Getting ’On the NATO Map’: Marine Corps Innovation and Late Cold War Exercises, 1975–1978

This article examines two pairs of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercises—Teamwork/Bonded Item 76 and Northern Wedding/Bold Guard 78—that had a significant impact on the United States Marine Corps of the late Cold War. These exercises reversed the service’s previous ineptitude, repairing its reputation in NATO and helping to quiet U.S. critics of the corps. More importantly, they spurred innovation and boosted deterrence, inspiring enduring changes in service training, equipment, and doctrine while also increasing Soviet perceptions of the conventional threat posed to their flanks. This article adds both to the study of peacetime military change and the historiography of the late Cold War.