When the Going Gets Tough… Monitoring Missions and a Changing Conflict Environment in Sri Lanka, 2002–2008

This article analyzes how the conflict environment in which a civilian monitoring mission is deployed influences the monitors' assessment of the operation. It draws on unique empirical material from the experience of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), deployed to oversee a ceasefire agreement in Sri Lanka 2002–2008. With material from a survey and in-depth interviews, experiences of the monitors are analyzed and changes over time are traced in relation to the monitors' assessment of the mandate and organizational set-up of the mission. The study points to the difficulty of monitoring missions to address escalation during an ongoing peace process. Its function is dependent on the goodwill of the parties. In essence, monitoring missions have the potential to strengthen peace when there is momentum in favor of progress, but when relations between the parties turn sour and the conflict escalates a civilian monitoring mission basically loses its potential. During the final stages of the war, which saw a very large number of civilian casualties, the war-torn areas were closed to international observers. Moreover, international pressure for a short-term ceasefire to alleviate the humanitarian situation was dismissed by the Sri Lankan government, which also saw the backing of several important actors, not the least China.     

‘Fighting for peace’

In Africa, most of the present conflicts are civil, intra-state wars where belligerent groups use guerrilla tactics to achieve various political, economic or ideological objectives. The atrocities and the effect of these on-going wars on innocent civilians, human suffering, poverty and development are beyond comprehension. Not surprisingly, the majority of current peace operations are in Africa, with more than 70 countries contributing forces to these conflict zones. On the continent, South Africa has come to assume a leading role in peace operations and is now a major troop-contributing country to UN and AU missions. In the past 11 years, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has taken part in no fewer than 14 peace missions. This article provides a brief background of the conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, the different United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) mandates under which peacekeepers had to operate as well as their objectives, and the extent of South Africa's involvement in the various missions. In the last section, the major challenges, that these operations have posed are highlighted.     

Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992–1993

ABSTRACT

The conventional wisdom about the 1992 US intervention in Somalia is that it was a quintessentially humanitarian mission pushed by President George H. W. Bush. This article challenges that interpretation, drawing on newly declassified documents. The Somalia intervention, I argue, was largely a pragmatic response to concerns held by the US military. In late 1992, as the small UN mission in Somalia was collapsing, senior American generals worried about being drawn into the resulting vacuum. Hence they reluctantly recommended a robust US intervention, in the expectation that this would allow the UN to assemble a larger peacekeeping force that would take over within months. The intervention ultimately failed, but the military learned useful lessons from this experience on how to achieve smoother UN handoffs in the future and thus effectively shift longer-term stabilisation burdens to the international community.     

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.     

团体心理干预对改善维和警察培训学员心理应对能力的效果研究

良好的心理应对能力是维和警察有效遂行维和任务的心理保障。为探讨团体心理干预对维和警察心理应对能力的改善效果,对32名维和警察培训学员分成实验组和控制组进行干预实验。经干预,实验组成员身心状况、应对方式、社会支持有明显改善,自尊状况亦有显著变化。说明团体心理干预对改善培训学员综合心理健康状况、增强其心理应对能力有一定效果。     

The long and winding road … to success? Unit peace operation effectiveness and its effect on mission success

Why does peacekeeping sometimes fail? How can effective peacekeepers increase the likelihood of success of a mission? The two main flaws in the current evaluations of peace operations are that they mainly rely on already concluded missions and that they make use of indicators that do not reveal micro-level dynamics. This article introduces an analytical framework relating the effectiveness of soldiers to their actual impact in their area of operation in a peace operation. The framework is called “unit peace operation effectiveness” (UPOE). Focusing on soldiers in peace operations, this article shows that: different units behave differently; emphasize different aspects of the mandate; and are effective in different ways. Ultimately, this has an actual impact on the end-state of the mission. It relies on and adapts classic security studies works to theoretically enrich the peacekeeping literature. The model is tested in an illustrative case study based on ethnographic work on French and Italian units in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010.     

陆军诸兵种合同作战兰切斯特方程的弹药消耗预测研究

描述了诸兵种合同作战的兰切斯特方程及其矩阵解,提出了一种通过兵力损耗换算弹药损耗的新思路,分析和确定了用该方法预测弹药消耗的相关参数,最后运用Matlab进行仿真计算,预测出了武器装备战损情况和弹药消耗情况。     

舰炮应急作战首群火力运用决策模型研究

依据水面舰艇海上作战的特点和需求,在对应急作战条件下舰炮首群火力运用决策影响因素和要求分析的基础上,构建了基于射击效果和工作方式转换时效性的火力运用决策模型,算例分析结果验证了模型的正确性和有效性。研究成果可为相关指挥决策人员改进指挥决策提供参考和借鉴。     

Why they fight? Reconsidering the role of motivation in combat environments

The current combat motivation model based on primary group thesis assumes that the main force behind motivation is peer-bonding or otherwise known as unit cohesion. Cohesion is perceived as an all-encompassing factor that leads to satisfactory (or unsatisfactory in lack thereof) military effectiveness and performance in conflict environments. However, the article identifies three main problems with this perspective: 1. mono-dimensional view of motivation; 2. motivation based on heteronomy, and 3. self-reporting bias. The current model does not consider motivation as a separate entity from cohesion; it does not place motivation as fundamental human value; lastly, it takes motivation as granted by-product of socialization. The article proposes a new combat motivation model based on The Self-Determination Theory. The theory maintains that human motivation requires satisfaction of three psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The degree of satisfaction of those three needs leads to different types of regulated motivations – a continuum from intrinsic to extrinsic – each of which has specifiable consequences for learning, performance, and well-being of an individual.     

What is the global landpower network and what value might it provide?

US national security guidance, as well as the US Army’s operational experiences since 2001, emphasizes the importance of working closely with partner countries to achieve US strategic objectives. The US Army has introduced the global landpower network (GLN) concept as a means to integrate, sustain and advance the Army’s considerable ongoing efforts to meet US national security guidance. This study develops the GLN concept further, and addresses three questions. What benefits can the GLN provide the Army? What are the essential components of the GLN? What options exist for implementing the GLN concept? By developing the GLN concept, the Army has the opportunity to transition the GLN from an often ad hoc and reactive set of relationships to one that the Army more self-consciously prioritizes and leverages as a resource to meet US strategic objectives.     

相依目标群系统火力分配问题分析与解法

本文中讨论由若干个相依目标群组成的平面点目标系统的火力分配问题。对于武器型号相同的情形,得到了“边际毁伤递减原理”和“循序最优方案即全局最优方案”等结论,并在此基础上提出了问题的解算方法。对于武器型号不同的情形,提出了“循序最优枚举法”,并得出有关结论。     

What explains the failure of U.S. army reconstruction in Afghanistan?

ABSTRACT

This author wrote his doctorate thesis on post-conflict army reconstruction, submitting it in 2011. Continued research on the subject in the intervening seven years indicates that his theoretical propositions can be refined and improved. This article examines refinements to the model, and then applies those refinements in detail to the Afghan case. In so doing, it shifts the focus from potentially altruistic state-building to a case that was driven by pure national-strategic interests. Issues surrounding the liberal peace ideology dominate recent army reconstruction in conflict-affected states. The liberal peace underpinning is of supreme importance, so much so that in many discussions, it is internalised and accepted virtually without thought. This paper will advance the body of knowledge by establishing, for the first time, a theoretical basis for the widespread failure of army reconstruction in Afghanistan. The empirical basis builds on extensive previous research by other scholars. The resulting model can also be applied to better explain outcomes in other similar cases.     

基于多子网语言决策图的空管体系绩效评估

为评估空管体系综合绩效水平,制定了关键绩效领域和指标,提出基于多子网语言决策图的群体评估模型。采用多子网策略分析领域及指标间的影响关系,应用语言尺度辅助群体专家建立了领域及指标间的初始判断矩阵和影响连接矩阵。给出了模型的求解方法,在求得各子网内准则的全局权重后,聚合即可得到体系的综合评估值。案例分析表明,相比于不考虑领域及指标间影响的情况,模型结果能更客观、全面地展示各领域及指标的权重,更显著地揭示空管体系间的差距。