During the Cold War, U.S. national security policymakers had a single major objective: to contain the Soviet Union. U.S. Army forces were optimized to deter and, if necessary, defeat the Warsaw Pact adversaries in Central Europe, and Army International Activities (AIA) were focused on furthering this objective through cooperation with allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The post–Cold War strategic environment is more complex, however. Today, adversaries are often non-state entities, and operations feature coalitions of the willing, composed of both long-time allies and new partners, with a wide range of military strengths and weaknesses.

Such an...

Performance measurement has a long history in the private sector as business enterprises have striven to increase productivity and market share.¹ More recently, through the 1980s and 1990s, performance measurement has become an issue in the public sector as a result of public concern for greater governmental efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. This chapter first describes the performance measurement requirements that have been imposed on government agencies in the last decade and the purposes for such performance measurement. Next, the chapter discusses how performance measurement has been applied to security cooperation. Finally, the chapter outlines the principles of assessment that we...

The initial step toward developing an AIA assessment system is to derive a workable set of AIA objectives (or “ends”) and manageable categories of AIA (or “ways” for pursuing the “ends”).¹ In this chapter, we examine the broad range of objectives any state might pursue and distill the key elements of security cooperation into five ideal objectives and eight specific ends. We relate the five objectives to official government guidance—in particular, the National Security Strategy, the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Strategic Planning Guidance, the Security Cooperation Guidance, the Army International Activities Plan, and The Army Plan. We then derive...

This chapter presents our methodology for linking the categories of Army International Activities to the set of national goals that security cooperation logically pursues—i.e., for populating the cells of the matrix depicted in Table 3.1. In the language of the social sciences, such linkages represent hypotheses, or causal processes, that integrate AIA ways and ends. They provide a clear rationale for conducting international activities, help distinguish the short-term benefits of activities from the more long-term objectives, and explain how and why certain categories of activities relate to national security objectives. We took a theoretical, deductive approach toward establishing two...

With the development of a detailed list of output and outcome indicators linking AIA ways and ends, as well as a methodology for converting these indicators into specific MOPs and MOEs, we completed our conceptual framework for assessing the value of Army International Activities. What remained was to embed this assessment framework within a widely distributed, computerized tool that would permit HQDA and its Component Commands to collect and report the data needed to develop specific MOPs and MOEs. The result was the AIAKSS. Designed to serve all Army personnel involved in the planning, execution, and performance of security cooperation...

Initial feedback from AIA personnel gathered in the first year of our assessment research in 2003 indicated broad understanding of, and support for, our general approach. However, there were also important questions raised about its implementation, several of which were mentioned in the previous chapter. This chapter presents three test cases that were used to explore the utility and feasibility of our AIA assessment method and collection/reporting tool. The test cases were the U.S. Army Medical Department (AMEDD), the U.S. National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program, and U.S. Army South (USARSO). Although these cases did not represent a comprehensive validation...

Analysis of our three test cases, as well as the feedback we have received from other Army organizations, shows that our basic AIA assessment approach appears sound. In addition, there is a consensus that a web-based database and reporting tool, such as AIAKSS, is needed to capture and share AIA-related programmatic, funding, and assessment information throughout the Army and DoD. Nevertheless, there is also recognition that the Army, in cooperation with the rest of the security cooperation community, must overcome some major hurdles before it can conduct a comprehensive and objective evaluation of its international activities.

In this chapter, we...