The UN and NATO:

Forward from
the Joint Declaration

Edited by Brooke A. Smith-Windsor
NATO Defense College
Collge de Dfense de lOTAN
Rome, May 2011
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Foreword by General Stphane Abrial
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation
NATO DEFENSE COLLEGE
COLLGE DE DFENSE DE LOTAN
Research Division
Division Recherche
The UN and NATO:
Forward from
the Joint Declaration
Edited by Brooke A. Smith-Windsor
Rome, May 2011
Foreword by General Stphane Abrial
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation
NATO DEFENSE COLLEGE
NATO Defense College Cataloguing-in-Publication-Data:
THE UN AND NATO: FORWARD FROM THE JOINT DECLARATION
Edited by Brooke A.Smith-Windsor
(NATO Defense College NDC Forum Papers Series)
Copy-editing: Maria Di Martino
ISBN: 978-88-96898-03-1
The views expressed in NDC Forum Papers are the responsibility of the authors
and do not necessarily refect the opinions of the NATO Defense College or the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Extracts of this NDC Forum Paper for academic purposes may be quoted or
reprinted without special permission, provided that a standard source credit line
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permission from the NATO Defense College.
NDC 2011 all rights reserved
Copies of this NDC Forum Paper may be obtained directly from the
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Table of contents
Foreword .......................................................................................................4
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................8
List of Abbreviations .....................................................................................9
Introduction
Invigorating UN-NATO Strategic Relations ...........................................11
Wolf-Dieter Loeser
Chapter One
Misery Makes for Strange Bedfellows: The Future of the UN-NATO
Strategic Partnership................................................................................15
Brooke A. Smith-Windsor
Chapter Two
Dispelling Misperceptions for a Renewed Synergy between the United
Nations and the Atlantic Alliance ............................................................53
Alexis Vahlas
Chapter Three
NATO and the UN in Afghanistan: Partners or Competitors? .............76
Michael F. Harsch
Appendix 1 Extracts of the UN Charter (1945) ...................................112
Appendix 2 Washington Treaty (1949) ..................................................121
4
Foreword
This volume results from a high-level research symposium that
was organized on 21 October 2010 by the NATO Defense College, New
York Universitys Center on International Cooperation, and the Turkish
delegation to the United Nations (UN). The event was an opportunity
for policymakers and researchers to bring together their insights on the
achievements and the prospects of UN-NATO cooperation, more than
two years after the signing of a Joint Declaration by the Secretaries-
General of the UN and NATO on 23 September 2008.
The main conclusion from the proceedings of the symposium
was that the UN and NATO are necessary partners in tackling todays
and tomorrows security challenges and that this is widely recognized
by both organizations, despite the various challenges that the UN-
NATO cooperation faces.
The operational interaction between the UN and NATO
is nothing new. Among many examples, it has been successfully
practiced in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, and more recently off the
coast of Somalia and in Pakistan. As a rule, NATO places itself within
a broader framework for confict resolution and crisis management,
stemming directly from the UN in its primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security. The most recent
example of this is obviously NATOs operation in Libya, which is
conducted on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and
1973.
However, there still is a long way to go for the UN-NATO
partnership to reach its full potential. The signing of the 2008 Declaration
was only a step, albeit an important one, in the right direction. Although
the political will exists at the highest level in both organizations, UN-
NATO day-to-day cooperation sometimes remains a sensitive matter.
5
During the research symposium, there was some debate as to whether
this stemmed from erroneous reciprocal perceptions or was grounded
in solid political realities that could not be changed simply by working
on perceptions. My own sense is that there is still some reluctance
about an active partnership with NATO among some UN members.
Conversely, there is also room for improvement in NATOs awareness
of the UNs modes of operation, constraints and culture.
Be that as it may, I strongly believe that in todays world, a
solid, effective UN-NATO partnership is not a matter of choice it is a
necessity for the international communitys ability to prevent confict,
manage current and future crises and tackle post-confict stabilization
and reconstruction. The importance of such a partnership is fully
recognized by the Alliances new Strategic Concept, adopted at the
Lisbon Summit in November 2010, which states that cooperation
between NATO and the United Nations continues to make a substantial
contribution to security in operations around the world and pledges that
the Alliance will deepen political dialogue and practical cooperation
with the UN.
The Strategic Concept also recognizes that the prevention
and resolution of future security challenges will require the Alliance
to engage actively with other international actors before, during
and after crises to encourage collaborative analysis, planning and
conduct of activities on the ground, in order to maximise coherence
and effectiveness of the overall international effort. Indeed, todays
and tomorrows challenges, be they in Afghanistan, in Libya, in our
counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, or in our response
to possible cyber-attacks, will require as coordinated an approach as
possible between different organizations. Cognizant that, today as well
as tomorrow, there is no viable alternative to effective civil-military
cooperation, NATO is therefore increasingly committed to contributing
to a comprehensive approach to effective crisis management, in the
6
broadest sense of this expression.
In this regard, the UNs long experience in peacekeeping and
peace-building is of tremendous interest to the Alliance. For decades,
the UN has brought to bear military and civilian capabilities in support
of stabilization and reconstruction efforts in a wide range of theatres. I
am convinced that the Alliance has much to learn from the UN in this
regard.
From a military point of view, the UN-NATO dialogue should
be geared towards allowing both organizations to interact seamlessly
when engaged concurrently in a theatre. It is obvious that this cannot
be achieved unless the staffs from both organizations know each other
well and are used to interacting before a crisis strikes. Such interaction
is an indispensable complement to high-level exchanges between
leaders. Valuable steps recently have been taken in this regard, and a
prime example is the research symposium that resulted in the present
volume.
Allied Command Transformation has been contributing to
this goal by offering to the UN a wide array of courses and training
opportunities that allow UN and NATO personnel to exchange
experiences and to fnd out about each others procedures in the pre-
deployment phase, affording a more in-depth perspective on topics
such as the comprehensive approach or the implementation of a
gender perspective in crisis management. This is being done through
the network of training facilities and NATO-accredited Centres of
Excellence, and in cooperation with other NATO entities such as the
NATO School in Oberammergau and the NATO Defense College
(NDC).
In addition, Allied Command Transformation has presented
concrete proposals for further UN-NATO cooperation in areas such
7
as planning, assessments and logistical and medical support. Its
favourable geographic location, as the only NATO strategic command
headquartered on the same side of the Atlantic as the UN, offers
promising perspectives for further interaction.
The present volume offers both a historic view of the UN-
NATO partnership and an analysis of current and future challenges
and opportunities. It is my hope that it will help advance the UN-
NATO partnership by offering insights and perspectives that will
provide stakeholders in both organizations with inspiration to continue
charting the way forward.
General Stphane Abrial
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation
8
Acknowledgements
The idea for this volume emanated from a NATO Defense
College (NDC) international research symposium entitled The
UN and NATO: Forward from the Joint Declaration, convened in
New York City on 21 October 2010. Conceived as an opportunity to
achieve deeper understanding of problems and prospects in the UN-
NATO strategic relationship, the symposium and this Forum Paper
would not have been possible without the assistance and cooperation
of many people. The NDC would like to acknowledge the support of
the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) of New York University
(NYU), particularly Jake Sherman, Associate Director, and Benjamin
Tortolani, Senior Program Offcer, for opening so many doors in the
UN system and for their invaluable advice on topics and speakers. The
NDC equally is grateful to the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the UN
for providing the symposium venue as well as intellectual and logistical
support. The personal interest and dedication of H.E. Ambassador
Erturul Apakan, Permanent Representative, Fazli Corman, Deputy
Permanent Representative, Ismail obanolu, Counsellor, and Major
Deniz Ay, Deputy Military Advisor, were invaluable. So too was
the unwavering commitment to the project of the two NATO liaison
offcers to the UN, Colonel Paul Van der Heijden and Eirini Lemos-
Maniati. Finally, the NDC would like to acknowledge the essential
contribution to the project made by scholars with an interest in UN-
NATO affairs, including the three profled in this volume, as well as
the participation of many offcers and offcials representing not only
the UN and NATO staffs but also related national missions and other
international organizations.
Dr. Karl-Heinz Kamp
Director, NDC Research Division
9
List of Abbreviations
AU African Union
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
CAS Close Air Support
CIC Center on International Cooperation
CNN Cable News Network
COMISAF Commander International Security Assistance Force
CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization
DFS Department of Field Support
DIIS Danish Institute for International Studies
DPA Department of Political Affairs
DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations
EU European Union
HDI Human Development Index
ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia
IFOR Implementation Force
IMO International Maritime Organization
IR International Relations
IRIN Integrated Regional Information Networks
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
JCMB Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board
JFC Joint Force Command
KFOR Kosovo Force
MINUSTAH United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti
MTCN Major Troop Contributing Nation
NAC North Atlantic Council
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDC NATO Defense College
NGO Non-governmental Organization
NRC NATO Russia Council
NTM-I NATO Training Mission-Iraq
NYU New York University
OAS Organization of American States
10
OEF Operation Enduring Freedom
OIC Organization of the Islamic Conference
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
P5 Five Permanent Members of the Security Council
PAG Policy Action Group
POLAD Political Advisor
PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team
RUSI Royal United Services Institute
SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander Europe
SACT Supreme Allied Commander Transformation
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SCR Senior Civilian Representative
SFOR Stabilization Force
SHAPE Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
SRSG Special Representative of the Secretary-General
UN United Nations
UNAMA United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
UNAMI United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNIFIL United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
UNISCI Research Unit on International Security and
Cooperation
UNMIK United Nations Interim Administration Mission in
Kosovo
UNMIL United Nations Mission in Liberia
UNMIT United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste
UNOCHA United Nations Offce for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs
UNOSEK United Nations Offce of the Special Envoy for Kosovo
UNOSOM United Nations Operation in Somalia
UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force
WFP World Food Program
11
Introduction

Invigorating UN-NATO Strategic Relations
Wolf-Dieter Loeser
1
On 21 October 2010, representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and United Nations (UN), as well as a group
of experts, diplomats and senior offcers, gathered in New York City
to share perspectives on the future of UN-NATO strategic relations.
The occasion was an unprecedented research symposium, organized
by the NATO Defense College (NDC) in conjunction with the Center
on International Cooperation (CIC) of New York University (NYU)
and the Turkish Permanent Mission to the UN.
The symposium examined two decades of crisis management
cooperation and looked at prospects for the future, based on the
lessons of shared history in operations such as those in Afghanistan.
The discussion focused primarily on three intertwined questions:
What kind of relationship exists between NATO and the UN 1.
(peculiarities)?
What are the reasons for suboptimal relations, particularly at 2.
the strategic level (shortcomings)?
What realistically can be done to improve the relationship in 3.
order to live up to mutual aspirations (opportunities)?

In contemporary NATO parlance, the meeting therefore afforded an
opportunity to consider how to implement a so-called civilian-military
1
Lieutenant-General Wolf-Dieter Loeser is Commandant of the NATO Defense College. The views
expressed in this paper are the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
12
comprehensive approach to crisis management; more specifcally,
it was an important opportunity to take a more focused look at one
particularly signifcant inter-institutional relationship in this context,
especially following the 2008 signature of the Joint Declaration on
UN-NATO Secretariat cooperation.

In order to engender frank debate in answering the three
questions posed, the symposium was conducted in a spirit of academic
freedom. Leading scholars, including the United States Lawrence S.
Kaplan, Georgetown University, were invited to candidly share their
viewpoints with offcers and offcials so as not to limit discussion
to offcial party lines. Equally in line with the NDCs approach
to its policy research, the location of the meeting in view of the UN
Headquarters was a deliberate choice in order to reach out to the widest
possible audience of decision-makers and security practitioners within
the UN system and across national missions.

This volume captures the follow-on refections of one Canadian,
one French and one German scholar among those who were present
in New York last October. The intent in compiling it is to inspire
continued discussion and new thinking about the UN-NATO strategic
partnership, particularly in the light of the emphasis placed upon it in
NATOs latest Strategic Concept in November 2010. Common to all
three contributions is the conclusion that the international community
cannot afford simply to accept the status quo: each paper thus offers
a series of measures to positively transform the UN-NATO strategic
connection in the interests of international peace and security.

Brooke A. Smith-Windsor turns to history and International
Relations (IR) theory to explain the paradoxical tendency in UN-NATO
affairs towards both friction and fraternity. In doing so, he traces
the increasing overlap in their normative mandates and introduces
the notion of the frst UN-NATO (Member States) and second
13
UN-NATO (bureaucracies) as an analytical framework to compare
and contrast key developments in their structural evolution. Inter-
organizationalist and Principal-Agent theories also are presented as
providing additional clues to understanding and practically managing
the opportunities as well as the limitations associated with UN-NATO
strategic relations. To ensure that the inclination towards fraternity
remains in ascendance, Smith-Windsor concludes by calling for
a strategic vision of the UN-NATO partnership spearheaded by the
Member States of both, particularly the 28 Allies, and offers ideas for
a UN engagement strategy to achieve this.

Alexis Vahlas similarly appeals for a more structured UN-
NATO partnership, publicly acknowledged and championed by the two
organizations Member States. As a point of departure, he argues that
mutual negative perceptions within both the UN and Atlantic Alliance
must be dispelled; this means correcting misconceptions concerning
respective functions, ideology, international law, politics, and culture.
In putting these to rest, Vahlas advocates a renewed public diplomacy
effort on the part of both organizations alongside a reaffrmed Alliance
commitment to multilateralism. While reiterating Smith-Windsors
call for the Atlantic Alliance to pursue permanent observer status in
the UN General Assembly, Vahlas goes even further in arguing for
Allied acknowledgment of NATO as a regional arrangement under
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.

In looking at the inter-institutional relationship in the context
of NATOs most ambitious foray to date in crisis management,
Afghanistan, Michael Harsch provides a forthright assessment of
cooperation in theatre as well as at headquarters level. He asserts
that a pervasive, mutual tendency not to give up autonomy, as well
as asymmetry in the organizations respective resource pools, have
acted as inhibitors of meaningful partnership. Harsch is equally blunt,
however, in his conclusion about the need for NATO and the UN to
14
accept their interdependence in Afghanistan and to redouble efforts to
construct a synergetic partnership, instead of opting for substitution
and evasion strategies.

The NDC prides itself on the objectivity it can guarantee in
examining the issues that feature on the Atlantic Alliances policy
agenda. This approach has been followed in compiling this latest
volume on the UN-NATO strategic partnership. It offers an analysis
free of offcial constraints, with a view to providing the necessary
impetus, on both sides of the relationship, for the implementation of
innovative policy solutions for the future.
15
Chapter One
Misery Makes for Strange Bedfellows:
The Future of the UN-NATO Strategic Partnership
Brooke A. Smith-Windsor
1

Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his
gabardine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a
man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the
storm be past.
The Tempest*
In 1992, civil war in the Balkans brought together two
unsuspecting characters on the world stage: a collective security
organization of near global membership and universal remit spanning
security, humanitarian assistance and development, with a collective
defense military alliance of just sixteen nation states created primarily
as a bulwark against the spectre of Soviet aggression in Western
Europe. For the United Nations (UN), the draw was arguably the cloak
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) military capability
to enforce an arms embargo, no-fy zones and later a comprehensive
peace agreement; for NATO, it was conceivably the cloak of UN
legitimacy, beginning with Security Council Resolutions 713 and 757
to enable it to address post-Cold War instability in its near abroad.
Thus was born of human misery in the last decade of the 20th Century
a heretofore improbable institutional relationship.
1
Dr. Brooke A.Smith-Windsor is Canadas Senior National Representative at the NATO Defense Col-
lege and former Director of Strategic Guidance at the Canadian Department of National Defense. The
views expressed in this paper are the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Government
of Canada or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
* The Tempest, William Shakespeare, 1610.
16
While for NATO and the UN distant coexistence was the order of
the day for the better part of four decades of Cold War, the proliferation
of complex emergencies in the 1990s, coupled with a more congenial
and activist UN Security Council calling for enforcement action to
bring them to a close, soon propelled the two organizations into a
new partnership. As the Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping
Operations, Kof Annan, declared in the midst of the Bosnian crisis:
The sheer size and complexity of peacekeeping
operations makes it imperative to explore new avenues of
cooperation with regional organizations such as NATO.
With its existing military structure, resources and political
weight, NATO has a lot to contribute to the concept of
peacekeeping, particularly in its more muscular form
[] In this context, NATOs willingness to participate
in United Nations operations holds the promise of a
vast qualitative as well as quantitative expansion of the
means of collective action that are at the disposal of the
United Nations.
2

On NATOs part, the response was an extension of its institutional
scope to encompass crisis management tasks outside its immediate
treaty area, often working alongside, or under the mandate of, the UN.
Following their frst Balkans encounter, UN-NATO collaboration to
facilitate greater international stability has spanned political, security
and capacity-building missions in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan
and Iraq, through disaster relief in Pakistan, to humanitarian convoys
and counter-piracy efforts off the coast of Africa. In recognition of
this growing legacy and NATOs embrace of so-called cooperative
security and a comprehensive approach to crisis management, the
Alliances 2010 Strategic Concept boldly declares:
2
Kof Annan, UN Peacekeeping Operations and Cooperation with NATO, NATO Review, 47.5 avail-
able at http://www.nato.int/docu/review/1993/9305-1.htm
17
Cooperation between NATO and the United Nations
continues to make a substantial contribution to security
in operations around the world. The Alliance aims to
deepen political dialogue and practical cooperation with
the UN, as set out in the UN-NATO Declaration signed
in 2008 [...]
3


Yet, such oratory papers over the many frictions between the UN
and NATO that have dogged the partnership since its inception; tensions
over mandating, command and control, monitoring, accountability and
resources that have resulted in what still may be described as relatively
immature and haphazard inter-institutional linkages and, even worse,
the lack of precision concerning the overarching vision for an enduring
UN-NATO strategic partnership despite past accomplishments. It
papers over the fact that the aforementioned Declaration took more
than three years to negotiate and is an agreement scant on details
and one between the two organizations Secretariats alone, not their
Member States. It papers over the fact that up until July 2010, when a
civilian liaison offcer was established, there was just a single NATO
Colonel in New York tasked to interface with the entire UN system,
with no UN counterpart in Brussels. It papers over the fact that the
same Colonel was in 2009 relieved of his desk at the UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) Situation Center, ostensibly due to
offce renovations, with no guarantee of a return.
4
It papers over the fact
that both organizations felt compelled, beginning in the same year, to
organize for their headquarters staff unprecedented mutual Education
Days, the agendas for which read like a frst year undergraduate course
on the basics of UN-NATO mandates and structure.
5
It papers over
3
Active Engagement, Modern Defense, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/offcial_
texts_68580.htm, para. 31.
4
Letter of B. Lynne Pascoe, UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs, and Alain Le Roy, UN
Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations to Martin Erdmann, NATO Assistant Secretary
General for Political Affairs, 07 October 2009.
18
the fact that NATO received not a single reference in the frst-ever UN
General Assembly thematic debate on the future of UN peacekeeping,
including in its special session on Building Partnerships and Securing
Capabilities convened in June 2010.
6
And it papers over the fact
that the NATO Secretary General has never been invited to address
the UN General Assembly or to explore the possibility of establishing
a NATO permanent observer mission in New York alongside other
international organizations.

While the casual observer might be dumbfounded at the
seemingly puerile and indiscriminate nature of the UN-NATO strategic
relationship despite more than two decades of collaboration on peace
operations around the globe, students of international relations will
be less surprised. As one analysis of UN task-sharing with regional
organizations insightfully notes:
[T]here is no straightforward hierarchical arrangement,
with a devolution from states to the United Nations,
and then from the world organization to regional
institutions [] Rather, there are pluralistic, or messy,
relationships that vary often by task, historical period
and geography.
7

The same studys conclusion that the analytical and policy
perspective thus is untidy is, however, small comfort for those
security and defense practitioners in Brussels and New York charged,
as they were in November 2010, to bring greater order to the UN-
5
Agendas for UN-NATO Education Days, New York, 07-08 December 2009, and UN-NATO Educa-
tion Days Part II, Brussels, 24-25 February 2010.
6
Author participation in the UN General Assembly Thematic Debate, UN Peacekeeping: looking into
the future, New York, 22 June 2010.
7
Edwin M. Smith and Thomas G. Weiss, UN task-sharing: towards or away from global governance?,
Third World Quarterly, 18.3, 1997, p. 595.
19
NATO strategic partnership.
8
So what to do? Where to turn? This
paper proposes some conceivable ways forward.
What impossible matter will we make easy next?
In defning in the frst order that which NATOs Heads of
State and Government have to date failed to achieve, namely the
overarching vision of an enduring UN-NATO strategic partnership,
to be accompanied only in second place by what they have called
for, clarifcation of additional practical measures to enhance inter-
institutional cooperation, fve fundamental questions arguably must
be posed: What are the respective interests of the UN, NATO and
their Member States in strengthening the two organizations strategic
partnership? What are the opportunities? What are the risks? What
are the impediments? How can these be managed and by whom?
To begin looking for answers to these questions, this paper
contends that fortunately for the contemporary analyst two useful
prisms are readily available through which to focus his or her attention:
history and theories about the workings of the international system.
The paper considers the frst four questions in the perspective of both,
followed by a concluding commentary addressing the ffth question on
the basis of the preceding observations. The historical prism addresses
the two organizations origins and essence as well as their structural
development. Mutual perceptions, whether or not refective of reality,
are also taken into account. The theoretical prism casts the eye on
elements of inter-organizational and principal-agent interaction to
provide additional clues to understanding and managing the benefts
8
The NATO Lisbon Summit Declaration of Heads of State and Government states: We have agreed to
further enhance our existing partnerships [] with interested countries and organizations [] We are
committed to strong and productive cooperation between NATO and the United Nations. We aim to deep-
en this practical cooperation and further develop our political dialogue on issues of common interest, in-
cluding through enhanced liaison, more regular political consultation, and enhanced practical cooperation
in managing crises where both organizations are engaged., NATO Press Release, PR/CP(2010)0155, 20
November 2010.
20
and opportunities, as much as the inherent risks and limitations,
associated with the UN-NATO strategic partnership.
There is a history in all mens lives
As it is often necessary to frst take a step back to confdently
move forward, endeavouring to understand the potential and pitfalls
in the future UN-NATO relationship is no different. The juxtaposition
of the origins and normative evolution of each organization, followed
by their structural make-up, serves to highlight possible points of
convergence as well as divergence in charting the way ahead.
Normative Mandates
The UN entered the world stage in 1945 as the embodiment
of a novel approach to the principle of collective security, seen as the
best hope to avoid the disappointments of the League of Nations and a
return to the destructive balance of power politics of years past. Given
the centrality of collective security to the universal organization (the
maintenance of peace and security is regularly referred to as the UNs
frst normative mandate), it is worth recalling its premise:
Collective security is based on the conviction that peace
is indivisible and that all states have a collective interest
in countering aggression whenever and wherever it may
appear. It assumes that potential aggressors will be
deterred by the united threat of counterforce mobilized
through an international organization [] like the UN.
If enforcement is required, however, then a wide range of
economic and diplomatic actions as well as armedforce
may be utilized.
9

9
Margaret P. Karns and Karen A. Mingst, International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of
Global Governance, London, Boulder, 2010, p. 311.
21
With the exception of Article 51 of the UN Charter, that establishes the
right of individual or collective self-defense, the UN Security Council
is the only body with the authority to decide on such enforcement action
for the maintenance of international peace and security. Of course, due
primarily to the prolifc use of the Soviet veto in the Security Council,
not to mention a reluctance of the Great Powers to empower the UN with
the standing army envisioned in Article 43 of the Charter, enforcement
actions during the Cold War were few and far between.
10
To be sure,
innovations never foreseen in the Charter, such as the advent of blue
helmet peacekeeping through the Uniting for Peace Resolutions of
the UN General Assembly, contributed to the maintenance of peace
in a variety of former confict zones. But their operating principles
of consent of the parties, impartiality, and the use of military force
only as a last resort and in self-defense, differed considerably from
the military enforcement actions envisioned under Chapter VII of the
Charter should the pacifc settlement of disputes provisions of Chapter
VI prove inadequate. Peacekeeping notwithstanding, the UNs
failure during the Cold War years to live up to the expectations for
its frst normative mandate did not, however, mean that the universal
organization suffered from lack of purpose. The brisk expansion of the
UN in the post-colonial period altered its internal dynamics and policy
agenda. The newer countries were interested primarily in national
integration, state-building, and economic development.
11
The result
was that since the 1960s development has often been identifed as the
UNs second great normative mandate.

NATOs genesis in 1949, however, was a direct result of
disappointment over the UNs incapacity to deliver on its frst mandate,
which the later addition of a developmental agenda would do little to
abate. The perception of the UN as an unreliable security provider
10
In June 1950, Security Council sanction of UN engagement in the Korean confict was only made pos-
sible due to the Soviet boycott of the body at the time.
11
Thomas G. Weiss et al., The United Nations and Changing World Politics, Sixth Edition, Boulder,
Westview Press, 2010, xxiv.
22
soon propelled Western Europeans fearful of Soviet aggression
to seek the protective shroud of US military forces, with Canadian
support, through a collective defense alliance for the geographically
circumscribed North Atlantic area. Yet still, [f]rom the very
beginnings of the Atlantic Alliance the United Nations occupied
a prominent place in NATOs perception of its role in the world.
12

While most West Europeans were at the time little interested in issues
of the Alliances compatibility with the UN Charter, many Americans
were wary of doing anything that might be construed as undermining
the vision of post-War internationalism embodied in the UN despite the
Soviet obstructionism and threat. The related debates have been well
documented and it is not the purpose of this paper to repeat them here.
13

At their core was the issue of how to bring NATO into harmony with
the Charter, without subjecting it to the jurisdiction of the UN Security
Council and thus the Soviet veto. In the end, reference in NATOs
founding treaty to Article 51 of the UN Charter governing collective
defense, and to the primary, although not exclusive, responsibility
of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and
security, carried the day. Yet there would be no reference to NATO
as a regional arrangement or regional agency under Chapter VIII
of the UN Charter, which would have instrumentalized subordination
to the Security Council. The Soviets, overtly, and the UN Secretary
General and President of the General Assembly, more subtly, were not
amused.
14

Nevertheless, for four decades, with their different foci, the
UN and NATO largely went their own way. Beginning in the early
1990s through to the present date, however, that has all changed. As
12
Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the UN: A Peculiar Relationship, Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 2010, p. 2.
13
Ibid, esp. Chapters 1 & 10. See also: Martin A. Smith, At Arms Length: NATO and the United Na-
tions in the Cold War Era, International Peacekeeping, 2.1 Spring 1995, pp. 56-73 and; David S. Yost,
NATO and International Organizations, Forum Paper 3, NATO Defense College, Chapter 2.
14
Kaplan, pp. 13-14.
23
their normative mandates have practically expanded and converged
in the area of collective security and the protection of human rights
(the latter was in 2005 explicitly identifed as the UNs third great
normative mandate),
15
their respective pedigrees have come to matter
more to both. As shall be described in the next section, their origins
and the patterns set during the Cold War as outlined above offer insight
into both the opportunities and obstacles on the path to strengthened
partnership. By way of departure, therefore, the signifcant points to
recall may be summarized as follows: the UN was founded on great
promise for the long term and with global scope; it was designed
to avoid war in order to maintain peace; the effectiveness of its
peacekeeping operations was inversely proportional to the amount
of military force available for use. NATO on the other hand was an
organization born of disillusionment and fear, designed to fght a war,
if necessary, in order to defend peace in a specifc region for as long as
a particular threat existed; its effectiveness was directly proportional
to the amount of military force available for use.
16


The concomitant rise of regional and intra-state crises in the
post-Cold War world alongside Security Council calls to address
them through peace operations, that were in many cases far more
complex and ambitious than the blue-helmet neutral and impartial
inter-positioning and monitoring of years past, soon forced a serious
reassessment of the tools available to maintain international peace
and security. If the UN Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) failure in
Bosnia did not suffciently demonstrate the inadequacy of the UN
legacy approach to peace operations in the new era, the UN Operation
in Somalia (UNOSOM) certainly did. As Michle Griffn observes:
15
Thakur, xxv.
16
Based in part on the observations of Derek Boothby, NATO and the United Nations available at http://
www.scdr.org/95Book/Boothby.htm
24
In the aftermath of the operation in Somalia, it was
generally acknowledged that the UN did not itself have
the institutional capacity to conduct military enforcement
operations. The solution to this problem, in the eyes of
many, was that such operations should be subcontracted.
17

Subcontracting to a coalition of the willing to implement
enforcement actions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter certainly
had the precedent of the frst Gulf War. But in 1992, should the Great
Powers time-honoured aversion to the possible alternative of raising
a UN standing army still remain intact, then UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali had put forth another subcontracting option
one with direct implications for NATO:
This wider mission for the world Organization will
demand the concerted attention and effort of individual
States, of regional [] organizations and of all of the
United Nations system. [These] could include treaty-
based organizations, whether created before or after the
founding of the United Nations, regional organizations
for mutual security and defence []
18

Notwithstanding their historically different approaches, the
UNs and NATOs shared commitment to peace, the rule of law,
human rights and fundamental freedoms as set down in their founding
texts would provide the baseline for a new relationship in the realm of
collective security consonant with the spirit of Boutros-Ghalis words.
Yet, there were other factors at play also directly related to their pasts,
and just as relevant today, that would fgure in the two organizations
17
Michle Griffn, Blue Helmet Blues: Assessing the Trend Towards Subcontracting UN Peace Opera-
tions, Security Dialogue, 30.1, 1999, p. 45.
18
United Nations Secretary-General, An Agenda for Peace: Preventative diplomacy, peacemaking and
peace-keeping Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to the statement adopted by the Summit Meet-
ing of the Security Council on 31 January 1992, 17 June 1992, A/47/277-S/24111, paras 16, 61.
25
calculations for the development of closer ties. For instance, as alluded
to at this outset of this paper, the UNs interest in NATOs unmatched
multinational military capability and integrated command structure,
developed over the Cold War, which continues to represent 70 percent
of the worlds hard security reserves, the likes of which has never
come close to existing in the universal organization. Furthermore, as
far as Europe is concerned, a desire on the part of the UN to make the
most of NATOs regional knowledge and vested interests in ending
confict in its near abroad.
19
Concerning the Atlantic Alliance, with its
longstanding enemy removed, interest in redefning its role in the world
with the imprimatur of international legitimacy offered by Security
Council sanction to not simply safeguard but to promote security;
20

or, as others have chosen to describe it, to embrace the dual track of
collective security alongside the collective self-defense function.
21
As
security challenges such as those in Afghanistan have evolved to cover
the spectrum of confict,
22
there also has been a desire on NATOs part
to leverage not only the UNs mandating authority for its collective
security efforts, but also its long-established civilian capabilities
in organizingin line with the organizations second normative
mandatethe political process and development, both of which now
often occur simultaneously with military operations.
23


19
UN interest in regional organizations to resolve local conficts was not limited to NATO but part of a
growing phenomena observed in the 1990s. See Griffn, esp. 47.
20
Dick A. Leurdijk, Before and after Dayton: the UN and NATO in the former Yugoslavia, Third World
Quarterly, 18.3, 1997, p. 460.
21
Dick A. Leurdijk, NATOs Shifting Priorities: From Peace Support Operations to Counter-Terrorism,
Peace Operations After 11 September 2001, London, Frank Cass, 2004, p. 63.
22
If traditional peacekeeping focused on containing military escalation, contemporary crisis manage-
ment aims at a social, political, and economic transformation to reach a comprehensive and sustainable
confict resolution. Consequently, the range of tasks today compromises humanitarian aid, physical pro-
tection of individuals, and ensuring the rule of law and functioning of political institutions. Claudia Ma-
jor and Christian Mlling, More Than Wishful Thinking? The EU, UN, NATO and the Comprehensive
Approach to Military Crisis Management, Studia Diplomatica, LXII.3, 2009, p. 21.
23
David S. Yost, Analysis: Enhancing NATOs cooperation with international organizations, NATO Re-
view, 3 (2007), esp. 1-2, available at: www.hq.nato.int/docu/review/2007/issue3/english/analysis2.html
26
While their respective pasts clearly have offered incentives
for greater UN-NATO collaboration in the area of collective security
and the protection of human rights since the 1990s, legacy equally
helps to explain some of the mutual reservations and accompanying
immaturity in institutional machinery experienced in their increasingly
overlapping normative mandates as well. For instance, there remain
concerns that over-reliance on regional organizations like NATO for
crisis interventions will undermine the long-term aspirations and
hopes for the UN as the universal security provider as enshrined in the
Charter of 1945. This perspective gained particular currency in the
run-up to 2003 when there were more regionally led peace operations
than UN proper ones. At an extreme, it has been articulated in terms
of: Natoization of the UN, when [t]otal dependence of the UN on
the US and the European countries for supply of weapons, equipment,
soldiers, and fnances is bound to destroy the UNs universality and
autonomy, and could lead to an atrophy of the UN itself.
24
These
so-called marginalists also believe that delegation will result in the
neglect of Third World conficts, great power abuse and a return to a
world divided by spheres of infuence, all of which will undermine UN
legitimacy.
25
In this regard, they frequently point to the downward
trend in Western military involvement in UN blue-helmet missions,
26

NATOs Kosovo intervention of 1999 absent a sanctioning Security
Council resolution, the Alliances increasing global presence beyond
its immediate geographic membership area or near abroad, and the
Security Councils alleged ambivalence regarding accountability
mechanisms for subcontracted enforcement operations.
27
However
well intentioned, comments like those made by the NATO Secretary
24
M.V. Naidu, The UN, NATO and regional conficts: a legal and political analysis, Peace Research,
32.1, 2000.
25
Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Overload, Not Marginalization, Threatens UN Peacekeeping, Security Dia-
logue, 31.2, 2000, p. 168.
26
Michael F. Harsch and Johannes Varwick, NATO-UN Cooperation Revisited: A New Dawn?, Studia
Diplomatica, LXII, 3, p. 31.
27
Griffn, p. 48.
27
General as recently as April 2010, stating that to carry out NATOs
job effectively, the Alliance should become the hub of a network of
security partnerships and a centre for consultation on international
security issues even issues on which the Alliance might never take
action, have done little to assuage fears about UN marginalization.
28

Concern over a perceived NATO challenge to the UNs historic primacy
in preventative diplomacy notwithstanding, lingering perceptions
within the UN of the Atlantic Alliance as fundamentally a warfghting
institution, with therefore a propensity to favour military solutions to
confict rather than the pacifc settlement of disputes envisioned in the
Charter, continue to act as a drag on the development of the inter-
institutional relationship. Recent criticism of civilian casualty rates
attributed to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan is representative in this regard.
29


From a NATO perspective, institutional ancestry in turn holds
as many keys to understanding its embrace of a closer relationship with
the UN, as the reasons for limits placed upon it. Indeed, its adoption,
like the UN, of collective security and human rights protection as
key normative mandates has not meant an end to the organizations
historic aversion to explicit subservience to the universal organization
grounded in the original mandate of collective defense. As Dick Leurdijk
points out, while NATO is prepared to act within the parameters of
the subcontracting model, the bottom-line is that it is not willing to
subordinate itself to the UN under all conditions.
30
At issue has been
fear of endangering the credibility of the Alliance as a military power
prepared and able to deliver on threats of force, because of an interfering
or dithering UN often seen as unduly preoccupied with maintaining
neutrality in a confict situation.
31
It emerged in the initial UN-NATO
28
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Connecting NATO to the Broader International System, Hampton Roads
Security Quarterly, April 2010, p. 75.
29
Michael F. Harsch and Johannes Varwick, NATO and the UN, Survival, 51.2 (Apr-May 2009), p. 9.
30
Dick Leurdijk, NATO and the UN: The Dynamics of an Evolving Relationship, RUSI Journal, June
2004, p. 27.
31
Janka Oertal, The United Nations and NATO, Paper prepared for the ACUNS 21st Annual Meeting,
28
efforts at collective security collaboration in Bosnia, with the so-called
dual key arrangement put in place for authorizing NATO air strikes
in support of UN ground operations. Over time it has resulted in ever
greater efforts to safeguard NATOs operational independence even
when acting under a UN Security Council mandate:
The UNs concern [in the former Yugoslavia] to conduct
traditional peace-keeping, maintaining neutrality
and employing force only in self-defense, prevented it
from developing a credible deterrence policy to contain
the conficting parties that violated the SC [Security
Council] resolutions. On the contrary, NATOs doctrine
has always emphasized the need to ensure that the use
of force for both deterrence and coercion be part of an
overall strategy of effective and credible intervention.
32

The result was that the decision in the aftermath of the fall
of Srebrenica in July 1995, that attacks against the remaining safe
areas would lead to a frm and rapid response from NATO air forces,
was [] taken in Brussels without any formal consultation with New
York. Thus, reminiscent of the disillusionment with the UN that gave
birth to NATOs collective defense function, disenchantment with the
universal organization likewise infuenced at an early stage the pattern
of Alliance engagement in collective security. By the time the Dayton
Peace Agreement was negotiated, the Implementation Force (IFOR)
had been elaborated at NATO headquarters totally outside the UN
framework
33
and with an independent command and control structure.
This so-called stand-alone (as opposed to supporting stand-by)
approach has since been followed in NATOs ongoing ISAF operations,
albeit with regular consultation with the United Nations Assistance
Bonn, Germany, 5-7 June 2008, p. 4.
32
Ettore Greco, UN-NATO Interaction: Lessons from the Yugoslav Experience, The International
Spectator, XXXI.3/4, 1997, p. 126.
33
Leurdijk, 1997, pp. 464-5.
29
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
34
At an extreme, NATOs 1999
aerial bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the absence
of explicit UN Security Council authorization is frequently cited as the
quintessence of the Alliances willingness to safeguard its freedom of
action, although the operations periodic description as the autonomy
model of collective security is not entirely accurate. Despite the
absence of a UN mandate, and while not denying inter-institutional
tensions at the time, a recent study reveals that recurrent consultation
between the UN and NATO did in fact transpire prior to and throughout
the 78-day air campaign conceived to prevent a humanitarian disaster
in Kosovo.
35

In summarizing the evolution of the UN-NATO relationship
as their normative mandates have increasingly converged, Lawrence
Kaplan aptly observes: The crises of the 1990s opened the way for
closer connections between NATO and the UN. But intimacy did not
necessarily breed comity. Put another way, he states that in many
ways the direction of UN-NATO relations since the Cold Wars end
has been a deepening both in friction and in collaboration.
36
This
part has demonstrated how the two organizations respective origins
have fgured in this seemingly paradoxical evolutionfactors of
pedigree and institutional essence that must be taken into account in
any effort to realistically progress the UN-NATO strategic partnership.
Institutional structure is equally signifcant. It is this to which attention
now turns.

Institutional Structure
While the layman might be forgiven for conceiving of the
34
Oertal, p. 5.
35
Kent J. Killie and Ryan C. Hendrickson, Secretary-General Leadership Across the United Nations and
NATO: Kof Annan, Javier Solana, and Operation Allied Force, Global Governance, 16 (2010), esp. pp.
511-517.
36
Kaplan, p. 186.
30
UN and NATO as monolithic, unitary actors on the world stage, the
contemporary analyst interested in advancing the UN-NATO strategic
partnership can ill afford to ignore the complexity that lies beneath
those titular references. Indeed, from the very beginnings of both
organizations, their respective constitutions as a collection of Member
States supported by a burgeoning international staff and related agencies
were readily apparent. Although the UN Charter was signifcantly
more prescriptive than the Washington Treaty in this regard, over time
such structural heterogeneity has become well entrenched. In the UN
context, mention is in fact routinely made of the frst UN, referring
to the Member States represented in the Security Council and General
Assembly for instance. Elsewhere, reference is made to the second
UN, exemplifed by the Secretary-General and the international civil
service, including the now 8900 professional and clerical staff based
in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi. Some have in more recent
times even gone so far as to refer to the third UN to acknowledge the
often signifcant infuence of independent experts and commissions,
as well as Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) that increasingly
interact with the intergovernmental dimension.
37
Within each category
diversity likewise is no stranger. Albeit with the arguable exception of
the third categorization, a similar approach might be taken to NATO to
capture its status as frst and foremost an intergovernmental organization
in which key decisions are made by governments representing states,
principally in the North Atlantic Council (NAC), with a second order
supporting international military staff, a 5200-strong international
civilian bureaucracy and, since 1952, the Secretary General.
It is not the purpose of this paper to describe in intricate detail
the evolution and composition of each grouping, but rather to use the
preceding typology as a means by which to shed additional light on
developments which represent opportunities or limiting factors en
route to strengthened UN-NATO partnership. In proceeding from
37
Weiss et al., 1viii.
31
an understanding of power to denote the capability to infuence
outcomes,
38
the evolving nature of power dynamics in the frst UN-
NATO is now addressed, followed by that in the second.

Given that the policy orientations and performance of both
the UN and NATO ultimately depend on the ideal (political will)
and material (resources) commitment of their Member States, they
arguably are the most signifcant structural factor infuencing the extent
of linkages between the two organizations. In this context, power
dynamics among the fve permanent (P5) members of the Security
Council and between them and other states, as represented in the UN
General Assembly for instance, are at issue.
With respect to the Great Powers, considering the historic
animosity of the Soviet Union to NATO, Russian attitudes have
fundamental bearing on the development of a viable working
relationship between the UN and NATO:
With Russia in support, or at least neutral, concerted
NATO-UN action is more likely to occur. Without such
cooperation, refections of the old Soviet-US superpower
rivalry and a failure to achieve consensus in the Security
Council are distinctly possible.
39

Since the Cold Wars end, such support or at least acquiescence
has, as alluded to above, authorized a growing number of NATO
operations in support of UN Security Council resolutions calling for
enforcement action to maintain international peace and security. But
positive Russian attitudes cannot be taken for granted, as the Kosovo
case of 1999 starkly underscores. The immediate Russian response
38
Weiss et al., 1ii.
39
Gordon Wilson, Arm in Arm After the Cold War? The Uneasy NATO-UN Relationship, International
Peacekeeping, 2.1, Spring 1995, p. 79.
32
to the aforementioned UN-NATO 2008 Joint Declaration is equally
demonstrative in this regard. While acknowledging that cooperation
between the UN and regional organizations was in general a normal
and necessary thing, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the time
lambasted the accords negotiation for its lack of transparency and
encroachment of areas considered the prerogative of sovereign states:
[T]hings of this kind must be done without keeping secrets from
the member states and on the basis of powers and authority held by
the secretariats.
40
While the overt criticism and concern has since
diminished, it nonetheless has been replaced by an apparent Russian
inclination to balance UN-NATO ties with the signature of similar
declarations between the UN and regional organizations in which it is
a leading member: frst, between the UN and the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO) in March 2010,
41
followed one month later
by the UN and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which
P5 member China is also a driving force.
42
Hence the oft heard 1990s
counsel that, to advance UN-NATO cooperation, it is important that
Western diplomacy remains aware of Russias interests and examines
the possibility of accommodating them
43
rings just as, if not more,
true in present times.

Chinas attitude towards greater UN-NATO cooperation would
appear less of a concern. During its presidency of the Security Council
in January 2010, for instance, a thematic debate specifcally was
convened to address: Cooperation between the United Nations and
regional and subregional organizations in maintaining international
peace and security. Unlike the previously mentioned General
40
Ria Novosti, UN and NATO Sign Secret Military Cooperation Agreement in Violation of UN Charter,
Global Research, 08 Oct 2008, available at: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=10503
41
See Vladimir Socor, The UN Accepts CSTO as a Regional Security Organization, European Dia-
logue, available at: http://eurodialogue.org/eu-central-asia/The-UN-The-UN-Accepts-CSTO-as-a-Re-
gional-Security-Organization
42
Joint Declaration on SCO/UN Secretariat Cooperation, 04 April 2010, available at: http://www.sects-
co.org/EN/show.sp?id=198
43
Wilson, p. 79.
33
Assembly thematic debate on UN peacekeeping, however, NATO
was not only acknowledged but actively engaged. In welcoming its
Deputy Secretary General, Claudio Bisogniero, to address the Council
alongside representatives from other regional bodies, the President
stressed:
Member States expect the Security Council to meet
the challenges before it and to play a bigger role in
strengthening international peace and security and in
responding to global threats and challenges. At the
same time, members strive to promote regional peace
and development through the strengthening of regional
organizations [] It is of great signifcance and relevance
for the Security Council to hold this thematic debate to
strengthen the cooperation between the United Nations
and regional and subregional organizations.
44

The President went on to further express the Councils
recognition of the role of such organizations in peacekeeping, post-
confict peacebuilding, recovery, reconstruction and development as
well as its intention to hold future informal interactive dialogues with
them.
45
As regards the Western P5 nations, considering the US military
pre-eminence within the Atlantic Alliance and status as the largest
contributor to the UN budget, its infuence on the direction of UN-
NATO relations is critical. Periodic cases of American unilateralism
notwithstanding (notably Iraq 2003), since Iraqs invasion of Kuwait
in 1990 the US has been central to the reinvigoration of the UN
Security Council. This includes its collective legitimization of the
44
United Nations Security Council, 6257
th
meeting, 13 January 2010, S/PV.6257, pp. 2-3.
45
United Nations Security Council, Statement by the President of the Security Council, 13 January 2010,
S/PRST/2010/1.
34
overwhelming majority of NATO crisis management operations,
beginning in 1992.

It would be wrong, however, to assume an American default
preference for NATO engagement, or even Allied bloc voting
within the Security Council and General Assembly, on all questions
of international peace and security. The US initial actions in
Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), vice NATO,
following the tragic events of 11 September 2001 are a case in
point. Furthermore, the caution about NATO Allies acting as a bloc
in the UN, articulated as far back as the Kennedy Administration
of the 1960s, is conceivably just as relevant to Washingtons
contemporary policy calculations concerning UN-NATO synergies:
As a world power, the United States has important
responsibilities in Asia, Africa, and the Americas which
cannot possibly be shared by its European allies. We
must not permit ourselves to be so closely identifed with
one group of states that we jeopardize close working
relations with others.
46

Perhaps it not surprising then that, while NATOs 2010 Strategic
Concept refers to the Alliance as a unique and essential transatlantic
forum for consultations where [a]ny security issue of interest to any
Ally can be brought to the NATO table, to share information, exchange
views [and] forge common positions, the latter alone receives the
specifc caveat where appropriate.
47
For the US, NATO remains
but one, although signifcant, forum among a plethora of others, both
bilateral and regional, through which to pursue its security policy.
46
Francis O. Wilcox, The Atlantic Community and the United Nations, International Organization,
17.3, Summer 1963, p. 696.
47
Active Engagement, Modern Defense, para. 5.
35
When enforcement actions by NATO are favoured by
Washington, however, it is equally important to acknowledge that,
courtesy of the two remaining Western P5 members, UN mandating
authority is likely (although not necessarily required, as Kosovo
demonstrates). As one analysis tellingly observes:
There has always been a strain of resentment against the
dominant voice of the superpower on the North Atlantic
Council. If NATO should be wholly free from the
UNs supervision, France and Britain would continue to
occupy an inferior place in the alliance. By supporting
the Security Councils prerogatives, they [are] able to
elevate their own status as genuine equals of the United
States []
48
Such British and French dispositions, therefore, would seem
to represent signifcant impetus for a continued UN-NATO strategic
axis in crisis management, even if recent history suggests a parallel
and increasingly entrenched preference among Allies (as described
earlier) to safeguard NATO independence in operational planning and
execution when implementing Security Council resolutions.
Although, since the Cold Wars end, the General Assembly
largely has been marginalized by the Security Council as the epicentre
of intergovernmental consultation on peace and security issues within
the UN system, it nevertheless remains a powerful force in the symbolic
politics of agenda-setting and giving voice to the small and medium
powers.
49
It is here where hesitation about a strengthened UN-NATO
relationship in collective security arguably is most palpable. This
includes many of the so-called Major Troop Contributing Nations
(MTCNs) for UN blue-helmet operations, which have grown to number,
48
Kaplan, p. 214.
49
Karns et al., esp. pp. 103, 109.
36
at the time of writing, over 90,000 in deployed forces.
50
Countries like
Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nigeria are wary of over-reliance
on NATO assets for fear that it might reduce UN decision-making
autonomy and operational independence, particularly in the area of
command and control.
51
At an extreme, the hesitation derives from
the perception that the Atlantic Alliance is merely one arm of alleged
US imperialist ambition, a modern guise for a return to colonial
meddling in the South, or a contributor to a continued arms race. From
this perspective, the reasons for the conspicuous absence of NATO
references in the unprecedented thematic debate on the future of UN
peacekeeping, as well as the organizations limited offcial presence
on the Assembly foor, as previously mentioned, would appear less of
a mystery.

Circumspection about NATO within the General Assembly also
has carried implications for the second UN-NATO as regards the pace
and extent of inter-institutional partnership. For instance, it has been
suggested that the General Assemblys 2007 approval to restructure the
DPKO (now the UNs largest) and to create the Department of Field
Support (DFS) was a move by some nations to strengthen the UNs
own capacity to mount and sustain multi-dimensional peace support
operations, precisely in order to lessen the universal organizations
reliance on NATO resources.
52
While the Secretariat-Secretariat 2008
Joint Declaration was made possible by the UN Secretary-Generals
authority (Russian reservations notwithstanding) to enter into such
agreements without a vote in the General Assembly, there can be
little doubt that the three years it took to get to the point of the so-
called quiet signing likewise was due in part to the infuence on
Kof Annan and Ban Ki-moon of the same NATO-wary nations.
53

50
Bruce Jones et al., Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010, Boulder: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2010, p. 132.
51
Harsch and Varwick, Studia Diplomatica, p. 32.
52
Kaplan, p. 199.
53
For a history of the Joint Declaration see: Harsch and Varwick, Survival, pp. 8-10.
37
Even for an organization like the UN with a long history of activist
Secretaries-General, it is important to acknowledge that the offces
room for manoeuvre is politically as much as legally circumscribed.
Such circumscription, moreover, cannot be fully appreciated in the
perspective of the Member States alone. Within the UN bureaucracy
itself differences over the approach to be taken to NATO also abound.
So, for example, while many in the Department of Political Affairs
(DPA) might seem openly supportive of the Secretary-Generals
engagement of NATO as manifest in the 2008 accord, less enthusiasm
is regularly voiced within the humanitarian bodies. There the fear is that
too close a relationship with NATO might compromise the cherished
operating principles of neutrality and impartiality.
54
Furthermore, for
many UN offcials, closer partnership with the Atlantic Alliance in
crisis management simply is not a priority compared to the daunting
internal challenge of bringing greater coherence and coordination to
the multitude of political, security, development, human rights and
humanitarian activities of the departments and offces, specialized
agencies, programs and funds and other elements of the UN system.
In this respect, it is interesting to contrast the signifcantly inward-
looking orientation of the UNs so-called integrated approach to
confict and post-confict management with the Atlantic Alliances
aforementioned advocacy of a comprehensive approach to similar
contingencies. The latter, by virtue of NATOs more limited (military)
repertoire in collective security, places much greater emphasis on
improving coordination and partnerships with external actors like the
UN.
55
That said, even if the UNs integrated approach suffciently
matures into a nucleus of collective security action around which
other organizations like NATO might conceivably cluster in line
with the aspirations for a comprehensive approach, Alliance offcials
would still do well to remember that each UN department, program,
54
Authors interviews with UN offcials in New York, June 2010.
55
See: Cedric de Coning, The United Nations and the Comprehensive Approach, DIIS Report, 2008/
14, and Brooke A.Smith-Windsor, Hasten Slowly NATOs Effects Based and Comprehensive Ap-
proach to Operations, Research Paper 38, NATO Defense College, July 2008.
38
fund, and offce maintains its own identity, management system,
funding lines and fnancial responsibility. Directors-General of the
specialized agencies, moreover, retain the same diplomatic rank as the
Secretary-General. In the UN, perhaps more than any other security
organization, questions of coordination rarely can be answered in a
one stop shop.

Before leaving the discussion of the second UN-NATO to
further appreciate the challenges and opportunities facing the inter-
institutional relationship, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the
important change that has occurred with respect to the offce of the NATO
Secretary General since the early 1990s. During the Cold War, when
the preoccupation was preparations for Allied military engagement of
Soviet forces on the Central European front, the offce regularly held
by European civilian leaders of smaller nations was generally in the
shadow of the always American Supreme Allied Commander Europe
(SACEUR) and omnipresent political fgures of the Allied Great
Powers. Beginning with Manfred Woerner and Willy Claes on the
Balkans, through Javier Solana on Kosovo, to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
on Afghanistan, however, the political stature of NATO Secretaries
General has grown considerably both in shaping and representing
Alliance policy regarding the increasingly varied and complex security
challenges of a globalized world.
56
This includes interfacing with their
UN counterparts. The current Secretary General and frst former Head
of Government to hold the post, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has shown no
signs of adjusting course. On the contrary, he potentially could emerge
as one of the most proactive in Alliance history.
57
His artful mastery
of the negotiations surrounding NATOs 2010 Strategic Concept and
considerable personal penmanship of the document itself, which as
cited above advocates strengthened UN-NATO ties, are well known.
It also was under his leadership that the aforementioned UN-NATO
56
Kaplan, p. 214.
57
See: Ryan C. Hendrickson, NATOs First Prime Minister: Rasmussens Leadership Surge, RUSI
Journal, 155.5 (Oct/Nov 2010), esp. pp. 26-30.
39
Education Days of 2009 and 2010 were organized, in part, as a bid to
consolidate control of, and bring greater order to, NATO interaction
and messaging with the universal organization.
58
The fact that the
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) felt compelled
to personally inform the Secretary General of his deliberations at UN
Headquarters in early June 2010 (specifcally referring to them as
a follow-on to the Education Days), and to seek his guidance and
feedback on ways to advance the UN-NATO partnership, would
suggest Rasmussens bid has met with some success.
59
Should his
diplomatic activism on the UN-NATO dossier continue, as Ban Ki-
moons invitation to the NATO Lisbon Summit last November would
certainly indicate, there is every reason to see it as a promising stimulus
for improved strategic linkages between the two organizations. Not
provoking the UN marginalists as discussed previously, however, will
be an ongoing challenge. So too will be avoiding oratory and actions
that might be construed by the Member States as diminishing their
sovereign authority over the Alliances international policy agenda.

The foregoing discussion has considered the interests,
opportunities, risks and impediments surrounding the UN-NATO
strategic partnership in a historical perspective, highlighting infuential
developments and factors from the origins of both organizations to
more recent times. Whether focussing on the evolution of normative
mandates or of power dynamics in intergovernmental and bureaucratic
structures, the picture that emerges is one of a myriad of positive as
well as negative forces at play. How to best manage them to ensure
that forward momentum is maintained in the interests of international
peace and security, while being ever sensitive to mutual concerns and
the underlying reasons for them, is the subject of the fnal part of this
paper. Before proceeding, however, it is useful also to turn to aspects
58
Authors interviews with NATO offcials in New York and Brussels, February 2010.
59
Letter from General Stphane Abrial, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, to Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, 08 June 2010.
40
of International Relations (IR) theory to further account for positive
and negative infuences on the UN-NATO strategic partnership in
order to chart a realistic and judicious way ahead.
Every why hath a wherefore
It is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into every feature
of the rich reserve of IR theory, or by the same token the more recent
conceptual framework of Global Governance,
60
in order to better
appreciate the problems and possibilities in the UN-NATO strategic
relationship. A brief look at two branches of IRone emergent, the other
more establishednevertheless is suffcient to demonstrate its utility
alongside history as an analytical prism available to the contemporary
security practitioner charged with progressing UN-NATO affairs.
The newer branch is known as Inter-organizationalism; the other,
Principal-Agent Theory.
Inter-organizationalism
Inter-organizationalism is the study of the direct and indirect
interaction of formal international organizations as a consequence of
globalization, and the need to address transnational challenges ranging
from humanitarian disasters, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and failed
states to terrorism.
61
It observes that as these transnational menaces
have mounted since the Cold Wars end, a number of signifcant new
developments in the international system have occurred. First, to
cope with the growing pressures, existing institutions like NATO have
responded by enlarging their membership to extend stability, as well as
60
Global Governance endeavours to address the explanatory defcit in traditional IR theory as regards
multilateralism. It is sometimes considered a theory in statu nascendi and refers to the multi-level col-
lection of governance-related activities, rules, and mechanisms, formal and informal, public and private,
existing in the world today. See: Karns and Mingst, esp. Chapters 1 and 2, and Phillip Pattberg, The
Transformation of IR: Global Governance as a Theory in the Making?, August 2008, PowerPoint pres-
entation available at: http://www.glogov.org/images/doc/P_IR_ESG_08.pdf
61
Rafael Biermann,Inter-organizationalism in Theory and Practice, Studia Diplomatica LXII.3 (2009), p. 7.
41
their policy mandates to address with a variety of tools the increasingly
complex and overlapping threats and vulnerabilities.
62
Coupled with
the creation of new problem-solving organizations, particularly of the
non-governmental variety, the result has been that:

institutional density is growing worldwide, particularly
in Europe [] As organizations and regimes converge
in their mandates, tasks, resources and membership, they
increasingly overlap in their geographic and functional
competences.
63

Second, even as institutions have broadened their membership
and policy remits to tackle the ever-growing array of complex
transnational security issues, they steadily have come to realize that
they alone cannot solve them.
Both developments carry positive and negative consequences
for inter-institutional relations. On the one hand, the overlap and
mutual dependency is an incentive for cooperation and burden sharing.
On the other, it also can breed resentment and rivalry for resources
and relevancy. The UNs interface with regional organizations in
the post-Cold War world is no exception. As one study on Inter-
organizationalism remarks:
The United Nations and regional institutions may
occasionally be able to cooperate, one serving the
interests of the other. At other times they may compete.
Tension is always present in interaction between the UN
and regional institutions, even when cooperating. Each
may derive benefts from cooperating with the other,
62
NATO has a current membership of 28 Member States following three post-Cold War enlargements:
1999 (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland); 2004 (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia,
Slovenia); 2009 (Albania, Croatia).
63
Biermann, pp. 7-8.
42
but both will also incur costs especially in terms of their
purpose and autonomy.
64

Such observations would indeed appear to align with the
historical pattern evidenced in much of UN-NATO relations since
1992, as previously described. In doing so, Inter-organizationalism
sheds additional light on the reasons for the paradoxical evolution of
the two institutions strategic relationship experienced over the past
two decades.

With institutional density and path interdependency providing
additional clues to the simultaneous tendency toward fraternity and
friction in UN-NATO affairs, it is reasonable to question: what, if
anything, does inter-organizationalist theory offer as regards insights
into navigating the future? For one, the study just cited presents the
following counsel: the tension can only be managed, not eliminated.
This calls for a fexible approach to cooperation (i.e. no one size fts all
situations), albeit with the articulation of some broad criteria concerning
division of labor and the means to ensure accountability.
65
The said
advice will be returned to in the fnal part of this paper on plotting
the course ahead. As the remaining intervening step, Principal-Agent
Theory serves to highlight additional factors to bear in mind when
looking forward.
Principal-Agent Theory
Although originally conceived by economists to explain the
internal dynamics of the frm, Principal-Agent Theory has since been
transposed to national governments and international organizations. In
the latter context, Member States, as the collective principals, delegate
levels of authority and control to the international bureaucracy, the
64
Muthiah Alagappa, Regional Insitutions, the UN and international security: a framework for analsyis,
Third World Quarterly, 13.3, 1997, p. 436.
65
Ibid, p. 436.
43
agent. They may do so, for example, to beneft from the agents
specialized knowledge, to enhance certitude in policy decisions or
to help them resolve disputes.
66
Within international organizations,
the theory also asserts that the number of Member States and the
heterogeneity of their preferences infuence the level of delegation:
This can go two ways. If there is a strong demand for
credible commitments, high divisiveness can lead to
more autonomy for the agent. A commander may, for
example, receive substantial autonomy to carry out
operational and tactical tasks in order to avoid too much
political inference in military affairs. On the other hand, if
international bureaucracies only make the policy-process
more effcient, for example through their expertise or
time, multiple principals with competing interests will
delegate fewer tasks and carry the higher transaction
costs of cooperation themselves.
67

In considering these potential outcomes in a UN and NATO
context, Hylke Dijkstras innovative study paints two very different
pictures. In the universal organization with 192 Member States of
extremely diverse interests, delegation to the agent is said to be limited.
Even where it has occurrednotably with the offce of the Secretary
Generalit has been quickly withdrawn if too activist an agenda has
been pursued.
68
In contrast, greater delegation can be expected in NATO
with far fewer and generally like-minded Member States. Despite
continuous transatlantic quarrels throughout its history, preference
66
Karnes and Mingst, p. 57.
67
Hylke Dijkstra, The Institutional Design of Peacekeeping Organizations: United Nations, NATO and
the European Union, paper prepared for the annual conference of UACES in Brugges, Belgium, 6-8
September 2010 and the conference of the ECPR Standing Group on International Relations in Stock-
holm, Sweden, 9-11 September 2010, p. 3.
68
Ibid, 9.
44
homogeneity in NATO is much higher.
69
By the same token, even
where differences exist, the propensity for greater delegation in NATO
compared to the UN arguably turns on its primary status as a military
alliance and the high degree of decisiveness required in the profession
of arms.

These different approaches to agent empowerment would
indeed appear to go some way to explain, for example, the long-
established robust command structure of the Alliance, numbering in
the thousands compared to the UNs 500 staff members in DPKO and
DFS, still limited in focus on planning and mission support rather
than operational command. It similarly would seem to account for the
enduring absence of any UN standing army and the historic hesitancy
of UN Member States to sanction coercive blue helmet operations.
From this perspective, Principal-Agent Theory can thus serve to help
align expectations for what each side of the UN-NATO equation can
realistically bring to the collective security table both in terms of
capacities and de facto authorities. By extension, it can provide clues
as to what might constitute a viable division of labor between them
as well as the requirements of effective inter-institutional engagement
strategies. These and other demands are topics for discussion in
answering the ffth question posed at the outset of this paper: How can
the UN-NATO strategic partnership best be managed and by whom?
It is this to which attention now turns.
There is no virtue like necessity
A mantra of contemporary security policy discourse is that
the demand for collective action to alleviate human suffering and to
foster enduring peace and stability exceeds supply. Even with close
to 100,000 troops deployed in missions in every hemisphere of the
globe ranging from Haiti (MINUSTAH) through Kosovo (UNMIK)
69
Ibid, p.3.
45
to Lebanon (UNIFIL), Iraq (UNAMI), Afghanistan (UNAMA),
Liberia (UNMIL) and Timor-Leste (UNMIT), the UNs peacekeeping
and humanitarian capacities are stretched and its foray into effective
coercive enforcement missions still signifcantly constrained. Boutros-
Ghalis far-sighted 1992 remarks about the need for reinforcement from
regional organizations ring just as true two decades later. Should there
be illusions to the contrary, reference to NATOs current operations
alone quickly puts them to rest. Operations that comprise no less than
70,000 deployed Alliance personnel spanning stabilization missions
in Afghanistan (ISAF) and Kosovo (KFOR), through counter-piracy
efforts off the coast of Somalia (Operation Ocean Shield), to police and
military training in Iraq (NTM-I) and most recently, no-fy zone and
arms embargo enforcement vis--vis Libya (Op Unifed Protector)all
with UN sanction. Despite the shortcomings, despite the hesitations,
despite the limitations, and despite the risks, a UN-NATO relationship
remains a necessity for the maintenance of international peace and
security. By virtue of this fact, every opportunity to strengthen it and
improve it over the next two decades and beyond must be taken. This
fnal part offers some thoughts on how to proceed and under whose
leadership.
Strategic Vision

In the frst order, as stated at the outset of this paper, an
overarching strategic vision for the UN-NATO relationship needs to be
defned by their Member Statesagain, the frst UN-NATO on whose
ideal and material commitment the partnership ultimately depends.
Common among working level staff offcers, particularly within the
Atlantic Alliance, is exacerbation over the lack of clarity from on high
concerning the meaning of the UN-NATO strategic partnership which
they, ironically, are nevertheless tasked to progress.
70
Their perplexity
and predicament is not without cause. The NATO Deputy Secretary
70
Authors interviews with staff offcers from NATO Commands, December 2010.
46
General said as much during his intervention at the previously cited
Security Council thematic debate in January last year:
In the past, a lack of strategic dialogue has often prevented
us [UN-NATO] from examining common challenges
and formulating common responses, leaving this to the
working level to sort out. That is why todays discussion
[is] most welcome [] to pursue the strategic dialogue
that so far has been missing.
71

NATOs new Strategic Concept released in November of the
same year, however, offered little in terms of articulating the Allies
appreciation of the purpose, principles and aspirations surrounding
the UN-NATO strategic partnership. Its cursory reference to the
2008 Secretariats Declaration (which is similarly lacking in strategic
foresight) and call for more practical measures to enhance inter-
institutional cooperation, therefore, represent a missed opportunity and
a case of still putting the cart before the horse. It is a fair question
to pose: if no Fortune 500 company would conceive of functioning
without an inspirational vision outlining what it wants to be and the
operating principles to get there, why should it be any different for the
partnership of two of the most signifcant security organizations in the
world today, charged with safeguarding the fortunes of great swaths of
humanity?
72
Given the internal preoccupations and divisions in many
UN quarters referenced earlier, the onus in taking the initiative to
redress this strategic void would appear to rest with the NATO Member
States supported by their empowered Secretary-General. With this
in mind, thoughts on potential elements of a strategic vision for the
UN-NATO partnership are presented, followed by consideration of a
realistic UN engagement strategy.
71
United Nations Security Council, 6257
th
meeting, 13 January 2010, S/PV.6257, 14.
72
Since 2005 the UN and NATO have been the primary international actors in peace support operations.
See: Tortolani et al., pp. 2-3.
47

As a starting point, a strategic vision should appeal to the two
organizations shared commitment to peace, the rule of law, human
rights and fundamental freedoms. It should also go a step further than
simply acknowledging the Security Councils primary responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and security (which
NATOs 2010 Strategic Concept does reiterate) and incorporate a
judicious recommendation made by the so-called Group of Experts
on the Alliances new strategy. This would entail specifcally stating
that a core aim of the partnership is to strengthen the United Nations
ability to fulfl its responsibilities as enshrined in the Charter.
73
As
countenanced by inter-organizationalist theory, it should in addition
include a commitment to improved accountability and transparency in
partnership areas. Such measures would in many respects acknowledge
existing practice
74
and also go a signifcant way in establishing operating
principles and guidance for lower levels of authority. It would in turn
help assuage UN marginalists fears. Once more drawing on Inter-
organizationalism, reference to fexible, case-by-case cooperation,
vice automaticity, would in turn help address sensitivities about over-
reliance or subordination in the relationship, as the case may be.

Beyond the general purpose and operating tenets of the
partnership, a UN-NATO strategic vision should offer guidance as
regards future areas of cooperation in the maintenance of international
peace and security. Clearly, crisis management should be atop the
agenda as it has been since 1992. Yet even here the time is ripe for
greater clarity. While not closing down any options, the scope for
a greater role for NATO in Chapter VII enforcement actions, and
for UN blue helmets under Chapter VI, could be more forthrightly
73
Madelaine Albright et al., NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement, 17 May 2010, p. 20.
74
With respect to ISAF, for example, the NATO Secretary-General tables quarterly reports to the Security
Council via his UN counterpart. See, for example: United Nations Security Council, Letter dated 10
August 2010 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council, 19 August
2010, S/2010/437.
48
acknowledged. This would be wholly consistent with historical
patterns arguably grounded in the institutions respective principal-
agent dynamics. Marginalists need not be concerned. As one 2000
analysis observed in words just as relevant today: Inability to carry
out enforcement operations will not marginalize the UN, because
traditional peacekeeping and multifunctional (Chapter VI) operations
with consent remain as important as ever.
75
By the same token, NATOs
willingness to build up the peace support capacities of the UN as much
as other regional organizations charged with implementing Security
Council resolutions warrants bold recognition. Not only would a more
reliable and credible partner in the UN result, but charges of Western
selectivity in crisis management serving its interests alone would be
addressed. This too would be consonant with emergent practice and
resonate positively with concerned observers. As Janka Oertel states:
The question remains, whether NATO can and will
provide its unique capabilities of regions of less obvious
interest to the Alliance. Recent developments such as
assisting other regional organizations like the African
Union with training and support measures or providing
training for Iraqi forces offer a promising response to
new challenges.
76

Outside crisis management operations, the Alliances growing
role in preventative diplomacy and cooperative security should be
acknowledged but with the stated goal of mutually reinforcing UN and
NATO efforts in this domain. The language of mutual reinforcement
has the advantage of being offensive neither to those concerned about
UN diminution nor to those concerned about Alliance subservience
in the international security arena. In setting down markers for the
future UN-NATO partnership, a strategic vision could go further still
75
Jakobsen, p. 171
76
Oertel, p. 8.
49
and highlight additional areas where cooperation is desirable. As one
study recently petitioned:
As transnational threats prompt states to pursue
multilateral arrangements to address them, and as the
UN and NATO continue to evolve in response to such
changing drivers of instability and confict, identifying
opportunities for collaboration in these new threat
areas warrants attention. Combating terrorism, non-
proliferation, cyber security, and humanitarian relief
operations would appear to offer the most potential for
coordination.
77

Such calls are not without reason. NATOs activities in many
of these areas already are routinely communicated to the Security
Council and General Assembly through the offces of the UN Secretary
General. Ban Ki-moons June 2010 report on the United Nations
Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy: activities of the United Nations
system in implementing the Strategy is a case in point. In it, specifc
mention is made of NATOs support of the Strategy and recognition
that tackling [terrorism] requires a multifaceted, international and
collaborative approach.
78
Should such acknowledgement mature into
a vision for greater collaborative action, a more capable UN system in
counter-terrorism should result, with the corollary beneft of removing
from circles within it the lingering perception of NATO as an inherent
proliferator.
77
Jake Sherman, Functional Cooperation Identifying Opportunities for Practical Cooperation, Back-
ground Paper for Panel Two delivered at the International Research Symposium entitled The UN and
NATO: Forward from the Joint Declaration, NATO Defense College, Center on International Coopera-
tion, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Turkey to the UN, New York, 21 October 2010, p. 2.
78
United Nations General Assembly, United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy: activities of
the United Nations system in implementing the Strategy Report of the Secretary General, 10 Jun 2010,
A/64/818, pp. 86-87.
50
Engagement Strategy
With the potential elements of a UN-NATO strategic vision
clearer to mind, the question remains: who among Alliance Member
States should lead the effort to validate them with UN counterparts and
to see them confdently articulated in the best possible fashion? Given
the ascendance of the UN Security Council in matters of international
peace and security, the priority of effort arguably lies with those NATO
Member States represented there. While non-permanent members from
the Alliance conceivably could play a constructive role, for reasons
of authority and continuity the brunt of the responsibility falls to the
three NATO P5 members. Considering their apparent predilection
for UN sanction of NATO actions in collective security as discussed
above, France and the United Kingdom, supported by the offce of
the NATO Secretary General, are the logical leaders. They should
build on Chinas recent efforts to increase Council dialogue and debate
on UN relations with regional organizations and engage in a similar
effort dedicated to addressing the future of UN-NATO relations. The
periods in which they hold the Presidency of the Council (France next
assumes the offce in May 2011) represent the preeminent occasions to
do so. Beyond thematic debates during which Presidential statements
might serve to scope out the purpose, principles and aspirations as
regards the UN-NATO strategic partnership, they could encourage the
Council to request the UN Secretary-General to compile reports on the
future of UN-NATO relations similar to the one commissioned in April
2008 regarding the African Union (AU).
79
Principles and approaches
agreed in the Council could in turn be reiterated in NATO Summit
communiqus. Maintaining particular attention to Russian sensitivities
throughout, for the reasons mentioned earlier, goes without saying.

79
United Nations Security Council, Report of the Secreaty-General on the relationship between the United
Nations and regional organizations, in particular the African Union, in the maintenance of international
peace and security, 07 Apr 2008, S/2008/186.
51
Within the General Assembly, parallel efforts to engender a
positive appreciation of NATO as a collective security actor and as
a value added partner of the universal organization also need to be
undertaken by all 28 Alliance Member States. Here efforts should
arguably be directed at the MTCNs who have the most to gain from
sharing the collective security burden and the capacity building that the
Alliance may offer. Allies should be equally proactive in advancing the
establishment of a permanent observer mission for NATO alongside
other international organizations. They should in turn promote the
Alliances inclusion on the agenda of UN Secretary-General reports to
the Assembly on cooperation between the UN and regional and other
organizations, similar to the one tabled as recently as September 2010
where no less than 23 organizations, including the CSTO and SCO,
were represented.
80


As regards the second UN-NATO, coupled with support of
the Member States initiatives above, the particularly enabled offce
of the NATO Secretary General has a key role to play in shaping a
future vision for the two organizations partnership through continued
outreach to its UN counterpart. In this regard, Anders Fogh Rasmussens
autumn 2010 visit to UN Headquarters for talks with Ban Ki-moon and
representatives of heads of other international organizations is a positive
development. So too is the increasingly entrenched practice of UN
Secretaries-General attending NATO Summits. The growing number
of exchanges by the DPKO and DFS with NATO military authorities
is equally encouraging. More should be championed, such as routine
visits of the UN Military Advisor to the NATO Military Committee
to facilitate strategic dialogue about the UN-NATO partnership. Yet,
given the heterogeneity and bastions of autonomous authority within
the UN system as discussed above, clearly, interface with the UN
80
United Nations General Assembly/Security Council, Cooperation between the United Nations and
regional and other organizations Report of the Secretary General, 20 September 2010, A/65/382-
S/2010/490, 20 September 2010.
52
Secretary-General and Secretariat alone is insuffcient to foster an
appreciation of the Alliance as a valuable security partner as well as
high ambitions for the future UN-NATO partnership. The heads and
staffs of the specialized agencies (e.g. World Bank) and Programmes
and Funds (e.g. World Food Programme [WFP]), for instance, equally
should be proactively engaged. Here the concerns about neutrality and
impartiality regularly voiced by the humanitarians resident in several
of them could be more directly addressed in the effort to defne an
overarching vision for the UN-NATO strategic axis.
Concluding Remarks
This paper has offered an explanation of the paradoxical
inclination towards both fraternity and friction in UN-NATO relations
since 1992. To do so, it has turned to history and IR theory as pathways
to enlightened understanding. It at the same time represents a call to
action; a challenge in particular to the leaders of the Member States
of both organizations, but especially those of the Atlantic Alliance,
to use this knowledge to engage in earnest in strategic dialogue in
order to articulate with conviction an overarching vision concerning
the purpose, principles and aspirations surrounding the UN-NATO
strategic partnership. The respective civilian and military staffs in
their service, and above all the suffering and vulnerable whose best
interests their organizations are intended to serve, deserve no less.

53
Chapter Two
Dispelling Misperceptions
for a Renewed Synergy
between the United Nations
and the Atlantic Alliance
Alexis Vahlas
1
Despite its shortcomings, the United Nations (UN) is the most
successful world organization in history providing a diplomatic forum
for discussing and, in many cases, resolving international crises. By
the same token, even if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
might at present be learning how not to win a war, it remains the
most successful defense alliance in history and still the most capable
military tool available to the international community if diplomacy
proves inadequate in confict resolution. Should the two organizations
therefore not seek to cooperate and establish a framework that leverages
their respective strengths in the interests of international peace and
security?
As early as 1998, UN Secretary General Kof Annan arguably
began to articulate an affrmative answer to that question when he
espoused an interagency, holistic approach to security, combining
both military and civilian efforts.
2
In this context, NATO increasingly
1
Dr. Alexis Vahlas is Associate Professor (Matre de Confrences) at the University of Strasbourg and
former Chief Political Advisor (POLAD) to the Commander NATO Joint Force Command (JFC) Head-
quarters, Naples. The views expressed in this paper are the authors and do not necessarily represent those
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
2
See UN A/53/1, Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 1998, 28:
In its work at the feld level, the United Nations has already started to embrace a new holistic concept
of security.
54
was seen as a kind of a blue helmet with a big gun, the one the
UN would turn to for its more robust missions. Since then, NATO
has developed its own concept of a comprehensive approach and
affrmed its readiness and willingness to participate in interagency
cooperation, including with the UN.
3
Yet, despite the conceptual policy rhetoric to the contrary, what
is the reason for the relatively immature state of UN-NATO strategic
relations epitomized by the 2008 UN-NATO Joint Declaration,
circumscribed to address only Secretariat-Secretariat relations? This
paper argues that since there is no apparent fundamental strategic
divergence between the UN and NATO, the reason for the absence
of high-level cooperation is the lukewarmness, if not reluctance,
of several Member States within both organizations, grounded in
lingering inter-institutional misconceptions. It endeavors to put those
misconceptions to rest as a springboard to a strategic cooperation
framework assuredly endorsed by the Member States.
The paper proceeds on the basis of two assumptions. First,
similarities between two organizations are not a prerequisite for
cooperation. Effcient cooperation is possible between very different
entities provided it is in the interest of both sides to operate together and
to dedicate a framework to this effect. Similar organizations operating
in the same feld often can actually be rivals, with no possibility of
complementing each other and setting up a cooperative partnership.
Second, the fundamental issue at stake today in UN-NATO
relations is the development of a deliberate, functioning, offcial,
strategic-level partnership, not the de facto coordination on the ground
which has become manifest to varying degrees since the 1990s. The
two should not be confused. Indeed, while not perfect, a good deal
3
See Brooke A.Smith-Windsor, Hasten Slowly - NATOs Effects Based and Comprehensive Approach
to Operations, Research Paper 38, NATO Defense College, July 2008, p. 8.
55
of operational coordination between the UN and the Atlantic Alliance
has occurred and continues to do so. For example, during the second
half of 2008 when the situation in Kosovo was particularly tense,
NATOs Operation Commander KFOR (Kosovo Force) would go
to Pristina every two weeks. There the only international head of
mission with whom he met almost systematically was the UN Special
Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG).
4
Similarly, when
NATO launched its frst counter-piracy operation, Allied Provider,
the Operation Commander traveled to London for an exchange
of information at the headquarters of the International Maritime
Organization, the UNs specialized agency responsible for improving
maritime safety. It is equally signifcant to acknowledge that NATOs
operational coordination with the UN sometimes works better than
with NATOs offcial strategic partner, the European Union (EU). For
instance, NATO and the UN signed a Memorandum of Understanding
on the evacuation of international personnel in the event of a crisis
in Kosovo. One year later, for political reasons that are well known,
the Alliance was unable to sign a similar agreement with the EU. Of
interest here, however, is that despite the examples of UN-NATO
operational coordination, there is no effcient, offcial partnership to
acknowledge and progress it through unfagging, formal, high-level
dialogue between the two organizations.
In order to dispel the mutual misconceptions between the UN
and the Atlantic Alliance, this paper frst analyzes the twofold suspicion
affecting the perceived image of the UN within certain NATO quarters,
before turning in the next part to the three main misconceptions about
the Alliance resident in the UN. Based on these observations, it offers
some recommendations on how to move toward an upgraded strategic-
level cooperation framework.
4
The SRSG and Head of UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was Joachim Rucker
from 2006 until June 2008, succeeded by Lamberto Zannier in June 2008. To underline how much the
two organizations are intertwined, it is interesting to note that Lawrence Rosin who was Deputy Head of
UNMIK in 2008 is now NATOs Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Operations.
56
Negative Perceptions of the United Nations
There are two primary misconceptions about the UN which
have prevented NATO Member States from actively embracing
a strategic partnership with it: a functional misconception and an
ideological misconception.
Functional Misconception: NATOs operational autonomy
threatened by the UN
A key condition for the success of any peace operation is an
effcient command and control structure. Both an outdated interpretation
of the UN Charter and one early experience of a UN-led operation with
a NATO component have inspired the idea that closer cooperation with
the UN would be detrimental to the Alliances operational autonomy.
Article 53.1 of the UN Charter, included in chapter VIII
(Regional arrangements), states that the Security Council shall,
where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for
enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action
shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies
without the authorization of the Security Council [...]. As early as
the drafting of NATOs founding treaty, these provisions raised fears
about the requirement for Security Council authorization acting as
an impediment to the collective self-defense mechanism ultimately
envisioned in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. The result was
that Allies erred on the side of caution, both avoiding reference to
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter in the NATO Treaty and persistently
refusing to consider the Alliance as a regional arrangement under any
circumstances.
5
The approach, however, is far from convincing.
5
See Nicholas. Henderson, The birth of NATO, Boulder, Westview Press, 1983, p. 130. On the origins of
the controversy, see also Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the UN: A Peculiar Relationship, University of
Missouri Press, 2010, pp. 6-25.
57
A serious exegetic interpretation of both Article 53.1 and the
UN Charter as a whole shows that the scope of this requirement for
prior Security Council authorization is limited to those enforcement
actions referred to in the frst sentence of Article 53.1. It therefore does
not affect the preeminent right to self-defense, described in Article 51
of the UN Charter as inherent (naturel and imanente respectively
in the French and Spanish versions) and potentially collective. The
very raison dtre of this right to self-defense is precisely to preserve
the freedom of a state to use force to protect itself against armed
aggression when the international system fails.
NATOs fear of being subordinated to the United Nations is
also based on a very unfortunate experience with a so-called dual
key mechanism used in the NATO Operation Deny Flight launched to
support the UN-led peace support operation (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia
and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.
6
Through this mechanism, a
decision by both UN and NATO offcials was needed to approve air
strikes.
7
As a result, a number of crucial requests did not receive
suffciently timely UN approval to allow effcient action and to protect
civilian populations. The negative legacy of this experience lingers.
Nowadays, however, it should be obvious that such fear of
ineffective subordination to the UN is no longer justifed. First, the dual
key mechanism amended in August 1995 for Operation Deliberate
Force to address earlier shortcomings was never employed thereafter.
8

Second, in all subsequent operations, NATO retained full operational
autonomy. This has been the case in IFOR (Implementation Force) and
6
Operation Deny Flight (12 April 1993 to 20 December 1995) to monitor the ban of military fights in
the Bosnian airspace, to provide close air support to UN troops and to conduct air strikes against targets
threatening UN safe areas. Legal basis provided by UNSC Resolutions 816, 836, 958 and 981.
7
The UN key was delegated to the UN SRSG and the NATO key to the Operational Commander (NATO
Headquarters Naples).
8
For Deliberate Force (29 August to 14 September 1995), the UN key was delegated to the UNPRO-
FOR Commander and, after a dual key decision adopted on 29 August 1995, 386 air strikes were
conducted.
58
then SFOR (Stabilization Force) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, KFOR
in Kosovo as well as ISAF (International Security Assistance Force)
in Afghanistan. In all, a clear separation between the international
military presence and the international civilian presence, with each
retaining the fnal authority of interpretation in its area of competence,
has become established practice.
9
The new standard of operational
autonomy for military forces engaged in coercive operations in support
of UN Security Council resolutions is also in line with the UNs
lessons learned after the confusion created in Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Somalia by the use of blue helmet peacekeepers in Chapter VII
contingencies.
10
A former member of NATOs Balkans Task Force,
David Lightburn, summarized the situation in 2005 in words just as
pertinent to present times: There should be no more dual keys [] the
detailed tasks and rules of engagement for NATO military forces are
the business of the North Atlantic Council and cannot be the subject of
scrutiny, control or even observation in New York.
11

To conclude, NATOs enaction of its core function as a collective
defense Alliance is not contingent on Security Council authorization;
the only requirement is to inform the UN body
12
. Where its increasing
post-Cold War foray into peace enforcement operations is concerned,
the established standard is operational autonomy even when acting
under a UN mandate.
9
This separation of military and civilian presences culminates with the aforementioned function of fnal
authority of interpretation used in the Dayton Agreement and the proposal of the United Nations Offce
of the Special Envoy for Kosovo (UNOSEK).
10
See the call for clear, credible and achievable mandates in the 2001 Report of the panel on United
Nations Peace operations, called Brahimi report; doc. N.U., A/55/305, 21 August 2001, p. 12.
11
D. Lightburn, Should NATO support UN peacekeeping operations? Answer to Peter Jakobsen,
NATO Review, summer 2005, http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2005/issue2/english/debate.html (ac-
cessed 15 July 2010).
12
See art. 51: [] Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be im-
mediately reported to the Security Council [].
59
Ideological Misconception: NATOs democratic legitimacy
threatened by the UN
The UN also regularly faces criticism for the alleged
undemocratic nature of many of its Member States. Some in NATO
have argued that only associations of democratic states are effcient
and should be established as partners.
13
Three undisputable facts,
however, draw into question the wisdom of this approach.
First, NATOs founding text includes no such democratic
prerequisite governing Alliance relations. A reference to democracy
may be present in Article 2 of the Washington Treaty, but only as
a soft objective for the Member States to strengthen their free
institutions:
The Parties will contribute toward the further development
of peaceful and friendly international relations by
strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a
better understanding of the principles upon which these
institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions
of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate
13
This idea was triggered by Republican candidate Senator John McCain during the 2008 US presidential
campaign, as well as by some ambiguous assertions of Ivo Daalder. See Ivo Daalder & James Goldeier,
Global NATO, Foreign Affairs, September-October 2006, pp. 106 & 113: A key part of this effort is
the proposal by the United States and the United Kingdom to forge a global partnership between NATO
and non-European states that will provide a forum for expanded dialogue with other major democratic
countries. Although this initiative is a good frst step, it does not go far enough. NATOs next move must
be to open its membership to any democratic state in the world that is willing and able to contribute to the
fulflment of NATOs new responsibilities. Only a truly global alliance can address the global challenges
of the day [...] An enlarged NATO would not undermine the United Nations or the European Union,
neither of which has the kind of military capacity that NATO possesses. Because NATO essentially is a
military alliancealbeit one with a democratic political foundationeven an enlarged alliance would
not become another UN; Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay, Democracies of the World, Unite, The Ameri-
can Interest, November-December 2006: In the end, the desirability of a Concert of Democracies will
depend not on the approval of autocrats, but on whether it offers an effective means for addressing the
challenges of an age of global politics. What, in short, would the Concert actually do? First, the Concert
would be a vehicle for helping democracies confront their mutual security challenges. This would involve
close coordination of diplomatic strategy, law enforcement activity, intelligence collection and analysis,
and military deployments. Over time, Concert members could follow NATOs lead [...].
60
confict in their international economic policies and will
encourage economic collaboration between any or all of
them.
To be sure, the Member States have for the most part now
consolidated their democratic regimes and all newcomers since the
Cold Wars end have been admitted only after establishing democratic
government based on universal suffrage. However, the development of
democracy as a condition for accession does not imply that interagency
cooperation must be restricted to democratic organizations. As far as
interagency cooperation is concerned, the primary objective is not
to promote a particular form of political organization but rather to
cooperate in order to prevent confict and to facilitate stabilization in
crisis areas.
Second, it would be a mistake to ignore the close link between
the UN and democracy despite charges to the contrary. While the
international rule of constitutional autonomy precludes a universal
intergovernmental organization of 192 Member States from imposing
a particular form of political regime
14
, it is undeniable that democracy
is the favored model. No other political regime is promoted by the
UN system; a democratically elected government is the only model
systematically chosen whenever the UN is called to (re)build a states
political system.
Third, a strict ideological stance on the political nature of
partners, including the membership characteristics of an international
14
See International Court of Justice, Judgement of 27 June 1986, Military and Paramilitary Activities in
and against Nicaragua, 263: However the regime in Nicaragua be defned, adherence by a State to any
particular doctrine does not constitute a violation of customary international law; to hold otherwise would
make nonsense of the fundamental principle of State sovereignty on which the whole of international law
rests, and the freedom of choice of the political, social, economic and cultural system of a State. See also
International Court of Justice, Order of 15 December 1979, United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff
in Tehran, 25: [I]t is no doubt true that the Islamic revolution of Iran is a matter essentially and directly
within the national sovereignty of Iran.
61
organization like the UN, would be contrary to NATOs approach to
already existing partnerships with, for example, the Mediterranean
Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, and its evolving
partnership with the African Union.
15
More generally, NATOs
partnerships are meant to be non-exclusive. This is actually an issue in
the fruitful dialogue with Russia, a country which is sometimes critical
of the parallel cooperation NATO puts in place with states like Serbia
or those of the Caucasus. Yet, a key difference between NATO and
Russia is that the former does not complain when its partners develop
military cooperation with the latter. NATO is an open organization
which is willing to cooperate with any kind of state or agency
contributing to international security. As the 2010 Alliance Strategic
Concept affrms:
The promotion of Euro-Atlantic security is best assured
through a wide network of partner relationships with
countries and organizations around the globe [] These
relationships will be based on reciprocity, mutual beneft
and mutual respect.
16

Negative Perceptions of NATO
The negative perceptions of NATO within the UN equally
are unfounded and therefore unnecessarily pollute the relationship
between the two organizations. The three main misconceptions may
be categorized as legal, political, and cultural in nature.
15
See, for example, the new Strategic Concept: We attach great importance to peace and stability in the
Gulf region, and we intend to strengthen our cooperation in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. We will
aim to: [] develop a deeper security partnership with our Gulf partners and remain ready to welcome
new partners in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (para. 35).
16
2010 Strategic Concept (para. 28-29).
62
Legal Misconception: NATO operates in violation of international
law
NATO is often perceived as operating freely, without due
consideration for international rules. An impartial assessment of
NATOs record with respect to legality is therefore necessary.
NATO has a choice of three possible legal bases for its
operations. The frst possibility is to act in collective self-defense, as
contemplated in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty and Article 51 of
the UN Charter. This is the case today for the maritime counterterrorist
Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean Sea, launched in
October 2001. The second option is to operate with a mandate from the
UN Security Council, which has been done for all NATO operations
in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as for Eagle Eye and KFOR in
Kosovo, ISAF in Afghanistan and all three recent maritime counter-
piracy operations Allied Provider, Allied Protector and Ocean Shield.
The last possibility is to be invited by a third state to intervene, which
was the case for small operations such as Essential Harvest, Amber Fox
and Allied Harmony in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
the Pakistan earthquake relief operation in 2005-2006, and the NATO
Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I).
The one exception to the three possibilities outlined above was
NATOs operation Allied Force in Kosovo, conducted from March
to June 1999, when approximately 700,000 Kosovo Albanians were
displaced and the Security Council was alarmed at the impeding
humanitarian catastrophe.
17
The legal basis of Allied Force is still
an open question. At that time, many scholars and states, including
some within NATO, argued that military intervention [] is lawful
on grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity. Whether or not
the NATO operation set a precedent for a fourth basis for intervention
17
UNSC Resolution 1199, 23 September 1998.
63
is still to be determined
18
, yet it can be considered a legitimate answer
to a legal quandary at the time: fve years after the Rwanda massacres
the Alliance prevented a humanitarian catastrophe with broad support
from the international community, justifed by moral and political
legitimacy. As the UN Secretary-General put it in his balanced
statement of 24 March 1999: It is indeed tragic that diplomacy has
failed, but there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in
the pursuit of peace.
19
Furthermore, this statement came after an even
more forthright answer given by the Secretary-General during a press
conference in Geneva on 27 January 1999:
On Kosovo, force may be used as you have indicated. I do
not know whether it will come to that or not, but I think
this is a question that has exercised quite a few of us. If
the Council were to be fully faced with the issue, I am not
sure whether there would be vetoes on the table or not.
But we have to understand in recent history that wherever
there have been compelling humanitarian situations,
where the international community collectively has not
acted, some neighbours have acted. Here for example
I have in mind Vietnam in Cambodia. And that did not
destroy, I hope, the international system, and I think
given the nature of the regime and what was happening
there, the international community came to accept it.
20

18
Many Allies argue today that the Kosovo case is a unicum and does not set a precedent.
19
UN SG/SM/6938, 24 March 1999.
20
In extenso: QUESTION: Now we see preparation of the NATO Organization for unilateral action in
Kosovo. Does it mean, in your opinion, that we are assisting the beginning of the end of the system of
international governments established after the Second World War and the end of the role of the Security
Council as the global council which is the fnal instance in the question of the global security? SECRE-
TARY-GENERAL: On Kosovo, force may be used as you have indicated. I do not know whether it will
come to that or not, but I think this is a question that has exercised quite a few of us. If the Council were to
be fully faced with the issue, I am not sure whether there would be vetoes on the table or not. But we have
to understand in recent history that wherever there have been compelling humanitarian situations, where
the international community collectively has not acted, some neighbours have acted. Here for example
I have in mind Viet Nam in Cambodia. And that did not destroy, I hope, the international system, and I
think given the nature of the regime and what was happening there, the international community came to
64
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) and the Organization of American States (OAS) also took
a supportive stance, as did the Muslim world which was united to
promote the right of Kosovo Albanians to self-determination. In the
2000 Doha Declaration, the Member States of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC) called on the United Nations to defend
the right of Kosovars to self-determination and [] commended the
signifcant improvement of security in the area.
21
Another myth is NATOs immunity from international justice.
It is rather surprising to read or hear allegations that international
courts considered that NATO had committed war crimes in Kosovo but
were prevented from hearing the cases because of an alleged absolute
immunity. In truth, exactly the opposite occurred. The International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established a
Committee [] to review the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo,
based on the fact that the International Tribunal has jurisdiction
over all potential war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
22
However,
the report to the Prosecutor concluded that the committee has not
assessed any particular incidents as justifying the commencement of
an investigation and emphasized that [a]lthough some mistakes were
made by NATO, the Prosecutor is satisfed that there was no deliberate
targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during
the campaign.
23
Clearly, the ICTY considered that it had jurisdiction
over NATO military operations but that none of them constituted war
crimes. There has been no other investigation, case or charge against
NATO personnel brought before the ICTY since 1999, despite nearly
20 years of military operations in the Tribunals area of competence.
accept it; UN SG/SM/6875, 27 January 1999.
21
OIC Declaration of Doha, November 2000, 47: The Conference called on the United Nations to de-
fend the right of Kosovars to self-determination and to protect their cultural heritage and Islamic identity
It commended the efforts of both UNMIK and KFOR in pursuance of the objectives of Security Coun-
cil resolution number 1244, as it commended the signifcant improvement of security in the area.
22
Doc. ICTY, PR/P.I.S./510-e, 13 June 2000.
23
Ibid.
65
What does remain in the relationship between NATO and the
ICTY, however, is the Alliances cooperation concerning the arrest and
transfer of fugitives to the Tribunal. If there are today only two persons
left on the ICTY poster of fugitives, from the 51-name list of the frst
edition published by NATO in 1996, it is largely because the Alliance
has effciently cooperated with ICTY through search operations and
information sharing and arrested more than 30 persons. Indeed,
whether IFOR and SFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, KFOR in
Kosovo, or the NATO HQ Skopje in the Former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia, all received the offcial key task to support ICTY
through search operations and information sharing. Furthermore, the
fact that NATO was reluctant to conduct risky arrest operations during
the frst years of operation on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(IFOR and the beginning of SFOR) does not contradict this conclusion.
Legally, there was no hierarchy between the different key tasks of the
NATO mission and it was legitimate to believe at that time that the
maintenance of a safe and secure environment was the main priority
which could have been put in danger by arrest operations against some
of the fugitives.
Political Misconception: NATO aims to supersede the UN
It is hard to believe how strong is the idea that NATO
somehow is plotting to replace the UN. In countries from Sweden
to Azerbaijan and from Egypt to Iraq, NATO envoys frequently are
asked the question: Why should we help an organization aimed at
superseding the UN? While completely unfounded, with no offcial
NATO policy agenda to even suggest an inclination in this direction,
it has been instilled through US neo-conservative political musings
and the proposal from the former US presidential candidate John
McCain to establish a League of Democracies as a spearhead
for the international order. The fear is also regularly manipulated
by anti-NATO propaganda. Recall the infamous and ridiculous
66
article published by the Pravda in March 2009, before NATOs 60th
anniversary summit in Strasbourg, entitled: Obama to reform NATO
to replace UN as defective organization.
24

Notwithstanding the fact that the idea of an omnipresent NATO
has gained currency among some anti-UN groups, this ambition is
neither offcial policy, politically realistic nor legally feasible today.
Comparing the UN and NATO is like comparing apples and oranges.
NATO and the UN serve different functions in maintaining security:
the former is the best provider of security for robust missions, whereas
the latters main role is its unique ability to provide legitimacy for
crisis interventions. Since most states today legally and politically
accepted the UN system of collective security when they ratifed the
UNs constitutive Charter, the world organization alone is able to
offer what General Wesley Clark called the unchallengeable mantle
of legitimacy.
25
NATO has no authority to impose anything on third
states and the disappearance of the UN would leave the international
community lawless. Whatever criticism it receives, the UN system
of collective security is the best one ever established and there is no
credible alternative. So it is simply not politically realistic to think
about replacing the UN with NATO.
Most importantly from a legal point of view, there is currently
no possibility for NATO to supersede the UN. Under Article 103 of
the UN Charter, which is binding for all NATO Allies as UN Member
States, the obligations under the UN Charter prevail over obligations
under other international agreements.
26
Furthermore, the Washington
Treaty itself clearly subordinates the Alliance to the UN Charter: this
24
D. Sudakov, Obama to reform NATO to replace UN as defective organization, Pravda, 13 March
2009, http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/13-03-2009/107232-nato_un-0 (accessed 15 July 2010).
25
Wesley K. Clark, Waging modern war, New York, Public Affairs, 2002, p.125.
26
UN Charter, art. 103 in extenso: In the event of a confict between the obligations of the Members of
the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agree-
ment, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.
67
Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any
way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which
are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of
the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and
security (Article 7). In the same vein, the preamble and Article 1 of the
Washington Treaty confrm the Alliances adherence to UN primacy:
[T]he Parties to this Treaty reaffrm their faith in the
purpose and principles of the Charter of the United
Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples
and all governments [T]he Parties undertake, as set
forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any
international dispute in which they may be involved by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace
and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain
in their international relations from the threat or use of
force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the
United Nations.
Therefore, NATO is and can only be understood as a pro-UN
organization, offcially dedicated to multilateralism and accepting
the primary responsibility of the UN Security Council in the area of
international security.
Cultural Misconception: NATO acts against Muslim populations
Herein lies the most surprising misconception about NATO, one
that unfortunately is not uncommon. NATOs image in many Muslim
countries represented in the UN is poor and the Alliance is sometimes
depicted as pursuing an ambition to fght the Muslim world. This is far
from the truth. No other regional organization has undertaken more
operations to protect Muslim populations. Recall the following facts:
68
NATO is not a religion-based organization, and includes 1.
Member States with substantial Muslim populations - Albania
and Turkey.
NATO has an offcial partnership with many Muslim states 2.
through the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul
Cooperation Initiative.
NATO stopped the ethnic cleansing of the mostly-Muslim 3.
population of Kosovo Albanians in 1999.
In the Balkans, many individuals suspected of war crimes against 4.
Muslim populations have been sent to the ICTY in The Hague
by NATO. For instance, Radislav Krstic, sentenced to 35 years
imprisonment, has been offcially convicted for genocide
against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica. He was
detained and transferred to the ICTY on 2 December 1998 by
NATOs SFOR force. The same applies to Vidoye Blagoyevic,
Momir Nikolic and others. Moreover, NATOs frst-ever
military engagement occurred on 28 February 1994 in order to
protect Bosnian Muslim populations, when NATO planes shot
down four warplanes violating the no-fy zone over Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
NATO treated more than 3000 patients with mobile medical 5.
teams and airlifted close to 3500 tons of urgently needed
supplies to Pakistan, where it also deployed engineers, medical
units and specialist equipment to assist in relief operations after
the devastating 8 October 2005 earthquake.
NATO has regularly adapted its way of fghting in Afghanistan 6.
in order to minimize civilian casualties. Despite a very
unconventional and complex war situation, with enemies
69
who do not respect the Law of Armed Confict, ISAF is doing
its best to avoid collateral damage. A succession of policy
guidelines have been adopted to that effect: two tactical
directives in October 2008 and July 2009, and a new set of
nine Civilian Casualty Guidelines on 6 August 2010. While
NATOs approach is far from perfect, it simply is not serious to
contend that the Alliance does not do its best to avoid civilian
casualties.
Why is this record completely ignored by so many commentators
quick to speak negatively of NATOs intentions towards the Muslim
world? Moreover, while it is too early to draw conclusions regarding
Unifed Protector in Libya, it is undoubtedly an operation launched
with a UN mandate in order to protect civilian populations.
Practical Recommendations
In order to dispel prevailing misconceptions between the two
organizations and establish an effcient synergy, the following fve
concrete measures should be undertaken:
Public diplomacy effort to counter UN and NATO bashing
The frst obligation to a partner is to respect its identity and
achievements. In order to counter the above-mentioned negative
misperceptions, Member States of both organizations should refrain
from making and denounce any defamatory attacks against the
UN and NATO.
27
Most important, however, will be a dedicated public
27
The following is a series of books providing an entertaining, albeit unhelpful, reading on the United Na-
tions: John Bolton, Surrender is not an option: defending America at the United Nations and abroad, New
York Threshold, 2007, p. 486 ; Thomas P. Kilgannon, Diplomatic divorce: why America should end its
love affair with the United Nations, Macon, Stroud & Hall, 2006, p. 219.; Eric Shawn, The UN exposed:
how the United Nations sabotages Americas security and fails the world, London, Penguin Books, 2007,
p. 316; Nathan Tabor, The Beast on the East river: the U.N. threat to Americas sovereignty and security,
Nashville, Nelson Current, 2006, p. 261.
70
diplomacy effort on the part of each organization.
NATOs Strategic Concept must be considered as a missed
opportunity in this regard. While the EU is described as a unique and
essential partner, the only objective stated in the paragraph dedicated
to the cooperation with the UN is to deepen political dialogue and
practical cooperation as set out in the UN-NATO Declaration
signed in 2008, including through: enhanced liaison between the
two Headquarters; more regular political consultation; and enhanced
practical cooperation in managing crises where both organisations are
engaged.
28
Thus, the new core document charting NATOs future
direction makes a very limited contribution to delineating a more
structured strategic partnership with the UN.
Both the UN and the Atlantic Alliance have to do better to
voice and progress their practical cooperation, including the ongoing
feld cooperation in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and off
the coast of Somalia. NATO also makes a valuable contribution to
the work of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee. The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) participated in the planning
of NATO Crisis Management Exercise (CMX) 09, and members of
UN personnel have been invited to follow courses in NATO training
and education establishments. There is no reason to consider this
information confdential. It is time for the two partners to come to
terms with their relationship and publicly communicate and champion
it.
Multilateralism reaffrmed in new NATO political and strategic
documents
There is an urgent need to clearly affrm the principle of
multilateralism enshrined in Article 7 of the Washington Treaty. The
28
2010 Strategic Concept (paras. 31-32).
71
organizations Strategic Concept would have been the best vector in
this respect, as duly underscored by, for example, the recommendation
in the EUs European Security Strategy of an international order
based on effective multilateralism.
29
In NATOs 2010 Strategic
Concept, the value of multilateralism is, however, not explicitly
mentioned and there is no demonstrable progress compared to the 1999
iteration. In 1999, the Allies simply declared that the United Nations
Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance
of international peace and security and, as such, plays a crucial role
in contributing to security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. In
addition, NATO was presented as an Alliance of nations committed
to the Washington Treaty and the United Nations Charter.
30
In 2010,
Allies agreed that the Alliance is frmly committed to the purposes and
principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and to the Washington
Treaty, which affrms the primary responsibility of the Security Council
for the maintenance of international peace and security.
31
Given the extent to which NATO is nowadays often considered
an advocate of unilateralism and challenger to the UN, the Alliance in
particular will have to redouble efforts to produce documents more
explicitly affrming its dedication to multilateralism, the UN Charter
and the primacy of the UN in international affairs.
29
European Security Strategy: A secure Europe in a better world, 12 December 2003, p. 9: an in-
ternational order based on effective multilateralism We are committed to upholding and developing
International Law. The fundamental framework for international relations is the United Nations Charter.
The United Nations Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international
peace and security. Strengthening the United Nations, equipping it to fulfl its responsibilities and to act
effectively, is a European priority. See also the ambition to develop partnerships associated to the need
for multilateral solutions in a UN framework in Art. 21.1 of the Treaty on European Union as amended by
the Treaty of Lisbon of 13 December 2007: The Union shall seek to develop relations and build partner-
ships with third countries, and international, regional or global organisations which share the principles
referred to in the frst subparagraph. It shall promote multilateral solutions to common problems, in par-
ticular in the framework of the United Nations.
30
1999 Strategic Concept (paras. 10 and 15).
31
2010 Strategic Concept (para. 2).
72
NATO categorized as a Chapter VIII regional arrangement
Based on a misplaced interpretation of Article 53 of the
UN Charter, NATO has been reluctant to consider itself a regional
arrangement under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. In order to facilitate
the establishment of an effcient partnership, the Alliance should
accept and publicly acknowledge its status as a Chapter VIII regional
organization for its crisis management peace enforcement operations.
As outlined earlier, this would not imply the need for UN Security
Council authorization in the case of collective self-defense.
It is interesting to note that this is already the perception of
the Alliance at the UN. The UN Secretary-General in fact referred to
NATO in a Chapter VIII context as early as 1999, in his statement
concerning Operation Allied Force:
In helping maintain international peace and security,
Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter assigns an
important role to regional organizations. But as Secretary-
General, I have many times pointed out, not just in relation
to Kosovo, that under the Charter the Security Council
has primary responsibility for maintaining international
peace and securityand this is explicitly acknowledged
in the North Atlantic Treaty.
32
NATO as an observer at the UN General Assembly
Trust comes from dialogue, and NATO would gain signifcantly
from being present and accessible at the UN General Assembly. The
UN is the institutional centre of the international community and the
General Assembly is its most representative forum.
32
UN SG/SM/6938, 24 March 1999.
73
Partner organizations may be granted observer status by a
resolution of the Assembly. As an observer, the Alliance would have
the right to follow the workings of the Assembly and its various
subsidiary bodies. In order to contribute to security-related debates,
the Alliance could be invited to comment. Furthermore, observer status
would provide an additional opportunity to deepen relations with other
organizations such as the EU, African Union (AU), Black Sea Economic
Cooperation Organization (BSEC), the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) and the Council of Europe, all of which enjoy an observer
status. With NATO members contributing more than 61% of the UN
budget,
33
to be absent from the General Assembly under their NATO
hat is totally anachronistic.
Establishment of a structured strategic partnership
A partnership between two major international organizations
cannot only rely on empirical cooperation. The level of feld cooperation
to date has already been mentioned. Interactions between the respective
Secretariats, as well as staff talks between NATO bodies, could also be
added to the list. But this is still largely ad hockery and does not allow
a real synergy between the two entities. A more deliberate, structured
strategic partnership endorsed and advocated by the Member States of
both organizations is required.
The UN-NATO Joint Declaration signed in New York on 23
September 2008 can be considered a frst step, but this framework, whose
scope is limited to Secretariat cooperation, is far from satisfactory. It
is useful to recall that its creation took more than three years. Some
UN Member States such as Russia were reluctant and even questioned
whether the competence of the UN Secretary-General should include
33
Assessment of Member States contributions to the United Nations regular budget for the year 2009, 24
December 2008, ST/ADM/SER.B/755.
74
such agreements with other organizations. Hence the establishment of
a watered-down compromise text and the request from Ban Ki-moon
to keep it low key. The commitments are vague, even if the cooperation
framework is optimistically described as fexible and evolving over
time. But not much has been added over the past two years. Only a
skeletal NATO staff of two has been established in New York, with
insuffcient offce space. The picture on the UN side in Brussels vis-
-vis NATO is little different.
Many convincing ideas have already been put forward to fll
the strategic void and upgrade the current institutional relationship.
34

It is not the purpose of this paper to repeat them here, but simply
to emphasize that they should be seriously considered. Overall, an
offcial partnership should be put in place by the Member States and
two cooperation templates developedone for permanent liaison
structures, mutual invitations and strategic dialogue, the other for
operational coordination.
Nevertheless, this ambition would require signifcant consensus
across both organizations, including Member States such as Great
Powers China and Russia represented in the UN Security Council. In
this context, any offcial UN-NATO partnership framework must be
seen as politically linked to the NATO-China relationship, currently
developing with coordination meetings related to counter-piracy
operations, as well as the NATO-Russia partnership, coordinated
through the existing NATO-Russia Council (NRC). With respect to
the latter, efforts must be redoubled to give real meaning to the 20
November 2010 NRC Joint Statement that we have embarked on a
new stage of cooperation towards a true strategic partnership. By
extension, the UN-NATO partnership should similarly progress.
34
See David Yost, NATO and International Organizations, Forum Paper 3, NATO Defense College,
Rome, 2007, esp. pp. 57-71.
75
* * *
It is not a surprise to see two old ladies, now aged over 60, being
suspicious of each other. It will take time to build trust and confdence
between NATO and the UN in the contemporary security environment,
which is substantially different from the time both organizations were
founded and largely went their own way. The two remain unique
actors on the world stage but their tasks since the 1990s have become
very much interdependent, their objectives similar, and the providers
of the resources to achieve them very often the same. Delaying the
development of a comprehensive, structured strategic partnership
between the UN and NATO, publicly acknowledged and championed
by their Member States, is a luxury the international community can ill
afford. Dispelling misperceptions is a logical starting point.

76
Chapter Three
NATO and the UN in Afghanistan:
Partners or Competitors?
Michael F. Harsch
1
Introduction
In 2006, the Commander of ISAF forces in Afghanistan,
British General David Richards, bleakly remarked that disunity among
international organizations had created a situation close to anarchy
in the country and warned that this was a recipe for failure.
2
Both
NATO and the United Nations (UN) have pledged in recent years
to coordinate and cooperate with other actors in crisis management.
NATO acknowledged its dependence on civilian agencies by offcially
embracing, at its 2006 Riga Summit, a comprehensive approach which
aims at combining and coordinating its measures more effectively with
other actors.
3
The UN, in turn, acknowledges in its New Horizon
peacekeeping concept that its resources must be linked with those of
others and calls for creative partnerships in the feld.
4
1
Michael F. Harsch is a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik/German Institute for
International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Freie
Universitt Berlin. The views expressed in this paper are the authors and do not necessarily represent
those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
2
David Richards, NATO in Afghanistan: Transformation on the front line, RUSI Journal 151, no. 4,
2006, 10-4, p. 12.
3
NATO Heads of State and Government, Riga Summit Declaration, November 29, 2006, www.nato.int/
docu/pr/2006/p06-150e.htm (accessed September 14, 2009), para. 10. NATO Member States strongly
reaffrmed their commitment to a comprehensive approach at the Summits in Bucharest 2008 and Stras-
bourg / Kehl in 2009.
4
United Nations, A new partnership agenda. Charting a new horizon for UN peacekeeping, New York,
July, 2009, www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/newhorizon.pdf (accessed October 07, 2010), p. 34.
77
While the organizations comprehensive approaches to crisis
management are sound in theory, both have struggled to implement
them in practice. The relationship between NATO and the UN in
Afghanistan, by far the most important joint operation, has been
characterized by a lack of meaningful effort to coordinate actions on
the ground. Despite a short phase of intensifed efforts at cooperation
in 2008/09, relations between the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) and other UN agencies have remained dysfunctional.
This paper investigates why NATO and the UN have failed so
far to achieve stronger unity of effort in Afghanistan. It argues that, in
addition to a general reluctance to give up autonomy, the imbalance of
the organizations resources has prevented any meaningful partnership.
UNAMA has been dramatically understaffed and under-resourced.
It is largely unable to reach out into the provinces without ISAFs
support and at the same time wary of being too closely affliated with
the military. This has put the UN in a structurally weak position and
has minimized incentives for ISAF to engage in cooperation. ISAF has
defned its mandate of providing security increasingly broadly, taking
on many traditionally civilian-led tasks, such as reintegration, anti-
corruption and the promotion of good governance. This has created
an unbalanced division of labor and has sparked concerns within
UNAMA about subordination.
The paper concludes that NATO and the UN will have to fully
accept their mutual dependence in Afghanistan, building a synergetic
partnership instead of opting for substitution and evasion strategies.
This includes the requirement that the UN provide its mission in
Afghanistan with the necessary capacities to become a credible partner
for the Alliance. NATO must fully respect and enable the UNs political
leadership in Afghanistan to ease UN fears of domination and to give
the international community a more unifed voice.
78
An assessment of cooperation in Afghanistan
When NATO and the UN began to work together in Afghanistan
in 2003, they could already look back on years of wide-ranging joint
efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo.
5
Afghanistan, however, has posed new
and unique operational challenges. The country is sixty times larger
than Kosovo, located thousands of kilometers away from NATOs
original treaty area, characterized by a huge diversity of ethnic
and tribal groups, and severely underdeveloped and war-torn after
decades of armed confict. In contrast to Kosovo, the two missions
had to coordinate their actions from the beginning with a sovereign,
albeit weak, national government, and have faced the pressures and
constraints of operating in an escalating armed confict. The following
section outlines the division of labor and coordination mechanisms
between ISAF and UNAMA. It then analyses how cooperation has
evolved in practice.
Division of labor: sound on paper, obsolete in practice?
When the international presence in Afghanistan was set up in
late 2001, the division of labor between UNAMA and ISAF seemed
clear-cut. UNAMA received a narrow political mandate. It was tasked
to concentrate on the political process set out in Bonn, including
provisions related to human rights, the rule of law and gender issues.
Furthermore, it received the tasks of promoting national reconciliation
through the provision of good offces and of coordinating the UNs
humanitarian efforts.
6
ISAF was mainly responsible for providing
5
Though ISAF was established in December 2001, NATOs assumption of the ISAF command in August
2003 marked the formal beginning of cooperation between NATO and the UN in Afghanistan. On the
experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo see Ryan C. Hendrickson, Diplomacy and war at NATO. The secretary
general and military action after the Cold War, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 2006; David S.
Yost, NATO and International Organizations, Forum Paper 3, NATO Defense College, Rome, September,
2007; Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the UN. A peculiar relationship, Columbia, University of Missouri
Press, 2010.
6
UN Secretary-General, The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and
79
a secure environment in which the political process and economic
development could take place.
7
Both mandates were in line with a supposedly light footprint
approach of minimal intrusion upon Afghanistans sovereignty. The
international donor community also did not task the UN, or any other
actor, with coordinating international assistance to Afghanistan.
Instead, a lead nation approach was adopted at a G8 donor meeting
in Geneva in spring 2002. Important donors received the responsibility
for orchestrating efforts to reform, or more adequately to (re)build,
different pillars of Afghanistans security sector.
8
However, no
lead nation assumed responsibility for coordinating international
reconstruction and development aid, refecting a disinclination on
the part of the American, UN and G8 leadership to step into this
breach.
9
International aid contributions in the frst years of the operations
were considerably smaller than in other post-confict regions, such as
the Balkans even though Afghanistans rudimentary infrastructure had
been much more severely devastated.
10
The initial force-to-population
ratio was also extremely low. The US and its allies deployed just about
one soldier per thousand local inhabitants in 2004, while 20 soldiers
per thousand inhabitants had been deployed to Kosovo in 2000.11
security, UN Doc. A/56/875S/2002/278, March 18, 2002, para. 97.
7
UN Security Council, Resolution 1386, UN Doc. S/RES/1386, December 20, 2001. The Security Coun-
cil has regularly renewed ISAFs mandate. As of October 2010, eleven Security Council resolutions had
been passed (Res. 1386, 1413, 1444, 1510, 1563, 1623, 1707, 1776, 1833, 1890 and 1943).
8
Mark Sedra, Security sector reform in Afghanistan. The slide towards expediency, International
Peacekeeping 13, no. 1, 2006, pp. 94110.
9
James L. Jones and Thomas R. Pickering, Afghanistan Study Group report. Revitalizing our efforts,
rethinking our strategies, Center for the Study of the Presidency, New York, January 30, 2008, www.the-
presidency.org/storage/documents/FellowsPaperGradingGuidelines/Afghanistan_Study_Group_Report.
pdf (accessed October 09, 2010), p. 20.
10
E.g. Bosnia received almost twelve times higher annual per capita assistance than Afghanistan in the
frst two years of the international presence, see James Dobbins et al., The UNs role in nation-building.
From the Congo to Iraq, Santa Monica, RAND, 2005, p. xxviii.
80
Many analysts criticized the light footprint approach as an excuse
for minimal fnancial and military engagement in the country and
derided it as nation-building on the cheap and tiptoeing through
Afghanistan.
12
However, there existed initially widespread resistance against
a broader engagement in Afghanistan. The US opposed any efforts at
nation-building. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush had
stated that American troops ought to be used to fght and win war,
and key members of his administration insisted that the execution of
non-military tasks undermined the militarys morale and readiness.
13

US forces in Afghanistan concentrated on operations against al-Qaeda
and Taliban leaders. They cooperated with Afghan warlords and local
strongmen who were supposed to guarantee stability in their area of
infuence until newly recruited and trained Afghan national security
forces would be able to take over.
14
The European powers were also reluctant to become too deeply
involved in Afghanistan.
15
Most were in the frst place motivated by
desire to show solidarity and loyalty to the US (and later NATO), rather
than by the aim to rebuild the country in order to prevent a return of
al-Qaeda. This translated into half-hearted commitment, with mere
11
Ibid., p. xxii.
12
Simon Chesterman, Walking softly in Afghanistan. The future of UN state-building, Survival 44,
no. 3, 2002, 3746; Milian Vaishnav, Afghanistan: The chimera of the light footprint, in Winning the
peace. An American strategy for post-confict reconstruction, ed. Robert C. Orr, Washington, DC, CSIS
Press, 2004, pp. 24462.
13
Commission on Presidential Debates, The second Gore-Bush Presidential Debate, Transcript, October
11, 2000, www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-11-2000-debate-transcript (accessed September 02,
2010); Michael R. Gordon, The 2000 campaign: The military; Bush would stop U.S. peacekeeping in
Balkan fghts, The New York Times, October 21, 2000.
14
James Dobbins, Ending Afghanistans civil war. Testimony presented before the House Armed Services
Committee, January 30, 2007, http://armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/FC%20hearing_013007/Dobbins%20
Testimony.pdf (accessed September 02, 2010), p. 3.
15
Amin Saikal, Afghanistans transition. ISAFs stabilisation role?, Third World Quarterly 27, no. 3,
2006, 52534, p. 528.
81
presence more important than the impact of engagement.
16

Many UN members, fnally, supported the light footprint
approach because Afghanistan, however dysfunctional, remained a
sovereign state. Developing countries were especially keen to prevent
an erosion of the concept of national sovereignty against voices
promoting more frequent international interventions in cases of state
failure.
17
As a result, the roles of ISAF and UNAMA remained very
limited in the frst years of the mission.
The organizations mandates initially simply called upon ISAF
to work in close consultation with the UN Special Representative
of the Secretary General (SRSG).
18
However, ISAF and UNAMA
are independent missions and have separate chains of command,
necessitating a form of non-hierarchical coordination. Orchestrating
policies has been further complicated by the fact that the UN SRSG
lacks authority over the various UN agencies operating in Afghanistan,
and that each ISAF nation tends to conduct operations according to
its national preferences and priorities. In contrast to the mission in
Kosovo, there have been no joint tasks, such as the provision of public
safety. While the mandates created a clear division of responsibilities
between ISAF and UNAMA in theory, they have also contributed to a
general perception within the organizations that it is not necessary to
engage in cooperation with each other.
One example is the half-hearted attempt to defne ISAFs
responsibilities for protecting UN personnel in Afghanistan. ISAFs
mandate only stipulated that the force had to guarantee that the UN
16
International Crisis Group, Afghanistan: The need for international resolve, Asia Report, 145, February
06, 2008, p. 12.
17
Simon Chesterman, You, the people. The United Nations, transitional administration, and state-build-
ing, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 89.
18
UN Security Council, Resolution 1386, UN Doc. S/RES/1386, December 20, 2001, para. 4; UN Secu-
rity Council, Resolution 1401, UN Doc. S/RES/1401, March 28, 2002, para. 6
82
could operate in a secure environment, but it did not specify what
this obligation meant in operational terms. It was not until 2008 that
the SRSG and the Commander ISAF (COMISAF) concluded a Letter
of Agreement which formalized and clarifed procedures for ISAF in
extremis military, medical and transportation assistance for UNAMA
and all UN agencies.
19

However, even these provisions turned out to be insuffcient
when Taliban fghters attacked a guest house in Kabul in October
2009, killing fve UN staff members and wounding fve.
20
While
NATO maintained that it was the responsibility of the Afghan security
forces to respond to incidents in Kabul until they were overwhelmed
by the situation, and that the Afghan authorities had not asked ISAF for
support,
21
the UN questioned why it took one hour before international
forces arrived on the scene, despite desperate calls for help.
22
A UN
inquiry into the attack diplomatically concluded that there had been
a number of shortcomings [] with respect to coordination between
the United Nations and both its international partners and the host
Government authorities.
23
The guest house incident and the April
2011 attack against UNAMAs compound in Mazar-i-Sharif illustrate
the Afghan Security Forces inability to provide adequate protection
for UNAMA and the urgent need to develop clear mechanisms for
ISAF support in emergency situations.
19
COMISAF and UN SRSG for Afghanistan, Letter of agreement. In extremis military, medical and
transportation assistance, and threat advisories, Kabul, August, 2008.
20
UN Secretary-General, The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and
security, UN Doc. A/64/613S/2009/674, December 28, 2009, para. 24.
21
Edith M. Lederer, UN critical of Afghan, NATO response to attack, Boston Globe, October 31,
2009.
22
Ban Ki-moon, Remarks to the General Assembly on staff security, New York, October 30, 2009, www.
un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/search_full.asp?statID=638 (accessed September 07, 2010).
23
UN Department of Public Information, Secretary-General orders review of fndings by inquiry into Ka-
bul attack, as report highlights shortcomings in joint security measures, UN Doc. SG/SM/12857, April
26, 2010, www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sgsm12857.doc.htm (accessed September 07, 2010).
83
In most areas, the envisioned division of labor between ISAF
and UNAMA has never been translated into practice. ISAF took over
non-military activities which were part of UNAMAs mandate, such as
governance promotion and coordination of reconstruction projects. As
the former British diplomat, Michael Aaronson, observed:
Turning to the relationship between ISAF and UNAMA, what
struck me is how much ISAF has moved in to fll the space the UN
would normally occupy. Although it is true that the Security Council
has given the security role to NATO/ISAF, security in this context
can be so broadly defned that ISAF takes virtually everything upon
itself.
24
NATOs ambitions beyond the military realm are also
evident in the creation of a Senior Civilian Representative (SCR)
for Afghanistan.
25
The SCR carries forward the Alliances political-
military objectives in the country and represents the NATO Secretary-
General and the North Atlantic Council in Afghanistan. NATOs frst
SCRs played a rather low-key role and were marginalized by the
COMISAF.
26
Yet, the simple fact that NATO appointed a high-level
political representative for Afghanistan, vested with a broad and only
vaguely defned mandate, has raised questions about the division of
labor with the UN SRSG.
Some analysts have argued that NATO had to take the lead in
many areas by default, because the UN was not present or capable of
managing ground realities. They have criticized what they call a near
24
Michael Aaronson, An outsiders view on the civil-military nexus in Afghanistan, in Comparative
perspectives on civil-military relations in confict zones, eds. Michael Williams and Kate Clouston, Lon-
don, RUSI, 2008, 109, p. 13.
25
The position has been held by Hikmet etin of Turkey (2003-06), Daan W. Everts of the Netherlands
(2006-08), Fernando Gentilini of Italy (2008-10), and Mark Sedwill of the United Kingdom (since 2010).
26
Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Right strategy, wrong place: Why NATOs Comprehensive Approach will fail
in Afghanistan, UNISCI Discussion Papers 8, no. 22, 2010, 7890, p. 84.
84
total lack of UN leadership in Afghanistan and claim that successive
UN Secretary-Generals have stood by and watched Afghanistan fall
into further chaos.
27
In this situation, NATO was forced to pick up
the slack.
28
However, this explanation of UN unwillingness to act as the
cause of ISAFs expansive role is not completely convincing. UNAMAs
staff had considerable expertise in the areas of institution-building,
rule of law, human rights, and reconstruction and development.
ISAF was not simply drawn into a vacuum left by UNAMA and the
Afghan government. The primary reason for ISAFs behavior was its
perception that it did not require UNAMAs resources.
ISAF and UNAMA relations are marred by a heavy imbalance
of resources. The UN mission has been woefully understaffed and
under-resourced
29
from the beginning and has suffered from an
international staff vacancy rate of up to 40%.
30
The volatile security
situation has furthermore led to a minimal UN presence in those areas
where the military needs UNAMA the most.
31
UNAMA has been
extremely dependent on external resources. SRSG Lakhdar Brahimi
already warned in 2002: Without serious support, the UN cannot
achieve anything in the country.
32
27
Smith and Williams, What lies beneath: The future of NATO through the ISAF prism, p. 6.
28
Kate Clouston, Comparative perspectives on civil-military relations, in Comparative perspectives
on civil-military relations in confict zones, eds. Michael Williams and Kate Clouston, London, RUSI,
2008, 19, p. 3.
29
Julianne Smith and Michael Williams, What lies beneath: The future of NATO through the ISAF prism,
CSIS, Washington, DC, March 31, 2008, www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080331_nato.pdf (accessed Au-
gust 14, 2010), p. 5.
30
Un Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 40 of resolution 1917
(2010), UN Doc. S/2010/318, June 16, 2010, para. 69-70.
31
Iselin Hebbert Larsen, UNAMA in Afghanistan. Challenges and opportunities in peacemaking, state-
building and coordination, Security in Practice 3/2010, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo,
2010, http://english.nupi.no/content/download/12005/118516/version/3/fle/SIP-03-10-NUPI+Report-
Hebbert+Larsen.pdf (accessed August 13, 2010), p. 33.
32
Lakhdar Brahimi, Interview: Wir brauchen Friedenstruppen auerhalb Kabuls, Sddeutsche Zeitung,
March 25, 2002, authors translation.
85
In contrast, NATO quickly became the predominant multilateral
institution in many areas of Afghanistan, not only in terms of assets
and personnel but also in sheer reach.
33
A former PRT commander
observed that the international troops sought their own resources to
solve a problem, while the civilian side did not in any one agency
possess the skills to do all aspects of the job, and therefore, needed to
coordinate their activities with other actors.
34
ISAF was able to operate
independently. UNAMA, on the other hand, could hardly reach into
the provinces without ISAFs support and protection.

In sum, the formal division of labour between ISAF and
UNAMA has been called into question by a stark imbalance of human,
fnancial and logistic resources. ISAF was at least partly proactive in
its take over of non-military tasks. The military was keen to guard its
operational autonomy and to use reconstruction projects according to
its priorities. In a nutshell, a low and asymmetrical resource dependency
impeded meaningful cooperation between ISAF and UNAMA.
Coordination: many forums, few results?
Theatre relations
UNAMA and ISAF representatives have been meeting each
other in a vast number of forums at different levels. In addition to direct
meetings between the SRSG and the COMISAF, both leaders are part of
the Group of Principals and the Policy Action Group (PAG), a war
cabinet chaired by President Karzai or his national security advisor.
Another forum has been the PRT Executive Steering Committee, an
ambassadorial/ministerial-level body to provide guidance for PRT
33
International Crisis Group, Afghanistan: The need for international resolve, p. 13.
34
Colonel Jon R. Brittain, Commander of the UK PRT in Mazar-e Sharif from June to December 2005.
Jon R. Brittain, Civil-military interaction: Practical experiences of a PRT commander, in Zivil-mil-
itrische Zusammenarbeit am Beispiel Afghanistan. Civil-military interaction - challenges and chances,
eds. Walter Feichtinger and Markus Gauster, Wien, Landesverteidigungsakademie, 2008, 12330, p. 129.
86
activities, co-chaired by the SRSG, the COMISAF, the NATO SCR,
and a senior representative of the Afghan government.
35
The London
Conference of 2006 has furthermore created the Joint Coordination
and Monitoring Board (JCMB) as the most senior body for strategic
coordination.
ISAF has also established liaison offcers at the UNAMA
Headquarters in Kabul. UNAMA has refrained from sending
representatives to the ISAF Headquarters, however, reportedly because
it did not want to put itself on an equal footing with ISAF and seeks
not to be affliated with the military.
36
At the provincial level, relations
between UNAMA and the PRTs remained much less institutionalized.
37

The frequent turnover of military personnel and changes in UN staff
have effectively prevented the establishment of meaningful, long-term
relationships in the provinces.
38
UNAMA continues to suffer from
chronic staff shortages and has frequently not been able to send staff
to meetings with ISAF.
39
Even though UNAMA and ISAF offcials attended a
plethora of meetings at various levels, prioritization and meaningful
coordination have remained elusive.
40
The former ISAF commander
Richards recalls:
The problem of co-ordination was very real. I am not sure
how it came about, but on arrival in May 2006 I found that I couldnt
get any traction on the policy making process. Youd have individual
ambassadors having discussions with President Karzai or one of his
35
Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Executive Steering Committee, Charter. Adopted 2 December
2004, revised 3 August 2006 and December 2008, December, 2008.
36
Interview with former UNAMA offcial, June 2009.
37
Interview with senior UN offcial, New York, October 2008.
38
Lara Olson and Hrach Gregorian, Interagency and civil-military coordination: Lessons from a survey
of Afghanistan and Liberia, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 10, no. 1, 2007, p. 23.
39
Interview with former senior ISAF offcial, May 2010.
40
Daniel Korski, Afghanistan Europes forgotten war, European Council on Foreign Relations, London,
January 21, 2008, http://ecfr.3cdn.net/6f494e9a379a6444df_85m6bt94n.pdf (accessed August 26, 2010), p. 18.
87
ministers that would lead to decisions that no one else would know
about. I would be doing the same thing.
41

The International Crisis Group notes that participants in
coordinating forums have often done little more than repeat policy
lines and action points.
42
The JCMB has become a highly bureaucratic
body, with various consultative groups and numerous technical working
groups. Originally envisioned as a small and effective UN Security
Council, the JCMBs membership constantly grew, turning the body
into a little UN General Assembly with almost 30 international and
several Afghan members. It was far too cumbersome for strategic
planning and decision-making, and produced few substantive
results.
43

Even if decisions were made, JCMB members did not
face any sanctions if they failed to meet benchmarks. Meeting in
different capitals around world, analysts quickly derided the JCMB
as a travelling jamboree [] rather than [] the primary in-country
coordination mechanism.
44
Key members of the JCMB have now
established a smaller coordinating meeting at the working level in
New York. However, the forum is not high-ranking enough to be able
to make substantial decisions.
The exchange between UNAMA and ISAF has, moreover,
been complicated by the lack of an agreement for sharing classifed
information. The organizations representatives have to rely on case-
by-case arrangements for certain documents. ISAF has been concerned
41
David Richards, RUSI Interview with General David Richards, The RUSI Journal 152, no. 2, 2007,
2433, p. 29.
42
International Crisis Group, Afghanistan: The need for international resolve, Asia Report, 145, Febru-
ary 06, 2008, p. 14.
43
Michael F. Harsch and Thomas Ruttig, An inundation of envoys, ISN Security Watch, February 24,
2009, www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-
98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=96866 (accessed September 02, 2010).
44
International Crisis Group, Afghanistan: The need for international resolve, p. 14.
88
that sensitive documents could be disclosed. UNAMA has complained
about ISAFs restrictive policy in this area, being dependent on the
military for security-related information. SRSG Brahimi already
stressed in 2003: As you know we have no means of being informed
in detail ourselves as the United Nations. We have no military presence
here and we have no intelligence.
45
ISAF offcials maintain that information-sharing has been
possible, even though it demands a certain amount of creativity.
For example, certain documents are cleared from sources and then
handed over to UNAMA. The content of documents can also be
explained in personal conversation without actually sharing them.
However, over-classifcation of information, even non-military, has
repeatedly impeded cooperation. For example, a PRT in Afghanistan
once rejected a UN request to share its food-contingency plan because
it was classifed.
46
Another example has been the classifcation of
ISAF troop-contributing nations Comprehensive Political-Military
Strategic Plan for Afghanistan. The document reportedly emphasizes
UNAMAs key role in Afghanistan, but NATO representatives are not
allowed to formally share it with UN offcials. Even weather forecasts
are often routinely classifed.
NATO, the UN and the EU have considered improving
coordination by introducing elements of hierarchy between their
missions. In 2007/08, there was debate about merging the positions
of the UN SRSG, the NATO SCR and the EU special representative
into a double- or triple-hatted super envoy. However, in addition
to questions about the practicability of an envoy simultaneously
representing three different entities, the organizations were afraid
of losing organizational independence. Many in the UN feared that
45
Lakhdar Brahimi, Interview: U.N. envoy to Afghanistan sees probable delay of June election, The
Yomiuri Shimbun, September 09, 2003.
46
Interview with Scott Smith, Senior Political Affairs Offcer (Afghanistan Desk), UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations, New York, October 2008.
89
merging the UN SRSG with the NATO SCR would endanger the
organizations impartiality in Afghanistan. NATO, in turn, wanted to
keep internal decision-making processes from becoming known to the
UN membership and objected to subordination to the UN.
47
In the end,
neither organization has been ready to put itself under the direction of
the other.
Headquarters relations
UN-NATO relations in Afghanistan have not only faced
challenges on the ground, but have also suffered from a lack of
strategic dialogue at the headquarters level. Until the conclusion of the
September 2008 Joint Declaration, there existed no formal basis for
exchange between the Headquarters. Desk-to-desk contacts were rare
and took place on an ad hoc basis.
NATO frst proposed a Joint Declaration in 2005 after growing
signs that the UN was ready to take institutional relations with the
Alliance to a new level.
48
The frst draft versions outlined possible
felds of cooperation and concrete measures to intensify collaboration,
such as a NATO offer to support UN peacekeeping missions with
strategic airlift as well as regular exchange of personnel between the
headquarters. The UN Secretary-Generals authority to sign Joint
Declarations the member states formal consent made it possible
to avoid a vote in the UN General Assembly, where NATO critics
dominate.
However, many UN members and staff were afraid that a
stronger reliance on NATO assets could reduce UN decision-making
47
Daan Everts, Interview: Nation building key in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, December 23, 2007, http://
english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2007/12/200852518425849682.html (accessed August 13, 2010).
48
Most notably, the September 2005 UN World Summit called for expanded consultation and coopera-
tion between the United Nations and regional organizations through formalized agreements between
the respective secretariats (UN General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/ RES/60/1,
October 24, 2008, para.170 (a)).
90
autonomy and operational independence. In particular, the permanent
Security Council member Russia fercely opposed any agreement with
the Alliance. Furthermore, the UNs humanitarian bodies and agencies
feared that closer cooperation with NATO could jeopardize their
neutrality and impartiality in confict areas and put their staff at risk.
Secretary-General Annan and his successor Ban were both reluctant to
defy large parts of the UN constituency, and their cabinets advised them
not to sign the declaration. The UN repeatedly delayed the signature
and the document was watered down over the years, removing any
concrete proposals for cooperation.
49
NATO continued to push the issue of the declaration, and
urged UN Secretary-General Ban in meetings in 2008 not to delay
signature any further.
50
NATO Secretary-General de Hoop Scheffer
later declared that he worked ceaselessly for the accord.
51
The UN
Secretary-General had to weigh the risks and benefts of his decision.
UN representatives familiar with the issue believe that his decision
was based on the assumption that it was crucial not to be at odds with
fundamental UN members like the US and the European states, and
that NATO had the potential to provide desperately needed logistical
and training capabilities for UN peacekeeping operations, particularly
in Africa. In an effort not to upset the declarations opponents further,
the UN secretariat urged NATO not to publish the accord, and ordered
its staff to keep the issue as low-key as possible.
52

The quiet signing nevertheless caused a public outcry in
Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ban Ki Moon of
secretly concluding an agreement without properly consulting
49
For a more comprehensive analysis of the Declarations genesis, see Michael F. Harsch and Johannes
Varwick NATO and the UN, Survival 51, no. 2. 2009, p. 5-12.
50
Interview with senior US offcial, Washington, DC, May 2009.
51
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Speech to the National Assembly, Paris, February 12, 2009, www.nato.int/cps/
en/natolive/opinions_51356.htm (accessed September 15, 2009).
52
Peter Viggo Jakobsen, A work in slow progress: NATOs comprehensive approach to crisis response op-
erations, DIIS Report 15, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, November, 2008, p. 33.
91
Security Council members. Russias ambassador to NATO, Dmitry
Rogozin, even called the declaration illegal.
53
The NATO and UN
secretariats argued, however, that they held suffcient briefngs and that
a Joint Declaration of the Secretaries-General did not require approval
from UN members. A UN spokesperson emphasized that the accord
was in line with similar agreements with other regional organizations
and that it did not imply agreement with all NATO policies.
54
For NATO, the main value of the agreement has been symbolic.
The UN recognized NATO as an interlocutor, granting it the same
status that other regional bodies, such as the EU and the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), already possessed: The
Joint Declaration provides legitimacy for NATOs activities. It is an
encouragement for states that are reluctant to cooperate with NATO,
for example Pakistan and the Muslim world. The declaration is a
way of image enhancement for NATO.
55
NATOs push for a formal
accord therefore seems to have been primarily an effort to increase
international as well as domestic support for the Afghan mission.
However, the Joint Declaration is also the frst formal accord
between the headquarters and provides a framework for expanded
consultation and cooperation.
56
It has facilitated more frequent contacts
at the headquarters level, and in 2010 NATO established a civilian
liaison offcer in New York.
57
Education days and more regular
meetings are useful to increase the exchange of information and
promote a common understanding of the challenges in Afghanistan
and in other joint operations.
53
Steve Gutterman, Russia offcial blasts secretive UN-NATO deal, The Associated Press, October
09, 2008, www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-09-722816108_x.htm (accessed October 11, 2010).
54
Michele Montas, Highlights of the noon briefng, UN Headquarters, New York, December 03, 2008,
www.un.org/News/ossg/hilites/hilites_arch_view.asp?HighID=1227 (accessed October 11, 2010).
55
Interview with senior NATO offcial, Brussels, June 2010.
56
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Ban Ki-moon, Joint Declaration on UN/NATO secretariat cooperation, New York,
September 23, 2008, http://wikileaks.org/leak/un-nato-agreement-2008.pdf (accessed September 14, 2009).
57
A NATO military liaison offcer to the UN has existed since the mid-1990s.
92
The operational impact on the mission in Afghanistan has
nevertheless remained very limited. Many within UNAMA had
hoped that the Joint Declaration would involve having the COMISAF
consult the SRSG on a more regular basis and designating the UN
envoy as his most senior political adviser. UN offcials felt that this
would have been an effective step to improve coordination between
the organizations.
58
NATO, in turn, has been disappointed that the UN
has remained reluctant to engage in closer cooperation, for example
by institutionalizing relations between NATOs strategic military
headquarters, SHAPE, and the UN Department of Peacekeeping
Operations (DPKO). Thus, the UN-NATOs joint declaration was
mainly an effort, in the formers case, to gain access to external
legitimacy, and in the latters, capabilities. Yet, the result did not
completely fulfll either sides expectations.
Cooperation in practice: a mixed record
ISAF and UNAMA have cooperated in Afghanistan on a
number of issues. The record is mixed. The rest of this section analyzes
UN and NATO efforts to align their policies in two key areas: the
protection of civilians and the promotion of more effective governance
and reconstruction. As outlined above, concerns about operational and
decision-making autonomy and the resource imbalance between ISAF
and UNAMA impeded close cooperation. Growing interdependence led
to a short period of stronger coordination in 2008/2009, but UNAMAs
continuing lack of resources and ISAFs growing dominance in all
policy areas have again reduced the organizations willingness to
engage with each other.
58
Larsen, UNAMA in Afghanistan, pp. 33-34
93
The use of military force and civilian casualties
From 2006 on, confrontation between international troops
and insurgents has caused a growing number of civilian deaths in
Afghanistan. According to Human Rights Watch, an independent
NGO, civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and NATO airstrikes
nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007.
59
This trend sparked a controversy
on the use of force between NATO and the UN. At the center of the
row was the use of air strikes and, at a more abstract level, the trade-
off between the safety of international troops in combat situations
and the protection of civilians. The issue has been partly resolved
by ISAFs new counterinsurgency guidelines, tactical directives and
statements directed at reducing civilian casualties. These measures
have produced a decrease in civilian deaths and injuries, even as large
numbers of additional troops entered Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010.
60

However, civilians continue to be killed in the confict and the issue
remains contentious.
The controversy between NATO and the UN began when
civilian casualties increased from almost 1,000 in 2006 to more than
1,500 in 2007, approximately 630 of them attributable to Afghan
government and international military forces.
61
The main reason for
the rise of the number of civilian casualties was that NATO and OEF
troops came under increasing attack from insurgents and called in air
strikes. These improvised troops-in-contact air strikes do not allow
a thorough assessment of potential collateral damage. Additionally,
59
Human Rights Watch, Troops in Contact. Airstrikes and civilian deaths in Afghanistan, New York,
Octorber, 2008, p. 14.
60
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Mid year report on protection of civilians in armed confict 2010, Kabul, Au-
gust, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/Publication/August102010_MID-YEAR%20
REPORT%202010_Protection%20of%20Civilians%20in%20Armed%20Confict.pdf (accessed Octo-
ber 07, 2010), pp. 13-14.
61
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Annual report on protection of civilians in armed confict, 2008, Kabul, Janu-
ary, 2009, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human%20rights/UNAMA_09february-Annu-
al%20Report_PoC%202008_FINAL_11Feb09.pdf (accessed August 29, 2010), p. 7.
94
revised insurgent tactics, including launching attacks from homes
and populated areas, making the strikes more likely to cause civilian
deaths.
62
The March 2007 Security Council mandate for UNAMA
explicitly instructed the mission for the frst time to monitor the
situation of civilians in the armed confict.
63

The UN urged the international forces to live up to their
responsibilities under international humanitarian law to protect
civilians. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in July 2007
that civilian casualties, no matter how accidental, strengthen our
enemies and undermine our efforts.
64
UN agencies also reproached
ISAF for not being responsive and accessible to families in ensuring
redress when civilian casualties occurred.
65

NATO offcials regretted civilian casualties, but felt that
UNAMAs public criticism of civilian casualties was one-sided and
exaggerated. They maintained that NATO forces had never intentionally
killed civilians and that the troops had to act in self-defense in life-
threatening situations.
66

The dispute between the UN and NATO was driven by
the organizations conficting priorities with regard to the military
campaign in Afghanistan and their unwillingness to align policies.
NATO countries were interested in stabilizing Afghanistan with a
limited amount of troops and in minimizing the risk for the forces
62
J. Alexander Thier and Azita Ranjbar, Killing friends, making enemies. The impact and avoidance of
civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Washington, DC, July, 2008, p. 2.
63
UN Security Council, Resolution 1746, UN Doc. S/RES/1746, March 23, 2007, para. 4.
64
Ban Ki-moon, Address to conference on justice and rule of law in Afghanistan, Rome, July 03, 2007,
www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2649 (accessed September 02, 2010).
65
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), Afghanistan: UNAMA facing new humanitarian
challenges, May 28, 2007, www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/722d3fdf04c6a7c902b56293747
28bf2.htm (accessed September 02, 2010).
66
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Secretary-Generals address. Rome conference on the rule of law in Afghani-
stan, Rome, July 03, 2007, www.rolafghanistan.esteri.it/NR/rdonlyres/D2515E25-F966-43B6-82CD-0-
E71227EE2BC/0/NATO.pdf (accessed August 26, 2010), p. 4.
95
deployed there. This led to a NATO preference for airstrikes: frstly,
because the number of ISAF ground troops was insuffcient to control
the territory; and secondly, because air strikes minimized the risk
of suffering casualties amongst ISAF forces, as the insurgents were
largely unable to respond to such attacks.
As for UNAMA, it had the mandate to monitor and prevent
civilian casualties. This put UNAMA at odds with ISAFs policy.
UNAMA perceived the growing number of civilian casualties as the
result of a political and military calculation to accept a higher number
of Afghan civilian deaths in order to avoid NATO casualties. Air strikes
have been statistically much more likely to cause civilian casualties
than ground attacks, and they have accounted for most of the civilian
deaths caused by international forces.
67
ISAF and UNAMAs position have nevertheless slowly
converged on the controversial issue of civilian casualties. In particular,
ISAF has adjusted its policy to maintain Afghan and domestic support.
NATO countries started to realize in 2007 that without legitimacy in the
eyes of the Afghan people, it would be very diffcult to [discourage]
insurgency and anti-government elements.
68
The Taliban leadership
was increasingly successful in portraying the international presence in
the country as an illegitimate American-led occupation. This spurred
Afghan nationalism defned by pride about repeatedly having driven
out foreign invaders in the past.
69
NATO feared that it was winning
the military battles, but was in danger of losing the strategic battle
over public opinion.
70
One measure to improve NATOs image and
67
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Mid year report on protection of civilians in armed confict 2010, pp. 13-14.
68
Daan Everts, Interview: Nation building key in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, December 23, 2007, http://
english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2007/12/200852518425849682.html (accessed August 13, 2010).
69
Astri Suhrke, The dangers of a tight embrace. Externally assisted statebuilding in Afghanistan, in The
dilemmas of statebuilding. Confronting the contradictions of postwar peace operations, eds. Roland Paris
and Timothy D. Sisk, Milton Park Abingdon Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2009, 22751, p. 243.
70
Cable News Network (CNN), International Correspondance: NATOs information war against the
Taliban, November 30, 2007, http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/30/i_c.01.html (accessed
September 02, 2010).
96
credibility was intensifed cooperation on civilian casualties with
UNAMA. The UN possesses the necessary neutrality to monitor
civilian casualties. It is able to credibly confrm NATO reports and to
dismiss exaggerated claims of civilian deaths by the Taliban.
71
The fnal trigger for policy change was a US airstrike on the
town of Azizabad, in the western province of Herat, in August 2008.
The US military initially insisted that only 5-7 civilians were killed in
an operation against the Taliban.
72
However, a UNAMA investigation
suggested that some 90 civilians, including 60 children, were among
the victims, and SRSG Kai Eide called the incident a matter of grave
concern to the UN.
73
NATO and the US military reacted to heavy
criticism from the Afghan government and UNAMA, and revised
their operating procedures. General David McKiernan issued new
tactical directives on preventing civilian casualties to ISAF and OEF
feld commanders.
74
The directives demanded that troops consider a
tactical withdrawal instead of calling in air support when civilians
were believed to be present in an area. By discouraging overreliance
on air power to repel attacks, ISAF hoped to minimize the number of
civilian deaths.
Furthermore, ISAF promised to promptly admit when civilians
were killed and to offer payments to the families of the victims. The
71
IRIN, Afghanistan: UNAMA facing new humanitarian challenges, May 28, 2007, www.alertnet.
org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/722d3fdf04c6a7c902b5629374728bf2.htm (accessed September 02, 2010).
72
Carlotta Gall, Evidence points to civilian toll in Afghan raid, The New York Times, September 07, 2008.
73
UNAMA, Special Representative Kai Eide on civilian casualties caused by military operations in Shindand,
Press Statement, Kabul, August 26, 2008, http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?ctl=Details&tabid=1
762&mid=1920&ItemID=3108 (accessed September 06, 2010). COMISAF General McKiernan eventual-
ly ordered a reinvestigation of the air raid which arrived at the conclusion that about 33 civilians were killed
in the operation, see John F. Burns, Afghans toll shakes generals, The New York Times, 18 October 2008.
74
UN Secretary-General, The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and
security, UN Doc. A/63/751S/2009/135, March 10, 2009, para. 32. Notably, the directive did not apply
to American special forces in Afghanistan who were not under General McKiernans command. It was not
until March 2010 that COMISAF General McChrystal brought most special forces under his command;
see Richard A. Oppel and Rod Nordland, U.S. is reining in special operations forces in Afghanistan,
The New York Times, March 15, 2010.
97
Deputy COMISAF, Lieutenant General Riley, declared that [o]
ur military forces are here to protect the civilian population, not to
damage them, and promised proportionality, requisite restraint and
the utmost discrimination in the use of frepower.
75
Meanwhile, the
UN SRSG Eide brought UNAMAs Human Rights Unit under his
direct authority in an effort to coordinate the assessments of civilian
casualties with ISAF more easily.
76
When US General McChrystal took over the ISAF command
in June 2009, he made reducing civilian casualties a cornerstone of
his new counterinsurgency strategy. General McChrystal issued a
revised Tactical Directive in July 2009, which called avoiding civilian
casualties an overarching operational issue. The directive instructed
commanders to scrutinize and limit the use of force, and to authorize
air strikes and long-range artillery fre only under very limited and
prescribed conditions: Commanders must weigh the gain of using
CAS [Close Air Support] against the cost of civilian casualties,
which in the long run make mission success more diffcult and turn
the Afghan people against us.
77
McChrystals successor, General
David H. Petraeus took further measures in 2010 to minimize civilian
casualties by introducing directives on night raids and a review of
standard operating procedures on escalation of force incidents.
78
The new guidelines and directives have had some success
in reducing the number of civilian casualties. International forces in
combat situations have started to call for air support less often and,
when they do, their requests are more frequently denied.
79
According
75
Riley quoted in John F. Burns, Afghans toll shakes generals.
76
Interview with senior UNAMA offcial, June 2009.
77
COMISAF, Tactical directive, Kabul, July 02, 2009, www.nato.int/isaf/docu/offcial_texts/Tactical_
Directive_090706.pdf (accessed September 07, 2010).
78
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Mid year report on protection of civilians in armed confict 2010, p. 14.
79
US Senate Armed Services Committee, Nomination of General David H. Petraeus, USA for reappoint-
ment to the grade of general and to be Commander, International Security Assistance Force and Com-
mander, United States Forces Afghanistan, Washington, DC, June 29, 2010, http://armed-services.senate.
98
to UNAMA fgures, the total number of civilian deaths attributed
to pro-government forces (i.e. Afghan national security forces and
international military) decreased in 2009 by almost 30% compared
to the previous year.
80
In 2010, the number of civilian deaths caused
by pro-government forces again declined by over 20% compared to
2009.
81
Thus, ISAF has been ready to give the protection of civilians
a higher priority, even though these measures entailed additional risks
for its troops.
In sum, ISAF and UNAMA have been largely successful at
coordinating their positions on civilian casualties in recent years. ISAFs
policy of increasing restraint in the use of force made its posture more
closely aligned with UNAMAs, which facilitated cooperation. The
US and NATOs eventual acceptance of this approach cannot only be
attributed to the UN. Arguably more important factors include the heavy
criticism of the Afghan government and commanders realization that
rising civilian casualties spurred support for the insurgents. However,
operations by foreign forces that claim the lives of civilians continue
to be a contentious issue and generate greater reproach amongst
Afghans than casualties caused by insurgents. Thus, ISAF continues
to be under pressure to further reduce civilian casualties and increase
accountability when they occur.
gov/Transcripts/2010/06%20June/10-57%20-%206-29-10.pdf (accessed September 07, 2010), p. 22.
80
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Annual report on protection of civilians in armed confict, 2009, Kabul, Janu-
ary, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human%20rights/Protection%20of%20Civil-
ian%202009%20report%20English.pdf (accessed September 07, 2010), p. 16. The 30% decrease is even
more signifcant if one takes into account that the number of security incidents increased in 2009 to an
average of 960 per month, as compared with less than 750 in 2008 (UN Secretary-General, The situation
in Afghanistan, March 10, 2010, para. 23). International military casualties sharply increased in the same
period of time from 295 to 521 (iCasualties, Coalition military fatalities by year, www.icasualties.org/
OEF/ (accessed August 31, 2010)).
81
UNAMA, Afghanistan: Mid year report on protection of civilians in armed confict 2010, p. 13.
99
Governance and reconstruction
Another key area of cooperation - and source of tensions - has
been the promotion of effective governance and reconstruction. Neither
of these areas were a priority for the international community in the
frst years of the Afghan mission. A 2004 UN Development Program
(UNDP) Human Development Report painted a gloomy picture of
the status of human development in Afghanistan and indicated that
Afghanistan was the sixth least developed country in the world.
82

One reason was that US engagement in Iraq, as a NATO offcial
put it, sucked the oxygen away from Afghanistan.
83
Furthermore,
ISAFs initial restriction to Kabul made it diffcult for international
organizations and representatives of the Afghan government to reach
out into the provinces.
The creation of PRTs from 2003 on was aimed at jumpstarting
reconstruction in areas where there existed no or only a minimal
presence on the part of the Afghan authorities and international
development agencies.
84
Each PRT lead nation developed a distinct
national concept and devised a unique organizational structure. Some
82
Due to the unavailability of data, Afghanistan was not included in the UNDP Human Development
Report of 2004. However, its Human Development Index (HDI) value suggested that Afghanistan would
have been place at the ranking of 173 out of 178 countries worldwide (UNDP, Afghanistan National
Human Development Report 2004. Security with a human face: Challenges and responsibilities, Kabul,
2004, http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/nationalreports/asiathepacifc/afghanistan/afghanistan_2004_en.pdf ,
p. 18).
83
Daan Everts, Interview: Nation building key in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, December 23, 2007, http://
english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2007/12/200852518425849682.html (accessed August 13, 2010).
84
The literature on PRTs is extensive, e.g. Markus Gauster, Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghani-
stan. An innovative instrument of international crisis management being put to the test, Occasional Pa-
per Series, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 2008,
www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/ECSS_Afghanistan_provincialreconstructionteams.pdf
(accessed September 10, 2009); Carter Malkasian and Gerald Meyerle, Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
How do we know they work?, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, March, 2009, www.strategicstudiesin-
stitute.army.mil/pdffles/PUB911.pdf (accessed August 14, 2010); Peter Runge, The Provincial Recon-
struction Teams in Afghanistan. Role model for civil-military relations?, Occasional Paper IV, Bonn In-
ternational Center for Conversion, Bonn, October, 2009, www.bicc.de/uploads/pdf/publications/papers/
occ_paper_04/occasional_paper_IV_11_09.pdf (accessed August 14, 2010).
100
PRTs served as forward operating bases for military operations, while
others were conceptualized as part of a comprehensive stabilization and
reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. Available funds, troops strength
and leadership arrangements have varied greatly. The lead nation
concept brought benefcial fexibility, but it also resulted in an ad hoc
approach to Afghanistans needs for security and development.
85
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), usually supported
by the Deputy SRSG for Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction, regard
the militarization of aid as counterproductive. For example, Oxfam
has criticized that PRTs blur the distinction between the military
and aid workers, jeopardizing the perceived neutrality of the latter,
putting them in danger and reducing operating space for humanitarian
organisations.
86
ISAF has maintained that non-military activities,
such as the improvement of basic public services like infrastructure,
health care and education, can temporarily only be delivered by the
military, and that these projects are necessary to attain military goals.
The UN has been concerned about the PRTs activities in the
feld of reconstruction and governance, as these tasks went well
beyond [ISAFs] originally in tended mission of providing direct
security.
87
NATO countries promoted PRTs as means to foster
security and reconstruction at the provincial level, but the PRTs main
contribution and impact was political.
88
The commanders of the PRTs
and the Regional Commands (RCs) became the frst and most important
points of contact for Afghan offcials and local powerbrokers. PRTs
85
Robert M. Perito, The U.S. experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan. Lessons
identifed, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC, October, 2005, www.usip.org/fles/resour-
ces/sr152.pdf, p. 2.
86
Oxfam, Afghanistan: Development and humanitarian priorities, January, 2008, www.oxfam.org.uk/re-
sources/policy/confict_disasters/downloads/afghanistan_priorities.pdf (accessed August 15, 2010), p. 9.
87
Bas Rietjens et al., Enhancing the footprint. Stakeholders in Afghan reconstruction, Parameters 39,
no. 1, 2009, 2239, p. 22.
88
Barbara J. Stapleton, A means to what end? Why PRTS are peripheral to the bigger political challenges
in Afghanistan, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 10, no. 1, 2007, p. 2.
101
have often relied on international contractors, and many projects were
not in line with provincial and national development plans. The aim
has been to accelerate project implementation and to keep money
from ending up in illicit channels. At the same time, however, local
government has been deprived of resources and unable to develop in
many areas. UNAMA has been largely excluded from PRT decision-
making and the UNs proven track record in certain areas, for example
in promoting the establishment of governance and security structures
at the local level, has not been acknowledged.
89
ISAF undertook a variety of measures to streamline PRT
activities, such as the PRT Executive Steering Committee, and the
release of a PRT Handbook.
90
In 2006, ISAFs four Regional Commands
North, East, South and West were given more authority over the
PRTs. However, the relationship between the RCs and the PRTs often
continued to resemble one of information-sharing rather than being
characterized by a coherent command structure.
91
While NATO commanders were at least partly able to
streamline military actions, the civilian activities of the different PRTs
remained largely uncoordinated and often ineffective.
92
Nominally, the
Afghan government was responsible for setting overall development
priorities, but it was hardly capable of fulflling this role. UN SRSG
Tom Koenigs noted in 2007 that the UN could be a good coordinator,
but that there was need for people who want to be coordinated.
93

Against the backdrop of sluggish economic development and
89
Aaronson, An outsiders view on the civil-military nexus in Afghanistan, p. 16
90
ISAF, Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Handbook. Edition 4, March, 2009.
91
Touko Piiparinen, A clash of mindsets? An insiders account of Provincial Reconstruction Teams,
International Peacekeeping 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 14357, p. 149.
92
Jones and Pickering, Afghanistan Study Group report, p. 20.
93
Koenigs quoted in IRIN, Afghanistan: Multiple humanitarian challenges in 2008 outgoing UN envoy,
December 31, 2007, www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76044 (accessed September 02, 2010).
102
growing frustration among Afghans about a lack of progress,
94
the
UNs coordinating role was strengthened in 2008. Security Council
Resolution 1806 of March 2008 expanded and sharpened UNAMAs
mandate,
95
and ISAF nations subsequently acknowledged UNAMAs
lead role in coordinating the overall international civilian effort.
96

UN Secretary-General Ban promised that the UN presence would now
take a more assertive role in coordination, both in the civilian and
civil-military feld.
97
UNAMA then focused on identifying priorities
that the Afghan government and the international community would
sign up to and tried to push for donors to channel more money through
the government, or at least in alignment with government priorities.
ISAF and humanitarian aid organizations, including UN
agencies, also endorsed a set of guidelines for the interaction and
coordination of civilian and military actors in Afghanistan.
98
UNAMA
hoped that the civil-military coordination guidelines would prevent
the humanitarian space from being squeezed further.
99
ISAF, in turn,
expected to receive more security-relevant information and to learn
more about plans and projects of humanitarian agencies.
After diffcult negotiations, the UN General Assembly decided
in December 2008 to double UNAMAs budget in 2009 to around
160 million dollars and to increase the number of its staff from
94
Antonio Donini, Local perceptions of assistance to Afghanistan, International Peacekeeping 14, no.
1, 2007, pp. 15872.
95
UN Security Council, Resolution 1806, UN Doc. S/RES/1806, March 20, 2008, para. 4a.
96
Heads of State and Government of the ISAF contributing nations, ISAFs strategic vision, Bucharest, April
03, 2008, www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/offcial_texts_8444.htm (accessed September 05, 2010), para. 6.
97
Ban Ki-moon, Remarks to conference on Afghanistan, Bucharest, April 03, 2008, www.un.org/apps/
news/infocus/sgspeeches/search_full.asp?statID=209 (accessed September 05, 2010).
98
Afghanistan Civil Military Working Group, Guidelines for the interaction and coordination of humani-
tarian actors and military actors in Afghanistan. Version 1.0, May 20, 2008, http://ochaonline.un.org/
OchaLinkClick.aspx?link=ocha&docId=1091345 (accessed September 07, 2010).
99
UNAMA spokesman Aleem Siddique quoted in IRIN, Afghanistan: NATO-led forces, aid agencies
agree new modus operandi, August 05, 2008, www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79621 (accessed
September 07, 2010).
103
approximately 1500 to 2000.
100
However, resources to strengthen
UNAMA arrived very slowly and proved insuffcient to turn it into a
capable partner for ISAF. NATO Secretary-General de Hoop Scheffer
complained in January 2009 that we are obliged to keep ramping
up the military operation partly because of insuffcient resources
and coordination on the civilian side. There must be a stronger effort
to [] beef up the UN mission in Afghanistan.
101
During his last
months in Kabul, COMISAF McKiernan reportedly hardly met with
the UNAMA leadership anymore, because he was frustrated about the
missions lack of capabilities.
102

UNAMA was also weakened by a self-defeating fallout between
SRSG Eide and his deputy for political affairs, Peter Galbraith, over
how to deal with blatant fraud in the 2009 presidential elections.
Galbraith made the dispute public and was removed from offce, but the
affair continued to paralyze the mission for several months.
103
Finally,
the UNs capacities were diminished by the decision to evacuate most
of the organizations international staff from the country and to delay
the opening of new provincial offces after the guest house attack of
October 2009. While many UN personnel returned to Afghanistan after
investigations had been concluded, a considerable number of staff quit
their positions over security fears or let their contracts run out, leaving
the organization critically understaffed.
104
At the same time, the Obama administration decided to
strengthen its engagement in Afghanistan and strongly increased the
number of US troops in the country. The US also initiated a so-called
100
UNAMA, Press conference by Kai Eide, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghani-
stan, Kabul, December 17, 2008.
101
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Afghanistan: We can do better, The Washington Post, January 18, 2009.
102
Interview with former senior ISAF offcial, May 2010.
103
Richard Gowan (ed.), Review of political missions 2010, Center on International Cooperation, New
York, 2010, p. 79.
104
UN Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 40 of resolution 1917
(2010), UN Doc. S/2010/318, June 16, 2010, para. 69-70.
104
civilian surge to support large increases in assistance programs to
Afghanistan. From January 2009 to early 2010, the US government
trebled its civilian staff in Afghanistan. A large share of the civilian
surge was designated to support military units with civilian expertise.
The initiative quadrupled US civilian staff at PRTs and US forward
operating bases.
105
The US imposed its version of the comprehensive
approach on NATO, the civilian organizations engaged in Afghanistan
and the Afghan government by asking them to support the new strategy
or get out of the way.
106
The expansion of the NATO SCRs role in 2010 effectively
ended UNAMAs role as aid coordinator. The appointment of Mark
Sedwill turned the low-profle position of the SCR into a key civilian
leadership post. The SCR offces staff was quadrupled from six to
24.
107
The SCRs terms of reference remained largely unchanged.
However, it was understood among NATO members that the new
SCR would take over the coordination of the civilian effort, together
with the US ambassador. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen announced that a core task of the new envoy would be
to strengthen the organization and coordination of the civilian
assistance to Afghanistan.
108
NATO members supported keeping
UNAMA formally in charge, because the UNs involvement provided
a legitimizing political cover for NATOs activities.
109

UNAMA reacted with great skepticism to the measures and was
concerned about ISAF claiming responsibility for felds which were
105
US Department of State, Report of inspection: Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan, Report no. ISP-I-10-32A,
Washington, DC, February, 2010, http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/138084.pdf
(accessed August 30, 2010), p. 4.
106
Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Right strategy, wrong place: Why NATOs Comprehensive Approach will fail
in Afghanistan, UNISCI Discussion Papers 8, no. 22, 2010, 7890, p. 90.
107
Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, British diplomat takes key Afghan role, The New York Times,
May 15, 2010.
108
Rasmussen in NATO, Joint press point with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the
new Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan Mark Sedwill, Brussels, January 26, 2010.
109
Interview with senior NATO offcial, Brussels, June 2010.
105
part of UNAMAs original mandate. NATO representatives maintained
that ISAF had to refect a comprehensive approach institutionally and
that own expertise was important for enabling ISAF to interact with
civilian actors. However, NATO offcials also admit that the military
had identifed a vacuum in the governance and development sector
and was keen to fll it.
ISAFs comprehensive role was illustrated during operations in
southern Afghanistan in 2010. In February and March, ISAF conducted
the largest offensive since the overthrow of the Taliban regime to gain
control over the Marja area in Helmand province. ISAF was interested
in including UN humanitarian agencies in the operation to ensure
provision of food and shelter for refugees as well as for rebuilding
of destroyed property. However, UN offcials criticized the militarys
focus on quick impact projects and urged ISAF to minimize its
role in aid distribution.
110
The UN Offce for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Afghanistan demanded that
aid should be provided on basis of need and not political or military
strategies [ W]e call on the military not to be involved in delivering
food assistance, healthcare or building schools and clinics.
111
Thus,
working together with UN agencies would have signifcantly reduced
ISAFs operational freedom and control over aid delivery.
ISAF was keen to avoid a loss of autonomy and substituted
the UNs resources. A central part of ISAFs strategy for Marja was
to ensure that representatives of the Afghan government would be in
place, once the area was pacifed, to rapidly deliver services, such as
justice, health care, and job programs. ISAF referred to this approach
as government-in-a-box. However, while in line with the joint aim
of transferring authority to local hands, the Afghan government lacked
110
Rod Nordland, U.N. rejects militarization of Afghan aid, The New York Times, February 17, 2010.
111
Wael Haj-Ibrahim, Head of Offce, OCHA Afghanistan in UNAMA, UN Humanitarian Coordinator
press conference, Kabul, February 17, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1761&ctl
=Details&mid=1892&ItemID=7810 (accessed September 07, 2010).
106
experience and capacity for providing governance and services in the
region. It faced mistrust and even outright hostility among the local
population, having a reputation for corruption and inability to promote
justice and security.
112
To compensate for the Afghan governments lack of resources,
ISAF relied on its increased civilian capacities. Development work
was increasingly initiated and being carried out by the military. Several
NGOs, including Oxfam, Care and Afghanaid, estimated in January
2010 that over one billion dollars would be spent on aid by the military
this year, more than the Afghan governments budget for health,
education and agriculture combined.
113
The combined application of
Afghan and civil-military resources allowed ISAF to become largely
independent of the support of UN agencies.
According to analysts, aid agencies did not appear to have
been briefed or consulted suffciently in advance.
114
UN agencies and
NGOs also criticized ISAFs behavior for violating the jointly endorsed
guidelines for the interaction and coordination of humanitarian actors.
These stipulate that the militarys primary responsibility is to provide
security, and they restrict its role in reconstruction to gap-flling
measures until civilian organizations are able to take over.
115

While it remains unclear how much capacity UN agencies and
NGOs would have been able to add to humanitarian and reconstruction
efforts, ISAFs substitution strategy also failed to fulfll the expectations
of the local population. The military operation quickly drove out the
112
Anthony H. Cordesman, The Afghan test bed in Marja. Key tests of victory are still months and years
away, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, February 18, 2010, p. 7.
113
Action Aid et al., Quick impact, quick collapse. The dangers of militarized aid in Afghanistan, Kabul,
2010, www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/confict_disasters/downloads/quick_impact_quick_collapse_
afghanistan_en.pdf (accessed September 07, 2010), p. 3.
114
International Council on Security and Development, Operation Moshtarak: Lessons learned, London,
March, 2010, www.icosgroup.net/documents/operation_moshtarak.pdf (accessed August 30, 2010), p. 15.
115
Afghanistan Civil Military Working Group, Guidelines for the interaction and coordination of humani-
tarian actors and military actors in Afghanistan. p. 4.3.
107
Taliban from Marjas center, but they have continued to wage a guerilla
war against the international forces.
116
The government in a box
which was supposed to win over the population has not materialized.
The available Afghan security forces were insuffcient to hold
the area and many Afghan offcials were afraid to fll administrative
positions. Food, shelter, and medical supplies were in extremely short
supply when the military actions ceased. Many residents were reluctant
to accept and engage in the militarys reconstruction projects. Reports
from the ground suggest that civilian casualties and a lack of security
and protection have alienated local communities, and many residents
voiced that they felt more negative about NATO forces than before the
offensive.
117
A key objective of the operation winning the hearts and
minds of the population was not met, at least in the short run.
Lessons from the Afghan experience
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair once declared that
Afghanistan was the place where the future of world security in the
early 21st century is going to be played out.
118
While his claim remains
debatable, the implications of the Afghan mission for UN-NATO
relations are certainly hard to underestimate. Despite all diffculties,
the joint operation in Afghanistan provides the opportunity for making
relations more effective. Both organizations depend on each other in
Afghanistan and have an interest to make cooperation more effective
in order to increase the chances of promoting sustainable stability in
the country and the region.
119
116
Todd Pitman, Marines in Marjah face full-blown insurgency, The Associated Press, October 08,
2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100704600.html (accessed
October 11, 2010).
117
International Council on Security and Development, Operation Moshtarak, p. 23; UNAMA, Afghani-
stan: Mid year report on protection of civilians in armed confict 2010, p. 15.
118
Sophie Walker, Afghan desert key to security, Blair says, Reuters, November 21, 2006, http://
uk.reuters.com/article/idUKSP251167Q120061121 (accessed October 07, 2010).
119
On the challenge of reconciling ISAFs interest in (short-term) stability with UNAMAs objective to
108
It is too early to make fnal judgments about NATOs expansive
role in Afghanistan, including its take-over of traditionally UN-led
tasks. Some analysts have regarded it as the only viable option in a
hostile environment like Afghanistan. However, the experiences so far
have been a reminder that NATO as regional military organization is
at a structural disadvantage relative to the UN. It does not have the
political legitimacy that the UN, or Afghan offcials, possess.
For example, it is questionable if the NATO SCR is better suited
for orchestrating international aid. The positions supporting staff
remains very limited in relation to the ambitious tasks it has been set,
even if the envoy only focuses on development aid distributed by the
current 27 PRTs. Furthermore, the new constellation arguably makes it
easier for ISAF nations to avoid coordination, because a NATO offcial
is unlikely to criticize member states in public and therefore less able
to put public pressure on governments to change behavior. Finally, the
fact that the UN retains the responsibility for aid coordination on paper
is likely to further undermine the UNs authority and credibility in the
eyes of local and international actors.
UN SRSG Staffan de Mistura now has to settle for three tasks:
organizing elections, promoting a political dialogue in Afghanistan,
and engaging regional actors. Fostering aid coherence has become a
subordinated task, aimed at minimizing duplication, not at orchestrating
international aid towards common objectives.
120
Some analysts have
welcomed that the UN has de facto given up its role as aid coordinator
because it had failed to bring international activities into alignment, and
they have embraced a complete focus on political issues.
121
However,
create the foundations of sustainable peace in Afghanistan, see Wolfgang Weisbnod-Weber, Zusamme
narbeit der Vereinten Nationen und NATO in Afghanistan, Vereinte Nationen (forthcoming).
120
The UN has called its new priorities the three-plus-one initiative, with aid coherence being the +1
priority. See SRSG Staffan de Mistura briefng to the Security Council, in: UN Security Council, 6351st
meeting, UN Doc. S/PV.6351, June 30, 2010.
121
Michael Knigge, New UN chief in Afghanistan faces old problems, Deutsche Welle, January 28,
2010, www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5177260,00.html (accessed September 07, 2010).
109
even in the political area ISAF now seems to play the decisive role.
In sum, the new division of labor is unlikely to increase the impact of
international efforts in areas which will determine the overall success
of the mission in Afghanistan.
NATO and the UN should accept their interdependence in
Afghanistan and try to construct a synergetic partnership, instead of
opting for substitution and evasion strategies. The UN must provide
UNAMA with the necessary resources, in particular at the provincial
and district level, until the Afghan government is ready to completely
take over. NATO needs to fully respect and enable the UNs political
leadership in Afghanistan to ease UN fears of domination and to give
the international community a more unifed voice.
In Afghanistan and beyond, NATO will have to convince the
UN and other civilian agencies that its advocacy of a comprehensive
approach is not about putting civilian organizations under military
control or replacing them. Instead, the Alliance should make clear
that its actions are in recognition of NATOs need for partners in
modern crisis management.
122
A crucial issue will be what kind of
civilian capabilities NATO is going to develop in the coming years. Its
2010 Strategic Concept calls for forming an appropriate but modest
civilian crisis management capability to interface more effectively
with civilian partners This capability may also be used to plan,
employ and coordinate civilian activities until conditions allow for the
transfer of those responsibilities and tasks to other actors.
123
NATO
has also decided to identify and train civilian specialists from member
states, made available for rapid deployment by Allies for selected
122
Group of Experts, NATO 2020: Assured security; dynamic engagement. Analysis and recommenda-
tions on a new strategic concept for NATO, May 17, 2010, www.nato.int/strategic-concept/expertsreport.
pdf (accessed October 07, 2010), p. 22.
123
NATO Heads of State and Government, Strategic concept for the defence and security of the members
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Lisbon, November 19, 2010, http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/
strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf (accessed November 25, 2010), para. 25.
110
missions.
124
Civilian capabilities could improve NATOs connectivity
to civilian organizations and facilitate cooperation, for example by
hiring experts who are familiar with civilian planning processes.
NATO should, however, refrain from duplicating physical capabilities.
Moreover, creating access to civilian experts from member states is
likely to lead to competition with the UN, the EU and the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) over the same set of
police offcers, judges and administrative experts. Instead, NATO and
the UN should, as Ban Ki-moon has put it, focus on those areas where
each of us has specifc expertise and capabilities, adding value to the
work of others rather than duplicating it.
125
NATO and the UN headquarters should also increase
information exchange, joint planning and substantial dialogue to
facilitate convergence on policy issues. Both organizations should
make the conclusion of agreements which enable the exchange of
classifed information at all relevant levels a priority. While NATO
will not be ready to exchange its most secret documents, arrangements
should at least be identifed for fles with a low classifcation. High-level
exchanges of senior representatives should be further institutionalized
through a fxed calendar.
It is a step in the right direction that the UNs DPKO and DPA
intend to establish a permanent albeit small liaison unit in Brussels to
facilitate regular, informal communication with the EU and NATO on
questions of peace and security. NATO, in turn, should transform its two
civilian and military liaison offcers into a permanent representation in
New York, providing them with basic administrative capacity. These
measures would promote constant and substantial exchange between
124
Ibid.
125
Ban Ki-moon, Remarks to conference on Afghanistan.
111
the strategic headquarters and create possibilities for a more structured
transfer of knowledge, for example in the areas of defense sector
reform, logistics and training.
Both sides should also agree on a set of joint principles and
standards for peace operations, such as on the role of the military in
humanitarian aid and on procedures to address civilian casualties.
Contingency planning and protection arrangements should be reviewed
in Afghanistan and beyond. NATO will have to offer protection in a very
discreet fashion, while still being ready to intervene if necessary.
Closer institutional and operational coordination and
cooperation does not provide a panacea for solving all the issues
bedeviling UN-NATO relations, but can increase synergy and
prevent both parties from working at cross-purposes. The situation in
Afghanistan should be a stark reminder that it is time for both sides to
get serious about adhering to a comprehensive approach.
112
Appendix 1
Extracts from the Charter of the United Nations
San Francisco, 26th June, 1945
We the peoples of the United Nations determined
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which
twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffrm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth
of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of
nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the
obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
and for these ends -
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as
good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution
of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the
common interest, and to employ international machinery for the
promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.
113
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives
assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full
powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present
Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international
organization to be known as the United Nations.
Chapter I Purposes and Principles
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take 1.
effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of
threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or
other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means,
and in conformity with the principles of justice and international
law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations
which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for 2.
the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and
to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international 3.
problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian
character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human
rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as
to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the 4.
attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in
Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality 1.
114
of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and 2.
benefts resulting from membership, shall fulfll in good faith
the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present
Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful 3.
means in such a manner that international peace and security, and
justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the 4.
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent
with the Purposes of the United Nations.
All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any 5.
action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall
refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United
Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members 6.
of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so
far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace
and security.
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United 7.
Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to
submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but
this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement
measures under Chapter Vll.
Article 37
Should the parties to a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 1.
33 fail to settle it by the means indicated in that Article, they shall
refer it to the Security Council.
115
If the Security Council deems that the continuance of the dispute 2.
is in fact likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace
and security, it shall decide whether to take action under Article
36 or to recommend such terms of settlement as it may consider
appropriate.
Chapter VII: Action with respect to threats to the peace,
breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression
Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to
the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make
recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance
with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and
security.
Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security
Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding
upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties
concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems
necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without
prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned.
The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with
such provisional measures.
Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the
use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions,
and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply
such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption
of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio,
116
and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic
relations.
Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in
Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it
may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to
maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may
include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or
land forces of Members of the United Nations.
Article 43
All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the 1.
maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make
available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with
a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and
facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of
maintaining international peace and security.
Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types 2.
of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the
nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.
The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as 3.
possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be
concluded between the Security Council and Members or between
the Security Council and groups of Members and shall be subject
to ratifcation by the signatory states in accordance with their
respective constitutional processes.
Article 44
When the Security Council has decided to use force it shall, before
calling upon a Member not represented on it to provide armed forces
in fulflment of the obligations assumed under Article 43, invite that
117
Member, if the Member so desires, to participate in the decisions of
the Security Council concerning the employment of contingents of
that Members armed forces.
Article 45
In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military
measures, Members shall hold immediately available national air-
force contingents for combined international enforcement action. The
strength and degree of readiness of these contingents and plans for
their combined action shall be determined within the limits laid down
in the special agreement or agreements referred to in Article 43, by the
Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.
Article 46
Plans for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security
Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.
Article 47
There shall be established a Military Staff Committee to advise 1.
and assist the Security Council on all questions relating to the
Security Councils military requirements for the maintenance of
international peace and security, the employment and command
of forces placed at its disposal, the regulation of armaments, and
possible disarmament.
The Military Staff Committee shall consist of the Chiefs of 2.
Staff of the permanent members of the Security Council or
their representatives. Any Member of the United Nations not
permanently represented on the Committee shall be invited by the
Committee to be associated with it when the effcient discharge of
the Committees responsibilities requires the participation of that
Member in its work.
118
The Military Staff Committee shall be responsible under the 3.
Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces
placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Questions relating
to the command of such forces shall be worked out subsequently.
The Military Staff Committee, with the authorization of the 4.
Security Council and after consultation with appropriate regional
agencies, may establish regional sub-committees.
Article 48
The action required to carry out the decisions of the Security 1.
Council for the maintenance of international peace and security
shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by
some of them, as the Security Council may determine.
Such decisions shall be carried out by the Members of the United 2.
Nations directly and through their action in the appropriate
international agencies of which they are members.
Article 49
The Members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual
assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security
Council.
Article 50
If preventive or enforcement measures against any state are taken by
the Security Council, any other state, whether a Member of the United
Nations or not, which fnds itself confronted with special economic
problems arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have
the right to consult the Security Council with regard to a solution of
those problems.
119
Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of
individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against
a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken
measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence
shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in
any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council
under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems
necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and
security.
Chapter VIII: Regional Arrangements
Article 52
Nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional 1.
arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating
to the maintenance of international peace and security as are
appropriate for regional action provided that such arrangements or
agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and
Principles of the United Nations.
The Members of the United Nations entering into such arrangements 2.
or constituting such agencies shall make every effort to achieve
pacifc settlement of local disputes through such regional
arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them
to the Security Council.
The Security Council shall encourage the development of pacifc 3.
settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements
or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states
concerned or by reference from the Security Council.
This Article in no way impairs the application of Articles 34 and 4.
35.
120
Article 53
The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such 1.
regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its
authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional
arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of
the Security Council, with the exception of measures against any
enemy state, as defned in paragraph 2 of this Article, provided
for pursuant to Article 107 or in regional arrangements directed
against renewal of aggressive policy on the part of any such
state, until such time as the Organization may, on request of the
Governments concerned, be charged with the responsibility for
preventing further aggression by such a state.
The term enemy state as used in paragraph 1 of this Article applies 2.
to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy
of any signatory of the present Charter.
Article 54
The Security Council shall at all times be kept fully informed of
activities undertaken or in contemplation under regional arrangements
or by regional agencies for the maintenance of international peace and
security.
121
Appendix 2
North Atlantic Treaty
Washington D.C., 4th April, 1949
The Parties to this Treaty reaffrm their faith in the purposes
and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their
desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage
and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of
democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek
to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for
the preservation of peace and security. they therefore agree to this
North Atlantic Treaty:
Article 1
The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations,
to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security
and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent
with the purposes of the United Nations.
Article 2
The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful
and friendly international relations by strengthening their free
institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles
upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions
of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate confict in
their international economic policies and will encourage economic
collaboration between any or all of them.
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Article 3
In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the
Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective
self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual
and collective capacity to resist armed attack.
Article 4
The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of
them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any
of the Parties is threatened.
Article 5
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.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof
shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures
shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures
necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.
Article 6
For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the
Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America,
on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of or on
the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North
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Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in
or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which
occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date
when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the
North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Article 7
This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting
in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties
which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility
of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and
security.
Article 8
Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now
in force between it and any other of the Parties or any third State is in
confict with the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter
into any international engagement in confict with this Treaty.
Article 9
The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be
represented, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this
Treaty. The Council shall be so organised as to be able to meet promptly
at any time. The Council shall set up such subsidiary bodies as may
be necessary; in particular it shall establish immediately a defence
committee which shall recommend measures for the implementation
of Articles 3 and 5.
Article 10
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European
State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to
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contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this
Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by
depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the
United States of America. The Government of the United States of
America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such
instrument of accession.
Article 11
This Treaty shall be ratifed and its provisions carried out by the Parties
in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. The
instruments of ratifcation shall be deposited as soon as possible with
the Government of the United States of America, which will notify all
the other signatories of each deposit. The Treaty shall enter into force
between the States which have ratifed it as soon as the ratifcations of
the majority of the signatories, including the ratifcations of Belgium,
Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom
and the United States, have been deposited and shall come into
effect with respect to other States on the date of the deposit of their
ratifcations.
Article 12
After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter,
the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, consult together for the
purpose of reviewing the Treaty, having regard for the factors then
affecting peace and security in the North Atlantic area, including the
development of universal as well as regional arrangements under the
Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international
peace and security.
Article 13
After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may
cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been
given to the Government of the United States of America, which will
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inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each
notice of denunciation.
Article 14
This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally
authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the
United States of America. Duly certifed copies will be transmitted by
that Government to the Governments of other signatories.
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