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Oh, for the simple days, when adversaries sent their diplomats to negotiate political disagreements and sent in their armies when talks broke down. Now, a small group of soldiers and civilians are packing themselves this week into the suburban Virginia offices of a major defense contractor to hash out how to make troops more like... diplomats.
A decade in Iraq and Afghanistan has taught the U.S. Army -- painfully -- that the world no longer works that way. There probably aren't going to be any experienced diplomats on hand at Combat Outpost Middle-Of-Nowhere, so soldiers have to engage in DIY Diplomacy. Platoon commanders in their early twenties need to go from directing artillery fire one minute and sipping tea with the potentates of the town they just shelled the next. And their late-twenties company commanders may end up negotiating truces or even alliances of convenience with the bad guys who prompted the artillery barrage in the first place.
That's where something called Unified Quest comes in. Every year, the Army's chief of staff instructs talented mid-career and senior officers and senior enlisted (wo)men to evaluate where the service is falling short -- and propose remedies. On Tuesday, about 120 soldiers and their civilian and foreign-military friends (and even some Marines) swarmed onto the manicured northern Virginia campus of mega-consultant Booz Allen Hamilton to kick off the first four-day debating bull session for Unified Quest 2011, to figure out how best to cultivate the next generation of Army leaders. One answer, hotly debated by the 25 or so soldiers and civilians in attendance: make them better diplomats.
One caveat. This is the first year Unified Quest opened its doors to a blogger. But a condition of that access was that I can't quote any participant by name. The stated rationale is to preserve everyone's ability to throw out wild-eyed ideas. Another rationale is to preserve everyone's ability to throw out wild-eyed ideas that diverge with their bosses' prerogatives.
In room 2011 of the Hamilton building, there's a strong consensus that negotiations ought to be part of the Army's toolkit -- something backed by a ream of recent doctrinal manuals and various short courses in negotiation at the Army's many schools. But soldiers' conceptions of negotiating, especially in a combat setting, diverged sharply on day one of Unified Quest 2011.
"When I was in Iraq," one participant recounted, he heard an officer muse that there were only two ways to negotiate with Iraqis: "Either you put a gun to their head, or you buy them." It was "very unfortunate that no one pushed back," he continued, but he allowed that those were "two strategies," however cynical, to reach an agreement.
An older participant seated nearby shook his head vigorously. "That's not negotiating. That's the same as if I put a division on your doorstep." Real negotiations are about "verbal resolution of conflict."
Another objected: But what about the very fact of being a foreign military in an unfamiliar territory? Isn't the Army's presence inherently coercive?
Ah, but that displays a "skewed view of where power comes from in negotiation," the first participant shot back. "What if you're not necessarily the strongest party?" The room quickly accepted the point -- whether or not they had in mind an experience of learning in Iraq or Afghanistan that their unit wasn't necessarily the strongest tribe.
Others on the panel argued to broaden the scope of what Army negotiations are for. They're not just to persuade opposing or neutral forces. One war veteran remembered, "I spent a lot of time negotiating with my international partner, to get around his national limitations" on engaging in combat. Another pointed out that "it also allows us to build alliances across the interagency" -- an ironic statement, considering that the Army might not be so deeply in the negotiations business if the State Department was more willing and able to send its diplomats out to Combat Outpost Middle-of-Nowhere. (Interestingly, according to one of the conference's public-affairs people, there aren't any State Department representatives participating in Unified Quest.)
Eventually -- by late Thursday, probably -- the negotiations panel will finish negotiating a series of recommendations for how the Army ought to institutionalize teaching soldiers how to negotiate and why. Those recommendations will instruct the Army's organs of professional military education on what to do, written in a form like "The Sergeant Majors Academy should do this..." By next week, Colonel Jeff Vuono, the session leader, will deliver the first round of Unified Quest recommendations to General Martin Dempsey, the commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. After monthly debating sessions on Unified Quest end in April 2011, Dempsey will provide its holistic view on how the Army needs to prepare its next generation to his boss, General George Casey, the Army's chief of staff.
Casey will decide whether to accept and how to implement Unified Quest's instructions on everything from ethics in warfare to cyber operations. The chief is an advocate of Unified Quest -- a photo of his face graces the cover to the Official Unified Quest Looseleaf Binder. Still, convincing him to embed diplomacy as a core "proficiency" of the next round of majors and colonels might take some negotiation.
Credit: U.S. Army
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