Beyond Payoffs Understanding Sustainable Economic Incentives at the Tactical Level

Broadly applied strategy-driven initiatives in a local environment may have unintended effects on the targeted nation's local economy. In addition to direct influences, a foreign force's service and resource requirements have the potential to restructure a local economy in a manner that is unsustainable when the force leaves. The question becomes, how can a tactical commander better understand these effects on their operating environment and work to lessen their ill effects? Building an understanding of the local economy's history to its current state is essential for tactical leaders to integrate strategic initiatives and the economic inputs of their presence in the same manner that they would integrate military operations. Conflicting guidance from Department of Defense publications that formed the basis of Army Doctrine coupled with the traction current initiatives such as those of Expeditionary propagated by Carl Schramm and others are strategic in nature with little construct to translate their ideas to the tactical level. Ultimately, these new initiatives, similar to those of the past, will have an effect for better or worse on the local economy and its related political and social power systems. Tactical commanders must work through this confusion to build on a unit's understanding of their local economy as necessary for the conduct operations that will have a positive effect, or at least minimize negative effects, on their local economy. Commanders do not need a model on which to base their local economy; they must continuously build a model that best represents their local economy.