An overdue story in the Chicago Tribune today looks at President Bush’s renewed emphasis on a civilian reserve corps. Acknowledging the shortcomings of previous efforts, this iniative will necessarily have to focus on dealing with the next conflict.

In 2006, the State Department established the Active Response Corps in hopes of responding to crises within 48 hours.

“We’ve already begun to implement the concept for a surge,” said John Herbst, chief of the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, which set up the corps. Though armed with a presidential directive to improve the government’s postconflict reconstruction and stabilization capabilities, the office never received adequate funding and today its Active Response Corps employs only 11 people.

With the civilian corps, the lead time involved with getting legislation passed and people trained means that even if all goes according to plan, it will likely have more of an impact on future crises than on Iraq

This is a key point, since some voices are already declaring Iraq and Afghanistan a done deal. “Okay, we’ve done that stability/COIN/nation-building thing - now it’s time to return to all those priorities that got crowded out by the OIF/OEF focus.” This isn’t about fixing Iraq, this is about getting better for the next inevitable SysAdmin mission.

Critics say the current proposal comes just a few years too late. “This would have been great on Sept. 12, 2001,” said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress. “There have been proposals on this going all the way back to [former Sen. Sam] Nunn, but there’s never been any movement on it.”

But some believe it’s an idea whose time has finally come. “Because of Iraq, people realized the limitations of military power. There’s a moment of opportunity now to prepare ourselves better for the future,” said Pascual. “You won’t get that clarity of understanding again for a long time.”

OIF forces national security planning to elevate the priority of these non-military aspects of national power.