Embassy in the Lead: Lessons for Interagency Cooperation in Iraq from the 1947-1949 U.S. Mission to Greece.

摘要

In December 2011, the United States removed all combat troops from Iraq, leaving only a handful of military personnel within the U.S. Embassy. This military presence -- in the form of the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq (OSC-I) -- seeks to assist Iraqi Security Forces as part of the Embassy's broader security sector reform (SSR) efforts to finish off a resilient insurgency. What the United States is attempting to do in Iraq today is not without precedent. Analysis of the U.S. mission to Greece between 1947 and 1949 suggests that a high level of interagency unity of effort was the critical component to success there. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy in Athens (with limited support from the U.S. military) led an SSR effort strikingly similar to today's efforts in Iraq. Without a single U.S. combat soldier on the ground, the United States helped Greece end an insurgency and establish enduring stability. This monograph provides recommendations for how to foster the extraordinarily high degree of unity of effort needed to succeed in Iraq. Specifically, the paper describes how U.S. officials in Baghdad can revise an outdated assessment, integrate their civil-military lines of effort, and develop shared civil-military metrics to improve the U.S. Mission's chances of success.