Over the course of the 2014 calendar year, Army South conducted seven cycles of planning focused on an individual country. As a means of organization, planning for countries residing
in the same sub-region (Central America, Caribbean, Andean
Ridge, or Southern Cone) was conducted serially. This planning resulted in a definitive operational approach with clearly
identified and approved objectives. The output of these country
planning cycles was the publication of the Army South CSP in
a doctrinal five-paragraph format with individual country plans
added as appendices to sub-regional annexes.
As these country planning cycles are conducted within the
TSCP2, another process, Army-to-Army Staff Talks, which
allows the command to engage with partner nations operates in
parallel. Prior to TSCP2 staff talks were proving incomplete because the inputs and outputs were neither formally staffed nor
socialized across the entire staff, therefore they did not result in
bilateral security cooperation plans and objectives that could
be progressively measured and built upon during the next year’s
talks. The net result was a limited focus towards security cooperation goals that both armies were determined to accomplish
together. TSCP2 has instituted a holistic process for integrating
country planning, to include a more formalized, nested staff
talks process that facilitates TSCP2 country plan development. With more detailed country plans in hand Army South’s
political-military professionals in the Regional Affairs Division
(RAD) then support the processes by providing the essential
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coordination between partner nations and Army South for a
successful bilateral staff talks program.
With a current country plan, political-military professionals and planners leading these bilateral planning sessions can
generally ensure discussions on any of the next year’s activities
(colloquially called “agreed to actions,”) can be nested within an
objective in the plan. Army South can also highlight to the partner nation that agreement to bilateral objectives ensure unified
efforts result in more focused activities. This synchronization
enhances our ability to reduce the partner nation’s capability
gaps more quickly than a series of unlinked activities that are
not mutually supporting.
Evolution is Continuous
Army South readily identifies the security cooperation assessment process as an information gap in the command. The Army
South staff is challenged with providing robust, quality objective and subjective security cooperation assessments to the commander. Weekly assessment working groups currently provide
the management mechanism for this additional security cooperation sub-process, but the expected products of the assessment
work group is readily recognized as modest.
When the TSCP2 was designed, measuring progress was so
important to the command that, as shown in figure one, metric confirmation became the third of five sequential steps in a