NATO Doctrine and National Operational Priorities: The Central Front and the Flanks: Part I

Abstract

The problem of providing unified and coherent operational direction for the efficient generation and effective employment of military forces in an alliance of sovereign states has not become any easier or less relevant since Montgomery made his first inspection as Chairman of the Commanders-in-Chief Committee of the Brussels Treaty, NATO’s predecessor. The difficulty in forging a common doctrine and the effort required in committing the resources to carry it out has left a bias against national operational priorities — the emergence of which has usually presaged change, a challenge to the common approach, a conflict with other members’ priorities, which could endanger the hard-won consensus and vital cohesion of the Alliance. Not infrequently national operational priorities have been both the source and medium of European — American friction: the latter impatient at the European self-absorbed preoccupations with national constraints and narrow latitude for operational change; the former cringing at yet another new initiative from the United States — accompanied by high-pressure salesmanship and self-righteous indignation — before the last innovation has been implemented.

… none of the plans could be carried out because the nations were unwilling to produce the necessary forces — properly trained with a sound common structure and a reliable communications system. It was the more difficult as there was no true unity, and no nation was willing to make any sacrifice of sovereignty for the common good.

(Field-Marshal Montgomery, 1948)