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Contributions from
the Column
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Different tasks but same responsibility
Civil society’s North-South divide
No need to re-invent global rules
Privatisation is good but regulation is needed
8-9/2004 |
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[ Security and development ]
Different tasks but same responsibility
The future of the Western democracies depends on whether the developing countries’ overcome their difficulties. “Seen from this perspective, development aid is a crucial element of security policy”. This statement represents the view of the German government at the beginning of the year – 1962. Adolf Kloke-Lesch, who is responsible for security and foreign policy issues at the German development ministry, used this quote in his speech at the 10th Global Issues Forum in Bonn in late June – and thus amazed his audience. Swap the word “aid” for “cooperation” and the 42-year-old dictum of then development minister Walter Scheel could well have stemmed from his present successor Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul. The correlation between development and security policy has been on the agenda long before September 2001.
But politicians are increasingly pressured to take a stand. Where democracy and economic development flourish, Ernst-Otto Czempiel believes, war becomes less likely. The expert for peace and conflict research points straight to the dilemma: where insecurity and war prevail, democracy and development cannot get established. In other words: no security without democracy and development, and no democracy and development without security. Therefore politicians need to address both issues at the same time. Afghanistan provides an excellent example of how tricky that can be.
But whose security are we talking about? In the past, the answer was easy: our own. Meanwhile, with good reason and fully in line with Walter Scheel’s views, the notion of ‘extended security’ has arisen. It highlights poverty and misery as a cause of war and insecurity and includes the idea that the security of the North hinges on the living conditions of people in the South. But the veneer of altruism in which the concept is cloaked is fading. The farther insecurity advances to the north, the more ruthless are the methods used to eliminate its causes in the South. “Where has the debate on ‘extended security’ got us?” asks Lothar Brock of Frankfurt University. “From Somalia and the question ‘Who do we need to protect?’ to Kosovo and the question ‘Who may we bomb?’, to Baghdad and the question ‘Who can we torture?’.”
Reinhard Hermle, chairman of the Association of German Development NGOs (VENRO), concludes that development and security policy need to be kept strictly separate. They pursue different goals, he says, and use different tools. But Bundeswehr General Johann-Georg Dora finds this arms-length attitude incomprehensible. At working level there is certainly room for improvement, he says, but no one disputes that soldiers and civilian aid workers need to pull together.
None of these approaches – neither cold-shouldering nor cuddling up – help countries like Afghanistan. As development ministry state secretary Erich Stather put it, development and security policy have “different tasks but the same responsibility”.
Conflicts of objectives between the two fields of policy should not be ignored, says Dirk Messner, director of the German Development Institute (GDI), often they are actually conflicts of distribution: how much money is allocated for what work? Messner suggests that defence ministries – which used to be called war ministries – should be abolished and instead institutionalised interfaces should be set up for civilian-military cooperation: ministries for global security. (ell)
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