Policy comparison and recommendation
The Policy Comparison and Recommendation will form the third and final part of the national security policy recommendation in this course, which incorporates the results of both the PMESII and DIMEFIL assessments.
The purpose of the exercise is to compare the DIMEFIL and PMESII assessments, and then determine what should be done next. In other words, you get to complete the process of using the PMESII construct and the DIMEFIL framework to analyze an issue from the enemy (PMESII) and friendly (DIMEFIL) perspectives to identify the capabilities of each side which serves as the basis for developing policy options to address the issue.
The idea is to use what you learned in your PMESII analysis of the opponent’s threat and and what you learned about US capabilities with respect to that threat through your DIMEFIL analysis to compare them to one another and identify areas of mismatch that the US can both exploit (areas of strength) or protect/bolster (areas of weakness). These areas of mismatch become the basis for the two policies you will develop (i.e., TWO different ways the US could take advantage of its strengths while also protecting its weaknesses to achieve its policy objectives) and compare in order to recommend one or the other.
Spend about half of the paper on the comparison and about half of the paper on the recommendation.
I note also that you are not allowed to recommend a hybrid of the two policies you develop. The learning objectives for this assignment are process-oriented and associated with the process of comparing two things and recommending one of them, meaning that you are to present an objective comparison and logical recommendation based upon and supported by the results of your comparison, NOT to develop an optimal policy for this issue (which would be a substance-oriented learning objective more appropriate for a different, substance-oriented course)! So pick one of the recommendations as your favorite.
Assignment Instructions
Using the results of your PMESII assessment of the enemy aspects of the national security issue you addressed and the results of the DIMEFIL assessment you conducted from the US perspective of the national security threat you addressed, create and compare TWO policy options, and recommend ONE of the two policy options you have created and compared (not a hybrid of the two!).
The intent is that your policy options contain specific counters using friendly capabilities identified in your DIMEFIL assessment to the enemy capabilities you identified in your PMESII assessment.
Technical Requirements
- Your paper must be at a minimum of 9 pages .
- Type in Times New Roman, 12 point and double space.
- Follow the Turabian (author date) Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework.