Where Is the Lone Ranger?
Questions and Answers with the Author

Why is the figure of the Lone Ranger emblematic of the need for a U.S. stability force, and what does this tradition have to offer in the way of guidance?

The Lone Ranger, “the most famous Ranger of them all,” stands against lawlessness and injustice. He never shoots to kill but disarms his opponents and restores peace. At the conclusion of his mission, the Lone Ranger and his companion ride off into the sunset and toward the next conflict requiring the intervention of a hero.

The Texas Rangers, from which the story of the Lone Ranger is drawn, are the best-known historical example of a U.S. constabulary force. The Rangers served as a volunteer frontier defense force, a military unit during the Civil War, and a Texas state constabulary unit with responsibilities for border patrol and law enforcement. Rangers dealt with foreign and domestic security threats and had the qualities of soldiers and policemen. When the state of Texas was left in economic and social chaos after the Civil War, it experienced the same conditions that are apparent in postconflict states today. These parallels remind us that we need a force capable of dealing with all kinds of enemies.

What constitutes a U.S. stability force, and what benefit would it have for future interventions?

A U.S. stability force could provide a full range of deployable, robust, police capabilities and the legal and judicial structure to support them. Including constabulary, police, judicial, and corrections personnel, this force would have full-spectrum capability to enforce peace and maintain stability leading to the introduction of the rule of law.

This force would join all the elements required to achieve sustainable security under a single, unified authority. It would also close the security gap that has plagued peace operations by providing a smooth transition from warfighting to peacebuilding. Effective police operations would free the military to perform its functions and speed the withdrawal of military forces. Political, economic, and social reconstruction can move forward only in such an environment.

Why should the U.S. develop a security force that shares capabilities with civilian police forces, judicial systems, and the military?

At the onset of the war on terrorism, it became clear that the United States’ ability to establish sustainable security in failing and postconflict societies would rise in importance. New threats, like international terrorism, cyberwarfare, transnational organized crime, trafficking, were likely to originate in countries experiencing political, ethnic, or religious turmoil.

Although all societies have a degree of violence, criminality, corruption, or instability, there is a threshold that, when crossed, triggers a spiral that can result in the collapse of trust and governance. In these cases, the task is to move the level of violence back to acceptable levels to provide the necessary “space” to improve governance. These kinds of crises require both military and nonmilitary forces—a suite of government, judicial, economic, and police forces—to both impose and enforce security.

What is necessary for successful deployment of a U.S. security force?

To deal with rogue states and international terrorism, the United States needs new forces and a new approach to postconflict intervention. It has to maintain its warfighting ability while becoming more adept at integrating civilian actors and processes. The military’s mission remains one of providing overall security, but in postconflict environments, civilian actors also have crucial roles in achieving sustainable security and establishing the rule of law.

Enforcing security requires a set of minimum conditions; law enforcement and the judiciary must work well enough to impose an adequate social agreement to obey the law. In cases in which interventions do not involve sufficient force to impose security, wars are prolonged, issues are left unaddressed, and costs go up.

Intervening parties needed to establish a police force while maintaining security. This often requires more force than a local police force might have but also skill in working with civilians and alongside military personnel.

How does one raise a police force?

Police forces are indispensible to ending criminality and corruption, but because local police are sometimes part of the problem, outside intervention is necessary to establish law enforcement authority. Raising police is not a stand-alone activity; it requires interagency cooperation and the development of complementary judicial and confinement programs. Long-term thinking is also necessary, as it may take generations to complete a transformation of police. It also requires success at local, provincial, and national levels.

Generations are required to complete a transformation of police such that they are no longer viewed as pariahs or enforcers of a dictatorial regime. The slow process of selecting, training, and promoting the right people to leadership positions in the police is one of the ways to accomplish this over time. However, for this process to succeed it must be augmented by security measures that can impose the rule of law in the short term.

What do the four case studies in this volume—Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan—have in common?

In all of these cases, military forces faced unarmed but violent mobs that they lacked the training and equipment to control. In some cases, the UN or another international body provided the appropriate forces, or the United States used indigenous forces, but this delayed progress and added to the cost of peace. Common conditions in each of these countries contributed to the breakdown of order: high levels of violence, the rise of black markets, illicit trafficking, gang activity, corruption, porous borders, weak governments, conflicted loyalties, and sectarianism. Additionally, political leaders, governing bodies, judges, and elections all needed protection in the period while security was established.

In Iraq, mob violence reaffirmed the need for the U.S. military to be able to call on police constabulary forces to help control looting and other types of civil disorder. When confronted with looting, military forces were unable to use their weapons against unarmed civilians and were unable to respond to mayhem. The same problem arose in Kabul when civil demonstrations against the U.S. military forces rocked the city.

What has changed in the last ten years since the first edition was published?

The first volume began as an effort to understand an apparent contradiction in U.S. peacekeeping policy: why advocate for the use of constabulary forces in the Balkans and elsewhere but fail to develop them in the U.S. military? It also examined the effectiveness of constabulary forces and their place in the larger task of creating sustainable security in postconflict environments.

The United States still lacks the ability to immediately establish public order in a postconflict society. It still does not have constabulary forces to control civilians, and it does not have a program to provide judicial and corrections support. Weak and dysfunctional states remain the primary source of international instability, and recent history demonstrates that the United States will be involved in nation building, peace operations, and other kinds of complex contingencies discussed in this new edition.  

The current U.S. strategic review is overly focused on military capabilities and should include an objective examination of nonmilitary capabilities and their place in past and future interventions. The lessons in this volume, which were gained from experiences  in Afghanistan and Iraq, demonstrate that much could be gained from creating a U.S. stability force.