The Fate of the Civilian Surge in a Changing Environment | Page 4

Foreword
As the United States winds down its stabilization
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of
State (DOS) and U.S. Agency for International Development will face bureaucratic and political pressures
to abandon their already modest reconstruction and
stabilization (R&S) lines of effort in favor of more traditional diplomacy and development assistance priorities. This period of relative peace allow policy makers to reflect on past challenges to creating a “civilian
surge” capacity and determining feasible, acceptable,
and suitable ways and means to ensure robust civilian participation in future R&S operations. To further
inculcate a surge capability, one primary recommendation would be to expand the work of a recently created interagency task force on fragile states to include
leading a new generation of civil-military planning
tied explicitly to resources, since past planning efforts
have not always done so effectively. Civilian agencies
should work with the Department of Defense (DOD)
to conduct formal interagency after action reviews
on R&S activities outside of Iraq and Afghanistan,
as well as track and respond to congressional efforts
at DOD reform. These interagency partners should
also encourage their respective R&S knowledge centers – such as PKSOI, the DOS Bureau for Conflict
and Stability Operations (CSO), the National Defense
University’s Center for Complex Operations, the U.S.
Institute for Peace, and the DOD’s Joint Force Development (J7) Staff – to take stock of existing capabilities
and reinvigorate their technical support relationships
with policy makers in order to maintain R&S planning
and implementation capabilities across agencies.

iii