NATO Response Force: Rapid? Responsive? A Force?

Abstract

The NATO Response Force (NRF) was intended to make NATO responsive to the security needs of the twenty-first century. However, by U.S. standards it is unlikely to be rapid, responsive, or much of a force. Nevertheless, the NRF will prove the most important vehicle for adapting European forces to the needs of modern expeditionary ventures. The United States proposed a “NATO Response Force” at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in September 2002. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cautioned his colleagues, “If NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile, that can deploy in days or weeks rather than months or years, then it will not have capabilities to offer the world in the twenty-first century.” The Americans had become increasingly concerned that the Europeans had become preoccupied with the needs of the 1990—that is, to provide stabilization forces after a conflict—and were ignoring the new threats that had appeared after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. “There are no more threats to NATO from within Europe, but from a nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction,” a U.S. official demurred. “NATO needs an expeditionary force, a strike force, that can move fast.” The NATO Secretary-General, Lord George Robertson, took a similar tack and urged the allies “to think carefully about the role of this alliance in the future, not least in protecting our citizens from criminal terrorists and criminal states.” He stressed that the NRF would not compete with the EU’s Rapid Reaction Force. “The bottom line is that NATO’s Response Force and the EU’s Rapid Reaction Force will be ... complementary,” he insisted.