A plethora of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has emerged to overwhelm the combatant command military planner. In post-conflict operations, with its emphasis on humanitarian relief missions, the military and responding agencies must direct appropriate resources to the primary critical relief functions that provide security, food/water relief, shelter of civilians, medical treatment, demining, restoration of infrastructure, return of displaced persons, and restoration of government and police functions. Balancing the NGOs' capabilities to perform these functions with NGOs' interests and goals, a new strategic model arises for military/NGO relationships. Essentially, the military/NGO interaction can be characterized in four possible manners: reliance, assistance , autonomous, or adversarial. Knowing these model relationships before a conflict enables the military planner to synchronize military resources, area coverage, and military/NGO actions better. The model development and agreement would occur at an annual week-long interagency conference under USAID lead in which NGOs, DoD, State Department, various contributing agencies, and combatant command representatives would establish roles and missions. They would also determine capability and scale for potential contingencies in various operational theaters. This directive model will serve the national strategy far better than the current reactive, ad hoc model in which military planners respond to on-the-ground operational and NGO situations.