IN-DEPTH BRIEFING // #83 // NOVEMBER 24
AUTHOR
Christoph Harig Associate Professor, Royal Danish Defence College
THE FUTURE OF CIVIL-MILITARY COOPERATION IN NATO
AThe Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research is the British Army’s think tank and tasked with enhancing the conceptual component of its fighting power. The views expressed in this In Depth Briefing are those of the author, and not of the CHACR, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Ministry of Defence, British Army or US Army. The aim of the briefing is to provide a neutral platform for external researchers and experts to offer their views on critical issues. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. www.chacr.org.uk
S NATO and its member states are reviving their focus on territorial and collective defence, there is a growing awareness of the need for effective co-operation with non-military actors. Flagship documents such as the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept explicitly mention the need for “better day-zero integration” that requires partnerships with “non-governmental organisations, civilian actors and industry”.1 NATO’s current conceptual definition of multi-domain operations equally highlights the crucial requirement to integrate nonmilitary actors into military operations, particularly in the cyber and space domain, where private actors’ capabilities often surpass those of the military.2 Hence, the Alliance and its member states are facing the challenge of re-designing their engagement with non-military actors to make it suitable for the contemporary security environment. When looking at
the current existing toolkit, the joint function of Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) appears as the obvious way of working together with non-military actors. However, CIMIC suffers from an image problem within military institutions across the Alliance. It remains associated with the expeditionary phase of operations after the end of the Cold War, and many still equate CIMIC with digging wells and its contributions to winning over the ‘hearts and minds’ of local populations in foreign countries. However, tasks for CIMIC have always been much broader than this narrative would reflect and are likely to expand even further. While still widely misunderstood and under appreciated by large parts of NATO militaries, CIMIC as a joint function has the potential to help meet the demands of situations that require close cooperation with nonmilitary actors. This requires appropriate preparation of military personnel that should be able to flexibly use CIMIC in
various aspects of planning and executing operations.
WHAT IS CIMIC?
History professor Thomas Mockaitis once quipped that “defining CIMIC is like nailing jello to a wall”3 and conceptual confusion continues to reign in the area of civil-military cooperation. Civilians have always been directly affected by armed conflict and have contributed to military operations in different ways throughout the history of warfare, but doctrinally incorporating civil-military cooperation in military operations is a relatively new phenomenon in
1NATO ACT, ‘NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept’ (Norfolk, 2021).
2Ian Bowers, ‘Multi-Domain Operations –The NATO and US Approach’ (Camberley: The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research (CHACR), 2024).
3Mockaitis 2005, cited in Thijs W. Brocades Zaalberg, ‘Countering Insurgent-Terrorism: Why Nato Chose The Wrong Historical Foundation For Cimic’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 17, no. 4 (December 2006): 399–420.
NATO countries. During the Second World War, the United States had tasked dedicated staff with the administration of conquered territories. This led to the establishment of the Civil Affairs Branch as part of the US military organisation, which ended up being a model for the development of CIMIC capabilities within NATO.4 For the Alliance, the operational experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan shaped the institutionalisation of CIMIC capabilities. While some argue that NATO’s official definitions and guidelines remained too narrowly focused on achieving military objectives instead of embracing counter-insurgency approaches,5 operational requirements led CIMIC practitioners to interpret their core functions of civilmilitary liaison, support to civilian actors, and support to the force increasingly broadly and flexibly. In fact, CIMIC often meant that troops were essentially taking over civilian governance functions in their area of operations.6 In other words, CIMIC tasks constantly expanded and doctrine development had to catch up on its ever growing role.
Despite its clear contribution to military operations, dedicated CIMIC practitioners have always struggled to convince its ‘institutional customers’ in the military hierarchy of their valuable input – and continue to do so today.7 The results of successful CIMIC are often hard to measure and hard to see for military personnel who are not involved in liaising with non-military actors. During the post-Cold War’s expeditionary phase of NATO missions and its focus on stabilising ‘fragile states’ and supporting host nation governments, large parts of the military and other stakeholders reduced CIMIC to its contribution to ‘quick impact
“WHEN SPEAKING TO MILITARY OFFICERS NOWADAYS ABOUT WHAT THE JOINT FUNCTION CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARY OPERATIONS, IT IS NOT RARE THAT THEY STILL EQUATE CIMIC WITH ‘DIGGING WELLS’ WHILE FORGETTING THAT IN A STRICTLY DOCTRINAL UNDERSTANDING, NATO CIMIC HAS ALWAYS CLEARLY AIMED TO CONTRIBUTE TO ACHIEVING THE MILITARY’S DESIRED END-STATE.”
projects’ and other humanitarian efforts.8 This created a narrative that stuck, and the case of CIMIC seems to be another instance where pre-established narratives hinder learning and progress in military institutions.9 When speaking to military officers nowadays about what the joint function contributes to military operations, it is not rare that they still equate CIMIC with ‘digging wells’ while forgetting that in a strictly doctrinal understanding, NATO CIMIC has always clearly aimed to contribute to achieving the military’s desired end-state. As these end-states will be different in territorial and collective defence than they used to be in expeditionary operations, CIMIC will have to be adapted. For this to be successful, the apparent confusion around CIMIC as a concept among military practitioners will have to change.
Apart from the difficulties of visualising CIMIC outputs, this confusion also stems from the distinct definitions of CIMIC which soldiers and officers have encountered in their professional careers. In many crisis response
NATO member states and aims at a much more horizontal relationship with civilian actors than US Civil Affairs.12
operations over the last decades, military personnel had to engage with multiple interpretations of civil-military cooperation. The European Union, NATO and the United Nations (UN), for example, currently use at least seven different definitions for civil-military cooperation.10 While NATO CIMIC aims at contributing to achieving military objectives, UN-CIMIC uses military personnel to enable efforts driven by the mission’s civilian component, which has practical implications for troops who have to navigate these different interpretations in the field.11 Even in conceptual understandings that are broadly similar and interoperable in the sense that they see CIMIC as a tool for the military to achieve the desired end-state – such as US Civil Affairs and NATO CIMIC – some differences make it hard to fully cooperate among allies. For instance, US Civil Affairs doctrine is much more directed towards expeditionary operations in which effects are supposed to be delivered in the civil domain. By contrast, NATO CIMIC (at least doctrinally) assumes that operations can take place within
That said, there still seems to be a considerable lack of clarity with regard to what CIMIC can and should contribute to operations in the future operating environment. In discussions with CIMIC practitioners and the wider community of interest, it became evident to this author that a considerable number of military personnel remain locked into a simplistic understanding of the ‘civilian’ environment and its variety of goals and motivations when discussing the future of CIMIC. Even when operating within NATO territory, engagement with non-military actors requires tailored approaches depending on whom military personnel are dealing with.
4Wessel Toonen, CIMIC in Missions and Operations. Reflections on History, Current Affairs and Perspectives (Den Haag: CIMIC COE, 2017), 30.
5Brocades Zaalberg, ‘Countering InsurgentTerrorism’.
6Agata Mazurkiewicz, Civil-Military Cooperation in International Interventions: The Role of Soldiers (Routledge, 2022), 6.
7Stefan Muehlich and Nicholas Krohley, ‘NATO CIMIC & US Civil Affairs Doctrinal Review & Comparative Assessment’ (Den Haag: CIMIC Centre of Excellence, 2022), 22.
8Toonen, CIMIC in Missions and Operations. Reflections on History, Current Affairs and Perspectives, 71.
9Nicole Jenne, ‘Narratives Around Civil–Military Cooperation: How Institutionalized Discourses Influence Learning in Peace Operations’, Armed Forces & Society 50, no. 1 (January 2024): 124–48.
10Henrique Garbino, Jonathan Robinson, and Joao Mauricio Dias Lopes Valdetaro, ‘Civil-Military What?! Making Sense of Conflicting Civil-Military Concepts’, Research Report (Providence: Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, 20 February 2024), 9.
11Mazurkiewicz, Civil-Military Cooperation in International Interventions, 28.
12Muehlich and Krohley, ‘NATO CIMIC & US Civil Affairs Doctrinal Review & Comparative Assessment’, 4.
Picture: UK MOD © Crown copyright
DOCTRINAL CHANGES IN CIMIC AND FUTURE CHALLENGE
NATO is currently changing its doctrinal approach towards CIMIC in order to make it suitable for the shift back towards deterrence as well as territorial and collective defence. This includes a clear acknowledgment that CIMIC is supposed to contribute to military objectives in the entire continuum of competition. According to NATO’s new approved definition of CIMIC, it is a “Joint Function that integrates the understanding of the civil factors of the operating environment and that enables, facilitates and conducts Civil-Military Interaction to support the accomplishment of missions and military strategic objectives in peacetime, crisis and conflict”.13 Particularly the potential use in warfighting requires a shift in the previously mentioned image of CIMIC, since exclusively associating CIMIC with the expeditionary phase of NATO missions stands in the way of fully unlocking its potential.
NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept explicitly underlines the future operating environment’s challenges and the requirement for “better day-zero integration” that requires partnerships with “non-governmental organisations, civilian actors and industry”.14 Moreover, NATO has acknowledged that national resilience needs to be strengthened and broadened in the contemporary strategic threat environment. In the concept of “layered resilience”, the Capstone Concept emphasises the need for both civilian and military resilience – in which CIMIC
“JUST AS THE TERM ‘CIVILIAN’ IN CIMIC HAS ALWAYS BEEN TOO BROAD TO REFLECT MANY DIFFERENT ACTORS WITH NOT NECESSARILY ALIGNED GOALS, SUMMARISING A PLETHORA OF DIFFERENT ENTITIES AS ‘NON-MILITARY ACTORS’ DOES NOT DO JUSTICE TO A COMPLEX REALITY.”
has the potential to bridge the gap between the civilian environment and the military. This is particularly relevant in the context of responding to “hybrid warfare”, where civil society and institutions are explicitly targeted by an opponent.15
That said, there are plenty of necessities for CIMIC in future operations. Doctrinally at least, NATO is clearly on a path of acknowledging the changes in the strategic environment and its consequences for CIMIC. The current ratification draft of the Allied Joint Doctrine for CivilMilitary Cooperation (AJP 3.19 Edition B) once more underlines CIMIC’s fundamental role in NATO’s comprehensive approach and its aim to synchronise the actions of militaries and non-military actors. Hence, an obvious role for CIMIC would be to contribute to establishing contacts and relationships of trust with those actors that can support the achievement of military objectives – and the new AJP 3.19 explicitly mentions this requirement. These actors’ goals, and therefore the extent of their relationships with the military, vary significantly. After all, it will make a crucial difference if civil-military interactions take place with civil defence agencies or with technology companies. Just as the term ‘civilian’ in CIMIC has always been too
broad to reflect many different actors with not necessarily aligned goals, summarising a plethora of different entities as ‘non-military actors’ does not do justice to a complex reality, either. Moreover, the shift of operational focus away from crisis response operations to territorial defence and eventual Article IV and V situations demands that some of the basic assumptions behind using CIMIC are reconsidered.
Although the current strategic threat environment in Europe does bear some resemblance to the period between the Second World War and the end of the Soviet Union, simply reviving Cold War plans for national resilience is not sufficient to address the complex challenges in 21st century societies. A crucial point therein is that many NATO states have lost important capabilities to secure their own populations in times of crises and conflict while also supporting military operations at the same time: civil defence agencies have often been disbanded or suffer from significant budget restrictions, decades of outsourcing logistical support to contractors have replaced military-owned capabilities, and strategically important sectors such as medicine provision rely on global supply chains.16 NATO member states address these challenges in different ways. For
instance, Germany has drawn up its ‘Operationsplan Deutschland’ in which it highlights the crucial role of non-military actors in safeguarding the country’s role as a logistical hub for NATO’s troop deployments towards a likely area of operations in Eastern Europe. This includes state agencies but also private companies from sectors such as logistics and energy.17 Scandinavian countries aim to update their Total Defence policies while working even closer with commercial actors. In Norway, some business actors are being “integrated into the military planning structures with access to – and knowledge of – highly sensitive plans and doctrines”.18 Such high levels of cooperation with actors driven by commercial interests also come
13NATO Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence, ‘New Definitions for CIMIC and for CMI - CIMIC-COE’, 2022.
14NATO ACT, ‘NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept’.
15Sebastian Rinelli and Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘The Missing Link: Civil-Military Cooperation and Hybrid Wars’, in A Civil-Military Response to Hybrid Threats, ed. Eugenio Cusumano and Marian Corbe (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 17–39.
16Vlasta Zekulić, Christopher Godwin, and Jennifer Cole, ‘Reinvigorating Civil–Military Relationships in Building National Resilience’, The RUSI Journal 162, no. 4 (4 July 2017): 30–38 .
17Carsten Hoffmann, ‘Operationsplan Deutschland’: Generalleutnant fordert “deutlich mehr” Soldaten für Heimatschutz’, Der Tagesspiegel Online, 20 March 2024.
18Joakim Berndtsson, Anne Roelsgaard Obling, and Åse Gilje Østensen, ‘BusinessMilitary Relations and Collaborative Total Defence in Scandinavia’, in Total Defence Forces in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Joakim Berndtsson, Irina Goldenberg, and Stéfanie von Hlatky (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2023), 416.
with obvious risks, and militaries need to come up with ways to mitigate them.
This is perhaps most apparent when considering the ‘new’ domains of cyber and space, where crucial capabilities are mostly owned by private companies. As the traditional pattern of technological developments – in which militaries would often come up with inventions that were later adopted by civilian companies – has been reversed, armed forces now depend on private companies to provide them with crucial capabilities.19 The ambitious goal of NATO’s concept of Multi-Domain Operations to orchestrate military operations across domains and environments while synchronising them with non-military activities is a prime example for the future challenge of incorporating nonmilitary partners in planning and execution of operations.20 Navigating these companies’ interests and making sure that they align with the military’s end-state will be a key challenge in planning and executing future
19Ulrike Franke, ‘How companies go to war’, Engelsberg ideas (blog), 2024.
20Bowers, ‘Multi-Domain Operations – The NATO and US Approach’.
21Reuters, ‘Musk Says He Refused Kyiv Request for Starlink Use in Attack on Russia’, 8 September 2023.
22Nick Paton Walsh et al., ‘Ukraine Relies on Starlink for Its Drone War. Russia Appears to Be Bypassing Sanctions to Use the Devices Too’, CNN, 26 March 2024.
23Thomas Grove et al., ‘Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin’, Wall Street Journal, 2024.
24Agata Mazurkiewicz, ‘Does CIMIC Make Sense - Critical Analysis of Civil-Military Cooperation’ (Biuletyn Analiz Centrum Inicjatyw Międzynarodowych, 14 October 2014).
25Jonathan Horowitz, ‘Private Companies in Cyber Operations During Armed Conflict’, Lieber Institute West Point, 13 January 2022.
26Franke, ‘How companies go to war’.
military operations. Apart from issues of technical integration, this means making sure that commercial service providers do not also make business deals with opponents – or at least trying to avoid that their products can be used by them. Take the example of Starlink, which has been very important for Ukraine in defending its territory against Russian invaders. While the company was quick in setting up internet services that allowed Ukrainian armed forces units to communicate and use drones, its owner Elon Musk decided to deny Ukraine’s request to enable the service in Crimea in support of an offensive operation against the Russian fleet.21 Moreover, Russia has clearly found ways to make use of Starlink for its own purposes, whether by circumventing sanctions or by hijacking and hacking devices used by Ukraine.22 Musk’s apparent regular interactions with Vladimir Putin further raise questions about the loyalties of an entrepreneur whose products Ukraine and NATO member states heavily rely upon.23
This episode highlights some potential issues with a dependency on tech companies and entrepreneurs which NATO
will have to navigate in the future. Of course, it is nothing new that armed forces have relied on commercial support. Still, the cooperation with private actors in the space and cyber domains requires a scope of integration into military planning and operations that comes with a new set of challenges. It cannot be ruled out that owners of crucial capabilities switch sides if they receive a better offer elsewhere or have other reasons to adjust the services they provide as they see fit. Some challenges CIMIC faced in the expeditionary phase will take new forms in cooperation with private actors: for instance, the personal security of nonmilitary actors such as health workers or humanitarian agencies was often threatened when they were perceived as working together with the military by warring parties in conflicts.24 NATO working together with non-military actors in the cyber and space domains raises similar questions, albeit at a different scale: can employees of civilian companies who provide input to military operations be considered as combatants, and therefore legitimate targets of military attacks under International Humanitarian Law?25 Moreover, private companies’ products
“WHILE THE COMPANY [STARLINK] WAS QUICK IN SETTING UP INTERNET SERVICES THAT ALLOWED UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES UNITS TO COMMUNICATE AND USE DRONES, ITS OWNER ELON MUSK DECIDED TO DENY UKRAINE’S REQUEST TO ENABLE THE SERVICE IN CRIMEA.”
that are used in conflicts – such as satellites – might become legitimate targets, and Russia has already declared that it would consider them as such in an armed conflict.26 While the protection of civilians has always been a key task for CIMIC, there might have to be ways to protect civilian assets that are crucial for military operations as well. The latter is certainly not a task for CIMIC alone, but it will have to liaise with private actors in order to guarantee the best possible outcome. If protecting commercial assets becomes a task for NATO forces, further issues arise if private companies end up essentially outsourcing the protection of their products to armed forces. The Alliance will have to avoid intervening in markets on behalf of their tech providers and will have to think hard about when to use scarce military resources to protect privately-owned capabilities, while having to trust the loyalty of those commercially-driven businesses.
These challenges of dealing with entrepreneurs might remind those familiar with Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 of the war-profiteer Milo Minderbinder, who uses military assets for protecting his business interests and eventually ends up bombing
his own troops after being paid to do so by the enemy. While CIMIC can certainly not change the character traits of tech entrepreneurs, it could play a crucial role in mitigating the risks of dependency on private companies. Compared to CIMIC with civilian state agencies or NGOs, working with business partners requires a much greater situational awareness of their respective interests. Moreover, signing a contract for the delivery of services will not be sufficient to create levels of trust that are necessary for effective cooperation. In this regard, a modified form of CIMIC has the greatest potential to establish trustful relationships with commercial actors and to contribute to situational awareness for decision-makers by liaising frequently with companies and by assessing their interests. This does sound like the work intelligence staff would do, but this overlap between CIMIC and intelligence is certainly not new. If CIMIC becomes clearly associated with intelligence tasks, there are risks for the personal safety of CIMIC personnel and of undermining trustful relationships.27 These trade-offs will have to be reassessed in the future operating environment, but it is clear that CIMIC with commercial entities needs an entirely different approach than
with humanitarian organisations or state agencies.
CIMIC also requires some adjustments for potential large-scale combat operations in conventional warfare. As the example of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows, the defending nation’s CIMIC played a significant role in the protection of the civilian population, for instance by managing evacuations, providing supplies to residents who stayed in combat areas and essentially taking over governance functions where local authorities were no longer able to do so. The case of Ukraine further shows CIMIC’s challenge of “transferring the perception as well as its own mindset and the consequent effort from the ‘support to the civil environment’(…) to the ‘support to the force’”28 – which will remain a task for CIMIC across NATO. While the nature of these tasks was expected, their scope soon overwhelmed the initial capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces – there was simply not sufficient CIMIC personnel available.29 It is not unreasonable to assume that in an Article V scenario, national CIMIC forces would face a similar situation and would have to be supported by NATO CIMIC units. This would require clarifications of the legal framework for when NATO
CIMIC units would be able to be deployed in a timely manner, in order to allow for sufficient time to establish trustful relationships with local actors. Moreover, the Ukrainian example of CIMIC units taking over civilian government functions out of necessity highlights that some of the lessons learnt during the expeditionary phase should not be forgotten.
Joint function CIMIC arguably remains the Alliance’s best tool to achieve synergies between non-military actors and armed forces. While it has often been understood as a tactical element in expeditionary missions, and continues to be seen by many military officers as a mere add-on to operations, properly performed CIMIC is clearly needed at all levels of operations in order to meet the challenges of the future operating environment. CIMIC as a joint function will have to serve as a liaison with many different non-military actors – which cannot be done with a one-sizefits-all approach. Dealing with local disaster aid agencies comes with very different demands than liaising with commercial providers of critical capabilities – and dedicated CIMIC staff will not be the only ones to have to navigate these difficulties. This means that the remit of CIMIC
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will have to become broader and simultaneously more tailored towards different situations, as the requirements for interacting with actors with highly diverging interests are going to be as complex as ever. This calls for extensive preparation, training and dedicated personnel, which will come at a financial cost. One could argue that building up CIMIC capabilities is perhaps cheaper than other areas of military spending – and therefore provides considerable ‘bang for the buck’. However, the effects of successful CIMIC are difficult to measure in quantitative terms and it is understandable that investments in military hardware enjoy greater priority. Combined with the image problem of CIMIC, those lobbying for greater investments in civilmilitary cooperation will thus have a hard job competing for scarce funds at a time when NATO militaries are having to significantly invest in other essential military capabilities.
27Garbino, Robinson, and Dias Lopes Valdetaro, ‘Civil-Military What?’
28NATO Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence, ‘CCOE Case Study - Ukraine Initial Study’ (Den Haag, 2024), 37.
29Center for Civilians in Conflict, ‘The Role of Civil-Military Cooperation in Protection of Civilians: The Ukraine Experience’, 2023, 17.
“It is clear to me that we face a convergence of threats. And that time is not on our side. Russia, rearming and restocking, will continue to contest Euro-Atlantic security. Within a few years the Chinese could seek to realise their ambitions militarily over Taiwan. Iran, with deepening investment in nuclear weapons, conventional weaponry and its axis of resistance, will continue to divide its region. And North Korea’s leader shows an undiminished appetite to sustain the militarisation of the Korean peninsula. All are dangerous individually, but as they converge at pace and scale, they could present an acute strategic threat from as early as 2027. This demands that we accelerate modernisation to meet a sharper timeline.” – General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the General Staff – writing in the latest edition of The British Army Review – on the Service’s ‘need for speed’. chacr.org.uk/media/british-army-review
