NATO Doctrine

Abstract

Ian Jones: The actions to set up and organize the linguistic support of NATO HQs described in the chapters above were largely taken without reference to explicitly-stated rules or official guidance. Allied Command Europe (later Allied Command Operations) had a Directive on Linguistic Services that laid down how those services were to be provided in the peacetime structure. Shortly after arriving at SHAPE in 1989, I revised the version I had inherited from my predecessors, bringing it into line with professional standards. I updated it twice more, in 2006 and in 2011. In the 2006 revision, I added a short chapter governing linguistic services in the PSO headquarters, based on my own experiences. It was not until the 2011 version, issued in October of that year, and which contained a much expanded chapter on those HQs, that I was able to base the text on a new NATO doctrine ‘ALingP-1 — Linguistic Support for Operations’, that had been promulgated the previous month.¹ The ACO Directive however only applied to the part of the NATO command structure under the authority of SACEUR. It did not apply to the nations contributing forces to NATO-led operations.