The One CA Podcast

185: Scott Mann, Life After Afghanistan

Please welcome Retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. 

As a Green Beret, Scott designed and led the local village stability operations program in Afghanistan.

After leaving the military, he began to focus on using his experience with the struggle of transitioning from a fast-paced and high-risk lifestyle to build a healthy transition to the civilian world of work and family. As a result, he launched "Heroes Journey" to help servicemembers, first responders, and their families cope with post-crisis trauma through storytelling.

Scott also wrote and featured in the play and film "Last Man Out," which portrays the impacts of war on our Veterans and their families

Additionally, after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Scott and others launched Task Force Pineapple Express to help Afghan partners leave the country. 

Lastly, Scott has made three appearances on TEDx to discuss his work with veterans and first responders and is announcing his new book, "No One is Coming to Save You," which will be released in October. 

This discussion is split into two separate episodes. 

The first one is to discuss Scott's work prior to the book "No One is Coming to Save You," which airs in October. The Second episode releases in September and is a discussion and the book.

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One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to Ahimsaz for the sample of “Shahamat." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wmoH-fHhwQ

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Transcript

00:00:03    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.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
Please welcome retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. As a Green Beret, Scott designed and led the local village stability operations program in Afghanistan. After leaving the military, he began to focus on using his experience with the struggle of transition from a fast -paced, high -risk lifestyle to the civilian world of work and family. As a result, he launched Hero's Journey to help other service members, first responders, and their families cope with post -crisis trauma through storytelling. Scott also wrote and featured in the play and film Last Man Out, which portrays the impacts of war on our veterans and their families. Additionally, after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Scott and others launched Task Force Pineapple Express to help Afghan partners leave the country. Lastly, Scott has made three appearances on TEDx to discuss his work with veterans and first responders and is now announcing his new book, No One is Coming to Save You, which will be released in October. This discussion is split into two separate episodes. The first one is to discuss Scott's work leading up to the book, and the second is a follow -up discussion and the book. So enjoy.

00:01:48    SCOTT MANN
We run really, really hard and we've got a lot going on in our family and stuff, you know, just with my parents' help. And so getting time to just recharge and recover is, it's a long game, right? You got to play the long game.

00:02:01    JACK GAINES
Well, I don't want to get too deep into your persona. Oh, no, no, it's fine. Or your family or anything, but you're finding balance in that to where it's not killing you or anything. Well, I think so.

00:02:08    SCOTT MANN
or anything. Well, I think so. Balance is something I find myself pursuing, never achieving, but I think as best we can. My dad and I are very similar in the sense that we both, believe that when we leave this world, we will get the car in sideways with a yeehaw and roll out the door. So it's hard to turn that off, but I think you have to manage that because it's just not everybody runs at that rate.

00:02:31    JACK GAINES
Right. And also sometimes you don't know if you're going 70 or 90. Yeah. And you might be actually driving harder, faster to that skidding sideways. Yeah. Great. You know where you could have a fruitful, happy life if you pace.

00:02:36    SCOTT MANN
And you

00:02:46    JACK GAINES
Or if I just built the habit of running at this pace and I can't know how to stop?

00:02:50    SCOTT MANN
That's very well said. And, you know, you have to ask yourself sometimes, why am I running this hard or going this fast? Is it something I'm running towards or something I'm running from? That's the other thing.

00:03:01    JACK GAINES
Now that you've come full circle, you've done your time in the military, you've gotten out, you've got kids coming into the military. My audience are either diplomats or military or aid or field agents. They're in the mix right now. How do we help them to come to a better transition? Should they be working the same strategies and tactics they are with Partner Nation, with their families? Do you see them needing more space? They come home and transition. Do you support counseling? What are your thoughts on that?

00:03:34    SCOTT MANN
What makes that question even more profound is how contextually relevant to the audience that you just described to me. And you actually provided some answers in that as you asked the question, which is great. I feel like I learned more after I got out of the military about what it means to be more engaging, more effective as a father, as a husband, as a leader in the military. And I think the reason was because I went through a really, really bad transition. I went from... This place where I felt like I was very high performing as a Green Beret in Afghanistan, doing village stability operations, working very, very heavily in the interagency environment. Then all of a sudden you're out and you're walking around your house in your flip -flops, showering every other day. No one's calling. Yeah. No one's emailing you. It's like changing planets. The other part of it for me was coming back to a country that was so divided and just so different than what I had remembered. So all of that conspired to create an environment for me where it just got very dark, very disconnected, very isolated. And it caused me to really reevaluate everything about myself, everything, and question everything about myself, from my manhood to my abilities as a father, as a husband, my relevance on this earth, which was very scary. And I almost didn't come back from. But I did. And in that process, through the help of some very, very skunkum civilian mentors, was a way to kind of reconnect at the most basic primal visceral level to my own nature, to those around me, and really through old school interpersonal skills like storytelling to make meaning out of things that I had assumed that I understood. And I know that's a long way around, but what I'm getting at here is that my journey to even answer that question was really ugly and clunky, and it was post -military. And then it was reacquainting myself with the real primal realities of the human operating system and how humans navigate the world, regardless of our industry. And once I kind of reconnected with that, I found a lot of answers, I think, that I wish I had had when I was. engaging partner nations when I was in the interagency environment, when I was a father and a husband in a high stress environment. And so what I would say to maybe kick things off is I believe in the definition of leadership that Professor James Clawson puts forward out at Darden University. He says that humans are mostly energy and that leadership is the management of energy, yours and those around you. And I don't distinguish between the management of that energy with my sons. My wife, an ambassador, client at Capital One that I'm trying to work with, or an employee who's had a terrible family experience and is distraught. All of that is the management of energy in real time. Both parties trying to meet their goals. And only the context changes. And I think it's our ability to have a process for managing energy with human engagement that's so important. And I don't think there's a way of negotiating with ambassadors and a way of negotiating with your children. I think leadership is leadership and it really comes with how we lead ourselves.

00:07:02    JACK GAINES
That's interesting. You say it was an ugly transition, but it's a transition that, as you know, many veterans struggle with every day and that you actually broke through the wall. Yes, those are the first to break through any wall are going to get bloodied, but you have found a vision of expanding that voice so that others can see it. And I've kind of seen your efforts in plays and the books and the talks and the podcasts. as you trying to say, hey, yeah, it was hard. It was real hard for me. Let me help you avoid some of those things so you don't have to go that dark and you don't have to get banged up like this so that we can all come out and prosper together. Yeah.

00:07:40    SCOTT MANN
I asked myself a very troubling question, but actually a question that probably saved my life in those dark times was, do I still have relevance on this earth? Do I still have something to say? Because I felt like maybe I didn't. But as I started to really explore that question, I realized that I did. I had a lot to say. I had learned a lot as a Green Beret working in low -trust, high -stakes environments, in particular with village stability operations, because I had been gifted the opportunity as a field -grade officer to really be the program manager for Green Berets back out into the rural areas of Afghanistan, working very closely with civil affairs and SIOP, but also state department, development workers. Even the academic weeks that we would run before every deployment, it was my opportunity to put those things together. And I got to meet this amazing community of practitioners from all these different realms that would never sit in the same room together, yet they were looking at the same wicked problem. And when you brought their functionality of understanding, really, the human operating system, as I call it, this ancient creature that is hundreds of thousands of years old and how it's trying to make sense of a modern world. It was the synthesis of all these wonderful points of view from these various disciplines and agencies that helped me craft a methodology that I still teach today. I call it rooftop leadership, but it really is this ability to understand our innate realities as humans, what makes us tick at a practitioner level, well, not a clinical level, and then use those as filters in how we see ourselves and how we see the world that most people don't take the time to do in this churn that we're in. but also as levers for authentic influence, storytelling, active listening, nonverbal physicality, breath. And that actually informed the answer to my question because I said to myself, man, if I could share that, that I learned at the latter part of my career on how to go into these really dynamic environments and manage the energy in the room through the science, not just the art, but the science of old school interpersonal skills. What could that do in this time of low trust and churn here in the country? So for me, that was a real profound answer because then once I learned how to use storytelling to do that, storytelling became the modality by which I could bridge this gap. And then once that emotional breach was done, then come in with the things about the human operating system that we've ignored, we've forgotten, that can really address a lot of today's ills. And that started to give me purpose again. It started to give me meaning again. And frankly, it allowed me to evolve into, I consider myself an artist. I consider myself a catalyst. I consider myself a person who was put on this earth to leave tracks for others, as my dad says. So yeah, it's been a really cool ride, but I do view the rest of my life as one where I try to pour myself into other people. and really hold space for them while they figure out how they're going to have that strategic impact through human connection. And the interesting thing is that sense of purpose is universal in a lot of ways.

00:10:49    JACK GAINES
interesting thing is that sense of purpose is universal in a lot of ways. It's not just soldiers that struggle with that. Yeah. And they struggle with, is this all I am? Is this what my goal is? And it takes working with these folks and trying to find out what their vision is and the challenge of overcoming all the obstacles to achieve. Some sense who they are and why they are a part of this earth. It's a tough one, especially if people are really ambitious. That's a hunger. That's a beast to feed.

00:11:19    SCOTT MANN
feed. And we're taught to be that way in the line of work that most of your listeners are in. We're conditioned that way at a subconscious level. We already have drivers to pursue that, or you probably wouldn't be in that line of work. But here's the thing. You just gave a perfect example that I'd like to just back up and pull the thread on a little bit when you talk about purpose and meaning. So in my book, Nobody's Coming to Save You, that I've got coming out this fall, that is one of the areas where we go deep. And so purpose and meaning, we talk about it all the time. But to me, it was always kind of nebulous. Even when Simon Sinek talks about people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. I love that statement, but I couldn't help but wonder, yeah, but why is that? And I'm like a little five -year -old. Because I need to know why that is. The Green Beret in me wants to understand the science of it. This just I'm OK, you're OK kind of thing. This just good self -talk and I should do it because you said so. There was so much skepticism coursing through my veins. I needed to understand at a visceral fundamental level why meaning and purpose is so profoundly important. And so one of the things in this community of practice is that we're all in. Why is meaning so important? Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning is a classic, but. Even more recently, the applications of neuroscience have opened up all kinds of levels of understanding of why we can't ignore this stuff like purpose and meaning. And one of the best I've seen is a guy named Dr. Ivan Tyrrell. He's from the UK and he wrote a book called The Human Givens. He's a psychiatrist and he runs an institute called The Human Givens Institute. Here's the basic premise of it. Every human on the planet has innate physiological and emotional needs that must be met. They are non -negotiable, and they are standard across all humans. Ethnicity, culture, language, they're the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline are these innate physiological and emotional needs that we as humans use to navigate the world. And if those needs are met, we're good. We can even move towards self -actualization on that same pyramid. But if they're not met, then we are going to find ways to meet them, oftentimes unhealthy. Purpose and meaning. is one of the most profound and important human givens inside of us. We are meaning -seeking creatures. We are meaning -assigning creatures. We seek meaning and we assign meaning in everything that we do. So if you come out of civil affairs or you come out of the diplomacy core and you do not pursue with rigor, the same rigor that you did in your former life, the elements of meaning and purpose, then the body, the spirit, it is going to fight it on its own or it's going to revolt. There's going to be a lack of alignment and it is as needed as water and air and shelter, meaning and purpose. It's not an optional thing for us. It's necessary at a fundamental level. So that's the kind of thing where I spend a lot of my time developing this methodology to help high performers see that meaning and purpose is not a casual thing. It is a necessity. And you must feed that beast. And if you don't, it will eat anyway. And it's a very ugly thing when it does.

00:14:39    JACK GAINES
Right. An interesting add -on is that most humans also need a sense of community, which is what I see you doing with your work through the talks, through podcasts, is you're building camaraderie through your work so that people see that need is being fulfilled. There are options. You don't have to drink your way through it. There are people that can help you. We are a team still, even though you've got a five -inch beard hanging off your chin and you're a civilian now. It's fine. We're still a team. We're still people. And we need to work together.

00:15:11    SCOTT MANN
Yeah, well said. And that was where I was really gifted the opportunity to learn firsthand. I mean, I grew up in a small community in Arkansas. My father and mother come from small communities. So I've always been aware of the power of community. I certainly understood that as a Green Beret. go local or go home. The power of community and bottom -up is so important. But it was really towards the end of my career, Jack, when we were doing disability operations, we were building communities of practice inside and outside Afghanistan where you would work with functional practitioners in the realm of low -tech agriculture, dispute resolution, good governance that was around restoration of relationships, tribal dynamics. The point is, There were all these amazing people who were working the same problem, but from a different subculture or a different lens. And we built communities of practice around these wicked problems. And it never left me. It just affected me in such positive ways. I left the military not encouraged about what was going on in Afghanistan, but very encouraged with how these communities of practice could form in a starfish and spider kind of way that Brofman and Beckstrom write about. And I still use that today. I still believe in that today. Younger says in tribes that it is probably communities that will determine whether we live or die as a civil society. And we can create them. People are starving for connection. Human connection is another human given. And if we can help create in a healthy way environments by which communities can be built, particularly around wicked problems, because that then assigns meaning and purpose without a lot of effort. and it unifies us in a very focused way. So yeah, I'm a huge believer in communities. It's one of the pillars that we do at Scott Mann and Rooftop Leadership. And we've built it around the play. We've built it around storytelling. We've built it around getting Afghans out of Afghanistan and helping them out. So yeah, I'm a big believer in it.

00:17:16    JACK GAINES
Matter of fact, when people research longevity, they usually go to the Italian Bulldites and say, oh, everyone there's 106, 105. And they're like, how do you do it? And they're like, When they're out walking everywhere, they're exercising, they have a sense of community. Yeah. They all work together in that community to help each other. Sure, they have food, water, everything. And so it builds cohesion within them. So I don't know if you've seen those reports, but I've always found that to be interesting.

00:17:42    SCOTT MANN
Yeah. I always say that if we just think of ourselves as meaning -seeking, emotional, social storytellers who struggle. In other words, we're a mess. Three S's there. But you accept the best. Yeah. We are social creatures. We are wired to be social. It's our superpower. We don't have fur fangs or claws, right? But yet we still sit on top of the food chain. How is that? Well, we are wired to build teams better than any mammal on the planet. And in my assessment, we have gone down a dangerous path in the last 50 years of getting away from human connection. We are actually more divided, more isolated than we've ever been. Our technology, while on the surface, appears to connect us. I believe we're more divided and isolated than we've ever been. And two plus years of COVID didn't help either. So we've got some work to do in our ability to build communities and our ability to build families and our abilities to build strong team places, strong nations. All of the fabric of these social institutions is under stress. Right.

00:18:43    JACK GAINES
I wanted to bring up village stability operations, if you don't mind. You worked that program from 2010 through 13? Yeah, I worked that program from its inception with Seth Jones and Dr.

00:18:52    SCOTT MANN
Yeah, I worked that program from its inception with Seth Jones and Dr. Arturo Munoz, Ed Reeder, all the way through when it really stood down. And then I wrote a book called Game Changers about it going local to defeat violent extremists with the cooperation of Scott Miller when he was in command over in Afghanistan and put that out as via primer. of lessons learned and what we got right and what we got wrong and if we ever had to do it again. Village stability is remote area for an internal defense. It was very similar to what was done with the Montagnards, with the CIDG program that the Marines did and the CAP program that we did in Guatemala. It's not new, but the Vietnam veteran SF mentors that I had who helped us put it together were adamant that when it was done to capture what happened. in the form of kind of a methodology. And we did. And so I was with that program in various capacities all the way through.

00:19:51    JACK GAINES
I was in Afghanistan in 2013 at the embassy running the Taliban counter -influence program. I was brought in to review it and then rewrite it because it wasn't working at the state level. And I wrote the plan very similarly. It was all about... having people out in the field who were reporting on what's going on with the Taliban, whether they're working in the markets, if they're working with local elders, and then reporting into the provincial leaders what those efforts were, and then giving them recommendations on how to engage, to build a better police force, how to take the things that the Taliban did that the population liked, like having kids read the Quran on the radio, but also bringing in the things that the Taliban could not compete in. It was hard. There was a lot of politics, a lot of fighting over how policy should run. But I felt like the program worked because we got a lot of good feedback from the population. I think the key indicator that something was effective was when an advisor to a provincial leader said that some village elders from his hometown came up, visited him, and they said, hey, the Taliban came to talk to us. And they said that we want for you to leave your posts and stop what you're doing. Come back with us. Explain why you were doing it to the Taliban. Apologize. Never do it again. Everything will be okay. And so he wrote up that note and I sent it up to the chain and it went all the way up to the White House to show that, hey, we are making a difference. That created a lot of heat. It didn't really create a lot of light on the program, as usual.

00:21:24    SCOTT MANN
Yeah, it's unfortunate.

00:21:25    JACK GAINES
Yeah, but I left it in a good place and then it was a one -year deployment. I handed it off and took off, but it never felt like... the whole of government understood that Afghanistan is about people and local councils, local jurgas, local leaders. And once you start there, you allow the government to build from there, it would be successful. I felt like it was just a rush to place a national government, a national law system. You're right.

00:21:52    SCOTT MANN
It was trying to fit a square peg and a round. It really was. And we tried to replicate our own civil society in a civil society that was radically different. That was probably far more status and honor -based than anything that we have at our individualistic contract society here in the West. So it was very flawed from the outset. And then when you look at our government and how it operates, I mean, they're far more tribal than any Pashtun. And, you know, it's hard to get to even sit in a room on anything. I do believe that there were, again, at the execution level, for example, USAIDOTI. Very impressed with those folks overall and the work that they did. And we did a lot of collaboration, most of it in formal, but there was some programmatic collaboration within, as well as other expeditionary diplomats, Department of Agriculture. Again, in my mind, everybody that was really having the impacts were the ones out there at the local areas. And then they were rendering status back to the higher levels of command and control and governance and programatics. And that's where the break was. bottom -up meets top -down. And that has always been a historic problem, yes, in Afghanistan, but also in any formal, informal arrangement. And we'd better figure that out. That is not an excuse to do as poorly as we did and to get it as wrong as we did. It's certainly to pull the trigger on a systemic ally abandonment. that will go down in the annals of history as probably the most wholesale cataclysmic abandonment in American history. That will far surpass Saigon in my assessment. And that could have been avoided if our governmental processes and our ability to talk to one another had been stronger and we could have gone out of the way of our own egos. But that's probably a whole different podcast. But I do struggle with all of that. But I think that what's important is One, we need to recognize that there is still a re -emerging threat in that country right now that is very, very dangerous and that we have lost 98 % of our human intelligence capability. So we don't really even know what's going on in that country except from left behind commandos and interpreters and the national resistance. And we're not working with any of it, only the veterans that are still on the phone with them. In some weird way, it's almost like veteran groups have more actionable intel. than the formal lettering agencies because they're not talking to the people who are actually trained to observe and report and deal with these things. Those people were left behind and we never hung up the phone with them. So it's really bizarre. I was telling somebody this the other day that stuff coming off the battlefield in Afghanistan about what al -Qaeda is doing, what ISIS is doing, what they're doing up in the Panjshir, bin Laden's sons being back in the country. Somebody kind of rolled their eyes that it was a veterans group that put that information out. And I'm thinking, well, hold on. They've got more fidelity on actually what's happening than most people because they're still talking to the people who know how to observe and report. And so my point here is big threat coming out of Afghanistan that we are in danger of ignoring again in a pre -911 kind of way. And then the other thing is there's been a tremendous moral injury, I believe, heaped upon. Not just the veteran population of Afghanistan, but our diplomats, our development experts, and were put in a position where they had to violate what they did. And moral injuries are nasty critters. And even if they are not diagnosed as a clinical thing, they're very much real. And we have done some damage to the men and women who we asked for 20 years to go take care of a very hard problem. We have abandoned them. We have turned the page on them. We didn't just abandon the Afghans. We abandoned my assessment, the men and women who did what we asked them to do day after day, month after month, year after year, and just turned the page on them. That's why I actually wrote Last Out. That's why we do the play, because there's a whole lot of restoration, accountability, healing that we need to do for our own folks around the way this war ended and ensure that it doesn't happen again to our kids, right, who are serving now. So it's not just a lessons learned thing with Afghanistan and just shaking our head and moving on. There's still a lot of active work that the veteran, diplomacy, and expeditionary diplomat and development community need to do. If we don't, as I testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it is going to visit us tenfold in the coming years.

00:26:34    JACK GAINES
So we have nothing right now except for ISR. We got photos from space. This over -the -horizon crap.

00:26:37    SCOTT MANN
-the -horizon crap. It didn't work pre -9 -11, and it didn't work when we killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, and it's not going to work to stop another attack. Anybody who believes that, I would love to debate them. I would love for them to explain to me how if we lived on these built -up fire bases for the first 10 years of the war, and we had zero fidelity on what the Taliban and al -Qaeda were doing, how in the hell are we going to have fidelity from an ISR platform 10 ,000 feet in the air? on what's going on in a former ANA camp in Helmut Province. Right. There's no way anybody that's been there at a local level is going to believe that. And we're setting ourselves up for something really, really nasty, in my opinion. And I really hope that we figure this out sooner than later because I'm afraid to attack planning. In fact, I'm pretty certain attack planning is already underway.

00:27:34    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.

184: Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger on Information Operations. Part II.

Welcome to the ONE CA Podcast. I’m LTC Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have Major Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger with us to discuss Civil Affairs, Information Operations, and the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). MAJ Schlesinger, welcome to the show!

 

Megan O'Keefe-Schlesinger is an Information Advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard medical detachment, the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East in various capacities from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. In her downtime she volunteered with Team Rubicon assisting with disaster relief in the Mid West and COVID vaccine events. As a student at the command and general staff officer college she studied Defense Support to Civil Authorities and Homeland Security at the University of Kansas  School of Law. She went on to study the impacts of automation on the Army and applying emerging concepts in multi-domain operations to large scale military exercises. 

 

Disclaimer: A quick reminder for the audience that all remarks are solely those of the presenters.

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to BluntedBeatz for the sample “Summer Breeze.” Retrieved from https://youtu.be/3P8Xz71BLes?si=r4-xvwcG21cLMWrO

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00:00:03    BRAIN HANCOCK
Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have with us Jedi Knight, Major Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger, an information advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard, the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East in various capacities, from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. In her downtime, she volunteered with Team Rubicon, assisting with disaster relief in the Midwest. As a student, she studied defense support to civil authorities, or DISCA, and Homeland Security at the University of Kansas School of Law. She went on to study the impacts of automation on the Army and applying emerging concepts in multi -domain operations to large -scale military exercises. Quick disclaimer before we get into it, all the remarks made by the participants are solely ours. Now, I first met you when you were out here in Europe on a School of Advanced Military Studies Utilization Tour.

00:01:13    BRAIN HANCOCK
And you were here at United States Army Europe in Africa in the G35. I certainly do.

00:01:18    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
certainly do. And boy, does it feel like time has absolutely flung. But being a student and a practitioner from the Advanced Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth really allowed me to appreciate and understand the value that that education brings to the joint force and certainly in a complex environment like Europe, where NATO multinational operations truly are at the forefront of everything that we do.

00:01:49    BRAIN HANCOCK
I love what you said about the complexity of the environment with all these different partners. Many of us spend much of our time in the tactical arena where we really don't have to think about sovereign first world governments allowing us to do this type of training or not do this type of training or capabilities that we don't have in our army that they bring and suddenly you're working with. It's super exciting, very different than what we're normally used to. I think we'll probably talk a little bit more about that as we go through some of our questions and some of the experience that you've had out here. Let's start with your current tradecraft. You have many diverse interests and are well -versed in many different topics, but we only have about 40 minutes here, so we'll stick to just a few. Let's start with information operations. Tell the audience, why did you settle on I .O. or have you?

00:02:42    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Oh, I don't think as a voracious learner and a curious leader, you ever really settle in the Army. I think our best leaders remain generalists. And so that is some of the appeal of the role of information operations, which we have transitioned to this phrase called maintaining an information advantage. From my early days in the National Guard onto my volunteer time, with various organizations, like you mentioned, Team Rubicon, you start to appreciate the role that crisis communication has, the role of informing and protecting an audience. But I really got interested in this field as a captain when I got to see the interplay between civil affairs, the interplay of psychological operations, electronic warfare, cyber and space. And it's amazing when you as a military planner have the ability to nest these things together, just how rewarding the art of planning becomes. And so to be interested in a field like any functional area in the Army particularly, you can't just go into it as a lieutenant. You have to come from another assessed branch. As a lieutenant, you might assess into infantry or signal or intel, certainly. And then you get the opportunity later on to say, you know, maybe I want to apply that to a new field and try to become a specialist in a unique way. And that's really the field of the FA30s. We all come from a different background. And that complexity or maybe the dynamic backgrounds of the individuals help to spark creativity, help to approach problem solving differently. And so I don't think any two IO officers are alike in that sense, because like I said before, you become more of a generalist and learning how to apply a vast array of combined arms into orders and plans. And so I came into this field almost about five years ago. I wanted to be able to mature into a field where I could take not just CA, but the combined information forces in a way where as a leader and as a manager, I got a little more toys to play with, if you will.

00:05:11    BRAIN HANCOCK
I could see from personal job satisfaction, you're a pretty bright light. I used to be a pretty bright light. I'm going to get a little older, but One of the things that I love about some of these aspects of information operations is how they rotate us every few years in the military to keep our education going. It's part of that broadening that we do. But within FA30, you have all of those things that you've mentioned. Are you interested in space? Great. You can do it. Are you interested in cyber? Great. You can do it. Are you interested in psyop? Great. You can do it. All of those things, they're all available to you. They're all open to you. All those schools, all those. training opportunities, all those career opportunities. With one functional area, you can play in any of those, which I think would keep my interest for a long time.

00:06:01    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Well, and what's unique to functional areas, and I did not know this until later on in my career, it is unique to active duty. And there's a great value in what the reserves in the National Guard are able to apply in the realm of information operations because you may not be a branded FA -30. But that's not to say that in our theater information operations groups, we don't have quite a complex and diverse background of leaders who may come from the fields of intel or civil affairs or psychological operations. and have the chance to go through the information operations qualification course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. So there may be a lack of awareness of these things that we call functional areas because they are slightly more unique to active duty officers who kind of track. In a way that I think the reserves have a little more flexibility to explore career fields and continue to grow and expand their knowledge base without necessarily being bound to one specific area of concentration.

00:07:05    BRAIN HANCOCK
That's true. Many of us have like three MOSs. That's not uncommon in the reserve as you move units. They'll let you go to whatever bill at MOS you are sitting in at the time. And they're happy to do that because many of these fields that you mentioned are non -accession fields. So they have to take folks from other base branches and move them over. They are used to doing that and are happy to do that. Now, I believe one of the National Guards on the East Coast has an IO qualification course that COMPO2 National Guard and COMPO III Army Reserve can go to. A friend of mine went to that. And I assume they award the FA -30 a functional area upon successful completion. But that sounds like that that is not a normal career pathing for many of our I .O. folks. So most of the folks that I know I've worked with in FA -30s are, as you said, from COMPO I, from the active duty component. And that's been wonderful. I think being a generalist also probably gives you some job security if you think about it. Now, when I was growing up, there was something called the S -curve, which would measure the acceptance of technology when a new critical tech comes out and is released in business. How long does it take for that to be adopted, to become ubiquitous, and to change the way business is done? And that used to be about a five -year period of time where some disruptive technology would come out, like the microcomputer, and it would just change the way business was done forever after. But that's now down to less than two years, where highly disruptive technologies, which at times eliminate entire job fields. So if you're a specialist and you've got a lot of education in a narrow niche, there's a lot of risk there that that field could go away when a disruptive technology is released. But as a generalist, we may not know as much about a specialist in their given field. But if one thing just isn't viable anymore, we just switch to something else. So I think there's some other auxiliary value to your generalist approach.

00:09:14    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure, sure. disruptive technologies. The Army is always attempting to forecast future challenges across the world, future problems it might face. And part of the approach to preparing for those challenges is through modernization and experimentation. And the field of information operations has been around for decades. And we think about the application in the Gulf Wars was quite successful. And as we come around now to moving into the nearly the 2030s, we're still applying some of those fundamentals. The common phrase that folks are arguably relearning is called multi -domain operations. We're really layering that space and that cyber maritime air and land across dimensions, right? Whether that's human information or physical. And so how do we collectively as planners As operators, think about how we have to fight across warfighting functions, whether it's the offense, whether it's the defense, or whether it's in response to disaster. Applying information, as it were, to the spectrum of operations that we tend to get involved in, from the small conflict battles to the larger campaigns. We are not in the Civil War era where we can think without the internet. And as a result, the information operations realm really looks to maximize our ability to continue the fight, protecting the command and control,

00:10:52    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
command and control, protecting data, and really trying to maintain an advantage.

00:11:01    BRAIN HANCOCK
Would you say that's a decision advantage? Because when we look at the information advantage doctrine, I don't think it's clear what the terminal outcome is supposed to be that is battlefield significant. I think it's decision advantage. We can run our OODA loop faster than the enemy. We make better, faster decisions, which allow us to gain and maintain the initiative and put the enemy progressively into a situation which they can't cope, which hopefully leads to their... early culmination. Is that how you see information advantage?

00:11:33    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Oh, I think this is a topic of great debate right now. Yeah. And, you know, I'll say that the November 2023 publication of the Army Doctrine Primer 313 tells us that information advantage is offensively oriented, which is somewhat the American way of war in some debate. It is combined arms, not a new topic. perhaps with layered capabilities that are emerging and modernizing today. It is commander -driven and remains soldier -enabled. So what does that mean? That is certainly not for one random FA -30 to think about. It is a complex series of decisions, thought processes, planning frameworks that have to be applied to improve our decision -making ability. So what is information advantage? I think it is many a things. And we continue to evolve and debate what it means because at the end of the day, acronyms and terms of reference, they do matter, but that doesn't mean that they can't change.

00:12:40    BRAIN HANCOCK
Well said. You mentioned earlier warfighting functions. I think we traditionally think that way. I'm not convinced that all combat power is defined by what we call warfighting function. So one example that's close to home for both of us, information is not a warfighting function in the Army. But of course, much of our topic today is about that and why it's important. It is a joint function. And for the Marine Corps, it is a warfighting function. Do you think the Army is going to follow in that path? Or how do you think we in our branch are going to ultimately treat information?

00:13:23    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So a warfighting function, for those that may not be familiar with these terms, we talk about intelligence, we talk about fires, we talk about these rather general terms that help bucket the way that we break down our staffs and prioritize who focuses on what. Whether as sustainment, you know, we might think of a logistics officer. Fires, we might think of a field artilleryman. But debatably, the realm of information truly does span the full warfighting functions gamut. And so to separate it out into its own might be dismissive of the integrated nature that it has across every single warfighting function. So I'm not here to debate whether it should be an army warfighting function, because I think inherently it is integrated across intelligence, across sustainment, across fires. a cross -maneuver.

00:14:22    BRAIN HANCOCK
Kind of like energy, right? Every business needs energy. Do you put that in a separate category?

00:14:26    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
If I was the future doctrine writer, would I say, oh yeah, it should be an information warfighting function? Well, okay. Does that change the nature of how we think about information? Does that overly complicate something that is inherently tied to what we're already doing? And sometimes I feel like we get wrapped around the axle on this one. And again, it's one of those healthy things to debate, like whether or not it should be information advantage, commander advantage, decision advantage. It's a little bit of buzzwordy. I hate to say it, you know? Yes.

00:14:57    BRAIN HANCOCK
Let's talk about SAF. There are many other opportunities that are available for folks at that stage of their career. The premier school for advanced military studies. In the Army, non -accession school usually attended in about the rank of major. Similar school at the Marine Corps is the School of Advanced Warfighting, which produces their MAGTAF planners. We're skilled in rare individuals. Tell us a little bit about the SAMS program.

00:15:29    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
The School of Advanced Military Studies, which is inherently... a critical thinking opportunity to just really dive into history, theory, and doctrine. So for those of you unfamiliar with Sam's planners, every year the Army has one academic peer group that typically after resident, command and general, staff officer course, you will go into what's called the second year of ILE. The School of Advanced Military Studies has three different programs. One program is the Advanced Military Studies program. That's for field grade officers. And then you can progress into a war college complement where students at the 06 level will go to their war college equivalent and then follow on utilization tour as an instructor at SAMS. And then the final peer group within School of Advanced Military Studies is for those looking to pursue a PhD who have already completed their war college. So there's a really dynamic opportunity to think very deeply about wicked problems, complex problems with folks across both the joint services and across the world.

00:16:42    BRAIN HANCOCK
I can only imagine what the talk must be like around the water cooler and in a place like this, pretty deep. You don't feel like the smartest person.

00:16:48    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
pretty deep. You don't feel like the smartest person. You're surrounded by brilliance and it's quite intimidating, but gosh, is it. rewarding when you step back and say, oh man, what did I just do for two years? Holy cow. So it is a master's degree producing course. And to get accepted, the time is approaching actually every summer, the Command and General Staff College, which is what the School of Advanced Military Studies falls under. We'll have students conduct a, you know, kind of reading, writing exam where you get to sort of test your speed reading skills and you get to determine, you know, hey, can I join the Book of Day Club? Like, am I comfortable with my comprehension? And so you get to kind of see how quickly you absorb information. And then it's no different than any other graduate school program. You kind of develop your application. You have an interview process and you're competing really against your peers to get accepted to a. What I would call kind of like the Harvard or the Army.

00:17:47    BRAIN HANCOCK
How many slots do they have roughly in those peer groups? So it has gone up and down throughout the years.

00:17:49    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
it has gone up and down throughout the years. My class had roughly 120 students in it. So you'll have typically one lieutenant colonel per class and one to two international students per class. And then across the services to include the Coast Guard representation within each peer group. That cohort then goes through a Socratic method.

00:18:14    BRAIN HANCOCK
Of that cohort, as you've described, rough numbers, how much of that is compo one versus say compo two and three?

00:18:21    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
and three? I can't speak to that. I'm not sure if it is intentional. The preponderance of students from my peer group were active duty with the follow on utilization tour being designed for division and core staff because, you know, division and core staffs, they really drive the army. Many SAMS students will immediately go on to a staff where they will be expected to lead the division staff or the core staff in warfighters, which is really the Mission Command Training Program's premier command post exercise every year to drive staffs to solve tough problems in a large -scale combat training environment.

00:19:00    BRAIN HANCOCK
Let's give a quick shout out to some of our National Guardsmen who listen to the show because you've been a National Guardsman. We are often doing very meaningful work in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and other areas, typically abroad, though. But I tell you, as a reservist, I've always been a little bit jealous of the National Guardsmen because they get to do disaster relief for our own American citizens. I understand that you've done that. Can you talk a little bit about your time in the National Guard and some of the things you got to do there? and maybe the similarities with the Federal Disc Commission.

00:19:42    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure. So when I was in college, I had the opportunity to go through the simultaneous membership program.

00:00:01    SPEAKER_00
Welcome back. This is part two of Brian Hancock's interview with Megan O 'Keefe Schlesinger. Enjoy.

00:00:08    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have with us Jedi Knight Major Megan O 'Keefe Schlesinger, an information advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard, the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East in various capacities. from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. Megan, can you talk a little bit about your time in the National Guard and some of the things you got to do there and maybe the similarities with the Federal Disc Commission?

00:00:46    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure. So when I was in college, I had the opportunity to go through the simultaneous membership program. So that facilitated my ability to both be a Guardsman and progress. through ROTC. And so it provided me exposure to how the National Guard functions. You know, it is quite different than active duty. You have a very cohesive team, typically, who spend their entire career in the same state. And the unique opportunities that the Guard has tend to be more focused on disaster relief and or the needs of their governor. And that may apply to Homeland Security, Homeland Defense, or Defense Support Civil Authorities, which tend to uniquely be a National Guard mission set, which makes our guardsmen and women quite skilled when we talk about stability operations, security operations.

00:01:38    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yes, surprisingly skilled. I've met a number of them. Yeah.

00:01:41    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Right, right. Opportunity when you're at the Command General Staff College is to take some electives. And one of the electives that I was able to take when I was a student in ILE was called DISCA Level 2. So you have the opportunity to study what would it take to defend a large city, or perhaps if a major disaster happened, what is the relationship, especially with things like Posse Comitatus? The National Guard will come to support the needs of that local community when that community's resources and capabilities have become overwhelmed.

00:02:17    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Because what you learn in Disco Level 2 is the military is never the first option. It should be the last option deliberately because, especially in the United States, we have very robust institutions, quite capable emergency medical response, things like that, to where when you're calling in the National Guard, it's really because there may be unique resources that are needed. C -130 aircraft under the Air Guard or Rotary Wing. Rotary Wing aircraft. When it comes to wildland fire or Operation Lone Star on the border, where you have state resources are potentially not. sufficient for whatever the mission of the governor might be. And then, or when you're involved in any kind of disaster relief with FEMA, there may be relationships between neighboring states where another state's resources are needed for a state that may not have the same capability. There may be sharing agreements regionally across the United States. So you get to really explore the role that DISCA plays, especially for those who ever serve on Army North or Northcom staff, understanding the homeland security law and policies become very important because there are limits on what the military can do. But the great value of understanding DISCA, especially for civil affairs officers, it's sort of an opportunity to mature our understanding of what we are all taught about, like Pamecies. So when I can understand my community and when I can understand my state, it helps me to appreciate when I go overseas, that community and maybe its differences or its strengths, and then the role that its military plays in its resiliency, its ability to respond to disaster, and then the role that its military plays in the strength, security, and stability of that local community. So the value that the National Guard brings, especially to things like the state partnership program, I think is in many ways anchored in like 3 -28 about DISCA operations.

00:04:08    SPEAKER_00
So the

00:04:16    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
like 3 -28 about DISCA operations. And it's just a fun place that a warfighter doesn't necessarily give you the opportunity to deep dive into. So, yeah.

00:04:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm glad you mentioned the state partnership program, too. I suspect a lot of folks, when they think about the National Guard, think about largely operations within that state. But through the state partner program, pretty much every major country in Europe has a stateside National Guard partner, and they conduct joint operations and training at varying degrees of sophistication. So that small National Guard unit in Kansas may be the definitive expert within DOD of what Bulgaria looks like and their armed forces and their operating environment. Not something that you would necessarily intuit from COMPLA -2, but that is absolutely there. And it makes a huge difference for us over here in Europe. One of the reasons that the Ukrainians were so well prepared is because they had such a strong partnership with their National Guard. back here in the United States, and it made a huge difference for them. Let's hop back to the SAMS topic for a minute. Looking at the contemporary operating environment, modern warfare is absolutely more complex than it's ever been. Not just with the number of domains, the number of dimensions, the number of environments. You mentioned earlier spectrum. Spectrum by doctrine is classified as an environment, a subset of the electromagnetic environment. And we still have to worry about that, which is ubiquitous like air for us at this time. You have nations executing operations at all phases of conflict in strategic integrated ways, particularly with countries like China. operating environment for us to understand, for us to assess, for us to inject carefully thought out interventions that benefit everyone involved. And navigating that complexity can be very hard for anyone. I think particularly for some folks. But as we look at that, one of the ways that complexity manifests in a strategic challenge is in our ability to convert our well -proven capability to achieve tactical success on battlefields.

00:06:23    SPEAKER_00
as we

00:06:28    BRIAN HANCOCK
strategic challenge is in our ability to convert our well -proven capability to achieve tactical success on battlefields. But converting that to achieving strategic objectives so that there's some stability, so that we don't have to keep coming back to that location, so that they don't threaten their neighbors, that has been somewhat elusive. If SAM's graduates are supposed to help fill that role in the Army to navigate that complexity, based on your experience, do you see that happening? Are they having that level of impact as I think the program originally intended? And why or why not?

00:07:08    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So that's a lot. And to peel it back a little bit and kind of anchor on your comment about complexity. So I believe that Fort Leavenworth is truly the think tank of the Army. students who are either part of the Art of Wars Scholar Program or the MMAS programs, the Information Advantage Scholars Program, or those who come out of the School of Advanced Military Studies, all of those students are charged with the responsibility of drafting either a thesis or a shorter version of a thesis called a monograph. And that forces the students over the course of a year Works for some, too, because those who go to ILE and get an MMAS and then continue to get an additional master's degree at SAMS, they're really honing in those research skills. And so the think tank of Fort Leavenworth has an incredible library with gifted researchers to help students improve. their own ability to think critically and dive into information that in your day -to -day job you just don't have time to do. But as a student, that is your responsibility to help solve the hard problems of the military. You know, I encourage your listeners to go on to the Carl Library website and really dive into decades of monographs from students who are brilliant in their own regard. And many of these monographs will trickle into doctrine and students might develop their own theories that we will then test and eventually turn into practice. So, you know, we talk about in Sam's history, theory, doctrine practice. And so it isn't. a cyclical thing where the students have a historian on staff. Every month, they'll go through a different block of instruction throughout a historical era of warfare. And then they'll have a full bird colonel who will help guide the discussion. But it's really a Socratic method of peer -to -peer education guided by true experts in either military history or emerging field, like mine being information operations. And then with both American instructors and international instructors. So going into your comment about critical thinking, one of the things I loved about SAMS, we had different blocks. And so those blocks included design methodology, futures, looking at systems, and then diving into history as we discover. Okay, how do we think about this in a historical perspective? Or how do we think about a problem in a future's perspective? And then how do we look at it systematically? And then ultimately, how do we develop the framework for a problem? And then as you can hear, you could take a problem in many different directions, like problem X could have a preposterous outcome, or a very muted outcome. And how do we guide our decision making to enable an end state that is desirable.

00:10:14    BRIAN HANCOCK
I love how you mentioned that because I think we focus on the kind of the first order effects oftentimes, you know, certainly in our cultural damage estimates and other things we do when we're executing military operations. But it's often those second and third order effects that are tied to the strategic outcomes that we need to be able to manage and to tackle. So you're getting some reps and sets and kind of taking it beyond just the tactical level to start. tying that up and fitting it back to Diamond Pimisi beyond just the initial battlefield?

00:10:45    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Well, certainly. And then ultimately, it is creating a framework that helps a commander visualize, understand, and direct action. And then the staff continue to assess. God, we talk about these buzzwords in the army, but they are truly important. If our commanders don't understand the problem that we're presenting to them, then we have to reframe in a way that helps to make sure that we're, A, having the same conversation. You know, are we in the same story here? But then ensuring that our commanders, who are ultimately the decision makers and organizations, can absorb the information that we're presenting in a way that helps him or her to make the best decisions. complementary aspects between the field of IO and the education that you get to become a better planner.

00:11:34    BRIAN HANCOCK
I want to follow up for one second on what you're talking about, problem framing. Sure. When we look at some of our areas where our strategy didn't work out, taking a look at the ultimate outcome in the Iraq conflicts, a lot of studies by Rand and others say, hey, look, we tried to solve the wrong problem. So the critical breakdown was very early in the process. Doctrinally, that's at the mission analysis phase for the Army. But the Marine Corps recognizes that problems are so critical to get right. Their mission analysis is called problem framing to be able to get specifically after that. Because everything else follows. We're very problem -fixing focused in the military. And if we get the problem statement wrong, then we're applying the... wrong ends, ways, and means to deliver the strategic effects that we need. So what I'm hearing is that the SAMs and the cohorts and some of the programs there are actually critical thinking kind of incubators to help get after not just a superficial categorization based upon, say, a political objective, but what does that really mean and then how we would really go about being able to do it? Yeah,

00:12:49    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
to do it? Yeah, you know, it's kind of like, building a house. If you're building a house in the wrong environment, you may forget to have the insulated windows in an extremely cold environment. Or maybe you forgot that you built it on a slab in a place prone to earthquakes. That may not be the right analogy. It's a great analogy.

00:13:11    BRIAN HANCOCK
a great analogy. Monty Python, they built the castle in the swamp and it sunk three times. Great analogy.

00:13:17    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So problem framing, it's a useful tool because we really shouldn't start the military decision -making process unless we understand the problem that we're trying to solve and acknowledging, is it a military problem to solve? It's not always, like I said earlier with discuss. Sometimes the military is the last resort. It is how we bound what we are trying to accomplish with the means that we have available to us. And if we apply the wrong construction material to a beautiful home, it doesn't matter how pretty it was. If it falls apart in two years, we made a bad investment, right? So we want to be very careful to ensure that we're aware of our operating environment and trying to apply critical thinking to assess the true problems. To inform our civilian leaders that the military decision -making process that ultimately will come out of Army design methodology develops options that are best suited for the situation at hand. And sometimes that can be frustrating. You know, we often don't appreciate the phrase tactical patience, but sometimes tactical patience is necessary to give our planners time to think. And we don't always have the luxury of time. You know, certainly like when we talk about natural disasters, we don't always have the luxury of time. Sometimes you just have to go with your best military advice with what you know at hand. That's right. And history can be a helpful playbook, but certainly must take into account the current operating environment. And so the value that you get from SAMS is really just, I think, being a better planner, better officer, a better leader, a better individual. You know, the conversations both in and out of the office at SAMS. Or you could call it fellowship. You could call it friendship. You could call it just lifelong mentorship.

00:15:03    BRIAN HANCOCK
And hopefully you have a good playbook, professional network building.

00:15:06    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Right. We have to acknowledge that we don't all have the answers. There's not always a perfect solution. And something that Sam teaches you, it's okay to ask for help. And not only does that speed up our decision making, but it leverages ideas and thought processes that may be internal to our staffs we didn't have before.

00:15:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
And it raises the N. So we have more samples for better statistic validity of our conclusions. Yeah. Now, if somebody doesn't want to challenge SAMs, but still wants to have this type of rigorous broadening opportunity, what are some of the other options that are available?

00:15:47    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So each service has a equivalent to SAMs. However, the Army's is the largest. And then you have more joint -oriented venues like the Joint Special Operations University. And then you have Naval Postgraduate School down in Monterey, California, where there's an Information Warfare Studies program. And across these venues, the value that you get is different ways of thinking, slightly different venues, slightly different outcomes, where much like you have ROTC, OCS, West Point. Think about the collective value that the Navy brings or that the Army brings. And then when you bring that all together, it's quite brilliant. So if either you're not in the Army and you're listening to this, or you're in the Army and you're looking to grow within your sister service skill set, I encourage students to go online and look at the application windows. Certainly, they're all going to have their own unique requirements. more challenging than others. And most of them will have some sort of staff ride that you get to go on. I'm pretty jealous. I believe the Marine Corps gets to go to Europe for a couple days for their staff ride.

00:17:03    BRIAN HANCOCK
They do.

00:17:04    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
And the School of Advanced Military Studies takes their students on a staff ride to Mississippi to study the Battle of Vicksburg, which is a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the complexities of joint warfare in the Civil War, the unique geography of the southern states of the United States, and the role that both the Navy and the Army played in the Vicksburg campaign. So it's not Europe, but it's still a great cultural perspective of looking at warfare on the homeland.

00:17:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's outstanding. And you don't have to go to Europe or Asia to learn valuable lessons. They're all over the world. And every one of these sites has something to teach us if we are open -minded and approach it with some humility. So let me ask you, What advice could you give to folks?

00:17:53    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So read broadly. You don't have to necessarily go to a year -long school to become a true gifted officer, gifted professional. And if you're not looking at Audible or you're not checking books out from the library or you're not having... some debates with friends and colleagues. I got to say, you might not be the right fit for Sam's because I tell you, the Book of Day Club is real. And the importance behind being a self -motivated, self -driven individual when it comes to learning is sometimes the folks to our left and right are leaning on us to think about things and to provide input. And if... you know,

00:18:37    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
know, you're not reading the news and you're not diversifying your thought processes through reading widely and deeply, you may miss some details. And so I love looking at books, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. Military history is always obviously important, but then beyond just military history, there's great courses series out there where you can look at fun topics like the history of spycraft, right? Or The ethics of military warfare or the August Cole and Peter Singer series like Ghost Fleet or Burn In or Like War are really good starting points to think through I .O. stuff. Those authors have had the effect of taking emerging technology and applying it to fiction in a way that helps to tell the story of, talked about earlier, possible futures. And so why do I say read a lot? To be a good professional, we also have to give back, kind of like today with you. And so whether you're passionate about writing articles for professional outlets or contributing to leadership development programs in your own home unit, looking at what other folks are reading, thinking about, and writing on can help really deepen the intellectual value of your staff. No one wants a boring staff. I love when I can walk into the office and have a healthy debate about something. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us young.

00:20:07    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's one of the things I love about the Marine Corps. They have a fantastic culture of intellectual exchange where you could take any position, but you have to bring the facts to back that up. So everyone walks away learning something from that exchange, whatever point of view you have. So I appreciate the value of an opportunity like that.

00:20:25    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
But here's the thing too. Army libraries, they're free. And you can check out a book. Yeah, you can check out a book from across the nation. Army and DOD library program is pretty phenomenal because it turns out military appreciates education.

00:20:39    BRIAN HANCOCK
Outstanding. Relative to the value it brings, not only for your career, but just for your personal life enrichment. Sure. Pennies on the dollar. The return on investment is amazing. Thank you for all of those recommendations for the audience. Really appreciate you coming on the show today.

00:20:56    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Thanks, Brian. Appreciate your time today and the opportunity to be on your show.

00:21:01    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.

 

183: Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger on Information Operations Part I

Welcome to the ONE CA Podcast. I’m LTC Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have Major Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger with us to discuss Civil Affairs, Information Operations, and the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). MAJ Schlesinger, welcome to the show!

 

Megan O'Keefe-Schlesinger is an Information Advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard medical detachment, the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East in various capacities from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. In her downtime she volunteered with Team Rubicon assisting with disaster relief in the Mid West and COVID vaccine events. As a student at the command and general staff officer college she studied Defense Support to Civil Authorities and Homeland Security at the University of Kansas  School of Law. She went on to study the impacts of automation on the Army and applying emerging concepts in multi-domain operations to large scale military exercises. 

 

Disclaimer: A quick reminder for the audience that all remarks are solely those of the presenters.

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to BluntedBeatz for the sample “Summer Breeze.” Retrieved from https://youtu.be/3P8Xz71BLes?si=r4-xvwcG21cLMWrO

----Credits----

Host: Brian Hancock

Production: Jack Gaines

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00:00:03    BRAIN HANCOCK
Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have with us Jedi Knight, Major Megan O’Keefe-Schlesinger, an information advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard, the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East in various capacities, from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. In her downtime, she volunteered with Team Rubicon, assisting with disaster relief in the Midwest. As a student, she studied defense support to civil authorities, or DISCA, and Homeland Security at the University of Kansas School of Law. She went on to study the impacts of automation on the Army and applying emerging concepts in multi -domain operations to large -scale military exercises. Quick disclaimer before we get into it, all the remarks made by the participants are solely ours. Now, I first met you when you were out here in Europe on a School of Advanced Military Studies Utilization Tour.

00:01:13    BRAIN HANCOCK
And you were here at United States Army Europe in Africa in the G35. I certainly do.

00:01:18    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
certainly do. And boy, does it feel like time has absolutely flung. But being a student and a practitioner from the Advanced Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth really allowed me to appreciate and understand the value that that education brings to the joint force and certainly in a complex environment like Europe, where NATO multinational operations truly are at the forefront of everything that we do.

00:01:49    BRAIN HANCOCK
I love what you said about the complexity of the environment with all these different partners. Many of us spend much of our time in the tactical arena where we really don't have to think about sovereign first world governments allowing us to do this type of training or not do this type of training or capabilities that we don't have in our army that they bring and suddenly you're working with. It's super exciting, very different than what we're normally used to. I think we'll probably talk a little bit more about that as we go through some of our questions and some of the experience that you've had out here. Let's start with your current tradecraft. You have many diverse interests and are well -versed in many different topics, but we only have about 40 minutes here, so we'll stick to just a few. Let's start with information operations. Tell the audience, why did you settle on I .O. or have you?

00:02:42    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Oh, I don't think as a voracious learner and a curious leader, you ever really settle in the Army. I think our best leaders remain generalists. And so that is some of the appeal of the role of information operations, which we have transitioned to this phrase called maintaining an information advantage. From my early days in the National Guard onto my volunteer time, with various organizations, like you mentioned, Team Rubicon, you start to appreciate the role that crisis communication has, the role of informing and protecting an audience. But I really got interested in this field as a captain when I got to see the interplay between civil affairs, the interplay of psychological operations, electronic warfare, cyber and space. And it's amazing when you as a military planner have the ability to nest these things together, just how rewarding the art of planning becomes. And so to be interested in a field like any functional area in the Army particularly, you can't just go into it as a lieutenant. You have to come from another assessed branch. As a lieutenant, you might assess into infantry or signal or intel, certainly. And then you get the opportunity later on to say, you know, maybe I want to apply that to a new field and try to become a specialist in a unique way. And that's really the field of the FA30s. We all come from a different background. And that complexity or maybe the dynamic backgrounds of the individuals help to spark creativity, help to approach problem solving differently. And so I don't think any two IO officers are alike in that sense, because like I said before, you become more of a generalist and learning how to apply a vast array of combined arms into orders and plans. And so I came into this field almost about five years ago. I wanted to be able to mature into a field where I could take not just CA, but the combined information forces in a way where as a leader and as a manager, I got a little more toys to play with, if you will.

00:05:11    BRAIN HANCOCK
I could see from personal job satisfaction, you're a pretty bright light. I used to be a pretty bright light. I'm going to get a little older, but One of the things that I love about some of these aspects of information operations is how they rotate us every few years in the military to keep our education going. It's part of that broadening that we do. But within FA30, you have all of those things that you've mentioned. Are you interested in space? Great. You can do it. Are you interested in cyber? Great. You can do it. Are you interested in psyop? Great. You can do it. All of those things, they're all available to you. They're all open to you. All those schools, all those. training opportunities, all those career opportunities. With one functional area, you can play in any of those, which I think would keep my interest for a long time.

00:06:01    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Well, and what's unique to functional areas, and I did not know this until later on in my career, it is unique to active duty. And there's a great value in what the reserves in the National Guard are able to apply in the realm of information operations because you may not be a branded FA -30. But that's not to say that in our theater information operations groups, we don't have quite a complex and diverse background of leaders who may come from the fields of intel or civil affairs or psychological operations. and have the chance to go through the information operations qualification course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. So there may be a lack of awareness of these things that we call functional areas because they are slightly more unique to active duty officers who kind of track. In a way that I think the reserves have a little more flexibility to explore career fields and continue to grow and expand their knowledge base without necessarily being bound to one specific area of concentration.

00:07:05    BRAIN HANCOCK
That's true. Many of us have like three MOSs. That's not uncommon in the reserve as you move units. They'll let you go to whatever bill at MOS you are sitting in at the time. And they're happy to do that because many of these fields that you mentioned are non -accession fields. So they have to take folks from other base branches and move them over. They are used to doing that and are happy to do that. Now, I believe one of the National Guards on the East Coast has an IO qualification course that COMPO2 National Guard and COMPO III Army Reserve can go to. A friend of mine went to that. And I assume they award the FA -30 a functional area upon successful completion. But that sounds like that that is not a normal career pathing for many of our I .O. folks. So most of the folks that I know I've worked with in FA -30s are, as you said, from COMPO I, from the active duty component. And that's been wonderful. I think being a generalist also probably gives you some job security if you think about it. Now, when I was growing up, there was something called the S -curve, which would measure the acceptance of technology when a new critical tech comes out and is released in business. How long does it take for that to be adopted, to become ubiquitous, and to change the way business is done? And that used to be about a five -year period of time where some disruptive technology would come out, like the microcomputer, and it would just change the way business was done forever after. But that's now down to less than two years, where highly disruptive technologies, which at times eliminate entire job fields. So if you're a specialist and you've got a lot of education in a narrow niche, there's a lot of risk there that that field could go away when a disruptive technology is released. But as a generalist, we may not know as much about a specialist in their given field. But if one thing just isn't viable anymore, we just switch to something else. So I think there's some other auxiliary value to your generalist approach.

00:09:14    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure, sure. disruptive technologies. The Army is always attempting to forecast future challenges across the world, future problems it might face. And part of the approach to preparing for those challenges is through modernization and experimentation. And the field of information operations has been around for decades. And we think about the application in the Gulf Wars was quite successful. And as we come around now to moving into the nearly the 2030s, we're still applying some of those fundamentals. The common phrase that folks are arguably relearning is called multi -domain operations. We're really layering that space and that cyber maritime air and land across dimensions, right? Whether that's human information or physical. And so how do we collectively as planners As operators, think about how we have to fight across warfighting functions, whether it's the offense, whether it's the defense, or whether it's in response to disaster. Applying information, as it were, to the spectrum of operations that we tend to get involved in, from the small conflict battles to the larger campaigns. We are not in the Civil War era where we can think without the internet. And as a result, the information operations realm really looks to maximize our ability to continue the fight, protecting the command and control,

00:10:52    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
command and control, protecting data, and really trying to maintain an advantage.

00:11:01    BRAIN HANCOCK
Would you say that's a decision advantage? Because when we look at the information advantage doctrine, I don't think it's clear what the terminal outcome is supposed to be that is battlefield significant. I think it's decision advantage. We can run our OODA loop faster than the enemy. We make better, faster decisions, which allow us to gain and maintain the initiative and put the enemy progressively into a situation which they can't cope, which hopefully leads to their... early culmination. Is that how you see information advantage?

00:11:33    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Oh, I think this is a topic of great debate right now. Yeah. And, you know, I'll say that the November 2023 publication of the Army Doctrine Primer 313 tells us that information advantage is offensively oriented, which is somewhat the American way of war in some debate. It is combined arms, not a new topic. perhaps with layered capabilities that are emerging and modernizing today. It is commander -driven and remains soldier -enabled. So what does that mean? That is certainly not for one random FA -30 to think about. It is a complex series of decisions, thought processes, planning frameworks that have to be applied to improve our decision -making ability. So what is information advantage? I think it is many a things. And we continue to evolve and debate what it means because at the end of the day, acronyms and terms of reference, they do matter, but that doesn't mean that they can't change.

00:12:40    BRAIN HANCOCK
Well said. You mentioned earlier warfighting functions. I think we traditionally think that way. I'm not convinced that all combat power is defined by what we call warfighting function. So one example that's close to home for both of us, information is not a warfighting function in the Army. But of course, much of our topic today is about that and why it's important. It is a joint function. And for the Marine Corps, it is a warfighting function. Do you think the Army is going to follow in that path? Or how do you think we in our branch are going to ultimately treat information?

00:13:23    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So a warfighting function, for those that may not be familiar with these terms, we talk about intelligence, we talk about fires, we talk about these rather general terms that help bucket the way that we break down our staffs and prioritize who focuses on what. Whether as sustainment, you know, we might think of a logistics officer. Fires, we might think of a field artilleryman. But debatably, the realm of information truly does span the full warfighting functions gamut. And so to separate it out into its own might be dismissive of the integrated nature that it has across every single warfighting function. So I'm not here to debate whether it should be an army warfighting function, because I think inherently it is integrated across intelligence, across sustainment, across fires. a cross -maneuver.

00:14:22    BRAIN HANCOCK
Kind of like energy, right? Every business needs energy. Do you put that in a separate category?

00:14:26    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
If I was the future doctrine writer, would I say, oh yeah, it should be an information warfighting function? Well, okay. Does that change the nature of how we think about information? Does that overly complicate something that is inherently tied to what we're already doing? And sometimes I feel like we get wrapped around the axle on this one. And again, it's one of those healthy things to debate, like whether or not it should be information advantage, commander advantage, decision advantage. It's a little bit of buzzwordy. I hate to say it, you know? Yes.

00:14:57    BRAIN HANCOCK
Let's talk about SAF. There are many other opportunities that are available for folks at that stage of their career. The premier school for advanced military studies. In the Army, non -accession school usually attended in about the rank of major. Similar school at the Marine Corps is the School of Advanced Warfighting, which produces their MAGTAF planners. We're skilled in rare individuals. Tell us a little bit about the SAMS program.

00:15:29    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
The School of Advanced Military Studies, which is inherently... a critical thinking opportunity to just really dive into history, theory, and doctrine. So for those of you unfamiliar with Sam's planners, every year the Army has one academic peer group that typically after resident, command and general, staff officer course, you will go into what's called the second year of ILE. The School of Advanced Military Studies has three different programs. One program is the Advanced Military Studies program. That's for field grade officers. And then you can progress into a war college complement where students at the 06 level will go to their war college equivalent and then follow on utilization tour as an instructor at SAMS. And then the final peer group within School of Advanced Military Studies is for those looking to pursue a PhD who have already completed their war college. So there's a really dynamic opportunity to think very deeply about wicked problems, complex problems with folks across both the joint services and across the world.

00:16:42    BRAIN HANCOCK
I can only imagine what the talk must be like around the water cooler and in a place like this, pretty deep. You don't feel like the smartest person.

00:16:48    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
pretty deep. You don't feel like the smartest person. You're surrounded by brilliance and it's quite intimidating, but gosh, is it. rewarding when you step back and say, oh man, what did I just do for two years? Holy cow. So it is a master's degree producing course. And to get accepted, the time is approaching actually every summer, the Command and General Staff College, which is what the School of Advanced Military Studies falls under. We'll have students conduct a, you know, kind of reading, writing exam where you get to sort of test your speed reading skills and you get to determine, you know, hey, can I join the Book of Day Club? Like, am I comfortable with my comprehension? And so you get to kind of see how quickly you absorb information. And then it's no different than any other graduate school program. You kind of develop your application. You have an interview process and you're competing really against your peers to get accepted to a. What I would call kind of like the Harvard or the Army.

00:17:47    BRAIN HANCOCK
How many slots do they have roughly in those peer groups? So it has gone up and down throughout the years.

00:17:49    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
it has gone up and down throughout the years. My class had roughly 120 students in it. So you'll have typically one lieutenant colonel per class and one to two international students per class. And then across the services to include the Coast Guard representation within each peer group. That cohort then goes through a Socratic method.

00:18:14    BRAIN HANCOCK
Of that cohort, as you've described, rough numbers, how much of that is compo one versus say compo two and three?

00:18:21    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
and three? I can't speak to that. I'm not sure if it is intentional. The preponderance of students from my peer group were active duty with the follow on utilization tour being designed for division and core staff because, you know, division and core staffs, they really drive the army. Many SAMS students will immediately go on to a staff where they will be expected to lead the division staff or the core staff in warfighters, which is really the Mission Command Training Program's premier command post exercise every year to drive staffs to solve tough problems in a large -scale combat training environment.

00:19:00    BRAIN HANCOCK
Let's give a quick shout out to some of our National Guardsmen who listen to the show because you've been a National Guardsman. We are often doing very meaningful work in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and other areas, typically abroad, though. But I tell you, as a reservist, I've always been a little bit jealous of the National Guardsmen because they get to do disaster relief for our own American citizens. I understand that you've done that. Can you talk a little bit about your time in the National Guard and some of the things you got to do there? and maybe the similarities with the Federal Disc Commission.

00:19:42    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure. So when I was in college, I had the opportunity to go through the simultaneous membership program.

00:00:01    SPEAKER_00
Welcome back. This is part two of Brian Hancock's interview with Megan O 'Keefe Schlesinger. Enjoy.

00:00:08    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have with us Jedi Knight Major Megan O 'Keefe Schlesinger, an information advantage practitioner. She has served in the Nevada National Guard, the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East in various capacities. from the Army Medical Department to civil affairs planner and leader with special operations. Megan, can you talk a little bit about your time in the National Guard and some of the things you got to do there and maybe the similarities with the Federal Disc Commission?

00:00:46    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Sure. So when I was in college, I had the opportunity to go through the simultaneous membership program. So that facilitated my ability to both be a Guardsman and progress. through ROTC. And so it provided me exposure to how the National Guard functions. You know, it is quite different than active duty. You have a very cohesive team, typically, who spend their entire career in the same state. And the unique opportunities that the Guard has tend to be more focused on disaster relief and or the needs of their governor. And that may apply to Homeland Security, Homeland Defense, or Defense Support Civil Authorities, which tend to uniquely be a National Guard mission set, which makes our guardsmen and women quite skilled when we talk about stability operations, security operations.

00:01:38    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yes, surprisingly skilled. I've met a number of them. Yeah.

00:01:41    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Right, right. Opportunity when you're at the Command General Staff College is to take some electives. And one of the electives that I was able to take when I was a student in ILE was called DISCA Level 2. So you have the opportunity to study what would it take to defend a large city, or perhaps if a major disaster happened, what is the relationship, especially with things like Posse Comitatus? The National Guard will come to support the needs of that local community when that community's resources and capabilities have become overwhelmed.

00:02:17    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Because what you learn in Disco Level 2 is the military is never the first option. It should be the last option deliberately because, especially in the United States, we have very robust institutions, quite capable emergency medical response, things like that, to where when you're calling in the National Guard, it's really because there may be unique resources that are needed. C -130 aircraft under the Air Guard or Rotary Wing. Rotary Wing aircraft. When it comes to wildland fire or Operation Lone Star on the border, where you have state resources are potentially not. sufficient for whatever the mission of the governor might be. And then, or when you're involved in any kind of disaster relief with FEMA, there may be relationships between neighboring states where another state's resources are needed for a state that may not have the same capability. There may be sharing agreements regionally across the United States. So you get to really explore the role that DISCA plays, especially for those who ever serve on Army North or Northcom staff, understanding the homeland security law and policies become very important because there are limits on what the military can do. But the great value of understanding DISCA, especially for civil affairs officers, it's sort of an opportunity to mature our understanding of what we are all taught about, like Pamecies. So when I can understand my community and when I can understand my state, it helps me to appreciate when I go overseas, that community and maybe its differences or its strengths, and then the role that its military plays in its resiliency, its ability to respond to disaster, and then the role that its military plays in the strength, security, and stability of that local community. So the value that the National Guard brings, especially to things like the state partnership program, I think is in many ways anchored in like 3 -28 about DISCA operations.

00:04:08    SPEAKER_00
So the

00:04:16    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
like 3 -28 about DISCA operations. And it's just a fun place that a warfighter doesn't necessarily give you the opportunity to deep dive into. So, yeah.

00:04:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm glad you mentioned the state partnership program, too. I suspect a lot of folks, when they think about the National Guard, think about largely operations within that state. But through the state partner program, pretty much every major country in Europe has a stateside National Guard partner, and they conduct joint operations and training at varying degrees of sophistication. So that small National Guard unit in Kansas may be the definitive expert within DOD of what Bulgaria looks like and their armed forces and their operating environment. Not something that you would necessarily intuit from COMPLA -2, but that is absolutely there. And it makes a huge difference for us over here in Europe. One of the reasons that the Ukrainians were so well prepared is because they had such a strong partnership with their National Guard. back here in the United States, and it made a huge difference for them. Let's hop back to the SAMS topic for a minute. Looking at the contemporary operating environment, modern warfare is absolutely more complex than it's ever been. Not just with the number of domains, the number of dimensions, the number of environments. You mentioned earlier spectrum. Spectrum by doctrine is classified as an environment, a subset of the electromagnetic environment. And we still have to worry about that, which is ubiquitous like air for us at this time. You have nations executing operations at all phases of conflict in strategic integrated ways, particularly with countries like China. operating environment for us to understand, for us to assess, for us to inject carefully thought out interventions that benefit everyone involved. And navigating that complexity can be very hard for anyone. I think particularly for some folks. But as we look at that, one of the ways that complexity manifests in a strategic challenge is in our ability to convert our well -proven capability to achieve tactical success on battlefields.

00:06:23    SPEAKER_00
as we

00:06:28    BRIAN HANCOCK
strategic challenge is in our ability to convert our well -proven capability to achieve tactical success on battlefields. But converting that to achieving strategic objectives so that there's some stability, so that we don't have to keep coming back to that location, so that they don't threaten their neighbors, that has been somewhat elusive. If SAM's graduates are supposed to help fill that role in the Army to navigate that complexity, based on your experience, do you see that happening? Are they having that level of impact as I think the program originally intended? And why or why not?

00:07:08    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So that's a lot. And to peel it back a little bit and kind of anchor on your comment about complexity. So I believe that Fort Leavenworth is truly the think tank of the Army. students who are either part of the Art of Wars Scholar Program or the MMAS programs, the Information Advantage Scholars Program, or those who come out of the School of Advanced Military Studies, all of those students are charged with the responsibility of drafting either a thesis or a shorter version of a thesis called a monograph. And that forces the students over the course of a year Works for some, too, because those who go to ILE and get an MMAS and then continue to get an additional master's degree at SAMS, they're really honing in those research skills. And so the think tank of Fort Leavenworth has an incredible library with gifted researchers to help students improve. their own ability to think critically and dive into information that in your day -to -day job you just don't have time to do. But as a student, that is your responsibility to help solve the hard problems of the military. You know, I encourage your listeners to go on to the Carl Library website and really dive into decades of monographs from students who are brilliant in their own regard. And many of these monographs will trickle into doctrine and students might develop their own theories that we will then test and eventually turn into practice. So, you know, we talk about in Sam's history, theory, doctrine practice. And so it isn't. a cyclical thing where the students have a historian on staff. Every month, they'll go through a different block of instruction throughout a historical era of warfare. And then they'll have a full bird colonel who will help guide the discussion. But it's really a Socratic method of peer -to -peer education guided by true experts in either military history or emerging field, like mine being information operations. And then with both American instructors and international instructors. So going into your comment about critical thinking, one of the things I loved about SAMS, we had different blocks. And so those blocks included design methodology, futures, looking at systems, and then diving into history as we discover. Okay, how do we think about this in a historical perspective? Or how do we think about a problem in a future's perspective? And then how do we look at it systematically? And then ultimately, how do we develop the framework for a problem? And then as you can hear, you could take a problem in many different directions, like problem X could have a preposterous outcome, or a very muted outcome. And how do we guide our decision making to enable an end state that is desirable.

00:10:14    BRIAN HANCOCK
I love how you mentioned that because I think we focus on the kind of the first order effects oftentimes, you know, certainly in our cultural damage estimates and other things we do when we're executing military operations. But it's often those second and third order effects that are tied to the strategic outcomes that we need to be able to manage and to tackle. So you're getting some reps and sets and kind of taking it beyond just the tactical level to start. tying that up and fitting it back to Diamond Pimisi beyond just the initial battlefield?

00:10:45    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Well, certainly. And then ultimately, it is creating a framework that helps a commander visualize, understand, and direct action. And then the staff continue to assess. God, we talk about these buzzwords in the army, but they are truly important. If our commanders don't understand the problem that we're presenting to them, then we have to reframe in a way that helps to make sure that we're, A, having the same conversation. You know, are we in the same story here? But then ensuring that our commanders, who are ultimately the decision makers and organizations, can absorb the information that we're presenting in a way that helps him or her to make the best decisions. complementary aspects between the field of IO and the education that you get to become a better planner.

00:11:34    BRIAN HANCOCK
I want to follow up for one second on what you're talking about, problem framing. Sure. When we look at some of our areas where our strategy didn't work out, taking a look at the ultimate outcome in the Iraq conflicts, a lot of studies by Rand and others say, hey, look, we tried to solve the wrong problem. So the critical breakdown was very early in the process. Doctrinally, that's at the mission analysis phase for the Army. But the Marine Corps recognizes that problems are so critical to get right. Their mission analysis is called problem framing to be able to get specifically after that. Because everything else follows. We're very problem -fixing focused in the military. And if we get the problem statement wrong, then we're applying the... wrong ends, ways, and means to deliver the strategic effects that we need. So what I'm hearing is that the SAMs and the cohorts and some of the programs there are actually critical thinking kind of incubators to help get after not just a superficial categorization based upon, say, a political objective, but what does that really mean and then how we would really go about being able to do it? Yeah,

00:12:49    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
to do it? Yeah, you know, it's kind of like, building a house. If you're building a house in the wrong environment, you may forget to have the insulated windows in an extremely cold environment. Or maybe you forgot that you built it on a slab in a place prone to earthquakes. That may not be the right analogy. It's a great analogy.

00:13:11    BRIAN HANCOCK
a great analogy. Monty Python, they built the castle in the swamp and it sunk three times. Great analogy.

00:13:17    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So problem framing, it's a useful tool because we really shouldn't start the military decision -making process unless we understand the problem that we're trying to solve and acknowledging, is it a military problem to solve? It's not always, like I said earlier with discuss. Sometimes the military is the last resort. It is how we bound what we are trying to accomplish with the means that we have available to us. And if we apply the wrong construction material to a beautiful home, it doesn't matter how pretty it was. If it falls apart in two years, we made a bad investment, right? So we want to be very careful to ensure that we're aware of our operating environment and trying to apply critical thinking to assess the true problems. To inform our civilian leaders that the military decision -making process that ultimately will come out of Army design methodology develops options that are best suited for the situation at hand. And sometimes that can be frustrating. You know, we often don't appreciate the phrase tactical patience, but sometimes tactical patience is necessary to give our planners time to think. And we don't always have the luxury of time. You know, certainly like when we talk about natural disasters, we don't always have the luxury of time. Sometimes you just have to go with your best military advice with what you know at hand. That's right. And history can be a helpful playbook, but certainly must take into account the current operating environment. And so the value that you get from SAMS is really just, I think, being a better planner, better officer, a better leader, a better individual. You know, the conversations both in and out of the office at SAMS. Or you could call it fellowship. You could call it friendship. You could call it just lifelong mentorship.

00:15:03    BRIAN HANCOCK
And hopefully you have a good playbook, professional network building.

00:15:06    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Right. We have to acknowledge that we don't all have the answers. There's not always a perfect solution. And something that Sam teaches you, it's okay to ask for help. And not only does that speed up our decision making, but it leverages ideas and thought processes that may be internal to our staffs we didn't have before.

00:15:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
And it raises the N. So we have more samples for better statistic validity of our conclusions. Yeah. Now, if somebody doesn't want to challenge SAMs, but still wants to have this type of rigorous broadening opportunity, what are some of the other options that are available?

00:15:47    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So each service has a equivalent to SAMs. However, the Army's is the largest. And then you have more joint -oriented venues like the Joint Special Operations University. And then you have Naval Postgraduate School down in Monterey, California, where there's an Information Warfare Studies program. And across these venues, the value that you get is different ways of thinking, slightly different venues, slightly different outcomes, where much like you have ROTC, OCS, West Point. Think about the collective value that the Navy brings or that the Army brings. And then when you bring that all together, it's quite brilliant. So if either you're not in the Army and you're listening to this, or you're in the Army and you're looking to grow within your sister service skill set, I encourage students to go online and look at the application windows. Certainly, they're all going to have their own unique requirements. more challenging than others. And most of them will have some sort of staff ride that you get to go on. I'm pretty jealous. I believe the Marine Corps gets to go to Europe for a couple days for their staff ride.

00:17:03    BRIAN HANCOCK
They do.

00:17:04    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
And the School of Advanced Military Studies takes their students on a staff ride to Mississippi to study the Battle of Vicksburg, which is a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the complexities of joint warfare in the Civil War, the unique geography of the southern states of the United States, and the role that both the Navy and the Army played in the Vicksburg campaign. So it's not Europe, but it's still a great cultural perspective of looking at warfare on the homeland.

00:17:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's outstanding. And you don't have to go to Europe or Asia to learn valuable lessons. They're all over the world. And every one of these sites has something to teach us if we are open -minded and approach it with some humility. So let me ask you, What advice could you give to folks?

00:17:53    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
So read broadly. You don't have to necessarily go to a year -long school to become a true gifted officer, gifted professional. And if you're not looking at Audible or you're not checking books out from the library or you're not having... some debates with friends and colleagues. I got to say, you might not be the right fit for Sam's because I tell you, the Book of Day Club is real. And the importance behind being a self -motivated, self -driven individual when it comes to learning is sometimes the folks to our left and right are leaning on us to think about things and to provide input. And if... you know,

00:18:37    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
know, you're not reading the news and you're not diversifying your thought processes through reading widely and deeply, you may miss some details. And so I love looking at books, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. Military history is always obviously important, but then beyond just military history, there's great courses series out there where you can look at fun topics like the history of spycraft, right? Or The ethics of military warfare or the August Cole and Peter Singer series like Ghost Fleet or Burn In or Like War are really good starting points to think through I .O. stuff. Those authors have had the effect of taking emerging technology and applying it to fiction in a way that helps to tell the story of, talked about earlier, possible futures. And so why do I say read a lot? To be a good professional, we also have to give back, kind of like today with you. And so whether you're passionate about writing articles for professional outlets or contributing to leadership development programs in your own home unit, looking at what other folks are reading, thinking about, and writing on can help really deepen the intellectual value of your staff. No one wants a boring staff. I love when I can walk into the office and have a healthy debate about something. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us young.

00:20:07    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's one of the things I love about the Marine Corps. They have a fantastic culture of intellectual exchange where you could take any position, but you have to bring the facts to back that up. So everyone walks away learning something from that exchange, whatever point of view you have. So I appreciate the value of an opportunity like that.

00:20:25    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
But here's the thing too. Army libraries, they're free. And you can check out a book. Yeah, you can check out a book from across the nation. Army and DOD library program is pretty phenomenal because it turns out military appreciates education.

00:20:39    BRIAN HANCOCK
Outstanding. Relative to the value it brings, not only for your career, but just for your personal life enrichment. Sure. Pennies on the dollar. The return on investment is amazing. Thank you for all of those recommendations for the audience. Really appreciate you coming on the show today.

00:20:56    MEGAN O’KEEFE-SCHLESINGER
Thanks, Brian. Appreciate your time today and the opportunity to be on your show.

00:21:01    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.

 

182: Natacha Ciezki, from Zaire to America

Today we welcome Natasha Zieski and discuss her journey from growing up in Zaire to becoming a US citizen and joining Civil Affairs and the State Department's Office of Conflict Stabilization. This episode is a little different, but there is a lot of good stuff in it.

Enjoy.

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

----

Special Thanks to the Cafe Music BGM channel for sampling Hip Hop Jazz & Chill Jazz Summer Beach Mix - Instrumental Cafe Music. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YROyrBBf9WQ

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Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

181: Proxy Wars, by Pawel Bernat, Juneyt Gurer, and Cyprian Kozera

Today Assad Raza hosts Pawel Bernat, Juneyt Gurer, and Cyprian Kozera, authors of Proxy Wars From a Global Perspective: Non-State Actors and Armed Conflicts: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/proxy-wars-from-a-global-perspective-9781350369283/

----

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

----

Special thanks to Rajhesh Vaidhya and Bengaluru Ganesh Utsava for the audio sample. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_iVM-6z2j4

-----

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Assad Raza

Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines

---

00:00:00    Introduction
A quick note, the guests on today's show represent themselves and their book and no other organization. Enjoy the show. 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.

00:00:45    ASSAD RAZA
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. I'm your host, Assad Raza, and our guests today are Pavel Bernat, Junaid Guerrero, and Saiprin Cozada, authors of The Proxy Wars from a Global Perspective. First, congratulations, and thank you for taking the time to talk about your book with our audience today. Thank you, Asad. Thank you, Asad. So, what motivated you to write a book on proxy wars and non -state actors in armed conflicts? Who'd like to start? Cyprian? Yeah.

00:01:10    CYPRIAN KOZERA
It pays back to some gloomy January. Syvasa Center organized a great meeting. Cyprian said, hey, let's do something about that. Because this obviously merits deeper attention. And we started working. We got so inspired. We issued an academic special issue devoted to proxy forces. And then it was yet not enough. We still had more ideas. There were more people interested in the topic. After this academic general special issue, we decided, okay, we have to go on. And then we started to work on a book, starting with theory and history, and then goes into case studies in the last decade.

00:01:50    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you, Cyprian. Before we started recording this, we had talked about... You guys noticed that there was a gap within the literature and focused on some of the contemporary proxy wars versus some of the historical ones that had been written about years ago. Pawel, I know you wanted to talk about the evolution of proxy warfare. So there are so many people interested in proxy warfare,

00:02:09    PAWEL BERNAT
are so many people interested in proxy warfare, trying to understand and define what it actually means. We find ourselves in this very special time. On the one hand, we've got this interesting and needed concept of proxy warfare, but we have observed this gap of understanding what it is. And on the margin, we have to remember that it is very important not only to understand from this academic point of view, but this is crucial for policymakers. A theoretical material does not really provide proper answers to the current proxy warfare. Those traditional old definitions, they were coined during the Cold War era. Basically, you've got armed conflict, two superpowers. So, you know, NATO and Warsaw Pact. And they fight against each other indirectly. So using the territory of the third state, like Korea, Afghanistan. And then in 1991, things changed. The Soviet Union collapsed. And this very significant... geopolitical alteration started. So traditional old Cold War definitions did not provide enough exemplary power. So this is the theoretical background behind the book. What we wanted to do, we have invited specialists on different areas on the globe to provide the field data. So we, with the book, provide enough end -of -row material for future researchers and policymakers understanding proxy warfare.

00:03:52    ASSAD RAZA
Funny that you say that because I think the average person wouldn't put in consideration these shifts within the geopolitical aspect and the way it impacts the operational environment. So on that point to Juneyt, how is proxy warfare in the context of international relations?

00:04:08    JUNEYT GURER
The key thing for us today is to understand the changes in the strategic element. International relations perspective is the state objectives basically are critical, but other non -state actors matter, which means the proxy group may have something to say in that interaction. So let's look at this issue from a different perspective to give us some more explanation.

00:04:35    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you, Jeanette. Having the different perspectives contributes to the conversation and the academic rigor to understand these complex problems. specifically in proxy wars. Let's shift now to talking about the current situations. How do contemporary proxy wars and the participation of non -state actors contribute to global strategic competition? So I'll shift to Powell.

00:04:59    PAWEL BERNAT
So what I'm going to talk about is the Russo -Granian war from the proxy perspective, or how the proxies were created and used by the both sides. The first thing we should do here is actually to divide the time of the conflict. So you have this first stage between 2014 and February of 2022, and then the full -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So in 2014, the Russian Federation annexed Crimea and started the occupation. There was some betrayal involved and the action was actually really well prepared. Russian troops in the skies were present there. This is a great example of efficient use of hybrid warfare because the level of disinformation was just enormous. This traditional fog of war, we had basically no idea what was going on. When we look to the Donbass region in 2014, this is actually very interesting because the Russian Federation created their own proxies. So obviously, before 2014, there had been many people living in Lugansk that were pro -Russian. So what Russians did, they created units from those regions and paid them to organize and to fight. So the proxies there, that actually were created by the sponsor state, the Russian Federation. The indigenous people were not the only ones involved. There were many Cossacks from Russia, there were some other ethnic groups from Ural, but there were also straightforward criminals invited and organized to conduct the basic fighting against the Ukrainian forces. But when we look at this from this global strategic perspective, obviously proxies are used by the sponsored state when the state doesn't want to take full responsibility. This direct involvement in the conflict, you use proxies to fight this fight indirectly. So with the use of intermediaries. And you can either use the existing forces or you can create them.

00:07:24    ASSAD RAZA
Pavel, thank you. One question when you were talking about Crimea and Russia's support to the proxy for the occupation or annexation, you were saying at the strategic level, state sponsors usually don't want to take full responsibility. So some of that responsibility shift to the proxy forces and how is that looked upon within the area that they're operating in?

00:07:45    PAWEL BERNAT
Sure. From the strategic perspective, that's very important to explain to the Russian society why this war is being fought. So the main argument that is actually being repeated by the Russian state propaganda over and over again has been these are our Russian -speaking people and we will engage. in order to protect them because the Ukrainian regime treats them badly. And to support this argument, you create the indigenous units who fight beside you for their freedom. So having proxies in the Donbass region, that strengthened this explanation and Russia behind this strategic move of actually going to war.

00:08:34    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you. So we'll shift now to talk about Russia's proxies in Africa. So type in.

00:09:03    CYPRIAN KOZERA
You don't need to involve a lot of resources to win with actors. And here I mean dislocating the Western powers, France, the US, from the Sahel and Central African Republic. So Russia not being able to counter the influence, use proxy forces to the point that the West still doesn't know what to do with that, how to respond. And is it warfare? That's a question I would like to raise here, because as Pablo started in this discussion, he introduced this issue of odd theories. The classic proxy warfare theories not really sit here nowadays, because in the classic theory, armed conflict, and then proxies. What happens now if you have hybrid warfare? Is it the fifth generation of warfare? It's so hard to define. Is it a complex or not? Are we waging war with Russia? Some sabotage is happening. And then with some assassination ordered by Russia in the Western countries, the West supporting Ukraine providing weapons. It's very hard to say. So even if we don't use the term proxy warfare, it's happening. Proxy forces are being used in Africa by Russia and strategic gains. So definitely proxy warfare. It's very efficient. in Central African Republic since 2008. In Mali, 2022. Burkina Faso, 2023. Niger, last month, when the Russian mercenaries arrived to Myanmar. And it was two days ago when we learned that the Russians moved into the very same base in Myanmar and standing outside the U .S. soldiers. The U .S. troops are not any more welcome in Niger. They're moving out. moved out from Burkina Faso, French from Mali, with a hundred, a couple hundred, three hundred mercenaries, they entirely dislodged the Western forces. And with that, the influence. And now we are facing a U .S. troop leaving Chad, and we don't know where Chad will go in the next elections, which is on the 6th of May in two days. What about Senegal? the new president speaking of emancipation deals with anyone willing to enter the deal. So, looking from this perspective of the Sahel and the Sub -Saharan Africa, we see that there's plenty of proxy hybrid warfare, which brings enormous gains for a very little expense. Russia is the winner there, and we still don't know how to react.

00:11:50    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you so much. That was a really good description of how proxy war is used in global competition. Before we move on, I wanted to ask Junet if he has any thoughts on the role of proxy forces in global strategic competition.

00:12:04    JUNEYT GURER
The other thing about the strategic competition is this is a competition between US and China, and now China and Russia international order. But what happens, interestingly, after the conflicts? I think we will see a lot of organized criminal groups in this new era of strategic competition.

00:12:26    ASSAD RAZA
But I want to ask you, what are your thoughts about the intersection with such terms like insurgency or counterterrorism or terrorism? I am not an expert in that field,

00:12:36    JUNEYT GURER
that field, but I have some experience actually working with my colleagues here at the Marshall Center. Interesting topic. What I would basically say, if we consider the new... international security domain that will shape around the strategic competition. We have to look at those definitions of groups or tactics from that perspective. It is a critical time right now, and we all agree after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, now we are in a new international security era. So that era requires us to focus on the outcomes. I think those should be the real questions.

00:13:18    ASSAD RAZA
So earlier in the conversation, we talked a little bit about ethical considerations. So what are some of the ethical considerations surrounding the use of proxy forces in armed conflicts? There is a plethora of issues that could be addressed here.

00:13:29    PAWEL BERNAT
is a plethora of issues that could be addressed here. But very briefly and generally speaking, we have observed certain negativity linked to proxy warfare. So there is this pejorative undertone to it. And I think it actually stems from this Cold War era understanding. So basically you had two superpowers fighting against one another on the territory of another country, using this country for their struggle in order to avoid mutual assured destruction. You used the country, but also the people living in it. So this is my hypothesis. That's why this pejorative undertone linked to proxy warfare comes from. If you want to be academically honest, proxy war, it is not the case where the sponsor state uses some proxies to do their dirty work and the state does not want to break international law. So they use some forces to do that for them in order to achieve those strategic goals. But proxy warfare in itself is not. a negative thing so this is neutral okay but it also could be positive so this is something that i'd like the circle of the people working on it but also the republic to understand and remember we've seen not only the states but also a whole number of ngos but also private companies and informal groups participating by providing data by hacking the russian infrastructure so this is obviously manifestation of proxy warfare that proxies don't have to be military organizations. Very often they are, but they don't have to. That could be a very informal group of hackers that enters the stage of this armed conflict by, for example, hacking or providing some information. So in this sense, proxy warfare is not something ethically neutral.

00:15:33    ASSAD RAZA
You hit a lot of good things. I like the way you framed it. Is it being neutrally ethical, depending on the reasons behind the supports of some of these proxies, and the complexity behind it with the different actors that are supporting a proxy force? I like the example of the hackers. That was really good. I wanted to ask anybody else within the group, what are your thoughts on how proxy wars impact civilian populations?

00:15:55    CYPRIAN KOZERA
From a civilian perspective, we deal with countries, states, that have very limited resources. efficient states. And so they reach out to armed groups that are filling the vacuum left by the state. So the state is reaching to certain armed groups, supporting them if their interests align. And that's been happening in Maui for years since they're independent. And you're creating a local power. So you tip the balance between the state and the non -state actors. Then within these non -state actors, You also tip the balance because you're supporting one actor that is growing, that is getting stronger, receiving the funding, the equipment, the training, intelligence, you know, all that stuff. So that's a very risky situation. Because basically the state should have the monopoly on yourself of violence. That is not the case if you are supporting non -state actors. They come from the similar population. It may work short -term, but about long -term consequences. And then the people who have been trained, equipped, and bartered pardon, what should they do? Well, especially when they have no many options. They have no economic incentives other than smuggling, controlling minds. But at the end of the day, somebody will suffer from that, which we often see. non -state armed groups involved in conflicts and they pillage and they abuse local populations. And then there's also the issue with proxy actor getting so strong that it can threaten a fragile state. At that point, that a proxy actor is growing so much that it's threatening the balance, especially in an environment where all the actors are weak. So in proxy warfare,

00:18:00    CYPRIAN KOZERA
proxy warfare, you have to have your limits, and think long term. I will conclude here and end it over to the journey.

00:18:10    JUNEYT GURER
Thank you, Sibyl. I think you summarized many of the things that I was going to say. One thing we did not discuss a lot that needs to be also looked at is the non -state actors using proxies. So this is a secondary effect of the proxy use, which is very much connected to civilian populations. The examples that I have in mind is from the organized crime field. And we see a lot of groups in South America, when they want to do some business, not necessarily for states. In the case of drug trafficking, for example, they do use a lot of other groups. So that is basically the non -state actors working with other non -state actors. But when they connect themselves with a state that... issue becomes much more complicated so i think one key takeaway for us as security practitioners or professionals working in this field is to understand it from different perspectives and looking at the structures so if the state is working within proxy group i think it will be easier to handle the consequences that supreme was talking about how much power you are giving but Lose networks will be difficult to control and to know who you are working with. So that may have larger and severe consequences, whether this is related to human rights violations or any type of control issues. So another important issue, Supreme also mentioned, is you are investing time, money, and some tactics that you are using in your military or special operation forces. So obviously you are making some groups more powerful than they are, and you are giving them a new identity. So in the conflict environment, control of the groups is a lot different than after the conflict when you have the post -conflict reconstruction. So I think the proxy use should go beyond the conflict and all the Western democracies to make sure you are not creating next terrorist organization, or creating an organized crime group. So I think understanding the context, not only how to work with them, but how to deal with them afterwards, or making sure they're doing right things is important. So what these case studies told me, first of all, state and non -state interaction is complex. To my understanding, democracy matters. Democratic regimes or non -democratic regimes, they use proxies differently. So we need to expect new tactics or new type of groups, such as organized crime groups, coming into this proxy domain in the future. And responses basically require a complex set of expertise and strategies. So it is not a good idea to borrow some ideas from the previous era and say, hey, During the Cold War, proxy engagement was like this. And how states, whether these are Western states or not, they use proxies. This is exactly how it will be. I think that would be a mistake. And for the Western countries, my last point is, I think unity of effort and unity of resources is necessary to tackle counter -proxy efforts if you want to stop what China is doing or what Russia is doing or potentially can do. I don't think the state is strong enough or can counter the damage they can do to the Western system. That's why the unity of effort and resources are critical to be successful.

00:22:06    CYPRIAN KOZERA
Yeah, I doubt it. I think we skip the most important proxy forces. Oftentimes, responsibility approaches crimes. Proxies, like we've seen in Africa, they do. So that's also impacting the population. It's just the victim, like the crimes of the Wagner group with the top of the Mayan army committed in murder -killing rape. That was the proxy forces, the Wagner group, idea of counterterrorism. That's also the issue. So I just wanted to underline that. They don't have to, they don't care. And we've seen that they are business -oriented. And many, many cases testify to that.

00:22:52    ASSAD RAZA
Annette, thank you. Saperin, thank you. You guys brought up lots of several good points. Thinking about DDR and the importance of demobilization and reintegration of some of these proxies from a Western perspective and at times which I think it's overlooked or the conversation isn't in depth as it should be. And another thing I had written down was the use of non -state actors using proxies. I think something that's overlooked at times. I know you brought up the example of the cartels in South America. which is a good point. And I think that's something we take for granted and not really having a good understanding of the use of proxy forces. So Jeanette, Cyprian, Pavel, thank you so much for your time today. And again, congratulations on your book. Thank you.

00:23:31    Close
It's been a pleasure. 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. One CA Podcast.

180: Sandor Fabian: Europe is Learning the wrong lessons from the conflict in Ukraine

Today, Jack Gaines hosts Doctor Sandor Fabian, who published 
"The Illusion of Conventional War: Europe is Learning the wrong lessons from the conflict in Ukraine." 

This ten-point contrarian op-ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs. 

Article link: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-illusion-of-conventional-war-europe-is-learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-conflict-in-ukraine/

Sandor Fabian's Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandor-fabian-ph-d-3422b639/

---

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

---

Special thanks to Jazz Bois for the sample of Mellow Hive Live @ Root Budapest. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/EhGCsaiVm0I?si=zG3B1_1zaHjC_K2j

---

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

---

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 Dr.

00:00:41    JACK GAINES
Shander Fabian, who published The Illusion of Conventional War, Europe is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Conflict in Ukraine. This 10 -point contrarian op -ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs. I have a link to his bio and the paper in the show notes. So let's get started. One thing that caught my eye thinking about your paper are the points where you say that most observers are ignoring or misinterpreting things that they don't agree with. In other words, they have confirmation bias or they have a blind spot to things that they don't understand or refuse to include in their ideal.

00:01:24    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. And the base of my argument is... I traveled all over Europe and look at European capabilities. So throughout my personal experience and also studies in Europe, that these small countries, especially former Warsaw Pact countries, are trying to get integrated into the NATO system, which is driven mostly by the U .S. and the U .S. frame of reference of warfighting.

00:01:48    JACK GAINES
Sure. Division on division.

00:01:50    SANDOR FABIAN
Division on division. But the issue is these countries could not. purchase, maintain, sustain big ticket items. Right. And small countries have very small training areas. You cannot train officers to conduct division on division war fighting. So you are missing major opportunities in the education and training of the professional military officers and NCOs as well. Tanks are very expensive.

00:02:19    JACK GAINES
Right.

00:02:19    SANDOR FABIAN
These countries can buy maybe 10 tanks. When you buy 10 tanks, then you cannot really train with them because it's very difficult and expensive to actually get them to the field. You need the train system. You need the training areas. You need the ammunition for them. You train as you fight. These countries cannot afford to train as you fight. So by that definition, you actually going into any kind of war. in a suboptimal setting because you did not prepare your soldiers as they are going to fight. So there's a huge disconnect compared to France or the UK or the US.

00:02:56    JACK GAINES
Right. Because they can field larger armories and have more of a supply system to support them.

00:03:01    SANDOR FABIAN
You have the supply system. You have a large training and education infrastructure behind it that actually prepares your military leaders to understand and to fight such kind of wars. And you have the infrastructure behind it and all that that is completely locking in smaller former Warsaw Pact countries. Right.

00:03:17    JACK GAINES
Right. Switzerland was able to stay neutral during World War II. And the strategic calculus that Nazi Germany had for not invading Switzerland was that their form of warfare didn't work well in Switzerland with all the mountains. So they would have had to change all their tactics. And they knew that the Swiss didn't have battle tanks. They had an air force. They had a lot of snipers. They had a lot of riflemen in the mountains that knew those mountains well. just realized that by going through those mountains trying to take Switzerland would have been such a cost that it wasn't worth it. So as you're saying, they created warfare in a way that was successful for them instead of trying to emulate what would have been the popular military style of that time.

00:04:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely. And it's not just the Swiss. Ivan Ergun Toft, he wrote a book about how the weak actually defeats the strong. And he looked at all the wars of the last 150 years. And the primary determinant of who is actually succeeding in war is exactly what you just described. And the Ukrainian war actually shows that too. When you are not presenting a war to your enemy that he is understanding, he is organized, trained, educated for, he's active for, that enemy is immediately in trouble because you refuse to fight on his terms. So when you have a lot of main battle tanks and your enemy don't have main battle tanks... those battle tanks are not going to be useful because who are they going to fight with? What type of targets are they going to hit? And if that enemy has a million high -tech IEDs against your main battle tank, but zero battle tanks, that creates a huge dilemma for you. And also the Western frame of reference of the warfighting is when we win conventionally, we won the war. And the Iraq invasion showed that it's completely wrong. We run through a country, we occupy the country, we won all the engagements, and now we won the war. That actually has been shown throughout history. It's not the case anymore.

00:05:21    JACK GAINES
Right. You know, and that reminds me, H .R. McMaster in his book was talking about how when he went into Iraq with his tank division. I can't remember the size of the unit. I apologize. It was his famous battle where he went over the hill. And he knew that the Iraqi tank commander had trained in the U .S. because as they saw the formation, It was laid out exactly the way they had taught them how to do it. He was proud of them for doing that, but also he knew how to unscrew that type of defense and it was a very effective offense. He wiped out the adversary's tanks. So that's the other half of it is when you are living in somebody else's strategy, they also have control of how that strategy falls out.

00:06:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely.

00:06:05    JACK GAINES
Now, your observation is never present your adversary with a type of war that they are organized, trained, and equipped for, which we've already started discussing. And thinking of that and also the introduction about how people ignore or are blind to different aspects of a conflict, one thing that reminds me of is right now in Ukraine, there was a supply gap between what the U .S. and the EU were providing in weapons and material to Ukraine. But Ukraine didn't collapse, and it's because of something that no one's talking about, and that is that Estonia and the Czech Republic were finding weapons and material and delivering them. They were also going into the black markets in the underground to find other people willing to donate and give weapons and material. But then they also started fundraising public money in order to buy 155 rounds or other munitions to help the Ukrainians continue the fight. while the traditional Western systems were dry. And it's just not talked about. But it really comes down to that notion that Ukraine is not just at war with Russia. It's Ukraine and their network at war with Russia and their network. And that network is critical on who is going to win, who is going to succeed at different phases. So that just really struck me to your first point.

00:07:22    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, Ukraine in this case didn't collapse, thankfully, but they also didn't win. They are presenting the same type of war and we kind of enabling them because we are providing the tanks, we are providing the armored personnel carriers, we're providing artillery and so on. So we are incentivizing and pushing them into the corner of fighting along the terms of Russia. As long as that's happening, we are creating a situation when the two networks that you described is fighting pretty much a material war against each other. So the outcome is going to be determined who can sustain longer on both sides.

00:07:56    JACK GAINES
Right. And actually, the Czech Republic were also fundraising for combat drones. So they're trying to see through and around this quagmire that you're talking about.

00:08:05    SANDOR FABIAN
Well, another thing I don't talk about in the paper that has been fascinating me for many years, we on the West are fascinated with fighting the war. But we don't determine what winning means and what's happening afterwards. So everybody celebrated that now the U .S. is providing all this aid again to Ukraine to win. But what win really means in this war?

00:08:27    JACK GAINES
That actually feeds to your fourth observation. Friends are important in war, but they can be detrimental as well. especially for your defense efforts, which is what you're bringing up now. And that is if your vision of success, of strategic success as a Ukrainian is to take back all territory and have Russia in a position where they can no longer fight, then that's success. But if your Western allies, if their vision of success is that you have sustained yourself and that... Russia can no longer go further. Their support is only going to go so far because once you have hit their success lines, that's when what they're providing you starts to dry up.

00:09:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, and the Ukrainian president has made it clear several times that the official goal is getting everything back. And that's obviously the communicated Ukrainian goal, understandably, because they are a sovereign, independent country who lost quite a bit of territory to an aggressor. I'm not necessarily seeing the same very clear message from all the Western allies. However, obviously, you can make the argument there is no counter communication made. So the public and everybody else can assume that on the West, we think along the same way. However, again, if you are a very cold headed, completely objective analyst, then the evidence on the ground points to a different direction.

00:09:48    JACK GAINES
That's what I'm seeing. It's almost that Madeleine Albright, Saddam Hussein moment where Saddam asked, do you have an issue if we invade Kuwait? She said, the U .S. doesn't have a position. And he thought, oh, that means that they are okay with me invading Kuwait. But it wasn't. It just caused a misunderstanding that ended up with an invasion that started this whole mess in Iraq. So I get what you're saying. And the signals are never clear between nations on intent. And so you're right. You have to look at the behavior on supply and on policy and what they're giving away to help you in order to succeed. And I think it's going to be limited. So I would imagine Ukraine in itself is going to have to have a plan B in case the U .S. says, you know what, you've gotten 80 % back. I think that's fine. We're going to end our support there. Or the EU says the same thing and they're kind of stuck.

00:10:42    SANDOR FABIAN
It is a very unique case. So when other European countries are looking at the Ukrainian case, I think they should be very careful because Ukraine could actually marshal a global network behind her struggle against Russia. And the same kind of support, the same kind of geopolitical situation, what we are sitting right now might not be recreatable in the future for some other countries.

00:11:06    JACK GAINES
Like Myanmar, the national unity government. just doesn't have the global network of support that Ukraine has. And it's a very different scenario, but it's also an excellent example of what it's like to not have that kind of support. Now, one thing that you were bringing up is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to Ukraine, as an example, because it's all in the field, it's all in trenches, it's very traditional. And one of your arguments, one that you have in this paper as well as in other papers, is that we need to start thinking about urban warfare, The fighting is going to hit the streets more often than not.

00:11:42    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, absolutely. Many analysts and previous studies are pointing to the war is actually back in the trenches, far away from urban areas and far away from the civilian population. It's not true. Right now, the current situation is more out of urban areas, but still the majority of the fronts includes small villages, small towns, and larger built -up areas. The Russians are attacking those urban centers because those have operational and strategic importance. If you look back at the early months of the invasion, almost all the targets that the Russians were going after were urban areas. If you kind of step back and look at the conflicts of the last 20 years, 30 years, urban areas are the future. We are in a very unique opportunity here that we can actually build our future battlefields. We are building the buildings. We are looking at road networks. We are wiring the CCTV networks, the communication networks in the cities. So why we are not thinking about this in how we are going to utilize our buildings, our underground structures, our communication for military or defensive purposes. And if you look at it, it's nothing new because the Finns are very good at this. During the Cold War, they had an amazing network of underground tunnels, caches, protective areas for the civilians. The Swedes developed the Gripen, which actually are designed to land on highways and can be serviced very easily in the field expedient context. So there is a lot of historical examples out there. It's just a matter of will. and understanding to dust them off and develop them to the requirement of the 21st century.

00:13:25    JACK GAINES
Unless you're South Korea or you're Finland or Sweden, you just don't see an enemy until they're on you.

00:13:31    SANDOR FABIAN
they're on you. Another point that I have been arguing for many years is NATO and the NATO structure itself is based on this idea of interoperability. We fight together, we look like the same and we develop the same capabilities. And if you look through Europe,

00:13:31    JACK GAINES
they're on you. Another point

00:13:46    SANDOR FABIAN
What you just said is absolutely true. The Portuguese and the Spanish don't see Russia the same way as the Latvians and the Estonians, for example, or the Finns. But the Portuguese and the Spanish and the French, they have a different problem set. So in NATO, it's a defensive alliance. Main task is collective defense. So people would argue there are two types of defense, proactive and reactive defense. But if you want to defend, the first thing you do is you build a defensive line. which is completely locking right now. So that's why I'm arguing that the Eastern European countries mostly, they are absolutely not postured to actually resist a potential Russian aggression. The whole plan there is they're going to lose and then a large NATO counterattack, and then the territories will be retaken. But originally, NATO will never be able to actually withstand a Russian aggression. Right.

00:14:37    JACK GAINES
And that's probably why Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, they're so vigilant. on defense because they've seen how close they are to an adversary and what happens if you're not prepared.

00:14:50    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, absolutely. And I don't know if you've seen an article just came out a couple of weeks ago that the Baltic states decided to build a line of trenches and fortresses along the border. So that's actually preparation for defense. So why are we not doing something similar at the NATO level, the whole Eastern Bloc? Why are we not preparing the urban areas for defense? Just imagine how deterrent that would be. First of all, it would take away any kind of narrative from Russia, going, look, NATO is aggressive, because in action we would present defensive actions, preparing for defense. And then the other thing, any conventional aggressor would understand, okay, now these guys are turned their cities into fortresses. They have all this unconventional capabilities, equipment, training. They're not going to fight our T -72s with other tanks, but they have a million javelins or you name it. So it would be such a strong deterrent because, first of all, they would not understand what they are looking at because we would not present the fight or kind of war that they understand. So it would be such a deterrent that it would actually, I argue, be more effective than whatever we have right now.

00:16:01    JACK GAINES
Interesting. Now, in your observation three, strategic depth is critical for survival. Is this what you're trying to describe in that paragraph? Yes,

00:16:11    SANDOR FABIAN
absolutely. So you need to build a multi -layer defense. And in many countries, the size itself is so small, you have very limited artificial or natural obstacles, like the Swiss example. So if you think about defense, you have to either create or reinforce existing obstacles. And that's when urban areas can come in. You can look at the rivers, you can look at dams, just like Ukrainians did flooding your own territories. So you have to exploit what you have. And if you don't have something, then you have to generate artificial obstacles, artificial opportunities that put any kind of aggressor into a major dilemma. And then you have to organize your defense around that. I'm also arguing it's not just a physical sense, but also if you look at some country's population, they are very thin on the human capital they can tap into. When you have 2 .5, 3, 4, maybe 10 million people, and then you look at the military age available, you have to understand that you have very limited resources as far as human capital, and you have to make sure you are not wasting them. Most of the countries, they have maybe 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 professional soldiers. in theory, is the top 10 % of your society. So what's happening with the small military is if a Russian aggression comes, they are going to be the first destroyed and killed or injured. So you are losing your best and sharpest and strongest right at the beginning, and then you have to work with whatever you have left.

00:17:41    JACK GAINES
Right. So you're saying that these smaller countries need to build more of a reserve out of their population, either the mandatory one to two year, like an annual refresher. or to keep a larger number of the population in a reserved status?

00:17:55    SANDOR FABIAN
In Europe, conscription is a very, very sensitive topic. However, I am a strong believer that a 21st century version of conscription is actually very necessary for several countries in Europe. A modern version of conscription. And it's not only for the defense of country in case of a conventional kind of war, but also resiliency building at the society level. Before Ukraine started, the big buzz was the Russian hybrid warfare. And everybody was talking about how Russia is using different tools, different parts of the national power, cyber attacks, proxies, the church, economic levers, and you name it, 30 -something techniques that the Russians were using. And everybody came to the conclusion that you need a resilient whole -of -society approach to counter these malign activities.

00:18:44    JACK GAINES
And preparation, because it's hard to stir that up in the middle of a crisis.

00:18:48    SANDOR FABIAN
That's absolutely true, yes.

00:18:50    JACK GAINES
So your next one is pre -war exercises should be platforms for losing and learning instead of always winning. But what I think you're saying is that we need to red team our exercises and exploit every gap in our strategy and operations so that we can see what the ramifications of those blind spots are so that we are better as a strategy and operational team. And you can only do that by being open to that type of loss and criticism.

00:19:20    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it goes back to that Western view of exercises. You do individual training and then you go fire team training, you go squad training, you go platoon training, company battalion, you name it. And then the exercise, you do collective training and then you master the skills and you learn how to win as you described. The exercises are serving evaluation purposes. You pass or you fail, and usually you pass. And it's very difficult to academically kind of support with evidence. But I'm telling you, in my 20 years, I've actually seen only one exercise in NATO where we failed.

00:19:58    JACK GAINES
Who got fired? Because that's usually what happens.

00:19:58    SANDOR FABIAN
that's usually what happens.

00:19:59    JACK GAINES
that's usually what happens.

00:20:00    SANDOR FABIAN
Exactly. So there is an organizational culture, and this incentivizes failure because... you might actually see examples of somebody got fired. And in former Warsaw Pact countries, I think it's even more true because you still have some of the kind of heritage from the post -Soviet system when the sky is always blue, the grass is always green, everything is fine. We can do whatever, we never say no to anything and we always succeed. Ukrainian pre -war exercises showed how important that when you have an enemy... You feel on your skin that war is imminent, that you actually are willing to look at those gaps and willing to solve those gaps and experiment with those gaps. There were exercises when the Ukrainians identified the military cannot do this because they don't have the capability. They looked at intelligence services and they said, OK, they have the capability, but they don't have the authority. So one of the outcome. of the exercise was a legislative change, removing certain tasks or requirements from the military and pushing it to the intelligence community because they had the capability but no authority. Other areas they identified as certain problems that cannot be solved with military tools or it can be solved but it's suboptimal and it doesn't meet the overall requirements. But the civil society has solutions. For example, Ukraine is very big on computer game developers and software developers. And those guys created apps for mobile phones that the Ukrainian intelligence community could pretty much crowdsource intelligence collection to the people. And they practiced it in exercises. And then you now are flooded with information, how your military system is dealing with that, the classification, how you're processing that data, and so on. So again, it was a big fail, but they find the solutions.

00:21:49    JACK GAINES
That's really interesting because one of the things that I've seen is when the U .S. faces a problem, they have a gap that they do spot, that they only look at DoD -style solutions. They don't look at cross -agency solutions. They don't look at commercial solutions. They certainly don't look at how the public can be involved in helping win a war. And it's happened. It's happened in the past. I've seen it, but it's not something that military will... formalize or even document.

00:22:20    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah. And you are talking about the US? Yes. Now, if you look at small European countries, that problem set is even larger because they do actually much worse on that level as well. One other issue pointing back to NATO and the interoperability idea, everybody needs to be a small US. Interoperability and influence by France is killing adaptation in small countries. When you say, no, you have to look the same way, wearing the similar boots, similar uniform, the same helmet, the same weapons, and this is the doctrine you should follow. That takes away the time to think innovatively and you turn them into this uniform NATO soldiers. One of my examples from Afghanistan, we went there first and we worked with the US guys there. My soldiers, you know, after two months started to say, oh, I want the same Oakley and the same baseball hat and the same body armor and the same weapon. I'm like... OK, and slowly became this more American looking and acting soldiers. We started to lose those guys who use the Swiss army knife to solve the same problems that a logistics platoon is solving for an American soldier. So there are obviously a lot of positives of interoperability and working together. But we have to also understand that actually that leads also to capability and capacity loss.

00:23:38    JACK GAINES
Interesting. Well, I'm going to leave it there because I can't imagine. more valid point than that, than encouraging small unit and small nation diversity in thinking about defense. I think that was brilliant. So number six? Absolutely. Intimate knowledge of your enemy is an invaluable force multiplier. And we saw Ukraine leadership and government and military use that intimate knowledge of Russian practices and standards and culture in the very beginning of the war by communicating to the Russians, hey, we're not far apart from each other. We shouldn't be doing this. Demand that your sons and daughters that are on the front come back home, organizing identifications so that Russian soldiers that were killed in the field and the Russians didn't want to notify the families so that there wasn't a bad public response.

00:24:22    JACK GAINES
so that Russian soldiers that were killed in the field and the Russians didn't want to notify the families so that there wasn't a bad public response. The Ukrainians did it on their own. They reached out and they started setting up networks to help people find. their soldiers. And that's always been a strategic strength, I believe, is having not only the willingness to fight and kill your adversary, but also understanding that the people in the back, yeah, they support the war for the opposition, but when it's over, they have to have some point of reference in order to cooperate. And I believe that what you're talking about here, the intimate knowledge, is good as a way to spot and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your adversaries, formations, movements, thinking process. But it's also a great way to understand what's going to be the second and third order effects. For example, let's say that Ukraine actually pushed Russia out of Crimea and all of the outlying territories and they declare success. And kind of like in the first Chechen war goes, all right, we're going to write a treaty. And they write a treaty. And then in about 15 years, they build up their force and reinvade when Ukraine's not ready for them. These things happen. And if no one's thinking about the behavior of your adversary, you're going to run into a blind spot by not thinking past what you think of as strategic success.

00:25:52    SANDOR FABIAN
On the West, we have this obsession of fighting the war, but not thinking about what winning looks like and what after the war. So what is coming after the war, how we are going to ensure it's not happening again in 10 years. We don't have that long -term thinking. And obviously there is large literature on why does it happen. But it has been done in the past. The Cold War is a primary example of long -term containment of Russia and winning itself. But going back to the knowledge on the enemy, it has an effect on the cognitive space, understanding the society on the other side, the soldiers on the other side, their education, their training, how you can influence certain parts of the adversary society. And Ukrainians for a very long time were obviously winning in the information operation. not just towards the West marshalling support, but also towards certain parts of the Russian society as well. And the other thing is, at the beginning of the war, one of the key to their success was exactly knowing the Russian order of battle. They knew how a armored formation would actually move. and they were attacking them at the weakest point. So that understanding acted as a force multiplier, and they organized around that specific knowledge. So if you look at European countries, there is no teaching of Russian order of battles. There is no teaching anymore the capabilities of T -72s. There is no teaching of the capabilities of Russian artillery pieces or airplanes. I remember my first two years in the Hungarian Military Academy. We were looking at thermal images of Russian and American equipment and area pictures and things like that. And we had to recognize that in the middle of the night, that there is no such understanding or knowledge, not even at that basic level. And then when you talk about culture, you talk about language, it would add an extra requirement for our countries to actually educate and train future military leaders in a completely different level. Right.

00:27:49    JACK GAINES
This is a great point because when Ukraine first started doing exercises with the U .S. and Western partners, they were very Soviet in the way they thought and performed. And I'll be honest, if they had stuck to that mindset when this conflict started, their over -homogenization would have caused them to collapse immediately. I think the Russians would have been able to get a lot further than they did now. But because they have a hybrid notion by having both experience with the Soviet military and with the Western concepts of conflict, it helped them to be more creative because they knew the good and the bad of both sides of it.

00:28:30    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, and actually a very important point there that the Ukrainians had the privilege to actually still have that kind of officer and NCO who still had knowledge from the past. but they also had training and education from the future or from the Western side. Now, most of the European countries now, we are in a disadvantage, I would argue, because our leaders, almost all of them grew up in the global war on terror kind of environment. So everybody's expert on countering insurgencies, countering terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, serious scenarios, but nobody is really a master anymore of prosecuting a large -scale war. in Europe. So now we have a generation or generations of military officer and NCO Corps who is unable to say no, obviously, because the military is like, yeah, we are capable of doing anything. But if you look at it realistically, we changed our training and education infrastructure to the requirements of the global war on terrorism. So there is a huge gap and that gap is very sad. But at the same time, I argue it creates an opportunity to start building a different type of officer and then CO corps that is actually not presenting this kind of war to a Russian aggressor, but a more realistic one that is designed for the realities of these smaller countries.

00:29:47    JACK GAINES
You know, I've been arguing the same thing about strategic competition, that this global war on terror mindset is not going to help you succeed or survive in global competition. So let's move on to number seven. Forget armor and other big ticket military platforms, traditional military platforms. Now, you're mostly talking small countries to stop over homogenizing with the U .S. That's one of your points. And one of those positions is don't go for the big battle tanks. Don't go for the C5s. Unless you absolutely need them, they're a cost waste to your defense.

00:30:27    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. So first of all, you are spending on something that is not going to do you any good. So when you can... afford 10 main battle tanks. 10. And you can offer 200 armored personnel carriers or fighting vehicles and maybe 20 helicopters and then 15 artillery pieces. And that's actually costing the 2 % of your GDP or even more. Let's put emotions to the side and be very objective and completely cold -headed here. What those pieces is really going to give you against thousands or hundreds of similar... capabilities when it's coming to a potential war or aggression. Nothing. You are going to lose them very quickly. You are going to lose the best trained and most educated people very quickly because you gave the enemy a type of war that they understand. You are disadvantaged when it comes to a material war, no matter what. There are many reasons why these countries cannot sustain a meaningful capability. Many countries were given the NATO capability goals to build a heavy brigade. It took them 15 to 20 years and they are still not there. And then if they have the capability, then there are so many issues, lack of training and education and infrastructure, lack of training areas, lack of culture and an understanding of combined arms maneuver warfare at the national level. prevent them to be successful or effective with those kinds of capabilities. The last thing I didn't really write about is in European countries, there is this misconception that capability equals capacity. I am able to do something once. It's not the same thing that I'm capable of doing that 30 days on a sustained level. So when you have 10 tanks and they are destroyed, You lost your capability and then you cannot recreate another 10 tanks and 10 tanks and 10 tanks for every single day with all the trained people and all that. So capability does not equal capacity. And that's a huge problem in most European countries that they build some capability. Yes, we can fight one day, combined arms, maneuver warfare. What's happening tomorrow? Our soldiers are tired. We don't have refuel. We don't have ammo anymore. We need five days to be able to fight one more day again. It's not effective. They have to look at some different approach and different type of war to present to this challenge. So the Ukrainian war also shows the utility of these small, salty, easy -to -build platforms that are very lethal, killing tanks. The Ukrainians sank one -third of the Black Sea fleet without a single maritime platform. They only used remote -controlled platforms. Without the Navy, they actually sank one third of the Russian Black Sea fleet. That is very telling. And the Ukrainians are killing tanks. They are killing artillery pieces with drones. They have like a shoestring and they tie a hand grenade or a mine on a drone and then destroying a $10 million worth of battle tank. So that is very telling. And that's something that the European countries should really, really take a serious look and then understand. What are the implications for their national defense systems?

00:33:44    JACK GAINES
Maybe the sense of defense is not just being on the front lines, but also if you're a finance person, you know, building funding and building financial networks that support the cause. What is your thoughts on national defense is not only a military or government function?

00:34:02    SANDOR FABIAN
You are absolutely right on that. And even if you talk about the U .S. Like 75 % of the transportation capability is owned by the civilian society or businesses. 90 % of satellite communication capabilities are owned by private companies. And those are even stronger in Europe. So the government has to realize that the 21st century battlefield or war itself is much more complex than I take my military, they will fight it out. And then if we lose, we sign the papers. And if we win, then we won the war. That has not been realistic since World War II. So the people, the society, the civilian businesses, the churches, the NGOs, they all had to understand that they have a role to play in national defense. Everybody has something to contribute. And not everybody will fight. Not everybody should fight. But everybody has something to contribute at their own individual or organizational level. Some capabilities. Look at Starlink, for example. Without Starlink, the Ukrainian communication would have been destroyed. And without that capability, their command and control disabled and potentially have a major negative effect on the outcome. And it goes back to the earlier discussion about exercises. You have to identify those gaps and then you have to actively go out to the society and the private sector and fight those who have capabilities in those fields. Can't just hand wave and say,

00:35:28    JACK GAINES
just hand wave and say, we'll take care of it. We've got satellite dishes. Oh no, we're fine.

00:35:31    SANDOR FABIAN
no, we're fine. Let's be honest. That's what the military does. We identify this problem. So we will take 10 years to develop a military capability for satellite communication. Instead of going out and say, OK, let's look at Company X. Do you have the capability already? OK, how we incentivize you to provide this capability to us during peacetime and during war and then how we work together and what we are doing. Even the U .S. has major problems in this kind of space. Then imagine a small European country with much less GDP, much less economic power and so on. They should tap into their entire society, private sector, industry, everything to give a chance to their national defense to be effective. Right.

00:36:14    JACK GAINES
Fantastic. All right. You ready for number 10?

00:36:17    SANDOR FABIAN
I am ready for number 10. Okay.

00:36:19    JACK GAINES
Deception is still a force multiplier.

00:36:22    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely. It goes back to the earlier argument about the intimate knowledge of your enemy. We actually stopped teaching deception. We stopped educating our officers and NCOs about the value of deception. We also stopped producing tools for our militaries in mass, serving only deception purposes. Where are the inflatable tank divisions? Where are the inflatable... aircrafts or helicopters. There are the deceptive platoons who work on deceiving the enemy and making them believe that you are a brigade when it's just two people exchanging radio communication. We kind of stopped doing that. And then obviously with the cyberspace, we had an extra domain, an extra space opened up. And again, we are not effective on utilizing this tool of deception. We are not training our leaders. And also, I have not seen an exercise besides camouflaging the command post. The military formations are actually effectively and actively try to deceive the enemy. It's all about force on force. It's all about fire, destroying the target and so on. Deception itself is not there. And deception is very important, I argue, for small countries with limited resources, with no main battle tanks and so on. Because if... the enemy's capabilities cannot see your target, then they cannot hit it. Or if you present them a fake target and they hit it, they are going to extend a lot of resources. So there are so much to deception that we are just not appreciating anymore.

00:38:00    JACK GAINES
Do you think it's because we overclassified deception? You make it so heavy with authorities and classification that it makes it impossible to do an exercise.

00:38:09    SANDOR FABIAN
I think that's one thing. And also, I think we became slaves to our superiority and to our technology because our tanks, our tank formations are so big. It's pretty much... almost impossible in the 21st century to hide them. So we are more like, okay, we show them how big we are. We show them how effective we are. And then they are not going to oppose us. It's going to be deterrent. We don't have to deceive them. So I think it's more about our dominance in this space and the belief in our dominance that led to this underappreciation of deception. When you're a smaller country and you have... way less capabilities even if you investing in tanks and 20 helicopters then you should be incentivized to protect them and one way to protect them is to deceive the enemy to hide this right and then present them with fake targets or deceive them every way it's possible but you cannot deceive effectively without the tools for deception and then from training and educating to people how to use those tools to effectively deceive your enemy right wow

00:39:10    JACK GAINES
Yeah, I see the challenge and I've heard it from other people who focus on psychological operations and intelligence and counterintelligence about how difficult it is to actually run a deception operation.

00:39:23    SANDOR FABIAN
maintain the illusion that they can actually challenge that enemy on its own term. If you are not a heavyweight boxing champion, you cannot challenge a heavyweight boxing champion in a ring based on the rules of heavyweight boxing with the referee keeping everybody in check. You are not going to win. That's not going to happen. So the best way for an underdog to defeat the stronger enemy is to present a dilemma. Something that he is not prepared for, he is not organized for, he is not trained for. And if you present that, then you have to make the logical step that you develop specific capabilities in support of your alternative strategy. You cannot fight an alternative type of war with a conventional military. You can, but it's going to be suboptimal. Conventional militaries were developed specifically for conventional war. If you decide that you cannot challenge your conventional aggressor and you decide to go with a different strategy, then you have to develop a training, education to support your alternative strategy. And I think that's the future. And that must be the reality for most of the European countries.

00:40:49    JACK GAINES
If you try to fight an enemy on their own terms, you'll lose. But if you change the rules to where that heavyweight fighter has to go to a knife fight, then it's different. Absolutely. Those boxing gloves won't save you anymore. If you take him to the alley in the dark and you have actually a thousand needles and he is still in his boxing equipment and you just jump around.

00:41:02    SANDOR FABIAN
If you take him to the alley in the dark and you have actually a thousand needles and he is still in his boxing equipment and you just jump around. He's going to.

00:41:13    JACK GAINES
to.

00:41:13    SANDOR FABIAN
have a bad day. He's going to have a bad day, yeah. And logically, you might lose again, but you have better chance in the dark alley with your needles against that boxing champion than trying to box according to the rules in the ring.

00:41:13    JACK GAINES
day. He's going

00:41:21    SANDOR FABIAN
that boxing champion than trying to box according to the rules in the ring.

00:41:25    JACK GAINES
Right. And the ultimate success is that champion comes to that alley and then goes, I'm not going in there. It's not worth it for me to go and fight. And then you've won without the battle.

00:41:36    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. Absolutely. I think you are understanding my overall argument, so I'm very happy. Good,

00:41:42    JACK GAINES
good. I appreciate it. This has been terrific.

00:41:45    SANDOR FABIAN
I just want to say thank you for the invitation. It was a pleasure to talk to you today, and I really appreciate it.

00:41:52    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. One CA Podcast.

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. 

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

Special thanks for SensualMusic4You producing "Hip Hop Jazz & Hip Hop Jazz Instrumental: 10 Hours of Hip Hop Jazz." Sample found at https://youtu.be/XEa0Xn9XAzk?si=eeWyVqE3c1uL6d2Q

dependent. How can the military, diplomacy, and development workers manage the process to ensure a successful transition to becoming an independent partner in the international community?

Special thanks to DrSaxLove for the song "Happy Hour." Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8YIlU_30Kk 

------

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

---

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.

176: Part II, interview with J. David Thompson

Brian Hancock hosts Major J. David Thompson, a Civil Affairs planner out of U.S. Africa Command, to discuss military campaigning, just war with post-modern conflict and avoiding civilian harm in conflict. 

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

Special thanks to Relax Music for sampling "Trio Riberto's song "Yellow Summer." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stpq54O2qO0

------

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Brian Hancock

Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines

---

00:00:03    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.

00:00:38    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we're going to explore the concepts of military campaigning, civil harm mitigation, and how to align just war with postmodern conflict. To get after this, I have with me Major J. David Thompson. He's a civil affairs major assigned to the U .S. Africa Command. He holds a Juris Doctorate from Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a Ph .D. candidate at King's College London, where he is researching the ethics of proxy warfare. Major Thompson, welcome to the show.

00:01:15    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Glad to be here, sir.

00:01:16    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right, before we begin, Dave, our quick disclaimer, a reminder to our audience that all remarks made are those of the presenters solely. All right, let's begin. Dave, can you tell me a little bit about your current positions and duties of what you're doing there at U .S. AFRICOM?

00:01:35    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Thank you. So I am a same military operations planner at U .S. AFRICOM. That's within the JFOLA. With same forward division, we have also the humanitarian assistance portfolio, largely, I think, the ODACA programs. We have a number of interagency representatives from the Health and Stabilization Office of the Department of State, foreign policy advisor from State Department, a public health advisor from DHEP. We also have a liaison from Pacific Disaster Center of PBC Global, and the PBC Global liaison works with California. That's a lot. Yes, that is a lot, but luckily we have really good leadership and good control. Arrow Division.

00:02:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Fantastic. I was worried you were never going to get to sleep with all those duties on your plate. All right, let's jump into our first varsity -level question. You recently wrote an award -winning civil affairs issue paper. Let me read the exact title. Campaigning the Campaign Plan, Focusing on the Fundamentals at the Combatant Command by Assessing Civil Affairs Operations, Activities, and Investments. The famous OANI is there. Now, it feels to me that the Army's come full circle. When I started my career 18 years ago, military campaigns were a thing. They were discussed. And then suddenly the term fell out of vogue. I never understood quite why. But now it's back. So campaigns are back on the menu, huh?

00:03:16    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Afghanistan, partly with global war on terror. I had the opportunity to meet Joel Stane. He was talking to me and he was doing this battlefield circulation, was the commander, and I was telling him all the things we were doing about the Afghan security forces. And he said, what would you do if you hadn't stayed here until the war? And can you think that, well, I would... Probably spend a little bit more of a tele -focus on doing a partner for us so that way I could hand this off to somebody because I was doing it. And ideally, it needs to be somebody else for us to win. So that started me thinking of how my rotation fit into Baylor's attention. So then we changed our approach. And during that time, I made it a little, to use a sports analogy, the ball was on the 20 -yard line and I was going to try to get it to the 30 -yard line. And that will mean our soldiers doing more and us doing less. That's being within that advice in a such role.

00:04:21    BRIAN HANCOCK
That makes sense to me. And I love your analogy on incremental movements, right? When we're talking about all these very complicated systems and politics and economics where strategic objectives tend to lie, these are not things that are solved quickly, especially in areas where you've got deep sectarian violence and hatred. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think not only as civil affairs officer, but as military officers in general, you know, we need to keep moving that needle to the right. Love that anecdote that you mentioned with General McChrystal to one of the generals in, you know, the famous book, The Four Star. Very interesting individual. For the audience, I think that their experience with the word campaign is in a political sense rather than in a military sense. For clarification, how does the Department of Defense define that term? And if you don't mind, can you just explain how it's different from an operation, an engagement, or a theater plan, which are other terms we hear bantered about a bunch?

00:05:25    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
So there is Champagne, as in Philippe, which is in J .F. Station, Rio. And I'm going to read a bit of the definition here.

00:05:45    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Now that differs from campaign plan and campaign, which comes from the joint publication final. So campaign is a series of laden operations with a given time and space, and a campaign plan is a joint operation plan. through a series of related major operations within its habit space. So ideally, you have the campaign plan, which lists LFP -CAN -8 objectives, the intermediate military objectives, and then the effects, subordinate to those IMOs or intermediate military objectives. Then you have the campaign formula, which provides TANAS to components. These TANAS generate operations, activities, and investments, or OAIs. So components can then have OAIs linked to tasks in the combatant command. It can have tasks linked to effects linked to IMOs linked to championing objectives. So if you think about it linearly, you should be able to draw a line between an operational activity or investment in OAI directly to the champion.

00:06:50    BRIAN HANCOCK
I know NATO talks a little bit about in -states as opposed to objectives, just a different way of looking at it. or desired conditions as you're moving towards things in a plan. It seems that based upon how DoD looks at a campaign, it's kind of on that cusp between operations and strategy with an ability to be broken down to tactical tasks and activities that support it. Let's go deeper into strategy and operations. In the paper that you published, you mentioned that the connection between strategy and operations is inherent. I know you've read Sean McFake's work. You're pretty well read. In that, he and other military scholars argue that America has actually lost every war since World War II, as measured by a failure to complete the strategic objectives of those conflicts. Now, given the potential connection between strategy and operations, what do you think went wrong? As a force, did we just suck at operations, and that in turn causes our strategy to fail in many of these wars? What do you think?

00:07:57    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
So first, one of the unique things about that paper was, it didn't call for any new .lltf piece, which just uses current dapering as what we have available. So anybody can go through and use it. Now the paper is published with the Silhouette Association as publicly available. Another kind of spent on looking at this, I talked to the OAIs and the campaign objectives. I forgot to mention maybe the measuring and assessments of those tasks, which are important and maybe lead to your point. You should be able to measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, measure them with facts and measure the performance, if the OAIs are what people are being tasked to do for helping to reach the campaign objectives. If not, why not? Do there need to be new structures, new processes, more guidance? machine resources in the 40s. She must really do all of assessments comes into play. So he doesn't show McFay. So he wrote a book, The New Rules of War, about the same time that Richard Cox wrote, A World in Disarray. And they both looked at the same question broadly and approached it in two very different ways. And there were solutions to solving that. I think if you read those two books side by side, you can follow all conclusions.

00:09:23    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks for that. Obviously, these are hot political issues as well as military issues. To use an egregious example, if we take a look at the war in Iraq, I don't know if you read Mark Perry's book, The Pentagon Wars, but he makes a pretty cogent case that the Iraq War actually reduced security abroad, caused some chaos, empowered Iran. Russia and ISIS damaged relationships between the civil and the military, nearly bankrupt the nation, and of course got many, many Americans as well as Iraqis killed. And relative to the strategic objectives, it doesn't look like that is a victory. So going back to what you said about assessments, did we just... pick the wrong things to do, and then therefore the rosy assessments, which I saw were just measuring the wrong things. Yeah.

00:11:54    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's great. I think we could probably have an entire podcast on just talking about the different definitions of victory and competition. I think those are hot terms.

00:12:23    BRIAN HANCOCK
from maybe a political lens or a socioeconomic lens, perhaps not. So I think that's one of the challenges, and you talk about it in some of your other papers, with the graying of modern warfare, our definitions just kind of haven't kept pace. Let's move on to the next question. You spent some time addressing assessments in your publication and referred to it earlier. Now, these are critical, and particularly as we move up echelon, they often direct... Now, in my experience, assessing non -lethal effects are challenging. Many of the things we're trying to affect are complex adaptive human systems, which have a relation to operations, activities, and investment. Now, to use an example of a difficult non -lethal assessment, one of the taskings we often get at U .S. Army, Europe, and Africa is for a civil affairs action team or a four -man cat team. to assess a tactical ODACA project. You talked about ODACA there earlier in your office. And typically that team has not been part of that project before and may not have contacts or baselines. And it is asked to assess how that typically tactical level project has advanced U .S. and NATO strategic objectives. And unfortunately, the team is usually only given a few days to accomplish this. Now, given math and science required to conduct a statistically valid assessment, how do you think we can do this better? Can we do this better?

00:14:16    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Perhaps I can put our CPM manager in touch and they can share some best practices. But I think one of the other things about this is looking when civil affairs forces are getting these very complicated tasks to do. I think that's one of the great things about being a civil affairs officer or soldier. We get tasks to do a hard thing. We don't solve easy problems. So we recruit and train. smart people when we put them through teams with other talented, smart people. And then we give them complex, challenging problems to solve. So, it's fascinating. And generally, they come out successful. Like, I would be hard -pressed to think of a time when I've seen a team take on a challenging problem and not come away with some ideas that were very creative and help solve it. They're really about success. So that's one of the great things about being a Civil Affairs soldier.

00:15:15    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
one of the great things about being a Civil Affairs soldier. If that appeals to anybody who's listening, who's not a Civil Affairs soldier, definitely get in contact with Colonel Hancock, myself, anybody in the Civil Affairs Association, I'm sure it's willing to help you. To the first part of the question about the assessment speech, right? So at the Geographic Combat and Command level, I think about assessments maybe a little bit different than like a tactical U .S. assessment. We want to know for assessments, are the things we're doing helping us reach our campaign objectives? So, great, let's keep doing. If not, again, what do we need? Do we need a new structure, process, guidance, resources? What is it that we need to do to help them achieve these campaign objectives? As far as the individual assessments of an evocative project, those are great, but at the command and command level, what I'm more interested in are all those assessments helping somebody else make a decision. I'm not so concerned about that decision, just that we have forces available working towards doing that and that they're informing people who are making decisions. The process of what we call civil knowledge integration.

00:16:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
I actually like your characterization of that, right? All models are wrong, but if it's useful, then it's worth investing in. in relation of a project to strategic impact is hard to measure. But if it moves the ball forward, if it teaches us something we didn't know, if it builds a valuable relationship we didn't have, then that is still useful in and of itself. All we're required to do as a government is conduct legal acceptance, which is more of an MLP, right? Let's say the project was to build a fuel pumping station, just making this up. Does it pump fuel? Does it hold fuel? Is it safe? Okay, yeah. And is the price what we agree? Then we accept that. But in terms of the value of that towards the campaign, the operational objective, that value could be shown in many different ways. And that's why we do both qualitative and quantitative assessments, right?

00:17:28    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, it's a good way to put it.

00:17:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. Let's keep talking about assessments. That's a real hot topic. You've worked at AFRICOM for a while, and one of the things that AFRICOM did is they held a civil affairs summit, which you participated in. One of the things that caught my eye in your write -up regarding the summit... was the extensive indicators that all the participants developed to attempt to capture CA impacts and garner useful measurements. Examples of these are number of episodic engagements, numbers of partners requesting civil military operations, embassies requesting civil affairs forces, and a number of others. Now, mathematically, these are obviously somewhat different concepts. These desperate factors get normalized, scored, and weighted to determine an accurate assessment framework.

00:18:26    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
That's really good. So we've got a quality assessment team at Capricorn. And also, anybody looking to replicate, I would point you to NXK of JP5 .0. In the paper, I basically just talked about our implementation of doctrine. Now, the actual indicators we developed are linked to our campaign objectives. We'll be jumping objectives across the slide. So the Peter I used thought was likely to be relevant to the Silver's audience. And then we're going to see as far as the indicators pointing exactly what we created during the summit is analogous. So using kind of tabular for the Silver line. Well, I think what we're going to share about is less about the actual indicators after column development and more of the process that we use. That's where I can preserve any listeners to focus. So what leads the tasks in the OEI is with the desired outcomes. Now, there were some pitfalls to avoid. Assessments don't inherently come with funding. And it creates work for Dell trade students. So we can have a perfect assessments framework, but we have to balance that with all the labor that goes into that with the operations piece. And then the assessments need to be full. Are we assessing things just for the sake of assessing them? Are we helping people make decisions moving forward? What are they helping to answer? Civil affairs doesn't exist in effect. So what are the strategic assessments helping to provide a comprehensive understanding to each other?

00:19:59    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think the assessments problem in non -lethal effects is one of those complicated things that probably drew you and I to civil affairs. And obviously, as you go up Aftalon, where you have more resources. One of the ways that we add value to our subordinate units is to help them with those assessments, right? Because we may have more ORSAs, more collection capabilities, more other things to do that. I don't think you and I are going to solve the assessment issues today, but I'm glad that we continue having that discussion. Let's keep going with Africa here. The National Defense Strategy in 2022 identifies China as the U .S. pacing threat and Russia as an acute threat. Through the One Belt, One Road initiative, China is conducting significant engagement in Africa, as are the Russians through their private military companies like the Wagner Group, and their recent media purchases. For additional context, in his book Factfulness, Dr. Hans Rossinger defines what he calls the pen code of the world. It's a very interesting idea. And that's how the 7 billion people on the planet are distributed. Now, at present, only 1 billion reside in Africa, while 4 billion reside in Asia. I suspect that's why PACOM has a lot of funding right now. Now, fast forward, though, to the year 2100. Dr. Rossinger points out that if demographic trends continue, Asia will only have grown to 5 billion inhabitants. But Africa will have drupaled its population to 4 billion. Given all this and other things you're aware of, it just seems to me that the U .S. military, particularly civil affairs, should be far more active in Africa.

 

00:01:25    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
fair economic trade issues. So we welcome PRC's cooperation on issues such as climate change, global health security, arms control, not proliferation, all issues that threaten the entire world. We get asking African states to choose between the U .S. and China. African countries or sovereign countries, they're seeing sometimes we may have a better offer and they may choose us, but we're not asking them to choose. Forcing fairness, forces in Africa. So they are doing a lot of great work. And they keep getting better. It's a testament to the professionalization of the force and their integration with components and culture teams. Seeing various forces constitute about 2 % of the rotational forces on Africa. And they use maybe 1 % of Egypt. But they execute 39 .5 % of all of Africa's OAIs. So that is a shattering trouble investment. But civil affairs, again, we don't, and so we sent it back. So we're a tool to help AFRICOL achieve this objective, but it's only worked with other tools. So these tools can be security cooperation programs, other special operations, foreign teams, country teams. Generally, we have AFRICOL as a combat commander. We're recently saying AFRICOL against Donald's when our interagency colleagues, State and USA, specifically with the special move settings, all over the field. And we, being DOD, are the Dutch. And that he reiterated such comments in his Senate and House testimony. Senator Armstrong's Committee, House Armstrong's Committee. And repeatedly brought up the holding government approach he's had to follow policy advisor and the senior development advisor sitting right behind him. And it is a testament to the holding government approach that we seek to do at AFRICON and how we do business. is the Global Fagility Act or the Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Composibility, SPCPS. Part of GFA or SPCPS is that we get on our own way to ruin business. We take a long -term approach and we think about how we get desperate together with our interagency colleagues. I think we had a lot of significant growth here and I think we've had a lot of positive benefits. And instead of thinking about civil affairs, again, as a standalone, GFA adds to think about how we collaborate. And for civil affairs, I think we do this pretty well. I think we'll live predisposition to thinking about other tools like government tower, even in countries that are not GFA.

00:04:02    BRIAN HANCOCK
I appreciate how you frame that. It seems like in the military, we sometimes have a tendency to think in zero -sum or binary terms. You know, we're at war, we're not at war. We're this country's partner or we're not. I think reality is more complicated than that. You know, for instance, with China, Dr. Brodigan, in her book, The Gift of the Dragon, talks a lot about how pieces of the One Belt, One Road initiative came to be in that the traditional international community and IMF typically does not like to loan money for large infrastructure projects, but China was willing to. So they found a niche, and they stepped into that. But we have some capabilities to offer, too. Just one example. China is a very traditional patriarchal society, so for them to have an aggressive women, peace, and security program, for instance, would be very difficult for them to offer that, whereas we're in a good position to do something like that. My read of the National Defense Strategy is that it's kind of all about Africa. I'm not sure our resources have followed that, but I imagine that we'll be talking a lot more about Africa in the future. Now, let's turn to your 2021 publication. in Volume 13, Issue 2 of Liaison. One of the focuses in that article is civilian harm mitigation. Given the recent creation of the Department of Defense Civil Protection Center, which actually published its first civil harm mitigation response plan in 2023, do you think that civil affairs may be losing some of its traditional core mission set as established by our famous progenitor, General Winfried Scott?

00:05:48    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
I had a great opportunity just recently. I got to meet with the director of the Swing Production Center of Excellence, Blake, and some members of his team. He has assembled an all -star team, and I think they're going to do some fascinating work. And they really love what we had to offer. They wanted us to work together. So, you know, the establishment of all of the CPCOE, the Swing Production Center of Excellence, is what it is. So I'm not saying we're losing grain. DLD and Army have given us guidance. And as professionals, it's not us to do our best. We could approach it, kicking and screaming, but we would like to lose opportunities. I think if we just do our best in public succeeding, we're going to bring a lot of possibilities. And I think that's what the narrative follows how we engage it. It's one of the things I appreciate about this show. So there's an opportunity for this to be a growth industry for us. As you know, there's not an MLS, a military occupational specialty, in a non -Orlean listeners that strictly focuses on site -owned mitigation.

00:06:51    BRIAN HANCOCK
You know, in civil affairs, we're trying to get civilians out of harm's way. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you see these roles as complementary, right? And they've got additional resources. And, you know, if we work together, we can potentially save more civilians caught in the line of fire.

00:07:05    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, that's the key piece of it. It's also important for class. This understanding all of the ways civilians are armed by military operation. So we're not talking just air civilian passages. We're looking at armies that civilians could be learned and developing more of a comprehensive understanding through that, looking for ways to mitigate or respond to it. In the paper with movies, Alder highlighted five military justifications for a spying or mitigation. So I say it's our loan to enforce protection. It allows our tactical victories to become strategic successors. It doesn't ask us to do any more than what we're already doing. It just asks us to get hurt. It allows us partners to engage in multinational efforts, even the kinds of effects and the information. A paper I just had accepted in conflict research societies that I'll present in September, I do address some of the shortcomings in my argument, and mainly how I approach it. So through big moral philosophy, Connick says humans should always be the end and never be the end of the second world. Same right, so. So they have heard mitigation, as I looked at the military justifications for it, or using the protection of civilians to help achieve the main trade. So I would say that argument is not without its flaws. It does, and the moral philosophy of culture does have some shortcomings, but ultimately civilians are being protected, and I think that's overall a good thing.

00:08:33    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, I think we need to do even more of that. Having the moral high ground, I think, is very important in conflict. And I think how the civilian population is treated and perceives conflict has very direct impacts on whether we achieve those strategic objectives going forward, making that sacrifice of blood and treasure worthwhile. And I think there's a little bit of a shortcoming in our traditional targeting methodologies where To put a round on a target, we do a collateral damage estimate, but that estimate focuses just on the first order effects, right? Not what's going to happen in the second and third order, which are potentially significantly much greater than the initial fires mission. So I suspect that's going to be a growth industry for us and for civil affairs for some time.

00:09:22    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, the civilian situation is going to be interested in bringing your perspectives on that and Flinders City and how they could do it better. I want to return to your article on Liaison.

00:09:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
return to your article on Liaison. You referenced Army Doctrinal Publication 3, Tax Zero. And specifically, you said that understanding the human context that enables the enemy's will, which includes culture, economics, and history, not just their hard power kinetic capabilities. is as important as understanding the enemy's military capabilities. Now, that reads very well, probably politically very palatable to decision makers. But let me ask, in your experience, does the U .S. military actually do this, put equal emphasis on those soft power factors? For instance, When is the last time that you saw an actual civil common operating picture on the command post computing environment or the tactical mission data platform? And how often do combat arms units resource civil analysis to the extent that they resource the S2G2 and military analysis? It seems to me that in most circumstances, there's actually relatively little analysis and certainly not understanding. which is up the information value chain of the human context in which the conflict is occurring. I've seen frequently staffs produce PAMISI A -scope crosswalk during the military decision planning process, and that's it. And then it kind of goes away, doesn't get briefed, and then we end up with a lot of tactical kinetic victories, but potential friction in the civil space.

00:11:18    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Last deployment was with the Special Forces. And they had outstanding leadership. Colonel Giles and Sam Major Zito. Fantastic service. Everybody from the ODAs all the way up to the sort of leadership. Totally on board collaborating. And we're very interested in the civil picture. Because the languages are focused very heavily on the friendly forces. Then you have the S -2 superflowers very heavily on the Kennedy forces. And we provide that context to the intelligence and the context changing the situation. In civil affairs, we have civil knowledge integration. If we stand alone systems or stand alone reporting, they're going to, by definition, stand alone. So we can force decision makers. In the military, it's through information intelligence reports, or IIRs. And the diplomatic side is through cables. But if we integrate our civil knowledge through the cables or the IIRs in the serialized traffic, it helps to inform those innovators. And then we're not standalone. We are fully integrated into the systems that are already established to help inform people who are making these decisions. As a captain in Afghanistan, it's one of my first soft rotations that I have this great detail of war. mentoring me in this process. I had a very long exploration of this previously, being like, well, the president's not going to be interested. But what he told me, or the people who were talking to me, or these IARs. So I started using the IAR process in the civil affairs, and again, to clarifying with the black -collections, through this pattern of information, but we can pass that information off to people who can write IARs or tables or whatever. It can go forth and help inform whoever, right? And I like to focus on the integration aspects of that. And again, if you want to talk about the civilian protection center of excellence or the goals from civilian for mitigation or response, understanding the civilian landmings don't have achieved requirements of that. So I think there's a lot to be done for civil affairs forces here.

00:13:24    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think you hit the nail on the head on using the IIR process. While this is information rather than intelligence, We have to admit the intelligence community with ISAM M3 and many other enterprise architecture systems have high level visibility to senior decision makers. And trying to get civil information in front of the right people is essential for our value add to the larger military operation. I think that's a fantastic way to get about it. I'm not sure. if the complexity of the civil environment easily lends itself to the kind of tactical cops that you see in our online systems. You know, we're not just moving units over geography. You know, we're doing very complicated analysis, but that's definitely a great way to add value to the systems. Appreciate you sharing that. Let's talk a little bit about, you've done actually quite a bit of work on Just War. And you did publish an article titled, Renegotiating Just War Tradition in Irregular Warfare. As a qualified attorney, I suspect this topic is near and dear to your heart. Let's start with what constitutes warfare. I think this gets back to that discussion we have earlier, what constitutes victory, what constitutes competition. I think warfare now in modern terms be in the same category. Does warfare, for instance, have to be kinetic to be war? Is there such a thing as economic or political or legal warfare? And if those things do exist, how would we apply the just war tradition to all of those things?

00:15:03    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Thanks. So that paper hasn't been published yet. It's hopefully coming out here soon. But yes, be on the lookout. I will be sure to flag it to the sole Arab community. JP 1, Volume 1, identifies two types of warfare, conventional and regulatory within. This is Lars, we want to work in a way, dissertation about, so I'm going to try not to go too in -depth here, because that would be a series of podcast discussions as opposed to a 35 -minute discussion on a series of topics. I hear you. So, I think just more tradition, or also called just for a theory, is a great job providing a framework to analyze the ethics of conventional warfare. And there are multiple ways to approach just war tradition. I'm not going to get into these because that is probably more apt for a philosophical community focused on just war that most listeners probably don't. But if anybody does, reach out to me. Happy to have that chat. So just war tradition, of all of its approaches, gives a great framework and vocabulary to discuss conventional warfare. You set a bell. Where we're writing to war, use to follow, write to conduct in war, use to postpone ending wars justly. We can think about that very clearly than conducting a war. It does a less good job than the radio warfare and particularly while looking at this proxy warfare. So what I'm trying to do is build that framework and build that vocabulary to allow people making decisions about going to war, people conducting wars, and then also ending to wars justly. Because it doesn't necessarily provide a great framework, but it doesn't mean we need a lot of the pathway. Just war traditions that were evolving, and this re -negotiation of just war tradition, to give the framework and vocabulary on the ethics of the regular warfare, proxy warfare, is not unfortunate. Now, some people may not accept this argument that just war shouldn't have an evolving notion that it's relevant. I will say that the definitions of regular warfare... Undergold numerous changes. The 2018 and 2024 National Defense Authorization Act set different definitions for irregular warfare. The Department of Defense recently changed this definition of irregular warfare. The Joint Chiefs of Staffs recently changed their definition of irregular warfare. And that's beyond done or being created as old name. Wow. With all these definitions, I would not say that a random warfare is irrelevant. So, ending this as a far structure. One of the potential weaknesses of my argument is that some people say that a regular warfare isn't a warfare at all. Now,

00:17:52    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
if your publication disagrees with you, and even if that is your position, okay, so what? We're still left without this ethical framework to think about it. So, just for tradition, again, you said it all, the right to war relating to all the criteria in the just authority, just cause, which Trimality, necessity, being in the head of the exhaustive peaceful alternatives, right intention, and reasonable chance of success, use in the bill, proportionality, discrimination, and then use post -battle with ending or just rights and responsibilities owed to each party. Thinking about a regular wheelchair helmet measures short of conventional wheelchair. Dr. Danny Wessel -Maxine's College London has a great favorite called All We Fight Yet. Actually, I'm familiar with that paper.

00:18:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
familiar with that paper. It's fantastic, and it raises a lot of important questions that we need to answer. For the audience, I suspect we can't dismiss irregular warfare. Our partners in the ground combat element, the Marine Corps, they've actually just moved to make irregular warfare a core competency of their entire force. So this problem is not going away. In fact, I suspect it's going to... get worse as more and more nations get access to weapons of mass destruction and more non -state actors continue to rise. Now, I doubt the listeners are surprised that our traditional definitions of just war, you know, defined by that tradition, have not kept pace with the frameworks imposed by modern operational operations exercised not only by nation states with whole government efforts, but also these non -state. actors with their own individual agendas. And this harkens back to our previous discussion of the difficulty of defining terms like competition. But I think we need to talk about that because we're going to be in competition 99 % of the time. Now, I don't think 99 % of our resources are designed to making us win without fighting in competition. But given that reality and the importance of it, And we just published at the joint level the joint concept for competing in February 10, 2023. That document leaves out a number of the most important questions. They're still not answered, especially as we start getting into some of the ethical implications of what we're looking at here. Now, based on your research, though, where you'll be writing your dissertation at some point, how does just war tradition apply? to military operations, in competition specifically, to include special forces activities.

00:20:39    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Again, if we're talking competition, I have to ask, are we using it? And as a little very clear, I would have questions on talking to you, like who, what, why, very basic global questions. If we're using it as prescribing activities, then they're told. Then I think we're a tad bit better, and I think we can analyze who is affecting these. Is competition a proportionate? Has it exhausted peaceful alternatives? Is it in line with the exhaustive alternatives? And do these prescribed activities have a reasonable chance of success? If we're using it restrictively, I think adjustable provides a pretty good frame note for thinking about it. But if we're using it descriptively, then... I think we have to kind of go back and pass some more summable questions. This does highlight the ambiguity, and some of this I've put it out before, is that states take advantage of ambiguity to shift risks, so it's tactical, strategic, and political, as to what actors chill and what makes them chill. Looking at these risks, you could say, like, what rules apply really apply to?

00:21:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
Let me ask one final question about just war tradition. Now, the DoD Law of War Manual, I'm not an expert on this, but taking a quick look at it and how they define a party to a conflict, let's take a look at our role in Ukraine, certainly as a stakeholder, and probably more than that. Does our level of involvement in Ukraine, in your opinion, rise to the level of us potentially being considered a party to that conflict.

00:22:31    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Now, what's the duty law, or what international law? More broadly, just because one violates the law of neutrality does not necessarily mean that the person has become a belligerent to the conflict. See, there is a gap between violent law of neutrality and then before you become a belligerent to the conflict. So that, I do find interestingly enough what the duty law for me does have. is it does provide a bit of thinking about the gesture of tradition. Chapter 1 looks at the use of Bellum. Chapter 2, a little bit more, the use of Bellum. It follows the orthodox approach that was popularized by Mike Walzer. But interestingly enough, it doesn't include chance of success as one of the use of Bellum criteria. So I do find that interesting. But I think when we're talking about how states take advantage of impugnability, let's go back to what I was just saying a second ago about violating neutrality to When violating neutrality is not so ambiguous, we tell it a little bit into a conflict. It was a little bit more ambiguous. So I do think states take advantage in that.

00:23:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. Sounds like we have more work to do in that area so that we have a working definition. Obviously, Russia is going to attempt to portray not only the United States, but NATO and others as direct parties to that conflict. if nothing else, for face -saving, given the losses they've experienced without actually having to fight NATO forces. So that one's not going away. We'll probably revisit it. We're approaching our time here. Let me give you the floor one last time. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our community?

00:24:09    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
First, thank you, Sarah, for having some discussion, and thank you to the Civil Affairs Association of the 1CA podcast for continuing the professional education and involvement of civil affairs forces, and I look forward to doing it again sometime.

00:24:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks, Dave. This is very stimulating for me. I was really looking forward to your interview here. I appreciate you sharing the gift of your time with us today.

00:24:30    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
You take care.

00:24:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. Out here.

00:24:33    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.

 

175: Part I interview with J. David Thompson

Brian Hancock hosts Major J. David Thompson, a Civil Affairs planner out of U.S. Africa Command, to discuss military campaigning, just war with post-modern conflict and avoiding civilian harm in conflict. 

One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

Special thanks to Relax Music for sampling "Trio Riberto's song "Yellow Summer." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stpq54O2qO0

------

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Brian Hancock

Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines

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00:00:03    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.

00:00:38    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we're going to explore the concepts of military campaigning, civil harm mitigation, and how to align just war with postmodern conflict. To get after this, I have with me Major J. David Thompson. He's a civil affairs major assigned to the U .S. Africa Command. He holds a Juris Doctorate from Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a Ph .D. candidate at King's College London, where he is researching the ethics of proxy warfare. Major Thompson, welcome to the show.

00:01:15    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Glad to be here, sir.

00:01:16    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right, before we begin, Dave, our quick disclaimer, a reminder to our audience that all remarks made are those of the presenters solely. All right, let's begin. Dave, can you tell me a little bit about your current positions and duties of what you're doing there at U .S. AFRICOM?

00:01:35    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Thank you. So I am a same military operations planner at U .S. AFRICOM. That's within the JFOLA. With same forward division, we have also the humanitarian assistance portfolio, largely, I think, the ODACA programs. We have a number of interagency representatives from the Health and Stabilization Office of the Department of State, foreign policy advisor from State Department, a public health advisor from DHEP. We also have a liaison from Pacific Disaster Center of PBC Global, and the PBC Global liaison works with California. That's a lot. Yes, that is a lot, but luckily we have really good leadership and good control. Arrow Division.

00:02:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Fantastic. I was worried you were never going to get to sleep with all those duties on your plate. All right, let's jump into our first varsity -level question. You recently wrote an award -winning civil affairs issue paper. Let me read the exact title. Campaigning the Campaign Plan, Focusing on the Fundamentals at the Combatant Command by Assessing Civil Affairs Operations, Activities, and Investments. The famous OANI is there. Now, it feels to me that the Army's come full circle. When I started my career 18 years ago, military campaigns were a thing. They were discussed. And then suddenly the term fell out of vogue. I never understood quite why. But now it's back. So campaigns are back on the menu, huh?

00:03:16    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Afghanistan, partly with global war on terror. I had the opportunity to meet Joel Stane. He was talking to me and he was doing this battlefield circulation, was the commander, and I was telling him all the things we were doing about the Afghan security forces. And he said, what would you do if you hadn't stayed here until the war? And can you think that, well, I would... Probably spend a little bit more of a tele -focus on doing a partner for us so that way I could hand this off to somebody because I was doing it. And ideally, it needs to be somebody else for us to win. So that started me thinking of how my rotation fit into Baylor's attention. So then we changed our approach. And during that time, I made it a little, to use a sports analogy, the ball was on the 20 -yard line and I was going to try to get it to the 30 -yard line. And that will mean our soldiers doing more and us doing less. That's being within that advice in a such role.

00:04:21    BRIAN HANCOCK
That makes sense to me. And I love your analogy on incremental movements, right? When we're talking about all these very complicated systems and politics and economics where strategic objectives tend to lie, these are not things that are solved quickly, especially in areas where you've got deep sectarian violence and hatred. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think not only as civil affairs officer, but as military officers in general, you know, we need to keep moving that needle to the right. Love that anecdote that you mentioned with General McChrystal to one of the generals in, you know, the famous book, The Four Star. Very interesting individual. For the audience, I think that their experience with the word campaign is in a political sense rather than in a military sense. For clarification, how does the Department of Defense define that term? And if you don't mind, can you just explain how it's different from an operation, an engagement, or a theater plan, which are other terms we hear bantered about a bunch?

00:05:25    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
So there is Champagne, as in Philippe, which is in J .F. Station, Rio. And I'm going to read a bit of the definition here.

00:05:45    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Now that differs from campaign plan and campaign, which comes from the joint publication final. So campaign is a series of laden operations with a given time and space, and a campaign plan is a joint operation plan. through a series of related major operations within its habit space. So ideally, you have the campaign plan, which lists LFP -CAN -8 objectives, the intermediate military objectives, and then the effects, subordinate to those IMOs or intermediate military objectives. Then you have the campaign formula, which provides TANAS to components. These TANAS generate operations, activities, and investments, or OAIs. So components can then have OAIs linked to tasks in the combatant command. It can have tasks linked to effects linked to IMOs linked to championing objectives. So if you think about it linearly, you should be able to draw a line between an operational activity or investment in OAI directly to the champion.

00:06:50    BRIAN HANCOCK
I know NATO talks a little bit about in -states as opposed to objectives, just a different way of looking at it. or desired conditions as you're moving towards things in a plan. It seems that based upon how DoD looks at a campaign, it's kind of on that cusp between operations and strategy with an ability to be broken down to tactical tasks and activities that support it. Let's go deeper into strategy and operations. In the paper that you published, you mentioned that the connection between strategy and operations is inherent. I know you've read Sean McFake's work. You're pretty well read. In that, he and other military scholars argue that America has actually lost every war since World War II, as measured by a failure to complete the strategic objectives of those conflicts. Now, given the potential connection between strategy and operations, what do you think went wrong? As a force, did we just suck at operations, and that in turn causes our strategy to fail in many of these wars? What do you think?

00:07:57    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
So first, one of the unique things about that paper was, it didn't call for any new .lltf piece, which just uses current dapering as what we have available. So anybody can go through and use it. Now the paper is published with the Silhouette Association as publicly available. Another kind of spent on looking at this, I talked to the OAIs and the campaign objectives. I forgot to mention maybe the measuring and assessments of those tasks, which are important and maybe lead to your point. You should be able to measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, measure them with facts and measure the performance, if the OAIs are what people are being tasked to do for helping to reach the campaign objectives. If not, why not? Do there need to be new structures, new processes, more guidance? machine resources in the 40s. She must really do all of assessments comes into play. So he doesn't show McFay. So he wrote a book, The New Rules of War, about the same time that Richard Cox wrote, A World in Disarray. And they both looked at the same question broadly and approached it in two very different ways. And there were solutions to solving that. I think if you read those two books side by side, you can follow all conclusions.

00:09:23    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks for that. Obviously, these are hot political issues as well as military issues. To use an egregious example, if we take a look at the war in Iraq, I don't know if you read Mark Perry's book, The Pentagon Wars, but he makes a pretty cogent case that the Iraq War actually reduced security abroad, caused some chaos, empowered Iran. Russia and ISIS damaged relationships between the civil and the military, nearly bankrupt the nation, and of course got many, many Americans as well as Iraqis killed. And relative to the strategic objectives, it doesn't look like that is a victory. So going back to what you said about assessments, did we just... pick the wrong things to do, and then therefore the rosy assessments, which I saw were just measuring the wrong things. Yeah.

00:11:54    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's great. I think we could probably have an entire podcast on just talking about the different definitions of victory and competition. I think those are hot terms.

00:12:23    BRIAN HANCOCK
from maybe a political lens or a socioeconomic lens, perhaps not. So I think that's one of the challenges, and you talk about it in some of your other papers, with the graying of modern warfare, our definitions just kind of haven't kept pace. Let's move on to the next question. You spent some time addressing assessments in your publication and referred to it earlier. Now, these are critical, and particularly as we move up echelon, they often direct... Now, in my experience, assessing non -lethal effects are challenging. Many of the things we're trying to affect are complex adaptive human systems, which have a relation to operations, activities, and investment. Now, to use an example of a difficult non -lethal assessment, one of the taskings we often get at U .S. Army, Europe, and Africa is for a civil affairs action team or a four -man cat team. to assess a tactical ODACA project. You talked about ODACA there earlier in your office. And typically that team has not been part of that project before and may not have contacts or baselines. And it is asked to assess how that typically tactical level project has advanced U .S. and NATO strategic objectives. And unfortunately, the team is usually only given a few days to accomplish this. Now, given math and science required to conduct a statistically valid assessment, how do you think we can do this better? Can we do this better?

00:14:16    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Perhaps I can put our CPM manager in touch and they can share some best practices. But I think one of the other things about this is looking when civil affairs forces are getting these very complicated tasks to do. I think that's one of the great things about being a civil affairs officer or soldier. We get tasks to do a hard thing. We don't solve easy problems. So we recruit and train. smart people when we put them through teams with other talented, smart people. And then we give them complex, challenging problems to solve. So, it's fascinating. And generally, they come out successful. Like, I would be hard -pressed to think of a time when I've seen a team take on a challenging problem and not come away with some ideas that were very creative and help solve it. They're really about success. So that's one of the great things about being a Civil Affairs soldier.

00:15:15    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
one of the great things about being a Civil Affairs soldier. If that appeals to anybody who's listening, who's not a Civil Affairs soldier, definitely get in contact with Colonel Hancock, myself, anybody in the Civil Affairs Association, I'm sure it's willing to help you. To the first part of the question about the assessment speech, right? So at the Geographic Combat and Command level, I think about assessments maybe a little bit different than like a tactical U .S. assessment. We want to know for assessments, are the things we're doing helping us reach our campaign objectives? So, great, let's keep doing. If not, again, what do we need? Do we need a new structure, process, guidance, resources? What is it that we need to do to help them achieve these campaign objectives? As far as the individual assessments of an evocative project, those are great, but at the command and command level, what I'm more interested in are all those assessments helping somebody else make a decision. I'm not so concerned about that decision, just that we have forces available working towards doing that and that they're informing people who are making decisions. The process of what we call civil knowledge integration.

00:16:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
I actually like your characterization of that, right? All models are wrong, but if it's useful, then it's worth investing in. in relation of a project to strategic impact is hard to measure. But if it moves the ball forward, if it teaches us something we didn't know, if it builds a valuable relationship we didn't have, then that is still useful in and of itself. All we're required to do as a government is conduct legal acceptance, which is more of an MLP, right? Let's say the project was to build a fuel pumping station, just making this up. Does it pump fuel? Does it hold fuel? Is it safe? Okay, yeah. And is the price what we agree? Then we accept that. But in terms of the value of that towards the campaign, the operational objective, that value could be shown in many different ways. And that's why we do both qualitative and quantitative assessments, right?

00:17:28    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, it's a good way to put it.

00:17:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. Let's keep talking about assessments. That's a real hot topic. You've worked at AFRICOM for a while, and one of the things that AFRICOM did is they held a civil affairs summit, which you participated in. One of the things that caught my eye in your write -up regarding the summit... was the extensive indicators that all the participants developed to attempt to capture CA impacts and garner useful measurements. Examples of these are number of episodic engagements, numbers of partners requesting civil military operations, embassies requesting civil affairs forces, and a number of others. Now, mathematically, these are obviously somewhat different concepts. These desperate factors get normalized, scored, and weighted to determine an accurate assessment framework.

00:18:26    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
That's really good. So we've got a quality assessment team at Capricorn. And also, anybody looking to replicate, I would point you to NXK of JP5 .0. In the paper, I basically just talked about our implementation of doctrine. Now, the actual indicators we developed are linked to our campaign objectives. We'll be jumping objectives across the slide. So the Peter I used thought was likely to be relevant to the Silver's audience. And then we're going to see as far as the indicators pointing exactly what we created during the summit is analogous. So using kind of tabular for the Silver line. Well, I think what we're going to share about is less about the actual indicators after column development and more of the process that we use. That's where I can preserve any listeners to focus. So what leads the tasks in the OEI is with the desired outcomes. Now, there were some pitfalls to avoid. Assessments don't inherently come with funding. And it creates work for Dell trade students. So we can have a perfect assessments framework, but we have to balance that with all the labor that goes into that with the operations piece. And then the assessments need to be full. Are we assessing things just for the sake of assessing them? Are we helping people make decisions moving forward? What are they helping to answer? Civil affairs doesn't exist in effect. So what are the strategic assessments helping to provide a comprehensive understanding to each other?

00:19:59    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think the assessments problem in non -lethal effects is one of those complicated things that probably drew you and I to civil affairs. And obviously, as you go up Aftalon, where you have more resources. One of the ways that we add value to our subordinate units is to help them with those assessments, right? Because we may have more ORSAs, more collection capabilities, more other things to do that. I don't think you and I are going to solve the assessment issues today, but I'm glad that we continue having that discussion. Let's keep going with Africa here. The National Defense Strategy in 2022 identifies China as the U .S. pacing threat and Russia as an acute threat. Through the One Belt, One Road initiative, China is conducting significant engagement in Africa, as are the Russians through their private military companies like the Wagner Group, and their recent media purchases. For additional context, in his book Factfulness, Dr. Hans Rossinger defines what he calls the pen code of the world. It's a very interesting idea. And that's how the 7 billion people on the planet are distributed. Now, at present, only 1 billion reside in Africa, while 4 billion reside in Asia. I suspect that's why PACOM has a lot of funding right now. Now, fast forward, though, to the year 2100. Dr. Rossinger points out that if demographic trends continue, Asia will only have grown to 5 billion inhabitants. But Africa will have drupaled its population to 4 billion. Given all this and other things you're aware of, it just seems to me that the U .S. military, particularly civil affairs, should be far more active in Africa.

 

00:01:25    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
fair economic trade issues. So we welcome PRC's cooperation on issues such as climate change, global health security, arms control, not proliferation, all issues that threaten the entire world. We get asking African states to choose between the U .S. and China. African countries or sovereign countries, they're seeing sometimes we may have a better offer and they may choose us, but we're not asking them to choose. Forcing fairness, forces in Africa. So they are doing a lot of great work. And they keep getting better. It's a testament to the professionalization of the force and their integration with components and culture teams. Seeing various forces constitute about 2 % of the rotational forces on Africa. And they use maybe 1 % of Egypt. But they execute 39 .5 % of all of Africa's OAIs. So that is a shattering trouble investment. But civil affairs, again, we don't, and so we sent it back. So we're a tool to help AFRICOL achieve this objective, but it's only worked with other tools. So these tools can be security cooperation programs, other special operations, foreign teams, country teams. Generally, we have AFRICOL as a combat commander. We're recently saying AFRICOL against Donald's when our interagency colleagues, State and USA, specifically with the special move settings, all over the field. And we, being DOD, are the Dutch. And that he reiterated such comments in his Senate and House testimony. Senator Armstrong's Committee, House Armstrong's Committee. And repeatedly brought up the holding government approach he's had to follow policy advisor and the senior development advisor sitting right behind him. And it is a testament to the holding government approach that we seek to do at AFRICON and how we do business. is the Global Fagility Act or the Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Composibility, SPCPS. Part of GFA or SPCPS is that we get on our own way to ruin business. We take a long -term approach and we think about how we get desperate together with our interagency colleagues. I think we had a lot of significant growth here and I think we've had a lot of positive benefits. And instead of thinking about civil affairs, again, as a standalone, GFA adds to think about how we collaborate. And for civil affairs, I think we do this pretty well. I think we'll live predisposition to thinking about other tools like government tower, even in countries that are not GFA.

00:04:02    BRIAN HANCOCK
I appreciate how you frame that. It seems like in the military, we sometimes have a tendency to think in zero -sum or binary terms. You know, we're at war, we're not at war. We're this country's partner or we're not. I think reality is more complicated than that. You know, for instance, with China, Dr. Brodigan, in her book, The Gift of the Dragon, talks a lot about how pieces of the One Belt, One Road initiative came to be in that the traditional international community and IMF typically does not like to loan money for large infrastructure projects, but China was willing to. So they found a niche, and they stepped into that. But we have some capabilities to offer, too. Just one example. China is a very traditional patriarchal society, so for them to have an aggressive women, peace, and security program, for instance, would be very difficult for them to offer that, whereas we're in a good position to do something like that. My read of the National Defense Strategy is that it's kind of all about Africa. I'm not sure our resources have followed that, but I imagine that we'll be talking a lot more about Africa in the future. Now, let's turn to your 2021 publication. in Volume 13, Issue 2 of Liaison. One of the focuses in that article is civilian harm mitigation. Given the recent creation of the Department of Defense Civil Protection Center, which actually published its first civil harm mitigation response plan in 2023, do you think that civil affairs may be losing some of its traditional core mission set as established by our famous progenitor, General Winfried Scott?

00:05:48    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
I had a great opportunity just recently. I got to meet with the director of the Swing Production Center of Excellence, Blake, and some members of his team. He has assembled an all -star team, and I think they're going to do some fascinating work. And they really love what we had to offer. They wanted us to work together. So, you know, the establishment of all of the CPCOE, the Swing Production Center of Excellence, is what it is. So I'm not saying we're losing grain. DLD and Army have given us guidance. And as professionals, it's not us to do our best. We could approach it, kicking and screaming, but we would like to lose opportunities. I think if we just do our best in public succeeding, we're going to bring a lot of possibilities. And I think that's what the narrative follows how we engage it. It's one of the things I appreciate about this show. So there's an opportunity for this to be a growth industry for us. As you know, there's not an MLS, a military occupational specialty, in a non -Orlean listeners that strictly focuses on site -owned mitigation.

00:06:51    BRIAN HANCOCK
You know, in civil affairs, we're trying to get civilians out of harm's way. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you see these roles as complementary, right? And they've got additional resources. And, you know, if we work together, we can potentially save more civilians caught in the line of fire.

00:07:05    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, that's the key piece of it. It's also important for class. This understanding all of the ways civilians are armed by military operation. So we're not talking just air civilian passages. We're looking at armies that civilians could be learned and developing more of a comprehensive understanding through that, looking for ways to mitigate or respond to it. In the paper with movies, Alder highlighted five military justifications for a spying or mitigation. So I say it's our loan to enforce protection. It allows our tactical victories to become strategic successors. It doesn't ask us to do any more than what we're already doing. It just asks us to get hurt. It allows us partners to engage in multinational efforts, even the kinds of effects and the information. A paper I just had accepted in conflict research societies that I'll present in September, I do address some of the shortcomings in my argument, and mainly how I approach it. So through big moral philosophy, Connick says humans should always be the end and never be the end of the second world. Same right, so. So they have heard mitigation, as I looked at the military justifications for it, or using the protection of civilians to help achieve the main trade. So I would say that argument is not without its flaws. It does, and the moral philosophy of culture does have some shortcomings, but ultimately civilians are being protected, and I think that's overall a good thing.

00:08:33    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, I think we need to do even more of that. Having the moral high ground, I think, is very important in conflict. And I think how the civilian population is treated and perceives conflict has very direct impacts on whether we achieve those strategic objectives going forward, making that sacrifice of blood and treasure worthwhile. And I think there's a little bit of a shortcoming in our traditional targeting methodologies where To put a round on a target, we do a collateral damage estimate, but that estimate focuses just on the first order effects, right? Not what's going to happen in the second and third order, which are potentially significantly much greater than the initial fires mission. So I suspect that's going to be a growth industry for us and for civil affairs for some time.

00:09:22    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Yeah, the civilian situation is going to be interested in bringing your perspectives on that and Flinders City and how they could do it better. I want to return to your article on Liaison.

00:09:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
return to your article on Liaison. You referenced Army Doctrinal Publication 3, Tax Zero. And specifically, you said that understanding the human context that enables the enemy's will, which includes culture, economics, and history, not just their hard power kinetic capabilities. is as important as understanding the enemy's military capabilities. Now, that reads very well, probably politically very palatable to decision makers. But let me ask, in your experience, does the U .S. military actually do this, put equal emphasis on those soft power factors? For instance, When is the last time that you saw an actual civil common operating picture on the command post computing environment or the tactical mission data platform? And how often do combat arms units resource civil analysis to the extent that they resource the S2G2 and military analysis? It seems to me that in most circumstances, there's actually relatively little analysis and certainly not understanding. which is up the information value chain of the human context in which the conflict is occurring. I've seen frequently staffs produce PAMISI A -scope crosswalk during the military decision planning process, and that's it. And then it kind of goes away, doesn't get briefed, and then we end up with a lot of tactical kinetic victories, but potential friction in the civil space.

00:11:18    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Last deployment was with the Special Forces. And they had outstanding leadership. Colonel Giles and Sam Major Zito. Fantastic service. Everybody from the ODAs all the way up to the sort of leadership. Totally on board collaborating. And we're very interested in the civil picture. Because the languages are focused very heavily on the friendly forces. Then you have the S -2 superflowers very heavily on the Kennedy forces. And we provide that context to the intelligence and the context changing the situation. In civil affairs, we have civil knowledge integration. If we stand alone systems or stand alone reporting, they're going to, by definition, stand alone. So we can force decision makers. In the military, it's through information intelligence reports, or IIRs. And the diplomatic side is through cables. But if we integrate our civil knowledge through the cables or the IIRs in the serialized traffic, it helps to inform those innovators. And then we're not standalone. We are fully integrated into the systems that are already established to help inform people who are making these decisions. As a captain in Afghanistan, it's one of my first soft rotations that I have this great detail of war. mentoring me in this process. I had a very long exploration of this previously, being like, well, the president's not going to be interested. But what he told me, or the people who were talking to me, or these IARs. So I started using the IAR process in the civil affairs, and again, to clarifying with the black -collections, through this pattern of information, but we can pass that information off to people who can write IARs or tables or whatever. It can go forth and help inform whoever, right? And I like to focus on the integration aspects of that. And again, if you want to talk about the civilian protection center of excellence or the goals from civilian for mitigation or response, understanding the civilian landmings don't have achieved requirements of that. So I think there's a lot to be done for civil affairs forces here.

00:13:24    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think you hit the nail on the head on using the IIR process. While this is information rather than intelligence, We have to admit the intelligence community with ISAM M3 and many other enterprise architecture systems have high level visibility to senior decision makers. And trying to get civil information in front of the right people is essential for our value add to the larger military operation. I think that's a fantastic way to get about it. I'm not sure. if the complexity of the civil environment easily lends itself to the kind of tactical cops that you see in our online systems. You know, we're not just moving units over geography. You know, we're doing very complicated analysis, but that's definitely a great way to add value to the systems. Appreciate you sharing that. Let's talk a little bit about, you've done actually quite a bit of work on Just War. And you did publish an article titled, Renegotiating Just War Tradition in Irregular Warfare. As a qualified attorney, I suspect this topic is near and dear to your heart. Let's start with what constitutes warfare. I think this gets back to that discussion we have earlier, what constitutes victory, what constitutes competition. I think warfare now in modern terms be in the same category. Does warfare, for instance, have to be kinetic to be war? Is there such a thing as economic or political or legal warfare? And if those things do exist, how would we apply the just war tradition to all of those things?

00:15:03    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Thanks. So that paper hasn't been published yet. It's hopefully coming out here soon. But yes, be on the lookout. I will be sure to flag it to the sole Arab community. JP 1, Volume 1, identifies two types of warfare, conventional and regulatory within. This is Lars, we want to work in a way, dissertation about, so I'm going to try not to go too in -depth here, because that would be a series of podcast discussions as opposed to a 35 -minute discussion on a series of topics. I hear you. So, I think just more tradition, or also called just for a theory, is a great job providing a framework to analyze the ethics of conventional warfare. And there are multiple ways to approach just war tradition. I'm not going to get into these because that is probably more apt for a philosophical community focused on just war that most listeners probably don't. But if anybody does, reach out to me. Happy to have that chat. So just war tradition, of all of its approaches, gives a great framework and vocabulary to discuss conventional warfare. You set a bell. Where we're writing to war, use to follow, write to conduct in war, use to postpone ending wars justly. We can think about that very clearly than conducting a war. It does a less good job than the radio warfare and particularly while looking at this proxy warfare. So what I'm trying to do is build that framework and build that vocabulary to allow people making decisions about going to war, people conducting wars, and then also ending to wars justly. Because it doesn't necessarily provide a great framework, but it doesn't mean we need a lot of the pathway. Just war traditions that were evolving, and this re -negotiation of just war tradition, to give the framework and vocabulary on the ethics of the regular warfare, proxy warfare, is not unfortunate. Now, some people may not accept this argument that just war shouldn't have an evolving notion that it's relevant. I will say that the definitions of regular warfare... Undergold numerous changes. The 2018 and 2024 National Defense Authorization Act set different definitions for irregular warfare. The Department of Defense recently changed this definition of irregular warfare. The Joint Chiefs of Staffs recently changed their definition of irregular warfare. And that's beyond done or being created as old name. Wow. With all these definitions, I would not say that a random warfare is irrelevant. So, ending this as a far structure. One of the potential weaknesses of my argument is that some people say that a regular warfare isn't a warfare at all. Now,

00:17:52    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
if your publication disagrees with you, and even if that is your position, okay, so what? We're still left without this ethical framework to think about it. So, just for tradition, again, you said it all, the right to war relating to all the criteria in the just authority, just cause, which Trimality, necessity, being in the head of the exhaustive peaceful alternatives, right intention, and reasonable chance of success, use in the bill, proportionality, discrimination, and then use post -battle with ending or just rights and responsibilities owed to each party. Thinking about a regular wheelchair helmet measures short of conventional wheelchair. Dr. Danny Wessel -Maxine's College London has a great favorite called All We Fight Yet. Actually, I'm familiar with that paper.

00:18:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
familiar with that paper. It's fantastic, and it raises a lot of important questions that we need to answer. For the audience, I suspect we can't dismiss irregular warfare. Our partners in the ground combat element, the Marine Corps, they've actually just moved to make irregular warfare a core competency of their entire force. So this problem is not going away. In fact, I suspect it's going to... get worse as more and more nations get access to weapons of mass destruction and more non -state actors continue to rise. Now, I doubt the listeners are surprised that our traditional definitions of just war, you know, defined by that tradition, have not kept pace with the frameworks imposed by modern operational operations exercised not only by nation states with whole government efforts, but also these non -state. actors with their own individual agendas. And this harkens back to our previous discussion of the difficulty of defining terms like competition. But I think we need to talk about that because we're going to be in competition 99 % of the time. Now, I don't think 99 % of our resources are designed to making us win without fighting in competition. But given that reality and the importance of it, And we just published at the joint level the joint concept for competing in February 10, 2023. That document leaves out a number of the most important questions. They're still not answered, especially as we start getting into some of the ethical implications of what we're looking at here. Now, based on your research, though, where you'll be writing your dissertation at some point, how does just war tradition apply? to military operations, in competition specifically, to include special forces activities.

00:20:39    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Again, if we're talking competition, I have to ask, are we using it? And as a little very clear, I would have questions on talking to you, like who, what, why, very basic global questions. If we're using it as prescribing activities, then they're told. Then I think we're a tad bit better, and I think we can analyze who is affecting these. Is competition a proportionate? Has it exhausted peaceful alternatives? Is it in line with the exhaustive alternatives? And do these prescribed activities have a reasonable chance of success? If we're using it restrictively, I think adjustable provides a pretty good frame note for thinking about it. But if we're using it descriptively, then... I think we have to kind of go back and pass some more summable questions. This does highlight the ambiguity, and some of this I've put it out before, is that states take advantage of ambiguity to shift risks, so it's tactical, strategic, and political, as to what actors chill and what makes them chill. Looking at these risks, you could say, like, what rules apply really apply to?

00:21:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
Let me ask one final question about just war tradition. Now, the DoD Law of War Manual, I'm not an expert on this, but taking a quick look at it and how they define a party to a conflict, let's take a look at our role in Ukraine, certainly as a stakeholder, and probably more than that. Does our level of involvement in Ukraine, in your opinion, rise to the level of us potentially being considered a party to that conflict.

00:22:31    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
Now, what's the duty law, or what international law? More broadly, just because one violates the law of neutrality does not necessarily mean that the person has become a belligerent to the conflict. See, there is a gap between violent law of neutrality and then before you become a belligerent to the conflict. So that, I do find interestingly enough what the duty law for me does have. is it does provide a bit of thinking about the gesture of tradition. Chapter 1 looks at the use of Bellum. Chapter 2, a little bit more, the use of Bellum. It follows the orthodox approach that was popularized by Mike Walzer. But interestingly enough, it doesn't include chance of success as one of the use of Bellum criteria. So I do find that interesting. But I think when we're talking about how states take advantage of impugnability, let's go back to what I was just saying a second ago about violating neutrality to When violating neutrality is not so ambiguous, we tell it a little bit into a conflict. It was a little bit more ambiguous. So I do think states take advantage in that.

00:23:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. Sounds like we have more work to do in that area so that we have a working definition. Obviously, Russia is going to attempt to portray not only the United States, but NATO and others as direct parties to that conflict. if nothing else, for face -saving, given the losses they've experienced without actually having to fight NATO forces. So that one's not going away. We'll probably revisit it. We're approaching our time here. Let me give you the floor one last time. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our community?

00:24:09    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
First, thank you, Sarah, for having some discussion, and thank you to the Civil Affairs Association of the 1CA podcast for continuing the professional education and involvement of civil affairs forces, and I look forward to doing it again sometime.

00:24:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks, Dave. This is very stimulating for me. I was really looking forward to your interview here. I appreciate you sharing the gift of your time with us today.

00:24:30    J. DAVID THOMPSON.
You take care.

00:24:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. Out here.

00:24:33    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.

 

174: Direct Commissions with Heater Cotter

Assad Raza hosts Heather Cotter, who recently gained a direct commission into the Army and Civil Affairs. In this episode, she talks about what it's like to go through the process and her first impressions of the Army. 

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Thank you FeedSpot for ranking One CA Podcast as one of their top 10 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

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One CA 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 the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special Thanks to KaraokeMedia

for sharing Manu Chao's "Me Gustas Tu," instrumental version.

Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZsSs9aIDqM

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Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Assad Raza

Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines

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00:00:03    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.

00:00:42    ASSAD RAZA
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. I'm your host, Asad Raza, and today we have a very special guest with us, Captain Heather Cotter. Heather has a unique and inspiring story about her journey into the civil affairs branch, and she's here to share that with us today. Heather, welcome to the show.

00:00:58    HEATHER COTTER
Thank you, Roz. Great to be here.

00:01:01    ASSAD RAZA
Oh, we're thrilled to have you. Can you start telling us a little bit about yourself?

00:01:05    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, absolutely. Well, professionally, for the last 20 years, I've been working alongside law enforcement and allied emergency responders like firefighters, emergency management professionals,

00:01:19    HEATHER COTTER
paramedics, and most of my career, I expect working at nonprofits that support the advancement of this idea of an integrated public safety community. And in 2020, about three months into the COVID -19 pandemic, I received an email about the 38 Gulf direct commission program. And I was immediately intrigued by this opportunity. After a couple conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Koyanda, I decided to prepare a packet for the commissioning board to consider. All my life, I've been behind the scenes supporting first responders, whether it was through research. training, policy development, or other supportive roles, but I've never been on the other side in the field. And I thought this was a great opportunity to grow as well as serve my country.

00:02:10    ASSAD RAZA
That sounds great. So welcome to the other side. So moving on to your decision of joining the civil affairs branch, could you explain to us what the 38 Golf does and what attracted you specifically to become a 38 Golf within the Army Reserves?

00:02:24    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, you bet. So where do you go? They're also known as military government specialists. The expertise that 38 Gulf brings, specifically, there are currently 18 unique still identifiers for 38 Gulf,

00:02:39    HEATHER COTTER
identifiers for 38 Gulf, and each 38 Gulf carries at least one of them. Some of them carry multiple. For example, I carry the one still identifier of a six hotel, which happens to be Long Order Enforcement. And there are, like I said, 18 total. A few others include four Delta, which are laws, regulations, and policies. Six Charlie, which is finance, money, and banking. Six Delta, which is education. And six Victor, which is heritage and preservation.

00:03:15    ASSAD RAZA
Man, so you said there's 18? Yes,

00:03:17    HEATHER COTTER
there are 18 of them. And every unit across the United States Army Reserve. and doing their best to fill the billet with a diverse group of agency leaders who carry these different types of expertise.

00:03:31    ASSAD RAZA
carry these different types of expertise. Can you kind of explain what the process was like for you from submitting your application to taking your oath to office?

00:03:39    HEATHER COTTER
It's a lengthy process, to be honest, on receiving a direct commission. But from my understanding, this isn't unique to civil affairs either. Some of the other branches also have a lengthy direct commission process. But specific to my experience, it was pretty long. It took me about two years from the time I submitted my packet until I took my oath of office. And there was a lot of paperwork in between that time. So essentially, from the time I submitted my packet back in July of 2020 until my board met, there was really little communication about my status as a candidate. I focused my waiting time on learning more about civil affairs, scanning my civil affairs network by reaching out to people like you, learning about our main history, foreign policy, international relations, hard events, and also improving my foreign language proficiency and improving my physical physics. I even applied to graduate school to get a second master's degree in international affairs. So during this time, like I said, a waiting period. But I tried to maximize it. And when I finally did receive the letter that the board obtained my conditioning appointment back in November 2020, my status changed from a 38 -golf candidate to a 38 -golf selectee. So once I became a selectee, and this is what other 38 -golfs will go through, there will be new next steps to take, like criminal background checks, obtaining a clearance, going through medical screening. And more paperwork.

00:05:19    ASSAD RAZA
So as a 38 golf candidate, as you're waiting to go through the process, you said it took about two years. You got your second master's in international affairs and you're working on foreign language proficiency. Two questions.

00:05:32    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah.

00:05:32    ASSAD RAZA
What foreign language were you trying to improve on? And what was your thought about getting a master's degree in international affairs and how it's associated with your personal development to be a 38 golf?

00:05:42    HEATHER COTTER
That's a great question. So when I was lumber, More than 20 years ago. Actually, when I was in grade school, I was in a program with German and French through college. And then when I entered the workforce, I didn't really use those languages, but I still had a lot of knowledge there deep in my brain. So while I was taking my oath of office and from when I got the approval letter, I was improving my perfect easy in both German and French. And I had also reached out to my unit. to ask them what language needs they had. So they were telling me Mandarin would be good to know, Tagalog would be good to know, as well as Korean. So I just started dabbling in those, but I never got too far. I don't know about you, Roz, but the way I suffer to learn is classroom study, if that makes sense.

00:06:37    ASSAD RAZA
Yeah, absolutely. Having that foundational within the classroom, and I think using the apps later on as a way to maintain the languages. having that foundational within the classroom, especially PACOM -aligned languages, which are a little bit more difficult compared to European languages.

00:06:53    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And then to use second question about the degree in international affairs. So interestingly, before I even learned about the 38 Golf Direct Commission program, I was exploring opportunities before this pandemic hit us in March of 2020. So I think it was like January. I think it must have been a New Year's resolution. In 2020, I started exploring opportunities to get involved with humanitarian aid assistance and what that would require of me in order to go on humanitarian aid work. And a common thing that I saw was a degree in international affairs would be super helpful, which makes obvious sense, right? So I started realizing that This was before civil affairs became something on my radar. But I realized that a degree in IA or international affairs is something I wanted to do. And then, of course, when the pandemic hit, life changed for a lot of us. And then I received the email about the 38 golf program. So I started pursuing that. And when I got selected by the board, I knew. even more confidently that a degree in international affairs would be incredibly helpful for me as an incoming civil affairs officer. Because the one thing that I kept sad was there's a lot of downtime between when you start the process of submitting your application to when you get selected and when you take your oath of office. And for me, you know, time is something that shouldn't be wasteful. I'm going to maximize my time. For me, the best way I could do a service to civil affairs class would be to expand my knowledge in international affairs. So I ended up applying to graduate school at Arizona State University. And I started my master's in August of 2022. And I graduated just a few months ago in December 2023.

00:09:07    ASSAD RAZA
Congratulations on that. Seems like everything kind of worked out, everything kind of aligned itself. So once you pleaded all that, transitioned from being a 38 golf candidate to an actual 38 golf, and you took your oath of office, what did you do next?

00:09:21    HEATHER COTTER
So once I took my oath of office back in August of 2022, the same month I started graduate school again, because I got my first, this was after 20 years ago, but I... I took my oath of office in August of 2022, and I attended a few battle assemblies, really just to complete and processing with my unit. And then within a few months, I was at the direct commission course at Fort Worth.

00:09:50    ASSAD RAZA
So when you say battle assemblies, for our listeners that potentially wanting to be 38 golfs and never served in the military, what is that?

00:09:58    HEATHER COTTER
Well, essentially, it's an active duty training that we do. Typically on a monthly basis, so it's when you get together with your unit, basically you're working on readiness as well as other soldiering skills, whether it's weapons qualification or something else relevant to whatever the unit's working on. But the 351s, specifically, I can't speak to the other units because I'm not in them. But we meet in a hybrid model, typically quarterly in person. And then we'll do our other battle assembly remotely. And typically, there's kinds of online training and requirements that you have to complete on an annual basis, whether it's anti -terrorism training or cyber awareness training or any other readiness requirements is typically what we're executing. As well as if we're trying to get involved in the school, as well as any mission requirements. or meeting whether it's before you go on a mission or mission.

00:11:06    ASSAD RAZA
Interesting. Just a really quick question. Where is the 351st Civil Affairs Command located? In Mountain View, California. How far is that from where you're located?

00:11:15    HEATHER COTTER
I'm physically based in the Phoenix metro area in Arizona. So it's about an hour and a half plane ride when I do have to go in person. So I'll be at battle assembly next month. And I'll fly up there to San Jose, which is about a 90 -minute flight. And then I'll return home.

00:11:36    ASSAD RAZA
Nice. So you get to fly up to Northern California for the weekend. Sounds like fun.

00:11:42    HEATHER COTTER
It's not the worst place to be, that's for sure. It's a great location.

00:11:46    ASSAD RAZA
Awesome. Okay, so you mentioned the direct commissioning course at Fort Moore. Can you describe that to our listeners?

00:11:53    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, we've got the direct commission course. developed for officers to receive a direct commission into the Army. So typically this course consists of mostly JAG officers, but you'll also see some civil affairs direct commission. You'll see direct commission into adjacent general, finance, fiber,

00:12:21    HEATHER COTTER
really any branch that the Army offers the direct commission to. So soldiers or those officers will attend the vaccination course at Fort Moore. And they offer this course throughout the year, I believe at a quarter of them basis, typically, and it's six weeks in duration. And throughout this course, you're going to learn how to review the uniform, how to do plan that, how to do basic rifle marksmanship. They'll take the ACFT a couple times, which is diagnostic. just to get you familiar with the requirements of physical fitness. And I'd have to say,

00:13:00    HEATHER COTTER
have to say, you know, my experience at Fort Moore was overwhelming and positive. The days were long. We had very little downtime. We were in the barracks and in uniforms, whether they were OCPs or APFUs about 98 % of the time. And we had staff duty in the middle of the night, training during the day. We ate a petite fast that we ate as a week, and we're information every three times a day. So it's a little bit like basic training, but it's designed for officers, and it's much shorter in length.

00:13:39    ASSAD RAZA
Nice. So you ate a defect three times a day, every day, for six weeks. Yeah. Did you get tired of the food? You know, I stuck with the salad box. Okay. That's great. I wanted to ask you, I know you said there was a lot of different other branches in there, like JAG and AG, Cyber. Were there any other civil affairs officers or 38 Gulfs in your course?

00:14:02    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, in my cohort, there were a few of them. There was actually another one from my unit, which was fantastic, Captain Ben Lyon. He's your 6th Delta, which is education. So it was nice to have a battle buddy there, somebody I could talk with before we fought to Fort Moore as well as during and after. And then I was also able to meet a few others that were there. Captain Heather Price was there. Major Al Cho was there. I don't want to forget anybody, but I believe it was just the four of us from Civil Affairs.

00:14:35    ASSAD RAZA
That's good. That's great that you got to meet some other peers within the 38 Golf and Civil Affairs branch. So once you finish the commissioning course at Fort Moore, back to your unit, the 351st. So what have you been doing since you got back to your unit?

00:14:49    HEATHER COTTER
So when I returned to the 351 back in June of last year, 2023, I had the opportunity to enroll in women, people, security training to become a gender focal point. So I did that in June of last year. And then I was able to go out to Hawaii. and support Indo -PACON with their first regional multinational women, peace, and security training. There were at least 10 different countries represented at that training. So it was a phenomenal experience, a phenomenal learning opportunity, and a way to get this opportunity to work with our nation partners. And then after that, I went back to professional military education. to Bullock B for 12 weeks in duration at Jackson. Nice.

00:15:50    ASSAD RAZA
Before I ask you more about your Bullock B experience, I do want to ask you one thing. Can you describe what you mean by a gender focal point?

00:15:59    HEATHER COTTER
So a gender focal point is essentially a person within the unit that is an advocate for women's peace and security issues champion to help promote women, peace, and security within the unit and inspire others to become also gender focal points and receive women, peace, and security training.

00:16:24    ASSAD RAZA
Oh, that's great. I'm a little bit jealous. You've gone to Northern California, which is beautiful, and in Hawaii. Well, with the 351st, so that's awesome. So talking about Bullock Bee now as we move on, where did you attend?

00:16:39    HEATHER COTTER
I was in South Carolina at Fort Jackson, and the bullet bee that I selected was Atchison General. It was 12 weeks.

00:16:49    ASSAD RAZA
So you get to choose which bullet bee you want to go to? Yeah, sort of. That's interesting. How did that work?

00:16:52    HEATHER COTTER
sort of. That's interesting. How did that work? I was like, kind of.

00:16:54    ASSAD RAZA
kind of.

00:16:57    HEATHER COTTER
Is there like a menu they give you guys?

00:16:58    ASSAD RAZA
like a menu they give you guys? Like, hey, here's a list of areas you can go, and you can choose one?

00:17:04    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, essentially, that's exactly what it is. had a selection of nine or ten different Bullocks that we could attend. Not every Bullock out there was offered, but Adjutant General was on that list, and I did select that one.

00:17:22    ASSAD RAZA
Okay, so how was your experience? What was it like?

00:17:25    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, so it was three months in South Carolina from August to November. The thing about Bullock B compared to Bullock A, There was a lot more downtime. If you remember the description I gave you about the recognition court, we were in uniform about 98 % of the time. And we were in formation three times a day. You did have the feedback three times a day, every day of the week. Life isn't like that. At full speed, we have a lot more freedom and liberty. So we generally had our weekend free. But for the court itself, some of the graduation requirements included day and night land navigation. We had to do a 6, 9, and 12 -mile walk, basic rifle marksmanship. We had to do the ACFP for record. And there were also, I don't know, about 27 assignments and two or three written tasks that we had to take. Unlike the direct commission course, which were predominantly jab officers with a few other branches and most of the cohort. at the direct commission course were first lieutenants for captains. And I think there was one or two majors. Whereas at Bullet B, the cohort, they're primarily recent graduates from ROTC or West Point. There were a couple from OCS, Officer Candidate School. And there was one other civil affairs direct commission there. And similar to the direct commission course, I was among the oldest.

00:19:01    ASSAD RAZA
Wow. That's, I'm not going to say a big age difference, but there is an age difference there between recent college grads and a professional like yourself that already had a career prior to coming into the military. Before we move on, was there any tension points or any frustrations because of the age differences within your cohort?

00:19:19    HEATHER COTTER
So I don't think there were any tension points, but it was noticeable, the generational differences. And I think a lot of that just... Life experience, as you mentioned, you know, I've been in the workforce for 20 years. I had a graduate degree under my belt. And these were folks who were brand new to leadership, most of them, right? But having said that, unlike me, they also had several months, if not years, of Army -type training. So they had skills I didn't have. So I think at the end of the day, it's a compliment to one another. I think I've learned from Dan probably more than they learned from me. And maybe because I was one of the oldest, some of them said, hey, you're mine. You know,

00:20:13    HEATHER COTTER
I remember specifically we were doing combatant. They're like, I just can't imagine my mom doing that. Yeah, we're down for it, you know? So. But it was all well -natured, right? Nothing was defaulting. I thought it was just understanding that there's going to be a generational gap and kind of being open -minded. I think it's important knowing that we can learn from young emerging leaders just as much as they can learn from us.

00:20:42    ASSAD RAZA
I think that's great. You brought up a good point. What time of year were you at South Carolina?

00:20:47    HEATHER COTTER
I was there in the fall, so from August to November.

00:20:51    ASSAD RAZA
Okay, so did you have an opportunity to go to Myrtle Beach?

00:20:54    HEATHER COTTER
I did not. Unfortunately, even though we had weekends free, because I am who I am,

00:21:00    HEATHER COTTER
am who I am, I was still in graduate school, and I was completing it. So not only did I have the demands on the Bullet Street course, I was also in two graduate school classes while I was trying to complete, and still kind of working. So my free time wasn't free, if you will.

00:21:20    ASSAD RAZA
That's understandable. All right. So, you know, this is really valuable for our listeners, specifically for those that are considering to become a 38 Golf and wanting to join the military and potentially never been in the military before. So reflecting on your 38 Golf career that you've had so far, what would you say has been the most rewarding experience?

00:21:40    HEATHER COTTER
I'm still very new, right? Into civil affairs and into the Army and a new commissioned officer at the 38 Golf. If gay, I would say the most rewarding experience I have in civil affairs has to be my recent mission to the Marshall Islands. I was with a team of experts to provide combating trafficking and persons training to different criminal justice constituents and stakeholders like prosecutors, judges, cops, and victim services professionals in the Marshall Islands. My area of focus for this training centered on victim services. like how to identify trafficking victims, the types of victims that might be trafficked, whether it's through forced labor, domestic servitude, or other types of trafficking. And while CTIP, combating trafficking in person, is a topic that's a little dark, some of the conversations we had, while they were tough to have, it was a rewarding experience because I'm hopeful that the knowledge that we share with the Marshallese and the knowledge shared between them during this event may help a survivor of trafficking.

00:22:57    ASSAD RAZA
That's truly inspiring. That's a really important and sensitive topic. I specifically have to talk with people from a foreign land. Potentially, it might be a little bit more sensitive for them, too. So, no, thank you. So, looking ahead. So what are some of your goals or aspirations within the civil affairs branch?

00:23:16    HEATHER COTTER
One of my immediate goals is to continue professional military education, the captain's career course. I've completed the direct commission course, bullet A. I've completed bullet B, which you're required to do within the first two years of proceeding the commission. And the next item for me to complete or the next P &E for me to complete is the captain's career course at Port Liberty. I'm also looking after that, or hopefully maybe even before that, to get some continued education and training in women's peace and security. And then longer term, really what matters most to me is being able to provide value to the civil affairs branch. What that looks like may vary over time, but I will do all I can just to be useful and relevant to the branch and to my unit.

00:24:10    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you. Well, I'm sure you're going to provide value to the SoFares branch in whatever you do. Before we move on, just really quick questions for our listeners. The Captain True course at Fort Liberty, what's the time frame for that?

00:24:23    HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, so from my understanding, it's about four weeks in duration for every service to attend, and they cut it across, I believe, three different phases. Don't quote me on those time frames, but it is about four weeks in duration.

00:24:37    ASSAD RAZA
Okay, four weeks, not too bad. It seems like it takes up a lot of time to get all these PME classes that you need to be branch qualified.

00:24:48    HEATHER COTTER
You're absolutely right on that. And a lot of it depends what bullets you go to as well. That is a factor in any person's division. I want to attend a nine -week bullet, a 19 -week bullet, or a 12 -week bullet. It really comes down to the individual officer, which one they attend. But you're right. I attended 18 weeks of PME last year and another four weeks, hopefully this year. But honestly, 22 weeks of army training for everything that you need to know really isn't that much.

00:25:21    HEATHER COTTER
training for everything that you need to know really isn't that much. At least in my perspective, because to me, training and education is ongoing and it should almost be daily. So yeah, I do. have to be a ways for extended periods of time. But one, it's absolutely necessary. Two, it's really rewarding. And you're going to find that everything you learn is going to stay with you. But unless you're using those skill sets on a regular basis, you're also going to lose some of them, which is why I think training and education is something that just needs to be the regular occurrence.

00:26:03    ASSAD RAZA
That makes sense. You want to stay up within your profession. like you do in your civilian side, you want the same thing in the military side, to be able to provide that value, like you said. All right, Heather, so before we wrap up, do you have any advice for our listeners who may be interested in joining the military or civil affairs branch, specifically like the 38 golf career field? Also, do you have any recommended readings or books that could better prepare them for this journey?

00:26:28    HEATHER COTTER
For me, joining the Army Reserve has been a transformative experience. I would love to see more people join, whether it's civil affairs or another grant. And there are two pieces of advice I can offer. First is to make sure you talk with your families and loved ones prior to taking the first step of applying. Their support is vital, especially when you become a service member. And second, you have to embrace the experience. Your mindset really matters. And it will be a factor in all aspects of your success. There are going to be times when you don't want to do something. They ask you to do like stand in the field when it's pouring rain. You know, waiting for tents, right? But that's just what you have to do. And I think having a good mindset and the attitude will make all the different things like that. And moving on to your second question about the recommended reading. Right now, I have two. The first book, I would recommend this for anyone interested in women, peace, and security. The title is Invisible Women, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Perez. And the second book is by Gran Allison, and that's Deskin for War.

00:27:53    ASSAD RAZA
I might have to get both of those books. You know, there's nothing wrong with standing in the rain and waiting around for a tent to go up.

00:28:03    ASSAD RAZA
I think that just makes the experience a lot more worthwhile. All right. So Heather, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the 1CA podcast. I really was really inspired by your journey. And I'm sure it's an inspiration to many of our listeners that are thinking about wanting to join the 38 golf career field.

00:28:20    HEATHER COTTER
Thank you, Roz. It was my pleasure to be here and share my experiences. I hope these lessons learned can inspire or help them on their own path.

00:28:30    ASSAD RAZA
Thank you. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. Be sure to join us next time for another episode of the 1CA Podcast. Until then, take care and keep pushing forward.

00:28:38    Close
forward. 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.