Military Operations Other Than War
by Collins G. Shackelford, Jr.

The end of the Cold War generated exhilaration and optimism for the promise of a new world order. Instead, these hopes drawn from the “end of history” hypothesis have been buried by the rise of historical grievances formerly repressed by superpower confrontations. Old antagonisms have expanded and rivalries with long histories have grown into open conflict. Yet a correlate of the demise of the Cold War order is a new sense of opportunity and a new willingness of international organizations to address issues of collective security. I will refer to this as consensus security, a response to a threat or crisis that is not necessarily automatic, but rather comes from a bargaining process that determines the level, time, and location of response. A key instrument of this new assertiveness is intervention, a collective or community action coercive in nature that employs military, economic, or diplomatic means to alter the behavior, or policies of a target state that are judged to be contrary to community norms.

In the security environment that appears to be emerging at the end of the twentieth century, military forces increasingly face the demands not of full-scale combat against a highly trained and technologically sophisticated enemy, but rather of military operations other than war, such as peace operations (the broad collection of activities usually discussed as peacemaking, peacekeeping, or peace building), disaster response, or humanitarian assistance. I begin by developing a picture of the emerging security environment and follow with a discussion of the promises and potential problems of such military operations.

Riding the Third Wave
During the Cold War, military planning by NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact centered on the prospects of a major war between the two alliances. This assumption drove strategies, doctrine, research agendas, acquisition priorities, and overall force postures. It was a world of worst-case analysis. Military planners typically focused on the high and midlevels of conflict where the emphasis was on fighting and winning wars that required the ability to defend, attack, and conduct large-scale combat operations. Today, military leaders increasingly find themselves facing requirements to conduct operations in situations formerly characterized as low-intensity conflict.

The end of the Cold War has meant shrinking military budgets and the return home of military forces, but also a new willingness to employ military forces abroad in response to complex emergencies. This new theme is captured by UN Secretary–General Boutros Boutros–Ghali in his “Agenda for Peace.” In this 1992 pronouncement, he elaborated the principle that groups and individuals have universal human rights such as freedom from starvation and threats to life. One can therefore infer that the United Nations or other duly authorized forces may intervene in a sovereign state to protect its citizens under certain circumstances. This implies the need for new rules to legitimize overt military intervention where the UN (or some other appropriate body) intervenes without the consent of the state or non-state parties that are the targets of the intervention. In such circumstances, the intervening forces will not be perceived as entering the conflict under a mantle of neutrality (as is the case in classic UN peacekeeping operations). Moreover, the use of weapons by the intervening force will be sanctioned for offensive purposes. While the wording of chapter VII of the UN Charter makes allowances for such operations, the same charter identifies a clear respect for the sovereignty of nations. In spite of the potential for conflict between intervention and sovereignty, U.S. Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton have supported the new ideal, and former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, said in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that military missions in support of humanitarian assistance and peace operations “are a given.” While intervention may be a given in a theoretical sense, translating this ideal from the level of strategy to the level of tactics is a passage marked by significant roadblocks.

The emerging theme of intervention to protect human and group rights is one of the leading factors that has brought about a shift in the operations, training, and planning of U.S. armed forces. The new policy concept is called “military operations other than war.” Such operations cover a wide range of activities in which national military forces are used for purposes other than full-scale combat operations at the general war level of the combat spectrum. The 1994 curriculum of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College refers to such operations as “The Challenge of the Future.” Under this broad conceptual mantle, security specialists must contemplate and plan for military operations that involve combat short of general war and goals that range from deterring war, to resolving conflicts, to fostering peace. Specific military operations that would involve the use or threat of force include strikes, raids, peacemaking, counter terrorism, or emergency evacuations. Other operations such as disaster relief, nation assistance (for example, security assistance or foreign internal defense programs such as personnel exchange programs, combined forces exercises, and sharing communications and intelligence resources), civilian support, and peacekeeping are a different class of activity that involves military forces but does not include the use or threat of force as part of the mission. While distinctions between combat and noncombat operations can be defined clearly in theory, the empirical reality facing an operator in the field is often one where the boundary between combat and noncombat is operationally and analytically quite permeable.

The collection of activities now being called military operations other than war will typically be interventions carried out by third parties. The planning for these operations will be difficult and will occur in a world of shifting threats, high uncertainty, and unclear context. The locale of the conflicts (for example, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Balkans, Korea, Southeast Asia) is diverse, the range of local governments equally varied, and the total collapse of government a possibility as well. It seems clear that, despite the early arguments of an end of history, the actual use or threat of force will remain an important item on the menu of options for precipitating change in dispute or conflict situations.

If we accept the above sketch of the emerging policy world associated with military operations other than war, we must ask: What are the promises and pitfalls of using military forces for such nontraditional military activities as peace and humanitarian assistance operations?

The Promise
The argument to employ military forces in response to a disaster or for peace operations rests with the military’s physical capabilities to perform a diverse range of operations. These capabilities include robust transportation; command, control, communications, and intelligence hardware; and a general capacity to operate independently in a wide variety of environments. Furthermore, there is a level of interoperability among military forces that is not matched by civilian enterprises such as nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).

Transportation is a key necessity to any response. Military forces have versatile land, sea, and air assets that can be mustered and deployed quickly. These assets have individual strengths and weakness, but the synergy between them can be exploited for maximum effect in a particular deployment so as to deliver large volumes of relief supplies and personnel over long distances and on short notice by using an appropriate combination of sea, air, and land-based resources. The Berlin airlift and the military’s contribution in distributing humanitarian relief in Bosnia are two such examples.

A command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) system is an important capability in any response to natural disasters or peace operations, whether the environment be urban or rural. Military satellite communications allow dispersed forces to coordinate activities even where local communications are destroyed by man-made or natural disasters. Additionally, these same satellite systems can allow coordination in real-time between widely dispersed locations such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, and New York.

Overall, military forces are particularly unique in being largely self-contained and self-sufficient. They can bring their own (and extra) shelter, water, and food, as well as security capabilities. The promise of military forces in operations other than war and especially in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations rests primarily on their versatility and flexibility. But the discussion about new roles for the military includes much more than this capability dimension; it also involves the unity of goals and means between the strategic and operational levels, such as between the UN and the forces in the field.

Problems and Dilemmas
Some problems center on the dynamic between the character of the strategic environment and the exigencies of the operational level. The nature of the problems involves linking the overall goals of the response to the operational level in a way that ensures a unity of effort at all levels. The general issue of command and control can serve as a notional example that captures this inherent enigma of maintaining a firm bond between ends and means.

Links between the decision makers and the actual forces in the field offer opportunities for both coordination and confusion. Ideally, at the international level (or national level in some cases), goals and objectives would be elaborated, leaving the military forces the responsibility of developing an operation that links strategic goals to specific tasks, that is, matching capabilities and missions. Reality offers a different picture. Even when collective decisions are made at the international level, they are the result of a consensus-building process and must, in the case of the UN Security Council, accommodate the interests of the permanent members and usually the sovereign rights of the target state as well. The consensus-building process often results in vaguely worded resolutions, especially in operationalizing intent in terms of missions and the employment of armed forces. Specific objectives and goals are provided ad hoc, and a clear chain of command for multilateral operations (that includes delegation of authority) is frequently settled only as an operation unfolds.

Related to this problem, but at the operational level, is the lack of a command and control structure for multilateral UN operations. C3I systems used by the various military and nonmilitary participants in a security or peace operation ought not to be assembled on an ad hoc basis. Today, the U.S. and Russia are discussing the coordination and sharing of missile-warning information. Given today’s security environment and the increasing call for multilateral operations, it would seem politically feasible and worth evaluating the opportunity costs for a similar dialogue between the U.S. and the UN on an even wider set of operational issues.

For example, one specific set of issues that might be addressed is a C3I system for UN operations. While combat operations have a traditionally clear hierarchical reporting chain, peace and humanitarian operations must accommodate a significantly expanded set of reporting requirements for coordination and intelligence purposes. A hypothetical path for communications traffic would be from the operator in the field, through the local chain of command (including the local embassies) into a national service headquarters, then to the joint operations headquarters, and eventually to the UN hierarchy. Throughout this process of transmission, copies of the message traffic would be sent to civilian agencies and departments such as foreign service offices for information and coordination and probably for some sort of action-response. In peace and humanitarian operations, this scale of communications would be needed regardless of who maintains the operational and tactical command of the forces. Additionally, for nonoperational and public affairs matters, the field operatives will need to be connected with the local military and civilian population, the UN, coalition humanitarian assistance agencies, and most likely the print and electronic media at all levels. In combat operations, C3I is always a critical function and it would seem that, even in the supposedly more benign environment of peace and humanitarian operations, the need to link the field with the “home office” remains an important capability that contributes to the unity of effort towards a common goal and therefore deserves further attention by military and UN offices.

Enduring and Emerging Capacities
The physical capacity to support peace and humanitarian operations exists today. In examining the promise of military forces in these roles, I see that they carry inherent capabilities that are congruent with these missions. Military forces have a robust transportation and communications capability. They are self-sufficient with respect to essential services and supplies, even in regions that are lacking essential levels of food, water, shelter, and medical services to sustain even short-term operations. So, potentially, military forces have the support capability necessary to conduct operations in a wide spectrum of regions and contexts.

On the down side, the UN consensus security system is not likely to provide military forces with a clear description of goals and objectives necessary for the operators to match strategies to tasks. Specifically, while the emerging international security environment suggests a new willingness to call for intervention without the agreement of all parties to a conflict, in other words peacemaking not just peacekeeping, the collective response will still face ambiguous mandates, shifting diplomatic requirements, and a higher probability that operations starting with one set of objectives such as peacekeeping will be forced to shift into peacemaking or peace enforcement. The basic dilemma remains: military operators will not have the clear goals and objectives they consider essential to any planning or execution of their resources; yet civilian decision makers and diplomats will continue to see military forces as one important element of a menu of potential responses to natural and political crises.

When civil authorities lost control in Somalia and could no longer guarantee the safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel, U.S. military forces received one day’s notice to initiate the noncombat, emergency evacuation of Somalia (Operation Eastern Exit). Following the April 29–30, 1991, cyclone that killed 139,000 Bangladeshi, U.S. Marine Corp Lieutenant General Stackpole’s initial set of orders consisted of not much more than the message, “The [U.S.] National Command Authority has decided to assist Bangladesh. The [Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Pacific Command] wants to know how soon you can get there.” By the end of the fifth week, General Stackpole’s command staff was working with the local government, IGOs, private voluntary organizations (PVOs) such as CARE and Save the Children, and NGOs. He had operational control of Pakistani, British, French, and Japanese rescue teams and equipment, and he was coordinating the activity of a detachment from the Peoples Republic of China. He and his staff were expected to turn a decision into an operational reality. To do so, he had to link capabilities to tasks and orchestrate the response in a joint and combined operation.

In the emerging environment I have described above, it will be even more difficult to develop a balance between the strategic goals and operational tasks. One must hope security specialists and defense establishments are not so overcome by the complex security environment that thinking and debate on military operations other than war take their traditional back seat to debate and analyses of the higher levels of the combat spectrum. These operations deserve further analysis and support to ensure appropriate levels of organizational planning and training so as to develop capable and prepared forces for these emerging, dynamic missions.

Collins G. Shackelford, Jr., is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has published a paper in the ACDIS Occasional Papers series Short Range Nuclear Forces: An Arms Control Perspective. His dissertation will explore the politics of humanitarian intervention. The views expressed in this article are his alone, and do not necessarily represent the positions of the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Department of Defense.