Humanitarian Operations of the United States Military - Essay Example

The involvement of the United s military in humanitarian assistance, at home and abroad, has brought about significant benefits, but also challenges, which undermine the scope of the military. Over decades, the United States Amy has been involved in carrying out humanitarian assistance in various parts of the world to assist people experiencing manmade disasters and natural calamities (Romano, n.d). In recent years, the US military participated in delivering humanitarian assistance in Haiti after a hurricane devastated its coast.

In what has become a policy, the US government continues to draw military personnel from the United States forces to implement various humanitarian operations. Many people regard humanitarian operations as beneficial to the United States forces, but this is partially true. Conducting Humanitarian Operations is not the role of the U.S. military and distracts our forces from their primary mission, which is to defend the U.S. interest. By conducting humanitarian operations, the United States reduces the number of personnel from its primary mission of defending its Interest.

In recent years, the US government deployed a significant number of military personnel on humanitarian operations, but this has reduced the number of US forces defending US interests in other places. For instance, the US government sent a considerable number of personnel to provide humanitarian operations in Libya against Kadhafi’s regime (Christopher, 2011). While the world welcome this move, many of the marine and air force personnel who went to Libya had to leave other duties elsewhere.

This can be catastrophic if the personnel is required to report to their stations should an emergency occur. The potential harm of such an event underpins the negative impact of the humanitarian operation in enabling the United States to defend its interest as necessary instead of taking part in operations that undermine the deployment of its personnel. Humanitarian operation distracts policymakers in the U.S government from providing meaningful direction on issues that allow the U.S military to execute their mission appropriately and successfully.

During humanitarian operations, the U. S military and it's policymakers who take part in these programs do not have definite objectives but are more demanding due to the complexity of logistics (Carter & White, 2011). Because of this, the U.S military will have less time to address real issues that affect their primary missions such as defending U.S interests. Consequently, their primary operations will suffer from a lack of appropriate attention and effort from both the policymakers and the commanders.

 Despite the importance of such effort, military personnel often experience increased pressure due to the huge tasks of delivering the assistance. Furthermore, increase pressure can reduce the morale of some of the personnel, and this has far-reaching implications. When a dire need arises where the U.S personnel are required to respond, it will almost be impossible for the forces to provide much need support and response even when it means protecting the interest of the United States, despite this being a primary objective. In conclusion, humanitarian operations have some negative impact on the U.S military as it distracts it from its primary mission.