The Validity of Conventional Assumptions Concerning Flexible Response

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an alliance for collective defense. Made up of 16 countries, NATO has been a successful alliance because there has been no war in Europe since 1945. In 1967, NATO adopted the strategy of flexible response, a strategy dependent upon conventional, tactical nuclear, and strategic nuclear weapons to provide deterrence from a Warsaw Pact attack. Although successful, NATO is suffering from an erosion in conventional strength. NATO continues to make assumptions about its conventional capabilities to successfully meet the requirements of the flexible response strategy. In the present day world of NATO, there is limited funding, a fact that is not likely to change any time in the foreseeable future. Limited funding makes it impossible to buy all the conventional force structure needed to ideally support the current strategy, also a fact that is unlikely to change. This paper shows limitations in some of the ways NATO assumes it can conventionally perform its mission. It is the authors position that NATO should modernize its conventional thinking to make it more in line with the realities of the situation NATO finds itself in today.