NATO and the Primacy of National Decisions in Multilateral Interventions
NATO and the Primacy of National Decisions in Multilateral Interventions
This chapter describes NATO: how the organization works, how its origins give its members latitude to influence their contingents, and how the commanders of its multilateral efforts cope with the challenges of multilateral contingents. As caveats, red cards, phone calls, and other techniques for managing individual contingents have proven to be problematic, NATO has worked hard to mitigate those techniques' impact upon ISAF's (International Security Assistance Force) effectiveness. Despite these efforts, the alliance cannot hope to compete with national command chains. The chapter then compares the intervention venues that states can use from a theoretical perspective, to include unilateralism, coalitions of the willing, and alliance actions. NATO interventions provide individual alliance members with the benefits of multilateralism while maintaining ultimate national controls on deployed troops. In NATO interventions, national commands have authority over choosing their nation's commanders, delegating authority to those commanders, conducting oversight, and providing incentives for appropriate military behavior—authority that the alliance cannot match.
Keywords: NATO, multilateral efforts, multilateral contingents, International Security Assistance Force, unilateralism, coalitions, alliance actions, NATO interventions, multilateralism, national commands
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