It appears that the Army is looking at shuttering the rather small Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute: https://www.yahoo.com/news/army-push-end-peacekeeping-institute-sparks-wider-debate-100019830.html
Now, I have never had any intersection with this organization, so I have no idea of how effective, productive or useful it is. I gather they are looking at renaming it (because peacekeeping is a bad word?) and cutting it more than 2/3rds. This is minimal savings.
Now, my experience is that DOD, being command driven and mission oriented, tends to forget about missions that are not currently getting “command attention.” I discussed this problem in some depth in my book America’s Modern Wars. We have seen parts of DOD go from ignoring the study of insurgencies before 2001 to recently not being able to properly model conventional combat for training exercises. As outrageous as this last sentence sounds, I can back it up with real world examples, except I really don’t want to embarrass anyone. But let us say, that we have seen multiple examples over the years of DOD being overly focused on the mission de jure at the expense of its other missions. DOD missions range from conventional wars, to counterinsurgencies, to irregular operations, to peacekeeping, nation building, and even border protection. These missions come and go, but they always show back up. It has been the case for over 200 years. The DOD always needs to be ready to conduct all missions. The failures in Iraq, which cost American lives, drives home that point in blood.
Following the dictum that form should follow function (and that form then constrains function and channels function), what do you think of the following form (in this case applied to organizing the strategic thinking at DOD with a similar approach envisioned for organizing tactical, logistical, … thinking at DOD)?
The ABCs (and more) for organizing strategic thinking at DOD:
Office of Annihilation Strategy
Office of Blockade Strategy
Office of Compellence Strategy
Office of Deterrence Strategy
Office of Extraction Strategy
Within this structure, peacekeeping strategies would be subsumed by the Office of Deterrence Strategy (viewing peacekeeping as deterring peace-breaking) whereas the Office of Compellence Strategy would be concerned with approaches to “encouraging” parties to enter into that peace which is then to be kept/maintained. Of course, DOD would need to avoid mission creep into the duties of the Department of State.
Anyway, DOD would cover its relevant roles through focusing on five basic functions. Can you think of any relevant sub-functions that wouldn’t naturally fit under one or more of those five basic functions? For example, would border defense strategy be completely covered by Annihilation Strategy and Deterrence Strategy (and perhaps by Blockade Strategy if thinking about blockades in broader terms than usual as might be the case for our current Commander in Chief)?