Is it a battlespace or is it "humanitarian space"?

My colleague Dr. Gene Bonventre has been hard at work considering ways to get USAID to work with DoD. One of the irritating fundamental arguments I have heard from USAID/DoS and NGO personnel against DoD's work is that we are 'crowding the humanitarian space'. Part of the problem, in my view, is that DoD doesn't view where it works as "humanitarian space." Afghanistan, for example, is a "battlespace" in my view. Some USAID personnel do not share that view and believe the country to be a "humanitarian space" that is being poisoned by DoD. In fact, some would argue that DoD's presence in Afghanistan creates danger to their personnel. From the DoD perspective, the U.S. President ordered up a war against the Taliban who were lurking in Afghanistan.

But back to the brilliant Dr. Bonventre who used to work for DoD. He apparently has been slaving away on a committee to make recommendations about how we can all get along. The report is here: http://www.usaid.gov/km/seminars/2009/civilian_military_relations.pdf. I haven't read it thoroughly yet but it looks promising.

Also, Dr. Bonventre and another brilliant former military guy, Dr. Skip Burkle, have posted their views here, on the New Security Beat blog ( http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2009/07/who-does-development-guest-contributor.html?showComment=1248726308123#c3239810732797271218).

I take issue with Skip Burkle's blog in that he views the discussion from a development perspective (the title of the blog, after all), and he maintains that USAID is best for development actions. He criticizes Secretary Gates for asking for more civilian personnel positing that Gates was asking for the personnel to be under the control of the military. Finally he criticizes DoD for be inexpert at development which he calls "winning hearts and minds" and which I would argue is "counter insurgency" when referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Regardless of his critique I think the question is the wrong question.

I don't think we have the luxury to have "either/or" agencies any more. I have written about this before--I think Michele Flournoy hit the nail on the head with a proposal for a new breed of security expert. Or, you could have a new breed of development expert. Either way, staff at USAID who are being paid with my tax dollars should be promoting the US Government agenda, and part of that is our national security interests. Cognizance of what that is would be a good starting point. Much like we can no longer leave military actions in these hybrid wars to the combat arms dudes who view every problem as something to shoot and kill. The world has moved on, but perhaps our gut reactions have not.

Down with "Roles and Responsibilities"

I'll just get it right out: the endless discussions we are having in the government about "roles and responsibilities" of the various agencies are fantasies. I agree with Michele Flournoy in the Armed Forces Journal (In search of harmony: Orchestrating 'The Interagency' for the long war, available here: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/07/1857934.) She basically says that what we need are a new breed of national security professionals who are "development-diplomats" and "defense-development" experts and so forth (those are my terms, tho), and who are trained at a national security institute--like the National Defense University.

What I would like to see are 'functional' experts who understand global public health across the security domains of defense, development and diplomacy. I'd like to know that the government has a team of experts who sit next to each other and understand how the bad guys are using health as a commodity against the U.S., and what strategies the U.S. is using against them in return. And I'm not just talking about biosecurity either. How about an expert who understands how to reach out to other countries like China in order to partner and do good around the world?

Instead, we seem to be locked in a do-loop of discourse about how the DoD should not be working in the "humanitarian space", for example, because we make the world dangerous. And how USAID's problem is that it can't leave the FOB. And how the Department of State is so weak it couldn't lead its way to the bathroom down the hall. And then the NGO staff stand up at meetings and talk as if ALL NGOs were all working with the same pure motivation and intent, born from a "human rights" perspective that is shared world wide. And the message from all of this is that if only we all knew our roles and responsibilities, and would climb back in to those boxes, then life would be much less frustrating, our actions much more legitimate (see my previous post about legitimacy), and the world an all around better place. And it's the fault of the "other guys" that the world is not 'better' already. Unfortunately, that's just way too easy.

Call me a pragmatist, darn it, but the world is what it is, and what we need is a way to deal with it. A flexible, responsive and initiating way of dealing with it. That is going to take a new breed of national securitists who are sophisticated and smart.

The discourse must change: we need to stop with the "roles and responsibilities". We are all in this together--the "humanitarian space" is populated by NGOs, DoD, USAID, DoS, USDA, private security firms, IGOs and more. It's a cacophony. And there you have it. What we need are good rules for working together, and good processes to at least share knowledge of our often conflicting actions. We must understand that there are differing purposes for being in the humanitarian space, and therefore take different actions. The most reasonable thing we can do is figure out how to best deconflict those actions. It makes sense to have a USG strategy, coordinated across agencies for initiating action and for responding to changes, and "Roles and Responsibilities" is not going to get us there.

The USAID is sponosoring a 90-day assessment in Afghanistan of all USG health development work. I hope it talks about processes, coordination, and methods to at least communicate actions. I look forward to the result.