
TriggerHappy, Autonomous, and Disobedient: Nordbat and Mission Command in Bosnia - joostdevries
https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/9/20/trigger-happy-autonomous-and-disobedient-nordbat-2-and-mission-command-in-bosnia
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siliconc0w
Sending in peacekeepers who cannot shoot back is absurd. It's political
cowardice at it's worst. We really need to figure out this world governance
thing and how to effectively rebuild rogue nation states. I'm not sure what
that looks like, but probably not the UN.

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pjc50
After the Iraq fiasco I think a little humility should be in order. Grand
schemes for "world governance" have a tendency to go wrong, and it's hard to
come up with a definition of "rogue" that doesn't include too many countries.

The limitations on the peacekeepers were part of the broader context of trying
not to simply invade the place and trigger conflict with Russia (e.g.
[http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/world/us-clashes-with-
russ...](http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/world/us-clashes-with-russia-over-
bosnia.html) ), a pattern which continues today in Syria.

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donquichotte
"Then they [the Croatian militants] issued an ultimatum: hand over the three
Muslim nurses, and we will leave you alone."

Quite nauseating to think that this happened in Europe in the 90's.

Edit: even more nauseating to go on vacation there and realize that the people
who did this are no different from yourself. This could happen anywhere.

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pjc50
Indeed. This is partly why people are so sensitive about anti-Muslim rhetoric
and policy in the West today. It's an alarmingly short slippery slope from
"send them back" to "send them back and burn their houses" (e.g. Rohingya) to
"just hand them over so we can murder them" to "send in the genocide squads",
as in Srebrenica that was mentioned at the end of the article.

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folli
The tough part is to find the right balance between top down management that
usually results in paralyzing micromanagment, preventing quick and dynamic
reaction, and a possible loss of control over the single acting units turning
into rogue actors.

As the article correctly states, this is an issue of trust, but trust can only
be earned with experience, which is lacking in such a complex environment.

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yagyu
This trust is a result of intentional training towards enabling everyone down
to private to know when to make a decision and when to bother chain of
command. It's not only training of management, it's more like a culture.

I guess this post in part has some traction with hn because mission command
seems like a wonderful management technique. Just let the people who knows
best and have first hand information make efficient decisions, fast, right?
But it actually takes good people and a lot of training to work in practice.
On every level there has to be a "feeling" of what's reasonable. And
management, in turn, must learn when to step back, and maybe more importantly
not punish afterwards when equipped with hindsight.

(Served two years in swedish army, too young for Bosnia myself but couple of
my officers were in nordbat2)

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jonke
Everyone involved has to know the objective, which is a lot of more work than
most people understand. Besides that I think that the selection and training
for the BA0X where uniq for the swedish army who could pick from a large
volunteer base.

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osullivj
"The culture of mission command in Sweden dates back to 1943, when senior
Swedish army officers were taking note of the tactical superiority of German
troops fighting Soviets on the Eastern Front."

Auftragstaktik: mission command - part of the German Army doctrine developed
in the 19th C. TN DuPuy's Genius for War gives an excellent explanation.

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speps
Missing a dash between "trigger" and "happy" is bothering me more than it
should. Reads like a new vulnerability name...

Please fix the title as it is "Trigger-Happy" in the original.

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DanBC
HN titles have an 80 character limit.

The dash doesn't fit.

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mping
Remove the 2nd comma then, its useless.

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DanBC
I'm neither a mod nor the submitter. I can't do anything with titles.

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basicplus2
This is precisely how i expect UN forces to behave. Bravo!

