Converging Forces: Achieving Unity of Purpose in Multinational Peace Operations

Abstract

Abstract : The United States Army is tasked to fight and win the nation's wars and is fully equipped with the doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures to do so. The military peace operations of the 20th century have shown that the Army is less well equipped to fight and win under those circumstances. Clausewitz described war as an extension of policy by other means. The military interventions of the late 20th century, while something short of war, exhibit those same characteristics. However, in these coalition-based operations competing national policies and priorities, and contingent equipment and skill sets, complicate the extension of policy into action. The natural inclination of the Army planner tasked with executing a peace operation would be to turn to the principles of war, espoused by Antoine Henri de Jomini in the nineteenth century and formalized into doctrine the United States in the twentieth, since they are the cornerstone of Army doctrine. In this regard, however, the venerated principles of war have proven inadequate. The United States military recognized these inadequacies and in 1995 introduced the principles of military operations other than war (MOOTW), but MOOTW is a very broad category of military operations, and each of the more specific operations it encompasses has its own unique set of problems. This is especially true in coalition peace operations where questions of consent, impartiality, restraint, and interoperability complicate even the simplest matters. Further, the principles of MOOTW can appear to the military planner more as conditions to be achieved rather than an operational approach to the conduct of peace operations. Numerous symposiums, reports, and studies have attempted to identify and codify a set of fundamental principles for the conduct of coalition peace operations.