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Theme: Several national security strategies which have been
devised in Europe offer guidelines for Spain to develop one of its own.
Summary: Since 2007, national security strategies have been
developed and made public in the Netherlands, the UK and Germany, and
the last was that of France, in June 2008. They stem from modern
states’ need to update the security model they have been
providing for their societies, and their publication is novel because
until now European governments had never committed to writing what
they perceived their security problems to be. Some had White Papers
on Defence or Home Affairs, but they had never yet decided to emulate
the US tradition or the precedent of the European Security Strategy
of 2003.
In Spain, in the course of 2008, the intention of devising such a
strategy has been expressed by the Prime Minister in his swearing-in
speech; by the Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and
by the Defence Minister, Carme Chacón, to the Defence Affairs
Commission of Parliament on 30 June 2008. As Spain prepares to design
a national security strategy, this ARI offers a possible roadmap to
follow, based on previous experiences in Europe. The paper analyses
the reasons that justify the adoption of such a strategy, the
national security concepts that are defined, the bodies that are
created to make such a strategy possible and the policy-creating
procedure to be followed so that the Spanish process might benefit
from the experience of others and move smoothly towards the country’s
first national security strategy.
Analysis: Over the past two years, some of Spain’s
allies, such as the US, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and France,
have devised national security strategies allowing them to
re-organise the tools and procedures that governments’ can rely
on to confront the new security risks facing their societies. The
development of these strategies was made necessary by the need to
undertake a structural reform of the concepts, functions and
organizations connected with security, after attempts at partial
adaptations proved unsuccessful.
Practically until the 1990s, a distinction was made as to the sources
of risks: there were domestic ones which threatened the individual
security of citizens and individual property, and external risks that
placed the very survival of the State in jeopardy. This dichotomy led
to a very clear separation between the external and domestic
dimensions of security. The process of globalisation tested this
division of functions by making borders more porous, as a result of
which criminals quickly took advantage of the opportunities posed by
free movement of capital, persons and merchandise, and by making
states more dependent on each other. The combination of the
internationalisation of security with the internalisation of defence
began to blurr the distinction between domestic and external
security, between defence and interior policy, between that which is
public and that which is private. This created a linear security, a
security continuum, in which new problems are incorporated
(securitisation). As a result of this, insecurity shifted to a new,
intermediate realm, somewhere between defence and citizen security,
where new, hard-to-confront risks emerged, such as organised crime,
illicit trafficking, proliferation, street gangs, ethnic conflicts
and the crumbling of fragile states, among others.
In order to confront these new risks, partial adjustments of existing
policies were attempted, but this was not enough. The defence
authorities started to change their complex concepts of national
defence; they opened up to more diplomatic aspects of international
cooperation such as arms control, disarmament and international aid,
while military aspects shifted to international peacekeeping
missions. Interior Ministry officials woke up to the idea of
international cooperation and created new security forums to discuss
their interdependence on police, customs or intelligence issues. At
times they have also turned to the armed forces and the intelligence
services to back up the police at major sporting events and
international summits or to stop illicit trafficking, while police forces have travelled abroad to provide assistance or stability.
The response to these changes has run into several structural
problems. The first is one of knowledge, because these are recent
phenomena and when it comes to combating them little is known about
their causes, dynamics and effects; furthermore, they evolve quickly.
The second problem is one of complexity because each phenomenon
involves several dimensions of risk, which frequently interact with
each other. With multi-dimensional risks such as pandemics, the
smuggling of human beings or nuclear proliferation, it is hard to
confront these problems with just one policy or through just one
ministry. Taking international terrorism as an example, its strictly
terrorist activities combine with other crimes such as proliferation,
illegal immigration, drug trafficking, petty crime and
money-laundering. Thus, a multi-dimensional response is needed so
that efforts are not spread out too thinly. The third problem is one
of resources because globalisation has also sapped the superiority
and efficiency of the state’s traditional tools. Some of them,
such as the armed forces, for instance, no longer serve to dissuade
possible aggressors the way they did before, or are not enough to
handle problems such as terrorism. States still have ways of
responding to new risks but must use them in a different way and
combine them so they are effective against new individual players,
criminal organisations, street gangs, terrorist groups, insurgent
movements, war lords and child soldiers or rogue states with the
ability, means and will to defy with impunity the rule of law or the international order which governments must protect.
The realisation that the security of advanced societies has entered a
new phase –one that is qualitatively different from the
previous one and requires structural changes– has led those
governments most concerned about security to consider a restructuring
of their role in this situation. As the US did in 2002 and the EU in
2003, European governments with a greater strategic tradition have
begun to think about the kind of security they must offer and get
this down in writing so that all those involved know the scope of the
new social contract between States and societies. In April 2007, the
Netherlands published its national security strategy (Strategie
nationale veiligheid). In March 2008, the UK released its first
such strategy: The National Security Strategy of the United
Kingdom: Security in an Interdependent World. In May 2008 in
Germany, the CDU/CSU group in Parliament presented its Sicherheitsstrategie für Deutchland proposal, although it
did not win the support necessary to become a full-blown national
security strategy; in France, the so-called Défense et
Sécurité National. Le livre blanc, did in June 2008.
National Security: Concepts and Strategies
These strategies lay out the respective governments’ vision of
the risks and threats that their societies face and the way in which
the authorities plan to provide security to the State and its
citizens. The strategies contain, at the very least, a concept of
national security, an assessment of the security problems that affect
it, the tools available to the State and the measures that should be
adopted. The strategies that have appeared each have their own
specific features but they share common concepts and contents.
First of all, national security emerges as a higher-level concept
that replaces others such as national defence or domestic security at
the centre of the government’s attention. The goal of national
security is for the State to protect its citizens from serious
collective risks, whether they come from deliberate acts
(international terrorism, organised crime, proliferation,
international conflicts, weapons of mass destruction, aggression by
other states…) or emergencies of a natural or human nature
(pandemics, critical infrastructure, financial crises, raw materials,
migration, ecological damage…). Protection no longer just
includes the catalogue of public expression of risks (trends) as has
been the case until now, but also phenomena (drivers) that cause or
aggravate them (globalisation, climate change, competition for
energy, poverty, unfair or bad governance, demographic risks…)
and unlikely risks (wild cards, black swans, unknown unknowns,
strategic surprises…) which can cause irreparable damage to
advanced societies. National security now broadens the timeframe for
government action because the authorities must not only respond to
risks when they occur (reaction) but must also anticipate them and
their causes (prevention) and overcome their effects (recovery).
European concepts of national security have common features: a
comprehensive nature (encompassing all dimensions or risk),
continuity of function (with no separation between the external and
internal dimensions), time (extending protection from reaction to
include prevention, anticipation and recovery) and management
(ranging from coordination to integration). These concepts also
coincide in the area of protection: population, society and
territory, with some variations (in the case of France, there is a
contribution to international security and republican values).
These national security strategies start from an analysis –done
with varying degrees of thoroughness– of the risks that affect
the concept of security over the long, mid and short term. The risks
and interests that are affected do not vary much because these are
societies in similar states of security. In the Netherlands, the
vital interests to protect are territorial security (the risk of an
attack, real or threatened, against Dutch territory, such as an
attack with means of mass destruction), economic security (the risk
of an interruption in commercial flows), ecological security (from an
environmental disaster to contamination of the water supply),
physical security (a dam bursting, or an epidemic) and political or
social stability (because of social tensions). The analyses evaluate
risks which, either on their own or in combination, are capable of
hindering what the Finnish strategy refers to as ‘vital
functions’. In the German strategy, the risks to prevent are
terrorism, proliferation, conflicts in fragile states, threats to
supplies of raw materials and the effects of climate change. Finland
considers the following to be risk scenarios: serious disruption of
critical infrastructure and economic activity, natural disasters,
risks linked to migration and the use of armed force. The British
strategy shares the first three risks that are in the German version,
but then adds civil emergencies and risks sponsored by hostile
states. France cites terrorism, proliferation, attacks on computer
systems, espionage, major kinds of trafficking, epidemics and natural
emergencies. The typology of risks is aggravated by some factors, or
drivers, which act on them (among others, France mentions
globalisation, non-state violence, conflicts that are ‘frozen’,
and the decline of Western powers. The UK cites poverty, inequality,
bad governance, the shortcomings of the international system and
competition for energy (among other resources) and even less likely
but more dangerous prospects (for instance, the end of the nuclear
taboo, which has prevented nuclear attacks out of fear of the side
effects).
Depending on the evaluation that is made, the strategies establish
which responses to adopt: what needs to be done and the tools that
must be applied. For example, and with regard to the risk of
organised, international crime, the British national security
strategy describes what is being done: the strategy applied to
terrorism (Counter-Terrorism Strategy, Contest since 2006),
the agencies created, one to confront organised crime and another for
borders (Serious Organised Crime Agency and UK Border Agency, respectively) and what is going to be done in cooperation with
agencies of other countries to help in the fight. Responsibilities
can also be shared out among ministries and agencies. For instance in
France, besides domestic security for people and individual property,
the Interior Ministry is in charge of civil security, protection of
the economic sector, crisis-management on French territory in
coordination with regional authorities, control of all security
forces including the Gendarmerie, and creating new bodies to provide
information, planning and operations for centralising and integrating
the Ministry’s functions. The strategies also note what areas
of action are reserved to States and which are shared bilaterally or
multilaterally with other States or with new private or sub-state entities.
All of the strategies state the relationship between ends and means.
National security strategies cannot get into minute detail over what
means are needed, but they do offer a general framework of the
resources available for implementing the strategies. While the French
strategy has set a budget limit of 2% of GDP for military defence and
investment of €300-400 million for the Interior Ministry for the
next five years, the British plan, for instance, calls for going from
a budget of £2.5 million per year for intelligence and
counter-terrorism operations up to £3.5 million in 2010/11. The
Dutch plan has no specific budgetary outlay, but the strategy did
devise a working programme to evaluate its needs. It also features
measures to boost the availability of an investigative, technological
and industrial base associated with national security, to develop
mechanisms for integration among new entities with the goal of
progressing in the inter-agency culture and to have centres and
training programmes needed to provide knowledge and experts to the new security system.
The structure of the strategy can range from being quite simple, such
as devising just the national security strategy, as the Dutch,
British and Germans have done, to the most complex extreme, which is
to formulate the strategy and develop one its dimensions –defence–
as the French have done. There is no creation per se of a new
strategy –that of security– but all other policies must
adapt to the goals of the new meta-strategy in a process of
adjusting tools, areas of responsibility and state resources to the
new concept. In this way, the integration effect is achieved because
the national security strategy serves to guide and orient the rest of
the government’s strategies and policies. The national security
strategy shapes the planning that is derived from it and avoids
duplication, contradiction and holes in strategies and policies that
existed from the outset, rather than resorting to coordination
after-the-fact, as was done until now. The process of devising a
security strategy is, in fact, a process of streamlining aimed at
creating synergies and enhancing the coherence and efficiency of the various policies associated with security.
For this purpose, the strategies have set in motion a process of
exhaustive review of policies, organisations and procedures in each
of the diplomatic, military, police, civil protection and
intelligence agencies, among others, that are involved in national
security. The strategies also set out which bodies, rules or
procedures should be created, eliminated or modified as a result of
the structural changes imposed by national security strategies. Along
with these accompanying measures, the strategies establish specific
forecasts that are to be revised periodically. And the process is
opened up to new political and social agents such as Parliament,
society in general and experts in assessment and review, so that it is possible to achieve a culture focused on security.
Therefore, the new national security strategies go beyond merely
temporary changes and generate a process of qualitative change that
is sustained over time. The devising of such a strategy allows
Governments to study various combinations and uses of the tools
available to the State, streamlining their deployment, avoiding
duplication and generating synergies and economies of scale.
The Process of Devising a National Security Strategy and the Bodies Necessary to Oversee it
The process is a special one in that national security strategies are
a new product of advanced societies for which there is no prior
experience to draw on, and because they reflect the willingness of
Governments to exert leadership. In all precedents for this in
Europe, processes were launched and led by Heads of Government
without delegating any tasks to any ministry or subordinate agency.
The mandate includes the person or persons in charge of devising the
strategy; the people who take part in it, along with the goals of the
strategy and deadline. In the Netherlands, the strategy was developed
by the Government through a leadership committee and
inter-ministerial working groups. The process was similar to that of
the British model, in which the strategy was devised in the office of
the Prime Minister. In Germany, the process was the result of a
proposal by the UDC/CSU political parties. In France, the President
opened the process up to participation by Parliament and created an
independent commission made up of representatives of the government and civil society to carry out the task.
In the processes we have studied and compared, the bodies that took
part in developing national security strategies answered to Heads of
Government (staffs, senior officials) or included representatives of
the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence, Interior, Finance,
Health, Technology, Industry or other government agencies, civilian
experts or government experts acting in a private capacity, and
representatives of Parliament. The processes of developing the
strategies did not experience major technical or political
complications because at stake were issues of State on which there
was a great degree of prior consensus. Another reason was that the
strategies only define the broad outlines of national security,
without going into the details that are developed later by the
strategies themselves and the policies that stem from them. In these
conditions, the time needed to devise a strategy is short, between six and 12 months.
The presentation of the strategy is the final part of the process,
and its formalisation by Parliament or the Government is designed to
showcase a policy of great social interest. Its written format shows
the Government will for commitment with its people and ability to
evaluate risks and security responses. The new format marks another
step in the need for Governments to show accountability by confirming
its goals in writing and distancing itself from oral ambiguity.
The most significant organisational change involved in these
strategies is the creation of advisory and oversight bodies close to
the President or Prime Minister. The act of coming up with a formal
strategy means nothing, in and of itself, if there is no will to
execute it. So heads of government are opting to set up bodies that
strengthen their abilities for perception (vision), assessment
(method), integrating and supervising (leadership) all the strategies
and policies derived from the national security strategy that is in
force. Until now, the management of the different aspects of national
security was fragmented among various ministerial departments
involving defence, diplomacy, intelligence, police, judges and other
officials. Later, inter-ministerial coordination bodies were created
and this trend spread from one country to another. The bodies emerged
as joint centres for analysis of terrorism, organised crime or
protection of critical infrastructure and Spain quickly created its
own versions (National Centre for Counterterrorism Coordination,
Centre for Intelligence on Organized Crime and the National Centre for Infrastructure Protection, respectively).
The new focus is that of integration because inter-ministerial
coordination has been insufficient, and the new strategies have had
to acknowledge the need for supra-ministerial formats, such as the
Council for Defence and National Security in France, or the Committee
for National Security, International Relations and Development in
Britain. Such bodies host decision-making meetings of Government
ministers along with the permanent secretariats tasked with devising
a national security strategy and overseeing its implementation. The
new bodies do not duplicate or renounce existing capabilities, but
must assure their synergy through prior integration mechanisms. The
bodies must provide guidelines for orienting strategies, goals and
planning, and follow-up supervision bodies to make sure the
strategies are coherent and efficient. National security councils are
not inter-ministerial coordination bodies, but rather ones involved
in supra-ministerial integration, so they answer directly to Heads of Government.
Lessons for Spain
The reasons we have discussed here should serve as advice for Spain
–and even urge it– to have a national security strategy
and a national security council within the office of the Prime
Minister. Recent governments have confronted complex security
problems such as international terrorism and massive immigration,
which have overwhelmed the ministries concerned and forced the
Government to mobilise resources and personnel at the local,
regional, state, international, government and private levels.
Spain has no strategic culture, and until now it has not acted as a
strategic player. For this reason Spanish governments have neither a
tradition nor legal obligation to put down in writing the security
goals and activities they plan to develop. Instead, each department
lays out its own plans in oral testimony to the corresponding
parliamentary commission, without a written backup that specifies
evaluations, goals and strategies. Devising a national security
strategy, which could be revised when circumstances warrant it, would
serve as a framework for all the strategies that stem from it. It is
in just this way that, from now on, the British or French strategies
in defence, interior, civil protection or counter-terrorism will have
to adapt to the countries’ new national security strategies.
Looking ahead to the future and engaging in analysis have not been
strong points of the Spanish government, and not even the Prime
Minister’s office has a department that could take charge of
overall, permanent management of national security under the terms
set by recent trends. In the absence of such a department, and in
order to coordinate their execution or deal with problems of an
inter-ministerial nature, the Government can convene spot meetings of
some ministers or agencies, none of which specialise in
inter-ministerial management. Inter-ministerial coordination has been attempted with government
committees known as Comisiones Delegadas, the National Defence
Council, the Foreign Policy Council and the Inter-ministerial
Commission on International Cooperation. But none of them has the
stature, structure or procedures needed to oversee an integrated
national security policy in a permanent and efficient way. The Prime
Minister also has specialised management tools: the Department of
International Policy and Security (DPIS in Spanish) to advise him on
his international agenda; and National Intelligence Centre satisfies
specific needs. The Department of Infrastructure and Monitoring for
Crisis Situations exists to back up the coordination of those other
agencies. But none of them gives the Prime Minister the necessary
ability to take the permanent lead in managing national security,
both in its routine development as a government policy and in special
times of complex crises.
In a speech to Parliament on 8 April 2008, before being sworn in for
a second term in office, the Prime Minister announced plans to
propose a national security strategy aimed at improving the safety of
Spanish society. Meanwhile, the Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez
Rubalcaba, in his address to a parliamentary commission on 27 May
2008, said that national security was the State’s first
responsibility and described the new security risks posed by
organised crime, international terrorism, illicit trafficking,
weapons of mass destruction and environmental disasters. In order to
meet new security needs, the Minister said the Government was
preparing to devise a national security strategy, as the prime
minister had first announced. Later, on 30 June 2008, in her first
appearance before the parliamentary defence-affairs panel, the
Defence Minister Carme Chacón also expressed a desire to come
up with an overall national security and defence strategy in order to
deal with new security challenges during the era of globalisation.
Once this generic desire has been expressed, the next step would be
up to the Prime Minister, who, like his European counterparts, must
state the goals, a timetable and the methodology for devising such a
strategy. One lesson learned from other European countries is that
the process must be led by the Prime Minister’s office because
the process takes responsibility for security to the highest level of
the executive branch. Officials at lower levels take part in the
process, but there is no European precedent for delegating
responsibilities to any of those levels because all of the strategies
carry with them a redefinition of areas of responsibility and
functions, and these cannot be redefined by the same bodies that are subject to such reforms.
None of the Ministries cited has its own strategy (the White Book of
2000 and the Strategic Revision of 2003 at the Defence Ministry were
isolated exercises which were not later made systematic). So it seems
logical to devise first a national security strategy that will shape
strategies at the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs and
Defence, and in cooperation and other areas. It will always be easier
to integrate them at the outset than to coordinate and transform them
afterward (the Dutch Government approved its national security
strategy along with a working programme to develop it).
The process presents challenges and opportunities. National defence
directives have been complaining about the need to create a culture
of defence. This shortcoming can be attributed to other areas of
security and in general to politics and questions concerning the role
of the State. The loss of a sense of State is a side effect of the
process of globalization which has forced States to transfer the
exercise of some areas of jurisdiction to international and sub-State
bodies. However, the new security situation forces the State to
strengthen its role because neither international nor local
organizations can offer people the protection that States can provide
in the face of new threats, and as a result of this there is an
enhancing of how people identify with the State. Systematic debate on
national security among the government, political parties, social
groups and experts provides a unique opportunity to encourage a culture of security.
Another opportunity and challenge is that of the streamlining of the
security sector. Given this new circumstance of security in a new
context, national security strategies represent an opportunity to
rationalize responsibilities which had been distributed on the basis
of risks and functions that were different from the current ones. The
new European strategies encourage streamlining of areas of
responsibility and functions of the various state, sub-state, public
and private bodies, with the goal of integrating them to confront new
risks. As acknowledged by the EU treaty that was approved in Lisbon,
national security will continue to be the exclusive responsibility of
States, but under the new division of labour, strategies will
determine which areas of security are better handled at the bilateral
or multi-lateral level. This explains the speed with which major
European powers have unveiled their proposals to see if they are
accepted in the next reviews of NATO’s Strategic Concept and the EU’s European Security Strategy.
Conclusions: The idea of devising a national security strategy
is not a fad to be followed, but rather a need acknowledged by States
as responsible as those mentioned here to change the way they
guarantee the security of their territory and their people. Once a
government recognises the need to prepare a security strategy and
decides to do it, a formal process is launched. Its mandate need only
show the determination of the Head of Government to get the job done,
identify the person or persons physically entrusted with devising the
strategy, and define the scope of participation and the contents which are desired for the strategy.
The Prime Minister and some Cabinet Ministers have expressed the will
to devise a national security strategy. As of January 2009, the
details of the process were not known. But in light of what is known
about the strategies developed in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany
and France, these provide valuable tips for a roadmap for Spain to
follow suit. In accordance with the experience of these countries,
the next step is for the Prime Minister to take the lead in the
process of devising a national security strategy. He must also open
up a constructive process on the new security model that is to be
established, the broad outlines of the strategy, the system tasked
with planning, devising and supervising them, and the redistribution
of jurisdictions and responsibilities among all the forces and dimensions of the new security model.
In the end, the strategy must express the security concept that the
Government wants to provide for Spain and its people, the risks that
will be covered, the forces and policies that will be used, which
responsibilities will be up to the State and which it wants to share
with third parties, the kind of bodies needed for the strategy to be
integrated and the resources allocated for all these changes.
European practice also recommends looking ahead to changes that need
to be made later: the main responsibilities, strategies,
organisations, doctrines and legal norms that must be revised, and
the method and people tasked with evaluating and revising them periodically.
Through this roadmap learned from Europe’s experiences or any
other, Spain must end up with a national security strategy that will
allow it to face changes in security in the new century. The new
strategies do not skirt the sensitivity of an advanced society like
Spain’s to the complex security risks of this day and age. But
it is one thing to be sensitive and quite another to be vulnerable,
and this is the main obligation which some European governments have assumed in writing.
Félix Arteaga
Senior Analyst for Security and Defence, Elcano Royal Institute
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