The New Constabularies: Planning US Military Stabilization Missions

Modern peace enforcement missions are much more akin to historical constabulary missions than they are to traditional peace operations. As such, the underlying strategic and operational bases for these missions are both more complex and have more elements that can go wrong than does classic peacekeeping. At the operational level, such issues as relations with civilian organizations, coordination with other nations' forces, and command and control of highly disparate elements become critical. The area in which the most significant problems have occurred, however, has been in translating political goals into a realistic military strategy.