The Psychological State of Peacekeeping Soldiers

Deceased philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right- only who is left”. Those left are the soldiers of the 1-502nd, specifically Bravo Company 1st plt, and the Janabi family and to a greater extent, the ever-changing global world we all live in today. The tragic events that conspired in a small Iraqi village became a microcosm of how leadership failures at every level shaped the actions of a few soldiers who committed atrocious acts. One can also see how a high operational tempo, along with prolonged violence and death, has on a person’s psyche. It is the ugly side of war that the average American citizen may not want to hear or talk about. For a soldier, it is inevitably what they train their

Thesis: The role of the United Nations has changed from being primarily an international peacekeeping force to primarily a humanitarian organization.

Countless generations have idealized the thought of being able to live in a society without war. With this ultimate goal many different ways of maintaining peace have been proposed or attempted. This is known as “peacekeeping”. Peacekeeping attempts have been happening throughout history. Peacekeeping is defined as “the maintenance of international peace and security by the deployment of military forces in a particular area” ( Spagnol). This means the cooperation of different nation states to complete missions or activities that will end in the result of lasting peace. The main contributor to international peacekeeping is the United Nations. The United nations is “an international organization where the missions and work is guided by the proposing and principles contained in the founding charter” ( United Nations website). Despite the substantial amount of peacekeeping the united nations does there are outside forces such an non-governmental organizations also known as NGOS that are peacekeeping forces as well. In retrospect peacekeeping is a very complex concept and throughout history has had many successes but also an overwhelming amount of failures. These failures have causes high amounts of criticism, and have led many people to believe that peacekeeping in general has been a failure. Despite the failures of peacekeeping some countries have been more involved than others. one of the largest contributors to peacekeeping is Canada and has made peacekeeping a

Kathryn expects that her fellow peacekeepers are just like her and are in this position for the same reasons as her because they are of the highest moral caliber as they want to help this nation. Unfortunately, many of them are

The peacekeepers band together in protest in a constant, and futile effort at keeping our world war-free. Vietnam provides us a clear and classic example of peace protests, and people uniting together to spread their message. This does not however stop those determined to fight, the powers that be are not looking for this outcome. However, the leaders of battle are only interested in victory over their opponent. They do not seek cultural integration as they might have you believe, but rather look to obtain dominance, control, and wealth. Military personnel are

We have all seen or read about the political and social upheavals caused by war. Some may have even experienced it first-hand. Throughout history war has had negative psychological implications on those effected. However, there is no greater negative impact of war than the psychological and emotional turmoil that it causes individual soldiers.

In 1994, in the song Survival of the Fittest, Prodigy of the group Mobb Deep famously said, “There’s a war going on outside, no man is safe from”. That rang true then as it does today, and will echo for centuries to come. Though, because of evolution, you have to wonder if war changed. Today’s wars and wars of the past may appear different at first glance, but once dissected, they have more in common than seen. All wars require reason and emotion. Also, depending on the size of the opposition, whether it be a country, state or non-state actor, it is evident the requirement of the government, the people, and some sort of military also need to be in aligned to support the cause. With that in mind, the Marine Corps has now conducted counterinsurgency operations in the Middle Eastern countries of Iraq and Afghanistan for over two decades. In that time, we have learned that war has changed to a hybrid treat better known as Irregular Warfare. The role the Marine Corps will play in the future

The three main tactics used to combat civil wars and instill peace in an area are peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and counterinsurgency. The first tactic I will address is peacekeeping. Once the two parties of a conflict have agreed to a truce, peacekeepers will come in to guarantee the implementation of the truce and try to maintain peace. The duty of peacekeepers is “not only [to] monitoring troops, but also with human rights monitoring, protecting and delivering humanitarian aid, demobilizing and retraining troops, reforming police forces, protecting civilians, reforming legal systems, assisting in economic reconstruction, and sometimes administering the entire state until a new government can take over. In other words, after civil wars, peacekeepers are often charged not only with military monitoring duties, but with reforming the essential institutions of the state” (Peacekeeping, Peace Enforcement, and UN Reform Lise Morjé Howard, P 1-2). There are three ways that peacekeepers are able to use their power in order to succeed. These three ways include coercion, inducement, and persuasion. Coercion involves a display of power, like swagger, to wield off attacks. Troops use swagger in several scenarios. One of the most common times the use of swagger will occur is during policing, where troops will patrol the area. Since one of the main doctrines of peacekeeping involves not using force, this type of coercion has been deemed useful. Even though the majority of the time

Our world is full of corruption; peace between countries is thrown out the window when power takes charge of everything we know. Because of that, there are issues that are more than difficult to solve- fighting, protest outbreaks, slaughters in the streets, rebels, countries turning their backs on their own people - everything is out of control. In some countries, the intensity has been growing for more than two years, and obviously it’s not getting any better. What we want, what everyone wants, is to have peace. But that is just a product of our imagination as horror is leaked out and we can't stop the wars, hatred, and starvation that destructs the world that we know and love. These issues can affect people who never wanted to get involved: women, children, the elderly. That is what’s so sickening about it all, destruction that is threaded together by greed, power, and selfishness. Most of us might think the officials are exaggerating on the seriousness of these issues, but this is real. If we transition to peace, it could bring up questions about how to handle the security forces. The Security Sector Reform is for rebuilding a country’s security sector, and it contributes to sustaining the peace in differing ways that really keep these societies on their feet.

Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) is another organization that has enjoyed the beneficial ebrace of “Stability Operations.” Since its establishment in 1993 as the Peacekeeping Institue, it has bolted-on the “Stability Operations” moniker and “grown in both size and outreach.” Unlike DASD SHA, however, PKSOI has refrained from direct involvement in military operations or planning, other than conducting assessments and lessons learned. As a positive example, PKSOI has focused their energies up-and-out by promoting “collaborative development and integration of peace and stability capabilities across the U.S. government and the international community in order to enable the success of future peace and stability activities and mission.” Although PKSOI has enjoyed organizational growth because of the embrace of “Stability Operations,” they have formed it into a center of excellence designed to share knowledge, develop external relationships, and facilitate coordination across services, departments, agencies, and governments. Despite the title, PKSOI refrains from treating stability as an

In chapter 35, The main topic was about Robust peacekeeping. Robust peace when UN peacekeepers would only interfere when there was political and operational means to implement. When reading that I pictured just a bunch of wars and fights going on without and enforcement to stop because it didn't seem like a “Big” enough reason. I'm not sure if that is inherently correct description of the reading but if so that seems like a big issue. I think about high school and all the useless drama if no teacher never interfered than major issues would occur. I believe the easiest way to solve a issue is facing the issue as soon as possible. The idea of Robust peacekeeping has been going on for years. Honestly, I’ve never in my life really heard of this.

Peacekeeping operation is led by the Department, and works to create the conditions for lasting peace in a country torn by conflict” (UN Staff, 2003). Military, police and civilian personnel, those who work to deliver security, political and early peacebuilding support consists of peace keeping operation. Currently, there are sixteen peacekeeping operations and one special political mission – the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) – led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations(UN Staff, 2013).

What images does the term “child” create when spoken? A child is defined as any person under the age of 18. Typically in the earlier years of childhood, children are still learning social norms for their various cultures. It is this vulnerability which allows for the development of child soldiers, a child being associated with any type of armed group with sex being no exception. Although youth are typically between the ages of 13 and 18 there are recorded cases of child soldiers being as young as 7 years old. The creation of innocent kids into killers is most effective by illustrating to them what would normally be seen as deviance is in fact acceptable. Such action highlights the danger of these children because as their own lives may be in danger, they put others in harm’s way as well. However, the most alarming part is how these children develop into soldiers.

Mansfield, Edward D., and Jack Snyder. Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World. Edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Hall. United States Institute of Pece Press, 2007.

Over the years peacekeeping has drastically changed, because conflicts are changing. Canada learned firsthand how conflict has changed when we tried to help Rwanda on a peace keeping mission that drastically failed. With the new liberal government, they have promised to take part in more peacekeeping missions. To do so it is important that we look at these new theories that we have discovered since our great failures. Peacekeeping is used to put an immediate end to conflict and to help the parties fighting rebuild. The peacekeepers take part in many roles such as destroying surrendered weapons, training security and entrenching human rights. The first theory is the peacekeeping umbrella, it is designed to depict graphically the larger inclusion of peacekeeping activities. Such activities include monitoring, training and aiding military and policing. The peacekeeping umbrella focuses on economics, political dependency and interpersonal reconciliation. The peacekeeping umbrella is important because it focuses on peacebuilding to help the futures of the parties. The next theory is the UN House, it was established in 1997 to fix the problems in prior peacekeeping missions as stated by former UN official UNPROFOR “Inability to adapt to the rapidly changing environment in which military and civilian personale have to operate will reduce chances of success in the mission and increase exposure to risk and casualties.” The UN house is a