In 2015, the British Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, asserted that: āArmed forces should be much more about avoiding, preventing and deterring war; maintaining the stability of the world order so as to permit the exploitation of opportunity in pursuit of prosperity; whilst mitigating those recurring threats and security related crisesā. Prevention is better than cure. The acceptance of this and similar logic has resulted in the recognition, principally among Western governments, that it is better to invest lesser amounts of resources early to deliver conflict prevention than vast amounts later in fighting a greater threat. Stabilisation efforts must thus recognise the diffuse nature of upstream threats, difficulties in measuring success and effects, the potential for situational mismanagement, and, in the event of perceived deficiencies, the loss of domestic support for action. Consequently, in this introductory chapter, we examine the problems in the definition of stabilisation, theories of stabilisation in different disciplines, the challenges and criticisms of the practice, especially in upstream contexts, and the various approaches to stabilisation, specifically the military role. The introduction offers an outline of a voluminous literature on the subject, showing the context and value of the case studies and chapters that follow.
The interventions of 2001ā2014 in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated limits to Anglo-American military capabilities in stabilisation. Yet planning for preventative operations has a tendency to grossly overestimate the capacity of what can be achieved with the resources available in peacetime (Dodge 2012). Part of the problem is that assumptions in government are based on what can be achieved with the available assets, and the potential to roll in more resources as and when required. It does not make financial sense to hold ready large reserves of personnel and material for low-priority missions, and ruthless decisions have to be made about more pressing requirements and the need to create a balanced force. The result is that armed forces and defence capabilities are rarely, if ever, adequate before or at the start of a stabilisation mission of any magnitude (Johnson and Clack, 2015). There are usually too few personnel with the necessary in-country knowledge to engage key leaders, especially those remote from the local governmentās apparatus. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the commercial sector will often have a better picture of the initial conflict, although here too there are limits. There is often friction with host-nation governments or local leaders. There can be expectations and anxieties to manage among the local population. There can be clandestine spoiling tactics at all levels, while criminal or terrorist networks use connections on an informal and covert basis and deliberately seek to hide their operations from any supervision. Alternative networks need to be understood for any effective action to be taken, and here local government and civil society agencies are invaluable. Nevertheless, there can be high levels of collusion between the state and non-state actors, corruption, or state abuse of the population to contend with.
In defence, it is widely acknowledged that stabilising states is a complex, long-term and multi-agency activity (Ritchie, 2011). The doctrine of Understand to Prevent: The Military Contribution to the Prevention of Violent Conflict asserts: āTo determine the appropriate approach to upstream engagement, we must not only understand the nature of the conflict, but also who acts and what actions are best taken at each levelā (Multinational Capability Development Campaign 2014: 30). Many armed services personnel regard stabilisation with some trepidation, seeing it as a low-priority compared with warfighting and associated with the problematic outcomes of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For civilian organisations, there are significant differences in how one even defines stabilisation. Most scholars, particularly economists, regard stabilisation as a form of structural economic readjustment, and not necessarily related to conflict (Franicevic and Kraft 1997; Gomulka 1994). Aid agencies and NGOs define stabilisation as recovery from an immediate humanitarian crisis, and do not regard a stateās role as particularly important. By contrast, government departments would see the stateās role as the essential one, and the ability of national, regional and local government to deliver services would be their definition of a stabilised polity.
To make definitions even more problematic, there have been significant changes over the last few decades which have altered what is meant and intended, in theory and practice, by the term stabilisation. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a particular model of state reconstruction tended to set the agenda of subsequent planning assumptions (Rynold 2011; Chandra 1996). In light of European decolonisation and a greater awareness of developing world humanitarian crises, and as the UN and other organisations struggled to deliver the appropriate level of support without creating a neocolonial dependence, definitions were altered significantly. Stabilisation and state-building became interchangeable again after the end of the Cold War, although certain regions were thought to be in particular need throughout the twentieth century (Paris and Sisk 2009). In the late 1990s, the popularity of humanitarian intervention reached its peak with UN endorsement of the āresponsibility to protect ā (R2P), an issue the British Prime Minister Tony Blair championed in a speech at Chicago in 2000. More recently, in light of the armed interventions by Western Coalitions into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the debilitating experience of countering local insurgencies, it seems less likely that the West would be willing to intervene. Indeed, the phrase in widespread use after 2014 was āupstream preventionā, reflecting a hope that stabilisation could be achieved before a large-scale military intervention became necessary. This policy shift was more apparent than real, as prevention was a long-standing policy aspiration in US and UK governments. The UN had set the agenda for decades, but the UN Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali, articulated the Agenda for Peace in 1992, and this was reinforced by the Brahimi Report (2000), after the UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the Millennium Report, and then by Ban Ki-Moonās reports which constituted āR2P Pillar IIā. The UN Security Council had consistently called for prevention, peacebuilding and stabilisation, and both the United States and the United Kingdom have been champions of these efforts. American and British armed forces have also examined measures to implement conflict prevention in peacekeeping , peace support, and stabilisation (Doctrine Publications 2014ā2017).
The context of Western powersā willingness to intervene is that international institutions or other non-Western nations may be obligated to take action, which has geostrategic consequences. China already plays a more significant role in peacekeeping, for example, but may come to be seen as a regional āpolicemanā for East Asia. Yet, China, like the West, is inherently cautious and is aware of the risks in trying to stabilise states where order is collapsing. Above all, the UN and all its member states are conscious of the question of Westphalian sovereignty , which limits intervention. This issue is not new and has been a source of discussion for many decades (Rath 1964; Pugh et al. 2008). What also concerns most states, NGOs and scholars is the degree of effectiveness of interventions to stabilise. Any attempt to engage can, potentially, destabilise, creatin...