Achieving Operational Adaptability Capacity Building Needs to Become a Warfighting Function

Eight years of persistent conflict and increasing engagement requirements across the globe have followed the end of the Cold War. Appropriately, leaders and theorists recognize the professional military obligation and importance of adapting military power and capabilities to achieve strategic objectives. America's security depends on developing a flexible and adaptive military that can integrate the threat or use of force with stability and partnership activities in complex operating environments. As a learning organization, the U.S. Army must examine its current doctrine and conceptual frameworks to determine if they sufficiently represent the logic behind the application of land power and the vision outlined in the recently updated Quadrennial Defense Review and Army Capstone Concept. This monograph contributes to organizational learning by proposing an additional warfighting function, capacity building, to the current list.