House of Commons - Defence Committee

The Comprehensive Approach: the point of war is not just to win but to make a better peace - Defence Committee Contents

Memorandum from Daniel Korski,[76] The European Council on Foreign Relations

INTRODUCTION

1. In the past decade, Britain has experienced repeated failures in integrating the political, military, economic, humanitarian and informational elements of its national power. The failures have been both at the strategic level in Whitehall and in the field. In Iraq, for example, the absence of an integrated strategy eventually led to the loss of British control over Basra.[77] Despite this hard-earned lesson, it took almost two years to effectively integrate the military and civilian contributions in Helmand- perhaps too long to make a real difference on the ground or in the eyes of the US. In many of the world's developing countries, British government departments still do not work together, and act as comprehensively as required, even when both the human and financial costs of failing to do so are high.

2. The lack of a comprehensive war strategy and the failures of in-theatre implementation have been accompanied by the Government's struggle to prepare its "back-office" systems ie the Human Resources policies, training, funding streams, IT support and duty of care arrangements, to operate in a comprehensive manner. This problem has been acute in post-conflict missions. In nearly every post-Cold War military operation, a lack of rapidly deployable civilian capabilities in all NATO allies has left military forces performing numerous tasks for which they do not have a comparative advantage. This has arguably extended the duration of their deployments.

3. These failures led to the development of the so-called "comprehensive approach." In its simplest definition, the "comprehensive approach" means blending civilian and military tools and enforcing cooperation between government departments, not only for operations but more broadly to deal with many of the 21st century security challenges, including terrorism, genocide and proliferation of weapons and dangerous materials.

4. In its first-ever cross-departmental submission on the issue to the Defence Committee, the Government argues "it has always worked cross-departmentally".[78] Though matters have improved in a stop-start reform process since Tony Blair originally mentioned the idea of "joined-up government" in 1997, there is still a long way to go. A habit of cross-departmental cooperation does indeed stretch back to the Haldane Committee that in 1918 created the modern departmental system. But interdepartmental working has not been an integral part of how Whitehall operates. The reasons are simple: political, financial and bureaucratic loyalties stream vertically upwards rather than across departments, thus inhibiting integrated collaboration. Changing this remains one of Britain's main national security challenges.

5. This paper looks at the history of the "comprehensive approach" in Britain, charting the tortuous journey to compel greater cross-departmental collaboration, especially in stabilisation operations. A journey that for a long time was trodden by mid-ranking MoD officials and military officers, allied with a small number of officials in the cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit, DfID and the Foreign Office. The paper then proposes a number of changes—at the strategic, operational and preparatory levels—required to operationalise a "comprehensive approach".

FROM JOINED-UP TO COMPREHENSIVE

6. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, governments began recognizing that most policy issues such as water use, security, terrorism, family breakdown and drug abuse could not be addressed by one governmental department or agency alone. Supported by academic research that showed issues as crime being influenced by family, social and economic factors, many governments began looking at new ways of organizing themselves to address such problems. Unlike New Public Management, the previous reform initiative, which encouraged governments to focus on performance against targets and to be more efficient at delivering services, the new wave of reform, promoted under the banner of "joined-up government", put an emphasis on horizontal and vertical integration of both policy and delivery. In the words of Geoff Mulgan, who is credited with inventing the phrase "joined-up government", the aim was to "align incentives, cultures and structures of authority to fit critical tasks that cut across organizational boundaries." In many ways, improving cross-departmental work became the administrative focus of the early Labour governments. Though this was mainly a domestically-focused effort, from 1997 to 2002 a number of internationally-focused initiatives were developed, most prominently the Global Pools, a cross-departmental funding mechanisms that compelled different departments to agree on resource allocation. In the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review,[79] Public Service Agreements were introduced that sought to compel inter-departmental cooperation. For the first time, different departments would have to work towards one, shared overseas target.

7. At the same time, however, the Labour government introduced the International Development Act and cleaved the Department for International Development out of the Foreign Office. Whatever its benefits for aid policy, creating DfID had the result of ring-fencing aid and complicating cooperation with the MoD, especially in post-conflict stabilisation missions.

8. By mid-2000, however, this focus on joining-up government began shaping the way in which key military officials thought the mistakes made during the initial US-led Iraq invasion could be avoided. In particular, senior military officials saw the absence of civilian departments—both from the military planning as well as on-the-ground implementation—as key reason for the worsening security situation.

9. Though the role of civilian organizations had been important in Kosovo, and other post-Cold War missions such as Sierra Leone, the record of civil-military integration had been a limited one. In the US, the separation between civilian and military agencies began after the Vietnam War as both the military and the civilian soured on each other. It accelerated during the Reagan years when the military began to capture such a large share of the federal budget and began to acquire both the resources and the expertise to do without civilians in most policy matters. Simultaneously the civilian aspects of stabilization were starved and atrophied. By the end of the Cold War, being aware of each other's work had been seen as sufficient. For example, the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian War strictly separated the civilian and military tasks. The US NATO commander famously avoided anything he thought was not strictly a military task, which was seen as "mission creep". In KFOR, DFID were represented at both Divisional and Brigade level. But compared to the close relationship between civilians and military officers in and after World War II—where the British Army alone had some 15,000 troops dealing with civil matters—the Cold War years and the immediate period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, saw a greater division between civilian and military roles and mandates.

10. There were exceptions to this trend of separating civil and military activities, as in during the Malayan Campaign, Britain's largest Cold War counter-insurgency mission. There, British General Frank Kitson warned: "the first thing that must be apparent when contemplating the sort of action which a government facing insurgency should take, is that there can be no such thing as a purely military solution because insurgency is not primarily a military activity."[80] Though often thought of as a good example of civil-military cooperation, Northern Ireland was less of an exception; military aid to the civil power (MACP) saw the armed forces help the police in the province, but the roles of the different units remained distinct. There may be a stronger case for arguing that British assistance to the forces of the Sultanate of Oman in their fight against the Marxist insurgents of the People's Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, showed how to effectively support an ally's counterinsurgency efforts with a range of tools, both military and civilian. In Vietnam, a number of improvements happened in civil-military cooperation including through the establishment in 1967 of CORDS—Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support—to coordinate the US civil and military pacification programs; but as described above, the political impact of the war caused a greater civil-military rift after the US withdrawal from South East Asia.

11. These missions were also the exception; during the Cold War, separation of civilians and military became the norm inside almost all NATO governments. Whatever governments such as the British, French or the US learned about the importance of cross-governmental cooperation during their counter-insurgency missions in Algeria, Malaya, Oman and Vietnam were forgotten. This division of roles may have been relatively cost-free during the Cold War and even in the peacekeeping missions in the early 1990s. The UN missions in those days were largely aimed at separating combatants, and monitoring ceasefires. They were "interpositional" and limited in scope. There was simply no impetus to dredge up previous experiences of institutionalizing civil-military cooperation. The exception may have been Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) officers attached to the British Army. But even their role became, in the words of Stuart Gordon, "progressively more narrowly defined".[81]

12. However, with the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq the costs of separation became clear. Lashing civilian and military plans together came to be seen not only as useful, but key for success. As the Defence Committee wrote: "Once the Government has made a commitment to post-conflict stabilisation, as it has in Iraq that commitment will only be effectively delivered through the planned and coordinated effort of all the relevant government departments."[82] Yet given the circumstances of the Iraq War, the resistance to greater civil-military cooperation was strong, particularly in DFID. Senior DFID officials, supported by the then-Development Secretary's resistance to the Iraq War were loath to engage with the military. The result was limited developmental input into the post-war strategies.

13. Since civilians could not be counted on to cooperate voluntarily with the military on the post-9/11 battlefield, the MoD began the search for other ways to compel integration. In Delivering Security in a Changing World, the Ministry of Defence began laying out its argument that that only by adopting a comprehensive approach to security policy, of which defence was but a part, would British interests be best served.[83] While British military officers grappled with how to get other departments involved in war-fighting, they found support from their US colleagues. As American defence expert Jeremy Shapiro notes: "in the US, the demand came because [the military] lacked some capabilities and probably to a larger degree because they were failing and had been hung out to dry by the rest of government to accomplish task that at least theoretically did not belong only to them."[84]

14. New US military thinking, spurred by technological advances that had facilitated greater sharing of battlefield information, had by then also led to the birth of "network-centric warfare"—the intent of which was to achieve enhanced military effect through information systems. If tomorrow's soldiers were electronically networked to each other, and back to their headquarters and potentially to their political masters in real-time, then, it made sense to think about their role more broadly.[85] This US push to exploit technological advances led directly to the adoption of the "effects-based operations" (EBO) concept, a quasi-scientific methodology for thinking through how to move beyond attrition and use non-military power.[86] The essence of EBO was neatly explained in The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter from 2002.The aim was to "Move away from always assessing defence capability in terms of platforms or unit numbers. It is now more useful to think in terms of the effects that can be delivered—we must consider what effect we want to have on an opponent and at what time."[87] By 2000 this thinking had percolated from its original wellspring in the US Air Force into the other military services. It has also become part of then-US Defence Secretary's mission to transform the US military into "deployable, fully integrated joint forces capable of reaching distant theatres quickly and working with our air and sea forces to strike adversaries swiftly, successfully, and with devastating effect."[88]

15. Though "effects-based operations" was about more than civil-military integration, aiming to transform military planning too, in the EBO concept many in the US military believed they had also found a cast-iron system to integrate civilian and military planning (under military leadership). Led by Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), US military authorities began experimenting with the EBO concept. Through military exercises, including with allies, JFCOM pushed its new idea. Unified Quest, a large US military exercise, sought to use the EBO methodology. The largest multilateral experiment, the Multinational Experiment (MNE) series, formally adopted an "effects-based approach". The result was that in exercise-like scenarios UK, French, German military planners had to become familiar with its language and methods. As the EBO concept required the simultaneous processing of large data sets, it found an enthusiastic audience in the defence industry, which begins looking for ways to develop IT systems to better support civil-military planning, EBO-style.

16. With the US commander of JFCOM double-hatted as the head of NATO's Allied Command Transformation, many of the ideas developed by the US staff were disseminated to allied officers. Given the close relationship between US and UK militaries, it was not a surprise that the "effects-based operations" were particularly important in shaping UK military thinking. In the discussion documents accompanying The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter, the MoD backed many of the ideas behind the EBO approach though it would be another two years before the concept of effects-based warfare was to be fully embraced. In the Joint Venture exercise, then the UK's largest military exercise run by PJHQ, many of the ideas associated with "effects-based operations"—for example the way to conduct planning—were tested.

17. In the end, "effects-based operations" were unlikely ever to survive the trip across the US in its fullest form being too complex, and too formalized to sit easily with the UK military's manouverist doctrine, and the notion of mission command, not to mention the administrative traditions in most government departments. Even in the US military it came in for criticism. For example, an analysis of the 2006 Israeli- Hezbollah conflict found that the EBO "terminology used was too complicated, vain, and could not be understood by the thousands of officers that needed to carry it out."[89] Key US doctrinal publications—such as the Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Operations, and JP 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, contain little of the original EBO concept. In 2007, the U.S. Army distanced itself from EBO entirely; Field Manual 3-0, Operations published in February 2008, rejected what General James N Mattis, the Commander of US JFCOM, called "the more mechanistic aspects of EBO".[90] But though the EBO concept never made it across to Britain in its original, deterministic form and was revised inside the US military, it acted as an important catalyst for doctrinal reforms and in Britain supported the MoD's push for changes in Whitehall. In the words of Lieutenant General Ebbe Rosgaard: "The comprehensive approach [was] a conceptual evolution stemming from the Effects-Based Approach."[91]

STOP-START REFORMS

18. Yet even though the push for a "comprehensive approach" was part of an intellectual push for greater cross-governmental cooperation that had clear support at the highest levels of the Labour government, particularly in No 10, it initially found little support among senior officials in the FCO, and DFID. The result was a process of stop-start reforms. In the early Blair governments a number of initiatives were developed; cross-departmental funding mechanisms such as the Global Pools, inter-departments units such as the jointly-run FCO/DFID Sudan Unit and the Stabilization Unit (then called the Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit), as well as the first UK-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Mazar-i-Shariff in northern Afghanistan, which brought together civilian and military staff.

19. But from mid-2005 until mid-2007, the desire to push further seemed to be on the wane at the time when the MoD was gearing up to advocate additional reforms, and when operational experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan suggested the necessity for further initiatives. When the Cabinet Office's produced a report about countries-atrisk of instability and sought to promote inter-departmental policy, it was blocked by senior FCO officials. As Andrew Dorman has written: There was "little support for this initiative outside the MoD, with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development markedly cool about the idea."[92]

20. This division between the FCO and DFID on the one hand and MoD on the other led, to a number of clashes between departments. When officials from the FCO, the Stabilization Unit and the MoD sought to develop principles for what the "comprehensive approach" would in reality entail, they were quickly slapped down by senior Cabinet Office officials, who were keen to preserve their institutional role; there could be talk of "a comprehensive approach", but certainly not "the Comprehensive Approach". Officials participating in the FCO-led Comprehensive Approach Working Group tried to develop a number of initiatives, but were often blocked. A proposals by the MoD's doctrine-writers—the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre—to draft a doctrine on the "comprehensive approach" for the military, was watered down from a full doctrine to the lesser category of a "Concept Note." Many senior officials felt that anything else, would be allowing the MoD to abrogate the right to tell other departments how to operate.

21. Though the Stabilization Unit—in many ways the holder of the cross-departmental flame alongside the MoD—tried to change the way government assessed conflicts, planned missions trained and prepared staff and allocated resources, the 30-person unit was allowed to get on with its job, but little more. The unit's planning methodology—the Joint Stabilization Assessment (JSA), which was designed to ensure inter-department in-put and thus create cross-departmental assessments—was rejected by DFID, which favoured its own analytical tools. Few senior officials attended the unit's civilian-led exercise and the Stabilization Unit's role in both Basra and Helmand was initially limited to providing contracted staff for the PRTs, rather than to assist in developing cross-governmental plans. It became, in the words of one employee, "a body shop", but only one of many across government since the FCO and DFID for a long time kept control of deployments into missions and posts seen as "theirs" eg OSCE missions for the FCO.

22. Operationally, the "comprehensive approach" also experienced a number of set-backs. In late 2005 when the first UK Plan for Afghanistan was being developed, there had been some indications it would become a genuinely integrated, cross-departmental product. Some of the team members tasked with drafting the plan came from the MoD and had, in the old jobs, pushed for the "comprehensive approach". But in the end, despite widespread consultations both across Whitehall and with the British Embassy in Kabul, the plan became an amalgamation of (in some cases already existing) departmental plans, stitched together at the seams; it was a new, integrated plan shaped by a joint assessment of the problems. (As such, it dovetailed the international community's disaggregated efforts in Afghanistan until 2008).

23. At ministerial level, a so-called "Reid Committee" named after the then- Defence Secretary brought FCO, DFID and Treasury ministers together to explore Stage III in NATO's plan to extend ISAF into Helmand and what role Britain should take on. Once Cabinet approved the UK role, planning for the deployment of British forces to Helmand was led by a PJHQ-run Preliminary Operations Team, working closely with a civilian team staffed by the Stabilisation Unit. But upon arrival in theatre, 16 Air Assault which led the Helmand Task Force, ignored the cross-departmental plans and drafted their own plan without input from the FCO and DFID. It would take months and several redrafting sessions before a genuine cross-departmental plan was agreed and the UK Civil-Military Mission Helmand (CMMH) in Lashkar Gah was set up. In 2006 in Iraq the US push to establish PRTs met with resistance from the FCO and DFID, who reluctantly agreed to sponsor a UK run PRT in Basra and in the end, endowed it with few of the resources and little of the political support necessary to work. DFID, for example, insisted on keeping the majority of its programmes and staff outside the PRT structure. Only in 2007 did DFID integrate most of its work into the PRT. By then, however, the team had been evacuated from the Basra Palace and re-established in the Contingency Operating Base at Basra Airport, with little room to visit Basra city or deliver programmes.

24. The period between 2005 and 2007 was in many ways a low period in the British government's effort to act comprehensively. This did not preclude a range of initiatives to improve cross-departmental cooperation, especially in the field, where collaboration across departments and professions is often easier than in London. For every iteration of the "Better Basra Plan", the guiding document of the UK's post-war intervention in the province, new cross-department initiatives were developed. In 2006, for example, the divisional headquarters for British forces in Basra created a second Chief of Staff position, at lieutenant-colonel rank, to ensure integration between the General Officer Commanding, the Council-General and the PRT Leader. To coordinate departmental input further, the three senior British officials used to meet regularly in the Southern Iraq Steering Group, chaired by the Council-General. In a similar vein, at the British embassy in Kabul in late 2005 an office was established, led by the MoD and staffed by the Stabilization Unit, to track progress of the UK's Plan for Afghanistan. Later in the autumn of 2006, a review of the Government's plan (and lack of progress) in Helmand was run by an interdepartmental team. But all these initiatives seemed to work against the grain of what senior officials wanted and therefore had only modest results.

AN ANGLO-DANISH ALLIANCE

25. Feeling little support for a "comprehensive approach" at home, British military officials began reaching out to their foreign counterparts. Using the UK presidency of the European Union in the beginning of 2005, the MoD managed to put the idea of a "comprehensive approach" into EU documents and processes—before it had even become official British policy.

26. Work on a "comprehensive approach" inside the EU and on the "integrated approach" inside the UN had been underway since 2003 and 2000 respectively.[93] The Brahimi Report on UN peacekeeping has advocated integrated missions, bringing all the UN agencies in one theatre under one senior UN official. In November 2003, an EU policy framework had similarly emphasized the need for close civil-military cooperation not just as a culture of coordination, but as a prerequisite for effective crisis responses. With the experience of each new ESDP operations, the pressure for the "comprehensive approach" inside the EU grew, and a 2006 paper by the Council Secretariat of the EU emphasized the need for EU actors in theatre and cross-support and synchronization of activities in theatre. By then both the EU Special Representative to Bosnia, Lord Paddy Ashdown, and his counterpart in Macedonia, had taken steps to ensure than their remit extended (in some cases unofficially) over the work of the European Commission and the EU's police missions. In Bosnia, Lord Ashdown had also constituted a Board of Principals to draw-in all the international organizations working in-theatre, including NATO, and the OSCE. But given Britain's role as one of Europe's main military powers and as a key player, alongside the French, at the St Malo Summit that kick-started ESDP, London's advocacy of a "comprehensive approach" to the EU's military approach turned an ad hoc field-based practice into dogma.

27. In pushing its ideas internationally, British officials found a ready partner in the Danish government, which under its 2003 EU presidency had originally pushed for greater civil-military cooperation (in part because of the Danish opt-outs from ESDP) and was keen to go further. From 2005 onwards, Danish officials began advocating for what they called "Concerted Planning and Action", or CPA, in NATO. Though the "comprehensive approach" was described as being "the basis of the Alliance's security policy" in NATO's 1991 Strategic Concept, this had been more focused on having a political and a military approach to the former Warsaw Pact states, rather than integrating different instruments of power. CPA was explicitly about integrating departmental in-puts. In the summer of 2005, the Danish government organized a conference in Copenhagen to move the discussions on. By the spring of 2006, five states—Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway and Slovakia—joined the growing chorus of allies pressing for a codified plan of action inside NATO on the "comprehensive approach."

THE US GETS SERIOUS

28. Meanwhile in the US, the failures of the Iraq War were leading to a clamour for inter-agency reform. A number of independent and bipartisan studies highlighted the problems in the current National Security Council system including the 1995 bipartisan Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces, the 1997 National Defense Panel, the 2001 US Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, CSIS's report Beyond Goldwater-Nichols, the Defense Science Board's Transition to and from Hostilities and the Princeton Project on National Security.[94] Congressional and executive studies also underlined the need for improved interagency collaboration.[95] In Congress, the calls for reform grew particularly loud. Ike Shelton, the powerful Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, began making clear he did not think the US had the necessary civilian capacity and Senators Richard Lugar and Joe Biden sponsored bills to create a dedicated organisation in the US administration to take responsibility for inter-agency missions.

29. Reluctant at first, the Bush administration eventually began a series of reforms to change the way the US government (both civilian and military) prepared for, conceptualized and implemented stability operations. As then Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral EP Giambastiani conceded: "at the federal level we can improve upon our structure, authorities, and tools to more effectively integrate executive branch actions."[96] The initial shuffling of bureaucratic chairs turned on efforts to implement National Security Presidential Directive 44, DoD's Directive 3000.05 (a new policy for stability operations), the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), and Condoleezza Rice's "Transformational Diplomacy" including USAID reforms, the establishment of the Office of the Director for Foreign Assistance and the "double-hatting" of its Director as USAID Administrator as well as the establishment of the State Department's Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.

30. Many of the problems in the interagency process were seen as similar to those experienced by the Department of Defense (DoD) prior to Congress passing the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (GNA). And much like in the run-up to the passage of Goldwater-Nichol Act, there wan an increasing sense of urgency. As Michelle Flournoy, who was to become Pentagon's third highest-ranking official, observed in 2004, "there has been a rising chorus of calls for a "Goldwater-Nichols II" for the national security agencies within the U.S. Government."[97] Former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made a similar link:" The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation led to greater "jointness" and interdependence in the Department of Defence among the four services, but it has taken 20 years to begin to fully realize its potential. The broader [US government] structure is still in the industrial age and it is not serving us well." He went on to "recommend ways to reorganize both the executive and legislative branches, to put us on a more appropriate path for the 21st century."[98]

31. This push eventually led to Congress funding a sweeping study of the interagency system and its problems; the Project on National Security Reform published a significant study, while many its board members—such as General James L Jones, Admiral Dennis C Blair, and James B Steinberg—brought their ideas into the new Obama administration. Combined with the support of Defence Secretary Robert Gates for increased State Department and USAID funding and General David Petraeus' practice of interagency cooperation in Iraq, under Barack Obama the US formally endorsed a "smart power" approach to foreign policy, with diplomacy in the vanguard as well as development and military power. What had begun in the second Bush administration as a set of low-profile initiatives to improve inter-agency cooperation would become the Obama administration's strategic intent.

32. But in 2006, with the US beginning to pushing for more civil-military cooperation, in November of that year NATO leaders formally acknowledged the need for the Alliance to adopt "effects-based operations" in their Comprehensive Political Guidance. Events culminated in the first articulation of the "comprehensive approach" at the Riga Summit in November 2006. Nearly two years later at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008, allied leaders endorsed an Action Plan for the development and implementation of NATO's contribution to a "Comprehensive Approach". Several areas of work were identified including: planning, lessons learning, training, cooperation with external actors and communications.

33. At the most recent Strasbourg/Kehl Summit almost every operation was described as requiring a "comprehensive approach", whether it be NATO's Afghan operation or the fight against piracy off the coast of Somalia. NATO leaders tasked the North Atlantic Council to prepare an interim report for Foreign Ministers in December 2009 and "to report at our next Summit on further progress with regard to the implementation of the Action Plan and NATO's ability to improve the delivery of stabilisation and reconstruction effects. Perhaps just as important, at Strasbourg/Kehl NATO leaders also endorsed the establishment of a NATO Military Training Mission in Kabul, taking an important step in providing the kind of police reform assistance than many in the alliance had, until then, hoped would be delivered by other international organizations. As work begins on NATO's new Strategic Concept, the assumption is that the "comprehensive approach" will, in the words of German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, become "a core element".[99] Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the new Secretary General, is also said to see progress inside NATO on the "comprehensive approach" as an important priority for this tenure.

COMPREHENSIVENESS COMES HOME

34. Concurrently, as the "comprehensive approach" was adopted in the EU and NATO, and the issues became a growing US concern not to mention indispensable in the field, from 2007 support for the concept grew in Whitehall. Recently out of office, David Omand, the Prime Minister's former Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, had elaborated on the requirements for reform, proposing the establishment of a Prime Minster's Department, improved Cabinet committees, and the creation of an NSC-like office[100] Quoting Field Marshal Alan Brooke, Winston Churchill's defence chief, Omand also called for process to support "grand strategy", that is an improved, interdepartmental planning process.

35. The call for reform was picked up by the Conservative Party, which in 2006 published a paper demanding the establishment of "a UK National Security Council".[101] In the paper, Pauline Neville-Jones, an adviser to the Conservative leader, wrote: "the quality of some policy and of contradictions between component parts of it, leads one to question the adequacy of the security policy making process itself." This was echoed by Charlie Edwards, who argued in a report that while "departments have begun to develop a more joined-up approach to this interconnected world, there has been no obvious impact to Britain's archaic security architecture and systems."[102]

36. Picking up on the outside pressure and not to be outdone by the Conservative Party, the newly installed Brown government issued a National Security Strategy[103] and convened a new Cabinet sub-committee, the Ministerial Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID), bringing together several departments. NISID, which replaced a sub-Committee that practically never sat, brought greater clarity to which of the 80 countries around the world that are at risk of instability or undergoing conflict the Government saw as priorities and therefore requiring a cross-departmental approach. Operationally, too, there was progress. The Helmand Road Map was agreed in spring 2008. Commissioned jointly between the Commander of Task Force Helmand and the Head of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, it set out their shared framework for the UK's engagement.

37. Efforts to change bureaucratic behaviour also began making a difference. The FCO, for example, has opened almost all of its positions to personnel from other departments while the Ministry of Defence hired a number of diplomats. The three most senior officials from the MoD, DFID and FCO made a habit of travelling together, including to the UK's civil-military missions in Basra and Helmand, to reinforce the need for the three departments to work together. More formally, two reviews commissioned by the Cabinet Office were tasked to look into ways of improving the government's ability to undertake post-conflict stabilisation mission. The latest, undertaken by a specially-formed Stabilisation Implementation Team, is expected to recommend changes to the way civilians are recruited for overseas missions. This adds to the earlier assessments undertaken by the Cabinet Office led Capability Reviews, which in 2006 were tasked to look at how government departments performed, including on cross-government collaboration. Simultaneously, the Stabilisation Unit has seen its role expand. It is now responsible for recruiting, preparing and deploying most of the civilian experts into the integrated Civilian/Military Mission in Helmand. The seriousness with which the "comprehensive approach" is being taken can also be seen in the increased levels of ministerial interest in the "comprehensive approach", not just in the field. For example, several ministers attended the military exercise Joint Venture 08, unthinkable for non-MoD ministers a couple of years ago.

BUT PROBLEMS REMAIN

The British Situation

38. The history of the "comprehensive approach" has been a tortuous one, characterised by lobbying by the military and recalcitrance in the other government departments. Yet despite significant initiatives to improve cross-governmental cooperation both in London and the field, the current system is still riddled with problems. Though there is now a National Security Strategy, how it relates to the FCO's Strategic Priorities and the MoD's Defence Reviews remains unclear. Whitehall uses at least five different computer/network systems (eg Fire crest, DII, DII Secret, IMN, GSI, DFID, etc) and can therefore only transfer classified documents and briefs interdepartmentally with the greatest difficulty.

39. Terminology is also as different between government departments as between countries. There are still insufficient incentives for staff to gain experience in other departments. Those that do undertake cross-departmental postings often feel they are "forgotten" by the home department or come to be seen as less departmentally loyal. On the ground, cooperation is also hindered the different departments' approaches to duty of care ie the rules that govern the safety of their staff. Though often deployed together, what a MoD civilian, a DFID official and an FCO diplomat—let alone an employee of the security services—are allowed to do still varies, though improvements have taken place in the specific case of Helmand.

40. There have been initiatives to compel departments to think about projects jointly (eg by pooling funds). However the majority of funds to be used in conflict environments are still allocated to DFID, which is circumscribed by the strictures of the International Development Act that mandates that funds have to focus on poverty-alleviation. Though this need not, in fact, constrain spending decisions, it has bred an organisational culture inside DFID that militates against spending resources in countries-at-risk of instability as well as alongside the military. As Ann M Fitz-Gerald writes: "Based on DFID's role as an international development agency, there is only limited overlap and convergence between DFID policies and foreign policy priorities."[104] It is hard to see how anything else than statutory change can help engender a new culture inside the department.

41. Policy is stove-piped both in the development and implementation phases; the few cases of successful cross-departmental cooperation have required a calamity or the direct interest of either No. 10 or a Secretary of State. Though both the FCO and DFID have undergone considerable changes, especially under David Miliband and Douglas Alexander, the two organisations are often, at odds. The Foreign Office continues to see its role as policy-making and struggles with implementation. It often prefers a reporting role does not have the project management skills to design and implement reform and capability-building programmes. Few ambassadors have worked in other government departments, let alone DFID. DFID, in turn, has begun to play a political role in many countries—especially in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa but (as noted above) it remains constrained by the International Development Act and by a culture that is suspicious of the national interest. Yet its programmes are often not as coordinated with the rest of government as necessary or staff equipped to play a political and representational role. None of the Whitehall departments have yet fulfilled Prime Minister Brown's promise, made as part of the unveiling of the UK's National first Security Strategy in 2008, that a 1000-person register of civilians to be deployed in post-conflict missions would be created.

42. Furthermore, coordination is weak between those departments that focus on foreign issues (FCO, DFID, MoD) and those that focus on the UK (eg the Home Office). Perhaps most problematically, there is no oversight organization to ensure that the myriad of agencies, departments, and organizations have the capabilities to work together. For example, though Britain has backed EU-led police reforms throughout the Balkans, the connection to domestic law enforcement has been weak.

43. Only in Albania has Britain deployed a large Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) team and runs the EC-funded Police Assistance Mission of the European Community to Albania (PAMECA). Policy-wise, the Cabinet Office, which has taken on more responsibility since the first Blair Government, does not have the staff or authority to fulfil its expanding mandate. With Parliament's oversight divided along departmental lines—both in terms of resources allocation, agenda and committee mandates—the incentives towards inter-departmental cooperation are not as strong.

The International Situation

44. The "comprehensive approach" has also run into problems internationally, especially in NATO. Though the process of getting the Alliance to agree the concept though policy documents was not straightforward, it may prove to have easy compeered to implementing many of the commitments. There are several reasons. First, NATO allies still disagree on what the "comprehensive approach" really means in practice. To the US it has become another, more EU-friendly word for counterinsurgency operations. To many European governments, however, it has had little effect on the way they conduct military operations. Though many allies have established PRTs, only those in RC South have sought to genuinely integrate civilian and military work, rather than simply improve coordination. As a non-paper circulated by the Danish government notes: "Countries view CA [the comprehensive approach] from different perspectives and employ different definitions of these efforts, eg, counter-insurgency in Helmand Province is not directly comparable to civil-military efforts in Northern Afghanistan, for example.[105] Now that NATO has to move towards implementation, problems are likely to emerge.

45. Second, though many allied governments talk about the need to be comprehensive, many if not all lack the basic civilian capabilities to complement a military strategy. In 2008, all the EU government said they had 6050 police officers on the books and ready to be deployed. They deployed reported 1422. Similarly, 939 Rule of Law experts were reportedly on stand-by; only 132 were deployed. In total, 11.112 were reported as part of the EU's Civilian Headline Goal 2008, but only 1928 were in the end sent to the field. Europe's genuinely "civilian powers"—measured by money spent, civilians deployed and the extent to which "back-office" systems are being reformed to facilitate cross-government cooperation—are Britain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Norway. But if other allies and partners do not build civilian capacities, NATO will struggle be comprehensive.

46. Third, NATO will struggle to be more comprehensive without a working relationship with the EU. Many key NATO allies like France and Germany will resist building civilian inside NATO, preferring to keep the Alliance focused on its military roles. This will remain the case even now that France has re-joined NATO's military structures. So a new NATO-EU link has to be forged. Forging such a link will, of course, be no easy feat. Turkey, Cyprus and Greece have blocked greater cooperation. Progress towards a resolution of the conflict is on-going and may be helped by behind-the-scenes international support but overt involvement is unlikely to help. No break-through though is likely in the immediate future. And though President Sarkozy is serious about France's integration into NATO's military structures, recalcitrant diplomats, for whom opposing NATO and championing ESDP has been a longstanding article of faith will need time to adjust. To this day, French and some other European diplomats prefer to discuss political issues elsewhere than NATO.

47. The fourth problem is operational. European governments are reluctant to commit additional troops, civilian personnel and resources to the Afghan mission. As a result it is not unlikely the US will increasingly see NATO not as a full-spectrum operator, and an alliance in need of a "comprehensive approach", but as a niche provider of peacekeeping missions in the already-stabilised Balkans and merely as a provider of security assistance in out-of-theatre missions such as NATO's ISAF.

REFORMS REQUIRED

48. In future, it will be necessary to match the most talented people to the threats Britain faces and make sure they bring a comprehensive approach to the problems of security. For lack of a better word, more "comprehensiveness" will need to be built into the way the British government recruits, trains, gives incentives and promotes civil servants—so a new generation of officials can be brought up to work differently. But rather than developing diplomats, soldiers, or development workers—or trying to teach each cadre of about the other—it may be necessary in the long-term to go further and develop officials who are equally at home in all government departments and who are encouraged to work together and in each other's offices in order to progress through the ranks.

49. The way to maintain departmental expertise and encourage cross-departmental working could be through a new National Security "Fast Stream" (like the old European track) of officials who would specialise in cross-departmental work. A subset of such a cadre could be more operational and be the in-house reserve for deployments; though the staff would not necessarily need to be uniformed, they may have to require military-level training and perhaps even carry weapons for self-protection such as CIMIC officers. This, however, is unlikely to create enough manpower for current deployments. So in future, Britain also needs to consider a civilian reserve, much like the US, with experts on stand-by contracts.

50. These are all long-term and costly initiatives. In the short-term, a cross departmental doctrine for stability and reconstruction missions should be developed for all departmental staff to follow in overseas missions. The US Institute for Peace has begun developing such doctrine for the US administration; there ought to be a British and perhaps even a NATO variant. A similarly short term measure would be to require Permanent Secretaries and their Deputy Permanent Secretaries in DFID, MoD, the Home Office and FCO to come from different departments.

51. Ultimately, this "bottom-up" approach needs to be accompanied by a "top down" transformation and integration of the entire national security apparatus. Any tangible success in facing the threat of the 21st Century requires that the inherently stove-piped Cold War institutions are torn-down and recreated. This means beefing up the centre of government, specially the Cabinet Office, which should be turned into a National Security Council staff as in the US administration. Such a staff could be led by an elected or appointed minister, who would also act as the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, supported by a National Security Director, from the ranks of the Civil Service. Unlike the Cabinet Office today, which has comparably few senior officials, a National Security Council staff ought to be staffed by several Senior Principal Action Officers at SCS1 grade, each covering a "mission areas" (eg a regional area like Afghanistan and Pakistan or thematic policy areas like non-proliferation) and have a Long-Term Planning Staff specifically dedicated to, and trained for, inter-departmental long-term mission planning.

52. Outside government, but reporting to the Prime Minister through the National Security Adviser ought to be a Comprehensive Security Board, led and staffed by respected senior ex-generals, former diplomats and past politicians who can given outside in-put into policy, and undertake occasional in-depth studies (including out of their own volition). The Government's National Security Forum, chaired by Lord West of Spithead, has taken a long time to be established, but may form a useful basis for a more independent Comprehensive Security Board. New structures also need to be established to ensure cross-departmental lessons are learnt and acted upon. One way could be to appoint, in National Security Council staff, a Chief Lessons Learning Officer, who would attend Cabinet discussions of military and civilian deployments. In time, it may be worth considering turning the Defence Academy into National Security University for all departments, with the top position alternating at least between MoD, FCO, and DfID, but preferably among all Whitehall departments.

53. In Parliament, a cross-departmental, perhaps even a joint National Security Select Committee of both the Houses ought to be set-up, led by a former Secretary of State and with a substantial staff, including secondments from a range of departments and the military. There also ought to be debates specifically on cross-departmental issues, and the development of a comprehensive National Security Budget with the Permanent Secretaries of FCO, MoD and DFID as joint Accounting Officers. In due course, it may also be necessary to consider a National Security Act, but the first step should be a comprehensive National Security Review, which examines all the departments from a perspective of cross-department delivery. From this can flow a Defence Review and other departmental plans.

54. Finally, the way British stabilisation missions are run, especially in the field, needs to be changed. The idea of a "lead minister" with responsibility for one operation has shown not to work either in Britain (or in the US). An alternative is to have empowered Prime Ministerial Regional Envoys. Or in the cases where Britain has a large-scale, multi-departmental commitment, like Afghanistan, to have Resident Ministers, such as Harold Macmillan's role in Austria, Duff Cooper's in Singapore and Oliver Lyttelton's in Cairo during World War II. These individuals would have the clout to manage all departmental interests, and have a direct link to Parliament.

55. For smaller missions, such as in Sierra Leone, Albania or Bosnia-Herzegovina, a number of short-term steps could also be taken to forge greater cross-departmental cooperation. In places where a cross-departmental is considered a priority, diplomats should have had cross-departmental experience to be eligible for the ambassador's post. Furthermore, as a norm an embassy's leadership—that is, the Ambassador, the DFID Head of Office, the Defence Attaché and the Head of Station should be appointed (though not necessarily deploy to Post) at the same time and attend pre-posting training together. By the same token, there should be a process of 360 performance reviews of all these posts, ensuring that judgments on performance are made from a cross-departmental perspective.

Changes inside EU and NATO

56. Internationally, reforms are needed in both NATO and EU and at various levels. Most importantly, however, will be the building of the necessary civilian capacity. As many countries do not prioritise the build-up of civilian capabilities, it may be necessary key to encourage a certain level national institution-building. To do so, EU and NATO governments could mandate the creation of National Action Plans, covering the structure, staffing and funding for dealing comprehensively with stabilisation missions. The plans could be modelled on the National Action Plans against poverty and social exclusion, which were submitted by ten countries in July 2004. The plans would have to be measured against common objectives, much like the anti-poverty aims agreed at the EU Nice European Council in 2000. If it proves too contentious to reach agreement on mandatory plans, it may be worthwhile beginning with voluntary submissions, perhaps with Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain agreeing to submit plans to galvanise the effort.

57. Closely tied to the notion of National Action Plans is the idea of organising a "peer review" of each plan, much like OECD peer reviews, which monitor OECD members' efforts and performance in the area of development co-operation. Each EU and NATO country would be critically examined approximately once every four years, allowing five or six plans to be examined annually. The reviews would be conducted by other EU countries—eg Germany would review Sweden's plan with either the EU Council Secretariat or NATO HQ functioning as the secretariat to the process and reports presented and discussed either by country representatives.

58. Learning lesson from past and even on-going mission will also be crucial to improve both NATO's and the EU's ability to undertake missions comprehensively. In the EU, the lesson learning process has been ad hoc and dangerously politicised. In future, there will have to be a standardised lesson learning process, a dedicated staff inside the EU Council Secretariat and even deployed Lesson Learning Officers in each mission (like in UNMIK). But in the short-term, the EU-ISS should be expanded with a Brussels-based, unit headed by dedicated to the on-going analysis of missions, with results discussed by allied governments.

59. The system that British leaders use to manage the instruments of national power, and the manner in which Parliament oversees and funds the governmental system, do not permit the comprehensive working required to protect Britain and its interests in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. By the same token, many of the international institutions are no longer up to the new tasks. While many improvements have taken place, especially in recent years, both systems still bear the hallmarks of being created to fight the Cold War. Many of the assumptions underpinning these systems are no longer valid. None more so than the departmental focus and the separation of civilian and military instruments. From 9/11 to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and emerging threats to the homeland, 21st-century national security challenges demand more effective communication across traditional organizational boundaries. Meeting these challenges requires a common vision and organizational culture and better integration of expertise and capabilities. That means making the "comprehensive approach" the standard approach both in Britain and internationally within NATO and the EU.

22 June 2009

76 Daniel Korski is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, London. Back

77 Hew Strachan, "Making strategy: Civil-military relations after Iraq", Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Volume 48, Issue 3, 2006. Back

78 Memorandum submitted by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, 12 May 2009. Back

79 See "Public Service Agreements 30", which seeks to "Reduce the impact of conflict through enhanced UK and international efforts." The subordinate Delivery Agreement lays out four indicators, to measure progress in achieving the PSA. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr_csr07_psa30.pdf. Back

80 Quoted in Eric Edelman, "Comprehensive Approach to Modern Insurgency: Afghanistan and Beyond", address at the George C. Marshall Center, 27 March 2007,
http://www.defenselink.mil/policy/downloads/USDPMunichSpeech_AS_DELIVERED.doc. Back

81 Stuart Gordon, "Understanding the Priorities for Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC)", 2001 http://www.jha.ac/articles/a068.htm. Back

82 An Initial. Assessment of Post Conflict Operations, HC 65-I, Sixth Report of Session 2004-05 House of Commons Defence Committee. Back

83 Andrew M. Dorman, "Transforming To Effects-Based Operations: Lessons From The United Kingdom Experience", Strategic Studies, January 2008. Back

84 Correspondence with Jeremy Shapiro, 18th June, 2009. Back

85 See Brooke Smith-Windsor, "Hasten Slowly: NATO's Effects Based and Comprehensive Approach to Operations: Making Sense of the Past and Future Prospects", Research Paper No 38, NATO Defence College, July 2008. Back

86 There is no commonly agreed definition of what "effects-based operations" are. In one definition, such operations are described as "operations planned, executed, assessed, and adapted based on a holistic understanding of the operational environment in order to influence or change system behaviour or capabilities using the integrated application of selected instruments of power to achieve directed policy aims." The Joint Warfighting Center, USJFCOM, Pamphlet 7: Operational Implications of Effects-based Operations (EBO), 17 November 2004. Back

87 The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter," Cm.5,566, London: TSO, 2002. Back

88 Donald Rumsfeld, "21st Century Transformation" (Lecture, National Defense University, Washington, DC, January 31, 2002), www.defenselink.mil/speeches (accessed September 28, 2007). See also Transformation: A Strategic Approach, Office of Force Transformation (hereafter, OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military (Washington, DC: 2003), and "Elements of Defense Transformation" OFT, Office of the Secretary of Defense, (Washington, DC: 2004). Back

89 Matt M. Matthews, "We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War", The Long War Series Occasional Paper 26 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008). Back

90 James N. Mattis, "USJFCOM Commander's Guidance for Effects-based Operations", issue 51, 4th quarter 2008, Joint Forces Quarterly. Back

91 Ebbe Rosgaard, "The Danish Comprehensive Approach" in Selected Contributions From The Proceedings Of The Effects-Based Approach To Operations (Ebao) Seminar 13-14 March 2008. Back

92 Ibid Dorman. Back

93 By 2006 every international organisation had begun looking at joined-up government. See for example the OECD-DAC Reference Document Whole of Government Approaches to Fragile States, OECD Publication, 2006. Back

94 Other reports and proposals include a CTNSP study, Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations, by Hans Binnendijk and Stuart E. Johnson, NDU Press, Washington (2004) and Thomas P. M. Barnett's proposals for "a department for all else", "Wanted: A department for all else", Thomas P. M. Barnett, Knox News, February 12, 2006. Back

95 Statement of Christopher J. Lamb Before the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee on Implementing the Global War on Terror "Overcoming Interagency Problems" House Armed Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives March 15, 2006. Back

96 Statement Of Admiral E. P. Giambastiani, Vice Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff Before The 109th Congress House Armed Services Committee 4 April 2006. Back

97 Transforming the National Security Bureaucracy", Miche"le A. Flournoy, Presentation before the National Defense University Joint Operations Symposium: Meeting Key U.S. Defense Planning Challenges, November 17, 2004. Bruce Berkowitz and Kori Schake made a direct link between the problems in the pre-1986 DoD and the current NSC system: "the situation closely resembled how departments and agencies in the national security community work today". Bruce Berkowitz and Kori Schake, "National Security: A Better Approach", Hoover Digest, 2005, No. 4 Winter Issue. Back

98 Bob Woodward, "The World According to Rummy", Washington Post, October 8, 2006. Back

99 Franz Josef Jung, "Ten points for a NATO Strategic Concept", Address to the Munich Security Conference, 8 February, 2009. Back

100 David Omand, "In the National Interest: Organising Government for National Security", The Demos Annual Security Lecture 2006. Back