discovered a large supply of minerals and until they are extracted and the violence subsides to a tolerable level, investors will have a difficult time convincing themselves that they should be putting money in an unstable area.

The report is significant not for its findings, which most analysts on the ground have written about for years, but for its criticism of a Democratic government by a Democratic majority staff on one of Congress’ most powerful committees. If it were Republicans conducting the investigation, the results of the report could be tainted by the White House as a partisan attack on a Democratic president seeking to wind down America’s military commitment in the Afghan war. Yet it was the president’s own party that did all of the legwork over the last two years, making the conclusions even more disturbing for the president’s Afghanistan team. In fact, the report was so dispiriting that the authors explicitly questioned the merits of counterinsurgency, the very strategy that the military is relying on to conduct the war.

The criticism is significant not only because President Barack Obama depends on the counterinsurgency doctrine for his current policy, but because the entire military command has used the past five years to weld the “hearts and minds” approach into its strategic playbook. The Army and Marine Corps in particular place far more of an emphasis on protecting the population and winning the trust of locals than on traditional war fighting. Pouring money into American aid agencies, building indigenous governing capacity at the local, provincial and national levels and enrolling war weary civilians into schools is 50 percent of the work. While the report only concentrates on Afghanistan, its language challenges the entire population centric, or COIN, notion of war.

With Robert Gates, a prominent COIN supporter, retiring from his post as defense secretary and Leon Panetta replacing him, the “whole of government” approach that the Obama White House has been following in Afghanistan may be at the beginning of being reevaluated. The report’s release, mere days before the president is set to announce his decision about how many troops to withdraw, should not be seen as a coincidence. Congress is tired of funding the war ($100 billion a year in military spending alone) and it is sending a loud message to the president that the withdrawal should be substantial.

Both the Obama Administration and terrorism experts are cautious. They know that the killing of bin Laden at the hands of American special forces is likely provoke a violent response. Al Qaeda has to prove that it can survive the demise of its founder.

Bin Laden, moreover, hasn’t played a key strategic role in the organization for many years. Being America’s most wanted terrorist made it impossible for him to effectively orchestrate another attack after 9/11. The consensus among defense and foreign policy analyst as reported by The New York Times, is that bin Laden’s death does not “end the threat from an increasingly potent and self reliant string of regional Qaeda affiliates in North Africa and Yemen or from a self radicalized vanguard here at home.”

There are several loosely affiliated terrorist groups around the Muslim world claiming to be part of Al Qaeda, notably in the Maghreb and Yemen. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula appears to have been the most successful of these organizations as it attempted several attacks against Western targets, all of which were foiled. Terrorist activity in West Africa goes mostly unreported in international media and may actually have less to do with religious fanaticism than regional and tribal disputes. The same is true for the insurgency along Pakistan’s western frontier where bin Laden was long presumed to be hiding.

What made bin Laden successful—and his death such a devastating blow to the organization—was his ability to rally dissatisfied and estranged young Muslims everywhere to a cause. “Al Qaeda was an idea and an ideology, symbolized by an extremely charismatic figure in Osama bin Laden,” writes Fareed Zakaria.

Bin Laden was this Saudi prince like figure who had gone into the mountains of Afghanistan forsaking the riches of a multibillion dollar fortune, fought against the Soviets, demonstrated personal bravery and then crafted a seductive message about Islam and Islamic extremism as a path to destroy the corrupt regimes of the Middle East.

Without its fountainhead, Al Qaeda is likely to lose part of its appeal as well as sponsorship.

What is more, the pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and other authoritarian Arab regimes have undermined part of Al Qaeda’s rationale. “Al Qaeda existed because bin Laden argued that the regimes of the Arab world were dictatorial and oppressive,” according to Zakaria.

He argued that the United States were supporting those regimes and, as a result, Muslims had to engage in terrorism against the United States and those regimes. He claimed that the only way to achieve change was through violence, terrorism and Islamic extremism.

The rioters and protesters of the “Arab spring” proved him wrong. They managed to bring down Hosni Mubarak, a stalwart American ally, almost without violence—let alone terrorism. In very few instances has Islamism been part of the anti-government protests that also swept Bahrain, Jordan and Libya. The people there want jobs, not sharia.

The death of bin Laden may not discourage a generation of freelance terrorists from inflicting serious harm. But the central organizing ideology that presented an existential seduction to the Muslim world as well as an existential threat to the West is probably damaged beyond repair.

NATO, specifically the Belgians, British, Canadians and the French, have been under control of the allied assault since Washington diverted authority last month. For better or for worse, the Europeans are now the predominate executors of the no-fly-zone mandate, hitting Gaddafi loyalists massing near opposition controlled cities from thousands of miles in the air. Yet even with the operation still up and running, some of the bravado that was exhibited by the coalition during the opening phase of the campaign has been lost by a combination of frustration and confusion.

Foremost among that frustration are the British and the French, who have both been disappointed that other partners in the NATO coalition have not lived up to their end of the burden. The United Nations Security Council, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference may have all signed on to the humanitarian intervention but only a few are actually contributing fighters in the skies. Fewer still are patrolling Libya’s airspace in order to protect civilians who have been liberated from Gaddafi’s army. The only Arab states that are actively participating are Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Of those three, only Qatar is flying missions.

Therefore, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the United States reentered the fight and assumed a more proactive role. The Europeans and NATO both asked for American assistance during bombing runs: only the United States have the equipment and fighter jets that can indefinitely hit targets without inflicting substantial civilian casualties. The president heard their calls and deployed armed Predator drones over Libya in order to tilt the military balance in favor of the rebels.

For an administration that was hesitant to intervene in the first place, this decision is right in line with America’s minimalist objectives in Libya—avoid the deployment of ground troops by protecting civilians from the air. At the same time, dispatching drones to Libya demonstrates to the Europeans that the United States have not gotten soft as the conflict has gotten messier. (Some respected journalists have argued that drones may just make the war worse.)

Will drone strikes help the coalition effort in any substantial way? If the objective is to parse out Gaddafi fighters from the general civilian population, the answer is yes. As illustrated in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, drone technology is quite reliable and their propensity for singling out people is virtually assured. Gaddafi loyalists have adapted to NATO air strikes by hiding in residential areas and blending in with civilians, which inevitably makes it more difficult to neutralize them without killing innocents at the same time. Drones, which can hover above a target for up to twelve straight hours, mitigate the chances of collateral damage quite dramatically.

The assassination of Muammar Gaddafi himself may also be a motive for sending drone aircraft into the intervention. Hundreds of Al Qaeda commanders have been killed by drones over the last seven years in the Pakistani tribal regions and a top terrorist leader in Yemen was wiped out in the same fashion a year after the 9/11 attacks. Pilotless aircraft are clearly the weapon of choice in American counterterrorism assignments around the world.

Now, we can file “protecting Libyan civilians” as a new bullet point in the drone resume.

But while civilian deaths are difficult to avoid, US and British troops have done a much better job over the past year eluding civilians during their operations, according to a United Nations report on Afghan civilian casualties. The study (PDF), conducted by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, is a long collection of assessments, charts, maps and graphs supporting its fact finding mission, yet the Associated Press ran a short story summarizing its main findings.

Civilian casualties did in fact increase by a disappointing 28 percent from the previous year (2009), but the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) found a way to decrease their share of the deaths by 26 percent.

Numbers can at times be consuming, but in this particular circumstance, the 26 percent decrease supports many of the conclusions that General David H. Petraeus and his operational command have been making over the past several months; that coalition troops are not only taking great care to stay away from local residents during attacks but are limiting their missions against very specific targets.

As expected, foremost among those targets are suspected Taliban hideouts, which have been severely degraded by frequent night raids by US Special Forces. The raids are controversial and unpopular in Afghanistan but they have not disappointed on results. Thousands of anti-government insurgents have been captured and thousands more (mainly low to midlevel Taliban field commanders) have been killed.

The statistics from the UN report also reveal an intelligence component that is especially important to the coalition going forward. The acquisition of accurate and actionable intelligence from those on the ground is undeniably one of the variables that have led the coalition to a more sustained campaign of precision targeting. As more accurate information makes its way up the chain of command, it is more likely that troops in the field will succeed in their operations with a substantially lower amount of collateral damage. It’s an obvious interpretation, but one that could convince more Afghan civilians to step forward with information.

This is good news tactically, since troops are finding it easier to locate Taliban fighters and weapons caches around areas that were “no go” zones only a year ago. But far more significant to the mission in Afghanistan is whether the decrease in civilian deaths is boosting Washington’s strategic advantage in relation to the enemy. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is still murky given the difficulties of measuring Afghan public opinion at a time of war.

The UN study also has implications for how the United States and its partners are actually conducting the war. Counterinsurgency (COIN) has become a common mantra in US military doctrine today, with the conventional use of force taking a secondary position in relation to the protection of the local population and the provision of enough security to win their support.

Counterinsurgency is reliant both on military and nonmilitary (or civilian) measures of success. Yet on the nonmilitary aspect of the strategy, there is cause for concern. General Petraeus himself acknowledged that a political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan remains way off into the distance. The Taliban leadership, unmolested in Quetta, remains steadfast in its refusal to engage in negotiations with the coalition as long as foreign troops are on Afghan soil.  Members of the Taliban that have actually stopped fighting the government and have switched allegiances are not being integrated into Afghan society as quickly as Petraeus would hope.

In this context, should COIN still be the overarching war strategy for the Obama Administration? The high level of enemy combatants killed and the tedious pace of reconciliation suggests that the ISAF may be focusing more on what the military regards as kinetic operations, or classic war fighting capabilities. In Afghanistan at least, COIN may be a dead concept.