Featured Article: Optimizing the CWMD Enterprise Across the Interagency

Featured article:

Optimizing the CWMD Enterprise Across the Interagency
by Michael J. Kwon

In recent decades, interagency cooperation has enabled the U.S. government in countering
weapons of mass destruction (CWMD) organizations. This interagency cooperation, collectively referred to as the U.S. CWMD enterprise is an ongoing effort to protect the nation from the threat of WMD. Progress, such as it is, has not been easy; regulatory, budgetary, bureaucratic, and cultural obstacles abound. Nevertheless, so do opportunities for process improvement. As this extraordinarily complex enterprise continues to grapple with its equally complex problem set, particularly pertaining to issues of process standardization and conformance with the goal of optimizing interagency effectiveness, the enterprise would do well to avail itself of some valuable lessons from an unlikely,
but highly effective interagency of another kind—the ecosystem of honeybees.

Honeybees are responsible for cross-pollinating 80 percent of the world’s fruits and vegetables and nearly half of all other food crops. In the U.S. alone, bees contribute $20 billion dollars to the economy. Bees are considered to be the highest form of insect life, showing sophisticated colonies and complex behaviors. The study of their enormous efficiency and effectiveness reveals some fundamental lessons, five of which are directly applicable to the U.S CWMD enterprise’s quest for process improvement…

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U.S. Air Force Major Michael J. Kwon serves as the Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander at Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea, where he provides medical counter Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear defense expertise to the Air Force commanders and warfighers. He holds M.S. Degree in WMD Studies and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.