Adam Day advances a nearly unthinkable contention with his book States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance: failing states are not actually in disorder. Instead, he argues that failing states demonstrate a different kind of self-organization and that persistent instability is, in fact, the success of system organization—just a system oriented toward instability instead of stability.

In 2021-22, Motive International was subcontracted by a large business prime contract holder to design and build an Atrocity Prevention (AP) tabletop exercise (TTX) for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (State/DRL). Delivered to State/DRL in September 2022, the TTX Motive developed today serves as the primary mechanism to fulfill the State Department’s Congressional mandate to train U.S. officials in AP as per the Eli Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018. Through immersive learning that measurably translates to real-world AP impacts, this project demonstrates Motive’s mastery harnessing the power of TTXs to advance our mission to mitigate conflict and bolster global stability.

In September 2022, the U.S. government’s Institute for Security Governance (ISG) hosted the week-long Panama Workshop at which Motive’s Ana Velsco served as an expert WPS facilitator. Designed to advance shared U.S.-Panama WPS goals, event participants included more than two dozen uniformed and civilian, male and female officials from different branches of Panama’s security agencies. Co-facilitators included officials from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and academia.

Instead of informing Panamanian officials about the goals or principles of UNSCR 1325, co-facilitators sought to explore complex themes of gender and security through various framing questions. Why should a patrol officer guarding the Darien Gap think about gender? What use does a UN framework have for a police officer in the city of Colon? Is the WPS agenda -- often couched in the context of inter-state war -- even relevant for Latin America? As opposed to lecture-based approaches that can reduce gender and security to mere abstractions, the ensuing dialogue made WPS relevant, relatable, and durable.

Motive Subject Matter Expert Nathan Toronto shares how his recent experience advising the 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade (3rd SFAB) and reflecting on “how the United States can reform military advising efforts to have a strategic effect, rather than achieving short-term tactical or operational gains that do not bear up under the weight of the overarching political conflict,” prompted him to consider the question “How does the Army know when an advisor is ready to deploy?”

This January and February, the 4th Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) gave Motive the opportunity to build critical understanding among their personnel when they contracted us to provide embassy role players for their validation exercise ahead of a deployment to the European theatre. By the end of the two-week event, Motive earned widespread praise from the most senior and junior members of the training audience, including an SFAB team lead about to deploy for the first time who said, “I feel as though I could walk into any embassy in the world and do my job effectively because of what I learned.”