Peace Operations: Field Manual 100-23

A valiant attempt to reduce the messiness of peacemaking, peace enforcement, and various other muddy missions of the U.S. Army in the Somalias, Kurdistans, Haitis, and Macedonias. The authors begin, warily, with a remark attributed to former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld: "Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only a soldier can do it." The manual holds that the basic tenets of army operations, as outlined in the operations manual for all-out conflict, apply to peacekeeping operations as well, a debatable proposition. In a conscientious effort to adapt the army to these uncomfortable (but hardly unprecedented) missions, the writers search for clarifying assumptions. But some of their assertions -- a clearly defined mission is the key to the successful planning and execution of a peace operation, for example -- lead one to ask how likely reality is to fit doctrine.