Intervention of the Director for Military and Defense Co-operation (DCMD) at the Royal Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), September 13, 2006, London
Intervention of the Director for Military and Defense Co-operation (DCMD) at the Royal Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), September 13, 2006, London
Minister,
Directors,
General Staff Officers,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by thanking RUSI for giving me an opportunity to speak to you today.
I am fully aware of the importance of these contacts, which contribute to the effectiveness of the actions conducted by our countries for the benefit of States and national populations who have need of them. I shall use the first part of my talk to throw light on the objectives of the French military cooperation system, with a specific focus on Africa.
I shall then go on to offer some thoughts on the importance of closer cooperation between our two countries in helping the beneficiary countries more effectively as well as ensuring the greater mobilisation of our European partners to supplement the work done by the United States.
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The Directorate for Military and Defence Co-operation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - the DCMD - , of which I now have the honour of being director, is an institutional body which has no real equivalent in the governmental administrations of either European countries or the United States. I should like to provide a clear description of the ways in which it works, but I believe it is essential for the proper understanding of what I will say that I begin with some comments upon the nature of military cooperation itself.
I say this because our respective involvements in transatlantic and European organisations have for many years led our armed forces to cooperate and work together in numerous domains, both operational and political/military. The starting point, and one that is essential of course, is an increasingly active search for interoperability at the operations level to allow military personnel to understand each other and work side by side.
This aspect is also present for the partners with whom France is associated through defence agreements, even if what is involved in the present case is accompaniment rather than complementarity: this is the case for Africa, which is our specific concern here. The cooperation that I would describe as “operational cooperation” is in this case conducted by the armed forces, which define and implement such cooperation under the orders of the Chief of Staff.
However, those same African partners have structural problems far removed from the expertise required for combat but which interfere with the proper functioning of their defence apparatus. Those problems, which in some cases have existed for many years, have been obscured in the past by a high level of aid and the presence of large numbers of French military personnel integrated into the armed forces of the countries concerned. This was of course the case during the Cold War.
The changes in the geostrategic context, which have been accompanied in our Western nations by far-reaching and costly reform of our Defence apparatus, also affect the countries of Africa. The handling of this “transition” is turning out to be all the more problematic for them because their individual economic situations did not necessarily see any improvement during the 1990s.
So structural difficulties continue to exist - I am tempted to say, “even more so” - and France wishes to assist in eliminating them because their impact is not restricted to the military sphere. On the contrary, recent history tells us that they are a source of instability which tends to interfere with the political balance when indeed it does not destroy it, and that they harm the overall development of a country by preventing optimisation of national budget resources. The elimination of such structural problems will make a dual contribution to national development, by normalising political life and the defence apparatus while at the same time allowing budget resources to be freed up, enabling them to be devoted to other socio-economic sectors.
This is, as you will have understood, the very basis of the DCMD’s activity. Through what I shall later term “structural cooperation”, the DCMD sets out, by transferring military techniques, expertise and conduct, to put in place or to reinforce key capabilities that will enable our African partners to improve the governance of their defence and, I would add, security apparatus. Indeed, the DCMD is also in charge of security cooperation through the gendarmeries of those countries which, like Spain, Italy or France, possess security forces of military type, or gendarmeries. In this way, it can contribute when and where necessary to demobilisation/reintegration processes.
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It is now time for me to go a little more deeply into the heart of the matter and describe the goals pursued by the DCMD in its cooperation in Africa, and the modes of action chosen by it to attain those goals.
I mentioned a short while ago the importance we attach to our partners’ improved governance of their defence and security apparatus. This is an essential aspect for us, one on which our action is based. We are pursuing two political goals through this objective.
The first, important at the national level, is to restore our military partners’ defence and security apparatus to its rightful place in a democratic society: civilian control over the military, effective and transparent management, and so on, all of which demand effective handling of human, material and financial resources, in addition to increasing military officers’ awareness of the values of Democracy and the Rule of Law.
The second goal, important at the regional and continental levels, is the engagement in peacekeeping operations of the countries we help, whether those operations are conducted by the United Nations or a regional organisation such as the AU or ECOWAS. To a certain extent therefore we intend our action to be part and parcel of the RECAMP concept, of which you are doubtless aware, and in this way we assist in the implementation of the decisions of the AU’s Peace and Security Council with regard to increasing the capacity of the ASF.
To achieve this, we act at two levels: at the level of personnel and at the level of systems.
At the level of personnel first:
Going to the heart of the problems and the heart of the solutions, we devote a major share of our action to the personnel through an absolutely clear prioritisation of training. To that end, we offer numerous individual training courses dispensed in France in our schools and in Africa in the 14 regionally-oriented schools (ENVRs) supported by us. In 2005, 768 African officers came to France, while nearly 1,178 cadres attended the 49 training courses dispensed in ENVRs. There is no question of this being two-speed training, with high quality instruction in France in our own schools and less high in Africa in ENVRs. We guarantee the quality of the training by making the academic management of these schools answerable for it and by accepting responsibility ourselves for certain precisely defined teaching modules. All these courses also provide opportunities to inculcate the values that are those of internationally respected armed forces.
We also conduct projects at country level, implemented in consultation with our partners in response to “capacity gaps” that have been clearly identified in their armed forces and gendarmeries: such projects are accompanied by extensive know-how that enriches individual expertise and supplements the training received in the schools.
As for the systems level:
Armed forces and Gendarmeries, as systems, encounter difficulties of structural type. After having arrived at a joint diagnostic analysis based on an audit mission, we try to remedy the problems, by means of advisory missions in the case of the most minor, or alternatively by building projects of the kind I mentioned a few moments ago. Material aid to support projects is usually provided in the form of equipment - but never weapons - and infrastructures. Every such project is implemented with a single focus: our partner’s autonomy. Because, although I have not had occasion to mention this up to now, all our activities are guided by a logic of ownership. We support 14 Schools on the continent because we believe that ultimately Africans should train Africans. Our projects are for limited durations - 1 or 2 years - and are regularly evaluated because we know it is pointless to continue providing assistance beyond this without seeing real ownership. These principles naturally need to be checked against the reality, which sometimes obliges us to maintain a very limited degree of substitution.
Since 2003, we have doubled the amount of work on personnel and systems at national level through support for regional organisations in their efforts to put crisis management capabilities in place. We are believers in regional integration as a factor for stability and we were early promoters of the emergence of regional-level solutions such as the ENVRs, which date from 1998. We therefore wish to assist such African organisations, the AU and ECOWAS of course, but also ECCAS, IGAD and, ultimately, why not the SADC? The aim must be to help them, in the case of the least developed ones in defining their security structures, and for the others in defining the procedures, doctrines, and mechanisms they need to function effectively. Military advisors placed with these organisations, since 2003 with ECOWAS, since 2005 with the AU and since 2006 with ECCAS, are already filling this role.
As a finishing touch to the picture I have drawn for you of the action implemented by my Directorate, as well as an illustration to lead into what I have to say next, I should like to raise with you the subject of the very recent multilateral developments. This is because I believe that this is not a flash in the pan but a fundamental trend. I shall give two brief examples to show this.
As some among you already know, Mali and France plan to build in Bamako a new School to house the Peacekeeping School which currently provides training in Koulikoro for staff officers at PKO tactical level. Complementing the “Kofi Annan” centre in Accra in the provision of peacekeeping training for West Africa, this project seemed to us to be an opportunity for multilateral action. It is with pleasure that we have now seen the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland answer our call to participate financially in this project. Others such as the United States, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark and Sweden will contribute their expertise by sending instructors or supplying equipment.
Between November 2005 and April 2006, we have organised and financed in part in the name of the EU within the framework of the European Union civilian-military supporting action to the AMIS II in the Darfur region of Sudan, two observer training courses for African military personnel due to serve in this AU operation. Set up in partnership with the Mali Peacekeeping School, these courses have received support from five Member States - Austria, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Romania - and from the Military Staff of the EU, in the form of the assignment of instructors.
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These two examples, radically different in nature, lead me to think that the time when we, Europeans and non-Europeans, were in rivalry with each other to exert influence in African territory is disappearing into the past. I shall not overstate my case by claiming that it is definitively past history, since my ingenuity has its limits, but I believe that we have all become aware of the necessity for concerted action in the area of cooperation on defence and security for the benefit of this continent and in the interests of all.
This new awareness can be seen very clearly in recent developments in the European Union. The Strategy for Africa, the decision to mandate the General Secretariat of the Council to put forward a concept for the reinforcement of African capacities for conflict prevention, management and resolution, are steps forward we consider to be important and which show that the multilateral European framework is beginning to take form in the eyes of the Member States in a domain that until recently was exclusively within the national remit. The logic that has prevailed since Operation Artemis in the DRC in the summer of 2003 is gaining ground. The European Union has a greater presence in Africa and is putting in place the tools to enhance it. France enthusiastically encourages this dynamic: the added-value provided by the EU is gradually taking concrete form, and here I have in mind its resources and the wide range of its capacities - military, police, civil - destined to act during a crisis or following it, up to reconstruction (cf. EUPOL, EUSEC, FOMUC, etc.). The decision to place RECAMP within a European framework, announced by President Chirac in August 2005, demonstrates our determination to support this process.
The United Kingdom shares with France this vision for Europe, a vision which is the essential spirit of the Saint-Malo declaration.
More recently, on 9 June last, our two countries reaffirmed at the bilateral summit their wish to “work together to strengthen the Europeans’ capability and commitment to contribute more to international peace and security and respond to the threats to security that they face”.
With a view to this, they agreed where Africa is concerned, “to strengthen [their] bilateral cooperation, within the European framework, while continuing to support existing arrangements with African countries and working alongside other actors”.
Until now we have each endeavoured to mobilise our European partners. The examples I gave a few moments ago show this, as do the participation and funding from Europeans - Germans, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, and others - for the “Kofi Annan” centre in Accra. Today we are seeking to do this together, through the creation of what one might call a phenomenon of emulation: let us improve our cooperation, let us develop it, and we will demonstrate to them that cooperation is possible, viable and more effective than a series of separate efforts. Then they will join us and Europe will at last be able to play the role we expect of it.
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These last reflections I wished to offer you show how important it is that our two countries harmonise their cooperation on defence and security in relation to Africa. We consider that they have a role in providing political leverage with our African partners.
Our defence and security cooperation with Africa is now increasingly a political lever at the service of the Europe of Defence.
We must continue down this road, and the vast domain of SSR, due to its diversity, can in my view offer us marvellous opportunities for synergy in the bilateral format, which could then be proposed to the EU.
I thank you.