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BASIC RESEARCH REPORT
A Risk
Reduction Strategy for NATO
"Missing
Document" 1: NATO Policy for Crisis Management and Security
Sector Reform
Crisis
Management66
The experiences of the 1990s have proved that tools developed
and used by the international community during the Cold War -
nuclear weapons, regional security Alliances, intra-bloc ideologies
and political discipline - have been of little or no help in
addressing today's new security challenge of intra-state conflict.
To correct this shortcoming, many have made suggestions on how to
improve those tools from increasing their size to increasing their
speed. What is needed, however, is an examination of the actual
nature of intra-state conflict, since the tools themselves are
rendered useless without a fundamental understanding of how such
conflicts evolve and die. Like a fireman trying to put out a fire
with a gun who eventually decides to make the gun larger to improve
his effectiveness, the international community, particularly NATO,
continues to focus on the tools instead of the problem itself.
The Nature of
Intra-state Conflicts
Intra-state conflicts, unlike interstate conflicts, do not often
produce a direct threat to another states' borders. As a result,
tools such as NATO Article V missions are rendered completely
inapplicable. Furthermore, intra-state conflicts almost always
require a long-term and multidimensional approach, something that
has never been a fundamental strategy of the Alliance. In a recent
report of the Dutch Clingendael Institute, "Building Blocks for
Peace," Dick Zandee talks about the multi-layered cooperation
and coordination that intra-state conflicts require to be completely
defused. He writes, "After intra-state conflict, reconciliation
between people living within the same state is required. This is a
difficult process because it can only succeed if cooperation
replaces confrontation from the grass-roots level all the way up to
the national top-level structures, encompassing all essential
elements of society."67 Therefore, the traditional
pattern of identifying a single goal, determining the tool that best
fits, going in and achieving the goal, and then leaving once the
violence stops no longer applies in most conflict situations. In
fact, often the only way to prevent the recurrence of violent action
is to create a comprehensive strategy for addressing the conflict on
all levels and to develop tools that are able to interlock with and
support those of other actors.
NATO's Approach
to Crisis Management
Recognizing that its traditional collective defense mandate was not
designed for this task, NATO has attempted (with limited success) to
react to intra-state conflict under the heading of crisis
management. In cases like the Balkans, where the conflict itself is
within close proximity to NATO's borders, NATO has had little
trouble justifying involvement in crisis management missions. Thus
far, however, NATO has been unable to create a comprehensive crisis
management vision. Much of NATO's contribution to crisis management
missions has been on an ad hoc basis and virtually none of the
lessons learned have been used to construct a comprehensive crisis
management vision. Therefore, much more work remains.
NATO Rhetoric
Concerning Crisis Management
NATO has made a number of official statements concerning crisis
management, most notably in its New Strategic Concept of 1991:
"In the new political and strategic environment in Europe, the
success of the Alliance's policy of preserving peace and preventing
war depends even more than in the past on the effectiveness of
preventive diplomacy and successful management of crises affecting
the security of its members." It goes on to say that "the
success of Alliance policy will require a coherent approach
determined by the Alliance's political authorities choosing and
coordinating appropriate crisis management measures as required from
a range of political and other measures, including those in the
military field." Unfortunately, since the issuing of those
statements, no "coherent approach" has evolved, although a
few crisis management measures have been formally developed (see
next section). Often times, however, such measures have come out of
conflicting policies. At least in theory, the Alliance continues to
affirm its commitment to crisis management. In 1997, for example,
the Alliance reiterated that "the focus of [NATO] military
forces is no longer on responding to a potential attack, but toward
responding to regional crises. The development of effective crisis
management procedures and the opening of dialogue and cooperation
with the members of the former Warsaw Pact are key in this process
and therefore major goals of NATO."68
Given the tense
situation in Kosovo in the fall of 1998, there was considerable hope
that the Ministerial meeting of the Defense Planning Committee in
December would lead to a formal recognition of existing measures
such as CMX or CIMIC (as described below). Instead, the Final
Communiqu‚ provided nothing substantial on the subject outside of
"a commitment to ensure that the NATO planning process will
continue to serve as a single, coherent system capable of generating
the individual and collective capabilities needed for deterrence and
collective defense; non-Article V crisis response operations;
support for WEU-led operations; and cooperation with [NATO]
Partners." NATO rhetoric on the subject of crisis management
has still not become a reality.
Civil-Military
Cooperation (CIMIC)
CIMIC, the military concept of the civil-military interface, is the
means by which the military command establishes formal relations
with national and local authorities, the civilian population,
international organization and non-government organizations within
its Area of Responsibility."69 While CIMIC is by no
means new, NATO placed added emphasis on CIMIC in 1992 after
deciding to endorse peace support operations under the
responsibility of the OSCE or UN.70 CIMIC's real moment
came during December of 1995 in Bosnia where it was used to support
the relationship between NATO commanders and the national
authorities, civil and military populations in areas where IFOR and
SFOR operations were underway. This demonstrated NATO's recognition
that conflicts, particularly intra-state conflicts, need to be
addressed multidimensionally. In the case of IFOR/SFOR, the
Alliance's military involvement evolved to include interaction with
a wide range of civil implementation organizations including the
World Bank, UNHCR, the OSCE, and the International Police Task
Force. Despite this milestone, the Dayton Agreement neglected to
produce the happy ending many anticipated. Several NGOs, diplomats,
and academics have blamed the lack of coordination between the
civilian and military groups implementing Dayton, thereby supporting
the need for even greater work in the area of civil-military
cooperation.
The good news is that
CIMIC is now recognized as a critical component of future missions.
"In November (1995), we had never heard of CIMIC, we had no
idea what you did... now we can't live without you," said
Admiral Leighton Smith, Commander of IFOR, in April 1996.71
The CIMIC component of IFOR/SFOR can and should serve as a basis for
a more structured approach to a broader range of conflicts. While
NATO is currently working on a CIMIC 2000 plan, it should formally
mention CIMIC in the Strategic Concept it is preparing for the April
1999 Summit. NATO Members should also be encouraged to increase the
number of personnel made available for CIMIC (particularly the
European members as the US already has an extensive CIMIC capability
through its regular and reserve Civil Affairs units). Dick Zandee
stresses the need for NATO Members to avoid different training
practices and develop common concepts, two things that should be
clearly outlined in CIMIC 2000.72 Could, for example,
CIMIC personnel be used as verifiers in missions similar to those in
Kosovo? And how can those personnel be better trained to prevent
them from exacerbating the conflict at hand?
Crisis
Management Exercises (CMX)
Each year NATO conducts a Crisis Management Exercise which is
designed to practice crisis management procedures, measures and
arrangements, including civil-military co-operation. Recognizing the
importance of including PfP Partners in such exercises (particularly
after their contribution to IFOR and SFOR), NATO invited the
Partners to participate in the 1997 CMX, where they were associated
with the natural disaster aspect of the exercise and briefed on the
potential Article V threat to which allies were responding. In
addition to supplemental courses and training, the Partners were
given a series of documents on crisis management, including the
Generic Inventory of Preventive Measures and the Generic Manual of
Precautionary Measures. The CMX in 1998 took it a step further by
including "consultations on political and military developments
and the planning and force generation process for a NATO-led peace
support operation."73 Twenty-one Partners
participated. The 1999 CMX is planned for February and will include
a new focus on preventive deployments in response to UN Security
Council mandates.
The plethora of current
and potential crises requires more than one week a year dedicated to
joint crisis management exercises. Partners and NATO Members need
frequent opportunities to develop joint crisis management strategies
and to learn from the lessons of their joint work in the Balkans.
NATO must now increase the pace and start conducting seminars and
training exercises that reflect the complex nature of intra-state
conflicts.
Enhancing and
Interlocking Crisis Management Mechanisms
While NATO should enhance and build on its existing crisis
management mechanisms, it must not start to assume that it holds
full responsibility for addressing all layers of a conflict. In
fact, the risk in developing better crisis management capabilities
within NATO is that the Alliance may start to believe that such
capabilities do not exist elsewhere. Therefore, it is critical that
NATO understand that any crisis management capabilities which it
develops will serve as a part of the international system and not
the whole. Dick Zandee writes:
NATO is likely to be
involved in future post-conflict peace operations, in supporting
humanitarian operations or perhaps in preventive deployments.
Contrary to the UN, the Alliance is a political-military
organization, which cannot deploy complete civil implementation
components. Nor is there a need to develop such a capacity. Other
organizations possess the knowledge, expertise and experience
required for civil implementation.74
In order for NATO to
develop its role in crisis management in cooperation with other
bodies, it should consider the following recommendations:
Crisis
Management Recommendations
-
Recognize
that the best crisis management is crisis prevention, particularly
in a time when budget cuts and deployment fatigue is
commonplace. Policy makers tend to blame faulty early warning
mechanisms for their inability to practice better crisis
prevention, but several sources of high-quality early warning
already exist. What policy makers lack is an understanding on
how to adequately capitalize on those early warning mechanisms.
The best example is Kosovo, where early warnings were issued for
five years that arms were being stockpiled in the region and yet
nothing was done until violence broke out and hundreds were
forced to flee. Failure of early response is to blame, not
failed early warning. Analysis and early warning currently
overflows from satellite imagery, NGOs and international aid
organizations on the ground, and various other technocratic
mechanisms. New guidelines for action include:
- use early
warning mechanisms to decide when to act preventively.
Policy makers need to familiarize themselves with the indicators
which trigger violent conflicts and learn how to watch for them in
tension areas.
- use information from
people on the ground to find the appropriate actors to
engage in crisis management strategies. For example, in
Kosovo the US and NATO made the mistake of assuming that President
Slobodan Milosevic was the key actor and chose not to deal with
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). This mistake has simply given
the Kosovo Albanians the option of blaming all atrocities on the
KLA and thereby avoiding US intervention or condemnation.
Furthermore, information from people on the ground should be used
to improve NATO's understanding of ethnic minority identities and
the ramifications of potential conflicts within the wider context
of European security.
- use early warning
and analysis to create coordinated strategies.
Again, in the case of Kosovo, 45 international humanitarian aid
organizations are currently in the region and yet several areas
still lack the necessary food and supplies for survival. Why?
Those 45 organizations have refused to cooperate with local NGOs
that possess the necessary knowledge and capabilities to get the
supplies to dangerous and hard to reach areas.
- turn to the analysis
available to determine the types of personnel required
before sending anyone to the region in question. When it
was decided that 2,000 verifiers were to be sent to Kosovo in the
fall of 1998, no one knew where they would come from and what type
of training would be required for such a mission. Early analysis
indicated, however, that verifiers would most likely be used as
hostages later in 1999 and therefore, should not be unarmed or
sent in the first place.75 As the unarmed verifiers
began arriving in the region at the end of 1998, it was clear that
such early warnings were not heeded.
-
Recognize
that diplomacy without force can work and
has worked in many cases. Unfortunately, the old adage that
"if it bleeds, it leads" is a testament to the
attitude that the media usually takes toward conflicts. In fact,
in those cases where diplomacy without force is effective, the
public rarely hears about it. Instead, it is often the failures
that receive publicity, leaving many to conclude that diplomacy
without force is ineffective. There have been several cases,
however, where international negotiators have prevented or are
trying to prevent the potential outbreak of violence. These
include the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno
Karabakh (which the OSCE is currently involved in) and the
removal of Soviet nuclear missiles in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan
and Belarus after the USSR collapsed. There are other examples
where various regional and subregional organizations such as the
EU, OAU, OAS and ASEAN "have taken or encouraged
initiatives toward conflict-threatened countries like Macedonia
and potential inter-state hotspots such as the South China Sea
islands."76 If such initiatives received greater
publicity, policy makers could be quick to learn the benefits of
both acting preventively and examining non-military solutions to
intra-state conflicts.
-
Distinguish
and promote the early involvement of other actors in
crisis management, particularly the EU and the OSCE. First, it
is important to clearly define the instruments, roles and
capabilities of other actors in order to prevent duplication.
The EU, for example, should be given the chance to deal with the
political aspects of crisis prevention and develop civilian
intervention units (see following section) while the WEU (until
it's absorbed into the EU) should deal with some of the military
aspects of crisis management. These include missions ranging
from humanitarian and rescue operations and traditional
peacekeeping to more robust peace support.77 A formal
working relationship between the EU and NATO should be
developed, especially once the European Commission appoints its
Common Foreign and Security representative in 1999 ("Mr. or
Ms. CFSP"). This relationship would build a bridge between
the numerous economic and political-military tools which
Europeans possess, thereby enhancing institutional triggers and
Europe's ability to implement sound crisis management policies
on its own. Like the EU, the OSCE also needs to outline its role
in crisis management in cooperation with NATO. Only through
transparency with other security organizations will NATO create
effective and lasting political strategies that have the ability
to complement, not duplicate, the work of other actors. In the
preface of a report issued by the Carnegie Commission on
Preventing Deadly Conflict, the commission's co-chairs, former
secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and former Carnegie Corporation
president David Hamburg said:
We have come
to the conclusion that the prevention of deadly conflict is, over
the long term, too hard - intellectually, technically, and
politically - to be the responsibility of any single institution
or government, no matter how powerful. Strengths must be pooled,
burdens shared, and labor divided among actors.78
-
Cooperate
with the EU and OSCE to develop Civilian Intervention Units (CIUs).
This report recommends that Civil
Intervention Units be created for the purpose of non-military
intervention. Such non-military instruments should be developed
by a non-military body like the EU (perhaps through the European
Community Humanitarian Office). The EU, by expanding its current
capacity, could then make the units available to the OSCE. Some
elements could be drawn from existing structures, while others,
particularly those that relate to training and recruitment will
need to be newly created. (see diagram below for suggested
elements to include in the units). NATO should support the EU
and the OSCE in its creation of this capacity. Furthermore, NATO
should endorse the requirement for CIUs and recognize that as a
military organization, this function is not its role. The NATO
Summit and the EU Summit in June 1999 should both act to create
CIUs.
The CIUs will need a training and development establishment.
Experience over the last ten years indicates a requirement to be
able to deploy some 5,000 to 15,000 people in the field, which
would require an establishment of 15,000 to 45,000, allowing for
rotations. The CIUs would include police and paramilitary
formations equipped with light Armored Personnel Carriers. In
the first instance, these could be drawn from, for example,
French CRS riot police, Italian Carabinieri and German border
units.
-
Assuming there will
be crises that require NATO to interfere, conduct crisis
management and peace support missions under the authority of the
UN and the OSCE. In theory, this is a move NATO
supports. However, NATO is unable to provide the intelligence it
receives during these missions to the UN or the OSCE because of
the NATO internal commitments not to share information with any
state outside of NATO or with any body that has members other
than NATO members. If NATO hopes to partake and successfully
contribute to a mulitdimensional approach to crises, it will
need to alter this policy.
Managing crises is a
task that requires organizations like NATO to look well beyond the
experience of the past 50 years and to focus on an entirely new form
of conflict. NATO, through a number of statements and a handful of
crisis management mechanisms, recognizes this but has yet to act
adequately. Much more work needs to be done, particularly in
creating long term political strategies that reflect both the nature
of intra-state conflict but also the interests and capabilities of
its members and Partners. Links need to be established, early
warning mechanisms utilized, roles defined, and military action
fine-tuned so that NATO can help create the right conditions for a
political settlement, implementation and final resolution of crises.
Security
Sector Reform
Western donors are recognizing that traditional international
assistance programs are ineffective in addressing deep-rooted
structural impediments to sustainable development, namely those
associated with what might be called the dysfunctioning security
sector of recipient countries. For example, one of the most pressing
problems of maintaining security in many poorer countries is the
proliferation and unlawful use of small arms. Law enforcement
agencies in such countries are usually incapable of investigating
and prosecuting offenders, or of collecting and guarding such
illegal arms, and may even compound the problem themselves by
committing serious abuses against civilians, driving up illegal
demand for weapons.
Traditional approaches
by donor countries to address such problems have for the most part
been totally inadequate. International assistance to train and equip
armed forces, police and other law enforcement agencies, have been
guided more by the narrow commercial and political interests of the
donor governments than an overall recognition of the international
scale of the crisis.
Providers of
international military assistance to poorer countries in Africa have
included all the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security
Council - China, France, Russia, the UK and the US - as well as
other states such as Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the
Netherlands, Israel, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and others. Although the
scale and type of security assistance has varied, one common feature
has been that almost no meaningful information is published giving
details of the assistance or the human rights considerations
included in programs by such donor states (even where they profess
to respect international human rights standards). Not surprisingly,
the proliferation of armed conflicts and the abuse of human rights
by recipient military personnel has cast public doubt on the
continuation of such military aid from Western states.
Looking at NATO
specifically, its programs with Eastern European states under the
auspices of the PfP have focussed on the civilian control of the
military and on improving the quality of armed forces. The focus on
quality has tended to emphasize reaction forces, new communications,
and combat capability. It is clear, however, that the projection of
Alliance values requires a stronger program to project them into the
operational habits of partner states' military, para-military, and
police force structures. Nevertheless, these elements form a very
small part of existing training programs even though PfP and the
EAPC provide a ready made process through which such security sector
reforms could take place.
The fundamental problem
with most security sector reforms remains the lack of
accountability, training and responsible resourcing of military,
security and police personnel in many poorer countries. There is an
urgent need for new approaches. Traditional analyses do not see
security as first and foremost a human right and a necessary
prerequisite for sustainable development. Or, to put it another way,
they do not see human security as the foundation of state security.
All too often the analysis of military, security and police
relations, as well as arms proliferation and the supply of other
security equipment and services, is focused exclusively on one
sector, agency, or practice at the expense of seeing how the
combined services operate in relation to one another.
Recommendations
In order to enhance the development of Alliance values, NATO should
ensure that all forces which participate in Alliance and member
state sponsored training are trained in the legal duties and
responsibilities of security forces. This
training should emphasize the applicability of human rights and
humanitarian law. In addition, the development of political control
of armed forces in post communist societies would benefit from
education or training in the methods used to cultivate democratic
culture, for example, in the Bundeswehr. Steps should be taken to
ensure that the highest standards are expected of all partner
nations in these respects.
More generally, an
important part of security sector reform is the changing attitudes
and new policies of influential donor governments. For example the
British, Canadian and Norwegian governments have been active in
placing security sector reform on the agenda of intergovernmental
agencies. These states should also apply their policies within the
Euro-Atlantic area.
Chart
of Civilian Intervention Unit structure (PDF
format)
A Risk
Reduction Strategy for NATO continued
Introduction
| Section 1 | Section
2 | Section 3 | Section
4 | Section 5
Section 6 | Section
7 | Section 8 | Endnotes
| Appendices
.
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