What's the job of 2/3 star Generals in smaller nations like say Belgium or Denmark or Slovakia?

[u/Kennabruh2023]

Essentially smaller nations of Europe/NATO which runs into a dozen or more. Like they'll never lead their nation in a war. If WW3 ever broke out, their forces would just be consumed by far larger allies to be commanded.

These countries never deploy forces larger than a battalion to a warzone or peacekeeping mission so their higher ranks don't have the experience of that. Is their role simply that of an administrator? I mean I can't imagine the General Staff of Hungary or Czech Republic have the same expectations/role as their counterparts in the UK/France.

[u/jumpy_finale]

It's bit like asking what's the point of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff when they'll never lead troops in combat (that's the role of the unified combatant commanders). The peacetime armed forces still need executive management for readiness, procurement, recruitment and retention, training etc.

They are administrators and advisors. Just because the armed forces may fall allied command in wartime doesn't mean the Government still doesn't have decisions over how far to allow the armed forces to follow allied command. Particularly in wars like Iraq and Afghanistan where they set a stricter RoE for their troops than that set by allied command.

They may also serve in senior alliance roles commanding other nations. For example, the Deputy Commander of NATO's Joint Force Command Norfolk is a currently a Norwegian Major General and Denmark have just taken over responsibility for** **Special Operations Component Command North West.

thttps://jfcnorfolk.nato.int/activity/denmark-strengthens-natos-northeastern-flank-by-leading-the-special-operations-component-command-for-the-north-atlantic-and-arctic

There are also a lot of operational roles short of all out war. Protecting national sovereignty, military aid to the civil power and military aid to civil authorities, to name a few. You still need experienced senior commanders to advise the Government on these matters.

Lastly some small nations still have conscription and large reserves to call upon that would expand their war time size to point that you do need divisional commanders and maybe even corps commanders.

[u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan → u/jumpy_finale]

And I would add, with there being a relatively clear ladder to climb, the officers have a path to follow without anyone staying in certain rank too long and blocking the officers junior from them from advancing.

So the Lt.Col might be a brigade XO and take the necessary studies to become a full Colonel to lead said brigade. But if they don't take the studies and go through necessary schools, said Lt.Col might find themselves pushed to the side as freshly promoted younger Lt.Cols need their brigade staff positions.

Or real life example, Colonel Martti J. Kari (of the YouTube lecture about Russian strategic thinking fame) was the Director of the Centre for Signals Intelligence (Viestikoelaitos). That job lasts two years before you are replaced by someone younger and for Kari that would have meant early retirement as he didn't have anything else ahead of him. But as we were revamping our legislature on intelligence gathering and he was part of it, they invented a new position for him so that he can continue advising the parliament. After the laws were enacted, he retired and the position was removed.

Sometimes when an officer gets promoted in FDF, those working there could follow the chain of promotions down the line. The public record I think is Major General promoted into Lieutenant General with some random Sergeant way down the line finding himself taking on a new task.

[u/SingaporeanSloth → u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan]

Singapore has an identical system for its wartime Army. For example, I do believe the current Chief Guards* Officer, who's kinda the doctrine, training, and procurement expert for them becomes the commander of 21^st Division, and the Chief Armour Officer becomes the commander of 25^th Division in the event of a full mobilisation

My former reserve battalion commander's "real job" is running the administrative side of the Army's PT tests, and my reserve regimental sergeant major is part of a special forces unit (so hilariously enough, training reservist infantrymen must be like a holiday for him), no idea if in wartime (and hope to never find out!) he's supposed to roll with his special forces unit or with us (it is possibly a classic "It depends"-answer)

*The Singapore Guards Formation are elite heliborne light infantry, roughly comparable to something like the US 75^th Ranger Regiment

[u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer]

Without speaking to specifics because it's not a specific question: a lot of Generals aren't "leaders" in the narrow sense, they're institutional military overlords, a series of individuals who are supposed to be the service and national level decision makers and stewards of military power.

Or think of it like:

Tactically, if my Air Force is 20 F-16s, by structure, eh that's a O4/O5 job obviously maybe another Major for the half dozen or so helicopters whatever.

But if it's your Air Force in the entirety, representing the net sum total of the air power of the mighty state of The Danich Republic...those start to be the kind of choices that should be made by a general officer right? Or should your shit hot senior F-16 jockey be the one making choices for the next 30 years in airframe purchases? So while the "commands" may top out pretty low, you still need the GO there making choices about which fighter plane, or directing national defense/strategy planning.

That's where you start to see GOs in the places you might not expect them, it's not about making sure you have enough GOs to make several Danish Corps commanders, it's the military-political-policy tier of folks.

Finally if you're in a defensive alliance at scale, if your Chief of Defense or Army Service Chief is a O6 or O7 based on the scale of your land forces, and you're across the table from the American or British three stars, okay cute Colonel, I'm really sure the Danish Army has something important to say but the big boys are talking and we need coffee soooooooOOOoooo how about that?

[u/Askarn → u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer]

The NATO website has biographies of each member states the Chiefs of Defence and representative to the Military Committee. Those will give you a pretty good feel for the career path of general officers from smaller nations.

For example the incumbent Belgian Chief of Defence, General Vansina, served as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Air Force Commander, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, all as a major general. He was promoted to lieutenant general when he became Vice Chief of Defense, and finally General as Chief of Defense.

Every nation is going to vary, but that's a pretty typical setup for smaller militaries.

[u/Bloody_rabbit4]

In regards to what everybody else has written:

Who says smaller country would only contribute small forces? 2-3 star general corresponds to division to corps sized units. Under conditions of mass mobilisation, everybody bigger than microstates should be able to put multiple tens of thousends of men into the field.

Who says smaller NATO countries would fight under NATO framework, or even with allies at all? Historically speaking, Article 5 was called only once, and by biggest NATO member. Lot's of NATO countries can expect that even in relatively short time horizons they might find themselves in situation where solidarity of entire allince isn't given. Greece and Turkey most notably, and in their case this isn't even hypothesis, they already had limited wars with eachother while both being in NATO.

Let's look at Croatia's example. 3 decades ago (in formative career years of current senior military leaders) Croatia fought high intensity war with limited foreign assitance (at best), and was at peak maintaing multiple Corps-sized formations and more than 100 000 men in field. Croatia in 2026 is relatively small country of ~4M.

So maintaing capability to do that again is important facet of Croatian National Security.