Global Security: in Search of a New Vision - Center for Strategic ...

Chapter 27
The Importance of Civil–Military Integration
General Rainer Schuwirth 1
Civil-military integration, or cooperation or coordination, continues to be a topical issue, although
one might think that, after decades of U.N. involve ment, some 14 years for NATO, many years
for the EU, five years for the ESDP, and many years for NGOs, along with librar ies of papers on
Civil-mil i tary cooperation that have been pro duced in the EU since 2001, the the ory might be exhausted
and now be com mon prac tice. But that has not hap pened, which means that it is not work ing, or at least
not work ing well enough, despite the fact that every where I go I hear, read about, and of course have
expe ri enced such things as the com pre hen sive approach, net worked secu rity, a wider approach to secu -
rity, and effect-based oper a tions.
But when you look into les sons learned, you find defi cien cies in areas such as the qual ity of sit u a tional
aware ness; the seam less dis sem i na tion and shar ing of infor ma tion by actors; the scope, speed, and qual -
ity of interdisciplinary planning and decision-making processes; effective linking of political and opera -
tional (civil-mil i tary) action in a cri sis area; coor di nated infor ma tion man age ment up the chain of
command; and coordination among international organizations, local actors, and NGOs.
Thus, it may be that those who decide to take action and encoun ter a CMO are not suf fi ciently clear
about what is expected of them, or ways to improve any given sit u a tion, the require ments for doing so,
and the costs in terms of engage ment, dura tion, per son nel, capa bil i ties, money, prog ress, and set backs. It
may be that some times the tar get that the IC sets for itself is overly ambi tious.
It may also be that the IC—regard less of the orga ni za tion—has not yet turned pos tu lates into real is tic
approaches, approaches that are coor di nated right from the begin ning and that divide the over arch ing
stra te gic aim into areas tai lored to the spe cific qual i fi ca tions of con trib ut ing par ties, which also set tar gets
for those who will be helped to avoid ever last ing depend ency on sup port from the out side.
Could it be, at least in some cases, that “his tory” will be rebuilt or reor ga nized instead of our open ing a
fresh, help ful way ahead Could it be that orga ni za tions that have only lim ited capa bil i ties in par tic u lar
areas are set ting their stakes too high Why is it so dif fi cult to bring inter na tional orga ni za tions together
in a coor di nated or com pre hen sive approach This panel and the audi ence are invited to address these
issues and hope fully to come up with some sug ges tions how to do better in the future.
1
General Rainer Schuwirth is the former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).