The Civilian Reserve Corps has gotten pitched in public again with Max Boot writing about it in today’s Los Angeles Times:
As for the Civilian Reserve Corps, the administration has no detailed plans to recruit, train or deploy abroad the kind of experts we need in such fields as law, finance, sanitation and balloting. Nor does it have the money. Odds are that this bright idea will suffer the same fate as another plan devised by the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which asked for $100 million from Congress for contingency planning last year and got zip.
Ideally (a key word here), CCR will be more than the ill-fated S/CRS ever was. Picking up on Barnett, Boot suggests a Department of Peace built from a new USAID and a new US Information Agency. I love that last bit, not because I disagree, but I find it increasingly humorous that talk about recreating and reempowering USIA come not from State (although old USIA hands say the same, they seem to have largely been sidelined) but from DoD & the defense establishment. In other words, it’s the hard power guys calling for USIA and improving communications while the “soft power” folks under SecState Rice are… well, what are they doing (and here)?
See Opposed Systems Design comments on Max Boot here and my previous observations on the CCR proposal here.