Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
Professor Mary Kaldor and Dr Bastian Giegerich
12 JUNE 2008
Q100 Lord Chidgey: You, I thought,
made a very interesting point regarding the European Union, the
European Commission, and aid, a very powerful tool in encouraging
stability, I think. Is it not the case that the jury is certainly
out on how effective aid has been in the past decade in trying
to improve security in the overall sense of states that are at
risk, and risk in regard to our interests?
Professor Kaldor: Thank you for that
question, because my argument, and the argument that we make in
the various reports that we have provided to Javier Solana, is
that implementation and capabilities is not just about more resources,
even though that is required. It is about how they are applied
and how they are used. What we have developed in our work is a
set of principles of human security which are about how you implement
human security. They are about the importance of human rights
in what you do, they are about the importance of establishing
the legitimacy of local institutions, which is absolutely key,
because one of the problems I think with aid efforts is that they
often displace local institutions, and that actually means they
are less sustainable in the long run. It is about what we call
bottom up, which means really involving local people in consultations
about how aid should be provided, where, and what strategy should
be developed. It is about involving neighbouring states, because
very often these problems cross over borders. It is also about
coherence, involving other institutions. This is what we found,
for example, when we did a couple of studies on the impact of
European aid for the tsunami. There was enough aid. The problem
was how it was implemented. So when we talk about implementation,
I think what you are doing with the human security approach is
operating in a very different way from a traditional top-down,
state-ist approach.
Dr Giegerich: Can I just add a few thoughts?
When we talk about the sources and drivers of security and insecurity,
there is actually a very important point there because the strategy
at the moment creates the impression that this is merely context
to these five real issues. I said initially that is a good focus,
but I just want to point out that a bit more attention to these
drivers would actually strengthen the logic of preventive action
that the European Security Strategy is built on. It would also
help European leaders to think through how to organise a coherent
and comprehensive response to these problems. While it is certainly
true that the ESDP cannot deal with everything, I think it is
also true that it is still part of the answer and therefore I
think it needs to address these issues. Some that I think are
worth pointing out: climate change has already been mentioned
and that is certainly a big driver but also things like exclusion
in various forms. I would include global inequalities here, but
also issues like multi-polarity, the rise of new power centres,
on which the security strategy is rather silent. It mentions them,
and that is all really. The question of, for example, how China
will manage to balance continued economic growth, internal stability
and increasing international activity. I think it would be good
for European leaders to think about these issues of rising power
centres and multi-polarity. There are certainly a few issues that
are worth fleshing out in a little more depth than they are currently
in the strategy.
Q101 Lord Crickhowell: Lord Chidgey
asked a rather wider question than I thought he was going to ask
in the area I want to pursue, but I am going to raise question
four on the list you have been given and then make a further comment
about it. To what extent is energy dependence, notably on Russia
for gas and the Middle East for oil, a source of European vulnerability?
Do these issues need to be better addressed in the European Security
Strategy and, if so, how? Having asked that question, I am going
to refer to a piece of evidence that was given to the Committee
last week by Mr Witney, when he observed: "I myself, for
example, am slightly sceptical about today's rather vogue concentration
on energy security which I think falls pretty loosely under the
ambit of what I understand by defence and security affairs, it
seems to me in fact more a matter of the organisation of the internal
gas market in Europe than something that needs to be considered
in conventional security terms. I see that danger if one is too
sophisticated and moves too far into spreading the term security,
but on the other hand it is absolutely right that things like
climate change do play a key role in contributing as drivers of
conflict and instability." I have taken up another question,
the climate change issue, but it seems to me quite an important
issue here. I understand what was being said earlier, particularly
about human security, about fragile states, about Darfur and Afghanistan.
What I am finding a little difficult as we come into this inquiry
is the connection between these other issues, like energy issues,
at the moment and the European security strategy. Are we not getting
into danger in stretching the whole thing so wide when we have
to look at the more specific threats that may arise? I am trying
to get the connection between the two things.
Professor Kaldor: I think there is a
connection actually, and I think what is very often left out of
the discussion of climate change and energy security is a third
element which I think is terribly important, which is known in
the jargon as "resource curse". I think there is a huge
problem of countries which are dependent on oil revenues being
vulnerable to huge instability. If you ask me what the problem
about Russia is, or the problem about Saudi Arabia, they can sustain
as long as the oil revenues keep flowing, but because they have
so many oil revenues, they do not need taxation, they do not have
a social contract with their citizens, and these are states that
are very vulnerable to conflict. This is exactly what the problem
was with Iraq, and it is something the Americans did not anticipate.
Actually, Saddam Hussein, far from leading a strong powerful state,
(I think he and George Bush had a joint interest in us all thinking
that), was actually leading a rather weak state because it was
a state built on oil revenues. When sanctions happened, when the
war with Iran happened, those oil revenues were steadily falling
and it was a state on the verge of collapse. What the Americans
did was just give it a final jolt, and what you have is what I
would call a contemporary oil war. It has all the characteristics
of local instability, weak state, weak law and order, fuelled
by all kinds of criminal smuggling. It illustrates different ways
in which oil can fund war—and there are lots of ways: you
can smuggle, blow up pipelines, take people hostage, and Iraq
is typical of that. Chechnya, surprisingly enough, was typical
of that. Angola was typical of that. This is one of the most serious
causes of conflict in the world, and it is not what we classically
think of as energy security. It is not worrying about threats
to us by people who are going to withdraw energy. It is about
the threats that local instability can cause to the supply of
energy and that local instability can cause generally. I think
that is a very serious issue that we need to worry about. If we
are worried about our vulnerability to Russia and the Middle East,
it is not so much that Russia is going to stop the oil flowing;
it is that in a situation where oil revenues fall for one reason
or another, there is likely to be internal instability. Imagine
what would happen in Saudi Arabia if you could not sustain that
government with oil revenues.
Q102 Lord Crickhowell: I think, in
a way, you have answered my question. You are in effect saying
that the question as far as the European Security Strategy is
not about the dependence of Europe on Russia for gas and on the
Middle East for oil. That is not the issue; that is an energy
policy issue, which is separately addressed. What you are looking
at is something different, which is the effect in states of energy
issues in a much more specific security and human affairs way.
Professor Kaldor: Exactly.
Lord Crickhowell: Thank you very much.
I will come back to it on the later question of climate change.
Q103 Lord Truscott: Professor Kaldor,
I agree with you that the real issue is not really OPEC or Russia
turning off the tap, because that is not in their commercial interests.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that Europe gets 25 per cent of its
gas from the Russian Federation. Alexei Miller, head of Gazprom,
in the last couple of days has said the price of oil could go
up to $250 a barrel. If it does hit $250, that will be a real
security issue, I think, in terms of security of energy supply
for the West, and for the EU. Looking at the European Security
Strategy, whatever way you look at energy security, even if you
look at it in purely human security terms, and given what you
said about what may threaten it may be internal developments rather
than external developments, how do think we can address energy
security? What sort of strategy could we adopt to mitigate any
perceived or real threats that we may experience from Russia or
anywhere else?
Professor Kaldor: Of course, one is just
having alternative energy policies which make you less dependent
on oil and gas, which is the solution to all three problems: energy
security, resource curse and climate change. Secondly, the problems
that I alluded to, how do you deal with the problems of oil-dependent
states and the risk of instability, I think there is a lot you
can do there. One issue that is terribly important is transparency.
We have Revenue Watch based in our office and they do a lot of
work on how to make sure that oil companies publish the money
they give to governments so the public can question them. Oil
transparency is a key issue. I think a lot more could be done
to encourage oil companies, international organisations, nation
states, to adopt co-operative efforts. The Caucasus is a very
good example of this. There are conflicts waiting to happen in
the Caucasus, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Ossetia, Chechnya, and
there you need to be making serious preventative efforts involving
dialogue, co-operation, helping to strengthen the law—all
the things that are involved in a typical human security approach.
Q104 Lord Truscott: May I ask a final
supplementary? Do you think those issues are addressed well enough
in the European Security Strategy as it stands or do you think
it could be further developed?
Professor Kaldor: I think it could be
further developed. I was going to say when Dr Giegerich was saying
about prevention, again, a lot of this is about coherence because
you must not forget that there is a conflict prevention bit of
the European Commission. There is a stability instrument within
the European Commission, and the European Commission is also addressing
many of these issues. The real focus of the ESDP is on law and
order and on dealing with outright crises, responsibility to protect.
That is what I see the ESDP as doing but in a rather broader way
than responsibility to protect, emphasising law and order, but
it needs to work much more closely with the Commission on reconciliation,
dialogue, using aid in a way that helps bring communities together.
Dr Giegerich: I have finally found something
I can almost disagree with! The first point I would like to make
is on energy, rather, on the strategy as such, and on the European
Security Strategy as such, I think it is actually about more than
just the ESDP, so therefore one might need a slightly bigger focus
here as well. I also want to try to make a more direct link to
what is commonly understood under the term of energy security.
If the European Security Strategy is about these things like freedom
from fear and from want, then one has to look at these things
as well, because there is a statistical relationship between wealth
and energy consumption, which is very clear, in the sense that
the higher the GDP per capita, the higher is energy consumption
per capita, and energy in a way fuels growth. So that is an issue
that one has to address. It is very important to be precise about
what it means. If you look at energy security in the way that
you alluded to, then it would imply access to raw materials, capacity
for refinement, security and protection of transportation and
distribution infrastructure, and all these things. The question
is, do we want that in the security strategy as such? There I
would be very cautious and point to a parallel discussion that
NATO is having at the moment about whether it should become active
in energy security. It very quickly emerged that there is simply
no consensus among Member States, and I would submit that it would
be the same in the European Union, not just because of the obvious
overlap in membership but in an institutional way as well. The
lowest common denominator, so to speak, might be to focus on energy
infrastructure security, which is a much more limited concept,
and it might have practical implications but it raises a lot of
very difficult questions, such as if in Saudi Arabia the number
of attacks on energy infrastructure increases by a factor of multiples
over the last couple of years, does that mean we will have to
be active there? They can obviously not protect their infrastructure.
These are questions that are very complicated, and I doubt that
we can find a consensus among EU Member States.
Q105 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Surely
some of the problems of coherence that you referred to, the Commission
doing one thing and the ESDP doing another, are those that are
addressed by the Lisbon Treaty and the reforms there. Presumably,
if the Lisbon Treaty survives the attentions of the Irish electorate
today, that will be improved. Can you comment on that? Listening
to your reply, Professor Kaldor, and thinking about these matters,
I am wondering whether it is quite correct if we are not lurching
from one proble"me du jour to another proble"me
du jour, the first one being energy security and security
of supply and the next one being the risks for countries with
large energy resources, oil resources and so on, because is it
not the case—and you mentioned Angola. The point about Angola
that differentiated it from Mozambique was that it had the diamonds
and the oil which enabled the civil strife to go on much longer.
In Mozambique you did not have either diamonds or oil or any other
natural resource, and therefore eventually the insurrection collapsed
into the arms of the international community. So it is not right
surely to say that oil caused the civil war. There was civil war
in both countries, helped greatly by the South Africans, but the
duration of it was enormously aided by natural resources. Given
that we cannot actually do anything about the fact that natural
resources are located in particular countries, it surely is a
little bit unwise, is it not, to suggest that this is a problem
we should address directly? It is surely another of those factors
which we should take into account when trying to strengthen governance
in countries which could be facing difficult problems further
down the road.
Professor Kaldor: On the Lisbon Treaty,
yes, that will begin to address it, but I also think—and
this is why I am so keen on the term "human security"—that
having a shared narrative, feeling that everybody is on the same
song sheet ... I was very impressed, I remember, when I was looking
at the UN effort in Sierra Leone that the departing Special Representative
in his departing note said, "What really matters is conceptual
coherence." Institutional coherence is very difficult to
achieve always, because you create new institutional mechanisms
and that becomes yet another source of competition. What you really
need is conceptual coherence, everyone agreeing on what the mission
is. That is one of the reasons I am so keen on human security.
On the other issue I completely agree with you. I am not suggesting
that oil is a cause of conflict. What I am suggesting is that
countries that are rich in oil revenues are more vulnerable to
conflict and have longer conflicts, as you suggest. What I also
think that means—and Paul Collier, for example, has pointed
this out—is that countries that are heavily dependent on
revenues of primary commodities are more vulnerable to conflict,
so that in your conflict prevention strategy it is very important
to give a focus to those countries, so issues of transparency
of revenue, all those kinds of issues need to be addressed as
part of the conflict prevention issue. One last point on critical
infrastructures. We did a big study on oil and conflict, and one
of the things we found was that one of the problems that has happened
in the past is that in the past oil companies focused on protecting
their enclaves. The enclaves were attacked and they started to
use all kinds of unsavoury methods to protect them; they got involved
with paramilitary groups for example. This typically happened
to BP in Colombia, Exxon in Aceh, Shell in Nigeria, and it was
only when they started a much more outward strategy of co-operation
and dialogue with local people, that they began to achieve security.
Actually, BP in Colombia is a fascinating example where they were
really very successful in adopting basically a human security
strategy in place of their traditional approach of protecting
enclaves; the person who wrote the essay called it "Beyond
the perimeter fence."
Q106 Chairman: Dr Giegerich, perhaps
on the Lisbon part.
Dr Giegerich: In one sense, it would
be at this point in time necessary to keep the discussion there
separated from the European Security Strategy. We will see what
happens today but if we expect Javier Solana to present a report
by December 2008, I would assume that would be a draft document,
which, if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified by 2009, could then be
adapted to take account of the changes that the Lisbon Treaty
would make in terms of the institutional set-up and things like
the External Action Service and so on and so forth. I think, however,
that the Lisbon Treaty will not make these problems of coherence
go away. It is actually very ambiguous in terms of the institutional
set-up, of responsibilities between individuals with overlapping
competencies and very strong positions. I do not think it will
go away. If you allow me one more comment on what Professor Kaldor
has just said, because I think that is an excellent point about
how energy companies sometimes have addressed these problems.
If one goes around the globe, one can pick out examples where
these companies succeeded in making the local population stakeholders
in this whole enterprise, thereby undercutting support for whoever
it was that was attacking the infrastructure. I think there is
actually a very useful model there. I am not saying it is destined
to succeed but those might be important lessons that one might
have to learn.
Q107 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Sierra
Leone, a comment: all the good work in terms of human development
was only possible because of a hard power intervention by the
UK, and there was a danger in your joint presentation of ignoring
the underpinning by hard power necessary in Sierra Leone. My problem
is that of definition, that there is a case for doing a few things
and doing them well. The definition of security 10 or 15 years
ago would probably mean purely military. Now we are extending
it. Human security is a much more amorphous concept. Where do
you see the limits? What is outside your definition of security?
Professor Kaldor: I very much take the
view that human security is a hard policy. There is a debate between,
on the one hand, UNDP, who have tended to use human security to
mean development, and it was a way of getting the development
people on the security bandwagon after the end of the Cold War,
I would argue, and the Canadian version, where human security
really means responsibility to protect. I am much closer to the
Canadian version but I do think what is good about the UNDP version
is the way it emphasises the multiple and interrelated sources
of insecurity. Human rights is not just about civil liberties
and political liberties. It is about economic and social rights
as well. It is about both freedom from fear and freedom from want.
I think it is that interrelationship I would like, so I would
like to keep the hard component.
Q108 Lord Anderson of Swansea: But
what is it not?
Professor Kaldor: What I am trying to
say all along is that we need a policy to deal with the hard issues
and I see ESDP as dealing with the hard issues. I see it as dealing
with people's personal security in their situations, I see it
as dealing with law and order, I see it as dealing with the relationship
between organised crime and political violence, and while I think
issues of human development are absolutely critical as drivers
and so on, I think that is the job of other bits of the European
Union, working very closely together with the ESDP.
Q109 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Can
I just come in on hard power? In terms of military, if you just
take one component, which is helicopters, these are enormously
relevant to almost anything that you are trying to do. The Americans
made an enormous impact on the tsunami because they had a carrier
in the area which was bristling with helicopters and could go
straight in to aid the people who were there. I do not think there
really is a difference between hard power and soft power because
at the end of the day you need the capabilities that hard power
brings with them to pull off soft power.
Professor Kaldor: I agree, and I would
emphasise that in dealing with these issues you need a combination
of military and civil capabilities. You need policemen, you need
civilians, you may be able to do things, as they did in Aceh and
as they are doing in Kosovo, with purely civilian missions. You
need them working together. Where you have the military operating,
I think they are operating in very different ways from traditional
war fighting ways. They are operating in support of civil authority,
which is what they did in Northern Ireland. I think where the
ESDP needs to go is strengthening the civilian side, bringing
the military and the civil closer together, doing more joint training—we
just did a pilot project for the EU Crisis Management Centre on
joint training for military and civilians going to Kosovo, which
was really interesting—more joint exercises, and on the
technology side I think there is a lot to be done in terms of
dual-use technology both in the field of communications and transportation.
Dr Giegerich: Can I add a few things?
I agree with the general assessment of the usefulness and the
great promise of human security as an underlying concept, which
to me would be one that not only provides a set of norms but one
that has operational implications, which is Professor Kaldor's
argument. However, I would also—I am trying to be a bit
provocative -say that human security in a way is a luxury. If
we think about the referent object of that security approach,
it is the individual, the human being. If a state—and we
are not in that situation right now but if you stay with me for
a moment—or a government were to be in the position to have
to make a choice between those different levels, I would think
that with those different levels of analysis and those different
levels of referent objects of what security is about, the human
being would probably lose out against the national level. We are
not in that situation right now but I just want to point out that
we can talk about human security in this way because of the context
that we are in at the moment. On the hard power issue and the
complexities, we can clearly see that the military is part of
the answer but it works in a way that complements a lot of civilian
things, and clearly the solution to problems like Afghanistan
is not going to be exclusively military. We can see that every
day but what we need to realise is that we are actually asking
quite a lot of the military in terms of the scope of tasks that
they have to carry out within one operation, beginning from training,
mentoring, to diplomacy with village elders, up to killing the
enemy, of which there are still a few around. If one talks about
hard power versus soft power, the challenge is to fuse these two
in a productive way. On the helicopter issue and the question
of availability of these assets, I do not think have the precise
numbers in my head now but in Europe there exist about 1,700 transport
helicopters. That is a large number. They might not be the right
type, they might need to be upgraded, they might need changes
but the key question here is how do we not just talk about getting
more but how do we get more of what is already available into
actual operations? How do we actually make them usable rather
than just have them on paper? Here is the real question of capabilities.
That, by the way, goes for the civilian side just as much. Just
to give you an example, the EU has a pool on paper of some 12,000
civilian personnel for civilian crisis management missions. When
the EU led the mission in Kosovo the planning team put out a call
for 1,375 vacancies. They got 1,200 applications from seconded
personnel out of this pool of 12,000, less than one application
per position, which already demonstrates that this is issue of
availability is a civilian and a military issue. I do not think
it makes sense to separate the discussion there. One has to make
sure that it operationalises both aspects and does so in a joined
up way.
Chairman: Lord Selkirk, we seem to have
dealt with the question you were going to ask on human security.
We will go on to the question from Lord Chidgey.
Q110 Lord Selkirk of Douglas: Could
I ask a supplementary question? You have talked about conflict
prevention. This may be a fringe issue but to what extent do you
envisage that future conflicts could be on the subject of water,
for example, dams, diversion of river courses, one country being
so lacking in water that it could find itself in conflict with
a neighbouring country? Is this more of a Middle East and African
problem, or do you see it as one in which the European Union could
be involved in some capacity, and has this been taken into account?
Professor Kaldor: I am not a water specialist
but from everything I have read, it is definitely an African and
an Asian problem, and it is going to be a huge problem with the
melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. Again, my answer would be,
whether one is talking about the Middle East or Africa, that there
needs to be serious attention paid to the issue of the availability
of water but for the ESDP, the issue is how to solve the Middle
East conflict actually, how to solve the conflicts, how to strengthen
the rule of law and states' capacity to deal with conflicts in
Africa.
Q111 Chairman: I am a little anxious
that we are not getting really quite through the scope of the
whole of our agenda. Dr Giegerich, do you wish to add anything?
Dr Giegerich: If you allow me two or
three sentences on water, I think we can see that already happening
but, interestingly, involving sub-national actors, including,
for example, in Sudan, and I would also point to Kenya as a potential
problem. There are projections that the water supply in Israel
might drop by some 60 per cent in the not too distant future,
with obvious consequences. The south Caucasus is also vulnerable
in that regard, so I do think it has implications. I am not a
specialist in this either, and I do not have the exact data to
hand but it is certainly an issue that in my organisation we have
started to look into because it is definitely concerning us.
Q112 Lord Chidgey: Moving on now
to state fragility, we have talked around this subject already
but, as a case in point, a test case, in a way, I would like to
spend some minutes on Afghanistan. Formerly we were asking you
if in countries like Afghanistan organised crime and drugs trade
are linked to the internal conflict and state fragility, which
in turn are involved around extremism and terrorism. The real
heart of the question is: does the ESS adequately address the
interdependent nature of the problems faced by fragile states?
If not, in what ways should it be modified? The background to
that, of course, is today's meeting in Paris, where of course
President Karzai is putting in a bid in for a huge amount of additional
aid, something like $18.2 billion over five years from 67 governments,
and the IMF is now reckoning that economic activity generated
by aid in Afghanistan represents something like two-thirds of
the country's gross domestic product. I do not say that is a bad
thing but it clearly skews terrifically the development of a stable
society and economy in Afghanistan. Against that background, I
would be very interested to hear what the ESS and the ESDP could
actually be doing better to try and get away from this scenario.
Professor Kaldor: I am really glad you
asked about Afghanistan, because it enables me to talk a little
bit more about the problem, which is this: that the ESS is a very
different approach from, say, the war on terror. The war on terror
is much more in a classic state security mould, and one of the
big problems for the European Union is that the Member States
are really divided on where they stand on the war on terror. That
makes it very difficult to implement the ESS. I could talk at
great length about the Middle East in this respect but let me
focus on Afghanistan, because I think that is the huge problem
in Afghanistan. Is what is happening in Afghanistan about the
war on terror, or is it about, for the sake of description, human
security? The problem is, if you take our principles, if you are
concerned with human security, the first priority is the security
of individuals on the ground rather than defeating the terrorists.
I am not saying that you do not have to defeat terrorists in order
to defend people on the ground, but many civilian lives have been
sacrificed in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and
not nearly enough attention has been paid to the need to protect
civilians. The result is that in itself has lost support and has
made human security more precarious in Afghanistan. A second principle
is legitimacy. In order to fight the war on terror—and this
goes right back to the establishment of the Karzai government—the
warlords were brought into the government, so ordinary people
on the ground said, "Why should we trust these guys who,
by the way, are all in the police and are making our security
very weak, rather than the Taliban?" So I think there is
a huge contradiction there. This is a big problem for the Europeans,
and it is one of the reasons why we need to be more explicit about
our commitment to the European Security Strategy, though I recognise
that is a big problem but I think it is very important, because
Afghanistan is a terrible mess actually.
Q113 Lord Chidgey: That brings me
back to my opening question: if the European Security Strategy
does not adequately address this interdependent nature, and you
have explained the complexity of it, how could it be modified
to better address it?
Professor Kaldor: Actually, I am saying
the piece of paper does address it but what I am really saying
is I do not think there is a sufficient political commitment on
the part of the Member States or on the part of the public to
this. Nobody has really thought through what that means in political
terms. Actually, to go on with my list, another case is regional.
You cannot solve Afghanistan or Iraq without a different kind
of strategy towards the neighbouring states. It means that the
ESS has to be integrated. We have talked a lot about the relationship
between the ESS and drivers of insecurity on the economic side
but it also needs to be related to a broader foreign policy approach.
That is not necessarily about the ESS; it is more about common
foreign security policy in general and how strong it is and how
much Member States are willing to sign up to these principles.
Dr Giegerich: Let me just add to that
briefly. One thing where one could do with a little more precision
or engagement really in the strategy is, I think, the connection
not just between these different threats but how they relate to
our efforts to deal with them. I mean in particular the effects
that, for example, terrorism, organised crime, whether it is in
Afghanistan or Kosovo, have on the missions that we send there,
whether they are civilian or mixed civil and military or military.
They obviously have a rather stark effect in undermining the effectiveness
of what we are trying to do, and I do not think that aspect is
explored at all at the moment in the security strategy, although
I agree that the security strategy does talk about the connections
between these different threats as such, but it does not talk
about what these connections do to our attempts to address crisis
situations. I think that would be a useful aspect to spend some
time on.
Q114 Lord Crickhowell: We began to
talk earlier about the extent to which the European Security Strategy
addresses the issue of climate change and some of the drivers
of insecurity. We now have a Solana mission saying we should spend
more time thinking about climate change and address it and so
on. Again, if I get the right connections, I spent a lot of time
debating climate change legislation as it was going through Parliament,
and Europe has a strong position on addressing climate change—not
everyone agrees but broadly there is a strong climate change policy.
I quite see down the road that the failure to deal with climate
change is going to throw up some crisis situations around the
world, but in the meantime there is a tendency to think that every
single environmental event is something to do with climate change,
when probably most of them have absolutely nothing to do with
climate change at the present time. Every storm that occurs almost
anywhere around the world is blamed on climate change. My worry
about all this is that we can have a strong policy on climate
change but I am trying to get the connection between an active
security policy, which should be surely addressing the problem
areas as they emerge, the volatile situations, and how we get
in to be effective in dealing with them. I have this worry that
if we have this broad "Let's look at energy issues or let's
look at climate change issues," we are going to be drawn
away or I do not see how we actually get to be keeping the focus
on the issues that are actually those of security policy. Am I
wrong in being worried about these connections?
Professor Kaldor: No. I agree with you
very much. It seems to me that what is absolutely key is strengthening
state capacities. That means not just state capacities; it means
strengthening legitimacy, and that means building the relationship
between the state and society, it means involving citizens in
decisions, it means establishing the rule of law, establishing
justice institutions that people trust; all of those things are
absolutely crucial both to managing climate change, energy security,
and what we classically think of as security issues. That is where
the ESDP's focus is.
Chairman: Can we perhaps leave the question
of commenting on the document or would you like to cover that
as well?
Lord Crickhowell: I did raise it. I asked
the question, I think, in my first remark.
Q115 Chairman: Do you have anything
to add, Dr Giegerich?
Dr Giegerich: On climate change? I am
also sympathetic to the point about conceptual stretching of what
is security, but I think climate change will function as a multiplier
of stresses on governance on national and international levels.
It will increase vulnerabilities of countries, which would then
have knock-on effects in terms of migration but also potentially
on conflict. The key is to try and mitigate these effects, not
just act when it is happening. Going back to the point I mentioned
earlier about prevention, I think it is not just dealing with
the symptoms but trying to engage earlier on. Therefore I would
agree with the analysis in the paper submitted by Javier Solana
in March, I think. In fact, the security implications of climate
change studied so far are not very well understood and I think
it is a useful area to think about. It seems to me to be a rather
crucial driver of security in the future.
Q116 Chairman: In the security strategy
the final section talks about the need to build an international
order based on effective multilateralism. I wonder whether you
could say something and to us about what you understand by the
phrase "effective multilateralism".
Professor Kaldor: I suppose what I understand
by the phrase is two things. I do understand it as moving towards
an international order. What we have seen over the last 50 years
is a coming together of international humanitarian or human rights
law and what people call a humanitarian regime, where we have
built to the International Criminal Court, we have human rights
groups, we have much more possibility for people in vulnerable
societies to be able to appeal to the multilateral regime. So
part of what I mean by effective multilateralism is strengthening
that international rule of law, increasing our capacity for enforcement,
and that also means that sovereignty is a much more conditional
concept than it ever was before. States are sovereign if they
respect the human rights of their countries. It is not as absolutist
as it used to be. It means moving towards a system of multilateralism
in which states are partners. I think it also means much greater
coherence. We have so many different international organisations,
international NGOs, and I think that is a huge problem in all
the places that I have looked at. There is an enormous problem
of swarming of all these different agencies, overlapping, failing
to do things, doing things in the wrong way, and a lack of coherence
which is actually quite catastrophic in some places. Those are
the two things I mean by effective multilateralism.
Dr Giegerich: I just want to add that
I think the irony about effective multilateralism—there
are two actually—one in the security strategy is it becomes
a means and an end at the same time, and I think there is a problem
with that. The second point is that effective multilateralism,
in the way it used to be understood in times before the European
Security Strategy, was multilateralism that required leadership
by a certain group, a smaller group within a larger multilateral
context. That is actually an idea that we should not forget, both
in the intra-EU context, in terms of when it comes to the implementation
of these issues in the strategy, but also in the larger international
context. Effective multilateralism usually requires leadership,
which then leads to a rebalancing of these questions of legitimacy
and the effectiveness of what we are doing. I think that is something
that got lost in the way that it is used in the security strategy.
Q117 Lord Crickhowell: All this talk
about human rights and effective multilateralism—how can
we actually claim there is anything in terms of effective multilateralism,
when we have a total failure to act in almost all situations in
Africa and in Burma, for example? If the situation is really bad,
and people are being slaughtered in their thousands and tortured
and brutalised, actually nothing at all gets done. It is only
in minor places where the aid agencies and so on can come in,
but if there really is brutality going on in the world, there
is a total failure now to be able to do anything about it, so
how can one possibly talk about effective multilateralism?
Professor Kaldor: I do not think there
is a total failure. There are terrible examples where we have
failed utterly, whether you are talking about Rwanda or Burma
or Zimbabwe, but I think there are huge efforts, and it is very
interesting. I do not know if you have seen the Human Security
Report but there has been a decline in the number of conflicts
in the world, there has been a decline in the number of people
killed in conflicts, and if you look at the details as to why
that is, it is a learning experience on the part of multilateral
organisations. I think there are lots of weaknesses, which I would
like to say something about, but actually the United Nations family
plus the EU plus other organisations have learned a lot about
how to negotiate ceasefires, how to sustain ceasefires, and there
is an enormous amount that has been going on in the last decade
and a half which has lessened some of these terrible tragedies.
I am not saying they have avoided it. What I do think is true—and
this is where I come back again to human security—is that
the emphasis has always been on stability, and that has been true
in military and in economic terms. The UN has got much better
at stopping conflicts. It has got much better at stabilising currencies
and preventing runaway inflation, but what it is not as good at
is the everyday insecurity that people in many conflict zones,
even after ceasefires, face: the insecurity of organised crime,
violence against women, high levels of unemployment, which, by
the way, are linked to organised crime because there are not legal
ways of making a living. Those are things that we are much less
good at addressing. I think at the heart of many of them is strengthening
the rule of law and law and order, and putting much more emphasis
on public security. What the UN is good at is peacekeeping, which
means separating sides, but it is not so good at dealing with
these human rights issues, which go on over a long period. That
is where a huge effort still needs to be made.
Q118 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: I have
certain doubts about the effect of multilateralism but surely—perhaps
you would comment on this—effective multilateralism as an
objective is a great deal better than ineffective multilateralism,
and that in its turn is probably better than no multilateralism
at all, i.e. the law of the jungle and each looking after his
own interests at the expense of others. If that is the case, surely
you have to think of ways of making effective multilateralism
more effective, not of deconstructing it. We are looking, after
all, at a review of this strategy and the question is, does the
third leg, effective multilateralism, stand and, if so, should
the European Union be showing the way that it can put more achievement
into that, get more implementation of it, not junking it?
Dr Giegerich: I think, first of all,
there is a hierarchy of objectives that one should not lose track
of, which is, in my view, effective multilateralism as a means
of increased security rather than an end in itself, but that is
my personal view. I absolutely agree there is no reason to disaggregate
this concept too much, but I think there is a tendency within
the EU, because of the way the EU works, based consensus and repeated
interaction and all of that, to favour—and that is part
of effective multilateralism—to be very inclusive. Sometimes
that inclusiveness undermines effectiveness. That is the kind
of balance I was alluding to earlier that one might have to rethink,
and I think making effective multilateralism as understood in
the security strategy into an end in itself is going to make that
more complicated. That was my earlier point. There are two other
things. We mentioned the lack of implementation in protecting
human rights and how one can allow gross violations to stand and
not intervene. Obviously, on one level the answer is that just
because one fails in one case does not mean that one cannot succeed
in another. It is not total failure, but I think what is absent,
and which might help in this regard, if we were there, is on the
one hand criteria for intervention, which the European Security
Strategy does not provide, the when, where and why. The "why"
it does provide but not in any specific sense. The second aspect
that would need to go hand-in-hand with it is a clear definition
of the level of ambition; in other words, what is available, how
often, for how long, and for what kind of missions in order to
deal with this. The European Security Strategy is absolutely silent
on that point. It mentions civilian and military means, and that
is it. A level of ambition and precise guidance, perhaps based
on human security or a concept that might provide the framework,
that is what would be needed to improve the situation and to actually
get better results than we have seen in the past.
Q119 Lord Crickhowell: That takes
us rather neatly into the implementation of the strategy. When
the European Security Strategy was adopted the European Security
and Defence Policy was only just getting off the ground. Do you
think the strategy should be revised to take into account the
experience gained since then of the type of crisis management
operations that have been conducted in the Balkans, Afghanistan,
Africa, the Middle East and Asia? What are the lessons and how
should they be learned?
Professor Kaldor: We actually did a study
of several of the missions that the ESDP has undertaken and I
would say two things really. First of all, actually it is quite
impressive. There have been some 20 missions and they have operated
in a different way, really interesting ways. Perhaps the most
interesting were the two missions in Congo, which really involved
consultation with the local population and were really seen as
neutral and impartial but they were too short. Aceh was also interesting.
A lot of good experience has been gained. The problem with all
of them has been first of all that they have often been too short—that
was especially the case in Congo—and secondly, which is
linked to their being too short, there has been a lack of coherence
either with other bits of the European Union or, especially importantly
in my view, at the political level. I was mentioning that in the
case of Afghanistan but in the case of Congo it was because there
was a mismatch between what German public opinion wanted and what
was needed in the Congo. In the case of Israel and Palestine,
this is really fascinating and it would take me a long time to
explain but actually the EU has done some very interesting things
on the ground. The ESDP mission there was to help the civilian
police, which was the only security agency keeping law and order
and there was also a mission to keep open the Rafah crossing.
These were really human security tasks but they were at total
odds with Quartet policy. When the embargo happened, the civil
police were the first to be hit. Instead you had the Americans
and the Iranians supporting different factions who fought each
other. Even though the only people keeping the peace were the
civilian police they could not be assisted because of the embargo.
Rafah was undermined by Israeli actions which no-one was willing
to seriously question. This was a real case where what the EU
was doing at a political level was very different from what it
was trying to do on the ground. The lesson of the missions is
less about the security strategy per se but the broader political
underpinnings of the security strategy.
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