Progress in Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations: Can the U.S. learn?

This study seeks to answer understand whether or not the United States has learned from its past in stabilization and reconstruction operations. To answer this question, this work constructs a new theoretical model of foreign policy learning and presents two case studies to explore if learning occurred and to determine if conducting more rigorous tests of the theory is a worthwhile endeavor. To do so, the study utilizes a plausibility-probe research design. The cases selected as plausibility probes cover security sector reform and civil-military relations in US experiences in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This study concludes that the theoretical framework is helpful in illustrating intervening and interacting factors that can interrupt or block learning cycles, and that the civil-military relations case study, on the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) should be used to more rigorously test the theory.