The Strategic Opportunity in our Senior Foreign Official Advisory Mission

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Military officers have frequently been called upon to serve as advisors to foreign officials and to play seminal roles in political (policy), institutional (strategic), and operational (tactical) realms overseas.  Historically, several high profile advisors are recognizable. [1]  Lawrence of Arabia’s military and nation building exploits with the Arabs became lionized in literature and the Hollywood big screen.   General Sir John Dill’s contributions played a significant role during World War II in the formation of the "special relationship" between the United Kingdom and the United States. Additionally, the role of allied military advisors in post World War II Japan and Germany are other well known examples of the impact military advisors to senior foreign officials can have on political evolution and development of effective institutions of government.

In the fall of 2010 I attended an interagency workshop and was introduced to several Army officers who served as advisors to senior foreign officials (SFO).[2]  During the discussion, I asked about their roles and how the Army prepared them to serve in such a challenging and strategically critical position.  Their responses were not what I had expected to hear. 

“As for selection and preparation; my assignment officer said I fit the screening criteria for dwell, rank and being a former brigade commander, frankly I wondered if I was the right person for this type of assignment.  There was no formal training provided or a repository of information to refer to for prep; I did a lot of googling...  The best training I received was the email dialog with my predecessor and the five days I was able to spend with him prior to departure.” 

“It took about 90 days to figure out what I was doing when it came to interagency and multinational collaboration.  Another concern was “What other organizations was I competing with who may not have our national goals as their priority?”

“Being aware of “Under-the table” allegiances and past friendships proved challenging.  It proved even more challenging with no Relief In Place (RIP).  I felt like I was back playing the childhood board game “CLUE”…trying to figure out who did what to whom and in what room and why!”

“After I arrived it took me about 90-120 days to both get a good grasp of what I needed to know and to build trust with the minister.” 

“As an advisor I worked with the minister, his deputy ministers and other executives.  I understood the minister’s priorities and his outlook on certain initiatives;…overtime, I was able to directly influence the host country’s strategic level decision making .” The fact is, having built a relationship which directly impacts our national security interests, I’ll likely never be leveraged again unless one of the senior officers I worked for does another tour and asks for me by name.”

“One thing I learned early is that reverse atmospherics to US leadership was critical, on many occasions I had to communicate to the coalition HQs the potential or actual strategic damage of certain policies and behaviors.”

--- Former U.S. Army Advisors to Senior Foreign Officials[3]

After hearing a common theme in every conversation that dealt with preparing senior personnel for their role as an advisor at the strategic and policy level, one thing became painfully clear.  The selection methodology, pre-deployment training and organizational support provided to senior personnel selected to serve as advisors to senior foreign officials was (and could potentially still be) woefully inadequate. 

For tactical level advisors we invest in ten weeks of pre-deployment training, convene Department of the Army level boards to select advisory team chiefs, and provide brigade infrastructure for reach-back and support.   Yet, for the several hundred personnel selected to advise[4] senior foreign officials at the strategic and policy level - where routine events and decisions can directly affect America’s security and political interests - we make no structured investments in the selection process, training, organizational support while deployed, or in capturing lessons learned upon redeployment.

A deeper exploration of this topic, fueled by articles, interagency forums and further discussion with friends and colleagues (in the Army[5], multinational forces and interagency institutions) led me to conclude  we can and should be doing more to reduce the strategic risk and leverage the strategic opportunity inherent inside our senior foreign official advisory mission.

I have broken this article out to  review: 1) the strategic impact of SFO advising; 2) the relevant policy and doctrine directing us to perform this mission; 3) the current selection processes for advisors; 4) training for strategic-level advisors; and, finally, 4) the implications of our current system.  In the last section, I present recommendations to optimize our capacity for advising at the strategic level.   My goal is to prompt debate that can leverage improvement of US capacity to shape the strategic institutions and processes   that govern the success of stability operations.  In my assessment this success will go unrealized unless we provide greater structure to the selection, training and support of our strategic advisors.

 The Strategic Opportunity Inherent in Advising Senior Foreign Officials 

Military officers have frequently served as advisors to foreign officials, playing a critical role in the advancement of political (policy), institutional (strategic), and operational (tactical) arenas thereby impacting political evolution and strategic success. The position is no less important in today’s world where obtaining support of civilian populations is as important as kinetic operations.  For example, over the last thirty years, Army advisors have successfully influenced those they advised in support of U.S. national interests with regard to the betterment of human rights, adoption of anti-corruption policies, ministerial capacity building, security sector reform, Rule of Law and much more.  

But with every success we have suffered just as many setbacks in our strategic advising mission.  For years we denied that stability operations and its inherent advising mission were the responsibility of general purpose forces[6].  When tasked to meet the shortfalls in interagency and coalition commitments during recent conflicts we did so on the cheap; sending the wrong people (improper rank, age, gender, technical backgrounds and psychological makeup).  We thereby alienated senior foreign officials to such a degree that we slowed significantly security development, political evolution and strategic success.  We also cost our nation dearly in both blood and treasure.  In these instances we were not as fully successful as early as we could have been had we prepared better for the role.   So have we learned from these past mistakes?  Are we now accepting the role as strategic advisor as  a core mission, and are we selecting, training and utilizing the personnel we place as senior foreign official advisors to optimize our chances for success

 Returning to the Past -- Policy and Doctrine

The U.S. Army has a long history of providing advisors at the tactical through strategic levels to rebuild indigenous institutions, including various types of security forces, criminal justice systems, and representative governmental institutions to secure and stabilize the environment (e.g., the taming the American Frontier and  operations in the Philippines, China, Japan, Germany, Korea, and Latin America).  Outside of U.S. Army Special Forces, this capability atrophied and was mostly pushed out of war fighting policy and doctrine with the end of the Vietnam War.  

 During the next thirty years (1975 – 2005) the Army participated in a series of short duration interventions (Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo) in which it strongly resisted planning for or being involved in stability operations.  Terms such as “mission creep” and “nation building” were terms of derision used to describe anything outside of Phase III (high intensity) combat operations.  Participation in these efforts was seen as competing with Army core missions; peripheral at best and more often a serious distraction.  So distracting, that major rehearsal exercises at the Brigade through Corps level consistently concluded after culmination of phase III operations.

When the Army commenced operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it did so with a set of assumptions on the part of our national leaders that in hindsight has proven faulty.  Then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is quoted in an interview as saying, “We would bring in new leadership, but we are going to keep the body in place.”[7]  The concept of “keeping the body in place,” led to the following assumptions:   1) a grateful public will welcome U.S. intervention; 2) security tasks will be easily transferred, and 3) existing country infrastructure and governance will be reestablished in short order with the help of interagency partner capacity   These faulty assumptions - combined with the lack of preparation for stability operations - were based on 30 years of cultural bias towards warfighting. They led to the Army making little progress toward sustainable security and stabilization between 2001-05 in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Many would argue that we in fact lost ground.

By 2005, senior administration and DoD leadership realized that stability operations, including the associated capacity building and legitimacy tasks, were critical to success in even limited interventions and central to our own national security.   In November 2005, DoD Directive 3000.05[8]  “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations” was issued establishing stability operations as a core U.S. military mission.  It would be given priority comparable to combat operations and to be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.[9]  Service doctrine was consequently written and published, most notably FM 3-24 (Counterinsurgency) in 2006 and FM 3-07 (Stability Operations) in 2008.

With stability operations policy and doctrine in place, the conventional Army slowly adopted the concept of advising (euphemistically referred to as “helping others to help themselves”) as critical to sustainable operational success.  Organizational structures were modified to embed advisors.  Incentives were provided to solicit volunteers.  Department of the Army boards were designated to centrally select our best for advisory team leadership and a ten week program of instruction was created to prepare soldiers for advisory roles.  Sadly, however, this was exclusively at the tactical level.  All of these were critical steps towards success of developing stable institutions and processes.  But a major piece of the system was largely ignored.  For the several hundred personnel selected to advise senior foreign officials (SFO) at the strategic and policy level, where routine events and decisions directly impacted America’s security and political interests, we relied on an underdeveloped  personnel selection process, with training woefully limited to one week of training on basic individual soldier tasks, and no organizational support.  Tragically, this situation remains largely unchanged today. 

Selecting Advisors for SFOs

The success of the SFO advisor depends on influencing foreign officials to act in manners which create stable, democratically based, and ultimately pro-western and pro-US governments.   This requires vision, diplomacy and simple people skills – particularly cultural empathy and respect.  Current personnel policies have little invested in tools to identify such skills and personality traits; instead focusing on previous command success or technical depth.  Numerous advisory studies since 1957 as well as interagency forums found this selection method placed increased risk to the US and host country relationship while threatening to undermine the overall success of the strategic mission. 

I cannot say it too often. The selection of the right people for a senior level mentoring position cannot be over emphasized. Lots of time is spent (I hope!!) on the right paper qualifications and this is of course very important. A lengthy CV[10] showing a good mix of operational experience, administration, instructional and staff duties, education and training must not be overlooked. However it has been my experience on several missions that even highly qualified and professionally successful personnel who do not possess the right personality, attitude and /or temperament have been nothing short of a disaster. I would suggest coming up with a template for a screening process that would weed out candidates who are inflexible, overbearing, racist and egotistical would be a blessing for all concerned. There are psychological profiles that could be incorporated into the selection process.

--- Tom Haney, Former SFO Advisor, Canadian Army (Ret)[11]

In discussing the selection processes for advisors to SFOs with Department of Defense, multinational, and interagency colleagues, similar opinions to those expressed in Tom Haney’s email were common.   I also found a common theme in my academic research. General William C. Westmoreland, in a letter to his advisors in 1967 eloquently described the nuances of serving as an advisor.  He wrote, “The training for the military officer is characterized by conditioned traits of decisiveness and aggressiveness.  The essence of your relationship with your counterpart is constituted by patience and restraint.”    A 1957 report from the Korean conflict sums up the criteria that should be looked at as a minimum when choosing an officer to serve in a senior advisory role.

“Personnel selected for such duty must be temperamentally … able to withstand these stresses, in addition to being professionally competent.  Qualities needed include tact, patience, emotional stability, self-sufficiency, self-discipline and …, command and combat experience if possible.” [12]

Bottom line: paper files alone are unable to provide the personality and psychological context needed for an informed selection.  Being a successful commander does not automatically translate into being a successful advisor.

We know from research that selecting the wrong person to serve as an SFO advisor can be incredibly damaging in the pursuit of our strategic objectives.  So how does the Army select advisors for positions where the potential for great success or great loss is a daily reality?  In discussing this question with a representative from the Army’s senior leader development office the following was laid out. 

‘In a few cases, positions are filled through a by name request by a senior mission commander using intuitive reasoning; understanding both the advisory position and personally knowing an officer with the right qualifications for the position. In most instances the theater identifies a position to fill, establishes screening criteria such as former brigade commander, specific branch and rank, etc.  Next, files are selected, dwell time weighted, availability confirmed and a nomination made.  There is no checklist that looks at the intangibles or weights past experience in a position that emphasizes influencing, negotiating or mediating in a foreign environment. Assignments are twelve months and an officer gets anywhere from a month to six months notice, the average is about 120 days.’

Assignment Officer, Senior Leader Development Office[13]

Of the several hundred SFO positions filled annually, the senior mission commander (SMC) is able to match the right advisor to the right SFO intuitively[14] in an undetermined percentage of instances.  For most of the SFO advisory positions, the Army fills the assignment by weighting the selection toward rank, technical expertise, past success in command, dwell time and in some instances a recommendation from another senior officer; but are these the right criteria?   Multiple studies and lessons learned show that in addition to technical expertise, rank and gender; psychological make-up, understanding the environment (i.e. proficiency in interdepartmental and multi-national cooperation in addition to host nation competencies) and tour lengths are critical factors for success.  However, criteria like “psychological evaluation and matching” are not used.  “Cultural understanding” is not given sufficient weight.  And, “tour length” is not established  with specific consideration for the advising mission. 

Current selection models weighted disproportionately on previous command success, technical qualifications and dwell time without tools to determine the proper psychological makeup were noted to be risky strategically, as advisors moved from the “world of command to the world of influence.”[15]  The Ministry Reform Advisor for the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute states; “More than any other position in the military structure , the SFO advisor role implies a relationship between two individuals and that relationship depends more on personality, psychology and intangible factors than it does on a personnel record or technical background.[16]  

Overall, the success of the SFO advisor depends on effecting actions by the foreign official which will ultimately serve the national security of the United States.  Poor selection or matching of personality types — plus insufficient mission preparation and frequent turnover — not only degrades the US and host country relationship, it threatens to undermine the overall success of the strategic mission.   An ill prepared or poorly matched SFO advisor is a strategic risk we cannot continue to underwrite. 

Training and supporting our advisors

Advisors who understand the host nation (HN) culture understand that local politics have national effects.  Effective advisors recognize and use cultural factors that support HN commitment and teamwork.  A good advisor uses the culture’s positive aspects to get the best outcome from…(the advised) leader.

--- FM 3-24, Chap 6[17]

Realizing it is difficult to consistently identify and find SFO advisors with the ideal personality and backgrounds, an investment needs to be made in pre-deployment training. In preparing for contingency operations we understand no two countries are alike and thus we prepare and train for each differently to optimize our chance for success.  The story is no different for soldiers selected to serve as advisors, they must possess specific knowledge of the geography, human terrain, culture, politics, history; unit, institution or Individual being advised, and how the host country views us in order to be effective.

Since 2005, the Army has dedicated a brigade’s training structure[18] to oversee ten weeks of pre-deployment training, a post deployment AAR and reach-back support to its ‘tactical level’ advisory personnel.  Ten weeks encompasses mandatory collective training requirements, socialization and individual readiness tasks; but just as important, is the country specific training on host nation (HN) culture and cross cultural incongruities, a human map of influencers, politics, history, and economy provided by successful former advisors in order to facilitate connecting the new advisors to their HN counterparts.  It is the combination of selection policies, pre-deployment training and “downrange” support that smoothes the progress of rapport development driving success in the tactical level advisory mission.

In stark contrast, for those selected to advise at the ‘strategic level’, the Army has invested little with regard to selection process or CONUS-based mission support and absolutely nothing outside of the individuals experience with regard to formally preparing for the strategic aspects of their mission.  My research shows a typical deployment for a strategic level advisor develops as follows:

• 30-179 days pre-deployment notification (Selectee continues full-time duties in high responsibility, high tempo position, gathers information by email, conducts individual research and invests little to nothing in language skills development)
• Schedules his/her own CRC class date, attends CRC for one week (training provided on theater specific individual readiness requirements)
• FSO deploys and the transition occurs.  Currently, there is no standard procedure.  The FSO can either overlap with their predecessor for a short time or they can immediately assume their duties as advisor.  Transitions vary widely on material covered and time allocated, many are abbreviated driven by time not tasks or learning objectives.
• 60-120 days – Average time into a deployment before most FSOs felt they understood the culture in addition to the mix of HN, Multinational, Interagency and US Military they were required to interact with, influence, or support.   This 60 – 120 day timeframe also describes the average length of time before the advisor established rapport with the senior foreign official.
• 12 months – tour ends, transition occurs with new advisor, out-process CRC.  (No requirement for post utilization debrief, submission of lessons learned, post-utilization tour or availability for future reach back for new advisors  and no flagging of veteran FSOs records with a view toward  leveraging the relationships in the future to speed attainment of national security objectives). 

With no formal training established or organization dedicated to preparing and supporting the strategic advisory mission, personnel selected to advise senior foreign officials are on their own to research relevant information in preparation for their role. As noted above, this is a significant challenge given the selected individuals are already serving as chiefs of staff, senior level commanders, or other high responsibility, high tempo positions.  The duties and responsibilities of these billets preclude truly investing oneself in the required cultural studies, language, interagency research, politics, history, economy, relationships with the US and advising best practices. To complicate matters, there is no published doctrine or centralized repository of information to assist in the preparation which truly takes the task from overwhelming to unmanageable.  Advisors prepare as best they can.  They deploys and stumble through many early introductions and meetings and eventually they understand the demands of their position, building the necessary rapport a quarter or more into their tour. 

But what happens if the advisor either doesn’t understand or lacks empathy for the cultural incongruities, strategic and governmental initiatives, history, politics and personal foibles of the senior foreign official?  What happens when the advisor is similarly insensitive to the outside actors their SFO’s support or compete with for influence?  The results can and have been disastrous, as the advisor is disregarded or even worse, perceived as an adversary; degrading or eliminating our ability to influence the SFO decision making process and negatively impacting our strategic objectives.  The examples below are pulled from the writing of Michael Metrinko, Military Reform Advisor at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute and personal discussions with still practicing senior advisors:

• In a speech before a Pashtun audience, a senior American official decided to lecture them about the error of their ways in continuing to raise opium poppies.  He pointed his finger at the crowd and told them harshly that they should be ashamed of their behavior.  Instead of winning the crowd to his point of view, the reaction was one of anger and extreme resentment, rising all the way to the top of the Afghan government and resulting in very negative publicity.  In the Afghan culture, pointing fingers and using the word “shame” are considered personal insults.[19]

• An Afghan VIP…noted he refused to deal with anyone from International Security Assistance Force Headquarters in Kabul because …They don’t know anything about Afghanistan. [20]

• At a meeting between U.S. and International Rule of Law advisors, and the Afghan Ministry of Justice.  One international official began the discussion by scolding ministry personnel for not having more Afghan Women involved in the discussions even though one was present.  Having committed a major cultural faux pas resulting in the loss of face for the afghan leaders, the meeting suffered considerably and the ability of certain organizations to advance their agendas after this incident was lost completely.[21]
• There was the U.S. Navy O-6 trying to advise the Iraqi, Deputy Minister of the Interior.  The O-6 was a submariner. Nice guy but no frame of reference to MOI-IPS (Iraqi Police Service). And, he was only there six months.  He was discounted by the Iraqis who knew not only his background but the fact that he was leaving after six months. You could say we made little progress in these days as this was not an unusual event.[22]

Optimizing our chances for success

Advising at the strategic level affords us the opportunity to influence, shape, mediate and inform the decision making process and capacities of the individuals and institutions that we serve as advisors for.  We have shown that failure to properly select, prepare and support the personnel serving in these critical positions can lead to strategic failure or missed opportunities that prolong operations costing us time, money and lives.  Described below are actions we can take now to optimize our performance both short and long term:

Selection and Utilization of Advisors: 

In the high stakes mission of SFO advising, nothing less than national security objectives are at stake.  Selecting the best personnel, establishing flexible 15-24 month tour lengths that reduce advisor fatigue for the HN official, and creating reutilization policy for successful advisors will allow them to leverage their evolving cultural competency, their HN and interagency network, and their relationship with senior foreign officials.  Proposals:

• Personnel Selection – Create a psychological assessment for targeted individuals and a 360 assessment to be completed by a requisite number of former colleagues which looks at the individuals desire to conduct the mission, temperament, humility, tact, the ability to build rapport and skill sets in mediation, negotiation and partnering.  A properly constructed assessment will provide greater awareness of candidates who might prove to be inflexible and unyielding or those who would display questionable tact in the senior advising environment.  Supportting such a critical billet with more discriminating selection criteria than is gleaned from command OER’s and other personnel documents would lead to human resource managers and mission commanders who are better equipped to match the right advisor to the identified senior foreign official.

• Tour Length - What should the tour length be for advisors assigned to senior foreign officials?  If it takes 60-120 days to build rapport and become effective at advancing U.S. strategic interests alongside an SFO, then a sixth to a quarter of the tour is lost opportunity.  Interagency SFO advising workshops recommend 24 months to avoid advising fatigue among officials.   General officer level advisors routinely serve 15-24 months in these positions with repeat tours to leverage relationships. I recommend training and leveraging a consistent cadre of senior officers who serve 15-24 months, return to a utilization tour that keeps them connected as a trainer or mentor and then reassigns them back to the same country in the same or a similar position that takes advantage of the confidence and shared personal relationships built in the earlier assignment. The 15-24 month tour length can be done in conjunction with the senior mission commander (SMC) on the ground, similar to a Garrison Commander’s two or three year command determination.  Six months into the advisory mission the SMC meets with the new advisor to review performance, discuss the criticality of continuity with the SFO, and agree to the final tour length.  This allows the human resources command to meet required notification timelines for projected replacements, reduces overall advisor fatigue and provides the SMC an opportunity to leverage outstanding advisor/SFO pairings.
• Establish a formalized relief in place with minimum times and specified tasks to accomplish similar to our expectations for brigade-level commands in theater.  In recognizing the complexity of the task and the criticality of rapport development with both the SFO and numerous agencies, a minimum of 30-45 days should be set aside to ensure an effective transition.
• Assign or dedicate outstanding advisors as part-time trainers for future SFO advisors.  At a minimum, use them as guest lecturers and discussion panelists during SFO advisor training.     

• Create post-utilization tours (identify talent, build and sharpen advisory skills, and re-employ good SFO advisors to leverage their networks and relationships.

• Make being an FSO advisor valuable to the officer.  Tie it in to promotion, coveted assignments post utilization, etc.  Service as an FSO advisor cannot be viewed as a ‘consolation prize’ assignment ILO a “black book” nominative position. (e.g. general or civilian equivalent)

• Provide  interdepartmental and coalition/multinational exposure in the training in the same fashion as above.

Preparing Advisors: 

Few subject matter experts (or successful former commanders) intuitively know how to advise an SFO without at least an introduction to basic principles and techniques.[23] To facilitate self development, ensure a common knowledge base, and speed the process of rapport development the Army should.Immediately create both unclassified and classified central repositories for training materials, SFO advising lessons learned, scholarly articles, and after action reports accessible through portals such as the Center for Complex Operations at National Defense University, Stability Operations Lessons Learned Information Management System (SOLLIMS), Army Knowledge On-line or the Joint Readiness Training Center’s (JRTC) 162^nd Infantry Brigade web-page.

• In addition to the CONUS Replacement Center (CRC) at Fort Benning, have National Defense University serve as the center to conduct Joint, Interagency, Multi-national Senior Leader advisory course training for strategic level assignments. At a minimum, the mandatory pre-deployment training should cover:

• History, culture, politics and economics of the country of assignment
• Interagency coordination: overlapping responsibilities, coordination mechanisms, support networks
• Cultural awareness: recognizing cultural assumptions and biases
• Interpersonal communication: verbal, nonverbal, and interpreter- mediated
• Exerting influence: Empathy versus sympathy, consensus building, respect and humility
• Understanding power relationships: formal, informal, illicit
• Negotiation and mediation: nonviolent dispute resolution
• Problem Solving: interpersonal and institutional
• Organizational development: leadership, planning, implementation, evaluation
• Transition to independent operations: preparations for departure

(Consortium for Complex Operations, Ministerial Advising Workshop, Feb 2009)[24]

•  Adopting best practices from our tactical advisory training, experienced former advisors should be used to provide training, share contextual knowledge and pass on lessons learned. Advisor training should include superiors to assist with expectation management and to develop appropriate means of assessment, feedback and support.  Ideally, training and discussions could include representatives from other government agencies, foreign partners, and non-governmental organizations (NGO).  Interactive interagency training could help provide a strong foundation for coordination during deployment.[25]

• Portions of the proposed training could be provided in-theater, upon arrival or several weeks after to allow for orientation and identification of individual areas that need to be addressed.  In Iraq, Multinational Security Transition Command ran a school for advisors for all newly arriving advisory personnel to provide them a deeper understanding of the current environment at both the macro and micro levels.

• Advising is undertaken by a diverse range of individuals from U.S. and foreign governments, militaries, NGOs, private contractors, and U.N. agencies. These actors have diverse and sometimes competing objectives.  Without coordination or consensus, advisors may find themselves working at cross-purposes. To address this shortfall, I recommend creating a Joint, Interagency, Multi-national Senior Leader Advisory Course to promote networking and mission understanding.  In every discussion I held with former and currently serving SFO advisors, they noted they’d have benefitted greatly from training of this nature

As part of training, ensure our SFO advisors have the chance to fail and learn vicariously by putting them in training scenarios that are challenging, have a measured standard, and are realistic.  Experiential learning might be best in this instance.  That way it won’t be a ‘sit down, take notes, listen to a lecture’ type program.  The program of instruction should  be hard and realistic

Support for Advisors: 

Advisors can often speed the establishment of rapport and create a perception of value to the SFO with proper organizational support.  The ability to reach back to gain timely insight, clarify positions, and harness or help direct resources that positively impact the HN or SFO all build trust and deepen relationships.  In this manner, organizational support directly impacts the two countries relationships and advances our strategic goals.

• Establish and continuously update a mentor and peer support network to enable both projected and currently serving advisors to tap the knowledge and experiences of successful former advisors to SFOs. 

• Establish a research and connectivity section within existing advisory force structure to provide information, intelligence, and links to training, material and finances that are outside the capability of in country support systems. 

Possible reach back solutions include the Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and the 162^nd Infantry Brigade.  Both are natural hubs for coordinating and managing reachback these initiatives by leveraging existing structure and expertise to gain efficiencies and effectiveness.

Conclusion

   Throughout Army history, advising has been critical in the attainment of our strategic objectives.  The ghosts of Vietnam and the emergence of Foreign Internal Defense as a Special Forces mission pushed advising out of the conventional force lexicon in favor of combat operations and rapid transitions to interagency players.  When the scale and complexity of the interventions exceeded the capacity of special operations forces and interagency organizations the Army and Department of Defense reaffirmed stability operations as a core competency.  Embracing the advisory mission was critical to the way forward and changes to personnel policies, doctrine, organizations and training of tactical level advisors allowed more operational synergy and greater effects.  The fix stopped at the tactical level, leaving strategic level advising of individuals and institutions as an ad-hoc process significantly slowing progress toward the attainment of our strategic goals. 

For a position that carries with it enormous responsibility and the possibility of great strategic advantage (and risk) for U.S. interests we should be doing more.  We must learn from our past and ensure future success by implementing the right personnel selection process, appropriate training, and adequate organizational support to optimize the strategic advising mission  for the future. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This article is based on research conducted in the fall of 2010 and winter of 2011.  Interviews and informal discussions were held with military and civilian officials and representatives of international organizations.  For comments and information I am grateful to the interviewees and reviewers, Tom Haney, Gerald Burke, Sam Anderson, Larry Saunders, Robert Killebrew, Nathan Frier, George Woods, Kevin Palgutt and numerous contributors who wish to remain anonymous.

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