#14 An Alarming New Norm:

National Caveat Constraints in Multinational Operations

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

Routine imposition of national caveat constraints on national military contingents has developed as an increasingly common habit of nations today, whenever countries contribute forces to Multinational Operations (MNOs) authorised by the international community. 

This practice has continued regardless of whether the international security missions concerned have been conducted under the banner and command of an international organisation, such as the United Nations (UN), or a treaty-based military Alliance structure, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).  Caveat constraints have also been habitually imposed within more informal, voluntary, temporary, purpose-driven structures such as operations conducted by an ad hoc ensemble of nations, known as ‘Coalitions of the Willing’, in which multinational forces operate under the command of only one or two Lead Nations. 

National caveats are limitation and prohibition Rules of Engagement (ROE) that are imposed by political governments on their national military forces to restrict or ban certain movements and activities while these forces are deployed on military assignments on behalf of the nation.  The caveats imposed on any one national contingent deployed to operate within a MNO can not only be numerous, but also wide-ranging in scope so that they constrain military personnel in a variety of different ways.  For instance, in the midst of a security operation, government-imposed caveats may limit or forbid entirely the ability of military personnel to:

• Deploy geographically within the operation, restricting their movements within their specific Area of Operations (AO) as well as across sectors within the wider Area of Responsibility (AOR) of the military campaign;
• Participate in a range of different types of ground, air, sea or intelligence operations (e.g. combat, combat support, security patrol, surveillance, reconnaissance, counter-narcotics, counter-insurgency, and riot control operations to name a few);
• Use certain kinds of weaponry, including heavy ammunition;
• Employ certain tactics in the field, including during engagements against Enemy forces;
• Cooperate with allied national forces in the midst of operations;
• Cooperate with native indigenous security forces in the midst of operations;
• Take part in intelligence-sharing with the Operational Commander of the military mission, or with other allied forces within the same mission; and/or
• Assist either allied personnel or civilians in an emergency situation, by way of emergency response (Quick Reaction Forces) and medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) capabilities.

As can be seen by this short list of examples, the impact of such restrictions within the ROE of most – if not all – national contingents contributed to any MNO can be extremely dire for the operation as a whole.  In particular, the negative effects of a multitude of national caveat restrictions on the flexibility of the Operational Commander to plan, act and react to security events in the prosecution of the international mission, as well as on the flexibility, inter-operability and unity of effort of the Multinational Force (MNF) as a whole, can not be overstated.

Consequently, the current practice of governments to continuously impose restrictive national caveats on any national forces contributed to international campaigns is an alarming new norm in the conduct of multinational security operations in the modern era.   

 

Caveat Constraints: A New Norm in Modern Warfare

The twentieth century was a century which gave rise to multiple wars and conflicts of varying types.  Over the hundred-year period from 1900 to 2000, conflicts between nations and peoples have given rise to: conventional total wars as in World War I and World War II; insurgency and counter-insurgency wars as in Malaya, Vietnam and Sri Lanka; proxy wars with superpower-sponsored military forces during the Cold War era, as in Korea and Afghanistan; civil wars within nations, also called ‘intra-state’ conflicts,  involving a violent contest for national power between rival groups within nations, such as in China, Iran, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Rhodesia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola and Rwanda; and limited wars such as aerial bombardment campaigns, like those carried out against Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait  (a.k.a. Gulf War I), and against Serbian forces in Serbia and Bosnia during the conflict over national independence in the Balkans following the breakup of the Former Yugoslavia.

However, despite the large numbers and types of conflicts that have arisen during this time, involving many different nations around the world, centred on diverse ideological, national or material interests, and taking place in diverse geographical theatres, throughout most of the twentieth century the existence or presence of “national caveats” on national forces committed to an international war campaign seems to have been an unheard-of phenomenon. 

It has only been since the early 1990s, a decade which saw an eruption of intra-state civil wars in the Balkans and across the African continent, and in reaction to the formation of multiple MNOs in these conflict theatres around the world, that caveat imposition has become an increasingly common feature of multinational military deployments, especially where national contingents form part of a multinational Peace Support Operation (PSO) under the auspices of an international organisation.

Indeed, according to Auerswald & Saideman, ever since the multinational security operation in Bosnia in 1992, it has become ‘customary’ for nations contributing to a MNO to deploy their forces bound by caveats.[1]  This prevailing habit has become so ‘normal’, in fact, that it has become standard procedure for a so-called ‘caveat spreadsheet’ to be created for Operational Commanders at the start of every multinational mission, in order to assist these commanders in keeping track of all the national limitation and prohibition caveat rules imposed on the various national contingents within the MNF.[2]

By 2010, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, caveats were so prevalent within multinational security endeavours that Captain (CAPT) Romuald Bomont, a French naval officer based at the French École de Guerre (‘School of War’) for French military officers, wrote that national caveats had become the ‘common lot’ to varying degrees of all military operations conducted by NATO, the European Union and the United Nations, as well as within ‘Coalitions of the Willing’.[3] 

 

Why Caveats? Explanations for the Modern Trend of Caveat Imposition

There are two principal explanations for the increasing habit of national governments to deploy their military forces on international security missions fettered by caveat constraints.

(1) The Increasing ‘Visibility of War’ & Image-Control

First of all, the global trend towards ever-increasing national caveat restrictions on military forces seems to correspond with the increasing ‘visibility of war’ since the early 1990s. This new reality developed over the decade due to a combination of three factors:

• (1) the outbreak of a rash of diverse violent conflicts around the world in the wake of the end of the ‘Cold War’;
• (2) the technological and informational revolution, which saw the emergence of enhanced methods of communication and transportation over the same time period; and
• (3) the rise of the ‘War Correspondent’ as major television news networks responded to the global situation by deploying ever-increasing numbers of journalists to cover events in warzones, armed and aided by the latest cameras, microphones, satellite phones and other sophisticated technological inventions.

The End of the ‘Cold War’ Leads to New Conflicts

Firstly, the early 1990s saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.  Between 1989-1990 the Communist Bloc of Eastern Europe, formerly hidden behind the so-called “Iron Curtain” of Soviet Russian control, disintegrated as Communist governments collapsed like dominoes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, and transition began towards truly democratic government representation.[4]  By 1991 the Soviet Union itself – the great Communist champion and superpower – had likewise collapsed, an event which signalled not only the end of the global superpower competition between democratic America and Communist Russia, but also the end of Russian support to multiple satellite Communist states around the world hitherto supported by the Soviet Union. 

The end of this global power struggle between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) removed Cold War mind-sets and restrictions and signalled the start of a new era in global politics and the ‘balance of power’.  It also, however, gave rise to an outbreak of new conflicts around the world.  As the new push for free elections, free markets and increased individual freedom swept Europe and the wider world, and the former authoritarian strait-jackets began to crumble in its wake, conflicts erupted around the world as long-suppressed and newly-freed peoples sought either their national autonomy and independence, or to redress what they perceived as past wrongs. 

In particular, war broke out throughout the 1990s in the formerly Communist state of Yugoslavia, as its former provinces of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia each sought to break away and become self-governing, independent nations in their own right.   Simultaneously, intra-state civil wars broke out across the African continent in Liberia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the Congo and the Sudan, fought from diverse motivations and in pursuit of various goals, and also involving conventional and non-conventional fighting forces and tactics.

A Revolution in Technology & Communications

Secondly, over the same period a technological and informational revolution occurred which gave rise to greatly improved audio-visual communications around the world, as computers became readily available, satellite and digital technology advanced, and the internet grew from a small novelty to a vast international information network that was user-friendly and easily accessible. This revolution, together with improved and faster global transportation methods, has accelerated the phenomenon of ever-increasing ‘globalisation’.  As a result, events that occurred in any part of the world – as well as any captured images, film, interviews or commentary associated with these events – could be quickly transmitted and diffused around the globe to the world’s population via television, radio and internet news networks in a matter of minutes.  The diffusion of information and images from their source to a global audience could also become instantaneous by means of satellite links and “live” news broadcasts.  

‘War Correspondents’ Flock to Warzones

Thirdly, the result of this combination – a rash of global conflicts combined with increased sophistication in technology, communications and travel – was that increased numbers of print, radio and television journalists and war correspondents from many different nations flocked to the conflict zones to write, film, photograph and report on these wars throughout the 1990s.

The Vietnam War had been the first ever “television war”.  The conflict was an insurgency/counter-insurgency war as well as a proxy war of the Cold War era, fought between Communist North Vietnam and its Communist supporters (USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia) and Democratic South Vietnam and its Democratic allies (U.S., Taiwan, South Korea, Khmer Republic, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand), which lasted twenty years from 1955-1975. Over a ten-year period from 1965-1975 following the deployment of U.S. forces to Vietnam, footage of the war was screened into American family living rooms every evening, giving rise to the adage that the Vietnam War was the “living-room war”.[5] 

Due to technological limitations in addition to military censorship, however, the aired footage during this era was typically five-days old and predominantly featured interviews with American soldiers, the aftermath of aircraft bombings, and scenes of combat between U.S. forces and the Northern Viet Cong insurgents that had all been vetted by the U.S. military.[6] Aware of audience sensibilities, the majority of media networks also practiced self-censorship during this period and protected their viewers from the worst horrors of war, such as images of the dead or wounded. [7]  

By the time of the Gulf War in 1990-1991, however, technology had advanced to such a degree that images and reporting of the war could be viewed and heard instantaneously by audiences around the world by means of live television and radio broadcasts. Indeed, the Gulf War was highly televised, especially by the American networks ABC, CBS, NBC and most infamously CNN. In the United Kingdom the BBC also dedicated an entire radio FM frequency to round-the-clock updates of events in the Persian Gulf, leading to the nickname “Scud-FM”. 

Due to the television networks’ satellite transmission equipment in particular, audiences around the world could watch fighter jets leaving aircraft carriers, see missiles being launched and striking their targets, and hear blow-by-blow accounts from the frontlines of bombings and combat action from war correspondents in real time on television during live television news broadcasts. This reporting was supplemented by aerial night-vision video footage of bomb strikes, captured by cameras on U.S. bombers and supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense, giving rise to the Gulf War being called the “video game war”.[8]  Five weeks of aerial and naval bombardment of targets in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, followed by 100 hours of a ground assault by Coalition troops into both Iraq and Kuwait, in addition to scenes of blood, gore, carnage and burnt-out, twisted pieces of wreckage, were witnessed live by an international audience in this way during January-February of 1991. The event marked a turning point in world history – it was the first time that war had ever been prosecuted on live television.[9]

This new norm of close and instantaneous media coverage of global conflicts continued throughout the 1990s, as war correspondents flocked to cover conflicts in warzones throughout:

• Europe in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Chechnya and Albania;
• Africa in Liberia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau and the Sudan;
• the Middle East in Iraq and Yemen;
• Central Asia in Afghanistan;
• South Asia in India, Pakistan and Kashmir; and
• the Asia-Pacific in Cambodia and East Timor.  

In the early 2000s the ‘visibility of war’ was heightened even further via the widespread practice of ‘embedding journalists’.  The new push for the embedding of journalists within military units developed in response to complaints by American journalists to the U.S. government that during the Gulf War they had been kept at the rear of the military assaults and had not been given enough access to the frontlines during that war.[10]  Up until that time, the U.S. government had selected only a small number of accredited journalists to visit the frontlines of battle during wartime. Any footage they shot, together with the interviews they conducted with military personnel, were conducted under official supervision and were followed by military censorship to remove sensitive information from being aired publicly, and thereby, leaked to Enemy forces. According to one journalist, David Ignatius, after the Gulf War, ‘U.S. media outlets pleaded that this sort of access be expanded’.[11] 

The practice of embedding large numbers of journalists into military units, under joint agreement between U.S. media outlets and the U.S. government, was devised by the Bush Administration in the early 2000s as a solution to these media complaints and pleas. Although journalists had often travelled together with military units since World War II, the extent of journalist embedding during the 2003 Coalition invasion of Iraq to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein (a.k.a. Gulf War II) was unmatched in history. [12]  As Powell states:  

‘Never before have reporters taken part in the assault on a major city like Baghdad from inside military vehicles.’[13]

At the start of the war in March 2003, a total of 775 television and print journalists and photographers had been officially embedded into U.S. force units, able to film, photograph and report on the war at the frontlines alongside military personnel from the protection of U.S. Humvees.[14]  Hundreds more travelled to Iraq as unembedded, ‘unilateral’ reporters.[15]  Indeed, as Powell states, the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ became:

‘Without a doubt the most widely and closely reported war in military history…The availability of cheap, portable technology such as digital video cameras and teleconferencing equipment made coverage of this war ever more immediate and intimate, giving the impression that events were being recorded in real time exactly as they happened.’ [16]

This meant that hundreds of journalist civilians were not only exposed up-close to the sometimes ugly business of warfare, but were witness to actions and scenes formerly experienced and responded to only by trained military professionals. What is more, these war correspondents were not only able to instantaneously transmit videos, images and personal commentary and perspectives on what they had seen or experienced back to their networks within their home countries, and thereby again into the living rooms of families around the globe, but also to conduct live on-the-ground broadcasts with global audiences including question-and-answer sessions. In this way the journalist and the personal, subjective, limited, sometimes skewed, and largely untrained ‘civilian’ perspectives of the journalist on military actions and events during the war became in large part ‘the story’ in everyday news reports.

Since then, the embedding of journalists has become a common practice around the world in many of the world’s most volatile conflict zones, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Some journalists have gone so far as to ‘counter-embed’ within Enemy insurgent forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.[17]  The proliferation of this practice has led Ignatius to conclude that in the world today:

‘An embedded media is becoming the norm, and not just when it comes to war.’[18]

Caveats: A Response to International Coverage?

These three dramatic changes in the late twentieth century have meant that since the early 1990s, the worldwide media – particularly television networks – have played a significant role in bringing into public view scenes of warfare that would once have been solely the purview of military armed forces. Complex and bloody events occurring on the battlefield within warzones can, via television or the internet, be transmitted within minutes into the homes of ordinary civilians, and paraded before the eyes of people neither trained nor prepared for the conduct, carnage and confusion of warfare.

Since government imposition of national caveats began and increased over this same period of time, it is likely that this new trend within MNOs may be due, in part, to a heightened awareness within national governments that any action taken by deployed national forces operating as part of a security campaign – including any errors in judgment and potentially the loss of life in the form of military or civilian casualties – may potentially be filmed and/or photographed and seen by both national and international audiences, with consequent political and social ramifications for the national government in the home country. 

In other words, increasing restraints on the movements and activities of armed forces deployed to multinational security operations in the modern era of warfare may reflect the desire of national governments to protect any damage to the nation’s image – or more accurately, the government’s image – despite the costs and ramifications of the restraints themselves on their military personnel in the conflict, or indeed, the effectiveness or success of the military operation itself.

Given the explosion of social media communication networks since the 2000s, this heightened ‘visibility of war’ is only set to increase in the future.  Journalists in conflict zones are now more able than ever before to transmit both images and messages straight from the battlefield into the living rooms of civilian populations around the world by means of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr, to name just a few, in addition to the traditional conduits of television, radio and print media.  Furthermore, soldiers, sailors and air personnel are themselves increasingly also taking part in filming their own exploits (often illicitly) by means of smartphones or personal helmet cameras and microphones, and then publishing the footage on their own individual social media accounts.

If the current practice of governments to habitually impose caveat constraints on their armed forces deployed to war zones is indeed directly linked to the increasing visibility of war,  this reality does not bode well for effective multinational warfare in future conflicts.

 

(2) Modern Attitudes Towards the Use of Force & Military Casualties

Another more potent explanation for this increasing habit of government-imposed restrictions within multinational security campaigns concerns modern attitudes within the current generation with regard to: (1) war and the use of force generally as a tool of government; and (2) sustaining casualties as a result of military enterprises conducted to ensure national security. 

The Modern Myth of “Bloodless” War

According to Lieutenant General (LTGEN) David W. Barno (Ret’d), the U.S. Army Operational Commander of the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) campaign in Afghanistan between the years 2003-2005 (with command over the U.S.-led Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan (CFC-A) Headquarters and over 20,000 multinational OEF forces), the prevailing myth within modern society today is that war is – or ought to be – ‘bloodless’.[19]  This attitude has been brought about by the military technological revolution that in its early phases caused the quick and decisive victories seen in the Gulf War of the early 1990s, and led to false expectations that common security objectives can be attained rapidly at a minimum or near negligible cost to national lives and treasure.  However, this attitude is an ‘historical anomaly’ compared with any other era in human history.[20]  Wars are never bloodless, even in the modern era. 

Historical Wars vs Modern Wars: The Reality of Comparatively Small Casualty Rates

Moreover, the reality is that war today is in fact less costly in terms of blood shed and lives lost than at any other time in recent world history.  Indeed, despite climbing casualty figures in conflict theatres like Afghanistan, total military fatality rates in such modern campaigns are relatively small in comparison with the numbers killed in other campaigns in recent history, such as in both World Wars, the Korean War or even the Vietnam War.  To exemplify the point with reference solely to American military fatalities, the United States sustained a total of 2,156 fatalities in Afghanistan over the period 2001-2012, in contrast to a total of 36,574 fatalities during the Korean War (1950-1953), and a total of 58,220 fatalities during the Vietnam War (1964-1973) (see endnote for total non-U.S. figures).[21]  Indeed, Barno considers the current generation to be ‘extraordinarily lucky’ to have sustained such comparatively small casualty rates overall in the Afghan War, a war that has now been prosecuted for over 12 years.[22] 

A Prevailing Unwillingness to Use Force – even among Military Personnel

In addition to an unrealistic view of modern warfare, within modern society there also seems to be a prevailing attitude of unwillingness to use force as a tool of government as a means of conflict resolution – even where resort to force is necessary and even vital.

A recent 2014 UN report has underscored this problematic modern attitude towards the use of force in a study of the deportment of UN forces in eight current UN operations around the globe.  The report found that many governments contributing peace-keepers to the mission considered the risk of the operation to their forces to be ‘higher than they would accept’, and consequently absolutely prohibited their forces from ever taking recourse to the use of force in the course of their activities.[23]  Other governments have made the use of force a ‘paper option’, constraining their troops with ‘operational and political constraints’ – that is, national caveats – that have been ‘at odds with their legal authority and mandate to act’.[24] 

This unwillingness to use force, even when necessary, has become so entrenched that it is affecting not only government decision-makers at the highest levels, moreover, but also military personnel on the ground at the lowest levels – those representing ‘the tip of the spear’.  Indeed, the UN report found that even where national governments permitted their military forces to use force in the protection of civilians during their missions, these UN military personnel intervened in only 20 percent of the attacks on civilians (101 of 507 incidents), being predominantly either ‘unable or unwilling to prevent serious physical harm from being inflicted’.[25]  When these rare cases of intervention were examined more deeply, furthermore, the study found that UN personnel were actually motivated to use force primarily in the interest of either their own self-defence or the protection of UN personnel and property, rather than their prime purpose of providing protection for the civilians themselves in the local vicinity of the UN operation. [26] 

In short, military personnel deployed to operate in UN security campaigns have proven so unwilling to use force, outside of self-defence, that they have in fact been failing to do their job – neither protecting the civilian population, nor fulfilling their assigned missions, nor acting in the spirit of the UN operation’s security mandate.

Dying for One’s Country: Outmoded in the Modern Era?

In addition to modern repugnance or disdain towards recourse to the use of force and the prosecution of war, together with an overriding unwillingness to use force by governments as well as military personnel, even when lethal force is necessary to protect the lives of civilians, there has arisen another myth in society today: the false idea that sacrificing your life for the good, safety and well-being of your country and its people is somehow “old-fashioned”, “outmoded” and “a waste” in the modern era.  In this way, modern society is responsible for both undermining and pouring contempt on one of the most noble, self-sacrificing acts any human being can ever do – to give his very life to save the lives of others.

At the national political level, this prevailing attitude within modern society towards military personnel ‘dying for one’s country’ in the line of fire is problematic for any multinational military campaign involving the use of force against Enemies.  The by-product – heavily-caveated national combat forces – is indicative of two-mindedness whereby nations are committed to a certain objective in the interests of their own security, yet are not necessarily willing nor prepared to pay the price to achieve it. 

Within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation in Afghanistan, Germany – the strictest and most notorious caveat-imposing nation within the ISAF ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – is a case in point in this regard.  In fact, in 2008 one German politician went so far as to state that the very prospect of German military personnel actually ‘killing and being killed’ could put the whole German military contribution of some 3,400 personnel in Afghanistan at risk (see endnote for an overview of new developments with respect to this traditional German stance).[27]

Caveats: The Prioritisation of Force Protection & Casualty-Avoidance over Effective Security Missions

The crisis over caveat imposition within the ISAF mission in Afghanistan is the inevitable outcome of such a prevailing modern view, what Hunter has described as a full-scale clash between ‘the need for tactical flexibility’ in Afghanistan and the preeminent ‘desire of allies to limit casualties’.[28] 

Indeed, it is aversion to casualties that seems to lie at the heart of the caveat problem – in Afghanistan as well as in other modern security campaigns – an aversion brought about by a shortage in political will or fortitude within national governments to suffer casualties in the course of achieving necessary security goals.  One is reminded of the old adage: ‘He who dares wins, he who hesitates is lost’. 

This modern trend towards the prioritisation of force protection and casualty-avoidance over effective security missions has also fed into the controversial burden-sharing crisis within NATO.  The heated dispute has divided the collective security organisation into a ‘two-tier alliance’ with two distinct fighting and non-fighting factions among its members.[29]  It has even been suggested, further, that the combat impasse in Afghanistan has created a ‘multi-tiered alliance’, based on the degree of risk that NATO members are willing to expose their forces to in the course of their operations in Afghanistan.[30]

Nations contributing to the ISAF mission have simply not been willing to deploy their forces to regions of Afghanistan where battle against the Taliban and other insurgent groups is most urgently needed, and consequently, where potential for casualties has been high.  This widespread aversion to casualties among the ISAF coalition members has forced a small group of more willing and self-sacrificial nations to bear a disproportionate cost of the fighting and the dying in these volatile regions, in order to achieve the collective mission objective of ensuring and maintaining security and stability in Afghanistan.  Amongst the military forces of this small group of caveat-free, war-fighting nations – namely, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States – anger, resentment, bitterness and a sense of betrayal have risen correspondingly to climbing casualty figures. 

 

The Caveat Bedrock: State Sovereignty

Whatever the motivations behind the current caveat-imposing trend among nations on the world stage, according to Auerswald & Saideman, caveat-imposition on national forces deployed to operate within modern multilateral security endeavours, stems from and is intricately linked to the issue of state sovereignty. 

Since the signing of the ‘Peace of Westphalia’ treaties of 1648, which laid the foundations of the current system of co-existing sovereign nation-states, every nation on the world stage is considered to hold sovereign power over their own territories and populations, including national instruments of power such as political institutions and military forces. In the context of international politics and security, this means that the government of every sovereign nation has the right to make its own decisions with regard to any military endeavour it might engage in. In addition, it means that while other countries or international entities may attempt to persuade, cajole or coerce a particular nation to act in a certain way, they do not have the right to usurp that state’s power and impose their own will or interests on a sovereign nation.

The powerful concept of state sovereignty is further reinforced by international organisations such as the UN or NATO, since both regional and international security organisations are formed on the basis that Member-States retain sovereignty.  Consequently, as a founding premise underlying their existence, it is inevitable that organisations must also deal with the ramifications of this sovereignty whenever coordinating military forces for PSO operations in support of international security.  As Auerswald & Saideman state:

‘For security organizations, the surrender of sovereignty by members is particularly difficult…countries almost never contribute forces to an alliance effort without a final say on how they are used.’[31] 

In practice this means that within any MNO national caveat constraints can be imposed unilaterally by Member-States at any time, without reference to any other nation or even the international organisation in command of the MNO.  Indeed, though some countries may voluntarily elect to do so, countries are under no obligation whatsoever to refer to, or consult with, either the overarching security organisation or the appointed Operational Commander in command of the multinational security operation in question on the matter of their national caveat constraints (for more information and analysis on this point see blog “#15 Highly Classified: National Caveats & Government Secrecy (Official & Unofficial Caveats)“). 

Consequently, while the security organisation and its officials may employ their powers of persuasion with Member-States, in order to limit or reduce these unilaterally-imposed constraints on participating national forces, in reality neither the organisation or its officials have any real control over the ROE imposed on the forces of any nation contributing to an international security operation.  With caveats, as with any other issue relating to international politics or security, state sovereignty reigns supreme.

 

*This blog is a revised excerpt taken from Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”. 

 

Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mromassey.ac.nz/handle/10179/6984

 

Endnotes

[1] D.P. Auerswald & S. M. Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, New York, United States, (15-18^th February) 2009, p. 6, http://profs-polisci.mcgill.ca/saideman/Caveats%20and%20Afghanistan,%20isa%202009.pdf, (accessed November 18, 2009).

[2] Ibid.

[3] R. Bomont, ‘Les « caveats »: Un concept d’engagement à géométrie variable au sein des coalitions est-il viable?’, École de Guerre, June 2010, pp. 1-8, http://www.ecoledeguerre.defense.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/CF-Bomont_Caveats.pdf,  (accessed 7 February 2013).

[4] United States Department of State Office of the Historian, ‘Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989’, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/fall-of-communism, (accessed 24 May 2017).

[5] ‘Vietnam on Television’, Museum of Broadcast Communications, 2017, http://www.museum.tv/eotv/vietnamonte.htm, (accessed 2 July 2017).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] ‘Television – The persian gulf war’, Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, 2017, http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Television-The-persian-gulf-war.html, (accessed 2 July 2017).

[9] Ibid.

[10] D. Ignatius, ‘The dangers of embedded journalism, in war and politics’, Washington Post, 2 May 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043001100.html, (accessed 2 July 2017).

[11] Ibid.

[12] B. A. Powell, ‘Reporters, commentators visit Berkeley to conduct in-depth postmortem of Iraq war coverage’, UC Berkeley News, 15 March 2004, http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/03/15_mediatwar.shtml, (accessed 26 May 2017).

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] D. Ignatius, ‘The dangers of embedded journalism, in war and politics’, op. cit.

[18] Ibid.

[19] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 26 August 2010, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Washington D.C., United States.

[20] Ibid.

[21] United States Library of Congress, S. G. Chesser, ‘Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians’, Congressional Research Service, 6 December 2012, pp. 1-2, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41084.pdf, (accessed 1 May 2015); United States Library of Congress, N. F. DeBruyne & A. Leland, ‘American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics’, Congressional Research Service, 2 January 2015, pp. 3, 9-10, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf, (accessed 1 May 2015).

These strikingly disparate numbers are also reflected in non-U.S. fatality rates during these wars.  For example, excluding all American fatalities, there have been 1,059 coalition fatalities in Afghanistan over the period 2001-2012.  In contrast, the UN coalition sustained a total of approximately 64,700 fatalities during the Korean War, excluding all American fatalities, over a three-year period between 1950-1953 (United States Library of Congress, S. G. Chesser, ibid., pp. 1-2; J. W. Chambers II, ‘Korean War’, The Oxford Companion to American Military History, 2000, Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Korean_War.aspxEncyclopedia.com, (accessed 1 May 2015)).

 [22] Ibid.

[23] M. Nichols, ‘U.N. study finds peacekeepers avoid using force to protect civilians’, Reuters.com, 16 May 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/16/us-un-peacekeepers-civilians-idUSBREA4F0M220140516 (accessed 17 May 2014).

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

 [27] U.S. Embassy Berlin (released by Wikileaks), 08BERLIN1542, Germany Remains Stubborn On MAP And Additional Troops For Afghanistan, 14 November 2008, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/11/08BERLIN1542.html, (accessed 11 July 2011); International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ‘ISAF Placemat’, About ISAF – Troop Numbers and Contributions  [online map], 3 June 2008, http://www.isaf.nato.int, (accessed 22 February, 2010).

It is interesting to note, however, that attitudes within the German government have begun to change in 2014 with regard to Germany’s obligations to world security.  Reappointed German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and new Minister of Defence, Ursula von der Leyen (the first female in German history to head the German Defence Ministry) have this year begun advocating an end to the ‘mantra of “restraint”’ advocated for German forces by Merkel’s former Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle.  Both Ministers have rejected this ideology, which many have regarded as ‘Germany shirking their global responsibilities given its pivotal position at the heart of Europe’.  Von der Leyen wishes Germany to become ‘a framework nation’ and is promoting a greater role for German national forces in military interventions in accordance with the principle of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’.  German commitments on the world stage must ‘come earlier and be more decisive and substantial’, Von der Leyen has argued. ‘Indifference is not an option for Germany…Germany can’t look away when murder and rape are taking place daily’ (Cited in D.W. Wise, ‘Germany’s New Hawks’, RealClearWorld,  6 February 2014, http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/02/06/germanys_new_hawks.html, (accessed 9 February 2014).

[28] R. E. Hunter, ‘NATO Caveats Can Be Made To Work Better for the Alliance’, European Affairs, vol. 9, no. 1-2, (Winter/Spring) 2008,  http://www.europeaninstitute.org, (accessed 17 May 2011).

[29] United Kingdom House of Commons (U.K. Hoc), Defence Committee, The Future of NATO and European Defence, Ninth Report of Session 2007-2008, 20 March 2008, p. 28, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdfence/111/111.pdf, (accessed 31 January 2013).

[30] S. Sloan, ‘NATO in Afghanistan’, UNISCI Discussion Papers, Redalyc,Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Espana/University of Madrid, no.22, (Enero-sin mes/January-March) 2010, pp. 51-52.

[31] Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 5.