Report
Defense Institution Building in Africa
Jan 4, 2016
This report presents an analysis of a range of defense institution building (DIB) programs and activities, recommends a set of goals and objectives for achieving them, identifies partner nation and DIB activity selection criteria, develops a strategy for coordinating DIB activities, and recommends procedures for achieving accountability and assessment.
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A key element in the Department of Defense's Defense Strategic Guidance is building the capacity of partner nations to share the costs and responsibilities of global leadership. To implement this goal, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy uses several security cooperation and assistance programs to work with partner countries to support defense institution building (DIB), i.e., build the capacity of their defense ministries. In addition, the combatant commands engage in DIB in response to the security cooperation focus areas in the Guidance for Employment of the Force. DIB has four primary components — Wales Initiative Funds-DIB, Defense Institutional Reform Initiative, Ministry of Defense Advisors, and Defense Institute of International Legal Studies — but includes all security cooperation activities that develop accountable, effective, and efficient defense institutions. The primary objective of many existing DIB activities is to help partner nations develop and manage capable security forces subject to appropriate civilian control.
This report presents an analysis of a range of DIB activities, recommends a set of goals and objectives for achieving them, identifies partner nation and DIB activity selection criteria, develops a strategy for coordinating DIB activities, and recommends procedures for achieving accountability and assessment. It also identifies the most critical challenges DIB programs will face as they go forward: the inherent complexity of the DIB enterprise, the difficulty of measuring the long-term success of short-term endeavors, and the challenges of selecting partner nations for DIB activities.
Defense institution building roles and responsibilities are not adequately defined at the program and project levels.
Involvement of partner nations in setting DIB objectives at the combatant command level is inconsistent.
DIB programs have developed processes for selecting countries and prioritizing their DIB activities.
More and better coordination mechanisms are needed to avoid the implementation of redundant security cooperation programs.
The principle of "unity of command" is lacking in the DIB community.
Although the entire DIB community has expended considerable effort at developing suitable methods to measure the progress of their investments, there is some unevenness in the approaches.
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Defense Institution Building Goals, Objectives, and Guidance
Chapter Three
Selecting and Prioritizing Partner Nations
Chapter Four
Harmonizing DIB and Other Security Cooperation Activities
Chapter Five
Roles and Responsibilities
Chapter Six
Assessment: Monitoring, Tracking, and Evaluating DIB Activities
Chapter Seven
Conclusions
Appendix A
DIB and DIB-Related Programs
Appendix B
Management of Defense Institution Building Programs
Appendix C
Interview Protocols
This research was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.
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