Key Reflections
* The importance of multilateralism and cooperation has become even more relevant in the post-pandemic era.
* The future of multilateralism rests on how it coalesces around addressing common security themes, which were not being thought about 20 years ago.
* Multilateralism needs to be strengthened to address non-traditional security issues such as climate change, poverty eradication, and free and fair elections, because these are drivers of some of the major international security concerns.
* Diplomatic multilateral agreements are the only way to prevent and end conflicts, to preserve the international order and obligations.
* The debate over what constitutes a foreign fighter has become more complicated due to events in Ukraine, which can be exploited by some entities, making it harder to reach consensus and agreement on terminology.
* The dilemma of foreign fighters and their families in Syrian camps remains an ongoing challenge. Resolving it will require unprecedented global cooperation.
* The lack of democracy, civil society, and effective rule of law, coupled with ungoverned spaces, exacerbates and leads to the growth of potential terrorist organisations.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
TW: Tom Wuchte
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Tom Wuchte who has served as the Executive Secretary for The International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ). Prior to that, Tom was the Head on Anti-Terrorism Issues at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) where he helped to strengthen the role of the organisation as an effective framework for addressing the terrorist threat and in close co-ordination with the United Nations and the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF). As a seasoned diplomat, Tom also had been with the U.S. Department of Defense as well as the U.S. Department of State. He was the Special Coordinator for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 and received the U.S. Department of State’s Highest Award for Excellence in International Security Affairs for his efforts to work collaboratively with international partners.
Tom Wuchte, many thanks for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
TW: Thank you Sajjan, it’s great to join this podcast. I have a long association with NATO, going back to my days in the early 2000s, working with conventional arms control, and continuing on, most recently, in my role as the executive secretary for the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ). But it’s my pleasure to be here and I look forward to having a discussion with you.
SG: We are very pleased to have you with us.
Let’s start by talking about multilateralism and global security in the post pandemic era. What’s the status of it, now that we are in this new normal, as we learn to live with COVID-19, and the challenges that exist with that? How has multilateralism been impacted, and where do we see it going?
TW: That’s a great question. And one which I’m deeply interested in, both in my professional and personal capacity. I often have said over the years, as a person steeped in multilateralism, and I don’t say that with any hubris, but I’ve been in both NATO meetings over the years; the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); many other regional organisations; when I was working on United Nations Security Council resolution 1540, which focused on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and now at the IIJ, where we have a vast variety of partners. And multilateralism is really a key part of moving the international agenda forward.
I would take note that I recently worked on a book with one of our advisory board members, that was called COVID-19 Pandemic, the Threat and the Response, with a co-author, Sophie Drake. And the article that we focused in on, was called ‘Multilateralism and Global Security, Post-COVID-19.’ And it looked at the importance of multilateralism, both coming into the pandemic, because I think we know the international global situation, during a short period of time, from 2016 to 2020, had some struggles with the importance of multilateralism and how it should be approached. And then the pandemic, of course, I don’t speak with any authority, I am a counter-terrorism expert and a multilateral expert, but the pandemic, of course, raised the interest and the necessity for a strong multilateral cooperation. The post-pandemic thing, when I sat down and was approached to write this article, it was the very early days of the pandemic. And like many articles, they take some time to get published, and it only came out a couple of months ago. And I started to think, last summer, maybe this article was outdated. And in reality, it’s ended up being prescient, and I’m not saying that about what we wrote. But I think there are many articles about the importance of multilateral loans in post-COVID. And that problems as complex as the pandemic, need good multilateral cooperation.
The state of multilateral cooperation is, and will probably continue to be, very difficult on different levels. There are many multilateral partnerships that we have, my personal involvement has been what we would call the traditional multilateral organisations: the United Nations, NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But there are other multilateral organisations out there that are working similarly to have a consensus-based approach to things, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the BRICS alignment.
What I think is the importance of multilateralism going forward is how does all of this coalesce around addressing some common security themes, which were not probably what we were thinking about 20 years ago. The multilateral community came together very strongly and very organised after 9/11. And a lot of people now, it’s been 20 years for 9/11, and if you are somebody that was born 20 years ago, it is something in history to you. For somebody that watched the unfortunate attacks that happened with 9/11, it’s still very fresh in your mind.
But it has become difficult for multilateral cooperation in some of the traditional organisations because we have not got good cooperation and collaboration with some key partners, that we would want to have, to move agenda items forward. I found it over the last several years, somewhat frustrating, working in multilateral environments that, seemingly, areas, which 20 years ago had been of common interests, whether it was reduction of small arms like weapons, something like the Open Skies Treaty, were easily to coordinate and cooperate among all the partners that were in there. And now, there’s been a challenge to getting everybody to want to join in on the discussion, and it’s hard to move multilateral issues forward if there’s not just some general consensus.
And the last thing I would say, which maybe can come up later in the podcast is, the article that I put together actually picked NATO, the UN, and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as examples of where multilateralism needed to be strengthened. If we want to address, what I called non-traditional security issues, climate change, poverty eradication, free and fair elections in democracy, because these ultimately are drivers to some of the security concerns which we are wrestling with now, at least in the world that I’m working in, particularly in counter-terrorism. And so, I give the state of multilateralism a tough balance right now to try to bridge some serious international disagreements. And I hope that we can come back together and make multilateralism the preferred method to solve very complex problems. Because if we can’t agree on that level, it’ll be very hard to then do some of the bilateral things that we need to do among nations.
SG: Well, you’ve raised a lot of important points, let’s unpack some of that. So, if we look at multilateralism, especially in the build up to the crisis in Ukraine, there was this concern that multilateralism failed, in the sense that Putin was not stopped from carrying out his invasion of Ukraine. And perhaps what’s interesting is that one of the conflicts that tested the strength of multilateralism, and in many ways perhaps now renewed the status of NATO and the European Union, has been the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, can multilateralism bring an end to Putin’s conflict in Ukraine? Or is this something that is now beyond the goals and the purposes of what multilateralism can do?
TW: Well, that’s a tough question. Clearly, I would say at the outset, the organisation where I work is more in the traditional line of international organisation where we are apolitical, and we try to be neutral on all of these issues. So, we have not spoken out about the global context of the Ukraine and Russia aggression between the two. But what we have emboldened and sort of tried to stress is the importance of collaboration and cooperation to solve some of these problems.
So, if I were to look at the ultimate solution to something like the conflict in Ukraine right now, I think it zeroes back into that, in the end of the day you have to have diplomatic multilateral agreement to end the conflict, because it’s the only solution that will allow us to get back to what one would see as a traditional international order where we have state to state relations and treaties are recognised and the obligations are followed through. And I see from my perspective, working in the counter-terrorism field, this causes concern to me and the longer term in that we spent a lot of time reaching agreement on how to address very thorny issues, such as counter-terrorism and it requires a multilateral framework where everybody agrees on the need to work together to cooperate. And a lack of cooperation makes it very, very difficult to actually implement the actions that you’ve decided to do to reduce the threat from such things as terrorists.
SG: So, as we speak about the Ukraine crisis, as we talk about the issue of terrorism, we have seen Russia encourage the use of Syrian recruits in Ukraine. And then you also have the very murky Wagner Group, which is a mercenary outfit that’s tied to the Kremlin, which has recruits on the ground in Ukraine. This raises a problem and a definition issue over what constitutes as a foreign fighter. Has the Ukraine crisis, complicated the issue about addressing the definition of foreign fighters, or what you could describe as foreign terrorist fighters potentially, as well?
TW: I’m very concerned about that, as somebody that worked through the foreign terrorist fighter issue in the early 2010s, up until recently. And I would like to say also, again, I think one of the things that multilateralism is important about is that you have to look at it from all sides. And the call for foreign terrorist fighters or fighters to go into the conflict region right now, in Ukraine, is actually coming from both sides of the issue. There have been calls for Western foreign fighters to also go into Ukraine. I don’t make a judgement about how we handle that. But what I do, cause great concern about, is the definition of foreign terrorist fighters was really carefully crafted in two UN resolutions.
I’m often fond of not trying to say that I expect the international world out there to be able to rattle off the numbers of UN resolutions. But there are two that anyone that works in the issues of security, counter-terrorism, foreign terrorist fighters, would immediately say, and it always rolls off the tongue, UNSCR 2178, which was adopted to address the outflow of foreign terrorist fighters into Iraq and Syria. And then resolution 2396, which was largely to address the return of foreign terrorist fighters back to the countries of origin. That’s a very general description of two very big resolutions that had many other elements in them, so I don’t want to imply that that was the only thing that they were about. But clearly, they took a very careful and agreed way in the Security Council, and so to adopt a resolution in the Security Council, there is a great example of effective multilateralism. You have to have agreement among the Security Council members, or at least not a veto, to allow resolution to be passed.
It propelled the international community to come to agreement on what it should do to stop the flow over, such things as making sure that through risk based analysis, as somebody that looked like they were travelling from a country of origin to Iraq or Syria, why are you applying for a flight that takes you from point A, B, and C and ends up in Syria? What’s your purpose? Administrative measures are to take the passport back and not allow them to travel. And then issues like foreign terrorist fighters returning from the area of conflict in 2396. Very carefully crafted to address those that were fighting in the ISIL Daesh context in those countries.
Now, what causes me concern, to reach consensus and agreement, the international community and diplomats and people that work on this. They have very good memories about what has happened. I am concerned that when we have another discussion, maybe 5/10 years from now about a new resolution on the issue of foreign terrorist fighters, people will point to what is the definition? Because now we have people coming in from a conflict zone that is not Iraq and Syria. Does that change the definition of foreign terrorist fighters? I don’t know what the outcome of that is. But we’ve opened up a discussion that I think will come back to be a point of, maybe if people don’t see that the next resolution fully suits their needs or their understanding of issue, they’ll point to this and say, well, that’s a different way foreign terrorist fighters were used previously regarding Iraq and Syria, ISIL Daesh. The jury is out on that, it’s going to be a long time before that comes back up. Because the fortunate point is we have a relative calm in the issues of the outflow of foreign terrorist fighters, the traditional areas that we were concerned about, after 9/11, and the occupation for the caliphate, and with ISIL Daesh and now the return of these foreign terrorist fighters, there’s a process going through to repatriate into their countries in a way that makes sense for the laws and the prosecution of them. That’s probably something to discuss maybe a little bit later.
SG: Well, let’s pick up on some of those themes. Because one thing I know that the IIJ has been looking at is this issue about prosecuting terrorism cases and preparing people for how to deal with that. Have we had successes in prosecuting foreign terrorist fighters such as say, those that were involved in the battlefield for ISIS, or al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria? And what are the challenges that still remain in getting successful prosecutions?
TW: Yeah, there have been successes. I don’t have any that I would like to be listing off, off the top of my head, just for some sensitivities. But governments have used a multiple wave collection of evidence to prosecute people, I think it would be simple things which, of course, terrorists have now somewhat become more alert about. But getting the cell phone of the individual or finding the cell phone of somebody, getting the data off of that, that becomes evidence in the prosecution. The social media posts, that was the beginning, when all the foreign terrorist fighters were going into Iraq and Syria, people were putting ourselves out there, proud that they were a foreign terrorist fighter in there. They soon learned that was probably not the best idea, because that became evidence.
And then I mentioned briefly, we do have a workstream now, in the IIJ, looking at battlefield evidence, which is the collection of evidence, literally from the battlefield, that could be used in the prosecution of foreign terrorist fighters, for people returning from the conflict zone. Now, there’s a lot of effort being done on battlefield evidence as an example because you asked if prosecutions are successful, in the end of the day, like all criminal affairs, and I have often fond of saying that the approach to prosecuting a terrorist is to treat it as a criminal activity. That ultimately is what it is. There’s not a special category, so to speak, that it’s not, it’s just still a crime to do these types of things. And so, that prosecution does require, and that’s what we teach our colleagues in our peer-to-peer learning method, that prosecution should be done proportionately, it should be done with fair access to trial, that the evidence is collected properly. This takes time and some of these cases will take several years to bring to trial to do that. And that also opens up the issues of detention. How long do you keep these people in detention? That also leads to incubators of further violence and radicalisation because people are surrounded by other like-minded people. But at the end of the day, I think there’s a good process and a track record to bring people to successful prosecution.
But the last point I would make on the collection of battlefield evidence, which is an issue, which we’re deeply interested in, is that when you’re a military person on the battlefield, and you pick up things in sort of an evidentiary way, that’s not necessarily the first thing on a military person’s mind, how does that evidence eventually end up in a civilian court. And so, we’re trying to make sure that’s understood in a sort of approach to share the experience, both with what the military people are doing, and then the civilian prosecutors and how to get it there in the bright chain of custody. Now, I think that the broader issues are that many of the collection methods on battlefield evidence, it’s the same evidence collection you would see in a civilian crime scene. So, if there was a non-military bomb that went off in a community, you would still be collecting evidence from that bomb attack and turning it over to prosecutors. But these are some of the very thorny issues that are being addressed.
But I’m particularly impressed, and we really like this workstream of ours, to help our partners, primarily our focus region is Africa in the Middle East, is to understand how to handle this between the military and the civilian prosecutors. And the last point I would make is, Sajjan, that not all countries have normal day to day contact between military people, and officers enlisted and lawyers on the civilian side. I mean it’s often two different worlds, they operate in different environments, and putting them together in some of our training is one of the main efforts that we need to do, to make sure they understand how each of them approach this issue.
SG: Well, tied into this, we have an enduring headache, which is the foreign terrorist fighters who are currently in these camps in Syria. And then you also have their wives and their children, who are now grown up to become young adults. And one thing you mentioned is that, in some ways, these places can also serve as incubators for extremism. How do we deal with the families of ISIS fighters who themselves are getting radicalised? And countries are reluctant, understandably, to take them back. Where do we get a resolution on this?
TW: I think where we get a resolution on this will be an effort that’s going to take a tremendous amount of international cooperation. And it goes back to the beginning of our podcast where we talked about the importance of multilateralism. We have worked lightly on the issue of returning families of returning foreign terrorist fighters, and how to approach this in a way that doesn’t exacerbate the issues of self-radicalisation. Because you rightfully note, staying in the camps, surrounded by people, and sitting in conditions, which may create an environment where they reflect on frustration about what they perceive as their own treatment to go back to their countries right now, leads to feelings of disempowerment toward their future in life.
Now, there is a large body of work in the international community and counter-terrorism on effective approaches to counter-terrorism in the juvenile justice context. And to make sure that this all is done in a way that doesn’t exacerbate this. Now, it’s already been, if I count on my hand, probably it’s been about five years now since the conflict has lessened and now the camps are there and we’re wrestling with how to get people back as returning families. Many of them were children in the conflict, they will soon be young adults. What’s going to lead to radicalisation is the reception and the processes they receive when they go back, whether it’s to their own country or they go to a third country that’s willing to take them. And that they are integrated into society in a way that is positive and successful for them. I’m concerned that if this process goes on 5/10 years from now, and they continue to be in a situation where they’re not well taken care of, and not well integrated, they will have grievances, self-perceived or perceived maybe in reality, that will lead to what we call in at least the context of the IIJ is addressing homegrown terrorism.
Will this become another generation of people that are self-radicalised, sort of in an individual capacity because they’re frustrated with their situation in life? I don’t know what the outcome of that was, or will be, but it causes me, as somebody that’s been working in this for 15 years or so, a lot of concern, because I don’t know where to go with this.
And I can also only add to this. I recall the migration issues in the mid-2010s, when people were coming up from the southern region, and many of them were settled into regions, for example, my good colleagues in Germany took almost a million people. How they are integrated successfully into society, that’s the success story that we want to have. And we don’t want to have a success story, which is that they are left unattended to and not given an opportunity. I mean all of us want to have a good opportunity in life and these are really thorny issues, I think we’re going to have to see how they pan out literally over the next generation.
SG: What do you say to those that feel that some of these people are now so ideologically extreme and dangerous that it would not be possible to reintegrate them back into society, and that they actually pose a threat and risk to the public?
TW: You know, I think that is clearly an issue which needs to be handled with each individual case, in the issues of rehabilitation and reintegration. And we just finished our own process on this, developing what’s called a multi-stakeholder referral mechanisms curriculum and guide, looking at how do you work with your community to integrate people; psychiatrists, school officials, employment agencies, your own security apparatus, but it’s many people to do that. Each individual person has to be attended to, and whether they’re such a risk to be admitted back into society, that is really a judgement that has to be done. What I often found to say, it’s really best at the local level, because they really have the most contact with the individual. And what I try to avoid in our approach, and also in thinking about this is sort of a one-size-fits-all approach; you often hear that in the international diplomacy world, but it’s true. I mean, you can’t sit back and say, “All people are ultimately going to be self-radicalised, and we shouldn’t let them come back into society.” That’s not a good outcome for anybody. What I see in the future of the counter-terrorism community is more emphasis on local action and local solutions is where it’s going to be done most effectively. It’s very hard at a very high level, to understand what’s really going on when this person comes back to their family, and what are they really thinking? That’s really a psychiatrist or a social worker in some community, where they’re now living and working and trying to reintegrate themselves back into society.
SG: Tying this into what’s going on in Afghanistan right now, in many ways, you see similarities to the challenges that emerged in Syria and Iraq post-Arab Spring where there is insecurity, the rule of law has collapsed, there is this concern about the rise of misogyny and extremism. Do you see a potential of Afghanistan becoming a theatre for foreign terrorist fighters? And if so, what lessons can we learn from the theatre of Syria and Iraq? And then tying that into lessons for multilateralism. So firstly, is it a concern of yours? And secondly, what can we do to perhaps prepare better than we did previously?
TW: That’s a tough question, Sajjan, I have to say, honestly, that the current work of the IIJ is not involved in Afghanistan, per se. But I would sort of take a step back from your question and say that the lack of democracy and effective rule of law exacerbates and leads to the growth of potential terrorist organisations developing. I think that we should all be concerned about the fact that we invested an enormous amount of time and energy in the region, such as Afghanistan, or Iraq for that, where many terrorist organisations found, one could say, safe haven, or an ability to work in ungoverned spaces, to organise themselves, to then lead terrorist attacks outside the region of where they’re being at. I mean, that is a long part of the battle we’ve had in the last 20 years with counter-terrorism; ungoverned spaces, spaces that have poor rule of law, poor oversight of the military situation, lead to the ability for terrorist organisations to organise themselves and operate sometimes with some impunity in the West. What has COVID shown us right now, is the inability to travel very easily and the inability to be in contact and organise in a face-to-face manner—it’s been a period of relative quiet.
What do I worry about, as I think about this? Counter-terrorism issues often are kind of like one of these sine waves if you were a maths student, and it has peaks and valleys. We’re somewhat in a valley right now, in that overt terrorist attacks that draw international attention, such as the Charlie Hebdo attack, almost 10 years ago now, which is hard to believe, how quickly these things happen…there has not been such an attack, and I hope there is not another attack like that. But those are the sort of the match that lights the fire for international cooperation. The ones that become very frenetic and very active in addressing issues in reaction.
To go back to the beginning of the podcast, from a multilateral perspective, what do we do with a situation like Afghanistan right now, which we didn’t envision probably two years ago that it would be back to a space where we didn’t have a lot of understanding and control and work, to how to shape the process to create a more democratic and accessible society, that out of that could come the rise of new terrorist organisations or new threats.
Because eventually, as we come out of this pandemic, a lot of the issues which we haven’t had to address the last couple of years, will come back, and that’s the sad reality, is potentially another terrorist attack that you’re just not expecting. And then everybody will look, in the state governments…why do you need to be prepared? Because senior government officials will always be asked three questions: What did you know? When did you know it? And what is your reaction to this problem? And if you can’t answer those three questions quickly and easily, then you are on unstable ground, in the perception of your constituency in your own country, that you didn’t think this through, and you weren’t prepared. But also, as somebody that’s done this and also been in the military myself, you can never prepare for every contingency, but the track record is that something will happen again in the international community that will make us say, “We need to pay attention to counter-terrorism.” Maybe I can talk a little later in this podcast where I think I see this going in the counter-terrorism community, given that the pandemic and COVID has made us rethink maybe what some of our international priorities should be in the future. But we can get to that maybe a little bit later in the questions.
SG: Most definitely, I do want to touch upon that. You said a lot of important things just now. One thing that occurred to me was the importance you place on democracy and that that is a very powerful tool, accompanied with the creation of civil society movements, rule of law, that can actually counter the rise of terrorism. Is that something that really, we don’t necessarily pay much attention to, that democracy is, in many ways, it’s not the cure, but it plays a very important role in stemming extremism and ungoverned spaces from emerging that you were also talking about?
TW: I mean, absolutely, no disagreement with that. Where I get maybe frustration is not the right word, but where I have wrestled with this is that the often siloed approach to some of these issues is…I mean, look, counter-terrorism officials are not democracy builders, other than to espouse in our work the importance of fair trials, access, and a government that includes everybody in the decision making process. I mean, these are very basic things that we discuss in all of our work. But we don’t have the resources, the mandate, or the time to focus on democracy building in a country, or to say, “Maybe you should think about doing this a little bit,” but the effects of it are seen.
Where I do have a direct impact is in the counter-terrorism world; we work tremendously with civil society, on many levels, and countries that have a robust democratic society also have a robust, well-organised, and accessible civil society network. And when we talk about lessening the path to radicalisation, the people that are most in touch with what’s going on at the local level are almost always non-governmental actors and civil society, as I often like to say, doing the Lord’s work in trying to change the environment for things as simple as something you wouldn’t think is counter-terrorism-related, but access to a sustainable water supply, and that the village elders take that as a priority, that makes those people less inclined to be dissatisfied, and say, “Well, maybe I should go on the path of radicalisation to become joining one of my terrorist organisations.” These are really important issues. I strongly believe that many of the resources that we put into some of our training and capacity building, it’s often a different pot of resource money, but it should be really empowering and helping to support the resources needed for civil society organisations down at the local level.
Countries that don’t have a strong democratic tradition often have—it would be an interesting study to do, I don’t know any facts and figures on it—but anecdotally, what we see is countries that don’t have a very robust, democratic setup have a very small civil society footprint. And then when you want to engage in those countries for issues like deradicalization and the fight against terrorism, there’s not so many people to work with at the civil society level, and you’re often left to work with the government structures…then you’re led to necessarily structures that are most trusted by the local communities, because they may not have really, again, the understanding of the importance of civil society to work through these local issues. So, it’s a very thorny question, but I’m really a big fan of including civil society in every step of this way, and I hope that the next five to 10 years in this issue of multilateralism and counter-terrorism further strengthens the whole civil society work that’s being done out there by some just incredible individuals and entities.
SG: And you raise so many important points there, Tom. I couldn’t agree with you more on everything you said about the essential need for civil society movements, and how it is actually so important to strengthening counter-terrorism. And it’s just a reminder in some ways as to what we’re seeing in Afghanistan and how the Taliban are eroding those very civil society movements, especially those that protect women’s rights, which is a warning sign of what potentially may occur down the road. If we look at another region, which is North Africa, there are ungoverned spaces there. There is the issue about illegal immigration and human trafficking. How much of a role does that play in the insecurity in southern Europe? And has that also directly challenged multilateralism?
TW: I sit in a region which has a tremendous migration flow from the south up to the north. In the counter-terrorism community, 10 years ago, we—again going back to this issue of silos—we tended to treat migration and human trafficking as separate issues and didn’t want to see them conflated with terrorism. I still think based on everything I’ve seen over the last 10 years, it’s difficult to find a direct correlation between terrorist organisations, terrorist travelling, and issues with irregular migration and refugees. That said, it is an issue, which one of our main efforts that we’ve been doing at the IIJ is the role of parliamentarians in addressing this. And unfortunately, it has often been conflated for what I’ve seen as somewhat expediency, that, like regular migration or refugees could potentially be perceived as a terrorist threat. I think that the more we can separate that as an issue allows us to focus on the core issue, which is people that are living in extreme poverty, and you give the example of North Africa, they are searching to get out of that situation, so of course, they’re migrating.
Only in the last couple of years has at least the work in the IIJ—and I didn’t talk earlier in the podcast, we’re an inspired institution from the Global Counterterrorism Forum, which is 30 like-minded countries—they have started to have discussions, because what I would call classical counter-terrorism work has now had to look at tangential issues. And I think it was a very excellent work recently done, they called it the Nexus memorandum, but it looked at issues like terrorism financing, migration, sexual violence, that maybe aren’t classically tied to what we would consider returning foreign terrorist fighters in the conflict zones, but these are exacerbating issues to us being able to address a stable, secure environment that allows us to move forward.
What I’m concerned about, you asked about the ungoverned spaces, is if the entire international community doesn’t have the wherewithal to allow migration in a good way, in a safe way, these people that are then sitting in ungoverned spaces, unable to either go back to their country because they don’t have a job, or to move forward as a potential refugee or a regular migration issue, they are subject to the forces of radicalisation. It is an extremely complex issue, it’s not covered by…I mean, counter-terrorism world is not involved in trying to adjudicate migration issues, but they are now all part of the bigger hole, which is, what do you do when you rethink multilateralism after the challenges we faced in the last two plus years of the pandemic. And I think without doubt, if the pandemic becomes endemic, which seems to be the general consensus right now, people will start moving and travelling again. And I don’t know what 2022 portends, but if a situation gets more stable, 2023 could be a lot of people migrating, who are finally able to get out of probably being in these so-called lockdowns after two, three years. How will we handle that? And what will be some of the second- and third-order issues which will come out from that? I don’t have a crystal ball, but I certainly think about it, and I certainly worry about it.
I want to say one last thing which didn’t come up in this: we talked about migration, we talked about camps, uncovered spaces—five years ago, we were doing what I call the traditional counter-terrorism capacity building work. A lot of it was based off of these two resolutions I mentioned to you 2178, 2396. But we just started a work stream. Because you mentioned gender and sexual violence as a construct of terrorism, terrorising people through sexual violence, in the context of terrorist work. Five years ago, that wasn’t on our radar, but we are flexible, we’re trying to think about how the international community is shifting. And the other issue that we’re looking at, it’s called “many things by many people.” But we’re looking at racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism. And this is often called right-wing extremism. We just saw it with the unfortunate attacks in some of the places in the United States. That also wasn’t on our radar five years ago, but that’s also an extremely important issue because if things like racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism are not well-handled, the so-called left-wing extremism can point to that and say, “You’ve spent many millions of dollars in many years addressing the path to violent extremism by terrorists. What are you going to do about racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism?” which is a whole subset and a different subset, but they all feed on each other, because that makes each side feel that they’re being persecuted. And that also is a grievance that leads to terrorist attacks. So, I mean, we’ve got our work cut out for us.
SG: Absolutely. And I guess that leads to the final question. In many ways, you’ve covered a lot of the angles. But to give you the final word on, where do you see the primary security challenges that could emerge, the challenges that worry you, that keep you up at night?
TW: Climate change, extreme poverty, lack of food resources, the continued growth of not seeing democracy as a model that is most effective to engender a free and open society that allows people to live and prosper, and an overemphasis on traditional security concerns, because there’s x amount of resources, and there’s the same number of issues, but we’ve said many, many times, the importance of counter-terrorism. But the question that I’ve posed in a recent meeting I went to is, is counter-terrorism an issue which needs to be given right sizing, given these other threats that I call non-traditional threats, so that they are as equally resourced? My biggest one right now is climate change. Money is not invested to change that dynamic. It’s going to create more migration, more poverty, and more people that could be leading on the path to radicalisation. How do we wrestle with that? That’s a difficult question.
And multilateralism is the key, but what I see—and I really gave a lot of thought to this post-COVID multilateralism approach article—is should we ask ourselves that we treat these other issues like climate change, poverty eradication, etc., as equally pressing, resource-based issues that should be on the agenda of multilateral organisations? So, for years…and I’m a great fan of the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe, but it is really focused on hard security issues. Are we ready to take the leap in multilateral work that climate change and poverty eradication are also hard security issues, and they should be equally resourced and equally on the agenda of these security organisations with pressing urgency to move these issues forward? That goes back to my interest in the role of parliamentarians. They, at the end of the day, have to decide what the priorities are. And multilateral organisations then need to take their guidance from their governments to see how they shift the agendas. But the agendas have been very set for very many years on some very traditional issues. Should we redefine what traditional security means. That’s my final comment.
SG: Redefining what traditional security means—that’s definitely food for thought. And I’m so glad that you brought in this dimension about climate change and its connections to international security and also counter-terrorism because that is something that we will have to address with greater pressing urgency, based on the fact that climate change is a reality. And it is impacting on all of us globally. Well, once again, thank you so much, Tom Wuchte, for joining us and NATO DEEP Dive, and hope to have you again on the show in the future.
TW: It’s been my pleasure, Sajjan, and I wish you all the best, and I hope to see you in-person soon as well. Thank you.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity.