Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations: Stability from the Sea (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)

Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations

This edited volume explores Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations (SSTR), highlighting the challenges and opportunities they create for the U.S. Navy. The book argues that SSTR operations are challenging because they create new missions and basing modes, and signal a return to traditional naval methods of operation. Mission accomplishment requires collaboration with a wide range of actors representing governmental, non-governmental, and commercial organizations, which often creates politically and bureaucratically charged issues for those involved. However, while from a traditional warfighting perspective stability operations might be viewed as having little to do with preparing for high-intensity conventional combat, these kinds of operations in fact correspond to traditional missions related to diplomacy, engagement, maritime domain awareness, piracy and smuggling, and intervention to quell civil disturbances. SSTR operations can therefore be depicted as a return to traditional naval operations, albeit operations that might not be universally welcomed in all quarters. This book will be of great interest to students of naval policy, strategic studies, peacekeeping and international relations in general. James J. Wirtz is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. Jeffrey A. Larsen is a senior scientist with Science Applications International Corporation, president of Larsen Consulting Group in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and an Adjunct Professor of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Cass series: Naval policy and history Series Editor: Geoffrey Till ISSN 1366–9478

This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations. It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as well as reprints of classic works. 1 Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914 Milan N. Vego

7 The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940 Robert Mallett

2 Far-flung Lines Studies in imperial defence in honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy

8 The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950 Edited by Greg Kennedy

3 Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars Rear Admiral Raja Menon 4 The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947 Chris Madsen 5 Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas Milan N. Vego 6 The Pen and Ink Sailor Charles Middleton and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813 John E. Talbott

9 Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia Geo-strategic goals, policies and prospects Duk-Ki Kim 10 Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean Sea Past, present and future Edited by John B. Hattendorf 11 Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet Soviet naval strategy and shipbuilding programmes, 1935–1953 Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov

12 Imperial Defence, 1868–1887 Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler 13 Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien 14 The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons Richard Moore 15 The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period An operational perspective Joseph Moretz 16 Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power Thomas M. Kane 17 Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939 George Franklin 18 Britain, France and the Naval Arms Trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939 Grand strategy and failure Donald Stoker 19 Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century An international perspective Edited by Christopher Bell and Bruce Elleman 20 The Road to Oran Anglo-French naval relations, September 1939–July 1940 David Brown

21 The Secret War against Sweden US and British submarine deception and political control in the 1980s Ola Tunander 22 Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East, 1919–1939 Planning for a war against Japan Andrew Field 23 Seapower A guide for the twenty-first century Geoffrey Till 24 Britain’s Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914–1919 Eric W. Osborne 25 A Life of Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Cunningham A twentieth-century naval leader Michael Simpson 26 Navies in Northern Waters, 1721–2000 Edited by Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen 27 German Naval Strategy, 1856–1888 Forerunners to Tirpitz David Olivier 28 British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 1900–2000 Influences and actions Edited by Greg Kennedy 29 The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic, 1921–1940 Gunnar Aselius

30 The Royal Navy, 1930–1990 Innovation and defence Edited by Richard Harding 31 The Royal Navy and Maritime Power in the Twentieth Century Edited by Ian Speller 32 Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland The question of fire control John Brooks 33 Greek Naval Strategy and Policy, 1910–1919 Zisis Fotakis 34 Naval Blockades and Seapower Strategies and counter-strategies, 1805–2005 Edited by Bruce A. Elleman and Sarah C.M. Paine 35 The Pacific Campaign in World War II From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal William Bruce Johnson 36 Anti-submarine Warfare in World War I British naval aviation and the defeat of the U-boats John J. Abbatiello 37 The Royal Navy and AntiSubmarine Warfare, 1944–49 Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones

38 The Development of British Naval Thinking Essays in memory of Bryan Ranft Edited by Geoffrey Till 39 Educating the Royal Navy 18th and 19th century education for officers H.W. Dickinson 40 Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century The turn to Mahan James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara 41 Naval Coalition Warfare From the Napoleonic War to Operation Iraqi Freedom Edited by Bruce A. Elleman and S.C.M. Paine 42 Operational Warfare at Sea Theory and practice Milan Vego 43 Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations Stability from the sea Edited by James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen

Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations Stability from the sea

Edited by James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2009 Selection and editorial matter, James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Naval peacekeeping and humanitarian operations : stability from the sea / edited by James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen. p. cm. – (Naval policy and history ; 43) 1. Peacekeeping forces, American. 2. United States. Navy. 3. Humanitarian intervention. I. Wirtz, James J., 1958– II. Larsen, Jeffrey Arthur, 1954– JZ6374.N38 2009 359.4–dc22 2008021755 ISBN 0-203-88723-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-46623-7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88723-9 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-46623-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-88723-3 (ebk)

Contents

List of illustrations About the contributors Preface

ix x xiii

JAMES J. WIRTZ AND JEFFREY A. LARSEN

1 Introduction

1

JAMES J. WIRTZ

PART I

Background 2 Stability operations: the view from afloat

11 13

DANIEL MORAN

3 SSTR as history: the British Royal Navy experience, 1815–1930

26

JOHN FERRIS

4 International law and stability operations

42

THEO FARRELL

PART II

Service models 5 Beyond protecting the land and the sea: the role of the U.S. Navy in reconstruction JESSICA PIOMBO AND MICHAEL MALLEY

59

61

viii

Contents

6 Blue water and muddy deck shoes: U.S. Navy support to the U.S. Marine Corps in SSTR operations

81

TERRY TERRIFF

PART III

Cases: implementing stability operations 7 An examination of maritime peace support operations

95 97

ADAM B. SIEGEL

8 Passing the trident: the role of naval international programs in SSTR operations

110

SAM J. TANGREDI

9 Security and stability on the inland waterways: naval riverine forces

129

JOHN W. STOLZE

10 Civil–military teams: the PRT model in Afghanistan

141

NICHOLAS TOMB

11 A small intervention: lessons from Liberia 2003

153

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

PART IV

Conclusion

171

12 Conclusion

173

JEFFREY A. LARSEN

Appendix: historical precedents for naval involvement in peace support operations and multinational SSTR operations, 1890–2001

181

ADAM B. SIEGEL

Index

185

Illustrations

Figures 2.1 5.1 5.2 7.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7

Spectrum of conflict (c.1990) State versus defense capabilities in stabilization activities Mapping USN capabilities into sectors of reconstruction activities Conflict spectrum and some naval PSO tasks PRT Contributing countries and geographical locations Typical PRT organizational structure NGO casualties in Afghanistan Two rebel groups converge on Monrovia in 2003 LURD rebels drive refugees into Monrovia Order of battle in Liberia, 2003 JTF Liberia – force structure Humanitarian access to rural Liberia via Monrovia Timeline of 2003 crisis JTF Liberia’s objectives and tactics

14 65 72 99 143 145 147 156 157 158 158 160 161 162

Tables 8.1 SSTR phases and international programs 10.1 Coalition fatalities in operation enduring freedom

120 149

Contributors

Theo Farrell is a Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Associate Editor of Security Studies. His recent books include International Law and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and The Norms of War (Lynne Rienner, 2005). He has a Ph.D. in politics from Bristol University. John Ferris is a Professor of History at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The British Army and Signals Intelligence in the First World War (Army Record Society, 1992), A World History of Warfare (Nebraska University Press, 2002), with Criston Archer, Holger Herwig, and Tim Travers, and Intelligence and Strategy, Selected Essays (Routledge, 2005). He holds a Ph.D. in war studies from King’s College, London. Alan J. Kuperman is an Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. He is author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (Brookings, 2001) and co-editor of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War (Routledge, 2006). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jeffrey A. Larsen is president of Larsen Consulting Group and a senior scientist with Science Applications International Corporation in Colorado Springs. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of International Studies at the University of Denver and Northwestern University. He is the editor of Arms Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment (Lynne Rienner, 2002) and co-editor, with Jim Wirtz, of Nuclear Transformation: The New U.S. Nuclear Strategy (Palgrave, 2005). He holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University. Michael Malley is an Assistant Professor and Academic Associate for Regional Security Studies in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on regime change, decentralization, and local politics in Indonesia. His recent work focuses on democratization and decentralization and the prospects for defense cooperation and regional security in South-

Contributors

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east Asia. Prior to NPS he taught at Ohio University. Malley earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Daniel Moran is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. His current projects include an edited volume (with James Russell) on Energy Security and Global Politics: The Militarization of Resource Management (Routledge) and an English edition of Carl von Clausewitz’s History of the Campaign of 1815 (Basic Books), coedited with Christopher Bassford and Greg Pedlow. Jessica Piombo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. She is co-editor, with Karen Guttieri, of Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2007) and Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade (with Lia Nijzink) (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). She is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for African Studies, and has been a research associate at the Centre for Social Science Research and the African Studies Centre of the University of Cape Town. She holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Adam B. Siegel is a Washington-based analyst who has worked on issues of naval force engagement in operations other than war, low-intensity conflict, and stability, support, transition, and reconstruction operations for several decades. As a civilian analyst he has deployed in support of military forces in operations in Haiti (Uphold Democracy, 1994), Bosnia (Operations Joint Guard and Joint Endeavor, 1996–7), and Kosovo (Operations Allied Force and Shining Harbor, 1999). John W. Stolze is an active duty Marine officer on assignment in Southwest Asia. He recently completed his masters degree in national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Sam J. Tangredi, Captain, U.S. Navy, is the first Director of Strategic Planning and Business Development for the Navy International Programs Office. Tangredi has been associated with the Naval Postgraduate School, University of Southern California, Hoover Institution, National Defense University, and George Washington University. He is the author of All Possible Wars (National Defense University Press, 2000), editor of Globalization and Maritime Power (National Defense University Press, 2002), and winner of the U.S. Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement. Terry Terriff is Reader in International Security in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Visiting Academic Lecturer at the NATO School in Germany. He is a coeditor of Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: The Fourth Generation Warfare Debate (2007). He holds a doctorate in international studies from King’s College, London.

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Contributors

Nicholas Tomb is a Program Coordinator at the Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Global Majority, and teaches American government at Monterey Peninsula College. He holds an M.A. from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. James J. Wirtz is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He has published extensively in the fields of strategic studies, intelligence, deterrence theory, international relations and U.S. defense policy. He is co-editor of Globalization and WMD Proliferation: Terrorism (Routledge, 2008). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Preface

This volume draws on papers and presentations that were initially delivered at a workshop, entitled “Stability, Security, Transition, Reconstruction: Challenges for the U.S. Navy” that was held on 13–14 September 2006 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The conference was sponsored and organized by the Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies (CSRS). We would especially like to thank CSRS Director Matt Vaccaro for drawing our attention to the important issues raised by these emerging naval operations and Rich Hoffmann, Director of the Center for Civil–Military Relations at the Naval Postgraduate School, for his support. In addition to our chapter authors, several individuals also contributed to our Monterey workshop. Thomas G. Mahnken, Karen Guttieri, Matt Zahn, CDR Stephen Maronick, USN, and RADM Philip H. Cullom, USN gave presentations or commentary that greatly contributed to our understanding of the issues and challenges inherent in Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations. Last but not least, we thank Andrew Humphrys, our editor at Routledge, and Emily Kindleysides, his talented and patient assistant, for their support. James J. Wirtz Jeffrey A. Larsen

1

Introduction James J. Wirtz

For nearly two decades, the United States Navy has faced incentives to abandon its preoccupation with potential operations against a rival blue-water fleet. The collapse of the Soviet Union terminated the open ocean naval threat, ending the need to gain command of the sea from hostile forces. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact also meant the immediate obsolescence of existing naval strategy.1 The requirement to maintain sea lines of communication to flow men and material to Europe, and the Maritime Strategy, which was intended to alter Soviet strategic calculations, were geared toward influencing the crucial land battle along what was known as the Central Front.2 Navy strategists would now have to work harder to explain the ongoing relevance of the fleet to U.S. national security. Yet, if the end of the Soviet Union made the most obvious justification for a large navy obsolete, it virtually guaranteed that the U.S. Navy would have command of the sea for the foreseeable future. As the sole remaining superpower, the United States became an unrivaled global maritime power, a position it retains today. This strategic revolution was soon followed by an information revolution as the Internet and increases in computational power transformed civil society and boosted global economic growth. The information revolution also seemed to render obsolete traditional operations and weapons systems, leading many observers to claim that technological, institutional and doctrinal change would ultimately culminate in a so-called revolution in military affairs.3 These developments, however, were not all bad from the Navy’s perspective. Even Edward Luttwak, who often criticized the Maritime Strategy as an extravagantly expensive way to move additional airpower to Europe, gave the Navy its due when it came to smaller-scale contingencies and presence missions: The strategic worth of the Navy, especially its core of aircraft carriers and their escorts, increases as conflict intensity diminishes. At one extreme, the carriers would be almost entirely useless in an all-out nuclear war. At the other extreme, they are the best of all military instruments for noncombat “showing the flag” visitations.4 The combination of maritime dominance, globalization, and the increasing relevance of the “noncombat” contingencies mentioned by Luttwak could, in fact,

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highlight the importance of the U.S. Navy in national defense.5 For believers in the ideas of Mahan, the U.S. Navy was poised to police a global economy that relied on the seas for transportation. The Navy could protect the commerce of friends and deny the benefits of globalization to America’s foes. The Navy also was right-sized for likely threats; a carrier battle group or expeditionary strike group could deal with most contingencies on its own. If need be, a carrier battle group could act as a quick reaction force to contain the conflict, enabling the movement of the bulk of U.S armed forces that would follow in its wake. In the age of globalization, especially given the absence of a “continental” peercompetitor, the Navy was poised to undertake the Mahanian vision of fostering international trade and the maritime commerce that benefited the economies of the United States and its allies. The Navy might not be able to deter the outbreak of all conflict, but it could offer a reasonable guarantee that violence could be quickly contained, reassuring the international business community that the future looked promising for uninterrupted international trade and investment. Senior U.S. Navy officers, however, found this Mahanian vision of the renewed importance of the Navy somewhat unsettling. Navy leaders seemed to believe that the image of sailors slowly plying the oceans in steel vessels, dissuading the emergence of military competitors and protecting against the somewhat intangible threats of instability, piracy, or threats to commodities (e.g., oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz), was antiquated. They seemed to worry that in a digital age, when business models drawn from Silicon Valley’s hightech sectors dominated imaginations, it would be impossible to capture the public’s interest, especially for a service that kept time like John Paul Jones. Despite the realities of world trade – business abhors uncertainty and most commerce moves by sea – they feared that Mahanian concepts appeared out of date. A variety of studies were launched to demonstrate how forward-deployed naval forces contributed to U.S. political and economic objectives, making the Navy a guardian of stability that accelerated globalization.6 Nevertheless, in the absence of a blue-water threat, senior U.S. Navy officers remained preoccupied with explaining the fundamental relevance of the Navy to U.S. national security. Bolstering global commerce seemed a weak justification for a service that Navy officers feared was often out of sight and out of mind when it came to the U.S. public and its elected officials.

Increasing relevance after 9/11 Doubts about the relevance of the Navy were exacerbated in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States. As events would play out, the Navy delivered on a decade’s worth of promises. Navy carrier battle groups and Marine amphibious ready groups quickly took the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But it was not at all clear to senior officers how the Navy could contribute directly to the Global War on Terror, especially against terrorist cells that had blended into urban centers around the globe. Navy strategists were able to turn away calls to pull Naval forces closer to home, and instead opted to

Introduction

3

prepare them to project force at great distances inland and to improve the ability of the Navy to monitor global maritime activity. The Navy’s Global Concept of Operations, often referred to as Global CONOPS, was the result: it divided the Navy into smaller operating packages, increasing its ability to conduct offensive operations against targets in more locations around the world simultaneously, while also offering a way to monitor developments across the world’s important trade routes.7 Because the Navy continues to rely on ships that were designed primarily for Cold War contingencies, this change in operations actually represented a serious effort on the part of the Navy to meet the terrorist challenge. Even Navy officers decided new vessels or training might be required to undertake the Global War on Terror, it might take decades before new weapons systems and “operators” became available. The war on terror, however, has demonstrated that offensive operations against known and suspected terrorists are just one aspect of the U.S. effort to restore stability to troubled regions. The war against al Qaeda, the effort to bring stability to Iraq and rebuild its government and society, the threat of natural disasters, and other civil disturbances have created a demand for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations, which will again force the Navy to focus on non-traditional types of missions intended to influence events ashore. The immediate goal for these types of operations is to provide the local populace with security, restore essential services, and meet humanitarian needs. The long-term goal is to foster the emergence of an indigenous capacity for securing essential services, a viable market economy, rule of law, democratic institutions, and a robust civil society. Although stability operations are best performed by shore-based local, foreign, or U.S. government and private organizations that specialize in these activities, the U.S. Navy needs to prepare to establish and maintain order to support and even undertake these operations in the absence of adequate civilian alternatives. Given its capability to move personnel and equipment ashore in remote areas lacking infrastructure or in insecure areas devastated by war or natural disasters, it is clear that there is an important operational niche that can be filled by U.S. naval forces. The prompt, effective, and highly publicized U.S. Navy response to the damage caused by the December 2004 Southeast Asian earthquake and ensuing tsunami highlighted the important contribution made by maritime relief operations in both natural and man-made disasters.8 In fact, there already is an expectation that the Navy’s amphibious landing and support ships – vessels outfitted with flight decks, well-decks, and cargo-handling equipment – should be prepared to sortie quickly or abandon “normal” operations to rush to the scene of some natural disaster. The increasing demand for a Navy contribution to Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations is thus the latest chapter in what has been a tumultuous quarter-century. To their credit, U.S. Navy officers have recognized the increasing demand for these “non-traditional” missions. A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, an October 2007 Navy–Marine–Coast Guard statement, highlighted the importance of creating the human capital, in the form

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of area studies, language expertise, and diplomatic relationships, to facilitate humanitarian assistance and disaster response. According to the maritime services strategic concept, we will continue to mitigate human suffering as the vanguard of interagency and multinational efforts, both in a deliberate, proactive fashion and in response to crises. Human suffering moves us to act, and the expeditionary character of maritime forces uniquely positions them to provide assistance. 9 Stability operations, however, create a special challenge because they call for more than just modest changes in ship deployments and operations. Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations might in fact call for new capabilities and expertise that might have to come at the expense of the ships and career paths that are currently favored by U.S. Navy officers. Should the Navy begin to make the long-term capital and personnel investments needed to bolster its ability to conduct stability operations in the future?

Stability operations from the sea Stability operations are a far cry from the warfighting demands created by bluewater threats, but they are a logical progression of worldwide trends set in motion since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead of concentrating for a fleet engagement against a peer competitor, U.S. naval assets are now dispersed across the world’s oceans so that they can respond to more numerous, but less intensive threats to the interests of the United States and its friends and allies. Increasingly, these threats do not take the form of direct combat operations against state and non-state actors, but instead focus on operations intended to mitigate the impact of man-made and natural disasters on local populations. Stability operations are conducted to help establish order that advances U.S. interests and values by aiding local civil authorities as they reconstitute basic services and rule of law in affected territories. Stability operations return areas ravaged by war or natural disaster to civilian governance, presenting them from operating as bases for state and non-state actors. As history has shown, remote, ravaged areas can be used as staging grounds for terrorist activities, and recruiting grounds for foot soldiers in the political battle that animates the global war on terrorism. For many observers, Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations are not a sideshow in the struggle against al Qaeda; they are the main event that will eventually determine the course and outcome of the conflict. The U.S. Navy clearly has a role to play in this conflict and can contribute to “winning the peace” once high-intensity conventional combat operations are terminated. SSTR operations present the Navy with several challenges. First, stability operations involve complex programs intended to restore potentially all aspects of civil society and its associated infrastructure. And, in the case of the more impoverished areas of the planet, some of this social and physical infrastructure

Introduction

5

might actually have to be constructed from scratch. Programs might be directed at constructing or reconstituting various types of police and security forces, operating correctional facilities and judicial systems, and providing the basic governmental services needed to revitalize economic and social activity in a given area. They are also directed at empowering local citizens to take part in reconstructing their own communities, revitalizing economic activity, and rebuilding infrastructure that has often suffered from years of neglect. Although we take for granted supplies of clean water, working electric grids, telephones, and functional sewer systems, to say nothing of access to the Internet and international financial institutions, recent experience demonstrates that political and economic reform cannot move forward if individuals are locked in a desperate struggle for survival. Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations play a key part in denying operating areas to movements and individuals who seek to harm U.S. interests. Second, stability operations are not limited to a specific facet of the Navy or a specific type of operation. Preparations for stability operations can influence a whole range of decisions related to doctrine, organization, training, education, exercises, materiel procurement, personnel recruitment, promotion, and retention. Navy officers must prepare to not only conduct stability operations with their own forces but to find ways to help other countries build local security capacity quickly. Stability operations are thus prompting the Navy to forwarddeploy assets in regions of concern and to develop new operating methods and basing concepts. For example, Navy planners are proposing the development of global fleet stations, made up of shore and afloat assets that respond to local political and developmental demands in a culturally informed and agile manner without deploying the combat capability provided by carrier strike groups or expeditionary strike groups. A typical global fleet station might consist of a small number of afloat or ashore units comprised of individuals drawn from a combination of staff corps, joint, interagency, and coalition organizations. Private organizations would be invited to participate in station operations, but it is unlikely that non-governmental agencies would be willing to station personnel permanently at a military facility. Global fleet stations also can be used to support maritime domain awareness, global maritime security cooperation, and to build partnership capacity missions. Third, stability operations involve a host of governmental and nongovernmental organizations with competing programs, objectives, and constituencies. Navy commanders have to be prepared to work with various U.S. departments and agencies, foreign governments and security forces, global and regional international organizations, and U.S. and foreign non-governmental organizations. Private individuals, grassroots organizations, and commercial enterprises also can become heavily involved in stability operations. Because they will often be heavily engaged in a support role, Navy officers have to help build military–civilian teams from these disparate organizations to harness available capabilities to stabilize areas in what will undoubtedly be less than ideal circumstances. Given the range of activities involved in reconstituting civil

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society – ensuring security, fostering local governance structures, promoting bottom-up economic activity, and rebuilding infrastructure – relying on civilians might be the only practical way to retain the skills and expertise needed to undertake such demanding operations. Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations are challenging because they create new mission areas, new basing modes, and new methods of operation. Mission accomplishment also requires collaboration with a wide range of operators representing governmental, non-governmental, and commercial organizations. This collaboration is no easy task and often constitutes a politically and bureaucratically charged issue for those involved. Non-governmental organizations generally do not desire actual partnerships with military units or other state institutions. Instead, they tend to accept services from government providers on their own terms, which often stipulate a high degree of autonomy for the nongovernmental agency. This is especially the case where military units might be engaged in coercive operations, which just happens to be the type of operation the U.S. military is most often asked to perform. From a purely warfighting perspective, stability operations might be viewed as a sideshow that has little to do with preparing for high-intensity conventional combat. Seen from another perspective, however, these kinds of operations correspond to traditional naval missions related to diplomacy, engagement, maritime domain awareness, suppression of piracy and smuggling, and intervention ashore to quell civil disturbances. SSTR operations can be depicted as a return to more traditional naval operations, albeit operations that might not be universally welcomed in all quarters.

Institutional culture A host of recent national and U.S. Navy policy documents have highlighted the importance of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations in U.S. foreign and defense policy. Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, for instance, states that “stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support.”10 The 2006 Navy Concept of Operations also highlights the role of stability operations that may “involve providing humanitarian and civic assistance to the local populace . . . activities may include the provision of health care, construction of surface transportation systems, well drilling, construction of basic sanitation facilities, and rudimentary construction and repair of public facilities.”11 In 2007, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower highlighted the important role played by maritime forces as enablers of interagency and multilateral humanitarian response and disaster-relief operations.12 Joint Doctrine has been created to integrate the efforts of U.S. and allied units in the conduct of stability operations and to integrate stability operations into an overall campaign plan.13 A recent Defense Science Board Summer Study has also identified a host of organizational, management, planning, and personnel reforms that could be undertaken to better improve the ability of U.S. forces to undertake SSTR operations.14 Stability operations clearly are high on the U.S. defense policy agenda.

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7

Given the current importance of stability operations to national policymakers, and the Navy’s ability to contribute positively to this mission, one might expect that Navy officers would seize this opportunity to contribute to national security policy. The Navy has long had a tradition of independent action on the part of small-unit commanders. A ship at sea is an entity unto itself, and captains and crews have always been expected to exercise their own judgment when confronting unexpected contingencies. Whether confronting pirates in littoral waters, engaging in diplomatic exchanges with local dignitaries, or showing the flag during port calls, Navy officers were supposed to support U.S. foreign, defense, economic, and humanitarian policy abroad and to do so with only the broadest guidance in hand. Throughout its history, diplomatic, economic, and civil interaction was the primary mission of the U.S. Navy: the focus on bluewater engagements emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. By affording the opportunity for independent action by individual commanders and ships, stability operations fit with the diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian activity that is part of the Navy tradition. Independent action on the part of small-unit commanders corresponds to Navy officers’ commonly held image of the role of the ship’s captain at sea. Stability operations clearly hold a place in the U.S. Navy’s traditions and history and, for a service that looks towards its past as a guide to its future, stability operations can clearly be considered to represent a normal Navy mission.15 One aspect of the U.S. Navy’s institutional culture, however, has slowed the Navy’s response to Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations. The aircraft carrier, the capital ship of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, continues to exert an overwhelming influence on all aspects of U.S. Navy strategy and policy. Aircraft carriers can play a part in stability operations, but it is clear to all concerned that smaller warships, hospital ships, patrol craft, and even floating repair or supply platforms probably have a greater role to play in a most stability operations. Because the aviation community currently dominates Navy leadership positions, and because Navy operations themselves are dominated by the effort to stage carrier operations, which involve a multi-year cycle of maintenance, training, qualifications, and deployment, stability operations are seen as at most a passing fashion or, at worst, a dangerous distraction by the aviators who dominate the Navy. In the short term, stability operations take away resources that could be used to support carrier operations, the primary naval mission. Over the long term, SSTR operations will threaten the dominance of the aviation community, especially if they take on greater importance in Navy building programs, doctrine, and operations. Because Navy warships have an operational lifetime that can easily span the careers of several generations of officers, a slow but steady shift in procurement priorities can have a lasting impact on capabilities. A decision to change Navy procurement priorities today thus represents a long-term estimate of the nature of the future threat environment. Moreover, the decision to enhance the capability to undertake stability operations could shape all of the Navy’s shipbuilding priorities because the ships of a modern battle group are intended to provide

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interlocking and synergistic combat capabilities. Today’s cruisers and destroyers, for instance, are optimized to defend carrier battle groups against air attack; their land-attack, anti-surface, and anti-submarine capabilities are limited. Admittedly, there is no guarantee that Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations will constitute the core task for future Navy officers; there is always the chance that a blue-water naval threat will re-emerge toward the middle of this century. But the decision to maintain the current balance that exists between the traditional “battle fleet” and what amounts to the “auxiliary” vessels that are often engaged in stability operations would probably be the product of institutional inertia, not sound strategic assessment.

About the book The purpose of this volume is to explore Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that they create for the U.S. Navy. In Part I, our contributors explore the strategic setting for contemporary stability operations by placing them in their strategic, historical, and legal context. Dan Moran explores how navies can contribute to stability operations today, drawing upon the Royal Navy’s experience in Baltic operations in the aftermath of World War I. John Ferris also takes an historical approach by surveying the Royal Navy’s experience conducting stability operations. Theo Farrell explores how international law acts as both an enabler and constraint when it comes to undertaking stability operations from the sea. Although the contributors to Part I illustrate the opportunities and limitations inherent in stability operations, they do highlight the fact that there is little that is unprecedented or even unanticipated in these “new” naval missions. In Part II, our contributors explore the new and traditional systems and operations the Navy can be expected to employ during stability operations. Jessica Piombo and Michael Malley describe the types of education, enhancement of capabilities, and planning that the Navy might undertake to support stability operations, using the Navy’s response to the South Asian tsunami to illustrate future requirements. Terry Terrif also describes several novel ways in which the Navy could support Marine Corps units as they conduct stability operations ashore. In Terrif’s view, Navy personnel already have the skills, equipment, and experience necessary to assist in the reconstruction of shattered civilian infrastructure. What is needed are better ways to allow these skilled individuals to help reduce suffering during the next disaster. In Part III, our authors explore contemporary stability operations and new instruments that might be brought to bear by naval forces. Adam Siegel surveys the role played by naval forces in peacekeeping operations. Sam Tangredi highlights the role played by U.S.-supplied equipment and training when it comes to stability operations, and the important role Navy liaison and engagement plays when it comes to fostering stability and reconstruction. J. W. Stolze also describes the Navy’s recent revival of riverine operations and the ways in which these forces might contribute to stability operations. Nicholas Tomb describes

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how U.S. Navy personnel have contributed to Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, further reinforcing Terrif’s idea that Navy personnel can sometimes contribute more on land than at sea when it comes to achieving stability. Alan Kuperman describes how U.S. naval forces influenced events ashore during a recent civil war in Liberia by helping to contain and curtail the conflict. Although our contributors are mindful of the impediments of bureaucracy and tradition that have slowed the U.S. Navy’s embrace of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations, they all agree that navies can play a significant role in winning the peace, restoring the rule of law, and alleviating human suffering. U.S. Navy officers share similar beliefs, but they often find it hard to imagine how naval assets can be brought to bear in relatively unconventional ways to achieve these noncombat objectives. Navies have a long tradition of launching stability operations from the sea; it is time to think about how that tradition will continue in the twenty-first century.

Notes 1 Jan Breemer, “Naval Strategy Is Dead,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 120, no. 2 (February 1994), pp. 49–53. 2 Linton F. Brooks, “Naval Power and National Security, The Case for the Maritime Strategy,” International Security, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1986), pp. 58–88. 3 Theodor W. Galdi, “Revolution in Military Affairs,” CRS Report 951170 F, 11 December 1995. 4 Edward N. Luttwak, The Pentagon and the Art of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 263. 5 Sam J. Tangredi (ed.), Globalization and Maritime Power (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2002). 6 Robert Looney, David Schrady, and Ronald Brown, “Estimating the Economic Benefits of Forward-Engaged Naval Forces,” Interfaces vol. 31, no. 4 (July–August 2001), pp. 74–86; Dov S. Zakheim, Sally Newman, Jeffrey Ranney, Richard Small, Peter Colohan, and Rhodes, Jonathan Dicicco, Sarah Moore, and Tom Walker, The Political and Economic Implications of Global Naval Presence (Arlington, VA: System Planning Corp., 1996); Daniel J. Whiteneck, Naval Forward Presence and Regional Stability (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analysis, 2001); and Edward Rhodes et al., “Forward Presence and Engagement: Historical Insights into the Problem of ‘Shaping,’ ” Naval War College Review (Winter 2000), pp. 25–61. 7 Mike Mullen, “Global Concept of Operations,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 2003, www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles03/Promullen04.htm. 8 Bruce A. Elleman, Waves of Hope: The U.S. Navy’s Response to the Tsunami in Northern Indonesia Newport Papers #28 (Newport: Naval War College Press, February 2007). 9 A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, October 2007, p. 14, www.navy.mil/ maritimestrategy.pdf. 10 Department of Defense Directive, “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations,” Directive Number 3000.05, 28 November 2005. 11 Naval Operations Concept, 2006, p. 19, www.quantico.usmc.mil/seabasing/docs/naval. 12 A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, p. 14. 13 Military Support to Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations, Joint Operating Concept, Version 2.0, December 2006.

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14 Defense Science Board, Transition to and from Hostilities, 2004 Summer Study (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, December 2004). 15 Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

Part I

Background

2

Stability operations The view from afloat Daniel Moran

Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR)1 operations have gone by many other names. Small wars, low-intensity conflict, counterinsurgency, peace operations, military operations other than war – the list could be extended without difficulty, each new name representing a fresh and hopeful plateau along a learning curve that America’s armed forces have struggled to ascend. There is no question that the rhetorical instability that has surrounded what will here be styled simply “stability operations” has been symptomatic of institutional conflict and stress, a public example of which was offered a few days before the most recent revision to approved nomenclature was announced, when the United States Secretary of Defense took it upon himself, at a press conference, to admonish the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to call the metastasizing violence in Iraq an “insurgency,” a word that he felt gave too much credit to America’s enemies.2 Serious students of language have long suspected that what things are called has more to do with what they “really are” than common sense finds comfortable. In this instance, however, it is the difficulty in finding the right words, rather than the words themselves, that is revealing. It is easy to see what all these operations in search of a name have in common. All require the carefully modulated and highly discriminate use of force; extensive coordination with domestic and foreign civilian agencies, and perhaps also with international government and non-governmental organizations; a willingness to embrace open-ended military commitments; and, an “inverted” force structure, in which elements that are normally in support – medical, logistical, intelligence, police, communications, engineering, or civil affairs units, for instance – may carry the main burden of accomplishing the desired mission.

War by any other name For America’s armed forces the question is not so much how to do these things as how to locate them within a general scheme of strategic priorities, and how to relate their tactical requirements to a diversity of political purposes. The current formulation at least captures some of the tension that earlier labels have tended to conceal – “transition” and “stability” being, if not quite antithetical, then at

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least divergent in political and strategic terms, however similar the tactical tasks they may entail. The conjoined pursuit of stability and transition as if they were two sides of the same coin (as opposed to two poles of a magnet) comes close to capturing the paradox at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, which has long sought to transform the world in line with American moral and ideological preferences, while simultaneously reaching out for the stability required by U.S. material and power-political interests. It has never been easy to figure out, in strategic terms, exactly how this can be accomplished. The question of where stability operations fit into the broader policy picture first came in for serious consideration following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its disappearance seemed to have left the United States alone in a world of shifting and ill-defined threats. The great Soviet dragon had died, as former CIA Director James Woolsey observed, but the world was still full of snakes.3 None were so venomous as to menace American vital interests, but it was a disquieting picture nonetheless, and one that called upon the United States to rework its strategic priorities more or less from scratch. The result was a new consensus, already emergent in the last years of the Cold War, that conceived of international violence along a “spectrum of conflict”4 as depicted in Figure 2.1. The notion of a conflict spectrum in turn gave rise to the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance,” meaning that the United States wished to configure its armed forces so as to be able to deploy them with decisive effect anywhere along the spectrum and, by extension, anywhere in the world.5 Most representations of the spectrum of conflict feature a graceful curve extending from the upper left to the lower right, a conceit that has been omitted in Figure 2.1 because no one in fact knows the real shape of such a curve. In any Port visits, civic action Non-combatant evacuations, disaster relief Humanitarian assistance, foreign internal defense, counter-drug operations Freedom of navigation Peacekeeping, counter-terrorism Restoring order, peacemaking Peace enforcement Likelihood

Key asset defense, maritime interdiction, blockade Insurgency/counterinsurgency Preemptive and punitive strikes Conventional defensive operations Conventional offensive operations Theater-level campaign General war Theater nuclear war Peace

“Peace

“Major regional

Global

operations”

contingencies”

war

Level of “conflict” [~violence]

Figure 2.1 Spectrum of conflict (c.1990).

SIOP

The view from afloat

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event, two ideas stand out: that military actions involving limited or no use of force are inherently more common than those involving large-scale violence; and that the logical relationship among such actions is basically linear, each operational category blending seamlessly into the next by a process akin to the escalation that is a normal feature of conventional war. When the spectrum of conflict was laid on top of a similarly prioritized understanding of American national interests, moreover, a surprisingly clear picture emerged. The high stakes are all on the right, where the likelihood of trouble had become exceedingly small. The operations on the left were remote from American vital interests, but they were also easy to accomplish in the course of normal military activity. Many observers in and out of uniform were prepared to argue that, relative to their costs, operations on the far left of the chart paid disproportionate political dividends, as part of the general upkeep of the “New World Order.” Those in the middle, labeled “Peace operations,” (as was normal at the time), might entail unexpected difficulty and risk in military terms. But they were associated with “important” rather than “vital” American interests – a distinction enshrined in the annual National Security Strategies mandated by the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986 – and were accordingly conceived as more or less optional, linked to an ad hoc interventionist policy intended to maintain regional stability and vindicate human rights. This understanding of how the world worked collapsed in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, and has since been interred in the shattered neighborhoods of Kandahar and al-Fallujah. The bitter experiences that these names recall have destabilized the American strategic picture in at least three respects. It is now taken for granted that major American interests can be put at risk by quite small applications of force – a fair characterization of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It is likewise no longer possible to view the political decrepitude of the developing world with anything like the old complacency. In the 1980s the United States intervened with great effect to thwart the Soviet Union’s designs in Afghanistan, and then lost interest in the obscure, internecine violence that followed. The result was the emergence of a government more than willing to afford refuge to America’s most virulent enemies. The danger that may arise if such vacuums of social order are left untended is now more fully appreciated as a consequence. It has become apparent that a strategy that embraces “regime change” as the final option against states that tolerate or sponsor terrorism must also embrace stability operations as an integral, and not merely an ancillary, element. Whatever role stability operations may play in the pursuit of marginal or humanitarian American interests, they also represent the mandatory exploitation phase of any strategy to overthrow another government. It would be premature to assume that this renewed interest in stability operations is more coherent or likely to endure than the one that it has displaced. The enabling connection between failed states and global terrorism is by no means certain, for instance – failed states being difficult places in which to operate, even for terrorists. Irrespective of the nuances, however, it seems unlikely that

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the old, linear understanding of the relationship between large- and small-scale violence will recover from the blows dealt to it by recent history. On the contrary, far from describing a smoothly changing spectrum of conflict, large and small wars now seem to encircle and engender each other, to the point where there is little reason to be good at the first if you are not also good at the second.6 The remainder of this chapter considers the range of contributions that seapower in general, and naval forces in particular, may make in countering the range of threats that stability operations address. It concludes with a discussion of an operation undertaken by the Royal Navy during the Russian Civil War, known as the Baltic Patrol, which highlights some of the distinctive features of the limited and discretionary use of naval force, under circumstances not altogether different from those we face today.

Maritime strategy for the long war American grand strategy since 2001 has brought stability operations emphatically to the attention of America’s armed forces. None have taken them as seriously in the past as they may be expected to for the foreseeable future. The Navy is at no particular disadvantage in this respect. If anything, maritime forces have been historically more disposed than armies and air forces to regard the carefully modulated use of force as central to their role. A glance at the left-hand side of Figure 2.1 includes a number of tasks in which naval forces normally play a preponderant role. The United States Navy, by virtue of being a deployed force even in peacetime, also suffers less than its sister services from one of the common anxieties associated with stability operations, which is that the special training they demand, particularly for combat infantry and other “triggerpullers” among the ground component, diverts attention from the skills needed to employ lethal force on a large scale, and dulls the psychological edge required to do so. Such issues are inherently of less significance for navies, whose ships ply the waves and discharge their weapons in much the same fashion regardless of where they may be sent, or why. Viewed from afloat, then, there is nothing immediately alarming about the heightened emphasis on stability operations. The leverage of seapower arises from two things that only navies can do. First, a nation that “commands the sea,” in Mahan’s resonant phrase, is able to deny military and commercial use of the sea to an adversary. It is also well positioned to profit from its continued use by others. Maritime strategy turns upon the ability of maritime states to accumulate economic resources and financial advantages under the umbrella of their naval power, and to extend the reassurance such power affords to neutrals, who in the worst of times have always tended to shelter, if sometimes reluctantly, under its protection. In addition, a navy affords unique means of inflicting harm directly on the enemy, by virtue of its ability to transport troops to a hostile shore, and to employ its own weapons on and from the world’s oceans. The United States Navy, whose institutional identity is founded above all on its contribution to the defeat of Japan in World War II, has historically stressed

The view from afloat

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the second of these forms of naval power, aptly described by George Baer as “offensive sea control.”7 Against an opponent like the Soviet Union, however, the significance of even the most powerful naval weapons paled. Their ability to influence the conduct of the Red Army seemed insufficient to justify the risk of employing them close inshore. The slowly accumulating economic pressure that a navy can bring to bear via blockade seemed even more irrelevant, given the prevailing image of World War III as a swiftly unfolding apocalypse, commencing in an overwhelming conventional clash, and culminating in nuclear war. The Navy eventually gained something like a fair share in the conduct of the Cold War only because it devised ways to deploy nuclear weapons at sea, which in turn caused the Soviet Union to develop an important naval capability of its own, to protect its seaborne nuclear forces, and to attack those of the U.S. In this connection, however, it is worth remembering that the naval share in the defeat of the Soviet Union was not confined to its contribution to bilateral deterrence, however large or small one may judge that to have been. Navies are at their best in long war, which is what the Cold War proved to be. Had the United States been called upon to fight World War III (always envisioned as a short one), it is hard to say what role its navy might have played. But in reality that is not the war it was required to win. The West’s victory in the Cold War was doubtless over-determined, but at bottom there lies the fact that America’s role as the engine of a globalizing world economy eventually created insupportable contradictions for its enemy, whose economy was burdened by a defective ideology, and isolated from the real sources of wealth in the world. The Cold War drew to a close when the social costs of maintaining competitive military capabilities became insupportable for one side; whereas for the other those costs had declined quite steadily in relative terms. The role of maritime power in bringing about this outcome was largely invisible while it was going on, and it is difficult to stipulate in detail even in retrospect exactly how maritime power helped to put the Soviet Union out of its misery. Yet the fact remains that the essential glue by which the world economy assembled itself into a shape so overwhelmingly favorable to America’s interests was the world’s oceans, supervised for half a century by the navies of the United States and its allies. A picture of the winning team in the Cold War would have at its center the members of an alliance named after an ocean – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about this. The surest path to victory in any global conflict, “hot” or “cold,” is to conduct yourself so as to insure that the rich countries and critical resource areas of the world end up on your side. This has been the essence of maritime strategy since the Age of Sail, and there is no reason to expect the pattern to change anytime soon. No less perennial, however, is the complaint that naval power is inherently indecisive in military terms, that it merely enables the success of other, more directly applied violence. In relation to the kinds of challenges that stability operations address, the influence of American naval supremacy on the world

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economy – in doctrinal terms a form of “strategic shaping” – is subject to especially steep discounting, since America’s adversaries in such conflicts are likely to be economically marginal anyway, hence unresponsive to the incentives for good behavior that may arise from that quarter. Given prevailing fiscal and political realities, it is understandable that the Navy, while hopeful of getting more budgetary credit than it has in the past for shaping the global environment, is reluctant to embrace a strictly enabling role with respect to stability operations. The Navy Strategic Plan promulgated in the spring of 2006 declares, apropos of “stability and shaping [sic] operations,” that “ ‘non-traditional’ mission sets such as counter-terrorism, humanitarian affairs, disaster relief, counter-piracy, peace-keeping, and peace enforcement, are no longer appropriately considered lesser included subsets of the missions sets associated with major regional conflict or major combat operations.”8 The Navy has thus effectively renounced the claim that, merely by going about its accustomed tasks, it is contributing its share to stability operations. True to its traditions, it wishes to steam toward the sound of the guns, however faintly they may be heard.

Operations and capabilities Modern naval forces can do many things that armies and air forces also do. This is partly owed to the convergent effects of new technology, which have caused precision strike systems to resemble each other quite closely in terms of their tactical effects, irrespective of where they are deployed. The three service branches in the United States have also converged organizationally, thanks to the spread of managerial “best practices” from the world of business, and to pressure from Congress and the senior leadership of the Defense Department. The modern joint force is one whose parts fit together more smoothly than in the past, and they have become more interchangeable in the process. One way in which the Navy can support stability operations is simply to contribute its share of the relevant skill sets to the required missions. The Navy possesses engineers, doctors, civil affairs officers, policemen, communications experts, intelligence officers, truck drivers, lawyers, clerks – any of which might be posted ashore to work alongside their Army and Air Force counterparts. Also available is the entirety of the United States Marine Corps, a naval service that has increasingly dedicated itself to mastering the arts of counter-insurgency and irregular warfare on land.9 A large or protracted overseas deployment by the United States Army (or the Air Force, for that matter) can scarcely be attempted without relying on the “strategic lift” provided by the Navy, whether in the form of commissioned warships or civilian vessels contracted under its auspices. Finally, warships can provide a range of services in the areas of communications and reconnaissance that may be directly relevant to operations ashore. Viewed in these terms the Navy is simply a resource pool, whose assets can be seconded to perform stability operations alongside other service components, to whatever extent may be demanded.

The view from afloat

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The relevance of naval forces to the prosecution of operations on the sea is not in doubt. If the requirement is to control piracy or maritime smuggling, then only seaborne forces will do. Failed or failing states are naturally hospitable to criminal activity, whose suppression may be important to establishing or sustaining the legitimacy of government. But whether the need to do this sort of thing would warrant the diversion of important naval units from other missions, much less the creation of specialized warships configured for such tasks, is another matter. The sea is not a friendly environment for insurgents. Revolutionary movements in the developing world do not normally have navies. There are exceptions, however, notably the Tamil Tigers, who have waged a ferocious campaign against the patrol boats and smaller craft of the Sri Lankan Navy. Hundreds of suicide attacks against such vessels have been recorded over the last 25 years, a track record equally suggestive of determination and futility, perhaps, but nevertheless one that may attract the attention of other, similarly situated groups.10 Questions in this area are complicated by concern that piracy, drug smuggling, or other criminal activities might somehow become tangled up with terrorism directed against the United States or its allies. Exactly how this entanglement might occur is hard to say. The most alarming possibility, entirely hypothetical as of this writing, would be the use of commandeered ships as weapons, in the manner of the commercial airliners employed in the attacks of September 2001. Alternatively, endemic piracy might provide cover for terrorist attacks against ships, in the manner of the French tanker Limburg, rammed by a small boat packed with explosives off the coast of Yemen in October 2002. Despite such exemplary episodes, it is hard to believe that maritime operations hold much promise from the point of view of terrorists and their ilk. It is exceedingly rare, because exceedingly difficult, for large vessels like the Limburg to be attacked while underway. In 2004 the National Counterterrorism Center identified 651 terrorist actions worldwide, of which only two occurred at sea.11 Nevertheless, however insubstantial the threat may appear, such concerns have already served to heighten the Navy’s interest in what has come to be called “maritime domain awareness.” Acquiring such awareness is a formidable problem indeed, particularly when the task is extended to include knowledge of the contents of the hundreds of millions of cargo containers that cross the world’s oceans annually. A visionary start has been made, however, in the form of a proposal to constitute the so-called “1,000-ship navy,” a misnamed but otherwise notably creative project. Its aim is to promote cooperation among national navies, police organizations, and the shipping industry, albeit without the establishment of any formal diplomatic or legal structure that would bind them to a common purpose.12 One important and relatively practicable provision would seek to extend the Automatic Identification System now employed by large seagoing ships to coastal shipping and other small craft. Such a measure, if widely adopted, would at least make the preliminary identification of suspect vessels easier than it is at present.

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U.S. Navy roles How far stability operations can benefit from the strategic leverage afforded by command of the sea is more difficult to assess. The task of patrolling coastal waters and controlling maritime access is not one for which the United States Navy is especially well suited, reliant as it is upon a small number of large and powerful ships. If such missions were to prove sufficiently significant one would expect the Navy’s force structure to evolve accordingly, a development of which there is scant evidence so far. The new littoral combat ship (LCS) is smaller and more capable of working inshore than a traditional frigate. The full-load displacement draft of LCS 1, launched in September 2006, is only ten feet. But the key missions are still naval combat of a familiar kind. The first LCS, in the words of its builder, is “a fast, maneuverable and networked surface combatant with operational flexibility to execute focused missions, such as mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, and humanitarian relief.” Even a sympathetic reader will recognize that the reference to humanitarian relief is mostly marketing.13 What the United States Navy is well suited for, apart from waging conventional or nuclear war, is the maintenance at sea of highly capable maritime forces for indefinite periods of time. Such naval presence is integral to the shaping role alluded to earlier. It also contributes to conventional deterrence, by confronting potential aggressors with the prospect that any action that they might undertake will be met with a response that is not merely powerful, but swift to arrive. Speed is as often as not the critical consideration. Conventional aggression over the course of the last century has typically featured an overwhelming initial attack, carried out by a party that recognizes that its chances of prevailing in a protracted struggle are not good, but which nevertheless imagines that its initial success will be so profound as to shift the strategic balance permanently in its favor. The speed with which forward-deployed naval forces can respond offers at least some hope that those contemplating such a move will recognize that the “window of opportunity” that they are hoping to squeeze through is actually quite small, in which case they may choose some other, less destructive course of action. Within the framework of stability operations, the speed with which forwarddeployed naval forces can respond to a crisis is mainly relevant when the crisis is of natural origin, as the exemplary role played by American naval forces in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 shows. Whether swift action, and the deterrent effects that arise from it, matter to the human adversaries that stability operations are likely to confront must be doubted. Insurgency and terrorism generally unfold slowly, and in contrast to conventional aggression do not count upon immediate results to shift the political balance in their favor. Those who employ such methods take it for granted that time is on their side. Defeating them requires that they be proven wrong, but doing so is more about patience and persistence than speed. Against such adversaries the skills and capabilities required for naval forward presence may take a somewhat different form, via the creation of “sea bases,”

The view from afloat

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from which American ground forces may operate in lieu of establishing comparable infrastructure on land. Sea-basing promises to reduce the shore-side footprint of American forces operating overseas. Its feasibility and costeffectiveness are unknown, because the concept is untried, but there can be little question that, if successful, sea-basing would afford obvious advantages in the area of force protection. These would come at the price of eliminating some opportunities for contact between American soldiers and the inhabitants of the host nation. Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends entirely on circumstances, and specifically on the question whether the visible presence of American forces ashore is reassuring or unsettling in social and political terms.

Stability operations: the Baltic Patrol It remains to consider the relevance of combatant warships to stability operations. Not the least irony of the present moment is that, having struggled throughout the Cold War against the possibility that warships and their weapons might be too inconsequential to matter against an opponent like the Soviet Union, the Navy now finds itself struggling against the possibility that those same weapons may be too overpowering to matter against an opponent like al Qaeda, much less the “Islamic courts” of Somalia or other shadowy threats for which stability operations are the intended remedy. Navies, as mentioned earlier, have a long history of employing limited force, a history brilliantly surveyed by James Cable in his book Gunboat Diplomacy.14 As Cable’s account shows, however, the intersection between diplomacy and violence on the high seas has usually arisen among organized governments, able to send and receive the kinds of signals that artfully modulated violence is supposed to send. Still, one of the examples of gunboat diplomacy that Cable analyzes also qualifies as a “stability operation” within the current meaning of that phrase (and accepting that “stability” can be synonymous with “transition”). A brief account of its history may highlight the strengths and limitations of naval warfare in circumstances where both the risks and the rewards are only dimly foreseen at the start. In 1919 the British government decided to send a squadron of warships into the Baltic Sea to exploit whatever advantages might arise there from the revolution in Russia. Britain and other Western powers, including the United States, had already intervened militarily against the Bolsheviks, but those efforts would accomplish nothing, apart from reinforcing the belief of Lenin and his colleagues that the Great Powers wished them dead. What became known as the Baltic Patrol was conceived along different lines. Not the least interesting feature of its activities, which lasted until 1921, is that at no time during their course did anyone go ashore. James Cable analyzes the Baltic Patrol as an example of what he calls “catalytic force,” which may be defined as military or naval operations intended to seize opportunities or avert disasters when strategists do not actually know what they are. “A situation arises,” as he says,

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D. Moran pregnant with formless menace or offering obscure opportunities. Something, it is felt, is going to happen, something that somehow might be prevented if force were available at the critical point. Advantages, their nature and the manner of their achievement still undetermined, might be reaped by those able to put immediate and appropriate power behind their sickle. These are situations peculiarly favorable to the exercise of limited naval warfare.15

In this case, the obscure opportunities were mainly tactical: British warships were able to enter the Baltic only because of the simultaneous collapse of both Germany and Russia in World War I. For a maritime and imperial nation, used to fishing in troubled waters, such a temptation would have been difficult to resist at any time. It was heightened in this case by conditions ashore, where a scene of unexampled chaos was unfolding, as White Russians, Bolsheviks, undefeated German Freikorps, and a diversity of Baltic patriots all sought to make what they could from the remnants of the Romanov Empire. No one had a clear idea which (if any) side Britain might take, but it seemed obvious that the options would only be improved by the presence of a Royal Navy squadron. Actual orders arrived months later, instructing the rear admiral commanding to “show the British flag and support British policy as circumstances dictate.”16 Over the next year policy and circumstances would shift repeatedly, as His Majesty’s government pondered whether to back the cause of “regime change” (exemplified by the White Russian armies), national self-determination (exemplified by the irregular forces of the Baltic nationalists), or appeasement (on the grounds that, if the Bolsheviks were going to win anyway, it would be as well not to infuriate them). The squadron thus found occasion to fire its guns at virtually everyone in theater, holding the ring until Whitehall settled on the Baltic nationalists as the ultimate beneficiaries of British support. At no time did Britain declare war on anyone, not even the revolutionary government in Moscow, because it feared the domestic political repercussions of doing so as much as anything; though it did take the opportunity to sink two Russian battleships in naval actions off Kronstadt. The independence of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia was confirmed by treaty with Moscow in 1920. This result was owed chiefly to the valor of the native forces fighting on their behalf, and to the weakness of a Bolshevik government in the throes of establishing itself. Yet it is difficult to deny that, despite the irresolution and capriciousness of British policy, the Baltic Patrol contributed its share to achieving an outcome that favored British interests. It was by today’s standards a considerable operation, involving hundreds of ships at one time or another, of which 17 were sunk, primarily by mines. The ships were small, and the loss of life limited – in all 128 British officers and men were killed – but even so it is in the nature of such opportunistic campaigns that afterwards many would wonder whether it was worth it. The Soviet Union survived, after all, and the Baltic states would be reabsorbed within it soon enough. Uncertainty, disappointment, and remorse generally go hand in hand in such matters, in our time no less than theirs.

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In many ways the story of the Baltic Patrol presents a spectacle remote from current political reality, in which the use of force on anything like a comparable scale would be greeted with widespread public alarm, notwithstanding the more discriminating destructiveness of modern weapons. Yet the patrol’s history remains instructive in at least two respects. First, in circumstance like those in the Baltic in 1919, naval “presence” would have made no difference. Unless the ships that were sent there were prepared to use their weapons for effect, there was no point sending them at all. Stability operations, to the extent that they involve violent conflict as opposed to humanitarian relief, embrace a wide range of political circumstances, most of which are symptomatic of conditions in which the subtler tools of “gunboat diplomacy” are bound to be lost in the noise. Naval presence is a subtle tool. Unless it is supported by credible assurances that force will follow, should semiotics fail, the results may well prove disappointing.17 It is also instructive to consider how poorly British interests in the Balkans would have been served had they been pursued by means of the British Army rather than the Royal Navy. Then as now, the insertion of “boots on the ground” in response to a crisis represents a qualitatively different sort of commitment than that involved in the dispatching of warships, however numerous or formidable. Once committed, such forces would have been hard-pressed to adapt to the second thoughts of Britain’s political leaders – a grievous but timeless defect of public life to which armed forces must accommodate themselves. A military force comparable in effectiveness to the Baltic Patrol could scarcely have shifted its sights with anything like the alacrity required by British policy or prevailing local circumstances. Once engaged with an adversary, its disengagement could not have been accomplished without the kind of humiliating explanations that most governments will go to great lengths to avoid – including persisting in military commitments that have outlived their usefulness, or strayed from their ostensible purpose. An army is, in political terms, a stake in the ground. If that is what you want then only an army will do. Employing one necessarily risks creating hostages to fortune, however, which means that such a commitment should only be made after that downstream risk has been fully considered. The outstanding strategic characteristic of a navy, on the other hand, is not merely that it affords additional choices with respect to where and how force is used, but that it affords unique means of limiting or altering political commitments as circumstances change. This is no less true for stability operations than for any other kind. If these things are not desired, then naval forces are the wrong choice, except as enablers for the hard work of others. If they are, then nothing else will work nearly so well.

Notes 1 Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, “Military Support of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations,” (28 November 2005); online at www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/300005.htm. 2 Dana Milbank, “Rumsfeld’s War on ‘Insurgents’,” Washington Post (30 November

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3 4 5 6

7

8 9

10 11

12 13

D. Moran 2005); online at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/ AR2005112901405.html. R. James Woolsey, Testimony before the Committee on National Security of the United States House of Representatives (12 February 1998); online at www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/19980212woolsey.html. See, for instance, “The Maritime Strategy,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings (January 1986), supplement 8, which includes a simplified diagram similar to the example in Figure 2.1. Full-spectrum dominance is the organizing principle of Joint Vision 2020, currently the most authoritative general statement of the strategic outlook of the United States armed forces; online at www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jvpub2.htm. The metaphor of the spectrum has retained its rhetorical hold, even as it has lost its ability to clarify reality. An example may be found in the Naval Operating Concept for Joint Operations (April 2003), which attempts to categorize the “range of military operations” across “War,” “Military Operations Other than War Involving the Use/Threat of Force,” and “Military Operations Other than War Not Involving the Use/Threat of Force.” Of the 24 mission types represented, none is confined to a single category, and 14 are included in all three. Online at www.nwdc.navy.mil/ Conops/NOC.pdf. George Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 4. The American disposition toward offensive sea control was rooted in the navalist theorizing of the 1890s, of which Mahan’s work is the preeminent expression. But its practical realization had to await the war with Japan. Before Pearl Harbor, as Baer notes (following Edward Beach), the United States Navy had “logged only 56 hours of actual fighting in its history” (p. 182). Department of the Navy, Navy Strategic Plan in Support of Program Objective Memorandum 08 (Washington, D.C., May 2006), pp. 8–9; online at http://bosun.nps.edu/ uhtbin/hyperion.exe/NSPPOM08.pdf. The extend to which irregular warfare has displaced amphibious assault as the core competency defining the Marine Corps’ institutional identity is apparent from its recent top-level doctrinal publications. See for instance Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Marine Corps Operating Concepts for a Changing Security Environment (Quantico, Virginia, March 2006); online at http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ ADA446044. See Martin Murphy, “Maritime Threat: Tactics and Technology of the Sea Tigers,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (12 May 2006); online at www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir060512_1_n.shtml. Cited by James Pelkofski, “Before the Storm: al Qaeda’s Coming Maritime Campaign,” Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute (December 2005), p. 21; online at www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles05/Pro12Pelkofski.html. Despite its title, Pelkofski’s article leaves little doubt that ships are mainly at risk of attack when they are moored at the pier. See also Paul W. Parfomak and John Frittelli, Maritime Security: Potential Terrorist Attacks and Protection Priorities, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress (9 January 2007); online at www.fas.org/sgp/crs/ homesec/RL33787.pdf. John Morgan, Jr, and Charles Martoglio, “The Global Maritime Network,” Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute (November 2005); online at www.military.com/forums/0,15240,81652,00.html. The quotation is from the website of PEO Ships, the builder of the USS Freedom (LCS 1); online at http://peoships.crane.navy.mil/lcs/. The LCS, despite its name, is not an amphibious warship, but a specialized variant of the DD(X) future surface combatant. The “focused mission” concept that governed its design incorporates modularized mission packages, of which three currently exist: anti-submarine

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14 15

16 17

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warfare, mine warfare, and anti-surface warfare. There is no mission package for “humanitarian relief.” James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, 1919–1991: Political Applications of Limited Naval Force, 3rd edn (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994). Ibid., p. 46. The discussion below follows Cable’s account, which is based on two principal sources: Stanley W. Page, The Formation of the Baltic States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959); and Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917–21, vol. 2: Britain and the Russian Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968). Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, p. 47. In this connection it is good to recall the distinction that Cable draws between “catalytic force,” like that wielded by the Baltic Patrol, and “expressive” force, in which warships are employed “to emphasize attitudes, to lend verisimilitude to otherwise unconvincing statements, or to provide an outlet for emotion” (ibid., p. 62). The histories of most navies are replete with activities of this kind, and, while they are not necessarily harmful, it is a mistake to confuse them with more effective forms of action.

3

SSTR as history The British Royal Navy experience, 1815–1930 John Ferris1

Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) has a history.2 Navies mattered to it primarily at just one time, between 1815–1930. Though France and the United States also practiced the art of using ships to stabilize the situation ashore, its master was Britain, which attempted and executed the greatest uses of seapower for the purposes of SSTR on record. Its failures were as weighty as its successes; together, they shaped the world as much as did any other phenomena. No other power in history ever relied on navies, or gained as much from them, to the extent that Britain did during this period. Its very status as a – the – world power rested on seapower. In 1922, Prime Minister David Lloyd George said “we are naturally sailors and an amphibious race.” In 1927, Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain, described seapower as “our great strength and decisive weapon.” In 1929, a First Sea Lord, Charles Madden, wrote, “The Navy is the chief sanction of our Foreign Policy; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that every Foreign Office telegram is backed by it.”3 Navy and empire were especially linked. Between 1815–1930, outside Europe, India, and some other colonies, the Royal Navy (RN) was Britain’s main arm of policy. Among its basic roles were tasks in war, power politics and areas related to SSTR, often described by terms like “presence,” “symbolic use,” “imperial policing,” “gunboat diplomacy,” “coercion” and “preventative, precautionary and pre-emptive naval diplomacy,” to pursue national interests, commercial or political, and common goods, like enforcing international law, suppressing piracy, and supporting free trade. This chapter assesses Britain’s use of maritime power in SSTR between 1815–1930, and its value, limits, and unintended consequences.

The Royal Navy and the rise of empire Before 1792, the RN had little concern with SSTR. Its fleets were rarely based for long outside Europe or the North Atlantic, nor used for tasks beyond power politics and war. Britain, in a proper mercantilist fashion, pursued narrow rather than common interests. After 1815, conversely, its biggest fleets always rested in Europe or, in cases of conflict with the United States, Bermuda, but permanent squadrons were based elsewhere.4 These squadrons, usually but not always small

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(between three to five ships in the East Indies, five to seven ships in Australian waters and four to eight ships off South America), were still the largest fleets in their seas. Between 1820–70, moreover, anti-slavery squadrons in the Atlantic were often comprised of over 20 warships, while 40 vessels were sent to the China seas between 1838–40, and 20 between 1858–62. A technological revolution, which let ships exercise greater power on land, multiplied the value of these numbers. Sail of the line, though masters of the open seas, could not easily move upriver or smash the forts of non-Western people. Steam technology changed these rules.5 A steamship was first used in battle during the Burma war of 1828, where it was central to British victory in a riverine conflict. The deployment of just one steam gunship enabled the annihilation of the defenses of Guandong (Canton) in 1841, and the passing of the bar at the Fraser River mouth and control over unruly American gold miners in 1858.6 Engines and ordnance steadily improved, and until 1890, British warships were designed especially for inshore power. The overall effect of these naval efforts was limited by British weakness on land. The celebrated “English barrack in the India Seas,” the Indian army, rarely provided soldiers for service abroad. Nor were British soldiers often available for the RN’s tasks in SSTR. Royal Marines and seamen turned soldiers supplied most land forces. Meanwhile, enemies were large and friends weak, whether missionaries, mercantile concerns of Britons or imperial subjects (like the Hudson’s Bay Company, HBC), banyans or hongs, states, or aboriginal peoples. Before 1870, and the rise of worldwide telegraph nets, SSTR was fractured because signals were slow – messages took nine to 12 months to reach London from the Indian and Pacific Oceans – and warships abroad were hard to control. These problems could be minimized in situations that were critical or well anticipated. Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries worked closely with First Lords of the Admiralty on power politics, while Lord Palmerston gave secret verbal orders to admirals and consuls before they sailed to areas of concern beyond easy reach of communication. When great powers opposed Britain’s campaign against the slave trade, the Foreign Office and the Admiralty controlled such squadrons through tight voluminous orders because, as one Prime Minister, Robert Peel, noted, acts taken “at the discretion of individual commanders liable therefore to abuse, and entailing vexation and possibly injustice, will, if not clearly defensible by the recognized Law of Nations, soon involve us in War.”7 By the time the telegraph reached maturity, however, only Arabs opposed this campaign, and the Foreign Office deliberately did not inform captains of the intricacies of international law, to increase the likelihood that they would act.8 Yet on lesser issues, the meat and potatoes of SSTR, Whitehall often found it hard to comprehend quite what was happening in many places abroad, or to give useful orders to naval officers, who had to act despite doubts as to whether they “knew anything about the rights of the matter” at hand.9 These problems were magnified by bad relations between the managers of power and politics abroad, captains and consuls. Local British interests and officers routinely borrowed the RN’s power to further their private interests. The Arrow

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War (1857–60) began in part because local British diplomats misled an admiral into bombarding Guandong, while captains committed Britain to quests on many a foreign shore.10 From 1870, this chaos declined, as Whitehall used better communications to control pawns abroad, but by then the great days of naval SSTR were ending. In 1815, for the first time, one fleet dominated all the world’s seas. Britain retained much of that power until 1914, despite slippages around 1840 and 1890. It used seapower to pursue SSTR at a global level. Britain created the first integrated world political and economic system, without fully knowing what it was doing. Its power, and a disjunction between intention and effect, gave Britain an empire in a fit of absence of mind. Between 1815–1913, Britain did not always intend what it got or get what it intended, but it was bound to acquire a lot, because the paramount position of the RN gave it a unique position: bilateral relations with almost every polity on earth and greater power than most of them. That power was not exercised in a simple way. Britain did not act on a grand design, but on many small ones, which reflected hard-headed interests and highminded ideals: power and profit, civilization, constitutionalism, and Christianity. The sentiments of statesmen and public pressure groups made Britain use its power to invent humanitarian intervention. Naval officers thought themselves knights errant protecting the weak, and sometimes did perform selfless and costly acts: defending Pacific islanders from British businessmen, or Africans from the “piratical potentates” running the “curse of mankind,” the slave trade.11 When explaining to Arabs his attempts to abolish that trade, Palmerston described Britain as “the main instrument in the Hands of Providence,” pursuing an end “written in the Book of Fate.”12 Britain’s aims and their effects were complex. It sought to establish and enforce ground rules for a New World Order. It stamped its definition of property rights, human rights, and international law, which it thought common goods and good for Britain, on the world. Britain regarded free trade as religious doctrine and human right, and forced non-Western states to adopt it. In pursuit of human rights, it attacked slavery and pushed opium. In the name of the “law of nations,” Britain broke and rewrote it: as one Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, described a case of unilateral British legislation against the Portuguese slave trade, “the law was certainly a good stretch of power.”13 Britain protected some aboriginal peoples from exploitation and robbed others of their land. It brought many peoples within an informal empire, which later became formal. British policy toward any issue affected and was affected by that toward others: that on Zanzibar to Africa and the Middle East; that regarding slavery to half the world. The Royal Navy supported SSTR through means ranging from presence to war. In its pursuit, Britain thought globally and acted locally. Its creation of a New World Order led Britain to shape structures everywhere, varying by locale, issue, and the relative power of the RN, in surprising ways.14 The RN was central to the establishment of liberal capitalism across the world and the continental drift of power. Between 1814–23, it kept other European powers from intervening in the war between Spain and its Latin American colonies, so letting

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Britain harmonize its hopes to support legitimacy, oppose despotism, maintain leverage over every faction in the Americas, and gain greater access for trade. For decades thereafter, British influence in Latin America was almost hegemonic, resting on established political and economic influence, backed by the sight of warships.15 So too, in 1840 and 1878, the RN kept France and Russia from upsetting the Middle East. Meanwhile, seapower gave Britain access to the coasts of every continent. The RN, however, faced many calls on its limited forces, which constantly created opportunity costs. Its strength usually was deployed only against major problems, most useful against polities directly vulnerable to pressure at sea, with counter-intuitive consequences. Between 1815–80, the heyday of naval SSTR and British power, RN attacks on peoples and forts in Africa and Southeast Asia routinely failed because British forces were weak and scruples strong: in 1879, one Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, doubted “whether burning villages is altogether the most appropriate mode of introducing a missionary to the notice of the natives.”16 The RN had little power to compel indigenous peoples on most Pacific islands, because officers were reluctant to use force against them, and had little at hand. Warships routinely ordered chiefs to pay a penalty, left without enforcing the demand, and punished disobedience only years later, by torching a few houses no one cared about. So too between 1845–53 in Madagascar, the Hova government enforced a ban on trade with Britain until it paid a penalty for launching an abortive attack on a town, which the defenders marked with a line of impaled British heads on poles.17

The Navy and SSTR Piracy and the slave trade The Royal Navy’s power in SSTR was greatest on purely maritime issues, but still constrained by politics and resources. Thus, in 1816, Britain tried to create an international naval league against the slave trade and the Barbary pirates. It promised that British seapower would defend all members of the league against pirates, but not those states which declined to join. To prove the point, the RN hammered the Barbary pirates, freeing all their Christian slaves, not one of which was British. This effort was altruistic, but also assumed British dominance at sea and over much of the international order. It failed for precisely that reason. Other states, as the French Premier, the Duc de Richelieu, wrote, saw it as a British attempt “to confirm fully and with the consent of all the powers, its empire over the seas.”18 Britain, thrown on its resources alone, became less altruistic. Between 1815–50 it broke piracy in the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Caribbean Sea and the South China Sea, because this threatened preeminently British trade. Yet it was less active against piracy in Southeast Asia, because suppression required a hard and constant effort, while success would strengthen Dutch control over territory that they could exploit to choke British trade. Britain also let the Barbary pirates recover part of their strength, returning

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to decades-old agreements to keep them off ships carrying British passes, and so deflecting them onto others. Piracy ended in these seas only when the Netherlands and France destroyed the polities where it was practiced. Piracy was beaten by an international effort of states motivated by self-interest and conquest, in which Britain led but refused to rescue every free rider.19 In suppressing the slave trade, however, Britain pursued common goods at its own cost. If “allowed to act with freedom,” as one officer said in 1822, the RN always had the power to halt the slave trade across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but it was shackled by politics and international law.20 Though Britain bullied smaller states on this issue, it dared not provoke the United States and France, which disliked interference with their ships and trade. Thus, between 1815–61, the RN worked hard against the slave trade, with mixed success. It freed tens of thousands of slaves without reducing the numbers shipped annually across the Atlantic. In 1831, the First Lord, James Graham, held Britain was “expending in vain the lives of our Seamen and the Treasure of our Country, for a disinterested object.” “No Force can really be effective” against the slave trade until all major countries cooperated with suppression, in which case “a single Cruizer, with the aid of steam, on the Coast of Africa would be more efficacious than our present Fleet.”21 This view was pessimistic. The RN was a necessary condition for success against the slave trade, serving to keep the issue alive, pressure great powers, and hammer small ones. Success, however, came only when Britain forced or bribed coastal African kingdoms out of the slave trade, and the public and governments of France and the United States adopted British views on slavery. That change in attitude was spurred and slowed by British self-righteousness and use of force to serve humanitarian ends.22 Seapower aided SSTR in a classic way on the northwest coast of North America.23 It was essential to Britain’s very ability to be in the region, literally the furthest place on earth away by sea from England until the Panama Canal was built, despite the emnity of great powers which were stronger in the region. In the Nootka Sound crisis of 1790, Spanish authorities ceased harassing British settlements only because of the RN’s full and ostentatious mobilization in Europe and warnings of war. So too, with less melodrama and more compromise, six British warships off Vancouver Island and the threat of more in the Atlantic deterred the United States during the Oregon boundary dispute of 1844–6. Every day for decades, the few warships on station, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), and the colonial administration that grew from it, were Britain’s main tools in the region, working symbiotically. The HBC staked large territorial claims, most of which Britain retained, and gave them an economic and administrative core. However, it lacked the power to handle the problems that swamped the region between 1840–70, American saber-rattling and threat of filibustering, and the policing of 50,000 coastal Indians. The RN managed these problems. In 1858, 164 marines and four warships kept the Queen’s peace over 10,000 Americans temporarily across the 49th parallel during the Fraser River gold rush. For decades, the RN underwrote the rise of British settlements and maintained law and order outside them, being “the armed might of the

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fragile system of magistrates and police superintendents that were extending English law on this populous Indian frontier.” Young RN officers were “amphibious policemen pursuing policies of minimum intervention.”24 This power was exercised preferably by presence, a show of force aimed to convince chiefs and communities to cooperate. If demonstration failed, the RN pursued careful coercion: to arrest individuals, or destroy their possessions when they escaped; and rarely, only as a last resort, collective punishment, by burning or bombarding recalcitrant villages. This power, combined with a general policy of avoiding empty threats and intervention among natives, so as to contain but not provoke them, achieved Britain’s aim of “keeping the Indians in awe,” aided by their own divisions. Far more than usual, perhaps because they knew Britain was weaker in the region than the United States or an Indian alliance, local civil and naval authorities provided considered leadership, while Whitehall kept naval tools under political control, rather than letting them be borrowed by its authorities. In harmony with the HBC and colonial authorities, the RN created the framework for substantial colonization and economic development. China Simultaneously, the other side of the Pacific witnessed a classic example of the failure of SSTR by sea. Britain wanted to engage seapower as a lever to open the closed kingdoms and economies of East Asia, but the RN could oblige only if used as a battering ram. In smashing Ch’ing coastal forts during 1841–2, and forcing its way upriver toward Beijing in 1859, the RN overthrew key parts of power in Asia and politics in China. The effect was not quite what British statesmen wanted. Essentially to improve exports and budgets, they insisted that China accept free or freer trade, especially in opium. Their aims were limited, yet could not be achieved without great collateral damage, because Chinese authorities refused even to discuss them unless forced to do so. Britain did not intend much of the damage it caused, which would have been less had the Chinese been willing to compromise, or negotiate, and had Britain not been forced to delegate so much control over its forces to local authorities months away from command at home. In 1832, Britain sent to Chinese waters, so wrote the First Lord, Graham, a Vice Admiral in a Line of Battle Ship, so that the full impression might be produced, both as regards the importance, which we attach to our relations with China and our fixed determination to uphold the predominance of our power, which is so much founded on opinion. Yet, he noted, the Cabinet favored “a conciliatory and pacific course towards China,” and local British interests or officials must be kept from abusing these forces for their own purposes: Trade with China is our only object; conquest there would be as dangerous as defeat; and commerce never prospers, when force is used to sustain it. No

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J. Ferris glory is to be gained in a Victory over the Chinese; any disaster in the quarter might shake our Indian empire; any Factory can only thrive by a ready compliance with the laws, the prejudices, and even the caprices of a nation, which we wish to propitiate; and the supercargoes must not imagine that great national interests are to be sacrificed to their notions of selfimportance, and to a spirit of haughty defiance and of assumed superiority, mixed with a contempt for the laws and customs of an independent people. . . . Our grand object is to keep peace and insure it; by the mildest means, by a plastic adaptation of our manners to theirs, to extend our influence in China with the view of extending our commercial relations, and for this purpose it is not a demonstration of our Force, which is required, but proofs of the advantage which China reaps from her peaceful intercourse with our Nation.25

Again, in 1837, before the Opium War, the Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, wished simply to make China allow freer trade, especially for opium, in its territories. This aim, he thought, could easily be achieved by demonstration alone. “Some good sized ship of war should be, as much as possible, on the China Station; both to inspire the Chinese with respect, and to keep the crews of our merchantmen in order.” He rejected arguments that the Chinese do not know anything about the size of our ships, or are not to be influenced by such considerations. A government which has the grass examined at day break Every Day along some Ten Thousand miles of Frontier to see whether any Stranger’s Foot has crossed the line during the night is not likely to be uninformed or careless as to the size & Force of ships of war coming to the coast.26 Graham and Palmerston, alas, were wrong. Chinese authorities, ignorant of seapower, let alone of the revolutionary strength of steam gunships, and undeterred by the RN, forced Britain’s hand by attacking its prestige, doubly exposed by the way local British officials borrowed the power vouchsafed by Whitehall. This drove Britain into a large expedition, which shattered the coastal defenses of China, and destabilized its politics. In return, Whitehall gained greater but still limited access to Chinese markets, which proved less profitable than expected, while Chinese authorities limited trade. Fifteen years later, local British officials and interest groups tried to overcome this situation by borrowing the power of their state, while authorities in London used the opportunity to make China accept completely free trade, especially in opium, on British terms, to China’s disadvantage.27 Though they believed that this aim could be achieved essentially through coercion, it required the “Arrow” War, which shattered the Chinese state. Between 1860–1930, Britain dominated Chinese commerce and got what it wanted from that country, largely through power exercised by gunboats, mostly to the benefit of missionaries and tiny economic interests, while counter-productive consequences swamped the gains. Without intending every

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consequence, Britain bullied China into its world system, and started events that killed millions of Chinese people and wrecked their state. China, the classic locale for gunboat diplomacy, offers negative lessons for SSTR. Japan Seapower achieved better results in Japan, with less collateral damage, largely because indigenous authorities responded differently than in China. Only fear of western warships, gained from knowledge of events in China and evidence before their eyes, persuaded the Japanese government, the bakafu, to let Westerners enter Japan after 1853; but their very presence was destabilizing. It sparked anti-Western agitation, terrorist attacks, and civil conflict which, over a decade, produced foreign military intervention and civil war. In this context, British diplomats emphasized the great necessity that exists of the constant presence of an English vessel of war of some description in this harbor, both to obtain from the native officials and people respect for British authority, and to assist the Consul in the exercise of his functions as regards British subjects. 28 Yet these diplomats also realized that those actions had counter-productive elements. They thought the Japanese right to dislike “the irregularities, the violence, and the disorders, with the continual scenes of drunkenness incident to a seaport, where sailors from men-of-war and merchant-ships are allowed to come on shore, sometimes in large numbers.” They noted that terrorists most attacked westerners when large numbers of warships were in these ports; counterintuitively, warships did not deter but rather attracted attack.29 By 1863, the foreign presence caused an internal crisis in Japanese politics, between the bakafu, the imperial court and leading clans, while terrorist attacks on Westerners created an international one. Western diplomats concluded that only a more aggressive use of force could resolve the deadlock. One British charge d’affaires wrote, The great difficulty with which our diplomatic agency has had to contend has been the lack of means to induce moral pressure; no lever has presented itself whereby to arouse conviction of a reciprocity of interests tending to render our goodwill and amity a political necessity to the Tycoon’s Government, or to induce on their part even a conciliatory policy. Sea power, he noted, the only lever at hand, could achieve these ends in a remarkably precise and contained way, if employed to punish the two clans, Satsuma and Choshu, most hostile to Western presence and the bakafu.30 On several occasions in 1863–4, British, French and pan-Western fleets destroyed the coastal fortifications of Satsuma and Choshu, which learned precisely the intended lessons: that the foreigners could not be driven out of Japan, and should

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not be dragged further in. Here, however, events took an unexpected turn. The pressure of Western powers and internal politics drove the bakafu to a civil war against Choshu and Satsuma, which it lost, bringing these clans to power, where they pursued a policy of learning from the West so as to withstand it, with fateful consequences. As these events occurred, noted another British charge d’affaires, the presence of powerful material support and the determination to be ready to rely upon it, as a last resort, will for some years to come be the basis on which a successful representation of Her Majesty’s interests and the real happiness of Japan itself must depend.31 He was right. The RN was a cause for the Meiji restoration. It remained fundamental to British power during the next 20 years, when Japan was a protectorate of the Western powers, especially Britain. This outcome was successful, from the perspective of Britain and Japan, but only because authorities on both sides pursued careful policy; the Japanese learned the right lessons quickly and cheaply (largely by watching the mistakes of China); while no country on earth was more vulnerable to gunboat diplomacy than Japan. Middle East and South Asia The Royal Navy (augmented by the Royal Indian Marine (RIM)) was one of Britain’s two levers of power in the Indian Ocean and its bi-continental littoral, alongside control over India, and the more deployable of them, since India’s resources were used mostly to control the subcontinent. Yet seapower was a tool with limits. It more easily suppressed piracy than slavery. To British frustration, control over the Red Sea and Persian Gulf had little impact on regional powers like Turkey or Persia, because these coasts were peripheral to their interests; so too lesser states like Egypt and Ethiopia, or inland Arab tribes. Seapower gave Britain less influence over Turkey and Persia than large armies on their frontiers gave Russia. Only if Britain used the RN to land major armies, primarily Indian, could seapower deliver much leverage in the Middle East. Such steps were rare and costly, though effective. The RN, however, was Britain’s hammer over coastal Arab polities from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar, which was fundamental to its running of these waves. In 1819, the RIM smashed the pirate fleets of Arab polities in the Persian Gulf, and made them protectorates, so as to maintain maritime peace in the Indian Ocean. This destruction of time-honored practices, which combined piracy, privateering, state construction, jihad, tolls, and protection money, was a triumph for British maritime and commercial interests, but it also committed Britain to defending places like Kuwait, which later proved a headache, against Turkish and Wahabi armies. Further use of seapower in the region became enmeshed in British relations with the Albusa’idi dynasty of Muscat and Zanzibar, with its loose hegemony over the coastal cities of Oman and East Africa and their hinterlands. This rule

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was ramshackle, because Omani tribes were strong and, like the dynasty, divided. In 1798, Britain entered friendly and equal relations with the Albusa’idi, in order to keep them from allying with France. For 60 years, the RN managed to check the real possibility of an Albusa’idi–French axis, which would have harmed British interests.32 Meanwhile, Albusa’idi power declined, because of internal politics, Wahabi attacks, and the fact that Britain supplanted Omani influence and profits in the Gulf and Western India. The Albusa’idi controlled several dozen towns scattered over 2,000 miles of Arabian and African coast, their fleet was significant, as was their position in African commerce, but still a few RN warships could dominate their politics and policy. Indeed, these warships provided more power over the Albusa’idi than Britain needed to achieve its national interests in the Indian Ocean, which were to minimize the presence of European seapowers and defend India and British commerce. This surplus power had counter-productive consequences. Local British officials borrowed it to back up aggressive, often purely personal, politics, while rival members of the Albusa’idi family called in Britain. It became their master in 1859, when a British warship halted a dynastic struggle by intercepting a seaborne invasion force of 2,500 men from Muscat to Zanzibar, and 100 marines destroyed an insurrection near Zanzibar.33 One cruiser suppressed the only later Albusa’idi effort to defy Britain, in 1896, by leveling the harem of Zanzibar in 37 minutes, without one shot striking an innocent target.34 The slave trade Britain was caught in another dilemma: it had too much power not to try to end the slave trade in the region, but too little to do so. The British thought that 20,000 slaves were shipped up the East African coast every year, perhaps 33 percent of the trade level on the Atlantic. This trade was hard to control. Indian authorities, the dominant imperial administration in the region, did not want to touch the problem. RN officers wished to do so, but their strength was limited. Suppression became possible only in 1850, when Britain bullied Portugal and France into abandoning slavery. This left Britain confronting the Arab slave trade. In 1870, a Parliamentary committee noted that “the presence of one of Her Majesty’s cruisers is the best check” on Arab slave traders, but only a squadron of four to seven vessels, led by “officers of local experience, who have made themselves acquainted with the usages and, to some extent, the languages of the east coast,” could control the trade.35 Available forces, smaller and dogged for decades by lack of intelligence and interpreters, spent much time in fruitless searches of dhows and mangrove swamps.36 Ultimately, Britain was tempted to destroy the slave trade through more economical means, by wielding the threat of its seapower against the Albusa’idi. In 1872–3, a senior official of humanitarian inclinations, Bartle Frere, and anti-slavery associations, engineered a commission of investigation into the local slave trade. He used the opportunity to threaten the Albusa’idi into abolishing the trade, despite the complaints of Sultan Barghash that this “involves destruction for us. It is quite in your power

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to destroy us, but you ask us to destroy ourselves, and that we cannot do.”37 This step, and other measures like blockading Red Sea ports and a temporarily heightened naval presence in Zanzibar, did cripple the trade, but still tens of thousands of slaves were shipped by sea, decades after the practice ended in the Atlantic, because there was a market, and too few British ships and too little interest to eliminate it. Meanwhile, Britain’s actions destabilized the local economy, which relied heavily on slavery, and the Albusa’idi. The slave trade ended only around 1890, when Germany took over much of the Albusa’idi African empire, combined with a coastal blockade and inland military operations by Germany and Britain. Ultimately, and ironically, Britain’s seapower and presence wrecked its local allies, while attempts to end the slave trade spurred imperialism in Africa, and created problems for 1914. The heyday of the RN’s role in SSTR ended before 1900. The world economic system was established, piracy and the slave trade ended. The RN was superseded by other elements in British colonies and could not act in European ones. Improved communications gave home governments more control over fleets abroad, reducing the ability of naval officers or local authorities to borrow power, or create a need or excuse to do so. Only in China and Latin America was gunboat diplomacy practiced.38 However, the art revived briefly after the World War I. At the armistice, the RN had greater power than any navy before in history, if less than the U.S. Navy since 1989, in open-ended circumstances. The power structure in Eurasia between the Indian and Arctic Oceans, the Rhine and the Pacific, temporarily collapsed. British policy toward these areas was contradictory, ambitious and, as the First Sea Lord, David Beatty, once said, “in a most chaotic state.”39 The Admiralty hoped that the Bolsheviks would be destroyed, or marginalized, allowing Britain to dominate the Middle East. Though they knew that their part in achieving those aims was limited, the admirals had great faith in seapower as a lever on land: as Beatty said of Italo–Yugoslav conflicts in the Adriatic, “a demonstration of seapower in the critical area would probably go far towards putting an end to an intolerable state of affairs which otherwise seems likely to drift from bad to worse.”40 Their efforts to deploy this power in a great game of SSTR, however, largely failed, although seapower did remain fundamental to British power politics.41 Russia Thus, ministers rejected Beatty’s proposed show of force in the Adriatic as provocative and unnecessary, and achieved their ends through other means.42 The most famous aspect of the RN’s use in SSTR, the naval intervention in the Baltic, was an act of war in a complex conflict between quasi-independent German Freikorps, the Bolsheviks, white Russians, and small states seceding from the Tsarist empire. On 29 November 1918, the Admiralty sent Admiral Cowan and a dozen warships to the Baltic, to exert pressure on all sides and protect the Baltic States from Germany and the USSR: “whenever we are in a

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position to resist by force of arms Bolshevik attacks on friends of Allies we should unhesitatingly do so.” Any Bolshevik warships operating off the coasts of the Baltic States “should be assumed to be doing so with hostile intent and should be treated accordingly.” In May 1919, Cowan was again sent to that theater with orders to protect the Baltic States and “act as a menace to the Bolshevik fleet,” which “may be attacked when opportunity offers” though he was not to assault its main fleet base, Kronstadt.43 Cowan instead blockaded Kronstadt and sank Bolshevik cruisers sailing out to attack his fleet; later, a young naval officer, Augustus Agar, sent off in plainclothes and a torpedo boat on an independent mission to carry messages between Finland and Britain’s best spy in Petrograd, failed at this task, but in the process did sink two Soviet battleships and an armored cruiser sailing off Kronstadt.44 Cowan’s fleet achieved remarkably precise successes in a complex situation, above all helping the Baltic States and Finland to withstand Germany and the USSR, but this success was minor compared to other events between 1918–21, especially the Bolshevik conquest of most of the Tsarist empire. Turkey This development also crippled the Admiralty’s aims further south. Between 1919–23, the RN mastered the Black and Mediterranean Seas, as it did the Baltic, yet could not keep its enemies, the Bolsheviks and Turkish nationalists, from sweeping victories through Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Anatolia: only a great army could have done so. In 1920, the RN tried to have fleets in the Black and Caspian Seas, linked by British and indigenous forces in the Caucasus, permanently block southward Soviet expansion. These efforts aborted, because of Bolshevik power and British weakness on land.45 The RN was irrelevant to the successes Britain did achieve in the Middle East, and unable to prevent its failures. During the collapse of British policy in Turkey between 1919–23, the RN rode at anchor off Istanbul, to little point. One admiral, John de Robeck, noted, A fleet in front of Constantinople and unable to get further will have little effect on the Turks who have become used to seeing the fleet there and have learnt that we are unlikely to bombard indiscriminately unless an object can be attained – which seldom can be done by bombardment alone.46 During the endgame of empires between Britain and Turkey, September 1922–June 1923, the world’s largest fleet – nine battleships, six cruisers and 38 destroyers – stood off Istanbul in the Sea of Marmora. It underwrote Britain’s bargaining position, yet this merely let Britain recoup prestige; it could not prevent a Turkish victory on most issues of substance. Had the Turks attacked, the RN could not have kept them from crossing the Bosporus and seizing Istanbul. Under such circumstances, the RN was ready to fire on the city, “to disperse large mobs, or to destroy certain buildings.”47 Had it wished, it could have flattened Istanbul – for what that was worth.

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This situation symbolized the end of a century’s application of seapower to SSTR. That practice ended even though Britain, the world’s greatest seapower until 1939, had the capabilities to exercise it, as the United States did for several years longer in the Caribbean basin. Attitudinal changes in Britain hampered any aggressive use of force or form of colonialism, as did the rise of stronger states and military power in non-Western countries. By 1924, these factors, which also led Whitehall toward micromanagement, rendered gunboat diplomacy increasingly difficult even in China.48 By 1927, Chinese field guns along the Yangtse River crippled the power of gunboats; the last of them, HMS Amethyst, made an epic run downriver from Chinese Communist forces in 1949. Maritime forces operating in SSTR had a tiny role in the era of decolonization and the Cold War; the gunboat diplomacy of that era really affected only maritime issues.49

Conclusion In the Royal Navy’s experience, SSTR overlapped with war and imperialism, self-interest and humanitarian intervention. British authorities often did not intend direct rule, but still got it. Their motivations were liberal, their actions sometimes terrible. Naval SSTR involved small investments that produced big rewards, and losses. In effective and cost-efficient ways, it let Britain exploit focal points and moments, achieve precise aims without collateral damage, lever other actors, and further many interests, though mostly of third-rate importance. The RN, however, could not support SSTR far from the coastline, save in China, where the results were not entirely happy. Power on the peripheries was limited, making it hard for Britain to solve the small problems its very presence tempted it to tackle. Good intentions did not guarantee good results. Unintended consequences were normal and counter-productive ones common; to intervene caused instability, trapped one in local conflicts, and tempted subordinates or friends to borrow your power for their ends, causing you needless enemies. Pursuit of stability was destabilizing. Failures were frequent. Naval SSTR was useful for Britons, and probably can be so for Americans, but to a lesser degree. The United States inherited a world system created by the United Kingdom, based on liberalism and free trade. So too, the “arc of instability” is a colonial inheritance, and the proposed multinational “1,000 ship navy” similar to Castlereagh’s naval league. For the United States Navy to pursue SSTR is to have that system function as it was set up to do. Yet naval SSTR will have limited value for the U.S. Navy and the United States. It can work well on purely maritime issues, such as countering the shocking revival in piracy, or in low-intensity environments, but for big problems on land, the U.S. Navy will prove less important than armies are, or the RN was. Even more, any form of SSTR may fail either because a force is too weak, or too strong. A nation’s presence as a stronger power in any region may create instability, become imperial, and enable sub-imperialism – creating authority to be borrowed by the power’s own local interests, or against its friends by its subordinates. For the U.S. Navy in SSTR, public pressure groups calling for humanitarian intervention, the CNN

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effect, and thick real-time communications, will jar the hand of policy. SSTR may solve some problems by creating others, which require solutions of their own, that will be harder for Washington to find than it was for London. Britain, facing societies that were eroding because of Western diseases or economics, often multiplied that trend by its very intervention, or the tools it enlisted. Yet no matter the problem, Britain could offer the final solution of empire; not so the United States. With SSTR, the elephants in the room are politics and imperialism. Politics is not linear: sometimes you cannot get there straight from here; and one place the United States cannot go is imperialism of the nineteenthcentury variety.

Notes 1 All material cited from the CAB, ADM, and PRO series are held at the National Archives United Kingdom, Kew, and appear by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. The papers of Robert Peel, Lord Minto, and John de Robeck are held, respectively, by the British Library, London, the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Churchill College, Cambridge. They appear by permission of the copyright holders. 2 British Parliamentary Papers (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), p. 118, Alcock to Russell, 24.9.1859. 3 The 158th meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 5.7.22, CAB 2/3; CP 258 (27), CAB 24/189; “Notes by the First Sea Lord,” 5.7.1929, PRO 30/69/267. 4 The best studies of the RN in the nineteenth century are Andrew Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815–1850 (London: Conway’s Maritime Press, 1991), John Beeler, British Naval Policy in the Gladstone–Disraeli Era, 1866–1880 (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1997); Gerald Graham, The Politics of Naval Supremacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); and Donald M. Schurman (ed. John Beeler), Imperial Defence, 1868–1887 (London: Frank Cass, 2000). For the Edwardian era, see Jon Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889–1914 (London: Routledge, 1989); Nicholas Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999). And, for the 1920s, see Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars, Volume 1: The Period of Anglo-American Naval Antagonism, 1919–1929 (London: Collins, 1968). Also see John Ferris, “It Is Our Business in the Navy to Command the Seas:’ The Last Decade of British Maritime Supremacy, 1919–1929,” in Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy (eds), Far Flung Lines, Maritime Essays in Honour of Donald Schurman (London: Frank Cass, 1996); and Chris Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars (London: Palgrave, 2000). 5 Steam, Shell and Gunfire, The Steam Warship, 1815–1905, Conway’s History of the Ship (London: Conway’s Maritime Press, 1992). 6 D. M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819–1835 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995); G. S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, A Study of Maritime Enterprise, 1810–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 346–60; and Barry Gough, The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1810–1914: A Study of British Maritime Ascendancy (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1971), pp. 131–49. 7 “Peel to Aberdeen,” 25.10.1841, Robert Peel Papers, British Library, BL 40453. 8 Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, pp. 96–120; Raymond C. Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 106–14.

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9 Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, pp. 79–80. 10 J. W. Wong, Deadly Dreams, Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 69–108. 11 Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence, Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998); G. L. Sullivan, Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters (London: Royal African Society, 1873), pp. 21, 284; Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade, pp. 6–7. 12 Mohamed Reda Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar, Roots of British Domination (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 167–8. 13 “Aberdeen to Peel,” 18.10.1844, Peel Papers, BL 40454. 14 These themes are addressed by the essays in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Britain and the Old World Order (London: Routledge, 2007). 15 Gerald S. Graham, ed., The Navy and South America, 1807–1923, The Correspondence of the Commanders-in-Chief on the South American Station (London: Royal Navy Record Society, 1962). 16 Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade, pp. 137. 17 Samson, Imperial Benevolence, pp. 130–47; Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, pp. 78–83. 18 Paul Michael Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 64–8. 19 Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and Politics in the Malay World (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1963); Sultan Muhammad al-Qasimi, The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Charles E. Davies, The Blood-Red Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797–1820 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997); Patricia Risso, “Cross-cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region during a Long Eighteenth Century,” Journal of World History, vol. 12, no. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 293–317; Oded Lowenheim, “ ‘Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind’: British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates,” International Studies Quarterly (47) (2003), pp. 23–48. 20 W. E. F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), pp. 97–8. 21 Graham to Palmerston, 11.1.1831, The Papers of Sir James Graham, Part 1: General Series, 1820–1860, Reel 1. 22 The standard books are Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949), Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers; and Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade. Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression, is the best account of the diplomatic side of the matter. 23 The most recent accounts are all by Barry Gough, The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast; Gunboat Frontier, British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians, 1846–1890 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984); and Britain, Canada and the North Pacific: Maritime Enterprise and Dominion, 1778–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Cf. Andrew Lambert, “Winning without Fighting: British Grand Strategy and Its Application to the United States, 1815–1865,” in Bradford Lee and Karl Walling (eds), Strategic Logic and Political Rationality, Essays in Honour of Michael I. Handel (London: Frank Cass and Co., 2003). 24 Gough, Gunboat Frontier, p. 210. 25 Graham to Bentinct, 19.1.1832, The Papers of Sir James Graham, Part 1: General Series, 1820–1860, Reel 2. 26 “Palmerston to Second Earl of Minto,” 23.9.1837, Minto Papers, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, MS 11810. 27 Gerald S. Graham, The China Station, War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); and Wong, Deadly Dreams. 28 BPP, Japan, 1, 1854–64, p. 118, Morrison to Alcock, 5.9.1859.

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29 BPP, Japan, 1, 1854–64, p. 134, Alcock to Russell, 10.11.1859, pp. 191–2, same to same, 6.3.1860. 30 British Parliamentary Papers, “Reports and Correspondence Concerning Japan,” 2, 1864–70, (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), pp. 36–7, Neale to Russell, 10.2.1863. For the relationship between Western policy and Japanese politics, cf. Conrad Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980). 31 BPP Japan, 2, 1864–70, p. 405, Winchester to Russell, 26.5.1865. 32 Norman Robert Bennett, “France and Zanzibar, 1844 to the 1860s,” Parts 1 and 2, International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 6, no. 4 (1973), pp. 602–32, vol. 7, no. 1 (1974), pp. 27–55; Bhacker, Trade and Empire, pp. 192–3. 33 Bhacker, ibid., pp. 184–9; this also is the best account of Anglo–Albusa’idi relations. 34 Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade, p. 208. 35 British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relating to the Slave Trade, 1861–1874, Slave Trade, 91 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), “Report Addressed to the Earl of Clarendon by the Committee of the East African Slave Trade,” 24.1.1870, p. 219. 36 For useful memoirs, cf. Sullivan, Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters, and P.H. Colomb, Slave Catching in the Indian Ocean (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1873). 37 R. J. Gavin, “The Bartle Frere Mission to Zanzibar, 1873,” Historical Journal, vol. 5, no. 2 (1962), pp. 122–48; BPP, Slave Trade 91, “Correspondence Respecting Sir Bartle Frere’s Mission to the East Coast of Africa, 1872–73,” p. 365. 38 Lawrence D. Taylor, “Gunboat Diplomacy’s Last Fling in the New World: The British Seizure of San Quentin, April 1911,” The Americas, vol. 52, no. 4 (4.96), pp. 521–43. 39 Beatty to de Robeck, 20.2.1920, John de Robeck Papers, Churchill College, Cambridge, 6/25. 40 Minute by Beatty, 28.11.1919, ADM 1/8575. 41 For the background, cf. John Robert Ferris, Men, Money and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–1926 (London: Macmillan, 1989) and John Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East (London: Macmillan, 1981). 42 Hamphill to Barnes, 4.12.1919, ADM 1/8575. 43 Admiralty to Grand Fleet, 29.11.1918, Admiralty to SNO Baltic, 12.5.1919, No. 252, ADM 116/1862. 44 Augustus Agar, Footprints in the Sea, the Autobiography of Captain Augustus Agar, V.C., R.N. (London: Evans Bros, 1959), pp. 87–138. 45 Beatty to de Robeck, 1.2.1920, de Robeck Papers, 6/25. 46 De Robeck, Atlantic Fleet, to Admiralty, 1326/A.F. 001360, ADM 137/1778. 47 Memorandum by De Brock, No 46, 12.10.1922, ADM 137/1776; Memorandum “Operation X.X.,” 1.6.23, ADM 137/1727. 48 Foreign Office to Admiralty, 19.9.1924, passim, ADM 1/8665. 49 James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, 1919–1979, Political Applications of Limited Naval Force (London: Macmillan, 1971).

4

International law and stability operations Theo Farrell

International law and the United States have enjoyed an uneasy relationship of late. Many American politicians, policymakers and pundits consider international law to be a bit of a nuisance, if not an actual hindrance to the advancement of U.S. national interests. Many around the world believe that under the Presidency of George W. Bush, the United States has ridden roughshod over international law. That the greatest power in the world and supposedly leader of the free world should show such apparent disregard for the rule of law has understandably caused much unease. International law on the use of force is at the heart of this discomfort. To be sure, a certain lawless spirit has been read in U.S. opposition to major multilateral treaties on nuclear testing, landmines, climate change, biological diversity, law on the sea, and the International Criminal Court (ICC), all of which are supported by almost all other states. But the bottom line is that the United States is legally entitled not to consent to these treaties. The controversial U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a clear mandate from the UN Security Council (UNSC), however, is widely pointed to as evidence of actual U.S. lawlessness. For U.S. policymakers at the time, the United States and its coalition partners had just cause to invade Iraq. But for others – including great powers such as China, France, and Russia – the 2003 Iraq War was essentially about an all-powerful and unbound United States doing as it pleased. International law has bearing on many aspects of stability operations, including operations undertaken by naval forces. Indeed, freedom of movement on the high seas, a central advantage of naval expeditionary forces, is protected under international law. This chapter however, focuses on the more controversial aspects of naval support of stabilization endeavors: international law concerning the use of force and conduct of military operations. It explores stability operations involving the use of force, often in non-permissive environments. Although humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping are important forms of stability operations, forceful stability operations – encompassing coercive peace operations, counter-insurgency (COIN), and counter-terrorist operations – are most consequential in terms of the application of international law and America’s reputation in world politics. The core argument in this chapter is that international law offers both challenges and opportunities for the United States. In other words, international law

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is as much an enabler as it is a drag on U.S. military operations. To support this argument, the next section introduces two basic perspectives on international law – the traditional positivist view of it as a system of rules to which states have consented, and a post-World War II American liberal view that sees international law as a vehicle for the advancement of progressive values. Both perspectives are necessary to appreciate the potential of international law as a restraint and a resource when it comes to U.S.-led stability operations. The second section takes the positivist approach in exploring the rules of international law on when and how the United States may use armed force. These rules do indeed place considerable constraints on the legitimate options available for U.S. strategy, operations, and tactics. Although one might infer from this observation that the United States should simply ignore international law, the final section explores the issue from a different perspective. It suggests that the liberal approach reveals the importance of international law as an enabler of U.S. strategy and a template for military operations that are consistent with U.S. liberal values and war objectives.

International law: rules and values The dominant approach to modern international law – called legal positivism – has a narrow view of international law as a system of rules to which states have given their explicit consent in treaties, or implicitly in widely accepted customary practice. The dominance of positivism is beyond doubt. This is how most scholars, jurists, and states view international law. Many U.S. international lawyers, however, take a different view of international law. They view international law as a vehicle for the advancement of progressive liberal values. This liberal approach was founded in the early Cold War period, and has enjoyed a revival in the post-Cold War era. Central to positivism is the idea that jurisprudence should be concerned with the empirical study of existing law, as opposed to the moral theorizing about the possibilities of law. Natural international law, stretching back to before medieval times, derived principles of law from the laws of God and inherent rights of man. Positivism, which gradually emerged in the sixteenth century, broke with this tradition by rooting the law in state choice, custom and convention. In one sense, the emergence of this state-based way of thinking about international law was remarkable because it involved rejecting over two millennia of jurisprudence. This displacing of ethics for empirics in legal study was consolidated in the context of the general move from philosophy to science in the humanities in early nineteenth-century Europe. So whereas naturalists based international law on religious or secular ethics, positivists read it scientifically in terms of what states agreed the law to be. State consent is so crucial in this scheme of things because, as sovereigns, there is no authority above states. Thus, states have to give their consent to be bound by rules that would regulate their relations with one another. This positivist approach to law was developed in the Victorian era by British and German scholars and by the early twentieth century had become the dominant understanding of international law.1

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Positivist international law was robustly challenged in the mid-twentieth century by self-proclaimed “realists” working in the new discipline of international relations. E. H. Carr and Hans J. Morgenthau, the founding fathers of modern realism, both pointed to the failure of international law in preventing the rise of an aggressive fascism in the interwar period and halting the descent into yet another world war.2 In response to this realist challenge, a liberal approach to international law developed in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The central figures in this “New Haven” school of international law comprised a team at Yale University, Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell. They called for international lawyers, trained in the methods of policy sciences, to develop progressive law – law that would help fashion a world public order that advanced human dignity. Indeed, McDougal and Lasswell were highly critical of the “make-believe universalism” of traditional international law, i.e., the notion that international law comprises only those rules to which all states have consented. This perspective, they argued, cloaked the tough moral choices created by the effort to develop a sustainable world order. In the 1950s, the value-free position of legal positivism gave equal recognition to democratic and totalitarian systems of public order. This simply did not make sense to McDougal and Lasswell in the context of the Cold War ideological struggle between the Western democracies and Eastern dictatorships.3 The New Haven school made little headway during the Cold War. Realist concerns with the balance of power between East and West stifled any inclination in Western diplomacy to use the law to advance liberal values. The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, however, created the strategic opportunity for the advancement of progressive liberal values. In this more permissive political environment, the liberal approach to international law has enjoyed a revival. Drawing on the legacy of the New Haven school, scholars such as Fernando Teson, Thomas Franck, and Anne-Marie Slaughter have resurrected the notion of a moral asymmetry in the world between democracies and non-democracies. Teson does not beat around the bush: “tyrannical governments are outlaws.” He argues that liberal international law should seek to protect individuals from tyrannies, and that force may be legitimately used for this purpose. Indeed, he maintains that sovereignty rests on internal legitimacy, and since tyrannies lack this, they also lack the “proper foundation” of state sovereignty. The conclusion is a subversive one from the perspective of traditional positivist international law: “Sovereignty is to be respected only when it is justly exercised.” In practical terms, Teson would have the democracies boot the nondemocracies out of the United Nations, suspend their right to make treaties, remove their diplomatic privileges, and refuse to recognize them as legitimate.4 Franck and Slaughter take a less extreme position, in terms of how nondemocracies ought to be treated. But they are forthright in laying out the legal and strategic imperatives for recognizing democracy as a core value in international law. Franck claims, somewhat controversially, that democracy has evolved “from moral prescription to international legal obligation.” This claim is based on “various texts” and on “the practice of global and regional organi-

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zations,” which Franck argues specify in remarkable detail the content of this new legal norm, especially “the requirement for free and open elections.”5 Slaughter claims that liberal democracies are more likely to honor obligations undertaken in treaties.6 She also maintains that they can no more be trusted with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) than non-democracies; indeed, she argues that democracies have a “duty” to use force to prevent non-democracies from acquiring WMD to protect international peace and security.7 Positivism and liberalism thus offer very different perspectives on international law. For positivists, it is a system of rules that gain force not from their moral worth but because states have agreed to them. For liberals, it is a mechanism for advancing intrinsically moral values. From this perspective, international law does not require state consent and indeed may push against the wishes of autocratic states. These perspectives also point to different purposes of international law. For positivists, international law serves a rational purpose of regulating relations between states. For liberals, it serves a moral purpose for the advancement of a progressive world order.

International law and the limits on force International law sets out strict rules regulating recourse to force and the conduct of military operations. There is a general prohibition against the use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. There are only two exceptions to this prohibition: Article 51 recognizes “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence,” and Chapter VII provides that the UNSC may authorize the use of force to protect or restore international peace and security. A number of other treaties sustain the normative prohibition on state use of force. Most significant is the 1928 General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (also known as the Kellogg–Briand Pact). Under Article 1, the parties undertake to “condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy.” Notwithstanding the obvious recourse to aggressive war by the fascist states during World War II, the Kellogg–Briand Pact carries considerable normative weight since all but four states in the interwar period signed up for it. In addition to informing Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the Kellogg–Briand Pact remains in force today, with 63 states being party to it.8 Also significant is the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations, which prohibits states from deploying force to change borders, resolve disputes, in reprisal, or to suppress people seeking self-determination, and prohibits states from supporting terrorists or insurgencies in other states. The Declaration is not binding and so, strictly speaking, has no force in law. But it does provide an authoritative interpretation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.9 Most often stability operations involve use of force. This may occur in the context of military action that was originally taken in self-defense – such as stability operations that are ongoing in Afghanistan. Legality is provided where such operations continue as a proportionate (i.e., proportionate to defensive

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requirements) and necessary response to the initial attack. Legality may also be vouchsafed where such operations are conducted with the consent of the host government. Both conditions apply in Afghanistan. Legality may be provided where such operations are authorized by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII, as is the case with the 9,000 strong UN Stabilization Mission that has been operating in Haiti since 2004. But stability operations may also involve use of force beyond the Charter provisions for self-defense and Chapter VII operations. This may occur in two instances. The first, and most obvious, is recourse to force for humanitarian purposes. As we shall see, the UNSC has authorized the exercise of force for humanitarian purposes on a number of occasions since the end of the Cold War. But equally, in many cases, forcible humanitarian interventions have occurred without a UNSC mandate. The other instance is when force is deployed to prevent a threat from emerging. Arguably this is a form of anticipatory self-defense. There is no provision for humanitarian intervention or preventive self-defense in the UN Charter. Indeed, humanitarian intervention runs against the prohibition in Article 2(7) against interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Equally, Article 51 only allows for a right of selfdefense “if an armed attack occurs.” Thus, the legal basis for both, if it exists at all, must be found in customary law. In this regard, the International Court of Justice found in the 1986 Nicaragua case that the UN Charter did not, as some commentators had suggested, replace customary law on the use of force.10 States have generally been hostile to the notion of humanitarian intervention and so, until very recently, there has been little state custom to go on. Indeed, our current understanding of “humanitarian intervention” – that is, employing force to “save strangers” – is particular to the late twentieth century. In the nineteenth century and before, “humanitarian intervention” involved wielding force to protect one’s own nationals on foreign territory.11 The basic objection to the use of force to sort out murderous and failed states was put thus by the French representative to the UNSC, when condemning humanitarian intervention by Vietnam in Cambodian genocide in 1978: The notion that because a regime is detestable foreign intervention is justified and forcible overthrow is legitimate is extremely dangerous. That could ultimately jeopardize the very maintenance of international law and order and make the continued existence of various regimes dependent on the judgment of their neighbours.12 There were only four instances, including this case, of forcible humanitarian interventions during the four decades following World War II. Everything changed with the end of the Cold War. Conflicts around the world were no longer viewed as extensions of East–West rivalry, and thus the Security Council was able to authorize armed intervention in humanitarian crises in Somalia (1992), Bosnia (1992), Kosovo (1999), and East Timor (1999). These interventions occurred under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which empowers the Security Council to determine that the humanitarian crisis constitutes a

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threat to international peace and security (Article 39) and accordingly to authorize the use of force in response (Article 42). There is a problem, however, insofar as the UNSC has tended not to provide legal reasoning to justify the characterization of a humanitarian crisis as a threat to international peace. The Security Council has also sought to maximize its discretion in this matter by repeatedly declaring those humanitarian crises that it deems warrant action under Chapter VII to be “unique” in some way, thereby suggesting that these cases do not set precedent. Thus, it is difficult to read a legal right of humanitarian intervention in UNSC action. NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo crisis in March 1999 provided the test case for the legality of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War system. NATO use of force (in the form of precision bombing) was intended to end violent Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. This intervention by NATO was widely recognized as responding to dire humanitarian need and hence legitimate. But serious doubts were expressed about its legality. Two UNSC resolutions (1160 and 1199) did provide the triggers for military action by identifying the situation in the province as a threat to international peace and security. But neither resolution actually authorized use of force because Russia and China would not agree to it. Given this, it was incumbent on NATO to lay out the legal case for war, which it failed to do. Significantly, while NATO states declared that they were acting on the grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity, only Belgium claimed a legal right to forcibly intervene in Kosovo on humanitarian grounds.13 The international community was divided in its response to NATO’s humanitarian war. Russia and China condemned NATO’s intervention as illegal. Against this, most states in and out of the Security Council accepted the humanitarian necessity for use of force in this case.14 Regardless, there was no mood among states to infer a general rule from this specific case. Hence, the G77 group of 133 non-industrialized states issued a statement in April 2000 declaring: “We reject the so-called ‘right’ of humanitarian intervention, which has no legal basis in the United Nations Charter or in the general principles of international law.”15 Nor was NATO trying to generalize from the Kosovo case. Indeed, following common UNSC practice in such cases, it declared Kosovo to be an “exceptional case.”16 Customary law on anticipatory self-defense dates back to the Caroline case, named after an American ship destroyed by British troops in 1837 because it had been supplying Canadian rebels. In a now famous diplomatic note sent to the British Ambassador to Washington in April 1841, U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster put forward an authoritative definition of anticipatory self-defense. He wrote that such use of force was legal when the necessity is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”17 This is taken to mean that anticipatory self-defense is only legal when a state is facing imminent and overpowering attack. The imperative for preemption in such cases flows from a powerful strategic logic: the advantage is often with the state that strikes first.

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State practice shows some sympathy for anticipatory self-defense when, as in the Webster formula, the defending state is facing a threat of imminent and overpowering attack. Thus, Israel’s preemptive air strike against the Egyptian air force in 1967 was generally recognized as justified (if not strictly legal) by the UNSC and UN General Assembly (UNGA), given Egypt’s hostile intent and Israel’s vulnerability to conventional attack. In contrast, Israel’s bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, designed to forestall an Iraqi nuclear threat, was strongly condemned both by the UNSC and UNGA because the threat from Iraq was not clear and immediate.18 Another recent test case was the 2003 Iraq War. The British government located the legal case for use of force against Iraq in past UNSC resolutions that had originally authorized military action against Iraq in 1991 and were, Britain argued, reactivated by Iraq’s failure to dismantle fully its weapons of mass destruction programs. However, the United States also latched on a claim of acting in self-defense.19 In a public address a few days before the war, President Bush made it clear that this claim was being invoked in the context of anticipatory self-defense: “Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations; and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide.”20 Bush’s line on Iraq echoed his administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy, which declared: “To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”21 In the case of Iraq, however, the United States was not able to present compelling evidence of an imminent threat of attack. Some allied states such as Spain, Italy, Poland, and notably Britain accepted the necessity for war against Iraq. But many states recognized this for what it was: preventive use of force. These states were not prepared to recognize the legality of preventive self-defense because to do so would risk returning the world to an earlier era of power politics where might makes right.22 So the United States is hemmed in by international law when it comes to recourse to force. And when it does use force, international law also regulates the conduct of military operations. The law of armed conflict (LOAC) requires that humane treatment be given to prisoners, wounded combatants, and civilians in conflict zones, it prohibits the targeting of civilians and civilian objects; and it bans specific weapons. These legal restrictions on the conduct of war are rooted in the Western Just War tradition that stretches back through the Middle Ages to antiquity, and were codified in modern LOAC in the twentieth century. Particularly noteworthy, in this respect, are the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), the four Geneva Conventions (1949), and the two Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions (1977).23 Until recently, a fairly clear distinction was maintained in LOAC between rules applicable to international and to internal armed conflicts. There is a very well-developed and highly codified law on international armed conflict. In contrast, the codified law on internal armed conflict is sparse, and mostly contained in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which makes some vague provision for the humane treatment of ex-combatants and civilians. As a consequence of the case law of the International Criminal

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Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (especially the Tadic case), however, it is now widely accepted that a broad swathe of customary rules in LOAC are applicable to all forms of armed conflict.24 Accordingly, U.S. stability operations, regardless of whether they are conducted in the context of an international or internal armed conflict, are subject to LOAC. The application of the LOAC is subject to the principle of military necessity. One of the first expressions of this principle is found in Article 14 of the Lieber Code, which covered the conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1863): “Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists of the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war.”25 In this early formulation, the principle of military necessity emphasized the restraints on war imposed by laws of nations and humanity. But, by the turn of the twentieth century, the principle had undergone a shift in meaning, from emphasizing the limits of war imposed by LOAC to emphasizing the limits of LOAC as imposed by military requirements.26 And so the principle of military necessity provides some leeway for combat operations. It accepts, for instance, that civilians may be killed and civilian structures destroyed in the course of military operations – that is, through collateral damage. But it does not permit violations of basic rules. Thus, civilian death and destruction may not be the objective of military operations. There is no doubt that the U.S. military takes seriously its obligations under LOAC. Judge Advocate General (JAG) officers are embedded at all levels of command down to battalion level to insure that military operations conform to the applicable law especially when it comes to military targeting.27 Embedding LOAC in national military systems involves generic targeting doctrine as well as campaign rules of engagement (ROE). In terms of targeting doctrine, however, there is a gap emerging between U.S. and European militaries. Most European militaries adhere to a strict reading of Additional Protocol I (Article 52(2)) that prohibits the targeting of dual-use structures (that is civilian structures which have military application, such as roads, railways, and bridges), unless such structures are making an “effective” contribution to enemy action and their neutralization or destruction offers a definite military advantage.”28 The United States is not a party to Additional Protocol I, but it recognizes the force in customary law (as do most states) of its provisions on targeting. The latest U.S. targeting doctrine, however, removes the “effective contribution” requirement and permits attacks on structures “whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization offer a military advantage.”29 This doctrinal divergence was already emerging in the late 1990s, and produced variations in how the U.S. and European militaries interpreted the range of lawful action during the Kosovo War. U.S. officers were satisfied with the lawfulness of extending NATO’s bombing campaign to include civilian structures in and around Belgrade (including television stations, offices of the ruling political party, and the civilian power grid), whereas the Europeans were uncertain about the lawfulness of this military escalation. Hitting such targets did indeed increase the coercive effect of NATO’s air

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campaign. So there was a clear military advantage to the practice. But it is stretching things to describe them as making an effective contribution to enemy military action. According to the letter of Additional Protocol I, these were not dual-use targets.30 The Kosovo campaign also illustrates how LOAC can hinder effects-based operations. The laborious process of target approval, often requiring authorization by all the NATO member states, meant that targets were stacking up waiting for approval. Concern with collateral damage also led to many approved targets being cancelled at the last minute. Even when targets were finally approved, the delays alone caused problems for military planners. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO) report: Officials at the [NATO] air operations center stated that the high level approval process also led to approved targets being provided on a sporadic basis, which limited the military’s ability to achieve planned effects and mass and parallel operations as recommended in doctrine.31 The slow target approval process hampered the effort to destroy particular facilities (e.g., approval being denied for all the targets necessary to take out an oil refinery) and in terms of destroying enough targets in a sufficiently compressed time period to achieved synergistic strategic effects. Thus, LOAC limits targeting tactics, especially where coalition partners are applying a more strict (that is, legally correct) reading of LOAC rules.

International law and the liberal way of war The rules of international law impose a defensive strategic posture on the United States, one that requires it to wait to be attacked or to persuade the permanent members of the UN Security Council – including France, China, and Russia – that force needs to be deployed offensively to protect global security. And when the United States does resort to force, LOAC rules also appear to hinder the U.S. military operations. The United States has attempted to stretch the rules to create strategic space for it to employ its preponderant military power. This is evident in the attempt to carve out special rights to engage in preventive use of force. It is also evident in the refusal to extend full prisoner-of-war rights to battlefield detainees, as required under a strict reading of the Geneva Conventions. And, arguably, it is evident in U.S. efforts to prevent the International Criminal Court, exercising jurisdiction over U.S. government officials and military personnel. The flippancy of key administration figures, such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as the cowboy image of President Bush, should not mislead one into thinking this simply reflects a cavalier U.S. attitude towards international law. The character of war has changed, and international law has some catching up to do. LOAC is premised on clear distinctions between war and peace, international and internal wars, and civilians and

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combatants. All these boundaries are blurred in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Thus, this is a “long war” which challenges the war–peace distinction, and it is waged against a global insurgency that operates within and across states. Insurgents and terrorists, by intention, conduct operations from among civilian populations.32 Moreover, the fact that Iraq did not have WMD as claimed by the Bush Administration does not negate the general point that, with the spread of WMD, the United States cannot wait to be attacked before using force in self-defense. The logic here predates the GWOT. Rosalyn Higgins (currently President of the International Court of Justice, or ICJ) noted over a decade ago: “in a nuclear age, common sense cannot require . . . a state passively to accept its fate before it can defend itself.”33 And, indeed, the ICJ refused to rule out anticipatory self-defense in its 1996 opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons use.34 In sum, the changing character of war gives the United States ample reason to seek necessary revisions to the rules on the use of force and the conduct of military operations. The concentration of military and diplomatic power in American hands gives U.S. officials the right to seek revision of the existing rules on the use of force. American power is unrivaled and will remain so for the foreseeable future.35 Some revision to international law might be the price for ensuring that the United States continues to work within the bounds of international law. Positivist international lawyers reject the notion that any single state, no matter how powerful, should have the right to demand such changes. Positivists, however, are blind to their heritage. Originally, positivists recognized the obvious: that is, the need for international law to work with, and not against, the prevailing distribution of power in the world system. Indeed, the leading positivist L. F. L. Oppenheim emphasized the necessity of the balance of power for international law in his hugely influential two-volume textbook on International Law, first published in 1905–6. Updated versions of this textbook were published under successive editors (and indeed continue to be), and it was in the 1935 later edition of the book that reference to the balance of power was dropped. As Benedict Kingsbury notes: “ever since, the notion that balance of power principles might be relevant to international law has been virtually unutterable among members of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’.”36 The liberal approach suggests how international law can be made to work for the United States, and why this working relationship is so essential. Liberal values underpin U.S. purpose in the world – a purpose once aimed at defeating fascist and Communist peer competitors, now directed towards promoting human dignity and spreading democracy.37 Critics would suggest that U.S. foreign policy is really about advancing the interests of “corporate America” and that this requires suppressing human dignity and real democracy so as to reduce labor costs and remove barriers to foreign-resource extraction.38 In some cases economic interests exercised through U.S. foreign policy have indeed produced these effects. It is abundantly clear, however, that the dominant narrative of U.S. foreign policy, one that gives purpose to U.S. leadership in the world, is a narrative of human rights and the promotion of democracy. Thus,

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narrow national interests cannot explain U.S. action in the 2003 Iraq War. There is no doubting now that U.S. policymakers realized that Iraq was not an immediate threat to U.S. national security. Rather this was an “offensive liberal war” (albeit not a terribly successful one to date) – that is to say, a war waged to protect human rights and promote regional peace through regime change.39 This offensive liberalism is deeply ingrained in U.S. strategic culture.40 As a liberal hegemon, it is not surprising that the United States seeks to create a world legal order that advances liberal values. Indeed, this liberal imprint is clear in international legal regimes on human rights, international crimes, and world trade. As a liberal hegemon, the United States is ideologically inclined towards a rulegoverned international order. Ironically, a crusading liberalism and the mantle of leadership often push and pull the United States into projecting power, sometimes in contradiction of international law, as occurred in the liberal wars in Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003.41 But it would be inconceivable for the United States to simply abandon international law. Indeed, the liberal approach illuminates why it would be a mistake of historic proportions to do so. The United States, with good reason, is the major architect of the international legal system and institutions that comprise it.42 This system provides order and facilitates the exercise of US power. By binding itself to international law, the United States is able to reassure states that are nervous about the concentration of U.S. power, and so to be able to wield it without triggering resistance.43 International law and institutions play a crucial role in legitimating and thereby enabling U.S. leadership. Here Christian ReusSmit highlights the “central paradox of hegemony: that stable, enduring leadership requires power to be socially embedded, and that unilateral action can be socially corrosive, with implications for both the preponderant power and world order.”44 Thus the United States faces a tricky balancing act – to revise the rules of international law as required by the changing character of war and its own liberal purpose, but without veering too far from the standards of state practice encoded in international law. The adverse world reaction to the 2003 Iraq War suggests that the United States may have strayed too far. Public opinion in most countries now favors the emergence of some other rival power to balance the United States.45 Even when it comes to how the United States employs force, the LOAC also furnishes the script and thereby enables it to wage war in a manner that is consistent with liberal values. Stability operations following the U.S.-led conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq probably supply the model for future forceful stability operations, which are likely to center on a struggle between liberalism and political extremism. Indeed, this model had already emerged in the coercive peace operations of the 1990s in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo. These conflicts between liberal interveners and local extremist groups cannot be won through force of arms. Rather it is the force of ideas that will decide the matter.46 It is crucial that the United States and its coalition partners set the narratives of these wars, narratives that have given just cause to what they are trying to achieve, and then sustain these narratives through military action.47

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Iraq illustrates the problems here. U.S. stability operations in the two years following the collapse of Saddam’s regime suffered from a number of deficiencies that could have been remedied through more careful compliance with LOAC. In the initial occupation phase, before the re-establishment of sovereign government in Iraq, coalition forces were obliged under the Hague and Geneva Conventions to maintain law and order.48 This they were not prepared to do. The U.S. Department of Defense, under Rumsfeld, was determined not to stick around in Iraq. Accordingly, the U.S. force that invaded Iraq was not configured for stabilizing the country. Indeed, the U.S. occupying authorities made matters worse by dismantling the local state security structures. We now know just how critical these errors were in creating the conditions for civil war in Iraq. But this lesson is not new: the peace operations of the 1990s underline the (fairly obvious) importance of law and order in stabilizing post-conflict societies.49 Serious attention to the international legal obligations to impose order on territory one has conquered would have avoided the necessity for America to relearn this lesson; it would also have greatly helped avoid civil war in Iraq. Stabilization operations in postwar Iraq were also characterized by considerable variation in the restraint exercised by U.S. forces towards local populaces in the fight against insurgents. This applies both to the detention and treatment of suspects, and the use of force against insurgents operating among civilians and civilian structures.50 Here, however, the story is more encouraging. The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps have gained a new appreciation of the need to be more judicious in the targeted detention of locals and the use of force against insurgents. Tactics and procedures at checkpoints have been revised, and more restrictive ROEs introduced, to reduce civilian casualties. Stability operations may require offensives necessarily involving large-scale deployment of force against insurgents (and other “peace spoilers”). But here too, the contrast between the first and second U.S. offensive against insurgents in Fallujah, in April 2004 and November 2005, respectively, revealed that important lessons have been learned. In the first offensive, U.S. Marines fought pitched battles with insurgents in heavily populated civilian areas. The second offensive was preceded by information operations that succeeded in getting 250,000 of the 280,000 inhabitants to clear the city in advance of combat operations.51 Challenges remain, especially when insurgents seek to manipulate LOAC for military advantage, for instance by using civilians as shields in attacks against coalition forces. Such practices have discredited LOAC in the eyes of some U.S. officers, who believe that it constitutes a means for the enemy to engage in “lawfare.”52 However, the principle of military necessity permits use of force against insurgents in such circumstances (especially, but not exclusively, in selfdefense). Moreover, anecdotal evidence suggests that U.S. Marines and soldiers are firing on insurgents operating from behind human shields.53 The broader point is that the United States has every reason to support the LOAC (even if specific rules on dual-use targets may need adjusting) because it de-legitimates insurgent military practices and legitimates the high-tech, precision-strike warfare practiced by the U.S. military.54

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Iraq underlines the importance of harnessing international law and institutions for a U.S. grand strategy that is centered on containing the threat from illiberal states to their own populaces and regional security. In Iraq, the Bush Administration was too quick to ignore the UNSC on the path to war. And it has paid the price in terms of a poor level of international support for postwar security and reconstruction. The failure to find Iraqi WMD does not negate the potential need for preventive military action or humanitarian intervention to contain the threat from illiberal states. There is provision for neither under current international law. However, both are consistent with a liberal reading of what should be provided under international law. Liberal states should not permit massive abuses of human rights to occur in illiberal zones of the world. The norm of democracy is developing attributes of a legal right. And, in any case, there is ample reason (both ethically and strategically) to make sovereignty conditional on minimum standards of responsible statehood. Equally, liberal states should not have to sit back while illiberal states acquire WMD. History gives liberal democracies ample reason to be nervous about the military intentions and capabilities of illiberal regimes. History also shows that, prior to the foundation of the United Nations, great powers enlisted international law to regulate “outlaw” states.55 Liberal values are certainly present in the current world legal order, in the regimes on human rights, international crimes, and world trade.56 Iraq will doubtless cast a shadow over any constructive engagement by the United States with the other great powers on the need to adjust legal rules to the new reality of liberal hegemony. And yet, such an engagement is overdue. It is time for the United States to engage its preponderant material and social power to inject liberal purpose into legal rules governing the use of force. Preventive use of force against illiberal states raises the prospects of regime change (as a logical strategic objective) and hence U.S. stability operations. And certainly stability operations naturally follow from humanitarian intervention. Here too, international law is a crucial resource in providing the script for a liberal way of warfare, and so a template for a liberal victory. America can win wars by military force alone. But to win the peace, it needs legal rules guided by liberal values.

Notes 1 Stephen Hall, “The Persistent Spectre: Natural Law, International Order and the Limits of Legal Positivism,” European Journal of International Law, vol. 12 (2001), pp. 269–307; H. L. A. Hart, “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals,” Harvard Law Review, vol. 71 (1958), pp. 593–629. 2 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001[1939]); Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993 [1948]). 3 Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Lasswell, “The Identification and Appraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 53 (1959), pp. 1–29; Myres S. McDougal, “Some Basic Concepts about International Law: A Policy Orientated Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 4 (1960), pp. 337–54.

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4 Fernando R. Teson, “The Kantian Theory of International Law,” Columbia Law Review, vol. 92 (1992), pp. 89, 92, 100. 5 Thomas M. Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 86 (1992), pp. 47, 90. 6 Anne-Marie Slaughter, “International Law in a World of Liberal States,” European Journal of International Law, vol. 6 (1995), pp. 503–38. 7 Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “A Duty to Prevent,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 83, no. 1 (2004) pp. 136–50. 8 Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 6th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 698–9. 9 Malcolm Shaw, International Law, 5th edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 1018. 10 ICJ, “Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua,” Merits, 27 June 1986, para. 176. 11 Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 12 Thomas Franck, Recourse to Force (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 148. 13 Catherine Guicher, “International Law and the War in Kosovo,” Survival, vol. 41 (1999), pp. 25–9. 14 Antonio Cassese, “A Follow-Up: Forcible Humanitarian Countermeasures and opinio nessitatis,” European Journal of International Law, vol. 10 (1999), pp. 791–9. 15 Declaration of the Group of 77 South Summit, Havana, Cuba, 10–14 April 2000, at www.g77.org/Declaration_G77Summit.htm. 16 Michael Byers and Simon Chesterman, “Changing the Rules about the Rules? Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention and the Future of International Law,” in J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane (eds), Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 199. 17 Caroline Case, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 29 (1836), pp. 1137–8, and vol. 30 (1837), pp. 195–6. 18 Franck, Recourse to Force, pp. 101–7. 19 Peter Slevin, “US Says War Has Legal Basis,” Washington Post, 21 March 2003, p. A14. 20 Peter Ford, “As Attack on Iraq Begins, Question Remains: Is It Legal?” Christian Science Monitor (21 March 2003). 21 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC, 2002), p. 15. See also The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC, 2006), p. 18. 22 Thomas Franck, “What Happens Now? The United Nations after Iraq,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 97 (2003), pp. 607–20. 23 A. Roberts and R. Guelff, Documents on the Laws of War, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 9–10; C. Greenwood, “The Law of War (International Humanitarian Law),” in M. Evans (ed.), International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 789–824. 24 Theodor Meron, “International Criminalization of Internal Atrocities,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 89 (1995), pp. 554–77. In its Customary International Humanitarian Law Project, the ICRC concluded that 147 of the 161 rules it identified in customary IHL are applicable to all forms of armed conflict. See Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck, Customary International Humanitarian Law, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), volume 1: Rules. 25 U.S. War Department, General Order No. 100, “Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field,” 24 April 1863, at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/ FULL/110?OpenDocument. 26 Burrus M. Carnahan, “Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

T. Farrell of the Principle of Military Necessity,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 92 (1998), pp. 217–18. Michael W. Lewis, “The Law of Aerial Bombardment in the 1991 Gulf War,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 97 (2003), pp. 481–509. Marco Roscini, “Targeting and Contemporary Aerial Bombardment,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 54 (2005), p. 442. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Doctrine for Targeting JP 3–60, 17 January 2002, A-2, 4 (b), at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp3_60.pdf. Theo Farrell, “World Culture and Military Power,” Security Studies, vol. 14 (2005), pp. 484–5. General Accounting Office (GAO), Kosovo Air Operations: Need to Maintain Alliance Cohesion Resulted in Doctrinal Departures (Washington, DC: GAO, July 2001), p. 9. John Mackinlay, Defeating Complex Insurgency (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2005). Rosalyn Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 242. Theo Farrell and Hélène Lambert, “Courting Controversy: International Law, National Norms, and American Nuclear Use,” Review of International Studies, vol. 27 (2001), pp. 321–2. William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security, vol. 24 (1999), pp. 5–41; G. John Ikenberry (ed.), America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). Benedict Kingsbury, “Legal Positivism as Normative Politics: International Society, Balance of Power and Lassa Oppenheim’s Positive International Law,” European Journal of International Law, vol. 13 (2002), p. 420. Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, Intervention and US Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage, 1992). Lawrence Freedman, “Iraq, Liberal Wars, and Illiberal Containment,” Survival, vol. 48 (2006–7), pp. 51–66. Theo Farrell, “Strategic Culture and American Empire,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs, vol. 25 (2005), pp. 3–18. Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). John F. Murphy, The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutes, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Christian Reus-Smit, American Power and World Order (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 6; on this point, see also Bruce Cronin, “The Paradox of Hegemony: America’s Ambiguous Relationship with the United Nations,” European Journal of International Relations, vol. 7 (2001), pp. 103–30. This finding is based on a 16-nation survey. See Pew Global Attitudes Project, “American Character Gets Mixed Reviews,” 23 June 2005, p. 3, at http://pewglobal. org/reports/pdf/247.pdf. This is most clearly articulated in Tony Blair, “A Battle for Global Values,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 1 (2007). Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs (Milton Park: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006), p. 26. Karen Guttieri, “Symptom of the Moment: A Juridical Gap for U.S. Occupation Forces,” International Insights, vol. 13 (1997), pp. 140–2.

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49 Simon Chesterman, The Use of Force in UN Peace Operations (New York: UN Department of Peacekeeping, Best Practice Unit, 2004), pp. 14–17. 50 Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco (London: Allen Lane, 2006). 51 Colin Kahl, “How We Fight,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 6 (2006), pp. 83–101. 52 Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., “Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in the Twenty-first Century Conflicts,” working paper, Project on the Means of Intervention, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University, www.ksg.harvard.edu/cchrp/UseofForcePapers.shtml, pp. 11–15. 53 Evan Wright, Generation Kill (London: Bantam Press, 2004), pp. 93–5; Peter Beaumont, “Gunmen, Children, Brutality, and Bombs – Iraq’s Dirty War,” The Guardian, 22 February 2007, at www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329723414–103550,00.html. 54 Thomas W. Smith, “The New Law of War: Legitimating Hi-tech and Infrastructural Violence,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 46 (2002), pp. 481–509. 55 Gerry Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 56 David Armstrong, Theo Farrell, and Hélène Lambert, International Law and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Part II

Service models

5

Beyond protecting the land and the sea The role of the U.S. Navy in reconstruction Jessica Piombo and Michael Malley

The contemporary focus on Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) activities is a direct result of the security environment that has emerged over the past two decades.1 With the decline of traditional threats such as interstate combat, or the prospect of blue-water naval engagements, the U.S. military, and the U.S. Navy in particular, have had to reassess many aspects of their force structure and operations. The new security environment is characterized by a sharp rise in non-traditional threats such as failed or failing states, global terrorist networks, and long-term insurgencies that attack both civilian and state targets. The U.S. military has had to reposition itself and its assets to meet this changed security environment. For its part, the U.S. Navy has discovered that blue-water operations do not figure prominently in this new threat environment. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) has called for the U.S. military to transition to a more flexible force structure, with more emphasis on Special Operations Force (SOF) operations, an awareness of history and foreign cultures, and a better appreciation of strategy. It also placed special emphasis on civil affairs and SSTR activities. These types of operations present many challenges to the U.S. Navy. As James Wirtz discussed in the introductory chapter, SSTR activities introduce new mission areas and new methods of operation, and entail cooperating with a wider range of partners. SSTR programs are complex and are intended to restore potentially all aspects of civil society and its associated infrastructure following a disaster. SSTR operations also are not limited to a specific facet of the Navy or a specific type of operation, and they may necessitate new basing modes as the Navy seeks to forward-deploy assets into regions of concern. Additionally, the U.S. Navy finds that it must work with or alongside governmental and non-governmental organizations that may have competing programs, objectives and constituencies as it engages in SSTR activities. What role can the U.S. Navy play in the reconstruction phase of these operations? Most of the analyses of the U.S. Navy in SSTR focus on the security and stabilization operations, but the Navy can also contribute to the reconstruction efforts that follow violent conflict or natural disaster. The Navy has unique assets for use in littoral or riverine areas that can undertake a wide range of missions outside of these areas. The Navy already has engaged in reconstruction

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activities in both post-conflict and natural-disaster situations that have little to do with traditional combat operations. This chapter reviews the emergence of SSTR operations as a priority in U.S. foreign and defense policy. It describes the components of SSTR, emphasizing the critical difference between the conduct of reconstruction operations following violent conflicts and the reconstruction operations undertaken in the wake of natural disasters. Ironically, emerging SSTR doctrine and directives focus on post-conflict situations, yet the U.S. Navy primarily engages in reconstruction operations in the wake of natural disasters. The U.S. Navy’s role, compared to that of other services, has been greatest in the largest post-natural-disaster operations: Operation Sea Angel, which was undertaken in response to a massive typhoon that hit Bangladesh in 1991; and Operation Unified Assistance, which followed the enormous tsunami that struck Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia in 2004. Thus, the distinction between the two operational environments (postconflict and post-natural disaster) is important, and demands more careful analysis and attention in terms of how the U.S. Navy prepares to engage in SSTR operations. To support this perspective on the relative importance of various types of SSTR operations in the history of the U.S. Navy, the chapter describes how the Navy operated in a major reconstruction activity, Operation Unified Assistance, and draws comparisons to similar efforts that have occurred over the last century.2 Our analysis suggests that in all of these SSTR operations, the U.S. Navy has utilized a wide range of assets, responded to an array of instigating events, and has shown that it can make a substantial contribution to SSTR missions.

The military’s prioritization of and role in SSTR The United States Department of Defense has steadily increased the priority of SSTR activities over the past five years, but its conception of SSTR has focused on post-conflict reconstruction at the expense of post-natural-disaster scenarios. In December 2003, the Defense Department began to consider creating a military force dedicated to stability and reconstruction operations. Navy Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, at the time the Chief of the Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation, declared that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center forced planners to consider conducting stability operations in places where the U.S. military had not previously engaged in military activities. The stability force that Cebrowski envisaged would include some of the military’s best people and equipment, including combined arms combat capabilities, as well as military police, civil affairs, military intelligence, psychological affairs, engineers, and explosive ordnance teams. It would also be a joint force and draw on the entire “interagency,” i.e., non-military, components of the U.S. government.3 At the time, however, little was done to turn Cebrowski’s vision into a reality. A year later, the Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study called for the creation of stabilization and reconstruction capabilities in the U.S. military. The

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Summer Study noted that the United States was engaging in stabilization and reconstruction operations more frequently than in the past: Board members noted that since 1989, the U.S. military had begun new stabilization and reconstruction operations every 18 to 24 months. The study recommended that the U.S. military should increase its capabilities in four principal areas, two of which related to stabilization and reconstruction: (1) stabilization and reconstruction capabilities; (2) strategic communication; (3) knowledge, understanding, and intelligence relating to stabilization and reconstruction; and (4) identification, location, and tracking for asymmetric warfare.4 The study suggested that stabilization and reconstruction operations tended to last longer than major combat operations (MCOs). SSTR operations typically stretched anywhere between five and eight years, and required a different skill set from that required in the kinetic focus of a combat operation. In the view of the Board members, the U.S. military needed to begin to train explicitly for SSTR operations. The Summer Study noted that SSTR operations were necessary due to the changing nature of warfare, and implied that stabilizing societies in the wake of war was a key way to eliminate the conditions that foster terrorism around the world. This logic also implied that the U.S. military should become more involved in natural-disaster relief, both to stabilize vulnerable societies and to “win hearts and minds” in the global struggle against Islamic terrorism. The first major policy directive to reflect these recommendations arrived a year later, when the U.S. Defense Department issued Directive 3000.05 in November 2005. This directive placed stability operations on the same footing as major combat operations and expanded the scope of stabilization and reconstruction to include a wider gamut of activities, coining the name Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction activities for this cluster of missions. Section 4.1 of the directive reads: Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning. The directive also distinguished between stability operations and SSTR operations, placing the Department of Defense in a supporting role in the latter. Stability operations, as the directive defined them, referred to military and civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to conflict to establish or maintain order in states and regions, while SSTR activities included Defense Department activities that support U.S. government plans for Stability, Security, Reconstruction, and Transition operations, which lead to sustainable peace while advancing U.S. interests. Department of Defense Directive 3000.05 serves as a landmark in how the U.S. government regards stabilization and reconstruction activities. Not only did

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the Directive reprioritize the activities, but it also identified specific duties and benchmarks for each of the Undersecretaries of Defense, combatant commanders and other officials to meet the mandate. Without this specific tasking, it would be easy for them to avoid implementing the Directive. Despite these specific benchmarks, for example, the military has dragged its feet and has resisted elevating SSTR to the same status as MCO. The fiscal year 2007 Defense Authorization Act mentioned SSTR in only one small paragraph that required timelines to be established. It provided no direct budgetary allocations to training for SSTR activities, nor did it call for the establishment of any SSTRspecific military capabilities.5 Following 3000.05, the National Security Presidential Directive-44 (December 2005) created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) within the Department of State to coordinate and integrate the efforts of the U.S. government to prepare for and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities.6 S/CRS was meant to lead U.S. government planning to help societies transition from conflict or civil strife to a sustainable peace, with democracy and market economies. All other government agencies involved in these activities were to report to this new office. To facilitate this coordination, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a Notice (3245.01) on 12 May 2006, which designated the Joint Staff as the “office of primary responsibility for matters pertaining to stability operations, security assistance, technology transfer, and the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.”7 The notice designated an office to oversee progress, and established a Department of Defense Stability Operations Executive Council and Stability Operations Working Group. Both groups were to be composed of all the Defense Department components assigned responsibilities pertaining to SSTR operations. Finally, the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review pushed the boundaries of military considerations into the humanitarian realm when it recognized the importance of humanitarian concerns in the war on terror. Based on U.S. experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the South Asian earthquake, the QDR argued that forces needed to prepare to undertake irregular warfare and humanitarian operations.8 Why do these directives call for new roles and capabilities for the U.S. military, and where does the U.S. Navy fit into all of this? The Defense Science Board’s Summer Study envisioned a transition from military to civilian activities in stabilization and reconstruction operations, with the military footprint being heaviest in the initial phases, gradually transitioning to a more civilian-focused effort. In their estimation, the military has unparalleled management and planning capabilities that the civilian sector cannot reproduce: While the military has deep experience in operational planning and execution, other parts of the U.S. government seldom demonstrate comparable management discipline, and plans are often poorly prepared. Their ability to prepare and validate plans is not comparable to that of the U.S. military.

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Even when seemingly sound plans are prepared, the failure to test and challenge them makes success problematic.9 At the same time, authors of the Summer Study also recognized that the military would be more appropriate as the lead in stabilization, rather than reconstruction. In reconstruction activities, the study’s authors argued, the State Department should play the leading role, and the Defense Department should function as a supporting actor. As figure one demonstrates, each organization has a distinct set of skills that make it the most appropriate agency to handle specific tasks. While this vision of cooperation is laudable, in reality, the Defense and State Departments rarely cooperate well, and in the conditions of a natural-disaster situation, there may not be enough time for the State Department to rally the resources necessary to contribute to a reconstruction operation. The unique requirements of a reconstruction operation in the wake of a natural disaster – often requiring extremely rapid response to an event for which there is precious little planning – indicate that the military, and particularly the U.S. Navy, may be the most appropriate organization to coordinate, lead, and execute certain kinds of reconstruction efforts. Post-conflict reconstruction efforts have a much longer lead time to develop a plan, and are more suited, therefore, for a larger state footprint. Ultimately, the full range of operations that falls under the realm of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction will require that the Departments of State and Defense cooperate with each other, with other government agencies, and with civilian groups.

Criteria for an effective stabilization capability Finding Effective partnership requires improvements on both sides

DOD

DOS

Actively train, practice, exercise, rehearse Evaluate readiness and validate plans Available on short notice Continuity in theater Large enough to support multiple concurrent cumulative stabilization operations Prepared for a range of cultures, languages Elasticity to respond and adjust to an adaptive enemy Active experimentation program Recommendations • DOD and DOS use these criteria to develop metrics to measure progress in S&R readiness • DOD include S&R readiness in the Joint Military Readiness Reporting System Inadequate capability

Some capability exists but needs to be improved

Figure 5.1 State versus defense capabilities in stabilization activities.10

Adequate capability

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SSTR activities and environments: post-conflict versus natural-disaster situations The tasks of SSTR require multiple capabilities. Security initiatives require robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), a capability to manage human intelligence operations, and adequate security forces to insure stability and safety. Military police need to be trained to maintain order and insure security. Military police must also be able to train constabulary forces and indigenous police. Ensuring that the SSTR operations will have effective communication requires a robust information operations capacity and strategic communication assets. Humanitarian operations require a civil affairs capability, robust engineering assets (including civil engineers), humanitarian assistance materials, and the authority and capability to disburse funds. Area expertise – including language capability and knowledge of the region’s people, politics, and history – is also required for these programs to be effective. When analyzing the role of the U.S. Navy in SSTR operations, there are several factors to consider that do not figure prominently in existing policy documents. First, the nature of the situation is critical: SSTR operations take place in both post-conflict scenarios and natural-disaster situations. Most of the policy documents on SSTR refer to post-conflict reconstruction (this was one of the earlier terms used for these activities), yet many SSTR activities take place in the wake of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods. The operating environment in a natural disaster is different than the conditions existing in post-conflict situations and will affect the objectives of SSTR operations, the timeframe that operators have to plan the activities, and the security risks to the country’s personnel and material assets as they conduct the operations. Recent experience suggests that this distinction is particularly relevant to the U.S. Navy. Although it has played a role in joint operations to deliver humanitarian assistance into conflict and post-conflict zones, including Yugoslavia (1992–6), East Timor (2000), and Democratic Republic of Congo (1996–7), its role has been much greater in non-conflict situations. The most prominent of these was its involvement in Operation Sea Angel, in which it delivered relief supplies to millions of Bangladeshis in the aftermath of a typhoon in 1991 that killed more than 140,000 people.11 The storm also destroyed a large amount of infrastructure, thus complicating efforts to provide assistance and raising the value of the Navy’s assets, especially helicopters capable of distributing supplies to isolated communities. Similarly, the Navy played a critical role in efforts to rescue and care for as many as 50,000 Haitian and Cuban refugees during Operation Sea Signal in 1994–6, and in a series of operations prior to that. A similar combination of natural disaster and large-scale humanitarian rescue was the focus of Operation Fiery Vigil in 1992. During that mission, navy ships evacuated 17,000 Americans from the Philippines as Mount Pinatubo erupted and dumped enormous quantities of ash on Clark Air Base amid massive rainfall and earthquakes spawned by the volcanic activity.12 In each case, the scale of the

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operation and its location far from land-based infrastructure meant that Naval power was the most effective means of providing assistance. Second, there are multiple issue areas in SSTR activities, and not all government agencies divide the components of SSTR in the same fashion. For example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Association for the U.S. Army produced one of the foundational works on stabilization and reconstruction in May 2002, in which they outlined the “four pillars” of reconstruction: security, justice and reconciliation, social and economic well-being, and governance and participation.13 When the State Department established S/CRS in 2004, the Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction took the CSIS framework and separated humanitarian assistance and economic programs. S/CRS, therefore, works under a framework that divides SSTR activities into five program areas: security, governance and participation, humanitarian assistance and social well-being, economic stabilization and infrastructure, and justice and reconciliation.14 In contrast, the Department of Defense collapsed the subject areas of SSTR into just three issue areas: security, economy, and governance.15 Finally, SSTR operations should be considered in phases: initial response, transformation, and sustainability. During the initial response, international military involvement plays a critical role in protecting life and property because this is when assets and people must be quickly brought to the area that requires assistance. The focus in the initial response is often on providing security to the area and to the individuals assisting those affected by the natural disaster or conflict. During the transformation phase, projects must develop local legitimacy and foster sustainable indigenous capacity, and the focus shifts from security to economy, governance, and justice. This is when military and civilian organizations often work in close contact with one another. Long-term recovery efforts constitute the sustainability phase and ideally witness the withdrawal of most of the international military effort as military assets are replaced with civilian agencies trained in economic development, governance assistance, and the provision of social welfare. Natural disasters versus post-conflict reconstruction The nature of the operating environment – whether the SSTR activity takes place in the wake of a natural disaster or in a post-conflict situation – affects all of the dimensions of SSTR operations, and is a distinction not considered in DoD 3000.05, the S/CRS operating framework, or the CSIS pillars of reconstruction. While some may debate the validity of distinguishing between natural disasters and conflict situations, there are critical differences that affect the nature of the response to each one. First, the security situation differs in natural versus man-made disasters. In natural disasters, the environment is often non-hostile, even if the area had been previously embroiled in conflict. In Aceh, for example, a long-running insurgency declared a unilateral cease-fire in the aftermath of the tsunami that

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devastated the area. The more benign security environment in the aftermath of a natural disaster reduces the level of military assets needed for force protection, freeing units to participate directly in reconstruction activities. In high-conflict areas in which the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF)-Horn of Africa (HOA) operates, by contrast, it has been suggested that, out of 1,200 military personnel detailed to operations, 800 provide security for the 400 soldiers who actually conduct civil affairs and humanitarian operations.16 Second, natural disasters permit virtually no lead time for preparation to deploy, while the signs of impending disaster often are apparent for months before SSTR operations in post-conflict situations. This affects planning for personnel training and deployment of equipment for reconstruction operations following natural disasters. With the ability to plan more extensively for an operation in a post-conflict situation, the Department of Defense should be able to generate a more comprehensive and integrated response, including genuine cooperation with the Department of State and civilian organizations. By contrast, natural disasters tend to generate ad hoc operations, based primarily on assets that happen to be available for rapid deployment to the site of the disaster, rather than a careful assessment of what the situation requires and which assets can best fulfill those needs. Post-conflict and post-disaster situations, therefore, often involve a different mix of actors because of the ability to plan for the response in one but not the other. Third, the very nature of the activities involved in reconstruction differs between natural and man-made disasters. Natural-disaster situations call for a focus on emergency relief and immediate humanitarian assistance, while postconflict situations focus more on providing security. In a natural disaster situation, governance may have been temporarily disrupted, but there are often remnants of an indigenous government that can take control of the reconstruction effort in a relatively short time horizon. The types of conflicts that create a need for a reconstruction effort, by contrast, are likely to have completely destroyed virtually all vestiges of the local government. Post-conflict SSTR operations will not only have to provide humanitarian assistance and infrastructure support (as in a natural-disaster response), but they will often also have to help to reconstitute a government, establish a service system, and create the basic infrastructure for the society to regain the ability to govern and provide for itself. Post-conflict and post-disaster situations, therefore, call for very different types of reconstruction, and as a result, responding to a natural disaster often entails a short time horizon. Military actors and civilian agencies aim to get to the area quickly, get it back on its feet, and then transition to indigenous authorities for the remainder of the effort. According to the authors of the Summer Study: There is a hierarchy of tasks that need to be performed in any nationbuilding operation. First is security – demobilizing former combatants, rebuilding police, and establishing a justice system, for example. Next is

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basic governance, public administration, and public services – garbage, water, schools, power, and other such services. Third are macroeconomic and regulatory functions – establishment of a stable currency, resumption of commerce. The fourth is political reform – free press, civil society, political parties, and elections. Finally, there is traditional economic development, to include heavy infrastructure. Iraq is the only nation-building operation since 1945 in which the United States has had to actually govern the society that it is seeking to move from conflict to peace and democracy. More often a weak but legitimate indigenous government (such as in Afghanistan) or an international administration (such as in Kosovo) is in place. In such circumstances the United States has concentrated on those areas where it has a comparative advantage or a special interest, in particular on the security sector and political reforms. The U.S. government often leaves infrastructure projects to the World Bank and other donors, recognizing that benefits from infrastructure spending will normally take years to realize. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also contributes to this longterm effort.17 This extended quote demonstrates that the Summer Study’s authors are clearly thinking only of post-conflict operations, and that the extent of the reconstruction effort in a post-conflict scenario far exceeds what is needed when responding to natural disaster. Yet, SSTR operations unfold in both post-disaster and post-conflict situations, and the U.S. Navy may actually have a larger role to play in the former than the latter, because of its ability to rapidly deploy and to replace critical infrastructure (communications, logistics, transport) that has been wiped out in a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, or similar event. Finally, the exit strategy for a natural-disaster response is often clear at the outset. It is comparatively easy to decide when the job is done if the project aims to rebuild critical infrastructure that was devastated by an “act of God,” while attaining the goals of the deep reconstruction efforts – reconstituting governments, educational systems, and service provision that were interrupted or destroyed by war – are more difficult to gauge. In fact, a current focus of research in SSTR seeks to create metrics to evaluate the progress of deep reconstruction activities. Mapping Navy capabilities onto reconstruction activities The Army and Marine Corps come to mind when considering appropriate military assets to deploy in support of an SSTR operation, especially in the reconstruction phase where civil-military operations and security assistance missions dominate. Accordingly, the Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study envisioned that the U.S. Army would be the “lead actor” and “executive agent” in reconstruction operations, in cooperation with the Marine Corps and U.S. Joint Forces Command. The Army is the only branch of the U.S. military with fulltime, active-duty, dedicated career-track civil affairs personnel; it has the most

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experience on the ground in running reconstruction programs like the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan; and by nature is designed to be the steady-state land force of the U.S. military. The Navy has been left out of much of the planning for these types of military programs. Yet, there are substantial contributions that the U.S. Navy can make to these efforts, and they extend well beyond the few outlined in the 2006 fleet response plan, which focuses on the Global War on Terror, major combat operations, and routine deployments. There are many direct-action operations that the U.S. Navy could undertake, moving the service beyond playing merely a support role in SSTR operations. For one, the U.S. Navy has the Seabees (organic engineering units), who are skilled at a variety of construction tasks. Currently Seabees conduct a number of engineering projects in the Horn of Africa as part of the task force there. The construction battalions number approximately 18,000 active and reserve personnel, and have recently been put under the control of the new Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC). The NECC was set up specifically with the Global War on Terror and SSTR operations in mind, to help the U.S. Navy undertake non-traditional missions. In this process, the NECC has created littoral forces that can bring Navy expertise and agents into an area through river systems, affording access for sea-based assets to conduct reconstruction activities inland. The NECC has also created the Maritime Civil Affairs Group and re-created a brown-water littoral force. The Maritime Civil Affairs Group will conduct civil affairs operations in the maritime environment, and support expeditionary and carrier strike groups. When at full operational readiness, the Maritime Civil Affairs Group will include two maritime civil affairs squadrons, with 32 fiveperson Maritime civil affairs teams.18 Each team will have a commander, a medical specialist, a construction person, a communicator, and a boat operator. One squadron will be based on the West Coast to support the U.S. Pacific Command and two on the East Coast, in support of the remaining combatant commands. The initial operating concept aims to have two deployable maritime civil affairs teams by June 2007. The initial group began its training in March 2007, and full operational readiness should occur in September 2008. The NECC has already begun to incorporate SSTR into the activities of the U.S. Navy through its concept of the “global fleet station,” designed specifically to address security and stabilization needs.19 The fleet station concept emerged from the Naval Operating Concept that was developed in late 2006. The global fleet station was intended to provide the U.S. Navy with a more easily sustained forward presence via sea-basing, creating a platform for sustained presence and pre-positioning. Currently, the NECC considers the Combined Joint Task ForceHorn of Africa, an example of a fleet station, though this is a shore-based operation located in Djibouti. The first floating station deployed in the Caribbean from April to September 2007, and the second, called the African Partnership Station, departed for the West Coast of Africa in November 2007. If the fleet stations are developed following the original concept and to their full potential, they could enable the Navy to overcome some of the obstacles

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faced in responding to natural disasters. They could devise a more comprehensive and appropriate response package to natural disasters because personnel and ships will already be in the region. SSTR exercises could be incorporated into the routine schedules, reducing the problems created by the lack of advance notice, the necessity of rapid deployment to the disaster site, and need for mostly humanitarian assistance and infrastructure support. Drills or war games to plan for natural-disaster responses could be incorporated into the regular training schedule of the global fleet stations. Navy personnel are serving as individual augmentees in a variety of reconstruction missions, especially with the PRTs in Afghanistan. As these individuals return to the fleet, they bring their experience with them. These Navy augmentees have proven invaluable in SSTR operations in Iraq. For example, when the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade deployed to Iraq in May 2006, the headquarters staff was approximately 75 percent Navy, comprising a mix of those on active duty and reservists. This was the first brigade to deploy with such a large Navy component, and the sailors distinguished themselves as valuable components of the brigade.20 Finally, the Navy can also play supporting roles by assisting in command and control, and specifically by serving as a communications node and logistics hub. Here the unparalleled communications abilities of Navy ships could help to alleviate many of the communications problems that plague current SSTR operations. The U.S. Navy can also continue to provide transportation for equipment and personnel. These are just a few of the areas in which the U.S. Navy could contribute to SSTR activities, particularly those focused on reconstruction rather than stabilization. Figure 5.2 lays out a more comprehensive proposal for the various U.S. Navy assets that could be deployed in a wide range of reconstruction activities. It takes the threefold division of activities adopted by Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, and distinguishes between natural-disaster and post-conflict situations. Ultimately, the Navy can employ these assets to assist in reconstruction operations in both post-conflict and post-natural disaster scenarios. The particular capabilities of the U.S. Navy, which allow rapid deployment and wholesale replacement of critical infrastructure, make it particularly suited to assisting in reconstruction efforts in post-disaster environments, which require rapid deployment and assistance for a limited duration. What the Navy cannot do, and is not prepared to do, is to operate deep inland. Insofar as reconstruction operations take place in remote hinterlands, the Navy’s role will be limited. But the Navy itself foresees an expansion into littoral and riverine environments as it resuscitates its riverine forces under the NECC. As the brown-water component of the Navy develops, the new assets could vouchsafe the Navy an entrance into the vast delta areas of the world enabling the Navy to project itself farther inland than a pure blue-water force would allow.

Nature of operation Sector of activity Natural disaster Security

Post-conflict

Naval forces can act as C2 nodes for security efforts in the littoral regions of the world. Limited amount of pure security forces (police-type) limits initial capabilities. Possible use in training a national gendarmerie.

Security forces

Navy Shore Patrol (SP)/Marines NECC

Navy SP/Marines NECC

Judicial system

N/A

Judge Advocate General (JAG) Navy SP/Marines

Correctional system

N/A – unless host nation requests support

Navy SP/Marines JAG

Economy

Naval forces can act as C2 nodes for initial reconstruction efforts. Possibility to reconfigure Preposition Ships so engineer equipment is the last loaded/first available.

Humanitarian assistance

Navy SP/Marines Logistics Command and Control (C2) Riverine

Navy SP/Marines Logistics C2 Riverine

Economic stabilization and infrastructure

Logistics C2 Seabee support

Navy SP/Marines Logistics C2 Seabee support

Social assistance

MEDCAP/DENCAP Mobile hospitals Riverine

Navy SP/Marines MEDCAP/DENCAP Mobile hospitals Riverine

Governance

Interaction of military personnel with civilians

Electoral system and constitution

N/A

JAG Navy SP/Marine security for polling stations Naval academics’ advice on devising governance systems

Institutions of governance

JAG Instruction on civil–military interaction and cooperation

JAG Assisting in establishment Instruction on civil–military interaction and cooperation

Public education about government

Public information about host government’s efforts (enhance government legitimacy)

Public information about new government structure and composition (enhance government legitimacy)

Figure 5.2 Mapping USN capabilities into sectors of reconstruction activities.

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The U.S. Navy in action: tsunami relief in Aceh, Indonesia The U.S. Navy’s response to the tsunami, which struck the littorals of the Indian Ocean in December 2004, illustrates the importance of naval capabilities in humanitarian relief operations, and it highlights several ways in which SSTR missions following a natural disaster differ from those undertaken in the wake of civil conflicts. It also provides an instructive example of how well military and civilian actors can respond to such crises, while drawing attention to the fact that neither group had planned to engage in the kind of cooperation needed to make the relief operation a success. The magnitude of this natural disaster is difficult to comprehend. Just before 7:58 a.m. local time on 26 December 2004, an earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean about 100 miles west of Indonesia. At 9.1 on the Richter scale, it was the third most powerful quake in the past century. The energy it released was equivalent to about 23,000 atomic bombs; the quake was so great that it even affected the rotation and tilt of the planet.21 In most places, the direct cause of massive death and destruction was not the earthquake, but a series of tsunamis that spread out across the Indian Ocean. Moving at up to 500 miles per hour in deep water, the first waves washed ashore in northern Sumatra just 15 minutes later, reaching southern Thailand in 90 minutes, Sri Lanka in two hours, and East Africa several hours later. The earliest reports of the destructive waves – which topped 30 feet in height and pushed more than a mile inland in parts of Indonesia – came from areas in southern Thailand and Sri Lanka where large numbers of Europeans were on holiday. Few foreigners, however, were in the region closest to the earthquake, the Indonesian province of Aceh at the northern end of Sumatra. Information about the tsunami’s devastating impact in these more remote areas only emerged over a period of weeks. In the end, it is estimated that more than 167,000 people were lost in Indonesia, 35,000 in Sri Lanka, 16,000 in India, 8,000 in Thailand, and nearly 300 far away in Somalia.22 Only Indonesia endured the double impact of earthquake and tsunami, and the resulting devastation created a situation that Naval power was uniquely suited to address. In other countries, the physical and human infrastructure remained essentially intact, so information about the disaster quickly became available and humanitarian assistance could be delivered rapidly. But much of Aceh’s infrastructure was wiped out. According to Edward Aspinall, in some places, the waves [the tsunami] generated were over ten meters high and traveled several kilometers inland. . . . Fishing villages, towns, farming land, and infrastructure all along the coast were destroyed. Half of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, was leveled.23 The entire seaboard was reshaped in a matter of hours, and much of the coastal road that connected Banda Aceh to the province’s southernmost city of Meulaboh, about 150 miles away, was destroyed.

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Along with the physical damage came the death of many government officials. In effect, the local government was no longer able to provide information about the disaster and coordinate relief activities. About 30,000 soldiers and another 15,000 police had been deployed to the province before the tsunami to combat a long-running separatist insurgency led by the Free Aceh Movement, and the tsunami, according to Mathew Davies, “smashed central [army and police] territorial command, communications, training, and other bases in Banda Aceh and Meulaboh” as well as most of the other military facilities located near the coast.24 Within hours, the military lost several hundred members, which far exceeded the combat casualties suffered in the last year battling insurgents.25 Because the police were more heavily concentrated in the provincial capital, their losses were much higher. Although official numbers were never released, total losses are estimated at 7,600.26 Likewise, rebel forces did not announce their losses, but several hundred are thought to have been drowned in their prison cells in Banda Aceh, along with many of their guards.27 Since its transition from authoritarian to democratic rule in the late 1990s, Indonesia had endured violent internal conflicts in several regions other than Aceh, and many governmental and non-governmental agencies maintained a significant presence in the country. But few had a presence in Aceh, because the province had been under martial law or emergency rule since mid-2003 as government forces attempted to crush the resistance. During this time, government forces had weakened rebel forces, but failed to win the support of the Acehnese public. In October 2004, the country held its first direct presidential election, and voters elected candidates who favored a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Aceh. By late December 2004, the new Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movements had agreed to attend internationally mediated negotiations in Finland, and just three days before the disaster formal invitations had been extended to both parties.28 Although they did not have a chance to accept those invitations, there was no indication that either party was likely to back out. These conditions correspond closely to the way this chapter characterized post-natural disaster situations. Earthquakes and tsunamis are inherently unpredictable and allow aid agencies and militaries no time to prepare their response. Their top priority is humanitarian relief, not reconstruction. And, for the most part, the security situation was non-hostile since the Indonesian government and Acehnese rebels had been moving toward negotiations. Both had also been severely affected by the tsunami and saw no advantage in somehow trying to exploit the situation at the expense of their opponent. In such challenging circumstances, it is unsurprising that foreign militaries led the response. Within two days, units from Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore had arrived in Aceh.29 Knowing only the magnitude of the earthquake and a small amount about the tsunami’s impact outside Indonesia, Pacific Command immediately began to organize a response and to redirect major naval assets to the region.30 Within a few days, Admiral Thomas Fargo, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, had established Joint Task Force 536, which was headquar-

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tered at the Thai air base in Utapao and commanded by Lieutenant General Robert R. Blackman, Jr, the commander of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa. As dozens of foreign militaries, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations began to coordinate their efforts in Utapao, the JTF was renamed Combined Support Force (CSF) 536. Reporting to CSF 536 were Combined Support Groups in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. In Indonesia, the Combined Support Groups were headquartered in Medan, the nearest city to Aceh and the major commercial and transportation hub in northern Sumatra. When initial reports of the tsunami reached Hawaii, Admiral Fargo and the Seventh Fleet Commander, Admiral Walter Doran quickly decided to send all available ships to the region.31 The main assets included the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, which was commanded by Rear Admiral Douglas Crowder. Crowder was informed of the mission one day after the tsunami struck while he and his strike group were in port in Hong Kong preparing for a visit to Korea. The Lincoln left Hong Kong the next day and headed for Thailand. Two days later, as more information became available, U.S. Pacific Command redirected Crowder to Indonesia, and on 1 January 2005, the Lincoln had completed the 2100-mile journey to Aceh. The second major naval component that arrived on scene was an expeditionary strike group, whose flagship was the USS Bonhomme Richard. En route from San Diego to Kuwait, the group diverted from its original course, picked up humanitarian relief supplies in Guam, and arrived in Medan on 1 January 2005. In early February 2005, these ships were replaced by the USS Essex and USS Fort McHenry. As a result of this rapid response to the disaster, the U.S. military created an enormous logistical capacity in the region that enabled relief supplies to be delivered over a large area where road links no longer existed. Just ten days after the tsunami, according to Bruce Elleman, “13,435 American military personnel were involved in Operation Unified Assistance,” of which “about 12,000 were aboard 17 Navy ships in the region.”32 At that point, the operation included over 25 U.S. Navy ships, 45 fixed-wing aircraft, and 58 helicopters. It had also delivered more than 610,000 pounds of water, food and other supplies to people who were suffering in the aftermath of the tsunami.33 Five weeks after the Lincoln arrived off the Aceh coast, U.S. Navy forces had delivered more than six million pounds of food, water, and medicine.34 The contribution of American and other military forces to the relief effort was widely recognized. As a spokesperson from the U.N. World Food Program said, The important thing is that the United States military was right there at the beginning and made a huge difference. . . . They had the logistical prowess . . . and without that we would not have been able to distribute to the remote areas.35 This sentiment extended to other countries’ militaries, as a UN-sponsored workshop found when it gathered 75 representatives from its own agencies, governments

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of affected countries, and non-governmental organizations to assess their response to the disaster. The workshop participants concluded “that the militaries of the affected countries played a vital role in the immediate aftermath of the disaster,” and described “cooperation between national and international militaries” as “generally excellent.”36 A related workshop found that “the scale of the involvement of foreign militaries in the relief operation was unprecedented, to the point of setting a new paradigm for future humanitarian assistance.”37 This recognition was hard-won, and far from unqualified. During the initial phase of relief operations, many people who worked for international organizations and non-governmental organizations were reluctant to coordinate their efforts with the military.38 A major report on the international response by the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition – whose members include agencies of the United Nations, official aid agencies including the USAID, and non-governmental organizations that provide humanitarian assistance – noted that “NGO–military relations bordered on the hostile,” but “despite . . . mutual suspicion, there were a significant number of joint military–civilian endeavours including the assessment missions flown from the USS Abraham Lincoln.”39 The relative success of the U.S. military and other countries’ militaries reflected more than their logistical superiority over other agencies and organizations. Other factors include happenstance, similarities between disaster relief operations and the general efforts to resupply ships at sea and troops ashore, and a commitment to avoid mission creep. Among the most fortuitous combination of circumstances were the presence of the Lincoln strike group in Hong Kong, its availability for immediate deployment to Southeast Asia, and its participation in an experiment in which it was carrying 17 helicopters rather than the seven that it usually carried on board.40 The additional helicopters were intended for use in anti-submarine operations, not humanitarian assistance, but their presence dramatically increased the Lincoln’s capacity to deliver aid to isolated communities in Indonesia. Similarly, the Bonhomme Richard’s group had just recently entered Southeast Asia, en route to the Middle East, which meant that its presence was more a result of circumstance than planning. Nevertheless, as an expeditionary strike group that was capable of deploying U.S. Marines ashore without port facilities, the Bonhomme Richard and its sister ships were equipped with landing craft and helicopters that could reach coastal towns that had been devastated by the tsunami. The Bonhomme Richard also possessed larger hospital facilities than virtually any other warship. The ability of the expeditionary strike groups to house and transport 3,000 U.S. Marines also provided a ready logistical and manpower pool to assist in the relief effort. Multinational planning efforts Although it is impossible to prepare for specific natural disasters, it is possible to plan and train for certain types of missions, and since the late 1990s U.S. Pacific Command had sponsored a process that created a set of standard operating procedures and personal relationships that enabled militaries from many countries

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to coordinate their aid efforts quickly and effectively. In the wake of the East Timor crisis in 1999, U.S. Pacific Command convened a series of meetings that resulted in an agreement among defense chiefs from around the Asia-Pacific region to take steps to improve their capacity to respond in a multinational way on short notice to military and non-military challenges.41 Beginning in 2002, more than two dozen countries with interests in the region joined a process that produced a “Multinational Force Standard Operating Procedure” to which all countries agreed, and of which none was sole owner.42 The main focus of this effort was the development of multinational planning augmentation teams that could be assembled quickly to supplement a headquarters and coordinate a combined crisis-response effort. At the time the tsunami struck, this model had not been tested, and did not yet include broad participation from the international organizations and nongovernmental organizations that typically play a key role in humanitarian assistance operations. Multinational planning augmentation teams, however, supplied the framework for U.S. Pacific Command to coordinate its tsunami relief efforts with other military and civilian actors. U.S. Pacific Command generally regards Operation Unified Assistance as a demonstration of the success of that model.43 Multinational planning augmentation teams supported the Combined Coordination Center that brought military and civilian, governmental and nongovernmental agencies together in Utapao to coordinate relief efforts.44 Finally, the military’s successful participation in tsunami relief undoubtedly reflects its ability to avoid being drawn into missions that extend beyond immediate humanitarian relief. From the outset, both U.S. Pacific Command and CSF 536 established a commitment to provide relief in coordination with other actors, and to transition the relief effort to those actors as soon as possible. As early as 15 January 2005, the commander of CSF 536 decided that “U.S. assistance was no longer necessary in Sri Lanka and Thailand, since these countries were ‘beyond the stop-the-bleeding phase,’ ” and the “conditions for transition from U.S. military to host-nation military control of operations in these countries have been met.”45 Soon thereafter, U.S. military involvement in those nations began to wind down. Similar considerations prevailed in Indonesia, and by mid-March 2005, all U.S. naval forces had been withdrawn from the relief operation in Indonesia’s coastal waters.

Conclusion The U.S. Navy’s success in Operation Unified Assistance rested on its unparalleled logistical capacity, the fortuitous proximity and availability of a substantial number of highly capable ships to send to the disaster area, prior preparation and planning for such an event, and a commitment from the outset to focus on providing humanitarian assistance and to leave long-term reconstruction efforts to actors with appropriate expertise. These characteristics are common to a range of operations in which the Navy has engaged, particularly since the end of the Cold War. No other service is likely to develop the same capacity to replace

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infrastructure that has been damaged or destroyed, or to enjoy the same probability that its assets happen to be in the vicinity of natural disasters, particularly those that are remote from major population centers. By necessity, U.S. Navy ships sail around the globe. As a result, the Navy can respond more quickly to major disasters in out-of-the-way places than the other services.

Notes 1 The authors are grateful to MAJ Matthew Zahn (USA), who helped to develop the conceptual framework for this chapter. All opinions in this chapter are the authors’ own and do not reflect the official position of the United States government. 2 James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988), pp. 144–50. 3 Paul Stone, “DoD Considers Creating Stability and Reconstruction Force,” American Foreign Press Service (20 December 2003), www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/ news/2003/12/mil-031230-afps01.htm (accessed on 25 July 2006). 4 Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study on Transition to and from Hostilities, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Washington, DC, 20301–3140. Released December 2004, available online at www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004–12-DSB_SS_Report_Final.pdf (accessed 25 July 2006). For an analysis of the report see Donna Miles, “Defense Science Review Board Report Recommends New Focus on Stabilization, Reconstruction,” American Forces Press Service (25 January 2005), www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/ news/2005/01/mil-050125-afps01.htm (accessed on 25 July 2006). 5 “House Armed Services Committee Approves Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill: Focus on Personnel Benefits, Force Protection Measures and Immediate Needs of America’s Warfighters,” House Armed Services Committee Press Release, 3 May 2006, www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2006_rpt/hr109–452.pdf (accessed on 25 July 2006). Additionally, S/CRS has been chronically underfunded and poorly resourced. The recent move of S/CRS to the Foreign Assistance Bureau of the State Department should assist with the resource and manning problems, but at the time of writing it is too soon to tell. 6 National Security Presidential Directive-44 (NSPD-44), “Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization,” 7 December 2005, www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.html (accessed on 25 July 2006). 7 “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations,” CJCS Notice 3245.01, 12 May 2006, p. 1. 8 Vince Crawley, “Pentagon Emphasizing Humanitarian Aid, Reconstruction Work,” Washington File (3 February 2006), www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/ 2006/02/mil-060203-usia03.htm (accessed on July 25, 2006). 9 Defense Science Review Board Summer Study, p. 36. 10 Ibid., p. 40. 11 Paul A. McCarthy, Operation Sea Angel: A Case Study (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1994). 12 Adam B. Siegel, Requirements for Humanitarian Assistance and Peace Operations: Insights from Seven Case Studies (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1995), pp. 71–8. 13 “Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Task Framework,” a Joint Project of the CSIS and the Association for the United States Army (May 2002). For the website of the Postconflict Reconstruction project of CSIS, see www.csis.org/isp/pcr/ (last accessed 11 April 2007). 14 “Post-Conflict Reconstruction Essential Tasks,” Office of the Coordinator for Recon-

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struction and Stabilization, United States Department of State, April 2005, www.state.gov/documents/organization/53464.pdf (accessed 26 July 2006). DoD Directive 3000.05. Presumably this was done in order to simplify the tasks and to enable multitasking, but it does point to an immediate difficulty in launching any interagency activities that require the Departments of Defense and State to cooperate in SSTR operations. Colonel Ike Trafton, “Marines in Africa Today: CJTF-HOA,” 2006 at the 21st Century Marines in Africa Conference, Quantico, VA, 19 January 2006. Trafton was the Chief of Staff in CJTF-HOA during the last staff that was comprised by Marines before the CJTF transitioned to Navy control in February 2006. Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study, pp. 59–60. Personal communication with the MCAG staff, December 2006. Much of the information on global fleet stations was gleaned from the conference at which this chapter originated. Daniel Sanford, “Sailors Play Major Role with 354th Civil Affairs Brigade,” Press Release #148–06, U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, Fifth Fleet, 17 August 2006, www.cusnc.navy.mil/articles/2006/148.html (accessed on 5 December 2006). John Pickrell, “Instant Expert: Asian Tsunami Disaster,” New Scientist (20 January 2005), http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/tsunami/dn9932 (accessed 26 January 2005). John Telford and John Cosgrave, Joint Evaluation of the International Response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami: Synthesis Report (London: Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, 2006), p. 33. Edward Aspinall, “The Helsinki Agreement: A More Promising Basis for Peace in Aceh?” Policy Studies, no. 20 (East–West Center Washington, 2005), p. 19. Matthew N. Davies, Indonesia’s War over Aceh: Last Stand on Mecca’s Porch (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 232. Ibid. Ibid. “Ratusan Napi Pun Cari Selamat,” Kompas (3 January 2005), www.kompas.com/ utama/news/0501/03/141852.htm (accessed 5 January 2005). Michael Morfit, “Staying on the Road to Helsinki: Why the Aceh Agreement Was Possible in August 2005,” prepared for a conference on “Building a Permanent Peace in Aceh,” sponsored by the Indonesian Council for World Affairs (14 August 2006), p. 9. See also, Aspinall, “The Helsinki Agreement,” p. 19; and International Crisis Group, “Aceh: A New Chance for Peace,” Asian Briefing, no. 40 (15 August 2005), pp. 1–5. Clare Harkin, The 2004 Tsunami: Civil–Military Aspects of the International Response (London: Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, 2005), p. 2. For details of U.S. military actions, this chapter relies mainly on Bruce A. Elleman, “Waves of Hope: The U.S. Navy’s Response to the Tsunami in Northern Indonesia,” Newport Paper, no. 28 (February 2007). His paper is based on interviews, oral histories, and primary documents and provides the most detailed account available of the U.S. military response. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 11 and 23. Ibid., p. 10. Captain (USN) Lawrence D. Burt, “Surge Deployment and Operation Unified Assistance,” presentation at the Naval Postgraduate School, 5 January 2006. Captain Burt was Commander, Carrier Air Wing TWO, USS Abraham Lincoln. Melanie Eversley, “Relief Groups Pick Up Where U.S. Leaves Off,” USA Today (January 24, 2005), available at www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005–01–24-reliefgroups_x.htm (accessed 25 January 2005). United Nations, “Regional Workshop on Lessons Learned and Best Practices in the

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42 43 44 45

J. Piombo and M. Malley Response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami: Report and Summary of Main Conclusions,” Medan (13–14 June 2005), p. 3. “Post-Tsunami Lessons Learned and Best Practices Workshop: Report and Working Groups Output,” Jakarta, (16–17 May 2005), p. 4. Lynne O’Donnell, “ ‘Trifling Do-Gooders’ vs. the U.S. Navy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 168, no. 3 (March 2005). Telford and Cosgrave, Synthesis Report, p. 60. Burt, “Surge Deployment,” and Elleman, “Waves of Hope,” p. 56. A detailed summary of this process can be found in Scott A. Weidie, “Multinational Crisis Response in the Asia-Pacific: The Multinational Planning Augmentation Team Model,” Liaison, vol. 3, no. 3 (2006), www.coe-dmha.org/Liaison/Vol_3No_3/ Dept16.htm (accessed 25 April 2007). Additional information may be found on the MPAT website at www2.apan-info.net/mpat/index.aspx?ct=12. The current version of the document is available at http://www2.apaninfo.net/mpat/index.aspx?ct=20. Elize Leroux, “Interview: Major General Gary North,” Liaison, vol. 3, no. 3 (2006). General North refers to MPAT as a “huge success.” www.coe-dmha.org/Liaison/ Vol_3No_3/Dept07.htm (accessed 24 April 2007). The role of MPAT in tsunami relief is summarized in an official USPACOM brief available at www.pasols.org/tsunami/USPACOM_ll_08.pdf (accessed 24 April 2007). Elleman, “Waves of Hope,” p. 31, quoting news reports that quoted General Blackman.

6

Blue water and muddy deck shoes U.S. Navy support to the U.S. Marine Corps in SSTR operations Terry Terriff

In 2006 the U.S. Navy embarked on an effort to generate a new naval strategy to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. According to Robert O. Work, the question faced by these strategists is “how do we describe the role of the Navy in an expeditionary age when there’s no compelling naval threat?”1 Since September 11th, 2001, the U.S. Navy has had a comparatively low profile in U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and, more generally, in the so-called “long war.”2 Nonetheless, thousands of sailors have traded navy blue for combat camouflage to serve in various ways alongside the Navy’s sister services, and there will be continued pressure for more sailors to serve on land. Yet, in spite of such pressure, the Navy cannot trade so-called relevance today at the expense of giving up its mission of maintaining maritime dominance and a long-term forward presence. The challenge facing the Navy was well put by former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Mullen, when he noted, “[the U.S. Navy] will still need traditional warfighting capabilities, of course, but given today’s incredibly complex and dynamic threats, not to mention tomorrow’s uncertainty, we must be capable of much, much more.”3 The issue is what more the Navy can do without losing its capability to fulfill its traditional roles and missions. Admiral Mullen was clear that the Navy needs to develop Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) capabilities, saying that “[t]o be effective in this environment, combatant commanders require tools that are not only instruments of war, but implements for stability, security, and reconstruction in our global neighborhood.”4 This chapter focuses on ways that the U.S. Navy could support the U.S. Marine Corps in SSTR operations. It offers some innovative suggestions as to how the Navy can do this without detracting from its many sea-based missions. The chapter does not suggest that the Navy should develop a major land-based capability that would entail a new, and fundamentally radical, SSTR mission for the Navy. Instead, the suggestions offered are informed by the philosophy of E. F. Schumacher, who in his 1973 book, Small Is Beautiful, argued that the usual practice in seeking the best solutions is to favor complexity and quality, “when simplicity and fit-for-purpose are optimal.”5 The aim here is to identify some comparatively simple ways that the Navy can undertake to support and complement the Marine Corps in SSTR without significantly detracting from its capability to conduct its traditional blue-water roles and missions.

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This chapter starts with a brief examination of Marine Corps concepts relating to SSTR, and then examines a number of initiatives that the Navy could undertake to provide support in the effort to influence events ashore.

Marine Corps concept of operations The Marine Corps has not, as yet, generated a concept or doctrine specially directed to address SSTR. A good starting point for understanding how it may approach such concepts, however, is the Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare (MC/SO IW concept), which was issued jointly on 2 August 2006 by the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) and the U.S. Special Operations Command Center for Knowledge and Futures.6 The MC/SO IW concept, which has been the subject of some discussion among Marines at MCCDC, focuses on irregular warfare, and was conceived to inform the Corps and Special Operations Command input into the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. It explicitly states, however, that it does not address the “conventional military defeat of regimes.” Hence, the concept set forth encompasses operations that are broadly consistent with the Marine Corps’ approach to developing concepts specifically designed to address the U.S. Department of Defense Directive on SSTR. These lines of operations are: information; providing essential services; training and equipping local forces; combat operations; governance; and economic development. The concept clearly notes that “[n]o finite list of lines of operations cover every dimension” but does suggest that the above “lines of operation cover the vast majority of anticipated lines of operations for campaign design.”7 These lines of operations furnish a plausible framework for considering SSTR concepts. The MC/SO IW concept document notes that: the circumstances of any particular conflict may require that campaign designers use more or fewer lines. Further, the nature of a conflict’s resolution may cause one or several lines to dominate or cause various lines to rise to dominance and recede at different times as the campaign moves toward its objectives. These lines, whatever their number, are meant to be fixed but flexible tools applied in appropriate balance.8 The reference to the “nature of a conflict’s resolution” suggests that an implicit assumption is that the IW campaign would most likely occur after a conventional conflict has occurred, though clearly it is flexible enough that this need not be the case.9 It is not possible here to describe each of these types of operation in detail. Because it can be assumed that the Navy will continue to support the Marine Corps in traditional ways, the chapter will assume that traditional warfighting operations will continue to develop in innovative ways. The emphasis here is on information operations, provision of essential services, and economic development, which are

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central to SSTR and encompass more non-traditional roles and missions for the Navy.

Information operations The importance of information operations in the twenty-first century is well understood. As the Marine/SO IW concept notes, “IW is about winning a war of ideas and perception.”10 Information operations must infuse all lines of operations so that every activity creates the correct perception among target audiences. Another aspect involved in IW is that creating the correct perceptions “requires an intimate understanding of the people, culture and mores of the operational area.”11 This section addresses some proposed initiatives that the Navy could adopt to support the Marine Corps in the conduct of information operations by bringing to bear a “deep understanding” of culture. One element of information operations (IO) comprises are psychological operations (PsyOps). The Marine Corps today does not have any organic PsyOps units and no organic equipment for disseminating products or broadcasts.12 Thus, the Marines’ ability to apply well-designed IO campaigns, which are mandated by the MC/SO concept, has been limited.13 The Navy could provide the extra support the Marines need, or it could work with the Marine Corps to develop a joint service PsyOps capability that leverages the respective strengths of each service. The Navy has at least elements of the electronic infrastructure needed for PsyOps, particularly when Marine ground operations take place in regions adjacent to the littoral that can be covered by ship-based electronic broadcast (and jamming) capabilities.14 A joint Marine–Navy PsyOps capability would be particularly useful in Navy–Marine expeditionary responses in which the Army is not involved. Information operations, however, encompass more than PsyOps. A key element of information operations in an era of global media is the ability to respond quickly to counter the welter of often misleading or mistaken news reports and the ability to counter deliberate propaganda pushed through various media. As the MC/SO IW concept notes, “Campaign Designers must develop information contingency plans to serve as templates to counter with truth an enemy’s propaganda.”15 Navy Public Affairs Officers (PAOs) need to work with their Marine counterparts to develop IO contingency plans. Moreover, the Navy should work with the Marine Corps to develop common operational IO concepts to improve their ability to respond quickly to a demanding operational environment. The importance of common approaches and shared information cannot be overstated in an era when an erroneous or deliberately false news report about an ongoing or just completed combat or SSTR operation can travel around the globe in a matter of minutes. Such reports, if not immediately countered, quickly become the perceived truth, no matter how often and loudly they are subsequently denied. An important aspect of information operations is the ability to monitor the media on an ongoing basis to identify and assess news reports and propaganda

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that could adversely shape public perceptions. Developing a Navy–Marine concept of IO could thus further be bolstered by the Navy working with the Marines to create the capacity to fuse information,16 from international and local public news media, local information derived from indigenous sources or street rumors, and intelligence gathering.17 Shipboard systems could create this information fusion center to support local IO initiatives. Such a capability would allow PAO officers (or intelligence officers) to monitor the occurrence of misleading news reports and, once alerted, to generate a rapid response to rebut mistaken news or deliberate propaganda.18 Further, PAOs need, as James Lacey has argued, to be “actively engaged in making sure information gets out the door.”19 PAOs need to do more than simply respond; they must constantly be putting out factual stories that create a consistent positive narrative about all aspects of operations across the range of available media. The Navy can contribute to this by providing the core, forward-deployed capability to monitor, alert, and respond immediately to the media’s demand for information, actively disseminating important information about Navy–Marine operations. Navy PAOs or intelligence officers, either alone or with Marine colleagues, may be able to monitor and respond to breaking situations more readily, as their distance from an operation means that they are less likely to be distracted by the immediate demands of an SSTR operation. From their offshore position nearby, they have the time and systems needed to integrate information about ongoing operations with information drawn from the broader strategic and political context.

Cultural intelligence An understanding of the cultural environment is a critical element of success in all military operations. A key theme running through the MC/SO IW concept is the need to plan and conduct operations with a “deep understanding” of the cultural context. All U.S. military services today are keenly aware of the need for cultural sensitivity, cultural knowledge and cultural intelligence; and that they must develop the means to address the extremely important human domain of modern war and operations.20 The Navy can offer significant help, either in cooperation with Marines or alone, in developing and ultimately providing such cultural understanding. In particular, the Navy can develop a significant capability in the realm of cultural intelligence.21 Developing and sustaining a deep understanding of culture is a long-term task, particularly given the global role of the U.S. military. Culture is not fixed in its details or in the way it influences the behavior and interactions of individuals and groups within a society. Tracking shifts in a society’s culture and how these influence behavior and international and domestic interactions is a core task of rigorous cultural intelligence that will be of real operational value for the planning and conduct of operations. This means that Navy (and Marine) officers charged with developing cultural intelligence must have the intellectual skills of a cultural anthropologist, a cultural sociologist, and indeed a cultural ethnographer, as well as being sufficiently fluent to recognize and understand the

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subtleties of the relevant language(s).22 These skills are the products of lifelong study and practice and require that the Navy set aside specific career tracks to allow officers the time to understand the language, history, politics, language, and culture of a specific country or region. The Navy is well placed to develop a substantial cultural intelligence capability; its forward-deployment task forces maintain a continuous presence in a variety of important regions around the world. But developing this capability means more than undertaking the reinvigoration of the Navy Foreign Area Officer program.23 To develop and sustain a real cultural intelligence capability means including in all Navy intelligence units – from shipboard units through theater intelligence centers to the Office of Naval Intelligence – intelligence specialists whose task is specifically to gather, collate, interpret, analyze and disseminate intelligence on culture, mores, beliefs, political, religious, tribal, and clan links, and tribal and clan law, among other important aspects of local cultures. Naval intelligence units shipboard24 could include officers with the intellectual skills of regional specialization, including a knowledge of local languages. Given the complexity of culture and the differing intellectual and analytical skills needed to acquire a deep understanding of culture, more than one cultural intelligence officer would probably have to be included in every Navy intelligence unit throughout its intelligence hierarchy. The reality of sailor rotations, home porting and operational movements suggests that Navy cultural intelligence for any local area could be episodic. Modern computer networks, however, furnish a means for information to be stored, shared, and updated via a distributed network. One approach to distributing this information would be to develop a U.S. Navy–Marine Corps restricted, open-source, distributed, cultural information database focused on culture and social systems, which Navy officers can access and update.25 Such a computer network could also be linked to cultural intelligence generated by other services, military attachés, American consulates and embassies, and the Central Intelligence Agency to broaden the array of information available. Additionally, the Navy can tap the “1,000-ship navy” concept to leverage geographically, intellectually, and culturally its capacity to gather, collate, and analyze cultural intelligence by networking with other nations’ navies. This type of information network capability could be incorporated into the “massive information network” that the Navy has started to develop.26 For the Navy to adopt this proposal would require a commitment of significant intellectual and capital resources. The Navy would need to encourage more young Naval officers to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the social sciences and humanities.27 It would also mean a change in thinking about the role of Naval intelligence. Yet, the acknowledged substantive contribution of cultural knowledge and intelligence to all aspects of U.S. military operations, including those of the U.S. Navy, provides a strong case for a rethink of Naval intelligence and the entire system of career paths in the Navy to incorporate operational useful cultural intelligence.28 A Navy capacity and capability to provide a source of cultural information and intelligence would be of substantial

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use to itself, and to the Marine Corps (and the Army and Air Force), in terms of developing operational campaigns and information campaigns, as well as for Navy public diplomacy and coalition-building missions.29 In a period when no one service is likely to be able to field the number of Foreign Area Officers for all the different regions and locales in which Marine Corps and Navy contingency operations may occur,30 Navy Foreign Area Officers or cultural intelligence officers may be seconded to joint planning and even operational headquarters, to provide cultural input as well as Naval operational input into operational planning and red teaming exercises.31 The provision of cultural knowledge and intelligence would be a major contribution to SSTR operations (and to IW operations). The Navy could thus play a direct role in the U.S. global fight against transnational terrorist groups – and Navy involvement and support would be welcomed by the Marine Corps as well as the other U.S. services.

Provision of essential services The provision of essential services is the line of operation in the MC/SO IW concept most clearly equivalent to the core element of SSTR operations. Providing essential services includes furnishing clean water, better sewage control, improved roads, reliable electricity, and village markets. The MC/SO IW concept notes that these services must be defined by the norms of the local society. Planners recognize that requirements cannot be determined by an “objective standard set by planners distant from and inexperienced in the ‘conflict zone’.”32 If the Navy develops a cadre of cultural officers, even though it is offshore, its forward-deployed units, operating with the Marines, should have a better grasp of the needs and standards of the local culture and situation than will planners back in Washington.33 The Seabees self-evidently will make a significant contribution in SSTR operations, and indeed already do so in many places around the globe.34 The Seabees operating in Afghanistan have developed common working concepts with Marine Corps Engineers. This initiative should be extended to encompass common Marine Corps–Navy working concepts and doctrines for SSTR operations so that the Seabees will be able to work with Marine Corps Engineers to better support combatant Marines. But beyond the important contribution of Navy engineering battalions, there are potentially other ways that the Navy can support or contribute to SSTR. The developing sea-basing concept should be adapted to support SSTR.35 Future Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) ships, for example, should be loaded out with dedicated stocks of core equipment that can immediately contribute to providing essential services in an SSTR environment. This is not a major conceptual stretch, for many of the MPF ships already carry some stocks of humanitarian supplies along with their combat loads. The key to one or more such dedicated MPF ships is to recognize that, in supplying essential services, particularly in terms of transitions from combat to stability and reconstruction operations, speed and efficiency is essential to winning over the population, and

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so the approach should be informed by the philosophy of “small is beautiful.” Support for the immediate needs of the population should be geared to the technological level of the culture. For instance, in terms of providing power, it is better to furnish 1,000 portable electrical generators that can be delivered quickly than to rely on some big infrastructure project to become operational at some unknown future date. Today in Baghdad, for example, there is no sustained power due to the failure of such ambitious infrastructure projects designed to supply electricity; yet, when the power goes out at night, there are a host of oases of light powered from local generators.36 A “small is beautiful” approach may not be able to deliver electricity for an entire city, but it can provide for villages, small towns (if used in multiples) and even essential parts of cities (i.e., markets, food processing, etc.), and help convince the local population of America’s positive intentions. An alternative approach to pre-positioning equipment is to procure the needed supplies and equipment locally and regionally. An advantage of this approach is that procuring as much as possible from local and regional sources means that such supplies and equipment are more likely to fit closer with the mores and technological capability of the population than supplies and equipment procured in the United States. Local or regional purchases also could help jump-start local economies, affording economic incentives in the effort to stabilize communities. Planning for this type of local approach would require an ex ante survey of local and regional businesses able to build or provide the equipment, materials, and supplies that may be needed for SSTR or even humanitarian operations. Such an approach requires first identifying what relevant equipment is needed for an SSTR operation, and then identifying local and regional suppliers and their likely inventories, so that the Navy can tap these resources more quickly in response to a nearby crisis.37 The Navy is well suited to developing and maintaining such a database because it already relies on a forward-based logistics system in specific geographic regions. The Navy could also directly invest in equipment or hardware in preparation for SSTR contingencies. For example, the Navy could deploy, likely via contractors, one or more ships in the MPF that act, in effect, as floating generators, with the means either to connect into local grids while in port or while standing close offshore. It has been suggested in an article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings that the U.S. Navy could access the power plants of nuclear-electric naval auxiliary transport ships, when they are not in military use, to generate electrical power to be added to the U.S. electrical grid in times of national emergency.38 The power that a single vessel could push into the U.S. electrical grid was estimated to be 300 megawatts. Although this is not much in terms of overall U.S. power consumption, this amount of power would be extremely significant in many regions of the world, especially when local power supplies have been disrupted. Even if these “power ships” were available, significant advance planning would have to occur to make sure that the equipment was compatible and that operators were trained properly.39 Security issues would also become pressing, because ship-based power generation could become a lucrative

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target for terrorists or insurgents, especially if the target involved a nuclear power plant. One way to alleviate a number of the issues related to nuclear power plants would be to employ ships with fuel oil generators.40 The Navy could develop this idea for SSTR or humanitarian operations by considering the development and deployment of one or more ships outfitted specifically to provide power for local use as part of the MPF. These proposals suggest ways that the Navy can think about enhancing its capability to support Marines operating effectively on shore from a logistical perspective. The most valuable resources of the Navy, however, are not necessarily the material resources it can contribute, but its people, who have a vast array of useful knowledge and skill sets. Navy aircraft carriers are often likened to a small city afloat in terms of the number of people aboard and the complexity of their operations. This analogy highlights the fact that the crews of Navy warships often possess skill sets that are found among those charged with managing and maintaining a city, town, or village. In other words, there are sailors with the requisite engineering and technical skills needed to help furnish clean water, better sewage, improved roads, reliable electricity, and even village markets in areas that are facing natural or political disasters. These skills represent the essential ingredients of stabilization and reconstruction operations. During transitions from combat to post-conflict operations, time is of the essence when it comes to winning over the local population. The Navy can respond to this challenge by harnessing the potential of sailors and officers, by providing training on how individual specializations and skills relate to the running and management of a city, town, or village.41 Select sailors could receive training in the area of urban management and maintenance relevant to their specialization. They could also study how local or regional infrastructure systems are constructed. Sailors interested in taking on these kinds of missions would have to be volunteers, for they would be operating outside of the Navy’s normal career tracks and missions. But the Navy can offer a framework and resources for creating teams that encompass the skills needed to maintain or rebuild village, town, or city infrastructures.42 How one establishes these types of planning reconstruction teams is an open question, but one model may be a framework analogous to NATO’s Combined Joint Task Force Headquarters concept, which was based on having predesignated command officers who could be detached from their parent headquarters to form the nucleus of a new, deployable headquarters staff. Such an approach would allow the Naval officers and technicians involved to get to know each other, to discuss and plan to meet various contingencies. Planning also might begin about how best to temporarily detach personnel from their regular billets without harming day-to-day shipboard functions. In an ideal world, informal SSTR teams would be available on forwarddeployed Navy carrier battle groups and expeditionary strike groups. These teams would be drawn from personnel deployed among various ships that make up these battle groups and act as a human repository of creative knowledge on local infrastructure and potential reconstruction needs. Not only can these teams

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supply services ashore, they could also contribute valuable advice and information to Navy or Marine commanders in terms of campaign planning and actual operations.43 Depending on the operational tempo and threat level on shore and at sea, these sailors could serve as visiting teams that go ashore to support and advise locals on building or re-establishing essential services. They could also provide advice and support on rebuilding local infrastructure in coordination with Marine units. Helping several small villages may seem like a marginal contribution when it comes to the size of some conflict-torn regions, but one village helped is one more village less likely to support a potential or emergent insurgency. Many “smalls” do add up. U.S. Navy personnel can vouchsafe that lasting gift of education and training to the local population. As the international aid community has long been preaching, the transfer of best practices and education can greatly improve local conditions. Such training must of course be aimed to the local technology and skill level, and be informed by the cultural mores of the society, but this should not be a stretch for sailors, especially those who have been given the chance to interact with the local population. Such training could be provided through onsite visits if security is not an issue, or it could be conducted aboard ships if local security is a problem.44 If the Navy wanted to deploy ships specifically designed for SSTR operations, it could utilize a pre-positioning ship as a repair shop and training facility providing support to sustaining local infrastructure, using local materials, and, more importantly, imparting the knowledge and skills so that local people can learn to support themselves in what is often a long rebuilding process. In a sense, the Navy already has such a medical capability in its two Naval hospital ships, that lend medical support to onshore operations. These ships could also serve as an offshore training facility to upgrade local medical skills. The provision of training for local personnel could also be undertaken in the absence of SSTR operations as part of the Navy’s traditional mission of regional public diplomacy.

Economic development Many of the proposed ways for the Navy to contribute to reconstruction would also contribute to economic development. Power supply, for example, is absolutely essential for economic activity. Thus, the Navy could develop these advisory teams in a manner designed to foster local economic development. Provision of some material, such as generators, might be undertaken by “selling” them to a family (or some other local unit that fits cultural norms) so that a traditional social group or organization would be responsible for running and maintaining the generator and lines, purchasing fuel, etc. These family or community units could then sell electricity to their neighbors or businesses, giving villagers an enormous stake in guaranteeing the success of the enterprise.45 Such transactions may be done in a straightforward manner – by offering a generous subsidy for the sale, or they may be facilitated by offering loans with generous repayment provisions. Navy volunteer advisory teams could also deliver the impetus

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as well as organizational and technical know-how for local reconstruction, by supplying funds for the creation of jobs for locals to do the actual work, and indeed to buy materials needed for local reconstruction projects from the locals.46 Sailors also could be trained to advise these kinds of small businesses. Such advisers could help local business get back on its feet by negotiating small loans to help businesses or emerging enterprises. Logistics specialists could also help emerging enterprises by helping them take the first steps in contacting distant distributors and customers. If the Navy focuses on simple and mission-specific contributions to SSTR operations, it has the intellectual and material resources needed to jump-start the local economic development that comprises a key ingredient in SSTR operations. Provision of the essential services, reconstruction of critical infrastructure, and boosting local economic development can contribute to governance and broader stabilization efforts.

Conclusion The Navy cannot wash its hands of SSTR because its leaders believe that it is not suited to such operations or that SSTR operations would detract from traditional sea control and power projection missions. As Admiral Mullen made clear, the U.S. Navy must develop instruments for stability, security, and reconstruction if combatant commanders are to achieve mission goals. Mullen’s message is that the Navy needs to recognize that sea control and power projection requires more than defeating an opponent in the open ocean or even the littorals. To respond to contemporary challenges, the Navy has to think and act beyond the sea to influence events on the land. The critical issue for the Navy is to determine how to contribute to U.S. or coalition SSTR operations without detracting from its prime missions. The suggestion advanced here is to approach this issue not in terms of complex engineering undertakings, but by recognizing that simple, tailored initiatives will allow the Navy to contribute by developing new approaches and working with the Marine Corps to devise joint operational concepts. Small can be beautiful, and the Navy can embrace this approach in seeking to develop capabilities to contribute to SSTR operations. Small, however, does not necessarily mean easy. The suggestions offered here would be hard to develop because they will inevitably draw resources away from traditional missions and career paths. In a period when the Navy’s share of the budget will be constrained, the construction of ships and systems tailored to SSTR operations could become problematic for financial reasons. Most of the suggestions offered here also do not conform to the platformcentric organizational culture of the U.S. Navy. The implementation of these concepts and ideas would involve introducing an element of muddy deck shoes into U.S. Navy organizational culture. The so-called “Gator Navy,” – officers and sailors who crew aboard amphibious assault ships – will likely be more receptive to such suggestions, due their working relationship with the Marines,

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while carrier and other surface ship sailors (and submariners) will likely find these ideas more alien. But muddy deck shoes may not be that much of a conceptual stretch for the individual sailor, especially if one considers the overall history of the U.S. Navy. The U.S. military may be developing SSTR concepts and doctrines to serve the national interest, but SSTR operations are fundamentally about helping people. U.S. Navy personnel have a long history of committing their individual will, energy, compassion, skills, and creativity to help strangers suffering from humanitarian disasters. The need today is to enlarge and transform Navy capabilities for humanitarian responses to the different, yet similar, demands posed by SSTR operations through education, training, and planning. The key asset that the Navy can bring to SSTR is not just what it can contribute materially or logistically to some distant disaster area. Instead, it is the knowledge, skill, and creativity of its personnel. The question remains whether the U.S. Navy can break with its traditional preoccupations and develop the concepts and capabilities needed to make a substantial contribution to SSTR operations.

Notes 1 Quoted in Art Pine, “Navy in Search of a Fresh Strategy for the 21st Century,” GovExec.Com, 6 December 2006, at www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35616&dcn=e_ndw (accessed 8 December 2006). 2 W. J. Holland, Jr., “The Fleet: Low Profile Today, Vital Tomorrow,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 5 (May 2006), pp. 52ff. 3 Mike Mullen, “What I Believe,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 1 (January 2006) pp. 12ff. 4 Ibid. 5 E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 6 U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the US Special Operations Command Center for Knowledge and Futures, Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare, Version 2.0, 2 August 2006, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory website, www.mcwl.usmc.mil/ (accessed 9 September 2006). 7 Ibid., p. 12. 8 Ibid. 9 In particular, the document stresses that, “Anyone – states, non-state entities, individuals such as terrorists, and the U.S. military – can practice irregular warfare” (Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare, p. 10). Further, the document notes that “the specifically military components of IW include a wide variety of operations and activities promoted in isolation, in combination, in alteration or as augmentation to conventional combat operations or in which conventional combat augments IW operations” (ibid., p. 11). 10 Ibid., p. 5. 11 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 12 John F. Dobrydney, “Marine Tactical PsyOp Teams,” Marine Corps Gazette, vol. 90, no. 2 (February 2006), pp. 33ff. Marine units operating in Iraq were augmented by the US Army PsyOps. 13 Frank Hoffman, “Changing Tires on the Fly: The Marines and Post-Conflict Stability Ops,” Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Note, 10 September 2006, at www.fpri. org/enotes/20060910.military.hoffman.marinespostconflictstabilityops.html (accessed 24 September 2006).

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14 Conversely, Marine operations in the Al Anbar Province in Iraq are so far inland that ship-based augmentation for their psychological operations is likely largely impractical. 15 Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare, p. 15. 16 On the difference between fusing information/intelligence and interservice cooperation, see Robert B. Watts, “Fusion Is More than Cooperation,” Proceedings, vol. 133, no. 1 (January 2007), pp. 70ff. 17 Such a proposed system would be similar to, or part of, the Navy–Marine Corps Intranet and ForceNet. On what these systems were supposed to provide, see Charles L. Munns, “The Big Network Could Save Your Life,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 9 (September 2004), pp. 56ff. 18 For a case study of the need to counter such misperception derived from the Marine Corps deployment to Haiti in 2004, see Bryan Salas, “Media Support in Joint Operations,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 11 (November 2005), pp. 74ff. On the importance of public affairs in modern operations, see also Antony J. Andrious, “Image Is Everything,” Marine Corps Gazette, vol. 91, no. 2 (February 2007), pp. 54ff. 19 James Lacey, “Who’s Responsible for Losing the Media War in Iraq?” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 10 (October 2004), pp. 37ff. 20 General Robert J. Scales, “Culture-Centric Warfare,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 10 (October 2004), pp. 32ff; and Mark Gorenflo and Mark R. Hagerott, “The Shifting Domain of War,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 11 (November 2006), pp. 38ff. 21 For the purpose of this discussion, cultural intelligence can be conceived as being analogous to military intelligence: the gathering and analysis of information on local cultures and social structures. 22 On the need for cultural ethnography, see Fred Renzi, “Networks: Terra Incognita and the Case for Ethnographic Intelligence,” Military Review (October 2006), pp. 180ff. 23 On the need to reinvigorate the Navy’s FAO programme, see Steve C. Boraz, “Behind the Curve in Culture-Centric Skills,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 6 (June 2005), pp. 41ff. For more on the importance of language and cultural skills in the Navy, see the comments on Boraz’s article in “Comment and Discussion,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 7 (July 2005), pp. 6ff; and “Comment and Discussion,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 8 (August 2005), pp. 6ff. 24 Reportedly, 46 percent of naval intelligence personnel are currently afloat, serving predominantly on board aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious ships (LHAs and LHDs), manning the carrier intelligence and joint intelligence centers. See Richard B. Porterfield, “Naval Intelligence: Transforming to Meet the Threat,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 9 (September 2005), pp. 12ff. 25 The Marine Corps is working on a culture Wikipedia as part of its effort to develop a better knowledge and understanding of culture. An example of such topics is “Intellipedia,” a classified form of Wikipedia, being experimented with by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. See Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Inside the Ring,” Washington Times, 5 January 2007, at www.washtimes.com/national/ 20070104–112334–2238r_page2.htm (accessed 5 January 2007); and Clive Thompson, “Open Source Spying,” NYTimes.com, 3 December 2006, at www.nytimes.com/ 2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html?pagewanted=print (accessed 3 December 2006). An alternative model, or complementary approach, for an open-source cultural intelligence data/analysis network is John Collins’s “Warlord Loop.” See John Collins, “Knowledge Is Power,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 9 (September 2005), pp. 79ff. 26 See Daniel Pulliam, “Navy Developing Massive Information Network,” GovExec.com, 29 January 2007, at: www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35978&dcn=e_ndw (accessed 6 February 2007). This system is ostensibly to encompass all Navy digital systems, including the reportedly troubled Navy–Marine Corps Intranet and ForceNet systems.

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27 For a similar, recently made argument, see Chris Rawley, “Naval Unconventional Warfare: Supporting GWOT on the Cheap,” Small Wars Journal, vol. 7 (February 2007), at http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/swjmag/v7/rawley-swjvol7.pdf (accessed 14 February 2007). For why relying on “reach back” programs to use the expertise of civilian academic cultural anthropologists is not a long-term solution, see Marc W. D. Tyrrell, “Why Dr. Johnny Won’t Go to War: Anthropology and the Global War on Terror,” Small Wars Journal, vol. 7 (February 2007), at http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/swjmag/v7/tyrrell-swjvol7.pdf (accessed 14 February 2007). 28 For arguments to revamp U.S. Naval intelligence to make it better able to deal with more traditional operational intelligence in the post 9/11 world, see Jason Hines, “Restore the Foundation of Naval Intelligence,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 2 (February 2005), pp. 36ff; and Mario I. Ona, “Overhaul Naval Intel to Support the War Fighters,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 2 (February 2005), pp. 38ff. 29 For the importance of civil affairs, see Alan Spira, Paul E. Beckhart, and David R. Woodard, “Civil Affairs Is the Invisible Force,” Proceedings, vol. 129, no. 11 (November 2003), pp. 40–3. 30 On the need to bolster the Marine Corps’ FAO program and training, including educating FAOs as cultural anthropologists, see Alfred B. Connable, “FAO Revisited,” Marine Corps Gazette, vol. 91, no. 2 (February 2007), pp. 17ff. Major Connable is Program Lead, Cultural Intelligence Program, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, Quantico. 31 Pat Paterson, “European Command Welcomes Navy Foreign Area Officers,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 10 (October 2006), pp. 71ff. Such a capability would as well alleviate, albeit only marginally, concern about the paucity of Naval officers filling assigned billets in joint operational commands. On this point, see Robert O. Wray, Jr, “Baghdad: Help Wanted,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 1 (January 2005), pp. 45ff. 32 Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare, p. 15. 33 This simple reality would be enhanced through Navy efforts to develop a deeper and broader FAO programme and cultural intelligence capability, as discussed above. 34 For an examination of the effectiveness of 1st NCD and the Seabees’ employment of two new concepts – the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Engineer Group (MEG) and Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Teams (SERTs) – in Iraq both during the war and afterwards in post-conflict reconstruction efforts, see Marshall T. Sykes, The Effectiveness of the Seabees in Employing New Concepts during Operation Iraqi Freedom, USAWC Strategy Research Project, U.S. Army War College (March 2005); accessible at: www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/displaypapers.cfm?q=123 (accessed 5 November 2006). Another example of the ongoing work of the Seabees who have been active in Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA); see David J. Danelo, “Around the Horn,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 6 (June 2006), pp. 18ff. 35 For an argument reminding Navy personnel that sea-basing is in large part designed to provide support to Marine Corps operations, see John J. Klein and Rich Morales, “Sea Basing Isn’t Just about the Sea,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 1 (January 2004), pp., 32ff. 36 James G. Lacey, “Sense and Nonsense,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 6 (June 2005), pp. 32ff. 37 As an example that shows the spirit of this suggestion, carried out in an ad hoc fashion, Expeditionary Task Group Five, which was directed to Indonesia to provide humanitarian assistance in the wake of the 26 December 2004 tsunami, stopped off in Guam to load supplies, and while there Rear Admiral Christopher Ames, the Strike Group commander, reportedly “sent a party to the Ace hardware store near the port to buy just about everything in stock – shovels, lumber, hammers, nails” (Dan Baum, “Mission to Sumatra,” New Yorker, 7 February 2005, at www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050207fa_fact (accessed 4 February 2005)).

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38 Jose Femenia, “Nuclear Ships Can Help Meet U.S. Electrical Needs,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 8 (August 2004), pp. 78ff. 39 On these, see Ray Fulton, Letter to the Editor, “Nuclear Ships Can Help Meet U.S. Electrical Needs: Comment and Discussion,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 10 (October 2004), pp. 10ff. 40 See Jack Landesberg, Letter to the Editor, “Nuclear Ships Can Help Meet U.S. Electrical Needs: Comment and Discussion,” Proceedings, vol. 130, no. 10 (October 2004), pp. 10ff. 41 General James T. Conway and Lieutenant General James N. Mattis, along with their command staff, spent a week with Denver city officials learning what was involved in running and maintaining a city before the 1st Marine Division deployed to Iraq in March 2004. A form of reach-back to city planners in the United States could enhance the capability of such teams to deal with local infrastructure problems. 42 This idea extends a concept in the developing Sea–Land strategy of the U.S. Navy, which envisions engagement ashore through teams or groups, consisting of “sailors with the language and cultural skills to interact directly with members of the host nation to develop maritime security solutions,” that are provisional and “organized by tasks, on an ad hoc basis for specific missions” Christopher R. Davis “Relevance: A Necessary Strategy,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 5 (May 2006), pp. 64ff). 43 Such knowledge would also be valuable during humanitarian crises or repeated public diplomacy visits in regions in which the United States wants or needs to remain engaged. For an example of a goodwill visit, with some of the benefits, see Mike Budney, “Mission Improbable: A U.S. Navy Charm Offensive in West Africa,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 7 (July 2006), pp. 32ff. 44 If there is an emerging or ongoing insurgency, bringing locals shipboard either on a daily or extended basis carries certain security risks that would need to be carefully managed. 45 For an example of how locals provide power from generators as a paid service, see Sudarsan Raghavan, “Generator Men Let Baghdad See the Light, but at a Price,” Washington Post, 19 November 2006, p. A22. 46 On the usefulness of spending money and creating jobs locally, see Kenneth Brown, “Forward from . . . Bureaucracy,” Proceedings, vol. 131, no. 1 (January 2005), pp. 41ff.

Part III

Cases Implementing stability operations

7

An examination of maritime peace support operations Adam B. Siegel

Until the 1990s, few military planners or academics were concerned about the roles that naval forces play in peacekeeping operations (PKOs). With the end of the Cold War, the last decade of the century saw significant change in the nature and concept of peacekeeping as the world community moved into and through “second-generation” peace operations (POs).1 One part of the changing nature of peace support operations (PSOs) was an increased involvement of naval forces in POs starting in the early 1990s.2 Since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack, these operations continue to undergo additional changes with the challenges posed by the “Long War”3 and demands of Stability, Security, Reconstruction, and Transition (SSTR) operations.4 This chapter examines the unique benefits and problems of involving naval forces in humanitarian assistance and peace operations, peace support operations, and SSTR. It begins with a discussion of the nature of naval missions in these operations, including some historical examples. Based on the historical record, the chapter turns to a discussion of the benefits and problems of naval involvement in PSOs. Following a discussion of some technical and operational issues related to such involvement, the chapter explores how the changing nature of PSOs could affect navy force development requirements for the coming decades.

Peace support operations Peace support operations have evolved over the decades. Until the 1990s, despite the Korean (1950–3) and Congo (1960–4) experiences, the term peacekeeping conjured up an image of a blue-helmeted soldier, binoculars in hand, observing cease-fire lines between two formerly warring parties. Peacekeepers were invited by international organizations – usually the United Nations – to monitor compliance with truces that had already been negotiated among the parties involved in a dispute. This image no longer reflects the total reality of peacekeeping. Second-generation peacekeeping often involves UN forces in complex humanitarian emergencies,5 ongoing conflicts, and post-conflict operations such as East Timor. Peacekeeping, or more appropriately, peace support operations, have become, according to Peter Haydon, “a form of shorthand for

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military and para-military operations to restore order in the international system.”6 Peace support operations can range from humanitarian assistance operations to aid distressed civilians (whether the distress derives from natural or man-made causes) to combat operations otherwise known as warfare. This concept includes not only UN-directed and authorized actions (whether under Chapter VI or Chapter VII authorization), but also unilateral and multilateral operations. Restoring order does not necessarily refer to armed conflict but it can also include responses to the chaos that can follow in the wake of natural or man-made disasters. In addition, there is the quite significant element within PSOs of another aspect of “order,” which could be referred to as “law and order” or the “justice sector.” This element of order can stretch Navy and maritime roles related to SSTR/PSOs from the interdiction of illegal weapons-of-mass destruction (WMD) movements through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) program to capacity building in an intervention through training, equipping, and otherwise resourcing a local Coast Guard (or maritime customs’) service. There is a broad range of naval tasks in SSTR/PSO missions. These range from the most benign (such as the opportune use of Navy vessels to transport relief supplies or a UN contingent) to the most belligerent (such as the Tomahawk missile strikes against Iraq (1991, 1993, 1998, 2003), Bosnian Serbs (1995), Serbia (1999), and Taliban in Afghanistan (2001)). Missions or tasks can occur in a low-level (benign), mid-level (uncertain), or high-level (conflict) operational and threat environment.7 Figure 7.1 depicts typology and provides some examples of the mission types and tasks that naval forces might conduct at these different threat levels.8 As Figure 7.1 suggests, many of these missions (such as sealift) remain a potential naval task in all levels of peace support operations, while others are likely to occur only in certain portions of this conflict spectrum. One of the complexities of today’s peace operations and SSTRs is that many PSOs will travel across this conflict spectrum depending on the passage of time and the movement of an area of operations across a region. The shifting nature of conflict of SSTR derives from the nature of today’s multinational peace support operations. These operations are less likely to be cases of intervention between two nation-states – each with clear command and control over disciplined forces that can control actions of field units across an entire geographic “front.” As seen in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, East Timor, Afghanistan, and Sudan, assuming true centralized command and control of any faction is most frequently a dangerous assumption. The recent surge in international terrorism has changed the nature of PSOs. While threat environments vary from operation to operation, the delineation between conflict and benign environments has come close to disappearing, especially for Western maritime forces. While threats may vary, the terrorist menace will always exist and the situation facing friendly forces will remain “gray.” A terrorist could strike a ship in port or at sea, with the same lethality that would occur in the event of a missile strike during high-intensity conventional combat.

Maritime peace support operations

99

Low-level/benign (Peacekeeping)

Mid-level/uncertain (Peace support)

Surveillance Monitor shipping -------

----- Monitoring ------- Escort shipping ---

Surveillance/targeting Convoy escort/protection

Inspect/interdict shipping --- Mine clearance/ sweeping/preemption of mine-laying --- Preventive deployment– Semi-permissive evacuation or hostage rescue SAR or combat SAR (CSAR) Conduct environmental clean-up, monitor Conduct limited combat operations, including proactive acts (as ROEs allow)

Interdict shipping Mine clearance/sweeping/ preemption mine-laying/ laying mines Demonstration – combat Opposed evacuation

High-level/Conflict (Peace enforcement)

--------- Sealift ---------

Mine clearance ----

Presence Permissive evacuation Search and rescue (SAR) Conduct environmental clean-up Conduct self-defense and limited reactive action to protect others (if Rules of Engagement (ROE) allow)

--- Capacity building ---------Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA)--------

CSAR Preempt or limit environmental warfare Conduct combat operations: power project; air combat; strike operations; amphibious operations; etc. ...

Figure 7.1 Conflict spectrum and some naval PSO tasks.

In terms of the role of navies in UN missions and, more broadly, SSTRs, Figure 7.1 suggests that involvement in peace operations does not present navies with missions that are at odds with training for traditional blue-water operations. In other words, for navies, peacekeeping is not significantly different from regular operations. In contrast to a ground unit which, for example, might require significant retraining for the individual soldiers, few Navy personnel conducting operations at sea will encounter training requirements beyond that which they undertake for traditional tasks. The greatest differences between traditional and peace support operations for Navy forces involve where those operations take place and the joint nature of the exercises. The movement from open-ocean operations to littoral operations represented a major shift for the United States Navy in the 1990s. The recent surge in riverine, inland coastal waterways operations, especially during the Second Gulf War, is reflected in the creations of the U.S. Naval Expeditionary Command and the development of a dedicated riverine warfare capability. Jointness, with U.S. Navy personnel moving ashore into positions on joint staffs or assuming missions and roles ashore, also creates new challenges for Navy planners.

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United Nations naval operations UN naval operations have occurred via three routes: authorizations; designation; or, the integration of naval assets into a land-based peace operation. Authorization occurs when the United Nations authorizes nations to conduct an operation. In these types of operations, deployed forces remain under their national flag. Designation is when the United Nations designates a lead nation to conduct and command a mandated operation; participating units remain under the “designated” nation’s (or a combined headquarters) command and control, rather than under a United Nations command or commander. This command arrangement occurred during the intervention in East Timor and the initial intervention in Somalia. Integration takes place when naval assets are directly integrated into a UN-controlled, ground-based operation. Naval units that are integrated into peace support operations are often even repainted in a way similar to the blue helmets worn by UN peacekeepers to clearly identify them as participants in a UN operation. Another type of naval participation in peacekeeping operations involves naval forces in direct support of UN operations without the ships flying the UN flag or without a specific request by the United Nations to participate in an ongoing operation. Many Navy ships, used to transport UN personnel and equipment, fall into this type of operation. The use of naval forces for suasion in support of UN peace operations has typically occurred under national authority without command association with the UN operation itself. In terms of UN-flag operations, past taskings have included transport of UN personnel and equipment (both under national and UN flags), riverine operations (including monitoring in Cambodia9 and sanctions enforcement along the Danube10), and monitoring missions. UN naval operations have also occurred in circumstances where the UN authorized or designated a nation (or group of nations) to undertake military operations in support of a UN resolution. Authorized missions have included the U.S.-led coalitions during the Korean War, in the Persian Gulf (1990–1), in enforcement of the sanctions against Haiti (1993–4), and in the entry of military forces into Haiti.11 The naval operations in the Adriatic in the early 1990s were another example where multinational, regional organizations acted to enforce UN sanctions (the Western European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) both conducted patrol operations). Additionally, the UN designated the United Kingdom to enforce economic sanctions against Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s. A variety of new kinds of UN naval mission is potentially on the horizon. These new operations include the monitoring and interdiction of illegal drug, refugee, and arms proliferation movements. Environmental monitoring and enforcement could also emerge as new missions on the high seas in the future. September 11 has changed the security agendas for many nations with the ability to deploy naval forces far from their shores. The Global War on Terror will create numerous opportunities for multinational naval operations, given that large multinational armadas already operate in the Indian Ocean, North Arabian

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Sea, and Red Sea; NATO forces already operate in the Mediterranean; and combined U.S.–Indian Navy patrols monitor ship movements through the Malacca Strait. Eventually, some of these patrols will occur under UN Charter. Today, naval peacekeeping support operations are proliferating. Support operations are underway in response to ongoing contingencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Emergency naval operations, like disaster relief (such as tsunami relief operations, 2004–512 and post-Hurricane Katrina, 200513) or noncombatant evacuations (like Lebanon, 2006), to strikes against terrorists are becoming increasingly common. The Proliferation Security Initiative, a relatively informal effort to stop trafficking in weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery systems, is gaining momentum as governments around the world recognize the threat posed by clandestine criminal and smuggling networks. Much of this activity has occurred outside the formal framework of UN PSOs.

Why involve naval forces in peace support operations? Naval vessels share a number of characteristics that make them valuable diplomatic tools.14 In Navies and Foreign Policy, Kenneth Booth listed seven qualities that make warships ideal tools in peace support operations. First, navies are versatile. Ships can accomplish a variety of tasks and change from one task to another as the threat environment changes. Second, navies are controllable. Because ships operate in international waters and can maneuver out of sight (if not always out of harm’s way), they can modulate the level of provocation and involvement in a situation. Ships are more easily introduced and withdrawn from a situation than a ground or air force and their logistical tail is less vulnerable to interdiction by local forces. Third, navies are mobile. Forces that are not already in theater are capable of moving relatively quickly where they are needed and can sustain local operations for months or even years. Fourth, navies can project force ashore. Although amphibious, relief, and riverine operations come to mind when talking about peace support operations, naval forces can also affect the situation on land through air and missile strikes.15 Fifth, navies guarantee access from the sea to threatened areas and the ability to move life-saving supplies to areas isolated by natural and man-made disasters. The freedom navies have from restrictions on their operations means that movement of significant forces and materials is easier across the sea than over land or in the air. Sixth, naval operations are symbols of national resolve and international interest. Like classic gunboat diplomacy, today a ship remains a symbol of national power and international community. Forces at sea under national command can stand ready to intervene with full combat capability to protect or otherwise support blue-helmet forces ashore. These “reserves,” retained under national control and national tasking, can implicitly give teeth to a blue-helmet force ashore without the UN itself having to assert a combative posture. Seventh, large navies can maintain ships on specific stations indefinitely. Ships can deploy for extended periods with auxiliary support vessels in an area of operations. In the Beira patrol, for instance, Royal Navy

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ships deployed at sea for months at a time to enforce sanctions against Rhodesia.16 Several key aspects of Booth’s characterization of naval forces are especially relevant to potential PSOs. The endurance of maritime forces suggests the ability to undertake sea-based operations: some units and their support elements might actually be based at sea rather than ashore. Sea-basing reduces an operation’s footprint in the affected territory, thereby reducing the requirement to protect forces and reducing the burden a military force will create on the society and social order. This is a critical concern in humanitarian relief operations where local infrastructure has been weakened, if not destroyed, by a man-made or natural disaster. Sea-basing would also help provide security for peace support forces. Sea-based forces remain – relative forces deployed ashore – more secure from terrorist and other security threats in uncertain environments. Naval forces, especially amphibious task forces, are the world’s best major rapid-response capability in many situations. In particular, naval forces have unique capacities to bring to bear in responding to many types of disasters. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary strike groups (ESGs), which are based on the combined amphibious ready group (ARG) and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU), make up a constantly deployed, floating engineering, medical, transportation (ground, water, and air), communication, and control organization.17 Although these units are deployed in support of a variety of U.S. national interests, the capabilities can be made available to respond rapidly to disasters or complex humanitarian emergencies. If deployed into a disaster situation, the ESG capabilities can provide crucial support to a society as it copes with disaster and moves toward recovery. While the United Nations has not practiced traditional gunboat diplomacy, the latent capability for intervention and support of peace operations has helped achieve UN mission objectives in a number of operations. In 1974, for example, as Turkish and Greek forces fought over Cyprus, the UN force on Cyprus struggled to prevent Turkish forces from attacking and overrunning the airport. In addition to diplomatic measures, the British airlifted additional forces to the British bases on Cyprus and reinforced their UN contingent. At the same time, British and U.S. Navy amphibious forces moved to positions off the island. While these forces principally engaged in evacuations of endangered civilians, the UK and U.S. forces clearly had the capability to intervene – perhaps decisively. In any event, the Turks did not attack the UN force.18 In September 1992, a U.S. Navy amphibious task force (with 2,000 Marines embarked) deployed off Mogadishu, Somalia, as U.S. Air Force aircraft airlifted 500 Pakistani peacekeepers into the country. Prior to the first aircraft flying into Mogadishu, the ships steamed into sight of Mogadishu as a show of force to intimidate anyone from taking hostile action against this airlift or against the Pakistani soldiers.19

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Challenges of naval involvement in PSOs While naval forces are inherently flexible, flexibility comes at a cost. Naval forces are expensive and this expense can limit the UN’s ability to finance extensive maritime operations. A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, for example, would cost the UN over $5 million per month in personnel costs alone at the UN’s reimbursement rate for enlisted personnel. This amount does not account for the costs of equipment depreciation (potentially quite a high cost for a warship that costs over $5 billion to build and equip), fuel, and other supplies.20 Supporting a large UN naval force in UN operations under UN control would shatter the already broken UN budget. Even small operations, such as the four-boat patrol in the Gulf of Fonesca, are expensive. For this small operation, the UN paid for transporting the four patrol craft from Argentina to Honduras, painting the ships in accord with UN rules (all white), later repainting them to national colors, dismantling weapons systems (and reinstalling them), undertaking environmental modifications to enable the ships to operate in tropical waters, and depreciation costs. The UN could have purchased the boats themselves once the total cost of the operation was tallied. In addition to these system costs, the UN paid for the construction of support facilities in the operational area, operating cost (including maintenance), the salaries of Argentinean personnel, spare parts, insurance, fuel oil, and crew rotations.21 In addition to financial costs, other problems emerge when it comes to utilizing naval forces in humanitarian assistance and peace support operations. While naval PSOs often involve only one navy, the real challenges emerge when attempting multinational naval operations.22 To operate effectively together, naval forces must have some level of technical, procedural, and doctrinal compatibility.23 In addition, these forces must train together to move from compatibility to interoperability. On all fronts, the world’s navies have moved forward on these issues. The US Naval Doctrine Command can be said to have led the way, with the development of a multinational doctrine for multinational naval operations. Partnership for Peace exercises are also spreading some degree of interoperability outside traditional European alliance structures for lower-threat operations, like disaster relief. The U.S. Navy’s concept of a “1,000-ship navy,” which relies on the ability to form operationally capable coalitions of the willing to confront new operational challenges and requirements, is helping to lay the groundwork for coalition-based maritime support operations. Navies enjoy certain advantages over ground forces when it comes to interoperability. A ship is an entity and deals with the outside world (whether other ships from the same fleet, alliance partners, or other entities) as a single unit. Thus, if key individuals can communicate clearly with partners, understand the doctrine and mission, and there is connectivity in terms of voice and data communications, operational integration should not pose insurmountable difficulties. As the operational environment becomes increasingly hostile, the integration of ship-based surveillance, command, and control becomes increasingly important.

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The ability of naval units to switch from one task to another also creates a liability. The inherent flexibility of maritime assets (ships) to switch from one task to another also creates a liability. Local governments, factions, and/or civilians might look to the ship’s capabilities as evidence that leads them to question the maritime force’s benign intent. For example, inherent in the warships involved in monitoring and observation missions is the capability to escalate from passive observation to combat operations. Unlike terrestrial forces, it is difficult to change maritime forces from their full combat capabilities to something less than that – unlike an armor division, a ship cannot leave its tanks behind when sent to a peace operation.24 Although small craft can be deployed without weapons, and aircraft carriers can deploy without their combat aircraft and serve as floating docks to support relief operations, most warships cannot easily remove their weapons systems and become “unarmed” for a classic UN bluehelmet observer role.25 It thus might be easier to transform a ground combat unit to carry out a peace support operation than a maritime force.

Technology and naval involvement in PSOs Unlike land operations, there are almost no naval technology developments that are focused on peace operations.26 There is no oceanic equivalent to the development of better mine-detection and -clearance systems to reduce the number of maimed civilians. For the most part, sea-based technologies with applications in PSOs will be procured by navies for other reasons and then applied in the peacekeeping or peace-enforcement environment. There are steps related to technology and ship design that can help convert ships to carry out multinational operations instead of traditional national operations. The Italian Navy, for example, is acquiring new amphibious ships that are designed, in part, with the idea of aiding in natural disasters. This design includes, for example, extra generators to provide electricity ashore, a common naval role following an earthquake. While this reduced the ships’ capacity for traditional combat operations, the Italian Navy benefited from the design’s inclusion of extra generators because it meant that the Italian disaster relief agency paid for one of the three ships of the new class. The Danish Navy has also developed ship classes that can easily be modified to better support peace operations.27 The U.S. Navy, which is increasingly interested in module design in future generations of warships to include flexibility, carries noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) kits on all ships that, for example, include pediatric medical devices not normally associated with traditional Navy combat missions.28 Navy planners are further developing such ideas by pre-positioning other types of kits that can be rapidly deployed on amphibious vessels to provide various types of aid in disaster-relief missions. The U.S. Navy’s littoral combat ship (LCS) program, with the use of modularity to enhance operational flexibility, can be seen as the next generation of modularity in operational capabilities. The LCS capabilities will be principally in its modules, rather than embedded in the platform. This should enable rapid

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transformation of the warship to move from one operational requirement to another. Several other ship design features can specifically aid multinational or UN peace operations. Liaison officers between ships, naval units, and commands can greatly help in creating a functioning multinational force.29 As liaison officers are key, additional berthing capacity beyond normal shipboard operations will allow augmentation with liaison and UN personnel without disrupting normal shipboard routine. In addition, including communication equipment and channels for UN or multinational operations would be useful. Interdicting shipping to enforce embargoes, stopping illegal refugee flows and terrorist movements, and preventing the movement of weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery systems are increasingly common missions for twenty-first-century international maritime forces. Non-lethal methods to slow or stop ships at sea are under development.

Conclusion While the world community seems to have rediscovered naval roles in peace support operations, the contribution that the world’s navies can make across all SSTR missions is poorly understood by leaders and publics alike. For a variety of reasons, navies are also under-utilized in peace support operations. It is unlikely that traditional UN peacekeeping command arrangements will soon become a standard method of managing major naval operations, if for no other reason than the tremendous fiscal cost – the UN simply cannot afford to pay countries for access to naval forces in the same way that it pays for ground units. UN reluctance to engage in maritime PSOs is likely to continue as long as the UN peacekeeping budget remains in arrears. Navies are simply too expensive for the United Nations to engage on a routine basis in run-of-the-mill peace support operations. The challenge facing navy planners is to consider how national or multinational naval forces can be more effectively exploited across the range of PSOs to achieve international objectives, whether these objectives are to render assistance or to end a conflict. As the UN and international community has moved from the use of military force to monitor and maintain the peace among nation states to its use to create peace in internal conflicts, the world community needs to consider new means, methods, and tools to achieve its objectives. A challenge before U.S. Navy planners is to determine how maritime forces can be better integrated into UN operations and ensure that independent operations support PSOs better. Navy planners should also begin to explore which modifications or developments within and among maritime forces can enhance the potential for operational success when undertaking PSOs.

Notes 1 In general, “second-generation” peacekeeping focuses on the gray environment between clear Chapter VI missions (observers supporting a peace agreement between

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nations as a confidence-building tool) and Chapter VII warfighting à la Korea, 1950–3, or Kuwait in 1991. For a discussion of “second-generation” operations, see: John Mackinlay and Jarat Chopra, A Draft Concept of Second Generation Multinational Operations (Providence, RI: Brown University, 1993); and Marianne Heiberg, Ethnic Conflict, Peacekeeping, and Peacemaking towards 2000: Second Generation Peacekeeping, Notat Paper no. 442 (Oslo: NUPI, April 1991). 2 In terms of scholarly attention see, for example, Capt George Allison, USN, “The United States and United Nations Peacekeeping Operations,” Naval War College Review (Summer 1993), pp. 22–35; C. Uday Bashar, “Navies in UN PeaceKeeping: Need for Conceptual Reappraisal,” Strategic Analysis (India), April 1994, pp. 123–38; Lt Col L. J. Bockman, USMC, Cdr Barry L. Coombs, USN, and Cdr Andrew W. Forsyth, RN, The Employment of Maritime Forces in Support of United Nations Resolutions (Newport, RI: Naval War College, August 1993); Dr Donald C. F. Daniel and Capt Bradd Hayes, USN, Blue Helmets and White Hulls: Expanding the Coast Guard’s International Missions (Newport, RI: Strategic Research Department, Naval War College, February 1995); Jeremy Ginifer, “The UN at Sea? The New Relevance of Maritime Operations,” International Peacekeeping, vol. 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1994), pp. 320–35; Eric Grove, “Navies Play Their Part in Peace Support Operations,” Jane’s Navy International, vol. 104, no. 2 (March 1999), pp. 26–9; Peter Haydon, “Naval Peacekeeping: Multinational Considerations,” in Alex Morrison (ed.), The New Peacekeeping Partnership (Clementsport, Nova Scotia: Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, 1995), pp. 105–24; Peter Haydon, “Navy and Air Force Peacekeeping: An Expanded Role,” in Alex Morrison (ed.), The Changing Face of Peacekeeping (Toronto: Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, 1993); T. G. Neethling, “The South African Navy in a changed Environment – Facing the Challenges of Peace-Keeping Responsibilities,” Wits Discussion Papers in International Relations, vol. 2, no. 3 (1998), pp. 1–19; Juan Carlos Neves, “The Argentine Navy and United Nations Peace-Keeping Operations in the Gulf of Fonseca,” Naval War College Review (Winter 1994), pp. 40–67; Sir Julian Oswald, “U.N. Maritime Operations: “Realities, Problems, and Possibilities,” Naval War College Review (Autumn 1993), pp. 124–9; Gwyn Prins, “The United Nations and PeaceKeeping in the Post-Cold War World: The Case of Naval Power,” Bulletin of Peace Proposals, vol. 22, no. 2 (1991); Michael Pugh, The Employment of Maritime Forces in Support of United Nations Resolutions, Strategy and Campaign Department Research Report 6–93 (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 11 August 1993); Michael Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping: A Framework for United Nations Operations (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994); Cdr Jorge H. Recio, Argentine Navy, Argentine Navy Units’ Participation in UN Haiti Blockade: Permanent or Selective Engagement? (Newport, RI: Strategic Research Department paper 7–98, Naval War College, 1998); Jeffrey I. Sands, Blue Hulls: Multinational Naval Cooperation and the United Nations (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses Research Memorandum (RM) 93–40, 1993); Cdr D. L. W. Sim, Royal Navy, Men of War for Missions of Peace: Naval Forces in Support of United Nations Resolutions (Newport, RI: Strategic Research Department Paper 8–94, Naval War College, August 1994); and Robert Stevens Stanley II, The Wave of the Future: The United Nations and Naval Peacekeeping (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). 3 Such as the development of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which is principally focused on controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For information about the PSI, see, for example: www.proliferationsecurity. info/; Richard Bond, “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Three Years On,” British American Security Information Council, BASIC Notes, 2 August 2006, www.basicint.org/pubs/Notes/BN060802.pdf; Mark J. Valencia, The Proliferation Security Initiative: Making Waves in Asia, International Institute for Strategic Studies,

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Adelphi Paper 376, October 2005; and Ron Huisken, The Proliferation Security Initiative: Coming in from the Cold, Nautilus Institute, Austral Policy Forum 06–13A, 20 April 2006, www.nautilus.org/~rmit/forum-reports/0613a-huisken.html. DoD Directive 3000.05, “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations,” 28 November 2005, www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/300005.htm. Complex humanitarian emergencies are situations where conflict aggravates some type of disaster (such as conflicts in the Horn of Africa aggravating drought conditions there), creates the humanitarian crisis (such as Bosnia and Kosovo), and/or where the conflict complicates humanitarian relief efforts (such as the presence of Iraqi forces in northern Iraq and Kurdish guerrilla activities in Turkey, which complicated caring for Kurdish refugees in 1991) Haydon, “Navy and Air Force Peacekeeping,” p. 83. Another similar breakdown lists three broad types of peace operations: • Observation or verification: neutral military observers monitor or mediate ceasefires, etc. • Containment: impartial armed forces act as a buffer between belligerents; supervise elections; assist in maintaining law and order; or protect the delivery of humanitarian assistance. • Peace restoration (police actions, collective security operations, or peace enforcement): limited force used to restore peace and security. (LTC Neil James, Australian Army, “Appendix A: A Brief History of Australian Participation in Multinational Peacekeeping,” in Hugh Smith (ed.), Peacekeeping: Challenges for the Future (Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1993), p. 196)

8 For another list of such missions, see, for example, Bockman et al., The Employment of Maritime Forces, p. 12. For another nation’s perspective and operations, for example, see Database of Royal Australian Navy Operations, 1990–2005 (Canberra: Sea Power Centre, Working Paper no. 18, 2005), www.navy.gov.au/spc/workingpapers/Working%20Paper%2018.pdf. 9 LCDR Doug Thomas, “Cambodia: Naval Observers,” Maritime Affairs (Spring/ Summer 1998), pp. 18–22. 10 Captaine Dieier Chiproy, “La mission ‘Danube’: Temoignage,” Revue de la Gendarmerie Nationale, 3eme Trimestre, 1995, pp. 27–8. Almost half (120 of 250) of the West European Union (WEU) officers assigned to help enforce the embargo along the Danube were housed in a former naval vessel due to hotel constraints in Calafert, Romania. This mission was not solely maritime in nature and represented the first WEU non-maritime, paramilitary operation. 11 On Haiti, see, for example, Adam B. Siegel, The Intervasion in Haiti (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, August 1996). 12 On tsunami relief, for a brief overview of U.S. Navy contributions to Joint Task Force 536, see www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq130–4. 13 On Katrina operations, in addition to U.S. Navy forces, the Royal Navy (UK), Canadian, and Mexican navies all sent ships to aid in relief efforts. (For a brief discussion, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_relief.) 14 For an examination of the role of military forces for diplomatic purposes, see Barry Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force without War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978). The classic study of the role of naval forces in this regard is James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, 1919–1979, 2nd edn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979). For an examination focusing on U.S. forces, see Adam B. Siegel, The Use of US Naval Forces to Compel, Deter, and Reassure (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses Research Memorandum (RM) 94–193, February 1995). 15 This capability is growing with “information warfare” and the growing importance of

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information technologies; naval capabilities in this arena offer another potential means of power projection. On the Beira patrol, see Adam B. Siegel, “Naval Forces in Support of International Sanctions: The Beira Patrol,” Naval War College Review, vol. XLV, no. 4 (Autumn 1992), pp. 102–4; F. E. C. Gregory, “The Beira Patrol,” RUSI, December 1969, pp. 75–7; James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, 1919–1979, 2nd edn (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981), pp. 123–9; and, Richard Mobley, “The Beira Patrol: Britain’s Broken Blockade against Rhodesia,” Naval War College Review, Winter 2002, pp. 63–84. The Beira patrol represents one of the clearest cases of the value of one ship characteristic: independent steaming endurance. While the Royal Navy was able to maintain the patrol, the logistics and other requirements stretched the force at times in ways that would have been eased if the involved surface combatants had had longer endurance. For a discussion of some of the history of these operations, see Adam B. Siegel, Requirements for Humanitarian Assistance/Peace Operations: Insights from Seven Case Studies (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, March 1995). For short descriptions of many operations, see Adam B. Siegel, A Chronology of U.S. Marine Corps Humanitarian Assistance and Peace Operations (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, September 1994). For the UN force tension during the 1974 war, see Francis Henn, “The Nicosia Airport Incident of 1974: A Peacekeeper’s Gamble,” International Peacekeeping, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 80–98. The Greek coup occurred on 15 July 1974 and the Turkish military operation to seize Cyprus began on 20 July. HMS Hermes, with the 41st Royal Marine Commandos aboard, was off the Cyprus coast from 20 July (Henn 1994: 80). The U.S. Navy presence included two aircraft carriers and the Mediterranean amphibious ready group (MARG). In an example of multinational cooperation, British helicopters carried evacuees to USS Trenton (on 24 July) as UK and U.S. forces evacuated noncombatants from amid the conflict. U.S. Navy forces evacuated a total of 752 noncombatants (Siegel, The Use of Naval Forces in the Post-War Era), The utility of forces for deterrence, reassurance, and compellence is essentially impossible to prove (the challenge of proving a negative). For the author’s views on the subject, see Adam B. Siegel, The Use of US Naval Forces to Compel, Deter, and Reassure. Following the destructive cyclone that hit Bangladesh in May 1991, the United States conducted Operation Sea Angel to assist recovery from this disaster. At one point, the U.S. government considered sending an aircraft carrier battle group to assist. In addition to the not inconsiderable question of uncertainty as to whether these assets could provide important augmentation to the operation, the question of the daily incremental cost of involving these forces in the operation led to a decision against their involvement. CDR Juan Carlos Neves, Argentine Navy, United Nations Peace-Keeping Operations in the Gulf of Fonesca by Argentine Navy Units (Newport, RI: Strategic Research Department Research Report 1–93, Naval War College, 1993), pp. 26–7. Interestingly, this case provides a reasonable case study about the potential for capacity building for regional security initiatives. Would the region have enjoyed better longterm security if the UN had procured the ships and built the infrastructure for use by UN forces (Argentine sailors), which would then have the responsibility for training/developing indigenous capabilities to operate (and maintain) the patrol craft? As with discussion of naval involvement in UN operations, multinational naval operations received increased focus from the early 1990s. See, for example, LT Ardan Kiratli, Turkish Navy, The Establishment of a United Nations Standing Multinational Force – A Dream? Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 1997; CDR Juan Carlos Neves, AN, Military Cooperation between NATO and NonNATO Countries: A Proposal to Improve Interoperability in Multinational Coalitions

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under UN Auspices (Newport, RI: Strategic Research Department Research Report 03–93, Naval War College, 30 June 1993); John B. Hattendorf, ed., Twelfth International Seapower Symposium, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference, 7–10 November 1993 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1994), pp. 95–131; Jeffrey I. Sands, Multinational Cooperation in a Changing World: A Report of the Greenwich Conference, 12–13 December 1991 (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1992). Doctrine refers to general concepts about the way to conduct business that are suggestive rather than prescriptive. This can include, for example, concepts about how to best organize a force for different missions (command and control arrangements) and thoughts on options to dissuade a potential enemy from escalating from tension to conflict. In gross terms, doctrine refers to concepts for which there is not a single accepted way of doing business that applies in all circumstances. Procedural interoperability refers to having similar (or the same) ways of doing business in terms of rather specific tasks. Procedures refer, for example, to the way a naval force might conduct logistics at sea or the terms pilots use to speak to each other in combat. To provide a specific example, procedural interoperability would mean using similar formats for daily situation reports, reporting the same information categories in a generally similar way. Technical compatibility refers to the necessity to have hardware and (ever more importantly) software that can function together. Technical compatibility includes, for example, having submarine escape hatches of the same dimensions to allow marriage with other nations’ rescue equipment or employing word processing software that can exchange information with partners’ information systems. As an example, when sent to Haiti, both the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division (1994) and 25th Infantry Division (1995) did not deploy their artillery with the rest of the division. This has been done a number of times, with instances including: Canadian use of an aircraft carrier to transport troops to Middle East peacekeeping (1956–7); French use of an aircraft carrier to carry forces to Saudi Arabia (1990); the deployment of US Army units on two aircraft carriers for operations against Haiti (1994); and the operation of Special Forces units from USS Kitty Hawk during Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan, 2001–2). The only significant exception that comes to mind would be maritime non-lethal weapons, which have applicability in a range of operational environments – such as interdiction of smuggling (of any sort) at sea. John Roos, “In Sync with the Times: Denmark Eyes Multi-Role Ship for PeaceSupport Operations,” Armed Forces Journal International, vol. 137, no. 7 (February 2000), pp. 26–7. One medical lesson learned from Operation Eastern Exit, which had perhaps the first Caesarean section birth aboard a U.S. Navy combatant, was the need to check and turnover these supplies more frequently. The surgeon involved was a pediatric specialist, who commented that the equipment was several generations old. On Eastern Exit, see, for example, Adam B. Siegel, “Lessons Learned from Operation Eastern Exit,” Marine Corps Gazette, June 1992. This is true in all but the most limited circumstances. Exceptions can be found only in forces that have a long history of training and operating together (in unison). Thus, Royal Navy (UK), Canadian Navy, and U.S. Navy surface ships can often join together for combined operations without assigning liaison officers. Even from within long-standing alliances, however, it can be difficult to combine elements. NATO’s standing maritime forces often find it necessary to have a ramp-up time in terms of capability as the ships and crews learn how to work with each other.

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Passing the trident The role of naval international programs in SSTR operations Sam J. Tangredi

United States involvement in low-intensity conflict, which has alternatively gone by the names of “small wars,” “insurgencies,” “low-intensity conflict,” “third world wars,” or “irregular warfare,” was often discretionary. During the Cold War, U.S. policymakers, officers, and scholars viewed these conflicts through the prism of the struggle against the Soviet Union, and were thus motivated towards occasional involvement in the effort to counter Communist-inspired insurrections, but with mixed results. The mixed results were partially due to the fact that most Americans indeed believed that involvement in these conflicts remained discretionary. To avoid a direct war with the other superpower, we could abandon a state to its fate in the hopes of fighting the next round of the Cold War on more hospitable terrain. But in the post-9/11 world of globalized terrorism, much of it directed against the hegemonic position of the United States, involvement in many stabilization operations is no longer discretionary. If the United States is to survive as the benign hegemon – the global power that both inspires and benefits from world political and economic freedom – it must seek to prevent or defeat terrorism wherever it can, with both its diplomatic strength and its armed forces. If they are to prevail in this “Long War,” the armed forces of the United States must remain involved in simultaneous operations in many locales. This involvement can range from training the indigenous military and security forces, to the fullscale Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations being carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The purpose of this chapter is to explore an often ignored component of SSTR operations: supply and training of indigenous forces. To explore this issue, the chapter will first highlight how SSTR operations inevitably involve close collaboration with local forces, collaboration that is facilitated by modern equipment and training. The chapter then highlights the various types of socalled “international programs” undertaken by the United States government to bolster cooperation and collaboration with friendly and allied military organizations. It also addresses some of the complaints made about the appropriateness of international programs in an SSTR situation. In effect, the chapter addresses whether naval international programs are appropriate elements of SSTR. Do we prefer to be the primary force performing the SSTR functions, or do we prefer

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that the host nationals and other coalition members, particularly the lesserdeveloped, non-traditional partners, take the lead? And if we prefer host nationals and non-traditional partners in the lead, how will we train and equip them to carry the burden of maintaining security in their own countries?

SSTR in the context of “traditional” military assistance: elements and phases SSTR is but a new term for traditional military roles and missions. American faith in the universal yearning for democracy aside, postwar stability rarely develops easily. Powerful nations – including the United States – have used their militaries more frequently for SSTR than for war against conventional and legitimate military forces (forces defined as legal combatants by the Hague and Geneva Conventions), particularly in the so-called “post-hostilities phase” of conflict. This is a tradition that is more likely to be accentuated in the years ahead. SSTR can be thought of as exclusively an element of post-hostilities, or of pre-hostilities, but only if hostilities are defined as combat against conventional forces. Otherwise, SSTR is but a shallower end of the classic spectrum of military operations ranging from strategic nuclear war to domestic humanitarian assistance. And because it is part of a spectrum of activity, it is difficult to identify exactly where it begins and where it ends. It is simply an element of the political relationship that the United States has with another state, one that is carried out by armed forces. Part of this spectrum was previously covered by the Clinton-era term “military operations other than war” (MOOTW), and the more recent stillborn term “Stability and Support Operations” (SASO). Breaking the elements apart does not seem to point to a clear distinction between the four phases of SSTR operations. Stability would imply the protection of civil order under chaotic or challenging conditions, but security would seem to be a most important component of stability rather than a state in itself. One could assume that security identifies operations conducted in a less chaotic environment, one that was more stable. The crossover point between stability and security operations, however, is difficult to find. Transition is a more selfevident term, implying the turning over of stability or security operations from U.S. or Coalition forces to local governing authorities. To conduct a transition would imply that local military or security forces have sufficient training and equipment strength to carry out these operations. Reconstruction implies the redevelopment of effective governance, civil society, physical infrastructure, and, as necessary, secure borders. An almost boundless number of activities can thus be expected to make essential contributions to SSTR. Prior to 9/11, the Bush Administration was accused of ignoring the necessity of SSTR, lumping it under the word “peacekeeping.”1 Then, following the Iraq War of 2003, the Department of Defense was criticized “for neglecting to plan sufficiently for the aftermath” of the conflict against Saddam Hussein’s forces.2 Whatever the validity of these criticisms, the Department of Defense issued

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Directive Number 3000.05 on 28 November 2005, as Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations, with the express purpose of laying out responsibilities for SSTR among the defense agencies, military services, Joint Staff and combatant commands (COCOMs).3 Unfortunately for those who seek clear-cut definitions for defense terminology, Directive Number 3000.05 does not attempt to define much beyond the term stability operations, and even then it simply confirms the above conclusion that they are part of the spectrum of conflict: “Military and civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to conflict to establish or maintain order in States and regions.”4 Military support to Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction is rather redundantly defined as: “Department of Defense activities that support U.S. Government plans for stabilization, security, reconstruction and transition operations, which lead to sustainable peace while advancing U.S. interests.”5 SSTR thus conjures up an image of Department of Defense activities conducted in an unstable or potentially unstable political environment directed at building a sustainable peace and advancing U.S. interests. This task must involve more than U.S. military forces and operations; it requires close collaboration with local forces. To build a sustainable peace in an unstable environment inevitably requires the training and equipping of indigenous armed forces.

What are international programs? The term “international programs” is used to designate activities that involve the training and equipping of foreign armed forces. Such training and equipping activities require planning, management, and funding. Within the Department of Defense (DoD), the term international programs refers to a specific family of cooperative efforts that seek to help improve the security posture of another nation, and, in so doing, support U.S. defense objectives.6 International programs usually fall into one of six kinds of activities: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Security assistance, which involves funding for local programs and activities; The transfer of excess defense articles; International cooperative armaments agreements; Information and personnel exchanges; Foreign comparative testing and evaluation; and, International military education and training (IMET).

In current Pentagon terminology, these programs are intended to “increase partner capacity” in providing for its own self-defense and in participating (in some fashion) in the Global War on Terror. In fiscal year (FY) 2006, an additional program, known as the 1206 Program, was established by the provisions of Section 1206 of Public Law 109–163, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 [HR 1815]. The 1206

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Program allows the Secretary of Defense to allocate up to $200 million from the defense budget “for the provision of equipment, supplies and training” to a foreign country’s national military forces in order for them to “(1) conduct counterterrorist operations, or (2) participate in or support military and stability operations in which the United States Armed Forces are a participant.” Although it is likely that Congress will include a similar provision in the FY 2007 defense authorization bill, 1206 has not yet entered the canon of permanent international programs. International programs are but a part (albeit a major part) of the DoD’s overall effort at security cooperation, which is the Pentagon’s current term for almost all interaction with foreign militaries, from military staff meetings to training provided by special forces, to joint and combined exercises. It is a form of military engagement that is intended to bolster friends and allies and to create the basis for future diplomatic or military cooperation. Security assistance Security assistance is a term that is frequently used as synonymous with security cooperation, but it actually has a more specialized meaning, referring to the sale or grant of new defense articles or related services, such as logistics and technical support. Sales are conducted in two different ways: under the foreign military sales (FMS) program or as a direct commercial sale (DCS).7 In both cases, the equipment is procured from a defense contractor (or other commercial business) for the foreign government. FMS, however, carries the “full faith” of the U.S. government in guaranteeing the equipment and usually provides a longterm training and maintenance contract, which may be conducted by U.S. military personnel. The foreign government deposits money into a case account managed by the U.S. government which, in turn, manages the case as if it were its own DoD acquisition program. This lowers the foreign government’s risk significantly (from contractor non-performance, program management difficulties, etc.) and insures a degree of long-term commitment on the part of the DoD, although it potentially raises the cost of the contract through a program management surcharge, which is currently above 3 percent of the total cost. The surcharge is representative of the primary legal requirement of all security assistance programs: they are conducted at “no cost” to the U.S. government. There is a counterpart to the no-cost programs that does involve U.S. financial aid applied towards defense purchases. Foreign military financing (FMF) operates similarly to FMS; however the money in the foreign government’s accounts comes from foreign assistance that is authorized by legislation passed by Congress. Unlike other foreign assistance programs, FMF money must be spent on the products or services of an American defense contractor, and the case is processed as if it were FMS. Although FMF would appear to be an outstanding program for building partner capacity for the Global War on Terror or an important element in SSTR, as a practical matter it is quite limited. The vast majority of FMF funds are allocated by Congress to two nations, Israel and Egypt. Although a historical legacy from the peace treaty of 1973, all

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subsequent efforts to persuade Congress to shift more than token funding to other nations have been rebuffed. In contrast to FMS/FMF, direct commercial sales are exactly that, contracts made directly between the foreign government and an American contractor. The U.S. government does have some involvement in DCS in that, by law, it must issue an export license to the contractor and it must certify that any resulting transfer of technology is in the interest of the United States. The U.S. government, however, neither guarantees the proper operation of the product nor commits itself to facilitating long-term maintenance support or training once the product is delivered to the buyer. Choosing DCS over FMS may make sense for a foreign government when procuring routine or well-proven military equipment because it avoids the FMS surcharge and allows for greater flexibility when negotiating with the contractor.8 Additionally, the foreign government may seek to demonstrate its “independence” from U.S. policies by avoiding direct dealings with U.S. officials in making an equipment purchase. When purchasing new systems that incorporate advanced technologies, most customers find it prudent to utilize the FMS system. But there have been foreign governments that, perceiving an opportunity for shrewd bargaining or perhaps applying their own cultural norms, have sought to gamble that the U.S government would “bail out” an American contractor if it appeared that they were about to “non-perform” on a contract with a foreign government. This gamble rarely pays off. Excess defense articles Transfer of excess defense articles conjures up the image of supplying poorer nations with decommissioned ships and aged aircraft. The majority of excess defense articles (EDA), however, goes to medium powers and consists of wellmaintained vessels, aircraft, and Marine and Coast Guard equipment being sacrificed early to free funding for other, higher-priority programs. For example, the S-3B Viking aircraft carrier-based anti-submarine warfare/maritime patrol aircraft is being “sun-downed” out of the U.S. Navy inventory in FY 2007–8 because that mission is no longer considered a priority. Average flight hours for the aircraft are approximately 11,000 out of a potential life of 22,000 hours or more. At the same time the U.S. Navy is divesting itself of its entire MHC (Minehunter) fleet, with most vessels of 10–12 years of age in a life expectancy of 30 years. Most EDA is sold at 10 percent of value or is given as grant aid, so that nations that are interested in greatly increasing their maritime patrol or mine-hunting capabilities could do so at bargain prices. The main limiting factor for foreign governments considering requesting American EDA is the cost of long-term maintenance and repair. Prior to EDA transfer, the U.S. government will identify these life-cycle costs, and, if requested, facilitate commercial support contracts. These contracts are priced at fair market value, not at a discount. Calculated based on ten years of life-cycle costs, these contracts may cause some “sticker shock” for foreign militaries not

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used to planning such maintenance in advance. Another issue that complicates EDA concerns the long-term continuation of commercial support services from American contractors after all units have been transferred out of the U.S. inventory. Nations operating only a handful of platforms may worry that service requirements do not create enough of a business case to justify continuing support by the original contractors. The United States is not alone in its EDA efforts. Many of the other major North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navies also have EDA programs that can be considered competitors to the programs sponsored by the U.S. Navy. Both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, for instance, have transferred vessels to Chile and Greece. France, too, has transferred EDA; however, UK and Dutch ships are preferred because they are compatible with U.S. weapons systems, particularly the SM-2 surface-to-air missile and the Harpoon anti-ship cruise missile. The Dutch have gone so far as to integrate EDA planning into the life cycle of their ships in an effort to guarantee Dutch shipbuilders steady orders, frequently decommissioning and transferring vessels at the ten-year point to provide money and crews for new construction.9 International cooperative armaments agreements Known simply as cooperative agreements or armaments cooperation, these programs are formal bilateral or multilateral agreements committing foreign governments to sharing the costs and benefits of a defense acquisition program with the United States. A current example of a cooperative agreement is the international development of the joint strike fighter. Up-front participation allows a foreign partner to have a major say in the characteristics of a weapons program. Sometimes the national investments are equal, such as in the development of new ordnance. But frequently the amount of investment the United States is able to put towards acquisition of a major platform dwarfs that of its partners. Depending on the political needs of the moment, this imbalance of investment may force the allied partners to accept dominant American decision-making, or, conversely, give the smaller partners a decision-making weight out of proportion to their financial contributions. Armaments cooperation allows U.S. and foreign partners to standardize their purchase and use of weapons systems, ordnance, and munitions so as to provide for commonality and weapons interoperability. As an organization, NATO has been at the forefront of standardization (which is why the British and Dutch frigates are armed with SM-2 and Harpoon).10 The United States has similar bilateral agreements with its Pacific region partners. Cooperative armaments agreements are generally conducted by the military services on a bilateral basis or with a small group of partners. For the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, the actual negotiation of cooperative armaments agreements with foreign governments is conducted by specialists working in the Navy International Programs Office (NIPO), the same organization that supports the Navy’s security assistance and EDA programs.

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Information and personnel exchanges Data exchanges and scientific and engineering personnel exchanges are conducted on a bilateral basis between the U.S. and foreign governments under negotiated International Exchange Agreements (IEAs) and the Engineer and Scientist Exchange Program (ESEP). Since the exchanges are directed at data sharing rather than training, these programs are not normally useful for SSTR. There may be local technical methods, such as the disabling of improvised explosive devices, however, that could be identified during SSTR and merit a formal exchange agreement. It would be more likely that technical information would be obtained through foreign comparative testing and evaluation programs. Foreign comparative testing and evaluation (T&E) Foreign comparative testing and evaluation is a collaborative research and development function in which the United States evaluates and potentially utilizes technology being developed by a partner country. Comparative testing often involves the sharing of scientific data or the adaptation of emerging technology for purposes previously unexamined by the country of origin. The extensive financial investment that the United States or U.S. corporations can bring to RDT&E is a prime motive for participants to enter into these partnerships. Test and evaluation requires technical expertise on both sides of a potential partnership, so this type of collaboration generally occurs with nations possessing an advanced industrial base. International military education and training (IMET) Out of all U.S. security assistance programs, IMET, which generally utilizes the extensive network of training and education the United States routinely supplies to its own armed forces, is probably most in demand. Many more nations are interested in training than equipment, if only because training can be obtained at a much lower cost and can provide for future indigenous training, an approach referred to as “training the trainers.” IMET is usually divided into two types of training based on geographic location. Some training is delivered by deployed instructors, primarily mobile training teams (MTTs) designed to teach particular skills to soldiers in their own country, engaging their own (or recently acquired) equipment. For example, the U.S. Marine Corps provides MTTs to foreign nations to teach basic infantry combat skills, or more advanced skills, such as planning amphibious operations. These are deployments specifically undertaken to train foreign personnel. Since IMET is a separately funded program, it does not normally include the on-thejob type of military training conducted as a part of combat operations, such as the training of the Iraqi army counterparts by U.S. forces in the Iraqi cities. Special Forces functioning in an advisory role would also not normally be considered IMET.

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A second and more visible component of IMET is the training and education of foreign military personnel in the United States. This often involves the enrollment of individual foreign military personnel in ongoing curricula offered at educational institutions maintained by the U.S. military. These programs are so popular that they have been integrated into the normal career path of many foreign officer corps. A number of studies have identified IMET as the most effective way to foster long-term cooperation with a foreign military, even when that military operates non-U.S. weapons systems.11 Section 1206 programs Section 1206 authority was sought by the Department of Defense to bypass the normal bureaucratic and (some) legislative requirements of FMS/FMF and to furnish other countries with capabilities that would allow them to be effective coalition members in the Global War on Terror.12 Congress provided this authority in FY 2006, with a budget limit of $200 million. For FY 2007 and 2008 it is $300 million. But since this represented the reprogramming of existing funds, rather than additional funding, implementation was slow while the DoD comptroller assessed the effects on the overall defense budget. Programs are recommended by the regional COCOMs or Service Component Commanders. In the case of the Department of the Navy, these include the Naval Component Commander and the Marine Component Commander. Actual program execution is the responsibility of the Navy Department and the other Military Departments. Section 1206 programs require Presidential approval and Congressional notification, and are to be managed as if they were FMS cases even though the equipment or training is procured directly by the United States government and provided at no cost to the recipient government. Unlike FMS, the COCOM rather than the recipient is the originator of the request, and Section 1206 agreements between the United States and recipient governments have thus far been on an informal basis. Because of the newness of the authority, only a few of the approved programs have been fully executed, making it difficult to assess the impact of the program. Combinations and effects The type of international program initiated with another nation depends on its government’s perception of threat and desired security posture, its available resources, the sophistication and robustness of its defense industry, and U.S. objectives in the region. This variance is wide. Sometimes new systems are created through collaboration. Under a cooperative agreement, for example, the United States and Germany jointly developed the RAM (Rolling Airframe) missile, which was subsequently adopted by other nations. At other times, collaboration can re-equip a country’s entire military. Through provision of

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decommissioned Coast Guard vessels, for instance, the United States has provided West African countries with a significant portion of their total naval capabilities. The greatest successes in terms of building partner capacity often follow the implementation of a combination of international programs, because programs can be mutually supportive. An EDA vessel can be procured by a partner nation at relatively low cost, and its weapons systems can be upgraded through FMS. At the same time, training to insure that the foreign crew is capable of operations and maintenance can be undertaken in the United States and in the partner nation. If the EDA vessel can be turned over in a “hot” condition – that is, while still in full operation – the foreign crew has the opportunity to train aboard alongside the U.S. personnel, gaining direct access to the people who are most knowledgeable about operating the ship. For the most technologically advanced U.S. allies, all six international programs can be offered to bolster their militaries. IMET, Section 1206, security assistance (FMS/FMF), and EDA transfers (in that order) are the appropriate programs for those nations that are at the center of SSTR operations.

Roadblocks to international programs as elements of defense policy Under current legislation, it is easier for the President to land troops to intervene in another nation’s struggle than it is to provide weapons systems to a long-term ally. This is because weapons transfers and international training are subject to a legislative and regulatory process fashioned during the arms control-centric Cold War era – a process that is bureaucratically biased against such transfers. Like recent Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and current Secretary Robert Gates, every Defense Secretary has repeatedly stated that security cooperation is a critical element of their overall defense program. But not all of the elements of security cooperation are controlled by the Secretary of Defense. In accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, as amended, it is the Department of State that has the authority and executive responsibility for all arms transfers and military training afforded to non-U.S. forces. Although most equipment transfers and training are either carried out or contracted by the DoD, the Department of State remains both the budget and approval authority and delivers the required notification to Congress about impending transfers of equipment or training. With the exception of Section 1206 programs, authorized by the Defense Authorization Act (a purview of the Congressional Armed Services Committees rather than the Congressional Foreign Relations Committees), the DoD cannot embark on any assistance program, training, sale, or transfer without a laborious approval process within the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and (depending on work scope or dollar value) a State Departmentinitiated 30-day Congressional notification period. Even with DoD and Department of State staff working together (generally the case) and with Department of

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State staff and Congressional Committee staffs maintaining amicable professional relations (not always the case), approval can rarely be considered timely. Moving from a Letter of Request by a foreign government for an international program to a Letter of Agreement signed by the United States and a foreign government concerning the financing and initiation of the program typically takes up to 120 days. This does not include the 30-day Congressional notification period. In theory, State Department control allows for the coordination of international programs (particularly arms transfers) with other diplomatic tools. But as a practical matter, this coordination occurs in-country through the efforts of the U.S. Ambassador, as advised and assisted by the Military Assistance Group, Security Assistance Office, or Office of Defense Cooperation (all names for the same functional organization), which are funded and controlled by the Department of Defense (via the COCOMs). Ambassadors sometimes play the same adversarial role towards their own Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs as the Defense Department plays towards the Bureau, continually questioning why the approval processes for international programs take so long. To those incountry, the approval activities often seem to act as a roadblock to achieving the intended result of security cooperation: a strong working relationship with a foreign military and foreign government. This reflects a structural arms control bias in the process, a feature preferred by Congress. Congress itself can be viewed by security cooperation advocates as a roadblock, but it is constitutionally the source of all authority for U.S. security cooperation – thus it is the road itself. Control of security cooperation is jealously protected by the Legislative Branch against any encroachment by the Executive. The protection is in the form of the approval process; none of the members of Congress or staff members appears to think that the process is too slow. Rather, it is in their view deliberate, allowing for the potential for reflection and debate. This debate can take the form of an “American forces first” argument, a defense equivalent to the “buy American” movement, or the form of a technology security concern: why should we allow foreigners to have our technology? It also permits Congressmen to express (and ultimately affect) specific country concerns, notably Greece–Turkey–Cyprus, potential human rights violators, and Israel. Since the State and Defense Departments are both involved in the decision to allocate resources, Congressional Foreign Relations Committees can have just as much of a role as the Armed Services Committees in directing DoD actions within the realm of security cooperation. The process of allocating security assistance is bureaucratically difficult and slow by Congressional design. Defense and State Department bureaucracy and Congressional approval combine to make international programs a multi-year endeavor from conception to implementation. The important question is whether this eliminates international programs as an effective tool in the fluid and rapidly moving environment of SSTR.

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Training and security assistance as elements of SSTR International programs, to some degree, have to be elements of SSTR. If they are going to assist in their own stability and security, the indigenous armed forces (and police) require training and equipment. This material could be provided by another Coalition member, and it is certainly desirable to have other Coalition members play significant roles. But since no one has as robust a military as the United States, it seems inevitable that any SSTR situation in which U.S. forces are involved will require U.S. training and equipment. Because it is obvious that training and equipment are important to the success of SSTR, many observers believe that training and equipment transfers are easy to coordinate in SSTR. In fact, a recent proposed reorganization of the office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) includes the creation of Deputy Assistant Secretaries for Building Partner Capacity Strategy and Security Cooperation Operations, but puts them in a different “stovepipe” than the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Stability Operations (SSTR).13 This may not lead to the closest of interactions among critical sections of important segments of the Federal bureaucracy. The U.S. Army, however, has formally acknowledged the role of security assistance in SSTR by including it as one of the “Additional Stability Operations” discussed in the current Field Manual (FM) 3–07, Stability Operations and Support Operations, breaking it into the components of “providing equipment, services, and training.”14 But FM 3–07 makes no effort to describe how security assistance can be coordinated within an SSTR situation, or in which phases security assistance or other international programs can be included. Referring to our earlier discussion of elements and phases, it is possible to logically distinguish between the appropriateness of the various programs to the individual “phase” of SSTR. In the combat phase of stability operations, chaos and immediate operational needs would preclude the implementations of many formal programs. Those that can be utilized must be timely, directed towards Table 8.1 SSTR phases and international programs

Security assistance (FMS and FMF) EDA Cooperative armaments agreements Information and personnel exchanges (IEAs/ESEP) Foreign comparative testing International education and training 1206 programs

Stability operations

Security operations

Transition operations

Reconstruction operations

X (FMF)

X X

X X

X X X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

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immediate military needs, and self-financing. This group would include 1206 programs, IMET in the form of MTTs, and security assistance in the form of FMF. The former would be undoubtedly be the swiftest, with the latter two subject to increasing constraints. Security assistance, IMET and 1206 programs are useful throughout all the phases of SSTR. The other programs are more likely to prove beneficial in the later phases, particularly during reconstruction. These programs also have great symbolic effect – demonstrating continued U.S. support for a reestablished government. Table 8.1 summarizes the appropriateness of international programs at various times in the SSTR process.

Naval roles in training and security assistance Naval international programs include the Marine Corps as well as the Navy (and, by agreement, the Coast Guard). Hence, there is a naval component in some ground combat programs, especially programs that include training. The U.S. Marine Corps maintains an extensive network of global MTTs capable of teaching basic and advanced infantry combat skills, as well as Military Operations in an Urban Terrain (MOUT), skills that are most helpful for the host-nation military in the stability and security phases of SSTR operations. While there is the potential for overlap with U.S. Army efforts, host-country officials rarely complain that there are too many trainers teaching military personnel in unstable areas. Each of the military departments maintains international training and security assistance structures tailored to their own systems. But there is little overlap across these programs since the demand is so high. For naval forces, crossservice security assistance is common; many foreign air forces fly the F/A-18, H-60, H-53 or other U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine, or U.S. Coast Guard aircraft. On the international training side, U.S. Navy IMET programs are jointly controlled by the Navy International Programs Office and the Chief of Naval Education and Training via the staff of the Navy Education and Training Security Assistance Field Activity (NETSAFA). NETSAFA coordinates the training; it is up to other naval organizations to supply the actual course content.15 The Navy offers several programs for training foreign personnel in the United States, notably flight-crew training and professional education for officers, but it offers fewer opportunities in MTTs. The Navy Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS), previously located in Panama, but relocated to Gulfport, Missouri in 1999, provides an extensive array of resident and MTT training in riverine warfare and small boat repair and maintenance, primarily directed towards Latin American navies. Of note is that the school, while administered by Navy personnel, is now under the operational control and funding of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). NAVSCIATTS has conducted MTTs during combat operations undertaken against insurgent units, situations that are similar to stability or security ops. On 13 January 2006, the U.S. Navy established the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) to better coordinate its efforts ashore in the Global

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War on Terror and SSTR. NECC has identified an extensive list of existing force capabilities: Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Naval Coastal Warfare, Mobile Security Force, Naval Construction (Seabees), Port Handling/Expeditionary Logistics, Mobile Diving and Salvage, and Navy Riverine (warfare). NECC also identified the following “new capabilities,” soon to be established: Maritime Civil Affairs, Expeditionary Training, Expeditionary Security, and an Expeditionary Combat Readiness Center. The existing capabilities include functions that have long had a “blue-water” focus but are now oriented towards the Global War on Terror and SSTR. These new capabilities are designed with SSTR in mind, and it is logical to believe that, if a robust U.S. Navy SSTR training/readiness program is created, it would eventually lend itself very well to international training. On the material side, the Navy Systems Commands, coordinated by NIPO, could provide for a wide range of combat and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) equipment to foreign forces in an SSTR situation if authorized and funded. Section 1206 programs are designed to be able to do this; however, the Navy’s portion of the Defense Department limit of $300 million remains relatively small. The equipment could be complemented by tailored training via NETSAFA. This training can be conducted by private contractors or by naval personnel. The U.S. Marine Corps maintains a significant effort at exportable training and MTTs led by the Security Cooperation Education and Training Center (SCETC) at Quantico, Virginia. SCETC evolved from the Coalition and Special Warfare Center (CSWC) in 2004, which had previously focused on training deploying Marine units.16 Representative of the renewed Department of Defense interest in security cooperation, SCETC focuses on training foreign instructors and deploying MTTs at the request of COCOMs or foreign governments. Recent emphasis has been on training in sub-Saharan Africa, with the objective of developing militaries that can prevent terrorists or insurgents from fostering an SSTR-necessitating situation. SCETC can be seen as the Marine counterpart to NETSAFA; however, unlike NETSAFA, many of the trainers are directly assigned to SCETC, rather than other commands. Material security assistance by the Marine Corps includes land anti-air weapons systems, helicopters, spare parts for common Army–Marine equipment, and small unit assets and logistics. Although it has its own individual Systems Command, much Marine systems acquisition is done jointly with the Navy, under the direction of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development, and Acquisition).17 The U.S. Coast Guard also maintains mobile training capability in the areas of maritime law enforcement, basic seamanship, and small-boat maintenance, carried out by its International Training Division (ITD) in Yorktown, Virginia. Additionally, Coast Guard cutter deployments have been tailored to provide direct training opportunities to foreign coast guards and navies. With their focus on near-shore operations, traditional Coast Guard activities more closely mirror those of the majority of world navies, which provides experience and entree to facilitate the training.

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Coast Guard material security assistance is coordinated by NIPO, which fosters close Navy–Coast Guard collaboration. In the past, these efforts have focused on the construction of small boats for foreign governments and the EDA transfer of a once-large inventory of smaller U.S. Coast Guard vessels. With the development of the Deepwater acquisition program, the Coast Guard also has sophisticated international assets available, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and maritime patrol aircraft. The Navy–Marine Corps–Coast Guard team can furnish unique training throughout all phases of SSTR that focuses on riverine, near-shore and offshore operations. Specified training on the interdiction of terrorists or potential insurgents by sea or rivers would be helpful in the stability and security phases of SSTR operations. Additionally, the Marine Corps, and eventually NECC, could deliver training for land-based activities such as small-unit combat, area security, and construction. This assistance can be offered as an adjunct or replacement for that lent by the U.S. Army.

Are naval international programs effective SSTR tools? A number of arguments can be made against the idea that naval international programs can play significant roles in SSTR. Most of this criticism is based on the idea that such programs were designed with permanent allies in mind (such as NATO members) and are thus difficult to adapt to the SSTR environment. Some observers might argue that Navy international programs simply take too long to be of any significant benefit in acute efforts to reduce chaos and disorder in specific countries. Given their lengthy bureaucratic approval process, most international programs execute too slowly to be useful in SSTR. In fact, in his Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq, General David H. Petraeus stated that he appreciated “the attention that some members of Congress have recently given to speeding up the FMS process in Iraq.”18 The only effective programs are those that can provide equipment to the host nation immediately, something that only Section 1206 programs can occasionally achieve. The process of building partner capacity is important, but it is actually part of the post-reconstruction phase; thus, international programs offer little to SSTR operations. This argument has considerable merit. The process of security aid and assistance through international programs is slow by design. But that does not mean that Congress, as creator of the process, could not be persuaded to modify it if a persuasive case is made that international programs are critical to an ongoing SSTR operation. To a considerable extent, authorization of Section 1206 programs already demonstrates a recognition that the process must be modified to deliver capabilities to partners in a timely fashion. Both the funding limits and the engagement of existing bureaucratic processes continue to create a drag. The personal attention of senior officials within the Defense Department when circumstances are critical can make bureaucratic impediments melt away. Critics also note that international programs traditionally supply hightechnology systems, such as multi-role combat aircraft and surface-to-air missile

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systems that do not provide the capabilities critical to success in SSTR. Moreover, the detailed staff requirements combine with high costs to place most international programs out of the reach of lesser-developed nations. This criticism, however, is not accurate. Expensive, high-technology weapons systems attract the most attention when they are offered as part of security assistance programs, especially since these are programs that can generate the highest profits for defense industries. Nevertheless, the majority of FMS programs involve less expensive equipment or training that is useful for SSTR, and even the poorest countries can overcome the bureaucratic impediments. Among the top programs being executed by the Navy International Program Office are small, boat purchases by African and Asian countries and 1206 programs providing maritime counter-terrorist surveillance capabilities to similar countries. Some observers note that SSTR is all about combat presence and the management of civil–military affairs in a chaotic environment and that there are never enough assets to complete the mission. Activities that take away from the operational focus of units engaged in SSTR thus place the cart far before the horse. Expectations of “promised goods” by host-nation forces will break their focus and skew their motivation. This criticism presumes a chaotic environment in which assets are tied down by ongoing combat. IMET training, however, can come in the form of additional advisors to host-nation units, which will not detract from U.S. support to ongoing efforts in the field. Likewise, the other programs bring personnel assets with them and, managed carefully, need not interfere with ongoing operations. Nevertheless, some critics believe that international programs can take on a life of their own. In other words, not only does the “tail” of international programs reach to Washington, but its “head” remains ensconced at headquarters as well. Those controlling international programs are thus insulated from activities on the ground and do not have to pay for any of their mistakes, particularly the diversion of host-nation assets in order to gain the benefits of the programs. There is no reason, however, why part of the management structure, for example the security assistance officers who reside in-country, cannot furnish information about local conditions to help shape international program decision-making.

Integrating international programs into the Global War on Terror and the 1,000-ship navy/global maritime partnerships One of the leadership and management issues involved in SSTR is determining whether or not the host-nation forces possess the equipment and training required for true integration with U.S. forces. This has been a question of great interest to both the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Mullen (now JCS Chairman), and his successor, Admiral Gary Roughead. Under their direction, the Navy is making its shift towards greater relevance in fighting the “Long War” against global terrorists. Such a shift must be made without slighting the U.S. Navy’s continuing geo-economic mission of keeping open the sealanes and access to materials that fuel the globalized economy.19

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The concept of a “1,000-ship navy,” known since the issuance of A Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century Seapower in October 2007 as “global maritime partnerships,” consisting of a networked coalition of world navies, was originally unveiled by Admiral Mullen in September 2005. The primary idea behind the initiative is to protect the global commons. To be inclusive, the concept steers away from emphasizing its role in the war on terror or as being directed towards SSTR. The creation of a networked fleet with global maritime surveillance capability (referred to as “Maritime Domain Awareness” by the Department of Homeland Security, and “Global Maritime Awareness” by the Navy) and rapidly deployable combat power, however, could help secure the seaward side of an SSTR environment. More importantly, training and equipping developing navies could generate a force for stability that may be the key to deflecting a potential SSTR situation in the future. The “1,000-ship navy” could realistically morph into an effective coalition of the willing that could provide combined assets in an SSTR situation. Sailors and Marines also represent trained military manpower that can perform a variety of functions ashore – which is the exact purpose of the U.S. Navy’s NECC. The success of a “1,000-ship navy”/global maritime partnerships relies primarily on developing a significant level of interoperability. It is difficult to quantify levels of interoperability and establish requirements for participation.20 But one thing is certain: security assistance programs (and potentially EDA programs) and IMET will be needed to help increase the command and control capabilities of the developing navies. And every increase in interoperability with U.S. and coalition forces is an increase in the capacity to conduct SSTR ops. Naval assets are theoretically less likely to be destroyed or disrupted by insurgencies (or at least have greater potential protection).

Conclusion and recommendations International programs can be significant SSTR tools if they are timely and tailored directly to local needs. The international program of greatest need and value is IMET, since it definitively applies across the board – from stability to reconstruction – in SSTR. Section 1206 programs can also apply across the board; however, Section 1206 is not a permanent piece of legislation and there is no guarantee that future administrations will ask Congress to grant such authority. Security assistance can also be considered an across-the-board SSTR tool; however, it is unlikely that a government facing grave instability can afford to finance an extensive security assistance program. Theoretically, FMF funds could be enlisted to pay for the security assistance; however, FMF has become the equivalent of an entitlement program. FMF recipients can only be changed with great difficulty. To maximize the potential for 1206, security assistance and IMET, the staff structure of major SSTR commands should include at least one experienced security cooperation specialist. This could be an operational assignment for a security assistance officer already within the region, if an asset could not be

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assigned from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or the Navy International Program Office, or the other service counterparts. EDA transfers can be a low-cost way of building military capacity; however, they are also subject to State Department and Congressional approval, particularly for naval vessels. EDA transfers – which involve systems that were originally designed for use by U.S. forces – usually feature high-technology systems (by SSTR standards) that require trained personnel. It is rare that a government facing instability can allow some of its most capable and motivated military personnel to spend time training for a high-technology system. Generally, no indigenous personnel with previous training are available or ready to take possession of an EDA system. Given these constraints, U.S. policymakers should not rely on EDA for assets in the initial stability phase, but only later, once a cadre of personnel can be spared for training. Capable and interoperative vessels organized as part of the 1,000-ship navy/global maritime partnerships concept, however, could prove to be useful SSTR assets, including as a national command and control nucleus. Naval forces can train host-nation forces to perform critical functions ashore in support of SSTR. Once NECC has met its initial objectives, its leaders should develop an international training component, similar in purpose to SCETC. This would increase the training throughput of host-nation forces and allow for the inclusion of unique naval aspects in the training. Once into the transition and reconstruction phase, provincial reconstruction teams or their equivalent should have at least one security assistance specialist assigned from the Navy International Program Office and one IMET specialist from NETSAFA or SCETC (or, in some cases, Coast Guard ITD) to insure that no opportunity for security assistance training is overlooked and that the “boots on the ground” view is transmitted back to Washington. These billets could potentially be filled by security assistance officers.

Notes 1 Harold Kennedy, “U.S. Shifting Focus to ‘Stability Operations,’ ” National Defense: NDIA’s Business and Technology Magazine, August 2005, available at www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2005/Aug/US_Shifting.htm. 2 Bradley Graham, “U.S. Directive Prioritizes Post-Conflict Stability,” Washington Post, 1 December 2005, p. A21, available at www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113002076.html. 3 It is important to note the implications of the title of the Directive. It is Military Support for Stability . . . and not simply Stability, Security. . . . This implies that other non-DoD entities are also responsible for providing support, and that there is a natural limit to the type and amount of support that the Department of Defense can or should provide. 4 U.S. Department of Defense, Directive Number 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations, 28 November 2005, p. 2. 5 Ibid. The lack of effort by the Office of the Secretary of Defense staffers to lay out a more exacting definition may indicate that such would fall within the responsibilities of the Joint Staff, and indeed the intellectual work behind SSTR and its predecessor

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terms was primarily done at Joint Forces Command as the transformation agent for the Joint Staff. This represents the Department of the Navy’s delineation as to what constitutes “international programs,” and indeed the Navy International Programs Office is organized to direct those programs. The other Services have slightly different combinations of functions, but similar in intent. Others have argued that direct commercial sales (DCS) should not be considered part of security assistance, since they are not agreements in which the U.S. government is directly involved. But because every aspect of DCS must be licensed by the DoD and the State Department, it would appear that DCS can be indirectly shaped and controlled for use as a security assistance tool (even if that is not openly acknowledged). Almost all international arms sales today involve the use of offsets, a commitment by the seller to invest a certain proportion of its profits in the economy of the purchasing nation. Offsets make the purchase of foreign defense items more politically palatable to some governments, both in the sense of using the national treasure to buy weapons and as a justification for purchasing foreign products. Some offset demands are an attempt at technology transfer; others may represent a way of funneling funds into businesses owned by government officials and their friends. Because of strict U.S. laws against the use of bribery in international business by American companies, the latter attempt must be carefully concealed. Most purchasers require a certain percentage of offsets, but do not necessarily direct the American contractor to invest in a certain sector; hence, offsets could theoretically be quite profitable. A survey of cases indicates that they are either moderately profitable or break even, insuring that the contractor effectively receives its anticipated profit from the sale. The U.S. government refuses to acknowledge the existence of offset agreements. My discussions with senior officers of foreign navies indicate a general preference for U.S. EDA vessels when they are available with the desired characteristics. As one foreign admiral explained: Dutch ships last only 20 years, whereas the U.S. ships will last 35 or more. If you can get a U.S. ship at its 15–20 year point, it is still a better deal than a Dutch ship at its 10-year point.

10 Agreements are negotiated as bilateral or multilateral treaties with other nations, not with NATO as an individual entity. 11 This is particularly the view of “traditional” American allies. See Stephen Price, “Sharp Guard Maritime Operations and the Former Yugoslavia, 1991–6” (DVD, Naval Historical Branch, United Kingdom, 2006) and David Stevens, “East Timor: ‘Operation Stabilise’ ” (DVD, Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Centre, Canberra, 2006). Both are obtainable from the Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, Virginia (POC: Peter Swartz). 12 To some extent this is largely a perception since 1206 programs must follow the same procedures as FMS. However, the fact that it is DoD money being provided to partners via the COCOMs brings a sense of urgency that appears lacking in most recipient-requested FMS cases. Any 1206 cases, by their very nature as part of a new initiative, attract more (positive) high-level attention. 13 Department of Defense, Under Secretary (Policy) PowerPoint slide entitled “Future Organization,” released within DoD on 29 August 2006. 14 Department of the Army, Field Manual 3–07 (formerly FM 100–20), Stability Operations and Support Operations, February 2003, pp. 5–1 to 5–5. 15 An instructive description and history of NETSAFA is Robert B. Pemberton and Larry Surtees, “NETSAFA,” at http://disam.osd.mil/itm/Articles/NETSAFA.htm. 16 A copy of the Commandant, Marine Corps’ message establishing SCETC can be found at http://disam.osd.mil/itm/Messages/MarCorps%20ReOrg.htm.

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17 ASN (RDA) is also the direct supervisor of NIPO, giving an acquisition emphasis to naval international programs. 18 General David H. Petraeus, Commander, Multi-National Force-Iraq, Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq (10–11 September 2007), pp. 5–6, available at www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Petaeus-Testimony20070910.pdf. 19 For a full dose of this argument, see Sam J. Tangredi, ed., Globalization and Maritime Power (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2002). It has subsequently become part of the official policy of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard. See U.S. Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, October 2007, especially pp. 2–5. 20 See, for example, George Galdorisi and Darren Sutton (Navy Space and Naval Warfare System Command, San Diego, California), “Coalition Interoperability: How Much Is Enough and How to Quantify It,” paper presented at the Royal United Services Institute conference Stepping Networked C4STAR into the Future, London, September 2006.

9

Security and stability on the inland waterways Naval riverine forces John W. Stolze

The United States Navy has a long history of conducting riverine operations. Riverine forces have been called upon to undertake a wide variety of missions ranging from traditional maritime combat operations to humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Their design, training, and experience in this unique operating environment make naval riverine forces ideally suited for employment in a range of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations. Because of these distinctive capabilities and dual-use functionality, riverine forces rank among the top U.S. naval assets capable of supporting military operations other than war (MOOTW).1 For these reasons, riverine forces have played a significant part in the history of U.S. naval involvement in SSTR operations. In fact, the history of naval involvement in SSTR operations along inland waterways began before the American Revolution. This chapter begins by highlighting the strategic importance of riverine forces and the significance of rivers and littorals in SSTR operations. It then explores how U.S. naval riverine forces have been employed to support SSTR operations. It also describes the recent re-establishment of the Navy’s brownwater fleet and considers how this current incarnation of naval riverine forces will support current and future SSTR operations. The chapter calls the readers’ attention to three observations about riverine operations and SSTR. First, in many parts of the world the ability to exploit a riverine environment is critical to supporting SSTR efforts. Second, the U.S. Navy has been conducting maritime-based MOOTW and SSTR operations for a very long time and is well positioned to undertake these types of operations today. Third, the recent re-establishment of a naval riverine force is evidence that the Navy is committed to supporting a variety of missions along the inland waterways of the world, including SSTR operations.

The strategic importance of the riverine environment SSTR operations Human beings are uniquely dependent on water because it is the single most important natural resource needed to sustain human life. We consume water regularly to regulate the balance of our biological systems. We eat fish,

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vegetation, and other food sources produced by the world’s seas, lakes, and rivers. With these same waters, we irrigate the land and support agricultural growth. We have harnessed the raw power of running water to drive hydraulic machines and generate electricity. And, since the beginning of human history, water has been utilized as a primary means of transportation, communication, and exploration around the globe. The absolute importance of water to human life is best illustrated by comparing the proximity of the world’s largest population centers to the locations of its major water sources. More than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface area is covered by water. The majority of this water is concentrated in the world’s seas and oceans. These, in turn, are ringed by more than 356,000 km of beach and coastline.2 It is estimated that approximately 39 percent of the world’s 6.5 billion people3 live within 100 km of these shorelines.4 Ocean fishing is still a major source of food around the world and more than 80 percent of the world’s total commerce, and 50 percent of the world’s daily oil supply, is transported across maritime trade routes.5 When these statistics are added to figures generated by the rivers, lakes, and inland waterways of the world, the numbers become even more dramatic. There are 113 major river systems throughout the world. These carry approximately 15 percent of the world’s total commerce from coastal maritime trade routes to final inland destinations. Hydroelectric power generated by these inland waterways is still the primary source of electricity in certain parts of the world; and, the highest concentrations of human population reside alongside the major river and delta systems of the world. Current estimates indicate that some 80 percent of the world’s total population lives within 100 km of the world’s major river basins.6 Human life and civilization was born from, and flourished in, these littoral and riverine environments. Mesopotamia, the so-called “cradle of civilization,” owed its productivity, prosperity, and longevity to the twin river basins of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Mekong, Niger, Congo, Ganges, and Brahmaputra river and delta systems have all supported human civilizations since the beginning of recorded history. In these places, to control the rivers is to control society. The role of rivers in potential conflict is highlighted by the fact that the world’s major population growth is occurring near rivers. It is estimated that, through the year 2025, 95 percent of the world’s population growth will occur in the poorest areas around the globe.7 A great many of these can be found in the world’s littoral and riverine locales. The combination of this population growth with the relatively poor conditions of these underdeveloped locations, has the potential to prompt instability, conflict, and crisis.8 Future efforts to promote peace, security, and stability in the developing nations of the world are likely to occur within global littoral and riverine environments. These rivers and inland waterways also constitute a way of accessing the places where SSTR operations are most often required. In some developing countries, there are actually more navigable inland waterways than there are

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paved roads. In other locations, rivers provide a complementary transportation system to available road networks.9 Because of this, riverine forces have a unique advantage in accessing locations that may require SSTR operations and denying the forces of instability and chaos access to local waterways. For all of these reasons, the rivers and inland waterways of the world are of particular importance in promoting Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations around the globe. Because naval riverine forces have a unique advantage in operating in this kind of environment, they can offer vital support to international efforts to undertake SSTR operations.

History of U.S. naval riverine operations The U.S. Navy has a long history of conducting riverine operations. Whether it was defending the American homeland along its own inland waterways, conducting hydrographic surveys and counter-narcotics operations in South America, protecting American commercial interests in China, fighting insurgents in Southeast Asia, providing humanitarian and disaster relief at home and abroad, or supporting offensive military operations in the Middle East. The U.S. Navy has conducted riverine operations during every chapter of modern history, in almost ever corner of the globe. These riverine forces have proven that they are equally fit to conduct traditional military operations and smaller contingency operations. This makes naval riverine forces among the most versatile and adaptable of the military’s operating units, and one of the most important types of units operating in support of SSTR operations. What follows are brief descriptions of the wide variety of MOOTW and SSTR operations that naval riverine forces have undertaken in previous conflicts. American Revolutionary War (1775–81) Before the U.S. Navy even existed, a ragtag collection of shallow-draft sailing vessels was conscripted into service from the Continental and state navies and the civil merchant fleet to fight along the waterways of North America. This shallow-water fleet, the nation’s first rudimentary riverine force, was expected to protect the American colonies from the penetration of British military forces into the inland waterways of North America. In the St Lawrence River, the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Champlain, and the Delaware River, American naval forces repelled advancing British forces by engaging them in the restricted confines of inland waterways and taking advantage of an operational environment that they could more easily control and dominate. These riverine force also sought to slow the movement of British ground forces by harassing them with naval gunfire from nearby inland waterways. Despite their successful efforts, these first U.S. riverine forces played a relatively minor role in the American Revolutionary War. In addition to engaging the enemy from these inland waterways, American colonists also took advantage of the rivers and streams to quickly and

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surreptitiously transport American forces for the purpose of engaging and escaping enemy forces. There is no better example of this than George Washington’s iconographic crossing of the Delaware River to surprise and defeat the Hessian soldiers garrisoned in Trenton, New Jersey. Though it was a minor tactical victory, this maneuver served as a rallying point in the American Revolution and provided a much-needed boost to the waning morale of the Continental Army. This act is often credited with breathing new life into the faltering American revolutionary movement. Even at the end of the war, Washington continued to rely on these riverine fleets for the transport of Continental forces. After the French defeat of British naval forces in the Chesapeake, Washington moved a large force of men up the York River and inserted them into southeastern Virginia. These forces would go on to launch the assault against Yorktown which led to the surrender of British forces and ultimately the independence of the American colonies.10 These illustrations demonstrate the earliest participation of American naval forces in riverine operations. Because the majority of these missions were focused on the defense of the American homeland, they can clearly be included in the list of missions known as security operations. And because the goal of some of these operations was ensuring freedom of navigation within colonial waterways, they can be considered a form of stability operations. They helped protect maritime commercial ventures and military operations alike. Second Seminole War (1835–42) After acquiring Florida from the Spanish in 1821, the U.S. government relocated the indigenous Indian tribes of the region to government-designated reservations. This cleared the way for the introduction of white settlers and plantation owners. After a number of skirmishes between these newcomers and members of different Indian tribes, the government decided that these Natives must once again be relocated, this time west of the Mississippi. The refusal of these Indian tribes, who became collectively known as the Seminoles, to comply with this second forced deportation prompted government crackdowns that forced the Indians to flee the reservations and seek sanctuary in remote parts of the southern United States. The Seminoles took refuge in the Everglades and began launching guerilla-style campaigns against the government forces of the United States. Though the United States had fought wars against Native American Indian tribes before, this would become the longest and most costly of these engagements.11 Because this conflict involved a national government attempting to suppress a violent uprising by a minority subset of its population, the Second Seminole War could be considered, in modern terms, a counter-insurgency operation. Counter-insurgency operations are just one among the litany of missions that fall into the broad category of SSTR operations. What makes this case especially relevant is the fact that the government forces that dealt with this Indian uprising were comprised of both Army and Navy units that operated jointly along the inland waterways of the Everglades in their hunt for the Seminole Indians.

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Navy Lieutenants Levin Powell and John McLaughlin would both command joint Army–Navy forces that scoured the coast, inlets, and rivers of southern Florida seeking out the Seminoles. They used small sailing ships and barges to patrol the Florida coastline and disembarked in canoes and row boats, with Marine security detachments, to follow the Indians inland. Unfamiliarity with the territory, swamp-borne illness, and the ingenuity of their Indian adversaries would all take a toll on these early brown-water sailors, but the lessons that the Navy learned in the swamps of the Everglades would help it draft the first-ever U.S. tactical riverine doctrine.12 South American River Surveys (1853–5, 1878, 1899–1900) Between 1853 and 1855 the Navy’s steam-powered gunboat, USS Water Witch, patrolled and charted the rivers and inland waters of Uruguay, Panama, and Paraguay. This mission was interrupted in 1856 when the Water Witch came under fire from a Paraguayan fort, killing a sailor on board, damaging the ship, and forcing it to withdraw from the area. Three years later, in 1859, a 19-ship Navy contingent sailed back up the River Plate to extract an apology for the incident and convince the government of Paraguay to sign a commercial treaty with the United States. This mission was successful on both counts and demonstrated that gunboat diplomacy could work on the inland waterways of South America.13 The Water Witch was not the only gunboat to ply South American rivers. In 1878, the USS Enterprise, a screw sloop, surveyed more than 1,500 miles of the Amazon and Madeira rivers to promote American construction efforts along those waterways.14 In 1899 and 1900 the gunboat USS Wilmington conducted hydrographic surveys along the Orinoco River in Venezuela and Amazon River into Peru.15 In each of these cases, U.S. Navy vessels were utilized for hydrographic survey operations in foreign inland waterways to develop new navigation aids and investigate potential commercial opportunities for American companies in these distant lands. Collectively, these operations helped promote cooperative military and commercial ventures between the United States and participating South American nations, albeit occasionally employing some heavy-handed tactics. Yangtze River Patrols (1854–1941) In 1854, vessels from the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron began patrolling the lower reaches of China’s Yangtze River to protect American financial interests in the region. American companies enjoyed profitable commercial operations in the area, which utilized the treaty port system put in place after China’s defeat in the Opium Wars. These concerns began to suffer, however, as a result of local uprisings promoted by disgruntled Chinese businessmen who sought to destabilize American commercial ventures and regain financial dominance over the region. Gradually these challenges were overcome and American river-based

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commerce, and accompanying Navy patrols, penetrated further up the Yangtze River. Over time, the Navy developed specialized shallow-draft vessels for operations along the Yangtze, and in 1919 the new Yangtze River Patrol Squadron was officially commissioned. This new squadron patrolled the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze and was responsible for safeguarding the expanding commercial ventures of the United States, battling river-borne pirates and banditry, and protecting American missionary interests. During the 1920s and 1930s, these naval vessels operated under increasingly dangerous conditions as internal struggles within China pulled that country toward civil war. In their effort to exert control over China’s natural lines of communication, Chinese warlords and emerging Communist forces attacked U.S. vessels operating in the region, making the Yangtze a veritable war zone. When the Japanese invaded China in the course of World War II, warlords seized control of the lower Yangtze, all but ending American commercial ventures in the region. This prompted the withdrawal of U.S. naval vessels and the disestablishment of the Yangtze River Patrol Squadron in 1941.16 This episode was unique because it was one of the few times in American naval history that a specialized naval force was created to operate specifically within the riverine environment and with the explicit intention of conducting missions other than traditional naval warfare. This riverine fleet received longterm funding, enjoyed both civil and military support, and benefited from the development of specialized doctrine, training, and shallow-water boat design. So, while the Vietnam conflict may have seen the development of the largest U.S. brown-water force designed to conduct riverine warfare, the Yangtze River patrols may have been the halcyon of naval riverine SSTR operations. Latin American Riverine Assistance (1980s and 1990s) Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, American riverine forces found themselves in South and Central America once again. This time, elements of the Naval Special Warfare community and the Marine Corps’ small-craft company traveled the inland waterways of Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and elsewhere to assist local governments with counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency operations. U.S. forces were usually called upon to provide training and material support to these countries, allowing them to build up their own indigenous riverine capabilities. On occasion, however, American forces were required to play a combat support role. Regardless of the amount of direct U.S. intervention in these local problems, all of these missions shared one similar characteristic. They were all undertaken to promote security and stability within the region.17 By design, these missions were conducted to eliminate subversive groups, stem the tide of illegal commerce, insure safe and free navigation of vital inland waterways, and promote civil and military cooperation between the United States and participating nations. These Latin American missions were at the very core of SSTR operations. They promoted local maritime security, bolstered economic stability, and helped regain control over portions of these countries that

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had been lost to bandits, organized crime, and narco-terrorists. They also helped build lasting ties between friendly governments and military forces, which ultimately led to increased stability throughout the region. Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–) The involvement of American riverine forces in Iraq is reminiscent of the Latin American missions undertaken by the Navy and Marines towards the end of the last century. The Marine Corps and Naval Special Warfare community have been called upon again to support counter-insurgency operations and to help maintain safe and free navigation along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The presence of large numbers of American military forces and civilian contractors, however, makes the need for security and stability extremely urgent. Today’s stability operations undertaken along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are absolutely critical in supporting regional security and reconstruction in Iraq. The Tigris–Euphrates River Valley forms the very center of Iraq. It serves as the lifeblood of Iraqi society. The nation’s capital, Baghdad, is nestled in this historic river basin with the Tigris River bisecting the city and providing vital natural resources to Iraq’s largest urban population center. This river basin is the single largest center of agricultural production in Iraq. Its 5,000 km of navigable waterways form a critical part of Iraq’s national transportation system, not only for its oil industry, but its entire economy. The Tigris is used for potable water, electro-power generation, and recreation. The restoration of security along Iraq’s inland waterways is thus crucial to reconstruction efforts in postwar Iraq. But the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates is not limited to civilian purposes. Recently, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have become major lines of communication for both friendly and insurgent military forces. As the Viet Cong used the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta, so too are Iraqi insurgents using the inland waterways of Iraq to move troops, transport weapons and explosives, and avoid capture by coalition forces. Recognizing the strategic importance of the Tigris and Euphrates, the U.S. Navy has dedicated increasing amounts of time, money, and attention to policing these waterways. Securing peace and security in Iraq will only occur when Coalition forces control the country’s inland waterways.18 Natural disaster relief and humanitarian aid (2004–5) In the first part of the twenty-first century, natural disasters highlighted the ability of the U.S military to provide aid and relief quickly following catastrophic events in distant lands. Earthquakes in Pakistan, tsunamis in Southeast Asia, and hurricanes in the United States, have forced civil and military leaders to contemplate the role military forces play in averting the loss of human life during these disasters and helping to rebuild regions after they have passed. There are many types of units within the U.S. military that serve in this capacity. For example, the Navy deployed a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS

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Abraham Lincoln, and the hospital ship USS Mercy to Southeast Asia following a severe earthquake in Indonesia that produced devastating tsunamis affecting people as far away as India and the eastern coast of Africa. Navy ships were able to alter their existing missions to deliver aid, relief, and medical support to foreign nations and people in need.19 While U.S. riverine forces did not take part in this particular disaster-relief effort, brown-water assets could also contribute to this kind of mission. Their size and speed would have made brown-water rivercraft the perfect platforms for launching survey missions, traversing the waterways of the affected area, and identifying locations most in need of assistance. They could also have offered rapid search, recovery, and rescue capabilities in the early hours of the disaster, evacuating personnel from devastated areas and transporting medical crews and other relief personnel into isolated areas. Once deployed, riverine forces can play a significant part in relief operations. When Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast along the Louisiana– Mississippi state border, it caused levees to break, flood waters to rise, and homes across hundreds of miles to be inundated and leveled. Roads all along the Gulf Coast were under water and land-based emergency relief crews were unable to travel to the most affected areas. Within hours, members of Naval Special Warfare’s Special Boat Team-22, the Navy’s only dedicated riverine unit, launched their boats from their river training facility in Stennis, Mississippi to assist in relief efforts. Their specially designed riverboats allowed them to go where washed-out roads used to be. They conducted search and rescue operations in the rising flood waters and delivered food and water to stranded citizens.20 This operation demonstrated how naval riverine forces were able to respond at a time when civil relief efforts were still floundering to get underway. This event, perhaps more than any other, proved the civil applicability of naval riverine forces and the valuable role that they can play in SSTR operations. As these vignettes show, naval riverine forces, because of their dual-use functionality and unique capabilities, have long participated in non-traditional maritime military missions and SSTR operations. Their value has been proven through both civil and military application in a number of locations around the world.

The future of U.S. naval riverine forces and the Navy’s commitment to SSTR operations While the Navy has long undertaken riverine operations, its conduct of operations along inland waterways has been inconsistent and episodic. Riverine operations have not traditionally been at the forefront of Navy planning. In most cases, riverine operations have only been undertaken under extreme circumstances, when world events have made it impossible for naval officers to avoid combat realities. Typically these periods of brown-water operations have been punctuated by the disestablishment of riverine units and a drawdown of related naval forces.

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This trend is perhaps best illustrated by the drawdown of riverine forces following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1969, at the height of the American riverine presence in Vietnam, the U.S. Navy was operating more than 500 riverine and coastal watercraft that were divided into more than 30 military units. Four years later, in 1973, the Navy was down to half a dozen combined coastal–river divisions. By 1979, these units were removed from the inventory of the mainstream Navy and assigned to the Naval Special Warfare community. By 2005, Naval Special Warfare was operating just three special boat teams, only one of which, Special Boat Team-22, was dedicated to the preservation of the Navy’s riverine capability. Meanwhile, the United States Marine Corps stood up a single small-craft company, which it used to help fill the gap left by the loss of the Navy’s mainstream riverine community. Until recently, it has been the Marine Corps that has served as the primary military resource for maintaining a U.S. riverine warfighting capability and doctrine.21 In the years following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. military has found itself stretched increasingly thin as it attempts to keep up with the operational requirements created by missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror. Both the Marine Corps and the Naval Special Warfare community have been particularly hard hit by these demands. The result has been that neither of these services has the time, money, or manpower to focus dedicated efforts on sustaining the military’s riverine operational capabilities. Recognizing the demands being placed on these services, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vernon Clarke, issued a memorandum to the Navy Staff in July 2005, directing a series of new initiatives to be undertaken by the Navy to help alleviate pressure being placed on the Army, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command. Among these new initiatives was a call to revive the Navy’s mainstream riverine warfare capability and return primary control over the conduct of military riverine operations to the Navy.22 The Navy’s new plan calls for the establishment of three operational riverine squadrons (RIVRONs) and a coordinating riverine group (RIVGRU) command under the new Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC).23 The NECC, which was formally established in January 2006, is headquartered at Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, Virginia and will be used to consolidate many of the previously dissociated expeditionary components under the Navy’s control. Under the new NECC umbrella, naval construction, salvage, and explosive ordinance disposal units will be horizontally integrated with naval security, coastal warfare, and riverine forces. The overall result of this initiative will be the creation of a new master command that will oversee the Navy’s expeditionary-related missions as they move inland from the sea.24 As part of this expeditionary warfare-focused command, the Navy’s new riverine force will be expected to help project the Navy’s influence from its normal operating environment in the open ocean into the rivers and inland waterways of the world. Their immediate focus will be supporting operations in Iraq, but, the leadership of the riverine community is quick to point out that these forces will be prepared to deploy anywhere in the world they are needed.

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The establishment, manning and training of these new riverine squadrons is already underway. The first squadron was ready for deployment in 2007. This development signals the start of a new episode in naval riverine operations.25 While there will be certain differences between this new riverine force and those of the past, it will still maintain the same flexibility when it comes to undertaking both combat and stability operations. Accordingly, concept-ofoperation documents for these new riverine squadrons list an extensive array of military and non-traditional missions that these operators will be trained to support. While they will still be used to engage certain enemy forces, they will also be expected to undertake a wide variety of SSTR operations.26 These will include maritime security, river patrol and interdiction, anti-piracy, maritime interception operations, hydrographic surveys, surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence collection, counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency missions, theater security cooperation, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief.27 All of these have direct applicability to the Navy’s capacity for supporting SSTR operations. In fact, recent projections regarding the anticipated operational capabilities of these squadrons over the next three years indicate that they will be best suited to undertake humanitarian assistance, counter-narcotic, and security assistance missions, followed closely by counter-insurgency, unconventional warfare, and combating terrorism operations. At least in the short term, these squadrons will be better prepared to support SSTR operations than any other type of mission set.28

Conclusion Rivers and inland waterways are strategically important because they provide access and natural resources to much of the world’s population. Furthermore, they present a vital operating environment in the provision of security and stability throughout much of the developing world. The U.S. Navy has a long history of developing naval riverine forces specifically trained to exploit this unique operating environment. At many points over the course of their history, these forces have served to support both combat operations and SSTR missions. Despite arguments that maintaining a naval riverine force and supporting SSTR operations have never been central to its military culture or ethos, the United States Navy is creating three new operational riverine squadrons that will be ideally suited for supporting SSTR missions. While critics and skeptics may wonder how long this current riverine force will survive, its existence, training, and mission focus seem to indicate that the Navy recognizes the importance of SSTR missions in today’s operating environment, and that it is being shaped to better undertake these operations. Perhaps the best metric of the Navy’s continued commitment to SSTR operations will be the material and monetary support that vouchsafes it to the NECC and its subordinate commands, like the new riverine force, over the next several years.

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Notes 1 The phrase “military operations other than war,” or MOOTW, typically refers to missions undertaken by military forces that do not directly relate to combat operations. For more specific definitions and examples of this concept, see Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Pub 3–07: Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other than War (Washington, DC: GPO, June 1995). 2 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The World Fact Book, www.cia.gov/cia/publications/ factbook/geos/xx.html (accessed February 2007). 3 This figure is based on a July 2006 population estimate published in CIA, The World Fact Book. 4 Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations (Norfolk, VA: Department of the Navy, September 2006), p. 22. 5 Robert Benbow, Fred Ensminger, Peter Swartz, Scott Savitz, and Major Dan Stimpson, Renewal of Navy’s Riverine Capability: A Preliminary Examination of Past, Current, and Future Capabilities (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, March 2006), p. 39. 6 Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations, p. 22. 7 Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 24. 8 Sidney Ellington, Special Operations in Littoral Warfare (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, December 1995), p. 4. 9 This information is based on a study conducted by the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency (MCIA) in 1993 and continued in Benbow et al., Renewal, pp. 141–51. The actual figures used in these studies come from CIA, The World Fact Book. 10 For more information on the role of riverine forces in the American Revolutionary War, see R. Blake Dunnavent, James C. Bradford and Gene A. Smith (eds), Brown Water Warfare: The U.S. Navy in Riverine Warfare and the Emergence of a Tactical Doctrine, 1775–1970, Chapter 1, pp. 1–13; Naval Historical Center, Riverine Warfare: The U.S. Navy Operations in Inland Waters (Washington DC: Department of the Navy, April 29960, www.history.navy.mil/library/online/riverine.htm (accessed February 2007); and Benbow et al., Renewal, p. 85. 11 For more information on the role of riverine forces in the Second Seminole War, see John Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967); George Buker, Swamp Sailors: Riverine Warfare in the Everglades, 1835–1842 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1975); Dunnavent, Brown Water Warfare, Chapter 3, pp. 32–44; and Benbow et al., Renewal, p. 86. 12 Dunnavent, Brown Water Warfare, Chapter 3, pp. 32–44; and Benbow et al., Renewal, p. 86. 13 For more on the Water Witch incident, see John Hoyt Williams, “The Wake of the Water Witch,” Naval Institute Proceedings Supplement (1985), pp. 14–19; and Benbow et al., Renewal, p. 88. 14 For more on the Enterprise and Wilmington incidents, see Captain Paul M. Simoes de Carvalho, “Gunboat Diplomacy on the Orinoco,” Naval History, 17 (August 2003), pp. 42–7; and Benbow et al., Renewal, pp. 91–2. 15 Ibid. 16 For more on the Yangtze River patrols, see Robert E. Johnson, Far China Station: The U.S. Navy in Asian Waters, 1800–1898 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979); Kemp Tolley, Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1971); Dunnavent, Brown Water Warfare, Chapter 7, pp. 87–109; and Benbow et al., Renewal, pp. 90, 93. 17 For more on U.S. riverine operations in South America, see Paul F. Willey, The Art of Riverine Warfare from an Asymmetrical Approach (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004).

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18 For more on naval riverine operations during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, see Jason B. Scheffer, The Rise and Fall of the Brown Water Navy: Changes in United States Navy Riverine Warfare Capabilities from the Vietnam War to Operation Iraqi Freedom (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2005); and Michael Newsom, “Special Delivery: Navy Riverboat Team Assists U.S. Missions in Middle East,” Sun-Herald (Mississippi, 28 July 2005). 19 Cassie Duong, “U.S. Navy Ship Mercy Returns to Indonesia on Aid Mission,” (U.S. Department of State, 18 July 2006), http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html? p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=July&x= 20060718130437cagnoud3.048342e-02 (accessed February 2007). 20 Scott Boyle, “Naval Special Warfare Comes Through at Crunchtime,” Navy press release found on Gamewardens of Vietnam Association website, www.tf116.org/ katrinaSBT22.html (accessed February 2007). 21 Scheffer, The Rise and Fall, pp. 50–72. 22 Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Role in Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) – Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, 6 February 2006), p. 3. 23 Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations. 24 O’Rourke, Navy Role, pp. 4–5. 25 Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations. 26 The Navy’s new riverine forces are only being developed to support operations against Level II threats. These include unconventional warfare forces, insurgents, and guerillas. Unlike the riverine forces of the Vietnam era, they will not be expected to support Level IV, large-scale force-on-force, engagements (Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations, p. 8). 27 Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Navy Riverine Group Concept of Operations. 28 Benbow et al., Renewal, pp. 64–6.

10 Civil–military teams The PRT model in Afghanistan Nicholas Tomb

Reconstruction efforts in insecure environments create challenges for politicians, development experts, and ordinary citizens. It is difficult to promote economic growth without security, but without economic opportunities and growth, communities can enter a downward spiral of stagnation and desperation. Without jobs, people will turn to crime; yet crime stifles investment and the entrepreneurial spirit necessary to create jobs. In the wake of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, the threat presented by an insecure, underdeveloped, “failed state” became tragically evident. It is now clear that poverty and violence can affect the livelihoods and safety of those enjoying the affluence and security of stable democracies. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent overthrow of the Taliban in December 2001, policymakers in Washington, DC addressed the challenge of fostering economic development and physical security by returning to a traditional model of civil–military cooperation, but with a new twist: Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) that combined military and civilian personnel so that security challenges and the promotion of economic growth could be simultaneously addressed. These joint, interagency teams now operate in remote, rural provinces to extend the authority of the Afghan central government, enhance security, and facilitate relief and reconstruction operations. Their success is far from certain. PRTs have generated their fair share of controversy and debate. While proponents tout their effectiveness, critics point to a series of deficiencies and contentious issues surrounding PRTs. In terms of doctrine and organization, PRTs have been hampered by vague standard operating procedures, the absence of a standardized organizational arrangement, difficulties integrating civilian and military personnel, a lack of team training, and insufficient resources.1 In terms of external challenges, confrontations with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) over PRT activities, which often reflect the highly debated concept of “humanitarian space,” have led to strained relations with what should have otherwise been valuable civilian partners in the reconstruction process.2 Although PRTs represent only a small fraction of the total troop deployment in Afghanistan, they also reflect one of the best strategies for stabilizing and

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reconstructing societies torn apart by war and ethnic conflict. Traditionally, civilian efforts to rebuild societies ravaged by war have been more successful than attempts to restore order and prosperity that relied solely on military units. By combining civilian and military efforts to promote the authority of the central government, PRTs shine a dim light of hope in a country that seems to be slowly and tragically slipping back into the throes of instability. With the experience of three years of operations in Afghanistan, and with the introduction of PRTs into Iraq, the time has arrived to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the Provincial Reconstruction Team. To facilitate future operations and scholarship, it would also be important to begin to compile a list of lessons learned and to identify best practices when it comes to the operations of civil–military reconstruction efforts. An objective evaluation of PRTs is especially important to donor governments that increasingly recognize the important role that stabilization and reconstruction activities play in promoting global security.3 By grappling with the controversies surrounding PRTs, setting clear operational guidelines for their future use, and learning from their experiences in the field, it may be possible to improve the prospects for success in current and future stabilization operations. To address the strengths and weaknesses of current reconstruction efforts, this chapter first describes the mission, composition, and command structure of Provisional Reconstruction Teams. Because the composition of PRTs can be diverse, this chapter focuses on U.S.-led PRTs, but the recommendations for improvement can easily be applied to PRTs led by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well. The chapter also assesses the effectiveness of ongoing PRT operations and the controversies that surround today’s efforts at stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan. It closes by describing the U.S. Navy’s contribution to PRTs and concludes by offering some recommendations to improve future PRT operations in Afghanistan.

PRTs: mission, force composition, and command structure PRTs operate in Afghanistan at the invitation of President Hamid Karzai. Their mission is to promote security, participate in reconstruction efforts, and, through these activities, extend and promote the authority of the Afghan central government and nascent provincial governments.4 This broad mandate results in PRT participation in a wide range of activities, including security-sector reform, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration, counter-insurgency operations, and reconstruction projects. The range of operations involving PRTs and the variety of tactics that they use to implement their missions, can be seen as a great strength – and a great weakness. While the authority granted to PRT commanders allows them to prioritize activities based on the unique needs of a specific province, the lack of standard operating procedures and standing doctrine leads to ad hoc means of decision-making, planning, and operations. Operations mandated by a commander in one province may be prohibited to other commanders operating in different provinces. The overall effectiveness of an individual

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PRT is thus largely dependent upon its composition and the quality of its leadership. Good commanders and troops adopt effective doctrine and operations to meet the demands of their operating area, but there is no way to communicate and adapt these practices across an entire theater of operations.5 While the basic design of PRTs is simple, with personnel from various military and civilian agencies working side by side, there is great diversity in the actual make-up of the teams in the field. In Afghanistan, this diversity is largely due to the large number of countries participating in Provisional Reconstruction Teams. As of October 2006, for example, there were a total of 12 coalition partners, including personnel from U.S. military units and government agencies, participating in PRTs in Afghanistan.6 The situation is further complicated by the fact that PRTs can operate under two distinct lines of authority. U.S. Coalition-led PRTs operate under the authority of the Afghan Central Government, and NATO-led PRTs operate under the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386. Thus, while their overall mission remains the same, PRTs come in various sizes, include personnel from various departments and agencies, and speak a variety of languages. (See Figure 10.1 for a listing of contributing countries and PRT locations.) U.S.-led PRTs are made up of approximately 75 personnel, although some NATO-led PRTs are two to three times larger. Most of the individuals in a U.S. PRT are military personnel. The vast majority of military personnel are involved

Figure 10.1 PRT contributing countries and geographical locations (source: based on information collected by the author).

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in support activities, ensuring force protection, providing language skills, and implementing routine logistical tasks associated with maintaining an organization in a semi-hostile environment.7 The “tip of the spear” is comprised of two civil affairs teams of four personnel each that interact with local Afghans. These civil affairs teams move about within their assigned areas of operation, meeting with local leaders, and discussing or assessing reconstruction projects. These civil affairs teams are the part of the PRT that provides a visible presence in the countryside by offering advice on how to rebuild local infrastructure.8 Several civilian agencies within the U.S. government have personnel directly assigned to the PRTs. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State (DoS) are the primary sources for civilian personnel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also has a limited number of employees assigned to PRTs. Civilian agencies usually supply one of their number to each PRT, but some teams lack even this limited amount of civilian representation. A lack of resources and the limited commitment on the part of civilian agencies themselves to the reconstruction effort is largely responsible for the relatively low number of civilian participants. Civilian and military cultures are different and relationships between civilian and military personnel are complex, depending on strong leaders and trusted personal relationships for success. In some cases, the civilian and military components of PRTs work well together, in other cases hardly at all. Ideally, the PRT commander will consult with his civilian counterparts on priorities, goals and objectives, and courses of action. Because civilian personnel are accountable to, and report to, their offices of origin (USAID, DoS) rather than through the military command structure, communications, coordination, and consultations are not always constructive. Additionally, insufficient funding – particularly on the civilian side – has led to tension between civilian and military components of PRTs. Operating in insecure and (frequently austere environments (especially for the civilians) can strain any organization, and PRTs are no exception. Under these circumstances success frequently comes down to personalities and leadership styles on the ground.9 See Figure 10.2. Although PRTs combine civilian and military personnel in a field unit, they have more in common with military forces that operate in dangerous, insecure environments, than with civilian disaster and relief workers, who generally operate in noncombat areas. Thus it makes sense that PRTs are commanded by military officers. Command organizations generally follow a staff structure favored by the military organization. The military component of the PRT assumes responsibility for force protection, USAID personnel take the lead on reconstruction operations, and State Department officials have responsibility for political oversight, coordination, and reporting.10 Civilian personnel in PRTs, however, often maintain their own reporting channels to the country embassy or mission to report on their areas of responsibility to their home agency in Washington, DC. Deployments to Afghanistan are difficult and sometimes dangerous, and these challenges are exacerbated by the rapid turnover of personnel in the PRTs. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) extended tours of duty in

Civil–military teams in Afghanistan = Control = Info sharing

PRT commander

DOJ

DOT

Ops Support element Force protection element Linguists

Security section

Civil section

Security sector coordinator

CMOC/ CIMIC

Patrols

Patrols

DoS USAID

Future PRT partners? HQs

145

USDA Afghan Ministry of the Interior ITGA rep IO/NGO

Military observer Security observer

CA team

UNAMA Co-located in PRT compound Located near PRT compound

Figure 10.2 Typical PRT organizational structure (source: the author).

Afghanistan from six (or in some cases three) months to one year, which was an important step in strengthening PRTs. Civilian agencies also have increased the length of time that their personnel serve on PRTs, typically from 90 days to one year. Better coordination in the rotation of PRT personnel could further improve the continuity and institutional memory of PRTs operating in the field.11

Effectiveness and controversies PRTs are involved in a variety of stabilization and reconstruction activities and have done a relatively good job of coordinating their activities with the comprehensive development strategies that have been adopted by the Afghan central government. The coordination of the overall stabilization effort and the assessment of specific reconstruction projects have been enhanced by the presence of USAID personnel, who have significant experience and expertise in overseeing development activities.12 While coordination and assessments are critical to the success of specific development strategies, however, it is easier to develop various quantitative measures of effectiveness than to assess the direct influence that PRT operations are having on the perceptions of the Afghan people. In other words, while efforts to build schools and supply medical clinics can be assessed in terms of the number of structures completed or the amount of materials that are expended, it is harder to determine whether PRTs are succeeding in “winning the hearts and minds” of the Afghan population. Developing meaningful metrics is no small matter because obtaining the support of the Afghan population and legitimizing the role of the

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Afghan central government can help to achieve the broader goal of stabilizing and reconstructing the country. Five years after the fall of the Taliban many of the hopes, dreams, and expectations of the Afghan population have not been met. This is evident in the complaints expressed by ordinary citizens, and in the surprising resurgence that Taliban forces are making across the country, especially in the south and east of the country, but also, alarmingly, in urban centers. According to Thomas Johnson, “In the first five months of 2006 there was a 200 percent increase in insurgent attacks compared to the first five months of 2005.”13 Given the enormity of the reconstruction challenge facing Afghanistan, perhaps it is not fair to assess the effectiveness of PRTs based on the economic and political expectations of the Afghan population. Despite the best intentions and valuable contributions that PRTs may make, Afghanistan is a large, wartorn country lacking in infrastructure and natural resources. It is perhaps unrealistic for the Afghan population to expect too much; the best way forward might be to manage local expectations about the progress that can be made in the short term. The same should also be said for donor-country expectations given the starting point at which reconstruction operations began. But because U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan cannot succeed unless ordinary Afghans believe that their future is indeed brighter, PRTs need to improve their efforts and metrics to make good on the promises of a more prosperous, peaceful, and democratic Afghanistan. If they leave open a void, the Taliban, and their al Qaeda allies, are more than willing to offer a competing vision of the future. In addition to the civilian–military challenges that have faced PRTs, they have been controversial, particularly with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations operating in Afghanistan. The most common complaint is that, by participating in traditional relief and reconstruction activities, PRTs are blurring the lines surrounding the delivery of humanitarian assistance, commonly referred to as “humanitarian space.”14 Non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations operating in insecure environments have traditionally relied on independence, impartiality, and the morality of their activities to insure the security of their personnel. By providing assistance to populations in need regardless of ethnicity, religion, or political persuasion, civilian humanitarian relief agencies have obtained remarkable levels of access and have been relatively secure in even the most dangerous situations. Since the introduction of U.S. and coalition forces into Afghanistan, however, many IGOs and NGOs have expressed concern that the public might believe that they are working with or are a part of the armed forces. While some activities (such as collaborating on specific reconstruction projects) would clearly lead to such impressions, other, seemingly innocent activities (such as coordinating separate field efforts) can also have serious consequences for the security and perceived neutrality of IGO/NGO personnel. In other words, if insurgent forces see military personnel from PRTs involved in the construction of schools or medical clinics, and then see IGO/NGO personnel involved in similar activities, they may come to believe that these groups are working together, or at least the lines of distinction have become blurred.

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IGO/NGO personnel thus run the risk of being perceived as similar to PRT personnel, who are seen as legitimate military targets. Blurring of the distinction between PRTs and other civilian organizations could prompt attacks on IGOs/NGOs. The situation can become further confused when PRT personnel work in the field without wearing uniforms, which makes it impossible to identify civilian and military personnel from a distance. Another common complaint from IGOs/NGOs is that PRTs frequently operate not in the most insecure regions of the country, but in relatively secure regions where NGOs and IGOs are also implementing development and relief activities. This is a contentious issue because many PRT supporters insist that PRTs are focusing their operations in remote, insecure regions where NGOs and IGOs are not present.15 Rather than get drawn into this debate, it would be constructive for PRT commanders to carefully consider the concerns of NGOs and IGOs on the ground, and NGO/IGO personnel should do their best to accept the challenges facing PRTs. See Figure 10.3.

PRTs and the Navy Afghanistan is a land-locked country in central Asia, thousands of feet above sea level and hundreds of miles north of the nearest substantial body of water, the Arabian Sea. Despite this distance from the nearest ocean, the U.S. Navy has been an important source of personnel for stability and reconstruction operations and has provided significant leadership for PRTs working in rural Afghanistan. Of the 12 U.S.-led PRTs operating in the country, six are currently commanded by Navy officers (the other six are led by U.S. Air Force officers). In addition to leadership positions, there are over 500 Navy personnel, both active duty and reservists, working with PRTs in various capacities.16 Aid workers and development contractors killed each year according to ANSO

Number of fatalities

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2003

2004

2005

1/1/2006–6/21/2006

Year

Figure 10.3 NGO casualties in Afghanistan (source: Afghan NGO Security Office). Note See www.icasualities.org (accessed November 30, 2006).

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Navy personnel are joining the traditionally U.S. Army-staffed PRTs through the Individual Augmentee (IA) program. The program recently added a series of incentives that reward Navy personnel operating in combat zones with points for advancement in their military careers.17 An interesting aspect of the IA program is the joint training that Navy and Army personnel go through in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. Several joint training programs are currently in operation, including a two-week combat training course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina18 and a two-month course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.19 Jim Hamblet, a Navy officer who undertook a joint training program in preparation for commanding a PRT in Ghazni, a central Afghan province, said of the training, It has been a very interesting mix of the Navy and Army cultures. A big part of the Army’s training has been building team confidence – confidence not only in our individual skills, but that we can operate together as a unit in a very complex environment.20 This joint training is an important step in improving PRT operations, and should be expanded to include government civilians preparing to work with PRTs. Despite efforts to augment PRTs with Army and Air Force officers, an augmentee program is required because the Army is stretched so thin by various combat commitments that it no longer has the capacity to lead and staff PRT operations in Afghanistan. This is a grim situation, because five years after the fall of the Taliban, the resources necessary to stabilize and rebuild the country have not yet been committed. In fact, using one measure, the deployment of peacekeeping personnel in Afghanistan represents the lowest per capita commitment of peacekeeping personnel in any post-conflict environment since the end of World War II. While the ratio of peacekeepers to citizens in Bosnia was 1:48, in Afghanistan the figure hovered around 1:2,000 for the first three years of “reconstruction,” and has increased to roughly 1:1,000 today, following the addition of increased U.S. force levels and an influx of NATO troops.21 These sorts of force ratios do not lend themselves to effective reconstruction. While Navy officers are not traditionally involved in land-based, civil affairs operations, their leadership in PRTs is not necessarily a negative development. According to Major Glenn Woodson, an Army civil affairs officer who worked with PRTs as the Chief of Plans for the U.S. Army’s Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, even without civil affairs experience these Navy and Air Force officers may be smart, good people. Most of civil affairs is about common sense . . . it’s not about helping individuals, it’s about building capacity. PRTs are unconventional in that they are about developing systems, governance.22 Therefore, as long as the Navy personnel leading PRTs are good leaders and good problem solvers, with adequate resources and support, they can make significant contributions to PRT efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

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Recommendations The situation in Afghanistan has steadily deteriorated following a brief period of optimism after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001. Despite the infusion of over $8 billion in international assistance over the last five years, the international reconstruction effort and the Karzai administration have failed to meet the expectations of the population. The country remains one of the poorest in the world and basic necessities such as access to food, shelter, electricity, and clean drinking water remain out of reach for vast segments of the population.23 Illicit poppy cultivation has skyrocketed, currently accounting for approximately onethird of all economic activity in the country.24 Outside the capital of Kabul, the security situation is dire. Insurgent attacks are becoming increasingly common and vast segments of the population find themselves caught between invigorated Taliban forces and an underdeveloped Afghan Army and its Coalition allies. Attacks against NATO forces are increasing, with the month of October 2006 being one of the bloodiest since international forces were introduced into the country nearly five years ago.25 See Table 10.1 for Coalition fatalities. It is against this backdrop that PRTs are interacting with Afghan citizens in an attempt to “win the hearts and minds” of the population. While the challenge is great, the cost of failure is much greater. Progress made over the past six years is at risk of being undermined, and the Taliban regime that hosted the al Qaeda terrorists behind the September 11th attacks is jockeying for a return to power in the country. It is therefore critical that the PRT model be continually re-examined and fine-tuned to improve success in the field. In order for PRTs to be effective, their numbers must be dramatically increased. There are approximately 10,000 U.S. troops and 32,500 NATO troops (including about 11,800 U.S. troops under NATO command) currently stationed in Afghanistan.26 Of these less than 10 percent are working with PRTs, and only a couple of hundred are serving on the civil affairs teams that are actually interacting with Afghan citizens. If one considers that there are somewhere between 28 and 32 million Afghans and 34 Afghan provinces, then the typical Afghan province has hundreds of thousands of people living in it. Expecting a 75-person PRT and two four-person civil affairs teams to have a major or long-lasting impact in such a situation is simply Table 10.1 Coalition fatalities in Operation Enduring Freedom Period

U.S.

Other

Total

2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

96 99 52 48 48 12

90 31 6 9 20 0

186 130 58 57 68 12

Total

355

156

511

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unrealistic. Rather than focusing on provinces, every district (or at least most districts) within each province should have its own PRT – or what could be termed “District Reconstruction Team.”27 In addition to increasing their number and altering the way that they are deployed, PRTs should be resourced to fulfill their mission by being provided with better transportation and communications equipment. Many NATO PRTs use different types of communication devices, making communication difficult or impossible. Standardizing transportation, communications, and air support equipment and operations would allow PRTs to focus more on delivering services to the Afghan people and less on administrative tasks. More funding to implement a wider array of reconstruction projects would also help PRTs have a greater impact in the countryside. Second, the number of Army civil affairs teams working with PRTs and interacting with the Afghan population should be increased. Expecting eight people to cover an entire province – or even a provincial district – and have a meaningful impact is unrealistic. The number of civil affairs teams should be reviewed to determine whether and where increases could be most beneficial. Third, civilian and military personnel must better coordinate their activities to achieve their objectives more effectively. The interagency community should develop clear guidance outlining the roles and responsibilities of each department or agency participating in a PRT. The security threats facing the United States have evolved from large armies on battlefields to small insurgent groups operating within civilian populations. To address contemporary threats, diplomats, cultural experts, and soldiers must be able to work together effectively. This will require a mental shift in Washington as bureaucrats evolve from viewing each other as competitors to seeing each other as partners. Career-long, interagency training and deployments, such as were implemented within the armed services under the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, would be an important step in implementing this goal. Fourth, PRT commanders should be encouraged to incorporate non-DoD representatives into PRT decision-making. While different departments are tasked with overseeing different objectives (military officers should focus on security, for example, while State Department officials should focus on governance) the successful reconstruction of Afghanistan will ultimately depend on all departments and agencies achieving their goals. An important step in realizing this goal will be to increase the number of civilian personnel serving on PRTs, from one per department to two, or even four or six. By working together effectively, and by incorporating civilian expertise into the decision-making process, PRTs can be more valuable to the citizens of Afghanistan and the world. Fifth, PRT commanders should do their utmost to create positive relationships with IGOs/NGOs operating in Afghanistan. Intergovernmental organizations and NGOs will continue to play a valuable role in the long-term development of Afghanistan. PRT commanders should focus on the most insecure parts of the country where IGOs/NGOs cannot operate due to a lack of infrastructure or security. Additionally, mutually acceptable means of communication and information sharing should be established between IGOs, NGOs, and PRTs. Such systems could take the form of Internet websites, Humanitarian

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Information Centers, Humanitarian Operation Centers, out-of-country meetings, or organizational liaisons. While it will be difficult to overcome many of the stereotypes and tensions that have developed between PRTs (which use force to implement political goals) and IGOs/NGOs (which are dedicated to impartial, neutral relief activities), ultimately it is in the interest of all groups to create a secure, prosperous Afghanistan. By respecting each other and cooperating – though not necessarily collaborating – PRTs, NGOs, and IGOs all stand to improve the chances of realizing their goals and objectives. Sixth, PRTs should increase the participation of local Afghans in reconstruction and security-building activities. Ultimately, the Afghan people will have to take responsibility for their own country. PRTs can help them prepare for ensuring security and promoting development. Close relationships with Afghan nationals will give PRTs greater credibility as they interact with local populations, as well as instill the understanding that the Afghan Central Government is taking charge of the country. Implementing these recommendations will be expensive and politically difficult. At a NATO meeting in Riga, Latvia on 28 November 2006, NATO leaders hailed efforts to relax the curbs on deployment that many member states had placed on their troops in Afghanistan.28 Under strong pressure from the United States, several NATO members will now allow their troops to operate where they are needed most, along the southern and eastern border with Pakistan. Additionally, a few countries offered to commit more soldiers to the effort and France agreed to send more helicopters and aircraft. Despite the diplomatic efforts expended, however, these measures will result in the movement of approximately 2,500 troops into the theater of operations, and will have an extremely limited impact on winning the support of ordinary Afghans. The relatively modest efforts made to “win the peace” in Afghanistan are unfortunate. The international community failed to engage Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1979, which led to the rise of the Taliban and its support of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. To a very large degree the international community is again failing to engage Afghanistan, and the consequences could be disastrous. PRTs represent the best strategy to stabilize the military and political situation in Afghanistan to promote its economic development, and to support its fledgling central government. With adequate support they may yet meet this incredible challenge. Without adequate support they will not, and the world will be a much more dangerous place.

Notes 1 Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: An Interagency Assessment. USAID document, June 2006. 2 Gerard McHugh and Lola Gostelow, Provincial Reconstruction Teams and Humanitarian– Military Relations in Afghanistan, study prepared by Save the Children, 2004. 3 Stephen Krasner and Carlos Pascual, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 84, no. 4 (July/August 2005). 4 Robert Perito, USIP Special Report 152, “The U.S. Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan,” October 2005.

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5 Michael McNerney, “Stabilization and Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRTs a Model or a Muddle?” Parameters (Winter 2005–6). 6 CRS Report for Congress: “Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security and U.S. Policy,” 23 August 2006. 7 Perito, “The U.S. Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan.” 8 Interview with MAJ Glenn Woodson, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, 31 October 2006. 9 Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan. 10 Ibid. 11 Interview with Woodson. 12 Andrew Natsios, “The Nine Principles of Reconstruction and Development,” Parameters, vol. 35, no. 3, 22 September 2005. 13 Thomas Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, vol. 51, no. 1 (2007). 14 Conference Report, “Humanitarian Roles in Insecure Environments,” prepared by the Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies, Naval Postgraduate School, January 2005. 15 Michael Dziedzic and Michael Seidl, USIP Special Report 147, “Provincial Reconstruction Teams and Military Relations with International and Nongovernmental Organizations in Afghanistan,” September 2005. 16 Kate Wiltrout, “Navy’s Role in Afghanistan Grows,” Virginia Pilot (21 May 2006). 17 “Navy Offers Advancement Points as Part of New IA Initiatives,” Navy Newsstand (17 October 2006). 18 Ibid. 19 “CNO Meets with PRT Commanders Headed to Afghanistan,” Navy Newsstand, (15 April 2006). 20 Wiltrout, “Navy’s Role in Afghanistan Grows.” 21 Johnson and Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan.” 22 Interview with Woodson. 23 The Economist Pocket World in Figures, 2006 edition. 24 CIA World Factbook, https://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html (accessed 4 November 2006). 25 David Rohde and James Risen, “C.I.A. Review Highlights Afghan Leader’s Woes,” New York Times (5 November 2006). 26 “NATO Hails Shift on Afghan Combat,” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ europe/6191504.stm (accessed 29 November 2006). 27 Thomas Johnson, “The Other War We Are Losing,” presentation at the Common Wealth Club of California, San Francisco, 16 November 2006. 28 “NATO Hails Shift on Afghan Combat.”

11 A small intervention Lessons from Liberia 2003 Alan J. Kuperman

Despite logistical limitations and potential unintended consequences,1 humanitarian military intervention into ongoing conflicts can in some cases save many lives with relatively small military force deployments. An excellent example, in 2003, was Joint Task Force (JTF) Liberia. Comprising only a single Marine amphibious ready group (MARG) of just over 2,000 troops, and deploying only 320 of those troops ashore, the operation facilitated the end of a civil war, helped avert a bloodbath, and paved the way for a democratic transition in a country that had long been wracked by violence. The remarkable success of JTF Liberia is underscored by comparison to a previous U.S. military operation in the same country. In 1990, Liberia had experienced instability quite similar to that in 2003. In both cases, two rebel groups converged on the capital, threatening to overthrow the president, and the United States deployed a MARG offshore. But in 1990, the U.S. troops avoided entanglement in Liberia’s internal conflict and instead conducted only a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) of foreign nationals. The rebels proceeded to occupy the capital and assassinate the president, triggering 13 years of civil war in Liberia that killed tens of thousands and sparked wars in neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast that killed tens of thousands more. The stark contrast between the outcomes in 2003 and 1990 raises tantalizing questions: Did the relatively small JTF Liberia really account for the vastly improved outcome in 2003, and if so, how? Were other preconditions essential for success? Most important, can this operation serve as a model for future successful U.S. humanitarian military intervention without large ground forces? The remainder of this chapter responds to these questions.

Similar crises + different U.S. missions = vastly different outcomes The crises and interventions of 1990 and 2003 had much in common, yet they led to vastly different outcomes, making them ideal for comparative study. There were several significant similarities between the two events: in each case the capital, Monrovia, was besieged in a pincer by two rebel groups; the United States deployed offshore a MARG of about 2,000 troops; and West African

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states initially deployed about 3,500 peacekeepers into Liberia in hopes of facilitating a cease-fire. In both cases, it was hoped that intervention would be followed by a transitional government and democratic elections. But the former intervention led to chaos while the latter produced stability. The roots of both crises date to 1980. Until then, Liberia had been ruled by a small elite descended from the former American slaves who founded the country in 1822, rather than the 14 native tribes that comprise more than 90 percent of the population. This changed in 1980 when the army launched a coup, killing President William Tolbert and replacing him with Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, a member of the small Krahn tribe. In 1985, Doe won rigged elections, but then faced a coup attempt himself. He defeated the putsch and retaliated brutally against the Gio and Mano tribes of central Liberia that he suspected of supporting it. In late 1989, Charles Taylor, a former Doe official who had fled six years earlier under corruption charges, invaded the country with a small rebel group – the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). Taylor easily recruited supporters among the alienated Gio and Mano tribes, and within months controlled much of central Liberia, converging on Monrovia from the east.2 In February 1990, one of Taylor’s top deputies, Prince Johnson, split off and formed his own rebel group, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), which converged on the capital from the north. By July 1990, Johnson controlled the free port that was Monrovia’s commercial lifeline, Taylor held Roberts International Airport, and Doe was holed up in his presidential mansion in the capital, as the two rebel groups closed their pincer around him. Thousands of civilians, especially of tribes not associated with the rebels, sought refuge in Monrovia, where the humanitarian situation grew increasingly desperate.3 1990: avoiding involvement exacerbates chaos The U.S. military response to the first crisis began on 25 May 1990, when MARG 2–90 was ordered to deploy to Liberia in preparation for a noncombatant evacuation operation. The MARG included four ships, the 2,100 Marines of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), 11 transport helicopters, four Cobra attack helicopters, and ten AV-8B Harrier jets.4 A two-person, forward command element arrived at the Monrovia embassy on 31 May. On 1 June the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel to leave Liberia.5 The MARG, which had been in France, required just two days to load out, and arrived off the coast of Monrovia on 3 June. During the next two months, however, as the rebels converged on the capital, the MARG did nothing in Liberia. That changed on 4 August, when INPFL leader Prince Johnson declared he would begin seizing Westerners the next day to compel international intervention. Strangely, he believed that this action would facilitate his assumption of power. On 5 August, the MARG commenced evacuation Operation Sharp Edge. A reinforced rifle company of 237 Marines deployed via helicopter to the U.S. embassy to protect it, provide logistics, and organize the bulk of the evacuation.

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Two other small units deployed briefly via helicopter to evacuate 21 Americans from two intelligence communication sites used by the Voice of America. Eight days later, on 13 August, the embassy contingent was downsized to 65 Marines. On 20 August, MARG 2–90 was relieved by MARG 3–90 including the 26th MEU.6 Over the next five months, the operation evacuated 2,400 foreign nationals, including 226 Americans, and flew 1,600 helicopter sorties of logistics to the embassy, including 35,500 gallons of fuel in 500-gallon bladders.7 But U.S. forces did not intervene in the Liberian conflict to reduce violence or even provide humanitarian assistance – they simply enabled the evacuation. The operation terminated and the Marines departed the coast of Liberia on 9 January 1991. In the absence of U.S. intervention, Liberia’s West African neighbors, who were inundated with refugees from the conflict, attempted to manage the situation themselves. On 6 August 1990, a Standing Mediation Committee of five neighbors approved a plan for an immediate cease-fire, deployment of peacekeeping troops from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to monitor the cease-fire, establishment of an interim government, and eventual elections. On 24 August, 4,000 peacekeepers, primarily Nigerians, began deploying to Liberia under the banner of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). But there was no cease-fire for them to monitor. Although Johnson welcomed the intervention openly, and Doe may have done so tacitly, Taylor’s rebels attacked the peacekeepers upon their arrival.8 President Doe initially clung to his office, perhaps encouraged by the U.S. troop presence offshore. As one Western diplomat explained in June 1990: “Sending the Marines here has sent Doe the wrong signal. He thinks he can hang on until the bitter end.”9 In defiance of Doe, Liberian civil-society figures appointed a new acting president and interim government at a meeting in Banjul, Gambia on 2 September 1990.10 A week later, while Doe was visiting ECOMOG headquarters in Monrovia, the peacekeepers permitted the rebel leader Prince Johnson to enter the site. Johnson and his men seized Doe, tortured him, and then executed him at the peacekeeping headquarters.11 Rather than containing Liberia’s civil war, the poorly disciplined ECOMOG troops became party to it – not merely battling armed elements but engaging in widespread looting and violence against civilians.12 By November 1990, an estimated one-half of Liberia’s population of two million had fled as refugees to neighboring states, and others were displaced internally.13 In 1991, former government troops formed their own rebel group, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), and other groups subsequently arose or split off from existing ones. Taylor, seeking diamond revenue and angry at neighboring Sierra Leone for providing a base for the ECOMOG force, spread the war to that country in 1991 by sponsoring the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which soon became infamous for hacking off the limbs of children as a method of intimidation. Liberia’s civil war raged on for seven years in this initial phase, interrupted only by temporary peace plans and cease-fires that Taylor typically broke

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because he had no intention of sharing power.14 (Indeed, the U.S. military was compelled to conduct a second NEO, Operation Assured Response, in spring 1996, evacuating an estimated 2,444 foreign nationals, including 485 Americans.)15 Ultimately, the international community and Liberians acquiesced to Taylor’s ascension to power. During implementation of the 1996 Abuja II peace agreement, ECOMOG disarmed Liberia’s weaker rebel factions but failed to confront Taylor’s prior to organizing elections. Because Taylor still controlled most of the country, the war-weary Liberian populace opted for peace by electing him president in July 1997. Stability was achieved, at least temporarily, but only after seven years of war that had cost tens of thousands of lives in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. 2003: intervention leads to democratic transition Despite his electoral mandate, Charles Taylor continued to rule by force. His army, police, and militias exacted a severe toll on civilians, especially the Krahn and Mandingo ethnic groups associated with the preceding Doe regime. According to one retrospective report: “The militias were generally unpaid and engaged in widespread intimidation, extortion and looting of the general population and internally displaced persons.”16 By 1999, remnants of Doe’s forces had combined with exile groups to form a new rebel movement, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), which in 2002 splintered, creating the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). The LURD eventually comprised 3,000 to 5,000 mainly Mandingo fighters, based in northern and central Liberia, while MODEL grew to 1,500–3,000 mainly Krahn rebels, concentrated in southern and eastern Liberia. Taylor inadvertently helped the rebels by his foreign adventurism. In

Figure 11.1 Two rebel groups converge on Monrovia in 2003.17

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Figure 11.2 LURD rebels drive refugees into Monrovia.18

2000, his forces crossed into Guinea in search of diamonds, but that country took revenge by supporting the LURD. In 2001, the UN imposed an arms embargo on Liberia due to Taylor’s support of Sierra Leonean rebels.19 In 2002, he supported two rebel factions in neighboring Ivory Coast, but that government retaliated by backing MODEL.20 Although the rebels were ragtag, included many child soldiers, they made steady progress against Taylor’s forces, who were handicapped by their own child soldiers, poor morale, drugs, alcohol, and the arms embargo. By June 2003, Taylor found himself in the same position as Doe in 1990, facing two rebel groups converging on the capital in a pincer – the LURD from the north and MODEL from the east (see Figure 11.1). On 17 June ECOWAS mediated a temporary halt in the fighting.21 But within days the crisis escalated as the cease-fire failed and the LURD advanced to occupy part of Bushrod Island, immediately north of Monrovia and home to the free port that is the capital’s lifeline. By late July, the LURD held the free port, while MODEL had captured Liberia’s second city, Buchanan, and its port east of Monrovia.22 See Figure 11.2. The reaction of the United States and ECOWAS was initially similar to that in 1990, but it then evolved in important ways. On 9 June 2003, the United States ordered Operation Shining Express, led by the USS Kearsarge, to deploy to the coast of Liberia in preparation for possible evacuation of noncombatants. President George W. Bush also called on Taylor to step down, but initially to no avail. On 2 July, ECOWAS authorized a peacekeeping operation called the

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ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL).23 On 17 July, the United States ordered formation of Joint Task Force Liberia, which required 12 days to stand up, including four days’ travel to the theater from the Horn of Africa – so that on 29 July it took up positions 20 miles off the coast of Monrovia.24 On 1 August, the United Nations authorized ECOWAS to utilize in Liberia assets from a UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. This set the stage for the order of battle shown in Figure 11.3. The military assets of JTF Liberia were limited but well suited to the chosen tactics (see Figure 11.4). The core of the task force was the Iwo Jima amphibious ready group, comprising three ships, and the 26th MEU, comprising 2,200 Marines, 24 aircraft, and motorized vehicles for combat and support.25 In addition, the 398th Air Expeditionary Group was attached to evacuate noncombatants. To insure that ECOMIL forces were suitably prepared for the operation, they were assessed in advance through site visits by the Army 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. The headquarters for the operation was a continent away, at the U.S. Army Europe’s 21st Theater Support Command near Vicenza, Italy. Active liaison was conducted with the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia and with ECOWAS.26 Logistics – including housing, office equipment, communications, and stores – were provided by a private contractor, Pacific Architects and Engineers Incorporated (PAE). Government Army Irregular forces Rebels LURD MODEL Interveners ECOMIL (Nigeria-led) U.S.A.

12,000 10,000 5,000 3,000 3,500 2,200

Figure 11.3 Order of battle in Liberia, 2003 (source: the author).

• Iwo Jima ARG (3 ships) • 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit – 2,200 marines – 24 aircraft – combat and support vehicles • 398th Air Expeditionary Group (for NEO) • Army 1st Btln, 10th Special Forces Group (to assess ECOMIL contributors) • U.S. Army Europe’s 21st Theater Support Command • Contractor logistics (PAE): housing, office equipment, communication, stores, etc. • Liaison with U.S. Embassy and ECOWAS

Figure 11.4 JTF Liberia – force structure (source: the author).

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President Taylor, under pressure militarily from the rebels and diplomatically from the international community, announced on 2 August that he would leave office on 11 August.27 On 4 August, with Taylor’s permission, ECOMIL entered the country, initially deploying by air its first Nigerian battalion (NIBATT-1) to secure Roberts International Airport, approximately 40 km east of downtown Monrovia.28 ECOMIL’s mission was primarily to establish separation zones between the belligerent factions, as well as corridors for humanitarian assistance. Its two main battalions were Nigerian, comprising 1,500 troops, but seven other West African countries contributed to three other battalions, for an eventual force of about 3,500 troops in-country by 10 September.29 On 7 August, Taylor delivered his resignation to Liberia’s Congress. On that same day ECOMIL troops at the airport intercepted a shipment of arms and ammunition destined for the government, thereby undercutting Taylor’s ability to hold power by force, if he still entertained that option.30 On 11 August, as pledged, Taylor left the country for asylum in Nigeria, and the U.S. MARG deployed closer to the capital, within sight barely three miles offshore. The day of 14 August was perhaps the most important of the military operation. The United States deployed 320 troops ashore, including 150 Marines to Roberts Airport as a quick reaction force (QRF), and an 80-Marine engineering unit to Bushrod Island to rehabilitate the free port. The task force also commenced air patrols, covering the deployment by land of ECOMIL’s second Nigerian battalion (NIBATT-2) from the airport, where it had arrived from Sierra Leone, to Bushrod Island. At the same time, the LURD withdrew from Bushrod to positions above the Po River, as it had agreed after Taylor departed and in anticipation of ECOMIL’s arrival. Four days later the government and both rebel groups signed a comprehensive peace agreement, authorizing ECOMIL to protect senior officials, monitor cantonment of weapons, and prepare for demobilization, disarmament, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) of fighters. On the same day, President Bush announced that U.S. troops would withdraw by 1 October.31 On 24 August, having spent only 11 days ashore, the QRF returned to the ships, now positioned off Bushrod Island. Despite the absence of U.S. ground support, ECOWAS troops quelled looting in the capital, rather than perpetrating it as they had in 1990. Indeed, the peacekeepers were so disciplined that they reportedly succeeded “without firing a shot.”32 ECOMIL barely had enough peacekeepers for its mission in the capital, so violence continued in the countryside, but on 8 September the mission did attempt to send a deterrent signal by deploying 55 troops to two towns 150 km north of the capital, covered by the JTF’s aerial reconnaissance.33 On 19 September, the United Nations approved a new United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), absorbing the 3,500 ECOMIL forces and authorizing an increase to 15,000 troops, while expanding the mandate to include port security, facilitation of humanitarian aid, implementation of DDRR, security-sector reform, protection of civilians, and preparation for democratic elections.34 On 26 September, the MARG deployed back over the horizon, and the last JTF troop departed

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Figure 11.5 Humanitarian access to rural Liberia via Monrovia.35

Liberia four days later. On 1 October, ECOMIL was formally re-hatted as a UN mission.36 See Figure 11.5. Little more than a year later, in December 2004, UNMIL declared that it had demobilized 100,000 fighters and collected 27,000 weapons.37 The following year, in November 2005, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson was elected president. In March 2006, Nigeria announced plans to revoke Charles Taylor’s asylum and hand him to the special court for war crimes in Sierra Leone, which it did after he briefly escaped and was recaptured at the Cameroon border. See Figure 11.6 for a timeline of the 2003 crisis. The contrast in outcomes between 1990 and 2003 is stark. In the earlier case, U.S. forces evacuated foreign nationals and then departed, allowing Liberia to descend into a civil war that spread to its neighbors and killed tens of thousands over the next 13 years. In the later case, U.S. forces worked with neighboring states, especially Nigeria, to end Liberia’s civil war and facilitate a peaceful democratization. At the time of this writing, Liberia remains a stable democracy.

Keys to strategy: diplomacy, alliances, and coercion JTF Liberia aimed to accomplish a lot, with limited resources, through efficient tactics that served as a force multiplier, and managed to achieve all four of its

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• 17–25 June – Ceasefire breaks down; LURD partly occupies Bushrod Island • 2 July – ECOWAS authorizes ECOMIL • 17 July – U.S. order to form JTF; 12 days to stand up (including four days travel) • 29 July – MARG arrives 20 miles offshore • 4 Aug – ECOMIL deploys to secure airport with NIBATT-1 • 11 Aug – Taylor goes into exile; MARG moves to three miles offshore • 14 Aug – U.S. QRF to airport, engineers to port; NIBATT-2 to Bushrod; LURD withdraws • 18 Aug – CPA signed by GOL, LURD, MODEL; Bush announces withdrawal by 1 Oct • 24 Aug – QRF back to ships (nearer Bushrod) • 8 Sept – ECOMIL deploys beyond capital • 30 Sept – Last Marines deploy back to ship • 1 Oct – ECOMIL (3,500 troops) transfer to UNMIL (15,000 troops) *** • Nov 2005 – Sirleaf-Johnson elected president • Mar 2006 – Nigeria revokes Taylor’s asylum and remands him to Special Court

Figure 11.6 Timeline of 2003 crisis (source: the author).

stated objectives in sequence: political, security, humanitarian, and transition (see Figure 11.7). Politically, the goal was to facilitate the peaceful departure of Charles Taylor, to avoid a bloody culminating battle between government forces and the rebels as well as possible follow-on hostilities between rebel factions fighting over the spoils. In the security realm, the task force aimed not to function as a robust ground presence itself, but rather to facilitate the operations of ECOMIL. That enabled African peacekeepers to secure checkpoints, control the airport to block resupply of arms to Taylor’s government, and insure the withdrawal of rebel forces from Bushrod Island to permit unfettered humanitarian access to the seaport. On the humanitarian front, the goal was to restore Monrovia’s seaport to enable delivery of relief supplies to tens of thousands of civilians already displaced by the rebel advance. The task force also aimed to facilitate two transitions: installing an interim government to replace Taylor’s regime; and handing off the international role from JTF Liberia and ECOMIL to a new UN mission.38 To facilitate Taylor’s departure, the United States employed three diplomatic tactics. First, Washington prevailed upon Nigeria to offer asylum to the Liberian president. Second, America gave the rebels a tacit green light to converge on Monrovia until Taylor departed. Third, the United States refused to deploy its forces ashore until Taylor departed.39 This conveyed to Taylor that, if he remained in Liberia, the rebels would soon capture and possibly kill him, and the United States would not deploy to protect him, but that he had a soft landing in Nigeria if he were willing to take it, which ultimately he did. The subsequent revocation of Taylor’s asylum was applauded by human-rights organizations, but it could impede diplomatic resolution of future conflicts by discouraging besieged leaders from accepting asylum offers and encouraging them to fight to the end. Militarily, JTF Liberia employed five main tactics. Most importantly, it deployed a quick reaction force of 150 troops to Roberts Airport. Although this

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troop level was quite modest, the combination of U.S. ground presence and rapid-reaction capability from on- and offshore assured the Nigerian peacekeepers that they could deploy from the airport to Bushrod Island without fear of ambush or being constrained to use gratuitous force that might have sparked hostilities with local forces. The onshore U.S. presence also facilitated deterrence of local forces, including MODEL rebels who had been advancing on Monrovia from the east. See Figure 11.7. The second tactic was flying air patrols over Monrovia – initially employing Harrier jets and Cobra helicopters, and subsequently P-3 aircraft – for reconnaissance, rapid reaction (if necessary), and deterrence. Third, the MARG moved from 20 miles to three miles offshore so that it could be seen from the city and Bushrod Island (where LURD rebels were located) to enhance the deterrent factor. Fourth, information operations communicated deterrent threats to Liberians via radio, newspaper, and leaflets, underscoring that U.S. forces were willing and able to react quickly if anyone challenged the peace process. Finally, 80 Marines conducted engineering to rehabilitate the seaport.40 Rather than employing a large U.S. occupation force, such as was sent to Somalia in 1992, JTF Liberia succeeded through diplomacy, alliances, and coercion. Diplomacy facilitated the voluntary departure of Charles Taylor by granting him asylum in Nigeria, so that government forces and rebels did not have to fight to the bitter end in Monrovia. Alliances meant that most of the ground forces needed to occupy strategic locations – Roberts Airport, Bushrod Island, and key checkpoints – were supplied by Nigeria, which reduced the demand for American troops and thereby made it easier logistically and politically for the United States to intervene. Coercion was achieved by demonstrating U.S. resolve – through air patrols, gunboat diplomacy, information operations, deployment of the ground-based quick reaction force, and maintenance of a reserve force offshore – to deter any challenge to ECOMIL, humanitarian relief, or American forces.

Objectives • Political: Taylor’s departure • Humanitarian: Open ports • Transition: Facilitate shift to UN and transitional government • Security: Facilitate ECOMIL deployment so that it can: – Secure checkpoints – Ensure withdrawal of rebel forces; pacify port and Bushrod – Control airport (block arms imports to Taylor)

Tactics • • • • •

QRF to airport Engineers to seaport Air patrols MARG near shore Info ops (radio, newspaper, leaflets)

Figure 11.7 JTF Liberia’s objectives and tactics (source: the author).

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A new model of intervention? Some have credited the U.S.–ECOMIL multilateral intervention for Liberia’s happy ending in 2003, asserting that it represents a new model for effective intervention without significant use of force. For example, the ECOWAS afteraction review states: “Success of ECOMIL was achieved without firing a shot and without any major complaints from the warring factions about the legality or legitimacy of the intervention. . . . [It] forestalled great loss of life, indescribable suffering and widespread destruction.”41 Likewise, the U.S. Army’s Southern European Task Force (SETAF) characterized the intervention as follows: “An unqualified success, this mission serves as a highly successful model for future support and stability operations.”42 Before jumping to such conclusions, however, it is necessary to explore two questions. Does the U.S.-led military intervention really deserve credit for Liberia’s positive outcome in 2003, or were there other differences from 1990 that may explain the improved outcome in the later case? To the extent that the 2003 intervention does deserve credit in Liberia, would such an operation be likely to succeed in other conflicts? Compared to 1990, there were at least four different circumstances in 2003 – other than the extent of U.S. military intervention – that help account for Liberia’s soft landing. First, unlike Samuel Doe in 1990, President Charles Taylor agreed to leave the country, thereby eliminating the rebels’ main casus belli. Since the rebels no longer had to capture Monrovia to remove the president, they were willing to accept a cease-fire that truncated fighting against government forces and averted a potential subsequent battle among the rebels. Ironically, in 1990, the United States had considered but rejected a similar plan, according to former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Herman Cohen: In the State Department’s Africa Bureau at the time [1990], we proposed a dramatic diplomatic intervention that would have taken the then President Samuel Doe into exile in a U.S. military aircraft, opened the border into Sierra Leone to help Doe’s incompetent army escape slaughter, and allowed Charles Taylor to take power with a minimum loss of additional blood. While this proposal was approved by the highest levels in the State Department, it was vetoed at the National Security Council level.43 The second difference in 2003 was that ECOWAS forces were better trained prior to deployment, which helps explain why they did not loot or become party to Liberia’s war as in 1990. This is especially true of NIBATT-2, the ECOMOG battalion that had the most sensitive role in 2003, deploying by land from the airport to occupy Bushrod Island as the LURD rebels withdrew. Had the Nigerian troops resorted to gratuitous force in 2003, as in 1990, they might have provoked the rebels into breaking the cease-fire agreement. But NIBATT-2 had undergone special training under Operation Focus Relief, the U.S. program from 2000–2 to train African troops for peacekeeping in Sierra Leone.44 According to

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a November 2003 presentation by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa Whelan: Operation Focus Relief-trained battalions remain cohesive units today and one was actually deployed to Liberia this August [2003]. Based on UN reports . . . NIBATT-2 in Liberia these days stands above the other African units in terms of its professionalism and its conduct of its mission in the field.45 The third difference in 2003 was that all Liberian forces – rebel and government – welcomed the ECOWAS intervention. By contrast, in 1990, Charles Taylor’s rebels attacked the ECOMOG troops upon arrival. Had any Liberian forces done likewise in 2003, it is not clear that the lightly equipped ECOMIL troops could have repelled them without greater intervention by U.S. ground forces. As noted in a retrospective analysis of ECOMIL by one of its senior officials: “One should not lose sight of the operational limitations that attended these efforts and that could have undermined its effectiveness, especially if the parties had shown less commitment to the cease-fire agreement.”46 The fourth difference in 2003 was that the United Nations eventually sent more than 15,000 troops and police to consolidate the peace. UNMIL stemmed violence in the countryside that U.S. and ECOMIL forces had failed to address, and also facilitated humanitarian assistance, demobilization, and democratic transition.47 By contrast, following the 1990 ECOMOG intervention, the United Nations never deployed more than 400 uniformed personnel in its United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) operation from 1993–7.48 If not for the robust follow-on UN force in 2003, it is possible that Liberia would have fallen back into civil war, so that today we would instead ask why the U.S. and ECOMIL interventions had failed. Although the above factors contributed significantly to success in 2003, the U.S. intervention also played two crucial roles. First, American diplomacy facilitated the exit of Taylor, which was essential to achieving the cease-fire. Second, the U.S. deployment of a quick reaction force and air patrol enabled the rapid deployment of ECOMIL, thereby averting a security vacuum in Monrovia that could have reignited violence. Thus, the direct American military impact was brief – in the second week of August 2003 – but potentially decisive. After it enabled ECOMIL to deploy successfully to Bushrod Island on 14 August, the American mission was essentially completed, so President Bush announced four days later that U.S. forces would withdraw from Liberia by 1 October. The United States also managed to avoid errors that have caused interventions elsewhere to backfire terribly. Supporting rebels to overthrow a government can trigger disaster if that government responds by escalating violence – including ethnic cleansing and genocide – in a desperate attempt to retain power and to protect itself from the retribution that can follow rebel victory. To prevent intervention from backfiring in this manner, potential interveners should follow several guidelines: do not attempt to overturn domestic power balances

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overnight; offer “golden parachutes,” including asylum, to oppressive leaders willing to leave office peacefully; and avoid coercive diplomacy unless there is international political will for a robust preventive military deployment to guard against potential escalation of violence.49 The 2003 intervention in Liberia was consistent with these guidelines: the peace plan did not disenfranchise officials of the previous regime but rather incorporated them in the transitional government; Taylor was offered asylum in Nigeria; and the United States and ECOWAS preventively deployed a military force that was sufficiently robust in comparison to potential opponents. But the U.S. success in Liberia should not be extrapolated too broadly because it depended on several idiosyncrasies. First, the adversaries in Liberia – as is typical in West Africa but not in other zones of instability – were remarkably feeble and easily deterred. The rebels had a combined strength of less than 8,000, of whom 80 percent were estimated to be child soldiers,50 leaving fewer than 2,000 adult fighters. Moreover, the rebels lacked heavy weapons or training, abused drugs and alcohol, and had no mobilizing ideology such as religion or nationalism. The government’s forces were evidently even weaker, considering that they were losing to these ragtag rebels. Because West Africa commonly has such feeble forces, small military interventions by advanced industrialized states have repeatedly proved capable of imposing peace. For example, in Sierra Leone in 1997, a mere 200 mercenaries from the South African company Executive Outcomes, using helicopter gunships and recruiting local militia, were able to defeat the RUF rebels in a matter of days. Three years later in Sierra Leone, after the mercenaries were dismissed and the RUF resurged, a British intervention of only 1,000 troops definitively defeated the rebels. Likewise, in Ivory Coast in late 2002, 4,000 French peacekeepers successfully imposed a cease-fire in a country of 17 million. Such feats are unimaginable elsewhere in Africa or most other conflict regions. In Somalia in 1992, for example, 37,000 U.S.-led peacekeepers were unable to impose peace on a populace of eight million. Likewise, in Iraq since 2003, a U.S.-led occupation by over 130,000 troops has failed to bring stability. Second, although ethnicity played a role in Liberia’s conflict, it never fostered the levels of fear or violence found in other conflicts, such as in Central Africa or the Balkans. Liberia’s government forces drew heavily from the Gio and Mano tribes, while the LURD was mainly Mandingo, and MODEL largely Krahn. But at the time of intervention, according to Lansana Gberie, there was “little rancour among these former ‘enemies’ ” because the conflict had been “largely a mercenary and opportunistic enterprise, with no ideological and little ethnic basis.”51 Third, unlike in many other conflicts or previously in Liberia, by 2003 all sides were exhausted by war and welcomed U.S. intervention. As Herman Cohen explained with only slight exaggeration in July 2003: “The Liberians are all saying, ‘Please come in and help us. We want the Americans here.’ The Liberians were never a colony of the United States. They’re trying to become a colony in a sense.”52

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Conclusion: when limited intervention can work In light of today’s over-commitment of the U.S. military, the choice in dealing with future regional contingencies may be between a limited intervention in the conflict or simply evacuating foreign nationals. The case of Liberia, especially the contrast between 1990 and 2003, indicates that, under the appropriate circumstances, a limited intervention can produce a much better outcome than an evacuation. In summer 2003, Africa experts and humanitarians claimed the United States was risking calamity by not sending a larger force ashore in Liberia. On the New York Times op-ed page, a UN human rights officer warned: “Holding American soldiers back in deference to a regional force that has been demonstrably brutal and misguided is a grave mistake.”53 Similarly, a former U.S. ambassador to Africa declared in a Washington Post op-ed: “To do this right, the United States should plan from the outset for a force of 1,500 to 2,000 U.S. troops, supported by 2,000 to 3,000 West African troops. We should plan to stay nine to 12 months.”54 The United States defied these doomsayers. It deployed a peak of only 320 troops ashore and then withdrew most of them 11 days later. Despite this circumscription, none of the predicted nightmare scenarios materialized and peace was achieved. Such a small deployment will not always be appropriate or effective. In some cases, such as Bosnia, a larger force may be necessary to deter or coerce stronger potential opponents. In other cases, such as Iraq, even a large force may be inadequate to the task. In still other cases, such as Darfur, a small deployment can unintentionally encourage rebels and thereby escalate rather than mitigate conflict.55 But the case of JTF Liberia demonstrates that, with the proper preconditions – intelligent diplomacy, well-trained local military allies, and relatively weak adversaries – a limited deployment of American force can restore order and save thousands of lives. Such a finding has implications for future U.S. Navy SSTR operations.

Notes 1 Alan J. Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001); Alan J. Kuperman and Timothy W. Crawford (eds), Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War (New York: Routledge, 2006). 2 Lansana Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process: A Historical Overview,” in Festus Aboagye and Alhaji M S Bah, eds, A Tortuous Road to Peace: The Dynamics of Regional, UN and International Humanitarian Interventions in Liberia (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2005), pp. 51–4. 3 Lt. Col. Glen R. Sachtleben, “Operation SHARP EDGE: The Corps’ MEU(SOC) Program in Action,” Marine Corps Gazette (November 1991), p. 84. 4 The four ships were the USS Saipan, USS Ponce (LPD 15), USS Sumter (LST1181), and USS Peterson (DD 969). Sachtleben, “Operation SHARP EDGE,” p. 78.

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5 Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Sends Ships to Liberia,” Washington Post, 1 June 1990, p. A1. 6 Of the ships in the new MARG, initially only the Whidbey Island (LSD 41) was involved in the Liberia operation, while the others participated in exercises. Later the Newport (LST 1179) joined in the Liberia operation. Subsequently, the Nashville (LPD 13) replaced both ships. Maj. John T. Germain, “Monrovia Revisited,” Marine Corps Gazette (February 1997), p. 50. 7 Sachtleben, “Operation SHARP EDGE,” p. 77. 8 Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” pp. 55–6. 9 Howard Witt, “U.S. Marines Keep an Eye on Liberia,” Toronto Star (10 June 1990, H3). 10 “Rebel Taylor Slays in Revenge,” Sunday Mail (SA) (2 September 1990). 11 Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” p. 57. 12 Ibid., pp. 55–6. 13 Peter Grier, “Liberians Face Increased Violence,” Christian Science Monitor (1 November 1990), p. 4. 14 These short-lived plans include the following: Bamako (Mali) cease-fire agreement, November 1990; Yamoussoukkro (Ivory Coast) disarmament agreement, October 1991; Cotonou (Benin) elections agreement, July 1993; Akosombo (Ghana) cease-fire agreement, September 1994; Akosombo II (Ghana) elections agreement, December 1994; Abuja (Nigeria) elections agreement, early 1995. Finally, the Abuja II (Nigeria) peace agreement, of mid-1996, was implemented (Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” pp. 58–61). 15 “Kearsarge Diverted to West Africa,” Flagship (19 June 2003); Germain, “Monrovia Revisited,” p. 51. 16 Colonel Theophilus Tawiah and Festus B. Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions: The ECOWAS Mission in Liberia and the Protection of Civilians,” in Aboagye and Bah, A Tortuous Road to Peace, p. 78. 17 Graphic created by BBC Television and used on ReliefWeb, and reproduced here with the permission of the BBC. 18 LURD rebels drive refugees into Monrovia. 19 The embargo was imposed by UN Security Council Resolution 1343 on 7 March 2001, though its effectiveness was questioned by Human Rights Watch. See http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/276/08/PDF/N0127608.pdf?OpenEl ement;, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/11/05/liberi3243.htm; and Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 80. 20 Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” pp. 62–3; Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” pp. 78–9; Jamie O’Connell, “Here Interest Meets Humanity,” Harvard Human Rights Journal vol. 17, pp. 216–17; and LURD Military High Command, “T. Q. Harris Appointed as LURD Negotiator,” 17 May 2003, at www.theperspective.org/tqharris_lurd.html. 21 Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 74. 22 Rory Carroll, “Liberian Rebels Seize Key City: Advances May Overtake Dispatch of Peacekeepers,” Guardian (29 July), p. 13. 23 Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 76. 24 Col. Blair A. Ross, Jr, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” Military Review (May–June 2005), p. 63. See also “26th Marine Expeditionary Unit/26 MEU,” at www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usmc/26meu.htm. 25 The three ships were the USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), USS Nashville (LPD 13), and USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) (“Iwo Jima ARG Leaves Liberia, Rota Marines Stay,” Navy Newstand, 14 October 2003). 26 Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” pp. 62–3. Lt. Col. Thomas W. Collins, “Joint Efforts Prevent Humanitarian Disaster in Liberia,” AUSA: Army Magazine (1 February 2004). In mid-July, the 398th Air Expeditionary Group was deployed to Sierra Leone and Senegal, and special operations forces were also

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deployed to neighboring states. In late July, the Monrovia Embassy was equipped with a seven-person forward coordination element. An eight-person liaison was deployed to ECOWAS headquarters in Accra, Ghana. The operation’s headquarters, in the Longare JTF facility in Italy, had a peak strength of 350 personnel. The JTF commander was Maj. Gen. Thomas Turner. Including all these elements, “At its apex, JTF Liberia consisted of over 5,000 service members,” according to SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.), “Combined Task Force (CTF) Liberia Psyop,” www.psywarrior.com/LiberiaPsyop.html. Jonathan Clayton, “Taylor Agrees to Cede Power on August 11,” Ottawa Citizen (3 August 2003), p. A7. Roberts International Airport has an 11,000 foot runway suitable for large aircraft, unlike Spriggs–Payne airport, which is closer to downtown Monrovia but has only a 6,000-foot runway. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/liberia/airfield.htm. ECOMIL deployed by air because Monrovia’s seaport was in rebel hands and Liberia’s roads were in bad condition (Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” pp. 77–8; Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” p. 67). Somini Sengupta, “Liberian President Resigns as Peacekeepers Enter Capital,” New York Times (8 August 2003), p. 3. Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 92. Karl Vick, “Liberian Rebels to Leave Capital: Occupation of Port Had Blocked Aid,” Washington Post (13 August 2003), p. A17; Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” pp. 87–9; and Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” pp. 65–7. The CPA was signed in Accra, Ghana. Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 95. Quote is from ECOWAS after-action report. Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” pp. 65–6; and Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 92. Violence continued in Nimba, Margibi, and Bong counties, and southeast Liberia. Festus B. Aboagye and Alhaji M. S. Bah, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions: The Contribution of the UN Mission in Liberia to Civilian Protection,” in Aboagye and Bah, A Tortuous Road to Peace, pp. 102–5; and Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” p. 64; U.N Security Council Resolution 1509, at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/525/70/PDF/N0352570.pdf?OpenElement. Humanitarian access to rural Liberia via Monrovia. Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” p. 67. Aboagye and Bah, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” pp. 111–13. The UN explains the discrepancy between demobilized fighters and weapons collected as partially the result of counting as demobilized the unarmed relatives of fighters. Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” pp. 61–2. Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” pp. 94–5, argues that this was “well-orchestrated brinkmanship by key actors in the region and the international community to insure a point of no return for Charles Taylor.” Ross, “The U.S. Joint Task Force Experience in Liberia,” pp. 63–5; Friedman, “Combined Task Force (CTF) Liberia Psyop.” Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” p. 95. Collins, “Joint Efforts Prevent Humanitarian Disaster in Liberia.” Herman J. Cohen, “Without U.S. Attention the Liberian Tragedy Will Continue to Fester,” based on presentation at American Enterprise Institute, 17 July 2003, www.aei.org/docLib/20030718_Cohen.pdf. Eric G. Berman, “The Provision of Lethal Military Equipment: French, UK, and US Peacekeeping Policies towards Africa,” Security Dialogue, vol. 34, no. 2 (2003), pp. 203–5; Mike Denning, “A Prayer for Marie: Creating an Effective African Standby Force,” Parameters (Winter 2004–5), p. 111.

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45 Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, Remarks to IPOA Dinner, Washington, DC, 19 November 2003, at www.dod.mil/policy/sections/policy_offices/isa/africa/IPOA.htm. 46 Tawiah and Aboagye, “Synergies of Regional and UN Interventions,” 96. From August to September 2003, Colonel Tawiah was the Chief of Staff of the ECOWAS vanguard force deployed to implement the Comprehensive Ceasefire Agreement of 18 August 2003. From October 2003 to October 2004, he was the senior military observer for the Monrovia sector. 47 See www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unmil/facts.html. 48 See www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unomilF.html. 49 See, for example, Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, pp. 109–19; Alan J. Kuperman, “Humanitarian Hazard: Revisiting Doctrines of Intervention,” Harvard International Review, vol. 26, no. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 64–8; and Alan J. Kuperman, “Suicidal Rebellions and the Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention,” in Kuperman and Crawford, Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention, pp. 1–25. 50 Jan Hennop, “Liberia: Peace at Last?” Institute for Security Studies (8 September 200), p. 3. 51 Gberie, “Liberia’s War and Peace Process,” pp. 64–5. 52 www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92654,00.html, 21 July 2003. 53 Kenneth L. Cain, “Send in the Marines,” New York Times (8 August 2003), p. 17. 54 Princeton N. Lyman, “How to Do Liberia Right,” Washington Post (19 July 2003), p. A21. 55 Alan J. Kuperman, “Strategic Victimhood in Sudan,” New York Times, op-ed (31 May 2006), p. 19.

Part IV

Conclusion

12 Conclusion Jeffrey A. Larsen

The United States Navy is facing a period of introspection as it transitions from the Cold War era, which called for a strategy of maritime supremacy, to a more uncertain time of smaller-scale events such as Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations. Unlike the other services, which have found themselves involved in nearly continuous combat operations for the past decade, senior naval officers have been forced to reconsider their core mission skill set and its relevance to the evolving threat environment. In so doing, they have recognized, albeit grudgingly, that while there may still be a need for carrier battle groups, submarines, and other traditional types of sea-dominance vessels, far more prevalent will be those sorts of operations that call for the mobile logistical and support capabilities that are inherent in naval forces. These include peacekeeping, humanitarian, stability, security, transition, and reconstruction capabilities – missions that were partly responsible for the creation of a navy in the first place. Stability operations were quite common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and were understood to represent an integral aspect of a great state’s diplomatic mission overseas. In essence, the Navy has discovered that, by looking to its future, it has found its new missions in its past. This discovery, however, has not been fully embraced by today’s naval officer corps, most of whom were weaned on the concept of a blue-water navy requiring large numbers of capital ships trained to fight a peer adversary. Since the demise of the Soviet threat in the early 1990s, the U.S. Navy has been called upon increasingly to provide support to, or sometimes carry out on its own, peacekeeping and other SSTR operations. The pace of those demands has increased since 9/11 and the War on Terror. The scale of many recent operations, and the location of interest, often far from any available land-based infrastructure, has meant that naval power has been the most effective means of delivering assistance in several natural and man-made disasters. While there are many types of operations that fall under the rubric of SSTR, Dan Moran describes them as having some commonalities: All require the modest, carefully modulated, and highly discriminate use of force, extensive coordination with domestic and foreign civilian agencies, and perhaps also with international government and non-governmental

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Jessica Piombo and Michael Malley supply us with another good, if somewhat tautological, definition taken from U.S. Department of Defense Directive 3000.05 (November 2005): Stability operations . . . referred to military and civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to conflict to establish or maintain order in states and regions, while SSTR activities included Defense Department activities that support U.S. government plans for stabilization, security, reconstruction, and transition operations which lead to sustainable peace while advancing U.S. interests.2 These definitions, however, highlight the primary issue facing Navy leaders today: how can the U.S. Navy transition to these new mission requirements? How can it dislodge the centrality of 50 years of Cold War logic that called for a much different set of force sizing issues, personnel training, and skill sets than those that will be needed in the foreseeable future? How will the service adapt, and how successful will be those individuals and organizations, none of them carrying much weight in the inner circles of Navy strategic planning, who advocate a future based on SSTR operations? There are some signs that the Navy’s senior leaders may be recognizing the need to meet these new missions. For example, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chief of Naval Operations, admitted in 2006 that, while the Navy “will still need traditional warfighting capabilities . . . given today’s incredibly complex and dynamic threats, not to mention tomorrow’s uncertainty, we must be capable of much, much more.”3 His is a minority view, but as the senior Navy officer, his views carry much weight and may help adjust the direction of future naval policies. This book provides a clearer view of what those future stability missions are, and how they are related to the U.S. and UK navies’ origins and history. These are not new missions, but the level of emphasis being placed on them is new in our lifetime. Our authors have shown not only what those missions are, and where they have come from, but they also suggest some methods for improving the Navy’s ability to adapt its forces and personnel to better accomplish the SSTR missions that will inevitably emerge in the future.

Key themes Several themes were highlighted by our contributors as they explored various aspects of the relationship between naval forces – the U.S. Navy in particular – and stability operations.

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Stability operations: the view from the sea The first section of this book reviewed the background of SSTR operations from historical, strategic, and legal perspectives. As might be expected, stability operations loom large in the annals of naval history, which makes it relatively easy to identify precedents for virtually all of the “modern” missions contemplated by contemporary strategists. SSTR operations are not new Several of the case studies highlighted by Dan Moran and John Ferris showed how the U.S. and UK navies were created, to some extent, by the need to meet stability, security, or humanitarian responsibilities. As Moran says, “Viewed from afloat . . . there is nothing immediately alarming about the heightened emphasis on stability operations.”4 Ferris reviews some eight cases in which the Royal Navy successfully performed SSTR operations while it ruled the seas, from the late eighteenth century until the period preceding World War II. Such operations were integral to the policy of the British Empire, and were of a type that could only, or best, be done using naval forces. Naval power can help accomplish successful military SSTR operations Any blue-water navy has the requisite skills and platforms to accomplish noncombat missions such as SSTR operations. Several of our authors present historical case studies, some of them quite recent, which demonstrate the accuracy of this assertion. These missions are typically more likely to succeed, however, if conducted by a larger multinational cooperative effort, rather than if attempted unilaterally, as both Ferris and Theo Farrell point out in their chapters. International law constrains but also authorizes military operations International law has been slow to keep up with the changing international security environment and the requirement for SSTR operations that typically follow conventional military missions. Farrell provides the background necessary for the reader to better understand the nuances of international law and its relationship to SSTR operations. For example, freedom of the seas is a fundamental principle enshrined in international laws of the sea. On the other hand, international laws also seriously restrict the use of force in stability operations. Since most stability operations require some degree of force, this potential for violence is a factor that must be considered when exploring the legality of stability missions. A positivist approach to international law authorizes the Western world to pursue the advance of liberalism. But as Farrell says, “America can win wars by military force alone. But to win the peace, it needs legal rules guided by liberal values.”5 In effect, stability operations can and should have the backing of international law to improve the likelihood of their success.

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The U.S. Navy and SSTR The essays in the second section of our volume examine the new and traditional approaches the U.S. Navy might consider in the conduct of SSTR operations, as well as the forces and platforms best suited to such missions. The Navy is the American military service best suited to rapid response to a natural disaster Natural (or man-made) disasters are but one type of contingency that would call for an SSTR operation, but they are illustrative of the value of a world-ranging fleet. There are several reasons for the Navy’s preeminence in such a response. Since the end of the Cold War, no other service has developed the capacity for replacing lost or damaged infrastructure, nor does any other so often find itself in a region where those assets might be needed. One of the best examples of the policy of “forward presence” paying dividends was the carrier battle group that responded to the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, a group that happened to be visiting Hong Kong while en route to the Middle East. It was easy to revise its sailing schedule to go to Aceh instead. By design, the U.S. Navy sails around the globe, regularly visiting remote portions of the world that lack infrastructure, effective government, or even nearby population centers. As a result, especially in the case of ad hoc disasters that allow for no prior planning, the Navy is much more likely to be able to respond immediately to humanitarian crises than the other services. Knowing this, even if it cannot predict the next disaster, the Navy can better prepare for certain types of contingencies that it may face. In other words, Navy officers cannot know where the next disaster might occur, but they can plan on the fact that, when a humanitarian crisis occurs in a remote portion of the planet, they are likely to be called upon to provide relief. Peacekeeping and SSTR operations are not that different from normal cruise operations for the U.S. Navy Adam Siegel points out that the Navy can easily adapt to the call for peacekeeping or stability operations due to its normal operating procedures, including long-term deployments and the training its forces receive while at sea. This is fortunate, since the Navy is procuring few new technologies or capabilities strictly for SSTR operations. In Siegel’s view, these trends will likely continue in the years ahead: sea-based technologies will most likely be acquired for traditional warfighting reasons and then applied to peacekeeping, humanitarian, or SSTR operations as needed. SSTR enthusiasts might not find this state of affairs reassuring, but ship procurement in the Navy is directly tied to the service’s organizational culture, and this culture, barring some catastrophic event, changes at a snail’s pace. The United States has used its military forces, including the Navy, more for SSTR operations in recent years than it has to combat legitimate

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conventional military forces of another state. This second trend is also likely to continue. The U.S. Marines lack a comprehensive doctrine or plan for SSTR operations Although the Marine Corps has not identified the SSTR mission as a task requiring a fundamental change in the way it operates, the service did issue a major report in 2006 entitled “Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare” (known as the MC/SO/IW concept), which covers much of the same ground as a major doctrinal document. But the MC/SO/IW concept paper is not linked to the Navy’s own master plan for stability operations. As Terry Terriff points out, the MC/SO/IW concept focuses on three non-traditional roles that the Marines may find themselves carrying out: information operations, provision of essential services, and economic development. The Navy can prepare to support future Marine operations in each of these areas. Capabilities of particular value in this arena may include the Seabees, Maritime Prepositioning Forces, and the Seabasing Concept. The Navy could also take procurement and design decisions today that would make future platforms more capable of supporting SSTR operations, although, as several of our authors suggest, this type of change in procurement philosophy flies in the face of Navy culture. The contributions made to SSTR operations by Navy personnel are more valuable than the platforms or the materiel Like any military service, the Navy is filled with specialists and experts in myriad fields, including infrastructure repair and management. Terriff makes the important point that an aircraft carrier carries a similar number and mix of technically skilled personnel (e.g., engineers, electricians, heavy equipment operators, managers, and able-bodied laborers) as one would find in a small city, with all the concomitant expertise that could be put to effect in helping repair a damaged small town on the other side of the world. And, despite decades of Navy policy pronouncements highlighting the technical and professional qualifications of even its most junior personnel, the idea that a ship’s crew might be more valuable ashore than afloat is a revolutionary notion in today’s U.S. Navy. Implementing SSTR In the third section, our contributors examined contemporary stability operations and new instruments that might be brought to bear in future SSTR contingencies. Because several of these essays are normative or describe emerging capabilities and their potential contribution to stability operations, the chapters in this section are less grounded in operational history than the earlier chapters in our volume. But the cases provide a good overview of what the Navy is capable of achieving, and the challenges it faces in the new century.

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The creation of riverine capabilities to meet new requirements and threats from a changing international security environment is a necessary step to bolster the U.S. Navy’s ability to conduct stability operations, but it is hardly new The rivers and inland waterways of the world are very important to a state’s security and economic well-being, and serve as vital pathways to military forces delivering SSTR support. As John Stolze told us, American naval history is replete with cases of riverine forces carrying out key missions. Riverine forces are inherently dual-capable: they can conduct both combat and stability operations depending on the scenario. Yet the U.S. Navy’s recognition of the value of such forces has been episodic, and they have never been at the center of naval planning. The Cold War Navy was not particularly well suited to carrying out the mission of patrolling coastal waters or securing maritime access. That perspective may be changing to some extent today. International programs that provide funding, training, and equipment for indigenous forces are more important than ever in today’s security environment Sam Tangredi points out that SSTR operations are meant to build a sustainable peace and advance U.S. interests in a specific country or an entire region, goals which require close collaboration with local forces. The United States cannot rely solely on its own military forces. As Tangredi puts it, “To build a sustainable peace in an unstable environment inevitably requires the training and equipping of indigenous armed forces.”6 This involves such international programs as security assistance funding, transfer of excess defense materials, cooperative armaments agreements, information and personnel exchanges, and international military education and training. This is all part of the Defense Department’s effort at security cooperation. The U.S. Navy recognizes that these tools can be significant force enhancers if they are timely and tailored to local needs. As evidence that it takes security cooperation seriously, the U.S. Navy recently created a new organization to oversee these efforts: the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command. In keeping with the need to conduct international training operations, several authors pointed out that, while unilateral state action sometimes proves valuable, it is always preferable to have a multilateral coalition force conducting SSTR operations. This was one of the findings in Adam Siegel’s study of U.S. Navy support to Marine operations, as well as in several of Ferris’s historical case studies of the Royal Navy. The United States can no longer afford to ignore situations calling for stabilization efforts, as it sometimes could during the Cold War If the United States wants to continue to be a benign hegemon, it must battle terrorism wherever it raises its head. Given the international linkages to the Global

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War on Terror, local problems once considered insignificant can now conceivably provoke a U.S. response. The need to respond to unanticipated and relatively minor disturbances is a mission tailor-made for a Navy expeditionary strike group, with its contingent of Marines and organic air and amphibious lift capability. The possibility of multiple contingencies increases the importance of having a capable, deployed navy available nearly anywhere in the globe at any time. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) demonstrate that the Navy can assist security operations in unexpected ways and in unexpected places The fact that the U.S. Navy is making a significant contribution to PRTs in Afghanistan, allowing officers to contribute to the global war against terrorism in an unconventional manner, demonstrates that personnel can adapt quickly in a crisis. It remains to be seen, however, whether these spontaneous “shore tours” will persist beyond today’s crises. Will the senior U.S. officers institutionalize these kinds of shore assignments and protect the careers of junior officers who veer from traditional career paths to participate in stability operations ashore? Even modest SSTR efforts can be successful Not every SSTR operation has to be on the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort of early 2005, which included a carrier battle group and over 13,000 naval personnel to lend help to Indonesia. Alan Kuperman describes a much smaller, but equally successful, effort to stabilize the capital of Liberia in 2003. Unlike the U.S. efforts ten years earlier, when the Navy evacuated Monrovia, this time a contingent of just 320 sailors and airmen, coupled with aerial flyovers and Seabees improving the harbor, made all the difference and led to the end of hostilities in that city. Kuperman points out that, as in all cases, this one was unique, especially in the sense that it had mitigating factors that made the participants eager for U.S. involvement and an end to conflict. Nevertheless, the history of stability operations in Monrovia provides us with an optimistic conclusion to our book. A small group of dedicated military personnel with a good plan and operating from the sea can make a difference.

Final thoughts The chapters in this book have provided an overview of the U.S. Navy’s heritage in conducting SSTR operations, the requirements of the new century with its new security challenges, and some of the ways in which the Navy is responding to those challenges. Senior U.S. Navy officers seem to be slowly recognizing the importance of SSTR and the need for trained personnel, appropriate platforms to respond to an emergency situation, and bureaucratic changes necessary to make that happen. The book also introduced several topics not generally

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considered important to naval forces – including UN multinational operations, PRTs in Afghanistan, the importance of international law in justifying SSTR operations, and naval involvement in the Liberian civil war. So what is the future of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction operations for the U.S. Navy? Terry Terriff may have said it best: The Navy cannot wash its hands of SSTR because its leaders believe that it is not suited to such operations or that SSTR operations would detract from traditional sea control and power projection missions. . . . [T]he Navy needs to recognize that sea control and power projection requires more than defeating an opponent in the open ocean or even the littorals. To respond to contemporary challenges, the Navy has to think and act beyond the sea to influence events on land.7

Notes 1 Daniel Moran, Chapter 2, p. 13. 2 Jessica Piombo and Michael Malley, Chapter 5, p.63. 3 Admiral Mike Mullen, “What I Believe,” Proceedings, vol. 132, no. 1 (January 2006), p. 12. 4 Moran, p. 16. 5 Theo Farrell, Chapter 4, p. 54. 6 Sam Tangredi, Chapter 8, p. 112. 7 Terry Terriff, Chapter 6, p. 90.

Appendix Historical precedents for naval involvement in peace support operations and multinational SSTR operations, 1890–20011 Adam B. Siegel Location

Dates

UN? Overview

Bering Straits

1890s

No

China

1900

No

North Atlantic

1914

No

Smyrna, Turkey

1922

No

Spanish Civil War

1936–9

No

Spanish Civil War

1937–9

No

Palestine

1947–8

Yes

Korea Greece

1950–3 1953

Yes No

Suez

1956–7

Yes

West New Guinea

1962–3

Yes

British and American ships conducted patrols to enforce limits on the hunting of seals. During the Boxer Rebellion, an international force gathered to “rescue” foreigners in Peking. This is just one of the more notable cases of multinational intervention in China during the 19th and 20th centuries. Following the Titanic disaster, the Convention on Safety of Life at Sea (1914) provided for an international ice patrol. The United States was the only nation to conduct such operations. British, French, U.S., and Italian Navy ships protected merchant ships, which evacuated over 200,000 Greeks and Armenians. The German, French, British, and Italian Navies participated in a non-intervention patrol. Ships involved in these patrols flew the pennant of the North Seas Fisheries Commission. Seven nations’ navies cooperated to evacuate endangered foreigners.2 Following a series of anonymous (Italian) submarine attacks on neutral shipping, Britain and France conducted anti-submarine patrols under the Nyon Agreement. U.S. and French Navy ships flew the UN pennant in support of UN efforts in Palestine. Many navies participated in operations in the war. U.S., UK, and Israeli Navy vessels lent assistance after a major earthquake hit the Ionian islands. Canada used an aircraft carrier (HMCS Magnificient) to transport its contingent to the UN Emergency Force (UNEF). Canada also provided a Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM), with crew, to support UNEF. In 1962, the Netherlands agreed to hand control of West New Guinea to Indonesia. To insure a

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Location

Dates

UN? Overview

Cyprus

1964

Yes

Malagasy Straits

1965–75 Yes

Gulf of Fonesca

1990–2

Yes

Liberia

1990s

No

Papua New Guinea

1990

No

Persian Gulf

1990– present

Yes

Northern Iraq

1991

Yes

Adriatic

1992–6

Yes

Cambodia

1992–4

Yes

Somalia

1992

Yes

peaceful transition, the UN was asked to administer the territory for the period between the Dutch withdrawal and the arrival of the Indonesian administrators. Nine countries supplied military observers and civilian administrators to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority in West New Guinea (UNTEA). Canada provided an aviation unit of pilots and technicians and two float-equipped Otter aircraft. Canada used an aircraft carrier (HMCS Bonadventure) to move its contingent to UNFICYP. Bonadventure flew the UN flag. Under UN authorization, Royal Navy ships conducted an interdiction patrol of oil tankers to the pipeline terminal at Beira to help enforce sanctions against Rhodesia. Four Argentinian patrol boats flew the UN flag in support of an observation mission. U.S. and UK Navy units cooperated in evacuating foreigners from amid the Liberian civil war. ECOWAS troops were transported to Liberia by and supported from the sea (by the U.S. Navy) for the peacekeeping operation that began in 1990. Three ships from the New Zealand Navy were used to hold meetings as a neutral site to negotiate a resolution to the Bouganville crisis. Multinational naval forces began interdiction of Iraqi shipping in August 1990, conducted combat operations in January–February 1991, conducted post-conflict operations (such as mine clearance, and continue interdiction operations to this day. U.S. Navy forces supported UN operations to aid Kurdish refugees. Support included transport, combat air patrols, debarkation of Marines, surveillance flights, and shows of force. Multinational forces supported UN forces in the former Yugoslavia and enforced UN sanctions and arms embargoes. Operations included shows of force, surveillance, combat air patrols (such as in support of Operation Deny Flight), combat search and rescue, movement of personnel (including Marines), and strike operations (by both naval aircraft and Tomahawk missiles). 376 naval personnel (220 UN observers) supported the UN operation in Cambodia. These personnel principally utilized Cambodian craft. U.S. Navy amphibious forces deployed off Mogadishu in September 1992 to support the deployment of 500 Pakistani soldiers for

Appendix Location

Dates

UN? Overview

Somalia

1992–3

Yes

Haiti

1993–4

Yes

Somalia

1995

Yes

Albania

1997

No

Albania

1997

Yes

Albania

1999

No

East Timor

1999

Yes

Indian Ocean

2001– present 2001–

No

Malacca Straits

183

No

UNOSOM I. In addition to a show of force, the unit prepared for combat operations to support the UN troops and provided air control for the airlift of the Pakistanis. Multinational naval forces (U.S., FR, IT) supplied the first entry forces to and supported Operation Restore Hope. A multinational task force enforced UN economic sanctions against Haiti. The Argentinian, Canadian, French, Dutch, UK, and U.S. Navies participated in this operation. The U.S.-led intervention in September 1994 occurred mainly by sea, including the deployment of U.S. Army soldiers off U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. A U.S.-led, multinational naval task force conducted a maritime withdrawal of the UN forces from Somalia. Seven nations conducted noncombatant evacuations operations (NEOs) from Albania amid a general collapse of order. Several of these evacuations were conducted by naval forces. An Italian-led multinational peacekeeping force deployed to Albania. The force deployed principally by sea, mainly via amphibious shipping. From USS Kearsarge and USS Inchon, US Marines and Navy forces supported Operation Shining Hope, the U.S. component of Operation Allied Harbor, assistance to Kosovar Albanian refugees in Albania. U.S., Australian, and French naval vessels deployed to support the International Force, East Timor. This included conducting amphibious operations to move forces and using sea-basing to support force logistics. Multinational, anti-terrorism patrols to interdict movements of al Qaeda terrorists. Indian Navy and U.S. Navy ships conduct presentcooperative anti-piracy and terrorismsuppression patrols.

Notes 1 Table compiled by Adam Siegel, Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, for this book project. The potential precedents for naval PSOs are far too numerous to discuss in this format and venue. Since precedent can be found in every instance of (multinational) gunboat diplomacy or humanitarian assistance, the number of cases would easily exceed 1,000 just in recent decades. For more substantial listings of such precedents by this author, see: Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) Information Memorandum 132, A

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A. B. Siegel

Sampling of Naval Humanitarian Operations, November 1990; CNA Research Memorandum 90–246, The Use of Naval Forces in the Post-Cold War Era: U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps Crisis Response Activity, 1946–1990, February 1991; and CNA Information Memorandum 334, A Chronology of US Marine Corps Humanitarian and Peace Operations, September 1994. For another author’s examination of precedents, see: “Appendix, Chronology of Relevant Circumstances,” in Michael Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping, (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 249–71. For a discussion of how ship requirements can be derived from the study of such operations, see Adam Siegel et al., Surface Warfare Operations in LowIntensity Conflict, Alexandria, Virginia, Center for Naval Analyses, July 1991. 2 Re. navies in the Spanish Civil War, by this author, see: “International Naval Cooperation during the Spanish Civil War,” Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 29, (autumn/winter 2001/2002) and “Naval Cooperation in a Multi-Polar War: The Spanish Civil War,” Tidskrift I Sjöväsendet (Journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Naval Science), no, 4 (2001). On the U.S. Navy’s operations, see: “Operating in Someone Else’s War: Squadron 40(T) and the Spanish Civil War,” American Neptune, vol. 61 (Spring 2001).

Index

1,000-ship navy 19, 85, 103, 124–6 1206 Program 112–13, 117–18, 120–5, 127n12 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations 45 1st Battalion 10th Special Forces Group 158 2002 National Security Strategy 48 2006 Defense Authorization Act 112 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review 61, 64, 112 2007 Defense Authorization Act 64, 113 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit 154 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit 158 354th Civil Affairs Brigade 71 398th Air Expeditionary Group 158, 167n26 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force 75 9/11 Terror Attack see September 11, 2001 Attack A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower 3, 6, 125 Aceh 67, 73–5, 176 Adriatic Sea 36, 100, 182 Afghan Central Government 143, 151 Afghanistan 2, 9, 15, 45–6, 52, 64, 69, 70–1, 81, 86, 98, 101, 110, 137, 141–51, 179–80 African Partnership Station 70 Agar, Agustus 37 Age of Sail 17 al Qaeda 2–4, 21, 146, 149, 151, 183 Albusa’idi dynasty 34–6 Amazon River 130, 133 American Revolutionary War 129, 131–2 amphibious ready group 2, 102, 108n18, 153–5, 158–62, 167n6 Arctic Ocean 36

Argentina 103 Arms Export Control Act of 1976 118 Arrow War 27–8, 32 Aspinall, Edward 73 Atlantic Ocean 26–7, 30, 35–6, 181 Australia 74 Automatic Identification System 19 AV-8B Harrier jet 154 Baer, George 17, 24n7 Baghdad 87, 135 bakafu 33–4 Baltic Patrol 16, 21–3, 25n17 Baltic Sea 37 Bangladesh 62, 66, 108 Barbary pirates 29 Beatty, David 36 Beijing 31 Beira patrol 101, 108n16, 182 Bermuda 26 bin Laden, Osama 151 Black Sea 37 Blackman, Robert R. 75 Bolivia 134 Bolsheviks 21–2, 36–7 Booth, Ken 101 Bosnia 46, 52, 98, 107, 148, 166 Brahmaputra River 130 Burma War of 1828 27 Bush, George W. 42, 48, 50 Bush Administration 51, 54, 111, 157, 159, 161, 164 Bushrod Island 157, 159, 161–4 Cable, James 21, 25n17 Cambodia 100, 182 Cambodian genocide 45 Caribbean Sea 29, 70 Caroline case 47

186

Index

Carr, E.H. 44 Caspian Sea 37 Cebrowski, Arthur 62 Center for Civil–Military Relations xiii Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies xiii Center for Strategic and International Studies 67 Central Front 1 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 14, 85 Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (U.S.) 13, 64 Chamberlain, Austen 26 Cheney, Dick 50 Chesapeake Bay 131–2 Chief of Naval Education and Training 121 China 31–4, 36, 38, 42, 47, 50, 131, 133–4, 181 Choshu 33–4 Clark Air Base 66 Clarke, Vernon 137 Coalition and Special Warfare Center 122 Cobra attack helicopter 154, 162 Cohen, Herman 163, 165 Cold War 3, 14, 17, 21, 38, 43–4, 46–7, 77, 97, 110, 118, 173–4, 176, 178 Colombia 134 combat commands (COCOMs) 112, 117, 119, 122, 127n12 Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTFHOA) 68, 70, 79n16, 93n34 Combined Support Force 536, 74, 107n12 command of the sea 1, 20 Congo River 130 Congress (U.S.) 18, 113–14, 117–19, 123, 125–6 Continental Army 132 counter-insurgency 18, 42, 132, 138, 142 Cowan, Walter Henry 36–7 Cyprus 102, 108n18, 119, 182 Davies, Mathew 74 de Robeck, John 37, 39n1 Defense Science Board Summer Study 6, 62–5, 68–9 Defense Security Cooperation Agency 126 Delaware River 131–2 Democratic Republic of Congo 66, 97, 130 Department of Defense Directive 3000 05, 6, 63–4, 67, 71, 112, 174 Department of Defense Stability Operations Executive Council 64 Department of Homeland Security 125

direct commercial sales (DCS) 113–14, 127n7 District Reconstruction Team 150 Djibouti 70 Doe, Samuel K. 154–7, 163 Doran, Walter 75 Duc de Richelieu 29 East Timor 46, 66, 77, 97, 98, 100, 183 Economic Community of West African States 155 ECOWAS Monitoring Group 155, 157–9, 161, 163–5, 168n32, 169n46, 182 Elleman, Bruce 75 Engineer and Scientist Exchange Program 116 Estonia 22 excess defense articles (EDA) 112, 114–15, 118, 120, 123, 125–6, 127n9 expeditionary strike groups 2, 5, 75–6, 88, 102, 179 Fallujah 15, 53 Fargo, Thomas 74–5 Farrell, Theo 8, 42, 175 Ferris, John 8, 26, 175, 178 Field Manual 3–07, Stability Operations and Support Operations 120 Finland 37, 74 Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 118 foreign comparative testing and evaluation 112, 116, 120 foreign military financing (FMF) 113–14, 117–18, 120–1, 125 foreign military sales (FMS) 113–14, 117–18, 120, 123–4, 127n12 Fort Bragg 148 Fort Jackson 148 France 26, 30, 35, 42, 50, 115, 151, 154, 181 Franck, Thomas 44–5 Fraser River 27, 30 Free Aceh Movement 74 Freikorps 22, 36 Frere, Bartle 35 full-spectrum dominance 14, 24n5 Future Maritime Prepositioning Force 86 Ganges River 130 Gates, Robert 118 “Gator Navy” 90 General Accounting Office 50 Geneva Conventions 48, 50, 53, 111 George, Lloyd 26

Index 187 Germany 22, 36–7, 117 Gio tribe 154, 165 Global Concept of Operations (CONOPS) 3 global fleet station 5, 70–1, 79 Global War on Terror 2–4, 51, 70, 100, 112–13, 117, 122, 124, 137 Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986 15, 150 Graham, James 30–2 Guandong (Canton) 27–8 Gulf of Fonesca 103, 182 Gunboat Diplomacy 21 Gunboat diplomacy 21, 23, 26, 33–4, 36, 38, 101–2, 133, 162, 183 Hague Conventions 48, 53, 111 Haiti 46, 52, 92n17, 100, 109n25, 183 Hamblet, Jim 148 Harpoon 115 Haydon, Peter 97 Higgins, Rosalyn 51 HMS Amethyst 38 Honduras 103 Hong Kong 75–6, 176 Hudson’s Bay Company 27, 30 Hurricane Katrina 101, 107n13, 136 Hussein, Saddam 53, 111 Independent Patriotic Front of Liberia 154 India 26, 34–5, 73, 101, 136, 183 Indian Ocean 20, 29, 30, 34–5, 64, 73, 100, 176, 179, 183 Individual Augmentee Program 148 Indonesia 62, 73–7, 93n37, 136, 179, 181–2 information operations 53, 66, 82–3, 162, 177 Information Revolution 1 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) 141, 146–7, 150–1 International Court of Justice 51 International Criminal Court (ICC) 42, 50 International Exchange Agreements 116 International Law 51 international military education and training 112, 116, 120–2 Internet 1, 5, 150 Iraq 3, 13, 42, 48, 51, 52–4, 64, 69, 71, 81, 91–2, 98, 101, 107, 110–11, 116, 135, 137, 142, 165–6, 182, 182 Iraq War 42, 48, 52, 111 Istanbul 37 Ivory Coast 153, 157, 165, 167n14

Japan 16, 33–4, 134 Johnson, Thomas 146 Joint Task Force 536 74 Joint Task Force Liberia 153, 158–62, 166, 168n26 Joint Vision 2020 24n5 Kabul 149 Karzai, Hamid 142 Karzai administration 149 Kellogg–Briand Pact 45 Kingsbury, Benedict 51 Kosovo 46–7, 49, 50, 52, 69, 107n5 Krahn ethnic group 154, 156, 165 Kronstadt 22, 37 Kuperman, Alan J. 9, 153, 179 Kuwait 34, 75, 106 Lacey, James 84 Lake Champlain 131 Larsen, Jeffrey xiii, 173 Lasswell, Harold 44 Latvia 22, 151 law of armed conflict (LOAC) 48–53 Lebanon 101 Liberia 9, 153–66, 179–80, 182 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy in Liberia 156 Lieber Code 49 Limburg 19 Lithuania 22 littoral combat ship (LCS) 20, 24n13, 104 London 27, 39 long war 16–17, 51, 81, 97, 110, 124 Lord Aberdeen 28 Lord Palmerston 27–8, 32 Luttwak, Edward 1 McDougal, Myres 44 McLaughlin, John 133 Madagascar 29 Madden, Charles 26 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 2, 16, 24n7 Malaysia 74 Malley, Mike 8, 61, 174 Mandingo ethnic group 156, 165 Mano tribe 165 MARG 2–90, 154–5 MARG 3–90, 155 marine amphibious ready group (MARG) see amphibious ready group Marine expeditionary unit 102, 154–5, 158 Maritime Civil Affairs Group 70

188

Index

Maritime Domain Awareness 5–6, 19, 99, 125 Maritime Prepositioning Forces 177 Maritime services strategic concept 4 Maritime Strategy 1 Medan 75 Mediterranean Sea 37 Mekong Delta 135 Mekong River 130 Meulaboh 73–4 Military Assistance Group 119 military operations other than war (MOOTW) 13, 111, 129, 131, 139n1 Mogadishu 102, 182 Monrovia 153–64, 167n18, 168n35, 169n46, 179 Moran, Dan 8, 13, 173, 175 Morgenthau, Hans J. 44 Moscow 22 Mullen, Mike 81, 90, 124–5, 174 Multi-Service Concept for Irregular Warfare 82, 177 National Counterterrorism Center 19 National Patriotic Front of Liberia 154 National Security Presidential Directive 44, 64 Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek 137 Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) 70–2, 99, 121–3, 125–6, 137–8, 178 Navies and Foreign Policy 101 Navy Concept of Operations 6, 70 Navy Education and Training Security Assistance Field Activity 121 Navy Foreign Area Officers 85–6 Navy International Programs Office 115, 121, 123, 127n6 Navy Operating Concept see Navy Concept of Operations Navy Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School 121 Navy Strategic Plan 18 New Haven School 44 New World Order 15, 28 New York Times 166 Nicaragua case 46 Niger River 130 Nigeria 158–63, 165, 167n14 Nile River 130 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 5–6, 13, 61, 75–7, 141, 145–7, 151, 159 Nootka Sound Crisis 30 North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) 17, 47, 49–50, 88, 100–1, 115, 123, 127, 142–3, 146, 148–51 Office of Force Transformation 62 Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization 64, 67 Okinawa 75 Oman 34–5 Operation Assured Response 156 Operation Fiery Vigil 66 Operation Iraqi Freedom 135 Operation Sea Angel 62, 66, 108n20 Operation Sea Signal 66 Operation Sharp Edge 154 Operation Unified Assistance 62, 75, 77 Opium War 32, 133 Oppenheim, L.F.L. 51 Oregon boundary dispute 30 Orinoco River 133 Pacific Ocean 27, 31, 36 Panama Canal 30 Paraguay 133 peace operations 13–15, 42, 52–3, 97–100, 102, 104–5, 107 Peel, Robert 27 Pentagon 15, 62, 112–13 Persia 34 Persian Gulf 29, 34, 100, 182 Peru 133–4 Petraeus, David H. 123 Philippines 66 Piombo, Jessica 8, 61, 174 Portugal 35 Powell, Levin 133 Proliferation Security Initiative 98, 101, 106n3 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) 9, 70–1, 126, 141–51, 179–80 psychological operations 83, 92n14, 148 Public Affairs Officers 83–4 RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) 117 Red Army 17 Red Sea 34, 36, 101 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq 123 Reus-Smit, Christian 52 Revolutionary United Front 155 Rhine River 36 Rhodesia 100, 102, 182 Richter Scale 73 River Plate 133 Roberts Airport 159, 161–2

Index 189 Romanov Empire 22 Roughead, Gary 124 Royal Indian Marine 34 Royal Marines 27 Royal Navy 8, 16, 22–3, 26–34, 101, 107, 175, 178, 182 Rumsfeld, Donald 50, 53, 118 Russia 21, 22, 29, 34, 36–7, 47, 50 Russian Civil War 16 S-3B Viking 114 St. Lawrence River 131 San Diego 75 Satsuma 33–4 Schumacher, E.F. 81 Sea of Marmora 37 Seabasing Concept 177 Seabees 70, 86, 93n34, 122, 177, 179 Second Gulf War 99 Second Seminole War 132–3 Secretary of Defense (U.S.) 13, 113, 118, 126 Security Assistance Office 119 Security Assistance Officers 124–6 Security Cooperation Education and Training Warfare Center 122 September 11, 2001 Attack 2, 15, 19, 62, 81, 93, 97, 110–11, 137, 141, 173 Siegel, Adam 8, 97, 176, 178, 183 Sierra Leone 153, 155, 157–60, 163, 165, 167n26 Silicon Valley 2 Singapore 74 Slaughter, Anne-Marie 44–5 SM-2, 115 Small is Beautiful 81 Somalia 21, 46, 52, 73, 98, 102, 162, 165, 182–3 South American River Surveys 133 South China Sea 29 Southern European Task Force 163 Soviet Union 1, 4, 14, 15, 17, 21–2, 44, 110 Spain 28, 48 Special Boat Team-22, 136–7 Special Operations Forces 61, 167n26 Sri Lanka 62, 73, 75, 77 Sri Lankan Navy 19 Stability Operations Working Group 64 Stolze, J.W. 8, 129, 178 Strait of Hormuz 2 strategic lift 18 strategic shaping 18 Sudan 98

Sumatra 73, 75 Tadic case 49 Taliban 98, 141, 146, 148–9, 151 Tamil Tigers 19 Tangredi, Sam 8, 110, 178 Taylor, Charles 154–7, 159–65 Terriff, Terry 8–9, 81, 177, 180 Teson, Fernando 44 Thailand 62, 73, 75, 77 Tigris River 130, 135 Tolbert, William 154 Tomb, Nicholas 8, 141 Tsunami Evaluation Coalition 76 tsunami in Southeast Asia 2004 3, 8, 20, 62, 67, 73–7, 93, 101, 107, 135–6, 176, 179 Turkey 34, 37, 107, 119, 181 U.S. Air Force 18, 86, 102, 147–8 U.S. Army 18, 53, 67, 69, 86, 109, 120–3, 132, 132–3, 137, 148, 150, 158, 183 U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command 148 U.S. Coast Guard 3, 114, 118, 121–3, 126 U.S. Department of Agriculture 144 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 6, 53, 62–5, 67–8, 82, 111–13, 117–19, 122, 126n3, 127n12, 144, 174 U.S. Joint Forces Command 69, 127 U.S. Marine Corp Combat Development Command 82 U.S. Marine Corps 2–3, 8, 18, 24n9, 53, 69, 72, 76, 81–6, 88–94, 102, 114–17, 121–3, 133–5, 137, 153–5, 158–9, 161–2, 177–9, 182–3 U.S. Naval Doctrine Command 103 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 87 U.S. Navy 1–4, 6–9, 16, 20–1, 24n7, 36, 38, 61–78, 81, 85, 87, 89–91, 94, 99, 102–5, 107–9, 114–15, 121–2, 124–5, 128–9, 131, 133, 135, 137–8, 142, 147, 166, 173–4, 176–80, 182–4 U.S. Pacific Command 70, 74–7 U.S. Special Operations Command 82, 121, 137 U.S. State Department 65, 67, 78n5, 118–19, 126, 127n7, 144, 150, 154, 163 Ukraine 37 Union Army 49 United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy 155 United Nations 44, 76, 97, 100, 102, 158–9, 164, 182

190

Index

United Nations Charter 45, 46–7, 101 United Nations General Assembly 48 United Nations Mission in Liberia 159, 164 United Nations Security Council 42, 46–7, 50, 143, 163, 167 United Nations World Food Program 75 United States 1–2, 4, 13–15, 17–19, 21, 26, 30–1, 38–9, 42–4, 48–54, 63, 69, 87, 94, 110–11, 114–21, 132–5, 150–1, 153, 157–9, 161–6, 176, 178, 181 USAID (United States Agency for International Development) 69, 76, 144–5 USS Abraham Lincoln 75–6, 79n34, 136 USS Bonhomme Richard 75–6 USS Enterprise 133 USS Essex 75 USS Fort McHenry 75 USS Iwo Jima 158 USS Kearsarge 157, 183 USS Mercy 136 USS Water Witch 133 USS Wilmington 133 Utapao 75, 77

Venezuela 133 Vietnam 46, 134, 137 Voice of America 155 Warsaw Pact 1 Washington, George 132 Washington Post 166 Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 45, 48, 51, 54, 98, 101, 105, 106n3 Webster, Daniel 47–8 White Russians 22, 36 Wirtz, James xiii, 1, 61 Woodson, Glenn 148 Woolsey, James 14 Work, Robert O. 81 World Trade Center 15, 62 World War I 8, 22, 36 World War II 16, 43, 45–6, 134, 148, 175 World War III 17 Yale University 44 Yangtze River 130, 133–4 Yangtze River Patrols 133–4 Yemen 19 Yorktown 122, 132 Zanzibar 28, 34–6

Vancouver Island 30