Revisiting Persistent Engagement and Interagency Collaboration

PHOTO: Agents with the FBI and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations search for evidence during rescue and recovery efforts at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, 12 September 2001. A. (U.S. Navy) T MUCH OF our strategic guidance understands the daunting task of stabilizing “failing states” and thwarting nonstate violent and criminal networks is heartening. This challenge faces joint interagency actors and our allies—chief among the latter, the nation hosting us. However, we must consider to what degree our actions and our allies’ choices have created the environment that made instability possible. There is an important difference between the “proximate cause” of the conditions that create instability and the actual “cause-in-fact.”3 The joint force has occasionally failed to understand the importance of political causation in creating instability, and has adopted inappropriate operational and tactical solutions for creating stability in preand postconflict situations. Further, special operations forces (SOF), as members of the force who are first in and last out, are in the best position to correct some of these deficiencies. Our counter-instability strategy broadly calls for persistent engagement and an indirect approach. In addition, we often hear, “It takes a network to beat a network.” The opening quotations of this article indicate the importance of this concept in a strategic context.4