Humanitarian operations

Humanitarian Operations Humanitarian Operations The involvement of the United s military in humanitarian assistance, at homeand abroad, has brought about significant benefits, but also challenges, which undermine the scope of the military. Over decades, the United States Amy has been involved in carrying out humanitarian assistance in various part of the world with an aim of assisting people experiencing manmade disaster and natural calamities (Romano, n. d). In recent years, the US military participated in delivering humanitarian assistance in Haiti after a hurricane devastated its coast. In what has become a policy, the US government continues to draw military personnel from the United States forces to implement various humanitarian operations. Many people regard humanitarian operation as beneficial to the United States forces, but this is partially true. Conducting Humanitarian Operations is not the role of the U. S. military and distracts our forces form their primary mission, which is to defend the U. S. interest.
By conducting humanitarian operations, the United States reduces the number of personnel from its primary mission of defending its Interest. In recent years, the US government deployed a significant number of military personnel on humanitarian operation, but this has reduced the number of US forces defending US interest in other places. For instance, the US government sent a considerable number of personnel to provide humanitarian operation in the Libya against Kadhafi’s regime (Christopher, 2011). While the world welcome this move, many of the marine and air force personnel who went to Libya had to leave other duties elsewhere. This can be catastrophic is the personnel are required to report to their stations should an emergency occur. The potential harm of such an event underpin the negative impact of humanitarian operation in enabling the United States defend its interest as necessary instead of taking part in operations that undermine the deployment of its personnel.
Humanitarian operation distracts policy makers in U. S government from providing meaningful direction on issues that allow the U. S military to execute their mission appropriately and successfully. During humanitarian operations, the U. S military and its policy makers who take part in these programs that do not have definite objectives, but more demanding due to the complexity in logistics (Carter & White, 2011). Because of this, the U. S military will have less time to address real issues that affect their primary missions such as defending U. S interest. Consequently, their primary operations will suffer from lack of appropriate attention and effort from both the policy makers and the commanders.
Humanitarian operation also lead to increased pressure on military personnel , and this can reduce the morale of the personnel. In the past, the needs for humanitarian operations, such as Haiti earthquake, have been spontaneous and unpredictable often-causing U. S and other countries to marshal the personnel within a short period (Chossudovsky, 2010). Despite the importance of such effort, military personnel often experience increased pressure due to huge tasks of delivering the assistance. Furthermore, increase pressure can reduce the morale of some of the personnel, and this has far-reaching implications. When a dire need arise where the U. S personnel are required to respond, it will almost be impossible for the forces to provide much need support and response even when it means protecting the interest of the United States, despite this being a primary objective.
In conclusion, humanitarian operations have some negative impact on the U. S military as it distracts it from its primary mission. Humanitarian operations take many personnel off their primary work to provide assistance elsewhere. In addition, humanitarian operations also distract policy makers and commander from focusing on the issue of primary interest. Most important, it also put the U. S military into a lot of strain, and this demoralizes many personnel.
References
Carter, A. B. & White, J. P. (2001). Keeping the edge: managing defence for the future: a publication of the preventive defence project. A research collaboration of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Stanford University. Cambridge, Mass. Boston : MIT Press.
Chossudovsky, M. (2010, January 15). The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?. Global Researcher. Retrieved May 8, 2010, from The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?
Romano, S. J. (N. d.). Logistics Planning and Collaboration in Complex Relief Operations. NDU Press. Retrieved May 8, 2012, from http://www. ndu. edu/press/complex-relief-operations. html
Schnaubelt, C. M. (2011, May 18). The Limits of Military Force. The New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2012, from http://www. nytimes. com/2011/05/19/opinion/19iht-edschnaubelt19. html? _r= 1