ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

The Army needs to do a better job of teaching its senior leaders how to identify and then work with key stakeholders to achieve the service’s goals and missions, according to a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army.

“Stakeholder engagement must be part of what we do as leaders, and we must learn how to do it early enough in our careers to make an impact when we serve at the highest levels of command and staff,” U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Col. Alex Carter writes in “Understanding Assets: Teaching Senior Leaders How to Identify and Engage Stakeholders.”

The Army’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment—a Stryker brigade combat team from Fort Hood, Texas—encountered a much more experienced, “battled-hardened” Iraqi military during its recent nine-month advise-and-assist mission in Iraq, Syria and Kuwait.

“They are happy to be in the lead,” said Regiment Command Sgt. Maj. Adam Nash. “From a military mindset, … [conducting] your own maneuvers within direct fires, that’s a huge leap. And to see them do that in combat without our advisement, without our prompting, that was a huge leap.”

The U.S. military has made “considerable” progress in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in the past year, but “we remain very clear-eyed regarding the permanence of that progress,” the U.S. Central Command commander told Congress.

Feb. 24, 2017

Too many cooks in the kitchen may have hampered efforts to rebuild Iraq in the wake of the war, according to a U.S. Army legal expert who has studied and written about postwar military governance.