ABSTRACT
Introduction Summarizing the decisive characteristic of warfare in the modern era, Clausewitz famously maintained that ‘war is merely the continuation of [state] policy by other means’ (Clausewitz 1989: 87). Independent, rational states used war to pursue policy but, throughout the modern period and especially in the Cold War, states found it necessary to ally with each other in pursuit of common goals. Consequently, their armed forces typically fought as part of an international alliance. Waterloo was fought by an international coalition of British, Dutch and Prussian troops. Yet, even in the twentieth century when state power was at its highest and war seemed to assume its ultimate Clausewitzian form, internationalism was a critical aspect of military activity. Both World Wars were fought by grand Axis and Allied coalitions. The Cold War was, of course, a competition between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, each an international coalition of (more or less willing) subordinate states around a superpower hegemony. Internationalization is not new therefore. It is an enduring feature of military operations throughout the modern period. However, while international alliance was common, since the end of the Cold War, certain critical differences have become apparent. During the Cold War, NATO was an international alliance which united states at the strategic level, but the armed forces, themselves, operated more or less independently. This is most obvious in the land environment, where West Germany was divided up into a series of corps areas, each assigned to a national corps. Within that area, the national corps of some 60,000 troops operated almost independently of their military partners. There was almost no tactical cooperation. Today’s multinational forces are characterized not merely by strategic alliance but by close cooperation in-theater at the tactical level. From the Balkans, onwards, Western troops have actively conducted operations together and, in Afghanistan, they are increasingly fighting together. The emergence of dense international relations at the tactical level was very evident in Europe in the 1990s. A wave of multinational formations came into being after the Cold War, and in Iraq and Afghanistan multinational forces have operated together in intense circumstances (e.g. King 2005; Soeters and Manigart 2008). Internationalization constitutes a major current of contemporary military
transformation. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the dynamics of internationalization and to identify some of its critical features.
