International Peacekeeping

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A Return to Realism? The United States and Global

Peace Operations since 9/11

Stewart Patrick

To cite this article: Stewart Patrick (2008) A Return to Realism? The United States and
Global Peace Operations since 9/11, International Peacekeeping, 15:1, 133-148, DOI:
10.1080/13533310701879977

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 CONCLUSION

A Return to Realism? The United States and

Global Peace Operations since 9/11

STEWART PATRICK

It is ironic that the administration of George W. Bush, which took office so sceptical
of multilateral peace operations, should have presided over the two largest inter-
national nation-building exercises since the end of the second world war. As the
administration entered its eighth and final year, the effort to stabilize and reconstruct
Iraq and Afghanistan continued to dominate Americas global agenda, overshadow-
ing many other pressing foreign policy and national security concerns. Through
painful experience, the administration belatedly concluded that the United States
needed new doctrines, strategies and capabilities to help restore peace and assist
recovery in war-torn societies. It had also adapted to a more pragmatic, less ideologi-
cal view of the UN, recognizing that the world body is an indispensable (albeit imper-
fect) vehicle to address protracted conflicts and peacebuilding challenges that the
United States has an interest in resolving but is disinclined to address on its own.
The two most recent presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, entered
office with diametrically opposed and equally unrealistic views about nation-
building, only to converge on a more practical middle ground, reflecting both
the inevitability of US involvement in such operations and their inherent difficulty.
And yet their motives for US action and preferred multilateral frameworks for
nation-building differed. Compared to its predecessor, the Bush administration
had been impelled less by humanitarian considerations than by the perceived exi-
gencies of the global war on terror. Moreover, it pursued a distinctive division of
labour, preferring ad hoc, US-led coalitions of the willing where US troops are
engaged, while supporting UN-led operations in less volatile, secondary theatres.
This essay explains how these dynamics have played out in US policy towards
peace operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans and Africa. It then examines
doctrinal and institutional innovations intended to improve US strategy and capa-
bilities for stabilization and reconstruction operations. The main impetus for
these changes was the fiasco of US post-war (non-) planning for Iraq, and the
resultant chaos that erupted in that country. In response to these obvious
deficiencies, the Bush administration took some belated, tentative steps to
improve the ability of military and civilian agencies to address priority challenges
of war-torn environments. This effort was more successful within the Department
of Defense (DoD) than the State Department, the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), and other civilian agencies. The Pentagon has begun to
develop new doctrine and training regimens to conduct this mission. Progress

International Peacekeeping, Vol.15, No.1, February 2008, pp.133 148

ISSN 1353-3312 print/1743-906X online
DOI:10.1080/13533310701879977 # 2008 Taylor & Francis
134 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

has been much slower on the civilian side, hampered by a lack of high-level leader-
ship, an absence of resources, bureaucratic resistance and hidebound institutional
cultures. These deficiencies have been particularly notable in the area of transi-
tional security. Overcoming these shortcomings will require dramatically
increased US investment in the civilian components of peace operations, including
new expeditionary capabilities.

Peace Operations: The US Record

Since the end of the cold war, the United States has adopted an ambivalent, selec-
tive and often inconsistent position toward UN peace operations. These conflict-
ing signals, as examined by Victoria Holt and Michael MacKinnon in this issue,
have included pressure on the Security Council to authorize ambitious mandates
to keep peace in troubled corners of the world. The United States also remains the
worlds largest funder of UN peace operations, with its assessed contributions
covering approximately one-quarter of the total cost. And yet, at the same
time, the United States has often withheld critical political support and sometimes
financial and other resources that the UN needs to build its capacities and accom-
plish these missions, as well as being a source of voluble criticism (particularly
from Congress) when things go bad, proving to be a fair-weather friend.
In addition, the United States has generally limited its own participation in
UN-led peace operations to materiel and logistical support, preferring to engage
its troops only in operations run by NATO or by an ad hoc, US-led coalition of
the willing, particularly as part of the US-directed war on terrorism. This div-
ision of labour has produced a bifurcation of global peace operations. The
United States has tended to take the lead in larger, more difficult operations,
including those involving forced entry, whereas the UN has led more modest
undertakings in more benign or permissive environments, particularly those
that Washington sees as having a more humanitarian rather than counter-
terrorism focus.1 In his contribution to this volume, Richard Gowan suggests
that a similar division of labour may now be emerging between the United
States and its NATO allies, in which the former fights wars while the Europeans
(and, in the case of Haiti, Latin Americans) are expected to keep the peace.
These oscillations and contradictions in US policy are consistent with a more
general US ambivalence toward multilateral cooperation. No nation has done as
much to create the institutional infrastructure of world order, including the
bedrock institutions dating from the 1940s, such as the UN, the Bretton Woods
institutions, and NATO. Yet few countries have been as sensitive to the restrictions
on their freedom of action or as jealous in guarding their sovereign prerogatives.
This ambivalence, as I have written elsewhere,2 reflects Americas overwhelming
power, its unique political culture and its constitutional traditions. Given its
massive weight in the international system, the United States enjoys unparalleled
unilateral and bilateral options and as the ultimate custodian and guarantor of
world order is tempted to claim special exemption from the rules binding on
others. It is thus uniquely impatient with restrictions on its policy autonomy.
Second, the countrys long-standing tradition of liberal exceptionalism inspires
A RETURN TO REALISM? 135
vigilance in protecting domestic sovereignty and institutions from the incursions
(real or perceived) of international bodies, including the UN. Finally, the separation
of powers enshrined in the Constitution, which gives Congress a critical voice in the
ratification of treaties and political and financial support for global institutions,
complicates assumption of international obligations. This legislative brake on
multilateralism was especially apparent during the mid- to late-1990s, when the
Republican-controlled Congress repeatedly withheld payment of assessments for
the UNs regular and peacekeeping budget in a blunt effort to impose reform on
the world body and to place limits on US involvement in peace operations.
In contrast to its predecessor, the George W. Bush administration came to
office intensely sceptical of multilateral nation-building exercises. The president
and his senior advisers believed that the Clinton administration had elevated
third-tier security concerns to the forefront of foreign policy, frittering away
resources and lives in unrealistic, open-ended UN interventions that merely
bred local dependency. Yet the attacks of 9/11 shattered the Bush adminis-
trations complacency about the strategic irrelevance of distant, impoverished
countries and led to a sweeping reorientation in national security policy.
Al-Qaeda, after all, had launched the most devastating foreign attack on
American soil from the worlds second poorest nation, Afghanistan. A central
lesson, enunciated by the Bush administration in its 2002 National Security
Strategy, was that the United States was now more threatened by weak and
failing states than it was by conquering ones.3 In an age of transnational, cata-
strophic terrorism, the United States could not allow any place in the world to
fall off the map, as it had in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal.
However, the new strategic salience of weak and failing states resulted in
neither an embrace of UN-led peace operations nor (at least initially) a commit-
ment to multilateral nation-building. Rather, the attacks reinforced the adminis-
trations unilateral instincts. In waging counter-terrorism, the United States
would occasionally turn to international institutions notably the UN to
achieve its national security objectives. But it insisted that this war be waged on
US terms. Moreover, the United States quickly adopted a coalition-based
approach that was less a truly multilateral undertaking than a classic hub and
spoke arrangement founded on bilateral deals between an American sheriff
and a heterogeneous posse. This flexible arrangement allowed the United States
to draw on and deploy others assets to respond to immediate US priorities,
without straining to reach consensus among numerous parties within formal insti-
tutions. Rather than a single coalition that formulated policy in a consensual
manner, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told CNNs Larry
King that there would be multiple coalitions, each organized around a (US-
defined) objective. In short, Its the mission that determines the coalition.4

Afghanistan and Iraq

This attitude coloured the US approach to the invasion and stabilization of
Afghanistan, as well as the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq. As
Bruce Jones recounts in this volume, the administration rebuffed any formal
136 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

NATO role in toppling the Taliban and pursuing al-Qaeda, as well as subsequent
allied suggestions to create a country-wide multinational force. It also adopted a
light-footprint approach, insisting on restricting the UN-mandated International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Kabul and its immediate environs until
September 2003, when Washington finally agreed to place ISAF under NATO
and to permit its gradual expansion outside Kabul. From the administrations per-
spective, this enhanced NATO role was a mixed blessing, requiring laborious
negotiations with resource-strapped and casualty-averse allied governments that
found it difficult to generate even modest forces, funds and materiel; that insisted
on restrictive rules of engagement; and that placed national caveats on the use of
troops. Moreover, US policy remained driven by counter-terrorism and counter-
insurgency objectives, giving less consideration to the goals of long-term justice
and security sector reform, economic rehabilitation, and good governance.
Its narrow concept of security defined as whether or not the Taliban were
on the run overlooked and sometimes contradicted the more comprehensive
requirements of human security for the Afghan people.5
In Iraq, the Bush administration sought to circumscribe the role of the UN in
the immediate aftermath of the invasion, both to ensure untrammelled US control
there and to avoid what administration officials presumed ironically, in retro-
spect would be a bloated, inefficient UN operation.6 Instead, the adminis-
tration handed post-war duties first to the ill-prepared and short-lived Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), and then to the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Paul Bremer. At the same time, the
administration sought explicit UN endorsement for the coalitions role, both to
win political cover for potential contributors to the US-led effort and to leverage
UN capacities in specialized areas like refugees and reconstruction. It thus wel-
comed Security Council resolution 1483 of 22 May 2003, which called upon
the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Representative to Iraq; strongly sup-
ported resolution 1500, which established a UN Mission (UNAMI); and later
pushed for resolution 1511, which gave the coalition an explicit UN mandate.
At the same time, the administration resisted the transfer to the UN of any signifi-
cant authority over Iraqs political evolution.7 Despite these obstacles, the UN
Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, made headway in engaging
leading Iraqi leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Sistani, on the countrys political
future. This ended tragically on 19 August 2003, when de Mello and more than a
dozen colleagues were killed in the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad.
The UN mission temporarily withdrew from Iraq.
Over the next four years, the Bush administration would return to the UN,
grudgingly but repeatedly, in the hopes of sharing some of the military and finan-
cial burden and obtaining the modicum of international legitimacy it needed to
succeed in Iraq. As initial plans for a gradual political transition in Iraq imploded
in late 2003 in the face of a swelling Sunni insurgency and deepening sectarian
violence, US officials enlisted the aid of Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi,
who skilfully negotiated with Sistani to accept the transfer of Iraqi sovereignty
from the CPA to an interim Iraqi government on 30 June 2004. The Security
Council ratified this decision and, by resolution 1546, also authorized the
A RETURN TO REALISM? 137
US-led multinational force to take all necessary measures to contribute to the
maintenance of security and stability in Iraq, in concurrence with the new
interim government.8 The UN would subsequently play a pivotal role in organiz-
ing Iraqs first post-Saddam national elections, in January 2005, as well as the
preparations and holding of the October constitutional referendum and Decem-
ber parliamentary elections of that year.
More than four years after the invasion, the UN continues to soldier on,
seeking to advance national dialogue and reconciliation in a deteriorating security
environment. In late summer 2007, after an intense US campaign to secure an aug-
mented UN presence in the country, the Security Council passed a new resolution
authorizing the UN, at the request of the Iraqi government, to promote political
talks among Iraqi factions and a regional dialogue on issues of border security,
energy and the spillover of refugees to neighbouring countries.9 The new UN
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, agreed to appoint a new UN envoy for Iraq.

Africa
The Bush administrations growing pragmatism toward peace operations also
included support for UN-led ventures outside the main theatres of Iraq and
Afghanistan, particularly in Africa. This change of heart reflected the new stra-
tegic salience of failing states viewed, particularly within the Pentagon, as
potential havens for al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists as well as a recognition
that the UN and increasingly the African Union (AU) had invaluable roles to
play in addressing what the United States saw as second-tier humanitarian or
regional concerns that the United States, overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan,
could not address alone. Operating on this logic, by summer 2007 the Bush
administration had supported a historic expansion in UN peace operations;
taken steps to bolster the capacity of both the UN and the AU to undertake peace-
keeping and enforcement; adopted an ambitious, Pentagon-led programme to
train and equip foreign military forces in fragile states; and created a new comba-
tant command for Africa (AFRICOM), with a special focus on shaping the secur-
ity environment on the continent through an integrated, whole of government
approach involving a variety of US government agencies. The ultimate result of
these efforts, as A. Sarjoh Bah and Kwesi Aning argue in their article, is a surpris-
ing continuity between the Bush administration and Clinton approaches to
authorizing UN peace operations and building African capacities.
In addition to the humanitarian motives that had guided its predecessor, the
Bush administrations support for peacekeeping and capacity building on the con-
tinent was informed by the perceived imperatives of the war on terrorism, includ-
ing the danger that Africas ungoverned spaces posed as possible havens for
terrorism and other illicit activity. This line of thinking has been most striking
in the Pentagon. The National Defense Strategy (2005) and Quadrennial
Defense Review (2006) advanced the construct of the long war against global
terrorism as the overarching framework to guide defence policy and force struc-
ture in the twenty-first century. They advocate a more flexible military posture,
with agile forces and assistance tools tailored to a world of asymmetric threats.
138 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

Addressing these new threats implies greater attention to building the sovereign
capacities of partner governments in the developing world particularly in
Africa to control their territories and police their terrestrial and maritime
borders and airspace.
The creation of AFRICOM, which unifies all US military activity in Africa
under a single combatant command, was long overdue, as was the Pentagons
new focus on conflict prevention, and its commitment to government-wide
policy planning and implementation. At the same time, the DODs apparent
desire to use this new military command as the platform to integrate overall US
policy towards Africa carries symbolic and practical risks that need to be carefully
managed. From a public diplomacy perspective, it could create the damaging
impression or allow US enemies to argue that the United States has a militar-
ized approach to the continent.10 More substantively, the new command could
indeed encourage such militarization, given the enormous asymmetry in the
resources available to the Pentagon compared to the State Department, USAID
and other civilian agencies. There is a real danger that any shaping activities
that emerge from AFRICOM will be dominated by defence priorities such as
enhancing the operational capacity of local security forces while giving short
shrift to broader political and developmental considerations.
The military is not well equipped to address the structural sources of underde-
velopment, alienation and instability in target countries though it understands
this, of course and that is why the Pentagon is looking for partners. Outside
efforts to help ameliorate such weaknesses will require a decades-long approach
to governance and development that may or may not be possible within the con-
struct of a regional combatant command. It is thus critical that any policy inte-
gration that occurs at AFRICOM reflect the firm leadership of the National
Security Council (NSC) and a more adequately resourced State Department,
supported by USAID, embassies and USAID missions on the ground with the
military playing a supporting role.

Nation-building Embraced?
As students of organizational change are well aware, significant institutional inno-
vations most often occur in the aftermath of demonstrable policy failure. The
belated embrace of nation-building by the administration of George W. Bush
provides a case in point.

Evolving Doctrine, Capabilities and Practice

Despite the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was no immediate doc-
trinal innovation in policy for multidimensional peace operations. Change
began during 2004 05, however, as the disastrous failure to stabilize post-war
Iraq became impossible to ignore. As numerous analysts have noted, the United
States went to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace.11 On taking office,
the Bush administration had abandoned the sophisticated political-military plan-
ning process of PDD 56, which had assigned agency roles and responsibilities in
complex contingency operations. In the case of Iraq, the administration gave sole
A RETURN TO REALISM? 139
responsibility for the post-war phase to the DoD, even though the Pentagon had
not led such efforts since the days when Gen. Lucius Clay was American military
governor of occupied Germany. Critics have excoriated DoD officials for failing
to plan for the post-conflict stabilization phase (Phase IV in military parlance),
blaming Rumsfeld in particular for dismissing the efforts of the State Depart-
ment-led working Group on the Future of Iraq, for waiting until the eleventh
hour to establish the ORHA, and for ignoring a decades worth of lessons
learned about the requirements for successful armed interventions and peace
operations. But the lack of civilian capabilities within the State Department and
USAID to address critical dimensions of stabilization and reconstruction was
also to blame, cementing White House determination to assign post-conflict
leadership to the DoD.
The ensuing chaos in Iraq drove home the price of failing to develop a doctrine
and resources to help consolidate peace and advance recovery in war-torn
societies. The Iraq experience made painfully clear the need for both civilian
and military standing capacity to respond to these contingencies.

What Sorts of Capabilities?

There is, of course, no one-size-fits-all template for building peace and promoting
recovery in war-torn societies. Each post-conflict setting presents a unique con-
stellation of challenges, shaped by the nature of the preceding conflict and its res-
olution, the number of formerly warring parties and their commitment to the
peace process, the scale of devastation, and the nature and resilience of existing
formal and informal institutions, among other factors. And yet, as James
Dobbins makes clear in this volume, there is also a general consensus within
the policy and scholarly community that those who seek to (re)build nations fol-
lowing large-scale violence are likely to encounter common categories of tasks.
These include sponsoring a constitutive process that lays the foundations for
the new political order; providing interim security, through a combination of
external troops and civilian police; (re)establishing mechanisms of justice and
accountability; stabilizing the economy and ensuring fiscal sustainability; and
providing infrastructure and essential services to the population.
Dobbins conceptual framework of essential post-conflict activities provides a
useful survey of the range of issue areas that must be covered in any stabilization
and reconstruction effort and the types of military and civilian capabilities in
which the United States must invest if it is to develop a professional approach
to nation-building. In addition, Dobbins counsels that would-be interveners
must be prepared to set strategic priorities, engage in comprehensive civilian
military planning, seize the fleeting moment (or golden hour) to set the trajectory
of subsequent events, and mobilize sufficient political will and adequate resources
to stay the course over what will inevitably be a multiyear undertaking. Such
mapping exercises provide an indispensable overview of common post-conflict
tasks. At the same time, Dobbins understands the complexities of nation-building
and the inherent limitations of such checklists as a guide for policymakers. As lists
of common ingredients rather than specific recipes, they do not address the diffi-
cult and often context-specific question of how such interventions should be
140 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

sequenced, nor the potential trade-offs among these various components of

external action. A more fundamental limitation of checklist approaches is that
they tend to focus overwhelmingly on the strategies, roles, coordination mechan-
isms and resources of external actors. As such, they risk exaggerating the role of
outside players to transform the complex societies that they are (in effect) merely
visiting, as well as encouraging donor-driven interventions that do not create local
ownership and indigenous capacity so much as replace it with what former
Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani has termed the parallel international
public sector.12

The Civilian Dimension: Innovations and Obstacles

Notwithstanding these caveats, by the spring of 2004 a rare (and perhaps fleeting)
bipartisan consensus had taken hold in Washington: in a world of failed states and
terrorist threats, reconstruction and stabilization were no longer optional, periph-
eral undertakings but rather unavoidable, core missions of foreign and national
security policy.13 To meet this challenge, the United States would need a robust
standing capacity to conduct and manage post-conflict operations, including
both civilian and military components. Essential ingredients of this approach
would include new coordination mechanisms with clear lines of authority and
accountability, a robust process for contingency planning, and a deployable civi-
lian capability to permit rapid, effective responses. To fill this gap, the NSC agreed
in April 2004 that the State Department should coordinate interagency responses
to future post-conflict operations, including the development of a civilian surge
capacity that could be deployed quickly to crisis countries. The State Department
responded to this call in August 2004 by creating an Office of the Coordinator of
Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS).
The new office was given impressive authorities at least on paper. A new
National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)14 assigned to the Secretary of
State (and through her to S/CRS) responsibility to prepare for, plan, coordinate
and implement reconstruction and stabilization operations in a wide range of
contingencies, ranging from complex emergencies to failing and failed states
and war-torn societies. However, S/CRS has continued to suffer from three fun-
damental weaknesses that undermine its ostensible leadership in post-conflict
operations. First, bureaucratic resistance within the State Department itself,
intra-agency rivalries and jockeying for power, and the decision not to have
the office take part in the two main reconstruction efforts of Afghanistan or
Iraq, left S/CRS with inadequate authority or respect within the executive
branch. Second, since it was created, S/CRS has been attempting to fulfil a
mandate that is both massive and in the absence of clear White House
support unrealistic. The offices broad agenda would be unwieldy even
under the best of circumstances, implying that S/CRS would not only organize,
train, and equip the interagency for stabilization and reconstruction efforts,
but also lead planning, deployment, and execution of those operations. Third,
and a related weakness, S/CRS has been chronically underfunded, as the
administration and Congress have declined to invest even modest resources in
this issue area.
A RETURN TO REALISM? 141
A New Military Mission
While the State Department has made only halting progress toward defining and
fulfilling its new post-conflict mission, the DoD has undergone a sweeping reor-
ientation of its long-standing doctrine, even as actual practice continues to
develop independently in field operations. As outlined in William Flavins contri-
bution to this volume, the military emerged from the Vietnam experience dis-
tinctly unenthusiastic about extensive involvement in so-called low-intensity
conflict. Experiences of the 1990s, including the debacle in Somalia and pro-
longed nation-building deployments in the Balkans and elsewhere, accentuated
the DoD distaste for operations other than war, which senior officers regarded
as a resource-intensive distraction from their core mission of fighting and
winning the nations wars. Despite the establishment of an Army Peacekeeping
Institute in 1994, few of the lessons learned from these experiences were incorpor-
ated into Army or other service doctrines.
This attitude began to change as the unfolding disaster in Iraq demonstrated
the militarys shortcomings in restoring stability in the aftermath of major
combat operations.15 Amid growing concerns about a rising insurgency, the
Pentagons Defense Science Board launched a year-long study in early 2004 on
the role of the military in the transition to and from hostilities.16 Although
some defence intellectuals had suggested that the DoD should create new special-
ized divisions dedicated entirely to post-conflict operations,17 the task force rec-
ommended instead that the entire military embrace stability operations as a
core mission, on a par with war-fighting. In November 2005, the Deputy Sec-
retary of Defense, Gordon England, endorsed this approach by signing Directive
3000.05, on Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruc-
tion Operations (SSTR). The document emphasized that these new responsibil-
ities shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly
addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organiz-
ations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities
and planning.18 The Pentagon appointed a new Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Stability Operations to supervise implementation of this directive,
created a Defense Reconstruction Support Office to sustain these efforts in the
field, and assigned a senior director for stability operations to each combatant
command.
In light of the inadequate Phase IV planning in Iraq, Directive 3000.05 man-
dates that each war plan henceforth must include a detailed annexe explaining
how stabilization and reconstruction will occur. While acknowledging that
many relevant tasks are more appropriately carried out by civilians, the directive
notes that this may not always be possible in insecure environments or where such
civilian capabilities do not yet exist. Accordingly, troops must be prepared to
carry out a wide range of activities, from rebuilding physical infrastructure to
training police to reviving market activity to developing institutions of represen-
tative government.
Pursuant to this new mission, the Army and joint military forces began to
revise their overarching and operational doctrine. Publications included a new
142 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

counter-insurgency manual jointly produced by the Army and Marine Corps in

December 2006 and a new joint manual on peace operations. As Flavin notes,
the emerging new doctrine breaks new ground by establishing Peace Building
as a key component of peace operations, and by recognizing that the activities
of the military in these non-traditional spheres must be integrated with those
of civilian agencies. However, the relationship between the SSTR mission (as
outlined in Directive 3000.05) and the counter-insurgency mission remains
ambiguous. Reconciling them may prove challenging to field commanders.
Also ambiguous is how the DoDs new stability operations doctrine relates to
emerging civilian capabilities. At first glance, NSPD-44 would appear to give the
State Department authority to coordinate all government agencies, including the
DOD, in stabilization and reconstruction operations. In fact, the question of lea-
dership is far from settled. There is no formal linkage between Directive 3000.05
and NSPD-44, beyond the declaration that the Pentagon will provide capabilities
to help support post-conflict operations by the State Department and other civi-
lian agencies, as appropriate.19

The Special Challenge of Public Security and the Rule of Law

Among the motivations for creating a stabilization and reconstruction capability,
the most powerful was the Bush administrations desire to address the public
security vacuum that arises after the end of hostilities in war-torn countries.
The object lesson here was the massive looting and criminality that arose follow-
ing the fall of Baghdad. Despite many precedents for a post-invasion breakdown
in public order, the Bush administration naively assumed that Iraqi security insti-
tutions would continue to provide physical security and, in any event, that a grate-
ful Iraqi public would remain quiescent. The militarys failure to respond
promptly to mounting chaos and human insecurity proved calamitous for US
plans to stabilize Iraq, causing immense social and economic disruption, punctur-
ing an aura of US invincibility, and providing momentum for a gathering
insurgency.
Chastened by this experience, in late 2003 White House officials, including the
Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, began exploring the notion of
a deployable civilian reserve that could help ensure post-war public order, civilian
security and the rule of law (including the provision of policing, corrections, and
judicial services) pending the reconstitution of indigenous capacities.20 Beyond
relieving some of the burden on US war-fighters, such civilian capabilities
would provide the necessary security environment for improvements in market
activity and social welfare.
Four years later, as Robert M. Perito points out in this volume, the United
States still lacks a deployable capability to conduct the full spectrum of police
and rule-of-law functions needed to restore security and justice in post-conflict
environments, including dealing with criminals and extremist elements. These
gaps in the repertoire are especially obvious when it comes to tasks that fall awk-
wardly between traditional peacekeeping operations and community policing,
such as the ability to crack down on politically motivated violence and organized
crime, respond to civil disorder, and protect high-value targets and installations.21
A RETURN TO REALISM? 143
The United States is the only country in the world that sends personnel for
international police service who are not part of a national police force but are
rather hired as individual subcontractors. From the Balkans to Afghanistan,
this model, which includes only minimal screening and pre-deployment training,
has been plagued by poor performance, limited accountability and occasional
cases of gross misconduct. As Perito has written elsewhere, The provision of uni-
formed, armed police with executive powers and the authority to use deadly force
is an inherent function of government.22 It is not one that should be left to the
private sector.
As the Iraq experience underscores, the United States needs to develop
standing capabilities to respond to the full spectrum of transitional security and
rule-of-law challenges. This includes the capacity to mobilize and deploy not
only constabulary forces (including formed police units that train and operate
together) and police (patrol officers and criminal investigators) but also judges,
prosecutors, attorneys, court staff and corrections officers.
As in Iraq, the uneven record of promoting public security and the rule of
law in Afghanistan suggests other valuable lessons. There, the coalition
adopted a fragmented, lead donor approach that apportioned responsibility
for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) to Japan; for
counter-narcotics, to the UK; for training rank-and-file Afghan National
Police (ANP) and Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits, to the United
States; for training the ANP officer corps, to Germany; for training ANA offi-
cers, to France; and for reforming the justice sector, to Italy. The uneven
results of this patchwork framework reaffirmed the need for a holistic and inte-
grated approach to security and justice sector reform, to ensure that progress in
each of these spheres works in coherent, parallel, and mutually reinforcing
ways. Like Iraq, the Afghan experience provides a cautionary lesson about
the risks of a monomaniacal focus on generating warm bodies to fill oper-
ational roles and a concomitant lack of attention to the long-term institution
building, professionalism and democratic accountability that are critical to
ensuring that the provision of order by security services occurs in the context
of the rule of law and justice.
As the United States improves its own ability to conduct policing and rule-of-
law operations, it must also consider how these national initiatives should fit into
a larger multilateral picture. Following the High-Level Summit of September
2005, the UN took tentative steps to create a new Standing Police Capacity, as
well as a Rule of Law division within the Department of Peacekeeping Oper-
ations. And yet the UN still scrounges to recruit qualified police and rule-of-law
experts from member states to staff each new operation. The United States
might wish to take a page from one of its closest allies, Australia, which has
created an innovative and efficient mechanism the International Deployment
Group to make police available for multinational peace operations.

Room for Improvement

This review of recent trends suggests several areas where the United States needs
to take remedial steps in its approach to and preparation for peace operations.
144 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

Improve Planning. The experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq revealed severe

deficiencies in the capacity of the government to plan for post-conflict stabiliz-
ation and reconstruction operations, as well as the need for integrated mechan-
isms for joint planning between civilian agencies and the military. Making these
changes will require overcoming some differences in institutional culture.
Within the State Department, for example, most of the planning that now
occurs is ad hoc and conceptual, intended to develop a common understanding
of the objective itself rather than provide a road map detailing how to get
there. Similarly, while USAID possesses pockets of experience in supervising the
implementation of programmes and projects, that agency has largely devolved
into a contracting shop that lacks strong technical expertise and planning capa-
bilities. By contrast, a culture of operational planning permeates the military,
focusing on how to meld overall strategy, doctrine, resources, and logistics into
a coherent effort to get the job done. Achieving greater policy coherence requires
bridging these civilian and military planning cultures, so that the strategic deter-
mination of overall objectives, informed by a sophisticated understanding of local
political and cultural environments, is accompanied by a rigorous operational
planning ethos, including regular testing, honing and correction of plans
through gaming, training and exercises. The government must also become com-
mitted to regular, joint civilian military planning whenever there is a prospect
that forces may be deployed in armed intervention, complex emergencies or
peace operations. Under standard practice, civilian agency input to military plan-
ning (where it has been provided) has been limited to the post-conflict stage. This
has proved problematic, as decisions in the run-up to and conduct of military
operations invariably shape the subsequent realization of post-war political, econ-
omic, and other objectives in the affected country. Henceforth, the United States
should incorporate civilian agency inputs into all phases of its war planning.
Along these lines, the S/CRS office is working with the militarys Joint Forces
Command (JFCOM) to develop a common doctrine for civilian military plan-
ning and conduct of stabilization and reconstruction operations, as well as on pro-
cedures to deploy civilian agency representatives to the relevant regional
combatant command in anticipation of such operations.
Clarify Interagency Roles. Ensuring more coherent policies towards war-torn
states will require the NSC to become far more assertive in coordinating intera-
gency involvement in peace operations and post-conflict reconstruction. The S/
CRS experience confirms that it is difficult if not impossible to coordinate the
entire government from a single agency, even one that draws staff from multiple
departments. It is even more challenging when the office has not been empowered
within its own department, much less provided with the financial resources
needed to command respect within the government as a credible leader capable
of getting things done. The weak interagency position of S/CRS was reinforced
by the decision in March 2007 to designate the S/CRS coordinator as the State
Departments Deputy Director of Foreign Assistance. While that step usefully
associated the office with aid resources, it paradoxically weakened its claim to
coordinate interagency policymaking on stabilization and reconstruction oper-
ations. The result has been a vacuum of interagency authority that can be filled
A RETURN TO REALISM? 145
only by the NSC, the sole entity with clear presidential authority to direct and
coordinate all executive branch departments. Besides leading interagency task
forces with S/CRS, the NSC should help that office develop a doctrine that
defines roles and responsibilities across agencies, military and civilian alike, as
well as the objectives in any prospective post-conflict effort.
Improve Coherence in the Field. Clearer leadership in Washington must be
complemented by clear roles and responsibilities for agencies in the field. In peace-
time, the structure of authority is fairly straightforward. All personnel fall under
the jurisdiction of the ambassador in his capacity as the head of the country
team. Things get more complicated during military operations, however, as mili-
tary commanders in the affected state report back through the National
Command Authority outside the ambassadorial chain of command. Where dis-
agreements arise, there is no clear means to adjudicate their differences. The
executive branch, with support from Congress, must refine interagency doctrine,
clarifying lines and phases of military and civilian authority in the immediate
aftermath of major combat operations.
Budget for the Mission Set. Although the Bush administration declared failed
and failing states to be a primary strategic challenge and embraced post-conflict
operations as a key element of the countrys global engagement, it has failed to put
its money where its mouth was. Despite a significant increase in total foreign aid
during the past several years, the federal budget remains heavily skewed toward
military expenditure, short-changing critical civilian investment in nation-
building. This misalignment in resources has potentially pernicious implications
for global engagement and the US ability to address the structural sources
of weakness in fragile, failed, and war-torn states. Beyond exaggerating the
Pentagons position in the nations national security architecture, it deprives
civilian agencies of the resources they need to build up their own technical exper-
tise, respond to unforeseen contingencies, and provide critical aid to such states.
A clear case in point is the inability of the S/CRS office, over several years, to
secure from Congress a modest US$100 million conflict response fund. Budgetary
allocations in 2007 left the United States well resourced to fight wars, but not to
address the root causes of political instability and state failure in the developing
world, as well as leading to an over-reliance on soldiers to conduct post-conflict
activities, from policing to infrastructure, that should more appropriately be
done by civilian agencies and actors.23 Since 9/11, the Pentagon has emerged
as an enormous provider of economic, humanitarian, security and counter-
terrorism assistance, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in dozens of
African countries. The massive capabilities of the Pentagon exercise a constant
gravitational pull, tugging away at civilian leadership of foreign policy.
Develop Civilian Surge Capabilities. Despite the pressing needs demonstrated
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has made only meagre progress in
developing a supply of qualified civilian personnel who can be deployed rapidly
to conflict and post-conflict settings in sufficient numbers and with relevant
skills to make a tangible difference on the ground. In 2005, the State Department
envisaged creating a 100-person Active Response Corps (ARC), available for
immediate deployment, backed by a 500-person reserve available within several
146 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

months. But the slow pace at which these capabilities have been created with
only 33 members of the ARC budgeted for fiscal year 2008 (FY08) and the full
reserve not formed until 2011 at the very earliest raises fundamental questions
about whether the diplomatic corps can rise to the operational challenges of post-
conflict reconstruction. Despite the rhetoric of transformational diplomacy, the
State Department has struggled to staff more than a modest number of civilian
slots in provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a gap is
likely to be filled only if the incentive structures of career promotion are
changed to reward preferentially service in hardship environments and relevant
technical skills, as well as joint service across agencies.
Finally, the United States has made little headway in developing a Civilian
Reserve from the wider citizenry. President Bush mentioned this goal in his
State of the Union Address in January 2007, but his FY08 budget did not
include any line for this item. Although both houses of Congress subsequently
included $50 million for the Civilian Reserve in their mark-up of the 2007 sup-
plemental budget for Iraq, the ultimate fate of this provision was uncertain as
of November 2007. If this pattern persists, pressure will continue to grow for
the Pentagon to build up its own cadre of civilians capable of fulfilling this
expeditionary mission.

Reversion to the Mean

Over the past decade and a half, the trajectory of US attitudes to peace operations
has fluctuated from naive enthusiasm to unwarranted dismissal to grudging recog-
nition that some degree of US involvement in nation-building is unavoidable and
that a more sophisticated approach to preparing, planning, and mobilizing is
needed for these missions. In parallel, there is now broad bipartisan recognition
that the UN and regional organizations, whatever their defects, have an important,
instrumental value in enlarging US policy options and sharing burdens in
crises where inaction is intolerable but where the United States has no wish to
act and bear all the costs and risks on its own.
At the same time, the underlying sources of US ambivalence towards multilat-
eral cooperation including the nations massive power, its sovereignty-minded
political culture, and its fractious and domestically minded legislative branch
remain, suggesting that its attitude toward multinational nation-building efforts
will continue to be selective and guarded. In addition, the long and painful with-
drawal from Iraq will inevitably reduce the American publics already minimal
appetite for nation-building, placing constraints on the size and ambitions of
any future operations. The Bush administration was thus in the ironic position
of having embraced a new set of doctrines and institutions, and begun to build
new capabilities, for a mission that holds little attraction to the electorate and
(increasingly) its political servants in Congress.
The new administration, regardless of party, is likely to pay greater rhetorical
homage to multilateralism and the UN, while seeking to preserve policy auton-
omy, minimize US obligations, and guard against suffering casualties. This will
represent not retrenchment so much as a sober and pragmatic multilateralism,
A RETURN TO REALISM? 147
removed from both the self-righteous fantasies of neoconservatism and the
utopian dreams of progressive humanitarian interventionists.

NOTES

1. James Dobbins, Americas Role in Nation-Building from Germany to Iraq, Survival, Vol.45,
No.4, 2003 04, pp.87109; The UNs Role in Nation-Building from the Belgian Congo to
Iraq, Survival, Vol.46, No.4, 2004 05, pp.81102.
2. Stewart Patrick, Multilateralism and Its Discontents: The Causes and Consequences of American
Ambivalence, in Patrick and Shepard Forman (eds), Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy:
Ambivalent Engagement, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002, pp. 144.
3. The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Sept. 2002.
4. Rumsfeld interview with Larry King, CNN, 5 Dec. 2001 (available at: www.defenselink.mil/tran-
scripts/2001/t12062001_t1205sd.html); Stewart Patrick, The Mission Determines the
Coalition: The United States and Multilateral Cooperation after 9/11, in Shepard Forman
and Bruce Jones (eds), Cooperating for Peace and Security: The Evolution of Multilateral Security
Institutions since the End of the Cold War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
2008.
5. Barnett Rubin, Constructing Sovereignty for Security, Survival, Vol.47, No.4, 2005 06,
pp. 93106.
6. Unidentified administration official, cited in Elizabeth Becker, US Plans to Run Iraq Itself,
New York Times, 25 Mar. 2003.
7. Larry Diamond, What Went Wrong in Iraq, Foreign Affairs, Vol.83, No.5, Sept./Oct. 2004,
pp.34 56.
8. S/Res/1546 (2004) (at: www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions04.html).
9. Edith M. Lederer, UN Steps Toward Greater Role in Iraq, Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2007;
Zalmay Khalilzad, Why the United Nations Belongs in Iraq, New York Times, 10 July 2007.
10. Walter Pincus, U.S. Africa Command Brings New Concerns, Washington Post, 28 May 2007,
p.A13.
11. See, inter alia, James Fallows, Blind into Baghdad, Atlantic Monthly, Jan.Feb. 2004; George
Packer, The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005;
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin,
2006; and Nora Bensahel, Mission Not Accomplished: What Went Wrong with Iraqi Recon-
struction, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.29, No.3, June 2006, pp.45373.
12. Ashraf Ghani, comments at Center for Strategic and International Studies conference on the pro-
posed UN Peacebuilding Commission, March 2005.
13. This section draws on Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown, Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts?
Assessing Whole of Government Approaches to Fragile States, New York: International Peace
Academy, 2007, pp.3841.
14. National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-44, Management of Interagency Efforts Con-
cerning Reconstruction and Stabilization, 7 Dec. 2005 (at: www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/
nspd-44.html).
15. The following paragraphs draw on Stewart Patrick, The U.S. Response to Precarious States: Ten-
tative Progress and Remaining Obstacles to Coherence, in Stefani Weiss (ed.), International
Responses to Precarious States: A Comparative Analysis of International Strategies with Rec-
ommendations for Action by European Institutions and European Member States, Gutersloh,
Germany: Bertelsmann Foundation, forthcoming 2008.
16. Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study on Transition to and from Hostilities, Office of the
Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics, Department of Defense,
Dec. 2004 (at: www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-12-DSB_SS_Report_Final.pdf).
17. Hans Binnendijk and Stuart E. Johnson (eds), Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction
Operations, Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2004.
18. Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Tran-
sition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations, 28 Nov. 2005 (at: www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/
corres/pdf/300005p.pdf).
19. Ibid.
20. Personal communications with NSC officials, 2003. A major impetus behind NSC thinking was
the work of Robert M. Perito and his colleagues at the United States Institute of Peace.
148 INTERNAT IONAL PEACEKEEPING

21. Robert M. Perito, Where Is the Lone Ranger Now That We Need Him? Americas Search for a
Post-Conflict Stability Force, Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2004, especially Brcko:
SFOR vs. Rent-a-Mob, pp.9 32.
22. See Perito, Building Civilian Capacity for U.S. Stability Operations: The Rule of Law Com-
ponent, Special Report 118, Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, April 2004, pp.116 (at:
http://usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr118.pdf).
23. Miriam Pemberton and Lawrence Korb (eds), Report of the Task Force on a Unified Security
Budget for the United States, FY2008, Washington, DC: Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for
Policy Studies, 2007 (at: www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/0704unifiedsecuritybudget.pdf).