Small-Scale Contingencies

Military operations that require fewer preparations than major war and whose missions include humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. Small-scale contingencies (SSC) are not defined or limited by a single military operation but rather include varying degrees of military participation. These include limited strikes, evacuation operations, enforcing no-fly zones, and peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs missions that may require military intervention. These missions are referred to by several terms including operations other than war (OOTW) and major operations other than war (MOOTW).

U.S. military planning is derived from two primary sources: the Quadrennial Defense Review prepared by the Department of Defense every four years, and the National Security Strategy developed by the White House at its discretion, generally every few years. In 1997, the Quadrennial Defense Review required the military to build up sufficient resources to meet demands for stability and support operations and to fight two major theater wars while simultaneously intervening in small-scale contingency operations. This was the first official inclusion of SSCs in national defense planning.

Small-scale contingencies require more planning than stability and support operations, but not nearly as much as a major theater war. The Quadrennial Defense Review and other analyses guide planning for SSC missions. They also focus on maintaining flexible, rapidly deployable forces that can meet the requirements for a variety of situations. The U.S. military, however, has been criticized for a sluggish transition to the peace-keeping and humanitarian mission. United States forces are still ill trained to handle these missions on a large scale. Partly for this reason, SSC planning has emphasized the need to prepare the military appropriately for the peacekeeping aspect of its mission.

One unique characteristic of small-scale contingency operations is that their desired outcome and duration are not always clearly defined. Some of the more recent examples of U.S. small-scale contingency operations have included both short-and long-term missions. Following the 1991 Gulf War, the United States established no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq to protect ethnic minorities from air attacks by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Projected to last several months, their enforcement ended only after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. From 1992 to 1994, the U.S. military [Page 660]conducted Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, a military-humanitarian effort to provide food and health assistance to Somalis. In the Balkans, the 1995 Implementation Force/Stabilization Force (IFOR/SFOR) was an SSC projected to last for one year. Ten years later, the United States was still involved in the mission.

Small-scale contingency operations, while focused on humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts in recent years, still occasionally require the U.S. military to exercise its military might. Some of the more traditional military roles assigned to SSCs include carrying out military exercises in the Taiwan Straits, participating in multinational force deployments in Haiti, and enforcing a naval embargo on Bosnia.