Written by Col. Dan Smith USA (Ret.) and Rachel Stohl, Center for Defense Information -- April 2000

Introduction
In last year’s conference we suggested an inexorable link between individual, national, and international security. Our starting points for that discussion were Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What these three documents have in common is the fundamental proposition that human beings ought to be free of fear; that is, they have a right to be secure in their persons from psychological and physical intimidation of any kind. This places personal security very close to water, food, and shelter on the continuum of basic human needs.

Of course, no government at any level can guarantee complete freedom from fear. Individuals often conjure their own fears. Natural disasters such as earthquakes induce fear, particularly when the aftershocks roll in. But what those in government can do is to remove or ameliorate as quickly as possible those circumstances that frustrate the expectation that individuals ought to be in reasonable control of their destinies.

A traditional instrument available to a sovereign government to provide security for its citizens is the nation’s armed forces. These serve to defend the nation’s vital interests. Again, these are traditionally summarized as defending the territorial integrity of the nation and its way of life. But in the 21st century it may be necessary to modify this traditional approach, for more and more in today’s world protecting a way of life has moved well beyond the use of military power. In fact, the explosion of interlocking if not competing political, economic, social, and environmental interests are tying together as never before the fate of sovereign states. In turn the freedoms of citizens in an ever growing number of nations are becoming intertwined in such a way that individual security is becoming increasingly linked to the achievement of security at the international level through the reciprocal implementation of policies driven by national priorities.

What is Human Security?
Because human security can encompass a welter of ideas, it is useful to offer a definition. The term "human security" was first used in the 1993 United Nations Human Development Report. According to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, human security is “safety for people from both violent and non-violent threats.” In its broadest interpretation, this definition touches on the right of individuals to live, work and participate without fear in the social, political, and economic structures that affect their lives and livelihoods. At a meeting of the UN Peacekeeping Operations Committee held in February, 2000, Michel Duval, the Canadian representative, said "the wider issue of human security spans the full range of international relations, from conflict prevention to post-conflict remediation."

While many sovereign states foster these attributes, in truth the concept of human security stands the Westphalian system on its head in that it decrees that the individual (or the collection of individuals known as the nation) is supreme, and not the institutions of governance. (Note that the Preamble to the American Constitution opens with the phrase “We the people.”) But in failed or failing states, this relationship – indeed, even the Westphalian compact – is not recognized let alone enforced.

When prolonged, the inability of individuals to feel in charge of their destiny creates an atmosphere in which violence becomes a remedy. This, of course, all to readily increases the range and depth of fear and insecurity as a failing or failed state loses its monopoly over the instruments of coercion – which in the first instance are tied to the judiciary and organs of public order and ultimately, for many nations, the armed forces. To employ an image which many of us a mere decade ago might have considered an anachronism, what follows when this monopoly is lost is the rise of warlords who vie for control of basic human needs – water, food, shelter, and personal safety – through intimidation of those not part of their entourage. Nowhere has this been more apparent continuously than in Somalia. Somali warlords in the south have paralyzed society, isolating that part of the country and preventing the establishment of sustainable political, economic, and social ties. Basic needs go unmet, the political system is in shambles, and the judiciary, healthcare, and education systems are in ruins. In the north, where the warlords’ influence is more limited, citizens obtain the resources necessary to lead productive and peaceful lives.

The Need for Intervention
For the warlord, power in the form of physical control over an area is key, and the use of force to sustain that power is paramount. Only the threat or use of superior power can alter the situation. And since frequently this superior power must be sustained for substantial periods and must be able to exert itself sufficiently to perform tasks such as demilitarizing local armed groups, in the failed state this inevitably means outside intervention. The need to demilitarize society is key to both successful intervention and state strengthening.

If states and population are not effectively demilitarized, the results can be disastrous. Somalia's failure as a state was in part due to the uncontrolled access to the tools of violence, the mass quantities of weapons that flooded the country for several years. From M-16s to grenade launchers, Somali warlords and everyday civilians had and still have access to a limitless supply of weapons. These weapons were used effectively against U.S. Rangers during Operation Restore Hope in 1993 and left permanent scars on the international community. The fallout reversed the post-Cold War trend to use the United Nations as the preferred provider of international peacekeepers in failing or failed states.

Similarly, in Bosnia, the human security situation is tenuous at best. Former warring parties share an uneasy truce, supported by a force of international peacekeepers. Each side seems more than willing to renew the conflict if weapons become more readily available. Anecdotes and news reports out of Bosnia regularly recount seizures of weapons intended to bolster the capabilities of one side or another.

As has often been remarked, pressure for international intervention in conflict and post-conflict situations increased during the 1990s in part because the Cold War’s end brought with it the end of the client state system. But we suggest that the collapse of the inter-nation client state system in and of itself does not lead to the rampant intrastate chaos we see today. Rather, it is the lack of a functioning bureaucracy – including a fair and open public security regime and a coherent civil society – that leads to the warlordism of failed states. If this is the case, then in the 21st century we are likely to see more such examples in addition to those that we carry over into the new millennium – East Timor; Kosovo; and Bosnia, where outside military forces are in their fifth year of deployment; the Sudan; the former Zaire and other countries of Africa’s Great Lakes region; as well as Somalia, which the international community abandoned in the mid-1990s on the basis that the situation was too intractable and costly to resolve.

What was missing in Somalia, was absent for a long time in Bosnia, and has yet to be mustered in support of other failing nations, is the political will to aid communities and even individuals in reconstituting that sense of personal control over their immediate futures that is the essence of human security – that is, the expectation that one can go to bed or walk down a street without the likelihood of being assaulted or killed. President Clinton, in an interview on global security in the new millennium, said: "There has long been a temptation in many democratic nations to avoid the burdens of engagement beyond their borders, including in my own country. Some seem to feel that our prosperity and peace can be protected without either spending money or efforts aborad. But the principal lesson of the last 100 years is that we avoid such engagement at our peril....There may be times when any country will be compelled to act alone to protect vital interests, but it is in our interest to act in co-operation with others who share our goals."

Perhaps a residual – and wise – effect of the Westphalian system is caution within the international community, which tends to intervene only when a situation has spun so out of control that inaction has become immoral. States turn to intervention when public awareness – often dubbed the "CNN effect" – is heightened to outrage. In the last decade, the international community has witnessed repeated horrors of genocide, mass murder, and forced displacement.

- In Rwanda, the slaughter of almost a million people initially received no response.

-In Bosnia, only after the slaughter of Muslims in the UN safe haven of Srbrenica and the mortar attack on the Serajavo market that killed 64 people was effective force brought to bear in the form of the 50,000 strong Intervention Force led by NATO.

-In Kosovo, NATO acted because of the images of massacres, mass graves, and tens of thousands of displaced refugees. But even as the air war in Kosovo was being organized, the international community virtually ignored the horrors of the renewed violence in Sierra Leone because it was largely hidden from western TV cameras.

To a great extent, this inaction is due to a lack of an immediate threat to specific national interests. The other driving factor was the unwillingness of the international community to risk losing the lives of peacekeepers after the deaths of U.S. rangers in Somalia. The decision to intervene in Kosovo was driven by the perception of NATO countries that ethnic tension could all too suddenly upset the always fragile stability of Southeastern Europe – a heretofore unrecognized interpretation of what is meant by legitimate self-defense of national interests. Nonetheless, as we move further into the 21st century and the interactions between geographically separate nations become more pronounced, we may well see a gradual shift in the perception of what constitutes a vital national security interest. Crimes against humanity and gross, sustained violations of human and even political rights may be catalysts for future military interventions rather than occurrences that only produce hand-wringing and expressions of regret after the fact.

From this rather lengthy background, the question that emerges is: What might constitute a human security policy or doctrine that is acceptable to the majority of nations and – as importantly – one that they would be willing and able to implement with minimum delay when future Somalias and Bosnias arise, as they undoubtedly will? Put another way, is there an overarching concept of human security that might impel nations to use their military forces – and be willing to accept the risks this use entails – to reestablish this fundamental precondition for a functioning nation-state?

The Military and Humanitarian Intervention

The focus – or as the military says, the objective – of any human security doctrine must be the physical and psychology safety of the individual within the broader structures of the nation-state. One possible version of a human security doctrine can be gleaned from remarks made by President Clinton to U.S. troops participating in the Kosovo Force (KFOR) when he visited them in November, 1999: “[T]he biggest problem in the world today is the oldest problem of human society: people tend to be afraid of people who don't look like them, and don't worship God the way they do, and come from a different place. And when you're afraid of somebody, it's just a short step to disliking them. If you dislike them, it's a short step to hating them. If you hate them, it's a short step to dehumanizing them. And once you do that, you don't feel bad about killing them.”

Mr. Clinton is not saying that human insecurity stems from differences but from the interpretation of what the differences represent. If the differences are seen as threatening, as they are when people feel at risk in their homes and in their way of life, then the only way to redeem the situation is to reintroduce a sense of safety. How is this done? By what the military calls “presence” or “boots on the ground” – or in less militarized language, “the cop on the beat.” The human interaction that results from a legitimate authority seeing and being seen on a continuing basis is the only way that human security has a chance of being reclaimed in a failing or failed state.

To adequately deal with state failure, military interveners must be prepared to deal with the reasons states fail initially. These include economic disparity, political corruption, and the proliferation of weapons. Planning for military intervention has to include programs that can sufficiently stabilize conditions of daily existence that will permit non-military organizations to undertake the reconstruction of the civil society that has been destroyed. Police, the judiciary, other official government institutions, as well as political parties and specialized interest groups are essential to the creation of an environment of sustainable human security.

Because intervention in intrastate conflicts is predicated in the first instance on the breakdown of human security, military forces must institute measures that will facilitate the early restoration of individual security. While actual implementation will be tailored to specific circumstances, some general principles should be discernible which in turn ought to suggest program alterations that can provide a greater range of options for policy makers. The following reflect examples of specific variables that make intervention programs work or, at the very least, increase the likelihood of success.

First, before a conflict has ended or a tenuous situation is resolved, the international community must begin planning the intervention. Early planning is crucial in cultivating donor support – both money and forces for a mission. Once the conflict has ended, it is important to get peacekeepers on the ground as quickly as possible to facilitate the implementation of the post-conflict reconstruction process.

Second, the international community and force that will be present in the region must gain the trust of the citizens of the country to which they are deploying. Developing the mission early helps in cultivating and strengthening trust by the indigenous population for the upcoming mission. If the local population does not believe in the intentions of the peacekeeping force, or does not approve of its presence, the intervention will be stalled immediately and progress will be slow, if at all.

Third, once the planning has begun, it is important that interventions have a viable and well-defined mission. Most significantly, it is crucial to set some form of end state – as opposed to end date – at which point the intended goals will be achieved. Without well defined goals, a mission can be swallowed into open-ended commitment as light is by a cosmic black hole. Similarly, without a clearly defined division of labor, the military side of interventions can get mired in other duties for which the troops may not have been trained beforehand. To keep the rehabilitative process moving forward, intervention planning should include benchmarks with realistic target dates, and these benchmarks should be widely publicized in the target area. If the indigenous population believes that the presence of the peacekeepers is temporally limited and that they will have to shoulder the burden of governance once the intervention force departs, they may buy into the process to a greater extent and help push the process along.

Fourth, military interventions must have a component that focuses on the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants. If weapons are not collected, former combatants will hold onto them in preparation for a renewal of the conflict. If demobilized fighters are not taught necessary skills for reentering society as productive contributors, then they will have no stock in the reconstruction process. These kinds of programs must be developed in advance and implemented as rapidly as possible. If the intervention force waits too long to begin, as happened in Sierra Leone, the window of opportunity for progress will close. Combatants will be less willing to hand in their weapons if they have no incentives or see real prospects for peace.

Fifth, military interventions must address the initial reasons for a state’s failure. No two situations will be the same; no two populations will be identical. For example, an extensively ethnically heterogeneous population cannot be handled like a nearly homogeneous one. Intervention forces must be trained and sensitized to the specific needs of the population in the target area else they risk creating resistance from one or another group and, in extreme cases, be seen as favoring one side over all other. In the best of circumstances, this is all to easy to do for members of an intervention force, whether military or non-military. We must always be aware of the fact that, as in quantum physics, so in peace operations: there is no such entity as a neutral observer.

Experience has taught us that perceived neutrality is essential for a successful intervention. In Kosovo in February, 2000, French peacekeepers were replaced by British troops following accusations that the French were not adequately protecting ethnic Albanians and were favoring the Serbs. However, KFOR Commander General Klaus Reinhardt indicated that complaints of the French troops' behavior came from both Serbs and Albanians, which Reinhardt interpreted as an indication of the impartiality of the French. Nevertheless, the mere appearance of favoritism threatened severe if not irreparable harm to the effort to stabilize relationships sufficiently for community rebuilding to commence. Because trust is such an indispensable component of successful military interventions, if one or both (or all) sides do not trust the military force, little or no progress will be made in reconstituting the elements of civil society. Going back to the above list of qualities of a successful intervention, if one or both sides do not trust the military force, the intervention will have little effect.

Of course, effectiveness must be a part of being seen. To take past examples, the presence of allied troops on the ground in post-World War II Europe gave Europeans the necessary sense of physical security on which the Marshall plan could build and work its magic in jump-starting European economic and social recovery. The same thing was repeated on a smaller scale in post-1953 South Korea. Conversely, the inability of U.S. forces to provide security to South Vietnam’s civil society from the Viet Cong doomed the U.S. intervention. But all these examples, unlike Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, had in common a presence on the ground that constituted a shield behind which more or less normal life had a chance to resume. Moreover – and we would suggest that in Bosnia and Kosovo we are only now relearning this point – major powers or coalitions of powers cannot intervene in even a failing or failed state for any purpose without affecting, sometimes radically, the political and economic climates that spawned the need for intervention in the first place.

Getting Involved
Paradoxically, the neutrality of normal life is the stumbling block in humanitarian or human security operations. Classic warfighting is an institutionalized process. At each level, centralized planning, setting specific objectives (attacking vulnerabilities, seizing ground, destroying enemy centers of gravity), and executing the plan follow time-tested – dare we say bureaucratized – procedures including the actual application of violence. Normal life doesn’t enter into the calculation because normal life is not institutionalized.

Not, that is, until the mission becomes human security. Then the objective is to have the institution with the local monopoly over the means of violence be seen and interact as impartially as possible with all parties so that a sense of trust in the intervening force develops. Some have compared this process to the role of sheriff in the American West; perhaps a more apt metaphor is soccer referees armed with yellow and red cards through which they regulate the severity of physical contact between individuals. Five or six referees are enough to saturate the playing field and maintain general control of the game’s development. Similarly, although some states are hesitant to commit forces to peacekeeping operations, the actual number of forces necessary to make a meaningful difference may be quite small. Forces of tens of thousands as in Bosnia and Kosovo are not always necessary. The United Nations and independent analysts alike believe that the presence of only a few hundred more blue helmets in Rwanda in early 1994 would have prevented the genocide that occurred in April of that year.

If institutional presence is the first step toward reestablishing the conditions of mutual trust that underpins human security, the second involves carrying out activities similar to those of a modern day police force in any large urban city. In normal societies, the police and the judiciary are the backdrop for citizen interactions. In failed states, the goal of intervening military forces is to eventually fade into the background of daily life and eventually be replaced by an organization – call them police or carabiniere or gendarmes – that is actually trained to maintain human security. But to reach this stage, a force intervening where a human security structure does not exist or is freighted against one side must come in with significant power and a willingness to employ that power as needed so as to recapture the monopoly of the means of violence.

For “peace” operations, such mission tactics – coming in hard with both feet – might seem a contradiction to the desired mission results and do nothing to fill the underlying political vacuum – the collapse of human security – that precipitated the intervention in the first place. The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) has realized that minimizing the tension between the police and the local population is an important step in rebuilding a society after conflict.

As a result, DPKO has enhanced the training regimen for the civilian police components of peacekeeping missions. At the same time, the UN Secretariat is also attempting to solidify the relationship and responsibilities of civilian administrators and other civilian personnel within the post-conflict framework. DPKO is currently authorized to deploy 8,500 police officers for ongoing missions, including 4,718 for Kosovo, 2,057 for Bosnia, and 1,640 for East Timor. Member States, however, have only contributed 5,122 officers – meaning the missions are running with a shortfall of staff. Additionally, some police have been sent home because of poor training.

The February 2000 UN Peacekeeping Operations meeting considered the difficulty of finding qualified and effective civilian police for UN missions. As Japanese representative Motoshide Yoshikawa pointed out, "Two major issues made the recruitment of civilian police difficult. The first was a structural difficulty, which stemmed from the fact that contributing governments were required to take working police officers away from their jobs at home. The second issue concerned the appropriateness of entrusting the tasks of law enforcement to civilian police in a situation where sporadic hostilities still occurred and the disarmament and demobilization process had not yet been completed."

Mr. Yoshikawa’s comments highlights the difficulty of using non-military personnel to basically undertake a military and peace-building role. The tension between military and non-military forces has been significant in both Kosovo and East Timor. In both missions, the military was not designated as police and were therefore not trained for the police role. As a result, in both cases, the military saw itself as a back-up force for other agencies that came in, including the international police force that was to set up shop operationally and train and supervise an indigenous police force. But in both cases, the basis security situation remained too volatile for many months for the military to be able to fade into the background.

Limits of Intervention
Even with the best intentions, military interventions do not always have the desired result. Limits placed on aspects of particular missions can hinder the ability to achieve the goals and standards the mission was intended to accomplish. The self imposed restrictions of the mission in Bosnia, particularly the apparent decision by the Pentagon that U.S. forces would not track down and arrest individuals indicted for war crimes, has limited the effectiveness of the military presence in Bosnia. Indeed, Justice Richard Goldstone, a former member of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, believes this refusal to assist more forcefully in restoring public trust in the legal-judicial system has slowed regeneration of genuine economic and political structures. Ethnic-based cliques dominate local governments and discriminate against other ethnic groups. Estimates are that over a million people have not returned to their homes because neither the international military nor police forces will provide the requisite security.

In Kosovo, into which another international military force of 50,000 deployed after the end of the 78 day bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, recreating the conditions for human security will likely advance faster but only because the population is so overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian and Muslim, especially after the flight of most Serbs and Romas. Similarly, ethnically and religiously homogeneous East Timor will have fewer internal human security problems even though the Australian-led Intervention Force numbered only 7,500 and UNTAET will have 8,950 troops from 23 nations in East Timor and the Oecussi enclave in West Timor. The Security Council has authorized a mission of 10,790, comprising 8,950 troops, 200 military observers and 1,640 police to replace the current force led by Australia.

Recent attempts at military interventions in Africa have not been in place long enough to do an accurate analysis of their effectiveness, but even in the initial phases, the hardships faced by other missions are apparent in the two most recent UN approved missions in Africa. In Sierra Leone, the preliminary mission of UN and ECOMOG forces was unable to adequately deal with the plethora of problems in the country. Poverty, crime, and violence were rampant. To deal with the enormous numb er of issues, the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMIL) was doubled in size in February, 2000, from 6000 troops to 11,100. UNAMIL includes 260 military observers and 66 civilian police.

At the same time, the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) involves six outside countries fighting within Congo's borders. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict and hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes. Only recently has the United Nations reached agreement about the kind of military intervention needed . The UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) approved by the Security Council will be deployed only when Secretary-General Kofi Annan believes the warring parties will cooperate with the UN and the troops’ security can be ensured. This condition could mean that a military force will not enter the Congo for several months, putting many more lives at risk. When completed, the mission will consist of approximately 500 military observers and up to 5,000 troops. The Congo mission will also include two "child protection advisers" to ensure that children's rights are being protected.

The U.S. Example
Perhaps the difficulty in defining success in these types of military interventions is the origin of the Pentagon’s profound sense of unease, even resistance, to human security missions. In warfare troops are both physically and psychologically oriented against the enemy force. In human security operations, troops initially are physically oriented against the contending side or sides but must psychologically be neutral. To do otherwise risks accentuating the debilitating distrust that the contending parties already harbor and may serve to redirect those attitudes toward the intervening force, thereby prolonging the presence of that force and increasing the risks. In short, impartial firmness as well as dignity and respect must be accorded all, just what we expect our local policeman to show us as he or she walks down the street.

The problem is that the American tradition of military operations – indeed the general military tradition of modern Western society – presents a mixed modus operandi. The two World Wars of the 20th Century highlight the American position. Both were total wars fought with the single-minded objective of winning by physically destroying the enemy. But none of the remaining four major engagements involving U.S. forces in the 1900s – Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Allied Force – were viewed in the same light even at their inception. In the first two, the means were limited in terms of conceding sanctuaries for the enemy. In all four the objective was limited – it was not unconditional surrender. In three of the four, the U.S. is now tied down in essentially a long-term policing role. (Indeed, Korea was called a policing action.) This isn’t what our military leaders say is the purpose of armed forces.

Secondly, the western and particularly the American tradition generally excludes military involvement in domestic affairs. In the Old West the cavalry didn’t police the towns but the spaces between towns and beyond the line of settlements – what was quaintly referred to as Indian country. In the early 20th century the army was used to chase Pancho Villa and other cross-border raiders. Even the National Guard is used only as a support or backup force in the domestic arena.

The New World Order
If the notion of protecting or insuring human security (as distinct from institutions) is not part of the traditional mission statement of military forces, should this concept become an explicit part of their mission? Whether explicitly stated or not, should regular military forces be employed for human security missions or should separate, well armed constabulary units be created to fulfill this need?

Before addressing these questions directly, it might be useful to reexamine what roles the military is expected to play in the new millennium’s new world order.

In December 1999 President Clinton issued the latest U.S. National Security Strategy. In it he differentiates national interests as vital, important, and “humanitarian and other.” If a vital interest such as the physical integrity of the state is threatened, military forces are the appropriate response. In the case of important but not vital interests, the National Security Strategy says that “military forces should only be used if they advance U.S. interests, they are likely to accomplish their objectives, the costs and risks...are commensurate with the interests at stake, and ...non-military means are incapable of achieving our objective.” With humanitarian and other interests, the Strategy says that the focus will be on the “unique capabilities and resources” rather than the “combat power” of the military when units are called upon to assist. Significantly, under this heading the Strategy says that military forces will be used when there is a need “to establish the preconditions necessary for effective application of other instruments of national power.” This clearly invites the employment of military forces in those instances in which traditional diplomacy, public diplomacy, and international assistance are unable to function because the human security environment is missing.

What seems to undergird the role of military forces in this third arena of interests is the growing presumption that the spread of western constitutional democracy may soon be classed as a vital national interest instead of just an important one. An Administration mantra is that the spread of democracy and open market economies reduce the chances of another nation threatening America’s territory and promote the economic well-being of America – both of which are vital interests. But the focus of constitutional democracy is the protection of the individual from coercion by the state or by another individual without some prior independent and fair procedure we call the rule of law as distinct from the rule by law. Thus if protecting America’s vital interests involves establishing conditions in which democracy can flourish, it seems logical that in failed or failing states where human security – the freedom from fear of coercion – is absent, employing military forces is not merely an additional or auxiliary duty but is a significant military mission.

At the same time, of course, the other elements of national and international power must be marshaled to complement and gradually replace military forces at a some point – the seemingly ever illusive “end state.” But in order to reach this hand-over point the military must have been able to impose restrictions on those groups wielding or planning to wield unauthorized and unchecked coercion. Unless this end state can be reached, those non-military institutions and organizations which in a normal state manage and guarantee the rule of law will not evolve. And it is in the absence of such impartial state organs that nominal democracies tilt to centralized regimes and eventually single party if not dictatorial rule.

To deal with the challenges faced by governments around the world to prevent the emergence or re-emergence of undemocratic and human rights abusing regimes, governments are embracing a new international diplomatic structure. Gone are the days of two, or even one, hegemonic powers. Instead, major international decisions are made with increasing reliance on the efforts middle sized governments such as Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway. These countries have led international efforts to create new treaties, protect the rights of individuals and states, and provide international aid. Canada pushed the Ottawa Landmines Treaty out of a stalemated United Nations into reality. Similar efforts have taken place in negotiating the International Criminal Court and the international ban on the use of child soldiers.

In the same vein, then, these medium sized countries have an increasingly important role in organizing, deploying, and participating in humanitarian interventions. The United States will not be the world’s policeman and has proved inconsistent in using its moral force. The resulting vacuum is already being filled by middle sized powers such as Australia, which recently took the lead on two missions – in Cambodia and East Timor – and Nigeria, which has been the primary peacekeeping force in West Africa (Sierra Leone and Liberia) through its role in ECOMOG.

The changing nature of military intervention – from interstate to intrastate – had the unfortunate effect of separating the objectives of protecting individuals or “power minorities” and reconstituting and strengthening the organs of governance whose existence or collapse led to the state’s failure. Bringing the two back together is increasingly difficult. Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has succinctly articulated the challenge when the intervention forces have different governing authorities and end states. “'Soft measures' alone, such as international presence through humanitarian agencies, are essential, but may not always be sufficient. 'Hard' measures, such as international military intervention, appear equally insufficient alone to prevent war, or to create a safe environment for those who want to return home after a conflict has ended. The security of people must not only be ensured but also be sustained.” And we would add, it must be sustained until the new local organs of government are seen as functioning efficiently and impartially.

At the grassroots level, this means especially the whole structure of a fair and equitable legal structure. As Ole Peter Kolby, the Norwegian representative to the February 2000 UN Peacekeeping Operations Committee meeting, remarked: "a professional police force was of little value without a judiciary and penal system and a locally recognized legal code."

This conjunction of institutions and the promise of individual security brings to mind the question raised by Samuel Huntington but in a broader sense: is there such a divergence in customs and mores of civilizations that intervention forces (and development donors) risk failure by expecting results to mirror their experiences? Many cultures view individuals relationally – that is, the very worth and value of the individual rests on his or her role in and contribution to the community. As priest-sociologist Diarmud O’Murchu has observed, “The notion of individual uniqueness is a relatively recent one in human evolution. Indeed, it is very much a by-product of industrial society when personal competence and the ability to compete became core values.” For societies that are still essentially agrarian, the gap in perceptions and expectations – and therefore institutions – is rapidly becoming a chasm as the information society takes hold in the developed world.

Yet even here contradictions abound. The military itself is a highly structured organization whose essential wartime mission is to produce chaos. But in failed states chaos already exists. The objective in these instances is to ameliorate chaos by disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating combatants – recreating the web of relationships on which human security depends. This is a paradigm shift in what has been called the “American way of war” which has been the theme of numerous analyses.

And perhaps this is the point: there is no single “American way of war.” If this is true, then it makes all the more imperative the ability to field sufficient forces sufficiently trained to both bring on and to eliminate chaos. We already have Special Forces which incorporate the potential to do both, but as presently constituted the Special Forces are not yet the institutional equal of conventional forces. America may have to field and support units whose primary mission is human security. This in fact might make any decision to intervene in human security situations less contentious.

In the future, we will most likely see a redefinition of what constitutes a legitimate military mission. This definition will be broadened to provide human security as a substratum of national security for countries with vital interest or crimes against humanity.

To return to a point made earlier, limiting the objectives of war or the means of waging war is a political, not a military decision, one that reverses Clausewitz’s dictum. As Michael Walzer notes, "The transformation of war into a political struggle has as its prior condition the restraint of war as a military struggle." This suggests an a priori decision that the rapid reconstitution of human security is now or now ought to be a fundamental element in the decision for external forces to intervene. If this is so, the question then becomes one of balancing the need to defeat an enemy with the need to provide human security within the zone of conflict itself. The seeming failure to consider human security needs is the root of the criticism of NATO actions in Kosovo where the overriding concern of the 78 day air campaign appeared to be avoiding losses among the pilots than with stopping the actions of the federal Yugoslav military, paramilitary, and internal security forces. And in part this same perception is driving the independent study of NATO’s Kosovo policy by the Swedish government. Richard Goldstone, who is heading the study, believes that it is “a form of civil society judging what governments do, and [all] governments...should be judged.” After all, in deciding to intervene in the former Yugoslavia Western nations themselves have judged Belgrade’s actions.

Conclusion
The balancing of the war-winning and human security goals of limiting wars is too important to leave to either the politicians or to the military, particularly as the numbers of civilian leaders with wartime experience declines. This fact in itself ought to be a yellow if not a red flag (to return to the soccer analogy) for the military, a warning that their role is not to arbitrarily set conditions affecting the use of force but to advise on how best force may be used to achieve foreign policy goals. As noted by the authors of the Triangle Institute’s “Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society,” the traditional understanding of the Western tradition of civil-military relations precludes the military from advocating or insisting on a course of action or, conversely, so circumscribing the conditions for taking action that the nation and its civilian leaders, shorn of realistic alternatives, are paralyzed.

The world has come far on the road to ending interstate conflict but has only begun the journey down the path of reining in intrastate violence, especially violence initiated or condoned by a government against a segment of its citizens. British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes that promoting global security in an ever-changing, politically dynamic world will be one of the biggest challenges in the next century . Blair has said: "How we consign the evil of two world wars, ethnic cleansing and genocide to the millennium we leave behind - how we ensure we create a more stable and just world - how we deal with the armed conflicts that disrupt the lives and security of millions.”

There is historical wisdom in the proverb that during peace one must prepare for war. It is equally true, however, that “the restraint of war is the beginning of peace." As the new century begins, governments must balance the thin line between war and peace with caution. James Orbinski, President of the Medecins sans Frontieres International Council (winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize), said of human security “The challenge in the new millennium will be to clarify the boundary between political interventions and humanitarian assistance. Governments’ new-found love of humanitarian principles must not be allowed to smother the very people they seek to protect." And in the 21st century that clarification and restraint must become an integral consideration if not an actual aspect of any and all preparations for the wars of peace.

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