The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

J U N E 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 15 W hen I received the March Foreign Service Journal , I was pleased, for the issue of relations between the Foreign Service and the military has been front-and-center for me during my two years in Kabul. Yet as good as they were, the two articles centered on Provincial Reconstruction Teams offered only a glimpse of the uneasy partnership between the two institu- tions, and what this relationship means for “transformational diploma- cy.” That’s unfortunate, because it is a profoundly important topic, one I would like to explore in this column. The National Security Strategy the Bush administration issued back in 2002 explicitly addresses this issue. I was serving in Washington then, and still recall that many of us in the Foreign Service cheered the fact that for the first time, defense, diplomacy and development were jointly enunci- ated as the basis for our country’s national security. After my time here in Afghanistan, I am more convinced than ever of the strategy’s soundness, although its execution in the field needs thought and attention. Both the U.S. armed forces and their NATO colleagues here have embraced the “3-D” doctrine. In fact, they say explicitly that the war against the resurgent Taliban cannot be won by military means alone. But for a variety of reasons, the U.S mili- tary does not seem to accept that this approach requires a true partnership with the Foreign Service. Instead, frustration with what they perceive as our overly diplomatic, bureaucratic and ponderous approach to delivering assistance has driven the military to move to cover all the “3-D” bases themselves — often with insufficient coordination — in order to accom- plish the mission. Mission Creep in 3-D Within the Foreign Service, we truly appreciate any additional re- sources and manpower that can be brought to bear on the vast needs of a country like Afghanistan, as well as the military’s earnest interest in doing the right thing. They recognize that development, including reconstruc- tion, governance and the rule of law, is perhaps the most important “line of action” in their campaign strategy. But the military’s “mission creep” into the Foreign Service lanes seems to be happening without sufficient thought, planning or coordination. The ques- tion is whether this represents an offi- cial policy of our government, or whether it is happening by stealth. Consider the Commander’s Emer- gency Response Program. Pentagon guidance issued in July 2005 states that CERP is intended to enable com- manders to “respond to urgent hu- manitarian relief and reconstruction within their areas of responsibility by carrying out programs that will imme- diately assist the indigenous popula- tion” (emphasis added). But in Af- ghanistan, and perhaps Iraq as well, military commanders s are increasing- ly using CERP for long-term, multi- million-dollar development projects. This impedes efforts by USAID to get a handle on the various streams of assistance in a particular country, and harmonize and coordinate them to maximize “unity of effort.” It is troubling that an entirely new stream of foreign assistance has come online, largely uncoordinated, outside the 150 Account box. A recent “peer review” of U.S. foreign aid by the Organization for Economic Coopera- tion and Development’s Development Assistance Committee found that the percentage of official U.S. develop- ment assistance managed by the De- partment of Defense climbed to 21.7 percent in 2005, from only 5.6 percent in 2002. Addressing this “new map” will require the Foreign Service to utilize a tremendous amount of man- power and time to match the legions of military planners who spend their days collecting information, develop- ing, “deconflicting” and synchronizing plans, and coordinating with any other U.S., host-country or international body they can identify. The realities of the Washington budget environment mean that it is far easier to add a few hundred million to the DOD budget for CERP and mili- Working It Out with the Military: The View from Kabul B Y T HOMAS E. J OHNSON J R . S PEAKING O UT The military’s “mission creep” into the Foreign Service lanes seems to be happening without planning or coordination.