Rebuilding Armed Forces: Learning from Iraq and Lebanon

Security Force Assistance becomes more and more important not only in the post-conflict reconstruction process, but also in a more general way in the foreign policy of the United States. Looking into the experience of both Iraq and Lebanon, this monograph offers useful insights for future military assistance programs and reconstruction efforts. While current assistance programs are certainly of high quality in technical terms, this publication sheds light on the equally important, yet often overlooked social dimension. Elements such as ethnic composition, exclusion of politically compromised personnel, and the armed forces' image in society will determine the military's future success just as much as technical training. How to improve these aspects is explained in this analysis.

FLORENCE GAUB is a Researcher and Lecturer in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defence College’s Middle East Faculty. Her areas of interest include the Arab world, military sociology, post-conflict reconstruction, and intercultural communication. Previously, she has served as a research fellow in the German Parliament, focusing on issues of defense, internal security and development. She has also held positions with the French Defence Ministry’s Research Centre in the Social Sciences of Defence (Centre d’études en sciences sociales de la defense), the Centre for Security Studies in Sarajevo, the Centre for Applied Policy Research in Munich, as well as with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in New York, where she coordinated courses for diplomats posted at the United Nations. She has conducted extensive field studies in Lebanon, Iraq, Nigeria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. She has published several articles and two books on these topics, and has lectured widely with The NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany; Allied Joint Forces Command Naples; and several think tanks and universities in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Dr. Gaub graduated from Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany, and holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Humboldt University of Berlin.