The Nation’s “Solutioneers”

Providing support to combatant commands and U.S. partners

By J.R. Wilson - December 23, 2013

Construction nears completion on a new junior high school building, housing grades four through six, in Grumesa, Ghana, July 22, 2013. The building, designed to accommodate more than 150 students, features three classrooms, a teachers’ room, storage space, and a detached latrine facility. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working in partnership with U.S. Africa Command and the local embassy to bring the school to fruition. The new classrooms will enable additional students from the district to attend school in Grumesa. The project, valued at $208,700 dollars, features local building materials – including mahogany doors and decorative cement blocks – hand selected by the school headmaster. In addition, local masons, painters, and other workers were hired as subcontractors. USACE photo by Jennifer Aldridge

While much of the support USACE divisions provide is common to the CCMDs worldwide, the structure of those divisions and region-specific CCMDs’ goals and requirements can differ substantially. That is especially true with projects not directed by a CCMD, but nonetheless seen as supportive of its regional plan.

The POD, for example, not only supports PACOM military construction, host-nation construction, and FMS programs, but also provides support to PACOM and U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) Theater Security Cooperation Program (TSCP) objectives. TSC support, which is done through various engagements and activities, facilitates engagement with Asia-Pacific countries and contributes to stability in the region.

“Our support to PACOM and USARPAC covers several areas, including humanitarian assistance – schools, clinics, cyclone shelters – and capacity development – assistance in areas such as disaster management, integrated water resources management, hydraulics and hydrology, and dam safety,” Jim Bersson, POD’s director of regional business, said. “We facilitate Disaster Response Expert Exchanges for USARPAC, which build the capacity and resiliency of nations to prepare for and respond to disasters.”

POD’s significant support to the State Department, USAID, and MCC programs and activities aligns with TSCP objectives as well. While that effort falls under POD’s work in Interagency and International Services (IIS), the non-DoD IIS projects are part of a network of USACE activities that improve overall U.S. relations, often more directly with the population of other nations. That, in turn, strengthens CCMD regional security and capacity-building plans in furtherance of U.S. national security goals.

DoD’s refocus from Cold War Europe and post-9/11 Southwest Asia to the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region could be seen as a boost to USACE work in the region. Unlike Europe and even the largely Islamic nations in the CENTCOM AOR, however, currently the United States has only two permanent military bases west of Guam – in Okinawa and South Korea.

“The U.S. Department of State’s Lower Mekong Initiative was created in response to the July 23, 2009, meeting between the secretary of state and foreign ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to foster agreement in the areas of environment and water, health, education, food security, energy, and infrastructure connectivity,” Bersson explained. “We support it by providing expertise in several of those areas, and especially through our relationship with the Mekong River Commission [MeRC]. The MeRC has an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with the Mississippi River Commission [MRC], which facilitates exchanges related to topics such as climate change adaptaion, water resource management, flood forecasting, hydropower development, agriculture and food security, navigation, fish passage, and wetlands and water quality.”

These exchanges often occur in the form of workshops in Mekong countries coordinated by POD but for which expertise is drawn from throughout USACE, especially the Institute for Water Resources. Most of these workshops have been funded by USAID.

“Our relationship with USAID in the region is outstanding. In addition to funding Integrated Water Resources Management-related workshops, they are involved in the humanitarian assistance work we do for PACOM – their country representatives are involved in the approval process for those projects. We are also building 100 cyclone shelters for USAID in Bangladesh,” Bersson said.

POD has districts in Japan and Korea that administer the military construction and host-nation programs in those countries, but the location of the district that manages the humanitarian assistance projects on the Asia mainland could seem surprising to outsiders.

“… We are ‘solutioneers,’ so in instances where funding is not available, I would challenge our people to come up with a solution, with success measured by outcomes, not dollars and cents,” said Cox.

“Our humanitarian assistance projects are executed by our Alaska District; they also are doing the FMS C-17 Bed Down project in India. We don’t have a district on the Asian mainland, other than Korea, which primarily just does work in South Korea. We just don’t have the volume of work that would require establishing another district,” he said, noting that the Alaska District has an expeditionary mindset and has a history of constructing similar projects for remote coastal communities in Alaska.

DoD’s refocus from Cold War Europe and post-9/11 Southwest Asia to the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region could be seen as a boost to USACE work in the region. Unlike Europe and even the largely Islamic nations in the CENTCOM AOR, however, currently the United States has only two permanent military bases west of Guam – in Okinawa and South Korea.

“Last September, I went to China with Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh [deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations] on an invitation from the Chinese Minister of Water Resources, with whom we are working on an MOU. They have severe water issues, such as how to move water from parts of the country with water to those without. The Corps does engage in relationships bilaterally, but we coordinate with and keep PACOM, USARPAC, and State advised of those engagements and our activities in these areas.”

That and USACE work with MRC – involving nations with a long and mixed history of relationships – are examples of programs that, through the predominantly civilian corps of engineers, give the United States a “presence” and positive reputation in nations where the CCMDs have no military relationships.

“What we are seeing is a significant increase in requests for support from many countries in the Pacific Rim that previously may or may not have been involved as strategic partners with the U.S. Through that shift, working through PACOM and USARPAC, we are being given an opportunity to engage with them directly and, in China and nations along the Mekong Delta, become a strategic partner,” Cox said.

For USACE, the impact of the Pacific pivot is expected to be felt primarily in MILCON work for EUCOM and CENTCOM, where most U.S. military facilities already have been built, upgraded, or consolidated. Cox said USACE will continue to provide all necessary resources to warfighters in Southwest Asia and to CENTCOM in general, which he calls “the most volatile and unstable region in the world.”

“CENTCOM will always have a need for potable water, including our capabilities in desalinization. Even when we draw down our forces in Afghanistan, we still will have a presence, both strategic and routine, with the nations in the CENTCOM AOR,” he said. “In addition, water resources [requiring USACE expertise] are critical to Africa. We also have a responsibility to support alliances with our partners [in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America], whether forward presence or supplying engineering support.

“Fundamentally, the economy, declines in the defense budget and sequestration will impact all of us. ‘How’ will depend on how we are able to execute those continuing requirements in support of the CCMDs. It doesn’t always require money for us to be a strategic partner; many of the things we do are because we already have a global presence and can provide institutional relationships, where a positive execution supports our national security interests. We are ‘solutioneers,’ so in instances where funding is not available, I would challenge our people to come up with a solution, with success measured by outcomes, not dollars and cents.”

This article first appeared in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2013-2014 Edition.