Toward Multinational Professional Military Education in Europe

TY - CONF

T1 - Toward Multinational Professional Military Education in Europe

AU - Schaub Jr, Gary John

AU - Breitenbauch, Henrik Ø.

N1 - Presented to the Annual Joint Meeting of the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association and the International Security and Arms Control Section of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C., 4-6 October 2013.

PY - 2013/10/6

Y1 - 2013/10/6

N2 - European NATO nations need better staff officers. Operation Unified Protector exposed a widespread deficiency in the professional knowledge of field-grade European officers. Professional military education (PME) is where corrective Alliance action must focus. The Nordic countries—Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland—have conducted joint training courses for decades and are considering ways to facilitate cooperation in the education of the field-grade officers that would populate the staff of any future NATO-led expeditionary operation. We suggest three alternative paths that increased cooperation in PME at the level of the command and staff course could take: a Nordic Defence College, standardized national command and staff courses, and a core curriculum of common courses for common purposes. We conclude with a discussion of how the Alliance can facilitate clusters of cooperation between strategically proximate groups of Allies to improve their number of knowledgeable and skilled staff officers.

AB - European NATO nations need better staff officers. Operation Unified Protector exposed a widespread deficiency in the professional knowledge of field-grade European officers. Professional military education (PME) is where corrective Alliance action must focus. The Nordic countries—Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland—have conducted joint training courses for decades and are considering ways to facilitate cooperation in the education of the field-grade officers that would populate the staff of any future NATO-led expeditionary operation. We suggest three alternative paths that increased cooperation in PME at the level of the command and staff course could take: a Nordic Defence College, standardized national command and staff courses, and a core curriculum of common courses for common purposes. We conclude with a discussion of how the Alliance can facilitate clusters of cooperation between strategically proximate groups of Allies to improve their number of knowledgeable and skilled staff officers.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - NATO

KW - Bolognaprocessen

KW - cooperation

KW - Professional Military Education

KW - Higher Education

KW - Nordic

M3 - Paper

T2 - Annual Joint Meeting of the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association and the International Security and Arms Control Section of the American Political Science Association

Y2 - 4 October 2013 through 6 October 2013

ER -