The Challenge of Post-War Stabilization: More Questions than Answers for the NATO-EU Framework
Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 3:54PM 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?
