This article appears as it was originally published in the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) quarterly Volume 3 2016-2017 CIVIL AFFAIRS ISSUE PAPERS: LEVERAGING CIVIL AFFAIRS
edited by Christopher Holshek
Building on the 2015 Civil Affairs (CA) Roundtable theme, “Civil Affairs: A Force for Engagement and Conflict Prevention,” this paper reaffirms that the Civil Affairs (CA) community is uniquely positioned to clarify and enable the U.S. policy mandate and military task to prevent global conflict. Specifically, we assert that a properly prepared cadre of CA staff officers is needed to bring much-needed and missing conflict preventive capabilities to Geographic Combatant Command (GCC) HQs. To fill current gaps in GCC HQ-level conflict prevention planning and conflict prevention assessment capabilities, the CA community should train, educate, and assign a cadre of conflict prevention experts who are 1) knowledgeable on the principles of structural factors of fragility and how to mitigate fragility that leads to conflict, 2) skilled in joint staff processes, and 3) capable of employing basic data analysis, data science, and modeling in support of conflict preventive planning and assessments conducted by GCCs. To prepare such a cadre, we recommend conflict prevention be integrated into specific CA education, training, and professional development, and that trained CA personnel be assigned as conflict preventive focal points at GCC HQs. If adopted, Civil Affairs forces can better assist the GCCs in fulfilling their policy mandate to prevent conflict. Perhaps more importantly, we believe this approach enables real preventive effects in the theater, thereby reducing or avoiding the comparatively high political and economic costs that would-be conflict poses to U.S. interests and resources.
The U.S. policy shift from a reactive to more pro-active stance on global instability and pre-conflict engagement has been driven not only by moral ambition, but by the practical reality that the U.S. can neither afford – fiscally nor politically – to engage in perpetual warfare, nor to ignore simmering dynamics that have the potential to eventually threaten national or global security. [1] Preventing – not just responding to or mitigating conflict – first emerged as stated U.S. policy in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), was reiterated in the 2014 QDR, and has gained traction as a policy objective ever since. The 2015 U.S. National Security Strategy, referring both to inter-state and intra-state conflict, identifies “Build(ing) Capacity to Prevent Conflict,” as a headline priority, and states, “We will continue to work … to address the root causes of conflict before they erupt…” [2] Accordingly, current Department of Defense (DoD) guidance to all six GCCs identifies conflict prevention as a task of increasing importance. [3]
For Combatant Commanders and their staff, conflict prevention continues to be prioritized below more “urgent” crises, or met with skepticism and resistance. Indeed, conflict prevention can seem inherently counter-factual in nature. Stopping something from occurring may seem an existential paradox for staff officers tasked with planning and executing activities, let alone conducting assessments to measure the effects of something that ideally never transpires. The natural reluctance to embrace the task of conflict prevention is further exacerbated by the fact that doctrine and training remain vague on the topic, and staffing patterns have not adapted to embed conflict preventive expertise within GCC Headquarters (HQ). As such, GCCs lack sufficient staff capacity or functional capabilities to fulfill perhaps their trickiest national security mandate: conflict prevention.
This paper does not attempt to examine the academic discourse on conflict prevention nor argue for the merits of prevention in principle. The paper takes as its basis the fact that conflict prevention is already stated U.S. policy. That said; we present a brief overview of the concept of “structural prevention” as the evidence-based paradigm on which CA-supported GCC conflict prevention efforts must rest. Also of note is the fact that this paper focuses at the GCC HQ level. Naturally, our approach and recommendations have implications and relevance for subordinate commands and echelons, most notably Theater Special Operations Commands and Service Component Commands. We posit that the recommendations presented could be adapted for subordinate units, though such recommendations go beyond the scope of this paper.
Conflict Prevention as a Real Task
From AFRICOM to PACOM, GCC staff officers confronting the directive to prevent conflict often struggle to understand the very meaning and existence of conflict prevention, much less how it relates to a Combatant Command. We assert that a useful starting point is the concept of “Structural Prevention,” which is the notion that the likelihood and/or intensity of violent conflict can be reduced or eliminated if the structural factors that place a society at high risk of conflict (i.e., that create “fragility”) can be reduced, mitigated, or eliminated. Structural factors that create fragility vary considerably by context, but examples may include weak reach or legitimacy of state security providers, or structural discrimination of a certain ethnic or religious group.
An integral feature of structural prevention is the principle that factors of fragility can and should be empirically measured with evidence-based methods used to demonstrate a reduction in factors of fragility with an overall decrease in likelihood for conflict. Many social scientists have established qualitative and quantitative methods – many of them relying on big data and data science – to measure the link between fragility and violent conflict. Their findings show that by deliberately and actively addressing structural factors of fragility, a society, country, or community can be diverted off a pathway otherwise destined for violence. This underscores the tenet that conflict prevention is indeed an actionable – and measurable – task. Naturally, this has implications for GCC action.
Conflict Preventive Planning at the GCC
Conflict prevention demands intent. In other words, mitigating structural factors of fragility that may lead to violence in a given society doesn’t typically happen by accident. Host governments, civil society, and local influencers are among the best positioned to identify and address factors in fragile societies that may lead to conflict. The actions and efforts of a GCC also have the ability to affect structural factors of fragility, and therefore help to prevent conflict.
In a 2014 RAND study by McNerney et al., Assessing Security Cooperation as a Preventive Tool, [4] a group of social scientists employed empirical methods to evaluate the link between GCC-led security cooperation (SC) activities and conflict prevention. They used data science to track correlations in country rankings on the State Fragility Index -- a global dataset that measures structural factors of fragility – with different types of SC over time. They investigated, for example, whether SC investments such as International Military Education & Training (IMET) or train & equip, could be linked to a positive drop in a country’s fragility levels. This was based on their hypothesis that lower levels of fragility serve as a proxy for a country’s proneness to violence and conflict.
The researchers used rigorous statistical regression models, and analyzed data from across all six GCCs over a ten-year period. They found that certain types of SC, employed in certain circumstances, could, in fact, be correlated with a reduction in the recipient country’s fragility level, therefore supporting the hypothesis that GCCs could contribute to conflict prevention. Importantly, however, they found that only certain types of SC (e.g. IMET) functioned to reduce fragility -- and thus, contribute to conflict preventive outcomes -- in certain types of countries; specifically those with partial or fully democratic political systems. Train-and-equip programs employed in non-democratic countries, by contrast, have tended to exacerbate state fragility. The study found that Cold War-era SC in highly fragile, non-democratic countries was “associated with an increased probability of military coups, strengthened military regimes, and regional arms races” [5].
Beyond SC, it is logical to infer that GCC-led exercises, engagements, and operations may also affect structural factors of fragility in specific countries or regions, thus contributing to a higher or lower likelihood of violent conflict in theater. For example, if a country is analyzed as having a high level of structural fragility in the form of social cleavages along ethnic lines, Military Information Support Operations (MISO) may be an appropriate operational tool of prevention to help dispel harmful stereotyping between groups before tensions turn violent. Similarly, if mistrust between a partner nation’s security forces and a marginalized minority group are identified as a structural factor likely to fuel conflict, a GCC could plan an exercise that intentionally brings the parties together around a cooperative scenario, such as disaster preparedness. But to achieve such preventive outcomes, GCCs must understand, consider, and deliberately plan to address structural factors of fragility -- aligning all “tools” at their disposal to the tricky task of conflict prevention.
At the GCC level, the two most important deliberate plans are Theater Campaign Plans (TCPs) and Crisis Action Plans (CAPs) -- both of which attempt to synchronize the various “tools” at a GCC’s disposal -- namely operations, exercises, security cooperation (SC) activities, and other engagements (i.e. public affairs, senior leader engagements, conferences, etc.) – around strategic objectives. Yet, despite a policy mandate to prevent conflict, GCCs have no standardized process to intentionally consider structural factors of fragility or to optimize the conflict preventive implications of TCPs or CAPs. We assert that this creates risk, but also presents an opportunity for the Civil Affairs community.
CA personnel who 1) understand Joint campaign planning doctrine and processes, 2) are trained in conflict preventive principles (i.e. the premise of structural prevention and how to identify critical factors of fragility), and 3) are able to translate analysis on structural fragility into recommendations for GCC deliberate plans, could help GCCs optimize their preventive outcomes and avoid inadvertent actions that fuel conflict in theater. Few, if any, GCCs have staff officers with this mix of qualifications. If adopted, the recommendations we put forth below, could prepare CA personnel to fill this gap.
Assessing Preventive Outcomes
As important as GCC HQ plans are to fulfilling the conflict preventive mandate, so too are GCC assessments. Theater assessments measure the effectiveness, in aggregate, of a Combatant Command’s achievement of strategic objectives. This is the optimal and most realistic level at which conflict preventive effects are likely to be achieved and meaningfully measured. For one, fragility data is most prevalent at the country level, and best understood in relation to other countries on a regional basis. Furthermore, the manpower, resources, operational tempo, and reporting cycles below the GCC HQ are generally not conducive to support an assessment of structural fragility. Indeed, few personnel in any GCC ecosystem – military or civilian – are likely to conduct conflict preventive-oriented assessments. This conflict resolution cadre may be best utilized at a GCC HQ level where they could engage most broadly.
Moreover, GCC HQs that gain proficiency to assess conflict preventive outcomes are best positioned to communicate these findings upward to the policy level. In September 2016, the Fragility Study Group [6], a joint project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), recommended a new architecture to routinize how fragility is integrated into U.S. policy-making and legislation in support of the National Security objective to prevent conflict. If adopted, these recommendations would affect how the National Security Council, Congress, and others make decisions and allocate resources with fragility indicators as a key basis and benchmark of that process. GCC theater assessments that feature -- on a recurrent and systematized basis -- indicators of structural fragility at the theater-wide and country levels, and Measures of Effectiveness (MoEs) that correlate GCC activities in aggregate to reductions in fragility, could represent one of the best data sources policy-makers have on conflict prevention across the U.S. interagency.
Conducting consequential assessments requires GCC HQs to have staff officers who 1) are skilled in theater assessment doctrine and processes, 2) are trained to collect or interpret existing data on structural factors of fragility, and 3) are able to define measures of effectiveness -- with accurate indicators -- that empirically correlate GCC activities with conflict prevention. Much like the capabilities described above in the planning category, few if any GCCs have personnel trained and qualified to assess structural conflict prevention specifically. Again, we submit that a select number of trained CA personnel should provide this missing capability, as discussed below.
Civil Affairs as a Natural Conflict Prevention Capability
Often deployed or focused on contexts and circumstances not yet in violent conflict – such as areas with latent instability -- CA personnel are naturally exposed to contexts with high structural factors of fragility, and are familiar with the processes and frameworks to understand and alter these factors. The CA Methodology, the CAO Running Estimate, and Civil Information Management (CIM) processes serve as doctrinally defined mechanisms for CA personnel to collect and analyze factors in the human and social terrain that can fuel, or ideally be altered, to prevent a conflict trajectory.
At present though, Civil Affairs processes and efforts are not consistently, nor systematically, called upon to reveal structural factors of fragility in order to guide conflict preventive planning or assessments. The CA community is naturally poised to apply their own tools and methods in this manner, and to further enrich structural fragility insights with interagency (IA) and multi-stakeholder data.
With additional training, CA personnel could gain skills required to leverage this information in a way that informs military action planning and assessments. This would make CA a much-needed node for conflict prevention in the joint force. The ability for CA to collate such data on fragility factors is unmatched, while the ability to make sense of and infuse this knowledge into GCC HQ-level planning and assessment tasks is an as-yet unfilled role.
Recommendations
In order to add value to current GCC HQ efforts to prevent conflict, we recommend the following three actions be embraced by the Civil Affairs community.
1) Develop a Program of Instruction that covers the principles of conflict prevention (with particular focus on understanding structural factors of fragility), for integration into the Civil Affairs Qualification Course (CAQC) and expansion in an advanced CA course and training such as the Special Warfare Advanced Analysis and Targeting Course (SWAATC) and the Security, Stability and Development in Complex Operations series.
During initial and advanced training, CA personnel must gain the skills, knowledge, and expertise to analyze structural factors of fragility, and to translate this understanding into conflict preventive joint planning and assessment tasks. Intentional training and education on these topics would equip CA personnel with skills, as well as a vocabulary to improve the limited understanding and overcome the resistance to conflict prevention that exists throughout the joint force, including at GCC HQs. As such, CA could become a capable proponent not only for why to do conflict prevention, but how to do it effectively. This cadre of conflict prevention-oriented soldiers would serve an essential and missing function in the joint force’s current ability to fulfill the tricky U.S. policy mandate to prevent conflict.
Beyond branch-specific training, it is imperative to send CA personnel to graduate and Joint Professional Military Education in preparation to best affect regional or theater level requirements. In addition to graduate civilian education, courses such as the School of Advanced Military Studies’ Advanced Military Studies Program and the Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program, the Joint Forces Staff College’s Joint Advanced Warfighting School, and the National Defense University’s CAPSTONE course would allow CA officers the opportunity to increase Joint and strategic exposure and provide the time to apply graduate-level scholarship to the study and application of structural factors of instability and conflict prevention. In sum, additional and targeted training is needed in order to expand upon the baseline skills and orientation of Civil Affairs, explicitly in support of the conflict prevention paradigm at the strategic level.
2) CA personnel trained as above, familiar with Joint planning and assessment processes and; should be assigned – either on a permanent, temporary duty or remote support basis – to the GCC HQ staff to deliver as a conflict prevention capability.
Using all appropriate staffing mechanisms, CA personnel – active and reserve – should be organized into a GCC staff division, for example within the J3 or J5, to provide concerted provision of conflict prevention expertise during key GCC HQ staff tasks related to plans, operations, exercises, and assessments. CA personnel specialized in conflict prevention should not be pooled in the J9, interagency, or partnership directorate, but should be an integral part of the various boards, bureaus, centers, cells, and working groups (B2C2WGs), and specifically tasked to support the theater campaign planning process, CAP development/review, SC programming, theater assessments, and various operations sections. In each case, conflict prevention-trained CA personnel should play a principal role in helping GCCs identify and understand priority factors of fragility, and work to synchronize and align GCC plans and activities towards mitigating those factors. Additionally, CA personnel should help to develop appropriate MoEs with rigorous metrics and indicators, and directly integrate these into the theater assessment framework. This GCC level cadre of CA personnel would have the added advantage of being able to reach back throughout the CA community to mine CIM and Civil Affairs operational data sets, as well as interagency and multi-stakeholder resources to enhance contribution to these tasks. 3) CA Products and CIM processes should be refined to improve data mining, modeling, and visualization on structural factors of fragility in priority countries and targeted regions, and tailored to provide timely, relevant information to achieve conflict preventive outcomes. This analysis should serve as a critical input to the many B2C2WGs, operational planning teams, and strategic decision making at the GCC HQ and subordinate levels.
Relevant data on structural factors of fragility, assessment and analytic frameworks for conflict prevention, and other tools are available from a multitude of sources such as IGOs, NGOs, and academic institutions. Indices and outlets such as the State Fragility Index, the Center for Systemic Peace, the CIA’s Political Instability Task Force (PITF) are only a few of the datasets that already routinely track and report fragility factors, and should be integrated into GCC planning and assessments with the guidance of CA personnel. Additionally, adapting CIM capabilities and processes towards the growing need for data on structural fragility – and embracing new data analytic technologies and the use of “Big Data”-- would prove indispensable for GCC HQs, as well as subordinate echelons, when it comes to the tricky task of knowing where to focus and how to measure conflict prevention efforts. At present, the CAO running estimate and existing CIM capabilities are insufficient to process and operationalize the amount and type of information required for effective conflict prevention. Incorporating data science in CA processes, and embedding data-savvy CA personnel or remotely supporting GCC staff with this capability would be applicable not only to conflict prevention efforts, but the whole range of planning, operational, assessment, intelligence, and other tasks critical to a GCC’s mission success.
Conclusion
The Civil Affairs is naturally positioned to meaningfully address current deficiencies impeding GCCs’ ability to fulfill the U.S. policy mandate to prevent conflict; a capability otherwise unavailable in the joint force. Doing so would add value to CA’s most important customer – the GCCs – and advance unmet national security goals. Cultivating a true conflict preventive expertise in the CA community, however, requires branch-wide resolve and resources, as well as early and ongoing dialog with Combatant Commanders and their staff to better understand perceived gaps, and attune CA readiness and actions accordingly. We believe if the CA Regiment takes swift and intentional action to enhance branch training and education on conflict prevention, utilizes staffing mechanisms to provide Civil Affairs capabilities in conflict-prevention to the GCC HQs, and harnesses the power of new data technologies, the contribution CA can make to the tricky task of preventing violent conflict would be real and profound.
Major Clay Daniels is an active duty Army Civil Affairs officer serving in the 83rd Civil Affairs Battalion. He holds a Master of Science in Defense Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School and has served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East and Asia.
Ms. Morgan Keay is the CEO of Motive International, a social enterprise specializing in conflict mitigation and stability, largely in the civil-military domain. She is a former U.S. diplomat and policy officer who served with the Department of State and USAID, including as Conflict and Stabilization Advisor to U.S. Africa Command
Endnotes
1. Professor Neta C. Crawford, U.S. Costs of Wars Through 2014: $4.4 Trillion and Counting: Summary of Costs for the U.S. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (Boston: Boston University, June 25, 2014), 11.
2. 2015 National Security Strategy https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf
3. 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf
4.http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR350/RAND_RR350.pdf
5. Ibid.
6. See: http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/US-Leadership-and-the-Challenge-of-State-Fragility.pdf