has been for noted for its successes in Thailand against the communists, the Philippines in the 1950s against the Huks, and in Malaysia during the Malayan Emergency. At the same time though, it is shaded in controversy because of its overlapping role in regime protection and the violations of human rights. Still, the foundations of CMO are significantly different in approach in contrast to Western militaries, due to its inward-looking nature.
Against this backdrop, countries integrated CMO in their military operations based on their military traditions or historical past. In the case of the United States, CMO was a military operation that was not initially welcomed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s. The United States began to fixate on reinvigorating energies and resources on producing an overwhelming technological-edge that would ensure an immediate and decisive victory in any battlefield as encapsulated in the concept, Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). However its ideal version of military reform took a blow with the harsh reality of contemporary conflict. Undoubtedly, its superior technology helped deliver a quick victory on the battlefield and lead to the toppling of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan but unexpected challenges were met in securing peace in a post-invasion phase. Hereon, American policymakers were faced with “remaking a nation” or long-term nation-building that included security, economic, political, and humanitarian realms.75
For the United States, CMO was something associated with COIN, a messy business that involved long-term commitment, not to mention the debate over CMO’s importance in comparison to traditional military tasking.76 In short, it was against its ideals of performing high-intensity operations for the purpose of delivering quick military results.77 The United States only began to adopt CMO in earnest as COIN specialists advocated that a conventional military approach could not meet the challenges faced in the occupational phase of Iraq and Afghanistan.78 Their point of reference has been to revisit the COIN annals of their past, including their experience in Vietnam and Latin America. Therefore, elements of population treatment that dictated their implementation of CMO came from their COIN experiences rather than peacekeeping.
On the other hand, Canada and Nordic countries tend to follow the traditional tenets of peacekeeping, which is grounded in contributing to global stability and humanitarian efforts.79 Organizations such as NATO which is comprised of alliance forces reflect a broader interpretation of collective-defense with an understanding that the mandates and activities of civilian organizations have to
75 T. David Mason & James O. Meernik, eds., Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding in Post-War Societies:
Sustaining the Peace, London & New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 1-4; Read David H Ucko’s The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars, Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press, 2009 for an account on how the United States military have fared in its military reform efforts in order to adapt to the post-Cold War environment. .
76 A summary of these arguments are made in John Ulbadi, “Why Civil Military Operations will be a Combat Multiplier in Counterinsurgency Operations,” Small Wars Journal, 2009, pp. 1-3.
77 James J. Landon and Richard E. Hayes, Ph.D., National Approaches to Civil-Military Coordination in Peace and Humanitarian Assistance Operations, Virginia, Evidence Based Research, Inc., undated. Accessed online at:
http://www.dodccrp.org/files/landon_hayes.htm. Hereafter cited as Landon and Hayes, National Approaches to Civil-Military Coordination in Peace and Humanitarian Assistance Operations.
78 John Ubaldi, “Why Civil Military Operations will be a Combat Multiplier in Counterinsurgency Operations,”
Small Wars Journal, 2009; The publication of a revised and updated counterinsurgency field manual The U.S.
Army * Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2007. The United States had not updated its COIN doctrine since its El Salvador campaign which took place more that two decades ago.
79 Landon and Hayes, National Approaches to Civil-Military Coordination in Peace and Humanitarian Assistance Operations.
be reconciled with NATO troops to make military interventions more successful.80 Another political organization, the United Nations avoids association with COIN and labels their version of CMO as Civil-Military Co-ordination (CMCoord) and CIMIC. Its activities are utilized for both peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.81
It was against this backdrop that Civil-Military Operations (CMO) officially came into use to describe a distinct military function which centers on dealing and cooperating with civilian actors operating in a conflict zone. The first commanding of media-attention in regards to CMO came from the wars in the Balkans (Bosnian and Kosovo) that required NATO intervention and more recently the United States’
counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations in post-September 11th attacks. These types of expeditionary wars have pushed militaries to institutionalize CMO practices in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the military mission which include undertaking responsibilities normally performed by civilian agencies, cooperating and coordinating with numerous actors in a conflict area, and also meeting humanitarian obligations in protecting and/or minimizing damage to the population.
The timing of the Philippines’ institutionalization of CMO also coincides with the post-Cold War trend in the Western world, reflecting a widespread movement to move away from applying CMO in an ad hoc manner and formally incorporating CMO in core military missions. However, unlike Western powers that engage in expeditionary wars, nations like the Philippines have developed CMO in order to deal with internal threats. That is why even though there is an outpour of publications of doctrines and field manuals that produce a similar-sounding definition, in actuality, there is a marked difference in the context that CMO is applied in which comes from the type of military mission, the security environment, and the military tradition that the soldiers come from. Consequently, any attempt on reaching a standard definition of CMO can obscure issues and challenges that a particular armed forces faces in conducting CMO. For this reason, a detailed investigation on the historical roots of CMO and its development was considered to be indispensable before approaching CMO in the Philippines’ operational environment.
80 AJP-9, 2003, pp. 1-2.
81 UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). "Civil-Military Coordination in UN Integrated Peacekeeping Missions (UN-CIMIC) Policy", January 2010, 3-4: Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination (UN-CMCoord) website. Available at:
http://www.unocha.org/what-we-do/coordination-tools/UN-CMCoord/overview. Accessed April 3, 2011.