The Smart Defense initiative is going to inevitably confront the multiple difficulties characteristic of international cooperation. In addition to that, it will have to address the diminished sovereignty concerns of national leaders, generated by natural risk-averseness over security. Building the Smart Defense initiative on three pillars (flexible arrangements, gradualism in integration, and regionalism) will greatly increase the chances of success of this strategic endeavor.
International cooperation has always been an area plagued with difficulties. States are often tempted to free-ride on collective goods provided by some partners, they run the risk of misinterpreting each other due to insufficient information, or they may find it difficult to monitor and enforce agreements. However, cooperation in areas involving international or national security has been even more problematic. Countries tend to be very risk-averse when there is much to lose and stakes are extremely high. Security is exactly such a domain, forcing states to vigorously guard their sovereignty over national security issues.
That makes the endeavor of collective defense and security especially complex and challenging. The Smart Defense initiative launched by NATO leadership in 2011 represents an attempt to address the obstacles the Alliance is currently facing. As any new revolutionary initiative, this one will have to confront the entrenched institutional preferences of the nation-states, and alleviate their innate risk-aversion over security. For that purpose the operationalization of the initiative will need to be supported by three pillars. Flexible arrangements, gradualism in integration and regionalization are the proposed foundational elements of a viable Smart Defense initiative.
In order to address the concerns over the diminished sovereignty, the provisions for implementing the Smart Defense policy should be flexible and reflect a degree of ambiguity. That would not imply unclear policy provisions, but offer choices so that the states' options will not be bound by a rigid language. This should provide the national leaders with the ability to show their constituencies at home that national sovereignty was not restrained. It will also relieve them of any concerns they may have over their freedom of action, which otherwise might discourage from joining the initiative. A good example of a legal arrangement that exercises such properties is the human rights international legal framework.
However, employing such a framework raises concerns about the inevitable enforcement problem. The second pillar of gradual integration is meant to deal with this issue. While formally states will be offered freedom of maneuvering in crises response cases, they will have to gradually integrate their defense capabilities with their allies. The gradualism will make sure that this integration is built up in stages, thus offering time to consolidate new institutions, create new strategic culture, and cherish new policy thinking among national elites. It will create the avenues necessary in assisting the departure from the old thinking about national security. It will consolidate the perception of a collective security institution built on Smart Defense principle as an organic entity. Besides, the stage of gradualism must be action-oriented, creating a fait accompli. Starting the integration with individual units should not be perceived as undermining national sovereignty, or as being a financial heavy burden on the national budget. However, as the process continues, the scale of integration will increase. With time, the joint NATO units should become the most cost-effective response to security problems available to policymakers.
Finally, the regionalization is meant to enforce the two other pillars effect. Integrating forces and resources on regional level is an efficient approach both from the operational and political point of view. Operationally it makes sense for NATO littoral states to invest into naval capabilities, or terrestrial border-states investing into air-defense and border security. This does not mean that cross-regional integration should not be explored, but that the emphasis should be placed on regionalization of Smart Defense initiative. Security threats have also a local nature, which intensity tends to diminish with distance. It is logical to assume that member-states that are geographically close will have a higher convergence in their security perception.
While the Smart Defense initiative seems to be very difficult to implement, using the three pillar framework suggested in this paper makes a lot of sense. It explores the past successful institutional building experience, such as that of NATO and EU. States tend to rigorously guard their sovereignty and may resist giving up big pieces of it at once. Doing it in small steps and having the time to realize the benefits of this cooperation would increase the chances of success of the initiative. Provided the economic pressure on many national budgets, the gradual approach should make the necessary spending less painful and sensible.
Dumitru Minzarari is a PhD Candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, United States. He is a military office by training and completed his Master in International Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University in New York, where he focused on security studies.
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April 23, 2012
Dumitru
Anyway, I went through the five shortlisted articles. What I had to say to the editors after I read the first three is still valid. Here is my responses to the AC team that I sent back a few weeks ago. I believe you guys failed to solve the cooperation problems, and therefore you got it wrong. Your proposals have also little use policy-wise, as if stripped off the flamboyant language and the usual buzz words, they basically say "we need to do things in a better way" but do not say what ways. Increasing cooperation adds zero utility, as policymakers need to know what incentives should they use to improve cooperation and with what type of allies (powerful leaders and weaker free-riders). So I am not sure what actually is the added value of the top fives. You think this is too arrogant and unfair? Ok, look at it from the policymaker point of view - can you actually run anything new based on those recommendations, anything better than currently existing approaches, or anything feasible to implement?
More details here:
I do have a few comments on the way you designed the question and the usefulness of potential responses to this question. Technically and analytically you identified the pertinent problem of cooperation in your question 3 in an insufficient manner. There is a subset of NATO members who would mostly care about the sovereignty, but before even this problem will emerge, many members will be facing the collective action problem and the resulting incentive to free-ride (FR). Thus, one cannot answer your question (#3) completely, without considering the FR problem, and any answer that ignores the FR incentive will generate policy relevant mistakes. To put is more simply, Smart Defense initiative will not work unless one addresses both the sovereignty concern and the FR problem, which are interlocked.
Second point: without understanding what this sovereignty concern implies in logical terms (the dynamics of this issue), one cannot offer feasible and useful policy recommendations. None of the two winning essays posted so far were able to identify the core issue that generates the sovereignty concern problem. First suggests the comparative advantage approach, but it is not clear on what principle this comparative advantage should be pursued. Therefore the utility of this advice is null. Then, it leaves the sovereignty concern problem completely without answer, as the risk-averseness over security continues to loom in the background. Even if we assume that states determined an algorithm according to which they should specialize, how they can be sure that focusing on one military capability will keep them secure against threats (read it how can they be sure that other states will come to complement their missing capabilities to help them in case of a security threat)? That is, we have the traditional choice between arming or alliances which countries address by choosing some middle point, or keeping control over their own national troops. You need incentives that will push states from arming option toward the alliance option - this is the only way to ensure the true success of Smart Defense initiative.
The second winning essay fails to the same analytical trap. Because it does not identify what exactly determines the sovereignty concern it does not answer the question 3 of your competition. It claims a clear legally bounding framework will address the issue, but this is false. The NATO treaty is rather clear. Problems of cooperation rarely occur due to lack of clarity, but usually due to disagreements over the distribution of gains/costs and insufficient information about each others' preferences. In a less technical sense, states don't give up arming exactly because they cannot fully trust others, even allies, when their national security is involved - they always tend to build themselves a security insulation in form of own armies. Thus, the second essay does not propose anything at all in addition to what is not already in place, and does not even touch upon the problem of cooperation that your question 3 tries to solve. Besides, the second essays clearly indicates that its envisaged solution is not a Smart Defense initiative, but just an enforcement of currently existing NATO rules and agreements. It does allow for the states to maintain full national control over military capabilities that they have, which conceptually contradicts the Smart Defense initiative, the way I understood it was stated by NATO top officials.