THE FATE OF THE CIVILIAN SURGE 

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Ryan S. McCannell 

Carlisle Barracks, PA and

UNITED STATES 

ARMY WAR COLLEGE

PRESS
PKSOI PAPER

THE FATE OF THE CIVILIAN SURGE 

IN A 

CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Ryan S. McCannell

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ii
iii

Foreword

As the United States winds down its stabilization 

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of 

State (DOS) and U.S. Agency for International Development will face bureaucratic and political pressures 

to abandon their already modest reconstruction and 

stabilization (R&S) lines of effort in favor of more traditional diplomacy and development assistance priorities. This period of relative peace allow policy makers to reflect on past challenges to creating a “civilian 

surge” capacity and determining feasible, acceptable, 

and suitable ways and means to ensure robust civilian participation in future R&S operations. To further 

inculcate a surge capability, one primary recommendation would be to expand the work of a recently created interagency task force on fragile states to include 

leading a new generation of civil-military planning 

tied explicitly to resources, since past planning efforts 

have not always done so effectively. Civilian agencies 

should work with the Department of Defense (DOD) 

to conduct formal interagency after action reviews 

on R&S activities outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, 

as well as track and respond to congressional efforts 

at DOD reform. These interagency partners should 

also encourage their respective R&S knowledge centers – such as PKSOI, the DOS Bureau for Conflict 

and Stability Operations (CSO), the National Defense 

University’s Center for Complex Operations, the U.S. 

Institute for Peace, and the DOD’s Joint Force Development (J7) Staff – to take stock of existing capabilities 

and reinvigorate their technical support relationships 

with policy makers in order to maintain R&S planning 

and implementation capabilities across agencies.

v

About the Author

RYAN MCCANNELL is the division chief for Conflict, 

Peacebuilding and Governance in the U.S. Agency for 

International Development (USAID) Bureau for Africa. He oversees a team of 12 subject-matter experts 

who manage regional programs and advise USAID 

Missions in sub-Saharan Africa on democracy, human 

rights, governance, conflict mitigation, and civil-military relations, as well as countering violent extremism, terrorism, and human and narcotics trafficking. 

Before joining USAID in 2004, Ryan spent eight years 

at the National Democratic Institute for International 

Affairs (NDI), where he was responsible for designing 

and managing democracy support programs in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Malawi, 

South Africa, and the Central African Republic. In 

2002-03, he served as NDI’s chief of party in Benin and 

Togo, where he organized training for political parties prior to elections in those two countries. Before 

NDI, Ryan worked as a democracy researcher for USAID. He received a bachelor’s degree and certificate 

in African Studies at Georgetown’s School of Foreign 

Service, a masters in Geographic and Cartographic 

Sciences at George Mason University, and a masters 

in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College. 

1

The Fate of the Civilian Surge 

in a Changing Environment

Ryan S. McCannell

Introduction

Fifteen years after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, American policy makers are still struggling to define appropriate national security responses to the challenges posed by fragile states. The United 

States (US) fights wars with great proficiency, yet it 

lacks the same finesse in supporting successful transitions to lasting peace. The recent conflicts in Iraq 

and Afghanistan taught Americans and the world 

hard lessons about these complex and difficult transitions. These conflicts also highlighted the gaps and 

seams among key U.S. international affairs agencies 

– principally the Department of Defense (DOD), the 

Department of State (DOS) and the U.S. Agency for 

International Development (USAID) – in crafting unified responses to post-conflict instability.

These failures at a unified response have not been 

for a lack of trying. At the height of coalition-led stability operations1

 in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US 

government (USG) made a significant, but incomplete 

effort to bolster its civilian agencies’ capability to contribute to post-conflict reconstruction2

 and stabilization3

 (R&S), as well as improve coordination4 with 

US military forces that struggled to respond to R&S 

challenges for which they were ill-prepared. The discouraging final stages of both conflicts have created a 

tendency to minimize and denigrate these efforts, as 

well as overlook the USG’s substantial contributions 

to R&S in other contexts. Indeed, policy makers and 
2

bureaucrats alike now avoid the terms “reconstruction” and “stabilization” to describe activities that 

address state fragility and transnational threats, given 

the disappointing rate of return on costly reconstruction activities and the continuing – even worsening 

– instability in areas where the United States and its 

partners undertook massive stabilization efforts.5

Despite the understandable reluctance to adopt 

nation building as a core foreign policy priority, the 

United States cannot afford to ignore national security challenges posed by state fragility. Yet the DOD, 

the DOS and USAID all face institutional and political 

pressures to abandon collaboration on R&S in favor of 

returning to conventional defense, diplomacy and development assistance priorities. Instead, policy makers should use this period of relative peace to reflect 

on lessons learned and determine options for improving R&S responses going forward. If not, the United 

States risks forgetting these hard lessons learned at 

considerable sacrifice, as our nation did after Vietnam.

This paper explores the extent to which civilian 

agencies have managed to retain latent R&S capabilities despite the shift in national security policy away 

from large-scale stabilization activities. As a USAID 

specialist in crisis, stabilization and governance, I was 

motivated to pursue this research as a form of mourning what I believed to be an ultimately fruitless effort 

at interagency collaboration. Instead, I was surprised 

to find a relatively rich – but rapidly attenuating – mix 

of interagency authorities, professional relationships, 

and persistent communities of practice, some of which 

are being reassigned (or at least rebranded) to address 

a new generation of challenges related to state fragility and violent extremism. Unfortunately, this process 

of retaining and repurposing R&S expertise is taking 
3

place in piecemeal fashion, rather than through a holistic inventory of lessons learned to determine what 

to jettison and what is worth retention. In contrast, 

the history of R&S operations underscores the need to 

capture these experiences deliberately, or risk paying 

the price in time, dollars, and lives the next time such 

capabilities are needed. 

This paper is based on a literature review and interviews with more than 20 subject-matter experts 

from across the U.S government who have designed, 

advocated for, participated in, or evaluated the contributions of U.S. civilian agencies to R&S during the 

past decade. The goal of this paper is to assess existing capabilities across four core policy objectives: 1) 

improving policy coherence in U.S. civilian agencies’ 

R&S efforts, 2) expanding civilian agencies’ strategic 

planning capacity, 3) mobilizing surge capacity for 

civilian R&S experts, and 4) encouraging better coordination between civilian agencies and the DOD. 

The review centers primarily on the headquarters operations – as opposed to field experiences – of the two 

key civilian agencies engaged in R&S: the DOS and 

USAID. The final section offers recommendations for 

filling gaps and capitalizing on gains identified in the 

analysis.

Historical context

The starting point for current U.S. policy on R&S 

operations is the National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 44, issued by President George W. Bush 

on 7 December 2005, during the height of stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.6

 NSPD-44 reflected 

a recognition by the White House that the transition 

from combat to stability operations in both countries 
4

required a greater contribution from civilian agencies. 

The directive built upon an earlier action, taken in 

2004 by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, to create 

the Office for the Coordinator for Reconstruction and 

Stabilization (S/CRS) within the DOS.7 The new structure reported directly to Secretary Powell, bypassing 

the normal DOS chain of command. NSPD-44 tasked 

S/CRS to lead the USG’s implementation of R&S 

policy and to organize the “development of a strong 

civilian response capability including necessary surge 

capabilities.”8 The White House directive reflected the 

perceived need for cabinet-level oversight; as overall 

coordinator of U.S. foreign policy, the secretary of 

state would presumably ensure that civilian agencies, 

including the DOS itself, followed the lead of S/CRS. 

The decision also reflected the DOS mandate to ensure 

proper security for civilian diplomatic and development officials conducting operations overseas.

Across the Potomac River, senior DOD officials endorsed NSPD-44’s aims, hoping to shift some of the 

R&S burden to civilian agencies. On 28 November 

2005, just days before the White House released its directive, the Office of the Secretary of Defense issued 

DOD Instruction (DODI) 3000.05, giving stability operations a “priority comparable to combat operations.”

9

 The instruction stated that “integrated civilian and 

military efforts are key to successful stability operations”10 and pledged the DOD “to lead and support the 

development of military-civilian teams... as a critical 

U.S. Government stability operations tool.”11 The DOD 

also worked alongside the DOS and the White House 

to negotiate authorities to transfer $100 million of its 

own funds to the DOS, via Section 1207 of the Fiscal 

Year 2006 National Defense Authorization Act,12 with 

the intent of jump-starting S/CRS operations. Subse-
5

quently, the DOD Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), 

and later the Joint Force Development (J7) Directorate 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided substantive assistance to S/CRS in developing its planning, training 

exercises, and policy coordination methodologies as 

well.13

Yet this new policy arrangement faced entrenched 

opposition within the foreign policy bureaucracy, 

which in turn complicated its endorsement on Capitol 

Hill. Congressional researcher Nina Serafino cites the 

dismay within the DOS at the creation of S/CRS, particularly among existing DOS bureaus that claimed responsibility for elements of R&S, including PoliticalMilitary Affairs (PolMil) and International Narcotics 

and Law Enforcement (INL).14 In addition, American 

University professor Gordon Adams notes that the 

powerful DOS regional bureaus, which manage and 

coordinate U.S. embassies overseas, resisted the creation of a new office with direct access to the secretary because it threatened their own power within the 

bureaucracy.15 Finally, embassies in conflict-affected 

countries lacked confidence that S/CRS teams would 

add value. In fact, the office’s slow start-up and weak 

initial capacity exacerbated these doubts.16 Most notably, policy makers at the DOS and National Security Council (NSC) decided against involving the 

fledgling office in Iraq, to prevent it from becoming 

overwhelmed by the massive R&S efforts already underway in that country. This arguably sound bureaucratic management decision nevertheless undercut 

the office’s political standing within the DOS17 – since 

the Iraq R&S challenge was ostensibly the impetus for 

NSPD-44 in the first place.18

For its part, USAID supported the DOS lead on 

policy coordination and its efforts to improve civilian 
6

planning capabilities. However, its leaders questioned 

the need for S/CRS to design and implement foreign 

assistance programs in the R&S sector, which became 

part of the office’s ambitions after NSPD-44.19 After all, 

USAID already had two existing offices with significant capabilities to respond to specific R&S challenges. The Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), 

created in 1964, is the lead federal agency for the U.S. 

government’s humanitarian assistance and disaster 

relief (HADR) responses abroad: even the much larger 

DOD follows OFDA’s direction in those circumstances.20 The Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), created 

in 1994, works alongside OFDA to provide rapidresponse support to countries experiencing political 

transitions.21 OFDA and OTI each receive a modest, 

dedicated annual appropriation from the Congress 

to address their specific lines of effort. At the time S/

CRS was created, OFDA and OTI already possessed 

many of the capabilities described in NSPD-44, albeit 

on smaller scales. These included personnel surge 

mechanisms, program design and implementation 

protocols, working relationships with other agency 

partners including the DOD (especially in the case of 

OFDA), and robust monitoring and evaluation tools. 

USAID argued that these existing capabilities should 

be expanded or replicated within the agency as operational counterparts to the enhanced S/CRS policy and 

planning role.22

These bureaucratic tussles resonated among skeptics in Congress, particularly on the appropriations 

committees, who were less convinced than their counterparts on the authorizing committees about the need 

for new funding and personnel support mechanisms 

to accomplish the difficult and politically unpopular 

work of R&S abroad. As a result, it took almost three 
7

years for legislation to pass both houses of Congress in 

order to implement and fund the reforms envisioned 

in NSPD-44.23

In 2008, the Congress endorsed S/CRS as part of 

permanent law; in 2008 and 2009, it appropriated a total of $140 million to establish and partially fund a new 

Civilian Response Corps (CRC), to be managed by S/

CRS with personnel detailed from several civilian 

agencies.24 As proposed by the Bush administration, 

the CRC was to have three components, the first two 

of which eventually received funding and authorization. The first was an “active” roster (CRC-A) of up 

to 250 newly hired civilian staff with specialized R&S 

expertise. The second was a “stand-by” force (CRCS) of up to 2,000 existing U.S. government employees 

with relevant skills, who agreed to deploy as needed 

for periods of up to three months. The most ambitious 

element of the CRC proposal was a larger “reserve” 

component (CRC-R), intended as a civilian analogue 

to the military reserves. The civilian reserve would be 

open to qualified U.S. citizens whose skills, readiness, 

and availability matched capability requirements during R&S contingency operations. Despite being requested by both Presidents Bush and Barack Obama, 

this component never received funding or authorization due to persistent congressional wariness about 

R&S becoming a standing foreign policy priority of 

the U.S. government.25

Policy Objectives, Gains, and Gaps

A decade has passed since the issuance of NSPD44. However, President Obama’s successful election 

campaign, with his promise to end the war in Iraq, 

signaled a shift in national attitudes concerning sta-
8

bility operations.26 In the ensuing years, a significant 

drawdown of U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan 

has taken place despite the ongoing stabilization challenges in both countries. Because the Obama White 

House has not updated R&S policy guidance, much of 

the current organization, doctrine, authority, resourcing, and personnel architecture related to these tasks 

are legacies of the Bush second term. In personal interviews, analysts and practitioners described a sense 

of drift and attenuation during the intervening years, 

leading some to conclude that NSPD-44’s aims went 

entirely unfulfilled. However, the reality is more complicated.

The rest of this paper picks up the story from 2009 

to the present, taking stock of civilian agencies’ current R&S capabilities in terms of policy coherence, 

planning, civilian surge capacity, and civil-military 

coordination. 

Improving Policy Coherence in Civilian Agencies’ 

R&S Efforts

NSPD-44 directed S/CRS to “[e]nsure program 

and policy coordination among Departments and 

Agencies of the United States Government... [and p]

rovide United States Government decision makers 

with detailed options for an integrated United States 

Government response in connection with specific R&S 

operations.” It also directed other U.S. federal departments and agencies to “[c]oordinate with S/CRS during budget formulation for relevant R&S activities 

prior to submission to [the Office of Management and 

Budget] and the Congress or as required to coordinate 

reconstruction and stabilization activities.”27
9

Despite these clear policy statements, the empirical evidence shows a mixed record by the DOS in ensuring policy and budget coherence among civilian 

agencies, or even among its own bureaus, during the 

years that followed. To paraphrase one senior DOS 

official, the State Department found itself hamstrung 

between its traditional, state-to-state relationships on 

the one hand, and the need to develop mechanisms to 

address the growing number of regional – as opposed 

to bilateral – national security issues and actors on the 

other.28 These actors included a plethora of U.S. agencies involved in international affairs that operated 

outside of the jurisdiction and direction of the DOS, 

but whose representatives generally coordinated their 

work at the country level as part of U.S. embassy country teams chaired by the U.S. ambassador or another 

senior DOS official.29

As part of its duties under NSPD-44, S/CRS set 

about trying to expand upon this DOS-led coordination system for R&S contingencies. S/CRS proposed a three-tiered interagency management system 

(IMS), with coordination bodies working in tandem 

in Washington, at the DOD’s geographic combatant 

commands or equivalent regional platforms, and in 

support of the local country team or teams, where 

applicable. Despite technical assistance from JFCOM 

and the NSC’s endorsement of IMS on 7 March 2007, 

S/CRS ultimately failed to embed the new structure 

into interagency operations. IMS proved unable to 

overcome resistance among DOS bureaus and skepticism from U.S. ambassadors, who saw few problems 

with the existing system in which they played leading 

roles.30 Two years later, the incoming Obama White 

House reorganized and expanded the national security staff, which eventually absorbed the DOS’s policy 
10

coordination function for dozens of priority countries, 

including those in which the United States would mobilize or contemplate R&S activities.31

Within the DOS, the fate of S/CRS hung in the balance through the change of administrations and the 

first year of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. A major turning point was the decision 

not to mobilize S/CRS crisis response teams in the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, despite 

a recent table-top exercise conducted jointly with the 

DOD that had envisioned a similar scenario.32 By that 

time, S/CRS had received criticism for its initial efforts 

to lead coordination and planning efforts in other crisis situations, such as the Russian invasion of Georgia 

in the summer of 2008.33 Following the Haiti response, 

the 2011 DOS-USAID Quadrennial Diplomacy and 

Development Review (QDDR) announced Secretary 

Clinton’s intent to pull S/CRS out of the Office of the 

Secretary of State and reorganize it into the Bureau for 

Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO).34 Beginning in 2012, under the leadership of Ambassador Rick 

Barton, CSO departed radically from its initial role 

under NSPD-44 as an interagency planning and coordination cell. The new bureau cut its ties with other 

civilian agencies by disbanding the interagency Crisis 

Response Corps, and focused instead on developing 

an internal DOS capability to design and implement 

R&S activities using the remaining Section 1207 and 

other small pots of funding at its disposal. This reorientation led to a major personnel shake-up within the 

organization and greatly weakened the unit’s claim to 

lead the civilian response to stabilization challenges.35

One DOS official described the relationships with 

other agencies as “bridges burned, or at least heavily 

damaged” as a result of these changes.36
11

Another result of all this turmoil was that S/CRS 

and its successor, the CSO Bureau, were unable to engage effectively in nations that were of key interest to 

the United States – the exception being Afghanistan 

from 2007 to 2013, albeit in a limited fashion and with 

wavering enthusiasm from the country team.37 Most 

notably, S/CRS mobilized several dozen CRC-A advisors from the DOS, USAID, and other civilian agencies 

to remote areas of what is now South Sudan in 2010. 

The mission of the advisors was to support the efforts 

of local leaders to resolve conflicts between different 

ethnic and religious communities during the tense 

months leading up to that country’s independence the 

following year. S/CRS and CSO also contributed to 

R&S activities in Kenya, Honduras, Burma, Nigeria, 

and most recently, Syria.38 However, in all cases, the 

office’s role has been to support the efforts of the relevant U.S. embassy country team, rather than leading 

a whole-of-government response from Washington.39

Although CRS and its successor failed to achieve 

the coordination role envisioned for it in NSPD-44, a 

parallel reform undertaken at roughly the same time 

took a step in the right direction. In 2006, the George 

W. Bush administration created the Office of the Director for Foreign Assistance, also known by its DOS 

acronym “F,” to unify budget formulation, execution, 

and reporting across the foreign assistance portfolios 

of the DOS and USAID. In the ensuing years, F developed a new programming and budgeting framework, 

as well as common performance measurements, in order to facilitate reporting to Congress and the public 

on the range and scope of spending and the impacts 

of foreign assistance activities across dozens of lines of 

effort.40 An additional by-product of F and its foreign 

assistance framework was the articulation of a broad 
12

foreign policy objective, called “Peace and Security,” 

encompassing civilian agencies’ diplomatic and development efforts to counter national security threats. 

Ironically, as R&S has fallen out of fashion in the foreign policy realm, its decline coincides with the emergence of a new generation of interagency coordination 

efforts reflecting other Peace and Security concerns, 

such as countering violent extremism (CVE), transnational organized crime, atrocities prevention, and 

security sector assistance. Officials in the DOD, the 

DOS and USAID noted these new focus areas overlap 

considerably with what used to be considered R&S 

challenges: “The capabilities may have shifted, but 

the habit of interagency coordination has remained.”41

Thus, much of the groundwork laid by S/CRS and its 

partners has actually survived and migrated toward 

these contemporary priorities – albeit without much 

deliberate reflection about lessons learned over the 

past decade.42

Expanding Civilian Agencies’ 

Strategic Planning Capacity 

Many analysts43 of interagency decision making 

highlight the lack of civilian agencies’ strategic planning capability as another major area of weakness 

hampering their ability to contribute to stability operations, as well as a key cause of the so-called “mission 

creep” by the military into traditionally civilian-led 

areas of foreign policy.44 To address this problem, S/

CRS and its partners at JFCOM undertook an intense, 

years-long effort to develop an interagency planning 

framework to support the three-tiered policy management system described earlier, and to help translate 

civilian agencies’ objectives more effectively to mili-
13

tary planning staff. These efforts included the development of an interagency planning handbook,45 numerous tabletop exercises envisioning R&S responses 

in countries such as Guinea46 and Haiti,47 as well as 

jointly organized conferences and workshops to test 

and train the concepts for both active and standby 

members of the Crisis Response Corps.48

As with the policy innovations, these planning efforts ran into bureaucratic resistance and ultimately 

failed. After investing much of its time and energy in 

creating planning tools, S/CRS was never able to generate sufficient demand for them from among their 

principal client base: U.S. embassies in conflict-affected countries. Part of the resistance stemmed from the 

DOS’s organizational culture, which observers like 

Gordon Adams describe as more comfortable with 

ambiguity, complexity, nuance and influence than the 

military’s orderly, mission-focused, readiness-centric 

orientation.49 However, officials who worked with S/

CRS during this period also note that few embassies 

understood the value of the planning staff’s capabilities given their limited previous exposure to deliberate or crisis action planning.50 In addition, a DOD 

official who worked at the National Security Council 

(NSC) during this period, faults S/CRS for being unable to effectively link its ambitious and elaborate 

planning framework – which was geared to long-term 

and heavily resourced interventions – to the mediumterm, modestly funded R&S contingencies facing the 

interagency during that time.51

The specific difficulties of S/CRS took place within 

a larger context in which civilian planning capabilities 

made some modest advances. For example, the 2011 

and 2015 QDDRs introduced multi-year, strategic-level guidance for both the DOS and USAID, mirroring 
14

the DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review.52 Additionally, since 2014, the NSC has convened an interagency 

task force on fragile states, which aims to collect and 

compare political analyses and early warning tools 

produced by federal agencies to provide better planning tools to senior policy makers.53 Despite its narrow 

focus, this task force represents a potentially expandable platform for interagency planning, replacing an 

earlier R&S interagency policy committee chaired by 

S/CRS until its dissolution in 2011.54

Overseas, since 2012, U.S. embassies have produced annual Integrated Country Strategies (ICS) that 

serve as planning tools for chiefs of mission to amalgamate the efforts of all U.S. government agencies 

working as part of the bilateral country team, including the DOD’s known local equities.55 Complementing the ICS, USAID’s overseas development offices, 

known as missions, produce five-year Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS) organized 

into strategic objectives for development and humanitarian assistance activities, including projected 

financial resource needs and personnel requirements. 

The CDCS serves as a reference document for budget 

formulation, personnel allocation, program design, 

implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and a 

lessons learned effort to inform the next generation of 

the strategy. This process amalgamates what defense 

doctrine defines as deliberate planning and programming. Taken together, the ICS and CDCS provide opportunities for interagency collaboration at the headquarters level in Washington and in individual host 

countries – although the limited capacity and interest 

in regional planning among civilian agencies remains 

a weakness.
15

For DOD planners, the limited availability of civilian agency personnel creates a challenge for determining the most effective location to integrate their views 

into the comparatively massive military planning 

processes to maximize their impact. Some geographic 

combatant commands, such as the U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM), have taken pains to adapt their 

theater campaign planning processes to accommodate 

civilian agency planners and policy makers. However, 

the fact remains that DOD planners must meet their 

colleagues more than halfway to ensure their participation in joint planning exercises. 

Mobilizing Surge Capacity for Civilian Experts 

in Reconstruction and Stabilization 

The civilian agencies’ modest progress in deliberate planning, contrasts sharply with the significant 

backsliding in crisis response since the demise of the 

CRC in 2012. Civilian agencies face four key obstacles: 

their own organizational cultures, uneven coverage 

across the breadth of capabilities needed to address 

R&S challenges, limited personnel capacity, and operational security issues. 

From the standpoint of organizational culture, creating and maintaining even a modest civilian surge 

capacity exclusively for R&S contingencies has proven difficult for agencies, whose missions gravitate 

around managing multiple priorities incrementally 

and simultaneously in steady-state operating environments. Thomas S. Szayna and his colleagues at RAND 

use an analogy drawn from domestic crisis responders to describe the contrast between civilian foreign 

policy agencies and their military counterparts: 
16

Civilian agencies operate on the police department 

model of continuous full employment of resources 

and have little slack in the system, whereas the military operates more on the fire department model of 

preparing for a contingency. The different orientations 

mean that, in reality, unless the United States made a 

choice to abandon or scale down many of its responsibilities abroad, most of the civilian personnel with 

[R&S] expertise cannot be redeployed for [those] contingencies without a damaging impact on current U.S. 

commitments.56

The CRC experiment did not function as planned in 

this environment. Although several civilian agencies57

contributed to the active and standby components, the 

delays in authorizing and resourcing the CRC created a 

mismatch between the supply of crisis responders and 

the demand among embassies for personnel surge capacity. With the exception of Sudan/South Sudan and 

Afghanistan, in which dozens of CRC-A deployments 

occurred in succession, most deployments consisted 

of one or two advisors fulfilling temporary duty assignments in low-priority conflict-affected countries. 

Between deployments, these staff often got assigned 

temporarily to offices at agency headquarters, where 

they remained “on call” for quick deployment. As described by one former CRC-A member interviewed 

for this report, “We spent most of our time in limbo, 

unable to do substantive work in Washington while 

awaiting field assignments that rarely came.”58 Eventually, the agency in question renegotiated the term 

“crisis response,” using funding in the account associated with R&S activities to cover the costs of deploying 

CRC staff to countries unaffected by conflict. The rationale was that ongoing direct-hire staffing shortages 

in these countries amounted to a crisis. This example 
17

perfectly exemplifies the conversion of Szayna’s bureaucratic firemen into policemen.

In terms of capabilities and capacity, civilian agencies maintain trained and ready personnel in narrow 

lines of effort along the R&S spectrum. USAID’s OFDA 

and OTI are organized, authorized, and resourced to 

address HADR and political transitions respectively. 

Within those narrow lines of effort, OFDA and OTI 

maintain an appropriate range of capabilities and can 

access surge personnel using dedicated “bull pens” 

of specialized civilian contractors. These individuals, 

often with years of international experience in crisis 

response, allow OFDA to mobilize disaster assistance 

response teams, while OTI jumpstarts transition activities within days or sometimes hours of an emergency. 

In addition, OFDA maintains standing agreements 

with municipal first responders in Fairfax, Virginia 

and Los Angeles, California, which function as a corps 

of civilian reservists for its work in disaster response.59

Outside of these specialized realms, the DOS and 

USAID each employ several hundred personnel with 

Peace and Security capabilities – a small force covering a wide area of operations.60 The recently created 

Office of the Undersecretary of State for Citizen Security, Democracy and Human Rights – known by its acronym “J” – oversees seven DOS offices and bureaus 

that manage Peace and Security resources, including 

CSO. At USAID, the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict 

and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) comprises offices devoted to conflict management and mitigation; 

democracy, human rights and governance; emergency 

food programs; and civil-military coordination – as 

well as OFDA and OTI. Posted overseas in the Foreign 

Service, State Department human rights officers and 

USAID crisis, stabilization and governance officers 
18

analyze and report on conflict and violence, as well 

as design, manage and evaluate political development 

and peacebuilding programs. As a cadre, these staffs 

specialize in a wide range of functions, and possess 

highly valued experience that could contribute to crisis response. Theoretically, they can be mobilized and 

organized to respond to an R&S contingency – and 

indeed, for short-term, high-priority crises, this often 

happens.61 However, the longer a crisis lasts, the more 

difficult it becomes for civilian agencies to sustain a 

response without surge support mechanisms, because 

most staff with relevant capability already have fulltime responsibilities elsewhere in the bureaucracy. 

Fortunately, both USAID and the DOS began investing modestly in surge support mechanisms in the 

wake of CRC’s dissolution. In 2013, USAID’s leadership transformed the office managing the agency’s 

contribution to CRC into an internal “firehouse” of crisis surge support staff,62 composed of a few dozen individuals with relevant skills, active security clearances, and an ability to perform inherently governmental 

work through congressionally authorized personal 

services contract mechanisms.63 This fledgling effort 

replicates the OFDA and OTI bullpen model across a 

broader range of capabilities. Recently, CSO launched 

a similar effort after consulting with USAID.64 It remains to be seen whether other civilian agencies will 

follow suit.

The final personnel challenge, which requires little 

elaboration, is the increased concern about operational security for civilian agency staff and contractors 

in the wake of the September 2012 attack on the U.S. 

consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The political salience of 

the issue in the current presidential campaign makes 

it difficult to forecast how civilian agencies’ presence 
19

and participation in conflict zones may be curtailed. In 

the meantime, policy makers will continue to turn to 

the DOD for contingencies that risk overwhelming civilian agencies’ limited capacity, or for exposing their 

employees and implementing partners to lethal force. 

This tendency will make civil-military coordination as 

important in future stability operations as it has been 

over the past decade.

Encouraging Better Civil-Military Coordination 

Much of the literature on interagency relationships 

in the national security sphere highlights the cultural 

and political conflicts that may hamper coordination 

between foreign affairs agencies.65 However, several 

representatives of the DOS, the DOD, and USAID interviewed for this research paper agreed that working 

relationships between the DOD and its civilian agency 

counterparts have improved noticeably during the 

past decade.66 In this respect, NSPD-44 and other policy actions succeeded in creating bureaucratic structures and personnel networks that supported joint 

interagency experiments in conflict zones, such as provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs). These structures 

and networks provided a range of prosaic coordination mechanisms that sought to ensure that DOD’s 

“development-like”67 interventions contributed to, or 

at least did not interfere with, other diplomatic and 

long-term development objectives. 

One example of a bureaucratic locus for coordination is USAID’s Office of Civil-Military Cooperation 

(CMC), formerly the Office of Military Affairs (OMA), 

established in 2005 to support the goals of NSPD-44. 

At the time, members of USAID’s non-profit industry base, as well as some of its own personnel, voiced 
20

concerns about the militarization of foreign assistance and reluctance about coordinating closely with 

military officials. Over time, that cultural backlash receded, particularly as USAID staff and implementers 

participated in R&S activities in Iraq and Afghanistan 

alongside their military colleagues, or received training from OMA/CMC on how to work effectively with 

military officials. Perhaps most importantly, personnel hiring policy changes led to an increased number 

of military veterans joining the civilian agency’s staff. 

These personal interactions helped to break down 

stereotypes and reinforce the value of each agency 

working in parallel lines of effort to accomplish unified goals.68

As a USAID Crisis, Stabilization and Governance 

Officer Benjamin Kauffeld notes,69 his and other civilian agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have joined the DOS in placing senior advisors 

in most of the combatant commands and at the Pentagon, both to influence military decision making and 

to help identify, filter, and steer the most legitimate 

military requests to the appropriate civilian authority. 

Embassy country teams serve as another key point of 

convergence between representatives from a range of 

civilian agencies and the military liaison teams and 

defense attachés serving in each post. In Kauffeld’s 

words, in the wake of the recent Iraq and Afghanistan 

conflicts, “USAID and DOD have never appreciated 

and respected each other’s capabilities better than 

right now.”70

The June 2015 “USAID Policy on Cooperation with 

the Department of Defense” sought to capitalize on 

this new reality.71 Developed by CMC in coordination 

with other USAID regional and functional bureaus, 

the policy formalizes the previous decade’s efforts to 
21

bridge the cultural, strategic, and programmatic distance between development assistance and the work 

of the DOD. To take one example, the policy specifically directs USAID missions abroad to share CDCS 

plans with their military counterparts, and to participate, where possible, in developing DOD country 

plans and theater campaign plans.72 Similarly, a 2012 

policy instruction from the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense instructs senior military officials working as 

part of an embassy country team to obtain approval 

from the chief of mission and senior USAID representative in country before implementing “developmentlike” activities funded by the DOD’s Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Aid (OHDACA) and 

Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA) accounts.73

Finally, CMC facilitates staff-level contacts between USAID and the DOD. The office has developed 

a training program for military audiences on development assistance and USAID’s role in the national 

security community, called “Development in Vulnerable Environments.” It also oversees the selection and 

placement of more than a dozen USAID officials annually as students and faculty at professional military 

education institutions.74

Despite these positive steps, as wartime coordination recedes and concerns about operational safety persist, civilian agencies will be increasingly unwilling or 

unable to play a leading role in response to R&S challenges. New priorities in the Peace and Security realm 

such as CVE, transnational organized crime, atrocities 

prevention, and defense institution building, provide 

new opportunities for interagency collaboration, but 

they also absorb most of the limited capacity in this 

field. As civilian agencies complete their retreat from 

R&S in favor of these new priorities, the DOD must re-
22

visit its own strategic posture in light of the changing 

interagency environment or risk going it alone again 

when the next major R&S contingency occurs.75

Recommendations

The recommendations offered here for addressing 

the capability gaps in the U.S. approach to R&S derive 

from captured lessons learned and acknowledging 

the advancements made in R&S that are benefitting 

interagency coordination in other areas. The first three 

recommendations aim to strengthen the goodwill and 

teamwork of public servants across the U.S. government, who collectively work to advance the nation’s 

common security goals, but whose relationships became strained during the conversion of S/CRS to the 

CSO Bureau.

1. Expand the work of the interagency task force 

on fragile states – currently focusing on early 

warning mechanisms and conflict assessment 

tools – to refine other technical tools that facilitate interagency coordination and best practices. For example, develop joint vocabulary 

to define security challenges and the capabilities required to address them. The task forces 

should also develop and test common performance indicators and standards, while providing these as technical assets for the incoming 

administration.

2. Under the auspices of the interagency task force, 

conduct “3-D” planning exercises focused on 

addressing current or impending challenges 

related to state fragility. Use these interagency 
23

exercises to introduce new or refined analytical tools, and develop options for coordination in addressing regional and transnational 

threats, where the biggest gaps exist between 

agency cultures and platforms. Crucially, task 

force leaders should direct agencies to identify resources for implementing those planning 

outcomes determined to be feasible, acceptable and suitable to achieving long-term policy 

objectives. By tying resources more explicitly 

to planning processes and outcomes, the task 

force can improve upon recent experiments 

with joint interagency planning in the Sahel 

region of northwest Africa, the Horn of Africa, 

and Syria. While those earlier efforts succeeded 

in clarifying whole-of-government objectives, 

implementation options, and vulnerabilities 

(ends, ways and risks), they failed to generate the resources (means) required to follow 

through – thus negating much of the practical 

value of such complex, time-consuming, and 

culturally challenging efforts. 

3. Perform a formal interagency after action review (AAR) on USG R&S activities outside of 

Iraq and Afghanistan (given the multitude of 

research already done on those two cases). The 

purpose of this effort would be to facilitate and 

inform the new generation of coordination now 

taking place in CVE, atrocities prevention, and 

other Peace and Security focus areas.76 Focus 

on past efforts that encouraged and supported 

regional planning and implementation, which 

is a recurring weak point in civilian agencies’ 

capabilities. To ensure participation, the AAR 
24

should be commissioned as a joint venture of 

the three lead agencies’ policy bureaus; or by 

State/F and a DOD-affiliated knowledge center, 

such as the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) or Center for Complex 

Operations (CCO). The AAR should include a 

well-respected U.S. academic institution that 

can contribute objective outside expertise, as 

well as serve as a repository of collected lessons 

learned documentation. This academic partnership will insure materials remain available for 

study in the event that USG entities involved in 

R&S get defunded, as has happened in the past. 

4. Civilian agency leaders should weigh in on the 

current legislative efforts at military reform tied 

to the 30th anniversary of the 1986 GoldwaterNichols Act, given that some of the proposed 

efforts to change the DOD’s global posture and 

organizational structures would affect diplomacy and development work as well as defense.77 For example, the outcome of decisions78

related to combining USAFRICOM and the 

U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), and 

the U.S. Northern and Southern Commands 

(USNORTHCOM and USSOUTHCOM), 

would impact the work of DOS and USAID in 

Africa and Latin America, just as the creation 

of USAFRICOM a decade ago rippled through 

the region and influenced the relationships 

between U.S. civilian agencies and their host 

nation counterparts. Civilian agencies should 

join forces with the DOD to seek congressional 

action to improve the alignment of authorities 

and resources among them, with the aim of re-
25

balancing civilian and military capabilities to 

address peace and security challenges more effectively across multiple lines of effort.

5. Convene a conference of R&S knowledge centers to take stock of current capabilities and develop strategies for reinvigorating relationships 

with policy makers, with the goal of ensuring 

that these earlier investments in knowledge 

management can help inform a new administration facing a new generation of complex 

international challenges. Examine how these 

institutions – such as CSO, PKSOI, CCO, USIP, 

and the J7 staff – can draw from their past work 

to contribute more strategically and robustly to 

current discussions around CVE, defense institution building, atrocities prevention, transnational organized crime, and emerging issues 

that parallel (or re-brand) an earlier generation 

of R&S concerns. Representatives from these 

government-sponsored centers should be prepared to re-introduce themselves to current 

and future foreign policy makers and outline 

their capabilities. Doing so would serve to refresh their mandate and ensure that their work 

remains relevant to an insular, evolving, and 

easily distracted foreign policy community in 

Washington.

Concluding Thoughts

Planning ahead for future R&S efforts is essential for the United States, given the number of fragile 

states in the world and the nature of contemporary 

security threats to our nation and its allies. As Ameri-
26

can leaders learned over the years, however, these efforts rate among the most complex and least popular 

foreign policy challenges.79 No civilian U.S. government agency claims responsibility for reconstruction 

and stabilization. Even the DOD accepts the leading 

role reluctantly. American public opinion can swing 

quickly from demanding intervention in response to 

some atrocity or disaster, to opposing a lengthy and 

dangerous commitment of U.S. troops and resources. 

As a result, R&S activities provoke an almost superstitious reaction among otherwise rational policy makers, as if planning to deal with these contingencies will 

make them inevitable. 

That political backdrop, as well as the nation’s 

current resource constraints, does not invalidate the 

need for serious reform to address R&S capability 

gaps. However, it does make wholesale changes to the 

government’s foreign policy infrastructure and budget extremely unlikely. Some contemporary authors 

and analysts advocate for grand proposals to create 

a new U.S. office for contingency operations, engineer a Goldwater-Nichols-type reorganization of the 

interagency, or undertake a massive rebalancing of 

resources and authorities from the military to civilian 

agencies. Few expect that such prominent changes can 

be accomplished by the current political system. The 

relatively modest recommendations presented in this 

paper reflect that skepticism.

The civilian foreign affairs agencies have key 

roles to play in helping to shape and implement R&S 

lines of effort as part of the U.S. foreign policy toolkit. Their past experience, both positive and negative, 

has taught valuable lessons and created some key 

elements of capability to help stabilize and rebuild 

fragile states, whenever doing so is consistent with 
27

U.S. national security interests. These agencies must 

resist the temptation to draw back into more familiar, 

less dangerous settings, leaving the hard cases to our 

brothers and sisters in uniform. With a few modest efforts and some focused attention, agency leaders can 

preserve and build upon the gains they have achieved 

at such great cost with faith that in the long run, those 

actions will have been worth the investment.

Endnotes

1. operations is defined in Department of Defense Instruction 

(DODI) 3000.05 as “an overarching term encompassing various 

military missions, tasks, and activities conducted outside the 

United States in coordination with other instruments of national 

power to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, 

provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.” U.S. Department of 

Defense, Stability Operations, Department of Defense Instruction 

Number 3000.05 (Washington, DC: Office of the Undersecretary 

of Defense for Policy, September 16, 2009), 1.

2. Following the lead of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) 

Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction handbook, 

this paper uses the U.S. Army definition of the term reconstruction: “the process of rebuilding degraded, damaged, or destroyed 

political, socioeconomic, and physical infrastructure of a country 

or territory to create the foundation for long-term development.” 

Beth Cole and Emily Hsu, Guiding Principles for Stabilization and 

Reconstruction, (Washington: U.S. Institute for Peace, 2009), 11-

231; U.S Department of the Army, Stability Operations, Field Manual 3-07 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Army, October 

6, 2008), Glossary-9.

3. Again following the lead of the USIP Guiding Principles

handbook, this paper uses the United Kingdom Stabilisation Unit 

definition of stabilization: “one of the approaches used in situations of violent conflict which is designed to protect and promote 

legitimate political authority, using a combination of integrated 

civilian and military actions to reduce violence, re-establish se-
28

curity and prepare for longer-term recovery by building an enabling environment for structural stability.” Cole and Hsu, Guiding Principles, 11-232; The United Kingdom Stabilisation Unit, 

The UK Government’s Approach to Stabilisation (2014) (London: UK 

Stabilization Unit, 2014), http://sclr.stabilisationunit.gov.uk/publications/ stabilisation-series/487-uk-approach-to-stabilisation-2014/file

(accessed March 19, 2016).

4. As an additional clarification, civil-military coordination refers in this paper to the peer-to-peer bureaucratic relationships 

between the DOD and other agencies of the U.S. Government. 

It does not address Samuel L. Huntington’s preoccupation with 

the dynamics between uniformed officers and the elected and appointed civilian leaders to whom they report. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military 

Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).

5. Several officials from the State and Defense Departments, 

as well as USAID, made this point when interviewed by the author in early 2016. However, I am continuing to use the terms reconstruction and stabilization (or R&S) in this paper to reflect the 

historical record and to contrast their past use with new terms 

used to describe similar issue areas, such as countering violent extremism, atrocities prevention, defense institution building, security 

sector assistance, and transnational organized crime.

6. George W. Bush, Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization, National Security Presidential 

Directive 44 (Washington, DC: The White House, December 7, 

2005), http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.pdf (accessed March 19, 

2016). NSPD-44 superseded a 1997 presidential decision directive 

issued by the Clinton White House to formalize interagency relationships on what it called “complex contingency operations,” 

specifically referencing the extant R&S program underway in 

Bosnia-Hercegovina. As noted by Dobbins, U.S. stability operations date back at least as far back at the end of World War II, 

with several recent examples including Somalia, Haiti, Kuwait, 

and Kosovo, as well as Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. William J. 

Clinton, Managing Complex Contingency Operations, Presidential Decision Direction 56 (Washington, DC: The White House, 

May 1997); James Dobbins, et al., America’s Role in Nation Building 

from Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2003).
29

7. Nina M. Serafino, Peacekeeping/Stabilization and Conflict Transitions: Background and Congressional Action on the Civilian Response/

Reserve Corps and other Civilian Stabilization and Reconstruction Capabilities (Washington: Congressional Research Service, June 16, 

2009), 9. However, the Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian 

Management Act of 2008, which formally enshrined S/CRS into 

law, specified that the president, rather than the secretary of state, 

appoints the S/CRS coordinator, with the advice and consent of 

the Senate; he or she then reports to the Secretary of State. Nora 

Bensahel, Olga Oliker, Heather Peterson. Improving Capacity for 

Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (Santa Monica, CA: 

RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009), 37. 

8. Bush, NSPD-44, 4.

9. Gordon England, Military Support for Stability, Security, 

Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations, Department of 

Defense Instruction 3000.05 (Arlington, VA: Department of Defense, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, November 28, 2005), 2.

10. Ibid., 3.

11. Ibid.

12. Nina Serafino, Department of Defense “Section 1207” Security and Stabilization Assistance: Background and Congressional Concerns, FY2006-FY2010 (Washington: Congressional Research Service, March 3, 2011), 2.

13. See for example U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), 

U.S. Government Draft Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation, United States Joint Forces 

Command J7 Pamphlet, Version 1.0 (Norfolk, VA: USJFCOM, December 1, 2005).

14. Nina M. Serafino, Catherine Dale, and Pat Towell, Building Civilian Interagency Capacity for Missions Abroad: Key Proposals 

and Issues for Congress (Washington: Congressional Research Service, February 9, 2012), 13.
30

15. Gordon Adams, “The Institutional Imbalance of American Statecraft,” in Mission Creep: The Militarization of U.S. Foreign 

Policy?, ed. Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, (Washington: 

Georgetown University Press, 2014), 28.

16. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), Lessons Learned and Recommendations – S/CRS Georgia Engagement – August 11, 2009 [sic] – 

October 31, 2008, internal office memorandum (Washington, DC: 

S/CRS, January 30, 2009) 1-5; interview with former S/CRS official, Washington, DC, February 12, 2016.

17. Interview with U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) official, 

Washington, DC, December 3, 2015.

18. Nora Bensahel, Olga Oliker, Heather Peterson. Improving 

Capacity for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009), 34-37.

19. Interview with USIP official, Washington, DC, December 

3, 2015.

20. U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of 

Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), USAID Office of Foreign 

Disaster Assistance (Washington, DC: OFDA, January 21, 2016). 

https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/OFDA_fact_

sheet_01-21-2016.pdf (accessed March 19, 2016).

21. OTI’s mission is “to provide fast, flexible, short-term assistance to take advantage of windows of opportunity to build 

democracy and peace. It lays the foundations for long-term development by promoting reconciliation, jumpstarting economies 

and helping stable democracy take hold.” USAID Office of Transition Initiatives Home Page at “Background,” https://www.usaid.gov/

political-transition-initiatives/background (accessed March 10, 2016). 

22. Interview with USIP official, Washington, DC, December 

3, 2015.

23. Serafino, Peacekeeping/Stabilization, 10.

24. Ibid., 14. 
31

25. U.S. House of Representatives, State, Foreign Operations, 

and Related Programs Appropriations Bill, 2010, House Report 111-

187, 111th Cong., 1st sess. (June 26, 2009), 12. https://www.gpo.gov/

fdsys/pkg/CRPT-111hrpt187/pdf/CRPT-111hrpt187.pdf (accessed 

March 19, 2016).

26. Dominic Tierney, “The Backlash Against Nation Building,” Prism 5, No 3, (Fall 2015): 15.

27. Bush, NSPD-44, 4.

28. Interview with Department of State (DOS) official, February 29, 2016.

29. Gordon Adams, “The Institutional Imbalance of American 

Statecraft,” 24-25.

30. Bensahel, et al., Improving Capacity, 43. 

31. Karen DeYoung, “How the Obama White House Runs 

Foreign Policy,” Washington Post, August 28, 2015; Mirko Crnkovich, The National Security Council: A Primer and Recommendations 

for Change, Eisenhower School Individual Research Paper (Washington, DC: The Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, National Defense University, May 26, 

2015), 43-48.

32. U.S. Department of State Home Page, “Haiti,” at http://www.

state.gov/j/cso/where/ engagements/haiti/index.htm (accessed March 

19, 2016).

33. S/CRS, Georgia Engagement, 1-5.

34. was also a factor in the decision to restructure S/CRS into 

CSO, particularly as Section 1207 funding phased out after Fiscal Year 2010. Up to that time, S/CRS’s efforts to coordinate and 

lead civilian agencies’ R&S efforts and manage the CRC had cost 

over $100 million a year, whereas the transition to CSO reflected a 

more modest funding level drawing primarily from DOS resources. Telephone interview with Neal Kringel, a current CSO official, 

February 24, 2016. 
32

35. Interviews with two former officials of the DOS Office for 

the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), 

Washington, DC, December 4, 2015 and February 12, 2016; telephone interview with Neal Kringel, February 24, 2016.

36. Telephone interview with a current CSO employee, February 24, 2016.

37. Telephone interview with Michael , USAID Office of Civil-Military Cooperation, February 25, 2016; telephone interview 

with a former S/CRS official, Washington, DC, February 12, 2016.

38. U.S. Department of State Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, Conflict Prevention and Crisis Response: Responding to Emerging Instability Overseas (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, June 21, 2013), http://www.state.gov/documents/

organization/211773.pdf (accessed March 19, 2016).

39. Interview with a former S/CRS and CSO official, February 

12, 2016.

40. Department of State, Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Structure and Definitions (Washington, DC: Department of 

State, March 18, 2013), http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/ 

246744.pdf (accessed March 19, 2016).

41. Telephone interview with Julie Werbel, a former USAID 

official, February 25, 2016. 

42. Telephone interview with Neal Kringel, February 24, 2016; 

telephone interview with USAID official, January 12, 2016; telephone interview with National Defense University official, March 

3, 2016.

43. Serafino, Building Civilian Interagency Capacity, 11-14; 

26-28.

44. Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, eds., Mission Creep: 

The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy?, (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 15-16. A more charitable view of 

the situation is that the differing forms of planning undertaken by 

various agencies reflect and support their different functions and 

missions. For example, the DOS compiles and issues annual re-
33

ports on human rights, trafficking in persons, and religious freedom, while the USAID Office for Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) – a sister office to OFDA and OTI – produces an 

annual Alert List measuring state fragility and instability. These 

tools provide critical information about the operating environment facing diplomats and development workers worldwide. In 

addition, CMM, OTI and CSO jointly developed an Interagency 

Conflict Assessment Framework (ICAF) tool to identify the root 

causes of conflict and instability in various operating environments. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military adopted the ICAF methodology, which now appears in doctrine as the District Stability 

Framework approach to local engagement during counterinsurgency operations.

45. USJFCOM, Draft Planning Framework.

46. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), USG Strategic Plan for Stabilization and Reconstruction in Guinea - Final Brief, briefing slides with 

scripted commentary, Washington, DC, S/CRS, June 26, 2008. 

47. U.S. Department of State Home Page, “Haiti,” at http://www.

state.gov/j/cso/where/ engagements/haiti/index.htm (accessed March 

19, 2016).

48. Sean McFate and Tim Challans, CRC Level 1 Planners 

Course, Facilitator’s Version (Washington, DC: National Defense 

University, College of International Security Affairs, September 

2009).

49. Gordon Adams, “The Institutional Imbalance of American 

Statecraft,” 34.

50. Telephone interview with a former USAID Crisis Response Corps-Active (CRC-A) member, January 12, 2016.

51. Interview with DOD official, December 29, 2015.

52. Unfortunately, the second five-year QDDR, published in 

2015, has little to say about stability operations beyond some references to the need for a new framework for fragile states. U.S. 

Department of State, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review: Enduring Leadership in a Dynamic World (Washington, DC, 

2015), 23-27.
34

53. Telephone interview with Joseph Hewitt, USAID Office of 

Conflict Management and Mitigation, February 25, 2016.

54. Department of State Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), “Operations Sub-IPC Meeting Minutes,” 

memorandum, Washington, DC, Department of State/CSO, June 

1, 2011.

55. Thomas R. Nides, Introducing New Strategic Planning and 

Budgeting Processes, State Department Unclassified Cable 124737 

(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, December 2011), 

http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pdact135.pdf (accessed March 20, 

2016).

56. Thomas S. Szayna et al., Integrating Civilian Agencies in Stability Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Arroyo Center, 2009), 

xviii.

57. These included the Departments of State, Agriculture, 

Commerce, Justice, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Treasury, and Transportation, as well as USAID. Serafino, 

Peacekeeping/Stabilization, 15.

58. Telephone interview with a former USAID CRC-A member, January 12, 2016.

59. U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of 

Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), USAID Office of Foreign 

Disaster Assistance (Washington, DC: OFDA, January 21, 2016). 

https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/OFDA_fact_

sheet_01-21-2016.pdf (accessed March 19, 2016).

60. During the Obama Administration, both agencies succeeded in increasing their direct-hire staff across the board by 

several hundred new foreign service officers, as well as bringing 

aboard hundreds of others using term-limited personnel appointments known as “foreign service limited” positions. Many of the 

latter positions have expired since the build-up of civilian staff in 

Iraq and Afghanistan that accompanied the expanded coalition 

military presence in the region. Telephone interview with Michael Hryshchyshyn, February 25, 2016.
35

61. A recent example is the 2014 Ebola virus disease response, 

for which dozens of USAID and State Department staff mobilized 

to assist the embassies and missions in affected countries.

62. USAID Home Page, “The Office of Crisis Surge Support Staff,” 

https://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau

-democracy-conflict-and-humanitarian-assistance/office-2

(accessed March 20, 2016).

63. Telephone interview with Mark Pickett, Director of the 

USAID Office of Crisis Surge Support, February 22, 2016.

64. Ibid., and telephone interview with Neal Kringel, February 24, 2016.

65. For example, Adams and Murray eds., Mission Creep.

66. Telephone interviews with Michael Hryshchyshyn, USAID Office of Civil-Military Cooperation, February 25, 2016; John 

Agoglia, National Defense University, 3 March 2016; and Julie 

Werbel, former USAID official, February 25, 2016.

67. These include the Commander’s Emergency Response 

Program (CERP), Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Aid 

(OHDACA) and Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA). G. 

William Anderson and Connie Veillette, “Soldiers in Sandals,” in 

Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, eds. Mission Creep: The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy? (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 97-119.

68. Interviews with several current and former USAID officials, November 2015 to March 2016.

69. Benjamin D. Kauffeld, USAID & DOD: Analysis and Recommendations to Enhance Development-Military Cooperation (Carlisle, 

PA: U.S. Army War College Press, August 2014), 42.

70. Ibid., 1-2

71. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), USAID Policy on Cooperation with the Department of Defense, (Washington, DC: USAID, June 2015).
36

72. Ibid., 7-8.

73. Anderson and Veillette, “Soldiers in Sandals,” 110; telephone interview with Michael Hryshchyshyn, February 25, 2016.

74. Beth Cole, “Approved Action Memo - 2016 LTT Positions,” 

memorandum for the senior assistant to the USAID administrator 

for human capital and talent management, Washington, DC, USAID, June 12, 2015. 

75. In fact, this is already occurring: the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, OSD (P), is preparing a revision 

to DOD Instruction 3000.05 to clarify the military’s roles and responsibilities in stability operations, including the conditions under which the DOD should support rather than lead such efforts. 

Interview with OSD (P) official, 29 December 29, 2015.

76. For a good model of an interagency after-action review, 

see U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), Ebola After 

Action Review Final Report (Washington, DC: USAID OFDA, September 2015).

77. In fact, USAID’s Office of Civil-Military Cooperation has 

circulated an internal memo advising agency leadership to pay 

greater attention to the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing process associated with the Goldwater-Nichols anniversary. 

Interview with Michael Hryshchyshyn, 25 February 2016.

78. Senator John McCain, Opening Statement by SASC Chairman John McCain at Hearing on Increasing the Effectiveness of Military Operations (Washington, DC: Office of Senator John McCain, 

December 10, 2015), http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/

index.cfm/2015/12/opening-statement-by-sasc-chairman-johnmccain-at-hearing-on-increasing-the-effectiveness-of-militaryoperations (accessed March 17, 2016); Peter Levine and Lt. Gen. 

Thomas Waldhauser, “Information Memorandum on GoldwaterNichols Working Group Recommendations” (Washington, DC: 

The Pentagon, Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer, 

March 15, 2016).

79 Tierney, 15.
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