Comprehensive Security Engagement: A Framework to Compete with the Kremlin
By Colonel Jason P. Gresh, U.S. Army
Editor's Note: Colonel Gresh's thesis won the FAO Association writing award at the U.S. Army War College. The Journal is pleased to bring you this outstanding scholarship.
Introduction
As the nature of conflict changes, governments can either change their approach to meet these challenges or simply muddle through, causing confusion in the process. The U.S. National Defense Strategy pegs itself to a concept of competition with Russia and China, without pinpointing the focus of the competition itself. In addition to helping inform the national discussion to answer this question, DoD must fulfill changes at the operational level to support the “continuum of competition.” This work will examine our efforts vis-à-vis Russia and how U.S. European Command can structure itself better to increase U.S. influence abroad, strengthen international partnerships, and contribute to regional security by informing and shaping activities which deter Russian coercive and harmful activity. It will put forward a concept of comprehensive security engagement, which incorporates existing efforts such as security sector assistance and other interagency activities, and why it must prevail to counter the threats we face and advance our interests and values. The revised structure aptly addresses contemporary threats, since it offers revised structure and processes to deliver more applicable and informed costs to our adversary that may dampen the risk of pure military escalation. Comprehensive security engagement requires three components to be successful – genuine interagency dialogue, security cooperation, and a multinational approach. It concludes by suggesting how these changes can inform our broader strategic culture.
Any struggle for one’s interests can only become sufficiently conscious and consistent when its goals have been clarified.
--Aleksandr A. Svechin
The U.S. Department of Defense, now on the brink of shedding its overwhelming focus on counter-terrorism efforts for the past two decades, faces an existential crisis. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) outlined an ambitious vision of ‘great power competition,’ but it dedicates more attention to the activity rather than the purpose of this activity. The NDS notes that it disapproves of Russia’s desire to “shatter NATO and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor,” but it fails to define what is in the U.S.’ favor. The National Security Strategy (NSS) similarly defines what we don’t want: a weakening of U.S. influence and Russia’s intent to “divide us from our allies and partners.”
The newfound focus on competition should be a competition for influence, and a chance for the U.S. to propagate our values and defend our interests abroad. If we wish to exert our influence with our allies and partners, we should rely on the values that make our influence compelling in the first place: democratic and representational governments; supported by a series of freedoms and safeguarded through an interdependent and multinational security ‘blanket.’ Such a philosophy depends on our ability to play to our strengths, such as the application and concentration of military force; but also acknowledge our shortfalls, like those options short of conflict to retain and increase our influence. Our competition should also transparently acknowledge a desire to advance our economic interests, rooted in international norms that acknowledge a global interdependency. Since contemporary competition increasingly involves non-military methods, our nation must embrace a wider set of options to preserve our alliances and defend our interests.
This work suggests one framework to help us compete. DoD’s dominant role in the application of our foreign policy paradoxically makes it an ideal spot to inculcate a new strategic culture that acknowledges that contemporary warfare is based on many more non-military inputs and factors. Our geographic combatant commands (GCC) could act as a central repository to leverage interagency strength, acting as the security lifeline for embassies at the ‘front,’ and greatly influencing the trajectory of our military actions abroad.
Such adjustments in our engagement abroad might offer de-escalatory pathways to reduce the risk of conflict in Eastern Europe. It could potentially highlight other means to rebalance our foreign policy away from strict military methods. Allied and Partner expertise and experience, coupled with broader U.S. tools and resources aimed to strengthen the Transatlantic bond, can work in concert to strengthen democracy, curb authoritarianism, and increase prosperity. In short, implementing a comprehensive and inter-agency-staffed entity at the geographical combatant command level can contribute to preventing conflict and strengthening societies to meet a host of ‘gray zone’ threats that would undermine our interests.
Why Change?
The National Defense Strategy (NDS) has already laid the groundwork to help focus our efforts towards great power competition. The 2018 NDS has brought renewed vigor towards readiness and modernization of a force prepared for great power competition with Russia and China, while acknowledging the importance of strategic partnerships to support this goal. While the NDS rightfully reorients the force on existential questions, focusing on the concept of ‘competition’ deserves more attention. Competition requires a broader focus than through a strictly military lens, and must include the other elements of national power that our adversaries seem all too willing to exploit. DoD must weave economic, trade, informational, and diplomatic factors together to inform security strategy. Since adversaries increasingly manipulate these factors for a coercive effect, DoD must learn to start thinking about warfare as an interdisciplinary endeavor. DoD can implement a structural change, invigorating a strategic culture that could elevate non-military means to advance U.S. interests and values abroad. Such a rebalance will help us more effectively meet the threat from Russia.
U.S. security abroad is strengthened by many instruments, not just military ones. While this work will not address the challenges presented by a potential imbalance of U.S. security policy that has been decades in the making, it is worth noting that the DoD budget has enjoyed a consistently high percentage of national discretionary spending since the late 80s. This and other factors point to a growing tendency in our government to look to DoD to solve our foreign challenges. In Fiscal Year 2020, the DoD budget was $738 billion, representing a 4.9% increase over the previous year. The DoD Comptroller justified this growth by pointing to the global power aspirations of both Russia and China, citing their desire for “military parity with the U.S. in a potential future, high-end conflict.” By citing competition as an imperative for defense purposes, the U.S. focuses on the resources and capabilities needed to not only militarily compete - in terms of readiness and technology - but win in large scale combat operations.
This work does not argue against the need for prudent military preparation to meet military threats from both Russia and China. Recent defense initiatives specifically aimed at demonstrating U.S. resolve in the European theater, are needed. Other military actions, operations, and investments to improve our posture in Europe and plan for possible contingencies must also continue. But to compete more comprehensively, and to deny Russia the space to exert its influence, DoD could implement changes that could encourage a broader definition of competition that finds the right ‘space’ to deny. This is a change that will help the U.S. deter Russia by adjusting our command structure to “pull together the different strands of activity so that they [reinforce] rather than [contradict] each other.” Often, the space that requires more energy and resources to properly deter cannot be addressed through military means alone. This is especially so with Russia.
As other scholars have noted, deterrence ‘by denial’ is not just about the relative military balance. It must incorporate non-military voices and tools that help us compete, even at the operational level. Although real military threats remain, the U.S. has faced more acute challenges to its attraction and power economically, diplomatically, and most importantly, in the cognitive-information domain. Integrating the GCC structure to incorporate interagency expertise will help us harden that space, increase the costs to Russia, and divert attention away from strict military operations – the domain with which Russia is historically familiar and at times comfortable. In Eastern Europe, Russia arguably poses an equal if not more acute threat via more opaque statecraft and military maneuvers, by exerting political coercion, leveraging economic advantages, and waging information warfare. They often use sophisticated cyber tools to do so. These are the methods and ‘spaces’ that merit our current focus.
The reason to orient on other non-military - arguably ‘soft power’ - tools is because this is a more appropriate means to mitigate the threat. Russia’s core interest in Eastern Europe is not necessarily military dominance, but political hegemony over their near abroad - one that approximates their imperialistic history and influence. Moreover, Russia fears that western democratic institutions in its self-professed ‘near abroad’ would threaten its own regime stability as if by osmosis. This is why the Ukrainian crisis in 2013-14 proved to be such a tipping point. The Ukrainian ‘Maidan’ revolution – a grassroots uprising angry at the direction that the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine was taking - frightened Russia so much that it deployed its arsenal of hybrid tools – little green men, information warfare, and overwhelming economic coercion – before ratcheting up the pressure via proxy forces in the Donbass. This approach reflected both their desire for change in Ukraine and betrayed their limitations in attaining this change. Russia was hoping that these actions would produce a counter-revolution to oust the ‘illegitimate coup,’ and restore a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. From Tsarist times through the Soviet Union to present day, the overwhelming concern for the Kremlin has been regime stability and preservation. Although he was describing the Soviet State, George Kennan’s description of the “instinctive sense of insecurity” still resonates today. A more balanced security policy that acknowledges this fact is more appropriate if we seek to stabilize this bilateral relationship. The policy should impose costs commensurate with the particular dangers, invest in activities which improve the resilience of the nations at threat, and simultaneously increase the interests-based influence of the U.S. In this way, we compete in that region in a more comprehensive manner, and not purely in a military framework that Russia understands very well.
Underpinnings of Comprehensive Security Engagement
If the United States wishes to compete with states such as Russia, the U.S. must do so comprehensively, focused on its core interests, and aligned according to its values, ultimately seeking to increase its influence with Allies and partners. This competition with Russia must demonstrate that the U.S. is interested in contributing to security, investing in economic prosperity, and dedicated to democratic values which strengthens societies and peoples’ freedom. The U.S. must not simply mirror adversary capabilities but compete proactively. In Europe, like other parts of the world, the competition for influence is happening now. Europe is a prominent source of much of our heritage and together, “it is the largest and wealthiest market in the world, accounting for one-third of world GDP in terms of purchasing power and half of total global personal consumption.” U.S. security is strengthened when its European partners are resilient, prosperous, and sovereign. Their inherent strength preempts the need for constant and direct U.S. military intervention. U.S. military posture can reinforce and may deter Russian coercive activity, though it is just one tool among many that the U.S. can bring to bear. Furthermore, outright military activity is risky, since it must be applied in a sophisticated manner to neither unintentionally escalate with our adversary nor constrain our foreign policy options.
To compete comprehensively, the U.S. must bring experts from across the interagency together to form a common operating picture of the threat that we face and introduce steps to change our strategic planning culture. The comprehensive nature of this approach also naturally lends itself to a longer-term view of our strategic interests, which helps reinforce our ability to view competition as a continuum. Comprehensive solutions take years and decades of iterative processes to develop, refine, and adjust. More and more, we face threats that lie just below the surface – threats that don’t manifest themselves with armed incursions or little green men. These threats include political and economic coercion, information warfare, cyber and space threats, as well as disguised forces. To confront these threats and impose commensurate costs which resonate with our adversary without unintentionally feeding the cycle of potential military escalation, an interagency cell – situated at the operational level – could synthesize the interwoven indications and warnings into a picture that would lead to more sophisticated responses from the Europe-focused GCC, European Command (EUCOM).
Some naturally point to the National Security Council staff to be the proper repository of interagency expertise. The NSC staff, created as a result of the 1947 National Security Act, was the first significant step to help the U.S. government make more holistic, interagency recommendations to confront issues of national security. A number of reforms and adjustments have been implemented by various Presidents over the years. President Obama greatly expanded the NSC, to a point where many lamented the sclerotic nature of national security decision-making. President Trump has taken a different tactic, greatly reducing the size of the staff and number of functional bodies within the staff. While it is certainly the prerogative of Presidents to adjust the NSC to their political philosophies, the result is that the NSC has increasingly been seen as political and, to a degree, dysfunctional. Creating an entity at the operational level, sheltered from political winds and staffed with expertise from across the interagency, could synthesize indications and warnings, as well as inform and recommend appropriate security sector assistance.
CSE also requires genuine engagement with allies and partners. This elevates the traditional activity bundled under ‘theater security cooperation (TSC)’ and raises it to a more profound and meaningful level. Although TSC is a worthy effort in principle, in practice, its impact has been diluted by the wide range of activities that it encompasses. While TSC does encompass worthy security assistance efforts that often builds genuine military capabilities in geostrategic locations, too often than not, it becomes subsumed by other priorities and lacks an imperative that links it to operational goals. Simply changing a name will not change the usage, and this will require our military establishment to understand the contemporary nature of conflict and how security sector assistance can meaningfully contribute to U.S. security objectives. The new approach will require increased genuine engagement and cooperation with allies and partners in the region that can help meet collective security goals. With the competition imperative in the NDS, it is an opportune moment for DoD to introduce these concepts into our military lexicon and strategic culture. Senior leaders across the DoD enterprise consistently point to the importance of ‘security cooperation’ to both reach our objectives and reduce the need to directly employ U.S. forces to achieve these ends.
This work will argue along three lines. First, for CSE to be effective, there must be more interagency representation and leadership at the GCC level - applying varied threat perspectives, synthesizing information, building a running estimate of the threats in various regions - which then inform recommendations on the scale and scope of security sector assistance to bolster our allies and partners. This will not supplant the work of frontline embassies, but bolster their daily efforts, as well as create better connectivity between the application of military instruments and traditional statecraft. There will be situations where the maxim of ‘best military advice’ dictates a non-military approach. Second, existing security cooperation efforts should be subsumed into this new inter-agency framework. By doing so, EUCOM can elevate its critical ‘partnering’ function to a separate directorate and impart it with the importance that it merits, while placing it into a cross-functional entity that more appropriately understands the full spectrum of partnership. Finally, DoD should synchronize these efforts with allies and partners for it to be effective. Comprehensive Security Engagement requires commitment from the nations in which this activity takes place. Synthesizing these components can better inform the established DoD Assessment, Monitoring, and Evaluation process to candidly address host nation commitment to our efforts. During this process, it might inform alternate options to mitigate the threat. Our allies and partners often understand the threat with more nuance than we do and must mitigate it daily.
Building an Interagency Operational Team
Our national security apparatus has bespoke entities to handle regional threats and advance U.S. interests. For DoD, these are the Geographic Combatant Commands. GCCs are typically in charge of integrating air, land, maritime, and amphibious military forces under their command in the pursuit of U.S. national security objectives. However, over the years, security cooperation has played an increasingly vital role for our national security. Notably after 2001, EUCOM focused on garnering support among European allies for missions associated with the global war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in other locations. The focus then was to leverage security cooperation activities and resources to enable our allies and partners to share the burden of this mission. Since the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the meaning of ‘European security’ has undergone a paradigm shift. EUCOM has focused on the correct posture and planning needed to deter Russian military advances in eastern Europe and support NATO while performing enduring missions such as support to Israel, ongoing support to other global operations, and strengthening relationships with Allies and Partners.
The introduction of ‘great power competition’ opens a unique window to leverage security cooperation and introduce modest structural changes to pursue operational goals. The concept of ‘competition’ was mentioned in the 2018 NDS to serve as a focal point for future investment, without specifying the type of investment. For strategic competition to be effective, it should harness those existing COCOM activities, operations, and investments that use U.S. resources to cooperate with and strengthen our allies and partners. This includes a range of activities from small scale familiarization events that bring together military officers to share best practices to concentrated efforts such as train and equip programs, section ‘333’ building partner capacity programs, and overseas military construction to improve U.S. posture. By hardening our allies and partners, we deter Russia by denying them the opportunities to exert malign activity in vulnerable sectors.
DoD should adapt its operational-regional architecture to incorporate diverse viewpoints from across the interagency to better populate running estimates and inform decision-making. Since the COCOMs are the repository for most operational plans, a natural place to station more diverse expertise to inform the scope and scale of our competition with Russia is EUCOM. Focusing the interagency efforts at EUCOM would take advantage of an existing structure – the J9 ‘interagency’ directorate – while avoiding the unnecessary creation of a separate ‘operational NSC-like’ structure, whose roles and responsibilities risk conflation with the existing U.S. policy apparatus.
Placing more interagency expertise inside the COCOM is not an attempt to supersede the NSC staff, nor should it warrant new resources or authorities. More importantly, DoD should focus on reforming its own internal decision-making process and command relationships. Here, the glass must be broken to innovative, empowering a cross-functional team to formulate EUCOM ‘competitive’ measures. As mentioned before, the NSC’s shape and scope will always reflect an administration’s priorities and outlook, so implementing structural changes within DoD’s capacity is a prudent measure to adapt its own institutions in the interim. It is a necessary adaptation reflecting the nature of contemporary conflict, and an attempt to bridge some of the past divides between interagency institutional planning timelines, outlooks, and capabilities. The U.S. should not and cannot replicate powers like Russia and China in their ability to bring about security decisions in a swift and uniform manner – to do so would run afoul of our democratic structure. However, by placing more interagency expertise at the COCOM level, we introduce one way of changing the strategic culture of our military institution by introducing more varied options and tools to achieve our objectives.
The existing structure of the EUCOM J9 directorate has some interagency representation already, but these representatives awkwardly sit in an organization known as the Joint Interagency Counter-Trafficking Center, or JICTC, which reports to the J9 director. The JICTC was originally designed in 2011 to counter trafficking in illicit goods in the EUCOM area of responsibility. The remainder of the J9 is functionally organized to look at ‘transnational’ threats such as illicit financing, terrorism, and opportunities for civ-mil engagement. A more unified approach is needed. By restructuring the J9 along regional and applicable functional lines, while empowering these interagency representatives to speak for their agencies, DoD has an opportunity to form a structure designed to inform how we can compete with Russia more comprehensively. The J9 already has Treasury, Justice, Coast Guard, and State Department reps. These should be sustained and directed towards applicable functional efforts – counter-illicit finance and border security, for example. The State Department should reconfigure its existing representation at the GCC to include Political-Military bureau reps, who oversee Title 22 security assistance, and the Global Engagement Center, which helps analyze and track worldwide informational trends. Finally, a Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) representative would be helpful to navigate and improve our defense industrial relationship in the European theater, and expertise from the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) would help better inform and improve technology release processes with a sophisticated customer base in Europe.
Case study – Improving Eastern Europe Border Security
Border security provides a useful case study for the difficult landscape that the U.S. now encounters abroad. Recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been pursuing an increased role in Eastern Europe by advocating for increased data sharing with U.S. Allies, while helping nations like Latvia shore up border security to prevent ‘hybrid threats’ from further materializing into more acute political and security threats. The challenge of enacting strong border security in these nations is one that transcends traditional Ministry lines. Traditional border security involves law enforcement bodies in each of these countries to enforce EU and national immigrationand cross-border traffic. Yet large swathes of the border are vulnerable to more nefarious infiltration, which raises the specter of hybrid activity which could be used to set conditions for hostile activity - much akin to how Russians and Russian-affiliated groups infiltrated the Ukraine-Russian border in the eastern regions of Ukraine to stir up activity in 2014. Hence this is a problem that requires both hardened law enforcement practices and military preparations for other contingencies. Both capabilities contribute to security in Eastern Europe and the U.S. Previously, DHS would convene working groups in these countries to discuss these threats at irregular intervals. However, U.S. ability to coherently advocate for these strengthened measures is greatly limited amidst short DC attention spans and a strictly military view of security from EUCOM. Fusing this challenge with appropriate experts at the J9, looking holistically and regionally to achieve desired effects, would bring greater coherence to this effort. We must adapt our own organization to be more agile in assessing these threats and recommending a wide array of options to mitigate them. Russia has no problem exploiting gaps in border security, as long as they won’t face credible resistance and obstacles in their way.
Elevating Security Cooperation
An improved structure to leverage interagency expertise at the GCC is one part of Comprehensive Security Engagement; empowering it with the range of tools resident in security cooperation authorities is the other. Senior OSD officials have recently called for a “coordinated strategy for Allies and Partners.” The perfect vehicle for this is via the range of activities offered by security cooperation, or more broadly, security sector assistance. This range of tools incorporates all Title 10 (DoD) and Title 22 (State) authorities, as well as all interactions between DoD officials and foreign defense establishments. All security cooperation activities, to one degree or another, require the consent, sustainment, and support of the host nations in which they are executed. To achieve realistic and sustainable security objectives in any part of the world, the U.S. must embrace this fact. Orienting a newly empowered entity inside EUCOM outwards towards partnering and engagement with allies and partners will add an operational imperative to security cooperation. Doing so would remove the ‘partnering’ function away from the J5 – the plans and policy directorate- and consolidate these activities inside the J9, where they would merge with an interagency outlook.
Freeing the J5 of this function will both broaden EUCOM’s outlook on security cooperation and greatly broaden the scope of the activities it encompasses, so that it doesn’t strictly focus on military shortfalls. Currently, security cooperation is seen as a tool to mitigate the gaps in U.S. military capabilities. EUCOM has greatly refined and focused the trajectory of title 10 security assistance by aiming for convergence with NATO capability targets and using operational plans to inform capability gaps in its theater. This is a constructive approach, but it risks a security cooperation perspective focused only on conventional military shortfalls. For example, the focus on maritime domain awareness and integrated air and missile defense requires leadership and advocacy from across the DoD enterprise, but also commitment from the nations where these capabilities would be resident, which has implications beyond strict military measures. Concentration on military capabilities risks overlooking other critical shortfalls, such as improved cyber security, transparency to combat illicit financing, and the information and communication needed to complement the fielding of these requirements. While sometimes categorized as ‘enabling’ functions, they all are required to support the employment of weapon systems and they all require expertise outside of normal military channels.
Furthermore, consolidating security cooperation activities in the J9 mirrors our framework already taken at all of our embassies, and adds clarity to an endeavor for which our partners and allies are the focal point. Our relationship with our allies and partners is already executed at an interagency level, shepherded by the State Department, and working as a cross functional team, digesting inputs and applying daily doses of diplomatic tools based on the exigencies of the moment. Consolidating the range of security activities that underpins this relationship under a higher operational body adds a ‘security lifeline’ to our Embassies in theater, who are nobly executing this work daily but might not be aware of the regional picture. Consolidating this expertise in the J9 more ably helps EUCOM and the embassies reinforce each other.
Furthermore, the J5 is already task-burdened in its current structure and requires focus to digest national planning documents and integrate planning not only with the service components, but with certain allies and partners interwoven with NATO realities. The J5 is currently responsible for integrating certain global DoD plans, formulating regional ones (in concert with NATO), addressing transnational threats such as WMD, recommending correct DoD posture in Europe, and digesting national and DoD policy to guide EUCOM senior leader interactions with foreign officials. Security cooperation is too important to be yet another task for the J5.
Moving security cooperation activities into the J9 is the fuel needed to produce a framework for comprehensive security engagement. Correctly structured, it could create a GCC ‘cross functional team (CFT)’ that serves as the repository of inter-agency strength, albeit focused on the European AOR. Staffed with appropriate expertise, this CFT could synthesize capability shortfalls from Allies and Partners and prioritize the most effective to meet EUCOM lines of effort, grounded in an existing assessment, monitoring, and evaluation (AM&E) process. More assigned expertise from not only inside DoD, but across the inter-agency, is needed to help refine specific security requirements for the region. More diverse U.S. experts (Missile Defense Agency, State, FAA, etc.) are needed to help drive missile defense capabilities generation for the Baltics, maritime domain awareness experts (Coast Guard, DHS, NGIA, etc.) for the Black Sea, and logisticians (State, TRANSCOM, etc.) to help refine dual-use infrastructure projects across Europe. And this doesn’t even factor in the valuable input from European bodies and governments.
Once this unity of effort is established, it will likely bear out needed execution improvements, resulting in activities that are both more effective, feasible, and sustainable. For example, services have created bespoke ‘Building Partner Capacity’ (BPC) units. Consolidating security cooperation missions in these units creates efficiencies, which should eliminate extraneous military-to-military familiarization and training activities which put a burden on other assigned forces in the service components and potentially detract from unit readiness. The Army continues to develop and man Security Force Assistance brigades (SFAB), one of which will likely focus on the EUCOM area of responsibility. The Air Force has similarly invested in the development of the Contingency Response Support Squadron, which notes includes a “newly dedicated building partnership capacity function of trained and certified Air Advisors [providing] the group with the capability to perform theater security cooperation events...” Elevating security cooperation also elevates the AM&E process and help bring about potential refinement. The CFTs in the J9 could direct requirements via the J2 to aid DoD understanding of the effectiveness of these security cooperation programs, hopefully reorienting Defense Attaché Offices towards COCOM lines of effort.
Empowering a Multinational Approach
Improving our structure is only one half of the coin to bring about more effective deterrence vis-à-vis Russia. Listening to our allies and partners and incorporating their constraints and capability assessments are equally important. Security cooperation programs are only as effective as is the recipient nations’ ability to support and sustain them over a prolonged period. While much has been centered on the burden sharing discussion to increase European investment in NATO capabilities, it is also equally telling that Allies have chosen to invest moderate amounts heretofore, which – right or wrong – might reflect a different threat assessment. Europeans must prioritize security as an imperative more than the United States for our collective efforts to be successful. By elevating the partnering function to its own operational directorate, DoD can invigorate emphasis on a new framework from which to assess the relative value of various security cooperation efforts with allies and partners. As such, it would support a comprehensive strategy for our Allies and partners that some would argue is currently missing.
We already have entities in most countries that facilitate U.S. efforts to listen to local concerns, understand their threat estimates, and liaise to create desirable effects for U.S. security. These ‘military diplomatic’ efforts are exerted by Defense Attaché Offices and Security Cooperation Offices (SCO) throughout Europe and other areas of the world. However, DoD should devote more work to convene and synchronize its (at times disparate) efforts abroad. Since the SCO answers to the GCC, that command could do more to embrace the military diplomatic power of this entity. Too often, SCOs take policy direction and guidance from the DSCA at the detriment of operational and strategic guidance that only the GCC can adequately distill. In practice, SCOs must answer to both, but too often SCOs are left to their own devices to digest GCC priorities. This situation often creates an imbalanced incentive structure whereby countries with the largest number of foreign military sales inevitably get the most attention. DoD recognizes this dilemma and the challenges it presents to presenting a unified front abroad, but more could be done. DoD must empower all of its military representation abroad to advocate for acquisition, operational, and strategic policy – these offices cannot afford to be firewalled from each other. Synchronizing SCOs with the DAOs will also help the host country understand primacy for certain policy matters and aid the bilateral relationship. Our defense officials at embassies abroad should be the primary conduit for U.S. defense matters for that nation. When foreign militaries place liaison officers at the COCOM headquarters, it undermines the message and power of our DAOs and SCOs. Obvious but difficult solutions must also be addressed to aid the power of these offices, such as providing all SCOs reliable and constant access to Combatant Command secure networks.
Recognizing the inherent advantage of our transatlantic bond to elevate collective security is imperative. Not only does the U.S. and much of Europe share interests in developing common defense solutions, but it is because of these shared interests that security cooperation efforts can be so consequential. Existing research has produced helpful guides to conceptually understand a framework for conditionality and help predict why some security cooperation efforts are more effective than others. When the U.S. undertakes security cooperation with partners and allies that possess a similar culture, democratic institutions, and political outlook, our efforts have more of an impact. NATO and many European nations represent some of the strongest Allies in the world. These alliances are the result of deep relationships based on shared heritage and centuries of shared experiences, from which institutions rooted in aligned values were formed. It would be wise to double down on security cooperation in Europe – in the long run, it will bring about the biggest return on investment since these efforts are more likely to be sustained by countries that share our interests and values. Furthermore, these shared values produce sophisticated partnerships, resulting in information sharing, research and development collaboration, and interoperability.
Case Study: Embracing Allied-driven responses to deterrence: MND-N
An example of a case where Allies have put forward and committed to a capability gap that merits support is the nascent command structure known as Multinational Division-North, or MND-N. The initiative, led by Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia, envisions a Division level headquarters based in the Baltics to execute operational planning and exercise command and control over selected assigned forces from those same nations. The Division level headquarters, now based in Riga, Latvia, resulted after several years of advocacy and is codified in a letter of intent signed by the three nations, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania. The formation of MND-N represents the natural evolution of NATO Force Structure and is the ideological evolution of the original NATO Force Integration Units (NFIUs). The new structure represents an entirely bottom-up initiative, emblematic of regional collaboration, to help bolster defense and resilience for the region. Properly manned, it would be a working structure to allow these nations to candidly assess defense gaps, and consequently plan to make up these shortfalls either nationally, regionally, or when appropriate, from outside the region. Being fully invested in the defense of the eastern flank of NATO is nowhere more important than in that eastern flank itself. Supporting MND-N with appropriate staff officers and advisors will rightly focus the onus of defense matters on the nations being defended. This forces the participating nations to look at themselves first for solutions. When they cannot be found or reasonably generated, it informs the scale and orientation of any potential assistance efforts, grounded by local expertise and guided by the principle that the assistance must lead to indigenous solutions. Simply put, MND-N could not only be a multinational headquarters to inform defense planning for the region, but a vehicle through which to discuss and propose solutions for joint capability development. These homegrown, multinational solutions, cannot help but inform our efforts to compete in that same region.
Moreover, we already possess the expertise needed to understand the symbiotic nature of contemporary competition. Defense Attaché Offices and SCOs are increasingly manned with Foreign Area Officers (FAO) - officers who are regionally oriented and professionally trained to understand cultural, economic, and political sensitivities of the host nation. FAOs are positioned forward to advocate for interoperability, implement security cooperation programs in support of COCOM lines of effort, and synchronize security sector assistance between the Departments of Defense and State. These officers come from assignments that puts them in more routine contact with other members of the interagency and are a natural DoD linkage to understanding competition abroad. In many cases, FAOs are quite literally embedded with host nation military institutions, which affords them a unique vantage point to articulate U.S. objectives and listen to host nation constraints and concerns every day.
Conclusion
In order to compete with Russia, we first must ask ourselves what we are competing for. Today, this question has not been sufficiently explored. While more rigor is required to face down this existential dilemma, our competitive means must be broadened for the range of eventualities across the security spectrum. This work offers a modest proposal to help guide our strategic approach via the empowerment of a single regionally-focused headquarters, EUCOM, incorporating structural adjustments that may also have wider peer command application.
The U.S. should be competing for influence abroad, because its strength also depends on the depth and breadth of our overseas relationships. Both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy affirm this. U.S. influence should overtly advance our economic prosperity, promote democratic ideals, and deter our adversaries from actions that threaten stability, prosperity, and democracy. Our actions must confidently project these values and not shy away from them. Adversaries have pursued their interests by relentlessly expanding their influence with information warfare as well as via economic and political coercion. The U.S. should not merely react to these developments, but project its own values and interests, and not be afraid to do so.
The U.S. must approach its way to compete for influence not simply by comparing ourselves with the adversary, but by doubling down on the powerful, diverse, and value-based expertise at our fingertips. It must not merely approximate its adversaries’ methods in form but remember what makes us strong. Implementing a diverse interagency approach at the operational level makes use of our inherent national strengths, our diverse civilian and military expertise, and informs the shape and trajectory of what could ultimately be a new grand strategy. Comprehensive Security Engagement implements a structure to intellectually reflect the ‘hybrid’ nature of war and imports a change into the military’s strategic culture. It conceptually connects our means (security cooperation) to our desired ends (strengthened strategic relationships), while admitting that we don’t have all the answers, and must rely on interagency expertise and our Allies and partners to fill the gaps. To compete effectively, DoD can lead structural change to mitigate threats and advance our interests, but it requires a humility to admit that it is impossible to do so on its own.