The mission of the YPFP Civil-Military Dialogue (CMD) is to address the need for an open and frank discussion between the members of the military and civilian foreign policy organizations, to build relationships across institutional boundaries, to inform military and civilian communities about one another, and to enhance civil-military cooperation now and in the future.

The CMD is planning the 2007 YPFP Annual Conference, entitled All Elements of National Power: Military, Civilian, and NGO Perspectives on Collaboration in Post-Conflict Reconstruction Operations [1]. Following the conference, the first year of the CMD will be devoted to the timely and important question of civil-military cooperation in post-conflict reconstruction. We will address this issue by cultivating relationships and identifying solutions that can be useful now and in the near future, not when government reorganization catches up with facts on the ground. Our method will be to bring together professional from the military, civilian government agencies, NGOs and contractors with the members of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy for a series of honest, private, pragmatic discussions.

In the near term, we hope to create a group of professionals from across communities that can develop greater familiarity and understanding while working toward practical and implementable solutions and useful relationships. In the long term, we want to create a group of young professionals versed in the “boots on the ground” challenges of military and civilian interaction in conflict zones with knowledge they can use to address these issues in a meaningful way in their future careers.

To learn more, click here [2] or contact Noah Kanter, Chair, YPFP CMD.
noah.kanter@ypfp.org