What approaches work best to execute Security Cooperation strategies and achieve defense and foreign policy objectives? The saying, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results,” credited to Sir Winston Churchill, is a reminder that a well-developed strategy alone does not yield results. Strategy needs to be executed effectively. The history of Security Cooperation is fraught with both successes and failures, resulting from actions or realities both within and outside our control. DSCU welcomes the opportunity to evaluate and collect lessons learned from decades of DoD Security Cooperation application. Security Cooperation reforms since 2017 have sought to improve the assessment, planning, monitoring, execution, evaluation, and administration of Security Cooperation programs and activities. While progress is being made, more evidence-based research is needed to improve the practice and enable more effective “ways” to achieve the “ends” identified in Security Cooperation strategies. Experienced Security Cooperation practitioners recognize the centrality of the partner, and that the “ways” and the “means” cannot only refer to U.S. efforts. We must also incorporate partner efforts and contributions to achieve shared Security Cooperation objectives.
Some of the key debates around this topic include (list is illustrative, not comprehensive): • Understanding readiness and will to fight of foreign partner forces • Analyzing institutional realities to inform relevant and achievable Security Cooperation plans • Effective methods for co-creation of Security Cooperation approaches with partners • Understanding conditions that have led to Security Cooperation failures and successes • Encouraging responsible and effective employment of capabilities by foreign partners • Enabling foreign partner institutional reforms relevant to achieving shared objectives • Supporting absorption, integration, and sustainment of defense capabilities • Readiness of U.S. defense industrial base in a competitive Security Cooperation environment • Enabling and exercising interoperability for combined operations and planning • Promoting defense reforms consistent with international norms, values, and behaviors • Methods for estimating partner will and absorptive capacity, and applying that knowledge • Cooperation on new or emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence • Interagency coordination on economic development; security sector assistance; democracy, rights, and governance assistance; and diversity, equity, and inclusion assistance programs • Transition from interoperability and access to adopting norm and values • Institutional prerequisites for building cyber institutional capabilities • Improving crisis response preparedness and operational planning • Piggybacking on existing partner reform efforts • Recognizing political, economic, societal, cultural, and security conditions that partners face