Maneuver Self Study Program

Why do Global and Regional Security Issues Matter to Maneuver Leaders?

Maneuver leaders must understand global and regional security issues in depth, breadth, and context in order to know how their actions affect and influence their area of operations and must ensure that their subordinates understand this relationship as well. The tenets of mission command require the commander to understand, visualize, describe, direct, lead, and assess operations while trusting the competency of subordinates to show disciplined initiative. Maneuver leaders will not be able to execute operations with the requisite understanding, precision, and skills to accomplish the mission, unless they understand the specific regional contexts of their area of operations.

Global and Regional Security Issues

“And, perhaps most importantly, regional conflicts will again and again confront us with a cruel choice between costly engagement and costly indifference.”
- Lord Robertson

Over the last two decades, the United States military has responded to conflicts and humanitarian disasters on six of the world’s continents and fought in two protracted wars. Often, these deployments were in response to a rapidly developing situation that required adaptable leaders to understand and operate in a foreign culture and to operate in existing conflicts with deep historical roots. To effectively operate in such environments, leaders must understand the existing power structures, local political dynamics, and history of the area.

Understanding the various operational and mission variables of an environment is the critical first step in military operations. It ensures we are asking the right questions and develops the political and strategic context in which maneuver leaders must operate. In short, maneuver leaders must study a variety of global and regional security issues in depth, breadth, and context. Developing a detailed understanding of a particular region cannot be accomplished without prior preparation. While it is impossible to predict the next location to which U.S. forces will deploy, it is possible and necessary to practice the art of studying global and regional security issues broadly. The factors that contribute to conflict and differences in culture are consistent throughout history and across the globe. The ability to identify and affect these factors to achieve lasting, positive outcomes can be developed through the study of specific areas. The Army’s transition to regionally-aligned forces reinforces this approach. Units will focus on a particular region of the globe; study its history, current events, actors, and cultural norms. This does not just prepare the unit to respond to a specific crisis within the region, but it educates leaders and Soldiers in the art of how to respond.

How to Approach the Study of Global and Regional Security Issues:

Leaders should approach this topic the same way they would approach the first two steps of the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. The first step is to define the operational environment. For the purposes of self-study, one must select and focus on a particular area or region to gain a complete picture of the cause and effect relationship between different factors and variables. An appropriate scope for this purpose is to select the purview of one of the US Combatant Commands: NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM, or PACOM. It is important to identify during this step the ways that a particular region can be affected by outside influences for example; Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in AFRICOM receives some of their funding through drug trafficking with the Latin American cartels in both SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM.

The next step is to determine how the operations will likely be shaped by existing factors. One should evaluate the terrain, weather, and civil considerations of the region as they affect the operational variables (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, Information, Physical Environment, and Time). For example, the military in Thailand is primarily a light counterinsurgency based force due to restrictive terrain and the presence of Muslim separatist organizations in the south of the country. Determining how these variables relate to each other and how they can shape operations will provide a firm understanding of the issues facing a particular region. Practicing the art of determining these relationships will effectively prepare a maneuver leader for the challenges faced on the battlefield.