Contributing to PKO in Haiti is important to the Canadian government because of commitments to multilateral institutions and interventions; the risk of gangs, drugs and refugees overflowing to the region; and the critical role Haitian immigrant voters play in Canadian politics. Intelligence and design of options for the mission were undertaken by a team of officials from foreign affairs, international aid, defence, and the national police forces - shaped via an interactive dialogue with the UNDPKO as it put MINUSTAH together - and decided by the Prime Minister. Slow progress in establishing civil order and effective democratic institutions indicates the need for better designed interventions based on in-depth knowledge and engagement with Haitian society, and its potential progress in governance.
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This study considers the use of multinational force to assist in rectifying Haiti’s political woes by exploring two research questions: "How did Haiti’s security situation evolve into its present situation?" and "How effective has multinational force been in assisting the government of Haiti in its quest for democracy?" By properly analyzing these queries, the Haiti case may yield valuable lessons that will serve to inform hemispheric nation-states seeking to build capacity for the conduct of current and future multinational peacekeeping missions.
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On February 29, 2004, only ten years after the United States last intervened in Haiti to reinstall President Jean Bertrand Aristide, U.S. military forces once again entered Haiti to stabilize the country after President Aristide fled as violence gripped the country. However, unlike the 20,000 troops, significant resources, and ambitious objectives of Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994, the recent intervention was executed with a much smaller force, with much more limited United States government goals, objectives, and expectations. This paper will analyze the events leading to the U.S. decision to intervene and the rationale to limit US objectives and participation. It will then examine the planning, organization, objectives, and effectiveness of the Multinational Interim Force’s (MIF) and the transfer of responsibility to the UN stabilization force. The paper will conclude with recommendations on how the US may build upon and strengthen the demonstrated capacity for collective security operations for Latin America and the Caribbean in the future.
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This paper serves to introduce the Special Edition of Security and Defense Studies Review. It discusses the nature of the research project on Capacity Building in Latin America and the Caribbean: PKO and the Case of Haiti. The paper develops the hypotheses, research questions, and the methodology of the study. Finally, an appendix, provides a list of the nine research questions and their subordinate questions.
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The article has two goals: first, to show how Brazil, when compared to other Latin American countries, represents a successful case of incorporating the military into the new democratic order; and second, to demonstrate that part of this process of subordinating the military to civilian power – and the consequent redefinition of civilian-military relations – can be credited to the way in which Brazil conceived and negotiated political amnesty during the transition to civilian rule. In addition, it will be argued that this success can also be explained by the ways in which the democratically elected governments of the 1990s dealt, in name of the State, with persisting uncertainties about "past scores to be settled."
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This paper focused on the origin, structure and roles of the military of Belize, an arm of the state of the only English-speaking country in Central America. The key tasks that were undertaken by the Belize’s military were both external and internal. It is shown that Belize is the only country of the English-speaking Caribbean in which armed forces are used primarily for defense. This is so to deter the Guatemalan army from marching into Belize and to control the infiltration of its borders by illegal immigrants. However, Belize’s military has become increasingly involved in "police" operations, including the combating of drugs and maintaining domestic order, thus leading to a blurring of the roles of the police and the military, as well as the provision of relief during natural and other disasters. Finally, Belize’s military engaged in self-help programs and provided assistance to a number of civilian projects as a way of fostering improved civil-military relations.
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There is a new civil-military pragmatism in the region defined by armies that engage in internal, role expansive missions at the behest of democratically elected officials. In the past, the armed forces would exploit such missions for their own political gain, while revising doctrines to make role expansion a permanent feature of military orientation. Instead, today’s armies have undertaken missions for purposes of helping civilian leaders fill vacuums and resolve specific problems that could not otherwise have been adequately dealt with. Military cooperation in this regard is dutiful but not altruistic; the military’s objective is to parlay these ventures into a justification for greater defense budget shares, salaries, and equipment. But role expansion is not inherently threatening to civilian control so long as soldiers remain decision-takers not makers. This they have, as brief case studies of Argentina and Venezuela make clear.
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Both the phenomenon of terrorism and our conception of it depend on historical context—political, social, and economic—and how the countries, groups and individuals who participate in or respond to the actions we call terrorism related to the world in which they act. The causes and effects of terrorism are comprehensible only in terms of political conflicts in specific historical periods. The current gap between Latin America and the United States on the conception of terrorism and the policy guidance that will establish a common anti-terrorist strategy in the Western Hemisphere respond to the unpredictability and dynamic of this phenomenon. Therefore, in order to reduce this present gap we require an effective guide to anti-terrorist policy formulation in Latin America and the United States under a common, clear, and prospective strategy that will be able to establish, enforce, and continually refine a holistic political-military plan and generate consistent national and international support.
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Despite early recognition of the importance of military institutions for understanding social organization and social change, sociology established no strong research tradition to study the military until after World War II. This paper explores the origins of this sub-field by focusing on the pioneering contributions of Morris Janowitz. Relying on a comprehensive review of primary source documents, it provides a history of the first twenty years of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS), an organization Janowitz founded in 1961 to support, extend, and routinize sociological study of the military as a social institution. Special attention is paid to the relation between the development of this institution and Janowitz's intellectual biography and to the strains resulting from the IUS's attempts to pursue multiple and sometimes conflicting goals.
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