Theory to Think About
Delegates of the Security Council
To help us all get in a strategic mindset, I have two exerpts from an Army report from the School of Advanced Military Studies in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, about preparing the military for military operations other than war (MOOTW), one of which is peace intervention (of all flavors).
“Worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real “strategic” danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are [the issues]… that will soon confront our civilization…[as we witness] the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease and the growing pervasiveness of war.” - Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy
Questions:
Can peace intervention rise to the challenge of anarchy that Kaplan outlines here? How can it adapt? Outside of establishing rule of law (military action) in a state, what else should those that intervene hope to accomplish?
The second quote comes from the paper itself. Major Camarena wrote:
“By 1997, it became apparent that there existed a (gap) between the ability of military forces to
implement their assigned tasks of the General Framework Agreement for Peace and that of their civilian counterparts to meet their requirements. Consequently, American military forces expanded their mission to ‘assist international organizations to set the conditions for civilian implementation of the (peace accords) in order to transition the area of operations to a stable environment.’”
Question: How does this approach augment the capacities of military force/intervention? Is this practical in a more hostile environment (like Somalia or Iraq)? What do the NGOs and the civilian governmental organizations need from the military? What does the military need from them to accomplish nation building?
I’ll be giving extra credit for well thought out answers… so post away!
- Richard
“Peace is our Profession”
February 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Kaplan and Van Creveld believe that the world is heading towards a pre-Westphalian world of decentralized communal and regional powers where conventional warfare and state governments fade as localized crime runs rampant and cultural identity becomes paramount.
In order to cope with the changing face of world cartography from a two-dimensional post-WW1 arena to that of post-modernism’s three-dimensional “last map,” peace intervention must come to recognize this overall trend.
Future participants of peace intervention will develop and positively progress through greater understanding of the conflicts in which they mitigate. As Kaplan wrote in “It’s the Tribes, Stupid,” the key to solving tendencies towards anarchy in Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and other etnically and communally oriented regions is to respect and understand the nature of their tribal basis.
Only now, as seen in the “Anbar Awakening” are US military officials understanding the importance of working with rather than against local tribal leaders and warlords. Although the nature of “warlords” as understood by Westerners seems to possess a negative connotation, in reality they are little more but “tribal elders who settle divorce cases, property disputes, and other civil conflicts for which we resort to the courts or government.”
In addition to greater cooperation with the established leaders within the focus of peace intervention operations, both planning and patience are vital to success. As seen in Iraq through the documentary “No End in Sight,” post-war Iraq was ill-conceived if conceived at all by major policy makers, and when post-war strategies were suggested they were ignored on the basis of political and ideaological lines rather than by the basis of their merit. Furthermore, patience and the desire for positive change are tantamount to future success in interventions. An impatient public lead to the withdrawl of troops from Somalia after the “Black Hawk Down” debacle and played a major role in the failure of the Vietnam conflict. Patience and understanding of the trails and tribulations of peace intervention is of vital importance to progress, however this can only be earned through trust, which is seen by merit of success and the absence of rash actions. As World War One lead to crippling isolationism within America, the possibility of the muck and mire within Iraq leading to a similiar stint of a narrowed global outlook could prove to be crucially damaging for world progress. Thus, peace intervention can only succeed by taking greater heed before such tragically poignant actions ever occur.
Coordination between nations and the combining of forces from the established nation states that rest within “the limo” will also lead to greater success. By spreading the burden of cost across multiple planes, the respective cost of peace intervention will decline. Thus, the otherwise mitigating factor of finacial burden will be effectively reduced while at the same time creating greater overall transparency. The 1991 Gulf War is an example of the overwhelming success that a broadly based coalition, supported by proper planning before hositilities, that can exist.
In regards to the threat of disease, as noted in GQ, Bill Clinton stated that the key to stemming the tide of calamities such as AIDS and HIV is to make doing so financially attractive. The cost of vaccines and medical supplies to counter these aforementioned afflictions is great. However, by giving these nations exponentially more potential customers, (effectively 10% of all of Africa) they can increase production, lower their prices by selling to NGOs and governments in vast bulk, spread the cost to a greater overall consumer base, reap the same rewards, and at the same time affect millions more lives in a positive fashion. (This same strategy helped drop the cost of fixed dose ARVs from $600 per person/year to $60. GQ, January 2008).
Lastly, in regards to environmental and climate change, the solution is the same as Kaplan put it: to remove the stigma attached to environmental issues by tradiontally conservative foreign-policy analysts by demonstrating its relationship to social and cultural issues. The work and writing of scholars and journalists, such as Kaplan, has played a vital role in this matter, as will growing public outcry, the reduction of oil stocks, and the increase in oil prices as they now have touched $100 a barrel.
These solutions can help make peace intervention possible in spite the possible return to a Pre-Westphalian world.