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Stardate 20011130.0915 (On Screen via long range sensors): Remember that disagreement that the US and UK didn't have a couple of weeks ago? More details about it are finally leaking out, and it seems that what happened is that the UK wanted to deploy several thousand troops in Kabul and the US wouldn't let 'em. USCENTCOM (General Franks) doesn't want peace keepers mucking up his war and making things complex. He says that you need to have a peace before you need peacekeepers and he has a point. (It also means I was wrong; it really was the US and not the NA who kept them out.) But that he's trying to keep his problem as simple as possible by avoiding international command-and-control difficulties as much as possible. (Which has been discussed here before.) With a brigade of Royal Marines in Kabul, it would have gotten really messy. By the same token, the French soldiers who were going to be deploying to Mazar-e Sharif are cooling their heels in Uzbekistan waiting for permission to deploy, even as elements of the 10th Mountain Division have begun operating in Mazar-e Sharif.

Evidently the Europeans are becoming increasingly strident about being included in the war. There are a number of reasons why, and I'm not sure how much or little of each of these may apply in the case of each country:

• National pride (proving that we really are still important in the world)
• Local voter pressure
• A desire to be a party to the planning and decision making process
• Conscience and obligation ("You're our allies; we promised we'd be there for you")
• Principle (i.e. "We agree that this war needs to be fought")
• Concerns about the consequences of not participating (i.e. the potential end of NATO)

It's going to be a lot different from nation to nation, though there's some element of them all everywhere (even in the US). I think that the UK is pretty strongly driven by conscience, obligation, and principle. I suspect that national pride may be the main driver behind French attempts at involvement. From what I'm hearing and seeing, voter pressure doesn't appear to be much of a factor at all anywhere except maybe in the UK. And this is by no means a complete list.

But that would mean that if General Franks were controlling a multilateral multinational force, he'd have an extremely difficult time coming up with operational plans which satisfied the political goals of all the participants. I can see why he doesn't want to. With his force pretty much purely US now, he only has to satisfy his commander in chief. Clarity of command and clarity of goals are essential aspects of victory. (discuss)