Search for the Philosopher’s Stone

Improving Interagency Cooperation in Tactical Military Operations

William J. Denn III

March 23, 2018

Search for the Philosopher’s Stone: Improving Interagency Cooperation in Tactical Military Operations

Maj. William Denn, originally from Albany, NY, commissioned into the United States 

Army through the US Military Academy at West Point in 2006 with a Bachelor of 

Science Degree in International Relations and Systems Engineering. He led both tank 

and infantry platoons in Iraq fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga in Mosul from 

2007 to 2009. In 2010, as an intelligence officer, he served as a Combat Advisor to the 

Afghan Security Forces in Regional Command East, Afghanistan.

Following his tour in Afghanistan, Denn developed new efforts to bridge gaps between national 

intelligence and the deployed tactical warfighters at the National Security Agency. After commanding a 

military intelligence company, Denn completed his Master in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School 

and graduated as the honor graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College. Following the 

Staff College, Denn completed the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies where he studied to 

become a war planner. Denn is currently a planner at the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC.

Denn has written for the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, and several policy and military journals. He 

has published on a variety of topics to include interagency integration into military operations, civilmilitary relations, counterinsurgency and security force assistance, and leadership studies. He is a 

recipient of the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award and the General George C. Marshall Award. 

He is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.

Search for the Philosopher’s Stone: Improving Interagency Cooperation in Tactical Military Operations

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ 1

Acronyms...................................................................................................................................................... 3

Figures........................................................................................................................................................... 5

Tables............................................................................................................................................................ 7

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................. 9

Research Questions and Methodology................................................................................................... 12

A Discussion on Bureaucracy ..................................................................................................................... 15

Necessary Characteristics of Interagency Cooperation .......................................................................... 18

Competing Ideas Addressing Insufficient Stability Expertise.................................................................. 19

Analytical Model ..................................................................................................................................... 20

Case Studies................................................................................................................................................ 23

Case Study 1: Africa Command Regionally Aligned Forces..................................................................... 23

Regionally Aligned Forces Interagency Problems............................................................................... 26

Measuring the Effectiveness of Regionally Aligned Forces................................................................. 30

Summary Analysis of Regionally Aligned Forces Case Study .............................................................. 31

Case Study 2: US Response to Ebola in West Africa ............................................................................... 32

International Community Rallies for Action........................................................................................ 32

Ebola: A Model for Interagency .......................................................................................................... 34

Measuring the Effectiveness of Interagency Integration during the Ebola Crisis...............................35

Summary Analysis of Ebola Case Study .............................................................................................. 40

Case Study Summaries............................................................................................................................ 40

Conclusions and Recommendations.......................................................................................................... 43

Recommendations.................................................................................................................................. 44

Doctrine: Update Military Doctrine on Interagency Tools.................................................................. 45

Organization: Reform the Civil-Military Operations Center................................................................ 45

Training: Improve Interagency Training within the Military............................................................... 46

Policy: Build Greater Capacity for Deployable Civilians in DoS and USAID.........................................46

Recommendations for Future Research ................................................................................................. 47

Closing Thoughts..................................................................................................................................... 47

Appendix A: Interagency Cooperation Embedded in US Army and Joint Doctrine .................................49

Types of Interagency Cooperation Embedded in Current Doctrine ....................................................... 49

Appendix B: At What Level Does Interagency Integration Currently Occur?...........................................53

Interagency Personnel Management in Support of Stability Operations...............................................57

Bibliography................................................................................................................................................ 59

Search for the Philosopher’s Stone: Improving Interagency Cooperation in Tactical Military Operations

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Abstract

The United States National Security Strategy and Department of Defense (DoD) joint doctrine recognizes 

that the complexity of the contemporary operational environment requires the United States to pursue 

whole-of-government solutions that integrate civil-military interagency cooperation. In particular, the 

military requires the expertise of interagency partners in stability operations. Army doctrine recognizes 

that interagency synchronization occurs at all echelons, although it has yet to fully institutionalize

interagency integration at tactical levels. This paper examines two historical case studies where 

interagency integration was essential to tactical mission success: DoD—Interagency response to Ebola in 

West Africa, and DoD—Interagency coordination for Africa Command (AFRICOM) Regionally Aligned 

Forces (RAF). The conditions that led to successful implementation of these programs are highlighted with 

an analysis across a Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership-Education, Personnel, Facilities,

and Policy (DOTMLPF) framework. Both case studies provide valuable lessons on how the United States 

Army may better integrate interagency at the tactical level of stability operations. The author based on 

his analysis also proposes several recommendations across the DOTMLPF framework for more effective 

interagency integration in future DOD tactical operations.

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Acronyms

AAR After Action Report

AFRICOM Africa Command (United States)

AOC Army Operating Concept

BCT Brigade Combat Team

CMOC Civil-Military Operations Center

COCOM Combatant Command

DART Disaster Assistance Response Team

DoD Department of Defense (United States)

DoS Department of State (United States)

DOTMLPF-P Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership/Education, Personnel, Facilities, 

and Policy

GAO Government Accountability Office (United States)

HA/DR Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief

HQ Headquarters

JFC Joint Forces Command

JIACG Joint Interagency Coordination Group

JIATF Joint Interagency Task Force

JIIM Joint, Interagency, Interorganizational, Multinational

JP Joint Publication

JTF Joint Task Force

LNO Liaison Officer

MCTP Mission Command Training Program

MoH Liberian Ministry of Health

NECC National Ebola Coordination Center

NGO Nongovernmental Organization

NSC National Security Council

NSP National Solidarity Program

PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team

RAF Regionally Aligned Forces

USAID US Agency for International Development

USARAF US Army Africa
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USDA US Department of Agriculture

USG US Government

UN United Nations

WHO World Health Organization
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Figures

Figure 1: Example AFRICOM RAF Security Cooperation Activities ............................................................. 26

Figure 2: AFRICOM’s Fragmented Coordination......................................................................................... 29

Figure 3: Ebola Cumulative Incidence—West Africa, September 20, 2014................................................33

Figure 4: Unity of Effort Approaches to Stability ........................................................................................ 51

Figure 5: Relationship of JIACG with NSC ................................................................................................... 54

Figure 6: JIACG Structure and Functions..................................................................................................... 55

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Tables

Table 1: Program—Primary Research Question Analysis........................................................................... 21

Table 2: Program—Analytical Lens............................................................................................................. 21

Table 3: DOTMLPF-P Analysis of RAF Interagency Case Study ................................................................... 31

Table 4: Cumulative Reported Ebola Cases: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone .........................................32

Table 5: DOTMLPF-P Analysis of Ebola Case Study..................................................................................... 40

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Introduction

The Army of 2025 and Beyond will effectively employ lethal and non-lethal overmatch against any 

adversary to prevent, shape, and win conflicts and achieve national interests. It will leverage 

cross-cultural and regional experts to operate among populations, promote regional security, and 

be interoperable with the other Military Services, United States Government agencies and allied 

and partner nations. 

— Combined Arms Center, The Army Vision:

Strategic Advantage in a Complex World

Over a decade ago, the stability and reconstruction missions of Iraq and Afghanistan revealed critical 

capability gaps within the US military. The military, while conducting combat operations against al-Qaeda 

and the Taliban, was also simultaneously conducting stability operations—development, governance, 

rule-of-law promotion, conflict resolution, and similar activities—at the local level with little guidance and 

oversight. While young leaders at the tactical and local level admirably sought to conduct these stability 

operations, the reality showed that the military was untrained, was unequipped, and lacked the expertise 

to effectively manage governance, development, rule-of-law promotion, and conflict resolution on the 

battlefield.

At the tactical level, the frustration was common among young lieutenants and captains, who, as 

nominal mayors of villages and towns, were expected to restore vital civil services and negotiate and 

resolve conflicts among feuding factions. The result was a “bipolar disorder” of sorts, as leaders planned 

high-value targeting raids one day; negotiated contracting issues with local firms the next day; conducted 

sewage, water, and educational assessments the next; and then ran microcredit grant programs the next. 

Our military training system mostly taught conventional kinetic operations; much of the nonkinetic

stability requirements were on-the-job or figure-it-out learning in theater.

The challenges in stability operationsfaced by the Department of Defense (DoD) were highlighted 

by the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, who noted that DoD’s efforts to spark 

the country’s economic development, which cost between $700 million and $800 million, “accomplished 

nothing.” The Task Force for Business and Stability Operations—a DoD unit aimed at developing war zone 

mining, facilitating industrial development, and fostering private investments—was considered by the 

special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction as “an abysmal failure,” lacking leadership, any 

clear strategy, or accountability.1

 1 Gould, “SIGAR.”
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These challenges at both the tactical and operational level are an indicator that the US military 

lacked the capacity and expertise to accomplish inherently nonmilitary tasks related to stability and nation

building. Assuming that the expertise to do some of these tasks existed within the US government (USG), 

or could have been contracted by the USG, why could the military not better leverage that expertise to 

more effectively guide the accomplishment of the stability tasks associated with our nation building and 

counterinsurgency operations?

Despite the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan being national priorities requiring a comprehensive,

whole-of-government civil-military strategy, the US military was required to do more than the lion’s share 

of lifting precisely because it was the only USG organization with the manpower and capacity to deploy in 

an expeditionary manner. With a lack of large-scale interagency presence and with limited means to 

coordinate with the interagency, military battlefield commanders were often in the lead to plan and 

execute stability operations within their area of operations. These nonmilitary tasks inherently became 

military tasks—and despite a can-do attitude, many of these efforts failed due to a lack of expertise. But 

despite recognition from the military that they were often ill equipped for this type of mission, the 

problem continued because of a civilian interagency apparatus that was simply ill prepared and ill

resourced to manage or coordinate with the military for these nation-building tasks for the scope and 

magnitude necessary.

Over the course of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, interagency integration improved as the 

USG surged civilian experts to advise battlefield commanders in governance and development activities. 

However, rather than institutionalize much of this interagency cooperation for future conflicts, much of 

it remains ad hoc in nature, created only for the conflicts at hand.

To be clear, the purpose of this report is not to reexamine the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan but 

rather to look toward the future and examine how to structure tactical formations better equipped to 

handle the types of complicated and complex environments that we anticipate. In part, the US Army 

recognizes that interagency integration is crucial to future success. The version of Army Doctrine 

Publication (ADP) 3-0, Unified Land Operations, published in 2011 (after nearly a decade of fighting in Iraq 

and Afghanistan) described the critical nature of interagency cooperation:

Army forces operate as part of a larger national effort characterized as unified action. Army 

leaders must integrate their actions and operations within this larger framework, collaborating 

with entities outside their direct control. All echelons are required to incorporate such 

integration. . . . Effective unified action requires Army leaders who can understand, influence, 

and cooperate with unified action partners. The Army depends on its joint partners for 

capabilities that do not reside within the Army, and it cannot operate effectively without their 
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support. Likewise, government agencies outside the Department of Defense possess knowledge, 

skills, and capabilities necessary for success. The active cooperation of partners often allows 

Army leaders to capitalize on organizational strengths while offsetting weaknesses. Only by 

creating a shared understanding and purpose through collaboration with all elements of the 

friendly force—a key element of mission command—can Army leaders integrate their actions 

within unified action and synchronize their own operations.2

Inherent in this statement is a doctrinal recognition that Army operations are part of a broader 

national effort—“unified action”—that requires the expertise of interagency partners. Without the 

collaboration, integration, and synchronization with these partners at all echelons, the Army cannot 

operate effectively. 

This discussion highlights three fundamental observations:

1. There exists a tremendous capability gap in US military formations to execute stability tasks, 

particularly ones focused on governance and development.

2. USG civilian agencies (including those at the state and local level) may have valuable expertise 

and capacity that could be leveraged in future stability operations to enhance the military’s 

understanding of the operational environment, as well as accomplish stability tasks and 

objectives.

3. The future of military operations will still have a large component of stability operations requiring 

local and regional knowledge, cultural understanding, and technical and specialized expertise.

Today, the status of DoD and interagency integration, particularly with the Department of State 

(DoS) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), faces additional challenges. Agencies 

like DoS currently face major budgetary cuts of up to 30 percent, which will reduce their capacity to 

conduct expeditionary diplomacy in the future.3 Concern over these proposed budgetary cuts wasso large 

that in February 2017 more than 120 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals sent a letter to 

the House and Senate leadership in order to advocate for protecting the DoS budget. They wrote, “The 

State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps and other development 

agencies are critical to preventing conflict and reducing the need to put our men and women in uniform 

in harm’s way. . . . The military will lead the fight against terrorism on the battlefield, but it needs strong 

 2 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Unified Land Operations, 3.

3 Krieg and Mullery, “Trump’s Budget by the Numbers.”
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civilian partners in the battle against the drivers of extremism—lack of opportunity, insecurity, injustice, 

and hopelessness.”4

A consequence of these budgetary cuts will be further challenges to the integration of interagency 

partners like DoS into tactical DoD operations. Thirty-percent reductions in the DoS budget will require 

DoS to cut many nonessential personnel to meet existing core requirements, like manning embassies 

worldwide, further limiting the possibility of expanding the expeditionary capability useful for 

partnerships with DoD. With the prospect of these cuts on the horizon, it has become more imperative 

for DoD to think through the challenges that interagency integration poses at the tactical level and 

whether reforms may provide an effective solution despite decreasing resources.

Research Questions and Methodology

In order to contribute to this discussion, thisreport will examine two recent DoD-interagency case studies: 

the US government response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic and the use of US Army forces to 

support security cooperation activities in Africa from 2013 to 2015. The 2014 Ebola response and the role 

of Army forces in Africa under the regionally aligned forces (RAF) strategy provide useful lessons primarily 

because they represent “most likely” cases of what Army interagency integration may look like in future 

operations. RAF in the near term is how the Army intends to support combatant commands for security 

cooperation activities. Likewise, the Ebola mission represents a significant stability mission, which 

required tremendous civilian interagency expertise, yet was led by a military headquarters. In each case,

this report will examine whether interagency integration was essential to tactical-mission success and, if 

it was, will identify what characteristics were required for integration.

These case studies will then be examined within a discussion of whether the Army should organize 

and train tactical formations (brigade combat team and below) to incorporate interagency partners into

their training and operations. There are several reasons the focus of this report examines the brigade 

combat team (BCT) level of operations. If BCTs continue to deploy independently, especially under the 

Army’s RAF construct, then it is worthwhile to examine BCTs’ suitability for interagency integration, as 

well as the potential impact on BCTs. Moreover, current Army force structure designs modularity at the 

BCT level, which from an organizational approach allows flexibility in adding potential interagency 

components to a BCT’s force structure. From a training perspective, deployment training is primarily 

 4 Traynham, “Over 120 Retired Generals, Admirals on State and USAID Budget.”
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conducted at the BCT level through combat training center certifications. Finally, the BCT (compared with 

smaller units) is the first echelon that is built to have a staff structure that could potentially incorporate 

interagency partners.

A limitation of this analysis is that it focuses on interagency rather than the full spectrum of joint, 

interagency, interorganizational, and multinational (JIIM) cooperation. From US military doctrine, unified 

action involves partners from the entire JIIM spectrum; however, each element of JIIM requires a unique

analysis of the best way to integrate. Joint cooperation has largely been resourced within DoD since the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Interagency, the focus of this report, may be a similarly manageable task 

because all stakeholders are within the organization of the USG. Interorganizational and multinational 

integration and coordination, however, especially at a tactical level, require a host of different solutions 

from a policy perspective that are outside the scope of this report.

DoD analyses often use the DOTMLPF-P framework—Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, 

Leadership/Education, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy—in order to find solutions that fill identified 

capability gaps. In the case of this analysis, the author primarily examines doctrine, organization, training, 

and policy. It is assessed that these factors would have the greatest immediate impact for increased 

interagency coordination and cooperation in operations at the tactical level (BCT and below).

Education and personnel policies are an extremely important facet of this problem—recruiting 

the right people to work in an interagency environment and educating them to be able to operate and 

think in a whole-of-government environment is vital—but not covered in this report. The education and 

personnel solutions to the Army’s interagency integration capability gap are large enough in scope to 

warrant its own study outside the context of this project. In addition, reforms in this arena would take 

substantial time to implement and realize improvements.

Policy solutions are also not addressed in this analysis. Such solutions are complicated, potentially 

requiring executive and congressional reform. While it is worthwhile to examine a potential “GoldwaterNichols Part II” that legislatively enables interagency cooperation, as Goldwater-Nichols incorporated 

“jointness,” the topic is also large enough to warrant its own, separate treatment. However, in this 

report’s supporting case studies and overarching conclusion, the author will briefly address where tactical 

integration of interagency may nest within the greater Goldwater-Nichols Part II policy debate and the

potential for future reforms.

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A Discussion on Bureaucracy

The quest for coordination is in many respects the twentieth-century equivalent of the medieval 

search for the philosopher’s stone. If only we can find the right formula for coordination, we can 

reconcile the irreconcilable, harmonize competing and wholly divergent interests, overcome 

irrationalities in our government structures, and make hard policy choices to which no one will 

dissent. 

—Seidman, Politics, Position, and Power

Before exploring the case studies, this report must address several important aspects of interagency 

integration by examining some of the seminal works on bureaucracies to establish a baseline to 

understand challenges within the field. This review will also address some existing ideas on characteristics 

of interagency integration as well as competing ideas that other authors have proposed to address 

insufficient expertise in the military for stability operations. Additionally, within Appendix A will be a 

discussion of current US military doctrine on interagency cooperation, and Appendix B will describe how 

DoS specifically currently manages interagency personnel in support of military stability operations. 

The challenges of interagency integration are not new; there is a large body of research 

addressing how bureaucracies can better integrate. For example, Jon Rosenwasser and Michael Warner 

propose one framework to consider the interagency system comprising two dimensions: dynamics and 

levels. The dynamics they propose are the functions of the underlying structures, the nature of the 

threat environment, a state’s geostrategic position, constitutional frameworks, leadership proclivities,

technology, and prevailing public management paradigms.5 The levels at which Rosenwasser and 

Warner examine the interagency are the strategic, the operational, and the field.6 Their framework—

dynamics and levels—helps us consider that context truly matters. To their point, the challenges of 

integration can be very different, not just at each level but also considering each unique environment 

where integration is needed. The challenges of integrating interagency in the war zones of Iraq or 

Afghanistan under the Bush administration are very different than integration to address the public 

health crisis in Africa in 2014.

Another interagency framework to consider was described by Harvard’s James Q. Wilson, author 

of Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. In his work, Wilson argues that 

 5 Rosenwasser and Warner, “History of the Interagency Process for Foreign Relations in the United States,” 12.

6 Ibid.
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government inefficiency is not due to unqualified bureaucrats or red tape but rather inherent systemic 

issues. Wilson uses a variety of lenses—like organization, beliefs, culture, interests, and autonomy—to

assist in analysis of interagency behavior. 

As Wilson indicates, organization matters: “the key difference between more and less successful 

bureaucracies has less to do with finances, client populations, or legal arrangements than with 

organizational systems.”7 The importance of organization is codified in whether or not these systems are 

defined and institutionalized: “If Congress wants an agency to tend to the needs of a group, it usually 

makes that preference clear. If it seems not to care, or some parts of Congress want an interest helped 

and others do not, the agency is likely to be given a lot of discretion that will then be used in a (usually 

vain) effort to stay out of trouble.”8 If a bureaucratic task is important, then we should see the 

organization and systems clearly defined. If they are not clearly defined, then the ambiguity may lead to 

future inefficiency, ineffectiveness, or irrelevance.

Wilson also explains that organizational beliefs are critical to understand, especially when tasks 

are ill defined: “Experience, professionalism, and ideology are likely to have their greatest influence 

when laws, rules, and circumstances do not precisely define operator tasks.”9 In a similar vein, 

organizational culture also influences bureaucratic and interagency performance: “Even short of 

occasions for major organizational change, the perceptions supplied an organizational culture 

sometimes can lean an official to behave not as the situation requires but as the culture expects.”10 In 

complex and ambiguous environments with ill-defined mission tasks, both organizational beliefs and 

cultures can dramatically affect performance. This fact is further complicated when multiple agencies 

with differing beliefs and cultures are involved.

Wilson also highlights bureaucratic interests in bureaucratic performance: “When bureaucrats 

are free to choose a course of action their choices will reflect the full array of incentives operating on 

them: some will reflect the need to manage a workload; others will reflect the expectations of 

workplace peers and professional colleagues elsewhere; still others may reflect their own convictions.”11

 7 Wilson, Bureaucracy, 23.

8 Ibid., 88.

9 Ibid., 70.

10 Ibid., 110.

11 Ibid., 88.
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While we may expect an attitude of mission first, human nature very much affects bureaucratic nature; 

interests of both the individual and the organization may affect organizational effectiveness.

Finally, Wilson uses the lens of autonomy in examining bureaucratic performance: “The chief 

result of the concern for turf and autonomy is that it is extraordinarily difficult to coordinate the work of 

different agencies.”12 Specifically recognizing interagency coordination, “Government agencies . . . view 

any interagency agreement as a threat to their autonomy.”13 The problem of autonomy is especially 

prevalent in the realm of foreign policy. Unlike environmental policy under the Environmental 

Protection Agency, there are many masters of the foreign policy portfolio. As Wilson highlights, “Turf 

problems are large, and largely insoluble, when the government has within it dozens of agencies that 

make foreign policy, scores that make or affect economic policy, and countless ones that regulate 

business activity and enforce criminal laws.”14 The result is inherent and systemic bureaucratic 

infighting, rather than incentivized cooperation: “Autonomy is valued at least as much as resources, 

because autonomy determines the degree to which it is costly to acquire and use resources.”15 While 

this is especially true at the strategic and operational level, the repercussions of these turf wars are 

always felt at the lowest levels of agencies’ respective organizations.

If we consider, however, that these challenges vary depending on what level we are analyzing, 

then the problem becomes increasingly complex. Executives at the strategic-political level may be more 

concerned about autonomy (turf) and interests, while managers and operators at the tactical level may 

be more influenced by culture in the organization.

Wilson’s seminal work ultimately provides this analysis with insight into how bureaucratic 

organizations operate. Specifically, we need to understand how organizational structure, beliefs and 

culture, interests, and desire for autonomy will affect interagency integration into Army units. These 

concepts provide us a common lexicon to better understand the dynamics at play, as we look at case 

studies for analysis.

 12 Ibid., 192.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., 195.

15 Ibid.
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Necessary Characteristics of Interagency Cooperation

The body of literature is unclear as to the necessary characteristics of interagency cooperation at the 

tactical level. However, one source for insight is a draft document that has been circulated among the 

diplomacy, defense, and development communities. The Diplomacy, Development, and Defense Planning 

Group was chartered to develop products and processes to improve collaboration in planning among DoS, 

USAID, and DoD.16 The Diplomacy, Development, Defense Planning Guide is a reference tool to help 

identify opportunities for coordination among the three organizations and helps articulate reforms and 

institutions that are being considered outside of joint doctrine. While the majority of the document is 

focused on the strategic and operational levels of operations for diplomacy, development, and defense

interagency-planning integration, there are still certain concepts and principles that are useful to consider 

for tactical interagency cooperation and integration. Accordingly, integrated interagency planning is 

intended to create unity of purpose and effort and is based on three key concepts:

1. Unity of effort, based on four principles:

a. A common understanding of the situation,

b. A common vision or goals for the mission,

c. Coordination of efforts to ensure continued coherency, and

d. Common measures of progress and ability to change course if necessary;

2. Integrated interagency decision making; and

3. Engaging with the host nation and international partners.17

The Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations applies these principles specifically to 

deconflict transformation planning with interagency partners in support of integrated USG efforts or 

integrated approaches, normally at the request of a chief of mission or State Department bureau.18 While 

these concepts and principles are applied at the chief-of-mission level, they provide another framework 

of characteristics, of what successful tactical interagency cooperation looks like.

 16 USAID, DoD, and DoS, Diplomacy, Development, Defense Planning Guide, 4.

17 Ibid., 38.

18 Ibid.
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Competing Ideas Addressing Insufficient Stability Expertise

This research would be remiss if it did not highlight some alternative proposed solutions to the lack of 

stability and reconstruction operations expertise in tactical military formations. In Exporting Security: 

International Engagement Security Cooperation and the Changing Face of the Military, Naval War College 

professor Derek Reveron succinctly articulates that security cooperation and stability operations are a 

new norm and reality for postmodern conflicts and US military operations. Recognizing previous failures 

of the US military to sufficiently train, organize, and resource these new mission sets, like in Iraq, Reveron 

discusses how to transform the military itself, to better address security cooperation and stability 

operations. For example, DoD and Congress have examined a variety of policy proposals in order to 

address this expertise gap in military formations. Since 9/11, the US military has dramatically increased 

the amount of culture and language training that soldiers receive.19

As discussed previously, interagency integration is another solution to addressing expertise gaps;

but as Reveron highlights in his work, DoD is attempting to reform at a pace much faster than many 

interagency partners like DoS can catch up to. The result is various proposals where others have looked 

at simply building organic capacity within DoD, to independently conduct stability and reconstruction 

operations without major interagency assistance. For example, Andrew Krepinevich proposed creating 

forward liaison and assistance groups composed of forty-five brigades (approximately two hundred 

thousand personnel); military assistance group headquarters of three hundred to three thousand 

personnel; security training and equipping groups of two thousand to three thousand personnel; and civil 

operations, reconstruction, and development support groups of four thousand to five thousand troops.20

On a similar model, the Congressional Research Service listed an option to create five divisions specifically 

tasked with and organized around stability and reconstruction operations.21 John Nagl—a retired 

lieutenant colonel, counterinsurgency expert, and former president of the Center for a New American 

Security—proposed a permanent twenty thousand–member advisory corps.22

 19 Reveron, Exporting Security, 154.

20 Ibid., 159.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.
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While these proposals may seem unrealistic in today’s resource-constrained environment, the 

Army is currently looking at smaller-scale versions of them. In February 2018 the US Army formally 

activated the first of six security force assistance brigades (SFABs) whose core mission will be to conduct 

security cooperation activities for combatant commands.23 These units will be smaller than regular BCTs, 

and they will be primarily manned by officers and senior noncommissioned officers trained specifically for 

advise-and-assist missions.

Building independent capacity within DoD is certainly a solution to the military’s stability 

operations capability gap. However, the problems with these proposals include the cost, the difficulty in 

building expertise in young officers and noncommissioned officers that is built over a lengthy career in 

the interagency, the longevity and stability of these soldiers in these units, the time required for these 

units to be available, and the loss of conventional combat operations expertise of these new units. For 

these reasons, the ideas presented within this report seek a more realistic solution, to incorporate already 

existing interagency expertise into tactical military formations.

Analytical Model

In order to assess whether interagency integration was essential to tactical-mission success, each case 

study conducts a qualitative analysis of three variables:

1. Internal interagency assessments,

2. Third-party assessments, and

3. Stability-operations outputs at the tactical level, or measures of effectiveness (e.g., villages 

secured, security cooperation objectives completed, new Ebola patients).

A subjective qualitative assessment will be made on each case study and be presented at the conclusion 

of each analysis (see Table 1).

 23 US Army, “1st SFAB hosts activation ceremony; Heraldry announced.”
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Table 1: Program—Primary Research Question Analysis (Source: created by author)

Case study Interagency 

integration present? Failure or success?

Results linked to 

interagency 

integration?

RAF No Major challenges 

present

Yes

Ebola Yes Success Yes

In order to answer the secondary research question (i.e., in cases where interagency integration 

was essential for tactical-mission success, what were its primary characteristics?), a cross-sectional 

analysis (Table 2) will be utilized to engender conclusions on how interagency integration was or was not 

applied in each case study across doctrine, organization, training, and policy. These will be used to 

determine characteristics for better interagency integration in future recommendations.

Table 2: Program—Analytical Lens

Program Doctrine Organization Training Policy Result

RAF

Ebola

The resulting analysis from these historical cases will subsequently aid in answering whether 

interagency cooperation should be institutionalized at a more integrated and effective rate in tacticallevel stability operations. Additionally, if so, how should we amend our doctrine, organization, training, 

and policy in order to facilitate this change?

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Case Studies

Case Study 1: Africa Command Regionally Aligned Forces

In 2013 US AFRICOM became the first combatant command to be allocated an Army regionally aligned 

BCT. According to the Army,

Regionally Aligned Forces (RAF) is the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army’s vision 

for providing combatant commanders with versatile, responsive, and consistently available Army 

forces. Regionally Aligned Forces will meet combatant commanders’ requirements for units and 

capabilities to support operational missions, bilateral and multilateral military exercises, and 

theater security cooperation activities.24

The RAF entailed sending small teams, often platoon- or squad-size elements, across the entire 

African continent in a variety of multilateral, nonkinetic, security cooperation activities.

AFRICOM and its subordinate command, US Army Africa (USARAF), partner with nations 

throughout the African continent through a variety of joint security cooperation efforts. Security 

cooperation covers a broad set of activities that promote US interests, build partner nations’ capabilities 

for self-defense and coalition operations, and provides US forces with peacetime and contingency access 

to host nations.25 Some examples of security cooperation activities include sending military liaison teams, 

conducting seminars and conferences, and training and equipping partner nations’ security forces.26

In order to prioritize security cooperation activities throughout the continent, AFRICOM develops 

a campaign plan, which is a joint, multiyear plan that reflects a strategy to achieve the commander’s 

desired end states for the region. The majority of Army security cooperation activities are planned, in line 

with the campaign, by AFRICOM HQ in Stuttgart, Germany, and USARAF in Vicenza, Italy.27 Planning for 

security cooperation involves multiple stakeholders, including each of the service component commands, 

AFRICOM’s special-operations component, the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, program 

 24 US Army, “Regionally Aligned Forces.”

25 US Government Accountability Office, Regionally Aligned Forces, 4.

26 Ibid., 4.

27 Ibid., 8.
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managers responsible for identifying resources to support security cooperation activities, and the Offices 

of Security Cooperation at US embassies in Africa.28

Both AFRICOM and USARAF generate security cooperation activities through a variety of formal 

and informal mechanisms. AFRICOM leads interagency conferences, which brings together planners from 

a variety of stakeholders, to discuss theater- and country-level objectives, resources, and supporting 

activities.29 AFRICOM also hosts country-level meetings in order to further develop country plans, 

especially those countries with a large number of engagements.30 Unfortunately, due to the sheer number 

of countries in AFRICOM’s area of responsibility, it is logistically difficult to hold these individual country 

meetings annually, but it is the responsibility for each embassy to review their country plan to ensure that 

DoD objectives and activities are aligned with and in support of DoS objectives and plans.31 Ultimately, 

the Office of Security Cooperation aligned with each individual embassy (approximately thirty-eight 

nations) generates many of the initial concepts for security cooperation activities that are subsequently 

tasked by USARAF to tactical units.32

In 2013 AFRICOM became the first geographic combatant command to receive an Army RAF—

specifically, a BCT to primarily support theater security cooperation.33 Prior to the RAF concept, AFRICOM 

and its subordinate command, USARAF, would allocate units to support approved security cooperation 

activities through DoD’s standard processes for requesting forces. This process required USARAF to 

separately request forces for each individual activity, a lengthy bureaucratic process that was slow and 

unpredictable, because each request would compete with requests from other geographic combatant 

commands and other strategic priorities.34 The RAF concept, conversely, sought to allocate an entire BCT 

to AFRICOM untied to individual specific security cooperation activities. The RAF construct allowed 

AFRICOM to more efficiently and predictably access Army brigade capabilities for the duration of an RAF 

 28 Ibid., 13.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 14.

31 Ibid., 14.

32 Ibid., 6, 14.

33 Ibid., 1.

34 Ibid., 6–7.
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deployment to support multiple (and last-minute-emerging) security cooperation activities without 

having to submit new requests.35 At its most fundamental level, RAF is a troop-delivery platform designed 

to provide habitually aligned forces quickly to combatant commanders.36 Hopefully, over time regional 

and cultural expertise will be built within these units through habitual relationships with their respective 

regions.

Between 2013 and 2015, four BCTs have been allocated to AFRICOM:

2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division from April 2013 to June 2014;

4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division from June 2014 to February 2015;

4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division from February 2015 to October 2015;

2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division from October 2015 through 2016.37

These units primarily conducted security cooperation activities in five categories: (1) security 

assistance; (2) combined exercises; (3) military contacts; (4) information sharing, intelligence cooperation;

and (5) humanitarian assistance.38 Figure 1 shows some examples of the different security cooperation 

activities that 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry; 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry; and 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division,

conducted during their RAF rotations.

Each of the allocated brigades also were tasked with security and crisis response missions under 

the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, which required each brigade to deploy a battalion task 

force to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti for the duration of its alignment.39 These battalion task forces 

conducted some security cooperation activities in support of the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of 

Africa and other peacekeeping support operations.40

 35 Ibid., 2.

36 Morse, “Regionally Aligned Forces,” 1.

37 US Government Accountability Office, Regionally Aligned Forces, 8.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., 9.

40 Ibid.
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Figure 1: Example AFRICOM RAF Security Cooperation Activities (Source: US Government Accountability Office, Regionally 

Aligned Forces, 55)

Regionally Aligned Forces Interagency Problems

Appendix A describes the state of current Army doctrine for interagency integration. In short, Army 

doctrine currently does not integrate interagency cooperation at the BCT level. Interagency coordination 

primarily occurs within civil-military operational centers (CMOCs) at the division, corps, or joint task force 

(JTF) HQ. In the specific case of the RAF BCT, there is no parent division or corps HQ that helps support 

day-to-day operations. The RAF BCT reports to USARAF, the army service component command, under 

AFRICOM, which attempts to coordinate interagency cooperation under their joint interagency 

coordination group (JIACG). The impact is an interagency apparatus designed for the operational and 
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strategic levels unaccustomed to managing and supporting the day-to-day operations of tactical units in 

an area of operations.

In 2015 the National Defense Authorization Act directed the US Government Accountability Office 

(GAO) to assess DoD’s efforts to plan for and employ these brigades to Africa.41 In August 2015 GAO 

released their findings, and it concluded there was much room for improvement, especially in interagency 

coordination. The report highlighted,

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) identifies and synchronizes security cooperation activities 

through various planning processes, but the brigades allocated to AFRICOM sometimes lack key 

information about these activities. The brigades are tasked to conduct many of these activities, 

but they sometimes lack timely and complete information about the activities, such as activity 

objectives, which can compromise their effectiveness. While personnel from USARAF and the 

Offices of Security Cooperation coordinate informally, they do not always have a shared 

understanding of the activity objectives or involve the brigades in planning. Furthermore, 

USARAF does not have a formal mechanism that includes both the Offices of Security 

Cooperation and the brigades to shape activities and address information gaps. As a result, the 

brigades’ ability to conduct activities may be challenged, and the resources invested may not 

have the anticipated effect.42

The communication issues that the report illustrates are a direct result of either ineffective or 

nonexistent mechanisms to coordinate between US embassies, defense attachés, offices of security 

cooperation at each country, USARAF, and ultimately the RAF BCT itself. For example, according to GAO, 

USARAF officials try to provide task orders to the BCT ninety days in advance of each activity in order to 

guide their preparation and training.43 Task orders identify each security activity’s key details, task, 

purpose, and desired end state.

44 The brigades reported that often the task orders were provided late and 

sometimes not at all—one brigade reported receiving their task order from a third-party channel, five 

days after arriving in country.45

The result of these communication problems and lack of synchronization are RAF soldiers who are 

unprepared or untrained to meet the activity objectives, wasted USG resources, or, worse, DoD and DoS 

 41 Ibid., 1.

42 Ibid., 1.

43 Ibid., 17.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.
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not achieving their regional objectives and end states. For example, one RAF unit was tasked by USARAF 

to send mechanics to teach a mechanic course; however, USARAF did not communicate what type of 

equipment they would train on. The US soldiers arrived in country and ultimately canceled training 

because they were unfamiliar with the equipment the host-nation country expected them to be educated 

on.46

In another example, incomplete critical information about host-nation security force’s capabilities 

affected mission success. During their initial planning, the RAF expected that the host-nation forces 

already had a basic competency and familiarization with their artillery systems. Subsequently, the RAF 

brigade planned and prepared for a training course in advanced artillery techniques. Upon arrival, 

however, they assessed that basic-level instruction for the host-nation soldiers was needed, which 

completely undermined all the planned exercises with the host-nation forces.47

Untimely or incomplete information is certainly not the sole responsibility of the USARAF staff, 

who are planning multiple activities for a continent at once. The information the RAF units need is often 

held within dozens of offices of security cooperation and embassies across the continent. However, while 

offices of security cooperation and USARAF do informally contact one other, they do not consistently and 

formally meet to discuss upcoming activities—furthermore, the brigades are rarely involved in these 

informal conversations.48

The brigades themselves also bear some responsibility, but often they are unaware that they have 

incomplete information before deploying. Likewise, they are ill equipped or restricted from contacting 

their applicable Office of Security Cooperation, embassy, or even USARAF, because they do not have 

approval for direct liaison.49 Figure 2 illustrates the fragmented coordination between the RAF BCT, 

USARAF, and the offices of security cooperation.

 46 Ibid., 18.

47 Ibid., 19.

48 Ibid., 21.

49 Ibid., 18.
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Figure 2: AFRICOM’s Fragmented Coordination (Source: US Government Accountability Office, Regionally Aligned Forces, 22)

Interagency confusion and inefficiencies have even escalated to cases where soldiers in the 

brigades experienced challenges and delays in obtaining official passports. Despite USARAF and RAF BCTs 

supporting DoS coordinated and approved security cooperation activities, DoS passport procedures have 

denied many soldiers from deploying.50 The concept of RAF was always to provide a flexible pool of 

soldiers for the combatant command to draw from, in order to support sometimes late notice security 

cooperation activities. As a result, brigades often put in blanket official passport requests for anyone with 

the potential to deploy in support of RAF activities, with the understanding that some soldiers may not 

use these official passports, depending on the combatant command needs. This practice runs counter to 

DoS procedures, and subsequently DoS has more-stringent vetting procedures for RAF passport requests. 

Due to these coordination problems, AFRICOM RAF brigades have reported that several of their activities 

were canceled or delayed because some personnel could not obtain an official passport or visa; similarly, 

 50 Ibid., 38.
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in some instances, the soldier best suited for an activity did not deploy, forcing personnel that only met 

the basic skill and capability requirements to deploy in their stead because they had a passport.51

Measuring the Effectiveness of Regionally Aligned Forces

There are many points of failure for the RAF and USARAF’s communication problems. Certainly USARAF 

could have devoted more time to clearly understanding each country’s security cooperation activity 

objectives and training plans. This information could have also been communicated to the RAF brigade. 

Likewise, the individual embassies and security cooperation offices could have more clearly ensured that

their security cooperation activities were more fully articulated to USARAF. The RAF BCT itself could 

submit requests for information through USARAF, but that would be conditioned on the RAF BCT knowing 

in the first place that they lack complete or accurate information.

Acknowledging the geographic dispersion of these units and the many other planning and 

mission requirements that the USARAF staff is responsible for, it is understandable that a complete and 

detailed awareness of each security cooperation activity was not communicated to the RAF planners. 

The results, however, are clear—wherever the responsibility for the ineffective coordination falls, a lack 

of interagency synchronization, cooperation, and potentially integration led to a less-than-optimal 

outcome for AFRICOM, DoD, and DoS’s security cooperation objectives within the region.

Using Wilson’s framework of analysis for the RAF case, we see that organizational structure and 

a desire for autonomy both played a role in undermining interagency coordination and mission success. 

Organizational structure and a lack of authority (caused by USARAF’s desire for autonomy) of the RAF 

BCT, which prevented any interagency liaison officers (LNOs) at the BCT level, resulted in the RAF BCT 

from directly coordinating with their embassy counterparts. Likewise, USARAF’s own organizational

structure of an overburdened staff (who logistically did not have time to regularly coordinate with each 

embassy), as well as relying on informal rather than formal mechanisms of coordination, resulted in 

insufficient coordination. All these challenges can similarly be analyzed through the DOTMLPF-P lens of 

doctrine, organization, training, and policy (see Table 3).

The 2015 GAO report recommends that AFRICOM develop formal mechanisms—such as regularly 

scheduled, country-specific meetings between all parties involved—to review and discuss upcoming 

security cooperation activities; GAO proposes increasing the number of LNOs embedded at USARAF in 

 51 Ibid.
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order to achieve this.52 However, another potential recommendation could be allowing and empowering 

the RAF BCT itself to synchronize and coordinate across the interagency. What would the result be if each 

RAF BCT (currently aligned with each geographic command) had a DoS embed in its staff or the authorities 

and mechanisms to reach out to each embassy or security cooperation itself to establish a direct line of 

communication? A DoS embed or authority for direct liaison would serve several functions: reduce 

communication and staff channels, improve timeliness of information flows, allow the RAF to better tailor 

their training and operations to the unique need of each security cooperation activity. Likewise, a DoSspecific embed could assist the RAF commander in tailoring the regional and cultural training to the unique 

area of operations that the RAF is deploying to. Finally, a DoS embed could also better validate and 

expedite RAF passport requests through DoS.

Summary Analysis of Regionally Aligned Forces Case Study

Table 3: DOTMLPF-P Analysis of RAF Interagency Case Study (Source: created by author)

Program—

analytical lens Doctrine Organization Training Policy Result

RAF

(-) Army 

doctrine did not 

support 

interagency 

coordination for 

unit

(-) No 

formalized 

mechanisms 

were in place 

for 

coordinationsynchronization 

to occur at BCT 

level with 

interagency 

partners.

(-) Even at levels 

where 

interagency 

could occur, 

lack of formal 

mechanisms like 

synchronization 

conferences 

decreased 

effectiveness of 

RAF program.

(+) 

Familiarization 

of interagency 

partners was 

conducted, 

which added 

value once in 

country.

(-) Lack of 

interagency 

coordination led 

to inefficient 

training and 

training 

management 

for security 

cooperation 

tasks.

(-) The BCT was 

not empowered 

to directly 

liaison with the 

embassy and 

interagency 

partners.

(-) Security 

cooperation 

goals were not 

efficiently met 

in many cases 

or were 

canceled in 

several 

circumstances 

due to lack of 

interagency 

coordination.

 52 Ibid., 27.
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Case Study 2: US Response to Ebola in West Africa

International Community Rallies for Action

On March 13, 2014, the Guinean Ministry of Health issued an alert concerning an unidentified disease 

with symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, later to be confirmed as Ebola.53 On March 23, the World Health 

Organization (WHO) announced the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, and days later Sierra Leone and Liberia also 

confirmed possible cases of the disease.54 Previously, no cases of Ebola had ever been recorded in West 

Africa; all three governments had limited to no experience in identifying or containing the disease.55

Communities were quarantined, schools were shut down, and military forces were deployed to contain 

the spread of the virus. Table 4 shows the cumulative rapid spread of the Ebola disease in all three 

countries during this time period. Figure 3 shows these cases geographically around the time of US

intervention.

Table 4: Cumulative Reported Ebola Cases: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (Source: Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention, “2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa”)

 53 USAID et al., “International Ebola Response and Preparedness,” 1.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

Mar-14

Apr-14

May-14

Jun-14

Jul-14

Aug-14

Sep-14

Oct-14

Nov-14

Dec-14

Jan-15

Feb-15

Mar-15

Apr-15

May-15

Jun-15

Jul-15

Aug-15

Sep-15

Oct-15

Nov-15

Dec-15

Jan-16

Feb-16

Total Cases, Guinea Total Cases, Liberia Total Cases, Sierra Leone
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Figure 3: Ebola Cumulative Incidence—West Africa, September 20, 2014 (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 

“2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa”)

On August 8, 2014, WHO had declared the Ebola epidemic in West Africa a public health 

emergency of international concern.56 By September 18, 2014, the UN Security Council called for 

assistance and declared the Ebola outbreak a “threat to international security and peace.”57 The USG 

declared that it would take the lead role in Liberia; the United Kingdom, in Sierra Leone; and France, in 

Guinea.58

The USG applied a whole-of-government approach to the Liberian Ebola response. USAID was 

designated as the lead federal agency to manage and coordinate the US effort; the Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention led the medical and public health component; DoS had responsibility for 

advancing related diplomatic efforts; and DoD, under Operation United Assistance, began direct support 

 56 European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, “Ebola Outbreak in West Africa (2013-2016).”

57 USAID et al., “International Ebola Response and Preparedness,” 36–37.

58 Ibid., 37.
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to civilian-led response efforts.59 These federal agencies sought to advance four primary goals outlined in 

the US global Ebola strategy:

1. Controlling the outbreak;

2. Mitigating second-order impacts;

3. Establishing coherent leadership and operations; and

4. Advancing global-health security.60

Ebola: A Model for Interagency

As soon as President Barack Obama authorized a US response, it was a whole-of-government operation. 

The Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance is the office within USAID responsible for providing 

emergency, nonfood humanitarian assistance in response to international crises and disasters. They are 

responsible for international disaster risk reduction, resilience, and coordination efforts and also for 

devising, coordinating, and implementing strategies for responding to disasters.61 When the size or scope 

of the disaster warrants it, the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance has the capability to deploy a 

disaster assistance response team (DART) globally.62 The twenty-eight-person DART consisted of 

humanitarian experts and technical advisors—from USAID, Centers for Disease Control, DoD, the US

Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Forest Service—who were to assess the situation 

firsthand, identify the most urgent needs, and coordinate the USG response.63 The DART was the first US

entity on the ground in Liberia, coordinating the response prior to the arrival of follow-on forces and 

agencies.

Operations and coordination centers were key to coordinating the interagency, 

interorganizational, and intergovernmental response. The Centers for Disease Control and USAID utilized 

a model called the Incident Command System, which is designed to provide effective and efficient incident 

management by integrating facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures, and communications command 

 59 Ibid., 3.

60 Ibid., 70–71.

61 Ibid., 73.

62 Ibid.

63 White House, “Fact Sheet.”
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efforts within a common organizational structure.64 Interim national Ebola operations centers were 

initially set up in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Mali to establish national emergency management 

programs for the Ebola response.65 The DART, USAID, and Centers for Disease Control served a vital role 

in facilitating the creation of these coordination centers. Eventually, the government of Liberia designated 

the Liberian Ministry of Health (MoH) to run and coordinate a national center called the National Ebola 

Coordination Center (NECC). Other coordination centers would also take root to manage more specific 

efforts, such as the UN mission.

The NECC would serve a critical function of coordinating the Ebola response from the wideranging agencies, organizations, and governments responding to the crisis in Liberia. As Lieutenant 

Colonel Ross Lightsey, the Operation United Assistance J-9, or civil-military operations section, indicated 

in a recent article, “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the center of gravity where collective and collaborative 

decisions were made was within the NECC. . . . It cannot be stressed enough that the NECC was the most 

central location and source of information and was where major cooperation and decision making 

occurred. If it had not been developed and implemented by the Liberian Ministry of Health (MoH), the 

opportunity for organizational collaboration would have been hard pressed for success.”66

Measuring the Effectiveness of Interagency Integration during the Ebola Crisis

In the September 16, 2014, opening order, USARAF was designated as a joint forces command (JFC) HQ 

to oversee the military mission and the three thousand soldiers dedicated to the Ebola response. In direct 

support of USAID and its DART, the JFC was given the mission to construct seventeen Ebola treatment 

units.67 USARAF would conduct the initial planning and theater opening (facilitating the logistics of moving 

troops into the region), but the JFC role would eventually be turned over to the 101st Airborne Division, 

by October 25, 2014.68

Unfortunately, not everything went smoothly for the 101st Airborne Division as they assumed the 

JFC role. As Major General Gary Volesky, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, noted in a Center for 

 64 USAID et al., “International Ebola Response and Preparedness,” 39.

65 Ibid.

66 Lightsey, “Fighting Ebola.”

67 Center for Army Lessons Learned, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Operation United Assistance, iv, 7. 

68 Ibid., 5.
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Army Lessons Learned interview, “Few of the 101st Division staff members possessed experience in 

humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) missions. . . . Fortunately, the alert to prepare to deploy 

occurred before the Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) were conducted. The program was 

flexible and adapted academics to meet the division’s requirements by focusing on Unified Action Partners 

(UAPs) and HA/DR.”69 MCTP is a staff training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where brigade, 

division, and corps staffs are tested in their processes and systems in a simulated operational 

environment. Lightsey, the J-9, was able to develop a two-day interagency academics seminar in 

conjunction with MCTP to bring together USAID, the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance, Centers for 

Disease Control, DoS, UN, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, the US

Department of Health and Human Services, and the US National Institutes of Health.70 Had it not been for 

this MCTP training opportunity immediately prior to the 101st’s deployment, their staff would have gone 

into Liberia with a tremendous capability gap in understanding the nuances of the HA/DR operation 

among interagency partners. These gaps would have required more on-the-job learning rather than being 

ready to immediately execute their tasks once in country.

When the 101st Airborne Division arrived, the J-9 and the commander made a conscious decision 

to not establish a CMOC. It was the belief of the 101st Airborne, that the NECC served as a type of national 

level CMOC and if the 101st had established their own, it would have only added to coordination 

confusion.71 It was clear to the 101st Airborne, however, that the NECC had room for improvement:

“Although more than 120 multinational organizations worked within the NECC, the lack of managerial 

oversight and prioritization was apparent.”72 In order to better facilitate coordination, cooperation, and 

synchronization, the 101st J-2, intelligence section, embedded analysts to work with the international 

organizations and utilize their skills of pattern and trend analysis, to help the NECC and partner 

organizations better understand the situation and the spread of the Ebola virus. Similarly, the J-9 section 

emplaced several LNOs within the NECC and other coordination centers to better synchronize their 

operations and situational understanding. As a later after action report (AAR) indicated, “The synergy 

 69 Center for Army Lessons Learned, Operation United Assistance Setting the Theater, 5-6.

70 Lightsey, “Fighting Ebola.”

71 Center for Army Lessons Learned, Operation United Assistance Setting the Theater, 40–41.

72 Center for Army Lessons Learned, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Operation United Assistance, 23.
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created by the constant monitoring and sharing of information by the LNOs was essential to successful 

mission command in Liberia.”73

The need for interagency, interorganizational, and intergovernmental cooperation proved critical 

throughout the operation. As the logistics officers for the JFC quickly realized, in an immature theater (one 

where US forces have not been operating for an extended period), it is very difficult to quickly move in 

large amounts of personnel and equipment: “A majority of nations worldwide are very similar to Liberia 

in that these nations have limited infrastructure (airports, seaports, and road networks) and few

governmental assets (law enforcement, healthcare, informational/educational workforces) to cope with 

large scale HA/DR events. HA/DR events tend to overwhelm the infrastructures and systems necessary to 

combat those very events. Logistic support is central to HA/DR. Planning, anticipating, forecasting, 

coordinating, and integrating within ASCCs [Army service component command] must include the whole 

of the strategic community; the DLA, USTRANSCOM, DoS, U.S. Embassies, USAID, UN, international 

participants, non-governmental organizations, and others within the JOA [joint operations area] are 

essential to progress and success.”74

A similar realization of the critical importance of interagency cooperation was realized by the 

officers tasked to establish an Ebola training center in the capital of Monrovia. The military was required 

to build a training center capable of training up to five hundred health-care workers per week. Staffed by 

the USARAF G-3 Training Team, the team consisted of one US Army lieutenant colonel, one major, and 

one sergeant major. At a loss in where to start, they coordinated with the USARAF surgeon cell to better 

understand the requirement. The command surgeon began interacting with MoH, USAID, and WHO and 

discovered that there was an existing training center providing the training capability requested by DoD. 

The problem, however, was that the center did not have the resources to expand the training or export it 

to another location.75 The G-3 team had sufficient time to rewrite their plan to incorporate the WHO 

training facility and simply provide WHO with the needed resources to adapt their curriculum and 

additional staff to meet the requirements for a larger training center. In this case, coordinating with NGOs 

and civil authorities to develop a civic assistance plan proved critical to mission success. Without the 

 73 Ibid., 34.

74 Ibid., 18.

75 Ibid., 22.
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expertise of WHO and MoH, the G-3 Training Team most likely would have created a suboptimal, 

redundant, and less efficient solution.

What if the command surgeon, in this previous example, did not have the time or ability to 

informally network with USAID, MoH, and WHO? The whole intent of a functioning CMOC or similar 

coordination center is to rely less on informal networking and instead institutionalize systems that can 

help fill these critical coordination gaps with other nonmilitary partners. In the AAR, the G-3 Training Team 

recommended that, in the short term, the staff should request NGO LNO representation to participate in 

staff humanitarian assistance planning and that, in the long term, the USARAF staff should include NGO 

representation or a USAID LNO to aid in early stages of force projection operations.76 Embedded partners 

on staffs are the type of interagency integration reform that can dramatically improve mission 

effectiveness in the future.

Another problem the 101st Airborne Division faced in interagency cooperation was on what 

systems they were communicating on. The USARAF commander, Major General Darryl Williams, quickly 

grasped the reality that unity of effort among the many different partners on the ground could only 

happen if USARAF shared information on unclassified networks, rather than the classified networks their 

staff was accustomed to.77 The transition to unclassified networks became a severe challenge for a staff 

dependent on their classified army command and intelligence information systems. The 101st Airborne 

was simply unprepared, especially in the austere environment of Liberia, to establish an effective 

knowledge-management process to not only give network access to interagency and interorganizational 

partners but also share information across the network.78

A solution for the 101st Airborne Division was to take over AFRICOM’s All Partner Access Network, 

originally intended to provide information on exercises and HA/DR conferences.79 AFRICOM’s All Partner 

Access Network suddenly became a real-time collaboration tool to share information and increase 

situational awareness. If the AFRICOM All Partner Access Network solution had not existed, the 101st 

Airborne Division would have had to generate another knowledge-management and information solution 

quickly. The need to share information primarily across unclassified networks will continue to be a 

 76 Ibid., 23.

77 Ibid., 33.

78 Ibid., 38.

79 Center for Army Lessons Learned, Operation United Assistance Setting the Theater, 7.
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challenge for future HA/DR missions that are whole-of-government operations. Future JFCs, divisions, and 

even brigades will need to be trained on and have available the technology to quickly switch from 

classified military systems to an unclassified information environment conducive to greater interagency, 

interorganizational, and intergovernmental information sharing.

The final challenge for the 101st Airborne was that of organizational culture. According to the 

AARs, “the U.S. Army has developed a Warfighter mentality that did not serve USARAF personnel well in 

a permissive environment (i.e. sovereign nation). This caused friction and put into motion unnecessary 

assets, units, and capabilities.”80 The AAR is referring to an Army unaccustomed to being subordinate to 

civilian organizations, other governments, and other government agencies in an area of operations. These 

other organizations often do not have clearly defined decision-making processes, which can be 

challenging to military organizations that are accustomed to making decisions and acting quickly.81 Rather 

than having these differing organizational cultures as points of friction, the military should learn how to 

support civilian leadership, utilizing their planning and logistical strengths without taking over the 

process.82 These cultural friction points were a challenge for the 101st, accustomed to quickly solving 

problems, but eased with time through greater interagency exposure and coordination.

As we look at the Ebola case study, by most accounts a successful example of whole-ofgovernment interagency coordination, there are a few key questions that arise. Would the 101st Airborne 

Division have been as successful if the DART element and USAID had not helped the government of Liberia 

develop the NECC? The NECC was critical to the success, and USARAF and the 101st Airborne Division 

made an excellent decision to utilize it as its primary CMOC. But in the absence of the NECC, was the 101st 

Airborne Division prepared or equipped to run or facilitate its own CMOC that could serve as an adequate 

coordination center for the entire region or country? Based on the level of experience of the staff and the 

organizational culture of the 101st Airborne Division, it is likely that their CMOC would have been less 

effective. In future HA/DR mission sets, the host nation, international organizations, and interagency 

partners may not have the capabilities to develop such a robust coordination structure, especially in war

zones with limited access.

 80 Center for Army Lessons Learned, Operation United Assistance, 4.

81 Ibid., 7.

82 Ibid.
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From a doctrinal perspective, both USARAF and the 101st Airborne Division were empowered to 

host or integrate into a CMOC structure. The J-9 and J-2 both had adequate personnel to provide LNOs to 

make the system work. However, if a BCT is required (on a much smaller scale) to integrate with 

interagency partners, would they have the expertise or capacity to coordinate such an effort? Most likely,

a BCT would not have the capacity to integrate interagency at their provincial, rather than national, level.

Summary Analysis of Ebola Case Study

Table 5: DOTMLPF-P Analysis of Ebola Case Study (Source: created by author)

Program—

analytical lens Doctrine Organization Training Policy Result

Ebola

(+) Both JFCand divisionlevel doctrine 

support 

interagency 

coordination 

through a 

CMOC function.

(+) Sufficient 

personnel were 

present in the J9 and J-2 

sections to 

provide 

sufficient LNOs 

at coordination 

centers 

throughout the 

country.

(-) There existed 

a lack of 

technological 

solutions; lack 

of planning on 

how to conduct 

operations and 

planning 

primarily on 

unclassified 

networks; 

difficulty to 

provide other 

partners with 

network access.

(-) Staff lacked 

expertise in the 

HA/DR mission 

set and lacked 

interagency 

experience. 

MCTP helped to 

alleviate this 

problem, but if 

it had not been 

scheduled in 

advance, the 

division would 

have been at a 

disadvantage.

(+) From the 

onset the Ebola 

response was a 

whole-ofgovernment 

operation. DoD 

and the JFC 

were a 

supporting 

command to 

USAID. This led 

to better 

understanding 

of support 

relationships 

and 

strengthened 

interagency 

cooperation.

(+) While there 

were initial 

issues that were 

resolved, 

effective 

interagency 

cooperation 

was a critical 

factor in 

mission success, 

halting the 

spread of Ebola 

in Liberia.

Case Study Summaries

The RAF case study illustrated that particularly in the AFRICOM theater, US Army brigades had difficulty 

accomplishing their mission because of a lack of interagency integration. This observation leads us to 

believe that interagency integration very likely is essential to RAF mission success. Specifically, due to 
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interagency communication problems between DoD and DoS, RAF soldiers were often unprepared and

sometimes untrained or unable to deploy.

In the case of Ebola, while initial integration difficulties arose, interagency integration proved 

critical to the 101st Airborne’s success in halting the spread of Ebola in Liberia. The Ebola case study is of 

particular value because it provides a good example where interagency integration occurred outside of 

US Army doctrinal interagency institutions. The 101st Airborne Division made a conscious decision to 

forgo a CMOC and instead utilized the DARTs and Liberia’s NECC constructs.

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Conclusions and Recommendations

The primary research question of this report was: In past cases in which the United States has conducted 

stability operations, has interagency integration been essential to tactical mission success? In order to 

answer this question, two case studies were examined:

1. RAF in Africa from 2013 to 2015; and

2. the US response to the Ebola pandemic in West Africa in 2014.

Each case study utilized a qualitative analysis of three variables: internal interagency assessments, 

third-party academic assessments, and measures of operational effectiveness in order to ascertain 

whether interagency integration was essential for tactical mission success (or failure).

Additionally, a DOTMLPF-P framework focusing on doctrine, organization, training, and policy was 

used to identify characteristics essential for success (or failure).

Prior to beginning this research report, the initial hypothesis, that interagency integration was 

essential for tactical-mission success, was based on observations that tactical-level Army units (BCTs and 

below) were required to conduct complex stability operations without the necessary expertise that 

interagency partners could provide to military formations. While this remains true, through the analysis 

of these case studies, a more nuanced conclusion emerges.

The first observation is that there are real challenges to managing both conventional operations 

and stability operations. As currently structured, BCT staffs do not have adequate apparatuses to manage 

large interagency inputs. Similarly, as the Ebola case study shows, there is an inexperience even in division 

staffs to work with the interagency. This problem is only further amplified at the BCT level. Tactical staffs 

are often better equipped to focus separately either on warfighting tasks or on stability tasks. 

Instead of building a BCT staff to manage both, it may be better to augment a more robust CMOC 

structure to manage interagency coordination separately from BCT warfighting tasks. In future operations 

it may be better to rely on CMOC structures but integrate them solely with division or corps staffs, so that 

commanders can include interagency expertise aligned with larger operational objectives while still 

allowing BCTs to focus solely on tactical tasks.

The second observation is that integrated interagency organizations must not ignore the 

challenge of finding civilian agency capacity to fill positions. Despite USARAF or AFRICOM including 

interagency integration at their HQ, much of that interagency experience could not filter down to lower 

levels like in the RAF brigade because the interagency often lacks personnel to embed across tactical 
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formations. Similarly, there is a lack of opportunities for interagency embeds to train with military 

formations. The 101st Airborne Division was only able to host interagency training during their MCTP 

academics and lacked regular interagency touchpoints during other training despite their role as a 

deployable JTF HQ.

The third observation is that interagency integration can occur outside of DoD managing the 

process. An early idea during this research was how to reform DoD toward a more comprehensive 

approach of interagency integration like the joint reforms of the 1980s under Goldwater-Nichols. 

However, cases like the Ebola response show that DoD attempting to exercise command of interagency 

integration can also have the potential to make matters worse, through an overt militarization of the 

interagency dynamics.

As the Ebola case study highlights, if the 101st Airborne Division chose to build a CMOC, it would 

have only confused the already complicated interagency structure in Liberia. The 101st Airborne made an 

important and excellent decision to utilize the NECC, which the USAID DART helped to build prior to the 

arrival of the 101st Airborne and JFC. The interagency community, resourced under the DART, had the 

capacity and expertise to build institutionalized mechanisms for DoD to incorporate itself into. 

Commanders need to have an awareness of when to utilize these other mechanisms, rather than 

duplicating them on their own simply because DoD may be resourced to do so and doctrine may call for 

it.

Finally, interagency integration is not a panacea. Interagency integration is necessary but not 

sufficient for tactical-mission success in stability operations. An integrated interagency element must also 

have talent, capacity, and the organizational and reporting structures to nest and synchronize with 

operational and strategic objectives. Despite AFRICOM’s interagency integration, bureaucratic obstacles 

still limited the value interagency integration provided to the tactical force.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are based on an analysis of the case study DOTMLPF-P characteristics for 

successful integration. Specifically, recommendations will focus on the doctrine, organization, training, 

and policy variables.
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Doctrine: Update Military Doctrine on Interagency Tools

The JIACGs and CMOCs may be the primary interagency tools for DoD as a lead agency, but as the military 

response to the Ebola epidemic has shown, DoD needs to be adaptable to other interagency integration 

systems. Commanders need guidance on when to appropriately apply DoD interagency coordination tools 

like a CMOC, when to utilize existing civilian systems, or how to best apply their own J-9 and S-9 civil affairs 

assets to augment existing civilian assets. For RAF units and future large-scale stability responses like the 

Ebola response, it is more likely that DoD will utilize other means of interagency integration, like the DART 

and NECC coordination systems, UN coordination centers, or ad hoc groups. Current joint doctrine like JP 

3-08 and Army doctrine like Field Manual 3-07 do not reflect these other means of non-DoD-focused

interagency coordination, nor do they give guidance in the variables and principles that commanders 

should utilize in understanding how to choose which system is more appropriate or how to augment 

existing interagency coordination systems.

Organization: Reform the Civil-Military Operations Center

When BCTs, divisions, and corps are required to lead or facilitate interagency integration, the CMOC is not 

sufficiently equipped. As shown during the 101st Airborne Division’s experiences with the Ebola epidemic, 

they were not prepared to provide Internet access or knowledge-management tools for the range of 

interagency and NGO partners in the Ebola response. The DART and MoH’s NECC provided the necessary 

institutions; but in a more denied environment where DoD is the lead agency, the CMOC may need to 

provide the necessary unclassified infrastructure to run a full coordination center. An immature theater 

of operations does not have the network and technology architecture to which the military is accustomed 

and which they utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the CMOC is the primary interagency coordination tool, 

then it needs to be resourced with the technology packages to serve this function.

Commanders should train at combat training centers with the J-9s and S-9s augmented with civil 

affairs soldiers and utilize their CMOCs. If the first time a tactical commander uses a CMOC is while 

deployed, he or she will be unaccustomed to using their CMOC properly, comfortably coordinating with 

interagency through it, and utilizing interagency partners in the staff-planning processes. This is especially 

the case for BCT commanders, who do not regularly interact with CMOCs or S-9s in their home station 

organic task organization.

Additionally, CMOCs that are viewed more as “meeting places” for civilian partners will struggle 

to integrate interagency partners into larger campaign plans and operational planning systems. The J-9
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and S-9 and supporting staff officers should be empowered to integrate their civilian partners into other 

staff sections if necessary, to ensure unity of effort with other military and strategic efforts.

Training: Improve Interagency Training within the Military

As illustrated in the Ebola and RAF case studies, the Army has a deficiency in training leaders and soldiers 

to operate in an interagency environment despite currently offered JIIM training. Operating in an 

interagency environment should be a required training task for all deployable soldiers, especially those in 

RAF units, those involved in stability missions, or those in an HQ staff. Interagency partners like DoS, 

USAID, USDA, and the intelligence and law enforcement communities should be invited to participate in 

training (especially at the combat training centers) and should help craft training objectives and training 

scenarios. Ideally, those interagency partners supporting organizations like USARAF would benefit from 

participating in training with RAF BCTs to ensure proper face-to-face coordination prior to security 

cooperation activities.

Staffs and headquarters should also become more familiar with including interagency partners in 

their planning processes. The 101st Airborne Division was able to quickly change their MCTP objectives;

however if made to deploy prior to or after a conventional MCTP, they would have been at a serious 

disadvantage. Likewise, the 101st Airborne Division was unaccustomed to operating in a mostly 

unclassified environment, on programs designed to share information with interagency partners and 

NGOs (for example, Google Earth rather than the Command Post of the Future). RAF units, division HQ, 

and those conducting stability operations should train their staffs to perform their functions on tool sets 

designed for information sharing with non-DoD partners.

Military officials should train on being in a support role, rather than a lead role, to the interagency 

(similar to the Ebola case)—this will help address the military’s cultural tendency of trying to run or 

manage the interagency rather than support and contribute to the interagency.

Policy: Build Greater Capacity for Deployable Civilians in DoS and USAID

This recommendation requires authorities outside of DoD channels. As shown in the case studies, 

deployable civilian interagency capacity for contingency crises continues to be a problem in stability 

operations. If the United States conducted another large-scale integrated interagency endeavor, DoS and 

USAID could not support it within their current means. Stability operations will only continue to have a 

perception of militarization as long as the USG does not invest in building greater capacity within DoS and 
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USAID to deploy civilians for stability operations. It is in the interest of DoD to seek greater funding for 

deployable civilian capacity in DoS and USAID; otherwise, the USG will continue to rely heavily on DoD as 

the only organization capable of stability operations, with or without development expertise.

Recommendations for Future Research

This research was limited by its case studies; interagency integration certainly is not limited to the two

cases presented. The State Partnership Program, interagency cooperation within the counterterrorism 

community, provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Iraq, defense support to civil authorities, 

intelligence cooperation initiatives, all provide good lenses for other observations on characteristics 

needed in interagency integration and cooperation at the tactical level.

Additionally, the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act sought to reform DoD to better integrate jointness 

across the military. Many policy experts advocate for twenty-first-century reforms that legislate a similar 

restructuring of DoD to incorporate the interagency. Examining proposals for “Beyond GoldwaterNichols” reforms were outside the scope of this research; however, these cases provide an interesting 

analysis of principles to consider if larger Beyond Goldwater-Nichols types of reforms become a political 

reality.

Finally, this thesis did not examine the impacts of education of personnel in the DOTMLPF-P 

characteristics for more effective integration of interagency cooperation. Education at the many 

professional military education schools—such as officer basic courses, captains career course, 

intermediate-level education, and advanced noncommissioned officer courses—represents a large 

amount of time and interface with the force to influence greater interagency familiarization and 

coordination. Affecting the military education system to address interagency integration challenges is 

worthy of its own independent study to understand how and where education changes can best impact 

interagency integration.

Closing Thoughts

The discussion about bureaucracy began with a quote from Harold Seidman, an American political 

scientist famous for his classic work in government and public administration called Politics, Position, and 

Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization. In it he described the quest for government coordination 
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as the twentieth-century equivalent of the medieval search for the philosopher’s stone.83 His point was 

that the inherent nature of bureaucracies runs counter to effective coordination. There is a lot of truth to 

this observation, but it should not prevent us from seeking to improve the current environment, especially 

when integration of interagency and DoD is not just an exercise of public administration interest but rather 

a means to prevent the loss of lives overseas and accomplish vital American national interests and 

objectives.

The US military is coming out of more than a decade of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that 

reached unprecedented levels of interagency integration for modern operations. An entire generation of 

young military officers and their foreign service officer peers understand the need, but this expertise and 

desire for reform can quickly be lost as a new generation of soldiers and public servants, unaccustomed 

to working in an integrated interagency environment, fills its ranks. The time for reform is now, while the 

lessons are still fresh in our collective memory. Building military and civilian formations capable of 

integrating is best accomplished during peace rather than in the stresses of conflict.

 83 Seidman, Politics, Position, and Power, 164.
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Appendix A: Interagency Cooperation Embedded in US Army and Joint Doctrine

Types of Interagency Cooperation Embedded in Current Doctrine

Recognizing the importance of operating in a joint, interagency, interorganizational, and multinational 

environment, US military doctrine codifies operations within such a diverse environment as “unified 

action.” Defined, “unified action synchronizes, coordinates, and-or integrates joint, single-service, and 

multinational operations with the operations of other USG departments and agencies, NGOs, 

Intergovernmental Organizations, and the private sector to achieve unity of effort.”84 Key to the definition 

of unified action is “achieving unity of effort.” Unity of effort is the coordination and cooperation toward 

common objectives, even if the participants are not necessarily part of the same command or 

organization.85 In military operations unity of command is an important principle; however, in civil-military 

operations the challenge is how to create unity of effort among diverse actors in stability operations.

Army doctrine describes unified action operations focused on stability operations using two 

approaches: whole-of-government approach and comprehensive approach. Both approaches seek to 

achieve unity of effort, differing depending on the nature of the partnerships.86

A whole-of-government approach is an approach that integrates the collaborative efforts of the 

departments and agencies of the USG to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal.87 Accordingly, 

success in a whole-of-government approach depends on the ability of civilians and military forces to plan 

jointly and respond quickly and effectively through an integrated interagency approach to a 

fundamentally dynamic situation.88 A key component of a whole-of-government approach is an integrated 

military-interagency effort. Whole-of-government planning refers to processes sponsored by the National 

Security Council (NSC) by which multiple USG departments and agencies come together to develop plans 

that address critical challenges to national interests.89 According to Joint Publication (JP) 3-08, whole-of-

 84 US Department of Defense, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, 2013, II-7.

85 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, ADRP 3-07, 1-3.

86 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, FM 3-07, 3-1.

87 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, ADRP 3-07, 1-4.

88 Ibid.

89 US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, II-2.
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government planning is distinct, from the contributions of USG departments and agencies to DoD 

planning, which remains a DoD responsibility.90

Joint Publication 3-08 recognizes that a primary challenge for integrating civilian and military 

planning into a whole-of-government process is addressing the different planning capacity and culture in 

civilian agencies, in contrast to DoD.91 Both joint and Army doctrine recognize the challenges of the wholeof-government approach and recommend that a successful whole-of-government approach requires that 

all actors:

1. Are represented, integrated, and actively involved in the process;

2. Develop and maintain a shared understanding of the situation and problem;

3. Strive for unity of effort toward achieving a common goal;

4. Integrate and synchronize capabilities and activities;

5. Collectively determine the resources, capabilities, and activities necessary to achieve their goals;

6. Allocate resources to ensure continuation of information sharing, common understanding, and 

integrated efforts; and92

7. Require a designated lead or primary agency with all USG instruments of national power 

represented, actively participating, and integrated into the process.93

The second approach in achieving unity of effort stability operations is a comprehensive approach. 

A comprehensive approach is an approach that integrates the cooperative efforts of the departments and 

agencies of the USG and, to the extent possible, intergovernmental and NGOs, multinational partners, 

and private sector entities, to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal.94 A comprehensive approach 

is different than a whole-of-government approach in that integration and collaboration are often missing 

among the diverse actors involved. A comprehensive approach, rather, achieves unity of effort through 

 90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, ADRP 3-07, 1-4.

93 U.S. Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, II-2.

94 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, ADRP 3-07, 1-4.
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extensive cooperation and coordination, to forge a shared understanding of a common goal.95 Figure 4 

illustrates the differing levels of military-interagency-interorganizational unity of effort as framed by Army 

Doctrine Reference Publication 3-07.

Figure 4: Unity of Effort Approaches to Stability (Source: Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, ADRP 3-01, 1–5)

Achieving unity of effort in a comprehensive approach requires leaders to utilize coordination, 

consensus building, cooperation, collaboration, compromise, consultation, and deconfliction among all 

stakeholders.96 Interestingly, Army Doctrine Reference Publication 3-07 notes that the comprehensive 

approach is often more appropriate than a focused military approach, because taking an authoritative, 

military approach often counters effective interorganizational relationships, impedes unified action, and 

compromises mission accomplishment.97

For the comprehensive approach, Field Manual 3-07 recommends establishing mechanisms such 

as CMOCs to aid in facilitating coordination. Specifically, a CMOC can facilitate information sharing and 

coordination between Army units and other partners, including the host nation’s population and 

 95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., 1-5.

97 Ibid., 1-5.
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institutions.98 Establishing the CMOC is a responsibility of Army civil affairs units. Articulated as part of a 

comprehensive approach, the CMOC is used to primarily coordinate stability activities among a wide range 

of partners, to include the civilian population of the host nation, rather than an integrated DoDinteragency institution found within a whole-of-government approach.

 98 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Stability, FM 3-07, 3-25.
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Appendix B: At What Level Does Interagency Integration Currently Occur?

One of the limiting criteria that currently prevents more integrated interagency involvement is the 

capacity of USG departments and agencies to support DoD planning.99 Unlike the military, most USG 

agencies are not equipped and organized to create separate staffs at the strategic, operational, and 

tactical levels, with the result that military personnel interface with interagency personnel who are 

coordinating activities on behalf of their organization at multiple levels of war.100 The military coordinates 

at the national strategic level through the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff; at the 

theater strategic level through the combatant command (COCOM); at the operational level through 

COCOMs, JTFs, and corps; and at the tactical level through divisions and below. Most USG agencies 

operate at the national strategic level with their home agencies in Washington DC and at the field level 

through their country teams.101 As a result, USG policy currently has the COCOM level as the primary 

embed point for institutionalized and integrated interagency cooperation and coordination, which is at a 

strategic and operational level of war. At each COCOM is a type of JIACG, which is composed of USG civilian 

and military experts accredited to the combatant commander and tailored to meet the requirements of a 

supported combatant commander.102

The JIACGs provide the combatant commander with the capability to collaborate at the 

operational level with other USG civilian agencies and departments.103 JIACGs support the entire range of 

military operations and provide a two-way link back to interagency partners’ parent organizations to help 

synchronize operations with the efforts of USG agencies, departments, and NSC (see figure 5).104

Combatant commanders utilize JIACGs as their lead organization for interagency coordination, providing 

guidance, facilitation, coordination, and synchronization of interagency activities (see figure 6).105

 99 US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, II-6.

100 Ibid., II-19.

101 Ibid., D-4.

102 Ibid., II-10.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., D-3.

105 Ibid., D-4.
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Figure 5: Relationship of JIACG with NSC (Source: US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint 

Operations, D-2)
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Figure 6: JIACG Structure and Functions (Source: US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint 

Operations, D-10)
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On an ad hoc basis, USG agencies will also support JTFs. Within the US Army, JTFs are usually built 

around a corps HQ, which functions at the operational level of war, rather than the tactical. If a JTF is 

formed for a contingency operation, the combatant commander may integrate selected members of the 

JIACG into the JTF.106 Additionally, according to JP 3-08, depending on the type of operation; the extent 

of military operations; and the degree of interagency, intergovernmental organization, and NGO 

involvement, the focal point for operational- and tactical-level coordination with civilian agencies occurs 

at the JTF HQ, the joint field office, the CMOC, or the humanitarian operations center.

In the case of the CMOC, Field Manual 3-94, Theater Army, Corps, and Division Operations,

indicates that CMOCs are supported by civil affairs brigades that are under the operational control of a 

JTF or corps.107 Civil affairs battalions from the civil affairs brigades are usually task organized to divisions 

and can also set up a CMOC within a division’s area of operations, with the Division G-9 providing direction 

and oversight.108 CMOCs serve as the primary coordination interface and provide operational- and 

tactical-level coordination between military forces and other stakeholders.109

Field Manual 3-96, Brigade Combat Team, makes no mention of supporting a CMOC; in fact, the 

S-9, or civil affairs operations staff officer, is normally authorized only at division and corps levels. Once 

deployed, units below division level may be authorized an S-9.110

Also at the tactical and operational levels are PRTs. A PRT is an interim interagency organization 

designed to improve stability in a given area by helping build the legitimacy and effectiveness of the host 

nation’s local government.111 PRTs tend to be ad hoc, varying in structure, size, charter, and mission sets 

designed around the capabilities of participating USG agencies and the needs and capabilities of the host 

nation. PRTs operate by combining security forces for protection with other interagency personnel for 

support, development, and governance, integrated together into one team.112 The integration and 

 106 Ibid., D-9.

107 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Theater Army, Corps, and Division Operations, 3-7.

108 Ibid., 6-11.

109 U.S. Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, IV-26.

110 Headquarters, Department of the Army, Brigade Combat Team, 3-18.

111 US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, IV-32.

112 Ibid., IV-33.
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reporting structure of PRTs with battlespace-owning military units is dependent on the theater. According 

to JP 3-08, USG PRTs have tactical objectives with a strategic focus and exemplify the nature of a true 

joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational operational environment.113

Interagency can also be formed around a joint interagency task force (JIATF), when the mission 

requires close integration of two or more USG agencies.114 Chartered by DoD and one or more civilian 

agencies, JIATFs typically are formed for a specific task and purpose as a formal organization. They are

guided by memorandum of agreement, memorandum of understanding, and other founding documents 

that define roles, responsibilities, and relationships of JIATF members.115 According to JP 3-08, JIATFs may 

be separate elements under a JTF, or they may be subordinate to a functional component command, a 

joint special-operations task force, or a staff section such as the J-3.116 The examples provided by JP 3-08 

of JIATFs include JIATF West, JIATF South, National Counterterrorism Center, and National Joint Terrorism 

Task Force, all of which are formed around strategic and operational mission sets.

Interagency Personnel Management in Support of Stability Operations

According to JP 3-08, the secretary of state may direct the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization 

to coordinate integrated USG efforts to prepare, plan for, and conduct reconstruction and stabilization 

activities, including ensuring harmonization with any planned or ongoing military operations, and by 

convoking an interagency management system response to a crisis.117 The Senate Foreign Relations 

Committee in 2004 directed that the State Department create the Coordinator for Reconstruction and 

Stabilization Office, comprised of about a hundred predominantly non-State Department personnel, in 

order to strike a new balance in the interagency relationship between Departments of State and 

Defense.118 The DoS Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization was provided the authority to set 

reconstruction and stabilization strategy, to develop policy and manage program execution, and to 

 113 Ibid., F-1.

114 Ibid., II-20.

115 Ibid., E-1.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid., G-1.

118 Rosenwasser and Warner, “History of the Interagency Process for Foreign Relations in the United States,” 25.
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coordinate with foreign and NGO partners.119 Specifically, the interagency management system is 

designed for the interagency and military commanders to manage reconstruction and stabilization 

operations by ensuring coordination at the strategic, operational, and tactical field levels.120 The DoS 

Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which has since 2011 been integrated into the Bureau 

of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, maintains a roster of potential team members and develops 

supporting memorandums of understanding with appropriate DoS bureaus and other federal agencies, in 

order to quickly coordinate and support COCOM HQ or JIACGs.121

The DoS Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, or Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization 

Operations, also has the authority to field advanced civilian teams to support embassies’ chiefs of mission. 

The size, structure, and composition of the advanced civilian teams are flexible, to meet particular 

requirements of each contingency situation.122 Advanced civilian teams are intended to quickly set up, 

coordinate, and conduct field-level reconstruction and stability operations; this includes performing 

assessments and coordinating USG operations in uncertain and hostile environments, with or without 

military deployment.123

 119 Ibid., 25.

120 US Department of Defense, Interorganizational Coordination during Joint Operations, G-1.

121 Ibid., G-9.

122 Ibid., G-2.

123 Ibid., G-11.
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59

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