Author: David Tressler
Publisher:
Published: 2007-08-31
Total Pages: 124
ISBN-13: 9781461163039
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The American military's mission in Iraq requires a set of skills and outcomes that are very different than the traditional warfighting for which soldiers are trained. These include negotiation, a common enough human activity that, in the context of military operations in places like Iraq, takes on new complexity, importance, and urgency. Negotiation has become for many military leaders, particularly the increasingly strategically important junior leaders, a daily task in their role of stabilizing, securing, transitioning, and reconstructing Iraq. Yet even given the prevalence of negotiation in the contemporary operating environment, there has been no systematic effort to study the negotiating experience of the American military in Iraq or Afghanistan or to understand negotiation's increasingly important role in accomplishing missions. This monograph begins to fill the gap by analyzing the experiences of U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers returning from Iraq. It integrates academic research on negotiation theory and practice with their experience on the ground. The author challenges us to see the tactical, operational, and strategic importance of negotiating in an operating environment characterized by near-constant interaction between U.S. soldiers and the civilian and military members of the local populace. The stability, security, transition, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency operation the United States is conducting in Iraq requires a different understanding of how missions get accomplished and what defines mission success. The author recommends increased training in negotiation and offers practical recommendations for how officers can improve their negotiating outcomes and how military trainers can supplement predeployment training to ensure that military leaders deploy with the skills and practice they need for what the author argues is becoming a mission essential task in the 21st century operating environment. The monograph includes an outline of a suggested program of instruction that trainers can use to prepare leaders for deployment.