NATO's Support to Stabilization and Reconstruction

Dr. Daniele Riggio

NATO Public Diplomacy Division

Rome, Center for High Defense Studies, 25th September 2006

 

NATO's support to stabilization and reconstruction endeavours must be viewed, first of all, as a conceptual continuity with what established by the 1999 New Strategic Concept of the Atlantic Alliance, which lists crisis-management as one of the core tasks of the NATO of the post Cold-War era. Moreover, it must be viewed as the reflection of the political parameters that have come to underpin the new transatlantic consensus of the post 9/11 era, namely the Alliance's commitment to go where the threat is and its pledge to transform such commitment into an operational reality, through the reliance upon deployable, sustainable, and flexible forces.
 
At present, NATO's support to S&R transpires from a variety of crisis management operations, from mentoring of the national defence reform process in Bosnia, to traditional peace-enforcement in Kosovo, through anti-terrorism in the Mediterranean Sea with Operation Active Endeavour, up to assistance to an Afghan-led stabilization process in Afghanistan, without of course forgetting forms of tailored support provided by the Alliance in Iraq and Darfur.
 
Specific factor of analysis can be extrapolated by NATO's experiences in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The Balkans have presented a relatively clear-cut picture, in the sense that they have reflected S&R endeavours within the boundaries of more or less defined international arrangements signalling a straightforward chronological separation between combat and post-conflict phases. Moreover, in the Balkans it has been relatively easy to recognize the pivotal presence of a military component and its inter-face with other non military actors.
 
Afghanistan, whilst revealing some similarities, has presented new features, including the parallel coexistence of S&R and combat endeavours within the same battle space, a massive reliance and expectation by the local societies on the enabling characterization of international military forces to create an operational edge necessary, for Afghan national security forces, to move the stabilization process forward, and the sperimentation of a new concept (the PRTs), which, whilst reflecting the legitimate rationale to institutionalize NATO/ISAF's operational outlook on a country-wide scale, has nevertheless accentuated the urgency to define new parameters that could help forging a pragmatic relationship between military actors and that multifaceted framework of interlocutors represented by the NGOs.
 
Pakistan, in its turn, has added a new dimension to the whole S&R debate by establishing a new analytical layer, namely NATO's involvement in relief support operations. It can already be ascertained that the Pakistan mission will not set a new precedent.
 
Overall, the doctrinal debate appears to have already developed some key conceptual features. These include the acknowledgment that the modem battle space calls for a new modus vivendi between military and non-military actors, that international cooperation is key throughout the various stages of any given crisis management endeavour, and finally that the military instrument cannot achieve, alone, S&R objectives, unless it is properly completed with additional efforts to boost economic development and good governance.
From a NATO's perspective there is a need to define consensus on what NATO's specific S&R tasks should be, although the Afghan experience can already provide some food for thought, given the wide gamut of tasks that de facto NATO/ISAF troops exert. What transpires clear, in any event, is that a full fledged NATO's S&R policy entails the right package of combat and non-combat capabilities, a proper degree of political-military interface in the theatre, and a comprehensive policy of engagement in support to defence institutions and regional cooperation.

 

 
 
 

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