Towards a Civil-Military Defense Partnership?
Photo By: Department of Defense
The 2006 U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy (COIN), the guiding manual of military strategy in Afghanistan, requires multiple operations, offensive, defensive and stability-inducing, to conduct an effective counterinsurgency campaign. It requires that an effective campaign must, “employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies.” Echoing this emphasis, the current U.S. National Security Strategy, released this past May, reflects the necessity of stabilization and non-military components in an effective Afghanistan strategy, stating that “our diplomacy and development capabilities must be modernized, and our civilian expeditionary capacity strengthened, to support the full breadth of our priorities.”
In contrast, our current defense and diplomatic budget allocation does not reflect the dual implementation of military operations and civilian capacity, set out both in COIN and in the NSS. The current State Department budget is $16 .4 billion, while the current Department of Defense budget is almost thirty three times greater, capping out at $530 billion (the FY2010 allocations are not exclusively to the war in Afghanistan; however, the figures capture the basic disparity in capacity).
High level officials have realized this for a while. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s reaction to the National Security Strategy was to call for a national security budget as opposed to separate USAID, Defense, and State Department budgets. The call for increased civil-military partnership has not emerged overnight. In a 2007 speech that Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave at Kansas State University, he declared that, “I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft’ power and for better integrating it with ‘hard’ power.” Gates continued to comment that non-military needs are real and have not been funded to the extent that the conventional military have, ending with a call for larger State Department budget. Though not quite the equivalent of President Obama campaigning for Representative Joe Barton, the Secretary of Defense campaigning for a State Department budget increase is notable.
While the concept of a civil-military partnership is now making its way through Washington, it is already in place on the ground. In Afghanistan, military paramedics act as civilian EMS. Female marines in a pilot program work to establish ties with Afghan women, giving out school supplies and medical treatment, and gathering information about local grievances. The military’s response to immediate civilian needs is often not in the form of conventional operations.
Dual budgeting might not be the answer; some argue that this would cause more conflict than it would solve. Yet the discrepancy in resources and mission for the crucial civilian component of counterinsurgency has not been resolved. Recognition of the importance of a civil-military defense partnership is evident, but the resources, personnel, and institutions have yet to follow.
What does the national civil-military defense structure look like?
Army doctrine hopes for an ideal situation in which the nation has a set of modular capabilities (offensive, defensive, and stability/support) that can be used with agility, that can be combined as needed, and that may be scaled up and down as national security requires. The institutional barriers that stand in the way of developing these capabilities, to say nothing of employing the capabilities with agility, are formidable. Adequate funding for these capabilities will most likely occur only after someone articulates a plausible path through the institutional barriers.
John D. Baldridge
Command Sergeant Major, USA
Harris School AM ‘90
I am not sure that the conclusion of Susan’s post is properly supported. The Department of Defense’s mission is, and always will be, to protect the American people and our national interests at home and abroad. What is different, given today’s complex and globalized environment, is our country’s priorities and the strategy needed for the military to address them.
The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review is clear on the military’s approach to not only COIN, but counterterrorism and increasing stability in the Middle East region. These approaches, however, entail a new set of responsibilites for the military on top of their traditional ones (remember, we are still at war). Given that, the military is not just paying for maintenance of installations and operations both CONUS and OCONUS, as well as air, sea, and land-based weapons systems, but they are also further building capacity of U.S. forces and armed forces of partner states, supporting civil affairs, and re-tooling enlisted military and officers from a skills perspective(e.g., intelligence, stakeholder engagement, negotiation, languages, etc). As such, DoD’s budget reflects the fact that our armed forces are taking on new responsibilities AND have to retool themselves in order to successfuly execute their mission to protect our interests. The State Department has no such problem and their budget reflects that as well.
The military has to adjust both in capability AND capacity. The State Department just has to worry about capacity. And again, no surprise, their budgets reflect this fact. Does that mean there is a discrepancy in mission, or even a discrepancy between their respective missions and their budgets? Not hardly. In fact, I dare say that their budgets properly reflect the missions, as well as strategies and levels of effort, that they both have in defeating terrorists and promoting peace and stability.
-Erin Brown Duggins
Harris School of Public Policy, MPP’99
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Susan Parker
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