Travels with Nick 2010 #3: Civil-Military Marriage Counseling
Kandahar Air Field is a sprawling air base in the desert north of Kandahar City. It has a dusty acrid industrial feel. The international influence is everywhere. Tommy Horton’s (the British equal of Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks) is the best place for coffee and pastry. And why so many hockey rinks? Oh right. Canadians.
My visit to Kandahar is leg one of a two part trip that will also include RC (SW) and Helmand. The purpose of this southern swing is to see how civ-mil relations are up and down the chain of command… From Kabul/ISAF/IJC to the Regional Commands to the Task Forces to the PRTs and DSTs. Effective civ-mil coordination is a key part of the work we do and a critical tenant of COIN. As part of the civilian uplift, State and AID had now sought to parallel the military structure with civilian counterparts at the Regional Command, Task Force, and Battalion level. Was it working?
My going in position was that Regional Command (South) at Kandahar Air Field would likely be a model of success because of my familiarity with and respect for the Regional Platform leadership — Senior Civilian Rep Henry Ensher, CoS Rob Tillery, and USAID Development Advisor Tom Baltazar. This is an all-star team of experienced Afghanistan and civil-miltary coordination talent. I expected the rest of RC (S) to be jumping on Oprah’s couch proclaiming their love for their regional platform and the new alignment of civilian and military structures.
Alas, things are never quite so simple. Complication #1: RC (S) is a NATO HQ, not a US HQ. ISAF RC (S) Commander, MG Carter (a Brit) no doubt appreciates the US regional platform but that is not his chain of command. And his existing stability operations section has been working these issues since the infant days of the platform. Complication #2: the role of the regional platform as a regional coordinator of multiple provinces doesn’t work because so much of the RC (S) focus is on Kandahar — the mandate of the PRT. This is bound to lead to some tugs between the platform and the PRT. And if that were not enough, Complication #3 is that the civilian staffs themselves are not really integrated. USAID and its implementing partners may listen to their State colleagues but they ultimately still have authority over their own programs.
Not that there are major issues here — by all accounts folks are working together in constructive and practical ways. But the staffs have clear differences and are not integrated. This is may improve when 10th Mountain gets settled in. The 10th Mountain CO MG Terry is fully switched on to importance of civ-mil integration. My suggestion to all involved is to integrate the platform and stability operations staffs into one relatively seamless unit and for 10th Mountain to fully embrace the SCR as the political and economic lead on the team.
The situation at RC (SW), in Helmand province is perhaps even more complex. Here again, the Regional Command had an overwhelming interest in just one province — Helmand. The Helmand PRT, under British leadership, was well staffed and independent. Furthermore, under agreements made in Kabul, the Helmand PRT Team Leader is also the ISAF Senior Civilian Representative — bypasing the US chain of command. This has led to considerable tension between the US contingent at Camp Leatherneck and the heavily civilian British led PRT in Lashkar Gah. The good news is that the new leadership at both the Regional Platform and the PRT are working closely to improve relations and collaboration.
Leatherneck also had three different organizations competing for leadership of civil issues — the still forming Regional Platform, the RC (S)/I MEF C-9, and the 1st Marine Division CMO. The professionals in all these organizations are working hard to make this work but it is just that… Work. Plus there is a missed opportunity here to integrate and streamline these staffs under the SCR, reduce coordination friction, and push more CMO resources out into the field.
Closing point on the civ-mil issues. A common civ-mil refrain we have heard is the effective cooperation is “personality dependent.” We heard this at every level of command, including in the assessment of how each DST was performing. Personalities that succeed tend to be those that think more about the team and less about turf, more about consensus and less about being right, more about demonstrating value to their counterpart rather than judging the value of their counterpart. However, I would argue that “personality dependent” is also a sign that there may be some room for organizational improvement.
If an organization has a clear mission, clear lanes and lines of authority, and most importantly the right standard operating procedures for decision-making and action, personality matters a lot less. A flight crew of a 747 can usually taxi, take off, fly, navigate, approach, land, and taxi from one crowded airspace to another without either crashing or having a fight among the crew. Success here is not usually personality dependent! Why is that? Neurosurgery is pretty complicated business involving a team of different specialists and nurses yet we don’t think of success as personality dependent. The same is true for a ballet, or a battalion staff. Organizations with clear processes and procedures for decisions and action, and experience/training in exercising those decisions and actions, will function with much less dependence on personality. What this means is it is important for civilian and military leaders in Kabul and at the platforms to more carefully define lanes and procedures for joint planning and decision-making, and then to push those staff processes hard in the pre-deployment training. This will do more than simply preaching peace, love and understanding — though the right attitude certainly helps as well.
SWJ Editors’ Note: Nick Dowling is a small wars policy wonk with experience in OSD, the NSC Staff, NDU, and the contracting sector. He has worked on stability operations for 16 years, most prominently on Bosnia and Kosovo as a Clinton Administration appointee and Iraq and Afghanistan as a DoD contractor. He is currently President of IDS International, a leader in interagency and “soft power” types of support to the US military. He is a graduate of Harvard, got his masters at Georgetown, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
