NATO Votes to Restructure Its Military Forces

North Atlantic defense ministers on Tuesday launched the most sweeping reorganization of NATO military forces in the alliance’s 42-year history, approving the outlines of a smaller, more flexible military structure for Western Europe.

The ministers voted to establish three tiers of forces at varying states of readiness, one of them--the plan’s centerpiece--a readily deployable “rapid-reaction corps” of as many as 100,000 troops under direct British command.

The ministers’ decisions come less than a year after NATO leaders had called for more flexible, multinational forces designed to deal with threats and instability that fall short of a massive Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe.

They are expected to provide the framework for a force in Europe that will shrink by at least 22% and as much as 50% over the next three years. American forces in Europe, now at about 320,000, are expected to be reduced by as much as half.

“This is a force structure designed for a world of 1994-1995, when the Russians are all gone” from Eastern Europe, a senior British official said Tuesday.

While U.S. officials Tuesday applauded the allies’ recent cooperation in the Persian Gulf, they said NATO has not agreed on whether or how the allied response force would be used in crises outside of Western Europe.

“NATO is not going to send integrated forces to, for instance, a crisis in Sri Lanka,” said a senior U.S. official here. “The alliance is not likely, as an alliance, to have a mission outside of NATO’s territory.”

However, the Bush Administration hopes to see the force “evolve over time” into one with the political backing to respond to crises outside NATO’s traditional geographic limits, an American official said. In the meantime, the broad participation of NATO allies in the Persian Gulf has “established the principle that NATO troops based in Europe can be used elsewhere, if the niceties of consultation are observed,” the official said.

As NATO’s most battle-ready force in the future, the rapid-reaction corps would be roughly divided into northern and southern sectors, officials said. Once organized, those forces could be dispatched within five to seven days to respond to crises on the northern or southern flanks of the alliance, where instability from the Middle East or ethnic strife from the dissolving Soviet republics could spill over borders and threaten the territorial integrity of NATO allies.

But a knowledgeable U.S. diplomat here said that even some of those threats may fall in a “gray area.” Reluctant allies may be unwilling to commit NATO forces, for instance, to some crises on the periphery of NATO, such as a violent breakup of Yugoslavia that revives border disputes with Greece or ethnic disputes that cross borders dividing Eastern and Western Europe.

The United States is expected to provide logistics support, air transport and combat air coverage for the rapid-action force, European and American officials said here. But the Bush Administration is divided over a proposal put forward Tuesday by U.S. Gen. John R. Galvin, NATO’s supreme commander, to add an American ground division--as many as 20,000 troops--to the quick-reaction force.

In addition to the rapid-reaction corps, the ministers adopted plans to structure the bulk of NATO’s forces in five to six “main defense forces.” Each of those units would be a multinational mix of active-duty and reserve forces and of troops based in Germany as well as their home countries.

Behind that, NATO’s new plan would make the alliance rely for its defense on “augmentation forces”--mainly Americans in reserve units at a low state of readiness, as well as troops that could be recruited and trained over several months.

Several officials were unable Tuesday to detail what particular threats to Western Europe exist to justify the still-powerful NATO forces. The alliance, however, has broadly cited the spiraling instability of Eastern Europe and the continued military strength of the Soviet Union as potential hazards to Western Europe.

In approving a total of roughly seven newly organized corps for Western Europe, the ministers agreed Tuesday to combine their countries’ forces to an unprecedented extent. In addition to assigning Britain command of the rapid-reaction corps, the defense leaders would give Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany command of a corps each. Italy might be chosen to provide the commander for that part of the rapid-reaction force dedicated to NATO’s southern flank.

Under all of these arrangements, American combat units would find themselves under the direction of European commanders in peacetime and in war.

At last summer’s NATO summit in London, alliance leaders called on the Europeans to strengthen their security role in NATO, and the debate over the new force structure has demonstrated the diplomatic perils of such a course.

Germany and Britain, for instance, have competed testily for command of the rapid-reaction corps. In addition, France, which does not participate in NATO’s military command structure, has been aggressively lobbying the European allies to establish a separate, all-European strike force that would fall under French command.

In November, after military negotiators have worked out the structure and composition of the new multinational forces in greater detail, leaders of the 16 NATO countries are to meet and put their stamp of approval on the new direction adopted by the defense ministers Tuesday.