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Ten Years After: Democratisation and Security Challenges in South East Europe
Austrian National Defence Academy
2001
European Peace And Security: A Different Perspective
Jan Oberg
1. European Union militarisation: Humpty-Dumpty as peace-maker
Some Reflections on Conflict Management in the 1990s
What we can learn from the conflict mismanagement in the Balkans the last ten years is that the EU must first of all improve its capacity to diagnose and understand complex conflicts, conduct early warning, early listening and early action and intervene with civilian capacity to create talks, dialogues, brainstorms and negotiations in close co-operation with all conflicting parties. I would suggest that it attempts to reduce national interests and intervene as impartially as it can and attack problems rather than actors. It is essential to understand that the earlier we intervene and the less violent a conflict is, the easier it is to help solve it without politicising the situation and the easier it is to control prestige, national interests and other - for conflict-resolution disturbing - considerations.
It is also clear that most governments and Ministries of Foreign Affairs need professionals to deal with conflict issues, like they need military professionals to deal with military matters. It is also quite obvious that many NGOs with professional staff in conflict-management have done more good and less harm than many governments. They must be given a place in the EU conflict-management structure.
We can certainly also learn that it leads nowhere when single countries try to play many roles at the same time - mediators, judges, peace-keepers, peace-enforcers, arms traders, sanction-makers, humanists, etc. It leads nowhere when they have national(ist) interests while professing to help bring about peace with the local parties. If Germany's real interest in the Balkans is obtaining influence and spreading the DM, do not call it "peace." If the Americans want the Bondsteel base on Yugoslav territory, the largest they've built since the Vietnam War, then tell people and the media honestly that the U.S. is engaged for more reasons than concern for human rights.
We can learn that peace plans must be developed from above but also from the bottom up and that all conflicting parties must have a stake. For instance, various peace plans could be presented prior to referendums and people given an opportunity to democratically vote for the peace plan they believe best serves their interests for the future - for one single reason: they are to live with them. And from the present situation in Kosovo we could learn that it is not that easy to occupy a trouble spot and socially engineer it into a democracy with tolerance and recon-ciliation.
Beyond any other lesson I would emphasise one: that at the end of the day peace and peace-making is about putting human beings first. We have to deal with people's perceptions of the issue that split them from fellow human beings, with how they perceive themselves, the conflict issue and the "others." We have to deal with fear (much more important than 'evil' when explaining why people do harm to each other), with hatred, intolerance, despair - in short with the root causes behind violence, rather than merely putting lids on the fire and ignoring the root causes. And I believe we have to develop criteria for best practices and that decision-makers ought to be both more humble and self-critical about the work they have done in the name of peace.
The lessons I am advocating here admittedly belong to a new paradigm. Judging from EU documents and plans, the EU wants none of it. Some reasons seem to be that they are incompatible with traditional concepts of power (power is power over someone else, not over ourselves), they do not have "sex appeal" for careerists, they won't make the EU a new world super power or satisfy the military-industrial complex. They are also quite incompatible with male thinking in general and male elite thinking in particular.
The EU Crisis Management Organisation
Little is available about it, but the EU crisis management structure is taking shape. Crisis management will be conducted under the auspices of the General Affairs Council (GAC). The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) - ambassadors to the EU make many of the decisions after issues have been prepared in working groups. The focal point of the crisis management structure will be the (Interim) Political and Security Committee (iPSC). Representatives of the EU Commission and the Council Secretariat, the Early Warning and Planning Unit (PU) and the EU Military Staff (EUMS) take part in its meetings. Not participating but advising the PSC is the Committee of Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management. Then there is the interim Military Body, later to become the EU Military Committee (EUMC) which is composed of member state chiefs of defence and will advise Mr. Solana, the High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)/Secretary-General (HR/SG). The PU, set up prior to the Helsinki Summit in 1999, is attached to Mr. Solana's office which also hosts the Situation Centre (SITCEN) which pools civilian and military expertise in the assessment of intelligence information.
The Civilian Dimension is Clearly Underdeveloped
In terms of manpower, the EUMS for instance, with military and civilian experts, will reach about 100, twice the size of the old WEU and half the size of NATO's international military staff. There will be around 100 military experts to assess intelligence. It is worth quoting at length from the October issue of the excellent European Security Review published by the Centre for European Security and Disarmament (CESD) and the International Security Information Service, Europe (ISIS Europe) from which the above rundown of the structure is taken:
"In comparison with the preparation for the military assessment of information relating to crisis management, the new civilian structures within the Council look relatively impoverished. The Policy Unit has a total of 20 staff who will be hard-pressed to meet the challenge of processing information from member states, open sources (including reports from NGOs) and the other EU institutions."
It is pretty obvious that the civilian dimension is not given priority. Sweden has been a major advocate of this civilian dimension and Swedish together with other EU politicians maintain that the civilian committee is fundamentally important while the military will serve 'only' as the last resort. But as it stands now, this is not credible. It is obvious that it does not have the manpower and other resources to effectively monitor and analyse developments in conflict areas around the world. And that is relevant since the EU has not defined any limits to where it can intervene.
Why no Co-ordination with the OSCE and the UN?
It is also evident that there is no body for the systematic co-ordination and co-operation with civil society organisations, conflict-resolution NGOs or peace research institutes. As long as the EU is called a peace project and its military force is justified with reference to peace-making, the above mentioned body is of great relevance.
In addition, whereas there are four working groups for EU-NATO co-ordination in crisis management and the central EU figure in all this is Mr. Javier Solana, former S-G of NATO, there seems to be no parallel bodies for co-ordination between the EU on the one hand and organisations like the UN, OSCE, OAU and other regional governmental bodies and potential conflict-managers on the other.
EU-NATO co-operation was pushed through in Nice, with no similar function vis-à-vis the mentioned organisations. Indeed, if the EU's endeavour were mainly civilian, it would be natural to discuss its fundamental relation to and co-operation with the OSCE, the existing civilian European security organisation. The OSCE is still grossly under-staffed with only a handful of civilians at its Conflict Prevention Centre in Vienna; with the sharp reduction in that organisation's influence, one might have thought that the EU would draw some conclusion from that when building a similar unit.
On the basis of this there seems to be extremely little evidence that the EU crisis management as it stands today is strong on civilian measures and will only use military force as the last resort. So far, it looks organisationally as if it were the other way around.
And it is likely that the EU Rapid Reaction Force and military build-up will make the European security 'architecture' even more chaotic and non-transparent. Indeed it could be a creator of conflicts inside Europe and with the United States.
Future EU's Dependence on the United States and NATO
It is no secret that the EU is militarily much smaller and less effective than the U.S. Figures speak for themselves: while U.S. military expenditures are roughly US $ 300 bn (3.2 per cent of its GDP), those of the EU combined are US $165 bn (2,1 per cent of their combined GDP) - and while U.S. spending is increasing, that of the EU has fallen steadily. The U.S. spends 39 per cent of its military expenditures on personnel, the EU 61 per cent, which is indicative of how much more technology- and capital-intensive America's defence is. The U.S. spends 24 per cent of its defence budget on new equipment, the EU average being only 14. And, perhaps most important of all for the future: the U.S. spent US $ 36,5 bn on military research and development (R&D) in 1999 while the European NATO members combined spent only US $ 8,9 bn. European NATO and EU members' military industries are also the story of duplication and much less integration and fusion than U.S. military industry.
One can find experts who argue that the (American) Revolution in Military Affairs, RAM, widens the gap between Europe and the US to such an extent that European militaries will soon be unable to operate alongside the Americans because of their technological backwardness!
For the foreseeable future, EU military action will be heavily dependent on access to NATO and American resources, be it various types of intelligence, satellite surveillance, lift aircraft capacity, coded communication systems etc. Remember, the U.S. conducted about 70 per cent of all the bombing sorties over Yugoslavia; and in spite of the fact that the EU allies had some 2 million man under arms on paper, it took them a long time to get some 30.000 (about 2 per cent of them) on the ground in Kosovo.
To perform as a military power in war-fighting and/or peace-making, the EU will have to overcome this historical and structural inferiority. It will only be possible if the EU (and non-EU NATO allies in Europe) rationalise and co-ordinate all military functions much more effectively in the future and boost their military investments considerably.
In addition, it is my contention that the EU - by choosing the military power scale - will bring itself into increasingly fierce competition with the U.S. and remain dependent upon it for decades. What it should do to become more autonomous is to develop a niche for itself that will strike the world around it as much more attractive and compatible with professional conflict-management of the future.
Formal Membership is Irrelevant and so are the Words "European Army"
Two hypothesis can be advanced here: The first one is that except for the symbolic importance to some East Europeans, it no longer matters at all what organisation a country is formally accepted into as a member. The fluid 'architecture' makes this irrelevant. Sweden can participate in all this and not be a member of NATO and non EU member Norway intends to make the largest per capita contribution to the EU forces. EU will co-operate with non-EU countries including the U.S. and Canada; and non-EU countries are encouraged to participate in the EU force - overlapping with activities and exercises with non-NATO countries which participate in a series of NATO activities.
The second is that it is nothing but a fig leaf argument when we are told that the EU Rapid Reaction Force is not and will not become a European "Army." You may add: not yet, at least. If one day the EU becomes a federation this must become an EU Army. But the point is that what we traditionally associate with a national standing, conscript, territorial army is no longer relevant. The current model operates with contingents of troops that will be trained and assembled on short notice and put under a central command. German Lt. General Klaus Schuwirth, commander of the German Army's 4th Corps in Potsdam, is already appointed head of the EU Military Staff in Brussels, with British major-general Graham Messervy Whiting who heads the EU military committee as second in command.
This fig-leaf discussion was summarised wonderfully by Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission: "If you don't want to call it a European Army, don't call it a European Army. You can call it Margaret. You can call it Mary-Ann." (Daily Telegraph, November 17, 2000). On February 10 this year, Romano Prodi also declared before a Latvian audience that "any attack or aggression against an EU member nation would be an attack or aggression against the whole EU, this is the highest guarantee." If implemented as stated this statement marks a quantum shift of EU from an socio-economic union into a military defence alliance. Such a development might risk to promote the development of a renewed cold war in Europe.
All you've got to do is to consult Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" in which Humpty Dumpty says: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." And Alice responds: "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things." And Humpty Dumpty answers "The question is: Which is to be Master - that's all." He then offers an example of how much one word can mean ("impenetrability") and summarises: "When I make a word do a lot of work like that, I always pay it well." Indeed, Alice has come to Euro land.
2. The Militarisation of the European Union: A Civilisational Mistake
It was quite predictable that the EU would militarise itself. In fact, one of the world's leading peace researchers, Johan Galtung, predicted that in his book about the EU from 1972, "A Superpower in the Making." It is not in the nature of big powers to see greatness in non-violence, dialogue, tolerance or in playing the role of one among many. The EU - whose main players are former colonial powers and present nuclear powers and/or culturally violent - began their militarisation some ten years ago with the French-German military co-operation, and it got another boost with the French-British agreement in 1998 in Saint Malo. And the recent EU Nice Summit has put the militarisation of EU on an irreversible path, most likely to a new Cold War.
Today it is the so-called Eurocorps which is formally in charge of NATO/KFOR in Kosovo. Internally, the EU struggles with ever deeper vertical integration, i.e. more and more standardisation and harmonisation of ever more areas, and with horizontal integration of more and more countries. Externally, it decided a year ago at its summit in Finland to become a world player by setting up a sizeable military Rapid Reaction Force by the year 2003.
There are various proposals in the direction of a "United States of Europe" (USE), there is a common currency, a common foreign and security policy, common or harmonised laws, a structure with functions that look increasingly like a super-state with a President. There is a stepped up civilian and military industrial integration and rationalisation. And at its summit in Nice in southern France, beginning December 6, 2000 a European Charter is on the table.
Rhetoric and Reality
We are told that a European "Army" is not in the offing. But can the EU really move on with integration in virtually all other regards and not end up having something that looks surprisingly much like an integrated military? If so, it will be unique in history. Isn't it in the nature of defence and military matters that they require more centralisation, central control, harmonisation, interoperability, standardisation and integration than most civilian spheres?
The Headline Goals for the force in the year 2003 was planned a year ago at 60.000 troops. Already committed, however, are almost 70.000. With reservists this will add up to 225.000 under arms. And not exactly traditional peace-keeping arms. Among other resources, Sweden for instance has assigned AJS 37 Viggen fighters, a submarine, corvettes and a mechanised battalion. Britain has pledged 18 warships and up to 72 combat aircraft.
Ministers tell the citizens that it is for disaster relief, humanitarian aid, natural catastrophes, mine clearing and peacekeeping. It will serve as a back-up for diplomacy and it will only be used as a last resort when everything else has been tried to avert conflicts from erupting into violent struggle. But if it is modelled upon the case of Kosovo, that is the example par excellence of the failure of preventive diplomacy, of diplomacy backing up force.
The Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management
We are also told that the EU's most important part is civilian and that civilian crisis management, coupled with early analysis, early warning and violence-preventive diplomacy is the main thing; however, the present structure and balance of resources does not bear out that point.
Earlier, the Commission has developed an inventory of 25 categories (encompassing 300 specific actions) for civilian crisis management. Among them we find virtually anything such as counter-terrorism operations, support to free media, training of intelligence and judicial staff as well as conflict resolution training centres. So, some priorities had to be set up.
According to the documents from the EU Feira European Council summit in June this year, an Interim Committee for civilian aspects of crisis management had its first meeting only three days before the Summit (June 16) and could hardly have developed much of an identity.
Appendix 3 of the Feira document approaches the civilian aspect in this manner: "The reinforcement of the Union's capabilities in civilian aspects of crisis management should above all, provide it with adequate means to face complex political crises by:
How is that operationalised? The priority areas outlined next to this goal formulation is:
It should be clear for everyone to see: every reference to civilian conflict management - conflict analysis, early warning, attention to the human dimensions of conflict, training of mediators, peace workers, social workers, psychologists, conflict-resolution experts, negotiators and activities to empower civil society, reconciliation and forgiveness - is conspicuously lacking.
The EU versus the UN and OSCE
The Feira summit decided that the EU force should be deployed "both in response to request of a lead agency like the UN and the OSCE, or, where appropriate, in autonomous EU action." It also decided to "propose to NATO the creation of four 'ad hoc working groups' between the EU and NATO on the issues which have been identified in that context: security issues, capabilities goal, modalities enabling EU access to NATO assets and capabilities and the definition of permanent arrangements for EU-NATO consultation."
At the peak point of its history as a peacekeeping organisation, the UN deployed some 70.000 Blue Helmets. By the end of October 2000, it was down to 37.000, a figure which include observers, civilian police and troops. Britain which will deploy 12.500 troops to the EU force has 312 UN peacekeepers. Sweden will contribute 1500 to the EU force and has 192 UN peacekeepers of whom 46 are soldiers.
If Europe's strongest nations wanted the UN to be the leading peacekeeper it is strange that that organisation has been systematically drained in terms of funds, manpower and legitimacy - while the EU seeks to build an operative force twice as big in just three years. It's the same countries that could never deliver enough well-trained UN Blue Helmets (e.g. to Srebrenica in time) with lighter and less sophisticated military equipment to the world's most important peace-making organisation. They are also the ones which, during last year's bombing, violated the Charter of the UN's basic value of creating 'peace by peaceful means' and ignored the provision of having a UN mandate.
The Swedish prime minister maintains that the EU force will be a contribution to the UN too. But that immediately raises the question: why did the US and the EU not decide to finally make the UN what it ought to be and had a chance to become after the end of the old Cold War?
From Kosovo to EU Turbo-Militarisation
The single most important event in creating the political atmosphere with which the turbo-militarisation of the EU now takes place is the experience in Kosovo last year. European leaders assess that the Americans took over the show, took the diplomatic lead and backed it up with overwhelming military power which almost cast the European NATO partners in the role of onlookers. Leading EU/NATO partners recognised the structural weakness and the inability to shoulder the burden and back up their diplomatic efforts by force.
In passing one may notice that Kosovo is the best singular illustration of the inability to a) diagnose the conflict, b) conduct early warning, c) apply early listening and d) come up with a set of reasonably creative and acceptable series of conflict-mitigation and mediation initiatives. It is also the case of clandestine arms trade and military training, intelligence infiltration of peace missions, double games and Western alliance-making with hard-line secessionist nationalists and ignoring moderate, non-violent political factors.
The simple facts remain, whether or not covered in the mainstream Western press: we are further from a solution to the real issues than ever before. It has been recognised that some Western leaders told their citizens quite a few things last year to justify the 78-days bombing which turned out to be either not the whole truth or blatant lies. None of the deep and complex conflicts have been settled in the region - five years after Dayton and 18 months after the bombing.
The present international missions are strapped for funds and have not been able to prevent ethnic cleansing, lawlessness and authoritarianism in Kosovo, in spite of having more troops and civilians than Belgrade ever had to maintain law and order. Kosovo has become a strongly divisive issue, if not a turning point, in Euro-Atlantic relations; it left the EU grumbling aloud in response to what the Americans are de facto saying: we fixed the bombing and got our base there, we paid by far the most - now it is your turn to fix the peace. Circles close to George W. Bush more than hint that the United States is not going to stay for much longer. So the European may be stuck with an extremely expensive cul-de-sac protectorate-like situation for the next few decades.
So, first there was Kosovo, then Kosova and for the foreseeable future there will be "Kaosovo." A diplomatic, moral and peace-making fiasco is now being turned into a recipe. By the EU.
Finally, history's non-violent irony deserves mention. The Kosovo-Albanians started out on a non-violent path and got nothing but lip service by the West. They ended up with an extremely violent political force with Western backing. In contrast, the nationalities that make up Serbia were imprisoned for a decade or more in Milosevic' internal cage and the outer cage of the West - in short major violence. However, they avoided what we all feared, namely civil war and other terrible internal violence and broke out of that cage by means of non-violence. Officially, they are supported by the West. But for how long if they do not comply with Western demands? (If Mr. Kostunica remains the Vojeslav Kostunica I know - and I think he will - he is not the man the West will see as a long-term partner).
And Kosovo was about 10 other Things
It is not difficult to see that Kosovo was not only, perhaps not even predominantly, about Kosovo. It was
The Serbia-Kosovo conflict could also be used
So, if the West's operation in the Balkans was about peace, it was a very special peace brought about in a special way. One must hope that this is not what the EU plans to repeat in various conflict spots up to 2.500 miles or 4.000 kilometres - or in any hotspot around the globe. The Swedish defence minister Bjorn von Sydow recently confirmed that no geographical limits have been defined beyond which the EU force should not intervene.
The U.S. attempt at World Domination
In short, the Balkans and Kosovo in particular was a gift to those who wanted to promote NATO and undermine the UN and other more civilian organisations. It was a springboard for those who want the United States to move forward, not as a force for civilisation and creative new conflict-management, but in the role of world police, world judge and world dominator.
Is it far fetched to hypothesise that the United States aims at world dominance in this period of history between a very weakened Russia and an ascending Asia?
Consider the simultaneous attempts by the U.S. to control modern computer-related technologies and bio-technology, the world market and world trade, the world's peace keeping, world space, world oceans, the world's resources and world environment. (The latter is being done not by agreeing with global norms in Kyoto and the Hague but by environmental modification techniques for war purposes such as HAARP). The U.S. is also the only state that plans to be able to fight a nuclear war even for political purposes and not only in response to an attack; while such a war means potential world destruction, the U.S. intends to survive it by means of the planned self-protective BMD, Ballistic Missile Defence.
Furthermore, no other country in human history has fought as many wars, intervened in so many places, used its intelligence agency so widely and sold so many weapons. Finally, add to all this the strength with which American culture, media and news bureaus are the strongest world-wide in shaping people's perception of the world and listening in on their views clandestinely (through e.g. Echelon and other listening devices around the world) - and you have some, not exactly negligible, indicators for that hypothesis.
The EU should make another Contribution to Peace
So, the EU sees its chance now. It also wants to guard itself against excessive US dominance in the future. The most recent example of the rapidly widening disagreement, if not worse, between the EU and the US came with Secretary of Defence, Richard Cohen's warning to European defence ministers in Brussels on December 5 in effect saying "don't even try to compete with NATO, co-ordinate with it and let us - US - control force planning and interventions."
The EU's chosen means to play a world role is economic first and from now on, military. While the former may succeed, the latter won't in the foreseeable future. If a small power wants to fight a bigger one, the first rule of thumb is: don't choose the field in which the opponent is much stronger. So, if the EU chooses to militarise itself it will remain a European sub-division of NATO.
If on the contrary it does things differently, draws some other lessons from Kosovo and decides to deal with conflicts around the world in a new way, it may become much stronger and even a moral force - and stronger than the US on most power scales. It may become a power of the future rather than a replica of its colonial past and of the present NATO. It would probably also create less suspicion among people and governments within a radius of 4000 kilometres, and beyond, who would have less reason to ask: what on earth is the EU up to for the future?
We may indeed ask whether the EU leaders have the required creativity and a vision of Europe in the future world to see some new 'mission civilisatrice" like that?
3. Peaceful Europe - Something different [1]
Peace is promoted by constructive Proposals and Dialogue
We openly express our concern over - and criticised - the ongoing, militarisation of the EU. Some will say: but there are no alternatives. We believe that there are always alternatives, that democracies are characterised by alternatives and choice, and that openly discussed alternatives will improve the quality and legitimacy of society's decision-making.
In addition, it is an intellectual and moral challenge to not only criticise but also be constructive. If we only tell people that we think they are wrong, they are not likely to listen. However, if we say: what are your views on this set of ideas and steps? - we may sometimes engage them in dialogue and sow a seed. Most people in power circles live their daily lives in a time frame and a social space where certain ideas, viewpoints and concepts are just not supposed to be brought up.
TFF is one small and constructive voice with proposals that reduce, wherever possible, the use of structural and direct violence. When it comes to the EU, it leads nowhere to be "anti" about the project or sceptical of some of its manifestations - such as its militarisation and conflict-management role. What is needed is a systematic, world-wide dialogue about the meaning of peace and how various meanings will compete in influencing the future of the EU and its day-to-day policies. A first precondition is that we liberate ourselves from the belief that the things which happen are the only things than can or should happen. Democracy is not about voting 'yes' or 'no' to one presented option, it is about engaging people in the dialogue about many alternatives and then have a vote to get to the one that suits most with a stake in the issue.
Peace is promoted by constructive proposals and dialogue. Authoritarianism and violence by its negation.
A Catalogue for further Brainstorming and Dialogue
To make the EU and broader Europe a factor for world peace, here follow 32 proposals, big and small, for everyone to discuss, grouped in a few categories. The list is not indicative of priorities and a EU peace policy would have to be pieced together by many elements, ideas and steps in different combinations depending on circumstances:
Around the world on average, about one in every three women has experience violence in an intimate relationship. World-wide, about 1,2 million women and girls under 18 are trafficked for prostitution each year. There are 100 million children living on the streets, there are 300,000 child soldiers and 6 million injured in armed conflict. We have seen how soldiers behave in this respect, not only in wars but also in so-called peace missions such as Bosnia and Kosovo. Those who want the EU to become a militarised actor can not also act with credibility on reducing violence against gender and children. In short, the EU cannot develop in whichever way its adult male leaders feel like and simultaneously call it a peace project.
What a marvellous opportunity in human history: no countries in the EU feel threatened by any other EU country and many do not see a military threat from anybody else. This means that all they need is a defensive military, a civilian component and then protection of citizens against embargoes, environmental catastrophes and the like. Of course it cannot be excluded that some kind of threatening situation may develop in the future. Thus, the EU does not need any long-range offensive weapons anymore to deter any enemies as it did in the past. This means conversion to purely alternative defence methods, predominantly civilian but perhaps also military (defensive, only for defence on one's own territory but non-threatening to others) since it is as much a democratic right to be in favour of military defence as it is to be in favour of non-violence only.
Common security was a concept developed during the end of the Cold War and cannot be applied today. But in a broader perspective the Palme Commission was essentially making a very wise point: we can't build security and trust with anybody if at the same time we threaten them or have the capability to threaten and kill them should we one day decide to.
Isn't it time to develop some kind of security doctrine for common defence in Europe &endash; before we continue with weapons technologies, strategies and doctrines that were comme il faut during the Cold War - and before the EU venture into peace, security and stability actions on the ground up to 6000 kilometres from Brussels?
Such a new thinking would also reduce arms trade and other profiteering from warfare by European companies. They would produce only what their own countries need.
No other governmental organisation has been so useful to confidence-building and tension-reduction in contemporary Europe. It has a machinery for conflict analysis, early warning and on-the-ground missions which, given its small size and resources, have done very impressive things. With all its members in the former Soviet Union and its basically civilian approach, it would be much more relevant to build peace with than the EU.
Strengthening the OSCE would also be EU's real gift to the UN, its peace-making capability and the norms of the Charter, whereas EU integration with NATO will not.
As long as European states either possess nuclear weapons or participate in nuclear-based strategies and policies, there is no substance to the assertion that Europe is a peace project. Neither is it democratic. If government dared, they would let Europe's citizens participate in a referendum with a question such as: would you like your country to be defended by the use of nuclear weapons? It would hardly yield a 10 per cent in favour. As long as EU countries conduct nuclear policies, they also provide an excuse for nuclear threshold countries. Possession means proliferation; the solution is abolition.
In the same way environmental assessment studies focus on the probable consequences for the environment of certain economic, technological and other policies, the EU could spearhead a similar development in the field of peace: to assess the risk for heightened tension, conflict behaviour and direct violence of EU policies and their likely effects within and outside the EU.
It would be natural for Europe, a centre of humanism and Enlightenment, to focus more strongly on the human dimensions of conflict, war and peace. What would be more natural than setting up reconciliation research and action centres in places of conflict, inside the EU - say, in Serbia or Croatia, the Basque province, Kosovo, somewhere on the line that once made up the Iron Curtain?
What about an African-European effort to deal with the hurt and harm throughout history and how to make use of that in a constructive manner to help the African continent to finally rise to the position of an equal to Europe in cultural, economic, religious and many other ways.
What about a similar effort to bring peace-loving Palestinians and Israelis together in a long-term effort to focus on the human, socio-psychological, cultural and societal factors in that conflict? With a view to the future, it might be useful for Europeans to learn more about Islam, Arab culture and the ways of living throughout the Middle East and the Caucasian region.
One very good argument for the EU is that it helps bringing young people together and study abroad and thus promote international understanding. This is true, well and good. But intra-European understanding is already much better and easier than broader inter-cultural encounters. It is not enough to improve European-European understanding. In a globalising world it is actually provincialism. Better global understanding (and thus peace), requires many more programs that make it possible for young Europeans to meet, work with and do projects together with people from Africa, the Middle East, Arab, South America, the former Soviet Union, India, Asia etc. - and exchanging places to live for extended periods, mutual aid and not one-way.
If EU diplomats are increasingly to serve as conflict-managers, they will need education and training in the concepts and skills, just as they would for any other profession such as law, medicine or economics. The Peace Academy mentioned below may be one place, but EU universities could focus much more on these subjects and NGOs could also provide some of the training when they have practical as well as theoretical competence.
Let's assume that European youth and other citizens would be interested in general peace education and learning about other cultures, ways of thinking and the cultures of peace in order to navigate more smoothly in an internationalising, globalising world. The EU could set up a foundation with funds to enable international, national public and private schools and new experimenting peace schools and NGO universities to undertake a systematic peace education of the citizens.
The idea is not to have a special peace subject, it is to develop a peace perspective in all subjects, be it history, literature, culture, engineering or physics.
European media could be encouraged to report peace news, positive events, do reporting from the fields of peace. Radios stations could begin with a peace story in the morning, call-in programs with peace proposals to various big and small conflicts and we could watch peace competitions in the evening. TV could broadcast peace documentaries and have studio discussions about peace and development issues - all serving to heighten the awareness about world problems and sharpen the creativity toward solutions. And every free media would function as a blow-torch asking EU public figures what the EU does for peace and how peace is built into EU policies and programs.
Perhaps to be seen as an umbrella institution for peace academies in various countries. A place where students, NGOs, officers and diplomats would come and work together and study peace, conflict-resolution, cultures of peace and non-violent theories and policies; a place where academic publications would also be converted into popular writings and Internet dialogues with citizens anywhere.
Internet and other electronic resources could be utilised to create all-European and European-Third World mutual teaching programs, seminars, debates and skills training in everything related to violence-prevention and peace-making. It goes without saying also that new types of peace research institutes could mushroom, both in conflict-ridden regions and elsewhere, something like the New Nordic Peace Research Institute (actual as well as in virtual versions).
The idea and a concrete proposal already exist in the EU Parliament. Apart from emphasising political, intellectual and civilian early warning and civilian conflict-management this proposal is an important evidence that alternatives do exist. The first priority of an ECPC will be conflict transformation of human-made crises, e.g., the prevention of violent conflict escalation and contribution towards conflict de-escalation. The ECPC's tasks will be exclusively civilian in nature. Special emphasis will be given to conflict prevention, because it is more humane and less costly in comparison with post-conflict reconstruction. The Corps might also take up humanitarian tasks following natural disasters. ECPC involvement should not be confined to a certain area (i.e. Europe).
It would be time to utilise the expertise and the human resources invested in most countries Civil Defence organisation and employ them in peacekeeping missions abroad. It is easy to imagine a EU Volunteer Service modelled upon that of the UN or something like the White Helmets proposed some years ago by Mexico. The International Peace Brigades already conduct important mission including accompaniment of, say, refugees to return to their homes.
So, what about NATO, some would legitimately ask? Imagine it was stripped of everything but defence weapons and the extremely professional civilian and military staff were trained in civil defence, conflict-management and non-violence. Imagine NATO's sophisticated intelligence systems were put to serve early warning and monitoring of peace plans and cease-fires. Imagine its transport capacity was oriented towards bringing in humanitarian aid, conduct rescue operations in areas where natural catastrophes happen and assisting in bringing in all it takes to rebuild war-torn societies? It could even fight drugs and criminality.
If you can bring soldiers to anywhere in the world with heavy equipment and sustain them in battle for months, you can do almost anything you want to also protect people, to go between conflict parties and help them restore normality if war has anyhow happened. In short, NATO as a defensive alliance, able to do humanitarian work better and faster than any other and a peacekeeper alongside with the UN: not such a bad option for proud and competent NATO officers. I guess they would rather do that than plan nuclear weapons and local wars if they were given a choice by decision-makers in their democratic countries.
An increasingly important dimension is to look at latent conflicts which are far from violent at the moment and therefore more easy to handle. It may be social groups, language communities, minorities in potential conflict with central governments, increasing racism and xenophobia - which are increasingly manifest phenomena throughout Europe causing violent incidents.
Yet another would be to disseminate information about examples/cases of viable conflict-resolution, big and small - such as the Trento Province, the Åland Islands, and Schleswig-Holstein.
In short, there are no limits to what could be done to create a more peaceful EU on the road to a non-killing Europe.
Europe has fought enough wars for decades and centuries. In a historical perspective, Europe has created colonial and economic violence historically elsewhere. European countries still exploit, marginalize and profit on the misery of others. The epoch in which we live is a golden opportunity to draw the only relevant conclusion: violence must be reduced and wars abolished. We must finally find new, more intelligent ways to deal with our conflicts. Europe could lead the way in this global, civilisational change process. It is nothing but the highest goal stated as the United Nations Charter. Europe must become a non-war zone.
One of the world's leading scholars on non-violence, Glenn Paige, uses the term nonkilling to describe the norms and policies of a new development for peace. If we apply Paige's nonkilling concept to Europe, it would have the following characteristics:
The EU is not Europe, it's one actor in Europe. Choose the largest definition of Europe in your discussions and ask: is a nonkilling Europe possible? If not, why not? If yes, why - and how? And then ask: how can the EU lead the way and become a nonkilling EU? What must we do if the EU turns out to promote a killing rather than a nonkilling Europe in years and decades to come? In short, what is the nonkilling and killing capacity of the EU now and in the future? And what is the nonkilling and killing capacity of all that Europe which is not the EU?
We need thousands of informed dialogues all over Europe, broad scope and many levels. But I do not think we need a new (peace) movement that states only what it is against or lobbying NGOs whose N stands for Near-Governmental since all they seek are minor changes within the government agenda without presenting independent alternatives to it.
In a contrasting play on words, we need NPOs: government which are Near-Peoples Organisations (NPOs) but not governments which are Non-Peoples Organisations. The dialogues about security, conflict-resolution, peace and development must be tuned to the needs of the 21st century and not the 20th which was the most violent in human history.
So, 32 proposals for a peaceful, nonkilling Europe. Scrap some, elaborate on others, produce many more yourself - and ask decision-makers why such things are not on their agenda. For the sake of democracy and peace!
Jan Oberg
Co-founder and director at the
Transnational Foundation for Peace
and Future Research, TFF, Lund/Sweden
1 The following part is co-authored by Jan Oberg, TFF Director and Christian Hårleman, TFF Associate.
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