NATO's Response Force: finally getting it right?

Abstract

At the Riga Summit in November 2006, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) declared the NATO Response Force (NRF) a fully operational capability. Yet only 8 months later – and behind closed doors – the Alliance's military authorities rescinded the declaration as it became increasingly clear that member states were unwilling to make the necessary commitments to the force. To this day, the force has been a qualified failure: while many allies have benefited from participating in the NRF, lack of concrete troop commitments and disagreement as to the force's operational role have largely eroded its credibility. This could change with the allies' recent adoption of a revised NRF-construct. However, as NATO is still in a state of strategic confusion, the NRF is likely to continue to be different things to different nations.

Keywords:

• NATO
• NATO Response Force
• military transformation
• transatlantic relations

Notes

1. Interview, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

2. Interview, SHAPE, October 2009.

3. Interview, Danish Ministry of Defence, August 2009; Interviews, NATO Headquarters, October 2009. See also Der Speigel, ‘Eingreiftruppe am Ende’, 17 September 2007; Judy Dempsey, ‘NATO retreats from establishment of rapid-reaction force’, New York Times, 20 September 2007; John Mark, ‘NATO to scale back reaction force’, The Irish Times, 26 October 2007.

4. Interviews, NATO Headquarter, October 2009; Interview, Danish Ministry of Defence, August 2009; Correspondence with senior NATO official, Allied Command Transformation. At the Riga Summit in 2006, NATO claimed that all of the 460 or so commitments made by the allies at Prague, would be fulfilled in 2009.

5. Interviews, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

6. Interviews, SHAPE, October 2009; Interviews, NATO Headquarters, October 2009; House of Commons, Defence Committee, The future of NATO and European Defence, p. 50.

7. The American decision to contribute the missing capabilities was made during the night between the first and the second day of the two-day Riga Summit. Interview, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

8. Interview, SHAPE, October 2009.

9. Interviews, NATO Headquarters and SHAPE, October 2009. See also Der Spiegel, ‘Schrumpfkur: NATO verkleinert schnelle Eingreiftruppe’, 25 October 2007; Tom Kington, ‘NATO may relaunch response force in June’, Defense News, 11 May 2009, http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4083046; Der Spiegel, ‘Transformation reversed: NATO Rapid Reaction Force to be eliminated', 20 September 2007.

10. The usability goals was agreed to at the Istanbul Summit in June 2004 and embraced in the Comprehensive Political Guidance (approved at the Riga Summit in November 2006). In June 2009, NATO Minister of Defense agreed to enhance the goals from 40–8 to 50–10. For an assessment of most NATO members' numbers of deployable and sustainable forces, see the European Defence Agency, 2007. Defence Data of EDA Participating Members in 2007. Brussels: European Defence Agency.

11. Interviews, NATO Headquarters and SHAPE, October 2009.

12. Allied Command Operations Blog, ‘The NATO Response Force – the way forward' http://acositrep.com/2009/08/04/the-nato-response-force-the-way-forward/; Interview, Danish Ministry of Defence, August 2009; Correspondence with NATO official, International Military Staff, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

13. Interviews, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

14. Correspondence with NATO official, October 2009.

15. Correspondence with NATO official, September 2009.

16. This group of countries also includes a number of the East European member states. These nations, however, have hided quietly behind Germany and France. Interview, NATO official, August 2009.

17. Interview, NATO Headquarters, October 2009.

18. Interview, NATO Headquarters and Danish Ministry of Defence, August and October 2009.

19. Statement of General James Jones, Commander, United States European Command, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 7 March 2006, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2006_hr/060307-jones.pdf, p. 43 (Accessed 28 January 2010). SACT, General Lance Smith, made a similar statement in May 2006: ‘You can put your forces in a NRF rotation and if nothing happens during those 6 months you're fine, but if there is an earthquake in Pakistan, as happened last year, those forces would have to deploy and it could become very expensive…costs that are not planned for in the national defense budget’ (Lok 2006).

20. Interviews and correspondence with NATO officials, October and November 2009.

21. Interview and correspondence with NATO officials, October and November 2009; see also Bell (2006) and Shaper (2009).

22. Interview, senior NATO official, NATO Headquarters, November 2009.