Stability and Support Operations: History and Debates

Abstract

U.S. military doctrine has recently elevated stability and support operations (SASO) to be a mission on par with the traditional combat missions, offense and defense. The new doctrinal approach to SASO represents a revolutionary change in the military's raison d’être; now the armed forces’ job is not only to win battles, but to create space for political negotiations and accords through the provision of controlled, nonviolent environments and other forms of military assistance to civilians. This article puts this change into context, looking at the American military's history of SASO and the longstanding debates about the military's priorities and roles.

Notes

1. Department of Defense Directive, Number 3000.05, 28 November 2005, Subject: Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSRT) Operations.

2. “Full-Spectrum Operations in Capstone Doctrine,” Information Papers, 2008 Army Posture Statement. Available at http://www.army.mil/aps/08/information_papers/transform/Full_Spectrum_Operations.html

3. The Goldwater Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 was the biggest change in the U.S. military's structure since the 1947 National Security Act that had created the National Security Council (NSC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense, among other things. Goldwater Nichols centralized operational authority through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than, as previously, through the service chiefs and designated the CJCS as the principal military advisor to the president, the NSC, and the Secretary of Defense. It also streamlined the operational chain of command from the president, through the Defense Secretary, to the unified commanders. The intention of the reorganization was to enhance joint coordination and cooperation that had suffered from inter-service competition and lack of communication under the previous structure.

4. “Shifting Emphasis: Leaders, Strategists, and Operators in an Era of Persistent Unconventional Challenge,” Nathan Freier, Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 2008. Available at http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/090305_shifting_emphasis.pdf; Nathan P. Freier, “The New Balance: Limited Armed Stabilization and the Future of U.S. Landpower,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 6 April 2009. Available at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=915; In “Mapping the Global Future,” NIC refers to “pervasive insecurity.” Available at http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020_s4.html; FM 3-0 (2008) begins on p. 1-1 with a section titled “Instability and Persistent Conflict.” Available at http://www.cspan.org/Content/PDF/fm3_2008.pdf; General William S. Wallace, “FM 3-0 Operations: The Army's Blueprint,” U.S. Army, Military Review (March–April 2008), p. 3, where the general writes that the current edition of FM 3-0 “reflects Army thinking in a complex era of persistent conflict.”

5. Department of Defense Directive, Number 3000.05, 28 November 2005, Subject: Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSRT) Operations.

6. Joint Publication 1-02, 2009, p. 517.

7. FM 3-0, Operations, 2008, p. 1–15.

8. Ibid., p. 9–1; for the lists of tasks within OOTW, see FM 100-5, Operations, Headquarters, Department of the Army, June 1993, p. 13-0. Only disaster relief, which was included under OOTW, is not subsumed within SASO.

9. For a discussion of the drawbacks of OOTW as a catch-all category, see: Jennifer Morrison Taw, “Planning for Military Operations Other Than War,” in Desmond Ball, ed., Maintaining the Strategic Edge: The Defence of Australia in 2015 (Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Center, Australia National University, 1999), pp. 209–210.

10. FM 3-0, Operations, 2008, p. 9–1.

11. Anthony H. Cordesman, “Iraq, Grand Strategy, and the Lessons of Military History,” 2004 S.T. Lee Lecture on Military History, 19 October 2004.

12. U.S. Army Field Manual 3–07, Stability Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army), 6 October 2008, p. 1–1.

13. These included the “Little Belt” Affair, the three Seminole Wars, the Black Hawk War, the Cayuse War, and many others.

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19. “Chronology of U.S. Military Actions and Wars.”

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21. Ibid., p. 112.

22. “A Strong But Risky Show of Force,” Time, 26 May 1975.

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29. Ibid., p. 206.

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31. Remarks by the President, National Defense University, Ft. McNair, VA, 29 January 1998.

32. Jack Spencer, “The Facts About Military Readiness,” The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder #1394, 15 September 2000. Available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/MissileDefense/BG1394.cfm

33. Ibid.

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36. James M. Inhofe, “Challenges of Military Readiness,” Military Review (March–April 1999), pp. 15–16.

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38. General Shalikashvili, NewsHour Transcript, 25 September 1997.

39. Ivo H. Daalder, “Knowing When to Say No: The Development of U.S. Policy for Peacekeeping,” in William J. Durch, ed., UN Peacekeeping, American Politics, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006), pp. 41–42.

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42. Ibid., p. 79.

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44. Ibid., pp. 52, 180.

45. “Beyond Nation Building,” Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, 11th Annual Salute to Freedom, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, New York City, Friday, 14 February 2003.

46. Ibid.

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49. John D. Banusiewicz, “‘As Iraqis Stand Up, We Will Stand Down,’ Bush Tells Nation,” Armed Forces Press Service, 28 June 2005. Available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=16277

50. General Anthony Zinni, USMC, Retired, Speech to the U.S. Naval Institute and The Marine Corps Association, 2003.

51. Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 34.

52. Charles W. Ostrom, Jr. and Brian L. Job, “The President and the Political Use of Force,” American Political Science Review 80(2) (June 1986), pp. 541–542.

53. Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1978), p. 3. On p. 12, the authors offer a more detailed definition: “… political use of the armed forces occurs when physical actions are taken by one or more components of the uniformed military services as part of a deliberate attempt by the national authorities to influence, or to be prepared to influence, specific behavior of individuals in another nation without engaging in a continuing contest of violence.”

54. Nadia Schadlow, “War and the Art of Governance,” Parameters (Autumn 2003), p. 85.

55. Richard M. Saunders, “Military Force in the Foreign Policy of the Eisenhower Presidency,” Political Science Quarterly 100(1) (Spring 1985), p. 97.

56. Samuel Huntington, as cited in ibid., p. 97.

57. Ibid., p. 116.

58. Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 190–191.

59. Ibid., p. 65. Of course, neither Dulles nor his CIA Director brother Allen were averse to imperialistic behavior, just the image. The two were responsible for covert operations that overthrew democratic governments in both Iran and Guatemala.

60. Richard A. Melanson, American Foreign Policy Since the Vietnam War: The Search for Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, 4th edition (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2005), pp. 59–60.

61. Major John S. Sellers, “The Weinberger Doctrine: Useful Compass or Flawed Checklist?” Thesis, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, June 2001, pp. 6–7. Available at http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA407811&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

62. “The Uses of Military Power,” Remarks Prepared for Delivery by the Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, to the National Press Club, Washington, DC, Wednesday, 28 November 1984. Available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/force/weinberger.html. On the third condition, Weinberger, in his original formulation of the doctrine, referred to Clausewitz: “As Clausewitz wrote, ‘no one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it.’”

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., (italics in the original).

65. Ibid.

66. Cori E. Dauber, “Implications of the Weinberger Doctrine for American Military Intervention in a Post-Desert Storm Age,” in Colin McInnis and Nicholas J. Wheeler, eds., Dimensions of Western Military Intervention (Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002), p. 88, fn. 38.

67. Colin L. Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1992). Available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/force/powell.html

68. Of course, those who advocate SASO often point to the other tenets of jus ad bellum, including “just cause,” or the use of force to protect innocent lives and “right intention,” or use of force to right a wrong.

69. Colin S. Powell, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p. 576.

70. Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1999), p. 360.

71. Ibid.

72. Andrew Bacevich refers not to traditionalists and progressives but to conservatives and crusaders, respectively. See: Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Petraeus Doctrine,” The Atlantic (October 2008). Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/petraeus-doctrine. Frank Hoffman offers a slightly different, more nuanced debate, between what he terms “counterinsurgents,” “traditionalists,” “utility infielders,” and “division of labor.” See: “Striking a Balance: Posturing the Future Force for COIN and Conventional Warfare,” Armed Forces Journal (July 2009). Available at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/07/4099782

73. Thom Shanker, “Plan to Shift Military Spending Faces Skepticism,” The New York Times, 11 May 2009. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11gates.html?adxnnl=1&ref=politicss&adx

74. See Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 40–41.

75. “Military Operations: Impact of Operations Other Than War on the Services Varies,” GAO/NSIAD-99-69, U.S. General Accounting Office, May 1999. Available at http://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/ns99069.pdf; Jennifer M. Taw, David Persselin, and Maren Leed, Meeting Peace Operations Requirements While Maintaining MTW Readiness (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998).

76. Julian E. Barnes, “Defense Chief Urges Bigger Budget for State Department,” Los Angeles Times, 27 November 2007. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/27/nation/na-gates27

77. Lawrence A. Yates, The US Military's Experience in Stability Operations, 1789–2005, Global War on Terrorism Occasional Paper No. 15 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006), p. 21.

78. Robert C. Shaw, “Integrating Conventional and Special Operations Forces,” Military Review 77(4) (1997).

79. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribner, 2001), p. 265.

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82. Wayne Bert, The Reluctant Superpower: United States’ Policy in Bosnia, 1991–95 (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1997), pp. 18–20.

83. Nathan Freier, “Shifting Emphasis: Leaders, Strategists, and Operators in an Era of Persistent Unconventional Challenge,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 2008.