Page 54 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

54 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Air power and sea power will always have their supporters, convinced of the greater
importance of one of the other; as it was then ascertained, military interventions to
promote stable political solutions usually require the use of ground troops. “You can fly
over a territory for years, you may bomb it, pulverize it and make it completely devoid
of life, but if you want to defend it, protect it, keep it, you must do so on the ground, as
did the Roman legions: putting their young into the mud”. 17

The current situation
The use of military force therefore traditionally requires a joint perspective; today
more than ever, it also needs a combined approach. Not even the American superpower
has the material and, above all, the ethical-political resources required to conduct solo
interventions. Essential (or at least useful) support to military operations by the domestic
and foreign public opinion is favoured by the existence of a legitimation of the interven-
tion that is all the stronger if it comes from an international organization. The optimum
is considered to be the UN mandate; in the case of the intervention in Kosovo, NATO’s
decision was deemed sufficient, while the Iraqi war of 2003 was unpopular also because
only supported by a coalition of the willing. Considering the objectives of the conflicts
of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, i.e. regime change or state building,

to the considerations already made on the need for a joint military approach we should
add that close coordination with politics and diplomacy is ever more needed. Post-con-
flict stabilization moreover calls for civil-military cooperation (CIMIC).
Collective defence Organizations such as NATO are better placed to ensure the so-
lution to some of the classic problems that have always troubled coalitions, such as
the choice of the commander and the command structure, interoperability, the role of
the various national forces, common interests, the permanence of solidarity among the
Allies also after the end of the war. The supreme and integrated theatre commands and
controls of NATO developed the model of one of the most integrated alliances in history,
the one between the United Kingdom and the United States during World War II, whose
top military command was represented by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, while in every
theatre there was a joint and combined supreme command.
The commander of Operation Overlord, General Dwight Eisenhower was then the
first Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe; SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters
Allied Expeditionary Force) was the forerunner of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Al-
lied Powers Europe).
The combined approach is today imposed on European countries also by the eco-
nomic crisis. Both NATO and the European Union are trying to launch collaborative
models that avoid wasting resources. The NATO agenda currently includes the smart
defence formula: in the military sector, as in the civil one, they try to do more with less
resources, and special attention is being placed on promoting the specialization of roles
and avoiding duplication. The risk is represented by the loss, on the part of some States,
of a broad-ranging, albeit small, military capacity.

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17 The Economist, 18 - 24 November 2000.
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