Since the end of the Cold War, the attitude of development organisations towards the security sector has changed and personal security is now recognised as a key concern of the poor in weak states. In addition, repressive or corrupt security structures can undermine the stability crucial to maximising the benefits of aid programmes. Consequently, a number of agencies have engaged with the issue of security sector reform and the idea is now largely accepted as something broader than solely the military.
This paper, from the Centre for Defence Studies, argues that wider and more innovative reform – security sector ‘transformation’ – would be a way of addressing the issues of socio-political dynamics of civil-military relations, as well as taking account of the political economy of conflict. It concludes with a number of detailed recommendations that the UK might address and points out that, while in developed states there are signs that policy coordination has increased, there is still a risk that policy can be co-opted by special interest groups, notably military-industrial actors, whose interests may not always coincide with security sector reform in conflict prone societies.
Identifying the challenges to security-sector reform as: Resource manipulation, weapon’s proliferation, the emphasis on coercion in international interventions and the diverse contexts of war torn societies, the paper delineates the role that transformative strategies can play in preventing conflicts and promoting post-conflict peace building as follows:
- There is a substantial deficit in current security sector governance in post conflict societies that necessitates going beyond reformism
- For peace to be embedded, the objects of reform should not be confined merely to the security sectors of target countries but should also incorporate the broader global structures and agents that condition them
- It implies an holistic approach to security which recognises the interconnections between the security sector and other areas of the domestic, regional and global arena, most notably the economy
- Therefore, strategies on other issues, such as the economy or the environment, might be implemented to complement rather than undermine transformation of the security sector
- Further, a transformative approach would give greater weight to the mobilisation of civil society to sustain peace and control militarisation than has hitherto been the case.
To achieve its goals, the paper divides a range of policies into two categories:
- ‘Structural arms control’ initiatives designed to effect change in regional or global structures, such as tightening arms-export credits and licensing rules, taxing defence sales and controlling conflict resources such as Diaspora funds and non-military conflict goods such as diamonds
- Initiatives aimed at generating socio-political safeguards against militarism within states, such as the transformation of civil-military relations through constitutional and capacity building provisions to establish the supremacy of civil authorities and a separation of powers
- It also outlines an alternative approach: To locate changes in security sectors within a broader transformative framework and to rebalance economic structures and the socio-political environment so as to reduce the incentives for militarisation. Also to engage with a wider set of actors, issues and security concerns in a manner that expands and empowers the ‘islands of tranquility’ in war torn societies.
