Inside Pentagon
The United States intends to boost support for United Nations peacekeeping operations by contributing more military training, airlift or staff officers to compensate for Washington’s inability to offer more “blue-helmeted” troops due to stretched forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior defense official.
Defense officials, including the plans shop in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, are eying the Guidance for the Employment of the Force (GEF) and other “planning instruments” to determine “useful ways to bring the voices and interests” of the combatant commands into the discussion on assisting peacekeeping missions, the senior defense official told Inside the Pentagon this week.
“It would be a stepped-up, broad commitment on the United States’ [part] to assist and improve U.N. peacekeeping performance through this general technique we’re calling enabling assistance,” the official maintained. “The driver here basically is in a specific interest the administration has in better ways to enable success in U.N. missions. This follows the president’s visit with top troop-contributing country member states in New York in September during the U.N. General Assembly.”
Given commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government is hard-pressed to substantially ramp up its presence within U.N. missions -- that is, “formed, blue-helmeted units,” said the official, adding the U.N. and key member states understand this challenge.
But the Obama administration has an opportunity to “lend more assistance,” enabling other countries to contribute troops and help the U.N. reform and improve its processes, the senior defense official said. “And we do, of course, provide some staff officers in some staff missions, which are actually very, very high payoff in terms of mission performance within a given area such as Liberia, for example.”
The United States, including DOD, the State Department and the National Security Council, may bolster the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), the defense official noted. Though a State Department program, U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Africa Command are involved “to increasing degrees” in its implementation, the official added. The program helps to carry out peace-support operations through training and equipping, regional and institutional-capacity building, logistics support, among other things.
In support of the Global Peace Operations Initiative, SOUTHCOM has established partnerships with 10 nations in its hemisphere with the goal of assisting in their efforts to increase their capacity to support U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping operations, command spokesman Jose Ruiz said in a statement to ITP. He noted SOUTHCOM’s GPOI program focuses on three areas: development or enhancement of a national peace operations training center in each partner nation, equipping an appropriate unit for U.N. peacekeeping deployments, and training that unit in U.N. peace support operations as well as in specialized military training.
SOUTHCOM has helped Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Belize, Paraguay, and Uruguay develop deployable infantry companies, he added. SOUTHCOM has also helped regional partners make significant improvements to eight national peace operations training centers, as well as the regional, multinational center in Guatemala supporting the Central American Armed Forces battalion, Ruiz said. SOUTHCOM sponsors three multinational peacekeeping exercises annually (PKO Americas, Southern Exchange and a CFAC battalion exercise), he said. Its SOUTHCOM GPOI program as a whole has trained more than 6,000 partner nation troops in U.N. peace support operations, many of whom have already deployed in support of missions in Haiti, Lebanon, and Congo, among others, he said.
The command, moreover, has also assisted Paraguay and Belize to develop deployable peacekeeping light engineering companies, Uruguay to enhance its existing capacity, and Peru to develop a deployable engineering battalion, he added. Next year SOUTHCOM is projected to continue partnering with Bolivia to assist the country to improve its peace operations training center in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
Boosting U.N. support may also take the form of airlift assistance in “critical cases,” human resources or staff officers, the senior defense official told ITP.
Defense officials may use the upcoming iterations of the GEF and the Guidance for the Development of the Force to direct the implementation of Quadrennial Defense Review initiatives, Kathleen Hicks, the deputy under secretary of defense for strategy, plans and forces, said last summer. Work on both classified documents will occur during the winter, with an envisioned released date of early spring, Hicks said (ITP, Aug. 13, p1).
In a July report, the non-governmental organization Refugees International urged the U.S. government to provide forces and assets, such as engineering units, tactical and strategic lift capacity, and other “enablers” to help U.N. missions deploy quickly and completely.
Through the Global Peace Operations Initiative, Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, the United States must work more closely with the U.N. to provide “standardized peacekeeping training, both bilaterally and through support to regional peacekeeping training centers, to increase global peacekeeping capacity,” advised Refugees International. -- Fawzia Sheikh
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