[Download] "Divided Partners: The Challenges of NATO-NGO Cooperation in Peacebuilding Operations (Report)" by Global Governance # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Divided Partners: The Challenges of NATO-NGO Cooperation in Peacebuilding Operations (Report)
- Author : Global Governance
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 294 KB
Description
In this article, I examine the challenges associated with the cooperation between NATO and nongovernmental organizations in peacebuilding operations. I argue that those challenges need to be understood as part of a process of contestation and competition over the redefinition of the "rules of the game" in the changing domain of peacebuilding. This process of contestation, I suggest, can significantly undermine NATO's ability to contribute to sustainable peacebuilding in war-torn countries. KEYWORDS: peacebuilding, NATO, reconstruction, humanitarianism, norms, contestation. IN RECENT YEARS, AS PART OF A PROCESS OF REDEFINING ITS IDENTITY AND purpose, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become deeply involved in complex operations aimed at stabilizing and rebuilding countries emerging from conflict. One of the key assumptions underpinning those operations is that their success depends crucially on systematic coordination between military and civilian actors--governmental and nongovernmental, domestic and international. The official discourse articulated by NATO (often echoing the UN discourse on peacebuilding) assumes that the alliance and a plethora of civilian organizations will mobilize their respective resources and cooperate closely in reconstructing war-torn countries. In practice, however, cooperation between NATO and civilian agencies engaged in reconstruction has been limited and, in some instances, virtually nonexistent. (1) As noted in Alexandra Gheciu's and Roland Paris's introduction to the special focus section, this tends to be portrayed as just one aspect of a larger challenge of coordination among the myriad of actors involved in reconstruction. By contrast, some scholars have highlighted the dangers of focusing too much on procedural efforts to improve coordination, to the detriment of substantive issues and challenges of peacebuilding. Roland Paris, for instance, has noted that the heavy emphasis on the question of coordination tends to conceal deeper disagreements among those actors over the desirable means and ends of reconstruction. (2)