CIAO DATE: 07/2013
Volume: 11, Issue: 4
Fall 2012
Deficiencies in Global Governance and Implications for Defense Education (PDF)
Fred Tanner
Those contributing to international peace and stability act in an ever-changing, increasingly complex and inter-connected global environment. The international security landscape has changed considerably during the last twenty years, with important power shifts in international affairs, an acceleration of globalization dynamics, the spread of modern information technologies, and a diversification of powerful actors in world politics. In addition, a multitude of transnational security challenges—ranging from the proliferation of weapons to organized crime, including the trafficking of human beings, the security implications of migration, and the challenges of information and cyber security—are on the agenda. Global governance, which is understood here as cooperative arrangements between various international actors—states, international and regional organizations, as well as actors from the private sector and civil society communities—to manage global processes under conditions of globalization and in the absence of a world government, is still weak when it comes to adapting to these developments. Significant deficits in global governance with respect to issues of peace and international security exist today, and will most likely continue to exist in the future. A key consequence is the continuous presence of insecurity and disorder. In such situations of uncertainty, there is a need for leadership and close cooperation among partners. Education will be crucial in enabling the armed forces to fulfill their role in this environment. Thus, leadership skills, political awareness, and versatility will all be important elements of defense education. The global governance deficit requires us to better understand and deal with the changes in the international security landscape, including changing patterns of armed conflict and other forms of violence, the increasing threat to our financial and economic security, and the development and spread of new technologies. All these factors determine our security and defense thinking.
James M. Keagle
A new security environment dramatically different from that which defined NATO’s mission at its inception poses different challenges for collective action. Newly emerging global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction confront both existing Alliance members and its global partners. NATO must also consider the nature of partnership itself, and the role NATO might play in building its partners’ capacity to address global threats, participate in coalition operations, and enhance defense reform. These themes—security and partnerships—were key to the NATO Lisbon Summit (held in November 2010) and the newly crafted NATO Strategic Concept. According to the recommendations of the Group of Experts on NATO’s new strategic concept, “For NATO 2020, the twin imperative is assured security for all its members and dynamic engagement beyond the treaty area to minimize threats.”1 Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates identified building partner capacity as a critical element in promoting and sustaining security. In an article in the May-June 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs, Secretary Gates wrote, “[There] has not been enough attention paid to building the institutional capacity (such as defense ministries) or human capital (including leadership skills and attitudes) needed to sustain security over the long term.” One way in which the United States, its NATO Allies, and Partnership for Peace (PfP) Partners are cooperating to enhance security through building defense institutions and developing human capital is in the context of professional military and civilian defense education. Many believe that education—changing mindsets and restructuring the approach to military teaching and research—and not military hardware offers the best opportunity for success. What follows is an exploration of those innovative initiatives that NATO—both collectively and as individual members and Partner nations—is taking to support PfP members in building Partner capacity in the area of education. The central point is that these initiatives are important: from building reliable partners, to deterring conflict in Europe and Eurasia (specifically the frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus), to strengthening Partner nations from within. I will demonstrate a link between the complex security issues facing the Alliance and the role of education and training in transforming individuals, military academic institutions, and societies. Education and training transformation is a high-priority mission that will need to be sustained for decades in order to contribute to more reasoned decisions, better leadership, and ultimately a region at peace. This sustainment is critical – and will be highlighted as essential for the programs’ success.
Showing the Way: Contributions from NATO's Newest Members (PDF)
Piotr Gawliczek
Trying to identify the symbolic turning points with respect to Poland’s focused contribution to NATO’s Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP) is a complex task.1 To begin, it is necessary to mention the Twelfth Annual Conference of the PfP Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes. Poland was pleased to host this meeting in Warsaw, in June 2010, and to welcome a broad group of representatives from defense academies, security studies institutes, foreign affairs and defense ministries, as well as from other institutions dealing with security matters. For many representatives from Poland, and especially the National Defense University in Warsaw, this conference provided a chance to confirm the importance of building networks of educators, policy makers, and practitioners in order to develop an effective defense education system. During the conference’s many debates and discussions, it was underlined that the PfP Consortium—as the key network that connects defense practitioners in Europe and Central Asia—directly contributes to building a better understanding of security problems and, in consequence, to ensuring the security of the societies in its member states. The meeting also gave the participants the opportunity to understand and share their similar perception of security. And the conclusion was that this “joint” perception can only be achieved and guaranteed through an education based on a shared foundation. And it was clear that, in the Polish case, Warsaw was definitely the best place for such discussion to take place, and that NDU Warsaw was the best institution to be directly involved.
Defense Education Enhancement Program: The Kazakhstan Experience (PDF)
Alan G. Stolberg
In 2008, the National Defense University of Kazakhstan (KAZ NDU) and the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes (PfPC) agreed on a three-year program of cooperation. The intent of the program was PfPC support for KAZ NDU's attainment of international standards for both curriculum and teaching methodology. The program that was created was known as a DEEP-a Defense Education Enhancement Program. DEEP initiatives have a unique ability to provide support to Partner defense education institutions in the areas of curriculum and faculty development. For curriculum development, this could include the creation or refinement of courses or individual lessons, as well as support for the curriculum development of an entire new defense education institution. Faculty development could include pedagogy support in the areas of classroom teaching and evaluation techniques. The PfPC program in support of Kazakhstan is now in its fifth year, and will continue for several more.
Some Key Principles of Multinational Military Education (PDF)
James S. Corum
Education is something that touches every single member of the military profession, and is important for the civilians who work with the military as well. Military education is something with which everyone in the military has some direct experience. After all, one could not get to top military positions today without attending staff college courses, and often war college-level courses, taught in military institutions. Higher military education— the focus of this article—is the education that takes place at the rank of major and above and includes the joint staff college courses as well as courses at the strategic level designed for colonels and generals. National armed forces and military education institutions create mission statements defining the institutional and individual goals of each course in higher military education. The aims of the higher military education institutions in the West are generally similar, with mission statements that reflect the need to develop officers who are critical thinkers and problem solvers, who will be prepared for higher command and to serve effectively in national and multinational staff positions. But while the goals are clear, the process of achieving those goals is usually not as explicitly laid out. As a practitioner, having spent the last twenty-two years as an academic involved in higher-level military education, I have to focus on the process. From this experience I will lay out some principles that are essential to meet the goals of educating officers to meet tough challenges. While most of the principles set out here are basic to all higher military education institutions, there are a few principles that apply specifically to multinational institutions. There are a few truly multinational institutions in the Western nations, and it is likely that in the future there will be more. This reflects the realities of modern operations. In the future, operations such as Libya and Afghanistan that involve multinational staffs and do not necessarily have a single lead nation will likely be the norm. Educating midrank and senior officers to operate in a multinational environment is already essential. Multinational military education is the central focus of the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia, which is a unique institution in that it is equally owned and operated by three nations: Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Because each of the Baltic countries alone did not have the resources to offer a top-tier higher military education for its officers, in 1999 the three Baltic States decided to pool their resources and expertise and create a single staff college that would provide higher courses for officers and selected civilians. The result is a comprehensive institution that offers a year-long joint staff course to officers not only from the Baltic States, but also from NATO, EU, and partner nations. In addition, the Baltic Defence College (where the author of this article is Dean) runs a half-year course for colonels and higher-level civilians as well as a half-year course for civilian members of the defense and foreign ministries. Based on the experience of the Baltic Defence College, this article will lay out some of the key principles that guide our planning and development. The insights presented here are not simply those of an American, or European, or an American who works for Europeans. They are the insights of a military educator who works in a highly multinational environment. There is one thing that a long period of working in a completely multinational environment will teach you – that the fundamentals of the military profession transcend nation and culture. Still, there are some aspects of education that apply especially to multinational environments, and I will discuss these later in this article. While all professional officers attend staff college and higher military education courses sometime in their career (usually several times in their career), they only understand military education through their experience as a student and, as students, they were primarily focused on the task at hand, which was to do well in their courses and graduate. Afterwards, while most officers use the skills they learned and developed in the higher-level courses throughout their careers, few officers think about the process of military education. Yet because military education is so central to the military profession, and so central to the ethos of military leadership, it is essential that senior leaders take some time to think seriously about the principles that ought to guide higher military education.
The Moldovan Military Academy: Transforming Officer Education (PDF)
John F. Troxell
The twenty-first century has ushered in an era of dynamic changes to the international security environment, which demands new capabilities and responses to new threats, an increased likelihood of operating as part of a multinational effort, combined with an expectation of economic austerity that places downward pressure on defense budgets. This dynamic security environment holds true for superpowers, like the United States, and nations at the other end of the geopolitical spectrum, like the Republic of Moldova. When it comes to the needs of military establishments across the entire range of national size and resources, they all share the same imperative for leader development and professional military education. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, highlighted this imperative in his recently published “Strategic Direction to the Joint Force.” He identified the need to “reinforce leadership development at all levels of Joint Professional Military Education,” in order to develop principled leaders “who can combine new capabilities in new ways in complex environments.” All nations need to reform and leverage their professional military education programs. From the perspective of the United States and NATO, a second imperative relates to the efforts undertaken to assist other nations in the enhancement of their professional military education programs. A key tenet of the recently published U.S. defense guidance, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, is building partnership capacity. Previous strategic documents have also stressed the importance of activities designed to enhance the professionalization of partner military forces, and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a Foreign Affairs article titled “Helping Others Defend Themselves,” further elaborated on this concept by emphasizing the importance of building the institutional capacity or human capital of partner nations. 3 The “Summit Declaration on Defense Capabilities,” from the Chicago NATO Summit in 2012, also highlighted the importance of linkages with partner countries and the need to expand education and training.4 Partnership capacity building, in part, should be focused on providing assistance to partner and allied professional military education (PME) programs. It is through enhanced partner capacity, and the ability to operate in a multinational environment, that global security challenges will be addressed and global stability will be maximized.
Moving Westward- The Azerbaijan DEEP Experience (PDF)
Thomas Fedyszyn
Azerbaijan confronts a unique set of challenges and opportunities as it conducts a foreign policy aimed at alienating none of its neighbors while also modernizing its society and armed forces. While never applying for NATO membership, Azerbaijan still desires all the resources NATO makes available to its aspirants and other members of the Partnership for Peace. Thus, she faces the dilemma of determining in which strategic direction she will eventually lean, while in the process not actually leaning too far. On the one hand, this secular Muslim nation is an ideal candidate for modernizing its military by bringing it up to NATO standards. Located on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan prides itself on being able to conduct friendly foreign relations with its neighbors, while also projecting an image of regional strength and preparedness. Its capital, Baku, is obviously flush with oil revenues, as evidenced by its well-groomed public spaces, magnificent architectural showcases, and high-fashion stores matched in few other European capitals. Its youth walk the boulevards of Baku wearing Western styles and listening to European popular music. However, it also maintains its local culture and traditions, which have only fitfully welcomed Western ideas. Outside of its main cities, Azerbaijani society has eased somewhat reluctantly into the twenty-first century. Both Russia to its north and Iran to its south send subtle messages that Europeanization is neither a correct nor realistic model. Adding to this friction is the pressing reality that Azerbaijan continues to be embroiled in a “frozen conflict” with Armenia over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The push and pull of these forces makes this decision over determining a “strategic direction” difficult. This article contends that the creation and development of a defense education program aimed at assisting the Azerbaijani Armed Forces to develop along the lines of a Western (NATO) model is a powerful force in persuading Azerbaijan to look westward.
Defense Education Enhancement Program: The Consortium Perspective (PDF)
John Berry
The Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes, based at the George C. Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany, is leading an innovative and unprecedented program for defense education reform in five Partner countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova). The modus operandi for these efforts includes finding fertile ground for defense reform in other countries beyond the Partnership for Peace nations. Defense education in general is gaining attention as a useful tool for security policy makers. Why and how this is happening is an intriguing story that begs to be told. This article attempts to tell that story.
Politics and Higher Military Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Missed Opportunity (PDF)
Heinz Vetschera
Developing higher military education (HME) is embedded in the overall development of modern armed forces. This development normally reflects adaptation to changes in the external strategic environment, changes in military technology and doctrine, and changes in the societal environment of the armed forces. While this is true for armed forces with an unbroken tradition, the pattern differs when a given military’s development had been interrupted by historical events. This article will focus on the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), which constitutes a unique case in itself. The particular political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the break-up of Yugoslavia, the ensuing war of 1992–95 and the General Framework Agreement on Peace (“Dayton Agreement”) of December 1995 had led to a rather de-centralized state structure, with two largely autonomous political “Entities” that each kept the armed forces they had established during the war, leading to the de facto military division of BiH. Thus, when the West initiated a defense reform process in BiH in 2002, it aimed first at establishing state-level control over these armed forces (2003), and then at merging them into one single military force for the nation (2005), with other issues mostly put on the back burner. This was also the case with regard to military education. While a coherent system for the training and education of the now joint state-level armed forces of BiH would have been a key element for completing defense reform, it has not yet been established. There have been serious attempts, but up to this point they have failed. Thus, this article will: Briefly outline the political and military situation in BiH, including the lack of a coherent system of military education Present early initiatives within the context of defense reform as well as parallel to it Describe the initiatives undertaken in establishing higher military education as well as the resistance they met Assess the process with respect to its impact, including the causes of its failure.
Education for Reform: New Students, New Methods, New Assessments (PDF)
Jim Barrett
The last few decades have seen many new features introduced into the world of warfare, with an evident impact on those who go into harm’s way on our behalf. In this article, I propose to briefly examine four developments that have brought new requirements for military education, and then to think further about what these new requirements mean for military educators. The essay will conclude with a real-life example, by sketching how this wave of change translates into military education reform in the Republic of Armenia. The four “new” elements selected for consideration here are: A new world of conflict and warfare, for which we must educate our students A new world of education, featuring lifelong learning, e-learning, and learnercentered education New networks of learning, including such examples as the European Higher Education Area, NATO’s Defense Institution Building initiative, and the Partnership for Peace Consortium Military education reform in emerging democracies, encompassing new institutions, new curricula, and new attitudes. This list is far from complete, and the discussion offered in a brief format such as this can only be superficial at best, but they provide intriguing indicators of how military education—that fascinating bazaar where the military world and the educational world intersect—is addressing the challenges of a military education curriculum that continues to expand and that has embraced some unexpected domains. Who would have predicted fifty years ago that diversity and gender would become features of professional military education? Such topics find themselves in the curriculum in part because they reflect modern human rights sensitivities and in part because they have operational utility.
Overcoming the Challenge of Legacy Learning Methods (PDF)
Kathaleen Reid-Martinez
Recognizing the role of the leader points to the importance of how leaders are trained and developed so that they are capable of helping their institutions maintain the values of their organizations. This was found to be a concern of the defense and security leaders of the newly developed independent sovereign states of the USSR. As many of them installed democratic forms of government, the challenge was not just to declare education for reform on paper, but how to transform their educational institutions to develop leaders for the directions that had been set by their newly formed governments. This concern for sustaining institutions is in keeping with much research in the field of leadership. Leadership’s role in sustaining institutional and societal culture and in driving institutional change is clearly pointed out by experts such as Burt Nanus, who focused on visionary leadership; the late Peter Drucker, who emphasized the growth of future leaders; and Warren Bennis, who underlined the importance of developing leaders to become leaders of leaders.1 Additional recognition of the leader’s significance in both sustaining and changing culture is found in Brady’s work,2 where he cited 2001 research conducted by the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller examining the top thirty CEOs of publicly traded companies in Germany. The results showed that approximately twothirds of the public reputation of a company was determined by the leader of the organization. In keeping with this, a later Burson-Marsteller study done in the United States examined 1155 key stakeholders, and determined that the CEO’s reputation contributed significantly to how companies are perceived. Brady pointed to leaders such as Lord Browne at BP, Chad Holliday at DuPont, Michael W. Crooke at Patagonia, and Ben Cohen at Ben and Jerry’s, who have understood that their legacies as leaders established the tone and sustainability of their organizations and made this an organizational priority. To be successful in leadership development at defense and security educational institutions requires that the educational processes themselves be examined. Following NATO’s Partnership Action Plan for Defense Institution Building (PAP-DIB) and Education for Defense Reform initiatives (2004–05), the Partnership for Peace Consortium’s (PfPC) Educators Development Working Group (ED WG) created a sub-group of the same name to tackle the challenge of how to transform the legacy teaching methods of authoritarian institutions into democratic learning processes that promoted education for defense reform within these countries so that they could train the leaders that would be required for the twenty-first century. More specifically, the challenge was how to help transform an authoritarian, top-down, teacher-centered approach to education that was based most often in the lecture method into a shared, collaborative learning process that exhibited democratic values, not just as curriculum content or an end state but as a democratic process and means of learning resulting in transformative leadership education.
Defense Education Enhancement Program: The NATO Functional Clearing-House on Defense Education (PDF)
Jean d’Andurain
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War period in the 1990s, NATO was highly engaged with the armed forces of a number of states of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe-based Warsaw Pact. The intent of this engagement was to assist their militaries in the process of Western-style transformation as part of their national preparation for interoperability and potential integration with NATO. One of the major supporting components for this NATO process was the development of regionally focused “clearing-houses.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a clearing-house as “a central agency for the collection, classification, and distribution, especially of information;…. [a] channel for distributing information or assistance.” In the case of NATO, these regional clearinghouses were to serve an integration function for the NATO member states to provide specific support for the transformation of militaries in former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries. The NATO member states would participate in these periodic meetings to identify the required assistance needs on the part of the non-member target states that were not being filled (gaps that existed in the support process), and to determine which member nations would be willing to support efforts to meet those needs through the execution of various programs and individual events. After heads of state and government created the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 1994, they developed a number of tools to assist partners, including the perpetuation of the original clearing-house concept. A clearing-house had been in existence at NATO headquarters up to the late 1990s, when NATO realized the difficulty of meeting partner requirements with offers from Allied nations when the partner states participated in the same meeting, sometimes in the same room. Several Allies made a decision to reinvent the clearing-house tool by taking a regional approach after NATO disestablished the clearing-house in Brussels. The first regional clearing-house was established in support of the three Baltic nations: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This was followed in the first decade of the twenty-first century by regional clearing-houses designated for Southeastern Europe (Balkan countries) and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, later joined by the Republic of Moldova). In addition, one clearing house exists solely to provide support to Ukraine. Over time, these regional clearing-houses have become critical security cooperation management tools for the Alliance in its effort to support the transformation of the armed forces in partner nations.
Hayk Kotanjian
Education is a systematic process of forming the fundamental ability to think analytically, incorporating both basic and specialized knowledge. Therefore, in the armed forces of leading countries of the world, the field of military education and personnel management is regarded as a primary factor for ensuring the efficiency of the defense security system and the combat capability of the military. Defense education reforms are a significant part of the overall reforms being implemented in the defense security sector in Armenia that are helping bring both more credibility and accountability into the Armenian Armed Forces and the National Security System on the whole. The importance of defense education has grown significantly within recent years due to the introduction of sophisticated new armament systems. Current military standards demand a new level of requirements for both soldiers and officers, and military professional education is one of the most important tools to help prepare highly qualified personnel who will be capable of implementing different tasks in the rapidly changing atmosphere of the modern battlefield. The cause and the essence of these innovations are not only due to hard power subsystem dynamics, but also require accepting the fundamentally new orientation in thinking about security that is not exclusively based on threat assessments and a presumed hard power response, as was the case in the past. Over the past decade, after the Prague NATO Summit, Armenia has employed comparative analysis and innovative decision making to smoothly turn its defense security thinking toward a goal-oriented approach that synthesizes both soft and hard security dimensions within one holistic “smart power”-oriented defense security policymaking system. The other important dimension of these improvements is a gradual transition from an obsolete “apparatchik” mode of Stalinist-style military governance of the Ministry of Defense to a modern leadership and management culture characterized by the redistribution of powers between defensepolicy institutions and military bodies and the delegation of power and duties to lower tiers in the hierarchy. In the United States, the system of professional military education (PME) must meet certain basic requirements, namely that it should be comprehensive, systemic, consistent, realistic, effective, and unanimous in concept, terms, goals, challenges, and opportunities. The U.S. system is familiar to me, due to my five and a half years of Defense, Army, Air Force, and Navy Attaché service as well as having held academic fellowships at the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio, Harvard University’s National Security Program, the National Defense University, RAND, and the Marshall Center for Security Studies. PME training places constant tension on the mind, will, and body, giving great attention to physical fitness and its major role in service activity of all categories of personnel.