NATO’s involvement in Crisis Management and Disaster Response – COVID-19: Legal Considerations

By Mr. Zdeněk Hýbl, Legal Advisor, JCBRN Defence COE, CZE₁

Disclaimer:
“The extract of this article was published at the December 2020 issue of the “NATO Legal…matters!” newsletter, issued by Allied Command Transformation, Office of the Legal Advisor”.

Introduction
Crisis management belongs among the core tasks and principles of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) together with collective defence and cooperative security.₂ NATO recognizes that crises beyond NATO’s borders, and we can argue that crises within the NATO borders as well, can pose a direct threat to the security of the Alliance. Lessons learned from NATO operations in Afghanistan and the Western Balkans, make it clear that a comprehensive political, civilian, and military approach is necessary for effective crisis management.₃

STEADFAST JUPITER JACKAL 2020 (STJU-JA20)

STJU-JA20 was a Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) sponsored strategic, operational, and tactical-level joint command post exercise that trained and evaluated selected NATO Command Structure (NCS) and NATO Force Structure (NFS) headquarters in planning for and executing an out-of-area non-article 5 crisis response operation at regional scale in NATO Strategic Direction South.

Modelling of Beirut explosion

Executive summary : Key military leaders can be confident in the use of simulation for damage assessment.

• The analysis on the Beirut explosion that occurred on 4 August 2020 allows us to easily compare the results in the field to simulation.
• The JCBRND COE, through the RFI process, is able to provide such simulations if requested.

Aim:
The aim of this study is to validate the outputs of the simplified model and compare it with the real-world case. Alsoto verify and show how modern simulations are accurate and could be used for planning, targetting and ,even taking into account the reality thatit could take few hours to get useable results, for conducting operations through military decision process.

Disclaimer:
This product reflects the policies and/or positions of the JCBRN Defence COE and/or its author(s) as an independent opinion. This product is not NATO endorsed or approved and does not reflect NATO's policies or positions.

JCBRN Defence COE in support of the fight against SARS-CoV-2

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the JCBRN Defence COE has allocated its resources not only to internal measures attempting to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 within the institution and to continue activities from the institutional program of work, but it was also focused on operations support objectives and the ongoing fight against SARS-CoV-2. As a result, a large part of the COE’s effort was with the operations area of interest and started to compile all readily available information about the virus and also to analyse which of the existing capabilities belonging to various national CBRN defence branches could be used in the global effort to combat the pandemic. Questions such as “Is SARS-CoV-2 a CBRN defence related issue if it isn’t a biological agent?” and “Where does the responsibility of CBRN defence start in this matter?” appeared from the beginning; however, the JCBRN Defence COE understood that in new situations the flexibility is the key to viable solutions and a classical doctrinal approach should only be considered a starting point for innovative alternatives.