Norms versus Interests: The Ambiguous Nature of NATO’s Democratic Conditionality in Armenia

Abstract

This article represents a part of a larger study that examines the relevance of the Western (NATO) standards to the process of Armenian defense transformation. In particular, it pays close attention to the democratic values of the Alliance and the degree of their practical application by the partner country within the respective cooperation agenda. The interplay of strategic mutual interests as the motivating for NATO's and Armenia's compliance is reviewed closely, as are the relevance of the language of communication and the varying interpretations of cooperation mechanisms. The article is an attempt to evaluate the status of democratic progress and, in particular, to assess the degree of democratic control over the armed forces in Armenia. The search for motives and reasons for democratic deficit or failure remains outside of the scope of this analysis.IntroductionThe brief review of the normative foundation of the Alliance as well as the context of its gradual development makes it possible to conclude that the mere intention of cooperation with NATO, let alone membership, preconditions a certain degree of national compliance, i.e. institutional transformation of a partner country in a number of defense related areas. A country entering into a partnership relationship with NATO would face fundamental requirements similar to the principles of Security Sector Reforms (SSR) that are predominantly focused on a deep democratic transformation of defense and military institutions.Sharing the claim that the Alliance consistently promotes norms of transparency and democratic control of the armed forces, we still struggle to find the deep and coherent elaboration of political criteria, whereas the practical-military dimension of criteria is better structured under the concept of force interoperability with the mechanisms provided by The Partnership for Peace (PFP) and the Individual Partnership Programme (IPP).1 Generally, NATO requirements and standards are better defined politically than practical-procedurally and are based on the common acknowledgement of the major role of democratic institutions in running the country. Applied to the field of defense and military, it essentially rests upon the primacy of the democratic control of military forces and the wide application of SSR to establish Western standards of governance in defense field.Though the Alliance possesses the mechanisms of monitoring and evaluating the degree of national compliance via the Planning and Review Process (PARP) and MAP (ANP) progress reports, the existing framework of cooperation and partnerships (PFP) still leaves enough space for national authorities to decide for themselves on the speed and depth of cooperation and does not rule out actions that run against the spirit of compliance (free riding). This ambiguity, generated from the very first steps of launching a partnership framework, is in fact an inherent challenge of its normative nature with a high likelihood of practical repercussions. The feature of hollowed conditionality might be explained by the desire of founding fathers to assist countries that aspired to NATO membership, but also to create architecture perfectly suitable to those countries that do not seek membership and would like to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security without compromising their own distinct foreign and security policies.2 The conditions for the second category of countries theoretically must be the same as for those countries that, despite their desire to join the Alliance, did not get the explicit guarantees of imminent accession.The example of the South Caucasus countries speaks for the existence of two sets of partner nations for NATO: those interested in full membership (Georgia), and those interested in maintaining some kind of cooperation with the Alliance due to various internal or external interests (Armenia and Azerbaijan).3 Similar to other partner countries, all three Caucasian republics enjoy PFP as a major tool for developing deep political and military cooperation with NATO. …