To return any kind of stability to volatile regions, the Department of Defense and the State Department must begin to work together.
For the past six years, the military buzzwords have been "counterinsurgency (COIN)," "irregular warfare," and "unconventional operations," with great emphasis placed on stabilization and reconstruction. Although counterinsurgency is hardly a new topic, the combination of counterinsurgency with stabilization and reconstruction, also referred to as nation-building, has produced a dynamic that has not been encountered before in this nation's history.
