ABOUT CSRS

The Center for Stabilization and Reconstruction Studies (CSRS) is a teaching institute located at the Naval Postgraduate School. The purpose of the Center is to provide educational opportunities for the full-spectrum of actors that become involved in stabilization and reconstruction activities. CSRS accomplishes this purpose through a wide variety of practitioner-oriented programs, including games/table top exercises, short courses, workshops, conferences and applied research initiatives.

Contemporary stability and reconstruction operations are conducted by a wide assortment of international actors that have different purposes, motivations, organizational structures, and methods of operation. This diversity, while necessary given the manifold tasks and functions encompassed in a modern peace or humanitarian operation, makes it extremely difficult to develop and implement a common strategy to strengthen the institutions of government and provide for the basic needs of at risk populations. It also makes it difficult to develop the elements of civil society necessary to keep governments responsive to the people, while also fostering conditions for societal healing and forgiveness.

CSRS was conceived to address this challenge of coordination and combined action among diverse actors in stability and reconstruction operations. The Center considers the actors falling, typically, into four broad communities:

• US and foreign armed forces;
• Governmental civilian agencies, such as the State Department and Agency for International Development, and their foreign counterparts;
• Representatives of NGOs (relief groups, human rights groups, civil society groups, etc.); and,
• Representatives from inter-governmental organizations IGOs (the UN family of organizations and the regional organizations).

CSRS programs are designed to be of value to all the diverse actors and involve representatives from each of the communities as participants. The notion is that greater cross-community learning, collective problem-solving and networking will equip individuals to be agents of change within their diverse organizations. To enhance credibility among each community of actors, CSRS programs are typically co-sponsored by major players from the various communities. Previous CSRS educational events and their composition are described in other sections of this website.

“The object in war is to obtain a better peace…If you concentrate exclusively on victory, with no thought for the after-effect…, it is almost certain that the peace will be a bad one, containing the germs of another war.”

--B. H. Liddell Hart