Doug's Hoosier Home Page


Welcome!

Doug Brooks

HOOSIER

(Photo from late 2000, in Sierra Leone)


LINKS

 

New: Doug Brooks bio information

 

Photos!

Links, academic papers etc.

The Association I founded and ran between 2001 and 2012: IPOA/ISOA - The International Peace Operations Asssociation/International Stability Operations Association

Conceptualizing the Stability Operations Industry

What's a Hoosier?

How to make a 'Hoosier Martini'

 

Information on the AMPMlist news group PMCs discussion group

 

Journal of International Peace Operations/Stability Operations Magazine



Welcome to Doug's Hoosier Home page!

In this site you will find personal information about my background, my research and my role in advocating for a larger role for ethical and capable private sector services to vastly improve international efforts at peacekeeping, peace enforcement, stability operations, disaster relief and humanitarian rescue.

Ultimately my interest comes from my own academic research and a widespread frustration at the poor quality and low rate of success that plagues current international stability operations. While Western nations have been willing to authorize and fund these vital projects, they rarely send their own well-equipped, highly-trained military forces anymore, leading to the phenomenon of 'Westernless' peacekeeping. In Westernless peacekeeping the actual military peacekeeping operations are shamefully left to militaries from the poorest countries in the world - militaries without the resources, training or equipment that is common to NATO-class armies.

But peacekeeping can succeed. In my own research in and around Afghanistan, the Balkans, Cambodia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Iraq and elsewhere I was astonished by the vital and positive role played by the private sector in holding chaotic international peace operations together. Indeed these private firms are making peace operations significantly more successful than they would have been otherwise.  In fact, it is inconceivable that any noteworthy stability operation could even function without engaging considerable private sector support. It is the private sector that is ably filling the gap left by the absent Western militaries, and these unique companies are doing their indispensable work in the most chaotic and dangerous conditions imaginable. Private companies are providing everything from demining to tactical rotary-wing transportation to armed security to logistics to medical services and much, much more - all with a remarkably high level of professionalism and ethics and remarkably little notice.

I also include some information in this web site about my various travels and shoestring journeys in Africa, Central America and of course my 1992-94 "Cold War Victory Lap" where I blew my retirement savings to wander hitchhike, and bum my way around the world.

You may also find more information than you ever needed or wanted to know about my awesome home state of Indiana, USA, and the people who inhabit the state: Hoosiers

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Please send me comments, criticisms and suggestions!

Hoosier84@Hoosier84.com

Note: The background is Indiana limestone.  Many thanks to professional geologist Hal Johnson and the artistic talents of my mother.

 


Email me - Hoosier84@Hoosier84.com