The Politico-Military Dynamics of European Crisis Response Operations

Planning, Friction, Strategy

Alexander Mattelaer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349436651, 9781137012593
• eBook ISBN: 9781137012609
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How do Europeans engage in military strategy? Through detailed comparisons of operational planning and exploring the framework of the EU, NATO and the UN, this book sheds light on the instrumental nature of military force, the health of civil-military relations in Europe and the difficulty of making effective strategy in a multinational environment

1

Understanding European Crisis Response Operations

Undertaking military operations is a complicated business. Military power can only be a rational instrument of policy as long as it can deliver the intended results according to a pre-specified plan. Harnessing the use of force to serve the ends of policy constitutes the essence of military strategy. Having said that, it is equally well known that any strategy can be thwarted by a multitude of factors. ‘No plan of operations’, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder famously noted, ‘extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength’ (q.i. Hughes 1993: 45). Yet it is not only the confrontation with an independently thinking adversary that complicates the making of strategy. In war, Carl von Clausewitz (1832/1976: 119) argued, ubiquitous friction causes even the simplest thing to become difficult. Increasingly, the armed forces of European states have experienced that the infamous ‘fog of war’ applies not only to the realm of military history but also to the contemporary operating environment. While policy objectives can range from the conquest of territory to the keeping of the peace, all military operations ultimately concern the exercise of power – with all struggles and unpredictability this entails.

This study concerns the making of strategy for contemporary crisis response operations undertaken by European armed forces. More precisely, it explores what are the effects of friction between intergovernmental political decision-making and integrated military planning on the designing of strategies. In this context, the term ‘strategy’ refers to the conceptual outline of how the use of force contributes to the realisation of an operation’s political objectives. As European states generally deploy their forces under the banner of international organisations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN), this particular version of politico-military friction qualifies as a pervasive feature in the planning of modern operations. These undertakings, moreover, go by many names (peacekeeping, stabilisation, military crisis management etc.) What all these labels have in common is that they are reactive in nature and aimed at mitigating the instability resulting from distant conflict rather than relating to territorial defence. They shall here be collectively referred to as European crisis response operations. Although we take ‘European states’ to refer to the member states of the EU, it should be clear that ‘European crisis response operations’ is intended to be an institutionally neutral term, encompassing military operations under the flag of the EU as well as NATO and the UN.

This book argues, firstly, that the operations planning cycle from political initiation to military plan constitutes the critical interface in the making of strategy for these endeavours. Operations planning is conceptualised as an iterative yet unequal politico-military dialogue that enables the formulation of a rational intent behind military operations. Secondly, it argues that the clash of logic between intergovernmental political decision-making and functionally-oriented integrated military planning inevitably challenges strategic coherence. As such, this clash constitutes a force disabling the making of strategy, albeit without fundamentally negating it. In order to cope with the challenges such friction poses, the quality and health of the politico-military dialogue can be considered as a critical factor, which can be analysed in informational, organisational and conceptual terms. Thirdly, this book explores the political instrumentality of European crisis response operations by using planning and friction as complementary windows on the making of strategy. In this regard, it argues that the combination of deterrence and local capacity-building constitutes a strategic blueprint for crisis response operations that is typically European. This allows them to function as a versatile instrument of containment while being at the same time limited by internal constraints in what they can achieve in a wider political context. Strategies based on deterrence and capacity-building generate limited political effects but do not substitute for political process. Drawing these three strands of argument together, this book claims that strategy carries its own conceptual limitations within itself because it is made in a politico-military dialogue – the operations planning process – that is characterised by omnipresent friction.

The focus on planning and friction positions this research at the crossroads of various scholarly traditions. The principal source of inspiration comes from the strategic studies community and the later writings of Clausewitz in particular (as these emphasise the political nature of warfare, cf. Heuser 2002: 24–43). The question of what makes strategy so difficult has occupied political leaders, generals and scholars for centuries (cf. Gray 1999a; Betts 2000; Cimbala 2001; Francart 2002; Jablonsky 2004; Smith 2005; Heuser 2010). Furthermore, the strategic studies tradition encompasses a strand of literature on civil-military relations that is critical for analysing the functional aspects of the politico-military dialogue (Huntington 1957; Janowitz 1960; Cohen 2002; Feaver 2003). However, strategic studies have long neglected those endeavours dismissed as ‘operations other than war’.

Peacekeeping studies, by contrast, have taken these operations as their principal subject matter (e.g. Bellamy et al. 2010; Fortna 2008; Bures 2007). However, these often display scant regard for the logic of conflict and little interest in military detail. Similarly, in the field of EU studies European-led military operations have primarily been analysed in terms of their political symbolism in terms of European integration. Only recently an operationally-oriented strand of research has been emerging within the study of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) (Giegerich 2008; Major 2008; Asseburg and Kempin 2009; Grevi et al. 2009; Gross and Juncos 2011). A fourth major source of inspiration comes from operations planning doctrine. Unfortunately, doctrinal reflection has the drawbacks of being nearly exclusively military and driven by debate within the US armed forces rather than their European counterparts.

Of course, these are but caricatures of the respective fields of study and several exceptions prove the rule (e.g. Gray 2006; Bono 2004; Friis 2010; Hillen 2000). However, these fields of study have not seen extensive cross-fertilisation and much uncharted territory remains. This book therefore applies the lens of strategy-making processes to the various sorts of crisis response operations undertaken by European militaries and as such positions itself on the intersection between strategic studies and European studies.

1.1 Aims of the book

The overarching aims of this book are twofold. First, it explores the dialectic interplay between the political decision-making process and the military planning process driving the contemporary employment of European states’ armed forces. Second, it analyses what effect friction between these two processes has on the strategic instrumentality of such European crisis response operations. Needless to say, the product of the first line of research – i.e. mapping out the operations planning cycle from political initiation to strategic-level operation plan – provides the empirical basis for the second, analytical line of research.

The planning of military operations assumes the form of an iterative dialogue between the political-strategic level, which is intergovernmental in nature as far as European states are concerned, and the military-strategic level, which can be understood as the top of an integrated military chain of command. This dialogue is characterised by omnipresent friction between those two levels, as they represent distinct systems with a logic and vocabulary of their own. Such friction inevitably complicates the formulation of strategy. In this regard, it is important to note that the concept of ‘strategy’ entails a process as well as a product (Strachan 2005: 52). While the former assumes the form of a politico-military dialogue, the latter assumes the form of an actual plan in accordance with the definition of strategy given above. As friction can relate to either of these dimensions, the focus here lies on its impact on the strategy-making process of which actual plans are but the material container. In other words, strategies as planning products are treated as a subcomponent of the strategy-making process.

The political decision-making process that governs European crisis response operations is per definition an intergovernmental one. While European integration has not left the domain of defence policy unaffected, the authority to deploy and use armed forces remains strictly national. Correspondingly, the political component of the planning process is one in which consensus has to be found by means of persuasion, bargaining and diplomatic pressure. As a result of different national interests, this consensus often thrives on ambiguity and abstraction. Varying national attitudes to the use of military force, diverging geopolitical priorities and different institutional characteristics give rise to a highly complex and pragmatic decision-making process in which intergovernmental consensus has primacy over practicability. Military planning, by contrast, is a process that is – in theory – joint and integrated. The classical principles of war stress the value of unity of effort and command. As plans are written with a view to execution in mind, they need to be as concrete, clear and devoid of ambiguity as possible. This functional logic is of course but a theoretical ideal. A formally integrated command chain may pose for multiple parallel national command chains or become politicised in other ways. At the same time, it remains a fact that military commanders have to rework the political guidance they have been given – ambiguous or not – into a plan ready for execution. This means drafting a detailed operation plan that is as functional, efficient and coherent as political guidance allows. The differentiation between an intergovernmental and a functional logic can be understood as the constitutive essence of political decision-making and military planning as distinct systems with their own individual set of characteristics. The interface between these two systems represents the core focus of this book. This is the environment in which strategy is made, even if it is compounded by ubiquitous friction. Correspondingly, both the debate on individual national positions taken in various European capitals and the debate on the tactical aspects of implementing strategy are only taken on board to the extent that they relate to this critical strategic interface.

The two lines of research outlined above form complementary analytical windows on the strategy-making process in European crisis response operations. The planning process, on the one hand, is what enables the making of strategy. By highlighting rational intentionality and limited predictability, the planning process provides the foundations that make strategy possible. Political-military friction, on the other hand, is the negative counterpart to the planning process, and as such constitutes one of the principal disablers of strategy. While strategic intentions can be thwarted by multiple external factors, ranging from geography and meteorological circumstances to the independent mind of an adversary, politico-military friction represents the internal brake on the strategy-making dialogue. The permanent friction between political and military logics inevitably complicates planning and strategy-making.

1.2 Research design and case selection

The formulation of strategy constitutes a field of study in which knowledge can be developed in two ways. One can either have recourse to strategic theorising about the relationship between military force and political effect, or rely rather on the teachings of history and empirical observation. This book adopts a predominantly inductive approach: it seeks to account for the dynamics of the strategy-making process in European crisis response operations on the basis of a set of case studies. Yet to explore these cases in analytical depth also requires an elaborate conceptual toolkit allowing for methodological orientation as well as the extension of theory.

In conceptual terms, the argument contained in this book is constructed around the triad of operations planning, politico-military friction and strategy-making. The first two elements of this triad are conceptualised as constitutive components of the third. As such, planning and friction represent a double methodological window for studying the otherwise elusive concept of strategy. The planning process is the enabler while politico-military friction is a disabler in the making of strategy. When strategy is defined as a conceptual outline of how a military operation should deliver its political objectives, it should be clear that this conceptual outline assumes its most tangible form in those planning documents that lay out the script of the operation under discussion. To the extent strategy has a material (rather than ideational or procedural) existence, the operation plan is its culmination.

The operations planning process is an iterative dialogue between political authorities responsible for setting objectives as well as allocating resources and military authorities tasked with bridging ends and means. Typically, the planning process evolves from vague political estimates and tentative military response options into ever more detailed plans and objectives. It is a dialectic process between political authorities and the military command chain involving multiple steps back and forth. The operation plan for the 1999 Kosovo air campaign, for example, was sent back and forth between the political NATO Headquarters and the military Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) no less than 26 times (Wright 2010).

As it is a true politico-military nexus, this planning process is the source of strategy just as much as it generates its own troubles. On paper, operations planning can be summarised in a neat flowchart of politically approved planning documents. In practice, this often is a disorderly and improvised process. The timelines on the basis of which the political and military debates proceed can be quite different, for example. Military urgency and political expediency can generate different answers to the same question. Imperfect knowledge often necessitates the making of assumptions that, if proven faulty, risk derailing the intent of the plan. A multitude of factors inherent to this politico-military debate can influence and blur the conceptual outline of how an operation is intended to deliver its objectives. Politico-military friction therefore qualifies as the conceptual formula allowing for acknowledging the influence of all the complications bedevilling the politico-military dialogue. Correspondingly, it is the dynamic intertwinement of planning and friction into strategy this book seeks to illuminate. On the basis of the insights these explorations generate, it becomes possible to consider the instrumentality of crisis response operations as conceived by European states and extend the strategic theorising supporting it.

To what practical use can this conceptual prism be put? As this book concerns the making of strategy for European crisis response operations, the reference unit in terms of research design is that of the individual operation. More precisely, the focus is on distinct planning cycles that are intended to imbue individual operations with particular political significance. In order to make general inferences about the making of strategy, the cases need to be chosen with a view to incorporating sufficient diversity. After all, such planning cycles may differ quite significantly from one another depending on the organisational context under which they take place, the phase of the operation they are designed to cater for, and the type of operation they are intended to enable. At the same time, the case selection needs to take into account methodological constraints in terms of data gathering, such as the availability of first hand interview sources.

The argument builds on three case studies of recent European crisis response operations that offer maximum variation across the three variables mentioned above. As regards the first – the organisational vehicle for conducting the operation – it should be noted that in the present day, European crisis response operations are invariably multinational undertakings. Even France and the United Kingdom, the most capable European states when it comes to military operations, proceed in their most recent defence reviews from the assumption that nearly all future operations will be multinational in nature (La Documentation française 2008: 201; HM Government 2010: 59). In effect, European states can have recourse to three different organisational frameworks for deploying their forces on operations. These include the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy, the United Nations peacekeeping system and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. (Crisis response operations can also be run as a coalition of the willing, i.e. without the formal involvement of an international organisation, but this is not treated as a prototypical model. The past decade featured only one historical example – the first two years of the International Security Force in Afghanistan – but this option was soon abandoned in favour of the NATO framework.)

The second variable concerns the planning phase. The inception of an altogether new operation in a deliberate process is likely to look very different from a planning cycle in a crisis environment where rapid deployment is key. This may yet again look different from the planning for ongoing operations and the reviewing of existing plans confronted with an ever-changing environment. Although there is no definitive typology available for cataloguing planning phases it is most insightful to take a broad variety into account.

The third variable relates to the type of mission European armed forces set out to achieve. To some extent, this will correlate with the choice of the organisational framework: the UN being designed to cater for peacekeeping operations, NATO for high intensity operations and the EU representing the middle of the spectrum. While the choice of the organisational framework may signal the expected type of mission, there is no guarantee that this expectation will be fulfilled. It is therefore warranted to regard the typological spectrum of crisis response operations – from traditional peacekeeping over hybrid stabilisation to counterinsurgency – as a relevant variable in its own right. Given these variables and methodological constraints, the three chosen case studies are the following.

First, we look at the start-up of the EU operation in Chad and the Central African Republic (EUFOR Tchad/RCA), for which the planning took place in 2007 and early 2008. This endeavour constituted the largest military operation the European Union and its member states have undertaken autonomously to date. In terms of the type of operation, it qualifies as a hybrid stabilisation mission: it was tasked to contribute to a safe and secure environment in an effort to contain a spreading regional crisis. The EU operation functioned as the military component of a wider multidimensional effort managed by the UN. From a planning perspective, it constituted a relatively ‘clean’ planning cycle, as it was the start-up of a relatively small operation of limited duration for which rapid deployment was not of critical importance. This case study comes closest to the doctrinal model of how the operations planning process unfolds, namely as a structured politico-military dialogue about planning documents of an increasing level of detail and sophistication.

Second, we turn to the enhancement of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the aftermath of the 2006 wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Understanding European Crisis Response Operations
• 2 Planning and Friction as Windows on Strategy
• 3 The Launch of EUFOR Tchad/RCA
• 4 The Enhancement of UNIFIL
• 5 The Reorientation of ISAF
• 6 Comparing Planning, Friction and Strategy Processes
• 7 Concluding Thoughts
• Bibliography
• Index