Pooling, Sharing and Specializing — NATO and International Defence Cooperation

Abstract

Since the financial crisis of 2008 defence and security policy in the transatlantic area has generally been characterized by austerity measures. Economic priorities have thus pushed the transatlantic allies to consider international defence cooperation in a number of areas — from logistics in operations to tasks in national defence. Terms such as ‘pooling and sharing’ and ‘smart defence’ have been used to describe these initiatives, and they have indeed become something like buzzwords in the strategic debate. This is not to say that international defence cooperation is something that is limited to either mature transatlantic democracies, or the period following the financial crisis. So far, cooperation on capabilities in military alliances like NATO has traditionally been limited — for instance, the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) — and connected to a common strategic threat. One of the most interesting aspects of international defence cooperation associated with pooling and sharing and smart defence is that it opens up a whole new dimension and potential for integration and deep dependencies in areas that have traditionally been the responsibility of the sovereign state, even though dependencies might not be the desired end state of the actors involved. If states in the transatlantic setting were to pool and share military hardware on a larger scale, the result might very well be an integration process that would challenge assumptions of individual states as the focal point of analysis in defence studies. International defence cooperation has the potential to introduce a new multilateral dimension for force generation to NATO.