The first time I heard the term “caveat” used was with ISAF in Kabul. I know that the concept existed before, particularly in Kosovo, and in prototypical form probably in SFOR. But the first time I really started to hear it and the restrictions on the various national contingents was in ISAF, when I was there in 2004, and this was a huge problem. This reflected national control over national forces, and it was completely legitimate, given the nature of the alliance. It was up to the commander of the force to apply his resources, given the limitations he had at the time. That caused a number of problems.
As I understand it, once we handed off Enduring Freedom to ISAF in the south, this hasn't quite been the case. The countries that don't want to be committed into that environment are committed elsewhere, particularly in RC West in Herat, and RC North. The people who want to be able to contribute in a robust way will go down to the south.
This becomes an issue of diplomacy on the one hand, and troop motivation on the other, in these various countries. Without having access to the information, it would be interesting to see, from the various members of NATO, how they assessed the motivations of the various forces in this environment or any other environment. In fact, if you do an historical analysis you'll find that the so-called heavy lifting has been borne by the ABCA countries, and usually The Netherlands. So it's been America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, The Netherlands, and sometimes Germany.
You'll find that ABCA and New Zealand are always there. You can track those guys in almost every operation. I think I did it in an article somewhere. Then some people will show up and some people won't. I just have to take it as the state of affairs. That's going to form the core of any force going in, and all sorts of other things will attach to it.