Strategic Misfire: The Army's Planned Reduction of Civil Affairs Forces by Maj. Arnel P. David and Maj. Clay Daniels, U.S. Army; Foreign Policy’s Best Defense
Understanding should precede action, yet a prime area of strategic weakness for the United States is its inability to understand the local social-political context of conflict and war. After failing to achieve any enduring strategic outcomes for this century, the Army returns to a state of suspended animation under the blissful blanket of combined arms maneuver. Rather than preserve human engagement capabilities that, dollar for dollar, do more to win the wars of today and the peace of the future, the Army is divesting itself of a large number of civil affairs forces. The 85th Civil Affairs Brigade is being deactivated. It is one of only two active duty civil affairs brigades, reducing nearly half of the force structure for the Army's active duty civil affairs.
Built from the battlefield demands of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, the 85th Civil Affairs Brigade was created to aid the Army and Joint Force with unique civil-military operations — ranging from humanitarian assistance and disaster response to supporting major campaigns. Soldiers trained in foreign languages, culture, mediation, and negotiations, with an organic expeditionary medical component, provided crucial support to missions like Operation Unified Assistance to combat the Ebola virus outbreak in Liberia and Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, among others…
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Oh, my goodness. This…
Oh, my goodness. This excites me tremendously. I provide life bright care services, and I've been so busy with work for the past two months that I haven't had time to rest. This week I was taking a much-needed rest when I noticed this. I'm quite excited to visit there.
There are many who can say "I told you so." The commitment to active duty Civili Affairs could never be sustained. I recall the anecdote (second hand to me so I cannot verify this) as to why GEN Lindsey said that when USSOCOM was created that asked for assignment of Civil Affairs and PSYOP forces to USSOCOM. Of course PSYOP is a no brainer - Special Forces and SOF were borne from Psychological Warfare. But Civil Affairs, while making important contributions to SOF is not inherently a special operations mission (though Title 10 Section 167 does designate it as a special operations activity). The reason that GEN Lindsay supposedly asked CA and PSYOP to be assigned to USSOCOM was to maintain an active duty force in these two disciplines. He knew that the Army would eventually put the entire CA and PSYOP capability in the reserve force and there would be no active capability remaining. We are fortunate that we were able to grow the 96th CA Battalion (the only active CA force from 1987 until 9-11) to the 95th CA Brigade after 9-11 but the regular Army 85th CA Brigade was a bridge (or brigade) too far. It is somewhat ironic that DOD Instruction 3000.07 states that the 5 activities of Irregular Warfare are unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, and stability operations - one of the most important forces in stability operations is civil affairs. Of course this decision to eliminate the 85th CA Brigade from the active force is probably in keeping with and justified by the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance which says we will no longer have the force structure sized to conduct large scale stability operations and expeditionary counterinsurgency. The only good thing that might come of this is that we might be able to maintain the 95th CA Brigade at or above 100% fill with the amount of qualified active civil affairs personnel we have.