Small Wars Journal

stability operations

Irregular Warfare Podcast: From SAR to GFA: The ABCs of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization

An interview with Dr. Frances Brown, currently with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Pat Antonietti, the director for stabilization and peacekeeping operations policy in the Office of the Secretary Defense-Policy.

https://mwi.usma.edu/from-sar-to-gfa-the-abcs-of-conflict-prevention-and-stabilization/

This episode examines how the SAR and the GFA have fundamentally reshaped the way the US government conceives and responds to conflict around the world based on lessons learned from places like Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the SAR’s most important contributions when it was released in 2018 was the establishment of a common interagency-wide definition of stabilization. To wit, “a political endeavor to create the conditions where locally legitimate authorities and systems can peaceably manage conflict.” Meanwhile the GFA codified many of the principles articulated in the SAR into law and appropriated specific money to pilot evidence-based approaches to conflict prevention and stabilization. But as our guests argue, the impact of these initiatives is not only felt in terms of how we approach conflict, but also supports other policy priorities like great power competition with China.

Dr. Frances Brown is a senior fellow and codirector of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. She previously served as director for democracy and fragile states on the White House National Security Council staff and managed stabilization and political transition programs in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa for the US Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives.

Pat Antonietti is the director for stabilization and peacekeeping operations policy in the Office of the Secretary Defense-Policy. Previously in OSD-Policy, Antonietti served as director for domestic counterterrorism, director for Middle East policy, and country director for Iraq. He is a retired Army officer, having served in multiple field artillery units in Germany, Kosovo, and Iraq, as well as serving as one of the first political-military planners for Afghanistan on the Joint Chiefs of Staff J5 after 9/11.

Riley.C.Murray Mon, 04/26/2021 - 10:18pm

Small Wars Preparations in Support of the Joint Operational Environment 2035

Mon, 04/22/2019 - 2:49am
Preparations for future small wars described in the JOE 2035 must account for stability operations, FHA and peace operations, and counter-insurgency and counterterrorism operations. Viewing these types of small wars as distinctly separate and mutually exclusive is a flawed perspective; the world is an interconnected place and the types of small wars the joint force may encounter in the future will often occur simultaneously and as a result of one another.

About the Author(s)

On the Recommendation to Shut Down the Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute SWJED Mon, 01/07/2019 - 10:12am
November 29, 2018 letter from Howard R. Lind, President and Executive Director, International Stability Operations Association, to Secretary of the Army Mark Esper concerning the recent recommendation to shut down the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. Continue on for the letter.