#34 Crucial Questions on Rules Of Engagement (ROE): (Q1/3) Are ROE Legally-Binding “Military Orders” or Merely Guidelines?

After more than 13 years of research on ROE instructions issued by governments to national military contingents deployed to operate as part of multinational security endeavours around the world, and especially the continuing existence and consistently negative effects of national caveat limitations and bans within these ROE, I will now attempt in the following to shine more light on this classified, sensitive, hazy, poorly-understood but critically important subject.

In particular, I will try to assist general understanding on this vital issue in military operations by answering, to the best of my knowledge, three basic and crucial questions as to the normative status and practices of nations with regard to ROE. This blog addresses the first crucial question: Are ROE legally-binding ‘military orders’ or are they merely ‘guidelines’ to military personnel?

#33 The Problem of “National Caveats” in NATO Operations around the World, 1996-2016

This blog will examine more closely NATO’s history of national caveat imposition in NATO military operations. It will begin by providing 5 reasons for caveat imposition within NATO missions. It will subsequently outline the recurring habit of NATO nations to contribute caveat-constrained military forces to NATO missions around the world over two decades, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Libya and most notoriously in Afghanistan. It will next describe the crux of NATO’s “caveat problem”, and then describe the three, largest, negative, caveat effects that have continuously resulted from NATO caveat imposition, namely (1) divided and inflexible NATO forces; (2) a disunified Multinational Force incapable of performing fundamental tasks; and (3) inequality and uneven burden-sharing within each NATO Multinational Force. Lastly, I will offer some final thoughts on this important issue of national caveats within NATO missions, with reference to the purpose and future of the NATO Alliance in global security affairs.

#23 Caveat Chaos in Kosovo: Divided Allies & Fettered Forces in NATO’s KFOR Operation during the 2004 “Kosovo Riots”

#23 Caveat Chaos in Kosovo: Divided Allies & Fettered Forces in NATO’s KFOR Operation during the 2004 “Kosovo Riots”   – Dr Regeena Kingsley   In blog “#17 The Complexity of Diverse National ROE within Multinational Security Operations”, I examined the reasons for, and impact of, diverse sets of Rules of Engagement (ROE) between force contributing nations to a Multinational Operation (MNO), especially with regard to national caveat constraints.  I also presented the fallacy of the “caveat myth” – still believed and asserted by many power-holders and policy-makers today – that national caveat prohibition and limitation rules are “positive” ROE

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#15 Highly Classified: National Caveats & Government Secrecy (Official & Unofficial Caveat ROE)

#15 Highly Classified: National Caveats & Government Secrecy   – Dr Regeena Kingsley   The last blog discussed how an alarming, new, global norm has developed within contemporary multinational security operations.  Since the early 1990s, nations have been increasingly imposing heavy and wide-ranging constraints on the forces they contribute to multinational security operations  (see blog “#14  An Alarming New Norm: National Caveat Constraints in Multinational Operations”).  The trend has become so strong in fact that today national caveats are considered to be ‘normal’ and the ‘common lot to varying degrees of all military operations conducted by NATO, the European Union

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