Lots of stuff going on the community at large related to Small Wars Community of Interest. Along with the symposium that JCISFA (the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance) there were a couple of other noteworthy events. There was some significant work and thinking done on TMAAG (Theater Military Advisory and Assistance Group), and the JFCOM (Joint Forces Command) and PKSOI (the Peace Keeping Stability Operations Institute out of the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks) hosted a conference at Gettysburg, PA in a shared effort with CALL (Center for Army Lessons Learned) to produce a Rule of Law Handbook for COCOM and JTF commanders and planners – but could also be used by those who must consider military support to Rule of Law (RoL) in their operations and planning.
I was fortunate enough to be the JCISFA representative and I was very impressed at the level of representation and participation from across the Joint & broader Inter-Agency communities. There was also some representation from the ICRC (Red Cross), and a presentation by a law professor from Indiana University who’d spent some time with his students tackling a Rule of Law scenario. I walked away far more literate in the broader scope of how important the issue of Rule of Law is in achieving our foreign policy objectives in terms of the pieces, parts and roles of the many agencies, organizations, commander and staffs play in addressing military support to Rule of Law; and how military operations and legal authorities are increasingly integrated with other legal authorities within the Inter-Agency, Host Nation, and broad Inter-National community.
The conference provided a nice balance between panel discussions and smaller work groups. The discussions were led by panels who are either currently dealing with or recently dealt with RoL issues with focuses on places like Afghanistan, Columbia, Horn of Africa – the panel compositions reflected the Inter-Agency requirements of dealing with RoL – given both the practical and legal consideration of the challenge – and offered the opportunities to ask questions to the people who’d actually had to work through the difficult issues they faced in pursuit of foreign policy objectives.
The small group work was broken out to give each small group cross cutting capabilities from the Inter-Agency and a senior mentor to guide the work toward producing thinking on what efforts (in this case we used the idea of Logical Lines of Operations) might be pursued to accomplish the effects that provide support to the RoL. We also tackled what tasks might be fleshed out under those LLOOs to help commander’s and planners dealing with the Rule of Law to allocate resources (money, time, people, units, etc.), and what other agencies and organizations might be coordinated with to accomplish military support to RoL. The overarching guidance was to strike a balance between universality and specificity in order to provide the work greater utility and longevity, in other words, try and focus more on a menu those working RoL could use to consider the conditions they face, not just the ones faced by others in the past.
The goal is to get something out to practitioners as quickly as possible that is both relevant and has utility so that we can better achieve unified effort on Rule of Law issues – the type of key planning requirements that help commanders, planners and staffs consider the problems and conditions they face.
I think JFCOM & PKSOI did a fantastic job on arranging and synchronizing the conference to address a difficult challenge we face in accomplishing our foreign policy objectives. This is one of those things that show the willingness of those working at the grass roots level to tackle tough Inter-Agency issues based on the guidance from some of the more senior leaders who understand the requirements we face now and ahead.
As a planner type at JCISFA, I came away with a much better understanding of how Security Force Assistance plays a role in the broader and more encompassing areas of Security Sector Reform and Rule of Law. This is an ongoing effort, and JFCOM has plans to continue the work to support the staffs and commanders who deal with RoL on both a sustained day to day basis through engagement with our partner states, and within the framework on achieving large scale/effort support to RoL such as we see in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A huge hat tip to them and the many agencies who participated in tackling tough issues to produce something that both lays the basis for considering and framing tough issues, and will produce something practical 04s and 05s can use to support the intent of their 06 through Flag Officer leadership. They did a great job, and I think exceeded even their own expectations – I came away bettered prepared to both work in my area, and provide better support to the larger effort.
Best, Rob
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