Occasional Paper #36, NATO and Humanitarian Action in the Kosovo Crisis

Review by Bert Kremers, "The sum of military deployment and humanitarian aid," in Internationale Spectator, May 2000, Vol. LIV, no. 5, pages 273-274 (Clingendael Institute, The Hague)

"The result of the efforts of the authors is without doubt required reading for ministers of defense and overseas development as well as their close advisors. ...

The reader who views the examples of misunderstanding [between themilitary and the humanitarian organizations] cannot escape a feeling of 'deja vu'. After the passage of lots of valuable time, the cultural differences ... between the worlds of the military and humanitarian relief organizations will disappear. But the main problem remains of course how the cooperation between both types of agencies can be organized in such a fashion that capability and effectiveness go hand-in-hand. The solution lies possibly within reach but demands more than waiting for the next conflict.

The recommendation of a seasoned relief worker is instructive, namely that: "for effective lessons-learning to be reflected in practice, the entire cast of military and humanitarian actors would needto be transferred en bloc from the last emergency to the next one." Just as telling, perhaps, is the fact that in the [Dutch] cabinet's evaluation of the Dutch military effort to the NATO operations in Kosovo, only two sentences are devoted to the "effective cooperation between military and civil agencies." That "the result thereof has been larger than the sum of the parts" is a conclusion which the authors of the book here reviewed are not yet prepared to sign up to."