In the aftermath of the U.S.-led ousters of the Taliban and Ba’athist regimes, and as part of the U.S. strategy to deal with transnational terrorist groups, there has been a great deal of activity focused on revising the way that the United States plans and conducts Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations. The primary emphasis of the changes has been to ensure a common U.S. strategy rather than a collection of individual departmental and agency efforts and to mobilize and involve all available U.S. government assets in a SSTR operation.

The use of the term SSTR to describe these...

This chapter uses a “top-down” approach to identify the key U.S. government agencies that have capabilities useful for SSTR operations. Our purpose is to establish in an explicit fashion the most important agencies that need to be involved in thestrategic-levelplanning and implementation process for SSTR operations. We focus on the actors that have the appropriate expertise, an externally focused capacity to act, and the developmental perspective that is essential in SSTR operations. Identifying the main actors allows for the formalization of their roles as lead agencies in specific domains as well as the agencies that will be supporting...

This chapter uses the “bottom-up” approach to identify the key U.S. government agencies that have capabilities useful in SSTR operations. Our purpose is to establish in an explicit fashion the expertise and skill sets required at thetactical levelof SSTR operations and then to provide a method of finding these skills in the U.S. government so as to draw upon them to assist in the implementation of SSTR operation goals. Identifying the skill sets allows for putting into practice the idea of employing “whole of government” resources. Our assumption is that, in order to bring civilian agencies and personnel...

The previous chapters took two different approaches to identifying the civilian agencies that have the capabilities appropriate for SSTR operations. In this chapter we examine the issue of capacity and the obstacles to more effective participation of civilian agencies in SSTR operations. First, we provide an overview of the capacity of the major civilian agencies to take part in SSTR operations, both in an absolute sense and in a comparison with U.S. Army capacity. Then we go over the obstacles and impediments that civilian agencies face in taking part in the planning and execution of SSTR operations. In doing so,...

Interagency collaboration for SSTR operations—as outlined in NSPD-44—means a change in existing patterns of behavior by the relevant U.S. government agencies and departments and, as such, entails organizational change and adaptation. For the departments and agencies identified as central to the process, especially DoS and USAID, this means important modifications to the mission or the standard manner of operating by these public organizations. For other departments and agencies that are secondary or tertiary to supporting SSTR operations, the changes needed still may be nontrivial, especially when the impact on a department may be concentrated in a relatively small...

In previous chapters we identified the civilian agencies that have capabilities relevant to SSTR operations. We then assessed their capacity to plan and participate in such operations. There are deep structural reasons for the problems that civilian agencies have faced in being more effective partners for the military in SSTR operations. The reasons are embedded in the way U.S. public administration functions, the basic organizational missions of the agencies most relevant for SSTR operations, and their incentive systems.

In this chapter we provide options on how to make the U.S. civilian agencies more robust partners for the Army in SSTR...