NATO

Here we are eighteen years later with a resurgent Taliban and US/NATO achievements not only not consolidated but more fragile than ever and the Afghan state weaker with an unusual President in the White House, a growing war fatigue in the west and a divided Washington over the fate of its military engagement in the country.

Foreign policy in the Trump era is a tug-of-war, a test of wills between national pragmatists and global utopians. Binary equations might be simplistic, but if it has done nothing else, the Trump agenda has exposed the venal politics and pratfalls of “social” democracies, here and in Europe. The contest is a struggle, as irony would have it, between voices arguing for change and the “business as usual” crowd.

Since the close of the Second World War the United States has retained a significant ground force presence in Europe to defend against Russian aggression. While laudable during the halcyon days of the Soviet Empire, it is past time for this anachronistic policy to end.

This paper is based on a qualitative study of NORSOF. In the study, twelve high ranking officers in NORSOF and the Norwegian military were interviewed according to an interview template, thereby ensuring consistency in the research. The interviewees participating in this research generated original primary source data, enabling unique insight to the subject. The sample group consists of some of the most experienced people in Scandinavia with regard to SR, in addition to the central leadership in NORSOF. There are no existing publications with such a comprehensive sample group looking into this subject, thus the qualitative data that will be presented in this paper provides a notable insight.

SWJ discussion with Luis Simón, research professor of international security at the Institute for European Studies (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute. He recently published a Whitehall Paper for London’s Royal United Services Institute: “The Spectre of a Westphalian Europe?”

ISAF may provide a new model of counterinsurgency – de facto multilateral – based on classical doctrines and tenets, yet organizationally and operationally different.

Given a Russian invasion scenario, the Baltic States would have no choice to preserve their independence but to fight a guerrilla war against occupying forces.

NATO rarely, if ever, exercises the deployment to and operation of the force in an environment that is under “hybrid” attack.