PoliticalWarfare.org

Stability Operations field manual: A good start with lots of room to grow

The US Army's new Stability Operations field manual, FM 3-07, takes warfighting to a new art form, with an emphasis on preventing large-scale conflicts from occurring, and on winning the peace after winning a war.

Lots of political warfare applications here. There's a lot that this book of doctrine doesn't say, but it leaves open a lot of room for our tools of first resort. 

For people who want to make a difference for all the right reasons in the information operations and related fields, the new field manual is a great place to start.

I ran excerpts from the field manual and related commentary in the latest issue of Serviam magazine, insofar as the book relates to the private sector and contracting opportunities:

• "US Army Embraces the Private Sector for Mission Success"
• "Comprehensive Approach: Army's New Field Manual on Stability Operations Stresses the Private Sector"
• "What Army Doctrine Means for Businesses and Charities"

A piece by Maj. John Rose, "Missed Opportunities in the Stability Operations Doctrine," notes how the field manual comes up pretty short on the information operations side of things.

Here's a pdf of the Stability Operations field manual: Download FM3-07.

Effectiveness of stability operations assessed

An Army War College Strategy Research paper discusses stability operations in post-invasion Iraq.  Col. Paul F. Dicker USAR, writes in "Effectiveness of Stability Operations During the Initial Implementation of the Transition Phase for Operation Iraqi Freedom," studies how the military, State Department, US Agency for International Development (USAID) and others fared in trying to bring order and recovery to the civilian population of Iraq. Publication date: July 2004.