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U.S. Defense Scholars Tout Gendarmerie as Peacekeeping Model

21 December 2005

INSS fellows suggest concept may help stretched military forces

By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Because peace-keeping and nation-building requirements have increased since the early 1990s, an alternative to combat military forces is needed to handle stabilization and reconstruction tasks as well as to conduct standard military operations against combatants, according to two scholars with the National Defense University (NDU).

The scholars suggested a "constabulary" patterned after national gendarmerie units in Europe, which they define as forces "organized along military lines, providing basic law enforcement and safety in a not-yet-fully stabilized environment."

David T. Armitage Jr., a visiting research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University and Colonel Anne M. Moisan (USAF), chief of staff of the INSS Research Directorate, examined this security concept in a study they wrote, Constabulary Forces and Post Conflict Transition:  The Euro-Atlantic Dimension.

The authors explained that unlike traditional soldiers, the goal of gendarmerie or constabulary units [as they are called in the English-speaking world] is "to defuse potentially violent situations through negotiations and conflict management, rather than to “neutralize” the enemy or destroy a target.  While constabulary forces vary by country, they can provide order and security in a post-combat area of operation after military forces have been relieved and redeployed but before local or law enforcement institutions have been restored."

They said the United States and other countries "need to consider the best way to develop these kinds of capabilities, which they do not possess today."

In simple terms, said the authors, "Military forces are trained for war -- force-on-force engagements against other military or armed adversaries. While the military is able to mobilize and deploy rapidly in large units, most are uncomfortable with, ill suited to, and not generally trained for police tasks that are central to post-military conflict operations.  For example, riot control, border control, domestic surveillance, securing/protecting sensitive sites."

A model for such a unit could come from Europe, the authors suggested, where several governments of the European Union (EU), particularly France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, are "drawing on long-standing paramilitary national police forces," to create a multinational European Gendarmeria Force (EGF).

France, which has a national force of 101,000 gendarmerie, will furnish 600 troops to the new 2,150- member unit.  In Africa, the French gendarmerie gained valuable experience conducting peace operations in Western Sahara, Somalia and Rwanda.

Armitage and Moisan wrote that, "Our European allies have substantial experience in the use of forces with the kind of training, organization, and equipment that is directly relevant for future law enforcement missions in security operations.  There is much Washington could learn from them."

With that in mind, they recommended the EGF should establish liaison relationships with the Department of State’s Office of Civilian Police and Office of Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization and the Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training and Assistance Program, as well as the Department of Defense.

The NDU authors concluded that capacities need to be developed “to respond to the full spectrum of conflict, from pre-crisis diplomacy to post-conflict peacekeeping and then to nation building."

The study (PDF, 8 pages) is available on the INSS Web site.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)