CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE
FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
Institute of Political Studies
Ken Ruml
NATO Transformation and the Capability
Gap
Master Thesis
Prague 2012
Author: Ken Ruml
Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Běla Plachanovová, CSc.
Year of defense: 2012
i
Bibliographic Record
RUML, Ken. NATO Transformation and the Capability Gap. Prague, 2012. 80 p.
Master Thesis. Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of
Political Studies. Department of International Relations. Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Běla
Plechanovová, CSc.
Annotation
The present Master Thesis is a macro-level comparative case study that addresses the
problem of most member states’ lack of adequate motivation to acquire innovative
military capabilities and contribute them to the North Atlantic Alliance. There has been
a significant gap between NATO’s ambition and its military capability since at least the
1999 Kosovo Crisis. Even today, a couple of years after the adoption of the longawaited new Strategic Concept, which confirmed NATO’s role in crisis management
beyond its borders, the evaluations of the recent NATO operation in Libya hint to fact
that the gap persists. The question is: what factors play the most significant role in
shaping state behaviour within NATO and what can be done to stimulate the member
states’ proactive attitude? The problem is addressed through the prism of Neorealism,
which emphasizes structural constraints of state behaviour, and Constructivism, which,
for its part, highlights the importance of domestic factors, namely state identity. Based
on the results of the fuzzy-set analysis, it is argued that the harmonization of NATO’s
and EU’s capability development initiatives, as well as the eventual military integration
of lower-capability NATO member states is most likely to reset the balance between the
Alliance’s ambition and available resources and thus make the organization viable in the
21st Century.
Anotace
Předkládaná diplomová práce je makro-komparativní případovou studií, která
pojednává o problematice dlouhodobé neochoty většiny členských států poskytnout
Severoatlantické alianci nezbytné vojenské schopnosti. Propastný rozdíl mezi
deklarovanou ambicí Aliance a jejími schopnostmi existuje minimálně od Kosovské
ii
krize z roku 1999. Pouhé dva roky uplynuly od přijetí nové strategické koncepce, která
potvrdila roli NATO jako aktéra řešení konfliktů, ale hodnocení nedávné operace
v Libyi naznačují, že nerovnováha mezi ambicemi a schopnostmi přetrvává, a to
navzdory četným iniciativám majícím za cíl zlepšení vojenských schopností
jednotlivých členských států. Otázka proto zní, jaké faktory nejvýznamněji ovlivňují
chování států v rámci organizace a jakým způsobem lze státy motivovat k lepším
výkonům. Na problematiku je nahlíženo z pohledu neorealismu, který klade důraz na
strukturální vlivy, a konstruktivismu, který zase upřednostňuje vlivy vnitřní, zejména
státní identitu. Výsledky analýzy metodou mlhavé množiny naznačují, že nejschůdnější
cestou, jak nastolit rovnováhu mezi ambicemi a schopnostmi NATO, je harmonizovat
iniciativy NATO a EU v oblasti obrany a pokusit se o vojenskou integraci.
Keywords
NATO, CSDP, military transformation, capability gap, capability development, fuzzy
set, Neorealism, Constructivism, multinational cooperation, smart defence.
Klíčová slova
NATO, SBOP, vojenská transformace, rozvoj vojenských schopností, mlhavá množina,
neorealismus, konstruktivismus, mnohonárodní spolupráce, chytrá obrana.
Word count: 17 666
Number of characters (without spaces): 94 205
Number of characters (with spaces): 111 789
iii
Declaration
1. I hereby declare that I compiled this thesis independently using only the listed
sources and literature.
2. I further declare that this thesis was not submitted to any other institution for the
purpose of gaining an academic degree, diploma or certificate.
3. I grant permission to Charles University to make this thesis public for study and
research purposes.
Prague, 18 May 2012
Ken Ruml
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. PhDr. Běla Plechanovová, CSc., for her
guidance and valuable insight. I would also like to thank Brigadier General Peter
Sonneby and his team at NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre in
Monsanto, Portugal, for giving me the unique opportunity to participate in their Defence
Metrics project, which inspired the present research.
v
List of Acronyms
ACT
-
Allied Command Transformation
C2
-
Command & Control
CINC
-
Composite Index of National Capability
CJTF
-
Combined Joint Task Force
COW
-
Correlates of War
CSDP
-
Common Security and Defence Policy
DCI
-
Defence Capabilities Initiative
DPP
-
Defence Policy and Planning
EDA
-
European Defence Agency
EDEM
-
European Defence Equipment Market
ESDI
-
European Security and Defence Identity
ESDP
-
European Security and Defence Policy
EU BG
-
European Union Battle Group
Fs
-
Fuzzy-set
HLSG
-
High Level Steering Group
IGO
-
Intergovernmental Organization
IR
-
International Relations
IS
-
International Staff
IUT
-
Istanbul Usability Targets
LCP
-
Lisbon Capabilities Package
NA5CRO
-
Non-Article 5 Crisis Response Operation
NAC
-
North Atlantic Council
NCS
-
NATO Command Structure
NRF
-
NATO Response Force
OCCAR
-
Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation
OUP
-
Operation Unified Protector
PCC
-
Prague Capabilities Commitment
QCA
-
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
RMA
-
Revolution in Military Affairs
SDI
-
Smart Defence Initiative
vi
Contents
List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................ vi
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
Formulating the Research Question and Hypotheses .......................................... 3
1.1.
Defining Transformation and the Capability Gap ............................................ 3
1.2.
Neorealism vs. Constructivism .......................................................................... 9
Methodology, Operationalization and Data........................................................ 16
2.1.
Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis .................................................. 16
2.2.
Operationalizing the Political Will to Transform ........................................... 20
2.3.
Operationalizing National Capability............................................................. 22
2.4.
Operationalizing the Degree of Militarism ..................................................... 25
2.5.
Operationalizing the Engagement in International Operations ..................... 27
Data Analysis ......................................................................................................... 29
3.1.
The Configurations and Groupings ................................................................ 29
3.2.
Assessing Necessity and Sufficiency................................................................ 31
3.3.
Alternate Analysis and Interpretation ............................................................. 34
Implications for NATO ......................................................................................... 36
4.1. Current and Past Attempts to Narrow the Capability Gap ............................. 36
4.1.1. Defence Capabilities Initiative .................................................................... 38
4.1.2. Prague Capabilities Commitment................................................................ 39
4.1.3. Istanbul Usability Targets ........................................................................... 40
4.1.4. Lisbon Capabilities Package ....................................................................... 41
4.2.
The Future of the Capability Gap ................................................................... 43
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 47
Resumé ........................................................................................................................... 49
References ...................................................................................................................... 50
List of Annexes .............................................................................................................. 58
Annexes .......................................................................................................................... 59
Annex 1: Scores on All Four Variables (Table) .......................................................... 59
Annex 2: Fuzzy-Set Membership Scores (Table)......................................................... 60
Annex 3: All Logically Possible Groupings (Table) ................................................... 61
Annex 4: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of High Capability States (Graph) .......... 62
vii
Annex 5: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of States With a High Degree of Militarism
and a High Level of Engagement in International Operations (Graph) ..................... 62
Annex 6: List of Operations Considered (Table) ........................................................ 63
The Master Thesis Project Proposal............................................................................ 64
viii
Introduction
The present Master Thesis is a macro-level comparative case study that seeks to explain
the variation in NATO member states behaviour vis-à-vis the process of military
transformation using an innovative method called the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative
Analysis (fs/QCA).
The word transformation has been articulated with growing intensity within the North
Atlantic Alliance since at least the 2002 Prague Summit but has not gained substance
and a clear meaning until only a couple of years ago when the long-awaited new
Strategic Concept was adopted. The Strategic Concept documents the consensus
reached by all 28 NATO member states on what role the Alliance should play in the
current global security environment and how it should play it. However, the question is
whether the Alliance’s new ambition can be matched by presently available military
capabilities; whether NATO can live up to its members’ expectations. The answer is by
no means straightforward because more than half of NATO members seem to be
passive and to contribute less than is expected of them.
In this paper, it is my intention to examine both the external and the internal factors that
might encourage or dissuade NATO member states from being proactive within the
organization and therefore willing to bridge the unequal distribution of military
capabilities across the Alliance. For the factors that might be decisive in shaping NATO
member states’ behaviour, I look to two International Relations (IR) theories:
Neorealism and Constructivism. I hypothesize that the availability of human, economic
and military resources, the degree of militarism as an important aspect of state identity
and/or the level of engagement in international operations as an expression of states’
interest to place their first line of defence abroad is present in those cases that display a
strong political will to transform.
The ongoing debate in the academic sphere, the media, as well as in the realm of
security policy practitioners about NATO’s viability in the dynamically changing
security environment of the 21st Century has prompted me to address the issue of most
NATO member states’ perceived passivity. Furthermore, after the adoption of the new
Strategic Concept, NATO officials were tasked to find ways to motivate improved
1
contributions to the Alliance. Several exercises to foster political will to transform are
currently under way within NATO and so I deem it timely to engage in a discussion on
their usefulness in this way. Hopefully, the findings of fs/QCA will be conclusive
enough to also allow for an assessment of the prospects of narrowing the capability gap
in the near future.
Moreover, literature dealing with NATO transformation and military capability
development is mostly purely military and problem-solving-oriented and thus not
entirely relevant to political science or security studies. Probably the only notable
exception is Ivan Dinev Ivanov’s book Transforming NATO published in 2011, in
which the author attempts to conceptualize the term transformation, as well as make
sense of the new role of the post-Cold War Alliance.
In general, there are disproportionately more studies dealing with EU military capability
development, some of which I have used – e.g. the European Union Institute for
Security Studies’ publication European Security and Defence Policy: The First 10 years
(Grevi and Keohane, 2009) – because I believe the NATO and EU capability
development issues to be intertwined. Furthermore, plenty of studies dealing with
NATO were published around the time of the Iraq Crisis, during the course of which the
debate about NATO’s viability intensified. As a result, the authors of these studies (see
Cornish, 2004 for example) had a tendency to prioritize NATO-EU relations above all
else and – with the notable exception of Jolyon Howorth’s and John Keeler’s 2003
publication entitled Defending Europe: the EU, NATO and the Quest for European
Autonomy – to ignore the fact that, despite temporary grievances, NATO and EU are
essentially two sides of the same coin and that their roles in European defence are
complementary. In short, I find lamentable the fact that NATO and EU military
capability developments are often treated separately.
Major sources of inspiration for me were the works of Vincent, Straus and Biondi
(2001) – Capability Theory and the Future of NATO’s Decision-Making Rules – and
Koenig-Archibugi (2004) – Explaining Government Preferences for Institutional
Change in EU Foreign and Security Policy. Both texts address the complex issue of
state behaviour within an international institution, the latter using the fuzzy-set method.
2
To conduct the analysis of collected data, I looked for inspiration in the works of
Charles Ragin (1987; 2000; 2008) who introduced fuzzy sets to social science.
The present Master Thesis is divided into four principal sections. The purpose of the
first section is 1) to define the terms transformation and capability gap so as to clarify
the meaning of NATO’s new role or ambition and the obstacles to the fulfilment of that
role or ambition and 2) to present the selected IR theories and the relevant hypotheses
therefrom derived. At the end of the first part of the section, I formulate the research
question(s) and specify what the dependent variable (the outcome) is. By the end of the
second part of the section, the theoretical framework will have been set.
The second section briefly introduces fs/QCA and then proceeds with the
operationalization of the dependent variable and the independent variables. A subsection is dedicated to each variable and includes the description of the measurement
used, the indication of the source, as well as a list of possible considerations. The
measurements are populated and the data is analysed using fs/QCA in the third section.
The process is described step-by-step and made more transparent using tables and
graphs.
The final section of the paper evaluates past and present NATO initiatives to narrow the
capability gap and analyses their shortcomings in the light of the findings of fs/QCA
from the previous section. The aim is to see whether they are meaningful. The second
part of the section offers some prospects of bridging the capability gap and matching
capabilities to commitments in the near future.
1. Formulating Research Questions and Hypotheses
1.1.
Defining Transformation and the Capability Gap
In order to be able to formulate and justify accurate research questions, determine the
dependent variable and relevant hypotheses (independent variables), the purpose of this
section will be to delimit the two somewhat intangible terms that appear in the title of
this Master Thesis, as their meaning is believed to be largely taken for granted. The few
publications that address the issue of NATO transformation often fail to provide the
3
reader with a clear understanding of what it is. Even the website of HQ Supreme Allied
Commander / Transformation1 does not specify what exactly is meant by
transformation. Is it a process or an outcome? At what level (NATO, state, etc.) does it
occur and what costs and benefits does it entail? What is the origin of NATO
transformation and why is it such an issue today? These and other questions will be
answered below.
Let us first have a look at the official NATO definition of transformation. The NATO
Glossary of Terms and Definitions compiled by the NATO Standardization Agency
(2010) defines transformation as a “continuous and proactive process of developing and
integrating innovative concepts, doctrines and capabilities in order to improve the
effectiveness and interoperability of military forces”. From this definition it follows that
transformation is an ongoing process of change of member states’ militaries. However,
it is still too broad and it leaves the researcher wondering as to the extent, direction and
motives of said change.
A recent inquiry into NATO transformation made by Ivan Dinev Ivanov suggests the
following three aspects of change: “admission of new members, the introduction of new
missions, and the development of new capabilities” (Ivanov, 2011:xx). Already, the
development of capabilities seems to be the recurring theme of transformation but note
how Ivanov introduces a geographical dimension on top of purely military dimensions.
He maintains that transformation and enlargement are interconnected processes. Thus,
according to him, transformation does not occur only at the level of individual NATO
member states but also at the collective “club” level. The club decides collectively
whether to expand its membership base, etc. (Ivanov, 2011:1-37).
Another explanation of what military transformation means – one more indicative of the
direction of change – is proposed by the Swedish author Lee-Ohlsson (2009:132): a
change “from a territorial defence force into an intervention force”. Similarly, Giovanni
Grevi and Daniel Keohane (2009:69) argue that most EU member states have yet to
1
HQ Supreme Allied Commander / Transformation is situated in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. It is the HQ of
Allied Command Transformation (ACT), one of NATO’s two strategic commands, the other one being
Allied Command Operations with HQ at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium. ACT was created in 2003 following
the 2002 Prague NATO Summit and is in charge of NATO’s adaptation to the security environment of the
21st Century. Its website is: www.act.nato.int.
4
reform their militaries “from a Cold War posture of defending national territory to
participating in international peacekeeping operations”. Their understanding of
transformation coincides with Ivanov’s second aspect of change, i.e. the introduction of
new missions, which are of expeditionary nature.
These new crisis management (conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction)
missions respond to the increasing gravity of asymmetric threats (threats emanating
from non-state actors such as terrorists, transnational criminal organizations, etc., whose
breeding ground are failed or failing states) and require well equipped, highly mobile,
rapidly deployable and sustainable forces, i.e. expeditionary forces. The importance of
asymmetric threats in shaping the structure of armed forces is reflected in the United
States Department of Defense (2003:8) definition of transformation: “[a] process that
shapes the changing nature of military competition and cooperation through new
combinations of concepts, capabilities, people and organizations that exploit our
nation’s advantages and protect against our asymmetric vulnerabilities to sustain our
strategic position, which helps underpin peace and stability in the world”.
The document further highlights that “transformation is a continuing process (…) [i]t
does not have an end point” (United States Department of Defense, 2003:8). Anne Aldis
(2005:103) confirms this in her paper on defence transformation in Europe:
“[t]ransformation (…) has come a long way in the last 15 years, but it is unfortunately a
process that can never be declared quite finished”. The fact that concepts, doctrines,
capabilities, etc. have to be continuously adapted to the changing security environment
implies high costs for NATO member states, as well as for Common Security and
Defence Policy (CSDP) members. Military transformation requires not only a sustained
level of military expenditure, but also a high degree of determination and commitment
on the part of states’ political elites, and especially so in a time of deep economic
recession when, given the lack of funds in areas such as education or healthcare, the
general public is finding the costly development of new military capabilities
increasingly difficult to comprehend.
Indeed, some Central and Eastern European NATO member states are generally thought
to be fed up with having to constantly restructure their armed forces insisting that “a
period of consolidation is what is needed, not more changes” (Aldis, 2005:103). As a
5
result of this variation in attitude towards the process of transformation, some nations
have been adapting to the changing security environment at a faster pace than others.
Over time, this has led to the widening of the so-called capability gap.
David S. Yost (2003:81) defines the capability gap as “the aggregate of multiple gaps
relating to the organization and conduct of large-scale expeditionary operations.”
According to conventional wisdom, the capability gap has existed between USA and its
European allies ever since NATO’s inception in 1949 but had not become an alarming
issue until the 1999 Kosovo Crisis.2 The problem was the lack of sufficient
interoperability, i.e. “the ability of Allied forces to operate effectively together in
execution of the assigned missions” (NATO Standardization Agency, 2010). Smith et
al. (2006) has a broader understanding of what the capability gap stands for: an
imbalance between a state’s or organization’s ambition and the resources available to it
(p. 10).
But where did the gap come from? Obviously, the problem is rooted in geopolitics and
the different historical experiences of USA and the rest of NATO. During the Cold War,
USA was busy preparing for transoceanic power projection, whereas most European
allies kept focusing on the defence of their territory against any possible Soviet
aggression (Yost, 2003:83-84). As a result, European forces were more static. Today,
more than two decades since the fall of the Wall, the likelihood of any NATO member
state being invaded is thought to be very low. This is reflected not only in the latest
NATO Strategic Concept (NATO, 2010) but also in the Petersberg Tasks3 and the
European Security Strategy, in which it says: “Our traditional concept of self- defence –
up to and including the Cold War – was based on the threat of invasion. With the new
threats, the new line of defence will often be abroad” (European Union, 2003:7).
European allies’ ambition today, same as the United States’, is to project power abroad,
be it in the Mediterranean, in sub-Saharan Africa or in the Balkans. However, they have
2
In 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force, which consisted of several air strikes in Yugoslavia.
Even though non-US NATO members accounted for 47 % of the strikes, an average of three US combat
support aircraft (air refueling, airborne command & control, etc.) was required for each non-US strike
sortie (Yost, 2003:88).
3
The Petersberg Tasks were adopted by the Western European Union in 1992 and later incorporated into
the European Security and Defence Policy. They include humanitarian and rescue tasks, conflict
prevention and peacekeeping tasks, post-conflict stabilization tasks, etc. (for more information see
Europa, 2012).
6
had less time than USA to catch up with the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA),4
which – according to some scholars – has been under way for over 30 years (Sloan,
2002; Adams and Ben Ari, 2006:3). RMA is what makes transformation an ongoing and
expensive process as it pressures actors who wish to remain relevant internationally in
the military sense to invest again and again in equipment, which is highly
technologically advanced (e.g. precision munitions, satellites, etc.). Grevi and Keohane
(2009) make note of the fact that “the cost of defence equipment is rising by six to eight
percent a year” (p. 71).
It would be exceedingly difficult to try and express the capability gap in numbers since
the acquirement and employment of capabilities depends to a large extent on the states’
level of ambition. For instance, in 2010 USA had 11 aircraft carriers and 1319 transport
and air refueling capability items,5 while the remaining 27 NATO member states
together only had 6 and 703 respectively (Hackett, 2010), in spite of the fact that USA
and all non-US NATO members put together are comparable in terms of resources
(human, economic, military) that are available to them. However, this difference is not
entirely indicative of the capability gap because USA needs more capabilities to protect
its interests and to sustain its forces scattered around the globe, an ambition the rest of
NATO does not have. Rather than global stability, European allies in particular are
concerned about threats originating from within a relatively small distance from their
borders, and develop new capabilities accordingly. For example, France, a militarily
powerful European nation with a colonial history, identifies an “arc of crisis” stretching
from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean (encompassing the Mediterranean, North and subSaharan Africa and the Near- and Middle-East) as its (and the EU’s) area of concern
(French Government, 2008:41) and not the whole world as USA does.
Nevertheless, it might suffice to say that the capability gap exists because most
stakeholders believe it to be real. The 1999 Kosovo Crisis and the widespread belief that
non-US NATO members are militarily incompetent in contrast to the US war machine
4
The term “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) was coined by Soviet military authors in the 1970s
and 1980s (Metz and Kievit, 1995:v). It refers to the rapid advances in information technology, which are
transforming the nature of modern warfare. RMA began in the latter stages of the Vietnam War with the
introduction of precision munitions but did not become evident until the Gulf War (Sloan, 2002:n.p.).
5
These items include large military transport aircraft such as Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, Airbus
A400M Atlas or Antonov An-124 Ruslan; smaller military transport aircraft such as Lockheed C-130
Hercules and many more.
7
led to reinvigorated debates concerning burden-sharing within the organization. “These
debates have, for the most part, consisted of Americans asking Europeans to increase
their level of defense spending” (Yost, 2003:86). According to Paul Cornish (2004),
“disagreements over defence spending threaten to occupy the vacuum at the heart of the
alliance left by the collapse of NATO’s historical adversary” (p. 72) and hence
jeopardize the very existence of NATO. The pressures to bridge the capability gap have
materialized into several initiatives both at the level of NATO and EU aimed at
fostering the political will of member states to transform their armed forces. These
initiatives include the 1999 Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI), the 2002 Prague
Capabilities Commitment (PCC), the 2004 Istanbul Usability Targets (IUT) and the
2010 Lisbon Capabilities Package (LCP), which will be addressed further in the final
section of this paper, where I will discuss the utility of these initiatives in attempting to
narrow the capability gap. Stephan De Spiegeleire (2011:n.p.) from the Hague Centre
for Strategic Studies argues that the impact of DCI, PCC, IUT and LCP on national
capability development “has proved disappointing.”
Indeed, if we look at the conduct of the latest NATO endeavour, Operation Unified
Protector (OUP) in Libya (a country within the aforementioned arc of crisis), we have to
conclude that non-US NATO members have yet to bridge the gap between their
ambitions and their capabilities. When evaluating OUP, NATO Secretary General,
Anders Fogh Rasmussen (2011), declared: “European allies and Canada led the effort.
But this mission could not have been done without capabilities which only the United
States can offer. For example: drones, intelligence and refuelling aircraft. Let me put it
bluntly: those capabilities are vital for all of us. More Allies should be willing to obtain
them. That is a real challenge.” Of all security policy practitioners and decision-makers,
Rasmussen certainly is not a lone critic of OUP and the state in which NATO currently
finds itself. In 2011, the outgoing US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, publicly
complained about many Allies running short of ammunition only 11 weeks into the
operation. He said that the shortcomings are pushing NATO toward “collective military
irrelevance” (Cloud, 2011).
From the statements of Rasmussen, De Spiegeleire and Gates, it can be inferred that
transformation, which can be understood as a tool to narrow the capability gap, has not
born its fruit over the past decade. Therefore, the primary question is: Why have
8
initiatives to foster NATO member states’ political will to transform failed, and what
must be done to preserve the Alliance, whose fate has been increasingly tied to the
success of the transformation process? For research purposes, I divide this question into
two parts as follows:
Research Question # 1: What factors – internal or external – or combinations thereof
are more determinate in stimulating NATO member states’ political will to transform?
Research Question # 2: What does the answer to the first research question tell us about
NATO-led efforts to stimulate NATO member states’ political will to transform, i.e. do
the efforts and initiatives focus on internal or external constraints of state behaviour?
The findings of this research will help determine whether the transformation of NATO
is attainable under current circumstances, i.e. in the situation where there are 28 member
states of various size, capability and culture, including strategic culture.
Political will to transform is, therefore, the dependent variable, i.e. the phenomenon,
whose occurrence or variation I will attempt to explain in the ensuing sections of this
paper. To recapitulate, NATO transformation is a continuous (i.e. never-ending) process
of developing and integrating new military capabilities – the cost of which is constantly
on the rise due to RMA – aimed at preserving the relevance of NATO in the post-Cold
War era by attempting to bridge the capability gap, which can be understood as the
imbalance between the organization’s ambition and available resources, and which can
be blamed on imperfect burden-sharing within NATO. Thus, I will examine member
states’ political will (or determination) to pursue the process described above. The
operationalization of this variable will be discussed at length in the second section.
Essentially, what this paper sets out to assess is state behaviour. In the next sub-section,
the possible causal factors/conditions drawn from dominant theoretical concepts dealing
with state behaviour will be presented.
1.2.
Neorealism vs. Constructivism
Neorealism and constructivism form the theoretical framework of this paper. Both are
IR theories that have a different understanding of how we conceive of the complex
9
social world we live in. While Neorealism, sometimes referred to as structuralism, has
two levels of analysis – the structural (international system) level and the unit (state)
level – and explains the latter in terms of the former (structures define units),
Constructivism places more emphasis on identities and cultures within units (identities,
i.e. internal specifications define units, not externalities like structures). The
consideration of both external and internal factors is important when trying to assess
state behaviour within an intergovernmental organization (IGO). Even more so if the
IGO is heterogenous like NATO, meaning that it encompasses states large and small,
resourceful and not so resourceful, with different historical backgrounds, etc. Before I
set out to derive hypotheses from the two theoretical concepts, it seems fitting to briefly
present them and explain why other concepts have been omitted from this research.
Structural Realism, a theory more rigorous than classical Realism, was developed by
Kenneth Waltz (1979) in his book Theory of International Politics. Waltz’s structural
Realism is similar to classical Realism, in that it understands the international system to
be anarchical and states to be the central (most relevant) actors in international politics,
as opposed to international institutions, individuals, etc. Furthermore, structural
Realism, same as classical Realism, distinguishes two types of state behaviour:
balancing and bandwagoning (Walt, 1987; Ivanov, 2011:2). Balancing can be thought of
as alignment with the weak, whereas bandwagoning as alignment with the strong (Walt,
1987:21). From the Realist perspective, lower-capability states enter NATO (chose to
bandwagon with the high-capability states) because the cost of balancing against highcapability states is (perceived to be) too high. Similarly, instrumentalism (in the sense of
a “means-to-an-end” approach), as a derivative of the Realist theory, suggests that states
join international institutions only to use them as instruments in the pursuit of their
selfish, exogenously defined, goals (Koenig-Archibugi, 2004:142). The theory assumes
that high-capability states use NATO as a means to legitimize (gain widespread support
for) their foreign policy action, whereas low-capability states join the Alliance to
passively benefit from the protection the high-capability members provide, i.e. they
bandwagon. The trouble is that bandwagoning is associated with, if not synonymous to,
free-riding, a term that refers to enjoying the benefits of membership without delivering
on the commitments agreed. As we have seen, USA as by far the most capable NATO
member state is quite unique, in that it wants to be balanced by the remaining allies.
10
USA wants to transform NATO from a heterogenous club into a homogenous club and
thus eradicate free-riding.
The most significant difference between structural and classical Realism is that the
former is a systemic and the latter a reductionist theory. Reductionist theories of IR
“concentrate causes at the individual or national level” (Waltz, 1979:18), which means
that they focus on those constraints of state behaviour originating from within the state
itself. Systemic theories of IR, on the other hand, focus on structural constraints of state
behaviour. It should be noted here that Neorealists believe that structures impact on
state behaviour and that state behaviour in turn impacts on the structures (unit-level and
structural causes interact). In other words, the structure – in our case NATO – exists
because states created it but the nature of the structure – the heterogeneity of NATO or
the unequal distribution of power within the Alliance – shapes the attitude of each and
every unit. It should further be made clear that structures “shape and shove (…) [t]hey
do not determine [italics added] behaviour” per se (Waltz, 1986:343). Structural causes
complement unit-level causes in producing the outcome.
For Neorealists, the number one structural cause or factor shaping state behaviour is the
distribution of power capabilities or resources across the state system. Classical Realist
theory emphasizes the distribution of military power but “[m]ilitary muscle does not
guarantee political influence (…) economic giants can be militarily weak, and military
strength may not be able to obscure economic weakness” (Waltz, 1979:130). Therefore,
Neorealism adds focus on the distribution of other than military resources, namely
economic resources. This new approach to measuring states’ power has led to the
formulation of the capability theory, according to which states with higher military and
economic indicators are expected to have a proactive attitude within an international
institution (Vincent, Straus and Biondi, 2001: 69). In the early 1990s, Jack E. Vincent
from the University of Idaho and his colleagues applied the capability theory when
testing states’ preferences within the United Nations. They found that in contrast to lowcapability states, high-capability states had a positive attitude towards the UN Security
Council and a negative attitude towards the General Assembly and the Economic and
Social Council (Vincent, Straus and Biondi, 2001:70). Later, Vincent used the
capability theory to provide a framework for the explanation of NATO member states’
attitudes towards the possibility of introducing qualified majority voting in the North
11
Atlantic Council (NAC).6 It can be said that his paper focused more on the institutional
aspect of NATO’s adaptation to the 21st Century. Vincent’s results show that high
capability states within NATO are more inclined to support qualified majority voting
than lower-capability states, though he contends that the degree of difference in member
states’ attitudes is not as great as it would be if NATO became more heterogenous like
the UN (Vincent, Straus and Biondi, 2001:76). Vincent’s results demonstrate that “the
capability theory is applicable beyond the UN, thus opening the door to more rigorous
tests of its explanatory power as a general, rather than case-specific theory” (Vincent,
Straus and Biondi, 2001:81). More than a decade has passed since his paper was
published and now, when NATO is bigger and guided by a new and more ambitious
strategic concept, the time comes to take up the challenge and have for a fresh look at
NATO member states’ attitudes through the lens of the Neorealist capability theory.
Hence my first hypothesis:
Hypothesis #1: NATO member states that are highly capable in terms of military,
human and economic resources will be inclined to pursue the transformation process.
The availability of sufficient demographic, economic and military capabilities is not
something a state can easily influence or change. They are given factors determined by
the nature of the state system into which the state is socialized. It is assumed that lowercapability member states are reluctant to actively support NATO transformation, for –
as has been mentioned – it is an expensive and never-ending process, and they do not
see the light at the end of the tunnel, i.e. they do not believe that it is in their power to
increase their security and gain a more equal standing vis-à-vis the high-capability
states. Only a dramatic change in the structure of the system has that kind of power.
Demographic, military and economic strength, then, are the structural variables this
paper will take into account.
For the complementary unit-level variables I look elsewhere. Constructivism seems to
be best suited for the selection of additional variables as it stands in sharp contrast to
6
The North Atlantic Council is the highest permanent decisionmaking body in NATO. It consists of
permanent representatives (ambassadors) from all member states and meets at least once a week.
Decisions have to be made unanimously, i.e. all member states have the right to veto any decision.
However, the continuing enlargement of NATO has spurred debates among scholars about the possible
alteration of decisionmaking rules aimed at preventing a possible paralysis of the Alliance.
12
Neorealism and its underlying materialism. Constructivists essentially hold that
structural constraints of state behaviour can be overcome by normative action. This
means that a state’s identity (or identities) matters more than its capabilities in
determining the state’s attitude within an international institution, which is an optimistic
premise since identities are malleable (they change and evolve over time and can be
fashioned by government policies), whereas capabilities are not.7 If this premise is true,
then a NATO member state could prove to be politically willing to transform in spite of
having limited material resources or material resources of the same quantity as another
member state who free-rides, i.e. is not interested in delivering on its commitments.
Moreover, it would mean that NATO transformation is not contingent upon the equal
distribution of power capabilities among its members or, in other words, upon NATO’s
homogeneity. Identity is all the more relevant when examining NATO because all
member states have democratic regimes (with the possible exception of Turkey) held
accountable by their communities for the preservation of their identity. For its focus on
identities, Constructivism has been associated with culturalism and the influence of
societies’ cultural backgrounds (see for example Koenig-Archibugi, 2004:138).
Alexander Wendt (1992) is arguably the pioneer of Constructivism in IR. In his article
entitled Anarchy is what states make of it, he argues that states often engage in selfreflection, which may entail a sort of “role change” (p. 419). This suggests that those
NATO member states, that have previously portrayed themselves as free-riders, could
undergo self-reflection and adopt a more proactive attitude. Here, the example of
Canada presents itself: Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Canada was considered
to be one of the least committed NATO members with only 1.1 % of GDP going to
defence in 2001. Also, Canada’s military equipment was said to be outdated. But, with
the Conservative party’s rise to power, Canada had gradually worked its way up to the
sixth rank of member states most dedicated to NATO in 2010 (Bellavance, 2010).
However, it should be noted that the “transformation of identity (...) is incremental and
slow” (Wendt, 1992:418). This means that the change in identity is an unintended result
7
In the study of identity and ethnicity, Constructivism is the mainstream explanatory framework. In
contrast to Primordialism it holds that identities are “inherently situational and always changing” (Hale,
2004:459). Hale further says that it is useful to think of identity as the “set of points of personal reference
on which people rely to navigate the social world inhabit, to make sense of the myriad constellations of
social relationships that they encounter, to discern their place in these constellations and to understand the
opportunities for action in this context” (2004:463). Therefore, it can be inferred that state identity too
depends to a large extent on the context of the international system the state finds itself in, and can change
whenever the international system (structure) changes.
13
of a long-term development within a state, it cannot be brought about overnight by
means of policies built for that purpose. To come back to the example provided above,
it took Canada a decade and a half to improve its reputation within NATO and there is
no telling what will happen once the Liberal party wins the elections. Has there really
been a change in identity, or are the steps of the Conservative government unpopular
and likely to be reversed by whoever is next in power?
Identities do not equal government policies or government preferences, they equal longterm societal preferences. In other words, they are deeply rooted within societies. It is
clear that the North Atlantic Alliance of today is a mosaic of identities, especially so
after the last three rounds of enlargement, during the course of which nine postcommunist and three post-Soviet states entered NATO.8 Most of these states have an
uneasy relationship and even share a border with Russia – a military superpower. A
large number of old and new NATO members share a border with a non-NATO nation,
be it a Partner nation9 or a nation that is not in any way aligned to NATO. A small
subset of these even border on de facto war zones or rogue states: in the North, Albania
shares a border with war-torn and quasi-independent Kosovo; Turkey neighbours on
Iran (a country vehemently opposed to the “West” and believed to be developing a
nuclear arms programme), Iraq (a divided and highly unstable country trying to pull
itself together after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime) and Syria (another war-torn
country and a source of instability for Turkey). Without doubt, these and other factors
determine NATO member states’ degree of militarism and hence shape the way they
perceive the transformation process. The more a state’s identity is militaristic, the more
likely it could be to gain public support for the adoption of innovative doctrines and
strategies, as well as for the increase of the defence budget (for the investment in new
military capabilities) in order to keep pace with the RMA and be ready for a conflict
that might develop in its vicinity. Therefore, my second hypothesis shall be formulated
as follows:
8
Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland entered NATO in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia entered in 2004; Albania and Croatia entered in 2009.
9
NATO has three sets of Partner nations: nations that form the 1994 Partnership for Peace programme
(e.g. Austria, Russia, Ukraine, Sweden), nations that belong to the 1994 Mediterranean Dialogue (e.g.
Algeria, Egypt, Morocco), and nations that cooperate with NATO via the 2004 Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative (e.g. Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates).
14
Hypothesis #2: NATO member states with a high degree of militarism will be most
inclined to pursue the transformation process.
Also central to Constructivist IR theory are state interests. The degree of militarism may
not be the only aspect of a NATO member state’s identity that has a considerable
impact on its course of action within the Alliance, and so it is important to look at
individual member states’ long-term interests as well, since – as Wendt (1992) argues –
identities are “the basis of interests” (p. 398). In other words, one’s interests follow
from one’s set of identities. Therefore, a close examination of interests should cover a
number of other relevant aspects of NATO member states’ identities.
Presumably, a member state that wishes to transform its military from a territorial
defence force into an intervention or expeditionary force and by extension contribute to
the preservation of NATO as a relevant international security actor will be active
militarily in the international arena and believe that its first line of defence lies abroad
and/or that it is righteous to intervene militarily in lawless parts of the world. By
contrast, a state concerned more with internal security or with security on its borders
will likely prefer to keep its forces static, not weaken them through endless restructuring
and not send them abroad. Similarly, a state that believes it does not need a strong line
of defence either at home or abroad can be expected to have a low rate of engagement in
international operations. The degree of activity in the international arena seems like a
relevant and easily quantifiable variable, and so I formulate my final hypothesis in this
way:
Hypothesis #3: NATO member states that are highly engaged in international
operations will be most inclined to pursue the transformation process.
To sum up, the degree of militarism, the engagement in international operations and the
distribution of power capabilities among NATO member states are the independent
variables, by the means of which I will attempt to explain the variation in each member
state’s political will to transform – the dependent variable. The dependent variable and
all three independent variables will be operationalized (transformed into measurements
and populated with data) in the following section.
15
I have opted for Neorealism and Constructivism as my theoretical framework because
the two IR theories stand in sharp contrast to each other – the former accentuates
structural factors saying that state-level (or internal) factors are merely complementary
and hence indeterminate, while the latter insists on the exact opposite. At first glance,
both the Neorealist and the Constructivist premises seem plausible, but which is more
determinate? Only the analysis section of this paper will unravel the explanatory power
of each.
2. Methodology, Operationalization and Data
2.1.
Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Before I proceed with the operationalization of the selected variables it seems
convenient to say a few introductory words about the method used in this paper. The
present Master Thesis is a macro-level comparative case study that assesses behavioural
patterns across a population of 27 cases (member states of the Alliance).10 The number
of cases is small enough to prevent me from employing strictly quantitative methods.
Indeed, to treat 27 states as equal for the purpose of safeguarding analytical rigour and
then make generalizing comments about the commonalities that exist among them
would be nonsensical. On the other hand, the number of cases is large enough to prevent
me from conducting an in-depth (qualitative) analysis of each case because such
analysis would be extremely time and space-consuming. For this reason, I have decided
to go for a balanced mixture of the two approaches, the fs/QCA.
QCA is a relatively new technique that was developed by Charles Ragin (1987). The
method is useful when the number of cases studied is intermediate and the number of
variables large. If the number of cases is anywhere between two and fifty (Ragin,
2000:25), it is possible for the researcher to maintain substantive knowledge about the
cases and hence keep the research variable-oriented (qualitative) as opposed to caseoriented (quantitative). In other words, the researcher can come up with a
comprehensive list of variables through empirical intimacy with the cases and not just
with a few elementary ones. When the number of variables is less than a tenth of the
number of cases, then the findings of the research tend to be contradictory, i.e. both the
10
In March 2012, NATO had 28 member states. However, in this paper I will not consider Iceland
because it has no armed forces and hence takes no part in the transformation discourse.
16
presence and the absence of a phenomenon or a combination of phenomena tend to
produce the same outcome (Pennings, Keman and Kleinnijenhuis, 2006:141). From the
above, it is apparent that the presented research fits the criteria concerning the number
of cases and variables.
Classical QCA relies on the so-called Boolean algebra or the conventional crisp-set
approach11 for analyzing diversity among cases. This technique “transforms qualitative
information into simple scalable values” (Pennings, Keman and Kleinnijenhuis,
2006:39) according to the binary logic. This means that all variables are assigned a
numerical value (1 if they are present in a case or 0 if they are not). Similarly, it can be
said that a case either belongs to a given set (it is assigned a Boolean score of 1) or it
does not (it is assigned a Boolean score of 0). However, to dichotomize variables and
cases is to oversimplify the research. For example, to say that a state is militarily strong
or militarily weak is an oversimplification. Of all NATO member states, Luxembourg
has the smallest army (with the exception of Iceland, which has no army) and USA has
the largest army. Clearly then, according to the Boolean logic, USA would score 1 on
military strength and Luxembourg would score 0. But, where would Italy fit? Surely,
Italy is not as weak as Luxembourg and not as strong as USA and to throw it in the
same bag with either one would be completely arbitrary. Most variables are not
dichotomous, they are continuous (they have more than two qualitative states, e.g. a
NATO member state can be militarily strong, somewhat militarily strong, not so
militarily strong and not militarily strong at all). Classical QCA does not retain the full
variation of variables and treats them merely as either present or absent in a case.
Charles Ragin sought to rectify this by introducing the fuzzy set as a substitute for the
conventional crisp set. “A fuzzy-set (…) permits membership in the interval between 0
and 1 while retaining the two qualitative states of full membership and full
nonmembership” (Ragin, 2000:6). The qualitative states of full membership and full
nonmembership are equal to the Boolean scores of 1 and 0 respectively. A third
qualitative state Ragin identifies is the cross-over point (the fuzzy-set score of 0.5).
Anything below the threshold of 0.5 is more out than in and anything above the
11
The crisp and fuzzy-set theoretical approaches treat cases as configurations of variables (sets). When
using a set-theoretic approach, the researcher does not ask the question Is X present in Y? but rather What
set of X does Y belong to? (Ragin, 2000:120-130).
17
threshold is more in than out of the fuzzy set in question (Ragin, 2000:8). For example,
in the set of countries that are militarily strong a NATO member state might have a
fuzzy membership score of 0.6, in which case it would barely fit into the category of
militarily powerful NATO members. Conversely, if the state had a score of 0.4, it would
be just out of the same set. If the state were to score 0.5, then it would be neither in nor
out of the set. The three qualitative states or anchors “distinguish between relevant and
irrelevant variation” (Ragin, 2000:161). It should also be made clear that “a fuzzy
membership score attaches a truth value [italics omitted], not a probability, to a
statement” (Ragin, 2008:186). Therefore, the fuzzy membership score is not an
expression of the probability that the variable will produce a given outcome. The score
is deterministic, not probabilistic.
It is up to the researcher to define the three qualitative states (what constitutes full
membership, full nonmembership and the cross-over point) but it has to be done in a
transparent way and based on thorough knowledge of the concepts in question. Once the
qualitative states are defined, the researcher can calibrate the variables, i.e. convert their
real life values into the index-like fuzzy-set membership scores and thus make them
directly interpretable (Ragin, 2008:175).12
It should be noted that the definition of the three qualitative states (especially the crossover point) may not always be straightforward, i.e. it may not always be proper or
transparent to declare some variation as irrelevant. For example, to say that the Latvian
military is efficient rather than inefficient because its fuzzy-set membership score in the
set of states with an efficient military is just above the cross-over point of 0.5 is a
problematic and controversial statement since the location of the cross-over point is not
grounded in any theory of military efficiency and was therefore chosen arbitrarily.
Moreover, where would Latvia be in a set of NATO member states with an efficient
military? Probably well below any cross-over point. And how would such a cross-over
point be defined? Whenever considering sets of cases with limited diversity whose
12
The values are converted (calibrated) using the formula:
degree of membership
=
exp(log odds)
1 + exp(log odds)
where “exp” means exponentiation of log-odds to simple odds. However, the fuzzy-set/Qualitative
Comparative Analysis software package, which computes the degrees of membership for the researcher is
available online for free at: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cragin/fsQCA/software.shtml (Ragin, 2008:188).
18
boundaries cannot be clearly defined, it may be convenient to retain all naturally
occurring variation in order to avoid allegations of the arbitrary truncation of data. The
cases (countries) that score the highest and lowest scores on a variable may be
considered as the thresholds for full membership and full nonmembership in the
appropriate set, i.e. they are assigned scores 1 and 0 respectively and the scores of all
other cases are determined based on how they deviate from the two ‘extreme’ cases
(Koenig-Archibugi, 2004:157).13 In this paper, I will use both methods of fuzzy-set
calibration.
Fs/QCA is useful in that it conceives of cases as configurations of causal factors. After
all, the social world we inhabit is multi-causal. Not Does X lead to Y? but rather Under
what circumstances does X lead to Y? is the question fs/QCA seeks to answer. Fs/QCA
allows the researcher to discern core and peripheral causes because it focuses on what
causal factors are necessary and/or sufficient for the outcome of interest (Fiss,
2011:402). “If a theoretically relevant causal condition is necessary, then it is present in
all instances of an outcome (…) to create a situation where [the outcome] can occur (…)
all the necessary conditions for that outcome must be in place” (Ragin, 2000:203). In
set-theoretic terms, a causal condition (the independent variable) is necessary if the
outcome (the dependent variable) forms a subset of the causal condition. When applying
fuzzy-sets, “set A [the outcome] is a subset of set B [the causal condition] if the
membership scores of cases in set A are less than or equal to their respective
membership scores in set B” (Ragin, 2000:214). However, necessary causes are not
always sufficient causes. Even if, demonstrably, a condition always precedes the
outcome, it may not be the only condition that triggers it. In other words, there may be
cases where all necessary conditions are present and the outcome is absent. The
question therefore is: what condition or combination of conditions is both necessary and
sufficient? Again, in terms of set-theoretic relations, a causal condition (or a
combination of causal conditions) is sufficient if it forms a subset of the outcome in
13
Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (2004) calculates the cases’ degree of membership in a fuzzy set using the
formula:
mi
=
vi – min(v)
Max(v) – min(v)
“where mi is the fuzzy-set membership score of the ith country, vi is the original value of the variable for
the ith country, and the max(v) and min(v) are the maximum and minimum values respectively” (p. 157).
19
question, i.e. if its fuzzy-set membership score is consistently lower or equal to the
fuzzy-set membership score of the outcome (Ragin, 2000:235).
To sum up, fs/QCA is an innovative method that bridges the gap between qualitative
(variable-oriented) and quantitative (case-oriented) approaches by combining theoretical
knowledge and evidence analysis. Thanks to fs/QCA, the researcher does not have to
focus on one variable at a time (and keep all other variables constant) but instead he can
examine how multiple causal factors combine and interact to produce the outcome (the
researcher examines causal complexity). Fs/QCA is more accurate in determining
necessary and sufficient causal conditions compared to the binary crisp-set approach
because it retains all naturally occurring variation in both the outcome and the variable.
In the ensuing sub-sections, I shall transform the dependent variable (states’ political
will to transform) and all three independent variables (distribution of power capabilities,
degree of militarism, level of engagement in international operations) into fuzzy-sets.
2.2.
Operationalizing the Political Will to Transform
The task of transforming the dependent variable called the political will to transform
into a fuzzy-set is a tricky business, not least because NATO member states, in
rhetorical terms, are quite homogenous in their position on military transformation. In
one way or another, they all agree that a change is needed so that NATO can continue to
guarantee their security interests in the changing global security environment. Indeed, if
one were to browse through declarations of decision-makers, white papers, strategies
and military doctrines of all NATO member states, one would not stumble across
enough differences to be able to categorize or fuzzify the cases transparently. One could
certainly argue that there are the so-called globalist NATO members who see nonArticle 5 crisis response operations (NA5CRO) as the Alliance’s new raison d’être or
traditionalist NATO members who, for their part, reiterate the principle of territorial
defence (Górka-Winter and Madej, 2010:7-8). Ivanov (2011) also notes that in the
heterogenous NATO “several relatively homogenous sub-clubs have always existed” (p.
30),14 but to say which state is more or less globalist than the other and why, based on
14
Ivanov (2011) maintains that member states can be classified into sub-clubs based on their size and the
amount of resources they are willing to allocate for common defence. In addition, there are ‘geographical’
sub-clubs, the most extraordinary being the sub-club of post-communist states (p. 30).
20
discourse analysis, would be nearly impossible. Moreover, the majority of NATO
member states would likely end up somewhere in between the two verbal labels of
globalist and traditionalist (they would gravitate around the fuzzy membership score of
0.5, i.e. they would be neither in nor out of either set).
I argue that when it comes to measuring states’ political will, what matters are deeds,
not words. Since transformation can be understood as a tool to narrow the capability gap
(between the Alliance’s ambition and available resources), I chose the most common
measurement of burden-sharing – the percentage of GDP on defence (Hartley and
Sandler, 1999:669) – as a proxy to indicate NATO member states’ political will to
transform. I argue that the lower a state’s percentage of GDP on defence, the lower its
conviction that there is a point in going ahead with the expensive and never-ending
process of transformation. Sure, one might oppose this argument by saying that a state
may spend more than 2 % of GDP on defence not because it wants to acquire new
capabilities and tools of modern warfare but because it has a large static army stationed
at the borders that it needs to feed (the case of Turkey comes to mind). One might also
argue that a state may spend less than 2 % of GDP on defence because its armed forces
are so small that pouring more money in would simply be wasteful (here, the case of
Luxembourg presents itself as the obvious example). Nevertheless, the advantage of this
measurement, as opposed to a plethora of other burden-sharing indicators,15 is the fact
that it is recognized NATO-wide as is the aforementioned threshold of 2 % of GDP on
defence. It should be emphasized at this point that the threshold of 2 % GDP on defence
is merely a guideline, a level recommended by the NATO International Staff (IS),16 and
as such cannot be enforced (Smith et al., 2006:17).
The downside of the GDP on defence measurement is twofold. First, it is an input
measurement and as such it only tells us what proportion of GDP each NATO member
15
Hartley and Sandler (1999) made a list of over thirty measurements of burden-sharing. Among them is
defence research and development spending as share of defence, and equipment share in defence budget
(p. 679). The problem with these measurements is that they are either not readily available from public
sources or, in the case of defence R&D expenditure, there is no NATO guideline as to what level the
expenditure should be.
16
The primary role of the International Staff (IS) is “to provide advice, guidance and administrative
support to the national delegations at NATO Headquarters” (NATO, 2006:77). Each of the five divisions
(Defence Policy and Planning, Emerging Security Challenges, Political Affairs and Security Policy,
Operations, Defence Investment) is headed by an Assistant Secretary General. IS as a whole is headed by
the Secretary General (currently Anders Fogh Rasmussen).
21
state pours into the defence sector but it does not tell us anything about the way the
funds are allocated (e.g. on what type of defence equipment they are spent on). Second,
there is no universally accepted definition of what exactly constitutes a defence budget.
Some nations include pensions or military R&D, others do not. Furthermore, “some
countries rely on conscript forces so that their defence budgets underestimate their
defence burdens” (Hartley and Sandler, 1999:669).
The data will be collected from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI, 2012) online military expenditure database for the year 2009. 2009 is the last
year, for which the data is publicly available. At the same time, I believe the data for
2009 is ideal for examining the Allies’ level of burden-sharing since it was in 2009 that
the new NATO Strategic Concept was hotly debated. Following the instructions of
Charles Ragin (2000; 2008), I assign three qualitative anchors to the fuzzy-set of states
that are politically willing to transform: full membership, full nonmembership and the
cross-over point. Full membership (the fuzzy-set membership score of 1) will equal the
highest percentage of GDP on defence registered in all 27 cases considered. Conversely,
full nonmembership (the fuzzy-set membership score of 0) will equal the lowest
percentage of GDP on defence registered. Finally, the cross-over point (the fuzzy-set
membership score of 0.5) will equal the NATO guideline of 2 % GDP on defence. I
argue that those states who go with the NATO guideline are neither in nor out of the set
of states willing to transform, they just try to stay out of the spotlight of the IS by
adhering to the bare minimum required. The fuzzy-set membership scores of all NATO
member states for both the outcome and the causal conditions are presented in Annex 2.
The values for all variables prior to conversion appear in Annex 1.
2.3.
Operationalizing National Capability
The first causal condition to be operationalized is national capability. It has been
mentioned that national capability is the result of the distribution of power resources
across the state-system. It is a condition that is determined by the nature of the structure
of the state-system and a condition that, in theory, shapes or impacts on state behaviour.
Disputable is therefore not the importance of this structural condition but rather the
ways though which it is measured.
22
There have been single-variable and multivariable approaches to measuring national
capability. Transparency, facility to use and widespread acceptance are the obvious
advantages of the former. Single-variable measurements of national capability focus for
example on military expenditures, specific military forces (strategic airlift and sealift
capabilities), national income, national output or GNP, fuel and electric energy
consumption, etc (Tellis et al., 2000:26-28). The disadvantage is that they account for
just one aspect (dimension) of a nation’s capability at a time which, as we know, is not
what Kenneth Waltz intended for the researchers to do. For the purpose of this research,
one can chose between dividing national capability into two or more sub-variables (e.g.
military and/or economic power produce the political will to transform) and going for a
more sophisticated aggregate measurement.
Arguably, the most commonly used aggregate measurement of national power in IR
literature is the Correlates of War (COW) project’s Composite Index of National
Capability (CINC) (Singer, Bremer and Stuckey, 1972:19-48). The COW project was
launched in 1963 at the University of Michigan. Its aim has been to collect and
disseminate knowledge about all kinds of war (inter-state, intra-state and extra-state).
The latest version (v4.0) of the CINC data set developed by the COW project covers the
period 1816-2007. Any indicator of national capability should be multidimensional and
CINC has three dimensions, each composed of two separate measurements, the values
of which represent a given country’s share of the world total. These dimensions and the
associated measurements are: demographic (total population and urban population),
economic/industrial (iron and steel production and primary energy consumption) and
military (military expenditure and military personnel).17 In this paper, I intend to adjust
the CINC slightly so that the values of the individual measurements represent a NATO
member’s share of the NATO total, not the world total, because I am only interested in
the differences or variation that exists among NATO Allies. The adjusted index, despite
having a similar impact on the analysis as the original CINC, will offer more sensible
numbers to work with.
17
The Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) is calculated using the formula:
CINC
=
TPR + UPR + ISPR + ECR + MER + MPR
6
where TPR is the total population ratio, UPR is the urban population ratio, ISPR is the iron and steel
production ratio, ECR is the energy consumption ratio, MER is the military expenditure ratio and MPR is
the military personnel ratio.
23
The downside of using CINC in this particular investigation is that it is not up to date.
The latest known figure is for the year 2007, not 2009 like in all remaining variables,
which is something that should be kept in mind since this research applies ad hoc (there
is variation across cases at a given point in time, not across time). I have decided to use
CINC nonetheless because its six components cannot, by definition, be subject to
dramatic change over a couple of years. Moreover, what matters most in the end are not
the actual figures but the differences that exist among cases and the general trends,
which remain the same to a large extent.
The fuzzification of CINC is more problematic than the fuzzification of the percentage
of GDP on defence since there are no clear theoretical guidelines that would help define
the cross-over point, i.e. the level of national capability that cannot be declared as either
high or low. Clearly USA is the most capable and Albania, the Baltic states, Croatia,
Slovenia and perhaps others as well are among the least capable NATO members but
what about Greece, the Netherlands or Turkey for example? Vincent, Straus and Biondi
(2001) say that technically speaking there are three classes of states in NATO: highest
capability (only USA), intermediate-capability (traditional European great powers
including Italy) and lower capability states (the rest). “In practice, however,” they
continue to argue, “these groups tend to divide into high-capability states (the USA, and
maybe [italics added] its strongest supporters, Britain and Germany) and low-capability
states” (p. 74). My intention here is to point out how problematic and arbitrary it is to
set a threshold for higher capability states. Therefore, I have decided against the use of
Charles Ragin’s (2000; 2008) qualitative anchors in the calibration of the high national
capability set. Instead, I emulate the calibration approach of Koenig-Archibugi and thus
retain all naturally occurring variation.
Alternatively, more than a single set of national capability could be defined and
assessed in relation to the outcome. So far, only a fuzzy set of high capability states has
been defined but one could also consider a fuzzy set of intermediate capability states to
see whether intermediate capability alone is necessary and/or sufficient for the political
will to transform. This way, the score of USA, which is disproportionately higher than
all other NATO Allies’ scores (see Annex 1), would have the same weight as
24
Germany’s score for example.18 As has been mentioned above, intermediate capability
NATO member states could theoretically be the former European great powers plus
Italy. If we again consult the CINC scores in Annex 1, we can see that these states
(France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom) indeed have very similar scores ranging
from 0.060966 (France) to 0.089788 (Germany). Let us then set the threshold for full
membership in the set of intermediate capability states to 0.089788 and the cross-over
point to 0.06 (any state scores lower than 0.06 will be considered as more out than in of
the set). The threshold for full nonmembership can stay the same (the lowest CINC
score in the sample. Two separate analyses will be conducted in the third section of this
paper, one with the fuzzy set of high capability states and another with the fuzzy set of
intermediate capability states. The calibrated values for both sets are listed in Annex 2.
2.4.
Operationalizing the Degree of Militarism
The degree of militarism is the second causal condition to be operationalized in this
section. Militarism is deemed to be an important and conclusive aspect of the identity of
some of NATO member states’ societies when it comes to explaining the variation in
the Allies’ political will to transform (measured in terms of the proportion of GDP spent
on defence). This state-level variable is complementary to the structural national
capability variable since there is no direct relationship between the level of material
capability and the degree of militarism. In other words, not all high-capability states are
militaristic and vice versa.
Militarism must be clearly defined before any attempt is made at measuring it. First, it
should be made clear that in this paper militarism is not taken to be a pejorative term. I
understand militarism to be a mere consequence of a society’s actual or perceived
insecurity or a result of a long-term historical development and tradition. I argue that
militarily insecure people as well as people who have been brought up in an
environment where the military plays a traditional role are more likely to adopt or at
least be apologetic of militaristic attitudes and hence grant a privileged status to military
institutions within their societies. Second, this paper makes no connection between
18
The US CINC score is so high that when calibrated using Koenig-Archibugi’s (2004) approach (with
no qualitative anchors), the membership scores of all other Allies in the fuzzy-set of high capability states
are well below 0.50. No other state comes close to being highly capable, the way USA does.
25
militarism and the type of political regime that exists in individual NATO member
states. Within NATO, there is little variation in the role the military plays in the political
sphere. The Allies are all more or less consolidated Western liberal democracies. With
the possible exception of Turkey, there is no significant predominance of the military in
the administration of any NATO member state and so it makes little sense to measure
the degree of militarism in terms of the influence the military exerts on political
decision-making. In the light of the aforementioned, I hold that the Oxford Dictionaries
(2012) definition of militarism, and especially its first part, comes closest to my
understanding of the phenomenon: militarism is “the belief that a country should
maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or
promote national interests”.
Some scholars measure militarism using discourse analysis or questionnaires in order to
gain an insight into a society’s opinion on the causes, the purposes and the results of
wars and so on (e.g. Droba, 1931). However, once more I consider actions to be more
important than verbal expressions or opinions. Arguably, military institutions in
militarily insecure societies or in societies where, historically, the military has had
special privileges can be assumed to have a fairly high rate of recruitment. Therefore, I
intend to look at what proportion of a NATO member state’s population is on active
military duty. According to Arthur MacDonald (1915), “[o]ne way to estimate
militarism in a country is to give the number of soldiers and sailors (including officers)
in time of peace (…) per million population” (p. 801). Instead of counting the number
of soldiers and sailors I will use the figures for active duty military personnel as they
appear in the International Institute for Strategic Studies Military Balance (Hackett,
2010). Active duty military personnel are defined as “all servicemen and women [from
land, air and maritime services] on full-time duty (including conscripts and long-term
assignments from the Reserves). When a gendarmerie or equivalent is under the control
of [the Ministry of Defence] they may be included in the active total [e.g. the French
Gendarmerie or the Italian Carabinieri]” (Hackett, 2010:8).19 Active duty military
personnel do not include Reserves as such and paramilitary forces because Reserves are
“formations and units not fully manned or operational in peacetime” (Hackett, 2010:8)
19
Horizontally, military personnel can be divided into three basic services: land, air and maritime,
whereas vertically, we distinguish between combat units, combat support units (e.g. sniper support) and
combat service support units (e.g. logistical support).
26
and paramilitary forces (e.g. the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) are not normally
considered part of a state’s military though they act in support of it and are organized in
a similar way.
The values for active duty military personnel per one million inhabitants will be
fuzzified using the same approach as in the previous sub-section, i.e. all variation across
the population of cases will be retained and no qualitative anchors will be used. The
fuzzy-set membership score of 1.0 (full membership) will be assigned to the NATO
member state with the highest number of military personnel per one million inhabitants
(in this case Greece), and the fuzzy-set membership score of 0.0 (full nonmembership)
will be assigned to the countries at the opposite end of the scale (Czech Republic and
Luxembourg). For a summary of the conversion see Annex 2.
2.5.
Operationalizing the Engagement in International Operations
The engagement in international operations, as an expression of NATO member states’
interest to place their first line of defence abroad, is the third and last causal condition
that needs to be operationalized. Given the time and space constraints, as well as the
limited availability of reliable data, the engagement in international operations shall be
defined as the deployments of a NATO member state’s military personnel (troops and
military observers) to all military (not civilian) operations outside of its territory in the
period 2009-2010. This period is important because it immediately precedes the
adoption of the new Strategic Concept. It is also a period of increased international
military activity.
Not only personnel contributions to NATO operations such as the International Security
Assistance Force or the Kosovo Force but also deployments in the framework of other
IGOs (e.g. UN, EU), deployments in the framework of multinational coalitions, for
example the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, or purely national
deployments (e.g. the French operation Licorne in support of UN in Africa’s Côte
d’Ivoire) will be counted. The full list of operations and missions considered can be
found in Annex 6. Excluded from the list are contributions to the NATO Response
Force (NRF) and the European Union Battlegroups (EU BG). Even though, technically
speaking, they constitute deployments (the units assigned to NRF and EU BG are on
27
high alert after they receive all necessary national authorizations),20 the member states
can still block the deployment of the force package in the NAC and the Political and
Security Council respectively. Moreover, NRF and EU BG are based on a rotational
system, which means that member states contribute units for a six-month period
(twelve-month period for NRF starting in 2012). Since the present investigation only
considers the period 2009-2010, those NATO member states that have passed their turn
in contributing to NRF and EU BG would be disadvantaged by this measurement.
Furthermore, deployed military personnel counts are unavailable for strictly maritime
operations (e.g. Operation Active Endeavour, Operation Ocean Shield, Operation
Atalanta, etc.). The data can be extracted with minimal effort from the Military Balance
(Hackett, 2010). The overall figure will subsequently be modified so that it represents
all deployed military personnel per one million inhabitants.21
The obvious downside of this quantitative measurement is that it does not account for
the quality of NATO member states’ deployments. For instance, a nation that deployed
a thousand combat service support personnel will be rewarded by this metric as opposed
to another nation that deployed an aircraft carrier or several unmanned aerial vehicles,
the role of which would certainly prove to be more decisive in an armed conflict. Also,
the trouble is that most information pertaining to the quality (equipment, training,
readiness, sustainability, etc.) of deployed military personnel happens to be classified.
Thus, a NATO member state that engages in international operations but is more
technologically advanced, better equipped and trained and more agile is expected to
have a disproportionately lower score on the proposed metric compared to those Allies
who engage in international operations but are less technologically advanced, poorly
equipped and trained and not so rapidly deployable. Given the limited accuracy of this
measurement, the results, as well as any conclusive comments made thereupon should
be treated with caution. Recall, however, that when using the fuzzy-set method,
independent variables are not studied in isolation but rather in combination with one
another, which compensates for each variable’s inaccuracy.
20
The NATO Response Force (NRF) consists of the Immediate Response Force of about 13,000 troops
and the Response Force Pool, which is used to sustain the troops on the ground. The first elements of
NRF are deployable within 5 days. The rest of NRF can operate self-sufficiently for 30 days. For more
information: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm?selectedLocale=en.
21
The exact number of inhabitants for each NATO member is provided in the Military Balance’s country
profiles section under the Population heading (Hackett, 2010:28-44, 119-197).
28
The conversion of the values to fuzzy-set membership scores will be done in the same
way as in the two previous cases, i.e. the NATO member state with the most military
personnel deployed on international operations per one million inhabitants will be fully
in the set, whereas the Ally with the least troops and military observers per one million
inhabitants deployed will be fully out of the set. All variation will be retained and no
qualitative anchors will be used. The scores appear in Annex 2.
3. Data Analysis
3.1.
The Configurations and Groupings
The analysis section of this paper will help unravel which of the two dominant theories
dealing with state behaviour – Neorealism and Constructivism – is more accurate in
explaining the variation in NATO member states’ political will to transform. It will also
help discern core causal conditions from peripheral causal conditions. Are exogenously
given material capabilities crucial in shaping state behaviour or are state identities and
state interests? The three causal conditions derived from the two IR theories
(high/intermediate national capability, high degree of militarism and high engagement
in international operations) will be studied in relation to the outcome (political will to
transform). The causal conditions will be studied both in isolation and in combination
with one another to see if any of them are necessary and/or sufficient for the outcome
(see sub-section 2.1.). Two separate analyses will be conducted, one with the fuzzy set
of high capability states and the other with the fuzzy set of intermediate capability states
(see sub-section 2.3.). Recall that the aim of this investigation is not to supplement but
rather to provide a basis for further case-specific studies. The goal here is to suggest
some simplifying assumptions (generalizations) about the evidence (data) collected that
shall need to be corroborated by qualitative inquiries at the level of each of the 27 cases.
In the first sub-section, I will provide a comprehensive list of all possible causal
expressions before proceeding with logical simplification, evaluation of the causal
conditions’ necessity and sufficiency and graphic visualization of the findings.
First, a distinction should be made between what Ragin (2000) refers to as
configurations and groupings. When one speaks of configurations, one speaks of the
29
types of cases. “The key to understanding cases as configurations is to view them in
terms of the different combinations of relevant attributes they exhibit” (p. 66).
Therefore, configurations are all logically possible categories of cases. Their number is
equal to “2k, where k is equal to the number of attributes [independent variables]”
(Ragin, 2000:127). Thus, in the present paper there are 23 = 8 configurations. The table
in Annex 3 lists these configurations on the right-hand side under Initial Configurations
(8 Combinations of 3 Aspects). The symbol “~” denotes the negation of the attribute.
Negation means that the “fuzzy membership in set not A = 1 – fuzzy membership in set
A” or ~Ai = 1 – A, where “i” stands for the “ith” case (Ragin, 2000:172). For example,
the negation of the United Kingdom’s membership in the set of highly capable states is
1 – 0.20 = 0.80 (see Annex 2). It should be noted that negation is not synonymous to
being the opposite, i.e. ~high capability (a NATO member state that is not highly
capable) does not equal low capability (a NATO member state with low national
capability). A case whose attribute is ~high capability could have an intermediate level
of national capability or any other level that is not high.22 According to Ragin (2000),
“[n]egation (…) serves as a subtle reminder of the restricted nature of bipolar thinking”
(p. 172). The concepts used in this investigation are not and cannot be operationalized
as dichotomous concepts. This is the reason why the majority (25) of NATO member
states fall into the crisply defined category ~high capability · ~high militancy · ~high
engagement.23 The symbol “·” denotes the logical and (the point where the fuzzy sets
intersect). In plain English, the above statement in italics would read: not highly capable
and not highly militaristic and not highly engaged in international operations.
Logical and joins component sets (e.g. high capability) into compound sets (e.g. high
capability · high militancy). “With fuzzy sets, logical and is accomplished by taking the
minimum membership score of each case in the sets that are intersected” (Ragin,
2000:173). For example, if the United Kingdom’s membership in the component set of
highly capable NATO member states is 0.20 and its membership in the component set
of highly militaristic states is 0.09, then its membership in the compound set of highly
capable and highly militaristic states is 0.09 (the smaller of the two scores).
22
Recall that fuzzy sets are not binary the way conventional crisp sets are. The combinations listed in
Annex 3 are dichotomized simplifications.
23
USA falls into the category high capability · ~high militancy · high engagement. Greece falls into the
category ~high capability · high militancy · ~high engagement.
30
The sets can be presented not only as the eight configurations but also as 3k – 1 (33 – 1 =
26) logically possible groupings. Configurations are combinations that share all
attributes, whereas groupings share one or more attributes. “[T]he examination of [the
26] different groupings is central to the assessment of causal complexity, especially the
evaluation of the sufficiency of different combinations of causal conditions” (Ragin,
2000:127). The comprehensive list of all 26 groupings appears in Annex 3. Obviously,
intermediate capability is not in the groupings because high capability and intermediate
capability are mutually exclusive attributes. I will replace one with the other (without
providing another list of groupings as that would be redundant) towards the end of the
analysis section to see how the findings differ.
3.2.
Assessing Necessity and Sufficiency
In this sub-section, each of the 26 logically possible groupings of attributes (causal
expressions) will be tested for necessity and sufficiency. Recall that causal expressions
are necessary for the outcome if the outcome forms a subset of the causal expressions
(the cases’ membership scores in the fuzzy sets of the causal expressions are
consistently greater than or equal to their membership scores in the fuzzy set of the
outcome). Causal expressions are sufficient if they form a subset of the outcome (the
cases’ fuzzy membership scores in the causal expressions are consistently smaller than
or equal to their fuzzy membership scores in the outcome). Logically, it follows that
causal expressions are both necessary and sufficient for the outcome to occur if the
cases’ fuzzy membership scores in both the causal expressions and the outcome are the
same. The tests conducted will be veristic, not probabilistic, because the sample used in
the present investigation is complete (all NATO member states are included except for
Iceland, which has no armed forces). Veristic tests imply that “one single disconfirming
case is considered enough to reject the hypothesis of sufficiency and necessity”
(Koenig-Archibugi, 2004:161).
The veristic tests will offer some preliminary findings that will need to undergo a
process of logical simplification, i.e. the elimination of logically redundant statements.
In both Boolean and fuzzy algebra, this is achieved using the containment rule. That is,
if the instances of a compound set (e.g. high capability · high militancy) are contained
within the instances of any of its component sets (e.g. high capability), then the
31
compound set is logically redundant and can be eliminated (Ragin, 2000:240-241). If,
for instance, high capability is found to be sufficient for the outcome by itself, it is
superfluous to say that high capability states or high capability and militant states
exhibit the outcome. The latter part of the expression is just stating the obvious. After
the findings are simplified, they will be visualized by means of simple scatter graphs
and interpreted accordingly.
Let us start by assessing the causal expressions’ necessity. From the inspection of fuzzy
set membership scores in Annex 2 (for now ignore the first column), it is immediately
apparent that no single causal condition (and thus no combination of causal conditions
either) exhibits scores that would be consistently greater than or equal to the cases’
fuzzy membership scores in the outcome. Hence, it can be concluded from scratch that
neither high capability nor high degree of militarism nor high engagement in
international operations is a necessary attribute that would absolutely need to be present
in a NATO member state for it to be proactive within the Alliance (to spend more than 2
% of GDP on defence).
However, the assessment of the causal expressions’ sufficiency yields far more
conclusive results. To illustrate them, I use simple scatter graphs (Annexes 4 and 5).
Plotted on the X axis are the NATO member states’ fuzzy set membership scores for the
causal condition(s). Plotted on the Y axis are the states’ fuzzy set membership scores for
the outcome, the political will to transform. If all instances of the causal condition(s)
were located on the diagonal that cuts through the graph, they could be considered as
both necessary and sufficient because their score on the condition(s) would be equal to
their score on the outcome. If they were all located below the diagonal, the condition(s)
could be deemed necessary but not sufficient. To pass the test of sufficiency, all of the
instances of the causal condition(s) need to plot on or above the diagonal. “Cases that
are close to the diagonal (…) are consistent with the ideas operationalized in the
researcher’s property space. Cases in the upper left region of the plot display the
outcome due to causal conditions not included in the property space” (Ragin, 2000:246).
The point should also be made that only non-zero instances are plotted on the scatter
graphs as zero cases are irrelevant.
32
The first scatter graph in Annex 4 shows the results of the sufficiency test for high
national capability. As is apparent from the graph, all instances of the condition fall
above the diagonal. Therefore, following Ragin’s lead, high national capability can be
deemed sufficient but not necessary for the outcome. But what does this mean with
regard to the present paper’s research question? The scatter graph simply suggests that
there is a connection, however vague, between the level of national capability and the
political will to transform. It is plausible to argue, though cautiously, that high
capability is one of the keys to a strong political will to transform. Therefore, the
Neorealist premise holds: the distribution of power capabilities across the state system
shapes (but does not determine) state behaviour in the system. The NATO member
states in the upper left corner of the graph display a strong or a relatively strong political
will to transform due to conditions other than high national capability. These conditions
remain unknown for the time being. Among other things, the graph also reveals the
immensity of the capability gap that exists between USA and the remaining NATO
members
and
thus
partially
corroborates
Vincent’s,
Straus’
and
Biondi’s
aforementioned assumption that there is, in fact, only one high capability state in
NATO, the United States.
In Annex 5 there is a scatter graph which presents yet another expression that comes
close to passing the sufficiency test. It is a combination of the attributes derived from
Constructivist IR theory, high militancy and high engagement. I say “comes close to”
deliberately because there are two disconfirming cases (Denmark and Luxembourg) that
plot just below the diagonal.24 Ragin (2000) argues that when “one or a small number of
cases fall just below the diagonal in a sufficiency test” it is possible to use an adjustment
factor that moves the diagonal downward. Researchers should do this only when they
lack complete confidence in their measures or in the conversion of these measures into
fuzzy membership scores (p. 247). Because the data for this investigation was collected
ad hoc, and the cases’ scores may vary (though not dramatically) from one year to
another, I decided to use an adjustment factor of 0.5 and thus make Denmark and
Luxembourg pass the sufficiency test.
24
Denmark’s fuzzy set score on high militancy is 0.24 and its score on high engagement is 0.26.
Therefore, Denmark’s score on high militancy · high engagement is 0.24 – the intersection (the lower of
the two scores). But, this score is slightly higher than its score on strong political will to transform, which
is 0.22.
33
The adjusted scatter graph tells us that NATO member states with a high degree of
militarism and a high level of engagement in international operations may display a
strong political will to transform, much like states with high national capability.
However, empirically, there are no NATO member states with a decidedly high degree
of militarism and a decidedly high level of engagement in international operations at the
same time (no cases appear on the scatter graph’s upper right hand side). This means
that we can merely assume that if ever there were NATO member states with a high
degree of militarism (a degree similar to that of Greece) and a high level of engagement
in international operations (a level similar to that of USA), they would display a strong
political will to transform.
Furthermore, note that if the causal condition is sufficient for the outcome, then,
logically, the absence (negation) of the condition is necessary for the absence (negation)
of the outcome (Ragin, 2000:330-331). If you consult Annex 2, you will see that this is
true for ~high capability. The conclusion that can be made from the data analysis is
therefore two-fold. First, it can be argued that high capability or the combination of high
militancy and high engagement is sufficient for a strong political will to transform.
Second, it can be argued that not high capability is necessary for a not strong political
will to transform. The findings can be reported in the following way as logical
statements:
high capability + high militancy · high engagement → political will to transform
~high capability → ~political will to transform
The “+” symbol denotes logical or (the union of sets). “[M]embership in the set formed
from the union of two or more component sets is the maximum value of the case’s
memberships in the component sets” (Ragin, 2000:174). In the first statement, “→”
means “is sufficient for”; in the second statement, “→” means “is necessary for”.
3.3.
Alternate Analysis and Interpretation
Let us now substitute the fuzzy set of high capability states with the fuzzy set of
intermediate capability states (see sub-section 2.3. for the operationalization of the
attribute) in order to illustrate the delicacy of measurement calibration. With the new set
34
in place, the assessment of sufficiency yields different results, in that the national
capability attribute is no longer sufficient for the outcome by itself. Compare the fuzzy
membership scores in the intermediate capability column in Annex 2 with the fuzzy
membership scores in the column entitled strong political will to transform and you will
see that the scores in the former column are not consistently smaller than or equal to the
scores in the latter column. This finding lends weight to the argument made in the first
part of this section, i.e. that only states with high capability can be expected to display
the outcome and that the absence of high capability is necessary for the absence of the
political will to transform.
To sum up this section, it was found that most NATO member states are constrained by
their lack of capability but that some manage to overcome this constraint by normative
action. Largely, the nature of this normative action remains obscured because of case
specificity, which cannot be addressed in this paper (fuzzy set analysis helps construct
generalizations, not explain deviant cases). However, it may be assumed, though there
are no empirical instances, that a militaristic identity in combination with a relatively
strong interest to place the first line of defence abroad facilitates the occurrence of
proactive behaviour within the Alliance. It should again be made clear that the analysis
did not cover the full scope of the variation in the political will to transform. This task
is, after all, superhuman in the social science discipline and it is up to single-case
studies to fill in the gaps. In spite of the fact that gaps remain, the analysis lent credence
especially to the Neorealist hypothesis that high capability allows for proactivity within
NATO. The inverse, i.e. that low capability constraints NATO member states form
being active, also holds. Hence, there is reason to assume that if national capability of a
NATO member state (or a group of NATO member states) rises to a level similar to that
of USA, it will display proactivity (or in other words, a strong political will to
transform).
The Constructivist hypotheses that 1) the degree of militarism allows for political will to
transform and that 2) the level of engagement in international operations allows for
political will to transform were neither corroborated nor entirely refuted. By themselves
they seem to have no general impact. However, in conjunction they potentially could (if,
in the future, a state with a high degree of militarism and a high level of military
engagement abroad joins the Alliance, the chances are that it will be proactive). All in
35
all, Constructivism is not better suited than Nerorealism to explain NATO member state
behaviour at the macro-comparative level.25 In the next section, I will address the
possible implications these findings may have for practitioners at both the NATO level
and national levels.
4. Implications for NATO
4.1.
Current and Past Attempts to Narrow the Capability Gap
Ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, NATO’s very existence has been on
the line. Periodically, diverse papers would crop out from the academic sphere casting
into doubt the viability of NATO’s new role in the new security environment.
Illustrative, in this sense, is the article entitled How to wreck NATO, in which the
author, Joshua Muravchik (1999), argues that the revival of NATO is unlikely due to
“the combination of European irresponsibility and the Clinton administration’s live-forthe-moment approach to foreign policy” (p. 33).
Not only scholars but also journalists and security policy practitioners would
occasionally foresee apocalyptic scenarios for the Alliance. Paul Cornish (2004) cites
the foreign editor of The Times as saying in 2003 (in the midst of the Iraq Crisis):26
“This time it is not an exaggeration to talk about the death of NATO (…) [w]hat we are
watching is a slow death” (p. 64). Marco Vicenzino (2008), the director of the Global
Strategy Project in Washington DC, for his part, wrote in an article that appeared on the
NATO HQ website: “Simply put, the primary issue that challenges the very existence of
NATO is the mission in Afghanistan”. Karsten Jung (2012) quite rightly points out that
prior to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the debate about NATO’s viability revolved around
the absence of a common threat, whereas in the post-9/11 period the debate focused
more on the absence of capabilities (pp. 45-46). 9 September 2001 was the day when
25
Of course, I do not pretend to have covered all important aspects of NATO member states’ identities
and interests. Ergo, Constructivism may yet prove to be better suited to explain the Allies’ behaviour in
other investigations of the same phenomenon.
26
The Iraq Crisis of 2003 was one of the most severe crises that NATO had to face. “At an early stage of
the Iraq conflict, Turkey’s request to its NATO partners for air defence, early warning and chemical
defence support was formally rejected by Belgium, France and Germany” (Cornish, 2004:63). It was a
crisis of collective identity. The need to combat the threat of rogue states was by no means a matter of
course.
36
NATO was given a renewed purpose and this purpose was definitively codified in the
new Strategic Concept of 2010.
The central argument I make in this paper is similar to Jung’s: NATO was able to agree
on and justify its new global role but unable to fulfil it (there is a gap between ambition
and capacity). In other words, there is no doubt about the collective identity of NATO
being strong but there is little basis for collective action. To illustrate what I mean, take
OUP in Libya for example: all members of the Alliance approved the mission but fewer
than half actually participated. Nothing much had changed since Kosovo: “While
NATO’s involvement in Kosovo provides enough empirical evidence to suggest that it
can muster the necessary consensus to authorize the use of force (…), NATO is learning
today that reaching a consensus that something ‘should’ be done is much easier than
reaching a consensus on ‘how’ something should be done” (Vincent, Straus and Biondi,
2001:68).
Typically, every now and then the Allies organize a NATO summit, during the course
of which they reach a political agreement on the desired level of ambition27 for the
organization and then they proceed to ignore it. From Richard L. Kugler’s (1990) study
it is apparent that the first example of such practice occurred as early as during the
Korean War. At the meeting of NAC in Lisbon in 1952 the Allies set themselves a level
of ambition of 100 divisions (to be reached within a couple of years) at a time when the
posture of NATO numbered only 12 divisions. In the end they managed ‘only’ to
double the number of divisions (p. 56). “These targets, it was widely recognized, could
be achieved only if all member nations exerted strong efforts in the face of tough
economic difficulties” which they did only to a limited extent (Kugler, 1990:57).
Initiatives such as DCI adopted at the 1999 Washington Summit, PCC adopted at the
2002 Prague Summit, IUT adopted at the 2004 Istanbul Summit and LCP adopted at the
most recent 2010 Lisbon Summit seem have had similarly disappointing results. It is the
purpose of this sub-section, which is conceived of as a historical background, to briefly
outline the contents of the four most recent initiatives and attempt to explain their
27
The level of ambition “refers to the types and numbers of missions that NATO military forces should
be prepared to carry out—simultaneously, if necessary—as mandated by NATO political leaders”
(Weinrod and Barry, 2010:3). At present, NATO’s level of ambition stands at two major joint operations
(e.g. the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan) and six smaller joint operations
(Weinrod and Barry, 2010:2).
37
shortfalls in the light of the present paper’s findings. The aim is to see whether there is a
growing tendency to pool national resources of lower capability NATO member states
because that seems to be the most certain way to ensure that the Alliance can live up to
its own expectations.
4.1.1. Defence Capabilities Initiative
DCI was the first concerted effort to rectify the capability shortfalls that became
apparent during Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia and prepare the Alliance for the
challenges of the 21st Century. The Allies identified five key areas that were in need of
development28 and established the High Level Steering Group (HLSG) to oversee the
implementation of the initiative. It was the task of HLSG and not individual member
states to report on the progress made, which would later prove to be a problem. The
leading motive of DCI was the quest for greater interoperability and harmonization of
member states’ militaries. For the purpose of bolstering interoperability, DCI sought –
among other things – to develop the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept that
had been approved at the Brussels Summit in 1994 (Tuschoff, 2003:107). CJTF was
supposed to improve cross-national as well as cross-service interoperability (‘joint’
means land, air and maritime services operating together). It can be understood as the
forerunner to NRF, a rapidly deployable multinational (coalition-format) force (see
footnote 20 and PCC below for more information about NRF). “While DCI contributed
to improvements in Alliance capabilities in quite a number of important areas, it was
couched in terms of general commitments by member countries as a whole and did not
require them to report individually on progress achieved” (NATO, 2006:175-176).
Some critics point out that DCI “foundered because it was too broad and diffuse” (Ek,
2007:3). According to David Yost (2003) DCI failed because there was an
“unwillingness [on the part of several NATO European governments] to spend more
than minimal levels on military capabilities” (p. 101).
Noteworthy is the more or less parallel launch of the European Security and Defence
Identity (ESDI) within Alliance structures, which, along with the Western European
Union and the Petersberg Tasks, can be understood as the first step toward EU military
28
The main areas of concern were 1) deployability and mobility, 2) sustainability and logistics, 3)
survivability, 4) consultation, command and control, 5) effective engagement (NATO, 2004).
38
integration. ESDI, however, overlapped little with DCI because it was far less
ambitious. It sought to fulfil the EU level of ambition rather than the NATO level of
ambition and was thus frowned upon mainly by USA, for “if EU states choose (…)
modest scenarios that emphasize threats closer to home and only at the lower end of the
Petersberg spectrum, this is more likely to justify the continued slide in their defense
budgets, making transatlantic imbalances more enduring” (Yost, 2003:100). It is
desirable to have an autonomous EU military capability within NATO but it should
have the same goals and ambitions. Otherwise, it risks being perceived as a competitive
rather than a complementary project.
4.1.2. Prague Capabilities Commitment
The PCC launched at the 2002 Prague NATO Summit was a reaction to DCI’s
shortfalls. With regard to the new threat of global terrorism, PCC specified the areas in
need of improvement and put in place measures to track and monitor progress and take
action to resolve any problems that arise (e.g. it set target dates for the correction of
capability shortfalls) (NATO, 2006:176). The initiative was complemented by two
important measures: 1) the reform of the NATO Command Structure (NCS) and 2) the
deepening of interoperability by introducing the NRF concept.
The main aim of the NCS reform was to institutionalize transformation by creating the
so-called Bi-Strategic Command made up of Allied Command Transformation (ACT)
and Allied Command Operations (see footnote 1 for details). “ACT is NATO’s leading
agent for change, driving, facilitating, and advocating continuous improvement of
Alliance capabilities to maintain and enhance the military relevance and effectiveness of
the Alliance” (HQ SACT, 2009). It is a military body. Most employees are officers
delegated and paid by member states’ militaries and so they can be said to have national
allegiances. It is not a transnational body like the Brussels-based IS.
The purpose of NRF was to enhance the CJTF concept and act as a “catalyst for the
sustained transformation and development of NATO forces as a whole” by encouraging
multinational cooperation and specialization (NATO, 2006:177). Specialization
essentially means that member states concentrate on the development of one or a limited
number of capabilities (e.g. in this way, the Czech Republic has focused on countering
39
the effects of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons) (Ek, 2007:3). The
idea that NRF will help pool and harmonize member states’ military resources was
sound but time has shown that the concept had considerable weaknesses. Once on
standby (certified29 and ready to deploy), an NRF unit is at the will of NAC and, when
deployed, at the will of SHAPE, its subordinate joint force commands or NATO Force
Structure HQs. This means that the unit can be deployed only if all 28 member states
reach a unanimous agreement and that, when deployed, the unit is not under the
operational command of the Ally that contributed it (and thus unavailable to the Ally).
The knowledge of this fact often causes NATO member states to contribute less and/or
to contribute capabilities of questionable quality, e.g. no strategic airlift or sealift, to
NRF. This is a known phenomenon in the case of EU BG, that have not been employed
once since they reached full operational capability on 1 January 2007. Gustav
Lindstrom (2007) points out that the “EU BGs consist of standby forces, resulting in an
opportunity cost when they are not employed. Moreover, when committed to an EU BG,
the troops are not available for consideration through force generation processes,
effectively magnifying the opportunity cost” (p. 60). If NATO had only 2, as opposed to
28 member states (or more specifically: defence markets, defence budgets and defence
ministries), the employability and quality of NRF would probably not be such an issue
and NRF could come close to being a genuine multinational NATO-operated military.
Again, it can be said that PCC and the associated measures formed a halfhearted
initiative to improve Alliance capabilities. Though more concrete and realistic than DCI
in terms of target apportionment, PCC has not bridged the gap between NATO’s
capability and NATO’s ambition and, at the conclusion of the 2004 Istanbul Summit,
was dubbed “a long-term endeavour” (Ek, 2007:4).
4.1.3. Istanbul Usability Targets
IUT is not a capability improvement initiative per se. At the 2004 Istanbul Summit, the
heads of state and government, as well as government ministers merely reaffirmed their
continued support for capability building through PCC and pledged to enhance the
initiative by introducing the so-called usability targets.
29
“[T]he Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) is responsible for setting standards and
developing training, readiness and certification programmes to be met by NATO Response Forces and
headquarters” (Lindstrom, 2007:48).
40
The defence ministers agreed that 40 % (later raised to 50 %) of each member state’s
overall land force strength should be deployable and that 8 % (later raised to 10 %) of
their overall land force strength should be sustainable.30 Similar targets were set for
each member state’s overall air force strength (NATO, 2011). The setting of these and
other targets allowed for the development of “input and output indicators – such as
personnel strengths, deployable personnel, capabilities for sustained deployment on
operations, expenditures for operations and expenditures for equipment – in order to
provide a broader picture of the extent to which the Allies were succeeding in
transforming their forces and a benchmark against which each Ally can evaluate its
performance” (Sturm, 2005). The purpose of the exercise was to highlight the specific
capability shortfalls member states might have and draw their defence ministries’
attention to these shortfalls with the view of rectifying them. Unfortunately, there is
little that the IS can do to verify the authenticity of the numbers provided by the Allies
and some Allies have been known to improve their scores on the metrics, e.g. by simply
altering the national definition of what constitutes land forces, etc.
Thus far, IUT has not produced tangible results. As the director of the Defence Policy
and Capabilities Directorate in NATO’s Defence Policy and Planning Division, Steve
Sturm (2005), points out: the success of this exercise remains uncertain because the data
provided by the Allies is not adequately comparable. Therefore, it is impossible for IS to
know exactly what proportion of Allies’ forces are usable.
4.1.4. Lisbon Capabilities Package
The 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon came at a time when most Alliance members were
talking about reducing their defence spending. Of course, discussing defence budget
cuts in the midst of the worst economic (debt) crisis since the Great Depression is a
legitimate thing to do, especially in the case of countries with limited resources.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Allies introduced LCP whose motto could be:
‘Smart Defence’. What capability requirements are included in the package is not of
30
Deployability is the ability of units to deploy to an operation at a specified notice-to-move.
Sustainability is the ability to sustain a deployed operation for an extended period of time through
national rotation of forces. No deployability and sustainability targets exist for naval forces in part
because vessels are deployable by their very nature.
41
central concern here. Rather, my intention is to focus on the manner of acquiring the
capabilities.
The manner of acquiring new capabilities was conceptualized in 2011 by the NATO
Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The concept was termed Smart Defence
Initiative (SDI). Smart Defence means “[h]elping nations build greater security with
fewer resources but more coordination and coherence”. Above all, it involves
“multinational cooperation in capability development” (Transformer, 2011a:4). In other
words, it is an attempt to do more with less: the NATO Defence Policy and Planning
(DPP) staff takes into account the fact that due to austerity measures, most member
states’ defence budgets are likely to fall or remain the same, rather than rise, and tries to
“identify and connect nations that have similar needs but not enough money to build a
capability on their own” (Transformer, 2011b:3). The general idea is to transform the
DPP staff into a facilitator of capability pooling and sharing, as well as into a middleman between the Allies on the one side and the defence industry firms on the other.
Such a role of DPP would not be dissimilar from the roles of the European Defence
Agency (EDA) and the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) in the
EU military environment. However, “the experience of [EDA] in stimulating
international cooperation, and of OCCAR in managing it, is not encouraging” as analyst
Ian Davis (2010:9) points out.
For ACT’s Deputy Chief of Staff in charge of capability development, Vice Admiral
Carol Pottenger, SDI essentially means “getting more output per unit of input”. She
likens SDI to what economists call “productivity growth” in the private sector: first and
foremost, SDI is about “measuring, assessing, and improving productivity”
(Transformer, 2011b:3). Therefore, to aid with the implementation of SDI, an input and
output measurements initiative was launched. In consultation with the IS, Pottenger’s
department together with a team from ACT’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned
Centre produced a set of defence measurements, as well as a visual tool designed to
provide a comprehensive picture of NATO’s and individual Allies’ military
performances (JALLC, 2011; Ruml, 2011). In essence, this exercise complements the
IUT initiative, for its purpose is to broaden the number of indicators of Allies’
performances, unify the definitions (of land forces, etc.), highlight Allies’ capability
42
shortfalls and foster their will at the top political level31 to develop the right capabilities
(multinationally where necessary), as well as to start an ongoing and vivid debate within
NATO on the issue of capability development.
It remains to be seen to what extent SDI and the associated initiatives (usability and
input and output measurements) are successful at stimulating multinational cooperation.
So far, they seem like an emulation of EDA and OCCAR that encompass not only EU
members but also Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey and USA. However, USA – as the
only high capability Ally – does not need to pool and share resources to make its
contribution to NATO more worthwhile. Hence, as Sven Biscop (2011) argues, “CSDP
is the platform from which to launch a stepped up [NATO] defence effort” (p. 4).
4.2.
The Future of the Capability Gap
More than ten years have passed since the endorsement of DCI and, as we are aware
from the evaluation of OUP for example, the capability gap persists. The inquiry into
past attempts to narrow the gap revealed that merely drawing the attention of NATO
member states’ governments to the Alliance’s problems is not enough. The four
initiatives (DCI, PCC, IUT, LCP) have not stimulated a strong enough normative action
on the part of most Allies to overcome the structural constraint of having limited
human, economic and military resources. How, then, can the Allies be persuaded to
spend more on defence and thus prevent NATO from having to scale down its level of
ambition and end up on the periphery of the global security environment?
The answer is implicit in Biscop’s (2011) aforementioned quote: the most promising
way to bridge the capability gap would be to push ahead with the process of EU
integration, especially in the military domain, and to continue building the EU’s military
capabilities, including command & control (C2).32 If, indeed, at 28 the Alliance seems
31
The input and output measurements initiative is innovative because it targets top decision-makers
(heads of state and government, defence ministers, etc.) not ministerial bureaucrats (namely force
planners) as the Instanbul Usability Targets initiative did. This is why a powerful visual tool in the form
of dashboards was included to make it immediately apparent which states lag behind the rest of the
Alliance (JALLC, 2011).
32
By command & control I mean a chain of command similar to the NATO Command Structure. To date,
EU has the European Union Military Committee – a body essentially equivalent to NATO’s Military
Committee –, the European Union Military Staff – a body equivalent to NATO’s International Military
Staff – and even a strategic level HQ (EU Operations Centre) – the approximate equivalent of NATO’s
43
to be ineffective and in a state of quasi-paralysis, why not make an Alliance of two
member states with a more or less equal amount of demographic, economic and military
resources?
The most common argument against an autonomous CSDP is that it consists of an
unnecessary duplication of NATO capabilities. This argument has all the more weight if
we consider that France and Germany (the states that participated together with Belgium
and Luxembourg at the Brussels Chocolate Summit following the Iraq Crisis of 2003;
see footnote 26 for details) are the strongest supporters of an enhanced European
military capability. Also, at that time, France was still not integrated into NATO’s
military structures, from which it had withdrawn in 1966, and to date does not take part
in the Nuclear Planning Group, one of the top decision-making bodies of the Alliance.
So, at first glance, one might say that France and Germany are not among the most
committed NATO member states.
In 2003, for example, France and Germany supported the creation of a permanent
military strategic HQ for EU operations but many others, the United Kingdom in
particular, were opposed to such a revolution in the EU C2 capability on the grounds
that it would undermine the trans-Atlantic link (Simón, 2010:18). For the same reason,
the United Kingdom was reluctant to consent to the creation of the EU’s own military
planning capacity, the European Union Military Staff (Biscop, 2002:476). David Yost
(2003), too, wrote that establishing a separate EU defence planning process and
command structure could be “most harmful to the Alliance’s political cohesion (as well
as being militarily unwise and financially wasteful)” (p. 96).
Even USA misinterpreted the motives of the French and the Germans in pushing ahead
with the process of European integration in the realm of foreign, security and defence
policy in the early 1990s but once the width of the capability gap became apparent at the
turn of the Century, the Americans cautiously started trying to harmonize NATO and
the emerging European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) (Moens, 2003:25). The
Americans have not been as concerned about unnecessary duplication of NATO
SHAPE – located in Brussels, Belgium. However, the strategic level HQ is not permanent (it is activated
on a case-by-case basis) and has not been used since it reached an initial operating capability in 2007.
Instead, EU uses national operational HQs or SHAPE via the Berlin Plus agreement, which, according to
Luis Simón (2010), causes the EU to perform “in a characteristically unprofessional manner” (p. 40).
44
capabilities as about the so-called division of labour between USA and the EU. The
Americans feared that an autonomous European military platform would either focus
solely on NA5CRO (or the Petersberg Tasks – see footnote 3) and thus limit NATO
action to Article 5 contingencies (Moens, 2003:30), or focus only on “softer” civilian
crisis management and leave the “harder” security issues to USA. The division-oflabour argument is the second most common argument against an autonomous CSDP.
Another aspect of CSDP that causes suspicion in the eyes of some NATO members is
the word autonomous itself but that it is for a separate discourse analysis to examine.
Though both the duplication and the division-of-labour arguments deserve attention and
consideration, I argue that the quest for European military autonomy within NATO is
desirable nonetheless as it may well be the only path to securing the Alliance’s
ambitious role in the 21st Century. Much like the Americans have their own defence
planning and C2 capability (and nobody accuses them of duplicating NATO), so should
the Europeans have it (but remain in the Alliance). Hynek and Střítecký (2009) maintain
that NATO and CSDP are complementary enterprises just as France under the
leadership of president Nicolas Sarkozy has demonstrated by reentering NATO military
structures in 2009 (p. 19).33 In the light of France’s 2009 move, the argument that ESDP
– a Franco-German effort to duplicate the Alliance – developed so quickly because of
fears that “the inclusion of states such as Poland that value NATO above all else” into
the EU might make the development of ESDP “infinitely more difficult”, (Menon,
2003:215) does not hold. Anand Menon further argues that ESDP “threatens (…) to
distract attention away from the crucial issue of Western military capabilities” (Menon,
2003:215). I dare to argue that the effect of ESDP/CSDP is exactly the opposite. It
emulates and coincides with the major NATO initiatives to improve military capabilities
(e.g. the introduction of EU BG alongside NRF that serve as the catalyst for military
transformation from territorial defence forces to expeditionary forces) and goes further
by emphasizing the need for a common European Defence Equipment Market (EDEM),
i.e. the need to pool and share resources, not on a case-by-case basis (as is the case of
NATO’s Strategic Airlift Interim Solution, for example) but permanently.34
33
France was rewarded for the long-expected gesture of reentering NATO military structures by a flag
officer post in ACT. General Stéphane Abrial assumed command of NATO’s agent for change in July
2009.
34
According to Grevi and Keohane (2009:86), “a more integrated European defence market would allow
free movement of most defence goods (…) larger economies of scale, increased industrial competition,
45
EDEM, once fully operational, should be able to do away with the ad hocery of
multinational armaments projects and “save EU governments up to 20 percent of their
procurement funds” (Grevi and Keohane, 2009:86). After all, “[t]he 27 EU governments
collectively spend over €200 billion on defence, which is a lot of money, and should be
enough to cover Europe’s defence needs. Indeed, collectively the EU-27 is the largest
spender on defence in the world after the United States” (Grevi and Keohane, 2009:69).
However, the defence arena is often perceived as the last bastion of state sovereignty
and integration therein is politically sensitive. Arguably, therefore, the path to EDEM
and eventually perhaps to a single European army, military budget, defence planning
and C2 capability is poised to be a long-term endeavour.
In the meantime, NATO officials and USA should downscale attempts to stimulate
normative action (e.g. by means of political level input and output indicators or
benchmarking) on the part of lower-capability Allies and concentrate more on
encouraging defence integration in order to accelerate its pace. NATO officials and
USA should make it absolutely clear (not only) to old and new Atlanticists such as the
United Kingdom and Poland that CSDP and NATO are not mutually exclusive
enterprises, since, as the analysis section has shown, the continuous pooling and sharing
of the resources of lower-capability states is likely to impact on their behaviour within
the Alliance and make them more proactive.
In the previous sub-section we saw that, following the realization that identifying
capability requirements and setting targets did not lead to significant improvements,
there has been a growing tendency to encourage multinational cooperation, namely
through SDI. So far, then, NATO seems to be on the right track. The fate of the
Alliance, however, rests mainly with the European members and their will to integrate
in the military domain.
and thus lower prices, particularly for more advanced equipment. Defence ministries would be able to
purchase equipment from the company that offered the best financial and technical package, regardless of
its national origin”.
46
Conclusion
At the 2010 Lisbon Summit, the representatives of NATO member states reached a
consensus on what should be the new role of the Alliance in the dynamically changing
security environment of the 21st Century. Furthermore, they set themselves a level of
ambition of being able to simultaneously conduct two major joint operations and at least
six operations of a smaller scale. Today, especially with regard to the evaluations of the
recent NATO operation in Libya, this level of ambition seems unfulfilled and Allies’
resources appear to be strained. Although a new Strategic Concept was published, it
continues to lack substance. The capability gap, which may be defined as the imbalance
between ambition and available resources, keeps growing. This is because most Allies
enjoy the benefits of NATO membership without giving even the bare minimum in
return. For decades, NATO has been a heterogeneous club of states, where burdens have
not been shared equally.
It was the primary purpose of this Master Thesis to explain the variation in NATO
member states’ behaviour vis-à-vis the military transformation process. More
specifically, the aim was to see whether state behaviour within the Alliance was shaped
more by external factors (the distribution of power resources) or internal factors (states’
identities and interests). Using Charles Ragin’s innovative fuzzy-set method that
combines both qualitative and quantitative research, it was found that, generally, there is
a relation between NATO member states’ capability (the amount of their human,
economic and military resources) and their political will to transform (the percentage of
GDP they spend on defence). It was also found that some member states may overcome
the structural constraint of having limited resources and reach a relatively high level of
proactivity within the Alliance through normative action. Though there are no strong
empirical instances in the present sample, it can be argued that (future) Allies reputed
for being militaristic and, at the same time, having a strong record in international
military activity will likely be proactive within NATO and refrain from free-riding
despite being small. It can be argued that NATO member state behaviour is shaped
more generally by structural factors than by internal factors. Note, however, that the
ways in which NATO members overcome the structural constraint are diverse and
remain unknown to a large extent. Therefore, the present research should by no means
47
be considered exhaustive and, in future, it should be complemented by in-depth singlecase studies.
The secondary aim of the present Master Thesis was to explain what the findings of the
fuzzy-set analysis told us about past and present NATO-led efforts to convince the
Allies to spend more on defence. DCI, PCC, IUT and some aspects of LCP (especially
the input and output measurements initiative) focus(ed) primarily on stimulating
normative action by highlighting the Allies’ capability shortfalls, setting targets and
comparing NATO member states’ military performances against each other. The results
of the NATO-led efforts have not been entirely satisfactory as is apparent from the 2009
level of most member states’ defence spending. The findings of the fuzzy-set analysis
suggest that when it comes to overcoming structural constraints by means of normative
action, no general recipe for success – that would apply to all lower-capability member
states – exists. It is possible that this is the reason why the initiatives have not born their
fruit.
Since high material capability appears to be sufficient by itself for the presence of a
strong political will to transform, I argue that the surest way for NATO to narrow the
capability gap and to preserve its ambitious role in the global security environment is
not to focus too much on stimulating normative action, but rather to fully endorse the
principle of multinational cooperation and perfect it, as well as to emphasize the
complementarity of NATO and EU’s CSDP, so that resources of smaller NATO
member states are pooled and shared. Moreover, the pooling and sharing should not be
done on a voluntary and case-by-case basis – as it has been done to date – but rather on
a compulsory and permanent basis, e.g. by way of creating a single European defence
market, as well as a single European defence budget. Hence, the ultimate goal of NATO
governments should be the recreation of the organization into an Alliance of a limited
number of more resourceful member states. Arguably, Rasmussen’s SDI is the first
small step in this direction. It remains to be seen if it will be harmonized with similar
EU initiatives (EDA, OCCAR, EDEM, etc.) and taken a step further.
48
Resumé
Cílem předkládané diplomové práce bylo objasnit, které jednotlivé faktory či
kombinace faktorů nejspolehlivěji určují chování států v rámci Severoatlantické aliance.
Od konce Studené války, zejména pak od vypuknutí kosovské krize na konci
devadesátých let dvacátého století, se NATO potýká s nedostatkem vojenských
schopností, což podle řady odborníků ohrožuje samotnou existenci organizace, neboť ta
přestává být schopna naplňovat ambiciózní roli aktéra globální bezpečnosti, která je
vymezena novým strategickým konceptem z roku 2010. Nerovnováhu mezi ambicemi a
schopnostmi organizace lze částečně vysvětlit pasivitou většiny malých a středně
velkých členských států a jejich neochotou dostát svým závazkům vůči NATO. Pasivita
některých členských států je v této práci označována jako politická nevole
transformovat, tj. neochota přizpůsobit se vojensky novému bezpečnostnímu prostředí,
přičemž základním předpokladem úspěšné transformace je vydávání minimálního
objemu finančních prostředků na obranu.
Na problematiku odlišného chování států v rámci NATO bylo nahlíženo z pohledu dvou
teorií mezinárodních vztahů, neorealismu a konstruktivismu. Komparativní analýza
metodou mlhavé množiny pomohla odhalit, že existuje spojitost mezi nerovnoměrnou
distribucí materiálních zdrojů a chováním států. Vysoká koncentrace lidských,
hospodářských a vojenských zdrojů je sama o sobě postačující, ne však nutnou,
podmínkou pro to, aby stát vystupoval aktivně a dostatečně sdílel břemeno členství. Byť
lze naplnit nároky organizace i přes nedostatek materiálních zdrojů, například díky
vysoké míře militarizace společnosti v kombinaci s vysokou účastí v zahraničních
vojenských operacích, nejjistějším způsobem, jak v dohledné době zefektivnit NATO,
se zdá být změna struktury mezinárodního sub-systému. Této změny lze dosáhnout za
pomoci harmonizace iniciativ NATO a EU na poli mnohonárodního vývoje nových
vojenských schopností a v konečné fázi vytvořením jednotného trhu EU s vojenským
vybavením. Fakticky by tak nastala situace, kdy by NATO mělo nízký počet vysoce
schopných členských států, namísto současných osmadvaceti.
49
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57
List of Annexes
Annex 1: Scores on All Four Variables (Table)
Annex 2: Fuzzy-Set Membership Scores (Table)
Annex 3: All Logically Possible Groupings (Table)
Annex 4: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of High Capability States (Graph)
Annex 5: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of States With a High Degree of
Militarism and a High Level of Engagement in International Operations (Graph)
Annex 6: List of Operations Considered (Table)
58
Albania
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
3928
3692
4855
1963
4143
1756
4833
3655
5476
3044
14585
2973
5044
2575
2489
1830
2805
5155
2599
4047
3302
3026
3590
3159
6648
2875
5197
Personnel Per 1 Million Capita)
Capability (CINC)
0.001534
0.013874
0.006886
0.037975
0.002793
0.009585
0.004211
0.000936
0.060966
0.089788
0.014385
0.007374
0.061615
0.001673
0.002281
0.001665
0.019282
0.005017
0.030732
0.007067
0.015733
0.005644
0.001399
0.046278
0.065416
0.081801
0.404093
Degree of Militarism (Military
Composite Index of National
90
98
88
88
103
96
177
147
138
94
78
92
134
79
82
71
137
152
90
61
58
114
281
59
25
149
619
Per 1 Million Capita)
(Military Personnel Deployed
Engagement in Intl. Operations
2,1
1,2
2,0
1,5
1,8
1,4
1,4
2,3
2,5
1,4
3,2
1,1
1,8
1,4
1,4
0,6
1,5
1,6
1,8
2,1
1,4
1,4
1,6
1,1
2,7
2,7
4,7
(% GDP on Defence)
Political Will to Transform
Annexes
Annex 1: Scores on All Four Variables (Table)
Source: Author’s own table.
59
Albania
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
0,05
0,09
0,06
0,25
0,05
0,07
0,06
0,00
0,52
0,95
0,09
0,06
0,54
0,05
0,05
0,05
0,11
0,06
0,18
0,06
0,10
0,06
0,05
0,33
0,63
0,90
1,00
intermediate
capability
0,00
0,03
0,01
0,09
0,00
0,02
0,01
0,00
0,15
0,22
0,03
0,02
0,15
0,00
0,00
0,00
0,05
0,01
0,07
0,02
0,04
0,01
0,00
0,11
0,16
0,20
1,00
high capability
1,00
0,97
0,99
0,91
1,00
0,98
0,99
1,00
0,85
0,78
0,97
0,98
0,85
1,00
1,00
1,00
0,95
0,99
0,93
0,98
0,96
0,99
1,00
0,89
0,84
0,80
0,00
~high capability
0,11
0,12
0,11
0,11
0,13
0,12
0,26
0,21
0,19
0,12
0,09
0,11
0,18
0,09
0,10
0,08
0,19
0,21
0,11
0,06
0,06
0,15
0,43
0,06
0,00
0,21
1,00
high engagement
0,17
0,15
0,24
0,02
0,19
0,00
0,24
0,15
0,29
0,10
1,00
0,09
0,26
0,06
0,06
0,01
0,08
0,26
0,07
0,18
0,12
0,10
0,14
0,11
0,38
0,09
0,27
high militancy
0,11
0,12
0,11
0,02
0,13
0,00
0,24
0,15
0,19
0,10
0,09
0,09
0,18
0,06
0,06
0,01
0,08
0,21
0,07
0,06
0,06
0,10
0,14
0,06
0,00
0,09
0,27
0,11
0,12
0,11
0,09
0,13
0,02
0,24
0,15
0,19
0,22
0,09
0,09
0,18
0,06
0,06
0,01
0,08
0,21
0,07
0,06
0,06
0,10
0,14
0,11
0,16
0,20
1,00
0,53
0,15
0,50
0,26
0,39
0,22
0,22
0,58
0,64
0,22
0,79
0,13
0,39
0,22
0,22
0,00
0,26
0,30
0,39
0,53
0,22
0,22
0,30
0,13
0,69
0,69
1,00
0,47
0,85
0,50
0,74
0,61
0,78
0,78
0,42
0,36
0,78
0,21
0,87
0,61
0,78
0,78
1,00
0,74
0,70
0,61
0,47
0,78
0,78
0,70
0,87
0,31
0,31
0,00
high capability +
high militancy · high high militancy · high strong political will ~strong political will
engagement
engagement
to transform
to transform
Annex 2: Fuzzy-Set Membership Scores (Table)
Source: Author’ own table.
60
Groupings Involving Combinations
of 2 Aspects
high capability · high militancy
high capability · ~high militancy
high capability · high engagement
high capability · ~high engagement
high militancy · high engagement
high militancy · ~high engagement
~high capability · high militancy
~high capability · ~high militancy
~high capability · high engagement
~high capability · ~high engagement
~high militancy · high engagement
~high militancy · ~high engagement
Groupings Involving
a Single Aspect
high capability
high militancy
high engagement
~high capability
~high militancy
~high engagement
high capability · high militancy · high engagement
high capability · high militancy · ~high engagement
high capability · ~high militancy · high engagement
high capability · ~high militancy · ~high engagement
~high capability · high militancy · high engagement
~high capability · high militancy · ~high engagement
~high capability · ~high militancy · high engagement
~high capability · ~high militancy · ~high engagement
Initial Configurations
(8 Combinations of 3 Aspects)
Annex 3: All Logically Possible Groupings (Table)
Source: Author’s own table.
61
Annex 4: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of High Capability States (Graph)
US
1,00
0,90
0,80
GR
TK
Political Will to Transform
0,70
UK
FR
0,60
PT
BG
0,50
0,40
PL
0,30
NO
CZ
0,20
0,10
IT
ND
CA
RO
SK DK
BE
HU
0,00
0,00
DE
ES
0,10
0,20
0,30
0,40
0,50
0,60
0,70
0,80
0,90
1,00
High Capability
Source: Author’s own graph.
Annex 5: Sufficiency Test of the Fuzzy-Set of States With a High Degree of
Militarism and a High Level of Engagement in International Operations (Graph)
US
1,00
0,90
0,80
Political Will to Transform
0,70
GR
TK
UK
FR
0,60
EE
PT
AL
BG
0,50
0,40
PL
CR
SL
0,30
0,20
IT
NO
ND
CA
CZ LT LA DE
RO SK
HU
0,10
0,00
LU
0,00
DK
BE
ES
0,10
0,20
0,30
0,40
0,50
0,60
High Militancy AND High Engagement
Source: Author’s own graph.
62
0,70
0,80
0,90
1,00
Annex 6: List of Operations Considered (Table)
NATO Operations Baltic Air Policing
ISAF (Afghanistan)
KFOR (Kosovo)
NTM-I (Iraq)
EUFOR Althea (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
EU Operations
EUFOR Chad
EUSEC Democratic Republic of the Congo
BINUB (Burundi)
UN Operations
MINURCAT (Central African Republic)
MINURSO (Western Sahara)
MINUSTAH (Haiti)
MONUC (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
UNAMA (Afghanistan)
UNAMI (Iraq)
UNAMID (Darfur)
UNDOF (Golan Heights)
UNFICYP (Cyprus)
UNIFIL (Lebanon)
UNMIK (Kosovo)
UNMIL (Liberia)
UNMIN (Nepal)
UNMIS (Sudan)
UNMIT (Timor-Leste)
UNMOGIP (India, Pakistan)
UNOCI (Ivory Coast)
UNTSO (Middle East)
Other Operations IMATT (Sierra Leone)
MFO (Israel, Egypt)
MNF-Iraq
Operation Boali (Central African Republic)
Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan)
Operation Epervier (Chad)
Operation Licorne (Ivory Coast)
Operation Proteus (Middle East)
OSCE Bosnia and Herzegovina
OSCE Kosovo
OSCE Moldova
OSCE Serbia
Source: Author’s own table.
63
The Master Thesis Project Proposal
Thesis title: NATO Transformation and the Capability Gap
Background and Purpose of Thesis:
According to some scholars, the Western world is currently experiencing a Revolution
in Military Affairs (RMA). (Sloan, 2008) The West, namely NATO, needs to adapt to
the changing global security environment brought about by the collapse of the Soviet
Union and made apparent by the deterioration of security in the Balkan region and
subsequently by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It can do so by improving old, as well as
by creating new defence capabilities, such as cyber defence, missile defence or
electronic warfare capabilities, to counter emerging global security threats and
challenges.
However, capability development is a long-term process that requires procurement of
new equipment, which is expensive and thus politically unattractive for many NATO
member states, particularly in the present time of austerity. As a result, some
(especially) smaller Allies are reluctant or even unable to increase their defence
spending, so as to match the capability development efforts of their larger counterparts.
This exacerbates what is known as the capability gap between high- and low-capability
NATO member states. It is the purpose of NATO transformation, spearheaded by the
Allied Command Transformation, to coordinate Allies’ capability development efforts
in order to bridge this capability gap and to ensure that all member states share the
burden of membership equally.
The Capability Theory, which is further elaborated upon below, assumes that the
behaviour of NATO member states is predetermined by their capability, i.e. by their
economic and military power. It says that high-capability states are likely to be more
proactive, whereas low-capability states tend to engage in free-riding and oppose any
major changes within intergovernmental organizations.
This master thesis sets out to explore the nature of the capability gap within NATO and
has the ambition of offering possible solutions to obstacles of NATO transformation. It
will: 1) test the validity of the Capability Theory with respect to NATO, i.e. determine
64
whether there are any behavioral patterns among NATO member states that could be
matched to their economic and military capabilities, and 2) propose ways to better
stimulate the Allies’ political will to transform their militaries, as well as briefly
compare these rough proposals to past and present initiatives to overcome the capability
gap (the Usability Initiative, the Smart Defence Initiative and the Input and Ouput
Measurements Initiative). (Sturm, 2005; Ruml, 2011)
For the sake of clarity, it seems fit to include the working definition of transformation
for this paper:
Transformation is an ongoing long-term process of developing and integrating
innovative capabilities, doctrines and concepts with the aim of improving the
effectiveness and interoperability of armed forces.
Research Questions:
•
Are there any patterns in the attitudes of different member states to NATO
transformation? In other words, are some member states more or less willing to
fulfill their obligations vis-à-vis NATO?
•
If so, is their will to transform related to their economic and military
performances? Can they be grouped in the three categories (low-, intermediateand high-capability states) proposed by Jack E. Vincent (2001)?
•
What, if any, are the solutions to bridging the existing capability gap? How are
these conceptually different from past and present initiatives to stimulate
political will in member states to transform?
Hypothesis: Member states that are less capable in terms of economic and military
power, are likely to be more reluctant to push ahead with transformation since,
according to the Realist view, they joined NATO to passively benefit from the
membership without having to make too many sacrifices. Powerful member states, on
the other hand, are using NATO to obtain legitimity and support for their national
foreign policy goals (again according to the Realist view).
Limited resource base discourages the former from spending more on defence and
prevents them from allocating available funds to procurement projects that are
65
important for transformation because these are usually too costly for any single small
nation to afford.
It is argued that a solution to bridge the capability gap would be for smaller lowcapability nations to pool their resources (both financial and personnel) and eventually
perhaps to integrate not only in the economic and military, but also in the political
arenas.
It is further argued that past and present initiatives to foster political to improve the
Alliance’s defence capability (DCI, PCC, IUT, LCP) focus too much on national
performances (usability of an Ally’s land, air and maritime forces) and too little on
performances on the multinational level (e.g. financial and personnel contributions to
nato owned- and operated capabilities like the NATO Airborne Early Warning and
Control System (NAEW&CS)). Unless NATO fully endorses the principle of
multinationality, the capability gap will remain (provided the Capability Theory is
valid) and NATO’s ability to address the threats and challenges of the 21st Century (to
fulfill its Level of Ambition) will be severely hampered.
Theoretical Framework: From an epistemological point of view, the framework of the
thesis is Realist. Hence the referent object is the state, in this particular case, 27 NATO
member states.35 The thesis is a comparative case study that identifies a causal
relationship between a state’s economic and military resources on the one hand and the
political will of that state to transform its military on the other. The applied theory is
Jack E. Vincent’s (2001) Capability Theory, which states that there is a relationship
between a state’s capability and its behaviour within an organization. Vincent’s model
proposes the following three-level grouping of NATO member states by capability:
•
High-capability states (USA only)
•
Intermediate-capability states (old colonial powers, such as the United Kingdom,
France or Germany)
•
Low-capability states (most other member states)
The consideration here is that it would be exceedingly difficult to draw a clear line
between intermediate-capability states and low-capability states, especially in the case
35
Iceland is specific in that it has no armed forces and, therefore, it shall not be considered in this thesis.
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of NATO where most member states are highly capable when compared to non-NATO
states, both in terms of their economic performance and their military strength. Since
one of the aims of the thesis is to locate the capability gap, it is argued that two
categories of states will suffice: states of lower capability and states of high capability.
Methodology and Operationalization: This thesis uses a very different methodology
from that of Vincent. Whereas Vincent interviewed scholars to find out about their
nations’ attidudes towards the decision-making process, I intend to directly measure
Allies’ performances quantitatively and qualitatively to determine whether they are
prone to transformation or not. The advantage of this approach is that it is unmediated (I
will mainly use primary sources) and thus more accurate and transparent. However, the
downside may be the lack of publically available data.
This thesis identifies one dependent variable – Political Will to Transform – and two
principal independent variables – Economic Resources and Military Resources. All
three of them can be broken down into measurable sub-variables as is shown below:
Dependent Variables
1. Political Will to Transform: In conformity with the working definition of
transformation, which was stated in the background, this variable will be measured
in terms of concepts, doctrines and capabilities in the following way:
1.1. Concepts and doctrines of a sample of NATO member states will be examined
using discourse analysis. An attempt will be made to see whether the provisions
of the new NATO Strategic Concept are reflected in national security strategies
and white papers. This sub-variable will therefore be measured qualitatively.
The nations will then be assigned a score ranging from 0 to 2 (0 = not at all
reflected, 1 = partially reflected, 2 = fully reflected).
1.2. Capabilities: this sub-variable will give an idea as to how one nation’s concepts
and doctrines translate into action. It is to be understood as contributions to the
collective defence effort. Capabilities will be measured in terms of military
activity in international operations by analysing the degree of eagerness at the
political level to participate in selected NATO and other operations, which are
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beneficial to the Alliance. The nations will be assigned a score ranging from 0
to 3 (0 = dismissive stance, 1 = passive support, 2 = marginal active support, 3
= major active support).
The scores for both sub-variables will be added to give a single indicator of political
will to transform (range 0 to 1). The overall result could be weighted in favour of the
Capabilities sub-variable because action has a higher value than what appears on paper.
Independent Variables
1. Economic Resources: this independent variable is straightforward in that the data for
Allies’ economic performances is mostly available in the online database of the
Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.
1.1. Gross Domestic Product on Defence: NATO sets a 2 % guideline for Allies to
try and reach. Allies will be assigned a score on this variable ranging from 0-3
(0 = less than 1 %, 1 = less than 1.5%, 2 = less than 2 %, 3 = 2 % or more).
1.2. R&D Expenditure: R&D is crucial for transformation and it will allow us to see
more clearly the divide between resourceful and less resourceful Allies (smaller
Allies have a tendency to buy new technologies and equipment “off the shelf”
and rely on their bigger trading partners for innovation). Allies will be assigned
a score on this variable ranging from 0-2 (0 = little or no R&D expenditure, 1 =
moderate R&D expenditure, 2 = high R&D expenditure).
2. Military Resources: this independent variable will be measured in terms of the
quantity of military personnel and military equipment. One possible source for this
data is the server Globalfirepower.com, which provides figures for active duty
personnel, airframes (aircraft + helicopters) and naval vessels. Allies will be
assigned similar scores to the ones above.
Again, scores for sub-variables of Economic Resources and scores for sub-variables of
Military Resources will be added to give an indicator in the range 0 to 1.
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The ultimate idea is to construct a table displaying the scores for political will to
transform and the scores for economic and military resources side by side. The purpose
of the table would be to visualize the relation between a country’s capability and its
attitude towards transformation and thus validate the Capability Theory. Data in the
table will be analysed by means of the Fuzzy Set Qualitative Analysis, which allows for
the comparison of qualitative data quantitatively. The following configurative
conditions are proposed:
T = E*M + E*m36
Conditions favorable for transformation:
E*M – possibly the United States, France, United Kingdom…
E*m – possibly Belgium, Luxembourg…
Conditions not favorable for transformation:
e*M – possibly Greece, Turkey…
e*m – possibly Lithuania, Romania…
The lack of large economic resources is likely to be the key cause of passive attitudes
towards transformation, provided the above formula is valid. This would lead to the
obvious conclusion that the pooling of primarily economic resources is the only credible
solution for overcoming the capability gap.
Considerations and Fallback Options: Reliable data needed to determine the military
strength of NATO member states is scarce, since most of it is classified. Also, the
practice of benchmarking is generally underdeveloped in the defence domain and thus
there is very little data concerning progress in military transformation that would be
collected on a regular basis. The fallback option here is to resort entirely to qualitative
(most likely discourse) analysis to get a notion of what a country’s overall military
capabilities are.
Generally speaking, the lack of adequate data may shift the emphasis of the thesis from
evidence analysis to theoretical discourse and make it somewhat superficial.
36
T – will to transform; t – lack of will to transform; E – strong economy; e – weak economy; M – strong
military; m – weak military.
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Sources:
Primary sources:
•
Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. The Revolution in Military Affairs for
Small States. Available online at:
<http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/conference_reports/RMA_small_states.pdf
> (downloaded on 1 June 2011).
•
National Defense University – Center for Technology and National Security
Policy. Affordable Defense Capabilities for Future NATO Missions. Available
online at:
<http://www.ndu.edu/CTNSP/docUploaded/NATO_Affordable%20Defense%20
Capabilities.pdf> (downloaded on 3 June 2011).
•
NATO. Strategic Concept For the Defence and Security of The Members of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Available online at:
<http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf> (downloaded
on 1 June 2011).
Monographies:
•
Dombrowski, Peter J. et al. Military Transformation and the Defense Industry
After Next. Naval War College, Newport, 2002.
•
Sloan, Elinor. Military Transformation and Modern Warfare. Greenwood Pub
Group, 2008.
Journals:
•
Cornish, Paul. NATO: the practice and politics of transformation. International
Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 1, 2004, pp. 63-74.
•
Vincent, Jack E. et al. Capability Theory and the Future of NATO’s
Decisionmaking Rules. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2001, pp. 6786.
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Internet Sources:
•
Ruml, Ken. ACT Designs Measurements of NATO Performance. Available
online at: <http://www.act.nato.int/multimedia/archive/42-news-stories/719-actdesigns-measurements-of-nato-performance> (downloaded 24 August 2011).
•
Seungyoon, Sophia Lee. A Critique of the Fuzzy-set Methods in Comparative
Social Policy. Available online at:
<http://www.compasss.org/files/WPfiles/Lee2008.pdf> (downloaded 29 August
2011).
•
Sturm, Steve. Matching Capabilities to Commitments. NATO Review, online
version: <http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2005/issue1/english/military.html>
(downloaded on 3 June 2011).
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