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Military

  B-277053 GAO/NSIAD-97-164 NATO Expansion

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NATO's PFP Program
Helps Partners
Prepare for
Membership

 The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia are extensively involved in NATO's PFP program. NATO, U.S., and partner officials agree that PFP is improving the ability of potential new members and other PFP partners to work with NATO in key areas but they cannot quantifiably measure the extent to which it will improve such abilities across the full range of NATO activities.

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Needs of PFP Partner States

 PFP partners need to improve their ability to work closely with NATO in numerous areas, according to U.S., NATO, and partner officials. These areas include:
  1. cultivating a larger cadre of officers fluent in NATO's languages,
  2. training officers in NATO practices and acquiring a greater and more detailed understanding of NATO standards and procedures,
  3. developing civilian expertise in and control over defense matters (e.g., defense programming and budgeting),
  4. promoting the use of interoperable command and control systems, and
  5. establishing modern airspace management systems.

Some partner nation officials told us that they will modernize their armed forces regardless of whether they join NATO.

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Partners' Involvement in the PRP Program

 Each of the six nations has taken or plans to take part in numerous NATO-sponsored PFP events.6 According to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) and U.S. officials, these events were partially shaped by more than 40 PFP interoperability objectives developed by NATO military commands (see App. II).

As shown in figure II, about 64 percent of the NATO activities in which the six nations are participating involve joint exercises, training, standardization and interoperability, communications, and civil emergency planning. Examples of such activities include exercises on naval peacekeeping in hostile environments, staff studies on the practicalities of conducting out-of-area multinational peacekeeping air operations, staff meetings on tactical communications interoperability, seminars on command and control systems, training in NATO operational terminology, search and rescue and explosive ordinance disposition working parties, and discussions of NATO reconnaissance and surveillance procedures related to peacekeeping. The remaining 36 percent of the activities involve 13 other PFP cooperation areas.
Figure II: Major NATO PFP Areas Participated in by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia [Blue wave line]
[Graph of PFP Activity Distribution]
NATO has also offered partners the opportunity to take part in a planning and review process aimed at helping them meet NATO's PFP interoperability standards. Seventeen partners--including the six countries we reviewed--have agreed to do so. NATO has recently set milestones for their compliance with its objectives and released most of its unclassified standardization agreements and publications.

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PFP's Impact

 NATO, U.S., and partner officials in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland expressed positive views regarding the PFP program. NATO officials asserted that PFP has become a permanent part of the European security architecture, resulted in closer political consultations among partners, and improved the ability of partners to work with NATO on peacekeeping missions. Partner nation officials indicated that PFP has helped expose them to NATO methods and practices.

However, according to NATO and U.S. officials, the extent to which PFP has helped prepare aspiring members for full participation in NATO (1) cannot be measured in quantifiable terms and (2) is limited by the scope of the program. PFP's scope does not include preparing partners for the major war-fighting tasks that NATO's collective defense responsibilities might require. Therefore, according to NATO officials, PFP interoperability goals do not cover the full range of interoperability objectives that NATO has established for its members and a partner's achievement of PFP interoperability objectives would not necessarily be an indicator of how well that partner would perform in collective security activities.

Current uncertainties regarding the forces and missions that will be required of the nations invited to join NATO7 --and the time frames for achieving future interoperability goals for new NATO members--further complicate the task of assessing PFP's impact on future NATO members. Some partner nation officials told us that they would like to have more specific data from NATO to guide their future interoperability efforts.
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