text: Understanding the Strategic Context
  Figure 1-1. Country team command relationships
  1-66. An important enabler for ensuring unity of effort in countering an insurgency, especially when the
  U.S. is enabling a host nation with various capabilities, is foreign area officers. These officers can be an
  essential link to an embassy’s country team. By virtue of unique language proficiency and cultural and
  regional expertise, foreign area officers can be critical in helping to integrate various capabilities into the
  host nation’s ongoing efforts. While foreign area officers are often associated with security cooperation
  activities, such as foreign military sales, foreign area officers have historically provided essential strategic
  thinking and planning necessary to enable a host nation. As core members of the security cooperation
  organization and defense attaché office within the embassy country team, foreign area officers serve as key
  advisors to ambassadors and combatant commanders. Foreign area officers routinely operate in a
  whole-of-government, joint, intergovernmental, and multinational environment. They can be essential in
  integrating resources, capabilities, and activities throughout U.S. and multinational agencies to achieve
  unity of effort and accomplish national counterinsurgency objectives.
  Multinational Forces
  1-67. Soldiers and Marines normally function as part of a multinational force, for example, by supporting
  the United Nations or as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Each multinational participant
  provides capabilities and strengths that U.S. forces may not have. Many other countries’ military forces
  provide cultural backgrounds, historical experiences, and other capabilities that can be particularly valuable
  to counterinsurgency efforts.