Secretary of the Army Mark Esper reportedly has recommended eliminating the Army War College’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI). The purported reason is that under the new National Defense Strategy, the Army should be focusing on fighting wars against peer and near-peer competitors. In light of this, I have a modest proposal: Move the institute to the Naval War College.
The rationale for the move is pragmatic and rests on four reasons:
(1) Having a research institute dedicated to peacekeeping is vital to National Defense Strategy
(2) Peacekeeping and stability operations mostly are antithetical to the strategic culture of the U.S. Army
(3) Peacekeeping and stability operations are more closely aligned with the strategic culture and purpose of the U.S. Marine Corps
(4) While the Marine Corps University, in Quanitco, Virginia, is the logical place to locate the institute, it currently is resourced for teaching as opposed to research, whereas the Naval War College has a robust research agenda in addition to its professional military education mission.
The recently released unclassified summary of the National Defense Strategy reflects a shift in national priorities toward preparing for interstate conflict with peer and near-peer states, however, it does not entirely consign the counterinsurgencies of the Global War on Terror to the dustbin of history. It highlights the need to “support relationships to address significant terrorist threats in Africa.” Since transnational terrorist networks thrive in areas where central governments are unable to exercise sovereignty, which Max Weber defined as a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a territory, peacekeeping is an important tool for the United States to effect capacity building in fragile states. The National Defense Strategy calls for working with partners—the United Nations and regional security organizations—to execute this mission. The United States should not make troop contributions, but rather funding UN peacekeeping operations and provide training and support to build peacekeeping capacity in lesser-developed countries.
Regardless of peacekeeping rhetoric, in its modern incarnation, it essentially is a form of nonterritorial imperial policing.[1] Today, most peacekeeping operations are undertaken by military contingents from lesser-developed countries. This is very similar to colonial armies under empire.
During empire, colonial powers raised native armies led by European and indigenous officers to maintain order in the colonies. Organizations such as the Kings African Rifles and British Indian Army deployed to theaters all over the British Empire. The logic of using colonial forces was purely pecuniary—they were cheaper for maintaining the vast empire as opposed to providing troops from the metropole. As one British officer explained, “None of the forces we served with were large enough or sufficiently well equipped to deal with foreign invasion or large-scale rebellion. We could, however, keep matters under some kind of control until help arrived.”[2] This is a pretty fair description of how peacekeepers are deployed today in active conflict zones. Peacekeepers drawn from lesser-developed countries are deployed as blue helmets maintaining order in the same zone as counterinsurgency operations are undertaken by specialized units from the developed world. For example, the French Operation Serval blunted an insurgency that threatened the Malian government and then a peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, comprised of African contingents, deployed and the French force was drawn down to a small combined arms contingent that supports MINUSMA.
One of the principal reasons the U.S. Army has resisted peacekeeping is that it conflicts with the service’s strategic culture. Strategic culture was defined by Yitzhak Klein as, “the set of attitudes and beliefs held within a military establishment concerning the political objective of war and the most effective strategy and operational method for achieving it.”[3] It is reflected in the strategies and doctrines chosen by a military organization. Its development reflects not only national culture, but is historically contingent, derived from the formative wars of the particular military service. The strategic culture of the U.S. Army was formed by the Civil War and reinforced by World War II. The Army sees itself as fighting big wars, not small wars. It is structured to fight interstate conflicts with massed armies—for example, the basic organizational unit for the employment of combined arms in the field is the division. The first Gulf War was the perfect model of a campaign for the U.S. Army: An application of overwhelming firepower by multiple divisions against the army of another state, leading to a battlefield victory in 100 hours.
The Army has been forced to do counterinsurgency in the Global War on Terror, but it still organizes its combined arms-fighting force around the division, not the brigade, which is better suited to small wars, counterinsurgencies, and military operations other than war. The Army wants to get back to its core purpose—fighting interstate war with divisions.
The Marine Corps, on the other hand, is conscious of its history. Learning the history of the Corps is part of the basic indoctrination of every Marine. That history includes the experiences in fighting small wars in Latin America, which culminated in the first written doctrine on fighting small wars, The Small Wars Manual, first published in 1935 and revised in 1940. The Corps also is more practically organized for deployment in small wars, counterinsurgencies, and military operations. The basic organizational unit, the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), is capable of combined-arms operations at the brigade level. Furthermore, it is a force that can deploy on short notice.
At first glance, the logical place to relocate the PKSOI would be the Marine Corps University, however, that institution currently is not equipped to support a research-focused agenda along with its professional military education (PME) mission. It is too small and too new, having been founded in 1990. Therefore, the place to relocate the PKSOI is the Naval War College, which is a venerable institution with both PME and research programs. The PKSOI operates on a modest budget and could either be tucked into the Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups or operated as a new, standalone research center. Rather than lose the capabilities of the PKSOI because of a reassertion of U.S. Army strategic culture, it should be located at a sea-service institution with a more compatible strategic culture.
[1] Philip Cunliffe, Legions of Peace: UN Peacekeepers from the Global South (London: Hurst, 2013).
[2] Cited in James Lunt, Imperial Sunset: Frontier Soldiering in the 20th Century (London: Macdonald Futura, 1981) xii.
[3] Yitzhak Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Culture,” Comparative Strategy 10 (1991):5.
Mr. Olsen is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Leicester researching peacekeeping effectiveness in civil wars.