London - The current military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan will have long-term implications for US defence strategy as Washington will find it increasingly difficult to recruit allies for extended campaigns, a key defence analysis report said Tuesday. "In the past it was the technological and doctrinal gap between the US and its NATO allies that was at the centre of anxious transatlantic debate, now it is the willpower and capacity gap that is striking," concluded the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in its Military Balance 2008 report.
The next NATO summit in April would therefore be dominated by the question of whether the alliance can muster the military forces and political commitments to match its expansive strategy vision, the IISS said.
The report acknowledged that Washington's military surge policy in Iraq had "clearly" delivered results in and around Baghdad, accompanied by a "substantive reduction in the activities of sectarian death squads and al-Qaeda mass casualty bombings."
However, progress on the political front in Iraq had been "insubstantial," the report concluded.
For Afghanistan, the IISS predicts an intensification of the counter-insurgency campaign, as the Afghan army remains below strength and the police is "corrupt and poorly trained," concluded the IISS.
"We can expect more," said the report about future attacks by the insurgency. "The insurgency is given impetus by the instability in Pakistan," it said.
