The Transformation of the World of War and Peace Support Operations (PSI Reports)

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD OF WAR AND PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS

Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) Therese Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.)

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD OF WAR AND PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS EDITED BY KOBI MICHAEL, DAVID KELLEN, AND EYAL BEN-ARI € FOREWORD BY LARS H ANSEL

PSI Reports

PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL Westport, Connecticut  London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The transformation of the world of war and peace support operations / edited by Kobi Michael, David Kellen, and Eyal Ben-Ari. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-36501-0 (alk. paper) 1. Peacekeeping forces. 2. Western countries—Armed Forces—Stability operations. 3. Security, International. 4. Nation-building. 5. World politics—1989– I. Mikha’el, Kobi. II. Kellen, David. III. Ben-Ari, Eyal, 1953– JZ6374.T73 2009 2008047578 341.50 84—dc22 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. C 2009 by Kobi Michael, David Kellen, and Eyal Ben-Ari Copyright 

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008047578 ISBN: 978-0-313-36501-0 First published in 2009 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9

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Contents

Foreword by Lars H€ ansel

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction: Wars and Peace Support Operations in the Contemporary World: Conceptual Clarifications and Suggestions Eyal Ben-Ari, Kobi Michael, and David Kellen

1

1. The End of War? The Use of Force in the Twenty-First Century Christopher Dandeker

21

2. From Conscription-Based Defense to Volunteer-Based Constabulary Forces: European Defense Integration and Mission Change as Driving Factors for the End of Conscription in Europe Karl W. Haltiner and Tibor Szvircsev Tresch

39

3. Peace Support Operations and the ‘‘Strategic Corporal’’: Implications for Military Organization and Culture Eitan Shamir

53

4. Media and Conflict: An Integral Part of the Modern Battlefield Ilana Bet-El

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5. The RMA, Transformation, and Peace Support Operations Allen G. Sens

81

vi

CONTENTS

6. Transformation or Back to Basics? Counterinsurgency Pugilism and Peace-Building Judo David Last

101

7. Civil-Military Aspects of Effectiveness in Peace Support Operations Robert Egnell

122

8. The Role of Private Security Companies in Peace Support Operations: An Outcome of the Revolution in Military Affairs and the Transformation in Warfare Christopher Kinsey

139

9. Cultural Intelligence for Peace Support Operations in the New Era of Warfare Kobi Michael and David Kellen

157

Notes

173

Index

207

About the Editors and Contributors

215

Foreword

More than 40 years ago, Konrad Adenauer and David Ben-Gurion laid the foundation for reconciliation and partnership between Germany and Israel. Carrying on the legacy of the late chancellor, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) has been active in Israel for almost 30 years. Together with local partner organizations we work on three main objectives:   

To preserve and further develop the relations between Germany and Israel, which are increasingly acquiring a European dimension To support efforts to strengthen democracy and the rule of law in Israel with our partner organizations To strive to facilitate a peaceful coexistence between Israel and its neighbors

Within this framework, we supported the international conference on ‘‘The Transformation of the World of War and Peace Support Operations,’’ which was organized by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS) and the University of Manitoba and took place at the Konrad Adenauer Conference Center in Jerusalem in June 2007. The involvement of third parties in the conflict was for a long time taboo. But recent experiences such as the EU missions EU-BAM and EUROCORPS and the EU troops in the framework of UNSCR 1701 have changed the atmosphere. A realistic mission of foreign troops—in particular in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—is still a long way away, but it has become

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FOREWORD

more and more possible to seriously discuss the concrete role of foreign forces in support of peace efforts in the region. This book offers a number of innovative ideas and insights for peace operations, with relevance both to the study of international involvement in conflict and to political decision makers in Israel, Europe, and beyond. This project, like all KAS projects, has been guided by our belief in the benefits of democracy, freedom, market economy, and peaceful coexistence. May it be a lasting and sustainable contribution to Israel’s peace, prosperity, and partnership with Europe. Dr. Lars H€ansel

Acknowledgments

A recurrent theme in The Transformation of the World of War and Peace Support Operations is the necessity of collaboration and cooperation between different agents, and perhaps this book is a case and point in itself. This work would not have been possible were it not for three years of fruitful collaboration between the Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the University of Manitoba’s Center for Defense and Security Studies. In the framework of that collaboration, Jim Fergusson, Director of the Center for Defense and Security Studies, brought together a talented group of Canadian scholars who have greatly enriched our understanding of peace support operations and have been instrumental in developing the conceptual foundation of this book. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies have supported the project in times of need and have ensured its continuation, and the dedicated support of Lars H€ansel and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung has sustained the project and facilitated collaboration with Europe’s best and brightest scholars of peacekeeping, the results of which are evinced on the following pages. Collaboration with such fine people has been a pleasure for us and has resulted in what we believe is an important contribution to the field of peace support operations. We hope you find in this book a valuable resource and that you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed producing it.

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Abbreviations

4GW

fourth-generation warfare

ACO (NATO)

Allied Command Operations

ACT (NATO)

Allied Command Transformation

CGS

chief of general staff

CIMIC

civil-military cooperation

COIN

counterinsurgency

CPA

Coalition Provisional Authority

CR

conscript ratio

DCI

Defense Capabilities Initiative

DDR

disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate

DFID

Department for International Development

DoD

US Department of Defense

DPKO (UN)

Department of Peacekeeping Operations

EBAO

effects-based approach to operations

EBO

effects-based operation

EO

Executive Outcomes

ESDP

European Security and Defense Policy

EUROFOR

European Union Force

FCO

British Foreign and Commonwealth Office

GDP

gross domestic product

GWOT

global war on terror

xii

ABBREVIATIONS

HIC

high-intensity conflict

I&R

information and research

ICRC

International Committee of the Red Cross

IFOR

Implementation Force

IISS

International Institute for Strategic Studies

IPB

Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield

IPE

Intelligence Preparation of the Environment

ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

IST

intervention, stabilization, and transformation

KFOR

Kosovo Force

LIC

low-intensity conflict

MAP

Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East

MoD

Ministry of Defense

MOOTW

military operations other than war

MPRI

Military Professional Resources Incorporated

NCO

non-commissioned officer

NCW

network-centric warfare

NGO

non-governmental organization

NRF

NATO response force

NSC

National Security Council

OoAR

out-of-area ratio

OOTW

operations other than war

ORHA

Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (Iraq)

PCC

Prague Capabilities Commitments

PfP

NATO Partnership for Peace

PMC

private military corporation

PSC

private security company

PSO

peace support operation

PTC

peace transition council

QDR

Quadrennial Defense Review

RDO

rapid decisive operations

RMA

revolution in military affairs

ROE

rules of engagement

RUF

Revolutionary United Front

SADF

South African Defense Force

SDR

Strategic Defense Review

SF

special forces

ABBREVIATIONS

SFOR

Stabilization Force

SitCen

UN Situation Center

SOD

system operational design

SSR

security sector reform

SSTR

stability, security transition, and reconstruction

SWORD

Small Wars Operational Research Directorate

UNAMIC

United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia

UNAMIR

United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda

UNHQ

United Nations Headquarters

UNOC

United Nations Operation in Congo

UNOSOM

United Nations Operation in Somalia I

UNOSOM II

United Nations Operation in Somalia II

UNPROFOR

United Nations Protection Force

UNSCOM

United Nations Special Commission

UNTAC

United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia

WEU

Western European Union

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Introduction: Wars and Peace Support Operations in the Contemporary World: Conceptual Clarifications and Suggestions Eyal Ben-Ari, Kobi Michael, and David Kellen

For the past two decades or so, various scholars, commentators, and experts have declared that the militaries of the industrial democracies are undergoing fundamental change. Some of these assertions have been formulated as slogans such as the ‘‘revolution in military affairs,’’ the advent of a ‘‘postmodern military,’’ or the matchless emergence of ‘‘effects-based and net-centric operations.’’ Other, more reflective, contentions have centered on the emergence of ‘‘new wars,’’ ‘‘other wars,’’ or new ‘‘Western ways of waging war.’’ While these arguments have been the focus of intense criticism and discussion, they nevertheless underscore the fact that since the end of the Cold War, the armed forces of the industrial democracies have undergone very significant transformations. As of yet, however, no systematic scholarly attempt has been carried out linking these changes to peace support operations (PSOs), those operations with major state-building components that demand broad and coherent cooperation between military forces and civilian entities. It is this lacuna that our volume seeks to fill. At the same time, however, our focus is primarily conceptual. This point means that our volume does not offer a focus on the implications of advanced technologies for peace-related missions. Rather, we seek to understand how social, economic, political, and organizational transformations around the globe are related to the complex links between armed forces and PSOs. Accordingly, we see the challenge facing decision makers, senior military commanders, and scholars as filling in gaps in existing conceptual frames that link PSOs to contemporary conflict and warfare. We contend that this gap is to a great extent an outcome of the dominance of militarized thinking in this area. Indeed, note the

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large number of scholars writing about PSOs who have either a direct background in military institutions or have specialized in military and security studies. Along these lines, because of the centrality of armed forces in PSOs and because the concepts handy to actors in the field are based on martial knowledge and experience, the main frames for analyzing and interpreting PSOs are militarized. More concretely, in this essay we argue that the dominant conceptualization connecting the transformation of war and PSOs continues to be based on, or derived from, two master templates or frames. The first is what has been variously termed ‘‘conventional’’ or ‘‘industrial war,’’ while the second is that of ‘‘traditional peacekeeping.’’ Whereas the first provides a conceptual lens that situates conflicts on a gradient of nearness or distance from conventional war, the second supplies a frame that analyzes missions in terms of their similarity to or difference from traditional peacekeeping. In fact, the basic notion of the latter is itself derived from an idea of industrial war, where traditional peacekeeping centers on maintaining or monitoring peace between two or more states marked by international boundaries and possessing an internal monopoly over the means of organized violence. As we shall show, these two conceptual prisms, which are still highly emotionally resonant both within and outside the military, provide the basic frames through which PSOs are perceived, understood, and acted upon. Yet an analysis of many contemporary conflicts leads us to conclude that these templates, and more widely military-based knowledge, are not necessarily the most suitable for analyzing and understanding these circumstances. The wider context of our volume is a sense of failure and pessimism in discussions and commentaries about PSOs. Thus, Schindl explains that after the end of the Cold War, the euphoria of the Gulf War of the 1990s, and the avowal of a ‘‘New World Order,’’ peace operations were declared the recipe for a better world.1 Yet the debacles and failures in Cambodia, Somalia, and the Balkans led to disillusionment. More concretely, a report by the Center for International Cooperation contends that the mandates of current missions are usually the outcome of improvised responses that lead to inconsistencies and false expectations.2 Hence, some authors contend that the United Nations’ response to law and order issues in peacekeeping have been no more than ad hoc and driven by exigencies on the ground.3 These examples underscore a sense of strategic helplessness that combines political, organizational, and conceptual problems. Against this background, our volume builds on emerging scholarship to suggest a new set of ideas and concepts that may aid us in grasping and interpreting the transformations we are witness to in the world of war and in PSOs.

TRANSFORMED WARS AND CHANGED CONFLICTS In much of the vast scholarly, professional military, and journalistic work on ‘‘future warfare,’’ the emphasis has been on ‘‘safe, clean wars’’ that are

INTRODUCTION

3

technologically based, precise, distanced, and imagined as near-bloodless.4 Gates caricatures this perspective on wars as ‘‘high-tech affairs, dominated by lasers, robot weapons, computerized decision-making, neutron bombs, energy beams, and fighting space stations.’’5 More thoughtful commentators have been skeptical of such high-tech scenarios that seemed to dominate debates at the end of the 1990s. Spiller notes, for instance, that such missions as the intervention carried out in East Timor defied the ‘‘easy, technological solutions that are so blithely promoted in some quarters today.’’6 Van Riper and Scales point out that there is an ‘‘enormous difference between enduring distant attack, which however unpleasant must eventually end, and enduring the physical presence of a conquering army with all of its political and sociological implications.’’7 Thus, for all of the polemics, especially rife after the Gulf War of the early 1990s, some scholars have argued that contemporary conflicts actually comprise ‘‘messy’’ local wars in which ground forces continue to be of prime importance.8 On a more macro level, Kaldor and van Creveld argue that such conflicts should be seen within the context of changes to the Westphalian order of states and the interrelations between them.9 Along these lines, Burk observes that unconventional struggles have actually been the predominant kind of conflict over the past fifty years, and despite the advent of alleged means to wage ‘‘virtual’’ wars, the world is marked, if anything, by the proliferation of insurgencies.10 What marks these many conflicts is that they all are dispersed, blurred, ‘‘fuzzy,’’ and unpredictably fluid. They are dispersed in place and time in accordance with the principles of guerrilla warfare, where one finds a ‘‘vanishing front’’ because it is often unclear where front and rear are and who are the warriors on the ‘‘battlefield’’ and who the supporters are at ‘‘home.’’11 This spatial and temporal diffusion is often intensified, moreover, by the links between diasporas and armed groups.12 These conflicts are blurred because the boundaries between war as politically motivated violence between states (and groups linked to states) or privatized bodies are not clear and because state interests often cannot be separated from economic, ethnic, or criminal ones.13 They are fuzzy because, as Battistelli, Ammendola, and Galantino state, many new arenas are characterized by unclear definitions of friend and foe, the existence of many enemies, and the saturation of the ‘‘battlefield’’ with a variety of innocents, unknowns, or neutrals.14 Finally, many contemporary conflicts are fluid in that within one arena different kinds of struggles may often combine or transform into each other (for example, peaceful demonstrations, violent protests, terror attacks, small-scale fighting, or open combat). In such conflicts fighting is not restricted to relatively isolated sectors but may flare up anywhere and anytime. Finally, they are fluid because ‘‘the new wars have neither an identifiable beginning nor a clearly definable end.’’15 Dandeker’s piece (Chapter One in this volume) sets the frame for the volume as a whole against this background. He starts his analysis with reference to Rupert Smith’s volume, which attempts to make sense of current-day conflicts through positing a broad global move from ‘‘industrial war’’ to ‘‘war among

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the people.’’16 To simplify somewhat, Smith’s argument is that while industrial wars are based on such assumptions as clear differentiation between front and rear, combat between regulars, linear organization, and decisive battles, the logic of war amongst the people is non-linear, complex, over hearts and minds, and about creating conditions for political solutions. To be sure, war amongst the people has various sub-forms, as the different conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, or Palestine demonstrate. But according to Smith a number of significant trends are common to them all: malleable (as opposed to hard) objectives; conflict that takes places within and outside a theater (real and virtual); goals centered not on victory but an ‘‘acceptable condition’’ based on changing the intentions of adversaries; a stress on force protection and not only mission accomplishment; and warring sides combining non-state and state actors.17 What Dandeker adds to Smith’s analysis is the crucial element of what he calls the spectrum of political strategy. Accepting the latter’s typology of what the military can be used for in contemporary conflicts—to ameliorate, contain, deter or coerce, and destroy—Dandeker contends that the risk of absence of strategy increases the more intense and lethal the force used. In other words, Dandeker complements Smith’s analysis by showing how different applications of military force imply dissimilar sets of considerations on the part of political and military leaders. While Smith’s volume has spurred intense discussions in the academic and military worlds, his contentions need to be balanced or supplemented by underscoring a number of other key developments. The first takes issue with Smith’s tome and the volumes by such scholars as Munkler and Kaldor in that they all tend to marginalize future prospects for industrial war. Potential sources of such armed struggles are represented by a resurgent China and rising India or continued global American interests in such resources as oil, water, or minerals. Hence we need to understand the emergence of new forms of conflict—the ‘‘new wars’’ or ‘‘wars among the people’’—alongside the continued persistence of older, more conventional patterns. This point implies more than saying, as the popular portrayal of Smith argument has it, that one type of conflict has become the dominant one. Rather, we argue that some countries may have to simultaneously fight different kinds of wars (hybrid wars) and that one type of conflict may turn into another.18 For many countries this situation poses significant problems in terms of the structure, training, and investment in their armed forces. The second trend centers on the idea that conflicts are now also managed and fought through the media, the Internet, and the stage of (national and global) public opinion (Bet El, Dandeker, Chapters Four and One in this volume, respectively). Today’s conflicts—and most crucially the interventions of industrial democracies—are judged on television screens and in newspaper columns. In today’s world the media is integral to the strategic level of conflict, not the tactical, since the military and political levels must be able to explain the context and produce a convincing narrative to wider publics. Indeed, the

INTRODUCTION

5

idea is that the core of battle involves the need to win over the hearts and minds of people around the globe. This element is heightened by our specific historical context due both to technological innovations allowing instantaneous reporting and the fact that many armed conflicts have become global media events. Indeed, take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has by now become iconic in the sense of representing in dense form many of the problems of conflict in the contemporary world. To be sure, Smith is well aware of the importance of the media, but its importance extends beyond the theater of war. Hence, the third trend can be referred to as the casualty aversion and fragility of legitimacy of many contemporary missions. Shaw sees in this trend the development of ‘‘risk-transfer war,’’ which centers on minimizing life-risks to the military and hence all-important political and electoral risks to their masters.19 In today’s industrial democracies, cultural transformations have led to an erosion of martial values and to much less tolerance of casualties both on ‘‘our’’ side and, to an extent, civilians on ‘‘their’’ side as a consequence of military operations.20 This is the social context that explains the emphasis found in many militaries, as in the American one, on force protection.21 In many countries, public insistence on a minimum of casualties has been closely related to the development of high-tech weaponry that supposedly both protects friendly military personnel and delivers force ‘‘effectively’’ and precisely to accomplish missions.22 Yet, as we shall see, expectations about advanced military technology that have contributed to (and emanated from) casualty aversion can also lead to a relatively easy commitment to wars of conscience.23 At base of this issue lies what Dandeker calls the ‘‘military covenant,’’ the social, political, and psychological contract that connects the military (and groups within it) and senior officers to politicians and civilian society.24 Thus, the question of how many casualties the industrial democracies are willing to suffer in missions abroad is not only related to concrete political will or risk tolerance. As Haltiner (Chapter Two in this volume) demonstrates, European states with mandatory conscription are far less likely to participate in PSOs. While he does not use the term ‘‘military covenant,’’ Haltiner argues that changes in such states have less to do with the end of the Cold War and more with new missions and the multinationalization of forces. Out-of-the-area deployments are simply much more difficult to manage in the hard-core conscription countries. PSOs violate the ‘‘republican equation,’’ the contract between citizens and their states. People are willing to sacrifice by military service and military funding for material and symbolic rewards and accept the state political control, but PSOs do not provide those rewards and therefore the motivation to participate in PSOs decreases.25 This point leads us to the fourth trend, which entails emerging international norms that involve what have come to be called ‘‘wars of conscience.’’26 Dandeker suggests that in late modernity, accompanying a greater questioning of the legitimacy of the unilateral use of military force to resolve international disputes is the increased focus on human rights as an addition to the concept of security.27 What we are witness to in the last twenty years is the development of

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new international norms that define what is legitimately accepted by state actors. Certain actors or norm entrepreneurs—both domestic and external, stateand NGO-based, and often supported by the media—have steadily been pushing to expand the role of humanitarian interventions. These loose coalitions of intellectuals, informed publics, human rights and humanitarian movements, and national and transnational judicial bodies have been producing a global discourse on human rights and the rules and expectations developed within it for the proper initiation and use of force.28 As a consequence, human rights now provide the very basis for justifying and legitimizing military intervention.29 The power of these global norms, refracted through domestic and international pressure, tends to force Western decision makers to intervene even when they should not because they resonate with assumptions about the responsibility of industrial democracies for conflicts in the Third World and the need to alleviate suffering and poverty among civilians in them. These themes are so ethically and emotionally evocative because they touch, as Ignatieff observes, on the basis of Western self-perceptions as good, responsible, moral beings.30 As a consequence, as Chandler and Reiff contend, the integration of human rights into humanitarian work has led to the emergence of a militarized humanitarianism.31 Indeed, following the past two decades, publics in the industrial democracies have been conditioned that humanitarianism is more than charity; it is action.32 Thus, the ‘‘new humanitarianism’’ has not only become much more explicitly politically involved and committed, it has also emerged as a driver for intervention in various places around the world.33 Perhaps one unintended consequence of this situation has been the appearance of a set of mobilizing slogans for new missions as in the calls for human security or indeed ‘‘humanitarian interventions’’ or ‘‘peace-building.’’34 A final and fifth trend is what Martin Shaw calls ‘‘global surveillance,’’ the growing transparency of contemporary armed forces to external agents such as political leaders; the media (local and global); the judiciary; pressure groups; international non-state institutions such as the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, or Amnesty International; and individual reports transmitted through cellular phones or the Internet.35 This development has been accompanied, in turn, with the expansion of international law governing military activity.36 This trend implies that almost all of the actions of troops are constantly open to external scrutiny monitoring. In this manner, while models governing military behavior originate outside a particular military organization or country, new organizations that have no governmental standing can nevertheless dictate and shape the rules of war.37 They may define, for example, weapons, modes of action, and forms of organized violence that are, or are not, acceptable. TEMPLATES: SHAPING THINKING AND ACTION Before proceeding on to an analysis of the template at base of contemporary thinking about PSOs, let us examine the premises underlying much

INTRODUCTION

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contemporary theorizing about war. Despite a rather voluminous professional military literature about armed conflicts waged by the ground forces of the industrial democracies, only recently have military establishments around the world set out to develop a comprehensive doctrine for combating irregulars.38 Given the Al-Aqsa Intifada in Israel—Palestine and the participation of coalitions of forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, things are slowly changing, yet much recent work is still restricted to military theory,39 journalism,40 or autobiographies.41 Furthermore, very little sustained and systematic social scientific research combining empirical data with theoretical formulations has been carried out about so-called irregular warfare. A prime reason for the dearth of such work derives from the kind of imagery of war and combat that many military professionals and scholars still retain. What is the model that shapes the social scientific idea of war? In short, it is, even now, an image of conventional interstate conflict between soldiers, fought in accordance with the codified laws of war.42 Historically, this model reflects the predominant forms of great-power warfare within the modern European civilization and is the one enshrined in the UN Charter, in collective defense organizations like NATO, and in definitions of aggression in international law.43 Indeed, notice how the terms used by various commentators originate in an assumption that the diversity of contemporary conflicts is based on their similarity to, or difference from, conventional wars. Spiller for instance talks about ‘‘war and lesser forms of conflict,’’ and Smith talks about ‘‘lesser operations’’ (presumably contrasted with ‘‘greater operations’’).44 Fastbend mentions ‘‘war and military operations other than war,’’ while Gates talks of ‘‘military operations short of war.’’45 Eliot Cohen talks about ‘‘small wars’’ as opposed (we would assume) to ‘‘big wars,’’ or takes the idea of ‘‘spectrum of conflict’’ based on the idea of its intensity (high, medium, or low) from which the term LIC (low-intensity conflict) is derived.46 In fact, the very term ‘‘irregular’’ warfare implies a normal, ‘‘regular’’ war—and assumptions about ‘‘regulars’’ and ‘‘irregulars’’ as fighting adversaries—offering a benchmark against which all other conflicts are almost always measured. An interesting exception in this regard is Hoffman’s definition of ‘‘Hybrid Wars,’’ which characterizes the multiple dimensions of modern warfare.47 This mode of thinking was reinforced by the emergence of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) during the 1990s. This RMA was basically driven by advances in technology applied to military munitions, communications and intelligence, and (on the basis of these improvements) certain organizational and doctrinal changes.48 Underlying it was a beguilement, a fascination with technology and especially military technology.49 As Bacevich argues, at bottom of the concept of warfare developed in the United States after the Vietnam debacle is war that combines high-tech precision (the veritable surgical strikes) with clear opponents and goals.50 Hence the problem, as Bondy observes, is that the language of RMA, with its stress on information dominance, stand-off munitions, and the end goals of a decisive battle, excludes

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alternatives such as asymmetric battles or long wars of occupation.51 The result, as Sens (Chapter Five in this volume) forcefully argues, is that many concepts such as full-spectrum dominance, effects-based operations, networkcentric warfare, and ‘‘shock and awe’’ have led to the marginalization of LIC, counterinsurgency (COIN), military operations other than war (MOOTW), and PSOs. As he ironically states, RMA has achieved ‘‘full intellectual dominance.’’ But the problem runs deeper than a marginalization of thinking about irregular conflict. In the majority of recent social scientific works on combat, the focus continues to be on ‘‘conventional’’ or ‘‘regular’’ war. Take the latest crop of excellent books about these matters: Joanna Bourke’s An Intimate History of Killing, Dave Grossman’s On Killing, McManners’ The Scars of War, or the book edited by Evans and Ryan, The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear, and Chaos in Battle.52 All of these volumes focus on, and assume the continued importance of, the stipulated conventional war. Similarly, a number of recent qualitative works about combat or preparation for combat that have been written about Israel and other industrial democracies take a similar tack.53 Such analyses tend to examine ‘‘conventional’’ combat, the armed struggle of (usually) two opposing forces belonging to regular armies of organized states. In this sense, corresponding to the relative (albeit changing) disregard of ‘‘irregular warfare’’ by military professionals, one finds an almost total absence of social scientific studies about the organizational and sociological aspects of unconventional conflicts. It is as though social scientists have accepted the military’s priorities in defining what is ‘‘worthy’’ of study.54 Many social scientists, in other words, have willy-nilly accepted the very worldview of the military organizations they study. No less significant is the fact that it has been the template of conventional war—in its older semblance or newer guise as part of the RMA—that is also the one from which concepts have been developed to explain and understand peace-related missions. Thus, for instance, in a thoughtful piece Burk observes that we know more about what constitutes ‘‘good practice’’ in war-fighting than we do about what constitutes ‘‘good practice’’ in peacekeeping.55 This point is true despite the fact that global peace operations have grown exponentially since 1999 and often not only involve troops in greater numbers and are more militarily ‘‘robust,’’ but also have more ambitious military, policing, and political roles.56 What is important from the perspective of our analysis is that just as conventional war continues to be the template for conceptualizing ‘‘unconventional’’ war, so traditional peacekeeping is the template for thinking and reasoning about all PSOs. In other words, all non-traditional missions are still to a great extent seen as a derivative of traditional peacekeeping. Most missions are characterized as traditional missions derived from conventional or industrial war, so peace-related missions are an extension of similar thinking in terms of traditional missions.

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Donald contends that the confusion centering on many PSOs originates in the three cardinal principles of traditional peacekeeping: the neutrality of the peacekeepers, the consent of the warring parties, and the minimal or non-use of force.57 Each of these principles has been applied, and subsequently questioned, in current PSOs. In our words, the confusion that Donald observes derives from the continued use of the template of traditional peacekeeping in PSOs. For instance, in conflicts such as Somalia or the former Yugoslavia, the belligerents recognize no neutrals and interpret any action by external agents as helping or hindering their cause.58 In such cases, intrastate conflict has much in common with insurgencies because both involve belligerents who do not recognize or accept the legitimacy of established states.59 Hence, while the traditional emphasis has been on the consent of the parties, peace-enforcement missions, let alone other kinds of interventions, are based on different kinds of legitimacy.60 Similarly, while older forms of peacekeeping emphasized the non-use of force, many new operations are explicitly based on it. Along the same lines, while the earlier stress was on neutrality in the sense of a ‘‘passive’’ absence of partiality, the newer missions involve a much more ‘‘active’’ judgment based on the application of criteria to render assistance or intervention. Accordingly, there is an immense difference between a cease-fire negotiated by two governments involved in an interstate war, and a settlement enshrined in documents of legal, political, and psychological validity and legitimacy between warring communities, warlords, and other parties operating in the chaos surrounding collapsing states.61 But the problem is not limited to the fact that much of contemporary thinking about PSOs is derived from traditional peacekeeping. The problem centers on the very militarization of concepts related to such missions. Take as an example the linguistic usages in such terms as ‘‘humanitarian intervention’’ or ‘‘human rights protection operations,’’62 or notice the proposal by Metz and Millen that as part of intervention, stabilization, and transformation (IST) operations, the American military ‘‘needs a stabilization concept that is equivalent to the rapid decisive operations in conventional war-fighting. This concept needs to be grounded in mass psychology, with the full integrations of cultural distinctions.’’63 Finally, take the militarization of ‘‘other’’ missions as in a statement by the then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, ‘‘The NGOs are such a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team.’’64 All these examples attest to the assumption that current missions (and the actors participating in them) should be undertaken within what are essentially military modes of action. Indeed, even counterinsurgency studies that argue that politics is paramount, in effect continue to overwhelmingly focus on the military dimension.65 These premises also apply to assertions about the preeminence of security considerations over other concerns and the primacy of the military over other organizations in PSOs. Such assumptions are related, no doubt, to sequential aspects of many missions in which security and stabilization must precede any other effort. But when examined closely, it seems that the very concepts with which PSOs are reasoned about are essentially military in nature. One example

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is the set of organizational practices centered on civil-military cooperation (CIMIC), which, despite its name, is a military creation, commanded by officers, and aimed at achieving military ends by linking representatives of the armed forces to civilians: ‘‘local’’ populations, NGOs, or UN civilian officials. Another illustrative instance, centered on military professionalism, is the intense discussion about the possibility of ‘‘training down’’ for ‘‘wars among the peoples’’ from industrial war (rather than the reverse). As Moskos notes, one of the growing internal debates within military circles is the degree to which ‘‘operations other than war’’ detract from the ‘‘warrior’’ capabilities of the armed forces.’’66 Indeed, Haltiner observes that for many commanders and scholars, there is an inappropriateness, even incapability, of traditional military organizational structures for tasks other than combatant ones and that the track record of the military in fulfilling other tasks is at best mixed.67 Dandeker and Gow hence contend that while there are differences between combat units (paratroopers versus light infantry) or nations (the United Kingdom versus Sweden) in terms of suitability for PSOs, there still is an underlying culture of the military that contrasts with peace-related missions.68 In this respect, Shamir (Chapter Three in this volume) contends that the expected behavior of noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and officers in PSOs runs counter to their training and ethos. Shamir argues that current doctrine still encourages acting aggressively in the face of uncertain situations, whereas in PSOs it is often better to avoid action or to de-escalate than to act incorrectly. A major reason for the continued stress on the template of conventional war is its continued emotional resonance with most soldiers and officers and the fact that at the very core of professional self-images are battles that take place within such conflicts. Such emotional meaning, as a long line of scholars have noted, is related to images of masculinity, to representations in popular culture, and to the expertise of soldiers in the management and effectuation of organized violence.69 This situation, in turn, implies difficulties for motivating and allocating prestige to soldiers in peace-related missions. As Burk dryly observes, ‘‘One strains to imagine a movie about the ‘Blue Helmets’ that would rival the ‘Green Berets.’’’70 Indeed, although there may be differences between militaries in this respect, the template of conventional war (distance from or nearness to ‘‘real’’ combat) continues to resonate emotionally with troops mainly from Western professional militaries around the world.71 And it is this continued emotional resonance that may further contribute to militarized thinking about PSOs.

NEW METAPHORS AND NEW KNOWLEDGE? One concept has recently become rather popular in discussions about current military missions: ‘‘cultural intelligence’’ (Michael and Kellen, Chapter Nine in this volume). This term, which refers to cultural knowledge of adversaries, may

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be modeled on the purported cultural and linguistic capabilities of special forces.72 The move toward ‘‘cultural intelligence’’ does not seem to be a mere organizational fad, for there is mounting evidence that many armed forces have adopted concrete measures to institute this kind of knowledge. For instance, aspects of cultural knowledge have begun to be incorporated into military courses and education, intelligence systems, and new organizational entities.73 In one example, the Pentagon has initiated a program by which social scientists are embedded with brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve as cultural advisors to their commanders.74 Other instances are the new Center for Languages, Cultures, and Regional Studies at West Point, the American Marine Corps’ Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, new advertisements for field anthropologists, cultural experts or analysts in corporations consulting for the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the smart card that has been issued to American troops in Iraq (to help in cross-cultural communication).75 Along similar lines, NATO has begun to carry out simulations and workshops aimed at exposing forces to the importance of religious and cultural issues in missions abroad.76 And finally, an Australian military officer with a background in anthropology and counterinsurgency now advises the American forces in a formal capacity.77 In examining the importance of cultural intelligence for PSOs, Michael and Kellen (Chapter Nine in this volume) contend that the production of such knowledge is primarily a response to the militarization of intelligence in such missions. They differentiate between two types of cultural intelligence. The first is environmental and is necessary to develop cognitive and behavioral abilities to adapt to the context of a mission. The second is operational and ‘‘anthropological’’ in nature and is needed for understanding the enemy and the theater of conflict. Michael and Kellen argue that both types play an important role in developing strategies and allocating resources within PSOs. To be sure, given the sheer volatility of the new conflicts and the number and variance of actors within them, there is an acute need for the kind of information and analysis this kind of intelligence may provide military and political leaders. But instituting these measures may also create problems. To start with, such intelligence requires intensive engagement with locals, which may go against military training and assumptions about enemies especially during insurgencies. More broadly, as a number of commentators have remarked, the problem is that what is labeled by one party as strategic intelligence may be labeled by the other as espionage involving subterfuge and secrecy.78 In addition, given the open nature of the United Nations, many member states are anxious or absolutely against the adoption of intelligence systems for fear that any covert intelligence is liable to create prejudice and suspicion and undermine the building of trust with local actors.79 Finally, many academics and especially anthropologists (who often have the greatest store of knowledge about areas where PSOs take place) are highly suspicious of collaborating with states and especially armed forces.80

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But the problems with the new kinds of knowledge necessitated by PSOs do not end with cultural intelligence as an organizational aspect of military action. The past decade has been marked by new humanitarian missions explicitly aimed at nation- and state-building. While such missions usually take place in post-conflict theaters, during the last decade such operations are increasingly conducted in situations of ongoing conflict. Thus, for instance, such efforts have taken place in East Timor, Haiti, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Similarly, around the world there is increasing involvement of world or regional bodies in violence reduction as part of removing hindrances to national development.81 Canada and Germany as states have established governmental structures to focus on nation-building, while the United Nations has set up its Peace-Building Commission to do the same thing. When looked at closely, however, it appears that the models at base of most efforts at nation- and statebuilding do not differ much from those used by social scientists in the 1950s, during the heyday of modernization theory. In fact, when peacekeeping scholars have adopted these terms, they have also taken on certain assumptions that many contemporary social scientists—in sociology, anthropology, and certain parts of political science—no longer hold. Take a recent report published by Rand, entitled A Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building.82 While such handbooks are important and sometimes useful for practitioners, it is important to get at the hidden assumptions at base of the report because they are indicative of wider premises. First we are told that the overall responsibility for any reconstruction and rebuilding efforts undertaken by the United States has been given to its Department of Defense. Yet not only is this an agency without experience in such projects, it is also one totally dominated by security considerations. In fact, note the sentence beginning the report: ‘‘Nation-building, as it is commonly referred to in the United States, involves the use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms with the objective of transforming a society emerging from conflict into one at peace with itself and its neighbors.’’83 The objectives of peace and stability are very much oriented to security, and the very definition of nation-building as a ‘‘mission’’ is indicative of its militarization. To go back to a point we made earlier, the concept of IST operations indicates the military point of view at base of a project, nation-building, that is far more complex than one that can be reduced to security considerations.84 Second, the report assumes that nation-building is predicated on the nationstate (or one of its permutations) as the proper unit for any kind of transformation. Part of this kind of emphasis involves the historical links between the military and the state since troops serve the latter and their culture is rooted in concept of honor, obedience, and sacrifice rather than in the idea of booty or spoils.85 In other words, modern militarized thinking assumes the existence and importance of the state both as a taken-for-granted matter and as the desired end-state. It is not surprising that in the guidebook, this kind of emphasis is, moreover, extended to adjoining states as partners in the process of

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nation-building.86 No less important, the ultimate goal of creating a safe and peaceful country is to be achieved, according to the guidebook, through a linear (albeit complex) process. This assumption is reflected in the way that the report’s text is constructed with each stage forming a precondition for the next. The final goal of this linear process, moreover, is envisaged as a country that is very similar to the United States: one with stable legal frameworks, democratization as evinced in political parties, a free press, civil society, and constitutional frameworks for free elections, finally leading to economic growth, the reduction of poverty, and improvement in infrastructure.87 Third, the report assumes that the complex set of processes encapsulated in nation-building can be implemented through planned and intentional social engineering. Thus, for example, the report uses such words as ‘‘refashioning’’ societies or ‘‘close oversight, mentoring, and institutional change’’ to characterize the kind of action needed for a successful project to take place.88 In addition, take the following sentence with its image of industrial production: ‘‘Mismatches between inputs, as measured in personnel and money, and desired outcomes, as measured in imposed social transformation, are the most common cause for the failure of nation-building.’’89 Similar postulates derived from this manual providing recipes or instructions for action are found in the suggestion to ‘‘dial down the objective if resources are likely to be limited.’’ In the practical world, this social engineering orientation has already begun to be implemented with the recruitment by the Pentagon of academics from engineering, statistical sociology, mathematical economics, or computer science to model the social behavior of Iraqis.90 Against this background it may be clear that new types of knowledge are necessary for PSOs. Given that the academic disciplines within which studies of peace-related missions have been rooted are overwhelmingly political science, international relations, and security and conflict scholarship, it is not surprising that on top of the militarization of concepts one also finds their securitization. But if one wants to understand the broader social context of PSOs, then it seems that the real challenge lies in bringing in knowledge rooted in political-economy, anthropology, and sociology. This kind of knowledge, it appears, is the key to any kind of long-term transformation of the violent societies within which peace forces are deployed. As Last (Chapter Six in this volume) asserts, theorists of MOOTW or counterinsurgency are almost totally oblivious to the growing literature on moral economy or social capital in societies around the world. More broadly, Bhatia contends that whereas the various forms of political involvement in peace-related missions are by now predictable, economic reconstruction has hardly been examined.91 Indeed, he calls for a renaissance of research on the economic dimensions of post-conflict situations like the one that is already occurring in regard to war economies.92 More concretely, Last argues that it is crucial to examine the incentive structures and political arrangements that may lead to change in war-torn societies. For instance, the differing incentive structures for women and men embedded within

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different societies may provide different levers for change. Or, in working for reconstruction, we need to be aware of the structures and dynamics by which warlords or gangsters who want to legitimate themselves may be brought into ‘‘the game.’’93 Finally, the economic impact of military forces on the societies in which they fight may also be a source of social transformation.94

INTER-LINKAGES AND HYBRIDS Understanding that PSOs involve much more than military or security aspects leads us to broader questions about interlinkages and interfaces between the military and other bodies involved with such issues as livelihood, economic development, or governance. In this respect, over the past years, many commentators have argued for an all-inclusive organizational approach to PSOs that would center on relations with civilian movements or various forms of interorganizational cooperation. Rather than adding another such call, in this section we discuss some the conceptual and practical implications of the organizational forms involved in PSOs. Inter-organizational cooperation. International peace operations now involve significantly greater numbers of civilians to handle political and developmental tasks and police to handle security tasks.95 This development has spelt an ever greater need for coordination and cooperation in inter-agency, inter-ministerial, or indeed inter-governmental projects. Such projects involve different entities (such as states) bringing different capabilities, interests, and commitments. As a consequence, a number of administrative measures have been put into place in order to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration and assistance. To cite one example, in 2005, the U.S. State Department established a new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization to help organize the transition from conflict to ‘‘sustainable stability.’’96 But such projects involve more than the establishment of partnerships or increasing organizational complexity. It is within this context that Egnell’s article (Chapter Seven in this volume) should be seen. The complex nature of contemporary PSOs implies that integrated civil-military approaches are necessary for effectiveness in achieving the often far-reaching political aims of democratization and economic development. Egnell’s contention is that the ‘‘comprehensive approach’’ to civilmilitary relations advocates creating interdepartmental and interagency structures that overcome the stovepipe structure and culture that characterizes most governments and presents a serious challenge to cooperation between most political, security, and defense establishments. Such comprehensive approaches to operations require integrated institutions at the national strategic level or at the international organizational level in cases of multinational operations. Integrated structures provide more accurate interpretations of reality, implying that the instruments of national power, primarily the military, are better suited for

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contemporary strategic contexts. In addition, such structures provide more inclusive command and control mechanisms at the strategic level, meaning that all relevant actors in complex operations are coordinated through integrated planning and execution of operations. Although he does not say it explicitly, Egnell’s contention appears to be that the effectiveness in PSOs is not primarily military. A real change needs to take place in civil-military relations among a variety of actors. Hyphenated roles. Long ago, Morris Janowitz argued that the militaries of the industrial democracies have been moving toward a constabulary role, toward policing in various forms.97 As we saw, this transformation—or more correctly, an addition of new roles to conventional ones—has led to debates about the tensions between the ethos of warriors and the needs and practicalities of policemen. Developing Janowitz’s thoughts, to the soldier-policeperson, Moskos has added the soldier-diplomat, soldier-statesman, and soldier-scholar as part of the array of hyphenated roles that contemporary officers need to master.98 But at present there seems to be a proliferation of such military roles that are relevant to PSOs, and we could easily add soldier–media expert, soldier– social scientist, soldier–social worker, soldier–nation builder, or (the somewhat unwieldy) soldier–infrastructure restorer. Finally, to follow Haltiner, we can suggest the soldier-consultant, soldier–relief worker, or soldier-alderman.99 One problem with these hyphenated roles centers on individual officers and commanders and what sociologists term role tensions, or the kinds of internal strains and contradictions between the stipulations of different components of expected behavior. But perhaps more significant are the kinds of training and promotion structures that will be established within the armed forces to encourage cultivation of different kinds of officers. One example is European military academies that have moved from a stress on military skills toward a broader education in the behavioral science, what Haltiner calls the move from a ‘‘Sparta’’ to an ‘‘Athens’’ model.100 Linking communities of professional practice. Another important example of links between militaries and external entities is not strictly formal or institutional but involves connections between communities of professional practitioners. Let us provide two examples. Bet-El (Chapter Four in this volume) provides an analysis of the ‘‘symbiotic’’ relationship between the media and the military as two such specialized communities. She proceeds from the differing expectations of both parties.101 While most militaries expect the media to be ‘‘objective’’ (i.e., rally to their cause), the media’s intention is to convey, within strict time limits, the most compelling narrative it can find. Since the very logic of the media centers on the creation of a narrative, commanders must also struggle to create their own persuasive military storyline. In military operations other than war, this basic tension is magnified by the fact that representatives of the media are usually much more independent of the military than in times past.102 The dispersed nature of conflicts in which the media may be anywhere (because there is no ‘‘war zone’’ or ease of access to armed groups) is reinforced by technological developments (the

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miniaturization and mobility of equipment) that make for much less dependence on military communications nets.103 The outcome of this situation is a recognition on the part of the armed forces that one needs to deal directly with the complex set of tensions, contrasts, and dependencies, with this other community of practitioners. One aspect of the introduction of ‘‘media awareness’’ in military instruction thus entails an understanding of the logic-of-action of journalists.104 This kind of awareness entails understanding not only the constraints (and possibilities) of the reports disseminated by the media but also the fact that they are run as business enterprises in a very competitive environment. More widely, we can conjecture that the increased move of people between the military and the media will lead, at once, to greater understanding between the communities but also to potentially greater and more focused critiques between these communities. One can analyze the relations between the military and NGOs (primarily human rights or humanitarian movements) in a similar manner. Titles such as ‘‘Strange Bedfellows’’ or ‘‘Uncertain Partners’’ underscore the tension-filled connections between these parties in PSOs.105 Here the differences between the two sides seem more far-reaching and include a hierarchical versus egalitarian mode of deciding and operating, national versus international loyalties,106 or differing abilities to control information, and contrasting definitions of success and the time frames for realizing it.107 But at the practical level, one often finds a mutual dependence that is even more acute than in the case of military-media relations. ‘‘Humanitarian organizations may find themselves unable to provide relief in very dangerous areas. International military units, for their part, may feel compelled to step into this void and begin delivering relief supplies and, in the process, blurring the distinction between combatant and humanitarian worker.’’108 Moreover, change may be afoot with the move of military personnel into humanitarian organizations.109 This unidirectional transfer has, ironically, led to a greater ‘‘militarization within’’ NGOs, making it easier for them to work with the armed forces.110 Here too, simulations of negotiations and links with humanitarian movements have been introduced into the training military units received before deployment to PSOs. Hybrid organizational forms. The next type of organizational form that has developed in regard to PSOs is hybrid organizations that blend structure and modes of action. David Last (Chapter Six in this volume) has suggested that we stop talking about the police and the military as separate entities. At one level, his point refers to hybrid corps such as the French gendarmerie that could perhaps be better suited to missions of stabilization. But at a second and perhaps conceptually more challenging level, our point involves forms that blend organizations together. Thus, rather than talking about military police we should take seriously ‘‘military policing,’’ as a set of activities that blend in hybrid form the ‘‘logics’’ of action of different organizations. The advantage of such organizational hybrids is that they combine order and disorder and thus provide a means to answer the complexity of such missions as PSOs. Accordingly, hybrid

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organizations are not only a means to control military operations (like manning checkpoints) but also measures that the military uses to manage its relations with groups in the civilian environment and whose values, needs, and identities may contradict its own. In this sense, hybrids like CIMIC officers are mediators or boundaryspanning roles that link the military to civilian entities through embodying in their functions the logics of two or more organizations. In effect, in CIMIC organizations’ members wear uniforms but also represent part of the military’s responsibility for civilians. As such, its members are, in a sense, both in and out of the military. The strength of such hybrids lies in their ability to perceive the needs and views of civilians and ‘‘translate’’ them into concrete suggestions that commanders and troops can take into consideration through their actions. CIMIC officers, moreover, sometimes find that they form a pressure group pressing for civilian interests. More broadly, links between combat troops and members of CIMIC, and other liaison officers, are part of the new relations between the armed forces and various entities centered on humanitarian issues (and to a very limited extent on human rights). In other words, they are ‘‘between and betwixt’’ the military and its environment but they are also part of practices that are not fully military or fully civilian. To put this point by way of example, such cases show how the military does not leave uncontrolled areas such as municipal issues but develops a mixed kind of control that is part civilian and part military. Through the work of such hybrids, the military concurrently displays its ‘‘humane,’’ caring aspects; reacts to some civilian demands; maintains overall control of the situation; prevents potential disruptions; and seeks to accomplish its military missions. To be sure, we are not arguing that these organizations are unqualified success stories but rather that their unique characteristics make them better able to help the military as an organization deal with the contingencies and uncertainties of PSOs. But from the strictly military point of view, the problem is that elements of the armed forces continue to be military units but are changed by their very relationships with others. The difficulty in many of these hybrids, in other words, is how the constituent units collaborate (even participate in a relatively coherent amalgam) but also retain their separate identity. The potential military disadvantage of hybrids is thus the loss of identity and special skills of the constituent units and roles. Organizational isomorphism. Another important organizational process also takes place in PSOs: mutual learning between militaries—the technical terms is organizational isomorphism—which leads to the emergence of similar kinds of practices.111 In this process, the practices of one armed force provide a model for other forces that then incorporate them into their own organizational structures and actions. Joseph Soeters’ argument (presented in June 2007 at the conference in Jerusalem mentioned in the acknowledgement) is that through what he terms experiential isomorphism in Afghanistan, the Dutch forces have become more like the Americans while the latter have become more similar to

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the former in terms of national military styles of responding to hostilities and administrative challenges. He argues that in contrast to the approach taken by the United States, Britain, and Canada, the Dutch approach aims not to defeat the Taliban but to make it irrelevant. Accordingly, it has been more modest and risk-averse, inclined toward interaction with local stakeholders on an equal basis, and has produced far fewer casualties. It remains unclear at present which national approach is more effective in the long run. Yet Soeters argues that the armed forces of the various nations show a tendency to learn from each other’s experiences and approaches, leading them to become isomorphic. In concrete terms this means that the Dutch forces have become more aggressive while the American forces have become more accommodating to local civilians. Armed forces of the industrial democracies now create practices on the basis of the global discourse of human rights and these practices, in turn, are being disseminated between them. Human rights considerations are beginning to become a kind of universalistic standard to which organizations seek to adhere to in order to gain legitimacy, support, and resources. In this manner, ideas related to ‘‘minimal collateral damage’’ can be seen as the military equivalent of ‘‘best practices’’ in a certain sector or organizational field. Theoretically, our argument is that the emulation and mimicking of one military establishment by another is part of the processes that takes place within what may be called a world system of professional military knowledge. Within this system, professional knowledge is produced and disseminated from world centers through various institutions, arrangements, professional publications, and military doctrines. Here, of course, it is the American military establishment that has been the center for the production of such knowledge. The point we are making is that military organizations not only conform to their national and international environments, they also come to resemble each other in the process of institutional isomorphism. It is for these reasons, then, that one finds not only an emphasis on human rights in all of the armed forces of the industrial democracies but concrete organizational measures (such as legal experts advising bombing missions) that are very similar. Privatization. Finally, let us take up the issue of how the process of privatization of security is related to PSOs. While the context of this process is the spread of global capitalism and the world-wide neo-liberal regime, there are more proximate causes: first, the spread of free-market values and the spread of economic liberalism makes moves toward privatizing services gradually more acceptable and legitimate; second, the increasing demands by civilian leaders for leaner, less expensive forces has been a prime reason for the move to outsourcing; and third, the heightened risk aversion of publics in the industrial democracies has contributed to viewing fighting by ‘‘proxy’’ as an advantage. Against this background, it seems only rational for states to privatize and for private groups to supplant the dearth of governmental forces with private ones.112 Today, the sheer scope and geographical breadth of contemporary private security companies are impressive, and, we would add, their lethal

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potential is no less critical for altering country- and region-wide balances of power.113 But as many commentators have noted, the core problem with the privatization of security is the potential for weakening the state’s monopoly over the means of violence thereby undermining the concentration of state power that began with the peace of Westphalia.114 Within this overall context, Kinsey (Chapter Eight in this volume) offers an overview of the current use of private security companies in armed conflict and discusses prospects and obstacles for their deployment in PSOs. Kinsey demonstrates that the use of private security forces has blossomed in recent years and that their deployment is spreading beyond traditional administrative and logistical support roles to the battlefield and to related roles such as defensive guarding, security sector reform, and disarmament. Kinsey argues that private security companies will most likely see more engagement in PSOs as militaries become more specialized and defer more mission tasks. He cautions, however, that private security companies lack the legitimacy of state actors and are more likely to be perceived by local populations as neocolonialist agents.115 Moreover, Hillen cautions that some powers and functions, mainly legal aspects of sovereignty, can never be transferred.116 Yet the economic benefits of private peacekeepers, in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, should prod us to think about other forms of security arrangements that are akin to privatization.117 Take the form that was involved in the Western forces’ use of the Northern Coalition in Afghanistan or Israel’s utilization of the Army of South Lebanon for many years. While these armed forces may be publicly categorized as ‘‘allies,’’ in organizational and economic terms they are much more similar to subcontractors, that is, relatively cheap groups that provide military services and often employ fighters as sort of day-laborers. Politically, the advantage of using such forces for the industrial democracies lies in averting casualties among ‘‘their’’ forces and overcoming many of the problems of accountability to wider publics and constituencies.118

CONCLUSION: PROFESSIONAL VOCABULARY AND SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE By way of conclusion, let us emphasize two main points. The first centers on the existing frames or templates used to interpret and act within PSOs. In this introductory essay, we underscored the twin templates of industrial war and traditional peacekeeping, the militarization or securitization of thinking about peace-related projects, and the assumptions based on 1950s modernization theory in preparing for and implementing programs for the reconstruction of war-torn societies. Instead of these templates, this introduction and many of the contributions to this volume suggest the need to develop new concepts and metaphors. The second point refers to the possible impact of PSOs on military transformation. Thus, perhaps the way to think about future developments is not so

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much on the way that military transformation influences peace-related missions but rather on the way the latter effect the former. Some of these effects have to do with career structures within the military, military education, or the links between the armed forces and external entities. For such institutionalization to take place, there will be a continued need for entrepreneurs for change within the security establishment, perhaps for a political champion, and for doctrinal developments (that is, mainstreaming of new ideas into military doctrine). By offering this volume on military transformation and PSOs we are also, of course, participating in current debates about these issues. The various contributions to this book, and the volume as a whole, should be seen as interrogating and questioning current trends from a variety of perspectives. And that, after all, is our aim.

1

The End of War? The Use of Force in the Twenty-First Century 1 Christopher Dandeker

INTRODUCTION Ever since the end of the Cold War there has been a debate about the extent to which the international order has been shifting away from states’ concerns with preparing for, deterring, and, if required, fighting classical, interstate war, toward a preoccupation with ‘‘new wars.’’2 This debate has been part of a wider discussion of the supposed decline of the ‘‘Westphalian’’ state system, which many argue is connected with an intensification of the process of globalization.3 Key questions arising from the literature on this subject are: with what forms of violence will Western armed services and the actors (military and non-military) with which they have to cooperate need to contend in the early decades of the twenty-first century; how will they do so, and what will be the likely effects on their organizations and the societies from which they are drawn? Martin Van Creveld argued in 1991 that low-intensity conflict, civil war, and guerrilla campaigns would supplant the kinds of interstate warfare that Western militaries have traditionally been trained to fight.4 He claimed that territorial states would be eroded, including the Clauswitzean distinctions between army, state, and people, characteristic of the modern state. Police and security organizations would become more important than regular military forces as political authorities sought to defeat armed bands in a world that would be somewhat reminiscent of medieval Europe, that is, a world where, in a fragmented political order, wars are fought by small groups of professionals for religion, status, and honor as much as for land or for profit. Although in the post–Cold War period, attempts would not be made to minimize damage to civilians; in fact, it was quite the contrary. State-on-state encounters, and the regular technology-rich armed forces designed to fight them, were a costly irrelevance for an era of transformed war.

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In 1999, Mary Kaldor developed an influential distinction between ‘‘new’’ and ‘‘old’’ wars, drawing attention to the contemporary frequency of mid- and low-level conflicts and the increased significance of intra- rather than interstate warfare as a source of human insecurity. Kaldor highlighted the features of ‘‘new wars’’ as follows. First, in the context of failed or disintegrating states, political leaders can make entrepreneurial use of the politics of identity: that is, to mobilize support for their strategies through the manipulation of national, ethnic and/or religious symbols, language, and memories, which may, as in the case of the former Republic of Yugoslavia or Rwanda, be misleadingly portrayed by ill-informed outsiders as the primordial politics of tribal enmity. Secondly, these intrastate conflicts, which may well spill over into neighboring territories and encourage outside intervention, are focused on non-state military agencies such as militias, armed and predatory criminal bands, for whom the (Western) ‘‘laws of war’’ scarcely apply. As a result, displacement of populations, refugee crises, and civilian suffering are key features of these wars. Third, new wars are connected with processes of globalization. Political leaders can use their control and plunder of a country’s assets in order to sell them on the global (and often black) market, sometimes in exchange for arms, of which there has been a plentiful supply after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in order to buttress their hold on power. Kaldor’s work led to a debate on how new these so-called new wars really are. For example, Hirst argued that ‘‘[m]ost of Kaldor’s new wars involve old problems, stemming from the colonial era, or from peace treaties after the First World War, or from the Cold War.’’5 The deep historical roots of the war focused on the break-up of the former Republic of Yugoslavia is one example.6 Recently, Munkler has assessed this debate. He argues that the distinctiveness of the era of new wars rests on a coincidence of three trends, each of which has appeared before but not in combination. First, the ‘‘privatization of war,’’ which means that ‘‘states are no longer the monopolists of war …; non and sub-state actors have increasingly seized the initiative from states that, for the most part, have been reduced to reactive positions.’’7 Second, Munkler points to the development of ‘‘military asymmetry’’ with the technically sophisticated Western armed forces facing ‘‘military[il]y inferior actors hardly fit for battle,’’ by which he means conventional war. Interestingly, he argues asymmetry is the historical norm with symmetry as a political order constructed by the Westphalian state. Third, Munkler argues that war has become ‘‘demilitarized’’ in the sense that ‘‘regular armed forces have lost both the control and monopoly of warfare.’’ There are a variety of players, not always uniformed and by no means committed to the (European in origin) laws of war.8 Munkler’s analysis leads him to conclude that three types of war are likely to define our era. The first is what he calls ‘‘resource wars,’’ which, echoing Kaldor’s arguments, are likely to occur in regions such as Africa, with valuable natural resources and conditions that encourage competition for their control amongst a variety of state and sub-state actors. These actors have the incentive of the global

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economy and the facilitating condition of fractures in local state authority to be able to use coercion and terror to control populations and resources for their own ends. Such resource wars can invite intervention from other states, which may be driven by a mix of strategic and humanitarian motives; these are wars of pacification. Yet such interventions may not be universally welcomed, not least in the territory in which an intervention takes place. This, in turn, can provide a fertile ground for ‘‘internecine warfare,’’ in which radicalized groups can not only resist intervention but also seek to mount, via terrorist tactics, armed attacks not only on local intervention forces but also in the heartland of the states from which they come.9 The example of the links between the U.K. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.K. domestic terror would be a case in point. Munkler argues that states that intervene and conduct wars of pacification, or what might be called robust peacemaking or ‘‘strategic peacekeeping,’’ will have a mix of strategic (realist) and humanitarian (liberal and cosmopolitan) motives.10 They will also face dilemmas about calibrating how much effort to expend and costs to incur relative to what their citizens are prepared to accept and for how long. In addition, states will need to think about what forces can achieve in such interventions. These are especially troubling issues for what Cooper has called ‘‘postmodern states,’’ principally the EU, which enjoy relative peace and prosperity in their region of shared sovereignty and interdependence.11 Yet this prosperity depends on resources of the wider global economy and faces troubles at the interface between the postmodern world and the premodern world of weak and failing states. At the same time, postmodern states that intervene in wars of pacification will also need to avoid losing sight of such states’ continuing power and political competitions with what he calls modern states, concerning resources such as oil, water, and minerals. Postmodern states’ armed forces need to be attuned with military symmetry if not for war, then for coercive diplomacy in a realist, interstate context. They must do this themselves or at least have a reliable ally to do it for them. Indeed, elements of interstate war are likely to be present in the three kinds of warfare discussed by Munkler. We need to think about how power contenders will fight them, and there may well be more than two sides. One argument is that, from the point of view of Western states engaged in these situations, such contests are likely to involve a ‘‘hybrid blend of traditional and irregular tactics, decentralized planning, and execution and non-state actors … using both simple and innovative tactics in innovative ways.’’12 This suggestion is not unrelated to another U.S. naval commentator’s influential concept of ‘‘three block warfare.’’13 He argues that it is possible for a military unit within one urban setting to move from delivering humanitarian relief, separating conflicting parties and then dealing with tactically high intensity exchanges of fire with insurgents. And this rapid tempo of events is likely to be exposed to media scrutiny, during which tactical and sub-tactical decisions can have major operational and even strategic consequences, as when an apparent war crime can damage the mission of an intervening state and its international reputation.

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These dilemmas of postmodern states preoccupy General Sir Rupert Smith’s influential book The Utility of Force, which provides analysis as well as an attempt to educate political and military elites (and their citizens) on what one can usefully do with force in the twenty-first century.14 Although Smith claims that ‘‘war no longer exists,’’ actually he means that warfare has become transformed from what he calls industrial war to a world of confrontations and conflicts where ‘‘war amongst the people’’ is the dominant theme.15 In industrial war—a product of the innovations of the Napoleonic and Prussian militaries, which used the resources of the industrial revolution and the modern nation state—armed forces are used to resolve conflicts through decisive strategic encounters with their opposite numbers on the battlefield. War is a rational use of force to win a political contest, and this remained the case from the early nineteenth century through the wars of German unification, the U.S. Civil war through the two World Wars of the twentieth century. The application of science and technology in industrial war led to the creation of nuclear weapons, which also, ironically, led to its decline as states could no longer use war as a rational instrument of policy to achieve military victory. During the Cold War bipolar confrontation, however, states prepared for industrial war; they equipped and trained their forces for conventional and nuclear phases of a war that they knew could not be fought and won. Meanwhile, they witnessed, and some became engaged in, rather different kinds of conflict—in counterpoint to industrial war—which were not interstate, strategic military encounters, but engagements with non-state or proto-state actors. The objective of these actors was to avoid a contest with an industrial state where the latter was strong but, from a position within the (more or less supportive) surrounding civilian population, to inflict a series of smaller tactical attacks on it so that it would become tired of its involvement in the guerrilla and revolutionary wars during the period after 1945; the current insurgency in Iraq is the latest example. As Smith notes, the basic features of ‘‘war amongst the people’’ were prefigured in the Spanish guerrilla resistance to the French occupation during the Peninsular campaign in the Napoleonic Wars, resistance which, when coupled with Wellington’s adroit use of the British regular army, led to Napoleon’s withdrawal and made a major contribution to his subsequent defeat. For Smith, industrial war came to an end in 1945. However, wars amongst the people only became the dominant form of war after the end of the Cold War (more properly termed a confrontation), as states sought, repeatedly, to consider how best to use force to engage in these conflicts and, when they did, such as in Somalia but especially in Bosnia and now in Iraq, to wonder why force does not produce the results they expected, why ‘‘victory’’ is elusive, and the extent to which something far less than this as an acceptable outcome is inevitable. Perhaps, Smith suggests, force can only lead not to a decisive victory, but to a condition, in which an acceptable outcome is likely to be produced by political and diplomatic parties internal and external to the territory concerned, and in which process the utility of force is quite limited.

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Wars amongst the people are complex affairs in which confrontations shift back and forth to conflicts in which the intervening state is unable and/or unwilling to use force at the strategic level to produce a decisive result that leads to a resolution of a political dispute. One of the rare examples of this after 1945 is the Falklands war of 1982. In wars amongst the people, the objective cannot be to defeat the enemy in a trial of strength on the battlefield but, through a contest of wills, to change the intentions of the insurgents and ultimately to win over the people whose more or less active support is a key to their success in resisting the intervening state. Military activities can be used by intervening states but these often fall short of the use of force and, in so far as force is used, it is confined to the tactical level. Force is limited to sub-strategic goals, which means that the interaction between military, political, and diplomatic agencies of the intervening states are quite different from those characteristic of the logic of industrial war. In a key passage on these civil-military dynamics, Smith states: Conflicts … are about trials of strength: military activities that may sit within a political or diplomatic framework, but do not involve those agencies in achieving the objective once the military activity is in process. In other words, if a confrontation has crossed over into a conflict, the military is in the lead and it is up to the other agencies to support it until the objective is attained, but at the same time they may continue working to resolve the confrontation that led to the conflict at another level. In essence, conflicts involve the application of force to attain a desired objective, whether at the tactical, operational or strategic level. And if the strategic level is reached, then a full war in the industrial sense is at hand. This has not happened very often since 1945, and then only in conflicts in which there was no threat of weapons of mass destruction.16

By the same token, in wars amongst the people, the lead role is not the military, but the political and diplomatic agencies to which the military lends support by exerting pressure to change intentions. Normally, even if force is used, the change of intentions and the achievement of an acceptable condition is the product of non-military and military means. Force in and of itself cannot be decisive. Smith argues that, whenever force is used, in industrial war or war amongst the people, ideally, it should be to achieve military objectives which, in turn, produce an outcome, or, in the latter case, a condition likely to lead to an acceptable outcome desired by political authority. Yet the history of the use of force in the contemporary age of war amongst the people shows a lack of clarity and coherence in the linkage between political goals and military activities, and it also shows that the organization of the military is inadequate to deal with the challenges of war amongst the people. Here the focus on the first set of issues, and some of the organizational issues will be considered later on. One suspects that Smith’s thesis will be used to assess the current imbroglio in Iraq rather more than the case that haunts the book: Bosnia and the record of

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the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), the United Nations, and NATO. Bosnia is the locus classicus of forces deployed for incoherent and unrealistic objectives and where Smith himself managed to use his position as force commander to ‘‘turn the UN key’’ in order to use NATO power to coerce Serbia into compliance, although he recognizes that offensive operations by Croatians and the federation for their own purposes were ‘‘ultimately decisive.’’17 In a similar fashion, in the case of Kosovo, Smith, as Deputy Supreme Commander of Europe, faced the daunting task of making sense of Western governments’ optimistic and misplaced belief that a short period of modest bombing would produce the desired political outcome of Serbia giving up its attempt to dominate Kosovo. In his discussion of the need for realism and coherence concerning the use of force, Smith’s anger and frustration are plain, dealing as he had to in a very practical way with political authorities’ naivete about what force could achieve, especially if (as in Bosnia) there was no attempt to take any risks to achieve realistic goals. Just as Smith felt the need to fill the gap left between political objectives and military force by the intervening states, so now he wishes to educate those who would countenance using force in comparable situations. Smith makes an impassioned and persuasive plea for a more realistic appreciation of the utility of force. He argues that, in the context of a complex world of confrontations and conflicts, force can only be used to perform four functions, arrayed in order of extensive and intensive use of force: ameliorate (for example, through the delivery of humanitarian aid. Here the military does not use force but performs useful activities as a disciplined and reliable organization, as it does in the domestic sphere of disaster relief); to contain, as in the enforcement of no-fly zones; to deter or to coerce, and to change intentions or indeed form them, as with the history of the Cold War and the use of force such as Desert Shield to deter Iraqi forces from designs on Saudi oilfields. Interestingly, Smith argues that with deterrence, ‘‘the employment of force is usually closely controlled at senior political levels by means of ROE [Rules of Engagement], and in the case of coercion, by close political attention to target lists as well as ROE’’18; to destroy (i.e., both people and objects in pursuit of a political purpose as in Desert Storm, from 1990 to 1991, or the Falklands War: both cases approximate the logic of industrial war and are the exceptions that prove the rule that, especially since 1990, wars amongst the people are the predominant reality). Smith groups these four functions into two subsets: to ameliorate and to contain are possible to initiate without a clear political strategy, even though one is to be preferred, but it is essential in the cases of coercion-deterrence and destruction. The linkage between political outcome and military objectives must be coherent and realistic and, in the case of wars amongst the people, that means the political level must recognize that entering into such a complex situation is likely to be ‘‘timeless’’ because the most that can be expected is not the achievement of a decisive outcome by force of arms at the strategic level,

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but a condition in which an acceptable outcome is likely. In the case of Kosovo, for example, even if coercion at the strategic level was relatively successful, it has not led to the achievement of a political objective because no one quite knows what that objective is supposed to be. Even such a modest goal as a condition is difficult to achieve unless the coherence and realism of which Smith speaks are followed through in operations on the ground and in terms of planning how they are to be conducted. Industrial war operates according to a relatively straightforward logic: ‘‘peace-crisis-warresolution, which will result in peace again.’’19 In wars amongst the people, the problem is to gain the support of the people and to change the intentions of the insurgents so that either both insurgents and people are prepared to participate in the process that leads to a favorable outcome, or that the insurgents become isolated and in too a weak position to undermine the infrastructure of a political community in which the people have a stake and feel offers the best prospect for their own future. As in the case of Iraq, after the initial industrial war phase, the key task is not the use of force, but the establishment of internal order through an effective system of police and justice as part of the infrastructure of a political community: as Smith says, ‘‘the objective of all our operations amongst the people is the will of the people, and if we want a stable state and to remove our force from maintaining a ‘condition’ they must be sufficiently content with the outcome that it remains intact.’’20 Smith emphasizes that the logic of industrial war is not only relatively straightforward, it is also linear, while war amongst the people is non-linear and complex, so that the objective of winning over the people must be integrated into the planning of operations from the start. Many will recognize this point in connection with Iraq and criticism of the failures of the United States in this regard, partly because of interagency squabbles (mainly between the Departments of Defense and State), but also naı¨ve overoptimism in thinking that the strategic use of force against Saddam could bring about success in the aftermath. Thus, the tricky part for the intervening state is not the defeat, marginalization, or neutralization by force of those who are opposed to this objective, but doing so in such a way that does not alienate the will of the people. Here Smith is touching on issues of cultural sensitivity and how to use force (especially to avoid incidents such as Abu Ghraib and the like), which have been taken up by others.21 Interestingly, Smith’s argument that armed forces are still equipped to fight industrial war rather than war amongst the people is more about a mindset than about technology: states are too obsessed with the idea of strategic uses of force than the current reality warrants, and they are mistaken in thinking that wars amongst the people are phenomena that are exceptions to the core business of war fighting. However, Smith exaggerates his argument unnecessarily. Wars amongst the people, it may be conceded, are the most frequent operations, but Western states need still to be prepared for industrial war because these still constitute a risk and, as Western doctrine generally argues, it is possible to train

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down for wars amongst the people from industrial war rather than to engage in the reverse. This is why, in terms of doctrine, equipment, training, and organization, Western armed forces are loathe to cease doing what they do now: with limited resources, to prepare for industrial war while also preparing for and conducting operations associated with wars amongst the people. But this is not conservatism; rather, it is based on a realistic judgment of the risks and threats in contemporary international politics. It is far too early and risky to write off industrial war. Consider the following. Industrial war, far from dying out, has been a key part of Middle Eastern politics as in the bloody attrition of the Iran-Iraq War, which was reminiscent of the First World War.22 There is the possibility of industrial war between Western states and North Korea in much the same way that industrial war was required to deal with Saddam Hussein (in that case even if the strategy was flawed, it could not have done without the apparatus of industrial war). There is also the possibility of interstate industrial war as competition for natural resources like oil, gas, water, and other raw materials intensifies. The United States, Russia, China, and Japan come to mind as, to use Cooper’s language, tension at the interface between modern and postmodern states continues.23 Smith’s conceptual distinction between industrial war and war amongst the people is overdrawn no matter how one views his analysis of contemporary historical trends. As Adam Roberts has suggested, in some degree war has always been amongst the people, notwithstanding Smith’s position that in the Second World War, for example, war was against, not amongst, the people.24 In addition, any engagement in wars amongst the people is likely to have to include a dimension of industrial war. The guerrilla war in Spain was effective in the end because it was exploited by Wellington’s regular British army. The Vietcong only triumphed because of the regular formations used adroitly by General Giap. Building democracy via external intervention (whether to do this or not is a debate, of course) in Iraq could not have been achieved without industrial war. States need to think hard about what they wish to achieve and to what extent armed forces can assist them, and whether in doing so force has any utility. They need to ensure that realism and coherence underpin their multinational efforts and that all concerned, including the wider public, are aware that the risks of a timeless engagement are known and judged to be worth taking. This is the consequence of not being able to achieve political outcomes through the decisive use of force at the strategic level but having to make do, at best, with achieving a condition in which an acceptable outcome might be achievable later on. Smith muses that this is all that is available to Western nation-states as they seek to manage their defense and security in a world where the principle of the nation state may be fading away, which of course takes us back, but not quite, to Van Creveld’s formulation on the future of war. Smith’s pragmatic and ‘‘band-aid’’ approach to the post–Cold War world of conflicts and confrontations implicitly treads a delicate path between two

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positions: the realist argument based on hardnosed national interest, where leaving well alone may be the best policy; and two variations on idealistic intervention: the cosmopolitan project or the idea of empire, which most commentators argue has no place in contemporary public sensibilities.25

CONDUCTING WAR AMONGST THE PEOPLE AND DEALING WITH THE PROBLEMS OF POSTMODERN WAR Smith highlights the distinctive ways in which Western states conduct war amongst the people. That is, they are engaged in the pragmatic task of establishing a condition, rather than the pursuit of victory. Most, but not all, of these tasks recur in those cases where strategic encounters are akin to interstate war. As indicated above, in establishing a condition, the use of force needs to be calibrated with other instruments of policy, and there must be coherence of the military goals and political objectives, all of which need to be geared to winning over the people and detaching the insurgents from them. In all of this, Smith’s emphasis on the integration of politics and military strategy in achieving realistic effects chimes well with the literature on ‘‘effects-based operations’’ (EBO). The evolution of the novel kinds of military operations to which Smith refers have been accompanied by changes in military organization, including a move away from conscription and the design of more agile and flexible structures capable of providing rapid and effective contributions to these international missions. These new operations have altered the ways in which the utility of force is calibrated, and it is here that the idea of EBO has taken root. EBO is a complex concept partly because it has been used in different ways by different states and their armed forces.26 In the United States, for example, EBO is used to highlight the ways in which information and other leading edge technologies offer unparalleled opportunities for the precise exercise of lethal force and with less need for repeat use of weapons platforms or munitions because of the greater capacity of information technology to conquer the friction produced by the fog of war. In doing so, EBO is viewed as an application of the potential of ‘‘the revolution in military affairs,’’ or ‘‘military transformation’’ and ‘‘network centric warfare’’ to security problems.27 As Abrahamsson et al. argue, in the United Kingdom, by contrast, there is greater emphasis on how military and non-military means can be used to achieve a political effect and how the military itself can be used to achieve effects without its resorting to the use of force—for example, via defense diplomacy—which is a key point in Smith’s analysis. However that may be, in both the U.S. and U.K. literature, the concept of EBO has been applied to resolving problems encountered in asymmetric warfare: how Western states can either prevail in, or at least nullify the worst effects of, the kinds of irregular warfare characteristic of the twenty-first century.

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One of the difficulties faced by those involved in wars amongst the people is that people can watch, via the media, a good deal, but by no means all, of what is done in their name by intervening states. In this context, the ‘‘people’’ comprise more or less interlinked populations across the globe—what Shaw has called global surveillance war—although that surveillance is far from constant or even, as the lens of the media tracks some wars rather than others and can move on from one pressing topic to another, rather like a searchlight does in its penetration of the dark night sky.28 Given the imperative of winning over the people, the arts of persuasion and media and opinion management are as critical as the conventional art of war. Smith asks members of the military profession to be good actors, which extends earlier formulations by Moskos on the importance of the soldier statesman and soldier scholar.29 Moskos focused on the importance of political skills in the management of the political-military interface and the need to think through the question of the use of force in conditions other than normal war (a prescient comment). He also focused on the importance of ‘‘courting the media,’’ whose support is critical in the conduct of operations within the theater of operations and amongst wider audiences. This support, he argues, not wholly convincingly, is more difficult in peace operations than in situations approximating war, where it is far easier to manage and sometimes muzzle the press. Recently, due to concerns about the perceived accuracy and lack of context of some news reporting and the alleged failure to preserve the privacy of wounded personnel being returned to the United Kingdom, the U.K. Ministry of Defense withdrew the right of ITV news journalists to be embedded with U.K. forces in Afghanistan.30 Smith is adding to this theme in interesting ways, largely because the theater of operations is indeed a ‘‘theater,’’ in which the people are watching events just as other observers in different states are doing. The people have to be won over, not bludgeoned by force, and their willingness to be won over depends, in part, on the information they have at their disposal and how they choose to accept one or more narratives of ‘‘what is going on’’ over others that are available. The military has a key role to play in ensuring that, in the diversity of conflicting and often confusing narratives, the political outcome or condition that operations are seeking to achieve is translated into a ‘‘narrative’’ that, once communicated, can play an effective part in winning over the people. In doing this—in playing to and seeking to influence audiences—Smith is asking the military to be more effective actors than before in recognition that success is no longer to be had on a discrete battlefield.31 There is no ‘‘objective war’’; rather, there are competing narratives, and one of the key tasks in establishing a condition is ensuring that one’s own narrative stands out as the most convincing. Smith’s discussion of narrative as an instrument in wars amongst the people raises a wider set of issues that have been addressed more explicitly by those who see it as an opportunity to pinpoint the postmodern aspects of the conduct of contemporary war. As Hammond has argued, in a perceptive essay, the idea

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of postmodern too often serves as a label with little real substance.32 For example, he points out that Baudrillard’s portrait of the first Gulf war as hardly a war at all, because its technologically driven one-sidedness and media image and spectacle made it hard to distinguish real from virtual war. This view applies a fortiori to the ‘‘shock and awe’’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the (premature) image of Bush at the center of the staging of ‘‘mission accomplished.’’ Others have emphasized the way in which technological superiority is facilitated by information technology, which is associated with a dramatic shift in the balance between human and technical capital in the conduct of war. But these features, including the ways in which applying force is akin to a visual game in which one is both immediately in the presence of the violent act yet detached from it, can be judged to be a ‘‘high-tech’’ part of late modernity because they extend rather than depart from modern war. The most interesting part of Hammond’s analysis relates to the paradox of the power of the West being undercut by its weakness. Interestingly, this has less to do with the well-known difficulties concerning the use of nuclear weapons or the problems of asymmetric warfare and more to do with the nature of contemporary political culture. He refers to Lyotard and the issue of grand or metanarratives and suggests that it is perhaps the absence of metanarratives today that explains the unique features of contemporary warfare.33 It is this lack of confidence to project a meaning, Hammond suggests, which lies at the heart of Baudrillard’s most valuable aspects of his discussion of the Gulf war.34 It is this lack of self-belief that accounts for the fragility of political and public will in the face of setbacks and casualties in contemporary war and the related obsession with media management and spin, to which I shall turn presently. Before doing so it is important to ask what are the roots of this lack of belief or self-confidence, which, it is clear, shocked conservative opinion when 9/11, far from leading to a robust and widely supported moral outrage that could underpin first the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and now the ‘‘long war,’’ led to skepticism, irony, and a relativization of these efforts to give an absolute meaning to the events. The recent events in Iraq, the collapse of the ‘‘neo-con’’ vision, and the ongoing government attempts to redraw the strategy of the coalition accompanied by their pleas for patience surely support this line of reasoning. This process of relativization, in turn, has led to a continued sense of doubt and ambivalence about the values of Western civilization within the West, and in terms of defending those values in wider global contests. Although some commentators have suggested that it was the Vietnam War that removed, in the United States at least, the meaning and will to undertake any ‘‘great projects,’’ again we must refer to longer term processes in Western culture that have led to the widening and deepening of skepticism and belief in grand narratives. This is true not just of Marxism but of any such overarching interpretations, including the values of liberal democracy which seemed, briefly, to have triumphed and to have done so absolutely after 1989. As Hammond concludes, ‘‘The collapse of grand narratives makes war a matter of risk management at

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the same time as it gives rise to an exaggerated feeling of vulnerability. The inability to cohere society around any inspiring, future-oriented project empties war of meaning even as it makes war more likely as an attempt to discover some common, unifying values.’’35 This argument helps us to account for the priority given to narratives in contemporary wars and also the nervous energy that is attached to ‘‘spinning’’ and winning the war of defining ‘‘what is going on,’’ in which process the military itself has become a significant actor. In these contending narratives, one problematic theme is the question of casualties, whether suffered by the armed forces of intervening states, the opposing forces (comprising regular but also insurgent and irregular elements), as well as non-combatant civilians. In wars amongst the people, ‘‘risk aversion,’’ one aspect of which is a concern or over-concern with force protection instead of achieving the mission, is a central feature. Interestingly, Smith attributes this phenomenon to quite prosaic factors such as the need to protect the valuable assets of Western all-volunteer forces, which are costly to replace in a competitive labor market, rather than in terms of a response to wider cultural sensibilities about home-side casualties as well as those of enemy forces, and collateral damage to non-combatant civilians, which, as we shall see later in this chapter, is the subject of some debate.36 By contrast, Shaw argues that the West has developed ‘‘risk transfer militarism,’’ which is a way of prosecuting as well as legitimizing war in Western societies, whether or not ‘‘amongst the people.’’ It allows the superior technology of the United States and its allies or coalition partners, not least the reliance on airpower, to inflict death and destruction without themselves having to face much in the way of a risk of the same. In his account, Shaw focuses on five issues. First, he accepts that the reinvention and application of airpower by the west is much more precise and effective than it was in its original 1920s usage. The focus is on killing the enemy and, therefore, in terms of the history of twentieth-century warfare, the risk of death is transferred back to them rather than to non-combatant civilians. Second, although the West emphasizes airpower, it does require land forces, but here the emphasis is increasingly on special forces (SF) with the assistance of local ground forces, as in Afghanistan, who bear the brunt of the risk of military casualties on the ground. Third, Shaw argues that the risk of ‘‘small massacres’’ of civilians is an inherent feature of its approach to war. He says it is a known and inevitable consequence of fighting with a view to maximizing the force protection offered to Western forces. The Amirya shelter incident in the Gulf War, in 1991, is one example. Shaw states, ‘‘Reliance on high-altitude and long-range bombardment keeps aircrew and soldiers safe; but it inevitably leads to errors of targeting in which hundreds or thousands of civilians die in each campaign. So the transfer to civilians of the risks of being directly killed is deliberate and systematic.’’37 Fourth, any concern with casualties leads to media management and ‘‘spin,’’ whether of overall civilian casualties or of any others. Finally, Shaw argues that

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so far as indirect casualties are concerned (caused by, for example, enemy policies, civil war, drought, etc.), where responsibility is difficult to allocate to the West, they are more acceptable because they are more manageable in terms of media representation. Shaw combines sociological observation with moral objections to these matters. He implies that the matter of military casualties being one-sided in Western encounters with enemy forces is, in some way, unfair or even unchivalrous. But why? Is not the aim of war, and war abiding by Just War principles, to ensure that the other side dies for their country while one does not have to do so oneself? On direct civilian casualties, Shaw thinks that these are beyond a Just War defense along Walzerian lines. Walzer, in his account of the rule of ‘‘double effect,’’ Shaw reminds us, contends that, in the conduct of war, an evil act, such as one leading to the killing of civilians, is permissible so long as it is in pursuit of a good that is greater than the resulting (and foreseeable) evil; and, second, that there should be proportionality so far as the respective loss of life of the opponent’s civilians and one’s own military forces are concerned. So, even if civilians suffer death and injury, this can be morally acceptable but only so long as the good intention and the reduction of evil are delivered. Shaw draws on Walzer’s claim that a state should not just give some indication of ‘‘doing something’’ to save civilians but provide a sincere effort, which means that, if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers’ lives, then this should be done. But, Shaw complains, ‘‘[i]n risk-transfer war, this is precisely what is avoided at all costs.’’38 Shaw then considers Walzer’s ‘‘get out clause’’ in respect of the above restrictions: that war is inherently hellish and that how far one should actually go in order to try and protect civilians is rather difficult to establish with precision. For Shaw the key point here is that this rather permissive stipulation might be acceptable in past wars (presumably, say, Korea and the Second World War), where very many Western soldiers were having to risk their lives, but is far less so when hardly any one of them do today. The proportionality is driven not by any decent Western military civilian/soldier death ratio, but by what will be acceptable in terms of media management. Bombing and long-range artillery bombardments are undertaken in the firm knowledge that it will increase the risk to civilians compared to other possible means, military as well as non-military. Even if the ends of the GWOT are just, Shaw contends that the ways in which it is being fought are not. Yet the following statements reveal the fact that this argument is problematic. The West is using armed force in a way that kills, directly, more enemy fighters than civilians; it generally doesn’t target civilians except in error; it aims to minimize ‘collateral damage’ and ‘accidental’ massacres. Although civilians are still killed, in historical, especially mid-twentieth century, terms, the numbers of victims are small. The new Western way of war thus meets, prima facie, many of the historic demands

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for just war, even if we may question some excesses. However, if my argument has been accepted, there is still something fundamentally awry. That disparity between more than 1000 innocent Afghans killed, to one American (in the first months of the Afghan campaign), says it all.39

The reference to the 1000 innocents implies one or more of the following: (a) this number could have been less if operations (unspecified as to detail) had been conducted in a way that led to more than the one American being killed; (b) that if, somehow, more U.S. military personnel had indeed been killed then this would have been a better outcome morally if the same number of Afghans had been killed; (c) that from Shaw’s point of view, the preferred outcome would have been to have had far fewer Afghan dead with more Americans killed, and that the resulting, more balanced, Western and opposing forces’ blood sacrifice would have been worth it; and that (d) this option is not pursued because of the fears of political and military leaders that these casualty figures would be beyond its capacity to ‘‘spin’’ the media and public into accepting its legitimacy. It should be pointed out here that so far, despite the decline in support for the Iraq War on both sides of the Atlantic, the point remains that the public’s capacity to accept casualties remains dependent on well-known factors studied since the Vietnam War: that the blood sacrifice is perceived to be worth the strategic objectives being pursued; that suitable progress is being made in achieving them; and that leadership is competent and in reasonable control of events. Admittedly, all are problematic so far as the public is concerned. These factors make any plea for patience hard to sustain. The legitimacy problem, referred to above, is caused, in part, by the increased value of individual human rights, which has now extended from civilian society into the sphere of the military itself. Consequently, the armed services are likely to face all sorts of moral and legal contestations on such matters as ‘‘small massacres,’’ the shooting or maltreatment of prisoners and suspected insurgents, and the failure to prevent ‘‘blue on blue’’ (i.e., casualties caused by Western, coalition forces firing on each other) or to protect troops sufficiently from hostile fire. All of these are likely to be magnified if the ends of war are seen to be fragile in terms of their own legitimacy or legality, as in Iraq today. For Shaw, this means that there is a prospect for the ‘‘delegitimation of war’’ as one outcome of the development of risk transfer militarism. This outcome is likely to be magnified further by such acts as local allies committing atrocities and coalition forces suffering or inflicting heavier casualties than the media and public can bear. Shaw calls these phenomena ‘‘risk transfer rebound.’’ Shaw contends that as people worry about their own casualties, and not just the opponents, ‘‘the tests for justly killing get ever tighter.’’40 Precisely so, and this is exactly why the West does what it does and when it can. That is to say, it uses technology and strategy not only to meet the prima facie criteria for Just War, but, more than that, to also manage its operations in the awareness that it cannot do so in a political and moral vacuum but in the context of

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contemporary Western culture’s sensibility about the ends and means of war. He appears to be arguing that in doing so, the West creates opportunities for critics, like himself, to aggravate the delegitimation of war, and so, in this process, the concept of risk transfer and the associated attempt to hold the West to ever stricter criteria, can assist in exposing the unjustness of the Western way of war. Shaw is among a number of contemporary commentators who critique the Western way of confronting the moral and political context of wars. Others have called this critique an unrealistic demand for humane warfare41 and the ‘‘de-bellicisation of the West.’’42 Gray suggests that, for Western pubic opinion, war is no longer acceptable as a means of resolving disputes; there is a greater need to have discretionary wars always backed by the United Nations (the legal and moral objections to U.S. unilateralism underscore the point), and there is ambivalence over the conduct of war which involves killing and destruction. Gray provides some telling points here, especially on the way in which live media coverage of the reality of war leads to or causes a change in public sensibility, but this underplays changes in political and cultural values since 1945. On the one hand, war as ‘‘spectator sport’’ creates entertainment and excitement—like a video game in some instances—with the possibility of the vicarious pleasure of living close to violence and thrills but being detached from them (like an exciting amusement park game where the risk is controlled in order to maximize the immediate sense of danger but not the reality).43 On the other hand, the same coverage can provide grounds for squeamishness and a sense of the awfulness and horror of war, which in turn can lead to pressure for the imposition of impossibly tight demands to fight in way that avoids the worst of those realities. That such strict rules are being asked for shows how far away from the reality of war many people are in the postmodern states of the West, how sheltered they are from it even if they can travel and see the world and know about it from their armchairs in ways quite beyond the imagination of those earlier generations who, via their own military experience, had a sense of what it was like.

CONCLUSION: INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS—SOME ISSUES FOR THE FUTURE Smith and other writers have highlighted a number of features that constitute contemporary war and conflict, and thus the context in which international missions are likely to evolve. A shift away from national territorial defense to international missions is associated with either a move to an all-volunteer force or an attenuation of conscription.44 The greater reliance on market forces for the mobilization of people for military service brings problems in its train. Although forces involved in international missions are composed of ‘‘volunteers,’’ the professional or ‘‘all-volunteer forces’’ of the West should now properly be referred to as ‘‘recruited’’ forces, as is indeed the case in the United

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Kingdom. Even though ‘‘leaner and meaner forces’’ are the dominant trend, the military continues to face a range of social, cultural, and demographic difficulties in recruiting enough people to meet its demands. This means that the military cannot rely on a flow of volunteers but has to proactively recruit and to design ever more imaginative attempts to attract people using a variety of financial and other incentives (including, for example, in the United States, forms of fast-track citizenship for non-nationals, or, in the United Kingdom, the use of Commonwealth citizens to fill the gap left by the recruiting effort within the United Kingdom). Police and military forces are becoming more focused on the increasingly internationalized and cooperative attempts by states to control borders and deal with internal security threats, whether these derive from terrorism, especially those forms associated with internecine warfare, or other problems such as the uncontrolled movement of population and drugs. These problems arise not just at the level of the state and its relations with other states but also at lower levels. That is to say, states are not only concerned with state-on-state military threats but also military and non-military risks and threats that flow from nonstate actors and transnational processes, which can undermine them at sub-state levels. Force projection abroad (itself requiring military cooperation with police and other agencies), therefore, takes place in a context where security threats (and thinking about security) has broadened from military to non-military issues as well as deepened from the level of the state to sub-state levels.45 Designing effective interagency collaboration is a real challenge for military and other organizations. Meanwhile, especially in states with all-volunteer forces, the public becomes more distant from its military even if, from time to time, it finds its armed services presented to it in the media spotlight, sometimes concerning matters about which the military and the civilian population can be proud (courage under fire, bravery, and the award of medals), or otherwise where embarrassment or shame is the order of the day (the abuse of prisoners or the lack of dignity with which the dead are treated). For most civilians, though, the default response can be ‘‘this does not have much to do with me; they volunteered, and so they can pay the price.’’ Thus, relationships between the military and the public are a paradoxical mix of estrangement and more or less supportive engagement, and these affect political and military elites in interesting ways. One of these ways is the matter of casualty sensitivity. International missions, even if supported by an international legitimate authority such as the United Nations, are less and less likely to have the charisma of national territorial missions that entail dealing with a military threat from a contiguous state. They are likely to suffer from a ‘‘fragility of legitimacy,’’ where public support for the mission is likely to be increasingly sensitive to perceived lack of progress or success and the blood sacrifice that has to be paid in a context where the end state and time frame for completion are unclear. Note, for example, that while some commentators wonder if the mission in Afghanistan can last for

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longer than a few years at most, others (including some within the military) argue that it will take at least three decades to deliver an acceptable ‘‘condition,’’ to use Smith’s concept. Contemporary ‘‘wars of choice’’ have, especially after the controversy over the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, increasingly become what this author has referred to as ‘‘wars of contested choice.’’46 For a while, a public attitude of ‘‘What has this to do with me?’’ can keep casualties from being too sensitive a matter, but it would be imprudent to rely on this when media dramatization of casualties can awaken public concern to their meaning and cost. Events both in Iraq and Afghanistan reflect this development, as does the attempt by some participating governments to ensure their own formations bear as small a risk of death in combat as possible. The current debate in NATO about burden sharing in Afghanistan illustrates this. So while international politics might dictate the need for international missions (including Peace Support Operations) to comprise contributions from a number of different states, there will be tensions in terms of competence, doctrine, and the attitude toward risk each country brings to a mission. In conducting these missions, armed services do far more than apply or threaten to apply lethal force. As we saw earlier, Smith argues they are there to ameliorate, to contain, to deter and coerce, or to destroy. The strategic use of force is exceptional as the military is asked to achieve political goals, and normally the most that can be expected is a condition in which an acceptable outcome can be delivered by the political process. In doing so, the military becomes engaged in a complex and interdependent political and military network with its government as it seeks to deliver that ‘‘condition,’’ often in ways that require the management of different missions (for example, counterinsurgency and reconstruction in different or even the same areas of the theater). At the same time, tensions between coalition participants need to be mitigated while relations with non-military actors also need to be managed. Throughout these missions, further issues can dog military personnel: the need to manage ‘‘timeless missions’’ and deal with the scrutiny of success and when a mission can be considered as over; the need to be a good ‘‘actor’’ and to manage the ‘‘narrative,’’ and thus to establish the political message of what the mission is or is not achieving; dealing with the issues that can arise from the role of the ‘‘strategic corporal’’ as the levels of war become decompressed, and letting mission command flourish or limiting it when the political and the media context of ‘‘global surveillance’’ indicate it would be prudent to do so.47 It is not surprising that, given the above discussion, tensions can arise between soldiers and governments. A good example was the case of the professional head of the British Army, the Chief of General Staff (CGS), General Sir Richard Dannatt’s controversial remarks in mid-October 2006 concerning the mission in Iraq, its relationship with operations in Afghanistan, and the implications for U.K. security and social cohesion.48 Similar rumblings occurred in the United States with regard to questions such as the size of the force allocated to the invasion and, subsequently, the appropriate strategy for counterinsurgency

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and reconstruction, which led to the recent ‘‘surge’’ of military forces to provide a more robust security framework for a political settlement amongst the factions within Iraq. Committing one’s armed forces to an engagement in ‘‘war amongst the people’’ is fraught with difficulties ranging from support for the engagement from the wider public at home to establishing the objectives of that engagement. These difficulties, associated with ‘‘wars of contested choice,’’ will necessarily lead the military profession to occupy the roles of soldier scholar and soldier statesman and to become more politically active and influential. Recent developments confirm an observation made some years ago by Bernard Boene: wars amongst the people must involve the officer corps of intervening states of the West in a more assertive military profession.49

2

From Conscription-Based Defense to VolunteerBased Constabulary Forces: European Defense Integration and Mission Change as Driving Factors for the End of Conscription in Europe Karl W. Haltiner and Tibor Szvircsev Tresch

THE CHANGING FACE OF THE EUROPEAN MILITARIES On 10 February 1996, The Economist predicted the end of conscription in Europe. From the end of the Cold War until the middle of the 1990s, Belgium and the Netherlands had begun suspending conscription, and it seemed obvious that other states would follow this trend in the years to come. Since 1996, when The Economist made its prognosis, until 2007, another thirteen European conscript-based armed forces have followed suit, phasing out the citizen soldier system. Additionally, three countries will soon switch to all-volunteer forces (Bulgaria in 2008, Croatia in 2008–2009, and Poland in 2010), and those who still stick to it are significantly reducing the share of conscripts in their armed forces. The primary causes of this process undoubtedly are the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 and, therefore, the end of the territorial threat in the West-East conflict.1 The end of bipolarity brought together European nations in the East and the West and allowed them to intensify their cooperation in security, military, and armament policies within the European Union and NATO. The risk of interstate wars in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe has been reduced to practically zero. Under increasing domestic pressure to reduce defense spending, conscription-based mass armies have been scaled down and fewer conscripts have been called in. The wars in the Balkans and the military involvement of the Europeans, however, have reduced the euphoria in the military. For the first time since their founding, NATO and finally the European Union had to prove reliable in a war and militarily-based conflict resolutions. It was easily overlooked that the

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stabilization efforts brought about mainly by the challenges of the war in the Balkans have initiated a process of inner-European military cooperation and of mission and structure change, both of which act in favor of the abolishment of conscription. The growing demand for crisis management operations has radically transformed Europe’s security environment. Today it is not the defense of national territory, but the stabilization of crisis regions at the periphery, often far from Europe, that dominates the spectrum of military tasks. THESIS This ongoing transformation process can be described, in Morris Janowitz’s terms, as one of increasing constabularization of the European militaries.2 The national defense forces formerly organized as mass armies are currently being transformed into international constabulary or expeditionary forces manned by volunteers all over Europe. This mission and structural change process has been given further momentum by the involvement of the armed forces in the war on terror and by the need for domestic security. Our thesis is that enhanced formal and informal European security integration, as well as the challenge of new missions out of the national area, are speeding up the phasing out of conscription. As a personnel recruiting system, conscription is unsuitable for armed forces of the constabulary type. There are three main reasons, at different levels, for this: 1. The strategic level. Out-of-area constabulary military missions are generally carried out on a multinational basis (i.e., within operational units comprising different nationalities). Operations of this kind require a minimum common security and mission doctrine as well as a high degree of interoperability, standardization, and professionalization of the participating nations, not only at headquarters level, but at all levels of operation. The case can be made that to the extent to which Europeans complement their political and socio-economical integration with military integration, the probability rises that conscription will disappear in Europe. 2. The operational level. The new kinds of threats (terrorism) and military missions of the constabulary type (peace support missions, police assistance for homeland security) require a much higher degree of stand-by readiness, deployability, and sustainability over time than was the case during the Cold War within the framework of mass armies. Compulsory citizen soldiers are not well suited for the new missions entailing longstanding operations beyond national borders. Longer-serving volunteers are needed. Therefore, the assumption can be made that to the extent to which a country engages in international out-of-area stabilizing missions, the possibility of its conscription ratio dropping and conscription being suspended eventually will rise. 3. The individual level. European countries cannot compel their conscripts to participate in out-of-area missions. In the eyes of the public, conscripted citizens are classic defenders of their nation or allied territories. The national

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populations of today’s Europe would not accept or even tolerate the compulsory use of their daughters and sons for purposes other than the defense of their own countries or allied territories. It follows that the operational capability of a country’s armed forces to participate in out-of-area peace missions depends solely on the number of available volunteers. The more extensively a nation is engaged in international stabilizing operations, the higher the probability that the conscript defense forces will be given up in favor of recruiting of volunteers for the armed forces.

The trend towards a deepening of European military integration in the framework of NATO and the European Union linked to the rise in the number of multinational operations and the trend towards the constabularization of forces must therefore be seen as two important interlinked driving factors in the phasing-out of conscription. In order to support the thesis, the extent and speed of the decline of conscription in Europe will first be specified. Second, the wave of transformation that the armed forces are currently undergoing, moving them away from mass armies towards forces of the constabulary type, will be outlined in the context of mission change. Third, the thesis will be empirically tested on the basis of data from the annually published Military Balance of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).3

METHODOLOGY The annually published Military Balance of the IISS, from which newly defined indicators have been calculated, serves as a database for analyzing the All European trend. The facts and figures in the publications from 1975 to 2007 have been used for this study. For methodological reasons, not all European armed forces are included in the following explanations and calculations. The database in the Military Balance does not seem to be sufficient for all years, especially in the case of the former USSR states and the new Balkan states. The following states are completely excluded from the empirical calculations in the next chapters because of lack of appropriate data: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldavia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, and the Ukraine. Additionally, because the aim of this article is to illustrate how the increase in international peace missions has acted in favor of the phasing out of conscription, we have left out the United Kingdom, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Malta. The armed forces of these countries are traditionally volunteer-based. With the above states excluded, our working sample includes twenty-seven European countries.4 We will base our analysis on two main indicators. The conscript ratio (CR) is defined as the percentage of conscripts relative to the total strength of the active armed forces. The second indicator, the out-of-area ratio (OoAR), is defined as the share of troops deployed outside the country in relation to the total active

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forces of a country. Troops deployed in other NATO/EU member countries are not considered as out-of-area and are therefore not included in the OoAR (e.g., foreign troops in Germany or standing multinational forces like the EUROFOR in Florence). A third indicator not derived from Military Balance is the extent of socio-political and military integration in Europe. It takes into consideration the number of memberships in political and military organizations. We have limited it to three institutional bodies: militarily, NATO and WEU (Western European Union); and politically, the European Union.5

THE ONGOING DECLINE OF CONSCRIPTION IN EUROPE During the Cold War, active and reserve soldiers in the European conscript armies totaled about 12 million. Since 1991, this figure has dropped by 50%, as the post-communist states have downsized their forces by almost two thirds. Western Europe has dropped by 40% (Figure 2.1). The downsizing was generally handled in such a manner that mainly compulsory personnel were reduced, and contract soldiers were not affected. In this way, the social character of all European armies began to change. Large mass armies defined by conscripts turned into lean professional military organizations dominated by volunteers. In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, continental Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals was a homogenous conscription region (Table 2.1). With the

14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 0 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1975

FIGURE 2.1. Manning levels in European conscript armies, 1975–2006. Countries as follows: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1975–2007.

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TABLE 2.1. Manning systems in Europe, 1990 (twenty-seven European countries with conscription or all-volunteer forces) Conscription

All-volunteer forces

On regular basis Germany, Norway, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Albania, Cyprus, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Denmark, Greece, Bulgaria, and Poland

Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Malta

With militia composition Finland, Austria, and Sweden Militia system Switzerland

exception of Great Britain and Luxembourg, the forces of all European NATO states, as well as all members of the Warsaw Pact and almost all of the neutrals (exception: Ireland and Malta), were large mass armies based on conscription.6 By 2007, just two decades later, the situation had changed significantly (Table 2.2). In a first phase, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries in Western Europe such as Belgium and the Netherlands decided to end conscription.7 In May 1996, President Chirac announced the phasing out of conscription in France. France was followed by Spain, which suspended conscription under the conservative government of Aznar, as well as by Portugal and Italy.8 In a second phase, towards the end of the twentieth century, the first postcommunist countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia decided to abolish their mostly unpopular conscription system in the near future.9 This process accelerated with the access of other East European Countries to NATO or to the Partnership for Peace framework. Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina will have transformed their conscript systems into volunteer forces by the end of this decade. Also, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Poland have decided to suspend their conscript system soon. In Greece, Ukraine, and Sweden it is just a matter of time before the government decides to make the same move. Originally, Russia had intended to do so as well but has meanwhile postponed the step. In 2006, Denmark decided to call up conscripts on a mandatory basis only in the event that the Danish forces do not find enough volunteer conscripts and enlisted personnel on the labor market. To sum up, fifteen European countries have to date abolished conscription, and in seven countries the decision has been made or will be made soon. In the remaining seventeen countries, a public debate on whether to maintain or

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TABLE 2.2. The decline of conscription in Europe, 2007 (forty-three European countries with conscription or all-volunteer forces)

Conscription On regular basis Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, Turkey, Russia, Albania, Moldavia, Belarus, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia With militia composition Finland and Austria Militia system Switzerland

Conscription in transition or planned to change

All-volunteer forces

Bulgaria (1 January Belgium, France, Great 2008), Croatia Britain, Ireland, Italy, (2008/09), Netherlands, Portugal, Poland (2010) Slovenia, Spain, Denmark, Ukraine, Hungary, Latvia, Greece, and Sweden Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Malta, and Luxembourg

abandon conscription has been initiated, often led by political parties that are members of a coalition government (Austria, Switzerland) It is interesting to note that among those nations in which conscription is not yet in question, we mainly find countries that still have territorial disputes with their neighbors, such as Turkey, Serbia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldavia, and Cyprus, or a country like Finland which neighbors on the biggest land power in Europe, with whom it has not had very good experiences in the past. This fact clearly emphasizes the traditional function of the draft as a national military concept for national defense. The diminishing significance of conscription is best illustrated by the development of CRs. Since 1990, the average proportion of conscripts has come down from more than 60% during the Cold War to 26% in the average European force in 2006. However, the average figures conceal a significant degree of variety among the European forces. This becomes evident when analyzing the changing CRs in specific countries (Figure 2.2).10 The small bars in the figure indicate the average CRs per country during a period of the Cold War (1975–1989) on the one hand and the situation in 2006 on the other. All in all, it becomes evident that since 1989, with few exceptions, almost all European states have markedly reduced the number of citizen-soldiers. Lowering the CR is often the first step to abandoning it completely. On the other hand, phasing out conscription obviously does not necessarily mean abolishing it altogether.

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45

100%

Conscript Ratio

Mean 1975–1989 2006

67%

33%

0% Switzerland

Turkey

Greece Finland

Austria Norway

Sweden

Poland Bulgaria

Romania

Germany Denmark

Hungary

Italy Portugal

France Spain

Netherlands

Belgium

FIGURE 2.2. Conscript ratios of nineteen countries. Average 1975–1989 in comparison to 2006 (without Albania).

REDUCING MILITARY CAPACITIES OR REDIRECTING TOWARDS NEW MISSIONS? EUROPE’S REFORM WAVES In almost all European countries, multiple stages of military reform have followed one another in waves since the Cold War. A first significant indicator of the impact of new missions on the phasing out of conscription can be obtained by analyzing the chronology of reform steps taken with the escalation of the war in the Balkans and the intensified international interventions by the Europeans.11 The Downsizing Wave, 1990 to 1995 The first wave of reform, lasting from 1990 to about 1995, can be described as a rapid, predominantly cost-motivated downsizing of the armed forces in most European countries. As a rule, this wave of reform lacked strategic vision and was devoid of serious questioning of the mass-army principle as such. Military service durations were shortened, heavy ground-war material sold or disposed of, barracks closed, and military locations abandoned. The primary goal was to reduce cost through cutbacks in personnel, weapons, and equipment. The peace dividend was being collected, and national defense became a secondary task. Only one country, Belgium, ventured a radical breach with the past by suspending conscription as early as 1992. Thus, without excessive simplification, this first phase can be termed the downsizing wave.

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The Wave of Peace-Intervention-Driven Professionalization, 1995 to 2001 The second wave of military reform started in the mid-1990s and is still going on in some European countries. It was partly provoked and partly accelerated by the peace interventions in the Balkans (United Nations Protection Force [UNPROFOR], Implementation Force [IFOR]/ Stabilization Force [SFOR]). It manifested itself in rapidly increasing international cooperation in military affairs as well as in the conceptual and strategic transformation of the military apparatuses to face an expanded spectrum of tasks. With the end of the bipolar threat, the national defense strategies of the NATO member states lost significance and priority was given to the new crisis and the Alliance’s peacekeepingoriented strategy. Within the framework of the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) platform established in 1994, international cooperation began to extend increasingly beyond the borders of the Alliance. NATO’s leadership rhythm and terminology were widely spread during this period, with English becoming the language of leadership in most European armies, including even those that do not belong to NATO. As a consequence of its hegemonic position, for many non-NATO countries, the Alliance developed into an example of the realignment of strategy and structure of armed forces during the second wave of reform. This is true not only of the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe, but also of neutral countries such as Austria and Switzerland, whose distance from the Alliance visibly diminished in the mid-1990s. The European Union security policy cooperation, driven by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which aimed for a common security and defense policy, intensified markedly during this period.12 All over Europe, large multinational, military-brigade-sized units sprang out of the ground like mushrooms (for example, the German-French Brigade, Eurocorps in Strasbourg, European Union Force [EUROFOR], Multinational Land Force, Multinational Corps North-East, and European Battle Groups). A common defense planning and procurement procedure was established.

The Third Wave: Consolidating the Strategic Change since 2001 A third reform wave can be dated to the beginning of the new millennium or, depending on the country in question, to reactions to the events of 9/11. The terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and the conflicts that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq can be seen as a multiplier of this reform wave. The military focus of most European nations is now clearly on missions abroad in a multinational context. The former primary task of national defense is being relegated to a secondary position, whereas former secondary functions (police tasks and subsidiary and rescue services) are given the rank of primary tasks. This prioritization becomes manifest when we look at the list of military tasks in official documents.13

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47

The military reforms of the third wave aim at rendering forces more flexible with regard to organizational preparedness and deployability in order to make them able to fulfill a large spectrum of missions abroad and at home. This, in turn, demands a higher and transnationally standardized technological standard in weapon systems, equipment, and transport capabilities. At the same time, the emergence of a transnational military role is promoted within the European state system, in which single countries develop specific competences that can be called on in joint operations to meet specific needs.14 The intensification of international cooperation continues in the third phase either in the framework of NATO or the European Union. It culminated in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Operation in Afghanistan and the European Union’s decision in Helsinki 1999 to set up thirteen Battle Groups by 2010, giving the European Union a military core for its common foreign and security policy (ESDP).15 However, these beginnings of a central European coordination of the national armed forces policies are still modest, a fact that has not been changed by the takeover of the WEU by the European Union or by the desire of four out of ten Europeans for a joint European defense policy.16 Further important impetuses for the third reform wave stem from the need to make use of regular armed forces not only in the international war on terror but also for the handling of domestic security issues in the aftermath of 9/11. A close examination reveals that one can speak of a constabularization of the military not only on an international but also on a national level. As a consequence of the developments described, conscription is degenerating more and more into a second-rate reserve pool or is losing its function altogether. Conscription, where it is upheld, serves national tradition rather than military efficiency.17 The third wave of reform concludes what had been started half-heartedly in the second wave. First, professionalism is becoming the rule in Europe, and military service based on conscription the exception. Second, European forces are used to an increasing extent for constabulary tasks, be they peace or stabilization operations out of the national territory or police support missions of all kinds at home.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE OOAR OF THE EUROPEAN ARMED FORCES How much this change of objectives mirrors the real situation concerning European forces’ operations, particularly their engagement abroad, is demonstrated by a comparison of OoARs of European forces between 1995 and 2006. One has to keep in mind that the proportion of logistic personnel expenses and reserves for replacement ranges from 1:4 to 1:6 if one compares troops at home bound for missions in a foreign region with those currently deployed. Thus, an OoAR of 3% indicates that up to 18%, almost a fifth of a country’s armed forces, are directly or indirectly involved in military engagements abroad.

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Figure 2.3 lists the OoARs of 27 European armed forces for 1995 and 2006, respectively, arranged from left to right in decreasing magnitude.18 The following becomes evident: .

.

With the exception of Norway, all European states have increased the number of troops based abroad during the last decade. In most cases the increase is significant, as Figure 2.3 indicates. In absolute numbers, in 1995, according to Military Balance, 22,823 military personnel from these twenty-seven European countries were sent on missions abroad. In 2006, a remarkable increase took place (47,065 persons); thus, the figure has more than doubled. In 1995, Norway, Denmark, and The Netherlands sent a significant number of soldiers in missions abroad (OoAR  3%) in relation to the strength of their armed forces. In keeping with their military tradition, these countries have always been classic peacekeeping countries and also participated during the Cold War. In 2006, the situation changed dramatically. Countries that are very involved in international crisis management at this time are Denmark, Estonia, Slovenia, the

7% OoAR 1995 6%

OoAR 2006

5% 4%

3% 2% 1% 0% CHE TUR HRV BGR GRC PRT LTU ALB FRA HUN ROU ESP FIN BEL NOR AUT LVA POL CZE ITA SWE DEU SVK NLD SVN EST DNK

FIGURE 2.3. The growth of the out-of-area ratio (OoAR) of twenty-seven

European countries (1995–2006). NATO abbreviations for countries as follows: ALB, Albania; AUT, Austria; BEL, Belgium; BGR, Bulgaria; HRV, Croatia; CZE, Czech Republic; DNK, Denmark; EST, Estonia; FIN, Finland; FRA, France; DEU, Germany; GRC, Greece; HUN, Hungary; ITA, Italy; LVA, Latvia; LTU, Lithuania; NLD, the Netherlands; NOR, Norway; POL, Poland; PRT, Portugal; ROU, Romania; SVK, Slovakia; SVN, Slovenia; ESP, Spain; SWE, Sweden; CHE, Switzerland; TUR, Turkey.

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.

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Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, and Austria (OoAR  3%). But Norway, Belgium, and Finland also have large numbers of forces abroad in relation to the strength of their armed forces. In this group we find all-volunteer forces as well as conscript-based armed forces. But, as Figure 2.4 indicates, the conscript armies have a low CR. The lowest OoARs are found in states with conscription. An OoAR lower than 2% is found in Lithuania, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, and Switzerland. Apart from Portugal, most of these countries still maintain draft-based mass armies, their CR being high in comparison to other armed forces that have abolished conscription. The burden of the relatively small foreign engagement is generally carried by a small professional core of these armed forces, complemented with volunteers recruited on a temporary basis, often conscripts, who volunteer for longer service abroad.

Figure 2.3 documents the massive increase in personnel in constabulary operations conducted by Europeans since the mid-1990s, and it also supports the assumption that there is a connection between out-of-area ratio and the maintaining of conscription.

EUROPEAN POLITICAL AND DEFENSE INTEGRATION AND OUT-OF-AREA MISSIONS AS DRIVING FACTORS FOR PHASING OUT CONSCRIPTION It can be empirically documented that the trend towards European defense integration and the development towards the conduct of constabulary missions by armed forces have to be seen as important causes for the termination of conscription in Europe. First, according to our initial thesis, the increase in European cooperation on political, social, and security policy levels implies the inclination of the cooperating countries to engage increasingly in international stabilization missions. As Table 2.3 shows, there is a clear relationship between the degree of integration into supra- and international networks and the OoAR of a country’s armed forces.19 This means that, if a country is a member of NATO and integrated into the European Union network, there will be a higher probability that it will be involved in international military missions of the constabulary type than a country which by 2006 has only partial membership or none at all of NATO and/or the European Union. Second, we argued that with the increase of a country’s foreign military engagements, the willingness to maintain conscription will diminish. If the CR of 27 European countries is correlated with their OoAR, we find a significant negative correlation (R = 0.48; Figure 2.4). The direct finding is obvious and supports our thesis that the more a country’s armed forces are engaging in outof-area missions, the more likely it will be that conscription is phased out or abolished completely.

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TABLE 2.3. The extent of sociopolitical and military integration in Europe (number of memberships) and the OoAR of a country’s armed forces (%) OoAR

Memberships 1 2

0

0–1

Switzerland

3

Croatia Turkey

1–2

Lithuania Bulgaria

Portugal Greece

2–3

Albania Finland

Norway Romania

Belgium France Hungary

3–4

Austria Sweden

Latvia

Czech Republic Germany Italy Poland

Denmark Estonia Slovakia Slovenia

Netherlands

4 or more

R= –0.48

7% DNK 6%

EST

5%

SVN NLD

4%

SVK

DEU POL

ITA

CZE 3%

BEL

2%

FRA

FIN

NOR

ESP HUN

AUT

SWE

LVA ROU

ALB

LTU

PRT 1%

BGR

GRC

HRV 0%

10%

20%

30%

CHE

TUR

0% 40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

FIGURE 2.4. The conscription ratio (%) by the out-of-area ratio (%) of twentyseven European countries. (NATO country abbreviations defined in Figure 2.3 caption.)

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TABLE 2.4. Conscription and international integration, 2006 (27 countries) Memberships System Conscription armies

All-volunteer forces

0

1

2

3

Albania Switzerland

Austria Croatia Finland Sweden Turkey

Bulgaria Denmark Estonia Latvia Lithuania Norway Romania Slovakia

Germany Greece Poland

Slovenia

Czech Republic France Hungary Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain

Belgium

Indirectly, this means that the more extensively a country is integrated into a European network of political and security political alliances, as well as supranational coalitions, the more likely it is to cooperate more closely on a military level and in missions of a constabulary type as well. The conscription ratio will thus drop until it is finally abolished.20 Countries joining security policy networks no longer see their home territory in danger and believe, therefore, that they can do without conscription. It is no accident, and fits into the picture as outlined, that it is primarily the neutral countries that are having a hard time giving up their citizen forces (Switzerland, Albania, Austria, Finland, and Sweden). Table 2.4 supports this conclusion by showing a remarkably strong connection between a European country’s recruiting system and the extent to which it is integrated into the NATO and European Union networks.

CONCLUSION Europe’s conscription-based armed forces have been rendered obsolete not only by the end of the Cold War, which necessitated mass armies, but also by other factors. On the one hand, the ongoing process of European political and security integration into the framework of the European Union and NATO has

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eliminated the threat of interstate wars of the traditional type on European soil. On the other hand, the trend towards a common security and military policy accelerated by multinational interventions, mainly in the Balkans and in Afghanistan, has fuelled the process of constabularization of European forces. These two developments must be seen as important agents speeding up the phasing out of citizen armies in Europe. Europe’s citizen-soldiers were formally and traditionally considered ideal defenders of their national territory; they are, however, not considered suited to the new kind of multinational military missions abroad. No European people would be ready to legitimize the compulsory employment of young conscripts in missions out of national or alliance territory, nor would they be ready to tolerate casualties among such personnel in out-of-area missions. The tradition of conscription is symbolically linked with national defense and with guaranteeing national existence. The new tasks of a constabulary nature in an international context are radically different. First, they are devoid of the character of guaranteeing national existence, and second, they require a much higher degree of stand-by capability and more sustainability than traditional citizen armies with their part-time soldiers can provide. The consequences are obvious. To the extent to which military organizations in Europe are used for purposes other than interstate war, conscription is proving obsolete and is being abolished in a growing number of European states. The military future belongs, as in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, to small forces-in-being. These forces are becoming more and more interwoven on the European level, be it within NATO or within a slowly forming alliance of European forces that is manifest in several multinational corps and is beginning to emerge in the framework of the planned European battle groups.

3

Peace Support Operations and the ‘‘Strategic Corporal’’: Implications for Military Organization and Culture Eitan Shamir

INTRODUCTION On 9 May 2007, near the Palestinian village of Dharia, a small group of reserve soldiers led by their captain were captured on camera severely beating a group of Israeli demonstrators.1 These young Jewish Israeli demonstrators, which the media described as ‘‘anarchists’’ (referring not only to their behavior but also to their stated ideology), were trying to remove by force an army road block near the Palestinian village in a show of support to the Palestinian cause. In response to the demonstrators’ provocations, the small detachment of soldiers, who found themselves outnumbered and attacked, acted aggressively and beat some of the demonstrators. The incident was immediately publicized by all the main Israeli news channels and caused the Israel defense forces (IDF) and the defense minister to swiftly condemn the behavior of the soldiers as unnecessary and out of line. Regardless of the fact that the IDF soldiers were not part of a peace support operation (PSO), the basic dilemmas they faced are typical and rather universal ones faced by soldiers that are part of any PSO. The incident serves to highlight some of the unique and specific challenges that soldiers in PSOs are facing. According to British doctrine, PSOs are defined as an operation that impartially makes use of diplomatic, civil, and military means, normally in pursuit of UN Charter purposes and principles, to restore or maintain peace. Such an operation may include conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement, peacekeeping, peace-building, and/or humanitarian operations. In addition, the doctrine suggests that the use of force ‘‘should be balanced so as to enforce the mandate without detriment to Campaign Authority.’’2 The British doctrine also warns that the way in which military force is applied and the means used can

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‘‘promote or prejudice other immediate and stabilizing activities.’’3 A typical PSO will usually consist of a ‘‘complex of actors,’’ representatives from the international community working alongside representatives of the indigenous population. Without the active cooperation and consent of the indigenous population, there can be no self-sustaining peace.4 A condition for success is thus the legitimacy obtained by the military forces that operate under a PSO mandate.5 In achieving this legitimacy, the use of force should be ‘‘credible and used in a manner that is reasonable to achieve the mandated outcome or desired effect. The action should be proportional and discriminatory such that it is confined in effect to the intended target.’’6 In addition, the military forces should ‘‘respect the laws and customs of the host nation and must be seen to have a respectful regard for local religious and secular beliefs.’’7 In essence, these requirements demand that soldiers, whose daily work is to maintain a delicate balance with suspicious and sometimes hostile host populations, exercise diplomatic skills. Further, these skills are demanded despite the fact that most soldiers are trained to fight and win conventional wars.8 In their decision to use force, soldiers can determine the outcome of a peace operation. A simple incident at a road block can have far-reaching strategic implications. This chapter explores this phenomenon while arguing that conventional military approaches to dealing with the issue are not very effective. Following this analysis, some possible directions will be suggested for reducing the damage this phenomenon causes.

THE RISE OF THE ‘‘STRATEGIC CORPORAL’’ The term ‘‘strategic corporal’’ was coined in 1999 by General Charles C. Krulak from the U.S. Marines in an article he published in the U.S. Marines Corps Journal.9 According to Krulak, modern militaries are facing what he called ‘‘the three block war,’’ which suggests that military intervention will include all the following three aspects simultaneously: combat operations, humanitarian aid, and peacekeeping. The combination inevitably puts military personnel in very complicated and difficult situations, which often do not have a clear solution. At the same time, mistakes in these situations may be very costly. In these situations, the actions and split-second decisions of often very low-ranking commanders can have a direct impact on not only on their immediate surroundings, but also on the overall success of the entire mission or even the stability of the whole region. The following quotation explains how the British Support Operations Doctrine explains the challenge most modern militaries face today: In PSOs, actions taken at the lowest tactical level may need to be especially responsive to strategic decision making, with the tactical outcomes having immediate strategic significance. For example, the comments and actions of a corporal may prompt

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ministerial statements as a result of media reporting. This may lead to political and military leaders at the strategic level wishing directly to influence the lowest tactical actions, missing out the intermediate operational and higher tactical levels of command.10

In addition to explaining the phenomena, the above quotation also gives a warning to commanders that, in contrast to regular battle situations, where numerous events happen in parallel and force the delegation of command to lower ranks, in PSOs they might actually have the time to directly intervene with low-level tactical decisions in order to prevent what they perceive as a strategic risk. This could be an event where a soldier might incorrectly assess a situation and use excessive force, an action that can put the entire mission as well as the commander’s career on the line. The doctrine clearly recommends against the commander’s intervention with low-level decisions, although it does not suggest to commanders how to otherwise minimize the risk from a strategic mistake committed by an innocent corporal in the field who is only trying to do his job.

THE ‘‘STRATEGIC CORPORAL’’ IN CONVENTIONAL WAR VERSUS PSOs In order to explore the meaning of ‘‘strategic’’ in this context, it will be argued in the following pages that in the conventional battlefield, the initiative of noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and junior officers has the potential, at the right place and time, to become what the Prussians and Germans referred to as schewerponkt, the center of gravity. Such opportunities lead to swift and decisive results, not only at the tactical but also at the strategic level.11 These were clear cases of winning or losing, and the ability of one side’s junior commanders to exercise initiative and understand the larger context gave that side a decisive edge. This point will be illustrated in two famous cases of strategic initiative by junior-level commanders. These cases demonstrate the decisive importance of junior commanders’ tactical actions, using independent decision making and initiative, on the general strategic outcome. The first case is the capture of Fort Eban-Emael in Belgium during the 1940 German invasion of France. The fall of Fort Eban-Emael signified a strategic achievement and opened the way for the advancing German forces. The formidable fort fell primarily due to the initiative of German First Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig and his non-commissioned officer (NCO), who overcame a complicated situation and a numerically superior enemy.12 The second example is that of a commander of an IDF company-size reserve reconnaissance unit, who in the 1973 War spotted a gap between the two Egyptian armies deployed east of the Suez Canal. Although a perfect opportunity presented itself to surprise the Egyptians and destroy several enemy artillery batteries, the commander understood that the gap represented something much

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more important and, if discovered, the Egyptian army would immediately close it. He chose instead to retreat quietly and reported his findings to his division commander, who was looking for alternative ways to cross the Canal. A few days later, the IDF exploited the same gap to cross the Suez Canal and encircle the entire Third Egyptian Army.13 In contrast to these examples, PSOs rarely present opportunities for quick resolution, and, therefore, the mistakes of junior commanders are more likely to worsen the existing situation. In PSOs, low-level initiative can rarely lead to strategic resolution. However, such initiative is still ‘‘strategic’’ because actions at the tactical level can have impacts far beyond the immediate tactical level, often in a kinetic effect through the media and public opinion. To conclude, then, acting wrongly on the tactical level might occupy the full attention and energy not only of the higher military operational and strategic level, but also the national security level, beyond the military echelons. These events are often dealt with directly by ministers, political leaders, international organizations, and even the courts. Unfortunately, the uninhibited behavior of resistance fighters and terrorists, including the manipulation of women and children as combatants, often places the corporal on the ground in the face of real life and death situations, forcing split-second decisions with impacts on fate of the mission. The corporal is left in a catch-22, ‘‘damned if he does and damned if he does not.’’ Uri Bar Lev, a former senior commander in an elite counterterrorism unit in the IDF, provides an illustrative example. He describes an event whereby he received information on a potential plot to drive a car full of explosives into a packed synagogue. When Bar Lev spotted a car that fit the description of the suspect car, he immediately and intentionally collided with it. The collision injured passengers in both cars, but the attack was averted and the terrorists were captured. When then Prime Minister Rabin came to visit the unit to praise them for their courage, Bar Lev asked him what would have happened had he made a mistake in identification and collided with an innocent car, injuring innocent civilians. Rabin, in his famous frankness, told him that had he failed, he would have found himself alone.14 In a different event, Bar Lev describes having to give an order to shoot at a suspect car. When he approached the car after the shooting, he found four dead terrorists, but he could not avoid thinking what would have happened had the dead been four innocent people, possibly a family with young children. ‘‘That’s our reality,’’ he says. ‘‘When we have a success, it is a bottle of champagne with compliments from higher echelons. When it is a failure, you are left to your own devices to face the harsh reality.’’15 A very similar sentiment is expressed by IDF officer Moshe (Chico) Tamir, a veteran of many years of fighting the Hezbollah in Lebanon, starting as a platoon commander and eventually reaching the rank of brigade commander. When he reflects on his long experience as a soldier and commander in his autobiography, he says:

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Litigation and trials of field commanders and the lack of backing from the chain of command have had an impact on operational effectiveness. Commanders understood that they will not receive any backing … consequently they prefer to avoid any initiative and repress the offensive tendencies of their units to avoid failures.16

But what is the view of senior commanders in these situations? What makes them so fearful of mistakes? General Rupert Smith helps us understand the view from the senior commander’s perspective. Smith uses a powerful metaphor to explain the problematic situations he found himself in as a senior commander in Bosnia and Northern Ireland. He speaks about a Roman circus where the commander fights the enemy while everyone watches. His role is not only to fight but also to be the circus producer: In these situations, instead of only you and a gang of gladiators, there is at least one other producer and another gang of gladiators. … Here the commander is actually writing and playing a story at the same time. His job is to produce the most compelling narrative and act it out, and every act he does is an act of sending information and causes an effect. The currency in these types of operations is not who has more effective firepower, but who has more effective information, the type that will enable him to separate the enemy from the rest of the crowd.17

One of the problems of writing a convincing script is that junior actors—or, worse, a mere extra—can spoil it. A classic example is the case of the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. In February 2005, she was kidnapped in Iraq and thereafter was held for one month and then released. As she was being driven to Baghdad International Airport, the car she was riding in came under fire from U.S. forces. Her escort, Major General Nicola Calipari, Italy’s second-highestranking military intelligence officer, died in the shooting as he tried to protect her. Sgrena was seriously injured.18 The U.S. military has maintained that the shooting was justified and that the car carrying the Italians was traveling at high speeds and refused to stop at a checkpoint. Giuliana Sgrena and the Italian government have denied U.S. claims. While the Pentagon cleared the troops involved of any wrongdoing, Italian prosecutors were pursuing the case and requested the indictment of U.S. Army Specialist Mario Lozano. This incident became a major source of tension between the Italian and U.S. governments.19 A different example with much worse implications, different both in terms of the clear misconduct of the group of soldiers involved and in terms of the kinetic impact on public opinion abroad and on the local population, was the infamous incident at Abu Ghraib prison. This incident is also different from the above examples in that it represents a failure of the entire system and chain of command. Here it was not about having to make a split-second decision in the face of great uncertainty and risk making the wrong judgment call, but what seems to be the consistent misbehavior of a group of soldiers over a long period of time.

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The resulting political scandal damaged the credibility and public image of the United States and its allies in the execution of ongoing military operations in Iraq. It gave ammunition for critics of U.S. foreign policy who continue to argue that it was representative of a broader American attitude and policy of disrespect and violence toward Arabs. The U.S. administration and its defenders argued that the abuses were isolated acts committed by low-ranking personnel. In a report on the incident, the New Yorker summarized it by saying, ‘‘As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army; and for the United States’ reputation in the world.’’20 It seems that under these circumstances, taking into account the risks and the response of the entire strategic spectrum (or the Roman circus, according to Smith), it is often worse to act wrongly than not to act at all. However, not acting runs contrary to the basic combat training and ethos of NCOs. A former head of the IDF officer candidate school (Bad-Ehad) stated that ‘‘an officer in general is a term that is related to performance. … An officer is a person who makes things happen.’’21 The famous motto ‘‘when in doubt, act’’ is part of an education that sees initiative as synonymous with leadership. It stems from maneuver warfare doctrine, which calls for ‘‘shock, surprise, and destruction.’’22 Most Western armies adopted maneuver warfare philosophy, which relies heavily on the independent actions of junior commanders. Moltke the elder, one of the most important thinkers and practitioners in this respect, said about his expectations from junior commanders, ‘‘In doubtful cases and in unclear conditions … it will generally be more advisable to proceed actively and keep the initiative than to await the blow of the opponent.’’23 However, as one Israeli officer said recently, ‘‘[T]he name of the game in LIC [low-intensity conflict] is not about taking the initiative as in regular battle, but how to do fewer mistakes and maintain stability.’’24

DOCTRINAL AND INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE: MISSION COMMAND Nevertheless, some of the most advanced military institutions do believe that the solution to the ‘‘strategic corporal’’ situation is not—despite the natural tendency of commanders—to tighten control through detailed orders and detailed rules of engagement (ROE). On the contrary, the message in most contemporary doctrines of Western militaries is to reemphasize mission command.25 Mission command is a decentralized leadership and command philosophy that demands and enables decision and action in every echelon of command where there is an intimate knowledge of the battlefield situation. The approach calls for subordinates to exploit opportunities by being empowered to use their initiative and judgment, as long as their decisions serve the higher objective communicated to them prior to the mission, which is referred to as intent. The

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articulation and communication of the commander’s intent are, therefore, essential for the success of the approach. Mission command requires above all a shared doctrine and trust, which implies tolerance for learning and latitude for honest mistakes, professionalism, and inclination for initiative.26 Another way to view mission command is as a type of a contract between the superior and the subordinate. The superior defines clearly the intent, mission, resources, and constraints, and leaves the subordinates the freedom to execute the mission the way he or she sees best according to these parameters. If the situation then changes, the subordinate is also empowered to change the mission according to the higher intent. Mission command asks the commander to provide means and to delegate authority; however, it is crucial to note, one can never delegate responsibility. Yet there are some basic flaws in this approach. Adopting mission command as a solution to the ‘‘strategic corporal’’ problem does not sufficiently address the challenges that militaries face in PSO environments. This is for the following main three reasons. First, historically the concept has been developed as part of the German military culture, which emphasized mobile decisive war with the aim of quickly bringing about the enemy’s collapse. In the post–World War II years, following the defeat of the German Army, mission command was somewhat neglected. During the Cold War years, the West, facing the Soviet threat, was searching for ways to balance its relative quantitative inferiority. In its investigation of the fighting qualities of the Wehrmacht, mission command was discovered as a central virtue that gave the Germans an edge over their rivals.27 In the 1980s, mission command became part of maneuver warfare theory, which is very similar in essence to the principles of German Blitzkrieg, and this theory eventually dominated the military doctrines of all main Western countries, starting with the United States.28 The ethos of mission command is therefore strongly biased towards acting aggressively. The approach praises commanders such as Moltke the Elder, Patton, Sharon, and Yigal Alon, who always felt that their political masters were standing in the way and tried to push military achievement further with little regard for political and international implications. Indeed, the British doctrine also emphasizes the importance of knowing when not to act, but it is still hard to separate mission command from its original ethos.29 It should be noted, however, that there are situations in PSOs that call for aggressive action. Such was the case in Srebrenica. A careful and balanced view is required, keeping in mind the desire to deescalate and achieve legitimacy, both of which call for the minimum possible use of force. Second, the ‘‘Roman circus effect,’’ which means high sensitivity to events on the ground by political leaders, creates enormous obstacles to applying the approach. Other obstacles also exist, namely the diverse composition of forces in PSOs and the difference in training and services that diversity implies. Mission command requires a highly professional force with strong mutual understanding and a common professional language. To this aspect, the lack of

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peacekeeping doctrine consistently followed by training and education leaves little opportunity for its successful application. Third, mission command is tightly linked to the mission analysis and the estimation process that the military uses to assess the situation and devise its plans.30 Traditionally, the mission is derived from the objective of one level above it. The commander is then guided to think in the context of two levels above his own immediate mission. However, in PSOs, the relevant levels for reference can be all the way up top at the political level, if one can distinguish between these levels at all. In this respect, Brigadier General Yaakov Zigdon, former IDF Staff and Command College commander, referring to recent improvements in the officer’s education program, said that when a day after his graduation from the Staff and Command College, a commander receives an order to recapture Abu Snen [Palestinian village], he will do it better because he knows what the Prime Minister’s intent was as communicated in his last speech to the nation. He also knows the implications of exercising force through his company’s actions.31

But directives from the political leadership do not arise by themselves and must become an integral part of the planning and briefing process. That is the reason why, in an interview with Dr. Kobi Michael, General Bogi Ya’alon, IDF Chief of Staff during the Second Intifida, said the following: Even in the days when I served as the Judea and Samaria Division Commander, I felt that the regular Estimate of the Situation (EOS) processes we used to teach did not provide us with relevant tools to cope with problems and challenges we used to face in the years 1992–93. I felt that we were missing tools; I felt that the discourses in Central Command as well as in other places were not deep enough. They dealt with foam on water.… I felt it was wrong … as I began my duty as the Central Command Commander, I understood that we had to build a different process of EOS.32

AN INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE At this point, let us turn back to the case that opened this chapter: the road block in Dharia. The series of reactions and counter reactions is arguably characteristic and typifies many soldiers and military organizations who find themselves under similar scenarios conducting peacekeeping or similar missions, such as the coalition forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. The automatic reaction of the IDF and the political echelon was immediately to condemn the captain’s behavior. However, an IDF inquiry into the case a few days later came up with following points. The captain indeed repeatedly asked for reinforcement, saying his force was too small to deal properly with the situation. His request was rejected, and he was told to deal with the situation alone. The brigade commander admitted he

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made a mistake in his assessment of the impact of these anarchists and in his final decision not to send reinforcement. Importantly, he summed up the whole event by saying that ‘‘we failed to anticipate these developments, and from a local event it became an all encompassing strategic event.’’33 Still, despite admitting his own mistake, he wanted to see the captain suspended. He concluded that the soldiers were not in life-threatening danger; therefore, there was no reason to behave so aggressively. Back at home the captain and his men, as civilians again after completing their reserve duty, released the following statement. They complained bitterly for not having their commanders’ backing and support, they said that they were sent to deal with an impossible situation with neither the necessary equipment nor a proper briefing on the relevant procedures prior to the mission. ‘‘We were given a mission without the necessary capabilities to fulfill it, and now they (the commanders) are not giving us any backing.’’34 To his defense, the captain raised another interesting point. He stated that he understood his mission the following way: defending the road block was serving the higher purpose of preventing the demonstrators from passing down to a major highway running from Jerusalem to Beersheba and blocking this more strategic road. This was his understanding of his mission, and he was intent on preventing a major road in Israel from being blocked. This is a cause that is worth fighting for. The Captain admitted he might have got carried away, but the negative display of normative behavior was due to professional problems within the system that was supposed to support him.35 Examining this incident from a mission command perspective, it is easy to see how almost every principle in this approach was violated. For example, mission command calls for a clear definition of resources and constraints in the context of the mission. This, according to the soldiers, was not done. In addition, the mission analysis was not adequate, the effect and intentions of groups such as the ‘‘anarchists,’’ armed with cameras and ready to provoke, was not taken into consideration. The result was that the commander acted in the context of ‘‘one level above’’ his own immediate mission; he interpreted the purpose of his mission in the following way: he would maintain his post (road block) in order to prevent demonstrators from reaching the main road, and from his point of view, this purpose was more important than any other higher ramifications.36 Another problematic area that demonstrates how difficult it is to use the mission command approach in these scenarios is the area of authority versus responsibility and accountability. First, the soldiers found themselves involved with Israeli demonstrators against whom they had limited authority to act. Second, although the brigade commander admits that his judgment was wrong, he still wants to punish the captain for his misconduct and intends to suspend him. Some critique will no doubt reveal that this case illustrates a lack of attention and professionalism, and if only the commanders across the chain of command would have paid more attention to the details and stuck to the principles of mission command, we would have seen a different outcome. Perhaps this is

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the case, although this author doubts that the final outcome reflects only basic professional errors. These events reflect something deeper that is imminent in every military organization. True, major flaws were committed by all sides involved, but what ensued was a reflection of a system that is organized, trained, and prepared (mentally and physically) for the realities of conventional wars and has found itself, to use General Smith’s metaphor, trapped inside the Roman circus. The infantry soldiers whose training emphasized a bias for action over nonaction, once outnumbered and under pressure, did what they believed they should do as soldiers, which is to fight and fight hard to accomplish their immediate mission. It should be pointed out that before the incident, this reserve battalion was praised for its performance and its captain was highly appreciated. In the aftermath of the immediate political scandal and under its pressure, the reaction of the entire chain of command was to deliver to the public what it wanted: a swift condemnation of the event. In PSOs, soldiers are expected to act more like police, to use force only as a last result. In this context force is not legitimatized, but when force is used, even police personnel expect some form of backing from their superiors and a fair trial. The primary victim of this behavior is the trust that serves as the main foundation of the social contract between commander and subordinate. Here we have a major break in trust between the tactical level, which does its work on the ground and feels abandoned, and the strategic echelon, which must deal with public opinion and political backlash. Without this trust there is little chance that mission command can work. It seems, therefore, that while initiative is a key asset in conventional wars, in the context of PSOs, it is a dangerous liability.37 The strategic peacekeeping corporal acts with the knowledge that the senior military and political echelon is always ready to sacrifice him for the sake of the ‘‘script’’ and to avoid the embarrassment.

CONCLUSION: WHAT CAN BE DONE? The strategic corporal phenomenon poses a serious challenge for military organizations in PSOs for two main reasons: it poses a risk to the mission itself by undermining the legitimacy of military force, and it destroys the trust foundation within the military organization itself. The breakdown of trust between senior officers and the rank and file has dangerous implications for those units who have to operate in conventional operations again, where trust between ranks is crucial. In a conventional war, those same soldiers will have to risk their lives knowing they can trust their commander’s judgment, and commanders must know that their soldiers will be able to follow their will and interpret their intent correctly. The doctrinal solution of mission command is a step in the right direction, but as this chapter shows, it is not adequate. The way forward

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for minimizing the strategic corporal effect is through a series of changes in different areas: doctrine, training, and education. However, these changes must come in parallel with an institutional change in attitude and norms of behavior—in short, a complete culture change. It should be noted that change in one area alone is not sufficient; these changes interlock and reinforce each other. Some militaries are currently taking some steps in the right direction, instituting programs to better prepare soldiers and commanders to cope better with the realities of LICs and PSOs, both of which require wining ‘‘hearts and minds.’’ Gaining legitimacy and the support of the local population is the key to success in such environments, and therefore both scenarios are acutely vulnerable to the strategic corporal phenomenon.38 The following are a few examples of what is currently being done and what can be done in this area. Doctrine. The British publications Peace Support Operations and The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations provide a comprehensive overview of the operational principles of armies in PSOs. The U.S. LIC Manual, although not specifically aimed at PSOs, also provides doctrinal knowledge about how to improve commanders’ understanding of the theater and how to prepare their soldiers to cope with the complex realities of PSOs.39 There are also some interesting developments in the areas of situational assessment and mission analysis. One is the U.S. Marine version of the principles of System Operational Design (SOD), which is used to better understand and operate in the complex environment of Iraq. This method, based on complex system theory, highlights the complex and non-linear connections between events and variables in the system and thus clarifies the futility of some courses of action that commanders often take.40 In terms of training, some militaries have realized that they must emphasize mental preparation for the theater.41 There is a saying among peacekeepers that a ‘‘trained soldier will make a good peacekeeper,’’ but this depends on what the soldier is trained for. Once soldiers are prepared and trained for battle as their core activity, they tend to perceive peacekeeping missions as feminine and inferior.42 Therefore, soldiers must be mentally prepared to see the importance of their missions and must be equipped to function in a PSO environment. One way of doing this is through role-playing and case-based analysis, where they can practice various reactions to unforeseen situations. The training should be done with as near as possible semblance to reality. Building a mock village and using real actors to play locals, like the U.S. army has done recently, might prove be very effective.43 Training will never be able to cover all scenarios, but it can enable soldiers to develop both a sense of the PSO environment and improved judgment. The same direction should be taken to officers’ development. A scenariobased approach that aims to develop officers’ ability to think and act independently in different environments increases the probability of making a good judgment call. Programs such as the ‘‘adaptive leader,’’ already offered by Donald Vandergriff, show the way forward.44

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However, these important changes are not sufficient. A deeper change is necessary, one that affects the basic norms and behaviors of the military institution. The change should reflect a process of strengthening the profession at the expense of careerism, while also restoring the bonds of trust between the echelons at the expense of public approval ratings. It is said that Moltke the elder, the chief advocate of mission command in the German army, used to tell a story about a major who was reprimanded by Prince Fredrick Charles, who served as his commander, for doing something wrong. The major, to his defense, said he was only following orders. ‘‘His Majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders,’’ was the Prince’s reply.45 Whether this story is true or not, it does make a good point: you will be backed by your superiors as long as you honestly attempted to do the right thing. Obviously, this sort of unconditional support seems to be more difficult in the PSO Roman circus type of environment, but unless military organizations and their political masters find a way to show absolute support and restore trust across the chain of command, the problem created by the corporal will become ever more strategic.

4

Media and Conflict: An Integral Part of the Modern Battlefield Ilana Bet-El

INTRODUCTION: THE MEDIA AND MODERN CONFLICTS Observing conflict is a profession nearly as ancient as that of making war. Chronicles, mythologies, religious testaments, poetic odes, and most other forms of historic expression often contain lengthy descriptions of soldiers and battle, detailed to an extent possible only if based upon a once observed reality and some knowledge of battle. Over the years the observations and data may have been changed or refined by the scribe, historian, or poet, but there can be no doubt that the original depiction, often lost in the mist of time, was created by a witness who understood the art of war. This is not a matter of chance; besides an eternal fascination with war, and especially its manifestations of masculinity as reflected especially in the myths and poems, there has also been an eternal need to communicate between the secluded battlefield and the civilians left behind, to justify the sacrifice of men and money the endeavor of war entails, and to this end have the official versions corroborated by an apparently impartial, non-military witness. From the middle of the nineteenth century, effectively with the Crimean War and then the American Civil War, the crucial role of observer became more or less ascribed to the journalist, a status that became confirmed throughout the subsequent century and its plethora of horrific wars. In this manifestation of the witness, it was this man, and occasionally woman, who sought to observe and report battle in the name of truth, however painful. And even if ‘‘truth’’ was a relative term open to interpretation, as the twentieth century progressed the war correspondent became a fixture on the battlefield very largely accepted by the military of every hue and regime.1 In the Second World War, for example, Stalin and Hitler authorized favorable journalists to accompany their forces and document their triumphs, if not failures. No less than Roosevelt

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and Churchill encouraged reporters to join their own militaries.2 And this was not due to momentary benevolence; as these despots and many others of their ilk clearly understood, any regime engaged in industrial war, using soldiers drawn from its civilian population, must communicate with this same population in order to keep it on its side. In a dictatorship this may be deemed to be achieved by journalists reflecting only the glories of the military, and in a democracy, it can be done through depictions of the broader, though often not complete, picture, including horror and disaster. But in all cases, it is clear that communication came to be crucial, and that to this end, the journalist came to be accepted on the battlefield, as both a truthful witness, and as a necessary if limited mediator between the military and civilian worlds. All these assumptions survived the Second World War, and any number of others after it, more or less intact and to this day, which is precisely the problem: the world has moved on from industrial wars and the gentlemen and ladies of the press to complex conflicts and the global media. Most significantly, it has moved from the journalist-as-witness reporting war as a means of communicating between the military and the civilian populations of each side, to the media transmitting conflicts in real time and therefore serving as a means of communication between all the opposing sides, the populations caught up in the conflicts, and the world at large. In this manifestation of the external observer, therefore, the media has moved from witnessing and reflecting conflict to recreating the military theater of war into a global interactive show. To date, this shift has not yet been properly explored as a factor in conflict, even though the crucial and sometimes determining pairing of ‘‘media and conflict’’ is now clearly integral to the modern battlefield. Most existing research and analysis of media and conflict tend towards four main areas: the role of media—mostly local as opposed to international outlets—in causing conflicts; the role of media in post-conflict situations; the creation of legal frameworks for media activity in conflict and post-conflict areas; and the impact of the media on political decision making in conflict.3 Whilst undoubtedly important, all these fail to address the core issue of the relationship between the media and conflict as a military event. Redressing this absence is the purpose of this chapter.

THE SHIFT FROM ‘‘WAR AND THE MEDIA’’ TO ‘‘MEDIA AND THE CONFLICT’’ To no small degree, the lacuna in understanding media and conflict is due to two of the main protagonists themselves. In the first place, both the media on one side and the military on the other tend to be practitioners rather than theoreticians.4 Moreover, since they mostly interact within the framework of conflict, which is intense and time consuming, little space is left for reflection on the actual interaction as opposed to its outcome. In the second place, and possibly more significantly, both sides seem unaware of the true significance of the shift from ‘‘war and the press’’ to ‘‘media and conflict,’’ or indeed of the major

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transformation in the event known as war. For whilst acknowledging the occasional change such as the impact of satellite technology on reporting, or the oftcited ‘‘CNN factor’’ of rolling news, both tend to contend that the roles of each and the relationship between them within a conflict remain essentially unchanged. Such assertions are largely predicated upon fixed notions; thus, ‘‘media’’ refers to objective journalists in the service only of the truth, and ‘‘conflict’’ refers to war between defined sides, involving at least one state army. In reality, neither notion is properly applicable to the exceedingly complex framework of modern conflict, where peace support operations (PSOs) might be conducted and which includes, besides the combatant protagonists, which are often non-state, and the media, many other organizations such as the United Nations and its agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and others. Nor do they reflect the vastly expanded role of the media, the changing nature of military intervention, and the combined effect of both upon conflicts in the past fifteen years. In other words, neither side seems to have internalized that the activity known as conflict in which they are both engaged has thoroughly changed; that they are no longer involved in industrial war but rather in ‘‘war amongst the people,’’5 in which the battlefield, the combatants, and the purpose of the event of war have been fundamentally altered; nor that the war correspondent is not a journalist reporting or even photographing or filming war so much as a member of the media transmitting events as they happen, commenting upon them, and, by default, interpreting them.6 And whilst these interpretations are not necessarily profound or absolute, they undoubtedly stand alongside others influencing both policy-makers and the general public—deemed the electorate by the policy makers—responsible for the militaries and peacekeeping forces operating in conflicts. A further complicating factor in the relationship between the military and the media in conflict is that alongside the prefixed notions, both sides are also operating and interacting within the confines of dated and conflicting assumptions regarding each other. For its part, the military still tends to somewhat dismiss the media and its handling, alongside civil affairs, as no more than ‘‘hearts and minds,’’ even though it can and should be argued that hearts and minds, of the population amongst which the military is operating as much as the folks back home, are increasingly the strategic objective of their operation. Upon this somewhat dire background, the military then tend to assume that what is at stake with the media is no more than carefully monitored reproduction and dissemination of data, preferably to its own advantage, and that it is possible to be in control of the monitoring and the data. There is also an assumption that the media is ultimately reactive, in the manner of journalism; it will present itself in response to either a defined event or else follow a lead about a potential event, an event being anything from a battle or skirmish to a suspicion of wrongdoing. Underpinning all these assumptions is another: that the media, being synonymous with journalism, consists at most of papers, television, and radio, and that those who make decisions within these organs do so on

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journalistic principles and merit alone. On the other side, the media usually still correctly assumes the military is a closed but coherent world of hierarchy and discipline, and as such tends to accept its separateness. However, it often tends to incorrectly assume that officers and other ranks are in a situation of management and workers, and that management—like in business—has a hand in deciding as well as implementing the actions unfolding on the ground. Whilst not necessarily assuming the military is malicious, the media does seem to assume the military has something to hide and will seek to expose it. In the conflict zone, it assumes itself to be separate and different from the military in the eyes of the local population, even if it is often dependent on the same military for protection. Above all, it also often seems to assume that journalism and media are largely synonymous, differentiating little between the distinct natures and capabilities of its various branches, most especially the Internet, and barely acknowledging its own impact on the actual environment it is reporting on. Collectively, these assumptions suggest that for the military, the media is basically only a mode of external communication, which can be used to advantage on tap. Within this perspective, failure is a question of disadvantage or unfair advantage by others, mostly the media. Conversely, the understanding arising from the media is that the military world is relatively removed and narrow and thus lacking in any broader context. Most especially, the media is unaware of its own role within the world of conflict where it interacts most with the military, other than to ‘‘shine a light,’’ even though that is an extremely small segment of what it actually does, more or less in proportion to the small segment of old fashioned journalism that still exists within it. At base it is therefore clear that the worlds of the military and the media have totally different concepts of the other, aside from one specific issue: there is a mutual sense of distrust, which paradoxically only underlines the inclinations of both to react to type. In this way the military tends to assume the media is seeking to harm it by either depicting it in some negative way or else by uncovering a dark secret, and so tends to behave furtively. The media equally assumes this to be the case and so approaches the military somewhat accusingly. It is a negative symbiosis that harms the military, above all. It is also one that masks the true relationship between media and conflict, since it appears to elevate the media to the role of player, which, as will be reflected below, is the only one it does not have in the modern theater of war. As a result of this comprehensive lack of awareness of the arena in which they operate, alongside the lack of both self- and mutual understanding, both sides tend to talk past each other and the public. Indeed, they tend to thoroughly confuse the public, which due to media transmission has now become an audience and the ultimate witness of conflict. This audience watches events of war amongst the people unfolding live on its television and computer screens, events such as tanks driving down a dusty street in Iraq or through a village in Afghanistan, or heavily armed soldiers in flak jackets and helmets in a shoot-out with Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters in traditional dress, with a school in the background and women and children to one side, but have it explained within the framework

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of the old concepts of industrial war. For in the vast majority of cases, both the media and the military commentator will use jargon such as divisions, battalions or other military units, lines of attack, strike capabilities, tactical and strategic objectives, and the technological attributes of weapons, and all of these in reference to ‘‘the enemy,’’ as if it were an equal, formed military opponent, and ‘‘the battlefield,’’ as if it were a removed location in which the sides met, rather than towns, villages, and streets full of regular civilians. This is a new paradigm or form of war being explained in terms of the old, since those tend to be the terms in which the military and the media still operate, but to the audience, they present a cognitive dissonance, since the images and the commentary do not add up. In order to untangle this confusion, there is a need to revert to basics: in this case, the basic identity of both the media and the military in their current sense rather than those attributed to them by dated assumptions. On the back of such an enquiry, it may then be possible to establish their roles in the modern battlefield and the manner in which they interact.

THE AMORPHOUS NATURE OF THE MEDIA There is endemic confusion concerning the identity of the amorphous entity commonly known as ‘‘the media.’’ As noted, many—in the military, government, the public, and the media itself—tend to use the terms ‘‘media’’ and ‘‘journalism’’ as synonyms, thereby confusing themselves as much as others. Journalism brings with it assumptions of neutrality and objectivity, and the dual role of the journalist as observer and investigator. Whether such a definition of journalism still applies in any medium is open to debate; though it must be noted that there are still fine investigative writers and broadcasters out there, there can be no doubt that the media, taken as a whole, cannot be classified in such terms. At best, professional journalism may be found within the media, and this is due to the three basic characteristics of what this entity actually is. A medium. Such is the focus on its outputs and actions that there is a tendency to neglect the obvious, for the media is first and foremost just that: a medium. The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines it as ‘‘newspapers, radio, television, etc., collectively, as vehicles of mass communication.’’7 As such, its significance lies in the means it offers, rather than the content, which is the commodity being conveyed by the vehicle, much as flour can be conveyed on trucks, boats, or planes. And much as flour can be packed in sacks or bags, or in bulk, so can media content be packaged in a multitude of ways. This means that content is open to constant change and manipulation, according to the media vehicle, the packaging, and the paying customer. A platform. The major difference between content—words and images—and any other commodity, is that it can have an immediate impact: on perceptions, ideas, debates, and events. This means that the vehicle can be dual-purpose; it transports, but at the same time, it is also a platform, since content passes on

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and through it. Moreover, it can pass in more than one direction, and in many permutations, such as back and forth, to three, four, or more sides at once, to a known and unknown audience simultaneously, and so on. It is in the guise of a platform that the media serves as a means of communication and messaging. A business. Above all, the media is a business, with high margins and annual targets to meet. As a result, it needs content as a commodity in which it deals, and which can fill the vast stretches of time and space that are now a default of it being global and operating 24/7. But it must on the whole be understood to have no stake in the commodity or its impact, but rather in its ability to convey it to the satisfaction of its customers. As such, it is dependent on specific audiences only in the sense of attracting advertisers or other funding. In this sense there is no difference between Al-Jazeera and CNN: even if there is an assumed bias, it is very largely due to the respective funders (i.e., advertisers who base their decisions on ratings and audience), rather than ideology or journalistic vigor. In the developed world, there is also no difference between these enterprises and other commercial media outlets and the BBC or any other state-owned outlets, since these latter are also dependent on audiences and ratings in order to receive funding from the state. Print and internet outlets are also market-driven, with only independent bloggers being relatively free from financial constraints. Yet on the whole, in order to be influential, the blog must be of a size and authority such as to attract advertising to pay for itself. As a business the media therefore has employees, some of whom may be journalists, many of whom are simply in the media business as entertainers, and nearly all of whom are driven by the bottom line. Taken together, the media must therefore be understood as a business that deals in conveying information. It is the total environment in which information is presented, exchanged, digested, and commented and reacted upon. It is the medium within which this happens and the platform upon which it is conveyed. It provides the arena and the stage of the theater, but not the actors or the scripts. It is the immediacy and impact of the constant and interactive nature of this theater that can influence the script, not the media itself. And the reason for this, and the ultimate paradox lying at the heart of the media, is that as a business, it is part of the audience consuming this information, as a commodity, for its own needs. Because the media deals in content, it has a constant need for it, but without any stake or intrinsic interest in it. As such, it is a sophisticated form of parasite; in order to survive, it lives off the activities of others, in every field of life, including conflict.

THE AMORPHOUS NATURE OF THE MODERN PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER The understanding of the modern soldier,8 as a member of a military in the developed world, is no less convoluted and confused than that of the media, largely because it is also multilayered and, in some respects, counterintuitive.

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A professional. Due to the nature of modern conflicts, there has been an increasing inclination to see the soldier in terms of the dire human and humanitarian situations in which they take place, and thus to obfuscate, or even reject, the most basic aspect of this figure. For as the Oxford English Dictionary definition clearly reflects, a soldier is ‘‘One who serves in an army for pay; one who takes part in military service or warfare; a man of military skill and experience.’’9 The soldier must therefore first and foremost be understood as a professional in the art of war, and one skilled in arms, whose primary purpose in a conflict zone is to exercise his profession. Like soldiers throughout the ages, the modern ones may be charged with keeping the peace rather than actively fighting, but their presence in the combat zone rather than the police is precisely in order to escalate rapidly to fighting in time of need. An agent of civil-military interface. Where modern soldiers may differ from previous generations, especially those in the era of industrial war, is in the need to be able to interact with civilians on the latter’s terms. One of the most basic aspects of war is that it usurps any other given reality through sheer force. It allows the military to reign supreme and the soldier to be entirely remote from civilians, or else expect them to interact on military terms. In this way the end of war has traditionally meant the disappearance of force and soldiers and a reversion to absolute civilian life. Not so in our current wars amongst the people, in which the aims of the operation are not purely military ones such as to destroy a bridge or to take a city. Instead, soldiers are now sent out to ‘‘create a safe and secure environment’’ or ‘‘establish conditions for democracy’’ or effect ‘‘regime change,’’ all of which rest on encouraging the people to behave differently rather than exercising military force. Moreover, since the battlefield is amongst civilians, and they are effectively the strategic aim, it is in the interests of the military to assist in re-establishing civilian order rather than just attaining military victory over opposing forces. To this end, therefore, the soldier, in order to be effective, must be seen as an agent of military-civilian interface. A representative of an accountable force. The traditional view of conflict is that of soldiers of two or more clearly defined sides fighting each other on a clearly defined battlefield; in other words, it is a view of industrial war. However, the reality of our current complex conflicts is of an exceedingly varied array of participants. The actual sides to a conflict may include soldiers of established states alongside ‘‘non-state actors,’’ ‘‘armed elements,’’ ‘‘insurgents,’’ or ‘‘freedom fighters,’’ to give a few examples. In addition, there may also be an international intervening force sent by the United Nations, NATO, or an ad hoc coalition. Within this reality, the soldier must be seen as a representative of an accountable force operating within the confines of international laws and standards, as opposed to other fighters in the field. Moreover, and as already noted above, the soldier is also part of a hierarchical organization based on strict, even rigid, discipline, imposing its own codes and laws to which the soldier is also accountable.

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A member of a national military. Due to the growing inclination of military interventions in the framework of PSOs being undertaken either in coalitions or by international organizations such as NATO, the United Nations, or the European Union, there is an understandable tendency to see the soldier serving in such a capacity as a representative of these organizations or formations and their collective political will and aspirations. However, it must always be remembered that there is no such thing as an international soldier. Even in a blue beret or sporting a NATO badge, the soldier has sworn allegiance to a specific state, and it is as a national asset that he or she is deployed into a conflict area.

THE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER IN THE GLOBAL SHOW THEATER These four threads taken together suggest that the modern soldier, as encountered in the conflict zone, is a complex composite: a national asset perceived as an international representative, a professional fighter assumed to sport humanitarian values, and an individual accountable both to the law and to the hierarchy faced by opponents outside both. In short, this is an individual expected to maintain the external appearance and all the capabilities of the traditional soldier, though not too blatantly with regard to fighting on the streets, who is equally expected to have the capabilities and inclinations of a humanitarian operative. Furthermore, the militaries composed of these soldiers are taken to be an amalgamation of all these qualities, as understood in civilian terms. This applies especially to the issues of hierarchy and accountability, which, as mentioned above, are often translated into managerial terms in which it is assumed that a person in command on the ground is also part of the overall decision making process that placed him and his unit in a certain place. As such, militaries and soldiers are seen as both extensions and representatives of a political will far removed, armed with capabilities of dealing, on the one hand, with the military opponent on military terms and, on the other, with the civilian suffering on civilian terms. Moreover, the soldier and the military—both in fact and in perception—are deemed to be accountable for all their actions, even those not properly in their remit, even if faced by opponents that are not, and often cannot, be held accountable themselves, and even if it is the media doing the deeming, though it is also accountable to no one, other than as a business to its shareholders. There is no doubt that this complex public understanding of the soldier in the Western world rests partly on the phenomena of militaries becoming increasingly remote from the societies from which they are drawn, and of conflicts becoming increasingly expeditionary. However awful the reality of war amongst the people, from the vantage point of the developed world, it still takes place far away in Africa or Iraq or Afghanistan or the Palestinian Territories. However, this understanding is also partly—possibly mostly—the product of media depictions and transmissions of conflict and combat zones, taking place

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in civilian settings with obvious humanitarian suffering occurring alongside, and in some cases as part of, the fighting. This is not to suggest that such media work is falsified in any way, but rather that it offers a disturbing reflection of a distant reality, which is often then accompanied by commentary that knowingly or not guides the media consumer to the various perceptions and understandings listed above. In other words, this happens as a result of the theater of war having become a global show, a process of transformation that is important to understand.

THE MEDIA’S RULES AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE GLOBAL SHOW THEATER Both the military and the media have a part in this process of transformation, but it may be of use to explain the media first. At the most obvious level, the media has a capacity to turn conflict into a global show simply through technology. Cameras, microphones, computers, phones, and satellites enable the immediate transmission of any data, in print, picture, or audio, anywhere in the world. However, it is the manner in which the technology is used and applied by people that is most important when considering the show, and in this matter there are a number of rules. The flattening rule. This rule has two implications when applied to conflict. First and foremost, in absolute terms and regardless of subject, all news is data of equal value and relevance, regardless of subject, since the media is in the information business; it is a commodity. Detailed data on celebrities and soap operas can take up the same amount of space, or more, as the War in Iraq, a market crash, or the launching of a space shuttle. There is now a vast audience of global TV owners, multiplied many times more through computer users, which can choose between historic moments and YouTube or constantly flip between the two and any number of other sites or stations. In other words, gone are the days in which there was a hierarchy to news, decided on journalistic principle, or a central event that could be assured full attention. Following upon this is the second implication: all decisions on content are made centrally, often thousands of miles away from the conflict zone. And so, whilst on the ground an event may seem of major importance, both the decision as to whether to include it and the size and slant of the item will be decided by editorial imperatives elsewhere. The open exchange rule. Not only is the audience constantly dipping in and out of the data in the media, but it is also open to reaction from any direction, which can change its intent and meaning; a piece of footage transfers to the Internet immediately and is blogged upon; a quote in a newspaper receives reaction in the morning radio program, a sentence of which is then commented upon on the Net. Data is a commodity that continuously changes hands, and both alters and loses value and meaning in each permutation, and the author of the original piece has absolutely no control over this process. In addition, every event happens more than once, often repeated in a loop. The concept of rolling

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news stations on television and radio makes this a necessity, since it is impossible to collect enough content to fill 24 hours a day every day; whilst the Internet gives access on tap not only to the present but also to the past, once again imparting new meaning in a process that the original author has no control over. In conflict this translates into pictures or sounds of events such as rolling tanks or soldiers apparently shooting at civilians—because the opposing gunman is situated amongst them—being taken out of context, both because the camera or recorder can take in but a small slice of action, and because any piece can be edited as it passes along the media chain. In this way the full pictures or sounds may be used first as news coverage then repeated, possibly edited, to fill time in rolling news stations, then adapted for other purposes by other users in other outlets such as blogs or clips on YouTube. And whilst this practice is rife in every field, in conflict it has the capacity to further inflame passions on the various sides. The brevity rule. Even if the media were composed only of journalists reporting facts and clearly distinguishing between these, analysis, and commentary, there is still every chance that a clear image of events would not emerge due to the need to maintain brevity. This is imposed primarily due to the massive load of content. With so much competition, and with the need to be first and fresh, outlets stick to extremely short presentations, whether written, oral, or visual. Thus an average written sample in a paper or on the Web is usually in the region of 500 words, at most, and much often less, with comment pieces at a maximum of 800 words, though often less. An oral or video piece, on radio or television, tends to be a minute and a half, often less and sometimes more, which is in the region of 300 words, plus a picture or a film if applicable. In addition, brevity is also imposed due to the need to be instantaneous: technology has created the impulse for information as events occur, however this tends to mean that the bare facts, or a shred of a fact mixed in with opinion, is all that can be delivered immediately. The main casualty of brevity is context: causes and clauses, especially if complex, simply get eliminated, often leaving bare facts standing in an accusatory manner. In modern conflict the effect of this rule is near disastrous. The context is all that gives meaning to the existence of soldiers fighting in what is often a civilian setting, since the reasons for them actually being there and using arms are usually very complex and often diffuse. An excellent example of this was the 1992 to 1995 war in Bosnia, which was exceedingly complicated, being an ethnic conflict, a civil war, and a war of succession. It was unique onto itself, but it was also part of the break-up of Yugoslavia and its resulting conflicts. In addition, there were three official Bosnian sides—Bosniac, Serb, and Croat—which sometimes had breakaway elements, whilst the latter two also had close affiliations to their ethnic groupings in Serbia and Croatia but were considered to be solely Bosnian within the context of the conflict. These were just some of the most salient problems, which were compounded by many others, before one even broached far more dramatic and pressing moral issues such as besieged cities, civilian deaths, or the utility and quantity of humanitarian aid.

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However, since all these made better pictures and were far easier to convey, over time, nearly all the complex context was eliminated from media coverage, leaving the human tragedy as a sole issue, which would not be problematic but for the fact that many important political decisions were made on the back of the media reporting and its impact on audiences. The narrative rule. Narrative is the backbone of the media, in all its formats and outlets. Whilst context gets eliminated and facts and comment often become mixed and treated as one, the actual minute or 300 words of data will be conveyed as a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and with characters. The beginning will usually be a lead in which the story is summarized. The middle will be a lengthier expose of the summary, or a rehash if no more data is available. The end will be a conclusion of sorts, often posing a question suggesting a problem with the issue discussed. Like all narrative, characters are imperative, and if they are not obvious, as in a clear quote, they are usually found in other means, such as a significant figure related to the story being mentioned, even if there is little connection. In addition, talking heads—from think tanks, universities, businesses, etc.—will be roped in to give a story a human voice or to fill time, often regardless of their direct relevance to the story. In modern conflict, coverage tends towards the human and humanitarian aspects because they offer by far the easiest narrative option and good pictures. The very setting of most conflicts within civilian populations makes this even easier, and it vastly increases the cast of available talking heads to include the multitude of NGO and humanitarian experts. The budget rule. This rule has a dual implication. First, there is an ever increasing inclination to cover an event or item in accordance to budget and availability rather than intrinsic interest or importance. In conflict this has an effect of either not covering far removed combat zones, or else to approach them only very slightly. In following Moynihan’s law, which holds that the number of complaints about a nation’s violation of human rights is in inverse proportion to its actual violation of human rights, media coverage of conflicts is usually in inverse proportion to the violence and danger of the combat zone. For example, most conflicts in Africa are hardly covered at all by the Western media, being distant, difficult to get to, and expensive to cover. In Afghanistan, the combination of distance, size, and danger has reduced most media coverage to an absolute limit verging on none, as opposed to Baghdad or the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which are very accessible and equipped with enough technological infrastructure to make them viable for coverage. Second, like many other businesses, the media tends to have periodic cuts in which relatively expensive (i.e., experienced) staff who, crucially, are capable of judgment and context, will be cut. As a result, the media is increasingly staffed with many young and eager people, who are those tasked with filling the endless hours of time in the many outlets. By definition, therefore, they have neither the background nor the time to understand an issue in full and will focus on a narrow remit which they do understand or find accessible, regardless of whether

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it reflects the reality objectively. At best, they are overseen by a thin layer of more experienced senior editors who tend to use their capabilities in shaping stories rather than demanding context, structure, and facts. In conflict this has a very strong impact since, in general terms, there tends to be ignorance of matters military, which is then compounded by the inexperience of the media person seeking to do a quick package or story, and thus grasping upon the first and easiest option rather than taking the story in the full. These five rules taken together reflect that in its operation, the media is essentially shallow and instantaneous, obsessed with costs, devoid of an awareness of context, and gripped by the need for narrative and character in order to make offerings more cogent and digestible to audiences that are constantly switching and surfing between outlets. It is this reality that led former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to devote one of his parting speeches to the issue of the media, and to describe it as driven by ‘‘impact’’: Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamor, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is often secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unraveling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.10

Although Blair’s words may be dismissed as no more than those of a disgruntled politician, it is important to note that his speech became part of an important dialogue, since it was followed some weeks later by one given by the prominent British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman. Apart from essentially agreeing with Blair on the issue of impact, he had dire things to say on the confusion between fact and opinion, and the role of the media in it: Now, you go live, live, live, wherever you can. It’s happened because of the pressure to be fresh and urgent, because of the way the market works.… The consequence is that reporting now prizes emotion over much else. In this press of events there often isn’t the time to get out and find things out. You rely upon second-hand information, quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organizations which do the work we don’t have time for.… The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis. It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free. In news, as much as anywhere else in the industry, the question is no longer ‘what can we do?’ It’s ‘what can we afford?’ Finding things out takes time and money. Easier to stay in the warm fug of what everyone agrees is news.11

This was a frank if sad analysis from one of the senior members of British journalism who is now part of the media, which applies equally across the globe, and to all subjects, not only politics. Even worse was his subsequent assessment, ‘‘the problem is that news is determined not by its importance but by its availability.’’12 This means the problem is basically endless, since the crossover between fact and comment makes availability effectively endless.

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THE MILITARY’S APPROACH TO THE RULES OF THE MEDIA IN THE CONFLICT THEATER AND ITS IMPLICATIONS The media rules of operation clarify that it does not make the show of the modern theater of war; that is done by the sides to the conflict, the intervening militaries, the civilians amongst whom they all fight, the international organizations and NGOs sent to assist the civilians and in some cases the sides; in short, all the producers and players of the modern theater of war. The media, as reflected in its definition, does not belong to this cast. It is neither a player nor a producer, but rather an enabler that offers the arena—the medium and the platform—for this theater, then packages and transmits it as a show. This point is often missed by the military, whether it dismisses the media as being just irrelevant ‘‘hearts and minds’’ or else complains of improper treatment by it, in both cases attributing to it the status of player. The reason for this mistake is simple: the media is physically present in the conflict zone together with all the players and producers and interacts daily with them all, including the military. And since reporters have long been on the battlefield, their presence is not questioned by the military, regardless of the fact that it is the media, not the press, that it is transmitting a show, not posthumously reporting facts; that it is seeking content for its consumers, not broadcasting a central event that attracts a single large audience; that in its technological capabilities and applications, it has not only broadened the battlefield into every living room in the world, including those of the actual combat zone, but also enabled it to become interactive, through mobile phones and especially the Internet, and in so doing, it often shapes the event without actually participating in it. This core misunderstanding is part of the wider problem of the militaries of the developed world still operating within the paradigm of industrial war, in which, as noted above, the military had full control and supremacy, and civilian life was subjugated to it.13 However, in modern conflicts amongst the people, and mainly in PSOs, the inverse is true: in order to succeed, the military must operate on civilian terms. It is its inability to do so, stemming from a basic misunderstanding of this fact, that is often the cause of its failure. It attempts to impose a purely military reality and operate on its terms, whilst the civilians on the battlefield—augmented by the many actors from the aid world—tend to continue to conduct their civilian life, or a form of it, not least because they have to: they have no other place to return to, since the opponents to the military are often amongst them. From a military point of view, this state of affairs is then unfairly depicted by the media, which effectively recreates the reality yet again for its own purposes and most often transmits it as an essentially dire civilian situation rather than a military one, since that is what the eye and the camera ultimately capture, and it is the simplest story to convey to a wide audience. There is thus a fundamental misalignment between the military and practically all other players on the battlefield in understanding the terms of play, and indeed the parameters of the battlefield. In sticking to its concepts of its own

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imposed reality, the military fails to see that the real terms are dictated both by civilians and by the media, and that in order to win, it must join in and be in a position to affect the terms to its own advantage. Once again, this is not an attainable goal with military force alone. Both as the guns roar and once they are silent, the facts—in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Occupied Territories, and any modern combat zone—remain the same: the battlefield is civilian, the civilians do not like the guns and destruction, and unless the quality of their lives is improved, there is no chance of attaining ‘‘a safe and secure environment’’ of even a minimal kind. In other words, without affecting the terms, the strategic aim is unattainable. By sticking to its own reality and outdated concepts, the military is also missing out in another way. Most, if not all, of the other players have realized both the status and the value of the media as the arena provider and show transmitter, and it is as such that they actively seek it out. They want to get their points across, to provide information to other players, to glean information from them, to shape opinions, to create constituencies, and, above all, to capture the will of the people amongst whom the fight is taking place. Whether a warlord, a besieged leader, or a humanitarian worker, there is an instinctive understanding that the true currency of modern conflict is information, not firepower. In order to win, it is vital to have as much information as possible in order to influence the people amongst whom, and over whom, the fight is being had. Getting their will can be achieved not through shelling, but through influence based on data. To this end, the narrative is now as much part of the event as shelling, shooting, and bombing, not a subsequent history. There is a need to offer a version of what is a happening as it is happening, in order to secure vital audiences, such as policy and decision makers, politicians, and the electorates that vote for them. They are all watching the show being transmitted as it happens, and they will be gripped by the best narrative of events, regardless of whether it reflects any objective reality. Moreover, the decision makers, dependent on the electorate, will ultimately make decisions based on the show and the narrative rather than on the hard facts of the conflict. A classic example of this was the 2006 conflict over South Lebanon between Israel and the Hezbollah. The latter kept an extremely professional media presence maintained throughout, largely focused on their leader Hasan Nasrallah, who spoke directly both to his constituents in Lebanon and throughout the Muslim world, and to Western public opinion rather than its leaders, directly through the media. From the start he established extremely minor but cleverly dependent aims for success, basically staying in the field as an informal and apparently relatively poorly armed fighting unit as against the might of the established Israeli military, and that this would be proof of a just cause. He hammered this message home in his media appearances and ensured that the few other Hezbollah spokesmen allowed access to the media, mostly guiding cameras through the rubble left by Israeli bombings, remained on message. In this way Hezbollah provided a continuous and plausible narrative through

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which viewers could interpret the unfolding events. This was in stark contrast to the Israeli media effort, which was much more confused and appeared focused on policy makers and leaders around the world, rather than public opinion. The Israeli military, moreover, treated the media exactly as if it were in an industrial war, communicating in badly staged press conferences and so without providing a narrative in which to place its activities other than its might and its own stated objectives, starting with the return of its kidnapped soldiers. Since it failed in the latter, its might was also brought into question, leading to an international understanding that it was Hezbollah that won, a notion crowned by The Economist, stating on its front cover, ‘‘Nasrallah wins the war.’’14 Which side actually won is a moot point, but the reality that unfolded after the conflict was one defined by the narrative of a Hezbollah win, and it was within these parameters that all parties, including Israel, had to maneuver.

REVERTING TO THE BASICS: THE GLOBAL SHOW THEATER AND REQUIRED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIA AND THE MILITARY Upon this background it may now be possible to revert to the basic issue posed at the start of this essay: the relationship between the media and conflict as a military event. Pulling the threads of investigation together, it is clear that the media must be seen as a crucial factor in the battlefield, not unlike the weather; much as the weather must be considered when timing an attack or estimating effectiveness, so the media must be considered in calculating the impact or consequences of it. But however crucial it is as a factor, the media is not a player. Its influence lies in its omnipresence both within and outside the conflict zone and its ability to provide the total environment and means for the transmission of data, constantly and instantaneously, not in its own opinions or positions. As such its influence upon conflict is essentially instrumental, in two interdependent and significant ways. First, it is the means for transforming the military theater of war into a global show: a fluid and flowing, but not always coherent, combination of reality and representation, images and words, available on tap anywhere in the world on paper, on screen, on television, on radio, through the phone, and in any number of other outlets. In the interchange between them all, they constantly interpret and reinterpret the show, thereby influencing and shaping it. And it is this that leads to the second element of the media’s instrumentality: it is the conduit of information, which has replaced firepower as the currency of modern conflict. To win in war amongst the people, it is necessary to have the data to influence the intentions of the sides and, above all, to win the people over to your side. To this end the purely military act is but part of the effort, often not even the main event, though it appears most militaries find this reality hard to conceive. If modern conflicts are to be won, the military must begin to accept the media in its real role and influence, not the one it wishes to accord it in line

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with outdated concepts of war. To this extent it must begin to operate with a clearer definition of the media and the battlefield, and first and foremost understand why it is unrealistic to suggest that the media, or the data that flows through and on it, can be directed or manipulated to a specific end. On the other hand, accepting the omnipresence of the media as a factor in defining the battlefield and the show must also reflect why it is imperative to start including it in all strategic moves, especially in a world increasingly dominated by data and its flow. This should not be seen as a relationship of dependency so much as symbiosis; whilst there is much the military needs to learn about the media, it must never be forgotten that the media also needs the military as an integral part of the data and narrative they are selling. Indeed, in many cases the media only bothers entering the battlefield when the military arrives, since it is deemed a good story to sell. On the other side, the military need the media in order to tell their own story, to convey information, to their own advantage. Most especially the commander on the ground needs the media in order to communicate to his advantage with the opponents he is fighting, the people amongst whom he is fighting, all the other actors and players on the battlefield, and then, in addition, with his own people, leaders, and policy influencers back home. Above all, the commander on the ground, as much as the high command that sent him, needs the media in order to create a convincing narrative of events, so convincing as to win over the will of the people for whom he has been tasked to create a secure environment so that they may become citizens of a state acceptable enough for him and his forces to leave, having achieved their strategic aim. To this end the media must be seen as integral to the modern battlefield and strategy.

5

The RMA, Transformation, and Peace Support Operations Allen G. Sens

In the last two decades, most of the military missions conducted by the industrialized democracies have been peace support operations (PSOs) of one variant or another.1 With the exceptions of the Gulf War, the air campaign against Serbia, and the initial phase of the Iraq War, military affairs have been dominated by low-intensity intrastate conflicts and the increased frequency, scale, and complexity of multinational operations designed to create stability and peace in war-torn countries. However, despite this operational experience, PSOs have been marginalized in the ‘‘revolution in military affairs’’ (RMA) and ‘‘transformation’’ concepts, the two most influential ideas guiding recent developments in doctrine, force structure, and planning in the militaries of the industrialized democracies (and especially in the United States). A disconnect has developed between RMA and transformation concepts, which emphasize traditional warfighting operations (which are rare) and the demands and requirements of PSOs (which are common). The marginalization of PSOs in the RMA and transformation literature can be explained by the dominant influence of U.S. perspectives in the intellectual and policy development of these concepts. While the RMA and transformation agendas do promise some improvements in the political, organizational, and operational conduct of PSOs, both concepts are inappropriate as foundations for the development of peace support and stability operation capacities and may in fact be obstacles to improving these capacities. As a result, there will be no wider ‘‘revolution’’ or ‘‘transformation’’ in the ability of the militaries of the industrialized democracies to conduct PSOs. Instead, ongoing and future peace support and stability operations may have a greater impact on the RMA and transformation agendas than the other way around.

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FROM THE RMA TO TRANSFORMATION: THE EVOLUTION OF FULL INTELLECTUAL DOMINANCE The genesis of the RMA concept is generally attributed to Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov, the chief of the Soviet General Staff in the early 1980s. Ogarkov and other Soviet military thinkers suggested that a military-technical revolution was underway due to the development of precision-guided munitions and advances in surveillance and information distribution systems.2 Ogarkov’s ideas soon found their way to the United States, where the specific term ‘‘revolution in military affairs’’ was originally coined by Andrew W. Marshall, the longserving director of the Office of Net Assessment in the U.S. Department of Defense. The RMA quickly developed into a fashionable intellectual concept in U.S. security policy circles. The fundamental tenets of the idea were expressed in three core arguments. First, military history is characterized by relatively sudden surges in military capabilities that fundamentally alter the nature of warfare. What distinguishes these revolutions (which are rare) from ongoing, incremental military innovations (which are common) is discontinuity: previous technologies and techniques for waging war are rendered obsolete. Second, military revolutions are social, not just military-technical, phenomena; they are embedded in wider political, economic, and organizational developments that together create the conditions for a paradigm shift in the conduct of warfare.3 Third, RMA advocates argued that a revolution was underway, characterized by new surveillance and reconnaissance systems that would lift the fog of war, advanced command and control systems to maneuver military forces and deliver firepower on the battlefield, and precision-guided munitions, which would increase the lethality and the efficiency of military operations.4 The RMA concept was accompanied by a tantalizing normative component. RMA advocates argued that those countries best able to harness an emerging RMA and adapt their militaries would reap the advantages of military superiority over their opponents. The RMA was, at the same time, a descriptive intellectual construct about the course of military history and a prescriptive policy argument charting a course for the future development of military power. Furthermore, the RMA was attractive politically in the immediate post–Cold War period, promising greater firepower and military effectiveness at less cost and the prospect of prosecuting regional wars quickly and with minimal casualties. The RMA soon moved from an intellectual idea to a policy initiative. In 1994, the Clinton administration appointed two RMA advocates to senior positions: Secretary of Defense William Perry and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Owens. As early as 1995, the Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense made reference to the RMA.5 Subsequently, doctrinal and vision statements such as Joint Vision 2010 (1996), Concept for Future Joint Operations (1997), and Joint Vision 2020 (2000) emphasized the RMA as the foundation for the ongoing development of the U.S. military, and established ‘‘full spectrum dominance’’ as the goal of this ongoing effort.

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In 2000, the use of the term ‘‘RMA’’ in intellectual and policy circles began to be superseded by the term ‘‘military transformation’’ or just ‘‘transformation.’’ Although the two terms are often used synonymously, transformation is best conceived as a policy and organizational agenda flowing from the intellectual logic of the RMA. In a report to the U.S. Congress, Ronald O’Rourke observed that the ‘‘RMA can be used to refer to a major change in the character of warfare, while transformation can be used to refer to the process of changing military weapons, concepts of operation, and organization in relation to (or in anticipation of) an RMA.’’6 In the introduction to his edited volume Transforming America’s Military, Hans Binnendijk suggested that ‘‘[m]ilitary transformation is the act of creating and harnessing a revolution in military affairs.’’7 The U.S. defense establishment began calling for the transformation of the U.S. military as early as 1997. The National Defense Panel report titled Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century recommended that ‘‘executing a transformation strategy for the U.S. military’’ was ‘‘the highest priority’’ of the Department of Defense.8 The annual report of the secretary of defense for 1998 declared that the department had ‘‘embarked on a transformation strategy to meet the challenges of the 21st century.’’9 The George W. Bush administration injected new energy into transformation. Under the Bush administration, transformation might be more accurately called ‘‘Rumsformation,’’ as the agenda was driven by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s objective to change the way the U.S. military fought wars. In a 2002 article in Foreign Affairs, Rumsfeld emphasized that transformation was an ‘‘ongoing process’’ that required ‘‘new ways of thinking’’ and the ‘‘ability to adapt.’’ In Rumsfeld’s vision, an emphasis was placed on organizational and doctrinal change. ‘‘All the high-tech weapons in the world,’’ he argued, ‘‘won’t transform the U.S. armed forces unless we also transform the way we think, train, exercise, and fight.’’10 Rumsfeld placed a particular emphasis on lighter, more mobile forces (particularly in the Army), joint operations between the services, and the importance of Special Forces. Rumsfeld’s vision was not universally popular within the U.S. military, as it threatened established views on desirable force structure, weapons platforms, and service procurement priorities. Undeterred, Rumsfeld was instrumental in the creation of the Office of Force Transformation in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). In the U.S. military, a tree of operational concepts grew out of the RMA and transformation vision, often in the form of service or specialized command vision statements. Rapid decisive operations (RDO) emerged out of U.S. Joint Forces Command and was billed as the essence of military transformation: ‘‘The U.S. and its allies asymmetrically assault the adversary from directions and in dimensions against which he has no counter, dictating the terms and tempo of the operation. The adversary, suffering from the loss of coherence and unable to achieve his objectives, chooses to cease actions that are against U.S. interests or has his capabilities defeated.’’11 The RDO framework was similar to the ‘‘shock and awe’’ concept that emerged in the mid-1990s and was later

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popularized with some notoriety by Secretary Rumsfeld.12 Not to be outdone, the U.S. Air Force developed the concept of ‘‘Effects-Based Operations’’ (EBO). Meanwhile, in 1998, the U.S. Navy developed the idea of networkcentric warfare (NCW), drawn from the network-centric business model popular in U.S. corporate culture at the time.13 NCW has since become a ‘‘master concept’’ in transformation thinking.14 And so it was that by the late 2000s, the RMA had evolved from a fashionable intellectual concept to a position of ‘‘full intellectual dominance’’ as the core framework for major changes in the U.S. military, with champions at the highest political and military levels of the United States.

FROM THE RMA TO TRANSFORMATION: THE MARGINALIZATION OF PSOs The RMA and transformation literature is almost exclusively focused on highintensity conflict (HIC). This is largely due to the dominance of the American strategic and military establishment in the origin and development of these concepts. Historically, the peacekeeping experience is largely peripheral to U.S. strategic culture and military operations. Even counterinsurgency operations have been largely marginalized in the RMA literature, as memories of Vietnam faded. The major experiences the United States had with PSOs at the end of the Cold War was in Somalia and Bosnia, experiences that were largely unpleasant and reinforced negative attitudes toward PSOs (and the United Nations). In contrast, the experience of the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War seemed to vindicate the RMA thesis and supported the widespread consensus that the U.S. military was an instrument of war-fighting, not peacekeeping. The HIC focus of the RMA did not go unchallenged within the U.S. military. An intellectual opposition suggested that ‘‘operations other than war’’ (OOTW) would become increasingly important.15 This view actually became entrenched in U.S. Army doctrine in Field Manual (FM) 100-5 (now FM 3-0) in 1993. However, little effort was made to connect or reconcile the RMA and OOTW concepts, and OOTW was relegated to the background of doctrinal thinking.16 Through the 1990s, oblique references were made to PSOs in some of the RMA literature. In one early study, it was suggested that the military technical revolution would be helpful in peace operations that required action against one or more of the parties to a conflict.17 Another study suggested that the RMA could have an impact on interventions in interstate conflicts due to the potential of new technologies to reduce casualties and collateral damage.18 The National Defense Panel Report of 1997 noted that the U.S. military would continue to be committed to peacekeeping and humanitarian relief missions, and conceded that some forces might require ‘‘restructuring’’ for such operations.19 However, no systematic analysis of the relationship between the RMA and PSOs was ever composed, and little in the way of substantive preparation for PSOs was undertaken in the U.S. military.

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The U.S. transformation literature devotes more attention to low-intensity conflict (LIC) but rarely addresses PSOs. In his Foreign Affairs article, Donald Rumsfeld failed to even mention peace support or stability operations. Official documents like the 2001 QDR mentioned OOTW, but these discussions were brief and the wider political, force structure, and training implications of such missions were never developed. The ‘‘shock and awe’’ concept emphasized the importance of OOTW, but defined such operations rather narrowly as smaller scale combat with political constraints, rather than addressing broader peace support or stability operations. In his Congressional Research Service Report on Defense Transformation, Ronald O’Rourke devotes only one paragraph to stability operations.20 Furthermore, in the U.S. literature on peacekeeping, peace support, and stabilization operations, there have been relatively few studies of the impact or significance of the RMA and transformation for peacekeeping. One report specifically devoted to the U.S. military and peace support and stability operations did not establish an explicit link to the RMA or transformation concepts that have been driving U.S. planning for years.21

THE RMA AND TRANSFORMATION OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES Changes in U.S. military policy, doctrine, and weapons technology have always reverberated through the defense establishments of allied countries, and it has been no different with the RMA and transformation. Shortly after the emergence of these concepts in U.S. defense circles, civilian and military defense planners in other countries began to evaluate them in the context of their own security policies and priorities. In a 2006 interview, the then acting director of the U.S. Office of Force Transformation identified the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and Singapore as the countries that had made the most effort on military transformation.22 Many NATO member states incorporated some components of the RMA and Transformation into their defense organizations, doctrine, and force structure. Many countries in Asia did the same, adopting the RMA and transformation to their own military requirements, budgetary constraints, technology level, geography, and threat perceptions.23 In general, the approach of other countries to the RMA and transformation was more cautious and incremental, a function of budgetary constraints, policy traditions resistant to revolutionary rhetoric, and defense strategies that do not envision a national requirement for the HIC war-fighting scenarios that dominate U.S. military thinking. The implications of the RMA and transformation for PSOs were examined with more diligence outside the United States because for many U.S. allies, PSOs were an important focus of civilian and military planning and the most frequent context for the deployment of military personnel abroad. In particular, the emphasis in the RMA and transformation on command and control (with the attendant implications for interoperability) and the promise of improvements to force projection (with the attendant implications for expeditionary forces) attracted

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attention in allied countries. However, PSOs were not the primary reason why allied countries adopted elements of the RMA and transformation agendas. A primary motive was the retention of first-rate war-fighting capabilities. The U.K. Strategic Defense Review (SDR) of 1998 reflected this line of thought, identifying the United Kingdom as ‘‘a leading member of the international community.’’24 The 2000 Australian White Paper on defense had a section devoted to RMA technologies, which were seen as vital to maintaining Australia’s ‘‘capability edge.’’25 The Australian Defense Force moved to implement network-centric warfare concepts, with an emphasis on enhancing war-fighting capability.26 In France, the RMA was viewed with considerable ambivalence, not least because it was a U.S. concept. However, the RMA was viewed at least in part through the prism of defining France as a great power.27 Another primary motive for adopting the RMA as a conceptual framework was the need to remain an effective ally and contributor to U.S.-led alliances and coalitions. Interoperability with the U.S. military became a watchword, as the political implications of a technological gap between one’s own military forces and those of the United States became evident. This theme was a prominent component of the United Kingdom’s SDR, which posed the question, ‘‘How do we and our allies retain interoperability with U.S. forces given the radical changes they envisage?’’28 The 2003 U.K. White Paper stressed the importance of remaining interoperable with the United States ‘‘to secure an effective place in the political and military decision-making processes.’’29 In 1998, the Liberal Party of Australia released an election platform document for defense which identified the importance of the RMA and the need to embrace it in order to ‘‘remain a highly valued ally of the United States.’’30 In Canada, interoperability with the U.S. was identified as a key concern in several defense planning documents.31 Although advances in interoperability were generally regarded as beneficial to PSOs, the central focus of such efforts was the ability to ‘‘plug and play’’ with the U.S. military. The surge in troop demands for peace operations placed a premium on expeditionary capabilities. The RMA and transformation concepts, already heavily permeated with an expeditionary consciousness given their origins in the U.S., provided a ready model for developing mobile, highly deployable, professionalized forces capable of multilateral operations overseas. Considerable emphasis was placed on expeditionary capacities in the United Kingdom’s SDR and Australia’s 2000 White Paper. The 2003 U.K. White Paper emphasized the move toward ‘‘rapidly deployable’’ forces.32 Canada’s Defence Plan 2001 guidance document identified the strengthening of Canadian Forces’ ‘‘strategic mobility capability’’ as a priority.33 The Swedish armed forces are undergoing major transformation towards a ‘‘network-based defense’’ concept, largely in recognition of a shift in the Swedish military’s focus from territorial defense to international operations. While much of this discussion emphasized war-fighting scenarios, the promise of enhanced expeditionary capabilities was directly connected to developing national capacities to carry out peace support and stability operations.

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NATO has served as the most important collective instrument for spreading the RMA and transformation agendas. NATO has undergone its own process of adaptation and reform since the end of the Cold War, evolving from an instrument of collective defense to an instrument of power projection. This evolution began at the Rome Summit of 1991, when NATO adopted a new strategic concept that established peacekeeping and crisis management as a new role for the alliance. However, the mid- to late-1990s saw a widening gap emerge between the capabilities of the U.S. military and the rest of the alliance. The extent of the capability gap was revealed by NATO operations in Bosnia and Kosovo and the air campaign against Serbia. A combination of U.S. pressure and a growing awareness of the negative political implications of the capability gap for alliance cohesion provided the energy for the incorporation of RMA and transformation principles into NATO planning. This led to the creation of the Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI) at the Washington Summit in April 1999. However, only a few years later, the DCI looked largely moribund. NATO transformation took on a new urgency in 2002, when Rumsfeld suggested (some would say threatened) that the United States would withdraw from NATO if the alliance did not transform itself.34 At the 2002 summit in Prague, member states approved the Prague Capabilities Commitments (PCC), resolving to transform NATO’s forces to increase their combat effectiveness and interoperability and to shift planning from threat-based to capabilities-based and effectsbased analysis.35 It was understood that not all NATO states would attain the level of network-centric warfare standards, but instead the alliance as a whole would work toward ‘‘network-enabled warfare.’’36 The alliance also agreed to establish a NATO Response Force (NRF) that would provide an effective rapid reaction capability for the alliance and serve as the model for incorporating transformation concepts into NATO’s force structure.37 Not coincidentally, the NRF was first proposed by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002. The alliance also agreed to reform its command structure, establishing Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT). ACT is NATO’s ‘‘forcing agent’’ for the development of new strategic concepts, an effects-based approach to operations (EBAO), force planning, capability requirements, and training.38 The physical location of ACT has not escaped notice. As Helga Haftendoorn has pointed out, the co-location of ACT with the U.S. Joint Forces Command at Norfolk, Virginia gives the United States a considerable influence over the alliance transformation.39 Transformation is now fully a part of the NATO agenda, a fact confirmed at the Riga Summit in November 2006.40 However, as an ACT document points out, ‘‘The unique challenge for NATO’s transformation is the attempting of this ‘revolution’ in an Alliance of 26 sovereign nations.’’41 THE IMPACT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ON THE RMA AND TRANSFORMATION The relative neglect of PSOs in the RMA and transformation agendas has been revisited in light of the operational experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, where

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‘‘theory has clashed with reality.’’42 In the wake of U.S.-led interventions, stability operations took on a new urgency as swift and successful military campaigns were followed by interminable efforts to establish security and order. This urgency has led to efforts to fill a doctrinal and capability gap between the war-fighting mission and the ultimate political objective of a long-term peace. Peace support and stability missions are seen as the means to fill this gap, and this has increased interest in PSOs, counterinsurgency, and state-building. In Iraq in particular, the U.S. military failed to respond effectively to lawless conditions, the collapse of institutions of governance, the impact of a destroyed national infrastructure, and attacks by insurgents. Some of this was due to insufficient numbers of personnel, but there was also an evident lack of preparation, training, and resources for post-conflict operations. As British Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster observed, ‘‘[T]he U.S. Army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent style, which left it ill-suited to the kind of operation it encountered as soon as conventional warfare ceased to be the primary focus in [Operation Iraqi Freedom].’’43 The realization that asymmetric warfare advantages lay with America’s opponents in counterinsurgency and stability operations led to a reactive scramble in intellectual and policy circles in the United States. In 2003, the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute was renamed the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute as a center of excellence for mastering stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) and peace operations. Two studies by the Defense Science Board in 2004 and 2005 emphasized the need for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other U.S. government departments to devote more energy and resources to carrying out stability operations. The 2005 report explicitly called for a ‘‘transformation’’ to establish stability operations on par with combat operations.44 In a 2005 DoD directive, the importance of stability operations was highlighted: ‘‘Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.’’45 The 2006 QDR recognized the need for U.S. forces to prepare for a long war against global terrorism by ‘‘[g]iving greater emphasis to the war on terror and irregular warfare activities including long duration unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and military support for stabilization and reconstruction efforts.’’46 It remains to be seen whether these conceptual initiatives will be translated into practical changes in the doctrinal and training emphasis of the U.S. military. While more attention is being directed toward peace support and stability missions in general and counterinsurgency operations in particular, there have been no systematic studies of the relationship between transformation and PSOs to date. For other countries, the operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has been less jarring, largely because of a longer and more extensive

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experience with PSOs in unstable environments. If anything, the development of more robust peace support and stability missions has created a convergence: the U.S. military has had to adjust to the demands of PSOs by moving away from a myopic focus on HIC, while many other countries have had to adjust by moving toward more counterinsurgency-based concepts of operations and away from more passive peacekeeping approaches. Nevertheless, the troubles experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the techno-centric and HIC myopia of the RMA and transformation agendas has served to hinder, rather than help, preparations for counterinsurgency, stability, and peace support missions.

THE RMA, TRANSFORMATION, AND THE NATURE OF PSOs In the period in which the RMA was conceptualized, peacekeeping was undergoing its own revolution or transformation. The emergence of intrastate conflicts in regional hotspots across the globe, especially in ‘‘failed’’ or ‘‘collapsed’’ states such as Somalia, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Haiti, provoked ambitious efforts to use peacekeeping as an instrument to stop civil wars and respond to humanitarian crises.47 There was a dramatic increase in the number of UN and UNsanctioned peacekeeping operations through the 1990s. While ‘‘traditional’’ interstate peacekeeping missions were still established (between Iraq and Kuwait and between Ethiopia and Eritrea, for example) most of the post–Cold War ‘‘secondgeneration’’ intrastate peacekeeping missions were qualitatively different in scope.48 They were frequently deployed into conflict zones where there was no peace to keep. Operationally, rather than conducting interpositionary functions such as patrolling a ceasefire line, missions were tasked with establishing a safe and secure environment and facilitating humanitarian relief efforts. Many missions were invoked under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, giving participants a broader mandate to use force against aggressors and ‘‘spoilers’’ (parties opposed to peace). The United Nations also authorized regional organizations to lead some missions (such as NATO in the Balkans and the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] in Liberia). The objective of PSO missions is the creation and consolidation of social order, the prerequisite for the peace-building and reconstruction efforts necessary for long-term development and a sustainable peace. C. Richard Nelson defines stabilization operations and reconstruction efforts as ‘‘a process to achieve a locally led and sustainable peace in a dangerous environment.’’49 This objective is achieved only partially through the application of military force. For the most part, the instruments of peace support and stability missions are political, not military. From these objectives flow a multitude of tasks characteristic of most, though not all, PSOs. These tasks include the monitoring and supervision of ceasefire lines, safe zones, weapons cantonment sites, and military formations; the maintenance (or supporting the maintenance) of civil order; sanctions enforcement, demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration

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of combatants; providing security of movement and protection of infrastructure; protecting the local population; deterring or defeating spoilers or insurgents; security sector reform (including development and training of police and judicial systems); and electoral support. To carry out these tasks, coordination with international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private contractors is crucial. In peace support or stability missions, concepts of operations based on a traditional war-fighting paradigm are largely irrelevant. The nature of the PSO experience thus cuts against the grain of the conceptual and doctrinal foundations of the RMA and transformation concepts. The RMA and transformation have been accused of an overemphasis on the impact of technology and an almost exclusive focus on HIC. Despite the recognition of the importance of training, doctrine, and organization in the RMA concept, critics charge that technocentric and especially weapons-oriented thinking has dominated the intellectual, policy, and funding environment.50 This techno-centric thinking takes place within the larger paradigm of preparation for large-scale conventional conflict. In particular, the U.S. military and its political leadership has repeatedly failed to mainstream irregular, counterinsurgency, or peace support missions into doctrine, institutional structures, and training. In peace support and stability missions, technology is an important but far from decisive component of operations, which depend much more on diplomacy, mediation and facilitation, and physical presence. HIC doctrines and training emphasize war-fighting skills, while PSOs place a higher premium on risk acceptance, fire discipline, and policing skills. A signature feature of PSOs is the importance of the social, political, and cultural context of the countries in which they are embedded. This places a premium on historical and social awareness at both the planning and operational levels. However, the RMA and transformation concepts have also been attacked for historical inaccuracy and a disconnection from political reality. Conceptually, the very existence of military revolutions has been called into question by those who dispute the argument that periods of innovation in military history can be described as revolutionary or discontinuous. For these critics, the emphasis on change over continuity in the RMA literature is an intellectual construct that has privileged interpretations of military developments as revolutionary instead of evolutionary.51 In a particularly scathing commentary, Brian McAllister Linn has suggested: Too much of the historical literature on transformation is conceptually weak, inadequately researched, simplistic, and is often fatally suspect. What is even more disturbing is that this flawed literature is assimilated by an uncritical audience and soon is cited to justify even more specious ideas. The lack of historical awareness, and the poor quality of much of the research, has led to some of the major tenets—one might even refer to them as the central dogmas—of the transformation debate being essentially built on historical fallacies.52

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If the RMA and transformation are based on historically contestable assumptions, then neither concept is a suitable foundation for military planning. This is especially true of planning for PSOs, which are largely absent from the historical record used to support the RMA idea. Also absent are the counterinsurgency and OOTW experiences and forms of armed conflict such as raiding, tribal warfare, and revolutions. These histories are a more relevant basis for understanding and planning for PSOs. The RMA concept is also accused of promoting an air of unreality in deliberations about war. Mackubin T. Owens criticized the RMA concept as ‘‘mechanistic’’ and ‘‘disconnected from what our adversaries may think, want, or do.’’53 Owens also suggests that the emphasis on reducing the ‘‘fog of war’’ through information systems and data management will not necessarily lead to more effective decision making; in his view, data and information do not equate to knowledge and understanding.54 Kagan criticizes the focus on the destructive potential of emerging weapons systems and doctrinal innovations, which he argues promoted a conceptualization of U.S. military operations separated from political context.55 Lost in the RMA and transformation discourse is the basic formula of war as a political act aimed at producing a political outcome. Not only are PSOs not wars, they are also intimately embedded in social, political, and demographic characteristics and depend on a solid understanding and appreciation of those characteristics to be effective. PSOs place a premium on understanding not only what ‘‘spoilers’’ (parties opposed to peace) may think, want, or do, but what the general population or various groups may think, want, or do. PSOs have a specific set of political and social goals that are the ultimate objective of any mission task, and operations that are ‘‘mechanistic’’ or ‘‘disconnected’’ from the political and social environment are doomed to failure. The conceptual foundations of the RMA and transformation are thus fundamentally unsuited to the character of PSOs. This suggests that developing improved PSO capacities must be based on alternative concepts based on different, or supplementary, interpretations of the history of armed conflict.

THE IMPACT OF THE RMA AND TRANSFORMATION ON PSOs Although the assumptions underlying the RMA and transformation are unsuitable as a foundation for the future development of PSO doctrine and capacity, to what extent do the RMA and transformation agendas promise some improvement in PSO capabilities? Historical and contemporary PSOs have faced a set of challenges at the political, organizational, and operational levels. An analysis of these challenges in light of the RMA and transformation agendas suggests that the ability to conduct PSOs might be improved by some of the RMA- and transformation-related changes in the military capacities of the industrialized democracies. However, these positive possibilities must be weighed against the larger conceptual gulf that exists between the RMA and transformation

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assumptions and the nature of PSOs. On balance, the RMA and transformation agendas are likely to harm, rather than help, efforts to increase the ability of armed forces to conduct PSOs more effectively. The Political Aspects of PSOs The creation of PSOs. The RMA and transformation agendas will have little impact on the political calculations and machinations that lead to the creation of PSOs. The creation of any mission, whether it is in the context of the United Nations, regional institutions such as NATO, or ‘‘coalitions of the willing,’’ is a product of a political process of negotiation and bargaining between states. In turn, states are driven by a complex political brew of national interests, domestic pressures, and the motives of leadership groups. The fact that every peace support and stability mission is the product of often unique sets of political circumstances is the most basic reason for the limited scope that military-technical or doctrinal innovations are likely to have on PSOs. Some potential does exist for changes in military capacity to have an impact at the level of political will and the creation of PSOs. If RMA or transformation developments lead to an increase in the availability and capacity of expeditionary forces, an enhancement of national and multilateral peace support preparations, and the development of improved operational capabilities, it is possible that these developments could reduce some of the political doubts and practical obstacles associated with generating PSOs, and in turn make their creation more likely. However, ultimately the decision to establish a mission is a product of political, rather than military, considerations. Deficiencies in capacity. The size, composition, and capacity of PSOs are the product of which states choose to participate, and what and how much they choose to contribute. For political reasons, many states choose not to contribute to PSOs at all. Many other states choose to offer only small contributions (sometimes a mere handful of personnel). The bulk of contributions to any given PSO tend to come from a rather small set of countries. Troop contributions to UN-led peace support missions are dominated by developing world countries, many of which have large militaries but may lack specialized capabilities. Furthermore, even the most enthusiastic contributors to peace support missions do not have inexhaustible resources and may choose not to participate in some politically sensitive missions. As a result, PSOs have historically suffered from shortfalls in funding, troop contributions, troop quality, and specialized assets such as transportation and communications. The RMA and transformation agendas might promise improvements in the war-fighting capacity of the armed forces of the industrialized democracies, but this improvement does not necessarily translate into a reduction in the capacity deficiencies experienced by PSOs. Right authority and mandates. PSOs are heavily dependent on legal or moral authority and legitimacy at the political level. This authority and legitimacy sustains both international support for a mission and the support of the host

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government and society. Right authority and legitimacy are generally products of the character of the conflict in question (which may feature gross violations of human rights that create compelling moral pressures for intervention) and the legal authority of an international institution (essentially the United Nations Security Council). The authority and legitimacy of the vast majority of peace support and stability missions are laid out in a written mandate, which is the product of political negotiation, bargaining, and power politics between states. The mandate of a mission specifies its objectives and the parameters of mission activities. Essentially, the mandate defines the mission, and the mission can only change if the mandate is changed. These mandates are in turn the basis for the rules of engagement, which specify the terms under which force and other instruments may be used in the field. At the political level, where the defining character and parameters of missions are established, RMA and transformation concepts have little impact. Legitimacy and political support. Over time, the ability to sustain PSOs in the field is heavily dependent on political support among the leadership and population of contributing countries. Popular support can be undermined by doubts about the prospects of success, a lack of progress on stabilization and reconstruction, and casualties (both to national soldiers and local civilians). In addition, legitimacy is not only a matter of justness of cause, but also a matter of justness of conduct. In this respect, the legitimacy of PSOs is also determined by how operations (particularly military operations) are executed. The excessive use of firepower, destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure, and civilian casualties can all undermine local support for a foreign peace support presence. To the extent that certain technologies or techniques can reduce the potential for the misapplication of force, reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties, and reduce the intrusiveness of field operations, then the RMA and transformation agenda may contribute to the ability to maintain host support for a foreign presence. However, PSOs have been conducted for a long time and witnessed many technological developments and differences in the technical capacities of national contingents. The relationship between the conduct of operations and local support is determined primarily by how available technology is used, not by the intrinsic technical capacities of weapons systems and other equipment. State-building, nation-building, and peace-building. The ultimate objective of most contemporary PSOs is the establishment of the conditions for a longterm peace in a failed and/or war-torn state. This requires an international effort that goes beyond the cessation of hostilities and the establishment of order. Most PSOs are now mandated to participate in large-scale post-conflict reconstruction efforts, now referred to as state-building or nation-building (or, in the UN system, peace-building). These efforts are carried out by a multitude of international agencies and actors, requiring effective planning and coordination across a wide spectrum of activities from elections to police reform to economic development. RMA and transformation weapons and techniques may

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improve the ability of a foreign presence to maintain the order and stability required for the success of state-building, nation-building, and peace-building. However, military capabilities cannot provide electoral assistance, contribute to police training, or revitalize local economies. Reconstruction efforts, on which the success of a mission ultimately depends, are primarily political, social, and economic endeavors, and the RMA and transformation agenda is therefore of little relevance to this crucial aspect of PSOs. The Organizational Aspects of PSOs Interoperability in multilateral military operations. One of the signature characteristics of PSOs is their multinational composition. As a result, one of the most significant challenges facing PSOs is interoperability. To be effective PSOs require a high level of cooperation at the military level, which places a premium on the ability of many different national contingents to communicate effectively and coordinate their activities. The emphasis placed on enhancing command, control, and communications through the RMA and transformation agendas promises ongoing advances in interoperability that will benefit PSOs. However, advances in NCW may be largely irrelevant in the conduct of a peace mission if multinational partners are largely technically or doctrinally incapable of operating in a NCW environment. Furthermore, concerns about information and network security may actually decrease communication and coordination across national contingents and may in fact compromise the political will of NCW-capable countries to participate in multinational efforts. As Paul T. Mitchell points out, the twin requirements of network compatibility and information security create a barrier to information sharing in multinational operations. Interoperability is not just a matter of technical capacity, but of trust.56 The unwillingness to share information due to real or imagined concerns about operational security and preserving intelligence sources can promote both a political and operational unilateralism fundamentally antithetical to the conduct of effective multilateral missions. The RMA and transformation thus have a potentially corrosive implication for multinational peace support and stability operations. National command and operational control. A significant barrier to the effective and efficient use of military forces in PSOs is the ‘‘national caveats’’ or ‘‘red cards’’ imposed by some participating governments. Essentially, these caveats specify that the personnel contributed by a government will not participate in certain mission tasks or in certain geographic locations within an operation. These conditions are imposed by governments that wish to avoid the domestic political consequences of casualties, either because public support for a specific mission is weak or because the political culture of a country is unfamiliar with or opposed to peace support missions or certain kinds of missions. As a result, despite the existence of a formal chain of operational control under a force commander, the reality that governments retain national command over

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their contingents has meant that certain personnel will participate in certain operations, tasks, or initiatives only with the expressed approval of their governments. In Afghanistan, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission has struggled with national caveats that restrict the movement of NATO forces deployed in the north and the west (relatively stable parts of the country) to the south, where the insurgency is most active and where additional troops are most needed. While RMA and transformation initiatives may have increased the ability of NATO contingents to operate effectively together in the field, they have not removed the political obstacle of national caveats. The Operational Aspects of PSOs Expeditionary and rapid reaction capabilities. As noted earlier, the RMA and transformation agendas place a great deal of emphasis on force projection and expeditionary military capabilities. Improvements in these capabilities have the potential to increase the number and availability of military units for peace support and stability missions. Another potential benefit is improvements in rapid reaction capability. PSOs have been plagued by the slow deployment of military forces after the creation of a mission, with delays of as much as three to six months not uncommon. This has led to several attempts to improve the rapid reaction capability of the United Nations. NATO has moved in the same direction, with the NRF emerging as the latest incarnation of the effort to enhance the rapid deployment capacities of the alliance. The creation of expeditionary and rapid reaction capabilities and arrangements is a positive development for PSOs. However, a political decision by national governments is still required if expeditionary capabilities are to be deployed. And despite the advanced preparation for rapid deployment in multinational military arrangements, the basic prerogative of governments to ‘‘opt out’’ of any given contingency remains in place. Deployment profile. RMA and transformation concepts emphasize military deployments designed for HIC operations. There is a special emphasis on air power, and more recently, special operations forces. The deployment of ground forces is focused largely on the use of firepower and maneuver elements capable of achieving victory in mass mechanized warfare. This concept of operations is not suited to the objectives or characteristics of peace support and stability missions. In PSOs, the presence of military personnel serves a primarily political function. By deploying between the combatants or within a given geographic area, they serve as a deterrent to future hostilities, a resource for regional and local negotiation and mediation, a channel for communication, a visible sign of the commitment of third parties to a peace, and, if necessary, providers of order and security. ‘‘Boots on the ground’’ remain the signature feature of PSOs. Peace support missions require a physical presence on the ground and human to human communication, networking, and the development of relationships of trust and understanding. Interaction with the local population

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is a signature component of all forms of peacekeeping and stability operations. To the extent that combat operations may be required in PSOs, they take a form more analogous to counterinsurgency warfare. The use of force. The RMA and transformation place a great deal of emphasis on the delivery of firepower, especially precision firepower. However, the use of force (even the use of precision-guided munitions) in PSOs faces far more significant political constraints than in traditional HICs or even counterinsurgency warfare. While the use of force can serve to destroy or disrupt opponents or ‘‘spoilers,’’ the inevitable collateral damage and civilian deaths can alienate local and international opinion, draw a PSO into hostilities, and increase the vulnerability of PSO personnel and foreign staff to retaliation. Both the RMA and Transformation place a great deal of emphasis on ‘‘battlespace awareness’’ to remove the proverbial ‘‘fog of war’’ from the battlefield. In PSOs there is no battlefield to be revealed, no battlespace to dominate. For the most part, combatants and spoilers take the form of light infantry operating in small, dispersed units. Lacking mass in the traditional military sense, they are able to take advantage of available terrain and population centers for concealment and evasion. As a result, they are far less vulnerable to detection and attack by RMA technologies than are traditional force structures. Stephen Biddle’s analysis of the war in Afghanistan is revealing, stressing the ability of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces to adapt to the introduction of U.S. firepower by utilizing terrain and technique.57 Even when relevant military targets can be found, attacking them may be politically undesirable. As Colin Gray has pointed out, Stability operations need to be understood as integral to counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine. In order for that to happen, the armed forces have to grasp the most vital differences between regular and irregular warfare. In particular, they need to understand, and act on the understanding, that chasing and eviscerating bad guys, though probably good for soldiers’ careers, is strictly a secondary concern.58

Information technology. Several studies have examined the relationship between information technology and improving peace support and stability operations. A U.S. study identified a range of information and related technologies suitable for PSOs. These included communications, crowd control, mine clearance, non-lethal weapons, and training systems. The study argued that these technologies could increase the effectiveness of peace support missions by reducing costs, personnel requirements, and casualties.59 Improved information gathering, dissemination, and communications capacities also carry the promise of reducing misperceptions and actions based on incomplete or faulty information. In PSOs, a premium is placed on accurate information not only about the disposition of combatants and analysis of their capacities and intent, but also on social and cultural factors that are crucial to any effort to engage in negotiation, mediation, or conflict management. To the extent that advanced technologies can help provide that information, the benefits to PSOs would be notable.

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However, in her examination of information technology in PSOs, Donna G. Boltz argues that ‘‘[t]he pace of [information technology] development in the second half of the twentieth century clearly has outrun its application in peace support operations.’’60 Boltz argues that national governments have devoted insufficient attention to information technologies and PSOs. Meanwhile, the United Nations is unable to assume leadership in incorporating information technologies into PSOs due to political, organizational, and financial constraints. A focus on high technology also obscures the fact that many of the technologies that have proved their worth in PSOs are scarcely revolutionary, including the operation of radio stations and the distribution of cheap radios. Finally, information technology alone cannot improve the negotiation and mediation skills required for conflict management at the field level in PSOs. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The intelligence gathering and ‘‘real-time’’ surveillance and reconnaissance technologies of the RMA and transformation concepts offer considerable potential for PSOs. When Kofi Annan was Under-Secretary General of Peacekeeping Operations, he recognized the potential benefits of technologies such as remote sensors and satellites for peace operations.61 Advances in surveillance and reconnaissance technologies promise to enhance observation of ceasefire lines, demilitarized zones, refugee camps, and safe areas, and key infrastructure points such as airports, bridges, and pipelines.62 In favorable terrain these technologies can also be used to detect troop concentrations, track refugee flows, and determine the location of atrocities or mass graves. Such technologies have the political advantage of being less visible and intrusive.63 The use of such technology can also contribute to confidence-building measures and transparency, as well as reinforcing the deterrent effect of a peace operation. As Gerald Yonas observes, ‘‘Data collected through sensor or surveillance systems can help increase the confidence of the parties to an agreement or it can provide operational intelligence for preventing violence.’’64 However, political opposition may limit the actual availability and use of some technologies. For example, the long-standing allergy to intelligence gathering at the United Nations poses an obstacle to the formal inclusion of more intelligence gathering capacities in UN-led missions. Furthermore, in cases where sovereignty considerations are a political constraint and where high levels of suspicion of a foreign presence exist, many of these technologies may be unacceptable to the host state or the local population and leadership. In addition, the question of who interprets the information and has access to the raw data is a significant political issue in multilateral operations of all kinds. In PSOs the political sensitivity of information analysis is magnified. Not only is information gathering and analysis subject to multiple political, social, or cultural interpretations, suspicions (real or imagined) that such interpretations are politically motivated and manipulative in intent can poison the atmosphere and create or reinforce distrust among contributing states. Finally, the mere gathering, storing, and disseminating of information does not create knowledge or

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understanding or effective decision making in conventional military operations. It is even less likely to do so in PSOs. The effectiveness of new surveillance and reconnaissance technologies in peace support and stabilization missions is more than just a function of the technical capacity of the equipment. It is also a function of the ability of intelligence staffs to interpret and collate the information in a peace support rather than a war-fighting context.65 Training. The RMA and transformation concepts place a high premium on training systems that emphasize high technology and traditional military operations, marginalizing training and simulation for operations short of HIC. The result is necessarily technical but excessively Manichean training that provides little guidance in the subtleties of occupation, counterinsurgency, or peace support missions. It is an axiom in most of the peacekeeping literature that a good peacekeeper necessarily requires the training of a war-fighting soldier. But it is also the case that a trained war-fighting soldier is not necessarily a good peacekeeper. PSOs place a unique set of demands on militaries. They must cope with the already formidable challenges of providing a safe and secure environment and conducting counterinsurgency style operations when required. They must also carry out a large array of diverse tasks which are outside, or at the margins, of their training regimen. They must operate within the rules of engagement established by the mission and their national capitals, and within the social and cultural milieu of the local and regional environment. The scope of the demands placed upon military personnel is such that training regimens and manuals and supplementary mission specific training cannot prepare soldiers for every eventuality. As a result, background knowledge, education, and life experiences (military or otherwise) become the basis for some actions, sometimes with negative or disastrous consequences. The experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has sparked some self-awareness within the U.S. military establishment of the neglect of counterinsurgency in doctrine and training. This shortcoming was recognized by senior military commanders, including General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Army training establishment and the Command and General Staff College (subsequently appointed to command U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007), who remarked that ‘‘the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not, in truth, the wars for which we were best prepared in 2001; however, they are the wars we are fighting and they are clearly the kind of wars we must master.’’66 The focus of the general’s article, it should be noted, was on insurgency and not peace support, although several of his core fourteen recommendations are relevant for the conduct of PSOs. The need for enhanced ‘‘language skills and cultural awareness’’ was recognized in the 2006 QDR.67 However, there is a danger that the self-awareness of the shortfalls in U.S. doctrine, training, and preparation as revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan will extend mostly to insurgency warfare and counterinsurgency operations. Given the military’s focus on combat operations, this emphasis is understandable. However, PSOs are about more than counterinsurgency. While there is overlap, a renewed emphasis on insurgency warfare and even its

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inclusion in subsequent RMA and transformation thinking does not mean that the military forces of any country will be adequately trained or prepared for peace support and stability missions, or that the RMA and transformation concepts will be systematically adjusted to account for such operations. Peace-building and reconstruction. The long-term goal of most peace support and stability operations is a long-term peace. The national reconstruction and peace-building effort required to achieve this objective is primarily a political, social, and economic endeavor. It is an axiom among senior Canadian officials in Afghanistan that there can be no development without security and no security without development. While RMA and transformation weapons and techniques may improve the ability of a foreign presence to maintain the order and stability required for the success of reconstruction and peace-building, these capabilities cannot enhance the prospects for successful elections, contribute to security sector and judicial reform, or revitalize the economy. Hans Binnendijk and Richard Kugler have suggested the establishment of a NATO Stabilization and Reconstruction Force alongside the NRF.68 In 2005, a proposal was floated arguing for the creation of a Stabilization and Reconstruction Joint Command, a military organization capable of ‘‘filling the gap’’ between the end of major combat operations and onset of nation-building efforts by civilian agencies.69 Whether these or other initiatives come to pass, the RMA or transformation concepts will not play a significant role in the development of post-conflict reconstruction or state-building capacities.

CONCLUSIONS: PSOs AND THE FUTURE OF THE RMA AND TRANSFORMATION CONCEPTS The RMA and transformation concepts have traditionally marginalized peace support and stability operations. In the wake of the experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq, and as transformation concepts work their way through the multilateral environment of NATO, there may be an opportunity to significantly raise the profile of peace support and stability operations in the civilian defense and military establishments of the United States and other industrialized democracies. Already, the Afghanistan and Iraq experiences have increased calls for improvements in political and organizational capacities to deploy such missions. Interagency cooperation and consultation measures are under review at both the civilian and military levels. There are efforts underway to expand network centrism to a wider group of agencies and organizations and actors. The importance of expanding training and simulation regimens to develop a wider range of competencies is evident. There is a renewed interest in counterinsurgency expertise within the U.S. military, and a growing consensus that security and development efforts must be conducted in parallel and in coordination with each other. However, in the United States there is a danger that a backlash may set in if domestic political pressure for ‘‘no more Iraqs’’ and the military’s

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disgust at being asked to carry out missions outside the traditional war-fighting rubric combine to create a larger political effort to avoid engagement in such contingencies in the future. This would be unfortunate. An ‘‘Iraq syndrome’’ era of U.S. military isolation from peace support and stability operations will only serve to reinforce the unfortunate intellectual dominance of HIC in U.S. strategic thought and doctrine. The RMA and transformation will have a positive impact on the ability of the militaries of the industrialized democracies to conduct certain specific aspects of peace support and stability operations, particularly in the areas of expeditionary capacity, interoperability, and surveillance technologies. However, the RMA and transformation are not suitable conceptual or policy foundations for developing PSO capabilities or doctrine. While the RMA and transformation remain largely focused on securing battlefield superiority, the military component of PSOs remains defined by political and social factors, not military-technical ones. As a result, the RMA and transformation have had a negative impact on the intellectual, policy, and operational development of PSO doctrine and capacities. In the future, the RMA and transformation will not have a revolutionary or transformative impact on peace support or stability operations. In fact, the opposite is more likely: peace support and stability operations of the kind encountered in the troubled campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan will have more of an impact on the RMA and transformation agendas than the other way around. However, this impact is likely to be felt primarily in the form of a renewed emphasis on counterinsurgency operations, with the effect of continuing the marginalization of PSOs. Since the first peacekeeping missions early in the Cold War and through the ‘‘second-generation’’ peacekeeping experience of the 1990s, the armed forces of the industrialized democracies have acquired an ever increasing body of experience, knowledge, and capacity to conduct PSOs. Repeatedly called upon to take part in PSOs, military personnel continue to demonstrate that they are capable of carrying out such missions. If the armed forces of the industrialized democracies are to improve their capacity to carry out PSOs, there must be a systematic effort to mainstream peace support and stability missions into doctrine, training, and force structure. This is especially true in the United States, where the marginalization of PSOs has been most evident. Mainstreaming PSOs in the civilian and military defense community in the United States (and other countries) will require champions at the highest levels of government and the armed forces. It remains to be seen whether such champions will emerge in the aftermath of the Afghanistan and Iraq experiences. This is not an argument for the exclusion or marginalization of preparations for high-intensity, high-technology warfare. Instead, it is an appeal for balance in military planning and preparation, a balance that is sorely needed given the frequency and significance of peace support contingencies, especially since the end of the Cold War. A true transformation agenda for the future should position PSOs on an equal footing with traditional high-intensity war fighting in civilian and military planning.

6

Transformation or Back to Basics? Counterinsurgency Pugilism and Peace-Building Judo David Last1

The talk of revolution and transformation in military circles after the end of the Cold War got fresh impetus with 9/11 and the messy campaigns of America’s global war on terror.2 Has the revolution in military affairs (RMA) contributed to thinking about peace and stability? My yardstick for success is the mantra of professional officers: the management of violence and, in particular, the preservation of peace, order, and good government at home and abroad. When military doctrine and practice are prepared for that task, they will have been appropriately transformed. To get there, we have to put aside technological panaceas and distractions and get back to basics. Violence does not occur in a social vacuum. To deal with it, we must focus on society, not technology. I begin by considering RMA and counterinsurgency writing. Because literature of the late twentieth century is set against a background of globalization and neo-liberal expansion, like that of the late nineteenth, I explore the idea of global civil war and conclude that recent thinking is flawed in isolating violence from its context. This is not new, but follows four threads running through security thinking. Getting back to basics, we need a model for the social context of violence, and I find this in development theory and World Bank studies. This leads to deductions about globalization, urbanization, and the resurgence of primitive warfare, three trends with which security transformation must come to terms. I conclude with six seeds for the transformation of military capacity to stabilize and manage violence. Transformation starts with an understanding of the social context of violence, working with social forces for cohesion, not seeking out enemies to punch into submission. The terms in use can be barriers to understanding. My understanding of the RMA is shaped by official U.S. doctrine, particularly Joint Vision 2010 and Joint Vision 2020, in which information dominance combines with technological

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supremacy to achieve victory. RMA literature is remarkable for advocating integration while focusing in practice on a narrow band of technical and military questions, which assume that the world speaks English, that culture can be put in a box for soldiers to use, and that technology is independent of politics and society. Peacekeeping is third-party intervention to manage violence, and I want to distinguish between intervention with the consent of the principal parties to the conflict and without it. Intervention to keep the peace without local consent and cooperation is imperial policing rather than peacekeeping. Recent work on counterinsurgency addresses practical difficulties, but it is in understanding the sociology and political economy of protracted violence that we will find the inspiration for a real transformation in the way we manage violence. Counterinsurgency presupposes an insurgent enemy and inevitably includes a large measure of pugilism no matter how much its proponents speak of hearts and minds and the primacy of a political solution. Peacekeeping assumes that the belligerents are allies and that violent conflict is the enemy, turning the exercise into one of directed momentum rather than oppositional force, more judo than boxing. Of course, sometimes there are spoilers of peace who need to be punched into submission, but understanding how we identify these enemies, and how hard we have to hit them, demands a finer understanding of the political, economic, and social causes of violence than we have generally demonstrated in counterinsurgency wars. I will begin with a selective review of some recent writing about RMA and counterinsurgency. This body of work is remarkable for avowing the primacy of the political, without applying any serious academic tools to understand it. I think this is because of the backgrounds of the people who write about military and strategic topics, and this leads me to describe four themes in military thinking—on war, revolution, counterinsurgency, and peaceful change—none of which has drawn extensively on social science research into violence, and each of which has culminated in a dead end. The third part of my argument is that globalization, urbanization, and the revival of primitive warfare provide an impetus to rethink these four themes in a more integrated way. Finally, I suggest that ideas of social cohesion, mimesis, and peace building as a form of nonviolent insurgency might be ideas that fill some of the gaps in recent thinking about counterinsurgency.

RMA WRITING The RMA has its parents in the birth of the U.S. Air Force and military-industrial complex, the strategic air campaigns of the Second World War, and Douhet’s atavistic fantasies of destruction with impunity which spawned them.3 The air force–centric RMA has made a generally self-serving and dysfunctional contribution to the management of violence.

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RMA literature is an intellectual fad. Using library holdings of a representative university and Internet book offers as proxy measures, peacekeeping titles average a few a year for the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, then show a jump that is sustained to the present. Insurgency and counterinsurgency, a narrower topic (and a subject whose authors appear to have shown more imagination in choosing titles), has fluctuated modestly over the years, with a dip in the early 1990s, when peacekeeping books started to rise. Insurgency and counterinsurgency library holdings are larger than those on the RMA. Only a few titles include the words ‘‘insurgency’’ or ‘‘counterinsurgency’’ up until the late 1990s. There is a big bulge around the millennium, and then the number drops off again after the first few years of the new century. Writing on the RMA originates overwhelmingly within the United States. In the sample search, no library books and only a handful of books for sale originated with non-American publishers. The publishers are also indicative of air force influence. Air University Press, the U.S. Air Force, and RAND Corporation (with long links to the U.S. Air Force) account for almost a third of the published RMA works in the sample. Although not heavily represented in the sample of library holdings and internet offerings, staff papers from American War Colleges and commercially oriented studies from industry account for another large group of RMA publications available in military libraries and professional collections that circulate primarily amongst the cognoscenti of the aerospace and communications industries and the smart-weapons complex. RMA literature seldom addresses the interplay of political, economic, and social factors: ‘‘much writing on military technological change in general and the RMA in particular is flawed precisely because it tends to look at systems and capabilities too much in isolation and abstracted from the context of their use.’’4 Nor is there much evidence of RMA approaches to interagency cooperation, either within the United States or with international organizations or allies. There are some exceptions. Vandergriff targets the army personnel system as most urgently in need of revolution in order to conduct new operations, including those that involve talking to non-American soldiers and civilians.5 Similarly, Mahnken and Fitzsimmons focus on officer attitudes within the U.S. Navy, one of the most technologically dependent services.6 This is one of relatively few RMA sources that acknowledges a range of serious non-military threats and complications to future operations, such as those identified by Proteus 2020, or the ominous Chinese work Warfare beyond Rules, which seems to threaten to do to us what we did to them during the Opium Wars.7 That social collapse, epidemic disease, climate change, organized crime, and even global trade patterns are significant confounders of future military operations does not appear in most RMA tracts. Benbow confirms that a variety of asymmetrical threats challenge the arguments of RMA enthusiasts.8 Rochlin and Demchak are thus unusual in applying theories of network-centric warfare and information dominance to social situations.9 Demchak, writing from the perspective of public affairs and policy analysis, discusses the preparation of the

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Israeli Defense Forces to deal with wars of disruption. Rochlin uses RMA ideas to explain the relative success of rebels in Colombia and establishment forces in Mexico. What makes these authors’ works useful is that they go beyond technology to consider its interaction with broader patterns of society, something that so little RMA literature does. On the whole, then, RMA literature is technology-centric, originates overwhelmingly in the United States, and fails to acknowledge changing patterns of conflict, or political-economic-social correlates of conflict.10 A small number of RMA authors link technology to its social context, but faced with the realities of modern war, the vaunted revolution in military affairs can be seen for what it might have been at its outset: a marketing ploy for the military-industrial complex. Has it contributed anything? Ideas about integrated intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition, global communications, continuous over-watch, and (more recently) reach-back to specialized knowledge are relevant to the problems of contemporary warfare. But the whiz-bang three-dimensional artists’ renditions of missile defenses and precision aerial attacks do not add much to the debate; they are a distraction from the important variables in managing violence. COUNTERINSURGENCY AND SMALL-WARS LITERATURE The literature on small wars has clear parents in post–Second World War decolonization and the containment of communism, and grandparents in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonization and imperial policing. Small wars are not universally fought by expeditionary armies on foreign soil, but that has usually been the case for Western armies, with Irish and Indian wars the notable exceptions (unless you conceive of colonists as foreigners following expeditionary armies). Both British and American doctrine, interestingly, consider small wars, counterinsurgency, and peacekeeping as similar types of conflict, occurring within a framework of rule of law and political constraints. Peacekeeping has generally permitted a veto by the parties to the conflict and requires their consent to a status of forces agreement. A RAND Corporation collection of 2001 marks something of an intersection between counterinsurgency (COIN) and RMA thinking. Networks and Netwars includes multiple references to Internet mobilization, hacking, and cyberwar, but is really focused on the social dynamics of networks and gangs that use this new technology.11 The footnotes are mainly secondary sources from police journals and news stories of contemporary mayhem, and there is no evidence of the research literature on the sociology of violence.12 The four-decade legacy of empirical studies of group violence and social behavior is not in evidence. The absence of any work on the sociology of gangs is an obvious gap. In their intuitive insights and creative categorizations, the authors seem to replicate some of the work on gangs and insurgency done by Kitson in the 1970s, based

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on the counterinsurgency experiences of Kenya and Malaya; facsimile editions and reprints of the earlier works began to reappear after 9/11.13 But like the earlier works, Arquilla, Ronfeldt, and others eschew the evidence of academic research. Writing about counterinsurgency without referring to the sociology of conflict and violence is like writing about public health without referring to sanitation and hygiene; clinical practice alone does not answer questions about cause and effect or public policies that should be explored. Nagl’s study of organizational learning by the British and American armies in response to insurgency is more impressive.14 Informed by organizational theory, Nagl describes British adaptation to the Malaya crisis and the less successful American learning in Vietnam. He attributes the difference to decentralization, innovation, and the absence of doctrine in the British army in Malaya. But, ‘‘More important than the tactical innovations … is the strategic vision required to put the military component of a counterinsurgency campaign in proper perspective vis-a-vis the economic and political actions necessary to defeat insurgents.’’15 In The Sling and the Stone, Hammes also finds shortfalls.16 He ascribes parenthood of fourth-generation warfare (4GW) to Mao, adapted by the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, and the first and second Intifadas. He describes AlQaeda as a transnational network and the Afghan war as a tribal network, and attacks the inadequacy of technological solutions: ‘‘Much to the surprise of the Joint Vision 2020 proponents, the Iraqis have proven largely immune to our technology.’’17 His prescription takes us back to the putative nature of 4GW: To achieve success we must be prepared to fight across the spectrum of political, economic, social, and military spheres. We not only have to win battles, we have to fill the vacuum behind them.… We have to establish banking, currency, customs, public health organizations, public sanitation, air traffic control, business regulation, a system of taxation, and every other process needed for running a modern society.18

The enormity of the task, and the disorganized grab-bag of projects, illustrates that not much thought has gone into techniques for combining political, economic, and social strategies; the remaining sixty pages disappoint. Hammes’ sources are better than Arquilla’s and Ronfeldt’s, but there is still a preponderance of secondary military thinking and no evidence of empirical social science. Feirabend, Organski, Midlarsky, Gurr, Azar, Rummel, Singer, and other classics with hard data about the political, economic, and social correlates of violence appear to have gone unread. Fishel and Manwaring have digested the social science literature and applied it to their thinking about military doctrine, though much does not appear directly in the footnotes to Uncomfortable Wars Revisited.19 Manwaring and Fishel worked in General Max Thurman’s Small Wars Operational Research Directorate (SWORD) of U.S. Southern Command in the early 1980s, looking for insights into the correlates of success in counterinsurgency, to be applied to

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ongoing wars in Central and South America. The seven dimensions of the SWORD model form an integrated whole, but legitimacy keeps turning up as most important. In the afterword to this volume, Ambassador Ed Corr notes, ‘‘Legitimacy is statistically the most important dimension of the paradigm. In the literature derived from the SWORD Model, the emphasis is on populacebased governance as a means to legitimacy.’’20 But this is not the same as insisting on Western-style democracy. It does mean the primacy of the political, integrated with economic and social approaches. On the primacy of the political, there is remarkable consensus, though the nature of the political and its relationship with other factors are not articulated. Returning to the thinking and practice of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we can see where the scope for development is and we can deduce why it has not occurred. As colonial governors of the 1890s, the French soldiers Gallieni and Lyautey were responsible not only for the security and policing of colonial territory, but also for its economic integration with France and for an overarching ‘‘civilizing mission,’’ which encompassed health, education, and welfare (albeit in paternalistic colonial style). Gallieni adapted colonial policing to the indigenous political structures of French Indochina. Learning from him, Lyautey abandoned Bugeaud’s punitive practice of the razzia in French North Africa and focused instead on developing a middle class with values and interests congruent with those of the colonialists.21 Similarly, in recovering from the Boer War, Lord Milner’s ‘‘kindergarten’’ of young Oxford graduates developed constitutional frameworks, rules for local governance, tax laws, and police policies, making difficult compromises with recalcitrant Boers in the interests of stability.22 Baden-Powell was instrumental in developing the South African Police, a compromise between early twentieth-century liberal commonwealth values and an acknowledgement of the racial insecurity of the Boers.23 Callwell was in the thick of this evolution as he wrote his seminal book, Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice,24 but it is as illuminating for what it omits as for what it includes. Baden-Powell gets not a mention for his policing efforts, only for his cavalry exploits. The flying columns developed by Bugeaud and abandoned by Lyautey are lionized by Callwell as the last word in strategy directed against guerrilla antagonists, without reference to Lyautey’s 1900 description of their limitations if not accompanied by stabilizing administrative bases.25 The expanding tache d’huile (oil spot) of peace and stability under effective governance gets no mention. Callwell’s Small Wars is about the tactics of fighting, not the practice of nation building or stabilization; Baden-Powell is of interest while riding and shooting, but not when registering and resettling. This isolation of intellectual effort was one of the most pernicious characteristics of early writing about small wars and continued as the twentieth century progressed. French military thinking on stabilization was eclipsed by obsession with the big wars of Europe, and literature in the English-speaking world became increasingly specialized, as ‘‘practical’’ soldiers raised on military

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history overlooked social science research and the context of the wars they studied at a tactical level. This vertical isolation of the military tactics of counterinsurgency from politics, economics, and society is matched by a horizontal divide, which continues to separate the tactics of imperial wars from their strategic context.26

GLOBAL CIVIL WAR? Late-nineteenth-century insurgencies were seen by Marxists as part of a global pattern, a ‘‘war between the biggest slave-holders for the maintenance and consolidation of slavery.’’27 What about the twentieth century? This analysis actually fits quite well with American neo-liberal and geopolitical strategists like Feinberg and Barnett. A Latin American specialist at the U.S. Overseas Development Council, Feinberg wrote presciently in 1983 that while the Carter and Reagan administrations had been rebuffed in efforts to impose American solutions on the Middle East and Latin America, globalization and the penetration of third world economies were creating common interests between multinational corporations and third world elites. The world was less controllable, but fundamentally safer for Western-based economic interests, and economics was the Soviet Achilles’ heel.28 More recently, Barnett has been influential through his work at the Naval War College and the Pentagon. His books, the Pentagon’s New Map (2004) and Blueprint for Action (2005), describe the interconnected world that replaced Cold War bipolarity, and the need for different kinds of forces to manage security: a ‘‘leviathan force’’ to maintain an international order in America’s interests, and a ‘‘system maintenance’’ force to manage insecurity in the margins.29 Blueprint for Action argues for increasing the integration and ‘‘connectedness’’ of parts of the world that do not currently benefit from the global economy, while simultaneously attacking those who resist integration and reject liberal values. Feinberg and Barnett provide just two examples of neo-liberal worldviews and manifestos. Key elites in third world countries identify with and benefit from the neo-liberal order, while pointing to oppressive regimes, rising inequality, and the concentration of wealth (both within states and between North and South). Historical sociologist Wallerstein coined the terms ‘‘systemic forces’’ and ‘‘anti-systemic forces’’ to describe these pressures, and historian Stavrianos describes the evolution of the third world and the continuity of struggles to escape oppression.30 In this narrative, globalization leads to both an increase and a concentration of wealth. Resistance, insurgencies, and nationalist uprisings are part of a pattern stimulated by exploitation. The small wars described by Callwell, the small wars of the 1940 U.S. Marine Corps Manual, and the peripheral wars of the late twentieth century are all related. Nineteenth-century globalization ended with the First World War, and twentieth-century globalization began with the deregulation of the 1970s. The

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continuation of a globalizing neo-liberal world order cannot be taken for granted, and could be reversed by democratic action, environmental concerns, or new trading blocs, but in the meantime, the inexorable logic of capitalism in global markets will create greater inequality and alienation.31 These effects are mitigated by the political left, but less so in a neo-liberal age.32 Insurgencies and war economies can often be seen as rational responses to global processes, which make it increasingly difficult for people to preserve their identities and meet basic human needs.33 The narrative of global civil war is significant for understanding the consequences of globalization, and the political and economic strategies for managing accompanying violence. Neo-liberal formulas may generate wealth, but without political and social strategies to contain their deleterious effects, they will also exacerbate violence. Political economists Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan have demonstrated in their impressive study of Israeli political economy that the ‘‘Washington consensus’’ of deregulation, trade liberalization, privatization, and minimal state involvement has pushed the Israeli economy away from kibbutzim, unions, and state corporations towards transnational ownership and integration in the global economy, with the attendant formation of a ruling capitalist class.34 How Israel deals with the Palestinians, how its neighbors deal with it, and how the Palestinians respond to their increasingly desperate circumstances are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but these questions have been analytically separated by concern over Palestinian terrorism. Reconnecting them is part of the challenge of getting back to basics in our thinking about how to manage security.

GAPS IN RECENT THINKING RMA literature is oblivious to political, economic, and social factors. The small-wars and counterinsurgency literature avows their primacy in managing insurgencies or civil wars, but their military focus detracts. This brings us to the gaps in thinking that make it difficult to deal with protracted social violence. They are gaps in knowledge about the political economy and sociology of violence, areas that have long been addressed in the academic community but that rarely appear in the footnotes of military studies, and which seldom inform doctrine or practice, even when the best educated and best intentioned of military leaders are confronted with the most intractable of problems. So we have to ask, how did we paint ourselves into this corner?

FOUR CONTINUING THREADS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS The problem of managing violence has long roots. I suggest that there are four continuous threads of thinking about peace and violence that might be traced as far back as the 1592 Wappenhandlungenbuch.35 The first thread is war-fighting

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doctrine: how to use military force effectively, often written with political ends in mind, although the author’s thoughts were usually closer to the battlefield than the king’s chambers. Clausewitz, Jomini, Schlichting, Von Schlieffen, Moltke, Suvorov, and the post-Dupuy evolution of air-land battle are all in this tradition.36 A culminating point for this tradition was the technologically driven doctrinal revolution of air-land battle, which made American-led military power effectively invincible, but also inevitably disconnected from politics, of which war is a continuation. RMA thinking is in this tradition. The second thread emerges with revolutionary ideas, which spur men to violence, including major religious movements like the expansion of Islam, the reformation, counter-reformation, and totalitarian ideologies. Mohammed, Luther, Marx and Engels, Lenin, Mao, Sanguinetti, and Debray are examples of thinkers in this tradition. While it is mainly military writers addressing the first theme, it is mainly ideologues and philosophers writing on the second. Justifications for violence in support of change often originate with weakness rather than power, so these ideas have often been associated with innovations by the weak in their revolutionary struggles, propaganda of the deed, people’s wars, urban guerrillas, and so on. The third thread was largely a response to the effects of the second, and traces the evolution of counterinsurgency and police thinking. Like the first thread, this field tends to be dominated by practical men, often in uniform: Gallieni, Lyautey, and Calwell in the nineteenth century, and Gwynne, Galula, Trinquier, and Kitson in the twentieth. All these helped to catalogue the practical lessons of fighting insurgencies or policing empires, asking the question, ‘‘What do we do that works?’’ A common theme alluded to above is that these writers are more concerned with symptoms than with causes. A culminating point for this line of thinking was the SWORD project sponsored by General Max Thurman of the U.S. Southern Command in the 1980s and headed by Manwaring. It is a culminating point because the study brings together understanding of the political, economic, and social elements of insurgency and marks legitimacy as the central variable. But it cannot offer more insight without a better model of specific insurgencies, and here Manwaring and the SWORD project were impaired by their Delphic approach, which relied on respondents who had focused primarily on the military aspects of counterinsurgency struggles. This brings me to the fourth thread. If the first is about winning wars, the second about revolution, and the third about preserving order, then the fourth thread might be described as the management of change to minimize violence. It goes beyond ‘‘keeping the peace,’’ just as revolutionary theory goes beyond insurgency and terrorism. Grotius and Kant might be its progenitors, and the minds in the background of the Westphalian treaties might be among its early practitioners.37 The Congress of Vienna, the Congress of Berlin, and the Treaty of Versailles followed to consolidate the epistemic community of European diplomacy,38 punctuated by internal and imperial policing operations like the four-power intervention in Crete from 1896 to 1908.39 The League of Nations

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gave rise to Peace Observation and transition missions in the 1920s,40 and John Maynard Keynes’ work on the economic causes and consequences of war influenced the framers of the UN Charter, so that it was established with both a Security Council for political and military matters and a General Assembly and other organs and agencies to address economic and social problems, hoping to avoid a recurrence of the proximate causes of the First World War.41 Like the pre-Dupuy doctrine writers and counterinsurgency writing, early thinking about peacekeeping was largely a matter of practical soldiers observing and recording successful practice. Notwithstanding their common origin in 1956, the soldiers of early peacekeeping forces do not show any evidence of reading the Journal of Conflict Resolution. E. L. M. Burns, Indar Rikhye, and Michael Harbottle described the military dimension of peacekeeping; Ralph Bunche, Dag Hammarskjold, and Lester Pearson pioneered its diplomatic side; and the early thinkers of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development set out evolving theories of economic development against the background of East-West Cold War competition.42

BACK TO BASICS: VIOLENCE DOES NOT OCCUR IN A SOCIAL VACUUM While many recent authors acknowledge the primacy of the political, they seem incapable of getting beyond the military factors with which they are familiar. For all the insight in Smith’s Utility of Force, it tells us nothing of the effects of force on social cohesion, nor of the means for achieving the peace and order he avows to be the object of ‘‘war amongst the people.’’ To understand the resilience of social capital in the context of violence, the best work comes from the World Bank. Nat Coletta and Michelle Cullen of the World Bank’s Center for Conflict Prevention and Post-conflict Reconstruction drew on sociology and anthropology to compare the resilience to violence of communities in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Guatemala, including the sorts of social relations during and after protracted social conflict that permit or impede peaceful coexistence.43 This is a counterinsurgency goldmine ignored by the military community; it does not prescribe military action, yet it addresses precisely the factors necessary to rebuild peaceful communities after conflict. Social capital affects social cohesion. ‘‘Social cohesion’’ refers to the absence of latent conflict (for example along racial, class, or ethnic lines), and to the presence of strong social bonds measured by levels of trust, norms of reciprocity, institutions to bridge differences (civil society), and institutions to resolve conflict (democracy, judiciary, independent media, entrenched rights, and safeguards for groups and individuals). Figure 6.1 illustrates the components of the concept (arrows added to indicate inter-connection). Part of the criticism of the concept arises in development circles because the World Bank espouses it, but it has also been stretched to be too all encompassing, and begins to lose its utility.44 Woolcock’s refinement is to distinguish vertical and horizontal social capital, and Colletta and Cullen build on this. It

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Figure 6.1. Social capital and social cohesion. Derived from Violent Conflict and the Transformation of Social Capital: Lessons from Cambodia, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Somalia (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000).

helps them to describe the role of civil society in moving from low social cohesion and fragmented states prone to violence towards high social cohesion and functional societies that have the capacity to manage conflict without resorting to violence. Inequality and exclusion do not, by themselves, lead to violence. The risk of violence is increased when these factors are exacerbated by manipulation or social fragmentation. Social capital can be perverted to undermine social cohesion and foster violence for the gain of one group at the expense of another, and the real contribution of the World Bank studies has been to describe the forms of social capital that contribute to peace and stability rather than exclusion and violence. Figure 6.2 reproduces Colletta and Cullen’s understanding of vertical and horizontal social capital, with three inserted deductions (shaded). For anyone seeking a transformation of military capacity to stabilize and manage violence, the concepts of social cohesion and social capital are more useful than a concentration on technology. Defining social capital in the context of a conflict allows measurement of the effects of violence and evaluation of interventions to stabilize a society. Indicators like community events, informal networks, village leadership, and links with external agents were used in the studies of Cambodia. Proxies for social capital in Rwanda included trust of neighbors, intermarriage, mechanisms for information exchange, and mutual cooperation. In Somalia and Guatemala, social responsibility indicators included the diversification of civil

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Figure 6.2. Violence and social cohesion. Adapted from Violent Conflict and the Transformation of Social Capital: Lessons from Cambodia, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Somalia (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000).

society organizations and the quality of collective actors, and social initiative indicators included material factors like mail and phone service, financial services, and qualifications of public employees.45 Using indicators like these, we have a much clearer picture of the correlates of violent conflict and resistance to it.

THE NEED TO REVISIT OLD THEMES We now need to revisit some themes to help frame the combination of theories and practical insights that will be useful for the future. These three themes point to areas that are not well developed in current military thinking. The themes are globalization, urbanization, and the return of primitive warfare. What binds these three themes together is the failure of military thinking to seek and incorporate necessary social science expertise, except in the most rudimentary and ad hoc ways. Global War or Global Peace? Globalization presents both threats to and opportunities for stabilization because of the ways in which it affects social cohesion. It can undermine the

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capacity of states to establish markets and build national cohesion, but it offers new sources of collective identity that can obviate anachronistic conflict. When Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots are all European citizens with common European institutions, there are new ways of managing the divided island’s conflicts. Non-state global actors like non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational corporations can bring employment and wealth and cultural change that may compensate for the incapacity of weak groups in a globalizing economy. Globalization is the restructuring of the world as a whole, ‘‘a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people are becoming increasingly aware that they are receding.’’46 The world systems perspective describes this as a function of the expansion and deepening of a global capitalist economy,47 but the impact that generates conflict is social and cultural. If globalization is related to widely dispersed resistance and unrest (a global civil war), then neo-liberal prescriptions for generating prosperity are part of the problem. Divorced from mechanisms to mitigate market failures, and combined with military ventures that enforce Western access and protect Western interests, they are part of the problem. This suggests two components to a counterinsurgency or stabilization strategy. The first entails exogenous mechanisms to manage the threat of exploitation. The second entails support to local culture as an antidote to the alienation of global pressures. Whether it is a jihad against godless Western culture or a revolution against capitalism, ‘‘global civil war’’ is an attractive rallying cry but a dysfunctional strategy for oppressed and marginalized groups. By militarizing what are essentially social and economic problems, it tends to bring precisely the wrong resources to bear, deterring investment and integration when these might contribute to stability, prosperity, and human security. We should consider both the individual and collective implications of this. Shimoni and Bergmann indicate that multinational corporations provide an alternate source of identity for individuals. As local managers start to work for corporations, they retain their core culture, but also develop hybrid, multinational, cultural attributes, which enhance communication within the organization and enrich the lives of the individual managers.48 The collectivist criticism is that although globalization may benefit some individuals, global penetration swamps and destroys local culture, reduces autonomy, and usually entails extractive industries and environmental damage, which benefit the powerful few at the expense of the poor majority. This criticism is especially germane in weak states, conflict zones, or peripheral regions with few institutions to confront corporate action. Corporations are bigger, richer, and better connected than many national governments, let alone subnational or local governments. Whether they deal directly,49 or through informal arrangements with the shadow economy,50 they are in a position to alter the power structures and economies quickly and perhaps irrevocably.51

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Referring back to Figure 6.2, some argue that without global governance and with weak international civil society, global markets simply reduce the capacity of states to serve their populations.52 World Bank economists Gerson and Colletta suggest a framework for peace building and reconstruction using the private sector, but argue, ‘‘Privatizing peace must mean more than simply opening up channels for rapacious companies.’’ They suggest that just as aid NGOs should focus on sustainable livelihoods rather than just saving lives, reconstruction efforts should build employment and local economic capacity. They cite Ericsson Response, aimed at putting cell-phone technology quickly into disaster areas, and building on it to achieve a permanent communications infrastructure, which may be publicly owned or regulated.53 They propose a Peace Transition Council (PTC) made up of business leaders and NGOs, incorporated in the District of Columbia as a non-profit corporation, and financed primarily from business contributions.54 Gerson and Colletta describe the PTC as a single organization with global scope, seeking to use the forces of globalization for inclusion and development in conflict zones and working with agencies like the United Nations and the World Bank.55 The argument for centralized decision making is that the global economy takes expertise and resources to manage and wealth to mobilize. A global PTC would open up markets and business opportunities in the wake of conflict; however, to be useful, it would have to be a creature of the business world. The balance envisioned by Gerson and Colletta would come from a trusteeship role for the United Nations and the World Bank. Key roles for the United Nations as ‘‘trustee-occupant’’ include establishing the legitimacy of local authorities, clarifying property ownership rules (important to reverse systematic efforts to displace and disenfranchise a population), identify sources of capital, and pick projects.56 Perhaps most importantly, one would expect the UN ‘‘trustee-occupant’’ to have an oversight role to prevent exploitation by ‘‘rapacious companies.’’ Swiss researchers Wenger and Mockli follow Gerson and Colletta, suggesting six roles for business.57 They argue that conflict prevention has foundered because governments lack the will and NGOs lack the means, but hope to find both in the private sector, under ‘‘tri-sector governance’’: public sector, private sector, and civil society. Businesses can help both by engaging in their normal lines of business and by transferring private sector knowledge and practices to local actors. In the first category, business ventures may be commercial, semicommercial, or non-commercial. In the second, they can engage in funding, inkind support, and strategic philanthropy. Surprising in a book from academics studying the security sector is the close reading of business literature: the most important factor in private sector development is an enabling and competitive business environment. This includes sound macroeconomic policies, low inflation, fiscal stability, stable exchange rates, reliable market institutions, a legal framework for commerce, secure ownership, enforcement mechanisms, and means to promote transactions (such as banks, markets, and stock exchanges).

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Credit, physical infrastructure, transport, communications, fuel, and power supplies complete the list of basic business requirements. It is a long list, but they point out that the private sector can help to generate many of these, particularly if it is not confronted with an unreliable or hostile public sector, an arbitrary or opaque administration, corruption, inflation, expropriation, lawlessness, and so on. Wenger and Mockli disagree with Gerson and Colletta’s prescription for a centralized peace council and argue instead for case-by-case arrangements and an ad hoc division of labor, but the concept of tri-sector governance echoes Gerson and Colletta’s assertion that there must be some mechanism to prevent exploitation of weak states and immature markets by rapacious and powerful companies. Global markets are not as big a problem if they are perceived locally to be fair and accessible, but making them so requires external support to governance that restrains and shapes their impact, whether that comes in the form of Gerson and Colletta’s unified PTC or Wenger and Mockli’s ad hoc local arrangements. With a suitable governance structure, the private sector in a globalizing economy should be positioned to support both peace building and conflict prevention. But without such a governance structure, we may see tactics evolving in Gaza and Kandahar today appear in Paris, Birmingham, and Los Angeles tomorrow. In this discussion of the economics of globalization, the social and cultural aspects have been bypassed, which brings us to urbanization. Urbanization Urbanization typically serves to break down traditional bonds and form new social groupings, a process associated with growth and innovation, but also upheaval and violence.58 Both counterinsurgency and policing have evolved to account for different behavior in urban and rural spaces.59 If globalization permits economic partnerships and conflict-resistant social capital, urbanization may permit renewed civil police more attuned to their own civil society.60 The new battleground for third world insurgencies and small wars is a sprawling landscape of low-rise slums and urban gangs with echoes in the developed world.61 Individual radio communications and GPS tracking, realtime satellite film, multi-spectrum imaging, and even instantaneous communication with distant translators or cultural interpreters are just some of the technological solutions intended to make Canadian police in cities like Toronto or American soldiers in cities like Najaf more effective. But the changing social landscape of the city is not well understood even at home, and it is even less well communicated to soldiers abroad. ‘‘Cities of peasants’’ and emerging questions of citizenship will determine how stable the cities of the future will be.62 Technology can help hunt bad guys, but it is less helpful in building safe neighborhoods and stable communities, on which stabilization ultimately depends. Many of the challenges of urban security are most evident at neighborhood level.63 Police make deals with crime bosses to protect some zones, and ghettos

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become ‘‘no-go’’ areas for officials. Low police salaries invite police involvement in gangland economies.64 Those who can afford it resort increasingly to private security, and the urban landscape is marked by spatial segregation and a lethal culture of armed police for hire, whose bosses and shareholders benefit from rising violence; the private security sector in Sao Paulo is lucrative and unregulated, blending the legitimate and illegal economies.65 There are other cases, however, of well-regulated and unarmed private security companies providing employment and discipline for unskilled demobilized young men.66 The availability of firearms correlates directly to levels of violence, and both side arms and long arms tend to become concentrated in capital cities and power centers after protracted social conflict.67 External regulation of security and tight control on small arms are clearly part of the human security picture, but they must be balanced by social development, which makes communities resilient to violence. We have some examples of successful experiments in urban social development: the Haiti Transition Initiative included road works, water and sanitation, electrification, marketplace development, youth sports, and socio-cultural activities, and involved a high proportion of youth at risk for criminal and gang activities. UN peacekeepers were permanently stationed near some of the projects and patrolled regularly near others to increase confidence in the security of the projects.68 This supports bridging social capital at the microscopic level by implicating international players because states are unable to provide the necessary framework for vertical social capital (Figure 6.2).69 The jury is still out on whether international organizations like the Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East (MAP) can sponsor inter-communal projects that serve the functions of bridging horizontal social capital, if a state (Israel) and nascent state (the Palestinian Authority) do not actively support them.70 Just as globalization permits new actors outside the state to contribute to, or undermine, social capital and social cohesion, so urbanization creates new dynamics within the state to which managers of violence must adapt. Primitive War and ‘‘War amongst the People’’ The positive aspect of brutal primitive warfare is that there is no military solution. It demands that we seek out the sources of individual and collective violence to defeat them in detail through law, good governance, education, economic opportunity, and cultural change. Unfortunately, there is always the temptation to see the barbarity as amenable to easier solutions: if they will not stop fighting, we will kill them, and we can do that because ‘‘whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun and they have not.’’71 But the conditions of primitive war exist precisely because the conditions of advanced society do not obtain, and military instruments cannot establish, those conditions. In The Utility of Force, Smith defines ‘‘war amongst the people’’ as a description of contemporary warfare and a conceptual framework reflecting the

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absence of a secluded battlefield; the people—all of them, anywhere—are the battlefield.72 His conclusion is that there are no longer separable political and military situations. Yet there is a residual tendency to think in terms of the strategic application of force in irregular warfare, often with the constabulary overtones of international peacekeeping. Rather than integrating social reconstruction with economic development and full-spectrum security, Smith sees the solution lying with information: managing what is known in theater for tactical purposes, and back home for domestic purposes.73 To make sense of his argument, information must be construed in the broadest sense. ‘‘Information’’ implies shaping perceptions and frameworks of reference, and it therefore comes close to the meaning of culture: all that is socially rather than physically or biologically transmitted.74 This takes us beyond Smith’s work into cultural anthropology to explain what is really going on in ‘‘war amongst the people’’ at three levels: aspects of culture below the conscious level (such as vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, including our concepts of ‘us’ and ‘them’); patterns of thought and perception that are culturally determined (ideas of family, revenge, ownership, and honor, for example); and learned patterns of behavior (e.g., throwing stones at the occupiers). I may be expanding Smith’s intent, but cultural change is precisely where the solution to war amongst the people lies, with all that it entails: self-criticism, socialization, early education, partnerships with families, schools, religions, and political agents, youth programs, publishing, scholarship, mass entertainment, and media diversification. The list derives from understanding how culture is shaped. UNESCO’s Culture of Peace program gives an idea of the quixotic, Sisyphus-like work of cultural transformation. Without efforts to combat the effects of primitive warfare, societies are on a downward escalator towards tighter bonding and exclusionary forms of social capital, as states and markets break down and people are thrown back upon ethnicity and clan as the basis for trust. The formal economy, which depends on trust, breaks down to be replaced by informal and illegal economies, reinforcing the power of rivals to the state and undermining development and stabilization efforts.75 This understanding has led the pragmatic World Bank to support various cultural and institutional revival efforts in pursuit of social capital and social cohesion.76

FINDING THE SEEDS FOR TRANSFORMATION The recent enthusiasm of the U.S. Department of Defense for ‘‘human terrain teams’’ with anthropological knowledge is encouraging, but anthropology falls short of describing all the political, economic, and social factors that produce stability. Multidisciplinary teams need a prescriptive map to guide them. If the map always points to Western-style liberal democracy and free markets open to global economic pressures, then we might continue to be disappointed in our interventions, but if we can temper capitalism’s effects with some social

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TABLE 6.1. Frequency of key word occurrence

Pages Technologj Societj Economj Culturj Politicj Governj

JV2010

JV2020

FM3-24

39 71 0 4 1 2 4

27 25 1 2 4 1 3

242 21 116 167 189 251 538

*Includes variations of the key words.

experimentation and politically imposed discipline on rapacious actors in the marketplace, we might see progress. This is the larger strategic backdrop against which military thinking about small wars and insurgency, or stabilization missions, must stand. Against this background, I suggest six seeds that might help transform the management of violence, some germinating and others dormant. The first seed is to replace ‘‘leading’’ with ‘‘supporting’’ military roles. It is axiomatic that civil authorities and police lead in counter-insurgencies and that military force plays only a supporting role.77 This is captured in the new draft American Field Manual (FM) 3-24 Counterinsurgency manual.78 The draft also provides an interesting contrast with the Joint Vision 2010 and Joint Vision 2020, as Table 6.1 illustrates. FM 3-24 illustrates a healthier balance between technology and society than the RMA-inspired Joint Vision documents. The second seed is the understanding that the technological focus driven by purveyors of gadgets has led us (and more specifically, the United States) seriously astray. We can hope that diversion is in decline, and the soil is now more fertile for other sources of transformation. The third seed is the understanding that although small-wars literature consistently avows the primacy of the political and the importance of populations, for the most part it ignores the social science research and tools that help us to understand social and political development. This suggests putting an understanding of the social correlates of violence at the center of our efforts to transform military thinking. The World Bank’s model is just one, but it is a good place to start. The fourth seed is mimesis. It emerges from the four threads of security thinking described above. These threads converge to the extent that they combine political, economic, and social issues and incorporate a clear conception of the ‘‘other’’ in their paradigms. War-fighting doctrines are more durable when they incorporate an understanding of the state (Clausewitz) than when they isolate technology (air-land battle); revolutionary thinking is more virulent when it incorporates a social and economic vision (Marx and Mao) than when it focuses on the tactics of overthrow (Sanguinetti); policing and counterinsurgency

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thinking is more effective when it works with society (Lyautey) than against it (Bugeaud). Thinking about peaceful change is nugatory when it focuses on security (buffer zone missions) but powerful when it builds new institutions (from Westphalia to the United Nations). Ideas of mimesis, the mirroring of characteristics, offer a path to combining these intellectual threads more fruitfully in the future. The concept of mimesis raises two further seeds for transformation—peacebuilding insurgency and the metaphor of judo before pugilism—but mimesis requires some explanation. In a powerful book about the role of emotions in keeping society healthy, sociologist Metta Spencer explores some of the roles of entertainment and popular culture.79 The effects of story telling (like that of clerics or television) can be beneficial, harmful, or mixed, but story telling cannot be abolished because it is the means of transmitting culture. It is particularly powerful in transmitting values to the young, through imagery and imitation. Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire explains how mimesis can lead to conflict because we adopt the desires of others and become rivals for the object of their desire: the popular girl, land, power, or wealth, for example. Spencer’s insight is to link mimetic desire to empathy for the other, and relate both to the existential, moral, and spiritual problem of finding meaning in our lives and communities through popular culture.80 Spencer’s image of popular culture as a vehicle for fostering a healthy society is one that should be mobilized to address shortfalls in social cohesion. The image is a powerful one. We know that insurgencies, revolutions, and wars amongst the people are above all battles of ideas. The Communist Manifesto is a powerful story of oppression and resistance. Al Qaeda recruits with poetry and polemics.81 The next generation of violent revolutionaries is already won over by stories half-remembered from early childhood. So a genuine revolution in the management of violence may depend more on purveyors of mass culture than purveyors of mass destruction; mothers and kindergarten teachers are more important than combat trainers, and literature and theology are more influential than engineering and social sciences. An investment in mass culture to support social cohesion, avoiding radio milles collines, is likely to pay bigger dividends than a heavy military presence within a generation. The fifth seed is the concept of a peace-building insurgency. Mimicking some aspects of the strategy and tactics of the insurgent may help transform the capacity of societies to manage insurgent violence. The first requirement is a cause, which the established authority cannot espouse without losing its power. A revolutionary insurgency may then follow two paths in its escalation to control of the state. The traditional pattern involves creating a party, forming a united front, conducting guerrilla warfare, escalating to maneuver warfare, culminating in a conventional campaign of attrition (or annihilation). This is a struggle that can last many years. Galula offers an alternative, or bourgeois nationalist short cut, which involves a rapid move from random terrorism to gain publicity and stimulate a repressive overreaction to selective terrorism aimed at

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severing the links of the population to the established authority.82 Galula further divides the insurgent strategy into two periods: a ‘‘cold revolutionary war’’ during which activity is largely legal and non-violent, and a ‘‘hot revolutionary war’’ during which it is openly illegal and violent.83 There is a peace-building analog to these patterns. The cause of peaceful coexistence and incremental change is an alternative to revolutionary or liberation ideology. The cadre organizational structure is easy to mimic, and the shadow structures of subversive organizations within urban settings could be turned around to serve other causes. This is what happens as communities begin to emerge from protracted social conflicts; trusted guerrilla or insurgent leaders assume positions of community leadership in civilian life. When one side seizes municipal instruments of power (such as transport, housing, utilities, taxation, and records), this signals continuation of the inter-communal conflict by other means.84 But equally there are examples of collaboration across conflict lines, such as the Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East. ‘‘Hot revolutionary war’’ is inimical to peace building, but there may be useful analogies. Galula and Kitson both point to the problem of mutual policing in a revolutionary society; even when populations loathe the insurgents, they will carry out their revolutionary duty to report infiltration out of fear of reprisals if they do not.85 Insurgent and counter-insurgent forces alike can use reprisals, but Smith’s insight is that the side that tells the best stories about them is likely to gain more. This is where a peace insurgency has a significant advantage, not by outbrutalizing the forces of violence but by out-publicizing them, and focusing particularly on stories that expose militants and bolster moderates. It might be a vain hope that a peace-building insurgency could be completely passive. Activist Ward Churchill has challenged the view that pacifism works, describing it as inevitably favoring the status quo, and if status quo is the reign of violent militants, it may take more than bloodless community building to deal with spoilers.86 Finally, the sixth seed for transformation in the management of violence goes below the community level to look at the dynamics of families and gender relations in the development of social cohesion. Women, children, adolescents, and men occupy different roles in families, particularly in raising the next generation. They join different groups and behave differently when they are in groups. They respond differently to incentives and disincentives. Efforts to develop both social responsibility (which has a primarily defensive function in mitigating the costs of conflict) and social initiative (which presents opportunities for growth and expansion of conflict managing institutions) can be tailored more effectively to meet the needs and expectations of particular parts of the population, and to draw on the resources they embody in the community. This is effectively moving with the social momentum of human and communal needs rather than fighting against it and looking for enemies that frequently can lay some claim to representing the needs of the community. Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata captures some of the power that is wielded within family groups, which might be mobilized in the interests of transforming conflict management.

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‘‘We do wrong, very wrong. Ah! Great gods! What lovely thighs she has!’’ A Laconian delegate, in Lysistrata

CONCLUSION Having dispensed with the distractions of technology and the revolution in military affairs, we can get back to basics: how do people behave? How are communities built and preserved? How do we manage conflict in ways that are not socially destructive? This sort of question will transform the way in which we deal with violence. There is a lot of useful military thinking about small wars, but the best of it adopts a catholic approach to security, including policing and governance, and socio-economic development. An all-too-common characteristic, however, is the isolation of military thinking and experience from social science research about political and economic development and processes of social change. Four threads of security thinking that have co-evolved with the Western world have culminated in dead ends, because violence does not occur in a social vacuum. Concepts like social capital help us to knit together ideas about the management of violence, and lead to deductions about the role of globalization, urbanization, and the resurgence of primitive warfare. From these, six seeds for the transformation of counterinsurgency thinking are extracted: surrender the leading military role, reject the preeminence of technology, focus on social cohesion, use mass culture to transform society, mimic insurgency with peace-building tactics, and work with the cleavages of gender and age within society to isolate and tame the militants. More sophisticated tools to find and kill enemies will avail little if we do not understand the society within which the violence occurs. Less counterinsurgency pugilism; more peace-building judo.

7

Civil-Military Aspects of Effectiveness in Peace Support Operations 1 Robert Egnell

INTRODUCTION The conflicts of the new millennium seem ever more bewildering, complex, and asymmetric. The starting point of this chapter is therefore the acknowledgement of a transformation in strategic affairs, a changing strategic context in which the most important and frequent operations involving Western armed forces will be different forms of complex peace support operations. This means a reversal of interest from traditional large-scale warfare between states to different forms of small wars.2 One of the main features of these conflicts is the far-reaching and complicated aims of operations, such as state and institutions building, imposed democratization, economic development, and respect for human rights. This means that Western armed forces will be operating in contexts often involving a combination of counterinsurgency, post-conflict reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, as well as economic development and statebuilding. The military will therefore only play a part (often not even the leading part) in operations that are likely to include a wide range of actors, such as other civilian government departments and agencies, international organizations, private security companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), host government agencies, and security forces. British doctrine argues, ‘‘In the light of experience gained in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq, it became evident that coherence could only be achieved if strategic processes, planning, and objectives were harmonized across all instruments and agencies.’’3 Arguably, the most salient problem of complex peace support operations is, therefore, coordinating the different instruments of power, multinational and multifunctional, civilian and military, into a coherent, comprehensive strategy. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how different strategic-level institutional arrangements in the

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civil-military interface affect the operational conduct and effectiveness of armed forces involved in complex peace support operations. The chapter notes that there are at least two important civil-military aspects of effectiveness. The civil-military interface must function effectively as the provider of well-trained and equipped forces of adequate size and nature for modern operations, which is referred to as the indirect impact of civil-military relations. The civil-military interface must also function effectively as an important level in the operational chain of command, providing coordinated civil-military analysis, planning, and execution of operations. This direct impact of civil-military relations is the main focus of the chapter. Without wellfunctioning civil-military relations, effectiveness in complex peace operations is unlikely. In essence, for increased effectiveness, the civil-military interface should strive towards increased integration of the military and civilian echelons. The purpose of such integration is to create enough mutual trust, knowledge, and understanding across the civil-military divide to provide both the necessary structures and a working culture that serve to coordinate the different instruments of power towards intended political effects in the field. The complex peace support operation is a concept employed within this chapter in a generic way to include all operations beyond conventional interstate warfare. As such, the concept includes the many traditional concepts referring to different forms of operations other than war: PSOs, stability and support operations, counterinsurgency, humanitarian interventions, small wars, and low-intensity conflict. The chapter is introduced by a section that creates the theoretical foundation for the hypothesis of the chapter. Thereafter, the U.S. and British cases are used as empirical examples to show how different patterns of civil-military relations can affect operational effectiveness.

CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS THEORY AND MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS A number of civil-military aspects of effectiveness are emphasized in the recent lessons learned coming out of complex PSOs such as Afghanistan and Iraq. They are also becoming part of the strategic studies literature and military doctrine. There is, in other words, relative consensus regarding the importance of the civil-military aspects of effectiveness. This consensus is not, however, matched by a corresponding body of work that seeks to increase the understanding of the relationship between civil-military relations and military effectiveness. A useful starting point is, nevertheless, the field of civil-military relations theory. The central problem discussed in civil-military relations theory is the need to maximize the protective value that armed forces provide and the need to minimize the domestic coercive powers that the same forces inevitably possess, thus creating effective armed forces under democratic civilian control.4 Despite the inherently dual aims of civil-military relations theory, Suzanne Nielsen

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notes that the field of civil-military relations theory has mainly focused on the issue of civilian control. The impact that civil-military relations has on military effectiveness is not nearly as well studied within the literature.5 The starting point of civil-military relations theory is often the assumption that the military institutions of any society are shaped by two forces: a functional imperative stemming from threats to a society’s security, and a societal imperative based on the ideologies, social forces, and institutions that are dominant within the society.6 How the functional and societal imperatives should be allowed to influence the structure and culture of the armed forces is, in other words, one of the main issues of civil-military aspects of effectiveness. Christopher Dandeker notes that in the search for a useful combination of the functional and societal influences, theorists tend to employ a ‘‘zero-sum’’ view, thinking that it is only possible to maximize either military strength or civilian control.7 However, the conceptualization of the relations between functional and societal imperatives in zero-sum terms is misleading, according to Dandeker, as it assumes that military adjustments to civilian values necessarily undermines military effectiveness, and that the focus on military effectiveness must necessarily mean decreased civilian control or non-adherence to the values of civil society.8 The aim of civil-military relations theory should, thereby, not be striking a balance between the imperatives but rather finding synergies between the imperatives, solutions that strengthen both civilian control and military effectiveness. It should, however, be noted that the idea of civil control goes beyond the specific nature and characteristics of different patterns of civil-military relations. Although a number of aspects of civil-military relations differ in various cases and theories, the logic of civil control as the mechanism that assures the superiority of the civil echelon is generally the same. Kobi Michael therefore highlights the fact that the essence and rationale of civil control are common to all patterns of civil-military relations, or at least they should be: ‘‘The common denominator of all definitions is the expectation that civilians will set the limits on the military’s action and ensure concordance between those actions and the political echelon’s objectives as well as maintain the elected echelon’s superiority.’’9 Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz have come to dominate the field of civil-military relations for the last half century and still serve as a useful starting point. Huntington treated the functional imperative of the armed forces as an external given, which can only be interpreted and adjusted to by military professionals without interference from the political leadership. Without interference from the political leadership or civil society, the military will automatically adjust for maximum effectiveness in relation to the functional imperative.10 Huntington, therefore, advocated a radical form of military professionalism, which emphasizes isolation and autonomy of the military for maximized effectiveness. Military professionalism, in this view, demands obedience to civil authorities but allows complete control over internal organizational matters.11 The practical structure of civil-military relations should

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include a clear divide between the political and military leaderships in order to allow for objective control of the armed forces and military professionalism. Such professionalism will, according to this tradition, inevitably lead to military effectiveness by allowing the military to define and adjust to its own functional imperative. This view of civil-military relations and effectiveness is hereafter referred to as the ‘‘divided approach.’’ This approach has become problematic as the changing strategic context of the post–Cold War has clearly placed new demands on armed forces for operational effectiveness. The changing strategic context also means that the functional imperative of defending the nation not only involves winning the nation’s wars, but also includes tasks such as maintaining international security, defeating international terrorism, and protecting citizens overseas. The practical application of the functional imperative has thereby changed. Many armed forces have nevertheless been slow to recognize this fact and to adjust their organization and culture for the new tasks. Morris Janowitz, in contrast, supports the tradition of pragmatic professionalism, which denounces military autonomy and instead emphasizes integration with civilian society and even the participation of civilian officials in the formulation of professional standards and the evaluation of performance.12 The shape of professionalization should be determined by immediate needs, by what is acceptable to the parent society and by what is seen to be the most effective way of getting the job done. Anthony Forster calls this being ‘‘fit for purpose,’’ whatever the task may be.13 Significantly, Janowitz argues that the political leadership must control both the criteria and information for judging the effectiveness of the military establishment. ‘‘The formulation of the standards of performance the military are expected to achieve are civilian responsibilities, although these standards cannot be evolved independent of professional military judgment.’’14 The implication of the pragmatic approach is expressed by Richard Kohn, who argues that ‘‘[n]o decision or responsibility falls to the military unless expressly or implicitly delegated to it by civilian leaders. Even the decisions of command—the selection of strategy, of what operations to mount and when, what tactics to employ, the internal management of the military—derive from civilian authority.’’15 In structural terms, the military leadership should be integrated with the political level in order to develop increased political understanding and sensitivity among the armed forces, and to ensure the relevancy of the military operation to the political goal. This idea is reflected in Kobi Michael’s useful definition of effective civil control: ‘‘the mechanism that assures that military force is used for the implementation of those political goals that best serve the public good as determined by the political echelon.’’16 The Janowitzean notion of civil-military relations is hereafter referred to as the ‘‘integrated approach.’’ There is general agreement regarding the notion that societal characteristics may be reflected in the ability of a country to create military power.17 The

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pattern of civil-military relations is, in other words, treated as a causal factor in the creation of forces ‘‘fit for purpose.’’ By being the arena in which funding, doctrine, and direction for the military organization is decided, and the strategic context interpreted, and by overseeing the implementation of those decisions, the constitution of the civil-military interface is an important factor determining the quality of the forces available for operations. This is what this chapter refers to as the indirect impact of civil-military relations However, lessons learned from irregular operations in the contemporary strategic context show that the civil-military interface must not only function well during peacetime preparation of armed forces, but also during operations as a highly important link in the chain of command. This is referred to in this chapter as the direct impact. It is an aspect of civil-military relations and effectiveness that is not well covered in the literature and serves as the main focal point of this chapter. What are the consequences of different civil-military structures within the operational chain of command?

THE CIVIL-MILITARY INTERFACE IN THE OPERATIONAL CHAIN OF COMMAND As an important level of the operational chain of command, the civil-military interface must be organized to provide efficient strategic- and operational-level command centers, capable of advanced planning as well as quick analyses and decisions regarding operations. At this level in the chain of command, political objectives are translated into strategy and operational plans, and decisions regarding size and structure of the force to be deployed are made. Thus, different patterns of civil-military relations may have a direct and very practical impact on operational effectiveness. Moreover, lessons from contemporary peace operations stress the importance of comprehensive civil-military approaches, involving integration and joint planning at the strategic and operational levels, and cooperation and coordination at the tactical level to achieve unity of command and effort. To achieve such coordination of planning and execution, the structures and working culture of the civil-military interface must function well. Moreover, in the field of operations, the development of civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) and civil affairs units indicate the increasing importance placed on the cooperation and coordination of the different actors at the tactical level. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of this.18 The comprehensive and cooperative approaches to operations must be provided by the institutional structure and culture of the civil-military interface. So what determines the success of this provision? Risa Brooks has looked at the impact of political control mechanisms and argues that the highly centralized and rigid command structures of Arab regimes, the use of direct leadership rather than mission-type command, and the tinkering with the chains of command for political reasons have negative

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effects on the effectiveness of Arab armies.19 Moreover, the central argument of Samuel Huntington is that the political leadership should avoid any interference in military affairs for maximum military effectiveness. Eliot Cohen, nevertheless, criticizes this conclusion empirically by arguing that the truly victorious wartime leaders have all interfered in the military sphere to a very large extent. Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion are used as examples of leaders who during wartime have continued to control their generals in a way that Huntington and others would find most damaging.20 However, the obvious counterargument involves highlighting any occasions when political meddling has produced negative results. Deborah Avant similarly highlights the importance of low-cost civilian monitoring and strong civilian control of the armed forces. Without such control, the military will resist necessary innovation as the strategic context changes.21 However, despite these contributions, the limited literature on how different structural arrangements in the civil-military interface affect operational effectiveness means that theoretical inspiration must be sought elsewhere. Therefore, this section turns to military command and control theory to enhance the picture. The increasing political sensitivity of operations in the contemporary strategic context, involving global media scrutiny, means that political and military leadership have sought ways to micromanage events from headquarters—this despite the fact that the increased operational complexity and pace of events indicate a need for the dispersion, rather than centralization, of command.22 Centralized or direct command is, for several reasons, not an effective solution to the problems of politically sensitive operations. First, micro situations on the ground are very hard to interpret if you are not there physically. Wrong or insensitive decisions may be the outcome. Second, micro-management often means that people with little understanding of soldiering will make the decisions, be it politicians with no or little experience, or high-ranking officers who have not experienced these situations for decades. Third, centralized command is time consuming. The reason for this is that when using centralized or detailed command, subordinates must refer to their headquarters when they encounter situations not covered by the commander’s original orders.23 In the short term, this means a loss of operational speed and missed opportunities while waiting for new orders. In the long term, it leads to a loss of quality and initiative of junior commanders and soldiers, who are never forced to make decisions and to learn from their own actions. Therefore, most armed forces’ doctrines on command and control emphasize the importance of mission command in complex environments, a philosophy of decentralized command based on trust and initiative. In essence, mission command involves giving orders about what to do and what the aims are, but not how to do it. Commanders can, by explaining their objectives and communicating the rationale for military action, give junior commanders and their soldiers ‘‘insight into what is expected of them, what constraints apply, and, most important, why the mission is being undertaken.’’24 Thus, commanders are

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allowed to hold a ‘‘loose rein,’’ allowing subordinates freedom of action, while at the same time requiring them to exercise initiative and adjust actions according to new inputs of information. This means that commanders make fewer decisions, but it allows them to focus on the most important ones.25 Richard Lovelock argues that when commanders on all levels understand their general roles within a larger perspective, as is ideally the case when employing mission command, ‘‘they are also more able to think laterally and share objectives through unity of effort, decentralization, trust, understanding, and timely decision making.’’26 There is, however, always an element of increased risk involved in mission command, the risk that the subordinates have not really understood the intent, or the risk that the commander has made a bad decision or provided too few resources. Mission command theory, therefore, always involves a trade-off between ineffective but safe command and effective but risky command. Dealing with such risk requires mutual trust between superiors and subordinates.27 In sum, mission command requires high levels of trust and understanding, initiative from subordinates, and clarity of intent and aims from commanders. Interestingly, the traditional notion of civil-military relations is very similar to that of mission command in its demand for a clear dividing line between political decisions and military implementation. Operations are delegated to the military and other agencies in a way that clearly resembles the ideals of mission command, stating what to do but not how to carry out the task. However, as observed above, the successful implementation of mission command requires the components of mutual trust and understanding, a clear intent from commanders, and initiative from subordinates. Without clear aims, mutual trust, and understanding, there is a risk that the political leadership meddles in strictly military affairs and increasingly micromanages what it considers to be politically sensitive situations. There is also a risk that the military chain of command misinterprets the aims and intent of the political leadership and how these aims should be translated into military actions. The concept of trust is a key to successful mission command and deserves further attention. The rich sociological literature distinguishes between different forms of trust, which are relevant to the argument of this chapter. First, interpersonal trust refers to trust between people. In a review of the literature, Dmitry Khodyakov makes a useful distinction between thick and thin interpersonal trust. ‘‘Thick interpersonal trust originates in relationships with strong ties and depends on the personalities of both the trustee and the trustor.’’ This form of trust involves personal familiarity with the counterpart, as well as strong emotional commitment to the relationship.28 Lynn Zucker calls this character-based trust, because it is based on social similarities, shared moral codes, and personal characteristics like gender, ethnicity, and cultural background.29 This form of trust thereby depends on similarity and strong emotional relationships between people. Anthony Giddens refers to ‘‘confidence in the reliability of persons’’ as the basis for creating a sense of social reality.30

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However, in governmental institutions, interactions and trust between people who do not often meet are of greater importance. This is what Khodyakov calls thin trust, which is created through interactions of people who do not know each other well. ‘‘It represents reliance on weak ties and is based on the assumption that another person would reciprocate and comply with our expectations of his or her behavior, as well as with existing formal and ethical rules.’’31 Zucker similarly refers to process-based trust, built on experiences of reciprocity.32 Social reality is nevertheless not only dependent on persons and their activities, but on institutions and abstract systems as well. Other ways to build trust than through personal relations are therefore necessary. This is where confidence or trust in systems or institutions becomes important. System or institutional trust refers to trust in the functioning of organizational, institutional, and social systems. It flows from institutional arrangements that create and sustain trustworthy behaviors, such as broad societal norms, guarding institutional arrangements, and organizational governance systems. These abstract principles can bring about varying degrees of embedded trust, of shared norms and expectations, and of reciprocity.33 Khodyakov argues that trust in institutions depends on their ‘‘perceived legitimacy, technical competence, and ability to perform assigned duties efficiently.’’34 How does knowledge about mission command theory and trust help in the analysis of civil-military relations for maximized effectiveness in operations? Mission command theory emphasizes that effective command and control in the political-military interface requires clear aims from the political leadership. It also requires an extensive understanding of how to use the military tool to achieve political aims, as well as a well-developed strategic conceptual framework. At the same time, mission command requires excellent political understanding within the military in order to translate political aims and directives into appropriate military activity. This is what Kobi Michael refers to as effective substantive civil control, as opposed to the normative formal assumption of civilian control that was mentioned earlier. Substantive civil control is weakened by instances when the political leadership has no clear vision or strategic preference, and when there is a knowledge gap and/or a gap in analytical and conceptual tools. In these instances, the military takes the position as an ‘‘epistemic authority.’’ The military controls the agenda of the civil-military interface, while the political and civilian structures develop an information dependence on the military.35 Michael argues that in order for the political leadership to wield effective substantive control, it must ‘‘generate knowledge and put forward high-quality challenging alternatives to those that the military adduces.’’ However, he also notes that the achievement of such an alternative requires a revolution in governmental culture.36 Mutual understanding and effective command and control in the civilmilitary interface also require mutual trust. It is, therefore, imperative that the civil-military interface be constructed to increase trust and mutual understanding across civil-military and departmental boundaries. At the same time, it

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should be noted that due to the different organizational cultures and interests of the civilian and military echelons, the inherent nature of the relationship is inevitably conflictual. However, as Kobi Michael argues, such conflict can be healthy as long as it is controlled.37 One important way to control such conflict and to keep it at a ‘‘healthy’’ level is to increase mutual understanding and respect across the boundaries. The knowledge that interpersonal trust is based on social similarities and shared moral codes, and/or experiences of reciprocity, means that trust within the civil-military interface can be achieved by recruiting people with similar social backgrounds and moral codes on both sides of the divide, or to promote a common civil-military culture of shared moral values within the interface. It also means that the civil-military organizations, such as the department of defense or interagency planning teams, should strive to integrate staff from both sides of the civil-military divide in order to create interpersonal trust and mutual understanding through personal experiences of reciprocity. Understanding that different institutional arrangements may evoke and sustain trustworthy behavior means that the structures of the civil-military interface must be carefully constructed to promote cooperation and trust. If interpersonal trust is lacking within the organization, there can at least be a level of belief in the structure or culture of the organization to provide a basic level of trust. Competition between the different agencies of the civil-military interface may evoke distrustful behavior within interagency structures. For example, when an operational planner does not know his or her counterpart from the other side and feels that there a few shared values with the counterpart, instead of instinctively distrusting the counterpart, the planner may instead fall back on institutional trust based on the fact that the different agencies have always cooperated well towards common goals, as well as the knowledge of a recruitment and promotion system within the other agencies that makes it highly unlikely that the counterpart is anything but competent and trustworthy. Finally, the planner may also fall back on previous personal experiences of working with people from other agencies with good results.

EVALUATING DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS Among several approaches to civil-military relations, this chapter has emphasized two extremes in the divided approach, as advocated by Samuel Huntington, and the integrated approach, as introduced by Morris Janowitz. These approaches are relatively well represented in the real world as implemented in the cases of the United States and the United Kingdom. Although it is well beyond the scope of this chapter to empirically test the theoretical outline, the purpose of this section is to provide an empirical taster, which serves to highlight and discuss a number of points made in the previous sections.

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U.S. Patterns of Civil-Military Relations American civil-military relations are, to a large extent, the implementation of Huntington’s divided approach. The United States has poorly developed structures for interagency cooperation and coordination. Power is decentralized, and national security issues therefore tend to be dealt with in departmental stovepipes. Where different forms of interagency structures exist, the competitive political culture of checks and balances means that interagency working groups and committees generally lack the authority as well as internal trust and understanding among participants, which is necessary to conduct meaningful work.38 The National Security Council (NSC) is obviously central in this respect, but it mainly functions in an advisory role to the president and has no executive function.39 A study conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that the NSC plays no role in the planning of operations and currently has neither the authority nor the capacity to fulfill such a function.40 Within the Department of Defense, the civilian and military sections are not well integrated. Instead, the department is purposefully divided to ensure the purification of military and political affairs. This divide, between the policy and military sides of the Pentagon, has led to a stovepipe structure in which civilian and military sets of expertise are not coordinated until the very top levels of the department.41 These findings are interesting with reference to the theoretical discussion on trust. The limited interagency structures, as well as the divided civil-military structures within the Pentagon, mean that there are few opportunities for civil servants and officers from different departments and agencies to meet face to face and thereby develop interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and at least some level of mutual understanding. The different background of military officers and civil-servants also means that no thick interpersonal relationships exist from common schooling or background. Moreover, there is little institutional trust as there are few positive experiences of working together. Neither the interagency system nor counterparts from other agencies and departments are trusted. The civil-military interface of the U.S. chain of command during operations does not function well and thereby affects the effectiveness of complex operations negatively. The U.S. armed forces’ historical development of professionalism in isolation from the political leadership in the wake of the Civil War, in combination with the high costs of civilian monitoring and control of the armed forces, has meant that the functional imperative of the U.S. military has been interpreted and defined by the military itself: winning the nation’s wars in defense of its people and values.42 The resulting strategic culture, or American way of war, begins with a conceptual division between war and peace, which means that there is really no conceptual space for ‘‘gray-area’’ operations, between war and peace, such as complex peace support operations.43 The dualistic view of war and peace, as well as of political and military affairs, is perpetuated in the

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divided pattern of civil-military relations. The preferred way of war involves large-scale conventional campaigns, fought quickly and at minimum cost. It also involves the maximum use of force and the application of high technology to maximize firepower.44 U.S. troops are therefore essentially organized around the division as the defining organization and emphasize the warrior ethos as the foundation of military culture. However, the uncompromising focus on conventional war fighting has left the U.S. military ill-prepared for complex peace support and post-conflict-type operations. Despite the fact that the U.S. military has mainly been involved in irregular warfare since the end of the Second World War, U.S. military and strategic culture is firmly fixed on what it sees as its core task: defeating conventional enemies that threaten the freedom of the American people. This unshakable belief in the essence of the organization has, according to John Nagl, precluded any organizational learning and adjustment to unconventional wars or operations other than war.45 It has also led to what Nagl describes as ‘‘a remarkable aversion to the use of unconventional tactics.’’46 During the peace support operations of the 1990s, and more recently in Iraq, we have witnessed how U.S. troops seek to apply the traditional American way of war in complex contexts.47 As an example, Robert Cassidy summarizes the U.S. role in Somalia by arguing that ‘‘maximalist and conventional attitudes about the use of force led the U.S. military to abandon the OOTW [operations other than war] principle of restraint, and thus legitimacy.’’48

U.S. Operations in Iraq The final verdict regarding the outcome of U.S. operations in Iraq remains for history to decide, but a number of conclusions can be made at this stage. Most importantly, the security situation is far from under control, which inhibits progress in the political and economic areas. Toby Dodge argues that Iraq is a collapsed state in which a resultant security vacuum has driven the country into sectarian civil war.49 The Iraq Study Group Report observes that the United States has made ‘‘a massive commitment to the future of Iraq in both blood and treasure.’’ By June 2008, more than 4,000 American soldiers had lost their lives serving in Iraq. Another 21,000 have been wounded. To date, the United States has spent roughly $400 billion on the Iraq War, and costs are running at about $8 billion per month. The Iraq Study Group’s concluding assessment reads: Despite a massive effort, stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating. The Iraqi government cannot now govern, sustain, and defend itself without the support of the United States.… The ability of the United States to shape outcomes is diminishing. Time is running out.50

The U.S. troops in Iraq conducted their operations in accordance with the traditional American way of war during the invasion phase, and to a large

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extent during the post-conflict phase. The campaign was interpreted as an essentially conventional war, which is also what the U.S. military planned and trained for. The invasion was an overwhelming display of superiority in terms of technology and organization on the conventional battlefield. However, when Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, it quickly became clear that the U.S. leadership had failed to create a serious strategy for the post-conflict phase. Interagency cooperation failed in the planning process and did not produce a comprehensive approach. The lack of civil-military cooperation and interagency structures in the United States make coordination and cooperation even more difficult in times of crisis and operations. Not even for the obviously multifunctional tasks of post-conflict operations in Iraq did the U.S. administration manage to set up interagency working groups and joint civil-military planning teams.51 Civilmilitary cooperation within the Pentagon also failed to produce plans that effectively connected operational and tactical activity to the strategic aims. The limited interaction over departmental boundaries, with the subsequent limitation in expertise in the planning process, allowed a small number of people to plan operations on a number of flawed assumptions about Iraq.52 There were, in fact, deep divisions between the State Department and the Department of Defense over how to plan for conflict stabilization and nation building. The rift began at the top with personal problems between Secretary of State Powell and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and extended down to the ‘‘working levels’’ of the departments. President Bush’s National Security Directive 24 on 20 January 2003 put the Office of the Secretary of Defense in charge of nation-building efforts and effectively led to the efforts of the State Department and other agencies being ‘‘dropped, ignored, or given low priority.’’53 The post-conflict planning lacked civil-military cooperation and coordination. A Council on Foreign Relations report highlights the weakness of the NSC structure and argues that the lack of a body or an arm within the U.S. government formally responsible for post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction operations is a major reason for poor post-conflict planning and lack of interagency cooperation. ‘‘Policy and implementation are divided among several agencies, with poor interagency coordination, misalignment of resources and authorities, and inadequate accountability and duplicative efforts.’’54 In the field, the civilian and military components failed to create unity of command, which made cooperation and coordination difficult, not least of all because the civilian Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA) refused to colocate with the military command. There was confusion about the chain of command as well as serious friction in the working relationships between the military and civilian sides of the operation. Different views about how to stabilize, reconstruct, and democratize the country led to frequent conflicts between the military and civilian leaders in the field.55 The failure to achieve unity of command thereby led to an even more serious failure to achieve unity of effort.56 The fact that General Garner refused to colocate ORHA with the military command meant that ORHA and later the Coalition

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Provisional Authority (CPA) remained out of touch with the conditions in the field, adding to the lack of expertise or experience with peacemaking and nation building.57 Key issues like jobs and economic security were, as a consequence, addressed much later than should have been the case in a campaign for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population.58 The tactical behavior of U.S. troops in Iraq, especially during the first three years of the campaign, revealed that they have neither been trained nor mentally prepared for post-conflict-type operations or complex irregular warfare. Instead, the U.S. military resorted to conventional tactics based on firepower and technology, with the addition of an overemphasis on aggressive force protection policies, which separated and alienated the U.S. troops from the local population.59 U.S. forces also lacked cultural sensitivity and understanding of how the political aims of the operation must be reflected in their behavior on the ground. The tactical principles of complex peace operations were therefore also violated.60 Instead of heart and mind operations, force protection through close connections with the local communities, and an understanding of the political primacy and consequences of operations, the strategic narrative has been lost in heavy-handed tactics and a failure to understand local culture and the nature of the enemy and its strategic aims.61 The incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib, in combination with the criminal investigations of serious crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, raise questions about the warrior values at the foundation of U.S. military training. In conclusion, the divided patterns of civil-military relations have, in the U.S. case, led to a conventional definition of the functional imperative and the creation of a corresponding structure and culture in the U.S. armed forces. Indirectly, the impact of the U.S.’s divided pattern of civil-military relations has resulted in an American way of war that is not well-adjusted to the contemporary strategic context. In the words of Andrew Garfield, ‘‘The U.S. military appears to have the wrong organizational culture to fight the war in which it is currently engaged [Iraq], which is the most likely type of warfare it will face over the next twenty years.’’62 The direct effect of the divided U.S. approach to civil-military relations is that, in the context of operations, the United States is struggling to achieve the necessary joint civil-military planning, cooperation, and coordination of operations. There is little trust within the system in peacetime, and this is exacerbated in times of conflict. As a link in the operational chain of command, the U.S. civil-military interface is functioning poorly. British Patterns of Civil-Military Relations On the whole, British structure and culture in the civil-military interface resemble the Janowitzean notion of civil-military relations of integration and mutual understanding. At the interagency level, there is an extensive and somewhat intricate web of committees, which aims to make government policy informed by all the relevant departments. It also means that there is a culture of

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cooperation and working towards common goals across Whitehall. However, despite the relatively extensive interagency structure, there are, as in most political bureaucracies, turf wars between the different departments and agencies, and tendencies to work in ministerial stovepipes. The committee system as a form for interdepartmental integration is also problematic as it is sometimes considered too slow for the planning and command of contemporary military operations involving high levels of complexity and a fast-moving operational pace.63 Within the Ministry of Defense, the integrated civil-military structures are nevertheless more noticeable. In the everyday workings of the ministry as well as in the command of operations, there is a joint civil-military structure that ensures military understanding of government policy as well as politically informed military advice.64 In the central areas of the ministry, there is widespread civil-military mixed management of the different divisions, where the head is a military officer and the deputy is often civilian or vice versa.65 The ministry’s integrated structure leads to a common culture of mutual understanding and trust among military and civilian personnel.66 This is reinforced by another important aspect of the British system: the highly professional civil service. Its apolitical nature and the fact that it holds positions at the very top of the ministries provide for high levels of political and military understanding as well as an institutional memory of crisis management that the more fleeting political and military leaderships can never provide.67 With the dual knowledge and understanding, the civil service also functions as buffers and mediators between the political and military wills of the ministry. With reference to the theoretical discussion on trust, the British case of integration provides interpersonal trust within the Ministry of Defense as well as, to a more limited extent, within the interagency and interministerial structures. The common background and close working relationships even provide what sociologists call thick interpersonal trust. Narrow social recruitment, close working relationships across the civil-military divide, and the small size of the ministry support this process. Frequent personal contact across some departmental and ministerial boundaries also develops thin interpersonal trust within the civil-military interface and the interagency structures. Although these contacts do not develop close personal relationships, they provide familiarity and trust in other organizations through the process of reciprocity. British military professionalism and military culture were formed under close scrutiny of the British government during the imperial era of colonial policing. This meant that the British military was forced to develop political sensitivity to handle the essentially civil-military operations in the colonies.68 The political leadership’s effective control over military administration, promotions, and appointments also forced the commanders in the field to be more sensitive to the preferences of the cabinet.69 In contrast with the U.S. case, the British way of war has always taken direction from whatever task the political leadership has defined for the armed forces, most often involving counterinsurgencytype operations in the colonies.

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Thus, the integrated pattern of civil-military relations has, in the British case, led to an unconventional definition of the functional imperative and the creation of a structure and culture of the British armed forces that can be summarized as pragmatic and flexible, with emphasis on a minimum use of force. Another aspect of the British way of war, derived from the pragmatic lessons of colonial policing, is close cooperation between the civilian and military aspects of national power.70 The resulting British way of war is therefore theoretically well adjusted to the contemporary strategic context of complex peace support operations. British Operation in Iraq The British forces in Iraq largely operated in accordance with what is theoretically and doctrinally considered appropriate behavior in complex peace support operations. Tactically, British forces conducted heart and mind operations involving the minimum use of force, good political understanding, and force protection through foot patrolling and interaction with the local community. The British troops, moreover, displayed an ability to be tactically flexible. The siege and fall of Basra showed a well-developed political understanding and restraint in the use of force, even in open battle. The patience and respect for civilian lives and property during the battle for Basra serve as an example of what Lawrence Freedman calls ‘‘liberal warfare.’’71 Not only did they have the capability to adjust from the invasion phase to the post-conflict reconstruction tasks, they also displayed the same flexibility when exposed to different levels of threat like during the Black Watch operations south of Baghdad in support of the U.S. operations in Fallujah. Several instances in which escalation would seem normal were, in fact, deescalated by the British. At the same time, a number of counterinsurgency principles were violated. Most importantly, the British failed to draw upon the complete set of national instruments of power.72 At the strategic level, the interagency committee system was not utilized to its full potential, creating low-quality strategic-level planning that seriously underestimated the post-conflict phase of the campaign and, consequently, did not produce an effective phase IV plan.73 This can partly be explained by the fact that the British were the junior partner in the coalition and, therefore, not solely responsible for strategy and operational planning. However, the British did have leverage in the process of operational planning and, in the end, accepted the Pentagon plans without using their leverage to a large extent.74 At the tactical level, the principles of civil-military coordination and cooperation, as well as unity of command and effort, were also violated.75 The cooperation between different agencies involved in British operations was substantially more limited than expected from the British approach. An interesting explanation for the failure to apply what is considered the British approach to complex operations is that the traditional committee system of planning was bypassed by the presidential style of leadership employed by

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Prime Minister Blair. The Butler Report argues that ‘‘the informality and circumscribed character of the Government’s procedures which we saw in the context of policy-making towards Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgment.’’76 In essence, the traditional approach to planning and operations, involving interagency cooperation and coordination through the committee system, may have been circumscribed because of a more centralized and controlled form of leadership, as well as the need for increased deliberation speed in the run-up to the war. The consequences of the British ‘‘hands-off’’ approach in Iraq are contested by academics and practitioners alike.77 While substantial results have been achieved in terms of security sector reform and the handover of responsibilities to Iraqi authorities, the British have failed to provide security for the Iraqi population and civilian organizations, which have not been able to operate in the southern parts of Iraq. The small number of British troops, only 8,000 in a vast area of operation, is a significant factor explaining these failures.78 In an imperial policing fashion, the British seem to have found what they feel is an acceptable level of violence without wasting too many resources and without creating too much of an imprint on Iraqi society. However, the result is that the British approach in Iraq has failed to establish a condition from which to achieve the political aims of the operation by political and diplomatic means. The British pattern of civil-military relations has had a positive impact on operational effectiveness by providing a military culture and structure welladapted to the contemporary strategic context. It has also provided interagency structures and a cooperative political culture that also often provides good cooperation and coordination in the field of operations. The committee system of the interagency structure, and the extensive civil-military integration within the Ministry of Defense, provides a structure and culture that is better suited for comprehensive approaches and civil-military coordination than the U.S. case. Interestingly, the positive indirect impact was obvious in the tactical behavior of British troops in Iraq. However, the direct impact was less successful as the interagency system was not used to its full potential. The result was that the multifunctional coordination of strategic planning and operational and tactical execution in the field did not reach the level of coordination that is expected of the British approach.

CONCLUSION This chapter has emphasized the importance of civil-military relations when studying effectiveness in complex peace support operations by outlining a theory of direct and indirect civil-military impact on operational effectiveness, and by applying them in the cases of the United Kingdom and the United States. The most basic conclusion is that the civil-military aspects of effectiveness in complex peace operations are of such importance that calculations of

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effectiveness without reference to these aspects are essentially obsolete. Understanding the direct and indirect impacts of different patterns of civil-military relations on operational effectiveness is, therefore, imperative in improving military and civilian conduct for mission success in complex PSOs. The chapter has argued that, in the contemporary context, structural integration at the strategic level of the civil-military interface is imperative for increased effectiveness. There are two main reasons why integrated civilmilitary structures at the strategic level provide better results in complex PSOs. First, the indirect impact means that integrated structures provide more accurate and up-to-date interpretations and adjustment to the functional imperative of the armed forces. This means that the instruments of national power, not least the military, are better suited to the contemporary strategic context. Second, the direct impact of integrated structures is that they provide more inclusive command and control structures at the strategic level, which means that all relevant actors in complex operations are coordinated through integrated planning and execution of operations, providing what is called a comprehensive approach to planning and operations. The empirical tasters of the preceding chapters have served to highlight how two different patterns of civil-military relations affect operational effectiveness. An important consequence of the conclusions of this chapter is that increasing the effectiveness of armed forces in contemporary peace support operations is not primarily a military endeavor. Instead, increased effectiveness requires comprehensive civil-military approaches, which in turn requires integrated and effective civil-military relations, as an important level in the operational chain of command, and as the arena in which the structure and culture of the armed forces is decided. However, to change the very foundations of political institutions and bureaucratic cultures is a cumbersome process, to say the least. Moreover, the institutional arrangements of the civil-military interface in certain countries are part of unique political systems, which are the result of long historical processes and particular political cultures. The fact that all political systems are different does not mean that lessons from other systems are impossible to implement, but lessons from across borders must be adjusted and implemented in accordance with the cultural circumstances of the system. With a sound understanding of the fundamentals and peculiarities of each system, the recommendations of this chapter may well be implemented in very different contexts.

8

The Role of Private Security Companies in Peace Support Operations: An Outcome of the Revolution in Military Affairs and the Transformation in Warfare Christopher Kinsey

INTRODUCTION The idea of privatized security is not new. Private actors have played a significant role in war throughout the ages. Before the establishment of the nation state, the princes of Europe filled the ranks of their armies with mercenary soldiers. Even Napoleon was reliant on contractors, though he despised them for profiteering from war, calling them rogues ‘‘[w]ho roll in … insolent luxury, while my soldiers have neither bread nor shoes.’’1 At the start of the twentyfirst century, contractors are once more an important, if sometimes controversial, feature in war. Importantly, their presence in the operational theater is in part a consequence of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) that has led to a military transformation in warfare. As state militaries have become more specialized, they have deferred more mission tasks to the private sector, while the increasing complexity of humanitarian disasters has left states with little alternative but to harness the capabilities of the private sector. As Duffield explains, ‘‘[L]iberal peace embodies a new or political humanitarianism that lays emphasis on such things as conflict resolution and prevention, reconstructing social networks, strengthening civil and representative institutions, promoting the rule of law, and security sector reform in the context of a functioning market economy.’’2 No single agency, including the state, has the ability to undertake such a range of tasks. Instead, since the 1990s, new institutional arrangements have had to come into being to support government agencies, international organizations, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations, as they struggle

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to manage in areas of ongoing conflict. The British Army refers to these arrangements using the term ‘‘comprehensive approach,’’ while Duffield prefers to call them ‘‘strategic complexes.’’3 In each case, new ways have had to be found to project power through networks and systems that are non-territorial and are located in the public and private spheres. In the case of the British Army, implicit in such an arrangement is an understanding that planning and execution must be coordinated across government departments and potential participants,4 the result of which is that the twenty-first-century battlefield is no longer the preserve of the military, but is instead shared with other actors, including those from the private sector. The role of private security companies (PSCs) has fueled the debate on the future shape of the battlefield. They offer the type of services that would have previously been provided by states. Neither does it appear that demand for private security services is slowing down, though the Iraq bubble appears to be slowly deflating. It is estimated that the global market for private security stands at roughly $3 billion.5 However, this is solely for security services and does not include the provision of training, demining, and logistical support. Security services include guarding installations such as embassies and airports; acting as bodyguards to government officials such as Paul Bremer, who was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq; and protecting convoys in war zones. Private security also undertakes services in such areas as logistical support, military and security training, intelligence support, and the provision of humanitarian assistance. Moreover, as long as Western governments continue to reduce their force protection, leaving them with a capability gap, PSCs will try to fill that gap. Finally, if Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of what tomorrow’s operational theater is likely to resemble, then the future for private security is assured for the immediate and medium term.6 Before examining the notion that the privatization of warfare is an outcome of an RMA and, with changes to the international political environment that have occurred since the end of the Cold War, has sought to transform warfare, the chapter will discuss the role of private security in the early post–Cold War period. The reason for placing the argument surrounding the use of private security within an historical framework is to show how it has developed since the end of the Cold War.7 The chapter will then explore the relationship between the RMA and the increased use of contractors in the theater of operation. Greater use of sophisticated weapons systems has resulted in more contractors being placed in harm’s way, and the trend is set to continue. At the same time, the U.S. military in particular is concentrating its efforts on war fighting, as witnessed during the invasion of Iraq, leaving humanitarian operations to other agencies. In both cases, the specialization of military tasks will open up opportunities for contractors of all types, while the drive to improve cost efficiency will only deepen the process. Following on from this, the third section will define peace support operations (PSOs) and identify the forces behind the drive to outsource aspects of PSOs to

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private actors. Such operations are no longer the sole preserve of the military, if indeed they ever were, but involve a whole array of national, international, public, and private actors. The fourth section examines the likely roles for PSCs in this new environment. The final section draws together the argument that the RMA and the rise of intrastate war have led to an increase in PSOs, which in its turn has increased the specialization and civilianization of Western military forces due to their growing reliance on contractors.

THE ROLE OF PRIVATE COMBATANTS DURING THE 1990S Even though private security has been active since the 1970s and 1980s, most notably on the African continent, it was not until Executive Outcomes (EO) operations in Angola in the early 1990s that the industry really came to the attention of the international community and media.8 According to Eeben Barlow, EO’s founder, in 1993 the company was approached by an international oil company, through a friend, who wanted to know whether the company could assist in Soyo to recover equipment that had been lost, or that had been laid to waste, but which the oil company wanted to recover because of its value.9 The company agreed to help recover the equipment, though at the time they did not know that Soyo was held by Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total do Angola (UNITA).10 The operations lasted two months and turned into a serious battle between EO and UNITA. As Barlow explains, ‘‘[F]or the first five days … all our guys did at Soyo was defend, until through probably very disciplined fire control they had worn UNITA down.’’11 UNITA subsequently withdrew from the Soyo area leaving EO temporarily in control of the area. However, as Shearer remarks, ‘‘when the company pulled out shortly afterwards, leaving the Angolan battalions in place, UNITA recaptured the centre. The operation was nevertheless significant in that it was the first real demonstration of EO’s combat capabilities.’’12 Then in July 1993 Barlow was once again approached, but this time by General Faceira, a senior officer in the For¸cas Armadas Angolanos (FAA). The Angolan government offered EO a one-year contract worth $40 million to train 5,000 troops from the FAA’s 16th Regiment and 30 pilots, and to direct front-line operations against UNITA.13 The contract was later renewed for a further twelve months in September 1994 and then again for three months in 1995. The contract finally ended in January 1996. EO’s main contribution was tactical advice, drawn from a solid understanding of UNITA’s weaknesses and supported by intelligence on UNITA’s activities leaked via South African sources.14 Even before it had finished its operation in Angola, the company was being employed in Sierra Leone. In May 1995 the company was contracted to help the government of Sierra Leone defeat the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The government signed three contracts with EO covering a twenty-one-month period for a total of $35 million.15 By the time the company arrived in Sierra

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Leone, the RUF was only 20 miles from the country’s capital, Freetown. Within eight months the company had forced the RUF to negotiate with the government for the first time in five years.16 At the same time as the company was operating in Angola and Sierra Leone, it was also involved in other operations in Africa and beyond. These operations mainly involved training special forces in covert intelligence gathering for special forces operations and not necessarily providing the direct combat support that was the hallmark of the Angolan and Sierra Leone operations.17 Neither was EO the only company operating at this time. Established in 1987 by a group of former senior U.S. military officers, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) is a training, simulation, and government services company. Unlike EO, MPRI has been directly involved with PSOs ever since the end of the Cold War, working for the U.S. government. Such participation has taken the form of training foreign militaries in the same military practices employed by militaries in the West. The company is also involved in organizing security sector reform (SSR) programs and law enforcement–related services that focus on stabilization and reconstruction efforts. One of the company’s more high-profile contracts was with the Croatian government. A contract was signed with the Croatian government in 1994 to help the transition of the country’s armed forces from a Warsaw Pact to a NATO-style force. MPRI designed a Long-Range Management Program to provide the Croatian Ministry of Defense with strategic long-term capabilities to improve its opportunity of becoming a member of NATO.18 Sandline International was another company operating during this period.19 Established in 1996 and registered in the Bahamas, the company supplied military and security services to governments and multinational organizations operating in high-risk areas of the world. The company became infamous towards the end of 1997 when it allegedly broke a UN arms embargo to supply weapons to Sierra Leone. The company argued that its actions were intended to restore to power the democratically elected government of the country, while the company claimed the British government knew all about the operation, a claim denied by the government at the time. It later transpired that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had been informed, while Sandline maintained that some officials gave it their approval, a claim dismissed by the FCO, but accepted by the Legg enquiry. The enquiry noted that some in the FCO might have unintentionally given the impression that the operation had government support, when in fact it did not.20 Other PSCs also active in the 1990s included Defense Systems Ltd.—known today as ArmorGroup International—and Control Risks. These companies tended to focus on security-related activities, staying away from the type of military services supplied by EO, MPRI, and Sandline International. Indeed, in the case of the United Kingdom, they typified the security industry. In this respect U.K. companies such as ArmorGroup and Control Risks have tended to work for multinational corporations, supplying them with security services as

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well as a range of other functions, such as political analysis of countries that face internal disruption. The focus on security and not military activity is typically a British affair and has its roots in the commercial security operations conducted during the 1970s. Today this distinction is reflected in the attitudes of many former British officers who now work in the industry. When retired Major General John Holmes was asked to describe the type of work Erinys does in Iraq, his immediate reply was ‘‘security work.’’ Holmes went on to explain that the company supplies point security, which is defensive in nature, for the oil infrastructure and close protection for individuals working for the U.S. Corps of Engineers and other companies working in the country. We guard things and are no different to the tens of thousands of private guards anywhere else in the world. What makes us different is that we are armed and the company has expatriate management managing local people.21

The view that the industry provides security and not a war-fighting function is reflected throughout the U.K. industry, while Donald makes the same point when he explains, ‘‘British PSCs will not in the short or medium term undertake combat tasks because it would wreck their business. The sector has spent too long separating itself from the combat end of the private security spectrum to jeopardize it all with more ‘dogs of war’ headlines.’’22 Importantly, these views differ from those held by some former U.S. military officers working for American companies. Blackwater Vice Chairman Cofer Black, for example, proposed dispatching a brigade-size force of private soldiers to Darfur as part of a UN peacekeeping effort to stop the fighting.23 According to Donald, the company may have quietly dropped the idea because of a lack of support from the U.S. government.24 In many respects, the 1990s prepared the industry for what was to come in the context of 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Unlike state militaries, PSCs were already adapting to the political changes occurring globally and especially in Africa. The increase in intrastate war has also meant an increase in business for PSCs protecting the assets of multinational corporations operating in hostile environments. Moreover, some companies were already engaging with international agencies involved with PSOs. Over the past fifteen years, ArmorGroup International has supported more than fifty-three missions, providing administrative and technical support to such organizations as the United Nations, UNICEF, and Care International in more than thirty countries from Afghanistan to Zaire.25 The same company is now a world leader in humanitarian mine clearance as a result of the amount of mine clearance contracts it has undertaken in the last decade.26 Neither is ArmorGroup alone in this respect. American PSCs have also undertaken to support PSOs. DynCorp supplied personnel for the International Police Task Force in Bosnia as well as personnel for the Kosovo International Verification Mission.27

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Even so, the industry’s participation during this period was on an ad hoc basis with the focus mainly on logistical support and not the physical security that we are now witnessing in Iraq. 9/11 changed all that. Ever since then, the industry has continued to grow in importance, while militaries continue to rely on contractors for a multitude of tasks from servicing weapon platforms to supplying logistical support. Thus contractors today are a significant actor in the operational theater, notably because of the RMA, the transformation in warfare from interstate to intrastate, and the subsequent increase in the number of PSOs now being carried out. Nevertheless, in the case of PSCs, governments have been slow in acknowledging their role in the operational theater. Instead, PSCs have been left to operate in the shadows, adopting in many respects a quasi-legitimate personality in relation to the international community. As the remainder of the chapter explains, this is about to change. The RMA and the transformation in warfare that has seen a marked increase in PSOs will drive the international community to increase their reliance on contractors, especially PSCs.

THE RMA AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONTRACTORIZATION OF WAR From the moment the coalition force crossed the border into Iraq in April 2003, there has been growing public concern over the role of contractors in the war.28 While most of the focus has been on contractors engaged in reconstruction, such as Halliburton, and armed contractors, such as Blackwater and Aegis, there is a third group without whom the U.S. military could not have gone to war. These are the defense contractors who are responsible for ensuring the weapon systems used by the military function properly. Without them, the military would struggle to operate many of their sophisticated weapon platforms given the degree of technical knowledge necessary to operate them. As Singer points out, ‘‘[W]eapons systems required to carry out the highest levels of conflict are becoming so complex that as many as five different companies are often required to help just one U.S. military unit carry out its operations.’’29 Such equipment has revolutionized the operational side of warfare, while in the case of high-intensity warfare, reliance on advanced technology has increased the need for skilled technicians from the private sector. Although changes in weapons technology have seen military power concentrated into the hands of ever-smaller groups, it has also had a dramatic impact on the political, economic, and social aspects of war, changing the nature of the modern battlefield. In many respects, we now live in a post-heroic world because of advances in technology. The military has become risk adverse, while at the same time the introduction of virtual war means the public now demands that their soldiers stay out of harm’s way. The soldier is not removed from the act of war, but only from the dangers it entails. The U.S. secretary of the Air Force summed up this state of affairs when he argued, ‘‘The computer chip may very well be a most useful war-fighting tool. For example, while it is never

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a good thing when we lose a Predator on the battlefield, given the alternatives I look forward to many more computer chips dying for our country.’’30 Many might refute this claim, but the truth is that technology combined with the ability for news agencies to instantaneously transmit pictures of the battlefield into the homes of millions of viewers has made politicians much more cautious about committing the lives of their soldiers to combat, especially when there are contractors who can operate advanced weapon systems that are able to engage the enemy instead. Indeed, this situation can only exist with the support of such highly skilled technicians. During the first Gulf War in 1991, for every contractor there were fifty military personnel involved. In the 2003 conflict, the ratio was one to ten.31 If warfare is being transformed as a consequence of the RMA, then the primary transformation is technological, which in turn is leading to a secondary transformation: the specialization or civilianization of the military. This has opened up opportunities for the private sector to play a much greater role in war. More importantly, in the case of the United States, if it is to maintain its military superiority, it will have to embrace technology from the private sector. Nor should we be surprised about how technology has impacted war. After all, the origins of industrial war can be traced back to the last years of the Napoleonic Wars.32 Then, as today, the military relied on the private sector to mass-produce muskets, cannon, and ammunition. By the end of the eighteenth century, the bureaucratization,33 industrialization, and nationalization of violence were starting to have a significant impact on how war was fought. War was becoming an activity endured by the masses. Clausewitz himself, one of the great nineteenth-century military strategists, recognized this transformation in the organization of war when he ‘‘urged the replacement of cabinet wars by national wars … saying in effect ‘Give the War to the People!’ The State is the People.’’34 Today war is back in the hands of cabinets, supported by contractors. This has led some to argue that military and civilian roles are becoming blurred, when in fact the opposite is true. Specialization and civilianization of roles that in the past were the responsibility of the military are finding their way back into the private sector with the support of the RMA. Rumsfeld’s ‘‘shock and awe’’ approach to war fighting, using technology in place of manpower to achieve regime change in Iraq, is a return to the quest for decisive warfare. It is an approach that sees soldiers engaged in fighting while contractors undertake the other tasks involved in war, from maintaining weapon systems to organizing logistical support for frontline troops. While the tools to fight wars today are different from the tools used between 1631 and 1815, some aspects of the nature of war are strikingly similar: [To] keep the costs of war reasonably proportionate to the purposes obtained. [Furthermore] if in a successful battle the enemy army could be substantially destroyed … then the whole course of the war could be resolved in a single day, and wars

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thereby might be won at relatively low cost, by avoiding the prolonged expenditure of resources and lives.35

These words apply as much today as they did 200 years ago. The U.S. military’s use of advanced weapon platforms has given them an unprecedented advantage, which means that opposing military forces can be defeated in months if not days instead of years, as the first Iraq war demonstrated. While on the one hand U.S. military strategists may be reassured by having a preponderance of force, the country now faces a different type of threat as its enemies adopt an asymmetric approach to warfare. Neither is asymmetric warfare confined to the United States. Other Western countries also face an asymmetric threat from the same enemies who want to wage war against the United States. Where does this leave the role of the advanced weapon technician in war today? To suggest he or she is solely responsible for the increase in the number of contractors on the battlefield is only partly true. They are nevertheless an important driving force, while a further driving force is the increasing fusion between the corporate ethos of defense contractors and the military ethos that is leading to a strengthening of cooperation between soldiers and civilians. This in turn is making it easier to specialize and civilianize the future military. ‘‘The contention here is that … defense contractors tend to recruit ex-military personnel ‘predisposed’ to ‘ways of acting, based on values drawn from their experiences of military services,’ and who operate ‘to the same high standards’ of the armed services ‘while exhibiting the same moral values which were first instilled in them in the military.’’’36 Thus, it is held that contractors working alongside military personnel frequently share the same experiences, dangers, likings, and difficulties, eroding further any cultural barriers that exist between them in a mutually beneficial relationship where values pass easily between environments, shaping attitudes and working practices.37 The fusing together of the corporate and military ethos suggests a new dynamic ethos that transcends the traditional civil-military relationship and the divide that has existed between these two groups for generations. Uttley sums up this new form of military ethos by suggesting that it replicates a new public service ethos and the sharing of best practices in other areas of state activity. Importantly, the provision of services is through a combination of public and private service agents and not an in-house monopoly.38 If the military ethos is being eroded in the field of technical support, it is also being eroded in the actual area of war-fighting and stabilization operations. In this respect, specialization and civilianization are confined not only to the sphere of high-intensity warfare, but also to the sphere of low-intensity warfare and specifically PSOs. Moreover, low-intensity warfare has become the norm for the time being, as the rest of the world realizes that it cannot challenge the U.S. military on its own terms. The amount of destructive power that U.S. forces brought to bear on Saddam’s army dictates that in the short to medium

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term, those who choose to challenge the will of the United States will do so using methods associated with asymmetric warfare. Recognition of the asymmetric threats to the West actually emerged after 9/11 and, in the case of the United Kingdom, is identified in the New Chapter White Paper published in 2003. The New Chapter concluded that it was better to engage the enemy at long range and to have significant forces ready to deploy overseas to act against terrorist groups and regimes that harbored them. Particular U.K. strengths were identified both in find-and-strike operations and in prevention and stabilization operations. The former were identified as requiring high-intensity war fighting capacity and decision-making structures to enable forces to act rapidly and decisively.39 The analysis in the New Chapter pointed to the importance of what it called network-centric capability: the linking together of precision weapons and information technologies to produce a military effect at a qualitatively higher tempo.40 The support of civilian contractors is crucial here. At the other end, the New Chapter also recognized the need to engage in PSOs. Moreover, as the next section discusses, PSOs are no longer the sole responsibility of the military. The role and importance of contractors are increasing in this realm as well.

THE DRIVING FORCES BEHIND THE USE OF PSCs IN PSOs PSOs cover a wide area of activity. It would be wrong to suggest that the private sector has been able to encroach on all aspects of PSOs. It is therefore necessary to define what is meant by PSOs before any discussion can take place as to the type and level of encroachment into this area of operations by the private sector. A PSO is an operation that impartially makes use of diplomatic, civil, and military means, normally in pursuit of United Nations Charter purposes and principles, to restore or maintain peace. Such operations may include conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement, peacekeeping, peace-building, state-building, and/or humanitarian operations. Under the present international political climate, it is unlikely that PSCs will be allowed to engage in peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations. Many governments are still uneasy about using the industry and are still struggling to come to terms with the presence of so many non-state actors, including PSCs, now operating in the operational theater since the end of the Cold War. They seem unwilling to separate the concept of PSCs from mercenaries and are therefore not prepared to employ them. Even if the international community was able to reconcile the difference between the two actors, it is still unlikely governments would turn to PSCs to act as peace enforcers or peacekeeping forces in the place of state militaries. As noted earlier, Cofer Black has suggested using private soldiers in Darfur as part of a UN peacekeeping force, citing EO’s success in Angola and Sierra Leone in support of the idea. However, Jim Hooper, who for the last twenty years has written about the South African Defense Force’s (SADF)

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special forces combat operations, questions the validity of the claim. Hooper argues that EO’s success is directly attributed to their operators being former permanent forces cadres of the SADF with extensive experience in jointconventional or special forces combat operations in Angola.41 Other than that provided by EO, there is no evidence to support the claim that a PSC could become an effective peace enforcement or peacekeeping force. It is more likely that such a role would be beyond their operational capability and the size of resources necessary to guarantee operational success. If PSCs are to be a part of PSOs, it is much more probable that they will participate in conflict prevention, peace-building, state-building, and humanitarian operations. These areas of PSOs reflect closely Duffield’s strategic complexes mentioned at the start of the chapter in that they employ complementary diplomatic, civil, and, when necessary, military means to monitor, identify, and address both the cause of conflict and the longer-term needs of those suffering. Furthermore, peace-building requires a commitment to a long-term process that may run concurrently with other types of PSOs.42 This last point is pertinent to PSCs because unlike state militaries, which frequently have other operational commitments to consider, PSCs can afford to commit the necessary time (cost permitting). What, then, is driving the military’s reliance on the private sector in PSOs? A number of reasons have been put forward, of which the two most common explanations are the end of the Cold War and the end of apartheid in South Africa, which saw the downsizing of state militaries and the release into the marketplace of thousands of trained soldiers. The problem with these explanations is the fact they both occurred seventeen years ago. Consequently, they can hardly be responsible for the increasing role of PSCs occurring today. Thus, both reasons are problematic when explaining the expansion of the private security industry. The most obvious explanation is that outsourcing government services continues to be a priority for the U.K. and U.S. governments. This may be because they believe private companies to be more efficient than publicly supplied services, but the most probable reason is increased pressure imposed by operational commitments. To put it more starkly, there are too few soldiers and resources for operational commitments. In the case of the British Army, manpower has diminished from 160,000 immediately after the Cold War to 101,808 today, while operations have increased.43 More worrying for the Ministry of Defense (MoD) is the military’s inability to attract recruits. (As of August 2006, the infantry was short approximately 3,500 soldiers, more than 15% of its total strength.)44 The market is thus seen as a solution to a shortfall in manpower linked to an increase in the operational tempo of the army. Neither is this situation likely to improve in the immediate or medium term. The proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) spent on defense has fallen from 3.5% in 1993 to just below 2.3% today.45 This reduction in defense spending has resulted in an emerging capability gap that will create opportunities that PSCs will want to fill. Nor is the United Kingdom alone in relation to

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manpower shortages and increasing operational tempo. The U.S. military faces exactly the same problem in terms of recruitment as fewer Americans now choose to serve in the military. Neither is the phenomenon new, as discussed above, though it was not until 9/11 that the industry really started to grow as demands for security services increased overnight. That said, it was only after the second Gulf War that PSCs started to sign multi-million dollar contracts. It is estimated that there are 630 companies working in Iraq on contract to the U.S. government, with personnel from more than 100 countries offering services ranging from cooking and driving to close protection, while their 180,000 employees now outnumber 160,000 official troops.46 PSCs only represent a small percentage of this figure. The precise numbers, however, are unclear, with some reports estimating the figure to be as high as 48,000 while other reports suggest the number could be as low as 25,000.47 Even so, such numbers represent a significant increase from two decades ago. Then, the industry only employed a small number of individuals, probably no more than 2000 to 3000,48 and would mainly have come from a special forces background, the Guards, or served with irregular forces such as the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces. Today, even ordinary soldiers see the industry as a second career after military service, especially given the U.S. government’s intention to rely more and more on PSCs for security functions in conflict zones. Other governments have been much slower to react, but will in all probability follow suit. After all, using private security may make sense for functions such as perimeter Defense since it allows the military to free up personnel for combat duty. The U.S. military sees its primary role as war fighting, not PSOs, and therefore prefers to give more of the latter responsibility to the private sector. Nor are they alone here. With the majority of Western militaries struggling to attract adequate numbers of recruits, it is quite likely they too will turn to the private sector to fill the manpower and skills gaps. What is not clear is the degree to which governments will become reliant on PSCs to supply services in the future. The following section discusses the direction the emerging trend might take, highlighting, in particular, the roles governments are likely to want to outsource.

ASSIGNING PEACE SUPPORT ROLES TO PSCs Donald identifies four areas where in the future we are likely to see an increase in PSC involvement in PSOs. They include intelligence provision and analysis, support to post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction operations, SSR, and humanitarian and development assistance. Unfortunately, this chapter does not have the space to allow a detailed account of the nature of PSC involvement in these areas. Instead, only a brief analysis is possible.

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Intelligence Provision The private sector understands intelligence differently from the government. In the latter case, intelligence is privileged information, normally gathered covertly by intelligence services and not open for public scrutiny. For the private sector, intelligence is simply open source or declassified information that has been analyzed, thus making it useful to the client.49 In relation to PSOs and intelligence, PSCs are in a rather unique position compared to other non-state actors operating in conflict zones because they tend to employ former soldiers with experience in intelligence. In addition, the fact that they normally work over large geographical areas and frequently form close relationships with the local population, being able to adapt to a given environment,50 make them an ideal source of additional information for the military tasked with conducting a PSO. The last point is particularly pertinent because failure to adapt can seriously jeopardize their operational effectiveness and even threaten their survival. As important are the implications for the military of turning to PSCs for intelligence. As with state militaries, PSC forces have different security and organizational cultures, usually reflecting the culture from which such forces are drawn. Thus, some PSCs may be better placed in cultural intelligence because their ethos is closer to a military culture that is used to operating in an insurgency environment. British PSCs, for example, may have an advantage over their rivals as a result of their employees having gained experience from operating in Northern Ireland, which would have taught them the value of adopting an open mind, cultural tolerance, and a willingness to communicate with outsiders. The same may also be true of other PSCs whose employees have intimate experience of insurgency operations as a result of serving in a state military. However, employees of PSCs can also have a detrimental impact on intelligence gathering by bringing to the operation habits and prejudices that are not conducive to good operational conduct. Employee attitudes towards the local community are especially important and can easily have a negative impact on the local population. Iraq is awash with stories of security contractors behaving badly towards locals, thus endangering not only their own company’s intelligence gathering, but also possibly that of other organizations.51 Where PSCs differ from state militaries is in how they operate, and it is in this area that they can make a contribution to intelligence culture, the military operational function of gathering and analyzing information about the theater and the enemy.52 In complex environments they are able to offer commanders and senior officers invaluable information as a result of cultural intelligence. In Iraq, for example, a number of PSCs operate from outside the Green Zone. This has meant being able to communicate with the local population, understand their culture, and remain open-minded and flexible, while also showing careful judgment in the application of force in what is frequently a very fluid environment. At the same time, PSCs appear well placed to operate in such an

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environment, notably because many companies employ former members of special forces with experience in both guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency. In each of these types of warfare, a crucial element is winning the hearts and minds of the local population. As Kain explains, ‘‘If you are a small unit working in a foreign country then you are dependent on the relationship between you and those people for your existence. If they dislike you and only associate with you because you provide them with dollars, then you can’t operate.’’53 The same applies to contractors living outside the Green Zone. Crucially, the experiences of some PSCs suggest it is possible as long as the local population is prepared to accept you. That said, it is usually a temporary arrangement and is susceptible to political manipulation by local power brokers.54 Finally, this places PSCs in an ideal position, if only for a short period of time, for gathering field intelligence, which they do as a matter of course to support their own security operations, and which the military can also use to improve its own operational picture. Good intelligence is a force multiplier and is essential for the overall success of operations, particularly in the case of the U.K. military, which has traditionally relied on intelligence rather than increasing manpower. In Iraq, for example, most of the established PSCs have their own intelligence cells, which collect information on threats and pass it on to team leaders, who use it to allocate resources more efficiently and to avoid any potential trouble.55 This type of tactical intelligence is extremely useful to the military as an additional source. Importantly, it offers the military a unique insight into different aspects of the local population that is frequently beyond their operational capabilities or is simply ignored as a result of the military’s cultural boundaries, which block out outside cultural influences. In this respect, security contractors who live in the local community and have access to privileged information that is not always available to military intelligence can provide new insight and understanding regarding the complex context of the local arena. Support to Post-Conf lict Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations This area is already familiar to PSCs. As mentioned above, in the case of DynCorp the company provided support to the Bosnian operation supplying former police offices to the International Police Task Force as well as police officers for the verification mission in Kosovo. In both cases they were supplied on behalf of the Department of State. In the case of the U.K. government, they have already hired PSCs to provide security for government staff who either work in or visit conflict zones. Recent figures show the cost running into millions of pounds.56 The most lucrative market, however, is likely to be in support of the military. Shortages in manpower coupled with an increase in overseas commitments suggest that the U.S. and U.K. militaries are becoming far too small to perform anything other than narrowly defined military tasks. This will invariably leave a whole range of activities in the hands of contractors. Indeed, both militaries already employ contractors to build and supply

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base camp facilities for their troops,57 while the United States also use PSCs to guard their bases, something British commanders are still not willing to accept. Finally, much of the logistical support militaries in the developing world are receiving from the U.S. government is coming from contractors. For instance, the State Department has hired DynCorp to help equip and provide logistical support to international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role in the critical mission without assigning combat troops.58 While at present the U.S. government appears to be the only country willing to outsource in this way, it is a trend that is set to increase, especially if Western governments want to be able to influence organizations such as the African Union without committing ground troops or resources. Paying contractors to do your bidding not only allows you to influence what is happening in the developing world, it also lets you protect your national interests by proxy. In this way, Western governments can keep an element of control over events happening thousands of miles away without the political risk associated with committing troops. Furthermore, Western militaries are now facing the prospect of an emerging capability gap as a result of government willingness to act with fewer resources, which PSCs will try and fill, but only as long as governments recognize that they are part of the nation’s assets. Security Sector Reform The role of private security in SSR is best understood in the context of closer cooperation between the many different actors that now make up the development and security arenas. SSR reform describes the reorganization of a country’s security structures in terms of its relationship to the state and civil society. The notion of including the security sector within the development program originated from the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. These countries sought to reorganize SSR in a less parochial and ghettoized manner than had previously been the case.59 Inclusion of SSR within the development arena was considered necessary since a breakdown in development can rapidly lead to a breakdown in the security sector. Thus, failure to address social, political, and economic injustices undermines the judicial, police, intelligence agencies, and the military. Much of the work undertaken by the private sector in this area is carried out by public sector consulting firms. These firms operate at the strategic level, undertaking work to promote long-term stability by helping to build local capacity and competence. In this respect, there is a difference between the type of work that a PSC is suited to and the kind of work public sector consulting firms engage in. Nevertheless, both groups engage in SSR alongside each other—not sequentially. Whereas in the past, longer-term SSR came after post-conflict tasks, this is no longer the case. Indeed, while a PSC may be contracted to disarm, demobilize, and then reintegrate (DDR) former combatants back into society—a post-conflict task—a consulting firm may be restructuring the Ministry of Justice at the same

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time, a long-term project. Neither is their role confined to DDR. PSCs can draw on a whole range of skills that they can place at the disposal of governments or international organizations. The most obvious is military and police training, which is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, where contractors have been used instead of uniformed personnel.60 Military training has been a core business activity for some U.S. PSCs for the last decade. Most notable among them is MPRI. As mentioned earlier, the company was involved in training the Croatian and Bosnian armed forces throughout the early 1990s, while DynCorp trained the Liberian army,61 and Vinnell is training the Saudi Arabian National Guard.62 Neither are U.S. PSCs alone in marketing their SSR skills. Control Risks, a U.K. PSC, has a governance and development department that specializes in long-term stabilization programs. It is also, according to the head of Governance and Development, able to provide services normally provided by governments.63 This is normally the result of consciously employing former government employees with the requisite skills to provide such services. Importantly, PSCs offer surge capacity without the government having to employ additional personnel. Whether this is cheaper in the long run is debatable. However, what is not debatable is that some operating areas will be dangerous and require security that will invariably be supplied by PSCs, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan. Humanitarian and Development Assistance This is probably the most controversial area in which PSCs might be engaged in the foreseeable future. There are potentially two roles that they can undertake: first, the direct delivery and provision of humanitarian aid and development assistance, and second, acting as coordinators of delivery of humanitarian aid.64 In the British context, the direct provision of humanitarian aid since the end of the Cold War has been increasingly managed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) acting in partnership with the British government on stabilization, reconstruction, and development projects. While the provision of hard security continues to be dominated by the military, human security— securing people against the threat from hunger, disease, and the physical environment—has been given over much more to the NGO community. However, handing over such responsibility can present a government with the problem of executing policy if, as was the case with Iraq, the NGO community suddenly withdraws its help in the implementation of human security tasks. It fell to the CPA to take on the role, which they were not suitably prepared for, and lacked the necessary experience. As Donald explains, ‘‘[M]any of its personnel were inexperienced in administering humanitarian or development aid projects.… The result was that there were very substantial holes in humanitarian and development provision.’’65 As noted above, being so reliant on the NGO community to execute policy is problematic if they withdraw their services because they do not wish to be associated with a particular military operation. In this respect,

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PSCs are an alternative to NGOs in humanitarian aid delivery and development assistance, while also being able to provide their own security if required. Furthermore, since PSC personnel are invariably former soldiers, they are less likely to show hostility towards the military and more likely to be prepared to work alongside them, which is frequently not the case with NGO personnel. Coordinating the delivery of humanitarian aid is the second role that PSCs can undertake for government. This is precisely what Aegis is doing for the U.S. government in Iraq. It is frequently the case that post-conflict environments are chaotic, with government agencies and NGOs unknowingly working against each other to achieve their objectives. Because government agencies and NGOs are sometimes suspicious of the other’s motives, they may not liaise with each other, thus creating problems when it comes to sharing information. For those responsible for mounting humanitarian operations, maintaining a strategic picture is important if the right amount and type of aid are to be delivered. This can only really be achieved through a centrally organized process that is able to coordinate all the different actors involved. In Iraq, the role of coordinating all the PSCs was given to Aegis. They became responsible for tracking the movement of security companies, coordinating their movement with that of the U.S. military, coordinating rescue operations if contractors got into trouble, and sharing intelligence between PSCs. Such experience could be useful in other humanitarian operations, but it does require the support of all the agencies operating on the ground if it is to work.

THE CONTRACTORIZATION AND CIVILIANIZATION OF THE MILITARY The changing nature of warfare, which has occurred since the end of the Cold War, has made militaries more specialized in their war fighting and more likely to defer mission tasks to contractors. This trend is set to continue as long as governments choose to engage in more and more PSOs. As the previous section noted, there is a whole array of tasks that in the past would have been considered the responsibility of the military which are now being given over to PSCs or NGOs. Even so, certain countries are further ahead in deferring mission tasks to contractors. The American government, for example, has outsourced many security roles in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of using the army, while the British government appears reluctant to do the same. They prefer to use the army rather than commit to the level of outsourcing security roles that the American government has undertaken. Indeed, whereas the U.S. military employs PSCs to guard their bases and protect their convoys, the British Army still uses troops with many commanders uneasy about outsourcing such important responsibilities. One possible reason for this unease may have to do with the fact that PSCs lack the legitimacy of state actors, thus raising real concerns for commanding officers. However, given the manpower shortage faced by the British Army, it may eventually have no option but to adopt the same approach as the American

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military for certain security roles, including using PSCs as static guards and convoy protection. Finally, the combination of outsourcing military responsibilities with the military’s reliance on advanced weapons platforms has intensified the impact of contractors on the operational environment, thus increasing the speed of which the military is becoming more specialized as it seeks to focus on war fighting while leaving other non-war-fighting functions, including some mission-critical functions such as logistical support, to contractors.

CONCLUSION What does the future hold for PSCs in respect to PSOs? While the industry is not going to go away, there is still uncertainty about the future regarding its potential contribution to PSOs, notably because it is dependant on other factors over which it has no control. At present the industry appears to be settling for less contentious roles within PSOs, in particular intelligence provision, support to post-conflict stabilization operations, and humanitarian and development assistance security sector reform. Peace enforcement and peacekeeping have for the time being been shelved because it is felt that the international community has no stomach for outsourcing these roles. Governments in developing countries are particularly hostile to the idea of using PSCs, which they see as a modern manifestation of the age-old mercenary, while also denying them a potential source of revenue for their own troops. Western governments, on the other hand, are already relying on their services, though there are still significant differences between countries. The U.S. government, for example, is determined to move forward and outsource more functions to PSCs. On the other hand, there are countries, such as South Africa, that would like to see the industry banned. This use of PSCs in peacekeeping has given the U.S. government a significant role in Somalia without assigning combat troops.66 This is a trend that the United States is actively pursuing. Nor is the U.S. government worried about outsourcing to foreign PSCs. Aegis, a U.K. PSC, won the Matrix contract in Iraq to protect U.S. government officials involved in reconstruction, while the British PSC ArmorGroup won a contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. What this also suggests is that in the future, U.S. contributions to PSOs may include foreign PSCs. Several U.K. companies have already established offices in Washington with the intention of benefiting from the government’s move to outsource more responsibility for PSOs to the private sector. In the United Kingdom, the government has been slow to react to the phenomenon and is lacking a coherent policy, instead preferring to leave it up to individual ministries to decide whether they should engage with the industry or not. While the Foreign Office, for example, uses PSCs to protect staff working in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan and has a clear set of rules governing their

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working relationship with PSCs, the same is not true of the Ministry of Defense (MoD). Consequently, while military personnel frequently work alongside security contractors on PSOs, tensions can and do arise. This is especially so concerning the use of firearms by PSCs, which can make the PSO environment even more complex for soldiers. The main worry for the industry at present, however, is whether the government will follow the American example and increase its use of PSCs in support of PSOs. In the immediate future, this looks doubtful. The MoD and the Department for International Development (DFID) both appear uncomfortable with the idea. The MoD appears particularly worried about the legal implication of companies being armed and the fact that they could also pose a risk for soldiers in PSOs. This only leaves the FCO. Unfortunately for the industry, their contribution to PSOs is usually limited to the diplomatic arena and not to roles that are generally suitable for outsourcing to PSCs. Other countries have also started to outsource some of their responsibilities in the area of PSOs. They are, however, a long way behind the United States and some way behind the United Kingdom. One of the reasons for this may have to do with public criticism of the idea, especially if it means risking the wrath of public opinion, which few, if any, politicians like doing. Even so, PSCs do offer another approach for countries that want to be seen to support PSOs but do not necessarily want to become directly involved for domestic reasons; PSO by proxy, some might call it. Finally, the pace at which aspects of PSOs are being outsourced should be of serious concern for government. Policy makers need to understand the implications of such outsourcing for all those parties concerned. The last thing they need to do is to sleepwalk into controversy as the British government did over the ‘‘Arms to Africa’’ affair in the late 1990s with serious potential implications for the future role of PSCs in PSOs.67 In this respect, governments need to start addressing the issues of legitimacy, accountability, and transparency if the general public is to have any trust in a system that allows functions which in the past would have been the sole responsibility of the state to be undertaken by private actors.

9

Cultural Intelligence for Peace Support Operations in the New Era of Warfare Kobi Michael and David Kellen

INTRODUCTION The end of the age of conventional and symmetrical wars and the growth in number of intrastate conflicts in failed states have, in turn, led to changes in the nature of peacekeeping operations. This change can be encapsulated in the transition from first-generation peacekeeping, which focused on observing ceasefire and armistice agreements between warring states, to second-generation peacekeeping, which emphasizes statebuilding through democratization and the rehabilitation of indigenous institutions and economies.1 Second-generation peacekeeping adopts an approach of dealing with the roots of conflict and not only the repression of violence. Intrastate conflicts are no longer the exclusive domain of the participating warring factions, and the international community increasingly finds itself involved in these conflicts, whether through the United Nations, regional organizations, or the direct intervention of state actors, most often the United States. Clear examples of this phenomenon can be found in Bosnia and Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The challenge only becomes more complex when intrastate conflicts involve terror and guerilla groups with connections to global terror networks (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan). Such conflicts demand increased military involvement, yet, as Frank van Kappen, former Director of Planning at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), explains, ‘‘[T]he military operation alone will not create a sustainable peace, it only provides the security umbrella underneath which the real peace process has to take place.’’2 On the other hand, increased military involvement has the potential to overshadow statebuilding efforts. The hegemony of military mission components is also expressed in the dominance of military thinking over political thinking, which leads to the

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militarization of peacekeeping professional discourse. Yet if modern PSOs are to succeed in fulfilling their mandates, they must be able to move beyond traditional military rationales. As Renauld Thuenens, director of Belgium’s national intelligence cell in the Stabilization Force (SFOR), explains, ‘‘[M]uch more than was the case during conventional military operations, analysts will have to be able to get out of the [military] paradigm; ‘get out of the box!’’’3 Military thinking in the changing world of warfare relies on the conceptual framework of the revolution in military affairs (RMA), whose characteristics, foundations, and development are detailed in the chapters written by Allen Sens and David Last in this volume. Current military thinking currently relies heavily on precision fire and technology to destroy targets (including human targets in targeted assassination). This kind of intelligence is not necessarily appropriate for increasing the effectiveness of second-generation peacekeeping operations. In this case, mission forces and their dispatchers are in need of a different kind of intelligence. The role of intelligence in second-generation peacekeeping goes far beyond destroying targets and force protection; its principle importance is in clarifying the basic context of the operation and its fulfillment. Without understanding their context, operations will meet with serious difficulties in ensuring their relevance and protecting actors in the conflict theater. Moreover, the context of a second-generation peacekeeping operation is far more complex than that of a traditional military operation. It is, therefore, important to discern the right kind of intelligence needed for peacekeeping, to grasp its rationale, and to understand how it is achieved. Intelligence in a peacekeeping context has three levels, all of which are different but connected: 1. Strategic intelligence, which is especially relevant for mission planners, who must understand the overall picture in order to design the mission’s political aims 2. Operational intelligence, which is necessary for commanders to understand the context of the conflict theater 3. Tactical intelligence, which commanders require to carry out specific mission activities

The third kind of intelligence most closely resembles military intelligence and is necessary for, among other things, force protection. Intelligence is often perceived as belonging to the realm of military experts, secret services, and the like. As such, it threatens the neutral nature of the United Nations, where intelligence is almost a synonym for secrecy, non-transparency, and sometimes conspiracy. This chapter’s historical review of the place of intelligence and its roles in peacekeeping operations reveals its near absence. The methodological and professional literature on peacekeeping does not so much deal with intelligence as it does with the difficulties and limits involved in developing

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intelligence capabilities in the framework of the United Nations and peacekeeping operations. At the United Nations, intelligence is almost taboo despite its essential importance. Patrick Cammaert, military advisor to the UN secretarygeneral, underscores this point when he writes, ‘‘Due to political sensitivities, for many years ‘intelligence’ within the United Nations was not considered an acceptable term, activity, or process.’’4 It seems that an inclusive doctrine for the use of intelligence in peacekeeping operations has yet to be developed. The complexity of second-generation peacekeeping operations, which results from simultaneous military, police, and civil operations being carried out in complex conflict theaters that are, from the perspective of the peacekeepers, culturally and politically foreign, requires the construction and development of integrative intelligence capabilities in the areas of collection, processing, evaluation, and distribution. Intelligence capabilities should develop the knowledge base of peacekeeping forces and ensure the relevancy of their actions in the theater. The relevancy of mission force actions in the theater should assist in achieving necessary mission goals. It should be expressed in the creation of the conditions for creating political change that ensures an end to violence, helps deliver a political agreement, and rebuilds the failed state. This kind of achievement is dependent on the ability of the mission force to conquer the hearts and minds of the local population.5 Thus, the goal of second-generation peacekeeping operations is to create political change that will end violence and rebuild the conflict theater by means of building the institutions and rationale of a state. Here, to our understanding, lies the interface between the new world of warfare and the new generation of peacekeeping operations. One of the most important components of that interface is intelligence, which, for different reasons, has not been professionally and strategically developed within the United Nations. As van Kappen points out, ‘‘The lack of strategic intelligence has been an important factor in the failure of a number of UN operations. Fact is that the United Nations has no intelligence capability of its own and is totally dependent on the member states for intelligence support.’’6 Intelligence in second-generation peacekeeping should assist in bridging the cultural gap that characterizes the encounter of mission forces, who usually operate from Western, liberal principles, and the conflict theater, which is usually in a failed state whose culture and political characteristics are not based on the same principles. The deeper the cultural gap, the less relevant the mission force will be. This understanding gives rise to the importance that we attribute to bridging cultural gaps and to the characteristics of the required intelligence capabilities. We define the intelligence necessary for these needs as cultural intelligence, and in our estimation, without developed cultural intelligence capabilities, peacekeeping forces and their dispatchers cannot reach their goals in a decisive and efficient manner. Developing intelligence capabilities demands an understanding of the differences between types of intelligence and the importance of integrating them.

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The military intelligence necessary for combating terror and guerilla groups is not similar to political, social, or economic intelligence, which are necessary for the civil and governmental aspects of second-generation peacekeeping. Only the informed and methodical integration of all types of intelligence enables a deep understanding of the theater and its various rationales. Thus, integration should be viewed as a necessary condition for mission success. Any achievement, military, governmental, economic, or social, must serve the wider political goals of the mission. In this chapter we will clarify the uniqueness and necessity of intelligence in second-generation peacekeeping missions. We will briefly review the history of intelligence in peacekeeping operations and the nature of its difficulties and failures. We will also characterize cultural intelligence and introduce the necessary conditions for its implementation.

WHY IS THERE A NEED FOR INTELLIGENCE IN PSOs? Modern peace support operations, which we also refer to in this chapter as second-generation peacekeeping, often cannot maintain the same level of neutrality as traditional peacekeeping operations. Intervention in an intrastate arena frequently involves backing an idea or a side with the aim of creating a political change towards stabilization and reconstruction of the arena. This is also known as statebuilding. The key for success in such a mission is winning the support of the local population for a new idea or a new government, a task that is essentially political and psychological in nature. Winning the population’s hearts and minds is a form of convincing that entails actively using information as a tool to further the mission’s goals and, simultaneously, coping with the opponents’ use of information to undermine the mission’s goals. Therefore, contemporary PSOs must take into consideration that opponents fight with information and must be countered with information. One of the basic assumptions of current PSOs is that protracted ethnonational conflict cannot by resolved by military means alone, nor by the neutral and impartial monitoring of a ceasefire or armistice agreement, because in most cases such an agreement simply does not exist. The resolution of protracted ethno-national conflict requires a more comprehensive and long-term approach: stabilization and reconstruction. Using such a multidimensional approach requires a deeper understanding of the conflict theater and its political and social nature. The mission becomes more complex when opponents blend in with the civilian population. Under such conditions, when ‘‘the enemy [is] indistinguishable from the general population,’’7 the challenge is being able to differentiate between opponents and innocent civilians in order to neutralize the former and empower the latter. The absence of such an ability can become a serious weakness, as the Canadian experience in Afghanistan demonstrates:

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‘‘Perhaps the most significant vulnerability facing the CF/Army is the ability to distinguish between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys.’’’8 Many PSOs can be characterized as war amongst people where the civilians are the arena, the target, and the audience to be convinced.9 Complexities like these compel learning and understanding the local culture and its politics. A useful resource in this regard is the U.S. Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which provides doctrinal instructions for improving commanders’ understanding and skills for successful coping with the complexity and unique challenges of intrastate conflict.10 In such theaters, intelligence becomes crucial as the strategic and operational tool that provides distinctions between different layers of society and identifies political tendencies and cultural aspects. When rivals use the local population to become invisible and attack peacekeeping forces, the ‘‘rules of the game’’ are changed. The asymmetry of the situation created by the encounter between state-organized PSO forces and non-state entities like terror and guerrilla groups demands intelligence that is more rigorous and sometimes of a different nature. Such intelligence can be acquired and created by deepening engagement with the local population and local institutions. Engagement enables mission forces to correctly identify the required indications for understanding the operational context and remaining relevant.11 Engagement also provides tactical intelligence for force protection, a factor that is much more important in PSOs than in traditional peacekeeping.12 Modern PSOs are concentrated on the idea of stabilization and reconstruction and therefore face challenges that are entirely different from those of traditional peacekeeping operations. PSOs have to focus on creating a political change that will undermine the roots of violence and establish better conditions for resolving the conflict or managing it more successfully. One of the main tools used in this regard is building reliable and functional governments and not simply defeating the enemy.13 Eventually, modern PSOs deal with social engineering, which means changing the societal and political order of the society in conflict. Building reliable and functional governance is one of the desired outputs of such a process, and it cannot be achieved without a deep understanding and established knowledge of the conflict theater, and that requires political and societal intelligence.14 Gathering such intelligence, however, is no easy task. As Pasi Valimaki, a former Kosovo Force (KFOR) intelligence officer points out, ‘‘In PSOs the indicators can be difficult to identify and follow as they can change according to ethnic background, geographical location, and the economic and political situation.’’15 In order to understand indicators, mission commanders must, in a sense, adopt an anthropological approach. They must acquire the methodological tools that will enable them to investigate and research the conflict theater and its actors in order to track trends and understand the essence of political developments in parallel to identifying security risks and threats towards their troops. In order to improve their effectiveness and efficiency, they have to

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conduct the mission as social scientists, politicians, policemen, and military commanders. Intelligence must simultaneously support all those functions and needs, and becomes an even more crucial component of mission effectiveness. Modern and complex PSOs are characterized by increased proportion of soldiers, and such proportion lowers the mission’s risk tolerance.16 Mission commanders should be aware of the fact that major military power can be especially destructive to mission intelligence because good force protection requires very good intelligence. This becomes even more important considering that as the United Nations intervenes in conflicts that are less ripe for resolution, the danger troops are exposed to is increased.17

WHAT SHOULD BE THE NATURE OF PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE? PSO intelligence should deal with the organizing rationale of local politics, understanding cultural codes and needs and the internal order of social networks. PSO intelligence should seek to understand opportunities required for advancing the political change, not just threats. Therefore, PSO intelligence should be comprehensive and coordinated in its nature and based on a broad understanding of social and political dimensions of the conflict theater, which are social constructions. Consequently, ‘‘[PSO] Intelligence is ‘socially constructed,’ and the qualitative and quantitative methodology of social science can be used to enhance analysis work.’’18 All actors in the arena are intelligence producers, and a common language should be established between them that will lead towards fruitful cooperation. Such a level of coordination is best ensured through common training and a common doctrine for all PSO personnel, including civilians, police, and military units.19 Military units have to coordinate their efforts at all levels with civilian units. This includes local and international NGOs and the private sector, whose influence in PSOs is increasing.20 All units must be unified by a comprehensive plan and a clear overall political goal.21 ‘‘Planning the intelligence support begins with a focused Intelligence Preparation of the Environment (IPE). The traditional Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) has to be adjusted to meet the local PSO requirements and situation.’’22 All actors must participate in systematic and coordinated intelligence operations. The NGOs, the police, and the private sector gather and provide information required for intelligence, but they are still not full partners. Private military corporations (PMCs) have their own intelligence capabilities, which can contribute to those of the mission.23 PMCs might also be perceived as less threatening, meaning they can collect the kind of information that regular troops cannot. Furthermore, PSO planners will have to develop strong cooperation mechanisms with the local government and use the local government as a source of information.24 These sources help provide one of the most important kinds of intelligence in PSO theaters: human intelligence. The American and international

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experience in Iraq and Afghanistan indicates that such intelligence plays a crucial role in bridging the cultural gap between the local population and the PSO force. Such a gap occurs in the encounter between the ‘‘first world,’’ represented by the PSO force, and the ‘‘third world,’’ represented by the conflict arena mostly in failed states. As Valimaki points out, one of the major problems for PSO forces of this encounter is that ‘‘[o]ur own belief system does not help in understanding the actions of an agent with a different belief system.’’25 Qualitative human intelligence can be acquired only by close work, engagement, and cooperation with the local population and its institutions, and heightened engagement with the local population not only produces more information, it necessitates more information for force protection.26 More intelligence resources create a flow of detailed information that should be managed and analyzed carefully and wisely and ‘‘that can be obtained only by a comprehensive collection system.’’27 PSOs are long-term missions in their nature and planning; therefore, they have to engage in long-term analysis using a wide variety of information sources.28 One of the resources in this regard is technologically advanced intelligence. As intelligence-gathering channels become commercially available, the United Nations has the chance to broaden its own capabilities. It can now acquire its own satellite technology and will have access to the intelligence databases of major powers like Russia and the United States as well as private databases.29 PSO intelligence should be recognized as a central tool for planning and executing PSOs. Mission planners and commanders should develop intelligence capabilities first in the conceptual level and then in the technological and human levels. The intelligence should be considered as one of the most important means for bridging the cultural gaps between the intervening forces and the local population in the conflict theater. Cultural gaps in the context of modern PSOs become an obstacle that can endanger the mission as a whole. Without the ability to bridge this gap, missions risk losing their relevancy, their effectiveness, and their efficiency. The Canadian experience in Afghanistan emphasizes the importance of these skills and qualifications. A recent Canadian military advisory report ‘‘recommends [that] the Canadian Forces put more emphasis on language skills, gathering intelligence, and developing knowledge about the societies it plans to operate in.’’ The report also deals with the relevancy of military knowledge in intrastate conflict theaters and recommends that the military ‘‘adapt a range of non-military knowledge and technology.’’30

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The following section provides an overview of the development of intelligence capabilities in peacekeeping operations. Before beginning, however, a distinction

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must be made between ‘‘native’’ peacekeeping intelligence—what UN Headquarters (UNHQ) and mission personnel collect and process themselves—and ‘‘national’’ peacekeeping intelligence—which is obtained through the national intelligence bodies of participating forces and their allies. These two kinds of intelligence are very different in nature and have contributed differently to peace support operations. This section begins with the development of native intelligence and continues with national intelligence and some of the problems associated with it. The systematic development and use of intelligence in peacekeeping operations (both native and national) are, with one exception, post–Cold War phenomena. That exception is the UN Operation in the Congo (UNOC), which began in 1960 and ended in 1964. UNOC maintained a small intelligence staff but incorporated several intelligence functions, including the deployment of field intelligence officers, gathering human intelligence, conducting aerial reconnaissance, counterintelligence and interrogations, and monitoring radio transmissions.31 However, the operation was so controversial that nothing like it—in both size and intelligence capabilities—was mounted again for the duration of the Cold War years. In the early 1990s, as the United Nations began to commission more peacekeeping operations, it also began to incorporate more intelligence personnel into its missions. In Somalia, UN Operations in Somalia I (UNOSOM; 1992– 1993) incorporated twelve intelligence personnel into the mission (which were dwarfed by U.S. national intelligence efforts in the operation).32 UN Operations in Somalia II (UNOSOM II; 1993–1995) went so far as to hire agents and informants, but this is the only example of the practice that the authors can find in the literature.33 The UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR; in 1995, after the massacres) incorporated six intelligence officers into its ranks.34 In the same period, peacekeeping operations also began to diversify their intelligence functions. The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) became one of the first peacekeeping missions to be preceded by a fact-finding mission (UN Advance Mission in Cambodia [UNAMIC]).35 In Iraq, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) incorporated aerial surveillance capabilities, nuclear radiation detection, and chemical sensors to identify and destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.36 Operations also used patrols to understand the terrain outside of their area of operation, although not always with UN consent. In March 1994, for example, the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) assembled a team of European peacekeepers and put them undercover as tourism scouts. These ‘‘scouts’’ toured Bosnia and Herzegovina and greatly enhanced the mission’s understanding of terrain outside of its area of operation.37 Following UNPROFOR, the Implementation Force (IFOR) adopted psychological and information operations components under the aegis of the Combined Joint Information Campaign Task Force, which operated a local radio station and published a weekly newspaper.38 SFOR went even further and became the first peacekeeping operation to use information warfare.39 Corresponding to operations on the ground, UN Headquarters also experienced a growth in its intelligence capabilities following the Cold War. In 1993,

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a situation center was established in the DPKO.40 The Situation Center is staffed by twenty-six people, including twelve to fifteen military officers, who together provide information to the Information and Research (I&R) Unit, a team of four intelligence officers from Security Council member states.41 According to Dorn, ‘‘[The I&R Unit has] produced important information/intelligence reports which have gone well beyond the scope of regular UN reports, including information on arms flows and covert assistance from States to the conflicting parties and leaders. They have evaluated the motivations of parties, prepared threat assessments, and made other forecasts.’’42 Consequently, the I&R Unit is the DPKO’s most important intelligence asset. Its four-person staff comprises professional intelligence officers with access to their national intelligence bodies. The United Nations does often receive reports directly from national intelligence bodies and foreign ministries, but intelligence sanitization is a significant concern when evaluating reports from single nations. The real value of intelligence from member nations is on the field where reports are delivered directly to force commanders. Although it tends to create intra-force coordination problems (discussed shortly), the tendency of member states to supply their own force commanders and those of allies with the fruits of national intelligence efforts has made a dramatic difference in the quality of intelligence available to peacekeepers. In fact, much of the increase in the quality of peacekeeping intelligence after the Cold War can be attributed to the increased participation of major powers—such as Britain, France, Russia, and the United States—in peacekeeping operations. The earliest instance of national intelligence support to a peacekeeping mission occurred in UNTAC in the early 1990s. An Australian, Major General John Sanderson, submitted a request to UNHQ to receive direct American intelligence support for the mission. The UN secretary-general had recently declined a similar request for UNPROFOR but accepted Sanderson’s request. The intelligence support that Sanderson received was only marginally successful in its early stages, primarily due to unfamiliarity with mission requirements, as well as internal American arguments over information sanitization and releaseability issues. However, in latter stages of the mission, the intelligence became quite effective.43 U.S. intelligence support continued in Somalia and Haiti, largely due to American involvement in those operations,44 and took on new levels in the IFOR mission, in which the Americans, the Germans, and NATO participated, bringing with them their intelligence capabilities.45 As previously mentioned, the ability of mission constituents to contribute to the mission’s intelligence capability is a boon, but also generates its own problems. In UNPROFOR, for instance, one of the force commanders, LieutenantGeneral Satish Nambiar, could not, as an Indian national, receive intelligence from NATO.46 In addition, a Canadian peacekeeper with NATO clearance received U.S. satellite photographs (useful to determine his operational

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deployment) but he was not permitted to show the images to his UN commander, who was a French officer.47 Finally, U.S. and allied air response teams who were tasked to support the mission had better intelligence than UNPROFOR itself.48 These problems underlie the fact that missions often lack, for good reasons, intelligence-sharing mechanisms, which makes working together as a unified whole rather difficult. A reliance on national intelligence also leaves a mission highly dependent on its force composition in terms of intelligence being brought into the mission and its ability to be shared. As Hugh Smith has noted: The ability of national contingents to collect and process intelligence within their area of operations will also vary. Some, perhaps most, will simply lack the resources, expertise, and experience to conduct intelligence activities, while some may lack an interest in doing so. A number of countries, however, will incorporate an intelligence capacity into a contingent as a matter of routine.49

This phenomenon is further aggravated by the ad hoc nature of peacekeeping. Dearth notes that ‘‘frequently, senior UN commanders and key staff had only days’ notice of their deployment, and only at best a few days sojourn at New York UNHQ before arrival in their area of operations.’’50 Under such circumstances, missions have little time to engage in intelligence gathering and are forced to rely on available national intelligence. Until the United Nations has a more substantial, centralized intelligence mechanism, this will remain the nature of peacekeeping intelligence.

INTELLIGENCE AND PSOs: PROBLEMS, OBSTACLES, AND RESERVATIONS Despite the importance and necessity of intelligence, it is still one of the weakest and least developed aspects of PSOs. Ideally, as Thuenens writes, ‘‘[The] intelligence picture should be available before the political decision to send troops, or participate otherwise in the peace support operation, is taken. Once this decision is taken, intelligence personnel should be among the first to be deployed to the mission arena, before the other troops arrive.’’51 This scenario is seldom how intelligence is actually handled in PSOs, mainly because of a set of problems that can be categorized on two levels: 1. Inherent conceptual problems. PSOs are mostly ad hoc missions and have little preparation time. Until the United Nations has a permanent intelligence unit with information and knowledge on every live conflict in the world, PSOs will have to cope with the reality of entering conflict arenas with insufficient information and knowledge. This increases the importance of intelligence gathering and analysis in the initial stages of the mission. An additional conceptual problem in PSO intelligence efforts is the United Nations’ reticence to engage in intelligence collection. The reasons behind this

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reticence are both varied and largely justified. To begin with, the United Nations sees intelligence collection as a threat to its transparency, law-abidingness, and impartiality, all three of which are pillars of its legitimacy as an international body.52 In fact, the United Nations avoids using the term ‘‘intelligence’’ altogether, preferring the more connotation-neutral ‘‘information.’’ Yet these concerns are well founded. A United Nations that engaged in the same kind of espionage as its member states would be a threat to those same states and become a target for espionage itself. The United Nations prefers to have as little top-secret information as possible in order to avoid tempting the loyalty of its own workers. Consequently, the United Nations’ standing intelligence capability is very limited. Its largest intelligence collection body—the Situation Center (SitCen) at UNHQ—numbers a mere twenty-six people and limits its activities to monitoring open sources of information.53 The SitCen does receive intelligence from member states, but this intelligence is not without problems. Another conceptual problem relates to human intelligence, which requires engagement with the local population, a demand with which militaries have difficulties. Militaries prefer differentiating themselves from civilians and perceive engagement with the local population in the conflict arena as a kind of threat.54 2. Organizational and methodological problems. Because the United Nations fears that intelligence collection might endanger its impartiality and policies of openness and transparency, the United Nations has no intelligence-gathering structure of it own and is dependent upon contributing nations.55 Such dependency raises at least three problems: a. Contributing nations share what they want to share with the United Nations, and they are not always willing or authorized to share information with one another.56 For example, an American general cannot share information obtained from NATO with an Indian general. This creates intelligence discrepancies and political sensitivities across mission contingents. The result, at the command level, is a patchwork of intelligence that is not unified and is not necessarily complementary. Therefore, the United Nations’ overall intelligence picture is left highly susceptible to the interests of its intelligence contributors. b. Contributing nations sanitize intelligence before passing it on, and the lack of context can be misleading. c. Different approaches, methods, and modus operandi increase the difficulties of coordination and cooperation. Different contributing nations produce intelligence that is a product of their national doctrines, training, and technology.57

Moreover, sanitization is also an issue when evaluating national intelligence because member states view the United Nations as an intelligence sieve where information is readily leaked. A case in point is provided in former SecretaryGeneral Perez de Cuellar’s memoir, in which he writes, ‘‘The diplomatic missions have always felt that security in the Secretariat is lax and that any confidential information provided to the Secretariat would quickly be widely circulated. In general, this is true.’’58 The knowledge that anything shared with

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the United Nations becomes, in the medium or long term, public knowledge is a major deterrent to intelligence sharing. The problem is not only one of UN leaks; the United Nations’ policy of using unsecured communication channels leaves shared information open to surveillance. The most drastic example of the dangers of this policy occurred in the UNPROFOR mission in the Balkans in which Scandinavian soldiers transmitted reports on the impact locations of Serbian mortar fire in a besieged Muslim town over unsecured radio channels. Unbeknownst to the Scandinavians, the Serbs listened in on the radio reports and used them to correct their fire.59 UN intelligence leaks are usually less dramatic, but not necessarily less damaging. An additional problem that occurs at the organizational level is that of SitCen’s flow of intelligence, which is geared towards providing the secretariat with information from PSOs and not the other way around. The SitCen offers little actionable information to commanders in the field. Each operation, therefore, must establish its own intelligence capabilities, drawing on members of different nations, sometimes with radically different training, capabilities, and equipment, who have never worked together. The multitude of approaches and methods in a single PSO can lead to difficulties in coordination and cooperation. The complexity of the PSO theater, which can be characterized primarily as a multi-national operation amongst the people, compels the restrained use of force and unique types of intelligence. The combination of these two factors demands a new conceptual platform, which we offer in the form of cultural intelligence.

THE UTILITY OF FORCE AND THE CONCEPTUAL PLATFORM OF CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE IN PSOs Military forces in PSOs must often deal with threats from non-state actors, usually in the form of terror and guerrilla groups who operate among civilians, using them as shelters and human shields. This complex evolution of war compels professional, Western military forces to adjust their doctrines and means of application in order to cope effectively with new challenges. In such a theater, the utility of force is limited. The utility of force becomes dependent on the quality of cooperation between the military and civilian actors in the arena: NGOs and international organizations, as well as local populations and institutions. Professional soldiers are often trained and educated to utilize military force to defeat an enemy, yet civil insurgency cannot be effectively tackled using the same principles. When civil insurgency occurs, military force should be used differently and in a more controlled manner, yet restraining force largely contradicts the professional instincts of the qualified, professional soldier. Under these circumstances the question of ‘‘doing the right thing the right way’’ becomes acute and challenging. Doing the right thing means being effective: correctly defining the aims of the mission and working towards their

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implementation. The right way means efficient and strategic use of available resources. The military mission must follow the mandate and serve the political goals defined by international authorities. There is, therefore, a need to ensure that military strategies are relevant to the specific political context and that they are well-developed. Without a conceptual platform based on cumulative knowledge and experience and converted to well-established doctrine and training, the military mission and the PSO as a whole are doomed to fail. Rupert Smith finds that in most contemporary cases of war amongst civilians (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo), Western professional militaries have failed to change their traditional paradigm, which is better suited to conventional warfare, and as a result, mission effectiveness and efficiency have been hampered.60 Military planners are compelled to understand and adapt military doctrine to the complex context of the conflict zone in question, thereby enabling PSOs to achieve their goals effectively and efficiently (simultaneously redefining the traditional military paradigm as Smith suggests). Operating in a ‘‘war amongst the people’’ theater demands fast adaptation to change in a dynamic environment, and planners should therefore carefully internalize the fact that the PSO’s key goal is political. Military forces are employed to reach a political end-point, and military commanders must understand the political context and be able to adjust the military means and doctrines to the political environment. One of the most important operational tools for these challenges is intelligence. Intelligence should provide commanders with relevant information and estimations. Therefore, intelligence means and methods must be adjusted to the political context of the theater and its dynamic nature, factors which military commanders accustomed to operating in a traditional military theater are not accustomed to considering. For that reason, special means and qualifications should be acquired and developed to ensure that the intelligence used as a basis for intervention is accurate. Understanding the culture, language, and conflict environment is a must, and intelligence professionals should understand that gathering information in intrastate conflicts requires intensive engagement with the local population. The local population is simultaneously the arena, the target, and a key source of intelligence. American experience demonstrates continued oversight in this regard and has done so since the Vietnam War. The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan provide valuable examples of such failings, from which many lessons can be drawn.61 This experience indicates the problematic nature of cultural encounters, which bring together local inhabitants and those who are mostly perceived by the locals as foreigners or invaders. In such tense, complex circumstances, cultural intelligence becomes a necessary qualification among commanders and senior officials in the theater. Cultural intelligence as ‘‘the ability of being effective in the interactions with people who are culturally different’’62 becomes the cognitive platform for absorbing information, understanding it, and communicating with the local population and institutions as well as with the different civil organizations operating in the theater.

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CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PLATFORM OF CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE This word-play demonstrates the link between the psychological and operational dimensions of the mission. The first type of cultural intelligence refers to an individual or group’s ability (cognitive and psychological) to adapt to, select, and shape a culturally different environment.63 The second type of cultural intelligence refers to the military operational function of gathering and analyzing information about the theater and the enemy. The first kind of cultural intelligence is a requirement of the latter; there is always a need to understand the context and differences between yourself and your adversary, but in the context of a war amongst the people, this demand becomes more critical. David Thomas and his colleagues have recently developed a rich conceptual platform for the first type of cultural intelligence. They view intelligence as a system of interacting abilities that determine the individual or group’s ability to adapt to an environment characterized by cultural diversity and cross-cultural interactions.64 Although they find similarities between social and emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence, they do distinguish between them by claiming that ‘‘both of these constructs are specific to the culture in which they were developed and do not necessarily relate to cross-cultural interactions.’’65 Therefore, cultural intelligence is distinct in that it is ‘‘a unique construction of interacting abilities that exists outside the cultural boundaries in which these abilities were developed.’’66 The military organization, as a well-established, hierarchal, and disciplined organization, lives by the principle of differentiating itself from other organizations, particularly civil organizations. Under such circumstances a limited capacity to go beyond certain cultural boundaries becomes a serious obstacle. In principle, we can claim that the cultural boundaries of the military organization are well blocked to outside cultural influence and that the military establishment does not welcome engagement with different cultures. Military intelligence is organized and conceptualized in a way that serves the military organization’s rationale. It should provide commanders and the establishment with the capacity to understand the military aspects of the theater in order to maximize the destructive utility of military force and defeat enemies in the shortest possible time, thereby minimizing casualties. Military intelligence and knowledge are focused and developed to achieve precisely this goal. On the other hand, the knowledge and skills associated with cultural intelligence are ‘‘linked by cultural metacognition that allows people to adapt to, select, and shape the cultural aspects of their environment.’’67 Thomas claims that cultural intelligence comprises knowledge and related skills that can only be developed in a cross-cultural context. However, as mentioned before, the military establishment is generally less exposed to local cultural intelligence, and thus its capabilities to develop such knowledge and skills are limited. ‘‘Specific knowledge of cultures is the foundation of cultural

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intelligence’’ says Thomas, and he explains that this knowledge forms the basis for ‘‘decoding the behavior of others and ourselves.’’68 Such knowledge enables us to recognize the existence of other cultures. Thomas believes this knowledge is necessary to achieve ‘‘greater predictability, more accurate attributions, and ultimately more effective intercultural behavior.’’69 Development of these skills and capabilities results in improved learning processes, which lead to enhanced adaptability. This is an important benefit for PSOs, whose mission effectiveness requires a focus on the specific nature of any one context and adaptation to the changing, dynamic environment of the theater in which war amongst the people takes place. Improving adaptation in such a theater requires the systematic generation of new knowledge, a process which ‘‘involves learning from specific experience with culturally different others and is the result of reflective observation, analysis, and abstract conceptualization, which can create new mental categories and recategorize others in a more sophisticated category system.’’70 In order to achieve military mission effectiveness in the complex theater of war amongst the people, military commanders must understand the distinctions between the environments in which they act. This kind of warfare requires openness to the other and to a variety of strategic military aims. Different military aims in a new war theater require cultural intelligence, and to be effective, such intelligence requires well-established foundations, as described by Thomas and his colleagues. Cooperating with civilians is not a straightforward mission for professional soldiers. Both soldiers and civilians have to be trained to acquire the necessary capabilities to cooperate with one another. Unity of command and chains of command are the basic modes of organization for military professionals, while civilian organizations are far more flexible and unity of command is an almost alien concept. Civilians talk and think in terms of management and not in terms of command. The difference in organizational culture between military units and civilian organizations can constitute a tremendous obstacle to successful cooperation. However, because PSOs demand integrated mission forces, composed of military units and civilian organizations, both have to establish the means to cooperate effectively and devote their efforts to bridging the gaps. If their cooperation is poor, both the international community and the locals are doomed to suffer a painful failure.

CONCLUSION The claim that the nature of conflict is changing is, by now, an adage, but its implications, especially for peace support operations, are not. Deployment in intrastate conflicts leaves PSOs in a situation where ‘‘warfighting and peacekeeping cannot be separated. They melt into one another, and the conduct of each determines the success of the other.’’71 It is the importance of understanding how to combine these two mission aspects that brings PSO intelligence to the fore. In

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making the transition from monitoring and verification to stabilization and reconstruction, peacekeeping commanders will need intelligence capabilities that are not only more powerful and varied, but also of a totally different scale. Future operations will need improved intelligence at each of the three levels mentioned in this chapter: strategic, operational, and tactical. Without the development of enhanced strategic intelligence, future PSOs operating in war amongst the people theaters will find it difficult to correctly discern political trends, weakening their ability to achieve the political goals that lie at the heart of state-building missions. Enhanced operational intelligence is and will continue to be necessary for understanding developments in the theater, their implications, and the appropriate means for responding. This function determines mission relevance and is a task made much more difficult by the blurred distinctions between combatant and civilian, both in the local population and among PSO forces. Finally, PSOs demand enhanced tactical intelligence for the accomplishment of their operations on the ground and for force protection, tasks whose importance is vital in minimizing casualties among the force and the local population, which, when neglected, can very quickly erode domestic support for the mission among force-contributing nations. Sadly, these changes will not come from UNHQ. The United Nations’ difficulties in collecting and analyzing intelligence place the onus of PSO intelligence squarely on the shoulders of the missions themselves, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The kind of intelligence that second-generation PSOs need most—political and cultural—can only come from prolonged and intensive engagement with the local population as well as from established and developed human intelligence capabilities. For these kinds of intelligence, the missions themselves are best positioned. As Wilson, Sullivan, and Kempfer write, ‘‘[F]uture commanders have to [gain] requisite insights into adaptive enemies and intelligence processes that exploit available information and can obtain the necessary fusion of data from a wider variety of non-traditional sources.’’72 The fusion of data that the authors refer to is the product of coordinated intelligence, and the most important non-traditional source of intelligence in contemporary operations is the local population. In order to produce such intelligence, mechanisms must be developed to overcome the obstacles to intelligence sharing within missions, and officers must overcome the military’s traditional reticence to engage the local population. One of the most beneficial fruits of such engagement is cultural intelligence, which provides force commanders with an understanding of the environment in which they operate and the strategies necessary to contain violence and eventually reach peace. It is cultural intelligence, in combination with political intelligence, that allows mission commanders to understand new developments on the ground, to adapt quickly, and to react in line with the mission’s overall goals. Given the reticence of both the United Nations and most force-contribution nations to make long-term troop commitments, these abilities may make the difference between gradual success and withdrawal until the next explosion.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Erwin A Schmidl, introduction to Peace Operations between War and Peace, ed. Erwin A. Schmidl (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 1. 2. Center for International Cooperation, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 2. 3. Bruce Oswald, Addressing the Institutional Law and Order Vacuum: Key Issues and Dilemmas for Peacekeeping Operations (New York: United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2005), 3; James Burk, ‘‘What Justifies Peacekeeping?’’ Peace Review 12, no. 3 (2000): 467. 4. Hugh Smith, ‘‘The Last Casualty? Public Perceptions of Bearable Cost in a Democracy,’’ in The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear, and Chaos in Battle, eds. Michael Evans and Alan Ryan (London: Allen and Unwin, 2000), 54–83; George Friedman and Meredith Friedman. The Future of War (New York: Crown Publishers, 1997); P. E. Meilinger, ‘‘A Matter of Precision: Why Air Power May Be More Humane than Sanctions,’’ Foreign Policy March/April (2001): 78–79. 5. J. M. Gates, The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare (Wooster, OH: The College of Wooster, 2002), http://www.wooster.edu/History/jgates/bfook-contents.html (accessed May 1, 2008). 6. R. Spiller, introduction to The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear, and Chaos in Battle, eds. Michael Evans and Alan Ryan (London: Allen and Unwin, 2000), 4. 7. Peter Van Riper and Robert H. Scales Jr., ‘‘Preparing for War in the 21st Century,’’ Parameters (1997): 4–14. 8. Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents since 1750 (London: Routledge, 2001); Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘New Times for the Military: Some Sociological Remarks on the Changing Role of

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Structure of the Armed Forces of the Advanced Societies,’’ British Journal of Sociology, 45, no 4 (1994): 637–654; Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘A Farewell to Arms? The Military and the Nation-State in a Changing World,’’ in The Adaptive Military, ed. James Burk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1998), 139–161. 9. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Globalized Era (London: Polity Press, 2001); Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press, 1991). 10. James Burk, ‘‘Ten Years after the New Times,’’ in The Adaptive Military, ed. James Burk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 1–24. 11. Herfried Munkler, The New Wars (London: Polity Press, 2005); Boas Shamir and Eyal Ben-Ari, ‘‘Leadership in an Open Army? Civilian Connections, Interorganizational Frameworks and Changes in Military Leadership,’’ in Out-of-the-Box Leadership: Transforming the Twenty-First-Century Army and Other Top-Performing Organizations, eds. James G. Hunt, George Dodge, and Leonard Wong (Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999), 15–40. 12. Katrin Radtke, From Gifts to Taxes: The Mobilization of Tamil and Eritrean Diaspora in Interstate Warfare (Berlin: Humboldt University in Berlin, 2005). 13. Kaldor, New and Old Wars; Munkler, The New Wars. 14. Fabrizio T. Ammendola Battistelli and M. G. Galantiono, ‘‘Peacekeeping and the Postmodern Soldier,’’ Armed Forces and Society 23 (1997): 467–484. 15. Munkler, The New Wars. 16. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2005). 17. Ibid. 18. G. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007). 19. Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (London: Polity, 2005). 20. Christopher Bellamy, Knights in White Armour: The New Art of War and Peace (London: Random House, 1996), 30; James Burk, ‘‘Ten Years after the New Times,’’ in The Adaptive Military, ed. James Burk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 12; Charles Moskos, ‘‘Towards a Postmodern Military?’’ in Democratic Societies and their Armed Forces: Israel in a Comparative Perspective, ed. Stuart A. Cohen (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 5–6; Smith, ‘‘The Last Casualty,’’ 55–56. 21. Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 22. Burk, Ten Years after the New Times, 1. 23. Cori Dauber, ‘‘Image as Argument: The Impact of Mogadishu on U.S. Military Intervention,’’ Armed Forces and Society 27, no. 2 (2001): 205–230; Paul Hirst, War and Power in the 21st Century (London: Polity Press, 2001); Jeffrey Record, ‘‘Collapsed Countries, Casualty Dread, and the New American Way of War,’’ Parameters Summer (2002): 4–23. 24. Dandeker, pers. comm. 25. Yigal Levy, ‘‘The War of the Peripheries: A Social Mapping of IDF Casualties in the Al-Aqsa Intifada,’’ Social Identities 12 (2006): 309–324. 26. Dandeker, ‘‘A Farewell to Arms,’’ 35. 27. Ibid. 28. Ariel Colonomos, ‘‘Tying the Gordian Knot: Targeted Killings and the Ethics of Prevention’’ (paper presented at the conference ‘‘The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical

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Warfare,’’ organized by The Netherlands Defense Academy in Amsterdam, Oct 2006); Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998); Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Toronto: Penguin, 2004); Kay Warren, ‘‘Death Squads and Wider Complicities: Dilemmas for the Anthropology of Violence,’’ in Death Squad, ed. Jeffrey A. Sluka (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 226–242. 29. Richard Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Mercy under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). 30. Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor. 31. David Chandler, ‘‘The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarianism Agenda,’’ Human Rights Quarterly 23, no 3 (2001): 678–700; David Reiff, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (London: Vintage, 2002). 32. Reiff, A Bed for the Night, 202. 33. Minear and Weiss, Mercy under Fire. 34. European Union, A Human Security Doctrine for Europe: The Barcelona Report of the Study Group of Europe’s Security Capabilities (Barcelona: Presented to EU High Representative for Common Foreign Policy and Security Policy, Javier Solana, 2004); Natalie Mychajlyszyn, Twisting Arms and Flexing Muscles: Perspectives on Military Force, Humanitarian Intervention and Peacebuilding—Report on a Workshop (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 2000). 35. Shaw, The New Western Way of War, 75–76; Burk, ‘‘Ten Years after the New Times’’; Dandeker, ‘‘A Farewell to Arms,’’ 34; Martha Finnemore, ‘‘Rules of War and Wars of Rules: The International Red Cross and the Restraint of State Violence,’’ in Constructing World Culture: International Non-Governmental Organizations since 1875, eds. John Boli and George M. Thomas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 149–165. 36. Sally Engle Merry, ‘‘Changing Rights, Changing Culture,’’ in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Jane K. Cowan, Marie-Benedicte Dembour, and Richard A. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31–55. 37. Finnemore, ‘‘Rules of War,’’ 163. 38. Gates, The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare. 39. Douglas Borer, ‘‘Inverse Engagement: Lessons from US–Iraq Relations, 1982– 1990,’’ Parameters Summer (2003): 51–65. 40. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005). 41. Keith Brown and Catherine Lutz, ‘‘Review Essay: Grunt Lit—The ParticipantObservers of Empire,’’ American Ethnologist 34, no. 2 (2007): 322–328. 42. Munkler, The New Wars, 12. 43. Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 44. Spiller, introduction to The Human Face of Warfare, 1; Smith, ‘‘The Last Casualty,’’ 65. 45. David Fastbend, ‘‘The Categorization of Conflict,’’ Parameters Summer (1997): 75–87; Gates, The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare. 46. Eliot A Cohen, ‘‘Constraints on America’s Conduct of Small Wars,’’ International Security 9 (1984): 151–181.

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47. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century. 48. Time Benbow, The Magic Bullet? Understanding the ‘‘Revolution in Military Affairs’’ (London: Brassey’s, 2004). 49. James Der Derian, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media Entertainment Network (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001). 50. Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 46–48. 51. Harry Bondy, ‘‘Postmodernism and the Source of Military Strength in the Anglo West,’’ Armed Forces and Society 31, no. 1 (2004): 31–61; see also Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Books, 2004). 52. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta Books, 1999); Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1995); Hugh McManners, The Scars of War (London: Harper Collins, 1994); Michael Evans and Alan Ryan, eds., The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear and Chaos in Battle (London: Allen and Unwin, 2000). 53. Eyal Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998); John P. Hawkins, Army of Hope, Army of Alienation: Culture and Contradiction in the American Army Communities of Cold War Germany (New York: Praeger Press, 2001); Anna Simons, The Company They Keep: Life inside the U.S. Army Special Forces (New York: Free Press, 1997); Donna Winslow, The Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia: A Socio-cultural Inquiry (Toronto: Ministry of Public Works and Government Services, 1997). 54. Kobi Michael, ‘‘The Israel Defense Forces as an Epistemic Authority: An Intellectual Challenge in the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 3 (2007): 421–446. 55. Burk, ‘‘What Justifies Peacekeeping,’’ 467. 56. Center for International Cooperation, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations, 1. 57. Dominick Donald, ‘‘Neutral Is Not Impartial: The Confusing Legacy of Traditional Peace Operations Thinking,’’ Armed Forces and Society 29, no. 3 (2003): 415– 448. 58. Thomas R. Mockaitis, ‘‘From Counterinsurgency to Peace Enforcement: New Names for Old Games,’’ in Peace Operations between War and Peace, ed. Erwin A. Schmidl (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 42. 59. Ibid. 60. Christopher Dandeker and James Gow, ‘‘Military Culture and Strategic Peacekeeping,’’ in Peace Operations between War and Peace, ed. Erwin A. Schmidl (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 67–68. 61. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, 194. 62. Reiff, A Bed for the Night, 268. 63. Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, ‘‘Intervention, Stabilization and Transformation Operations: The Role of Landpower in the New Strategic Environment,’’ Parameters Spring (2005): 48. 64. Cited in Reiff, A Bed for the Night, 236. 65. One example is Austin Long, On ‘‘Other War’’: Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research (Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation, 2006).

NOTES

177

66. Moskos, ‘‘Towards a Postmodern Military,’’ 17. 67. Karl W. Haltiner, Do New Military Missions Require New Military Structures? Reflections on the Constabularization of the Military Form from the Perspective of the Sociology of Organizations (Zurich: Swiss Military Academy, 2005). 68. Dandeker and Gow, ‘‘Military Culture and Strategic Peacekeeping,’’ 64–65. 69. William Arkin and Lynne R. Dobrofsky, ‘‘Military Socialization and Masculinity,’’ Journal of Social Issues 34, no. 1 (1978): 151–168; Elisabeth Badinter, XY: On Masculine Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); David H. J. Morgan, ‘‘Theater of War: Combat, the Military and Masculinities,’’ in Theorizing Masculinities, eds. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 165–182. 70. Burk, ‘‘Ten Years after the New Times,’’ 42. 71. Donna Winslow, ‘‘Strange Bedfellows: NGOs and the Military in Humanitarian Crises,’’ International Journal of Peace Studies 7, no. 2 (2002): 35–55; Maren Tomforde, ‘‘Motivation and Self-Image among German Peacekeepers,’’ International Peacekeeping 12, no. 4 (2005): 576–585; Liora Sion, ‘‘Too Sweet and Innocent for War? Dutch Peacekeepers and the Use of Violence,’’ Armed Forces and Society 32, no. 3 (2006): 454–474. 72. Metz and Millen, ‘‘Intervention, Stabilization and Transformation Operations,’’ 51. 73. Brian Selmeski, Military Cross-Cultural Competence: Core Concepts and Individual Development (Kingston, Ont.: Royal Military College of Canada, 2007). 74. Evan R. Goldstein, ‘‘Professors on the Battlefield,’’ Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2007, W11. 75. Roberto J. Gonzalez, ‘‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology? The New US Army Counterinsurgency Manual FM 3–24 and the Military-Anthropology Complex,’’ Anthropology Today 23, no 3. (2007): 14–19. 76. Jeffrey Schwerzel, ‘‘Transforming Attitudes,’’ NATO Review 2 (2005), http:// www.nato.int/docu/review/2005/issue2/english/art3.html. 77. David J. Kilcullen, ‘‘Counter-Insurgency Redux,’’ Survival 48, no. 4 (2006): 111–130. 78. Gustavo Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations for Peace Operations,’’ in UNISCI Discussion Paper Number 13 (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007), 25–41; Hugh Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and UN Peacekeeping,’’ Survival 36, no. 3 (1994): 174–192. 79. Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations,’’ 27; Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and UN Peacekeeping.’’ 80. Amitav Ghosh, ‘‘The Global Reservation: Notes toward an Ethnography of International Peacekeeping,’’ Cultural Anthropology 9 (1994): 414–422; Gonzalez, ‘‘Towards Mercenary Anthropology?’’; David Price, ‘‘Lessons from Second World War Anthropology,’’ Anthropology Today 18, no. 3 (2002): 14–20. 81. Erik Alda, Buvinic Mayra, and Jorge Lamas, ‘‘Neighborhood Peacekeeping: The Inter-American Development Bank’s Violence in Columbia and Uruguay,’’ Civil Wars 8, no. 2 (2006): 197–214. 82. James Dobbins et al., A Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building (Arlington, VA: RAND, 2007). 83. Ibid., xvii.

178

NOTES

84. Metz and Millen, ‘‘Intervention, Stabilization and Transformation Operations.’’ 85. Dandeker and Gow, ‘‘Military Culture and Strategic Peacekeeping,’’ 61. 86. Dobbins et al., A Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building, xxii. 87. Ibid., xxiii. 88. Ibid., xx, xxv. 89. Ibid., xxi. 90. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, ‘‘Pentagon Asks Academics for Help in Understanding it Enemies,’’ Science 316 (2007): 534–535. 91. Michael Bhatia, ‘‘Postconflict Profit: The Political Economy of Intervention,’’ Global Governance 11 (2005): 205; see also Sarah Collinson, ed., Power, Livelihoods and Conflict: Case Studies in Political Economy Analysis for Humanitarian Action (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2003). 92. Bhatia, ‘‘Postconflict Profit,’’ 221. 93. Gordon Peake, ‘‘From Warlords to Peacelords?’’ Journal of International Affairs 56, no. 2 (2003): 161–172. 94. Michael Carnahan, William Durch and Scott Gilmore, Economic Aspects of Peacekeeping (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006); Marianne Heiberg, ‘‘Peacekeepers and Local Populations: Some Comments on UNIFIL,’’ in The United Nations and Peacekeeping: Results, Limitations and Prospects, eds. Indar Jit Rikhye and Kjell Skjelsbaek (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990), 147–170. 95. Center for International Cooperation, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations, 1. 96. Nina M. Serafino and Martin A. Weiss, Peacekeeping and Conflict Transitions: Background and Congressional Action on Civilian Capabilities (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005). 97. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: Free Press, 1971). 98. Moskos, ‘‘Towards a Postmodern Military,’’ 19. 99. Haltiner, Do New Military Missions Require New Military Structures? 100. Ibid. 101. See also Charles C. Moskos, The Media and the Military in Peace and Humanitarian Operations (Chicago: McCormik Tribune Foundation, 2000). 102. Ibid., 9. 103. Ibid., 13. 104. Ibid., 44. 105. Winslow, ‘‘Strange Bedfellows.’’; Daniel L. Byman, ‘‘Uncertain Partners: NGOs and the Military,’’ Survival 43, no. 2 (2001): 97–114. 106. Moskos, ‘‘Towards a Postmodern Military,’’ 33; Laura Miller, ‘‘From Adversaries to Allies: Relief Workers’ Attitudes towards the US Military,’’ Qualitative Sociology 22, no. 3 (1999): 187–197. 107. Sarah E. Archer, ‘‘Civilian and Military Cooperation in Complex Humanitarian Operations,’’ Military Review March-April (2003): 32–41; Winslow, ‘‘Strange Bedfellows.’’ 108. Dobbins et al., A Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building, xxxi. 109. Moskos, The Media and the Military, 30. 110. Reiff, A Bed for the Night, 308. 111. John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, ‘‘Institutional Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,’’ in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis,

NOTES

179

eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 41–62. 112. Robert Mandel, ‘‘The Privatization of Security,’’ Armed Forces and Society 28, no. 1 (2001): 132; Eugene Smith, ‘‘The Condottieri and U.S. Policy: The Privatization of Conflict and Its Implications,’’ Parameters Winter (2002): 104. 113. Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 114. Mandel, ‘‘The Privatization of Security,’’ 129–130. 115. See also Smith, ‘‘The Condottieri and US Policy.’’ 116. John Hillen, Blue Helmets: The Strategy of UN Military Operations (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1998). 117. Jared F. Lawyer, ‘‘Military Effectiveness and Economic Efficiency in Peacekeeping: Public versus Private,’’ Oxford Development Studies 33, no. 1 (2005): 99–106. 118. Jennifer K. Elsea and Nina M. Serafino, Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005); Mandel, ‘‘The Privatization of Security.’’

CHAPTER 1 1. This chapter is adapted from a piece originally published in Eight Essays in Contemporary War Studies, ed. Magnus Christiansson (Stockholm: Military Academy Karlberg, 2007). 2. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Globalized Era (London: Polity Press, 2001). 3. Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and the World Order (London, Demos, 2000). 4. Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press, 1991). 5. P. Hirst, ‘‘Democracy and Governance’’ in Debating Governance, Authority, Steering and Democracy, ed. J. Pierre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13–35. 6. Beratrice Heuser, ‘‘Wars since 1945: An Introduction,’’ Zeithistorische Forschungen, http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/site/40208299/default.aspx. 7. Herfried Munkler, ‘‘What is Really New About New Wars? A Reply to the Critics,’’ in On New Wars, ed. John Andreas A. Olsen (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 2007), 69. 8. Ibid., 69. 9. Ibid., 80–81. 10. Christopher Dandeker and James Gow, ‘‘The Future of Peace Support Operations: Strategic Peacekeeping and Success,’’ Armed Forces and Society 23 (1997): 327–348. 11. Cooper, The Postmodern State. 12. G. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007), 7. 13. C. Krulak, ‘‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,’’ MaxwellGunter AFB, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.htm. 14. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2005). 15. Ibid., 1.

180

NOTES

16. Ibid., 182, emphasis added. 17. Ibid., 368. 18. Ibid., 321. 19. Ibid., 181. 20. Ibid., 379. 21. N. Aylwin-Foster, ‘‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations,’’ Military Review November-December (2005): 1–15. 22. A. Roberts, ‘‘Review of Rupert Smith, the Utility of Force: The Theatre of Blood,’’ The Independent (London), 11 (2005). 23. Colin S. Gray, ‘‘How Has War Changed since the End of the Cold War?’’ Parameters, Spring (2005): 14-26; A. Mallinson, ‘‘A Review of Rupert Smith’s Utility of Force: ‘Battles Just Don’t Work Any More,’’ Times (London), 24 September 2005. 24. Roberts, ‘‘Review of Rupert Smith.’’ 25. J. Keegan, ‘‘Review of Rupert Smith, Utility of Force: First Decommission the Machete,’’ Daily Telegraph (London), 10 October 2005. 26. B. Abrahamsson, R. Egnell, and K. Yden, Effects-Based Operations, Military Organization and Professionalization (Stockholm: National Defence College, 2006). 27. Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘Surveillance and Military Transformation: Organizational Trends in Twenty First Century Armed Services’’ in The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, eds. K. Haggerty and R. V. Ericson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 225–249; Abrahamsson et al., Effects-Based Operations. 28. Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (London: Polity, 2005); S. Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 29. Charles Moskos, John Williams, and David Segal, eds., The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold War (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), 15. 30. Sam Knight, ‘‘MOD Bans ITV News from War Zones,’’ Times (London), 27 October 2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2425115.html. 31. Roberts, ‘‘Review of Rupert Smith.’’ 32. Phillip Hammond, ‘‘Postmodernity Goes to War,’’ Spiked, 1 June 2004, http:// www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA554.htm. 33. J. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984). 34. J. Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 35. Hammond, ‘‘Postmodernity Goes to War.’’ 36. N. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); C. Coker, Humane Warfare: The New Ethics of Postmodern War (New York: Routledge, 2001); Shaw, The New Western Way of War. 37. Shaw, The New Western Way of War. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Coker, Humane Warfare. 42. Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005).

NOTES

181

43. Michael Mann, ‘‘The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism,’’ New Left Review 162 (1987): 35–50; C. McInnes, Spectator Sport War: The West and Contemporary Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002). 44. Karl Haltiner, ‘‘The Definite End of the Mass Army in Europe,’’ Armed Forces & Society 25 (1998): 7–36; Karl Haltiner, ‘‘The Decline of the European Mass Armies,’’ in Handbook of Military Sociology, ed. G. Caforio (New York: Plenum, 2003), 361– 384. 45. D. Lutterbeck, ‘‘Between Police and Military: The New Security Agenda and the Rise of Gendarmeries,’’ Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association 39 (2004): 45–68. 46. Dandeker, ‘‘Surveillance and Military Transformation.’’ 47. Ibid.; see also Shamir, this volume. 48. There is an extensive press debate on the general’s remarks. For an argument that CGS should have resigned, see Mathew Parris, ‘‘I agree with every word Dannatt said. But he has got to be sacked,’’ Times (London), 14 October 2006, http://www. timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-2402956.html. Some Labour and Liberal democrat politicians also suggested the general’s remarks were unconstitutional. See Toby Helm, ‘‘Army Chief Went Too Far with His Iraq Attack, Says Blunkett,’’ Telegraph (UK), 16 October 2006, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/16/ ndannatt16.xml. 49. Bernard Boene, ‘‘Western-Type Civil Military Relations Revisited,’’ in Military, State and Society in Israel, eds. Daniel Maman, Eyal Ben-Ari and Zeev Rosenhek (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 43–80.

CHAPTER 2 1. Karl W. Haltiner, ‘‘The Definite End of the Mass Army in Western Europe?’’ Armed Forces & Society 25 (1998): 7–36; Franz Kernic, Paul Klein, and Karl W. Haltiner, eds., The European Armed Forces in Transition (Frankfurt: Lang, 2005); Tibor Szvircsev Tresch, Europas Streitkr€ afte im Wandel: Von der Wehrpflichtarmee zur Freiwilligenstreitkraft. Eine empirische Untersuchung Europ€ aischer Streitkr€ afte, 1975 bis 2003 (PhD diss., University of Z€urich, 2005); Christopher Jehn and Zachary Selden, ‘‘The End of Conscription in Europe,’’ Contemporary Economic Policy 20 (2002): 93– 100; Marjan Malesic, ed., Conscription vs. All-Volunteer Forces in Europe (BadenBaden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003). 2. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: Free Press, 1960). 3. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1975–2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 4. This implies that the ‘‘micro-states’’ in Europe (Monaco, Lichtenstein, San Marino, etc.) are not included in the research because they have no armed forces. Iceland, a NATO member, is excluded for the same reason. 5. In the case of the WEU, we have confined ourselves to full members (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) and associated members (Czech Republic, Hungary, Norway, Poland, and Turkey).

182

NOTES

6. Jacques van Doorn, ‘‘The Decline of the Mass Army in the West: General Reflections,’’ Armed Forces & Society 1 (1975): 147–157; Morris Janowitz, ‘‘The Decline of the Mass Army,’’ Military Review 52 (1972): 10–16. 7. Miepke Bos-Bax and Joseph Soeters, ‘‘The Professionalization of the Netherlands’ Armed Forces,’’ in Conscription vs. All-Volunteer Forces in Europe, ed. Marjan Malesic (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003), 83–99; Philippe Manigart, ‘‘The Professionalization of the Belgian Armed Forces,’’ in Comparative Analysis of Manning the Armed Forces in Europe, ed. Marjan Malesic et al. (Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana, 2002), 115–131; Rene Moelker, ‘‘Der Umbau der Niederl€andischen Streitkr€afte und die Sich Wandelnde Sicht des Milit€arberufes,’’ in Europas Armeen im Umbruch, ed. Karl W. Haltiner and Paul Klein (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002), 159–177; Jan Van der Meulen and Philippe Manigart, ‘‘Zero Draft in the Low Countries: The Final Shift to the All-Volunteer Force,’’ Armed Forces & Society, 24 (1997): 315–332. 8. Rafael Ajangiz, ‘‘The European Farewell to Conscription?’’ in The Comparative Study of Conscription in the Armed Forces, ed. Lars Mjøset and Stephan van Holde (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2002), 307–333; Fabrizio Battistelli, ‘‘The Professionalization of the Italian Armed Forces,’’ in Conscription vs. All-Volunteer Forces in Europe, ed. Marjan Malesic (Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003), 151–170; Bernard Bo€ene, ‘‘Going, Going Gone: How France Did Away with Conscription (1996–2001),’’ in Conscription vs. All-Volunteer Forces in Europe, ed. Marjan Malesic (Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003), 101–131; Paul Klein and Christophe Pajon, ‘‘Die Milit€arreform in Frankreich,’’ in Europas Armeen im Umbruch, ed. Karl W. Haltiner and Paul Klein (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002), 109–122. 9. Karl W. Haltiner and Paul Klein, eds., Europas Armeen im Umbruch (BadenBaden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002); Tresch, Europas Streitkr€ afte im Wandel; Marie Vlachova, The Professionalization of the Czech Armed Forces, Working Paper no. 18 (Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2003). 10. For the selection of the countries, see the methodological section of the chapter. Source: IISS, The Military Balance. 11. Kernic, Klein, and Haltiner, The European Armed Forces in Transition. 12. Anne Deighton and Victor Mauer, eds., Securing Europe? Implementing the European Security Strategy (Z€urich: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 2006). 13. Ines-Jaqueline Werkner, Wehrpflicht oder Freiwilligenarmee? (Frankfurt: Lang, 2006). 14. Gilles Andreani, Christoph Bertram, and Charl Grant, Europe’s Military Revolution (London: Center for European Reform, 2000); William Hopkinson, Sizing and Shaping European Armed Forces: Lessons and Considerations from the Nordic Countries, SIPRI Policy Paper no. 7, 2004. 15. Gustav Lindstrom, Enter the EU Battlegroups, Chaillot-Paper No. 97 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, 2007). 16. European Commission, ‘‘Standard Eurobarometer 64: Public Opinion in the EU, June 2006,’’ European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/ eb64/eb64_en.htm. 17. This thesis is supported by an international expert survey conducted by Tresch. See Tresch, Europas Streitkr€ afte im Wandel. 18. IISS, The Military Balance. Troops employed in own territorries overseas and deployment in Germany are not taken into account.

NOTES

183

19. The number of memberships is as follows: 1. NATO, 2. EU, 3. WEU (Members and Associate Members). 20. Ines-Jaqueline Werkner, Allgemeine Trends und Entwicklungslinien in den Europ€ aischen Wehrsystemen (Berlin: SOWI-Arbeitspaper, 2003).

CHAPTER 3 1. The story was reported and the video was shown in all three main Israeli TV news channels as well as all other news media, such as news sites on the Internet and in the written press, the following morning. 2. British Army, Land Operations, Army Doctrine Publication, AC 71819 (2005), 20. 3. The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations, Joint Warfare Publication 3-50, 2nd ed., The Joint Doctrine and Concepts Center, MOD (2004), 1. 4. Ibid., 2–11. 5. Ibid., 2–14. 6. Ibid., 3–4. 7. Ibid., 3. 8. Dandeker, this volume. 9. Charles C. Krulak, ‘‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,’’ Marine Corps Gazette 83 (1999): 18–22. 10. Joint Doctrine and Concepts Center, British Ministry of Defense, The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations, Joint Warfare Publication 3-50, 2nd ed., (2004). 11. William S. Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 98–107. 12. Wener Widder, ‘‘German Army, Auftragstaktik and Inner Fuhrung: Trademarks of German Leadership,’’ Military Review (2002), 3. 13. Ron Ben Ishay, ‘‘Hpirtza Sheshinta et Pney Hakravot,’’ Yedioth Ahronot, 12 October 2005. 14. Quoted in Uzi Ben Shalom and Eitan Shamir, ‘‘Reality Redefines Mission Command: The IDF Experience,’’ Ma’archot (forthcoming). 15. Ibid. 16. Moshe Tamir, Undeclared War (Tel Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 2006). 17. Rupert Smith, ‘‘RSA Utility of Force’’ (lecture presented as part of RSA series on the changing nature of war, Brussels, Belgium, 7 May 2008), emphasis added. 18. The incident was also widely published and debated in the media. See, for example, Edward Wang and Jason Horowitz, ‘‘Italian Hostage Returns Home after 2nd Brush with Death,’’ New York Times, 5 March 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/ 05/international/middleeast/05italy.html?ex=1401595200&en=935183cee9a4bd49&ei= 5007&partner=USERLAND. 19. ‘‘Bush Apologizes to Italy Again for Shooting of Agent,’’ NY1 News, 4 May 2004, http://208.198.20.182/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=3&aid=50591. 20. Seymour Hersh, ‘‘Torture at Abu Ghraib, American Soldiers Brutalized Iraqis. How Far Up Does the Responsibility Go?’’ New Yorker, 10 May 2004, http://www. newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact.

184

NOTES

21. Haim Biny’amini as quoted in Haim Lapid and Hagai Ben Zvi, ‘‘Leadership Concepts and Training of Commanders, a Development over Time among Commanders of Bad-1,’’ in On Leadership: Theory of Leadership in the IDF, Leadership Development, eds. Micha Poper and Ronen Avihu (Tel Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 2001), 159. 22. British Army, Land Operations, 33–34. 23. Daniel J. Hughes, ed., Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings (Novato, CA: Persidio Press, 1993). 24. Noam Tibon, ‘‘IDF Ground Forces Command’’ (presentation at the IDF Ground Forces Psychology Conference, Tel Aviv, 14 February 2006). 25. US Army Headquarters, Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 (Washington, DC: US Army Headquarters, 2006), 115. 26. British Army, Land Operations, 116. 27. On the circumstances of adopting maneuver warfare mission command into the U.S. doctrine, see Richard Lock-Pullan, ‘‘How to Rethink War: Conceptual Innovation and Airland Battle Doctrine,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 28, no. 4 (2004): 679–702; on mission command development in the IDF, see Sergio Catignani and Eitan Shamir, ‘‘Mission Command and Bitsuism in the Israeli Defense Forces: Are They Complementary or Contradictory in Today’s Counterinsurgency Campaign?’’ in Dimensions of Military Leadership Vol. 1, eds. Allister MacIntyre and Karen Davis (Ontario: Canadian Defense Academy Press, 2006), 185–215. 28. US Army, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces, FM 6-0 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Headquarters, 2003); U.S. Marines, Warfighting, MCDP 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Navy Headquarters, 1997), 77–81. 29. British Army, Land Operations, 115. 30. Ibid., 133–134. 31. Moshe Shamir and Hila Sagi, 50 Years Jubilee to the IDF Command and General Staff College (Tel Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 2004), 58. 32. Kobi Michael, ‘‘The Israel Defense Forces as an Epistemic Authority: An Intellectual Challenge in the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 3 (2007): 431. 33. Amos Harel, ‘‘Report: Palestinians Abandon 1,000 Hebron Homes under IDF, Settler Pressure,’’ Ha’aretz, 14 May 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/ PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=859084. 34. Hanan Greenberg, ‘‘We Were Facing an Impossible Situation,’’ Yediot Ahranot, 13 May 2007, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3399397,00.html. 35. Ibid. 36. In mission command, every mission must have a reason, and the commander should understand its purpose and role as part of the greater scheme of things. Therefore, the paragraph ‘‘in order to’’ in the mission statement is a central piece in mission command. 37. British Army, Land Operations, 130. 38. U.S. Army Headquarters, Counterinsurgency. 39. Ibid., 3–6. 40. John F. Schmitt, ‘‘A Systemic Concept for Operational Design,’’ Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, http://www.mcwl.usmc.mil/concepts/home.cfm. 41. Tibon, ‘‘IDF Ground Forces Command.’’

NOTES

185

42. Liora Sion, ‘‘Too Sweet and Innocent for War?’’ Armed Forces & Society 32 (2006): 454–474. 43. ‘‘How to Do Better? The American Army Has Become More Intelligent and Hopes to Be More Effective,’’ The Economist, 17 December 2005, 25. 44. Donald E. Vandergriff, Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War (Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2006); Douglas Macgregor, Transformation under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). 45. T. N. Dupuy, Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff 1807–1945 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), 116.

CHAPTER 4 1. This process was first described by Phillip Knightley in 1975 (first edition). See Phillip Knightly, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 2. For an excellent example of the disparity between the full observed reality and the authorized and published versions of events on the Eastern front from the Soviet perspective, see Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War: Vassily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 (London: Harvill Press, 2005). Grossman was embedded with several military units as a correspondent for the Red Army paper, and his book contains both his published pieces and excerpts from his diaries, which show how much of the negative he kept out of the reports. 3. It is often possible to see the effects of specific conflicts on research. The 1990– 1991 Gulf War produced the first study to gain attention on the issue and establish the term ‘‘CNN factor.’’ See Nik Gowing, ‘‘Real-Time Television Coverage on Armed Conflicts and International Crises: Does It Pressure or Distort Foreign Policy Decisions?’’ Working Paper 94-1 (Boston: Kennedy School of Government, 1994). The Balkans, and especially the Bosnian conflict, produced much writing around the media. See, for example, Nik Gowing, ‘‘Media Coverage: Help or Hindrance in Conflict Prevention?’’ A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (Washington, DC: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997); James Gow, Bosnia by Television (London: BFI, 1996); Warren P. Strobel, ‘‘The CNN Effect: How Much Influence Does the 24-Hour News Network Really Have on Foreign Policy?’’ American Journalism Review (1996): 32–37; Warren P. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997); Miles Hudson and John Stanier, War and the Media: A Random Searchlight (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1997), esp. ch. 12, ‘‘The Balkan Tragedy, 1990– 1996,’’ 263–302; Ilana Bet-El, ‘‘Black and White: Journalism and the Bosnian War,’’ Cross Currents: A Journal for Journalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 2–7; Ilana Bet-El, ‘‘Playing to Different Audiences: The U.N. and the Media in the Bosnian War,’’ Reuter Foundation Paper No. 106 (Oxford: Green College, 1998); Monroe E. Price, ‘‘Memory, the Media and NATO: Information Intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina,’’ in Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, ed. Jan-Werner Mueller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 137–154. More recently, the Iraq conflict has led to new research, such as Sean Aday, Steven

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Livingston, and Maeve Hebert, ‘‘Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of the Iraq War,’’ Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 10 (2005): 3–21. 4. To be clear, the reference here and throughout this chapter is to the military as the armed forces of states, predominantly Western, that operate either on their own behalf or as part of international interventions. 5. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005). 6. On the change in paradigms of war, see Smith, The Utility of Force; for a discussion of the role of the media in the new paradigm, see pages 284–289. For other discussions on the role of contemporary media in conflict, see also Thomas Rid, War and Media Operations: The U.S. Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq (London: Routledge, 2007); Milena Michalski and James Gow, War, Image and Legitimacy: Viewing Contemporary Conflict (London: Routledge, 2007). 7. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 1 (London: Guild Publishing/Oxford University Press, 1988). 8. As a matter of simplicity and clarity, I am using the masculine in reference to soldiers, though the entire discussion is of course relevant to the many women who now serve in armed forces and in combat zones. 9. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 10. Tony Blair (speech delivered at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 12 June 2007), http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKZWE24585220070612?src=061207_ 1647_TOPSTORY_blair_attacks_media. 11. Jeremy Paxman, ‘‘Never Mind the Scandals: What’s It All For?’’ (James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, Edinburgh Festival, 24 August 2007), http://image.guardian. co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2007/08/24/MacTaggartLecture.pdf. 12. Ibid. 13. Mike Capstick encapsulates this core issue in his excellent analysis of the strategic failure in the Afghanistan conflict, which stemmed from ‘‘the collective failure of American and NATO leaders to understand the true nature of conflict in failed and failing states. This failure led to the application of military force using concepts, doctrine, tactics, and equipment optimized for ‘state—on—state’ conflicts characterized by clashes between similarly organized military forces, but not well-adapted to the realities of warfare waged by non-state actors in failed and failing states.’’ (Mike Capstick, ‘‘The Civil-Military Effort in Afghanistan: A Strategic Perspective,’’ Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 10 (2007): 1–19. 14. The Economist, 17 August 2006.

CHAPTER 5 1. In this chapter, I apply the contemporary term ‘‘peace support operations’’ to the full spectrum of peacekeeping missions, past and present. Related terms such as ‘‘stability operations,’’ ‘‘stabilization operations,’’ and ‘‘stability and reconstruction operations’’ are taken to be synonymous with ‘‘peace support operations.’’

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2. For a discussion of Ogarkov and his writings, see Dale R. Herspring, ‘‘Nikolai Ogarkov and the Scientific-Technical Revolution in Soviet Military Affairs,’’ Comparative Strategy 6 (1987): 29–59. 3. For discussions of the RMA concept, see Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (New York: Gotham Books, 2006); Elinor C. Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Implications for Canada and NATO (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Thierry Gongora and Harald von Riekhoff, eds., Toward a Revolution in Military Affairs: Defense and Security at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000); Richard Hundley, Past Revolutions, Future Transformations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999); Eliot A. Cohen, ‘‘A Revolution in Warfare,’’ Foreign Affairs 75 (1996): 37–54; Andrew F. Krepinevich, ‘‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,’’ The National Interest 37 (1994): 30–42. 4. See William A. Owens, ‘‘The Emerging System of Systems,’’ Strategic Forum 63 (1996): 35–39; Stuart Johnson and Martin Libicki, eds., Dominant Battlespace Knowledge (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1995); Bill Owens and Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000). 5. William J. Perry, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1995), part iv. 6. Ronald O’Rourke, Defense Transformation: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress, CRS Report RL32238 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2006), 5. 7. Hans Binnendijk, ed., Transforming America’s Military (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2002), xvii. 8. National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: National Defense Panel, 1997), 57. 9. William S. Cohen, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1995), ch. 13. 10. Donald H. Rumsfeld, ‘‘Transforming the Military,’’ Foreign Affairs 81 (2002), 31. 11. U.S. Joint Forces Command, J9 Joint Futures Lab, A Concept for Rapid Decisive Operations, RDO White Paper Version 2.0, Coordinating Draft (2001), http://www. globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2001/RDO.doc, ii. 12. For a discussion of the early development of the ‘‘shock and awe’’ concept, see Harlan Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996). 13. Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, ‘‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future,’’ Proceedings 124 (1998); David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, and Frederick P. Stein, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: CCRP Publication Services, 1999). 14. Paul M. Mitchell, ‘‘Network Centric Warfare: Coalition Operations in the Age of U.S. Military Primacy,’’ Adelphi Paper 385 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006), 7. 15. See Gordon R. Sullivan and James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in the 21st Century (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 1993). 16. Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), esp. ch. 4.

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17. Michael J. Mazarr et al., The Military Technical Revolution: A Structural Framework (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993). 18. Michael G. Vickers and Robert C. Martinage, The Military Revolution and Intrastate Conflict (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1997). 19. National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense, 31. 20. O’Rourke, Defense Transformation, 25. 21. Nina M. Serafino, ‘‘Peacekeeping and Related Stability Operations: Issues of U.S. Military Involvement,’’ Congressional Research Service Briefing for Congress, CRS IB940040, (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2006). 22. David H. Gurney, ‘‘An Interview with Acting Director, DOD Office of Force Transformation, Terry J. Pudas,’’ Joint Force Quarterly 42 (2006), 34. 23. Paul Dibb, ‘‘The Revolution in Military Affairs and Asian Security,’’ Survival 39 (1997–1998): 95; Richard Bitzinger, Transforming the U.S. Military: Implications for the Asia-Pacific (Barton: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2006). 24. Strategic Defence Review (Ministry of Defence, July 1998), 11. 25. Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force (Commonwealth of Australia, 2000), 107. 26. Network Centric Warfare Roadmap (Department of Defence, Commonwealth of Australia, 2005). 27. Patrick Bratton, ‘‘France and the Revolution in Military Affairs,’’ Contemporary Security Policy 23 (2002), 87–112. 28. Strategic Defence Review (London: U.K. Ministry of Defence, 1998), http:// www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/65F3D7AC-4340-4119-93A2-20825848E50E/0/sdr1998_ complete.pdf, 14. 29. Delivering Security in a Changing World, Defence White Paper (London: UK Ministry of Defence, 2003), http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/147C7A19-8554-4DAE9F88-6FBAD2D973F9/0/cm6269_future_capabilities.pdf, 8. 30. Building Combat Capability, Australian policy statement, http://www.liberal. org.au/documents/1998_election/defence/defence.html. 31. Chief of the Defence Staff, Shaping the Future of the Canadian Forces: A Strategy for 2020 (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 1999); Defence Planning Guidance 2001 (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2000); Canadian Department of National Defence, Defence Plan 2001 (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, April 2001). 32. Delivering Security in a Changing World, 1. 33. Canadian Department of National Defence, Defence Plan 2001, 5–2. 34. Gerry Gilmore, ‘‘Rumsfeld: NATO, like U.S., Needs to Transform Its Military,’’ American Forces Information Service, 22 September 2002. 35. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘‘Prague Summit Declaration,’’ press release (2002) 127, Prague NATO Summit Meeting, 21–22 November 2002, 21 November 2002, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2002/p02-127e.htm. 36. Daniel S. Hamilton, ed., Transatlantic Transformations: Equipping NATO for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2004). 37. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘‘The NATO Response Force—NRF,’’ NATO briefing, January 2005, 25 October 2005, http://www.nato.int/docu/briefing/ nrf-e.pdf; NATO, ‘‘The NATO Response Force—NRF,’’ North Atlantic Treaty Organization, http://www.nato.int/shape/issues/shape_nrf/nrf_intro.htm.

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38. Understanding NATO’s Military Transformation, NATO Allied Command Transformation Public Information Office, 12. 39. Helga Haftendoorn, ‘‘From an Alliance of Commitment to an Alliance of Choice: The Adaptation of NATO in a Time of Uncertainty,’’ in The Changing Politics of European Security: Europe Alone? eds. Stefan G€anzle and Allen G. Sens (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 168. 40. The 2006 Riga Summit Declaration and the Comprehensive Political Guidance document approved at the summit both commit the alliance to an ongoing process of transformation. 41. Understanding NATO’s Military Transformation, 9. 42. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15. 43. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, ‘‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations,’’ Military Review (2005): 9. 44. Defense Science Board Task Force, Institutionalizing Stability Operations within DoD (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2005), http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2005-09-Stability_ Final.pdf. 45. U.S. Department of Defense, ‘‘Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations,’’ DoD Directive no. 3000.5 (2005), http:// www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf, 2. 46. U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2006), http:// www.defenselink.mil/qdr/, 3–4. 47. Failed and collapsed states are situations in which state structures, authority, the law and order system, and political institutions had broken down. See, for example, I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1995), 1. 48. For comparative discussions of the changed nature of peacekeeping, see Marrack Goulding, ‘‘The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping,’’ International Affairs 69 (1993), 451-464; Adam Roberts, ‘‘The Crisis in UN Peacekeeping,’’ Survival 36 (1994), 93–120; Mats R. Berdal, ‘‘Whither U.N. Peacekeeping?’’ Adelphi Paper 281 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993), esp. 6–25; Thomas G. Weiss, ‘‘The United Nations at Fifty: Recent Lessons,’’ Current History 94 (1995), esp. 223; Trevor Findlay, The Use of Force in U.N. Peace Operations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 49. C. Richard Nelson, How Should NATO Handle Stabilization Operations and Reconstruction Efforts? Policy Paper (New York: Atlantic Council of the United States, 2006), 2. 50. Michael O’Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 51. Phillip L. Ritcheson, ‘‘The Future of ‘Military Affairs’: Revolution or Evolution?’’ Strategic Review 24 (1996): 31–40; Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos (London: Frank Cass, 2002). 52. Brian McAllister Linn, ‘‘Driving in Reverse: Perspectives on Military Transformation,’’ in Divergent Perspectives on Military Transformation, eds. Benjamin Schreer and Eugene Whitlock (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2005), 8. 53. Mackubin T. Owens, ‘‘Technology, the RMA, and Future War,’’ Strategic Review 26 (1998), 67. 54. Owens, ‘‘The Emerging System of Systems,’’ 69.

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55. Kagan, Finding the Target, ch. 4. 56. Mitchell, Network Centric Warfare, 8–9. 57. Stephen Biddle, ‘‘Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare,’’ Foreign Affairs 82 (2003): 31–46. 58. Colin Gray, ‘‘Stability Operations in Strategic Perspective: A Skeptical View,’’ Parameters (2006): 12. 59. Alex Gliksman and Anthony Fainberg, introduction to Improving the Prospects for Future International Peace Operations: Workshop Proceedings, by U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-BP-ISS-167 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995); Milton Finger, ‘‘Technologies to Support Peacekeeping Operations,’’ in Improving the Prospects for Future International Peace Operations: Workshop Proceedings, U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-BP-ISS167 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 105–114. 60. Donna G. Boltz, ‘‘Information Technology and Peace Support Operations,’’ Virtual Diplomacy Report Series (2002), http://www.usip.org/virtualdiplomacy/publications/ reports/13.html. 61. Kofi A. Annan, ‘‘U.N. Peacekeeping Operations and Cooperation with NATO,’’ NATO Review 41 (1993): 6. 62. See, for example, A. Walter Dorn, Technology and Cooperative Monitoring for U.N. Peacekeeping (Toronto: Canadian Forces College, 2004); Reynolds M. Salerno et al., Enhanced Peacekeeping with Monitoring Technologies (Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories, 2000). 63. Paul F. Diehl, ‘‘The Political Implications of Using New Technologies in Peace Operations,’’ International Peacekeeping 9 (2002): 6. 64. Gerald Yonas, ‘‘The Role of Technology in Peace Operations,’’ U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Improving the Prospects for Future International Peace Operations: Workshop Proceedings, OTA-BP-ISS-167 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1995), 128. 65. See Michael and Kellen’s chapter in this volume for a detailed analysis of the kinds of intelligence necessary in PSOs. 66. David H. Petraeus, ‘‘Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq,’’ Military Review 86 (2006): 2. 67. U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 14–15. 68. Hans Binnendijk and Richard Kugler, ‘‘Needed: A NATO Stabilization and Reconstruction Force,’’ Defence Horizons 45 (2004): 1–8. 69. Stuart Johnson and Duncan Long, ‘‘Transforming for Post-Conflict Operations,’’ in Divergent Perspectives on Military Transformation, eds. Benjamin Schreer and Eugene Whitlock (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2005), 30–36.

CHAPTER 6 1. Thanks to Kobi Michael, Eyal Ben-Ari, David Kellen, and Jim Fergusson for their leadership in this project, and to Sean Maloney, Michael Hennessy, Lew Diggs, Galia Golan, Walid Salem, and Liora Sion for insights and comments. 2. Generals like Sir Michael Jackson, analysts like Gwynne Dyer, and even philosophers like Sam Harris have all pointed out the stupidity and fuzzy thinking inherent in a ‘‘war on terror,’’ so I will not belabor that point.

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3. James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006); Robert F. Gass, Theory, Doctrine, and Ball Bearings: Adapting Future Technology to Warfare (Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1996). 4. Time Benbow, The Magic Bullet? Understanding the Revolution in Military Affairs (London: Brassey’s, 2004), 10. 5. Donald Vandergriff, The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (New York: Presidio, 2002). 6. Thomas G. Mahnken and James R. FitzSimonds, The Limits of Transformation: Officer Attitudes towards the Revolution in Military Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Navy Headquarters, 2006). 7. Pamela Krause, Michel S. Loescher, Chris Schoreder, and Charles W. Thomas, Proteus: Insights from 2020 (Washington, DC: Copernicus Institute Press, 2000); Ming Zhang, ‘‘War without Rules: Western Rules and Methods of War,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 6 (1999): 16. Zhang reports on the book by Qiao Liang and Wang Xianghui, Chao Xian Zhan: Dui Quanqui Hua Shidai Zhanzheng yu Zhanfa de Xiangding (Warfare beyond Rules: Judgment of War and the Methods of War in the Era of Globalization) (Beijing: People’s Liberation Army Art Press, 1999). 8. Benbow, The Magic Bullet, 154–170. 9. James F. Rochlin, Social Forces and the Revolution in Military Affairs: The Cases of Colombia and Mexico (London: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2007); Chris Demchak, ‘‘Wars of Disruption: International Competition and Information Technology-Driven Military Organizations,’’ Contemporary Security Policy 24 (2003): 75–112. 10. RMA might be seen as a culmination of Polanyi’s Great Transformation, in which the modern world separated first magical thinking (religion) and then economics from the political. Technology divorced from politics, economics, and society offers no solutions. 11. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation for National Defense Research Institute, 2001). 12. A chapter by Luther P. Gerlach, ‘‘The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and Its Opponents,’’ in Networks and Netwars cites more than thirty sources, not one of which could be classed as sociological. A third are by Gerlach himself, and most of the rest are newspaper and website sources. 13. Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping (St. Petersberg, FL: Hailer Publishing, 2002); Frank Kitson, Gangs and Countergangs (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960). 14. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 15. Ibid., 195. 16. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2006), 2. 17. Ibid., 189. 18. Ibid., 231. 19. John T. Fishel and Max G. Manwaring, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006). 20. Ibid., 270.

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21. Stephen H. Roberts, History of French Colonial Policy 1870–1925 (London: P.S. King and Son, 1929). 22. Walter Nimocks, Milner’s Young Men: The Kindergarten in Edwardian Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968); Keith Breckenridge, ‘‘Lord Milner’s Registry: The Origins of South African Exceptionalism’’ (sem. paper, University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2004). 23. Albert Grundlingh, ‘‘Protectors and Friends of the People? The South African Constabulary in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, 1900–1908,’’ in Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830-1940, eds. David M. Anderson and David Killingray (New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), 168–182; Sam Steele, Forty Years in Canada: Reminiscences of the Great North-West with Some Account of His Service in South Africa, ed. Mollie Glen Niblett (Toronto: Prospero, 2000), 365–388. Steele’s account is interesting because it bridges the end of hostilities seen from a military point of view, and the establishment of civil policing, including registration of the civil population. 24. C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 3rd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). 25. Callwell, Small Wars, 135–137; Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents since 1750 (London: Routledge, 2001), 40–41. 26. I use imperialism here as a descriptive rather than a pejorative term. It implies wars to preserve the established order that suits the hegemonic power, in this case the United States. 27. V. I. Lenin, Socialism and War (The Attitude of the RSDLP towards War) (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1950), 13. 28. Richard E. Feinberg, The Intemperate Zone: The Third World Challenge to U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983). 29. Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century (New York: Putnam’s, 2004); Thomas P. M. Barnett, Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (New York: Penguin, 2005). 30. Immanuel Wallerstein, World System Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Leften Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age (New York: Harper Perennial, 1981). 31. Meghnad Desai, ‘‘The Possibility of Deglobalization,’’ in Globalization, Social Capital, and Inequality: Contested Concepts, Contested Experiences, eds. Wilfred Dolfsma and Charlie Dannreuther (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishers, 2003). 32. Barry K. Gills and John Kenneth Galbraith, Globalization and the Politics of Resistance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 33. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed, 2000). 34. Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel (London: Pluto, 2002). 35. Maury D. Feld, The Structure of Violence: Armed Forces as Social Systems (London: Sage, 1977). 36. Paul H. Herbert, Deciding What Has to Be Done? General William E. Dupuy and the 1976 Edition of FM100-5 Operations (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1988).

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37. Mai’a K. Davis Cross, The European Diplomatic Corps: Diplomats and International Cooperation from Westphalia to Maastricht (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 60–61. 38. Ibid., 68–137. 39. Georgios (Prince of Greece) The Cretan Drama: The Life and Memoirs of Prince George of Greece, High Commissioner in Crete, 1898–1908 (New York: R. Speller, 1959). 40. David W. Wainhouse, International Peace Observation: A History and Forecast (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). 41. Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003), 24; Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2001), 478. 42. Devesh Kapur, John Lewis, and Richard Webb, The World Bank: Its First Half Century (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1997), 59–67. 43. Nat J. Colletta and Michelle L. Cullen, Violent Conflict and the Transformation of Social Capital: Lessons from Cambodia, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Somalia (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000). 44. Michael Woolcock, ‘‘Social Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework,’’ Theory and Society 27 (1998): 151–208; Ben Fine, ‘‘The Development State Is Dead: Long Live Social Capital,’’ Development and Change 30 (1999): 1–19. 45. Colletta and Cullen, Violent Conflict, 9. 46. Gordon Marshall, Dictionary of Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 258; Malcolm Waters, Globalization (New York: Routledge, 1995). 47. Philip McMichael, ‘‘World-System Analysis, Globalization and Incorporated Comparison,’’ Journal of World Systems Research 6 (2000): 68–99. 48. Baruch Shimoni and Harriet Bergmann, ‘‘Managing in a Changing World: From Multiculturalism to Hybridization—the Production of Hybrid Management Cultures in Israel, Thailand and Mexico,’’ Academy of Management Perspectives 20 (2006): 76–89. 49. Ken Wiwa, ‘‘It’s the People, Stupid: When Corporations Carry the Flag to the War Zone,’’ Corporate Knights 1 (2003): 12–13. 50. Yahaya Hashim and Kate Meagher. Cross-Border Trade and the Parallel Currency Market—Trade and Finance in the Context of Structural Adjustment: A Case Study from Kano, Nigeria, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet Research Report no. 113 (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999). 51. Toby Heaps, ‘‘The Heart of Darkness,’’ Corporate Knights 16 (2006): 19–22. 52. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Chicago: Stanford University Press, 1999); Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars. 53. Allan Gerson and Nat J. Colletta, Privatizing Peace: From Conflict to Security (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 2002), 104–107. 54. Ibid., 175. 55. Ibid., 155–165. 56. Ibid., 191–199. 57. Andreas Wenger and Daniel Mockli, Conflict Prevention: The Untapped Potential of the Private Sector (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003). 58. Peter Brand and Michael J. Thomas, Urban Environmentalism: Global Change and the Mediation of Local Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2005).

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59. David H. Bayley, The Police and Political Development in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). 60. Charles Reith, A Short History of the British Police (London: Oxford University Press, 1948). 61. John Sewell, Police: Urban Policing in Canada (Toronto: J. Lorimer, 1985). 62. Bryan R. Roberts, The Making of Citizens: Cities of Peasants Revisited (London: Arnold, 1995). 63. Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Human Security for an Urban Century: Local Challenges, Global Perspectives (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007). 64. Sam Logan, ‘‘Public Security and Organized Armed Violence in Rio de Janeiro,’’ in Human Security for an Urban Century (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007), 28–30. 65. Graham Willis, ‘‘The Privatization of Security in Sao Paulo: Sure-Fire Security or Catalyst for Urban Conflict?’’ in Human Security for an Urban Century (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007), 30–32. 66. Author interviews with Southern Cross and Mount Everest Security managers, UN Civilian Police, and British Commonwealth Police Training Team, Freetown, June 2001. 67. Nicolas Florquin, ‘‘Small Arms in Urban Environments,’’ in Human Security for an Urban Century (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007), 32–38. 68. Katherine Donohue, ‘‘Increasing Stability by Improving Urban Security: USAID’s Haiti Transition Initiative in Port-au-Prince,’’ in Human Security for an Urban Century (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007), 92–94. 69. David Last, ‘‘Balkan Operations in the 1990s: Stepping-Stones to Improved Peacekeeping,’’ in Give Peace a Chance, ed. Charles Pentland (Montreal: McGillQueen’s Press, 2003). 70. Peter Knip, ‘‘Local Governments Work Together to Build Peace in the Middle East,’’ in Human Security for an Urban Century (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, 2007), 104–107. 71. Hilaire Belloc, ‘‘The Modern Traveller,’’ University of Pennsylvania Online Library, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp38186. 72. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 2007), 5–6. 73. Ibid., 377. 74. Marshall, Dictionary of Sociology, 137. 75. William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin, 2006), 79–80; James Boyce, ‘‘Development Assistance, Conditionality, and War Economies,’’ in Profiting from Peace: Managing the Resource Dimensions of Civil War, eds. Karen Ballentine and Heiko Nitzschke (London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 287–315. 76. Colletta and Cullen, Violent Conflict; Gerson and Colletta, Privatizing Peace. 77. Bruce Hoffman and Jennifer M. Taw, Defense Policy and Low-Intensity Conflict: The Development of Britain’s ‘‘Small Wars’’ Doctrine during the 1950s (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1991); Anthony James Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2004); Kitson, Low Intensity Operations.

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78. U.S. Department of Defense, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Headquarters, 2006). 79. Metta Spencer, Two Aspirins and a Comedy: How Television Can Enhance Health and Society (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006). 80. Ibid., Nat J. Cottet, ‘‘The Mimetic Desire,’’ http://www.cottet.org/girard/desir5. en.htm. 81. Mathieu Guidere and Nicole Morgan, Le Manuel de Recrutement d’Al Qaida (Paris: Seuil, 2007). 82. David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 11–42. 83. Ibid., 43–60. 84. There are examples of this from the Bosnian conflict. A former brigade commander, M. Alagic, seized control of the mayor’s office of Sanski Most in January 1996 and installed his former staff officers and commanders in the town’s key offices. 85. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 18–19; Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 36–37. 86. Ward Churchill and Mike Ryan, Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998).

CHAPTER 7 1. This chapter incorporates the thoughts from the theoretical chapters of Robert Egnell, ‘‘The Missing Link: Civil—Military Aspects of Effectiveness in Complex Irregular Warfare’’ (PhD diss., King’s College, London, 2007). 2. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005); Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper no. 379 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006); Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). 3. U.K. Ministry of Defense, The Comprehensive Approach, Joint Discussion Note 4/05 (Swindon, UK: Ministry of Defense, 2006), 1–1. 4. Michael Quinlan (lecture, NATO Headquarters, 1993), cited in Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘Military and Society: The Problem, Challenges and Possible Answers’’ (paper presented at the 5th International Security Forum, 14–16 October 2002), http://www. isn.ethz.ch/5isf/5/Papers/Dandeker_paper_V-2.pdf. 5. Suzanne C. Nielsen, ‘‘Civil-Military Relations Theory and Military Effectiveness,’’ Public Administration and Management 10 (2005): 61–84. 6. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of CivilMilitary Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 2. 7. Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘Military and Society,’’ 2–3. 8. Ibid. 9. Kobi Michael, ‘‘The Dilemma behind the Classical Dilemma of Civil-Military Relations: The ‘Discourse Space’ Model and the Israeli Case during the Oslo Process,’’ Armed Forces & Society 33 (2007): 519. 10. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 229.

196

NOTES

11. Arthur D. Larson, ‘‘Military Professionalism and Civil Control: A Comparative Analysis of Two Interpretations,’’ Journal of Political and Military Sociology 2 (1974): 57–72. 12. Ibid., 57–72. 13. Anthony Forster, Armed Forces in Europe (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 43. 14. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: The Free Press, 1960), 420. 15. Richard H. Kohn, ‘‘How Democracies Control the Military,’’ Journal of Democracy 8 (1997): 142. 16. Michael, ‘‘The Dilemma,’’ 522. 17. Nielsen, ‘‘Civil-Military Relations Theory,’’ 75. 18. Provincial Reconstruction Teams are administrative units consisting of a small operating base from which a group of sixty to more than one thousand civilians and military specialists work in a coordinated manner to perform small reconstruction projects or provide security for others involved in aid and reconstruction work. 19. Risa Brooks, ‘‘Political-Military Relations and the Stability of Arab Regimes,’’ Adelphi Paper no. 324 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46. 20. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Free Press, 2002), 209. 21. Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 49. 22. Christopher Dandeker, ‘‘Surveillance and Military Transformation: Organizational Trends in Twenty-First Century Armed Services,’’ in The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, eds. Kevin Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 240. 23. U.S. Department of the Army, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces, FM 6-0 (Washington, DC: US Army Headquarters, 2003), http://www. globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/6-0/, §1–80. 24. U.S. Department of the Army, Mission Command, §1–79. 25. Ibid., §1–74. 26. Richard Lovelock, ‘‘The Evolution of Peace Operations Doctrine,’’ Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 2002): 69. 27. C. S. Oliviero, ‘‘Trust, Manoeuvre Warfare, Mission Command and Canada’s Army,’’ The Army Doctrine and Training Bulletin (August 1998), http://armyapp.dnd.ca/ ael/ADTB/Vol_1/August_98/english/Trust_maoeuvre.htm. 28. Dmitry Khodyakov, ‘‘Trust as a Process: A Three-Dimensional Approach,’’ Sociology 41 (2007): 115–132. 29. Lynn G. Zucker, ‘‘Production of Trust: Institutional Sources of Economic Structure,’’ in Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 8, eds. B. M. Staw and L. Cummings (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1986), 53–112. 30. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 38. 31. Khodyakov, ‘‘Trust as a Process,’’ 122–123. 32. Zucker, ‘‘Production of Trust,’’ 53–112. 33. Katinka Bijlsma-Frankema and Ana Cristina Costa, ‘‘Understanding the TrustControl Nexus,’’ International Sociology 20 (2005): 261–262.

NOTES

197

34. Khodyakov, ‘‘Trust as a Process,’’ 123. 35. Kobi Michael, ‘‘The Israeli Defense Forces as an Epistemic Authority: An Intellectual Challenge in the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30 (2007): 443–445. 36. Michael, ‘‘The Dilemma,’’ 541. 37. Kobi Michael, e-mail message to author, 4 October 2007. 38. Matthew F. Bogdanos, ‘‘Joint Interagency Cooperation: The First Step,’’ Joint Force Quarterly 37 (2005), 11. 39. Cecil V. Crabb and Pat M. Holt, Invitation to Struggle: Congress, the President, and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1989), 9. 40. Clark A. Murdock, ed., Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, Phase 1 Report (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2004), 61. 41. Martin J. Gorman and Alexander Krongard, ‘‘A Goldwater-Nichols Act for the U.S. Government: Institutionalizing the Interagency Process,’’ Joint Force Quarterly 39 (2005): 52. 42. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 229. 43. Antulio J. Echevarria, ‘‘Towards an American Way of War’’ (London, Institute for Strategic Studies, 2004), http://www.iwar.org.uk/military/resources/us/way-ofwar.htm; Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, 43. 44. See Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973). Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, 43–44; Robert M. Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 111–113; Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘‘The American Way of War in the Twenty-First Century,’’ in Democracies and Small Wars, ed. Efraim Inbar (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003), 78–81. 45. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons (2002), 205. 46. Ibid., 43–44. 47. See James Jay Carafano, ‘‘Post-Conflict and Culture: Changing America’s Military for 21st Century Missions,’’ Heritage Lecture, no. 810 (22 October 2003), www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/HL810.cfm, 2–3; John Garofano, ‘‘The United States in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Points of Tension and Learning for the U.S. Military,’’ in Warriors in Peacekeeping: Points of Tension in Complex Cultural Encounters, eds. Jean Callaghan and Mathias Sch€onborn (M€unster: Lit Verlag, 2004); Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Allen Lane, 2006). 48. Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss, 155, 162–165. 49. Toby Dodge, ‘‘The Causes of Failures in Iraq,’’ Survival 49 (2007), 89–90. 50. James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward—a New Approach (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006), 27. 51. William L. Nash, ‘‘In the Wake of War: Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities,’’ Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/ Post-Conflict_Capabilities.pdf, 7. 52. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 498. 53. Ibid. 54. Nash, ‘‘In the Wake of War,’’ 7.

198

NOTES

55. Ricks, Fiasco, 180–181; Paul L. Bremer and Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 316–317. 56. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005), 299. 57. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 499–500. 58. Ibid., 500, 502. 59. Alice Hills, ‘‘Something Old, Something New: Security Governance in Iraq,’’ Conflict, Security, and Development 5 (2005): 192. 60. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 502. 61. Christopher H. Varhola, ‘‘American Challenges in Postwar Iraq,’’ Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Notes, 27 May 2004, http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20040527.america war.varhola.iraqchallenges.html. 62. Andrew Garfield, Succeeding in Phase IV: British Perspectives on the U.S. to Stabilize and Reconstruct Iraq (Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2006), 29. 63. Edwin Samuels and Tim Russel (lt. col.), ‘‘The Comprehensive Approach’’ (presentation, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 24 May 2006). 64. UK Ministry of Defense, ‘‘Departmental Framework,’’ http://www.mod.uk; UK Ministry of Defense, ‘‘Key Facts about Defense,’’ http://www.mod.uk. 65. William Hopkinson, ‘‘The Making of British Defence Policy,’’ RUSI Journal (October 2000): 33. 66. Simon Mayall (brig.), interview with author, November 2004. 67. Bill Jones and Dennis Kavanagh, British Politics Today, 7th ed. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), 186–187. 68. Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counter-Insurgency, 1919–1960 (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990), 64. 69. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change, 38, 40. 70. Rod Thornton, ‘‘The British Army and the Origins of Its Minimum Force Philosophy,’’ Small Wars and Insurgencies 15, no. 1 (2004), 85. 71. Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs. 72. Louise Heywood, ‘‘CIMIC in Iraq,’’ RUSI Journal 151 (2006), 36–40. 73. House of Commons Defense Committee, Iraq: An Initial Assessment of PostConflict Operations: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixth Report of Session 2004–05, HC 436 (London: House of Commons, 2005), 15–17. 74. Christopher Meyer, cited in Mary Jordan, ‘‘Blair Failed in Dealing with Bush, Book Says,’’ Washington Post, 8 November 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/11/07/AR2005110701569.html. 75. Heywood, ‘‘CIMIC in Iraq,’’ 36–40. 76. Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, HC 898, (London: House of Commons, 2004), 160. 77. See, for example, Human Rights Watch, Basra: Crime and Insecurity under British Occupation, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003, 8. 78. U.K. Ministry of Defense, ‘‘U.K. Operations in Iraq: Key Facts and Figures,’’ Defense Fact Sheet, http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FactSheets/OperationsFactsheets/ OperationsInIraqKeyFactsFigures.htm.

NOTES

199

CHAPTER 8 1. Edgar Sanderson, ed., Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte (London: Hutchinson, 1836), 302–303. 2. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (London: Zed Books, 2001), 11. 3. Ibid., 50–53. 4. Joint Warfare Publication 3-50, The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations, 2nd ed. (London: British Ministry of Defence, 2004), 1–8. 5. It is estimated that the U.K. market is worth £1.8 billion. This figure, however, does not include training, demining, and logistical support. Doug Brooks, president, International Peace Operations Association, e-mail message to author, 27 November 2006. 6. For details about the role of private security in Iraq, see GAO-060865T, Rebuilding Iraq: Actions Still Needed to Improve the Use of Private Security Providers (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2006), 5. 7. For a historical account of the development of British PSCs, see Christopher Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers and International Security (London: Routledge, 2006), 43– 51; Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962–1965 (Brighton, UK: Academic Press, 2004), 113–135. 8. For a detailed account of EO history, see Herbert Howe, Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in Africa States (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), ch. 5. 9. Eeben Barlow (founder, Executive Outcomes), interview with Jim Hooper, 26 January 1996. 10. Ibid., 4. 11. Ibid., 4. 12. David Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention, Adelphi Paper no. 316 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 48. 15. Alex Vines ‘‘Mercenaries, Human Rights, and Legality,’’ in Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma, ed. Musah Abdel-Fatau and J. Kayode Fayemi (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 175. 16. Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers, 63. 17. Barlow, interview. 18. Shearer, ‘‘Private Armies,’’ 58. 19. The company closed down its operations on 16 April 2004. 20. For an account of the Sandline affair, see Foreign Affairs Committee, Second Report, Sierra Leone (London: Stationery Office, 1999); Thomas Legg and Robin Ibbs, Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation (London: Stationery Office, 1998); Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers, ch. 4. 21. John Holmes (director, Erinys International), interview with author, 8 July 2004. 22. Dominick Donald, After the Bubble: British Private Security Companies after Iraq, Whitehall Paper Series 66 (London: RUSI, 2006), 36. 23. Bill Sizemore, ‘‘Blackwater Seeks Role in Training Security Forces in Sudan,’’ Virginian-Pilot, 18 January 2007, http://hamptonroads.com/node/209801. 24. Dominick Donald, interview with the author, 17 July 2007.

200

NOTES

25. Patrick Toyne Sewell (communications director, ArmorGroup International), e-mail message to author, 3 August 2007. 26. ArmorGroup International, ‘‘Mine Action Services,’’ http://www.armorgroup. com/services/servicesmineaction/. 27. Peter Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 16. 28. There has been concern over the use of contractors in conflict since the end of the Cold War. However, since the 2003 Iraq War, that concern has increased significantly, especially in the areas of oversight and accountability. 29. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 64. 30. Christopher Coker, The Future of War (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 130. 31. David Isenberg, A Fistful of Contractors: The Case for a Pragmatic Assessment of Private Military Companies in Iraq (London: British American Security Information Council, 2004), 7. 32. Coker The Future of War, 15. 33. The bureaucratization of violence actually started much earlier than the industrialization and nationalization of war. However, it was not until all three forces came together at the end of the eighteenth century that significant changes to warfare occurred. 34. Anatole Rapoport, introduction to On War, by C. Von Clausewitz (London: Penguin Classics, 1982), 24. 35. Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battle: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (London: Pimlico, 1993), vii. 36. Matthew Uttley, Contractors on Deployed Military Operations: United Kingdom Policy and Doctrine (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005), 16. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. British House of Commons Defense Committee, A New Chapter to the Strategic Defence Review, 6th Report of Session, 2002–2003, Vol. 1 (London: Stationery Office, 2003), 9. 40. Ibid., 10. 41. Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers, 153. 42. Joint Warfare Publication 3-50, 1–2. 43. Robin Moore (lt. col., Royal Logistical Corps), interview with author, 27 April 2007. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Jeremy Scahill, ‘‘A Very Private War,’’ The Guardian, 1 August 2007, G2, 6. Accurate data on the actual number of contractors working in Iraq is difficult to come by, and there is variation in the limited data available. In a recently published report by the Congressional Research Service, it was estimated that individuals employed under U.S. government contracts to perform functions once carried out by U.S. military personnel had reached 127,000. See Jennifer Elsea and Nina Serafino, Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues, CRS Report to Congress, RL32419 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2007). 47. United States Government Accountability Office, Rebuilding Iraq: Action Needed to Improve Use of Private Security Providers, GAO-05-737 (Washington, DC:

NOTES

201

Government Accountability Office, 2005); Alec Klein, ‘‘For Security in Iraq, a Return to British Know-How,’’ Washington Post, 24 August 2007. 48. Sewell, e-mail message. 49. Donald, After the Bubble, 46. 50. Thomas David et al. refer to this as cultural intelligence, the fundamental idea of being able to adapt to the environment. This includes the cognitive and behavioral ability required to select and shape an environment. See Kobi Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way: The Challenges of Military Mission Effectiveness in Peace Support Operations in a War amongst the People Theatre,’’ in Cultural Challenges in Military Operations, ed. Jean Dufourcq and Tibor Szvircsev Tresch (Rome: NATO Defense College, 2007), 7. 51. See Marshall Adame, ‘‘Private Security Contractor Behavior in Iraq Is Detrimental and Unacceptable,’’ American Chronicle, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/ viewArticle.asp?articleID=35753. 52. Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing,’’ 7–8. 53. Andrew Kain (managing director, Andrew Kain Enterprises), interview with the author, 11 March 2005. 54. For a detailed account of how one PSC was able to live and work outside the Green Zone, see James Ashcroft, Making a Killing (London: Virgin Books, 2006), 129– 269. 55. Ibid., 52. 56. The total cost to the FCO of employing private security firms in (a) Iraq and (b) Afghanistan during the years 2003, 2004, and 2005, and up to 13 September 2006: Iraq May 2003–March 2004:

£19,121,598

April 2004–March 2005:

£45,705,639

April 2005–March 2006:

£47,818,682

April 2006–August 2006:

£14,611,529à

Afghanistan April 2004 –March 2005:

£2,085,000

April 2005–March 2006:

£8,534,000

April 2006–August 2006:

£5,239,000

 No private security firms were employed in Afghanistan prior to 2004. The names of each of the companies involved and the bill for each: Iraq Control Risks Group

£112,457,849

ArmorGroup

£11,888,699

Kroll Security Group

£3,014,620

Figures attained from the Foreign Commonwealth Office through a Freedom of Information request Ref. No: FOI 0784-06, 22 September 2006.

202

NOTES

57. Deployed capability is provided through MoD’s overarching ‘‘Contractors Logistics’’ (CONLOG) contract, a ‘‘one-stop shop for packages of commercial support.’’ CONLOG is intended to reduce the number of ad hoc urgent operational requirement contracts and has been awarded to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) under a seven-year partnering arrangement. The United States Army has a similar arrangement with KBR called LOGCON. See Uttley, Contractors on Deployed Military Operations, for a detailed account of CONLOG. 58. Chris Tomlinson, ‘‘US: DynCorp Hired for Somalia Peacekeeping,’’ Forbes, 7 March 2007, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14398. 59. R. Williams, Building Stability in Africa: Challenges for the New Millennium, Monograph 46 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2000), 2. 60. DynCorp International, ‘‘Front page,’’ http://www.dyn-intl.com/index.aspx; MPRI, ‘‘Security Sector Reform Programs,’’ http://www.mpri.com/main/securitysectorreform.html. The FCO also has a contract with ArmorGroup to provide international police advisors in Iraq. This contract is funded from the Global Conflict Prevention Pool, and the costs to date have been as follows: Figures attained from the Foreign Commonwealth Office through a Freedom of Information request Ref. No: FOI 0784-06, 22 September 2006. April 2004–March 2005:

£3,700,172

April 2005–March 2006:

£8,417,243

April 2006–August 2006:

£3,331,102

61. Tomlinson, ‘‘DynCorp Hired for Somalia Peacekeeping.’’ 62. See Vinnell, ‘‘History of Vinnell Coporation,’’ http://www.vinnell.com/ ArabiaRecruiting/recruiting.htm. 63. Donald, After the Bubble, 62. 64. Ibid., 65. 65. Ibid., 66. 66. Tomlinson, ‘‘DynCorp Hired for Somalia Peacekeeping.’’ 67. For details of the Sandline affair, see Tim Spicer, An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company, 1999).

CHAPTER 9 1. William J. Durch, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Evolution of U.N. Peacekeeping: Case Studies and Comparative Analyses, ed. William J. Durch (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 1–15; Steven Ratner, The New U.N. Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict after the Cold War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Allen Sens, ‘‘PeaceBuilding and State-Building in Peacekeeping Operations: Options and Challenges in the Palestinian Case,’’ in Stabilizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Considerations for a Multinational Peace Support Operation, ed. Kobi Michael and David Kellen (Jerusalem: Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, 2007), 40–69. 2. Frank van Kappen, ‘‘Strategic Intelligence and the United Nations,’’ in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, ed. Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (Oakton, VA: OSS International Press, 2003), 3–10.

NOTES

203

3. Renaud Theunens, ‘‘Intelligence and Peace Support Operations: Some Practical Concepts,’’ in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, ed. Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (Oakton, VA: OSS International Press, 2003), 63. 4. Patrick C. Cammaert, ‘‘Intelligence in Peacekeeping Operations: Lessons for the Future,’’ in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, ed. Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (Oakton, VA: OSS International Press, 2003), 14. See also Van Kappen, ‘‘Strategic Intelligence,’’ 3. 5. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2005). 6. Van Kappen, ‘‘Strategic Intelligence,’’ 5. 7. David Pugliese, ‘‘We Need to Know the Enemy: Military Must Learn about Afghans,’’ The Gazette (Montreal), 3 October, 2007 http://www.canada.com/montreal gazette/news/story.html?id=4fc8f9a0-5791-4ab0-a90f-74934f14fc70&k=28118 (accessed 7 May 2008). 8. Ibid. 9. Smith, Utility of Force. 10. U.S. Army, Counterinsurgency: FM 3-24 (Washington, DC: US Army Headquarters, 2006). See also ‘‘Think before You Shoot: A New Field Manual Teaches American Forces How to Fight Elusive Insurgents,’’ Economist, 23 December 2006, 74. 11. Kobi Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way: The Challenges of Military Mission Effectiveness in Peace Support Operations in a ‘War amongst the People’ Theater,’’ in Cultural Challenges in Military Operations, ed. Cees M. Coops and Szvircsev Tibor Tresch (Rome: NATO Defense College, Research Division, 2007), 254–263. 12. Gustavo Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations for Peace Operations,’’ in UNISCI Discussion Paper Number 13 (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007), 25–41. 13. Brent Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future? The Lessons of Counterinsurgency for Contemporary Peace Operations,’’ Carleton University, http://www.carleton.ca/e-merge/docs_ vol5/articles/article_Ellis1.pdf. 14. Hugh Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and UN Peacekeeping,’’ Survival 36, no. 3 (1994): 174–192; Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way.’’ 15. Pasi Valimaki, ‘‘Bridging the Gap: Intelligence and Peace Support Operations,’’ in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, eds. Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (Oakton, VA: OSS International Press, 2003), 49. 16. Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations.’’ 17. Ibid; Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future?’’ 18. Valimaki, ‘‘Bridging the Gap,’’ 50. 19. Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future?’’ 20. Kinsey, this volume. 21. Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future?’’; Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way.’’ 22. Valimaki, ‘‘Bridging the Gap,’’ 52. 23. Bob Hoogenboom, ‘‘Grey Intelligence,’’ Crime, Law & Social Change 45 (2006): 373–381. 24. Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future?’’ 25. Valimaki, ‘‘Bridging the Gap,’’ 55. 26. Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way,’’; Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations.’’

204

NOTES

27. Valimaki, ‘‘Bridging the Gap,’’ 54. 28. Ellis, ‘‘Back to the Future?’’ 29. Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations’’; Kinsey, this volume. 30. Pugliese, ‘‘We Need to Know the Enemy.’’ 31. David A. Charters, ‘‘Out of the Closet: Intelligence Support for Post-Modernist Peacekeeping,’’ The Pearson Papers No. 4, Intelligence in Peacekeeping (Clementsport, NS: Canadian Peacekeeping Press, 1999), 34–68. 32. Walter A. Dorn, ‘‘The Cloak and the Blue Beret: The Limits of Intelligence Gathering in U.N. Peacekeeping,’’ The Pearson Papers No. 4, Intelligence in Peacekeeping (Clementsport, NS: Canadian Peacekeeping Press, 1999), 1–31. 33. Ibid., 15. 34. Ibid., 13. 35. Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping.’’ 36. Dorn, ‘‘The Cloak and the Blue Beret,’’ 20. 37. Ibid., 14. 38. Douglas H. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age,’’ Global Intelligence Partnership Network, http://www.oss.net/dynamaster/file_archive/040319/50bc105e7727 ef8f62a7de860d4ab42d/OSS1999-P2-29.pdf. 39. Ibid. 40. Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping,’’ 178. 41. Charters, ‘‘Out of the Closet,’’ 51. 42. Dorn, ‘‘The Clock and the Blue Beret,’’ 18–19. 43. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age,’’ 238. 44. Ibid., 230. 45. Ibid., 231. 46. Ibid. 47. Dorn, ‘‘The Clock and the Blue Beret,’’ 13. 48. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age,’’ 231. 49. Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping,’’ 177. 50. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age,’’ 230. 51. Theunens, ‘‘Intelligence and Peace Support Operations,’’ 63. 52. Ibid. 53. Charters, ‘‘Out of the Closet.’’ 54. Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way.’’ 55. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age’’; Diaz, ‘‘Intelligence at the United Nations’’; Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping.’’ 56. Dearth, ‘‘Peacekeeping in the Information Age’’; Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping.’’ 57. Smith, ‘‘Intelligence and U.N. Peacekeeping’’; Michael, ‘‘Doing the Right Thing the Right Way.’’ 58. Javier Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace: A Secretary General’s Memoir (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997). 59. Dorn, ‘‘The Clock and the Blue Beret.’’ 60. Smith, The Utility of Force. 61. Williamson Murray, ed., Strategic Challenges for Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terrorism, Strategic Studies (SSI) Monographs (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2006).

NOTES

205

62. David C. Thomas et al., ‘‘Cultural Intelligence: Domain and Assessment’’ (forthcoming). 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Howard, Michael. ‘‘A Long War?’’ Survival 8 (2006): 7–14. 72. G. I. Wilson, John P. Sullivan, and Hal Kempfer. ‘‘The Changing Nature of Warfare Requires New Intelligence-Gathering Techniques,’’ in Espionage and Intelligence Gathering, Louise I. Gerdes, ed. (Farmington Hills, MN: Greenhaven Press, 2004).

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Index

Abu Ghraib, 27, 57, 58, 154 Al-Aqsa Intifada (Israel-Palestine), 7 Allied Command Operations (ACO), 87 Allied Command Transformation (ACT), 87 All-volunteer forces, 43, 44, 51 American Civil War, 65 American Marine Corps’ Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, 11 American military establishment, 18 Australian Defense Force, 86 Australian White Paper, 86 Avant, Deborah, 127 Aylwin-Foster, Nigel, 88 Bar Lev, Uri, 56 A Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building (Dobbins et al.), 12 Bichler, Shimshon, 108 Binnendijk, Hans, 83 Black Watch operations, 136 Blair, Tony, 76, 137 Blue Helmets, 10 ‘‘Blue on blue’’ casualties, 34 Boene, Bernard, 38 Boltz, Donna G., 97

Bourke, Joanna, 8 Brevity rule, 74 British military professionalism and military culture, 135 British Support Operations Doctrine, 54 Brooks, Risa, 126 Budget rule, 75 Bush, George W., 31, 83, 133 Calipari, Nicola, 57 Cammaert, Patrick, 159 Cassidy, Robert, 132 Center for Languages, Cultures, and Regional Studies at West Point, 11 Civil-military divide, 130, 135 Civil-military interface, 71, 123, 134, 138; in operational chain of command, 126–30; of the U.S. chain of command, 131 Civil-military relations: British operation in Iraq, 136–37; British patterns of, 134–36; evaluating different patterns of, 130–37; theory, 123–26; U.S. operations in Iraq, 132–34; U.S. patterns of, 131–32 Cohen, Eliot, 7, 127

208

INDEX

Cold War, 1–2, 5, 21–22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 39, 42, 44, 45, 59, 84, 87, 89, 100– 101, 140, 142, 147, 148, 153, 154, 164, 165; bipolarity, 107; East-West, 110; in Somalia and Bosnia, 84 Civil-military cooperation (CIMIC), 10, 126, 133 CNN factor, 67 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), 134; in Iraq, 140 Cold War bipolar confrontation, 24 Combined Joint Information Campaign Task Force, 164 Conscription in Europe: methodology, 41; ongoing decline of, 43–45; termination of, 49; thesis, 40–41 Conscription-based defense, 39–51 Conscript ratio (CR), 41, 44; of nineteen countries, 45 Contractorization and civilianization, of military, 154–55 Council on Foreign Relations report, 133 Counterinsurgency (COIN), 8, 104; operations, 84; pugilism, 101–20; and small wars literature, 104–7 Conventional war, versus PSOs, 55–58 Creveld, Martin Van, 3, 21, 28 Crimean War, 65 Cultural intelligence, 10–12, 150; for peace support operations, 157; psychological platform of, 170–71 Current military thinking, 111, 158 Dandeker, Christopher, 3–5, 124 Dannatt, Richard, 37 ‘‘De-bellicisation,’’ 35 Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI), 87 Defense Science Board, 88 Department for International Development (DFID), 156 Department of Defense (DoD), 12, 82–83, 88, 117, 130–31, 133 Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), 157, 165 Disarm, demobilize, and then reintegrate (DDR), 152–53 Dodge, Toby, 132

Downsizing wave, European countries, 45 DynCorp, 143, 152–53 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in Liberia, 89 Effects-based approach to operations (EBAO), 87 Effects-based operations (EBO), 8, 29, 84 Egyptian army, 56 Estimate of Situation (EOS), 60 Ethno-national conflict, 160 European armed forces, 41; development of out-of-area ratio, 47–49; evident, 48; military integration, 50 European Battle Groups, 46, 52 European conscript armies: decline of, 44; manning levels in, 42; manning systems in, 43 European countries, 41, 43, 48; conscription and international integration, 51 European defense integration and mission change, 39–51 European defense policy, 47 European militaries, 39–40; decline of, 44; inner cooperation, 40; integration; 41; manning levels in, 42; manning systems in, 43 European political and defense integration, and out-of-area missions, 49–52 European security integration, 40 European Union Force (EUROFOR), 46 European Union security policy cooperation, 46 Europe reform waves, 45–47 Executive Outcomes (EO) operations, in Angola, 141 Falklands war, 25, 26 First World War, 22, 28, 107, 110 Flattening rule, 73 Forcas Armadas Angolanos (FAA), 141 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), 142, 156 Fort Eban-Emael (Belgium), 55 Fourth-generation warfare (4GW), 105

INDEX

Freedman, Lawrence, 136 Full-spectrum dominance, 8 Giddens, Anthony, 128 Girard, Rene, 119 Global civil war, 101, 107–8, 113 Gray, Colin, 35, 96 Global show theater: media’s rules and its contribution to, 73–76; professional soldier in, 72–73; relationship between media and military, 79–80 Global War on Terror (GWOT), 31, 33, 101 Great-power warfare, 7 Green Berets, 10 Gross domestic product (GDP), 148 Grossman, Dave, 8 Guerrilla warfare, 3, 119, 151 Gulf War, 2, 3, 31, 32, 81, 84, 145, 149 Haiti Transition Initiative, 116 High-Intensity Conflict (HIC), 84, 89, 90, 95, 96, 98, 100; war-fighting scenarios, 85 High-intensity warfare, 146 Holmes, John, 143 Hooper, Jim, 147 Hot revolutionary war, 120 Humanitarian intervention (human rights protection operations), 6, 9, 123 Humanitarianism, 6, 139; development assistance, 153 Humanitarian organizations, 16 Huntington, Samuel, 124, 127, 130, 131 Hussein, Saddam, 28, 133, 146 Hybrid organizational forms, 16 Hybrid wars, 4, 7 Implementation Force (IFOR), 46, 164 Industrial war, 2–3, 8, 10, 19, 24–28, 66–67, 69, 71, 77, 79, 145 Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), 162 Intelligence Preparation of the Environment (IPE), 162 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 67

209

International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 41, 42 International missions, 29, 35–38 International peace operations, 14 International Police Task Force, 143, 151 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Operation, in Afghanistan, 47, 95 Inter-organizational cooperation, 14 Interpersonal trust, 128, 130–31, 135 Intervention, stabilization, and transformation (IST) operations, 9, 12 Iran-Iraq War, 28 Iraq Study Group Report, 132 Irregular warfare, 7–8, 29, 88, 96, 117, 132, 134 Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 53, 55–56, 58, 60 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 5, 108 Janowitz, Morris, 15, 40, 124, 125, 130, 134 Janowitzean notion, 125, 134 Joint Vision 2010, 82, 101, 118 Joint Vision 2020, 82, 101, 105, 118 Journalism, 67–70; British, 76 Kaldor, Mary, 3, 22 Khodyakov, Dmitry, 128, 129 Kohn, Richard, 125 Kosovo Force (KFOR) intelligence, 161 Kosovo International Verification Mission, 143 Kugler, Richard, 99 Last, David, 13, 16, 101, 158 Legg enquiry, 142 Low-intensity conflict (LIC), 7–8, 58, 63, 85 Linn, Brian McAllister, 90 Long-Range Management Program, 142 Lozano, Mario, 57 Manichean training, 98 Media, amorphous nature of, 69–70

210

INDEX

Media and conflict: brevity rule, 74–75; budget rule, 75–76; flattening rule, 73; from ‘‘war and the media,’’ 66–69; integral part of modern battlefield, 65–80; narrative rule, 75; open exchange rule, 73–74 Media and modern conflicts, 65–66 Media rules: brevity rule, 74–75; budget rule, 75–76; flattening rule, 73; military’s approach in conflict theater and implications, 77–79; narrative rule, 75; open exchange rule, 73–74 Michael, Kobi, 1, 60, 124–25, 129–30, 157 Military asymmetry, 22 Military Balance (IISS), 41, 42, 48 Military capacities, reducing or redirecting toward new missions, 45–47, 91 The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations (British Ministry of Defence), 63 Military covenant, 5 Military intelligence, 57, 151, 158, 160, 170 Military operations other than war (MOOTW), 7, 8, 13, 15 Military organization and culture, implications for, 53–62 Military policing, 8, 16 Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), 142, 153 Ministry of Defense (MoD), 30, 135, 137, 142, 148, 156 Mission command, 37, 61–62, 127, 161, 172; doctrinal and institutional response, 58–60; theory, 128–29 Mitchell, Paul T., 94 Modern battlefield, 65–80 Modernization theory, 12, 19 Modern professional soldier, amorphous nature of, 70–72 Moynihan law, 75 Multinational Corps North-East, 46 Multinational Land Force, 46 Municipal Alliance for Peace, 116, 120

Nagl, John, 105, 132 Napoleonic military, 24 Napoleonic Wars, 24, 145 Narrative rule, 75 Nasrallah, Hasan, 78–79 National Defense Panel, 83–84 NATO, 11, 26, 37, 71, 85; badge, 72; International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 95; operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, 87 NATO Response Force (NRF), 87, 95, 99 ‘‘Network-Based Defense’’ concept, 86 Network-centric capability, 147 Network-Centric Warfare (NCW), 8, 84, 86, 87, 94, 103 New World Order, 2 Nielsen, Suzanne, 123 Nitzan, Jonathan, 108 Non-commissioned officers (NCOs), 55 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 5, 9, 10, 16, 67, 75, 77, 89–90, 113–14, 122, 139; community, 153–54, 162, 168 Non-military actors, 37 Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA), 133 Office of Force Transformation, 83, 85 Ogarkov, Nikolai V., 82 Open exchange rule, 73 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 88 Operations other than war (OOTW), 7–8, 14, 84–85, 123, 132 Organizational isomorphism, 17–18 O’Rourke, Ronald, 83, 85 Out-of-area missions, 40, 49–52 Out-of-area ratio (OoAR), 41, 42; of European Armed Forces, 47–50; of twenty-seven European countries, 48, 50 Owens, Mackubin T., 82, 91 Palestinian Authority, 116 Palestinian villages, 53, 60 Partnership for Peace (PfP), 43, 46 Paxman, Jeremy, 76

INDEX

Peace-building: analog, 120; commission, 12; insurgency, 119; Judo, 101–20; and reconstruction, 99 Peace-crisis-war resolution, 27 Peace-intervention-driven professionalization wave, in European countries, 46 Peacekeeping intelligence: development of, 163–66; nature of, 162 Peace observation and transition missions, 110 Peace Support Operations (PSOs): British publications, 63; civil-military aspects of effectiveness in, 122–37; complex nature of contemporary, 14; contingencies of, 17; conventional war versus, 55–58; creation of, 92; cultural intelligence for, 11–12, 157–71; deficiencies in capacity, 92; deployment in, 19; deployment profile, 95; doctrine and capacity, 91; environment, 63; expeditionary and rapid reaction capabilities, 95; hybrid organizational forms, 16; impact of RMA and Transformation on, 91–92; implications for military organization and culture, 53–62; information technology, 97; intelligence in, 160, 163, 166; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, 97–98; inter-linkages and hybrids, 14–19; interoperability in multilateral military operations, 94; inter-organizational cooperation, 14; legitimacy and political support, 93; military roles relevant to, 15; modern, 161; national caveats, 94; national command and operational control, 94–95; nature of, 89–91; new metaphors and new knowledge, 10–14; operational aspects of, 95–99; organizational aspects of, 94–95; organizational isomorphism, 17–18; peace-building and reconstruction, 89, 99; political aspects of, 92–94; privatization of security, 18; professional vocabulary and social scientific language, 19–20;

211

red cards, 94; right authority and mandates, 92–93; in RMA and transformation, 81–100; role of private security companies in, 139–55; Roman circus, 57–59, 62, 64; shaping thinking and action, 6–10; statebuilding, nation-building, and peace-building, 93; ‘‘Strange Bedfellows’’ (‘‘Uncertain Partners’’), 16; strategic corporal, 53–62; traditional peacekeeping in, 9; training, 98; uncertainties of, 17; use of force, 96; use of PSCs in, 147 Peace Transition Council (PTC), 114 Perry, William, 82 Petraeus, David, 98 Political-military interface, 30, 129 Post-conflict stabilization, 133, 149–51, 155; reconstruction operations, 151–52 Postmodern war, 29–35 Prague Capabilities Commitments (PCC), 87 Private combatants, role of, 141–44 Private military corporations (PMCs), 162 Private security companies (PSCs), 19, 116, 122, 139–40, 141, 153, 155–56; assigning peace support roles to, 149 Professional soldier: amorphous nature of, 70–72; in global show theater, 72–73 Provincial Reconstruction Teams, in Afghanistan and Iraq, 126 Prussian military, 24 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), 83, 85, 88, 98 RAND Corporation, 103–4 Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO), 9, 83 ‘‘Republican Equation,’’ 5 Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 141–42

212

INDEX

Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), 7, 8, 139, 158; advocates, 82; concept, 81–82; and counterinsurgency writing, 101, 110; enthusiasts, 103; force-centric, 102; impact on contractorization of war, 144–47; in intellectual and policy circles, 83; literature, 84; military transformation, 83; and operations other than war (OOTW), 84; publications, 103; thinking, 104, 108, 109; transformation, and nature of PSOs, 89–91; and transformation agendas, 86, 87, 89, 91, 94; and transformation concepts, 81–86, 90, 93, 149; to transformation (evolution of full intellectual dominance), 82–84; and transformation literature, 81, 82, 84, 108; transformation outside the United States, 85–87; writing, 104 Risk transfer militarism, 32, 34 Risk transfer rebound, 34 Risk-transfer war, 5, 33 Roberts, Adam, 28 Roman circus effect, 59 Rules of engagement (ROE), 26, 58, 93, 98 Rumsfeld, Donald, 83–85, 87, 133, 145 Rumsformation, 83 Saudi Arabian National Guard, 153 Second World War, 28, 33, 65, 66, 104, 132 Security sector reform (SSR) programs, 137, 139, 142, 152–53, 155 Sens, Allen, 8, 81, 158 Sgrena, Giuliana, 57 Shaw, Martin, 5–6, 32–35 ‘‘Shock and awe’’ concept, 8, 31, 83, 85, 145 Sierra Leone, 4, 122, 141, 147; operations in, 142 Small wars literature, 104–7, 118 Small Wars Operational Research Directorate (SWORD) model, 105–6, 109 Smith, Hugh, 166

Smith, Rupert, 4–5, 7, 24–30, 32, 35, 37, 57–58, 116–17, 166, 169; analysis, 4; anger and frustration, 26; argument, 4, 27; discussion, 30; The Utility of Force, 24 Social capital and social cohesion, 111, 116–17 Soeters, Joseph, 17–18 South African Defense Force (SADF), 147, 148 Spencer, Metta, 119 Stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR), 88 Stabilization Force (SFOR), 46, 158 Strategic Corporal, 37, 59, 62–63; in conventional war versus PSOs, 55–58; rise of, 54–55 Strategic Defense Review (SDR), United Kingdom, 86 System Operational Design (SOD), 63 Thomas, David, 170–71 Thuenens, Renauld, 158, 166 Thurman, Max, 105, 109 Traditional peacekeeping, 2, 8–9, 19, 160–61 Transformed wars and changed conflicts, 2–6 Tri-sector governance, 114–15 Trustee-occupant, 114 U.K. White Paper, 86 U.N. Advance Mission: in Cambodia (UNAMIC), 164; in Rwanda (UNAMIR), 164 Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total do Angola (UNITA), 141 U.N. Operation: in Congo (UNOC), 164; in Somalia (UNOSOM), 164 U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), 26, 46, 164, 166 U.N. Security Council, 93 U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), 164 U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), 164 Urbanization, 101–2, 112, 115–16, 121

INDEX

U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, 88 U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute. See U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute U.S. Transformation literature, 85 Vietnam War, 7 Violence and social cohesion, 112

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Volunteer-based constabulary forces, 39–51; thesis, 40–41 War-fighting doctrines, 118 World Wars, 28; of twentieth century, 24 Yonas, Gerald, 97 YouTube, 73–74 Zucker, Lynn, 128–29

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About the Editors and Contributors

EDITORS Kobi Michael Dr. Kobi Michael is an assistant professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. He has previously served as a senior advisor at the Israeli National Security Council. In addition to his position at Ben-Gurion University, he lectures at Tel-Aviv University, the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and the Israeli National Defense College. Dr. Michael is a recipient of the Tshetshik Prize (2005) and the Yariv Award (2002). His most recent book is Between Militarism and Statesmanship in Israel. Dr. Michael has edited five books about peacekeeping operations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has published more than thirty articles and monographs about civil-military relations, peacekeeping operations, security cooperation, and Jerusalem’s future political status. David Kellen David Kellen is the Israeli Coordinator of the Strategic Affairs Unit at the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information. David holds an MA in Conflict Analysis from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Together with Kobi Michael, he has published several articles on peacekeeping in the IsraeliPalestinian context and has co-edited Stabilizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Considerations for a Multinational Peace Support Operation (2007).

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ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Eyal Ben-Ari Eyal Ben-Ari is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has carried out research in Japan, Israel, and Singapore on white collar communities, early childhood education, business expatriates, the Israeli and Japanese militaries, and peacekeeping forces. His previous publications include Body Projects in Japanese Childcare (1997), Mastering Soldiers (1998), and with Zev Lehrer, Uzi Ben-Shalom, and Ariel Vainer, Rethinking the Sociology of Combat: Israel’s Combat Units in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2008). Among his recent edited books are, with Edna Lomsky-Feder, The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society (2000); with Daniel Maman and Zeev Rosenhek, War, Politics and Society in Israel (2001); and with Smita Jassal, Echoes of Partition (2006).

CONTRIBUTORS Ilana Bet-El Ilana Bet-El is a senior advisor and analyst on defense, security, and politics, specializing in communications and international organizations. She has extensive experience in the international world, working for international organizations, governments, NGOs, and the private sector. Alongside her field and practical experience, she has a strong background in both academia and the media. She holds a PhD in history from the University of London and has lectured at Tel Aviv University. She has written extensively on conflict, international political situations—especially the Balkans—and the EU in both academic publications and media outlets. Most recently she co-wrote The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World with General Sir Rupert Smith. Christopher Dandeker Christopher Dandeker is a professor of military sociology in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is also co-director of the King’s Center for Military Health Research. He has authored The Structure of Social Theory (1984), Surveillance Power and Modernity (1990), and Nationalism and Violence (1997). His recent work includes, with S. Wessely, A. Iversen, and J. Ross, ‘‘What’s In a Name? Defining and Caring for ‘Veterans’: the United Kingdom from a Comparative Perspective’’ (Armed Forces and Society, 2006) and ‘‘Surveillance and Military Transformation: Organizational Trends in Twenty First Century Armed Services,’’ in The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (University of Toronto Press, 2006). Robert Egnell Robert Egnell, PhD, is a researcher at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), where he is currently working on peace support operations, civil-military relations, and African security. He received his doctorate from the Department

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

217

of War Studies, King’s College London, with a thesis entitled ‘‘The Missing Link: Civil-Military Aspects of Effectiveness in Complex Irregular Warfare.’’ He has previously been a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam and a guest researcher at the Swedish National Defense College. Dr. Egnell is also a captain in the Swedish Army Reserves with international experience from the first Swedish battalion in Kosovo. Karl W. Haltiner Karl W. Haltiner is Professor and Head of Military Sociology at the Military Academy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. His current research is on the relations of armed forces and society. He focuses mainly on the democratic control of the military and on the effects of social changes on the armed forces and the officer profession in Europe. He directs the annual trend study Swiss Public Opinion on Security Policy. His recent books include The European Armed Forces in Transition (edited with Franz Kernic and Paul Klein, 2005) and Civil-Military Relations in Europe (edited with H. Born, M. Caparini and J. Kuhlmann, 2006). Christopher Kinsey Dr. Kinsey is a lecturer in international security with the Defense Studies Department, King’s College London at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. His research examines the role of contractors in war, but in particular, the impact of private security on the twenty-first century battlefield. He has published widely on the subject in leading academic journals. His present work examines the cultural links between private security companies and the military and shows how military values can influence the behavior of contractors working for such companies. He is author of Corporate Soldiers and International Security. David Last David Last served thirty years with the Canadian Forces, including NATO and UN duty in Germany, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia, and West Africa. He is now associate professor of politics at Canada’s Royal Military College and does research on conflict management, international policing, ethnicity, and governance. His books and edited works include Theory, Doctrine and Practice of Conflict De-escalation in Peacekeeping Operations (1997) and Choice of Force: Special Operations for Canada (2004). Allen G. Sens Allen G. Sens is a senior instructor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He specializes in conflict and conflict management, with a specific focus on peacekeeping and peace support operations, peace-building and reconstruction efforts, European and transatlantic security, and Canadian foreign and defense policy. He is currently chair of

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ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

the International Relations Program, an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Eitan Shamir Eitan Shamir is currently working at the IDF Staff and Command College as an academic instructor while completing his PhD in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His PhD thesis compares the doctrine and practice of mission command across different military cultures. Eitan previously worked as a management consultant, focusing on large-scale corporate transformation and culture change. His current research focuses on command and leadership, reforms, and sources of military change and military culture. Eitan holds a BA in Political Science from Tel Aviv University and an MA in Organizational Behavior (MOB) from Brigham Young University. Tibor Szvircsev Tresch Tibor Szvircsev Tresch is a military sociologist and has been the head of military sociology at the Military Academy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich since August 2008. He was born in 1967 in Zug, Switzerland and studied sociology, political science, and criminology at the University of Zurich. Szvircsev Tresch earned a PhD in sociology at the University of Zurich in 2005. From August 2006 until July 2007, he was assigned to the NATO Defense College in Rome as a senior research fellow. He is interested in the question of the cooperation between armed forces in peace support operations regarding the topic of military cultures. Szvircsev Tresch is also currently a militia officer in the Swiss Army psychological/ pedagogical service in the rank of captain.