Published Airpower Journal - Winter 1996
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
JAMES S. CORUM
IN THE LAST five years, the world community has seen a dramatic increase in peace-enforcement operations conducted by multinational forces in locations such as Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Accordingly, peace-enforcement operations have taken on an unprecedented level of importance for the militaries of the major powers that are dispatching large military forces, along with significant humanitarian relief, in support of these operations. One major problem is a lack of clear doctrinal guidance for the particular issues and conditions typically faced by military forces during these operations.
This article draws primarily from the experience of the United States Air Force (USAF) in supporting peace-enforcement operations to assess our present Air Force doctrine, or lack thereof, and to pinpoint areas in which we need to make changes in our force structure and operational methods in order to carry out these operations more effectively. Although the article deals primarily with the USAF, the lessons learned by the US military and most conclusions regarding changes and reforms are directly applicable to other air forces. After all, peace-enforcement missions are multinational operations, with United Nations (UN), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and other major organizations involved in sanctions enforcement, airlift, and combat operations. Like other multinational combat operations, peace enforcement requires a common approach to doctrine among the various military forces involved.
The present UN and US definition of peace enforcement is rather vague. The US Joint Staff maintains that "Peace Enforcement includes appropriate forceful military actions to separate belligerents involved in the conflict-with or without their consent. There is a clear distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement."1 Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali defines the term as "actions to keep a ceasefire from being violated or to reinstate a failed ceasefire."2 As Donald M. Snow points out, a subtle difference exists between the UN and US definitions of peace enforcement. The UN definition implies the existence of some will for peace, whereas "the American version more realistically portrays another, far more difficult matter.
Peace enforcement is decidedly not peacekeeping.
By definition, in the situation for which peace enforcement is a potentially appropriate response, war and not peace describes the situation, and one or more of the combatants prefers it that way."3 Despite these differences in definition, one aspect of peace enforcement remains clear. Although US doctrine calls it a "peace operation," peace enforcement is decidedly not peacekeeping. Peace enforcement may not have the consent of all parties; further, intervening forces are not likely to be neutral, and they are authorized to use force in situations other than self-defense. Peace enforcement is not defined as war, but it still involves military combat operations and falls into the traditional American category of low-intensity conflict (LIC).
Within the context of a peace-enforcement operation . . . the US military and other air forces have often exhibited a doctrinal vacuum.
In effect, for the UN, the US, and regional multinational organizations, the term peace enforcement has become a euphemism for military intervention. Most cases of peace enforcement deal not with a conflict between two established and recognizable states, but with a country undergoing civil war. In the most dramatic cases of peace enforcement, the world community must deal with countries that have imploded or moved beyond a war between recognizable factions to a collapse of the economy and of social and governmental order. Such situations have occurred in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Liberia. Chaos and anarchy are the best descriptions of the situation encountered by peace-enforcement forces upon their arrival. In such cases, these forces may encounter numerous armed factions but few organizational or governmental entities with whom to negotiate.
One of the most important services that an air force can provide in a peace-enforcement operation is psyops support.
Faced with the problem of a country's collapse and the consequent loss of innocent lives by famine, disease, and violence, the UN, the major powers, and many smaller nations have often demanded that something be done for humanitarian reasons. The result is multinational military intervention-not as the preferred solution but as the only remaining alternative to alleviate human suffering. Given the state of the world today and the marginal nature of the economic and societal order of many countries, the UN, NATO, and other multinational bodies probably will have to conduct more peace-enforcement operations in the future.
The military in peace enforcement, unlike peacekeeping, is much more than a support force to assist diplomatic efforts. In peace enforcement, the military assists diplomats, but it also may have to apply force, assist humanitarian operations, help and train indigenous forces, and assist international and national agencies in nation building. As in any military operation, airpower-Air Force airlift and combat units as well as Army helicopter lift and combat units-plays a major, perhaps even a decisive, role in making peace-enforcement operations a success.
An examination of airpower's record in peace-enforcement operations reveals several major areas in which airpower can make a significant contribution. These include humanitarian operation support, troop/equipment airlift, force protection, psychological operations (psyops), reconnaissance, and surveillance. The USAF and other services have proven themselves quite capable of conducting most of these operations within the context of a conventional war. Within the context of a peace-enforcement operation, however, the US military and other air forces have often exhibited a doctrinal vacuum. It is more often a case of learning and improvising as we go along. We might accomplish the mission, but the lack of planning and doctrine leads to inefficiency, waste, and needless loss of equipment and personnel.
Peace-enforcement operations are, in many respects, much more complex than conventional wars, which entail defeating the opposing armed forces and imposing our will upon the enemy. Targeting an enemy military for destruction requires considerable operational finesse but no great degree of political sophistication. A peace-enforcement operation, however, does not aim for the destruction of an enemy armed force or for the overthrow or submission of an enemy state. The mission "to impose peace" is quite vague. We are authorized to use military force but not too much. We cannot destroy a nation's industrial power if the country has imploded and therefore has no industrial activity. Targeting enemy armed forces is difficult when we are not even sure who the enemy is. Our opponents may not even have anything resembling conventional armed forces to target. Moreover, if the mission is to promote peace and to assist in reestablishing the basis for a functioning government and economy, it is best not to use too much military force. Overkill would merely increase devastation and add to the problem, compounding it with the ill will directed against foreign troops and organizations that any military intervention is likely to provoke.
For all the above reasons, this highly complex mission is not popular with the military. Since it will not go away, however, the only reasonable response is to attempt to create-or at least modify-airpower doctrine to try to deal with some of the problems specific to this kind of mission. This article concentrates upon areas in which, according to our experience, the greatest level of doctrinal vacuum exists. Further, while not proposing any comprehensive solution, it offers a few ideas that might serve as starting points for debate to foster doctrinal study and change.
Most peace-enforcement operations have provided humanitarian relief-as will most future operations. The Somalia operation from 1992 to 1994 certainly falls within this category. From 1991 to 1995, military and civilian agencies made an enormous effort to provide food and supplies to refugees of the besieged populations of Bosnia. Similarly, future peace-enforcement operations will likely be triggered by the need to assist large populations facing famine and disease caused by conflict.
The USAF, as well as other air forces, has sound doctrine and considerable experience in the airlift and airdrop of supplies. Acquisition of more C-17 airlift aircraft by the USAF and of the Osprey light transport by the US Marine Corps will enhance US ability to conduct effective airlift into difficult terrain and tough tactical environments. Improvements in helicopter technology leading to greater lift and speed, as in the UH-60 Blackhawk, also have given us additional capability to get food and supplies to civilians in isolated areas.
The experience of the American military in Somalia, however, indicates that we can save money and gain efficiency by implementing certain low-tech solutions. The USAF discovered a need for twin-engined, fixed-wing, light transport aircraft of the CASA 100 type, capable of carrying a small number of passengers or limited supplies to short, rough airfields scattered throughout the country. 4 It found that a light, twin-engined short takeoff and landing (STOL) transport had about the same lift capacity as a UH-60 helicopter-approximately 12 passengers or three to four tons of cargo. Helicopters with significant lift capability, however, were highly restricted due to their relatively short range. Transports, on the other hand, have approximately three or four times the range of lift helicopters. In addition, fixed-wing light transports require only a fraction of the maintenance required by helicopters, and the per-hour cost for flight operations is approximately one quarter the cost of lift helicopters. Consequently, the USAF chartered a number of these aircraft for use in Somalia. Since future humanitarian operations will probably entail flying people and supplies to small outposts scattered over a broad area, the USAF ought to consider maintaining a squadron of twin-engined light transports within its force structure-possibly within the Reserve forces.
One major problem of deploying airpower in humanitarian operations is the effective coordination of relief efforts with civilian nongovernmental organizations (NGO) such as the International Red Cross, CARE, and so forth. The prime providers of humanitarian aid in situations such as Somalia are UN agencies and large NGOs that usually operate under contract to the UN to organize and provide assistance to devastated populations. In peace-enforcement operations, US military doctrine mentions that the US military should cooperate with NGOs, coordinating efforts through a civil/military operations center (CMOC). 5 Still, effective cooperation and coordination by civilian agencies is a hit-or-miss affair. Although civilian agencies require military assistance to conduct their missions in places like Somalia, many of them have a cultural bias against working with the military.
One example of civilian/military friction comes from the initial stages of the Somalia airlift. The USAF was providing airlift support to UN-contracted humanitarian agencies flying relief supplies into Somalia beginning in July 1992, five months before the intervention of American ground troops. 6 The primary disagreement between USAF aircrews and the International Red Cross concerned the security of relief supplies, Red Cross workers, and USAF aircrews. One of the rules of the International Red Cross-at that time one of the primary players in the Somalia relief operation-was that US aircrews flying Red Cross relief supplies into Somali airstrips could not be armed, even though the airstrips were often surrounded by volatile armed groups. Oftentimes, Somali factions quickly looted relief supplies. For example, a flight of four US relief planes landed at Mogadishu in August 1992, only to have three guards killed and two UN observers wounded by gunmen as they looted the shipment. The USAF aircrews, ordered to comply with the Red Cross request, flew their missions into Somalia unarmed. At the same time, however, the Red Cross hired heavily armed Somali "technicals" for its own security and thus always traveled well-armed-even on aircraft flown by unarmed US aircrews.7 In fact, the NGOs' approach of hiring their own security in humanitarian operations might actually encourage social breakdown by contributing to the problems of unstable countries. Although some of the NGO technicals in Somalia were loyal employees, many of the hired security forces were little better than bandits. 8
Another issue of contention during the Somalia operation was the manner in which the operation itself was conceived. Once relief supplies from international agencies arrived on the ground, the agencies preferred a transport system of ground convoys, which were difficult to secure and highly vulnerable to land mines and ambush by various Somali factions. Some Western air forces operating in support of Somali relief made the commonsense proposal to eliminate most of the convoys. They argued that they could supply starving people in the hinterlands by dropping double-bagged food sacks out of low-flying C-130s at sites just outside remote villages. This proposal probably would have worked, but several NGOs opposed it. Some people participating in the operation believe that the NGOs-whose raison d'être is humanitarian relief-saw direct supply to the Somali people by air as a threat to their organizational function.
As already mentioned, no requirement presently exists for civilian and military agencies to coordinate their efforts. In many cases, frictions, lack of cooperation, and lack of coordination have needlessly complicated humanitarian missions. Clearly, the UN needs to renegotiate the relationship between NGOs and supporting military forces in UN-sponsored humanitarian missions. If contract agencies, which receive their funding from the UN and other governments, require military support to carry out their mission effectively, the military must exert greater control over many aspects of the relief effort, in order to increase security and efficiency. Clearer rules and a certain amount of military control are justified, even though the NGOs are likely to resist such changes.
Command and control (C 2) is likely to be one of the most difficult aspects of any multinational operation. The shoot-down of two US Army UH-60s by two US Air Force F-15s over northern Iraq in 1994, resulting in the loss of 26 lives, is a sobering reminder of the tragic consequences of failing to coordinate and communicate in a peace-enforcement operation. A military effort involving several nations and much less restrictive rules of engagement increases the chances of such mistakes.
At the outset of the operation in Somalia, no single agency coordinated the air effort in that country. The United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) coordinated the tactical aviation effort through two agencies. One was the J-3 of the Air Staff Division, with authority to task subordinate commands for the support of task-force missions and to maintain central tasking authority over some resources, such as carrier aircraft. The other agency was the Airspace Control Agency (ACA), set up as a special staff function that served as a central clearing agency for publishing flight schedules for fixed-wing aircraft and for establishing procedures for airspace control and deconfliction. 9
This command setup generated some confusion. Some units weren't certain which agency controlled which function and would often contact the wrong agency, retarding the coordination process. In addition, the Third Marine Air Wing found that, initially, it had neither the trained personnel nor the facilities to operate the ACA. Eventually, the ACA was disbanded, leaving all C 2 functions to the J-3 air and subordinate units. 10 The primary lesson learned from Somalia is that, in future peace-enforcement/humanitarian operations, we should deploy an adequately staffed and trained ACA/air operations headquarters at the very beginning of the opera tion and regulate and coordinate all fixed -wing operations through one central agency.
One important aspect of the C 2 of military air operations in peace enforcement concerns the bureaucratic rules governing the sharing of supplies and equipment by various participating military forces. The US military is encumbered by numerous peacetime regulations that inhibit something as simple as giving water to a neighboring German air force unit.11 The military needs to review the various regulations governing peacetime logistics and contracting operations and to ensure that many of these are not applied to multinational peace-enforcement operations. Commanders who deploy ought to receive a reasonable budget, under their own control, to spend as they see fit. It should include money for contracting and providing supplies and maintenance to participating multinational forces. The sound solution is to do what is necessary to enable a commander to carry out the mission with the least bureaucratic burden. We should properly budget each mission and let the State Department sort out the accounts afterwards.
Finally, the UN system of planning, deployment, and budgeting for peace-enforce ment operations needs fundamental reforms. The UN rule that provides $1,000 per month per soldier to a government providing troops to UN operations, as well as rules allowing countries to send broken and obsolete equipment to UN operations, needs to be changed. UN peace operations have become, in effect, moneymaking opportunities for many of the poorer, third world militaries. UN regulations allow countries to deploy obsolete-even broken-equipment to UN operations. When that equipment arrives in-theater, the UN is responsible for its repair and maintenance. The air transport of substandard equipment constitutes a waste of valuable airlift assets. For example, the Zimbabwe army provided several 1950s-vintage British Puma armored cars, some of which were nonoperational. These vehicles were deployed to Somalia, at great expense, whereupon the UN had to repair and then maintain them. Such ancient vehicles were probably not worth the cost of airlifting them to Somalia. 12
Wealthy Western nations should insist upon UN reforms to eliminate such practices. Changes in those countries' programs of military aid to poorer nations might be appropriate. Instead of funding poorly equipped third world infantrymen for deployment in peace operations, Western nations might provide the necessary equipment and training to help poorer nations create engineer units, logistics units, and modern air-transport squadrons-precisely the types of units needed for future peace-enforcement operations. The West would provide aid, training, and equipment on the condition that these specialist units from poorer nations would be available to the UN for deployment in future peace operations. Such an arrangement would probably be acceptable to many third world countries, enabling them to use UN peace operations to improve their own military efficiency without incurring the cost and inefficiency of the present system of financing. The UN should pay only for the actual costs of troop deployment for its operations.
One of the most important services that an air force can provide in a peace-enforcement operation is psyops support. Modified C-130 transports of the USAF's 193d Special Operations Wing can transmit radio and television messages throughout a wide variety of frequencies. In Haiti, USAF aircraft transmitting messages prepared by US Army psyops specialists carried out an intensive campaign aimed at the Haitian population weeks before the US invasion in late 1994. USAF aircraft also dropped leaflets. Information disseminated to the Haitians discouraged any further exodus by boat and sought to calm them at a time when violent repression by the government appeared possible.
During the US invasion of Haiti, the psyops message disseminated by radio and leaflet informed the populace of US intentions and played an important role in keeping people calm. Much of the credit for the lack of Haitian resistance can be attributed to an effective psyops campaign-particularly airborne psyops. The lesson of Haiti is that the US military should enact a comprehensive psyops campaign before fully initiating a peace-enforcement operation.
In Somalia in December 1992, the USAF and Army-and later the Marine Corps-deployed psyops personnel to conduct an information campaign designed to reassure the local populace regarding the policies and intentions of the multinational force. Again, psyops proved its worth in convincing Somalis not to resist foreign forces. Still, the US made a major mistake in the campaign in May 1993, when it reduced its forces in Somalia and withdrew military psyops units and specialists just as the UN took over the mission. Rather than conducting a humanitarian mission, the US began active opposition to Gen Mohammed Farah Aidid's faction as part of a nation-building campaign. Without a proper psyops campaign to explain this change in UN policy, a large part of the Somali population-not just Aidid's clan-became more hostile to the UN force. Somali resistance and UN casualties increased, leading eventually to the humiliating withdrawal of UN forces from Somalia. The lesson of Somalia is that at all stages of a peace-enforcement operation, the US military should conduct a full campaign of broadcasts , leaflets, and information dissemination.
Psychological operations have proven their worth in conventional wars and in low-intensity conflicts. Even though the USAF already has some capability to conduct such operations, psyops specialist forces of the Air Force and Army should be expanded if the US plans to involve itself in large-scale operations.
Because USAF and US military intelligence is geared, in general, toward conducting conventional war operations, it emphasizes the technological side of intelligence gathering. LIC operations, however, require effective political/human intelligence, which can be gathered and analyzed only by well-educated people with operational experience. Further, they must possess a thorough understanding of the language, culture, and politics of the nation in which they are operating. The difficulty of peace-enforcement intelligence is that, normally, the threat does not come from large conventional forces that we could easily observe from spacecraft and aircraft and monitor with high-tech equipment. Rather, it comes from small factions or militias, often dressed in civilian clothes, who live amidst the civilian population and operate from cities and villages.
The US military never seems to have enough language-capable intelligence officers with the regional expertise to provide commanders with accurate analysis and advice about LIC threats. Indeed, ours is the only major military force in the world that does not require, or even expect, intelligence officers to be fluent in a foreign language. The US Army has a foreign area officer (FAO) program in which a very small number of officers complete a graduate degree in area studies, undergo language training, and finally receive training in a foreign country. FAOs can provide a commander with in-depth knowledge of the politics and military forces of a foreign country.13 Although FAOs can be a major force multiplier in LIC, the program that produces them is being reduced, along with other Army forces.
The lack of FAOs is compounded by the shortage of enlisted linguists to serve as translators/interpreters. The Army seldom fills intelligence units with multiple contingency requirements at 100 percent of their linguist authorizations. 14 The general shortage of linguists has a serious effect on intelligence gathering in peace operations. For example, the US Marine Corps had only two Somali linguists when it went into Somalia in 1992. 15 The lack of FAOs or military linguists meant that the US military was forced to hire Somalis who knew a bit of English. Although some Somalis provided useful service as interpreters, many were tainted by their clan affiliations and other local loyalties. In the best of circumstances, a military force should not rely upon local civilians as an accurate and objective source of political or social intelligence.
The USAF is in even worse shape, having no equivalent of the Army's FAO program. Only a handful of USAF officers are truly capable of providing accurate advice to commanders concerning countries where peace- enforcement interventions or LICs are likely to occur. The USAF is biased toward finding a technological solution to all problems. Mere technology, however, cannot analyze the political/social dynamics of a foreign society. The employment of force in politically sensitive situations such as peace enforcement requires that the Air Force seek to develop a greater degree of area and language expertise. In other words, the Air Force needs an FAO program.
Not having accurate intelligence about countries in which we intervene or not possessing a clear understanding of political/ cultural factors that motivate competing parties can be deadly. For instance, the disastrous bombing of US marines in Lebanon in October 1983 that cost almost 300 American lives is largely attributable to a lack of understanding of the nature of the threat in a LIC situation. US forces in Lebanon had little knowledge of how various Lebanese and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions were likely to respond as the US escalated military actions, including shore bombardment by the US Navy, against forces opposed to the Lebanese government in spring and summer of 1983.
The lack of linguists and area-expert officers also makes it difficult to mount an effective psyops campaign since only culturally knowledgeable personnel can plan and conduct such operations. We can solve all of these problems by making a relatively small investment in funds, personnel, and training resources. Improving the USAF's language/psyops and intelligence capabilities, however, will require a greater understanding of the nature of LIC and an act of will on the part of the military leadership to effect a change in Air Force attitudes.
If the US military's problem is bias against political/human intelligence, then the UN has a bias against dealing with military intelligence at all, viewing covert collection of intelligence as incompatible with the peace keeping ethic. 16 The UN does not follow careful procedures to control classified documents or information, a deficiency that became evident in Somalia when UN authorities failed to secure-and even abandoned-classified US intelligence documents. 17
This episode not only demonstrates problems that can arise when a doctrinal vacuum exists but also provides another example of the need for reform in UN operations. Peace-enforcement operations require intelligence. If the UN wishes to play a central role, it will have to establish procedures for disseminating and safeguarding classified information, and these procedures will have to conform to US and NATO doctrine.
Long gone are the days when the primary means of observation for peace operations was a light infantryman in a bunker with binoculars. The ability of military airpower to provide timely, comprehensive surveillance and reconnaissance in peace operations remains vital to a peace operation's chances of success.
Peace-enforcement operations are not likely to provide a high-threat environment for military aircraft. Therefore, although expensive, high-tech equipment such as airborne warning and control system (AWACS) and joint surveillance and target attack radar system (JSTARS) aircraft will remain necessary for conventional war operations, the need to contain the costs of peace-enforcement operations will probably dictate the employment of lower-tech solutions whenever possible. Specifically, twin-turboprop light aircraft equipped to intercept emissions or employ side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) are inexpensive and able to operate from short, rough airfields. The US Army, for example, employs a modified version of the Beechcraft 200 twin turboprop (C-12 Guardrail) that has several hours of endurance and can operate from a 1,400-foot runway. 18 In places like Rwanda or Somalia, such an aircraft should be sufficient for accomplishing the mission.
Still more important is the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for surveillance of large areas. UAVs have undergone rapid evolution in the last 20 years and are likely to become the primary means of reconnaissance and surveillance in future peace operations. They are inexpensive and can operate from the field with a small ground crew.
Until recently, the drawbacks of UAVs have been their range, endurance, and payload, but improvements are rapidly overcoming these limitations. The Israelis, who are on the cutting edge of UAV development, already have UAVs with 14-hour (Searcher) and 16-hour (Vanguard) endurance. 19 Under development are UAVs like the Heron, which can carry a heavy payload and has an endurance of 24 hours. 20
NATO nations have long trained and planned for the defense of airfields in a conventional war. In the past, the USAF has usually operated from airfields that were developed, hardened, and defended by friendly host-nation personnel. In peace-enforcement operations, however, we shall have to operate from rough, forward airfields, normally with poor facilities and an openly hostile environment-or at least an insecure one.
As already mentioned, in Somalia between July and December 1992, some US aircraft flew relief supplies into airfields where armed Somalis posed a threat to both the airlifters and relief providers. 21 We need to develop doctrine to deal with the kinds of threats encountered during peace-enforcement or humanitarian operations. Under US doctrine , the Army has the mission of protecting USAF bases. This mission, however, receives low priority, and the Army seldom trains for it. At the same time, the USAF holds occasional exercises in air base defense but also tends to give this mission low priority.
The USAF needs to put considerably more effort and doctrinal thought into security for rough, forward airfields.
History shows that a considerable threat exists to aircraft and air bases in a LIC environment. During the Vietnam conflict, 393 American and allied aircraft were destroyed, and another 1,185 aircraft were damaged from ground attacks, normally from small, lightly armed ground units firing mortars and rockets or even from units raiding and leaving satchel charges. 22 In 1981, for example, a small Puerto Rican terrorist group sneaked into an Air National Guard installation in Puerto Rico, affixed satchel charges to 11 aircraft, and escaped undetected. The attack destroyed eight A-7 aircraft and damaged two. 23
In a LIC such as a peace-enforcement operation, the threat does not come from an enemy who is likely to overrun an air base or even put an air base out of action. Rather, it comes from groups prepared to wage an attrition campaign against foreign troops by conducting harassing attacks or destroying the occasional aircraft. Improvements in light weaponry increase the threat from small, hostile forces, which can inflict moderate damage to aircraft from outside an airfield perimeter. 24 Airfields and aircraft are especially lucrative targets for any faction willing to enhance its prestige by destroying a high-value target such as an aircraft.
The USAF needs to put considerably more effort and doctrinal thought into security for rough, forward airfields. The present, lightly armed, 44-man security police detachments used by the USAF as reaction forces and air base defense are not large enough or properly equipped to meet the current threat found in peace-enforcement operations. A RAND report proposes several practical solutions, including increasing the weapons training given to aircrews and ground personnel and adopting some of the ethos, organization, and tactics of the Royal Air Force (RAF) regiment. 25 A practical solution calls for establishing additional security police companies of 150 or more people, each equipped with light-armored vehicles and intelligence teams that would replace sensors, as well as a full array of ground surveillance equipment. This unit would specialize in security for rough, forward airfields. Such a properly trained and equipped force would be the first unit deployed in a peace-enforcement mission. In addition, the USAF should provide more light-weapons training to aircrews and ground personnel if they are to operate in insecure forward environments.
Attack-helicopter aviation and troop-lift aviation are essential in any operation that might include combat. In peace-enforcement operations, Army helicopter aviation has truly come into its own. Attack helicopters such as the Cobra and Apache allow our forces to respond quickly and with devastating firepower. US forces in Somalia found that attack helicopters provided both a strong deterrent and coercive capability. UN and military representatives who regularly negotiated with hostile clan or faction leaders made sure that a section of attack helicopters hovered nearby. According to Army after -action reports, "The impact of the AH-1 (Cobra) attack helicopter cannot be overstated. The psychological impact of helicopters in this low i ntensity style conflict established the air craft's value-frequently, without firing a shot." 26 Army analysis of helicopter operations in Somalia described the deterrent effect of these impressive weapons:
A major impact of attack helicopters in the Somalia AOR [area of responsibility] was their psychological effect. This, combined with the judicious use of the weapons system under the rules of engagement, combined to make the aircraft an enormously valuable combat multiplier for the commander. On several occasions, the mere presence of the attack helicopters served as a deterrent and caused crowds and vehicles to disperse. 27
The lesson from Somalia is clear: future UN multinational peace operations need to contain fewer light-infantry units and more Army helicopter aviation assets.
The coercive use of airpower in peace-enforcement operations is important. Operation Deny Flight in Yugoslavia, for example, has had some success. Opponents that seriously threaten multinational forces should know that we can and will use powerful air strikes to punish them and reduce their military capability. Although this use of combat aircraft can deter a faction from taking action-even forcing it to yield territory or make other concessions at the negotiating table-it cannot ensure the success of an operation in which the opponents are motivated to fight and take losses.
Some American airpower thinkers have taken the admittedly impressive performance of airpower in the Gulf War as evidence that airpower is now the predominant means of exerting military force. Modern military airpower is capable of all-weather, stealthy operations; enormous firepower; and precision targeting. All of these attributes are useful and important, but some airpower theorists have taken their analysis of Gulf War performance to extremes, arguing that airpower alone can force a hostile faction or state to conform to our dictates.
Carl Builder, a senior member of the RAND staff who specializes in strategy formulation and analysis and one of America's leading airpower theorists, is one such proponent. He points to the RAF's colonial constabulary role of the 1920s, which involved conducting police operations in Iraq primarily through the use of airpower, as a useful model for peace-enforcement operations. Builder argues that in the future, when effective airpower and space power combine with nonlethal weapons, "we might be able to find the tools to exploit our control [of] the air and space for controlling the use of the ground. If air and space power can be forged into means that can effectively deny people the use of the street for looting property or mobbing human victims, the dark shadow of one of the most vexing problems of the future will have been drawn back." 28
Although the idea of coercing factions or states without endangering our ground forces is attractive, Builder's analysis is flawed from the beginning. First, the use of airpower as a constabulary force in the 1920s was successful primarily because the RAF sought only to coerce Arab tribesmen into minor changes of behavior-specifically, to ensure that tribesmen paid their taxes, posed no major threat to the British-imposed colonial government, and reduced their banditry against caravans. In this case, the coercive use of airpower was successful, but the affected tribesmen were not asked to yield territory or even to change their tribal leadership beyond providing minimal allegiance to the colonial government. People are more susceptible to coercion by force when they have little motivation to resist the will and strength of an outside party. Part of the explanation of airpower's enormous impact upon Iraqi morale during the Gulf War is simply that few Iraqis wanted to invade Kuwait and that few Iraqi soldiers felt motivated to fight and die for the cause of Saddam Hussein's prestige.
There are numerous other instances, however, of applying coercive airpower on a massive scale against nations, groups, or factions that were highly motivated to resist. In particular, the United States had complete air superiority over Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, employing tremendous amounts of airpower to coerce the Vietcong and North Vietnamese into changing their behavior. We heavily bombed North Vietnam with a wide array of aerial weaponry, including some of the most advanced weaponry in our conventional arsenal. Indeed, US aircraft dropped over 4,000 precision-guided bombs on North Vietnam in 1972 and 1973 alone. The North Vietnamese, motivated by nation alism and ideology, were nevertheless willing to accept severe losses and continue the fight. The Vietnam War showed that overwhelming airpower cannot invariably ensure the success of the mission.
Numerous, large-scale Israeli air strikes against Southern Lebanon in the early 1980s caused significant personnel losses to the PLO and other groups yet engendered no curtailment of terrorist activity against Israel. 29 The large-scale use of airpower, including American F-15s and precision guided munitions (PGM), only produced the impression in the public that "something was being done." The failure of Russian airpower to coerce highly motivated Afghans who were prepared to fight and take losses is another recent example of the fallacy of Carl Builder's airpower constabulary model.
Finally, we have the example of Yugoslavia. There, the use of airpower in the Deliberate Force operation of the summer of 1995 played an important part in the campaign to coerce the Bosnian Serbs into a truce arrangement. However, we should note that the limited and carefully prosecuted air campaign against the Bosnian Serb targets was only one element of the pressure brought by the Western alliance against the Bosnian Serbs. Economic sanctions placed upon the Serbian Republic had a disastrous effect upon its economy, and by 1994 the Bosnian Serbs had become a liability to the Belgrade government, which began cutting aid to their cousins in Bosnia and pressuring them to negotiate. In 1995, the Croatian ground offensive in the Krajina Region, one of the most successful ground campaigns of the war, caused a major loss of territory for the Bosnian Serbs. The subsequent NATO air campaign finally pushed the Bosnian Serbs into accepting the same agreement that they had almost accepted the year before. Although the air campaign proved useful in getting a settlement, we should not overestimate its role. The ground offensive and sanctions on the Serbian Republic probably played a greater role than the air campaign in forcing an agreement.
In the long term, the use of airpower in Yugoslavia might ensure some minor concessions from the Yugoslavian factions. Airpower will also remain essential for the protection of US and NATO forces in Yugoslavia. However, the use of airpower in an attempt to compel any one faction to substantially disarm or to force any faction into major territorial concessions will most likely fail-and might even lead to an escalation of violence. All three groups in Bosnia are motivated by ethnic nationalism and by the conviction that their surrender on any major issue will lead to the victimization of their families. In fact, hatred is so strong in Yugoslavia that ethnic Serbs, convinced that Moslem government forces would desecrate the burial places of their dead, are exhuming bodies from Serbian graveyards in territory turned over to the Moslem-dominated government and are moving them to Serbian territory. 30 In Yugoslavia today, people prefer to give up their hometowns and villages rather than live under the control of another ethnic group. Consequently, even a massive application of force would probably never compel a significant number of people in Yugoslavia to live under a multiethnic government.
Peace-enforcement operations have had a poor record of success. The Congo, Lebanon from 1982 to 1984, and Somalia are certainly not model operations. In each case, the introduction of some UN or multinational force was supposed to help bring about peace within a fairly short period of time but failed to do so. In reality, if peace-enforcement missions are to be effective, they will have to be of long duration. For example, the West African states have maintained a multinational force in Liberia since 1990. Stability is only now slowly returning to Liberia-and the Economic Organization of West African States (ECOMOG) forces are still there.
In any case, the US is certainly being overly optimistic regarding Haiti. Although military intervention may have ended the rule of a dictatorship and tamped down the internal crisis for a short time, the long-term prognosis for Haiti gives no cause for optimism. Eighty percent of the Haitian population is illiterate, and 80 percent is unemployed. The last two elections in 1995 are scarcely indications that democracy has taken root in Haiti. The municipal elections held last year under the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide were so poorly organized that only a handful of the population was even able to vote, due to the lack of polling places and voting records. The presidential election of 17 December was poorly attended, with no more than 25 percent of the population taking part. 31 The assassination of 20 of President Aristide's opponents and the failure of Haitian authorities to cooperate in the murder investigations indicate that democracy is not returning to Haiti. 32 Before an impoverished country such as Haiti, with no history of democratic rule, can ever truly become a functioning nation, it will need a vast amount of aid and assistance over a period of several years.
Whenever a country has imploded, foreign troops should remain there for a long time to maintain order and retrain the indigenous forces. If there is to be a long-term solution, the country also needs assistance in rebuilding its basic infrastructure. Political leaders of developed nations should be open with the public; people deserve to know what a long-term solution will cost in terms of money and lives. This situation certainly applies to Bosnia. A one-year commitment of UN troops might tamp down some of the violence, but without costly, long-term investment in rebuilding the country, the present intervention likely will result in only a short-lived truce.
We can trace the lack of clear airpower doctrine for low-intensity conflict or subsets of LIC, such as peace enforcement, to the intellectual heritage of the Air Force. The USAF has a cultural tendency to view an enemy as a static system containing centers of gravity that serve as suitable targets for strategic attack. A model for strategic air warfare such as that of Col John Warden, which pictures all opponents as organized into five concentric rings (leadership, infrastructure, population, fielded forces, and government), might have limited use in planning a conventional war but can inhibit serious study of the dynamics inherent in a LIC such as peace enforcement. Dr Lewis Ware argues that this tendency toward simple modeling "minimizes the importance of all the intellectual, moral, and historical imponderables that characterize the nature of the enemy." 33
During the early 1990s, as a new edition of Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Doctrine of the United States Air Force, was being prepared, some USAF people favored excluding serious consideration of LIC in Air Force doctrine: "There were a significant number of military officers-many of them very senior-who believed, for one reason or another, that special attention to such `unconventional' strategies was ill-advised and perhaps counter-productive." 34 One Air Force officer involved in writing the new doctrine was advised by a very senior Air Force general that we should not be distracted by "those kind of wars" since we can always just "muddle through." 35
Indeed, this bias toward midlevel conventional wars and against LICs has even resulted in considerable confusion within American airpower doctrine. AFM 1-1 declares that "any enemy with the capacity to be a threat is likely to have strategic vulnerabilities susceptible to air attack." 36 However, it provides no historical or other proof to defend this assertion. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. US forces have often taken significant losses from enemies who are not susceptible to an air campaign against their strategic targets.
In Vietnam, the Vietcong employed mortars, rockets, and even satchel charges to destroy and damage hundreds of American aircraft on the ground throughout the course of the war, despite a massive application of aerial firepower against them. The presence of considerable American airpower in the form of the US Sixth Fleet could neither deter nor effectively retaliate against the Islamic faction that bombed the US headquarters in Beirut in October 1983, killing 300 US marines. Nor could the presence of US airpower do anything about the Somali faction that killed 18 American soldiers and wounded more than 80 in an ambush in Mogadishu in October 1993. The Israelis, using American aircraft and precision munitions, bombed PLO installations in Southern Lebanon for years, inflicting heavy casualties. The air campaign, however, did not reduce the PLO shelling or terrorist attacks out of Lebanon in the 1980s. Only direct political negotiations and political compromise were able to lessen hostilities. Airpower and air campaigns are not likely to have a decisive effect in a low-intensity conflict. 37
If the political leadership wishes to commit US forces to peace-enforcement missions, numerous changes will have to be made in doctrine, policy, force structure, and service culture. The Air Force and other branches of the US military will need more money and personnel-not less-in order to field the right kind of people and equipment for these operations. Additionally, our military will have to change several of its cultural attitudes and develop more officers capable of conducting psychological and intelligence operations in low-intensity conflicts. The US military has only begun to establish anything resembling a comprehensive doctrine for peace operations. At present, our doctrine contains considerably more information and text about the conduct of public affairs than about the conduct of humanitarian operations in peace operations. 38 Certainly, we need to place more emphasis on LIC operations.
As mentioned previously, the UN needs to make numerous reforms in the way it finances and controls peace operations. If the UN is unable to make some basic changes, it likely will lose its present credibility and effectiveness in conducting and overseeing peace operations. Although the UN, from the American perspective, is often very difficult to work with, it would be far more difficult for the US to conduct peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations without the support of a respected multinational political organization.
Implementing the reforms discussed in this article, improving our doctrine, changing our service culture, and obtaining the right equipment will assist us in conducting peace-enforcement operations. But all of these changes still will not guarantee long-term success. The ability to put fire and steel on target with great efficiency cannot substitute for a coherent strategy based upon a sound understanding of the culture and politics of the people we are fighting or defending. In peace enforcement, the military is only one part of an equation that includes nation building and developing long-term political solutions.
Airpower can bring quick and dramatic results and, for that reason, is popular with the American public and political leadership. However, problems and tensions that generate implosions of whole countries and civil wars such as those in Liberia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Haiti require long-term commitment of troops and significant resources if we desire anything resembling a permanent solution. The US, UN, NATO, and major economic powers have the resources and military forces, but they need to use them with greater efficiency in peace-enforcement operations. It remains to be seen whether Americans have the will to make the long-term commitment that peace-enforcement operations require.
Notes
1. Joint Pub 3-07, Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other than War, April 1993, chapter 4, page 1.
2. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peacekeeping: Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to the Statement Adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992 (New York: United Nations, 1992).
3. Donald M. Snow, Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace-Enforcement: The U.S. Role in the New International Order (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, February 1993), 4.
4. Aircraft like the De Havilland C-7 Caribou are able to operate out of assault landing strips of slightly over 1,000 feet. The C-7 can carry 8,740 pounds of cargo or 32 troops. With maximum cargo, the range is 242 miles. See Lt Col Thomas E. Eichhorst, Military Airlift: Turbulence, Evolution, and Promise for the Future (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, May 1991), 94-95.
5. Joint Warfighting Center, Joint Task Force Commander's Handbook for Peace Operations, February 1995, 23-24.
6. US airlift operations to Somalia began in August 1992 out of Mombasa, Kenya. By 20 September, 20 USAF C-130s were flying relief supplies into Somalia. See John L. Cirafici, Airhead Operations-Where AMC Delivers: The Linchpin of Rapid Force Projection (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1995), 21.
7. Col Charles Dunlap, USAF judge advocate general for the US task force in Somalia, interview with author, 16 June 1995. After the humanitarian operation in Somalia was expanded in December 1992, many Air Force officers and aircrews were reluctant to operate in conjunction with the International Red Cross, preferring to work with more cooperative NGOs.
8. F. M. Lorenz, "Law and Anarchy in Somalia," Parameters, Winter 1993-1994, 31-32.
9. James Tubbs, Beyond Gunboat Diplomacy: Forceful Applications of Airpower in Peace Enforcement Operations (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, June 1995), 51-52.
10. Ibid.
11. Dunlap interview.
12. Maj Harold E. Bullock, Peace by Committee: Command and Control Issues in Multinational Peace Enforcement Operations (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, February 1995), 59, 72 (footnote).
13. Col John Haseman, "The FAO: Soldier-Diplomat for the New World Order," Military Review 74, no. 9 (September 1994): 74-76.
14. Richard Riccardelli, "The Linguist Paradigm," Military Intelligence 20, no. 4 (October-December 1994): 14-17, especially 16.
15. David Shelton, "Intelligence Lessons Known and Revealed during Operation Restore Hope Somalia," Marine Corps Gazette 79, no. 2 (February 1995): 37-42, especially 41.
16. Hugh Smith, "Intelligence and UN Peacekeeping," Survival 36, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 183.
17. Stephen Caldwell, "Defense Intelligence Training: Changing to Better Support the Warfighter," Defense Intelligence Journal, Fall 1995, 92-93.
18. Leonard Howard-Flanders, ed., Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1995 (New York: Franklin Watts, 1995), 633-34.
19. E. R. Hooton and Kenneth Munson, eds., Jane's Battlefield Surveillance Systems, 6th ed. (Surrey, England: Jane's Information Group, 1994-1995), 211, 214.
20. Ibid., 213.
21. Cirafici, especially 21-27, on initial operations in Somalia.
22. David Shlapak and Alan Vick, Check Six Begins on the Ground: Responding to the Growing Ground Threat to US Air Force Bases (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1995), 30.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 49. This study posits that the most promising light-force technologies to threaten airfields include PGMs for mortars, large-caliber sniper rifles, man-portable surface-to-surface missiles, and fiber-optic guided missiles.
25. Ibid., 70-72.
26. US Army Forces Somalia, "Tenth Mountain Division After-Action Report," June 1993, chap. 14, page 20.
27. Ibid., 67.
28. Carl H. Builder, "Doctrinal Frontiers," Airpower Journal 9, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 12.
29. Lt Col Kenneth C. Schow, Jr., Falcons against the Jihad: Israeli Airpower and Coercive Diplomacy in Southern Lebanon (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, November 1995).
30. Bruce Nolan, "Now It's Serb against Serb," Time Magazine, 22 January 1996, 40-41.
31. "Haiti Votes," The Economist, 23 December 1995.
32. "Haitian Officials Hindered FBI Probe," Washington Times, 5 January 1996.
33. Dr Lewis Ware, "Some Observations of the Enemy as a System," Airpower Journal 9, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 87-93, especially 91.
34. Col Dennis Drew, USAF, Retired, "Air Theory, Air Force and Low-Intensity Conflict" (Unpublished monograph, USAF School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1995), 45.
35. Ibid.
36. AFM 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, vol. 1, March 1992, 12, paragraph 3-5a (5).
37. AFM 2-11, Foreign Internal Defense Operations, vol. 9, 3 November 1992, 10, paragraph 3-3b.
38. Joint Warfighting Center, Joint Task Force Commander's Handbook for Peace Operations, 28 February 1995. This document contains five pages on the public affairs aspect of peace-enforcement operations and one and one-half pages on the civil affairs/humanitarian operations conducted in a peace operation.
Contributor
Dr James S. Corum (MA, Brown University; MLitt, Oxford University; PhD, Queen’s University [Canada]) is professor of comparative military studies at the US Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. A major in the US Army Reserve, he has also taught at Queen’s University, Canada. Dr Corum is the author of The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and the German Military Reform (1992), The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940 (forthcoming), and numerous articles about military history and low-intensity conflict.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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