Abstract: For a long time, Western armies were organized to fight total war. Since the end of the Cold War, they have been reduced, but have been engaged in conflicts requiring large deployments. European societies no longer know what type of war they have to conduct. Indeed the very concept of limited war and its instruments need to be rethought.
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If the Cold War in Europe had become hot, it would not have been limited except in one respect: it would have been short. Armies became smaller because they were not expected to sustain resistance for more than a few weeks. Germany in particular ... wanted to keep the ladder of escalation to nuclear release short and steep. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war games tended to end with a nuclear exchange within days.
Those less close to the inner German border, and particularly the United States, wanted the ladder to be longer and the process of ascent more gradual. Their interpretation of the strategy of "flexible responseʺ, adopted by NATO in 1967, stressed the initial use of conventional military capabilities as much as the final sanction of nuclear release.
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With the end of the Cold War, and the removal of the immediate threat of a major war of self-defence within Europe, that hope – implicitly at least – has become even more fervent. ... They cannot command the man-power for ʺtotal war". The question that is more pressing is whether they can command the manpower for long wars of lower intensity.
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At the heart of Europe’s problem is the lack of a unifying conception of war – a conception which can tie the armies of Europe and their parent societies into a common narrative. ... The European folk memory of war is still shaped by the Second World War, by "total warʺ. Two consequences follow.
The first is that armies exist only for purposes of direct national self-defence in what the English language no longer calls ʺtotal war", but "major warʺ or increasingly ʺexistential war". The corollary of a war for national survival should be an expectation that in such a war armies should be both conscripted and large, reflective of their parent societies in terms of their social composition and even more in values.
The second is the obverse of that position. Given the destructiveness for Europe of modern war, and particularly of the two world wars, war is not in fact a continuation of policy by other means. War represents the failure of policy, and so has no political utility.
Today Europe’s armies are designed less to fight and more for diplomatic leverage. Small contingents are a means by which a state pays its dues to the international community and to the multilateral organisations, principally the European Union, NATO and the United Nations, in which most modern, westernised and democratic nations invest their hopes of a stable international order.
This "tokenismʺ can extend to bilateral relations, particularly given the possible long-term need to call in aid from the United States.
The real military strength of NATO lies with America, and by sending forces to Afghanistan other states are investing in a favour bank with the US if their security is threatened in the future. Alliances help keep armies small and serve to constrain the circumstances in which they may be used.
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