The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

itary takes a shorter-term view than the Foreign Service, which looks at the longer-term payoffs from institution building. “The main point of divergence is in the time horizon,” says FSO Chuck Hunter, team leader for PRT Babil, “with the military focused on short-term effects and State/USAID concerned more with long-term outcomes. The main overlap is in the recognition that security and stability are essential for any of the other things we want to build.” This view was reiterated by Dr. Barbara Stephenson, deputy senior adviser to the Secretary of State and deputy coordinator for Iraq, who says that diplomats have longer time horizons than the military. “It’s about relationships,” she says, “knowing who’s a moderate.” And the longer the Foreign Service is on the ground in a province, the more chance for success there, because the relationships can be sustained. “Theoretically, the military pursues the ‘kinetic’ (i.e., fighting) mission and the PRT addresses the ‘non-kinet- ic’ (i.e., everything else) portion,” says former Diyala Province PRT leader Kiki Munshi, a retired FSO who left Iraq in January. “In fact, it is not possible to separate kinetic from non-kinetic because winning this ‘war’ is as much political as military. … Our missions overlap in a more functional way. The military has the control of fair- ly vast resources in the form of CERP [Commander’s Emergency Response Fund] monies, while the PRT has no money. If the military’s vision of how these funds might best be used fits in well with the PRT’s vision, it’s great. On the other hand, if the military thinks it can do something we believe won’t work or doesn’t think what we want to do is important, we’re up a tree.” From PRT Anbar, FSO public diplomacy officer Angela Williams and Iraq Provincial Action Officer Horacio Ureta both report good relations with the U.S. military. Williams tells us, “I work closely with their pub- lic affairs office and am able to be a contributing member of their work and team efforts. I also work closely with the U.S. military in their civil and social affairs division on the Iraqi Women’s Engagement Program.” Ureta ex- F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29