Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) Program

June 2, 2015

Topics

The Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace Program provides a cultural, regional and socio-political framework that sets the stage for leaders to understand, visualize, describe and assess the operational variables in regions/countries of interest. Audience is the leadership of O6 and higher commands supporting Regionally Aligned Brigades/Regionally Aligned Forces, Korea Forces, and NATO allies supporting SFA and ISAF missions in Afghanistan.

LDESP is a collaborative educational program designed and facilitated by scholars from leading educational institutes, DoD, government agencies and international organizations to support DoD and Army educational requirements. The program executes distance learning courses and seminars to cultivate skills and promote whole-of-government approaches, preparing participants to build partnerships in countries and regions around the world. Since 2001, LDESP has graduated more than 86,000 leaders and soldiers.

Custom Programs

The graduate level LDESP program is customized for each unit and can be phased to meet the different levels of educational requirements for developing regional cultural-socio political knowledge and attributes within the Army. The LDESP curricula are constantly evolving to meet current requirements.

Afghanistan Programs

The program executes distance learning courses and customized seminars on Afghanistan to help leaders understand the operational environment and cultivate cultural and interagency skills to work with allies and their Afghan counterparts in the country. Audience for the LDESP Afghanistan programs include (but are not limited) to the leadership of O6 and higher commands and NATO allies supporting SFA and ISAF missions in Afghanistan. Please contact LDESP Staff (LDESP_staff@nps.edu) for more information on the program or to schedule a seminar.

Regional Programs

LDESP meets the enduring requirement for building regional expertise for meeting contingencies in various regions, by providing specialized, customized regional education on regions identified in the AOR. LDESP conducts regular distance learning courses and seminars on regions/focus countries within Africa, Asia-Pacific, South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, and other regions identified by the Army components of regional commands and RAFs. Please contact LDESP Staff (LDESP_staff@nps.edu) for more information on the program or to schedule a seminar.

Leadership Programs

As LDESP continues to educate both military and civilian leaders engaged in ongoing operations, the program simultaneously supports military readiness to respond to future national security challenges by meeting the educational requirements of our National Defense strategy and expanding its existing programs on capacity building, military, economic, social, infrastructure and information (PMESII) education, leadership, building partnership capability, security cooperation, strategic communication, and achieving unity of effort. The goal of the program is to develop innovative thinkers, capable of predicting second and third order effects; who have the cultural and political understanding necessary to effectively use negotiation skills; and who can retain team building and training skills along with the capacity to leverage technology. Core competencies education provided by LDESP includes:

PMESII-PT* & Cultural Awareness Regional Expertise
Security Sector Reform, Understanding Security Environment & US Policies
Security Force Assistance
Building Partnerships, Negotiations & Key Leader Engagements
Interagency Coordination
Working on Improving Governance Capability
Leadership Development
Ethics
Humanitarian Assistance & Disaster Response

Meeting DOD Educational Requirements

LDESP is designed to meet the education standards of DoDD 3000.05, DoDD 3000.07 FM 3.0, FM 3-24, HQDA EXORD 273-10 and other DoD cultural and regional requirements. It compliments and covers all the supporting regional competencies outlined in the Army Culture and Foreign Language strategy ACFLS plan.

The program has graduated more than 76,000 soldiers since its inception. About 12,000 soldiers deploying to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Africa and other regions go through the program each year.