Afghanistan doesn't have to be lost, but it's looking more and more like we will lose it.

Let's start with Paddy Ashdown, who said something you're not allowed to say:

Paddy Ashdown, the former U.N. high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, warned major instability would be inevitable in the region if resurgent Islamic extremists gain the upper hand.

"We have lost, I think, and success is now unlikely," Ashdown told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"I believe losing in Afghanistan is worse than losing in Iraq. It will mean that Pakistan will fall and it will have serious implications internally for the security of our own countries and will instigate a wider Shiite-Sunni regional war on a grand scale," he added.

Of course, the usual suspects rushed to say that everything is fine:

A NATO spokesman said he was baffled by the comments from Ashdown, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the proposed role of a new high-level international envoy to Afghanistan.

"I couldn't begin to understand what he's talking about," James Appathurai told CNN. "We are firmly committed to this, we feel we're on the right track, and we're going to keep going. There is no doubt."

U.S. commanders also believe NATO is winning in Afghanistan but say victory will still take years and requires a long-term commitment of more troops and equipment.

In a speech delivered Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said progress is "real but fragile."

"At this time, many allies are unwilling to share the risks, commit the resources, and follow through on our commitments to this mission and to each other," Gates said in prepared remarks to the Conference of European Armies in Heidelberg, Germany.

"As a result, we risk allowing what has been achieved in Afghanistan to slip away."

Gates said an ongoing problem among NATO member nations has been a lack of will and commitment to the Afghan campaign.

"Today, non-U.S. NATO nations have more than 2 million men and women in uniform, yet we struggle to maintain 23,000 non-U.S. troops in Afghanistan," he said, adding there are similar problems with equipment and other resources.

That got a laugh, or it should have. Whatever is he talking about? Could it be this?

So what is an international alliance to do when a war it's committed to has become so unpopular in member states, it can't get their governments to cough up necessary equipment? The 21st Century answer: outsource it. The Financial Times Deutschland is reporting that NATO is planning on outsourcing air support for southern Afghanistan, an area of some of the most intense fighting. The alliance is intending to contract for some twenty helicopters.

According to the Financial Times Deutschland, air support is being outsourced because of widespread domestic opposition in member countries to the deployment of more troops. The US has pioneered wide-scale military outsourcing as a force multiplier and for -- well, let's just say it -- plausible deniability in some situations. However, this is the first time military outsourcing has been used as a workaround to domestic opposition of a military action. This occurs at a time of broadening US public opposition to military outsourcing.

This summer Germany, France, Turkey, Spain and Greece all declined NATO requests for more helicopters to be sent to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. Recent polls in Germany have indicated that two thirds of the population are against a renewal of the German commitment to Afghanistan. (Regardless, the Bundestag renewed the mandate last Friday, although Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung continues to refuse to send German troops to the more dangerous south.)

The article then goes on to talk about the most likely company to get the contract, Blackwater.

Here's the deal. You can make a case militarily that Afghanistan is far from lost. And I agree with that assessment. With a significant commitment of money and (to a lesser extent) troops, I'd say it's more than winnable. The Afghanis don't much like the Taliban, they want a better life, and they've been more than patient with NATO's fumbling.

But the bottom line is simple -- NATO members aren't going to pony up and the US is rather tied down, thanks. The commitment to do what it takes to turn Afghanistan into a functioning state isn't there and the strategy for doing so (for example, eradicating poppies) is flawed, in any case.

The amount of money that would be necessary isn't that significant, really. If you could sink, say 30 billion in subsidies for schools, police, infrastructure building, farm boards and so on into the country a year, along with sufficient troops (mostly not US troops, US troops aren't the best at nation building and counter-insurgency), Afghanistan could be won.

But ponying up to save Afghanistan isn't going to happen. It's not just a matter of "the population" of NATO countries being unhappy, the governments haven't shown the willingness to pay either. In large part that's because while it's a NATO war officially, the US made it clear that Afghanistan wasn't a priority for Washington when the US invaded Iraq. Since Afghanistan isn't a priority for the US, why should it be a priority for anyone else? Sure, there are reasons -- it isn't just the US that has had al-Qaeda inspired attacks, but at the end of the day, Afghanistan was invaded because of 9/11 and if the US, which was attacked that day doesn't take it seriously, no one else is going to massively contribute either.

It is also the case that the money that would be required to win in Afghanistan has been thrown away in tax cuts for the rich, and on domestic pork, corruption and financial bubbles. Massive bonuses for hedge fund managers and record profits for corporations are a choice that America has made about where money should be spent and the refusal to tax that money is likewise a choice.

So my prediction for Afghanistan remains that it's going to be lost. Not because it couldn't be won -- the commitment required to do so would be, while not trivial, not all that large for NATO, but because it's just not that important to us.

Whether that's wise remains to be seen. An Afghanistan that is usable as a secure base for Al-Qaeda is important, but the real prize is and always has been, as Ashdown indicates, Pakistan.

Will Pakistan fall if Afghanistan does? That's not clear to me. But what is clear is that it's much more likely to.

While the US is fulminating over Iran, and the possibility it might get nukes it would never use in a first strike, the possibility of a real nuclear power, which already has nukes, falling to people much more radical than the Mullahs seems to be only peripherally on Washington's radar.