Page 148 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

788 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

in the nuclear arms race.
As an almost logical consequence, NATO focused increasingly on conventional
defense and, subsequently, the situation on the flanks. The situation there had been
precarious for political and military reasons right from the beginning of the Cold War. In
the north, this was especially true for Norway and Denmark, which on the one hand were
able to raise only a limited number of forces and on the other did not want to be bound
too much by NATO militarily. The most dangerous areas of this flank were Northern
Norway and Zealand in the BALTAP-area.
The situation in the south or southeast was even more threatening since the two main
allies in this region, Turkey and Greece, were relatively weak in military terms and
had trouble with each other. The strategic trouble spots in this region were the northern
border in Thrace with the extremely important Bosphorus at its back, Turkey’s southern
border and Eastern Anatolia. Finally, there were concerns regarding the northeastern
border of Italy (near Istria), which would have been under threat if a conflict had arisen
over Yugoslavia.
NATO headquarters did not merely see the direct military aspects as the main danger,
but rather the risk of a weakening of Alliance solidarity, which had not always been
stable due to the continued conflicts of political and military interests in general. The
deterrence of the enemy and the Alliance’s efforts to strengthen itself were two sides of
the same coin.
As the major tool for defence the NATO Military Committee considered influencing
the enemy rationally and psychologically by an effective crisis management in an
emergency. It was to be made clear to the Warsaw Pact that the risks of aggression of
any kind would by far outweigh the benefits.
The AMF was considered as one of the most important tools for precisely these
purposes. Its main mission was to act as a front-line deterrence, i.e. the units assigned
to the AMF, mostly elite units, had to be able to move to their position on one of the
regions of the flank quickly, to act ostentatious and communicate with the public. It was
especially important that the whole world realized that the force was multinational and
made up of units from powerful allies that counted not to the flank states (in particular
the USA, the UK and the Federal Republic of Germany). Their core mission was, so to
say, “showing the flag”.
Albeit in peacetime, the AMF was loudly and clearly conveyed to the public as a
flexible elite force. It was made clear to the Eastern bloc that if the AMF was deployed,
it was a kind of last warning.
The AMF was to a certain degree the most distinct military manifestation of Article 5
of the North Atlantic Treaty. A direct military attack on one of its battalions would have
been considered an attack against NATO and each of its single members.
The AMF consisted of a total of six battalions, which were assigned and equipped
according to the preparedness of the member states. The headquarter of the Allied
Mobile Force Land (AMF (L) was located initially in Seckenheim/Palatinate and later
collocated with the headquarters of the 7th US Army in Heidelberg. The air support
forces consisted of 6 squadrons of fighter bombers, but these did not have any permanent