By decision of the NATO Political Committee, the North Atlantic Alliance, as a recognized international organization bringing together 28 highly developed countries of North America and Europe since the late 1990s, has actively engaged in peacekeeping operations around the world. NATO’s multinational armed forces are the most modernly equipped and trained real component, also predestined for non-military operational activities in various places of tragic events, capable of efficiently eliminating the symptoms of threats, their negative consequences, and providing effective humanitarian aid to the affected population. The foundation of the high operational capabilities of NATO armed forces is perfect command and control, as well as modern logistical potential composed flexibly, according to current tasks.
Logistical support for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations conducted by NATO is based on modern information and communication technologies, high technical and organizational standards, and significant transport and material potential in terms of the most urgent needs of these operations. A significant factor enhancing NATO’s logistical potential in these operations are NATO standardization, compatibility, and interoperability procedures, regulated by special documents such as STANAG and EXTAC. NATO’s strategy for logistical support of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations relies heavily on civil-military cooperation of all potential partners and, where possible, utilizes civilian supply chain technologies and market distribution channels. A sine qua non condition for the commencement of any peacekeeping and humanitarian operation by NATO multinational armed forces outside the territory of member states is obtaining a United Nations Mandate and the acceptance of world public opinion.
Paramilitary security threats
The new geopolitical conditions that took place in Europe at the turn of the century, including the admission of three new members to NATO on March 12, 1999 – the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary – caused a change in the existing political and military strategy of the North Atlantic Alliance. The consequence of these facts is, among other things, the announcement in April 1999 of a new NATO defense strategy (ANSC – Alliance’s New Strategic Concept) and its derivative, a new response concept in the form of the so-called Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI). Another procedural undertaking was the publication at the same time of the so-called LO 2020 Report (Land Operations in the Year 2020), concerning projected changes in the scope of the Alliance’s broadly understood defense technology. The above documents, which are strategic studies, imply very significant consequences, including in the area of logistical support for the military operations of the Alliance’s armed forces.
The basic assumption of the DCI strategy is the immediate readiness of the Alliance’s forces to repel any aggression directed against any member country. In the European area of NATO’s operational responsibility, the probability of large-scale military aggression is currently low. Much greater are the threats resulting from a wide range of peripheral regional conflicts of low intensity, the sources of which are primarily: wars and regional conflicts, ethnic fighting, mainly on religious grounds, as well as economic and social crises.
The necessity of continuously maintaining and preserving peace in various crisis situations, such as those that have occurred in recent years, forces the Alliance’s armed forces to maintain a sufficiently high operational readiness and appropriately high mobility of troops, in order to deploy quickly in distant theaters of operations. In the Alliance’s strategic plans, joint multinational operations play a special role, the basis of which is the highest interoperability of joint forces, as well as individual national contingents and the partner countries themselves.
The NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative assumes much greater stability of the overall situation on a strategic scale than in the local operational, and above all, tactical dimension. This means:
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pushing into the background the vision of a general global war (Global War)
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close interest in “spontaneous” local wars (Local War).
In NATO’s immediate military environment, the relatively greatest threat to international security is generated by non-state and non-governmental centers of local power, focused around various political, ethnic, religious, and social groups. Sometimes these are classic terrorist organizations based on an absolute criminal and felonious element. Alongside local ethnic-religious wars, the greatest threat to world peace and security are the activities of perfectly organized, most often transnational criminal groups co-organizing: drug, human, and strategic material trafficking, various crises and government coups, all forms of pressure and subordination, smuggling of people, various materials, especially weaponry, and recently, more and more often, highly advanced technology and information.
Often, the services of these paramilitary organizations and various quasi-formations of irregular forces are used by aggressive governments of smaller non-democratic states, which, in order to stay in power, deliberately destabilize the socio-political situation, regardless of the further consequences when the situation gets out of immediate control and spreads in wider circles on an international scale. All these factors have led to a change in the Alliance’s defense strategy, and thus to new challenges in terms of logistical support for conducted military and non-military operations.
The article comes from the journal “Logistyka” 2/2011.