Who Should Be the Peacekeepers?

This document addresses what kind of soldier should he sent on peacekeeping operations, what kind of training they should have, and how they could be utilized in multi-national, multi-actor interventions. The best peacekeeping force includes participation from a mix of nations and a mix of peacekeeping styles. This includes forces from wealthy and poor nations, from aggressive or former colonizing countries and from the never colonizing and neutral countries. No one peacekeeping style is best each are suitable for different reasons and address different needs in the country, and all can serve as a check and balance system on extreme behavior in any direction. Within the US military, peacekeeping forces should include a heavy concentration of human relations personnel, including reservists who are especially valuable for civil-military relations. Soldiers originally from the peacekeeping area should always be activated and deployed, and again, a mix by race, gender, MOS, unit, and service acts as a check and balance system against groupthink or extreme behavior. The current US military systems for collecting, coordinating, and disseminating human relations information in the field are inadequate and need to be centralized. The US military should utilize area scholars, anthropologists, immigrant communities, and relief workers as cultural resources for the regions in which they are deployed. The individual soldier needs to understand the political, cultural, and social context and basic conflict management strategies as well as any officer does. Soldiers are often in positions to act as informal ambassadors or make decisions that could have international repercussions.