South Asia Policy and Engagement Support Specialist

Policy Analysis

• Conduct research and analysis on political, governmental, diplomatic, military, economic, social, technological, development, and security developments affecting South Asia, and U.S. regional interests.
• Monitor relevant legislative and executive developments, policy announcements, elections, leadership changes, defense decisions, diplomatic initiatives, security incidents, and regional events.
• Assess implications for U.S. policy, defense posture, partner relationships, regional access, operational planning, and engagement priorities.
• Analyze governmental structures, policy processes, institutional authorities, decision-making dynamics, and stakeholder ecosystems.
• Evaluate bilateral and regional relationships including developments that may affect U.S. engagement objectives.
• Identify emerging issues requiring senior-level awareness, additional research, stakeholder coordination, or policy action.
• Develop assessments that clearly identify facts, assumptions, strategic implications, risks, opportunities, and recommended courses of action.

Expert Advice on Governmental Affairs

• Provide expert advice on regional governmental affairs, policy priorities, institutional relationships, and engagement considerations.
• Explain the likely policy implications of legislative, regulatory, diplomatic, defense, economic, or leadership developments.
• Advise teams on country-specific sensitivities, stakeholder interests, communication considerations, and potential barriers to implementation.
• Challenge assumptions and identify unintended consequences associated with proposed policies, engagements, exercises, or programs.
• Support senior leaders in preparing for meetings, official visits, bilateral discussions, conferences, testimony, and other high-visibility engagements.
• Provide timely verbal and written briefings on fast-moving developments and emerging risks.

Policy Recommendations and Strategic Planning

• Develop policy recommendations, courses of action, decision points, and engagement options related to India and Bhutan.
• Evaluate the potential value, feasibility, risks, and resource implications of proposed operations, actions, and investments.
• Support the development and refinement of country-specific objectives, planning assumptions, lines of effort, milestones, performance indicators, and desired outcomes.
• Assess how policy developments could affect U.S. force capabilities, posture, access, requirements, and regional plans.
• Support the development, review, and maintenance of inputs to OPLANs, CONPLANs, campaign plans, theater strategies, engagement plans, and related planning products, as appropriate.
• Recommend mitigation strategies for political, operational, diplomatic, implementation, and stakeholder risks.

Program and Initiative Development

• Support the design and development of policy, engagement, exercise, and capacity-building initiatives involving India and Bhutan.
• Translate policy objectives into practical workplans, activities, milestones, governance structures, resource requirements, and implementation approaches.
• Support concept development for bilateral and multilateral engagements, exercises, workshops, exchanges, and strategic dialogues.
• Develop implementation roadmaps and decision-support materials for new or evolving programs.
• Assess the likely regional and country-level impact of proposed initiatives before implementation.
• Support post-event reviews, lessons-learned activities, and continuous-improvement efforts.
• Maintain awareness of dependencies, approvals, taskings, deadlines, and unresolved issues affecting program execution.

Stakeholder Engagement and Coordination

• Coordinate with HQUSPACOM, component commands, service organizations, interagency partners, embassy or country-team stakeholders, and other authorized organizations.
• Support coordination with relevant governmental or institutional stakeholders when authorized by the client, contract, and applicable disclosure requirements.
• Build productive working relationships across policy, strategy, plans, operations, intelligence, security cooperation, legal, protocol, public affairs, logistics, and security functions.
• Prepare for and support bilateral and multilateral meetings, official visits, conferences, working groups, policy reviews, and senior-staff engagements.
• Develop agendas, engagement plans, meeting objectives, participant lists, background materials, biographies, talking points, read-aheads, and follow-up trackers.
• Consolidate, reconcile, and disposition stakeholder comments on staff products.
• Track action officers, approval authorities, suspense dates, dependencies, decisions, and unresolved issues.
• Capture engagement outcomes, commitments, open questions, and follow-up actions through meeting records and after-action reports.

Senior-Leader Products and Written Communications

• Draft, coordinate, edit, and quality-control senior-leader-ready products.
• Prepare executive summaries, briefing slides, information papers, decision memoranda, policy memoranda, country briefs, talking points, meeting read-aheads, recurring reports, and background papers.
• Develop trip books and visit-support materials for senior military and civilian leaders.
• Prepare command-level inputs for testimony support, executive engagements, conferences, policy reviews, and leadership meetings.
• Translate complex policy and regional information into concise, accurate, action-oriented products tailored to the intended audience.
• Incorporate stakeholder feedback while preserving analytical rigor, factual accuracy, alignment with approved guidance, and on-time delivery.
• Review products for grammar, formatting, consistency, accuracy, classification markings, and adherence to organizational standards.