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
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 the notion of security (in terms of how it is to be achieved and for whom), which has perhaps found its most prominent expression in the notion of ‘human security’. Far from being restricted to scholarly exchanges with the bounds of the ivory tower, unsettled debates over the linkages between security and development, poverty and conflict, individual grievances and violence have important policy implications.8
5 In the sense of Foucault’s definition of discourses as sites of social relations of power which ‘situate ordinary practices of life and define the social fields of action that are imaginable and possible’ as well as producing social identities and capacities by giving meaning to them. Cited in Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, International Organization , 59 (2005), p.56. 6 See foreword by Jean-Marie Guehenno in Daniel Korski and Richard Gowan, ‘Can the EU rebuild failing states? A review of Europe’s civilian capacities’, European Council on Foreign Relations , London, 2009, p. 8: The EU and its member states must develop a better understanding of ...‘the importance of submitting every component of the effort – military, police, civilian – to a single unified political vision’. 7 This conflation of security and aid imperatives is analysed by Mark Duffield in ‘Governing the Borderlands: Decoding the Power of Aid’, Disasters , 25/4 (2001), pp. 308-320; and Mark Duffield and Nicholas Waddell, ‘Securing Humans in a Dangerous World’, International Politics , 43/1 (2006), pp.1-23. 8 For instance, although a multitude of policy and scholarly documents have embraced the interdependent view of security and development, the nature of the relationship between the two remains strongly contested. Mark Sedra and Jonathan Goodhand contend that ‘the historical and contemporary evidence points to a far more ambivalent relationship between security and development than is currently recognised.’ Goodhand and Sedra, ‘Who owns the peace? Aid, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Disasters , 34/1 (2009), pp. 78-102. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 4 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
PART I OBSTACLES TO COMPREHENSIVENESS: A THREE-LAYER FRAMEWORK FOR DISCUSSION The ascendancy of the stabilisation imperative in the realm of international security and ‘a rise in the interest of political elites in the reconstruction agenda’ have arguably strengthened the agencies identified as ‘tools’ for the promotion of stability. 9 The current relationship between defence, diplomacy and development, however, is marked by confusion over responsibilities and uncertainty over an appropriate division of labour. There is growing realization that a Manichean view of the military ‘breaking things’ and civilians putting them back together is not appropriate. 10 What the new relationship should look like, however, is subject to intense debate. The search for a new division of labour has led to the design of detailed and complex stabilisation ‘task matrices’ within several NATO member states. 11 These tend to proceed from a list of activities that are seen as contributing to stability through their expected impact on security, governance, or livelihoods. The division of labour for these tasks among different organisations – military, police and/or civilian – is then usually determined with a view to the security constraints that the context within which stabilisation takes place (often characterised by fluctuating levels of violence) places on the providers.
Many analyses of interagency coordination have taken a rather mechanical and managerial approach to cooperation problems.12 New coordination mechanisms and tools (e.g. Provincial Reconstruction Teams) have attracted considerable attention in both academic and practitioner circles. 13 But as Roland Paris observes, ‘discussions aimed at improving coordination have tended to overlook ... substantive disagreements and to redefine them in procedural-technocratic terms: namely as “coordination” problems.’ 14 The focus on new mechanisms to improve coordination is not a negative trend per se. However, an overly technical approach provides little scope for
9 Tim Jacoby and Eric James, ‘Emerging patterns in the reconstruction of conflict-affected countries’, Disasters , 34/1 (2009), pp. 1-14. 10 Christopher Ankersen, Civil-military cooperation in post-conflict operations: Emerging theory and practice (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 1. 11 See ‘UK Stabilisation Task Matrix’, Version 1.0, June 2008, by the cross-departmental UK Stabilisation Unit at
addressing ‘clashes’ among different organisational cultures and is therefore unlikely to address underlying conceptual impediments to cooperation.
The paper proposes employing a three-layer framework for the classification of obstacles to integration among military and civilian organisations in the context of stabilisation missions. The framework builds upon three theoretical perspectives on organisations: a functionalist view that sees organisations as fairly neutral instruments; a second perspective that identifies them as unruly bureaucracies; and a third one that treats them as embodiments of collective, shared meanings – or ‘cultures’. From this tripartite structure follows a categorisation of obstacles to cooperation into ‘material’, ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘cultural’ ones. The separation among the different layers serves primarily an analytical purpose. In reality, the layers are interlinked and some obstacles straddle the boundaries between them. The framework provides an opportunity to evaluate to what extent seemingly technical or bureaucracy- related problems have deeper roots in an organisation’s culture and identity. Undoubtedly, material and bureaucratic obstacles to cooperation exist and may be highly relevant in some instances. But their existence may point to disagreement at a more fundamental level. The disaggregation of theoretical approaches to organisations further allows differentiating among policy recommendations and measures introduced to improve cooperation.
Figure 1: Three-layer framework
Layer Perspective Obstacles expected
• Disparities in resources organisations as 1 • Disparities in manpower/staff tools or instruments • Incompatible equipment
• Parochial departmental/individual interests • Rigid project templates, planning processes, organisations as 2 and standard operating procedures unruly bureaucracies • Legal clauses and bureaucratic ‘red tape’ • Career paths and staff profiles
• Different understandings and expectations attached to institutional principles and processes organisations as 3 • Clashing core missions repositories of meaning • Divergence in values and guiding principles • Incompatibility between self-perceptions and assigned roles
The framework and the underlying hypotheses it contains about obstacles to cooperation are designed to critically engage with the prevailing policy discourse at two levels. Implicit in the first layer is the expectation that www.chathamhouse.org.uk 6 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
committing more resources is naturally going to result in better cooperation. Repeated calls for capacity-generation on the civilian side and for the rebalancing of resources among military and non-military branches of government point in this direction. But increasing capacity alone is unlikely to solve the cooperation problem, as will be discussed in more detail later on. The second layer reflects the assumption that resistance to greater integration is mainly a sign of petty ‘turf wars’, inter-departmental rivalry or bureaucratic inertia. One finds ample illustration of this in the policy discourse and scholarly literature, reaching from ‘dissonate bureaucratic cultures’, 15 to ‘departmental tribalism’, 16 and ‘professional snobbery’. 17 An influential US analyst for instance noted ‘what should be an integrated civil-military effort, focused on winning the war in the field is a dysfunctional, wasteful mess that is crippled by bureaucratic divisions.’ 18 Yet, resistance to greater integration does not automatically have to be a function of either insufficient ‘hardware’ or petty bureaucracy. The framework’s third layer suggests that the deeper, less immediately visible differences in worldviews, problem-solving approaches and values that exist among different organisations deserve greater attention. The term ‘organisational culture’ is sometimes used as shorthand to describe collective, shared understandings of how things are and how they ought to be. ‘Culture’ in that regard refers to a set of values, practices, and beliefs held by the organisation as a collective entity on the basis of which a shared identity is formed among its members. 19
Military forces view stabilisation missions through a prism that is shaped both by the immediate and heavy impact of their own presence on the ground and by the potentially grave consequences of any missed opportunities or mistakes. Civilian agencies tend to have a less direct impact and can thus allow themselves a greater margin of error and more time to observe and analyse. Diplomats and development experts are more inclined to look at complex processes and long term consequences which often have to be simplified for the sake of clarity and speed in a military operation. For instance, knowledge of (and consequently sensitivity to) the political economy and conflict dynamics within the target society have become the hallmarks of
15 Robert E. Hunter and Khalid Nadiri, ‘Integrating instruments of power and influence in national security – starting the dialogue’, proceedings of a conference organised by the RAND Corporation on 21 March 2006 at the American University, Santa Monica CA, p.2. 16 Ann Scott Tyson, ‘Standard warfare may be eclipsed by nation-building’, Washington Post , 5 October 2008. 17 Alan Okros, ‘Civil-military cooperation in multilateral missions’, Conference report, Forum for Security Studies , Stockholm (18-19 January 2008), p.12. 18 Anthony Cordesman, The Times [online edition], 10 August 2009. 19 Elizabeth Kier, Imagining war: French and British military doctrine between the wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).; Isabel V. Hull, Absolute destruction : military
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professionalism within the aid community. 20 Militaries tend to approach stabilisation from the perspective of transition (or ‘exit strategy’) rather than as the beginning of a long term process. Development agencies on the other hand are wary of the longer term impact of hastily mounted ‘Quick Impact Projects’ (QIPs). The substance of diplomatic intervention – navigating the political space of the host nation that is contested among cooperative and antagonistic players – is inherently more reactive and indirect than the tangible impact on security and livelihoods that the ‘operational’ organisations seek on the ground. Finally, understandings of what counts as success or failure vary widely among different organisations. The different organisational profiles that emerge from these somewhat anecdotal impressions are schematised in the figure below. The hexagon is formed by three axes, each of which represents a spectrum between opposing ideal-types:
• process-oriented versus outcome-driven organisations • ‘analytical’ versus ‘operational’ staff profiles • diffuse ‘influence’ versus tangible ‘transformation’ of a situation
Figure 2: Organisational profiles
Organisational profiles and stabilisation missions
process 10 8 6 action-oriented analytical transformation 4 deliberative 2 0 hybrid
influence operational
outcome
Compared to task matrices, organisational profiles provide an alternative way of looking at the ‘comprehensiveness’ required in stabilisation missions. The differences between organisational profiles – summarised as ‘action-oriented’,
culture and the practices of war in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, N.Y. ; London: Cornell University Press, 2005). 20 See Mary B. Anderson, Do no harm: How aid can support peace - or war (Boulder; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999). www.chathamhouse.org.uk 8 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
‘deliberative’, and ‘hybrid’ – suggest not only that some organisations may be better placed to carry out certain tasks than others, but also that different organisations may interpret and approach the same task or ‘outcome’ in very different ways. Organisational cultures shape the way in which problems are identified and approached and how solutions are operationalised and disseminated. This suggests that it may indeed matter which (type of) organisation is entrusted with a specific stabilisation task. In practice, the focus on delivery has narrowed the debate over different organisational roles in a stabilisation context to the question of how well individual organisations are able to deploy and operate in a hostile environment. Acknowledging the role of organisational cultures in the generation and application of expertise for stabilisation sheds new light on the possible consequences of seeking greater integration among organisations with different profiles. This further invites us to think carefully about the consequences of a possible transformation or ‘hybridisation’ of these profiles.
Hypothetically, the organisation best qualified to respond to the demands of a stabilisation mission would occupy the centre of the hexagon and stretch out more or less equally to all edges. In other words, it would combine subtle influence with a suitably forceful approach to guide a process of transformation away from violence and insecurity towards long term stability. The unanimous call for greater ‘comprehensiveness’ suggests that no such organisation exists and that expertise needs to be drawn from different corners of the institutional landscape. Within the context of a single government apparatus, the tendency has been to incentivise or push different branches of government to move towards the middle of the spectrum. In practice, this has been taken to imply that civilian organisations should become more ‘operational’ and militaries more ‘subtle’ in their approach.
The foregoing discussion suggests that coordination methods not only need to be ‘calibrated to particular tasks and task-environments’ 21 but arguably also to the specific profiles of different organisations. These profiles may require transformation in some cases but preservation in others. Standardizing different ways of doing business through joint training and exercising enables unified action. But an overly uniform approach risks defeating the initial purpose of a comprehensive approach, which follows from the necessity of bringing a variety of experts from different professional fields together. A middle way that requires an equal amount of compromise and adaptation from each organisation might diminish friction within the coordination process
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itself – but will it lead to better outcomes on the ground? To put it figuratively, by moving each corner of a triangle towards the middle, one risks losing the edges that could be vital to achieving the overarching objective.
21 Paris and Sisk, The dilemmas of state-building: Confronting the contradictions of postwar peace operations , p. 61. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 10 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
PART II: INSIGHTS FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM’S EXPERIENCE WITH A ‘COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH’ SINCE 2006
The United Kingdom’s experience with the implementation of a ‘Comprehensive Approach’ in Afghanistan provides an opportunity to examine some of the claims made above. 22 The ‘Comprehensive Approach’ (CA) initially emerged as a template for cross-government cooperation from an initiative within the British military aimed at promoting ‘jointery’ among the three services and subsequently extending cooperation to the wider government apparatus as well as within the multilateral context of military operations. The CA embodies the vision that military forces provide the space or ‘hold the ring’ for a political solution to develop and reconstruction to take place. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) published a Joint Doctrine Note on the Comprehensive Approach (JDN 4/05) through its Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) in January 2006.23 While JDN 4/05 did not spell out a precise division of labour, the CA was subsequently shaped by the military’s expectations of what its implementing partners should contribute: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) would mainly provide leadership and overall direction while the Department for International Development (DFID) would deliver civilian capability on the ground.
Some four years into the exercise, opinions about the CA oscillate between a measured sense of progress and enduring frustration. Failure to deliver an effective CA has regularly been attributed to both a lack of capacity – particularly in terms of ‘deployable civilian experts’ – and bureaucratic impediments despite a marked reduction in interdepartmental animosities over the past years. Lord (Paddy) Ashdown noted not long ago that US counterinsurgency practice was ‘now as good as the best – and better than any when it comes to getting the civilians in straight after the military (the UK’s department for international development please note)’[sic ].24 Sir Hilary Synnott concluded that 'seven years after the start of the Afghanistan campaign and nearly five years after that in Iraq, we are still trying to fight two wars with a civilian administration which, despite some tinkering, is designed for conventional development cooperation and diplomacy and which is neither
22 British troops have been stationed in Helmand province, Regional Command South, under NATO command as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2006. As of November 2009, British troop levels were announced to be increased by 500 additional troops, bringing the total to over 10,000 (including Special Forces). ‘Brown commits 500 more UK troops to Afghanistan’, BBC News , 30 November 2009. 23 UK Ministry of Defence, Joint Doctrine & Concepts Centre, Joint Discussion Note 4/05 – The Comprehensive Approach , Shrivenham, January 2006. 24 Paddy Ashdown, 'A strategy to save Afghanistan', Financial Times , 12 February 2008. Parenthesis in original. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 11 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
flexible nor hard-nosed enough to take advantage of a sometimes evanescent strategic space created by combat operations.' 25
The following discussion of the UK experience is structured around the two key areas of joint analysis and joint implementation.
Joint analysis Unified decision-making has been among the most frequently cited requirements for greater synergy between civilian and military efforts. Beyond this generic assertion, however, there is little agreement on a precise model. The crucial question is whether a single, integrated model could cater to different organisations’ demands and expectations. Policy recommendations aimed at improving joint analysis have emphasized the importance of joint planning, training, and exercising. A key issue that plays into these processes is the notion of leadership.
It is often observed that military and non-military agencies operate under different time frames (i.e. short, medium and long term). Organisations, however, differ further in terms of to the value and purpose they attach to the planning process and with regard to the expectations raised therein. For the military, planning allocates roles and clarifies responsibilities which then define resource requirements both in terms of equipment and manpower. Diplomats – due to the inherently reactive nature of their core trade 26 – prefer flexible arrangements and diffuse modes of influence over detailed plans designed to pursue fixed objectives. DFID’s emphasis tends to be on ex post facto analysis and evaluation rather than on contingency planning. Civilian organisations often approach joint planning sessions in the sense of deliberating options rather than fixing responsibilities and committing different actors to deliver their respective share of the plan. 27 In the past, this has led to misunderstandings where civilians were perceived by their military counterparts as ‘promising’ capacity that their organisations were subsequently unable to provide. 28 Joint training and exercising is likely to be considered by the military as a means to disseminate a uniform, coherent approach and ensure that everyone is on the same page.29 The Foreign Office, on the other hand, may approach joint training as an opportunity to
25 Sir Hilary Synnott, former Coalition Provisional Authority regional co-ordinator for Southern Iraq, January 2008 see Hilary Synnott, 'Afghanistan and Iraq cry out for brave civilians', Telegraph (online edition) , 8 January 2008. 26 John Coles, Making foreign policy: A certain idea of Britain (London: John Murray, 2000) p. 11. 27 Interview with an FCO civil servant, 2 September 2009, London. 28 Interview with an FCO civil servant, 18 January 2008, London; interview with a military officer, 11 January 2008, London. 29 Interview with a military officer, 3 April 2008, Shrivenham. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 12 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
understand how other departments work and as a way to gain influence, for instance to ‘sensitize the military counterparts to our agenda [the protection of civilians]’. 30 DFID is likely to evaluate the added value of joint training on a balance sheet that contrasts the access to skills that are seen as increasingly important by the organisation with the additional burden this places on a frequently overstretched staff.
A recurring complaint concerned the lack of overall guidance and leadership, which was often attributed to the lack of ‘managerial’ skills within the FCO. 31 The type of leadership that is cultivated within an organisation, however, is not only a matter of capacity and education but arguably also a function of cultural preferences. Military culture induces a strong preference for hierarchical lines of command and decision-making that are not necessarily understood or valued by other actors to the same degree. With regard to the complex web of interlocutors that diplomats find themselves working in, modes of interaction based on giving and receiving orders are often considered inappropriate. Building and entertaining a network of relationships requires subtlety, patience and adaptability – attitudes which, in a military perspective, may be perceived as signs of hesitation and fickleness.32 Leadership for the military is about execution – not about consensus building. 33 Unified command effectively means control in the hands of a single person. Yet, civil service culture has traditionally valued deliberation, consensus-seeking, and the provision of room for the articulation of individual views. 34 Committee-based decision-making models are frequent and generally valued within civilian organisations. Ensuring buy-in from all actors through consensus-building is often seen as a precondition for effective action. Hence, the FCO is likely to interpret its role as ‘lead department’ in the sense of obtaining agreement of the other government departments on the content of policy.
Insistence on unity of effort may have erected a mental barrier against the exploration of other models of cooperative but not necessarily joint decision- making and planning. An alternative way forward could consist in sticking to
30 Interview with an FCO civil servant, 17 September 2009, London. 31 This issue has been raised both externally and within the Foreign Office itself. See for instance House of Commons, ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2004-05’, Uncorrected Transcript of Evidence before the Foreign Affairs Committee (to be published as HC 522-ii), 26 October 2005, Questions 66-107, in particular evidence given by Sir Michael Jay, Permanent Under-Secretary on the need for ‘cultural change’ within the FCO while emphasising the need for a balance between management and diplomatic skills. 32 Interview with an external consultant, 26 February 2008, London. 33 Leonard Wong and Douglas Lovelace, ‘Knowing when to salute’ (Op-Ed), Strategic Studies Institute Newsletter (July 2007), US Army War College, published online 9 July 2007.Leonard Wong and Douglas Lovelace, 'Op Ed - Knowing When To Salute', Strategic Studies Institute Newsletter . www.chathamhouse.org.uk 13 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
separate planning cycles and tools while complementing them with robust formal procedures that ensure mutual recognition and inclusion of input provided by other departments. The military would be encouraged to think in a more integrated way about the security, development and political aspects of a given area of operations. Civilian departments, on the other hand, would be pressed to reconsider the suitability of their respective approaches in hostile environments and make tough decisions about values that will inevitably be compromised in such contexts. Beyond the issue of becoming more ‘operational’, they would need to look for ways to reconcile the principles that inform their work – such as good governance or local ownership – with the requirements of a counterinsurgency (or ‘robust’ peacekeeping) operation. What speaks against a more decentralised approach to planning is the issue of accountability. Ensuring accountability for a given mission or issue may indeed require the identification of a single leader who is held responsible for outcomes (and in return is invested with the authority to command). This individual, then, should be keenly aware of the different expectations cultivated within different organisations about the essence of leadership and prepared to accommodate them in flexible and innovative ways.
Joint implementation A strong focus on ‘delivery’ has tended to overshadow discussions over the policy dilemmas that involvement in the CA implies for individual organisations. Legal constraints, such as the comparably more stringent duty of care regulations of civilian government departments, or the limitations placed on the allocation of DFID funds by the 2002 Development Act, have fed into controversies over unequal burden-sharing and clashing priorities among departments. One example thereof is the debate over DFID’s reluctance to support QIPs aimed at rapid and visible improvements of livelihoods on the heels of British combat troops in Helmand.
While security constraints are the more visible aspect of the problem, the question of ‘delivery’ equally touches upon how organisations define their priorities and interpret their own role. DFID’s aspiration to maintain its reputation as a first-rate donor and leader in development policy renders the organisation wary of being perceived as the ‘delivery arm’ of the British military. As an organisation, DFID walks a tight rope between maintaining its credibility as a global leader on independent aid policy in the multilateral realm and the need to be perceived as a cooperative partner within Whitehall.
34 Coles, Making foreign policy: A certain idea of Britain , p. 90. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 14 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
The debate over the lack of ‘deployable’ civilian capacity – or bureaucratic impediments thereto – has further obscured deeper questions about the value of development and governance where the host government’s authority continues to be contested by violent means. While a new cadre of civilian staff within FCO and DFID may be incentivised to work in hostile environments through enhanced career prospects and adequate compensation schemes, it is also worth asking whether the tasks that these ‘robust civilians’ are asked to carry out make sense in a hostile environment.
The implementation of the CA on the ground also brought to the fore profound differences among preferred ‘ways of doing business’ among the different partners. Attachment to specific practices raises the question of whether one is confronted with an instance of déformation professionnelle that should be removed somehow for the sake of cooperation, or whether such cultural dispositions actually perform a crucial function for the members of a given organisation. An additional dilemma lies in the uncertainty over whether the cultivation of certain attitudes comes at the detriment of others which may be just as vital. Militaries face possible trade-offs between the maintenance of essential combat skills and educating soldiers in a variety of non-combat related stabilisation activities. Civilian departments are reluctant to ‘operationalise’ their staff and working modes in a sense that they perceive as curtailing the scope for individual analysis or preventing them from keeping their options open. They tend to view the military’s structures for force generation and training as overly constraining and culturally resent the idea of turning their employees into ‘deployable machines’, as a member of the FCO put it. 35 The nature of their work often requires civilian agencies to accept that tension, disagreement and ideological differences are part of the process and not a negative element per se. Cultural dispositions such as the readiness to invest time and resources in the exploration of different views and working towards small, partial and not immediately visible outcomes have to be reconciled with a demand for greater ‘deployability’, leadership, and tangible outcomes.
35 Author interview with an FCO civil servant, 18 February 2008, London. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 15 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
CONCLUSION: BEYOND A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH?
In the United Kingdom, lack of attention to organisational profiles and insufficient assessment of strengths and weaknesses at an early stage in the process had led to a division of labour that did not match the capacities and cultures of the organisations involved. While the CA started with a military-led template that focused on identifying the right ‘instruments’ for delivery, it might evolve towards a more influence-based approach in the future. 36 This would require a re-evaluation of the different departments’ comparative advantages. In the case of DFID, for instance, the organisation’s reputation and influence among multilateral agencies might prove a more valuable resource over the long term than the ‘delivery’ function that it was initially identified with. The process towards greater integration within the UK’s ‘conflict architecture’ to date has been strongly based on personalities and the ability of individuals to step up to the task and work together. This raises questions over the institutionalisation of cooperative mechanisms and lessons learned.
Exposure to other ways of thinking and ‘doing business’ – through joint planning, training, exercising, and co-location in the field – undoubtedly improves cooperation, not at last through the promotion of mutual understanding of cultural differences. The question is how these micro- processes are best institutionalised without resulting in a form of standardisation that threatens to curtail the variety of approaches that made ‘comprehensiveness’ necessary in first place. Disagreements over the design and implementation of the CA have largely been portrayed as obstructive in the official discourse. But the ‘constructive friction’ that the constant bargaining among different institutional actors entails may be necessary in order to define more effective modalities for cooperation. It would arguably be difficult to build a case against greater coherence and cooperation in the pursuit of peace and stability. But it is too easy to prescribe coordination as a generic response without acknowledging the myriad of difficult decisions it implies for each contributing organisation.37
The case of the United Kingdom may act as an example for similar processes at national and EU levels in that suggests that the level of ‘constructive friction’ among different players might ultimately lead to better outcomes if it is openly acknowledged and built into the policy process. A common endeavour is unlikely to succeed as long as there is no agreement on the ‘stability’ that is sought in stabilisation or statebuilding missions. At the policy level, this
36 Author interview with a military officer, 23 September 2009, Shrivenham.
www.chathamhouse.org.uk 16 ESDF Workshop 2: Constructive Friction or Petty Turf Wars?
requires clarification of objectives and motivations: are we intervening for the sake of ‘our’ security or ‘their’ well-being, or can we do both? During implementation, an aspiration to maintain minimum standards and defend core values has to be reconciled with the necessities of a military operation. Simply creating new, shared project templates to overcome departmental ‘stove-piping’ is unlikely to solve these difficult questions.
37 See Paris and Sisk, The dilemmas of state-building: Confronting the contradictions of postwar peace operations , p. 61. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 17