Nonmilitary Peacekeeping Tasks in Africa's Security Environment: Can the African Crisis Response Initiative Adapt

摘要

The end of the Cold War revealed a Second Tier of countries whose internal wars are the source of nearly all the violence and instability in the new international system. The result is the deployment of multidimensional peace operations around the world on a scale unimaginable before 1990. The US National Security Strategy's approach calls for fostering regional efforts to promote peace, particularly in areas where US national interests are marginal and the causes of conflict are deep rooted and complex. Such is the case in Sub-Saharan Africa, marked by as many as 20 violent conflicts raging throughout this decade. According to the Institute for National Strategic Studies, it is to Africa that US forces are most often deployed operationally, albeit generally on a small scale. Consonant with the National Security Strategy's preference for regional efforts to promote peace in such environments, in September 1996 the Clinton administration proposed the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) to enhance indigenous African capacity to conduct peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. Through ACRI, the United States offers military-to-military training and equipment to select African nations that seek to enhance their crisis-response capabilities. But under increasingly complex conditions, Africa's peacekeepers may face demands outside only traditional military functions. To develop an effective training program, ACRI planners must understand what those diverse operating duties may entail so they can appropriately prepare participating African militaries to respond to the challenging and difficult demands of their peacekeeping environment.