The Economic Instrument in Stability Operations
On April 6, 2009, CNA and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute hosted a conference in Washington, DC, on governance, security sector reform, and economic growth. During the latter part of the conference, the participants examined the findings of a workshop on stabilization and economic growth of November 2008 that had focused on economic initiatives to be pursued during stability operations. These operations “encompass various military… activities conducted outside the United States in
coordination with other instruments of national power to [1] maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, and to [2] provide essential governmental services, emergency
infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief effort.” 1 The counterinsurgency that we are pursuing in Afghanistan—the “military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions” that we are taking “to defeat [the] insurgency”2—is a subset of stability operations. It is hoped that this article will help focus our civil military economic effort in Afghanistan, our premise being that “correct thinking leads to correct actions; incorrect thinking leads to incorrect actions.”
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