US Foreign Police Advising

Foreign assistance in policing is not a new phenomenon, but often we fail to consider the past, while planning for the future. Since 1989, the role of the US in several stability operations has increased, such as: Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994, 2004), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003). Additionally, US military and civilian organizations have been used to rebuild military and police forces and to provide logistics to international forces (El Salvador, 1991; East Timor, 1999). With the intention of avoiding past mistakes in future stability activities, we have endeavored to capture the lessons from Vietnam policing development. The operational environment in Vietnam was similar to Afghanistan and Iraq, in that police development was initiated during the conflict, in a dangerous environment that was difficult for civilian development actors to work in, thus requiring a large military police advising contingent. Police advising in what was then RoV also incorporated USAID and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advisors, as well as those from other countries, but that is beyond the scope of this anthology of lessons learned. The lessons derived from the US intervention in Vietnam have important implications for foreign advising today and in the future.