Bush Plans Aid to Build Foreign Peace Forces

Facing a chronic shortage of foreign troops for
peacekeeping missions, President Bush has decided to
launch an international drive to boost the supply of
available forces — a move that if successful could
relieve some of the pressure on U.S. soldiers to join
such operations, defense officials said.

A plan approved by Bush earlier this month calls for
the United States to commit about $660 million over the
next five years to train, equip and provide logistical
support to forces in nations willing to participate in
peace operations.

The campaign, known as the Global Peace Operations
Initiative, will be aimed largely at Africa by
expanding the peacekeeping skills of African forces and
encouraging international military exercises in the
region, where U.S. officials said much of the need
exists.

But African forces developed under the program could be
used in peace operations anywhere in the world,
officials said. And the program also sets aside some
assistance for armies in Asia, Latin America and Europe
to enlarge their peacekeeping roles as well.

Pentagon officials who briefed The Washington Post
stressed that the plan, which Bush has yet to formally
announce, is not meant as a unilateral U.S. effort.
They said Bush intends it to be a broad, multinational
push, with other countries contributing trainers and
additional resources, although consultations with
potential partner nations remain at an early stage.

The initiative grows out of the frequent struggle by
administration officials to recruit enough foreign
forces for peacekeeping missions. In Haiti, the latest
case, the administration hopes a force of 6,000 to
7,000 international troops can be cobbled together
under a U.N. mandate to replace an interim contingent
of about 3,800 led by the United States and including
French, Canadian and Chilean soldiers.

Many of the world’s peacekeeping missions operate under
the auspices of the United Nations, which currently
oversees more than 50,000 troops in 14 places. That
troop number is due to grow by about 20,000 as four
other planned operations take shape in Haiti, Burundi,
Sudan and Cyprus.

But efforts to meet this surge have been handicapped by
the demands of U.S. and NATO-led coalitions trying to
stabilize Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. These
operations have sapped troops and resources from the
United States, Canada and some European countries —
traditional sources of support for U.N. peacekeeping
missions.

"There is not enough capacity in the world to deal with
the requirements," said Douglas J. Feith, the
Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy. "Other countries
have shown an interest in building up their
peacekeeping forces, but they need help."

The goal of Bush’s initiative is to train about 75,000
additional foreign troops who could be deployed on
short notice and perform a wide range of peacekeeping
activities, including the most dangerous and demanding
ones.

"This is meant to expand worldwide capacity that could
be used by the United Nations or by others," Feith
said.

By focusing on Africa, Bush is building on a State
Department program that has provided training
assistance to the region since the mid-1990s. But
funding for that effort — the African Contingency
Operations Training and Assistance program — has
stayed below $15 million in recent years.

Another program, known as Enhanced International
Peacekeeping Capacities and used to fund U.S. training
for peace operations worldwide, has received even less
money.

Administration officials expect to finance Bush’s
initiative from Pentagon as well as State Department
accounts. Some of the trainers will come from U.S.
military ranks, but in certain regions, private
contractors are more likely to be used, according to
Joseph Collins, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant for
stability operations.

Although past U.S. training efforts have succeeded in
creating some additional peacekeeping capacity, one of
the persistent challenges has been sustaining units
that have received the training.

"They have tended to dissipate as a result of people
leaving, dying, getting reassigned," Feith said. "So
there’s a major element in the president’s initiative
that deals with sustainment, which is to say, continual
training and incentives to keep these units together so
they can be used."

On Capitol Hill, a Democratic staff member with a
Senate committee — one of the few in Congress who has
been briefed on the initiative — predicted it will
receive broad bipartisan support. Several independent
analysts also welcomed the initiative.

"This is an awakening for an administration that hadn’t
made peacekeeping a priority," said Victoria Holt, a
senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a
Washington research group. "They are recognizing that
if they want to have other countries participate in
peacekeeping, they must provide more support."

Bush’s plan has been months in the making, according to
officials involved in drafting it. As early as November
2002, in a speech in Chile to a gathering of defense
ministers from countries in the Western Hemisphere,
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld briefly mentioned
the need to do something to increase the number of
peacekeeping forces available around the world.

The president’s initiative stops short of establishing
standing military units that would be devoted only to
international peacekeeping — an idea that U.S.
officials considered but discarded as unnecessarily
restrictive.

It also makes no provision for creating forces within
the U.S. military that would be reserved for
peacekeeping missions. This notion has gained favor
with some in the Pentagon, including Arthur Cebrowski,
director of the Office of Force Transformation. But it
faces stiff opposition from senior Army officials who
argue that combat troops can be used for peacekeeping
when required and that designating a separate
peacekeeping-only force would sap overall U.S. military
strength.

"We are always going to do our share of peacekeeping,"
Collins said. "What we want to avoid is doing more than
we have to."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22637-2004Apr18.html