Mark your calendars! The Civil Affairs Association’s online spring Roundtable will be on Tuesday, 11 April 2023 from 8:30-15:30 Eastern (NY) Time.
The Roundtable will be the closing event of this year's thematic discussion of "Civil Affairs; A Force for Winning without Fighting." The Association has published its interim report on the annual web-based Symposium. Among the observations are:
Integrated deterrence is about winning without fighting and civil-military integration at interagency, interorganizational, and multinationals levels.
Civil affairs has been the de facto joint force of choice to win without fighting by supporting and implementing integrated deterrence not just to “secure the victory” before, during, and after major combat but also in preventing it in the first place. In other words: “secure the victory” does not apply solely to post-conflict situations.
In addition to a military institutional understanding of capabilities like CA more as maneuver forces in integrated deterrence than “force multipliers” or “enablers,” this also requires a universally active sense of CA readiness for strategic competition that only a constant forward regional presence of all CA force types can provide.
The Roundtable will shift the CA Corps’ annual force and professional development discussion to policy-level perspectives on the role of CA in integrated deterrence and how the CA Corps can ready itself within the context of this new strategic and policy guidance.
To help lead this dialogue, the Association has invited Anne A. Witkowsky, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), U.S. Department of State as well as Christopher P. Maier, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict as keynote speakers.
Following that will be a round-robin response involving related institutional civil-military stakeholders, the first among the extended Civil Affairs Corps, including the Civil Affairs Proponent, U.S. Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command (Airborne), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, Marine Civil Affairs, the U.S. Army Peacekeeping & Stability Operations Institute, and others.
The editors of the upcoming book, Warrior-Diplomats, due for publication by then, will also be on hand to discuss this seminal work on CA in the 21st century.
Last, as always, will be the open discussion on the next annual theme for the 2023-24 Civil Affairs Issue Papers.
More information and an agenda will appear in January. Stay tuned, and make sure your subscription information is updated on the Association website!