New Armies from Old: Merging Competing Military Forces after Civil Wars

Foreword

fOrewOrd bruce russett This volume fills a serious gap in our understanding of civil wars and their possible resolution. Especially since the end of the Cold War, study of the causes and consequences of civil wars has become a huge academic and policy-wonk industry. This research delves into how and why civil wars end, why they often soon resume between the original combatants or new ones, the role of institution building after civil wars, civil–military relations, the disarmament and demobilization of combatants, and the integration of combatants into more heterogeneous postwar military structures—the particular subject on which this volume focuses. The United Nations and other international organizations, as well as national government agencies, frequently carry out retrospective examinations of their operations for “What lessons are to be learned?” studies. Some of those exercises have included aspects of military integration and security reform, more or less defined as here. But all too often such exercises focus on a just a few operations—or, if the sample is expanded, the basis for choosing examples may be opportunistic, unsystematic, and subject to intentional or more likely unintended bias in selecting cases. Similarly, the cases they consider may be very hard to compare if they were compiled by different writers, at different times, with different key assumptions and concepts. Until recently, much of the work on military integration has been mostly case specific, lacking an established comprehensive framework with which to systematically compare the costs and benefits of trying to carry out integration in ever-changing circumstances. Military integration has become accepted, over time, as a key element in negotiations to end civil wars. For this book the editor and his contributors have developed— through a process requiring a great deal of financial support, time, trial, and error—a careful and explicit framework for selecting and comparing their cases. This could not have been an easy task for area specialists from different intellectual and cultural backgrounds . In effect they were looking at the impact of experiments in peace-building carried out by individuals who were both agents and observers. The authors explore the role of support, by governments and international organizations as well as internal groups, of efforts to create integrated military forces. By doing the individual case studies within a common framework they can probe into micro-political behavior to support casual inferences. Relevant outcomes include whether major violence is resumed and how fast, and if not, whether “peace” was imposed by a faction that emerged as most powerful, or became a peace with democratic or at least somewhat liberal and pluralistic institutions. What are the limits as well as the possibilities of imposing a fOrewOrd xii policy like military integration, and what may be the costs to the international organizations and governments that try to carry them out? Aid for reconstruction and development is scarce, and military integration is not cheap; is it the best use of resources? Most of all, what are the costs incurred from these efforts by the people of these post–civil war states? I have followed this project from its inception. As usual with any serious academic venture—or for that matter life venture—the answers offered here are incomplete and contestable even between the contributors. The book is nonetheless a landmark in exploring terrain that has been undermapped and poorly understood, yet one that can offer great rewards to the explorers and to those many in the world who could greatly benefit from the riches evident here. Lessons-learned studies too easily wind up in bureaucratic oblivion. Maybe the analysts learned much, but policymakers learned little if anything. This book is different, and it deserves a far better reception. ...