The Proper Role of the American Military
By Jason Vines
The terrorist attacks upon New York City and Washington, D.C.,
this past September have united Americans behind a war on terrorism (“Under” 10,
Simon 11). The first target in this war has been Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, but officials
at the Pentagon have said the war could expand to encompass assaults on other nations,
such as Iran and Iraq (“Under” 10). Such a war would greatly stretch American
military forces that are already feeling the strain of far-flung deployments all across
the globe (Inman 69-70, Langewiesche 54).
The most controversial of these deployments involve peacekeeping
missions (Krull 55). According to William Langewiesche, the American military presently
has peacekeepers assigned to the Sinai Peninsula, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and East
Timor (54). The missions of these peacekeepers differ from traditional military campaigns
of the past in that the peacekeepers have no predetermined enemy to fight (80). Instead, the peacekeepers’ orders are to
prevent fighting from occurring (80). Beyond that, the peacekeepers have no set goals;
they have no objectives to take, cities to seize, or lines to breach (80).
A negative aspect of peacekeeping missions is that they can last
for extended periods of time. For example, Langewiesche says the operation in Bosnia has
lasted for six years, and no end is in sight (52). During these extended peacekeeping
deployments, military units can lose some of their fighting edge. The experience of the
Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which contributes most of
the American forces involved in Bosnia (54), aptly demonstrates this deterioration.
Soldiers from this Brigade have difficulty maintaining even their skills with tank guns,
because the soldiers’ ordinary peacekeeping duties of patrolling and driving do not
provide outlets to practice traditional military skills (56).
A logical assumption, then, would be that if the military were
to cease peacekeeping operations, the overall readiness of the military to execute war
would increase. Also, as Langewiesche maintains, the morale of the troops who now must
serve in what they interpret as “police actions” would improve (66, 80).
Soldiers do not like murky missions with ambiguous objectives (66); they prefer campaigns
with distinct foes and clear goals (80).
The Gulf War of 1991 was an example of such a traditional
campaign. Don Nardo explains that the specific objective of that campaign–Operation
Desert Storm–was to force out of Kuwait the Iraqi Army (70), which had conquered
Kuwait on August 2, 1990 (2). To achieve this, a coalition the Americans organized began
to bomb Iraq on January 16, 1991 (56). Coalition warplanes, conducting the most massive
aerial attack in history, launched raids against Iraqi positions thousands of times per
day (56). After this air campaign, the Iraqis still remained in Kuwait (69), so on
February 23, 1991, the American coalition launched a ground assault against the Iraqi
military in order to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait (70). During
this endeavor, coalition soldiers used massive force and advanced technology to defeat
absolutely the Iraqi Army (Barry 22) and to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation within
100 hours (Powell 73). With the achievement of Operation Desert Storm’s objectives,
President George H. W. Bush ordered the ground campaign to stop on February 27, 1991 (72).
Another example of the clear campaign American soldiers tend to
prefer is World War II. This war started on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded
Poland, and the United States entered the war on December 7, 1941, after the Japanese
conducted a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. With its allies Great Britain and Soviet
Russia, the United States fought to defeat the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy,
three nations that intended to conquer the world and divide it amongst themselves. The
journalist William Shirer expounds that to defeat Germany and Italy, the Americans and the
British seized Axis holdings in North Africa (925, 933), took the Italian Peninsula (995),
then invaded and liberated Nazi-occupied Europe through initial landing zones in France
(1,037-1,039), while the Russians advanced from the East (1,085). Meanwhile, to defeat
Japan, the Americans employed a strategy of island hopping, where the Americans took
islands from the Japanese to establish a line of American bases in the Pacific leading to
Japan that would facilitate an invasion. But the Americans never had to invade Japan
because it surrendered after the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These traditional campaigns have clarity of goals and foes that
soldiers prefer, but such missions are not the sole purpose of the modern American
military. In order to promote global stability, the military has for a long time engaged
in operations to “extinguish small fires” across the globe (Langewiesche 56).
Peacekeeping deployments are part of that American agenda to reinforce global stability.
Nineteen years ago, on April 25, 1982, the Americans sent troops
to the Sinai Peninsula to help launch a peacekeeping operation (“American” 9).
The peacekeepers in Sinai–the Multinational Force and Observers, or MFO
(“What” 41)–“patrol a buffer zone between Israel and Egypt” and
“underwrite the Camp David accords between” them (“Now” 26). Israel
and Egypt both agreed to allow the establishment of the MFO (Maestrone B9). For the length
of its existence, the MFO has successfully helped to keep the peace between Egypt and
Israel (Ya’ari 30).
Six years ago, the United States deployed peacekeepers to Bosnia
(Thompson 54). This followed three years of futile diplomatic efforts on the part of
President William J. Clinton to end a war characterized by “concentration camps, mass
executions, ethnic cleansing, and the use of rape as calculated terror” (Morganthau
28). The plan for peacekeeping in Bosnia was to stop the fighting; to seize the weapons of
the Bosnian Serbs as per agreements in Dayton, Ohio; and to institute a policy of
“nation-building” and “free elections” (30). The first wave of
peacekeepers included 20,000 American soldiers, as well as other NATO troops, who deployed
all over Bosnia as part of the peacekeeping operation (28, 31). This operation, in which
only 4,000 American soldiers now participate, has resulted in the end of the ethnic
conflict within Bosnia (Langewiesche 54, 52, 80).
As the examples of Sinai and Bosnia show, peacekeeping missions
can have the desirable effects of stopping conflict and preventing death. An example of
the horrible circumstances that can develop when the United States decides not to send
peacekeepers is the genocide in Rwanda. Tom Masland writes that the genocide began when
Rwandan President Juvénal Hobyarimana died in a plane crash on April 6, 1994 (33).
Rwandan officials who witnessed the crash said a rocket hit the plane to bring it down,
and some Hutus believed the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel Tutsi group, was responsible
(33). This precipitated genocide (33) that, from April 1994 until July 1994 (Herbst 123),
took the lives of 800,000 people (“Rwanda”). The killing rate in the Rwandan
genocide was five times the death rate in the Nazi concentration camps
(“Other”). Hutus, both military troops and common citizens (Herbst 123), hunted
and slaughtered Tutsis with everything from sticks to machetes to grenades
(“Genocide” 45). Scenes of death repeated themselves all over Rwanda. Corpses
lay everywhere in forsaken towns and empty farms (“Killing” 47). In
Rwanda’s east, the decaying bodies of dead Tutsis filled the road to Tanzania
(“Genocide” 45). Down Rwanda’s Kagera River floated as many as 25 corpses
per hour (Roberts 10).
By the time the genocide was over, the Hutus had eliminated half
the Tutsi population (“Genocide” 45). American military forces could have
stopped the genocide in Rwanda with ease (Des Forges 141), but the United States delayed
sending peacekeepers to Rwanda because it feared embroiling itself in such an open-ended
mission (Hammer 46). Also, the American experience in Somalia, where locals had
“dragged [American soldiers] through the streets” (Roberts 11), made the United
States wary of deploying peacekeepers to Rwanda (“Killing” 47). The Clinton
administration opposed a peacekeeping mission in Rwanda so much that it resisted labeling
the killing in Rwanda as genocide because that would have required the United States to
intervene as per the terms of the 1949 convention on genocide (“Other”).
For the United States to have stood aside in the face of such
brutality was unethical. As the world’s only superpower, the United States has the
responsibility to safeguard innocent lives and to halt destructive conflicts when other
nations might not have the capability to do so. Therefore, the American military should
zealously pursue peacekeeping missions around the world.
Had America’s military never pursued peacekeeping missions,
the consequences for people on many other parts of the globe might have been tragic.
Without the MFO in the Sinai, Israel and Egypt might have once again gone to war. If the
United States and its NATO allies had not intervened in Bosnia, ethnic conflict could be
devastating that region right now, or else the Serbs might have almost completely
eliminated their opposing ethnic groups. On an occasion when the United States decided not
to send peacekeepers, genocide consumed Rwanda.
Even though the United States has now dedicated itself to a war
against terrorism, it should not abandon its peacekeeping agenda. Despite the fact that
the American military currently has thousands of troops engaged in peacekeeping operations
around the world, America and its allies have managed to topple swiftly and painlessly
Taliban control over Afghanistan. Obviously,
regardless of its vast overseas deployments, the United States can still accomplish its
military objectives with ease. Restricting the
American military to the defense of the United States might increase the morale of
American troops and their readiness to go to war, but such increases are not essential to
America’s ability to win military conflicts.
Works Cited
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Inman, Bobby R., et al. “Lessons from the Gulf War.”
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