Founded Motive in 2015
Former Policy Officer at State Department Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations
Served as Conflict & Stabilization Advisor to U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)
Served as director of interagency Task Force in Afghanistan with USAID Foreign Service
U.S. Department of Defense governance advisor
Founded and ran an international NGO in Mongolia for 10 years
Experience as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) advisor to Fortune 100 firms
Master’s in International Policy from The George Washington University’s Elliott School
Since the toppling of their regime in 2001, the Taliban have demanded recognition from Kabul as a legitimate political actor in a country where they enjoy substantial support among segments of the population, not least for for the economic and infrastructural systems they helped cultivate and on which nearly all rural Afghans depend. The Taliban have a near monopoly on a global commodity representing a $4 billion dollar a year industry that necessitates the sustainment of elaborate supply chains: opium. But a deeper conflict analysis foretells a future in which the Taliban could soon be incentivized not only to walk away from its lucrative drug empire but become an ardent counter-narcotics partner to the Kabul government and its international backers.
In May 2017, Motive CEO Morgan Keay was a featured panelist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at an event entitled “The Role of Multi-Sector Partnerships in the New Development Era.” CSIS hosted this half-day event at the start of the Trump Administration when U.S. foreign assistance budgets faced significant cuts. The panel Morgan spoke on was asked to explore creative options to better leverage capital – financial or otherwise – through cross-sector partnerships, specifically in conflict-affected and fragile states.
Opening her remarks with the statement, “Conflict affects all sectors of society and therefore takes all sectors of society to address." Morgan confronted an idea considered to be heretical by many in the international development and diplomacy communities: expanded partnerships with the military can advance development and humanitarian goals. To make the case, Morgan offered a story about a real-world case study: a World Bank-funded road construction project through the heart of extremist-affected territory in West Africa’s Lake Chad Basin. This example illustrates what happened when local civil society, the host country’s military, and the U.S. military came together around a violence-plagued infrastructure project to transform human security in the region.
The term ‘governance’ recently re-emerged across the Civil Affairs Regiment, appearing on new Mission Essential Task Lists in the SOF component, in updated regiment-wide doctrine and publications and as a reinvigorated topic of concept and capability development.01 Governance is not new to CA. The regiment’s roots are in Military Government in post-World War I and World War II theatres, and more recently in state-building endeavors, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, images of CA forces executing technocratic, essential service projects in support of governments-in-transition is often the first image that comes to mind when one thinks of governance in the military context. This image is problematic.
Fragile and conflict-affected regions of the world threaten not only U.S. national security, but the stability and prosperity of markets and society. If we accept that governments, businesses, and citizens all stand to gain by addressing global crises, then a “whole-of-society” approach to U.S. foreign policy should be the norm. Yet in practice, full-spectrum, civil-military (civ-mil), public-private collaboration remains ad hoc and sub-optimized. This is especially true for U.S. engagements in the world’s trickiest places, namely fragile and conflict-affected regions. With the Trump Administration still forming its global strategies and re-shaping how resources and roles are arranged for U.S. foreign policy, comes an opportunity to re-imagine how stakeholders collaborate in countries facing crises. In light of proposed foreign assistance cuts, an expanding defense budget, and a more commercially-inclined Administration, civilian, military, public, and private actors may in fact have no choice but to leverage their comparative advantages like never before.
This paper, a collaboration between Motive CEO Morgan Keay and US Army Civil Affairs Major Clay Daniels, was originally published in The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute’s quarterly journal Volume 3, 2016-17 Civil Affairs Issue Papers: Leveraging Civil Affairs, alongside other the winning papers from 2016 Civil Affairs Association's Annual Symposium.
In April and May of 2019, a team of Motive International experts composed of Dr. Salamah Magnuson, Morgan Keay and Kimberly Metcalf conducted an investigation of societal dynamics in Estonia through in-country field research focused on social cohesion and national security. The purpose of this initiative was to apply Motive’s Social Contract Assessment Tool (SCAT), a framework designed to identify and characterize social institutions and the sources of legitimacy that underpin them in transitioning or threatened societies in order to inform policies, plans and activities to mitigate threats and promote stability.
In answer to question of what alliance structure would be “most appropriate for the US interests in the 21st Century?” Morgan Keay, CEO of Motive International, asserts that the U.S. must move towards “cross-sectorism”. In order to constructively compete with the rising influence of China and the European Union, and prevent armed conflicts, the U.S. must develop systems for stronger integration of diplomatic, commercial, humanitarian and military efforts.
Watch the video of the complete discussion, and learn more about Motive’s Transforming Crisis Systems course, offering integrative conflict mitigation strategies for military operations.