Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes

Background

The PfPC was founded in 1998 in response to the speech by United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen, "Toward a Cooperative Security Network for the 21st Century". The speech was delivered during the 12 June 1998 meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) defense ministers and similar sentiments were echoed in the concluding documents of the NATO and EAPC Summits on 24 and 25 April 1999. The PfPC was originally co-sponsored by the United States and Germany to work in the spirit of the Partnership for Peace Program "to strengthen defense and military education through enhanced national and institutional cooperation." Since its founding, the PfPC’s sponsorship has expanded, with contributions from numerous partner states and organizations.

Upon its establishment, the PfPC was chartered with the following objectives:

Organization

The PfPC is governed by a Senior Advisory Council (SAC), with high level government representatives from Austria, Canada, Germany, NATO International Staff, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, United States. SAC members can be permanent or rotational depending on the interests of the contributing state or organization. The most recent SAC additions are Poland and Sweden. The SAC meets annually to review the PfPC's activities, providing guidance to ensure activities match the PfPC's founding principles.

The PfPC organizes its activities through Working Groups and Study Groups, which address relevant topics in international security and related fields. In total there are nine groups, each with a Chair, Co-Chair, and Technical Advisors, who contribute to the groups' activities voluntarily or otherwise. The Chairs and Co-Chairs comprise the PfPC's Consortium Steering Committee (CSC). The CSC meets annually to provide updates on their activities and to determine future activities, ensuring activities are aligned with SAC directions.

Activity Groups

Over 90 PfPC events per year across the US, Europe and Central Asia provide the activity groups with a forum for debate and exchange of ideas on contemporary security topics. Such forums are designed to identify and facilitate options for nonviolent resolution to international differences, and to further defense education transformation goals in recipient countries. The groups benefit from a multinational, multidisciplinary network of experts across defense, academia, industry, and civil society.

Advanced Distributed Learning

The Advanced Distributed Learning Working Group’s mission is to strengthen e-learning-based defense and security policy education through international and institutional collaboration. The activities include the creation and sharing of interactive, widely needed e-learning courseware; providing access to interoperable, open-source e-learning technologies; and the exchange and dissemination of ADL-based best practices. A strategic goal is to contribute to the Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP) and integrate interested Partner nations into the ADL community of practice. The Advanced Distributed Learning Working Group coordinates and standardizes training and promotes innovation.

Combating Terrorism

The Combating Terrorism Working Group endeavors to develop an internationally recognized body of terrorism studies experts to better understand international, regional, and domestic terrorist threats, to educate future leaders who will have responsibilities to counter terrorism (CT), and to provide policy analysis and assistance to leaders dealing with the current and future terrorist threat. The group’s diverse membership, consisting of seasoned CT practitioners and scholars from more than two dozen countries across Eurasia and North America is unique in the CT community and professional military education (PME) as well, offering special insights into emerging security problems including radicalization and extremism.

Comprehensive Approach

The Comprehensive Approach Working Group approaches today’s complex security challenges in a comprehensive, inclusive way. By engaging the whole of government, industry and educational institutions the Comprehensive Approach Working Group will be able to develop practical answers on how to incorporate a comprehensive approach across the board. The group seeks to gradually integrate all Partnership for Peace (PfP) partner countries to participate in discussions on the issue of implementing a comprehensive approach. The strategic goal is to encourage PfP partners to participate in the development of a curriculum and to teach the concept of comprehensive approach, which is based on western experience but tailored to consider a country's particular regional and cultural needs.

Conflict Studies

The mission of the Conflict Studies Working Group is to establish, maintain, and enhance a regular, multilateral and open exchange of information, viewpoints and ideas between official military history institutions. This is done through annual thematic conferences that examine historical determinants of national military strategy, policy and objectives, as well as the historical context of current international and regional affairs. Here, military historians from different nations come together to share ideas concerning important events and to gain an appreciation of differences in national perspectives with respect to them. This open sharing of opinion and historical research assists the different nations in moving away from confrontation and toward lasting peace and stability.

Education Development

The Education Development Working Group (EDWG) is designed to strengthen defense education in partner nations and consists of two core components:

These two core components are facilitated by the multinational staffed Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP),. DEEP is central to EDWG activities, supporting foreign government defense learning institution efforts to: (1) enhance the quality and relevance of curriculum and to (2) promote faculty development and modern learning techniques within a framework of individually tailored multi-year action plans. As of December 2014, DEEP programs were underway in 13 nations: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

Emerging Security Challenges

The Emerging Security Challenges (ESC) Working Group aims to enhance the capacity of decision makers and policy shapers to identify and respond to emerging security challenges. Specifically, its goal is to identify and prioritize such challenges and discuss possible political frameworks and mechanisms to address them. “Emerging Security Challenges” has become a term used at NATO and in public debate to deal with potential, upcoming, non-traditional threats to our security. The working group does not have a defined set of issues for analysis - rather, it remains open to include new challenges as they arise.

Security Sector Reform

The Security Sector Reform Working Group (SSRWG) was formally established in 2001 and is financially supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport. Its stated objectives are “to enhance the exchange of ideas, insights, expertise, knowledge and best practices of security sector reform processes between consolidating and consolidated democracies in the Euro-Atlantic area”. From 2010, the group began to focus more on human security issues and has taken a particular interest in how to improve gender equality through defence transformation. This led the group to identify teaching gender to the military as an area that warranted greater attention, resulting in a series of workshops organised in collaboration with the EDWG, starting in 2012. These have been attended by representatives from NATO and Partner countries specialising in military education, gender education and integrating gender in military operations. The SSRWG’s current activities are centred on the development of a handbook to document the findings of the workshop series.

Regional Security in Southeast Europe

The Regional Stability in Southeast Europe Study Group contributes to peace and security in Southeast Europe. Its working principles include the following:

Regional Security in the South Caucasus

The PfPC's Regional Security in the South Caucasus Study Group actively seeks to foster stability in the region through facilitating dialogue among diverse parties. The activities of the group serve to advise broader conflict resolution activities, such as the Geneva Talks and the OSCE Minsk Group. The group pursues its goals by focusing on the following areas:

Products and Services

Supported by the research and activities of the study/working groups, the PfPC offers the following services:

Publications

Connections (journal)