Steering Elephants: Focusing the Interagency to Enable Planning for SSTR Operations

Recent Presidential and Defense policies direct coordination of stabilization efforts across the government and define Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction as a core military mission giving it equal priority as combat operations. Increasing post-conflict challenges require that we have adaptive planning processes across the government agile enough to employ all the instruments of national power at decisive points when required. However, pre-coordinated and deliberate planning to achieve unified action and enhance unity of effort during security and stability operations remains illusive at the operational level. This paper argues that a critical gap in planning capability for security and stability operations exists at the operational level. It suggests a new functional interagency structure would best enable planning by aligning corresponding functional capability with requirements through increased authority, unified action, service support, and analysis. The new functional structure, modeled after U.S. Special Operations Command, proposes integrating the interagency to enable civil-military cooperation and planning, best serving to accomplish post-conflict objectives.