Irregular Warfare Podcast - Slow Burn: How US Security Cooperation Shapes Operational Environments

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Subscribe to the IWI monthly newsletter by going to www.irregularwarfare.org! This episode explores how America’s security cooperation programs can help shape regional security environments by training foreign militaries. We're joined by two guests whose extensive practical and research experience is extraordinarily relevant to the subject. Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling is a national security and military analyst for CNN who served thirty-eight years in the US Army, culminating in command of US Army Europe. Professor Derek Reveron is the chair of national security affairs at the US Naval War College and the author of the book Exporting Security. Together, they address why America settled on security cooperation as a pillar of its global strategy, describe the important nuances associated with the implementation of security cooperation efforts, and discuss how past military cooperation efforts have shaped today’s regional security environment in Eastern Europe and what America can do to optimize its approach to security cooperation in the future. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

You can't surge trust is the old phrase that you have to build that trust throughout and so if we are training together if we are working together when an international crisis does occur we can deploy together because we're interoperable. And when you're talking about this security cooperation, you have to consider a pusher and a pull system. In Afghanistan, it was a push system. We were pushing things to them. They wanted us to fight for them. In Ukraine, it's been a pull system. Welcome to episode 66 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and I'm pleased to introduce today's special guest host, Dr. Barbara Elias.

Today's episode explores irregular warfare in the context of European security cooperation. Our guests today begin by addressing why the U.S. military adopts their global strategy of security cooperation. by addressing why the U.S. military adopts their global strategy of security cooperation. They then examine the range of activities that fall under the umbrella term of security cooperation and compare and contrast building partner capacity, conventional operations versus irregular warfare activities. Finally, they end by talking about how past military cooperation efforts have shaped today's regional environment in Eastern Europe and what America can do to optimize its approach to security cooperation in the

future. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling is a national security and military analyst for CNN. Over his 38 year long career in the military, Lieutenant General Hertling served or commanded at every level, from platoon to field army. In 2013, he retired from the military as a commanding general of US Army Europe. Lieutenant General Hertling graduated from West Point in 1975 and holds advanced degrees from Indiana University, National Defense University,

and Rollins College. Professor Derek Reverend is the chair of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is also a Reserve Naval Officer who has testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Security Cooperation Programs and has published multiple books and research articles on U.S. military cooperation efforts around the world. The second edition of his 2016 book, Exporting Security, serves as the anchor for today's conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals.

Here's our conversation with Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and Professor Derek Reveron. General Hertling, Dr. Reveron, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It's great to have you on the show. Hey, it's great to be here. It's really good to be with you, Ben, and thanks so much for having us. Dr. Reveron, you've literally written the book on security cooperation. So I was hoping you could explain in its most basic form what security cooperation is and what is the logic that undergirds building the military capacity of America's partners around the world? Yeah, I think simply security cooperation is really just military to military relations. And there's probably four basic dimensions as I think through it. You know, first is just relationship building. And that could be everything from hosting officers from other countries at our professional military schools like the Naval War College and West Point,

also just key leader engagements. So when our military leaders throughout the ranks just engage with other officers and NCOs throughout the world. A second, I think, often has to do with access. The U.S. is a global power. Its defense strategy has very much been characterized by forward engagement, at least since World War II and probably even go before then. And so we rely on our partners to provide critical base access, And so we rely on our partners to provide critical base access, host access, to facilitate U.S. defense strategy. And I think U.S. defense strategy is very much intertwined with our relationships, whether it's in Europe, in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and other countries, or in Asia and Japan,

South Korea, Australia. I think the third dimension, and probably what most people think about, is really sort of the hardware part, the capability. And Congress provides a lot of support to many countries around the world through foreign military financing. So this enables a country, for example, the Army component commander in Europe, doing our exercises, bilateral, multilateral with our European partners to enable to deploy those forces in operations where they're often in coalition. And in terms of the logic, you know, I sort of see two basic things that kind of undergird all this. You know, one is a term I use, just security deficit. So this is when a country cannot meet its national security obligations without U.S. assistance. And so this can be up at the high end. You know, for example, the U.S. and Japan partner in many dimensions, and Japan seeks to deter Chinese aggression. And it could be a more traditional lens,

you know, supporting counterinsurgency, counterterrorism operations in Nigeria or in Colombia. So security deficit is sort of my first explanation. And then maybe my second one, the more pragmatic, and this always gets into the questions about how do we know this stuff works and the assessment. I think, you know, coalition warfare is a norm. And so when I start looking out and saying, how effective is this? I look at the wars the U.S. has been engaged in, Afghanistan, Iraq, smaller operations in Syria, in East Africa. And I say, are those countries that we partnered with, trained with, are they serving with us in our coalition combat formations?

And so to me, that's kind of a really important assessment tool. That was an unbelievably strong definition and hit every aspect of it. What I would say, when we're talking to an army audience, most younger officers, NCOs have no idea the amount of effort that goes into security cooperation, building partners and alliances. But it's one of those kind of things you can't wait for a conflict to start to begin building it. And it's all about truthfully generating trust, generating an understanding of each other's way of conducting operations, and having an understanding of just the way an organization works from leadership to maneuver to logistic support to intelligence sharing completely down the line. So I think, as Derek just said, a lot of people get the feeling that

it's mainly just partnering. But as the commander in Europe, I did not realize this until I became the G3 of Europe in 2005. But the component commanders also have unbelievably strong connections with the defense attaches in every country because of acquisitions, because of the selling of equipment, and how the embassy staff literally works with the foreign government. It's fascinating to me that as both the G3 and the commander of U.S. Army Europe, I was almost spending more time with embassies and ambassadorial country teams than I was with soldiers on the training ground, because you do have to sort of divvy up responsibilities to work with other countries as well as other armies. There was a great book written by a former boss of mine who

now runs his own think tank, the Quincy Institute, Andrew Bacevich, his very first book was entitled Diplomats and Khaki. And what he talks about is the military literally building the strength of not only foreign armies, but oftentimes foreign governments. And I hope we talk about that a little bit today. I would say that we always need to come back to these are foreign policy programs, right? They're foreign policy programs that have a defense character because many countries face a security dilemma, you know, both from internal and external threats.

And all of that assistance is coordinated through the U.S. ambassador. And I know we'll talk about Ukraine in a little while. And certainly the Secretary of State Blinken has been very much out front on this, ensuring that the U.S. and the 50 or so countries are well organized to support the Ukraine. So it seems like security cooperation is an umbrella term that covers a vast array of activities. It covers traditional warfighting concepts, but also addresses military education, efforts to professionalize the officer and NCO Corps, and even delves into humanitarian assistance and governance. So Dr. Revron, could you provide us with a brief field survey of the different domains covered under security

cooperation? So the landscape is pretty big. So we can start with hardware because it often gets like the most attention. And as I think about the comparative advantage the United States has in the defense industry is huge. If you are Japan and you wanted to buy a fifth generation fighter, your choices of where to do that are pretty slim. And so you look to the U.S. and then you look at a program like F-35, which, you know, has been derided for decades, is the most expensive single program in the Defense Department. But the program has been internationalized. I think it's about up to 15 countries, with Finland maybe the latest country kind of adding on to it.

And so the U.S. defense sector is significant in the world, and so hardware exports are critical. Second, training. And I hope to hear more about the time General Hurtling spent at Grafenwoehr because U.S. military are really well-trained and professional. And this goes throughout the ranks. And I think the NCOs that we develop in the United States are somewhat unique. And many countries look to model on how we do NCO development. And in addition to just regular combat training. So our training base is significant and very important and admired. So you have hardware, you've got the training that goes related to that.

And then I would say, you know, just the cooperation that happens on a day-to-day basis. So if I start with coalition warfare as a norm and General Hertling highlights something to the effect, you can't surge trust is the old phrase that you have to build that trust throughout. And so if we are training together, if we are working together, when an international crisis does occur, we can deploy together because we're interoperable. We speak the same language, we can communicate on the same frequencies, and we understand how to work together. Those are all really fascinating points. One of the things that I keep going back to the you can't surge trust. I was unfortunately the latter part of my career involved in the downsizing of forces in Europe. And we thought we had come up to a model based

on the direction we had been given in terms of the amount of forces we were keeping there. But as the war continued in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we realized that as countries were going as part of either the ISAF force or the coalition force in Iraq, first of all, I want to point out too, by the way, that 86% of the ISAF force leveled off were mostly from European countries. And that was a direct result, I think, of folks coming to my boss early on when I was the training center commander at Grafenwoehr and saying, hey, look, we're fighting shoulder to shoulder with all of these partners coming out of Europe, but they don't have the same training capacity that we do. They don't understand how to conduct

counterinsurgency warfare. So you all have to help us before sending them over and training them up to our standards in terms of the training. It gets directly to what Dr. Everon was saying about not only the officers who were in charge of these units, but primarily, in my view, the NCOs were the most important part. And again, I can tell war story after war story about some of the things we did. But I think one of the more interesting things that occurred when I was the commander of the training center was we posited an idea to our CG of Europe, who at the time was General Bell, about opening up our NCO Academy at Grafenwoehr. And it got to the point where we had an opportunity for about 200 soldiers in every class. But because of the downsizing in

Europe, we were not filling the classes. So I kind of came to the boss and said, what if we started inviting some of our allies and partners to the course to start building their NCO Corps and their leadership at the junior level? And you have to understand that most armies in Europe do not have a professional NCO Corps. Some of the bigger ones do, Germany, France, obviously. But back in those days, in 2004 and 2005, armies like Poland, Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic, none of them had professional NCOs. So our requirement was you can send X number of bodies and we kind of dole them out to our primary leader development course at the time, later the warrior leader course, WLC. And it not only established that bond and that relationship at the sergeant

level, but more than anything, it established the kind of standards that foreign armies would go by. And what I would tell you, I don't have the data from the research for this statement, but what I will tell you is I can name the armies that during about a three-year period made the determination to actually incorporate a professional NCO corps, even to the point of, for the first time in their lives, appointing a sergeant major or first sergeants of units. And something like that, I mean, that's common ground for all of us in the U.S. military. But when you go to a country like, oh, I don't know, let's say Romania or let's say Ukraine, because we're going to get to that. They did not have a professional NCO Corps and they

also had a conscript army. And it was a huge success story for me personally, when about a year after I retired, I got a call from my former sergeant major, USAR sergeant major, Dave Davenport. He said, sir, you'll never guess what happened. He said, after so many times asking us to help them do this, the Ukrainian army finally declared that they would have a professional NCO Corps with ranks associated to them in line with what the U.S. Army does. These are the kind of victories that mean a lot to people who are in the business of theater security cooperation that are sort of under the wavetops of what most people understand. And it makes a huge difference, as we're seeing today. It seems like the armed forces are the default tool for a lot of different

security problems, including coalition politics and trust building and critical alliances. Can you discuss the consequences for this on security and on the military? Is there a risk that the U.S. military is just taking on too many different types of responsibilities? So I've been thinking about kind of this question, the military and foreign policy, probably for a couple of decades now. So, you know, when my first writing story came out, you know, my I think tagline was initially combatant commanders are as much policy entrepreneurs as warfighters. And this upset many people to say, why is the military engaged in policymaking? At the general officer and flag officer level, your job starts to become you're more broadly representing DOD and the U.S. government, not necessarily your particular service, let alone just the U.S. military.

So the danger that we often hear, and Rosa Brooks' book on this is very good, where DOD becomes, I think she uses the Walmart metaphor, DOD ends up having to do everything. I typically say DOD is more like Home Depot. You know, you can buy everything from lumber to plants to power tools and everything. That DOD is much more than warfighting. I think there's probably more non-warfighting functions of DOD than warfighting. Things like humanitarian assistance, tremendous logistics capability, probably the largest medical system for a military. And so DOD can offer a lot. So I guess the danger, and I was a part of a project with Gordon Adams and Shun Murray down at American University, and their book project was called Mission Creep. And this was sort of

the word back then. And all the contributors, we had probably a four-month conversation on the title, and that it was just going to be mission creep. And then half of us wanted a question mark, and the other half didn't, because we couldn't quite determine, is this really mission creep or not? If these functions are a foreign policy tool, and DOD is much bigger than warfighting, I personally don't think it's mission creep. I mean, right, there are certain things that can go for a long time that can lead to this mission creep idea. But, you know, DOD is a very large organization. And I of these security cooperation programs, I think, are essential to that because we do not fight alone, is to me, at the end of the day, why we should do these engagement programs, even though they might seem very frustrating at times. You know, using that model of the defense budget, I think one of the things a lot of Americans don't understand is that business concept of return on investment for alliance building. And the reason they don't see it as clearly as some of us that work the projects do every day is because you don't get the return on the investment after the exercise. You get it when the nations are called to conduct operations together. So again, I don't want to steal your thunder, Ben, but people will talk about Ukraine and how much we are buying in terms of equipment.

But I would suggest that not just in Ukraine, but several other countries within the European footprint, because I know them the best, are as good as they are, not because of HIMARS, which everyone is proclaiming, although that certainly contributed quite a bit, but they're as good as they are because we have been training with them for the last 14 years or so. And you don't get that return on an investment of capabilities in a foreign force that is actually helping U.S. security interests by being prepared to go it alone in this case, or as part of an alliance. So it's sort of like why are universities paying so much to build gymnasiums or why are hospitals interested in building gyms and the pre-injury stuff that comes along with physical fitness? Well, you understand

that once you are injured or have a disease that you can rebound a lot quicker if you do have that base, which is what security cooperation is all about. And if I could follow up to back to Barbara's point is there's been a lot of failure in these programs too. And this is what I think policymakers find frustrating is if we were having this conversation a year ago, we wouldn't sort of have the aura of the Ukrainian armed forces successes today. We would have sort of the aura of the fall of Kabul. And so there's a lot of failure in these programs too, which I think caused, right, for pause in this program that I mentioned, Mission Creep. But I really do think, and as a political scientist, it's frustrating because the cases tend to be unique.

It's hard to say, well, why did the rebuild in South Korea post-1953 work, but not in South Vietnam, for example? Probably similar people. So why is Ukraine having these great successes, but Afghanistan didn't? Very hard to explain how has the relationship between the U.S. and Israel been managed in spite of its very high level of military-to-military engagement, with some consequences. But I would kind of put it in that larger context. But I think it does require everybody to do their jobs right, that OSD needs to make sure they're giving the uniform the right direction, because to me, that's a key piece of the civilian control. And then at the country team level, that anything DOD is proposing is supportive of broader U.S. objectives in those countries. I'm sure that like many bureaucracies, broader U.S. objectives in those countries.

I'm sure that like many bureaucracies, the U.S., as well as other branches of the government, were somewhat resistant to the idea of making security cooperation a centerpiece of its military strategy. And Dr. Reverend, you commit an entire chapter of your book to addressing this resistance. So could you explain how the U.S. national security establishment overcame bureaucratic inertia and finally came around to investing in partner capacity building efforts? It's a great question, and thanks for calling out that chapter. And I'll admit, too, it's a chapter I did not originally have in the book. And so during the peer review process, you know, the criticism was, hey, you're too rosy on these programs.

Where's all the resistance? And so that's where that chapter came from. But when I thought about the resistance to security cooperation programs, I think it comes throughout many different levels. People in the uniformed military would say, look, I didn't enlist to train Afghans in marksmanship. That's not why I joined the military or in the Navy. I did not spend years training to conduct anti-submarine warfare from a P-8 to be supporting counter-migrant operations or counter-drug operations. And so you sort of had that resistance that every time we partner, we are taking time away from our core combat training mission. So that was serious. And so, you know,

I got a lot of hate mail from my uniform friends on these points. And then on the civilian that, you know, we started out is that old idea, right? If all we have is a hammer, everything is a nail. And that's where I say, well, DOD is much bigger than a hammer. It's got tremendous logistics capability, tremendous planning capability, tremendous intel capability that we're not using special forces officers to, I don't know, dig wells in East Africa. They might be there, but we're using Navy construction battalions. Their function is civil construction projects and military construction projects.

So they're getting that training time anyway. And then more broadly is there is a concern. The U.S. has a very black history with mil-to-mil training, and it's pretty current. And you look at Senator from Vermont, Pat Leahy, has the amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act to make sure the U.S. is not training people in units accused of human rights abuses, because that's a real part of this history going back to the 1980s. And so we have to be really careful about that. So I would say one of the caveats, too, you know, for me then with all this in mind is we always have to solve for U.S.

national interests. We've got too many examples, whether it was during the Cold War, if a country wanted assistance, they would say, hey, there are communists in the jungle. And then they would label their political enemies communists, and then the U.S. would help. So if that was sort of the red scare, I think probably the last 20 years, we had the green scare, right? There's Al-Qaeda, there's ISIS there. And we have to be really careful because at the end of the day, we're asking U.S. men and women in uniform to go do these training missions and support our partner. And we have to make sure that partners' interests are aligned with the U.S. interests so we don't put people in these situations and make things worse. And we've got lots of examples where

intervention actually makes things worse. And that's what makes us so hard. General Hertling, I'd like to hear your perspective on something Dr. Reverend mentioned regarding what kinds of interests between the U.S. and partners are the most important when there are so often disagreements and divergent priorities between allies, including the human rights issues Dr. Reverend mentioned. Could you speak to that a bit? Well, Dr. Elias, I'll introduce you to a term that only graduates of the War College know, and that's DOTS. That's another military acronym, DOTS. That stands for Depends on the Situation. So in Europe, there were, like I said, 49 countries on the continent that I was working with. I'll go back to what Dr. Reverend said about focusing on the countries, because in the military context, we have something called targeting cells. capabilities to destroy that target or to disable it or whatever. We expanded those targeting

meetings to engagement with other countries. And we use targeting, the targeting methodology that you use in military and combat, to how do we apply forces to achieve a specific objective with X country. And every single one of them was different. So when you're dealing with a country like, I'll pick one, Romania, the objectives of that nation in terms of their government and military are very different than the objectives

of a more democratic state like Germany that's been around for a while. And it reflects in how you do theater security cooperation. I spent very little time as a commander in Europe with the German army. I spent a whole lot of time with Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, Croatia, and each one of them had different ideas about what they wanted to do in terms of their security forces. they wanted to do in terms of their security forces. So you do push the U.S. perspective, certainly. But one of the biggest lessons I learned as a senior commander was you have to understand what the strategic dynamics are in the country you're dealing with. And you can't push too hard on what the United States want. You have to really have a nuanced hand in terms of allowing

things to occur through various levels of influence. And that takes leadership as well as an understanding of what your national objectives are. If I can give you one small example, I got a call one Sunday afternoon from my counterpart in Croatia. And if you've ever been to Croatia, it is a gorgeous country. It has a great sea coast, great beaches, but it also has some great mountains. Well, they happen to get about three or four feet of snow in the mountain areas where most of their farms were. I got a call from my Croatian counterpart, a two-star general in charge of their land forces. And he asked if I could help somehow, because we had an aviation unit training in Croatia at the time at their training center.

And there were a couple of CH-47s down there, the big helicopters, the twin-bladed helicopters. And he said, I sure could use some of those helicopters to move cows out of the mountain areas and get them from dying in the snow because the farmers are really pushing my president hard. I said, okay. So I called the aviation brigade commander. I said, let's turn this into a training mission. They moved something like 75 cows in a four-day period. And the farmers thought that the Croatian-U.S. military relationship was the best thing ever. That got to the ambassador level, got to the president of Croatia level, and something as silly as moving cows out of a snowstorm had strategic effects in

terms of our relationship with an emerging country that eventually was led into NATO. So a question I'd like to pose to both of you covers the difference between mil-to-mil cooperation over conventional capacity building versus security assistance to more irregular warfare activities. I know there's nothing easy about building partner capacity in any context, but is it maybe somehow more straightforward to train forces on large conventional maneuver warfare rather than addressing counterterrorism and unconventional warfare, or maybe they're both equally difficult in their own way. I'm going to go back, if you don't mind, Dr. Aaron, I'll take the first shot at this. Again, dots. I mean, when you talk about the special forces capability of the Baltic

countries, relatively small countries with relatively small militaries that can't do much against a large Russian onslaught. As we're seeing now, and by the way, I mentioned Army, Navy, Air Force in my previous statement about theater security cooperation. SOCUR, the Special Operations Command Europe, was unbelievable in terms of the things they did with the special forces of various countries. Primarily, their end road was to get the counterinsurgency, counterterrorism capability, but they were also training things like leadership, supply at the small unit level. Then I'll add one more capability, and that's the U.S. National

Guard, both Air Force and Army. There's a place in Ukraine that absolutely nobody knows about called Yabariv, which was the Ukrainian training base. We took a cell out of Grafenbuehr and put it in Yavarev in 2011 to help them with their exercises. It formalized in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea and the Donbass with something that is called the JMTGU, Joint Multinational Training Group Ukraine. And that was modeled after the JMTGR, which was the Joint Multinational Training Group Romania at a place called Sinku, another place, Drozdko Pomorskie in Poland. I mean, I can name down several more places where the U.S. Army, in this case, literally had a hub-and-spoke

concept with training centers where both special operations and conventional operations were trained. And then the special operators, the Green Berets, basically the special forces, would dig deeper into the training of individuals and individual teams. One of the things that I think has prevented early on Ukraine from doing as well as they could is because from the years 2014 to 2018, we were training them on conventional operations up to the battalion level. When you get above the battalion level, other things come into play like logistics, intelligence, engineering, things like that. And the U.S. military in Yavariv, in their training ground, did not get to those things. When you get into the operational level of war with large-scale units doing large-scale things over big areas, that's when logistics takes over. And we never really got to that part because we were more involved in the conventional

training at the tactical level. I might add, I think people in the U.S. national security system don't always appreciate how much bigger the United States is relative to our partners. And so it often gets pitched as this trade-off, well, I can do this in irregular, I can do this in conventional. And I did some quick consulting here. So U.S. Special Operations Command claims to have about 70,000 personnel with all the service contributions. that's about 10,000 bigger than the German army, just U.S. SOCOM. The Royal Navy for the United Kingdom, it's got about 35,000, according to my search. The U.S. Navy Reserve is 15,000 personnel bigger than the Royal Navy. So I often think,

back to what General Hertling said earlier, it's trying to figure out, you know, from the partner country's perspective is what do they need, shared interest, and then where in the world, it can help kind of meet those needs. And there's certain high demand, low density assets that, you know, do stress the system. And probably with special operations training, because I think many militaries in Europe in particular have, right, soft capability, and they want to preserve that. And so oftentimes, it's just trying to figure out who can do that and when, and in ensuring the training doesn't detract from their core skill set. One of the other things, too, I'd be remiss since Ben's interviewing us is one of the objections back to the resistance is this used to be just the domain of special forces, all this training stuff, and then it became conventional. And I have seen and received that criticism from our SF officers in particular saying, look, conventional forces shouldn't be doing this. That's not what they're good at. They don't have the language

skill. They don't have the maturity, right? All of those key things that make special operations forces special. There is a difference. But to the earlier point, I think we've all made is there's such a demand for U.S. security cooperation that SOCOM, no matter how big, at 70,000, can't meet all of these demands. And then the final point, too, because this came big, at 70,000, can't meet all of these demands. And then the final point, too, because this came up, I think, when General Hertling was talking, is the U.S. is not the only country out there doing security cooperation. And this is what makes assessment of our programs really hard. You know, did that coup in Mali occur because it was U.S. training,

or was it French training, or was it, you know, Chinese training? Oftentimes, smaller countries are getting assistance on the security front from many different countries. And this is where it makes it hard to say, well, why did this one work and not this one? Why did a coup happen there, even though they went through our training program, but not there? We're not the only ones out there. They're in their own national context as well. And we sometimes think, well, if you come to the Naval War College for a year, you will stop being your own nationality and you'll embrace positive civil control, democracy, free enterprise. But you go back, that's not necessarily your country. And this

is where we just need to be sort of careful and employ the DOTS assessment. We don't say that in Newport. We do the depends, but I'm going to bring in DOTS now, so we'll be more joint. That's good. And by the way, I want to comment too, because you said something very important that just struck to me. Yes, training of foreign militaries was normally the domain of special forces. That's what they were set up to do. What we found in Europe, kind of a counter to that, was all of the new NATO nations, all of the new allies after the fall of the wall and the lowering of the curtain, all the new nations wanted special ops guys. Just like everybody that goes to see a movie, you know, SEAL Team 6 wants to wear camouflage gear around the street. I mean, I'm kidding about it to a degree, but know, SEAL Team 6 wants to wear camouflage gear around the street.

I mean, I'm kidding about it to a degree, but the cool thing for a country is special operations, and I'm not denigrating them, they're cheap to build. They're small. They're relatively highly trained, but you can do that with a lack of money. Conventional forces, not so much. I think that's what's hurting some part of Ukraine right now. They spent a lot of time wanting to spend money on special forces because they saw how capable they were. But you can't win a war with special forces, just like you can't win a war

with F-16s. I mean, you've got to have all of those kinds of forces to play together. So I think that's a good segue to discuss European theater security cooperation directly. Lieutenant General Hertling, how did the arc of build partner capacity activities change over time in Europe? I know that as a field grade officer, you were stationed in Europe during the Cold War and then kind of returned to Europe episodically over your career. And I would imagine military cooperation in the 1980s was different than efforts in 2008 or 2011, or even today. I would almost say that it was security cooperation per se was non-existent in the 1980s. What we had

in the 1980s and before that was more alliances. And there was the expectation that other countries would train their force. So sometimes when you came together back in the days, the haughty days of the Cold War, what you saw is what you got. There was no training together. There was a lot of exercising together. But I think what happened, at least where I saw it changing, was as a result of 9-11 and some renewed emphasis on NATO as a governing body, what some people are now calling NATO 2.0, the change from what they did during the Cold War to defend against the Soviet invasion to preparing forces to train in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what really drove that,

like I said before, a lot of the combatant commanders or the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq were coming to the Department of the Army in the Army's case and saying, hey, these guys are coming from X, Y, Z country, and they can't fight alongside of us. So that trickled down to, at the time, my boss in Europe, who said to me, we've got to train them before they get to Iraq and Afghanistan. And what we were finding is not only were we training other forces for working with ours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we were learning an awful lot of lessons too from them. It was amazing how much we were taken away from working with the Czech Republic. I remember one day a first sergeant told me that his unit

had lost the capability for making range cards because they had been in Iraq so many times. When the Czech Republic came in and dug their foxholes and made their range plan, their range cards, it's something his soldiers had never seen before. From an old Cold War perspective, that's unfathomable to me. But we had lost a lot of capability. In 2011, when I first became commander of U.S. Army Europe, the secretary of the Army came over to visit, and he specifically said he wanted to go see a foreign training event. This was 2011. So the only thing that was going on during his visit was an exercise called Rapid Trident being held at the Yavariv training area in Ukraine. So on our flight up there, he asked me, he said, why are we doing exercises with Ukraine?

He said, tell me about the Ukrainian army. I said, well, they're corrupt, but they're getting better. And the Ukrainian government is extremely corrupt, but the army can drive an elimination of that corruption. And he says, well, why are we playing with corrupt armies? And I said, because there's the potential there. When we got there, what he saw was not just U.S. Ukrainian forces training, but this rapid Trident event had 16 other nations there. It was in everything but name, a NATO training event. So the secretary of the army saw Canadian, British, German, Ukrainian, Italian, all jumping out of parachuting out of airplanes in a major

drop zone. And he got to talk to them and he walked away with a different perspective of what was going on there from both the unit and the command level in terms of coordination, these exercises. And by the way, in terms of coordination of these exercises. And by the way, that exercise of rapid trident was a yearly thing that continued on until last year when the Russians invaded Ukraine. So we've discussed the critical importance of appreciating the context of each partnership, aka DUTs. And Dr. Reverend, you've mentioned partner willpower, And Dr. Reverend, you've mentioned partner willpower, discussing Russia, Ukraine, as well as Afghanistan, saying, mentioning that we, the U.S., can't want victory any more than partner forces want it. So where does partner willpower come from? Why are the Ukrainians overcoming corruption and organizational issues, for example, where our Afghan partners fail to do so?

It's a great question. And so for all those in graduate school looking for a topic, I mean, I think a great one would be to kind of do a nice comparative study between international assistance to support the Afghan forces and international assistance to support the Ukrainian forces. Because I think it's fascinating and it's too soon to say what explains, at least today as we're recording, relative success of the Ukrainian armed forces integrating Western, not only U.S., but Spanish air defense, German air defense, French artillery, all across the board. About 50 countries are supporting Ukraine on this. across the board, about 50 countries are supporting Ukraine on this. One of the ones is, I think to me, you know, the bigger lesson that I took away out of Afghanistan is we can't want it more than they want it. And I think in this case, clearly the Ukrainians are fighting for their lives literally, and they want it, right? They have to succeed. If they don't succeed, then we know what will happen. Probably the technical dimensions to operating major air

defense networks is significant. It's not like giving somebody a stinger and relatively fast, but if you want to set up, so NASAMs, the joint system between the US and Norway, and then I saw the Brits are kicking in about a thousand missiles to kind of fill it out. Spain releasing the Hawk missiles and SAM batteries, same thing, the U.S. old Avenger systems. I don't know the last time an Avenger was activated, but it's got to be a long time ago. The Germans with their IRIS system, it's an observation. I think from a Ukrainian perspective, it could be a criticism because they wanted everything immediately. And I can't really explain why those things became slowly. Some of it is just having

those equipment being made available. Second is the training that's involved in the maintenance that's involved in those systems. So, so far, so good. So maybe the criticism is too slow. I think that legacy of corruption, I'm not sure in terms of the perception of President Zelensky. I think if you go back to probably maybe December, a couple months before the war started, you know, his perception was, yes, he was elected on a counter-corruption campaign. But I think the perception was, well, is he a really serious leader, you know, given his background as an actor and a comedian? And he's proven to be a great leader in really leading his country in the defense of his country. So I know that's a lot, but curious General Hertling how he kind of thinks about these issues too. The corruption issue, it's interesting because America has now latched on to phrases like javelin and high Mars. And there was a time period where people were saying, we need to give them 400 high Mars. Well, there are not 400 HIMARS

in the system. What Ukraine really wants right now, and I love Ukraine, I train with them, I have good friends there, but sometimes I've been accused of being the naysayer because I say, no, you can't give them these things because either they don't exist or it requires a long time to train or the maintenance and repair requirements is just off the charts that you don't understand. You just don't drop something in the middle and say, go for it. I'll get to the tanks in a minute. But what was interesting, because I do know a little bit of a background, what was going on between 2011 and 2018 or 19 was corruption was still rampant in the Ukrainian government. They wanted a new military, but they didn't want to pay for it. And truthfully, our

giving of equipment is not the norm. It's usually selling of equipment after a lot of checks go into place. So what Ukraine wants, and now what most of America wants, because they don't understand these things, is for us to just create them a new technologically advanced army and do it right now. The Poles went through this process, and it took about 14 years. And the first delivery of M1A1 tanks was to them about a year ago, as well as F-16. So it's just a matter of how do you pay for these very expensive weapon systems? And for America to give these things, the president has the unfortunate requirement

of actually getting the money from Congress. And it's a lot of money. I mean, we've spent close to $20 billion, and that's a drop in the bucket based on what Ukraine would like to have or what they need. But truthfully, they couldn't handle it right now. And I would say that to any Ukrainian that's pushing these kind of things right now. So far, as Dr. Reverend said, the javelins and the stingers and the HIMARS are relatively easy to field. It doesn't take that much training. I was in Grafenwoehr about a month ago. I was in Germany about a month and a half ago, and I was watching some Ukrainians

train on the 120 millimeter mortar. That's a good piece of equipment. It takes a long time to train on it, and that's one of the easier ones. So again, it has to do with none of these things can provide a quick fix. And that's why, as we started the conversation, trust and building relationships over the long term is critically important. And we get fixated on hardware for whatever reason. I think it's easier to understand nice demonstration videos. And I think, again, the big lesson, why have the Ukrainians been successful, is their will to fight is really strong. Their leadership is really strong. We haven't seen

videos of what a Ukrainian command center looks like, but we have seen those releases of HIMARS launches. But to me, right, as you know, you're a general, and certainly that's where the real work and success is coming on. It's the leadership, it's the planning, it's the implementation. And you can't capture that in a short video or a photo. And that's where I think the Ukrainians have been extremely successful, is employment of all these equipment. Following up on a point made by General Hertling on the importance not only of material in Ukraine, but longstanding partner assistance efforts, I'd like to ask both of you,

in what ways has U.S. partner assistance been most helpful in Ukraine? And what are the limits of that help? Is there a tendency for Americans to take credit for Ukrainian organization, agency, and efforts to combat Russia? Yeah, I hate to skim the generic leadership matters, but leadership matters. And so I'll sort of offer three examples that I sort of think change it, two positive and one negative. So first, Colombia. You know, what explains why Plan Colombia in the early 2000s was effective? I think it was good leadership, you know, starting at the top with President Uribe,

because there were previous efforts for the U.S. to support Colombia against the FARC insurgency was decades old. Why did Plan Colombia work? I think, you know, a number of restraints, Congress-imposed strict limits of how many uniformed people could be in the country at any one time. So this kind of held back. I think, you know, the American tendency is we want to, right, help everybody and solve their problems, and we want it more than they do. But it was all about the Colombians, and I think starting with President Uribe, you know, very effective against the FARC. The larger question is still open. On the Afghan question, I think the U.S. did want it more than

the Afghans, and certainly I was in meetings in Kabul during, you know, 10 and 11 in the surge, and I often walked away from those meetings and the Afghans would almost, I don't know if they explicitly said this, or I walked away in the meetings of, yeah, this is all on you, America. If we succeed or fail, it's all on you. And somehow we had all convinced ourselves that the U.S. was more important to the situation than the Afghans were. And I think on the Ukrainian side, obviously, you know, outside the U.S. embassy and Kiev is there, but, you know, there is not kind of an industrial-scaled network that was created to support the Ukrainians. Some of it is just time. I mean, I think as we start to sort of regularize and normalize, you know, what does U.S. assistance, international

assistance look like from a bureaucratic organizational perspective, say, you know, six months from now? Does that get back into that old adage, right? Bureaucracy does its thing. And that could be good and bad. But, you know, again, I think the will to fight partly comes from the leadership, Zelensky, Zelushny, all down the list, Reznikov doing great work. And then the context that if the Ukrainians do not succeed, they will die. And I think the other thing too, we've kind of neglected a little bit is we've focused on security cooperation, which is nice, but there's also the broader effort that's been going on within Europe

and the U.S. to provide economic support just for regular government operations. And then the massive refugee resettlement, or at least support in Poland and in other countries in Europe. You know, again, I have to imagine as a deployed sailor, I want to focus on my job. I don't want to worry about my family. And so I think the type of support that European governments have been providing for Ukrainian families has also enabled the Ukrainian soldiers and airmen and, you know, a few sailors and Marines out there to be able to do their job and kind of restore their country. General Hertling, what are some policy considerations that policymakers should take into account

to better optimize America's theater security cooperation strategy? And Derek, based on today's conversation, what are the implications for practitioners who are tasked with implementing the United States' approach to security cooperation? We're already starting our after-action reviews of what's going on in Ukraine, as well as we continually do the status of our theater security cooperation plans around the world. That's a yearly update in each combatant commands office. What I've learned from the campaign in Ukraine, as well as some of the other things I experienced as a commander in Europe was, and it reared its ugly head, as Derek said before, they got to want it more than we do.

That's a recurring theme in many countries. And when you're talking about this security cooperation, you have to consider a pusher and a pull system. In Afghanistan, it was a push system. We were pushing things to them. They wanted us to fight for them. In Ukraine, it's been a pull system. They've wanted assistance. They've seen the opportunities that they have to protect their sovereignty and their territorial integrity. And when you consider the implications of where we do business, a lot of stuff is laid on the intelligence community, both CIA, DIA, the various combatant commands, intel sections, which is all good, but even that's somewhat stovepiped. I'm going to go back to the evaluation of countries we work with. An old thought of,

if you want a new idea, read an old book. And I keep going back to old dead Carl Clausewitz, who said for a nation to be successful, they have to have the holy trinity, as it were. They have to have a performing and capable military, a supportive government, and a people that understand what the military is fighting for to win their conflicts and win their war and increase security. If you look at those three areas, capable military, supportive government, and not corrupt government, and a people that understands what the military does, those Clausewitzian principles may be a pretty good approach to security cooperation as opposed to just wanting to sell things or wanting to build allies.

Because allies live up to those three elements of the Holy Trinity, or they don't. So those should be considerations of, I'm going to say commanders, but I'm talking about policy folks as opposed to just what the intel community is feeding them, which is all very good. And I don't mean to denigrate the intel community, but it has to be bigger than that. Some really great points. So I'm a professor at the Naval War College. And so even though these are my personal views, you know, some of the things that I really like to emphasize with everybody is, you know, some of the things that I really like to emphasize with everybody is, you know, first know the history. How did we get here? And so we have been looking at these

programs and we've been a part of these programs for decades. So if you find yourself, you know, back my sort of first foray into this was really looking at the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia in particular. There's a deep history that undergirds everything. And if you walk into another country trying to, quote, help, and you do not appreciate the history, you will probably fail and do harm. So maybe that's kind of the second, right, is remember, you're supposed to be there to help, not do harm. Second, I think, is know the limits of the U.S. military. I think fundamentally, we can create time and space for policymakers, for negotiations, for diplomats to try to bring apart some resolution. Because I think the overall goal the U.S. always has is to sort of return to

some peaceful state, bring stability. And so, you know, ensure what we're doing is supporting those efforts. Know what U.S. interests are with that country. And then you have to be careful to balance what our partners' interests are with U.S. interests. And remember who you work for is probably the key thing. And then the final thought is all these programs are foreign policy programs. And so it's a key aspect of foreign policy. And so I think always keeping in mind, what are you doing to advance and defend foreign policy is important. I mean, I really try to drop away from the notion of the U.S. military's job is to fight and win the nation's wars. That's a part of it, but it's also a part of larger foreign policy, and we have to understand what those are. And so I hope to see

some of the listeners in classrooms in Newport, Rhode Island at the Naval War College, where you can find all our syllabi online and you can do your own self-study. Well, Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, Dr. Derek Revron, thanks again for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. That was a fascinating conversation about European theater security cooperation. Thank you both for having me and General Hertling. Enjoy the conversation. Same here. I learned a lot from Dr. Reverend. Thank you.

And Dr. Elias and Ben. That was fun. Thanks for having both of us. Thank you again for joining us for episode 66 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Kyle and Ben will discuss the implications for U.S. credibility in the wake of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Following that, Laura and Jeff will explore the opportunities and risks of air advising with Colonel Tobias Switzer. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all-volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals.

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