177: Patrick Passewitz on the Sicilian Model

Today, we welcome Patrick Passewitz, who authored the Monograph "The Sicilian Connection: A Story of Allied Military Governance in 1943" while attending the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies. We brought him over today to discuss his findings and how they apply to current events. We will share the article link when it is published. 

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and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

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Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

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00:00:04    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Today we welcome Patrick Passewitz, who authored the monograph, The Sicilian Connection, A Story of Allied Military Governance in 1943, while attending the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies.

00:00:52    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
We brought him over today to discuss his findings and how they apply to current events. So let's jump right in. I did read your thesis. It was solid. And the thing that struck me, and maybe it's because of my time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and some of our other cooperative, not fully overturned the government initiatives, basically, was the lack of control of the markets and the lack of control of corruption and crime in those regions. For example, when I was in Iraq, we basically allowed the Iraqis that we emplaced, and we quickly emplaced a government. And anyone who wanted to give them a bribe was open to their market. And the Chinese flooded Iraq with all kinds of manufactured goods to where it wiped out everything from their shoe industry to their leather making to their textiles. And it really wiped out their economy. It made everyone unemployed. What I saw in your survey of Sicily with Operation Husky, they controlled the markets, they controlled the value of currency. And by doing that, they controlled the level of black market. And have you seen a similar comparison when you were writing that piece?

00:02:07    JACK GAINES
So the biggest thing to go all the way back, comparing a little bit of Husky to Iraq and Afghanistan, not that it's pure apples and oranges, but with Husky, it was very much in... the beginning parts of the process of the planning. Because we understood, hey, this is going to be the first time we as the Allies are going to interact with basically an enemy population. We did some limited governance in North Africa, but it very much went back to indigenous control after that. But this is the first time we're going to interact with an enemy population. We need to get it right from all aspects to include. governance, because if we fail to, we're still going to have to commit a lot of military resources to Sicily, because it was vital, particularly for the British, to control from Gibraltar all the way to Suez to keep reinforcing the Burma theater. So they had to get it absolutely right, so they brought in military governance very early on in the planning process. The second thing, once they did that, they broke it down into a systems approach. We understand that security, economics, and good governance are going to be late. And if you break down how they interacted with all of those, they made them mutually reinforcing, which I think was really brilliant and smart. And they balanced that system's approach with very immediate impacts, as well as the long -term strategy of stability that eventually happened about six months after the Allies landed on Iraq and Afghanistan. We were pushing the bull just a year at a time. I know there were some very smart guys in the State Department, and I was actually just reviewing David Kilcullen's book when he was in Iraq. They had the long -term stuff, but I don't think it was truly married or we married it late in the campaign compared to Sicily that was very early on. One of the brilliance, I thought, was they got the legal piece down. With the economic piece, if we see black markets, You're going to go to jail. We're also going to provide wage stimulation. We're going to give jobs. We're going to ration food, as rough as that is. And then if you're corrupt within any of these realms, whether it be the legal realm, the working realm, or the political realm, you're gone. The system was too important to fail. And help mutually reinforced it. And I go back to it. If you want your systems, forces, and functions to work, you got to change how it's structured. And I think we came in an altered structure to equal form and function.

00:04:51    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Right. And one thing it helped do is weed out insurrections, criminal groups, black markets. And that was one thing that really struck me because one of the biggest problems with most of our foreign policy outreach to partner nations in development or in conflict stabilization. And post -conflict stabilization is the corruption and the insurgency. So it seems like they had a mind for it in the planning process.

00:05:17    JACK GAINES
Absolutely. And I lean on our doctrine a little bit, and that's why I not took a critical shot at doctrine, but highlighted where we could probably get better. If you look at how old 27 -5, the FM for military governance, you need to collect printing presses, wireless. You need to control that. atmosphere in that environment to be able to control the population and then enforce not necessarily your will but your economic reforms your legal reforms i think they'll be extremely difficult in today's age with how information flows that's why i think it's a little bit of apples and oranges but i think we can also wrap our heads around it and get smarter at it if we bring in the planning by all means i think or even a division can turn off some internet or restrict that so that we can enable some good governance and some stability mechanisms.

00:06:12    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Was it helpful that Sicily is a smaller nation than some of the ones we've tried to tackle recently? I think that was very much a good starting block. Kind of a really awesome to test. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:26    JACK GAINES
Because if you look at it, right after Sicily, they went into Naples. which was roughly about the same size population -wise as Boston. And I think the Allies learned a little bit six weeks prior from when they finished Husky and moved into Naples that, hey, this is what's going to work. This is what didn't work. And ultimately, it definitely paved dividends when we finished up Italy and moved into Germany.

00:06:51    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Well, one of the things I noticed in the paper was that each commander that managed different districts had a different attitude about the population and the controls. And same today, right? Anyone new that comes in, the last guy was an idiot. I'm a genius. We're going to do it my way now. Go do an assessment. And we got complaints about that. And so it seemed like they were also trying to address that issue by trying to homogenize some of the policies and practices so that whether you had a new commander, old commander, they were conservative, they were liberal, that they had guardrails. You've got to control the economic situation. You've got to keep people employed. You've got to allow local laws and governances to emerge and take over the population's practices and beliefs. But you've got to remove the poisonous actions of that fascist regime as well. It seemed like a balancing act.

00:07:46    JACK GAINES
Two things, Jack. First, spot on. I think the first part is going back to the planning. As soon as the Allies liberated a town... They'd find the public building and lay down their 10 proclamations of, hey, this is what allied military governance means. These are the new laws that you're going to follow. This is what occupation means. And this is what disillusionment of the fascist regime means. And now we're also going to put that onus on the division commander because you are now the military governor. And if you want your... Rear area secured because we're pushing forward through the island. To keep this offensive going, you need to secure your rear area, which means you need to accept military governance and really put some thought into it because it's going to sustain your offensive. The second thing I think we also did very well is you have a two -star division commander trying to keep the fight going. We also have the military governor starting to land and starting to work that consolidation area. He's also a two -star. So we have... a better cooperative through the ranks of, hey, I understand you need XYZ in your front area, but for that to happen, we need to work this with the military governor. And the ultimate end state of controlling Sicily to allow commerce to transit the Mediterranean was ultimately the goal. I think everybody understood that. And it goes back to, hey, if we bring civil affairs and governance and some of these enablers in early, it's a better product in the end. Right.

00:09:16    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Now, another I saw happening was every time we've gone into a town or into a capital, we've allowed free press to go watch right off the bat. Did they do the same thing in Sicily or did they have more of a control or a censorship of public communication?

00:09:33    JACK GAINES
It's almost unthinkable now, but yes, there were no correspondents. We temporarily shut down the Italian press. We opened up our own newspaper and we controlled the narrative very much. And I don't want that to sound misleading. That was also our key way of informing the population of, hey, this is what governance now means. These are the new work programs that were starting to work. So it was more of a necessity than a censorship. But we also discounted the narrative from the opposing side to ensure that our actions were getting out to the population and then ultimately that it is going to work.

00:10:12    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
And I see the benefits of both, honestly. Because like Libya, in the middle of the revolution back in 2012, I saw a lot of radical radio and online social media popping up as we're supporting the fight. And I remember our PSYOP and IO folks had to send them a message saying, hey, the people that are helping you with Gaddafi, we're going to cut you off. And it squelched it. squelched it immediately. They knew that this was not acceptable. But in an environment where you have to control all aspects in order to get the rules and norms of the population to behave a certain way, to cooperate, to participate in governance, to participate in the economics, kind of have to control that narrative. And I know censorship is a bad word these days, but it might be something that we have to look at. A hundred percent. And to put it into context,

00:11:12    JACK GAINES
The Allies landed in July. The battle was only really 38 days long. By then, the first two weeks were starting to inch in the stability force. By the end of the 38 days, the military governor really takes control of the island because the Nazis flee back over to the Straits of Messina. And by 1944, so we're really talking about six months, we're giving everything back to the Sicilians, mostly with training wheels, and sometimes the training wheels came off depending on which... sector of the public sphere we're looking at. The economic piece was probably the longest standing one because we were controlling, as you mentioned, imports, exports. We were definitely working on exchange rates of what the lira was to British pounds. So that was probably the longest piece. But harvesting the daily public utilities, they went very quickly back over to the Sicilian population. Because they knew the systems. Yeah.

00:12:09    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
they knew the systems.

00:12:12    JACK GAINES
Yeah. And the courts were probably the longest as well. As we mentioned, hey, we wanted to have good governance. We built up the local system very quickly. By the time it got to the national and that, about six months, we handed it back over and we built in mechanisms because we understood, hey, we're at the due governance at first, not purge, but evaluate the former fascist judges.

00:12:37    JACK GAINES
former fascist

00:12:40    JACK GAINES
Right. When we found the ones that were on the level and not part of the party, but had to say they were part of the party, but were competent, we installed them fairly quickly. They were allowed to review sentences, grant parole, clemency, or reinforce everything. So it was pretty fluid in how they were able to balance the first two weeks. We were just doing human problems to make sure that the Army can roll forward after those two weeks when the stability guys got there. we're going to work on rebuilding this population and actually make it favorable to Allied efforts.

00:13:16    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Right. Well, one thing I thought was interesting is that, yes, they reinstated judges, but they also had the Army legal system oversee the judgments. So it was as if they were auditing to make sure that they're following their own rules and laws, as well as international rule of law, effectively before they would back off and let them do their job. But they continued to monitor in case someone started taking bribes on the side for a judgment or was ruling on behalf of a family versus another showing bias. So it seemed like there was always the ability to step in and out versus in the more modern times, we stepped out and let them just run with it until they came up with their own solutions. And I feel like we didn't have enough direct relationships with systems that we've been with to where we could make change or enforce international standards. So,

00:14:07    JACK GAINES
agreed. I think there was also two great parts with that. I'm not being sacrilegious with this, but it was a purely military affair. The State Department and the Treasury didn't come onto the island until about late 44 when we were working those stability pieces, and that was a political decision by FDR and Churchill. They thought the Army had enough training and resources that they can conduct governance in the short term.

00:14:32    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
So that's about a year after?

00:14:33    JACK GAINES
after? About a year after. Okay. And that was the big thesis of why I was writing the paper is, hey, if we really look at large -scale combat operations, LISCO, the Army might outpace the State Department when we get into there. And I know we've traditionally had a green zone where we were able to work governance and stability while the Army was working security. The LISCO environment, we may not have that. In turn, the Army, you may have to work all aspects of this problem until we can build up. combat power and allow for a green zone to be built. In my SAMS work this year, that has been the biggest flavor is how is the Army going to get ready to transition from our global war on terror back into big, large -scale combat operations? And that was kind of the nexus of the paper. I think we're also going to have men and material to flow through the rear area to enable that first part.

00:15:29    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
With your time at the SAMS school, let's talk a little bit about that. We have moved away from ends, ways, means as a theory of strategy. What are they teaching you now? Is it still kind of build it out as you go or are they moving towards a strategic theory or are they teaching multiple theories of practice now?

00:15:49    JACK GAINES
It's multiple. I definitely started to get my fair share dose of ends, ways, means again, particularly as you're starting to build the operational approach. So I think what old is new again. Right. We focused a lot on RV design and the elements that make a good frame for a problem and the elements of where do we want to go.

00:16:11    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
So kind of a 3 -5 way of looking at a problem set.

00:16:11    JACK GAINES
a 3 -5

00:16:14    JACK GAINES
That's correct. Most of us will end up in a 3 -5 or a 5 upon graduation. But, of course, we've got our fair dose of doctrine, of theory, even theory I wasn't even ready for. Well, it's a good thing. You don't want to be bored. No, no, no. All in all, I think the different theories give you a different way to potentially frame a problem set, but also influence that, hey, this is what I'm really seeing because I know I want to need a general officer not only to buy off on it, but I got to share this across not only the staff, but potentially some interagency partners and some NGOs that, hey, this is probably what we're looking at. Do you agree with this frame? And then how can we best work through the solutions?

00:16:57    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Right. Because what you're asking them is. Is this what you think reality is? And is this what you think reality ought to be? And what's the road to get there?

00:17:05    JACK GAINES
A hundred percent. If you don't agree, where do we meet the middle that we may get some better truths out of it? Or what's the gaps that you see in that model, which is my favorite job.

00:17:11    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
what's the gaps that you see in that model, which is my favorite job. I love poking holes in strategic theory because I don't know. I'm just good at it.

00:17:21    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
People ask me what my favorite stuff in the Army is, and I'll be honest, it's looking at conditions and then seeing where opportunities are, where can we exploit them, where can we reinforce them to achieve goals. So I'm always interested in strategy and theory of strategy. What's next for you now that you've gone to Sam's and you've become, what is it, you're a planned Jedi now or a samurai or a ninja? Yeah, I'm a Jedi knight after this.

00:17:46    JACK GAINES
a Jedi knight after this. You've been Jedi. Provided I passed the world comms. I'll be heading to 5th Corps forward. I know you had Colonel Augustine on not so long ago. I'll be in the 3 -5 there. Traditionally, in my background, I've been a UConn guy for most of my career, so it feels like going home a little bit. Right. But overly excited, ready to get back into Poland, ready to get back into doing some good work and some good plans, because I think that's, as everybody knows, a very emerging theater.

00:18:17    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Oh, yeah. And it's an exciting time over there because we are probably at the cusp of Ukraine coming to a decision. So how we transition those conditions to support the future Ukraine,

00:18:18    JACK GAINES
an exciting

00:18:26    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
we transition those conditions to support the future Ukraine, and my hope is they get Crimea all the way through their eastern side taken back. That's, to me, a win. I have some personal anchoring bias into the game.

00:18:38    JACK GAINES
have some personal anchoring bias into the game. When I was a team leader, I got pushed into the first Atlantic Resolve in 2014. when they took Crimea. And then before I got to the SAMs, I was in 18th Airborne Corps when they rushed over as part of that problem set. So I very much agree with you, Jack, and that's the way I want it to go. Right. But Jack, thank you again. I really appreciate it.

00:19:02    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
No problem. It's a great paper. I enjoyed it. And I'm glad that you raised your hand to come on. I think this is going to be a fun episode. Anyway, I'm going to let you go. Thank you. I'll send you the rough and the projected time that'll release. So give you a little time to listen to it.

00:19:19    JACK GAINES
Oh, great.

00:19:20    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Yeah. Yeah. Make it easy. All right. We'll talk soon.

 

Close

Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. I'll have the email and CA association website in the show notes. And now, most importantly, to those currently out in the field working with a partner nation's people or leadership to forward U .S. relations, thank you all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host. Stay tuned for more great episodes, 1CA Podcast.