What is the future of NATO?

NATO will continue its role stabilising Afghanistan

Question: What is the future of NATO?
Position‹3 of 3: NATO will have a renewed role in the 21st century
Argument1 of 2›: NATO will continue its role stabilising Afghanistan

The Government of Afghanistan remains under siege from Taliban insurgents and will continue to be reliant on NATO to train, advise, and assist the Afghan National Army.

The argument

Since 2002 NATO has played a key role in stabilising Afghanistan and fighting the Taliban. Until 2014 this role involved direct combat aimed at stabilising the Government of Afghanistan and has subsequently morphed into an indirect role training the Afghan security forces. While a peace agreement has been brokered between the Afghan Government and the Taliban, continued violence makes role of NATO within the country more critical than ever. NATO forces will not be able to fully withdraw from Afghanistan until the peace agreement is fully implemented, which at this moment in time is increasingly unlikely as Taliban forces continue to attack the Government in Kabul.

Premises

[P1]Since 2002 NATO has played a key role stabilising Afghanistan, shifting from direct combat to training Afghan security forces. [P2] Continued Taliban violence against the Kabul government makes NATO's role there more critical than ever. [P3] NATO cannot fully withdraw until the peace agreement is implemented, which remains unlikely. [C] Therefore, because NATO will continue its role stabilising Afghanistan, it will have a renewed role in the 21st century.

Counter-arguments

NATO's future role in Afghanistan is uncertain and unlikely to continue since the USA and the UK have both announced their intention to withdraw the bulk of troops by the end of 2020. President Trump has made it clear that the US withdrawal is not dependent on the successful implementation of the peace agreement between the Afghan Government and the Taliban. This means that the UK/USA withdrawal, which accounts for the bulk of NATO troops still in the country, is likely to go ahead irrespective of the continued levels of violence.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise describes a role that has since ended. The Resolute Support mission was wound up and the last international forces left in 2021, after which the Afghan government and the security forces NATO had trained collapsed within days — so a continuing stabilising presence cannot be the basis for the alliance's future. [Rejecting P2] Deteriorating conditions are treated as a reason forces would stay, but the sequence ran the other way. The agreement signed in Doha set a withdrawal timetable that was not conditioned on the level of violence, and the withdrawal proceeded while attacks continued — so the premise's own evidence of instability turned out not to be what determined the outcome. [Rejecting P3] This premise was mistaken when it was written, as the counter observes: the United States and the United Kingdom, who supplied most of the remaining troops, had already stated that departure did not depend on implementation of the agreement. A case for a renewed twenty-first-century role would have to rest on something else — collective defence in Europe, enlargement, or the alliance's response to threats outside its treaty area — rather than on this mission.