More allies, weaker missions? How junior partners contribute to multinational military operations

ABSTRACT

There is a growing consensus that multinational military operations are often less effective than the theoretical sum of their constitutive parts. Multiple chains of command, restriction on intelligence sharing, and capability aggregation problems can reduce fighting power. However, partners may be necessary to provide legitimacy to an intervention. As such, most studies assume that the state leading a coalition (usually the United States) has to accept a degree of operational ineffectiveness in order to gain political benefits from the participation of junior partners to a multinational military operation. However, such analysis puts all junior partners under the same category, without taking into account the differentiated contributions of those junior partners based on their relative military power and international status. This article explores variation between the junior partners’ contributions and their impact on coalition political and military dynamics. It teases out the implications of adopting a fine-grained analysis of junior partners.

KEYWORDS:

• Coalitions
• alliances
• military interventions
• contemporary warfare

Acknowledgements

This article is based on my book Allies that Count: Junior Partners in Coalition Warfare, published by Georgetown UP in 2018. It summarizes the key theoretical argument, and expands on the research and policy consequences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Olivier Schmitt is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and a member of the Center for War Studies, both at the University of Southern Denmark. He is the author of Allies that Count, Junior Partners in Coalition Warfare (Georgetown University Press, 2018) and the editor of Raymond Aron and International Relations (Routledge, 2018). His work focuses on transatlantic security, multinational security cooperation, and military change.

ORCID

Olivier Schmitt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1366-6621