The socialization of military power: security cooperation and doctrine development through multinational military exercises

Abstract

Multinational Military Exercises (MMEs) are often viewed by states as opportunities to increase interoperability, improve cooperation, and solve common security problems. We argue that in addition to this, MMEs work as tools to shape the shared beliefs of coalition partners surrounding threat. Specifically, MMEs allow multinational forces to identify best practices, consolidate beliefs, and codify behavior through doctrine, typically by means of some institutional process. We examine our argument on MMEs through an analysis of various multinational and coalition partner efforts to identify security threats and cooperate through the development of common doctrine at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. Our analysis suggests that the use of MMEs for doctrine development does help to socialize states in terms of identifying common threats and subsequently sharing a process by which to address them.

Keywords:

• International cooperation
• threat perception
• doctrine development
• state socialization

Notes

1. We use the term multinational military exercises instead of joint military exercises to remove ambiguity as it relates to the possible use of combined arms within a state’s military (e.g. US joint exercises). We define MMEs on the basis of the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) description that describes military exercises as “military maneuvers or simulated wartime operations involving planning, preparation, and execution that is [sic] carried out for the purpose of training and evaluation” (DoD 2015).

2. For a more detailed discussion of the various definitions see Palazzon (2008).

3. i.e. their organizational identity (Høiback 2016).

4. In essence, patterns of globalization are forcing many states in the system to adapt their doctrine to fight in a variety of contexts such as jungles, deserts, and urban centers. This is in contrast to earlier periods where states could a stable military doctrine over the course of many years (Høiback 2016, p. 190).

5. While they clearly serve as a preparatory component of what the DoD calls Multinational Operations, we are focused on their utilities beyond their actual use in this capacity.

6. It is important to note that not all MMEs affect all levels equally, nor from a practical aspect does this line of argument imply that MMEs always achieve these outcomes. What is clear is that the motivations for states to engage in MMEs seem to focus on these criteria as being relevant for their participation.

7. For a more in-depth discussion of this distinction see Malik (1998).

8. In NATO, for example, there has been an increasing focus on CIMIC or civil-military cooperation in mission areas that involve post-insurgency operations, reconstruction, non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) and stability/security missions in the wake of humanitarian relief efforts. These are typically being planned in the context of intrastate conflicts as compared to interstate warfare. For additional insight see Lacerda (2007).

9. This of course is with respect to states in general. Clearly the cooperation between the US and USSR in the area of nuclear arms during the Cold War would be the most important to date.