Role of Relatively Small-Scale Logistics Contributions in North Atlantic Treaty Organization Operations

摘要

In the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an entity of 26 member countries, logistics support to operations is challenged by a limited number of countries that are contributing logistics capabilities. These are large countries that bring a substantial amount of logistics capabilities into the theater thus creating logistics support for everyone in the theater. For small countries this situation is advantageous, because they enjoy multinational logistics as free-riders and contribute to it only on an ad hoc basis. Small nations prefer to make very limited logistics contributions, which results in ineffective multinational logistics. NATO must work with its smaller countries to identify their comparative advantage capabilities. These will be so-called 'niche' capabilities that small countries can successfully provide. Through well-coordinated specialization of small countries in certain logistics areas, NATO can get considerable contributions from them. This will help to equalize the logistics burden among the NATO countries and also make the multinational logistics system more effective and reliable. To achieve good coordination and management of logistics activities, these processes have to be run by a single authority. Current NATO logistics doctrine provides enough tools to implement multinational logistics, but NATO lacks the authority to effectively implement these tools. Forceful NATO leadership is necessary for achieving effective multinational logistics.