Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
– the Office of Regional Engagement (ORE for the acronym happy).
Changing the means of implementation from a GCC to something like an ORE is a huge strategic culture shift. We sometimes use the “turning the super-tanker” analogy to discuss evolution in the DOTMLPF arena, this might be more akin to changing planetary orbit! There are all kinds of challenges associated with the magnitude of the task, to name a few: articulating the rationale behind it to overcome domestic political resistance (which involves overcoming lobbyist and the military – industrial complex , congressional districts, jobs, etc.); enhancing existing bureaucracies and cultures in the Inter-Agency such as DoS, DoJ, USAID, etc. to work on a scale that is representative of the scale of the political objective – and deployed forward – think along the lines of DoD (this has not only $$$ and faces associated with it, but planning cultures and educational requirements like DoD); overcoming the inertia associated with our current means of implementing or political objectives – there is more then just the internal aspect to this, but the external aspect – who is the most trusted organization amongst the government?; the “whole of government” does not get to some of the means – there is the aspect of private enterprise and the role the interactions between them on a national, regional and international scale play toward economic development (same could be said for informational). This will all take time.
Seems to me we could be in the process of forming up such an entity (even if the poor attempt to put a continent inside a shape akin to a Masai shield--or something else --was misguided). Anyone have any insight into what is actually happening in the creation of AFRICOM? I have garnered some understanding of how it is organizing some of its intel assets, but that is a far cry from seeing the COnOPS and command relationships diagrams.