Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, we have Retired General Anthony Zinni present his argument for a unified, interagency command to bring together Civil Affairs forces and personnel from the Department of State, USAID, etc. General Zinni also tells the story of his nickname, "The Godfather."
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Transcript:
00:00:00 SPEAKER_02
Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part? They accept Discover. Accept Discover? In a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah, huh?
00:00:11 SPEAKER_00
Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times.
00:00:15 SPEAKER_02
Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants?
00:00:19 SPEAKER_00
These are making a comeback. I think. Discover is accepted at 99 % of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report.
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Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. My name is John McGilligate, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by General Anthony Zinni. General Zinni was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1943 and raised in the Philadelphia area. He attended St. Cosmos and Damien Grade School and St. Matthews High School in Conshohock in Pennsylvania. He currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. His military, diplomatic, business, and academic career has taken him to over 100 countries. General Zinni joined the Marine Corps' Platoon Leader Class Program in 1961 and was commissioned an Infantry Second Lieutenant in 1965 upon graduation from Villanova University. He held numerous command and staff assignments that include platoon, company, battalion, regimental, Marine Expeditionary Unit, and Marine Expeditionary Force Command. His staff assignments include service and operations, training, special operations, counterterrorism, and manpower billets. He has been a tactics and operations instructor at several Marine Corps schools and was selected as a fellow on the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group. General Zinni's joint assignments include command of a joint task force and a unified command. He has also held several joint and combined staff billets at joint task force and unified command levels. His military experience includes deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific, Northern Europe, and Korea. He has also served tours of duty in Okinawa and Germany. His operational experiences include two tours in Vietnam where he was severely wounded, emergency relief and security operations in the Philippines, Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey and northern Iraq, Operation Provide Hope in the former Soviet Union, Operation Restore Hope, Continue Hope, and United Shield in Somalia, Operation Resolute Response and Noble Response in Kenya, operations Desert Thunder, Desert Fox, Desert Viper, Desert Spring, Southern Watch, and Maritime Intercept operations in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and Operation Infinite Reach against terrorist targets in the Central Region. He was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Proven Force and Operation Patriot Defender during the Gulf War, and noncombatant evacuation operations in Liberia, Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Eritrea. He has attended numerous military schools and courses, including the Army Special Warfare School, the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the National War College. General Zinni retired from the military in 2000 after commanding U .S. Central Command. General Zinni, welcome to the 1CA Podcast. Thanks, John. Good to be with you. Thank you very much. And going through the long list of operations makes me wonder who comes up with the names and how they do that. Do you know how that works?
00:04:55 SPEAKER_04
And I would think the foxes and the vipers and the springs, all the animals you can put on a coin would work out well, too. Yeah. So we're here today to talk about your connection with civil affairs, what you've learned throughout your career, and give some guidance to listeners about where you see civil affairs as a joint force, Army, Marine Corps, where it may be heading, and as a capability to support of the U .S. government interests. So let me start by asking you, during your time in uniform, when did you first come across the Civil Affairs Unit?
00:05:26 SPEAKER_01
Well, you know...
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in a hostile environment, and a lot of agencies that were going to show up, and non -governmental organizations, United Nations, other international organizations, and private volunteer organizations, and trying to figure out how this would all work. And that's the first time I really sat down with two civil affairs officers that were planners on our staff that I got to know very well,
00:06:29 SPEAKER_01
were planners on our staff that I got to know very well, and captains Elmo and Hess. who taught me a lot about what civil affairs could contribute. And I think for the J3 and our deputy commander at the time, we all were kind of saying, you know, we just didn't have this kind of understanding of what civil affairs could do.
00:06:53 SPEAKER_01
And I think one of the reasons why the operation was such a success is because the civil affairs participation in there, eventually we had a brigadier general.
00:07:04 SPEAKER_01
Because what we found, what I would say was the main effort eventually became that kind of coordination and connectivity with not only the people that were traumatized and were dealing with in their leadership, but with all these other civilian governmental and non -governmental volunteer organizations.
00:07:24 SPEAKER_01
organizations. And so that was an eye -opener, and I took that with me to Somalia. When I went to Somalia as the J -3 for the first task force, and then back again as an advisor with Ambassador Oakley, the second tour, then the third tour commanding the forces to cover the withdrawal. Civil affairs played a great deal in the planning that we had done,
00:07:50 SPEAKER_01
and my awareness of what they did, you know, really.
00:08:10 SPEAKER_04
So it sounds like the planning aspect of this is a key point, turning point, potentially positive way for CA forces to support their units. And you can't wait for you to be on the ground and hope, oh, the CA team is right over there. Of course we know what they do. And that rarely happens. It's kind of like getting an infantry commander to realize, well, logistics are key to your success overall. just as these other enablers like psychological operations or civil affairs may be, but that needs to start well in advance before you hit the ground and plan the operation. Does that happen routinely?
00:08:49 SPEAKER_01
And unfortunately, I think in a lot of cases, planners are not as aware of what civil affairs can do and bring as maybe we should be,
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especially when we're thinking in terms of, well, it's a combat operation, but in this day and age. You know, the kinds of environments we find ourselves in, it's combat rolled into all sorts of other kinds of missions. And I think, you know, up until the 1990s, probably everybody thought of civil affairs as an organization that came in, basically dealt with keeping civilians out of the way and tending to their needs. And then more in a support role, I think in the 1990s began to see. It was not only a major contributor, but like I said, at times it should be and could be the main effort.
00:09:37 SPEAKER_01
be the main effort. Certainly as you phased into maybe the drawing down of combat operations and now the more reconstruction efforts and stabilization efforts,
00:09:42 SPEAKER_01
the drawing down of combat operations and now the more reconstruction efforts and stabilization efforts, but still requiring military involvement. This is the ideal bridge and organization, but it has to be planned for and it has to be involved right from the beginning. But I think the key is that maybe in the 90s we began to see that it was more than just a supporting role, that it played a key role in the planning, and that it had operational level importance and certainly needed to be considered at that level,
00:10:03 SPEAKER_01
in the 90s
00:10:12 SPEAKER_01
operational level importance and certainly needed to be considered at that level, at the combatant commander level.
00:10:19 SPEAKER_04
Yeah. You spent most of your career in the Marine Corps and Joint Force elements. The Marine Corps still has civil affairs. The Navy got out of the business. The bulk of the CA forces are still in the Army, with most of it in the reserve component. When you, going through your experiences looking back and now what we have today with the force structure of civil affairs, is it the right mix? Does the Marine Corps need more or less civil affairs? And, you know, for the Army balanced active duty and reserve, do you think that's right?
00:10:49 SPEAKER_01
You know, I spent almost my entire general officer time.
00:11:01 SPEAKER_01
I think we have to think about it joint. Who are the best contributors? Obviously, the bulk of civil affairs will be from the Army. I think it's valuable that all the services have some civil affairs capability so that they're aware of it and its capabilities, and they contribute to the joint capability. I do think, though... And like we think of transportation command and all that, we need a joint command that does civil affairs. I don't think SOCOM is the right place for civil affairs. I think civil affairs is important. And there's a differentiation between what civil affairs does and what we do with special operations. And I think the integration and the requirement and the need to interface with other agencies. means that we should look at a unified or subunified command. And I think I would even go so far as if we really have people that want to think on a larger and more strategic scale,
00:12:06 SPEAKER_01
would even go so far as if we really have people that want to think on a larger and more strategic scale, this would be the ideal.
00:12:30 SPEAKER_01
It would help tremendously, I can tell you from a combatant commander's point of view, in planning because none of those other agencies plan at all.
00:12:35 SPEAKER_01
of those other agencies plan at all. They claim to, but they don't. I look at my deliberate war plans and I don't see a State Department or AID or other component about how we're going to manage things during the operations and in the later phases how we're going to do the transitioning.
00:12:53 SPEAKER_01
in the later phases how we're going to do the transitioning. I think a classic example was Iraq.
00:13:00 SPEAKER_01
Orha and CPA were disasters. You know, we keep trying to put lipstick on that pig, but it did not go well because it was a pickup ad hoc attempt at nation building, and you can't do business that way, even on a smaller scale.
00:13:17 SPEAKER_04
It seems like the last 20 years or so, maybe longer, DOD has been taking on... more and more missions that state or USAID had been doing traditionally, and the money has been going to DoD, and that slope just feeds the cycle of people saying, well, state and aid can't do it. Well, maybe they're not stepping up to the plate. Maybe they don't have the money they used to have. And DoD just continues to eat more of that mission set. Where do we get, do you think, the turning point where state and aid continue to pick up those missions or the Congress decides, hey, we need to fund them adequately? Otherwise, as General Mattis had mentioned, we need to buy more ammunition.
00:14:19 SPEAKER_01
Biden and Senators Curry and a number of others are on there. And this whole business of lack of interagency coordination and planning and then execution on the ground that really bothered them. And they formed a policy advisory group. And I was on it. I retired to sort of represent the military. And what surprised me is the lack of understanding by state and others about how extensive the planning had to be, the preparation. and the identification of the personnel and the people and the structure and the organization you were going to need. Because I was looking,
00:14:56 SPEAKER_01
when I was a CENTCOM commander, just on the Iraq plan, you know, where's the annex or where's the second part of the plan that tells me how we're going to transition this over? Who comes in behind the combat forces or with them, more appropriately, that begins right away restructuring the government? I did assessments after I retired in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Iraq for General Odierno and Afghanistan for General Mattis. And I kind of wandered around and looked at everything we had on the ground there. And what shocked me is seeing the percentage of organizations that were non -military that had military people doing that business.
00:15:26 SPEAKER_01
had on the ground
00:15:32 SPEAKER_01
-military that had military people doing that business. I would find the anti -corruption task force. You know, headed by Brigadier General H .R. McMaster with everybody. I looked around with one exception was wearing a uniform. The provisional reconstruction teams were 80 percent military, not counting security.
00:15:53 SPEAKER_01
You know, and you looked around and saw that we had no plan going into these operations because nobody did the planning. And we had no pre -coordination or pre -identification as to who was going to do all this. Therefore, you end up with those pickup teams with people that are coming in that have no clue,
00:16:12 SPEAKER_01
that have no clue, couldn't find the Middle East, you know, if they tried. And you end up with the military piece goes well, but the day after, the and then what question is up in the air,
00:16:26 SPEAKER_01
in the air, and that's where you end up failing. Right.
00:16:29 SPEAKER_04
So I want to circle back to a recommendation you had a few minutes ago. And this relates to a section of your book, which is entitled Before the First Shots Were Fired, that you've written with Tony Colts. And you cite a 2009 conference at which you recommended that civil affairs become, quote, a unified command responsible for integrating all the agency's efforts and providing the planning, administrative, and logistical support for the interagency teams on the ground, end quote. So we've already talked about some of what you've seen in your career