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NATO and the Impact of the Long War in Afghanistan: Avoiding a Wrong Memory About ISAF

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NATO in the Post-Cold War Era

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Abstract

NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan has been the most demanding mission in the alliance history. While NATO confirmed its reliability as a multilateral organization with extraordinary capabilities to project military power even in distant and far-reaching theatres of war, Afghanistan represents a unique case in which the alliance faced new challenges not comparable with other post-Cold War missions. The chapter delves into the peculiarities which distinguish NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan from the interventions in the Balkans and then in Libya: the lately engagement after the US-led mission; the concurrent presence of peace-keeping and counterterrorist operations; the unprecedented transformation during the mission from peace-keeping to counter-insurgency. Grasping such uniqueness is the starting point to better appreciate the impact that the long war in Afghanistan may have for the alliance’s future.

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  1. Department of International Studies, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Carati

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  1. Andrea Carati
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Correspondence to Andrea Carati .

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  1. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

    Massimo de Leonardis

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Carati, A. (2023). NATO and the Impact of the Long War in Afghanistan: Avoiding a Wrong Memory About ISAF. In: de Leonardis, M. (eds) NATO in the Post-Cold War Era. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06063-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06063-2_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-06062-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-06063-2

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