Death of the Combatant Command. Toward a Joint Interagency Approach (Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 52, 1st Quarter 2009)

摘要

Hindsight is often 20/20. We can study our efforts in Vietnam, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and even the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq and come to some fundamental conclusions. One is that our interagency process is broken. Why is that. If it is broken, can we fix it. In this article, we explore the problems with our current interagency process, suggest a solution, compare that with other possible solution sets, and discuss consequences of its implementation. The problems with the American interagency process are complex. We do not pretend to be experts on the current process or historians recounting each incremental step along our path to the present. We do believe, however, that most of today's problems arise from a gap created by a lack of either capacity or integration, or both, below the national level. This article proposes filling that vacuum with standing, civilian-led interagency organizations, having regional responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Thomas Ricks posits that the decision to give the Department of Defense (DOD) the lead for postwar Iraq was problematic and may have doomed the American effort from the start, since the department lacked the capabilities to oversee a large multiagency civilian mission. If so, then why did DOD get the lead for postwar Iraq. A possible answer is that although DOD may not have had all that it needed at the outset of the war, there was no other government institution that had the budget or manpower to manage the effort.