Most importantly we all need to help the activist Syrian opposition factions to reach out to all Syrian ethnic and religious groups in order to preserve in a future Syria the unique and priceless mosaic of Middle Eastern peoples that has been Syria over the centuries. Moreover, helping the Syrians now to create practical visions of their future economy, society and political system will go a long way to smooth the transition. We must not allow Syria’s struggle for human rights, dignity, freedom and opportunity to devolve into a sectarian or religious war.

US unilateral, uninvited intervention has rarely, if ever, succeeded. Think Iraq. By contrast, Libya was a good model. Twenty years earlier, Bosnia unfolded tragically with a feckless European effort to manage the violence. The US finally snatched the reins and, with a coalition of the willing and pleas for assistance from the actors on the ground, helped turn the situation around – with a committed European alliance.

The Syrian tragedy will end with the fall of the Asad regime; we just don’t know how or when. We do know that concerted actions of regional and international players can affect the pace and direction of that fall. Ever-constricting economic sanctions should persuade regime defenders with large commercial interests that Asad’s days are numbered and they have precious little time to make the right choice that would preserve their well-being into the future. Political isolation will reduce the number of external “friends” the regime can count on, and make the defection of even one of those few friends catastrophic for the regime’s longevity.

How will the transition occur in Afghanistan? Assuming that the UN, private sector, and NGOs will have a relatively larger role than the military in post-2014 Afghanistan, how will all of the disparate parts of ISAF transfer non-military responsibilities, goods and services to their governmental and non-governmental counterparts?

How well did the military-to-civilian transition occur after the Haiti earthquake? Who planned it; who was “in charge”? I think we all know the answer to that one. But how should the international community better prepare for military-to-civilian transitions in post-disaster scenarios?

Capturing lessons observed, pitfalls to avoid, pre-crisis best practices in the transition from military to civilian lead in crisis operations must become the heart of a new curriculum in professional education for crisis managers and logisticians. This process must include not just US military and interagency players, but commercial, voluntary, and international organizations, all of whom will perform the lion’s share of the work.

We at the Center for Stabilization and Economic Reconstruction are working on just that.

The same utility applies, however, to Iran’s own use of constructive ambiguity: there is great debate as to whether the Iranian government will actually take steps required to build a nuclear weapon– beyond its current drive for independent enrichment capability and the separate, but critical, delivery capability. Iran – like Iraq before it – finds merit in keeping its adversaries guessing, perhaps in the hopes of provoking an unwise move that redounds to Iran’s advantage.

There are many likely undesirable consequences of a strike on one or more Iranian nuclear facilities, if it occurs in the absence of demonstrable evidence that a weapons program is underway. Most of these consequences are being discussed in blogs, chat rooms, TV interviews and op-ed articles. One of those consequences could be to push Iran definitively – and perhaps openly – into a weapons program “in self defense” from unwarranted Israeli and/or US “unprovoked aggression.” The UNSC could very well vote to condemn such aggression, throwing into serious question all of our successful efforts to isolate and squeeze Iran. Iran could very well exercise its right to withdraw from the NPT under Article X, and argue (hypocritically of course) that it now has every reason to require a nuclear weapon since it has been attacked without cause or provocation by nuclear powers.

We want the Iranians to choose on their own to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons for their own interests. We do not want to give them the ability to pursue such weapons, openly or clandestinely, unfettered by international pressure and isolation. We should give our constructive ambiguity time to work

I brought the audience through the first generation of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 60s, with the dominant British role as the backdrop. The role of Islam as a political force was also a feature of contemporary Middle Eastern political thought, but vastly overshadowed and suppressed by the secular, and chiefly military-led regimes of the age. The UK lost the battle for power and influence, culminating in its withdrawal from East of Suez.  At the same time, Arab nationalist regimes by and large failed to address the legitimate aspirations of the region’s citizenry.

The second generation of revolution and realignment witnessed two main efforts to correct the wrongs of the past:  non-state terrorism, especially by not exclusively among Palestinian groups, and the resurgence of political Islam in 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution.  These two strains likewise failed to address the long-standing grievances, which persist today, among them injustice, repression, and betrayal.  The United States presence and influence in the region grew in the 1970s and 80s, with America’s “soft power” on the rise. US diplomatic and development agencies helped spread admiration for  America’s vitality as a democratic society. At the same time, however, the US was criticized for hypocrisy, manipulation, and prejudice against the Muslim people. Arab and Muslim uncertainty about America persists today, although the Obama administration has made great strides in turning around America’s image in the region.  We are not out of the woods, yet.

The third generation, that of the Arab Awakening, is still in its infancy.  I told the audience in Raleigh that the peoples in “successful” revolts must put aside recriminations and score settling. They must focus urgently on three tasks:

• establishing consensus around a basic law as a foundation for their nation;
• creating or strengthing  institutions of democratic alternance –  a diverse spectrum of political parties, not ethnic- or sectarian-based; laws and regulation on elections and political parties; and the independent media and civil society that protects participation and transparency, and helps bring malefactors to account. (I noted that this is what NDI and IRI really do, not the trumped up charges invented by some Egyptian officials.);
• building capacity in organs of government:  ministries, parliaments, and the agencies of the rule of law (police, judiciary and prisons); and
• promoting a process of national reconciliation, wherever ethnic or sectarian division already threatens to explode in greater violence and destruction – for example in Yemen and Iraq.

With respect to those nations whose third generation revolution is being squelched – Syria and Iran – their time will come.  And, once successful, they too will require the medicine of strong institutions open to participation by all, with transparency guaranteed, and accountability enforced for transgressors.

The US needs to understand the limits to its role and influence in the region, given its recent history.  We must approach the Middle East with more humility and work hard to achieve robust international participation in helping the flowering of democratic institutions and processes. We cannot afford to do this alone or with an outsized American presence, and we should not try. The international community, and the Middle East neighborhood itself can be the best guarantors of a successful and prosperous Middle East Awakening.

So it is with depending predominantly upon our military forces to resolve conflict, the threat of conflict, or even post-conflict stabilization. Too late, too expensive.

Furthermore, in health care we seem to have realized our excessive emphasis on high-tech, cutting-edge hyper-specializations in medicine, and the need to return attention to primary care, public health, family medicine, nurse practitioners, etc. The basics – and those equipped to perform them.

Where is the national security debate about resources and attention paid to “preventive” medicine and promoting “healthy life styles,” i.e., the effectiveness of economic, social and political development in violence-prone or stressed nations? Where is the shift toward resourcing the primary care givers: the diplomats and development specialists?

Our military is the best in the world by far, and has a useful and vital role in protecting our national security, but similarly we don’t need a nation full of neurosurgeons and cardiologists alone running our health care system.

So, gone is the attitude that the US military in a crisis can always work better, and be more successful, when it is in the lead and sometimes, just alone. Good riddance. We will henceforth establish effective partnerships, teams and networks. Thus, the need for a new educational curriculum across the new collaborative dimensions in the fields of crisis preparedness, prevention and response. The missions that the strategy document listed provide clear guidance as to where we still need to sew some seams in our ability to collaborate with other organizational cultures.

The last four missions in particular are areas in which educational programming is called for:
• Defend the Homeland and Provide Support to Civil Authorities. Cooperation among NGOs, local authorities, US military, corporations, and federal agencies can be just as problematic at home as it is overseas in the aftermath of a disaster.
• Provide a Stabilizing Presence. Just as DoD and other US interagency partners strive to collaborate more effectively, so do our major allies. We should anticipate that many more of our partners will also want to emulate this model. Preparations for more effective presence operations should include education, training, exercises among and between militaries and civilian agencies across borders.
• Conduct Stability and Counterinsurgency Operations. It is right to scale back DoD’s involvement in “nation-building” and prolonged stability operations. I believe, in fact, that COIN doctrine was never designed as such. Civilian and private/voluntary sector entities should be a substantial part of our strategies to deal with conflict and instability, much more than they are today to be sure. However, this requires significant retooling in the way we all approach pre- and post-conflict response, cognitively, attitudinally, and operationally. Education is key.
• Conduct Humanitarian, Disaster Relief, and Other Operations. Ditto on the role of non-military actors in humanitarian operations. The QDDR specifically designates USAID as the lead agency for US international humanitarian crisis response. Lashing up the extraordinary military capabilities the US enjoys, with those of other organizations responding to a crisis, in an effective and efficient network, does not come naturally. It requires the same “retooling” as stabilization and COIN operations, and therefore dedicated educational programing.

The US government will likely focus more on creating new response strategies, different bureaucratic mechanisms, and specialized funding accounts – but I am less confident that Uncle Sam will devote funds to educating our personnel in collaboration and cooperation, particularly with non-military, non-governmental counterparts. Other organizations will also devise their own efficiencies, particularly as funding streams dry up. Many will come to the realization that cooperation is an essential way to do the same with less. But few will spend time, energy and resources on influencing the way their personnel think about responding to crisis. In fact, I believe that efforts to effectively shape our attitudes and approaches toward collaboration, synergy, and sharing resources, will – counter intuitively – drift lower on many organizations’ priority lists. Most organizations will also cut their overall training and education budgets. If anything remains in the education budget, I am concerned that it will emphasize only the minimum necessary internal and tactical training for immediate operations.

Instead, what is required for short-, medium- and long-term crisis response effectiveness is improving our ability to accomplish our tasks cooperatively across organizational cultures. Crises are not going away; in fact, they are increasing in number and impact. Changing our bureaucratic mechanisms and processes towards cooperation, without changing the way we as professionals perceive the value of cooperation, accomplishes little. Education across organizations is the most effective way to shape this thinking collaboratively, and to staff the old and new bureaucracies with personnel capable of planning and implementing strategies in a cooperative fashion.

NEXT: What the new curriculum could contain.

The cracks and fissures still run throughout the political and social fabric. A clever, tactically savvy, but imperfect autocrat has held that fabric together; it is not clear to me that a successor government could fare so well given the current internal instability.

I am not a Yemen expert, but I strongly believe that Yemen can only come out of its current troubles with massive and transparent political and economic support from its immediate neighbors, especially the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia, in close coordination and cooperation with the international donor community that has long been supporting Yemen’s development over the decades. That would include the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UN. Yemen will not be able to withstand the tides of instability alone. The dangers of a failed Yemeni state are potentially catastrophic for the Arabian Peninsula region and for the United States.

But the U.S. must not succumb to the pleas of those around the world who demand of the U.S.: “Let’s you and him fight!” Individuals and governments are all too ready to have the U.S. battle for their cause, for U.S. blood and treasure to be devoted on their behalf. We can and will do that if our national security interests require. But other regional states– European, Arab, and African — must have “skin in the game.” They must physically participate in transparent and accountable ways in the effort to end the Qaddhafi rule. And we must be prepared to coordinate when matters don’t go in the direction we expected. Thus the importance of agreeing in advance as to where we are ultimately headed.

There is a bigger issue at stake as well, beyond that of Libya:  nations of the world must develop effective ways to impose their collective will on deviant governments that defy international law and the collective will as represented by the UN and Security Council. This was the issue with Iraq and the Balkans, it is still the issue with Iran, and now it has become the issue (once again!) with Libya.