International Interventions and their comparability

...not a bad idea, all told, should the alternative be allowing them to fall into the wrong hands.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Russians throughout history generally do it on their own when their leaders get that bad (unless there are extenuating circumstances, like WWII), so it wouldn't require NATO. Besides, NATO might attempt to put in another Yeltsin, which might cause just as many problems via sheer ineptitude.

In theory yes, but there is a reason the Indians themselves haven't tried. The Pakistan Army may outright suck at offense, but their defense is not to be sneezed at. And their Air Force is pretty good.

In other words, that would be a fight that would make Afghanistan and Iraq TOGETHER a pale pale shadow of what would be required in Pakistan.

edited 13th Apr '14 10:53:51 AM by FFShinra

Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Northern Ireland has reasonable cultural stability now, as I believe does Bosnia (by reasonable I mean that the majority of people don't want to kill their neighbour for being a different culture), but the Kurdish bits of Turkey don't. You can bring a level of cultural stability if it's done properly, but it's not easy or certain.

Now the places where the border lines were drawn pretty much randomly are generally going to be to hard a task for anyone willing to try it and should be broken up, but that's not everywhere.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Neither Northern Ireland or Bosnia fit what I'm talking about though. In terms of borders, both are based on historical, social, and cultural realities. And in the case of the former, it's not sovereign, which changes the dynamics quite a bit.

Again, look at the examples I gave initially: Central African Republic, Tajikistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those nations are only so on paper. They'd be better off redrawn (not necessarily destroyed either, but maybe expanded or contracted). It's not an easy job, but it lasts longer and takes far less time and effort to do.

O I'll agree on those three examples (well I'm taking your word on Tajikistan), most of Africa needs redrawing to be honest. But you seemed to be asserting that all states where force needs to be used to hold the place together long enough for cultural stability to be bought about should be broken up, which is what I disagree with.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

That wasn't my intention to give off that vibe. All states require force. Artificial states require a level of force beyond what is usually acceptable in one way or another.

That makes sense, the kind of states I meant by states that need force to hold them together are places like Bosnia, where force had to be used to hold things together for a while.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

I thought Bosnia doesn't have an army? If it's a foreign force holding it together still, I'd argue maybe the situation should come under some kind of review.

They integrated the Srpska and the Bosnian armies in 2005. Bosnia has a rather clever decentralized power-sharing agreement; whereby the Republika Srpska still exists as a separate federal unit. It's pretty confusing, and I can't think of any immediate historical parallels. They seem to be doing okay-ish for themselves, though there's been some recent unrest, mostly on economic lines.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Huh. Well the more you know...

It's still got some troops, but it's almost done. The EU police mission finished in 2012, IFOR was 54,000 troops at its height but became SFOR in 96, SFOR had reduced its numbers to 7,000 troops by 2004 when it became EUFOR Althea, which as of 2012 was down to 900 troops.

So it's almost done, but not just yet.

edited 13th Apr '14 1:01:08 PM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Reving this thread so as to move over the discussion from the US politics thread about the invasion of Iraq and the state building attempt that followed.

The thing to remember for Iraq is that it was intended as an in out rush job, the US wanted to withdraw within a matter of months, thus it never Turkey commited the kind of forces needed for a stabilisation mission on a nation of that size, it takes a lot of troops to stabilise a nation like that, the US has said troops and commited them under Obama’s surge, but it was to late by that point and the surge didn’t last long enough.

Nation buildings takes solid numbers over a long times, it’s mesured in decades, not months.

A good book on nation building is the one Paddy Ashdown (a UK political and UN high commissioner for Bosnia) did called Swords and Ploughshares.

Edited by Silasw on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:09:23 PM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

And that effected Afghanistan because resources that could've been used in it were instead rerouted to Iraq.

Honestly the biggest lesson to be gotten from Iraq and Afghanistan are that for a democracy occupations and reconstructions are major undertakings that should never be assumed to be cheap or quick.

Also that's interesting, I'm going to add Swords and Ploughshare to my wishlist.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 20th 2018 at 8:01:48 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Ashdown makes mention of one of the big things that complicates most interventions, national red cards, any long occupation is best down by a mix of nations each contributing troops, but national governments don’t all want their troops doing all the things. This specifically caused him issues in Bosnia, as when they tried to round up a Serbian war criminal he slipped past them, because one of the roads wasn’t blocked, why? Because “Germans don’t do roadblocks”.

He actully does talk a bit about either Afghanistan or Iraq (I think Iraq) drawing needed leadership out of Bosnia, that’s the thing, we think of the US doing just Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, the stablsiaitosn forces in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo and probably others are all forgotten.

Edited by Silasw on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:11:04 PM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Since they may have missed it in the politics thread I'm just going to page ~Alityros The Philosopher here directly.

In relation to their last post on the politics thread, I sincerely don't get this logic.

Are they saying someone forced into the military because of an existential threat would do a better job than someone who willingly dedicated themselves to it as a career?

I would think that conscripts stent fighting for defense, they're fighting not to die.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:24:26 AM

I'm just going to respond to this whole thing all at once; This is a militarily illiterate position on the issue.

Conscripts are a difficult proposition for any military force to work with. Even during the Vietnam War, one famous in recent memory for conscription, almost no conscripts were sent to the front lines. In the best of times conscripts are unreliable and poorly-motivated, in more serious situations they can be an active detriment to their teammates. This is particularly true in modern war, which has a much higher "skill threshold" than historic conflicts.

This is something that was observed directly in Vietnam. The performance of conscripted units was compared studiously to the performance of volunteer units, and volunteer units consistently not only completed combat objectives more often but had lower rates of PTSD and better cohesion. In the Middle East more recently, we've lucked out in that volunteers are more likely to come back for additional tours, and less likely to shoot civilians.

The issue with our military engagements in the Middle East, as I mentioned in the previous thread, is that they're like trying to put in a nail with a jackhammer. Our military wasn't (and isn't) prepared for a long-term policing action. It's certainly not prepared for unilateral nation building. In Afghanistan, the military had so little idea of what to do after the Taliban government was wiped out in 2002 that they simply left units where they were, with the objective of "keeping society functioning". The US military does many things very well, but most of those things are related to destroying opponents. When faced with an opponent that can't be destroyed through any application of conventional force it starts to run into issues.

They should have sent a poet.

sgamer82, you wrote:

Not “a better job”, a “more than good enough job” rather, and they would be available in higher numbers.

You added:
I would think that if the war is one the conscripts deem a defensive one, they will fight for defence and be motivated accordingly, while if not they will fight not to die (whether at the enemy’s hand or at their own military’s), and be motivated accordingly.

Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend

I wouldn't think conscripts would care if a given war is offensive or defensive. They aren't there because they want to be, and I'm inclined to agree with that volunteers are preferable. Your post suggests they're more valuable for their numbers.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:47:06 AM

archonspeaks, in your #41 page 2 you wrote:

Would the Vietnam War be one you’d term, in our own words, as one with a clear motivator (such as defending one’s people and home) or one of a more esoteric mission?

Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend

It's not such an easy divide.

The issue with conscripts, like you've pointed out, is that they're really only motivated by a few things. Their home being under direct attack, their family being under direct attack, stuff like that.

Volunteers are more likely to be able to handle the ever-flexible mission objectives that characterize modern war. They're expected to do things that are incredibly dangerous and have little to no tangible payoff to the individuals involved. Handling things like the endlessly changing ROE in Afghanistan and Iraq, confidence boosting with warlords, holding strategic objectives with no strategic value to impress a hostile population. Frankly, you need volunteers for these missions. Our engagements in the Middle East have not gone well, but they would have gone even worse with conscripts.

They should have sent a poet.

Yeah peacekeeping is a hard thing to learn, you can teach it to volunteers but for conscripts you’d need to conscript them for a very long time. Hell part of super good peacekeeping is having troops build relationships with locals, if you’re cycling out conscripts all the time that won’t happen.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

sgamer82, in your #43 page 2 you wrote:

Very few people will be in a war because they want to, most people whose job isn’t war will be there because they have to.
I would think that most concerned citizens do care whether the war they’re fighting is to defend their own country (or an allied country in some case) or fighting to further some political or venal endeavour unrelated to actual defence.

You added:
i may have expressed myself less than clearly. When properly motivated conscripts are valuable and available in higher number, which may be needed to make a difference; when not properly motivated they might not be valuable and even a be liability.

Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend

Conscripts are almost always a liability. Outside of the most dire of circumstances you'll always be better served by volunteers. They simply have a better disposition towards the work expected of them, and are more likely to do "extra mile" type stuff.

There's really no such thing as a properly motivated conscript.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:09:19 AM

They should have sent a poet.

Except this is completely wrong, by definition professional soldiers are there because they want to be professional soldiers.

Now there may be exceptions such as the people who don't have anything else they want to do but almost every conscript is like this, they aren't fighting because they want to but rather because at best they think it's necessary at worst they're just press ganged.

So no "concerned citizens" don't actually care about causes more complex then "these people are trying to kill me and mine", the one's who do are called professional soldiers.

This I disagree with, if they have sufficient motivation due to the perceived rightness of their cause they can absolutely be motivated quite well.

But the only wars simple enough to find such a rightness are symmetrical one's, thus going back to the initial problem.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 20th 2018 at 9:13:02 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

What I was getting at there is that the motivations of a conscript, even when they are motivated, are very different than the motivations of a volunteer.

Even a motivated conscript can’t be trusted with an “esoteric” task. There are no conscripted special forces, to use an example, because unconventional warfare and special reconnaissance are tasks beyond the motivation of someone like that.

They should have sent a poet.