File:National Security Council of Mongolia promoting civil-military relations (IA nationalsecurity109451703).pdf

Since the end of the Cold War, Mongolia has enjoyed a new security environment that offers both a genuine opportunity to determine its national security and unavoidable uncertainties that accompany all transitions to democracy. Entering the new environment, the nation faced an urgent necessity to form new policies to meet those uncertainties and establish adequate institutions to implement them. Mongolia, as most small nations with greater vulnerability, sees its security in the greater view of emphasizing its survival in all dimensions with the physical endurance of not being invaded by a military force on the one hand, and survival of its ethnical identity from being assimilated by outnumbered neighbors on the other. Such a broad definition of national security requires participation of all elements of the society in the security process, thus an adequate system able to manage such broad involvement becomes vital. Mongolia has successfully managed to establish a relatively efficient and complex system for national security management. The NSC is the only state institution responsible for the coordination of the nation's effort to ensure its security. However, despite the clear definition of the legal status of the National Security Council provided by legal acts, there is a persistent incorrect popular feeling that the National Security Council is a presidential institution and that the President enjoys the prerogative of orchestrating the nation's effort to ensure its security. This thesis argues coordinative functions will be more efficient if the NSC will properly maintain its independent, non-attached status, and its immediate supportive institutions, the Executive Secretary and the Office, serve as non-partisan, independent, and purely professional units devoted to serving only the interests of national security.

Subjects: National security; Mongolia; Civil-military relations; Ethnic groups