Compass Points - NATO Response Force
Building an expeditionary force.
February 6, 2024
The Russian attack on Ukraine has NATO rethinking its approach to deterrence.
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What kind of military force should NATO have today?
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Some years ago, two US Marine Corps officers, Major Justin Hooker and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Meyer presented an article in Proceedings, that said, "NATO Needs a Multinational Amphibious Task Force." The authors explained:
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Since 2014, Russia’s activities in the eastern Mediterranean and Sea of Azov have reinforced the need for NATO to have credible maritime force options. Twenty-six of NATO’s 29 members have coastlines, making the alliance an inherently littoral organization, and there is increasing recognition that maritime power is critical. As NATO considers how it should maneuver under, on, and from the sea, it also must determine how amphibious forces should contribute to its defense and deterrence.
A large amphibious task force (ATF) is an achievable and relevant capability that could significantly enhance NATO’s capacity for deterrence and crisis response. An ATF could reinforce a threatened ally or respond decisively and quickly to Russian aggression. Indeed, a NATO ATF need not be capable only of forcible entry operations—such a force also could conduct broad-scale distributed expeditionary operations . . .
-- USNI Proceedings
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An amphibious task force, "could conduct broad-scale distributed expeditionary operations."
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How powerful was the argument by the two Marine officers that what NATO needed was a mobile, flexible, combined arms, amphibious force with a full range of expeditionary capabilities?
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It is hard to say for sure, but history shows that just a few years after the Proceedings article, at the 2023 Vilnius Summit, NATO leaders, "agreed to establish a new multinational and multi-domain Allied Reaction Force."
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Why would NATO want to establish a flexible, immediate reaction force with the ability to get to any crisis quickly and deter, assist, and fight? To ask the question is to answer it. That kind of force has unlimited usefulness.
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But what about the danger of precision munitions? Some have said that highly accurate missiles and drones make any kind of flexible, offensive, amphibious force obsolete.
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The authors of the Proceeding's article address the issue directly:
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. . . Include amphibious forces in contingency plans and emerging concepts. Given their geographic and functional flexibility, allied amphibious forces could be used to project light and medium maneuver forces in an array of scenarios, from Arctic operations to actions to counter instability emanating from the Middle East or North Africa. Amphibious forces can function as a dynamic reserve in any NATO graduated response plan. Success will depend not only on C2 and readiness, but also on the ability to develop innovative operational concepts that address the modern antiaccess/area-denial (A2AD) threat. A2AD capabilities introduce new challenges for the employment of amphibious forces, but they are not a force field. NATO and national planners must not assume away the strategic effects that amphibious forces can provide.
-- USNI Proceedings
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Precision munitions are a challenge everywhere, but they are not a reason to abandon the usefulness of flexible, amphibious, offensive forces. NATO has announced no plan, no study, no indication of any kind that it intends to respond to the threat of precision munitions by creating the Mediterranean First Island Chain Force.
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Under a Mediterranean First Island Chain plan, NATO would withdraw from offense and instead place small missile units on a chain of islands, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
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But NATO planners have too much sense for that. That is why there is no Mediterranean First Island Chain Force. Instead, NATO is building "a new multinational and multi-domain Allied Reaction Force." NATO is not building a static, defensive force. Why should anyone?
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Compass Points salutes Major Justin Hooker and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Meyer for their influential article, salutes NATO planners for rejecting the Mediterranean First Island Chain Force, and salutes all those in the Marine community and in Congress helping to rebalance and rebuild the US Marine Corps' combined arms MAGTF.
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NATO Response Force
27 Jul. 2023
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm
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USNI Proceedings (usni.org) Vol. 145/10/1,400
NATO Needs a Multinational Amphibious Task Force
A large amphibious task force could enhance NATO’s capacity for deterrence and crisis response, but it will require a command-and-control structure to combine members’ forces into a credible capability.
By Major Justin Hooker and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Meyer, U.S. Marine Corps
The Barents Observer recently reported, "Norway expands defense agreement with American troops..."
https://thebarentsobserver.com/security/2024/02/norway-expands-defense-agreement-americab-troops
The defense of NATO's Northern Flank is vital for the defense of the Atlantic's SLOCs that are vital to the defense of Europe that in turn is critical to the national security of the United States. This new agreement should reinvigorate Marine Corps interest in the Norway Geoprepositioning program that had standup planning completed in 1987by Marines and the Naval Center for Analysis. At that time, the Cold War program, titled the "Air Landed MAB," called for the storage of heavy weight, high volume, long shelf life, equipment and supplies needed to support a brigade level MAGTF.
All the stored equipment and supplies were considered to be part of the DOD Prepositioned War Reserve Program. As such, all the equipment and supplies stored under this program were additive to Marine Corps allowances. It was because of the additive character of the stored equipment and supplies that led to Gen. Lou Wilson's approval of Marine Corps participation in the program.
Just as it is today, there was a shortage of amphibious lift because of one MEB's Mideast responsibilities and a second MEB's Western Pacific responsibilities in a global war scenario. Consequently, there would not be amphibious lift available for the defense of the Northern Flank of NATO. because of the Mideast and Western Pacific higher priority for amphibious lift. A Fly-in-Echelon was therefore conceived to get Marines to the Northern Flank because of the amphibious lift shortage anticipated in a global war.
Besides the littoral geography of Norway, with the addition of bordering Finland to NATO with Sweden soon to follow, there is unlimited opportunity for Marine Corps participation in this Northern Flank defense expansion. There is no other area on the globe better suited for a task organized, combined arms, amphibious capable force than that provided by the Marine Corps. The newly expanded defense agreement for NATO's Northern Flank should be vigorously pursued by Marine leadership..
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The American Dilemma of War
By: George Friedman
Many argue that the United States should not have involved itself in the Ukraine war. For some, it’s a matter of national interest; for others, it’s simply too expensive. There are those who fear that U.S. involvement in the Middle East will trap Washington again in a dangerous situation that is not its business and will be costly both in lives and in money.
These are not frivolous arguments, but they miss other dimensions of war. The first is that war isn’t always a choice. The second is that avoiding war is sometimes even costlier than entering a conflict.
The United States has been forced to consider both dimensions in various conflicts since World War I, with some claiming that we have no interest at stake, that the financial and human toll would outstrip the importance of the war, or that the war would be unwinnable. The reason that this choice has been so important is that the United States is the dominant power in the world. Economically and militarily, it is everywhere, and all other nations know that drawing the United States into a war on their side would dramatically increase their odds of success. Like other empires before it, the U.S. is an overarching presence in the world and is therefore constantly confronted with military threats and military opportunities.
The question is not whether the world appears a dangerous place to the U.S. but rather what is to be done about the situation. There are always choices; some save a country, some trap a country, some urge caution, and others demand action. The U.S. is always on the threshold of making another decision, with great debate over what it ought to be.
It is here worth thinking about its choices in World War II. There was a debate over whether to enter the conflict at all. The America First Committee argued that it was not the United States' war and that the U.S., still in the Great Depression, should spend its treasure at home. Though plenty disagreed, the choice was made for the U.S. when Japan, a country with which there was friction but whose military threat was dismissed by most, struck Pearl Harbor. Very shortly afterward, Germany declared war on the United States. Washington was involved in a war that girdled the world. The choice to stand back turned out to be the wrong one.
There are many reasons why it was the wrong decision, but chief among them was the associated failure to invest in a military capable of fighting such a war. We confused our desire to stay out of war with a limited need to arm ourselves.
In truth, the attack at Pearl Harbor was not really a surprise. The U.S. had placed radar there, and the radar picked up a mass of aircraft heading to Hawaii. Left out of the radar system was a mechanism to communicate with fighters based in substantial numbers in Hawaii. Here, the decision to stay out of the war led to limits on spending, signaled to the military that it did not have to see war as imminent and created a sense of peacetime.
If the U.S. had entered the war in 1940, it could have rushed troops to France. British reinforcements were not enough, but the U.S. had more resources. Had the Germans failed to take France, the war would have been very different. At the very least, the casualties at Normandy at the Battle of the Bulge would not have happened.
Now consider Vietnam. The decision to enter the war was almost casual. The assumption was that the presence of U.S. troops would be so intimidating to North Vietnam that it would abandon its dream of unification. There was an arrogance, rather than a refusal to see the threat, that led to a massive defeat for the United States and massive casualties.
Simplistic confidence doesn’t work, of course, and failing to recognize the dangers doesn’t limit casualties, or at least not in a reasonable time frame. After Vietnam, the U.S. adopted a stance of peace coupled with a readiness to fight, including waging possible nuclear war. The Cold War was a time of extreme tension, but that tension was a major reason there was no war.
We face the Ukraine conflict on the same basis. We are divided. Some feel there is no risk, others that it is an existential threat. But the U.S. adopted the strategy of arming a native force and not deploying U.S. forces. It came from an understanding of what happened in Vietnam and also from the fears wrought by the Cold War. Likewise, in the Middle East, we are trying to determine what interest we have that justifies war.
None of this is a suggestion of how we should approach war, but it is intended to be a consideration of the potential consequences of bad decisions. Going to war and declining war can both end in failure, save that being as prepared as possible for war provides options without committing to the fight. But it is the details that contain what truth there is and a clear understanding of the reasons for going or not going to war. These should be faced at all times because an enemy might be coming, and not making a decision is very much a decision.