Why we need closer links between development and defense

Military players and humanitarians are not natural bedfellows. But Stanislava Mladenova, the author of “When Rambo Meets the Red Cross: Civil-Military Engagement in Fragile States,” says they can be. She argues that civil-military engagement, especially in fragile and conflict-affected states, is an underappreciated necessity because both sides are working toward the same ends: stability and peace. As a NATO political adviser in Afghanistan, she saw the risks of a siloed approach firsthand. “And I remember sitting there and thinking, gosh, you have these two actors. One is trying to prevent human rights violations. One is trying to strengthen capacity to prevent human rights violations. One's lethal. One is not, one is military, one is not, but they're kind of going after the same thing. This is very puzzling to me, and from that moment, I was hooked,” said Mladenova, now a global fellow at Boston University, during an interview at the Pro Lounge of Devex World 2024. Fragile spaces, in particular, are tricky terrain but offer opportunities for security and humanitarian actors to cooperate. “From a military standpoint, fragile spaces are not spaces where the military is in charge. They don't own the terrain. They don't own the airspace. There's no high-intensity conflict going on. But these are places that could always be on the brink of kind of slightly breaking into further conflict,” Mladenova said. Meanwhile, from the humanitarian-development side, these are spaces that lack medical services, education, and jobs and could break out into violence at any point, she added. “And when you think about the space in that context, what you're seeing is a blend, a blend of these two where you're looking at a vicious cycle that can reinforce each other from a security and socioeconomic standpoint,” Mladenova said. “So fragility is something that we can more easily describe than define, and that's the point of trying to rethink — not necessarily blending them together and asking humanitarians to be militaries or vice versa — but to actually think whether our functions are fit for purpose. “So what this is saying is that the boundary now is bleeding into each other, and we're trying to answer the question, should we be also rethinking what defines these actors — who's a combatant, who's a humanitarian, who's a civilian, who's security,” she said.