Leveraging Civil Affairs PDF Download

Author: Christopher J. Holshek
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military policy
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
FOREWORD. For three years now, the Civil Affairs Association and its partners have provided the Civil Affairs Regi-ment a way to provide experience-based feedback and advice to institutional and policy level leadership on the future of the Civil Affairs force through an annual fall symposium. These symposia result in Civil Affairs Issue Papers published and presented at the spring roundtable. With every successive year, the discussion has become increasingly impactful, improving the Regi-ment as a learning organization by advancing a uni-fied, whole of CA force view of professional and force development discussion using this unofficial, collegial platform.The 2016 Symposium on “Leveraging Civil Affairs” featured a workshop, led by the International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI), to refine the understanding of what Civil Affairs’ most important customers – the Geographic Combatant, Service Component, and Joint Force Commands in each region of the world – should expect CA to contribute to their missions. In turn, this informs CA on what it should be ready to deliver, regardless of source component or service or level of employment – in order to help “prevent, shape, and win” the conflicts of the future.The workshop built upon Lt. Gen. H.R. McMas-ter’s 2015 Symposium challenge to the CA Regiment to contribute to the discussion of the future force through the Army Warfighting Challenges. This dis-cussion was motivated by the general recognition of CA’s longstanding role as more than a critical “force multiplier” or tactical “enabler” in decisive action. viAdditionally, it drew on the appreciation of CA as a national strategic capability to consolidate military into political gains by facilitating post-conflict transi-tion from war to peace and from military to civilian lead. More recently, there has been greater recogni-tion of CA’s emerging ability to engage a multitude of partners to shape, influence, and stabilize the “human geography” (as the Army calls it) and thus contribute as well to conflict prevention and mitigation across the full range of operations.The Symposium concluded that CA can do so only when appropriately leveraged by regional and operational commanders who understand the strate-gic value of CA even at the tactical level.The resulting discussion was so rich and substan-tive we have included an in-depth report with a list of recommendations on issues related to CA force development and integration, accompanying this year’s Civil AffairsIssue Papers. It by no means represents a complete consensus; however, we see it as a first and not last word on what we hope will become a CA whole-of-force dia-logue to promote changes to policy, doctrine, and other determinants shaping CA force development.The Association, IPSI, the U.S. Army Peace-keeping & Stability Operations Institute, and their partners will continue support this learning process for Civil Affairs. Our thanks go out in particular to Christopher Holshek and Kevin Melton for preparing the Symposium report, the writers of this year’s issue viipapers, and to many others, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Michael Kuehr, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Bruce Bingham, Col. (ret.) Larry Rubini, as well as those mentioned and unmen-tioned for their contributions to this effort.