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120 Thierry Tardy 120 6 The Inherent Difficulties of Interinstitutional Cooperation in Fighting Terrorism Thierry Tardy In the aftermath of the events of September ,,the debates about how to respond to the attacks on the United States broadly acknowledged that the fight against terrorism had to be global and that it had to encompass as many political entitiesaspossible.Everystructureinvolvedinactivitiesrelatedtothefightagainst terrorism—at the state, substate, or interstate levels—had to be mobilized. The global nature of the threat implied the necessity of a global response. Global mobilization implies cooperation. International organizations (IOs) have a particular role to play,not only as forums for discussion but also as independent agents of interinstitutional cooperation. This chapter focuses on cooperation between and among formal IOs that have a central political and security—rather than economic or financial—agenda.The essay focuses on the four most important and well-financed of these entities: the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Union (EU). Security institutions are created and mandated to collectively address the threats faced by their member states. The end of the Cold War placed all existing institutions in a new situation; thus, their mandates, their composition, and even their raisons d’être had to be reconsidered. Activities were reoriented to match the needs of the new international milieu: the UN embarked upon a new generation of peacekeeping and peacemaking operations; NATO struggled to redefine its purpose and moved away from its collective-defense dimension to embrace crisis-management activities; the OSCE developed its competency in the field of human rights, institution-building, and electoral supervision; and the EU expressed the will to become a security actor through the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which had newly found capacities in the field of crisis management. While these institutions found themselves interacting more and more frequently, competition forced them to think more seriously about their respective comparative advantages. The Inherent Difficulties of Interinstitutional Cooperation 121 Like the end of the Cold War, the events of September  have had an impact on security institutions. Even though none of them have an explicit mandate to fight terrorism, the advent of threats from non-state actors obliges these institutions to demonstrate their relevance to member states as they face a“new”challenge.1 The transnational nature of the threat, the magnitude of the attacks, and, at least in part, the place of the United States in the international system have all contributed to the turn of states and IOs toward the idea of enhanced interinstitutional cooperation. Interinstitutional cooperation is multifaceted. It may take place at the tactical and strategic levels in both the short and long term. It may include normative and legal issues as well as operational matters such as raising public awareness, sharing of information by the police and intelligence services, providing mutual assistance and support to third parties, developing joint bodies ,and appointing liaison personnel.Operational cooperation among security institutions may also include actions to deal with the consequences of terrorist attacks and dismantling terrorist cells, possibly with the use of force. This chapter argues that interinstitutional cooperation among security institutions in the fight against terrorism is weak, unstructured, and unlikely to be significantly developed in the medium term. In spite of the official discourse that followed the tragic events of September , security institutions barely cooperate with one other. What cooperation there is is unstructured because there is no overriding central mechanism to coordinate or facilitate it.The interinstitutional environment cannot be considered a“social network” with “recurrent transactions,” to use the usual terms employed by analysts. Interinstitutional cooperation among security institutions is unlikely to become an effective channel of the fight against terrorism because few elements conducive to meaningful collaboration are present. The first part of this chapter examines and questions the official discourse of the UN, the OSCE, the EU, and NATO about interinstitutional cooperation . The second and the third parts then look at two sets of reasons that explain the shortcomings of interinstitutional cooperation: the nature of interinstitutional cooperation under what international relations specialists call “anarchy,” and the specific character of the fight against terrorism. Interinstitutional Cooperation in Fighting Terrorism: Discourse versus Reality In the first months following September , the secretariats of IOs as well as state officials issued a spate of declarations strongly advocating international cooperation and, to a lesser extent, interinstitutional cooperation, as channels of the fight against terrorism. The UN, the OSCE, the...

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