WAR 09-30-2017-to-10-06-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.realcleardefense.com/ar..._key_to_us_success_in_afghanistan_112438.html

India Is Key to U.S. Success in Afghanistan

By Willis Krumholz
October 05, 2017

"It’s damned easy to get in war but [it’s] going to be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself” - Lyndon B. Johnson

As America’s war in Afghanistan enters its 17th year, with the possibility of being in that country for at least another decade, these words ring true today. President Johnson’s fateful statement came when his administration was increasing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Today in Afghanistan, the Trump Administration is hoping that a strategy change that amounts to not announcing a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, coupled with an increase in U.S. troop levels, will finally beat back the Taliban.

Now that America has secured our vital interests in Afghanistan, eliminating those responsible for 9/11 and defeating those who directly threatened our safety, policymakers’ ultimate goal must be an exit of our forces. The U.S. should not be tied up with nation-building in Afghanistan forever––it would cost countless lives of American sons and daughters, and would distract from greater threats to the homeland, such as North Korea.

Because of this, the U.S. is rightfully pushing for greater burden sharing among our allies in the region. This is both necessary to achieve an eventual U.S. exit, and for Afghanistan to secure its long-term prosperity and stability. Not only does geography allow our regional allies to provide economic ties and assistance in a way that the U.S. cannot, but these regional powers also have a compelling interest in ensuring Afghanistan does not devolve into a safe-haven for international terrorists. And the regional power uniquely suited to lend the U.S. a hand is Narendra Modi’s India.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met his counterpart in New Dehli, Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Top on the agenda of Mattis’ diplomatic mission was to encourage India toward greater burden-sharing in Afghanistan. While India agreed to increased assistance for Afghanistan’s government in Kabul, Sitharaman made clear that there “shall not be any boots from India on the ground in Afghanistan.”

Why India is reluctant to lend a hand

As much as U.S. policymakers may wish for greater Indian involvement in Afghanistan, two significant roadblocks remain. First, it is thought that Indian troops on the ground could cause Pakistan to wreak greater havoc in Afghanistan. Second, although India cares deeply about the outcome in Afghanistan, India can leave the heavy lifting up to America. To put it simply, why do the hard work if someone else will do it for you?

To temper Pakistan, New Delhi must first offer greater military aid and military advisors, not a full-scale military presence. As for Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbor to the south could hardly ratchet up support for the Taliban any further. A case in point, Pakistan’s security forces likely plotted to assassinate moderate Taliban leaders for the sin of considering a political solution with the government in Kabul. At the very least, Pakistan’s powerful security forces have allowed the Taliban a safe-haven in Pakistan.

The U.S. also has leverage over Pakistan, due to our almost $1 billion in aid sent to the country annually. Pakistan may be acting rationally given the status quo, but the status quo is still unacceptable. It is high time that Pakistan ends its support for the Taliban altogether, or sees its support from American taxpayers cut off entirely.

Encouraging India to play a larger role because of the “free rider” problem is more complicated. Timetables aside, this requires the U.S. to persistently remind India that we cannot be involved in Afghanistan forever. India would also like to see U.S. aid to Pakistan dry up—this could be used to encourage India toward greater action.

Pursuing this strategy allows America to confront Pakistan, already cementing close ties with China, while attempting to edge closer to our true friend, India. In the words of Barry R. Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, a smaller U.S. footprint in Afghanistan “would likely draw India deeper into Afghanistan,” and “intensified Indian-Pakistani competition in Afghanistan would deepen the emerging rivalry between India and China, driving India closer to the United States.”

Even our regional adversaries would have a constructive role to play if America’s footprint was reduced, which could also sow division among these adversaries. According to Posen, “[w]hen America intervenes to manage a civil war, other powers can throw darts at the Americans from the sidelines; when it is absent, those on the sidelines have to solve the problem for themselves, and will often disagree about the solution.”

Good policy and politics

Going forward then, the Trump Administration should be sending India a clear message on Afghanistan: The promise of stronger ties to the U.S. and the possibility of a reduction in U.S. aid to Pakistan must be accompanied by the knowledge that America’s days in Afghanistan are numbered. If this were to occur, India’s interests in Afghanistan would compel it to share the burden currently shouldered by U.S. taxpayers and our armed forces.

This is both good policy and politics for the Trump Administration. The remaining mission of nation-building in Afghanistan could be effectively carried out by India and other regional powers, and at a much lower cost. If India shares the burden in this effort, it allows America to focus on threats of a more existential nature.

Military readiness is the talk of the day, but this is largely a concern because Washington has overstretched our armed forces by failing to set priorities in determining which missions to pursue. Including some future costs, estimates put America’s Afghanistan tab at over $2 trillion. Transferring the remaining nation-building efforts in Afghanistan will ease significant pressure on our defense budget.

More important are the lives of the men and women in our armed forces. Already, we have lost 2,400 troops in America’s longest military conflict. Spurring India to carry a greater burden in Afghanistan reduces the burden on our troops. The alternative contains the possibility of a costly failure, at the expense of more American lives. We should look out for American interests and avoid such an outcome.

Willis L Krumholz is a fellow at Defense Priorities. He holds a JD and MBA degree from the University of St. Thomas, and works in the financial services industry.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm....Does Beijing really think that an RCT worth of carbines is going to make up for grabbing Philippine territory in the South China Sea?...

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-p...-to-show-its-a-friend-not-a-foe-idUKKBN1CA0OK

OCTOBER 5, 2017 / 1:13 AM / UPDATED 20 HOURS AGO

China gives guns to Philippines to show it's a friend, not a foe

Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ

MANILA (Reuters) - China gave 3,000 assault rifles to the Philippines on Thursday as a gesture of “friendly and cooperative relations”, the second shipment of rifles to the Philippines this year as President Rodrigo Duterte seeks closer ties with old foe Beijing.

Philippines Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the Chinese weapons were supposed to go to the military, but Duterte felt the police needed them more.

“We are lucky that the Chinese government provided the firearms,” Lorenzana said at a news conference, where stacks of rifles were on display.

The rifles, worth about $3.3 million, will all go to the Philippine National Police (PNP), which needs to fill a shortfall of guns after some U.S. legislators blocked the sale of about 26,000 M4 rifles to the police last year.

The freeze on that sale came amid concerns about the United States arming a police force accused of widespread human rights abuses during Duterte’s fierce war on drugs, which has killed thousands of Filipinos.

Duterte, who has been critical of the Philippines-U.S. alliance, is eager to develop closer trade and political ties with old foe China.

China gave 3,000 assault rifles and 100 sniper rifles to the Philippines in June, part of a new wave of diplomacy to engage a country with which Beijing has a bitter history of territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The military also gave those guns to the police, but kept the sniper rifles for themselves.

Beijing’s donations so far remain small compared with arms transfers from the United States, a defence treaty ally with the Philippines since the 1950s. Washington has in the past 17 years provided nearly a billion dollars of military aid, including drones, ships, surveillance planes and assault rifles.

Duterte has a notorious grudge against the United States and accuses it of hypocrisy and of making his country a potential target for aggression. He has also complained about troops receiving used, “hand-me-down” American weapons, and applauded China’s donation of new ones.

Washington and Manila have for decades held joint exercises, as many as 300 a year, and the programmes remain intact, despite repeated threats last year by Duterte to cancel them and abrogate bilateral defence pacts.

They are set to increase those exercises next year, said Military chief General Eduardo Ano, who agreed last week with his U.S. counterpart to hold more maritime security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian assistance programmes.

Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Michael Perry

 

[energy_wave]

Why not give the guns to the citizens of China? Oh, wait...can't do that in a communist country. Sounds more like China is arming the police in preparation of a take over maybe? Of course, if those guns were made in China. they'd be crap, imo.

 

[Housecarl]

Why not give the guns to the citizens of China? Oh, wait...can't do that in a communist country. Sounds more like China is arming the police in preparation of a take over maybe? Of course, if those guns were made in China. they'd be crap, imo.

Variant of the Norinco CQ, built "under licence" in Iran, Sudan (which also makes an AR-10 clone) and by a company in the Philippines (interestingly that M-16s/M-4s are also manufactured under licence from the US by at least two other companies there...) and used all over the place by a lot of "interesting actors"....

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2...ins-army-west-fight-east/141577/?oref=d-river

In Ukraine, the US Trains an Army in the West to Fight in the East

http://cdn.defenseone.com/media/img/upload/2017/10/05/Ukrainemap_alt/defense-large.png

For more than two years, some 300 American soldiers have been quietly helping train an enormous partner military in western Ukraine

BY BEN WATSON
READ BIO
OCTOBER 5, 2017

For more than two years, the U.S. military’s contingent of 300 or so soldiers have been quietly helping train an enormous allied military in western Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian-backed separatists appear to be keeping pace some 800 miles to the east, showcasing entire parking lots full of new tanks and artillery just a 15-minute drive from the front lines.

“Every 55 days we have a new battalion come in and we train them,” said U.S. Army National Guard Capt. Kayla Christopher, spokesperson for the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine. “And at the end of that 55-day period, we’ll do a field training exercise with that battalion.” The U.S. and partnered armies have trained seven battalions in the past roughly two years or so.

That’s what she calls the “main line of effort that you tend to see most of the time in the news.”

Building a host-nation’s military, the U.S. has learned painfully in the 21st century, has rarely been a good news story. And Ukraine’s conflict has largely taken a backseat to the sequel to one of those stories: the war on ISIS, in which eight Americans have lost their lives fighting since 2014. In the same period, Ukraine is believed to have lost nearly 4,000 soldiers to Russian-backed separatists.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKy5xGeXcAAn2lO.jpg
OSCE SMM Ukraine @OSCE_SMM
Last week #OSCE SMM observed 283 weapons beyond withdrawal lines but outside of storage sites & 15-min drive from striking distance
12:48 AM - Sep 28, 2017
2 2 Replies 100 100 Retweets 45 45 likes

Since Crimea was annexed in 2014, the U.S. and partner militaries have helped grow Ukraine’s forces from just over 100,000 troops to nearly 250,000 today. Just since January, Capt. Christopher’s unit of 250 soldiers has added another 3,000 or so Ukrainian soldiers to Kiev’s ranks.

“But that’s not the real end state,” she said. “Essentially, what we’re trying to do is get them to the point where they are running their own combat training center,” like the U.S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., or the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

In other words, their task is to build an army’s entire training infrastructure almost from the ground up — a tall order following decades of not-so-casual corruption that has plagued Ukraine’s and many post-Soviet countries’ militaries across eastern Europe.

“Our overall goal is essentially to help the Ukrainian military become NATO-interoperable,” Christopher said. “So the more they have an opportunity to work with different countries — not just the U.S., but all their Slavic neighbors, and all the other Western European countries that come” and train or exercise with Ukraine’s military.

That includes Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Canada, and the U.K. The U.S. has also sent a variety of non-lethal military help to Ukraine — equipment like Humvees, medical supplies, bulletproof vests, and radars to track the hundreds of artillery shells that have fallen on the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Maybe Javelin anti-tank missiles, Defense Secretary Mattis said in August. But Christopher’s unit is far from the fighting. Their mission is “training the trainers” and in particular, adding to Ukraine’s NCO corps — the stern disciplinarians who help ensure that units are fit and ready for combat.

http://www.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/ukrainemap.jpg

Terrorism in the east

For Ukraine’s new soldiers, combat means fighting terrorists — at least according to the U.S. military’s way of looking at things.

“They’re called anti-terrorism operations rather than something else because of the issue with the Russian-backed separatists,” said Capt. Christopher. “So they’re not really Russians, you know. They’re essentially terrorists.”

So the U.S. calls eastern Ukraine’s most troubled regions an Anti Terrorism Operation zone, or ATO, where those Russian-backed forces have attacked and counterattacked Ukraine’s soldiers and civilians. (See, for example, this interactive day-by-day map of alleged shelling by Ukrainian government and separatist forces.)

In just the first two days of this month, UN monitors recorded dozens of violations to the Minsk II ceasefire, an agreement reached in February 2015 between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany. The deal never really stuck. It called for all heavy weapons — tanks, rocket launchers and artillery — to be pulled away from the front lines and kept in monitored storage. By that time, more than 5,400 civilians had already been killed in the fighting. In the months after Minsk II was signed, the death toll barely slowed.

The Ukraine conflict, since 2014:

At least 10,225 soldiers and civilians have died.
Another 24,500 have been injured.
Some 1.6 million have been displaced.
Nearly 10,000 prisoners are believed to be held in the east. Last October, Kiev itself has said it was holding 500 or so prisoners of its own.
The UN calls these statistics “a conservative estimate based on available data,” and inevitably incomplete “due to gaps in coverage of certain geographic areas and time periods.” Military casualties, especially injuries, have been particularly under-reported, the UN says.

http://www.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/ukraine_casualties.jpg

Most of the civilians killed in the fighting were killed by tanks and artillery, 55 percent; followed by IEDs, 36 percent; and small arms fire, 9 percent. For months it puzzled observers how allegedly local separatists could have obtained so much heavy weaponry, even factoring in Ukraine’s legacy as a sort of junkyard of old Soviet weapons factories. The appearance of more advanced equipment — drones and armored vehicles, for example — revealed Russia’s hand in Ukraine as early as January 2015, although President Vladimir Putin didn’t admit Russia’s role until that December. Since then, their advanced equipment has only grown more sophisticated and deadly for Ukraine’s frontline soldiers.

International ceasefire monitors aren’t having an easy go of their job in 2017, either. During the first six months, they were restricted from or intimidated through armed confrontation (see photo below) inside regions mandated by the Minsk agreement no fewer than 480 times. More than 75 percent of those occurred in separatist-held areas.[photo]

A world away

U.S. troops are largely kept away from the conflict. That is by design; the U.S. and the international community have struggled with the appropriate response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian Prime Minister Petro Poroshenko in August, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said, “We do not, and we will not, accept Russia’s seizure of Crimea and despite Russia’s denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe.”

So far, sanctions have been the U.S. and its European allies’ preferred response, hitting Russia’s major banks and energy companies. But President Trump has indicated that he feels sanctions may not be in the best interest of the U.S. In August, he complained about a new round of sanctions passed by Congress, calling it “seriously flawed.” But the measure reached the Oval Office with a veto-proof majority, and so he grudgingly signed it into law.

But that is a world away from the U.S. Army in Yavoriv, and even the fighting on the other side of Ukraine feels remote, Christopher said. “It’s actually pretty remarkable how little you feel the effect of the conflict on the western side of Ukraine. It’s almost as if nothing is happening,” she said. “And if I didn’t work directly with soldiers every day, I don’t think you would really know. I mean, we see it on the news every day, and I work with soldiers every day. So we know about it. But you go out into Lviv, or any of the other big cities around this area and you really don’t feel the effects of there being war here.”

Except, perhaps, for the U.S. and NATO soldiers who for months have had their phones and social media accounts breached by what appear to have been Russian hackers. On top of that, Moscow has spent the past few months ferrying troops around its border with Ukraine and into Belarus for extended exercises that run from the Barents Sea to the Mediterranean.

http://www.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/ru-ex_copy.jpg

So Russia is hardly backing down from a tense region. And apparently, neither is the U.S. Despite the Trump administration’s hesitancy, its approach in Ukraine is not terribly different from the Obama administration’s.

“The U.S. will continue to press Russia to honor its Minsk commitments and our sanctions will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them,” said Mattis in August during the visit with Ukraine’s Poroshenko.

For its part, Moscow’s latest move has been not to reverse its annexation of Crimea, but rather to fence off some 30 miles of land on the seized peninsula. One Russian lawmaker even said in May that Moscow would use nuclear weapons if the U.S. or NATO tried to enter Crimea.

Which would suggest that the U.S. Army’s quiet mission in Ukraine may go quietly on for many, many months to come.

Ben Watson is news editor for Defense One. He previously worked for NPR's “All Things Considered” and “Here and Now” in Washington, D.C. Watson served for five years in the U.S. Army, where he was an award-winning combat cameraman and media advisor for southern Afghanistan's special operations ... FULL BIO

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...apons-are-still-thing/141540/?oref=d-topstory

Why Tactical Nuclear Weapons Are Still A Thing

In the debate over low-yield nukes, opposing camps are largely talking past each other. Here are some thoughts about why they remain necessary.

BY ALBERT J. MAURONI
READ BIO
OCTOBER 4, 2017

Michael Krepon recently published an article in Defense One in which he called the potential development and employment of tactical nuclear weapons “unwise” and strategically unsound. His argument includes several statements that illustrate the yawning chasm between arms control experts and military planners today when it comes to the subject of the utility of nuclear weapons. As is often the case, he uses illustrations and questionable statements that date to the Cold War to discuss the contemporary challenge of nuclear modernization. Here are some thoughts as to why tactical nuclear weapons are being advanced as a valid, contemporary — and necessary — defense capability.

Krepon states that “the U.S. Army reached the conclusion that it’s folly to use tactical nuclear weapons in a land battle.” That’s not quite true – President George H.W. Bush decided that the U.S. Army should give up its tactical nuclear weapons in 1991, in part due to concerns from NATO allies as to their deployment in Europe and in part due to Congressional political views at the time. But the idea that the U.S. Army thought that “tactical nuclear weapons get in the way of U.S. soldiers” is belayed by decades of field manuals, operational plans, and leadership testimony supporting the offensive use of nuclear weapons and continued interest today by the U.S. Army in supporting nuclear weapons planning. If the U.S. Army were allowed to develop tactical nuclear weapons, I’m very sure its leadership would do so.

Much of this debate is unnecessarily confused by the very term “tactical.” Many serious people, to include advocates of the DoD nuclear enterprise, claim that there is no such thing as tactical nuclear weapons. Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has said, “I think every nuclear weapon that is employed is strategic.” And of course, the impact of any nuclear weapon is felt at the strategic level of national leadership, but certainly the offensive use of nuclear weapons, delivered by “short-range” military systems (within a theater of operations) to achieve limited operational (military) goals is the very purpose of tactical nuclear weapons. The State Department at the least understands that “non-strategic nuclear weapons” – the formal name for tactical nuclear weapons – are a category distinct from strategic nuclear forces, and acts accordingly.

Krepon goes on to claim that nuclear weapons advocates claim “that small mushroom clouds are better than big mushroom clouds,” that “the point of deterrence is to have no mushroom clouds.” No respected academic lecturer or military planner would agree to this oversimplification. The point of deterrence is to have a credible means of military force to threaten an adversary into not pursuing a particular course of action. Taken to an extreme, successful deterrence does means no mushroom clouds, large or small. But successful deterrence is impossible without a credible capability, and eliminating tactical nuclear weapons could result in the U.S. government self-deterring itself from using larger nuclear weapons in a future crisis against another nuclear-weapons state.

And for the arms control community, that’s acceptable. That’s a desired outcome, not a limitation. However, that’s a luxury in which other nuclear-weapon states, including Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, refuse to indulge. Given that the possibility of other adversaries using tactical nuclear weapons, can the United States rely on conventional weapons alone to deter their use against U.S. national security interests? Given that the overall size of the military force has shrunk over the years and that the U.S. military is increasingly involved in numerous conflicts all over the globe, can it afford to not invest in low-yield nuclear weapons and delivery systems designed to operate in a specific theater?

This is a long-running debate that will not be solved today or in the near future. It’s occurring today because a new administration has taken charge of national security matters, because funding for a new generation of nuclear delivery systems is underway, and because of concerns of proliferation in Northeast Asia. These are understandable concerns. But the debate over the utility of new low-yield nuclear weapons increasingly involves two main bodies talking past each other.

The arms control advocates repeatedly say that a low-yield nuclear weapon capability already exists within the B61 family of nuclear bombs, that modernizing this capability is both too expensive and contrary to the spirit of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and that U.S. conventional capabilities are “good enough” to deter future crises against nuclear-weapon states other than Russia and China. The nuclear weapons advocates point out that the B61 uses a very old design and low-yield options are desired in the cruise missile variant, that the Defense Department has successfully developed a defense budget that includes nuclear modernization and that will be accepted by the White House and Congress, and that conventional capabilities – no matter how superior – are an inadequate response to another nation’s nuclear saber-rattling. Neither side will change their talking points anytime soon.

This is not to say that there cannot be a common road between the two diametrically-opposing viewpoints. The arms control advocates may never see a treaty or actions to rid the world of tactical nuclear weapons, as long as nation-states see advantages to their existence. The nuclear weapons advocates may never see the resumption of nuclear testing to validate new weapon designs. But modernizing the B61-series of bombs and designing a Long-Range Standoff cruise missile may permit further reductions in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. And it may well save money to allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to design a new physics package for a low-yield nuclear weapon, rather than limiting research and development to wringing out life extension programs for existing nuclear warheads every few years.

The fact remains that a deliberate process is in place. The National Security Council develops national policy objectives that include deterrence goals. The military develops and validates requirements for new military requirements for nuclear weapons, in line with State Department guidance on strategic force limits. Plans and concepts are developed to be effective, legal, and proportional. The annual budget cycle is well-established and balanced (as best as one can) among multiple stakeholders. Congress oversees the development and employment of strategic forces and vigorously questions the nuclear advocates. The academic community debates and informs the national security enterprise and Congress on the soundness of their policies and plans. The process works, but not to the ends of the arms control community alone.

Colin Gray once noted, in his book “Weapons Don’t Make War” (Univ Press of Kansas, 1993), that the absence of experience with nuclear conflict had resulted in the “fashionable judgment” that the only positive utility for nuclear weapons in the pursuit of statescraft was in their nonuse. He called out those who believed that any nuclear use option carried an unacceptable risk of uncontrollable escalation as “strategically illiterate.” As long as there are nation-states fearing for their security, there will be the challenge that nuclear weapons will be developed in the pursuit of national security objectives. Focusing the argument on the type of nuclear weapon ignores the real debates on how strategic deterrence policy is developed – in today’s terms, not that of the Cold War – and how the U.S. government pursues regional stability across the globe.

The Korean Peninsula offers an opportunity for the current debate on nuclear weapons employment. Krepon misses the point on U.S. actions in the region – U.S. bomber flights are not necessarily designed to deter Kim Jong Un, but rather to assure the South Korean and Japanese public. No one is seriously talking about returning tactical nuclear weapons to the Peninsula. But at the same time, the U.S. government requires options to effectively respond to the potential threat of North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. The ICBMs and SLBMs were not designed to be that option. A low-yield nuclear weapon is a must-have, not a luxury.

Albert J. Mauroni is the Director of the U.S. Air Force Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies and author of the book, “Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the U.S. Government’s Policy.” The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are those of the ... FULL BIO

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-t...-funding-in-line-with-trump-agenda-1507198439

NATO to Increase Counterterrorism Funding in Line With Trump Agenda

France was holdout on increasing common budget funding over audit concerns

By Julian E. Barnes
Updated Oct. 5, 2017 11:05 a.m. ET
12 COMMENTS

BRUSSELS—NATO has reached an agreement with holdout France to increase allied funding for counterterrorism programs, clearing a significant obstacle to the Trump administration’s agenda for the alliance.

Under the deal, allied diplomats said, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will spend an additional $12 million to $24 million on counterterrorism programs next year. The overall NATO budget of roughly $1.6 billion will rise modestly to encompass the new spending.

The French have been forcefully opposed to increasing common funding in recent years, particularly for counterterrorism initiatives, and have expressed concerns about how the money is spent.

Many members don’t see counterterrorism as the alliance’s core mission, but at a NATO meeting of leaders in May there was broad agreement to expand training.

President Donald Trump has pushed NATO to focus more on counterterrorism. NATO has taken some steps to get more involved in training, including asking members to increase their contributions to its mission in Afghanistan.

Many NATO initiatives, including the deployment of military forces to Poland and the Baltic States, aren’t covered by the common budget and are funded based on voluntary national contributions of personnel or military equipment to missions. But NATO officials and diplomats said common funding is important to promote the training missions.

Adam Thomson, the director of the European Leadership Network and the former U.K. ambassador to NATO, said both the amount of money for counterterrorism, and the overall NATO training effort remains small.

“The significance of this step is more political,” Mr. Thomson said. “It signals a willingness to put alliance money where its mouth is on” counterterrorism.

In recent years NATO budgets have been tightly reigned in adhering to “zero nominal growth.” Additional money for counterterrorism training will mirror the trend across the alliance for increases in defense spending, Mr. Thomson said.

NATO’s North Atlantic Council of ambassadors failed to agree on expansion of the common funding until late last month, when France stopped its block on funding. The new U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said increasing common funding was important to help the alliance get more involved in counterterrorism programs.

“Counterterrorism is very much a priority set by the council and common funding is essential for that to really move forward,” Mrs. Hutchison said in a recent interview.

Allied diplomats said the full slate of counterterrorism initiatives being funded is still being discussed and NATO defense ministers may discuss options at their meeting next month.

Some officials want the alliance to use common funding to increase training efforts in Iraq, but a number of countries remain skeptical that the NATO effort there should grow dramatically, diplomats said.

Mr. Trump in May spoke at NATO headquarters about terror attacks in Europe, but few if any of the initiatives being considered by NATO involve directly fighting European terror networks. Most European countries view that as a job for the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition or national law-enforcement agencies.

U.S. military officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford, have said NATO’s strength is in training other nation’s militaries, rather than getting involved in combating terror networks in Europe or conducting strikes in the Middle East or North Africa.

Some NATO officials have examined how to expand the number of mobile training teams the alliance sends to countries such as Tunisia and Jordan. Such teams can work with partner militaries on a range of skills that can help them combat terror groups more effectively.

The alliance is also thinking about ways to expand the work and role of NATO’s Special Operations Forces headquarters, which develops training programs for the alliance. It is currently mostly funded by the U.S. and isn’t formally part of the alliance command structure.

NATO is also working to finalize the number of additional troops it will contribute to an expanded mission in Afghanistan, which the U.S. and allied diplomats have argued is part of the counterterrorism effort. The U.S. is seeking roughly 1,000 more allied troops for the mission, Mrs. Hutchinson said in a meeting with reportersThursday. She said the U.S. was approaching individual allies and will be making specific requests for capabilities.

“The goal is for very quickly, in the next two weeks or so, to have specific asks for what we need,” she said.

The total common budget is made up of NATO’s €1.29 billion ($1.5 billion) common military budget—which funds the alliance’s multiple command posts, its 16 surveillance planes, some missions and other items—and the smaller civil budget of €234 million, which funds the headquarters and its civilian staff.

The U.S. contributes about 22% of the alliance’s budget, which is only about half of what it would contribute if it paid based on the size of its economy. But the U.S. spends far more on its military than other countries and makes a disproportionate contribution to NATO’s military might.

This year, France is the third-largest contributor, after the U.S. and Germany. But next year, because of shifting economic growth, the U.K. will become the third-largest contributor.

French officials have been pushing for expanded audits of NATO spending and an overhaul of how the alliance spends its money.

U.S. officials said they didn’t agree to any additional audits as part of the deal to expand common funding. But allied diplomats noted that NATO has been expanding its use of performance audits.

French diplomats said they are hopeful the new U.S. administration will eventually back their proposals for greater scrutiny of alliance spending. The diplomats said that U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon are working on proposals to improve NATO decision-making and leadership that could be aligned with the French proposals.

Write to Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes@wsj.com