Multinational Rapid Response Mechanisms: From Institutional Proliferation to Institutional Exploitation

The track record of military rapid response mechanisms, troops on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame by intergovernmental organizations, remains disappointing. Yet, many of the obstacles to multinational actors launching a rapid and effective military response in times of crisis are largely similar. This book is the first comprehensive and comparative contribution to explore and identify the key factors that hamper and enable the development and deployment of multinational rapid response mechanisms.

Examining lessons from deployments by the AU, the EU, NATO, and the UN in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa, the contributors focus upon the following questions: Was there a rapid response to the crises? By whom? If not, what were the major obstacles to rapid response? Did inter-organizational competition hinder responsiveness? Or did cooperation facilitate responsiveness? Bringing together leading scholars working in this area offers a unique opportunity to analyze and develop lessons for policy-makers and for theorists of inter-organizational relations.

This work will be of interest to scholars and students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, legitimacy and international relations.

John Karlsrud is senior research fellow and manager for the Training for Peace program at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), and external associate at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, where he also earned his PhD. He has been a Fulbright fellow at the Centre on International Cooperation, New York University (NYU), and a visiting fellow at the International Peace Institute, New York. John works on peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and humanitarian issues. Books include Norm Change in International Relations (Routledge, 2016), and The Future of African Peace Operations: From the Janjaweed to Boko Haram (Zed Books, 2016, co-edited with Cedric de Coning and Linnea Gelot).

Yf Reykers is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Leuven International and European Studies Institute at KU Leuven, Belgium, where he also obtained his PhD in 2017. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center on International Cooperation at NYU and at Aarhus University. His research focuses on multinational military operations. He studies issues relating to the accountability of military interventions, rapid response mechanisms, and inter-organizational relations. His work has been published in journals including Contemporary Security Policy, European Security, International Peacekeeping, and Parliamentary Affairs.