President Bush approved the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), a five-year $660 million program, on April 1, 2004. GPOI was developed to address major gaps in international peace support operations (PSO):
the number of capable peacekeepers and the ability of countries to sustain that capacity,
deployment and logistics support, and
the number of gendarme units able to participate in PSOs.
GPOI’s goals were put forth as a G-8 Sea Island Summit initiative in June 2004, where G-8 Leaders agreed to an action plan on “Expanding Global Capability for Peace Support Operations.” This plan includes commitments to:
train and, where appropriate, equip 75,000 military PSO troops worldwide, with an emphasis on Africa, through 2010
develop a transportation and logistics support arrangement to help troops deploy to PSOs and help sustain them in the field
support the Italian initiative to establish an international training center to train gendarme units to participate in PSOs, and
coordinate capacity building efforts.
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