Foreign policy decision-making in operational overlap: the UK’s policing assistance in Afghanistan through the EU and NATO

ABSTRACT

Traditionally seen as an interlocutor between Europe and the US in transatlantic security relations, the UK’s engagement with the training of the Afghan National Police (ANP) through the concurrent EU and NATO missions presents an interesting case of foreign policy decision-making. Although a logic based on broader British orientations about the roles of the two organisations expect that the UK’s primary institution of choice would be NATO, London supported both missions in providing international policing assistance to Afghanistan. Adopting an operational overlap perspective, this article seeks to explain the UK’s strategic behaviour vis-a-vis the EU and NATO training missions that have been simultaneously involved in overlapping tasks, despite the initial intention that the two missions would undertake different and complementary roles. Analysing evidence from the UK Parliament and Government, US diplomatic missions, the EU and NATO, as well as interviews with former UK and NATO officials, this article argues that while providing training to the Afghan police, London focused on these missions’ practical outputs rather than preferring an organisation of choice as such. This strategy is mainly guided by the UK’s concern to uphold counter-narcotics enforcement in Afghanistan and to fulfil transition tasks during the incremental withdrawal of British troops.

KEYWORDS:

• EU
• NATO
• Afghanistan
• foreign policy analysis
• governmental politics
• operational overlap

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Whitman, Benjamin Martill and Filiz Doğan, two anonymous referees as well as the participants of the BISA European Security Working Group workshop in January 2020 for their helpful suggestions on drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Feyyaz Barış Çelik is a PhD candidate and an Assistant Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent. His research investigates member states strategies regarding the EU and NATO crisis response operations with spatial, temporal and task-based proximities.

Notes

1 The phrase “member state engagement” covers member states’ preferences such as operational support (e.g. contributing assets), diplomatic support or tolerance (e.g. supporting the launch of an operation without contributing assets), and reluctance to or rejection of these operations during different and sometimes parallel operational phases (e.g. planning, force generation and launch).

2 The inquiries of these committees are attended by Members of Parliament, Lords, officials in the UK government, EU and NATO, and independent analysts, depending on the topic at hand.

3 Email communication with FCO’s Central Freedom of Information Unit.

4 Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) and Focused District Development (FDD).