No matter how often I insist that NATO's follies will not surprise me, each new revelation of the organization's cheek and hypocrisy never fails to take my breath away.

I now wonder how Canada's military officers have any teeth left after so many years of grinding them in frustration over NATO's meandering approach to the war in Afghanistan.

Now, we are learning just how exasperated our military was this time last year when NATO pressed our war-weary Canadian forces to ante up still more troops in preparation for the Afghan elections.

According to newspaper accounts, the Canadian Forces urged Defence Minister Peter MacKay to sternly refuse the request, which he did. And I hope he did it with a special zing in his words.

Why should we be so upset? For starters, why didn't our NATO allies call instead on their own special response force — 25,000 strong — which is still squatting in Europe, fresh and well equipped.

It is farcical that European nations would call on a clearly overstretched and near-exhausted Canadian combat force in southern Afghanistan to sacrifice still more, while the presumed cream of Europe's "readiness brigade" hunkers down in its usual posture of avoiding risk anywhere and always.

No campaign ribbons

Let's pause to consider this picture. For years the joint NATO missions in Afghanistan, including the Canadians, Danes, Dutch and British, have begged NATO's high command for reinforcements, with minimal results.

Then NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer gestures following a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Krakow in February 2009. The United States had asked NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan to provide security for the presidential election in August, but received only a limited response. Now we learn that NATO turned around and made the same request of Canada. (Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters)

They've specifically suggested that the once-trumpeted NATO Response Force actually "respond" for a change. But they have been refused time and again.

When one of the first calls went out, a horrified German government refused to sanction use of this reaction force, concerned it might become involved in "high intensity combat."

Others Europeans quickly agreed and, instead, they seem to have asked, why not call for more ever-willing Canadians.

Consider that this European reaction force is heralded in NATO publications as "a coherent, high readiness, joint multinational force package … advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable and sustainable."

It's a nice resumé, but did you catch the missing adjective? Proven.

In fact, this seemingly awesome military force has been involved in only one significant operation so far — helping guard the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece.

Plus, it has only been sent abroad on a handful of other (non-combat) missions, including a small team dispatched to New Orleans to help with the aftermath of Katrina five years ago, hardly the stuff of campaign ribbons.

Not operational

This was not the way it was supposed to be. This response force was originally designed in 2002 to add real muscle to NATO's overseas missions, with a mandate that included counterterrorism operations and "quick response operations to support diplomacy as required."

A generation of Canadian officers in southern Afghanistan has spent years looking over its collective shoulder to see if this European force would give some validity to NATO's promises by actually showing up.

However, for at least a year now they've known that's never going to happen.

It's one reason many will soon leave the Afghanistan mission behind with few regrets. More than a few may leave with feelings of betrayal.

What Canadians and Americans have discovered is that this reaction force is largely a hollow shell. A piece of exquisite European slight-of-hand meant to cover up a military sham.

"It's all smoke-and-mirrors, it never does a damn thing," one senior Canadian officer told me.

Indeed, a search through some of the more in-depth NATO studies reveals that this force is not currently fully operational and hasn't been for at least three years, all Euro boasts to the contrary. At last count, it was over 53 per cent short of troops and equipment. .

That's because European nations simply won't contribute to it. Because they don't want to be involved in risky missions, or because they don't like the expense that's involved.

So weak

Indeed, this special force is so weak the NATO's supreme commander in Europe quietly deemed it near useless. So quietly, in fact, that we seem to be dealing with an astonishing military cover-up.

That's what respected military analyst Jen Ringsmose of Denmark revealed earlier this year in his report "Taking Stock of NATO's Response Force."

Although the response force was declared "fully operational" in 2006, NATO leaders secretly rescinded that declaration just eight months later.

"This of course, was never made public. But the force has not had a fully operational capability since July 2007," Ringsmose wrote.

"At that point, too much political capital had obviously been invested in the concept to abandon it," he went on.

"Exhibited as a symbol of commitment and solidarity, the renouncement of the force would have signaled the disarray of a feeble alliance unable to find the capability to man a fairly small force, [while] liquidation would have been a public relations disaster."

Well, I guess so.

The reality is the failure of the response force is just the latest example of what Ringsmose has called the "strategic schizophrenia of the alliance."

In his memoirs, the former Canadian chief of the defence staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, was withering about such failures in NATO command. But the federal government has been far more diplomatic. Perhaps too diplomatic.

One has to ask if successive Canadian governments were complicit in permitting this NATO "Response Force" charade to continue in order to avoid losing public support for the war.

Ottawa seems to have agreed with its allies that the less their publics know about the true weakness of this allied effort the better.