Rethinking global engagement the requirement for knowledge before action

摘要

The type of engagement necessary for US security is not compatible with the interests of today's US SOF. America requires a Global Engagement Plan (GEP) that is unprecedented in its patience and persistence, and that maintains a diffuse presence everywhere on the planet. Such a plan envisions and necessitates deliberate, intimate, and continuous American contact with the predominantly non-elite majority that is inadequately observed and reported on by extant instruments of American power. Operatives tasked with executing the GEP would be permanently immersed in the host environment, taking a U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) mantra to "operate by, with, and through indigenous forces and peoples" to an extreme. Current American governmental structures and methods of foreign engagement are unequal to such a task. America already has a force whose mission includes acting as "global scouts": SF. Nevertheless, the traditional method of SF employment is inadequate to provide such continuous observation and reporting. Better methods of global engagement can be found in both a (military) Regional Engagement Concept (REC), and a proposed Global Engagement Agency within the Department of State for (civilian) operatives. Retired and/or transitioned SF soldiers provide an ideal nucleus for the forming of such an agency.