NATO's Interacting Models of National Mobilization

摘要

Alliance nations have found prohibitive the costs of manning their NATO forward defense positions fully and continually with active duty personnel. Accordingly, they have adopted various modes of mobilizing their national resources in time of crisis to bring their deployed forces in Europe up to effective wartime strength. Meeting the challenge of deterrence, however, means getting a proper combination of forces together and moving them to their forward positions in time to make a difference. This problem is particularly demanding with respect to NATO's central region. Here, unlike the flanks, a credible deterrent posture is the mutual responsibility of seven different nations within NATO's current military command structure. This paper examines the different processes by which these nations plan to mobilize their resources and move their reinforcements into position. It also identifies problems likely to be encountered in coordinating the simultaneous flow of these resources in the central region and suggests some areas where improvement can be made.