Obstacles to a Whole of Government Approach: DoD versus State AOR's

[Marauder Doc]

To me the biggest concern with having different boundaries has to do with much needed integration and coordination at the inter-agency level. No matter how the map is divided up, each region should have a:

• Director of Regional Foreign Policy

Who is supported by:

1. Unified Combatant Commander (from DoD)
2. Deputy Director of Regional Aid and Development (from USAID)
3. Deputy Director of Regional Affairs (from State)

Everybody looks at the same map, works with the same people, out of the same office. Major NGOs and regional powers are invited to send liasons to the Regional Commands. Maybe they don't get a seat at the briefing table all the time, but if the PACOM commander wants to coordinate Tsunami relief efforts with PLAN, they should be able to do that because they already have a working relationship.

[wm]

Unless these new regions' boundaries correspond to one of the already existing set of regional boundaries, I submit it will result in the same "seams" problem, just pushed to a different, higher level. If the new seams correspond to some other organization's boundaries, then I do not see the value of creating another "chief" to manage that region. It might just be better to add new responsibilities for coordination/C2 to the person already in charge of the described region (or enforce exisiting responsibilites more stringently).

The substructure described below is a matrixed organization of a most complex kind. How does one manage the priorities and reporting processes of these deputy directors. Since they will supervise regions that overlap more than one of the regions under the purview of a Director of Regional Foreign Policy (DRFP), I suspect they will have responsibilities to support more than one DRFP at a time. Who sets/deconflicts those priorities?

To me the biggest concern with having different boundaries has to do with much needed integration and coordination at the inter-agency level. No matter how the map is divided up, each region should have a:

• Director of Regional Foreign Policy

Who is supported by:

1. Unified Combatant Commander (from DoD)
2. Deputy Director of Regional Aid and Development (from USAID)
3. Deputy Director of Regional Affairs (from State)

Everybody looks at the same map, works with the same people, out of the same office. Major NGOs and regional powers are invited to send liasons to the Regional Commands. Maybe they don't get a seat at the briefing table all the time, but if the PACOM commander wants to coordinate Tsunami relief efforts with PLAN, they should be able to do that because they already have a working relationship.

[Bob's World]

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

[John T. Fishel]

As I said there, the issue is not so much regional boundaries (which, IMO, should be rationalized - see both previosus posts) but rather the bilateral nature of US foreign relations. The current structure is specifically designed to address that. Thus the "chain of command" in US foreign relations runs:

President

US Ambassador to Country X

It also runs:

President

SECSTATE

Regional & functional bureaus in suppport of Ambassadors

And, it runs:

President

SECDEF

GCCs (generally) in support of Ambassadors

So, your regional organizational structure is based on, I think, the faulty premise that we do business - primarily - regionally. Any modification to the current structure must start from the position that US foreign relations are, and probaly will remain, primarily bilateral. Until that changes, all schemes for powerful regional organizations of US foreign relations will fail.

Cheers

JohnT

[Old Eagle]

That's where I spent over the last decade of my career. I can tell you that life becomes very difficult when you have to constantly coordinate across "borders" with other agencies.

I am now working the PRT lane. In examining the pre-deployment and enduring training requirements, there are three uncoordinated sources of guidance from the State Dept. Iraq is owned by one assistant secretary (NEA), Afghanistan by another (SCA), and future requirements by a third official, a SECSTATE direct report (CRS). Since there is no analogous synchronization organization to the GCC, PRTs have different make-ups, different leadership, different training requirements, and on and on and on.

I have been a strong proponent for better border rationalization among U.S. foreign policy organizations for years (OK, a lot of years), and I have seen nothing here to change my ossified mind.

[Surferbeetle]

Old Eagle,

Human nature is that everybody likes to focus on their piece of the pie to the exclusion of the whole.

A German institution, SWP, has an interesting paper on coordination issues, CIMIC am Beispiel des ISAF-Einsatzes by Dr. Michael Paul that parallels your PRT observations.

It's a long article in German (and I'm to lazy to translate it) but the gist is that lack of unity of command in management structures, databases, digital languages, spoken/written languages, and military/civilian expectations were observed in the CIMIC/NATO/Bundeswehr arena.

We are not alone...

Regards,

Steve

[Schmedlap]

This thread started with CavGuy posting a map that shows how DoD and State breakdown the world map into regions. So that is one big-picture question regarding the "whole of gov't" approach. I was also recently thinking about the activity down at the individual level. After googling for some statistics I made the following graph (I admit to not spending lots of time searching for the best data, but I think these are ballpark figures)...

The DoD numbers are from the FY2009 Defense Authorization Bill. Other sources - if anyone cares - are listed in my rambling blog entry. There seems to be a tremendous disparity in "troops available," which most likely causes all agencies to rely heavily on DoD and, as a result, tend to follow DoD's lead.

Here is the breakdown in Afghanistan (again, my data sources are not the greatest, but I think these are ballpark)...

If you add up State, DEA, and CIA, they are still outnumbered by more than 30 to 1 by DoD (none of the bars include contractors, of which, I think DoD has a whole lot more). I've seen "other" agencies get quickly marginalized on military staffs because the military staff wants to know "what do you bring to the table?" If the answer to that question is not what the military cmd/staff is looking for, then that person has a long, uneventful deployment and gets very little accomplished. The military staff drives ahead and the other agency individual is just along for the ride.

I'm not pointing the finger at DoD, so much as just observing that when one agency dominates the organization, then the other agencies are forced to fall in line and you get no real serious collaboration that differs from what a joint staff produces. You only get a few other agencies coming along for the ride. But they never take turns driving or even touch the GPS. They just sit in the back and stare out the window (and lounge around the pool in the green zone). Obviously, there will be individual exceptions here and there (I'm thinking, for example, of Pol-Mil FSO's comment on another thread - see his last sentence). But, for the most part, when DoD outnumbers everyone else combined by 30 to 1, you're going to get a DoD-run operation, not a "whole of government" approach.

To reiterate, I am not pointing the finger at DoD. On the contrary, I think the other agencies are doing themselves and the country a disservice by failing to field adequate personnel. Take State, for example. I signed up for the FSO exam months ago. I just took it yesterday. Depending on how I did (I'll find out in several weeks), I might get an interview at some point in the future. And then how long will I need to wait before clearing the next hurdle? And why is this time-consuming process so selective? I've seen Soldiers join the Army with a GED and criminal record who deploy to Iraq and are masterful at their jobs, interacting smartly with locals, gathering solid intel with only the assistance of a lackluster interpreter, and establishing a great rapport with entire neighborhoods. Maybe we're working too hard to recruit ideal candidates with fancy degrees and impressive resumes and not working hard enough at recruiting enough people who have enough potential to do a good enough job.

[Bill Moore]

that's my story and I'm sticking to it

Posted by Schmedlap,

But, for the most part, when DoD outnumbers everyone else combined by 30 to 1, you're going to get a DoD-run operation, not a "whole of government" approach.

If DoD's role is to provide security to enable other agencies to be successful, then it is logical we'll have the largest percentage of personnel on the ground. In a JTF configuration it may appear that DoD is dominating the other agencies for a variety of reasons. One key one is that the JTF is focused on the "military" mission, and interagency LNOs are there to collaborate, share information and hopefully cooperate. They key is who the JTF answers to, to ensure that there military operations are facilitating political/economic success. If we don't have that structure (and associated strategy, then we're attempting to win via a military approach alone, which will probably be ineffective).

I can give two examples where size didn't matter. In at least one instance in OIF I, a local commander said the Civil Affairs effort was his main effort, so everyone else was in support of the CA effort. The CA element was relatively small compared to the combat arms folks. This effort was successful. During JTF Liberia, DoD provided the bulk of the personnel, but it was clearly a State run operation. This was another successful effort. In both cases, size didn't determine who dominated.

I think carefully worded command and control arrangements that clearly spell out who is supported and supporting, and what the main efforts are will facilitate the correct relationships despite what organization has the greatest numbers in country.

Regarding your other points:

And why is this time-consuming process so selective? I've seen Soldiers join the Army with a GED and criminal record who deploy to Iraq and are masterful at their jobs, interacting smartly with locals, gathering solid intel with only the assistance of a lackluster interpreter, and establishing a great rapport with entire neighborhoods. Maybe we're working too hard to recruit ideal candidates with fancy degrees and impressive resumes and not working hard enough at recruiting enough people who have enough potential to do a good enough job.

Agree, and would add that State's folks largely focus at what we would call the Strategic/Operational level, but are grossly under resourced at the Operational/Tactical level (primarily USAID). Decisions that matter are being made at the operational/tactical level, where DoS is not well represented. That may explain why are foreign policy may appear to be off track at times. If we don't have the right folks on the ground to get ground truth, then who is informing the policy process?