TRAINING FOR PEACE OPERATIONSThe U.S. Army Adapts to the Post–Cold War World

Colonel J. Michael Hardestyand Jason D. Ellis

UNITED STATESINSTITUTE OF PEACE

CONTENTS

Foreword v

Key Points vii

1 Introduction 1

2 Defining the Challenge 5

3 The Response 16

4 Conclusion 27

Notes 30

About the Authors 35

About the Institute 37

When the United States Institute of Peaceannounced a joint fellowship programwith the U.S. Army War College, someobservers unfamiliar with the Institute’s work notedan apparent irony: Why should an organization de-voted to the peaceful resolution of international con-flict work with an institution whose main job isfighting wars? This publication, the first product of theInstitute-Army collaboration, demonstrates that thereis no irony at all in the relationship.

Colonel John Michael Hardesty arrived at the Insti-tute in August 1995 to serve as the first Army War Col-lege fellow assigned to the Institute’s JenningsRandolph Program for International Peace. He cameto the Institute having served with distinction in sev-eral peace operations conducted by the Army’s TenthMountain Division.

Soon after Col. Hardesty began his fellowship year,it became quite evident that his experiences in peaceoperations had great relevance to the projects of otherInstitute fellows, particularly those examining the im-plementation phase of peace settlements. While muchresearch has been done on the causes and sources ofconflict, less attention has been devoted to the oftencrucial postconflict issues that can determine whethera treaty or peace agreement can produce genuinepeace or become the framework for renewed conflict.Our fellows soon came to realize that Col. Hardesty

could help supply the keys to understanding this partof a conflict’s life cycle—the “nuts and bolts” of ensur-ing that the parties to a conflict do not lapse back intomutually destructive behavior.

As explained by Col. Hardesty and Jason Ellis, adoctoral candidate at American University who collab-orated on this project, the soldier’s task as peace-keeper is, in many ways, much tougher than carryingout a combat operation. The objective of the soldier onthe battlefield is the swift defeat of the enemy. A peace-keeper confronts many time-consuming and delicatetasks, all of which require careful, nuanced judgment—from separating hostile forces to assisting in the recon-struction a war-ravaged society.

Col. Hardesty’s military specialty is the manage-ment of human resources, an amalgam of responsibili-ties that are crucial to making an army unit runefficiently. The most important part of his job, though,is training—making sure the soldiers in his unit havebeen adequately prepared and equipped to carry outtheir missions.

As is the case with combat operations, the militaryrelies heavily on training to carry out entirely newpeacekeeping missions in the post–Cold War era—mis-sions that are helping to redefine the role of this coun-try’s armed services as we approach the twenty-firstcentury. As this study shows, the U.S. Army has maderemarkable strides in a relatively short time in updat-ing its training for the peace operations that have be-come a major responsibility of our military in recentyears.

Training professionals for a new set of conflict man-agement challenges is also an integral part of the Insti-tute’s mission. Our Education and Training Programhas conducted numerous International Conflict Reso-lution Skills Training (ICREST) sessions, most re-cently in Kenya for the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment staff stationed in the Horn of Africa, andin Greece for diplomatic practitioners from southeast-ern Europe. Other ICREST training sessions havebeen conducted for nongovernmental organizationleaders and military personnel. Indeed, it was a seriesof joint programs with the Army War College that ledto the creation of the Institute’s Army fellowship—anongoing collaboration that will continue to benefitboth organizations.

RICHARD H. SOLOMONPRESIDENT

UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE

v

FOREWORD

vii

- Following the collapse of the Soviet Union,U.S. military strategy had to go through somerather dramatic changes. Shifting from adecades-long training strategy of developingand refining a joint, combined-arms approachto war-fighting designed to defeat Cold Waropponents, the nation’s armed forces mustnow also train their personnel for “operationsother than war,” including peacekeeping,peace enforcement, and humanitarian-reliefoperations.

- This paper examines the relevance of the U.S.Army’s training strategy for these new types ofoperations through an analysis of the institu-tional changes resulting from lessons itlearned in successive peace operations, start-ing in 1989 with Operation Just Cause inPanama. It also surveys recent policy debatesover the use of force, the role of contemporarypeace operations in U.S. foreign and nationalsecurity policy, and the doctrinal underpin-nings of the army’s training for operationsother than war.

- Peace operations have different operating prin-ciples than traditional combat missions. Theylack clear strategic direction, have an ex-panded scope, rely on limited intelligence, are

characterized by political and cultural diver-sity, involve the coordination of multiple ac-tors, are media-intensive, typically take placein “failed states” with a limited rule of law, em-ploy constrictive rules of engagement, arelikely to occur in austere environments, aredominated by small and independent unit op-erations, demand a visible presence, are set inprimarily built-up or urban areas, require closecoordination with Psychological Operationsand Civil Affairs units, and typically require ex-tensive negotiation skills.

- Commanders who have participated in recentpeace missions unequivocally argue that addi-tional skills are required for today’s types ofmilitary missions. To succeed, the army musttrain commanders and staffs to cope with thedifferences between these missions and tradi-tional combat operations.

- The army’s professional military educationsystem has expanded its curriculum and im-proved its techniques to teach the operationalprinciples and tactics associated with the six-teen types of missions in the category of “oper-ations other than war.” Each branch serviceschool has incorporated staff, situational, andfield training exercises to reinforce the doctri-nal principles and tactics associated with itstraining manuals. The courses of instruction atthe Command and General Staff College andthe Army War College have undergone similarexpansion.

- After evaluating how the army has adjusted itstraining strategy to accommodate the new real-ities of conflict in the post–Cold War era, it isevident that the U.S. Army has been able tomaintain its war-fighting edge while simultane-ously expanding its “playbook” to accommo-date the myriad tasks associated withcontemporary peace operations.

- In addition, the army has intensified trainingin urban environments and routinely incorpo-rates new rules of engagement into its exer-cises. Its Combat Training Centers haveexpanded their scenarios to incorporate peaceoperations, testing a unit’s ability to apply

KEY POINTS

viii

appropriate small-unit tactics, whose successoften hinge on the unit’s effectively integratingPsychological Operations and Civil Affairs per-sonnel into its missions.

- Predeployment training covers detailedcultural orientations and incorporates simula-tions involving interactions with governmen-tal and nongovernmental organizations andbelligerent parties in order to enhance negoti-ating skills. Moreover, the army has developedspecific strategies to deal more effectively withthe media and trains its leaders accordingly.

- Contemporary military thought has been re-vised to consider required tasks following theconflict or crisis stage of an intervention. In ad-dition, considerable attention has been de-voted to reconstituting constabularies and torule-of-law issues that are necessary for thelong-term security of local populations. Effortsto revise doctrine, professional military educa-tion, and unit training have made the U.S.Army the world’s premier peacekeeper.

- The number of peace operations has effec-tively doubled since the end of the Cold Warera, and the potential exists for many similartypes of operations in the near future. Indeed,a conflict-prone international environment un-derscores the possibility of even more frequentdeployments. Because of this, the army mustcontinue to refine its training strategy to ac-commodate such future challenges.

- Three areas require renewed emphasis: updat-ing the curriculum of most NoncommissionedOfficer Academy courses, improving the nego-tiating skills of leaders throughout the army’s

ranks, and conducting more combined-armstraining in urban environments.

- The army has generally kept pace with the rig-orous and increasing demands posed by re-cent peace operations. However, the increasedfrequency of deployments, coupled with theburden of expanded peace operations train-ing, has increased the operational tempo ofunits to unparalleled levels. This situationbegs a difficult and problematic question:With increased mission requirements and acontinued decline in real defense expendi-tures, is the army capable of fielding forces forthe two “nearly simultaneous” combat mis-sions envisioned in contemporary strategicplanning and conducting peace operations atthe same time?

- The army obviously benefits from the nationaldebate over maintaining both war-fighting andpeacekeeping missions. The ongoing review ofthe necessity and requirements for such mis-sions improves military planning and providesbetter overall guidance for long-term trainingneeds. The U.S. Army has already made con-siderable progress in transforming its trainingstrategies in light of the relatively young de-bate over peace operations and how they servethe national interest.

- Undoubtedly, there will be more cases of mas-sive humanitarian tragedy and civil break-down in states and regions that involve thenational interest of the United States. The chal-lenge for the U.S. Army will be to build on itsnew base of knowledge and tactics to serve thenational interest in offering assistance and sta-bility to these endangered populations.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and theshort-lived euphoric expectations of amore peaceful and prosperous “new worldorder” have necessitated a reexamination of U.S.national military strategy. Today, we face the sober-ing realities of worldwide armed conflict and hu-manitarian crises resulting from opposing ethnic,religious, racial, and political ideologies, as well asfrom natural disasters and failed states.

The U.S. military had spent the previous twodecades developing and refining a joint, com-bined-arms approach to war-fighting designed todefeat Cold War opponents. Preparations for suchcombat inspired an integrated military strategythat placed a premium on joint operations. Indeed,the overwhelming victory achieved during Opera-tion Desert Storm in 1991 was the culmination ofthe previous two decades of military effort; thestructure, doctrine, equipment, and training forU.S. armed forces withstood the tests of war.

Now, with a significantly changed world situa-tion, is it reasonable to expect the same degree ofmilitary excellence from the U.S. Army as it partici-pates in missions associated with military opera-tions other than war? This study examines thequestion in detail by tracing the evolution of U.S.national strategic policy and how military strategyhas responded in recent operations, drawing

heavily on the experiences of the Tenth Mountain(Light Infantry) and First Armored Divisions.1 Italso examines the factors that differentiate today’soperations from war-fighting and the relevance ofthe U.S. Army’s doctrine and training strategies fortoday’s operations through an analysis of the insti-tutional changes resulting from lessons the armylearned from Operation Just Cause in Panama(1989) up to the present.

DEFINITIONS

Although there has been much debate in militarycircles on how to differentiate and categorize mili-tary operations other than war, common defini-tions have emerged and have been incorporatedinto the defense establishment’s lexicon. Recentliterature on peace operations and traditional war-fighting missions has created some confusion,since terms were being used interchangeably.Since many contemporary military operations fallwithin the mission category of peace operationsand are the primary subjects of this manuscript, itis necessary to establish a common frame of refer-ence by reviewing applicable definitions from theJoint War-Fighting Center’s Joint Task Force Com-mander’s Handbook for Peace Operations andFM (Field Manual) 100-23, Peace Operations:2

- Peace Operations: Encompasses peacekeep-ing operations, peace enforcement operations,and other military operations conducted insupport of diplomatic efforts to establish andmaintain peace. For this study’s purposes, theterms military operations other than war,peace operations, contingency operations, andstability operations are used interchangeably.

- Peacekeeping: Military operations under-taken with the consent of all major parties to adispute, designed to monitor and facilitate im-plementation of an agreement (cease-fire,truce, etc.) and support diplomatic efforts toreach long-term political settlement.

- Peace Enforcement: Application of militaryforce, or the threat of its use, normally pur-suant to international authorization, to compel

1INTRODUCTION1

compliance with resolutions or sanctions de-signed to maintain or restore peace and order.

- Peacemaking: The process of diplomacy, me-diation, negotiation, or other forms of peacefulsettlement that arranges an end to a disputeand resolves issues that led to the conflict.

- Peacebuilding: Postconflict actions, predomi-nantly diplomatic and economic, thatstrengthen and rebuild governmental infra-structure and institutions in order to avoid arelapse into conflict.

THE EVOLUTION OF POST–COLD WARSTRATEGIC POLICY AND SUPPORTINGMILITARY DOCTRINE

Use of Force

The policy debate on criteria for the use of militaryforce came into sharp focus just over one year after239 U.S. marines were killed in a suicide-bomb at-tack during an ill-defined 1983 peacekeeping mis-sion in Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, Secretary ofDefense Caspar Weinberger established clearly de-fined criteria for the use of force abroad. Recallingpublic antipathy toward the military resultingfrom the Vietnam debacle and the Lebanon disas-ter, Weinberger emphasized the need to ensurewidespread popular support for U.S. forces for theduration of a conflict:

- Forces should not be committed unless the ac-tion is vital to the U.S. national interest or thatof allies;

- forces should be committed wholeheartedly,with the clear intention of winning, or theyshould not be committed at all;

- if forces are committed, it should be withclearly defined political and military objectivesand with a precise sense of how the forces de-ployed can achieve the objectives;

- the relationship between objectives and forcesmust be continually reassessed and adjusted,if necessary;

- before committing forces abroad there mustbe some reasonable assurance of public andcongressional support; and

- the commitment of U.S. forces to combatshould only be as a last resort.3

Although Weinberger was discussing the com-mitment of U.S. troops to combat, the criteria arealso applicable to operations short of war. Takingthe lead to expand upon and revise Weinberger’scriteria, Secretary of State George Shultz subse-quently argued that the need sometimes exists toemploy armed force for objectives short of “vital”national interests, particularly those that rest onmoral grounds. For Shultz, the use of force was jus-tified when

- It helps liberate a people or support the yearn-ing for freedom;

- its aim is to bring peace or to support peacefulprocesses;

- it prevents others from abusing their powerthrough aggression or oppression; and

- it is applied with the greatest effort to avoid un-necessary casualties.4

In the post–Cold War era, President GeorgeBush extended this debate, arguing in an addressto cadets at West Point that “real leadership re-quires a willingness to use military force,” but thatat times such force “may not be the best way ofsafeguarding something vital, while using forcemight be the best way to protect an interest thatqualifies as important but less than vital.”5 Echo-ing this statement, senior Clinton administrationofficials have repeatedly asserted that the “selectivebut substantial” use of force might be necessary tosupport coercive diplomacy even when nonvitalnational interests are at stake.6

Peace Operations and U.S. Interests

While such debates revolve around the use of forcein general, the first three years of the Clinton ad-ministration were also marked by ongoing debatesover the nature, relevance, and desirability ofpeace operations themselves. In its first national

2

security strategy document, released in July 1994,the administration argued that “multilateral peaceoperations are an important component of ourstrategy. From traditional peacekeeping to peaceenforcement, multilateral peace operations aresometimes the best way to prevent, contain, or re-solve conflicts that could otherwise be far morecostly and deadly.”7

In the second and third versions of this docu-ment, released in February 1995 and February1996, respectively, the administration differenti-ated among vital, important, and humanitarian in-terests.8 For the first, “we will do whatever it takesto defend these interests.” For the second categoryof interests, “military forces should be used only ifthey advance U.S. interests, they are likely to beable to accomplish their objectives, the costs andrisks of their employment are commensurate withthe interests at stake, and other means have beentried and have failed to achieve our objectives.” Forhumanitarian interests, the military “is generallynot the best tool, . . . but under certain conditionsthe use of our armed forces may be appropriate.”The administration believed that such conditionswould be fulfilled, for example, when a humanitar-ian catastrophe is clearly beyond the capacity ofcivilian relief agencies to respond, when the needfor relief is urgent and only the military has theability to “jump-start” the longer-term response tothe disaster, when the response requires resourcesunique to the military, and when the risk to U.S.troops is minimal.

While the Clinton administration was draftingits first national security strategy document, bittercongressional and public criticism following theproblematic U.S. experience in Somalia reducedthe administration’s interest in multilateral peaceoperations. By February 1994, while still support-ing U.S. involvement in such multilateral opera-tions, National Security Adviser Anthony Lakedeclared that “peacekeeping is not at the center ofour foreign or defense policy.”9 This positionbecame official U.S. policy in the final text ofPresidential Decision Directive (PDD) 25, whichstated that peace operations could “prevent, con-tain, or resolve conflicts” and act as a reinforcingmechanism for U.S. policy in general. PDD-25 es-tablished factors to be considered before decidingwhether to support a peace operation sponsoredby the United Nations or regional organizations.These factors currently serve as the basis for U.S.

involvement in peace operations requiring militaryintervention:10

- Whether UN involvement advances U.S. inter-ests, and there is an international communityof interest for dealing with the problem on amultilateral basis;

- whether there is a threat to or breach of inter-national peace and security based upon inter-national aggression, urgent humanitariandisaster coupled with violence, sudden inter-ruption of established democracy, or gross vio-lation of human rights coupled with violenceor the threat of violence;

- whether there are clear objectives and an un-derstanding of where the mission fits on thespectrum between traditional peacekeepingand peace enforcement;

- for traditional peacekeeping operations,whether a cease-fire is in place and the consentof the parties is obtained before the force is de-ployed;

- for peace enforcement operations, whether thethreat to international peace and security isconsidered significant;

- whether the means to accomplish the missionare available, including the forces, financing,and a mandate appropriate to the mission;

- whether the political, economic, and humani-tarian consequences of inaction by the interna-tional community have been weighed and areconsidered unacceptable; and

- whether the operation’s anticipated durationis tied to clear objectives and realistic criteriafor ending the operation.

In addition to asking the difficult question ofwhether a proposed operation is in the U.S. na-tional interest, PDD-25 asks whether the operationcould succeed without U.S. support and calls forthe consideration of other viable alternatives—in-cluding the option of doing nothing. Of particularimportance is the emphasis on the necessity forsufficient resources and planning in addition to

3

4

popular and congressional support to conclude aparticular mission successfully. To some informedobservers, there is a clear recognition that neitherthe United Nations, nor America’s European al-lies, nor any other country or organization cansubstitute for U.S. leadership and involvement inpeace operations, owing to resource demands, po-litical will, or logistical and infrastructure capabili-ties.11

Evolving Military Doctrine

Just as U.S. strategic policy has evolved, U.S. mili-tary doctrine has undergone a similar transforma-tion in the post–Cold War international securityenvironment. Former Army Chief of Staff GeneralGordon Sullivan best articulated the role ofdoctrine in FM 100-1, The Army, by stating, “ourdoctrine establishes a common language for pro-fessional soldiers, communicates institutionalknowledge, and establishes a shared understand-ing of organizational purpose. . . . [It] establisheswar-fighting principles for the employment of theArmy which are relevant to the contemporary en-vironment . . . [and] represents the continuingprogression of the Army’s intellectual adaptationto the changed strategic environment.”12

Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the army’scapstone doctrine, FM 100-5, Operations, wasbased on offense-oriented air-land battle princi-ples that were focused primarily on a potentialconflict with Warsaw Pact forces. In the context ofa dramatically altered landscape of world politicsand entirely new sources of threats to U.S. na-tional security, more attention to activities short ofwar was clearly needed. Accordingly, FM 100-5was updated in 1993. The new version included aseparate chapter that paid particular attention tothe unique operational principles in the sixteenmission categories of operations other than war(see note 2) and provided historical examples togive its readers a better understanding of thesetypes of operations. By incorporating thesechanges and retaining the tactics and operationalconcepts covering the full range of military opera-tions, the army has been able to link all militaryoperations to redefined national objectives. Thesignificance of this manual cannot be overempha-sized, since it serves as the basis for all supporting

doctrinal manuals, their tactics, and their trainingstrategies.

Quick to expand its revised capstone doctrine,the army published FM 100-23, Peace Opera-tions, in December 1994. This manual summa-rized many of the lessons learned from recentdeployments like Operations Provide Comfort inIraq and Restore Hope in Somalia. Directly sup-porting FM 100-5, this doctrinal manual appropri-ately depicts the strategic context, organizationalprinciples, and operational imperatives that areunique to peace operations. Considerable atten-tion is paid to the planning considerations and co-ordination challenges posed by other U.S. andforeign government agencies, multinational mili-tary forces, and nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) typically converging in the area of opera-tion. Similar doctrinal publications accompaniedthe release of the Peace Operations manual. Forinstance, FM 100-19, Domestic Support Opera-tions, was distributed in July 1993, and FM 100-23-1, Multiservice Procedures for HumanitarianAssistance Operations, appeared in 1995. Branchand Integrating Centers, such as the U.S. Army In-fantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and theCombined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth,Kansas, have made major strides in updating therelevant tactical literature as well. These evolvingdoctrinal principles and concepts, reinforced byhard experience, have established the necessaryframework to enhance the military’s ability to exe-cute contemporary operations effectively.

The very nature of recent peace operationshas tested the mettle of the participatingmilitary commanders and their units. Asnoted earlier, the army had been geared to fight onthe high-intensity battlefields of Europe, Korea,and the Middle East. Conventional military opera-tions were within the “comfort zone” of the militaryhierarchy, which was more familiar with fightingand winning wars than waging a soft peace. Units’mission-essential tasks (those tasks that must beperformed with the utmost effectiveness to suc-ceed on the battlefield) did not include conductingpeacekeeping, peace enforcement, or humanitar-ian-relief operations. As a result, commanders par-ticipating in initial post–Cold War operations,such as Provide Comfort in war-torn Iraq and Re-store Hope in Somalia, were faced with missionsfor which they had not received appropriate train-ing; they relied on their own best judgment toguide, measure, and evaluate their actions. Al-though the deployed units consistently achievedtactical success, after-action reports and the profes-sional literature highlighted areas where improve-ment was needed. The army has responded tothese challenges by updating most of its doctrinalliterature and adjusting the curriculum at most ofits professional military education institutions.

Many in the military establishment maintainthat specific units should be secured and trained

solely for peace operation engagements. Others ar-gue that there is no need to establish a separatetraining strategy for military operations other thanwar; they assert that war-fighting tactics and proce-dures are easily modified for these types of mis-sions. Arguably, the reality of a “downsized” armywith more frequent peace operation deploymentsundermines the first argument, and a systematicevaluation of the factors that differentiate thesetypes of operations from war discounts the secondargument. The U.S. Army has taken an approachthat considers both arguments by expanding thecapabilities of its fighting forces to accommodatethe special challenges of contemporary peace oper-ations.

Factors that differentiate war-fighting frompeace operations include operating principles;lack of strategic direction; expanded scope; limitedintelligence; political and cultural diversity; multi-ple players; media intensity; the lack of (or limited)rule of law; constrictive rules of engagement; likelyoccurrence in austere environments; dominationby small and independent unit operations; the de-mand for a visible presence; operations set primar-ily in built-up or urban areas; the need to integratePsychological Operations and Civil Affairs units;and the need to conduct extensive negotiations.Recent interventions highlight unit ineffectivenessresulting from the inappropriate application of op-erational principles or the failure to understandadequately the environmental characteristics ofpast operations and the reasons for the success ofinnovative tactics developed during these opera-tions.13 The following discussion elaborates on thedifferences between conventional military mis-sions and contemporary peace operations to illus-trate why the army has had to adjust its trainingstrategy to deal more effectively with the realitiesof a post–Cold War world.

OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLES

The first and probably most important considera-tion is that there are significant differences be-tween war-fighting principles and those thatgovern peace operations. The elements of objec-tive and security are common to both categories ofoperations. Offense, mass, unity of command,economy of force, maneuver, surprise, and simplic-ity remain the dominant principles for combat op-erations. However, as military operations become

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2DEFINING THECHALLENGE

less “warlike,” various principles emerge from thedoctrinal literature that come to dominate militaryactions: unity of effort, restraint, perseverance, andlegitimacy. The application of these principles candetermine mission success or failure.

Recent executive-branch planning guidance andthe actions of multilateral force participants in re-cent operations indicate that unity of commandmay be impractical for contemporary peace opera-tions. Indeed, PDD-25 clearly underscores “the factthat the President will never relinquish commandof U.S. forces” to United Nations or other multina-tional commands.14 Italian forces’ failure to com-ply with command direction and mission taskingin Somalia15 and a similar breach by a Swedish bat-talion in Bosnia that refused to relieve Canadianforces in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica serve asillustrative examples.16 Dual chains of commandand parallel command structures are not new; themost notable recent example is the one establishedin Bosnia between the Implementation Force(IFOR) and the civilian High Representative re-sponsible for coordinating and implementing thenonmilitary aspects of the Dayton Accords. Thesefactors and the requirement to support and coordi-nate efforts with NGOs, which operate under inde-pendent charters, make unity of effort the guidingprinciple for most peace operations.

Restraint appears among the principles guidingpeace operations because, unlike conventional op-erations, which reward the use of overwhelmingforce, the lack of restraint in peace operations canresult in unforeseen, and often adverse, conse-quences. Adam Roberts has described four possi-ble dilemmas that must be considered beforeapplying force in peacekeeping and humanitarian-relief operations. First, although the use of forcemay establish credibility, it also makes peacekeep-ers more vulnerable to attack by belligerent par-ties. Second, collateral civilian damage and deathscreate mass resentment, and accusations of brutal-ity can weaken the political will of countries pro-viding the military forces. Third, the use of forcemay compromise the perception of impartiality.And finally, countries are reluctant to leave to oth-ers the decision to use force when the lives of theirpeacekeepers and their reputations are at stake.17

Perseverance is included among the principlesbecause of the long-term nature of peace opera-tions, especially the peacebuilding phase of an in-tervention. Some analysts estimate that it may take

more than twenty years to provide the socialchange required for the sustained avoidance ofconflict.18 The U.S. military’s continued engage-ment in Panama, the Sinai, Iraq, and Macedonia at-test to this. Indeed, the Dayton Accordsacknowledge this principle by maintaining theoversight responsibility of various international or-ganizations over the Commissions on HumanRights, Refugees, and National Monuments, estab-lished in the accords, for five years. The distinctivenature of this protracted conflict mandates a long-term presence of the NGO community as well.

Finally there is a need to understand legitimacyas a condition that “sustains the willing acceptanceby the people of the right of the government togovern or a group or agency to make and carry outdecisions.”19 Typically, the U.S. military’s authorityto carry out decisions has been legitimized by UNmandates. Conversely, the military’s inadvertentdealings with criminal elements in the early phaseof the Somalia operation contributed to the legit-imization of some inappropriate—or illegitimate—actors. The same will hold true in Bosnia, wherecommanders likely will be exposed to inadvertentinteraction with indicted war criminals.20 Accord-ingly, army doctrine warns personnel to use ex-treme caution when dealing with individuals andorganizations in countries or localities where nogovernment exists.

LACK OF STRATEGIC DIRECTION

Unlike war, where the National Command Author-ity (the president and his most senior national se-curity advisers, including the secretary of defense)gives clear strategic guidance and mission parame-ters are evident, peace operations often suffer froma lack of clarity and repeated changes of guidance.The mission requirements and desired politicalobjectives of contemporary military operationshave been tough to define, often placing comman-ders in difficult situations. To stay within desiredmission boundaries prior to deploying his troopsto provide relief and assistance in the wake ofHurricane Andrew and the Somali crisis, thecommanding general of the army’s Tenth Moun-tain Division, Major General S. L. Arnold, prepareda mission statement including a description of the commander’s intent, success criteria, and de-sired end state. To save time, this statement wasforwarded to the leadership at every command

6

level simultaneously. Reacting to insufficient mis-sion guidance that he believed would force him toassume missions that were outside the desiredframework of the senior leadership, GeneralArnold essentially established the parameters ofthe operations himself.21

In Rwanda, Lieutenant General DanielSchroeder faced a similar challenge. He receivedincremental guidance from the National Com-mand Authority after the mission statement had al-ready been issued by the commander-in-chief ofU.S. forces in Europe and after the mission analy-sis had been performed by the U.S. EuropeanCommand staff. In a draft after-action report, tenseparate objectives were cited ex post facto.22

The complex nature of peace operations makesit difficult to develop strategic objectives that canbe easily translated into supporting operationaland tactical mission statements. The simplicityand clarity of the directive from the CombinedChiefs to General Dwight Eisenhower before theNormandy invasion in World War II illustrate thepoint that strategic direction in support of wartimemissions is easier to understand and execute. Themission guidance, in its entirety, was as follows:

Task. You will enter the continent of Europe andin conjunction with the other United Nations, un-dertake operations aimed at the heart of Germanyand the destruction of her armed forces. The datefor entering the Continent is the month of May,1944. After adequate channel ports have been se-cured, exploitation will be directed towards secur-ing an area that will facilitate both ground and airoperations.23

Commanders cannot expect guidance for oper-ations other than war that is similarly succinct, fo-cused, or unrestrained.

EXPANDED SCOPE

In recent operations, the role of the military hasbeen significantly expanded, at times catching thecommanders off guard. Despite their increasing at-tention to circumscribed roles for the peacekeep-ers, the United States and United Nations haverepeatedly failed to develop a strategy that effec-tively incorporates the military’s role in expandedphases of missions, such as postconflict/crisis re-construction or nation-building efforts. Thislacuna was well documented in the aftermath ofOperation Just Cause. As Richard Shultz explains,

“Looking back on the experience in Panama, it isevident that the U.S. government was program-matically and structurally ill equipped for the situ-ation that followed the fighting.”24 He concludesthat the planning challenge was hampered by sixobstacles:

- Failure to provide clear postconflict objec-tives—to restore democracy and critical gov-ernment functions;

- exclusion of other civilian agencies from theplanning process;

- bifurcation of the planning process into war-fighting and postconflict restoration;

- lack of experienced personnel in restorationplanning;

- failure to understand the impact of twentyyears of authoritarian rule; and

- failure to effectively determine who was incharge.

According to Shultz, “There was no integratedstrategy for supporting nation building and de-mocratization in Panama following Just Cause.”25

This situation exemplifies a tactical success thatcould have resulted in a strategic failure because ofthe ineffectual peacebuilding phase of the cam-paign plan and the military’s inability to recognizethat other U.S. government organizations, such asthe Departments of Justice or State, may not mobi-lize as quickly as the military. The lessons fromthis operation also apply to later operations in So-malia and Rwanda, and perhaps Bosnia as well.

The expanded scope of Operation RestoreHope, from a U.S.-led humanitarian-relief interven-tion to a conflict-resolution and nation-buildingmission, further illustrates the point. Contempo-rary operations tend to encompass peace enforce-ment, peacekeeping, and peacebuildingcomponents, and all may occur simultaneously.Only the broad scope—not the tactical failures—ofRestore Hope in Somalia was replicated duringOperation Uphold Democracy in Haiti. During theHaiti operation, the Tenth Mountain Division’s fo-cus changed from peace enforcement to nationbuilding as the situation stabilized. Perhaps it wasthe international community’s recognition of this

7

expanded scope, and the accompanying meansthat were provided, that account for this interven-tion’s success to date. Clearly, similar mission ex-pansion is likely to occur in Bosnia as the situationallows the belligerent parties to be separated.

Recent operations have increasingly straineddivision and ad hoc headquarters because a rela-tively small commitment of forces is believedsufficient to accomplish the mission. The TenthMountain Division was the first to serve as anArmy Forces headquarters in recent times, signifi-cantly expanding the operational scope for whichthis division’s headquarters was designed, per-forming this function during the Hurricane An-drew operation and again during OperationRestore Hope. The division’s mission scope wasexpanded further when it served as a Joint TaskForce headquarters during the Uphold Democracyoperation in Haiti.

Although the division demonstrated that itcould perform these expanded roles with morepersonnel (increasing the size of the headquartersfrom its authorized strength of slightly more thanthree hundred to approximately five hundred), thestaff officers’ limited experience with the Joint Op-erations Planning and Execution System (JOPES)compounded the deployment problems the U.S.Transportation Command had already encoun-tered with the software-driven system during otheroperations. While JOPES is supposed to facilitatelogistical coordination in complex military opera-tions, it functions only as well as the weakest linkin the chain—in this case, the training of the staffmembers who will use it. Arguably, well over halfthe problems identified in the Rwanda operation’safter-action report were directly attributable to thead hoc nature of the staff and its lack of familiaritywith JOPES.26

Ultimately, the expanded scope of military oper-ations will cause a unit’s mission-essential tasks tochange as it makes the transition from one phaseof the operation to another and as new missionsare assigned to traditional tactical and operationalheadquarters. For example, a change in a mission’sfocus may change an infantry battalion’s tasksfrom conducting air assault, area security, andsearch-and-cordon operations to conducting hu-manitarian-relief, election monitoring, and refugeerelocation operations. Divisions must also be pre-pared to serve vastly expanded coordinating roles

as Army Forces or Joint Task Force headquarterswith little advance notice.

LIMITED INTELLIGENCE

Recent military interventions have been devoid ofuseful intelligence, typically occurring in locationswhere human intelligence capabilities had notbeen well established. This situation was most evi-dent during Operations Provide Comfort (north-ern Iraq), Restore Hope (Somalia), and SupportHope (Rwanda). To a lesser extent, it holds true forthe interventions in Haiti, Panama, and Bosnia.This shortcoming is well articulated by RichardBest, who argues that “Creating a capability to pro-vide intelligence support to future peacekeepingmissions is a significant challenge. Potential oppo-nents of peacekeeping missions may be relativelysmall, clandestine groups that are difficult to moni-tor with systems designed for the surveillance ofhighly sophisticated military establishments.”27

This void has led early-deploying units to take inef-fective, and sometimes misguided, actions, such asdealing with inappropriate actors.

The Tenth Mountain Division recognized thisshortcoming during its mission in Somalia and de-veloped a detailed patrol checklist to determinethe nature and extent of anticipated clan interfer-ence with military operations, as well as the condi-tion and attitudes of the general populace. Thechecklist proved so useful that similar checklistswere developed for airfield security, roadblocks,and convoy operations. The efficient use of thesechecklists greatly enhanced overall intelligence as-sessments and minimized the need for remedialunit training.28

With the realization that human intelligencewas the most productive source of information inSomalia, techniques to expand its use were devel-oped. For instance, the threat from land mineshampered operations along major supply routesand at certain relief sites. Since satellite imagerywas of limited use in detecting mined areas, Somalitranslators accompanied mine-sweeping teamsthat contacted local village leaders to help identifyknown mined sites. Because of the extent of min-ing in Bosnia (some estimates put the figure at up-wards of three million mines) coalition forces willhave to cultivate human intelligence sources,cooperate with local leaders, and exchange key

8

information with the various intelligence agencies.Indeed, the United States has already authorizedcertain foreign military officers to be aboard highlyclassified U.S. signals intelligence flights overBosnia.29

POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

With the exception of the U.S. intervention inPanama and domestic disaster-relief operations,recent military deployments have occurred wherethe local population and foreign peacekeepershave little familiarity with each other’s cultural andpolitical orientations. Recognition of and respectfor these differences are now emphasized as atraining requirement before each deployment.Even though in the past, each U.S. predeploymenttraining program covered cultural and political ori-entations, the military’s insensitivity to culturaldifferences has been identified as a factor con-tributing to tensions between the Somalis and UNforces, significantly reducing the military’s effec-tiveness.30 As Mohammed Sahnoun, a former UNenvoy to Somalia, observes, “In Somali culture, theworst thing you can do is humiliate them, to dosomething to them you are not doing to anotherclan. . . . It’s the kind of psychology the UN doesn’tunderstand.”31 Although intended to be impartial,the mandate for the UN phase of the mission in So-malia, which included disarmament, ran counterto the long-term political objectives of Somalileaders like General Aideed, prompting his hostilemilitary actions.

The outgoing UN commander of the Bosnia op-eration’s northeastern sector, Brigadier GeneralHagrup Haukland of Norway, advised IFOR lead-ers that U.S. troops should balance peace enforce-ment aspects of the mission “with acts of goodwilland respect for Bosnian ways and feelings.” Ad-dressing IFOR commanders, Haukland cautionedthat while “providing security is the primary task . . . you also have to show the local population thatyou care for them. It’s very important to have goodrelations with the people. . . . They are proud peo-ple who want to be masters in their own house.”32

MULTIPLE PLAYERS

Although the U.S. government reserves the right to act unilaterally in defending its foreign policy

interests, as in Operation Just Cause, each U.S. mil-itary deployment from the beginning of thepost–Cold War period to the present has been aspart of a multilateral force. Operation ProvideComfort involved participants from more thantwenty nations, Restore Hope had thirty-five, AbleSentry fourteen, Support Hope seventeen, UpholdDemocracy twenty-seven, and Joint Endeavormore than thirty. The complexity of peace opera-tions increases even more with the presence of nu-merous nongovernmental organizations in anoperational sector. For example, 132 NGOs wereregistered with the United Nations during RestoreHope, 70 during Support Hope, and 164 are regis-tered and operating throughout Bosnia. Not onlyhave NGOs been increasing in numbers, but thescope of their missions has been expanding. In ad-dition to their traditional functions of relief and de-velopment, more NGOs are including earlywarning, human rights monitoring, and conflictresolution in their repertoire of activities.33 Whilethe army has expanded the role of the Civil-Mili-tary Operations Center to facilitate dialogue withthese relatively new actors, the coordination re-quirements will increase as many more new play-ers enter the field of contemporary peaceoperations.34

The sheer number and diversity of the playersplace increasing demands on commanders (espe-cially those exercising command jurisdiction overcoalition forces) and bring with them entirely newchallenges. For instance, the court-martial of a pri-vate in a Canadian Airborne regiment for the tor-ture and death of a Somali during OperationRestore Hope, and the subsequent investigationinto the causes of this tragic event, sent shockwaves through the ranks of the Canadian mili-tary.35 During the UN Transitional Authority’smission in Cambodia, soldiers in the Bulgarianbattalion were dubbed “the Vulgarians” because of widespread allegations of sexual misconduct.36

In Bosnia, investigations centered on allegations of black-marketeering, prostitution, and drug deal-ing among various members of the multinationalforces, resulting in the expulsion of nineteenUkrainian and four Kenyan soldiers.37 Russianpeacekeepers have allegedly diverted UN fuel sup-plies to Serb forces and have exchanged the ser-vices of east European prostitutes for diesel fuel.38

9

MEDIA INTENSITY

Contemporary military interventions are typicallycarried out in low-threat zones, enabling relativelyunimpeded access by the media. Somalia serves asa case in point. Most military personnel who wit-nessed the initial phases of Operation RestoreHope on television vividly recall the scenes of U.S.Navy Seals attempting to conduct a stealthpredawn landing on Somali beaches amid theglare of news crews’ camera lights. While foreignpolicy analysts continue to debate whether the“CNN effect” has been more than a contributingfactor in recent U.S. interventions, there is no dis-puting the fact that today’s almost instantaneousnews coverage of crises across the globe has cre-ated an immediacy that heavily influences govern-ment decision making in Washington and theconduct of operations in the field. One academicobserver sums up the phenomenon, stating, “To-day, when the body of a single American is draggedthrough the streets of Mogadishu, the Americangovernment reverses its foreign policy and beginsa withdrawal from the country.”39 Similarly, then-UN Under Secretary General for PeacekeepingKofi Annan lamented that the “impression hasbeen created that the easiest way to disrupt apeacekeeping operation is to kill Americans.”40

The immediate change in the rules of engagement(ROEs) that occurred after the media televised U.S.troops helplessly watching members of Haiti’sFAd’H (the Forces Armées d’Haiti, which com-prised members of the country’s military and na-tional police) beating exuberant pro-Aristideprotesters—resulting in the death of a Haitianwoman—further illustrates the point. The ROEs atthe time did not permit U.S. soldiers to intervene,but they were changed immediately after the inci-dent in response to public outcry and political fall-out, so that soldiers could use both nonlethal anddeadly force to prevent the loss of human life.41

LACKING THE (OR LIMITED) RULE OFLAW

All the interventions examined in this study oc-curred in either nascent or failed states withnonexistent or ineffective judicial systems. Sheeranarchy perhaps best characterized the situationsin Somalia and Rwanda. The legal systems inPanama, Haiti, and Bosnia have been severely

marginalized, a problem compounded bypoliticized, maladministered, or dismantled con-stabularies. The U.S. military has been called uponfrequently to facilitate and assist constabulary-force training in crisis-ridden countries. Such ef-forts have proved essential in reconstructingsocieties in Panama, Somalia, and Haiti, and maybe initiated to a limited extent in Bosnia.

In a draft report highlighting the military’s rolein recent interventions, William Rosenau exam-ines several cases of military support in recon-stituting constabulary forces, among them aU.S.-sponsored police training course that in-cluded combined U.S. military patrols with localconstabulary forces. Marines and army forceshelped train what were called “auxiliary forces” inSomalia, and army personnel were involved inestablishing a new constabulary after the Haitianmilitary was disbanded following the U.S. inter-vention.42 While the Justice Department’s Interna-tional Criminal Investigative Training AssistanceProgram (ICITAP) has responsibility for such pro-grams, Rosenau argues that ICITAP “has beenhampered . . . [by] the lack of a clear mission, inade-quate funding, an inability to deploy quickly andoperate with [the Department of Defense], andpoor access to effective personnel.”43 While Rose-nau makes some valid points, ICITAP’s efforts inHaiti have been extremely successful. To date, ithas conducted basic law enforcement training forover five thousand personnel who staff the recon-stituted constabulary, significantly enhancing theprospects for long-term democratic stability. Thelack of an effective rule of law in Bosnia may alsoplace new demands on the military as the Interna-tional Police Task Force is established. Althoughthere are legal restrictions on U.S. forces’ conduct-ing law-enforcement training, the military hasproved to be the only institution capable of effec-tively performing this mission in the early stages ofa peace operation.

CONSTRAINED BY RULES OFENGAGEMENT

The 3-325 Airborne Battalion Combat Team wasone of the first units in recent times to experiencethe challenges associated with ROEs that restrictedcombat activities in a combat zone. FollowingDesert Storm, the battalion was charged with es-tablishing a five-thousand-square-mile security

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zone in northern Iraq in order to provide humani-tarian assistance to and promote cooperationamong the country’s Kurdish groups by denyingaccess to Iraqi forces. In the course of expandingthe security zone, the battalion developed innova-tive procedures during chance encounters withIraqi forces. Once visual contact was made, in-fantry elements immediately began establishingwell-protected defensive positions. Bradley fight-ing vehicles were placed in overwatch mode (ableto provide a rapid response capability if hostilitieserupted), while other elements maneuveredaround the flanks of the Iraqi forces, which were insight but out of small-arms range. Continuous aircover circled the engagement. Once a strong de-fensive position was established, unit leaderswould initiate negotiations with the Iraqi unit com-manders, demanding their withdrawal from thesecurity zone.44 The battalion also used mortar-launched flares to illuminate the area to assist incheckpoint operations, to identify and observe bel-ligerent forces, and to demonstrate a military pres-ence and the ability to respond at will. This tacticnot only constituted a show of force but helpedmagnify the capabilities of the U.S. forces.45

During the second UN operation in Somalia(UNOSOM II), the Tenth Mountain Division’squick-reaction force most often operated on agraduated response principle, which was deter-mined by the existing ROEs and the necessity tominimize collateral damage. Throughout theoperation, the graduated response technique gavebelligerents the opportunity to surrender withoutresorting to violence beforehand. In a typical cor-don-and-search mission, the unit would infiltratean area, establish a cordon, and then announceover loudspeakers that the belligerents were sur-rounded and would be injured or killed if they re-sisted. If the belligerents failed to surrender, teargas would be used to encourage them to leavepeacefully. If they continued to resist, the unitwould use concussion grenades to enter the areaforcefully and apprehend the belligerents. Whilethe Somalia after-action report highlighted suc-cesses in applying these techniques, it also listedseveral considerations that must be evaluated be-fore deciding to use surprise or graduated re-sponse tactics, including proximity of innocentbystanders and belligerents, vulnerability toattack, and the potential for and consequences ofattracting crowds.

The fact remains that ROEs are complex, andthey have varied with each peace operation.Soldiers have the inherent right of self-defense(use of deadly force) when responding to a hostileact. The ability to respond to hostile intent is gen-erally more constrained, complex, and subject tointerpretation; as such, it has been limited in peaceenforcement missions. In Somalia, for instance,there was some apparent confusion over whetherthe use of deadly force had been authorized to pre-vent theft of weapons or equipment. For example,did ROEs justify the use of deadly force against aSomali who had just stolen a soldier’s night-visiongoggles? Although the rules called for a gradual re-sponse to hostile intent, the decision of whether ornot to allow deadly force in this case was never offi-cially published.46

A review of after-action reports and recent arti-cles on military operations reinforces the need forclearly defined rules of engagement. Certainly, theU.S. military has not been immune to the inappro-priate application of force. Gunnery Sergeant HarryConde, a U.S. Marine, was convicted of aggravatedassault after firing his weapon at a Somali who hadreached into his vehicle to steal his sunglasses dur-ing UNOSOM II. Other unfortunate incidents haveled commanders to reiterate the acute need fortraining, not only for U.S. forces, but for other coali-tion forces as well. In Somalia, the senior U.S. mili-tary leadership encouraged other coalition forces toadopt the existing ROEs, which were modified toaccommodate the country’s political and socialconditions, and many units did so. Other seniormilitary officials, such as General Schroeder, com-mander of the U.S. humanitarian-relief interventionin Rwanda, argue that the ROEs should be stan-dardized to facilitate common training programsacross various countries’ military services.47

Lieutenant Colonel William Martinez, whoserved with the Tenth Mountain Division in Soma-lia, writes about the need for unit preparedness:“Part of the training process for any peacekeepingoperation must . . . be ROEs. Creating different sce-narios or situations to help soldiers practice theROEs will help them clarify in their minds the situ-ations in which they can or cannot fire. The time tolearn this is before coming under fire or gettinginto a situation that could cost a life.”48

OPERATING IN AUSTEREENVIRONMENTS

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With the exception of the U.S. intervention inPanama, each operation examined in this studyhas taken place in a location devastated by a nat-ural disaster or ravaged by conflict. In the after-math of Florida’s Hurricane Andrew in 1993, forinstance, the region looked as if a nuclear weaponhad been detonated there. The city that sufferedthe hurricane’s greatest intensity was left with asubstantially degraded infrastructure, and a major-ity of homes, buildings, and government facilitiesalong the twenty-mile path of the hurricane wereseverely damaged or destroyed outright. In Soma-lia, civil war left the country in a similar state. Mostbuildings had been damaged either during combator by looting for building materials. There was nocommerce, agriculture, functioning governmentinstitutions, or operating utilities. The country hadseemingly collapsed into a failed state, immersedin total anarchy. Much of the local population wasdestitute and almost totally dependent on humani-tarian relief.49 Since control over the relief suppliesbecame a sudden source of power and wealth, hu-manitarian-relief efforts often inadvertently con-tributed to the renewal of violence.50

For instance, in and around Rwanda and neigh-boring Zaire, U.S. forces were surrounded by thou-sands of Tutsi refugees dying from malnutrition,exhaustion, and a cholera epidemic. Their system-atic slaughter at the hands of the Hutus reachedgenocidal proportions, and the mass exodus of oneof Rwanda’s major tribes became an instantrefugee crisis for Zaire.

DOMINATED BY SMALL ANDINDEPENDENT UNIT OPERATIONS

Small, independent operations are the rule ratherthan the exception in most peace operations, andthey place enormous demands on young, rela-tively inexperienced unit leaders. Army Times cor-respondent Jim Tice described the experience ofsquad leaders charged with observation duties in Macedonia. One leader summed up his newresponsibilities: “When we trained for this mis-sion, I heard all the hoopla that squad leaderswould run this, and team leaders would run that,and I didn’t believe it. . . . But this is reality. If any-thing goes wrong, it’s my fault, or it’s the teamleader’s fault. They have placed great trust andresponsibility in us, and that is a good thing for aleader. We couldn’t ask for more.”51

In Somalia, Tenth Mountain Division opera-tions ranged from the battalion task force to thesmall-team level. Most missions, however, wereperformed at company level or below. In one arti-cle describing such operations, Lawrence Vowelsand Major Jeffrey Witsken note that “junior leadersmust be confident and competent to make quick,hard decisions. . . . [The] decisions had to be madewhile operating relatively independently and outof communication range with their superiors.”52

Likewise, the relatively broad scope of indepen-dent, small-unit checkpoint operations placed ex-traordinary demands on junior leaders in northernIraq. Lieutenant Colonel John Abizaid, the U.S.Army infantry task force commander during Pro-vide Comfort, emphasizes this point: “The pres-sures on junior leaders to make the right decisionswere enormous, and there was great temptation toput all checkpoints under centralized battalioncontrol.”53 Abizaid considers his decision to trustthe instincts of his subordinates to be one of theprimary reasons the mission succeeded.

Similarly, Brigadier General Michael Hurbottle,commander of UN forces in Cyprus, concludes,“There is no doubt in my mind that the success ofa peacekeeping operation depends more than any-thing else on the vigilance and mental alertness ofthe most junior soldier and his noncommissionedleader, for it is on their reaction and immediateresponse that the success of the operation rests.”54

Senior officers have noted the difficulties involvedin making snap judgments in an uncertain envi-ronment, recognizing that mistakes have been—and will continue to be—made.

For example, consider the many rapid decisionsMajor Martin Stanton had to make, as he and hiscompany arrived on the scene of an impendingriot at a food distribution warehouse in Somalia:

I looked at the looters. My instructions werepretty clear: I was to go and secure the food site[but] faced with the anarchy before me, it seemedthe proper thing was to try to stop [the looting]. Iwas confident I had sufficient combat power tohandle any armed resistance and that the infantryplatoon with me could secure the warehouse andeject any looters.

I made the decision to hand out the food. . . .Unfortunately, I did not understand one of the ba-sic economic realities [that] relief supplies weremoney. When I began handing out supplies it waslike handing out free money. . . . At one time, I was

12

13

convinced that unless something was done toforce the crowd back, our soldiers were inimmediate danger. . . .The threat to the troops wassuch that . . . only reinforcements or an extrememeasure such as lethal violence could have pre-vented us from having people killed or injured. . . .

Handing out the food as a crisis-defusingmechanism failed disastrously. I could have in-formed representatives of each tribal group that Iwould hand out a portion of the food to them fordistribution. . . . This might not have worked forseveral reasons. First, many of the people in-volved in the riot were refugees with no localtribal affiliation. Second, the crowd was lootingthe food store because of a lack of faith in the dis-tribution supervised by their authority figures.Third, I didn’t know if all players were on hand. Icould have alienated a large group of the popula-tion by unwittingly not including them. . . . I real-ize that my basic error was in looking at it from anAmerican frame of reference. . . .What I shouldhave asked myself was: Is it worth getting any ofmy people hurt over? Is it worth killing any Soma-lis over? What are the consequences of doingnothing?55

DEMANDING A VISIBLE PRESENCE

Unlike conventional combat operations, whichplace a premium on stealth during patrol, peaceoperations generally use patrols to demonstrate avisible presence and to obtain vital intelligence orto assess the situation in a particular area. DuringOperation Provide Comfort, for instance, the 3-325 Airborne Battalion Combat Team was in-volved in what became known as the “checkpointwar” once it established its security zone. To keepthe feuding Kurdish groups from engaging one an-other and to keep the Iraqi forces in check, theteam developed a “flying checkpoint” technique,in which a mounted force (typically infantry, com-bat engineers, and anti-armor vehicles) wouldmove into areas and establish hasty roadblockswhere Iraqi or guerrilla fighters were known to beoperating. The U.S. unit always had sufficient fire-power—air cover and mortar support, plus a quick-reaction force, including anti-armor and infantrycarriers—held in reserve for reinforcement or ex-traction if necessary.56

In Somalia, the Tenth Mountain Division’sCavalry Squadron Ground Troop frequentlyperformed checkpoint operations. After a daylightreconnaissance, the checkpoint was established af-

ter dark and continued to operate throughout thenight. Two anti-armor vehicles were placed at aroad checkpoint site, with their crews using night-vision devices to assist in early warning. Two othervehicles were held in reserve for immediate reac-tion or to intercept vehicles that did not heed anorder to stop. Even though it used a small force,this tactic proved sufficient for a low-threat envi-ronment and was instrumental in maintaining avisible presence in a very large humanitarian-reliefsector.57

In Haiti, “presence patrols” were employed forthis purpose. When conducting an area assess-ment, a patrol would move into a densely popu-lated location, break down into squad-sizedgroups, and then work a particular area. The samesquad would continue to operate in the area sothat the local population would become familiarwith the soldiers, who would often converse withthe residents and shopkeepers and convey stan-dard themes, such as the purpose of the U.S. pres-ence or the efforts being made to establish alegitimate government. The patrols also updatedthe Haitian citizens in their sectors on world andnational news. Finally, the patrols were used toidentify and assist in local civic projects, such asputting a new roof on a schoolhouse or moving asmall market out of an unsanitary open-seweragearea. This type of civic affairs operation proved sosuccessful that the Haiti after-action report ac-knowledged that “the American Soldier and hispresence on the streets, market places, parks,schools, and businesses of the cities and on theroads, fields, and villages of the countryside werethe greatest weapon present to prevent oppres-sion. Professionalism and the proper attitude to-wards the citizens of Haiti established a standardfor the Haitian police and military to follow.”58

OPERATING PRIMARILY IN BUILT-UPAREAS

Most recent military operations have taken placein urban areas, drawing on special tactics that havenot been employed since the U.S. engagement inVietnam. The Tenth Mountain Division’s 2-87 In-fantry Battalion, for example, was one of the mostactive units during Operation Restore Hope andwas often involved in independent or combinedcordon-and-search operations in various Somalitowns. The battalion effectively employed an air-

14

borne command post to coordinate unit actions,enabling the commander to move quickly fromone side of a town to the other. To minimize thelikelihood of friendly-fire casualties, vehicles wereclearly marked, and the unit developed a graphicdisplay technique to divide cities into numberedblocks and then put up signs or paint buildings toidentify unit boundaries and facilitate easy refer-ence and rapid movement. Smoke grenades orpaint bombs were used to mark buildings to besearched. The unit found squad-sized searchteams to be most effective, requiring visual coordi-nation between flanks be-fore moving into newbuildings when searchinga zone. Concertina wirewas found to be effectivein cordoning off an area.

During the Haiti opera-tion, the division foundthat belligerents couldeasily move weaponscaches from building tobuilding undetected. In re-sponse, a shift from the “known point” techniquewas developed. Under this modified system, cachetargets are plotted, and a zone or target area estab-lished, then the zone is occupied by infantry forcesto limit weapons movement. Active patrolling,supported by information culled from human in-telligence sources, was then used to pinpoint andisolate the cache.59

Operation Uphold Democracy presented theTenth Mountain Division with other challenges aswell. While the operation occurred in a “permis-sive,” or unopposed, environment, the divisionwas able to use urban terrain tactics that workedextremely well. Infantry commanders found that acombined unit, consisting of military police, psy-chological-operations specialists, and linguisticsupport staff, proved invaluable in conductingroutine operations. This combination of special-ists accompanying the normal infantry maneuverforce proved essential in assisting Haitian nation-als or detaining belligerents and was successful inpreventing or defusing violence.

The division also employed innovative crowdcontrol procedures to manage demonstrations,including the fifty-thousand-strong protest in Port-au-Prince in late September 1994. The divi-

sion’s intent was to avoid violence and keep thecrowd from destroying facilities and homes; itfound that doctrinally modified tactics workedextremely well, among them: showing a unit’sstrength up front, incorporating psychologicaloperations in crowd control, using armor as anintimidator, displaying a professional appearance,and integrating military police with maneuverforces to defuse situations with a high potential forviolence.60 CH-47 helicopters equipped with wa-ter buckets were placed on standby in case thedemonstrations escalated.

Prior to Operation Re-store Hope, doctrinal tac-tics that applied to armyaviation operating over ur-ban terrain were limited. Infact, what doctrine therewas called for aircraft to flypatrols on the outskirts ofurban areas. In Panamaand Somalia, however,army aviation was selectedas the prime operational

component because of the limited air threat andthe need to minimize collateral damage. Army avi-ation units found the usual attack methods inap-propriate because the urban environment limitedthe utility of deploying more than a single attackaircraft and because targets typically could be seenonly along a one-gun target line.61

REQUIRING PSYCHOLOGICALOPERATIONS AND CIVIL AFFAIRSINTEGRATION

The army has made great use of Psychological Op-erations (“psyops”) and Civil Affairs units in recentpeace operations, whose after-action reports allreinforce the need to integrate these Special Oper-ations Command forces with conventional units.Over the past decade, their utility has increasedalmost exponentially. Operation Uphold Democ-racy was the culmination of previous experienceswith this type of combined-unit approach, effec-tively incorporating recently developed psyopsand civil affairs procedures into all levels of theplanning process and the execution phase of the operation. The ability to prepare the area ofoperations for programs—ranging from “cash for

In many cases, young militaryleaders are faced with perhapsthe most important negotiation

challenges of their careers.

15

guns,” using an improvised chit system to make iteasier for the local population to turn in itsweapons, to activities coordinated with a variety ofNGOs to prepare the population for the return ofPresident Aristide—was instrumental in minimiz-ing the level of violence.62

The ability of the U.S. military to work effec-tively with the many NGOs that respond to hu-manitarian crises has been enhanced by thecreation of a separate Civil-Military OperationsCenter. Some observers argue that “NGOs havefelt uneasy working with the military” and that“military leaders tend to regard NGOs as undisci-plined and their operations as uncoordinated anddisjointed,”63 but the coordination activities of thiscenter have helped to break down the barriers ofdifferent organizational cultures and the percep-tions that separate these two different types of in-stitutions. The Tenth Mountain Division used thisfacility during the Hurricane Andrew disaster-reliefoperation, when the center helped coordinate thedivision’s efforts with those of more than eightyNGOs in providing immediate disaster assistance.

The lessons the division learned in Florida weretested just three months later in Somalia, this timein a situation that was significantly more complexbecause of the hostile environment. Every opera-tion since then has capitalized on the center’s abil-ity to work closely with civilian organizations toincrease the efficiency and effectiveness of humani-tarian relief efforts. Not only have Civil Affairsunits filled the need for more personnel in theCivil-Military Operations Center caused by limitedstaffing in the division’s G5 (civil/military opera-tions) section, but their teams have been well inte-grated into conventional forces. In Somalia, forexample, these teams were attached to maneuverunits and helped establish credibility with local vil-lage leaders by providing routine medical and den-tal services and keeping residents informed ofongoing military activities as well as world and na-tional news. The relationships they established notonly helped defuse potentially hostile situationsbut also served as a valuable source of intelligence.

REQUIRING EXTENSIVE NEGOTIATIONS

Beginning with Operation Just Cause, when armypersonnel negotiated the surrender of GeneralManuel Noriega, negotiating with belligerent par-ties has been a recurring theme in recent U.S. mili-tary interventions. In Somalia, military leaders

down to the platoon level were involved in directnegotiations with local clans when trying to deter-mine how to equitably distribute relief supplies ina humanitarian-relief sector. Senior officers werealso actively engaged in such efforts. The com-manding general of the Tenth Mountain Divisionand his senior officers were frequently called uponto negotiate settlements between warring factionsand were directly involved in disarmament talks.In a Military Review article, General Arnold recallsthat “Political negotiation was an area that re-quired extensive coordination. The ARFOR [armyforces] was involved in negotiations with clan el-ders in each small town and village.”64 To illustratethis point further, when the Tenth Mountain Divi-sion was deployed to Haiti, the quick-reactionforce platoon leader from the 2-14 Infantry Battal-ion had to respond to a situation in which a heavilyarmed FAd’H member was being harassed by thelocal population and had barricaded himself in hishouse. Although a large crowd had gatheredaround the house, the young platoon leader wasable to negotiate a peaceful resolution between thetwo sides.65

Recounting his experiences in northern Iraq,Lieutenant Colonel Abizaid confirms the impor-tance of negotiations at the junior-officer level—forexample, during routine checkpoint operations,when Kurdish guerrillas wanted to pass to attackIraqi forces, or when Iraqi civil authorities wantedto pass in the opposite direction to arrest localKurdish leaders. In many cases, young militaryleaders are faced with perhaps the most importantnegotiation challenges of their careers.66

Although today’s military leadership cor-rectly argues that fighting wars remainsthe most difficult mission and must re-main the primary focus of training efforts, com-manders who have participated in recentdeployments maintain that operations other thanwar differ significantly from conventional opera-tions and, as such, require additional skills. Theability of a unit to operate effectively in peace oper-ations is directly linked to a leader’s ability to ap-ply the supporting operational principles. The verynature of these operations mandates a trainingstrategy that accommodates the challenges posedby much more complex missions.

In order to succeed—however success is mea-sured in these types of operations—the army musttrain commanders and staffs to deal with the lackof strategic direction and to accommodate thelikely expanded scope of such operations. This re-quires a deeper knowledge of tasks and increasedproficiency in performing them. Units must be pre-pared to operate in an urban environment, em-ploying unconventional tactics. They must knowhow to conduct a cordon-and-search operationand establish and operate checkpoints, and theymust be proficient in crowd control techniques.They must be capable of performing effectively in austere environments with few sources of

intelligence. Finally, they must interact with peopleof different political and cultural orientations, inareas governed by few or no commonly acceptedrule-of-law principles.

The challenge of training the military’s leader-ship and units to meet the new demands of wagingpeace is significant. The interactions that typicallyoccur among coalition forces that have differentvalues and beliefs, and an expanding NGO com-munity, are the first items to be addressed on thetraining agenda. The presence of the mediathroughout the area of operations also presents anew challenge for soldiers and commanders alike,since the inappropriate behavior of a single soldiercan be instantaneously broadcast around theworld, prompting national debates or public out-cry. These factors—as well as the requirement forsoldiers to shift rapidly from providing humanitar-ian-relief assistance to conducting limited combatoperations—magnify the challenge. Finally, negoti-ation skills must be a training priority, as reiteratedin a recently published article in the military jour-nal Parameters:

Officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers]will be in close contact with combatant and non-combatant groups in situations where decentral-ized diplomacy and on-the-spot negotiating skillscan defuse a volatile situation, possibly savingAmerican, allied, and noncombatant lives. Wecannot place the lives of those officers and NCOsat risk by failing to prepare for the challenges ofnegotiating under adverse conditions with indi-viduals from different cultures. We have to findways to adapt our formal training of officers andNCOs to develop the skills they will need in suchsituations.67

Because of the unique nature of these types of missions and the likelihood that our militarywill frequently be called upon to perform them in the future, the army must incorporate peaceoperations training into all professional militaryeducation courses, starting with the Basic Non-commissioned Officer’s Course and continuing on up to the Senior Service College. Units that arelikely to be deployed for peace operation missionsmust adapt their training strategy accordingly. Therest of this section will focus on how well the armyhas responded to this challenge.

In each operation examined in this study, theU.S. Army made some strategic and tactical errors.

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THE RESPONSE

However, instead of trying to dismiss or down-play its mistakes, the army has painstakinglydocumented them in an attempt to minimize theprobability of their recurrence in subsequent mis-sions. During an interview well after OperationJust Cause had been concluded, General MaxwellThurman, former commander-in-chief of the U.S.Southern Command, did not hesitate to point outthat he had focused his efforts primarily on thewar-fighting phase of the operation, while neglect-ing its peacebuilding phase.68

Such candor is complemented by each opera-tion’s comprehensive after-action reports, pro-duced by the Center for Army Lessons Learned atFort Leavenworth, Kansas. The center, which nor-mally sends a team on each operation, documentsevents and provides specific recommendations forimprovement. It is through its observations andrecommendations that command and control pro-cedures, management of the various battlefield op-erating systems, planning and staff supervisiontechniques, organizational structures required forsimilar missions, and other functions and proce-dures are improved and enhanced. The reports,which average more than two hundred pages, mayprovide hundreds of recommendations for im-provement, which are then tracked to ensure theyare implemented within funding constraints orsubmitted for further analysis. These documentsare a crucial part of the army’s training process.Army Branch Service Schools rely on them to up-date doctrine and the supporting tactics and pro-cedures that are taught in all professional militaryeducation courses; units deployed on similar mis-sions use them to design predeployment training.By adopting such a holistic approach to training,the U.S. Army is better prepared to operate effec-tively in today’s complex peace operations.

PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION

As a large, complex, and vital organization, the army relies heavily on training, as do otherbranches of the armed forces. The army has alwaysmaintained that the quality and effectiveness of its fighting force is directly linked to its educationsystem. The first major component of the army’straining strategy lies in the formal service schools,where commissioned and noncommissioned offi-cers receive a firm grounding in the tactics,

operational concepts, leadership principles, andmilitary values that will make them effective lead-ers in the field. This section will examine how thistraining component has adapted to today’s reali-ties by evaluating recent doctrinal and instruc-tional innovations in all of the army’s formalschools.

Branch Service Schools

The U.S. Army Infantry School has taken the leadin revising its doctrine and instruction to reflectpost–Cold War operational challenges. The schoolhas included specific tactics for operations otherthan war in all its recently published tactical manu-als. FM 7-30, The Infantry Brigade, was publishedin October 1995 and contains a twenty-page ap-pendix on operations other than war. The basicbranch manuals covering infantry battalion andcompany operations, FM 7-20 and FM 7-10, re-spectively, also have appendixes covering low-in-tensity operations. The changed nature of conflictand increased frequency of post–Cold War mis-sions resulted in the publication of FM 7-98, Oper-ations in a Low-Intensity Conflict, in 1992. Basedon a well-circulated conceptual article on peace en-forcement operations, FM 7-98 is now being up-dated to incorporate many of the lessons learnedin the Somalia and Haiti operations as well as thepredeployment training for the current mission inBosnia. Because of the increase in the number ofoperations in urban environments, a ninety-five-page addendum to FM 90-10-1, An Infantryman’sGuide to Combat in Built-up Areas, was issued inOctober 1995, including seven new appendixes ontactics.

The Infantry School’s efforts to update doctrinehave been supplemented by a concurrent projectto develop a viable training support package forunits scheduled to deploy in peace operations.This draft publication, TC 7-98-1, Training SupportPackage for Operations Other Than War, willcontain detailed instructor notes, lesson outlines,and slides to support classroom and field training.Tactics that are likely to be needed in future mis-sions are included so that a unit can quickly estab-lish a predeployment training program focusingon only those tasks that are likely to be performedbased on the initial mission analysis. This publica-tion has been validated during numerous Joint

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Readiness Training Center rotations and was usedto assist both the Tenth Mountain Division beforeits deployment to Haiti and units undergoing pre-deployment training for Operation Joint Endeavorat the Combat Maneuver Training Center.

Supported by current doctrine that is relevantto today’s operational environment, classroom in-struction and field training have been adjusted aswell. The advanced course for officers is based on asmall-group instruction format that is led by highlyqualified captains and majors who have success-fully commanded companies participating in re-cent operations or have been through rotations atone of the combat trainingcenters; their experience isinvaluable in discussionsof doctrinal principles andtactics. Six days are de-voted solely to operationsother than war to ensurethat students have mas-tered the concepts. Thefirst two days include doc-trinal reviews, small-groupdiscussions, and practicalexercises involving the six-teen relevant missions (seenote 2). The next four daysare devoted to staff exer-cises and after-action re-views, in which the students, acting as a battalionstaff, go through the deliberate planning processfor three separate missions. The first involves aninfantry battalion task force being deployed to ariot zone in a large metropolitan area. The secondis based on a Central American scenario, where aninfantry battalion task force is assigned the mis-sion of finding and destroying illicit drug laborato-ries; the scenario includes an opposing hostileinfantry battalion operating under the orders of adrug cartel in the task force’s operational sector.The final exercise involves a noncombatant evacu-ation operation on the fictitious island of Cortina.The deliberate planning for these types of missionsreinforces doctrinal principles and supporting tac-tics. The advanced course also televises the month-ly National Training Center and Joint ReadinessTraining Center teleconferences, during whichperformance trends based on recent unit rotationsare candidly discussed.

The basic course for officers focuses on develop-ing platoon leaders’ combat skills. Each class is or-ganized as a platoon, rotating leadership positionsthroughout the sixteen-week course. Each platoonhas a captain and two noncommissioned officers toadvise and lead students through the course. Theculmination of the basic course is a five-day fieldtraining exercise, where the young officers’ tacticalknowledge is tested in a simulated combat environ-ment. In addition to conventional operations, theexercise exposes the officers to typical peace opera-tion scenarios (that is, those that are constrained byrules of engagement, occur in urban settings, and

require negotiations to enddisputes).

The small-group discus-sion approach is also usedat the Infantry School’sNoncommissioned OfficerAcademy. Although theprogram of instruction de-votes only one hour to op-erations other than war,NCOs with experience inpeace operations attend al-most every class, and theircontributions to the typicaldialogue that occurs in thesmall groups give othersthe flavor of such missions.

Similar efforts have been undertaken at theArmy Armor School. The Armored and Mecha-nized Infantry doctrinal manuals, from the com-pany up through the brigade levels (Field Manuals71-1 through 71-3), have been or are being up-dated to incorporate separate chapters on opera-tions other than war. While the training focuswithin the armor community appropriately re-mains on the critical combat tasks that are ex-pected on high- to mid-intensity battlefields, aconcurrent training strategy has been imple-mented to make junior leaders proficient in thetactics employed during peace operations.

In addition to presenting and discussing princi-ples of operations other than war in the NCOCourses and the Basic and Advanced OfficerCourses, training vignettes have been added to of-ficer field training and situational training exer-cises. As part of the Basic Course’s ten-day tacticaltraining exercise, future armor and scout platoon

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The support branches in theU.S. Army—such as engineers,military intelligence, military

police, and transportation—

have been equally active in

adapting their training to

peace operations.

leaders have the opportunity to practice tacticsthat are likely to be employed in peace operations,such as establishing a hasty roadblock, conductingarea security, patrolling, constructing and staffingobservation and listening posts, and performingconvoy escort and security. This training is supple-mented with small-group discussions of themounted force’s role in contingency operations aswell as lessons culled from recent operations. TheAdvanced Armor Course has developed a five-daymodule for operations other than war. The train-ing encompasses a series of situational exercises ina scenario similar to the situation in Bosnia, requir-ing tactics and procedures ranging from companyteam to brigade task force. This instruction, whichis aided by recently developed mission trainingplans, helps prepare armor officers for small-unitleadership and staff duties.

The Army Aviation School has expanded itsdoctrine to incorporate the lessons of recent oper-ations as well. Its capstone doctrine, FM 1-100,Army Aviation Operations, is in the final updatestage, now clearly delineating aviation’s combat,combat support, and combat service support tasksin operations other than war. The manual orga-nizes these activities into three main categories: se-curity and limited conflict, peacekeeping andhumanitarian-relief operations, and support to do-mestic authorities. FM 1-100 also provides de-tailed descriptions of likely missions, such as showof force, noncombatant evacuation operations,and peace enforcement. The supporting manuals,FM 1-111 (Aviation Brigades), FM 1-112 (AttackHelicopter Operations), and FM 1-113 (UtilityHelicopter Operations), are also being updated.Capitalizing on after-action reports and interviewswith participants in recent operations, each ofthese publications devotes significant attention topeace operation missions. FM 1-111 has an eight-page appendix on operations other than war, andFMs 1-112 and 1-113 reinforce the necessary tac-tics to operate effectively during these