Nordic Approaches to Peace Operations

A New Model in the Making

Peter Viggo Jakobsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134176366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Anew examination of Nordic approaches to peace operations after the Cold War. It shows how the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) remain relevant for the study and practice of post-Cold War peace operations.This uniquestudy is structured around eleven success conditions derived from an analysis of the lessons learned

1 Introduction

A Nordic instructor training US troops in border patrol techniques told his class, ‘You’ve got to be shot [as opposed to shot at] first before you can return fire.’ To which one American soldier laconically replied, ‘Ain’t gonna be that way’.¹

During the Cold War the four Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, made a name for themselves in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. The Nordics were seen as one actor due to their close cooperation with respect to standby forces earmarked for UN peacekeeping, training, doctrine and personnel contributions. Their cooperation became known as the ‘Nordic Model’,² and it was generally regarded as the quintessence of traditional peacekeeping.³ Its influence was evident from the popularity of the ‘Blue Book’, the Nordic Standby Forces manual, which became widely used as a basis for establishing and training UN peacekeeping contingents,⁴ and it was also to the Nordic Model that the British Army, the United States (US) Army and the Western European Union (WEU) turned when they began to take an interest in peace operations in the early 1990s.⁵

Unfortunately for the Nordics, their model did not survive the fall of the Berlin Wall. Peace operations moved from the margins to the centre of Western security policy and many new states, including the great powers, entered the scene. As a consequence, it became impossible for the Nordics to maintain their status as major troop contributors. During the 1990s 67 new nations joined the contributors club, which during the Cold War had been limited to 56.⁶ This put pressure on the Nordics to field larger forces than before. Their traditional battalion-sized contributions were no longer enough to obtain operational influence and autonomy in operations led by the great powers. On NATO-led operations, brigade-sized contributions became the admission card for influence, and the Brahimi Report also called upon member states to make brigades available to the UN.⁷ On EU-led operations, 1,500-strong battle groups seem destined to become the minimum required following the adoption of the battle group concept in 2004.⁸

Also, and more important, the erosion of consent rendered the traditional (Nordic) approach to peacekeeping ineffective and some observers even condemned it as morally bankrupt.⁹ The experiences from Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Somalia where lightly armed peacekeepers were deployed in environments characterized by limited consent showed that a peace force to be effective under these circumstances had to be able to fight and stop attempts by the parties to prevent it from achieving its mission. This realization led to the development of new doctrines and the increased use of Chapter VII mandates authorizing peace forces to use force beyond self-defence.¹⁰

Aims and Arguments

The big question asked by this book is therefore whether the Nordics have been able to meet these challenges and bring their approach(es) up to speed with the post-Cold War era. Many non-Nordic analysts believe this not to be the case. The Nordics are commonly still seen as a bastion of traditional peacekeeping with little relevance for contemporary operations. This perception is not surprising. The principal Nordic contribution to the field in the 1990s, the UN Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG), a Danish initiative that gave the UN an effective rapid reaction capability, was based on traditional peacekeeping principles.¹¹ Similarly, the main work produced by Nordic scholars on peace operations in the 1990s made the case that the lessons learned from the UN operation in Bosnia (UNPROFOR) had vindicated the traditional Nordic peacekeeping principles.¹² Apart from this work very little has been written on the Nordic approaches to post-Cold War peace operations, and even less has been published in English. It has, in short, not been easy for analysts, who do not master one of the Nordic languages, to keep track of what the Nordics have been up to since the end of the Cold War.

One of the aims of this book is to fill this gap and set the record straight. It does so by proving wrong the conventional wisdom regarding the Nordic approaches to peace operations after the Cold War. The Nordic countries are no bastion of traditional peacekeeping and they have, as this book shows, led the charge to reform the traditional approach in several areas. To give a few examples, the Danish tank squadron serving in UNPROFOR was the first ever to be deployed in a UN-commanded peace operation, and the Danish tanks inflicted the largest military defeat upon Bosnian Serb forces prior to the Croat offensives and NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force in 1995. In Operation Hooligan Buster conducted on 29 April 1994, the Danish tanks fired seventy-two shells taking out all the Bosnian Serb units that opened fire upon them.¹³ According to the American NATO ambassador Robert Hunter and UNPROFOR commander Michael Rose, the Danish use of tanks in UNPROFOR later served as a model for the operation that NATO launched in Bosnia in 1995.¹⁴

General Rose’s characterization of the Swedish battalion serving in UNPROFOR is also difficult to square with the traditionalist view:

Although Sweden has not been at war for 300 years, it was plain that they had lost nothing of the martial quality that allowed them to dominate northern Europe in the seventeenth century. They could be extremely bloody-minded and always returned fire immediately with their heavy weapons if they were fired upon . . . Henricsson [the Swedish battalion commander] had personally led their first convoy across the conflict line. At a Bosnian Serb roadblock, he was confronted by an aggressive soldier who told him he had orders not to allow him to pass. Henricsson immediately put a loaded pistol to the soldier’s head and informed him that he had just received a new set of orders . . . Because of their tough-minded approach, the Swedes were respected by all of the warring parties.¹⁵

The Nordics have not just contributed to the ‘militarization’ of traditional peacekeeping, however. They have also contributed to the development of the civilian components in the new breed of multifunctional or complex peace operations that have become the dominant mission type of the post-Cold War era. Norway was the first country in the world to set up a civilian rapid reaction capacity for peace operations, and the Norwegian standby arrangements were an important source of inspiration for the arrangements subsequently set up by the other Nordic countries, Canada, the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).¹⁶

Finland has created an effective CIMIC model, and Finnish CIMIC contingents have gained a reputation for being among the best in the field. A Swedish study published in 1998 comparing the Danish, British, Finnish and Swedish CIMIC contingents in Bosnia concluded that the Finnish rotation system was superior to the one used by the other nations which rotated all personnel every six months. In contrast, the Finnish CIMIC personnel serve for 12 months, only a third of a unit is rotated at a time, and a rotation is carried out with an overlap period of two weeks. As a result, the Finnish model ensures greater continuity and less loss of local knowledge than the models employed by most other nations.¹⁷ Another strongpoint of the Finnish model is the ready availability of considerable funds for CIMIC projects and procedures allowing for their quick dispersal. For instance, the Finnish CIMIC contingent in Bosnia had been provided with an annual budget of more than FIM 1 million (EUR 168,000).¹⁸

Finally, the Nordics have also taken the lead with respect to intelligence sharing in the field. The establishment of joint Nordic Intelligence Cells in Bosnia and Kosovo took intelligence sharing in peace operations to a new level, and the creation of these cells was hailed by an impressed KFOR commander, General Juan Ortuño Such, as an example for others to follow.¹⁹

Proving conventional wisdom wrong is merely a sideshow to the war, however. The principal aim of this book is to determine whether a new Nordic Model is in the making. That is to say, whether the Nordics have established a new model for post-Cold War peace operations that may become as influential as their Cold War one; and whether the Nordics continue to have something of value to offer to other small- and medium-sized personnel contributors with limited budgets and capabilities.

The answer to both questions is yes. This book shows that all four Nordic countries have succeeded in meeting the requirements for success in the post-Cold War era, and that they have established a new effective model of cooperation. The Nordic Co-ordinated Arrangement for Military Peace Support (NORDCAPS), which replaced the old institutional framework the Nordic cooperation group for military UN matters (NORDSAMFN) in 1997, represents a deepening and widening of the old model. The joint training programme has been expanded and widened, the old Blue Books have been replaced by new manuals covering the full spectrum of peace operations, and the force pool is considerably larger and includes all three services. NORDCAPS thus enables the Nordics to provide sizable military contingents to peacekeeping and enforcement operations, not involving offensive operations, as well as critical enablers in high demand such as logistics, headquarters staff, combat support services and communications. It has also ensured that the Nordic expertise in peace operations remains a commodity in high demand. The training assistance provided to other countries has grown, the Nordics are deeply involved in the development of training programmes within the EU, NATO and the UN, and they have also been involved in the establishment of multinational forces earmarked for peace operations such as the Baltic Battalion (BALTBAT) and SHIRBRIG. The new Nordic Model, in short, continues to have something of value to offer to other countries.

Somewhat paradoxically this book also finds that these achievements may not be enough to ensure the survival of the Nordic ‘brand name’ in the field of peace operations. As demonstrated in the final chapter, Nordic cooperation does not enjoy the same level of support in all the Nordic governments as it used to. Denmark has all but abandoned Nordic cooperation in favour of bilateral cooperation with the great powers and informal alliances within the EU and NATO. The importance of these channels, which did not exist during the Cold War, has also increased significantly in the other three Nordic capitals. The problem for NORDCAPS is, in other words, that Nordic cooperation no longer is the ‘only game in town’ with respect to generating influence and prestige within the field of peace operations. The new reality is illustrated by the fact that the most notable ‘Nordic’ successes in the post-Cold War era, SHIRBRIG which the Brahimi Report held up as a model for others to follow,²⁰ BALTBAT and the multinational Baltic Defence College which served as the model for the defence college established in Bosnia-Herzegovina, all included several non-Nordic countries. These successes and the growing Nordic involvement in other multinational arrangements dilute the Nordic profile and threaten to dissolve it completely in the longer term. The preservation of a clear and distinct Nordic profile in the field of peace operations will consequently require new initiatives, which set Nordic cooperation apart from the growing number of cooperative arrangements that characterize post-Cold War peace operations.

The most effective way to give the Nordic brand name a longer shelf life would be to give the military NORDCAPS framework a fully fledged civilian rapid reaction component. The building blocks for a Nordic civilian rapid reaction arrangement already exist as the Nordics have established civilian standby arrangements at the national level and made civilian personnel available to the EU, the OSCE and the UN. By pooling their resources the Nordics could develop indispensable niche capabilities in short supply that would enhance their political profile and give them a lead-nation capacity. Civilian rule-of-law teams (judges, jailers, prosecutors and correctional staff), civilian administration teams and police mission leadership teams are examples of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The old Nordic Model: Nordic peacekeeping during the Cold War (1947–87)
• 3. Peace operations after the Cold War: the need for a new model
• 4. The Danish approach to peace operations after the Cold War
• 5. The Finnish approach to peace operations after the Cold War
• 6. The Norwegian approach to peace operations after the Cold War
• 7. The Swedish approach to peace operations after the Cold War
• 8. A new Nordic model in the making?
• Appendices
• Index