Darfur

The United States and its European allies have fundamentally different ideas about what is needed to build a functioning country in Afghanistan – a rift that could have possibly fatal consequences for NATO, according to an international panel of experts. A former White House official accused some European political leaders of not doing enough to prepare their voters for the possibility of violence and casualties in Afghanistan. That failure has led to greatly varying acceptance of risk among NATO member states with troop contingents in Afghanistan. That fact, in turn, threatens to scuttle the entire mission, said the former official, Kori Schake.