Department of State response to the Lord's Resistance Army

One of the most interesting projects I worked on at the Department of State was writing a history of the U.S. response to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. This project had a number of aspects that made it intriguing. First, it was an area of foreign policy where there was clear public interest, since the work of non-governmental organizations had raised considerable public awareness about the LRA. Second, the U.S. response was predicated on cooperation between the Department of Defense and Department of State through the use of a “field representative” housed in the Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict Stabilization and Operations.

Finally, this project was about a foreign policy issue that was almost universally acknowledged to be important, but not a top priority (for example, the LRA was never going to invade the United States). Therefore, studying this topic provided a window into how the United States foreign policy apparatus addresses lower priority issues, and how those can struggle to compete for resources.