We found three things:

1. Everyone breaks the world up differently, but all use 6 regions (state, DoD, National Geographic, etc), and they all have pros and cons.

2. It doesn't really matter how you do it, but you have to in order to gain a regional understanding, but...

3. You also have to ignore the boundaries that you just made, as you can not discuss or study any one region of the world without taking into account how it interacts with the other 5. hockey rules, you have lines but you get to go outside them as necessary.

Key is to not get too wrapped up in the lines you just drew, as they don't mean anything to the people you just boxed in with them.


As an asside, an idea that I am toying with is to take the existing MSCA processes and concepts and see if it makes sense to expand and divide it into "Domestic MSCA" and "Foreign MSCA." Believe that this could take us a long ways toward getting DoD back into the supporting role overseas. May also be a way to clean up new concepts like IW and old processess like Security Assistance under an accepted and practical mechanism that ensures that the GCC only sends his components into a country to engage upon a request from the country team. As ASD HD has lead for MSCA, would possibly be ASD SO/LIC for foreign, split between Stability Ops and Special Ops to lead for DoD on this, with the mirror image over at State doing same as primary over all lead. Real work happens at each individual embassy though