Non-Member State Participation in NATO Maritime Operations: Benefits in Burden-Sharing - Operation Active Endeavour and Ocean Shield, Defending Shipping Traffic from Terrorism and Pirate Attacks

This mid-2018 report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Since the early 1990s, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has increasingly welcomed the participation of non-member states in its operations and activities. This thesis examines two NATO maritime operations: Operation Active Endeavour (OAE), conducted from 2001 to 2016, and Operation Ocean Shield (OOS), conducted from 2009 to 2016. In each of these operations, NATO benefited from the participation of non-members, notably in information sharing. OAE and OOS provided opportunities for non-members to gain valuable insight into how NATO and its Allies operate individually and together in multilateral missions. NATO and its partners thereby gained the potential for more extensive and higher-quality participation in the future. Moreover, NATO obtained an outside perspective on its operations and practical support in the allocation of responsibilities undertaken by NATO Allies and non-NATO partners. The participation of non-NATO partners benefited both the Alliance and the non-member operational partners.

In September 2001, following the terrorist attacks in the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched Operation Active Endeavour (OAE), one of the Alliance's several responses to counter-terrorism. Shortly after OAE's creation, NATO accepted assistance from countries that were not part of the Alliance, although the Alliance had done this with comparatively few operations in the past and those cases involved ground forces in the Balkans. In August 2009, in response to a United Nations (UN) call to curb piracy and protect aid efforts in Somalia, NATO began Operation Ocean Shield. Unlike OAE, OOS included non-member participation from its start. Both operations represented a shift in NATO policy toward the inclusion of non-members. However, did the addition of these countries provide a benefit to the operation or NATO?

This thesis is organized in five chapters. Following Chapter I, Chapter II focuses on NATO, providing a background on its origins and purposes. Chapters III and IV each examine one of NATO's maritime operations: OAE and OOS, respectively. Each chapter will analyze the origins of the operation, any transformations during its activity, and the contributions of the participants with due attention to the activities of non-members. Chapter V, the conclusion, compares the findings about OAE and OOS and determines to what extent—and in what ways—the inclusion of non-member states in these NATO operations was advantageous. The conclusion focuses on lessons learned and makes recommendations for future operations.