State Department Establishes New Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations
11.22.2011 at 10:35pm
State Department Establishes New Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations – DoS Press Release.
On Monday, November 21, the U.S. Department of State established a new Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) to focus on conflict prevention, crisis response, and stabilization activities.
CSO will seek to:
- Get ahead of change. While the scale and types of future crises cannot be predicted, the complex nature and cascading effects of 21st century challenges require a future-oriented State Department. CSO will support the State Department’s ability to anticipate major security challenges by providing timely, operational solutions.
- Drive an integrated response. CSO will build integrated approaches to conflict prevention and stabilization by linking analysis, planning resources, operational solutions, and active learning and training. The bureau will call on the expertise in the Civilian Response Corps to rapidly deploy to areas of instability to bring the right mix of expertise to each unique situation.
- Leverage partnerships. CSO will work with a range of non-governmental and international partners to prevent conflict, address sources of violence, build on existing resiliencies, and promote burden-sharing. In particular, CSO will encourage greater involvement of local civil society – including women, youth, and the media – to prevent and respond to conflict.
The new bureau subsumes the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization and builds upon the expertise of the Civilian Response Corps.
It all sounds very lovely, but the cynic in me has to wonder how exactly all of this is to be achieved, and by whom. In particular I wonder who is to assess and determine “the right mix of expertise” for each situation. Do they actually propose to recruit – and listen to – area specialists?
We will wait and see, I suppose, and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
I hope that some military types (field grades and above as well as senior NCOs) are afforded the opportunity to serve a tour in this new organization. They can bring in their operational experience to help develop operational solutions and learn something about “diplomatic” techniques to crisis response & conflict resolution that may prove helpful to our military forces in future operations.