UN, NATO & Other Regional Actors
UN, NATO AND OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PARTNERS IN PEACE?
This multi-year project, which began in the last quarter of 2000, aimed to explore a constructive and sustained relationship between the UN, NATO and other European regional organizations in conflict management, in the context of past and present collaborative efforts in the Balkans. It also ssought to develop specific suggestions for future interaction between the UN and regional organizations and explore the implications of these interactions for other regional actors in Asia, Africa and Latin America in their ties to the UN.
The UN and NATO are the two major security institutions created following the end of the Second World War but with widely different approaches to the maintenance of international peace and security. For five decades, under the prevailing politico-ideological divide, most of their respective member states saw little cause for or value in cooperation between the global collective security arrangement of the UN and the regional, collective defense mechanism of NATO. However, developments in Europe in the post Cold War period, such as the rise of intra-state conflict in the Balkans and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact created a new dynamic, requiring significant conceptual and practical adjustment for both the UN and NATO. Peace and security challenges today no longer involve only traditional inter-state threats to which the UN and NATO were initially mandated to respond, but rather consist of complex emergencies with military, political, economic, humanitarian and social dimensions. In practice, this has meant that the two organizations have been thrust together in Bosnia during the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and Kosovo during and after the intervention of 1999. In these circumstances, the UN and NATO have cooperated well in the field, but there could be much mutual benefit from reaching a better understanding on a broad range of issues relevant to their future collaboration.
In 1998, well before the apex of the Kosovo crisis, IPA started examining the UN-NATO relationship more closely. Board members Hans Jacob Bjorn Lian (Norway) and Nicolaas Biegman (Netherlands), serving as Permanent Representatives to the North Atlantic Council after previous terms at the UN, advanced the idea. A preliminary Seminar entitled Cooperation between the UN and NATO: Quo Vadis? was held on 11 June 1999 with broad participation by UN and NATO-based Ambassadors and both secretariats as well as independent experts. With strong institutional ties to the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, as well as with NATO and other regional organisations, IPA embarked on the project to undertake in-depth research and provide policy recommendations regarding (a) the role of the UN, NATO and other regional organisations in responding to conflict in Europe and (b) the implications of this relationship for egional organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the field of peace operations.
The project was designed to address three themes: prevention and management of conflict; security challenges in post-conflict situations, especially security-sector reform; and the implications of closer UN-NATO collaboration on relations with other regional actors in Asia, Africa and Latin America over three working groups. Each working group aimed to bring together a cross-section of officials and experts from international and regional organizations, think-tanks and academia to focus on different aspects of the emerging relationship between the UN and regional actors.
The project was formally launched at an Opening Conference titled UN, Europe and Crisis Management, which took place in Paris on 19-20 October 2000. The two-day conference helped to clearly outline the parameters of the project and also featured a keynote speech by Lakhdar Brahimi, the chairman of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations setup by the UN Secretary General.
The first working group on Cooperative Prevention and Management of Conflict in Europe met in New York on 20-21 April 2001 and sought to clarify the evolving relationship between the UN and regional organizations in Europe, on the political, doctrinal and operational level with the objective of examining how this co-operation can be improved to make peace operations more effective in future. The role of the Russian Federation, a key actor in the region, was also examined to identify how best to enlist Moscow’s support in peace operations.
The second working group on Managing Security Challenges in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, which met in Ottawa on 22-23 June 2001, examined how the UN’s partnership with regional actors in Europe can be enhanced to promote post-conflict peace-building, particularly in the sphere of security-sector reform. Here special emphasis was placed on the normative and practical aspects of coordinating institutional responses to security challenges in peacebuilding; the role of the military force in managing security-sector challenges during and after the conflict; mechanism to strengthen indigenous civil-police capacity and the rule of law; and reviving the judicial and penal system.
The third working group on Regionalization of Peace Operations met in Potsdam on 11-12 January 2002 and explored how greater co-operation between the UN and regional actors in Europe would affect the peace and security roles and responsibilities of regional organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In light of the increasingly complex peace, security and humanitarian crises requiring the contributions of multiple actors, participants compared and contrasted the European experience with the operational experience of three other specific regions and specific regional and sub-regional organizations. The comparative nature of the discussions helped to identify not only areas of convergence and divergence between the different regions and regional approaches but also to suggest common trends and common tools to enhance cooperation between the UN and regional actors.
The Closing Conference on The UN, the EU, NATO and Other Regional Actors: Partners in Peace? took place in Paris on 11-12 October 2002. The conference was jointly organized by IPA, the European Union Institute for Security Studies, and the Directorate for Strategic Affairs, Ministry of Defense, France. The participants included UN, EU, NATO and OSCE officials, high-level national representatives, academics and independent researchers, and members of the three working groups.
Keynote address at the conference were delivered by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Secretary General of NATO; Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations; Ján Kubis, Secretary General of the OSCE; Michèle Alliot-Marie, Minister of Defence, France; and Robert Cooper, Director-General for External Economic Relations, Common Foreign and Security Policy of the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU.
Marking the culmination of this multi-year project, the primary objectives of the closing conference were to present and discuss the principal conclusions of the three working groups; to provide recommendations to international institutions and governments; and to explore further research and policy development projects. As indicated by its title, the closing conference also marked the project’s increasing consideration of the role of the EU, developing in parallel to the evolution of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. A background report based on the findings of the earlier working groups served as the springboard for debate and discussion.
The project produced a series of reports, which provide policy-relevant, action-oriented conclusions for dissemination among decision makers (please see below for an up-dated list of reports). An edited volume, based on the background papers commissioned exclusively for the three working groups, was also prepared.
This project benefited from regular consultations with five partner institutions: The United States Institute for Peace (USIP), Washington D.C.; the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London; the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo; the Netherlands Institute of International Relations (NIIR), Clingendael; and Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin.
The project was generously funded by the Governments of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.