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Session Submission Summary

Strange Bedfellows: Peace Leadership and Defense/Legal Peacekeeping

Sat, October 14, 16:00 to 17:00, SQUARE, Silver Hall

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Short Description

This cross-country panel will delve into perspectives seemingly at odds: peace leadership and defense/legal leadership. Peace leadership will be viewed as fostering a culture of peace, and defense/legal leadership viewed as responding to societal needs to build and maintain peace. Panelists and participants will exchange ideas and compare views on how peace leadership can enhance defense/legal leadership, and the roles that military leadership and the international courts play to create and maintain peace. Time will be reserved for participant discussion and dialogue.

Detailed Abstract

Twenty-first century political and economic turmoil is increasing globally due to regional instability, failed states, asymmetric conflict, and global terrorism (Baylis, Smith, & Owens,2008; Crocker, Hampson,& Aall, 2007; Kramer,2011). International courts and military actions shape diplomatic, political, security, and socio-economic engagements between states, non-state actors, and civil society organizations. A cross-country panel will explore two sides of the same coin: peace leadership and defense/legal leadership. In this panel, peace leadership will be viewed as fostering a culture of peace, and we will define peace in the context of the UN definition of a culture of peace. Defense and legal leadership respond to societal needs to build and maintain peace. Military leaders play critical roles along the peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding continuum, while justice actors within the international court setting struggle to enforce human rights abuses. Differences between these functions will be shared, with a focus on the nexus between leadership and peacebuilding in today's turbulent times. The panel explores the role that peace leadership could play in enhancing defense; and the role that military leadership play in creating and maintaining peace. The purpose of the session is to exchange ideas. By comparing perspectives and leadership approaches across countries, we aim to deepen understanding of meaning and dynamics of peace leadership in the context of confusing and turbulent times.

This multinational team of panelists, chair, and commentator from Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, and the USA will explore these ideas and intersectionalities. This panel will note the urgency to explore divergent views in times of conflict. Often military missions focus heavily on security through force, rather than utilizing a whole range of peace making in a meaningful and sustainable manner, and limit the use of force. We will also propose a cost-benefit analysis that favors, not only theoretically but also practically, using force as the last resort for security reasons. Positing that perhaps once non-military peace making interventions are provided by peace professionals, the use of force would be used only in the most extreme cases.

To set the stage, this panel will discuss the importance of alternatives for dealing with defense and peace spending, including the establishment of a Department of Peace in the United States context. We will include a discussion on the size of defense spending, the reclassifying defense contracts to nonprofit endeavors, and a new role for defense in the business of peacebuilding.

This introduction will set the stage for a cross-country presentation that gives real context to some of these ideas, including the leadership concept in the military, leadership of justice actors in the international courts, the notion of peace leadership, and leadership in practice. A panelist from the Netherlands will discuss the new vision of Dutch Defense leadership. Included in this discussion will be the context of constant change and uncertainty in the Dutch armed forces, and the notions that in order to stay effective, leaders should adapt their style to the context, to their team, and to their own capacities. To address these turbulent times, there is a new corporate vision on leadership in the Dutch Ministry of Defense, which is bottom-up and is right now being implemented for both civilian and military personnel throughout the organization, in trainings and operations. Adaptive leadership is considered in the Dutch context as important to be able to respond to the changing context and be responsive to societal needs.

The second country perspective, from the Czech Republic, explains a new leadership concept in the Czech Army. Before the 1989 Velvet Revolution changed the communist regime into a democratic one, the Czech Army (then ‘Czechoslovak People´s Army’) was strongly influenced by the Soviets, which had an autocratic leadership of the “one party”. Since 2005, the professionalized Czech Army has changed and four new main goals have been formulated, including defense of the Czech territory, defense of the NATO countries, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, and non-military operations during natural disasters. The panelist will discuss how the new leadership faces challenges not only related to these new defense goals, but also related to societal transformation and contextual changes in general.

Another panelist will show how leadership framing could spark international court reform. With an increase of interstate and intrastate conflict human rights violations or economic disputes, the international community established international courts as critical for holding perpetrators of human rights violations accountable and resolving economic disputes (Clark, 2005; Welch & Watkins, 2011). International judicial reformers and scholars claim international legal institutions, like the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, are in crisis. Leadership is a key ingredient to develop legal institutions emerging from a post conflict environment (Keilitz & Meeks, 2012; Widner, 2011). In a recent empirical study conducted by the presenter, leadership attributes of justice actors were explored. Henham (2008), Ingadottir (2002), Schiff (2008) argued international courts are politically polarized, poorly coordinated, often technically incompetent, bureaucratically stove-piped, and organizationally inefficient. Hall and Suskin (2010) noted judicial practitioners believe leadership inappropriate for these courts. Advancing leadership understandings within a multicultural judicial environment could enhance efficiency and effectiveness in the court system.

The final panelist will discuss defense and peacebuilding in the United States. The peacebuilding debate has focused on policy prescriptions – what needs to be done to bind up the wounds of war and to prevent a relapse into conflict. Less attention has been given to the role of military leaders in post-conflict peacebuilding, who must act within a specific country and regional context that define the parameters of opportunity. Two types of leadership can be distinguished: national leadership and military leadership of peacebuilders within the international community. This discussion focuses on the role of USA military leaders in training peacebuilders as peacekeepers to develop stabilization and reconstruction measures in a post-conflict environment.

The session will devote time to an exchange amongst panelists and participants to elaborate and gain insights. Closing remarks from the chair, commentator, and interested parties will explore commonalities, differences, challenges, and implications for peace leadership, and the role of peace leadership and peacekeepers.

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