ABSTRACT
The heavy vehicles, uniforms and fortified camps all contribute to the image of a strong and dominant actor. However, there are also clear differences as regards intervening military actors. Since the 1990s, intervening armed forces have been conducting traditional ceasefire-monitoring and peacekeeping operations, more robust stabilization operations, counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency operations, offensive operations without ground forces and with ground forces, including invasion and occupation. The chapter explores the questions by first comparing the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations’s ‘Capstone Doctrine’. The most cited publication of the COIN doctrine is the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, adopted in 2006. The adoption of the doctrine was in itself a result of, and was highly flavoured by, the Iraq experiences of several of its authors, including General David H. Petraeus, who later became commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
