Countering Others' Insurgencies: Understanding U.S. Small-Footprint Interventions in Local Context.

摘要

With the United States exhausted by more than a decade of war and facing severe fiscal limitations, decisionmakers are striving to place American defense policy on a more sustainable footing. Central to this effort is a commitment to work through partner nations wherever possible, providing support to countries with which the United States shares interests or values while also ensuring that the primary responsibility for these nations' security remains their own. This emphasis on partnership strategies is particularly central to U.S. efforts to manage the security externalities of fragile and conflict- affected states. Such states increase the risk of spillover conflicts throughout the region in which they occur, damage the economies of neighboring states, contribute to flourishing transnational crime networks, and foster transnational terrorism. When pursuing partnerships with regimes that are fighting insurgencies, however, the likelihood of success using such small- footprint approaches is inextricably bound with the local context and particularly the nature of the partner government. Too often the importance of local context is minimized in discussions of U.S. security strategy, particularly in relation to the problems of fragile states. Proponents of small- footprint and indirect approaches overwhelmingly cite as models the recent U.S. operations in the Philippines and Colombia. This study seeks to understand the extent to which the 'success stories' of U.S. partnerships, such as those with the Philippines and Colombia, can be generalized, or phrased differently, to understand the conditions under which the small-footprint model is likely to succeed in bringing an end to an insurgency that both the United States and its partner seek to combat. It explores how local circumstances shape the 'art of the possible' in such partnerships and how the United States can best maximize the potential and minimize the risks of these often uneasy alliances.