1 Kevin DeAnna The United States Army and Stability Operations – Reform or Just Rhetoric? Thesis This paper will examine whether the United States Army has adopted nation building as a core mission and will incorporate it into its long term planning. The Army has performed a larger number of these missions in recent years and there is some evidence to suggest a change in attitude from within the institution. At the same time, there are significant barriers towards such a change. The thesis of this paper is that the balance of evidence suggests that the United States Army, despite some changes in doctrine and training, has not fundamentally reformed itself in terms of budget and force structure to credibly embrace nation building as a core mission. Definition The definition of nation building is a matter of some dispute. The term itself is not mentioned in Field Manual Operations 3-0, nor in FM 5-0 Army Planning and Orders Production or FM 6-0 Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces.i There is in fact no core definition or doctrine on nation building per se, although there is material on missions that incorporate these kinds of activities. The Army is tasked with providing support to civilian authorities as one of its Army Mission Essential Tasks as defined in the 2001 edition Operations 3-0 as part of Full Spectrum Operations, but this is not specifically defined and is subservient to the primary role of warfighting. However, the Army is required to be prepared for the related concept of “stability operations,” which are defined as those operations that “promote and protect U.S. national interests by influencing the threat, political, and information dimensions of the operational environment through a combination of peacetime development, cooperative activities, and coercive actions in response to crisis.”ii2 FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency goes into more detail, defining stability operations as “an overarching term encompassing various military missions, tasks, and activities conducted outside the United States in coordination with other instruments of national power to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. Forces engaged in stability operations establish, safeguard, or restore basic civil services.”iii For the purposes of this paper, nation building is defined as the non-military aspects of stability operations, including infrastructure reconstruction, providing governmental services, and policing. The goal of such operations is to change the host nation’s system of government and provide for the basic social and economic needs of the population in order to ensure social stability. The key distinction between nation building operations and traditional military operations is that nation building encompasses an explicitly governmental and political role that focuses on the civilian population of the host nation, whereas traditional military operations focus on the elimination or subjugation of a defined enemy force. There is a distinction between nation building and counterinsurgency (COIN). Counterinsurgency incorporates military elements as by definition it requires an insurgency that must be quelled, usually with at least some use of deadly force. Nation building takes place in the absence of military conflict. There is no “enemy” in nation building missions such as building roads or humanitarian relief. Nonetheless, the two concepts are closely related. Counterinsurgency expert Lt. Col John Nagl states that “Counterinsurgency is nation building in the face of armed opposition.”iv While not all nation building is done within the context of counterinsurgency, COIN as is practiced by the United States Army today always incorporates nation building. Therefore, the degree to which the United States Army has embraced counterinsurgency as a core mission to some extent reflects the degree to which it has adopted nation building as a core mission. While this paper focuses exclusively on nation building, it will incorporate evidence on counterinsurgency if it is relevant to the thesis.3 Why This Question is Important The question of whether the Army has embraced nation building is important for several reasons. First, as President Obama considers whether to deepen involvement in Afghanistan and the intervention in Iraq continues, a major consideration is whether the United States can build institutions like a national army and a stable government in those countries in order to allow for an American withdrawal. Such a decision hinges upon feedback from the Army as to whether nation building is a realistic or even legitimate goal and therefore the question has immediate political implications. If the Army is unable to reform in order to perform nation building, certain policy options will be discouraged by Army representatives in debate or doomed to failure if chosen by policymakers. Second, the question has implications for bureaucratic politics. The Army, as an institution, has a certain personality, notably described by Carl Builder in The Masks of War. The response of the United States Army to the demands of its contemporary missions highlights the ability of a bureaucracy to reform itself in response to demands for change from both external circumstances and internal critics. The research can help determine whether other military services or government departments can break with traditional roles in response to new missions and objectives. Third, the ability or inability of the Army to transform itself has implications on the rest of the government. Defense contractors, domestic political considerations, and input from both the Executive and Congress limit the ability of the Army to prepare for the missions that it either sees as most important or for the missions that it would prefer to perform. At the same time, the direction the Army takes in force distribution, weapons acquisition, and other internal policies has important political and economic consequences. Forces outside the Army that would be opposed to a transition to a nation building focus can be expected to try to stop any such reform. Because of the sheer size of the Army, any widespread change within the institution affects the country in general and demands attention. The4 adaptation of nation building as a core mission of