Blessed Are the Peacemakers: What Afghanistan Can (Re)Teach Military Planners about Conflict Termination
Mark Gilchrist | July 22, 2020
Despite plenty of recent experience in peacekeeping, Western militaries have largely forgotten how difficult it is to end hostilities in a conflict where they are a belligerent. Military officers are well versed in how to fight wars, but few are similarly educated in how to terminate them, and even fewer have the opportunity to actually bring them to a close. The signing of a tentative peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban brings this issue into sharp focus and provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the military’s role in conflict termination.
Afghanistan is once again demonstrating that conflict termination is a messy, uncertain, inherently political, and consistently violent process. The tumult of the experience in Afghanistan will hopefully re-teach planners how difficult it is to bring conflict to a politically acceptable close when the adversary is in a position of strength. As a result, it presents an opportunity to close a crucial gap in our collective military education by enabling a better understanding of how the military can satisfy a government’s revised political objectives when victory is no longer possible.
https://mwi.usma.edu/blessed-are-the-peacemakers-what-afghanistan-can-reteach-military-planners-about-conflict-termination/
