Stay in Your Lane: The US Military and the Interagency Community
Stay in Your Lane: The US Military and the Interagency Community by Brian Hayes – Georgetown Security Studies Review
… Of course, military capabilities are sometimes quite useful in addressing humanitarian crises and disrupting criminal networks. For example, US naval vessels quickly move relief supplies, search and rescue aircraft, and fully equipped operating rooms in response to disasters in or near coastal areas. This vital capability exists nowhere else in government. Other military capabilities, such as surveillance aircraft and intelligence collection platforms, augment law enforcement agencies’ efforts to interdict drugs en route to the United States. Such common-sense uses of military power to support non-military objectives should continue.
However, policymakers should ask hard questions about the degree to which the armed forces have taken leading roles in traditionally civilian-led missions, such as development and public diplomacy. Military personnel typically have little expertise in these areas. In Afghanistan, the US armed forces tried their hand at economic development, frequently failing to coordinate with the US Agency for International Development. “Unsurprisingly”—as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction observed—DOD didn’t have much expertise in economic development and many of its projects failed.” In Liberia, a US military task force ignored the advice of public health experts and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Ebola treatment centers that proved essentially useless. Proposed DOD “strategic communication” to counter violent extremism presents another questionable use of military power: why should Army psychological operations personnel conduct what is essentially public diplomacy? Although in some cases the US military has voluntarily stepped into these roles, it is also important to recognize policymakers’ partial responsibility for the military’s encroachment into traditionally civilian activities. When civilian agencies lose funding while defense budgets remain steady, the military may take on new roles in order to fill the gaps.
In similarly misguided efforts to those above, SOUTHCOM has proposed to work with foreign law enforcement. Most US military personnel know little about policing—a point illustrated by an officer’s recent admission that he watched television cop shows to prepare for an assignment training Afghan police. Civilian US federal law enforcement agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have long operated in key South American countries, and their agents have substantial training and experience in criminal investigation and prosecution. The Departments of Justice and State also operate training and assistance programs for foreign prosecutors and law enforcement officers. If the United States wants to support South American law enforcement more aggressively, it should assign the task to these civilian agencies, not the US military…
