Diplomacy, Development and Defense: A Paradigm for Policy Coherence E-Book

• Herausgeber: Bertelsmann Stiftung
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 545

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

The end of the Cold War radically changed both classic policies of national and collective security and international strategies for conflict management and the stabilization of precarious states. The threat of Islamic extremism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shattered any illusions of a peace dividend and have given strategies against state failure a new urgency. The growing awareness of the complex and intertwined problems of human security, socioeconomic underdevelopment and governance deficits as root causes of precarious statehood made policy coherence the new mantra for Western national governments and international organizations. Henceforth, it was envisaged to relinquish the existing division between diplomacy, development and defense in favour of the new comprehensive "3D"-approach. This book is an attempt to assess the extent to which both international organizations and states have lived up to the new insights of the "3D" continuum and adopted strategies corresponding institutional settings and policy instruments to provide the necessary culture of policy coherence for tackling the problems of precarious statehood and the international security challenges those states pose. On the national level, the cases studied are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. On the international level, the United Nations and the European Union were examined. It is hoped, that the lessons learned from whole-of-government approaches and the recommendations drawn from this survey will help both governments and international organizations to excel in dealing with precarious states, thereby making policy coherence a reality in risk assessment, decision-making and policy implementation.

Leseprobe

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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2010 E-Book-Ausgabe (EPUB) © 2009 Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh

Responsible: Stefani WeissCopy editor: Celia BohannonProduction editor: Christiane RaffelCover design: Nadine HumannCover illustration: Fotolia/Maxim MalevichTypesetting and Printing: Hans Kock Buch- und Offsetdruck GmbH, Bielefeld

ISBN : 978-3-86793-258-5

www.bertelsmann-stiftung.org/publications

www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/verlag

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Impressum

Preface

Precarious States Strategies: Toward a Culture of Coherence

The problem of precarious states and international interventions

From ideals to implementation: institutionalizing policy coherence

Works cited

The US Response to Precarious States: Tentative Progress and Remaining ...

Overview

A new focus on weak, failing, and post-conflict states

Foreign aid reform and fragile states

Steps in the right direction, but miles to go

Works cited

The UK Response to Precarious States: Innovative Ideas on the Long Path toward ...

Why do precarious states matter to the UK?

The UK’s altering response to the challenge of precarious states

The emerging challenge of climate change

Conclusion

Works cited

Germany’s Response to Precarious States

Introduction

On methods and sources

The political agenda

Strategy development

Institutions

Procedures

Good practice and recommendations

Works cited

The Netherlands Response to Precarious States

Introduction

Fragile States as part of the political agenda: mixing conflict prevention, ...

Strategy development

Instruments, institutions and procedures

Coordination mechanisms

Assessing the performance of the Netherlands’ whole-of-government approach

Critical factors for success, and key challenges

Works cited

Names and corresponding titles

The United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture

Introduction

The political agenda

Peacebuilding strategy

Institutions and procedures at the intergovernmental level

Institutions and procedures within the UN system

Conclusions

Works cited

EU Responses to Fragile States

Introduction

Political agenda

Strategy development

Institutions and actors

Coherence and coordination

Funding mechanisms

Recommendations

Specify common strategic goals

Revitalize the conflict prevention program

Work toward “whole of EU” approaches

Works cited

About the Authors

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Preface

Precarious statehood-the inability of a state to enforce public order and to fulfill its international obligations-implies severe challenges to global security. At least since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it has become clear that the risks posed by weak or failing states are not limited threatening the life of their own citizens or destabilizing their immediate neighborhood. The failure of a country to govern and control its territory jeopardizes security on a global scale. Such state weakness or failure often abets the emergence of lawless zones, which provide safe haven for international terrorism and organized crime. Just recently, the mounting danger of piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia underscored the international security implications emanating from precarious states.

Over the last ten years, there has been a growing awareness of the threats posed by precarious statehood and the international community has had to admit that its existing policy approaches do not suffice. In the face of the multidimensional and interdependent challenges that precarious states pose, some very basic questions have arisen: Whom should diplomacy address if there is no government present with which the international community could negotiate? What can development policy achieve if its projects within a precarious state fall victim to a hostile security environment repeatedly? And what purpose is served by military intervention if it succeeds in winning a war but fails to establish peace?

In suggesting answers to these questions, policy-makers and scientists in the West have become convinced that foreign-policy-related instruments need to be realigned and a whole-of-government approach needs to be implemented in order to deal successfully with precarious states. This means relinquishing the existing division between diplomacy, development and defense in favor of a comprehensive approach that coordinates and combines civilian and military policy tools.

This book is an attempt to assess the extent to which both international organizations and states have lived up to the new insights of the “3D”-continuum and adopted strategies corresponding institutional settings and policy instruments to provide the necessary culture of policy coherence for tackling the problem of precarious statehood. On the national level, the cases studied are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. All four countries have been, and still are, involved in peacebuilding and reconstruction in precarious states, albeit to different degrees. On the international level, the United Nations and the European Union were the obvious choices for a close scrutiny.

Hopefully, the lessons learned from whole-of-government approaches and the recommendations drawn from this survey will help both governments and international organizations to excel in dealing with weak and failing states, thereby making policy coherence a reality in risk assessment, decision-making and policy implementation.

It was a pleasure for the Bertelsmann Stiftung to work with so many outstanding experts during the project and we are most grateful for the dedication with which the authors of these case studies have supported this project. We are indebted to Reinhard Rummel of the SWP (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) for serving as commentator, especially for the chapter on the European Union. Special thanks are due to the two co-editors, Wim van Meurs and Hans-Joachim Spanger, for their advice and encouragement.

Stefani WeissDirector Bertelsmann Stiftung, Brussels Office

Precarious States Strategies: Toward a Culture of Coherence

Stefani Weiss, Hans-Joachim Spanger, Wim van Meurs

The end of the Cold War radically changed both classic policies of national and collective security and international strategies for conflict management and the stabilization of precarious states. Initially, optimistic expectations of a peace dividend from defense budgets coincided with enhanced ambitions to move beyond “containment” and invest in sustainable solutions to protracted inter- and intrastate conflicts. The threat of Islamic extremism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shattered any illusions of a peace dividend, redefined the parameters of national security and given strategies against state failure a new urgency.

The growing awareness of the complex and intertwined problems of human security, socioeconomic underdevelopment and governance deficits as root causes of precarious statehood made policy coherence the new mantra for Western national governments and international organizations. “3D coherence” requires institutions that once largely acted autonomously-defense, diplomacy and development-to exchange information, share resources and cooperate in strategy development and implementation. Meanwhile, it has become a truism that civil and military crisis management do not go together easily and that ill-construed development or humanitarian aid in an escalating conflict risks counterproductive side effects. Both the timing of initial 3D coherence endeavors and their results varied for each national government and international organizations, depending on institutional architecture and political culture as much as on the actual challenges in the field. The present study compares the institutional implementation of the coherence agenda by four national governments-the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands-as well as by two international organizations-the United Nations and the European Union.

The problem of precarious states and international interventions

Foreign governments’ efforts to give the newly created states of the post-colonial era a lease on life, or to reconstruct war-torn states and societies, are old and new at the same time. For several decades, these efforts have been the business of diplomatic mediation, development assistance and military intervention, with the anti- as well as post-colonial wars of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa providing the most pertinent examples. However, much as the Cold War for most of the postwar period had spoiled any thought of a uniform approach by the international community, initially a need for harmonized and coordinated activities by relevant government agencies was scarcely recognized, in part because the relevant institutions, procedures and concepts were not yet in place.

Thus, military involvement either meant fighting a war, as in the cases of Vietnam and Afghanistan, or was confined to mere peacekeeping under UN auspices: third-party intervention (often, but not always, by military forces) to separate the fighting parties and keep them apart. Peacebuilding-that is, the long-term process of capacity-building, reconciliation, and societal transformation after violent conflict-was not yet on the agenda. The German Bundeswehr’s operations were even more restricted. Up until the first comprehensive missions at the beginning of the 1990s (UNTAC in Cambodia 1992- 1993 and UNOSOM II in Somalia 1993-1994), German armed forces were engaged globally in scope yet on a rather limited scale, with missions confined to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Similarly, development assistance needed time to establish itself as a conceptually and institutionally distinct government activity, based on the assumption that development as an inevitably long-term venture required dialogue and partnership with the recipients in order to properly identify local needs. This widely shared premise nevertheless led to quite different institutional results. Whereas in Germany, for instance, a separate Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development was established, the American agency USAID made it only to a branch within the State Department, and in the UK the development agency frequently changed its status in line with government composition. The repercussions on political decision-making varied correspondingly.

Conceptually, another paradigm shift occurred within the international development community in addressing the issue of governance. The popularity of the “developmental state” as the engine of growth in the 1960s and 1970s was followed by a trend away from the state when, in the 1980s, the efforts at “structural adjustment” set in. Toward the end of that decade, mitigating calls for “good governance” complemented these trends, thereby again giving greater weight to state institutions and their proper functioning. With the end of communism, propelled by the third wave of democratization, however, the focus shifted back to civil society. In the 1990s, this trend was accompanied by an emphasis on rewarding “good performers”-countries with relatively effective governments and sound macroeconomic policies-and a neglect of those “weak performers” that, almost by definition, were the ones most in need of aid and that originally gave birth to the notion of development assistance.