10 years of armed interventions – assessment

When withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in the course of 2011, the international community will close over a decade of armed interventions. An assessment of those is of the utmost relevance, not only on the national level but on the European level as well, because in the course of this year the EU’s Rapid Reaction Force will be discussed in the European Parliament, and un November a new NATO plan is due.

That assessment is at the core of one of the Supporters’ Network’s new projects. Currently we are thinking of the best way to tackle the issue - here you find a draft proposal. However, we are -very much- interested in your feedback, which will be used as input for a workable agenda containing a background document, discussions, debates, opinion articles in the press and a final report that will be offered to our EGP board and the Green Group in the European Parliament. Do’nt hesitate to let us know what you miss, what emphasise you would prefer, what issues must be added, or left out – ehither by leaving a comment or by mailing to inti.suarez@gmail.com.

10 years of armed interventions: a needed reassessment for the European Green Party

In the first place, the context

In the course of this year the European reaction force is expected to be discussed in the European Parliament. That will give us a good opportunity to provide the greens with positions to bring to the discussion. The Greens will have to have a position on army collaboration across European countries.

Perhaps more important than that is the creation/presentation of a new NATO plan, scheduled for November, which undoubtedly will draw a lot of media attention.

These two circumstances make our proposal to discuss the issue a relevant one.

A third contextual point is that we recognize that at the moment former Green MEP Angelika Beer’s  position is leading within the EGP. We are not interested in opening the debate on “individual security” as a leading principle for and from the Greens, but take that for granted and, from there, we move on to evaluating how what we have done, or condone, is coherent with this idea.

In the second place, the core issues to tackle

The goals

What is the goal of an armed intervention? institutional support? regime change? prevention of genocide, whatever that might mean? We are willing to be seduced to the idea that goals of armed intervention should be minimalistic in the sense that missions with sweeping goals have been a failure. We are, even if the name have undesired echoes, to evaluate as positive missions that have constricted themselves to a police role

The size of the intervention and of the intervened.

It is likely that missions acting in small countries, or regions, are the most likely to succeed. This opposed to or combined with the history of the conflict. It might be not so much about whether a conflict is religious, ethnic, or poverty driven… but much more about the size of the country in which the conflict plays, and the size of the intervening force.

The duration of the intervention

It seems almost a pleonasm, but it isn’t. Long-term missions are more likely to end in failure. Or is it precisely the opposite?

Key example is, a list of all interventions. It is likely that we will focus on few examples of military intervention to illustrate points of the evaluation. Two apparently opposed ones are the intervention in Sierra Leona and in Kosovo. Apart from getting sufficient information on these two interventions, we should collect a list with all intervention where Europe played a military role. We will scan the databases of the EU websites, to see how many evaluations of interventions we can get hold of. We should compose a background paper listing and in principle evaluating each intervention.

Veterans

Unlike in the US, in the EU the re-integration of veterans into civil life has hardly been a matter of broad debate. We will explore this issue, not only because it is relevant to the individual ex-soldier, but also to provide our discussions and positions with a recognizable face. We have to make clear to the public outside our parties (and inside as well) that this is not yet another discussion of a lofty ideal, but a matter with profound repercussions for the individual and society as a whole.

In the third place, people

In relatively short time we should contact potential political players on the issue. In the Dutch context, Mariko Peters, member of Parliament for GroenLinks, comes directly to our minds, followed close by the social democrat Jan Pronk, a former minister of foreign affairs. It is important to identify which people are active or prone to become so inside and outside the party. The two trade unions for the armed forces have also been mentioned as starting points.

Inti Suárez, http://www.inti.gl

“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music” (Groucho Marx)