Civilian Response Corps

The Center for Technology and National Security has issued a report called Civilian Surge: Key to Complex Operation. (URL: http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/CivSurge_Book.htm). I received an email that summarizes the report well:

Edited by Hans Binnendijk and Patrick M. Cronin, the study recommends what
civilian capacity to build, how much of it is needed, and how to manage and
organize it. Major findings of the book include the following:

* The civilian response capacity force size would best be
served by 5,000 deployable, active-duty government civilians and 10,000
civilian reserves. The cost would be about $2 billion annually.
* The National Security Council's oversight role needs to be
significantly strengthened, the sine qua non of an effective,
whole-of-government approach. A new "cross-functional interagency team"
should be created to coordinate all complex operations.
* The military has adjusted well to the new, complex missions,
but its risks overstretch and needs its civilian partners to build up their
capacity to conduct complex operations.
* The State Department should focus on developing
"stabilization-savvy" diplomats, who should be plugged directly into
"seventh-floor" executive crisis management activities.
* The United States Agency for International Development
should be the operational agency charged with training and equipping
civilians for complex missions. It should be restructured and renamed the
Agency for Development and Reconstruction to reflect its main missions.
* Domestic civilian agencies have skills useful to overseas
complex operations, but special legislation and funding is required to allow
them to participate fully.
* Efforts to educate interagency personnel for complex
operations have stalled and need to be revitalized.
* Overreliance on civilian contractors to fill this need has
led to inadequate government oversight. A new contracting standard is needed
focused on maintaining agency core competencies.
* Homeland security events, such as the response to Hurricane
Katrina, are also complex operations that require collaboration and skill
sets similar to overseas operations. The United States needs to organize in
a way that takes maximum advantage of these synergies.
* Since the US is unlikely to engage in future complex
operations unilaterally, Washington needs to mobilize the civilian capacity
of its friends and allies.
* Connecting with nongovernmental organizations and local
actors is critical, along with maximum sharing of unclassified information
with civilians.


The first part of the report describes (as do most reports like this) a greatly reduced Department of State and USAID when compared to the Vietnam era. And obviously the report ultimately calls for a greatly improved cadre of trained professionals. Interestingly, Secretary Clinton has recently described in testimony before Congress, that the DoS is having trouble finding 500 civilians to go to Afghanistan, and I read in the Washington Post that there is a request before Secretary Gates for military reservists to fill some of the positions, but the reservists would wear civilian clothes and be "low profile" which I assume means unarmed.

I have mixed thoughts about this request, and this direction. First of all, the Army Reserve and Army National Guard have been used fairly heavily in the two conflicts, and are also serving as "backstops" to the active component when the active duty units deploy. Having said that, in reality, a few hundred soldiers is not such a stretch for the entire reserve force (all Services have Reservists), so at least the superficial requirement of finding a body to fill a slot should not be a big deal. What the military has a great deal of trouble doing is finding the right body with the right skills to fill a slot.

The problem for a Reservist (from my perspective) with this plan is that it would do nothing for a military career and in fact could damage it. Much like the civilian world, when a Reservist leaves his 'professional community' people forget who he is, and it becomes much more difficult to describe what he can bring to the table. General Officers are still made from people who followed the very traditional career path of platoon leader, operations officer, executive officer, commander, and so on. So, there is little incentive for the Reservist. At least an Army Reservist (not sure what it's like in the other Services.) Finally, I envision the "low profile" being a partial deterrent to Reservists. From my limited experience, apparently civilians do not have to follow the same force protection rules that the military follows and this might inhibit some from volunteering.

The call to create a civilian response corps has been circulating around D.C. for several years, and the DoS has started to create its own "civilian reserve force". I suspect that it is having trouble incentivizing its employees to join, and this gets back to a refrain often heard in the military: the military is at war, and the rest of the country is not. Were I a civilian living in my pleasant salubrious suburb here in D.C. with a nice comfortable job in the city, why would I want to risk my health, and my life to go to Iraq or Afghanistan? It's a realistic question that the USG must answer. Are we at war, and if so, what is the accountability of the rest of the USG and the rest of the nation for the outcome?

I heard a briefing given by then-retiring Major General Fastabend from the Army's operations division (G3/5/7) who made the point that the military is always accountable. From "winning the war" to protecting service members to protecting Afghan and Iraqi civilians. It's often a life and death accountability. But what about everyone else? I don't think the current administration has answered this question to itself or to the nation.