Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

À l’occasion des commémorations liées aux 30 ans de la chute du mur de Berlin, Marion Van Renterghem, auteur de Mon Europe, je t’aime moi non plus (Stock, 2019) analyse pour l’Institut Montaigne ce double mouvement par lequel l’Europe centrale et orientale intègre l’Union européenne tout en construisant une critique radicale de son modèle. Trente ans d’une construction européenne placée sous le signe du doute.
 
Si l’on…

Trump foretrækker ’New Europe’

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United Nations peace operations often operate in complex theaters where a wide array of actors are also deployed by specific member states or regional organizations to effectively address peace and security challenges, and on November 4th, IPI and the French Ministry of Armed Forces held a policy forum to explore peacekeeping partnerships.

The event featured two panel discussions and launched two IPI publications, Partners and Competitors: Forces Operating in Parallel to UN Peace Operations by IPI Senior Fellow Alexandra Novosseloff and Lisa Sharland, Head of the International Program  of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), and Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by Paul D. Williams, Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, opened the morning-long discussion by noting that six UN operations are now fielded in partnerships with regional, subregional, and other non-UN forces, and he suggested this pattern presaged upcoming deployments. “Regional and subregional bodies are increasingly authorized by the UN Security Council to take on roles for which the UN peacekeeping forces are ill-suited,” he said. “Parallel forces will be an essential aspect of planning and deploying all UN peacekeeping in the future.”

Laure Bansept of France’s Ministry of the Armies said there had been around 40 such coalition deployments since the end of the Cold War and that they were “helpful in situations where the UN lacks the capacity or skills to work in certain sensitive contexts” and allowed the UN to “focus on its mandates.” Referencing France’s support for African-led peace operations, she said these partnerships proved essential “when humanitarian situations rapidly deteriorate and threaten the stability of a region, and no other organization can address it as immediately.”

IPI Research Fellow Namie Di Razza said that regional organizations “offer what UN peace operations don’t have—they have different entry points and different resources and capacities.” Citing her experience researching the case of Mali, she warned, however, that while all actors pursue the same objective in different ways, they also risk “confusion, conflation with peacekeeping operations, and duplication.” She suggested there should be “a clear division between forces.”

Ms. Sharland listed three “rationales” for deploying parallel forces:

• Where there is a humanitarian imperative, and immediate action is necessary, they can respond more rapidly and robustly than a UN force.
• Since parallel forces can be more advanced militarily, they can overcome reservations about the capability of UN peace operations.
• They can serve national interests and intervene to protect their own nationals.

She also listed four “classifications” of parallel forces:  military stabilization, crisis response, insurance or deterrence, and capacity building, and three different types of actors: bilateral, multinational, and regional organizations.  “No two parallel forces are the same,” she said, “so while we can draw some broad lessons, we must be conscious of each unique context.”

Her co-author, Dr. Novosseloff, addressed some of the challenges these parallel force partnerships pose. “UN and parallel forces may have different motivations and goals, and this impacts the way they work on the ground and also their effectiveness,” she said. “The lack of mutual understanding and communication at the strategic level can be more damaging than we think. The divisions of labor that should be at the heart of the deployments are not clear enough.”

She said that central to these concerns was “the impartiality of UN peace operations and how partners can work with non-UN forces that may have different objectives. It impacts the perception of local populations so the impartiality of the UN will be at stake.” Such a lack of distinction, she said, could be exploited by “those seeking to undermine the peace or the process by going after the UN.” And potential mission overlap raised the danger of UN forces being “dragged into situations for which they are not equipped.” Airing these objections, Dr. Novosseloff said, should not be seen as minimizing the positive elements of parallel deployments, “such as additional niche capacities, military robustness, and political support. But the various stakeholders have to make stronger efforts to make them less of competitors and more genuine partners.”

The report makes a series of specific recommendations, but in general, Dr. Nosovoleff concluded, it represented a “plea for a stronger cooperation between all stakeholders involved in crisis management because all the money spent comes from the same pockets, and there needs to be a greater accountability.”

Col. Richard Decombe, Defense Mission of the Permanent Mission of France to the UN, said that while there remained room for improvement in how parallel forces operate, “it’s already an achievement.” Detailing the work of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), he explained how a coordinating forum involving five different partners (MINUSMA, Barkhane, G5 Sahel Joint Force, Malian Armed Forces, and EU training mission) met every two months. “What is in place is quite good, in terms of coordination and communication so the partners are at least informed on what the others are doing,” he said. What they can do better, he said, was having a stronger focus on building up the capacity of local security forces.

Naomi Miyashita, Senior Political Affairs Officer, UN Department of Peace Operations, said that parallel forces were of great value to the UN, which typically confronts situations with a dense web of competing regional and international interests and no clear path to a comprehensive political solution. “Parallel operations shape the space that others have for alternative approaches,” she said.

Self-criticism was essential, she added. “We must be constantly asking ourselves what the progression of the conflict has been and be constantly critically evaluating whether our interventions are having the desired effect and whether stability in itself is a good enough long term objective. We need to be clear about where we add value and where we have strength and comparative advantage. For the UN, it’s its political role, support for political processes and ability to protect civilians.”

The second panel of the morning provided an opportunity to discuss Paul D. William’s IPI report on Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The report describes AMISOM as the AU’s “longest, largest, most expensive and deadliest” peace operation and says that for the UN it is “the most profound experiment not only with providing logistical support in a war zone, but also with partnering on the political front.” Dr. Williams described AMISOM as “probably the most complicated model for any modern peace operation we’ve ever seen,” a model, he said, that “evolved in response to a series of crises and in an ad hoc manner.” As a consequence, he said, the AMISOM model is “not one that screams out for replication, but there are a lot positive things we can draw from it.”

Since AMISOM reflected “the primacy of politics”, the fraught state of politics in Somalia, a country with no state authority for decades, has prevented the mission from becoming effective, he said. “AMISOM has been unable to deliver a peace dividend because the Somali government did not come in behind it and support it.”

In Dr. Williams’ account, AMISOM was less nimble than its principle adversary, the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, and the conflict became “cat and mouse”, with the government regularly “displacing” al-Shabab but “not destroying its capabilities.” The result was starkly counter-productive, he said. “Extending state authority and consolidating it in a place where the central government is not universally accepted as legitimate is not peacebuilding, it’s actually conflict-provoking.”

AMISOM has also failed to stabilize the polarized society, attract local support, shape an exit strategy, or design what kind of government structure it should leave behind, he said. “At a fundamental level, there are real limits to what a peace operation can achieve when the local actors do not want to see the issue reconciled and resolved. Until the parties in Somalia reconcile, AMISOM will be stuck holding the line and not generating the means for its successful exit.”

Rick Martin, Director of the Division for Special Activities in the UN Department of Operational Support, acknowledged that the situation in which AMISOM is working is “very complex.” But he said there were lessons to be learned, principally that “a partnership of the sort we have in Somalia needs to start at the strategic level—it has to be built on planning, as a contingency for further cooperation, and focus on building capacities between the two organizations. ”He agreed with Dr. Williams that the AMISOM model should not be replicated but conceded that “something similar is likely to evolve again in the future.”

Alhaji Sarjoh Bah, Chief Advisor on Peace, Security, and Governance, AU Permanent Mission to the UN, said that the UN mission in Somalia compared favorably to the UN mission in Afghanistan. It illustrated, he said, the particular challenges that Africa presented. “The AU talks about peace operations, not peacekeeping. Peacekeeping is driven by consent, impartiality, but our peace operations range from peacekeeping to open warfare and counter insurgency. When we went into Somalia, there was a clearly identifiable enemy, so in the views of al-Shabab, we were ‘legitimate targets.’ We haven’t been deterred by the absence of peace to keep. We have gone in, created peace, and then maintained the peace, as in Somalia and Liberia.”

Among the lessons he said were learned from the mission in Somalia were that from the outset, there has to be a “political strategy” and “planning” for a subsequent “multi-dimensional phase,” and neighboring states must be “involved and committed.”

Chloé Marnay-Baszanger, Chief of the Peace Mission Section of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), said that “we are witnessing a reconfiguration of how the international community responds to conflict, and Somalia has been a good example of how to think through our processes. If the UN is not the primary vehicle for leading international intervention, then how can we make sure that human rights are still a priority in crisis response?”

She said that Somalia presented a distinct problem because there was no Protection of Civilians (POC) mandate to AMISOM. In its absence, she said, “what we managed to do through the human rights due diligence policy, we managed to strike a conversation about how we reduce the likeliness of violence against civilians in the context of complex violence.” She said that the most important lesson that the Somalia and the G5 Sahel experiences taught was “going forward, we put mechanisms in place so that from the beginning, we don’t have to course-correct.”

Dr. Di Razza moderated the first discussion on parallel forces, and Mr. Sherman the second on lessons from AMISOM.

Le voyage que commence Emmanuel Macron en Chine s’annonce difficile, car il doit répondre à des impératifs contradictoires. On peut en distinguer quatre. D’abord, celui de la diplomatie française, qui se veut d’une portée globale, en ces temps où le multilatéralisme se réduit comme une peau de chagrin. Le climat et la protection de la biodiversité sont des terrains plus favorables que la réforme de l’OMC, où la Chine défend bec et ongles son statut…

Stefan Stahlberg 2019-11-04T09:58:00Z

Figure 1. Past and current parallel forces around the world (Click for full graphic)

Figure 2. Timeline of parallel force and their type (Click for full graphic)

Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has authorized or recognized the deployment of more than forty parallel forces that operate alongside UN peace operations. As the Security Council has deployed peace operations in increasingly non-permissive environments, the division of labor between UN missions and these parallel forces has blurred, and their goals have sometimes come into conflict. This raises the question of whether they are partners or competitors.

This report examines the missions that have operated in parallel to UN peace operations to identify how to strengthen these partnerships in the future. It analyzes and categorizes the types of parallel forces that have been deployed and examines the rationales for deploying them. It also looks at strategic and operational challenges, including the challenges unique to peace operations operating alongside a counterterrorism force. Finally, drawing on lessons from past and current parallel deployments, it offers recommendations for member states, the Security Council, and the UN Secretariat. These include:

• Strengthening coordination of assessments, planning, and application of UN standards: The UN and actors deploying parallel forces should conduct joint assessments and planning when deploying or reconfiguring missions. The UN Security Council should also engage more regularly with parallel forces and encourage the continued development of human rights compliance frameworks for them.
• Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and areas of operation: Peace operations and parallel forces should clearly delineate their responsibilities and areas of operation, assess the risks of collocating, and improve strategic communications with the local population. The Security Council should also continue to put in place mechanisms to strengthen the accountability of parallel forces, especially when peace operations are providing support that could contribute to counterterrorism operations.

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The United Nations agendas for Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and for Protection of Civilians (POC) both deal with protecting vulnerable populations. The comparison of these two agendas and opportunities to enhance protection were the focus of a November 1st IPI-Canada roundtable discussion, held under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.

Discussants expressed concern that protection of women from sexual violence has been prioritized over other forms of gendered violence, such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, sexual violence against men and LGBTQ communities, trafficking, and domestic violence. One reason, agreed participants, is that gender-based violence is chronically underfunded. In addition, women are often appointed as gender experts solely because of their sex.

The experts lamented the fact that women tend to be seen only as victims of violence and not as agents of protection from violence. To overcome this barrier, speakers highlighted the need for more female uniformed and civilian personnel on the ground in peacekeeping missions with POC mandates and involved in developing POC strategy. Even so, they noted, women’s participation is often treated with a tokenistic, “tick the box” approach.

In order to insure that peacekeeping missions better and more safely engage communities, especially with women, participants agreed that accountability measures in peacekeeping should be strengthened, and that it was necessary to embrace a wider understanding of “protection.” One way to do this, they said, was to frame accountability around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, since UN member state governments have made public commitments to concrete goals and indicators and to carry out certain gender-sensitive measures of protection.

To truly mainstream these concepts, discussants suggested it would be useful to conduct local analysis in conflict communities and examine intercommunal conflicts. Speakers said that the strategic integration points of the WPS and POC agendas were climate change, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The second session of the workshop focused on research questions. Participants pointed out that gender considerations are often an afterthought in peace operations, and explored ways to implement POC that do not reinforce the stereotype of women as victims. They pointed out programs that have been working well and recommended monitoring and scaling up these efforts.

One question that arose was whether domestic violence should be addressed in POC mandates. Discussants argued that intimate partner violence is not unrelated to conflict, and that it must be included in gender-based violence analysis and action. However, doubts were raised as to whether military and police personnel, who are the primary actors in peacekeeping, were the right people to address this intimate type of violence.

Finally, participants discussed how best to incorporate male victims in protection peacekeeping mandates and pointed out that because of patriarchal systems of power, the threats men and boys face are under-reported and protection of men and boys receives less attention. Discussants highlighted the fact that “gender” is not specific to women and that to say, “we need more women in peace operations to carry out the WPS agenda” takes the onus off of men to implement the WPS agenda and reinforces the stereotype of women as victims and men as perpetrators of violence.

Alexandros-Lukas Axiopoulos 2019-11-01T12:17:00Z

Alexandros-Lukas Axiopoulos 2019-11-01T10:58:00Z

The Arctic’s melting ice not only acts as an early warning system for the world’s climate, but also makes this region an indicator of change for international security policy. The Trump administration sees the Arctic primarily as an arena of competi­tion between great powers. This could both benefit and harm the region. A greater engagement on the part of the USA would be welcome, but if it comes with an at­tempt to exclude other states, this would damage the high level of cooperation that has held sway in the Arctic thus far. US Arctic policy has become a variable that is dependent on great-power rivalry. The resulting polarisation of relations makes it difficult to find the necessary common solutions for coping with the changes caused by global warming.

Stefan Stahlberg 2019-10-31T10:31:00Z

Increasingly, states are openly and assertively pursuing their national interests in international politics. The US, for instance, is revoking important international agree­ments on disarmament, trade and climate change. Other countries with a claim to global power, such as China and Russia, are pursuing an aggressive territorial policy. The withdrawal of the UK from the European Union (EU) would mean the loss of an im­portant partner, undermining its ability to implement a strategic and self-confi­dent course of action at the international level. This is all the more worrying since any erosion of the rules-based international order requires a forward-looking and effective policy for shaping the future. Every time a binding international agreement is called into question or revoked, the threshold for uncoordinated unilateral action is lowered. Unexpected crises and conflicts might therefore occur more frequently in the future. Consequently, governments wanting to promote multilateralism should invest in joint strategic foresight. A multiperspective approach appears to be prom­ising for identifying situations in which coordinated action with like-minded part­ners offers opportunities to proactively shape international affairs.

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The international community’s role in supporting women as vital stakeholders in an inclusive and enduring peace in Afghanistan was the subject of an October 30th IPI policy forum cosponsored by Cordaid, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and the NYU Center for Global Affairs.

Rina Amiri, Senior Fellow at the NYU center and longtime expert on peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, said that while the world’s weariness with the ongoing Afghan war was speeding up people’s eagerness to come up with a way to end it, it was also resulting in concessions being made on earlier promises of inclusion. “Women’s rights and inclusion has moved from an absolute priority of the international community to something that is relegated just to inter-Afghan talks,” she said.

In light of this, she asked, “What are the arguments that we need to make that we’re not making, how can we move from lip service to genuine commitment, what are the ways that we should be thinking about inclusion and process design?”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor spoke of a disturbing discordance between the pledges of UN member states to the women, peace and security agenda that she heard voiced in the Security Council debate on the subject the day before and the reality that women are still being kept from positions of power and influence 19 years after the passage of the landmark resolution 1325. She alluded to the example of the work done in Sudan by women “putting their bodies on the line, breaking curfews, braving tear gas yet still excluded from the discussions that determine the future of their communities.”

Storai Tapesh, Deputy Executive Director, Afghan Women’s Network, said that recent peace negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in the Qatari capital Doha allowed for more women’s participation than in past talks but still did not attract the necessary support from the international community. “We saw the added value of women during the recent dialogues in Doha,” she said. “It was us, the women of Afghanistan, who were putting important issues on the table. As opposed to the men, we were not negotiating out of a position of self-interest but pushing the real issues such as human rights, the red lines of the constitution and the need for an immediate ceasefire.”

Though those talks have now stalled, Ms. Tapesh said the women of Afghanistan are still “very much committed” to them and want to see them resumed and “facilitated” by the international community. Clarifying the kind of support they needed, she said, “Afghan women do not want you to fight our battles; we need support for our voices and space to advocate for peace.”

Testifying to the importance of women’s inclusion to the sustainability of peace processes, Karen Pierce, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, said, “You cannot actually build a truly prosperous society that enables any country to realize its full potential if you exclude some 50% of the population from the economic and legal life of the country, never mind the social. More than half of all peace processes collapse within five years if they don’t have sustainable provisions, and those sustainable provisions have been shown in well-documented evidence to include gender and women’s provisions.”

Ambassador Pierce was asked by the discussion moderator, Jake Sherman, director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, about how to balance the push for women’s rights with the overall push for a peace accord without one jeopardizing the other. “You must have some very robust clauses about human rights and women’s rights, but I don’t know if in a negotiation with an informal organization such as the Taliban, it is good to go in loudly with your red lines,” she said. Instead, she explained, “the point at which you ask for the things you really need is at the end when peace is in sight.” Signaling the critical nature of this sequencing, she warned, “When we sacrifice the long term goal for short term expediency, we end up regretting that quickly and find ourselves back at the table negotiating peace again.”

Ms. Pierce acknowledged that it was particularly difficult to introduce the subject of women’s rights into conversations with the Taliban, a group notorious for its overt sexism and violence against women. “But the fact that is a difficult argument isn’t an argument for not making it,” she said. She added that those who counsel taking up the subject only “at the pace that the Taliban want” are ignoring evidence of women’s rights having been brought into the process successfully with tact, good timing and persistence. “You do it incrementally, you do it gradually, but above all, you do it steadily, don’t go backward.”

Mahbouba Seraj, a member of the Afghan Women’s Network, urged the international community to adopt a principled position on Afghanistan without regard to pleasing one side or the other. “Do not worry about the Taliban or Trump, but take a stance because if you don’t do that and stay on the basis of being wishy washy with the Taliban, then they are going to take advantage of that.”

Teresa Whitfield, Director, Policy and Mediation Division, UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said that actions to include women in peace processes had to go beyond the numbers. “We need to normalize the process that women have substantive contributions in peace processes and not just that there are two women at the table,” she said. She asserted that obtaining respect for Afghan women’s rights would require a “creative” approach, given the nature of the Taliban. “The Taliban doesn’t include women in leadership so we cannot recruit and include them through their political or military power,” she said. Among the alternatives from her office’s experience that she suggested were advisory boards, gender subcommittees, women lawyers, broad consultations with civil society, online platforms, and social media information sharing.

In conclusion, Ms. Whitfield stressed, “The absolutely fundamental need for those of us who represent the international community and are on the outside of conflicts is to put in the legwork, the analysis, the research, the knowledge, and always focus on harnessing international forces. The demand for Afghan women’s rights comes from Afghan women, and that’s what needs to be represented in some shape or form at the table in the peace process.”

En observant le déferlement de critiques dont les acteurs au pouvoir font face d’une part, et les tensions sociales qui se manifestent de manière régulière, en France comme aux quatre coins du monde d’autre part, on pourrait être en droit de s’interroger sur les actions des décideurs politiques et l’efficacité de ces derniers : font-ils assez pour répondre aux enjeux du 21ème siècle (parmi lesquels l’environnement, la crise migratoire ou encore le…

Juliane Liebers 2019-10-30T10:42:00Z

An assertive Chinese foreign policy poses challenges for Danish and European interests both in faraway seas in Asia, but also increasingly at home, where China’s strategic and commercial interests mix within European borders.

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The death of ISIS-leader al-Baghdadi isn´t necessarily the grand victory it’s been presented as. The actual effects hinge on the reaction inside the ISIS-hierarchy - and the Sunni population’s future stance towards the group

Minda Holm presents research from the project World of the Right