United States Army War College

Civil War Arkansas endured many forms of irregular or guerilla warfare including activity that approached insurgency. It was a complex arena that resembles the present day and it illustrates much of contemporary counterinsurgency doctrine. Arkansas was a Southern state with a significant Unionist population and this divide fueled and shaped much of the conflict. Arkansas was unique in that the Confederate commander seeking to make up for conventional weakness, initiated guerilla warfare directed at Union forces. In response, Union commanders who were merely to protect lines of communication responded with punitive actions against individuals and communities which did little to reduce guerilla activity and served to alienate the local population. As the war progressed, however, guerilla bands shifted from military targets becoming progressively more terrorist, criminal, and once a Unionist state government was installed, insurgent. The Union army's role also changed as the main war moved on from the Mississippi basin and Arkansas became an early field for Lincoln's plan to reincorporate rebel states. The army's emphasis thus shifted to extending Federal authority and its organization and tactics evolved into a successful combination of locally raised troops, intelligence led operations, isolation of the guerillas, and political reconciliation.

Protection of Civilians (PoC) must be considered and integrated during all military operations, including Peace Support Operations (PSO) and Major Operations during Armed Conflict (MOAC). Civilians are protected persons under international law, and parties to a conflict have a legal obligation to protect civilians from the conflict's effects. Additionally, PoC is a major objective of many military operations and is frequently includedin peace support mandates. There is, nevertheless, a lack of clarity and common understanding about PoC and how to achieve it. Many recent studies have noted that civilians are the people most at risk during armed conflict and peacekeeping operations have often not protected civilians effectively. These studies have identified numerous problems including inadequate mandates; a lack of applicable doctrine; differing views on what PoC includes; challenges in integrating the diverse set of military, police, and civilian actors required forPoC; and a lack of the necessary capabilities. This PoC Military Reference Guide is intended to be a resource for military commanders and staffs who must consider PoC while conducting operations in PSO and MOAC contexts as shown below. Other interested readers may include international organizations, national militaries, training centers, and civilian and police officials who are also concerned with PoC.

The Army must prepare its units to employ Full Spectrum Operations (FSO) competencies as part of the Joint Force 2020 in order to generate the desired strategic effects that "prevent" adversaries from escalating conflicts, "shape" the international environment, and, where challenged, "win" decisively and dominantly across the range of conflicts. To ensure its success, the Army must make changes to the National Training Center's (NTC) Contemporary Operational Environment (COE). This paper traces the NTC's evolution, analyses the strategic security landscape from present to 2020, and makes recommendations to optimize the NTC's preparation of Brigade Combat Teams. The main recommendations target the depiction of three of the COE's "operational variables": infrastructure, social, and economic. Accounting for fiscal and other resource-constrained realities, this study finishes with suggestions on how to incrementally implement these ideas, emphasizing "smarter" stewardship over increasingly scarce resources. If employed, these ideas can generate a tailored COE that allows units the most realistic and challenging training experiences short of actual combat.