NATO ready to leave Afghanistan

That’s the gist of a special white paper recently circulated quietly at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Rumania.

As Matthias Gebauer notes, it should be no shock that Germany is the driving force behind this:

The paper illustrates a new train of thought developing within NATO: For the first time, a step-by-step outline has been sketched — with substantial help from Germany — for when the 47,000 NATO troops currently in Afghanistan might be pulled out. According to diplomats, concrete benchmarks are laid out — though any withdrawal, they make clear, would not be immediate.

Supposedly, those benchmarks are much more specific than the vague ones U.S. Congressional Democrats pushed on President George Bush over Iraq. At the same time, benchmarks in the paper include ones for controlling opium poppy production and establishing an independent judiciary, so NATO forces may be there for a while.

But, both of those areas are in the realm of nation-building, not combat. So, if NATO forces stay, their mission is going to get more of a NATO theme and less of a U.S. military focus.

Whoever wins the White House has now been forewarned.