POLITICS-U.S.: Top Commanders Seen to Favour Peace Operations

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 15 2002 (IPS) - As the administration of President George W. Bush debates Washington’s role in stabilising post-Taliban Afghanistan, a report released Thursday said top U.S. military commanders strongly favour U.S. participation in international peace operations.

Based on interviews with more than two dozen top U.S. military leaders, including the commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, and several European commanders, the report concluded that U.S. engagement in peace operations is “in our national interests and will be a critical ingredient in the war against terrorism.”

Most of the commanders, including Franks, were interviewed before the Sep. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Those interviewed afterwards, according to retired Marine Colonel Richard Roan, who conducted the interviews, said the attacks only strengthened their belief that international peace operations and U.S. participation in them were of “critical importance to our own national security.”

“Most senior commanders believe that the U.S. doesn’t have to lead every operation, but it has to be a player, and, to be most effective, must be a player on the ground,” according to the 83-page report, ‘A Force for Peace and Security,’ released by The Peace Through Law Education Fund with the help of retired senior U.S. military officers.

The report comes as the Bush administration remains undecided about whether to support an increase in the British-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to enable it to deploy outside Kabul, where its 4,500 troops have been confined so far. The administration has rejected any possible U.S. participation in ISAF.

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, backed by Special United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, has appealed to both Washington and the international community to enlarge the force in order to maintain security and help extend his government’s reach beyond the capital.

But the U.S. administration has been in stalemate on the issue. While the State Department has supported Karzai, political appointees in the Pentagon and, to a lesser extent, in the National Security Council (NSC) have resisted the idea.

Initially, the latter were concerned that deploying peacekeepers throughout Afghanistan would get in the way of Washington’s pursuit of remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda troops. More recently, they have said they would prefer to spend the resources needed to build up and deploy ISAF throughout Afghanistan, instead, on training a new national army, a course on which the United States is already embarked.

Behind those reasons, however, lies a reflexive antipathy to “peacekeeping”, a cause championed by former President Bill Clinton, according to the administration’s critics. These sources note that, even during Bush’s election campaign, his top advisers had cited “peacekeeping”, like “nation-building”, as the kind “social work” in which U.S. soldiers should not be engaged.

Bush suggested several times during the campaign that he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from peacekeeping missions in the Balkans so that they could better prepare for war-fighting missions.

He has since insisted such a withdrawal is not imminent but Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested just last month that he was actively considering redeploying U.S. peacekeeping forces from the Sinai Peninsula, which they have monitored since the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt.

That view is shortsighted, according to the authors of the report.

Peace operations are “not something we’re doing to be nice,” said retired Major Gen. William Nash, who is now affiliated with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “This is a conflict prevention issue; it is not peacekeeping.”

“We must get over the mind-set that cross-border aggression is more of a threat than the terrorist breeding grounds and safe havens of Bosnia and Timor and Somalia,” said Gen. Wesley Clark, who, as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, ran the bloc’s campaign in Kosovo. “We must be prepared to participate with our allies, on the ground, to build stability in broken states and countries of conflict.”

“Commanders interviewed in the report state that peace operations are no longer the discretionary humanitarian missions they were considered in the 1990s, but now are necessary operations that preclude terrorism and enhance U.S. security,” the report stated.

Many military commanders were reluctant to engage in peacekeeping operations in the early 1990s for similar reasons to those cited by Bush and his top aides during the political campaign. There were concerns that troops serving in peace operations would suffer low morale and reduced readiness for combat missions.

But as they became more involved in such operations during the decade, according to military analysts, the tide of opinion changed quite dramatically.

Retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, a predecessor of Clark’s at NATO command, is quoted in the report as saying, “The training that the young NCO (non-commissioned officer) or younger officer gets (in Kosovo) is far superior to what he or she would be getting if they were (stationed at U.S. bases) in Germany.”

The reported concluded that peace operations are “leadership laboratories” for officers. “Leaders across the board asserted without qualification that morale and retention rates are highest among those serving in peace operations,” it said.

Major points of unanimous agreement among the U.S. commanders, according to Roan, included: the importance of establishing a civilian-led criminal law system with a professional police before peacekeeping troops withdraw; the need to apprehend known war criminals in areas patrolled by peace forces; and the potential importance of the United Nations as a partner in peace operations and in the larger context of the “war on terrorism”.

According to Beth DeGrasse, a co-author of the report, there is a serious incongruity between views of the Pentagon’s civilian leadership under Bush and those of the military brass on the entire issue. “We’re trying to bring the voices of the commanders into the public view in order to promote more discussion,” she said.