The effectiveness of economic incentives for career commitment of peacekeepers in the Sinai.(Special Issue on Peacekeeping)

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make complete use of the other five.

- Somerset Maugham

During the post-Cold War era, multinational peacekeeping operations have become increasingly important for both the United Nations (UN) and the United States (U.S.). Changes in international peacekeeping doctrine and Russian support of collective security under United Nations auspices have contributed to the status of peacekeeping as a "prominent military mission."(1) A U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff report noted for the first time that the principal roles of American troops are no longer limited to fighting wars and deterring aggression, but also include sustaining peace.(2)

The level of increased peacekeeping efforts involves increased commitment of military and personnel with concomitant financial outlays. In addition, the above noted Joint Chiefs of Staff report added, "Reserve component elements will take on increased responsibility for participating in and supporting peacekeeping missions."(3) An obvious rationale is that war prevention is less costly than war fighting. The rationale for deploying the Reserve Component (RC) is to reduce the strain on the Active Component (AC) and to integrate the two components into a "Total Force Policy."(4) Eitelberg noted that reservists comprised 16% of the 570,000 soldiers deployed in Operation Desert Storm (ODS).(5)

The UN peacekeeping budget increased from $233 million with 20,000 employees in Fiscal Year (FY) 1987 to $3.6 billion with 70,000 employees in FY 1995. In fact, the UN spent more on peacekeeping in 1993 than in the previous 48 years of its existence.(6) The U.S. contribution of $1 billion in FY 1995 accounted for approximately 31% of the UN peacekeeping budget in that year.(7)

United States peacekeeping expenditures for the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) operation in the Sinai are excluded from its share in the UN peacekeeping budget. The U.S. provides one-third of the annual operating costs for maintaining the MFO(8) and has provided about one-half of the total force required for this mission.(9)

United States involvement in the MFO operation consists of supplying military and civilian personnel and providing financial contributions. Apart from the U.S., the MFO includes personnel from ten other countries: Australia, Canada, Colombia, Fiji, France, Hungary (replaced The Netherlands in 1995), Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and Uruguay.

The U.S. deploys soldiers to the Sinai Peninsula on six-month rotations to support the Camp David Accord signed in 1979. Since its implementation in 1982, there have been 28 rotations. The 28th rotation initiated deployment in January, 1995, and comprised a battalion of 80% reserve and 20% active component soldiers. This is the first time that the U.S. deployed a battalion of this type (mixed active and reserve personnel) as part of the MFO. Soldiers for the U.S. battalion were drawn from 35 states.

While the overall costs or actual budgets for peacekeeping efforts are well known, little is known about the benefits of the expenditures. For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported the incremental cost of deploying the 27th rotation (100% AC), at $18.6 million in FY 1993.(10) Similarly, Brinkerhoff and Horowitz of the Institute for Defense Analysis report the incremental cost of the combined AC and RC battalion in the 28th rotation at $21 million, with $18 million covering pay and allowances.(11) They note, "(T)his is about the same cost that would be incurred by using an AC battalion for the mission."(12) The cost difference between the 27th and 28th rotations was $3 million. Most of this amount represents the permanent change station (PCS) costs to cover RC soldiers' moving expenses from 35 states to Ft. Bragg for training. In short, the costs of a 100% AC and the alternative of 80% RC and 20% AC are not substantially different. Therefore, one objective of this article is to analyze the economic benefits generated by these costs on the U.S. soldiers who volunteered for the 28th rotation of the peacekeeping mission in the Sinai. We are particularly interested in longitudinal changes to reservists' economic life course developments at two points in time: during the training phase from July to December 1994, and during the Sinai deployment phase from January to June 1995.

Previous Research

The Peacekeeping Role in the Post-Modern Society

The literature on peacekeeping has progressed from the concept that peacekeeping and soldiering are contradictory terms to advocating an active role of multinational forces for world peace.

Morris Janowitz pioneered research on peacekeeping over thirty years ago,(13) and it has been continued since then by his students, especially Moskos, Segal, and Burk.(14) For example, Moskos notes that Janowitz's constabulary model of military force deemphasized violence and emphasized political compromises in peacekeeping efforts. Segal observes that Janowitz predicted soldiers' attitudes toward peacekeeping missions would be met with resistance (in 1960), but later found soldiers' attitudes were positive (in 1983). Segal collected attitudinal data in the Sinai, compared them with data for the 10th Mountain Division, and concluded, "American soldiers do not wholly reject the constabulary role."(15) Based on his empirical research, he recommended that "members of the reserve component should be regarded as an appropriate source for peacekeeping personnel."(16)

Burk advanced the preceding views by explaining the future of peacekeeping in the context of the "turbulent world" and only one superpower, and used Thompson's work in economics to show that a "leading power's ability to maintain its share of military capability is markedly influenced by its capacity to maintain a large share of the market in leading economic sectors and high rates of growth in the development of new leading-sector technologies."(17) An international socioeconomic perspective is also shared by Builder, who noted that "the security of nations is coming to rest more upon the health of their economies and societies and less upon their military capabilities."(18)

Dandeker also believes that there is a link between the evolution of postmodern society and the changing role of military missions, and that post-modern society consists of interrelated social processes. These processes are linked to five tenets of internationalization of the global economy: (1) globalization, or the growth of interdependent economic systems; (2) regionalization and transregionalization, such as the European Economic Community, in which relations of economic superiority can be out of kilter with relations of military superiority; (3) transnationalization, in which multinational corporations cut across and dominate nations; (4) the increasing importance of international law on the conduct of states that questions unilateral use of military force; and (5) the growth of nationalist, regional, and religious separatist movements to counter the growth of internationalization and globalization of the economies.(19) As society changes due to these factors, the role of peacekeeping changes to be compatible with this new …