Joint by Design, Integration Pending

• In Event: U.S. Military Post-War Analysis

Abstract

In the face of a rapidly evolving security situations, across warfighting domains and international regions, the U.S. Department of Defense solidified the idea of a globally integrated assessment system. In order to provide political decision-makers with decision support, concerning the global positioning of key military assets in the case of multiple large operations, at the speed of relevance, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was handed responsibility for ‘Global Integration’. To bring about this unified situational awareness and to assess how allocate resources to meet transboundary threats, The Chaiman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) charged with providing global integration has set up the Global Integration Meeting (GIM) to coordinate and facilitate this effort. The challenges associated with bringing together and making sense of U.S. national interests and objectives in a globally integrated picture of military capabilities and priorities, along with possible recommendations for reprioritizing to meet an evolving and dynamic security environment, are formidable. The challenges the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Joint staff face, break into five distinct, but not independent, sets of expectations and effects. Drawing on previously published case studies, unclassified Department of Defense sources, and interviews with Department of Defense professionals, the paper presents a theoretical set of challenges the GIM is likely to face in fulfilling the global integration mandate. Drawing on prior research in a number of disciplines and subfields on decision-making, group dynamics in strategic interactions, and collaboration, the paper offers new ways for researchers to think about military jointness and prevent collaborative failures in the face of transboundary security threats.

Author

• Lina Svedin, Air University