Posted on 05/09/2003 6:15:58 AM PDT by DeuceTraveler
Wall Street Journal May 9, 2003
Norway's Small Military Plays Big For Global Role
By Philip Shishkin, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal
RENA, Norway -- On a moonlit winter night in 1943, a small team of Norwegian commandos parachuted from a British plane into the freezing void over Nazi-occupied Norway. Trekking on skis through harsh mountain terrain, the soldiers sneaked up to a factory producing "heavy water," a hydrogen-rich compound vital for Adolf Hitler's plans to develop an atomic bomb. The commandos slipped through the German patrols, blew up the factory and disappeared without losing a single soldier.
It was perhaps the proudest moment in Norway's military history, recorded in books and retold with admiration by soldiers and civilians alike. And it is an early example of the latest military vogue -- "force projection," or sending soldiers to a distant battle and giving them all the necessary hardware to win.
Now, Norway is seeking to resurrect some of the same strengths that brought success to the eclectic team of Norwegian hunters-turned-commandos on that winter raid. Armed with a big increase in its defense budget, Norway is reshaping its military with a particular focus on highly trained special forces, on troops skilled in clearing mines and disarming other munitions and on the ability to deploy soldiers at very short notice to wherever in the world their presence may be required to counter the new threats of terrorism or unstable states.
At a time when many of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's European members struggle with falling or stagnant defense budgets and obsolete armed forces, Norway's military reform shows that even small NATO countries can be relevant players in the new global security environment.
On a rain-soaked field here at one of Norway's biggest military camps, two soldiers with rectangular cushions on their feet resembling giant flip-flops advance cautiously toward a Yugoslav antitank mine sticking out of the mud. The soft shoes distribute the foot pressure over a larger surface area. The mine-clearance team also has a truck with a special flail fitted in the back. Moving through a minefield, the flail would spin, pummeling the ground with long chains tipped with heavy lead weights. The impact of the weights is so strong and quick that it can crush a landmine before it has a chance to explode. Some of this gear was used in Afghanistan, where Norwegian mine clearers were deployed in early 2002.
"After Afghanistan, some other nations got their eyes" on the flip-flops, says First Lt. Thomas Oestby. Developing-world conflict zones are brimming with land mines and unexploded ordnance, and the Norwegians were very busy in Afghanistan. The old Soviet minefields were clearly marked, but the newer Afghan-laid mines were scattered everywhere, without a pattern. When asked to help identify the mined areas, locals would simply make an all-inclusive sweep with their hands, Lt. Oestby recalls.
It is a far cry from the kind of battle that Western Europe was preparing to fight throughout the Cold War. The old doctrine of territorial defense against a massive Soviet land invasion placed a premium on large numbers of troops and tanks. Recent American-led wars -- from Kosovo to Afghanistan to Iraq -- brought home to Europe how lackluster and outdated their armed forces have become in comparison with the U.S. With Washington's encouragement, some NATO members are trying to speed up military restructuring, and the Norwegian experiment is among the most advanced.
Presiding over the changes is Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold, an energetic, 41-year-old politician with wavy blond hair and a passion for handball and snowboarding. Her appointment a year and a half ago was initially treated with skepticism; she was an outsider with little experience in defense. But she quickly earned the respect of the military by showing great enthusiasm for her job. During a winter-training exercise in which a soldier intentionally skis into a lake in full combat gear and then disentangles himself, Ms. Devold stripped down to a tank-top and shorts and jumped in the same frigid lake. The soldiers watched incredulous from the snow-covered bank.
Ms. Devold helped convince Norway's parliament to give her a large budget increase, which she used to transform 13 underfunded brigades into one deployable force and allocate more money to such niche capabilities as mine-clearing and special forces. She also got the parliament's approval to shelve the old territorial-defense doctrine, a highly sensitive subject here that required some compromises. A country of just 4.5 million people, it is wary of invasions: Norway was occupied during World War II, shares a border with Russia and has a long coastline with offshore oil rigs to protect. So Norway decided to mothball -- but keep -- coastal defense batteries and continued to buy fast patrol boats, in effect saying that while the new mantra of force projection is fine, one still needs to worry about defending one's country.
Ms. Devold is unabashedly enthusiastic about NATO, a historical guarantor of Norway's security, and she advertises her country's demanding terrain as a perfect place for allied exercises. This strategy suffered a minor setback when a NATO plane dropped a cluster bomb in the Norwegian wilderness, causing a public outcry. Ms. Devold's track record at home has made her one of the U.S.-backed candidates to succeed NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, who plans to step down at the end of the year. By way of comment, Ms. Devold will say only that "I haven't got a clue what I will do when I grow up."
The tip of the spear of Norway's military pride continues to be its special forces, which fought with their U.S. and British counterparts in Afghanistan. The Norwegian commandos are now getting more funds and equipment, and there's a political push to expand their ranks. But the training is so grueling that recruiters are running up against the limits of human nature. In one standard drill, trainees go through a marathon-length run in full combat gear, sometimes carrying an antitank mine for additional discomfort, followed by days of living with almost no food and swimming in freezing water.
For inspiration, Norwegian commandos still look back on the valiant exploits of their World War II predecessors who deprived the Nazis of their heavy water. "It is still regarded as the operation," says a veteran special-forces officer.
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