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04 July 2011
GPPi fellow discusses prospects for inter-agency crisis management at 1 GE/NL Corps
On 1 July 2011, GPPi Fellow Philipp Rotmann took part in a panel discussion entitled “Wish and Reality – the Comprehensive Approach in times of tight pockets.” The panel concluded a two-day conference on “The Comprehensive Approach – Road to Sustainable Security?” (Der Comprehensive Approach - Ein Weg zu nachhaltiger Sicherheit?) hosted by the 1st German/Netherlands Corps and Haus Rissen Hamburg at the Corps Headquarters in Münster.
Rotmann discussed the comprehensive approach in civil-military crisis management with former Dutch development minister and UN Special Representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe (SHAPE), Gen. (ret.) Rainer Schuwirth, and the founder and chairwoman of KinderBerg e.V., Suzana Lipovac. Christian Thiels, defense correspondent with the ARD Hauptstadtstudio Berlin, moderated a lively discussion on the key obstacles and realistic opportunities for better inter-agency collaboration.
Rotmann argued that it may be too easy to blame only politicians for the large problems and the slow pace of change. While in Germany, barely any political leaders in high positions have made sensible cooperation between ministries and government organizations a priority, there are institutional factors that make it harder for some organizations to change than others. In particular, he said, crisis management operations abroad remain a side issue for all government departments except the armed forces – understandably so, since 90% of the foreign service will continue to engage in diplomacy and 90% of the development aid apparatus will continue to work on poverty outside of conflict environments. Side issues rarely manage to grab the attention of the top political leaders in each ministry or in parliament, however, so the necessary changes to become better team players are harder for those ministries than for the army. Conceptually, Rotmann argued, the “civil-military” dichotomy is dangerously misleading: in many ways, there are deeper and more significant fault lines between some of the civilian actors. The military, for one, needs to understand these fault lines in order to engage effectively with all its partners, from police to diplomats and development experts.
The wide-ranging discussion covered many topics including the political and institutional differences between the Netherlands and Germany, internal obstacles to change in the military bureaucracy, the need for leadership on both the political level and that of senior officers, and the challenges of stimulating broader public debate on crisis management.
Rotmann's broader analysis of institutional obstacles to inter-agency collaboration has been published as a Research Paper by the NATO Defense College.
For more information please contact Philipp Rotmann.