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This is an article about security sector reform that covers the concepts and problems associated with applying the security sector reform agenda in Southeast Asia.

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This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University] On: 10 October 2014, At: 09:28 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Global C...

This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University] On: 10 October 2014, At: 09:28 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Global Change, Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpar20 Security Sector Reform: Prospects and Problems a Alex J. Bellamy a University of Queensland Published online: 19 Aug 2010. To cite this article: Alex J. Bellamy (2003) Security Sector Reform: Prospects and Problems, Global Change, Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change, 15:2, 101-119, DOI: 10.1080/14781150303903 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781150303903 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Global Change, Peace & Security, Volume 15, Number 2, June 2003 Security Sector Reform: Prospects and Problems ALEX J. BELLAMY* (University of Queensland) This article evaluates the prospects and problems associated with applying the security sector reform agenda in Southeast Asia. It argues that although the reform of regional security sectors along democratic lines provides an important opportunity to improve regional peace and security, by creating security sectors that are able to perform their tasks Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 legitimately, effectively, and efficiently, the implementation of reform is fraught with problems. Such reforms may be perceived as being imposed by outsiders and hence may not take root, and reform may itself foster instability and may prompt states to redirect resources away from other activities to fund expensive professionalization programmes in the armed forces. Attempts to create armed forces in East Timor are indicative of some of the challenges confronting the security sector reform agenda. The theory and practice of security sector reform (SSR) is relatively new. Its origins lay in the growing recognition within the ‘development’ or ‘aid’ community that development and security are interdependent. Long-term development or democratization programmes cannot succeed, it is argued, without the provision of stable security by legitimate and democrat- ically accountable security forces. Aid donors therefore have a responsibility to promote good governance in the security sector in order to assist broader development programmes sponsored by a range of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), individual states and international institutions such as the World Bank.1 There has been a growing awareness in the development and aid communities not only that ‘repressive or corrupt security structures … undermine the stability crucial to maximising the benefits of aid programmes’ or peacebuilding missions2 but also that positive reform of the security sector can provide a catalyst for wider good governance and democratization programmes. Since the ‘security first’ initiative in Mali in 1992, a ‘new aid paradigm’3 has developed which recognizes that self-sustaining security depends upon the creation of a legitimate, democratically account- able and effective indigenous security sector. Whereas during the Cold War the security sector was shunned by the development and aid communities as the source of the underdevelopment problem, there is an increasing awareness that development and security are interdependent and that armed forces and police forces can make a positive contribution to wider processes of democratization and development.4 * Alex Bellamy, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. Fax: ⫹ 61-7-33651388. Email: [email protected] I would like to thank Marianne Hanson, Tim Edmunds, Anthony Forster, and Edith Bowles for their helpful comments on this and related papers. 1 This case was first presented by Nicole Ball, Spreading Good Practices in Security Sector Reform: Policy Options for the British Government (London: Saferworld, 1998). 2 Neil Cooper and Michael Pugh, Security Sector Transformation in Post-Conflict Societies (London: Centre for Defence Studies, 2002), p. 5. 3 Mark Duffield, ‘NGO Relief in War Zones: Towards an Analysis of the New Aid Paradigm’, Third World Quarterly, 18,3 (1999). 4 See Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed, 2001). ISSN 1478-1158 print/ISSN 1478-1166 online/03/020101-19  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1478115032000079813 102 Alex J. Bellamy This paper aims to introduce the concept of SSR to a Southeast Asian context by showing how pertinent the issues it raises are for the way that security is pursued in the region and by identifying some of the specific problems that may arise from attempts to pursue an SSR agenda in this region. I argue that thinking about SSR makes at least three important contributions to the way we ought to think about, and pursue, security: first, it prompts a renewed focus on the importance of civil–military relations and particularly on the role of the military in domestic societies; second, it speaks to a broader human security agenda by making the point that there is no security without development and democratization but also no development and democratization without security;5 finally, it raises important questions about the effectiveness of externally sponsored development programmes that take place within insecure environments and the broader impact of defence measures such as arms sales and transfers, training assistance, and defence diplomacy on development and democratization. Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 The article therefore proceeds in five parts. Firstly, I will discuss the emergence of the ‘new aid paradigm’ in order to convey the idea that whilst security and development are interdependent this fact has long gone unrecognized and is only now beginning to frame the way that aid donors and defence practitioners think about their business. The second and third sections turn to a discussion of SSR more specifically; identifying what it is, where it comes from, and the generic problems associated with it. Fourth I will turn to briefly examine one attempt to promote good governance, development and democratization through the implementation of security sector reform: the rebuilding of the East Timorese defence forces. Finally, in the conclusion I will turn to more generic regional issues in order to identify the potential for fostering stable peace and the potential problems associated with promoting an SSR agenda in the Asia Pacific region. The New Aid Paradigm The ‘new aid paradigm’ centres upon the merging of security and development identified by Mark Duffield. According to Duffield, there has been a noticeable convergence between the two to the extent that they are now seen as interdependent.6 Such convergence ‘embodies the increasing interaction between military and security actors on the one hand, and civilian and non-governmental organizations on the other’.7 Thus, ‘proponents of the new aid paradigm accept that a prerequisite for social development and human-rights protection is the security and stability that comes through an effective, impartial and humane introduction of law and order, alongside the extension of sound governance to the military sector itself’.8 Such convergence is evidenced by the growing interest in security issues on the part of civilian organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), EU, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Saferworld and others9 and the simultaneous growth of concern amongst UN peacekeepers, military 5 As I argued elsewhere: ‘not only are states unable to provide security for citizens despite the appropriation of vast amounts of resources for this goal, many states actively contribute to individual insecurity’ and ‘a discourse of human security that does not delegitimise states when they act as agents of human insecurity … has, at best, a very limited utility. At worst it helps to sustain the very practices and structures that cause human insecurity in the first place.’ See Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald, ‘ “The Utility of Human Security”: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to Thomas & Tow’, Security Dialogue, 33,3 (2002), pp. 220–221. 6 Duffield, Global Governance, p. 16. 7 Duffield, Global Governance, p. 16. 8 Cooper and Pugh, Security Sector Transformation, p. 14. 9 See for instance, World Bank, The State in a Changing World: The World Development Report 1997 (Washington: World Bank, 1997); World Bank, A Framework for World Bank Involvement in Post-conflict Reconstruction (Washington: World Bank, 1997) and other reports sponsored by these organizations and others cited throughout the paper. Security Sector Reform 103 organizations such as NATO and individual states about democratization and develop- ment.10 The basic point is that these very different types of organizations (though noticeably all dominated by Westerners) have begun to work together more closely because of a shared recognition that, rather than being mutually exclusive, their concerns (development and security) are actually interdependent. Such linkages, however, are hardly new. The links between security and economic development were expressly made by the founders of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), who saw ASEAN’s primary aim as being the creation of a secure environment conducive to economic development.11 How- ever, at its inception ASEAN understood a ‘secure environment’ to mean a degree of negative peace or the absence of war. At the time there was no indication of a belief that the structure and function of a state’s armed forces had an impact on democratization and development. Foreign assistance to another state’s military is hardly new either and was a common practice during Cold War. During the Cold War, both superpowers offered military aid for Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 the purposes of nation or state-building and legitimisation. Throughout Latin America in particular, the United States donated large sums of money to construct armed forces capable of defeating communist insurgents, thus helping to defend, indeed create, non-communist (though usually not democratic) states.12 Such aid consisted of arms transfers, covert training and joint operations. In the decade leading up to 1989, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) channelled US$2 billion worth of weapons to groups fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.13 Such aid was offered without much, if indeed any, consideration of the wider impact of assistance. This led to what Chalmers Johnson described as the ‘blowback effect’ in the 1990s: groups funded and supplied by the CIA during the Cold War used those resources to work against US interests after the Cold War.14 Al-Qaeda is perhaps the best known consequence of the ‘blowback’ of US military assistance. For their part, development agencies were not much interested in security matters during the Cold War. Their view, not wholly inaccurate, was that militaries, militias and their superpower supporters were some of the most significant barriers to economic development. Organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE, Médecins sans Frontières, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and others often operated close to war zones, delivering emergency assistance, or worked on long-term development programmes in states with oppressive military regimes. Neither of these contexts was conducive to close relations between international development agencies and the military and the guiding principles developed by such agencies (restraint, consent, neutrality) stood in stark contrast to the values espoused by the military.15 Moreover, during the Cold War, emergency assistance in response to natural and human-caused disasters was delivered quite separately from long-term development aid, diminishing the likelihood of agencies or militaries establishing the relationship between development and security. To the extent that 10 The wider concerns of UN peacekeeping are discussed in the contributions to Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel (eds), United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Ad Hoc Missions, Permanent Engagement (Tokyo: UNU Press, 2001). NATO’s growing interest in democratization is discussed with regard to enlargement in Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (London: Columbia University Press, 2002). 11 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problems of Regional Order (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 141. 12 John Fischel and Edmund Cowan, ‘Civil-Military Operations and the War for Moral Legitimacy in Latin America’, Military Review (January 1988), p. 38. 13 Cooper and Pugh, Security Sector Transformation, p. 13. 14 Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Owl, 2001). 15 Hugo Slim, ‘Violence and Humanitarianism: Moral Paradox and the Protection of Civilians’, Security Dialogue 32,3 (2001). 104 Alex J. Bellamy there was any appreciation of a link between the two, there was a wide assumption in the development community that protracted social conflict was produced by underdevelop- ment.16 There was certainly very little appreciation that the reverse might also be true. This began to change after the Cold War partly as a result of changes within the development community and partly due to changes within the theory and practice of security. The proliferation of so-called ‘new wars’17 and, more importantly, the proliferation of international agencies working in environments of protracted social conflict helped to increase awareness on the part of aid and development agencies of the fact that their projects could not succeed without the provision of basic levels of security. In places like Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Somalia, East Timor, Aceh, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands there was growing recognition within the development community that the delivery of aid and assistance in insecure or unstable environments was not only ineffective but could potentially lengthen violent conflict and reward warlordism.18 Moreover, in places where there is underdevelopment but no protracted social conflict, such development aid Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 may prop up the systems of patronage and corruption that help sustain underdevelopment whilst creating wealthy local elites. Partly as a response to this, and partly as a response to wider global change, development agencies in the 1990s began to insist that development depended upon two other factors that had not enjoyed a prominent role in their activities or thinking during the Cold War. The first was democratization. Although democratization has been a prominent feature of Western rhetoric since 1945 it did not feature heavily in Western military assistance programmes during the Cold War. Nevertheless, the removal of the ideological opponent to liberal capitalism saw the West promote democratization as a good in itself.19 The second key factor was security. On the one hand, many of the ideological and practical barriers between development agencies and international militaries were eroded by the ending of the controversial military assistance programmes and proxy wars. On the other hand, there was widespread recognition that across the world violent conflict and illegitimate security actors were often the cause of underdevelopment and therefore could not be ignored. This was true not only in humanitarian crises20 but also more generally. For its part, the theory and practice of security also changed significantly in the 1990s to the extent that not only were the maxims of Cold War security politics (the ‘balance of power’, ‘deterrence’, ‘mutually assured destruction’) discredited and exposed as actually a significant part of the problem, but new maxims appeared and some long-forgotten ones reappeared (‘human security’ and ‘security communities’21) which helped to change the perceived role of the military in global politics. The pursuit and study of security underwent two principal changes in the 1990s: deepening and broadening. First, approaches to security were deepened by an understanding of the constitutive role of security studies. Security, it 16 Duffield, Global Governance, p. 27. 17 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (London: Stanford University Press, 1999). 18 There is quite a sizable body of literature on this. For a good overview of the key points though see David Shearer, ‘Aiding or Abetting? Humanitarian Aid and Its Economic Role in Civil War’, in Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (eds), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (London: Lynne Rienner, 2000) and Claude Bruderlein, ‘The End of Innocence: Humanitarian Protection in the Twenty-First Century’, in Simon Chesterman (ed.), Civilians in War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 19 See Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa (London: Zed, 2001), p. 44. 20 One of the key features of crisis response in the 1990s was the growing cooperation between civilian and military components. See Thomas G. Weiss, Military—Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). 21 See United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Alex J. Bellamy, Inside and Outside Security Communities: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming). Security Sector Reform 105 was argued, was a far from neutral pastime. Instead, it was about awarding social value that permitted authoritative and exceptional behaviour in response to threats that were in fact constructed by security theorists and practitioners.22 The pursuit of security in response to particular threats was not an instrumental reaction to objective threats; it was rather a normative response to socially constructed danger. This epistemological point opened up the possibility of thinking about alternative threats to security and different ways of ameliorating them: the broadening of security. The pioneering work in this area was Barry Buzan’s People, States and Fear, which identified five broad dimensions of security (military, political, societal, economic, and environmental).23 Since then there has been growing recognition that more people in the world are threatened by their own security forces than by other people’s,24 that military threats to security are only one—and in most places of the world not the most significant—of the causes of human insecurity,25 and that armed forces can play important positive roles in society. For instance, the human security concept now frames a great deal of activity on the part of the United Nations and states such Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 as Canada and the UK. Furthermore, the notion that the military can play wider social roles is enshrined in both the current NATO strategic concept and the primary objectives of a European force, both of which identify peacekeeping, humanitarian activities, and military assistance to civilian authority as core military purposes. The ‘new aid paradigm’ therefore emerged out of significant shifts in the way that very different types of actors thought about development, crisis assistance, democracy, the use of military power, and the meaning of security more broadly. On the one hand, development and humanitarian organizations began to realise that (1) short-term aid and long-term development were not always discrete activities, (2) the lack of security constituted a major barrier to successful development and democratization and thus (3) engagement with the security sector was important. On the other hand, states concerned with providing military assistance began to see (1) the blowback effects of unrestricted military aid, (2) the failure of traditional maxims of security to actually provide people with security, (3) that security can be constructed in different ways that incorporate threats other than the direct threat of military invasion by foreign powers, and (4) that the armed forces could play important positive social roles. Security Sector Reform The study of the ‘security sector’ (as opposed to the traditional focus on civil–military relations), therefore, is a rapidly emerging field that had its roots in development studies, security studies and practical policy and in the ‘new aid paradigm’ specifically. The driving 22 This is a gross over-simplification of a large amount of critical literature that spans critical theory of different varieties, postmodernism and post-structuralism, and constructivism. This literature includes (but is in no way limited to) Michael Dillon, Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought (London: Routledge, 1996); David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: UCL Press, 1997); and Ken Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs, 67,3 (1991). These developments are superbly summarized and evaluated in Steve Smith, ‘The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualising Security in the Last Twenty Years’, in Stuart Croft and Terry Terriff (eds), Critical Reflections on Security and Change (London: Frank Cass, 2000). 23 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Order, 2nd edn (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991). 24 Ken Booth, ‘Human Wrongs and International Relations’, International Affairs, 71,1 (1995). 25 The leading writer in this regard is undoubtedly Caroline Thomas; see Caroline Thomas, Global Governance, Development and Human Security: The Challenge of Poverty and Inequality (London: Pluto, 2000) and In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (London: Lynne Rienner, 1987). 106 Alex J. Bellamy force behind the idea can be found in the adoption of SSR as a major policy goal by DFID in 1999. The basic rationale for this focus was that ‘unprofessional or poorly regulated security forces often compound rather than mitigate security problems’.26 The UK’s development minister, Clare Short, identified five key areas of SSR that DFID intended to promote. They were: supporting the establishment of structures of proper civilian control over the military; training members of the military in international humanitarian law and human rights; strengthening national parliamentary oversight of the security apparatus; supporting civilian organizations that might act as watchdogs over the security sector; supporting the demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants.27 Within post-conflict programmes such as that in East Timor and potential programmes in Cambodia and Vietnam, SSR may also include building local capacity for reconstructive Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 activities such as de-mining and encouraging armed forces to play a role in promoting regional stability through defence diplomacy and building peacekeeping capabilities. These policy initiatives form the nub of the security sector reform agenda. The key normative objective underpinning them is the maximization of the efficacy of the armed forces in the pursuit of their legitimately and democratically decided goals through programmes designed to improve the professionalism and democratic control of armed forces28 and the minimiza- tion of the potential threat to human security that they pose.29 As Malcolm Chalmers and others have explained, SSR is concerned with moving a state’s armed forces—its practices, doctrines and management structures—towards Western norms of behaviour.30 Viewed this way, the logic behind SSR is therefore reminiscent of the democratic peace thesis and shares many of its problems.31 The democratic peace thesis insists that democratic states do not wage war on each other.32 That is not to say that democratic states do not wage war or at all, make less use of their military or are less warlike in their relations with each other, only that democracies tend not to fight each other.33 Advocates of this approach generally present one of two explanations as to why this might be, though they are in no way incompatible. These two explanations are broadly referred to as structural/ institutional accounts and normative accounts.34 Structural or institutional accounts explain the democratic peace by pointing to the institutional constraints placed on decision-makers 26 Dylan Hendrickson, A Review of Security Sector Reform (London: Centre for Defence Studies, 1999), p. 9. 27 Cooper and Pugh, Security Sector Transformation, p. 16. 28 See Andrew Cottey, Timothy Edmunds and Anthony Forster (eds), Democratic Control of the Military in Postcommunist Europe: Guarding the Guards (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) and Anthony Forster, Timothy Edmunds and Andrew Cottey (eds), The Challenge of Military Reform in Postcommunist Europe: Building Professional Armed Forces (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 29 See Wilhelm N. Germann, ‘Evaluation of Security Sector Reform and Criteria of Success: Practical Needs and Methodological Problems’, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) Conference Paper (August 2002), p. 10. 30 Malcolm Chalmers, ‘Structural Impediments to Security Sector Reform’, working paper introduced at the International Institute of Strategic Studies/DCAF Conference on Security Sector Reform (April 2001). Elsewhere, Chalmers has identified those norms as ones constructed by, and cogniscent with, the guiding norms of defence management in Western Europe. See Malcolm Chalmers, Security Sector Reform in Developing Countries: An EU Perspective (London: Saferworld, 2000). 31 The following paragraph draws from Chapter 1 of Alex J. Bellamy, Stuart Griffin and Paul Williams, Understanding Peacekeeping (Oxford: Polity, forthcoming). 32 See Michael Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’, Parts I and II, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12, 3–4 (1983) and Jack S. Levy, ‘Domestic Politics and War’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18,94 (1988). 33 Miriam Fendius Elman (ed.), Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999) and Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 34 These labels are taken from John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19,4 (1994). Security Sector Reform 107 in democracies. Legislatures, the rule of law and electorates mitigate against rash decisions to go to war.35 We can add to this the plethora of international institutions and regimes that tie democratic states into international society and give political leaders international as well as domestic responsibilities.36 In contrast, normative explanations of the democratic peace focus on the ideas and norms that underpin liberal democracy. Democracies practise compromise in their internal politics, believe that it is imprudent to fight each other, and confer legitimacy upon other states believed to be democratic. Moreover, states that trade extensively with each other are less likely to fight because such war is costly and irrational.37 Security sector reform therefore promises to assist the process of building democratic peace by fostering armed forces that reflect and promote liberal democratic values. It contrives to do so by enhancing human security, democratization, and broader development programmes in places where there has either been ‘protracted social conflict’38 as in East Timor or Cambodia or a track record of illegitimate and ineffective governance as in many Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 other parts of the Southeast Asian region. As Figure 1 shows, SSR aims to promote democratic peace by contributing to three interrelated processes. First of all it aims to enhance the physical security of a state’s inhabitants. As we noted earlier, one of the cornerstones of the ‘new aid paradigm’ is the idea that the lack of physical security can be an important impediment to broader processes of development and democratization. On the one hand, this point holds not only in times of protracted social conflict where there is open military confrontation. In such situations the safety of international and indigenous aid workers and the fiscal security of long-term development programmes are jeopardized by ‘generalized lawlessness’. On the other hand, community security is associated with local commitment to development projects and Figure 1. Security sector reform and the democratic peace. 35 Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, p. 90. 36 See Robert O Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little Brown, 1977) and Stephen D. Krasner (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). 37 Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, p. 90 and Havard Hegre, ‘Development and the Liberal Peace: What Does It Take to Be a Trading State?’, Journal of Peace Research, 37,1 (2000). 38 This term is Edward Azar’s. Edward Azar, ‘The Analysis and Management of Protracted Social Conflict’, in J. Volkan, J. Montville and D. Julius (eds), The Psychodynamics of International Relationships Vol. II (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1991). 108 Alex J. Bellamy deeper collaboration between local communities and international donors.39 It is also true that a basic level of physical and legitimate security is an important ingredient for the success of development and democratization programmes in places that are not suffering from protracted social conflict.40 As DFID put it in 1999, ‘an essential condition for sustained development and poverty elimination is security’.41 Security sector reform aims to enhance security in two principal ways. First, through professionalization programmes it attempts to create armed forces capable of carrying out their tasks in an effective and efficient way. Traditionally, professionalization has tended to be equated with the ‘professional’ attributes of individual soldiers (they are volunteer soldiers who form an epistemic community with shared values and rules).42 Others argue that professional soldiers accept that they have a duty to fulfil the demands placed upon them by civilian governments.43 Still others argue that military professionalism is all about developing the technical expertise and social awareness necessary to prosper in postmodern times.44 By themselves, each of these conceptions of professionalism is inadequate. For Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 example, the first example implies that all conscripts are unprofessional (therefore we must conclude that the French and German militaries were unprofessional until very recently) whilst all volunteer soldiers are ‘professional’ (a conclusion that is unsatisfactory when we think about Tantara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) ‘volunteers’ in East Timor). A more useful way of thinking about professionalism and processes of professionalization is offered by Forster and colleagues. They argue that professional armed forces are defined by four core characteristics, which SSR programmes seek to instil. They are: Role: ‘professional armed forces have clearly defined and widely accepted roles in relation both to external functions and domestic society’.45 Expertise: ‘professional armed forces have the expertise necessary to fulfil their external and domestic functions effectively and efficiently’.46 Responsibility: ‘professional armed forces are characterised by clear rules defining the responsibilities of the military as an institution and of individual soldiers’.47 Promotion: ‘professional armed forces are characterised by promotion based on achievement’.48 This leads us to the second security function of SSR. According to Samuel Huntington, professionalism entails the creation of a professional class or ‘epistemic community’49 that operates according to the rules and social norms that constitute a ‘profession’. This contributes towards the minimization of corruption, the prevention and punishment of crimes by members of the armed forces, the prevention of human rights abuse and the 39 Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace–or War (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 64–65. 40 See Barry Buzan and Eric Herring, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998) and World Bank, Governance. The World Bank’s Experience. Development in Practice (Washington: World Bank, 1994). 41 DFID, ‘Policy Statement on Security Sector Reform’, 1999. Available from www.dfid.gov.uk 42 Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (London: Free Press/Macmillan, 1960) and Martin Edmonds, Armed Forces and Society (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988). 43 Huntington, The Soldier and the State. 44 Lawrence Freedman, ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’, Adelphi Paper, 318 (1998) and Charles Moskos, John Allen Williams and David Segal (eds), The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 45 Anthony Forster, Timothy Edmunds and Andrew Cottey, ‘Professionalisation of Armed Forces in Central and Easter Europe: A Background Paper’, unpublished, p. 5. 46 Forster et al., ‘Professionalisation’, p. 6. 47 Forster et al., ‘Professionalisation’, p. 6. 48 Forster et al, ‘Professionalisation’, p. 6. 49 See Peter Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities’, p. 3. The idea of ‘epistemic communities’ is influenced by works on ‘policy networks’ and shares many conclusions with this line of thinking. See David Knoke, Political Networks: The Structural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Security Sector Reform 109 politicization of the military by a particular governing regime.50 Security sector reform therefore attempts to limit the negative impact that a state’s armed forces can have on its own people through direct oppression and human rights abuse and indirectly through corruption and the distribution of resources to itself—both of which have been core features of the domestic role of the military in states such as Indonesia and the Philippines.51 The second way in which SSR contributes to the building of democratic peace is through its direct assistance to broader processes of democratization. The provision of legitimate and legal internal security by professional armed forces is clearly an important precondition for democratization more generally and the fate of Cambodia after the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia’s (UNTAC) withdrawal in 1993 provides testament to what happens when democracy is installed without requisite levels of security and military professionalism.52 Professionalization, it is argued, provides an important normative barrier to military intervention in politics, permitting the creation of strong civilian institutions such as parliaments, judiciaries and bureaucracies that reinforce civilian supremacy over the Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 military.53 These institutions, in turn, ‘lock in’ the military’s subservience to civilian control.54 This has two effects. On the one hand, it protects civilian institutions from the threat of military coups (‘coup proofing’ as the traditional civil–military relations literature refers to it55). On the other hand, such professional militaries may become powerful bulwarks of democracy and secularism—a particularly important and positive characteristic in states that have little experience of liberal democracy. As such, SSR may contribute towards wider programmes aimed at fostering ‘good governance’. ‘Good governance’ refers to the efficient, effective and legitimate use of resources by governing elites in particular countries. As we noted earlier, the ‘new aid paradigm’ insists that the key problem confronted by the development community was not merely poverty or the lack of scarce resources, but endemic inequalities and social injustice. Whilst such inequalities are caused by global economic structures, they are exacerbated in many developing states by the lack of good governance.56 Security sector reform can contribute towards good governance by bringing the military under the ambit of parliaments, curtailing so-called ‘off-budget expenses’, and creating transparent methods of governance and management that filter into other areas of government.57 50 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). On the perils of politicisation see Ozren Zunec, ‘Democracy in the “Fog of War”: Civil-Military Relations in Croatia’, in C. Danopoulos and D. Zirker (eds), Civil-Military Relations in the Soviet and Yugoslav Successor States (Boulder: Westview, 1996). 51 See Beliveer Singh, ‘Civil—Military Relations in Democratising Indonesia: Change Amidst Continuity’, Armed Forces and Society, 26,4 (2000) and Harvey Kebschull, ‘Operation “Just Missed”: Lessons from Failed Coup Attempts’, Armed Forces and Society, 20,4 (1994). 52 The election results were challenged by Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party who overthrow the royalist Funcinpec party in a violent coup in 1997 after the United Nations had departed. See Michael W. Doyle, ‘Peacebuilding in Cambodia: Legitimacy and Power’, in Elisabeth Cousens and Chetan Kumar (eds), Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (London: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 53 Samuel Huntington, ‘Reforming Civil-Military Relations’, Journal of Democracy, 6,4 (1995); Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (London: Routledge, 1962); and Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). 54 The ‘locking in’ of a certain pattern of relations happens where ‘an initial arrangement effectively maintains itself over time, even in circumstances where the reasons for the arrangement no longer apply, because the costs of change are prohibitively high’. Chris Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Oxford: Polity, 2002) p. 39 55 James Quinlivan, ‘Coup-Proofing: Its Practices and Consequences in the Middle East’, International Security 24,2 (1999). 56 See Adebayo Adedeji (ed.), Comprehending and Mastering African Conflicts: The Search for Sustainable Peace and Good Governance (London: Zed, 1999) and Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy. 57 Dylan Hendrickson and Nicole Ball, ‘Off-Budget Military Expenditure and Revenue: Issues and Policy Perspectives for Donors’, CSDG Occasional Papers, 1 (2002) and Kinfe Abraham, ‘The Reform of the Security Sector and the Judicial System: Its Challenges and Performance in Ethiopia’, paper presented in Bad Honnef, Germany (9 November 2000). 110 Alex J. Bellamy Finally, SSR can contribute to development. In places formerly stricken with protracted social conflict (such as East Timor and Cambodia), SSR can contribute directly to demobilization and post-conflict peacebuilding. There has been increased recognition that one of the main reasons why violent conflict recurs in places like Cambodia, Aceh and other Indonesian islands is that there has never been a sustained policy of demobilizing belligerents and reintegrating them into society. Ongoing conflict delays and retards development programmes whilst at the same time indicating that the civilian economy is incapable of absorbing large numbers of men and boys into the workforce. Because professionalization usually implies a reduction in the actual size of the armed forces and the monopolization of legitimate violence within a state, SSR depends on the successful rehabilitation of former soldiers into civilian life. Foreign donors involved in professional- ization programmes ought to be responsible for the welfare of demobilized persons not least because successful demobilization is an important element of the professionalization process. They need to ensure that the local economy can absorb former soldiers in Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 meaningful ways that imply a sustained commitment to economic development.58 More generally, the provision of a basic level of internal and external security and the curtailing of the negative aspects of the security sector’s role in developing states mark in themselves a significant contribution to development, as is recognized by the ‘new aid paradigm’. Security sector reform therefore claims to contribute to the construction of democratic peace by assisting in the provision of legitimate security, contributing to embedding democratization, and creating an environment conducive to long-term development pro- grammes. The agenda insists that in each of these areas, an illegitimate, non-transparent, politicized or cadre-controlled armed force acts as a powerful impediment to progressive change, a claim sustained by even a cursory glance around Southeast Asia. How, though, does thinking about SSR contribute to or challenge more traditional approaches to civil–military relations? Edmunds argues that SSR introduces at least three new and important lines of thought.59 First, it takes us beyond the pattern of thinking about a civil–military dichotomy in which an interventionist military struggles with a civilian elite for power. Instead, the military may actively contribute towards the internalization of good governance practices and democratization by local elites. In many parts of the postcolonial world the indigenous military was a constitutive element of the state-building process populated by members of the national liberation movement charged with constructing civilian bureaucracies. Often, therefore, the question is not necessarily the degree of civilian control or management of the military, for in many non-democratic regimes the civil– military distinction is blurred. Rather, the central question is how democratic that control is.60 Secondly, it forces us to consider wider issues of state capacity—taking us back to van Doorn’s understanding of the need for effectiveness within legitimate armed forces.61 Armed forces do more than merely defend the state’s borders. They can contribute towards the overall capacity of the state, fulfil normative roles, and facilitate regional and global cooperation in a number of ways.62 58 See Nat J. Colletta, Markus Kostner and Ingo Widerhofer, The Transition from War to Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington: World Bank, 1996) and Joanna Spear, ‘Arms Limitation, Confidence Building Measures and Internal Conflict’, in Michael Brown (ed.), The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict (London: MIT Press, 1996). 59 Timothy Edmunds, ‘Defining Security Sector Reform’, TCMR Paper, 1 (2001), pp. 1–2. 60 I explored this question in more detail with reference to the military in post-communist Croatia in Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Like Drunken Geese in the Fog: Developing Democratic Control of Armed Forces in Croatia’, in Cottey et al., Democratic Control of the Military. 61 G. Van Doorn, The Soldier and Social Change (London: Sage, 1975). 62 Forster et al., The Challenge of Military Reform. Security Sector Reform 111 Finally, taking up the DFID agenda discussed earlier, Edmunds argues that thinking about SSR introduces an interest in the internal functions of the security forces and not only their ability to threaten civilian governments through coups. Indeed, this approach suggests that there is a need to look beyond ideas such as ‘coup proofing’ towards an understanding of the wider contribution that the armed forces can make to democratization and good governance programmes. Thinking about SSR therefore ought to prompt a discussion about what a particular military is for and the role it plays in wider society. This again takes us beyond the simplistic idea that militaries need to be ‘constrained’ by civilians, towards a more thorough appreciation of the positive and negative impacts that the armed forces can have on human security, democratization and development. This brings us to two general questions. Firstly, how do we define the security sector? The whole purpose of thinking about a security sector is to acknowledge that there is more in the equation than a military formation. But by moving beyond this traditional focus the potential list of entities that might fall within the security sector is immense, potentially Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 invalidating the usefulness of the concept itself. For the purposes of this study, therefore, the ‘security sector’ is taken to consist of: organizations that are able to employ lethal violence in a way considered legitimate by a political community and the mechanisms used to control those organizations. There are several reasons for this apparently narrow definition. First, practical policies that come under the rubric of SSR are primarily concerned with issues related to armed forces and militia groups and not issues of policing and wider aspects of human security, though it is important to acknowledge their interdependence. Second, this definition is not state based, referring instead to ‘political communities’. Throughout the 1990s, there were many organizations that used lethal force in wartime and after that had legitimacy within a particular political community but were not state based (in Cambodia, East Timor and Aceh, for example). Finally, this definition opens up the study to include the numerous security/intelligence services and paramilitary (both non-state and state based) organizations that tend to exist in former conflict zones. This raises a second question of what, precisely, policies aimed at promoting SSR consist of. There have been a number of attempts to identify the remit of SSR practices and policies. Nicole Ball, perhaps the leading figure in this area, has identified five types of assistance that foreign donors can offer in order to facilitate and encourage SSR. They are: the strengthening of civil institutions; the professionalization of civilian defence and security personnel; the professionalization of security forces; the institutionalization of mechanisms to develop security policy and identify security needs; and the provision of assistance to overcome the legacies of war.63 Security sector reform certainly includes the areas of reform identified by DFID (earlier) and Nicole Ball, but we can broaden these out into three generic areas of concern: Control: Security sector reform is about establishing civilian and democratic control over instruments of lethal force. This involves making security forces accountable to demo- cratically elected civilian authorities; general adherence to the rule of law—both domestic and international; making the security sector adhere to the same principles of financial management and transparency as the non-security sector; creating and embedding clear lines of authority which establish civilian and democratic control of the military; building capacity within civilian government and civil society to scrutinize defence policy (building an epistemic community for defence); creating an environment conducive to the 63 Nicole Ball, ‘Good Practices in Security Sector Reform’, in Bonn International Center for Conversion, Brief 15, Security Sector Reform (June 2000), p. 18. 112 Alex J. Bellamy participation of civil society in security matters; and ensuring that the training of professional soldiers is in line with the requirements of democratic societies.64 Capacity: It is about building organizations ‘which accept that their role is to fulfil the demands of the (civilian and democratic) government of the state [or political com- munity] and are able to undertake military activities in an effective and efficient way and whose organization and structure reflect these twin assumptions’.65 Security sector reform aims to create professional armed forces that are able to fulfil their functions (which consist primarily of the provision of internal and external security) in an effective, efficient and legitimate manner. It also aims to create systems of security governance that have a sufficient level of expertise and capacity to implement the security policies of governments in efficient and effective ways. Cooperation: It is about reducing regional and internal security dilemmas by reorienting organizations, promoting confidence, and establishing cross-border working partnerships. As Edmunds argued, since Morris Janowitz identified the ‘constabulary concept’ in Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 1960,66 it has been recognized that militaries can play a normative international role. They can, for instance, promote cooperation and integration through defence diplomacy, joint exercises, training and education, and combined actions against common threats (such as people smuggling and piracy).67 The Pitfalls There are, however, several problems with this new focus on SSR. These include theoretical problems and more specific problems with the way that SSR programmes might be implemented. Broadly speaking, the normative claims at the heart of SSR are grafted onto the back of the normative claims made by the democratic peace thesis. As such, the idea that material resources and intellectual weight should be given to SSR as opposed to more traditional aspects of civil–military relations draws the same criticisms as the democratic peace thesis, particularly when we talk about the need for foreign donors to incorporate SSR concerns into their broader international development strategies. Three arguments in particular are of relevance here. The first of these generic criticisms, then, is that the democratic peace does not, in fact, exist. Many critics doubt the empirical evidence for the claim that democracies do not fight each other. Some argue that the evidence is too scant to prove that peace could be attributed to chance.68 Others point out that the definitions of ‘democracy’ and ‘war’ are so vague that they can be manipulated to provide favourable evidence for any thesis.69 A third group of critics point out that there are plenty of cases where democracies have fought each other, the most commonly cited case being the Spanish–American war in the nineteenth century.70 This criticism poses a fundamental challenge to SSR because it challenges the basic assumption that underpins it, that only democratic armed forces create the degree of legitimate security needed to foster long-term development and democratization. The claim 64 These aspects of reform are taken from Nicole Ball, ‘Democratic Governance in the Security Sector’, paper presented at a United Nations Development Programme workshop (5 February 2002), p. 3. 65 Anthony Forster, Timothy Edmunds and Andrew Cottey, ‘The Professionalisation of Armed Forces: A Framework Paper’, TCMR Paper, 3 (2001), p. 11. 66 Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (London: Free Press/Macmillan, 1960). 67 See Alice Hills, ‘Defence Diplomacy and Security Sector Reform’, Contemporary Security Policy, 21,1 (2000). 68 Raymond Cohen, ‘Needed: A Disaggregate Approach to the Democratic Peace Theory’, Review of International Studies, 21,3 (1995) and David Spiro, ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, International Security, 19,2 (1994). 69 Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 16. 70 Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19,2 (1994). Security Sector Reform 113 is that democracy does not account for peace and hence development and security.71 Whilst in Asia there are plenty of cases where corrupt and non-democratic militaries act as a brake on social, economic and political development (Indonesia and Burma perhaps being the best examples) there are also cases where non-democratic militaries that break international rules actually foster secularism, developmentalism, and at least a basic level of political and civil rights (Turkey and Pakistan). When thinking about supporting SSR programmes, there is therefore a need to bear in mind that the causal links demonstrated in Figure 1 are not unproblematic. Second, SSR is an agenda imposed by the West and democratic ideals do not take root if they are imposed (through aid conditionality for instance). Critics argue that it is not possible to understand democratization and development processes without recognizing that both are intimately linked with colonization.72 They point out that not only were liberal democratic values imposed on the rest of the world by Western imperial states, but many one-party systems evolved from the demands of fighting anti-colonial wars (e.g. Ho Chi Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 09:28 10 October 2014 Minh in Vietnam). The appearance of democratic peace emerges from the fact that liberal democracies are embedded in a web of political, social and, most crucially, economic relations that support capitalist power.73 Seen in this way, the aim of SSR is not the furtherance of international peace and global development but rather the expansion and strengthening of international capitalism and a Westphalian society of states in a Western European image. Third, and linked to the first two, far from breeding security, SSR and the promotion of liberal democracy may foster insta

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