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Air Force Commander Is Likely Candidate for Top NATO Post NATO Considers Keeping 350,000 Security Forces in Afghanistan Through 2018
(about 2 hours later)
BRUSSELS — Senior NATO officials said on Thursday that Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, currently the commander of American Air Force units in Europe and Africa, was emerging as the likely candidate to be nominated by President Obama to be the alliance’s supreme military commander. BRUSSELS — NATO defense ministers are seriously considering a new proposal to sustain Afghanistan’s security forces at 352,000 troops through 2018, senior alliance officials said on Thursday. The expensive effort is viewed as a way to help guarantee the country’s stability — and, just as much, to illustrate continued foreign support after the NATO allies end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year.
An opening to serve as NATO’s next military commander surfaced this week as the previous nominee, Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps, announced that he was retiring. The fiscal package that NATO leaders endorsed last spring would have reduced the Afghan National Security Forces to fewer than 240,000 troops after December 2014, when the NATO mission expires. That reduction was based on planning work indicating that the larger current force level was too expensive for Afghanistan and the allies to keep up, and might not be required. Some specialists even argued that the foreign money pouring into Afghanistan to support so large a force was helping fuel rampant official corruption.
General Allen, who served until earlier this month as the top commander in Afghanistan, said he was retiring to focus on family health issues. He had been caught up in the scandal that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Last month, the Pentagon officially cleared him of any misconduct after an investigation into his exchange of e-mails with Jill Kelley, a Tampa, Fla. socialite. Recruiting, training, equipping and operating Afghanistan’s army and national police forces at their present level will cost about $6.5 billion for the current American fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Afghanistan pays $500 million of that total, its international partners add $300 million, and the United States provides the remaining $5.7 billion.
General Breedlove at present holds several positions. He is the Air Force’s top officer for both the European Command and for the Africa Command. Senior NATO officials said on Thursday that the allies were examining a new assistance package to Afghanistan that would last at least five years and keep the security forces at the higher troop level.
He was commissioned into the Air Force in 1977 from the R.O.T.C. program at Georgia Tech. According to his official biography, he has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings. The alliance is “strongly considering” the proposal, said one senior NATO official, although many of its provisions are not yet settled, including how the cost would be shared. That official and others who described the closed-door deliberations did so on standard diplomatic rules of anonymity.
Before his current command position, General Breedlove also served as vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined his counterparts at the alliance’s headquarters here in Brussels on Thursday to open a two-day conference, their first since President Obama announced in his State of the Union Message that America would draw down its forces in Afghanistan by 34,000 troops within a year.
Senior NATO officials described General Breedlove as the leading candidate for the top alliance military post, but spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not yet been announced by Mr. Obama. NATO officials acknowledged that the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan were pointing to the approaching end of the coalition combat mission as proof that the United States and its allies were abandoning Afghanistan, repeating a cycle of intervention and withdrawal. Alliance officials worry that ordinary Afghan citizens and even some Afghan leaders could adopt the same view. So NATO is discussing expanded financial aid and the continued presence of a small contingent of American and allied troops after 2014 as concrete proof of continued foreign support for Afghanistan, officials said.
The disclosure on the likely personnel decision came as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined other defense ministers from the alliance for a two-day session. The future of the mission in Afghanistan was on the agenda for the defense ministers’ meeting, the first since Mr. Obama ordered American forces in Afghanistan to be reduced by 34,000 troops within a year. “The will and the endurance and the commitment of the coalition equals the confidence and hope on the part of the Afghans,” said one NATO official.
“There is a post-2014 mission,” the official added. “There is a train-advise-and-assist mission. And we are going to use that as an insurance policy, to ensure that the success we’ve had over the past 12 years will continue.”
One thing NATO forces are trying to achieve as they hand off security responsibilities to Afghan forces is to diminish the insurgents’ ability to depict foreign forces as invaders and occupiers.
“The Afghans will be in the lead across the nation this spring,” the official said. “At that point, we now will have Afghans fighting Afghans. It’s pretty hard to talk about the coalition as occupiers at that point.”
NATO officials who have been briefed on the current military plans say that even with the new withdrawal timeline set by Mr. Obama, the bulk of American forces now in Afghanistan will stay there through the summer fighting season and then withdraw in late autumn and early winter.
“The commanders on the ground believe they have the flexibility to do this mission and absorb the drawdown,” one NATO official said. “This drawdown can be done without interfering with our campaign objectives.”
Senior NATO officials also said on Thursday that Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, currently the commander of American Air Force units in Europe and Africa, was emerging as the President Obama’s likely nominee to be the alliance’s supreme military commander, who is customarily an American. Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps had been in line for the post, but he announced his retirement last week.
General Breedlove is the Air Force’s top officer for the European Command and for the Africa Command, and thus is well-known at NATO. He was commissioned into the Air Force in 1977 from the R.O.T.C. program at Georgia Tech. According to his official biography, he has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings, and rose to vice chief of staff of the Air Force before being appointed to his current commands.