and participation in conflict zones may be curtailed . In the meantime , policy makers will continue to turn to the DOD for contingencies that risk overwhelming civilian agencies ’ limited capacity , or for exposing their employees and implementing partners to lethal force . This tendency will make civil-military coordination as important in future stability operations as it has been over the past decade .
Encouraging Better Civil-Military Coordination
Much of the literature on interagency relationships in the national security sphere highlights the cultural and political conflicts that may hamper coordination between foreign affairs agencies . 65 However , several representatives of the DOS , the DOD , and USAID interviewed for this research paper agreed that working relationships between the DOD and its civilian agency counterparts have improved noticeably during the past decade . 66 In this respect , NSPD-44 and other policy actions succeeded in creating bureaucratic structures and personnel networks that supported joint interagency experiments in conflict zones , such as provincial reconstruction teams ( PRTs ). These structures and networks provided a range of prosaic coordination mechanisms that sought to ensure that DOD ’ s “ development-like ” 67 interventions contributed to , or at least did not interfere with , other diplomatic and long-term development objectives .
One example of a bureaucratic locus for coordination is USAID ’ s Office of Civil-Military Cooperation ( CMC ), formerly the Office of Military Affairs ( OMA ), established in 2005 to support the goals of NSPD-44 . At the time , members of USAID ’ s non-profit industry base , as well as some of its own personnel , voiced
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