The movement toward a policy commitment embracing peacekeeping and peace-enforcement remains in its infancy. It is not at all clear that either civilian or military leaders have fully explored the kinds of situations in which such a capability would be used, the implications of varyingly aggressive peacekeeping/peace-enforcement for the operation of the international system, and even the global desirability of attempting to pry apart warring factions within states or warring states. With the policy end of the equation incomplete, so too necessarily must the strategy and force implications remain tentative and shadowy. This suggests that this area remains a part-indeed possibly even the signature-of the great uncertainty that marks circumstances in the post-cold war environment. What we prepare for depends vitally on what we want to prepare for, and that requires an assessment of the world that we have not yet completed. With a new administration and a new party occupying the White House, the policy answers that must drive strategy and forces will not likely be resolved rapidly, and for that we can probably be thankful. The new policy team that is being assembled will have to confront the problem of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement, but unless the evolving situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina dictates an action during the winter, one can hope that there will be adequate time to deliberate and form a coherent, intelligent policy. Because the policy questions are not totally resolved, it is difficult to outline in any detail what a commitment one way or the other to peacekeeping and peace-enforcement means for the Army. If one assumes, however, that there will almost surely be some commitment to the concept, then one can lay out at least some tentative categories of implications. For present purposes, four implications, sharing the common theme of the disjunction of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement and traditional Army practice, will be discussed. The first implication is a rejoinder: Do not think of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement either as an extension of what the Army does or as parallel and compatible missions. The Army has limited experience in peacekeeping, and could probably adapt itself fairly easily to some expansion of that mission through an increased emphasis and some modifications to procedures for training military police (MPs). An expansion of the peacekeeping role would require more emphasis in this area. [57] The same is hardly true for peace-enforcement. As the preceding discussion has attempted to demonstrate, peace-enforcement is likely to be very difficult and probably an extremely frustrating activity. This is so because of the political intractibility of the kinds of situations where peace-enforcement will be an option. The military task of disengagement will not be the hard part; adequately deadly and well-aimed firepower could probably dislodge the various Serbian militia units from the positions they use to strangle Bosnian cities with reasonable ease. The problem is that the military separation is only the first, tentative step toward the kind of reconciliation that would allow peacekeeping to be the follow-on to peace-enforcement. That requires political processes and will for which military force is not clearly relevant. The Army's preparation for the broader task is at least suspect. Likewise, the two forms of activity are not part of any continuum: Peace-enforcement is not simply peacekeeping that is a little harder. There is a fundamental political and military difference between the two. To engage in peace-enforcement in essence requires deciding to go to war; peacekeeping does not. Peace-enforcement requires physically going to war in a complex, politically difficult environment; peacekeeping does not. Peace-enforcement, in other words, is not business as usual extended. This leads to a second observation: A sizable commitment to peace-enforcement requires abandonment of some post-Vietnam dogma. Many of the situations for which peace enforcers will be needed will be internal wars between factions within states whose animosity is defined along historical, ethnic, linguistic, religious grounds or some combination of those causes. The schisms are likely to be deeply felt and strongly held. Using outside force to "attack" those symptoms runs the very real possibility of involvement in quagmires that policy has attempted to avoid since Vietnam. Two tenets are almost certain to be victimized in the process. The first is the Weinberger Doctrine; all but the last principle of six will probably be violated in a peace-enforcement exercise: American vital interests will not be at stake; winning will have an elusive meaning; political and military objectives will be vague and subject to change; forces will be inappropriate to the task; and public support will be quickly eroded. The only principle upheld is likely that peace-enforcement will be the option of last resort. General Powell's principle of the massive and rapid application of overwhelming force is also not relevant in a peace-enforcement situation. When the situation is internal and any action will have clear political implications for all parties, considerable discretion and restraint will be necessary in the application of force to avoid unintended and unfortunate results. it would, for instance, be very difficult to apply the principle of maximum force in Bosnia in a way that would not harm all sides, including innocent bystanders, along the way. [58] This leads to a third implication: Significant involvement in peace-enforcement and peacekeeping operations will require the Army to modify the way it does business. Once again, the extent of the impact of this observation is much more pointed for peace-enforcement than it is for peacekeepers. Peace-enforcement will require some fairly basic changes in the way the Army prepares for war. Because peace-enforcement operations will occur in more complex politico-military phenomena than normal operations, those who carry them out will have to be correspondingly more sophisticated than regular operators. Two aspects of this sophistication stand out; there are probably others that experience will ultimately reveal. A first aspect of sophistication is that the peace enforcer must understand that even the most tactical actions he takes (or orders) may have enormous strategic and political implications. Who is separated, how they are separated, and where separation occurs in, say, a neighborhood, a town, or even a street can affect local balances of power, and can implicitly align the peace enforcer with one side or another to the dispute. The average soldier clearing a town or lifting a siege does not have to be concerned with such matters; the peace enforcer who does not can change things without realizing what he is doing. In peace-enforcement, everything is strategic. This kind of distinction would not be important if the peace enforcer's actions were openly partisan: helping one side or another. That, however, is unlikely to be the case. Instances consonant with the United Nations'/Joint Staff's definition of peace-assisting activities form the conceptual, if not physical, continuum of restoring or reinforcing peace. To do so will require a strict neutrality toward the combatants if the purpose is to reconcile the combatants into a willing peace rather than imposing a peace (which will be the case). As argued, doing this will be exceptionally difficult under the best of circumstances, since almost any action will benefit one side at the expense of the other. To march unprepared into a strategic maelstrom could do enormous harm. A second aspect of this sophistication is linguistic and geopolitical. Because peace enforcers' actions at the small unit level can have important strategic effects on situations, it will be extremely important that, even at the small unit (platoon, company?) level, someone be capable of communicating with the inhabitants where operations are occurring. In a place like Bosnia, where three separate languages are spoken, that is no small task. Geopolitically, many, if not most, peace enforcing opportunities will occur in remote areas that have not been geopolitically scrutinized in detail by the Army, or others in government. How many Foreign Area Officers (FAOs), for instance, does the Army possess with detailed expertise in the Caucasus region, where instability is rife? Without detailed advice from somewhere, will the Army make mistakes that geopolitical expertise could have avoided? Would, for instance, the apparently tactical decision to set up the security zones in Iraq have been undertaken if the broader systemic consequences had been thoroughly analyzed? This leads to a third way in which the Army will have to do business differently within peace enforcing operations. Because of their heavily political content, these situations will require more than just "jointness" within the armed services; they will also require considerable interagency cooperation [59] within the Executive branch of government. Certainly overt cooperation between the armed services and the State Department will be required; how far the interagency net will have to extend will vary with the individual situation. Where such operations will find an eventual institutional "home" is also an interesting concern. It is not clear that that base will be within the Department of Defense. This leads to a summary warning about entrance into this whole business of peacekeeping, peace-enforcement and the like: It is a very new enterprise to be examined and embraced only with all due caution. Conceptually and practically, it is a potential minefield into which one should enter tiptoeing lightly. The caution is, of course, tempered by what kind of activity one embraces in the conceptual continuum of activities. Peacekeeping, where the conditions for success inhere, does not represent a novel or conceptually radical form of activity, nor does peacemaking defined as diplomatic activity. It is peace-enforcement that represents the radical change. We do lack critical direct experience with peace-enforcement actions, and are uncertain what precedents may apply to guide deliberations and actions. If there is any parallel suggested at least by Bosnia, it is that the situations will be akin to insurgency/counterinsurgency situations: warring internal fracases where control of government or dismemberment of states are the underlying conditions. Outside intervention into such situations has a sufficiently questionable track record that, if the analogy holds, suggests considerable caution. Back to Table of Contents Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace-Enforcement: The US Role in the New International Order Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com