Entering the war machine: on construction of order in a multinational NATO headquarters

Abstract

This article concerns organisational decision-making in a multinational military NATO headquarters. Despite widespread criticism of its mechanistic and bureaucratic tendencies, empirical research on the daily practices of military planning remains surprisingly scarce. Drawing on fieldwork in an operational NATO headquarters and interviews with commanders and staff officers, this article utilises an assemblage framework to unravel the construction of order. Within the military headquarters, war is generally imagined as a managerial problem–a rational, procedural endeavour of aligning means and ways to achieve military ends. The article shows how standardisation efforts designed to increase interoperability can paradoxically relegate staff officers to the status of cogs in the war machine focused on processing (“feeding the beast”) rather than inspiring creative or innovative thinking. This approach risks alienating segments of the multinational staff when imposed standards diverge from contemporary NATO doctrine. Since professional military education is the domestic responsibility of member nations, NATO commanders cannot assume a uniform understanding of doctrine and planning; individual headquarters must therefore bridge this gap if staff officers are not to be left with the inescapable obligation to adhere to procedures.