U.S. experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that improving U.S. capacity for stabilization and reconstruction operations is critical to national security. To help craft a way ahead, the authors provide an overview of the requirements posed by stabilization and reconstruction operations and recommend ways to improve U.S. capacity to meet these needs.
Five years into the ongoing and tragic conflict, the paper analyzes how Syria’s economy and its people have been affected and outlines the challenges in rebuilding the economy. With extreme limitations on information, the findings of the paper are subject to an extraordinary degree of uncertainty. The key messages are: (1) that the devastating civil war has set the country back decades in terms of economic, social and human development. Syria’s GDP today is less than half of what it was before the war started and it could take two decades or more for Syria to return to its pre-conflict GDP levels; and that (2) while reconstructing damaged physical infrastructure will be a monumental task, rebuilding Syria’s human and social capital will be an even greater and lasting challenge.
In 2004-2006, the U.S. government acted to revise the way that the planning and implementation of Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations are conducted. The primary emphasis of the changes was on ensuring a common U.S. strategy rather than a collection of individual departmental and agency efforts and on mobilizing and involving all available U.S. government assets in the effort. The proximate reason for the policy shift stems from the exposing of gaps in the U.S. ability to administer Afghanistan and Iraq after the U.S.-led ousters of the Taliban and Ba'athist regimes. But the effort to create U.S. government capabilities to conduct SSTR operations in a more unified and coherent fashion rests on the deeper conviction that, as part of the U.S. strategy to deal with transnational terrorist groups, the United States must have the capabilities to increase the governance capacities of weak states, reduce the drivers of and catalysts to conflict, and assist in peacebuilding at all stages of pre- or post-conflict transformation. According to the Joint Operating Concept for Military Support to SSTR operations, these operations are civilian-led and conducted and coordinated with the involvement of all the available resources of the U.S. government (military and civilian), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and international partners. Although military assets are an essential component of many SSTR operations, specific military goals and objectives are only a portion of the larger SSTR operation.
"The pendulum regarding the level of U.S. military participation in stabilization efforts has swung dramatically since 2001, from a low level of preparation and participation in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq operations in 2003, to widespread stabilization activities costing billions of dollars in the ensuing years, to significantly scaled-back forces and resources devoted to stabilization in recent years. To remedy the initial lack of preparation, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued a directive with guidance on stabilization requirements in 2005 and then updated it with more expansive requirements in 2009. This report supports DoD efforts to update this guidance by assessing the accumulated experience of the past 17 years and evaluating the appropriate roles for the U.S. military and its ability to execute them in conjunction with interagency and other key partners. Without stabilization, successful warfighting often does not produce desired political outcomes. Yet warfighters are not the most capable actors for many stabilization tasks. Therefore, the authors recommend shifting DoD guidance on stabilization away from requiring high levels of proficiency in a large number of tasks to emphasizing three key roles for DoD: prioritizing security tasks; providing support to other actors performing stability functions; and performing crosscutting informational, planning, coordination, and physical support roles."--Publisher's description
This edited volume offers a first thorough review of peacekeeping theory and reality in contemporary contexts, and attempts to align the two to help inform practice.
This study provides a brief overview of the US military?s involvement in stability operations and draws out the salient patterns and recurring themes that can be derived from those experiences. It is hoped that a presentation and critical analysis of the historical record will assist today?s Army in its attempts, now well under way, to reassess its long-standing attitudes toward stability operations and the role it should play in them. The US military?s experience in the conduct of stability operations prior to the Global War on Terrorism can be divided chronologically into four periods: the country?s first century (1789-1898); the?Small Wars? experience (1898-1940)7; the Cold War (1945-1990); and the post-Cold War decade (1991-2001). Reference will be made to a group of 28 representative case studies. The list of these case studies can be found at appendix A; synopses of the cases, written by members of the Combat Studies Institute, are located in appendix B.
If Iraq and the United States are to win the war in any meaningful and lasting sense, they must translate the Strategic Agreement they signed in November 2008 into a lasting and functional strategic partnership. In the process, the United States must put Iraq firmly in the lead, but sustain the kind of aid and advice that will help Iraq make further progress in political accommodation, the quality of governance, economic development, and security. The CSIS Burke Chair in Strategy conducted a detailed analysis of the current situation in Iraq, the challenges Iraq faces, and the actions the United States needs to take to help Iraq meet those challenges. Its report provides a detailed risk assessment of current and potential levels of violence in Iraq. It addresses the levels of political accommodation and stability and the problems Iraq still faces in the aftermath of the national election. It also addresses the opportunities and problems in developing Iraq's petroleum sector; investment and development issues in other sectors, the problems in the Iraqi budget forecasts, and progress in Iraqi reconstruction. It evaluates the need for continued economic aid and advice and describes U.S. options for extending such assistance. The concluding section examines progress in creating Iraqi military and police forces. It examines the role the United States can play in helping Iraq further develop such forces and analyzes what a strategic partnership, based on the Strategic Agreement, should mean.
This paper clearly shows the immediate relevancy of historical study to current events. One of the most common criticisms of the U.S. plan to invade Iraq in 2003 is that too few troops were used. The argument often fails to satisfy anyone for there is no standard against which to judge. A figure of 20 troops per 1000 of the local population is often mentioned as the standard, but as McGrath shows, that figure was arrived at with some questionable assumptions. By analyzing seven military operations from the last 100 years, he arrives at an average number of military forces per 1000 of the population that have been employed in what would generally be considered successful military campaigns. He also points out a variety of important factors affecting those numbers-from geography to local forces employed to supplement soldiers on the battlefield, to the use of contractors-among others.
The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies--Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.
