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The Center for Complex Operations is pleased to announce the release of Volume 1, Issue 2 of PRISM, the journal of complex operations. PRISM is available for online viewing and download here.

This issue's articles include:

Pauline Baker: Forging a U.S. Policy Toward Fragile States

Yet for all the talk of the critical importance of such challenges, the U.S. Government lacks a comprehensive strategy and overall set of objectives to prevent state failure and to strengthen weak states. While many U.S. agencies are engaged in activities related to state fragility, their efforts are typically fragmented into different priorities, goals, and frameworks. 3 In sum, the terminology of conflict risk varies; the metrics of successful interventions are not uniform; and operational functions are usually divided into pre- and postconflict phases, with analysts rarely looking at the full life cycle of a conflict.

AMB. Ronald Neumann: "Security is More than "20" Percent

Security is only 20 percent of the solution; 80 percent is governance and development.” “There is no military solution to insurgency.” These and similar statements have rightly refocused counterinsurgency doctrine and popular thinking away from purely military solutions to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet these catchphrases have become substitutes for deeper consideration of the role of security in the current conflicts and in insurgency in general, hiding some important points and leading to assumptions that are an insufficient basis for policy.

William Reno: Complex Operations in Weak or Fragile States: The Sudan Rebel Perspective

Sudan thus serves as a good illustration of complex operations that can inform effort of “synchronization, coordination, and/or integration of military operations with the activities of governmental and non-governmental entities to achieve unity of effort.”2 Even though the military component played a minimal role in the Sudan case until recently, this experience with coordinating the other two components of this trinity highlights some important lessons for complex operations in the future.

Plus an interview with Gen. Raymond Odierno and a report from the CCO on building a civilian lessons learned system.

To subscribe to the paper version of PRISM, please contact us.

Now ending its fifth year, the Offi ce of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization has become the epitome of Secretary Clinton’s U.S. concept of “smart power” – drawing from all corners of the U.S. federal government to address the unique needs of American foreign policy. The pages that follow detail the various capabilities, success stories, and activities throughout 2009 demonstrating how S/CRS has become the Secretary’s premier tool for reconstruction and stabilization

Available at State.gov