Why alliance interoperability multiplies coalition power

The post-Cold War Western advantage rested on more than raw force size. NATO militaries retained large forces built during the Cold War while slowly reducing them, and they remained part of the same practiced coalition. Unified command, shared training standards, common logistics, exercises, and compatible interfaces made that force more effective than a paper total of unfamiliar national units. A small deployed ship could therefore represent a much larger coalition whose response was understood in advance. Combining forces without those habits could instead reproduce the coordination failures of the Second Pacific Squadron on a larger scale.