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112. Metrics for the Haiti Stabilization Initiative
- Author:
- Robert Grossman-Vermaas and David C. Becker
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Stabilization in postconflict or low-conflict situations is a growing business around the world. For the United States, stabilization efforts at the moment may seem to focus on U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the recently released Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review noted that there are 36 active conflicts and 55 fragile states in the world. In reality, the United States supports stabilization efforts from Colombia to Lebanon through a variety of programs. Using a parallel non-U.S.-centric indicator, the United Nations (UN) now supports more than 14,000 police in 17 different countries to provide police advice, law enforcement training, and a public security presence in situations where the UN has a mandate to support a government or encourage peace-building efforts.
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, Colombia, United Nations, and Lebanon
113. Civil-Military Operations in Kenya's Rift Valley: Sociocultural Impacts at the Local Level
- Author:
- Jessica Lee and Maureen Farrell
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- In the aftermath of Kenya's December 2007 to January 2008 postelection violence, U.S. Army Reserve Civil Affairs (CA) teams began a series of school rehabilitation projects in the Rift Valley. This area was still reeling from a period of significant trauma and instability. Life in the Rift Valley had been completely disrupted. Most of the residents were displaced, markets and public places were destroyed, and schools were burned to the ground. Families' lives were turned upside down. Based on tensions over land tenure, the violence was generally described as focused on particular ethnic groups, including the Kikuyu and Kalenjin.
- Political Geography:
- Kenya and United States
114. ISAF Lessons Learned: A German Perspective
- Author:
- Rainer Glatz
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Following several largely futile attempts to gain control over Afghanistan, the British Empire granted independence to the country in 1919. Seventy years later, Russian forces withdrew having failed to establish control through a pro-Russian government. Today, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) struggles to establish a stable political system in order to prevent the country from again becoming a safe haven for terrorists. The question is: Will the Alliance prevail or will it join the club of losers? The answer is open, and it is up to NATO and the international community to sustain the positive momentum gained in 2010. The difficulty of nation-building in this remote, but nevertheless strategically important, part of the world can be seen in daily media coverage of the setbacks and losses, progress and success.
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Russia, North Atlantic, and Germany
115. Forging a Comprehensive Approach to Counterinsurgency Operations
- Author:
- Robert L. Caslen Jr. and Bradley S. Loudon
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- The United States will face a myriad of new strategic challenges and opportunities in the 21st century that will test its capability and capacity to succeed in an increasingly competitive, dynamic, and uncertain operating environment. A key component to success in future stability operations will be the ability to interpret the seemingly chaotic series of weak global signals and environmental stimuli to draw logically valid connections and conclusions to recognize obstacles and opportunities in advance. Equally important will be the capability, capacity, and will to leverage the appropriate balance of national power in a coordinated, synchronized, and focused manner to mitigate risk and exploit opportunities.
- Political Geography:
- United States
116. Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances
- Author:
- Douglas Farah
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- On July 1, 2010, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment that outlined the rapid expansion of operations of transnational criminal organizations and their growing, often short-term strategic alliances with terrorist groups. These little-understood transcontinental alliances pose new security threats to the United States, as well as much of Latin America, West Africa, and Europe.
- Political Geography:
- United States, New York, Europe, Latin America, and West Africa
117. Criminal Insurgency in the Americas and Beyond
- Author:
- Robert Killebrew
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the global context for American security policy was changing. While the traditional state-based international system continued to function and the United States reacted to challenges by states in conventional ways (for example, by invading Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11), a cascade of enormous technological and social change was revolutionizing international affairs. As early as the 1990s, theorists were writing that with modern transnational communications, international organizations and corporate conglomerates would increasingly act independently of national borders and international regulation. What was not generally foreseen until about the time of 9/11, though, was the darker side: that the same technology could empower corrupt transnational organizations to threaten the international order itself. In fact, the globalization of crime, from piracy's financial backers in London and Nairobi to the Taliban and Hizballah's representatives in West Africa, may well be the most important emerging fact of today's global security environment.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq
118. Law Enforcement Capacity-building in African Postconflict Communities
- Author:
- Bruce Baker
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Postconflict is, unfortunately, not always a suitable descriptor of societies where a peace agreement has been signed and a transitional government installed. Violence does not stop on the day of the public signing of the treaty. Large numbers of unemployed and (in the short term) unemployable youths, often armed or with access to arms, loiter on the streets. They have had little opportunity to gain education in the preceding years, but have learned that violence is the key to accessing resources and status. The former security forces or informal armed groups and militias that they have been part of have, over many years, provided a whole range of roles: social support group, family, employer, provider, escape ladder from rural poverty, and source of status. Hence, whether these groups are officially disbanded or not, the youths look to their former general-patron and their ex-fighting colleagues as their surrogate “clan” in times of trouble. Violence may well live on in their minds, dreams, responses to conflict resolution, attitudes toward women, and methods of securing resources. No wonder, then, that the crime rates escalate in the cities where they now live, and no wonder that some militias remain in the countryside, looting and robbing, despite the official end of the war.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution and War
- Political Geography:
- Africa
119. International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus
- Author:
- Stephen Krasner
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- State-building—external efforts to influence the domestic authority structures of other states— is arguably the central foreign policy challenge of the contemporary era. The principal security threat of the last several centuries—war among the major powers—is gone, primarily because of nuclear weapons. At the same time, the relationship between underlying capacity and the ability to do harm has become attenuated because of the actual and potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea, with a fraction of the gross domestic product of any one of its neighbors, could kill millions of people in China, Japan, or Russia. Biological or nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of transnational terrorist organizations. Anxiety about the relationship between failed or malevolent states and transnational terrorism will not disappear despite the recognition that there can be training camps in Oregon as well as Kandahar. Perhaps more than at any point in the several-hundred-year history of the modern state system, policymakers are confronted with the uncertainty—not a specific known risk—of the small probability of a bad outcome. It is an uncertainty that they cannot ignore, and state-building will be part of the program.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Japan, China, and North Korea
120. Irregular Conflict and the Wicked Problem Dilemma: Strategies of Imperfection
- Author:
- Franklin Kramer
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Irregular conflict is neither neat nor fair. Definitionally, it is hard to describe, including as it does conflicts ranging from Somalia to Bosnia to Sierra Leone to Colombia to Iraq to Afghanistan (to say nothing of Sudan, the Philippines, or Yemen). Hybrid, counterinsurgency (COIN), stability operations, counterterrorism, and civil war have all been utilized as descriptions, often in combination. But if defining irregular conflict is difficult, even more difficult is knowing how to respond, especially for an outside intervener like the United States. Doctrine has now been developed, but in practice the context of an irregular conflict is generally so complex and contradictory that it is difficult to put the full doctrine effectively into practice.
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Sudan, Bosnia, Philippines, Yemen, Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia