10 Recommendations from 2010 Security Jam

10 Recommendations from 2010 Security Jam

The Atlantic Council co-hosted the Online Security Jam, an online forum to discuss the global security challenges for the coming years, from February 4 to 9.  It was sponsored by NATO and the European Union. Now, the conclusions have been compiled in a report.

Security Jam 10 Recommendations Cover

"Civilian actors should have more of a say in security policy" was one of the strongest recommendations pitched to NATO and the EU in a report published by the Brussels-based Security & Defence Agenda today, just as the key EU 2020 and NATO Expert Group reports are being finalized.

In the run-up to both Felipe González’s EU 2020 report and Madeleine Albright’s NATO Group of Experts recommendations towards NATO’s Strategic Concept, the Security & Defence Agenda’s report highlights the 10 key recommendations to the institutions on delivering long-term stability in the new global security landscape.

The recommendations came out of the Online Security Jam, which brought 4,000 military, diplomatic and civilian experts from 124 countries together online to thrash out the challenges facing global security.

Organized by a coalition of leading think-tanks worldwide, the Security Jam was a major step forward in the institutions’ approach to defining security policy for the 21st century. By putting top decision-makers from NATO and the EU online together with senior military figures, academics, NGOs and think-tanks, the institutions showed a willingness to get stakeholders from many walks of life around the table to push forward fresh and innovative thinking.

According to Robert Hunter, former US Ambassador to NATO, "The Security Jam has done something that NATO’s Group of Experts has not – to reach out beyond the ‘usual suspects’, to people who have truly original ideas and a range of analysis that goes to the heart of today’s and tomorrow’s security issues."

The recommendations, which have already been shared with the EU’s Reflection Group and NATO’s Group of Experts, come from online discussions with top military officials such as Admiral James Stavridis, SACEUR, General Håkan Syrén, EUMC Chairman and Lt Gen David Leakey, EUMS Director General, as well as senior policy-makers including Kai Eide, UN Ambassador to Afghanistan, Josette Sheeran, UN World Food Programme, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former NATO Secretary General,  Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy Planning in the US State Dept and Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, OSCE Secretary General.

They will provide both the EU and NATO with significant food for thought at a moment when both institutions are looking for ways to tackle global security challenges within more cooperative frameworks. It is expected that they will also feed into new policy thinking on how to make the world safer for everyone in the 21st century.

The 10 recommendations were:

  • NATO should develop a civilian wing to cooperate with civilian actors
  • The UN should secure agreement on UN Millennium Security Goals based on the concept of human security
  • Expand both EU and NATO regional security through mutual assistance agreements
  • Create a European Intelligence Agency as an information broker for hybrid threats
  • Improve the EU’s internal public diplomacy and use new media to consult European experts and citizens on security threats and policies
  • Create a European Security Academy for EU civilian and military staff
  • Establish a combined EU-NATO Wisemen’s group to evaluate capability planning and build public support for cross-border cooperation
  • Establish an EU scarce natural resources inventory with a mandate to protect them
  • Publish a joint EU-NATO quarterly where senior officials from both organisations can highlight new collaboration efforts between the two players
  • Establish an International Crisis Preparedness Fund to prepare for future disasters

Participants, including members of the institutions, called on NATO, the EU and the organizers to make The Security Jam a regular yearly fixture on the policy debate agenda.

Press Coverage:

  • "NATO and Europeans Plot Path Ahead," Steven Erlanger, NYT, 5 May 2010

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