Ten Years of SHIRBRIG: Lessons Learned: Lessons Learned, Development Prospects and Strategic Opportunities for Germany.

In 1996, seven nations, including Austria, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, founded the Multina- tional Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Opera- tions, or SHIRBRIG. Based at Høvelte Barracks in Denmark, SHIR- BRIG aims to provide the United Nations (UN) with a rapidly de- ployable peacekeeping force. Since its inception, SHIRBRIG has grown to 23 members, participated in five peacekeeping missions, and led military capacity building initiatives in Africa. It now enjoys a reputation among African military staffs, policy-makers and mili- tary experts as an effective, experienced and impartial partner. De- spite these successes, however, SHIRBRIG also faces several external and internal limitations and challenges.

This report analyses and assesses SHIRBRIG’s past, present, and fu- ture achievements, limitations and value from a distinctly German perspective.
The report consists of five main sections. The first section provides an overview of SHIRBRIG’s origins, its key elements, its membership and the changing nature of its aims and focus as a result of its activi- ties and experience in practice during the last ten years. The second section surveys SHIRBRIG’s main missions, activities and lessons learned. The third section analyses SHIRBRIG’s inherent limitations and current challenges in depth, addressing issues such as public di- plomacy, its membership base, and institutional rivalries. The fourth section examines SHIRBRIG’s core contribution, comparative ad- vantage and potential future role. The concluding section presents the implications and options for Germany.
Through the course of this analysis, the authors put forth three over- arching recommendations:

1. Germany should examine the possibility of joining SHIR- BRIG (either as Observer or full Participant). SHIRBRIG could provide Germany with a cohesive, experienced and ef- fective platform for contributing to UN-geared peacekeeping and AU-geared capacity-building as well as enhancing Ger- many’s role as an international peacekeeping actor. It would make sense to define the conditions and the (financial) scope for a potential German role. This could be seen as a strategic investment that could demonstrate Germany’s will to support ‘UN-centred Effective Multilateralism’.

2. To this end, an initial, informal meeting between SHIR- BRIG’s Chief of Staff and the relevant administrative, politi- cal, and military layer in Germany should be convened for exploring potential formal/informal cooperation and partici- pation options. A more in-depth follow-up ‘feasibility study’ should—in close cooperation with the Federal Ministry of De- fence—be conducted to examine the benefits and drawbacks of potential German participation in SHIRBRIG.

3. Irrespective of the question of German participation in SHIR- BRIG, Germany should lobby for more EU attention to be given to SHIRBRIG. It also should coordinate the strategic development of the EU-Battlegroup concept with the needs and experiences of SHIRBRIG. This could include joint mili- tary training exercises between EU Battlegroups and SHIR- BRIG.

This report is part of a larger research project titled “10 Years of SHIR- BRIG: Past Lessons and Future Potentials of the Standby High Readiness Brigade for UN Operations ,” led by Joachim Koops at the Department of Political Science, University of Kiel. In preparing the report, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with SHIRBRIG senior offi- cers, members of the European Union (EU) Council Secretariat, NATO’s Crisis Management Unit, the UN Department of Peace- keeping Operations (DPKO), and various national peacekeeping ex- perts.