Page 147 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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ActA
NATO’s deployable forces: The history of the Allied Mobile
Force and the UK Mobile Force as historical blueprints for

the NATO Response Force today

Bernd lEmKE

he solidarity between all members of NATO constitutes a core principle which
T significantly contributed to the end of the Cold War and was and still is essential
for the existence of the Alliance: the common standing of all the allies for the purpose of
deterrence and defense against manifest dangers and threats. This refers not only to joint
operations by their armed forces, but especially to joint action and the show of strength
in matters of policy, military policy, planning and organization in the broadest sense.
The following text will focus on this solidarity as manifested by deployable forces
in the Cold War. The main objects will be the Allied Mobile Force AMF which existed
between 1961 and 2003 and a temporary sister of that body, the UK Mobile Force
UKMF, which existed between 1968 and 1976.
First there will a short look on the general history of the AMF and the UKMF in
the Cold War from its beginning. Then the role of the AMF in the main exercises of
NATO for war preparation, the WINTEX and HILEX-series, will be scrutinized. In this
course, the controversies in the Alliance after the Americans tried to include the Arabian
region into war planning will be looked on. Finally, the article concentrates the only live
mission of the AMF in southern Turkey in 1991 from a German Perspective and the last
years of the unit until the creation of its successor.
The importance of Alliance solidarity as a means of defense – and not only military
defense – is as old as NATO itself. From the very beginning, NATO’s means and
ends were never merely confined to military build-up, preparations and planning for
emergencies. Cohesion between all the partners was the essential basis for deterrence,
the decisive instrument of the Alliance for preventing a war and containing Communist
aggression in Europe and ultimately around the world.
To illustrate the core principles, its realization and its problems, the focus of the
following pages will be on one of its most visible manifestations: the Allied Mobile
Force. The AMF, one of NATO’s longest-standing units, is a very good example to
demonstrate how coherence within the Alliance and its capability to respond to
aggression have developed from 1960 until today.
The Allied Mobile Force (AMF) was designed and set up in response to the general
strategic development in the late 1950s. Its beginnings can be traced back to the major
strategic transition before 1990, the change from Massive Retaliation to Flexible
Response. This was based on the growing realization that the Alliance could not respond
to local provocations or attempts by the Eastern bloc with purely nuclear means as there
was always the danger of nuclear escalation. The Russians were catching up with the US