The Stability Operations Era
The Stability Operations Era by Mark Moyar, Foreign Policy Initiative
Douglas Blaufarb, a Kennedy-era intelligence officer, coined the term “The Counterinsurgency Era” to describe the period beginning in 1961 with John F. Kennedy’s inauguration…
The history of the counterinsurgency era holds important lessons for today. We are now fifteen years into one might describe as the “stability operations era,” in which American forces have fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reminiscent of the lengthy conflict in Vietnam. As in the mid-1970s, Americans have tired of a slow and confusing form of warfare that is not amenable to decisive victories. Disenchantment with stability operations has led to both to a serious underestimation of what American forces achieved on the battlefield, as well as wishful thinking about the possibility of avoiding such conflicts in the future…
But the skeptics get it wrong in several respects. First, they focus inordinately on the beginning and the end of the conflicts they describe as futile, which leaves out the crucial particularities of the middle. Even among the expert community, a relatively small number of analysts concern themselves with the details of day-to-day stability operations, which are essential to understanding the big picture. Oftentimes, stability operations have achieved their near-term objectives, only to be thwarted by external factors…
