The Corps and USAID: Interagency Cooperation for Tomorrow

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Agency for International Development teamed in Iraq and Afghanistan to realize stability and reconstruction objectives. This working relationship can be expanded into other regions of the world to further diplomacy and development in order to advance United States national security goals. In an era of straitened budgets, the federal government can achieve greater efficiencies through promoting and facilitating expanded partnering across the joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational (JIIM) community. In this paper, historical collaboration, engineering capability and structure are examined for USACE and USAID. An increased understanding provides the impetus for short and long-term recommendations that have future potential to strengthen each agency and provide a model of interagency cooperation.