NATO’s bureaucracy is weak despite its organizational appearance.

Evidence

Despite the appearance of organizational strength, the particular structure of NATO and the nature of its day-to-day interactions actually make for a weak bureaucracy. NATO’s international staffs (the International Staff and the International Military Staff) work almost exclusively at the direction of the Secretary-General and NATO’s Military Committee, respectively. The new post-cold war activities have been added to the responsibilities of these staffs without a corresponding increase in personnel or resources, so that, in the words of one senior NATO official, “they [the international staffs] have barely enough time to do what we ask them to do, let alone what they might want to do.” — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the expectation that an organization pursues its own interests; if NATO is a weak bureaucracy it cannot autonomously generate a new enemy on its own, which refines the MOC question.

Related

• NATO positioned itself among rival security organizations to prove its continued relevance (similarity 0.82)
• NATO adapts tasks to persist, as organizational resources enable institutional survival. (similarity 0.81)
• High institutionalization distinguishes NATO from traditional alliances. (similarity 0.81)
• NATO’s bureaucracy policed member defense cuts to protect its own force-level standards (similarity 0.80)
• NATO survived the cold war’s end due to institutionalization, not merely threats (similarity 0.80)
• NATO’s dense institutionalization beyond mutual defense is what made it survive its founding threat. (similarity 0.80)
• NATO accepted nuclear downsizing without organizational resistance (similarity 0.80)
• NATO functions as a dense elite-network security regime, not merely a treaty. (similarity 0.79)
• NATO’s expanded ties to outside organizations fit institutionalist expectations better than organizational ones. (similarity 0.79)
• NATO reoriented itself after the Cold War and stayed valuable without a compelling threat (similarity 0.79)
• NATO has expanded rather than dissolved after the Soviet threat ended. (similarity 0.78)