A Framework for NGO-Military Collaboration
Abstract : What do military professionals need to know about NGOs? The literature on NGOs includes very little about NGO-military relationships in troubled areas. Moreover, the U.S. military fails to convey or encourage an adequate understanding of NGOs in its publications and mid-career military education. Drawing abductively from scholarly literature and inductively from case studies and practitioner interviews, I theorize that the efficacy of NGO-military collaboration varies with the type of NGO (INGO or LNGO) and the type of operation. I crystallize this argument into a typology of NGO-military outcomes. I find that military cooperation with international NGOs is most productive during humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief operations, whereas military cooperation with local NGOs is most productive during conflict and post-conflict operations.
Civil-Military Cooperation: A Way to Resolve Complex Crisis Situations
The first of these three aspects [of war] mainly concerns the people; the second the commander and his army; the third the government. The passions that are to he kindled in war must already he inherent in the people; the scope which the play of courage and talent will enjoy in the realm of probability and chance depends on the particular character of the commander and the army; hut the political aims are the business of government alone.- Carl von Clausewitz1Discussions about the most effective, efficient, and sustainable approach to resolving complex crisis situations have a long historical tradition, even if ongoing debates among politicians and researchers may suggest otherwise.2 The discussions about developments in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan, as well as evaluations of the disasters in Haiti and Pakistan, call for all participants to find new solutions in response to obvious deficits and the looming prospect of failure. This holds especially true with regard to the question of when, where, and how the military instrument should be integrated with the activities of all the other actors involved in the resolution of complex crisis situations based on an overall political rationale.However, an analysis of relevant publications in military and security policy or social science over the last few years clearly shows that different perspectives prevail. From a military viewpoint, the focus is typically on determining the right tactical approach, and the broader debates are only tangentially helpful. By contrast, the civilian side emphasizes that the resolution of complex crisis situations should primarily be obtained through civilian tools.Of course, these rather different perceptions of the same reality are easily explained in terms of the observer's particular expertise and interests - the situation is analyzed and best resolved with the help of the tools available to his or her particular field of expertise. However, such one-sided approaches have not passed the litmus test of reality. They are ill suited to capture and explain the interdependencies of complex crisis situations and combine them into a synergistic whole; most importantly, they do not address the vital issue of sustainability As a result, efforts to provide incentives seep away, capabilities cannot be pooled and focused, and the main target audience - the population in need - looks upon all this activity with increasing caution or even outright rejection.In the form of civil-military cooperation (CIMIC), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has created both a concept and capability to meet such challenges in the field of civil-military interaction (CMI). The following paragraphs examine this tool for its viability against the backdrop of changing conditions and lessons learned. The assessment criterion is the optimization of effects of deployed armed forces at the international level in a broader political context and their ability to make effective contributions. As a first step, the current key elements of CIMIC are outlined and assessed to illustrate the need for transformational change. An extended conceptual approach to CIMIC as a military necessity and capability to resolve complex crisis situations is then offered, against the backdrop of NATO's comprehensive approach and Germany's principle of networked security. This is to be achieved particularly by interlinking CIMIC with the CMI approach currently being discussed within NATO.Description and Transformational AssessmentCivil-military cooperation, as a military capability and as a theoretical idea, was conceptualized,3 developed, and applied for the first time in its present form by NATO in the context of its commitment in the Balkans. This development was originally triggered by an operational-level reorientation of the deployment of forces in significantly changing conflict scenarios after the end of the Cold War. The main objective was the creation of a military tool for analysis and action that would integrate the "civil dimension"4 in an effort to meet the challenges posed by unclear confrontation patterns between opposing forces, changing geographical conditions, political and ethnic considerations, and domestic and international factors. …
The continuing metamorphosis of the humanitarian practitioner: some new colours for an endangered chameleon.
In this article I set out an agenda of good practice for today's humanitarian practitioner. I first outline the distinctive political and conflict-related features of today's complex political emergencies, and the new interventionist strategies of the international community and the United Nations in responding to them. From this description of the new operating environment faced by humanitarian practitioners since the end of the Cold War, I go on to identify a range of key skills required by today's relief workers. These include: informed political analysis; negotiation skills; conflict analysis management and resolution; propaganda monitoring and humanitarian broadcasting; a broader understanding of vulnerability to include notions of political, ethnic, gender and class based vulnerability; human rights monitoring and reporting; military liaison; and personal security and staff welfare. Finally, the article focuses on the moral skills required by today's humanitarian practitioners if they are to work out a new model of humanitarian identity and positioning which supersedes the traditional but devalued notion of neutrality.