Stability, happiness, prosperity and peace – these are the things people are striving for all over the globe, but the main component among them is peace, without which nothing is possible, be it prosperous and happy family life or personal development, because the alternative of peace is war. And the whole definition of peace could be ‘absence of war’. Broadly, three conditions of world politics can be identified: war, non-war and peace. However, peace is simultaneously the fundamental assumption upon which international law is based. Although time of the great wars has gone, it could be naïve to say that we have reached the Kantanian ‘perpetual peace’. New challenges appeared; among them are intra-state conflicts and global spread of terrorism.
‘Peace operations’ is a broad concept, which refers to peace peacekeeping, peace building/making and peace enforcement. Actually this is a concept, which combines all the peace support measures during inter- and intra-state conflicts. The first concept of peacekeeping had been introduced in 1950s by Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lester Pearson and the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in response to the need to supervise troop withdrawals from Suez in 1956, later this concept had been defined as a third party role played by an actor in a violent conflict situation. Put it roughly – conflict management rather than conflict resolution. Later requires peace building/making activities or even peace enforcement, but traditional peacekeeping is inherently status quo oriented, therefore it cannot address or contribute to any lasting political solutions to the problems of the post-Cold War era. Massacre in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Somalia is a bitter proof to this fact. That is why ‘keeping the peace’ does indeed imply a more active role for the peacekeepers and we need more ‘peace operations, not peace keeping missions.
Peace operations may be coordinated under the auspices of the United Nations, African Union, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (nowadays we can add to this list Collective Security Treaty Organisation, GUAM and maybe others). NATO has come a long way in the field of peace operations since the early 1990s and managed to conduct several ‘peace operations’ such as Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996-2004), Operation Allied Harmony in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (2001-2003), Kosovo Force in the province of Serbia Kosovo (since 1999) and participate in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (since 2001).
Peace operation in the Kosovo province proved to be a real peace keeping mission, when NATO-led Kosovo Force was in charge to prevent future massacres and fighting based on the ethnical ground. Peace in this region is very crucial for the maintenance of peace in the whole Balkans. However, at the present political solution is needed, based on the compromise and consensus of the two sides involved – Serbian government and authorities of the Kosovo province. In Afghanistan we see completely different situation and to call this NATO-led ISAF a peace operation in its traditional sense is very difficult. It was the United States which used the fifth Article of the North Atlantic Treaty –
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area”
-- to intervene Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, basing their arguments that Taliban regime gives a shelter to Al-Qaeda terrorists, who actually stood behind that bloody terrorist attack on the twin-towers in New Your city . After the ousting of Taliban regime, ISAF, a –UN mandated international force had been established with the aim “to assist the newly established Afghan Transitional Authority and to create a secure environment in and around Kabul and support the reconstruction of Afghanistan.” Since August 2003 ISAF is supported and led by NATO, which was the first peace support initiative undertaken by NATO out of the Euro-Atlantic area and remains crucially important to the Alliance nowadays as the fighting with the Taliban insurgents appeared to be more intense and on the wide scale. The main problem in Afghanistan is to win hearts and minds of the local population, which sometimes not only assist the insurgency, but also fill the ranks. As it is stated, “development without security is unachievable and security without development is meaningless.” That is why it is crucially important to provide to the local Afghanis not only security, but also development be it infrastructure or economy, and this is not only NATO task, which however is actively engaged into the development and reconstruction works, but also the task of all the international community, development and relief agencies.
I have a deep conviction that each person working or trying to promote NATO and its values should have his own perception of this international organization. In my opinion, NATO should look and behave like a cooperative security organization. It has been generally used to describe a more peaceful, but rather idealistic, approach to security through increased international harmony and cooperation, and includes four concentric and mutually reinforcing “rings of security”: individual security, collective security, collective defense and promotion of stability. Individual security stands at the centre of any real international security system built around liberal democratic ideals. It is the essential basic value upon which a Cooperative Security rests. Collective Security looks inward to attempt to ensure security within a group of sovereign states. But a Collective Defense organization looks outward to defend its members from external aggression, to defend the Self (group of states with collective identity, sharing common values) from the Other. The fourth and outer ring of Cooperative Security is the active promotion of stability outside the boundaries of the states forming this Cooperative Security system.[1] However, NATO should not become a global police, trying to be involved in a resolution of any conflict. The primary aim of NATO is to secure the peace of its member states, trying to promote stability into its neighbourhood without using military force, which is to be the last resort to use.
[1] Richard Cohen, „Cooperative Security: From Individual Security to International Stability” in Cohen R., Mihalka M., Cooperative Security: New Horizons for International Order. The Marshall Center Papers, No. 3, 2001. http://www.marshallcenter.org/site-graphic/lang-en/page-pubs-mcpapers-1/static/xdocs/coll/static/mcpapers/mc-paper_3-en.pdf
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