Accession Number:

ADA455013

Title:

Approaches to Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: The UK Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU) and US Office for the Coordinator of Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS)

Descriptive Note:

Master's thesis

Corporate Author:

KING'S COLL LONDON (UNITED KINGDOM)

Personal Author(s):

• Krieger, Miriam A.

Report Date:

2006-09-01

Pagination or Media Count:

56.0

Abstract:

In 2004, two separate but remarkably similar organizations were founded in the United Kingdom and United States the British Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit PCRU and the American Office for the Coordinator of Reconstruction and Stability SCRS. Both represent national strategic-level endeavors to do the following 1 institutionalize humanitarian-military coordination, and 2 provide preemptive planning capacity for peacebuilding scenarios. This paper first addresses the conditions that motivated the establishment of these organizations, focusing on the separation between warfighting and nation-building doctrines and communities that contributed to failure in post-Cold War peacekeeping. The author suggests that a new security paradigm revealed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, created an imperative for improved post-conflict peacebuilding. The paper then evaluates prospects for success of the PCRU and SCRS based upon their respective cultural and institutional histories, and analyzes the merit of national strategic-level peacebuilding capacity in principle, seeking the ideal locus of planning and coordinating functions. The author concludes that the need to replace the local-level ad hoc coordination that characterized post-conflict reconstruction operations throughout the 1990s with a more institutionalized framework is legitimate. However, what is more important than doing something is doing the right thing, and national strategic-level coordination organizations such as the PCRU and SCRS must re-align to maximize their effect.

Descriptors:

• *STABILIZATION
• *UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
• *POSTWAR OPERATIONS
• *PEACEKEEPING
• *ORGANIZATIONS
• *UNITED KINGDOM
• STABILITY
• MANAGEMENT PLANNING AND CONTROL
• THESES
• CULTURE
• AFGHANISTAN
• ORGANIZATIONAL REALIGNMENT
• DOCTRINE
• CIVILIAN PERSONNEL
• HISTORY
• GOVERNMENT(FOREIGN)
• MILITARY ASSISTANCE
• MILITARY PERSONNEL
• IRAQ

Subject Categories:

• Administration and Management
• Government and Political Science
• Unconventional Warfare

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE