Unified Command Plan

The new Unified Command Plan was released recently, realigning responsibility for several nations, and more importantly, prioritizing stability, security and reconstruction operations (SSTRO) along with pandemic influenza.

First the pandemic influenza news is interesting because responsibility was given to NORTHCOM, the command that has responsibility for the U.S. area of operations. While the apparent intent of this move was to deliver this topic to one single agency for oversight, the discontinuity between the operational agencies of the military and the policy agencies may widen. Currently, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (ASD(HA)) has responsibilities for surveillance operations. And, while not a Mars-Venus situation, NORTHCOM is miles away from D.C. both geographically and somewhat less, but not insignificantly, culturally. Pandemic Influenza response initiatives are wide and deep across the federal agencies, and it will be interesting to see how this apparent shift in responsibilities pans out.

Second, the prioritization of SSTR operations is interesting news. The reason for prioritizing stability operations (as they are called for short) is that the U.S. policy crowd would like to mitigate future conflict before it happens, and not always by application of the Bush doctrine. They would like the military to conduct operations that will create/support capable and legitimate governments. However, the use of the military for pre-conflict stability operations is an imaginative leap into an abyss for many in the military. With little evidence that using the military in this way actually creates any stability at all, other than hopeful anecdotes heard in conferences all across the land (validated by wonderful heart-warming photos of smiling children in dirty clothes and raggedy hair), the fighting force is asking the question--what are the priorities and where? The answer men, supposedly in the Department of State and U.S. AID, seem to be unhelpfully commenting in the media about what a bully DoD is for sucking up all the tax dollars, and not really stepping out with comprehensive and rationalized plans across any region at all. Aside from sniping at DoD, there also is much news from the Department of State about the Civilian Response Corps, which is supposedly a reserve force of willing and able civil servants who will march across the foreign lands (doing what?) in support of foreign programs. In other words, it seems as if there is a huge disconnect between the policy makers and the policy-executors, which is really nothing new.

This leads me to Afghanistan. The time is ripe for a broader prescription for what ails us in Afghanistan, but I have heard nothing from any quarter. The U.S. is engaged in two operations there: International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The legal mandates for both do not allow expansive engagement with the multitudes working across the country. Instead we are restricted to building Afghanistan's own security forces, primarily. This is leading toward ineffective and piecemeal projects. Progress is slow. Painful. Yet where is the State Department? We need a comprehensive plan, with public diplomacy as a key driver. Keeping these two goals in mind, a plan must soon be articulated across the agencies so that the policy will finally connect with the execution. And even if the effort is messy, which is necessarily will be, we will finally at long last have taken the next step in this idea of stability operations.