Evolving the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan to Support Precision Lethality and Effective U.S. Military Operations

Excerpt

Recent guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has mandated an 8
percent cut in Department of Defense (DoD) programs not related to 17 priority items Secretary
of Defense Pete Hegseth has identified to spare from the funding cuts. Secretary Hegseth has
accordingly directed Army leadership to identify programs where cuts can be made, but has
suggested that his focus is on non-lethal programs that weaken U.S. warfighting readiness.
Consistent with this guidance, press reports indicate that Secretary Hegseth is moving to close the
Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) program and its Civilian Protection
Center of Excellence (CP CoE).

Both the office and the center have roots in the first Trump administration, when Secretary James
N. Mattis ordered a review of civilian casualties in U.S. targeting operations taking place in Iraq
and Syria during the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). Mattis’ order was based on a
perception of high levels of civilian casualties involved in U.S. combat operations during the war
on terror. The Biden administration responded to the findings of the study in 2022 by creating the
Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) program, issuing the Civilian Harm Mitigation
and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) and creating new positions within operational commands
to support military planning and operations, while Congress established a “Center for Excellence”
(CP CoE) with bipartisan support under 10 U.S. Code § 184.

Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Pennsylvania. She is also Faculty Director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of
Law. Orde F. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served for a decade as an attorney and
policy official at the U.S. Department of State.