CATR Post #5 – What is Civil Affairs? (Part 2-Telling the Civil Affairs Story)

By Col. (Ret.) Christopher Holshek

9-minute read.

The Challenge

As Dennis mentioned in CATR Post #4, the Hunt Report analyzed civil affairs (CA) during the U.S. occupation of the Rhineland from 1918 to 1923. Since that seminal work, civil affairs has been searching for an identity that resonates with itself and the military, defense, and foreign policy establishments it serves and supports. Unlike other capabilities, the value of civil affairs has never been a given—it must be earned and argued generationally. As you may have seen in this year’s Civil Affairs Issue Papers call for papers, CA has had to constantly redefine itself in response to atmospheric changes to meet foreign policy, national security, and service objectives as well as doctrinal and force development priorities. For this reason, the answers to the questions of What is civil affairs? What do civil affairs forces do? and Why is civil affairs important? will always be works in progress. Nevertheless, this identity search spanning nearly a century and a half of experiences has revealed lasting themes and principles on the nature of this unique national strategic capacity to help win, end, and prevent wars.

Once again, we face the challenge of explaining CA’s enduring and present value to national security, defense, and military institutions whose dominant views continue to see CA as an “enabler” or “multiplier” for post-conflict stabilization and governance. In today’s force management environment, any Army formations not directly explainable in terms of “lethality” are subject to reduction, if not elimination.

The Task

In response to a growing consensus on the need for CA to speak with one narrative voice, the new Civil Affairs Association president, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Hugh Van Roosen, launched a more pointed effort at the December 2023 Civil Affairs Conference at Fort Bragg, NC. As the de facto regimental association of the Army Civil Affairs Corps and a non-government organization free of bureaucratic restrictions, the Association was well-positioned to facilitate an effort to coordinate the institutional interests of the proponents, major CA commands, and the Association. He tasked Col. (Ret.) Dennis J. Cahill, Sr., and me to lead an effort to draft a strategic narrative for members of the extended CA Corps that would explain to multiple audiences, in plain language, what civil affairs is and does, and what value it brings in all mission applications and at all levels of engagement and integration. At the very least, the resulting deliverables would provide a template for further development and refinement of a comprehensive and collaborative strategic narrative on civil affairs, ensuring maximum buy-in and usage among the broader community of interest.

First, we had to find an acceptable definition of strategic narrative. For the moment, we settled on “an intentionally composed, compelling and inspiring story that explains the enduring values shared by members of an organization, their origins as a collective, and what they want to achieve in the future—and how” by Amy Zalman. A strategic narrative is more adaptable to the audience, situation at hand, and message deliverer than the recitable talking points of an “elevator speech.” It is developed as much from the bottom up as the top down, is a more enduring cognitive reference-framing, and evolves more or less on its own.

What that ultimately looks like is CA professionals – regardless of component, type (SOF or conventional), or service (Army or Marine) – who can adapt an overarching strategic narrative for any audience. The implied task, however, is for those CA professionals to describe the unique capabilities and constraints of any part of this diversely talented force to enable the right array of CA capabilities, especially in the global force management process at theater level, and optimally leverage and integrate them in theater campaign plans.

Additional Research

Before developing a strategic narrative for civil affairs, we realized that it is helpful to understand what a narrative is and why it is significant for CA professionals. We invited Dr. Ajit Maan, who appeared in a 2020 OneCA Podcast and whose books and articles are cited in several Civil Affairs Issue Papers, as the keynote speaker at the 2024 CA Roundtable to help us refine our understanding of narrative.

Dr. Maan told us that a narrative is primarily a strategic story. Stories are the principal way we capture, communicate, and continue a narrative. “We don’t tell narratives, but we do tell stories.” Stories exist above the conscious level of narratives, as psychological terrain features on the “meaning map” that local people use to provide an understanding of the context for exchanging information in a culture and society. “The context of a story reflects the context of the cultural narrative.” Messages, in turn, are usually found in stories. This is highly important for CA professionals to know and understand.

Developing a CA narrative requires three elements: a solid understanding of ourselves (origins, principles, challenges, and goals for the future); identification of the target audience and its cultural narrative; and delivery of our story in a way that resonates with the target audience based on its cultural narrative. For our purposes, the storyteller must know how the audience views CA relative to the audience’s mission and capabilities. Ultimately, the CA story should be told in a way that “fits into the cognitive scheme of the target audience.”

Part 1: A History provides a foundation for us to understand ourselves. When trying to understand civil context and gain insight on public and tribal attitudes of our target audience, Dr. Mann advises us to seek out, listen to, and learn the meaning of popular local stories, including jokes and other forms of humor and social commentary. As part of mission preparation and actions upon arrival, CA practitioners should read the analyses of cultural anthropologists, social psychologists, historians, and others who can provide sociocultural context on societies in question – as well as help understand where and how, in narrative terms, the cultures in contact coincide and differ. Dr. Maan noted that CA has its own organizational culture and represents a narrative nested in the larger culture of both the U.S. military and U.S. society. After all, CA forces work mainly in the space between numerous cultures—civil and military, American and foreign, etc.

Among other sources we used in our research are an unpublished 2022 Civil Affairs Value Proposition from the Army’s CA Capability Manager, itself based heavily on the current Army FM 3-57, Civil Affairs Operations (CAO), and Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 2000.13, Civil Affairs, which is in the process of being reviewed for rewrite.

However, upon learning that a true narrative cannot simply come solely from policy and doctrine, we sought other sources to help inform this emerging narrative. We identified a range of insights that emerged from a decade of discussions on topics related to the future of civil affairs captured in the Civil Affairs Issue Papers. These include:

•     CA is a national strategic and joint economy-of-force capability (Vol. 1).

•     CA is the premier military capability for civil engagement and conflict prevention (Vol. 2).

•     CA is best leveraged and integrated through geographic and Army service component commands (Vol. 3).

•     CA is the joint force of choice to consolidate military and security gains into political and civilian outcomes (Vol. 4).

•     CA must become a better learning organization in all four Army strategic roles (shape, prevent, win, and consolidate conflict) in both irregular and conventional settings (Vol. 5).

•     CA is the premier national capability for operational interagency civil-military integration (Vol. 6).

•     CA is a leading joint force capability for “strengthening alliances and attracting new partners” to win influence in strategic competition and multidomain operations (Vol. 7).

•     CA contributes decisively to full-range positional advantage by building civil-military networks locally and regionally in joint, interorganizational, and multinational (JIM) settings through civil reconnaissance (CR), civil engagement (CE), and civil knowledge integration (CKI) (Vol. 8).

•     CA is the premier U.S. force for winning without fighting—a maneuver force in the human and information environments that must be organized, managed, integrated, and resourced with the same institutional as well as operational seriousness as combat forces (Vol. 9).

•     CA, CAO, and civil-military operations must be integral to campaigning at all levels of command and across the full range of operations in support of strategic competition, integrated deterrence, and large-scale combat operations (Vol. 10).

Telling the CA Story

After working for over a year, Dennis and I presented our findings at the November 2024 Civil Affairs Symposium. The Civil Affairs Association posted our capstone memorandum on Telling the Civil Affairs Story—A Narrative Strategy for Civil Affairs. An update to the 2018 strategic communication slide deck (with notes) and a two-sided handout are also available at that link.

The memorandum outlines a narrative strategy for CA and a narrative framework for telling the CA story. Citing what we learned about knowing ourselves, identifying our target audience and its cultural narrative, and delivering our story in a way that resonates with our target audience based on its cultural narrative from our discussions with Dr. Maan, the paper ends with notional cultural narratives of three sample priority target audiences with whom our most essential storytellers – individual CA professionals – typically engage.

While none of the deliverables on the CA Association’s website are official documents, they are intended to facilitate a more common view of CA so that supported commands and interorganizational partners can better understand, leverage, and integrate this uniquely diverse but widely unknown strategic land force to support a complexity of U.S. and allied strategic and politico-military objectives in any campaign.

At the very least, these deliverables will provide a template for further development and refinement of a comprehensive and collaborative strategic narrative on Civil Affairs, ensuring maximum buy-in and usage among the broader community of interest.

We encourage you to download, read, use, and share your observations and recommendations of those products by sending a message to admin@civilaffairsassoc.org so we can refine them. At the end of each year, we will consider your comments in product revisions and repost them early the following year.

Thank you for your help in telling the civil affairs story and promoting a narrative for better and more universal understanding civil affairs.

Question: What is your experience in telling narrative stories to help a target audience understand civil affairs?  We’d be interested in hearing your story of what you said, why you said it, and how it turned out.

Send a note to the Civil Affairs Team Room.

---

Subscribe for updates to the Civil Affairs Team Room Blog

Don’t forget to check out our affiliated sites

LC38 Brand
Aerial Resupply Coffee