Searching for Stability: The U.S. Development of Constabulary Forces in Latin America and the Philippines

Dr. Millett’s succinct analysis highlights several critical themes common to the American experience in these types of missions. First and foremost, despite all the best attempts to involve other departments of the federal government, the U.S. military has historically served as the lead, and often the sole, U.S. agency in these efforts. This fact often translated into constabulary training programs that suffered from a lack of both guidance and resources. Put simply, the relatively few Soldiers and Marines working on these efforts - many of whom were relatively junior in rank - were forced to make important military and political decisions that had critical effects on the host nation as well as on U.S. foreign policy. Additionally, this study emphasizes the traditional strains between U.S. goals and host nation desires, tensions that were often exacerbated by U.S. personnel who knew little or nothing about the culture in which they were working and had no ability to speak the language of those they were training. Dr. Millett suggests that these problems contributed to the important but flawed assumption among both U.S. policymakers and American military officers that indigenous forces trained by the U.S. military would behave like the U.S. military. Unfortunately, rather than becoming the professional security forces that served stable representative governments, these constabularies often became tools of unsteady repressive regimes.
Given the geopolitical challenges facing the United States in the early 21st Century and the Department of Defense’s focus on creating a military that can conduct stability operations in a variety of countries, the mission to train and advise foreign security forces is unlikely to disappear any time soon. This study offers an important set of insights from the past that can contribute to a sharper understanding about the challenges of building and advising these forces in the future. CSI – The Past Is Prologue!