Title

Supporting Regional Security Forces for Peaceand Stability Operations

Author(s)Bowman, Geoffrey; Goad, Michael; McDowell, Kurt

Citation

国際公共政策研究. 2017, 22(1), p. 85-93

Version Type VoR
URL

https://doi.org/10.18910/65096

rights
Note

Osaka University Knowledge Archive : OUKA
https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/
Osaka University

85 

Supporting Regional Security Forces
for Peace and Stability Operations

Geoffrey BOWMAN*
Michael GOAD**
Kurt McDOWELL***

Abstract
The U.S. military struggles to manage lengthy, complex, multidimensional stability operations around the world.
These operations are costly, U.S. forces are frequently treated as outsiders, and their effectiveness is hampered by thefact that U.S. intervention may have contributed to the instability in the first place. At the same time, many developing
and underdeveloped nations are struggling to manage a Youth Bulge, where a significant portion of the population is
between the ages of 15-29. Standing regional stability forces similar to the African Union’s African Standby Forcecould be a solution to both problems, providing education, training and employment to Youth Bulge members and creating a credible, apolitical and more cost-effective stabilization force to respond to situations around the globe.

Keywords： Stability Operations, United Nations, Peace Operations, Youth Bulge*

Director, Wargaming Division, Center for Applied Strategic Learning, National Defense University; Lt Col, USAF
Branch Chief, United States Africa Command Staff J-2: Intelligence; CDR, USN***
Staff Member, United States Department of Defense Joint Staff J-7: Joint Force Development; MAJ, USA**

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国際公共政策研究第 22 巻第 1 号

1. Introduction
The United States should support the creation of regionally based international forces under the control of theUnited Nations to conduct peace and stability operations. The efficiency of these operations is an important
issue in today’s international order. The U.S. military has developed doctrine describing its interpretation ofstabilization missions and peace operations as well as guidelines for its forces’ implementation of those efforts.
However, describing the U.S. military’s efforts at stabilization in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 16 years as alittle rocky would be a charming understatement. The mixed results we have achieved have come at a great costin lives, resources, readiness, and national prestige. Stabilization efforts are hard, take lots of manpower, andrequire a different type of military training than other phases of our joint doctrine. Also, the presence of the U.S.
military executing stabilization missions in areas they are partially responsible for destabilizing serves as aconstant reminder of why opponents decided to fight us in the beginning. Additionally, using U.S. forces forUnited Nations mandated or other peace operations may not be the most efficient method to ensure peace in anarea of dispute. U.S. forces are highly trained as well as expensive to deploy and sustain. Other forces could
achieve similar results at a much lower cost.
Another issue boiling to the surface is the disorder generated by unbalanced demographics around the globe.
Developed states are rapidly ageing, while developing nations are dealing with a lopsided bulge of younger
inhabitants. This “Youth Bulge” presents an opportunity in increased available labor. However, many Youth
Bulge national economies lack growth at a rate that allows for sufficient employment opportunities. Lack of full
employment or underemployment can feed a host of negative social trends as these young women and men dowhat they must for their survival. Left unchecked, these negative social trends will result in the destabilization ofnations and regions and require domestic or international peacekeeping missions to prevent atrocities and restore
order.
Looked at separately, these two issues pose some difficult problems to overcome. However, taken together, apotential solution to both emerges. Namely, the excess and unemployed labor of nations suffering from a Youth
Bulge problem could be trained and employed as regional extra-national peace and stability forces to be used asneeded throughout the world. A current model that could be taken as a starting point is the African Union’s
African Standby Force (ASF). The African Union (AU) has developed the ASF to handle peace and stability on
their continent, and some aspects of this construct could inform other regional standby forces. Taken alone theproposed stabilization force merely dents the risk inherent to the impending global Youth Bulge and surplus ofyoung women and men devoid of opportunity. However, in the chaotic environments many Youth Bulges
manifest, this minor repair contains the potential to nudge nascent nations towards exponential return. With risk
comes opportunity, constraints beget innovation, and a stabilization tool emerges.

2. Youth Bulge Definitions
While the rest of the world is declining or holding steady, the populations in South Asia and Africa are
increasing dramatically. Asia will increase in population by about a billion people by 2050. That increase isessentially another India, albeit spread over an entire continent. Asia must contend with this reality, but after
2050 the forecasts level off. If Asia has an issue to address, Africa has a problem with no projected long termSupporting Regional Security Forces for Peace and Stability Operations

87

improvement. Today the aggregate population of Africa is over one billion. In 2050 that number is projected tosurpasses two billion, and by 2060 the African population will nearly triple! While not all countries haveproblems, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all have Youth Bulges, defined
as a percentage of their adult population between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine, recorded at nearly fifty
percent. These levels are projected to hold steady for at least another decade. In South Asia, Pakistan and India
have the greatest Youth Bulge problems at 45% and 35% respectively1. While having a large number of youth ina country is not necessarily a cause for concern, economies must be robust enough for those young people to findgainful employment.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case in Asia and Africa.

unemployment rate in Nigeria is 29% and 17.5% in Ethiopia.

For instance, the2

3. Stabilization Doctrine Definitions
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff define Stability Operations in Joint Publication 3-07 as “...various military
missions, tasks, and activities conducted outside the U.S. in coordination with other instruments of national power
to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency
infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.”3 The United Nations utilizes the term “Peacebuilding” todescribe a long-term process for “...strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and tolay the foundations for sustainable peace and development.”4 Various other authors and scholars describe “Peace
Operations” as “...multifunctional military and non-military undertakings...involving military forces anddiplomatic and humanitarian activities.” 5 Regardless of the definition or the discussion, common themes
emerge: multidimensional military, police, diplomatic, and civilian operations; long duration missions extending
well beyond any actual military or combat operations; and the extremely labor-intensive nature of any such
undertaking.
Decades of experience around the globe have taught the United Nations, the African Union, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, the United States and other countries and organizations that it is not enough to merely bringabout an end to hostilities to achieve peace. While there is some overlap in the definitions of peacekeeping,peace enforcement, and stability operations, the former two have historically been focused on ending hostilities
and physical conflict. Stability operations seek to more fully address the root causes of the conflict over time,with an emphasis on setting conditions to prevent future occurrences. Joint Publication 3-07 lists five key
stabilization functions: security, humanitarian assistance, economic stabilization and infrastructure, rule of law,and governance and participation.6 Military intervention is certainly a key consideration in the security function,and there are roles for military forces across all the functions, but experience tells us that such a vast and complex
undertaking cannot be accomplished in a relatively brief deployment of military capability. Instead, stability
operations must be approached from the earliest planning phases as multidimensional efforts employing the full

1

International Futures (IFs) modeling system, Version 7.26. Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School ofInternational Studies, University of Denver, Denver, CO.
2“CIA World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency, accessed February 12, 2017, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/3

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stability Operations, Joint Publication 3-07 (Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 29, 2011), vii.

4

“Peace and Security,” United Nations, accessed February 11, 2017, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/peace.shtml.

5

Sylvester B. Maphosa, “Partnerships in Peace Operations,” Africa Insight 44, no. 3 (2014): 113-114.

6

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stability Operations, Joint Publication 3-07 (Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 29, 2011), xv.

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国際公共政策研究第 22 巻第 1 号

range of humanitarian, diplomatic, economic, legal, information, and other disciplines to adequately address root
causes of conflict at socioeconomic, cultural and other levels.
The United States is still learning painful lessons from Iraq in 2003, driving significant policy changes in the
Department of Defense and elsewhere in 2005 that elevated stability operations to the same core-competency
level as combat operations.7 It was not enough to liberate Iraq and bring an end to hostilities between Coalition
and Iraqi militaries. We failed to fully understand and anticipate the root causes of internal Iraqi conflict, while atthe same time removing or excluding many of the institutions that would have been critical to addressing that
instability. We have been playing catch-up ever since.
On the other hand, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the African Union-United Nations
Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) both describe the significance of a broader approach to address root causes ofconflict in their mandates.8 These missions employ a mix of regional AU forces and United Nations staff andhave been, by most measures, successful in enhancing security in their respective areas and are making important
strides in the re-establishment of good governance and services. In contrast to the vast resources and manpower
the United States has devoted to Iraq, however, AMISOM and UNAMID (and indeed, most AU operations) are
hamstrung by budgetary and manpower considerations.

4. Peace Operations Definition
Peace Operations is a broader umbrella term from U.S. Joint doctrine that encompasses the potentially kinetic
operations of peacekeeping with the long-term multidimensional commitments of stability operations.
Regionally based security forces could also conduct peace operations. “Peace operations are crisis response andlimited contingency operations, and normally include international efforts and military missions to containconflict, redress the peace, and shape the environment to support reconciliation and rebuilding and to facilitate thetransition to legitimate governance.” 9 Normally peace operations are executed with sponsorship by someintergovernmental organization such as the United Nations, but individual countries can conduct them unilaterally.
The legal basis for United Nations mandated peace operations comes from chapters VI, VII, and VIII of theUnited Nations charter which discuss the terms by which that organization can use force to maintain peace.
Additionally, some nations have negotiated methods by which they may execute peace operations independent ofa United Nations mandate.
U.S. military joint doctrine defines fifteen fundamentals and five types of peace operations. The fundamentals
are Consent Impartiality, Transparency, Credibility, Freedom of Movement, Flexibility and Adaptability,
Civil-Military Harmonization and Cooperation, Restraint and Minimum Force, Objective/End State,
Perseverance, Unity of Effort, Legitimacy, Security, Mutual Respect and Cultural Awareness, and Current andSufficient Intelligence. The types of peace operations are briefly defined below.
Types of Peace Operations:10
7James W. Derleth and Jason S. Alexander, “Stability Operations: From Policy to Practice,” Prism 2, no. 3 (2011): 125.

8

“AMISOM Mandate,” AMISOM, accessed February 11, 2017, http://www.amisom-au.org/amisom-mandate; and “About UNAMID,” United

Nations, accessed February 11, 2017, https://unamid.unmissions.org/about-unamid-0.
9

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stability Operations, Joint Publication 3-07 (Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 29, 2011), I-1.

10

Ibid, I-8.

Supporting Regional Security Forces for Peace and Stability Operations

89

Peacekeeping: Military operations undertaken with the consent of all major parties to a dispute,designed to monitor and facilitate implementation of an agreement (ceasefire, truce, or other suchagreement) and support diplomatic efforts to reach a long-term political settlement.
Peace Enforcement: Application of military force, or the threat of its use, normally pursuant tointernational authorization, to compel compliance with resolutions or sanctions designed to maintain or
restore peace and order.
Peace Building: Stability actions, predominately diplomatic and economic, that strengthen andrebuild governmental infrastructure and institutions in order to avoid a relapse into conflict.
Peacemaking: The process of diplomacy, mediation, negotiation, or other forms of peacefulsettlements that arranges an end to a dispute and resolves issues that led to it.
Conflict Prevention: A peace operation employing complementary diplomatic, civil, and, whennecessary, military means, to monitor and identify the causes of conflict, and take timely action toprevent the occurrence, escalation, or resumption of hostilities. Activities aimed at conflict prevention
are often conducted under Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter. Conflict prevention can include
fact-finding missions, consultations, warnings, inspections, and monitoring.
With the definitions and descriptions of both stability and peace operations in mind we will now look at how the
problem of the Youth Bulge fits into our proposed solution.

5. Proposed Solution
While the U.S. military does many things very well, one aspect of warfare where it has shown deficiencies inrecent years is in returning areas to peace and stability and redeploying to the homeland. While some of thereasons behind these difficulties are political, the U.S. military’s training and employment also partially bear theblame. They are trained to decisively defeat the enemy, not necessarily to re-establish peace. The type of
personnel and training needed to execute stability or peace operations are different than those needed to defeat an
enemy’s military force. The use of the U.S. military requires significant amounts of money as well. For
instance, the United States spent approximately $54,000 in personnel costs for each soldier in the U.S. Army infiscal year 2015.11 This figure does not include equipment, training, basing, or other costs associated with amodern military.
Instead of employing these highly capable but expensive forces in sustainment or peace operations, other forces
could be specially trained and employed for the final stages of a stabilization campaign. One good example ofanother force capable of executing stability and peace operations is the African Union’s African Standby Force(ASF). The ASF has recently reached its full operating capacity and is able to accomplish a wide range of
missions similar to those listed above. The ASF’s stated goal is to be able to deploy up to 2,500 peacekeepers

11“Military Personnel Programs (M1),” Office of the Undersecretary of Defense Comptroller, accessed February 11, 2017,

http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2017/amendment/fy2017_m1a.pdf; and “2016 Index of Military Strength: U.S.
Army,” The Heritage Foundation, accessed February 11, 2017, http://index.heritage.org/military/2016/assessments/us-military-power/us-army/

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anywhere on the African continent within fourteen days.12 The United Nations, with U.S. support, could create
their own version of the ASF to respond to regional crises. For instance, creating an Asian Standby force,
European Standby Force, and an Americas Standby Force could ensure that regional peace and stability forces arereadily available if needed throughout the world.

6. Advantages
This proposed approach has distinct advantages over U.S.-sourced peace and stability operations. ASF-typeforces could employ a significant portion of the excess young labor that has built up in areas suffering from aYouth Bulge. Joining a standby force would provide an employment opportunity for young people from thoseareas and provide them with additional skill sets acquired through standby force training from which they may beable to capitalize during post-standby force jobs. Also, the average individual income of those living in countries
with Youth Bulge problems is far less than in the United States and in many cases less than the amount the United
Nations pays for peacekeepers.13 Because of the high costs of American service members, substituting an
ASF-esque force could prove much more affordable. As a point of comparison to the cost of a U.S. soldier, theUnited Nations provides approximately $15,600 to a peacekeeper’s country per person per year for United
Nations mandated peacekeeping operations. Offering jobs in a standby force at rates below the cost of a United
Nations peacekeeper should still attract sufficient workers to that type of employment. Next, using forces forpeace and stability that were not party to the original conflict could lend more credibility to peace efforts. Rather
than being a constant reminder of the recent violence, populations in disputed areas might view the ASF-esquepeace mission as apolitical and therefore more interested in providing security and genuinely contributing to thepeace process.

7. Disadvantages
At the end of 2016, nine of the sixteen active United Nations peacekeeping and stability operations were in
Africa. These operations involved more than 98,000 uniformed and civilian United Nations peacekeepers, 83%of the United Nations’ deployed forces worldwide. 14

There is clearly no shortage of labor-intensive

peacekeeping and stability operations, particularly in Africa. Nevertheless, focusing a standby force recruitedfrom a Youth Bulge area on stability operations on a regional or continental basis is not without drawbacks.
Funding is perhaps the biggest concern. The United Nations pays the peacekeeper’s country of origin around$1,300 per month, and only during their particular deployment. A standing force with dedicated infrastructure,logistics, training and other support requirements presents a much larger budget over time (even if the United
Nations peacekeeper salary rates could be undercut). The Institute for Security Studies estimates that for every

12“Understanding the African Standby Force, rapid deployment and Amani Africa II,” Institute for Security Studies: Media Toolkit, November 4,2015, accessed February 9, 2017,
http://www.issafrica.org/media-resources/fact-sheets/understanding-the-african-standby-force-rapid-deployment-and-amani-africa-ii
13John C. Gannon, “NIC Chairman: Intelligence Challenges Through 2015,” Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook, April 27, 2000, accessed

February 13, 2017, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2000/gannon_speech_05022000.html.
14“UnitedNations

Peacekeeping

Operations

Fact

Sheet

31

http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.shtml.

Dec

2016,”

UnitedNations,

accessed

February

12,

2017,

Supporting Regional Security Forces for Peace and Stability Operations

91

uniformed ASF soldier and police officer there are at least six other people required to address logistics, supply,
medical and other issues.15 As stability operations become increasingly multidimensional in nature, there is asignificant humanitarian and diplomatic footprint that will continue to drive costs upward. The African Union
has a lofty goal of being able to fund 25% of its operations by 2020, obviously excluding any of the expansion that
we advocate here.16 The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) comprises more than 22,000 troops
from five countries, but is funded entirely by the European Union’s African Peace Facility.17 The enormous costs
and scope of stability operations will continue to be almost entirely dependent on external funding sources for theforeseeable future.
Impartiality and legitimacy are cornerstones of any peacekeeping or stabilization force. On the surface, the
ASF’s regional construct would seem to provide forces with regional backgrounds and experiences that would
have a vested interest in stability on their “home turf.” However, this proximity can degrade the impartiality of
the force as contributing nations (or even individual peacekeepers) find themselves aligned culturally,
economically, or politically with one particular side of the conflict.18 It might be possible to mitigate this risk andpreserve impartiality by deploying regional forces well outside of there are of origin, but this method would also
incur additional logistics costs.
Training and interoperability present additional challenges. Thirty-five African nations currently train to
NATO standards.19 This seems reassuring at first glance, but the ASF’s Amani Africa II exercise that concludedin November 2015 revealed discrepancies in standards, doctrine, communications, and capabilities. While notunexpected in a complex field training exercise comprising more than 5,400 representatives from twenty
countries, the overall effectiveness of the ASF -- indeed, of any regional force -- relies on a common baseline ofstandards in tactics, doctrine, command and control, and communications.20 Interoperability of everything fromradios to ammunition to fuel to medical records is essential to the establishment of an effective force. The scaleand diversity of the African continent -- even when managed in a regional construct as with the ASF -- combinedwith the increasingly multidimensional, complex nature of stability operations, make training and interoperability
a significant challenge. If United Nations standby forces we propose could bring in peacekeepers as individuals
instead of as part of a nation’s military, the force’s training and equipment could be standardized.

8. Comparison of Options
Let us now look at a comparison of three options for the deployment of peace operations forces to a generic area
15

Johnathon Rees, “What Next for the African Standby Force?,” Institute for Security Studies, December 2, 2015, accessed February 10, 2017,https://issafrica.org/iss-today/what-next-for-the-african-standby-force/ .
16“Understanding the African Standby Force, rapid deployment and Amani Africa II,” Institute for Security Studies: Media Toolkit, November 4,2015, accessed February 9, 2017,
http://www.issafrica.org/media-resources/fact-sheets/understanding-the-african-standby-force-rapid-deployment-and-amani-africa-ii.
17

Marina Caparini, “Challenges to Contemporary Peace Support Operations in Africa,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 17, no. 2 (2016):45.
18

Ibid, 45-46.

19

Johnathon Rees, “What Next for the African Standby Force?,” Institute for Security Studies, December 2, 2015, accessed February 10, 2017,https://issafrica.org/iss-today/what-next-for-the-african-standby-force/.
20“Understanding the African Standby Force, rapid deployment and Amani Africa II,” Institute for Security Studies: Media Toolkit, November 4,2015, accessed February 9, 2017,
http://www.issafrica.org/media-resources/fact-sheets/understanding-the-african-standby-force-rapid-deployment-and-amani-africa-ii/.

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国際公共政策研究of dispute. The chart below is a subjective comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of conducting peaceand stability operations with the U.S. military, United Nations peacekeepers, and an ASF-esque force.

U.S. Military

UnitedNations ASF-esque force
Peacekeepers

Personnel Costs

High

Low

Low

Legitimacy

MediumHigh

High

Time to Deploy

Low

High

MediumCapability

High

Variable

MediumTable 1: Subject comparison of peace and stabilization forcesFirst, the costs of U.S. military versus United Nations peacekeepers or personnel in an ASF-like structure havebeen discussed above. Next, multinational and neutral forces are the most legitimate since they would have theleast political bias. A U.S. peace and stability force could be perceived as neutral if the United States had nointerests in a region. However, as a world superpower there are few regions in today’s world without some levelof interest for the United States. Also, the U.S. military is able to deploy personnel rapidly to most regions of theworld. In contrast, the United Nations often takes several months to gather and deploy any peacekeepers after
the United Nations Security Council issues a mandate.21 Under a construct like the ASF, a regional entity could
deploy its force to the area in dispute in a few weeks.22 Finally, the U.S. military is highly capable due toextensive training whereas the capabilities of peacekeeping forces gathered for a United Nations mission vary
based on their country of origin. Standing regional forces could be trained to an internationally approved
standard such that their capabilities would be a known and accepted quantity.

9. Conclusion
Using the U.S. military for stability and peace operations is inefficient. Instead, a more efficient way for theUnited States to execute peace and stabilization operations would be to endorse United Nation’s controlled,
regionally based, and apolitical forces similar to what the African Union has developed in their African Standby
Force. Such forces could be trained to an internationally acceptable standard capability, deploy to areas in21

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stability Operations, Joint Publication 3-07 (Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 29, 2011), II-1.

22“Understanding the African Standby Force, rapid deployment and Amani Africa II,” Institute for Security Studies: Media Toolkit, November 4,2015, accessed February 9, 2017,
http://www.issafrica.org/media-resources/fact-sheets/understanding-the-african-standby-force-rapid-deployment-and-amani-africa-ii/.

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dispute within an acceptable timeframe, and cost less than equivalent American units. These regional peace andstability standby forces could also be at least partially comprised of the currently unemployed youth in countries
suffering from a Youth Bulge. This would help alleviate some of the crushing unemployment felt in Youth Bulge
regions and give the more militant minded of those youths a socially acceptable profession.
While this proposed solution has merit, there are some factors that would require further study to create a viable
path forward. Some of these concerns are listed here for further thought. First, the international community
would need to develop an acceptable standard or baseline capability for peace and stability forces. Also, funding
for the peace and stability forces’ personnel, basing, sustainment, and equipment would have to be identified.
One possible solution is for the United Nations to pay for the forces through member country donations. Finally,transportation to and from an area in dispute requires a reliable logistics capability that does not yet fully exist in
Asia or Africa. Despite these unresolved issues, creating apolitical regional standby forces available to execute
peace and stability operations would benefit the United States.