Author Description

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been an integral part of theAmerican consciousness for most of the new millennium. Militarysuccesses-and failures-have dominated the headlines. Names suchas Tora Bora, Abbottabad, Abu Ghraib, and Fallujah, unknown to theAmerican public (and even regional specialists at the Pentagon andFoggy Bottom) a decade ago, have become catchphrases for a newgeneration of political and military analysts. Yet perhaps the mostenduring legacy of US involvement in these wars has been the evolutionof US military doctrine and the concomitant growth of the whole-ofgovernmentapproach that puts stability operations and civil affairs onequal footing with combat operations.The whole-of-government approach is defined as "one where a governmentactively uses formal and/or informal networks across the differentagencies within that government to coordinate the design andimplementation of the range of interventions that the government'sagencies will be making in order to increase the effectiveness of thoseinterventions in achieving the desired objectives."1 While these principleshave exerted influence in national security strategies in the UnitedStates and among NATO other organizations since the mid-twentiethcentury, the concept was distilled early in the first decade of this century.It underlays work on stability operations, "complex operations,"peacebuilding, and counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.