CIAO DATE: 04/05

Learning from Case Studies

Abstract

When countries are accepted into NATO membership, it will become more difficult to 'test' them on a pass/fail basis since, by virtue of the fact that they will have been accepted into the 'club', they will already have passed. Increasingly, therefore, some other form of process will be needed in order to promote improvements in democratic control of the armed forces in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

One possible route forward may be to place increased emphasis on the exchange of best practice between NATO members (long-established as well as relatively new), in which states improve their practices because that want to do so, not because doing so is seen as a condition for achieving the wider objective of NATO (or EU) membership. This more nuanced approach - perhaps along with a 'scorecard' of progress made, which might be better developed by a non-governmental organisation - could still be combined with a 'pass/fail' criterion for countries that remain outside NATO, such as Albania and Macedonia.

Full Text (PDF, 10 pages, 74 KB)