PfP CONSORTIUM
The Consortium, founded in 1998, supports the PfP efforts to promote effective civilmilitary cooperation and improved military interoperability among all Allied and Partner
nations with the following goals:
•
Contributing to an expanding dialogue, common understanding and broad range
of cooperation in security issues among the EAPC countries.
•
Helping to build a cadre of professionals and security specialists in government
and the private sector in partner nations with an expertise in a wide variety of
defence issues, including defence strategy, parliamentary oversight, public
information policies and the like.
•
Facilitating greater information-sharing in partner countries about NATO, EAPC
and PfP, and other Euro-Atlantic and European security institutions. Within
individual nations, cooperation between national security studies institutes and
academies is well established, and internationally there is cooperation between
academies on the one hand and between security studies institutes on the other,
but international exchange between these two groups appears to be limited. The
Consortium is meant to bridge this gap and establish contacts between
academies and institutes throughout the Euro-Atlantic region.
•
Providing a forum to assist private foundations, ‘think tanks’, governmental and
non-governmental agencies to offer practical assistance (enhanced academic
standards and recognised accreditation; regular publication of scholarly journals
and articles in topics related to European security).
DCAF is chairing the Working Group on Security Sector Reform1; this group, founded in
2001 at the Moscow Annual Conference, has the following core objectives, which ideally
complement the overarching general Consortium goals:
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to enhance democratic civil- military relations and promote security sector
reform through cooperation in joint research, outreach and expert formation
initiatives.
1
http://www.pfpconsortium.org/parser.cgi?file=/info-pages/WGS/cmr_en.htm
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to encourage cooperation between international information networks in
support of research, outreach and expert formation related to security sector
reform
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to enhance the exchange of ideas, knowledge, expertise and best practices
of security sector reform processes between consolidating and consolidated
democracies in the Euro-Atlantic area.
The research programme was conceptually prepared by experts from the region within
the Partnership for Peace Consortium Working Group on Security Sector Reform, one of
11 Working Groups dealing with different topics. The Working Group meetings were
repeatedly made available for discussion of the progress made. The present book aptly
reflects the excellent possibilities and opportunities the Consortium provides for
comparative and cross-country studies. The Consortium provides for just this kind of
meeting of like-minded experts and comprehensive area studies. It is unique in this
respect, and deserves our attention and support.