Liberation and Occupation: A Commander's Perspective

• Author: Fabio Mini
• Position: Lieutenant General, Italian Army
• Pages: 221-251

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Liberation and Occupation:

ACommander's Perspective

Fabio Mini*

Oneof the main challenges for the commander of amilitary operation out-

side his national territory is to deal with the international laws that should

apply to the operation and the constraints his own nation may impose upon him.

Such limits stem from political aims, diplomatic convenience, economic interest,

international image, media opportunity, budget priorities, force structure and the

national law jurisdiction applicable to the area of operations. For the commander

of amultinational force the challenges are even greater because he is subject to ad-

ditional constraints coming from the international organization he is working for,

the international organizations he is working with and the national caveats each

contingent of his force brings with them. The legal constraints influence his auton-

omy and command action during the conflict, but, most importantly, they affect

post-war operations when he becomes the target of scrutiny—and often criticism.

While the military code of conduct and the customs of war are embedded in mili-

tary education and can help guide the commander's action, the legal constraints af-

fecting war or peace support operations are sometimes ambiguous. The latter must

be known and studied, with the support of legal advisors, but, unfortunately, they

are largely neglected in military education and during the specific pre-deployment

Lieutenant General, Italian Army.

Liberation and Occupation: ACommander's Perspective

training. In many countries, the military education systems include them only in

the formal program, but then they are skipped because there is something "more

important" to do or they are left in the hands of boring lawyers that simply list the

litany of what you cannot do.

In particular, in many Western war colleges or military academies no one

teaches how to handle apost-war situation. Strategy and tactics refer only to com-

bat situations. Management deals only with our own military organization and

units. Alittle bit of management is devoted to civil-military cooperation (CIMIC),

but because of the emphasis given to peace support operations rather than to post-

war management, CIMIC is perceived more as acandy bar distribution initiative

than amilitary methodology to control the post-war situation. Military control

over civil institutions is ablasphemy for democratic armies and nowadays every

nation and army pretends to be democratic. Iam old enough to remember the

warning posters of the occupying powers after World War II: "Tomorrow the dis-

tribution of food will be suspended" and "Public gathering is prohibited. Of-

fenders will be arrested," signed Captain Charlie or Kurt or Martini. Nowadays

captains are not even given the authority to ask questions and the generals who ask

questions are not entitled to any answers. Ialso belong to the generation that

planned for military control over civilian administrations in case of internal in-

surgency. Iremember the plans to replace civil authorities, to exercise censor-

ship, limit individual liberties and so on. Those times are gone and, we all hope,

for good.

Our democratic system is strong and the military does not have to plan for the

assumption of power. However, while war is still very much present and alive, we

in the West have avoided and, at the same time, subverted the idea of war. During

the last ten years we have avoided the reality ofwar. We invented operations "other

than war"—humanitarian intervention, international police operations, peace

support operations, with their aggregate of peacekeeping, peace enforcing, peace

making, and so on. We invented hundreds of expressions in order to avoid the

word "war" or to soften its meaning. In the United States and other parts of the

world, e.g., China, there was the opposite phenomenon. The same word was largely

abused and everything became a"war," including market competition, family

quarrels and social endeavors. The result was again an illusion because when war

resumed in its traditional form as confrontation and violence, often asymmetric

and non-linear, many people did not recognize it. War on terror in many countries

is still considered to be the equivalent ofthe war on inflation, or the war on corrup-

tion, or the war on drugs.

The "Global War on Terror" and its many forms suggest avision of Star Wars,

with the Empire striking back and Luke Skywalker saving the Galaxy or similar

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