European Security and Defence Forum Workshop 2: New Transnational Security Challenges and Responses Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars? Organisational Resistance to the Integration of Defence, Diplomacy and Development Andrea Baumann D.Phil candidate, University of Oxford 11 November 2009 This paper was presented at the European Security and Defence Forum (ESDF) organized by Chatham House. Chatham House is not responsible for the content of this paper. The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions, but the ultimate responsibility for accuracy lies with this document’s author(s). The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars? INTRODUCTION The risk of state failure and the multiple sources of instability associated with it – the availability of ‘ungoverned space’ for criminal and terrorist elements, generations of unemployed and uneducated youth, low economic growth as well as wider regional repercussions – have come to be perceived as major security challenges in the twenty-first century. It is widely agreed that interventions in states emerging from (or threatening to descend into) violent conflict require a blend of expertise from a variety of institutional actors both military and non-military. Consequently, several Western nations have sought to design frameworks for the coordinated application of military power, development assets and diplomatic engagement. In both national and multilateral forums, a policy consensus has formed around the need for ‘comprehensiveness’ at the conceptual level and ‘integration’ at the practical level. The paper takes the United Kingdom’s experience in pursuing a ‘Comprehensive Approach’ in Afghanistan as the basis for a critical examination of the assumptions that have informed the policy discourse in the area of ‘stabilisation’. It challenges the view that hard and soft instruments of state power can simply be combined to form a hybrid type of ‘smart power’. 1 Instead, the organisations behind the labels of defence, diplomacy and development are conceptualised as repositories of specialised professional identities and cultures. In doing so, the paper offers a new perspective on obstacles to integration and the motivations behind individual organisations’ seeming unwillingness or inability to commit to an integrated approach. This endeavour proceeds in two stages. The first part of the paper outlines a three- layer framework for the analysis of obstacles to coordination, and introduces the notion of organisational cultures as key to the understanding of practical coordination problems. The second part critically examines the nature of recent policy recommendations in light of the British experience in Afghanistan over the past three years. 2 1 Hillary Clinton, in her confirmation hearing before the Senate to become the next U.S. Secretary of State, has advocated that ‘We must use what has been called smart power – the full range of tools at our disposal. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.’ in Philippe Naughton, ‘Hillary Clinton says “smart power” will restore American leadership’, Times Online , 13 January 2009. The term ‘smart power’ has been coined by Professor Joseph S. Nye of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and promoted at various occasions. See for instance transcript of a statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 24 April 2008 <http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2008/NyeTestimony080424a.pdf>. 2 A generic reference system has been adopted to account for information obtained in confidential interviews with officials from the British military, the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and the Department for International Development (DFID) and external consultants between November 2007 and January 2010. This system is employed with a view to solving the trade-off between credibility and access to data in favour of www.chathamhouse.org.uk 2 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars? The term ‘stabilisation’ has come to describe both the overarching goal of recent interventions and the way to achieve it. It has gradually found its way into development policy, national security strategies and military doctrine on both sides of the Atlantic.3 While the concept of stabilisation has gained prominence across these different policy spheres, it has remained sufficiently vague to offer a platform for a variety of different organisational discourses. Labels used by practitioners and policy-makers as shorthand for more complex processes have an enabling effect in that they convey a sense of shared understanding and purpose and thereby create the grounds for common action. 4 Through frequent use, however, they tend to become self- evident to a point at which they risk constraining thinking, stifling critical evaluation and suggesting a false sense of harmony by glossing over potential disagreements or inconsistencies. Hence, umbrella terms like ‘stabilisation’ or ‘stability operations’ to some extent obscure the profound differences in terms of priorities, sequencing, trade-offs, and expectations among the various organisations and individuals who are tasked with translating them into practice. ‘Stabilisation’ can be interpreted in a developmental logic as building the basis for longer term development; in a political logic guided by the need to establish a stable and legitimate regime for donor nations to interact with; or in a force protection logic aimed at fostering a supportive environment for troops that find themselves fighting an insurgency and eventually allowing for their timely withdrawal. In particular (but not exclusively) with regard to the latter, stabilisation partly and implicitly fulfils the role of an exit strategy. In situations where a military presence on the ground is required, the ‘stabilisation’ phase implies an institutional tension between ‘partner nation’ and ‘intervening force’ for troop-contributing nations. Due to the difficulty (or impossibility) of controlling or managing local perceptions effectively, this tension between ‘intruder’ and ‘partner’ is arguably true for both military and civilian actors intervening in foreign societies and cultures. The new stabilisation agenda can thus be seen as a discourse that is contested among different groups who compete for definitional power and the most efficient way to understanding the problem at hand. The categories used are those of ‘civil servant’ with an indication of organisational affiliation (FCO or DFID); and ‘military officer’ regardless of rank or service. 3 See for instance U.S. Army Field Manual 3-07 ‘Stability Operations’ (October 2008); US Agency for International Development, Fragile States Strategy (January 2005) ; UK Ministry of Defence (Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre) Joint Doctrine Publication 3-40 ‘Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution’ (December 2008); UK Department for International Development, 2009 White Paper (June 2009). 4 Roland Paris offers an analysis of this process in his critique of the human security paradigm. See Roland Paris, 'Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?' International Security , vol. 26, no. 2, 2001. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 3 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars? ownership. 5 ‘Stabilisation’ is not a value-free description of how Western states go about confronting the security environment of the twenty-first century: it is a discourse within which different players attempt to coin definitions and practices that harmonise with their organisational mandates and priorities. There are ongoing debates over what stabilisation entails, how to measure its impact, and what ‘success’ would look like. In other words, what kind of ‘stability’ is both desirable and achievable through external intervention is by no means an objective measure. Despite the often reiterated need to establish a common narrative 6 amongst all components of an integrated or ‘whole of government’ approach, decision-makers have shown little appetite for addressing the controversies that follow from different understandings of ‘stability’. The narrative of the stabilisation project pursued in Afghanistan has shifted between an ambitious agenda for transformation – involving far-reaching socio-economic and political modernisation and development – and more modest definitions of ‘stability’ in the sense of reducing the insurgency to a non-existential threat to the central government. Justifications for intervention have oscillated between ‘their wellbeing’ (e.g. Afghan women and girls) in an expansive vision of stability and ‘our security’ in a narrow focus on the denial of safe havens to transnational terrorism and crime. 7 It is no coincidence that this discourse emerges in a period of uncertainty surrounding