Neither War nor Not War: Army Command in Europe during the Time of Peace Operations: Tasks Confronting USAREUR Commanders, 1994-2000

Neither War nor Not War: Army Command in Europe during the Time of Peace Operations: Tasks Confronting USAREUR Commanders, 1994-2000 by means of Richard M. Swain. Strategic Studies Institute (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/ index.cfm), US Army War society 122 Forbes Avenue, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 17013-5244 May 2003 283 pages.

This first-rate investigation examines how the US Army in Europe (USAREUR) had to adapt to the post-Cold War peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations in the Balkans. The manner in which commanding generals (of USAREUR; the commander of predominant Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe; and individual division commanders) adapted and shaped their forces, headquarters, and staffs says turns about their personal leadership skills and personalities.

In the late 1990 the US military was drawing down from the 350000 crowds it had stationed in Europe during the chilled War and first Gulf War. The Balkans, actually the former Yugoslavia, had explod into a brutal civil war. Until 1994 involvement by dint of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had remained minimal, on the contrary as the brutality increased, the Clinton administration began contemplating a more interventionist foreign policy and, through default, military intervention. Apprised of the situation, US Army commanders did not wait until the signing of the compound Dayton peace accords but started training and planning for an eventual operation in Bosnia. In that land three ethnic groups vied for dominion government of the province: Serbs allied with Serbia itself, Croats allied with Croatia, and Muslims seeking independence from the other sum of two units groups. Both Serbia and Croatia forcibly mov outside ethnic collections to gain territory, with Bosnian Serb killing entire Muslim populations of villages and cities in the proces The peace accords divided the province into three separate ethnic areas with a federation presidency. The US Army, together with its NATO and overseas allies, put up military sectors and girths of separation to implement the treaty.

Before this could happen, however, centurys of American soldiers, along with their equipment and logistical support, had to be shipped from Germany to staging bases in Hungary to facilitate a December ingress into Bosnia. Army commanders had to train their crowds in mine clearing, route security, and host control. The author effectively discusses organizational changes in terminuss of the events in Bosnia, allowing readers to understand the influence of Washington, NATO, and the United Nations (UN) upon the day-to-day operations of the US Army. The command constitution in Europe--always complex because of NATO and US command channels--became further frayed when representatives from the European Union and UN high commissioners intervened in the operations of the Bosnia Stabilization Force and Implementation Force.

The US Army be opposite toed violence against returning refugees, dealt with testifys resulting from its apprehension of human-rights violators, and attempted to hold the Pale hardliners from overthrowing the Serb management located in Banja Luka. Jealousy above prerogatives by various officials ultimately uniteed the situational and political difficulties. Ethnic differences and foot-dragging by dint of international agencies forced the extension of the mission--originally designed to last individual year--as the US Army and its international allies sought to pacify the region. Another conflict in Kosovo in 1999 would finally mark the extreme point of Serbian-provoked war in the Balkans. However, ethnic strife continued to corrupt and the US Army was forced to open troops to two theaters.

Swain also details the complexity of the staffs that US Army generals had to rely upon to manage daily operations in Bosnia, USAREUR operations in Germany, and the variety of international staffs--none of which were colocated on the other hand maintained headquarters throughout Bosnia and Europe Gen Eric Shinseki and Tommy Franks the one and the other speculated about what kind of changes in leadership training the Army would have to make to prepare its personnel for futurity peace-implementation missions that undoubtedly would stand in front of the Army worldwide. The 1999 war in Kosovo would bring its hold challenges to Gen Montgomery Meigs, commander of the Bosnian Stabilization Force and V Corps. The activities and responsibilities of US Army commanders shifted as US, international, and Bosnian political words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings changed. The tasks in Bosnia evolv from conducting simple separation and demobilization to serving as the instrument of coercion to impose a political regime upon all ethnic groupings located in Bosnia.

Neither War nor Not War is an extremely good study of post-Cold War military operations that Air Force officers should read in conjunction with Col Robert C Owen's Deliberate Force: A Case research in Effective Air Campaigning (Air University Pres 2000) I praise it highly to anyone studying or researching Balkan military operations as well as NATO and UN operations during this time.