Politics

How Afghanistan broke NATO and why it matters for Ukraine

Trump officials are united in anger at the failure of European member states to support one aborted mission. This explains their thinking on the Ukraine war.

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US Marines on patrol in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom on February 4, 2012.

How Afghanistan broke NATO and why it matters for Ukraine

Kamal Alam

last update on 10 Mar 2025

As Europe scrambles to come to terms with President Donald Trump’s decision to halt the flow of military aid from the United States to Ukraine, capitals around the continent are struggling to fully understand Washington’s drastic new view of the war there.

There is a widely under-reported factor influencing the new administration: NATO in Afghanistan, and Europe’s failure to properly support the last major ongoing military operation undertaken by the West’s main defence organisation.

It helps explain much about Trump’s position on Ukraine, including his insistence on a deal giving Washington rights to the country’s minerals and calls for increased defence spending, as well as the deployment of non-US NATO troops.

NATO in jeopardy?

Concern has run deep enough for experienced officials to warn that NATO could be weeks away from unravelling entirely, including from Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO alliance commander, who warned of the possibility in a Daily Telegraph article.

From US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the consensus in the Trump administration is that NATO's involvement in Afghanistan exposed its traditional European partners as unreliable allies.

The consensus in the Trump administration is that NATO's involvement in Afghanistan exposed its traditional European partners as unreliable allies.

Days after the 9/11 attacks, NATO faced its most definitive military and diplomatic test since its foundation in 1949. It formed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to fight in Afghanistan, where the Taliban—a hardline Islamist group running the country—was hosting the masterminds of the attack.

Sobering realisation

By 2021, ISAF was still active, making Afghanistan the longest-running war involving US and NATO troops. The feeling among American soldiers and generals was that the ISAF acronym could just as well have stood for 'I Saw Americans Fight' as they came to the sobering realisation that the Europeans simply did not have sufficient troop numbers to help them defeat the Taliban.

At its peak, US troop levels hovered at around 200,000 boots on the ground. For its part, the combined contribution from Europe didn't even reach 100,000 soldiers. What was worse, was that countries like France and Italy were found to be striking under the table deals with the Taliban, while US troops were dying on the frontlines.

Even America's closest ally in Europe, the UK, was not spared from criticism. American generals were furious that so few British troops were deployed, so much so that it greatly strained the so-called "special" relationship between London and Washington.

Similar sentiments have been expressed since Trump returned to the White House. General Lord Richards, a former ISAF commander and once the chief of staff for the UK defence ministry, took to the pages of The Telegraph to warn that the British military had no real fighting capacity anymore, and criticised the UK for having no grand strategy to fix the problem.

The Trump administration has simply had enough of America doing the heavy lifting in NATO

The article generated a huge debate on social media. He later appeared in a BBC interview where he weighed in on the UK's military role in Ukraine and how he sees the war potentially ending.

Richards was the last non-US general to lead NATO in Afghanistan and the last British General to command US troops in battle. He had warned many times, that if NATO lost in Afghanistan, it would have profound reverberations not just on the alliance but on European security, colouring the US view of Europe and the UK.

Sabotaged peace

Like Trump, Richards also questions why it took so long to entertain a peace deal for Ukraine, pointing out that one was within reach in 2022, when Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia's President Vladimir Putin were almost about to sit down for talks. But Washington and London shot that prospect down, under the administrations of former US president Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In conclusion, Trump has surrounded himself with officials who share his view that if Europeans want Ukraine to keep fighting Russia, then they should take full responsibility for funding and arming Kyiv. This administration has simply had enough of America doing the heavy lifting in NATO—a frustration best illustrated by Trump and Vance's public beratement of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

While the alliance's future looks shaky now, historians of the future will probably trace the origins of its demise back to the war in Afghanistan and the many shortcomings that it exposed in NATO.

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