The Politics of Weapons Standardization in NATO.
Abstract
Awareness of the growing conventional imbalance between the Warsaw Pact and NATO led, in the early 1970s, to a search for ways for NATO to regain the lead or at least to balance the Warsaw Pact. Since it offered an appealing logic, standardization of weapon systems within NATO was rapidly embraced as a major means of redressing the balance. Standardization promised increased military effectiveness without increased costs (and, some argued, at lower costs) through reduction of waste caused by duplication of systems. Standardization was embraced in spite of a 25-year history of failures of similar efforts within NATO. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that this new effort will, likewise, fail to achieve any significant degree of standardization. Proponents of standardization fail to appreciate that weapons procurements are a low policy (domestic) issue and that weapons procurement decisions have traditionally been made in a disaggregated fashion (by subgovernments). Standardization requires a high policy (strategic) focus in which domestic concerns are secondary. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA119414
Entities
People
- Richard Charles Fast
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology