The One CA Podcast

Welcome. Today, we bring Dr. Stanislava Mladenova to discuss the NATO CIMIC Foresight Conference. 

Book: Rambo Meets the Red Cross. Found at: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538187722/When-Rambo-Meets-the-Red-Cross-Civil-Military-Engagement-in-Fragile-States

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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 [email protected] 

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

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Special thanks to Ambience Lord for the sample of OKTOBERFEST Music 

Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/Kb_lr32vcrk?si=_V4vM_4BBv2zNxY2

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Transcript

00:00:01    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 dot 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. Stanislava Mildanova, author of When Rambo Meets the Red Cross. We met at the NATO Strategic Foresight Conference in The Hague this October. In this session, we reflect on our experiences at the conference and discuss some ideas for the future of civil -military relations. So let's get started.

00:00:56    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
We tend to very constantly think about civil as a human -to -human function on the ground or, you know, potentially function of the Navy when it pulls into port. And whenever I try to explain this to a civilian and what it means, I have to kind of think logistically through every function that the military could perform, which is any function potentially. And whether they join well, whether a domain joins well with another domain, or whether that domain needs to be able to understand what is in the civilian environment that it needs to better integrate with, that's where I think things can get a bit wonky, as you said. Sure. Yeah, I think at the moment, business is booming in Europe, for obvious reasons.

00:01:42    JACK GAINES
Very true. What did you think of the conference? It started off with... some panels, and then we went into some work groups, and then another panel, and then we had some social hours in between. Yeah,

00:01:56    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
I think I found that exactly as I expected to, which is trying to really be creative around the conversation of what the future means. Of course, I was with one of the groups where we looked at how the world could be in 2045 from a cognitive superiority standpoint. You know, ask a soldier to be a social scientist or ask a soldier to be an environmentalist or a techie. And that is by definition something very difficult to do. I mean, ask a civilian person to be a military person, right? And that's kind of the whole idea of putting yourself in the other's shoes. And it really gets at the heart of Sid Milne. So I think that within the constraints of how... creative and innovative, we can be within the three days. But also understanding that the military by default has this culture of, you know, creativity is not the place, right? You execute, you're kind of given orders and you just go about them. I think that I've gone to several of these conferences now with them. And I think that every time it just kicks the can a bit further down the road. And that's good. I don't think we can be too aggressive or innovative or get outside of our comfort zone, certainly whenever you're talking about the military and whenever you're talking about bureaucracies.

00:03:18    JACK GAINES
Right. The listeners should know, and that's that they did a 20 -year projection into the future. And most of the, I would say their military forecasters, projected pretty dour futures. Less freedoms, a lot more conflict, a lot more environmental challenges. Not a lot of peace, love and happiness in the future with those guys. I have to challenge it because I don't fully disagree, but I don't fully agree as well. I think there had some logic gaps because military forecasters, they look at risk and what future risk looks like.

00:03:54    JACK GAINES
look at risk and what future risk looks like. So if you're going to look at a military forecast, it's going to look like risk problems because that's what they're looking at. If you look at some of the other forecasters that are not risk -focused, you'll see there's some really positive things coming up as well. I just didn't think it was as balanced as it should have been.

00:04:15    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
Well, this is where I think trying to get a bit more in their community is very important. So let me give you a bit of the perspective of a development person. Let's say you're a development person that's working on climate.

00:04:22    JACK GAINES
let me give

00:04:22    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
a bit of the perspective of a development person. Let's say you're a development person that's working on climate. And we talk about all kinds of things get thrown around. on the climate, the seas are rising and everything's getting hot and you're going to have conflict and so on. And that's correct. And at the same time, when you're throwing the resilience conversation, it'll probably be a whole other podcast series. But essentially, you do have a lot of innovative strategies on how to leverage. the opportunity that presents itself. So are you looking at new types of horticulture? Are you looking at more exploratory ways to allow for livelihoods? Are you necessarily looking at, the assumption is always like, oh, people are going to move away from very hot areas where they can't grow food and go somewhere else and go on a huge influx. But we don't actually know that it's very hard for humans to just pick up and go elsewhere. likely they're going to try to adapt. And adaptation is part of being resilient. You don't have the shock absorbency to deal with something. So you need to come up with new ways to react to your current environment. And I think that there's also an assumption somehow that conflict will also cause people to leave. And that's also not necessarily a straightforward answer because people may be more willing to live in a place with terrible land. And more Cossack simply because they can provide for their livelihood and they don't want to leave their land and their families. So I think the more we can open up the aperture to think adaptation as opposed to shock, we're probably dealing with a more realistic scenario. And there are people outside of the military profession. Think about this. And their DNA is all about long term. How do you grow? In 30 years, how do you provide livelihoods? How do you lift people out of poverty by the end of the decade, by the end of the century?

00:06:25    JACK GAINES
Right. Matter of fact, I got to bring Gus Ferreira and Jamie Critelli back on because they are long -term economic agriculturalists. Another thing that struck me about the conference was the work groups. Did you attend any of the work groups or did you just present?

00:06:42    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
I actually facilitated one of the work groups. Really fascinating. You go and you facilitate, but you're also learning. And our groups were really very well mixed. We had someone from the police that from you, Paul, and we had also a couple of colleagues from the NGO communities. But again, I found that I think our difficulty was trying to really look to the future. We thought about the future in the construct of what we know about the presence.

00:07:14    JACK GAINES
Which is how most people project the future is what we know now and just kind of extend it out and see how things have changed.

00:07:21    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
Exactly. It's really hard to know, right? So we were kind of thinking like, well, what will NATO look like? And as some of us, is there a guarantee that there will be a NATO or there will be an EU? Which actually, if I can take us back to your question, I think it ties very neatly into really not underestimating how difficult multilateralism actually is.

00:07:44    JACK GAINES
Oh, yeah.

00:07:45    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
It's very hard politically, extremely hard operationally. And we now have 32 nations. I was with NATO, young staffer, when it was only 28, I believe. No, it was actually 26 when I joined. And it was a really interesting, up -and -close experience to see what it means to get everyone to agree and then to operationalize what a guidance means. Try to get 32 different countries whose military do things different ways. Yes, to join NATO, you need to be part of the force structure. There's a common denominator under which everyone needs to be able to operate. But these are still sovereign nations and sovereign militaries and culturally, mechanically, organizationally, technically, budgetarily, whichever way you want to spin it. There's very much a difference. So you will appreciate this. There's always kind of a bit of, you know, CA and SF and, you know, CA and something else. Well, take a small country's military where the soldier has to be all things, where there is no separation between the lethal and the diplomatic in development. And then you're just dealing with a very different mindset and a ballgame in terms of what and who you can deploy.

00:09:05    JACK GAINES
True. That reminds me of Switzerland. Even though they're not a NATO member, they're soldiers. They have to do everything. They have to know how to do disaster response. They have to know how to do offensive operations. And they have to have technical skills. It's a lot, but be diverse and be successful at it. And that's another part of it is Europe having so many wealthy countries that have good education and training. Get really quality people. I mean, and to be soldiers, the Simic teams that I met. Those people were brilliant, really capable. So it was impressive to talk with them and to work with them on different subjects. One thing that caught me, though, it seemed like a lot of people were hung up on Article 4 and 5. And they didn't really want to talk anything pre -Article 4 or 5, any kind of lead -ups, any kind of what I call zero -based planning, because that's not where the business is. They were like... Once the rockets hit and we go to Article 4 or 5, that's when we do our job. And so I found a challenge there, and it's one that I pitched at NATO, and that is to start a working group to discuss CIMIC in competition. Domestic CIMIC, where you're doing crisis response in a nation, even if it's your nation or if you're going over to a nation to support them, as well as... expeditionary civic, where you're deployed overseas or in a hostile zone, what kind of efforts can you do before the fight begins?

00:10:44    STANISLAVA MLADENOVA
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Everyone says, oh, we need to be talking to each other before the crisis happens, so before Article 5. We say this, and yet it's very, very... deliberate, thoughtful, long -term, and kind of taxing to think about a worst -case scenario and essentially be able to think through every possible outcome. This is why I really enjoyed the work and the exercise that we had. As you know, I've been focusing a lot on this work and trying to mobilize the conversation as well in Washington for quite some time around research around the book. What actually very pleasantly surprised me from the conference is that signal is booming in Europe. The conversation is there, I think, for obvious reasons because of what's happening in the East. But again, it's booming because there's literally a crisis and there are boots on the ground. And I always wonder why we've not had the same type of energy and urgency. here in the US. And of course, we have it. We have it in the context of great power competition. Here it's China. In Europe, it's Russia. So you really have to bow to the moment and what people are talking about and thinking about. But it's exactly as you said, we need to be having these conversations in advance. And it's got so much other stuff to deal with. Bigger fish to fry. We'll feed people their signal vegetables when the moment comes. And I think this conversation around fragility This conversation about donor funding now increasingly going to fragile states. If we can focus on prevention, we can certainly focus the conversation more deliberately to start getting these signs to speak each other's love language. If we need to have the conversation around capacity and absorbency on the health or education side, we certainly can have the same conversation on the security side. The security relationship oftentimes is a political relationship. It's not necessarily focused around the fascism. But if you take up a multilateral organization such as the World Bank, they're now starting to operate in programming spaces that were completely off limits just 15, 20 years ago. So we have an impetus and we have plenty of terrain to see how some of this works by deliberately coming to the team.

00:13:21    JACK GAINES
When people are talking about crisis, they mostly are focusing on Ukraine. The one thing that I brought up was that Georgia is just as much a crisis as Ukraine because government is being toppled. It's just not with war. It's by political subversion. And that's where SIMIC can help a country if they were involved with Georgia in working with civil security, spotting risk, coordinating better responses so that they could work with the military on countering things like cyber incursions. or financial encouragements, while then showing the public that the military is there as part of the full -of -nation policy, it would have slowed down or even reversed the Russian attempts to subvert that government and bring in a bunch of politicians that are now rewriting all the laws in Georgia, a pro -Russian stance. And that's my challenge, is that if we lose in competition, there's not going to be a war. There won't be a need for a war. Everyone's equipment's going to be obsolete, because The gove

Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, Brian Hancock talks with Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez about how the Marine Corps modernization is shifting Civil Affairs' roles and duties in the force and how those changes impact their work in the Pacific.

MSgt Andrew Gonzalez joined the USMC-CA community in October 2015 as an E7. CA activations of note include OCT 2017 CJTF-OIR, clear and hold Mosul after displacing ISIS, DEC 2021 in support of Operation Allies Welcome operating out of Fort Pickett, VA, a rare opportunity to support a Defense Support of Civil Authorities mission. MSgt Gonzalez was most recently activated in support of JTF-Red Hill, the safe and expedient refueling of the underground fuel storage facility on the island of Oahu. Allowed to meet with the Waianae Kupuna Council to discuss the transition from JTF-Red Hill leadership and mission to the Red Hill – Navy Closure Task Force.

MSgt Gonzalez has supported 1st Civil Affairs Group for nearly 10 years and continues to drive USA-USMC CA collaborative efforts, civil information management best practice, and USMC - Civil Military Operations training standards in direct response to OSD/INDOPACOM/MARFORPAC/IMEF demand for CA and Civic Action Team support.
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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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special Thanks to "Cool Jazz Hot Bossa" for the sample of Energy Jazz Music Playlist - Jazz Instrumental Upbeat - High Energy Jazz Music Mix. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/bdWUj2NYDYQ?si=_bLf2fdTw6Ba93oh

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Transcript

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.

00:00:40    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 Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez to discuss United States Marine Corps Civil Affairs, Civil Information Management, and civil harm mitigation and response. Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez joined the United States Marine Corps Civil Affairs community in October 2015 as an E -7. Civil Affairs activations of note include Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve, Clear and Hold Mosul after displacing ISIS, Support of Operation Allies Welcome operating out of Fort Pickett, Virginia, which was a rare opportunity to support a defense support to civil authorities mission. Master Sergeant Gonzalez has supported First Civil Affairs Group for nearly 10 years in direct response to the Secretary of Defense, INDO -PACOM, MARFOR -PAC, and IMEF. Boy, that's a lot of acronyms. Top, welcome to the show. Great to link up, Ryan. It's been a while. Far, far too long. The last time we worked together, we were lamenting the state of civil information management in both the Marine Corps and the Army because we saw the potential there to help us achieve strategic objectives that are often tied to the civil population.

00:02:03    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, I can only speak for the Marine Corps. And then, you know, because you were with McTog at the time and then you had a leg inside, I think it was 351st KCOM. So that's what always made the conversation interesting. So you could just step into both worlds and say, this is what I'm learning on the USA, CA side. Conversely, this is what McTog is doing it. And really what it came down to was the commander's perspective.

00:02:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
Absolutely. I am very grateful to the Marine Corps for the opportunity to learn, you know, both from professionals such as yourself, as well as from some of your schools, like the Civil Military Operations Planners course back in Quantica. Amazingly good. I'm really excited to have you here today because you're going to give us a much -needed additional perspective and thought on some of these challenges that we're wrestling with, frankly, all over the world.

00:02:55    ANDREW GONZALEZ
You and I had first connected, and all throughout that time, numbers are shrinking, toker shrinking, and we're like, where's value? And that came into our initial dialogues with civil information management, thinking that, hey, we could probably get some traction with this, but ultimately, it took several years, but then... I call it the great IF Sauron, right? The DOD looked west and said, hey, Indo -PACOM, this is the simple problem. But I just felt like when it came to developing relationships with the host nation, that's a given. We're going to be placed inside the host nation. But what's the commander's perception? And that's where I want to kind of pick up the conversation due to the fact that that has changed. And now it's coming down to IMF landing general saying, what I witnessed in Vallarta 1024. With respect to the civil affairs engagement in theater, I want more of it. I want more cowbell. And that's what we're going to deliver it in Balakatan 25. With the planning that's going on right now after the initial planning conference that I just got back from, I asked for it. And without hesitation, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, G7, responded with, we are going to give you civil affairs teams. So it's just a much more open, much more inclusive, much more inviting environment when it comes to the civil picture.

00:04:08    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's fantastic. In 351, a number of years ago, I was involved in Balakatan. And previously, when I was in the SIOP demand, now military information support and operations, we participated there. And it was not easy, and it was not friendly, and it was not open like that. And it was really just an opportunity to send some of our service members who spoke to Gallic to go on over there. There was some increase in capability of the Philippine Defense Force, but they were still very much struggling against Abu Sayyaf and MNLC and these other terrorist organizations that were operating at the Holo Archipelago. It was just a really rough time. So it's fantastic to hear that years later, fast forward now, and we have a much stronger relationship, a much more effective relationship, a stronger partnership. We're talking about reopening some of our military bases there. We've lost some of those bases years ago, which allows China certainly to say, OK, if you only got one major port where you can do roll on, roll off operations, boy, we know where to set up our ISR and target. Right. So the strength of that relationship and the work that you're doing out there, I think, is really important. I'm glad to hear how it's progressed.

00:05:19    ANDREW GONZALEZ
I have a couple of relationships with 351st KCOM 3Shot. So maybe sometime after the podcast, we'll reconnect and talk through. Some of the collaboration, because it's been a while since I've talked with them. But during the initial planning conference, I reached into USRPAC to say, hey, we would really, really appreciate some USACA flavor. And the response was, what do we need to do? I said, can you put me in touch with 350 first? And it happened that day.

00:05:46    BRIAN HANCOCK
While you reconnect there, make sure our 38 golf program with all of those PhD level experts and everything from medicine to engineering, that is really taking off. 38 golf, got it. Yes, that MOS within the functioning specialty team constructs that we have in the Army is delivering incredible value. For instance, in our region, they recently did the NATO 7 resiliency studies of other areas, which is things we should be working in competition, and food resiliency within Medova and other areas. These things are such quality, they're being published in Military Review. And right now, the iron is hot because they're still trying to figure out... How do you utilize those 38 golfs and functional specialty teams? So make sure as we partner with you in the ground combat element in the core that we're fully utilizing some of those capabilities I think would add a lot of value to those of you who are doing planning on the Mew and doing assessments.

00:06:43    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, it's very easy to say things like 1CA, okay? It's the people. It's individuals that see and understand that given the tyranny of distance, there's lots of things, right? Like expeditionary. advanced -based operations. And just that there's no possible way that one service couldn't cover all that distance and cover down on all of those requirements. So the bottom line is we have so much to learn from one another. And I am definitely going to discuss that with 351st S3 Shop for sure.

00:07:11    BRIAN HANCOCK
Fantastic. I really encouraged to hear that. And I know 351st will receive that well. Many of our listeners happen to be Army just because there's a little bit more civil affairs in the Army. The Marine Corps is a little bit smaller force. Let's level the table a little bit, help them understand some of the Marine Corps civil affairs structure. For instance, in the Army civil affairs, this is a non -accession branch, certainly for officers it is. But here's the thing, both officers and NCOs, once they get the MOS, can spend their entire careers in civil affairs. And the way the pyramid is built out, there's plenty of room and plenty of slots for promotion. So it's very realistic that you can be awarded. a 38 MOS in the Army, and then that's it. That's what you'll be doing for the next 15 plus years or however long you go until you choose to retire. Now, I understand the Marine Corps, it's not like that. Can you elaborate a little bit on how that process is for Marines?

00:08:11    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, you're 100 % right with respect to officers. Once you get to E -8 and E -9 in the Marine Corps, you suddenly start to see how difficult it is for the O -4 and above. to get to kernel. And it is incredibly competitive. So what's also happening is the 17XX migration. But that came out of not just consolidating MISO and Comstrat and SIOP and civil affairs all under one MOS branch. And some space operations in there too, I recall. It's what's required, right? In order for us to work through any kind of distributed operations, we're going to have to rely on space substantially. Yes. But these changes are happening at the headquarters Marine Corps level where 17XX will now give officers a career path. Nice. In 17XX. And this is where you and I were having conversations about what does that mean for Reserve CA? Are we going to be completely replaced, supplanted, marginalized?

00:09:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
Right.

00:09:10    ANDREW GONZALEZ
And in the end. From 21 to 24, we learned that even though our schoolhouse got completely consumed with consolidating the MISO, the PSYOP, the Comstrat, the CA schools, all in one building, to teaching the entire 17XX curriculum.

00:09:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
In fairness, the Marine Corps has done some massive changes, at least relative to, say, the Army, which turns a little bit slower. Look at their entire divestiture of tanks under Commandant Berger. And the standing up of these Marine littoral regiments. uh brand new formations the very new equipment that they're looking at that's tied into very specific missions the marine corps is innovating across stop gulf pp very quickly it's impressive to see i popped into third mlr in oahu when i was there from october to april 2024 and asked them about civil affairs

00:09:57    ANDREW GONZALEZ
popped into third mlr in oahu when i was there from october to april 2024 and asked them about civil affairs And their concept of civil affairs employment wasn't so much about understanding the civil population. It was really just understanding that they're there. We're going to take this into consideration. But there was no real collaboration, if you will. But what they did was, as they reached out to requisition CA specifically, because they recognized that there was a little bit of a delta there. And they wanted to make sure that civil affairs had a seat at the planning table when it came to MLR and specifically overall combat team operations.

00:10:36    BRIAN HANCOCK
Good.

00:10:36    ANDREW GONZALEZ
It's a part of their training tasks. And that's the commander's perspective that I keep coming back to. If the commander sees value, if the commander sees a necessity, then it will happen. Marine Corps, Army, Navy doesn't make any difference.

00:10:48    BRIAN HANCOCK
make any difference. So when you're referring to Marine Corps, civil affairs, I understand why we would say Navy, civil affairs. But the Navy itself organically had its own. civil affairs program. We'll talk about that later. They disbanded it. So I just want to make sure that the audience understands that when you're saying Navy civil affairs, you're still referring to United States Marine Corps civil affairs.

00:11:09    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, but let's drill down on just one specific point. When it came down to BK -25, we reached out to the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command. And this is kind of analogous to your 38Gs in the USA. It's a very specific maritime focus for that commander. that says hey before i go into this littoral region with ships etc i'm not i need a really good evaluation of what's the host nation look like are they amenable and open to us being in the area yeah and then drilling down on that so we asked because they were clamoring to get involved in bk24 and immediately they responded with one of their maritime ca units great and then ideally we're going to do that in bk25 as well so i'm just trying to bring in the one ca mindset I really have to say it's not just lip service. Speaking about BK -25, Armed Forces of the Philippine CA is going to lend six teams. I see no reason why 351st CA leadership isn't going to lend at le

Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, Brian Hancock talks with Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez about how the Marine Corps' modernization is shifting Civil Affairs' roles and duties in the force and how those changes impact their work in the Pacific.

MSgt Andrew Gonzalez joined the USMC-CA community in October 2015 as an E7. CA activations of note include OCT 2017 CJTF-OIR, clear and hold Mosul after displacing ISIS, DEC 2021 in support of Operation Allies Welcome operating out of Fort Pickett, VA, a rare opportunity to support a Defense Support of Civil Authorities mission. MSgt Gonzalez was most recently activated in support of JTF-Red Hill, the safe and expedient refueling of the underground fuel storage facility on the island of Oahu. Allowed to meet with the Waianae Kupuna Council to discuss the transition from JTF-Red Hill leadership and mission to the Red Hill – Navy Closure Task Force.

MSgt Gonzalez has supported 1st Civil Affairs Group for nearly 10 years and continues to drive USA-USMC CA collaborative efforts, civil information management best practice, and USMC - Civil Military Operations training standards in direct response to OSD/INDOPACOM/MARFORPAC/IMEF demand for CA and Civic Action Team support.
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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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special Thanks to "Cool Jazz Hot Bossa" for the sample of Energy Jazz Music Playlist - Jazz Instrumental Upbeat - High Energy Jazz Music Mix. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/bdWUj2NYDYQ?si=_bLf2fdTw6Ba93oh

---

Transcript

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.

00:00:40    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 Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez to discuss United States Marine Corps Civil Affairs, Civil Information Management, and civil harm mitigation and response. Master Sergeant Andrew Gonzalez joined the United States Marine Corps Civil Affairs community in October 2015 as an E -7. Civil Affairs activations of note include Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve, Clear and Hold Mosul after displacing ISIS, Support of Operation Allies Welcome operating out of Fort Pickett, Virginia, which was a rare opportunity to support a defense support to civil authorities mission. Master Sergeant Gonzalez has supported First Civil Affairs Group for nearly 10 years in direct response to the Secretary of Defense, INDO -PACOM, MARFOR -PAC, and IMEF. Boy, that's a lot of acronyms. Top, welcome to the show. Great to link up, Ryan. It's been a while. Far, far too long. The last time we worked together, we were lamenting the state of civil information management in both the Marine Corps and the Army because we saw the potential there to help us achieve strategic objectives that are often tied to the civil population.

00:02:03    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, I can only speak for the Marine Corps. And then, you know, because you were with McTog at the time and then you had a leg inside, I think it was 351st KCOM. So that's what always made the conversation interesting. So you could just step into both worlds and say, this is what I'm learning on the USA, CA side. Conversely, this is what McTog is doing it. And really what it came down to was the commander's perspective.

00:02:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
Absolutely. I am very grateful to the Marine Corps for the opportunity to learn, you know, both from professionals such as yourself, as well as from some of your schools, like the Civil Military Operations Planners course back in Quantica. Amazingly good. I'm really excited to have you here today because you're going to give us a much -needed additional perspective and thought on some of these challenges that we're wrestling with, frankly, all over the world.

00:02:55    ANDREW GONZALEZ
You and I had first connected, and all throughout that time, numbers are shrinking, toker shrinking, and we're like, where's value? And that came into our initial dialogues with civil information management, thinking that, hey, we could probably get some traction with this, but ultimately, it took several years, but then... I call it the great IF Sauron, right? The DOD looked west and said, hey, Indo -PACOM, this is the simple problem. But I just felt like when it came to developing relationships with the host nation, that's a given. We're going to be placed inside the host nation. But what's the commander's perception? And that's where I want to kind of pick up the conversation due to the fact that that has changed. And now it's coming down to IMF landing general saying, what I witnessed in Vallarta 1024. With respect to the civil affairs engagement in theater, I want more of it. I want more cowbell. And that's what we're going to deliver it in Balakatan 25. With the planning that's going on right now after the initial planning conference that I just got back from, I asked for it. And without hesitation, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, G7, responded with, we are going to give you civil affairs teams. So it's just a much more open, much more inclusive, much more inviting environment when it comes to the civil picture.

00:04:08    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's fantastic. In 351, a number of years ago, I was involved in Balakatan. And previously, when I was in the SIOP demand, now military information support and operations, we participated there. And it was not easy, and it was not friendly, and it was not open like that. And it was really just an opportunity to send some of our service members who spoke to Gallic to go on over there. There was some increase in capability of the Philippine Defense Force, but they were still very much struggling against Abu Sayyaf and MNLC and these other terrorist organizations that were operating at the Holo Archipelago. It was just a really rough time. So it's fantastic to hear that years later, fast forward now, and we have a much stronger relationship, a much more effective relationship, a stronger partnership. We're talking about reopening some of our military bases there. We've lost some of those bases years ago, which allows China certainly to say, OK, if you only got one major port where you can do roll on, roll off operations, boy, we know where to set up our ISR and target. Right. So the strength of that relationship and the work that you're doing out there, I think, is really important. I'm glad to hear how it's progressed.

00:05:19    ANDREW GONZALEZ
I have a couple of relationships with 351st KCOM 3Shot. So maybe sometime after the podcast, we'll reconnect and talk through. Some of the collaboration, because it's been a while since I've talked with them. But during the initial planning conference, I reached into USRPAC to say, hey, we would really, really appreciate some USACA flavor. And the response was, what do we need to do? I said, can you put me in touch with 350 first? And it happened that day.

00:05:46    BRIAN HANCOCK
While you reconnect there, make sure our 38 golf program with all of those PhD level experts and everything from medicine to engineering, that is really taking off. 38 golf, got it. Yes, that MOS within the functioning specialty team constructs that we have in the Army is delivering incredible value. For instance, in our region, they recently did the NATO 7 resiliency studies of other areas, which is things we should be working in competition, and food resiliency within Medova and other areas. These things are such quality, they're being published in Military Review. And right now, the iron is hot because they're still trying to figure out... How do you utilize those 38 golfs and functional specialty teams? So make sure as we partner with you in the ground combat element in the core that we're fully utilizing some of those capabilities I think would add a lot of value to those of you who are doing planning on the Mew and doing assessments.

00:06:43    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, it's very easy to say things like 1CA, okay? It's the people. It's individuals that see and understand that given the tyranny of distance, there's lots of things, right? Like expeditionary. advanced -based operations. And just that there's no possible way that one service couldn't cover all that distance and cover down on all of those requirements. So the bottom line is we have so much to learn from one another. And I am definitely going to discuss that with 351st S3 Shop for sure.

00:07:11    BRIAN HANCOCK
Fantastic. I really encouraged to hear that. And I know 351st will receive that well. Many of our listeners happen to be Army just because there's a little bit more civil affairs in the Army. The Marine Corps is a little bit smaller force. Let's level the table a little bit, help them understand some of the Marine Corps civil affairs structure. For instance, in the Army civil affairs, this is a non -accession branch, certainly for officers it is. But here's the thing, both officers and NCOs, once they get the MOS, can spend their entire careers in civil affairs. And the way the pyramid is built out, there's plenty of room and plenty of slots for promotion. So it's very realistic that you can be awarded. a 38 MOS in the Army, and then that's it. That's what you'll be doing for the next 15 plus years or however long you go until you choose to retire. Now, I understand the Marine Corps, it's not like that. Can you elaborate a little bit on how that process is for Marines?

00:08:11    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, you're 100 % right with respect to officers. Once you get to E -8 and E -9 in the Marine Corps, you suddenly start to see how difficult it is for the O -4 and above. to get to kernel. And it is incredibly competitive. So what's also happening is the 17XX migration. But that came out of not just consolidating MISO and Comstrat and SIOP and civil affairs all under one MOS branch. And some space operations in there too, I recall. It's what's required, right? In order for us to work through any kind of distributed operations, we're going to have to rely on space substantially. Yes. But these changes are happening at the headquarters Marine Corps level where 17XX will now give officers a career path. Nice. In 17XX. And this is where you and I were having conversations about what does that mean for Reserve CA? Are we going to be completely replaced, supplanted, marginalized?

00:09:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
Right.

00:09:10    ANDREW GONZALEZ
And in the end. From 21 to 24, we learned that even though our schoolhouse got completely consumed with consolidating the MISO, the PSYOP, the Comstrat, the CA schools, all in one building, to teaching the entire 17XX curriculum.

00:09:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
In fairness, the Marine Corps has done some massive changes, at least relative to, say, the Army, which turns a little bit slower. Look at their entire divestiture of tanks under Commandant Berger. And the standing up of these Marine littoral regiments. uh brand new formations the very new equipment that they're looking at that's tied into very specific missions the marine corps is innovating across stop gulf pp very quickly it's impressive to see i popped into third mlr in oahu when i was there from october to april 2024 and asked them about civil affairs

00:09:57    ANDREW GONZALEZ
popped into third mlr in oahu when i was there from october to april 2024 and asked them about civil affairs And their concept of civil affairs employment wasn't so much about understanding the civil population. It was really just understanding that they're there. We're going to take this into consideration. But there was no real collaboration, if you will. But what they did was, as they reached out to requisition CA specifically, because they recognized that there was a little bit of a delta there. And they wanted to make sure that civil affairs had a seat at the planning table when it came to MLR and specifically overall combat team operations.

00:10:36    BRIAN HANCOCK
Good.

00:10:36    ANDREW GONZALEZ
It's a part of their training tasks. And that's the commander's perspective that I keep coming back to. If the commander sees value, if the commander sees a necessity, then it will happen. Marine Corps, Army, Navy doesn't make any difference.

00:10:48    BRIAN HANCOCK
make any difference. So when you're referring to Marine Corps, civil affairs, I understand why we would say Navy, civil affairs. But the Navy itself organically had its own. civil affairs program. We'll talk about that later. They disbanded it. So I just want to make sure that the audience understands that when you're saying Navy civil affairs, you're still referring to United States Marine Corps civil affairs.

00:11:09    ANDREW GONZALEZ
Yeah, but let's drill down on just one specific point. When it came down to BK -25, we reached out to the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command. And this is kind of analogous to your 38Gs in the USA. It's a very specific maritime focus for that commander. that says hey before i go into this littoral region with ships etc i'm not i need a really good evaluation of what's the host nation look like are they amenable and open to us being in the area yeah and then drilling down on that so we asked because they were clamoring to get involved in bk24 and immediately they responded with one of their maritime ca units great and then ideally we're going to do that in bk25 as well so i'm just trying to bring in the one ca mindset I really have to say it's not just lip service. Speaking about BK -25, Armed Forces of the Philippine CA is going to lend six teams. I see no reason why 351st CA leadership isn't going to lend at l

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today, Commander Jörg Grössl from the NATO Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence will discuss the center’s contribution to the maritime domain.

From research, I found that 80 percent of the world’s population lives near a coast, and 90 percent of world’s trade is carried by ships.

So, we are bringing in Commander Grössl to discuss the CIMIC role in the maritime environment and cooperation with Government and Non-Governmental Organizations to build awareness and mitigate the potential impact of military operations at sea or in the littoral regions.

---

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 [email protected] 

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

Music 
Afternoon Lounge Jazz - Relaxing Jazz Music for Work & Study
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRyJe-0Uie0

---

Transcript

00:00:01    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 dot 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 have Commander George Grossel from the NATO Civil -Military Cooperation Center of Excellence, who will discuss the center's contribution to the maritime domain.

00:00:46    JACK GAINES
From research, I found that 80 % of the world's population lives near a seacoast, and 90 % of the world's trade is carried by ships. So it makes sense that we would have a maritime simic type of operation. So Commander Grossel, welcome to the show.

00:01:02    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, thank you. And to add some figures to what you said, we had in 2024, the crisis and the Red Sea, in addition to the Panama Canal drought and the Baltimore Bridge incident, a reduction of container traffic of 80%. We had... 3 ,400 ships in the Suez Canal less than the year before. So that is what we are talking about. It's how the CIMIC can support that and what does that mean for us as a society. That must be a pretty good size impact on the global economy to have that much slowdown in shipping.

00:01:32    JACK GAINES
must be a pretty good size impact on the global economy to have that much slowdown in shipping.

00:01:38    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, true. And approximately 500 ,000 containers waiting in Singapore to be transported because of all those interruptions in sea traffic are causing a delay.

00:01:49    JACK GAINES
Right, because the production doesn't stop just because the sea lanes have slowed down from shipping.

00:01:54    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, true.

00:01:55    JACK GAINES
I remember back at the end of COVID how the Port of Los Angeles had 100, 200 ships in harbor waiting, lined up for unloading, and it was just an enormous mess until everyone finally was able to get back to work and catch up with that delay. Yeah,

00:02:12    JÖRG GRÖSSL
we were never given that motor as that big container vessel. Grounded in the Suez Canal for six days in 2021, that resulted in a backlog of 400 ships and trade loss of almost $60 billion. So that is a mess what we are talking about.

00:02:45    JACK GAINES
defending themselves or prosecuting a conflict.

00:02:49    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, that is the one thing. And a good example was the blockage in Ukraine in 2022 -23 that caused effects even in Africa with the shortage of grains being transported there.

00:03:04    JACK GAINES
I remember North Africa and the Middle East were struggling to get enough grain for the simple breads that they use every day. And it was a real concern here in the United States. Did NATO have concerns about the wheat blockage?

00:03:18    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Well, it was more a UN or a nation's initiative, especially then when we had the agreement arranged by Turkey. But NATO as an organization was not involved in that.

00:03:30    JACK GAINES
Okay. And plus, Ukraine's got a border with Poland, so it could export grain that way into Europe. And Europe has a pretty robust grain agricultural system too, so it probably wasn't as big of an impact.

00:03:44    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, well, it developed to a bigger impact. They compensated it now, but especially at the beginning, it was all based on sea transport. And land transport was basically possible, but not in the same capacity as the sea transport. And they had to make that running via land. They went through Romania to the Mediterranean, things like that. But that was not established at the beginning. And so NATO had to be involved in?

00:04:09    JACK GAINES
so NATO had to be involved in? Deconflicting military and commercial maritime operations and also collaborating?

00:04:16    JÖRG GRÖSSL
NATO nations like Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, they had their ships there, but NATO as an organization was at the beginning not involved. That developed then later. But in fact, NATO was not involved into protecting transport or things like that. So it was just putting the picture together and minimized the impacts. With all of the issues with commercial shipping,

00:04:41    JACK GAINES
issues with commercial shipping, grain shortage, how did you work with NATO to deconflict gray hole operations with commercial shipping and ensuring that they didn't get drawn into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?

00:04:58    JÖRG GRÖSSL
They were basically, they were in the conflict. They were a kind of a bargain. from the Russian side to allow or deny the flow of goods. And that was a clear bargain that they used against Ukraine. And at that time, NATO was not involved because they didn't want to be thrown into the conflict and get into an active part. So it was more like the NATO nation, Turkey as such, who played a role. But the NATO as an organization observed that, but we didn't play an active role in it. Okay.

00:05:33    JACK GAINES
Now, with Turkey being effectively the arbiter between Russia and Ukraine on shipments and security, did what they learned help NATO out with their maritime summit programs?

00:05:47    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Turkey not just played a moderator role, of course. With them owning the choke point of the Boxboroughs and the Marmara Sea, they were also a nation that allowed or denied traffic going through. And so the key message that NATO learned from that was who owns the choke points as the joker in his hands. He who holds the choke points makes the rules. Yeah, exactly. You see that on the other side at the Bob Elman Depp,

00:06:14    JÖRG GRÖSSL
exactly.

00:06:16    JÖRG GRÖSSL
see that on the other side at the Bob Elman Depp, you see that at some other choke points like the Panama Canal, who has control, writes the rules.

00:06:32    JACK GAINES
stop policy or promote policy, and those who run it have enormous power over the lives of the rest of the nations in that region. And we've seen some use by countries to influence that. Iran has used mines in the Straits.

00:06:50    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, absolutely. And we see that at the Bob Ellman debt, the moment where a rather short number of foodies have a severe impact to world economy. Right.

00:07:02    JACK GAINES
And that's been a real struggle on trying not to get sucked into a full conflict with the Houthis in the Red Sea.

00:07:08    JÖRG GRÖSSL
We all know who the Houthis are, that they're a proxy for Iran against Saudi Arabia, Israel -Gaza war, and the Israel -Lebanon conflict that we have at the moment will add some more oil to that fire. Well,

00:07:24    JACK GAINES
and that's the challenge that NATO faces. It's always been a networked organization with multiple nations that can forward foreign policy. And now other countries are starting to become regional powers and are using similar tools and techniques to influence policy in those areas. And so we have to start thinking of Iran, Russia, China as networked organizations. They're not just one country anymore because they've got partners, they've got proxies. Some of them have criminal groups that work as operators on behalf of them, and some have paramilitary groups. So it's a more complex environment for NATO. to work on international rule of law and stability and security.

00:08:06    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yes, absolutely true. But to make that clear, at the moment, NATO is not involved, for example, in operations in the Red Sea. It is only run by NATO Nations or the European Union. The NATO as an organization at the moment is not involved. We are doing other things that have the same importance, for example, in the Baltics, in the Mediterranean. but not in the Red Sea at the moment. Well, tell me about the Baltics. We usually call the Baltics Sea a kind of a swamped field. And sometimes you can walk with dry feet from Germany to Denmark or to Sweden because of that amount of shipping. And of course, you have basically the only ice -free Russian access to the north in the Baltics, but they have to go to the narrow of the Femont Belt and the Catechart in Denmark. You have Kaliningrad in the Baltic. You have St. Petersburg in the Baltic. And of course, in that rather small area, you have a high density of gray ships. You have a high density of white ships. And to have a picture on that is quite challenging. And NATO nations are working together to get a picture of what is going on above the sea.

00:09:25    JACK GAINES
Is that what the NATO Shipping Center does? picture and help coordinate between gray holes and commercial shipping?

00:09:32    JÖRG GRÖSSL
shipping? To some extent, the NATO shipping center is adding to that. But the NATO shipping center has no tools. They have no radar stations. They have no electronic devices. So they just use the picture that they get from the bordering nations. They use the information that they get from the ships that are in the Baltics, for example. condensed that to a picture that they can use to support the merchant shipping. Okay.

00:10:04    JACK GAINES
Explain to me how they support merchant shipping.

00:10:06    JÖRG GRÖSSL
The NATO Shipping Center, it is meant to be the link between the organization of NATO and the merchant shipping community. And basically, they are the point of contact to exchange and to get information, to propagate warnings to the shipping, and to interact with the wide shipping. The NATO Shipping Center as such is a rather small organization, but they have a quite extensive network of reservists that are captains of merchant shipping in their civil life and participate in the NATO Shipping Center when they do their reserve missions. And so they are the connection between the military part and the civil part, like passing information. passing warnings, and try to filter the information that are coming from the civil life and put them into the military.

00:11:01    JACK GAINES
They cover the Baltics. Do they cover the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean as well, or does it go further than that?

00:11:08    JÖRG GRÖSSL
They're covering the Baltics. They're covering the North Sea, the Atlantic to some extent. It always depends on what nations are available if you have them. Like in the Baltics with Germany, Denmark, now Sweden, Finland, and Poland. For example, in the Mediterranean, only the northern part of the Mediterranean is covered by NATO nations and the southern part is not. So your picture that you have there is different than, for example, in the Baltic or in the North Sea.

00:11:37    JACK GAINES
That makes sense. And then, of course, whenever there's a crisis, like that ship grounding in the Suez, then they also probably put some type of focus on that because it's going to impact. shipping coming out of the Baltics in the North Sea?

00:11:50    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Not to that extent, because if there is an incident like that, then there is still the International Maritime Organization with their center in Kuala Lumpur. And they are basically responsible for the civil side of it. So it is not a NATO task to inform the merchant shipping about the civil incidents that took place somewhere. So they have their own organization to some extent. Okay.

00:12:19    JACK GAINES
What was it called again? The International Shipping?

00:12:22    JÖRG GRÖSSL
IMO, India Mike, the International Maritime Organization.

00:12:22    JACK GAINES
IMO,

00:12:26    JACK GAINES
Okay. Do you guys ever partner with them or work with them?

00:12:30    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah, we cooperate with them when needed. Let's say it like that. Sure. Because you don't want to get too deep into their business and they don't want to get too deep in yours.

00:12:36    JACK GAINES
into their business and they don't want to get too deep in yours.

00:12:38    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah. And they're acting globally and we are not that much interested in about what is going on off the coast of Chile.

00:12:46    JACK GAINES
But sometimes, I mean, NATO gets pulled into, I mean, they got pulled into Korea. Yeah. Pulled into Iraq. So sometimes it's outside the borders and I'm sure there has to be some cooperation when NATO extends itself beyond.

00:12:59    JÖRG GRÖSSL
Yeah. But that is a case by case basis.

00:13:02    JACK GAINES
Sure. But can you give me your perspective of NATO civil -military cooperation in the maritime domain? What is your role? How do you apply it?

00:13:13    JÖRG GRÖSSL
CIMIC functioning in any domain, but especially counts for the maritime domain. What are the civil factors in my environment? How does this impact my operation? How might I impact the operation of the civil traffic? And we try to de -conflict that or to coordinate that, and if possible, even to cooperate

Today, Brian Hancock hosts Col. Jeffrey Fiddler to discuss his work helping manage the DOD response to the Gaza relief mission.

---

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 [email protected] 

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

---
Special thanks to Natalia Lafourcade for the sample of  Tú Sí Sabes Quererme (En Manos de Los Macorinos). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABLT6hdgEek

---

Transcript

00:00:01    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. 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 a 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.

00:00:34    BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock and I will be your host for this session. Colonel Jeffrey Fidler is a civil affairs officer with 34 years, thank you sir, of combined enlisted and commissioned service. He has a master's degree in strategic studies and a master's and bachelor's degrees in criminal justice. On the civilian side, he is a career law enforcement officer. currently employed as a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security. Colonel Fidler, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about Gaza. It's a man -made disaster. Of course, natural disasters are on the rise as well. This one happens to be a man -made disaster, and the toll is high. At present, 96 % of the population of the Gaza Strip, which is an estimated 2 .15 million people, are food insecure. Now, you went to that region. You're back. You probably have a view of this from multiple angles. Can you tell us a little bit about the U .S. response to this crisis?

00:01:38    JEFFREY FIDDLER
This was a complex operation. Yeah, no doubt. It involved a joint force across two different combatant commands. So you have Cyprus, which belongs to UCOM, AOR, and then you have Gaza, Israel, which falls under CENTCOM. And you have... IGOs out there, United Nations, UKAID, USAID, Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, which is the most important one for us when it comes to HA, bringing all those actors, so to speak, together to form a coherent response. Like anything we do in civil affairs, it can be challenging at first.

00:02:15    BRIAN HANCOCK
But it's extra challenging because we're military. Many of these actors you just described... have a little bit of baggage when it comes to military, or they have neutrality requirements like the Red Cross that limits their ability to work with the military. If they don't understand civil affairs and what our role is and the heart we have for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and our sincere willingness to help, I mean, if we are mistaken for folks who want to take a, you know, shoot them up kind of approach, then that... would not make that an easy group to bring together as a coalition of the willing. There is definitely some baggage from the wars, right? Yeah. There is.

00:02:55    JEFFREY FIDDLER
There is. And we had the constraints. President made a decision. We're not going to have any boots on the ground. We follow orders of soldiers, right? So now you need partners on the back end. One thing the Army's always great at is logistic. So we can get a bunch of aid over there. And there'll be some friction getting it. Because you're dealing with civilian entities and organizations. There's always friction, but that's too easy. Really, the hardest part is once we get it on the beach, who's going to take it from there to deliver it to the people that are hungry? It's not going to be the U .S. military. And it's certainly not going to be really any military because you're dealing with organizations that can't necessarily work with a military organization. So it has to be civilian -led.

00:03:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
-led. And there can be mistakes if military forces of any branch are rolling in there. They may be seen as aggressors or a party to the conflict under the law of war. Very complicated. But getting supplies through there, tough. You're talking, you know, everyone with a gun is going to shake down an aid convoy coming through because that stuff is just worth its weight in gold right now. So you've got that complexity once it hits the beach. And obviously we want the humanitarian assistance to get to the needy who requires that sustenance to continue living. You've got a logistics hub, as I understood it, sitting there in Cyprus that was put together to do all of the loading and preparation. Then you're going out to CENTCOM, crossing a geographic combatant commander's boundary to set up this giant man -made dock amidst threats from some folks to attack this structure in what's kind of amounting to the Wild West. And then we have ARSEN, formerly Third Army in World War II. who's in charge of this mission. And then we have all these partners in the mix. You're being very humble, I think, but this sounds like a tough coalition to put together and get them all to work into a common purpose.

00:04:52    JEFFREY FIDDLER
It's not easy. Yeah. And I'll touch on that. I'm going to geek out for a second for all of our real civil affairs people. I'm going to talk about the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. Yeah, BHA.

00:04:58    BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm going to talk

00:05:00    SPEAKER_00
Yeah, BHA.

00:05:02    JEFFREY FIDDLER
So you need a MITAM to get the HA. You need a consignee. in Cyprus to receive the goods. And that's easy.

00:05:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
The MITAB is a mission tasking matrix, kind of like a request from the host nation that you're providing support to saying, we need this type of thing here, there, which gets validated and vetted by the military.

00:05:23    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Yeah. And it allows the DOD to respond, to actually use a piece of equipment to bring non -DOD articles or something to somewhere else. So the DOD doesn't get the bill. So you need a consignee from my team on both ends. The hard part was, who's that consignee going to be? It's a clear chain of custody. It's a requirement. Absolutely. So the World Food Program stepped up to the plate. But back to one of your earlier points of not working with the military, and look, that's their charter. Us and the military might hate it, but that's just the way it is. And WFP made it quite clear there's not going to be a military flavor to this when they receive the goods over there. And that's important to understand. So really bringing in everybody so that we could all get on the same shoot of music.

00:05:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
a clear chain of custody. It's a requirement.

00:06:06    JEFFREY FIDDLER
bringing in everybody so that we could all get on the same shoot of music. One of the things that I'm proudest of, what we did for civil affairs is helping set up a multinational coordination center with the Cypriots. So when we first started it, there might've been 10 people at the table, Brian. By the time we left her at the height of the operation, it was about 50 people in a room from all these various organizations. And we made sure that the Cypriots were in the lead. It's their nation. Yeah, yeah. Sovereign nation. Yeah. Sovereign nation, which is a whole other point. And we could do a whole other podcast on that about how civil affairs operates over in Yukon. But Cypriots are in the lead. We're there to support them and their efforts. And it was something as simple as, you know, Major Alan Diggertullo, my CPI chief, he was down there with me. One of the things we did with Alan was he would liaison with the Cypriots,

00:06:34    BRIAN HANCOCK
Sovereign nation.

00:06:56    JEFFREY FIDDLER
create a PowerPoint slide of... talking points that we were going to discuss during the MNCC. And that might not seem like a big deal to members of the audience out there that are Army. But other militaries, they don't necessarily do that. We weren't trying to insert ourselves. We were just trying to come to a middle ground where everybody could have a common understanding of where we were going. Trying to help facilitate. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the friction points were wicked out during the MNCC. And then once a week, we would host a multinational decision board. where we would bring in senior leaders. So I'm talking one -star admirals all the way up to four -star generals in the army, plus the ambassadors. So you have ambassador level ranked from the Cypriots, other countries that are visiting, and the United States there, where if we hit a roadblock where we couldn't get something done during the MNCC, which is really like a working group, then you bring in the senior leaders for them to make a decision or something for them to action. So I think that's what kind of lessened some of the friction that we had.

00:07:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
that we had. Yeah. Sometimes that can increase, too, when you have different equities, different political equities, different concerns coming together. And, of course, for the military, it's usually pretty short -term involvement in HADR. So you hit a couple of good roadblocks, and that could really derail the mission. And it's awesome to hear that you guys had to figure out a process and that apparently it largely worked to keep that moving forward and get that aid to the people who desperately needed it.

00:08:22    JEFFREY FIDDLER
needed it. It wasn't easy, but there was mistakes made along the way,

00:08:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
the way, for sure. Right. Mistakes don't define us. What we learn from them and how we pick up and carry on maybe does, but mistakes don't necessarily define us. Within the context of that, for the audience, we've kind of talked a lot about the Gaza mission. What was your specific role that you were assigned to?

00:08:44    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Sure. And this goes back to, like we talked about a little while ago. You got to be aggressive, figure it out. Like I talked about, Hilda Fernandez, you know, came down to the Pentagon to do a job. She didn't necessarily end up doing that job, but she did what was required to do as a civil affairs officer. So my job was to go down there and to be the U .S. Army, Europe, and Africa, Army element, OIC, and just strictly focus on Army -related issues to support the mission. That completely morphed as soon as I got there, and we fell under a joint task force. And there was a need for a strong civil affairs presence in the MNCC and operations in general and civil knowledge integration. So we immediately shifted gears. I ended up becoming the de facto XO of the JTF. So I was dual -hatted as the senior civil affairs officer for the operation and the XO. And Major DeGratulo was the CKI chief and one of the operations officers for the JTF. So it just turned into that and it worked for us. Okay.

00:09:46    BRIAN HANCOCK
Well, you brought some handpicked team members there, so I'm not surprised that they were able to adapt. I think that's one thing that really defines us as civil affairs professionals is that we're very adaptable in different environments. We don't bring just like one tool to the fight.

00:09:59    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Absolutely. I sometimes see that culture out there where it's like, hey, we're going to find a way to know. And one of the things that I appreciate about civil affairs, most of us have a mindset of let's find a way to yes and figure out the problem. For one example, both Alan and I went out to sea with the French Navy. That's not something I ever saw myself doing in civil affairs, but they wanted a liaison officer on the French warship to deliver aid. So we actually went within four miles of the shore of Gaza. And that was just to make sure the French Navy was comfortable, that they were able to talk to the U .S. Navy. They had an American officer on board. And, you know, we'd pull in, deliver the aid, and then leave. Did you do that under a French flag or were you international?

00:10:39    BRIAN HANCOCK
under a French flag or were you international? French flag. Sometimes they re -flag depending on the mission. So that's interesting. But you know, others in our community who might be involved in defense support to civil authorities, DISCA or humanitarian assistance disaster reef, HADR, what were some of the obstacles that you encountered in your mission in Gaza and how did you overcome them? Sure.

00:11:02    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Like I said earlier, the friction points, that was difficult at times. And you said it earlier, Brian, there are folks that have been doing this for 20, 30 years in the civilian world. I think baggage is the wrong word. I'm going to say scar tissue. And you need to recognize that. If you see that, you know, you as the civil affairs officers, you're going to take part in this and kind of, if you're going to take a leading role to make this thing work, you need to recognize that and allay their fears that you're going to do everything you can to protect the process that they use. They're not showing up to be difficult. They have a process like BHA. They have a process for MITAM. You don't want to go to the left or right of that because that's the way that they do their business. And I think it's one of our jobs as civil affairs to make sure that our military understands that process so that eventually the two can come to a way to yes of how we're going to get something across the finish line.

00:11:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, that's awesome. In civil affairs, we get access to some specialty training like the Jayhawk, the Joint Humanitarian Assistance Operations Course. the hard course. And I'm not sure that the larger force, especially in the combat arms, that they necessarily broaden with these kinds of things. But it's really important when we're working for BHA, that's always in a support role. And if we're doing DISCA, again, always in a support role, we ma

In this episode, Mariah Yager is interviewing David Luna and Jack Gaines as they discuss how adversaries use criminality to achieve their foreign policy goals while removing U.S. influence and capability. 

The interview is based on a presentation at SMA (Strategic Multilayer Assessment), an online Pentagon forum. Link to the show and resources: https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_22august2024/ 

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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 [email protected] 

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

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Special thanks to the Epidemic Blues channel for the sample of Peter Crosby - Jailhouse Blues. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuyc-bIjQ10

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Transcript

00:00:06    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast, 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.

00:00:39    MARIAH YAGER
Hi, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, and welcome to today's guest, David Luna, the founder of International Coalition Against Illicit Economies. Prior to ICAIE, David Luna was the Senior Director for International Security and Diplomacy at the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. He focused on strengthening international cooperation and fighting threat to illicit networks. And David also helped launch the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade. But with that, Mr. Luna, I'd like to hand the floor over to you.

00:01:11    DAVID LUNA
Thank you very much Mariah and Jack. It is great to be here to participate about the radar warfare in grey zones related to China and Russia, manipulating instability through co -option and coercive economics, including by weaponizing corruption. including election interference, as Secretary Blinken has underscored in recent months, elicit financial flows to support pro -authoritarian candidates that advance malign influence and that exploit governance gaps to secure friendly policies, while harming our U .S. national interests. This also includes the leveraging of criminal networks, proxies, and professional enablers. to advance policies to construct a multipolar world, exploiting grey zones in the process from small islands in the Asia -Pacific region to fragile democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Europe. The United States remains unprepared for irregular warfare. China, Iran, and Russia continue to seek to undercut U .S. influence. They degrade American relationships with key allies and partners. and to exploit the global environment to their advantage, including by exploiting instruments of competition, strategic corruption, blind influence operations, terrorism, sabotage, and subversion through asymmetrical and clandestine efforts. And so we can dictate the costs related to these hostile actions by effectively prosecuting the strategic use of corruption. and predatory criminality by adversaries across race zones to ensure that democracy reigns over authoritarianism. Greaterly the rule of law and international -based systems must outlive targeted chaos, abversion, and malign influence. I think that we must use such current and horizontal threats to repressive threat convergence so that we can develop actional responses to counter illegality. that is corroding the rule of law and interconnected with the threats networks. Through this framework, I firmly believe that we can better help DOD, the intelligence community, the interagency community, our combatant commanders, and our warfighters to understand the threat and to equip them with pragmatic resource sustain, irregular warfare tools, and anti -crime capabilities. The Department of Defense and our interagency partners to develop more dynamic NASA security military strategies and to get ahead of the game in planning for future irregular warfare campaigns, using these innovative capabilities to expand the competitive space to the U .S. advantage of their allies. A few months ago, I had the distinct pleasure of delivering the keynote address at a meeting hosted by the Department of Defense. Office for Special Operations, as well as the Cali Narcotics and Cali Transnational Organized Crime Program. At that time, I focused more on criminal networks, and I would like to expand on that discussion. I've been focusing more on the policy actions that I believe are needed and that must be integrated into greater warfare strategies. Last month, the Office of the Director for National Intelligence released a brief report. entitled Conflict and the Gray Zones, highlighting non -relations, will increasingly feature an array of hostile gray zones activities. As China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia seek to challenge the United States and to gain advantage over other countries through deliberate campaigns while also trying to avoid war. These gray zones are more often than unexploited in places where corruption thrives. Criminals finance chaos, impunity, and insecurity. So I will focus again on some of these reasons to give you a better understanding how some of these adversaries are leveraging illicit criminal activities, using climate grids, using organized criminals, and other proxies to promote authoritarianism and weaken democracies. erode institutions and undermine the rule of law and global order. Russia and Iran and China continually work to gain access and gain control over strategic locations, critical minerals, ports, and other infrastructure, with the aim of becoming board operating bases for their military forces and intelligence agencies. The islands in the Pacific Rim have become a challenge in recent years that has corroded American influence in these countries and, of course, more globally. We continue to work across sectors with cutting edge research to help map these threat networks, to help the United States and its allies to really understand today's threat environment, to see the interconnections of illicit vectors. to pinpoint nodes of crime convergence, identify those gray zones that are being exploited by some of these malign state actors, and to track illicit rude supply chains and illicit financial flows that enable authoritarians to weaken democracies. So we hope that these challenges or relays will drive further analyses and investigations to disrupt illicit threat networks and their...

00:07:10    MARIAH YAGER
Hey, David, thank you so much. The Criminality Index, how were those calculated? How did that data come together?

00:07:19    DAVID LUNA
This is the Organized Crime Index that was developed by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Without getting too much in the weeds of their methodology, they do look at various baskets of data sets from different international organizations. different governments to share more of their methodology.

00:07:41    MARIAH YAGER
And on that, I did post your white paper that you mentioned, and then these slides and your remarks, so everyone can look through the different sources. I mean, there's just some great resources there, from ACLED to some of the track stuff, so I will get those available.

00:07:57    DAVID LUNA
And we also emphasize that despite many successes within the law enforcement community, Global criminality and corruption has expanded greatly today compared to even a decade ago. Illicit entrepreneurial networks collectively continue to exploit the lucrative illicit economies, which, according to some estimates, are between 7 % to 15 % of the world's economy, or up to $20 trillion a year. They really go towards criminal networks. and they contribute to expanding these illicit economies. $20 trillion a year, that is staggering. Equally concerning, adversaries such as Russia, China, Iran, underwrite armed conflicts and malign operations against Western democracies and free markets. Among the reason local conflicts no longer end is that they are supported by illicit threat networks. For example, paramilitary groups supported by criminal opportunists, profit -driven, illicit companies who exploit conflict, and instability to expand criminal economies. In fact, rampant corruption and the violence wrought by organized criminals and terrorist networks help to soften the conditions for insecurity that are exploited to weaken other fragile governments. The state capture aided by criminality and strategic use of corruption results in democracies sliding into optocracies and through proxies helped to start and expand conflicts of regional insecurity. For example, if we look at Russia's Wagner group, who had assisted in a series of coups in Africa that had brought some lundas to power or enabled further optocracies to raid. In exchange, Proxies now rod global high -value commodities in those countries and allow for autocrats to remain in power. In the Central African Republic, Wagner's successors continue to employ active measures to disrupt African efforts to move their countries from violent conflict to stability by moving money and weapons around the continent through an intricate web of shell companies and through criminal networks that specialize in illicit trafficking and legal trading. and sanctions busting. What results is chaos, furthering the corruptive influence of extremist insurgencies in many cases, or regime protection of authoritarians who have faced sanctions and condemnations, including for their human rights abuses. Some of the dirty money that is derived by Russian mercenaries in Africa have helped Russia bypass global sanctions to fund its war in Ukraine, or to support political upheavals. paramilitary misadventures in the Middle East, the Balkans, and forward Soviet republics. Inland America, Russian proxies are selling some of the more advanced surveillance technologies to state and non -state actors across the hemisphere, greatly enhancing their ability to monitor and attack political enemies, law enforcement, officials, anyone else that they perceive as a threat. And as many experts correctly pointed out, Russia remains a criminalized state, led by a ruthless and thugish godfather. In fact, the Russian mafia is an extension of the Putin regime in advancing Russia's national interests overseas, and as an instrument of power operating in the shadows, elicit facilitators, super -fixers to other criminal networks. Russian cybercriminals not only penetrate businesses, it steals. trade secrets and bonds, but also to launch cyberattacks against enemies of the Gremlin. The Siloviki, too, may be asked to engage in kidnappings or assassinations on behalf of their masters in Moscow. Finally, one last point related to Russia. While annexation of Crimea and the recent invasion of Ukraine have significantly affected regionalized economies, Russian criminal networks continue to aid Russian intelligence and special forces in smuggling needed weapons and technology. Obviously, this undermines Western sanctions and transport bans for highly sought consumer goods and helps to londer the assets of Russian countergrants and oligarchs in places like Dubai, London, New York, and Western capitals. Now let me focus for a few minutes on the bigger threat. China. According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, China has become the biggest threat to our national security and to the homeland. This is not because of the global ambitions and active involvement of transnational crimes, but also through political interference operations. China's involvement in expanding illicit economies around the world has a triple whammy effect. Yet, first of all, it increases tremendous illicit wealth. hurts U .S. national security, American competitiveness, and innovation. Finances showing this ambition to become the predominant superpower by 2049. President Xi has openly stated, he would like China to become that predominant power. Through our research and through other institutions like the Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, the CCP has leveraged corruption, illicit markets, Predatory crime to become the world's largest player in almost every sector of transnational crime, including counterfeits, trafficking of weapons, humans, wildlife, illegally harvest timber, fish, natural resources, the theft of IP, and trade secrets, illicit tobacco, organ harvesting, and other crimes. Several trillion U .S. dollars in the list of proceeds every year are generated from productive fences for money laundering that touch China's jurisdictions and markets and are often used to finance China's authoritarian regime. According to our ICAO research, China may very well be the biggest money laundering hub in the world. So, on so many fronts, China poses a serious geopolitical and organized criminal threat. Given its proximity to make money on crime and laundering dirty monies for drug cartels or other counterparts, terrorists, sanctioned rogue states, and other pariahs, China has also helped Russia, Iran, and others evade international sanctions, including on oil exports. threats will continue to garner more attention across different illicit industries driven by China as they continue to expand across the developing world. In Latin America and in Panama, for example, China is leveraging bribery of government officials to win concessions to control the port and other critical infrastructure along the Panama Canal. Alarmingly, China already controls or operates in more than 40 ports across Latin America. In many of these ports, the Chinese triads are also quite active. As the former Salcom commander testified a few years ago, China continues to be the number one underwriter for the Mexican drug cartels and other criminal networks. In Venezuela, China is firmly supported to corrupt the Jura regime. not only because of its access and investment in the oil sector, but because it truly is a strategic partner to counter American influence. If we look at Canada in recen

Today, we welcome back the author, actor, public speaker, Ret. Lt Colonel Scott Mann to discuss his new book "Nobody is Coming to Save You" https://scottmann.com/

The website Nobody is Coming to Save You is a practical guide for leaders who want to make a bigger impact in the world now. It distills what I’ve learned over my three-decade career as a Green Beret into strategies you can use to lead others through hard change. These are the same tactics Green Berets use to get vital stuff done when stakes are high and conditions impossible. You’ll also learn about human behavior, strategic influence and dynamic storytelling because relationships are rocket fuel for getting big sh*t done.

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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 [email protected] 

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

---

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

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Transcript

00:00:01    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. Please welcome retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann.

00:00:39    JACK GAINES
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 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. 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. So enjoy. Your book is coming out. It is. In October, right? October 1. October 1. It's a great book. I really liked how you took the turn. This is a lot of different things that the ESM would diagnose as issues with. adaptability, with coping skills, general anxiety, you were able to successfully build them down into a thing you call the churn. And that's really, really helpful because if I told somebody they have a bipolar and anxiety complexity disorder, they'd be like, what in the hell are you talking about? But if you say you're stuck in the churn, which is a culmination of all these different types of things they're struggling with. you created an object, you gave it a name, and it gave them a way for people's minds to focus on that and identify it. And then by doing that, preying on how to separate themselves from the churn and give themselves a break, give themselves some air so that they can recover a little bit. Because with any kind of condition that people are struggling with, they have to learn how to separate themselves from it in order to grow, to heal.

00:02:45    SCOTT MANN
Yeah, it's well said. And the thing is, I've been working on the book for years, and most of the books I've written have been either about Afghanistan or they've been about veteran transition. And a lot of folks have been after me to write a nonfiction, story -based, narrative -based book on how did we do Pineapple? How did we do Last Out? Because I don't have a title. I don't have authority. I don't have a lot of resources. Yet those were strategically impactful things, just like DSO. How did I do that? And so I decided to write a book, a very quick read, called Nobody's Coming to Save You. which was the rally cry in most SFA camps throughout history, but you can still get big shit done. And this is what this is. It's kind of a guide to getting big shit done. And to your point about the churn, the thing is, and this is Ivan Tyrrell again, he says that the brain is a metaphorical pattern matching organ and it has a mandate to make sense of the world. So metaphor and story is how the brain makes sense, right? And this is another reason that we want to be storytellers. And what I found is, for example, The Democrat or Republican sitting across from you at the holiday dinner table is not the enemy. The person that cuts you off in traffic is not the enemy. The person who wears a mask or doesn't wear a mask and points their finger at you is not the enemy. The person on LinkedIn that disagrees with your political opinion is not the enemy. The churn is the enemy. And I characterize the churn as the antagonist in this book. It is both an external and internal condition within our civil society that is novel and new. And it's something that we just have not faced as a country until the last five, 10 years. And we see versions of the churn over in Afghanistan, in Iraq, where tribal dynamics at play in groups and out groups. And you've also got your own internal resistance that you're dealing with. And that's just the nature of being in that roiling, churning environment. But it's weird to see it here in the United States, where we are supposed to be a society of abundance and rule of law. And out of many come one. And much of that has fallen away. And it was in that dark period of my transition that I saw, wow, there's a churn right here at home. And as Sebastian Younger says, most combat veterans are willing to die for their country, but they have no idea how to live for it because it's hard to know how to live for a country that's tearing itself apart along every imaginable line from race to economics to religion. And that is my assessment, the churn and that division, that distrust, that disengagement. As humans, we have an obsession for imitation. Back in the traditional world, we imitated animals when we thought animal pelts. Well, now we're obsessed with imitating machines. And the left hemisphere of our brain is obsessed with control while the right hemisphere is obsessed with the connection to the natural world. And the left has always worked for the right. But according to a lot of neuroscientists, it's flipped because of these things. We've become so obsessed with this represented reality that we've lost our connection to the natural world. And so my book starts off by framing the enemy. That's the first special ops imperative. Always understand your operational environment. Well, our operational environment has changed. What got us here is not going to get us there. So I take about one third of the book to lay out, look, your operating environment is different. And it's not just about transitioning from military to civilian. The civil society we live in. is different externally and internally. And if you don't know that, then you are at risk of being lured into shadow tribalism and a range of other things. If you do know it, the antibody to it is an understanding and appreciation of the human operating system. Another metaphor I use is the iceberg, right? So you've got the iceberg versus the churn and getting below the waterline of that iceberg part you can't see. That's where the innate human realities reside that we can leverage.

00:06:32    SCOTT MANN
storytelling, empathy, active listening, breath, a range of things that are available to us. They're innate. They're already in us. Our ancestors knew, but we need to access them in a new way with an improved understanding of how our environment has changed so that we can lead with those things. And the cool thing is, and I'll end on this for this question, is that that's available to all of us, whether you're working in diplomacy right now, whether you're working in civil affairs right now, or whether you are transitioned and you're trying to just lead your family, most people are victims of the churn. And if you have a language and a grammar for it, and if you have an understanding of the human operating system and a practicality and how you can engage using old school or personal skills, you can lead your way pretty much out of anything without a time.

00:07:20    JACK GAINES
One brilliant point you had in there was that the person on the social media that's Leaving comments is not your enemy. A person who cuts you off is not your enemy. Because if you are stuck in a churn, it triggers that they are the enemy because it's your natural instinct that they've wronged you and you have to defend yourself. So by separating the person from that sense, you can back away from potential fights, road rage, getting arrested. It does. Yeah.

00:07:50    SCOTT MANN
And all of that could happen. Think about how we're trained in these rough places around the world to respond, and the responses that have been ingrained in us are not necessarily appropriate for responses in our civil society here at home. Yet, the way in which our body physiologically responds, it goes into a trance state. We enter a sympathetic state of fight, flight, or freeze. Our bodies have been preconditioned to fight. Our bodies have been preconditioned to lean into the problem in a very aggressive way, for example. And that's a primal response that has been infused with training. Okay. Well, here, if you're watching your 401k erode over six months, kind of response that we were trained to do is not appropriate. Is to go burn down the hedge fund. Yeah. The reality is, so what's actually happening there is that trance state that Ivan Terrell talks about. We all go into it. A trance state is just a state of hyper -focus. And the churn has created these conditions all around us where people are in it all the time. And when you go into a trance state and get a secondary emotion of anger, anger makes you stupid. Anger reduces your higher intelligence functions. You can't look with a shared perspective. You're trying to survive. And so what are we going to do for those of us who have trained a certain way? It's not good. And so we have to manage our energy. We have to manage the energy in the room. And it starts, I believe, when emotions are low by reading about and learning about the charm that's out there and this human operating system that's old and primal within us and is going to act on us one way or the other. And the more that we can appreciate the human operating system and reconnect to it, the more we can manage our own energy in a possible way within this new context that we live in. and be the most relevant, relatable person in the room. Those skills that we learned in the military all of a sudden truly then become very relevant. But if we can't manage the churn or read it for what it is and then manage our energy and those around us, we will be a pawn for the divisionist leaders that are out there just like everybody else.

00:10:09    JACK GAINES
That's a great point. That churn of feeling like it's coming at you from every angle. allows people who do work in information and influence to then say, okay, you're all wound up. Here's the bad guy. And then have them lunge at that person or that issue and explode all that energy that they've been building up on a problem. It goes after what I want them to do versus them thinking through an issue and actually coming up with their own position, either agreeing or dissenting on what I want.

00:10:37    SCOTT MANN
It's a very good definition of what I call divisionist leaders in the book. It's at a basic level that the civil society we live in here in the West is based on the individual. The individual is above the group. Well, in most places of the world and where we all come from, the group is above the individual. Status society is where we all come from. Just like any other mammal, it's for the good of the group because it's the only way you can acquire resources, maintain resources, find a mate. It's all within your circle, your tribe, your quam. And the group is above the individual. Well, in America and other places, we put the individual above the group. That's not a natural state of affairs. Which is why cults are so popular. Yes. And it's also why leadership is so essential and why a lot of social scientists say that you need for a democracy or a republic to survive that way. You need social capital where you have faith in each other and trust as neighbors. You need institutions that you can. have trust in and then you need stories that you tell each other and the outside world that you believe in right how are we doing on that we are really struggling with all of those so as a result they've abandoned that stewardship of bridging and then instead they practice this divisionist approach where they foment instability from the president all the way down both parties to meet their own narrow agenda social media engineers Instagram and Facebook create algorithms that are designed to encourage us to share negative fear -based information about outgroups because they've done the studies and they know that we will share information faster if it's negative information about an outgroup. So in other words, you have engineers that have done deep research on in -group, out -group, tribal dynamics, and then they're using it. You orchestrate algorithms that will leverage in -group, out -group behavior. Now, that to me is insidious. That is a divisionist approach that is practiced in 24 -7 news. It's practiced in politics. It's practiced in social media. And if we're not careful as humans who are just moving along our day, we will enter into this represented world. It's not reality. It's a represented reality. It's not the natural world. And that world is their world. 24 -7 news is the world of the divisionist. It's not an even plank. And so it's so easy to just get sucked into that trance state where the primal condit

Today, Brain Hancock hosts Col. Jeffrey Fiddler to discuss his career and his experience at the Pentagon helping manage the DOD response to the COVID 19 outbreak.  

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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 [email protected] 

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

---
Special thanks to Natalia Lafourcade for the sample of  Tú Sí Sabes Quererme (En Manos de Los Macorinos). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABLT6hdgEek

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Transcript

00:00:01    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. 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.

00:00:34    BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Colonel Jeffrey Fiddler is a civil affairs officer with 34 years, thank you, sir, of combined enlisted and commissioned service. He has a master's degree in strategic studies and a master's and bachelor's degrees in criminal justice. On the civilian side, he is a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security. Colonel Fidler, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me. I tell you, sir, with all of that experience you have in both infantry and military police, who actually rolls with more firepower than an infantry company, I'm making you think you just like to fire guns. Oh, yeah. Love shooting guns. Fair enough. So I'm going to ask you a little bit about your civil affairs journey in a moment, but let me give out the quick disclaimer here. A reminder to the audience, all of the remarks of the participants are solely ours. Now, sir, I met you here in Europe when you replaced the legendary Tony Vaja as chief of the civil affairs division at U .S. Army Europe and Africa. Boy, a lot has happened since then. It has.

00:01:41    JEFFREY FIDDLER
has. A lot has changed. First of all, Colonel Vaja is great. Tough guy to replace. As you know, Brian, he was the DCO of the 353KCOM when I was in brigade command. So I got to know Tony for two years. We would talk at least a couple of times a week. The institutional knowledge that he has is just amazing. It's unbelievable. It really is. So I still talk to Tony to this day.

00:02:03    BRIAN HANCOCK
Tony to this day. And there's so many rich reasons why you join civil affairs. But the quality of the people you meet on that journey, I think, is one of the things that keeps us in this field. Absolutely. Yeah. So when I first got here,

00:02:16    JEFFREY FIDDLER
we were G39. We had SEMA, Space, IO, Civil Affairs, PSYOP, Brigadier General Ellis, who's... Selected for major general, our old boss, our old boss's boss, he wanted to separate all those divisions out. So we're now fully functional G3 civil affairs division, which is interesting for USRAF because the 06 lead is going to be a comp of three person going forward, which is a little different from some of the other directorates and divisions that you see here in USRAF. Yeah.

00:02:48    BRIAN HANCOCK
Well, given the breakout, I wonder if they're just going to add a G9 shop at some point. I thought about that. The two -star level, certainly we have a G9 shop. Yeah. I'm currently filling a G9 billet for the 79 Theater Support Command. So that would not surprise me, especially given the importance that civil affairs plays in CIMIC and in competition and in all of the setting, the theater and shaping operations that we're doing right now. Absolutely. I went back and forth on that because I had talked to General Ellis about that.

00:03:12    JEFFREY FIDDLER
and forth on that because I had talked to General Ellis about that. The reason why I like being in the G3 is that we have all the integrating cells, the G33, G35. Right. And for long -term planning, we do have an officer, Major George Warren. He's embedded with the G5 downstairs. And the reason why I like being in the G3 is that any organization that you go to, the three shop is the center of gravity. Always. So when those emergent missions come up, like Cyprus or the Greek floods, anything even remotely related to civil affairs, even in an infantry mindset or whatever, they look over to us and then we get the tap on the shoulder, which is pretty cool for the soldiers in the division.

00:03:52    BRIAN HANCOCK
in the division. Well, you must be doing something right to have that kind of demand signal. So well done. It's just luck. I'd rather be lucky than good in the final analysis. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Now, one of the things that I personally love about civil affairs is that since we are a non -accessions branch and Of course, in the Marine Corps, it's a B -billet for the officers. So while they're non -commissioned officers can be a civil affairs officer for their career, they cannot on the officer side. So there's a lot of rotation and change in both the Army and the Marine Corps on the officer side, which basically means almost every civil affairs officer that you meet is different, has different skill sets, has a different career path, a lot of awesome diversity, I think, that we have in the branch. And so let me turn to your story. You commissioned as an infantry officer in the 90s. And now you're a civil affairs officer. How did you get here?

00:04:50    JEFFREY FIDDLER
So I think it was right after the surge in Iraq. And that was when they took a lot of the chemical folks because I was at the time. Made a mayor defense artillery. Yeah.

00:04:57    BRIAN HANCOCK
at the time.

00:05:00    JEFFREY FIDDLER
So I was voluntold like, hey, you're going to go down to Fort Liberty. You're going to go to CA school. And then all started before that, I was in the Massachusetts Army National Guard and very tough to get promoted. Yeah, a few slots. Yeah, a few slots. So after Operation Noble Eagle, when we did all the defense of the bases, I transferred over to the Army Reserve,

00:05:12    BRIAN HANCOCK
a few slots.

00:05:21    JEFFREY FIDDLER
had to pick up a basic branch that the Army Reserve had, which is an infantry. People out in the audience might know there is one infantry battalion in the Army Reserve. I didn't know that. I was thinking the Guard,

00:05:31    BRIAN HANCOCK
didn't know that. I was thinking the Guard, but I didn't realize we had it in the Compo 3.

00:05:33    JEFFREY FIDDLER
but I didn't realize we had it in the Compo 3. Yeah, no, there's one infantry battalion in the Army Reserve, and it's out in Hawaii. A good friend of mine, Alan Perkins, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Perkins, just commanded that, but that's a whole separate story. So you want to talk about IDT travel, he had to fly from Boston to Hawaii for drill weekend. He probably hated that. Yeah, he probably did. But it's the only infantry battalion in the Army Reserve. All right. So we needed those influx of CA officers. So I got orders to go down there and went to school and the rest is history.

00:05:35    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah,

00:05:51    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, he probably

00:06:01    BRIAN HANCOCK
history. You've spent most of your career in infantry law enforcement and the chemical corps. How do those fields assist you in your civil affairs work?

00:06:14    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Well, two things come to mind. In the infantry, you have those type A personalities. And I'm not saying I am one, but you have to be aggressive in the infantry. For us as civil affairs to show our relevancy, you have to be aggressive. Agreed. If you sit back and wait for something to happen, you're going to be marginalized. Right. You're going to watch your budget go,

00:06:32    BRIAN HANCOCK
You're going to watch your budget go, dude.

00:06:34    JEFFREY FIDDLER
Yeah. Exactly. So you've got to show some type of relevancy to that maneuver commander. So you don't necessarily have to be infantry to start up, but I think you need to be an aggressive officer. Like we say in the civil affairs division, we're not taking the foot off the gas pedal.

00:06:47    BRIAN HANCOCK
Right. We're just going to keep on pushing forward. You know, that's one of the things I also I've noticed about civil affairs formation, even at the civil affairs. action team cat level foreman and army doctrine. These folks are always volunteering for missions. They're always making suggestions. They're not waiting to be tasked to solve a problem that they think they can help and add value. They're speaking up. They're going to the three. They're going to the fire's chief. They're going to whoever and saying, hey, you know, I think we can help you with that problem. And they're very aggressive. And that makes them one of the hardest working and highest op tempo groups as a slice enabler. to combat arms in combat operations. But that's about a return on investment and earning your pay. So I agree. I think now more than ever, with some civil affairs battalions going away, there's force reduction in the army in general. It's not just civil affairs. I think now more than ever, we have to beat those folks who ship up and add value at every level of war to make sure that we're not only achieving tactical battlefield success, but we're also... achieving operational and ultimately strategic success so we don't keep going back and repeating crisis after crisis. Yes.

00:06:47    JEFFREY FIDDLER
We're just going to

00:07:57    JEFFREY FIDDLER
And I think on the law enforcement side, one of the things that they're looking for for training is negotiation training. Yeah. How do you do that? And I think in law enforcement, if you're a decent law enforcement officer, you've got to know how to negotiate with people. And I think for civil affairs, that's a huge thing for us because we're really that connective tissue between the civilian populace and the military. We saw that just recently down in Cyprus, that you dealt with a pretty big problem set getting humanitarian assistance into Gaza, and you have a lot of international players everywhere. IGOs that are over there that want to do something, NGOs, different militaries from other countries. How do you pull all that together? You have to have some kind of negotiation training, or have done that in the past, and I think a lot of us have in civil affairs.

00:08:03    SPEAKER_00
Yeah. How

00:08:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think so too. Many of the most important problem sets, there are ways to solve them other than bullets. And bullets may be expedient, but again, that tends to generate a lot of long -term animosity, which leads to that crisis after crisis, right? So critical skill definitely need more of that. And if we're not going to plus up civil affairs, maybe we need to start training some other people to understand that, or at least how... to utilize the civil affairs assets they have properly. And I think we're going to talk a little bit more about that later. Now, not long ago, the psychological operations groups of the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, known as USACAPOC, they did that reorganization. They took their separate psychological operations groups, their POGs, and which, by the way, had a broken officer pyramid. They had about 100 captain positions, which would go to 33 major positions. and then go to 505 lieutenant colonel positions, four of which were battalion command.

00:08:57    SPEAKER_00
right?

00:09:45    BRIAN HANCOCK
So it really became hard to have a career in PSYOP. Those are now moved under the KCOM, theoretically integrated within the KCOM. So we have civil affairs and psychological operations not only working together, but actually coexisting the same unit together. KPOC started with some experiments in that, and there's more of that occurring now. You commanded a civil affairs and psychological operations combined battalion. What was that experience like for you? And do you have any opinions on whether combining those two elements is a good long -term strategy for the command? Sure. Well,

00:10:21    JEFFREY FIDDLER
I'm not going to say any psyop jokes because I put my foot in my mouth in the past on that. There's a lot of CA officers that are dual -headed. I am. I'm one of them. Exactly. See? So I didn't do it. It's not going to be there in perpetuity. All right. But I had a CA PSYOP training battalion, Brian. So really, we're training NCOES, wasn't an operational battalion. Still counts as battalion command time for anybody that's out there that's looking for a battalion command. And those CA PSYOP training battalions are, in my opinion, you're not only getting your command time done, but it's also a good broadening assignment because you're running a schoolhouse. Right on. How often do you get that opportunity other than going into one of the more traditional training commands? Yeah,

00:10:28    SPEAKER_00
Exactly. See? So I didn't do it. It's not going to be there in perpetuity.

00:11:00    BRIAN HANCOCK
you don't. You either work for TRADOC or you become a defense contractor for somebody's school, right? Yeah.

00:11:06    JEFFREY FIDDLER
It's a really different experience. I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about running a schoolhouse. So that was, it was interesting. For example, so my S3 at the battalion was PSYOP. So, you know, you can't do anything without your S3. He didn't work too much with CA. I haven't worked too much with PSYOP, but at the end of the day, we're all wearing a uniform. We're going to figure out a way to make it happen. When I look at 353KCOM, I think they have 2POG underneath them. So now you have three brigade -size commands under there. So I think I understand why KPOC did it. I think we'd have to ask the folks down there, but they were direct reporting, right,

Today, we welcome Cleo Paskal, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a frequent lecturer for the U.S. military about the Indo-Pacific region.

Cleo came in to discuss the PRC's efforts to infiltrate Guam and the regional islands to undermine US relationships with those communities, the threat it creates to national security, and how we need to do to respond. 

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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 [email protected] 

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

--

Special thanks to Noel Flores for the sample of the Album Eat Your Greens and song Anger Management by Anita  Schwab on his channel Jazz of the South Pacific. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/zfRUrnNhwfs?si=Afcsham-r5Gjnjaj 

---

Transcript

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 Cleo Pascal, investigative journalist for Freedom for Democracies and a special lecturer at the Air War College about the Pacific region. Cleo came in today to discuss the PRC's efforts to infiltrate Guam and the regional islands around it to undermine U .S. relationships with those communities, the threat it creates to national security, and how we need to respond. So let's get started.

00:01:04    CLEO PASCAL
For most Americans, the idea is that there's the West Coast. Alaska,

00:01:10    JACK GAINES
Hawaii.

00:01:11    CLEO PASCAL
Alaska, Hawaii. And then if they're being clever, they might go, oh yeah, there's Guam. But the distance between Hawaii and Guam and the location of Guam is often pretty fuzzy. So Guam is maybe two, three hour flight from Manila and maybe five or six hour flight from Honolulu. In fact, it's the other side of the dateline. So if you're going to be very geeky about it, you'll go, is that the west -western part of the U .S. or is that the most eastern part of the U .S.? Because, of course, it's the other side of the dateline. Right. And then what you really need to do is look north of Guam because Guam is the southern part of the Mariana's island chain. It's its own thing. It's its own territory. It's been... part of the United States as a territory since the Spanish -American War, so since the late 19th century, which includes the islands of Saipan and Tinian, and they are also part of the United States. This is where the United States shares a maritime boundary with Japan, and we're the site of some of the most fierce battles of World War II. We just passed the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Saipan and the Battle of Tinian. That became the busiest airport in the world in early mid -1945, where the B -29 bombers were taking off in wave after wave after wave to hit Japan. And that's where the Enola Gay took off from. And that is all the United States of America. Highly strategic, has been for a long time, right off the coast of Asia. In between Hawaii and Guam, there's a whole other stretch of islands, which is the Marshall Islands, the Federal States of Micronesia, and Palau. which are independent countries, but which have signed this completely unique document with the United States called the Compact of Free Association, which gives the U .S. exclusive defense and security rights and responsibilities in those countries. So these are independent countries, along with what is now CNMI, Commonwealth of Northern Marian Islands.

00:03:26    CLEO PASCAL
were all part of the Japanese Empire from 1914 to 1944. This is what enabled Japan to be in a position to hit Pearl Harbor and created this impenetrable chunk of the Central Pacific, which meant that U .S. forces had to go south through Guadalcanal, through the Solomon Islands, up through Bougainville, and then come up from the bottom through Tarawa to be able to start to fight its way across east to west. So that control over the Central Pacific that Japan had meant that Japan could keep the U .S. pushed towards Hawaii and isolate Guam. The Japanese hit Guam just after they hit Pearl Harbor and took Guam. So that gave them the whole stretch across the Central Pacific. And after the war ended, the U .S. Navy controlled an area that combined is about as large as the continental United States. and administered it under naval control. And there was all sorts of stuff going on. Saipan was closed to the outside for years. On the record, the Naval Technical Training Unit, I think, was the cover for it. But the CIA basically was running operations in Saipan to train a few Tibetans, but more Taiwanese that were supposed to be sent in to mainland China with disastrous results. The Marshall Islands were nuked 67 times in various nuclear tests. This was kind of an active zone for testing, training, very highly strategically important. And there was a real understanding in D .C. because you had people in Congress who had fought in the Pacific Theater, who knew people who died in these islands, who didn't want that to happen again. The U .S. strategic community knew how important control over this area was to keep the threat contained to the Asian coast. But some of that information has now been lost and the Chinese are all over the place. That assumption that the U .S. can safely get across the Central Pacific to get to its treaty allies and to get to Guam and to get to the bases in Japan and South Korea is now being questioned.

00:05:52    JACK GAINES
Is it U .S. defensive officials or is it strategy watchers in the region?

00:05:52    CLEO PASCAL
it U

00:05:57    CLEO PASCAL
Indo -PACOM is starting to get very concerned. And definitely the leadership in Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas is starting to say, we've got some serious problems here and we need help. And especially currently the governor of Commonwealth of Northern Marianas is saying, we're seeing Chinese activity that is very disconcerting. And we need help. In my mind,

00:06:21    JACK GAINES
we need help. In my mind, I see a lot of water and a few dots of islands reaching back and forth. It's hard to imagine it as a territory.

00:06:32    CLEO PASCAL
Yeah. And what you said is if you put your logistics hat on, a lot of water and a few islands, a few islands become really important. So the less land and the more water, the more important that land is.

00:06:47    JACK GAINES
Yeah. You want to talk about what? it is that's concerning them about the RC's activities?

00:06:53    CLEO PASCAL
Sure. So the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which the acronym is CNMI, joined the United States. But when it joined, it kept control over certain aspects of immigration and labor because its economy is so different than the rest of the U .S. Some may remember the issues it had with garment factories, for example. Early on, Chinese interests had set up garment factories there with some pretty horrific labor conditions. But because it was part of the U .S., they could put the Made in the USA label on it. From the beginning, the Chinese were eyeing CNMI's loopholes to figure out how they could use it to gain advantages in the U .S. When China was allowed to enter the World Trade Organization, the value of that disappeared. But it started to shift to earth tourism. where Chinese would come and give birth in CNMI and then they'd have little American babies. You had more recent issues, Chinese -linked casinos. One of them, a few years ago, running more money through it than the casinos in Macau. Billions of dollars. And it was almost exclusively Chinese gamblers. And the way that the money was coming out of China and... Working through corresponding banks to give these lines of credit to these gamblers made it look an enormous amount like money laundering. There was never any proper investigation done by the U .S. government. There are about 40 ,000, 50 ,000 people living in Saipan. And you've got billions in Chinese casino money flowing through the economy. So you can imagine how that distorts politics and the economics of the place.

00:08:39    JACK GAINES
Oh, absolutely. Just trying to wonder, what is it that they're laundering? Is it all the commodity trade that they're doing around the world? Is it the fentanyl?

00:08:48    CLEO PASCAL
It needs an investigation. We shouldn't be wondering. This is U .S. jurisdiction. So there's absolutely no reason that this question can't be answered. If you go to Garapan, which is the capital I've come with under the Marianas, it's the biggest town in Saipan, by far the biggest building. is this casino, which was almost finished. It had started operations, but it had a whole hotel complex on it. And they had a typical Chinese Communist Party -linked style. They had built it on a grave site, so the locals were just horrified. You know, they dug up ancestors, and there was no proper reburial or anything. Like, the whole thing was just horrific. It was very close to completion. And then one of the construction workers fell off the scaffolding and died. And it turned out that they were not there on a work visa. And this gets to this other question of the visas. So apart from these other loopholes, Chinese can get on a plane in Hong Kong and fly straight to the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas with no visa. And the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas is considered U .S.

00:09:54    JACK GAINES
the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas is considered U .S. territory. So they can take a domestic flight from there into the continental U .S.?

00:10:02    CLEO PASCAL
They're not supposed to. Supposed to stay in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas. But there are successful prosecutions of people who have been illegally taking Chinese by boat to Guam. We talked to the mayor of Rota, which is the island closest to Guam. And one Chinese guy who got off the plane in Rota with an inflatable boat as his luggage. Yeah, there have been cases of Chinese sea people with boats on their docks and knock on the door and ask to buy the boat or to get a ride. And they did it for one of the Fish and Wildlife guys. You know, it's not hidden. But the other thing is that the woman who ran the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas has been convicted of selling. driver's licenses, specifically to Chinese.

00:11:01    JACK GAINES
Oh, wow. So,

00:11:01    CLEO PASCAL
So, yeah.

00:11:03    JACK GAINES
Any idea how many she sold?

00:11:05    CLEO PASCAL
I don't know, but it wasn't one or two. This was a business. So everything I'm mentioning, there have been people prosecuted for bringing Chinese from CNMI to Guam. The Bureau of Mortar Vehicles woman was found guilty. They've also been using the U .S. Postal Service because, of course, once you're in CNMI, that's the U .S. domestic mail. So using the U .S. Postal Service for distributing drugs, over 30 members of Congress led a letter to Secretary Mayorkas. Why does this loophole persist? And that was in November last year. And they finally got an answer, which said that, well, the Chinese contributed a lot to the tourism economy of CNMI in 2008, 2009. So that was the justification. Oh, wow. The regulations that allow for them to come in say this can be suspended on national security grounds. So it's sort of inexplicable. They're now saying, well, we'll change it from no visas to some sort of electronic semi visa. But there's no reason it shouldn't be a normal visa like any Chinese national going to anywhere else in the United States.

00:12:18    JACK GAINES
What else are you finding happening due to the flow of? Chinese tourists into Guam.

00:12:24    CLEO PASCAL
We know that one of the big priorities is Taiwan. And we also know that they want to, as much as possible, win without fighting, which is a misnomer because they're fighting. They're just fighting on a different battlefield.

00:12:38    JACK GAINES
Yeah. Win without major combat.

00:12:40    CLEO PASCAL
Yeah. Win without major loss of Chinese life is probably the more accurate way. But if you're focused on Taiwan, one of your biggest challenges is Guam. You need to disable Guam or take Guam offline somehow. Make it inoperable or ineffective.

00:13:00    JACK GAINES
Sure. Because that's where all the aircraft that are going to support Taiwan defense are going to go.

00:13:05    CLEO PASCAL
Yeah. And other forms of military support and intel support and all that. And we know that Guam already had issues with Volt Typhoon cyber infiltration into critical infrastructure. And you also, ideally, you want people on the ground. To be very blunt, you can blow up the planes or you can disable them, but you can also kill the pilots.

00:13:30    JACK GAINES
But in the waiting without fighting mindset, how do you see their efforts in these islands?

00:13:36    CLEO PASCAL
If you've got the Chinese that have come in to CNMI without a visa, very hard to know who they are. There's no background check. They've just gotten on a plane and gotten off the plane. And then they've illegally come into Guam. you don't know who they are. So you have untraceable saboteurs, whatever. And the U .S. military has found Chinese nationals roaming around bases in Guam and have handed them over to the FBI, and I don't know what's happened to them after that. Guam is a problem for them. And being able to get people onto Guam without detection is an advantage. Now, two of the three countries, Palau, and Marshall Islands recognize Taiwan. If they recognize Taiwan, that gives them an added layer of defense because it means there's no Chinese embassy. And the Chinese embassies operate like these forward operating locations. You can run the influence operations and the intel operations more

Today Brian Hancock interviews Doug Stevens who is an expeditionary pastor, working faith-based diplomacy to improve international relations. The discussion is on his work travelling to partner nations to reach out to locals and leaders to overcome social trauma from war, genocide and help rebuild communities. 

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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 [email protected] 

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

Links mentioned: Hope international ministries: Hope4nations.org

---

Special thanks to Dimitar Dodovski for sampling Keith Jarrett's album Spirits 20. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yeh7OX5m4E

---

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.

00:00:38    BRIAN HANCOCK

I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today we have with us Pastor Douglas Stevens to discuss religious outreach, relief operations in Ukraine, and mission opportunities in Ukraine. Doug is a graduate of both Cal Berkeley and Fuller Seminary. Doug is active with humanitarian missions in Eastern Europe. in Haiti and elsewhere. He is a people lover, culture watcher, mountain bike rider, and avid world trader. Isn't that the truth? A quick disclaimer to the audience, a reminder, all remarks are solely those of the presenters. Further, due to the subject matter of our session today, some of the content may be a little bit disturbing to some audiences. Now, Doug, I first met you in the United States. when you swooped in to rescue our church as God's quick response force. Do you remember those days? I do. I remember them fondly. It seems like a lifetime ago to me, so much has happened since, but our church is still standing, so you must have done something right.

00:01:36    DOUGLAS STEVENS

It seems

00:01:42    DOUGLAS STEVENS

Well, it was a great time. I have friendships from that that continue.

00:01:46    BRIAN HANCOCK

Outstanding. Some of the things that you do are similar to what we do in the Army of the United States, or at least there are some similarities to it. The way we view the American military is as an expeditionary force. We often go places with large numbers, with lots of equipment and logistics and partnerships. And oftentimes these areas we are going to are characterized by great suffering. Relief agencies may not be able to get in there to operate. So that's usually when the world often turns to the U .S. military. Now, it seems to me that you've spent much of your life in a similar capacity as an expeditionary pastor.

00:02:29    DOUGLAS STEVENS

Well, first of all, I just want to say what you're doing and what you represent is not well enough known as a part of the U .S. military's mission, the humanitarian side of that. And I just want to encourage you. So thank you for what you're doing. Now, my experience is on a different plane and yet heading in the same direction, just trying to help people. and have been in a variety of places around the world. In Haiti, for example, serving in Colombia, South America. I have been to Bosnia during the war back in the 90s when things were very tense. That was with World Vision. I have been to Rwanda in East Africa. That was with International Justice Mission. I have been overseas to places like Beijing, China, Cambodia, in the aftermath of their genocide. And have seen light shining in some of the darkest places in the world, places that you wouldn't expect any good news to come out of. And yet some wonderful people doing some heroic work in those places. In fact, we have just returned from more than a weekend in Ukraine. I know that you personally have a podcast that you host.

00:03:34    BRIAN HANCOCK

know that you personally have a podcast that you host. Yes. Very, very inspiring. Hello, darkness. Stories that transform. And I'll tell you, having read about... The scenario in Rwanda you mentioned, I think a number of people have watched the movie Hotel Rwanda. Yes. Very dark. You've got Hutu mothers murdering their neighbors Tutsi Chol. Yeah. You've got massive numbers fleeing. Yes. You have the radio saying there is work to be done. Kill the cockroaches. Right. You have female leaderships in the government calling the men in the camps, often stadiums, other places where, Hutu have herded the Tutsis to kill them brutally with machetes and complaining, saying, well, you need to rape these women before you kill them. And they're saying, well, we're just too tired because of all this killing. It's what they were saying at the time. And of course, the international community, we have some bases there and some other things, but we are not allowed to leave the base. There is no protection that is offered by the international community. There is no sanctuary. Clearly, this was hell on earth. It was. Have you seen some light come out of something like that?

00:04:48    DOUGLAS STEVENS

It went on for about 90 days back in 1994. That took nearly a million lives, as I understand it. We were there in the aftermath and the recovery time. And they had these wonderful trials for people who had been convicted of murder. But in these trials, you actually had the opportunity for reconciliation. You had the opportunity to extend forgiveness. potential repair of communities. And so we were close to that. We were supporting efforts as that was happening. There was a filmmaker who was there with us. So that was our time in Kigali and the countryside in Rwanda. And pleased to see the development since then. And of course, there are more complications now politically, and that's happening in our world. So that's a whole nother story.

00:05:33    BRIAN HANCOCK

I hear you. But I'm also glad to hear that some justice, some reconciliation, some path forward does exist there that you were able to see. Now, in Army Civil Affairs and United States Marine Corps Civil Affairs, both of us work with what we call united action partners. These may be local allies, they may be host nations, oftentimes the non -government organizations. We often can't work directly with them if they need to maintain a neutrality. help both sides, such as Doctors Without Borders. You are for World Vision and I believe a few others. What is it like working with a non -government organization doing this type of work? And did you ever have any interaction with the military in that role? And would you have even liked any interaction with military civil affairs?

00:06:30    DOUGLAS STEVENS

Well, we primarily worked with churches and NGOs that were there doing a variety of things, and those folks are the heroes on the ground, often unsung and unrewarded for what they did. But they didn't do it for that reason. They were doing it for the people they loved, the people they were sacrificing for. And we worked very closely with them and wanted to support them because they were the ones who were on the ground. We're going to be there for a long time after we left doing whatever we were doing. And often we were bringing in humanitarian aid. Sometimes we were doing leadership training. Sometimes we were doing reconciliation, conflict resolution, working with local churches that were... suddenly coming back to life again and wanting to encourage them, and the work they were doing in drawing people close to the, well, the work of God, if I can put it bluntly, because what needed to be done seemed impossible. How do you crawl out of this deep, dark hole? But it was happening, and there was a tremendous resurgence of faith in the hearts of many people who were then living it out. Hard to explain how this happened except to call it a miracle.

00:07:35    BRIAN HANCOCK

And I'm glad that miracles still do happen.

00:07:37    DOUGLAS STEVENS

They do. You have to invest in it. It doesn't happen because you're hoping for it.

00:07:42    BRIAN HANCOCK

Right. May of last year, you found yourself in Moldova. Now, that may not be a household name for many folks in America. I knew nothing about it until I went there.

00:07:51    DOUGLAS STEVENS

knew nothing about it until I went there. Next door to Ukraine.

00:07:54    BRIAN HANCOCK

We have a regionally aligned civil affairs commands who get to know some of these places. And for the European region, civil affairs command is... the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, which is back on the East Coast. And in January 2023, they actually published an excellent article in our flagship publication in the military, the Military Review. You've arrived if you get peer review publication in Military Review. And the functional specialty team, a couple of brilliant captains, published. an article regarding food resiliency in Moldova. So this is a hot topic. Can you tell the audience a bit about the mission that you were doing in Moldova, as well as what you experienced?

00:08:41    DOUGLAS STEVENS

Well, Moldova is a relatively poor country inside the EU, hoping to get in, not in NATO yet, hoping to enter, be approved, along with Ukraine, of course. that took in a million refugees in the last couple of years that were flooding out of Ukraine, looking to escape. The Moldovans themselves, many of them literally have their bags packed in case Ukraine is overrun by the Russian invaders. And they know that they would be next and they have no defense. And NATO is not officially obligated to intervene. So right now, for the moment, they look relatively safe, but they have absorbed an awful lot of special needs. coming in from Ukraine. Now, Moldova is also an agricultural country. They produce a lot of what they need, but they were overwhelmed by this crisis that took place. And so there is help coming in from other places. We were able to bring some of those materials in, and we were very impressed by the work of many different missions and churches working together in ways they never have before. And that's happening all across this area. People are working together like they never have. So it's a great thing to watch that happen and be part of it.

00:09:54    BRIAN HANCOCK

That's outstanding. And of course, right now, you've got a lot of Russian interference in going Moldavian elections.

00:10:00    DOUGLAS STEVENS

We've heard about that. It's still a controversy because Russia apparently is jealously looking at other parts of other countries they would like to retake as part of the Soviet venture. Now, no longer part of the Soviet experiment, which closed down in 1989, 91, somewhere in there. but want to now reestablish, according to Putin, the Holy Russian Empire. And it now has a religious overtone, backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, that basically wants to reclaim all of these lands, whether it's Poland, whether it's Georgia, whether it's Moldova, Ukraine, the Baltic states. We don't know how far this ambition goes, but we've been shocked so far, so nothing right now is going to shock me.

00:10:44    BRIAN HANCOCK

I thought we had closed the chapter on large wars in Europe. Maybe not. It sounds like Putin styles himself a bit of a czar. We know how well that worked out. It's a shame that we seem to be heading that direction. Putin's language, of course, is, hey, we want to open another front just to take Ukraine.

00:11:02    DOUGLAS STEVENS

And, of course, the war in Ukraine has been going on from at least 2014 when they took Crimea. And then the oblasts in the east, they've been occupying there. And now, of course, trying to come across. Right now, the front is essentially frozen, although I will defer to you and the military for a better estimate of what is actually happening. And we don't know where this is going. And my role, our role, is to come in and support those who are doing this good humanitarian work, especially in the faith -based areas.

00:11:30    BRIAN HANCOCK

Yeah, I'd like to tug at that string a little bit, because you just literally, a few days ago, got back from a mission in Ukraine. And I understand that it was a multifaceted mission. You're doing a number of different things, all important works, why you're there. Now, while most of the audience is at least to some degree aware of the mental suffering that's taking place in Ukraine, can you, having some firsthand experience, tell us a little bit about what you saw, what you did, and what you found?

00:12:00    DOUGLAS STEVENS

A year ago, when I went into Ukraine, we went from Odessa all the way to Kyrgyzstan, all the way to the front lines, essentially, visiting along the way, doing leadership training, because the churches were asking for that. As people left, all kinds of new people flooded into these churches, which was a surprise to me. I didn't know about that. I wasn't expecting that. I thought maybe they'd be emptied out. But because they are serving so well, not just their own congregation, but the whole community now is looking to the church, even more than the government, which is busy fighting a war to supply those needs. And there are... Of course, other organizations that are there are Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, World Central Kitchen, various other churches in that area. And I had no idea how strong the church was in Ukraine, the evangelical, Protestant, Pentecostal, Catholic working together. Not the Orthodox so much. They tend to be a little bit more aloof. Some of them are still aligned with Russia, even though Russia is the invader. But the other churches working together and mitigating the trauma and the food insecurity and everything else that's needed and providing m

Today we welcome Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. 

Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide.

The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels.

They created the Blood Diamond campaign to counter the De Beers diamond cartel and multiple rebel groups in Africa that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. 

Their findings were also critical for getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and trials for crimes against humanity. 

Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans, which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid-August.

This is part two of a two part episode with Mariah Yager from SMA to cohost the discussion on DOD Integrated Influence. 

Patrick Alley:

Global Witness: https://www.globalwitness.org/

Book, Terrible Humans: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/patrick-alley/terrible-humans/9781800962385/ 

Book, Very Bad People: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/very-bad-people-inside-story-fight-against-corruption/

Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/lUIrYBtkfl4 

SMA version of the interview: SMA version of the interview: https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_31july2024/ 

---

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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special thanks to the Juanes Channel for the intro sample of Desde Que Despierto Hasta Que Duermo. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZCeqUVeRMU

---

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 dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Welcome, Patrick, to the show.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
This is a quick introduction, and then we'll get right into it. Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide. The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels. They created the Blood Diamond Campaign to counter the De Beers Diamond Cartel that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. Their findings were also critical in getting the U .N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and the war crimes trials for crimes against humanity. Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People, in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans. which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid -August. So, welcome, Patrick. With all the unrest in Venezuela, Ukraine, Le Levant, Africa, we live in interesting times.

00:01:36    PATRICK ALLEY
How are you? I'm good, thank you, and thank you very much for asking me to take part. It's a real privilege. I'm a child of the Cold War, and nuclear war was sort of ever -present when I was younger. We were really quite worried about it. And then the world seemed to be quite a nice place for many years. And it seems we've gone back to Cold War II, which is a bit of a worry. Yeah.

00:02:01    JACK GAINES
The reason I brought you on today is because I felt like EOD and the US government overall struggles with strategic competition. We are in action with Russia, China, the four plus one, basically, trying to figure out how to counter their foreign policy goals. And we're finding that they're... more and more using criminal groups or paramilitary groups that have criminal practices to achieve their foreign policy goals. And North and Central Africa are excellent examples with the Russians and Wagner helping to provide coups and then slowly taking over countries' management so that they can get to the mines and to the timber and then selling that to avoid Russian sanctions for the war in Ukraine. Yeah.

00:02:48    PATRICK ALLEY
In the case of Wagner, and I have to give credit to the wonderful US -based organization, The Century, but I talked to them extensively for my book, Terrible Humans, and the Central African Republic, CAR for short, and how Wagner has sort of infiltrated. And many people in this call may know this well, but it was an extremely clever and strategic operation. Obviously, we all know Wagner is sort of the deniable arm of Russian military or foreign policy. But how they wheedled their way in, the Russian resource of Sochi with the new president promising him arms, and in the end, not all of the subjects of that conversation were made public, but what obviously transpired, was the Russians did everything for that guy. So first of all, they gave him personal security through Wagner. Wagner created a troll farm, and so they started manipulating public opinion. The Russians created the ruling political party, the Mouvement de l 'accord, the United Hearts movement in Central African Republic. The national election server is based in Russia. And as they were doing all of this, they were training the army in everything from straightforward combat to torture. And then... Wagner troops were with the army and various rebel groups against other rebel groups throughout Central African Republic, not just trying to win battles, but creating terror. The motto was leave no trace. So mass rape, mass execution was the order of the day. And you're right, they also set up companies, particularly in gold. diamonds and timber. A lot of this obviously became much more relevant when Russia unreaded Ukraine and sanctions started to bite, because these valuable commodities are leaving Central African Republic, as we speak, and making their way, or the money from them making their way to Russia. And when I finished that chapter, before the book was published, Wagner arrived in Niger, and there was a coup, the president was locked up. And I thought to myself, I wonder how long it'll be before the population are waving Russian flags in the streets. And it was the next day. And you think, well, they didn't just arrive overnight. There's something in the planning.

00:05:16    JACK GAINES
Well, you met the guy that goes out there to prep for an event and passes out flags.

00:05:21    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I didn't meet him. I talked to him on Zoom. He was only involved in the Central African example, but it's a really good example. He's called Abdullah Ibrahim. And he was related by marriage to senior people in the government and indeed to the president. And when the new president came in and he was voted in and there was no reason necessarily to think he was going to be awful at that time, this guy went back in and started campaigning politically and building up cells in France, the ruling party amongst the diaspora in France. But then it started getting a bit murky and he was asked, initially to organize welcoming demonstrations so when the first armored vehicles came in from russia they were met by enthusiastic crowds and he was the guy who hired the enthusiastic crowd and bought them the baseball caps and the t -shirts and the flags to wave and gave me the numbers which are frighteningly small i can remember top of my head like 25 30 000 bought a demonstration but then he got even worse and he was asked to impersonate a rebel general, and to call on the killings of these people and those people in order so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:38    JACK GAINES
so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:43    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, black ops, which by that time he felt he had no choice but to do because he was in a very bad situation. In the end, he fled and he's back in France. So basically,

00:06:53    JACK GAINES
basically, Wagner came in, they helped with the governance and security by bringing in forces and training troops. But then they got so close and in tight with leadership in the government, they were able to also dictate the policy within that government and then open up new areas for them to exploit.

00:07:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think what's interesting about it is CAR is perhaps the best documented of the countries they've gone into. That's arguable, but I think it probably is. Wagner have a presence. And I was thinking, actually, just over the last day, what can you do about Wagner? And that's maybe the subject of this conversation or another, whatever you like. But one of the things I didn't think of, because it hadn't happened very often, is what happened in Mali over the last few days, where Wagner actually lost on the battlefield. And I think quite a few Wagner troops were killed. And that's not a common thing. Usually they've had the upper hand. So maybe there's another way.

00:07:57    JACK GAINES
And do you think that is more of an opposition leader frustrated with doing neocolonial control of the region? Do you think that's a reaction to that? Because I know the Tarigs are famously anti -government in most countries.

00:08:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yes, I think they are. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question. And of course, there were links with al -Qaeda, IS, etc. So it could be any number of reasons. I think going to the point you're making, which I think is the really important one about neocolonialism, is that's exactly what Russia is doing. They were doing it in Libya and Syria way before the invasion of Ukraine. But with the invasion of Ukraine, it's become probably much more important to them, I think, because of the resources that Africa holds. So in a sense, it's straight back to the colonialism perpetrated by the British, the Belgians, the French, the Portuguese a century or more ago. It's the same thing. And it's just as brutal. And it's just as essential. And the global north wants those resources. And I think those countries that we've talked about are important in their own right from a resource perspective amongst others. But if you start looking at places like DR Congo, which possesses two -thirds of the world's cobalt, essential for the energy transition, if the same thing happens there, and I believe Russia did sign a military pact with the Congolese government over the last few months, then, you know, you've got a globally significant problem.

00:09:27    JACK GAINES
Right. And we also had talked in the past about how you and Global Witness have also mapped some of Wagner's networks for getting either the resources out or funneling money to Russia in order to avoid sanctions that are going on with Ukraine. I remember you mentioning a gold transfer in the UAE, which now has stopped, correct?

00:09:50    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I mean, UAE, I think, is a very good point to raise because it's kind of mafia central, isn't it? It's where you want to go if you want to launder money or launder resources. So I know the US were particularly looking at the activities of a guy called Colotti, who was one of the major gold refiners in UAE, and literally billions of dollars worth of cash transactions, people actually coming off the streets with gold and walking away over a short period of time with billions of dollars for cash. But I think it goes further than that, because one of the things I mentioned in the book, and this was something I think it was CBS News tracked, is that one of the Aleutian 76 transport planes based in CAR flew into the UAE. They tracked it going there. Another Aleutian 76 flew from Russia to UAE, and those planes shared a runway for eight hours. Then they went back to where they came from. No one actually knows. what happened but my suspicions would be that resources were going out arms or whatever were coming in right in your book you were talking about how small banks in the car were being super funded with millions of dollars those monies were then transferred up into was it russia or was that other points basically well actually it was russia trying to bring money with the exchange of money and and the problem that russia had with that

00:10:58    JACK GAINES
your book you were talking about how small banks in the car were being super funded with millions of dollars those monies were then transferred up into was it russia or was that other points basically

00:11:08    PATRICK ALLEY
that other points basically well actually it was russia trying to bring money with the exchange of money and and the problem that russia had with that was that because most of the correspondent banks, and I think all of the correspondent banks, of banks in CAR are based in France, which theoretically gives the French authorities the ability to monitor transactions. And they thought, well, how are we going to get around that? And then they thought, okay, let's fly the money in by private jet, which is what they resorted to doing in the end.

00:11:37    JACK GAINES
So with Global Witness, they're on the ground where they know people and they've got connections and they're building a case. through these observati

Today we welcome Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. 

Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide.

The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels.

They created the Blood Diamond campaign to counter the De Beers diamond cartel and multiple rebel groups in Africa that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. 

Their findings were also critical for getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and trials for crimes against humanity. 

Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans, which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid-August.

This is a two part episode. Next week we bring in Mariah Yager from SMA to cohost the discussion on DOD Integrated Influence. So, stay tuned. 

LInks:

Today we welcome Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. 

Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide.

The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels.

They created the Blood Diamond campaign to counter the De Beers diamond cartel and multiple rebel groups in Africa that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. 

Their findings were also critical for getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and trials for crimes against humanity. 

Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans, which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid-August.

This is part two of a two part episode with Mariah Yager from SMA to cohost the discussion on DOD Integrated Influence. 

Patrick Alley:

Global Witness: https://www.globalwitness.org/

Book, Terrible Humans: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/patrick-alley/terrible-humans/9781800962385/ 

Book, Very Bad People: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/very-bad-people-inside-story-fight-against-corruption/

Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/lUIrYBtkfl4 

SMA version of the interview: https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_31july2024/ 

---

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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special thanks to the Juanes Channel for the intro sample of Desde Que Despierto Hasta Que Duermo. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZCeqUVeRMU

---

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 dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Welcome, Patrick, to the show.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
This is a quick introduction, and then we'll get right into it. Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide. The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels. They created the Blood Diamond Campaign to counter the De Beers Diamond Cartel that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. Their findings were also critical in getting the U .N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and the war crimes trials for crimes against humanity. Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People, in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans. which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid -August. So, welcome, Patrick. With all the unrest in Venezuela, Ukraine, Le Levant, Africa, we live in interesting times.

00:01:36    PATRICK ALLEY
How are you? I'm good, thank you, and thank you very much for asking me to take part. It's a real privilege. I'm a child of the Cold War, and nuclear war was sort of ever -present when I was younger. We were really quite worried about it. And then the world seemed to be quite a nice place for many years. And it seems we've gone back to Cold War II, which is a bit of a worry. Yeah.

00:02:01    JACK GAINES
The reason I brought you on today is because I felt like EOD and the US government overall struggles with strategic competition. We are in action with Russia, China, the four plus one, basically, trying to figure out how to counter their foreign policy goals. And we're finding that they're... more and more using criminal groups or paramilitary groups that have criminal practices to achieve their foreign policy goals. And North and Central Africa are excellent examples with the Russians and Wagner helping to provide coups and then slowly taking over countries' management so that they can get to the mines and to the timber and then selling that to avoid Russian sanctions for the war in Ukraine. Yeah.

00:02:48    PATRICK ALLEY
In the case of Wagner, and I have to give credit to the wonderful US -based organization, The Century, but I talked to them extensively for my book, Terrible Humans, and the Central African Republic, CAR for short, and how Wagner has sort of infiltrated. And many people in this call may know this well, but it was an extremely clever and strategic operation. Obviously, we all know Wagner is sort of the deniable arm of Russian military or foreign policy. But how they wheedled their way in, the Russian resource of Sochi with the new president promising him arms, and in the end, not all of the subjects of that conversation were made public, but what obviously transpired, was the Russians did everything for that guy. So first of all, they gave him personal security through Wagner. Wagner created a troll farm, and so they started manipulating public opinion. The Russians created the ruling political party, the Mouvement de l 'accord, the United Hearts movement in Central African Republic. The national election server is based in Russia. And as they were doing all of this, they were training the army in everything from straightforward combat to torture. And then... Wagner troops were with the army and various rebel groups against other rebel groups throughout Central African Republic, not just trying to win battles, but creating terror. The motto was leave no trace. So mass rape, mass execution was the order of the day. And you're right, they also set up companies, particularly in gold. diamonds and timber. A lot of this obviously became much more relevant when Russia unreaded Ukraine and sanctions started to bite, because these valuable commodities are leaving Central African Republic, as we speak, and making their way, or the money from them making their way to Russia. And when I finished that chapter, before the book was published, Wagner arrived in Niger, and there was a coup, the president was locked up. And I thought to myself, I wonder how long it'll be before the population are waving Russian flags in the streets. And it was the next day. And you think, well, they didn't just arrive overnight. There's something in the planning.

00:05:16    JACK GAINES
Well, you met the guy that goes out there to prep for an event and passes out flags.

00:05:21    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I didn't meet him. I talked to him on Zoom. He was only involved in the Central African example, but it's a really good example. He's called Abdullah Ibrahim. And he was related by marriage to senior people in the government and indeed to the president. And when the new president came in and he was voted in and there was no reason necessarily to think he was going to be awful at that time, this guy went back in and started campaigning politically and building up cells in France, the ruling party amongst the diaspora in France. But then it started getting a bit murky and he was asked, initially to organize welcoming demonstrations so when the first armored vehicles came in from russia they were met by enthusiastic crowds and he was the guy who hired the enthusiastic crowd and bought them the baseball caps and the t -shirts and the flags to wave and gave me the numbers which are frighteningly small i can remember top of my head like 25 30 000 bought a demonstration but then he got even worse and he was asked to impersonate a rebel general, and to call on the killings of these people and those people in order so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:38    JACK GAINES
so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:43    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, black ops, which by that time he felt he had no choice but to do because he was in a very bad situation. In the end, he fled and he's back in France. So basically,

00:06:53    JACK GAINES
basically, Wagner came in, they helped with the governance and security by bringing in forces and training troops. But then they got so close and in tight with leadership in the government, they were able to also dictate the policy within that government and then open up new areas for them to exploit.

00:07:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think what's interesting about it is CAR is perhaps the best documented of the countries they've gone into. That's arguable, but I think it probably is. Wagner have a presence. And I was thinking, actually, just over the last day, what can you do about Wagner? And that's maybe the subject of this conversation or another, whatever you like. But one of the things I didn't think of, because it hadn't happened very often, is what happened in Mali over the last few days, where Wagner actually lost on the battlefield. And I think quite a few Wagner troops were killed. And that's not a common thing. Usually they've had the upper hand. So maybe there's another way.

00:07:57    JACK GAINES
And do you think that is more of an opposition leader frustrated with doing neocolonial control of the region? Do you think that's a reaction to that? Because I know the Tarigs are famously anti -government in most countries.

00:08:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yes, I think they are. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question. And of course, there were links with al -Qaeda, IS, etc. So it could be any number of reasons. I think going to the point you're making, which I think is the really important one about neocolonialism, is that's exactly what Russia is doing. They were doing it in Libya and Syria way before the invasion of Ukraine. But with the invasion of Ukraine, it's become probably much more important to them, I think, because of the resources that Africa holds. So in a sense, it's straight back to the colonialism perpetrated by the British, the Belgians, the French, the Portuguese a century or more ago. It's the same thing. And it's just as brutal. And it's just as essential. And the global north wants those resources. And I think those countries that we've talked about are important in their own right from a resource perspective amongst others. But if you start looking at places like DR Congo, which possesses two -thirds of the world's cobalt, essential for the energy transition, if the same thing happens there, and I believe Russia did sign a military pact with the Congolese government over the last few months, then, you know, you've got a globally significant problem.

00:09:27    JACK GAINES
Right. And we also had talked in the past about how you and Global Witness have also mapped some of Wagner's networks for getting either the resources out or funneling money to Russia in order to avoid sanctions that are going on with Ukraine. I remember you mentioning a gold transfer in the UAE, which now has stopped, correct?

00:09:50    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I mean, UAE, I think, is a very good point to raise because it's kind of mafia central, isn't it? It's where you want to go if you want to launder money or launder resources. So I know the US were particularly looking at the activities of a guy called Colotti, who was one of the major gold refiners in UAE, and literally billions of dollars worth of cash transactions, people actually coming off the streets with gold and walking away over a short period of time with billions of dollars for cash. But I think it goes further than that, because one of the things I mentioned in the book, and this was something I think it was CBS News tracked, is that one of the Aleutian 76 transport planes based in CAR flew into the UAE. They tracked it going there. Another Aleutian 76 flew from Russia to UAE, and those planes shared a runway for eight hours. Then they went back to where they came from. No one actually knows. what happened but my suspicions would be that resources were going out arms or whatever were coming in right in your book you were talking about how small banks in the car were being super funded with millions of dollars those monies were then transferred up into was it russia or was that other points basically well actually it was russ

Today, Assad Raza interviews Drew Biemer, an energy outreach strategist and senior advisor to the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission. Drew has experience leading domestic and international campaigns to support energy sector projects and came on the show to discuss how Civil and Public Affairs are key to building positive relationships between projects and the population. 

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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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special Thanks to Sahraoui and Fadela for providing the sample of "Mani" from the album Arabic Groove. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCJI52eWDLw&list=PLloxRkIwt8TNujJnQFxjH7kJ0yjKJkpeg&index=7

---

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 dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:39    ASAD RAZA

I'm your host, Asad Raza, and today our guest is Drew Beamer. Drew is a management and communications professional with 20 years of experience in governmental, public, and civil affairs. He is the current administrator of the Site Evaluation Committee, SEC for short, the Agency Directorate for Energy Facility, Sitting, Permitting, and Enforcement of Compliance, in the U .S. state of New Hampshire. Thank you, Drew. I've been following your Baseload Power newsletter on LinkedIn for a while, and you touched on a broad list of topics from leadership to strategy to include civil affairs and information operations. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

00:01:12    DREW BEAMER

1. It's great to be here. So what got you interested in the topic? Well, my early career was spent in political campaign management, and I segged into public affairs on energy and infrastructure projects in my 30s. That was a very interesting time because I got to see firsthand a lot of the strategies and tactics that seemed to work and that seemed to not work in energy and infrastructure development. I've spent a lot of time in the United States and in Africa working on energy projects. And one of the reasons I'm interested in civil affairs as a discipline and as a strategy is a lot of these concepts translate well. into infrastructure development. And I'm definitely a squeaky wheel on this stuff because a lot of the infrastructure developers don't take these things seriously. They believe they can just go in and they can tell you the benefits of a project and that you're going to support it. And then that's it. So I'm passionate about this topic because as the United States strives for our own energy security, as we strive to extend our hegemony throughout the developing world. This topic is extremely important. And as you've mentioned on your podcast before, this is the last three feet of diplomacy. And the last three feet is probably the most important.

00:02:35    ASAD RAZA

Drew, I really like how you are applying civil affairs strategies and information operations to civilian sectors, specifically the infrastructure development. So why are civil affairs strategies important in energy resource development?

00:02:48    DREW BEAMER

Well, one thing that energy developers need to realize, every single boot on the ground, is an arm of this operation. Every single person who interacts with the local community, whether you're a line worker on a utility project or you're a soldier in theater, the tactical missteps can create massive strategic problems. And one of the things that energy developers do not take seriously is that even if you're working on a domestic energy project in the United States, the local population is going to view you as an occupying force. That doesn't mean they'll view you in a negative light. It just means that they will view you as an occupying force. Most of the time, your construction workers and your contractors are going to be new people to the region. They're going to have cultural differences that may rub locals the wrong way. And what you really need to focus on is how do we endear ourselves to the local population? How do we let them know that we're going to be good community partners? is not achieved by simply telling them things. You need to actually build that capital and you need to build that capital before you need it. Because a lot of projects will just parachute in and they'll say, hey, we're here to help support our project. And that's not an effective strategy. You need to be on the ground in advance. You need to be listening to folks. You need to be helping them address their problems. And then once you've built capital, then you can call on that capital when it comes time to build something and you need local support.

00:04:25    ASAD RAZA

Drew, I like the way how you frame that. When we were in Iraq and Afghanistan, they had a saying about the strategic corporal, that corporal that's on the ground engaging with the local population. Any actions that they're doing can have a strategic impact negatively or positively. So what are some of the common pitfalls that developers fall into during the process? There's a phrase called the engineer's fallacy.

00:04:47    DREW BEAMER

the engineer's fallacy. And the engineer's fallacy states that an engineer will interpret any lack of support, any deficit in support as the stakeholders not having all the facts. So what I mean by that is I propose a project. You're a local stakeholder. You oppose the project. The engineer's fallacy says that I will address your opposition with just more facts because I believe in the project so much that I believe. that any opposition from you is just a deficit of facts. I don't take into account that it might be an emotional argument. I don't take into account that I've failed to build capital with you. And this engineer's fallacy is inherent in a lot of civil affairs context. You certainly look at some of the hearts and minds campaigns that we've embarked on in the 20th century and the early 21st century. is you don't win hearts and minds by just telling people why your way of life is the best, right? You don't win hearts and minds on an energy project by going into the region and just selling people on facts alone. You need to build capital with people. So one of the pitfalls that developers fall into is, first of all, they're not in the field early enough. They show up when they support, not before. And then they don't take into account the fact that a lot of these arguments become cultural and or emotional arguments, not necessarily factual arguments. So you need to exercise a good bedside manner. You need to make sure that locals know that you are there to help them solve their problems, rather. And once you've done that effectively, then you're going to get support. or minimally you're going to mitigate opposition.

00:06:43    ASAD RAZA

Interesting when you're talking about the engineer fallacy, engineers motivated or driven by facts when other stakeholders, specifically the local populations, are probably viewing the problem through either emotions or some other interest versus just the facts alone. So how do you shift the mindsets for engineers that are focused on the facts and driven by their own views and help them to look at the problem through the local population's eyes? That's a good question. I would say that civil affairs,

00:07:09    DREW BEAMER

that civil affairs, public affairs, government affairs is important enough that the person running the entire project should be from one of those disciplines. They should not be an engineer. And this goes into a lot of corporate environments and a lot of governmental environments where people promote subject matter experts, the leadership positions. And there's a saying that when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you're an engineer in charge of a major. infrastructure project, every problem looks like an engineering problem. So one of the things that I did in the private sector as a consultant is I would get put over top of these big projects. They could be adjacent to energy development or they could be like disaster power restoration projects. We have to communicate real time with stakeholders in the community and you need to communicate with local elected officials and local governments to give them real time updates. So in those scenarios, they would call on people like me to lead an ad hoc team that we assembled. And that team would include people who are above my pay grade. I mean, they would have people who are directors and VPs of companies. You'd have external consultants. You'd have people who had more experience. And the way that you get them out of that engineer fallacy mindset, you need the person running it to understand the nuances of the campaigns. You need to demonstrate proof of life on your concepts. You need to be able to demonstrate how focusing on things like civil affairs and public affairs make everybody's life easier. Because when you avoid those small tactical missteps, you don't create major strategic blunders for yourself. And the other issue is once you've painted yourself or you've allowed opponents to paint you as an occupying force, anything you do positively or negatively will be held against you. I've worked in scenarios where we were trying to build an energy project and the developer had let the information space get away from them. And they would say things like, we may have to use eminent domain to get the property needed for this project. And people would say, well, that's corporations taking private property. Then the developer would say, well, we're just going to pay a lot of money. We're going to pay several times value for your project. And the opponents would say, now you're just paying people off. You want to avoid those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. And one of the issues, circle back to the crux of your question, is the engineer's fallacy is avoidable for the same reason a lot of these types of issues are avoidable. I would recommend against putting a subject matter expert in charge of one of these projects. You need somebody who's more of a generalist and more of a manager. And just like a military operation, you want the commanding officer to understand all the different components. They don't have to be an expert in all the components, but they have to know how they work synergistically with one another to create a holistic operation. And an engineer, generally speaking, is not going to be very good at that.

00:10:13    ASAD RAZA

That makes sense. Engineers aren't developed to think like that. They're developed to be engineers and be subject matter experts within their field. So which makes sense. You hit something and you're talking about how your competitors can exploit these tactical mishaps. So how can some of these energy projects become proxy wars between their competitors or their meat peers? In the United States, you have a dynamic that's called astroturfing.

00:10:36    DREW BEAMER

a dynamic that's called astroturfing. I'm assuming it exists elsewhere in the world. But astroturfing is basically the manufacturing of grassroots, okay, through dark money. So when one company proposes an energy project, you'll see grassroots opposition crop up. They'll all be singing off the same sheet of music. The messaging will be dialed in. They'll have branded collateral materials. They'll have yard signs. They'll have t -shirts. And I would say nine times out of 10, that opposition is funded and ginned up by whoever your competitor is, usually an industry incumbent. Okay. So there's a dynamic that we've seen in proxy wars in the past hundred years anyway. And that is that In a proxy war, sometimes you want to defeat the enemy, but other times you just want to bog them down. You just want them to bleed out money forever and ever and ever. So you were building a hydroelectric project and your chief competitor in the market was a nuclear power plant. The operators of the nuclear power plant are going to have a cost assessment where they're going to say, if your hydro dam comes online, it's going to cost them X millions of dollars a month in lost revenue. So if it's going to cost X millions of dollars a month in lost revenue, then if they can delay you by a year, they've just made X times 12 in found money. So what they will do is they will hire political operatives to create a grassroots insurgency against your project. And bringing it back to the engineer's fallacy, the grassroots insurgency will be based primarily on emotion. It will be people who... at the grassroots level who've been convinced that your project is going to completely destroy their way of life for one reason or another. It's going to have environmental issues. It's going to have cultural issues. They're going to throw a lot of messages at the wall and they're going to see what sticks because one of these messages is going to saturate. And the engineer's fallacy is people will look at this grassroots opposition and they'll say, well, we can sway them on. facts and reason and logic. We're just going to tell them how clean the power is, how many jobs it's going to create, how it's going to improve energy security and lower energy prices. We keep telling them those facts. They'll have no other choice but to eventually support us. And that works almost as well as going into South Vietnam and telling people that the American way of life is the way everybody should live. absent cultural context, absent building capital, the facts are not going to matter, which is why one of the reasons I say, if you think you're going to build something somewhere, get in the field very, v

Today, we welcome Pavlo Kukhta, Ukrainian Economist and Special Advisor on Reconstruction. Additionally, Mariah Yager from SMA joined me as cohost of the conversation. 

We brought in Pavlo to discuss the current state of conflict reconstruction, the strategy for post-conflict reconstruction, and how to overcome challenges like balancing government oversight with designing a system that removes major corruption while managing Ukraine's transition into the EU. 

I set up this interview because I know that many diplomats, aid workers, and servicemembers are focused on helping Ukraine now and after the 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 [email protected] 

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

---

Pavlo's info: https://ua.linkedin.com/in/pavlo-kukhta-93190091 

SMA version of the interview: https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_20june2024/ 

Special Thanks to Jamming Edward for the music sample. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/lRboIm0tlqE?si=be0Mai-k4EsIQr3h

---

Transcript

00:00:07    Inroduction

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 dot 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 Pavlo Kufta, Ukrainian economist and special advisor on reconstruction, and Mariah Yeager from SMA to co -host the conversation.

00:00:52    JACK GAINES

We brought in Pavlo to discuss the current state of conflict reconstruction and the strategy for post -conflict reconstruction, as well as how to overcome the challenges of balancing government oversight with designing a system that removes major corruption while managing Ukraine's transition into the EU. I set up this interview because I know there are a lot of diplomats, aid workers, and service members focused on helping Ukraine now and after the conflict. So let's get started. I think it's critical that people are looking forward to the future of Ukraine, the vision of where it's going and how it could be. And your work has been seminal in going around the international community, talking to leaders, talking to people about how important it is to support Ukraine in its current fight, but also to look at the future and how Ukraine can be a partner in the international community and how they can help support making that happen.

00:01:48    PAVLO KUFTA

Oh, and by the way, I have to give a warning to you guys. If I drop out suddenly, this means there is a blackout. Because periodically electricity goes out, unfortunately, these days in Ukraine. So I will be back with you in a minute or two. I just simply need to shift to my mobile. Actually, that's kind of my main job these days. I'm working with a whole bunch of companies, mostly European, mostly from Central Europe, on getting them into the reconstruction effort. Right now, a lot of it is focused on energy. We spend about a third of our time here without electricity. I mean, I have a generator in my house. I'm also installing battery systems now. With all that, I should be going more or less independently. Most of Ukrainians actually live in multi -apartment buildings. Millions of families suffer from that, and into the winter it will be even tougher. And here I actually have to thank the American public for their help, because it's actually USAID spearheading the provision of gas generation. the small steel power plant running a natural gas to Ukraine for the winter to actually make it through. Because the blackouts will be with us for a year or two now, but one thing is to periodically have electricity, another is freeze to death in the winter. We really need that equipment here that aid is quite appreciated. It's life -saving.

00:03:17    JACK GAINES

Now, you're private industry, but you're also the senior advisor to the Minister of Finance on... Ukraine Reconstruction, right?

00:03:25    PAVLO KUFTA

Reconstruction. We're actually now out. You've heard about the old team.

00:03:30    JACK GAINES

Yeah, Mr. Mustafa, right? Mustafa is the head of the agency, and Mr. Alexander Kubrick,

00:03:36    PAVLO KUFTA

who was an advisor, he was the deputy prime minister for Reconstruction. Now the team for the Reconstruction is not in limbo, but it's hanging up in the air. We don't know who will be appointed, how will the system work now?

00:03:51    JACK GAINES

Well, like most cabinets in war, people rotate in and out because of stress, because of politics, family, everything else. Well, there's politics in every country, right? Yeah. Because as a private citizen working in a private industry, you're able to continue focusing even as the reshuffles occur.

00:04:09    PAVLO KUFTA

I've been working on that simply as a voice in Ukraine, respected and heard as one of the top economists in the nation, as someone who has close relationships to literally everyone in the government. These are my former colleagues for many years. Some of them I've known for more than a decade we've worked together. So I'm working with everyone, and reconstruction has been my priority since a short stunt at the front lines.

00:04:57    JACK GAINES

We all have skills that we have to go forward with. Right, but your work in economics is much larger.

00:05:04    PAVLO KUFTA

The magnitude is totally different. So since then, I've been engaged mostly in the efforts for reconstruction of Ukraine. I've produced some internal reports to the government and how to help construction so that it is most conducive to private sector. Because my firm opinion is that the key to get Western multinationals,

00:05:27    PAVLO KUFTA

because that is the type of economic agent. or let's say stakeholders that we lack in Ukraine. I mean, there are many multinationals here. They're working here, they're present in the market, but compared to the more successful economies of Eastern Europe who are in the EU, the share of international companies, multinationals present there is much larger. And consequently, the structure of the economy is much different, much less resource -based. more complex, more production -oriented, more knowledge -based. So that is what we want to do, right? We will not be rebuilding this old Soviet industry that has been destroyed by the war. It's useless. Just to illustrate, so these blackouts, why are they happening? Because the Russians have done a concentrated, unfortunately quite successful, assault and sprained on Ukrainian energy system. But what they have destroyed, they have destroyed all power. That's the bulk of the assets that they have wiped out. They've also damaged heavily old hydroelectric dams, but the main problem comes from these full power plants. These were old Soviet assets, essentially in our conditions in Europe destined for being thrown out. We're switching to gas. Europe is switching to green renewables. That's what happened to them anyway. So what the Russians have done is in a very destructive and catastrophic fashion, but they've... If destruction, that would have happened anyway. Because the coal power plants are out. We're not going to lose. But the question is what to build instead. Because depending on the success on that endeavor, that is actually, you know, the definition of victory here for me. Because victory is not just getting Russians out or getting to some stable peace. Victory is throwing them out, drawing the iron curtain behind them. and then rebuilding Ukraine in a way that would clearly make it as successful as its EU natives. Because that way, we will firmly get this territory and this nation into the West, integrate them in such a way where it will become fixed. In the same way as Poland has become fixed as part of the Western alliance, in the same way as Slovakia has become fixed as part of the Western alliance. Even Hungary, with all these political issues around it, political conflicts. still is firmly fixed in NATO, EU, Western political structures, and ultimately it's not about anywhere. And that is actually the goal, which I believe it's not just about restoring justice, it's not just about stopping bloody war, it's also about finally closing that tissue between the two worlds, between the West and the authoritarian Asia that Russia essentially represents. Because if Ukraine is no more in some kind of gray zone where we don't know what it is, the two sides can fight for it. Or at least Russia can pretend it's fighting the West over Ukraine, right? While the West was not really fighting and then had to come in to help Ukraine. So we close that picture. Once that picture is closed, once it's clear to everybody where the border between the two civilization and the border should run on the eastern border of Ukraine.

00:08:38    JACK GAINES

Okay. Have you been working with Parliament on building up better foreign investment laws to protect companies coming in with the government of Ukraine as well as going out into the international community and recruiting foreign investment?

00:08:54    PAVLO KUFTA

Actually, that's kind of what my career was mostly about. It's not about fighting groups or some kind of social justice. It's about an old Soviet corrupt model of the economy where essentially, Whoever is in power, whoever has begun, exploits everyone else, extracts resources from them. Versus the modern, liberal, normal market economy, where people earn money meritocratically, right? Whose ideas is better, who work more devoted wins, resources. And that's how it worked. And that's at the core of this question of Ukraine. Because you hear a lot of talks about Ukrainian corruption. Mostly these go nowhere. either descriptions of some corrupt officials, but this doesn't really tell you the nature of what we're dealing with. And we're dealing with this old legacy, because that is how the Soviet system essentially comes. You had the party and their apparatus, kind of keeping everyone else enslaved and then exploiting them. That's international, that's what Soviet Union was. Since that system did not really collapse, rather there was a kind of gradual transition. The former communists declared themselves now to be nationalists and pretended they are pro -independent Ukraine. Well, really, they are the former party bosses. Unlike to the West, unlike in Poland, where the system crashed and the new people came and the old guys were kicked out, and Ukraine did not happen. And that's why Ukraine went on this different path, much less successful. Because then no really quick and sharp reforms were possible. Well, there was a lot of shock here, but there was no therapy. because there were no real market reform. Instead, there was this mishmash of gradual introduction of market mechanisms into the Soviet system, which allowed to generate future profits, which created dollar guards, which created all kinds of injustices, instead of a normal market economy where you compete in whoever is better with. So that legacy is the problem, and that's what we're trying to get rid. And it's a fight right now. These days, it's a fight. I believe to win it, what we need is a proper... integration into the eu so it's kind of a carrot stick where the country has to change its system in exchange for money but not just giveaways for it to grow just hand something into the budget and you know they pay pensions with it no what we're talking about is an exchange okay you change your environment we give you structural funds to build up infrastructure to attract investment So the reforms create a better environment for the actors which we bring in to then change our economy, kick out the oligarchs. And then in a proper market time, really corruption, it doesn't disappear, right? Then you need a strong state, good institutions to fight it.

00:11:44    MARIAH YEAGER

Thank you. What is the scope for greater political decentralization as a route to limiting corruption?

00:11:52    PAVLO KUFTA

So decentralization has been ongoing in Ukraine. It's been a tool used pretty heavily over Europe. So all European countries were pretty centralized, unlike the U .S. Federal nations, all European countries used to be very centralized at some point. Then they realized that it's very inefficient. And they've started descent. It makes the system more efficient because it introduces competition on the level of local authorities. The decision -making is much closer to people, so it's much more effective and more efficient. It's simply a better system. It's not necessarily a tool for fighting. Because what happens is corruption from the center and it moves to the big cities or towns, local buildings. Not necessarily better. I mean, the examples are everywhere, including the states. We all know, like, towns captured by corrupt officials who then start rigging local election systems. perpetuating themselves in power, even in very developed countries. So these things can happen in any of this environment. So no, decentralization, I would say it's just simply a necessary reform for a modern way of life, because our modern societies are way too complex to be governed for one capital city. And that's why, you know, when people start talking about using some kind of strategist model, free construction of Ukraine, right? Let the state control everything and it will run everything. They don't know what they're talking about because that is exactly the way to create new oligarchy, new corruption, and to fail miserably. We need to keep it as a free market competition, as many Western companies and businesses as we can get, as much Western funding, Wester

Welcome to One CA Podcast.

Today, Brian Hancock talks with Phillip Smith about his experience as commander of the 451 Civil Affairs Brigade, his time as a student at the Army War College and his work designing how Civil Affairs can respond to domestic crises and disasters. 

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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 [email protected] 

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

---

Special thanks to "Traveller" for the sample of Federico Abuele's "Contigo." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-AL7q5mDSc

---

Transcript

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 dot 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    BRIAN HANCOCK

I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I'll be your host for this session. Today we have with us Lieutenant Colonel Philip Smith. He serves on an active duty tour at the Joint Staff J -5 in the Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian Affairs Division. In his civilian capacity, Lieutenant Colonel Smith is an Assistant Attorney General in the State of Texas. where he works on general civil litigation. Quick reminder for the audience, all remarks are solely those of myself and the prosecutors. Now, you've done many things in your 26 -year military career, and can you walk us through your journey where you started in military intelligence, then moved to psychological operations, and now are in civil affairs. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

00:01:29    PHILIP SMITH

Absolutely. So going all the way back to 2002, coming out of Texas Tech, I don't really know that I had a great bead on where I was going to go. And I knew that I wanted to do military intelligence. I recall at advanced camp when I went through in summer of 2001, before 9 -11, we had what you call branch orientation day and all the branches presented their best foot forward. And I recall that we had the G2 from I -Corps there. And he didn't really put on much of a presentation. It was a lot like, hey, I get 5 ,000 or however many applications. And I know that he was addressing the active component there. But I had things pretty well sewn up as far as a unit. The 413th Civil Affairs Battalion was going to take me in as their S -2. So I knew that I had everything locked in. Well, then 9 -11 happened one month almost to the day after graduating from advanced camp. And I recall that they had to rebuild the sessions packets from scratch. Normally by about Thanksgiving, you would get your branch assignments, but we didn't get ours until spring break in March of the next year. So it was a different time moving from there to OBC. I went to Fort Huachuca at a time when seeing the ground invasion in Iraq happened, OIF -1 happened while I was at OBC. And I thought, oh my God, just like everything else that had occurred prior to this time. Desert Storm, Panama. It was going to be over before I had a chance to get over there, participate in something that made history.

00:03:05    BRIAN HANCOCK

You're concerned that it's going to be over before you can go in and lend a hand. That's very impressive. It's what you train for. You never hoped for it,

00:03:12    PHILIP SMITH

for. You never hoped for it, but when it happens, you want to be part of that effort. You want to be part of that victory. And so I moved very quickly afterwards to get to deploy over there. I went with... field artillery battalion for the West Virginia National Guard, and then stayed there for another year. So I did two years back -to -back because the unit that replaced us was the Texas National Guard. And being able to then spend that year in Iraq with those folks was another opportunity that your friends that you grew up with in Iraq can be able to partake in an effort of that magnitude with them. It was just a tremendous opportunity. So I stayed there another year and then came back home, finally, And then went and took a tour after I sat for the LSATs at the Joint Analysis Center and RAF Molesworth from USUCOM, working on counterterrorism capabilities for several North African countries and leading a team that put those together and directing them and helping to guide their efforts was another great opportunity. From there, law school, three years. for 15th Civil Affairs Battalion then after that. And then got back home to Dallas after graduating, went to the 345th PSYOP in Dallas. And from there, had the opportunity to go through the PSYOP -2 course with you and then got ready to deploy to Horn of Africa. Preparing for deployment.

00:04:45    BRIAN HANCOCK

for deployment. Do you remember those heavy days?

00:04:48    PHILIP SMITH

Brian, I absolutely do. And we had a great group in that class. It does seem like a lifetime ago, and that was a great opportunity to be able to exercise those skills that we learned. I think from one of the best in the trade, Greg Cisa, I think absolutely one of the best instructors that we could have hoped for and gotten really prepared us well for deployment. And then also my experience at the SOC pack. built upon those prior experiences. But yes, it has been a while. And I look back fondly. I don't know how fondly I look back at Camp McCall. But, you know,

00:05:26    BRIAN HANCOCK

know, we would take the bad. Now, the coordinating assignment for successful officer careers, of course, battalion command. Now, you were the battalion commander for the 451st Civil Affairs Battalion. What was that lot?

00:05:40    PHILIP SMITH

Just a tremendous experience to be able to work with some of the finest in our profession. in our regiment to take the 451 battalion that was coming off of COVID and in many respects not seeing each other in at least a year. It was a very trying time because you have to have that physical face -to -face. So that was one challenge that we inherited when I took command. We went in two CTC rotations, NTC, JRTC, and then we had a warfighter just before I relinquished commands.

00:06:19    BRIAN HANCOCK

That's a pretty ambitious schedule just coming out of what it mattered to a year at Reset. You're getting back together and trying to establish policies, procedures, stand up training and prepare for the mission. And then the missions just fall in on you back to back. Absolutely. How did you overcome them?

00:06:38    PHILIP SMITH

Correct response to a situation is sometimes no response, but to let the situation transpire a bit, get you a little bit more information and not to knee jerk, I think was one of the biggest lessons that I distilled out of battalion command. Sometimes you need to let things transpire or let your subordinates make the decisions and run with things and not interject. Let them grow and develop or let the situation transpire.

00:07:09    PHILIP SMITH

instance, we had a lot of unsatisfactory participants. And the problem was essentially getting people to physically show up. You mentioned problem solving and everything starts with framing the problem. How do we get people back to drill? So what I did was I sat down with my sergeant major and chaplain, and we decided to develop what we called the battalion wellness working. And what we did through that was we would have the sergeant major, the chaplain. And the first sergeants from the companies sit down and just see how can we engage these soldiers? Who are the problem soldiers that we're recognizing some of these signs and that we're not seeing things that we're having contact with, but we're not able to connect with? And how can we connect and bring them in? And our chaplain was tremendous in being able to facilitate that and provide some ideas and being a conduit for our companies to be able to bring. and reconnect the soldiers. So that post -COVID world was a great challenge. The other one that I have sticking out in my mind was NTC, which was our first CTC rotation. And we had a trucker strike. Our truckers would not cross the picket line to go into California. You just can't make this stuff, right? Not one bit. So I have soldiers there at Fort Irwin with no equipment. And it's, sir, what are we going to do? And basically it was, hey, you're going to have to try to hitch a ride. You know, a lot of it was just questioning the company commander to try to lead him to the right conclusion. And together we worked on it to resolving it was basically a nut you can't crack. You can't materialize those vehicles there. But at the same time, you know, you need some transport. So you're going to have to really knuckle down on that relationship with the supported unit. You're really going to have to do something at least until the strike breaks. So a lot of what I found working with my company commanders, and I had a tremendous slate of company commanders that were great. I had Courtney Bone was my HHC commander during the warfighter. I had Matt Horschow as my Charlie company commander. Both these challenges developed into something where I think that as a commander. You are more of a shepherd insofar as you've got to work with your people and you've got to lead them to the resources. Part of development and growth is to cause them to exercise the six most important inches of real estate on the battlefield. And that's the gray matter between your ears. And I think as commanders, we have to facilitate that.

00:09:43    BRIAN HANCOCK

Right. Give them the estate and give them positive feedback. I think that positive feedback may be something that we don't do the best job in the military. I'm not sure we coach and mentor as effectively as we could at times. But critical to learning, it seems like we have to experience things ourselves for us to really cement that learning. Well, let's look at the flip side. We've talked about some of the challenges. We know that it's not easy to be a battalion commander. And sometimes, at least in Comp3, there have been some difficulties in getting enough people to manage this. So, curious to you for throwing your name in the hat and getting selected. In that time, I imagine it was a very valuable experience, though. Did you do anything particularly novel or anything that you found in your good time? And can you tell us a bit about it?

00:10:31    PHILIP SMITH

Absolutely. I think that each one of those events and the outcomes from them are something that remain a source of pride for me during my command tenure. I think that the legacies that... Sergeant Major Hardy Hay and I left for the 451. I would like to think that they echo to this day. All of them are a testament to the dedication of the soldiers of the 451. One is Resolute Sentinel, Guatemala, where we sent CA teams down there. We had an enduring presence. They're going to Southcom and supporting efforts down there. And to great aplomb to the soldiers down there, that was something I'm proud of and how we were able to achieve effects. And then finally, the three -quarter warfighter exercise, we supported 1st Cavalry Division. A great opportunity to be able to go down there, interface with our active component brothers and sisters, and support them in an exercise of tremendous magnitude. Again, achieved tremendous effects in many cases. I couldn't have been prouder to see our soldiers really shine a light and set the example. That was the capstone for my command.

00:11:40    BRIAN HANCOCK

command. Earlier, we'd see one of the regional groups has had such a kind of doings, filling all the battalion command positions. They did the public report for how to be studied on. I think it was a missed opportunity that many of the battalion commanders that I had talked to and said, look, this is a very demanding timeline. You're looking at, oftentimes, 20 plus hours a week doing various things, whether it's... Signing papers, drafting things, reviewing things, making decisions, building plans, political coordinations, etc. So you've got that road when you are sitting as a battalion commander. Then you've got clearly a very challenging civilian career. Do you have any advice for the audience, those folks who find themselves in a very demanding civilian job, at the same time as a very demanding military job? How do you manage your time to make sure that you stay healthy?

00:12:37    PHILIP SMITH

I found that really kind of prioritizing things helps and sitting down and setting the time aside for all of those aspects that you mentioned really helps. And I've found just from other leaders and mentors that I've talked to and worked with, and this is what I've adopted, is setting aside the time to give to each one of those aspects every day. Obviously, when not on orders, what am I going to do? I've got a lot more time dedicated than to the civilian job. But I always set aside at least maybe an hour every day or period of time to look at the prioritized issues, especially when in command, what's being presented to. Now, that's not to say that fires don't pop up, things don't occur that demand immediate attention. heavily empowered my subordinates. I think you've got one battle as a commander where you really knuckle down on assessing your AGR full -time staff leadership. That paramount when you take command because those are the folks you're going to be relying on and you've got to assess everything. Exactly. And those are the people that are going to become the threshold filter and you've got to assess your confidence in them and where that contours of that confidence lie. And so, I was always confident in my operations officers that I gave them signature authority. My SSA, I gave Ms. Glasgow 451, I gave her signature authority because I could trust them. And that's the thing, trust and confidence. A

Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book "In The Shadows," where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on Earth. 

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson and, after his death, transforms his legacy into the non-profit Global Reach, where he now brings in a community of people to continue the work. 

This is part two of a two-part episode. Check out last week's episode to hear part one. 

Global Reach Website: https://www.reach.global/

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-High-Stakes-Negotiations-Americans-Captured

----

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 [email protected] 

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

---

Today's music is a tribute to James Chance, who passed away this week. The solo is from his album White Cannable. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/vUfcWDHMEQY?si=gPGLKe6_05aFSE24

---

Transcript

00:00:01    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 dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book In the Shadows, where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on earth.

00:00:49    JACK GAINES

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson, and then after his death, transforming his legacy, into a nonprofit called Global Reach. This is the first of a two -part episode. The second part will air next week. Enjoy. I really appreciate you guys reaching out. I did finish the book. It was great. And in my perception of it, it kind of encapsulates the work and legacy of Governor Richardson and then that transformation that you had to do with his death into Global Reach. So it was kind of both a historical document. and continuing the work through the aggregate of other specialists in the field, and then continuing on with the mission. Is that similar? Am I right on your goals?

00:01:36    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, no, you're right. It's interesting because, look, I wrote the book. Obviously, the governor was alive, and he hasn't even read it because I was waiting until the manuscript was final in order to share it with him because the governor referred to him as Gov. He was like my six -year -old father. You know, father figure, but also juvenile as a six -year -old. And I knew for the first time in his life, somebody else was telling the stories and the role that he played and not him. And that's a great thing to have. And I think it comes out really, really well in the book, but I knew that he's going to nitpick and find something and give me hell for it. So I was really, really dreading. point. And so I wanted to give it to him when it's done, when I can't do anything about it. It's already published, boss. What can you say? But then he died. And I'm sad that he didn't get to read it. But after he died, I figured that I can't publish a book and not address his death. So basically, I wrote it in one day. I wrote this section to him and telling the story of how I found out and then touching on the first mission that we did after his death. And that's where Global Reach kind of came in. So it was not intentional in the design of the book, but out of circumstances, it was important to convey that this continues. And not only that, the mission to Venezuela, where the book ends with us going, the book does not cover the actual mission and the fact that 13 Americans came home in December, partially because of that mission. So I like that dynamic. At some point, you have to cut.

00:03:13    JACK GAINES

You have to because you're constantly on another mission. Correct.

00:03:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

Because they just continue to go.

00:03:18    JACK GAINES

Yeah. Reading that last portion, that was my perception is you were focused absolutely on a good ceremony and burial for the governor. But this Venezuela issue was on the back of your neck the whole time. And so to me, reading it, it felt like you were like, all right, the best way to appreciate this is after the ceremony. Get back to work and finish his mission, his goals, and then find a path forward from there.

00:03:43    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, and not only that, we had the trip to Venezuela was planned before he died. And we had a whole process. We knew exactly where the deal was stuck. We had an idea for it. We wanted also to make sure that the two Green Berets that were there in Venezuela, Luke Denman and Aaron Berry, are included in it because they were never designated. by the U .S. government as wrongfully detained, we were very worried that they would not be included. So we needed to get that commitment directly from the Venezuelan leadership to lock them into the deal. And we had that all set up to the extent that the day before the governor died, I actually shared with the families that were going. And then when I got the news the next day, and I was like, the first thing, of course, is the personal grief that you have. The second thing is, oh, shoot, he was my access over there. He had a relationship with Maduro. He had a relationship with Jorge Rodriguez. You know, I was like, oh my God. And it took about 24 hours to figure out, oh, he would love me to use his death for one last mission of rescue. In the WhatsApp group of the team and of the mission, we call that group the governor's last rescue.

00:04:56    JACK GAINES

Right. Wow. And that brings up an interesting point.

00:04:59    JACK GAINES

brings up an interesting point. And that is what in the tech community, they call the founder's curse. And that is the founder starts a movement or an organization and they are so entrenched in the details in the process that it's hard for them to separate the program from themselves. And often if that transformation doesn't happen, the legacy dies with the person. Almost sounds like he brought you in because he was considering his legacy and brought you into the fold and in the details to the point where he didn't predict his death. But he knew that by bringing some people like you and others in to understand the details and the nug work within the negotiations, he was sort of a life preserver to the mission versus passing away and the whole thing just goes flat.

00:05:45    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, well, it's funny because, look, in his mind, he was immoral. Yeah. Of course, like typically they are. And he had a huge personality and a huge presence. And I worked with him for 17 years. You know, he gave me compliments and then he would balance them with punches. That's typically his management style, which was a lot of fun, right? But towards, in the last couple of years, he had these little sessions with me that were just so uncharacteristic to him. We just like to say, Mickey, you're better than everybody else just because you don't have a government title. Don't you realize that you get it better than the high officials? So he was very encouraging from that perspective, but he never spoke to me about what happens after. That is a conversation that we had without him, with his board, not because we expected him to die. Obviously, he died too soon. There was no underlying disease there or something that was expected. It was a surprise, but his mortality was not a surprise. And so we had that conversation. And then with the board immediately after, with the board of directors of the organization, because you're right, it's not the first government organization that I worked with. I've seen the founders curse. I've seen what happened immediately after the founders death, not even stepping away and retiring, just death. There is so much emotions and nostalgia because the board is made of his friends. Right.

00:07:10    JACK GAINES

Or chaos because no one knows all of the different things that are going on in the process and they have to rediscover it. Yeah.

00:07:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

But emotionally, we were all, including myself, like, oh, my God, we have to create a legacy. We have to continue with this. And everybody's like, no, we'll step in. We'll make sure it happens. And I remember the day after his funeral, breakfast with the board. Just informal. It wasn't a board meeting. It was just breakfast. Just to debrief. And I told him, look, the governor and I actually had a conversation after Kofi Annan passed away. The Kofi Annan Foundation kept the name, and they wanted to keep this because they were. blown in with that kind of emotional response to it. But we talked about how it just feels like all they're doing right now is fundraising full time just to keep the lights on. But there's no substance left. And it's a miserable way for an organization to die out. And so I raised it with the board. I said, look, we can try. We can see if there's sustainability in it just for a couple of months to see where things settle. But I know that despite our very raw emotions right now, life continues. And life happens. And I do not want to spend all of our time just keeping the lights on because that's not what he would love. He wanted to find a way to keep the work going. So if we can't keep it as Richardson's center and there is a law of diminishing returns on the name, let me work and put a proposal in front of the board of what it looks like to do the different pieces of this legacy. One, of course, hostages and prisoners, which is a huge chunk. And that came out to be global reach. Another one was around the program we did with the Rohingyas and humanitarian work that we did. And that we basically have moved it, found a different home for it. It's going to continue at the Stimson Center instead of the Richardson Center with the funder that funded it is moving there with our guy, Steve Ross, who's the director of that program. So he's moving over there as well. And third, I wanted more of a name legacy piece. And that's when we established and announced the... The Bill Richardson Heart of a Patriot Award, which we hope will be known as the Billy. We're trying to make that stick. And that's going to be awarded every year at the Foley Foundation Gala. And the award is going to be given to former political and policy principals that, after leaving government, use their credentials and their gravitas to help bring Americans home.

00:09:35    JACK GAINES

Let's just make it stick. Let's just start calling it the Billy Awards. I like the Billy.

00:09:37    MICHEY BERGMAN

like the Billy. The Billies. The Oscars, we have the Billies.

00:09:43    JACK GAINES

Well, I apologize if I cut you off on your string, but that makes total sense. So how do you guys stay afloat? If it's something sensitive, I won't add it to the show. Oh, no,

00:09:52    MICHEY BERGMAN

no, no, absolutely. No, as you can tell, we're an open book. We love that. So we were lucky enough that during the pandemic, because there was just no commercial flights, but we still had hostages and we still needed to go there and get people out. And the governor has met an American businessman named Steve Menzies. He's an insurance guy out of Omaha. He runs a reinsurance company called Applied Underwriters. And he's done very well for himself financially. But he's one of those, you don't see him flying rockets to space. He's a quiet guy. He does his thing. And he and the governor got to this. He said, hey, you can use my jet for some of these missions, especially in places that you can't go commercially. Right. But I'm coming with you.

00:10:37    JACK GAINES

Of course, he wants the experience. He wants to feel a part of the cause. Yeah,

00:10:41    MICHEY BERGMAN

he came with us in the middle of the pandemic on a mission to Venezuela. Later on, he did a few other missions with us to Russia, including the return and recovery of the Taylor Dudley. That was a month after Brittany Griner came home and we went to Russia and got the former Navy guy, Taylor Dudley, out. That's the one where you're driving through Poland.

00:10:59    JACK GAINES

the one where you're driving through Poland. That is correct. And that was Steve's plane.

00:11:01    MICHEY BERGMAN

is correct. And that was Steve's plane. But it's not only his plane. At that point, he already started integrating his logistics skills into this and helping us really set this up. And so when the governor passed away, Steve and I sat together and he said, Mickey, we have to continue this, not only for the name of his legacy, but for the work that it is. And he says, but. I'm no Governor Richardson. I know that what he did with you was unique. So you tell me, Nicky, if you didn't have budget constraints, how would you build that and structure this in a post -Richardson world to be not only as good as what you did, but better? And so he gave me basically a blank check to put a structure together. And we looked at, A, the piece of what we did with the governor, which was this intergovernmental mediation and negotiations. And on that, I said, well, I'm going to run that part, but I'm not going to replace Governor Richardson with a single person because there isn't such one person.

00:11:58    JACK GAINES

Right. You did an aggregate.

00:12:00    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. I wanted a bunch of people that we have worked with over the years, former diplomats, former politicians, Republicans, Democ

Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book "In The Shadows," where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on Earth. 

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson and, after his death, transforms his legacy into the non-profit Global Reach, where he now brings in a community of people to continue the work. 

This is the first of a two-part episode. The second part will come out next week. 

Global Reach Website: https://www.reach.global/

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-High-Stakes-Negotiations-Americans-Captured

----

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 [email protected] 

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

---

Today's music is a tribute to James Chance, who passed away this week. The solo is from his album White Cannable. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/vUfcWDHMEQY?si=gPGLKe6_05aFSE24

---

Transcript

00:00:01    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 dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book In the Shadows, where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on earth.

00:00:49    JACK GAINES

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson, and then after his death, transforming his legacy, into a nonprofit called Global Reach. This is the first of a two -part episode. The second part will air next week. Enjoy. I really appreciate you guys reaching out. I did finish the book. It was great. And in my perception of it, it kind of encapsulates the work and legacy of Governor Richardson and then that transformation that you had to do with his death into Global Reach. So it was kind of both a historical document. and continuing the work through the aggregate of other specialists in the field, and then continuing on with the mission. Is that similar? Am I right on your goals?

00:01:36    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, no, you're right. It's interesting because, look, I wrote the book. Obviously, the governor was alive, and he hasn't even read it because I was waiting until the manuscript was final in order to share it with him because the governor referred to him as Gov. He was like my six -year -old father. You know, father figure, but also juvenile as a six -year -old. And I knew for the first time in his life, somebody else was telling the stories and the role that he played and not him. And that's a great thing to have. And I think it comes out really, really well in the book, but I knew that he's going to nitpick and find something and give me hell for it. So I was really, really dreading. point. And so I wanted to give it to him when it's done, when I can't do anything about it. It's already published, boss. What can you say? But then he died. And I'm sad that he didn't get to read it. But after he died, I figured that I can't publish a book and not address his death. So basically, I wrote it in one day. I wrote this section to him and telling the story of how I found out and then touching on the first mission that we did after his death. And that's where Global Reach kind of came in. So it was not intentional in the design of the book, but out of circumstances, it was important to convey that this continues. And not only that, the mission to Venezuela, where the book ends with us going, the book does not cover the actual mission and the fact that 13 Americans came home in December, partially because of that mission. So I like that dynamic. At some point, you have to cut.

00:03:13    JACK GAINES

You have to because you're constantly on another mission. Correct.

00:03:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

Because they just continue to go.

00:03:18    JACK GAINES

Yeah. Reading that last portion, that was my perception is you were focused absolutely on a good ceremony and burial for the governor. But this Venezuela issue was on the back of your neck the whole time. And so to me, reading it, it felt like you were like, all right, the best way to appreciate this is after the ceremony. Get back to work and finish his mission, his goals, and then find a path forward from there.

00:03:43    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, and not only that, we had the trip to Venezuela was planned before he died. And we had a whole process. We knew exactly where the deal was stuck. We had an idea for it. We wanted also to make sure that the two Green Berets that were there in Venezuela, Luke Denman and Aaron Berry, are included in it because they were never designated. by the U .S. government as wrongfully detained, we were very worried that they would not be included. So we needed to get that commitment directly from the Venezuelan leadership to lock them into the deal. And we had that all set up to the extent that the day before the governor died, I actually shared with the families that were going. And then when I got the news the next day, and I was like, the first thing, of course, is the personal grief that you have. The second thing is, oh, shoot, he was my access over there. He had a relationship with Maduro. He had a relationship with Jorge Rodriguez. You know, I was like, oh my God. And it took about 24 hours to figure out, oh, he would love me to use his death for one last mission of rescue. In the WhatsApp group of the team and of the mission, we call that group the governor's last rescue.

00:04:56    JACK GAINES

Right. Wow. And that brings up an interesting point.

00:04:59    JACK GAINES

brings up an interesting point. And that is what in the tech community, they call the founder's curse. And that is the founder starts a movement or an organization and they are so entrenched in the details in the process that it's hard for them to separate the program from themselves. And often if that transformation doesn't happen, the legacy dies with the person. Almost sounds like he brought you in because he was considering his legacy and brought you into the fold and in the details to the point where he didn't predict his death. But he knew that by bringing some people like you and others in to understand the details and the nug work within the negotiations, he was sort of a life preserver to the mission versus passing away and the whole thing just goes flat.

00:05:45    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, well, it's funny because, look, in his mind, he was immoral. Yeah. Of course, like typically they are. And he had a huge personality and a huge presence. And I worked with him for 17 years. You know, he gave me compliments and then he would balance them with punches. That's typically his management style, which was a lot of fun, right? But towards, in the last couple of years, he had these little sessions with me that were just so uncharacteristic to him. We just like to say, Mickey, you're better than everybody else just because you don't have a government title. Don't you realize that you get it better than the high officials? So he was very encouraging from that perspective, but he never spoke to me about what happens after. That is a conversation that we had without him, with his board, not because we expected him to die. Obviously, he died too soon. There was no underlying disease there or something that was expected. It was a surprise, but his mortality was not a surprise. And so we had that conversation. And then with the board immediately after, with the board of directors of the organization, because you're right, it's not the first government organization that I worked with. I've seen the founders curse. I've seen what happened immediately after the founders death, not even stepping away and retiring, just death. There is so much emotions and nostalgia because the board is made of his friends. Right.

00:07:10    JACK GAINES

Or chaos because no one knows all of the different things that are going on in the process and they have to rediscover it. Yeah.

00:07:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

But emotionally, we were all, including myself, like, oh, my God, we have to create a legacy. We have to continue with this. And everybody's like, no, we'll step in. We'll make sure it happens. And I remember the day after his funeral, breakfast with the board. Just informal. It wasn't a board meeting. It was just breakfast. Just to debrief. And I told him, look, the governor and I actually had a conversation after Kofi Annan passed away. The Kofi Annan Foundation kept the name, and they wanted to keep this because they were. blown in with that kind of emotional response to it. But we talked about how it just feels like all they're doing right now is fundraising full time just to keep the lights on. But there's no substance left. And it's a miserable way for an organization to die out. And so I raised it with the board. I said, look, we can try. We can see if there's sustainability in it just for a couple of months to see where things settle. But I know that despite our very raw emotions right now, life continues. And life happens. And I do not want to spend all of our time just keeping the lights on because that's not what he would love. He wanted to find a way to keep the work going. So if we can't keep it as Richardson's center and there is a law of diminishing returns on the name, let me work and put a proposal in front of the board of what it looks like to do the different pieces of this legacy. One, of course, hostages and prisoners, which is a huge chunk. And that came out to be global reach. Another one was around the program we did with the Rohingyas and humanitarian work that we did. And that we basically have moved it, found a different home for it. It's going to continue at the Stimson Center instead of the Richardson Center with the funder that funded it is moving there with our guy, Steve Ross, who's the director of that program. So he's moving over there as well. And third, I wanted more of a name legacy piece. And that's when we established and announced the... The Bill Richardson Heart of a Patriot Award, which we hope will be known as the Billy. We're trying to make that stick. And that's going to be awarded every year at the Foley Foundation Gala. And the award is going to be given to former political and policy principals that, after leaving government, use their credentials and their gravitas to help bring Americans home.

00:09:35    JACK GAINES

Let's just make it stick. Let's just start calling it the Billy Awards. I like the Billy.

00:09:37    MICHEY BERGMAN

like the Billy. The Billies. The Oscars, we have the Billies.

00:09:43    JACK GAINES

Well, I apologize if I cut you off on your string, but that makes total sense. So how do you guys stay afloat? If it's something sensitive, I won't add it to the show. Oh, no,

00:09:52    MICHEY BERGMAN

no, no, absolutely. No, as you can tell, we're an open book. We love that. So we were lucky enough that during the pandemic, because there was just no commercial flights, but we still had hostages and we still needed to go there and get people out. And the governor has met an American businessman named Steve Menzies. He's an insurance guy out of Omaha. He runs a reinsurance company called Applied Underwriters. And he's done very well for himself financially. But he's one of those, you don't see him flying rockets to space. He's a quiet guy. He does his thing. And he and the governor got to this. He said, hey, you can use my jet for some of these missions, especially in places that you can't go commercially. Right. But I'm coming with you.

00:10:37    JACK GAINES

Of course, he wants the experience. He wants to feel a part of the cause. Yeah,

00:10:41    MICHEY BERGMAN

he came with us in the middle of the pandemic on a mission to Venezuela. Later on, he did a few other missions with us to Russia, including the return and recovery of the Taylor Dudley. That was a month after Brittany Griner came home and we went to Russia and got the former Navy guy, Taylor Dudley, out. That's the one where you're driving through Poland.

00:10:59    JACK GAINES

the one where you're driving through Poland. That is correct. And that was Steve's plane.

00:11:01    MICHEY BERGMAN

is correct. And that was Steve's plane. But it's not only his plane. At that point, he already started integrating his logistics skills into this and helping us really set this up. And so when the governor passed away, Steve and I sat together and he said, Mickey, we have to continue this, not only for the name of his legacy, but for the work that it is. And he says, but. I'm no Governor Richardson. I know that what he did with you was unique. So you tell me, Nicky, if you didn't have budget constraints, how would you build that and structure this in a post -Richardson world to be not only as good as what you did, but better? And so he gave me basically a blank check to put a structure together. And we looked at, A, the piece of what we did with the governor, which was this intergovernmental mediation and negotiations. And on that, I said, well, I'm going to run that part, but I'm not going to replace Governor Richardson with a single person because there isn't such one person.

00:11:58    JACK GAINES

Right. You did an aggregate.

00:12:00    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. I wanted a bunch of people that we have worked with over the years, former diplomats, former politicians, Republicans, Democrats,

Today, we welcome back Major Gustavo Ferreira, a Civil Affairs agriculturalist.
 
Gus originally came on episode 123 to discuss agriculture's impacts on foreign policy. 

Gus has published two articles, 
"Does China Have Enough Food to Go to War?" and 
"Taiwan's Food Resiliency—or Not—in a Conflict with China."

After publishing, Gus was interviewed on this show, which resulted in an interview with the Economist, a session at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 

and now resulting in a congressional testimony with the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission.
 
Gus was joined by two others but for this episode, I will only focus on his testimony and discussion with the commission. I'll include links for the full testimony and papers in the show notes. 

----

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 [email protected] 

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

---

Links: Commission link: https://www.uscc.gov/hearings/chinas-stockpiling-and-mobilization-measures-competition-and-conflict

Does China Have Enough Food to Go to War? https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/PDF-UA-docs/Ferreira-UA.pdf

Taiwan's Food Resiliency—or Not—in a Conflict with China
https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/10/

Special Thanks to Joyful Jamboree · CM BGM Room Bossa Nova In The Café ℗ Cloud Media Released on: 2023-05-16 Producer: CM BGM Room Composer: CM BGM Room Music Publisher: CM BGM Room. 

Retrieved from https://youtube.com/watch?v=YCTzOnKNaSQ&si=v2hajnhu77yw3FzU

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Transcript

00:00:02    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    House Chair

We'll begin with Dr. Gustavo Ferreira, Senior Agricultural Economist with USDA and a Civil Affairs Ag Officer in the U .S. Army Reserve.

00:00:46    Introduction

Today we welcome back Major Gustavo Ferreira, a Civil Affairs Agriculturalist. Gus originally came on Episode 123 to discuss agriculture's impacts on foreign policy. Gus had published two articles, Does China Have Enough Food to Go to War and Taiwan's Food Resiliency or Not in a Conflict with China. After publishing, Gus was interviewed on this show, which resulted in an interview with The Economist and a session at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and is now resulting in a congressional testimony with the U .S. Economic and Security Review Commission. Gus was joined by two others. But for this episode, I will only focus on his testimony and the discussion with the commission. I'll include links in the show notes for the full testimony and papers. Enjoy.

00:01:37    House Chair

Dr. Ferreira will assess China's dependence on foreign agriculture. Next, we're happy to welcome back Dave Collins, Baker Botts Fellow in Energy and Environmental Regulatory Affairs at Rice University's Baker Institute. Mr. Collins will assess Beijing's strategic energy reserves. Finally, we'll hear from Dr. Zoe Liu, our Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Liu will detail China efforts and sanctions prove it to come. Thanks again to all the witnesses for your testimony. The Commissioners are very much looking forward to your remarks. I'll remind all the witnesses to please limit their remarks to seven minutes. And Dr. Ferreira, we'll begin with you.

00:02:16    GUSTAVO FERREIRA

Thank you. Good morning. Commissioners and staff, thank you very much for inviting me to this hearing. Please note that I'm not here today on behalf of the U .S. Department of Agriculture or the Department of Defense, and I'm speaking only for myself. My testimony discussed the intersect between food security and national security in the People's Republic of China, and specifically focused on grains. This issue is of the highest importance for the PRC's government, and therefore, it should warrant our attention here in the United States. For millennia, the ruling class in this country has been extremely sensitive about ensuring food security for its population, gives the precedence of famines and food crises that trigger political instability and regime collapse. While the PRC is the largest food producer in the world and has made remarkable progress in the food security space, the country also faces growing challenges to feed its population of 1 .4 billion people. Furthermore, recent events such as the African swine fever outbreaks or the war in Ukraine revealed fragilities in the PRC food system. One must understand that the term food security translates literally to grain security in the Chinese language. Not surprisingly, the nation established self -sufficient targets at 95 % or higher for rice, corn, and wheat. Despite early successes, self -sufficiency rates for some food products fell below those targets. And in early 2000s, BRC's imports of grains and oilseeds began to soar to unprecedented levels. The country is now the world's largest buy of key agricultural commodities. As an illustrated example, in the year 2000, the PRC combined imports of corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans were just above 10 million metric tons. Fast forward to 2023, and those same imports surged to 140 million metric tons. This 1 ,200 % increase was mostly driven by soybeans. as the PRC now accounts for about 60 % of the world's soybean imports, mostly supplied by the United States and Brazil. Early on, the United States was the PRC's top soybean supplier, but in the past 15 years, Brazil gradually claimed that title. As a response to this growing import dependency, General Secretary Xi Jinping made food security a national priority, and under its leadership, the PRC is now employing a multi -pronged approach to tackle this issue. Some of the main policies that I would like to highlight here include significant increases in public investment in agricultural research and development, the goal of boosting agricultural production and the domestic seed industry. Another one is the diversification of the PRC pool of agricultural suppliers to mitigate geopolitical risk for the United States. Also, a notice of expansion grain stockpiles, but these are a state secret. Therefore, outsiders can only speculate about their location, true size, and quality. Nevertheless, official communications state that the PRC has built nearly 700 metric tons of grain storage capacity. Furthermore, USDA data provide evidence that the PRC has amassed very large commodity stockpiles. As an example, in 2023, the PRC alone accounted for 67 % of the world's corn stocks and nearly 60 % of the world's rice stocks. Another important note here has to do with the question of how long this strategic research will last. in the event of a conflict or major disruptions to trade. Evidence seems to indicate that the PRC has somewhere between one to two years' worth of stocks. However, there are also questions about the conditions of those stockpiles, given the complexities and the difficulties associated with maintaining the quality of so much grain over time. Despite its efforts to improve its food security status, the PRC faces significant challenges in the future, and I would like to highlight a few. First, the loss and shortage of farmland due to rapid urbanization, widespread pollution, and uses of land for other non -agriculture purposes. Second, climate change and its impacts on agriculture production, not only in the PRC, also in Maine's supply in nations. Third, decreased availability of agricultural labor, which constrained ongoing efforts to expand domestic agriculture production. And the last one, water scarcity. The United Nations assessed that the PRC is now facing extreme water shortages due to growing demands for the agricultural sector, rapid urbanization, and pervasive pollution of water sources. Climate change will only worsen water shortage in the PRC. The bottom line is that it is very difficult for outsiders to discern whether the PRC's actions to improve its food security are just a government reaction to this structural challenge or another step in the preparation for conflict. Nevertheless, U .S. observers should attempt to identify and monitor developments in the PRC's food and agriculture space, especially those that deviate from normal market signals that could be part of a large political capitalist. An example of such an indicator would be the noticeable surge in soybean and soybean imports in the context of very low profit margins with Chinese hog farms or decreasing domestic demand for pork meat. Our main policy recommendation focuses on improving our ability to better assess the true food security situation in the PRC. To achieve that, I propose a close collaboration between non -Title 10 and 50 federal agencies that have expertise in agriculture and trade and the intelligence community, which will collect new information and data related to PRC's food security space. Such cooperation could yield important wins, such as identification of early food -related indicators that may signal potential preparation for conflict. Lastly, if the United States is to effectively leverage the PRC dependency of food imports as part of a broader economic statecraft, it will need to work closely with other global agriculture powerhouses such as Brazil, Argentina, Australia, or Ukraine. This will involve strengthening our economic and diplomatic ties with these nations. perhaps even beginning to design compensation mechanisms that will incentivize nations to use agricultural trade to pressure the PRC in the event of a conflict.

00:08:21    House Chair

Thank you, Dr. Ferreira. Going in, reverse alphabetical order. Start with Mr. Wessel. One benefit of having a last name starting with a W on this commission. Thank you all for being here. If I could get a fairly quick answer to my first question, because I have some others, but... As we look at the potential lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I think it surprised a lot of people as to the duration or the durability of the conflict. Have you seen an acceleration of stockpiling and other activities resulting from the duration of that, meaning that they think that the ability to sustain sanctions, or that a conflict could be of greater duration that they have to plan for more stockpiles. Thank you for your great question.

00:09:09    GUSTAVO FERREIRA

The conflict in Ukraine brought agriculture issues front and center, specifically strategic importance of grains and oil seeds. And he caught China right in the middle of an effort to expand his pool of suppliers. Ukraine was regarded as a key actor in their strategy. So that threw a kink in that plan. But what he did, he did alter the course in terms of stockpiling and increasing food self -revisation in the food space. I think he just accelerated. He really alerted the Chinese authorities about the perils of food supply chains, especially in an environment where some commodities are literally in the hands of two or three producers globally. And it takes one to be knocked out of the system to bring a lot of... external shocks to the markets. So, yeah, so I'll say it just confirmed the course and the need for the certain policies that are in place. Okay.

00:10:09    House Chair

Do you have any, is there any current reporting that you're aware of that would indicate sufficient capabilities to execute on a Taiwan contingency, or do we not know? For the food security space,

00:10:23    GUSTAVO FERREIRA

the Achilles heel, The PRC truly is the dependency on imported oil seeds. The thing is, in terms of how the PRC government is approaching this, first, it had to be acknowledged that we don't know the size of their stockpiles. As I stated before, it's a state secret. But even from conversations with colleagues, even the central government, Albert does not even know the true size of those stockpiles. I mean, they're massive. They're scattered across the provinces. There's issues with data, accuracy of data, reliability of some provisional data. So in terms of how to address this issue, the PRC knows there's no quick solution to it. And actually, the way they address it is eating the elephant one bite at a time. But none of those solutions will ever fix the issue. And I'll give you an example. So South America itself produces enough soybeans to supply the animal needs of China. However, that will put them on a very precarious situation because they will literally depend on the weather and crop conditions. One of the lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

00:11:42    SPEAKER_03

lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I think it surprised a lot of people as to the duration or the durability of the conflict.

00:11:53    SPEAKER_03

Either of the first two witnesses seen an acceleration of stockpiling and other activities resulting from the duration of that, meaning that they think that the ability to sustain sanctions or that a conflict could be of greater duration, that they have to plan for more stockpiles. Mr. Ferrer, can you start?

00:12:17    GUSTAVO FERREIRA

Sure. In the agriculture space, I think... Remaining a reliable and affordable supplier of food products to the PRC is probably the best tourist that we can design. We are intrinsically connected by this massive trade. And a conflict with the PRC will obviously result in the loss of that market and will have significant structural shocks into our agricultural sector. Now, if we want to be proactive and prepare ourselves and lean forward. We'll have to start designing policies of what to do with those surplus. We already started to diversify our exports to

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.

----

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 [email protected] 

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

----

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

---

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 profoun

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 [email protected] 

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

----

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

---

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 t

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

----

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

---

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

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

-----

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

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 anyb

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/

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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

---

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

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Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

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00:00:04    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website, at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Today we welcome 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

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 

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Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:12:37    JACK GAINES
former fascist

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

00:13:16    PATRICK PASSEWITZ
Right. Well, one thing I thought was interesting is that, yes, they reinstated judges, but they also had the Army legal system oversee the judgments. So it was as if they were auditing to make sure that they're following their own rules and laws, as well as international rule of law, effectively before they would back off and let them do their job. But they continued to monitor in case someone sta

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

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

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. 

---

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/

---

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 KaraokeMedia

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

------

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Assad Raza

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.

00:00:42    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, Capt

Recently, I partnered with SMA's Mariah Yager to talk with Professor Beatrice Houser about post-conflict stabilization. 

“In Kuwait, preparing for the Iraq invasion, I asked the leadership, ‘Could you give us a little more detail about after we get to Baghdad and topple the regime? ' [The answer] was more than inadequate.’” -David Petraeus, speaking at Carnegie.

The U.S. and the West recently suffered monumental failures in planning and implementing post-conflict stabilization, resulting in massive corruption, instability and loss of foreign policy goals.

[Charley Wilson’s War]. “These things happened. They were glorious, and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame.” -Charley Wilson’s end-of-film quote.

In this session, we turn the corner from commiserating on past failures to discussing solutions to planning and implementing the transition from conflict to post-conflict stabilization. To help partner nations regain their stability, security and partnership in the international community.  

To help, we have brought in Professor Beatrice Heuser, renowned Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow and second to the General Staff Academy of the Bundeswehr, as Head of Strategy.

Dr. Heuser recently published a paper on post-conflict Gaza stabilization and reconstruction and wanted to discuss strategies for building an effective post-conflict strategy and operation.  

Jack Gaines, showrunner and host of the One CA Podcast, is joining SMA to co-host the discussion.

In this session, Dr. Heuser, Jack Gaines, Mariah Yager and the audience will try to address three themes:
1. Planning the transition from conflict to post-conflict. How should the military shape the end of an active conflict to help the transition to post-conflict stabilization?

2. How to support the post-conflict stabilization. Typically, during stabilization, insurgencies rise, popular movements grow, and extremist groups attempt to usurp the transition for their political ambitions; how does conflict stabilization work with the military to minimize usurping groups while spotting and enabling popular movements?

3. Spotting and supporting the post-conflict transition and transitioning a post-conflict state that depends on aid and support to become independent. 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?

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/

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

---

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 dot com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:39    MARIAH YAGER
Hello, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, and welcome to today's SMA speaker session entitled Building Solutions to Post -Conflict Stabilization. I'd like to thank Professor Beatrice Huser for taking the time to speak with us today. And I'd also like to welcome back Major Jack Gaines of the 1CA podcast as our guest host.

00:00:57    JACK GAINES
I partnered with SMA to talk with Professor Beatrice Hauser on post -conflict stabilization. What you will hear on this show is the edited version. If you wish to listen to the full uncut version, I will have a link to it in the show notes. This is part one of two. The second half comes out next week. So enjoy.

00:01:17    MARIAH YAGER
So with that, please keep your video and audio off for the duration of the event so we have a nice clear line for our presentation today. All right, let me introduce Professor Beatrice Huser. She holds the Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. She has degrees from the Universities of London and Oxford and a habilitation from the Phillips University of Marburg. She has taught at King's College London and at universities in France and Germany. Previously, she has worked on the international staff at NATO headquarters in Brussels as well. She has numerous publications. from nuclear strategy, history of strategy, insurgencies, and counterinsurgency. But today we're talking about post -conflict stabilization. And with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Leijer.

00:01:59    JACK GAINES
Thank you, Mariah. And thank you, Professor Huser. Personally, I see a market gap in post -conflict stabilization. And to describe that gap, I forwarded Professor Huser three challenge questions to help her shape her presentation and the discussion. Those questions were, the military drives conflict to an end state. what conditions do we need to achieve to successfully transition a conflict into post -conflict stabilization? Second, during post -conflict conditions, how does the military and lead agencies spot and support legitimate efforts while also spotting and filtering out groups trying to derail recovery for their own benefit or spoilers or those who use instability for personal gain? And third, How do we work to transition a nation from post -conflict dependencies to becoming a self -sufficient member of the international community? These came to me after listening to retired General David Petraeus speak at Carnegie. He talked about when he was a division commander preparing to go into Baghdad and asking leadership about the plan after toppling the regime. The response was, leave that to us, which he states was inadequate. General Petraeus described the market gap. We needed to know the instate to achieve post -conflict conditions and then how to deter instability to support stabilization and transition. So that is the challenge for Professor Huser to answer. But I also wanted to use this talk as a call to action. We should take chalk to the State Department CSO strategy to either update our current plans and operations so they achieve the conditions for post -conflict stabilization and transition or Build operational templates that staff can plug into the back of any strategy or operation so planners can sketch out the steps to drive a conflict into a successful post -conflict environment with stabilization and transition. So with that, Professor Huser, good morning.

00:04:00    BEATRICE HEUSER
Thank you very much indeed. I'm very honored to be with you. If you can stop sharing your screen, I will flash mine up straight away and start. with a disclaimer that I am a very small and modern armchair strategist, and I'm standing on the shoulders of lots and lots of giants, which means that I'm going to introduce you in the first part of this whole talk to the ideas and the thinking of some very interesting and very important people of the past who've had plenty of experience. But at the same time, what is driving my interest is, of course, the present. And you will see all along, I think, like me, how these ideas that were developed by people a long time ago impact on the present. More still, there's a big debate about how much war changes and how much technology impacts war. I think particularly when it comes to insurgencies, peacemaking, counterinsurgency, intervention in foreign wars, there is a particularly strong continuity. even with allowances made for some of the modern technology. All the themes I'm going to be running past you today very quickly, I have got a very important role to play still in the present. So without further ado, let me plunge into the subject and I promise to you that I'll become more modern as at the very end during questions and answers. But I don't think it would make much sense if I simply ran you through. the NATO AGP 3 .28 contribution to stabilisation, let me take you back instead to a lot of ideas that have been around for a long time, some of which have found their way into this new NATO document. So these are the points that I'm going to be addressing. What happens when we're still at war affects everything else, then the difficulties of the transition to peace, post -conflict stabilisation, and how then to wean a polity from this foreign intervention. And then I have a big philosophical question at the end, which you will have to bear with me for, because it is very, very difficult and very morally problematic in every way. And I hope that I will not be misread when coming to this last point. So very briefly, let us look at what happens while we're still at war and how that influences the outcome and the intervention and the outcome of a stabilisation. process afterwards. One of the things that I've discovered trying to look into the subject of how to end wars is that causes of wars and war aims could be the same really, but they're not. Simply because during a war, particularly if it's more than seven days, more things can appear that will change the aims of the war. In theory, the causes of the war are grievance that you want to address. So if you've addressed the grievance, the war's over. But in fact, during the development of the war, things change. Existing causes and war aims can wax and wane in that context. The question is, in trying to make peace, what is at stake? Is it something like secession of a state or a part of a state? Is it to have better rights? Or is it something much bigger? Is it in fact something like... a world order that lurks behind that particular conflict. Is the war about ethnic tensions with interstate, as it was in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo? Is it about picking out a foreign occupation power, a colonial power, as in Indochina and Algeria on Indonesia? Is it about religion, as it was for the Iranian Revolution Phase II, the Arab Spring Phase II, Afghanistan in its last phase? Is it about kicking out, overthrowing a government that is non -democratic and corrupt and is trying to perpetuate its power as South Vietnam in Iran, the Shah and phase one in Iraq, in Niger? And one of the important things there was a realization by one of my heroes about you, whom you're going to hear more, a Spaniard called the Third Marquis of Santa Cruz de Mascinado, who lived in the early 18th century. and who even then said that a state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors. And a Welshman who was Catholic and therefore escaped Protestant England and Britain in the 18th century, the first cause and object of a revolt is to repel injuries, real or supposed. The second is to provide for future security, which can never be effectually done other than by destroying the sovereign authority. There is no alternative. Freedom or slavery is the result of it. Very interestingly enough, during the first phase of the American War of Independence, but this stark way he put it is very modern. Therefore, the sovereign in conducting such a war should, by a moderate conduct, diminish the idea of danger and leave room to a solid and hearty reconciliation. So reconciliation is already a very important idea to take away from the idea of how to... end the war and stabilize that result of war. The effects of the conduct of war will polarize warring parties even more, particularly if the war is conducted in a way perceived as being exceptionally cruel. Ukrainians cared little about Russians before 2014. By now, it is pretty unlikely that there are a lot of Ukrainians still around who have positive feelings about Russians and the many things we hear about Ukraine, about how they suddenly... ban Russian books from bookshelves and from the school curricula seem to suggest that. Equally, the feelings of people in Gaza, I imagine, are much worse now towards Israel than even when the war started in October last year. Christina Pizal, who is the only woman strategist I've ever come across in the early 15th century, wrote that cruelty increases and multiplies the number of enemies by making many people die. for their children are kin succeed them in hate. That is to say, for one enemy slain, several others spring up. This has got a path to reconciliation when, for every enemy slain, several others spring up. A very brief note about bombing. The idea in the immediate post -World War I period that you could end wars faster by bombing civilian populations. Pressing them to put pressure in turn on their governments to surrender has been proved to be quite unworkable. So in the Second World War, as a number of authors have shown, this was quite counterproductive because it created more solidarity, both in Ukraine and in Gaza. It has not turned the population against its own government. I think in both cases, the bombing from the air has had very adverse effects on the chances of making a good peace. making it soon and then stabilizing the situation. Let me touch briefly on the question of which external actors might be the best to intervene in something that is a civil war of a country, a non -international armed conflict. There are configurations in which somebody very, very external to the conflict might have been a good side to intervene. For example, I used to go around in the 1990s before the Easter agreements and the Good Friday agreements were signed in 1998, saying that in fact it would have been a good idea to bring in German forces because they weren't sympathising with either side and they weren't seen as enemies by either side. In the Yugoslav wars it was clearly an external multinational force that was the best. In African conflicts what seems not to be a good idea is to bring in previous colonial powers. There's a lot of atheistic reaction to say, ah, they're just neo

Recently, I partnered with SMA's Mariah Yager to talk with Professor Beatrice Houser about post-conflict stabilization. 

“In Kuwait, preparing for the Iraq invasion, I asked the leadership, ‘Could you give us a little more detail about after we get to Baghdad and topple the regime? ' [The answer] was more than inadequate.’” -David Petraeus, speaking at Carnegie.

The U.S. and the West recently suffered monumental failures in planning and implementing post-conflict stabilization, resulting in massive corruption, instability and loss of foreign policy goals.

[Charley Wilson’s War]. “These things happened. They were glorious, and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame.” -Charley Wilson’s end-of-film quote.

In this session, we turn the corner from commiserating on past failures to discussing solutions to planning and implementing the transition from conflict to post-conflict stabilization. To help partner nations regain their stability, security and partnership in the international community.  

To help, we have brought in Professor Beatrice Heuser, renowned Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow and second to the General Staff Academy of the Bundeswehr, as Head of Strategy.

Dr. Heuser recently published a paper on post-conflict Gaza stabilization and reconstruction and wanted to discuss strategies for building an effective post-conflict strategy and operation.  

Jack Gaines, showrunner and host of the One CA Podcast, is joining SMA to co-host the discussion.

In this session, Dr. Heuser, Jack Gaines, Mariah Yager and the audience will try to address three themes:
1. Planning the transition from conflict to post-conflict. How should the military shape the end of an active conflict to help the transition to post-conflict stabilization?

2. How to support the post-conflict stabilization. Typically, during stabilization, insurgencies rise, popular movements grow, and extremist groups attempt to usurp the transition for their political ambitions; how does conflict stabilization work with the military to minimize usurping groups while spotting and enabling popular movements?

3. Spotting and supporting the post-conflict transition and transitioning a post-conflict state that depends on aid and support to become independent. 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?

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/

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

---

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 dot com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:39    MARIAH YAGER
Hello, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, and welcome to today's SMA speaker session entitled Building Solutions to Post -Conflict Stabilization. I'd like to thank Professor Beatrice Huser for taking the time to speak with us today. And I'd also like to welcome back Major Jack Gaines of the 1CA podcast as our guest host.

00:00:57    JACK GAINES
I partnered with SMA to talk with Professor Beatrice Hauser on post -conflict stabilization. What you will hear on this show is the edited version. If you wish to listen to the full uncut version, I will have a link to it in the show notes. This is part one of two. The second half comes out next week. So enjoy.

00:01:17    MARIAH YAGER
So with that, please keep your video and audio off for the duration of the event so we have a nice clear line for our presentation today. All right, let me introduce Professor Beatrice Huser. She holds the Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. She has degrees from the Universities of London and Oxford and a habilitation from the Phillips University of Marburg. She has taught at King's College London and at universities in France and Germany. Previously, she has worked on the international staff at NATO headquarters in Brussels as well. She has numerous publications. from nuclear strategy, history of strategy, insurgencies, and counterinsurgency. But today we're talking about post -conflict stabilization. And with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Leijer.

00:01:59    JACK GAINES
Thank you, Mariah. And thank you, Professor Huser. Personally, I see a market gap in post -conflict stabilization. And to describe that gap, I forwarded Professor Huser three challenge questions to help her shape her presentation and the discussion. Those questions were, the military drives conflict to an end state. what conditions do we need to achieve to successfully transition a conflict into post -conflict stabilization? Second, during post -conflict conditions, how does the military and lead agencies spot and support legitimate efforts while also spotting and filtering out groups trying to derail recovery for their own benefit or spoilers or those who use instability for personal gain? And third, How do we work to transition a nation from post -conflict dependencies to becoming a self -sufficient member of the international community? These came to me after listening to retired General David Petraeus speak at Carnegie. He talked about when he was a division commander preparing to go into Baghdad and asking leadership about the plan after toppling the regime. The response was, leave that to us, which he states was inadequate. General Petraeus described the market gap. We needed to know the instate to achieve post -conflict conditions and then how to deter instability to support stabilization and transition. So that is the challenge for Professor Huser to answer. But I also wanted to use this talk as a call to action. We should take chalk to the State Department CSO strategy to either update our current plans and operations so they achieve the conditions for post -conflict stabilization and transition or Build operational templates that staff can plug into the back of any strategy or operation so planners can sketch out the steps to drive a conflict into a successful post -conflict environment with stabilization and transition. So with that, Professor Huser, good morning.

00:04:00    BEATRICE HEUSER
Thank you very much indeed. I'm very honored to be with you. If you can stop sharing your screen, I will flash mine up straight away and start. with a disclaimer that I am a very small and modern armchair strategist, and I'm standing on the shoulders of lots and lots of giants, which means that I'm going to introduce you in the first part of this whole talk to the ideas and the thinking of some very interesting and very important people of the past who've had plenty of experience. But at the same time, what is driving my interest is, of course, the present. And you will see all along, I think, like me, how these ideas that were developed by people a long time ago impact on the present. More still, there's a big debate about how much war changes and how much technology impacts war. I think particularly when it comes to insurgencies, peacemaking, counterinsurgency, intervention in foreign wars, there is a particularly strong continuity. even with allowances made for some of the modern technology. All the themes I'm going to be running past you today very quickly, I have got a very important role to play still in the present. So without further ado, let me plunge into the subject and I promise to you that I'll become more modern as at the very end during questions and answers. But I don't think it would make much sense if I simply ran you through. the NATO AGP 3 .28 contribution to stabilisation, let me take you back instead to a lot of ideas that have been around for a long time, some of which have found their way into this new NATO document. So these are the points that I'm going to be addressing. What happens when we're still at war affects everything else, then the difficulties of the transition to peace, post -conflict stabilisation, and how then to wean a polity from this foreign intervention. And then I have a big philosophical question at the end, which you will have to bear with me for, because it is very, very difficult and very morally problematic in every way. And I hope that I will not be misread when coming to this last point. So very briefly, let us look at what happens while we're still at war and how that influences the outcome and the intervention and the outcome of a stabilisation. process afterwards. One of the things that I've discovered trying to look into the subject of how to end wars is that causes of wars and war aims could be the same really, but they're not. Simply because during a war, particularly if it's more than seven days, more things can appear that will change the aims of the war. In theory, the causes of the war are grievance that you want to address. So if you've addressed the grievance, the war's over. But in fact, during the development of the war, things change. Existing causes and war aims can wax and wane in that context. The question is, in trying to make peace, what is at stake? Is it something like secession of a state or a part of a state? Is it to have better rights? Or is it something much bigger? Is it in fact something like... a world order that lurks behind that particular conflict. Is the war about ethnic tensions with interstate, as it was in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo? Is it about picking out a foreign occupation power, a colonial power, as in Indochina and Algeria on Indonesia? Is it about religion, as it was for the Iranian Revolution Phase II, the Arab Spring Phase II, Afghanistan in its last phase? Is it about kicking out, overthrowing a government that is non -democratic and corrupt and is trying to perpetuate its power as South Vietnam in Iran, the Shah and phase one in Iraq, in Niger? And one of the important things there was a realization by one of my heroes about you, whom you're going to hear more, a Spaniard called the Third Marquis of Santa Cruz de Mascinado, who lived in the early 18th century. and who even then said that a state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors. And a Welshman who was Catholic and therefore escaped Protestant England and Britain in the 18th century, the first cause and object of a revolt is to repel injuries, real or supposed. The second is to provide for future security, which can never be effectually done other than by destroying the sovereign authority. There is no alternative. Freedom or slavery is the result of it. Very interestingly enough, during the first phase of the American War of Independence, but this stark way he put it is very modern. Therefore, the sovereign in conducting such a war should, by a moderate conduct, diminish the idea of danger and leave room to a solid and hearty reconciliation. So reconciliation is already a very important idea to take away from the idea of how to... end the war and stabilize that result of war. The effects of the conduct of war will polarize warring parties even more, particularly if the war is conducted in a way perceived as being exceptionally cruel. Ukrainians cared little about Russians before 2014. By now, it is pretty unlikely that there are a lot of Ukrainians still around who have positive feelings about Russians and the many things we hear about Ukraine, about how they suddenly... ban Russian books from bookshelves and from the school curricula seem to suggest that. Equally, the feelings of people in Gaza, I imagine, are much worse now towards Israel than even when the war started in October last year. Christina Pizal, who is the only woman strategist I've ever come across in the early 15th century, wrote that cruelty increases and multiplies the number of enemies by making many people die. for their children are kin succeed them in hate. That is to say, for one enemy slain, several others spring up. This has got a path to reconciliation when, for every enemy slain, several others spring up. A very brief note about bombing. The idea in the immediate post -World War I period that you could end wars faster by bombing civilian populations. Pressing them to put pressure in turn on their governments to surrender has been proved to be quite unworkable. So in the Second World War, as a number of authors have shown, this was quite counterproductive because it created more solidarity, both in Ukraine and in Gaza. It has not turned the population against its own government. I think in both cases, the bombing from the air has had very adverse effects on the chances of making a good peace. making it soon and then stabilizing the situation. Let me touch briefly on the question of which external actors might be the best to intervene in something that is a civil war of a country, a non -international armed conflict. There are configurations in which somebody very, very external to the conflict might have been a good side to intervene. For example, I used to go around in the 1990s before the Easter agreements and the Good Friday agreements were signed in 1998, saying that in fact it would have been a good idea to bring in German forces because they weren't sympathising with either side and they weren't seen as enemies by either side. In the Yugoslav wars it was clearly an external multinational force that was the best. In African conflicts what seems not to be a good idea is to bring in previous colonial powers. There's a lot of atheistic reaction to say, ah, they're just neo

Today, we have a special guest episode.

Dana Lombardy of Lombardy Studios hosts talks on military history and current events. To find out more about Dana's work, check out LombardyStudios.com.

For this episode, he brings in retired Rear Admiral Michael Baker, a general surgeon who travels to Ukraine to teach combat first aid. 

It's a great story about volunteering and working in a war zone to help Ukrainians save soldiers' lives. 

Great news: FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 10 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

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 Max Jansson for posting the
Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins instrumental "I'll see you in my dreams," performed live at Secret Policeman's Third Ball 1987. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTVLIZaxMk

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00:00:05    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 a 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.

00:00:41    DANA LOMBARDI
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the War College. My name is Dana Lombardi, and I've been using the facilities here for about 10 years to do War College presentations. They've been mostly historical. In the past couple of years have been trying to look at more contemporary things that are going on in the world. This morning we're going to talk about the events in Ukraine and also how this impacts ourselves and our allies. We have really good speakers who have personal experience with this. And they have a lot of things to tell us about what is happening there and also what they have done and some of their personal experiences. The gentleman to my immediate right is retired Admiral Michael Baker, a surgeon.

00:01:26    Jack Gaines
Today, we have a guest episode. Dana Lombardi of Lombardi Studios hosts talks on military history and current events. To find out more about Dana's work, check it out on LombardiStudios .com. For this episode... He brings in retired Rear Admiral Michael Baker, a general surgeon who travels to Ukraine to teach combat first aid. It's a great story about volunteering and working in a war zone to help Ukrainians save soldiers' lives. So let's get started.

00:01:55    MICHAEL BAKER
Thank you for that kind introduction. So I got to tell you this story about how I got involved. Why is a general surgeon going to Ukraine in the middle of a war? In fact, a retired general surgeon. I mean, what am I doing? I decided after all my surgery training and medical school and everything, I felt grateful to grow up in this country, believe it or not. And I decided I would join the military. The military at that time was scaling down, but very short of specialists. So they said, well, we're going to put you in the reserves for now in case we ever need you and we'll find something for you to do. And I said, okay, I can do a couple of years in the reserves and then that won't interfere with my career and I'll go back to civilian life. So I signed up. Little did I know that they would hook me into doing more than those two or three years in the reserves, and I wound up spending quite a long time retiring as a rear admiral with a warfare pin of river and coastal patrol, which at the time was extremely unusual. I had all kinds of odd assignments, most of which had nothing to do with surgery. It was very strange. So Europe's been at peace for 75 years since World War II. How did this happen? If you believe Mark Twain, he says God created war so that Americans would learn geography. And normally I start this talk with some history and geography. We won't dwell on that today because of our time constraints. Normally this is like a 90 -minute talk. So Ukraine's been part of many countries. Borders changed all the time, but Ukrainians are not Russians. That's the key thing here. They never have been. There's a lot of reasons that Putin listed for attacking Ukraine. One of the big ones that's outlandish is NATO's getting too close. So I have to show you that one real quick on the map. And you can come up with some arrows. But if you look at the dark blue, dark purplish color, those are the original NATO countries sort of pre -1991. You know, England and France and Germany. And the purple ones... adjacent to Ukraine, those are all former Russian Soviet republics. So, you know, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, what did they do after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Well, they all rushed to join NATO because they're afraid of the Russians. What a surprise. Where is the border close? Well, they already share a common border. So how do you get any closer to NATO than sharing a common border? They also are pretty close to Turkey. Anybody know what that is? Hunt for Red October? It's Kaliningrad, Sean Connery's port of embarkation with a nuclear sub. There's a Russian naval base with nuclear weapons in the middle of NATO countries. Now, I'm a surgeon, so we would call this a metastasis. I don't know what to call it geopolitically, but it's right between Lithuania and Poland, and my prediction would be that the next place that the Russians would go if they triumphed in Ukraine would be to open that corridor. So the Russian effort backfires so extravagantly that previously neutral Finland and Sweden decide to join NATO. You know, it's kind of interesting. So now there's more NATO countries. It really did backfire because everybody fears the Russian bear, as you'll see. And I put that on there just to remind everybody that the bear is coming. There's really reason here why the Ukrainians stood to fight. Everybody thought it would collapse in two weeks, including all the NATO countries and the Western powers. They did stand. And I think it's well exemplified by the response. There's 18 guys on a place called Snake Island. And the garrison on Snake Island became famous because they were approached by a battle cruiser, the Moskva. And the 18 guys gave a response that became symbolic to the rest of the war with the Russian military. And it actually have we have postage stamps now that talk about it. Next slide.

00:05:46    MICHAEL BAKER
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, a Russian warship ordered Ukrainian soldiers manning a Black Sea outpost on Ukraine's Snake Island to surrender. What happened next made headlines around the world.

00:06:04    MICHAEL BAKER
It was the go F yourself heard round the world. And tonight we're learning the Russian warship that attacked Snake Island has been destroyed by Ukrainian forces. The Times of London reporting that the Vasily Bikov seen in this earlier video was hit during a firefight after the Ukrainians used a smaller vessel to lure the Russian ship closer to shore where a hidden missile battery could open fire.

00:06:25    MICHAEL BAKER
You know, I'm a sailor, but I would never say anything like that. So what it really amounts to is the fact that fighting for your home is a lot different than being an invader who fights to loot and to rob and to rape and to destroy. Napoleon stated historically that the moral is to the physical as three is to one. It's really true. It might even be higher. I'm going to show you a video of a 15 -year -old boy credited with about 100 kills of Russian armor using his drone to guide the artillery. That's pretty amazing for a 15 -year -old. So how did I get involved with this? To tell you the quick story, I have a friend and shipmate named Malcolm Nance. He was an MSNBC contributor. He's an author. First week of the war, he predicted that Ukraine would beat Russia. He was an outlier. And then he went and joined the International Legion and went to Ukraine. So there's volunteers from over 50 countries. They get background checks and psyche evals, unlike the Russians who take them out of jail and prison. He returned home in August to promote his book, and he was at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. And so I said, I'm going to come down there and let's go out and talk after the lecture. He gave a great discussion about Ukraine. Interesting guy. And he wrote a book called They Want to Kill Americans about militias and terrorists. Great read, actually, fairly interesting. And even though I don't really drink, I learned what certain drinks like a French 75 was. I didn't even know what that was, but now I know. So I want you to meet my friend Malcolm Nance. He's an author. He's an NBC commentator. He's an intelligence guy from the Navy background. And he's the only one who predicted Russia would lose. So here's a clip from the Commonwealth Club. I said this on MSNBC. I said,

00:08:02    MICHAEL BAKER
Club. I said this on MSNBC. I said, these guys are going to fight. I can tell by the look in this man's eye. He is ready to kick Russian ass and enjoy it. And, you know, he's a very short guy, he's a thick guy, you know. And the other commander, the commander of land warfare was General Serski. You know, guy's about five foot five. Five foot fives of five foot five inches of I cannot be defeated. No, really. And as I looked at them, I was like, whoa. I think there's something happening here in media that is not being factored. And I said this on one of the MSNBC shows about three or four days before the invasion. And they were like, well, you know, the invasion will be quick. Analysts were coming on. The invasion will be quick. They'll lose rather fast. And I said, hey. Let me tell you something. They were talking about the Ukrainians losing.

00:08:52    SPEAKER_01
were talking about the Ukrainians losing. He would be in there within two weeks. It would all be over. The entire war would be over.

00:08:54    MICHAEL BAKER
He would

00:08:58    MICHAEL BAKER
entire war would be over. Keefe would be taken in 72 hours. I kept thinking, this is why intelligence field collectors are the smart ones to listen to. We're on the ground. And I've been in the city of Keefe. It's the size of Chicago. It has a bigger population. It's five million people. And these 20 stories Soviet apartment blocks that are 20 buildings deep. And I'm like, no one's ever taking this city. All right. There's little old ladies right now who are woefully heartbroken. that they didn't get to throw their Molotov cocktails out the 18 -story window on top of Russian tanks. If you go to the checkpoints in Kiev right now, there are thousands upon thousands of Molotov cocktails in crates waiting for the reservists because they expected to be fighting hand and fist with the Russians. The Russians never got near going anywhere near taking. Kiev, except one ambush that the Ukrainians let them into the city and slaughtered them wholesale. And, you know, I said the same thing in the pre -war. I go, they're never going to, they're going to lose this war. They don't have enough men to win this war. The Russians. Yes.

00:10:12    MICHAEL BAKER
So he goes back to put on his uniform and roughly a week later, out of the blue, I get some contact saying, would you be willing to go teach combat casualty care in Ukraine? And in this case, it was the International Medical Corps reaching out in the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. And it trains medical providers to deal with acute injuries on the highway, on the battlefield, wherever. But it's really very straightforward. It was introduced about 1980 because an orthopedic surgeon and his family went down in the airplane, and he felt that the family had been very badly handled and poorly treated. And he said, we've got to teach people how to do this right. There are ways to do it. So it's been taught to over a million doctors and other medical professionals. In the U .S. military, we teach it to physicians assistants and to dental officers because they got to know. You never know when combat will come their way. So here I am, retired guy, walks the dog, tells his kids, I'm going to go to Europe and teach ATLS. They're used to me going to South Korea and Germany, so they didn't think too much about it. And I come from a background where you don't really tell people where you're going anyway, because that's operational security. Some of you may know and nod your heads when I say that. It's 12 hours from San Francisco to Warsaw, but we had a layover, of course. It was 18 hours by the time I got there. Then it gets more interesting. I have to change planes, and I go to the desk, and I go, where's the gate for this city, and how do you pronounce it? And she smiles and tells me the gate and says it's pronounced Zhezhov just like it's spelled. And I go, okay, next slide, please. Yeah, I guess I won't be learning Polish any too quickly. So we fly into Zhezhov. And there we get a van to the border. And we actually get out and it's 90 minutes, but we meet a van on the other side. The reason is there's 10 miles of trucks backed up on the border and it would take us three days to get through. So we walk across, which is why they told us to only bring carry -ons, which was really good advice. But we didn't get to go straight because you don't want to travel with all those ammunition trucks and fuel trucks and stuff. So you get to take a few side roads. It takes a little longer. So we finally get there and Ukraine felt like a country that was at war, but it didn't really feel like war imminent. You know, there were checkpoints and fighting posts and armed guards and air raid sirens and bomb shelters everywhere. And going down the highway, you had these barricades with concrete blocks and sandbags. Those are called serpentines. You're met by the greeters, just like at Walmart. And the greeters sometimes will inspect your van or your truck to see what you're doing. And we got an app installed

Please welcome Maria Yager and Bas Waters to One CA Podcast. 

Originally, I was cohosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd (or overcome by events), so Maria covered until I arrived and helped with questions and answers. 

This is part two of a two-part episode on influence and persuasion.

FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

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 Max Sedgley for remixing Sarah Vaughan's iconic signing of the theme to the show Max Gunn. Found at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33GglmH6U1k

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00:00:02 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.

00:00:37 Mariah Yager
Hi, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, your host for today's SMA speaker session titled On Persuasion. We have Bass Waters, who is co -founder and CEO of the Cialdini Institute. He's the author of Online Influence, which is combining Dr. Cialdini's work with insights from other behavioral experts, creating a highly practical framework to boost online results.

00:00:57 Jack Gaines
Please welcome Mariah Yeager and Bass Waters to 1CA Podcast. Originally, I was co -hosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd, or overcome by events, so Mariah covered until I arrived to help with questions and answers. This is part one of a two -part episode on influence and persuasion, so enjoy.

00:01:14 Mariah Yager
So after establishing the Cialdini Institute, companies like Disney, Bookings .com reached out to our speaker today. So he has extensive experience. We're happy to have him today. So with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Mr. Waters.

00:01:28 Bas Wouters
Thank you, Mariah, for this great introduction. Thank you all for joining and to dive deeper into the practical application of the science of persuasion. I'm representing the Cialdini Institute. I'm aware that a lot of you know the great work of Dr. Robert Cialdini, and he is my business partner in the Cialdini Institute. I'd like to start with some things you may not know about Robert Cialdini, and one of the things that we are very proud of is this research in 2022. They established a jury of the top entrepreneurs in the world, which included Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. And they voted for the best business book of all time. And as you probably can guess, the winner was Influence from Dr. Robert Cialdini. And actually, they repeated this study with those top entrepreneurs. And in 2023, again, the winner was Influence from Dr. Cialdini. I understood from Jack and Mariah that most of you read his book, published in 1984. And Dr. Cialdini became a professor at the University of Arizona State. He started lecturing, PhD students, but he also started to do research. And one thing that fascinated Dr. Cialdini is why people can influence so easily. I'll give you an example. One day at home, somebody rings the doorbell. He opens. He makes a nice chat. Goes back inside and then he realized, why do I suddenly have a new energy supplier? I didn't need that. I didn't ask for it. I said yes to the request. So that fascinated him. So he started looking into the research that was already done for influence, the science of persuasion. But he found actually the first influence research of psychologists who were wondering in the 1930s. When Hitler came to power, how can a man who is an advocate for such a totalitarian regime, how can he move complete societies in his direction? So Dr. Cialdini was looking at approximately 40 to 50 years of data on influence research. And then he realized something important. These are lab studies. But influence is done in the real world. So I need to go out there where it actually happens. So Dr. Cialdini went undercover and he infiltrated a lot of training programs. So training programs on sales, marketing, VR. But he also infiltrated army recruitment and even calls. And after three years, he collected his findings and connected that to the 50 years of research that already was out there. And then he wrote his book, Influence. And in that book, first he wrote the six principles of persuasion. And later, in this new and expanded edition in 2021, he added a seventh principle. These seven principles of persuasion, these are the universal principles of persuasion. Sayers shows us these principles work in every culture, in every language, in every country. There's also research on what is the most powerful principle per culture, but they all work in every culture. The thing is what Dr. Cialdini wondered during his research is something different because everybody told him, well, we are from marketing. That's completely different than PR. Well, I'm from PR. That's different than sales. Sales is different from advertising. So everybody told him. how different everybody was. What he was looking for, what is the same? Which principles motivates in every case to move more people in your direction? Like I said, in 1984, he found six. Based on research, he added a seven principle. So these principles are reciprocity. If I invite you to my birthday party, you feel a pressure. To invite me back at your party. Liking. We like to say yes to our friends. To give you an example. If I walk here on the street. And a complete stranger is moving houses. And they say to me. Well boss. Do you want to help me? Most likely I would tell that stranger. I don't have time. Or no I don't want to help you. But if my best friend would ask me that same question. Probably I say yes. The fourth principle is social proof. There's something interesting with social proof. In its first edition, it was referred to as consensus. Dr. Cialdini created the term social proof. What it states is, when we are uncertain, we look to other people to decide what we should do. Think, for example, about booking .com. Which hotel should we pick to stay? A thousand people tell me this is a great hotel, so I booked that hotel. The fifth principle is authority. We follow the advice of the experts. This is an interesting one because how we base in our decision making if somebody is an expert is very interesting. To give you an example, if I go to my general doctor. I just ask him questions about whatever health condition I have. But who ever checked the diplomas of that general doctor? Probably nobody did that. But based on his title, I already trust him that he has expertise about whatever complaint I will bring to him in my health situation. Then consistency. It's about if we made a small commitment previously, we feel an internal pressure to act consistent with what we previously have said or done. Consistency is the most powerful internal driver to motivate into action. And that leads me to the second principle, and that's scarcity. Scarcity is the most powerful external driver that motivates us into action. And you can think, for example, about Black Friday. It started in the US, but now it's spread all over the world. And on Black Friday, everybody is moving into directions just because they assume they can get great deals. Then unity. This is the seventh principle that Dr. Cialdini introduced in his new and expanded edition of Influence. And it's about... Do we belong to the same group? We are all football fans. We are all Americans. So the fact that you belong to the same group may increase the motivation to say yes to a certain request if that is raised to awareness. Those are the seven principles. What's important, these principles are based on science. Everything we do in the Cialdini research has three core values. One is science. The other one is application. So you cannot change your outcome just with theory. You have to be able to translate the theoretical research into practical application. But that's another very important component of us, which we will discuss into a systematic way of applying today. And the third is ethics. And ethics, it's about these powerful principles. You have to use them in an ethical way because we talk not about manipulation. Influence is not manipulation. Ethical influence is not manipulation because it's raising to awareness parts of information that are also helpful for people to make a decision. And therefore, you create win -win outcomes. Because things are based on science, it can be taught. And if something can be taught, it can be learned. There are a lot of people out there who have a natural gift to be persuasive. They often end up in marketing, sales, or leadership positions because they have this natural ability to persuade. We know one thing for sure. People who master the science that don't have the natural ability to persuade are more powerful persuaders than people who have the natural ability to persuade. Can you imagine if you have both? One, you have a natural skill to be persuasive, plus you master the science. And why this is also important, I train a lot of people all over the world. And especially in sales and marketing, after a training, people told me, now I can actually explain what I was doing. They were successful, but they could not teach it. It's just what comes up to me natural. That is not transferable. So because it's science, it can be taught, and therefore it can be learned by everybody. And today we want to dive into the application. Dr. Neidert has been a right -hand man to Dr. Cialdini for the last 25 years. He is also a professor at ASU University, and he consulted the Fortune 100 companies, but also a lot of government agencies, including intelligence. And every time when he did such a consulting, he selected a principal that was most suitable for that case. And people asked him, of course, Dr. Neidert, why you've chosen reciprocity or why you've chosen scarcity to overcome our influence challenges? And this answer could not be, that's just because I do. Everything is science and research -based. So he developed the core motives model so we can teach you how to select the best principle in every given situation. Let me start by introducing the first core motives model. In an influence challenge, the relationship we have with a person is very important. To give you an example, let's imagine I'm in a very important meeting and my phone rings and I look at my phone and I see somebody that I don't speak so often. What would I probably do? I wouldn't pick up my phone. But imagine the same situation. I'm in that very important meeting and my spouse or your partner or friend that knows you are in that important meeting calls you. Now probably what will happen is you will excuse yourself and try to pick up the phone to at least know why they are calling you because you assume there's something urgent. You do this based on the relationship. you have with that person. And if you go back to the 50s, one of the communication models that was introduced was the sender -receiver model, which says, when you send out a message with words and images, then you have the receiver. That receiver processes the information they get and make it a message. Then you have the channel. Those channels are now extended in the online world. First, you had face -to -face. Then we had... face -to -face and phone calls. And now you have face -to -face, video calls, phone calls, text messages, emails. Also, the channel is very interesting to look at and which one is most persuasive in influence. Then back to the first core modus model. So as I shared with you in the situation, do I pick up my phone during that important meeting? Yes or no? So in any given influence situation, we have to establish a relationship. Some questions that you can ask yourself, well, how can you recognize a signal that you have to work on your relationship? Do people pick up the phone, for example? Do they answer my text messages because you see those blue check marks in WhatsApp, for example, but they don't reply? You saw that they got it, they read it, but they don't reply. People don't pay attention when you are in a meeting. They are distracted. Look at their phone. These are all signals where you should recognize in the future, I need to work on my relation. And the three principles that most likely will do the job to cultivate a relationship or repair an existing relationship are reciprocity, liking, and unity. So what you see... Pulling here is now we can recognize a signal. Why we might not reach our goals, why we get a no instead of a yes, can only be one core motive and the whole machine is start pinning again. So relationship can be one of those gears we have to work on. It's not a one, two, three step model. It could be in a new influence challenge, but it could also be just fix the relationship. So influence is start to move in your direction. So the second core motive that I like to introduce is uncertainty. In every decision -making process, we get uncertain most of the time. To give you an example, let's assume you want to buy a new kitchen. You go into Google and you type in buy a new kitchen. And then bang, you right away have like a million hits. Unconscious, we get uncertain. Where do I click? What are signals? What could you recognize when other ways that people are uncertain? Well, if you communicate with them, they might just say it. I don't know what to do. Or I doubt that this is the best decision for me. These kinds of expressions will help you recognize that people are still uncertain. Here's another thing people do. They start improving your offer. One of times we think, oh, but I am the expert. Why they don't listen to me? It's because they are uncertain. Those people don't want to act annoying. They know what to bother you, but they express uncertainty. And you should think I should m

Please welcome Maria Yager and Bas Waters to One CA Podcast. 

Originally, I was cohosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd (or overcome by events), so Maria covered until I arrived and helped with questions and answers. 

This is part one of a two-part episode on influence and persuasion.

FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

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 Max Sedgley for remixing Sarah Vaughan's iconic signing of the theme to the show Max Gunn. Found at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33GglmH6U1k

---

00:00:02 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.

00:00:37 Mariah Yager
Hi, everyone. I'm Mariah Yeager, your host for today's SMA speaker session titled On Persuasion. We have Bass Waters, who is co -founder and CEO of the Cialdini Institute. He's the author of Online Influence, which is combining Dr. Cialdini's work with insights from other behavioral experts, creating a highly practical framework to boost online results.

00:00:57 Jack Gaines
Please welcome Mariah Yeager and Bass Waters to 1CA Podcast. Originally, I was co -hosting the show with Mariah, but I got OBE'd, or overcome by events, so Mariah covered until I arrived to help with questions and answers. This is part one of a two -part episode on influence and persuasion, so enjoy.

00:01:14 Mariah Yager
So after establishing the Cialdini Institute, companies like Disney, Bookings .com reached out to our speaker today. So he has extensive experience. We're happy to have him today. So with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Mr. Waters.

00:01:28 Bas Wouters
Thank you, Mariah, for this great introduction. Thank you all for joining and to dive deeper into the practical application of the science of persuasion. I'm representing the Cialdini Institute. I'm aware that a lot of you know the great work of Dr. Robert Cialdini, and he is my business partner in the Cialdini Institute. I'd like to start with some things you may not know about Robert Cialdini, and one of the things that we are very proud of is this research in 2022. They established a jury of the top entrepreneurs in the world, which included Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. And they voted for the best business book of all time. And as you probably can guess, the winner was Influence from Dr. Robert Cialdini. And actually, they repeated this study with those top entrepreneurs. And in 2023, again, the winner was Influence from Dr. Cialdini. I understood from Jack and Mariah that most of you read his book, published in 1984. And Dr. Cialdini became a professor at the University of Arizona State. He started lecturing, PhD students, but he also started to do research. And one thing that fascinated Dr. Cialdini is why people can influence so easily. I'll give you an example. One day at home, somebody rings the doorbell. He opens. He makes a nice chat. Goes back inside and then he realized, why do I suddenly have a new energy supplier? I didn't need that. I didn't ask for it. I said yes to the request. So that fascinated him. So he started looking into the research that was already done for influence, the science of persuasion. But he found actually the first influence research of psychologists who were wondering in the 1930s. When Hitler came to power, how can a man who is an advocate for such a totalitarian regime, how can he move complete societies in his direction? So Dr. Cialdini was looking at approximately 40 to 50 years of data on influence research. And then he realized something important. These are lab studies. But influence is done in the real world. So I need to go out there where it actually happens. So Dr. Cialdini went undercover and he infiltrated a lot of training programs. So training programs on sales, marketing, VR. But he also infiltrated army recruitment and even calls. And after three years, he collected his findings and connected that to the 50 years of research that already was out there. And then he wrote his book, Influence. And in that book, first he wrote the six principles of persuasion. And later, in this new and expanded edition in 2021, he added a seventh principle. These seven principles of persuasion, these are the universal principles of persuasion. Sayers shows us these principles work in every culture, in every language, in every country. There's also research on what is the most powerful principle per culture, but they all work in every culture. The thing is what Dr. Cialdini wondered during his research is something different because everybody told him, well, we are from marketing. That's completely different than PR. Well, I'm from PR. That's different than sales. Sales is different from advertising. So everybody told him. how different everybody was. What he was looking for, what is the same? Which principles motivates in every case to move more people in your direction? Like I said, in 1984, he found six. Based on research, he added a seven principle. So these principles are reciprocity. If I invite you to my birthday party, you feel a pressure. To invite me back at your party. Liking. We like to say yes to our friends. To give you an example. If I walk here on the street. And a complete stranger is moving houses. And they say to me. Well boss. Do you want to help me? Most likely I would tell that stranger. I don't have time. Or no I don't want to help you. But if my best friend would ask me that same question. Probably I say yes. The fourth principle is social proof. There's something interesting with social proof. In its first edition, it was referred to as consensus. Dr. Cialdini created the term social proof. What it states is, when we are uncertain, we look to other people to decide what we should do. Think, for example, about booking .com. Which hotel should we pick to stay? A thousand people tell me this is a great hotel, so I booked that hotel. The fifth principle is authority. We follow the advice of the experts. This is an interesting one because how we base in our decision making if somebody is an expert is very interesting. To give you an example, if I go to my general doctor. I just ask him questions about whatever health condition I have. But who ever checked the diplomas of that general doctor? Probably nobody did that. But based on his title, I already trust him that he has expertise about whatever complaint I will bring to him in my health situation. Then consistency. It's about if we made a small commitment previously, we feel an internal pressure to act consistent with what we previously have said or done. Consistency is the most powerful internal driver to motivate into action. And that leads me to the second principle, and that's scarcity. Scarcity is the most powerful external driver that motivates us into action. And you can think, for example, about Black Friday. It started in the US, but now it's spread all over the world. And on Black Friday, everybody is moving into directions just because they assume they can get great deals. Then unity. This is the seventh principle that Dr. Cialdini introduced in his new and expanded edition of Influence. And it's about... Do we belong to the same group? We are all football fans. We are all Americans. So the fact that you belong to the same group may increase the motivation to say yes to a certain request if that is raised to awareness. Those are the seven principles. What's important, these principles are based on science. Everything we do in the Cialdini research has three core values. One is science. The other one is application. So you cannot change your outcome just with theory. You have to be able to translate the theoretical research into practical application. But that's another very important component of us, which we will discuss into a systematic way of applying today. And the third is ethics. And ethics, it's about these powerful principles. You have to use them in an ethical way because we talk not about manipulation. Influence is not manipulation. Ethical influence is not manipulation because it's raising to awareness parts of information that are also helpful for people to make a decision. And therefore, you create win -win outcomes. Because things are based on science, it can be taught. And if something can be taught, it can be learned. There are a lot of people out there who have a natural gift to be persuasive. They often end up in marketing, sales, or leadership positions because they have this natural ability to persuade. We know one thing for sure. People who master the science that don't have the natural ability to persuade are more powerful persuaders than people who have the natural ability to persuade. Can you imagine if you have both? One, you have a natural skill to be persuasive, plus you master the science. And why this is also important, I train a lot of people all over the world. And especially in sales and marketing, after a training, people told me, now I can actually explain what I was doing. They were successful, but they could not teach it. It's just what comes up to me natural. That is not transferable. So because it's science, it can be taught, and therefore it can be learned by everybody. And today we want to dive into the application. Dr. Neidert has been a right -hand man to Dr. Cialdini for the last 25 years. He is also a professor at ASU University, and he consulted the Fortune 100 companies, but also a lot of government agencies, including intelligence. And every time when he did such a consulting, he selected a principal that was most suitable for that case. And people asked him, of course, Dr. Neidert, why you've chosen reciprocity or why you've chosen scarcity to overcome our influence challenges? And this answer could not be, that's just because I do. Everything is science and research -based. So he developed the core motives model so we can teach you how to select the best principle in every given situation. Let me start by introducing the first core motives model. In an influence challenge, the relationship we have with a person is very important. To give you an example, let's imagine I'm in a very important meeting and my phone rings and I look at my phone and I see somebody that I don't speak so often. What would I probably do? I wouldn't pick up my phone. But imagine the same situation. I'm in that very important meeting and my spouse or your partner or friend that knows you are in that important meeting calls you. Now probably what will happen is you will excuse yourself and try to pick up the phone to at least know why they are calling you because you assume there's something urgent. You do this based on the relationship. you have with that person. And if you go back to the 50s, one of the communication models that was introduced was the sender -receiver model, which says, when you send out a message with words and images, then you have the receiver. That receiver processes the information they get and make it a message. Then you have the channel. Those channels are now extended in the online world. First, you had face -to -face. Then we had... face -to -face and phone calls. And now you have face -to -face, video calls, phone calls, text messages, emails. Also, the channel is very interesting to look at and which one is most persuasive in influence. Then back to the first core modus model. So as I shared with you in the situation, do I pick up my phone during that important meeting? Yes or no? So in any given influence situation, we have to establish a relationship. Some questions that you can ask yourself, well, how can you recognize a signal that you have to work on your relationship? Do people pick up the phone, for example? Do they answer my text messages because you see those blue check marks in WhatsApp, for example, but they don't reply? You saw that they got it, they read it, but they don't reply. People don't pay attention when you are in a meeting. They are distracted. Look at their phone. These are all signals where you should recognize in the future, I need to work on my relation. And the three principles that most likely will do the job to cultivate a relationship or repair an existing relationship are reciprocity, liking, and unity. So what you see... Pulling here is now we can recognize a signal. Why we might not reach our goals, why we get a no instead of a yes, can only be one core motive and the whole machine is start pinning again. So relationship can be one of those gears we have to work on. It's not a one, two, three step model. It could be in a new influence challenge, but it could also be just fix the relationship. So influence is start to move in your direction. So the second core motive that I like to introduce is uncertainty. In every decision -making process, we get uncertain most of the time. To give you an example, let's assume you want to buy a new kitchen. You go into Google and you type in buy a new kitchen. And then bang, you right away have like a million hits. Unconscious, we get uncertain. Where do I click? What are signals? What could you recognize when other ways that people are uncertain? Well, if you communicate with them, they might just say it. I don't know what to do. Or I doubt that this is the best decision for me. These kinds of expressions will help you recognize that people are still uncertain. Here's another thing people do. They start improving your offer. One of times we think, oh, but I am the expert. Why they don't listen to me? It's because they are uncertain. Those people don't want to act annoying. They know what to bother you, but they express uncertainty. And you should think I should m

LTC Brian Hancock interviews CW5 Michael Gudmundson on electronic warfare (EW) and how it shapes current and future conflicts. Gudmundson spent four years at I Corps and then transferred to the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa to plan and advise on EW.

FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

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 Zlatno Doba for arranging "Amazing Theramin Music Compilation." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDYvQ8FsZB4&t=502s

---

00:00:07    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 a 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.

00:00:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome to the One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we're going to explore the amazing world of electromagnetic warfare and its implications for the civilian populace. I have with me in the studio, Chief Warrant Officer 5, Michael Gunmanson, one of the Army's foremost experts on electronic warfare. Welcome to the show, Chief. Thanks. Glad to be here. Hey, I'm glad you're here, too. Now, I understand we have reason to celebrate. You recently moved from Chief Warrant 4 to 5. So tell the audience, what does it feel like to not have to ever worry about a senior rater making comments on your OER again?

00:01:24    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I was so worried about it before that like now I just keep rowing, just I'll keep doing what I do.

00:01:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, explore the freedom. I think the rest of us are always fighting for top blocks and trying to get those rater comments, which seem to be 90 % of promotions. So enjoy the freedom. I was wondering why you are so happy and now I know the truth of the matter. Okay, fantastic. Let me tell the audience a little bit about you. I'm lucky to know you well. Chief Warrant Officer 5 Gunmanson was selected for the very first electronic warfare warrant officer course taught by the U .S. Army in 2009. Following the course, he spent nine years as a brigade combat team electronic warfare technician. He's completed two deployments, first to Iraq and the second to Afghanistan.

00:01:42    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I know the truth of the matter.

00:02:07    BRIAN HANCOCK
And next, he spent four years at First Corps and then transferred to the United States Army, Europe and Africa, where he has spent the last three years planning and training U .S. Army cyber electromagnetic activities to include electronic warfare. Amazing. I'm really glad you're here. Glad to be here. Okay. Let's give him the standard disclaimer because I know you and I are both opinionated. Reminder to the audience, all remarks made by Chief and I are ours and only ours and do not necessarily represent the views of the U .S. Army or the Department of Defense. All right, Chief, this is a complicated topic and got some pretty smart folks involved in Army and Marine Corps civil affairs, but not all of them spend time working in electronic warfare. So just to set the foundation, I'd like us to define a few terms. that we're going to be using repeatedly through the show. Let's start with that term electromagnetic warfare, EW. What exactly is EW and how does that differ from cyber electromagnetic warfare, SEMA?

00:03:08    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The way I define it is electromagnetic warfare is radio frequency propagation and how the... all of the spectrum -dependent devices that count on radio frequencies. Electronic warfare is the attack and sensing of systems that are dependent on the spectrum. Where cyberspace electromagnetic warfare and SEMA, it includes EW because so many of those systems touch the spectrum. For example... I have an image of a cyberspace person who is always on the keyboard, who is hacking and doing everything on the Internet. And that image, I see that as there is a point in the nodes from the computer. to the Wi -Fi from the Wi -Fi back into a landline, either into fiber or some other system. And then when it gets pulled into a company that's providing that service, it's going to hit airwaves again in another form. And there's just all these different areas where electronic warfare will deal specifically with frequencies and then cyberspace would have to do with the effects on a device.

00:04:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks for clarifying that. It sounds like... If we have the Internet of Things in our house, we're doubly screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.

00:04:27    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.

00:04:29    BRIAN HANCOCK
Amen. You mentioned spectrum. Spectrum, I think, is very important. I don't think we have specific MOSs dedicated specifically just to spectrum. I may be wrong about that. You can correct me. But in modern living, spectrum is kind of like air, right? It's all around us. It's ubiquitous. And everyone is using it for almost everything. Communication. to information, to understanding. Tell us a little bit about spectrum. What is it and who's responsible for it?

00:05:01    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, spectrum management for the U .S. Army, it's an all -NCO MOS that manages the spectrums. And it is what frequency is your device operating on and how much of a specific frequency does it need to function properly.

00:05:20    BRIAN HANCOCK
And I'm glad to hear that we have the backbone of the Army getting after that with spectrum management. I suspect that that's going to become more and more contested over time, just like airspace, probably carefully metered, especially in these dense countries that we operate in, such as Europe. All right, let's switch gears a moment to your current role here at the United States Army Europe in Africa. Tell the audience a little bit about what you do here.

00:05:46    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
What I do is I help make sure that there are enough electromagnetic and SEMA resources for all of the units in Europe and Africa to conduct their missions and operations and training.

00:05:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
So you're kind of like a facilitator or a broker? Absolutely. Well, at your level of excellence, I'm not surprised. You'd be a force multiplier to help all those other people get it right. Do you do any active SEMA planning or coaching, anything like that?

00:06:10    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. If there's a SEMA question that comes up... I'll give my experience and I'll show where electromagnetic warfare and SEMA will fit into the mission.

00:06:21    BRIAN HANCOCK
Great. I wish you would continue that coaching and advice to the people who make GoWarsim and JCATs and these other devices so that we could get a SEMA layer in there. And we'll talk, obviously, later in the show why that's really important from what we're seeing in Ukraine and elsewhere. But keep doing that influencing you're doing. I think we need more of it. All right, let's talk about authorities, right? This is a pretty big topic for any enabler, and SEMA is no exception. What authorities, if any, exist to conduct electronic warfare in Europe or Africa? And how difficult is it to get authorities if you don't have one that you need?

00:06:56    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The Department of Defense has a spectrum management doctrine regulations at how -to, and every piece of military equipment is annotated in that process. And so that process shows which piece of equipment we work with in the U .S. Army and how much of it can be shared with each country. To get after the authorities, the step number one is can we use the equipment in the country we're in? And then the step number two is how do we assign the frequencies to it? Because we're sharing the spectrum, which is owned by the host nation. Each host nation owns every frequency. In order to transmit on what we want to transmit, we have to share the parameters of the equipment. And there's a process for that. And we make sure that that process is. So that's how we get to the authorities. How long it takes with the processes that we and relationships we've built. If all of the documentation is in order, we can do it in. It's nice to have 30 days, but we can do it much faster. And then if that documentation isn't in order, I think we can do it in about 180 days.

00:08:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. I imagine that varies quite a bit depending on where you're operating. Germany, where we are right now, is a pretty well -oiled machine when it comes to bureaucracy process and paperwork. Certain other countries, I think, is probably closer to the Wild West. So I imagine that that could vary quite a bit. But that's great explanation. It's really important as you move up. that you have those authorities to conduct on frequencies for whatever period is time, for whatever purpose, whatever condition. And ideally, we want to build those authorities into our operations plan in advance so that they're pre -coordinated and train them in exercises too, especially force -on -force tactical type exercises. I think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors.

00:08:52    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors. Your eyeballs are as close as you're going to get to sensing the spectrum. Light is on the electromagnetic spectrum, but most of the devices we use, we can't actually feel the spectrum being used. And so we have to go through another medium, a computer, to identify whether it's on or off.

00:09:20    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah. I think all those folks in the... Cuban embassy were feeling the spectrum when Russian turned on the microwave emitters. But maybe not normal.

00:09:30    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. That's where you got to say most. But to get those results from what I understand is very high power and very highly specific systems.

00:09:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay, I got it. Many of these folks that we have listening to 1CA podcast are officers and NCOs who have the burden of making things happen. And they have to take senior officers and turn those good ideas into actual executable operations. So they're doing a lot of the sausage mating. So in the intermediate level education that we get on the officer side, one of the things we really don't talk about is the electronic warfare process as to how that moves through boards, bureaus, centers, sales, working groups, all the way to the host nation, the country team, to result in an approved concept of operation that allows us to emit within a host nation. Can you tell those folks who want to incorporate EW into their planning, into their exercises, into their staff products, How do you move an EW CONOP from good idea all the way to firing it?

00:10:49    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, for the U .S. Army, there are units that have been fielded equipment or there are units that have requested for equipment and have acquired equipment. In order to do specifically an electronic and attack CONOP, you just need to find the equipment and the power level and then also to plan it.

00:11:09    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, but can't you get that at RadioShack? Yeah, you probably could. Right? So there's more to it, right, to get an Army approval to do that.

00:11:15    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. In the scenario where you got something from RadioShack and you made a transmitter, you're going to classify the antenna. You're going to measure how far or how powerful it is and at what frequency it's tuned to. And then you're going to have a LAN to do it on. You're going to have to have a sensor to detect it or a device. that you're going to want to jam or interrupt. And the way we do it is you're going to put all of that data in a CONOP or in a request form with the five W's of how you want to perform your electronic attack mission or how you're going to perform your EW effect.

00:11:55    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. How does that CONOP track through the process? You know, you and I sit at the computer. We ginned something up, and I think it's the greatest idea ever. I don't know if anybody else will, but what's our next stop with that after we've come up with that good idea and dropped it in the format?

00:12:09    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
We start with the signals section, the G6 at UCRF, and that's where they will look at the spectrum needs and determine if they have enough resources for it, if equipment can be turned on, if there is host nation trends. turning on that type of equipment in the location that we want to do it.

00:12:33    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. And, you know, like if it's a training area on foreign soil, we might have some type of standing arrangement which would grease the skids, so to speak.

00:12:42    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
And a lot of times in the planning conferences, if there's an event happening, a lot of people would love to have EW into their event.

00:12:47    BRIAN HANCOCK
lot of people

00:12:50    BRIAN HANCOCK
I really think so. You know, we keep looking at all of the CTC rotations, including JRMC. The senior leaders from Forcecom are talking and they say, every time we try and do any type of jamming, the movement goes to hell because nobody knows how to do that. They've forgotten how to operate without all of these bandwidths and all the devices that depend on it. And that doesn't seem to have gotten any better in the last 10 years or so. So I think at every level from tactical on up

With the death of Alexei Navalny, I called Ilya Zaslavsky, A Russian anti-Putin activist, and asked him to come on the show to give some perspective on what happened and its ramifications.

This show was a quick turnaround, so I apologize for the editing. I wanted to get it out to you as soon as possible. 

Also, a quick heads-up: FeedSpot just ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at:

https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

---

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 PilSkills Cheftain Channel for creating 11 hours of hip hop instrumentals for the sample. Found on YouTube at (+/-2:40:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl9ZsT3jKs

---

00:00:03    JACK GAINES
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 have a special episode.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
With the death of Alexei Navalny, I called Ilya Zaslavsky, a D .C.-based anti -Putin activist, and asked him to come on the show to give some perspective on what happened and its ramifications. This show is a quick turnaround. So I apologize for the editing, but I wanted to get it out to you as soon as possible. We've known each other for a couple of years now, right? Correct. And for this call, I just wanted to bring you on because of the whole Navalny announcement that he was killed, and it was right in the middle of the Munich Security Conference. It was right when his wife was about to speak, I believe.

00:01:14    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
Absolutely, yes. She spoke yesterday and she said that maybe it would have been a better choice for her to go to her family, but... She understood that if Alexei was alive, he would be on this stage speaking against Putin. So that's why she did it.

00:01:29    JACK GAINES
Right. Yeah. And so have you been getting prompt a lot since the Navalny? Do you mind if I just call it a Navalny murder? Even though he was in prison, it was timed specifically for this Munich conference and to send a message to the West. Does that bother you if I call it a murder?

00:01:45    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
No, no, no. It is a murder and it should be called a murder. It's a deliberate assassination.

00:01:50    JACK GAINES
Okay. I try not to editorialize too much, but when something like this happens, it's so obvious that you just kind of have to name it. And I thought of you because you get pinged on these things a lot because of your work with anti -corruption and anti -cliptocracy. And I thought this is a great time to reach out and just get your opinion on what's going on and also talk about how this demonstrates how cliptocracy becomes an ongoing national security threat. Absolutely, it does.

00:02:17    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
And this grave concern has been going on since the beginning of Russian war against Ukraine in 2014, for others much earlier, since actually Putin's speech at Munich conference, I believe it was like 2007 or something, just before Russia attacked Georgia. And within Russian opposition, both within Russia and outside in the diaspora, there have been lots of divisions and lots of different thoughts. But I would say... There were people who were still hopeful to do changes within Russia. And Navalny was their flagman, was their leader, was their organizer. Many people considered him one of the best people who can unite, especially young people and young professionals. Right. Him and Barbouris Nemtsov. And that's why when Nemtsov was killed. There was so much discouragement and tragedy, but people were still hoping that we still got Navalny. And then there was another, I would say, streak of thought and activity that is, especially in the diaspora, where some activists and experts were not hopeful about things within Russia and didn't believe that much can be changed. But they saw a global security. threat coming out of Russia. Sure. Out of Russian corruption and plutocracy. And because they saw it spread in the near broad, that's how Russia used to call former Soviet Union states,

00:03:40    JACK GAINES
of Russian corruption and plutocracy.

00:03:49    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
but also in Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, and then in Africa, Southern America, and then in the West, in US, in Canada, in Japan, among G7 and NATO allies. And I belong to the second camp. I don't suggest that they are mutually incompatible, but I never believe that we can actually stop Putin's regime anytime soon. But I always warned since at least 2012 that this is absolutely unprecedented kleptocratic regime. It's worse than Soviet regime in some aspects. And the West is partly complacent in giving resources,

00:04:29    JACK GAINES
resources, money. You're talking about banking. especially intermediaries that help with hiding banking and buying commodities and just feeding this regime allowing it to trade globally in the way that it wants rather than forcing them to trade on the western governance standards and that this will have grave security implications this will this is not something happening in distant russia you know with poor russian people and i sympathize i'm not make sarcasm here but

00:04:30    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
money. You're talking about

00:04:36    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
and just feeding this regime allowing it to trade globally in the way that it wants rather than forcing them to trade on the western governance standards and that this will have grave security implications this will this is not something happening in distant russia you know with poor russian people and i sympathize i'm not make sarcasm here but It will not stay contained within Russia. So this is not some distant story. We in the West will pay a price. In 2012, it sounded freaky and then alarmist. After 2014, it gradually became, the acknowledgement sort of grew. But it still took years and years. And only full -scale attack on Ukraine actually made it mainstream. And now NATO is talking about long -term conflict with Russia. which Russia is forcing on NATO. And everyone is talking finally about defense spending and collective action and containment. So to bring this back to Navalny, Navalny showed the actual magnitude of this corruption. Someone calculated overall, he and his team, around 100 major investigations. And I mean, it depends how one counts, but... I think if you include all the small and little regional investigations and various findings they did on individuals, it will be much more. Like this investigation of Putin palaces and yachts, but also... That's right.

00:06:08    JACK GAINES
That's right. I remember that, the ones that were off the Black Sea, right?

00:06:11    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
Yes, and it had millions of views. But what he showed isn't just the fancy and the scary part of corruption. What he showed is the systemic nature of it. And if we're talking about systemic nature, it is not contained within Russia. It is global. They're using global financial system and using lots of various partners, allies, and enablers, including in the West, to carry out what they do. And so that's the legacy of Navalny. For me, he not just mobilized people who wanted to do changes within Russia, but he also showed the international experts applications of This grant corruption for the rest of the world.

00:06:53    JACK GAINES
Then obviously Putin took him seriously because he went after him when he was living overseas and then he captured him when he was in the country. So does that mean that Putin is influenced or his government is influenced by the diaspora and how they think about Russia?

00:07:08    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
It's a great question. To be honest,

00:07:09    JACK GAINES
question. To

00:07:10    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
be honest, I'll be brief about this. I think Putin tolerated Navalny and actually tried to exploit his existence for his own political needs at the time. And his expediency and his needs fluctuated over time and changed significantly over time. I think he always hated the West and the U .S. in particular. Yeah, he blamed him for collapsing the Soviet Union. Yes, and he always had this revanchist kind of mind.

00:07:29    JACK GAINES
for collapsing

00:07:35    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
of mind. What we should not forget about him is that his cool nature is that he's a KGB recruiter.

00:07:40    JACK GAINES
a KGB recruiter. Right, so anytime you offer him an opportunity, he'll explore it to see if he can exploit it. or if it's worth cooperating with. But if it's not, then he'll go against it or undermine it.

00:07:53    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
Exactly. He sort of reached the ceiling of globalization. He exploited it to the best of his ability, and then he got disappointed in it, that he couldn't manipulate it further. But while he was still doing it, he was consolidating power within Russia. And I think until maybe 2010, 2012, he was using... Navalny and other investigations from third parties to keep a leash on his own boyah. It's a story ancient as Russian history. Corrupt and tyrant czar keeping at bay his boyahs through third parties and forcing them to fight each other. He basically wanted to have compromise on everyone and some of that compromise to be publicized. But that led some people to... even accuse, you know, Navalny of being a Kremlin's project, which is nonsense, just insane. But I'm sure Navalny was always a genuine activist and a genuine anti -corruption fighter.

00:08:52    JACK GAINES
fighter. He was probably trying to play within the rules at some point to cooperate and still be the opposition. But when he just got to be too dichotic, he just said, that's it. I got to just go all the way with this.

00:09:05    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
Exactly. I share the same opinion. Along that murky and bumpy road, Navalny did a lot of things. He removed all the cases that got in his hands, and he mobilized many young people, and he gave hope to many of them. But then the dire times started. Putin really decided to go full -scale against Ukraine, and I believe that's why he started to eliminate opponents physically. And openly.

00:09:36    JACK GAINES
openly. The chair flying contests out of all the windows in Moscow. Yes, and he did these constitutional amendments, which allowed him to basically stay for life and get reelected as many times as he wanted for rigged elections.

00:09:39    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
Yes, and he did these constitutional amendments, which allowed him to basically stay for life and get reelected as many times as he wanted for rigged elections. I think very few people in Russian opposition or among Western policymakers understood the scale of Putin's intentions. He would actually go at the full scale war with Ukraine, but also with the West. What we're witnessing over the last two years is almost total disentanglement of Russia from Western globalization, from Western economic ties. Something that has been built since even Stalin times. The first gas deals were discussed even in the last years of Stalin and then Khrushchev and Brezhnev. He disentangled all of that, even like the most sacred to some of his KGB colleagues and party bosses. So he was preparing for many years for this attack. And Navalny was one of the people who meddled with this policy. And he had to be either squeezed out of the country or eliminated within the country. So they tried to poison him. And then when he returned back to Russia, not receiving the signal to shut up and to stay abroad, they immediately jailed him and they started to isolate him. And they still couldn't manage to do that. because Navalny managed to be vocal even from the prison. So what happened over the last half a year is a clear preparation for the murder because they moved him around the country and eventually put him in this very distant northern region where no one can reach it. They opened criminal cases on his lawyers. So they squeezed two out of his five lawyers out of the country and the three others are now in prison. And he got new lawyers. So he kept on kind of being resurgent in his protest and in his activism. So yeah, they decided to kill him. In any case, it was deliberate and it couldn't have been done without the protest direct order. And you know,

00:11:45    JACK GAINES
there's two things that come to mind. One, a friend of mine who is very familiar with Russia told me a story. He said, when you get to the point where you feel like you can't win, it's like you live in a neighborhood and you really hate the guy next door. And so you start talking to people who are arsonists and you just start passing out matches and say, just go burn something, just go burn something, whatever, just go burn stuff. And you may burn down your own house, but eventually they're going to burn down that guy's house and you'll be happy. And that's kind of the mindset is if I'm going down, everyone's burning down. And so, which is a very dire view of current conditions. But to me, it shows the willingness to take that risk of losing his money. He's willing to do that because he'd rather take new money out of Russia. He'll take more money out of the foreign campaigns where Wagner and other groups are running mines in Africa. He can get more money. He doesn't worry about the money. It's the power and the position that he worries about. The second thing that gets me is I don't see a transition plan.

00:12:11    ILYA ZASLAVSKY
that's kind

00:12:40    JACK GAINES
I don't see a transition plan. So he doesn't care. Once he passe

Today, Courtney Mulhern interviews Dan Joseph, Author of the Combat Psych website and the book Backpack to Rucksack: Insight Into Leadership and Resilience From Military Experts. 

His articles and tools are to help soldiers and families build mental fitness and overcome past trauma so that they can live healthier / happier lives. 

As you know from Courtney Mulhern's episode, she is a practicing therapist and a terrific interviewer, so I put the two together for this episode.

Dan Joseph's info:

https://combatpsych.com

"Backpack to Rucksack: Insight Into Leadership and Resilience From Military Experts": 
https://www.amazon.com/Backpack-Rucksack-Leadership-Resilience-Military

Website "Combat Psych" where you can find more information about him and the things he's working on: https://www.combatpsych.com

Instagram: @mhen2.mentalhealth

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 US 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 Amr Diab for the song and album "Amarain." 
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6RC2T3Q7rs

---

Transcript for episode I&II

00:00:00    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. Contact the show. Email us at [email protected]. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Okay, testing.

00:00:37    COURTNEY MULHURN
Can you hear me, Dan?

00:00:38    DANNY JOSEPH
Yes, loud and clear. Today, Courtney Mulhern interviews Dan Joseph, author of the Combat Psych website and the book Backpack to Rucksack, Insight into Leadership and Resilience for Military Experts. His articles and tools are to help soldiers and their families build mental fitness and overcome past trauma so that they can live healthier, happier lives. As you know from Courtney Mulhern's episode, she's a practicing therapist and a terrific interviewer. So I put the two together for this episode. This is part one of two. I'll have a link to his site in the show notes. So back to Courtney.

00:01:14    COURTNEY MULHURN
Hi, Dan, and welcome to the 1CA podcast.

00:01:17    DANNY JOSEPH
Thanks for having me. Yes,

00:01:18    COURTNEY MULHURN
we've got a lot to talk about today. Looks like you've been very busy with several books out now and still more coming. So I want to talk to you about all of that. But before we get into that, I just want to hear a little bit about your military service.

00:01:33    DANNY JOSEPH
Yeah, I was a combat engineer, training folks to go deploy, and was a platoon leader. Got to spend a lot of time with the Joes out in the field. And it was a short contract. I was only in for three and a half years. And I'm out now, but definitely I'm looking at rejoining in other capacities.

00:01:53    COURTNEY MULHURN
Okay. So kind of moving into your writing process, just kind of curious how you got into writing.

00:02:01    DANNY JOSEPH
So the main crux of it was getting out of the military, trying to fit in society and realizing I was totally different. I changed in a big way that I didn't expect. It was quite subtle, to be honest. And I joined old. I joined at 32. So a lot of my buddies were 18, 19 when I met them. So I had to go through basic training before OCS. And so mental health was a big issue due to COVID. I was in the military during the lockdowns. I had a soldier survive his suicide attempt. Another friend of mine lost 13 men from his unit to suicide after Afghanistan, which is crazy, crazy numbers. I'm shoppable. I need to think about. And so when I got out, I just wanted to make sense of what was going on. What I felt as points of friction with my identity and who I was, I also wanted to apply, because I'm a big nerd, aspects of neurophysiology to the concept of being a leader in the military. What that means in an environment where your sympathetic response and their sympathetic response are constantly triggering on and off due to high intensity, high urgency, combat experience, things of that sort. Working with a lot of combat veterans. I witnessed the weight that they carried. And it just begged the question, how does a military leader stay tactically aggressive and at the same time show consideration and care and love for the men and women who are in their platoon, in their unit, who potentially are struggling with invisible weight? And so it's just one big constellation of variables. There's so many moving parts. So writing was just my way of kind of trying to process all this.

00:03:39    COURTNEY MULHURN
So where does one even start? How do you start to organize the thoughts pen to paper?

00:03:45    DANNY JOSEPH
So my first book was a journal entry that turned into like 400 pages. When I got out, I thought about my soldier, Cody. He wrote the introduction to the book. The foreword was written by Austin, who lost 13 of his men. And I started journaling on what could be done to help those who are hurting and struggling with depression, with suicidality, with difficult feelings. So I started a journal entry about the neurobiology that underlies chronic depression. So it was kind of like this dual process of what does my gut tell me? And then what does the science tell me? And I was trying to make sense of this. And all of a sudden I realized, hey, this is an interesting dualistic process here. So I'm looking at warm, fuzzy feelings. And then I'm looking at hardcore functional MRIs and brain scans and all that. And I wanted to marry the two. And then that turned into multiple pages. And then I thought, well, I could write about another soldier right now that I know. I could write about a Marine that I met and an airman and a Navy rescue swimmer, a Navy EOD. And so I started piecing together kind of this crumb trail of service members who inspired me and touched my life even before I joined the military. And this book came out with a little nuggets of advice that hopefully will help. Incoming leaders, especially junior officers, have a special kind of consideration for the nuanced variables of being a leader.

00:05:14    COURTNEY MULHURN
So then Backpack to Rucksack. So was there anything specific that made you want to focus your thoughts into this book? Or how did this one start?

00:05:27    DANNY JOSEPH
So yeah, this one started as the journal entries. And then I created the Combat Psych Handbook as a boiled down version of it. And I gear it specifically towards men because men tend to have less emotional vocabulary and they're much more inclined if you look at the rates of suicidality and successful suicides. It's way higher. I think it's four to one when it comes to men. And so there's just such a stigma on talking about feelings and discussing things. And so I wanted to give the troops some really, really boiled down lists of thoughts and phrases, self -talk, journal prompts. and just variations on how to describe their feelings, how to understand their feelings, and why it doesn't mean that they're weak because they experience very inconvenient feelings at times. Again, it goes down to the neurocircuitry of the brain. So that was a distilled version of Backpack to Rucksack.

00:06:21    COURTNEY MULHURN
I like how you organize the chapters. So you kind of give keywords at the beginning that will be discussed throughout the chapter with some definitions, and then an introduction, how to be a good... military leader, the psychological application, and then leadership advice?

00:06:38    DANNY JOSEPH
While I was in the Army, during the lockdowns, things got slow, right? A lot of the pipelines were shut down. So Ranger School, Airborne, Aerosol, everything was just on hold. And so I thought, and what do I do in an indefinite amount of time? And I thought, well, Army offers tuition assistance. So I started an online organizational psychology degree. And what I loved about getting a master's in org psych is that There's no necessarily right or wrong answer when you give a prompt to the professor, but you need to back it up with peer -reviewed journal citations. And so I started looking at terms and definitions and ideas and concepts in the world of psychology, but based on peer -reviewed journals. So there's a community of researchers that agree or disagree on certain things. And so I kind of brought that muscle memory into this book. And so I wanted to offer terms that basically provide a sense of objectivity. that I'm not just talking about my feelings and my perspective. Yes, a lot of the book reflects that for sure. But I also wanted to inject some objective truth that regardless of my biases, I wanted to mitigate that as much as possible. So I thought, let me add some of the words, the definitions, let me add some journal citations and give credit to researchers who did the science and then expand on that.

00:07:58    COURTNEY MULHURN
Definitely. And throughout this book, you discuss many of your relationships and with just other service members both peers friends and mentors as a part of your research so what was that like talking to different service men and women and hearing their stories and and just making them a part of this book a lot of these people molded me before i joined and while i was in i had my own issues growing up i had my own experiences and

00:08:20    DANNY JOSEPH
lot of these people molded me before i joined and while i was in i had my own issues growing up i had my own experiences and I was not in a healthy lifestyle before I joined and was asking myself existentially who I want to be in this world. I started meeting service members. I met some awesome Navy SEALs here at San Diego, started working out with them. I started meeting EODs who were coming back and forth from multiple deployments back to back in Afghanistan. I started having these conversations with people who were my demographic, my age range and all that, but they were doing some things in their lives that I just couldn't even wrap my head around. I saw their self -discipline. I saw their humility. I saw how focused they were and that they weren't doing horrible things with their lives like me and my friends were doing. And that rubbed off on me. I wanted to emulate that. And so this book is kind of a journey through all the different people who mentored me through the way they behaved, just observing them and seeing the qualities that they had. And yeah, I didn't have a great relationship with my father. And so especially for me, meeting male mentors was really cool to just understand what healthy masculinity looked like. And jujitsu played a big role in that as well. Getting me to just break my own ego or having black belts on the mats break my ego for me and allow me to reconstruct it in a healthy way. Just knock down my pride. I needed that. And then some of my sisters in arms showed me kind of their side of it too, what it was like being in the military with certain issues that they were facing. It was a family, you know, and so we all kind of bonded together. It was just cool identifying as service members wanting to strengthen America. And that was the overarching relationship that we had with each other. And anything else that we brought to the table, regardless of race, gender, any ideologies that we had, we just together in uniform, you know, we all needed to work together and that was it.

00:10:25    COURTNEY MULHURN
Absolutely. So how were you able to network across different branches and ranks? Like if there are units out there, you know, it's important. We're all brothers and sisters in this. So how would you suggest to network with each other?

00:10:40    DANNY JOSEPH
One big thing was jujitsu gyms. I guess fight houses. So if you do MMA, jujitsu, Muay Thai, things of that sort, you know, CrossFit, go to a gym where you meet people with uniforms, right? So you meet. all these different service members who are driven, who are motivated, who are making healthy decisions with their minds, their bodies. And that's a way to connect. I met a lot through like groups groups and men's groups and things like that, where I was intentionally seeking mentorship and just kind of spiritual guiding as well. And then honestly, just having, having conversations with people from whether you go to MEPS and you're joining, you just talk to the people left or right of you, or if you're at a D shock at a dining facility, I mean, Having that openness to just talk to people like they're people, regardless of rig. And I noticed that just the more relaxed someone is in approaching others in uniform, you allow them to relax as well. And you can have these awesome discussions. And one thing that was so cool was I'd be working with a soldier, let's say a senior NCO, who's fairly reserved. And then I would just ask them a question. Hey, so how long have you been in? Where have you deployed? what's your take on things going on right now and we would talk about what they experienced in combat like things would come up that they'd want to share voluntarily it was just so cool to know that they did these things for our country and they weren't looking for the limelight or anything by just validating that and asking them to share some wisdom you know i'm a new officer tell me something that i don't know that you know that you learned in war that you wanted them and you just see them light up And say, yeah, you know what, when it comes to this, this should be your focus. So these are your priorities. This is how you care for people. And then it would just blossom into these discussions where you realize you're talking to the smartest person in the room and they're also the quietest. They're the most reserved. I love that. You know, I'm just naturally curious about people's inner world and what makes them tick. I love that because in the military, it's so easy to loo

Today, Courtney Mulhern interviews Dan Joseph, Author of the Combat Psych website and the book Backpack to Rucksack: Insight Into Leadership and Resilience From Military Experts. 

His articles and tools are to help soldiers and families build mental fitness and overcome past trauma so that they can live healthier / happier lives. 

As you know from Courtney Mulhern's episode, she is a practicing therapist and a terrific interviewer, so I put the two together for this episode.

Dan Joseph's info:

https://combatpsych.com

"Backpack to Rucksack: Insight Into Leadership and Resilience From Military Experts": 
https://www.amazon.com/Backpack-Rucksack-Leadership-Resilience-Military

Website "Combat Psych" where you can find more information about him and the things he's working on: https://www.combatpsych.com

Instagram: @mhen2.mentalhealth

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 US 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 Amr Diab for the song and album "Amarain." 
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6RC2T3Q7rs

---

Transcript for Episode I&II

00:00:00    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. Contact the show. Email us at [email protected]. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes. Okay, testing.

00:00:37    COURTNEY MULHURN
Can you hear me, Dan?

00:00:38    DANNY JOSEPH
Yes, loud and clear. Today, Courtney Mulhern interviews Dan Joseph, author of the Combat Psych website and the book Backpack to Rucksack, Insight into Leadership and Resilience for Military Experts. His articles and tools are to help soldiers and their families build mental fitness and overcome past trauma so that they can live healthier, happier lives. As you know from Courtney Mulhern's episode, she's a practicing therapist and a terrific interviewer. So I put the two together for this episode. This is part one of two. I'll have a link to his site in the show notes. So back to Courtney.

00:01:14    COURTNEY MULHURN
Hi, Dan, and welcome to the 1CA podcast.

00:01:17    DANNY JOSEPH
Thanks for having me. Yes,

00:01:18    COURTNEY MULHURN
we've got a lot to talk about today. Looks like you've been very busy with several books out now and still more coming. So I want to talk to you about all of that. But before we get into that, I just want to hear a little bit about your military service.

00:01:33    DANNY JOSEPH
Yeah, I was a combat engineer, training folks to go deploy, and was a platoon leader. Got to spend a lot of time with the Joes out in the field. And it was a short contract. I was only in for three and a half years. And I'm out now, but definitely I'm looking at rejoining in other capacities.

00:01:53    COURTNEY MULHURN
Okay. So kind of moving into your writing process, just kind of curious how you got into writing.

00:02:01    DANNY JOSEPH
So the main crux of it was getting out of the military, trying to fit in society and realizing I was totally different. I changed in a big way that I didn't expect. It was quite subtle, to be honest. And I joined old. I joined at 32. So a lot of my buddies were 18, 19 when I met them. So I had to go through basic training before OCS. And so mental health was a big issue due to COVID. I was in the military during the lockdowns. I had a soldier survive his suicide attempt. Another friend of mine lost 13 men from his unit to suicide after Afghanistan, which is crazy, crazy numbers. I'm shoppable. I need to think about. And so when I got out, I just wanted to make sense of what was going on. What I felt as points of friction with my identity and who I was, I also wanted to apply, because I'm a big nerd, aspects of neurophysiology to the concept of being a leader in the military. What that means in an environment where your sympathetic response and their sympathetic response are constantly triggering on and off due to high intensity, high urgency, combat experience, things of that sort. Working with a lot of combat veterans. I witnessed the weight that they carried. And it just begged the question, how does a military leader stay tactically aggressive and at the same time show consideration and care and love for the men and women who are in their platoon, in their unit, who potentially are struggling with invisible weight? And so it's just one big constellation of variables. There's so many moving parts. So writing was just my way of kind of trying to process all this.

00:03:39    COURTNEY MULHURN
So where does one even start? How do you start to organize the thoughts pen to paper?

00:03:45    DANNY JOSEPH
So my first book was a journal entry that turned into like 400 pages. When I got out, I thought about my soldier, Cody. He wrote the introduction to the book. The foreword was written by Austin, who lost 13 of his men. And I started journaling on what could be done to help those who are hurting and struggling with depression, with suicidality, with difficult feelings. So I started a journal entry about the neurobiology that underlies chronic depression. So it was kind of like this dual process of what does my gut tell me? And then what does the science tell me? And I was trying to make sense of this. And all of a sudden I realized, hey, this is an interesting dualistic process here. So I'm looking at warm, fuzzy feelings. And then I'm looking at hardcore functional MRIs and brain scans and all that. And I wanted to marry the two. And then that turned into multiple pages. And then I thought, well, I could write about another soldier right now that I know. I could write about a Marine that I met and an airman and a Navy rescue swimmer, a Navy EOD. And so I started piecing together kind of this crumb trail of service members who inspired me and touched my life even before I joined the military. And this book came out with a little nuggets of advice that hopefully will help. Incoming leaders, especially junior officers, have a special kind of consideration for the nuanced variables of being a leader.

00:05:14    COURTNEY MULHURN
So then Backpack to Rucksack. So was there anything specific that made you want to focus your thoughts into this book? Or how did this one start?

00:05:27    DANNY JOSEPH
So yeah, this one started as the journal entries. And then I created the Combat Psych Handbook as a boiled down version of it. And I gear it specifically towards men because men tend to have less emotional vocabulary and they're much more inclined if you look at the rates of suicidality and successful suicides. It's way higher. I think it's four to one when it comes to men. And so there's just such a stigma on talking about feelings and discussing things. And so I wanted to give the troops some really, really boiled down lists of thoughts and phrases, self -talk, journal prompts. and just variations on how to describe their feelings, how to understand their feelings, and why it doesn't mean that they're weak because they experience very inconvenient feelings at times. Again, it goes down to the neurocircuitry of the brain. So that was a distilled version of Backpack to Rucksack.

00:06:21    COURTNEY MULHURN
I like how you organize the chapters. So you kind of give keywords at the beginning that will be discussed throughout the chapter with some definitions, and then an introduction, how to be a good... military leader, the psychological application, and then leadership advice?

00:06:38    DANNY JOSEPH
While I was in the Army, during the lockdowns, things got slow, right? A lot of the pipelines were shut down. So Ranger School, Airborne, Aerosol, everything was just on hold. And so I thought, and what do I do in an indefinite amount of time? And I thought, well, Army offers tuition assistance. So I started an online organizational psychology degree. And what I loved about getting a master's in org psych is that There's no necessarily right or wrong answer when you give a prompt to the professor, but you need to back it up with peer -reviewed journal citations. And so I started looking at terms and definitions and ideas and concepts in the world of psychology, but based on peer -reviewed journals. So there's a community of researchers that agree or disagree on certain things. And so I kind of brought that muscle memory into this book. And so I wanted to offer terms that basically provide a sense of objectivity. that I'm not just talking about my feelings and my perspective. Yes, a lot of the book reflects that for sure. But I also wanted to inject some objective truth that regardless of my biases, I wanted to mitigate that as much as possible. So I thought, let me add some of the words, the definitions, let me add some journal citations and give credit to researchers who did the science and then expand on that.

00:07:58    COURTNEY MULHURN
Definitely. And throughout this book, you discuss many of your relationships and with just other service members both peers friends and mentors as a part of your research so what was that like talking to different service men and women and hearing their stories and and just making them a part of this book a lot of these people molded me before i joined and while i was in i had my own issues growing up i had my own experiences and

00:08:20    DANNY JOSEPH
lot of these people molded me before i joined and while i was in i had my own issues growing up i had my own experiences and I was not in a healthy lifestyle before I joined and was asking myself existentially who I want to be in this world. I started meeting service members. I met some awesome Navy SEALs here at San Diego, started working out with them. I started meeting EODs who were coming back and forth from multiple deployments back to back in Afghanistan. I started having these conversations with people who were my demographic, my age range and all that, but they were doing some things in their lives that I just couldn't even wrap my head around. I saw their self -discipline. I saw their humility. I saw how focused they were and that they weren't doing horrible things with their lives like me and my friends were doing. And that rubbed off on me. I wanted to emulate that. And so this book is kind of a journey through all the different people who mentored me through the way they behaved, just observing them and seeing the qualities that they had. And yeah, I didn't have a great relationship with my father. And so especially for me, meeting male mentors was really cool to just understand what healthy masculinity looked like. And jujitsu played a big role in that as well. Getting me to just break my own ego or having black belts on the mats break my ego for me and allow me to reconstruct it in a healthy way. Just knock down my pride. I needed that. And then some of my sisters in arms showed me kind of their side of it too, what it was like being in the military with certain issues that they were facing. It was a family, you know, and so we all kind of bonded together. It was just cool identifying as service members wanting to strengthen America. And that was the overarching relationship that we had with each other. And anything else that we brought to the table, regardless of race, gender, any ideologies that we had, we just together in uniform, you know, we all needed to work together and that was it.

00:10:25    COURTNEY MULHURN
Absolutely. So how were you able to network across different branches and ranks? Like if there are units out there, you know, it's important. We're all brothers and sisters in this. So how would you suggest to network with each other?

00:10:40    DANNY JOSEPH
One big thing was jujitsu gyms. I guess fight houses. So if you do MMA, jujitsu, Muay Thai, things of that sort, you know, CrossFit, go to a gym where you meet people with uniforms, right? So you meet. all these different service members who are driven, who are motivated, who are making healthy decisions with their minds, their bodies. And that's a way to connect. I met a lot through like groups groups and men's groups and things like that, where I was intentionally seeking mentorship and just kind of spiritual guiding as well. And then honestly, just having, having conversations with people from whether you go to MEPS and you're joining, you just talk to the people left or right of you, or if you're at a D shock at a dining facility, I mean, Having that openness to just talk to people like they're people, regardless of rig. And I noticed that just the more relaxed someone is in approaching others in uniform, you allow them to relax as well. And you can have these awesome discussions. And one thing that was so cool was I'd be working with a soldier, let's say a senior NCO, who's fairly reserved. And then I would just ask them a question. Hey, so how long have you been in? Where have you deployed? what's your take on things going on right now and we would talk about what they experienced in combat like things would come up that they'd want to share voluntarily it was just so cool to know that they did these things for our country and they weren't looking for the limelight or anything by just validating that and asking them to share some wisdom you know i'm a new officer tell me something that i don't know that you know that you learned in war that you wanted them and you just see them light up And say, yeah, you know what, when it comes to this, this should be your focus. So these are your priorities. This is how you care for people. And then it would just blossom into these discussions where you realize you're talking to the smartest person in the room and they're also the quietest. They're the most reserved. I love that. You know, I'm just naturally curious about people's inner world and what makes them tick. I love that because in the military, it's so easy to loo

This week, Rob Boudreau hosts Joel Searl, who created and runs the U.S. Marine, 1st CAG, podcast "The Human Dimension," their social media and public outreach programs.

The original is located at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpdSA_Z7pAs

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 US 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 Gloria Estefan and Sony Music Media for a sample of Dingui-Li Bangui. Released 1990-09-16. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7J_DVryF-g  

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Transcript

00:00:06 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 [email protected]. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:42 ROB BOUDREAU
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. I'm Rob Boudreau, and today we're joined by Joel Searles, who is a podcaster in his own right. He is also a Comstratat Officer and Civil Affairs Officer in the Marine Corps Reserve. Before we get started, I'd like to just include a quick disclaimer that the views expressed today are those of participants and do not reflect the views of the federal government or any of its components. So with that, Joel, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:05 JOEL SEARLES
Hey, thanks for having me, Rob. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:08 ROB BOUDREAU
Absolutely. Our introduction was through Jack Gaines, who made a connection, I think, with mutual contacts of both of ours. So my understanding is that you're a podcaster, is that right?

00:01:18 JOEL SEARLES
That's correct. Yes, I've worked on and ran and created three podcasts.

00:01:24 ROB BOUDREAU
All right. So I know that you're a reservist. Are you able to provide a little information about what you do in the civilian world?

00:01:29 JOEL SEARLES
Sure. I currently run my own company. It's a small production company in the entertainment business. We focus on military and inspirational stories, sports stories, features, and television. Currently do that. I write within that company as well. I've been hired to write core screenplay based on a true story. And then also I do acting. And I've been able to act usually as a Marine or as a police officer or authority figure in some TV shows and feature films and supporting rules.

00:02:00 ROB BOUDREAU
Wow, that's terrific. That sounds like it dovetails really well with your reserve career as a Comstead officer. It does. Yeah. How have you been able to blend those things? Have you been able to use your civilian skills? How do you pair those with your military service?

00:02:15 JOEL SEARLES
Well, this all came about during the pandemic. On July 1st, I was called by my boss. I worked at a boutique entertainment firm, finance firm in Century City. And he had called me to let me know. He went out of business. His deal flow went through the basement, basically, and he wasn't able to sustain his company anymore. And he'd had some of his assets acquired. So I got that call and thought to myself, how am I going to survive this? And, you know, how am I going to find a job when nobody's running or, you know, only a few companies are. So I called my reserve unit, which was the entertainment media liaison office. And I hadn't even been to public affairs QCORS yet. I told my boss and talked to him. His name's Joe. And he's like, well, I want to help you. I know you need to work, but we're closed. But what would you want to do if you could? And I've already done a few interviews of successful Marines in Hollywood. And what can you do during the pandemic? You can make Skype and Zoom calls with people and phone calls and write interviews. And so I pitched, how about I do a series of interviews with successful Marines in Hollywood? He's like, that's a great idea. It'll help with recruiting. You know a lot of folks, so give me a list, I'll prove it, and you go talk to them. And that led to me starting a writing career, and I'd just been hired by We Are the Mighty the month before because they'd seen some of the interviews I'd done and enjoyed them. And so I was kind of dual hat, and I was writing for the Marine Corps and, you know, getting things published on Divids, and then eventually over to We Are the Mighty, and I was viewing veterans during the pandemic like Robert Duvall. And Bob Gunton, who was the warden in Shawshank Redemption, Warden Norton, who's a Vietnam vet. And Roberto Barba, who's a showrunner, TV show producer, probably done 40 or 50 now. But through the Marine Corps, I was able to interview Don Balisario, who created NCIS and Magnum PI and Airwolf and so many other great shows. Bill Broyles, who wrote Cast Away and Apollo 13. I mean, you know, Oscar -level screenwriter and Vietnam vet. And then that eventually led to me interviewing Fred Smith, who founded FedEx and finances feature films, such as The Blind Side and Sicario movies. I know those are a lot of names and a lot of references, but that's really where this all started. And I started writing, kind of got a name for myself as a writer in a good way, and then, you know, started my own small firm. focused on specific genres that I'm comfortable with and that also resonate with a lot of veterans and the American audience. So that's really where it started. From there, it just kind of branched out. That's now three and a half years ago.

00:04:54 ROB BOUDREAU
Wow, that's fantastic. So you live in the information space. How did you get into civil affairs?

00:05:00 JOEL SEARLES
So I was doing some research. I looked at civil affairs even seven, eight years ago and recognized a couple of things. My initial MOS was air defense and a LAD, Stinger missiles. That MOS has now since kind of restarted and gained some steam. But, you know, eight years ago, there was really talk about it all. If you wanted to have a continued career in the reserves, you needed to find an MOS that was more applicable and relevant. And so I looked at civil affairs, saw it was only secondary. I didn't know how that would allow me to continue. And so I held on it. Went to the entertainment office after making about four or five different inquiries about coming to the office on an MLS waiver. And they let me in based on my industry experience because I worked at a talent agency, actually for probably the only Marine talent agent left in Hollywood and packaged the film while I was there. But I digress. So after completing the time there at the entertainment office, I looked at civil affairs and knew some people in the unit. Got some intel and information about people who enjoyed it. And I decided to join the unit myself back in August of 2022. That's great. And you're with First Civil Affairs Group out of San Diego.

00:06:17 ROB BOUDREAU
First Civil Affairs Group out of San Diego. Is that right? Camp Pendleton. Camp Pendleton.

00:06:23 JOEL SEARLES
Pendleton.

00:06:24 ROB BOUDREAU
All right. Close enough. But either way, you're living the Hollywood Marine dream as a civil affairs officer. I like that. Well, the way our intro came about as a result of a podcast that you launched with First CAG. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

00:06:38 JOEL SEARLES
Absolutely, yes. Our CO and XO, and OPSO at the time, brought me into the unit, and they wanted to maximize not only the Hollywood style, being able to translate the narrative into action, but also some of my creative skills that I've been blessed with probably since childhood. I guess they kept that part of me alive and always maintained curiosity. So they initially wanted me to do a social media revamp. which allowed me to kind of structure and align our social media, develop a system that was accessible, and allowed the CO's voice and the Marine's voice to be heard and seen. And so I wrote an SOP, spent a good amount of time developing that, and got a lot of references and insights and help from people. So I'm grateful for that. And got the SOP signed and put it out into action. And then that's since led to an increase in our recruiting and efforts there as a unit. We've had people come in from all over the base. and even off base on the other side of the country. And they've seen some of the posts and they've seen what's going on with the unit. And they're like, yeah, I'd like to check this out. I'd like to join. So the CEO was happy about that. The hire, Marfor Rez, was happy about her social media impact and imprint. And that led to them being open to, hey, can I do a podcast? That's great. Yeah, you can highlight things within the unit, what we've done or what we're going to go do. You know, I have an OPSEC manager who comes in and makes sure what we've talked about is kosher. And I briefed the maroons beforehand to keep it on the unclassed side and things that are out in the ether are ready. So we're keeping our cards close to our chest. And I share it with the CO and usually the INI to get their opinions on it as well. And then I post it. And that's helped generate some interest, obviously, even from yourself. We're grateful for that. And you put in one of our podcasts on your page and sharing it. And that it led to... us doing an internal command messaging program called the CMP, not the Combat Marksmanship Program, but the Command Messaging Program. And we've put up displays inside the command to highlight what the Marines are doing so they can see current messages inside of our unit. You know, we've got stuff from the Gulf War, stuff from Mogadishu. We have things from OIF like 2 and 3. So everything on the walls, for the most part, is either 10 to 30 years old, older than a lot of the junior Marines that are there at times. And even some of the officers like myself, like I remember the Gulf War as a kid and watching it on CNN and PBS. But, you know, I certainly wasn't in the service. And I mean, I know people that served in that war, but that's a long time ago. So the CO wanted to be relevant. We've repainted the walls. We're doing some stenciling. updating everything. We've got a really engaged first sergeant. We've got some other engaged Marine sergeants and even up to company and field grade officers that really want to see this turn out well. And so it's looking good. We've got the electronic displays up and it's crossed into the 2020 plus decade and years to engage the Marines to know that what they're doing is relevant. And here's photos from a lot of different Marines of the unit and what they're doing.

00:09:52 ROB BOUDREAU
That's amazing stuff. You made reference there to we had the privilege of rebroadcasting one of your introductory shows over the holidays, so we appreciate the opportunity to synergize there. Getting off the ground, you had a lot of resources and folks you're able to lean on. Is it fair to say that this is a fairly siloed effort by First CAG? And what I'm getting at is the social media stuff. That's not really being driven by hire, is it?

00:10:17 JOEL SEARLES
No, the CEO wanted it, and I wanted it too as a comms right officer. I've done that. sweet social media managers course, which is really tough. I went and did that and paid for it on my own dime to get better even before I came to the unit. Once I came, I was able to put it into use right away. So it is an internal CAG, internal generation, and an internal purpose and drive that is making positive ripples and waves far out from our unit.

00:10:47 ROB BOUDREAU
That's great. And obviously, outside of yours truly, Have there been other folks from the Marine Corps or units that have looked into what you guys have been able to generate and ask you any questions or anything like that?

00:11:00 JOEL SEARLES
Yes. To my knowledge, the SOP I wrote was shared with Hire because they asked for it. I believe it was FHG asked for it because they wanted to know what we were up to because they were seeing a lot of activity and they were hearing positive things.

00:11:14 ROB BOUDREAU
Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like your reach, beyond the substance of that, you've also been able to provide. additional influence, if you will, in the recruiting lanes and other things that I think are outside the traditional mission, at least as we ordinarily think of it. So that's really awesome. Thank you. I'm blessed with some strong support and good Marines.

00:11:30 JOEL SEARLES
Thank you. I'm blessed with some strong support and good Marines. For sure. And sailors. Absolutely.

00:11:36 ROB BOUDREAU
Can't forget our Navy brethren. Right. We've got,

00:11:37 JOEL SEARLES
We've got, I believe, our corpsman and then our logistics chief. And then I think the first sergeant, they were out doing woodwork to put up stuff and hold the displays we hang on the walls now. with the laptops and the electronic displays. So even the Navy's jumped in and done some carpentry and some staining to bring, I guess, an old core sense of work ethic of just getting it done and making it look new and fresh and taking responsibility for our structure and engaging younger Marines and the younger audience, the Marines and sailors and their families and the general public.

00:12:13 ROB BOUDREAU
Wow, that's awesome. That's quite a concerted effort. Thank you. Leading up to the launch of the podcast, did you stand up an operational planning team or conduct any kind of formal planning for what it was going to look like?

00:12:25 JOEL SEARLES
That was just left to me. You know, I conversed with higher and I conversed with my wife's counsel on how to exactly do it. And then, you know, registered the website with the YouTube page with headquarters Marine Corps and discussed it with the INI and the CO and the XO. But there really wasn't OPT. Kind of like, just go out and make it happen. You know, do it, you don't. And there was planning that went into it. It was just, you know, more focused on what it

Today, we welcome back Curtis Fox, author of Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict, which is now hot off the presses and in stores. 

We discuss the book's concepts and how they apply to current events. This is part one of two, so sit back, enjoy and come back next week for part two. 

Link to Biography: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-fox-mba-pmp-59b74223/

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Please email us to either speak or guest-host at [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Today's music is from the Disney film COCO and is a tribute to Ana Ofelia Murguia, whom I once met at a San Diego Latin Film Festival. Ana passed away this week at age 90, so this episode's music is her tribute. 

Murguia: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/movies/ana-ofelia-murguia-coco-dead.html

Link to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJfoPUOUWBw

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Transcript for I&II

Introduction
Welcome to the One CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 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 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 [email protected]. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:41 CURTIS FOX
This is Curtis Fox.

00:00:43 JACK GAINES
Curtis! Jack Gaines, how you doing?

00:00:45 CURTIS FOX
Doing good, man. You're very punctual.

00:01:07 JACK GAINES
Russia and Syria is a great example of a combination of, as you say, hybrid operations evolving into the full scale kinetic operations.

00:01:35 JACK GAINES
For the listeners? Sure. I can't even pronounce them. And I did read them, but it would be better for you to describe them. I mean,

00:01:42 CURTIS FOX
I mean, I tell you what, I speak Russian and they're still hard for me to pronounce. Maybe the first term we can go into is Maskarovka, because this is one of the Russians' favorite terms. And that literally just translates to camouflage. This is the hidden hand approach that the Russians have in history done so well. They don't want these things to be directly attributable to Moscow.

00:02:06 CURTIS FOX
Just literally means activity. And what they mean by that is all of the little things that you do in the background to try to frustrate a target nation's institutions from responding to the intervention that you're conducting. You do not want them to be able to get forces in the field. Preferably, you'd have them stay in their barracks. And you want to set up blockades that frustrate public transit and encourage people to stay in their homes. Or maybe come out in mass protest, preferably in front of city hall or a police station so the political apparatus is frozen. And then vignettes at most is surprise. But it's surprise of, you know, like speedy movement. And what they mean by that is if they can use soft forces to rapidly deploy and establish some sort of a foothold on a limited number of key objectives. then they need the rapid maneuver of heavy ground forces to entrench those gains. This was the secret sauce that did so well in the Crimean annexation back in 2014. So the VDV, the Russian Airborne Services, those are really the elite trigger pullers of the Russian armed forces. And once a number of Spetsnaz battalions had advanced far enough up roads and blackaded positions coming into the peninsula, The VDB immediately used a number of secured local airstrips to move in forces in mass. And they spread rapidly throughout the peninsula and secured all those gains.

00:03:43 JACK GAINES
You know, it kind of reminds me of Bosnia and Kosovo during the conflict and how it has resulted in Kosovo having a Bosnian shadow government in part of the border towns.

00:03:53 CURTIS FOX
There's some real similarities in the way Russia continues to manipulate and maintain influence in Georgia. and the Serbian approach in Bosnia. That's probably where they get a lot of these ideas from. If you look at Georgia, there's an autonomous enclave called South Asatia, and then another one called the Bukazia, which is right up on the coast of the Black Sea. And the Russians would have us believe that these enclaves had ethnic Russians in them, that they would have you believe that they don't want anything to do with that government. And they want to remain segmented off and autonomous from the country with no trade and political independence.

00:04:33 JACK GAINES
I remember Lithuania had that issue, too. They were arguing that there are Russians in Lithuania that want nothing to do with Lithuania. I remember them posing the same argument there. So it must be a form of foothold mentality where they're saying, look, these are our people.

00:04:49 CURTIS FOX
Sure. Yeah. Vladimir Putin actually talks about it as a genuine tragedy that these are Russian citizens that have been scattered across the globe and isolated from the government in their mother country. Never really offers so many resources to come home if it's really that big of a tragedy. And they don't seem to want to migrate to Russia on their own dime. But this being a civil affairs podcast, it's probably also worthy to point out something the Russians do very well. is they figure out what influencers have their hands on which buttons. They're very good at understanding which individuals have access to what information and which individuals run X, Y, and Z departments and who would it be good to make friends with.

00:05:36 JACK GAINES
Right. They have good influence operations. They know how to map people and their networks and reach. So your book is really large.

00:05:44 JACK GAINES
book is really large.

00:05:48 JACK GAINES
And I appreciate it. I mean, it's what, 500 pages?

00:05:52 CURTIS FOX
I tell you what, my publisher made me take out three appendices and an additional chapter. I actually wrote a chapter. It was a comparative glance on U .S. doctrine to highlight how is the Russian apparatus, the political apparatus, how do they actually create authorizations for these interventions? And then, you know, how do they actually deploy military force? from the available units that they have in SOF. And then I compared that to how we would do it in the United States. So that whole chapter was removed. And then I had separate appendices on the Soviet arsenal that Russia inherited in 1991, including the nuclear ordinance.

00:06:35 JACK GAINES
Huge maintenance cost. Oh, my gosh.

00:06:37 CURTIS FOX
my gosh. And then I had an appendice on the state procurement programs, GPV 2020 and 2027. And I go through. All the hardware that they've been purchasing over the last 10, 12 years, you know, for Army, Navy, Air Force, Strategic Rocket Forces.

00:06:53 JACK GAINES
So are you going to push those into a second book or are you going to make those online dependencies for people who just want to learn more about it?

00:07:01 CURTIS FOX
So those are on the website right now. You can actually go read those. And, you know, if you're, I mean, you need to be an Uber nerd to get into them. But if you want to know which electronic warfare systems Moscow is running in Ukraine right now, it's all there.

00:07:15 JACK GAINES
Well, if I'm uber lazy, could you send me the link so I can post it on the website?

00:07:19 CURTIS FOX
For you, anything.

00:07:20 JACK GAINES
I'll put it in the show notes. That way people can check it out.

00:07:23 CURTIS FOX
I'd love to pivot from that and talk to you a little bit about some of the units that they actually need to execute these strategies. And the reason it's such a relevant conversation is because a lot of these units have been hollowed out now in the current war, the Russo -Ukrainian War. Oh,

00:07:41 JACK GAINES
wow.

00:07:44 CURTIS FOX
has taken such extraordinary casualties that it was combat ineffective by the end of last year.

00:07:51 JACK GAINES
Is it kind of like that old saying about soft? The best time to train a soft person is 10 years ago? The best time to train a new VZV person is 10 years ago? Is that what they're facing right now?

00:08:03 CURTIS FOX
It's a little bit of that. The other issue that they're running into is they just have nobody they can recruit into the ranks. They have an inverted demographic. in their country, and so they just have no healthy young people that can serve as soldiers. So they can go through and round up the homeless, and they can go through the prisons, and they can round those people up. They have a vicious, vicious narcotics crisis in Russia, and they can put people who are addicted to substances in the armed forces, and you can throw those people in as cannon fodder, but they don't perform the soft mission very well. And they certainly don't make good elite light infantry. So they're in a real pickle as far as deploying elite forces go. And you need those elite units to conduct hybrid warfare. So maybe that's a good starting point.

00:08:51 JACK GAINES
Are they recruiting other people than the White Caucus people from the steppes so they don't have a race issue that's also blocking it?

00:09:01 CURTIS FOX
It's entirely possible if they get desperate enough that, yeah, they'll start channeling them into elite units. I don't really have any direct evidence that they wouldn't have put people from an Asian disposition into, you know, let's say the 10th Spetsnaz Brigade.

00:09:14 JACK GAINES
Right.

00:09:15 CURTIS FOX
But the big one to watch are the Chechens. The ruling family in Chechnya is allied with Vladimir Putin, and they're very willing to contribute troops. But one of the unspoken realities about that is that the more Chechens are organized into, you know, the Volstok and Zapad battalions and pushed into foreign wars. The fewer Chechens there are at home to cause trouble for Moscow. And there are other ethnicities that start getting uppity. Moscow will absolutely adopt similar tactics.

00:09:46 JACK GAINES
Sure. Now, the trick is, though, the surviving Chechens that are battle -hardened to come back to Chechnya, what's the risk that they'll flip the nation back towards independence?

00:09:56 CURTIS FOX
It's definitely on Putin's mind. But the goal is, first off, those individuals are loyal to the family and basically rules Chechnya through a puppet governor, let's say. It operates almost as an autonomous vassal state. And so they would first have to fight their own people. And then the second issue is that Moscow has absolutely no qualms about sending a special missions unit down there to round somebody up in their home. I mean, you can go to their Wikipedia page and they're open and honest about saying they still conduct operations in Chechnya all the time.

00:10:35 JACK GAINES
Actively hunting people down. Actively hunting people down.

00:10:37 CURTIS FOX
people down. And they're on the southern end of Chechnya. And those guys will have no problem going up there and getting them. Okay.

00:10:45 JACK GAINES
Okay. So it's dangerous, but it's unlikely. It's less likely right now. Yeah. Unless Russia comes out of this Ukraine conflict so battered that everyone starts seeing the blood in the water. Right.

00:10:57 CURTIS FOX
The one thing that could create a real separatist movement in Chechnya is if Kardarov and his cronies decide that they're just going to switch allegiances. Sure. If he decides that Putin is weak or that serving Moscow is no longer in the family interest, that would change everything.

00:11:14 JACK GAINES
Okay. So we were talking about the development and evolution of hybrid warfare.

00:11:20 CURTIS FOX
Yeah, yeah. We got a little off track.

00:11:24 JACK GAINES
That's okay. We'll just play as is. It's fine.

00:11:27 CURTIS FOX
Well, and, you know, Chechnya is a good place to start for this because the first and second Chechen wars were so taxing on Russian and international standing and resources and manpower and so embarrassing for Moscow that they realized they needed to come up with another way to do this. They needed a way that would limit their investment, limit their risks, limit their attribution, and let's say stack the deck in their favor so it was more likely that they could slant the outcome to victory.

00:11:57 JACK GAINES
And they've had a long term intelligence practice. And so do you think that a lot of their successes in intelligence were just incorporated into a more military style that they just weaponized it a little bit more? to what we want, our desires for Russia.

00:12:29 CURTIS FOX
Russia. So let me kind of outline the framework here, I guess, and I think I'll answer your question. Sure. There is a ruling class in Russia of about 200 individuals. Right. Those 200 individuals, they call themselves Slovy. Most of them were educated during the Soviet era. The education system collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was never rebuilt. And so their talent pool that is constantly getting smaller and dwindling. A lot of these guys are into their mid -70s now. Some of them, like Sergei Lavrov, came from the Foreign Service, but a lot of them are simply KGB men like Putin.

00:13:08 JACK GAINES
So these aren't long -term families of Russia? No. They're not the Vanderbilts.

00:13:14 CURTIS FOX
Yeah, they're not oligarchs, for sure. They're only oligarchs in the fact that they wield in fun.

00:13:19 JACK GAINES
Yeah.

00:13:20 CURTIS FOX
Basically, the promise that Vladimir Putin made to the Russian elites when they started this project, w

Today we welcome Albert Augustine, the G9 at V Corps.

Albert came on the show to discuss the changes in army training in Europe and how they impact civil affairs. 

Additionally, we discuss how CA members can get a tour and how to prepare for a gig at V Corps or in Europe. 

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special Thanks to Backing Track Music for sharing Track C of Big Band Blues. You can find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=bWzuzLgde28

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

This week, we introduce the USMC 1st CAG Human Dimension Podcast.

This is the first pilot episode 1st and hosted by Major Searls, with guests including Major Antonov, Captain Johnson, and Staff Sergeant Camos. The Marines discussed their experiences at Operation BRIGHT STAR 2023.

The original is located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpdSA_Z7pAs.

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 US 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

I'll have those in the show notes.

Lastly, special thanks to 90sHipHop Instrumental for sharing a sample of the song Jump Around by House of Pain. You can find the source at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szn7VARgmyo

Today, we welcome back to the second half of the interview with retired Col. Robert Curris, who drafted the opinion piece, "The Army needs to invest in Psychological Operations and not cut them." in the November first edition of the Military Times:
https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/2023/11/01/the-army-needs-to-invest-in-psychological-operations-not-cut-them/

This is the first time I have had the honor of bringing in an expert on Psychological Operations. With the Army Reserve combining some Civil Affairs, Information Operations, and PSYOP commands, this is an excellent opportunity to give the community a voice. 

Robert Curris Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-curris-29887188

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks for Jeffrey Friedman and Water Tower Music for todays theme song "OOOH". Found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ksJXPrZfk

Today, we welcome retired Col. Robert Curris, who drafted the opinion piece, "The Army needs to invest in Psychological Operations and not cut them." in the November first edition of the Military Times:
https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/2023/11/01/the-army-needs-to-invest-in-psychological-operations-not-cut-them/

This is the first time I have had the honor of bringing in an expert on Psychological Operations. With the Army Reserve combining some Civil Affairs, Information Operations, and PSYOP commands, this is an excellent opportunity to give the community a voice. 

Robert Curris Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-curris-29887188

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks for Jeffrey Friedman and Water Tower Music for todays theme song "OOOH". Found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ksJXPrZfk

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today, we are rebroadcasting a Carnegie Connects interview with retired General David Petraeus about his new book and current world events.

I will have a link to the source in the show notes. 

Carnegie interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=druqmRdjOow

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Broke For Free for releasing the song "Something Elated." Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh4S2A8Q4U 

Please welcome Angie Smith, environmental Scientist and Civil Affairs Officer. 

Angie and her team travel globally to partner nations to assess resource use and advise on sustainable development. 

Her team has helped countries like the Marshal Islands with resource management to mitigate climate change.
 
In this episode, Angie will talk about her trade, and how it helps the U.S. build foreign relations with the international community.

In a future episode, she will return with their new partner, Wisconsin University.  

One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jimmy Eden Moon for sharing the compilation "Hip Hop 1995 XIII Instrumentals." Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vnXH18FMoc

Welcome to One CA Podcast. This episode is from the archives. The former host, John McElligott traveled to AUSA in 2018 and interviewed participants on Civil Affairs. It's a quick episode, but a fun one for the Veteran's Memorial Weekend. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Broke For Free for releasing the song "Something Elated" (No Copyright Music). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh4S2A8Q4U

Recently, I organized a panel discussion on Taiwan with the Joint Staff SMA program (Strategic Multilayer Assessment), which is similar to a think tank but within the DOD. 

They bring in people to present their work and discuss national security.

I had reached out to Dan Blumenthal and Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute and thought it would be good to include SMA in the discussion. 

Mariah Yager is running the SMA portion, and I am guiding the discussion. This is a two-part episode, so enjoy. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Perri Yellow Bird for the song "Tradish," retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TKmaoHBI7A

Recently, I organized a panel discussion on Taiwan with the Joint Staff SMA program (Strategic Multilayer Assessment), which is similar to a think tank but within the DOD. 

They bring in people to present their work and discuss national security.

I had reached out to Dan Blumenthal and Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute and decided to include SMA in the discussion. 

Mariah Yager is running the SMA portion, and I am guiding the discussion.

This is a two-part episode, so enjoy. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Perri Yellow Bird for the song "Tradish," retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TKmaoHBI7A

Today, we welcome Captain Daniel Moriarty, Professor John Melkon, and Captain Tommy Daniel to talk about Westpoint's Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations and the exciting new programs for students to learn CMO within the school and abroad. 

They also requested that I add that their comments are their own and do not officially represent any institution or organization.

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Today's theme is "On, Brave old Army Team" the Westpoint fight song.  

Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/AKkAqIvFdAo?si=ctqv5MIlc4yZj7EO

This version of “On, Brave Old Army Team” is in the public domain.

Brain Hancock hosts Colonel Tony Vacha

They discuss his experiences as the Civil Affairs planning chief for the US Army Europe and Africa, 

as well as his thoughts on the new Civil Affairs 38-Golf program and discussions about the new transitional governance doctrine. 

This is part one of a two-part episode, so stay tuned. 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

---

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. A quick shout out to LC38 Brand. They're offering 10 % off for 1CA Podcast fans. The promo code is 1CA10. LC38 Brand has a little bit of everything for the international adventurer. So check out their website at lc38brand .com. I'll have the promo code and the address in the show notes.

00:01:00    BRIAN HANCOCK

Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Crump Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session.

00:01:07    Introduction

Today, Brian Hancock hosts Colonel Tony Vaja. They discuss his experiences as the Civil Affairs Planning Chief for U .S. Army Europe and Africa, as well as his thoughts on the new Civil Affairs 38 Golf Program and discussions about the new Transitional Governance Doctrine. This is part one of a two -part episode, so stay tuned.

00:01:27    BRIAN HANCOCK

I have with me in the studio, Colonel Tony Vaja. Colonel Vaja, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Outstanding. Let's give you a little bit of background. Colonel Vaja is currently the civil affairs planning chief for the U .S. Army Europe and Africa. He has previously served for two years as the deputy commander of the 353rd Civil Affairs Command in Staten Island, New York. He has had a range of assignments in both civil affairs and force management. He served as the lead concept developer for the 38 Gulf career field and the development of the Institute for Military Support to Governance. Quick reminder for the audience that all remarks by myself and Colonel Vaja are ours solely, and they do not represent the views of the U .S. Army or Department of Defense. Well, Colonel Vaja, you have done so many things in your 31 years of military service that I'm not sure where to begin. Okay, all right. Your assignment as Deputy Commander of the 353 Civil Affairs Command, KCOM. Many of us will not have that opportunity to be a DCG of a KCOM, and the KCOMs are growing. What is that experience like? What is it like to be at that pinnacle position in civil affairs, be the deputy commander of a formation that is very nearly the size of division?

00:02:57    TONY VACHA

Yeah, it's a fun and exciting assignment. I always joke if you're going to come serve at a KCOM, whether DCO or in the G3, you need to make sure you come with your running shoes on. As DCO, I was blessed to work for two really strong civil affairs generals, General Tim Brennan and later General Dean Thompson, and watch them and get their thoughts on civil affairs and how to support a theater. I appreciate that commentary.

00:03:25    BRIAN HANCOCK

that commentary. As you're well aware from your work in Proponency and your lengthy service, the bulk of civil affairs originally came out of Special Operations Commander and the USASOC. And as a result, we are very tactically focused. And when you look at what we do in war games and exercises, I've never seen an operational or strategic civil affairs war game or exercise. So that work that you were doing at the strategic level at the KCOM, Any thoughts you can share? Because it seems to me the gulf between what we do tactically versus how we make that operational strategic civil affairs leap is vast.

00:04:05    TONY VACHA

leap is vast. Yeah, I think it's challenging in terms of how we allocate forces to a GCC or an ASCC is uniquely different than the tactical mission set. And, you know, I had the privilege of serving at the KCOM twice. the deputy G3. And so I got to watch through exercises, austere challenge, judicious response, civil affairs planning teams. And we've had some really strong colonels at 353. And when they take a mission, they lead it and execute it. And I've been privileged to see some of these colonels work at these headquarters. And it becomes an issue of the amount of time to spend someone up. on whatever the problem set is, right? The faster someone can do that, the more agile they are for the customer, whether it be the GCC or ASCC.

00:05:01    BRIAN HANCOCK

Outstanding. Let's continue in this vein on operational and strategic civil affairs. There's talk that the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command may soon reorganize and actually make psychological operations. and the theater information operation groups, or TIOG's, subordinate to the KCOMs. Is there any truth to this? Certainly that will put a KCOM at a division size. If they do that, are they going to make our KCOM commanders two stars? Yeah,

00:05:32    TONY VACHA

Yeah, probably not. Is this going to happen? And if so, what are the implications? I've been told it's going to happen. Unfortunately, a lot of that came after my tenure as DCO. It does make sense in some ways, because... as information -related capabilities, I think there's a lot we could learn from PSYOP. And I also think there's a lot they could learn from us. I know for some of the POGs, they have multiple theaters that they're supporting. So that can be very challenging, right? When you have three different theaters that you're trying to array your forces and align them to. I see goodness in all of it because ultimately, Like I said, the KCOM is built as a strategic headquarters with a general officer, right, who can engage in venues that a colonel can't. You know, when a KCOM commander comes to theater, they're meeting with maneuvered division commanders, core DCGs, you know, these types of people, ASCC senior leaders, GCC senior leaders. So that can provide some advocacy for PSYOP. So I don't see it all as just a bad thing. I see it as an evolution. So I served at UC KPOC force development under Major General Daryl Guthrie. And he used to have a quote. He'd say, it's a shame the first time I really learned about PSYOP was when I became the two -star commander of UC KPOC. And I think there's some truth to that, that we need to learn from each other because we share a common headquarters.

00:07:03    BRIAN HANCOCK

I appreciate that. It seems to me that actually, you know, I've spent most of my career in UC KPOC. We're a little bit late to the party. Now, we've been experimenting over the last few years, I believe even in the New York area Bayou, with putting some CA and some PSYOP together. What we're seeing at the larger level for joint combined operations, we're seeing formations like multi -domain task forces, which have been in development for 10 years now. We're seeing theater information advantage elements or theater information advantage detachments. We're seeing in our G39 that you're part of in USRAF. There's a lot more capabilities than just CA and PSYOP because we're moving towards this concept of convergence to meet the challenges of modern warfare, which means we have to synchronize every IRC and fire rapidly and continuously against every target to shape for a kinetic kill or to hopefully avoid a conflict. So at this point, we're looking at putting... eight plus IRCs together. So I think KPOC has some opportunity to advance that, but we're going to need to do, I think, a lot more than just putting CA and PSYOP together with a tie. Yeah, I concur. To stay relevant.

00:08:21    TONY VACHA

No, I completely concur. And I had the unique opportunity to be part of the information warfare design team that ARCyber did a few years ago, which kind of led to the evolution of what the tie is evolving to right now. And the one thing I'd always remind the other capabilities within the information arena is with current programmed forces, there's only two capabilities that go from ASCC all the way down to maneuver battalion,

00:08:44    TONY VACHA

current programmed forces, there's only two capabilities that go from ASCC all the way down to maneuver battalion, and that's CA and SIOP, right? So when you look at how we get them engaged in a future fight. Not probably, it definitely requires some synchronization and convergence at multiple echelons. Just from the fact that CA is unique in that a branch or organization only has one role by definition for the Army. We are the only capability in DOD that is solely focused on foreign civilian populations. PSYOP is very unique. Now they may. look at foreign civilian populations, but they also look at threat actors. They're looking at a broader piece than necessarily we are. But that civil component, that civilian portion of the operational environment, I've always said when we were developing functional specialist capabilities in 2012 to 2015, which includes 38 Gulf, but also includes AMED and JAG, other capabilities. Why wouldn't other branches want to use functional specialists? Yes. Right? I think it can be as helpful to PSYOP and I .O. as it is to CA. Absolutely.

00:10:06    BRIAN HANCOCK

I remember back at Rim of the Pacific a few years ago, building a fusion team with the evolving 38 golf program that I think we'll talk about here shortly. And they were the analytical brains with my SIM cell. Now we call it civil knowledge integration course, CKI. And together we produced products that the Joint Combined Task Force had never seen before. So there is, I think, incredible opportunity as a customer demand driven organization for the larger army and the larger joint force for us to provide that kind of information and analysis and insight that allow us to significantly reduce costs in terms of lives and equipment. And of course. Our struggle as a force is not winning a tactical battle. It's achieving our strategic objectives. So we walk away with having spent blood and treasure towards a larger purpose that really mattered. And that is very challenging right now. And the more destruction, the more death, the more crisis that happens in blunt contact. the more difficult that stability and achieving those long -term strategic objectives become. So a lot of opportunity in this space. I concur that the 38 Gulfs are going to be a big player in that. Let's talk about that. You were actually one of the founders of the 38 Gulf Specialist Program. Can you tell the audience a little bit about the history of this military occupational specialty and how it came to fruition?

00:11:37    TONY VACHA

Yeah, yeah, sure. So I was a doctor and developer at SWCC. Then Colonel, a later Brigadier General, now retired, Mike Wormack, was the commandant. And he assigned me as the OPR to do the initial research, did a lot of reading, read every manual, civil affairs manual, going back to FM 27 .5 in 1942. So yeah, I've been asked by a number of people over the years, people are doing research on something, they'll call me and they're like, what triggered the development of it? And it was actually a joint capabilities -based assessment and got validated by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, which produced JROCM 162 .11, if anybody wants to look it up. So it assigned particular .mil PFP responsibilities to SOCOM and SWCC to redo or to professionalize functional specialists, basically. So unfortunately, the Army Reserve doesn't promote on skill identifiers. So, you know, at least when I initially came into civil affairs, you know, circa late 2003, people would get promoted as lieutenant colonel into colonel into functional specialist slots. Well, they may or may not have any background for whatever they're promoted into. So it hurt us. Because we were in busy years, you know, at that time. And so that's why the Jay Rockham said to professionalize the functional specialist program. 38 Gulf, a commissioned officer, was the way that was chosen. Ultimately, the commander of USASOC at the time was Lieutenant General Cleveland. And he also wanted to develop the Institute for Military Support to Governance. So these were two distinct yet related initiatives. and functional specialists writ large were designed to be operational and out and about. The IMSG was designed with some key functions that are currently missing, as a matter of fact. One, they were to inform the development of doctrine and training because you just can't expect a GS -12 doctrine developer to understand. the range of the specialties. We have 21 now or something like that.

00:14:00    BRIAN HANCOCK

We have 21 now or something like that.

00:14:02    TONY VACHA

So, so yeah, you had to, the experts were supposed to help us write what the doctrine should be. The second function that IMSG had, which is missing, they were supposed to be basically the talent management of all the functional specialists. Who do we have where, what are their specialty, look at their career growth, what kind of assignments should they have. And then the third function, which we've had experience with in my 10 years DCO, was to be a place that you could go for requests for information or requests for assistance. Yes. Right. And there'd be a clearinghouse. Because it's

Brain Hancock hosts Colonel Tony Vacha

They discuss his experiences as the Civil Affairs planning chief for the US Army Europe and Africa, 

as well as his thoughts on the new Civil Affairs 38-Golf program and discussions about the new transitional governance doctrine. 

This is part one of a two-part episode, so stay tuned. 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

---

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. A quick shout out to LC38 Brand. They're offering 10 % off for 1CA Podcast fans. The promo code is 1CA10. LC38 Brand has a little bit of everything for the international adventurer. So check out their website at lc38brand .com. I'll have the promo code and the address in the show notes.

00:01:00    BRIAN HANCOCK

Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Crump Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session.

00:01:07    Introduction

Today, Brian Hancock hosts Colonel Tony Vaja. They discuss his experiences as the Civil Affairs Planning Chief for U .S. Army Europe and Africa, as well as his thoughts on the new Civil Affairs 38 Golf Program and discussions about the new Transitional Governance Doctrine. This is part one of a two -part episode, so stay tuned.

00:01:27    BRIAN HANCOCK

I have with me in the studio, Colonel Tony Vaja. Colonel Vaja, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Outstanding. Let's give you a little bit of background. Colonel Vaja is currently the civil affairs planning chief for the U .S. Army Europe and Africa. He has previously served for two years as the deputy commander of the 353rd Civil Affairs Command in Staten Island, New York. He has had a range of assignments in both civil affairs and force management. He served as the lead concept developer for the 38 Gulf career field and the development of the Institute for Military Support to Governance. Quick reminder for the audience that all remarks by myself and Colonel Vaja are ours solely, and they do not represent the views of the U .S. Army or Department of Defense. Well, Colonel Vaja, you have done so many things in your 31 years of military service that I'm not sure where to begin. Okay, all right. Your assignment as Deputy Commander of the 353 Civil Affairs Command, KCOM. Many of us will not have that opportunity to be a DCG of a KCOM, and the KCOMs are growing. What is that experience like? What is it like to be at that pinnacle position in civil affairs, be the deputy commander of a formation that is very nearly the size of division?

00:02:57    TONY VACHA

Yeah, it's a fun and exciting assignment. I always joke if you're going to come serve at a KCOM, whether DCO or in the G3, you need to make sure you come with your running shoes on. As DCO, I was blessed to work for two really strong civil affairs generals, General Tim Brennan and later General Dean Thompson, and watch them and get their thoughts on civil affairs and how to support a theater. I appreciate that commentary.

00:03:25    BRIAN HANCOCK

that commentary. As you're well aware from your work in Proponency and your lengthy service, the bulk of civil affairs originally came out of Special Operations Commander and the USASOC. And as a result, we are very tactically focused. And when you look at what we do in war games and exercises, I've never seen an operational or strategic civil affairs war game or exercise. So that work that you were doing at the strategic level at the KCOM, Any thoughts you can share? Because it seems to me the gulf between what we do tactically versus how we make that operational strategic civil affairs leap is vast.

00:04:05    TONY VACHA

leap is vast. Yeah, I think it's challenging in terms of how we allocate forces to a GCC or an ASCC is uniquely different than the tactical mission set. And, you know, I had the privilege of serving at the KCOM twice. the deputy G3. And so I got to watch through exercises, austere challenge, judicious response, civil affairs planning teams. And we've had some really strong colonels at 353. And when they take a mission, they lead it and execute it. And I've been privileged to see some of these colonels work at these headquarters. And it becomes an issue of the amount of time to spend someone up. on whatever the problem set is, right? The faster someone can do that, the more agile they are for the customer, whether it be the GCC or ASCC.

00:05:01    BRIAN HANCOCK

Outstanding. Let's continue in this vein on operational and strategic civil affairs. There's talk that the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command may soon reorganize and actually make psychological operations. and the theater information operation groups, or TIOG's, subordinate to the KCOMs. Is there any truth to this? Certainly that will put a KCOM at a division size. If they do that, are they going to make our KCOM commanders two stars? Yeah,

00:05:32    TONY VACHA

Yeah, probably not. Is this going to happen? And if so, what are the implications? I've been told it's going to happen. Unfortunately, a lot of that came after my tenure as DCO. It does make sense in some ways, because... as information -related capabilities, I think there's a lot we could learn from PSYOP. And I also think there's a lot they could learn from us. I know for some of the POGs, they have multiple theaters that they're supporting. So that can be very challenging, right? When you have three different theaters that you're trying to array your forces and align them to. I see goodness in all of it because ultimately, Like I said, the KCOM is built as a strategic headquarters with a general officer, right, who can engage in venues that a colonel can't. You know, when a KCOM commander comes to theater, they're meeting with maneuvered division commanders, core DCGs, you know, these types of people, ASCC senior leaders, GCC senior leaders. So that can provide some advocacy for PSYOP. So I don't see it all as just a bad thing. I see it as an evolution. So I served at UC KPOC force development under Major General Daryl Guthrie. And he used to have a quote. He'd say, it's a shame the first time I really learned about PSYOP was when I became the two -star commander of UC KPOC. And I think there's some truth to that, that we need to learn from each other because we share a common headquarters.

00:07:03    BRIAN HANCOCK

I appreciate that. It seems to me that actually, you know, I've spent most of my career in UC KPOC. We're a little bit late to the party. Now, we've been experimenting over the last few years, I believe even in the New York area Bayou, with putting some CA and some PSYOP together. What we're seeing at the larger level for joint combined operations, we're seeing formations like multi -domain task forces, which have been in development for 10 years now. We're seeing theater information advantage elements or theater information advantage detachments. We're seeing in our G39 that you're part of in USRAF. There's a lot more capabilities than just CA and PSYOP because we're moving towards this concept of convergence to meet the challenges of modern warfare, which means we have to synchronize every IRC and fire rapidly and continuously against every target to shape for a kinetic kill or to hopefully avoid a conflict. So at this point, we're looking at putting... eight plus IRCs together. So I think KPOC has some opportunity to advance that, but we're going to need to do, I think, a lot more than just putting CA and PSYOP together with a tie. Yeah, I concur. To stay relevant.

00:08:21    TONY VACHA

No, I completely concur. And I had the unique opportunity to be part of the information warfare design team that ARCyber did a few years ago, which kind of led to the evolution of what the tie is evolving to right now. And the one thing I'd always remind the other capabilities within the information arena is with current programmed forces, there's only two capabilities that go from ASCC all the way down to maneuver battalion,

00:08:44    TONY VACHA

current programmed forces, there's only two capabilities that go from ASCC all the way down to maneuver battalion, and that's CA and SIOP, right? So when you look at how we get them engaged in a future fight. Not probably, it definitely requires some synchronization and convergence at multiple echelons. Just from the fact that CA is unique in that a branch or organization only has one role by definition for the Army. We are the only capability in DOD that is solely focused on foreign civilian populations. PSYOP is very unique. Now they may. look at foreign civilian populations, but they also look at threat actors. They're looking at a broader piece than necessarily we are. But that civil component, that civilian portion of the operational environment, I've always said when we were developing functional specialist capabilities in 2012 to 2015, which includes 38 Gulf, but also includes AMED and JAG, other capabilities. Why wouldn't other branches want to use functional specialists? Yes. Right? I think it can be as helpful to PSYOP and I .O. as it is to CA. Absolutely.

00:10:06    BRIAN HANCOCK

I remember back at Rim of the Pacific a few years ago, building a fusion team with the evolving 38 golf program that I think we'll talk about here shortly. And they were the analytical brains with my SIM cell. Now we call it civil knowledge integration course, CKI. And together we produced products that the Joint Combined Task Force had never seen before. So there is, I think, incredible opportunity as a customer demand driven organization for the larger army and the larger joint force for us to provide that kind of information and analysis and insight that allow us to significantly reduce costs in terms of lives and equipment. And of course. Our struggle as a force is not winning a tactical battle. It's achieving our strategic objectives. So we walk away with having spent blood and treasure towards a larger purpose that really mattered. And that is very challenging right now. And the more destruction, the more death, the more crisis that happens in blunt contact. the more difficult that stability and achieving those long -term strategic objectives become. So a lot of opportunity in this space. I concur that the 38 Gulfs are going to be a big player in that. Let's talk about that. You were actually one of the founders of the 38 Gulf Specialist Program. Can you tell the audience a little bit about the history of this military occupational specialty and how it came to fruition?

00:11:37    TONY VACHA

Yeah, yeah, sure. So I was a doctor and developer at SWCC. Then Colonel, a later Brigadier General, now retired, Mike Wormack, was the commandant. And he assigned me as the OPR to do the initial research, did a lot of reading, read every manual, civil affairs manual, going back to FM 27 .5 in 1942. So yeah, I've been asked by a number of people over the years, people are doing research on something, they'll call me and they're like, what triggered the development of it? And it was actually a joint capabilities -based assessment and got validated by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, which produced JROCM 162 .11, if anybody wants to look it up. So it assigned particular .mil PFP responsibilities to SOCOM and SWCC to redo or to professionalize functional specialists, basically. So unfortunately, the Army Reserve doesn't promote on skill identifiers. So, you know, at least when I initially came into civil affairs, you know, circa late 2003, people would get promoted as lieutenant colonel into colonel into functional specialist slots. Well, they may or may not have any background for whatever they're promoted into. So it hurt us. Because we were in busy years, you know, at that time. And so that's why the Jay Rockham said to professionalize the functional specialist program. 38 Gulf, a commissioned officer, was the way that was chosen. Ultimately, the commander of USASOC at the time was Lieutenant General Cleveland. And he also wanted to develop the Institute for Military Support to Governance. So these were two distinct yet related initiatives. and functional specialists writ large were designed to be operational and out and about. The IMSG was designed with some key functions that are currently missing, as a matter of fact. One, they were to inform the development of doctrine and training because you just can't expect a GS -12 doctrine developer to understand. the range of the specialties. We have 21 now or something like that.

00:14:00    BRIAN HANCOCK

We have 21 now or something like that.

00:14:02    TONY VACHA

So, so yeah, you had to, the experts were supposed to help us write what the doctrine should be. The second function that IMSG had, which is missing, they were supposed to be basically the talent management of all the functional specialists. Who do we have where, what are their specialty, look at their career growth, what kind of assignments should they have. And then the third function, which we've had experience with in my 10 years DCO, was to be a place that you could go for requests for information or requests for assistance. Yes. Right. And there'd be a clearinghouse. Because it's

Sabrina Barton brought me on to her channel to talk about my experiences with the One CA Podcast as I reached my first year hosting the show. 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

In this episode, Brian Hancock interviews Jess Langerud, who works in medical security cooperation in Poland for the U.S. Army. Jess talks about the value of medical outreach as a form of diplomacy and how Civil Affairs can better integrate into security cooperation and security force assistance programs. 

I also want to highlight LC38 Brand for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Rock Tee From ''East End'' for producing the Rip Slyme - Searchin' (Instrumental) (1998) (90's Japanese Hip Hop) (Jazzy/Lofi Hip Hop). You can find the music at this link: https://youtu.be/k8TQXU9Snas 

Today, we welcome Courtney Mulhern, a professional therapist (MSW) and team sergeant for the 492 Civil Affairs Battalion.

Courtney talks about using her skills while working with partner nations' people and leaders to build lasting relationships and provides tips to help others with outreach. So please welcome Courtney to the show.  

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site. Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Today's theme is brought to you by The Shadows album "Apache". The recording was retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TELLAKvwK50

We bring back CMS Garrick Banfield to discuss the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade with host John McEllicot

Garric Banfield's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garric-banfield-aa13212a/

95th CA website: https://www.soc.mil/95th/95thhomepage.html 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site.

Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Broke For Free for releasing the song "Something Elated" (No Copyright Music). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh4S2A8Q4U

Today we welcome Richard Messick, 
who served 14 years with the World Bank, advising on the rule of law and anti-corruption issues. 

Richard now leads the Messick Group out of DC and recently traveled with UNODC to Southeast Asia to advise on anti-corruption in governance. 

and also to Ukraine to advise the Ministry of Infrastructure on reconstruction. 
There was a lot to unpack in this episode, 
and we meander a little bit, 
but I think you will enjoy the discussion, 
so let's get started. 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site.

Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

Thank you to NIGMA for providing the mix "Habano." Check them out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxAxwE0Dgg. 

Today we welcome Colonel Scott DeJesse, who is rebuilding the US Army Civil Affairs monuments program. Dejesse is an Army Reservist who works at the Department of State in cultural diplomacy. 

For the monuments program, Dejesse is partnering with the Smithsonian Institute, The Met in New York, academic institutions and others to revitalize and develop CA teams who can work in crisis and conflict to protect a nation's cultural heritage. 

We brought Scott in today to talk about the monuments program, its tie to the Civil Affairs 38 G program, and cultural diplomacy's impact on national security, so please welcome him to the show

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site.

Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Music: Special thanks to Fasol Productions for NEO SOUL Instrumental Music. The song is called "Cool Jazz." It's a terrific album, so check them out at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNm3rGXPXs&t=3s

U.S. State Department Trafficking Tip Lines: https://www.state.gov/domestic-trafficking-hotlines/

DOD (CTIP): https://ctip.defense.gov/Domestic and DOD inspector general, 800-424-9098

DOJ: https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en

UNODC: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/track4tip/contact-us.html

Today we have a special rebroadcast of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan interviews Paul Hutchinson about the film "Sound of Freedom" and the human trafficking trade. In the full show, Jordan threads the needle to disclaim the interview from any political bents and conspiracy theories that cloud the topic and just wanted to expose the trade and damage it causes. 

As we work overseas on foreign policy issues, I suspect our soldiers, diplomats, development officers, and field agents will cross paths with this growing illicit trade. To help the team, in the show notes, I'll add the Department of State, DOD and UN contacts who can help you respond.

Show background and contacts:

Jordan Harbinger: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Sound of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_of_Freedom_(film)

Paul Hutchinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulhutch/

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site.

Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. In this episode, we set up a new remote studio for Brian Hancock. It was the first run, so you will hear some background noise, but it was a terrific conversation about Civil Affairs work at the 4-star level command and some of our work in Europe and Africa, so stay tuned. 

Special thanks to LC38 for celebrating our People's Choice Awards nomination by offering listeners 10 percent off anything at the site.

Check them out at https://lc38brand.com/

10% promo code: oneca10

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Thank you to the folks at Afro Beats + Instrumentals for providing this episode's welcome music. Afro Beats features tracks from across Africa, exclusive remixes, and original instrumentals for DJs and artists. Check them out at: https://www.youtube.com/@afrobeatsyt 

Today, we welcome John Cassara.

John started his career as a CIA covert operations officer, then moved to the US Treasury as a special agent, where he worked in counter-terrorism and financial intelligence. During that time, he was also detailed to the State Department's INL or International Narcotics and Law Enforcement to support counter-terrorism finance and anti-money laundering. John also worked at US Customs on counter illicit trade and illicit arms smuggling. 

John is also a board member of Global Financial Integrity and the Coalition against Illicit Economies and a guest instructor at George Mason University for the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center. 

Additionally, John Cassara published the book: Specified Unlawful Activities in China's illicit economy. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Links:

Book: Specified Unlawful Activities: https://www.amazon.com/China-Specified-Activities-Transnational-Laundering/dp/B0BW2S2SKN

John Cassara bio: http://www.johncassara.com/

CIA covert operations officer program: https://www.cia.gov/stories/intelligence-operations/

US Treasury as a special agent program: https://home.treasury.gov/about/offices/terrorism-and-financial-intelligence

State Department's INL or International Narcotics and Law Enforcement: https://www.state.gov/about-us-bureau-of-international-narcotics-and-law-enforcement-affairs/

US Customs, counter illicit trade and illicit arms smuggling program: https://www.cbp.gov/about

Global Financial Integrity: https://gfintegrity.org/

Coalition against Illicit Economies: https://icaie.com/

George Mason University for the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center: https://traccc.gmu.edu/

Music: Thank you to DJ WhiteShark from Barranquilla, Columbia. The album is Urban Beats, Vol. 1. DJ WhiteSharks SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/whitesharkmusic. Music retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMcNiB_Wvmc&authuser=0

Dr. Joseph Long comes on the show to discuss his theory on relational leadership, based on his new publication, The Future of Conflict: How Super-Empowered Populations Will Change Warfare, published at the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Joe is a retired Green Beret and is now a senior Lecturer at the Defense Security Cooperation University in Virginia.

Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-joseph-long-9021821a/

Article: https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-future-of-conflict-how-super-empowered-populations-will-change-warfare/

Other references from the episode:

Naval War College, Monterey: https://nps.edu/web/naval-war-college

SWIC, Robin Sage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMVnHMYxDGU 

2017 Niger Investigation: https://dod.defense.gov/portals/1/features/2018/0418_niger/img/Oct-2017-Niger-Ambush-Summary-of-Investigation.pdf

3212 Un-Redacted: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15909364/

12 Strong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Strong 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to JD Kid for producing Mac Miller Chill x Summer Type Beat // "Higher." Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Z9K6-hDtyjU

Dr. Joseph Long comes on the show to discuss his theory on relational leadership, based on his new publication, The Future of Conflict: How Super-Empowered Populations Will Change Warfare, published at the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Joe is a retired Green Beret and is now a senior Lecturer at the Defense Security Cooperation University in Virginia.

Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-joseph-long-9021821a/

Article: https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-future-of-conflict-how-super-empowered-populations-will-change-warfare/

Other references from the episode:

Naval War College, Monterey: https://nps.edu/web/naval-war-college

SWIC, Robin Sage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMVnHMYxDGU 

2017 Niger Investigation: https://dod.defense.gov/portals/1/features/2018/0418_niger/img/Oct-2017-Niger-Ambush-Summary-of-Investigation.pdf

3212 Un-Redacted: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15909364/

12 Strong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Strong 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to JD Kid for producing Mac Miller Chill x Summer Type Beat // "Higher." Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Z9K6-hDtyjU

We bring back Joe Pastorek's discussion on the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade's Advanced Skills Detachment with host Sean Acosta.

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Broke For Free for releasing the song "Something Elated" (No Copyright Music). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxh4S2A8Q4U

In this episode, Mr. Carlos Dias from Global Integrity interviewed me on anti-corruption programs I have been working on for Civil Affairs and DOD. I also turned the tables on him to discuss current events and his experience growing up on the border of Columbia and Venezuela. This one is slightly different because I was interviewed, but it would make a great show.

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Music: Gotta Serve Somebody, Thank you, Bob Dylan, and The Orchard Enterprises for the karaoke version. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYecYWQRuUI

Today we welcome Calvin Chrustie, a retired member of the RCMP who worked in conflict negotiation with the UN and 

Canadian armed forces during the Bosnian war.

After the conflict, Calvin used his skills also to conduct international hostage negotiation

and then got into counter-criminal and state-sponsored threat networks.

In this episode, Calvin talks about his experience in conflict and hostage negotiation 

and shares tips and tricks on negotiations. 

Calvin Chrustie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvin-chrustie-llm-03b4686/

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Also, thank you to Taylor Swift for the music. The song is "Cruel Summer" instrumental. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_MHSLNtuTc

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to @jambcbaba for the music from the Album Afghani BABA. Retrieved from YouTube.

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to @jambcbaba for the music from the Album Afghani BABA. Retrieved from YouTube.

Assad Raza hosts Alexander Kenna and Matthew Alexander to discuss their research on climate impacts on foreign policy.  The interview is based on their thesis, Climate Insecurity and Governance Competition: The Near-Term Geopolitical Consequences of Destructive Climate Events. See the link below in the show notes. 

Thesis:

Climate Insecurity and Governance Competition: The Near-Term Geopolitical Consequences of Destructive Climate Event, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2022 https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/71489

Thesis Presentation (Video):

https://nps.edu/web/nps-video-portal/-/challenges-of-climate-security-governance-competition

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to Jacob Gibson Free Instrumental for the beats.

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today we bring Chris Hyslop, the Executive Director of the Montana World Affairs Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering global awareness and understanding in Montana’s classrooms and communities.

On the show, Chris talks about his experience in the United Nations; human rights work worldwide. 

LI profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hyslop-a438b7/

The Montana World Affairs Council: montanaworldaffairs.org

Video on the United States Peace Corps: https://youtu.be/xAJHr_Ce6po

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to Pilskills Chefhane for the music.  You can find him @PilskillsChefhain or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl9ZsT3jKs at 3:30:00

Dr. Carrick Longley and Stephen Hunnewell of IST Research discuss Digital Civil Reconnaissance and how it supports Civil Affairs missions.

About Dr. Carrick Longley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carricklongley

About Stephen Hunnewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunnewellstephen

About IST Research: https://www.linkedin.com/company/istresearch

Book: "The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare," by Christian Brose.

One CA brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy.

To contact the show:

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Special thanks to Broke For Free for releasing the song "Something Elated" (No Copyright Music)

Today we welcome Josh Bedding-field, 
who is studying at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies or SAMS
I brought Josh in today to talk about his upcoming paper, 
The Value Proposition of Shadow Governments in Resistance Operations
Which should be out this summer. 
Josh will give us a preview of his findings and discuss how they are applied.

This is part two of a two-part series. Check out part I in the show history. 
So, let's get started 

Why civil resistance works: https://g.co/kgs/1LMQzM

Waiting for dignity, legitimacy, and authority in Afghanistan: https://g.co/kgs/6v8Vfp

Rights as weapons: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166049/rights-as-weapons

SAMS podcast, The Operational Arch: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-operational-arch

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

We are here to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground diplomacy to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

The Civil Affairs Association website: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org

Music: Special Thanks to  Wagram Music, Dokidoki éditions for the Rouge Rouge Music Ensemble, found on the Ce soir, après dîner album

Today we welcome Josh Bedding-field, 
who is studying at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies or SAMS
I brought Josh in today to talk about his upcoming paper, 
The Value Proposition of Shadow Governments in Resistance Operations
Which should be out this summer. 
Josh will give us a preview of his findings and discuss how they are applied.
This is part one of two, which will be out next week 
So, let's get started 

Why civil resistance works: https://g.co/kgs/1LMQzM

Waiting for dignity, legitimacy, and authority in Afghanistan: https://g.co/kgs/6v8Vfp

Rights as weapons: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166049/rights-as-weapons

SAMS podcast, The Operational Arch: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-operational-arch

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

We are here to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground diplomacy to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

The Civil Affairs Association website: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org

Music: Special Thanks to  Wagram Music, Dokidoki éditions for the Rouge Rouge Music Ensemble, found on the Ce soir, après dîner album

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today we have Juan Quiroz from the Civil Affairs capabilities integration and development office. Juan discusses his paper, "The oblique approach to irregular warfare: Civil Affairs as the main effort in strategic competition." 

Article: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/oblique-approach-irregular-warfare-civil-affairs-main-effort-strategic-competition 

LI profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-q-457a8853/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

We are here to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground diplomacy to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

The Civil Affairs Association website: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org

Also, thank you to Pilskills Chefhane for the music.  You can find him @PilskillsChefhain or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl9ZsT3jKs at 4:10:00

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today we bring Chris Hyslop, the Executive Director of the Montana World Affairs Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering global awareness and understanding in Montana’s classrooms and communities.

On the show, Chris talks about his experience in the United States Peace Corps and NGO work around the world. 

LI profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hyslop-a438b7/

The Montana World Affairs Council: montanaworldaffairs.org

Video on the United States Peace Corps: https://youtu.be/xAJHr_Ce6po

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to Pilskills Chefhane for the music.  You can find him @PilskillsChefhain or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl9ZsT3jKs at 3:30:00

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

This week we pull a past episode from the Jordan Harbinger Show with H.R. McMaster. 

One CA will continue bringing new content every two weeks, then use the other weeks to bring in shows from our vaults, partners, and special extended interviews. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Special thanks to Jordan Harbinger for sharing episodes from his show. He also has a free course on professional networking that is terrific. Check him out at the Jordan Harbinger Show: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/ 

Also, thank you to Pilskills Chefhane for the music.  You can find him @PilskillsChefhain or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl9ZsT3jKs at 4:04:50 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today we have Gustavo Ferreira, an agricultural economist for USDA and the Civil Affairs 38G program. Gustavo continues the discussion on agriculture's impacts on foreign policy. 

LI profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gustavo-ferreira-71825729/

One CA brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy.

To contact the show:

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Music: Special thanks to Joe Leytrick. Prod. Riddiman for the beats. Found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEiZiMzKRvk 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

Today we bring Jamie Critelli to discuss assessing food stocks during peacetime and conflict and agriculture's role in foreign policy. 

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/critelli/ 

For more information on Critelli, here is a link from the farmer veteran coalition: https://farmvetco.org/stories/4027-2/ 

One CA brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy.

To contact the show:

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Music: Special thanks to Joe Leytrick. Prod. Riddiman for the beats. Found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEiZiMzKRvk 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. 

This week we talk with David Maxwell, a retired Army Colonel who now works with the Defense of Democracies and other institutions to achieve a peaceful reunification for Korea.

In the episode, David discusses current conditions, events that have made a difference, and strategies for peaceful reunification. 

One Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground diplomacy to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

​Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]

One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Maxwell's bio on Defense of Democracies: https://www.fdd.org/team/david-maxwell/

Special thanks for Pat Benatar and Legacy Records for the song "We Belong," Which is an excellent fit for the story. 

Thank you to the Irregular Warfare Podcast for sharing Episode 54: Plan Colombia: Anatomy of a Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign.

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. 

We are here to inspire anyone interested in working on-ground diplomacy to forward U.S. foreign policy. 

We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.

If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Link to the original episode: https://mwi.usma.edu/plan-colombia-anatomy-of-a-successful-counterinsurgency-campaign/ 

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

In this episode, Brian Hancock guest hosts and interviews Marine Maj. Rob Boudreau on his experience deploying as a CA officer with the 31 MEU. 

Brain Hancock LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-j-hancock/

Rob Boudreau LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rboudreau55/ 

The One CA Podcast info:

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Thanks to Assad Raza for guest hosting and Frank Sobchak for coming on.
If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

This is part two of the interview with former Defense Undersecretary "Mick" (Michael Patrick) Mulroy. If you missed the first episode, check it out on the episode list or at this link:  

Links mentioned in this episode and the last show:

If you would like to come on the show or guest host, contact us at [email protected] 

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

About Michael Patrick Mulroy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Patrick_Mulroy

Lobo Institute: https://www.loboinstitute.org

Case study on improving collaboration between CIA field operations and the military (MEI): https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/2021-08/Irregular%20Warfare%20-%20A%20Case%20Study%20in%20CIA%20and%20US%20Army%20Special%20Forces%20Operations%20in%20Northern%20Iraq%2C%202002-03.pdf

My Star in the Sky (Child Solder documentary): https://www.loboinstitute.org/my-star-in-the-sky/

ABC article on covert action: http://abcnewsradioonline.com/national-news/covert-action-and-national-security.html

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Daughters of Kobani: (MIlitary.com article) https://www.military.com/off-duty/books/2021/02/18/daughters-of-kobani-tells-riveting-story-of-women-combat.html

Music: Special thank you to The Cranberries

Today we welcome Michael Patrick Mulroy, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. This episode is part one of two. 

"Mick" worked for Secretary Mattis, Esper, and the transition to the new administration. He is also a retired CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer and a United States Marine. Today he discusses the integration between field operations, Civil Affairs, and diplomacy. Mick Mulroy is currently running the Lobo Institute, a National Security analyst on ABC News, and an advocate to end Child Soldiering.
In part two, Mick Mulroy talks about China's competition. 

Links mentioned in the show:

If you would like to come on the show or guest host, contact us at [email protected] 

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

About Michael Patrick Mulroy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Patrick_Mulroy

Lobo Institute: https://www.loboinstitute.org

Case study on improving collaboration between CIA field operations and the military (MEI): https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/2021-08/Irregular%20Warfare%20-%20A%20Case%20Study%20in%20CIA%20and%20US%20Army%20Special%20Forces%20Operations%20in%20Northern%20Iraq%2C%202002-03.pdf

My Star in the Sky (Child Solder documentary): https://www.loboinstitute.org/my-star-in-the-sky/

ABC article on covert action: http://abcnewsradioonline.com/national-news/covert-action-and-national-security.html

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Daughters of Kobani: (MIlitary.com article) https://www.military.com/off-duty/books/2021/02/18/daughters-of-kobani-tells-riveting-story-of-women-combat.html

Music: Special thank you to The Cranberries

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.
Assad Raza is your guest host and is talking with (Ret.) Col. Frank Sobchak.
Frank researched Iraqi and Afghan units that performed well against their adversaries, and what made the difference in training. He discusses the value of speaking the local languages, the ratio of trainers/advisors to troops, and the training consistency. 
Assad talks with Frank about his findings. 
So, stay tuned. 

Links
Frank Sobchak
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-sobchak-phd-a76b1b6/

Assad Raza
https://www.linkedin.com/in/assadraza1/

Books mentioned:
The Dictator's Army, Caitlin Talmadge, JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.7591/j.ctt20d89pv.8.pdf

Deny and Destroy, Michael Gordan, Politics and Prose: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780374279899

The U.S. Army and the Iraq War report, Army War College: https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/?s=The+U.S.+Army+and+the+Iraq+War+report&ct_post_type=post%3Apage%3Apublication

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Thanks to Assad Raza for guest hosting and Frank Sobchak for coming on.
If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Music: Special thanks to the Cranberries for the beats

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.
Assad Raza is your guest host and is talking with (Ret.) Col. Frank Sobchak.
Frank researched Iraqi and Afghan units that performed well against their adversaries, and what made the difference in training. He discusses the value of speaking the local languages, the ratio of trainers/advisors to troops, and the training consistency. 
Assad talks with Frank about his findings. 
So, stay tuned. 

Links
Frank Sobchak
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-sobchak-phd-a76b1b6/

Assad Raza
https://www.linkedin.com/in/assadraza1/

Books mentioned:
The Dictator's Army, Caitlin Talmadge, JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.7591/j.ctt20d89pv.8.pdf

Deny and Destroy, Michael Gordan, Politics and Prose: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780374279899

The U.S. Army and the Iraq War report, Army War College: https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/?s=The+U.S.+Army+and+the+Iraq+War+report&ct_post_type=post%3Apage%3Apublication

One CA Podcast email: [email protected]

One CA Podcast webpage: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/podcast

Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Thanks to Assad Raza for guest hosting and Frank Sobchak for coming on.
If you or someone you know would like to come on the show, or guest host, contact us at [email protected].

Welcome to the One CA Podcast, 
This is Jack
Today we are bringing in a special episode from the Irregular Warfare Podcast called  SLOW BURN: HOW US SECURITY COOPERATION SHAPES OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS.

A special thanks to Benjamin Jebb for helping make this happen.
The show has an excellent discussion between retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, Professor Derek Reveron from the US Naval War College and the hosts Ben Jebb and Barbara Elias.

The episode is the full uncut version. 
I wanted to share it because it's relevant to our work with the last feet of foreign policy and to introduce the Irregular Warfare Podcast and its sponsor, the Modern Warfare Institute.

If you are interested in coming on the One CA Podcast or guest hosting an episode, contact us at [email protected]

the Civil Affairs Association sponsors the One CA Podcast. Check them out at https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/ 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. 

On this episode, we have Jodi Harman for the HillVets Foundation (www.hillvets.org) 

HillVets helps service members and their families gain policy positions on Capital Hill and is an excellent resource for accessing military support and Veterans advocacy programs.

If you are interested in coming on the One CA Podcast or guest hosting, contact us at [email protected].

One CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/. 

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

On today's show, David Maxwell talks about grand strategy. 

Col. Retired Maxwell is currently a senior fellow at FDD. He is a 30-year veteran of the United States Army, retiring in 2011 as a Special Forces Colonel with his final assignment serving on the military faculty teaching national security strategy at the National War College.

If you are interested in coming on the One CA Podcast, contact us at [email protected].

One CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/. 

Apologies, the original upload clipped down to four minutes. So, I am uploading the whole episode again.

Brigadier Chris Stockel comes on One CA to discuss his experience integrating Civil Affairs and Security Cooperation to improve how forces work with partner nations.

BG Stockel held various command positions within the Infantry, special forces, and Civil Affairs.

His last position was as the Commanding General of the 351 Civil Affairs Command out of Mountain View, California.

In that position, he was also the senior civil affairs advisor for INDOPACOM, which included synchronizing almost all CA forces within the region.

BG Stockel worked various leadership positions outside the Reserves, including a tour with the State Department Counter-Terrorism Bureau.

Additionally, he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in China and testified before Congress to the House Committee on State and Foreign Operations about Iraq.

He also is the current Vice President of the Civil Affairs Association - a proud sponsor of this show.  

BG Stockel has a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Trenton State and a master's degree in strategic studies from the Army War College. He and his family live in New Jersey.

For more information, Click here for his Bio

Col. John Hutcheson discusses his experience with Hiring for Heroes training, coaching, and mentoring service that helps service members and families prepare for a career outside the military. 

For more information on Hiring our Heroes: https://www.hiringourheroes.org

and our guest: John Hutcheson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jshutcheson 

Host: Jack Gaines: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-h-gaines/ 

The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. Tesla Government and LC38 Brand sponsor this episode.

Col. Gregory Fontenot, USA Ret., is a guest host and interviews BG Pat O'Neal, USA Ret. CA operations during the launch of Operation Joint Endeavor. 

Col. Fontenot commanded the First Armored Brigade of the First Armored Division and reported to BG O'Neal, the ADCS, during Operation Joint Endeavor. In this episode, Greg and Pat reflect on the Civil Affairs' role and key points to help the force. 

Special thanks to our sponsors LC38 and Tesla Government  

If you are interested in interviewing, have an idea for the show, or would like to guest host, contact us at [email protected] 

Special episode. John McElligott announces that he is leaving OneCA Podcast and introduces Jack Gaines as the new host.

If you're a show fan, it's a chance to listen and wish John well. Also, you are welcome to like, subscribe, and thank our sponsors for helping support the show. 

Host: John McElligott:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcelligott/

Co-host: Jack Gaines: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-h-gaines/ 

The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

MAJ John Burns talks about the evolution of Ghost Team at the National Training Center in California and why it matters for the future training of Civil Affairs forces.

MAJ Burns is the Senior Civil-Military Operations Trainer and Operations Officer for Ghost Team at the National Training Center.

MAJ Burns previous Civil Affairs assignments include serving as the G9 for the 13th Expeditionary Sustainment Command at Fort Hood, TX, Commander of E Company, 83rd Civil Affairs BN, CMOC Chief for E Company, 83rd Civil Affairs BN, Team Chief for CAT 723, Bravo Company, 97th Civil Affairs BN, and Assistant Operations Officer for the 92nd Civil Affairs BN.

MAJ Burns’ Civil Affairs Deployments include Civil-Military Support Element Cambodia and supporting US Pacific Fleet in Pacific Partnership 2017 and 2018.

The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Welcome to the One CA Podcast.

In this episode, our guest host Assad Raza speaks with Stanislava Mladenova, a doctoral candidate at King’s College London, on the relationship between military and civilian entities on low-intensity conflict and state fragility.

Assad Raza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/assad-raza-557727a5

Stanislava Mladenova: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/stanislava-mladenova-b55aa02 

The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

“Special operators may be professionals of a sort. However, until special operations designate a jurisdiction over which it has the autonomy to exercise judgment, the organization is better characterized as a bureaucracy that manages a highly skilled force.” 

Host Benjamin Ordiway in conversation with professor C. Anthony Pfaff, Ph.D. of the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, to discuss his recent article in Parameters, “Professionalizing Special Operations Forces.”

We also talk a little about my ongoing work on coaching moral reasoning & ethical decision-making in field-training environments. This work is sponsored by the 1st Special Forces Command.

Benjamin Ordiway, former 92 CA and now a philosophy instructor at US military academy, interviews Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff (Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.), who is currently the research professor for Strategy, the Military Profession and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. 

Dr. Pfaff has published "Proxy War Ethics" by the Journal of National Security Law and Policy, Military Ethics below the Threshold of War, in Parameters (Vol 50, No. 3), "The Ethics of Acquiring Disruptive Military Technologies," in the Texas National Security Review (Vol. 3, No. 1), "Western and Chinese Ways of War and their Ethics," in Parameters (Vol. 52, No. 1), "The Future of US-Iraq Relations," by the Atlantic Council.

Host: Benjamin Ordiway, https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminordiway 

Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-anthony-pfaff-phd-2b42349/ 

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org. 

Sponsorship links:

Tesla Government: https://teslagov.com 

LC38 Brand: https://lc38brand.com

Third Order Effects: https://www.thirdordereffects.com 

Nicholas Krohley, Ph.D., and Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Muehlich discuss their study of US civil affairs and NATO CIMIC doctrine.

Commissioned by the NATO CIMIC Centre of Excellence, the document compares and contrasts the two capabilities’ doctrinal tasking and highlights shared challenges.

The CIMIC doctrine also charts a potential path forward, through which civil affairs and CIMIC might make an evidence-based case to the forces they support for the value of their outputs and their worthiness for better integration and resourcing.

Dr. Krohley is the founder of FrontLine Advisory and proprietor of www.civilreconnaissance.com. Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Muehlich is the branch chief of Concepts, Interoperability, and Capabilities at the NATO-accredited Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence.

Hosted by John McElligott. The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Nicholas Krohley, Ph.D., and Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Muehlich discuss their study of US civil affairs and NATO CIMIC doctrine. Commissioned by the NATO CIMIC Centre of Excellence, the document compares and contrasts the two capabilities’ doctrinal tasking and highlights shared challenges.

It also charts a potential path forward, through which civil affairs and CIMIC might make an evidence-based case to the forces they support for the value of their outputs and their worthiness for better integration and resourcing.

Dr. Krohley is the founder of FrontLine Advisory and proprietor of www.civilreconnaissance.com. Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Muehlich is the branch chief of Concepts, Interoperability, and Capabilities at the NATO-accredited Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence.

Hosted by John McElligott. The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

John McElligott, host of the One CA Podcast, reflects on the past 100 episodes. He shares some statistics of the most downloaded shows, information about the growing audience, and ideas for the future of the show.

The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

US Army Reserve Majors Brian Hancock and Jack Gaines discuss the Theater Information Advantage Element (TIAE). Major Hancock is G9, 79th Theater Sustainment Command. Major Gaines is CA and Public Affairs Officer, who consults on strategy and policy in the DC area.

For more information about the TIAE, check out the presentation Majors Hancock and Gaines provided as a part of the SMA Speaker Series in January 2022.

Hosted by John McElligott. The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

US Army Reserve Majors Brian Hancock and Jack Gaines discuss the Theater Information Advantage Element (TIAE). Major Hancock is G9, 79th Theater Sustainment Command. Major Gaines is CA and Public Affairs Officer who consults on strategy and policy in the DC area.

For more information about the TIAE, check out the presentation that Brian and Jack provided as a part of the SMA Speaker Series in January 2022.

Hosted by John McElligott. The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Brigadier General Chris Dziubek, Commanding General of the 351st Civil Affairs Command, US Army Reserve, talks about his priorities, training exercises in the USINDOPACOM Area of Responsibility, and how you can get honest feedback from Soldiers before jumping out of an airplane. General Dziubek enlisted in 1986 into Field Artillery, commissioned through ROTC, and entered active duty in Aviation. He completed the Armor Officer Advanced Course and served in a few Engineer units. He later joined Civil Affairs and commanded troops at the company, battalion, and brigade echelons.

Hosted and produced by John McElligott. One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Mark Delaney, who served for the US Army in the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, talks about why he chose CA and how skills he gathered translate into life after the military. Hosted by John McElligott.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. Music by Coma Studio.

Colonel Marco Bongioanni, a US Army Reserve Civil Affairs officer, discusses the Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer program and how it connects to Civil Affairs. We discuss what missions EPLOs conduct, where they serve, who qualifies to become an EPLO, and how people can apply. Hosted by John McElligott.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association. Music by Coma Studio.

Contact your US military command for details about the EPLO program and how to apply.

Major General Jeffrey C. Coggin, Commanding General, U.S. Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) presents updates called “USACAPOC(A) and Global Civil-Military Networking in an Era of Strategic Competition." His remarks were delivered during the 2022 CA Roundtable hosted by the Civil Affairs Association. Moderated by retired Major General Daniel R. Ammerman, Vice President, Civil Affairs Association.

Recorded during the 2022 CA Roundtable.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Colonel Caroline Pogge leads a discussion about Operation Allies Refuge to evacuate at-risk Afghans and resettle them in the United States. Colonel Pogge is G39 Civil Affairs Planning Team Chief, U.S. Army Europe & Africa.

Guests include: Deanna Swainer, American Red Cross; Colleen Denny, Spirit of America; Tyler Waterhouse, Department of State - Population, Refugees and Migration; Josh Mater, Department of State - Population, Refugees and Migration; Gina Kassem, Department of State - Population, Refugees and Migration (Camp Liya); Master Sergeant Larry Lloyd, USAREUR-AF G39 OAR Lead Planner; Major Susan Graler, 361st Civil Affairs Brigade Detachment Leader; and Captain Josh Black, B Company, 415th Civil Affairs CAT Leader, Camp Liya (Kosovo).

Recorded during the 2021 CA Symposium.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Greg Banner, retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army, discusses his recommendations for training for unconventional warfare. He wrote an article for the December 2021 issue of Army Magazine published by AUSA. Lt Col Banner spent time with US Army Special Forces and Civil Affairs.

Hosted and produced by John McElligott. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Chris Bryant, special operations medical sergeant with the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, discusses social media and how it applies to CA forces. Chris handles some social media accounts for the Civil Affairs Association.

Hosted and produced by John McElligott. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Part 3 of the Civil Affairs Issue Papers presented during the 2021 Civil Affairs Symposium. Facilitated by retired Brigadier General Bruce Bingham. Presenters are Major Jim Munene and Staff Sergeant Courtney Mulhern, who discuss ways to build a global civil-military network by going back to the basics.

Produced by John McElligott. Music by Broke for Free. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Part 2 of the Civil Affairs Issue Papers presented during the 2021 Civil Affairs Symposium. Facilitated by retired Brigadier General Bruce Bingham. The first presenters are Colonel Brad Hughes, Lieutenant Colonel Tyson Voelkel, and Major Giancarlo Newsome, who discuss innovation as a weapon system. After the break, Sergeant First Class Nicholas (Jon) Kempenich, Jr., argues for expansion of operations NCOs for security cooperation.

Produced by John McElligott. Music by Broke for Free. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Part 1 of the Civil Affairs Issue Papers presented during the 2021 Civil Affairs Symposium. Facilitated by retired Brigadier General Bruce Bingham. The first presenters are Hayden Bassett, PhD, and Lieutenant Kate Harrell, PhD, who discuss the 38G Military Government Specialist program. After the break, Colonel Marco A. Bongioanni discusses individualism and collectivism.

Produced by John McElligott. Music by Broke for Free. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38 Brand. The One CA Podcast is brought to you by the Civil Affairs Association.

Brigade commanders of the US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC) speak as panelists for USACAPOC(A) Command Strategic Initiatives in Civil-Military Networking. The panel discussion was a part of the virtual 2021 Civil Affairs Web Symposium. Facilitated by Colonel Marshall Straus Scantlin. Panelists include Colonel Keith K. Kelly, Commander, 364th Civil Affairs Brigade; Colonel Reginald J. Kornegay, Commander, 360th Civil Affairs Brigade; and Colonel William J. Smith, 308th Civil Affairs Brigade.

Edited by John McElligott. The One CA Podcast is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Part 2 of a two-part series. Ryan McCannell moderates an interagency panel discussion about Civil Affairs in the U.S. National Security Strategy. Speakers include Andrea Freeman of the National Security Council, Jason Ladnier of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict & Stabilization Operations, Ciara Knudsen of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, and Pat Antonietti of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability & Humanitarian Affairs.

The discussion was recorded during the 2021 Civil Affairs Roundtable.

Edited and produced by John McElligott.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Part 1 of a two-part series. Ryan McCannell moderates an interagency panel discussion about Civil Affairs in the U.S. National Security Strategy. Opening remarks from retired Colonel Chris Holshek. Speakers include Andrea Freeman of the National Security Council, Jason Ladnier of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict & Stabilization Operations, Ciara Knudsen of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, and Pat Antonietti of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability & Humanitarian Affairs.

The discussion was recorded during the 2021 Civil Affairs Roundtable.

Edited and produced by John McElligott.

Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Zach Hyleman and Captain Kevin Chapla discuss the Foreign Area Officer program and the connection with Civil Affairs.

Hosted by John McElligott. This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government and LC 38.

Part 2 of a two-part series on Civil Affairs in Regional Competition for Influence. Moderated by retired Brigadier General Chris Stockel, panelists include Dr. R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College Strategic
Studies Institute and retired Colonel Timothy Faulkner of the United States Army Pacific Command G-2.

This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government.

Part 1 of a two-part series on Civil Affairs in Regional Competition for Influence. Moderated by retired Brigadier General Chris Stockel, panelists include Howard Gambrill Clark, PhD, retired Colonel David Des Roches, and retired Colonel Daniel Hampton, all of whom work at the National Defense University.

This episode is sponsored by Tesla Government.