Air Command and Staff College Should Contribute to Educating Regional Affairs Strategist Officers
Abstract
The United States has focused its national security strategy on today's interdependent international order to help build and maintain American and global security. This system has been around since the end of WWII and has evolved into one facilitating international cooperation, burden sharing, and accountability. Protecting American citizens is the U.S. Government's number one priority and to accomplish this involves addressing security issues at home and abroad. To achieve this, the U.S. continues to take a collaborative approach by supporting the international system through strong ties with capable partners. The U.S. Joint Forces are prepared to preserve regional stability, render humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and build the capacity of our partners to join with us in meeting security challenges. The United States' increased push to address security concerns in coordination with partner nations places a larger number of military members in untraditional roles. These roles require close interaction with partners and senior U.S. leaders, military and civilian. To fulfill these requirements the Department of Defense (DoD) developed the Foreign Area Officer (FAO) program, creating officers educated in the politics, culture, economics, geography, and language of foreign countries or who have duty experience abroad. The USAFs International Affairs Specialist (IAS) program provides airpower expertise to the DoDs FAO program. IAS officers are developed in two categories, Regional Affairs Officers (RAS) and Political-Military Affairs Officers (PAS). The IAS program faces three substantial challenges: time involved in qualifying RAS officers, effects from budget reductions on RAS qualifications, and increasing demands of RAS certified officers. ACSC can help solve RAS certification problems by offering international relations advanced academic degrees: 1) online, 2) in-residence, and/or 3) in-resident through partnerships with local schools.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1012769
Entities
People
- Shawn E. Coil
Organizations
- Air Command and Staff College