PKSOI Publications

This issue will focus on articles generated from PKSOI's annual Peace & Stability Training and Education Workshop or PSOTEW. The PKSOI Director COL Greg Dewitt will also brief you on PKSOI's activities over the past three months as well as the upcoming major events and activities.

This publication has been prepared under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). It sets forth joint doctrine to govern the activities and performance of the Armed Forces of the United States in joint operations, and it provides considerations for military interaction with governmental and nongovernmental agencies, multinational forces, and other interorganizational partners.

As the United States winds down its stabilization operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of State (DOS) and U.S. Agency for International Development will face bureaucratic and political pressures to abandon their already modest reconstruction and stabilization (R&S) lines of effort in favor of more traditional diplomacy and development assistance priorities. This period of relative peace allow policy makers to reflect on past challenges to creating a “civilian surge” capacity and determining feasible, acceptable, and suitable ways and means to ensure robust civilian participation in future R&S operations.

This stability operations case study project emerged from a Joint Requirements Oversight Council task to examine how Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) institutions teach operational planning for steady-state peacekeeping and stability operations. The Joint Staff J-7 requested the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI), as the Joint Proponent for Peace and Stability Operations, accomplish a number of tasks to improve JPME curricula. As part of this effort, PKSOI is developing a series of professionally focused, historical case studies of successful joint peacekeeping and stability operations. The purpose of these case studies is to provide balanced analyses of the strategic conditions and guidance underlying each selected operation, and describe how military leaders successfully interpreted and implemented this guidance during the conduct of joint operations.

Foreword by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster (USA) Director, Army Capabilities Integration Center and Deputy Commanding General, Futures, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 

The case studies and analyses in this volume make clear that understanding the dynamics associated with illicit power and state weakness is essential to preventing or resolving armed conflict. These case studies also point out that confronting illicit power requires coping with political and human dynamics in complex, uncertain environments. People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor and interests.

The following CA award winning issues papers clearly illustrate many of the impending challenges for the CA force, and we recognize their innovative concepts and insight.
• First Place: "Renewed Relevance: CA Develop Human Networks for Effective Engagement," by Maj. Arnel P. David.
• Second Place: "From Green to Blue: U.S. Army Civil Affairs and International Police Engagement," by Capt. Rob Kobol, and "Civil Engagement as a Tool for Conflict Prevention: A Case Study," by Capt. Tammy Sloulin and Lt. Col. Steve Lewis.
• Third Place: "The Role of Civil Affairs in Counter-Unconventional Warfare," by Maj. Shafi Saiduddin.
• Fourth Place: "Civil Affairs Forces, U.S. Army Reserve, National Guard, and State Partnership Program: Is There Room for Engagement?" by Maj. David E. Leiva and Maj. John Nonnemaker.

The activities of private companies in combat operations and complex environments have traditionally drawn minimal attention when compared to their historic presence in such settings; yet in the last twenty years the services of these companies have grown to become a seemingly indispensable part of the modern western stabilization arsenal, as well as the subject of much media attention.

Author: Colonel Jason A. Kirk

DoD’s Geographic Combatant Commands (GCCs) have the imperative to assess their Theater Campaign Plans in response to DoD’s recent 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap. As a “case-study” relevant to all GCCs this paper analyzes the risks and opportunities facing U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in reviewing climate change impacts primarily in the Caribbean region of its Area of Operations.