Responding rapidly to DoD's need for remote training to maintain force readiness, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and tech innovators adapted Motive’s signature courses to a fully virtual format. Since April, we’ve executed multiple iterations of highly-interactive online courses to soldiers and Marines working from home, quarantined on deployment, or constrained to virtual battle assemblies and drills. Find out more and see if these courses are right for your mission!
The current mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing violence, economic collapse, and political instability in their home country is the largest migratory movement in Latin American history. Desperate to identify more effective and holistic policy and programmatic options to address the Venezuelan Migrant crisis, stakeholders in the region have expressed a need for a systems-level analysis to inform better strategies. This need inspired our team to conduct desk-based and in-country research relying on the rigorous and participatory Transforming Crisis Systems (TCS) approach.
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.
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.
Responding rapidly to DoD's need for remote training to maintain force readiness, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and tech innovators adapted Motive’s signature courses to a fully virtual format. Since April, we’ve executed multiple iterations of highly-interactive online courses to soldiers and Marines working from home, quarantined on deployment, or constrained to virtual battle assemblies and drills. Find out more and see if these courses are right for your mission!
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.
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.
Overcoming a legacy of broken pledges is just one of many hurdles in any future journey towards conceiving, authorizing, resourcing then carefully cultivating BW&T partnerships with any future partner. Yet instead of developing processes to ensure these myriad challenges are overcome, gut instinct and partisan politics still dominate U.S. decision-making on partnered operations, while informed analytic approaches to assess the risks, rewards, and requirements for successful BW&T are absent. Though there is no avoiding realpolitik, history makes a compelling demand for better tools to answer the critical questions of with whom, why, how and when to invest (or divest) from BW&T operations. One possible option: Motive International’s Social Contract Assessment Tool (SCAT).
Motive’s CEO, Morgan Keay, sat down with fellow Motive instructor and Subject Matter Expert (SME) Geoff Odlum to discuss working with Motive after nearly three decades as a U.S. diplomat, how emerging technologies are shaping global peace and security, and options for bridging the civil-military divide.
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.
