Program Management and Building Partner Capacity: A Tangled Thicket

This chapter explores how the U.S. Department of Defense plans and executes Building Partner Capacity projects in lower-middle and low-income partners. U.S. planners and practitioners rarely understand the effective preconditions that influence partner security apparatus and infrastructure. Consequently, security capabilities provided to the partner are rarely sustained and provide questionable security to the affected population. The U.S. Department of Defense employs a threepart approach to building security in partnership: training and equipping, developing institutional capacity, and monitoring and evaluating. U.S. security planners should manage all three parts concurrently to produce a security capability that the partner uses and sustains, thereby lessening pressure on the U.S. This chapter will take the reader through a brief background on U.S. security exports, current U.S. DOD program planning and management principles, with particular attention given to security assessments and how getting those assessments right or wrong contributes to success or failure in the implementation of the security project.