The military cooperation group

Abstract

The United States has experienced a significant amount of difficulty of late with two factors: a) how to fight against a networked enemy, and b) the need for more cultural intelligence. This thesis will describe a structure to assist with both those needs. The premise is that an expanded and improved network of US Military Groups is the weapon of choice for the war on terror, and beyond. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a policy that will consolidate the functions of Defense AttachsÌ , Security Assistance Officers, and a proposed corps of ethnographic information officers into a network of embassy annexes that will cover every nation in which the United States has a country team. The intertwined questions of how to fight a network and how to gather cultural intelligence present the United States with a strategic challenge, and require the examination of the type of information the Department of Defense captures, and what is to be done with that information. This thesis proposes a means to collect ethnographic information and a structure for using it to make effective decisions in a variety of traditional security roles as well as in the fight against transnational terror networks.