The concept of UN peacekeeping has had to evolve and change to meet the challenges of contemporary sources of conflict; consequently, peacekeeping operations have grown rapidly in number and ...complexity. This book examines a number of issues associated with contemporary multinational peace operations, and seeks to provide insights into the problems that arise in establishing and deploying such forces to meet the challenges of current conflicts. The focus of the book is three case studies (Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo), involving a comparative analysis of the traditional peacekeeping in Lebanon, the more robust peace enforcement mission in Somalia, and the international administration undertaken on behalf of the international community in Kosovo. The book analyses the lessons that may be learned from these operations in terms of mandates, command and control, use of force and the relevance of international humanitarian and human rights law to such operations.
This sharp study makes for evocative reading as it introduces the new concept of regeneration as key to any restoratively arranged peace operation. Military, police, NGO and civilian peacekeeper ...practitioners, as well as academic theorists, can use this unique work to produce better and more lasting results for conflict ridden communities.
The main locu of instability, conflict and violence in the post-Cold War world is the periphery - particularly the poorest regions of what used to be called the Third World. Internal wars of ...secession, struggles for power and chaos in failed or failing states are the dominant forms, expressed in intercommunal or ethnic violence, domestic and international acts of terrorism, and, increasingly, essentially criminal insurgencies with no political objective. This completely revised edition of "Distant Thunder" brings the problem of Third-World conflict into the post-Cold War era. Now that the periphery is no longer the site of surrogate competitions between rival political-economic systems, when and how should the developed countries intervene in internal wars outside the compass of their traditional geopolitical interest - and what can such intervention be realistically expected to accomplish? The new edition shows how secessionist and ethnic conflicts, terrorism and the drug trade fit into the context of international politics, examines the post-Cold War dynamics of political and economic decline, state failure, and the limits of interventionism, includes case studies of the Shining Path of Peru and its degeneration from a Maoist-type insurgency to a narco-terrorist ring and the Somali crisis as examples of the difficulties of international intervention in internal wars.
Describes the operational challenges posed by the urban environment and proposes several recommendations to surmount them.
Urban areas are notorious for complicating operational planning, command, ...control, and the communications that facilitate the three. Frequent interruptions of line of sight due to the prolificacy of man-made structures interfere with radio and global positioning system signals. They often combine with extreme noise, dust, smoke, and light conditions to impede leader control at all echelons. The density of noncombatants and their potentially crucial influence on friendly force success further demand effective employment and synchronization of psychological operations, civil affairs, public affairs, and other resources. Savvy use of existent systems, employing decentralized control procedures, and innovation all have their place in overcoming these inherent limitations in the service of achieving objectives across the spectrum of conflict.
US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation examines how the US Army rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War and how this has affected US intervention policy, from the victory of the Gulf War to the ...failure of Somalia, the Bosnian and Kosovo interventions and the use of force post 9/11.
Richard Lock-Pullan analyzes the changes in US military intervention strategy by examining two separate issues: the nature of the US Army as it rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War, and the attempts by the US to establish criteria for future military interventions. He first argues that US strategy traditionally relied upon national mobilization to co-ordinate political aims and military means; he subsequently analyzes how this changed to a formula of establishing militarily achievable political objectives prior to the use of force. Drawing on a vast body of material and on strategic culture and military innovation literature, Lock-Pullan demonstrates that the strategic lessons were a product of the rebuilding of the Army's identity as it became a professional all-volunteer force and that the Army's new doctrine developed a new 'way of war' for the nation, embodied in the AirLand Battle doctrine, which changed the approach to strategy.
This book finally gives a practical analysis of how the interventions in Panama and the Gulf War vindicated this approach and brought a revived confidence in the use of force while more recent campaigns in Somalia, Kosovo and Bosnia exposed its weaknesses and the limiting nature of the Army's thinking. The legacy of the Army's innovation is examined in the new strategic environment post 9/11 with the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Introduction 1. The US Army and American Strategic Culture 2. The Vietnam War and the US Army 3. The All-Volunteer Army 4. Innovation in US Army Doctrine 5. The Influence of Army Thinking 6. Interventions: Panama, The Gulf, Somalia 7. Back to the Gulf Conclusion
In every operation, the functions of command, control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and communications are all fundamental to success. But in cities, the dense population, ...many manmade structures, and other challenges act to severely impede these functions in several ways. This monograph contemplates the nature of those challenges and proposes several recommendations to surmount them in both the short and longer terms.
Since the end of the Cold War, the international community, and the USA in particular, has intervened in a series of civil conflicts around the world. In a number of cases, where actions such as ...economic sanctions or diplomatic pressures have failed, military interventions have been undertaken. This 1999 book examines four US-sponsored interventions (Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia), focusing on efforts to reconstruct the state which have followed military action. Such nation-building is vital if conflict is not to recur. In each of the four cases, Karin von Hippel considers the factors which led the USA to intervene, the path of military intervention, and the nation-building efforts which followed. The book seeks to provide a greater understanding of the successes and failures of US policy, to improve strategies for reconstruction, and to provide some insight into the conditions under which intervention and nation-building are likely to succeed.
The support of the American public is widely held to be a critical prerequisite for undertaking military action abroad. This monograph describes American public opinion toward wars and other large ...military operations over the last decade, to delineate the sources of support and opposition for each war or operation, to identify the principal fault lines in support, and to illuminate those factors that are consistent predictors of support for and opposition to military operations.
