Attitudes of Citizen-Soldiers Toward Military Missions in the Post-Cold War World

Abstract

The 28th six-month rotation of peacekeepers to the Sinai Multinational force and Observers (MFO) was an experiment to test the use of a composite force of reserve and active component soldiers for peacekeeping. This article presents analyses of the attitudes of reserve soldiers who volunteered for this mission, based on three waves of surveys conducted before and during the deployment. We focus on three sets of attitudes that bear on the way citizen-soldiers are likely to play the role of peacekeeper: perceptions of the likelihood of American forces being deployed for a range of missions over the next decade; attitudes toward foreigners and foreign experiences that might affect adjustment to multinational military environments; and attitudes toward the peacekeeping role. Like earlier active duty soldiers who have served in the Sinai MFO, our respondents regarded operations other than war to be considerably more likely than high intensity warfare in the future. However, their estimates of the likelihood of American involvement in actual hostilities was higher toward the end of the deployment than prior to the deployment. We did not find an emergence of a transcultural orientation among the soldiers. Most of them did not regard foreign nationals as trustworthy, and disagreed with the idea that people are pretty much alike across national boundaries. An increased number of soldiers seem to have been motivated to volunteer more by a desire for travel and new experiences than by a desire to work with and among people of other nationalities. The analysis of soldiers' attitudes toward various components of the peacekeeping mission showed a considerable degree of change. Although a majority of soldiers supported the basic peacekeeping norms of minimal use of force and reduction of conflict, the size of the majority decreased through the mission, and a strong majority denied that peacekeeping could be performed by unarmed personnel.