Description
After 1991, there occurred a significant effort to reform the institutional design of NATO for a new era. British Foreign Office and Defence officials played an important role in shaping this agenda, as newly available archival evidence shows. However, this effort largely failed. Utilising new and underused sources from the inside of NATO structures, this paper argues that British officials, alongside allied representatives, squared off against an institutionally powerful NATO Headquarters structure and lost. This internal conflict, largely carried out between the years 1991 and 1993, had significant impacts both on the direction of NATO and the relationship of its allies to its permanent staff structures. This argument, as part of broader research by the author, widens the aperture on the study of NATO’s history by taking a fuller account of the initiative and entrepreneurship displayed by NATO, rather than allied, staffs. It has implications for considering reform of NATO in the 21st century.
