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Current Practices Present Opportunities for Improvement

• Many security and justice stakeholders support improving U.S. Government coordination, and some have achieved success in designing effective performance benchmarks with foreign partners. There are also opportunities — often underexploited — for improving coordination among other actors in the region, such as the United Kingdom.
• Many partners are interested in building more effective and professional security and justice sectors. While this does not equate to allowing imposition of U.S. standards on partner forces, it indicates that opportunities exist to help partners professionalize their own forces in their own ways.

These Opportunities Do Have Some Obstacles

• Ongoing U.S. security interests frequently threaten to constrain reform initiatives.
• Despite many efforts to improve these partnerships, there often exists a temptation to continue "business as usual" approaches, rather than rock the boat.
• Given the variation in these relationships and the challenges in predicting partner nation reactions to change, U.S. efforts to exert leverage on partners in a heavy-handed way could be politically dangerous.
• There is sometimes a lack of incentives to improve the integration of U.S. Government activities or to improve coordination with other actors in a region.
• Congressional interests and expectations can lead to a siege mentality among policy-makers and planners, thus reinforcing a natural aversion to risk.