Although I am no fan of conceptual navel-gazing and the over-categorisation of military operations, there is an unresolved question, particularly in Europe, as to the difference and overlap between ‘peacebuilding’ and ‘counterinsurgency’. On the one hand stand the types of operations engaged with in the Balkans in the 1990s, and on the other those seen more recently, primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. The tension between these types of operations stems from the difficulties experienced by many European countries in adapting from a force posture and engagement framework predicated on a permissive environment (prevalent in the 1990s) to one that is contested and that requires, alongside some of the skills and attributes called for in more peaceful settings, also the ability to apply force and to engage effectively with the local population and leadership. Faced with this challenge, several European countries are no doubt looking back wistfully to the ‘golden days’ of peacebuilding in the 1990s, when it all seemed so much easier to be a responsible contributor to ‘international peace and security’.
All of this will become quite interesting as troop deployments to Afghanistan subside and European nations ponder where else to ply their peacebuilding trade. Of course, in today’s economic climate, who is to say that we won’t enter into a prolonged period of isolationism, particularly given the cautionary tale that is Afghanistan? Still, as cutting ourselves off from the rest of the planet indefinitely appears unlikely, at least in the long run, there may also be a temptation to return to the operating principles that, once upon a time in the 1990s, appeared to make international engagements so much less complex: the need to operate with consent, to apply only the absolute minimum level of force, and to retain impartiality rather than fight for one side against another.
Concerned with the possibility of such a turn, I have recently been researching some of the challenges of ‘peacebuilding after Afghanistan’, and just last week Contemporary Security Policy published an article of mine on this topic. Keen to share the findings with the esteemed readership of Kings of War, the editors of Contemporary Security Review have kindly allowed me to link to the article in its entirety here on this blog.
The argument advanced is that the recollection of the ‘easier’ operations of the 1990s, and of the principles derived from these experiences, is deeply flawed and that the requirements for effective third-party engagement in war-to-peace transitions will, whatever we call them, reproduce many of the challenges and requirements encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq. Problematically, these requirements and challenges tend to exceed the ambition and desire to intervene of most European nations.
So what are the alternatives for effective engagement in the face of limited capacity yet a desire to ‘do good’, or to satisfy alliance commitments, or to demonstrate relevance on the international stage? The article highlights some possibilities for future operations, but also provides the caveat that engagement will, whatever form it takes, seldom be easy and requires a clear political strategy to match the substantial military and non-military inputs also required.
With this post I also want to highlight a related article also featured in the current issue of Contemporary Security Policy, namely Timo Noetzel’s ‘Germany’s Small War in Afghanistan: Military Learning amid Politico-strategic Inertia’. The two articles work well together, because here is a case study examining the attempts of one particular country – Germany – to transform its approach to military operations, from the permissive framework of the 1990s to the more contested and seemingly more complex environment of Afghanistan, and of counterinsurgency in general. As Timo Noetzel shows, the journey has been a difficult one, militarily on the ground and, perhaps even more so, politically in Berlin.
Of course Germany faces its own challenges with the effective prosecution of military operations, but it also seems clear that there are broader lessons here for other powers, especially those who cut their teeth on the peace operations of the Balkans. Indeed, I wonder whether the temptation to return to permissive peacekeeping is a particularly European equivalent to the more American temptation to return to an exclusive focus on ‘conventional warfare’ – both are hopeful attempts to wish away the complexity of war as it presents itself and drastically underestimate the effects of deploying troops to a foreign land.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
The cautionary tale that is Afghanistan? And what tale is that? That we shouldn’t go starting another war somewhere else, abandoning the initial one? If a recent war should be cautionary, it should be Iraq II: How not to wage a war in a complex cultural environment, especially when the rest of the world is questioning its legitimacy and you’ve got another more important war going on across the gulf.
I think you are right in your article to refer to counterinsurgency implying “a distinct strategic backdrop and intent”, which is different from peace-building or peace-keeping. One of the implications is that the term ‘counterinsurgency’ carries so much baggage that it becomes less than useful in the variety of types of conflict resolution operations that might require the deployment of military force.
However, it is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While your article draws useful comparisons between 1990s operations and current ones, I wonder whether it is also enlightening to take the issues you’ve raised back further, because there are useful lessons that can be drawn from successful use of force in security operations after or as continuations of hot war operations throughout history. I would argue that it is vital to prioritise the stabilisation of population security over and above all other requirements, in situations in which that is compromised or likely to be compromised, either in contested situations or in permissive environments that might deteriorate. While it is a truism of COIN operations that political, economic and social circumstances must be addressed in COIN planning, and that political, economic development and associated civil governance factors are important as well as the military, there is a danger that the overriding need for security of, and for, the population is merely seen as one part of the picture, instead of the overriding need.
I am myself tending towards the heretical suggestion that those responsible for the strategic and tactical deployment and use of military force should be concerned primarily with the military and related security situation, if the latter is compromised. Without population security the rest cannot follow.
Some current interventions, specifically both Afghanistan and Iraq, seem to me to have attempted to put in place economic development, good governance and improvements to essential services in the absence of, and to the detriment of, the attention focused on population security.
Current US COIN doctrine stresses that population security is the first requirement of success in counterinsurgency, but that it is not sufficient. It goes on to stress the other elements I’ve mentioned above as also essential for improvement simultaneously with population security. That places the use or threat of use of military force within a specific conceptual framework. Peacebuilding has a similar framework, which attempts to carry out specific non-military tasks in a security environment that is more or less compromised.
My main concern about current thinking (if that is reflected accurately in current operations) is that insufficient weight is given to establishing population security, prior to the other strands of activity. To bring a stark and possibly simplistic example from an earlier time, successful peace-building in Germany at the end of World War Two in Europe was brought about by a concentration on establishing and maintaining security (requiring huge troop numbers) prior to engaging in other necessary activities to rebuild both West and East.
Intervention by foreign powers using military force must focus on population security first and foremost. Intervention for any other reason will undermine the legitimacy of the intervention in the eyes of the local population, because the intervening power will be rightly blamed for failing in the first duty of governance, which is the maintenance of the populace in a secure environment. Therefore politicians responsible for intervention must be willing and able to provide sufficient resources to achieve this end, over and above any resources required for “effective engagement in the face of limited capacity yet a desire to ‘do good’, or to satisfy alliance commitments, or to demonstrate relevance on the international stage”.
It is insufficient to commit resources in order to ‘do good’, if there is not enough commitment to solve the problem of population security. A primary danger that we’ve already experienced in so many interventions is that there is an identified requirement to do something without the resources to solve that main problem. And I don’t believe that squirming on the hook of conflicting requirements, reconciling some of these in new doctrines that attempt to square the circle, is going to be sufficient. “Building peace after war” is precisely not what we’re attempting – instead we’re attempting to build peace during war, by redefining war as only those higher intensity operations associated with both conventional operations and COIN operations. In the presence of population security significantly compromised by military violence so that civil governance is impossible or deteriorating, therefore requiring military assistance, I would argue that any intervention that doesn’t address the reality of this type of conflict (‘war’ is what I would prefer to say) will fail to gain the legitimacy required for success.
At the risk of making a circular argument, do you not think that the gross corruption in (to pick a random example) Afghanistan’s “legitimate government” at all levels itself causes instability, by making the Taleban more appealing with their rough but less unjust civil justice? And poverty creates a ready and willing workforce to fight (and suicide-bomb)?
Is it barely possible that “securing the population” doesn’t exist in a vacuum?
Ed, presuming your reply is aimed at me?
I don’t think that anyone has suggested that securing the population exists in a vacuum. You’d have to expand on that for me to understand the critique.
Actually, thinking about it a little more, ‘instability’ is insufficient. I was concerned more with actual military conflict, not just instability (which could be political or social). And I would also disagree that ‘poverty’ as such creates a ready and willing workforce to fight etc – you need a few more elements in it than that.
Thanks for these comments, particularly Alan Paull for really weighing in on this discussion.
There appears to be some disagreement in the comments thread but hopefully not with me, because I agree with what is being said here: yes, population security is fundamental to third-party interventions in war-to-peace transitions; yes other factors also pertain but without security, any sort of progress will be very difficult (in fact, I say as much in the section on population security in the linked-to article); and finally, yes, it would be better if we could just call these efforts ‘war’ and resource them appropriately.
What is most interesting, I think, in regard to interventions since the Second World War is the extreme variability and unpredictability of their impact, which ought to be a series of cautionary tales for any government contemplating military intervention at almost any level. This may be obvious to a student of history, but, when it comes to the crunch, governments persist in believing that they can control events after unleashing military force. Even low intensity operations let the genie out of the bottle.
In your conclusion, you ask the question “How can states intent on peace-building, on stabilising countries emerging from protracted conflict, best conduct or contribute to such missions?” You then continue by using words like “highly demanding”, “tempting yet dangerous compromise”, “building peace after war … is never easy”, “significant
challenges”, and so on. You seem to be tending towards the view that perhaps ‘do nothing’ or at least ‘don’t intervene’ would be a better policy, despite your suggestions of other options, such as ‘niche capabilities’. What’s your view of the efficacy of these other options for peace-building operations within the post-Afghanistan European context?
For European countries, with an increasing reluctance and decreasing capacity to carry out war-to-peace operations, we may have a different answer to the United States, for which there is a perception that there exists a capacity for effective action.
The financial environment and the chastening experience that is Afghanistan may provide for a measure of caution among European governments, but it would also seem clear to me that any lull in intervention will not last indefinitely. With good intentions, or to satisfy domestic or international expectations in the face of a crisis, it will only be a matter of time before European or Western or UN forces are again in a country marked by conflict, strife or starvation. The effects of such a deployment are, as you say, always unpredictable. So I think the best way to think about them is to be realise that they won’t go away, but that there is a need to be very cautious before committing and to do so in a way that is politically realistic and within ones capability. All such thinking, also, must be based on a clear historically-informed appreciation of what interventions have typically required. And in such reasoning, the myth of permissive environments and of the intervening force’s ‘neutrality’ need to be seriously challenged.
I am currently writing a paper on COIN in Afghanistan for a foreign policy class, and I can just say that all this talk about COIN vs. peacebuilding etc. simply shows desperation on the part of academics and strategists. When I read that “protecting the population” was the new innovative dogma at the heart of US COIN strategy, I was stunned. As if it was not obvious that you would want to protect the population you are defending in a war. I agree with the above poster that we should simply call these things war, and Western powers should also commit more troops to them if they intervene, or not intervene at all.