Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Sergeant First Class Max Steiner and Major Mazi Markel discuss recommendations in their CA Issue Paper titled, "Developing Civil Affairs: Increasing Soldier Flexibility and Doctrinal Specificity."
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Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for this episode. We're joined today by Major Mozzie Markle and Sergeant First Class Max Steiner, authors of an issue paper submitted to the Civil Affairs Association, and it's entitled Developing Civil Affairs, Increasing Soldier Flexibility and Doctrinal Specificity. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. I think it's all good to hear. Max, I wanted to start with you. Could you tell us what you're doing for civil affairs right now, what's your position, and which unit are you with? Right.
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been recently transferred into the 425 CA. I've yet to drill with them in the person. So I was drilling with the 416 CA in San Diego. And when I was promoted, I had already been deployed to Egypt. So I was deployed starting in October and then promoted in January. And in the reserve side, when you're promoted, you were often transferred units. And I ended up in the 425. And so that's where I am now. So I'm kind of in a long -term RST status, but still reaching back a little to do CA as much as I can. That's great. Thank you. And Major Markel. Yeah, thanks. So essentially the, I guess Max is saying, so I'm the Charlie Company commander with 425. So kind of actually new to the CA game, probably been with Charlie Company. I've been boots on ground now about three years. Kind of first was more of a... team leader slash XO and picked that command maybe 10 months ago. But long -time side guy and kind of needed the CA game. But love it. It's been a lot of fun. Well, that's good to hear. Sergeant Steiner, what do you do for your day job? Right. So I'm a diplomat with the Department of State.
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I'm currently seconded as a civilian observer with the MFO. The MFO is a multinational organization that verifies the status of the Treaty of Peace signed in Camp David between Egypt and Israel. So basically we drive throughout the Sinai and a small portion of Israel and verify the troop levels are in accordance with the treaty. So it's been going on for almost 40 years now, and so far they haven't gotten to war again, so we view that as a success. But, yeah, it's a semi -diplomatic role that's understood as a PCP mission.
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Major Markell, what's your day job?
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So, for me, I'm a DOJ guy. So, basically, on 1811, a special agent with the DEA down here in San Diego. And just doing God's work, I guess, down here in San Diego with kind of the anti -drug initiative. Yeah, that's good to hear. Well, gentlemen, let's get to talking about your issue paper here. I want to start with you, Sergeant Steiner. Can you talk about what led you to draft an issue paper that talks about CA doctrine and training? Yeah, so the short answer is I checked the CA website, the CA Association website, and I was reading the prior years, basically, papers, and some of them were very interesting. And I was like, wow, this is really great. And then I saw, I think, a day that they were soliciting further papers. My job, you know, it's not exactly deployment, but, you know, we're on a military base. Many times we're confined to base if there are situations outside. And so I had a lot of free time, and I can't go to the gym the whole day. So I decided I was going to brainstorm something and write it up. And I sent that to Major Markell and shot some ideas by him and talked to him. And the paper kind of grew out of those discussions. When you were brainstorming, What led you to training a doctrine, if you consider the dot mil PF approach? Why pick out those two? I had never deployed as civil affairs. I had two deployments for a total of two years, as I left Bravo before I went to college, before I became a diplomat.
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before I became a diplomat. So I didn't feel completely comfortable talking about how CA should do its jobs. I felt much more comfortable. with the aspects of CA that I personally experienced, namely CA training and my exposure to CA doctrine. So, yeah, judging, just going off of what I considered the areas that I knew enough about to talk about, I didn't want to come in and start swinging without having experienced a CA deployment. I think if you look at it, we're kind of going back and forth, the collaboration piece. And Sarnstein, incredibly intelligent guy. I mean, a lot of experience got me through good training. And I think he had questions that I think a lot of guys that I've seen just for the last few years, smart guys, they come through the training and they go through CAQC or they go through the reclass. And it's, there's just, there's still questions that they don't understand the doctrine and whether it's too broad. So for example, you know, we look at, let's say, you know, just the pillars and we're discussing NA and SCA, you know, they'll say, you know, I don't get it. Like I get it theoretically. I understand the definition, but it doesn't make sense. And my question would be, If you have guys that are super smart guys like Steiner, other guys in the ranks that are having the same questions, where are we lacking as a branch, essentially, with our training? Right. Major Raquel, when you received the draft ideas from Sergeant Steiner, how did you initially respond? Do you think this was totally on target, or was there a shift more focused on training or more on doctrine? Do you think it was pretty well balanced? No, I think he did a great job grabbing the paper. We basically went through... There were some items in there that we kind of took out, just kind of looked at the focus of it, kind of shifted the focus. So basically, the final submission that you guys have or the final page, the paper that he wrote up, it really kind of highlights, I'd like to say, the meat, if Steiner, if that's appropriate, the meat of kind of his intent, where he was going with it. And then, too, looking at it just from my perspective, both on the PSYF side, the DOJ side, and my short time here with the CA, but I think he's right on point. You look at what you have here. If you've got a guy that, because my thing is this, Steiner's an exception, right? You've got a guy that literally is doing CA essentially Monday through Friday, right? The Department of State guy has been, you know, both is in 11 Bravo, but also now kind of in a foreign environment with Department of State. He can go to a training and he can pick up, let's say, the CA tasks and kind of come back and still be effective and be an operator because he has that civilian background where he can kind of cut through the meat, let's say, at the doctor. you know, come out as an effective soldier. My concern is I've got guys that, you know, they don't have that background, so they work in a grocery store, they're a student. And I don't think the training and the doctrine really totally address their needs. And I think Max did a good job describing that here on this webinar. Yeah, that's wonderful. I look forward to reading the full paper when it comes out. Before we get to the training reforms and the doctrine reforms that you propose, I want to talk about the big picture and the future operating environment that you describe. And you argue that CA operators must prepare to work in a, quote, complicated environment of international and interagency actors. Moreover, CA soldiers must be able to explain and deliver CA capabilities to supported commanders, end quote. So to me, it sounds a lot like the same requirements of today. Sergeant Seiner, how would you say the future operating environment differs from what we have today?
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are the kind of engagements, the long -term, you know, nation -building that the Army will have problems with and that CA will be most challenged by. And as such, I think, you know, we should be addressing our efforts towards making sure that if we get into an Iraq situation or an Afghanistan situation going forward, that we are fully prepared to learn the lessons from our, I would say, challenges that we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. And address that. I think one of the big problems looking back is how the army addressed Vietnam. And there was just kind of a denial the next 30 years about we're just not going to do a Vietnam again. And we had to in 2001. You can argue that it was a political decision. But the army went into Afghanistan in 2001. And it should have learned from what happened in the 60s and early 70s in Vietnam. And I think that we didn't really. A lot of lessons got. forgotten a lot of lessons, got pushed to the back of the institutional mindset. We wanted to do force -on -force engagements with a near -peer adversary, and we weren't adequately prepared for counterinsurgency. I think the next century, you know, we are going to be facing more conflicts like this, and that might not be the war the Army wants to fight, but I think it's the war the Army is going to have the most problem fighting. It's interesting to hear because I know the shift now in the Army has been back toward the near -peer threat and preparing at least to go head -to -head with countries like Russia or China. And there certainly is a shift away from what you're describing would continue. Right. And I don't want to be, you know,
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you know, that sergeant first class who thinks he's a general, right? Like, if you have a near -peer fight, you have one chance to win a near -peer fight. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we've had, you know, in the case of Afghanistan, 17 years, 17 years of opportunity. to win the civil affairs fight or at least influence the civil affairs engagement. So there is a difference in, like, where do you focus? Big Army, where do you focus? And between that, you know, like an armored brigade should not be focusing on CA tests. But I think CA, the big challenge for CA will be challenges like Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're fighting long -term insurgencies that involve a nation -building component. Major Markell, what's your take on the future operating environment? Yeah, concurrent. I think if you look at, let's say, if you take a near -peer fight, and now all of a sudden, Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, your focus is smaller. I don't want to say the scope is smaller, but the players, the different factors that are going to be involved, comparing it to, let's say, Russia, China, it's on a far more small scale. So I think it's critical when we kind of plan for those fights, we are now on the CA side of it, we have much more adept utilizing our UAP partners. NGOs, IGOs, to be more effective. Because if we fail to do that, we're not going to be able to secure the fight. So gentlemen, you propose some training reforms. So training reforms and doctrinal reforms. Let's talk about training first and then get to the doctrine. Could you describe what are the reforms in training that you're proposing? Two basic training reforms. One is to place more soldiers, active duty, and reserve component soldiers into the Department of State internship program. So the Department of State. has a summer internship, but it's all year. The majority of students go in the summer, and this is basically for undergraduate and master's level students to go and experience the embassy life. So they're typically two to three month trips down to a country, and then you work with embassy offices within that country. And you'll get an understanding of how the embassy works and how the embassy interacts with other unified action partners. You know, the embassy will just support them as NGOs, but we'll use the army terminology and see how the whole government approach works overseas.
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And that's really valuable for a student studying political science or studying international affairs or with a regional major. But it's also very valuable for civil affairs. And I've worked in an embassy. I've worked in a consulate. I saw that every student that came down benefited immensely from the program, and it just always struck me as something that this would be great for CA soldiers. Well, I think it would be amazing. How would that be operationalized? Who needs to approve something like that as a broadening opportunity? We discussed it basically logistically, especially on the financial piece. So what Steiner's saying, and I think it was logical, is you could probably have it to where you break it down, let's say, by commands, for example. You know, we're a pay comp. So if you can work with, let's say, you know, the recruitment folks that Steiner's talking about basically with the Department of State that typically organize those kind of internships, I think it's logical to see, I would say, two soldiers as a buddy team for travel there and back. But essentially, building is going to be provided by the Department of State as well as food. So, I mean, from that standpoint, you cover AT days. So I guess the question would be. I would provide AT days, and that's what the units could lo