NATO's Transformation Gaps: Transatlantic Differences and the War in Afghanistan

Abstract

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has since the turn of the new century experienced a double transformation gap: between global and regionally oriented allies and between allies emulating new military practices defined by the United States and allies resisting radical change. This article takes stock of these gaps in light of a decade's worth of collective and national adjustments and in light of counter-insurgency lessons provided by Afghanistan. It argues first of all that the latter transatlantic gap is receding in importance because the United States has adjusted its transformation approach and because some European allies have significantly invested in technological, doctrinal, and organizational reform. The other transformation gap is deepening, however, pitching battle-hardened and expeditionary allies against allies focused on regional tasks of stabilization and deterrence. There is a definite potential for broad transformation, our survey of officers' opinion shows, but NATO's official approach to transformation, being broad and vague, provides neither political nor military guidance. If NATO is to move forward and bridge the gap, it must clarify the lessons of Afghanistan and embed them in its new Strategic Concept.

Key Words:

• NATO
• Military transformation
• Afghanistan
• Counter-insurgency

Acknowledgements

This article was originally produced for a project on ‘NATO and Sustainable Peacebuilding’, supported by the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI London), and the Carnegie Corporation (New York). We thank these institutions, and the project leaders Roland Paris and Alexandra Gheciu, for their support. We are grateful to participants of the project workshop, held at RUSI on 2 July 2009, for their comments on a draft of this article. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her critical feedback. Theo Farrell wishes to gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by an ESRC/AHRC Research Fellowship (RES-071-027-0069) funded under the Research Councils UK ‘Global Uncertainties’ Programme. Sten Rynning is grateful to the Danish Social Science Research Council for funding research into the Atlantic Alliance (research grant 09–064015/FSE).

Notes

¹Curtis Gilroy and Cindy Williams (eds), Service to Country: Personnel Policy and the Transformation of Western Militaries (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 2006).

²David Gompert, Richard L. Kugler and Martin C. Libicki, Mind the Gap: Promoting a Transatlantic Revolution in Military Affairs (Washington DC: National Defense UP 1999). See also Paul T. Mitchell, Network Centric Warfare: Coalition Operations in the Age of US Military Primacy, Adelphi Paper 385 (London: Routledge for IISS 2006).

³On US and Soviet approaches to the RMA, see Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Innovation (Stanford UP 2010).

⁴Kimberly Martin Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955–1991 (Princeton UP 1993), 130–3.

⁵The Iraqi army in Kuwait, some 350,000–500,000 strong, was defeated in the field after 100 hours and with the lost of fewer than 300 coalition troops killed.

⁶Heidi Toffler and Alvin Toffler, War and Anti-War (Boston, MA: Little, Brown 1993).

⁸Quoted in the Transformation Planning Guidance (TPG), See DOD, ‘Elements of Defense Transformation’, <www.oft.osd.mil/library/library_files/document_383_ ElementsOfTransformation_LR.pdf>.

⁷US Dept. of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 30 Sept. 2001, 16.

⁹Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Its Future’, US Naval Institute Proceedings (Jan. 1998), 28–35.

¹⁰Joint Staff, Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, Version 2.0 (Washington DC: Dept. of Defense, Aug. 2005), 20–3.

¹¹Author interview with John Garstka, Washington DC, 27 April 2007; Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (New York: Encounter Books 2006), 201–53.

¹²Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2000), 104–10.

¹³As the USAF's chief historian put it: ‘simply … stated, air power won the Gulf War’. Cited in Lambeth, Transformation, 261.

¹⁴To be sure, ‘Desert Storm’ was focused nonetheless on attriting Iraqi field forces. Moreover, possibilities for less extensive damage to Iraqi infrastructure were lost because the new effects-based thinking had yet to make it down to the weapons officers in the air wings tasked with executing the campaign plan. Michael W. Lewis, ‘The Law of Aerial Bombardment in the 1991 Gulf War’, American Journal of International Law 97/3 (2003), 505–6.

¹⁵Ivo H. Daadler and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 2000).

¹⁶Indicative of debate at the time, see the special section on ‘NATO Expansion’ in Survival 37/1 (1995). The Euro-American balance, reflecting NATO–EU issues, was momentarily settled in the 1996 Berlin agreement but then revised for the 50th anniversary summit in Washington DC, April 1999. This new agreement, so-called Berlin Plus, is still formally in operation.

¹⁷NATO, Prague Summit Declaration, 21 Nov. 2002, para. 3.

¹⁸Ibid., para. 4.

¹⁹NATO, The Alliance's Strategic Concept, 24 April 1999.

²⁰‘Launching NATO's New Strategic Concept, Introductory Remarks by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the Opening of the Strategic Concept Seminar, 7 July 2009', <www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_56153.htm>.

²¹‘America Pushes for New Rapid-reaction Force to Revive NATO's Sense of Purpose’, The Independent, 5 June 2002; ‘Interview with Admiral Forbes, Last SACLANT’, NATO Review (Summer 2002), <www.nato.int/docu/review/2003/issue2/english/ interview.html>.

²²The old ACLANT command thus disappeared in favour of the ACT. However, NATO's other strategic command, Allied Command Operations (ACO), was reorganized as well and one of its three subordinate commands was a kind of transfer of the old ACLANT to ACO. This is the Lisbon maritime ‘joint headquarters’. ACO's two other subordinate commands in Brunssum (Netherlands) and Naples (Italy) are not singularly focused on the maritime environment and are therefore ‘joint forces headquarters’ with land, air, and maritime component commands.

²³This section draws on background interviews with military officers who participated in the reform process.

²⁴Seven countries were invited at the Prague summit to join NATO, and they joined in 2004, bringing the membership to 26. NATO has since, in 2008, invited an additional two countries to join the Alliance. Albania and Croatia duly joined by Feb. 2010.

²⁵NATO, Istanbul Summit Communiqué, 28 June 2004, para. 45.

²⁶ACT, Understanding NATO Military Transformation (no date), <www.act.nato.int/media/5-Multimedia/Doclibrary/unmtbooketenglishversion.pdf>.

²⁷Secretary General, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘MC Position on an Effects-Based Approach to Operations’, MCM-0052-2006, 6 June 2006, NATO Unclassified.

²⁸Ibid., 6.

²⁹On the NRF see Jens Ringsmose, ‘NATO's Response Force: Finally Getting it Right?’, European Security, 18/3 (Sept. 2009), 287–304.

³⁰Theo Farrell, The Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2005), 25–64; Joao Resende-Santos, Neorealism, States and the Modern Mass Army (Cambridge: CUP 2007).

³¹Chris C. Demchak, ‘Creating the Enemy: Global Diffusion of the Information Technology-Based Military Model’, in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason (eds), The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Stanford UP 2003), 307–47; See also Emily O. Goldman and Thomas G. Manhken (eds), The Information Revolution in Military Affairs in Asia (New York: Macmillan 2004).

³²Foreword by the Secretary of State for Defence, the Rt. Hon. Geoff Hoon MP, to Delivering Security in a Changing World: Defence White Paper (London: TSO 2003), 1; Directorate General Doctrine and Development, British Army, The Future Land Operational Concept, April 2004; Royal Navy, Future Maritime Operational Concept, NAVB/P, 2004; Royal Air Force, Royal Air Force Strategy: Agile, Adaptable, Capable, Version 2, 2006.

³³ Konzeption der Bundeswehr (Berlin: Bundesministerium der Verteidigung 2004); Document de politique générale sur la transformation (Paris: Ministère de la Défense 2005).

³⁴Theo Farrell interview with John Garstka (former deputy director of OFT), Washington DC, Jan. 2004.

³⁵This is explored in Gordon Adams and Guy Ben-Ari, Transforming European Militaries: Coalition Operations and the Technology Gap (London: Routledge 2006).

³⁶Frans Osinga, ‘The Rise of Military Transformation’, in Terry Terriff, Frans Osinga and Theo Farrell (eds), A Transformation Gap? American Innovations and European Military Change (Stanford UP 2010), 14–34.

³⁷This is argued in Thomas G. Mahnken and James R. FitzSimonds, ‘Revolutionary Ambivalence: Understanding Officer Attitudes toward Transformation’, International Security 28/2 (2003), 113–14.

³⁸Thomas G. Mahnken and James R. FitzSimonds, The Limits of Transformation: Officer Attitudes toward the Revolution in Military Affairs (Newport, RI: US Naval War College 2003), 18.

³⁹Mahnken and FitzSimonds, Limits, 29, 31, 34.

⁴⁰Mahnken and FitzSimonds, Limits, 73.

⁴¹Survey by Terry Terriff and Theo Farrell conducted of 2,460 students at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany, over 2007–08. The survey contained 15 statements to which students were invited to answer: agree, disagree, or don't know.

⁴²We tested officer beliefs on this key question by asking elsewhere in the survey if IT would ‘profoundly change the conduct of military operations’: 66 per cent believed that it would.

⁴³Sten Rynning, ‘From Bottom-Up to Top-Down Transformation: Military Change in France’, in Terriff et al., Transformation Gap, 59–82.

⁴⁴Antonio Marquina and Gustavo Diaz, ‘The Spanish Military and NEC: the Innovation Imperative’, in Terriff et al., Transformation Gap, 144–66.

⁴⁵Olaf Osica, ‘Transformation through Expeditionary Warfare: Military Change in Poland’, in Terriff et al., Transformation Gap, 167–86.

⁴⁶EBAO has since been dropped as a term from British doctrine but the underlying philosophy and approach to planning and operations has been retained.

⁴⁷Theo Farrell and Tim Bird, ‘Innovating within Cost and Cultural Constraints: the British Approach to Military Transformation’, in Terriff et al., Transformation Gap, 35–58.

⁴⁸This is well explored in Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (London: Hurst 2007).

⁴⁹The United States has also been a major contributor of forces to RC(S).

⁵⁰David H. Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars (Washington DC: Georgetown UP 2009); James A. Russell, ‘Innovation in War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005–2009' Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (August 2010), 595–624.

⁵¹John T. Bennett and Kris Osborn, ‘Gates Reveals DOD Program Overhaul’, Defense News, 6 April 2009, <www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4026294>.

⁵²H.R. McMaster, ‘On War: Lessons to be Learned’, Survival 50/1 (Feb.–March 2008), 19–30.

⁵³Noah Shachtman, ‘How Technology Almost Lost the War’, Wired Magazine 15/2 (2007), <www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15–12/ff_futurewar?currentPage= all>.

⁵⁴Gen. J.N. Mattis, ‘USJFCOM Commander's Guidance for Effects-Based Operations’, 14 Aug. 2008.

⁵⁵Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn, and Jaron Wharton, ‘Learning Under Fire: Progress and Dissent in the US Military’, Survival 51/4 (Aug.–Sept. 2009), 31–48.

⁵⁶Data from Post Operation Reports for Operations ‘Herrick 4–9’. Accessed by Farrell at British Land Warfare Centre, Sept. 2009.

⁵⁷Theo Farrell, ‘Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan 2006–2009’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (Aug. 2010), 567–94.

⁵⁸Farrell interview with Lt. Gen. Nick Houghton, Chief of Joint Operations, UK Permanent Joint Headquarters, Northwood, London, 18 July 2007.

⁵⁹Ministry of Defence, ‘New Armoured Vehicles for Afghanistan’, 29 Oct. 2008, <www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EquipmentAndLogistics/>.

⁶⁰ISAF Strength as of 5 March 2010, <www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Place mats/20100303%20Placemat.pdf>.

⁶¹Timo Noetzel and Thomas Rid, ‘Germany's Options in Afghanistan’, Survival 51/5 (Oct.–Nov. 2009), 71–90. In response to increased insurgent activity in RC/N and the risk of placing German soldiers in a legal grey area, the German government moved in early 2010 to redefine the mission, upgrading it from a stabilization mission to an ‘armed conflict’. ‘New Evaluation on Afghanistan Long Overdue’, Spiegel Online International, 11 Feb. 2010, <www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,6772 89,00.html>.

⁶²The United States thus deployed an additional 20,000 troops to Afghanistan in the spring of 2009. Following the August assessment of Commander ISAF, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and his request for an additional 40,000 troops, the Obama administration in autumn 2009 undertook an additional strategic review and committed another 34,000 US troops to the conflict.

⁶³The key here is the US Integrated Civil-Military Campaign Plan (ICMCP) that was finalized along with the COMISAF strategic assessment in August 2009 but which was the outcome of around six months of planning and preparation. The ICMCP's purpose is to create ‘Counter-Insurgency Transformative Effects’.

⁶⁴Richard Holbrooke is the US president's special envoy on this matter; European representatives support him via an Envoys' Group.

⁶⁵NATO, ‘ISAF's Strategic Vision’, 3 April 2008, <www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-052e.html>. The four principles are shared long-term commitment, enhancing Afghan leadership, comprehensive approach and civil-military coordination, and increased regional cooperation.

⁶⁶A point emphasized by an official of NATO's Operations Division interviewed by Sten Rynning, 25 Sept. 2009.

⁶⁷Following receipt of the strategic assessment on Afghanistan from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which painted a grim picture of a failing campaign, speculation grew that the Obama administration was considering an about turn, withdrawing most US combat forces, and focusing on a more narrow counter-terrorism campaign waged against Al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, ‘COMISAF Initial Assessment’, Headquarters, ISAF, Kabul, Afghanistan, 30 Aug. 2009. Peter Baker and Elizabeth Bumiller, ‘Obama Considers Strategy Shift in Afghan War’, New York Times, 22 Sept. 2009, <www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/world/asia/23policy.html>.

⁶⁸Milton Bearden, ‘Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires’, Foreign Affairs 80/6 (Nov./Dec. 2001); Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (New York: Norton 2009).

⁶⁹Canada is not European, of course, and it may to some extent be free of this type of regional constraint.

⁷⁰Malcolm Chalmers, ‘Capability Cost Trends,’Future Defence Review Working Paper No. 5, Jan. 2010.

⁷¹‘Le financement de l'armée du future sur la sellette,’Le Figaro, 22 Feb. 2010.

⁷²Marquina and Diaz, ‘Spanish Military’, 164; Osica, ‘Transformation’, 185.

⁷³Peter Viggo Jakobsen, NATO's Comprehensive Approach to Crisis Response Operations: A Work in Slow Progress, DIIS Report 2008 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies 2008), 15.