Description
While the liberal peace has attained a tenacious hold in the way Westerners see the world, the problem that has become clear since 1990 is that the liberal peace ideal has a very poor rate of success in practice.
Afghanistan (2002-2014), Iraq (2003-2011), and the Congo/Zaire (2002-c.2008), represent the longest and most high-profile attempts to transform and rebuild state armed forces while a war was ongoing.
To establish rebuilt states as functional, democratic, organisms, functioning military forces responsive to democratic control would be required. Yet this did not happen. Army reconstruction has never yet built enough military professionalism or, depending upon definitions, skill/effectiveness (as expertise, the first of Huntingdon’s components of professionalism, is close enough to be analogous to skill), or capacity, to monopolize violence within the state’s boundaries.
These failures are for three main reasons. First, the liberal peace concept doesn’t really work, and the myriad civil transformation programmes fall short, not providing enough support to military reform; Second, the Anglo-American army model is very hard to transfer effectively; it is neither adopted enough nor suited for very different environments, lacking a liberal democratic environment. The ‘can-do’ ethos embedded into the Anglo-American model (‘give us a mission and get out of the way’) also in some circumstances leads to a shallower understanding of the local environment. Thirdly neo-patrimonialism and extraversion present enough resistance to wear down the essentials that interveners try to transfer. These three factors explain what happened far better than ‘corruption’ or lack of political will or resources.
