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Description

U.S. Embassies face unprecedented challenges. The kinds of issues that confound governments today—from organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism to nuclear proliferation, human rights, ethnosectarian conflict, global disease, and climate change—no longer fit within diplomacy’s traditional categories.1 Just as nonstate actors everywhere are becoming more powerful, regions of geostrategic importance in the developing world find themselves beset by weak or dysfunctional governments and increasingly perilous socioeconomic situations. While some might reasonably question the categorical quality of the 2002 National Security Strategy’s assertion that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones,” there is still plenty of reason to be concerned about the trends.2

Document Type

Policy Brief

Topic(s)

National Security, Defense Policy, Leadership

Publication Date

9-2007

Publication

Strategic Forum

Publisher

National Defense University Press

City

Washington, DC

Keywords

country team reform, U.S. embassy interagency coordination, national security engagement, U.S. foreign policy implementation, civil-military integration, ambassador leadership role, global security challenges, interagency decisionmaking, strategic governance

The Country Team: Restructuring America’s First Line of Engagement

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