Making Peace While Staying Ready for War: The Challenges of U.S. Military Participation in Peace Operations

In the past decade, U.S. military forces have deployed more frequently to operations other than war. Those operations include missions to provide humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, or the forced cessation of hostilities in areas of conflict. Geopolitical changes and shifts in U.S. foreign and security policies since the end of the Cold War -- combined with the U.S. military's ability to project power around the globe -- may have contributed to the growing role for the United States in peace operations worldwide. And as the nation's role has grown, so has the amount it spends on such operations. The U.S. military's increasingly frequent involvement in peace operations raises two key questions. First, are U.S. forces well structured and prepared to meet the challenges involved in carrying out those operations on a routine basis? A military that is designed for conventional war may have trouble continually performing other missions. Second, does participating in peace operations detract from the ability of U.S. forces to carry out their primary mission -- fighting and winning two nearly simultaneous major theater wars? This question is a relatively recent one. During the Cold War, military planners assumed that forces capable of defending Europe against Soviet aggression would be more than adequate to meet U.S. commitments elsewhere without significantly affecting the military's ability to perform its primary conventional mission. But lately, signs have emerged that peace missions could be taking a toll on the military's ability to pay for routine operations, maintain the combat skills needed for conventional wars, and keep its equipment and personnel ready and available for such wars. In this analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examines four options for restructuring or expanding the active-duty Army to improve its ability to conduct peace operations while staying ready for conventional war.