Minding the Gap The biggest obstacle to transforming NATO’s military is not technology or money—it’s psychology. By Sir Ian Forbes For evidence of the current revolution, or transformation, in military affairs, recall the second U.S. attempt at taking out former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while he was inside a Baghdad restaurant on April 7, 2003. Within 38 minutes, U.S. forces had sighted and identified an enemy position, flowed targeting information, made a command-level decision to attack, and dropped a bomb on the target, reportedly missing Hussein by minutes—all amid the fog of war. Overall, in comparison with the first Gulf War, the United States, Britain, and others in the coalition achieved a more ambitious goal, in almost half the time, with one third of the casualties, and at one fourth of the cost. These results exemplify military transformation and all that it delivers, Rumsfeld-style. What do these results have to do with the future of NATO? Everything. The brutal truth is that, with NATO’s current military capabilities, the alliance could not fight at a level comparable to the recent U.S. operations in Iraq. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has suggested that with 2000 Democratic candidate Al Gore as president, the United States and NATO would have gone to war in Afghanistan together. From a military perspective, such a proposal is questionable. The divergence in military psychology, or mind-set, between the United States and its European and Canadian allies is in danger of widening too fast. For the United States, NATO is no longer a tool of first resort, nor will it be until Europe and Canada upgrade their capabilities and change their intellectual course. This U.S. attitude toward NATO should surprise no one. After all, operations in Kosovo in 1999 were met with more criticism than praise in the United States, where many felt...