In September 2006, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was assuming overall responsibility for all military operations in Afghanistan, NATO’s military commander, General James Jones, was working feverishly behind the scenes to gain support from partner nations to commit the troops and materiel he felt were necessary to succeed in the new tasks that the alliance had assigned to him. Seemingly with the stroke of a pen, NATO was taking a bold step—and taking on a host of new risks—yet it engaged in endless debates about sending even modest increments of additional troops and equipment to support what was, by any standard, a greatly expanded and extraordinarily difficult mission in Afghanistan. Just as NATO was stepping up, at least in theory, Afghanistan was showing more and more signs of falling apart. Yet, as it was stepping up, NATO lacked an overriding concept of or support for the mission itself, leaving many to wonder what would fall apart first: Afghanistan or the International Security

Assistance Force (ISAF) mission.