Do As I Say, Not As I DoD

Will the Pentagon ever value nation-building as much as war-fighting?
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Friday, Dec. 2, 2005, at 6:04 PM ET

A Pentagon directive issued this week might herald the most dramatic upheaval of the U.S. armed forces in 20 years—or it might dissolve upon first contact with reality, like so many reform plans and nostrums before it. We'll know in the next few months, or maybe weeks, whether the order gets taken seriously or waved off as empty rhetoric.

Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England on Nov. 28, declares the following to be new Defense Department policy:

Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission. … They should be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities, including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.