I was at a conference last week in Washington looking, once again, at the role the (US) military sees for itself in disaster and humanitarian response.
It bought home to me just how muddled our thinking can be on this issue, because it is of course not an issue, but many issues.
Neutrality of a warring party?
When looking at humanitarian crises, there is the doctrinal issue of whether, and in what way, a humanitarian agency can associate with the military of a party to the conflict (or who are perceived as being party to the conflict) and retain any semblance of neutrality and general trust between the agency and the disparate populations it seeks to assist. An interesting sub-set of this occurred in Iraq in the months after the US invasion when the US was to all intents and purpose, an occupying power, which gave them certain obligations under the Geneva conventions, namely to look to the welfare of the occupied population.
The bottom line though is that close association with any military force in a conflict or post conflict environment jeopardizes an agency’s neutrality and close association with only one side’s force in the war, totally discredits the agency.
Patriotism, liberty and humanity
Then there is the debate, here in the States, between US based aid agencies and the military of their country on how they should associate overseas. The US NGO coalition, InterAciton has produced some useful guidelines on this. What strikes me though, as a non American, is how different this debate feels here from what it would in Europe or Africa. Despite all its flaws America is a nation driven by an ideology of personal freedom and betterment and by the notion that this ideology should be spread and available to all. Most Americans would subscribe to this basic political cause. Patriotism here also has its own flavor. In many European countries, patriotism is regarded with suspicion and confined to the flag waving far right. Here in the US it is central to building a nation out of other nation’s people. And then there is the relationship with the Military. In the US the military is far more omnipresent than in most liberal states. It is a part of being American, of being patriotic. It is a projection (as it should be) of American foreign policy, and as we have seen, that policy, as well as being pragmatic (protect the routes, markets and sources of a trading economy), is ideologically ingrained into the American psychic. So, for American agencies, staffed by patriotic Americans, to separate themselves from and even oppose an a-prori association with their military overseas is a far more gut wrenching decision than for aid agencies from other countries. It essentially requires agency staff to be schizophrenic freedom loving patriotic Americans in private and a neutral impartial humanitarians in public. Thus for US agencies to distance themselves from their country's foreign projection is a far harder and more courageous step than it would be for French, British or Swedish agencies.
Hearts and Minds
Of course in all the above the implicit assumption is that the military is playing a supportive role, but increasingly it is the other way round. In Afghanistan and Iraq, through the PRTs and the US “Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP)”, the military is playing a leading role. According to OECD, between 2002 and 2005 USAID’s share of US overseas development assistance, which includes humanitarian aid, decreased from 50% to 39%, and the Department of Defenses’ increased from 6 to 22%. In this scenario the military are in the driving seat and humanitarian aid becomes just one more weapon in the arsenal. Hardy a good description of a neutral impartial action.
Lifting power
Fourthly we have the role of international military in natural disasters, a role where the military’s undoubted expertise in logistics and serious lifting power can make a real difference, as it did after the tsunami in Aceh. Of course there are issues of cost, secondary effects, mission creep and the like but, when applied under the Oslo Guidelines established by the UN, there is a here a legitimate and useful role of international military forces in disaster relief (note this is not the same as humanitarian).
Defending the homeland
Finally, and so often ignored, is the very real and growing role for military forces at home in disaster response. All the science tells us that global warning and climate change will bring more extreme hydro-meteorological events which will need to more disasters. If a military’s job is to defend the nation then this defense may become increasingly against natural, internal enemies; floods, land slides and the like. Already the Indian and Chinese armies as we have witnessed this week, play and big role in this. In the US, the military plays a major role in flood evacuation and the Army Corps of Engineers is primarily responsible to most of the US major flood protection infrastructure.
So, when you next attend a meeting on the role of the military in disaster response, unpack it and differentiate. That way we can make some headway, based on evidence and policy, rather than anecdote and ideology.