Europe and Beyond: Professional Trajectories from The Army to International Organizations

Abstract

Despite being a small country, Portugal actively participates in international security policies and in the last few years the Portuguese soldiers were involved in the most prominent military operations and crisis management missions (under the umbrella of the UN, NATO, and the EU). The budgetary constraints after the financial crisis of 2011 affected the commitment; even so over 36,000 troops participated in peace missions in over 30 different theatres of operations, covering all the world continents (Arena, 2017). The new generation of Peace Support Operations, include conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian operations. This huge challenge engages mainly military personnel (with multiple and flexible capabilities), but also a large composition of civilian actors, such as police forces, NGO’s and members of multiple agencies. The participating in those scenarios opens possibilities for multinational civil-military cooperation which defies traditional boundaries. We will analyze professional trajectories of Portuguese military that after participating on peace missions are presently engage in civilian international organizations, still contributing to global security activities, under different roles and statutes. Based on deep interviews applied to ex-military, we will follow professional and personal trajectories, first in the military career then in civilian live. Special attention will be given to understand how previous military experience (education and profession) enable and facilitates the integration into international organizations and the commitment to human security