Effective Civil Military Interaction In Peace Operations

This book contains unique, firsthand experiences of both the military and civilian actors involved in civil-military interaction processes. It presents lessons learned from a variety of situations, from both NATO-led operations and UN Integrated Missions, and in different geographical areas, such as the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. Rather than taking the improvisational approach, these lessons learned will enable military commanders and staff and their civilian counterparts in governments, International Organisations and NGOs to come fully prepared for the challenges of today's multifaceted missions. With a better understanding of the mandates and methods of the various civilian and military actors comes greater respect for each other's comparative advantages. With respect comes smoother cooperation. And with that, efficiency gains and enhanced overall mission effectiveness. Each chapter contains solid analysis and advice, specific to the functions found in military organizations, from Intelligence to Personnel and from Logistics to Engineering. Cross-cutting themes like Gender, Human Rights and Corruption are also included in this work that brings together some of the best that practitioners and academics can offer.

This book investigates the challenges related to civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) and offers a new perspective by examining the social role of NATO CIMIC soldiers. The intertwining of the civilian and military spheres has become a significant part of the contemporary security environment. However, the relationship between the military and civilian actors is often troubled, filled with misunderstandings and rivalry. In their duty to provide a link between the military and diverse civilian environment, soldiers involved in CIMIC are exposed to varied, often-conflicted expectations that make up their social role and put stress on their performance and the effectiveness of CIMIC. By drawing on analysis of NATO CIMIC documents and a series of interviews with CIMIC soldiers, the author is able to, first, identify the elements of the CIMIC role and, second, diagnose the inherent role conflict and describe methods of dealing with it. Looking at civil-military cooperation through this lens reveals new layers of challenges that impact its effectiveness and a better way to understand the complexity of civil-military interaction. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, military sociology, peacekeeping, security studies, and international relations, as well as military practitioners.

The humanitarian intervention in Kosovo provides an excellent case study of civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) in peace operations. The intervention required 40,000 heavily armed combat troops from NATO and Partnership for Peace countries to provide security and coordinate relief efforts with the UN, the OSCE, and over 500 humanitarian organizations. CIMIC provided the mechanism for such cooperation and support. Like any concept employed in coalition warfare, CIMIC varied widely in the quality of its application. This study examines the effectiveness of CIMIC within each brigade area and throughout the province as a whole. It identifies best practices and common mistakes to derive lessons that might inform the conduct of future missions, such as those currently underway in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the mix of different actors and organizations taking part in complex peace operations, the concept of integration has become increasingly relevant, as evidenced by the lively debate among theoreticians and practitioners within the peace operations community. Integration, in its narrow sense, is often seen as difficult and even undesirable. However, if understood as part of a larger trend toward strengthening peace operations, integration can be said to reflect the importance of cooperation and coordination among all actors involved in peace operations. Increasingly, military, police and humanitarian actors find themselves, sometimes sharing but more often, co-habiting a common space in complex peace operations. Faced with diverse perspectives, lack of clarity regarding roles and responsibilities, and the need to identify lessons learned, they are finding new and innovative ways to collaborate and synchronize their actions. While revised operational principles, guidelines and doctrines are carefully crafted to incorporate the multiplicity of perspectives found in intervention efforts, more is required to enhance our understanding of current approaches to today's complex operations. This issue of The Pearson Papers thoughtfully discusses and analyzes the theme of cooperation and coordination through a selection of four major articles and one dispatch from the field. The first article, The Implications of Regional Peace Operations on examines the effects of a shift from multinational to regional peace operations on the United Nation's ability to maintain international peace and security. While some positive outcomes are identified from this shift, ultimately, the argument remains that enhanced and concerted coordination amongst all actors involved in peace operations is critical to achieve long-term peace and security. Coordination becomes even more critical where leadership is dispersed, efforts are fragmented and there is disagreement on priority access to scarce resources and facilities. This is reflected in the remaining articles and dispatch from the field, which discuss the theme of cooperation and coordination among diverse actors in the context of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is an interesting prototype of UN-mandated but coalition-led intervention, which not only disrupts our traditional "linear" understanding of peace processes, but pushes the boundaries in terms of how we view, understand, and work in integrated environments. Given this background, the articles examine the challenges and effectiveness of civil-military interaction in Afghanistan and the advancement of a "whole of government" approach from a coalition, Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), and humanitarian perspective. Lastly, the dispatch from the field provides a credible account of the nature of the challenges of cooperation and coordination on the ground. -- Publisher's Description.

This book explores the impact of different civil-military structures on operational effectiveness in complex peace operations. Recent operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are examples of grand failures to enforce peace and to promote democracy and development through international interventions. A missing variable in analyses of these conflicts hitherto has been the nature of the civil-military interface and its impact. The principal argument of this book is that the civil-military interface should ideally be integrated within the interagency arena as well as within the defence ministry. Such integration has the potential to provide joint civil-military planning and comprehensive approaches to operations. It also creates mutual trust and understanding amongst officers and civil servants from different departments, agencies and units, and thereby, a co-operative interagency culture. For the civil-military interface to function effectively within the chain of command during operations, a co-operative culture of trust is essential. Crucially, structurally and culturally integrated civil-military structures are likely to provide a more balanced view of the functional imperative of the armed forces. The results are armed forces fit for whatever purpose the political leadership decides for them - including complex peace support operations. Empirically, the book applies the theoretical framework to a comparative study of US and British patterns of civil-military relations, their strategic cultures and their operations in Iraq. This book will be of much interest to students of peace operations, civil-military relations, humanitarian intervention, and security studies/IR in general. Robert Egnell is a lecturer in War Studies at the Swedish National Defence College and a senior researcher at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. He was awarded the 2008 Kenneth N. Waltz Dissertation Prize for the best thesis in the field of international security.

As the antithetical relationships between the civilian and military agencies and components of modern peace operations are essentially cultural and are rooted in misinformation and prejudice; effective civil-military operations are needed from the outset of an operation.

The NATO deployment in Kosovo provides a unique opportunity to study the effectiveness of civil-military cooperation in humanitarian interventions and other stability and support operations. Such a study can provide valuable insights into how better to conduct a wide range of future missions. The importance of this cooperation has already been demonstrated in Somalia and Bosnia. The occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that it also has an important role to play in the war on terrorism. Winning hearts and minds through humanitarian assistance and development often produces the intelligence necessary to find terrorists. A clear distinction must be made at the outset between the NATO concept of "Civil-Military Cooperation" (CIMIC) and the American term "Civil Affairs" (CA). While CIMIC refers specifically to cooperation between NATO units on the one hand and civilian institutions (including humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, etc.) on the other, CA includes a broad range of activities, of which civil-military cooperation is but one. The distinction between the two concepts has more than academic significance and helps explain some of the difficulty the U.S. military has with humanitarian interventions. CIMIC now figures so prominently in NATO planning that all Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations and prospective members are scrambling to develop their own CIMIC doctrine. Given the lead role the United States often plays in NATO missions, the U.S. military must make sure that its own approach to CIMIC is as consistent as possible with that of its allies. The best way to assure this consistency is to compile a list of best practices and common mistakes discovered by different national contingents in an actual mission and to then work these lessons into CIMIC doctrine. The current disinclination to assume the long-term task of nation-building makes CIMIC even more important. The best way to assure that humanitarian interventions remain of limited and reasonable duration is to hand over control as soon as possible to civil authorities and international, nongovernmental, and private volunteer organizations (IO, NGO, and PVO). CIMIC is the tool for this transition. CIMIC also operates as a force multiplier, making it possible for a significantly smaller force to have the same or greater effect than a larger one. The ability of CIMIC to make possible shorter, smaller deployments should have great appeal to militaries concerned about over-extension of their limited resources. Making CIMIC more effective requires garnering lessons from past and current missions. Many characteristics of Kosovo and the international mission there commend it as a case study. To begin with, the province is both small and compact with a manageable population. This compactness has meant that, despite widespread destruction of infrastructure and homes, rebuilding has occurred rapidly. Unlike Bosnia, where a brutal war lasted for 3 years, conflict in Kosovo remained brief and the loss of life, though considerable, was not appalling. Such conditions make the possibility of return of the minority Serbian community possible. The Kosovo Force (KFOR) faced the possibility of armed confrontation with the Yugoslav Army and the reality of guerrilla action by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The first possibility quickly disappeared, and the second proved easily handled.

Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) is the relationship between militaries and humanitarians. This book demonstrates the wide variety of national approaches to CIMIC activities, introducing some theoretical and ethical considerations into a field that has largely been bereft of this type of debate.