The NRF was launched in November 2002 at the Alliance’s Prague Summit. The brainchild of US defense leaders, the NRF was intended to strengthen NATO’s readiness and responsiveness as well as act as a catalyst for capability development (especially in Europe). As one of its conceptual forebears has written,1 the goal was to create a “real-life force with a C4ISR structure and assigned combat units, not merely a disorganized troop list,” pulled together on an ad hoc basis. The problem is this original defining strength of the NRF has been revealed as its Achilles heel.

Key Takeaways:

0:00 Intro

1:45 John talks about NATO Response Force, NRF, what it is, when it was formed and what’s its role in NATO

4:32 John shares his thoughts on why he strongly believe that NATO does not require to have the NRF and how multi-nationality has primarily become NATO’s weakness

7:18 John talks about the process of deployment of NRF and who was to be consulted before its deployment 

8:51 John also shares some of the examples to show how the NRF is not useful just sitting on the shelves and not being deployed 

10:52 John talks about what the NRF would have done if it had been used by NATO in a situation like Crimea 

12:22 John also talks about how the NRF could have become the now enhanced forward presence, EFP should it have been used in 2014

14:13 John explains why there was need to disband the NRF after the creation of the EFP since they all fulfill the same purpose 

16:57 John talks about the reasons why NRF is slower to respond to crisis and it is termed to be very fast as opposed to EFP such as decision making

19:06 John also explains why NRF takes longer for it to be deployed than the EFP and they are all tools from NATO

21:12 John talks about evolution of decision making in the deployment of NRF and if it would make any difference 

23:04 John also talks about the disadvantages of the Alliance having fixed multinational formations or consensus in its decision making

24:33 John talks about how he would convince allies that are wedded to the capabilities of the NRF to consider his suggestion to disband it and also what they would replace it with 

27:22 John also talks about whom pays for NRF resources and how that money would go back into preparing the capabilities that the NRF has if it is disband 

28:27 John explains if the countries providing the plug and play option would they get the same benefits that they got with the NRF

29:07 John talks about how it would be arranged with the plug and play option for allies to get the help that they need 

30:26 John talks about consensus in the plug and play option also and how different it is from the NRF which also requires consensus 

32:07 John talks about how disbanding the NRF would be received at the Alliance since there are some allies that are quite fond of the NRF sitting there on its shelf

34:00 John explains the need to push interoperability down lower so allies can get more contributions from across the Alliance

35:05 John talks about why the defense establishments are needed more than ever and not waste resources in any capacity now more than ever