Britain’s decision to bring half of its 5,000 soldiers home from Iraq by spring is the latest blow to the U.S.-led coalition. The alliance is crumbling, and fast: excluding Americans, the multinational force was once 50,000 strong — by mid-2008, it will be down to 7,000.
President Bush, facing opposition to the war from the Democrat-led Congress, also is paring back. He says he is committed to gradually reducing the American force from its current peak of 168,000 soldiers to just over 130,000 by next summer.
U.S. troops already are stretched thin trying to contain Sunni Arab and Shiite Muslim extremists. But defense experts say the shrunken coalition probably won’t make much of a difference because most of the non-U.S. forces have largely stuck to noncombat roles.
“This is a U.S. and Iraqi coalition — nothing more and nothing less,” said Anthony Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon and now an analyst with the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“A British withdrawal and that of other countries really doesn’t matter very much. They’re playing a very limited role,” he said Tuesday.
What’s certain is this: The alliance has withered dramatically since its peak in the months after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
At its height, in the months after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries — 250,000 from the United States, about 40,000 from Britain and the rest ranging from 2,000 Australians to 70 Albanians.
By January of this year, though, the combined non-U.S. contingent had dwindled to just over 14,000. As of Tuesday, it stood at 20 nations and roughly 11,400 soldiers.
The latest defectors include Denmark, which withdrew a 460-strong contingent from the southern Iraqi city of Basra in August and replaced it with a small helicopter unit.
Latvia withdrew nearly all of its 125 personnel over the summer, leaving only 15, while Lithuania brought home its 50 soldiers in August.
The coalition will wither more in the coming months.
Georgia said last month it will slash its peacekeeping contribution from 2,000 to around 300 by next summer. El Salvador, the only remaining Latin American member of the alliance, cut its contingent from 380 to 300 in August and says it expects to draw down further if the situation in Iraq improves.
Yet two key allies — Poland, with 900 soldiers, and South Korea, with 1,200 troops — have signaled they will stand by the United States.
The U.S. also can count on a handful of smaller stalwarts.
Australia’s government has rebuffed calls by political opponents to pull out its 550 combat soldiers from southern Iraq. Romania, too, says it has no plans to withdraw its 600 peacekeepers.
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