The US Military’s 

Experience in 

Stability Operations, 

1789-2005

Lawrence A. Yates

Global War on Terrorism

Occasional Paper 15

Combat Studies Institute Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

OP 15
The US Military’s 

Experience in 

Stability Operations, 

1789-2005 

by

Lawrence A. Yates

Combat Studies Institute Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

OP 15
CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views expressed 

in this CSI Press publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of the 

Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.

A full list of CSI Press publications, many of them available for downloading, can 

be found at http://www.cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yates, Lawrence A., 1945-

 The US Military’s experience in stability operations, 1789-2005 / by Lawrence 

A. Yates.

 p. cm. -- (Global war on terrorism occasional paper ; v 15) 1. United 

States--Armed Forces--Stability operations--History. I. Title. II. Series. 

 U167.5.S68Y38 2006

 355.4--dc22

 
Foreword

This Global War on Terrorism Occasional Paper (GWOT OP), by Dr. 

Lawrence Yates, provides his thoughts and analysis of the US Army’s 

participation in stability operations (SO) since 1789. Dr. Yates, a member 

of the CSI Team since 1981, has spent twenty plus years intensely studying 

this aspect of Army operations. Prior to his retirement in 2005, CSI asked 

him to put in writing his impressions formed by his research in this field. 

The result is this monograph.

Dr. Yates makes several key arguments about the Army’s involvement 

in SO. Among the key points he makes is his contention that the Army 

has an institutional habit of forgetting the lessons learned about SO, 

when, after conducting a stability operation, it returns to conventional 

warfare preparation. He also points out, correctly, that the Army, which 

has participated in far more SO-type activities since 1789 than it has 

conventional wars, has hitherto retained a mindset that stability operations 

are the anomaly rather than the norm in American military operations. 

It is our hope that this GWOT OP will be of great value in providing 

the military professional with a broad overview of the history of the US 

Army’s participation in stability operations, and at least one historian’s 

view on how well it performed. Some may disagree with Dr. Yates’ views 

on specific aspects of his analysis; that is well and good. If this GWOT 

OP stimulates a vigorous debate, Dr. Yates’ study will have achieved its 

purpose. CSI—The Past is Prologue.

Timothy R. Reese

Colonel, Armor

Director, Combat Studies Institute

iii

Contents

Foreword........................................................................................................iii

Introduction.....................................................................................................1

Historical Overview........................................................................................3

The First Century, 1789-1898......................................................................3

The Small Wars Experience, 1898-1940......................................................7

The Cold War, 1945-1990........................................................................... 11

The Post-Cold War Decade, 1990-2000 .....................................................19

Patterns and Recurring Themes....................................................................21

Traditional military assumptions concerning stability operations ..............21

Execution of stability operations................................................................26

The stability operations environment .........................................................30

The Historical Record and US Capabilities for Stability Operations...........36

Planning......................................................................................................36

Doctrine ......................................................................................................37

Organization ...............................................................................................38

Training.......................................................................................................39

Leader development ...................................................................................39

Materiel.......................................................................................................41

Personnel ....................................................................................................41

Summary and Prognosis ...............................................................................41

Appendix A...................................................................................................53

Appendix B...................................................................................................55

v



Introduction 

According to US Army Field Manual 3.0, Operations, “Fighting and 

winning the nation’s wars is the foundation of Army service....” Thus, 

even though the Army recognizes that soldiers will perform a wide range 

of military activities across the spectrum of conflict, the service’s institutional emphasis is on warfighting.

1

 This focus is narrowed even further 

when considering war itself. Officially, the Army describes war as a phenomenon that takes on many forms, including large and small, total and 

limited, global and regional, conventional and unconventional. Yet, in the 

past, warfighting doctrine, supported by military education and training 

programs and reflecting the Army’s institutional biases, has instilled the 

conviction in most officers that, despite war’s diversity, “real” war is primarily a conventional undertaking—one in which the regular armed forces 

of a given state wage large-scale and sustained combat operations against 

the regular armed forces of an enemy state. In conventional warfare, the 

battlefield tends to be linear, the armies large, the combatants uniformed 

(and thus identifiable), and the technology highly sophisticated. The mission of the US military in such wars is to defeat the enemy’s forces, or 

at least to inflict unacceptable damage on them, so that American policy 

makers can achieve the political objectives of a given conflict.

In the more than two centuries since “thirteen united States of America” declared their independence, American forces have fought 11 wars that 

were, by the aforementioned description, predominantly conventional in 

nature. Of those conflicts, four were total wars (the War of Independence, 

the Civil War, and World Wars I and II), in which America’s existence or 

its way of life was considered to be at stake, and in which few restrictions 

were placed on the weapons employed or on the targets attacked in the 

military’s efforts to defeat the enemy. The remaining seven wars (the War 

of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Korean and 

Vietnam wars,2 and the two Gulf wars) were limited, in that an imminent 

threat to the country’s survival or way of life was not apparent, thereby allowing US policy makers to accept or set limitations on the objectives, the 

geographical scope, and the conduct of hostilities. Throughout its history, 

the American military has focused the bulk of its attention on fighting, or 

preparing to fight, these kinds of conventional wars, with circumstances 

dictating whether any given conflict would be total or limited. 

One trade off for this preoccupation with conventional warfare has 

been the military’s general disinclination to study and prepare for what, 

in current jargon, is referred to as stability operations. As of this writing, 
Army doctrine for full spectrum operations (offense, defense, stability, 

and civil support operations) and for the narrower categories of stability 

operations and counterinsurgency is being rewritten. The current working 

draft of the field manual for stability operations contains the following 

generalization:

A stability operation is an operation executed outside the 

United States and its territories to establish, preserve, and 

exploit security and control over areas, populations, and 

resources. They may occur before, during, and after offensive and defensive operations; however, they also occur separately, usually at the lower end of the spectrum 

of conflict. Army forces engaged in stability operations 

establish, safeguard, or restore basic civil services. They 

act directly and in support of government agencies. Stability operations involve both coercive and cooperative 

actions. They lead to an environment in which the other 

instruments of national power can predominate.3

In the past, the following kinds of activities have fallen under the rubric of stability operations4

: 

Peace operations

Foreign internal defense (to include counterinsurgency)

Security assistance

Humanitarian and civic assistance

Support to insurgencies

Support to counterdrug operations

Combating terrorism

Noncombatant evacuation operations

Arms control

Show of force

If America’s armed forces have fought fewer than a dozen major conventional wars in over two centuries, they have, during that same period, 

engaged in several hundred military undertakings that would today be 

characterized as stability operations.5 The Army was involved in many 

of these; as an institution, however, it developed, in the words of analyst 

James Carafano, “a tradition of forgetting” its own experience.6 The primary reason for this is simple enough: throughout most of its history, the 

Army has regarded stability operations as “someone else’s job,” an unwanted burden, a series of sideshows that soldiers performed either separately from war or in the wake of war. Because the Army did not gener-

•

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ally perceive stability operations as integral to war, such operations were 

belittled for diverting essential resources away from the service’s principal 

mission of warfighting. On occasion, critics of this traditional view urged 

the Army to alter its doctrine and training programs so that combat units 

would have the skills both to fight and to conduct stability operations. In 

countering this recommendation, the Army often employed the argument 

that disciplined soldiers trained solely for warfighting were capable of adjusting to the unorthodox tasks and activities required by stability operations. Whatever the merit of this position, it tended to ignore or play down 

the disruption to the military mission and the cost to US policy objectives 

caused by the required period of adjustment. 

In hopes that historical perspective might act as a mild antidote to 

the Army’s recurring memory lapses regarding its experience in stability 

operations, as well as to the traditionalist mind set that fosters such lapses, 

the following pages provide a brief overview of the US military’s involvement in such operations and draws out the salient patterns and recurring 

themes that can be derived from those experiences. It is hoped that a presentation and critical analysis of the historical record will assist today’s 

Army in its attempts, now well under way, to reassess its long-standing 

attitudes toward stability operations and the role it should play in them. 

Historical Overview

For the sake of convenience, the US military’s experience in the 

conduct of stability operations prior to the Global War on Terrorism can 

be divided chronologically into four periods: the country’s first century 

(1789-1898); the “Small Wars” experience (1898-1940)7; the Cold War 

(1945-1990); and the post-Cold War decade (1991-2001). In providing an 

overview of each period, and in discussing the salient patterns and recurring themes derived from this overview, reference will be made to a group 

of 28 representative case studies. The list of these case studies can be 

found at appendix A; synopses of the cases, written by members of the 

Combat Studies Institute, are located in appendix B.

The First Century, 1789-1898

With the exception of the war with Mexico in 1846, most major operations of the US Army during the first century of its existence took place 

within what were or would become the continental borders of the United 

States. Of the operations that could be characterized as stability operations 

today, the least violent tended to be those associated with building and securing the country’s infrastructure. “In this surge of national development,” 
write Peter Maslowski and Allan Millett, “the Army served as an advance agent of continental empire. Soldiers explored the West and built, 

improved, and protected transportation networks. Communities arose in 

the vicinity of forts where bluecoats provided security and consumed 

goods and services.” West Point graduates, the authors go on to say, were 

able to apply the scientific and engineering skills they had acquired at the 

Academy to the task of national development.8 

During this period of territorial expansion and development, the 

Army also engaged in law enforcement, at times to deter or quell violent 

activities by groups of disgruntled citizens, but more extensively in the 

area of Indian affairs.9 Prior to the Civil War, this meant keeping peace 

in frontier areas and removing eastern Indian tribes to territory in the 

trans-Mississippi West. Often, these duties necessitated only a show of 

force, either to keep Indians and white settlers from engaging in hostilities or, under the US government’s removal policy, to escort the tribes 

to their new land and help them settle it. When hostilities against an 

Indian foe did break out, the Army often relied on conventional tactics, deploying in converging columns in order to surround the enemy 

and force him to fight a decisive battle. In the Second Seminole War 

(1835-1842), however, the policy of Indian removal took US forces into 

the swamps of Florida, where the troops became bogged down in the 

country’s first protracted unconventional war. Constrained by the terrain 

and plagued by the raiding and ambush tactics of small Seminole war 

parties, American commanders enjoyed little military success until they, 

too, adopted unconventional, small-unit tactics designed to bring the war 

parties to battle or run them to ground. In the list of eight generals who 

commanded US troops in Florida, only two, Zachary Taylor and William 

Worth, did so with distinction, while others asked to be relieved from 

their involvement in a messy undertaking they regarded as unworthy of 

a true officer and warrior.10

Beginning shortly before the Civil War and continuing into the 

1890s, the Army’s involvement in Indian affairs shifted largely to 

the trans-Mississippi West, specifically to the country’s Great Plains, 

Northwest, and Southwest, where US soldiers engaged in a variety of 

activities, including pacification and police work. As had been the case 

in the first half of the century, battles and skirmishes with the Indians 

involved a combination of conventional and unconventional warfare, 

the latter necessitating that the Army adopt such unorthodox measures 

as small, lightly armed, and highly mobile forces, and the use of Indian auxiliaries. By the end of the century, when the United States was 
deemed to have fulfilled its “Manifest Destiny” upon the North American 

continent, the Army had acquired an impressive record in the conduct of 

irregular warfare against opponents who, fighting in accord with their cultural norms, had proved challenging and formidable. In the process, US 

soldiers had also played a critical role in developing the country’s transportation and communication systems, conducting scientific surveys and 

studies, promoting local education, and stimulating economic growth.

On occasion in the period between 1789 and 1898, the US military 

engaged in what it considered to be genuine—meaning conventional—

warfare: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. While 

remembered for their large-scale battles between uniformed combatants, 

these conflicts also had their unconventional aspects, with each requiring 

soldiers to perform a variety of tasks not directly related to combat on the 

battlefield. In the case of the war in Mexico, the Army’s strategic plans and 

battlefield successes meant that, until the conflict ended, it would have to 

occupy large areas of a foreign country. With no international guidelines 

to follow, the Army’s general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, devised occupation policies that initially emphasized conciliation toward the Mexican 

people and local officials. US military governors enacted programs to feed 

the poor, promote sanitation, and support public institutions. Local elections took place on schedule, and the local judiciary continued to function. When, however, guerrilla bands began disrupting US supply lines 

and ambushing US patrols, American military governors did not hesitate 

to respond with harsh measures against the guerrillas, who could be summarily executed, and against civilians supportive of guerrilla activities, 

who could be fined or have their homes and other property destroyed. This 

combination of reconciliation and retribution would later influence the development of the Union’s policies for occupied areas during the American 

Civil War.11

In that internecine conflict, large numbers of Union troops were engaged 

in occupying border states and territory captured from the Confederacy. 

President Abraham Lincoln established military governments in most occupied secessionist states and, mindful of the disastrous “people’s war,” or 

guerrilla, that Napoleon had been forced to fight in Spain, sought the implementation of moderate policies that would not provoke armed resistance. In 

translating the president’s lenient intentions into practice, Army officers in 

occupied areas sought to establish order by creating police forces and civilian judicial systems, though military courts in some areas were compelled 

to preside over civil affairs. Military officials also supervised elections, collected taxes, regulated economic matters and business affairs, and engaged 
in humanitarian and sanitation efforts to ease the plight of a war-afflicted 

population. 

Despite the Army’s initial implementation of moderate policies, much 

of the population in the border states and the Union-controlled South were 

hostile toward the occupying federal forces. That hostility manifested itself in a variety of ways, from passive resistance to violent attempts to 

sabotage occupation efforts. In several areas, resistance took the form of 

pro-Confederate guerrilla movements. Confronted with this irregular warfare and the popular support it engendered, Union policies toward the rebel 

guerrillas and their local sympathizers grew harsher as the war progressed, 

a pattern reminiscent of the Army’s experience in Mexico. Only in April 

1863, with the promulgation of General Order No. 100, did occupying 

forces receive official guidelines for dealing with recalcitrant civilians and 

the various categories of partisan fighters captured by the troops. Overall, 

the document called for moderation in occupation policies, but sanctioned 

a progression of more stringent measures when the situation warranted. 

As for the Union officers and troops who had signed up to fight rebels, 

occupation duty involved them in a variety of administrative, security, and 

counter-guerrilla tasks and risks for which they had not been adequately 

prepared.12

The war ended in April 1865, and with the postwar draw down of the 

military, only Regular Army units would be available to occupy the wartorn and defeated South. Among the soldiers in place in mid-1865, there 

existed a shared expectation that they would perform some security and 

humanitarian tasks and then move on to other duties by the end of the year. 

To the surprise of many, however, reconstruction of the South would take 

three times longer than the Civil War itself. The unrepentant behavior of 

recalcitrant Southerners incurred the wrath of congressional Republicans, 

who, in alliance with top US Army commanders, passed legislation rejecting President Andrew Johnson’s plan for a conciliatory and rapid reconstruction, and adopted instead a more ambitious program for transforming 

nearly all aspects of Southern life. 

The legislation passed in 1867 and virtually put the Army in complete 

control of implementing reconstruction, answerable to no civil authority save Congress. Invoking martial law and applying an administrative 

model used in US territories, federal troops in five military districts—later 

changed to three territorial departments—maintained order and provided 

security. At the same time, they initiated comprehensive measures designed to set up new state governments, hold elections, ensure the rights 

and welfare of the newly freed slaves, and revolutionize much of the 
South’s economic infrastructure and social relationships. The timetable of 

results varied from district to district, but by 1871, all former rebel states 

had been readmitted to the Union, albeit with reconstructed governments 

and a social system deeply resented by many Southerners. When this resentment took the form of guerrilla warfare, the Army was called upon to 

deal with the perpetrators. Efforts to subdue such terrorist organizations as 

the Ku Klux Klan, however, met with limited success. There were simply 

too few federal troops left in the South during the 1870s to counter the 

guerrilla threat, and restored state militias were ill-prepared to suppress 

the armed bands of irregulars. Thus, a military solution to the problem appeared unlikely, while the rancor and deep divisions in Southern politics 

and society obviated any political compromise. 

Within a decade after the Civil War, much of what the Army had accomplished in reconstructing the South stood in jeopardy. As General William T. Sherman somberly noted, the Army did not have the power to 

change the feelings of most white Southerners, nor could it subjugate the 

South in perpetuity. With popular support for Reconstruction waning in 

the North and a new wave of anti-Republican “white terror” sweeping 

the South in the mid-1870s, the federal occupation ended in 1877. Within 

a few years, what was left of the Army-supported Republican governments had been overthrown,13

 and the Army’s leadership had quickly put 

the whole Reconstruction experience behind it. Consequently, at century’s 

end, when US soldiers became involved in setting up military occupations 

and governments overseas, many of the lessons that the Army could have 

applied from its Mexican War, Civil War, and post-Civil War occupation 

experiences had been largely forgotten.

The Small Wars Experience, 1898-1940

By the mid-1890s the United States had completed its continental 

expansion, had emerged as the world’s foremost industrial power, and 

stood postured to play a more active role in world affairs. When, in 1898, 

the country declared war on Spain, the decision inaugurated a new era in 

American history. From that point down to the present day, US land forces 

would be engaged overseas on a continuous basis. As for the reasons behind the Spanish-American War, the complex motives included a desire on 

the part of the United States to liberate the Cuban people from their harsh 

colonial masters and to restore a degree of stability in a country and a region deemed critical to America’s strategic and economic interests. For the 

US military, the war was a conventional undertaking, aimed at defeating 

Spanish power in the Caribbean and the Pacific. In that Spain no longer 

retained the great power status it once enjoyed, an American victory was 
not only inevitable but secured in a relative short time. With the peace 

agreement that formally ended the war, the United States found itself in 

control of Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines and a 

number of small islands in the Pacific. 

In postwar Cuba, Washington imposed a military government that 

sought to clean up the country and refashion its political, economic, social, 

and military institutions in America’s image. One of the key figures in this 

effort was Major General Leonard Wood, who served as a military governor, 

first over Cuba’s Santiago Province and later over the whole island. In this 

capacity, he initiated public works, health, and sanitation programs, replaced 

the Spanish education system with one based on US models, reformed penal, legal, and judicial procedures, organized and trained a national military, 

set up civil administration throughout the island, and helped the Cubans 

form political parties, draft a constitution (one article of which relegated 

Cuba to the status of an American protectorate), and hold elections. When 

the military government ended in 1902, US officials hoped that they were 

leaving behind an Americanized island that would serve as a political and 

economic model for other countries in the region. Tempering these sentiments, though, were concerns that a combination of Cuba’s inexperience 

in self-government and the remnants of Spanish colonial culture would undermine the American reforms. Within five years of Cuban independence, 

these fears were realized, as factional fighting and economic malfeasance on 

the island led to renewed instability, resulting in a US reoccupation of Cuba 

from 1906 to 1909.14

Halfway around the world, the war with Spain put an end to Spanish rule 

in the Philippines and led to the annexation of the archipelago by the United 

States. During the period of military government that followed, US troops 

duplicated much of what Wood had accomplished in Cuba in the way of 

health and sanitation, public works, judicial and penal reform, and other initiatives. But unlike Cuba, the fact that the Philippines were slated to become 

an American colony triggered a widespread uprising of Filipino nationalists 

opposed to a renewal of foreign rule. The resulting US-Philippine War began in 1899 as a conventional conflict, but after a succession of American 

victories, most Filipino belligerents chose to adopt guerrilla tactics. Consequently, US soldiers and marines, who excelled in the conventional phase 

of the war, had to adapt to irregular warfare, discovering in the process that 

the insurgency varied in motivation, organization, composition, and tactics 

from one locale to another. That revelation put the onus for devising effective counter-guerrilla measures squarely on US small-unit commanders at 

the local level. Between 1900 and 1902, as each commander adapted to the 
unique challenges he faced in his area of responsibility, American forces 

imposed a potent combination of benevolent policies and ruthless measures 

that succeeded in reducing the local guerrilla forces in the northern islands to near ineffectiveness. Once the US troops pacified an area, control 

passed into the hands of American civilian administrators. 

As this process neared its end in the north, the military turned its attention to the southern islands, where, in America’s first major attempt to control a significant Muslim population, US officers such as Wood and Brigadier General John J. Pershing sought to impose order and colonial rule 

over the indigenous Moros. Pershing, more than Wood, immersed himself 

in Moro culture and used this awareness to assert US authority through 

negotiation and in ways that would least offend the locals. Both Wood and 

Pershing, however, used force to counter armed challenges to US policies. 

By 1913 the Philippine Islands had been stabilized; they would remain an 

American colony until granted independence in 1946.15

Between 1900 and 1941, the United States intervened in one major 

conflict, the Great War, and several Small Wars. Of the lesser interventions, one occurred as part of an international punitive expedition in China 

during the Boxer Rebellion and another as a coalition undertaking in Russia toward the close of World War I. Most US interventions, however, took 

place in countries bordering or in the Caribbean Sea, generally for the 

purpose of maintaining or restoring stability within the region. In 1914, 

for example, President Woodrow Wilson ordered American forces into the 

coastal Mexican city of Veracruz, the first move in a plan designed to help 

liberate Mexico from the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta. But the country was in the throes of a major revolution, and even Huerta’s opponents 

denounced the US incursion. When Mexican troops in the city suffered 

high casualties resisting the American incursion, a shocked Wilson called 

off the US Army’s planned march on Mexico City. His decision transformed the intervention into a US occupation of Veracruz. 

To their dismay, American soldiers in the port city found themselves 

performing the routine humanitarian, governmental, economic, social, judicial, penal, and security tasks similar to those carried out by their predecessors in Cuba and the Philippines 15 years earlier. The resulting reforms 

dramatically transformed Veracruz, but the Americanization of the city did 

not survive the departure of the US troops later that year. With the Americans gone, traditional ways of doing business resurfaced, while many 

Mexicans who had collaborated with the occupiers faced severe penalties 

once revolutionary forces moved into the city.16
10

After the Veracruz affair, the responsibility for policing and stabilizing the Caribbean region fell primarily to the US Marine Corps. In 1915 

the Marines entered Haiti for a near 20-year stay, and in 1916 they began 

an eight-year occupation of the Dominican Republic. In the mid-1920s 

marines intervened in Nicaragua to end a civil war between various political strongmen and their armed militias. In all cases the interventions 

provoked armed opposition, which, as in the Philippines, generally went 

through a conventional phase before the indigenous forces shifted to guerrilla tactics in order to offset the US advantage in firepower, discipline, and 

conventional tactics. In the case of the Sandino affair in Nicaragua, there 

was another parallel with the Philippines, as the marines fared best when 

they, too, adopted the guerrilla tactics of their foe. One particularly effective counter-guerrilla unit was Lieutenant “Chesty” Puller’s small, lightly 

armed, and highly mobile M Company, composed of two marines and a 

few dozen members of the Nicaraguan guardia nacional.

17

 

The guardia nacional in Nicaragua had been organized and trained 

by the marines, as had similar organizations in Haiti and the Dominican 

Republic. When coupled with the US blueprint for each country to establish democratic institutions and processes, the creation of an indigenous 

national military establishment loyal to a country’s institutions and not 

to its political and military strongmen served as a key element in America’s blanket formula for creating models of stability in underdeveloped 

countries. Unfortunately, the formula rarely worked. As Max Boot has observed, “The marines had tried hard to plant constitutional government 

but found it would not take root in the inhospitable soil of Hispaniola.” 

During the Small War period, only the Philippines came close to living 

up to Washington’s expectations. In Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, 

and Nicaragua, the national armies or police forces created by American 

soldiers and marines did contribute to their country’s security, but not as 

defenders of democratic institutions and values. Rather, they fostered stability by becoming instruments of repression in the service of a succession 

of national dictators.18

In the mid-1930s the Great Depression and escalating violence in Europe and the Far East forced the United States to begin withdrawing its 

forces from Haiti and Nicaragua and to refrain from intervening in other 

Caribbean countries. As the Small War era drew to a close, the Marine 

Corps and, to a small degree, the Army tried to capture the lessons they 

had learned. The most notable product of this undertaking was the Marine 

Corps’ Small War Manual, a compendium of information published in its 

final form in 1940.19 While much contained in the manual is antiquated, 
11

much remains relevant to US military personnel today. At the time of the 

manual’s publication, however, the Marines put it on the shelf and hoped it 

would remain there, as the Corps, like the Army, turned its attention back 

to fighting large conventional wars. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 

kind of war both services preferred to fight came to pass.

The Cold War, 1945-1990

As World War II came to an end in 1945, the stage was set for what 

became known as the Cold War, a superpower struggle waged partly in 

terms of power politics, partly in terms of universal ideologies. In 1945 

the two principal antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, confronted each other in the center of war-torn Europe, as American and Russian troops (along with the British and French) occupied their assigned 

sectors of defeated Germany, Austria, and other former Axis countries. 

By 1947 the administration of President Harry Truman perceived a threat 

of Soviet military and ideological expansion into Western Europe and reacted by formulating a policy of containment. Three years later, this policy 

was extended to the Far East, after Mao Tzedong’s revolutionary movement in China took control of the mainland and, in June 1950, war broke 

out on the Korean peninsula, precipitating US and UN intervention. In the 

mid-1950s the Middle East, too, became a part of the Cold War calculus, 

and by the 1960s most of the world had become an ideological or military 

battleground between East and West. 

The Cold War, therefore, was a global conflict as much as World War 

I and World War II. But the beginnings, as noted, were in Europe, where 

the key to American strategy was rebuilding a devastated Germany in the 

zones of Western occupation. In 1942 the US military had begun planning 

that occupation, had established a school of military government, and had 

placed officers versed in civil affairs on the headquarter staffs at divisions 

and higher. These anticipatory initiatives seemed impressive, but most 

were inadequately resourced, as the manpower and materiel needs of those 

US units essential to combat operations received top priority. Once Allied 

forces entered Germany, US troops began administering German towns in 

rear areas. When the country fell, it was the combat forces on the scene 

that initially performed the myriad of security and humanitarian tasks 

that the situation urgently demanded, even though the troops were poorly 

prepared, poorly equipped, and poorly trained for these functions. That a 

considerable friction developed between the soldiers coming off months 

of combat and an unrepentant German population did not help matters. 

(In 1946 a specially formed US constabulary force would take over many 

occupation duties from regular units. Initial recruits for the constabulary 
12

were combat veterans, but as they redeployed, younger men trained in police and border control methods and operations took their place.) 

Contrary to the worst-case predictions of Allied planners, no significant internal resistance materialized as Allied troops occupied an enemy 

country whose government they had deposed, whose cities and infrastructure lay in ruin, and whose population—to include large numbers of refugees—lacked homes and the basics of life. Under the auspices of an Allied 

Control Council (ACC), the US military government under Army General 

Lucius Clay launched a comprehensive program of disarmament, demilitarization, denazification, democratization, and economic and financial 

reform within the American zone of western Germany and the US sector 

of Berlin. American military specialists vetted German officials, helped 

establish democratic political parties, worked with local and state agencies 

on civil affairs issues, participated in the international tribunal that tried 

Nazi leaders, and, in general, helped set the country on the road to political, economic, and social recovery and reform. Occupation programs were 

ambitious and difficult at times to implement, but progress was abetted by 

the fact that Germany, despite its feudal heritage and dictatorial experiences, had known several decades of constitutional government, produced 

a highly industrialized capitalist economy, and legislated far-reaching social reforms. In short there was no unbridgeable cultural chasm separating 

Germany from the Western occupying powers that could have doomed the 

long-term prospects for any reconstruction effort.

Worsening relations between the Soviet Union and the West became 

a significant factor in the direction American occupation policies took, 

as, in the words of one analyst, “Germany came to be seen more as a 

potential ally than as a defeated enemy.”20 As the Russians pursued their 

own aims in their occupation zone, the Americans and the British merged 

each of theirs into the Bizone in January 1947. (For a variety of reasons, 

the French waited to join in 1949.) The Marshall Plan, designed to bolster 

all European economies, certainly helped that of western Germany, while 

the massive US-British airlift of supplies to west Berliners isolated by 

a Soviet blockade in 1948 and 1949 did much to transform US-German 

interaction from one of “victors and vanquished” to one of “friends and allies.” In 1949 the Western powers agreed to the establishment of a Federal 

Republic of Germany, or West Germany. After the outbreak of the Korean 

War the following year, the West German government’s rearmament and 

subsequent membership in NATO completed the process of turning America’s erstwhile enemy into a staunch Cold War ally.21

 

The success of Western stability operations and nation building in 
13

Germany was duplicated in Japan, although the process often differed considerably. For one thing, the United States exercised almost sole control 

over reform and rebuilding efforts in postwar Japan, despite the illusion, 

perpetuated by the Far Eastern Advisory Commission, that other Allied 

countries that had fought the Japanese were also involved. General of the 

Army Douglas MacArthur oversaw the occupation and, considering himself an expert on the Asian mind, allowed several concessions to Japanese 

sensibilities and culture as he moved to transform the country’s political 

and economic systems. In perhaps the most controversial decision of the 

occupation, the United States retained Japan’s emperor on the grounds 

that, having renounced his claim to divinity, his support for the occupation 

would translate into general public acceptance. Otherwise, as in Germany, 

a number of prominent military and political officials were tried for war 

crimes.

In the first days of the occupation, MacArthur addressed the urgent 

humanitarian and administrative needs that the Allied bombing campaign, 

blockade, and subsequent victory had created within the country. Not surprising, one of the first accomplishments of the occupation was to establish an effective food distribution network. In terms of more far-reaching 

programs, the US occupation worked to demilitarize and democratize 

Japan. With the emperor’s backing, the first goal, the demobilization of 

all Japanese military forces, proved fairly easy to achieve. The process of 

democratization and liberalization, which aimed at social, economic, and 

political reform at all levels of Japanese society, was exceedingly more 

complicated and took much longer to accomplish. Land reform, economic 

reorganization, the rewriting of the country’s constitution, and the holding 

of free elections in 1947 represented significant milestones along the way. 

By the late 1940s, however, measures to hold a defeated enemy in permanent check were being balanced against Cold War considerations, as 

Washington came to view Japan as critical to the US policy of containing 

communism in the Far East. Thus, when the United States concluded a 

peace treaty with Japan in 1951, it also signed a defense agreement that, 

in effect, made the former enemy a Cold War ally.22

To the west, across the Sea of Japan, US forces in late 1945 had moved 

onto the southern portion of the Korean peninsula below the 38th parallel, 

a hurried reaction to the movement of Soviet forces into northern Korea 

in the last days of the war. As was the case in Germany, the Cold War 

transformed what was to have been a temporary administrative division of 

the country into two separate political entities, Kim Il-sung’s communist 

regime in the north and, in the Republic of Korea (ROK), or South Korea, 
14

the right-wing government of Syngman Rhee. When the US occupation 

of South Korea ended in 1949, Washington left behind a Korean Military 

Advisory Group to improve and strengthen the ROK army. Besides the 

threat of an invasion from the north, the fledgling military had to cope 

with an active, largely communist-led guerrilla campaign in the south, 

which, although giving South Korean soldiers experience in counterinsurgency, did so at the expense of the time they needed to acquire basic 

training skills. All the while, Washington tried in vain to hold in check 

both Kim’s and Rhee’s desire to reunite the peninsula by force.23

At the same time Germany, Japan, and South Korea were being rebuilt and transformed into US allies, Washington found itself beset by a 

variety of Cold War crises. One involved the communist-led insurgency 

in Greece that, through guerrilla warfare based in the country’s northern 

mountains, sought to overthrow a right-wing Royalist regime in Athens. In the Philippines the communist Huk movement, which had fought 

Japanese occupation forces during World War II, now sought, through 

guerrilla warfare, to extend their control over the archipelago. In both 

cases, the United States responded to the threat of communist expansion 

with military and economic aid and military advisory groups. In Greece 

US military advisers generally advocated the use of conventional doctrine, force structure, and weaponry to counter the insurgents. The Greek 

guerrillas, for their part, proved obliging by prematurely and unwisely 

adopting conventional tactics. The outcome was a military victory for 

the American-supported regime in Athens. As for the Philippines, the 

country’s defense minister and, later, president, Ramón Magsaysay, took 

American advice and equipment, but also initiated the political, economic, and military reforms necessary to marginalize the Huks. Helping to 

run the guerrillas to ground were the highly mobile counterinsurgency 

units and small hunter-killer teams that Magsaysay had approved. In 

short, US aid and military advisers in both Greece and the Philippines 

helped friendly governments defeat communist-led insurgencies and establish some degree of political stability.24

The West’s list of early Cold War successes did not include the Korean War, a conventional but limited conflict that broke out in June 1950 

and, for the next three years, committed US forces to fighting on the 

peninsula. The war took its toll in manpower and diverted precious resources to a country the Pentagon had not identified as one whose security was vital to America’s national interests. The conflict ended in a 

costly stalemate along battle lines that approximated the status quo ante 

bellum, one of several facts that raised the American public’s level of 
15

frustration with the war. By the time an armistice was signed in mid-

1953, the new administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower had 

already acted on its determination not to embroil American armed forces 

in another such “brushfire” war. For the remainder of the decade, the New 

Look, as the administration labeled its military strategy (others dubbed it 

“massive retaliation”), relied heavily on the country’s nuclear arsenal to deter or defeat communist aggression. By the late 1950s, however, the Soviet 

Union’s acquisition of effective delivery systems for its own nuclear weapons had undermined America’s strategic deterrence, thus keeping the door 

ajar for limited conventional wars and insurgencies. These conflicts would 

most likely be local or regional in scope and, in many cases, part of the process of decolonization that followed World War II. They might also reflect 

decades or centuries old religious, tribal, and ethnic tensions and divisions 

within a given area.

Such was the case in Lebanon in 1958, when sectarian strife within the 

country was aggravated by the appeal of radical Pan-Arab nationalism propagated by Egypt and Syria throughout the Arab Middle East. The Kremlin 

supported Cairo’s call for the overthrow of pro-Western governments in the 

region, creating fear in Washington that the resulting instability would open 

the door further to Soviet influence. Thus in mid-July 1958, when a nationalistic element within the Iraqi military deposed the pro-Western government in Baghdad and slaughtered the royal family, Eisenhower immediately 

ordered US troops into Lebanon to shore up a friendly government that was 

literally under fire from its domestic opponents, many of whom espoused 

Pan-Arab nationalism. American forces arriving in the country anticipated 

a fight with the Syrian army, which they believed was marching on Beirut. 

When the US command found that regular Syrian units were not in Lebanon, the likelihood of large-scale combat operations diminished. Instead, 

American soldiers and marines would engage in a show of force, asserting 

their presence in a peaceful but demonstrative way so that American negotiators could help end Lebanon’s internal crisis through diplomacy. Working 

closely with the Lebanese army and under very strict rules of engagement 

(ROE), US troops conducted patrols, manned checkpoints, engaged in psychological operations (PSYOP), and helped contain the bulk of the antigovernment forces until a political settlement was negotiated with the Levant’s 

warlords and armed militia groups, which included the Druze, Maronite and 

Orthodox Christians, and Sunni and Shia Muslims. By October when the 

last of the US forces left Beirut, stability had been restored in Lebanon, the 

regional situation seemed improved, and Soviet initiatives in the area had 

been checked for the time being.25
16

Seven years later, in an intervention very similar to that in Lebanon, 

US forces entered the Dominican Republic after rebel groups that included 

communist elements had overthrown a pro-American government in Santo 

Domingo. Again, as in Lebanon, American soldiers and marines anticipated 

combat operations; again, they spent most of their time engaged in such unorthodox activities as separating the warring parties, providing security and 

humanitarian assistance in the capital city, enforcing cease-fire agreements, 

gathering intelligence on rebel forces, engaging in PSYOPs and crowd control, serving as the “muscle” behind diplomatic efforts, playing their part 

in the Inter-American Peace Force created after their arrival, and, once a 

provisional government was formed, serving as its military arm until the 

regular Dominican military could be reconstituted. Well into the intervention, US combat troops continued to perform many of these functions, even 

after large numbers of military police (MP), civil affairs (CA) and PSYOP 

units, civic action personnel, and other military specialists in political, economic, and humanitarian issues had deployed into the area of operations. 

The Pentagon called the intervention a stability operation, and when the 

United States ended its intervention the following year, stability had been 

achieved.26

The Dominican crisis occurred just six years after Fidel Castro had installed a communist government in Cuba, and four years after the Soviet 

Union had called on Third World countries and colonies to engage in Wars 

of National Liberation against the United States and other Western imperialist powers. In the Dominican Republic the United States had intervened with 

conventional force to counter this threat, but throughout the 1960s, Washington was also preoccupied with communist-led insurgencies in the underdeveloped countries of Latin America and Asia. As early as 1961, President 

John F. Kennedy signaled the urgency with which he regarded this threat 

when he instructed the Army to focus less on the prospect of conventional 

war and more on counterinsurgency. The Army pledged compliance, but 

never truly embraced the reorientation. The Army’s Special Forces (SF), 

however, did shift their mission from fomenting insurgencies behind Soviet 

lines in the event of World War III to conducting irregular warfare in underdeveloped countries. SF mobile training teams, together with Army advisory groups, moved throughout Latin America, training local forces, engaging 

in some degree of nation building, and advising on counterinsurgency programs and tactics. The stability operations performed by these small units 

numbered in the hundreds.27 Similar efforts were geared toward the Far East, 

particularly Southeast Asia, and, more specifically, Vietnam.

Since the late 1950s, the communist-led insurgency in South Vietnam 
17

had been growing, despite the efforts of US military advisers to help Saigon’s armed forces respond to the threat. When North Vietnamese regulars 

joined the fight, the United States reacted in 1965 by sending in American 

combat units. By the time the last of these forces had withdrawn in early 

1973, Vietnam had become the longest war in US history, and the divisions 

it caused within American society still influence military decisions today. 

In many respects, Vietnam was a limited conventional war against regular 

forces; in other respects, it was a guerrilla war; and in still other respects, it 

was an exercise in pacification, stability operations, and nation building. 

American troops were most effective when fighting conventionally. 

Counterinsurgency activities fared less well, although a number of innovative programs, such as the Marines’ Combined Action Platoons (where 

marines and local Vietnamese defense forces lived together in threatened 

villages and hamlets), enjoyed some success. In general, pacification and 

stability operations did not yield significant results until the establishment 

of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS), an organization under the US Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) that 

integrated American military personnel and civilian officials in a program 

that ranged “from regional security and paramilitary forces to propaganda 

to agricultural development.” CORDS received high praise for what it managed to accomplish in the way of pacifying much of the countryside, but 

even its supporters argued that it came too late in the war to really turn the 

tide. Antiwar demonstrations in the United States, the failure of the Saigon 

government to make far-reaching reforms that might have won broad support in the south, and the wide cultural gap that separated the Americans 

and Vietnamese are just three of the many reasons the United States failed 

in Vietnam.28

One consequence of that failure was the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome,” the belief held by civilian policy makers and high-ranking military 

officers that, short of a direct and lethal threat to US security, the American 

people would not support the deployment of US forces in combat or stability operations that did not have clear objectives and a short-term “exit 

strategy”. The syndrome certainly limited (and, to some extent, still limits) US military commitments abroad, although in the decade or so after 

Vietnam, the projection of America’s armed power by no means came to 

a halt. Throughout the 1980s, for example, US Special Operations Forces 

(SOF) continued to conduct a variety of stability and training operations in 

the Caribbean region, especially in Central America, where, for a decade 

after 1979, a communist government ruled in Nicaragua, and neighboring El Salvador was in the throes of a communist-led insurgency. There 
18

were times when even conventional forces were deployed to the region. In 

October 1983, for example, President Ronald Reagan ordered marines, 

an Army airborne division, SOF, and other US armed forces to invade 

the tiny island country of Grenada in order to overthrow a communist 

regime, rescue American medical students on the island, restore stability, 

and establish a pro-US government. Five years later, Reagan deployed 

elements of the 7th Infantry Division (Light) to Honduras (Operation 

GOLDEN PHEASANT) to thwart what was perceived as a Nicaraguan 

threat from across the border. In the chronically unstable Middle East, 

US marines revisited Lebanon from 1982 to 1984 in an effort to stabilize 

that country after civil war erupted again in the mid-1970s. Originally 

cast as peace keepers, by mid-1983 the marines were engaged in what 

was at times heavy combat, culminating in the October terrorist bombing 

that killed 241 of their number. The critical reaction to this event and the 

in-depth analysis that followed attested to the complexity of most stability operations and the continuing influence of the Vietnam experience 

over military policy.29

In perhaps the last major US military intervention of the Cold War 

(or, some might argue, the first of the post-Cold War period), American 

forces invaded Panama in December 1989 (Operation JUST CAUSE) to 

topple the dictatorial regime of Manuel Noriega and to restore stability 

and democracy to the country. Stability and nation-building operations 

began simultaneously with combat operations, as US officials helped 

swear in a new Panamanian government minutes before the invasion, 

and American troops in the midst of combat operations had to contend 

with refugees and looters. (The refugee problem was still a scandal a 

year after the intervention, while the several days of unrestricted looting 

in Panama’s two largest cities inflicted serious damage on the country’s 

economy.) As in previous operations, conventional troops were required 

to perform a variety of stability tasks for which they were ill-prepared. 

Compounding the problem, the pre-invasion failure to integrate the conventional war plan and the civil-military operation plan (CMO OPLAN) 

precluded a smooth transition from an emphasis on combat operations to 

stability and nation-building operations. So, too, did the US command’s 

inability to deploy significant numbers of CA personnel and reservists 

into the theater in a timely manner. The stability and nation-building 

effort in Panama was code-named Operation PROMOTE LIBERTY. 

Following the recommendation of the commander of the US Special 

Operations Command (SOCOM) in Florida, a Military Support Group 

(MSG) was established under Joint Task Force (JTF) Panama to help the 
19

country’s new government function effectively, provide for the training 

of a new Panamanian police and paramilitary force, and assist in reviving 

the country’s financial and economic fortunes. Attached to the MSG were 

MP, PSYOP, CA, and SOF assets. A year after its formation, the MSG disbanded, its mission accomplished.30

In the decade beginning in 1990, it became conventional wisdom in the 

Army that the operational tempo of military operations other than war had 

been very low during the Cold War compared to what it would become in 

the years immediately following the end of that global contest. In reality, the 

United States had employed its armed forces several hundred times between 

1945 and 1990 in operations designed to bring some degree of stability to 

various countries and regions.

The Post-Cold War Decade, 1990-2000

As the Cold War ended with a whimper, not a bang, many predicted 

it would be superseded by a New World Order that would be more stable 

than any system the international community had seen in almost a century. 

Others predicted that the world, in fact, would become a more dangerous 

and unstable place, as ethnic, religious, tribal, and other local and regional 

conflicts, repressed, ignored, or co-opted by the superpowers’ regional ambitions during the Cold War, would become more prominent and increasingly disruptive. The decade of the 1990s seemed to validate the second 

prognostication, as local conflicts emerged or reemerged on virtually every 

continent and as the US military found itself gainfully employed and deployed throughout the world. The motives for US intervention varied from 

case to case: national interest in the Persian Gulf, humanitarian issues in 

war-torn Somalia, political fears triggered by Haitian “boat people,” and 

concerns over regional war in the Balkans. In Operation DESERT STORM 

in 1991, the United States fought another limited, conventional war, this 

time to protect Saudi Arabian oil fields and to prevent further Iraqi destabilization of the Gulf area. The US-led multinational coalition quickly defeated 

Saddam Hussein’s army, but Washington, having no intention of occupying 

Iraq, had no plans for major postconflict stability operations. When Iraq’s 

Shia and Kurdish populations rose up against Saddam at the end of the conflict, they were brutally suppressed, causing the United States to belatedly 

launch Operation PROVIDE COMFORT for the purpose of supplying them 

humanitarian aid. This major undertaking captured headlines at the time, but 

was largely forgotten in subsequent years, even within military circles.31

More memorable is the US experience in Somalia from 1992 to 1994. 

The memories, however, are largely negative: Black Hawk Down, “mission 
20

creep,” the perceived “misuse” of the military in a humanitarian crisis in 

which America’s national interests were not at stake. Forgotten is the success US and coalition forces enjoyed in the first phase of their involvement, 

Operation RESTORE HOPE. Thanks to the overwhelming force deployed 

under a combined task force (CTF) commanded by Marine Lieutenant General Robert Johnston, the clan warfare responsible for spreading chaos and 

famine in southern Somalia was kept under control, starving people received 

food and medical attention, a program of weapons control was imposed on 

various warring factions, an apolitical police force was reactivated, and political processes were initiated to end the country’s internal strife. When the 

UN took over from the US-led coalition and attempted nation-building activities in all of Somalia, UN officials on the scene lacked the overwhelming 

force that Johnston had commanded, and the situation quickly deteriorated 

to the point where a tactical setback involving American SOF caused a major reversal of US policy in the country.32

The resulting “Vietmalia” Syndrome, to use diplomat Richard Holbrooke’s terminology, delayed US intervention in the ongoing crisis in the 

Balkans, but did not prevent President William J. Clinton from sending US 

troops into Haiti, largely to end the violence and instability that had motivated thousands of impoverished Haitians to flee by boat the brutal dictatorial 

military regime under which they had suffered. Even before the first American troops landed, the Clinton administration’s goal of “regime change” 

had been accomplished, leaving the invasion force to provide security and 

prepare the way for national elections that, it was hoped, would set the country on a path of sustained stability. The US command in Haiti planned and 

secured the elections, and soon after the new president was inaugurated, 

American forces withdrew. However, reminiscent of past American experiences in Cuba, Haiti (1915-1934) the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and 

Nicaragua, the order and stability established by US forces in Haiti in the 

mid-1990s did not long survive their departure.33 A decade after the 1994 

American intervention, the marines would return as part of a multinational 

peacekeeping force following another outbreak of major violence in 2004. 

US ground troops entering Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of 

a NATO-led force in December 1995 fared better, although the long-term 

ramifications of their efforts to stabilize the Balkan area and prevent a regional war have yet to play out.34 Once international attention shifted to 

Kosovo, the multinational military coalition employed armed force to bring 

the offending parties into line, and then returned to the implementation of 

the various accords designed to stabilize the situation. That stabilization effort continues as of this writing, although the role played by American forces 
21

has been cut back dramatically in light of US commitments in Afghanistan 

and Iraq stemming from the Global War on Terrorism.

Patterns and Recurring Themes

Although selective, the preceding overview of stability operations 

throughout American history strongly suggests that, on the basis of frequency and numbers alone, the US military should not regard the occurrence of 

such operations as an aberration, but as an integral part of its general and ongoing missions. A more thorough and comparative analysis of each of the 28 

case studies listed in appendix A would also yield a number of patterns and 

recurring themes that are relevant to the conduct of stability operations today. The list that follows here is far from exhaustive, but does suggest some 

general issues and problem areas. These are divided into three categories: 

traditional military assumptions and their impact on preparations for stability operations; the conduct of stability operations; and the environment in 

which these operations take place. Where appropriate, a historical example 

is included to illustrate a pattern or recurring theme. 

Traditional Military Assumptions Concerning Stability Operations and the Preconflict Ramifications

Traditionally, the US military has not regarded stability operations as 

a “core” mission with a priority approaching that accorded to combat operations. The American military has traditionally focused on conventional 

warfighting as its most important mission, and while few officers have challenged the Clausewitzian axiom that wars are the “continuation of policy by 

other means,” a pervasive belief maintains that, once an enemy’s conventional forces have been defeated, the responsibility of the military for helping the policy makers achieve the broader objectives for which the hostilities 

were conducted has been largely fulfilled. While in many cases there may be 

a requirement for some specialized troops to participate in follow-on stability 

operations designed to solidify the war’s accomplishments, the military traditionally has regarded most of those tasks as “someone else’s job.” In other 

words, it is the military’s responsibility to win the war, not to win the peace. 

Carried to its extreme, this line of thinking contributes to a situation 

in which, as Professor Frederick Kagan has noted, the United States “has 

developed and implemented a method of warfare that can produce stunning 

military victories but does not necessarily accomplish the political goals for 

which the war was fought.”35 As America’s experience for over 200 years 

would suggest, the US military has a critical mission that goes beyond 

warfighting and necessitates a professional mind set that perceives war 
22

and peace to be interrelated, not compartmentalized phenomenons. In the 

words of one analyst, “The essential point is this: Combat operations and 

governance operations are both integral to war and occur in tandem.”36

In a variation on the theme of “it’s not my job,” many US officers have 

acknowledged that stability operations are a valid military mission, but 

only for certain personnel and units, such as CA and information operations (IO) specialists, MPs, engineers, medics, lawyers, and SOF. According to this view, stability operations have not been—and should not be—a 

core mission for conventional combat and combat support units. Not only 

are these conventional units ill-prepared and poorly trained to engage in 

nontraditional missions, but they risk losing their fighting edge when they 

do. To make stability operations a core mission for combat troops would 

only exacerbate the degradation of their warfighting skills and warrior 

ethos. In short, warriors should not be forced to double as cops, social 

workers, civil administrators, economists, diplomats, and politicians, either on the training field or in real-life situations. 

These arguments against making stability operations a core mission 

for the military as a whole betray more wishful thinking than an understanding of the military’s historical experience. Given that experience, 

there is every reason to believe that US armed forces will continue to face 

situations in which the requirements of war and peace cannot be compartmentalized, in which conflicts other than conventional war will require 

the deployment of combat units to impose security and stability, and in 

which the country’s decision makers will continue to direct the military 

to conduct those missions that have to be done, not necessarily those with 

which the military is most comfortable. Yet, despite this prognosis, any 

general officer or political leader seeking to add stability operations as a 

core military mission will have to overcome and, in the process, transform 

a deep-seated traditional mind set as to the proper role of the country’s 

armed forces, especially the Army. 

As of this writing, the experiences of most US combat units in Iraq 

are helping to change the traditional mind set, as are initiatives directed by 

the Department of Defense and the Chief of Staff of the Army. But there 

is always the possibility that the occupation of Iraq, however it turns out, 

will be seen by traditionalists as just another aberration; it could even end 

up reinforcing the traditionalist view, just as Vietnam did, that the United 

States should avoid wide-ranging commitments to stability operations at 

all costs.

Military planning for major combat operations (MCO) and stability 
23

operations has generally been compartmentalized, not integrated. Just as 

the traditionalist military viewpoint regards the requirements of war and 

peace to be related but separate and compartmentalized phenomenons, it 

also perceives MCO and stability operations not only as separate and distinct kinds of activities, but activities that occur in sequential, not overlapping, phases. More precisely, stability operations are seen as beginning 

once major combat operations have ceased or are near completion. This 

perception, however ahistorical it might be, has often resulted in segregated preconflict planning for the two categories of operations (on those 

occasions when there was any military planning at all for the stability operations “phase”). When compartmentalization of MCO and stability operations planning has occurred, as a rule, there has been little coordination 

between the two groups of planners, with stability missions and tasks generally ignored or given only lip service by the MCO planners. On the rare 

occasions when coordination—not integration—between the two groups 

has occurred, the needs of MCO planners have invariably received a higher 

priority, since winning the war has seemed a logical precondition for initiating effective stability operations. Moreover, the desire to keep friendly, and 

sometimes enemy, casualties to a minimum during hostilities has favored 

the priorities of the MCO planners over any competing priorities set by the 

“postconflict” planners. That losing the peace could render winning the 

war (however low the cost) irrelevant has tended not to be a consideration 

in preconflict MCO planning for reasons that are by no means superfluous. 

The fact that, in reality, MCO and stability operations are often not 

sequential or phased but either overlap at various points or, in many instances, are conducted simultaneously throughout the course of a conflict 

confounds traditional thinking about the temporal relationship between 

the two categories. For example, when MCO planners insist that “shooters” receive top deployment priorities and first call on scarce resources, 

the demand seems logical if the US military is to win the war as quickly 

and efficiently as possible. Such priorities, however, have often meant that 

the personnel needed immediately and throughout a military campaign for 

stability operations have not been present in sufficient numbers, nor with 

sufficient resources, to perform their tasks. These tasks, consequently, have 

gone wanting or have been performed by combat arms units that have not 

anticipated such duties or been trained in the necessary skills. 

Planning for US combat and stability operations in Panama in the late 

1980s illustrates these points. The initial operations order (OPORD) produced by the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in March 1988 incorporated combat and stability operations as phases that could be conducted 
24

separately in any sequence, or simultaneously. At the direction of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, that OPORD was broken down into three separate orders: 

one for defensive operations, one for offensive combat operations, and one 

for CMO. Procedurally, this meant that combat operations and CMO were 

relegated to two separate plans—Blue Spoon for the former, Krystal Ball 

for the latter—and increasingly treated as distinct and largely sequential 

activities. At the operational level, the XVIII Airborne Corps ultimately 

became responsible for planning Blue Spoon, while SOUTHCOM’s plans 

and policy staff (J5), assisted by reservist CA teams rotating in and out of 

Panama, worked on the supporting CMO Task Force OPORD for Krystal 

Ball. Two critical points should be emphasized here. First, although the 

Blue Spoon order listed stability operations as a mission for US forces, 

Corps planners paid little attention to that aspect of the plan, beyond establishing ROE aimed at minimizing damage to the country’s military forces, 

civilian population, and economic infrastructure. Second, at no point was 

there substantial coordination between the Corps and the SOUTHCOM J5, 

much less any thought given to integrating Krystal Ball into Blue Spoon. 

As a result, stability and security issues that arose during combat (for example, looting, humanitarian needs, and refugees) either received insufficient attention from the few MP units and CMO personnel on the scene, or 

were dealt with by combat units. Once hostilities subsided, the shift in emphasis to stability operations went through a turbulent transition, in which 

combat units continued to perform a variety of security and stability tasks, 

while volunteer reservists with the skills necessary for stability operations 

and nation building belatedly trickled into the country.37

As demonstrated in Panama, the conduct of simultaneous major combat operations and stability operations, or the transition in emphasis during the course of a campaign from the former to the latter, can prove a 

disruptive experience. Historically, the failure to integrate the two types of 

undertakings is one reason for this disruption. Reflecting on this problem 

as it manifested itself in Iraq, one US general officer recently declared that 

there is a need to get the plan for Phase IV “postwar” operations “out of 

the annex and build it into the actual OPLAN. You should have a single 

plan to get you to the NSS [National Security Strategy], not just the warfight.”38 This observation seems to reflect common sense, but so does the 

conflicting consideration that planners should focus on winning a conflict 

as expeditiously and with as few casualties as possible.

Operations Security (OPSEC) 

In a related issue, operations security is a key component of the planning process for MCO. Because of concerns about OPSEC violations, the 
25

process has often excluded personnel, both military and civilian, involved 

in planning stability operations.39 This has generally ensured that the support needed for stability operations from military and civilian sources has 

lagged far behind what has been required at critical phases of an operation. Procedural and organizational remedies that emphasize the need, 

in the preconflict phase, for military and civilian organizations to coordinate their planning efforts for stability operations and to synchronize 

these efforts with those of the MCO planners, need to address how to 

handle the obstructive but essential issues of OPSEC. Even though history and America’s current experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq make an 

urgent case for integrated, interagency planning in the preconflict period, 

the traditional reluctance of MCO planners to divulge the details of a 

campaign plan in a forum given to bureaucratic contention and potential 

security lapses will likely remain a serious obstacle to a truly integrated 

process.

Intelligence

When the planning process for MCO and stability operations is separated and compartmentalized, the two groups of planners are isolated 

from each other. Under these conditions, each group will gather only the 

information relevant to its assigned missions. This myopic approach can 

have a significantly negative effect when combat troops become responsible for conducting stability operations and the intelligence relevant to 

those operations is not available to them. Knowing the conventional enemy’s order of battle, intentions, tactics, location, and capabilities does 

not prepare combat units for dealing with looting, refugees, criminals, 

paramilitary groups, public health and sanitation problems, humanitarian assistance, and other tasks common to stability operations.

An illustrative case would be the US intervention in Lebanon in 

1958. The American soldiers and marines going ashore had very good 

intelligence on the Lebanese armed forces and, to some degree, the Syrian military. The real threat, however, turned out to be from rebel groups 

and militias representing various sects, religions, clans, and family leaders in the highly complex and contentious environment of Lebanese confessional politics. The US military intelligence (MI) community possessed little or no pertinent information concerning the leadership, motivation, intentions, and capabilities of these groups, and this meant that 

the troops deploying to Lebanon were also in the dark. As a quick fix, 

the American embassy and CIA station chief in Beirut readily opened 

their files to MI officers, but had the situation turned violent early in the 

intervention, the US force, by its own admission, would not have had the 
26

information it needed to engage in effective politico-military operations 

against the numerous and unconventional rebel groups.40

Replacing the traditional/conventional intelligence preparation of 

the battlefield with a more unified approach that incorporates noncombat 

and unconventional data is likely to meet resistance when planning for 

MCO. Often, time constraints do not allow collection of the vast array of 

information available. More to the point, the traditional/conventional elements of intelligence will likely continue to receive planning priorities on 

the assumption that conventional combat poses the greatest risk (short of 

nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare, of course) to US forces. 

Execution of Stability Operations

US forces conducting stability operations will perform many and diverse tasks. Stability operations have generally been highly complex undertakings, involving a myriad of tasks performed within several diverse 

but interrelated fields—political, economic, financial, social, humanitarian—not associated in the traditional mind set with orthodox military operations, functions, or duties. Ideally, these numerous and complex tasks 

would be performed by those who have the skills and expertise to do so. 

This, however, has seldom been the case. Large numbers of civilians and 

civilian organizations with the needed skills and expertise often do not 

arrive in a theater to conduct stability operations until friendly combat 

forces have established some measure of security. Even military personnel 

with similar skills and expertise often do not make a timely appearance, 

generally because they were not considered a high priority for deployment 

or, in the case of the reservists, because they were not readily available 

for rapid deployment. In other instances, the military has simply lacked 

enough people with the required skills and expertise. As a result of not 

having the experts in stability operations present when their skills are first 

needed, combat troops who had been engaged in MCO, or who might have 

been present in anticipation of MCO, have found themselves performing 

a myriad of security and stability tasks that, more often than not, they had 

not anticipated and for which they lacked the requisite proficiency. Complicating the situation was the view often taken by many combat soldiers 

and marines that it was beneath the dignity of a true warrior to be a cop, to 

perform social and humanitarian work, to conduct political negotiations, 

or to engage in certain “demeaning” activities, such as garbage collection.

Several historical cases, not to mention the more recent experience of 

American combat units in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), illustrate this 

phenomenon. In the US intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, 
27

for example, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division together with a 

contingent of marines engaged in limited combat during the first two days 

of the operation. At the same time and for days, weeks, and months thereafter, these combat troops found themselves handing out food, guarding relief 

distribution points, providing security for US medical and dental units treating the local population, screening pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the 

American-held sections of Santo Domingo, guarding rebel prisoners (not 

wanting to assume the role of policemen, US commanders turned the first 

group of prisoners over to Loyalist forces, who promptly executed them), 

cleaning up garbage and debris, and performing numerous other tasks that 

they had not anticipated. As one paratrooper protested, “Clean up the streets, 

hell—we came here to fight.”41 After action reports from other US contingency operations are replete with similar sentiments.

Stability operations often involve military officers in a variety of “political and diplomatic” roles. Commanders and staff officers who have 

been engaged in stability operations often have found themselves working with coalition forces, directing a variety of “nonmilitary” (political, 

economic, social, humanitarian) projects, or even running or helping to 

administer villages, towns, and cities. All of these activities have generally required political and diplomatic skills that an officer might have acquired through experience or other means, but probably not as a result of 

formal military education and training. In fact, the tactless “take charge” 

mentality that has been a hallmark of military training might prove effective on a traditional battlefield but has often proved counterproductive 

when a US officer has had to interact with foreign officers, humanitarian 

aid officials, American and foreign diplomats, local authorities, or the indigenous population. Such interactions require negotiating skills, cultural 

awareness, a sense of historical context, empathy for the position of other 

participants, patience, a grasp of nuance, a willingness to compromise, and 

a basic understanding of how various political, economic, and social initiatives affect the military’s role in stability operations. While not a guarantee of success in “political” situations, these attributes are likely to produce 

better results than more abrasive, insensitive, or confrontational methods. 

A historical accounting of the hundreds of US general officers who have 

acted in political and diplomatic roles during stability operations would include the activities of George Crook in the American West, Wood in Cuba, 

Pershing in the Philippines, Bruce Palmer in the Dominican Republic, Fred 

Woerner in Panama, Johnston, Anthony Zinni, and Thomas Montgomery 

in Somalia, and Wesley Clark in the Balkan crisis. While learning from the 

experience of these flag officers, it is important to remember that officers 
28

throughout the ranks have had experiences mirroring those of the aforementioned generals. The example of a Ranger platoon leader in Panama 

illustrates the point. After engaging in combat operations at Río Hato on 

the first night of Operation JUST CAUSE, the lieutenant was told by a US 

colonel to administer a small town. As the Ranger later confessed, he did 

not understand, nor was he prepared by training to carry out, any of the 

tasks the colonel directed him to perform.42

In politically sensitive stability operations, military actions taken at 

the operational level and even the tactical level can have a direct impact at 

the strategic and policy levels. There are numerous historical examples that 

prove the validity of the “strategic corporal,” with the one most likely to 

come to mind being the 1993 fire fight in Mogadishu, “Black Hawk Down,” 

in which a tactical battle involving SOF in support of a UN-led stability 

operation in Somalia caused a reversal of American policy at the highest 

levels.43 In other cases, the action or decision of just a single individual 

has often had positive or negative ramifications that seem, on the surface, 

out of all proportion to the act itself. In most cases, any negative consequences of such actions have not been irreversible, but they have at times 

created major setbacks that jeopardized the military and political missions.

Combat operations of a limited or irregular nature may be necessary 

at some point after stability operations are well under way. Throughout the 

US military’s history, there have been several instances in which significant combat occurs during the course of a stability operation. In some cases, such as Somalia (1992-1994) and the second intervention in Lebanon 

(1982-1984), the combat began well after what had started as a relatively

peaceful US or coalition intervention. In other cases, such as post-Civil War 

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the Philippines (1899-1902), the Dominican 

Republic (1916-1924), Nicaragua during the Sandino Affair (1927-1933), 

and Iraq (2003-present), conventional combat operations resulting in a US/

coalition victory over opposing forces were followed by small-scale conventional operations or guerrilla warfare that, to some degree, disrupted the 

ongoing stability operations. In these situations, the military had to provide 

security for all parties engaged in the stability operations while seeking 

out and neutralizing opposition forces that continued to put up armed resistance. The record of American arms in these situations has been mixed, 

with some short-term and even long-term successes (the Indian wars, the 

Philippines, the Dominican Republic in 1916 and again in 1965, and Nicaragua, 1927-1933), and some failures (Lebanon, 1982-1984, and Somalia).

IO and stability operations. IO have been an essential part of most stability operations. In many cases, however, IO campaigns have proved only 
29

marginally effective. Reasons vary from case to case and include a lack of 

time to prepare an effective IO campaign, a need to improvise coordination 

with other government agencies involved in IO, a dearth of linguists fluent 

in the indigenous language, disagreements over the focus of an IO campaign, 

a lack of cultural awareness, and operators who were better trained in IO 

technical procedures than they were in how to produce a persuasive message. 

In the Dominican Republic in 1965, for example, the products disseminated by psychological warfare units tended to explain the US intervention in ethnocentric terms that, by the Army’s own surveys, failed to 

create within the Dominican public a positive view of the US intervention 

and the benefits it sought to bestow upon the chaotic country. In fact, some 

IO products had the unintended effect of offending the target audience. As 

the US commander stated later, “We didn’t really know how . . . to communicate with people in that way, because we’re just not used to the idea 

of using [propaganda] as a weapon.” Three decades later, in both Haiti 

and Bosnia, IO-generated leaflets targeting the local population were often 

printed in the wrong language or dialect. Matters have not been helped 

when forces opposing US military efforts—especially forces indigenous 

to a country or region in which those efforts are being made—have conducted their own IO in an effective way. In the Dominican Republic, once 

again, a military decision that inadvertently left a rebel-controlled radio 

station outside the zone occupied by American troops proved a propaganda disaster for the first month of the operation, causing the US commander 

on the scene to label the decision “an almost fatal mistake.” Rebel control 

of the radio was finally ended through military action.44

The Stability Operations Environment

The diverse activities that the US military has been called upon to 

perform in stability operations have generally taken place within an environment that differs in degree or in kind from that in which strictly conventional combat operations typically take place. The failure to anticipate 

and understand this environment has complicated stability operations in 

the past and will likely do so in the future. 

Political considerations and activities permeate stability operations 

at the operational and tactical levels. In the United States, tradition, 

law, and principle dictate that the military serve in a subordinate role to 

a democratically elected civilian government. It is also taken as axiomatic that military objectives and strategy serve larger political goals. Military leaders often play a significant role in the policy debates that determine those larger goals; then, once the political authority has decided on 
30

a course of action, they support that decision. They also expect that the 

political decision makers will provide them with clear guidance to help 

shape the military strategy necessary to achieve the political ends. Below 

the strategic level, however, traditional theory and practice hold that the 

planning and conduct of operations, as well as the determination of the 

tactics employed, are military matters best left to the oversight of competent officers imbued with professional expertise and unencumbered by 

political influences. In stability operations, however, reality often upsets 

the expectations born of this traditional politico-military relationship. 

The reality of bureaucratic infighting, the confusion or uncertainty imparted by a dynamic and often ambiguous situation, and a host of other 

complications may result in political guidance to the military that lacks 

specificity and clarity. When the United States intervened in Cuba in 1898 

and defeated the Spanish forces there, President William McKinley simply told the American people that US military rule on the island would 

continue “until complete tranquility and a stable government” had been 

achieved.45 The president’s guidance to his top military commander on 

the scene was no more specific than this, largely because the president 

himself did not know what policy to follow. American troops landing in 

Lebanon in 1958 knew they were supposed to prevent a takeover of the 

country by unfriendly forces, but the Eisenhower administration had provided them no specific guidance on how they were to accomplish that. 

As the top Army general told a group of deploying troops, “At this time I 

can not tell exactly what our future mission may be.”46 In 1982 President 

Reagan’s secretary of state argued for sending US marines into Lebanon 

to help stabilize a chaotic situation; the secretary of defense opposed the 

deployment. The consequent in-fighting resulted in contradictory information and guidance about the deployment and its duration emanating from 

the highest levels in Washington.47 The lack of clear political guidance to 

the military is by no means inevitable in stability operations, but it has occurred often enough that US officers should be prepared to determine how 

best to act absent clear guidance.

The lack of clear political guidance is not the only influence politics 

will have on stability operations. Given the political sensitivity of many 

stability operations, political considerations will often determine or influence military activities at the operational and tactical levels. Recounting 

his experience in the 1965 Dominican intervention, General Palmer, the 

commander of US troops there, acknowledged that in a situation “more 

political than military, [it] is inevitable that Washington is going to take 

direct control.”48 The political considerations reflected by this control will 
31

often manifest themselves to the military as operational and tactical constraints, which can take a variety of forms. In the Dominican Republic, for 

example, invading US paratroopers flying to their objective were instructed in flight not to air-drop, as planned, but to air-land. The reason given was 

that hundreds of parachutes opening over the city of Santo Domingo might 

appear too “warlike,” a message President Lyndon Johnson did not want to 

send. In Lebanon in 1982 the US special envoy on the scene denied the US 

commander permission to occupy the high ground in front of Beirut International Airport for fear that various parties to the conflict would perceive 

that the marines were guarding the Israeli main supply route that ran through 

the mountains. Such a misperception could have discredited the appearance 

of US impartiality that was deemed essential to the success of the marines’ 

mission.49

Other examples of political considerations determining operational and 

tactical activities abound. But the politically determined constraints US 

troops in stability operations feel most directly generally come in the form 

of ROE. ROE dictate circumstances and limitations under which US forces 

will employ deadly force against an opponent. ROE also provide guidance 

for how civilians and their property will be treated. In some cases, however, political considerations have compelled military commanders to issue 

ROE that come close to denying the inherent right of US troops to defend 

themselves, as was the case in the Dominican Republic (1965-1966) and, 

some would argue, in the Panama crisis prior to Operation JUST CAUSE. 

For soldiers and marines trained as warriors, highly restrictive ROE can 

create uncertainty about when the use of deadly force is permissible, and 

this uncertainty can have a negative impact on morale. This is especially 

true in cases like Operation JUST CAUSE, where ROE suited to limited 

warfare changed overnight to restrictive rules more appropriate to stability operations. Also in Panama, the ROE written strictly for stability operations changed frequently and varied from one location to another within the 

same area of operations, adding to the troops’ confusion, uncertainty, and, at 

times, resentment.50 Too often, the response of military officers to restrictive 

ROE has been to denounce the intrusion of political considerations into the 

domain of the military and vow to fight such incursions in future operations. 

A more realistic approach would be for officers to accept such constraints as 

a given and determine how best to accomplish the mission in light of them. 

In stability operations, US and coalition forces will interact regularly 

with local leaders and citizens, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), various diplomats and other dignitaries. Not only have US forces in the past 

lacked the political skills discussed earlier needed to facilitate interaction 
32

with a variety of nonmilitary groups, but the troops have regularly faced a 

“cultural gap” in dealing with these groups, a gap that has sometimes been 

bridged, but too often has not.

Most US stability operations have occurred in countries whose cultures differ greatly from that of the United States. In America’s earliest 

experiences overseas (Cuba, the Philippines, Mexico, the Banana Wars), 

accepted racial theories in the West ensured that US troops would assume the “white man’s burden” and attempt to transform these “primitive and barbaric” cultures by forcing them into an American mold. This 

early method of remaking countries in America’s image enjoyed little 

success, however, except perhaps in the Philippines. During the Cold 

War and post-Cold War periods, such heavy-handed cultural imperialism, besides being anachronistic, would have been counterproductive to 

US goals and national security. While not disavowing the superiority and 

appeal of democracy and free market economics, the United States relied 

more on persuasion than coercion as its principal method for spreading 

American principles and institutions. Since the US military was often 

involved in this process, service members regularly found themselves in 

need of some degree of cultural awareness. At minimum, this required a 

basic familiarity with a foreign country’s language, manners, and behavioral norms; beyond that, it was helpful to acquire a deeper understanding about a country’s beliefs and values, its socioeconomic and political structure, and the way in which indigenous groups and individuals 

interacted. 

Relatively speaking, few American military personnel in the past 

could be said to have demonstrated much cultural awareness, much less 

an interest in acquiring it, and those who did make the effort were often suspected of “going native.” Still, officers who have tried to understand—but by no means embrace—the culture of the country in which 

they were conducting stability operations have often found their efforts 

rewarded. The examples of Pershing in the Philippines and Zinni in Somalia come to mind. Cultural awareness is important up and down the 

military’s chain of command—from flag officers to the lowest ranking 

troops on the front line. It is most often the front-line soldiers and marines engaged in small-unit activities who have the most contact with the 

local population. The more these troops know about the local culture, 

the greater the chance that they will develop relationships that will prove 

useful to mission accomplishment.

In stability operations not only will US forces operate within an indigenous culture, but often foreign troops are placed under US com-
33

mand, complicating mission requirements in other areas such as logistics, communication, and interoperability. In some cases, foreign officers 

serving in a multinational coalition will be required to consult and report 

to their own national political authorities before committing to an action 

directed by the US commander (the UN operation in Somalia from 1993 

to 1995 offers a good example of this). Foreign countries may also have 

joined a coalition to pursue their own political agenda, as was illustrated 

by the behavior of the initial Russian contingents in Bosnia. In general, 

past stability operations have benefited from having a coalition force 

present, despite the problems inherent in any multinational military undertaking.

During stability operations, it is common for US troops to also interact with a variety of nongovernment and humanitarian organizations. 

Such, for example, was the case in Cuba in 1898, when the American V 

Corps commander landed his force and was immediately confronted by 

requests for assistance from Red Cross representatives already there. In 

many stability operations, US troops who interacted with NGOs experienced a “cultural gap.” Many NGOs cannot work with military organizations by charter, others prefer not to; some harbor an antimilitary bias, 

and others often operate in areas beyond the military’s control. Different 

agendas and markedly different ways of doing business also contribute 

to friction between the US military and NGOs. This discord, however, 

does not remove the need for the military to interact with the civilians 

for the sake of accomplishing the mission. Generally, the necessary interaction and coordination has been arranged on an ad hoc basis, but 

following the successful model of the Civil-Military Operations Center 

(CMOC) in Somalia, an organizational arrangement designed to minimize any military-NGO friction has been employed in subsequent stability operations.51

Finally,the media has also historically played a role in stability operations. During the 1965 Dominican intervention and the Vietnam War, 

relations between the US military and American news media deteriorated markedly, and the distrust and suspicion generated in those days 

still exists to one degree or another. Past experience demonstrates that 

it is generally better to have the media in support of stability operations 

than critical of them. The desired military-media relationship can best be 

achieved through personal and organizational interactions that, while not 

devoid of friction, should not go out of their way to generate it. General 

H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s masterful handling of the media during Operation DESERT STORM serves as an example of a military commander 
34

fostering a near-harmonious relationship with the media. That that relationship remained harmonious, however, could in part be explained by 

the short duration and overwhelming success of the war. 

The environment in which stability operations take place is generally dynamic, complex, and often ambiguous. In highly dynamic, rapidly 

changing situations, US forces committed to stability operations have 

often needed to perform unanticipated tasks in order to meet changing 

requirements and to accomplish their mission. At the time of the US involvement in Somalia, this phenomenon was labeled “mission creep,” an 

unfortunate term in that the “missions” in past stability operations rarely 

changed, only the tasks required to accomplish them, and such changes 

were most often unavoidable. In the Dominican Republic in 1965, US 

forces intervened to fight communist-led rebels. The heaviest fighting 

lasted for only two days, after which the combat units entered a year 

and a half of stability operations in which they served as peace keepers, 

peacemakers, and peace enforcers. They had anticipated none of these 

roles, but performing them became essential to accomplish the original 

mission of establishing a stable, noncommunist, pro-US government in 

Santo Domingo. In Somalia during Operation RESTORE HOPE, Lieutenant General Johnston undertook a number of unanticipated initiatives that civilian and military critics in the United States denounced 

as “nation building” and “mission creep.” Johnston, though, justified 

each of the controversial undertakings—reactivating the Somali police 

force, politically empowering local elders, sanctioning various civic action projects—as a necessary step toward achieving his original mission. 

Planners and commanders, in short, need to anticipate “mission creep” 

as an inevitable part of any complex and dynamic stability operation.52

In past stability operations, US forces learned that, for sensitive political reasons, traditional concepts of the “enemy” often did not apply. In 

extreme cases, such as the Dominican Republic in 1965, troops were told 

that the people shooting at them on a daily basis were not the enemy and, 

therefore, could not be neutralized militarily. In this instance, as in others, confusion and resentment within the ranks naturally followed such 

pronouncements. In counterinsurgency, there has rarely been any doubt 

that those trying to kill you are the enemy; the problem has been finding 

them, as they have generally lived among the people, indistinguishable 

from friendly elements of the population. The frequent inability in stability operations to react to hostile activity or to find an acknowledged 

enemy has resulted in anger and demoralization among friendly forces 

and, too often, has been the cause of military action, including atrocities, 
35

against civilians who were suspected of being hostile or of supporting 

hostile forces. The Indian wars, the Civil War occupations, the Philippine War, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Iraq today have demonstrated the 

harsher consequences of the frustrations generated, in part, by not being 

able to define or identify the enemy. 

The Historical Record and US Capabilities for 

Stability Operations

The list of patterns and recurring themes that emerge from a case study 

approach to the US military’s experience in stability operations over 200 

years is lengthy, and only a few of the more significant findings are presented here. Still, through these findings (as well as a careful study of 

current events), it is possible to reach some conclusions as to what capabilities the US armed forces, especially the US Army, require in order 

to conduct stability operations more effectively. In discussing these capabilities, the P-DOTLMPF (Planning-Doctrine, Organization, Training, 

Leader Development, Materiel, Personnel, and Facilities) framework will 

be employed. Facilities, however, will not be considered in this work.

Planning

Integrated planning. Since stability operations occur before, during, 

and after combat operations, the military requires a capability to integrate 

the planning for both types of operations, and to do so at the strategic, 

operational, and tactical levels. America’s military history provides few 

examples of the armed forces possessing or utilizing this capability; rather, planning for each type of operation has generally been separated and 

compartmentalized. Where coordination—not integration—has occurred 

between the combat and “postconflict” planners, requirements for combat 

operations have tended to override those for stability operations. The capability for integrated planning would recognize and act upon the reality 

that both kinds of operations are necessary to achieve the goals of national 

strategy. Since the outbreak of the insurgency in Iraq, the US government, 

including the Pentagon, has undertaken a number of measures to ensure 

integrated planning in future stability operations (see below). As of this 

writing, the future effectiveness of those initiatives remains problematic.

OPSEC. In planning combat operations, the need for OPSEC generally means that only key policy makers and essential military personnel will 

participate in the planning process and possess detailed knowledge of the 

campaign plan. In order for the integrated planning of combat and stability operations to work, the military requires a capability that will allow it 
36

to retain OPSEC regarding MCO, while including in the planning process 

all essential military personnel involved in projected stability operations. 

Ideally, it would help to have a capability for bringing the appropriate civilian 

groups, both government and nongovernment, into an integrated process. 

The “other” perspective. The historical record suggests that planners for stability operations would profit from determining, as best they 

can, not only what resources the military can bring to bear to solve anticipated problems, but how the local population and its leaders will 

respond to actions the military undertakes to address those problems. 

To this end, planners must have a capability to access resources that 

will increase their understanding of situational, demographic, and cultural factors that could affect any contemplated stability operation.

Doctrine

Integrated doctrine. US military capabilities for stability operations 

must be reflected in doctrine. Generally, stability operations do not occur 

in isolation from other types of operations, including combat, and doctrine 

should emphasize requirements for the integrated planning and execution 

of these operations at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. 

Battlefield Operating Systems (BOS) and doctrine for stability operations. To enhance the Army’s capabilities in stability operations, the requirements for such operations need to be incorporated into BOS doctrine, 

the Army’s warfighting framework. (BOS categories are command and 

control, combat service support, intelligence, maneuver, fire support, air 

defense, mobility, countermobility, and survivability.) For example, doctrine for intelligence in stability operations needs to delineate the nontraditional priority intelligence requirements likely to arise. Another example 

would be fire support, where the various weapons systems used for that 

purpose perform certain roles in combat, but different roles in stability 

operations.53

Stability operations doctrine for combat units. As America’s military 

experience readily demonstrates, combat troops are generally required to 

perform a variety of unorthodox and nonmilitary tasks in stability operations. Doctrine needs to delineate these nontraditional roles so that combat 

units can better plan and train for them.

Organization

General purpose vs. special purpose forces. The American experience in 

stability operations is so extensive and so diverse that not one organizational model fits either the general phenomenon itself or each of the sev-
37

eral operational categories that fall under it. Whether stability operations 

have occurred during combat or required combat units to help achieve 

success, or whether such operations have taken place in a permissive and 

benign environment, the organizational approach adopted by the US military, almost without exception, has been to field a range of general purpose 

forces suited to the requirements of the operation. (An exception would be 

SF organizations, such as the Special Action Force of the 1960s, designed 

to conduct stability tasks on a small scale.) In other words, the organization committed to a given stability operation has been the result of putting 

together the units and personnel needed on an ad hoc basis, and the mix of 

units and personnel cobbled together for one stability operation has rarely 

duplicated the organization committed to another. 

By employing this flexible approach, the United States has tailored 

headquarters and subordinate units that best address the operational requirements of a given problem or situation. In those cases where stability operations have been unsuccessful, the cause of the failures cannot be 

attributed to the task-organization of general purpose forces, but to other 

causes such as a failure to integrate planning, a lack of resources, the unpreparedness of certain units involved, the dynamics of the situation, and 

so on. Indeed, in those unsuccessful ventures, there is no reason to believe 

that the use of special purpose forces would have fared any better than 

the task-organized general purpose forces. Moreover, where stability operations occur in the midst of hostilities, a deployment of special purpose 

units in conjunction with general purpose units could create command and 

control problems and violate the principle of unity of effort, thus further 

complicating an already complex situation. The idea that significant numbers of special purpose forces can be deployed and employed together 

with combat troops looks good on paper but ignores the strains that have 

historically been placed on transportation and other critical resources and 

assets during war. Therefore, the US military experience in stability operations strongly supports the continued use of general purpose forces, taskorganized in a modular fashion and, more important, prepared for the tasks 

they will be directed to perform.

Training

Throughout its history, the US military has rarely trained combat and 

combat support elements for the conduct of stability operations. In the 

case of the Army, a unit whose specific mission and qualifications were 

deemed pertinent to stability operations received the relevant training. The 

force as a whole did not. This was particularly true of the combat arms, 

whose operational responsibilities were seen to end once an enemy had 
38

been vanquished. The historical record suggests, however, that, for the 

Army to develop greater proficiency at conducting stability operations, it 

needs to develop or, where present, refine its training capability to achieve 

the following objectives: 

Prepare leaders and units for the requirements of stability operations.

Prepare leaders and units for the simultaneous conduct of combat operations and stability operations and the transition from an emphasis on the former to the latter.

Prepare officers in combat units for the nontraditional and diverse activities they could be called upon to perform in stability operations. The training should include the variety of political constraints and 

limitations that have been imposed on military personnel in the conduct 

of past stability operations. 

Prepare officers and units for operating in an environment, 

often urban, populated with civilians, NGOs, government and privatesector officials, the news media, and other nonmilitary individuals and 

groups.

Prepare officers and units for integrated planning and for the 

BOS-related requirements of stability operations in a hostile environment.

Prepare officers and units to interact in a culturally unfamiliar 

environment.

Leader Development

The historical record suggests that the US military needs to develop 

or refine its capabilities for leader development in such ways as to supplement and enhance the training objectives outlined above and to emphasize 

the following key points as well. 

Stability operations as a “core” mission. The American military experience suggests that stability operations are not just “fads,” “aberrations,” or “second-class” operations; rather, such operations can determine 

whether the United States achieves the objectives outlined in its National 

Security Strategy. Thus, military leaders should view stability operations, 

and the requisite skill sets needed to undertake them, as critical core competencies.

The combat arms are generally an essential part of stability operations. Too often, stability operations are not conducted in the kind of 

benign, permissive environment that would preclude the use of combat 

forces as an integral part of the operation.

•

•

•

•

•

•
39

Cultural awareness. Most stability operations will be conducted in 

countries that are culturally different from the United States. While US 

officers cannot become experts on the culture of any given foreign country 

in which they will operate, they can at least try to acquire a basic familiarity with that country’s language, political and economic systems, social 

structure, belief and value systems, and behavioral norms. In the process 

of acquiring this knowledge, officers must address not just how US troops 

should behave in the country, but seek a broader awareness of the institutions and relationships that make that society function. Officers should 

be exposed early in their careers to the importance of cultural awareness 

and required, at a minimum, to take language training. Cultural awareness 

should also be emphasized at each stage of their professional and personal 

education.54

The complexity of politico-military operations. Stability operations by their 

nature are complex politico-military operations. Officers who have been 

educated and trained to believe that their “job” encompasses strictly military matters are likely to be unprepared for the requirements placed upon 

them by stability operations.

The interdependency of the military in stability operations. In a point 

related to the previous one, military activities in stability operations are 

generally deeply involved in political, economic, social, and informational 

activities. Professional military education and professional development 

programs can help prepare officers for these unorthodox situations. 

Above all, leader development needs to reassess the mind set of the 

traditional military, and whether such a mind set is appropriate in light 

of both the US military’s historical experience and the current operating 

environment. 

Materiel

The US military has not always had the materiel necessary for implementing stability operations readily available. This has been especially 

true when combat operations and stability operations have been conducted 

simultaneously, or when the requirements of a given stability operation 

have not been clearly anticipated. In light of this record, it would seem 

that the military needs to refine its capability to anticipate and stockpile the 

materiel likely to be required in a stability operation, so that the resources 

can be made available in a timely way to the affected units. 

Personnel

In past stability operations, the US military has experienced challenges moving the right people for the mission into the theater quickly and 
40

efficiently. One recurring problem has been the shortage or unavailability 

of area specialists and linguists. The talents of these individuals are needed 

during the planning process to provide realistic assessments of what approaches will work well in a given country. In the execution of the plan, 

the same experts are needed to interact with the indigenous leaders and 

population, serving as translators and facilitators. Further complicating the 

personnel issue, the majority of the personnel with the skills to support stability operations are in the reserve components, decreasing their ability to 

become involved on the ground quickly and effectively. From a historical 

standpoint, the active Army needs to enhance its capability to maintain a 

large number of personnel qualified to support stability operations and to 

make them available in a timely way.

Summary and Prognosis

To summarize, a historical assessment of the 28 selected case studies 

of US stability operations supports the following assumptions concerning 

the Army’s role in future stability operations.

The US government will continue to conduct stability operations. 

Stability operations will be conducted in a joint, interagency, and 

multinational environment.

The US military, especially the Army, will play a critical role in 

stability operations.

The US military will bear some significant responsibility for planning in the pre-execution phase of stability operations.

The US military must be capable of conducting stability operations simultaneously with other military operations.

To anyone who has studied the historical record, none of the above 

should occasion surprise. The statements find their source in over two centuries of military experience. Yet, throughout most of that past, there has 

been within the American military establishment a professional, personal, 

and institutional resistance to these basic observations. There have been 

exceptions, at least on the surface, such as during the early 1960s when 

President Kennedy directed the Army to give much greater emphasis to 

counterinsurgency in its training, doctrine, and professional education. 

Officially, the Army complied; in reality, the compliance amounted to little 

more than lip service, with little or no substantive movement away from 

the service’s comfort zone of conventional warfare.55

The insurgencies and America’s nation-building efforts in Afghanistan 

and Iraq have generated new initiatives to prepare the US government 

and the military, particularly the Army, for stability operations. On 5 

•

•

•

•

•
41

August 2004, for example, the State Department created the Office of the 

Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) “to lead, coordinate and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or 

prepare for postconflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife, so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.” The S/CRS 

website contains an elaborate Postconflict Reconstruction Essentials Tasks 

Matrix that breaks the list into four categories: governance and participation, humanitarian assistance and social well-being, economic stabilization and infrastructure, and justice and reconciliation. The matrix offers 

visual proof of the complexity of stability operations, the multitude of 

tasks involved, and the difficulties inherent in forming an interagency 

approach to such operations. More to the point, each of the four categories requires the participation of US military forces.56

The Army has recognized this fact, as demonstrated by the prominence afforded stability operations (referred to as “stability and reconstruction operations,” or S&RO) in its latest version of FM 1.57 When 

published, other field manuals, namely updated editions of FM 3-0, 

Operations, and FM 3-07, Stability Operations, will address stability operations in more detail. The forthcoming doctrine promises to emphasize 

the variety of conditions in which stability operations are needed and 

conducted; the fact that a stability operation may take place in conjunction with offensive and defensive operations and, thus, may involve both 

“coercive and cooperative” actions; the impact of stability operations 

on the military, political, economic, and information “dimensions of the 

operational environment”; the need to understand “regional culture and 

politics”; and the “use of minimum lethality consistent with rules of engagement.”58

With the doctrinal review in progress, the Chief of Staff of the Army 

created a Stability and Reconstruction Operations Focus Area “mandated to identify and implement initiatives to increase Army capabilities to 

plan and conduct stability operations in a joint, interagency, and multinational context.” Members of the focus area team were to “identify initiatives for both immediate implementation and for ensuring full-spectrum 

capabilities of the future force as well as assess S&RO requirements for 

all force sizing construct elements.” The team completed its work in 

2005 and forwarded its recommendations to the Chief of Staff.59

On 28 November 2005, DOD issued a directive with the subject 

heading of “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and 

Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations.” A key paragraph in the document 
42

declared: “Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the 

Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They 

shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DOD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, 

personnel, facilities, and planning.”60

How the execution of this DOD directive, together with the application of updated Army doctrine, will proceed is, as of this writing, an open 

question. There are many obstacles that both initiatives will have to overcome. The size of the military institution alone militates against any momentous change aimed at transforming the traditional military mind set of 

those who do not believe stability operations to be a proper military mission or, in modified form, only a mission for a selected few of their number 

(many of whom are in the reserve force and thus not readily available). 

The situations in Afghanistan and Iraq have laid the groundwork for such 

a transformation. Yet, should the United States leave Iraq before the end of 

the decade and before the American military becomes involved in another 

stability operation of similar scope and importance, what seems so obvious today might revert—as did the 20-year experience in Vietnam—to the 

status of “aberration,” with a concomitant reinforcement of the traditional 

military mind set.61Thus, the problem confronting those inside and outside 

the Pentagon who are calling for change: how best to proceed with an 

intellectual and institutional transformation that might take a generation 

to effect. However those leaders address the problem, they would do well 

to consult and employ to the utmost the historical experience of their own 

institution. 
43

Notes

1. Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, 

Department of the Army, June 2001), paragraph 1-1, p.1-3; paragraph 1-4, p.1-3. 

This citation covers the opening quotation and the doctrinal terms “full spectrum” 

and “warfighting.”

2. Each of the eleven wars listed had an unconventional element to it. There 

are a number of analysts who would argue that in Vietnam, the unconventional 

element was, in fact, predominant. The point is controversial. One of the more 

forceful proponents of the view that, from 1965 on, the Vietnam War was primarily a conventional conflict between American/South Vietnamese forces and North 

Vietnamese regulars is the late Harry G. Summers in his On Strategy: A Critical 

Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York: Dell, 1984). For the counterargument 

emphasizing the unconventional aspects of the war, see Andrew F. Krepinevich, 

Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

3. This quote comes from a portion of the working draft for FM 3-0 that 

was provided to the author in January 2006. It is imperative to emphasize that, at 

that time, the draft had not been approved for official release. The quote is used 

here simply to provide the reader with an up-to-date description of stability operations as conceived by the doctrine writers. Until approved in its existing form or 

in a revised form, the paragraph cited has no official doctrinal authority. 

4. The list is taken from FM 3-07, Stability Operations and Support Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, February 2003). 

5. For lists that include what today would be called stability operations, 

see US Congress, Congressional Record-Senate (23 June 1969), 16840-44; Barry 

M. Blechman, Stephen S. Kaplan, et al, Force without War (Washington, DC: 

The Brookings Institution, 1978), 547-53; Philip D. Zelikow, “Force without War, 

1975-82,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1984) : 51-54; Herbert K. Tillema, Appeal to Force: American Military Intervention in the Era of 

Containment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1973), 218-25; Congressional Research Service, “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 

1798-1995” (Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 6 February 1996). 

6. James Jay Carafano, “Post-Conflict Operations From Europe to Iraq,” 

Heritage Lectures (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 13 July 2004), 3. 

7. The term “small wars” is taken from the title of a book authored by C.E. 

Callwell, a British officer, in 1896. One reprint of C.E. Callwell’s book is Small 

Wars: Their Principles and Practice (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 

1996).

8. Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1984), 

130.

9. On the US military’s involvement in Indian affairs in the 19th century, 

see Francis Prucha, The Sword of the Republic (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1969); Robert Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army 
44

and the Indian, 1848-65 (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1890 (New York: Macmillan, 

1973); Robert Wooster, The Military and the United States Indian Policy (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). A brief overview of the Army’s role in 

non-Indian affairs on the frontier can be found in Robert Wooster, “The Frontier 

Army and the Occupation of the West, 1865-1900,” in Armed Diplomacy: Two 

Centuries of American Campaigning (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004).

10. The best book-length account of the Second Seminole War is John K. 

Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 rev. ed. (Gainesville, FL: 

University Presses of Florida, 1991). 

11. Justin Smith, “American Rule in Mexico,” American Historical Review

23 (January 1918) : 287-302; Edward S. Wallace, “The United States Army in 

Mexico City,” Military Affairs 13 (Fall 1949) : 158-66.

12. On occupation and guerrilla warfare during the Civil War, see Michael 

Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American 

Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Mark Grimsley, The 

Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For a fictional account of the 

guerrilla war that offers countless insights, see Daniel Woodrell, Woe to Live On

(also titled Ride with the Devil) (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1987).

13. The only book-length survey of the US military’s role in Reconstruction is James E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865-1877 

(Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1967). For a short overview, 

see Joseph G. Dawson III, “The US Army in the South: Reconstruction as Nation 

Building” in Armed Diplomacy, 39-63. Sherman’s thoughts on Reconstruction 

can be found in Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 246.

14. On the US occupation of Cuba, see David F. Healy, The United States 

in Cuba, 1898-1902 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963); Jack 

C. Lane, Armed Progressive: General Leonard Wood (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978); and Allan R. Millett, The Politics of Intervention: The Military 

Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 

1968). 

15. On the Philippine war and US pacification of the northern islands, see 

John Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 

1899-1902 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1975); Brian M. Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000); and 

Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 

(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989). For pacification of 

the Moros, see Lane, Armed Progressive; Donald Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior: The 

Early Life of John J. Pershing (New York: Scribner, 1973); and Charles A. Byler, 

“Leonard Wood, John J. Pershing, and Pacifying the Moros in the Philippines: 

Americans in a Muslim Land,” in Turning Victory Into Success, ed. Brian M. De 
45

Toy (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2005), 89-104.

16. On the US military occupation of Veracruz, see John S.D. Eisenhower, 

Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917 (New 

York: W.W. Norton, 1993); and Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow 

Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky 

Press, 1962). 

17. On the American intervention in Nicaragua, see Neill Macaulay, The 

Sandino Affair (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967); Richard Millett, Guardians of the 

Dynasty: A History of the U.S. Created Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua and the 

Somoza Family (New York: Orbis Books, 1977).

18. The quote from Max Boot is in The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars 

and the Rise of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 181. On US 

military activities in the Caribbean basin, see Bruce J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924 

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984); Stephen M. Fuller and Graham A. 

Cosmas, Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, US Marine Corps, 1974); David F. Healy, Gunboat 

Diplomacy in the Wilson Era: The U.S. Navy in Haiti, 1915-1916 (Madison, WI: 

University of Wisconsin Press, 1976); Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971); 

Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 

1900-1934 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983).

19. US Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual (Washington, DC: Headquarters, 

US Marine Corps, 1987). (Reprint of 1940 edition.)

20. Germany country study at http://countrystudies.us/germany/47.htm. 

21. On the US occupation of Germany after World War II, see John Gimbel, 

The American Occupation of Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 

1968); Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946 

(Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1990); James Jay Carafano, “Post-Conflict Operations From Europe to Iraq”; Nadia Schadlow, “War 

and the Art of Governance,” Parameters 33 (Autumn 2003) : 85-94; and Lucius 

D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1950). Summaries can be found in the German country study book at http://countrystudies.

us/germany/ and in American Military History (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1989), 534. The quote on the change in perception of the 

US-western German interaction is taken from William Stivers, “Victors and Vanquished: Americans as Occupiers in Berlin, 1945-1949,” in Armed Diplomacy, 

157. 

In Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria (College 

Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), James Carafano argues that the 

US military was unprepared to turn Austria into a democratic country. Regarding 

Carafano’s assessment, a blurb from the book includes the following comment: 

“The fog of peace, [Carafano] concludes, befuddled U.S. planners.” The point is 
46

that, while the outcome of the occupation of both Germany and Austria was favorable to American interests, the process of reaching those favorable results was 

never smooth or well thought out in terms of the US military’s contribution.

22. On the occupation of Japan, see John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: 

Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999); D. Clayton 

James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 3, Triumph & Disaster, 1945-1964 (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1985); and Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation 

of Japan and Its Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2002).

23. On the US occupation of southern Korea, see Robert K. Sawyer, Military 

Advisors in Korea: KMAG in Peace and War, ed. Walter G. Hermes (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, US Army, 1962); and Charles 

M. Dobbs, The Unwanted Symbol: American Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and 

Korea, 1945-1950 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1981).

24. For the US effort in Greece and the Philippines, see Larry Cable, Conflict 

of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the 

Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1986). For Greece alone, 

see Lawrence S. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949 (New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and Howard Jones, “This New Kind of 

War”: America’s Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1989). For the Philippines, see Lawrence M. Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency 

Operation in the Philippines—1946-1955 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of 

Military History, 1986); and Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The HUK Rebellion: A Study of 

Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 

1977).

25. For US military activities in Lebanon in 1958, see Jack Shulimson, Marines in Lebanon, 1958 (Washington, DC: Historical Branch, US Marine Corps, 

1966); Roger J. Spiller, “Not War But Like War”: The American Intervention in 

Lebanon, Leavenworth Paper No. 3 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1981); and Lawrence A. Yates, “The US Military in Lebanon, 1958: 

Success Without a Plan” in Turning Victory Into Success, 123-33.

26. For US military activities in the Dominican Republic, see Bruce Palmer, 

Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965 (Lexington, KY: 

University Press of Kentucky, 1989); and Yates, Power Pack: U.S. Intervention 

in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966, Leavenworth Paper No. 15 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1988).

27. For a summary of US military activities in Latin American in the 1960s 

and 1970s, see Yates, Power Pack, 10-13; the relevant sections of Charles M. 

Simpson III, Inside the Green Berets (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1983); and US 

Army, 1st Special Forces, 8th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Special Action 

Force for Latin America: Historical Report (each report covers a period of one or 

two years). 

28. The length and complexity of the war in Vietnam defy any attempt to 
47

summarize briefly the variety of stability operations executed by American and 

Vietnamese forces. The volume of literature on the war is also overwhelming. On 

the Combined Action Platoons, see Yates, “A Feather in Their CAP? The Marines’ 

Combined Action Program in Vietnam,” in William R. Roberts and Jack Sweetman, eds., New Interpretations in Naval History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute 

Press, 1991); on CORDs, see Ronald Spector, After Tet (New York: Free Press, 

1993); Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); and Douglas Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present (New York: The Free Press, 1977).

29. On US military activities in Central America in the 1980s, see Andrew 

Bacevich, et al, American Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador, 

Special Report (Washington, DC: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1988); and Benjamin C. 

Schwarz, American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and El Salvador: The Frustrations of Reform and the Illusions of Nation Building (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 

1991). On stability operations in Grenada, see John T. Fishel, “The Grenada Intervention of 1983,” Report for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense 

[unpublished manuscript]. On the marines in Lebanon, see Benis M. Frank, U.S. 

Marines in Lebanon, 1982-1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1987).

30. On stability operations in Panama, see Yates, “Panama, 1989-1990: The 

Disconnect Between Combat and Stability Operations,” Military Review 85, no. 

3 (May-June 2005) : 46-52; and Fishel, The Fog of Peace: Planning and Executing the Restoration of Panama (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

1992). 

31. On Operation PROVIDE COMFORT, see Fishel, Liberation, Occupation, and Rescue: War Termination and Desert Storm (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1992).

32. On the US involvement in Somalia, see Robert F. Baumann and Yates, 

with Versalle F. Washington, “My Clan Against the World”: US and Coalition 

Forces in Somalia, 1992-1994 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2003); United States Forces, Somalia, After Action Report [also known as 

the Montgomery Report] reprint (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 2003); and John L. Hirsch and Robert B. Oakley, Somalia and Operation 

Restore Hope (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1995).

33. On the US involvement in Haiti, see Walter E. Kretchik, Baumann, and 

Fishel, Invasion, Intervention, “Intervasion”: A Concise History of the U.S. Army 

in Operation Uphold Democracy (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command 

and General Staff College Press, 1997).

34. On the US involvement in Bosnia, see Baumann, George W. Gawrych, 

and Kretchik, Armed Peacekeepers in Bosnia (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat 

Studies Institute Press, 2004); and Larry Wentz, ed., Lessons From Bosnia: The 

IFOR Experience (Vienna, VA: CCRP, 1997).

35. Frederick Kagan, “War and Aftermath,” Policy Review Online http://

www.policyreview.org/aug03/kagan.html
48

36. Nadia Schadlow, “War and the Art of Governance,” 86. See also, Conrad 

C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and 

Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, 2003). 

37. On planning for MCO and CMO in Panama, and the actual interaction of 

the two kinds of operations, see Fishel, Fog of Peace, and Yates, “Panama, 1989-

1990.”

38. Nonattribution general officer interview, Spring 2005, Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas.

39. Again, Panama provides but one illustrative example of this point, as the 

two-year development of SOUTHCOM plans for combat operations, CMO, and 

nation building was restricted largely to military circles.

40. On Lebanon, see Spiller, “Not War But Like War”; and Yates, “US Military in Lebanon, 1958.” 

41. On the various tasks performed by combat units in the Dominican Republic, see Yates, Power Pack. The quotation is on p. 133.

42. Comments made by the Ranger officer to the author.

43. See Baumann and Yates, “My Clan Against the World,” chapters 5 and 

6.

44. On information operations in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, see 

Yates, Power Pack, 136-40 (the general officer’s quote is on p.139); Bruce Palmer, Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965 (Lexington, KY: 

The University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 46, 151, 159; and Baumann, et al, Invasion, Intervention, “Intervasion”, passim. 

45. Lane, Armed Progressive, 71.

46. US Army, 24th Infantry Division, After Action Report for Operation 

GRANDIOS, 15-31 July 1958, 5 November 1958. A copy of the document is located in the Combined Arms Research Library (CARL), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

47. David C. Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of 

America’s War Against Terrorism (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 95-98.

48. Yates, Power Pack, 73.

49. Ibid., 69; Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 24-25.

50. On ROE in general, see Mark S. Martins, “Rules of Engagement for 

Land Forces: A Matter of Training, Not Lawyering,” Military Law Review 143 

(Winter 1994). For the Dominican intervention, see Yates, Power Pack, 140-43; 

for Panama, see author’s manuscript on the Panama crisis prior to Operation JUST 

CAUSE (forthcoming from the US Army Center of Military History), and Clarence E. Briggs III, Operation Just Cause: Panama 1989, A Soldier’s Eyewitness 

Account (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1990).
49

51. On the organization and effectiveness of the CMOC in Somalia, see 

Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 67-69; and Baumann 

and Yates, “My Clan Against the World,” 53-55, 76-79.

52. For what could have been called “mission creep” in the Dominican intervention, see Yates, Power Pack; for Somalia, see Baumann and Yates, “My Clan 

Against the World.”

53. For example, see Field Artillery in Military Operations Other than War: 

An Overview of the US Experience (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004).

54. Complicating attempts to acquire cultural awareness is the adage that an 

understanding of another culture begins with a thorough grasp of one’s own. Few 

historians in America would argue today that the population at large, or even those 

segments that have received degrees in higher education, have little more than a 

passing understanding of US history and American culture. As in all countries, 

what passes for history falls better into the categories of myth and legend.

55. For the Army’s response to the counterinsurgency initiative, see Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era; Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam; and Robert A. Doughty, The Evolution of US Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76, Leavenworth Paper No. 1 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1979), 

25-40.

56. Information regarding S/CRS as well as the matrix can be found at http://

www.state.gov/s/crs/. Interestingly, in the budget battle of 2005, S/CRS fought to 

keep from being woefully underfunded. 

57. FM 1, The Army (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the 

Army, June 2005).

58. In a telephone conversation on 11 January 2006, the author discussed 

the direction that doctrine for stability operations is taking with an Army officer 

responsible for writing that doctrine as a member of the Combine Arms Doctrine 

Directorate, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

59. The quotes on the focus area team are taken from briefing slides prepared 

at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in March 2005.

60. US Department of Defense, Directive Number 3000.05, 28 November 

2005. For a brief but insightful journalistic assessment of the directive, see The 

Christian Science Monitor, 16 December 2005.

61. In the summer of 2005, a US Army officer in the Pentagon told the author and others that, within DOD, there is already a sizable group of officers who 

regard the current situation in Iraq as an aberration.

51

About the Author 

Dr. Yates served as a member of the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) 

from August 1981 until his retirement in September 2005. He was 

originally assigned to the research committee in 1986 and then reassigned 

as chief of the historical services committee in 1991. Dr. Yates has taught 

the Command and General Staff College’s military history survey course 

and several elective courses, including “Case Studies in US Contingency 

Operations and Interventions since World War II.” He has authored or 

coauthored several CSI publications, including Leavenworth Paper no. 

15 entitled Power Pack: US Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 

1965–1966 and GWOT Occasional Paper no. 4 entitled Field Artillery 

in Military Operations Other Than War. He coedited and contributed to 

Block by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations and coauthored “My 

Clan Against the World”: US and Coalition Forces in Somalia. During his 

tenure at CSI, Dr. Yates became known as one of the foremost experts in 

the world in the study of US peace-keeping and contingency operations. 

53

Appendix A

Selected Case Studies in US Stability Operations, 1789-2005

Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 ................................................... 55

The Mexican War, 1846-1848 .......................................................... 56

Civil War Occupations, 1861-1865 .................................................. 57

Reconstruction, 1865-1877 .............................................................. 59

Nation Building in the West ............................................................. 60

Cuba, 1899-1902 .............................................................................. 61

Philippines, 1899-1913..................................................................... 62

China Relief Expedition, 1900-1901................................................ 64

Mexico (Veracruz), 1914.................................................................. 66

Interventions in Russia, 1918-1920.................................................. 68

Haiti, 1915-1934............................................................................... 69

Dominican Republic, 1916-1924 ..................................................... 71

Nicaragua, 1927-1933 ...................................................................... 73

Germany, 1945-1949........................................................................ 74

Austria, 1945-1955........................................................................... 75

Japan, 1945-1951.............................................................................. 77

South Korea, 1945-1950................................................................... 78

Lebanon, 1958.................................................................................. 80

Vietnam, 1955-1973 ......................................................................... 82

Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 ..................................................... 84

Latin America, 1960-1989................................................................ 86

Beirut, 1982-1984............................................................................. 88

Grenada, 1983 .................................................................................. 90

Panama, 1989-1990 ......................................................................... 92

Kuwait and Iraq (post-Operation DESERT STORM)...................... 94

Somalia, 1992-1994.......................................................................... 96

Haiti, 1994-1995............................................................................... 98

The Balkans.................................................................................... 100

.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

0.

.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

20.

2.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

55

Appendix B

Overviews of Selected Case Studies in US Stability Operations

The Second Seminole War, 1835-1842

As part of the US government’s policy of relocating Indian groups living east of the Mississippi River to western territories, President Andrew 

Jackson in 1835 ordered ten Army companies into Florida to evict some 

5,000 Seminole Indians. In December a Seminole war party attacked an 

Army column, thus precipitating the Second Seminole War, which lasted 

until 1835.

The Seminoles were organized into loose-knit clans that confounded 

the Army’s early attempts to force a decisive battle through the conventional tactic of converging columns. Eventually the Army adopted unconventional tactics and techniques, but still had to contend with the swampy 

terrain and heat of Florida’s Everglades and with political constraints imposed by Washington (for example, against the use of bloodhounds), both 

of which slowed progress in the war. Seven general officers commanded 

US troops in the war, and with one or two exceptions, their reputations 

suffered as a result. The last US commander, Colonel William Worth, adopted effective small-unit, search-and-destroy tactics aimed at Seminole 

villages and crops. By 1842 over 4,000 Seminoles had been removed from 

their land, and with fewer than 200 still offering resistance, the government considered the hostilities terminated. The Second Seminole War was 

the longest war in the country’s history to that date, and one that forced 

officers and units oriented toward conventional tactics to adapt to an unconventional battlefield.

Mahon, John K. History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. rev. ed.; Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Presses, 1991 (first edition 1967).

Prucha, Francis Paul. Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846. Paperback ed.; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University 

Press, 1977.
56

The Mexican War, 1846-1848

America’s war with Mexico began in May 1846, was fought entirely 

on Mexican soil, and provided the US Army its first significant experience 

in military government. With no international guidelines to follow, the 

Army’s general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, devised occupation policies that 

initially emphasized conciliation. The Army was to treat Mexican civilians 

as friends and protect their rights and property. Through proclamations 

and other forms of communication, Mexicans received assurances that the 

United States meant them no harm, posed no threat to their customs and 

religion, and fought only against the “tyrants” who constituted the current regime. Where possible, Scott governed through native municipal officials, allowed local elections, permitted the Mexican judiciary system to 

function, maintained public institutions, distributed food, sought improvements in public sanitation and morality, and, in Mexico City, provided 400 

soldiers to augment the native police force. 

As American soldiers and Scott’s supply lines became targets of Mexican guerrillas, conciliation in many places yielded to harsher measures 

designed to exterminate the guerrillas and punish those civilians who supported them. Captured guerrillas were generally tried and summarily executed, while civilian supporters were subject to fines, the confiscation of 

their property, and, in extreme cases, the razing of their homes and villages. Though these harsh policies did not completely eliminate the guerrilla 

threat, they managed to hold it in check. 

The United States signed a peace treaty with Mexico in February 1848. 

In June the last American troops left those areas that would remain under 

Mexican sovereignty. On the whole, the two-year US military occupation 

of Mexico was regarded as a largely benevolent and successful operation, 

despite the harsh anti-guerrilla policies and the acknowledged misconduct 

of many American soldiers.

Provost Marshal General’s School, “Military Government under Winfield Scott,” 

Training Packet #58, n.d. 

Smith, Justin H. “American Rule in Mexico,” American Historical Review 23 

(January 1918) 287-302.

Wallace, Edward S. “The United States Army in Mexico City,” Military Affairs

13 (1949) 158-66.
57

Civil War Occupations, 1861-1865

Throughout America’s Civil War, Union forces occupied captured 

southern territory and the so-called “border states” between North and 

South. For the troops assigned to occupied areas, the list of duties included 

guarding Union supply lines, maintaining order, and, in some cases, fighting rebel guerrillas. All told, it is estimated that, at some points in the war, 

occupation activities tied up as much as a third of the Union army. 

While there were general, albeit changing, policy guidelines governing occupation policies throughout the war, the implementation of those 

guidelines varied according to location and circumstances. Some remote 

areas might not realize they were under occupation at all, while others in 

which rebel sympathizers and guerrillas were active might experience the 

full weight of martial law. The form of military occupation also varied 

from place to place. Generally upon occupying an area, the Army would 

first emphasize the need for a policing force and a military or civilian court 

system that would maintain or restore order. In some places, President 

Abraham Lincoln authorized military governments, which performed administrative functions, supervised elections, conducted a variety of public 

health and sanitation programs, monitored public morals, collected taxes, 

oversaw business and financial activities, provided basic services, and enacted labor laws. As the linchpin of the Army’s administration of civil 

affairs, the provost marshal in a given area monitored the activities of 

suspected rebels, administered loyalty oaths, and arrested and prosecuted 

criminals as well as rebel activists. 

During the first two years of the war, Union commanders in occupied 

areas sought to pursue lenient policies that would protect individual rights 

and property and promote reconciliation with the majority of Southerners 

whom President Lincoln assumed to be in favor of restoring the Union. 

This assumption proved false, and as guerrilla warfare and terror tactics 

against occupation forces and pro-Union officials and civilians intensified, and as pro-rebel civilians increasingly assisted the guerrillas, federal 

troops adopted harsher policies toward both the guerrillas and those who 

abetted them. Partisans who did not wear uniforms and who did not belong 

to formal units of the Confederate army often received no leniency if captured, while civilians who supported the guerrillas might face a number 

of penalties, including imprisonment, the loss of property, fines, banishment, and even death. General Order No. 100 codified how Union forces 

should treat guerrillas and recalcitrant civilians in occupied areas. The order sanctioned a combination of harsh and conciliatory policies that most 

Union commanders were already employing. Still, the document “marked 
58

the first time a government had issued official guidelines regulating how 

its army should conduct itself in relation to an enemy’s army and civilian 

population”(Birtle, 34). 

After the war, the Army made little effort to study its occupation and 

counter-guerrilla policies. The whole experience was regarded as too unrewarding and too political to merit serious and continuous study. This 

disregard of the wartime experience is particularly interesting in light of 

the fact that the Army’s responsibility for occupation and pacification of 

the South would carry over into Reconstruction.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations 

Doctrine 1860-1941. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1998.

Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern 

Civilians, 1861-1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
59

Reconstruction, 1865-1877

At the close of the Civil War, the US Army engaged in the challenging 

task of occupying the former Confederate states. Many Southern whites 

were outraged by the occupation and sought to restore pro-Confederate 

governments. Under President Andrew Johnson’s generous plan of Presidential Reconstruction, it appeared an uncomplicated task, as southerners 

elected “unrepentant” governments, implemented Black Codes as a substitute for slavery, and committed many violent acts against freed blacks. 

While the Army sought to maintain order, Johnson repeatedly sided with 

white Southerners. When outraged Republicans in Congress attacked 

Johnson’s lenient course of action, the Army became embroiled in a political battle.

In a series of groundbreaking legislative acts, Congress attacked 

Johnson’s ideas and instituted a new Reconstruction plan. Congress declared the newly elected pro-Confederate governments merely provisional 

(except in Tennessee, which had already been reconstructed), and placed 

Army generals in command of large areas of the South with the power to 

remove any elected official from office. With US forces protecting black 

males and white Republicans at the polls, the Army helped establish pioneering, interracial Republican governments throughout the South. Soon, 

however, the Army found itself embroiled in having to protect those new 

governments and their supporters. In many instances, the Army was forced 

to quell race riots which exploded in the streets, as well as uprisings resulting from contested elections.

When Southern whites retaliated with terrorist organizations like the 

Ku Klux Klan, Congress and newly elected President Ulysses S. Grant responded by employing the Army as a posse comitatus. In conjunction with 

federal marshals and attorneys, the Army was able to temporarily destroy 

the power of the Klan.

In 1877 the Army’s protective presence in the South came to an end. It 

had been a remarkable experience, one that required the Army to adjust to 

constantly changing national policy, while applying unparalleled military 

control over the southern states. By the time of the US military withdrawal 

from the South, however, virtually every state house had reverted to Democratic control by white supremacists. 

Coakley, Robert W. The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders 

1789-1878. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988.

Sefton, James E. The United States Army and Reconstruction 1865-1877. Baton 

Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. 
60

Nation Building in the West

As the United States exercised its self-proclaimed “Manifest Destiny” 

and expanded beyond the original thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, the US Army led the way in the country’s westward movement to 

the Pacific Ocean. During this period, the United States acquired massive amounts of land to accommodate its growing population. As pioneers 

rushed into these new domains, the Army examined and mapped the new 

territories and provided an infrastructure for the new frontier. Road building and the construction of forts along the westward trails facilitated the 

rapid migration of a population eager to obtain new land.

As the American population moved west, the Army protected the 

transportation routes from hostile Indians. In many cases, the Army served 

in the unenviable position of peacemaker, as it attempted to keep the peace 

between the incoming settlers and outraged Indians who, in many cases, 

had been forcibly removed from their land. At various times, the Army 

protected Indians from white encroachment, but would also spend much 

of its time battling hostile Indian tribes.

During the westward expansion, as new settlements sprang up around 

distant Army forts, and pioneers moved farther away from established 

population centers, citizens often called on the Army for all manner of assistance, including law enforcement.

In the end, the US Army was a major catalyst in the growth of the nation. West Point trained officers and engineers helped cut a path into the 

wilderness and greatly influenced the rapid completion of the country’s 

“Manifest Destiny.”

Utley, Robert M. Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian.

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.
61

Cuba, 1899-1902

The island of Cuba served as the flashpoint for the Spanish-American 

War that began in 1898. At the start of the war, Cuba was a Spanish colony. 

However, due to the presence of Cuban insurgents who had been fighting 

for independence since 1895, Spain’s control of the island was tenuous. 

In 1899, after defeating Spanish naval and land forces in the Caribbean, 

the United States assumed responsibility for governing Cuba. Before the 

beginning of the war, Congress had rejected annexation of the island, but 

President William McKinley kept American forces in Cuba until the island’s political, economic, and social systems had been reformed in the 

image of the United States. 

As the occupation began, American soldiers quickly disbanded the 

Cuban insurgents by offering cash bonuses and jobs in exchange for their 

weapons. The Army then established a military government that incrementally returned authority to civilian Cuban administrators. Other reforms 

were equally cautious. US Army leaders in Cuba mandated small changes 

to Cuban law, attempting to minimize negative affects on the traditional 

social order. At the same time, the military government undertook projects that made improvements in the lives of the average Cuban, including 

the construction of roads, schools, and sewers. These projects employed a 

large number of Cubans and helped facilitate economic recovery. Perhaps 

most impressive was the Army Medical Corps’ program to eradicate yellow fever and malaria which resulted in significant declines in reported 

cases of both diseases.

In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt recognized that Cuba had matured politically and economically and granted the island independence. 

Under the new Cuban constitution, however, the country retained the status of an American protectorate, and the United States held the rights to 

have a naval base on the island. Once the troops departed, only a few of 

their reforms had any lasting impact. Cuban elites allowed the construction projects and the health programs established by the American soldiers 

to fade away. Political turmoil compelled Roosevelt to reoccupy the island 

with American troops in 1906. Ultimately, the US Army had assisted in the 

stabilization of Cuba and begun the process of recovery, even if it had not 

introduced enduring cultural change.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations 

Doctrine, 1860-1941. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 1998.

Healy, David. The United States in Cuba, 1898 – 1902: Generals, Politicians and the 

Search for Policy. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.
62

The Philippines, 1899-1913 

In 1898 the United States went to war with Spain in a series of battles 

that took place, not in the country of Spain, but against Spanish forces 

in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, colonies determined to be the 

most important holdings in the declining Spanish empire. American forces 

quickly defeated the Spanish military, leaving the US in possession of 

the former Spanish holdings. With little guidance from President William 

McKinley’s administration, the US Army occupied these territories and 

began to implement new policies focused on fostering prosperous and 

democratic societies. While Cuba would be given its independence in 

1902, the Philippines became an American colony in 1899.

Despite the McKinley administration’s emphasis on democracy and 

economic prosperity, not all Filipinos were content with their status as 

subjects of the United States. In February 1899 armed Filipinos under the 

leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo and other nationalists engaged in open 

hostilities with US troops occupying Manila. While the war began as a 

conventional conflict, the overwhelming firepower of the United States 

forced Aguinaldo and the others to adopt guerilla tactics as the fighting 

spread across the archipelago.

Over the course of the next 13 years, the US Army fought the insurgency using a variety of policies and techniques. Much of the conflict was 

waged by small platoon- or company-sized units located in distant outposts isolated from each other and higher headquarters. Because of this, 

local American commanders tailored their policies and procedures to meet 

the conditions specific to their area of responsibility. In general, these officers used a combination of civil affairs and humanitarian projects and 

counterinsurgent operations to combat the guerillas. The formation of proAmerican local governments, the construction of schools, and the establishment of public health programs were all designed to win the support of 

the civilian population. American commanders often supplemented these 

humanitarian efforts with active patrolling, destruction of villages that 

supported the insurgents, and population relocation programs. Another 

critical element in the American pacification campaign was the aggressive 

gathering of intelligence, which sometimes included the use of torture to 

gain information from suspected guerillas. 

This combination of benevolent and punitive methods led to the gradual stabilization of the Philippines. By 1903 most of the insurgents on Luzon and some of the smaller islands in the northern part of the archipelago 

had been pacified. However, resistance continued in the south, where, for 
63

example, the Moros, a Muslim people on the southern island of Mindanao, 

continued their own insurgency against American forces until 1913. The 

final pacification of Mindanao in that year allowed the Army to turn over 

complete control of the island to American civilian administrators and return most of the regular American forces to the United States.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations 

Doctrine, 1860–1941. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 1998.

Linn, Brian M. The US Army and the Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 

1899–1902. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 

1989.
64

China Relief Expedition, 1900-1901

The China Relief Expedition is the official designation for America’s 

military response to China’s Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Five years earlier, 

the stage had been set for the rebellion when, as a result of the central 

Chinese imperial government’s weakness, Japan defeated China in a brief 

war, providing the opportunity for foreign powers, namely Japan, Russia, 

Germany, and Great Britain, to establish geographically defined spheres of 

influence in China. A secret Chinese society with the name of “Righteous 

and Harmonious Fists” (shortened to “the Boxers” in the Western press) 

first attacked institutions of the weakened central Chinese government, 

but then was co-opted by that government and used to attack foreign interests.

In June 1900, in a military action that became known as the “Boxer Rebellion,” Boxer paramilitary forces attacked the area of the Chinese capital 

city of Peking where many foreigners lived and where many diplomatic 

legations were located. The killing of the German ambassador on 20 June 

1900 prompted eight nations to form an alliance and send troops quickly to 

China to relieve their besieged delegations. The coalition included about 

55,000 forces from Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, the United States, 

Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Italy.

The bulk of the American force, comprised of the 9th and 14th Infantry 

Regiments, then stationed in the Philippines, was dispatched to China and 

placed under the command of Major General Adna R. Chaffee. US naval 

and marine forces also participated in the armed response. The multinational ground force, commanded by the British Brigadier General A.R.F. 

Dorward, marched from the port of Tientsin to Peking and quickly defeated the Chinese Imperial and Boxer forces, numbering from 120,000 to 

170,000 troops. The Chinese government, in September 1901, was forced 

to pay over $300 million in war reparations and to sign a peace agreement that granted additional concessions to foreign powers. This further 

weakened the Imperial government, contributing to its collapse five years 

later.

General Chaffee carried out the administration of the American zone 

of occupation (several square miles of territory and approximately 50,000 

inhabitants) based on his previous experiences in the American West and in 

the occupation of Cuba. The Americans imposed civil order, reestablished 

Chinese police and judicial institutions, took measures to improve public 

sanitation and eradicate disease, repaired infrastructure, and improved the 

living conditions of the population. The American occupation was remark-
65

able for its discipline, order, and efficiency. General Chaffee and the bulk 

of his US Army occupation force left China in early 1901.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1960-1941. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1998.

“The Boxer Rebellion and the US Navy, 1900-1901,” document on-line; available 

at www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq86-1.htm; last accessed on 4 November 

2005.

“General Chaffee’s Report on the China Relief Expedition,” in U.S. War Department, Five Years of the War Department Following the War With Spain, 

1899-1903. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. Document available on-line; available at www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/China.html, 

last accessed on 4 November 2005.
66

Mexico (Veracruz), 1914

In early April 1914 Mexican soldiers in Tampico arrested several US 

sailors who had come ashore on routine business. The men were soon 

released, but President Woodrow Wilson used the incident as a pretext for 

intervening in Mexico, then in the throes of a major revolution. Specifically, Wilson desired the replacement of the dictatorial regime of General 

Victoriano Huerta with a constitutional government. When, soon after the 

Tampico affair, the president learned that a shipment of arms for Huerta 

would arrive at Veracruz, he ordered the US Navy to seize the customs 

house in that Mexican port. On 21 April American marines and sailors 

assaulted the city and, after a short but violent battle, gained complete 

control of the port area. Although the bloodshed caused Wilson to call off 

the US Army’s plan to march on Mexico City, he remained determined to 

hold the city until Huerta stepped down as the Mexican president. On 30 

April a brigade of the US Army under the command of Brigadier General 

Frederick Funston landed at Veracruz to begin a seven-month occupation 

of the city. The occupation was widely denounced by nearly all sides in the 

revolution, even those opposing Huerta.

While American military forces began their occupation duties in Veracruz, politicians from several South American countries attempted to 

mediate a peace between the United States, Huerta, and Huerta’s principal political rival, Constitutionalist Venustiano Carranza. Meanwhile, the 

city was a cesspool of disease, and the new American military government wasted no time in instituting a robust health and sanitation policy. 

The Americans cleared away massive amounts of garbage and debris and 

burned the accumulated waste. The US Army also instituted an extensive 

public works program in order to clean up the city’s marketplace where 

the food goods were infested with maggots and filth. American soldiers 

removed stagnant water from the city streets and took charge of the water 

and sewage facilities. Intent on eradicating disease, they also provided 

vaccinations to the entire population of Veracruz and hospitalized prostitutes infected with diseases. In no time, the mortality rate among the native 

population fell by more than 25 percent. In addition to matters of public 

health, the US occupation attempted to reform the city’s civil government 

and judicial and penal systems. 

On 15 July 1914 Huerta removed himself from Mexican politics and 

fled the country, while Carranza and General Francisco Villa and Emiliano 

Zapata battled over the spoils. However, it was not until 23 November that 

the Americans evacuated Veracruz. 
67

While the American occupation of Veracruz was seen by many as an 

overt act of Yankee imperialism, American military forces had in fact conducted themselves in a professional and compassionate manner. When the 

US Army pulled out of Veracruz, they left behind a far healthier and better 

organized city. The changes did not survive the American withdrawal.

Quirk, Robert E. An Affair of Honor Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz, 2d ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967. 

Eisenhower, John S. D. Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
68

Interventions in Russia, 1918-1920

Land and naval forces of the United States, Canada, and several European 

and Asian nations intervened in the Russian civil war from July 1918 until 

1922. Participating nations, in addition to the United States, included Canada, 

Britain, France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Serbia, Poland, Romania, China, and 

Japan. While each nation in the coalition had its own geo-political and military 

purposes in supporting the intervention, the common objectives were several: 

guard vast amounts of military supplies that had accumulated in and around 

the ports of Vladivostok in the east, and Murmansk and Archangel in the far 

North, secure the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Siberia to allow Czechoslovakian troops to link up with freed Czechoslovakian prisoners 

of war in the interior of Siberia, and, in the case of the European powers and 

Japan, assist forces attempting to overturn the recently established Bolshevik 

regime.

The US ground force contribution to the intervention included approximately 9,000 soldiers of the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments in the Vladivostok sector, and soldiers (about 5,500) from the 339th Infantry Regiment and 

supporting units of the 85th Infantry Division in the Archangel sector. The US 

units in northern Russia were subordinated to a British coalition commander, 

but the commander of US troops in Siberia, while acting as part of an international force, resisted attempts to place his men under the direct control of the 

coalition’s Japanese commander. An American naval officer, Admiral Austin 

M. Knight, commanded the coalition naval forces at Vladivostok.

After a winter of skirmishing alongside coalition forces against Bolshevik 

military units south of Archangel, in June 1919 the American contingent in 

North Russia withdrew. The American forces in the Vladivostok region began 

to redeploy back to the Philippines in January 1920. Total combined US losses 

to sporadic enemy hostilities and disease were approximately 400 men. Any 

stability imposed on the respective regions by the presence of coalition forces 

was obviated by the ultimate Bolshevik victory in the Russian civil war that 

ended in 1922. The American intervention in Russia remained a point of contention in Soviet-American diplomatic relations for decades afterward.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations 

Doctrine 1860-1941. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 

1998.

Dunscomb, Paul E. “U.S. Intervention in Siberia as Military Operations Other 

Than War.” Military Review, 82 (November-December 2002).

Palazzolo, Christopher. “American Intervention in Russia: A Study of Wilsonian Foreign Policy.” Modus Vivendi (Spring 1997). 
69

Haiti, 1915-1934

In 1915 the United States landed marine forces in Haiti with the goal 

of establishing a stable and democratic regime in the chronically troubled 

nation. This was not the first time that American forces had become involved in Haiti. Indeed, between 1857 and 1915, the United States had 

mounted over a dozen serious interventions in Haitian affairs. By 1915 

however, the stakes in the Caribbean were higher. American officials had 

begun to view Haiti’s chronic instability as a possible trigger for the intervention of Europe’s Great Powers in the Caribbean region. This fear, 

coupled with concerns about American commercial interests in Haiti, led 

the United States to send in the marines when the Haitian government 

underwent another period of political turmoil.

The Marine Corps quickly took control of the capital city of 

Port-au-Prince and began efforts to return stability to the region. In short 

order, American officers became involved in reforming the Haitian administrative system, supervising the nation’s finances, and writing a new 

constitution for a new democratic regime. To prevent Haitian political 

elites from undoing these reforms, US representatives pushed the Haitian 

National Assembly to approve a new president selected by the American 

command.

With the new regime installed, American forces began two large-scale 

programs designed to restore order and bring civic improvements to Haiti. 

First, the Marine Corps, with the help of the Navy, began a program of 

projects to greatly improve the Haitian infrastructure. During the occupation, marines supervised the construction of bridges, harbors, airfields, and 

a road network. The Navy’s Medical Corps oversaw the construction of 

new hospitals and clinics and initiated public health campaigns designed 

to stamp out malaria and other debilitating diseases that plagued Haitian 

society.

The second critical program was the establishment of a Haitian constabulary. However, that same year, an insurrection in the northern part 

of the nation made it obvious that the relatively small marine contingent 

would need help in maintaining order. The Marine Corps was tasked not 

only with the training of the new constabulary but its leadership as well. 

For much of the occupation, individual marines served as the constabulary’s officer corps, directing it in public works projects as well as in 

operations against the insurgencies that periodically erupted in the rural 

areas of Haiti.

The American occupation of Haiti lasted 19 years. In 1934 President 
70

Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled the marines, who left a mixed legacy in 

their wake. By the 1920s, the American presence had created a large measure of stability and certainly improved Haiti’s physical infrastructure. 

However, local resentment towards the occupation had never completely 

disappeared and once the marines departed, the Haitians abandoned many 

of the programs and institutions established by the Americans, including most importantly the political stability the marines had instilled. Less 

than four years after the marines’ departure, the commander of the Haitian 

constabulary attempted to overthrow the constitutional government in 

Port-au-Prince and Haiti fell back into a pattern of political and social 

upheaval that would continue for the next two decades.

Boot, Max. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American 

Power. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

McCrocklin, James H. Garde D’Haiti: Twenty Years of Organization and Training 

by the United States Marine Corps. Annapolis, MD: The United States 

Naval Institute Press, 1956.
71

Dominican Republic, 1916-1924

The primary cause for the United States intervention in the internal affairs of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924 was strategic—to protect the southern approaches to the US coast and the eastern approaches 

to the Panama Canal from foreign control. The United States also had a 

strategic interest in maintaining its economic interests in much of the Caribbean region. The 1916 occupation of the Dominican Republic was part 

of a pattern of US intervention in the affairs of several Caribbean states in 

the 15 years preceding World War I. In this specific case, US involvement 

was precipitated by a revolution that threatened to topple the local government in Santo Domingo. Left to itself, continuing political and economic 

chaos in the country could disrupt US economic interests and possibly 

invite foreign intervention.

The occupation was characterized by widespread cooperation between 

local officials and American occupation authorities in several areas of activity, but also by guerrilla warfare between indigenous forces and US marines in the eastern region of the country and politico-intellectual protest 

in both the Dominican Republic and abroad. Military occupation forces 

implemented reforms in local political, economic, and social institutions, 

engaged in projects to develop and improve the nation’s public health and 

physical infrastructure, and established a constabulary system, which after 

the marines’ departure, became the armed fist of the 30-year dictatorship 

of Rafael Trujillo.

A regiment of marines, led by Colonel Joseph H. Pendleton, arrived in 

the Dominican Republic in late June 1916. The command apparatus that 

evolved over the next several months was a Marine brigade headquarters 

commanded first by Pendleton, then Brigadier General Ben H. Fuller in 

August 1918, and finally by Brigadier General Harry Lee in August 1921. 

Subordinate to the brigade were initially two and, later, three regiments, 

each of which had responsibility for a geographical section of the country. 

Battalions and companies were stationed in towns and villages to enforce 

the occupation. From 1916 to 1922, the affairs of the Dominican Republic were managed by three US government agencies—the Departments of 

State, Navy, and War. The Department of the Navy remained the strongest 

of the three departments from early 1917 until late 1922. The military government that was formally established in late November 1916 remained in 

power through a succession of military governors until August 1922, when 

the US Department of State effectively gained control in advance of the 

selection of a new, provisional Dominican government. As the Dominican 

political structure reemerged in 1923 and 1924, US Marine units were 
72

gradually withdrawn until the last marine left the country on 18 September 

1924.

Calder, Bruce J. The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the 

U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 

1984.
73

Nicaragua 1927-1933

In 1926 Nicaragua was in the midst of an armed civil conflict among 

liberal and conservative militias controlled by various political strongmen. 

Concerned with the rising chaos and the threats it posed to US security 

and business interests in the region, Washington ordered marines into Nicaragua to separate the warring factions and, following that, to enforce 

the terms of a settlement negotiated by US diplomats. The marines compelled the disarming of all the factions save one: the forces led by liberal 

commander, Augusto César Sandino, who, beginning in 1927, launched 

an all-out effort to topple the US-supported government in Managua and 

eject the US marines from Nicaragua. At first, the fighting was strictly 

conventional, but the preponderance of American firepower forced Sandino to adopt guerrilla tactics against his adversaries. The marines and the 

Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua (a Nicaraguan military organization created by the marines) in turn devised a counterinsurgency campaign aimed 

directly at Sandino and his supporters.

Although Sandino and his Army in Defense of the National Sovereignty of Nicaragua were legitimate combatants, US policy makers declared Sandino and his men to be nothing more than bandits, opening the 

door for the use of excessive force against both Sandino’s forces and, in 

many cases, the civilian population who supported them. Marine aviation also conducted bombing runs on guerrilla strongholds and sanctuaries. Many of these actions strengthened the local support for Sandino and 

rallied a large portion of the population to his cause. Constraining the marines’ counterinsurgency campaign were political restrictions preventing 

the pursuit of guerrilla bands into Honduras and forbidding programs to 

relocate the civilian population from areas friendly to Sandino.

In 1933 the marines withdrew from Nicaragua, and Sandino declared 

an end to the hostilities. The commander of the Guardia Nacional, having 

agreed to meet with the guerrilla leader, arranged for his assassination. In 

1936 Somoza and the Guardia toppled the elected government and established a military dictatorship led by Somoza and supported by the United 

States. Somoza and his two sons would rule Nicaragua until 1979. 

Macaulay, Neill. The Sandino Affair. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985.
74

Germany, 1945-1949

The occupation of Germany after World War II is perhaps the paradigm 

of a successful postcombat operation in modern American history. After four 

years of bitter fighting and some initial friction between American combat 

units and the defeated German population, the US Army shifted from its 

combat missions and literally reorganized and retrained its forces for their 

new peacetime role. The US Constabulary in Europe effectively bridged the 

gap between the victorious Allies and the defeated populace by providing 

aggressive law enforcement, border control, and assistance to the Germans 

in rebuilding their country’s infrastructure. The presence of American soldiers also served as a symbol of the United States’ resolve to reconstruct a 

devastated Germany and help shape it into a trusted friend and ally.

Initially, tactical units deployed across the region to maintain order and 

security while the Germans began the arduous process of rebuilding their 

country. The challenges were daunting in the face of the massive destruction 

caused by the war and the flood of refugees into the Zone of Occupation. 

Redeployment of US forces earmarked for the Pacific theater and the demobilization of units returning to the United States compounded the challenges faced by American forces remaining in Germany. However, to assist 

the downsized American forces, the US Constabulary was formed in the 

summer of 1946 to serve as the dedicated occupation and law enforcement 

element. With specialized training and distinctive uniforms, these soldiers 

assisted the rebuilding of the German law enforcement agencies, countered 

the black market, and controlled the international and inter-zonal borders.

The post-World War II occupation of Germany, spanning almost 11 

years, was a massive and diverse undertaking involving Britain, France, and 

the Soviet Union and, to varying degrees, a multitude of US government 

departments and agencies. Moreover, the occupation was a major event in 

German history and in the history of the postwar world.

Fredericksen, Oliver J. The American Occupation of Germany, 1945 – 1953. 

Darmstadt, GE: Stars and Stripes Printing, 1953.

Gott, Kendall D. Mobility, Vigilance, and Justice: The US Army Constabulary in 

Germany, 1946-1953. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2005.

Libby, Brian A. Policing Germany: The United States Constabulary, 1946-1952. 

Ph.D. thesis, Purdue University, 1977.

Ziemke, Earl F. The US Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944-1946. Washington, DC: US Army Center for Military History, 1989.

Zink, Harold, The United States in Germany 1944-1955. New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1957.
75

Austria, 1945-1955

The United States reluctantly joined the Allied occupation of Austria 

from 1945 to 1955, responsible for one of four zones of occupation and a 

section of Vienna. There existed an immediate need to establish Austria’s 

legal status after the war, though many argued that the country had willingly accepted German annexation in 1938. In accordance with the Moscow Declaration of 1943, Austria was extended a better status than Germany, contingent upon active assistance to the occupiers.

Planning for the occupation of Austria began in earnest as the war drew 

to a close. However, the planners at the Departments of State and War had 

major differences of opinion over questions of command responsibility 

and participation in the postwar occupation. The War Department actually 

opposed the occupation of Austria on the grounds that it was unnecessary, 

but the State Department persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to 

join the British and the Soviet Union in stationing troops in the country. 

Arguments also arose between the British representatives of the European 

Advisory Commission and the combined British and American Chiefs of 

Staff, as well as the senior military commanders who were more focused 

on winning the war before addressing occupation duties. 

The occupation of Austria in 1945 presented a host of challenges. Territorial demands were made by the Soviets to extend their zone of responsibility, and Yugoslavian troops left the region of Carinthia only under 

threat of force. These difficulties were largely resolved by July 1945, but 

remaining challenges, including denazification, placement of thousands of 

refugees, and economic reform, would take months or years to implement. 

Unfortunately, the growing friction caused by the developing Cold War 

impeded progress.

As Austria continued to cooperate with the occupiers and adopted a 

neutrality policy, it was allowed great freedom and flexibility. Elections 

were held in late 1945, and in 1946 the Allied powers gave up their unilateral veto power of Austrian legislation. Instead, the need for a unanimous 

vote by the four major powers was required. The Soviet Union resisted 

many of these measures, attempting to block Austria’s participation in the 

Marshall Plan and its membership in the Organization for European Economic Cooperation.

The Soviet Union was finally willing to settle Austria’s status permanently in 1955. After months of negotiation, the final treaty was signed on 

15 May, forbidding unification with Germany and the return of the Hapsburg monarchy; it also provided safeguards for ethnic minorities. By the 
76

end of 1955 all Allied troops had been withdrawn from Austria.

Carafano, James J. Waltzing Into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002.

Snyder, James M. The Establishment and Operations of the United States Constabulary. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (GPO), 1947.

Whitnah, Donald R. and Edgar L. Erickson. The American Occupation of Austria: 

Planning and Early Years. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.
77

Japan, 1945-1951

Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the US military occupied 

that country in conjunction with the terms identified in the Potsdam Agreement. By those terms, the two primary goals of the occupation of Japan 

were the complete demilitarization of the Japanese military complex and 

the democratization of Japanese society. US Army General Douglas MacArthur was appointed as the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP) 

and was responsible for administering the Japanese occupation.

General MacArthur’s plan for the occupation of Japan was known as 

Operation BLACKLIST and had been in development by his staff since 

May 1945. This plan was itself grounded in research and planning documents developed primarily in the US Department of State as early as 1941. 

The two phases of the occupation included a brief initial phase (which 

lasted approximately 60 days) of disarmament and demobilization, followed by a longer phase devoted to political and economic reform that 

lasted several years. A key factor in the success of both phases was the 

early decision to work through Japanese government and administrative 

organizations, rather than to dismantle and replace them.

Pursuant to this decision, the following divisions were established to 

oversee existing Japanese government bureaus: government, economy and 

science, natural resources, public health and welfare, civil intelligence, 

legal, civil information and education, civil property custodian, and diplomacy. These divisions were staffed by US civil servants and former 

military officers, approximately 3,500 of them at the peak in 1948.

Guided by MacArthur’s policies, the new Japanese government instituted many far-reaching changes in Japanese politics, society, and culture. 

Economic reforms imposed on the Japanese government included democratization of economic opportunity, land reform, and expansion of the 

scope and quality of workers’ rights. So successful was the Allied forces’ 

occupation policy in Japan that the Japanese Diet approved a new constitution for the nation in 1947. The US occupation of Japan formally ended 

on 28 April 1952 after Japan and representatives of the 46 Allied nations 

signed a peace treaty in San Francisco on 8 September 1951.

Cavaleri, David P. Easier Said Than Done: Making the Transition Between Combat Operations and Stability Operations. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2005.
78

South Korea, 1945-1950

When World War II ended in the Pacific theater in 1945, American 

soldiers were thrust into the roles of occupiers and peace keepers. The 

focus of postwar recovery operations in the Pacific region was Japan, but 

the Army also sent the XXIV Corps to the Korean peninsula to deal with 

the surrender of Japanese forces that had occupied the country since 1905. 

A US-Soviet agreement split the Korean peninsula into two occupation 

zones along the 38th parallel, and American forces were established south 

of that line.

Initially, the US force in Korea concentrated on taking the surrender of 

Japanese units and repatriating those units to Japan while establishing law 

and order in southern Korea. However, in 1946 when tensions developed 

between the Soviet and American authorities over plans for the Korean 

peninsula, the United States formed a military government that attempted 

to create a stable environment in which the two occupation zones could be 

politically united. During the two years that the United States controlled 

the southern zone, many American officers within the military government 

became heavily involved in negotiations, preparing the Koreans for eventual independence. However, a large number of soldiers supervised other 

stability operations designed to reinvigorate the rural economy, reestablish 

the judicial system, and rebuild the education system. 

Unfortunately, as critical as these programs were to the establishment 

of stability on the Korean peninsula, they became less important in the 

larger struggle to secure the future of South Korea. A small number of 

American advisers became involved in the training and equipping of the 

Korean constabulary as early as 1946. In 1947 American leaders in Korea began expanding this effort. This change was a direct result of increased concerns about communist threats of invasion from the north and 

the very real communist-led insurrections erupting in the southern regions 

in 1948.

In the two years before the Korean War, the primary mission of the 

US Army in South Korea was to help transform the Korean constabulary 

into a force that could defend the south from both communist guerillas 

and a North Korean army that continued to make threats. On the eve of 

war, the new Republic of Korea (ROK) army consisted of 95,000 soldiers 

organized into eight divisions and equipped with American weapons and 

vehicles. In the war that began in 1950, American advisers served with the 

new army they had helped create in an attempt to defeat the invading communist forces and safeguard the emerging democracy in South Korea.
79

Millett, Allan R. The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning. Lawrence, 

KS: Kansas University Press, 2005.

Sawyer, Robert K. Military Advisors in Korea: KMAG in Peace and War. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1962.
80

Lebanon, 1958

In May 1958 Lebanese President Camille Chamoun sent an urgent 

cable to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower requesting military aid to 

quell civil unrest in Lebanon. Chamoun claimed communist supported Syrian weapons and men were crossing his borders and leading his 

political opponents in an armed insurrection against his pro-American 

government. Chamoun was seeking US assistance because he believed 

his army would mutiny and disintegrate if ordered into action against 

Muslim rebels. 

The 1958 revolt was instigated, in part, by Lebanese Muslims and 

Druze, who were inspired by the February 1958 unification of Egypt 

and Syria and were receptive to the Pan-Arab Nationalism espoused by 

Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. Also at issue, and drawing in 

other opposition groups, were charges of political corruption against the 

government and an attempt by Chamoun to retain the presidency for a 

second term, a violation of the Lebanese political system. 

The Eisenhower administration was wary of committing US troops 

to Lebanon, but following the overthrow of a pro-American government 

in Iraq and the murder of the Iraqi royal family by nationalist elements 

within the military, Eisenhower ordered some 5,000 marines ashore 

south of Beirut. US Army units out of Europe would follow in a matter 

of days. The role of the US forces, in a situation described by the Department of Defense as “like war but not war,” was to support the legal 

Lebanese government against any foreign invasion, specifically Syria. 

Once it became clear that Syrian forces were not going to intervene in 

Lebanon, the American troops engaged in a show of force around Beirut 

that helped stabilize the situation and allowed US negotiators to arrange 

a political settlement that ended the conflict. By the end of October, all 

American forces had left the country.

Making the US withdrawal possible was the agreement by most 

Lebanese opposition groups to elect a new president, General Fuad Chehab, who enjoyed widespread respect throughout the country. During 

the 1960s and early 1970s, the 1958 accords held, and Lebanon enjoyed 

a period of relative calm that would not be broken until the outbreak of 

civil war in the mid-1970s. 

Kornbani, Agnes G. U.S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 and 1982: Presidential 

Decision Making. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991.

Shulimson, Jack. Marines in Lebanon 1958. Washington, DC: US Department of 

the Navy, 1966.
81

Spiller, Roger J. “Not War, but Like War,” The American Intervention in Lebanon. 

Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1981.

Wilson David N. The Eisenhower Doctrine and its Implementation in Lebanon1958. Master’s thesis, Texas University, 2002.
82

Vietnam, 1955-1973

While the overall mission of the US military forces in southern Vietnam was to support the Republic of Vietnam’s government and armed 

forces in their military struggle against both internal insurgents and invaders from the north, there existed also an important parallel mission. This 

second war, the pacification program, had a single overarching purpose: to 

develop loyalty and support for the local and national government among 

the people of South Vietnam.

Early nonmilitary assistance to the Republic of Vietnam was provided 

by the International Cooperation Administration and the Development 

Loan Fund—the same entities created to implement the Marshall Plan in 

Europe. As early as June 1955, resources from these two organizations 

were directed toward land reform programs and training for South Vietnamese police forces and intelligence services in counterinsurgency tactics.

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy created the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent federal agency that received 

its policy guidance from the State Department. Between 1962 and 1975, 

thousands of USAID workers were embedded throughout South Vietnam, 

helping to establish schools and medical treatment facilities, build transportation and utilities infrastructure, and administer many other forms of 

nonmilitary assistance to the Vietnamese people. Unfortunately, management of these largely civilian-run programs was not well coordinated in 

Saigon with senior embassy and military command officials. As part of the 

pacification/counterinsurgency plan, Kennedy also increased the number 

of US military advisers working with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam 

(ARVN) and local defense forces.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson met with the heads of the South 

Vietnamese government in Honolulu in February 1966, pacification was 

stated as one of three components of the Johnson administration’s strategy, 

the other two being military pressure and negotiations. Upon his return to 

Washington, Johnson appointed Robert W. Komer as a special assistant for 

pacification in Vietnam. Komer worked tirelessly in Washington for the 

remainder of 1966 to subordinate all pacification organizations and activities to General William C. Westmoreland’s Military Assistance Command 

Vietnam (MACV). In the face of determined opposition from Secretary of 

State Dean Rusk and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Johnson set a 90-

day deadline for a civilian solution to the organizational problem.

The solution, the Office of Civil Operations, was created in Novem-
83

ber 1966. It combined the personnel and activities of USAID and several 

other civilian organizations. It employed about a thousand American civilians and directed a program budget of $128 million and four billion 

South Vietnamese piastres. Meanwhile, Westmoreland created within his 

MACV headquarters a Revolutionary Development Support Directorate 

and named a general officer as its director. The Office of Civil Operations 

was short-lived—it was succeeded in early May 1967 by the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) program. The first director of CORDS was Komer, who enjoyed direct access to Westmoreland, 

through his status as a MACV deputy, and to US Ambassador Ellsworth 

Bunker, through his appointment at ambassadorial rank.

The CORDS program was implemented through a command and control structure that paralleled or was intertwined with the military command structure down to the province senior adviser level. In addition to all 

pacification activities, CORDS was also responsible for providing advice 

and support to the South Vietnamese militia, conducting the war against 

the enemy’s clandestine politico-military command and administrative infrastructure (the PHOENIX program), and coordinating with the South 

Vietnamese government for recovery after the 1968 Tet offensive. When 

Komer accepted the offer from Johnson to become US ambassador to Turkey in October 1968, he was succeeded as director of CORDS by William 

Colby. Colby and the new MACV commander, General Creighton Abrams, 

both strongly believed in the CORDS mission and worked cooperatively 

toward its accomplishment until the final withdrawal of American troops 

from Vietnam in early 1973. The feeling of many who participated in the 

program was that it had been highly effective, but came too late to alter 

the war’s outcome.

Clarke, Jeffrey J. Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965-1973. Washington, 

DC: Center of Military History, 1988.

Colby, William and James McCargar. Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam. Chicago: Contemporary 

Books, 1989. 

Hunt, Richard A. Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and 

Minds. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.

Leepson, Marc. “The Heart and Mind of USAID’s Vietnam Mission,” document 

on line [Internet], available at www.afsa.org/fsj/apr00/leepson.cfm, accessed on 8 November 2005.

Scoville, Thomas W. Reorganizing for Pacification Support. Washington, DC: 

Center of Military History, 1991.
84

Dominican Republic, 1965-1966

After Fidel Castro led Cuba into the sphere of communist nations in 

1959, the United States interest in the affairs of Caribbean nations increased 

significantly. Specific interest in the affairs of the Dominican Republic was 

amplified when that country experienced a revolt that overthrew a proAmerican government in late April 1965. The revolt, which Washington 

believed was being controlled by key communists, was opposed militarily 

by many Dominican officers. When those “loyalist” forces were repulsed 

by the rebels, however, President Lyndon B. Johnson, stating the need to 

protect American lives and property in the Dominican Republic, ordered 

marines and the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to Santo Domingo to 

stabilize the situation. The principal mission of the intervening force was 

to keep the country from falling to the communists. 

Within a week after the initial alert, Lieutenant General Bruce Palmer, 

the US force commander in the Dominican Republic, had two battalions of 

the 82nd on the ground east of the capital and a 500-man Marine force on 

the western edge of the city. This force was soon reinforced by four more 

battalions of paratroopers. Palmer quickly moved three airborne battalions 

through the city to link up with the marines and establish a buffer zone between the two main warring factions. By the end of the first week of May, 

the entire 82nd Airborne Division was in the country. 

The combined Army-Marine force soon numbered about 20,000 

troops. Palmer directed subordinate commanders to begin stability operations and soon the troops were conducting constabulary operations and 

distributing food, water, and medical supplies to the members of both factions. After mid-May, the buffer zone and the actions of the American 

military forces made it almost impossible for a renewal of general fighting, 

although sniper fire, including much directed into the American sector, 

was an almost daily occurrence. 

The Organization of American States (OAS) was not happy with this 

latest evidence of American involvement in the internal affairs of a Latin 

American nation. Nevertheless, under US pressure, the OAS organized a 

coalition force, the Inter-American Peace Force (IAPF), from six countries 

(Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay) to 

deploy to the Dominican Republic and help the US forces there maintain 

law and order. To underscore the multinational effort, a Brazilian lieutenant general was soon appointed to command the IAPF, with Palmer as his 

deputy and the commander of the US military element within the coalition. 

By September 1965 a provisional government had been established 

which prepared for elections to reestablish a legitimate government. By 

the end of 1965, only three battalions of the 82nd were still in the country. 

In June 1966 the national elections took place; by the end of September, 
85

all US and other IAPF troops had been withdrawn from the Dominican 

Republic. 

The Johnson administration was roundly criticized in Latin America 

and at home for its intervention in the Dominican Republic. Still, from 

both a military and a political standpoint, the intervention undoubtedly 

saved lives, restored law and order, and enabled the people to eventually 

install a democratically elected government.

Dominican Action, 1965: Intervention or Cooperation? (Special Report Series, 

2.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center for Strategic Studies, 1966. 

Greenberg, Lawrence M. United States Army Unilateral and Coalition Operations in the 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention. Washington, DC: 

US Army Center of Military History, 1987.

Palmer, Bruce. Intervention in the Caribbean: the Dominican Crisis of 1965. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1989. 

Schoonmaker, Herbert G. Military Crisis Management: U.S. intervention in the 

Dominican Republic, 1965. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. 

Yates, Lawrence A. Power pack: US Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 

1965-1966. (Leavenworth Paper, no. 15)Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat 

Studies Institute Press, 1988. 
86

Latin America, 1960-1989

As the Cold War began to take shape after World War II, the US government began to reassess its foreign policy in terms of the new struggle 

against the Soviet Union and its Marxist allies. While American policymakers had been very interested in Latin America since the early 19th 

century, the US interest in and concern about its southern neighbors grew 

more acute in the 1960s as it became evident, after Castro’s success in 

Cuba, that the political, social and economic fragility of many Latin America states left them vulnerable to communist revolution.

To address this vulnerability, the US government followed an interagency approach to support stable regimes in many of the region’s countries. American policymakers hoped that these governments would fend 

off Marxist guerillas while moving their societies toward democracy and 

economic prosperity. The US Army’s role in this policy was twofold. First, 

the Army attempted to help the regimes of this region establish effective 

military institutions. American military advisory groups worked to train 

and equip the armed forces of these states. In the late 1960s, for example, 

there were hundreds of SF soldiers in Guatemala involved in the training of the Guatemalan army. The American advisory effort in this region 

remained important into the 1980s as US Army advisers in El Salvador 

and Honduras became involved in preparing indigenous forces to fight 

domestic insurgencies. Supplementing this training was the more formal 

military education courses for Latin American officers offered at the US 

Army School of the Americas, originally located at an American base in 

Panama and then moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.

The Army’s second role, civic action, complemented its advisory programs. Beginning in the 1960s, American soldiers worked in several Latin 

American states to build stability by improving the economic and social 

infrastructure. By the 1980s, the Army was conducting large-scale civic 

action operations, many of which involved Army Reserve and National 

Guard units deployed to Panama and other Latin American countries to 

build roads, schools, and other facilities. 

Honduras became the site of the Army’s most ambitious civic action 

program. Between 1983 and 1989, American soldiers were involved in 

training Honduran health care workers, immunizing large segments of 

the rural population and even providing veterinary services to Honduran 

farmers. They also made large-scale improvements to the infrastructure, 

building schools, airfields, roads and wells. The success of this program 

and as well as that of the advisory mission in El Salvador illustrated the 
87

US Army’s ability to foster stability and assist in reconstruction efforts in 

very volatile environments. 

Childress, Michael. The Effectiveness of U.S. Training Efforts in Internal Defense 

and Development. Santa Monica: RAND, 1995.

Lafeber, Walter. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. 

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984.
88

Beirut, 1982-1984

In early June 1982 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon to 

stop cross-border attacks against the Jewish state by elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in southern Lebanon. At the time of 

the invasion, the various Lebanese politico-religious factions were in the 

midst of a full-scale civil war, which had precipitated Syrian military intervention in 1976. Once the IDF cut through Syrian and PLO forces in the 

south, Israeli units moved north attacking remaining elements of the PLO, 

including its top leadership, in Beirut. This attack became an international 

public relations disaster for Israel, forcing Israeli political leaders to agree 

to the evacuation of the PLO out of the country. In August a multinational 

force, which included US marines, entered Beirut to assist in the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon. 

In mid-September the new president of Lebanon, a Christian Phalangist who promised national reconciliation, was assassinated. In retaliation, 

his followers massacred Palestinians in two refugee camps in suburbs of 

Beirut. To prevent a renewal of the civil war, virtually all parties involved 

called for a new multinational force (MNF), including US marines, to 

enter Lebanon and help stabilize the situation around Beirut until a new 

national government could begin effective operations. The marines were 

ordered into a permissive environment where their mission was to provide 

a “presence” that would contribute to the process of stabilization. They 

would also help train and reorganize the Lebanese armed forces (LAF). 

For several months the operations of the MNF proceeded with minimal 

disruption. But in the first half of 1983, several factions in Lebanon, including newly arrived militant groups from revolutionary Iran, engaged in 

armed conflict. Gradually, the marines were drawn into the fighting.

On 18 April the US embassy was attacked by a suicide bomber driving a delivery van packed with about 400 pounds of explosives. The blast 

collapsed the front section of the embassy and killed 63 people. It was the 

deadliest attack on a US diplomatic mission up to that time, and is seen by 

some as marking the beginning of anti-US attacks by Islamic groups. 

By late July Marine positions at Beirut International Airport were 

coming under sporadic but persistent fire. In September after the Israelis 

withdrew their forces from the area around Beirut, the LAF tried to fill 

the consequent military vacuum. In the fighting that resulted between the 

Lebanese government forces and their opponents, the marines’ impartiality in the crisis was called into question, and attacks against them intensified. The culmination of this fighting came on 23 October when a yellow 
89

delivery truck loaded with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT destroyed the Marine headquarters building. The death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 marines, 18 Navy personnel, and 3 Army soldiers. 

Sixty Americans were injured. An identical attack occurred on the French 

paratrooper barracks nearby.

The bombing of the Marine headquarters led to a policy debate in 

Washington, the outcome of which was a decision to withdraw the marines, but only over a period of several months. The situation in Lebanon 

remained chaotic for the remainder of the decade.

Gawrych, George W. “The Siege of Beirut”, Block by Block: The Challenges 

of Urban Operations. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2003.

Rabinovich, Itamar. The War for Lebanon, 1970-1985. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Revised edition, 1985.

Salibi, Kamal. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.
90

Grenada, 1983

In March 1979 the Marxist New Jewel Movement (NJM) came to 

power via a coup d’etat in Grenada, a small Caribbean island nation about 

190 kilometers due north of Venezuela. Due to the severe economic problems in Grenada, the leader of the NJM, Maurice Bishop, turned to Fidel 

Castro for assistance. Soon, numerous East European and Cuban “tourists” were arriving in large numbers. 

Bishop’s cozy relationship with the Castro regime, coupled with his 

refusal to organize democratic elections, soon caused political friction 

between the United States and Grenada. Complicating the problem was 

the expansion of the Port Salines airport by Cuban engineers that would 

enable it to handle large, heavy aircraft, ostensibly to support increased 

“tourist” traffic. The construction, however, led American intelligence officials to believe that Castro intended to use it to support Cuban military 

activities in Central and South America and in Africa. 

Besides US hostility, Bishop also faced opposition from more radical 

elements within the NJM. On 13 October 1983 he was arrested, and a new 

government under General Austin Hudson was formed. Pro-Bishop elements of the population demonstrated against his arrest, and Bishop was 

freed only to be recaptured and executed, along with former members of 

his cabinet. Many among the demonstrators were also shot by government 

forces. Washington had been monitoring these events and, with Bishop’s 

execution, concluded that American medical students on the island were 

in danger. As a result, President Ronald Reagan ordered the Department 

of Defense to intervene militarily, not just to protect the students, but to 

overthrow the existing regime and restore democracy. On 23 October 1983 

Operation URGENT FURY was executed.

At about 0500 on 25 October, the invasion began, with US SOF and 

US marines assaulting key airfield and government targets. Over the next 

several days, Army, Marine, and Navy forces swept over the island ferreting out pockets of resistance. By the following day, the most of the 

US students had been rescued and evacuated from the island. Two days 

later, all resistance ceased. The marines began pulling out on 2 November, 

soon followed by the Rangers, and then the troops of the 82nd Airborne 

Division. The primary mission of protecting the students from harm was 

accomplished, as was the secondary mission of ridding Grenada of Cuban 

and Soviet influences. 

A great deal of foreign aid poured into Grenada after the intervention, 

but the US military’s role in the postconflict stability operations was lim-
91

ited. After the departure of US troops, Grenadians experienced relatively 

little social upheaval, and while the vast majority of Grenadians were supportive of the US intervention, in the long run, they became more dependent on US aid rather than productive citizens of a truly self-reliant nation 

that could fend for itself economically.

Adkin, Mark. Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada. Lexington, MA: Lexington 

Books, 1989. 

Beck, Robert J. The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decision making. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. 

Cole, Ronald H. Operation Urgent Fury: The Planning and Execution of Joint 

Operations in Grenada, 12 October-2 November 1983. Washington, DC: 

Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

1997. 

Dunn, Peter M. and Bruce W. Watson, eds. American Intervention in Grenada: 

The Implications of Operation “Urgent Fury”. Boulder, CO: Westview 

Press, 1985.

O’Shaughnessy, Hugh. Grenada: An Eyewitness Account of the U.S. Invasion and 

the Caribbean History That Provoked It. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984. 
92

Panama, 1989-1990

On 4 February 1988 US federal district courts in Florida issued indictments against General Manuel Antonio Noriega, commander of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF), for drug trafficking. For years Noriega had 

been a reliable, if somewhat notorious, friend of various US government 

agencies. After his indictment by the court, Noriega evolved into a bitter 

enemy of the United States, and relations with Panama rapidly deteriorated. 

Just after the issuance of the indictments, Noriega forced the legitimate president of Panama, Eric Delvalle, out of office and installed the 

Panamanian education minister in his place. Following ensued a period 

of tension between the PDF and US armed forces personnel in Panama. 

In April 1989 US marines guarding a fuel depot engaged in a fierce firefight with armed intruders, presumed to be PDF. Military personnel and 

their families were frequently harassed when they traveled off post. As 

problems grew with Noriega, General Frederick F. Woerner, commander 

of SOUTHCOM, had gradually increased the strength of US forces in 

Panama and developed plans for military action in the event the White 

House, first under President Ronald Reagan, then his successor, George H. 

W. Bush, decided to take military action. 

On 7 May 1989 Guillermo Endara, a critic of Noriega, was elected as 

the new president of Panama, only to have the PDF commander overturn 

the results of the election three days later.

In response Bush to ordered 2,000 additional US military personnel to 

Panama and recalled the US ambassador. Eight months later in December 

1989, after the PDF killed a marine lieutenant and assaulted a Navy officer 

and his wife, the president ordered General Maxwell Thurman, new commander of SOUTHCOM, to destroy the PDF and capture Noriega. 

On 20 December a joint US force of special operations and conventional units attacked over two dozen targets in Panama. Noriega fled, hid 

out for several days, and then showed up in the Vatican’s Nunciature, or 

embassy. After several days of negotiations, at one point accompanied 

by loud rock music to mask conversations at the gate from news media, 

Noriega gave himself up to US authorities. He was subsequently tried, 

convicted, and sentenced to jail in the United States. By 3 January 1990 

all resistance by the PDF had ceased.

Much of the stability and reconstruction operations during and after 

Operation JUST CAUSE were part of Operation PROMOTE LIBERTY. 

This plan concentrated on public safety, health issues, and population 
93

control measures, as well as helping the newly appointed government of 

Panama function efficiently. An important part of the effort was to train 

the Panamanian police and paramilitary forces that replaced the PDF. The 

primary organization responsible for executing this plan was the MSG, 

backed by US forces already stationed in Panama. In January 1991 the 

group was deactivated, its mission accomplished. 

Flanagan, E. M. Battle for Panama: Inside Operation Just Cause. Washington, 

DC: Brassey’s (US), Inc., 1993.

Guevara Mann, Carlos. Panamanian Militarism: A Historical Interpretation. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1996.

Hogan, J. Michael. The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy 

and the Evolution of Policy. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University 

Press, 1986.

Watson, Bruce W., and Peter G. Tsouras eds. Operation Just Cause: The U.S. 

Intervention in Panama. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.
94

Kuwait and Iraq, post-Operation DESERT STORM

Following Operation DESERT STORM in 1991, Kuwait maintained 

close military cooperation with Western countries. In October 1994 the 

United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries came to Kuwait’s 

assistance after Iraq moved 70,000 troops and heavy armor close to the 

Kuwaiti border. In November 1994 Iraq officially recognized Kuwait’s 

sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence, as well as 

its borders as defined by the United Nations. 

In the fall and winter of 1997 Saddam Hussein engaged in a series 

of aggressive acts which threatened regional stability. He violated nofly zones, threatened to shoot down U2 reconnaissance overflights, and 

interfered with UN weapons inspection teams. In response the United 

States executed Operations DESERT THUNDER I and II to provide 

military presence and capability during negotiations between the UN 

and Iraq over weapons of mass destruction. The United States and its allies provided more than 35,000 land, sea, and air strike forces, marking 

the largest multinational force assembled in Southwest Asia since the 

conclusion of the Gulf War. In addition to the US and coalition forces 

already in Kuwait, a brigade task force from 3d Infantry Division rapidly 

deployed to Kuwait. Additional equipment for two more brigades was 

poised in the Persian Gulf for landing with the maritime pre-position 

force. The volatile situation was temporarily defused when Iraq agreed 

to allow uninterrupted resumption of UN weapons inspections. 

Despite Hussein’s initial agreement to allow UN weapons inspections, Iraq’s intransigence and noncompliance with UN Security Council resolutions continued, resulting in the initiation of Operation DESERT FOX in December 1998. On 16 December coalition military forces 

launched cruise missile attacks against military targets in Iraq. The fourday campaign of airstrikes was designed to deliver a serious blow to 

Iraq’s capability to manufacture, store, maintain and deliver weapons of 

mass destruction and to Hussein’s ability to threaten or otherwise intimidate his neighbors. The airstrikes achieved their objective and Iraq again 

promised to provide the UN inspection teams with unfettered access to 

factories and laboratories. 

During the 2002-03 build up to and execution of OIF, Kuwait was a 

vital coalition partner, allowing the staging of coalition troops and equipment and donating upward of $350 million in assistance, primarily fuel, 

to the effort. Throughout OIF, Kuwait has been consistently involved in 

reconstruction efforts in Iraq, pledging $1.5 billion at the October 2003. 
95

Cordesman, Anthony H. After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the 

Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Freedman, Robert O. ed. The Middle East after Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993.

Houlahan, Thomas G. Gulf War: the Complete History. New London, CT: 

Schrenker Military Publishing, 1999.

Korman, Susan. Kuwait. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
96

Somalia, 1992-1994

In December 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered US forces 

to lead a multinational coalition to enter the war-torn country of Somalia. 

The mission was to provide security for humanitarian relief organizations 

attempting to provide food to the Somali people and to prepare the way 

for the UN to assume responsibility for the more complex task of nation 

building. The result was Operation RESTORE HOPE, commanded by US 

Marine Lieutenant General Robert Johnston. Under Johnston’s command 

were elements of the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 10th Mountain 

Division, as well as military units from other contributing countries. Confined to the southern third of Somalia, where the country’s factional fighting was most intense, the United Task Force (UNITAF) had the firepower 

to keep the warlords under control while coordinating with aid agencies to 

distribute food and other supplies to the population at large. Also, as part 

of the operation, UNITAF forces helped rebuild the Somali police force, 

politically empower traditional leaders at the local and regional levels, and 

engage in a number of civic action programs—all of which critics in the 

Pentagon labeled as “mission creep.” Johnston and his staff, backed by 

Ambassador Robert Oakley in Somalia, defended each of these initiatives 

as essential to accomplishing the original mission. On 4 May 1993 Operation RESTORE HOPE formally ended, having successfully achieved its 

objectives.

UNITAF was succeeded by UN Operations in Somalia II (UNOSOM 

II). As promised by Bush and honored by Clinton, the United States provided logistical support and a quick reaction force composed of 10th 

Mountain Division troops to the undertaking. In its efforts to arrange a 

permanent solution to the Somali conflict, UNOSOM II lacked the military power to engage in effective nation-building activities. This fact was 

not lost on Somalia’s warlords, particularly Mohamed Farah Aideed whose 

supporters killed and mutilated 24 Pakistani soldiers in early June. From 

that point on, the principal focus of UNOSOM II was trying to apprehend 

Aideed and his supporters. Numerous firefights rocked the streets of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and Clinton approved deploying US SOF to 

help track down the warlord. On 3 October 1993 in an operation to capture 

Aideed, two American helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu and an 

all-night firefight ensued between US forces and Aideed’s militia and followers. When dawn broke the next morning, the American force counted 

18 dead and dozens wounded. Somali casualties ran well over 1,000, with 

between 300 and 500 killed. 

Despite the disproportionate casualty ratio, the firefight ignited a po-
97

litical debate in the United States over whether American forces should 

be involved in Somalia or not. After a meeting with his national security 

advisers, Clinton decided to withdraw all US troops by the end of March 

1994. However prior to the redeployment date, he reinforced those troops 

with JTF-Somalia that included armor, artillery, and combat aviation assets. The US withdrawal took place as planned, and the following year, the 

UN quit the country as well. Not surprisingly, Somalia remained engulfed 

by political and military turmoil.

Baumann, Robert F., and Lawrence A. Yates, with Versalle F. Washington. “My 

Clan Against the World”: US and Coalition Forces in Somalia, 1992-

1994. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003.

Hirsch, John L., and Robert B. Oakley. Somalia and Operation Restore Hope. 

Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1995.

United States Forces, Somalia, After Action Report [also known as the Montgomery Report]. Reprint, Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 2003.
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Haiti, 1994-1995

The UN Security Counsel issued Resolution 940 on 31 July 1994 in 

response to the continued repression of the people of Haiti. A three-man 

ruling junta had forced out democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand 

Aristide in a coup in 1991 and had increasingly oppressed the people of 

Haiti to maintain its hold on power. The UN resolution essentially authorized any means necessary to remove the junta and restore a constitutionally elected administration to govern that Caribbean nation.

The United States soon formed a multinational force (MNF) to carry 

out the UN’s mandate by means of a military intervention. As US armed 

forces prepared to invade Haiti, on 17 September Clinton sent former 

President Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and retired US Army General Colin Powell to convince General Raoul Cédras and the other two 

members of the junta to step down and allow the return of constitutional 

rule. Late the following day, knowing that elements of the 82nd Airborne 

Division were in the air en route to Haiti, Cédras and the others agreed to 

relinquish power and allow the MNF to peacefully enter the country. 

The deploying units of the 82nd were recalled in mid-air, and on 19 

September 1994 the first contingents of the US 10th Mountain Division 

arrived via Blackhawk helicopters at Port-au-Prince. Eventually almost 

21,000 multinational troops deployed to Haiti to supervise the transition 

of power from military rule to a constitutional government. By 15 October 

the junta members had departed and Aristide was restored to his position 

as president.

Over the next 18 months, the MNF and CTF 180 and JTF 190 embarked on a series of efforts to restore law and order and return a sense of 

normalcy to Haiti. Key actions included patrolling the streets of the capital 

and other large cities, professionalizing the Haitian police and army, providing humanitarian assistance, and disarming and neutralizing paramilitary forces. On 31 March 1995 the United States handed over control of 

the MNF to the UN.

The US and MNF efforts in Haiti in 1994 and 1995 were successful in 

temporarily creating a secure environment and, with a great deal of foreign 

aid dollars, a partially restored infrastructure. However, the outside effort 

did not train and educate the Haitian people to maintain the nation’s stability and infrastructure, nor has Haiti’s elected leaders made much progress 

in that direction. One could argue that Haiti is better off today than it was 

under the junta, but in reality, that is not saying much given the continued 

economic depression that still grips that country. In 2004 another multi-
99

national coalition, including US Marines, entered Haiti to restore order in 

the midst of civil disturbances. In early 2006, however, the country again 

held presidential elections.

Ballard, John R. Upholding Democracy: The United States Military Campaign in 

Haiti, 1994-1997. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. 

Fishel, John T. Civil Military Operations in the New World. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. 

Kretchik, Walter E., et al. Invasion, Intervention, “Intervasion”: A Concise History of the U.S. Army in Operation Uphold Democracy. Fort Leavenworth, 

KS: Command and General Staff College Press, 1997.
100

The Balkans 1995-Present

NATO imposed a cease-fire in 1995 ending a destructive four-year war 

in the Balkans. With the signing of the General Framework Agreement for 

Peace on 14 December of that year, the United States deployed US Army 

forces to Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR.

Within 65 days of notification, the US Army Europe (USAREUR) 

moved more than 25,000 troops, 11,000 vehicles, and the equipment and 

supplies to sustain them more than 1,000 kilometers across former Warsaw Pact countries and into the operational sector. This was completed in 

spite of the flooding of the Sava River, a French rail strike, an anti-nuclear 

protester who shut down the German rail system for two days, and the 

cold of a harsh Balkan winter. To move this force, USAREUR employed 

358 trains with 6,800 rail cars, 500 buses, and 1,600 trucks, while US Air 

Force strategic airlift conducted 1,300 sorties. In the United States, nearly 

1,200 soldiers from the US Army Reserve were mobilized and deployed 

in support of the operation. Most of these reservists were deployed to Bosnia or Germany to provide support to forward-deployed European-based 

units.

The 1st Armored Division formed the backbone of the US Army forces under the designation Task Force (TF) Eagle. This task force was supported and augmented by elements from the US V Corps and was joined 

by Nordic-Polish, Turkish, and Russian brigades. In all, 12 nations provided troops: Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Russia, Turkey and the United States. TF Eagle 

was charged with enforcing the cease-fire, supervising the marking of 

boundaries and the zone of separation between the former warring factions, enforcing the withdrawal of the combatants to their barracks, and 

moving heavy weapons to designated storage sites. In addition to land 

mine removal, TF Eagle also supported the Organization for Security and 

Cooperation in Europe’s efforts to administer the country’s first ever democratic national elections.

On 10 November 1996 the 1st Armored Division was replaced by the 

1st Infantry Division, but the mission of TF Eagle continued. When demonstrations in the villages of Celic and Gajevi erupted, the soldiers of the 

1st Infantry Division skillfully intervened and quickly brought this very 

intense situation under control. On 20 December 1996 the Implementation 

Force (IFOR) mission came to a successful conclusion, and the 1st Infantry Division remained in Bosnia as part of the new Stabilization Force 

(SFOR). The conclusion of the IFOR mission marked the conclusion of 
101

Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR. The ongoing SFOR mission is known as 

Operation JOINT GUARD. This decision brought to a close the mission of 

Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR and has been the beginning for the current 

operation known as Operation JOINT GUARD.

In the years since the start of JOINT GUARD, various US Army units 

have deployed to the region to continue the work of TF Eagle. Through 

careful planning and skillful execution of every mission, American and 

coalition soldiers have continued to monitor the militaries of the former 

warring factions and provided a climate of stability in the war-torn land 

of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The mission is periodically assessed and the force 

commitment is adjusted as current circumstances require.

Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav conflict, 1990-1995. 

Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Russian and European Analysis, 2002.

Baumann, Robert, Walter Kretchik, and George Gawrych. Armed Peacekeepers 

in Bosnia. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004.

Swain, Richard. Neither War Nor Not War: Army Command in Europe During the 

Time of Peace Operations: Tasks Confronting USAREUR Commanders, 

1994-2000. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Press, US Army 

War College, 2003.

Wentz, Larry ed. Lessons From Bosnia: the IFOR Experience. Vienna, VA: CCRP, 

1997.