Examining Military Governance as a Part of Professional Military Education
Abstract
After the capture of Baghdad in 2003, the expectation was that an Iraqi entity would quickly step forward to begin to fill the role of government in the territory formerly ruled by Saddam Hussein. Instead, there was a power vacuum which the United States--and in particular the United States military--had to fill. Similarly, in Afghanistan, despite the relatively quick identification of Hamid Karzai as the "designated" national leader, it also became clear that the new national government lacked many of the essential capabilities required to actually implement good governance. Again, despite the clear preference of many of today's military officers to have some other entity (whether of the U.S. government, the United Nations, or even nongovernment private contractors) be responsible for doing so, that responsibility initially fell largely, if not exclusively, on U.S. military commanders. Even though the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army, has had a long history of military governance activities, many of those commanders felt unprepared and/or that it was "not really my job." In order to assist selected future senior leaders to be better prepared for such responsibilities, the U.S. Army War College began offering an elective course entitled "U.S. Military Governance Operations, A Historical Perspective." This issue paper briefly outlines the scope of that course and provides reflections regarding military governance developed by students who have participated. While not in any sense an exhaustive examination of either the history of military governance or the totality of the student learning experience, this short paper hopefully provides insights valuable to the broader national security community as well as potentially encouraging its readers to delve more deeply into the topic of military governance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA544532
Entities
People
- Brent Bankus
- James O. Kievit
- Lorelei Coplen
Organizations
- United States Army War College