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Michaela Hertkorn is a political scientist with degrees from Free University Berlin, the University of Heidelberg and 'Science Po' in Paris. Michaela has taught international affairs at NYU, the New School, Seton Hall University and New Jersey City University.  

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"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience" (Albert Einstein)

 

 

 


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Entries in Analyses (2)

Saturday
Dec012007

The Challenge of Post-War Stabilization: More Questions than Answers for the NATO-EU Framework

The Challenge of Post-War Stabilization: More Questions than Answers for the NATO-EU Framework

The comment below was published by the Duesseldorf Institute for Foreign and Security Policy (DIAS), http://www.dias-online.org/

The following comments regarding the so-called ‘EU-NATO framework’ and its increasing role in post-conflict peace- and nation-building and stabilization refers to a project, which I conduct as associate researcher at the Foundation for Post-Conflict Development in New York (http://www.postconflictdev.org/). The focus of my research at the Foundation is three-fold. First, it analyzes Germany’s role and player within the ‘framework of increasing out-of-area peacekeeping or peace-building missions, initiated or supported by either the North Atlantic Organization or the European Union, or both.

Some of the questions concern the characteristics of contemporary German foreign and security policy. Are there, and if yes, what are the specific limitations for German contributions to peacekeeping, such as in Afghanistan? I also ask the question, whether and to which extent, reunified Germany might benefit from its own historic experience with a successful post-World War II reconstruction process; and how we can contrast this success story with the disastrously flawed policy of insufficient or non-existent post-war planning for Iraq, plus the enormous security challenges NATO is still facing in Afghanistan where the Germans have had for a considerable time the second largest contingent among NATO allies. What might be the lessons the international community could have drawn or still should be drawing from the ‘German case’ following World War II with regard to contemporary cases of reconstruction and stabilization?

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Friday
Sep012006

The Challenge of Successful Post-Conflict Nation- and Peace-Building: NATO's Role and Potential

The following analysis was published by the Duesseldorf Institute for Foreign and Security Policy (DIAS), a foreign policy think tank at the Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf, on 9/1, 2006. Please see: DIAS-online.org

The Challenge of Successful Post-Conflict Nation- and Peace-Building: NATO's Role and Potential

This paper explores NATO’s increasing role in post-conflict peace- and nation-building, a process that started in the 1990s with peacekeeping missions in the Balkans (IFOR, SFOR and KFOR). At the beginning of the 21st century, that process has continued in the form of out-of-area missions in Afghanistan and a common NATO role for Iraq. The paper also takes into account NATO’s humanitarian operations, be they logistical support for the African Union (AU) in Darfur, Sudan, or flying aid to Kashmir in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.[1] Does NATO have the potential to steadily develop into a permanent stand-by force to the United Nations for UN peacekeeping based on chapter 7 of its charter?[2]

Another important aspect refers to the theoretical challenges for successful nation- and peace-building after both, man-made and natural disasters.[3] Important questions in that regard are how to create lasting stability?[4] How to enable a viable peace, and thus ‘win the peace’?[5]

1. The Theory of Peace- and Nation-Building: ‘Old Issues’ Re-Visited

Which lessons should and could have been learned from post-conflict peacekeeping and peace-building in the Balkans in the 1990s?[6] Jock Covey, Michael Dziedzic and Leonard Hawley observe that the commanders of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) believed it to be “essential to the effectiveness of their mission and the security of their own troops that the former warring parties see the international military as an honest broker aloof from politics”.[7] However, neutrality vis-à-vis all parties in a post-conflict situation seems to pose a dilemma, as NATO learned in the second half of the 1990s, especially when dealing with so-called obstructionists to a peace process.[8]

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