The 2012 CIOR Symposium: focus on new challenges for the Reserve

By Lieutenant Commander (R) Jacques Monbaerts (BE) | 2012-08-22

As every year, CIOR organizes a one-day Symposium, which takes place on the first day of its Summer Congress. This Symposium aims to broach international topical questions in the civil-military field, by focusing particularly on the role that reservists can play in the fields studied.

Last year, in Warsaw, the stress was laid, first, on the missions of reservists actually deployed on the field (Afghanistan,…) and, second, on the subject of the fight against maritime piracy, where reservists play an active role (as legal and political advisors for example).

The Reserve, a ‘pillar’ of the armed forces

This year, focus has been placed on “cyber warfare” (hacking electronic systems, especially via the Internet) and the problems reservists are faced with when coming back from a mission abroad ("post-deployment"). Beforehand, the Chief of Defence of the Royal Danish Armed Forces, General Bartram, drew up a realistic and thorough portrait of the situation of the military means available in his country, while insisting on the more and more critical role entrusted to the Reserve: "better with less".

General Skare (Norway), who currently chairs the National Reserve Forces Committee (NRFC), gave the next briefing. He insisted on the challenges the Atlantic Alliance is at present confronted with. There again, the message sent to the reservists is similar: well trained, operational reservists are more and more a "pillar" with regards to NATO’s requirements in terms of manning and staffing.

The French Gendarmerie: a model of permanent use of the Reserve

The general in charge of the Reserve of the French Gendarmerie, Major General Danède, then presented the security layout developed by his forces. Once again, the core message to the audience was clear: the Gendarmerie Reserve makes up about 20% of the total available staff. These personnel are immediately available, throughout the whole national territory, which makes the Reserve simply indispensable to the smooth running of the French Gendarmerie.

European Defence in the future : specialization and complementarities

To close this day, another Chief of Defence, retired Admiral Herteleer (Belgium) shared his vision of a necessarily increased cooperation of the European armed forces within the European Union. Consistency, cohesion, complementarities and economies of scale among national forces are indispensable conditions to ensure greater efficiency, considering both the more and more limited means available at national level and the increased requirement for specialization of the resources.

Two dedicated panel discussions: cyber warfare, and the specific problems reservists are faced with when coming back from a mission abroad.

Specialization was also at the heart of the two panel discussions of the day:

- A new challenge for NATO, the subject of cyber attacks was tackled by Professor Daniel Ventre, from the "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (France), Doctor Rain Ottis, from NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (Estonia), Cécile Doutriaux J.D., a lawyer from Strasbourg (France) and Mr. Asgeir Myhre, the managing director of Teleplan SA (Norway)

- The post-deployment problems for a reservist were dealt with by Lieutenant (R) Christophe de Villeblanche (France), Captain (R) French (Canada), Mads Kroeger Pramming J.D., a lawyer from Denmark, and Ambassador Brigadier Doctor Stan Flemming (United States).

The documents presented during the Symposium are available below

It is not possible here to go into detail through the various presentations. But for those speakers who have agreed to it, their respective presentations can be downloaded below.

Photos : Henry Plimack (US).