To help the Army increase the effectiveness of its security cooperation activities, this report examines when Army security cooperation can have the greatest impact, and how the Army should assess, monitor, and evaluate security cooperation.
This report explores the creation of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) system for security cooperation assessment, monitoring, and evaluation (AME) by analyzing existing AME practices inside and outside DoD and proposing an implementation framework.
The U.S. Department of Defense has struggled to assess the progress and effectiveness of its information operations. Best practices across sectors can guide the assessment of these activities and ensure that they help meet national security goals.
This report assesses U.S. efforts in defense institution building (DIB) in Africa and suggests possible improvements to planning and execution. It defines DIB and reviews some best practices from DIB and security sector reform experiences. It also highlights how DIB activities serve U.S. official strategic guidance for Africa.
"Translating security cooperation goals into effective action is challenging, given the multitude of stakeholders, changing political and security environments, and resource limitations. To help ensure that limited security cooperation resources are properly directed for greatest effect, the U.S. Department of Defense has highlighted the need to develop security cooperation objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and results-oriented, and time-bound (SMART). The SMART concept has been used for several decades in the private sector to develop objectives that facilitate assessment, monitoring, and evaluation. This report evaluates DoD's effectiveness in developing SMART security cooperation objectives. It also proposes a systematic approach to developing security cooperation objectives for use by policymakers, planners, program managers, and resource managers. The authors present a detailed evaluation of the extent to which the security cooperation objectives used by U.S. European Command, U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Southern Command meet the SMART criteria, and they recommend changes to improve DoD security cooperation guidance and planning"--Back cover.
The United States has sought to combat security threats in Africa principally by supporting partner governments, and security sector assistance (SSA) has been one of the primary tools it has used. Rigorous evaluations of the overall impact of SSA, however, have been extremely rare. A RAND Corporation study used statistical models to evaluate the impact that U.S.-provided SSA has had on political violence in Africa-in particular, the incidence of civil wars and insurgencies, terrorist attacks, and state repression. The authors found that SSA has had a mixed record. During the Cold War, SSA likely exacerbated instability, leading to a higher incidence of civil wars. During the post-Cold War era, it seems to have had little net effect, likely reflecting recipient-government failures to sustain the capabilities developed through SSA and to harness these capability gains to effective political-military strategies. When SSA has been implemented in conjunction with peacekeeping operations, however, it has had a consistently positive impact across a range of outcomes, including the likelihood of civil war recurrence, the incidence of terrorist attacks, and the extent of state repression. These findings have important implications for future U.S. policies in Africa and potentially beyond.
This open access book focuses on both the theory and practice associated with the tools and approaches for decisionmaking in the face of deep uncertainty. It explores approaches and tools supporting the design of strategic plans under deep uncertainty, and their testing in the real world, including barriers and enablers for their use in practice. The book broadens traditional approaches and tools to include the analysis of actors and networks related to the problem at hand. It also shows how lessons learned in the application process can be used to improve the approaches and tools used in the design process. The book offers guidance in identifying and applying appropriate approaches and tools to design plans, as well as advice on implementing these plans in the real world. For decisionmakers and practitioners, the book includes realistic examples and practical guidelines that should help them understand what decisionmaking under deep uncertainty is and how it may be of assistance to them. Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty: From Theory to Practice is divided into four parts. Part I presents five approaches for designing strategic plans under deep uncertainty: Robust Decision Making, Dynamic Adaptive Planning, Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways, Info-Gap Decision Theory, and Engineering Options Analysis. Each approach is worked out in terms of its theoretical foundations, methodological steps to follow when using the approach, latest methodological insights, and challenges for improvement. In Part II, applications of each of these approaches are presented. Based on recent case studies, the practical implications of applying each approach are discussed in depth. Part III focuses on using the approaches and tools in real-world contexts, based on insights from real-world cases. Part IV contains conclusions and a synthesis of the lessons that can be drawn for designing, applying, and implementing strategic plans under deep uncertainty, as well as recommendations for future work. The publication of this book has been funded by the Radboud University, the RAND Corporation, Delft University of Technology, and Deltares.