Andrew Cottey

The Second Generation Problematic: Rethinking Democracy and Civil-military Relations

This article argues that a decade after the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe, the establishment of democratic civil-military relations has moved on from first generation issues of institutional restructuring to second generation challenges relating to the democratic consolidation of these relationships. In practice, these have more to do with issues of state capacity-building and bureaucratic modernization with the traditional concerns of the civil-military relations literature. In most cases, the problem is not the establishment of civilian control over the armed forces or the separation of the military from politics, but rather that of the effective execution of democratic governance of the defense and security sector-particularly in relation to defense policy-making, legislative oversight and the effective engagement of civil-society in a framework of democratic legitimacy and accountability.

Beyond humanitarian intervention: the new politics of peacekeeping and intervention

This article reviews patterns of peacekeeping and military intervention in the post-9/11 world. It argues that while Western states have become increasingly reluctant to engage in the types of humanitarian interventions they undertook in the 1990s, a new model of peace operations is emerging that lies in the middle ground between traditional United Nations peacekeeping and classical humanitarian intervention and combines elements of both. The emergence of this new generation of peace operations indicates that, despite the post-9/11 reluctance of Western states to intervene militarily for humanitarian purposes, there is continued momentum behind the normative shift away from an absolutist conception of state sovereignty and towards the view that the international community has a right and a duty to intervene in internal conflicts and crises.

Introduction: the Challenge of Democratic Control of Armed Forces in Postcommunist Europe

After the collapse of communism in 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe faced the enormous challenge of making the transition from communism to an unknown future, with little or no experience of democracy, market economics or stable relations with their neighbours to build on.1 One element of this transition was the problem of reforming communist-era armed forces and civil-military relations. The ability of postcommunist elites to secure democratic control of the armed forces, or at least the acquiescence of the military to the democratic transition, would have a significant impact on the prospects for democratization as a whole. The extent of democratic control of the military might also have a significant bearing on Central and Eastern European states’ relations with the West and their prospects for integration with the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The extent to and ways in which armed forces maintained influence over foreign and defence policy decisions and were intertwined with conceptions of national identity might also have major implications for relations with neighbouring states and ethnic minorities and hence for peace and security in the region.

The Visegrad Group and Beyond: Security Cooperation in Central Europe

Since the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989, the strategic priority of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been their integration with the West, in particularly joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). The established democracies and market economies of Western Europe and North America represent the model to which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe aspire. They see NATO and the EU as the only bodies capable of providing them with credible security guarantees and economic security. For them, membership of NATO and the EU will both symbolize their full integration with the West and underpin the democratization and reform of their societies and economies. In short, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are seeking to return to the democratic Europe from which they were separated by forty years of Soviet domination. At the same time, they have sought to normalize and re-build relations with each other and with their Western and former Soviet neighbours. For the most part, this has taken place in the context of bilateral relationships: through the negotiation of state treaties guaranteeing existing borders and minority rights and committing states to develop cooperative relations; and through various more practical forms of bilateral political, economic and military cooperation.

Europe's new subregionalism

From the Barents and the Baltic Sea in the north, through Central Europe and the Balkans, to the Black Sea in the south a range of new subregional groups and cooperation processes have emerged in Europe during the 1990s. Compared to NATO and the European Union, these new subregional groups have received little attention. Their ‘indirect approach’ to security, however, plays an important role in overcoming the legacy of the Cold War, reducing the risks of military conflict and addressing non‐military security challenges. As NATO and the EU expand eastwards, subregionalism is assuming growing importance as a means of avoiding new ‘dividing lines’ in Europe. After the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, subregionalism is also gaining importance as a means of building cooperation in South‐Eastern Europe. The challenge for the future is to give more substance and depth to Europes new subregional cooperation frameworks.

Regionalism and the EU’s neighbourhood policy: the limits of the possible

In the context of its neighbourhood policy since the early 1990s, the European Union (EU) has sought to promote multilateral regional cooperation in the areas on its periphery, such as the Baltic Sea, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Despite a quite large number of EU policies and initiatives to promote such cooperation, the impact of these efforts has been limited in terms of substantive cooperation and the effect on neighbouring states. The limited impact of the EU’s efforts to promote regional cooperation in its neighbourhood is explained by a number of factors: confusion over the goals of such cooperation; the contested nature of the regions under consideration; the gap between the ends sought by the EU and the means available to it; the existence of enduring geopolitical rivalries and intractable conflicts in these regions and the hub-spoke character of the relationship between the EU and its partners, which militates against regional cooperation. The promotion of multilateral cooperation in the regions of the European neighbourhood is a sensible objective of EU foreign policy, but expectations of what can be achieved should be realistic and modest.

Civil-military relations in postcommunist Europe : assessing the transition.

Abstract This article argues that the relative homogeneity of communist civil–military relations postcommunist Europe has been replaced by significant diversity. Those states that have joined NATO and the EU have consolidated democratic civilian control of their militaries, re-oriented their defence policies towards peacekeeping and intervention operations beyond their borders and are fashioning new military–society relationships. In contrast, in Russia, Ukraine and most of the other former Soviet republics the military has become part of the nexus of semi- or outright authoritarian presidential rule, while severe economic and social problems are resulting in a dramatic downgrading of the militarys professional and operational competence and severely inhibiting the prospects for meaningful military reform. In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, civil–military reform is gathering pace, but continues to struggle with twin legacies of war and authoritarianism.

Armed Forces and Society: a Framework for Analysis

Armed forces and societies in central and eastern Europe have undergone dramatic changes since the collapse of communism, with important implications for military-society relations. Communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe produced a particular model of military-society relations.1 For four decades after the Second World War, all the countries of the region had large armed forces based on conscription. As a result, almost all adult males experienced military service. The military also received a relatively large share of state resources — significantly higher in percentage terms than in the West. As a result communist societies and economies were often highly militarised. The physical presence of uniformed personnel throughout society and the symbolic and economic significance of the armed forces within the socio-political system were striking features of communism throughout central and eastern Europe. The main official justification for the armed forces in the communist states was one focused around external threat. This took a variety of different forms including the capitalist West, fascism during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Soviet Union itself for Yugoslavia after 1948 and Romania from the mid-1960s.

Chapter 3: Enhancing Regional Peacekeeping Capabilities

Over the last decade there have been major changes in patterns of international defence diplomacy. Defence diplomacy – peacetime military cooperation and assistance – has traditionally been used for realpolitik purposes of strengthening allies against common enemies. Since the early 1990s, however, the Western democracies have increasingly used defence diplomacy for a range of new purposes. These include strategic engagement with former or potential enemies, in particular Russia and China, encouraging multilateral regional cooperation, supporting the democratisation of civil-military relations and assisting states in developing peacekeeping capabilities. This Adelphi Paper analyses the new defence diplomacy and the policy challenges and dilemmas it poses. The new defence diplomacy runs alongside the old and there are tensions between the two, in particular between the new goal of promoting democracy and the old imperative of supporting authoritarian allies. These tensions cannot easily be resolved, but external defence diplomacy assistance is likely to play a continuing role in supporting conflict prevention, the reform and democratisation of armed forces and the development of peacekeeping capabilities.

Subregional Cooperation and the New European Security Architecture

Since the early 1990s, there has been general acceptance that the new European ‘security architecture’ should be defined by an inter-locking framework of institutions, with differing institutions playing differing roles, but also cooperating with one another to enhance general European security, as well as in the management of specific problems. Critics argue that the differing views amongst European states and the interests of competing beauracracies have meant that the new European architecture has been defined by competition between different organizations and the absence of any real consensus on how Europe’s security institutions should be re-organized. Nevertheless, a new, multi-institutional security architecture is emerging and — despite differences amongst European states on the future of that architecture — certain divisions of labour have become clear. The European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) and the Western European Union (WEU) continue to provide political, economic and military security for their members, but have also taken on new tasks: expanding their memberships to include countries from Central and Eastern Europe; developing cooperative ties with both prospective members and those states not likely to join these organizations; and developing operational conflict management and peacekeeping roles. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe continue to provide broad normative frameworks for European security (through the principles of democracy and human rights which they enshrine), but have also taken on new operational roles in areas such as election monitoring, support for democratization, conflict prevention and post-conflict peace-building.