Category: 30

Hybrid warfare has become a popular term in academic, military and policy circles. But what does the term actually mean and how is this approach to warfare harnessed by state and non-state actors in practice?

The term hybrid warfare (HW) came into prominence in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea, part of the Ukraine, proceeded to support autonomist Russian-speakers in the Ukraine, and crushed some Ukrainian regular battalions in border clashes. Barely six months later, hundreds of miles to the southeast, a revitalized non-state actor, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) trounced the Iraqi Army in a ‘blitzkrieg’ that unraveled four Iraqi army divisions in the most humiliating defeat of an army since the Six Day War of June 1967. ISIS forces seized Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul located in the north, and proclaimed their caliphate there on June 29, 2014. These events were seen by many to be hybrid warfare in practice.

Since 2014 there has been an explosion of op-eds, policy statements, policy papers and academic papers on the concept of hybrid war. Despite this plethora of literature, there is still a serious need to establish a better definition of HW, to describe its characteristics, assess the term’s relevance, and address the distinction between hybrid warfare as it is practiced by states and by non-state actors. This article addresses such issues.

What is hybrid warfare?

Despite gaining prominence since 2014, HW has been used to describe changes in the character of warfare since around 2005. The term was used to describe Hezbollah’s strategy in the 2006 Lebanon War. But some observers and strategic analysts have even argued that its contemporary origins lie in the Balkan War and the unraveling of Yugoslavia. Others have argued that elements of hybridity have occurred in many wars since the rise of ‘civilized’ warfare. In other words, there is nothing ‘new under the sun,’ except yet another term to describe the familiar.

Defining HW has also been a matter of debate. While there are not as many definitions of HW as there are gainfully employed strategic thinkers (although at times it feels like it), it would be safe to say that there are as many definitions of the term and concept as there are countries worried by it or seeking to practice it. But even this is contestable too because a number of countries deny that what they actually practice hybrid warfare. Indeed, for Moscow ‘gibridnaya voina’ is what others (Western powers) have done to Russia. The definition I offer here derives largely from the various iterations of it by Frank Hoffman and others and from a variety of doctrinal manuals from the United States of America and those of other countries.  The term hybrid means something heterogeneous, multi-shaped or multi-varied. With respect to warfare, what does this mean? HW occurs when an actor practicing it against an opponent brings into play a ‘cocktail’ of conventional military capabilities, political warfare, terrorism, subversion, guerrilla warfare, organized crime, and, in contemporary times, cyber warfare. It may also include violations of international laws of war by the practitioner of hybrid warfare.

However, haven’t nations in the past used a ‘cocktail’ of measures against their opponents? Is it not true that Russia, which stands accused of using HW, is successor to a nation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which used all kinds of measures and ‘skullduggery’ to advance its interests even times of peace? Hoffman argued that even though wars in the past, even the recent past, could also include both regular and irregular elements, these occurred in different places, were not coordinated, and often occurred in sequence or one after the other. In contemporary HW, all the above-listed elements are orchestrated to act in coordinated, coherent and often simultaneous ways. Hence, for the person or persons watching from outside as well as for the enemy, this ‘cocktail’ of measures – some designed to kill and others not to do so but just as deadly to morale and cohesion of the target — may become blurred into a unified force acting in a single and comprehensive battle-space. Thus, the practitioner of hybrid warfare achieves a synergistic effect against which the target is rendered hors de combat in lieu of a shooting war, before a shooting war starts, and during an actual war.

When the term first appeared to describe what a certain number analysts like Hoffman saw as emerging trends some of their colleagues literally sighed because they wondered – politely and often not so politely — whether the term added anything new to describe wars other than the purely conventional or symmetric force on force clashes between like armies. Others wondered whether the term added much to the existing plethora of terms that describe wars other than purely conventional: irregular, guerrilla, low-intensity, fourth generation, asymmetric, new wars, forever war, etc. I argue that each term has a purpose and most should have a specified life-span before gracefully disappearing into the shadows instead of lingering on like an unwanted guest. Each term brings out certain aspects of indirect war associated with particular technologies, operational art, tactics, environment and cultural context. The same holds true for HW; if it still in existence a decade from now, then strategists are a dull lot indeed. Indeed, HW is not a prediction of what future warfare is going to be like. In this context, we need to avoid the ‘reification’ of HW.

HW is also ‘transcultural.’ There are ways of warfare to be sure, but HW is not just Eurasian – Russian – or Oriental. This would be strategic ethnocentrism to borrow a recognized term from international relations scholar, Ken Booth. Russia is, indeed, right in arguing that the West, which sees itself as the target of HW, as being as much perpetrators of the genre as they are the victims. Russia perceives the West, rightly or wrongly, as making a ‘big issue’ of it in the last half decade because of the events in Ukraine where Moscow believes it has successfully blocked Western-inspired or even led HW against Russia’s resurgence. Ultimately, HW is a useful term because it draws out/highlights certain characteristics of contemporary warfare by states and non-state actors.

HW is not replacing inter-state conventional warfare. The dominance of inter-state conventional warfare between roughly 1645 and 1945 has always been buffeted by forms of warfare that have been given various names throughout this three hundred year history. Many of these forms have actually been nothing more than appendages to conventional warfare; and HW is but one of the latest terms to describe certain characteristics of the contemporary conflict environment.

Ultimately, though, HW is a useful term because it draws out/highlights certain characteristics of contemporary warfare by states and non-state actors.

State and non-state hybrid war

There are clear-cut differences between state and non-state hybrid warfare characteristics. Indeed, even the definition for state hybrid warfare might not fit what non-state actors do in terms of hybrid warfare. Russia is not the only state that has developed hybrid warfare capabilities; Iran, North Korea and China come to mind. Even here, we can see wide disparities in military power between these states that are alleged to be at the forefront of hybrid warfare developments. Similarly, IS was not the first to develop non-state hybrid warfare capabilities (nor will it be the last). In fact, when several American theorists, of whom the indefatigable former United States Marine Corps officer, Frank Hoffman, was in the lead in developing the concept, the focus was on groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

The output on hybrid warfare in 2014 and thereafter was almost overwhelmingly focused on the alleged hybrid warfare capabilities of these two distinctly different entities. This was, in fact, a huge problem: Russia on the one hand, and Islamic State are certainly not similar entities. Without meaning to state the obvious, one is a large and powerful legitimate state with a military establishment that has come out of the doldrums of the 1990s. Historically, the Russian military has engaged in some very innovative thinking, about which only a few Western experts are cognizant. For example, in the 18^th century the great soldier, Frederick the Great of Prussia, was derisive of Russian military prowess. The Russians quickly disabused him of this derision when the Russian army trounced him in a major battle. In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet officers formulated some very innovative military ideas, which those interested in current Russian military theorizing are revisiting. A considerable amount of literature has appeared in the West to address the matter of Russian hybrid warfare over the course of the past three years. This has elicited some humor and denials on the part of the Russians. Russian commentators argue that Russia, does not wage hybrid warfare, and that it is actually the West that is waging war against Russia. Russia is responding and developing its own approach to contemporary warfare, which Russians refer to as ‘New Generation.’

For a state like Russia, hybrid warfare entails the composition of different elements of ways to wage war used simultaneously and in a coordinated manner to achieve one’s goals. If the measures work without leading to an extended or large-scale war or indeed lead to the achievement of the goals at stake below the threshold of the legal definition of war with the victim or the victim’s allies all the better as far as the state practitioner of hybrid war is concerned. Though the debate about evidence for Russia seeing contemporary warfare as being hybrid is still ongoing, for the sake of argument Russia’s hybrid capabilities as exhibited in the Ukraine and Crimea can be described as a ‘cocktail’ of measures that were used to achieve one’s goals in lieu of going to full-scale war, in shaping the theater of operations to one’s advantage, and as a force multiplier if need be in an actual exchange of violence with an enemy.

HW is different for IS and entities like it. The literature on IS is now huge and almost unmanageable. Most of it, however, concentrates on its personalities, ideology and organizational structure. Very little deals with the military ideas or strategy of this entity, which is surprising because there remains the puzzle of explaining its military rise during the first Iraqi insurgency (2003-2011), its demise, which proved to be temporary, and then its rapid re-emergence from 2012 to 2015. Between 2016 and early 2017, it suffered enormous losses and has lost Mosul. However, the consensus is that the collapse of the caliphate in Iraq (and soon in Syria) will not be the end of that entity. How do we explain its military trajectory? Some analysts have argued that this is hybrid threat or hybrid entity. Unfortunately, the analysis of IS as a hybrid warfare has mainly been descriptive rather than analytical in that most of the literature narrates the trajectory of IS’ war fighting over the years without conceptualization or context. The underdevelopment of the literature on the hybrid threat posed by most dangerous current non-state actor then raises the question of how can we distinguish between the hybrid warfare capabilities of a state actor and that of a non-state actor.

HW for a non-state actor also involves building a ‘cocktail’ of hybrid capabilities. Among these capabilities are political warfare techniques for propaganda against enemies, recruitment of supporters and shaping the ‘human terrain’ on the ground in the conflict zone in their favor. However, while states have the resources to develop robust hybrid capabilities only a few non-state actors in the contemporary conflict environment have been able to develop and maintain effective revolutionary political warfare infrastructures. These include the FARC in Colombia, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of, course, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These groups have also incorporated terrorism to target civilians and to intimidate and terrify opponents or even force them to overreact. The practice of terrorism has, of course, been a subject of controversy even among its practitioners, some of whom have even distinguished between discriminate, which targets specific individuals or categories of people, and indiscriminate terrorism, which targets people collectively or whole communities. Indeed, indiscriminate terrorism became a source of contention even within the global constellation of violent jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State during the course of the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. These entities also develop robust guerrilla hit and run tactics for attacking small-scale enemy units. Finally, this limited set of non-state actors have moved up the spectrum of warfare to develop impressive semi-conventional forces, which have been able to conduct both offensive and defensive operations against seemingly more formidable conventional forces.

Conclusion

For an advanced and well-developed non-state actor hybrid warfare is part and parcel of their arsenal of war whereas for states it can be used in lieu of outright war. For a super-empowered non-state actor, hybrid warfare is scalar manner, defined as having ways of war – terrorism, guerrilla tactics, and semi-conventional war coupled with the requisite capabilities for each – necessary to go up and down the spectrum of conflict in accordance with environmental factors, enemy faced, operational art and tactics needed at a particular time.  When a non-state actor like IS first emerges, it is invariably weak, lacking in resources, personnel, and territory to control. This leads them down the path of using the most primitive and illegitimate form of political violence, namely terrorism. As such an entity develops it moves ‘up the chain’ of violence, as it were, to guerrilla warfare, which is more ‘advanced.’ As it acquires territory, which is both a sanctuary and a base, this enables it to develop semi-conventional ways of war. This has almost Hegelian march up the ladder of progress was, indeed, the trajectory of people’s revolutionary war as espoused by Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap in China and Vietnam respectively. So what is the difference?

The key difference with hybrid warfare by contemporary non-state actors, like IS or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and state actors is that the progression towards a higher form of warfare is not one way; the lesser forms are not discarded. Indeed, they remain integral to the entity so that they can slide up and down the spectrum of violence when needed or when necessary. IS has its territory and Mosul, it will now revert to guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The ‘happy days’ of having a quasi-conventional military and a ‘state,’ are over, at least for now.

The future is likely to witness the further evolution of HW; it will be developed both by states, including powerful and weak ones, as well as non-state actors. If HW is really nothing more than the effective, efficient, and often simultaneous use of a set of measures, military and non-military to achieve one’s goals before or during a war and if the use of these measures ultimately ensures that the lines between peace and war are blurred to the point of irrelevance, then we will see states scrambling to deal with this situation by devised offensive and defensive measures.

Ahmed S. Hashim is Associate Professor in the Military Studies Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, RSIS, and specialises in Strategic Studies. He received his B.A. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, Great Britain and his M.Sc and Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has worked extensively in the fields of Strategy and Policy dealing in particular with irregular war and counter-terrorism for the past 20 years prior to taking up his current position at RSIS in 2011 where he teaches courses on insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, and defense policies at RSIS and SAFTI Military Institute (SAFTI MI).

 

“As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up… As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down…” So says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that the first law of ‘petropolitics’ is that the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated in countries “totally dependent on oil” for economic growth. Friedman’s attempt to link economic oil dependency and political freedom is an interesting one, which could go some way towards explaining why many of the world’s top oil-exporting countries are governed by heavy-handed authoritarian regimes. However, the correlation between recent oil price spikes and anti-authoritarian action – particularly in the Arab Spring – challenges Friedman’s assessment.

Rather than being driven by drops in oil revenues for authoritarian regimes, popular unrest and armed resistance  in countries such as Libya may in fact be correlated with the price of oil remaining high. Inward pressure caused by oil price spikes on petroleum-fuelled supply chains for basic commodities can exacerbate already harsh living conditions, galvanising rebel factions to form a unified anti-authoritarian front against a regime that can no longer ensure price stability for essential goods. This seems true of the 2011 uprising in Egypt (the world’s largest wheat importer), as bread prices rose drastically following the doubling of global wheat prices between June 2010 and February 2011. The impact of high oil prices on the production, shipping and distribution of staple commodities such as corn and wheat – both of which saw severe price escalations of near 40% in 2008 – can lead to social unrest and, in the case of Egypt, the toppling of an authoritarian regime.

High oil prices mean freedom on the rise?

Since December 2010, when mass protests began gathering steam in Tunisia, oil prices have remained consistently high, hovering at $82 per barrel. Is it a coincidence that in September 2011, when rebels overtook the coastal town of Bani Walid, one of Colonel Gaddafi’s last strongholds, oil was just above $82 per barrel and the FAO food price index had reached a ten-year high? While oil revenues may be a temporary source of political stability for some authoritarian regimes, the pressure of increasing price volatility on supply chains, due to scarcity in supply, can convert to instability downstream as oil prices have a compounding impact on food prices. Indeed, in December 2010 just a week before the self-immolation of Tunisian food vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, New England Complex Systems Institute a Cambridge-based organisation comprised of faculty from Harvard, MIT and Brandeis, warned the US government that global food prices were about to cross a socially dangerous threshold. If anti-authoritarian action is any indication of freedom ‘on the rise’ then high oil prices in oil-dependent states are at least one major factor.

Of those countries mentioned in the International Energy Agency’s 2011 list of top oil exporters, ten out of fifteen are classed by Freedom House as ‘Not Free’. Freedom House, ‘an independent watchdog organisation dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world’, base their rankings on two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties. The former they define by a country’s electoral process, degree of political pluralism and level of participation/ functioning of government; the latter by degree of freedom of expression and belief, associational and organisational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights. The irony, according to Friedman, is that Western dependence on oil imports from countries which are ‘Not Free’ has channelled revenues to authoritarian regimes that oppose freedom. This paradox undermines Western credibility as champions of democracy. In a post-9/11 world, where militant extremists reportedly seek safe harbour in oil-exporting states like Saudi Arabia, the consequences of Western oil dependency undermine the West’s long-term security goals. But, when it comes to Friedman’s equation for ‘petropolitics’, the reverse may actually be true. Recent events such as the Arab Spring demonstrate that as the price of oil rises, impacting staple commodity prices, so too does the need for change – change that is blocked by Western dependence on remaining regimes.

Bottom-of-the-barrel security

Western countries reliant on fossil fuel imports from nations ruled by authoritarian regimes are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy – a crisis which could render us more insecure in the long term. In Algeria, where the Arab Spring has not resulted in full on revolution, violent extremists recently made their presence felt at the ‘In Amenas’ gas plant, brutally murdering 37 expatriate workers. The plant, which is jointly operated by BP, Norway’s Statoil and Algerian state oil and gas company Sonatrach, is a major supply source for Western markets. Algeria is responsible for roughly 12.2 billion barrels of crude oil reserves. 85% of Algeria’s oil exports are destined for European and North American markets. Under the leadership of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose five year executive terms are renewable indefinitely, Algeria certainly does not rate highly on the list of Freedom House ‘Freedom Ratings’. Military and intelligence services strictly monitor and interfere with open elections. But the Arab Spring may not ever reach Algeria precisely because of the stability brought to the country by a Western-funded heavy-handed regime, which goes to great lengths to protect the general population from militant Islamist extremists and pro-democracy activists alike. Saudi Arabia and UAE are governed by similarly oppressive regimes; regimes which subvert democracy in favour of ‘stability’. Both supply oil and gas to the West. Both benefit from revenues gained through Western dependence in spite of their heavy-handedness.

Interests versus values

The Arab Spring has been full of unfortunate surprises linking former and current administrations to corrupt leaders. Photos of a smiling Tony Blair, getting up close and personal with much maligned Colonel Gaddafi, were a hit in the mainstream press as well as online following the collapse of his regime. Not long before that, the Bush Family’s close ties to the Saudi royal family did little to lend credence to their Middle East pro-democracy campaigns in the early 90s and 2000s.

Germany is in a similarly awkward position as the the largest energy consumer in Europe, with oil making up 38% of Europe’s overall consumption in 2011. Germany is Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom’s biggest European customer with 34% of total sales volume of Russian ‘blue fuel’ destined for German markets last year. There was therefore more than a hint of hypocrisy in Angela Merkel’s recent remarks during a visit by Vladimir Putin to a trade fair in Hanover that Russia ‘needs more NGOs’. The statement was made in regards to a Russian law passed last year requiring all NGOs that receive overseas funding to register as  ‘foreign agents’. Topless Ukrainian activists from the pro women’s rights group ‘Femen’ made their presence felt at the trade fair, drawing attention to  Russia’s crackdown on civil society groups and independent media organisations. Russia’s authoritarianism is a key element of the Putin government, but the issue arguably receives little mainstream coverage in the West compared to the Middle East.

Germany and, by extension, Europe’s de facto dependence on Gazprom to meet their energy needs provides yet another example of why Western countries need to seek develop a more sustainable energy security strategy. It is difficult to legitimately champion broad concerns about upholding civil protections, when some of your largest business partners engage in the shadowy practice of denying basic freedoms to their own citizens.

Renewable energy… and freedom?

In light of the above we can welcome new approaches to energy security, which are aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuel imports from authoritarian states. The Obama Administration’s ‘All of the Above’ energy strategy, as well as the pragmatism which the European Union, led by Germany, has shown in pushing forward a low carbon agenda are both steps in the right direction. Obama has pledged to double American energy efficiency by 2030, setting aside $2 billion over 10 years to support research into ‘a range of cost-effective technologies’, including electric vehicles, domestically-sourced biofuels, fuel cells, and domestically-produced natural gas. The plan also includes scope for reducing oil imports, while boosting renewable electricity generation from wind, solar and geothermal sources. Although Obama’s plan is far from low carbon, it shows promise. By comparison the UK Government, which at one time pledged to be the ‘greenest government ever’, has attempted to push forward its nationwide low carbon transition through the establishment of a Green Investment Bank. However, fairly recent public squabbles in the UK between Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and Chancellor George Osborne the UK’s finance minister, have called that agenda into question.

Friedman’s claim of an inverse correlation between high oil prices and authoritarianism is flawed. But his point about ‘petropolitics’ is still crucial to security, not only because he tries to link oil price fluctuations to authoritarian politics, but also because he highlights how Western dependence on foreign oil provides significant revenue streams on which remaining authoritarian governments can rely. It is also important to point out that as the global price of oil becomes more volatile due to price instability (see: ‘peaky behaviour’) the economic stability of authoritarian regimes that have consolidated their power bases around fossil fuels will almost certainly erode. Moreover, as the impact of oil prices continue to destabilise staple commodity prices, authoritarian regimes will almost certainly come under increasing pressure from their own populations to step down. Western countries that have formed dubious partnerships with these regimes in order to meet their energy security needs will risk further embarrassment when these regimes are toppled by the inevitable anti-authoritarian movements. Western leaders might then stand by and wait to pick a winner – a dubious strategy at best – in order to ensure that supply shipments are not further destabilised. But is this sustainable?

Renewable energy is not the most obvious factor for bolstering the strength of nations. But it is fast becoming clear that Western dependency on fossil fuel imports from countries governed by heavy-handed regimes cannot go on. The International Energy Agency has recently announced that power generation from renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear by 2016. That’s a positive sign. As for oil, we will have to wait and see. But if the restoration of Western legitimacy as champions of the “free world” is a top priority for Western leaders, then more support for domestic renewable energy growth is essential.

Phillip Bruner is Founder of the Green Investment Forum and a guest lecturer in global political economy at the University of Edinburgh

Image source: United Nations Photo

In peacekeeping missions, peacekeepers live seperated and segregated from the local communities which they are mandated to protect. This wide gulf between the everyday lives of peacekeepers and locals has consequences for peace interventions’ effectiveness and outcomes.

A truism of international peace interventions is that peacekeepers – and international peacebuilding personnel writ large – live in the same place as local residents, but do not live in the same world. The peacekeeping world is air-conditioned, clean, and well-guarded; it consists of decent housing, generous pay, access to vehicles, domestic help, and, usually, a robust (if limited) social life that revolves around expensive restaurants, hotels, bars, and clubs. In other words, peacekeepers live, work, and socialize in what I call ‘blue helmet havens’, distinct from the spaces most locals inhabit. They are spatially, economically, culturally, and in many cases linguistically separated or segregated from the majority of the local population of the ‘peace-kept’ city. As a Goma-based source put it, peacekeepers are ‘living in Congo’ but not ‘living Congo’.

The security and safety of peacekeeping personnel and property is the dominant justification for the ‘bubble’ in which peacekeepers live. Notably, this separation is enacted not only by barriers, bunkers, and security guards, but also by various peacekeeping rules, regulations, and norms that mitigate – if not actively discourage – informal or social contact between peacekeepers and locals.

Thus, peacekeepers’ off-duty movements are circumscribed by the security perimeter zone that is established by the mission’s internal security service, which delineates where peacekeepers can live, shop, and socialize and, in capitals and other urban areas, excludes vast swathes of the host cities. Even within the zone, peacekeepers are advised never to move on foot. They are required to live in gated and guarded compounds; are given black-lists of proscribed social venues; and, besides being prohibited from buying sex while in the mission area, are also strongly discouraged from having any intimate or sexual relationships with locals. These formal rules and regulations are reinforced by informal norms and mission cultures, which are heavily oriented towards keeping the peacekeeping bubble intact and exclusive. Cumulatively, the extremely risk-averse approach that missions take towards peacekeepers’ interactions in and with their surroundings means that the contact between peacekeepers and locals is both sparse and essentially transactional. There exists a wide gulf between the everyday lives of peacekeepers and locals, and very few means to bridge it.

Peacekeeping-as-enterprise in the peacekeeping ‘bubble’

But why is this important? Research shows that the gap in proximity and understanding between the international and the local matters for peace interventions’ effectiveness and outcomes. For example, in her book Peaceland, Séverine Autesserre argues that the shared everyday habits, practices, and narratives of international interveners simultaneously enable international peacebuilders to work in challenging environments, and degrade the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions. In other words, she asserts a direct link between the peacebuilding bubble and peacebuilding outcomes.

My own research also deals with the distorting effects of the peacekeeping bubble. Using the analytical lens of the peacekeeping economy – which encompasses the services, establishments, and activities needed to allow peacekeeping and peacekeepers to function, and which to a large extent frames and contains the peacekeeping bubble – I have argued that in areas with robust peacekeeping economies, peacekeeping appears to locals more as an enterprise than protection or development. Where peacekeeping economies flourish, they are as visible and tangible to local citizens as anything else done by peacekeeping missions – maybe even more so. It is thus unsurprising that, when people look around them and see money flowing and where it flows, they conclude that, heroic narratives aside, peacekeeping is not that different after all: it is all about the money. This in turn fosters cynicism and resentment among local citizens towards the peacekeeping mission, from which it is plausible to draw a connection to subpar results. On the peacekeepers’ side, meanwhile, what is striking is the extent to which their arms-length relation to the local reveals a sense of vulnerability – a perception of themselves as potential victims of exploitation, crime, or violence, thus upending the normal framing of peacekeepers as powerful, dominant protectors. On both sides, the strict separation between the peacekeepers and the local encourages, if not fosters, a lack of understanding and trust.

Taken together, then, this paints a picture of peacekeeping and peacekeepers as purposefully disconnected from the local everyday, apart from the microeconomic transactions contained by, and constitutive of, the peacekeeping economy. When it comes to how peacekeeping really works, the peacekeeping bubble is as relevant and significant as the peacekeeping mandate. Problems associated with this bubble’s existence include local suspicion of missions’ activities and motives; and a dearth of knowledge of, and empathy towards, locals from peacekeepers – each of which could be reasonably conjectured to inhibit the effectiveness and transformative potential of peacekeeping.

Security, estrangement, and stasis in peacekeeping transformation

An obvious implication of this contention is that international peace interventions will work better and more empathetically if the prevailing separation and segregation is lessened, such that the international and local ‘everydays’ are more enmeshed and aligned. But how would this work? Is it even possible?

There are modest proposals that missions could immediately initiate in order to promote an environment of mutual trust and more substantive formal and informal contact between peacekeepers and locals, which could eventually make peacekeeping environments safer for both peacekeepers and locals alike. For example, to mitigate the negative effects of the peacekeeping economy on the local economy and labour market, missions could:

• implement better scrutiny and oversight of subcontractors employed by missions (with respect to labour standards and protections) and of landlords the mission rents from (to ensure that ill-gotten gains are not rewarded);
• give guidance to peacekeepers on how to relate to their employees, prioritizing the rights of the employee equal to those of the peacekeeper;
• make greater efforts to procure goods and supplies locally, working with and monitoring local suppliers to forestall potential negative side-effects on local markets;
• and use of training methods and materials that do not rely on scare stories and fear to coerce obedience, thus encouraging more receptive attitudes towards locals by peacekeepers.

The most significant obstacle to peacekeeping transformation lies in the area of security. The tendency in peacekeeping missions to take greater and greater precautions to obviate danger and avoid risk is not without reason: persuading member states to contribute troops and money to peacekeeping is significantly more challenging if the UN is perceived to be reckless, and recruiting civilian peacekeepers also becomes more difficult. But ‘security’ in peacekeeping increasingly seems to mean the elimination of risk – whether stemming from armed groups, organized or ordinary criminals, fraudsters and scam artists, or everyday activities like driving, eating out, having sex, or walking down the street. According to such a standard, peacekeeping missions will never be fully secure. Nor, for that matter, will anything else. Peacekeeping institutions (headquarters and missions) and peacekeepers surely recognize this reality, yet there is little evident willingness at any level to push back against ever-escalating security demands and regulations.

In this heavily securitised and risk-averse environment, where protection of peacekeepers is (and always has been) mandated equal to protection of civilians, separation is the path of least resistance. This implies that fundamental transformation in how peacekeeping missions situate themselves to local people and communities is unlikely. Missions’ estrangement and alienation from the local community and the local ‘everyday’ is a feature, not a bug; and thus that whatever losses may ensue – of legitimacy or effectiveness – is a price that the peacekeeping apparatus is willing to pay.

Kathleen Jennings is a senior researcher at the Fafo Research Foundation in Oslo. Her work focuses on UN peacekeeping, gender, and political economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Jennings recently defended her PhD thesis on gendered peacekeeping economies in Liberia and the DR Congo. She has previously worked at the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Summary

The dramatic recent escalation of rhetoric and military posturing on the Korean peninsula has reawakened suggestions that the United States could use relatively low-yield nuclear weapons in a limited or tactical operation to neutralise North Korea. Indeed, both the idea of nuclear ‘first strike’ and their ‘flexible’ usage on and off the ‘battlefield’ are deeply rooted in historic and current NATO and UK doctrine on nuclear weapons. Given the extraordinarily militarised nature of the inter-Korean border and, increasingly, that between NATO and Russia, the potentially cataclysmic nature of any nuclear exchange must be urgently recalled and avoided at all costs.

Introduction

One of the most common misunderstandings about nuclear weapons in general and Britain’s nuclear weapons in particular is that nuclear strategy is solely about deterring an opponent from attacking you by threatening that opponent with all-out destruction in response. Given the growing risk of a nuclear confrontation over North Korea it is appropriate to point out that this has never been the case. Ever since the start of the nuclear age nuclear weapons have been seen as useable weapons and appropriate in certain circumstances for fighting limited nuclear wars.

As a member of NATO Britain retains the option of using nuclear weapons first and has the means to do so. This briefing is intended to serve as a reminder of this. It will do so by concentrating specifically on British policy, both within NATO and out-of-area, but this applies just as much to the other seven full nuclear powers and, no doubt, to North Korea as well. It applies very much to the United States in particular and its current president, Donal J Trump, who has made it clear that the United States will not allow North Korea to develop the ability to target the continental United States with nuclear weapons.

Early history

When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in August 1945 these weapons were seen in air force circles as direct descendants of the mass bombing of cities with conventional weapons using a thousand bombers or more. The raids on Hamburg and Dresden and especially the firestorm raid on Tokyo each killed tens of thousands of people so the perception after Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that the primary difference between conventional and nuclear weapons was one of cities being destroyed by one atom bomb from a single plane rather than five thousand tons of high explosive bombs from many planes. Indeed the US Army Air Corps and the nuclear weapon industry had already set in motion the industrial structures to destroy two Japanese cities every month until surrender.

By 1948 the United States had an arsenal of fifty atom bombs and was already starting to develop the far more powerful thermonuclear weapon or H-bomb. Britain came on the scene rather later. While it first tested a nuclear weapon in 1952, it was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that it could start deploying its Valiant, Vulcan and Victor strategic bombers in large numbers. These, too, were seen in the context of the British involvement in the area bombing of German cities, but Britain was also an early adherent of the idea of fighting limited nuclear wars, an issue that was seen as particularly relevant in the Middle East and Eastern and South Eastern Asia.

Thus there were nuclear-capable Canberra bombers and nuclear weapons deployed to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus from 1961 to 1969 to support the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), the South West Asian equivalent of NATO. These were replaced by Vulcans until 1975. From the mid-1960s there were regular detachments of V-bombers to RAF Tengah in Singapore and the Royal Navy had nuclear-capable Scimitar and Buccaneer strike aircraft on aircraft carriers such as Eagle, Ark Royal, Centaur and Victorious over a 16-year period from 1962 to 1978.

From the early days of the deployment of nuclear weapons  by states such as the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain there is ample evidence that both military and political leaders accepted the possibility of limited nuclear war. It was expressed in Britain, for example, by the then Minister of Defence, Harold Macmillan, speaking in the House of Commons in 1955:

“…the power of interdiction upon invading columns by nuclear weapons gives a new aspect altogether to strategy, both in the Middle East and the Far East. It affords a breathing space, an interval, a short but perhaps vital opportunity for the assembly, during the battle for air supremacy, of larger conventional forces than can normally be stationed in those areas.” (Hansard, volume 568, column 2182, 2 March 1955).

NATO and nuclear first use

As one of the founder members of NATO, and the second to develop nuclear weapons, Britain was involved in NATO nuclear planning from the very early years of the mid-1950s. In those early years and until the late 1960s, NATO nuclear policy was codified in document MC14/2 known as the “tripwire” policy which planned a massive nuclear response to the initiation of war by the Soviet bloc.

While the United States maintained massively greater nuclear forces, and a wide variety of weapon types, Britain also had a significant arsenal which eventually developed to include an array of strategic and tactical systems. These included the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles, free-fall bombs of variable power and anti-submarine nuclear depth bombs as well as nuclear-capable 155mm and 203mm artillery and Lance short-range nuclear missiles, the last three utilising US nuclear warheads under a dual control system. Thus, for several decades, all three branches of the British Armed Forces focused their operational planning around use of forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons.

By the latter part of the 1960s the Soviet Union had developed its own array of tactical systems and NATO responded by modifying “tripwire” and developing “flexible response”. This was encoded in MC14/3 of 16 January 1968 and envisaged the limited use of mostly low-yield warheads early in a conflict against Warsaw Pact troops and their immediate logistic support in the belief that they might be “stopped in their tracks”. If that failed, a more general nuclear response might ensue.

Britain was very much part of this move, its nuclear forces were normally committed to NATO and UK personnel played significant roles within the NATO Nuclear Planning Group. This move away from deterrence through massive assured destruction was rarely publicised by the British government, one exception being an exposition of the policy offered to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs two decades after the transition to flexible response:

“The fundamental objective of maintaining the capability for selective sub-strategic use of theatre nuclear weapons is political – to demonstrate in advance that NATO has the capability and will to use nuclear weapons in a deliberate, politically-controlled way with the objective of inducing the aggressor to terminate the aggression and withdraw. The role of TNF [Theatre Nuclear Forces] is not to compensate for any imbalance in conventional forces. The achievement of conventional parity could have very positive consequences for the Alliance’s strategy of deterrence. But it would not, of itself, obviate the need for theatre nuclear forces.”    (Third Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs 1987-88, p.35, para. 6.)

What was very little understood at the time in the public domain was that NATO’s flexible response approach was not just the preparedness to use nuclear weapons first in response to a conventional military attack from the Soviet bloc but to do so at an early stage in such a conflict. This was made clear by SACEUR (the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe), General Bernard Rogers, in an interview published in early 1986:

“Before you lose the cohesiveness of the alliance – that is, before you are subject to (conventional Soviet military) penetration on a fairly broad scale – you will request, not you may, but you will request the use of nuclear weapons”. (International Defence Review, February 1986)

NATO’s flexible response policy remains broadly in place to the present day and nuclear planning allows for many different targeting options. This also applies to the United States where such options are constantly updated to allow for changing political situations. In an interesting reflection on relative economic and political strength, Russia also sees nuclear weapons as intrinsically of greater relevance given the low capabilities of its conventional military forces compared with those of the Warsaw Pact at the height of the Cold War.

Britain’s out-of-area operations and nuclear weapons

Since the end of the Second World War the United Kingdom has been one of the most active countries to be involved in overseas wars. The majority of these were wars of the late colonial period, but many others have been more broadly based, from Korea through to former Yugoslavia as well as the more recent and intensive post-9/11 conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa. Throughout all this period the UK has maintained its wide-ranging tactical and strategic nuclear options, even though the size of the arsenals is smaller than thirty years ago.

Two of the most controversial conflicts, the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982 and the first Gulf War of 1991 have both had a nuclear connection. After Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands in early 1982 the UK government under Margaret Thatcher despatched a substantial naval task force and six days after it left Britain The Observer reported that

“It is almost certainly carrying tactical nuclear naval weapons – atomic depth charges carried by Sea King helicopters and free-fall bombs carried by Harrier jump jets – as part of NATO equipment.” (11 April 1982)

Later reports indicated that many of the weapons from the smaller warships were transferred en route to an auxiliary supply ship, the RFA Resource which proceeded to the South Atlantic with the rest of the fleet but was deployed away from the most intense areas of action during the subsequent war. It is not clear whether this also applied to the nuclear weapons that may have been deployed on the two aircraft carriers, HMS Invincible and Hermes and there were also multiple if unconfirmed reports that the Thatcher government was prepared to deploy a Polaris missile submarine to the mid-Atlantic to bring it within range of Argentina. (Paul Rogers, “Sub-Strategic Trident: A Slow Burning Fuse”, London Defence Papers 34, Brasseys, 1996)

Nine years after that war the UK government committed substantial forces to a US-led multinational military coalition to evict the Iraqi forces that had invaded and occupied Kuwait in August 1990. At the time there was considerable concern that Iraq had a useable arsenal of chemical weapons and a clear indication of UK willingness to use nuclear weapons in response came in an interview with a senior army office attached to the 7^th Armoured Brigade which was leaving for the Gulf. He confirmed that an Iraqi chemical attack on UK forces would be met with a tactical nuclear response. (Observer, 30 September 1990).

Deliberate ambiguity

During the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, the UK government, under the leadership of the Conservative Prime Minister John Major, scaled down Britain’s nuclear arsenals in a series of unilateral moves, ceasing to deploy dual-control US nuclear artillery and missiles and withdrawing the WE.177 tactical nuclear bombs and depth bombs between 1992 and 1998. US-owned B61 tactical nuclear bombs continued to be deployed at RAF Lakenheath for another decade and still are based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey under enduring nuclear sharing arrangements with those host countries.

In order to preserve a British “sub-strategic” capability, a low-yield variant of the standard high-yield Trident thermonuclear warhead has since been deployed, although terms such as “tactical Trident” or “Sub-Strategic Trident” are no longer used in government publications. Neither is there any specific reference in official publications to the UK maintaining a policy of potential first-use of nuclear weapons.

Instead a generic description of the UK nuclear posture appears in successive defence white papers, the 2015 statement being an example:

Only the Prime Minister can authorise the launch of nuclear weapons, which ensures

that political control is maintained at all times. We would use our nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances of self-defence, including the defence of our NATO Allies. While our resolve and capability to do so if necessary is beyond doubt, we will remain deliberately ambiguous about precisely when, how and at what scale we would contemplate their use, in order not to simplify the calculations of any potential aggressor. (National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, para 4.68, page 34, November 2015)

It should be borne in mind that, while British ambiguity on nuclear first use is echoed by its NATO allies in Washington and Paris, as well as its assumed adversary in Moscow, there is nothing intrinsic about such a posture. China has consistently maintained a policy of no first use and normally stores its warheads separately from its delivery systems to prevent any accidental or malicious usage. India and Pakistan are also formally committed to no first use.

Conclusion

This brief summary of elements of the UK nuclear posture is intended as a reminder that such a posture is far more complex than simply providing a last-ditch deterrence against nuclear attack. Moreover, this applies very much for the United States which has a far wider array of nuclear weapon types and has been at the forefront of NATO nuclear planning, including the first use posture.

Should a conflict arise between the United States and North Korea it is by no means certain that Britain would be involved, given public attitudes within the UK, although a joint RAF/US Air Force/Korean Air Force exercise was held in South Korea late last year for the first time in several decades. Even so, at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions the concern should be that a crisis could escalate to the use of nuclear weapons, especially with an unpredictable incumbent in the White House.

Given Britain’s propensity for considering the idea of out-of-area nuclear first use and limited nuclear war, one would hope that there is also a full understanding of the considerable dangers of such a posture. If so, what should follow is a determination to do everything possible to advise President Trump against even considering this option in the case of North Korea.

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Image credit: Neil Hinchley. 

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About the Author

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website. His new book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threats from the Margins will be published by I B Tauris in June 2016. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

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Closing Europe’s borders and politicizing the attempt to admit refugees at a time when the growing humanitarian crisis poses mounting human rights challenges to the international community is fundamentally wrongheaded. These approaches only strengthen the hand of Islamic State.

While violent extremism, terrorism, and civil wars have drawn the most attention, coming to grips with the refugee crisis—emanating mainly from Syria’s civil war, but also more generally from the Middle East and North Africa’s political environment (MENA) in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings—has never been more essential. The Syrian crisis has propelled a wave of migrants to the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey. The Syrian refugee population stands at approximately 4.7 million, of whom 1.7 million live in Lebanon and Jordan and even more in Turkey. It is estimated that Turkey now hosts the world’s largest community of displaced Syrians.

Defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL and by its Arabic acronym as Da’esh), while at the same time fulfilling the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the Syrian situation, has presented a complex challenge to the international community. The growing threat of ISIS as shown in attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016), magnified by the increased threat of individual terrorists—the so-called “lone wolves” in San Bernardino, the United States—has stemmed a wave of nationalist, right-wing alarm, reinforcing a general concern about the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers, while underlining the shift from a regional to the international nature of both threat and risk. These security issues have also illustrated the willingness of great powers to support military reactions to ISIS in order to stem the atrocities perpetrated by this group, while putting the departure of the Assad regime on the back burner—at least for now. For all intents and purposes, ISIS poses a much greater threat to Europe than does the current regime in Damascus.

An Unavoidable Tradeoff

Confronting and dismantling ISIS need not be achieved by stigmatizing refugees and subjecting them to religious litmus tests. Closing Europe’s porous borders and politicizing the admission of refugees at a time when the growing humanitarian crisis poses mounting human rights challenges to the international community is fundamentally misguided. After all, fortifying European borders, while effective in the short term, strengthens the hands of ISIS and other terrorist groups that portray such policies and practices largely in terms of apocalyptic visions and arcane Islamic prophecies of great battles against Western imperialists.

Defeating ISIS requires strategic endurance and long-term prudent political decision-making involving internal and external actors in the MENA region. While doing so, it is important to avoid the enemy’s repressive, atavistic, and brutal methods, eschewing certain tactics that could potentially play into ISIS’s hands. It is important to bear in mind that the tactics that terrorist groups like ISIS employ pose mostly political and ideological challenges to the West and that the real fight will be in defeating and destroying the claims and values that these groups assert.  In the end, defeating ISIS requires that its demonic ideology and tactics be confronted and exposed.

Preventing further refugee crises in the future requires that fighting ISIS be at least temporarily prioritized over the overthrow of the Assad regime.  Seeking a political solution in conjunction with harnessing a multipronged strategy may in fact be among the most effective tools and processes of dealing with current humanitarian crises that the world faces. The possibility of working with the Russians and the Iranians in order to seek a political solution in Syria also raises questions about whether this tradeoff is justified. If the intent is to defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Levant Conquest Front (formerly known as al-Nusra Front), then this tradeoff is inevitable even as it buttresses the Assad regime in Syria for the foreseeable future. This solution is not problem-free or without significant challenges, however.

Competing Views

While the military actions against ISIS are warranted and can be coordinated by both inside and outside actors, the nature of such military missions and their consequences are also subject to further debate and negotiations. The inclusion of Russia and Iran, allies of Assad, in the fight against ISIS raises concerns that their stated goal of curbing ISIS is merely a pretext to prolonging Assad’s rule. Likewise, Turkish participation in air strikes in northern Syria in the war against ISIS has raised the possibility that Ankara will target the Kurds, who have successfully fought against ISIS since the beginning of the conflagration. Turkey’s interest in settling political scores with the Kurds, an interest that it believes is vital to its security, imperils whatever impartiality one might have hoped for in a fight solely against ISIS.

The massive movement of migrants and refugees to Europe, coupled with the ISIS-led attacks on soft targets in Europe, has created a new urgency among Western leaders to fully confront this new global threat and seriously contemplate the possibility of cooperating with Russia in a coordinated effort. Compromises must at times be made when a multifaceted campaign that includes both countering ISIS and precipitating the removal of the Assad regime is waged. The collapse of the Assad regime would create a significant security void that ISIS and other terrorist groups could easily exploit.

There is no denying the fact that the Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino terrorist attacks have heightened the securitization of the refugee threats, as the Islamic State has been using the wave of the migrant influx to infiltrate Europe and North America. The number of terrorists hiding among the refugees is small. ISIS has exploited the flood of refugees to smuggle jihadis into Europe by distributing fake passports in Greek refugee camps to allow its terrorists to travel within Europe. On April 22, 2016, The Washington Post reported that more than three dozen suspected militants who had posed as migrants have been arrested or died while planning or carrying out acts of terrorism.  They included at least seven individuals who were directly linked to the bloody attacks in Paris and Brussels.

But even a few of these will be highlighted by conservative circles in all Western countries to call for the repatriation or active policing of refugee communities.  Donald Trump Jr.’s notorious analogy between refugees and poisoned Skittles is a case in point. Conservatives rank the issue of terrorism much higher than do liberals in the West, the latter agreeing that one cannot stop all terrorism and that the chances of being caught in a terrorist attack are still quite small. Vigilance and the exclusion of possible threats by governments, however, is prioritized over the compassionate acceptance of refugees.

The Flaws of the Current Refugee Regime

The issue remains to be discussed within the core conception of the mandate of the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Remaining at the center of the global refugee regime, UNHCR faces new challenges. Today, for example, most refugees tend to flee from violence and flagrant human rights violations—not necessarily from the threat of persecution, which is a key requirement according to the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This has resulted in confusion and lack of clarity regarding who qualifies for refugee status and what are the rights to which all refugees are entitled— issues left up entirely to states to interpret. To compound matters further, in the case of Syrian refugee crisis, the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq have never ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention. Now, more than ever, a robust and comprehensive discussion about the future of refugees, whose numbers will only increase with the worsening effects of climate change, is not only timely but necessary, given the tumultuous nature of international politics.

It is important to bear in mind that refugees can be a destabilizing factor, especially when displaced, alienated, and bitter persons among them are recruited into armed extremist factions. Many studies have shown that the absence of a protective and enabling environment is likely to render more young people vulnerable to racist ideologies and movements and ease the process of their recruitment into the ranks of radical groups like the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. The traditional method of relying on purely humanitarian remedies has proven counterproductive in the face of new influxes of refugees. There is a need for a new thinking that envisions relief and humanitarian aid as fundamentally linked to the granting of work permits to the refugees. To dwell solely on the conventional method of humanitarian aid, and to ignore the importance of wage-earning employment for the refugees, is to wear blinders.

Shifting Focus from Protection to Empowerment

The focus of the 1951 refugee protection regime should shift to new ways of dealing with displaced persons that take into account the self-interested reasoning of host countries and the concerns of their citizens regarding competition over jobs. This shift will help to eliminate risks to refugees’ personal security by reducing human smuggling and trafficking by land and sea. Some experts, such as Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, have offered solutions along the line of creating “spaces of opportunity” for the refugees through “special economic zones” that provide jobs, training, and education.

Helping refugees, I would argue, should begin with technical education and vocational training, coupled with a strategy focused on creating jobs immediately in economic zones from which both host societies and displaced Syrians can benefit. The need to work is inseparable from human security and thus crucial to preserving human dignity. The refugees’ right to legal employment makes good ethical and logical sense. Designing, for example, a vocational skills training program tailored to the needs of women refugees can significantly reduce the incidence of sexual trafficking and abuse. These projects offer a more plausible solution in the long term, not only because they will develop transferable skills that refugees can use in their countries of origin upon return, but also because they create monetary disincentives for refugees to emigrate to Europe in the first place.

Dr. Mahmood Monshipouri is a professor of international relations at San Francisco State University and he is also a visiting professor at UC-Berkeley, teaching Middle Eastern Politics, and editor, most recently, of Information Politics, Protests, and Human Rights in the Digital Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).  For more on the perspectives provided here, see Mahmood Monshipouri, Claude Welch Jr., and Khashayar Nikazmrad, “Protecting Human Rights in the Era of Uncertainty: How Not to Lose the War against ISIS,” Journal of Human Rights Online version, July 28, 2016, available at <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14754835.2016.1205477>.

by Isabelle Geuskens, Executive Director of Women Peacemakers Program

Almost 15 years after the first resolution to address women, peace and security, the agenda’s implementation is increasingly subverted by the militarised security paradigm. Implementing UNSCR 1325 has been interpreted as being about fitting women into the current peace and security paradigm and system; rather than about assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender lens. As a result, the opportunity to create a new recipe for peace and security, based on taking women’s perspectives into account, is being lost.

Next year we will be celebrating the 15th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the first resolution of seven addressing Women, Peace & Security. In 2000, UNSCR provided the world with a groundbreaking message – providing an important recognition of the crucial role that women have to play in processes of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding, as well as the specific impact of war on women’s and girls’ lives.

The years following its adoption have borne witness to an increase in the amount of interest in the Resolution, as well as in the number of activities dedicated to “1325”, both at civil society and governmental level. However, almost 15 years into actual implementation of UNSCR 1325, we are still facing many challenges. Women’s participation in peace negotiations and peace agreements has remained low. Though some progress has been made in the adoption of UNSCR 1325 National Action Plans (NAPs) and in terms of legal and judicial reforms in some countries; implementation of these policies is often not enforced. Conflict related sexual violence as a deliberate weapon of war still occurs on a large scale and with impunity

Peace and security from a holistic gender perspective

Analyzing and addressing these challenges requires us to go back to the bigger picture. Over the years, the women’s peace movement has observed a growing, and worrying, trend. To a large extent, implementing UNSCR 1325 seems to be interpreted as being about fitting women into the current peace and security paradigm and system; rather than about assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender lens. In other words, “Just Add Women and Stir” has become the maxim as the way to move forward, instead of coming up with a new recipe for peace and security altogether, based on taking women’s perspectives into account.

Such a new recipe would not only impact the lives of women, it would also provide important alternatives for men. The dominant peace and security paradigm is heavily militarized, normalizing the use of armed force and violence as a means to address conflict. This process of militarization incorporates specific gender dynamics, among others pushing men to engage in armed and violent action to solve conflict. Redefining this peace & security paradigm from a holistic gender perspective not only brings in women’s perspectives of what makes up real human security, it also addresses the normalization of violence in patriarchal society and prioritizes conflict prevention as well as nonviolent conflict resolution.

Militarization of Women, Peace & Security

UNSCR 1325 is increasingly being used as a tool to support women’s recruitment into militarized institutions and environments. Though some actors in the women’s movement view the increase of women’s participation in the armed forces as a sign of women’s empowerment and emancipation, others see it as a sign of the increased militarization of society. It is not the question whether women are capable of taking up arms and engaging in military action; for many of us, the discussion is about whether the militarization of women’s lives is beneficial for women and society in general.

Often, the call to increase women’s participation in militarized institutions is backed up by essentialist arguments. One of the arguments given is that “adding women” will somehow challenge its hyper-masculine culture and contribute to both a more humane and a more women-friendly environment. The assumption at work here is that women are naturally less violent than men, and hence might have a soothing effect on the inside and the outside. However, using violence against the enemy is part and parcel of every militarist system. Some of the women combatants WPP has spoken to over the years – whether active within state armies or guerrilla movements – indicated that in order to be taken seriously as a woman fighter, they often presented an even tougher front towards the enemy. They made it clear: a woman in the armed forces is, first and foremost, a fighter. Within any military system – state or non-state – unity is key, and many women in armed forces most certainly do not want to be viewed as special category, because they are working hard to be taken seriously in their role of fighters.

It is also often argued that women’s inclusion will benefit the military mission, as their presence provides access to previously untapped sources of intelligence: women in the community. However, referring to local women in such a manner can be dangerous, as in many situations of conflict, anyone (and in particular women’s groups, whose women’s rights activism might already challenge existing traditional notions around gender) seen interacting closely with (foreign) armed forces is at risk of being labelled a traitor or enemy agent.

A major concern for us is that the above lines of argumentation completely instrumentalize women’s lives and experiences. The arguments also fail to challenge the – patriarchal – status quo by any means: conflict continues to be framed and solved by armed intervention, hence promoting the use of violence to overcome and dominate the enemy “other”.

Missing an opportunity for change

With the 15^th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 around the corner, there are some big questions to be asked. Is the world becoming a safer place if UNSCR 1325 implementation merely focuses on integrating the female half of the population in upholding and promoting militarization? If the focus is narrowed to embedding women firmly within existing systems, are we not missing out on an opportunity for real change? Should UNSCR 1325 not also be about stretching the current peace and security paradigms, about addressing the gendered way that humanity frames and addresses conflict itself, and about investing in disarmament, conflict prevention, human security and alternative conflict resolution mechanisms? As UNSCR 1325 is about gender and peacebuilding, should we not also explore and address men’s gendered experiences of violence and war? Is it not time to  lay bare the connections between war and hyper-masculinity, and thereby show the importance of investing in alternative masculinities to address violent conflict at its roots?

Many women peace activists – some of whom laid the ground work for UNSCR 1325 via the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and their continued mobilizing during the late 90s – have presented us with powerful feminist perspectives on peace and security that challenge current patriarchal paradigms. Their peace work is inextricably linked to calls for disarmament; investment in nonviolent conflict resolution and the prevention of policies of aggression; the need to divert excessive military expenditures to social development, and the promotion of women’s leadership in order to advance a culture of peace.

Now is the time for their claims to be taken serious: violent intervention is not bringing about the desired impact. In their publication “Gender, Conflict and Peace” (2013), Dyan Mazurana and Keith Proctor state: “Contrary to popular belief, the academic literature increasingly argues that a strategy of non-violence is more effective than violence in achieving policy goals. According to data analyzed by Stephan and Chenoweth, between 1900 to 2006 non-violent campaigns were successful in achieving their policy goals 53 percent of the time, whereas violent campaigns only had a success rate of 26 percent.”

Nonviolence provides an important alternative to our current thinking about peace and security. Often also referred to as “people power” or “civil courage”, it recognizes that conflict is a fact of life, and can even provide an important opportunity for positive change. The challenge lies in how to frame and address conflict. Instead of the current “Power Over” security model – which is rooted in the use and legitimacy of armed violence to overcome and eliminate the opponent – nonviolence operates on the principle of “Power With”: empowering the people with the idea that peace and security ultimately has to come from the people, which implies that injustice can be successfully addressed when people organize themselves into a nonviolent collective.

For decades now, women peace activists have presented us with feminist analysis and viable alternatives to secure peace for all, challenging the current patriarchal security and peace paradigm. Despite their efforts, their claims and peace work tend to still be largely overlooked– even after 15 years of USNCR 1325. If we truly want to engender peace, we need to broaden and diversify UNSCR 1325 implementation. For only by going back to the bigger picture and applying a holistic gender analysis to peace and security, can we become successful in securing peace and security for all.

Isabelle Geuskens serves as Executive Director of  Women’s Peacemakers Program, a Dutch NGO that works for the nonviolent resolution of conflict, and the inclusion of women’s voice and leadership in nonviolent conflict resolution processes. From 2002-12, she acted as program Manager of WPP at the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR). Under her leadership, WPP started pioneering a program on engaging men for gender sensitive peacebuilding. Prior to taking up this position, Isabelle was active in peacebuilding initiatives in Belfast and in Srebrenica, where she worked for the Working Group Netherlands-Srebrenica. Isabelle holds a Master of Arts from the University of Maastricht.

Featured Image: Female soldier at a shooting range during IDF training, southern Israel  Source: Wikipedia

Implementation of the interim deal with Iran, which freezes the country’s nuclear enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief, began last week. As an initial outcome of this deal, we are witnessing a substantial shift in diplomatic relations and relationships between Iran and its regional neighbours – some positive, some not. This deal marks a significant step for the international non-proliferation regime, but will it achieve the trust and confidence-building goals intended? As the US and Iran face increasing domestic pushback on the terms of the agreement, questions remain on the interim deal’s impact on relations in the region and abroad, and the effect these relations may have on the prospects of coming to a full comprehensive follow-up agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries.

The Interim Deal

The current deal, in which Iran will halt further progress on its nuclear programme and roll back key elements in return for temporary and limited sanctions relief from the P5+1, was originally negotiated at the end of November in Geneva, but the details of implementation were confirmed in early January. After a decade of negotiations to solve the Iranian “nuclear crisis”, the implementation of this deal marks a significant step forward for the international non-proliferation regime, and is an important success story for international diplomacy. Despite the misgivings of a number of sceptics, this six-month interim deal brings countries together to work towards developing assurances around Iran’s nuclear programme, acting as a trust and confidence building exercise with the intention to create opportunity and space for a more ambitious longer term agreement in the future.

 A Positive Impact on Diplomatic Relations…

As an initial outcome of this deal, we are witnessing a substantial shift in diplomatic relations and relationships between Iran and its regional neighbours. While the outset of the interim deal saw a number of sceptics, encouraging reactions have developed, including positive official responses from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Even the Prime Minister of the UAE officially welcomed the deal and called for lifting sanctions and a partnership with Iran.

Relationships between Iran and Western partners have also begun to restore themselves as a result of the deal. After three decades of no sustained direct contact, back channels were set up prior to and early on during Rouhani’s presidency to help unlock the negotiations and in a pinnacle moment in September, Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone after the UN General Assembly.

The United Kingdom also hasn’t had bilateral diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic since 2011, when the British Embassy in Tehran was stormed.  However, the UK and Iran agreed to renew direct diplomatic links during November’s Geneva talks and shortly thereafter, a newly appointed British chargé d’affaires, Ajay Sharma, travelled to Iran as the first British envoy since 2011. It was announced on the 28^th of January that a delegation of Iranian parliamentarians will visit London during the summer months. This follows a visit by British Members of Parliament, led by former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw MP, to Tehran that took place in early January.

This overall confidence-building between regional states and diplomatic restoration between Iran and the P5+1 negotiating partners promises to improve the chances of negotiating a comprehensive nuclear deal next month.

…But Not for Everyone

However, the possible détente between Iran and Western countries – the US in particular – may be a game changer for some regional states and parties. Israel’s response to the interim deal has been continuously vocal and disapproving from the start, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemning the deal as a “historic mistake”. It comes as somewhat of a personal defeat for the Israeli Prime Minister, who has been campaigning to strip Iran from all of its enrichment capability. Some analysts have hinted that this deal will damage the prospects for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East as it will pull Israel even further away from the negotiation table. Perhaps, though, the fear of losing US interest will bring them even closer to it.

Responses in Saudi Arabia have also been less than enthusiastic: while the official response labelled the deal as a good solution to the Iranian nuclear programme, the unofficial response fears proliferation in the region and the enhancement of Iran’s role as a regional power. Members of the Saudi royal family have labelled Obama’s strategy with Iran as flawed and claimed that sanctions relief was a huge mistake that will now give Iran the upper hand. The Saudis see this deal as giving Iran more power, which threatens their status as a regional hegemon. In an unusual turn of events, this sees Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s interests aligning—both feeling disappointed and outraged towards the US and fearing Iran’s potential.

Hints of a rift between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have also been noticed as a result of this deal. Unlike Saudi Arabia, most of these states have signalled their modification in policy to match US goodwill towards Iran. This is especially seen in Oman, a state with strong historic ties to Iran and which helped broker the initial back channels established between the Islamic Republic and US in early 2013. At the IISS Manama Dialogue in December 2013, Omani Foreign Minister Youssef bin Alawi candidly spoke out against the Saudi proposal to upgrade the GCC union. The Sultanate state has always intended to pursue an independent foreign policy path, careful to balance relationships on both sides of the Gulf. The proposal, which strengthens the union of the GCC, was rejected by the Omani Sultanate on the grounds that there is a failure to agree on the foundations of the GCC and economic integration, but it would also force Oman to align more closely with Saudi Arabia which might in turn antagonise Oman’s relationship with Iran. With the complex combination of global and regional structural shifts and intersecting economic interests, this is perhaps the first of many small fissures between the Gulf States and regional partners that will come as unintended consequences of this deal.

Hurting at home

Even within Iran, the reaction has been mixed, and Rouhani has faced criticism for being too close to the West. Since his election in June of last year, he and his administration have been leading a public relations campaign to repair relations with the West, but he has faced problems with hardliners who are sceptical of US motivations or hold on to historical grudges.  While this deal helps to relieve some of Iran’s economic hardship, Rouhani has gone out on a limb in easing off enrichment, a capability which is seen by many within Iran to be entrenched within their national identity.

Obama faces similar problems in Washington, as lawmakers in the Congress come dangerously close to causing the collapse of the deal by supporting the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act (S.1881) in the Senate. This bill, introduced in December by New Jersey Democratic Senator, Robert Menendez, imposes additional financial sanctions against Iran if it were to default on the terms of the interim deal, or if a long term deal was not agreed to after the end of the six months. Terms of the initial deal with Iran stipulates there will be no new nuclear related sanctions but core sanctions will remain intact for now and Iran will continue to lose $4-$5 billion in revenue per month.

Crucially,  the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act would require zero enrichment from Iran, which is a red line for Iranians. Under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all Parties have the inalienable right “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”. Blatant discrimination against these rights is a deal breaker for Iran and in response (or perhaps retaliation) to Menendez’s bill, Iranian parliament has proposed new legislation that would allow for Iran to increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, enough for weapons grade uranium. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has threatened that if bill S.1881 is passed in Congress, “the entire [interim] deal is dead”.

Moving Forward

The next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 to negotiate a more comprehensive nuclear deal is reportedly to be held in New York in mid-February. However, with domestic and regional backlash from the deal threatening to collapse the interim deal – and worse, threatening to prohibit the agreement of a more sustainable deal in February – the chance of achieving further negotiations now depends on successful physical implementation of the interim deal Joint Plan of Action.

While many remain sceptical of the parties involved or the implications on the region and beyond, this interim deal is a positive breakthrough for the international non-proliferation regime, which has needed a major boost like this for some time. We have a major opportunity ahead of us for restoring trust and strengthening Iran’s partnership on the global non-proliferation and disarmament agenda. This potential for such positive outcomes must now be the focus of the next month, because losing the momentum of this deal and starting from scratch would be a setback that global security cannot afford.

Rachel Staley is currently the Programme Manager for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in their London office. Since 2011, Rachel has managed the operations of the office and assisted in developing the organisation’s programmes working on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the Middle East, as well as engaging directly in the Trident renewal debate in the United Kingdom. Rachel holds an MA with Distinction in Non-Proliferation and International Security from King’s College London and a BA with Honours in International Affairs and Anthropology from Northeastern University.

Featured image: British Foreign Secretary William Hague, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, US Secretary of State John Kerry, on early November 24, 2013 in Geneva. Source: European External Action Service (Flickr)

 

Published last week, Myanmar: Storm Clouds on the Horizon is International Crisis Group’s latest Asia report. It focuses on the potential for political violence and social instability as Mynamar’s leaders are undertaking reforms “to move the country decisively away from its authoritarian past”. For most of the past 50 years, the government of the Republic of the Union of Mynamar (also referred to as Burma) has been under direct or indirect control by the military. Since independence in 1948, the people of Myanmar have suffered civil wars which have mainly been struggles for ethnic and sub-national autonomy. The country has consistently been in the news for human rights violations. Perhaps one of the world’s most well-known political prisoners, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi, also chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) was released in 2010 after 21 years under house arrest.

Thein Sein, current president of Myanmar, has put in place a far-reaching and radical reform agenda. The ICG’s report focuses on what reforms have been achieved and what this may mean for a possible resurrection of violence because “political prisoners have been released, blacklists trimmed, freedom of assembly laws implemented, and media censorship abolished. But widespread ethnic violence in Rakhine State, targeting principally the Rohingya Muslim minority, has cast a dark cloud over the reform process and any further rupturing of intercommunal relations could threaten national stability.” With former political prisoners being released, 2,000 high-profile activists and opposition politicians being allowed to return home, and further liberalization of the media, “social tensions are rising as more freedom allows local conflicts to resurface”.

The report notes that “The easing of authoritarian controls has created the space for the population to air grievances, the ability to organise in a way that was not possible before, and the opportunity to have a real influence on government policies and decisions” which has led to an “exponential growth in civil society activity”. In order for the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy to be stable, and for peace and security to be sustainable, the government of Myanmar will have to face and resolve major challenges. Widespread militarization and the political and social marginalization (past and present) of ethnic and religious groups will have to be addressed. For example, it has been estimated that the recent 2012 violence between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine State led to an estimated 90,000 displaced people in addition to dozens of casualties. It will not be sufficient to react to past and present violence by allowing more freedom of speech and liberalizing the press. Trying to contain the violence and reducing state repression alone will not address the underlying drivers of insecurity. The government will have to take a sustainable security approach and make great efforts in order to actively address the causes of long-standing grievances. Addressing only the symptoms cannot lead to long-term stability and the rebuilding of trust between communities.

The ICG offers several options to minimize the risks associated with single party dominance during Myanmar’s political transition. These include changing the electoral system to some form of proportional representation, building coalitions between the NLD and other political parties, and building bridges between the NLD and current president Thein Sein as well as other political forces- particularly the old guard. The ICG recommendations underscore the importance of all parties, and the majority of people, to feel involved in the political process. The marginalization of any political or ethnic/religious groups will most probably lead to further violence and insecurity in the future.

ICG’s full report and details of the policy recommendations can be read here.

Anna Alissa Hitzemann is a  Peaceworker with Quaker Peace and Social Witness. She currently works with Oxford Research Group as a Project Officer for the Sustainable Security Programme, with a focus on our ‘Marginalisation of the Majority World’ project.

Image source: Rusty Steward

This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 29 May, 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explores pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.

The abduction of over 200 school girls from Chibok has radically changed not only the popular profile of the Boko Haram insurgency but also the narrative of the war in northeast Nigeria. This was probably not intended by the insurgents or the ham-fisted Nigerian government, neither of which seemed to recognise this apparent gear-shift in the insurgency. After this fumble, it was civil society, through the #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign that picked up and ran with the call for action. Now that the US and its allies have channelled this urge to “do something now” into security assistance, caution is due in monitoring how and why the energy from this new burst of liberal interventionism will be channelled.

Responding to Chibok

Boko Haram has a long and undiscriminating record of terrorist violence. My analysis of data compiled by Nigeria Watch suggests that about 9,000 Nigerians (including combatants) have died in related violence since 2009, most of them since the federal government declared a localised state of emergency a year ago. That rate has been rising fast; 1,043 were recorded killed in March 2014 alone. Nevertheless, the 14 April Chibok mass abduction and Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’s subsequent threat to forcibly marry pre-teen girls to his supporters or sell them into slavery were extraordinary, crossing multiple red lines around protection of civilians, girls’ right to education and sexual violence.

The #BringBackOurGirls campaign has tapped into a social movement last and best exploited through the Stop Kony 2012 viral video campaign. That campaign influenced the African Union to establish its Regional Cooperation Initiative for the Elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in April 2012 and was a major driver of post-facto public support for the Obama administration’s October 2011 commitment of US special forces to Uganda and central Africa to hunt LRA leader Joseph Kony. Those troops remain in four countries and haverecently been reinforced. Kony has not been caught but the LRA menace to children, women and other civilians has been contained and reduced.

The state-level response to Chibok has been belated but even stronger. Since 7 May, the US, UK, France, China and Israel have all sent teams to Nigeria to help search for and rescue the abducted girls, and France has hosted a summit of Nigeria, its four neighbours and the US, UK and EU. In fact, all these states already played a role in training, equipping or supporting Nigerian forces against Boko Haram. However, they were reluctant about going public with a counter-insurgency campaign previously linked to the increasingly unpopular and divisive ‘war on terror’, the toxic human rights reputation of the Nigerian security forces, and an entirely reasonable confusion over the political nature and linkages of the ostensibly Islamist rebellion.

Response and replication

Whether this foreign assistance is useful in the search for the missing girls is both highly questionable and a moot point. The US certainly has formidable aerial, satellite and signals reconnaissance technology to employ but it is struggling to coordinate with Nigeria, and unwilling to share raw data with the Nigerian security agencies. Other countries’ contributions probably only replicate Nigerian and US capabilities, and risk over-complicating the search.

The French summit on 17 May was a classic case of replicating initiatives in order to bolster perceptions of French concern, consultation and action. Nigeria, which desperately wants to revel in its new status as Africa’s economic superpower, was humiliated that Paris – Abuja’s great rival for influence in West Africa – assumed its regional leadership role. The summit outcome commitments to bolster security cooperation in the Lake Chad basin replicated those that Nigeria and its neighbours had already made. Those sanctioning Boko Haram replicated UN-led measures.

The Elysée Summit was more useful in redirecting attention to the gendered aspects of Boko Haram’s campaign of violence, issues of particular importance to the EU and the UK, whose Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflictconvenes on 10 June. Both sides of the conflict have made tactical use of abducting and (separately) raping women and children linked to the other side as a means of exerting pressure or retaliation. Nigerian security forces and their civilian allies increasingly harass local women suspected of working for the militants. Boko Haram is accused of abducting girls and women to marry to its young, poor male combatants. Shekau has put his view on video record that girls above puberty should not be educated. This may be the most convincing explanation for the Chibok kidnapping: women as an economic and sexual resource.

Intervention narratives

The goal of securing the safe release of the abducted girls – and the security of their peers – must be paramount at this time. But, if the foreign assistance being pledged and provided makes little impact on this task, we must ask whether there are other goals motivating western governments to cooperate with Nigerian forces. Clearly, the political urge to assuage activists by responding with action is one of these, although we should not doubt that the Obama or Cameron families share the revulsion of other families around the world united behind #BringBackOurGirls.

The social media shaming of the Nigerian and foreign governments’ inactivity and inability to resolve the crisis has propelled foreign military forces across the rubicon. US, and perhaps British, French, Canadian, Israeli and other states’, special forces and reconnaissance aircraft and drones may stay on in Nigeria well beyond the current abduction crisis; this should not be surprising.

French forces are currently consolidating their redeployment from coastal Africa to a string of remote bases in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Their main base in N’djamena is just 40 km from Boko Haram’s stronghold in northeast Nigeria. US special and private military forces operate covertly in most countries of the Sahel-Sahara belt. Until this month, Nigeria appeared to be the exception.

The quiet reinforcement of these several thousand French and US troops across the western Sahel since 2012 – linking up to similar strings of mostly US bases in the eastern Sahel and Horn –is justified through the on-going international campaign against al-Qaida. US African Command openly uses the Operation Enduring Freedom tag for its operations in the Horn and Trans-Sahara. In Mali, Niger and Mauritania, French forces have joined battle against the al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algerian-origin group with regional aspirations. Yet Boko Haram is rather different. While it professes a common Salafism, it is not an al-Qaida affiliate and appears uninterested in controlling territory or attacking state assets outside of Nigeria.

This matters in the Nigerian context for two reasons. The first is in the way that the humanitarian impulse of #BringBackOurGirls – which diplomats can recognise as Protection of Civilians, Responsibility to Protect, or Ending Sexual Violence – shades into the realities of the war on terror. I would count four or five distinct narratives used to justify foreign military interventions in the last 15-20 years:

1. Liberal interventionism – following the ostensibly humanitarian urge to protect civilians and uphold human rights, notably in Kosovo and Sierra Leone.
2. The War on Drugs – an old idea reinvigorated with Plan Colombia in 1999.
3. The War on Terror – the idea that homeland security begins abroad, notably in Afghanistan, but lately in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali and elsewhere.
4. Proliferation of WMDs – actively in Iraq, and as a threat to Iran, Syria and others.
5. Protection of civilians – controversial used to pursue regime change in Libya, less so in pursuit of Kony thereafter.

Clearly, there are overlaps; the Bush administration’s Axis of Evil concept linked state sponsors of terrorism and WMD. ‘Narco-terrorism’ links the wars on drugs and terrorism. Whatever their muddy political and religious ideologies, Kony and Shekau do lead terrorist movements. With the failed war on terror increasingly unpopular among a cynical and war-weary populace, the post-2011 shift back to humanitarian criteria completes the circle back to liberal interventionism.

While applauding the global public’s shift from retribution to humanitarianism, we should be wary of politicians’ and generals’ intent in getting involved in northern Nigeria. The signs are that future ‘humanitarian’ interventions will be fought with the tactics of the war on terror, minus its rhetoric. Perhaps we should call these ‘Protection from Terror’ operations?

Self-fulfilling prophecy

If this shift in narrative represents the new Anglo-American take on intervention, the second reason for concern about the international fallout from Chibok is the Nigerian and French imperative to rebrand Boko Haram as part of al-Qaida. Nigeria’s successful addition of Boko Haram to the UN Security Council’s Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list on 22 May was a step in this direction. For Abuja, this may help to isolate Boko Haram and justify the disastrous escalation of the war since France pushed AQIM and its allies out of Mali in early 2013. For France, it creates a common bond and removes a potentially powerful voice of dissent in the AU and regional organisations about its own military presence in the Sahel.

Yet al-Qaida, for all its strategic interest in Nigeria’s 90 million Muslims, has shown little interest in Boko Haram and its use of indiscriminate violence against mostly Muslim civilians. Boko Haram has, in rhetoric and action, showed limited interest in a wider struggle beyond Islamicising Nigeria. It almost certainly has links to AQIM and splinter groups in Mali and Niger but these are not obviously strong. Al-Qaida and Boko Haram are not natural bedfellows, but post-Chibok dynamics, including US and Israeli military in northern Nigeria, are pushing them together, potentially consolidating a regional insurgency that is as much anti-western as anti-Nigerian.

Richard Reeve is the Director of Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme. He has researched African peace and security issues since 2000, including work with ECOWAS and the AU. His most recent security briefing ‘The Internationalisation of Nigeria’s Boko Haram Campaign’ is available here.