Les réseaux militaires comme acteurs des relations internationales : le cas du Multinational Interoperability Council
For more than fifty years, Western powers have created many different forms of international military networks, in order to strengthen their ties and harmonize their technics, equipment and ways of doing things. To date, these groups have remained largely ignored by the academic discipline of International Relations. And yet, globalization and the rise of information technologies have provided many new actors with an access to political processes, including in the field of security. This evolution sheds new light on the role, mission and responsibilities that states assign to these networks. This research conducts an in-depth analysis of one military network, the Multinational Interoperability Council. The aim of this analysis is threefold: to define international military networks as a category of analysis for International Relations, to document empirically their functioning, and to understand their role in the field of internal security. To do so, the analytical framework combines the conceptual apparatus of relational institutionalism, the theory of social fields, and the methodological tools of the practice turn in International Relations. This combination allows for addressing the institutional, cognitive and practical dimensions of collective action within the network. The analysis reveals that, despite a limited influence, the MIC produces its own identity, capabilities, preferences and effects. The MIC’s actors have been able to create the conditions of its institutionalization, and they have succeeded in turning the network into an intentional actor of the international security field, while it was originally created as a mere structure of exchange of information. The MIC is not able to act autonomously, without states’ control. However, the relations established by the military who belong to it have provided them with capabilities – social, political and expertise capitals – that they would not otherwise possess, and which they can mobilize in their interactions with other actors of the field.
MIC International relations Networks Security Military Practices Institutionalism Strategy Interoperability