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American willingness to engage in peacekeeping depends not only on public opinion or on the opinions of its elected officials, but also on the views of its so-called "experts in the management of violence," its soldiers.1 But the American officer corps has adopted the post-Cold War peacekeeping mission with considerable reluctance.
This reluctance was most clearly manifested in the person of General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who used the very extensive political clout he gained as a Persian Gulf War hero to caution against extensive U. S. commitments to global peacekeeping efforts. Powell's decisive influence over President Clinton early in his first term and officer discontent with the concept of peacekeeping were among a number of factors that prompted observers to suggest not long ago that American civilmilitary relations were in crisis.2
Into this crisis stepped General John Shalikashvili, who was, during the course of his tenure, destined to oversee the American withdrawal from Somalia and subsequent deployments to Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia. Although he might be described in some respects as a Powell protege, the content, and perhaps more strikingly, the form of Shalikashvili's advice to the president seems to have differed so markedly from that of his predecessor as to invite comparison. Numerous scholars have appraised Powell's chairmanship, but none have looked specifically at the role of his successor in the formulation of American post-Cold War strategy. While a complete understanding of Shalikashvili's legacy must await the opening of military archives and the testimony of individuals now constrained by current government roles, enough information can be divined from open sources concerning U.S. post-Cold War peacekeeping operations to make an early evaluation of Shalikashvili's legacy for American civil-military relations, as these relations were gradually adapting to the challenge of peacekeeping.3
Peacekeeping and U.S. Civil-Military Relations
Despite some bureaucratic incentives to support peacekeeping (i.e., more missions, more funds), evidence attests to a reluctance within the U.S. military to embrace the peacekeeping mission. Thus, U.S. soldiers in Somalia complained to researchers about the "...ambiguous mission, belief that their superiors did not trust them, uncertainty about how long they would be there...and a sense of having failed to do anything significant for the Somalis."4 A survey of more than 2,000 U.S....