NATO may not have enough troops for Iraq: Powell

Powell, CFR: NATO Doesn't Have the Troops

Also from Secretary of State Powell, we have a statement on NATO involvement in Iraq:

US Secretary of State Colin Powell called Thursday for increased NATO involvement in Iraq but said he doubted that the Atlantic alliance had many troops available to contribute.

"Some 16 of the 26 nations of NATO are in Iraq in some capacity and I'm not sure there is a great reservoir of troops left in NATO," Powell said during a visit to Denmark where he met with Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller.

Powell suggested however that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which currently has only a small logistical support operation in Iraq to back Polish-led multinational coalition forces, could contribute by increasing its logistical support.

The ones not in Iraq are, as mentioned below, involved in operations elsewhere. NATO is tapped out. This is not only my reading, but that of the Council on Foreign Relations:

Does NATO have enough resources to take on all these new missions [in Afghanistan]?

Not without difficulty, many experts say. Most NATO nations have small military budgets--and in many cases military spending is declining, says Michael Peters, an expert on NATO affairs and executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Only a handful of NATO nations--France, Germany, Britain, Turkey, and Poland--have the capacity to field significant numbers of troops, and cash-strapped Poland and Turkey require financial assistance to do so, Peters says. Ongoing Balkans deployments involving some 40,000 personnel already strain the capacity of some NATO members. NATO's focus for now is getting Afghanistan "absolutely right... because it's somewhere we cannot possibly fail before we start looking at other elements," Robertson said October 9.

There are the bald facts.