Embedded Decision-Making in Peace Operations
The diagram illustrates a dynamic, where the lightening bolt is any given action that the mission undertakes. Each of the three MPD elements is nested, with the military is embedded in political decision-making, and the political embedded in the requirements of social and economic development. The problem is that each element operates on a different timescale, with decision-making happening at different speeds, creating feedback loops that are completely out of synch with each other.
In a peace operation, the military can’t wait for the political level to reach a final analysis before it reacts to any given situation (for example, a rebel attack); as a result the political level often reaches a premature conclusion while the political feedback loop is still completing. This goes double for the development loop, because social and economic development processes happen in terms of decades rather than days.
Within this triple feedback loop, for any given action the three cycles may come together at a single point (temporal or spatial), but the effects are felt over different timescales and in different ways, each feedback loop may be positive or negative; and of course there is no guarantee that the three loops will even come together again. If this model is anywhere close to useful, then it’s always going to be impossible to predict how the three will play off each other from any given starting point – let alone for the wider range of interlocking actions the international community usually undertakes.
As a result it seems unlikely that we’ll ever be able to reconcile the three to create a truly coherent MPD approach. MPD is complex rather than complicated, and this means that linear planning tools – which currently dominate thinking in all three of these elements – aren’t up to the task. While systems thinking is making its way into each domain and will no doubt provide new tools to deal with this problem, there’s still a long way to go before that will have any impact on the ground.
It’s worth noting as well that this applies not just to peace operations in the traditional UN blue helmet sense, but also occupations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and it should be a counsel of caution for anybody who still thinks that regime change is a linear process of Stop X, Start Y. Also possible to adapt this very basic model to change processes in e.g. Arab countries in 2011-2012, but that’s a story for another day. Also:
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