Welcome to the YMCA podcast. This is Jack.
Today, we are bringing in a special episode from The
Irregular Warfare podcast. Also a special shout-out to
Benjamin web for helping make this happen.
Episode 66 is called Slow Burn. How US security cooperation
shapes operational environments, it has a great discussion
between retired lieutenant general Mark, hertling Professor
Derrick reveron from the US Naval War college and host been
web and barrette. Elias episode is full and uncut
and I wanted to share it because it's relevant to the last three
feet of foreign policy and to introduce our listeners to The
Irregular Warfare podcast and its sponsor the Modern Warfare
Institute. Enjoy you can't search trust is
the old phrase that you have to build that trust throughout.
And so we have we are training. Earning together, if we are
working together, when an international crisis does occur,
we can deploy together because we're interoperable.
And when you're talking about this security cooperation, you
have to consider a push and a pull system in Afghanistan.
It was a push system. We were pushing things to them,
they wanted us to fight for them and Ukraine.
It's been a full system. Welcome to episode 66 at The
Irregular. Warfare podcast.
I'm your host Ben Jeb and I'm pleased to introduce today's
special guest host. Dr. Barbara Elias, today's
episode, explores irregular warfare in the context of
European security, cooperation. Our Guest today Begin by
addressing. Why the US military?
Adopt the global strategy of security cooperation, they then
examine the range of activities that fall under the umbrella
term of security cooperation and compare and contrast.
Last building partner capacity, conventional operations, first
irregular, warfare activities. Finally, they invite talking
about how past military cooperation efforts, have shaped
today's Regional environment in Eastern Europe.
What America can do to optimize its approach to security
cooperation in the future. Tenants General, Mark hertling
is a national security and Military analyst for CNN overs,
38-year long career, in the military lieutenant, general
hurtling served or commanded at every level from the tomb.
Field Army in 2013, he retired from the military is a
Commanding General of US Army Europe.
The kind of Journal grilling graduated from West Point in
1975 and holds Advanced degrees from Indiana University,
National Defense University and Rowland's college.
Professor Derrick, reverend in the chair of National Security
Affairs at the US, Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island.
He is also a reserve. Naval officer who has testified
before the house armed services. His committee on security
cooperation programs and has published multiple books and
research articles on US. Military cooperation, efforts
around the world. The second edition of his 2016
book exporting, security serves as the anchor for today's
conversation, you are listening to The Irregular Warfare
podcast. A joint production of the
Princeton empirical studies of conflict project and the Modern
War Institute. At West Point, dedicated to
Bridging, the Gap between Scholars and practitioners to
support the community of irregular warfare.
Professionals. Here's our conversation with
Lieutenant General Mark hertling and Professor Derrick reveron
General hurtling, dr. Ron thanks for joining us on the
irregular warfare podcast today, it's great to have you on the
show. Hey, it's great to be here.
It's really good to be with you Ben and thanks so much for
having us Dr. Reverend you've literally written the book on
security cooperation. So I was hoping you could
explain and its most basic form what security cooperation is and
what is the logic that undergirds building the military
capacity of America's Partners around the world?
Yeah, I think simply security cooperation is really just
military-to-military relations and there's probably four basic
Dimensions as I think through it.
You know, first is just relationship building and that
could be everything from hosting Ting officers from other
countries at our professional military schools like the naval
war college and West Point also just key leader engagements so
when our military leaders throughout the ranks, just
engage with other officers and ncos throughout the world.
A second, I think often has to do with access.
The u.s. is a global power. Its defense strategy has very
much been characterized by, right?
Forward engagement, at least since World War Two and probably
even go before then. And so, we were Rely on our
partners to provide critical base access host access to
facilitate us defense strategy and I think us defense strategy
is very much intertwined with our relationships, whether it's
in Europe in the UK, Germany, Italy, and other countries, or
in Asia, and Japan, South Korea, Australia.
I think a third dimension. And probably what most people
think about is really sort of the hardware part that
capability and Congress provides a lot of support to many
countries around the world. World through foreign military
financing. So this enables a country for
example, like Israel to buy F-35 and to improve their air defense
perspective and then developing capacity.
And so the types of things that components lead.
So General hurtling when it was Army component commander in
Europe, doing our exercises, bilateral multilateral with our
European Partners to and able to deploy those forces in
operations where they're often in Coalition and in terms of the
logic, you know, I sort of see two basic things that kind of,
uh, Gerd all this, you know, one is a term I use just security
deficit. So this is when a country cannot
meet its National Security obligations without us
assistance. And so this can be up at the
high end, you know, for example, the US and Japan partner and
many dimensions and in Japan seeks to deter Chinese
aggression and it could be a more traditional lens, you know,
supporting counterinsurgency counterterrorism operations in
Nigeria or in Colombia. So security deficit is sort of
my first Explanation. And then maybe my second one,
the more pragmatic and this always gets into the questions
about how do we know this stuff works in the assessment?
I think, you know, Coalition, Warfare is a norm.
And so when I start looking out and saying, how effective is, as
I look at the wars, the US has been engaged in Afghanistan
Iraq. Smaller operations in Syria in
East Africa. And I say are those countries
that we partnered with trained with?
Are they serving with us in our Listen combat formations.
And so to me, that's kind of a really important assessment
tool, that was an unbelievably, strong definition, and hit every
aspect of it. What I would say, you know, when
we're talking to an army audience, most younger officers
and ncos have no idea, the amount of effort that goes into
security cooperation, building, partners and alliances, but it's
one of those kind of things. You can't wait for a conflict to
start to begin building it, and it's all, About truthfully
generating, trust generating an understanding of each other's
way of conducting operations. And having an understanding of
just the way an organization works from leadership to
maneuver, to Logistics support intelligence-sharing completely
down the line. So, I think is there just said,
you know, a lot of people get the feeling that it's mainly
just partnering. But as the Commander in Europe,
I did not realize this until I became the G3 of Europe and
2005. But the component commanders
also have an unbelievably strong connections with the defense
attache is in every country because of Acquisitions because
of the selling of equipment and how the embassy staff literally
works with the foreign government.
It's fascinating to me that is both the G3 and the commander of
US Army Europe. I was almost spending more time
with embassies and ambassadorial Country teams than I was with
soldiers on the train. In ground because you do have to
sort of divvy up responsibilities to work with
other countries as well as other armies.
There was a great book written by a former boss of mine who now
runs his own, Think Tank, the Quincy Institute Andrew
bacevich. His very first book was entitled
diplomats and khaki and what he talks about is the military,
literally building the strength of not only foreign armies, but
often times foreign governments and I hope we talk about that a
little bit today. I would say that we Need to come
back to. These are foreign policy
programs right there. Foreign policy programs that
have a defense character because many countries face a security
dilemma, you know, both from internal and external threats
and all that assistance is coordinated through the US
ambassador and I know we'll talk about Ukraine in a little while.
And certainly the secretary state blinken has been very much
out front on this ensuring that the u.s. and the 50 or so
countries are well organized to support Ukraine.
So, it seems like security cooperation is an umbrella term
that covers Purrs a vast array of activities, it covers
traditional warfighting Concepts but also addresses military
education efforts to professionalize the officer and
NCO Corps and even delves into humanitarian assistance in
governance. So dr.
Reverend could you provide us with a brief field survey of the
different domains covered under security cooperation?
So the landscape is pretty big, so we could start with Hardware
because it often gets like the most attention and as I think
about the comparative advantage, the United States has in the
defense industry is huge. If you are Japan and you wanted
to buy a fifth-generation fighter, your choices of where
to do that are pretty slim and so you look to the US and then
you look at a program like F-35 which you know has been derided
for decades is the most expensive.
Single program in the defense department, but the program has
been internationalized. I think it's about up to 15
countries with Finland, maybe the latest country kind of
adding on to it. And so the US defense sector is
significant in the world and so Hardware, exports are critical
second training and I hope to hear more about the time.
General hurtling spent at Grafton ver because US military
are really well. Trained and professional in this
goes throughout the ranks and I Think the ncos that we develop
in the United States are somewhat unique and many
countries, look to model on how we do NCO development.
And in addition to just regular combat training so our training
base is significant and very important and admired.
So you have Hardware, you've got the training that goes related
to that and then I would say, you know, just the cooperation
that happens on a day-to-day basis.
So if I start with Coalition Warfare as a norm and general
hurtling highlights, Something to the effect, you can't surge
trust is the old phrase that you have to build that trust
throughout. And so if we are training
together, if we are working together, when an international
crisis does occur, we can deploy together because we're
interoperable, we speak the same language, we can communicate on
the same frequencies and we understand how to work together.
Those are all really fascinating points.
One of the things that I keep going back to the, you can't
surge trust. I was, unfortunately, the The
latter part of my career involved in the downsizing of
forces in Europe and we thought we had come up to a model.
Based on the direction we had been given in terms of the
amount of forces we were keeping their but as the war continued
in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we realized that as countries were
going as part of either, the I say F force or the Coalition
force in Iraq. First of all, point to point out
too. By the way, that any 6% of the I
say F Force leveled off. Mostly from European countries.
And that was a direct result. I think of folks coming to my
boss early on when I was the training center Commander graph,
and beer and saying, hey, look, we're fighting
shoulder-to-shoulder with all of these partners coming out of
Europe but they don't have the same training capacity.
We do they don't understand how to conduct counterinsurgency
Warfare. So you all have to help us
before sending them over and training them up to our
standards in terms of the train it gets directly.
What doctor ever owned? Was saying, about not only the
officers who were in charge of these units.
But primarily in my view, the ncos were the most important
part. And again, I can tell War story
after were story about some of the things we did.
But I think one of the more interesting things that occurred
when I was the commander of the training center was we posited
an idea to our CG of Europe who at the time was General.
Bell about opening up our NCO Academy at graph endure, and it
got to the point where we An opportunity for about 200
soldiers in every class. But because of the downsizing in
Europe, we were not filling the classes.
So I kind of came to the boss and said, what if we started
inviting some of our allies and partners to the course, to start
building their NCO Corps and their leadership at the junior
level. And you have to understand that
most armies in Europe, do not have a professional NCO Corps,
some of the bigger ones. Do Germany, France, A ously but
back in those days in two thousand, four and five armies
like Poland, Ukraine Romania, the Czech Republic, none of them
had professional ncos so our requirement was you can send X
number of bodies and we kind of Dole them out to our primary
leader development course. At the time later the warrior
leader course wlc and it not only established that Bond and
that relationship at the sergeant level but more than
anything it is Others. The kind of standards that
foreign armies would go by. And what I would tell you, I
don't have the data from the research for this statement.
But what I will tell you is I can name the armies that during
about a three-year period made the determination to actually
incorporate a professional NCO Corps, even to the point of for
the first time in their lives appointing a sergeant major or
First Sergeant's of units and something like that.
I mean that's Ground for all of us in the US military.
But when you go to a country, like, oh, I don't know.
Let's say Romania or let's say Ukraine, because we're going to
get to that. They did not have a professional
NCO Corps, and they also had a conscript Army.
And it was a huge success story for me.
Personally, when about a year after I retired, I got a call
from my former sergeant major. You sir, sergeant major Dave
Davenport. He said, sir, you'll never guess
what happened. He said after, so many times
asking us to help them do this, the Ukrainian.
You finally declared that, they would have a professional NCO
Corps with ranks Associated to them in line with what the US
Army does. These are the kind of Victories
that mean a lot to people who are in the business of theater
security. Cooperation, that are sort of
under the wave tops of what most people understand, that it makes
a huge difference as we're seeing today.
It seems like the armed forces are the default tool for a lot
of different security problems, including Coalition, politics,
and Trust building and critical alliances.
He discussed the consequences for this on security and on the
military is there a risk that the US military is just taking
on too many different types of responsibilities.
So I've been thinking about kind of this question, the military
and foreign policy probably for a couple decades now.
So, you know, when my first writing stored, it came out, you
know my I think tagline was initially.
Combatant commanders are as much policy entrepreneurs is
warfighters. And this upset many people to
say, why is the military engaged in policy?
Making the general officer and flag officer level.
Your job starts to become your more broadly representing DOD
and the US Government. Not necessarily your particular
service, let alone just the US military.
So the danger that we often hear in Rosa Brooks book on.
This is very good. You know, we're DOD becomes.
I think she uses the Walmart metaphor DOD ends up having to
do everything. I typically say DOD is more like
Home Depot. You know, you can buy everything
from Lumber to plans to power tools and everything that DOD is
much more than warfighting. I think there's probably more
non warfighting functions of DOD.
Then we're fighting things like humanitarian assistance,
tremendous Logistics capability. Probably the largest medical
system for a military and so DOD can offer a lot.
So I guess the danger and I was a part of project with Gordon
Adams and shoot Murray down at American University and their
Book Project was called Mission creep.
And this was sort of the word back then and all the
contributors we had probably a four month conversation on the
title and it was just going to be Mission creep and then half
of us, wanted a question mark. And the other half didn't
because we couldn't quite determine.
Is this really Mission creep or not?
If these functions are foreign policy tool and DOD is much
bigger than warfighting? I personally don't think it's
Mission creep. I mean right, there are certain
things that can go for a long time that can lead to this
Mission creep idea. But DOD is a very large
organization and I sort of think even at what think we're going
to look at the defense budget close to 800 billion plus
nuclear weapons. We should be able to prepare for
war. And especially if war is going
to be coalition in nature. All of these security
cooperation programs, I think are essential to that because we
do not fight alone is to me at the end of the day, why we
should do these engagement programs, even though they might
seem very frustrating at times. Using that model of the defense
budget, I think one of the things a lot of Americans don't
understand is that business concept of return on investment
for Alliance building and the reason they don't see it as
clearly as some of us. That work the projects do every
day is because you don't get the return on the investment after
the exercise. You get it when the nations are
called to conduct operations together.
So again, I don't want to steal your thunder and but people will
talk about Ukraine and how much we are buying in terms of
equipment, but I would suggest that not just in Ukraine, but
several other countries within the European footprint because I
know them the best are as good as they are not.
Because of high Mars which everyone is proclaiming,
although that certainly contributed quite a bit but
there is good as they are because we have been training
with them for the last 14 years or so and you don't get that
return on an investment of capabilities in a foreign force
that is actually helping us security interest by being
prepared to go it alone in this case or as part of an alliance.
So it's sort of like why our universities paying so much to
build gymnasiums or wire hospitals in.
As did in building gyms and the pre-injury stuff that comes
along with physical fitness. Well, you understand that once
you are injured or have a disease that you can rebound a
lot quicker if you do have that base, which is what security
cooperation is all about. And if I could follow up to back
to Barbara's, point is there's been a lot of failure in these
programs to and this is what I think policymakers.
Find frustrating is if we were having this conversation a year
ago, we wouldn't sort of have the aura of the Ukrainian Armed
Forces successes. Today we would have sort of the
aura of the fall of Kabul and so there's a lot of failure in
these programs to, which I think caused right for pause in this
program that I mentioned Mission creep.
But I really do think it is a political scientist.
It's frustrating. Because the cases tend to be
unique, it's hard to say, well, why did the rebuild in South
Korea? Post 1953 work?
But not in South Vietnam, for example, probably similar
people. So why is?
Crane having these great successes but Afghanistan didn't
very hard to explain how has the relationship between the US and
Israel. Been managed in spite, its very
high level of military-to-military Engagement
with some consequences, but I would kind of put it in that
larger context, but I think it does require everybody to do
their jobs, right? That OSD needs to make sure
they're giving the uniform the right direction.
Because to me, that's a key piece of the civilian control,
and then at the country Team level, that anything.
She is proposing is supportive of broader us objectives, and
those countries. I'm sure that like many
bureaucracies the us as well as other branches of the
government, were somewhat resistant to the idea of making
security, cooperation is centerpiece of its military
strategy, and Doctor. Reverend, you commit an entire
chapter of your book to addressing this resistance.
So could you explain how the US National Security establishment,
overcame bureaucratic inertia and finally came around to
investing in partner capacity. Cassity building effort.
It's a great question and thanks for calling out that chapter and
I'll admit to it's a chapter. I did not originally have in the
book. And so during the peer review
process, you know, the criticism was.
Hey, you're too Rosie on these programs.
Where's all the resistance? And so that's where that chapter
came from. But when I thought about the
resistance to security cooperation programs, I think it
comes throughout many different levels people in the uniform
military would say look. I didn't enlist to train Afghans
in Marksmanship. That's not why I joined the
military or in the Navy. I did not spend years training
to conduct anti-submarine Warfare from ap8 to be, you
know, supporting counter migrant operations or counterdrug
operations. And so you sort of have that
resistance at every time we partner we are taking time away
from our core combat training. Mission.
So that was serious. And so, you know, I got a lot of
hate mail from my uniform friends on these points and then
on the civilian that, you know, we started out is that old idea,
right? If all we have is a hammer,
everything is a nail. And that's where I say, well,
DOD is much bigger than a hammer.
It's got tremendous Logistics capability, tremendous planning
capability, tremendous Intel capability that we're not using
Special Forces officers to. I don't know.
Dig wells in East Orca, it might be there but we're using Navy
construction battalions. Their function is civil
construction, projects and Military construction projects.
So they're getting that training time anyway and then we're
broadly is there is a concern. The US has a very black history
with mil-to-mil training and it's pretty current and you look
at the senator from Vermont. Pat Leahy has the amendment to
the foreign assistance act to make sure the u.s. is not
training people and units. Accused of Human Rights abuses
because that's a real part of this history, going back to the
1980s. And so we have to be really
careful about that. So, I would say, one of the
caveats to, you know, for me, then with all this in mind is,
we always have to solve for US national interests.
We've got too many examples, whether it was during the Cold
War. If a country wanted assistance,
they would say, hey there are communists in the jungle, and
then they would label their political enemies communist, and
then us would help. So, if that was sort of the Red
Scare, I think probably the last 20 years, we have the green
scare, right? There's Al Qaeda, there's Isis
there and we have to be really careful because at the end of
the day we're asking u.s. men and women in uniform to go do
these training missions and support our partner.
And we have to make sure the partner's interests are aligned
with the US interest. So we don't put people in these
situations and make things worse, and we've got lots of
examples where intervention actually makes things worse.
And that's what makes this so hard.
Deborah hurtling. I'd like to hear your
perspective on something dr. Reverend mentioned regarding
what kinds of interests between the u.s. and partners are the
most important when there are so often.
Disagreements and Divergent priorities between allies
including the human rights issues doctor Reverend
mentioned, could you speak to that a bit?
Well, dr. Elias I'll introduce you to a
term. The only graduates of the war
College know. And that's dots that's another
military acronym dots that stands for depends on the
situation. Ation.
So in Europe there were like I said 49 countries on the
continent that I was working with.
I'll go back to what dr. Reverend said about focusing on
the countries because in the military context we have
something called targeting cells.
When you go to combat, you target something that you think
the enemy has and you apply capabilities to destroy that
Target or to disable it or whatever we expanded those
targeting meetings to engagement with.
Other countries and we use targeting the targeting
methodology that you use in Military and combat to.
How do we apply forces to achieve a specific objective
with X country and every single one of them was different.
So, when you're dealing with a country, like I'll pick one
Romania. The objectives of that nation,
in terms of their government and Military are very different than
the objectives of a more democratic state.
Like Germany that's been around for a while and it reflects in
how you do theater security. Cooperation, I spent very little
time as a commander in Europe with the German Army, I spent a
whole lot of time with Romania. Bulgaria the Baltic countries,
Croatia and each one of them had different ideas about what they
want to do. Do in terms of their security
forces. So you do push the US
perspective certainly but one of the biggest Lessons.
I learned as a senior Commander was, you have to understand what
the Strategic Dynamics are in the country you're dealing with
and you can't push too hard on what the United States.
One, you have to really have a nuanced hand in terms of
allowing things to occur through various levels of influence, and
that takes leadership, as well as an understanding of what your
National objectives are. If I can give you one small
example, I got Got a call one Sunday afternoon from my
counterpart in Croatia. And if you've ever been to
Croatia Croatia, it is a gorgeous country.
It has a great Sea Coast, great beaches, but it also has some
great mountains. Well, they happen to get about
three or four feet of snow in the mountain areas where most of
their Farms were. I got a call from my Croatian,
counterpart, a two star general in charge of their land forces.
And he asked if I could help somehow because we had an
aviation unit training in Croatia, Time at their training
center. And there were a couple of
ch-47f down there. The big helicopters, the twin
bladed helicopters and he said, I sure could use some of those
helicopters to move cows out of the mountain areas and get them
from dying in the snow, because the farmers are really pushing
my president heart. I said, okay, so I called the
Aviation Brigade Commander. I said, let's turn this into a
training Mission. They move something like 75 cows
and a four-day period and the farmers thought that the Ation
US military relationship was the best thing ever, that got to the
Ambassador level. Got to the president of Croatia
level and something as silly as moving.
Cows out of a snowstorm had strategic effects in terms of
our relationship with an emerging country that eventually
was led into NATO. So question, I'd like to pose
the both of you covers the difference between mil-to-mil
cooperation over conventional capacity.
Building versus security assistance to more irregular
warfare activities. I know there's nothing easy
about building partner capacity in any context, but is it may be
somehow more straightforward to train forces on large
conventional. Maneuver Warfare rather than
addressing counterterrorism and unconventional warfare or maybe
they're both equally difficult in their own way.
I'm going to go back if you don't mind doctor and I'll take
the first shot at this. Again, dots mean, when you talk
about the Special Forces capability of the Baltic
countries, relatively small countries, with relatively small
militaries, that can't do much against a large Russian
Onslaught as we're seeing now. And by the way, I mentioned Army
Navy Air Force in my previous statement about theater
security, cooperation, sock, your those Special Operations
Command. Europe was Table in terms of the
things they did with the special forces of various countries,
primarily there in Road, was to get the counterinsurgency
counterterrorism capability but they were also training things
like leadership Supply at the small unit level and then I'll
add one more capability. And that's the US National
Guard. Both Air Force and army.
There's a place in Ukraine that absolutely nobody knows about
called. Yeah, bereaved, which was the
Ukrainian training base. We took a sellout of graph and
beer and put it in your favor, even 2011 to help them with
their exercises, it formalized in 2014.
After the invasion of Crimea and the donbas with something that
is called the JMT gu joint multinational training group
Ukraine and that was modeled after the JMT gr, which was the
joint multinational training group Romania at a place called
sink. Ooh, I know Another place drops
Copa more ski in Poland. I mean I can name down a several
more places where the US Army. In this case, literally had a
hub-and-spoke concept with training centers, where both
Special Operations, and conventional operations were
trained. And then the special operators,
the Green Berets basically, the special forces would dig deeper
into the training of individuals and individual teams.
One of the things that I think has prevented early on, Crane
from doing, as well as they could is because from the years
2014 to 2018, we were training them on conventional operations,
up to the Battalion level. When you get above the Battalion
level other things, come into play like Logistics
intelligence, engineering things like that and the US military in
yeah, bereaved in their training ground.
Did not get to those things. So, whereas the conventional
National forces in Ukraine are pretty good.
When you get into the operational, level of war, with
large scale units, doing large-scale things over big
areas. That's when Logistics takes over
and we never really got to that part because we were more
involved in the conventional training at the Tactical level.
I might add, I think people in the US National Security System.
Don't always appreciate how much bigger the United States is
relative to our partners. And so it often gets pitched is
this trade-off. Well, I can do this in a regular
I can do this in conventional and I did some quick Consulting
here. So US Special Operations Command
claims to have about 70,000 personnel with all the service
right contributions. That's about 10,000 bigger than
the German Army, just us. So calm, the Royal Navy for the
United Kingdom. It's got about 35,000 according
to my search, the US Navy Reserve is Fifteen thousand
Personnel bigger than the Royal Navy.
So I often think back to what general hurtling said earlier.
It's trying to figure out, you know, from the partner countries
perspective is what do they need shared interest and then we're
in the dod structure can support that need.
So whether it's a National Guard unit, a reserve unit or write a
unit from another part of the world.
It can help kind of meet those needs in their certain high,
demand, low density asset, That, you know, do stress the system
and probably with Special Operations training because I
think many militaries in Europe and particular have right soft
capability and they want to preserve that.
And so, oftentimes, it's just trying to figure out who can do
that and when, and in ensuring the training doesn't detract
from their core skill set, one of the other things to I'd be
remiss since Ben's interviewing us is one of the objections back
to the resistance. Is this used to be just the
domain of Special Forces. All this training stuff and then
it became conventional and I have seen and receive that
criticism from rsf officers. In particular saying, look,
conventional forces, shouldn't be doing this.
That's not what they're good at, they don't have the language
skills, they don't have the maturity, right?
All of those key things that make Special Operations forces.
Special, there is a difference, but to the earlier point, I
think we've all made, is there such a demand for US security,
cooperation that so calm, no matter how big it 70,000, can't
meet all of these demands. And then the final Point two is
this came up I think when General hurtling was talking is
the u.s. is not the only country out there doing security
cooperation and this is what makes assessment of our programs
really hard. You know did that coup in Mali
occur because it was u.s. training or was it French
training or was it you know Chinese training often times
smaller countries are getting assistance on the security front
from many different countries and this is where it makes it
hard to say. Well why did this one work and
not this one. Why did a coup happened there?
Even though they went through our training program, but not
there. We're not the only ones out
there, they're in their own National context as well.
And we sometimes think, well, if you come to the naval war
college for a year, you will stop being your own nationality
and you'll Embrace positive signal control, democracy, free
enterprise, but you go back, that's not necessarily Your
Country. And this is where we just need
to be sort of careful and employee.
The dots assessment. We don't say that Newport.
We do the depends, but I'm going to bring in dots now.
So we'll be more joint that's good.
And, by the way, I want to comment too because you said
something very important that just struck to me.
Yes, training of foreign militaries was normally the
domain of Special Forces. That's what they were set up to
do what we found in Europe, kind of a counter to.
That was all of the new NATO Nations, all of the new allies
after the fall of the wall and lowering of the curtain, all the
new nations wanted Special ops guys, just like everybody that
goes to see a movie, you know, SEAL Team Six wants to wear
camouflage gear around the street.
I mean, I'm kidding about it to a degree, but the cool thing for
a country is Special Operations and I'm not denigrating them,
they're cheap to build, they're small, they're relatively highly
trained, but you can do that with a lack of money,
conventional forces, not so much.
I think that's what's hurting some part of Ukraine.
Right now, they spent a lot of Time wanting to spend money on
Special Forces because they saw how capable they were, but you
can't win a war with special forces.
Just like you can't win a war with f-16s.
I mean, you've got to have all of those kinds of forces to play
together. So I think that's a good segue
to discuss European theater security, cooperation directly
lieutenant-general hurtling. How did the Ark of build partner
capacity activities? Change over time in Europe?
I know that as a field grade officer.
You were stationed in Europe during the Cold War and then
kind of return to Europe episodically over your career.
And I would imagine military cooperation in the 1980s was
different than efforts in 2008 or 2011 or even today.
I would almost say that it was security cooperation.
In per se was non-existent in the 1980s.
What we had in the 1980s and before that was more alliances.
And there was the expectation that other countries would train
their Force. So sometimes when you came
together back in the days, the hottie days of the Cold War,
what you saw is what you got. There was no training together,
there was a lot of exercising together, but I think what
happened at least where I saw changing was, as a result of
9/11 and some renewed. Emphasis on NATO, as a governing
body. What some people are now calling
NATO 2.0. The change from, you know, what
they did during the Cold War to defend against a Soviet invasion
to Preparing forces to train in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And what really drove that like I said before, a lot of the
combatant commanders are the Commander's on the ground in
Afghanistan and Iraq. We're coming to the Department
of the Army, in the Army's case and saying, hey, these guys are
coming from XYZ country and they can't fight alongside of us.
So that trickled down to, at the time, my boss in Europe.
Who said to me, we've got to train them before they get to
Iraq Afghanistan. And what we were finding is not
only were we training other forces for working with ours in
Iraq and Afghanistan. But we were learning an awful
lot of lessons to from them. It was amazing how much we were
taking away from working with the Czech Republic.
I remember one day, I'd first sergeant told me that his unit
had lost the capability for making range cards because they
had been in Iraq. So many times, when the Czech
Republic came in and dug their foxholes and made their range
plan, their range cards. It's something his soldiers had
never seen before from an old Cold War perspective, that's
unfathomable to me, but we had lost a lot of capability in
2011, when I first became commander of US Army Europe, the
secretary of the army came over to visit and he Take Lee said he
wanted to go see a foreign training event.
This was 2011. So the only thing that was going
on during his visit was an exercise called rapid Trident
being held at the robbery of training area in Ukraine.
So it on our flight up there. He asked me, he said, why are we
doing exercises with Ukraine? He said, tell me about the
Ukrainian Army. I said, well, they're corrupt,
but they're getting better. And the Ukrainian government is
extremely corrupt but the Army can drive an illumination of
Corruption and he says, well why are we playing with corrupt,
armies? And I said because there's the
potential there when we got there what he saw was not just
us, Ukrainian forces training, but this rapid Trident event had
16 other nations there it was in everything but name a NATO
training event. So the secretary of the army saw
Canadian British German Ukrainian Italian, all jumping
out of eating out of airplanes and a major drop zone and he got
to talk to him. And he walked away with a
different perspective of what was going on there, from both
the unit and the command level in terms of coordination these
exercises. And by the way, that exercise of
Rapid, Trident was a yearly thing that continued on until
last year when the Russians invaded Ukraine.
So, we've discussed the critical importance of appreciating the
context of each partnership AKA dots, and Doctor, Reverend
you've mentioned Partner willpower discussing Russia
Ukraine, as well as Afghanistan saying mentioning that we the
u.s. can't want Victory anymore than partner forces wanted.
So, where does partner will power come from?
Why are the ukrainians overcoming corruption and
organizational issues? For example, where our Afghan
Partners failed to do? So it's a great question and so
for all those in graduate school looking for a topic, I mean, I
think a great one would be to kind of do a nice.
Comparative study between International assistance and
support the Afghan forces and international assistance to
support the Ukrainian forces. Because I think it's
fascinating, it is right? It's too soon to say, you know,
what explains at least today as we're recording relative,
success of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, integrating Western you
know, not only us but Spanish air defense, German air defense.
Also write French artillery all across the board about 50
countries are supporting you. Crane on this one of the ones is
I think to me, you know, the bigger lesson that I took away
out of Afghanistan is we can't want it more than they want it
and I think in this case clearly the ukrainians are fighting for
their lives literally and they want it, right?
They have to succeed if they don't succeed then we know what
will happen but probably the technical Dimensions to
operating major air defense networks is significant.
It's not like giving somebody a stinger and relatively fast but
if you want to set up So, nay Sam's, The Joint system between
the u.s. and Norway and then I saw the Brits are kicking in
about 1000 missiles to kind of. Fill it out, Spain, releasing
the hawk missiles and Sam batteries.
Same thing, the u.s. old Avenger systems, I don't know, the last
time an Avenger was activated, but it's got to be a long time
ago, the Germans with their Iris system.
It's an observation, I think from a Ukrainian perspective, it
could be a criticism because they wanted everything
immediately and I can't really explain.
I mean, why those things became slowly?
Some of it is just having those equipment being made available.
Second, is the training that's involved in the maintenance
that's involved in those systems so so far so good.
So maybe the criticism is too slow.
I think that Legacy of corruption, I'm not sure.
In terms of the perception of President solinsky, I think if
you go back to probably maybe December a couple months before,
the war started, you know, his perception was yes.
Use elected on a counter corruption.
Option campaign but I think the perception was well as he really
serious leader, you know, given his background as an actor and a
comedian and he's proven to be a great leader in really leading
his country in the defense of his country.
So I know that's a lot but curious General hurtling how he
kind of thinks about these issues to the corruption issue.
It's interesting because America has now latched on to phrases
like Javelin and high Mars. And there was a time period
where people were saying we need to give them. 400 High Marsh.
Well there are not 400. High Mars in the system, what
Ukraine really wants right now and I love Ukraine train with
them. I have good friends there but
sometimes I've been accused of being the naysayer because I
say, no, you can't give them these things because either they
don't exist or it requires a long time to train or the
maintenance and repair requirements is just off the
charts that you don't understand, you just don't drop
something in the middle. And say go for it.
I'll get to the tanks in a minute.
But what was interesting? Because I do know, a little bit
of a background. What was going on between 2011
and 2013? 18 or 19 was corruption was
still rampant in the Ukrainian government.
They wanted a new military but they didn't want to pay for it.
And truthfully are giving of equipment is not the norm, it's
usually selling of equipment after a lot of checks.
Into place. So what Ukraine wants and now
what most of America wants because they don't understand
these things is for us to just create them a new
technologically, advanced Army, and do it right now.
The polls went through this process and it took about 14
years and the first delivery of M1A1 tanks was to them about a
year ago as well as F-16. So it's just a matter of.
How do you pay for these very expensive Weapons Systems and
for America to give these things?
The president has the unfortunate requirement of
actually getting the money from Congress and it's a lot of
money. I mean we spent close to 20
billion dollars and that's a drop in the bucket based on what
Ukraine would like to have or what they need.
But truthfully, they couldn't handle it right now and I would
say that to any Ukrainian that's pushing.
These kind of things right now. So far dr.
Aaron said the javelins and The Stingers and the high Mars are
relatively easy. Field.
It doesn't take that much training.
I was in grafenwoehr about a month ago.
I was in Germany about a month and a half ago and I was
watching some ukrainians trading train on the 120, mm mortar.
That's a good piece of equipment takes a long time to train on it
and that's one of the easier ones.
So again it has to do with none of these things can provide a
quick fix and that's why as we started the conversation trust
and building relationships over the long term.
ERM is critically important and we get fixated on hardware for
whatever reason. I think it's easier to
understand, nice demonstration videos and I think again, the
big lesson, why of the ukrainians been successful is
their will to fight is really strong.
Their leadership is really strong.
We haven't seen videos of what a Ukrainian Command Center looks
like. But we have seen those releases
of high Mars launches but to me, right?
As you know, your general and certainly, that's where the real
work and success. It's coming on, it's the
leadership, it's the planning, it's the implementation and you
can't capture that in a short video or a photo.
And that's where I think the ukrainians have been right.
Extremely successful is employment of all these
equipment following up on a point made by General hurtling
on the importance, not only of material in Ukraine, but
long-standing partner, assistance efforts, I'd like to
ask both of you in what ways has u.s. partner assistance, been
most helpful in Ukraine. And what are the limits of that
help? Is there a tendency for For
Americans to take credit for Ukrainian organization, agency,
and efforts to combat Russia. Yeah, I hate just give the
generic leadership matters, but leadership matters and so I'll
sort of offer three examples that I sort of thing.
Change it to positive and one negative.
So first Columbia, you know what explains why plan Colombia in
the early 2000s was effective? I think it was good leadership.
You know, starting at the top with president or Ebay because
there were previous efforts for the u.s.
Support Columbia against the farc Insurgency was decades-old.
Why did plan Colombia work? I think, you know, a number of
restraints Congress imposed strict limits of how many
uniform people could be in the country at any one time.
So this kind of held back I think you know, the American
tendency is we want to write help everybody and solve their
problems and we want it more than they do, but it was all
about the Colombians and I think starting with president or Ebay,
you know, very effective against the farc.
The larger question is still open.
And on The Afghan question, I think the US did want it more
than the Afghans. And certainly I was in meetings
and Kabul during, you know, 10 and 11 in the search and I'd
often walked away from those meetings in the Afghans would
almost. I don't know if they explicitly
said this or I walked away in the meetings of yeah this is all
on you America. If we succeed or fail it's all
on you and somehow we had all convinced ourselves that the
u.s. was more important to the situation than the Afghans were.
And I think on the Ukrainian side, obviously, you know,
outside the US Embassy in kyiv is there.
But, you know, there is not kind of an industrial scale Network
that was created to support the Ukrainian.
Some of it is just time, I mean I think as we start to sort of
regular eyes and normalize, you know, what is US, assistance
International assistance. Look like from a bureaucratic
organizational perspective. Say, you know, six months from
now does that get back into that old adage right?
Bureaucracy, does its thing and that could be good and bad but
you know, again I think the will too.
Fight, partly comes from the leadership, zielinski Deluge
knee, all down the list. Reznikov, doing great work.
And then the context that if the ukrainians do not succeed, they
will die. And I think the other thing,
too, we've kind of neglected, a little bit.
Is we focused on security cooperation?
Which is nice. But there's also the broader
effort that's been going on within Europe and the US to
provide economic support just for regular government
operations and then, the massive refugee, Settlement or at least
support in Poland and in other countries in Europe.
You know, again I have to imagine as a deployed sailor, I
want to focus on my job. I don't want to worry about my
family and so I think the type of support that European
governments have been providing for Ukrainian families.
Is also enabled the Ukrainian soldiers and Airmen and, you
know, a few Sailors and Marines out there to be able to do their
job and kind of restore their country.
General hurtling. What are some policy
considerations that policymakers should take into account, to
better optimize America's theater security, cooperation
strategy, and Derek based on today's conversation.
What are the implications for practitioners?
Who are tasked with implementing the United States is approach to
security cooperation? We're already starting our
after-action, reviews of what's going on in Ukraine, as well as
we continually do the status of our theater security,
cooperation, plans around the world.
That's It's a yearly update. Then each combatant commands
office. What I've learned from the
campaign in Ukraine, as well. As some of the other things I
experienced as a commander in Europe was and it reared, its
ugly head as Derek said before, they got to want it more than we
do. That's a recurring theme in many
countries and when you're talking about this security
cooperation, you have to consider a push and a pull
system in Afghanistan. It was a push system.
We were pushing Things to them, they wanted us to fight for them
in Ukraine. It's been a pull system.
They've wanted assistance. They've seen the opportunities
that they have to protect their sovereignty and their
territorial integrity. And when you consider the
implications of where we do business, a lot of stuff is laid
on the intelligence Community, both CIA Dia, the various combat
commands Intel section which is all good.
But even that's um what stove-piped I'm going to go back
to the evaluation of countries. We work with an old thought of
if you want a new idea, read an old book and I keep going back
to Old Dead Carl clausewitz who said for a nation to be
successful, they have to have the Holy Trinity as it were have
to have a performing and capable Military Support of government
and a people that understand what the military is fighting
for it to win their conflicts and when they're And increase
security. If you look at those three areas
capable Military, Support of government and not corrupt
government and a people that understands what the military
does, those clausewitz and principles may be a pretty good
approach to security cooperation, as opposed to just
wanting to sell things or wanting to build allies because
allies live up to those three elements of the Holy Trinity or
they don't. So those should be The durations
of I'm going to say commanders, but I'm talking about policy
folks. As opposed to just what the
Intel Community is feeding them, which is all very good.
And I don't mean to denigrate the Intel Community, but it has
to be bigger than that. Some really great points.
So I'm a professor at the naval war college.
And so even though these are my personal views, you know, some
of the things that I really like to emphasize with everybody is
you know, first know the history, how did we get here?
And so we have Looking at these programs and we've been a part
of these programs for decades. So, if you find yourself, you
know, back my sort of first foray into this was really
looking at the former Yugoslavia and Bosnian particular, there's
a deep history that undergirds everything.
And if you walk into another country trying to quote help and
you do not appreciate the history, you will probably fail
and do harm. So maybe that's kind of the
second, right? Is remember, you're supposed to
be there to help. Help not do harm.
Second, I think is know the limits of the US military.
I think fundamentally, we can create time and space for
policymakers for negotiations, for diplomats to try to bring
apart some resolution because I think the overall goal the u.s.
always has is to sort of return to some peaceful State bring
stability. And so you know in sure what
we're doing is supporting those efforts.
Know what US interests are with that country and then you have
to be careful. A balance, what our partners
interests are with us, interests, and remember who you
work for, is probably the key thing.
And then the final thought is all these programs are foreign
policy programs. And so it's a key aspect of
foreign policy. And so I think always keeping in
mind. What are you doing to advance
and defend? Foreign policy is important.
I mean, I really try to drop away from the notion of the US.
Military's job is to fight and win our nation's Wars.
That's a part of it, but it's also a part of of larger foreign
policy and we have to understand what those are.
And so I hope to see some of the listeners in classrooms in
Newport Rhode Island at the naval war College, where you can
find all our syllabi online and you can do your own self study.
Well, Lieutenant General Mark, hertling, dr.
Derek Rev Run. Thanks again for coming on the
irregular warfare podcast. I was a fascinating conversation
about European theater security cooperation.
Thank you both for having me and general hurtling.
Enjoy the conversation. Same!
I learned a lot from dr. Reverend, thank you.
And dr. Elias and then I was fun.
Thanks for having both of us. Thank you again for joining us
for episode. 66 of the irregular warfare podcast.
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