White House Should Direct Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff to Review Strategic Choices on Embassy Crisis Response

Media reporting suggests that there has been an increase in the risks facing U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff worldwide. That reality poses a serious challenge to the Trump Administration and its legacy. The America First Agenda (AFA) demands that U.S. foreign policy advances the prosperity, safety, and security of the American people. Logically, one would expect that includes U.S. diplomats and their dependents. However, there appear to be gaps in the global posture of the specialized tactical units that would need to respond in the event of a serious attack on U.S. diplomats and their dependents. That includes the Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) Companies of the United States Marine Corps (Marine Corps). There are concerns that those gaps could make it difficult for the U.S. Department of Defense (Department of Defense) to be able to rapidly deploy FAST teams (Figure 1) to respond to urgent threats against U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff in particular regions of the world. To mitigate against the risk of another Benghazi, the Marine Corps and Department of Defense should make it a priority to re-evaluate and realign the FAST Companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response. To ensure that happens, the Trump Administration should immediately direct the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to re-evaluate and realign the global posture of the FAST Companies and the other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response with the America First Foreign Policy Agenda (AFA/FP).

Figure1: Current Global Footprint of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.

Background Information

In the aftermath of the recent attacks on diplomatic missions to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serious questions have been raised about whether the Trump Administration is adequately prepared for a significant attack on the U.S. Government’s overseas presence. In the event of such an attack, the Department of Defense may need to call upon the FAST Companies of the Marine Corps Security Force Regiment to respond. These tactical units are forward deployed to overseas military bases (i.e., Bahrain, Japan, Spain). They provide Geographic Combatant Commanders with a unique set of rapid response expeditionary anti-terrorism and security capabilities that can be used to protect national assets and conduct other limited-duration contingency operations. Those include a unique set of capabilities for rapidly responding to non-traditional security threats against U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff (e.g., the 2012 Attack on the U.S. Consulate Benghazi). There is, therefore, a clear and present need for the Marine Corps and Department of Defense to better understand whether they need to make new strategic choices about the FAST Companies. That starts with conducting an environmental scan.

Environmental Scan

The Marine Corps should conduct a systematic scan of all environment levels (Figure 2) of the FAST Companies. Those levels include:

• Internal Level:
  • The Marine Corps will need to identify the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of the FAST Companies.
• External Level
  • General External Sublevel: The Marine Corps will need to identify the key political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal forces at the global and regional levels.
  • Specific External Sublevel: The Marine Corps will need to identify the key stakeholders in the external environment. That includes customers, allies, partners, competitors, adversaries, enemies, and societies.

When scanning the external environment, the Marine Corps will need to place special emphasis on the external forces affecting the current and forecast locations where customers will demand services (e.g., diplomatic posts, overseas military installations, protected third-country sites).

Figure 2: The Multidimensional Environment of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.

Strategic Alignment

Once the Marine Corps has completed its scan of the environment, the Department of Defense should re-evaluate the strategic alignment of the FAST Companies. That assessment should examine all three axes:

• Horizontal: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of similar specialized tactical units within the United States Government. (Examples of relevant specialized tactical units include the Marine Raider Regiment, Regimental Reconnaissance Company, Naval Special Warfare Development Group, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, 24th Special Tactics Squadron, Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation Unit, Mobile Security Deployments, and FBI Hostage Rescue Team). That includes the special mission units of the U.S. Armed Forces.
• Vertical: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of higher-level components within the United States Government. That must include those of the Executive Office of the President.
• Diagonal: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of key stakeholders outside of the United States Government. That includes the specialized tactical units of foreign governments (e.g., Special Program for Embassy Augmentation Response Teams).

When evaluating strategic alignment (Figure 3), the Marine Corps should pay special attention to any misalignments with the style, strategies, and values of the Executive Office of the President. Those values appear to include dominance, efficiency, effectiveness, and reciprocity.

Figure 3: The Strategic Alignment Evaluation of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.

Risk Assessment

After the Department of Defense has re-evaluated the strategic alignment of the FAST Companies, the Marine Corps should conduct a risk assessment for the FAST Companies:

• Risk Assessment: The Marine Corps should seek to identify and evaluate risks that exist in the internal and external environments. Examples include asset impairment risks, competitive risks, operational risks, and political risks.
• Mitigation Measures: The Marine Corps should seek to identify ways that the Department of Defense could enhance decision-making, foster innovation, reduce costs, minimize the negative risks, maximize the positive risks, and promote accountability to the American taxpayer. This includes ways to mitigate further foreign entanglements in the course of crisis response.
• Management Decisions: The Marine Corps should determine if any risks exceed acceptance levels. If so, the Department of Defense should develop a security plan with a cost evaluation for those risks.

When conducting the risk assessment, the Marine Corps should prioritize threats to the provisioning of essential services to customers (Figure 4). This is important as there appears to be a serious misalignment between the current spatial distribution of the FAST Companies and the spatial distribution of country-level risk. Given the global distribution of diplomatic posts and other customer sites, one would imagine that this means that FAST Companies would struggle to provide essential services to customers across a wide range of contingencies.

Figure 4: The Multi-Dimensional Risk Facing FAST Companies

The European Commission publishes an annual report of global risks. The INFORM Risk Index is based on the concepts of hazards & exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping capacity dimensions. It shows that the independent states with the highest risk tend to be located between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Since the FAST Companies tend to be located north of the Tropic of Cancer, that begs the question of whether they would overcome the tyranny of distance and adequately provision essential services to customer locations in places like South America, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Strategic Choices

Once the Marine Corps and Department of Defense have a good grasp of the environment, strategic alignment, and risks, then their leadership figures will be in a much better position to make a new strategic plan for the FAST Companies. That will require making five interdependent strategic choices (Figure 5):

• What is the principal mission of the FAST Companies?
• Where can/will the FAST Companies operate to accomplish their mission?
• How will the FAST Companies’ success be determined?
• What capabilities will the FAST Companies need to be successful?

What command and management systems will the FAST Companies need to be successful?

Figure 5: Strategic Choices for the FAST Companies

When making these strategic choices, the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense will need to consider a large number of factors beyond the environment, strategic alignment, and risks. Some examples include the resource constraints and competing interests of the FAST Companies.

Political Considerations

The Marine Corps and Department of Defense need to be mindful that there is a political imperative to rapidly re-evaluate and realign the FAST Companies. In the past, President Donald Trump has not only criticized how the Obama Administration responded to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens and American diplomat Sean Smith. He has criticized how the Biden Administration mitigated the known threats associated with the Kabul Airlift that resulted in the deaths of over a dozen American service members. If a Geographic Combatant Commander were to struggle to respond to a future threat against an overseas diplomatic mission or military base, then those prior comments would provide powerful ammunition for political opponents to launch a direct attack on the Trump Administration. For that reason, the Trump Administration has a political imperative to ensure that the Marine Corps and Department of Defense re-evaluate and re-align the FAST Companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response as quickly as possible.

Recommended Policy Directive

To mitigate against another Benghazi incident on its watch, The White House should direct the Department of Defense to immediately re-evaluate and re-align the FAST companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response with the administration’s strategic priorities. That can be achieved through an executive directive that requires the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide the National Security Council of The White House with an environmental scan, strategic alignment evaluation, risk management assessment, proposed strategic plan, and prioritized list of recommended posture changes within 60 days.