Recently, I partnered with SMA's Mariah Yager to talk with Professor Beatrice Houser about post-conflict stabilization.
“In Kuwait, preparing for the Iraq invasion, I asked the leadership, ‘Could you give us a little more detail about after we get to Baghdad and topple the regime? ' [The answer] was more than inadequate.’” -David Petraeus, speaking at Carnegie.
The U.S. and the West recently suffered monumental failures in planning and implementing post-conflict stabilization, resulting in massive corruption, instability and loss of foreign policy goals.
[Charley Wilson’s War]. “These things happened. They were glorious, and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame.” -Charley Wilson’s end-of-film quote.
In this session, we turn the corner from commiserating on past failures to discussing solutions to planning and implementing the transition from conflict to post-conflict stabilization. To help partner nations regain their stability, security and partnership in the international community.
To help, we have brought in Professor Beatrice Heuser, renowned Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow and second to the General Staff Academy of the Bundeswehr, as Head of Strategy.
Dr. Heuser recently published a paper on post-conflict Gaza stabilization and reconstruction and wanted to discuss strategies for building an effective post-conflict strategy and operation.
Jack Gaines, showrunner and host of the One CA Podcast, is joining SMA to co-host the discussion.
In this session, Dr. Heuser, Jack Gaines, Mariah Yager and the audience will try to address three themes:
1. Planning the transition from conflict to post-conflict. How should the military shape the end of an active conflict to help the transition to post-conflict stabilization?
2. How to support the post-conflict stabilization. Typically, during stabilization, insurgencies rise, popular movements grow, and extremist groups attempt to usurp the transition for their political ambitions; how does conflict stabilization work with the military to minimize usurping groups while spotting and enabling popular movements?
3. Spotting and supporting the post-conflict transition and transitioning a post-conflict state that depends on aid and support to become independent. How can the military, diplomacy, and development workers manage the process to ensure a successful transition to becoming an independent partner in the international community?
Thank you FeedSpot for ranking One CA Podcast as one of their top 10 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
Special thanks for SensualMusic4You producing "Hip Hop Jazz & Hip Hop Jazz Instrumental: 10 Hours of Hip Hop Jazz." Sample found at https://youtu.be/XEa0Xn9XAzk?si=eeWyVqE3c1uL6d2Q
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00:00:03 Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail dot com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:39 MARIAH YAGER
Hello, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, and welcome to today's SMA speaker session entitled Building Solutions to Post -Conflict Stabilization. I'd like to thank Professor Beatrice Huser for taking the time to speak with us today. And I'd also like to welcome back Major Jack Gaines of the 1CA podcast as our guest host.
00:00:57 JACK GAINES
I partnered with SMA to talk with Professor Beatrice Hauser on post -conflict stabilization. What you will hear on this show is the edited version. If you wish to listen to the full uncut version, I will have a link to it in the show notes. This is part one of two. The second half comes out next week. So enjoy.
00:01:17 MARIAH YAGER
So with that, please keep your video and audio off for the duration of the event so we have a nice clear line for our presentation today. All right, let me introduce Professor Beatrice Huser. She holds the Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. She has degrees from the Universities of London and Oxford and a habilitation from the Phillips University of Marburg. She has taught at King's College London and at universities in France and Germany. Previously, she has worked on the international staff at NATO headquarters in Brussels as well. She has numerous publications. from nuclear strategy, history of strategy, insurgencies, and counterinsurgency. But today we're talking about post -conflict stabilization. And with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Leijer.
00:01:59 JACK GAINES
Thank you, Mariah. And thank you, Professor Huser. Personally, I see a market gap in post -conflict stabilization. And to describe that gap, I forwarded Professor Huser three challenge questions to help her shape her presentation and the discussion. Those questions were, the military drives conflict to an end state. what conditions do we need to achieve to successfully transition a conflict into post -conflict stabilization? Second, during post -conflict conditions, how does the military and lead agencies spot and support legitimate efforts while also spotting and filtering out groups trying to derail recovery for their own benefit or spoilers or those who use instability for personal gain? And third, How do we work to transition a nation from post -conflict dependencies to becoming a self -sufficient member of the international community? These came to me after listening to retired General David Petraeus speak at Carnegie. He talked about when he was a division commander preparing to go into Baghdad and asking leadership about the plan after toppling the regime. The response was, leave that to us, which he states was inadequate. General Petraeus described the market gap. We needed to know the instate to achieve post -conflict conditions and then how to deter instability to support stabilization and transition. So that is the challenge for Professor Huser to answer. But I also wanted to use this talk as a call to action. We should take chalk to the State Department CSO strategy to either update our current plans and operations so they achieve the conditions for post -conflict stabilization and transition or Build operational templates that staff can plug into the back of any strategy or operation so planners can sketch out the steps to drive a conflict into a successful post -conflict environment with stabilization and transition. So with that, Professor Huser, good morning.
00:04:00 BEATRICE HEUSER
Thank you very much indeed. I'm very honored to be with you. If you can stop sharing your screen, I will flash mine up straight away and start. with a disclaimer that I am a very small and modern armchair strategist, and I'm standing on the shoulders of lots and lots of giants, which means that I'm going to introduce you in the first part of this whole talk to the ideas and the thinking of some very interesting and very important people of the past who've had plenty of experience. But at the same time, what is driving my interest is, of course, the present. And you will see all along, I think, like me, how these ideas that were developed by people a long time ago impact on the present. More still, there's a big debate about how much war changes and how much technology impacts war. I think particularly when it comes to insurgencies, peacemaking, counterinsurgency, intervention in foreign wars, there is a particularly strong continuity. even with allowances made for some of the modern technology. All the themes I'm going to be running past you today very quickly, I have got a very important role to play still in the present. So without further ado, let me plunge into the subject and I promise to you that I'll become more modern as at the very end during questions and answers. But I don't think it would make much sense if I simply ran you through. the NATO AGP 3 .28 contribution to stabilisation, let me take you back instead to a lot of ideas that have been around for a long time, some of which have found their way into this new NATO document. So these are the points that I'm going to be addressing. What happens when we're still at war affects everything else, then the difficulties of the transition to peace, post -conflict stabilisation, and how then to wean a polity from this foreign intervention. And then I have a big philosophical question at the end, which you will have to bear with me for, because it is very, very difficult and very morally problematic in every way. And I hope that I will not be misread when coming to this last point. So very briefly, let us look at what happens while we're still at war and how that influences the outcome and the intervention and the outcome of a stabilisation. process afterwards. One of the things that I've discovered trying to look into the subject of how to end wars is that causes of wars and war aims could be the same really, but they're not. Simply because during a war, particularly if it's more than seven days, more things can appear that will change the aims of the war. In theory, the causes of the war are grievance that you want to address. So if you've addressed the grievance, the war's over. But in fact, during the development of the war, things change. Existing causes and war aims can wax and wane in that context. The question is, in trying to make peace, what is at stake? Is it something like secession of a state or a part of a state? Is it to have better rights? Or is it something much bigger? Is it in fact something like... a world order that lurks behind that particular conflict. Is the war about ethnic tensions with interstate, as it was in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo? Is it about picking out a foreign occupation power, a colonial power, as in Indochina and Algeria on Indonesia? Is it about religion, as it was for the Iranian Revolution Phase II, the Arab Spring Phase II, Afghanistan in its last phase? Is it about kicking out, overthrowing a government that is non -democratic and corrupt and is trying to perpetuate its power as South Vietnam in Iran, the Shah and phase one in Iraq, in Niger? And one of the important things there was a realization by one of my heroes about you, whom you're going to hear more, a Spaniard called the Third Marquis of Santa Cruz de Mascinado, who lived in the early 18th century. and who even then said that a state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors. And a Welshman who was Catholic and therefore escaped Protestant England and Britain in the 18th century, the first cause and object of a revolt is to repel injuries, real or supposed. The second is to provide for future security, which can never be effectually done other than by destroying the sovereign authority. There is no alternative. Freedom or slavery is the result of it. Very interestingly enough, during the first phase of the American War of Independence, but this stark way he put it is very modern. Therefore, the sovereign in conducting such a war should, by a moderate conduct, diminish the idea of danger and leave room to a solid and hearty reconciliation. So reconciliation is already a very important idea to take away from the idea of how to... end the war and stabilize that result of war. The effects of the conduct of war will polarize warring parties even more, particularly if the war is conducted in a way perceived as being exceptionally cruel. Ukrainians cared little about Russians before 2014. By now, it is pretty unlikely that there are a lot of Ukrainians still around who have positive feelings about Russians and the many things we hear about Ukraine, about how they suddenly... ban Russian books from bookshelves and from the school curricula seem to suggest that. Equally, the feelings of people in Gaza, I imagine, are much worse now towards Israel than even when the war started in October last year. Christina Pizal, who is the only woman strategist I've ever come across in the early 15th century, wrote that cruelty increases and multiplies the number of enemies by making many people die. for their children are kin succeed them in hate. That is to say, for one enemy slain, several others spring up. This has got a path to reconciliation when, for every enemy slain, several others spring up. A very brief note about bombing. The idea in the immediate post -World War I period that you could end wars faster by bombing civilian populations. Pressing them to put pressure in turn on their governments to surrender has been proved to be quite unworkable. So in the Second World War, as a number of authors have shown, this was quite counterproductive because it created more solidarity, both in Ukraine and in Gaza. It has not turned the population against its own government. I think in both cases, the bombing from the air has had very adverse effects on the chances of making a good peace. making it soon and then stabilizing the situation. Let me touch briefly on the question of which external actors might be the best to intervene in something that is a civil war of a country, a non -international armed conflict. There are configurations in which somebody very, very external to the conflict might have been a good side to intervene. For example, I used to go around in the 1990s before the Easter agreements and the Good Friday agreements were signed in 1998, saying that in fact it would have been a good idea to bring in German forces because they weren't sympathising with either side and they weren't seen as enemies by either side. In the Yugoslav wars it was clearly an external multinational force that was the best. In African conflicts what seems not to be a good idea is to bring in previous colonial powers. There's a lot of atheistic reaction to say, ah, they're just neo