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Developing U.S. Army Officers’ Capabilities for JIIM Environments
The nascent Interagency Exchange Program builds on joint and interagency elements in Army intermediate level education’s common core. Officers are assigned to the national capital region for two years. During the first year, officers receive common core instruction at the Command and General Staff College’s satellite campus at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Afterwards, they serve on the staff of another government agency for approximately one year, to be followed by another year on the Army Staff. This last year allows the Army to capitalize on the officer’s interagency experience (Doughty, 2008). There have also been significant changes in the Senior Service Colleges’ student populations. A much higher proportion of students at the various U.S. war colleges come from other services than was the case previously. A much higher number of foreign students are attending as well. As our respondents noted that spending time with students from other cultures, both national and organizational, was usually the most broadening aspect of “joint” education, these developments will undoubtedly improve “joint” and “multinational” aspects of professional military education. In contrast, the Director, Army National Guard has proposed an initiative focused on providing Army officers with experience in the practical details of governance. The governance issues confronting most deployed Army officers in many ways resemble those encountered at the U.S. state and municipal level more than they resemble business at the federal level. In this initiative, Army officers would spend a year working in state or municipal government. There they would learn not only the practical details of administration, but also how local politics intimately affect that administration. This initiative would have the added effect of acquainting Army officers with state and local officials and constitutional arrangements, which would improve Army capabilities within the intergovernmental domain as well. There is recent precedent for such a program. Then Major General Peter Chiarelli helped prepare his 1st Cavalry Division for operations in Baghdad in 2005 through collaboration with the cities of Austin and Killeen, Texas (Chiarelli and Michaelis, 2005). Similarly, Colonel Robert Brown helped train the soldiers in his Stryker Brigade for operations in Mosul by having them learn civil administration from