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One CA Podcast episodes

February 15, 2019 23: Manya Dotson on Life in the NGO Community
, we welcome Manya Dotson, who shares her views on a career in the NGO community and the differences between development and defense. We also discuss the need for more mental health support for NGO workers.
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Music courtesy of Broke for Free.
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Transcript:
00:00:00    SPEAKER_02
You know, what I did was wrap it up in duct tape and throw it into the basement, hoping that maybe it wouldn't, if it was just wrapped in duct tape and compartmentalized and thrown into the basement of my mind, that it wouldn't come out, you know, that it would just stay down there. And it did for a long time. But then the thing is, you know, something happens and it's like opening the door to the basement, going down there and kicking those packages around. And then you're like, oh, wait, these now have thrown into zombies. And then they're, you know, stampeding up the stairs. into the house.

00:00:44    SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode, and we're joined today by Manya Dotson. Manya, I knew you under a different last name many years ago when we were serving in the Peace Corps together in Côte d 'Ivoire. Ivory Coast and West Africa. We recently got reconnected after many, many years and wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about your background, especially in the NGO community, non -governmental organizations, and talk about how it interfaces with the civil affairs forces of the Army and the Marine Corps. I understand you haven't worked directly with those forces, but I think it's really helpful for our listening audience to hear about your perspective in the NGO world. Because there's really no cases, I think, where CA forces are going in a steady state or in conflict areas, and there's not an NGO nearby. So they're always at the table. So thank you very much for being on the 1CA podcast.

00:01:44    SPEAKER_02
Thanks so much, John. I have to say, John and you and I share a connection that nobody really shares in the world, which is that we lived in the same house and worked in the same... Peace Corps Village, and we know the same characters. So what an incredible connection that is. And I was so thrilled to hear from you. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

00:02:07    SPEAKER_01
Thank you. And so now you're a global health consultant as well, coach, writer. You do some speaking engagements. What's the best way for people to find out information? Go to your website.

00:02:19    SPEAKER_02
Yes. My website is www. Manya Dotson. And Manya is like Tanya with an M, M -A -N -Y -A -D -O -T -S -O -N dot com. And that's the best way to get in touch with me. I'm also on Instagram. I'm pretty active on Instagram as well. And that's just at Manya Dotson. Okay.

00:02:41    SPEAKER_01
So I wanted to dig into some of the things you talked about. Public health, social marketing, worked a lot of different issues in public health. Could you start by talking about what social marketing is?

00:02:58    SPEAKER_02
of using all of those very powerful tools that we use to develop and sell products and services and taking that mindset, tool set, and skill set and applying it to development challenges. Specifically, I've spent my life applying that to public health challenges. So, you know, there's a lot of things that people could be doing. And buying, that would be very life -altering in a good way. And we don't always want what we need. So I would say at heart, social marketing is about helping make stuff that's good for people also really desirable.

00:03:43    SPEAKER_01
Okay. Is it connected to behavior change and behavior change communication ideas? Of course.

00:03:49    SPEAKER_02
course. Yeah, of course. I mean, it's... We use the four P's of marketing, so looking at your product or service, really looking critically at that, looking at the placement of that product or service, looking at promotion, which is very much about behavior change, behavior change communication, and figuring out why people are doing what they're doing, figuring out the alternatives, the alternative options that they're choosing to the option of your product, service, or behavior. You know, assuming that people have the dignity of choice and make choices based on some sort of calculation about value and, you know, vote with their money or vote with their presence or vote with the opportunity cost for, you know, that choice. So we're looking at those four things. So pricing, people, placement, service, placement and promotion. marketing is that there's this really relentless focus on the customer and what they want and their vision of value which can be different than a public health orientation which is like this is good for you and if you just were scared enough about how bad for you it could be if you don't do it you would do this yeah and I mean I think we all know that there's all kinds of things that we do that are absolutely delightful and absolutely terrible for us things we should be doing that just don't feel, we just don't do them. Even though we're very scared about not doing them, we still don't do them. So it's, yeah, it's really interesting. It's a fun discipline. And we tend to look in social marketing at market, the entirety of a market system. So all of the different places that a person might access anything related to that outcome. And then we would look at, so that would be both public,

00:06:10    SPEAKER_02
them with the option to do this thing that would be good for them.

00:06:16    SPEAKER_01
Okay. It sounds very similar to, for folks in civil affairs, our colleagues who do psychological operations or information operations, they probably use very similar means, but very different ends in analyzing social media, analyzing how to engage with not necessarily selling a product, but maybe an idea or behavior. Much similar thoughts.

00:06:39    SPEAKER_02
work around how terrorist networks grow through very skillful marketing and how to take that same very skillful marketing and turn it to other types of behavior or alternatives.

00:07:02    SPEAKER_01
And when you think about public health, I was thinking recently of a funny way to get what could be an otherwise boring topic. but preparedness, getting families to prepare for a hurricane or natural disaster. CDC had a campaign for a while about equating that to zombies and TV shows and movies about zombies and saying, hey, you want to prepare for a natural disaster or a flood the same way you would for a zombie invasion. And that really resonated with a lot of people. Yeah. That's awesome.

00:07:32    SPEAKER_02
with a lot of people. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. Exactly. That's awesome.

00:07:36    SPEAKER_01
That's awesome. That's awesome.

00:07:39    SPEAKER_02
I love that.

00:07:40    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was great. And it worked. People paid attention. It got in the news. Mania, so the national security community talks about the three Ds, defense, diplomacy, development. You spent a lot of your working career in the development side of things. What do you think drew you and friends of yours to work in development?

00:07:57    SPEAKER_02
I think I kind of accidentally fell into development. The Peace Corps for me was a way to prototype being a doctor before. being a doctor before committing to seven plus years and zillions of dollars to medical school. And at that moment, I was at this crossroads where I knew that magazine editorial, I was a health editor at Fitness Magazine, was really interesting, but I just wasn't feeling that individualized impact. And there was this desire to explore and see the world and this deep curiosity about the world. I've always had these four driving qualities. One is a drive to explore the world, to know the world, in a more extreme kind of a way. The second one is a deep interest in health, women's health, and sexy health, reproductive health, and all that stuff around sexy health. A third has been this, I'm very creative, and need an outlet for creativity. I really create. And the fourth has been a desire to be of service. And that manifested through volunteering and, you know, lots of different ways of attempting to be of service. So, you know, for me, public health, what I found was that being the medical profession. So for me, it was never really a question of diplomacy or development. It was that public health.

00:09:40    SPEAKER_02
driving pillars of my personality and identity in a way that can also be productive and helpful. And in ways that, you know, for me, that diplomacy was never an option, nor was the military. Those two things were not really a mental option for me. I was looking at it more relative to a medical career or an applied anthropological career.

00:10:10    SPEAKER_02
disciplinary. And being a doctor could be great. I loved working with patients, etc. But being a doctor is really being an auto mechanic working on a jelly donut. It's really procedural. Yeah, it's really procedural. And you don't really want your gynecologist to be super creative. You don't. You want your waxer to be a little creative maybe, but not your...

00:10:36    SPEAKER_01
maybe, but not your...

00:10:40    SPEAKER_02
So for me, sitting in that clinic and drawing mangoes and figuring out how to get, you know, how to have a conversation with the community that would get people excited about building a spring box or, you know, how to get the dads to buy the stuff that would help the mom prepare the things she needs to prepare so that the kid would get fed and fatten up. That was very creative and brought these things together. So, yeah, it was really, I just feel like I fell into it and got incredibly lucky to find this field that allows me to really express all of these things in such a fascinating way.

00:11:20    SPEAKER_02
me to really express all of these things in such a fascinating way.

00:11:25    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so we both have a lot of friends who are still in development and have stayed. They may not be making as much money as maybe you could have if you stayed in publishing. But it's a career field that they really enjoy. Their heart's really in it. And there's the excitement to it as well. You could be living in other countries, speaking foreign languages, understanding and sitting with people, breaking bread, having different meals that you would never dream of before.

00:11:51    SPEAKER_02
would never

00:11:54    SPEAKER_01
It's very exciting.

00:11:55    SPEAKER_02
exciting. I've learned so much. I truly believe that I have...

00:12:06    SPEAKER_02
I hope that some things that I was a part of in some way have made a difference. I know that they have because the data is there, but I just feel so humbled by the incredible things that I've gotten to learn and see and witness and be a part of in the way that I've gotten to participate in the depths and breaths of humanity and the human experience. It's been very rich, really rich.

00:12:34    SPEAKER_01
That's wonderful. So, Manja, I'm not going to say that you can generalize for the whole development community, and it's really helpful just to get your perspective. But you've also been in a lot of conversations with fellow employees, host country nationals, working with you on projects. And in those other two Ds, defense and diplomacy, is there a general sense of how the development community views, for example, the military and defense?

00:13:06    SPEAKER_02
there's perspectives on different levels. First of all, when you're working in smaller countries like a Togo, the expat community is often a very tight -knit community, and that community cuts across diplomats, military, and development folks who are there as expatriates. Often, socially, those can be very tight -knit social communities. I think that those three three different Ds are fundamentally different. And the development objective is, and I would say like the main difference is that, from my perspective, is that diplomats are about bringing the U .S. to a foreign environment. Military is about protecting U .S. interests, U .S. interests in a foreign environment.

00:14:10    SPEAKER_02
USAID was pulled back under the State Department. But to be effective in development, development workers really have to integrate and really effective development happens when there is deep local ownership and where the local government and local players and local actors are driving the agenda.

00:14:44    SPEAKER_02
to align those objectives with global objectives coming out of the World Health Organization. So often I have found that diplomats...

00:15:11    SPEAKER_02
in the civil affairs branch. But my perception is that those activities also are fundamentally driven by a desire to ease entry and make the local population more open to U .S. military presence.

00:16:01    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's very helpful to hear your perspective. And I think if I asked the same question of many people who have worked in NGOs, I'd probably hear a similar theme there. Stick around for the rest of my conversation with Monty Dotson. We'll talk about the reluctance of NGOs to engage with the military or be seen working with the military. We'll also talk about the burnout and emotional toll that members of the NGO community experience.

00:16:30    SPEAKER_00
and where they turn for support.

00:16:40    SPEAKER_01
Mark your calendars for the 2019 Civil Affairs Roundtable to be held on Tuesday to April at the National Guard Armory Conference in Washington, D .C. This year's roundtable will conclude the seminal discussion of optimizing civil affairs started at last fall's symposium at Fort Frag, North Carolina. and in the 2018 -19 Civil Affairs issue papers to be published before the roundtable. At the roundtable, the discussion shifts to a more granular identification of .mil PFP pathways to guide CA modernization and continuous investment in an innovative and adaptive force that is well -networked in planning and operational relationships and persistently engaged and aligned regionally to facilitate political -military goals and objectives. In addition to the speakers and panel discussions, attending members and friends of the regiment will conclude by looking at how to advance civil affairs at a more ambitious multilateral scale over the next year's cycle. In order to maximize official travel for uniformed members of the regiment, the roundtable immediately precedes the PKSOI Training and Educati
35 min
February 02, 2019 22: Wyatt Hughes Trains the Central Readiness Force of Japan
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Major Wyatt Hughes discusses his experience training the Central Readiness Force, a component of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force. Major Hughes had been a member of the Army Reserve Engagement Team
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Japan. Haiko drum music courtesy of Bensound.
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Transcript:
00:00:00    SPEAKER_02
Japan's known for Godzilla movies. So they had a new one come out called Shin Gojira, means New Godzilla. And the Simic team leader, Lieutenant Colonel Kawasaki, told me I should watch it because it would show me how Japanese military planned. And when I watched it, it was extremely obvious what she meant. Even as Tokyo was being destroyed, it took a while to get to a decision. You know, their decision -making process was very detailed. and had to be absolutely sure and and that's no i'm not finding fault in any way i'm just stating you know what they told me and what i observed because once they do decide they're going to do something it's very hard to make changes

00:00:53    SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA Podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Wyatt Hughes, a major in the Army for Civil Affairs, and he was a civil affairs planner for the U .S. Army -Japan's Army Reserve Engagement Team, also called an ARET. Major Hughes, welcome to the 1CA Podcast.

00:01:11    SPEAKER_02
Hey, good morning.

00:01:13    SPEAKER_01
Where are you now? What are you doing? I think you're in ILE, is that right?

00:01:18    SPEAKER_02
That's correct. I'm currently assigned here at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, going through the CGSC curriculum. I'm thankfully halfway through and should PCS around June of this year. Not really sure where I'm going yet, but I'm certainly enjoying the educational experience while I'm here.

00:01:33    SPEAKER_01
That's great. How long is the program?

00:01:36    SPEAKER_02
The program is 10 and a half months. It's changed a few times over the years, but currently they project that for the next few years it will remain anywhere from 10 to 11 months, depending on your report date. which also is tied to any preparatory courses you may have to do based on a specific branch.

00:01:53    SPEAKER_01
Okay. Well, we may get to that. If that's okay with you, ask any follow -up questions toward the end of this or maybe as a bonus. What we wanted to focus on for this discussion was a paper that you had written regarding your experience in Japan, and it's entitled Civil Affairs Interoperability, Japan Ground Self -Defense Force, Civil -Military Cooperation Education. So you were a CA planner, as I mentioned, and the ARET, those in Japan, and wanted to focus your discussion here on your experience working with the Japanese Central Readiness Force, or the CRF. And before we get into that, try to set the stage for listeners. So that's a part of what's called the Japanese Self -Defense Force, which was created in 1954 after World War II. The U .S. had been occupying Japan and essentially got rid of its... the previous version of its military. And so it helped to reestablish a self -defense force for Japan that did not have offensive capabilities. In the early years, I think it was mainly a police force helping to maintain a law and order within Japanese borders, not really going outside of Japanese borders, and has evolved to a very powerful force today. And it's now considering adding some offensive capabilities. So could you talk about, if you know this, the history of the Central Readiness Force in Japan?

00:03:12    SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. So the Central Readiness Force was established in 2007. It was established as part of a directive that was a national policy directive, which included defense guidelines for Japan. The establishment specifically of special operations and an unconventional warfare force. but primarily one that could provide defense of the homeland using special skills or be utilized in international peace cooperation activities. At the same time that the CRF was established, the International Peace Cooperation Activities Training Unit in Camp Komikato, Japan, was also established. So within the CRF, you've got the Special Forces Unit, which is in Okinawa. It works very closely with our own special forces for direct action and special operations in event that Japan itself is attacked, not for exportation of those skills or use overseas in any missions. However, from the International Peace Cooperation Activities Training Unit, what you see is a different focus. So looking at what for years was considered within CA as our core task, Two specific ones that are related to the IPCAT, or International Peace Cooperation Activities Training Unit, are populist and resources control, and also foreign humanitarian assistance. Since 2007, the CRF assumed the duties of deploying personnel, specifically personnel who are from the CRF, in support of various United Nations missions. Since 2007,

00:05:00    SPEAKER_02
There has been more than five instances where they've been deployed to places such as Rwanda or Sudan in support of the United Nations missions. But prior to the CRF even, the Japanese have taken part in numerous UN peacekeeping operations. So what you saw with the CRF was a transition from the Japan Ground Self -Defense Force, which is one of three branches of the Japan Self -Defense Force, a transition of the UN peacekeeping duties. from across the Ground Self -Defense Force to a specific population that was trained more so to be culturally focused and regionally focused in support of HADR, or Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations. Unfortunately, the CRF was disbanded in March of 2018. A little bit of history behind what happened. While I was stationed in Japan at Kamzama from 2015 June until 2017 June, The Central Readiness Force continued to focus its efforts where it had previously in the international peace cooperation area within the region. However, due to realignment within the Japan Ground Self -Defense Force and additional defense guidelines, the CRF itself was disbanded, although the capabilities remain. So CRF headquarters at Kamsama Japan was then switched to Tokyo itself, and then ultimately... The same capabilities exist, but were pushed back into the ground self -defense force in various units. So that's a little history there,

00:06:40    SPEAKER_02
not due to a lack of importance, a lack of, well, not lack of, but rather a realignment of the management of those capabilities. The Special Forces Unit in Okinawa was combined with a Western Army. or amphibious force that was within the Western Army in Kyushu. So this is just some of the basics, the dynamics, as the leadership changes and ultimately as some of their guidelines change under their prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

00:07:14    SPEAKER_01
All right. I mean, those changes always happen, certainly when leadership swaps out. So the buildup of capabilities, which are no longer in CRF but elsewhere, for HADR, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief that you mentioned. Why did the CRF become a regional go -to partner for HADR?

00:07:32    SPEAKER_02
Well, part of it has to do with the United Nations budget. So next to the United States, we contribute 25 % of the UN's budget annually. Japan is the next largest partner. They contribute about 11%. As such, and as part of that mandate, their focus is within their own region. They look at it as a preparation for...

00:08:07    SPEAKER_02
Japan is well known to be a place that has experienced every type of humanitarian disaster imaginable due to the fact that they have volcanoes,

00:08:09    SPEAKER_00
well known

00:08:13    SPEAKER_02
humanitarian disaster imaginable due to the fact that they have volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. They've had a combination of events March 11th of 2011, which led to a complete change in how they looked at regional response. They're also, unfortunately, geographically situated in such a place that the plates beneath them could easily lead to a major disaster at any time, which is one that they've prepared for and hopefully will never experience, but could destroy a large portion of what we know now as Japan in the event of a massive earthquake.

00:08:51    SPEAKER_01
What happened in 2011?

00:08:53    SPEAKER_02
Well, in 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami took place virtually within minutes of each other. And then ultimately, as a result of the earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear power plant was essentially, it led to a meltdown.

00:09:10    SPEAKER_01
Right. Inundated with seawater and contaminated everything.

00:09:11    SPEAKER_02
with seawater

00:09:14    SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. And as part of their national response and the combined response of United States forces that were also within the country, Japan continued to look at ways that they can respond internally to disasters in a similar way that we look at FEMA. In fact, within the CRF, there is a national welfare section, and that itself is tied to how they respond to disasters. They became experts by default. Due to that and several other disasters over the years. And as such, each division of CRF was not only focused on defense of Japan, but how do you maintain a response to a crisis internal to Japan? You know, it was never really focused on exporting these abilities or capabilities aside from humanitarian relief. And because they were so quick to respond to so many UN disasters within the region. or essentially like the ring of fire, you know, as it's often considered, then by default their expert abilities have continued to be relied upon, you know, as a go -to partner for United Nations.

00:10:27    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's a great one for Japan to have and to be able to export to its partners. So the CRF had stood up and is no longer existing, but the capabilities are still there. Does Japan have its own version of civil affairs forces or personnel assigned to do CIMIC -type missions?

00:10:41    SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. So within the original Central Readiness Force headquarters, they had a section, a CEMIC team, and their entire CEMIC capability was approximately 11 people. When I got there in June of 2015, by way of conversation with our foreign area officers that were assigned to the Eastern Army and also to Central Readiness Force, I was able to engage in a couple of critical key leader. discussions with personnel who manage the systemic team and also the engineer section that was within the Eastern Army.

00:11:12    SPEAKER_02
who manage the systemic team and also the engineer section that was within the Eastern Army. So to clear that up a little, Japan's Ground Self -Defense Force has five armies within the Self -Defense Force, each one based on region. The Eastern Army is the army that is in the same region that Central Readiness Force headquarters was located. Okay. Okay.

00:12:03    SPEAKER_02
I thought this might be a great opportunity as we continue to work together to build capacity. That was also one of the missions that U .S. Army Japan was charged with, was building partner capacity with the Japan Ground Self -Defense Force. Their headquarters was approximately half a mile away from ours. Both headquarters had both personnel located working together on quite a few different things.

00:12:26    SPEAKER_02
together on quite a few different things. So I saw this as an opportunity to continue to build that capacity. I engaged the CIMIC team leader, Lieutenant Colonel Kawasaki, who was a pharmacist by branch, and she had just been assigned there for a two -year rotation to lead the CIMIC team and essentially support any efforts for HADR within the region that required a CIMIC specialist. So civil -military cooperation training is different depending on what countries you go to and depending on what they're allowed to do. CIMIC is quite different than civil affairs. However, specific to Japan, SEMIC is even more different than a lot of other SEMIC forces around the world. And what I mean by that is due to their constitution. So the Japan constitution, Article 9, prevents them from having an army, a navy, a fighting force, and essentially declaring war on anyone else. You know, this is all the way back to World War II. So if you can't have all the other skills that civil affairs has, that we teach at our schoolhouse, then how do I modify this to support what they can do? So those discussions led us to create a new curriculum together, which pulled from our populace and resources control and foreign humanitarian assistance and build them a course specific to that that would give them something within a pipeline to kind of understand how they would work with us in conjunction, you know, throughout the region for FHA. or PRC, or what they refer to as HADR. Right. Same thing our Army as a whole refers to it as, you know, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.

00:14:10    SPEAKER_01
Right. What the USAID calls HADR. Absolutely.

00:14:15    SPEAKER_02
So that combination of key leader engagements, right place, right time, because, you know, CRF had been relocated from Camp Osaka, Japan, to Camp Zama, Japan in 2013. So two years later, you know, I arrived there. I'm able to have this opportunity to engage their leadership. And from there, we began the planning process. Leadership within the CRF included Lieutenant General Kobayashi, who was assigned there as the commander in 2016.

00:14:49    SPEAKER_02
And he approved of our idea to create a course. So based on that, I reached back to the Special Warfare Center in school. and also to 322CA, which is over in Hawaii, to see what kind of support I could get to bring some instructors and some subject matter experts and begin the process of planning a modified type of course for the Japanese. Okay. Basically, what they were legally allowed to do, I put together a textbook. It was 367 pages worth of...

00:15:21    SPEAKER_02
367 pages worth of... civil affairs information focused on PRNC, FHA, and also the other core tasks, but only an overview of what the U .S. can do from that standpoint. Then I had it translated into Japanese. I attempted to do that, but not very successfully. So I had to work through professional translators to get it translated, and I reached back to SWCC to just get additional support. I knew that we did not have an exportable CA course, which is something I had wanted to do anyway, so I felt this was an opportunity to do a hybrid version. And I knew that having worked previously as the OIC
39 min
January 19, 2019 21: Bonus episode with Ryan McCannell of USAID
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have a bonus episode with Ryan McCannell of USAID. We discuss the future of Civil Affairs in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transcript:
00:00:01    SPEAKER_00
Thanks for sticking around for a bonus episode. The conversation with Ryan McCannell continues.

00:00:10    SPEAKER_00
In our original interview with Ryan McCannell of USAID, we talked about his civil affairs issue paper entitled The Evolution of Civil Affairs in Interagency Partnerships in Sub -Saharan Africa. Here's a little bit more about our conversation in the next phase of civil affairs in Sub -Saharan Africa.

00:00:35    SPEAKER_01
Well, your paper is titled The Evolution of Civil Affairs and Interagency Partners in Sub -Saharan Africa. From our discussion, it's clear, and after reading your paper, the evolution has been generally positive over the last 10, 11, 12 years. Where do you think it's headed over the next 10 years?

00:00:51    SPEAKER_02
I think that depends on some pretty higher, I'm not sure I have a real clear answer. Above our pay grades?

00:00:57    SPEAKER_01
answer. Above our pay grades?

00:01:02    SPEAKER_02
We have a new Africa strategy that was just rolled out two weeks ago by the National Security Advisor. I think that it speaks to the need for us to be thinking cross -training across this security and development divide. On the whole, though, I'm a little concerned about what the focus on great power competition means for our strategy toward Africa. It's salient to Africa. I think it matters, given that the presence of some of our competitors, particularly China, is growing on the continent. But there's a real risk, and you'll hear this from most anybody who's worked on the Africa region. There's a real risk in basically seeing Africa as a giant chessboard across which America and China are playing a game. And that removes agency from the Africans themselves. And kind of short changes, that's not a real convincing good message from the United States, that basically we want to save you from China or that we're concerned about China on your behalf. It's more about how can we work with Africans to help them understand kind of what their various choices and tradeoffs may be. And are there potentially places where we may actually have some... points of convergence with China and with other major powers in the Africa region, because conflict generally in Africa doesn't really serve anybody's interest. This is not the Cold War that we're talking about. It's largely an economic competition that's taking place on the continent right now. So those are some concerns that I have going forward with respect to that. I think that's way above kind of like, what does it mean for civil affairs?

00:02:49    SPEAKER_01
The piece that I see from civil affairs is the bread and butter that we need to continue to learn foreign languages, languages that pertain to the African continent. We need to pick up the paper or look online for news because very often people completely miss looking up anything that comes out of the African continent regarding current events. It's normally not going to be hitting the top of your feet on Google News or the nightly news if people listen and watch that. So you really do have to reach out to some of the good sources to find out what's happening. What tips would you have for civil affairs forces to learn more about African nations or to, we have DOD resources to learn languages, but to become current on what's happening in the continent?

00:03:51    SPEAKER_02
The hardest challenge for any of us, but particularly for civil affairs, is not the physical or combat -oriented stuff that's less likely in the Africa context, actually. And it's more of an intellectual challenge, which is developing an understanding and a narrative about how small -scale projects and activities like civil reconnaissance and civil information management can scale up to something. more valuable and enduring. And that really requires the sustainment of these networks and relationships that we were talking about. And I think actually that has been the secret to the success or the evolution of civil affairs is because the first time you hit the ground in the African continent, it doesn't matter how well studied you are, you're perceived as a novice. But it actually, the second and third time and fourth time, and the more you have actually, you know, a persistent presence that you can kind of get absorbed into. the more you're taken as somebody who can be part of a larger effort. And now I think that there is actually some groundwork laid for that kind of success. The other thing, though, for Africa is always being comfortable with paradox. Most of the problems in Africa, whether they're security or governance or development, have complex root causes that go back decades, if not centuries. And yet... African societies are evolving more quickly now than they ever have, right? So those of us who have known about Africa for a long time and, you know, could kind of sort of think we know the way that things work in Africa are being challenged on a daily basis. But the fact that it's not the same continent that it was 25 years ago, and in fact, most Africans have been born since then. And so the reality for them is different from the one of the generation that... Somebody like you who went out on Peace Corps or me who's been, you know, kicking around on the continent for 20 or more years. You know, things are changing on the ground. I think nothing encapsulates that better than the whole violent extremism threat, which a lot of us who worked in the Africa region, we kind of dismissed it because it was tied to historical, you know, context. And there were, you know, this has happened before and it didn't matter, you know, at that time. Or it was,

00:06:07    SPEAKER_02
you know, related to local, you know, issues or whatever. We just, we never, we didn't really see it coming. Like Molly, when Molly fell, that was sort of a wake -up call where we sort of realized, okay, like everything we thought was true, maybe we do have something to learn from our colleagues who look at this content from the perspective of threat, not just opportunity.

00:06:36    SPEAKER_00
Thank you for spending some time with us. Please subscribe and come back for another installment of One CA. Until then, be safe and secure the victory.
7 min
January 14, 2019 20: Ryan McCannell of USAID on the Evolution of CA in Sub-Saharan African
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Ryan McCannell of USAID discusses his paper "The Evolution of Civil Affairs and Interagency Partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa," which won the top prize among the Civil Affairs Issue Papers presented at the 2018 Symposium at Ft. Bragg, NC.
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Transcript:
00:00:01    SPEAKER_00
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00:01:00    SPEAKER_03
across the board, the respondents noted that I talked to noted that civil affairs and the military more generally needs all the training it can get about how civilian agencies work, particularly in steady state environments. And also the philosophy and the mindset of NGOs because they're, you know, what motivates them is different than national security often. And so understanding kind of where, you know, how they see the world is really important. But that also begs the question of whether we civilians are showing up to serve as resources.

00:01:29    SPEAKER_03
civilians are showing up to serve as resources.

00:01:38    SPEAKER_02
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligott, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Ryan McCannell, who is the author of an issue paper submitted to the Civil Affairs Association. It's entitled, The Evolution of Civil Affairs and Interagency Partnerships in Sub -Saharan Africa. Ryan, thanks a lot for being on the 1CA podcast.

00:01:59    SPEAKER_03
Absolutely, John. Thanks.

00:02:01    SPEAKER_02
You're currently serving as the Seasonary Advisor for the U .S. Agency for International Development, USAID, or other people will just call it aid, in the Bureau for Africa in Washington, D .C. From 2016 to July 2018, you were the USAID Advisor to the U .S. Army War College Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, otherwise called PKSOI. That's in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And how long have you been at USAID?

00:02:28    SPEAKER_03
Well, first, let me update you. Since November, I actually have jumped ship in the Africa Bureau, and I'm now serving as the acting office director for our global office of conflict management and mitigation.

00:02:42    SPEAKER_02
Wow, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. And, you know, I'm the third USAID person that I know you've had on the podcast, and I think that says something about how... closely aligned our two communities really are.

00:02:48    SPEAKER_03
person that I know you've had on the podcast, and I think that says something about how... closely aligned our two communities really are. I want to thank you on behalf of my colleagues and me for your great interest in the organization. I would just say, just quickly for people who don't know very much about USAID, although the work we do is pretty different, the organizational, the sort of logic is pretty similar in that we're a matrixed organization. We have, in the same way that The DOD has its combatant commands that are regionally aligned. We have regional bureaus, so does the State Department. And then we also have a number of functional bureaus. And so I've joined the same one that is where both Diana Parzek and Kevin Melton, who are some of your previous interviewees, are now part of, which is called the Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau. And so I'm now in one of the sister offices of those two individuals who spoke already with you.

00:03:47    SPEAKER_02
Oh, that's great. Now, why the shift from Bureau for Africa to what you're doing now?

00:03:53    SPEAKER_03
The main reason is because I've been an Africa specialist for most of my career, and this was an opportunity to learn something different. And then I think also after three years in Carlisle,

00:04:01    SPEAKER_00
I think

00:04:03    SPEAKER_03
three years in Carlisle, one as a student and two as a teacher, it opened my eyes to... the great amount of work that we could be doing across the civil -military divide, and that's really what motivated me to write the paper.

00:04:17    SPEAKER_02
Clearly, it looks like the last couple of years of working in Carlisle at PKSY, would you say that's the strongest connection most recently you've had to civil affairs?

00:04:26    SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it's always been an indirect connection, and unlike I think a lot of folks that have been on the podcast to date, I don't have any military experience. The closest that I have been involved is on the planning side when AFRICON, the Africa Command, was being stood up, and then over the course of the last few years. I've also been really – another aspect of organizational logic being similar, we have the equivalent of a military occupational specialty among – USAID employees. And so my, we call them backstops for some reason. I don't know why. Mine is called crisis stabilization and governance. And so when the, a few years ago, when there was a lot of talk and interest about setting up an institute for the military support to governance down in Fort Bragg. that caught a lot of our attention because as a democracy and governance officer basically at USAID, you know, we wanted to sort of understand what it is that civil affairs was planning to do at that time. More recently, a lot of my students and friends at the War College, you know, the civil affairs folks know how to find us. USAID folks. And so its result, what's kind of weird, is that many of the current sort of colonels in the civil affairs structure were either in my class or some of my students, which is weird.

00:05:53    SPEAKER_02
weird. Very nice. But pretty cool.

00:05:54    SPEAKER_03
cool.

00:05:55    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it gets to be a pretty small network, especially you keep running into people over and over at a couple of these, the 3Ds, right? And that's great because you know people who have been there before. You can call even if they've been retired. People are more than willing to share from their experiences. It's great. Well, Ryan, I wanted to dive into some of the topics of your paper. It's again entitled The Evolution of Civil Affairs and Interagency Partnerships in Sub -Saharan Africa. And so let's sort of set the stage for the listeners if we can, because people from the military may be used to AFRICOM or Army Africa and its area of operations. Does the Aid Bureau for Africa cover the entire continent, or does it overlap with the DOD side?

00:06:44    SPEAKER_03
on an important point of the coherence or lack thereof across the civil and military perspective. So the short answer is no. The way that we divide the Africa region up or the African continent up is similar to that of the State Department. In fact, it's identical. Where we consider sub -Saharan Africa, which is to say all of the countries that are south of the sort of northernmost tier that runs from Morocco to Egypt, all of those are part of our Africa Bureau. And then along the top, the countries from Morocco to Egypt are part of the Middle East Bureau for, and in our case, we call it the Middle East and North Africa Bureau. And so that automatically creates some complexity when trying to get any conversation going with AFRICOM because we have to involve two of our bureaus and so generally just the State Department.

00:07:37    SPEAKER_02
So more phone calls, more meetings, more people to clear up any confusion about who's going to be where and who's going to fund it and what they're going to do. That's right. Okay. Well, I've also been hearing a lot about, from the military side of things, the Horn of Africa, the Lake Chad Basin, a lot of violent extremist organizations out there, a lot of DOD activity for combating terrorism. And I know AID has some work out there as well. What would you say are hotspots for aid in African nations?

00:08:04    SPEAKER_03
Yeah, well, I'm glad you asked. I think one thing to keep in mind is that when you're dealing with Africa, and anybody who's listening will understand this, there are generally two parallel conversations that are always going on. And sometimes they talk to each other, but more often they don't. There's a security conversation that really, of course, focuses on the military, but also law enforcement. And then there's a whole development and governance kind of conversation that is where USAID and To some extent, the State Department really focused, certainly a lot of the NGOs that are active in the region. And so often what's frustrating about working in the region is that sometimes those conversations are going on in parallel without reference to each other. And so the two areas that you mentioned, Horn of Africa and Lake Chad Basin, are two obvious places where... Both of those are aligning pretty closely in terms of the concerns and threats that we have. And, of course, on the USAID side, we also break it down a little bit more in terms of long -term development, which is where most of our offices abroad, our missions, as we call them, focus, and then all of the special things that we have, like the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office of Transition Initiatives. Increasingly, we've had a lot more engagement by those special elements of USAID's capabilities. that are focused more on addressing, you know, humanitarian challenge, like short -term humanitarian emergency relief kind of challenges and also political transitions, particularly in those two regions, but also increasingly now across the Sahel. So when you mentioned before I was a senior advisor when I came back from Carlisle, I was actually working on the area on the border between, okay, focused from Washington on the policy issues surrounding the areas. where Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso all come together because the violent extremist threat is really starting to migrate south. And so that's another area where we're trying to figure out how does development have a contribution in terms of addressing the grievances that people might feel that might lead them to make the decision to, I guess, become violent extremists or support violence.

00:10:18    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's incredibly complicated and nothing that one country is going to solve alone. And it's tough for outside countries, in my experience, to fund enough to give locals enough faith in their government and providing governance at certain levels.

00:10:35    SPEAKER_03
Well, just to turn it a little bit also toward, I think, where we're going to go, one of the places of convergence that actually where things kind of work relatively well. in our big, vast government, is at the country team level, which is where the ambassador of the U .S. embassy convenes the senior defense official and the defense attache alongside the USAID personnel,

00:10:53    SPEAKER_03
senior defense official and the defense attache alongside the USAID personnel, alongside the law enforcement folks, and tries to develop some coherence. And that's pretty easy. I can't say it's easy, but it's easier done at a country level than it is at any other level in our system.

00:11:14    SPEAKER_02
They're the people on the ground. They understand the flow of the culture and society, and it is a team. I mean, in my experience and what I've heard from fellow colleagues at aid, you know, colleagues of yours, they've said that that system has become stronger over the years from experience.

00:11:32    SPEAKER_03
Well, just as important, though, John, the authorities are clear, right? The president of the United States gives the ambassador the power to represent the president.

00:11:39    SPEAKER_03
power to represent the president. specific coordination role, whereas that's not necessarily clear kind of at a regional level. When you sort of draw back and are trying to do things across countries' borders, it gets more complicated. And then at a sort of macro level, it raises the question, the combatant commander, are they not sort of in more of a command and control kind of perspective than we might otherwise be? So, yeah.

00:12:08    SPEAKER_02
So your paper talks about the evolution of this partnership. And I want to start at what could be described as the beginning, 2007, when AFRICOM stood up. So it was established then. And your paper talks about the early days of CA, civil affairs forces working under AFRICOM. And I took it as being described as lacking strategic coherence, overlapping activities, lack of cultural awareness, a general blasé attitude to coordination. Is that accurate, and what would you say has been learned that may have led to the lackluster start to see a force as an AFRICOM?

00:12:43    SPEAKER_03
Sure. So I want to preface this by saying that there is a happy ending, right? Yeah. So I don't want to come across – and also,

00:12:49    SPEAKER_03
also, like, people are wondering, where on earth did this dude get all this information? So one thing that I did, I think what may be part of the reason that this paper got the attention that it did, was that I – I actually went out and interviewed about 40 people, a third of them actually members of the civil affairs community, and the others a like number from USAID, and then the
37 min
January 01, 2019 19: Arnel David on Strategy in the 21st Century
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Lieutenant Colonel Arnel David, co-author of Strategy in the 21st Century: People, Connectivity, and Competition, discusses the book and offers some tips for junior NCOs and officers in Civil Affairs. Available on Amazon, the book calls for rethinking how the U.S. national security community approaches population-centric warfare and strategic competition in the 21st century.
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Transcript:
a00:00:00   SPEAKER_02
Simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now. It's kind of hot. But we're saying that, you know, if you if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's humans first that all war is eternally human, a human endeavor. So humans are always a part of this space. But what's happening in the presnt is that. This human domain is shaping, you know, modern competition and conflict faster with the speed of networks and communications. So networks, I mean, networks define the human domain and shape the current character of conflict and competition.

00:00:40    SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Arnell David, Lieutenant Colonel in the U .S. Army. and he's currently the chief of the General Staffs Initiatives Group for Army Headquarters UK. Colonel David, thank you for being on the 1CA podcast. Thank you.

00:00:59    SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us about your current position out there in the UK? We know you're a civil affairs officer in the Army. What are you doing in the UK right now?

00:01:09    SPEAKER_02
So I'm a civil affairs officer, but working for the chief of general staff in the British Army on strategy and advising. I'm working on their strategy branch, and we're working on a new strategy for their Army.

00:01:22    SPEAKER_01
Okay. Well, that's a great tie -in to our topic for today, which is your role as author of a book. It's titled Military Strategy for the 21st Century, People, Connectivity, and Competition. And you wrote this book with Charles Cleveland, retired Lieutenant General, Benjamin Jensen, and Susan Bryant. This was published by Cambia Press this last year. We want to dig into why you guys wrote this book, why now, talk about some of the pieces of it, and pique the interest of listeners to go out and buy a copy on their own. So let me start, sir, by asking you, what's your elevator pitch about the book?

00:02:01    SPEAKER_02
Well, obviously the title gives it away a little bit, but I just tell people it's a book about military strategy and human domain. We present some new ways to think about power and influence in this rapidly changing world. And we construct a theoretical foundation for this human domain concept that, you know, not too long ago, you know, had a lot of momentum and attention, but eventually it's fallen from the discourse.

00:02:23    SPEAKER_01
So it's fallen away from discourse. Is that why you wanted to bring up this topic and this topic now? Do you think there used to be a focus in this area and it's fallen away?

00:02:33    SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So, you know, General Cleveland had a good allegory for, you know, to this bowling frog story where, you know, ever vigilant to avoid the gigging stick. The frog's unaware of the rising temperature, and that's how he describes our current situation, you know, the United States and our military, is that we're the boiling frog. We're not really aware of, like, what's really happening, how the changing character of conflict is unfolding before our eyes, but we're not really reacting in a way that makes us relevant. So the four of us, we were together in the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group in 2015. We all shared, you know, this common concern that the Army was going to pivot and shift to the... from the experience of our against and of counter -insurgency warfare to you know what we're most comfortable with you know full -scale conventional warfighting and rightly so you know what happened Crimea with Russia and everything and you know this multi -domain battle was emerging as a concept as well as the third offset was taking shape in the Pentagon so all of our collective experience and professional you know instinct told us that this shift this lifted shift you know Well, it might be necessary. You know, we didn't want to lose a lot of the harder insights from what we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. So what started as a series of articles that we were going to start publishing in places like War on the Rocks or Foreign Affairs, it turned into this book, which, you know, after two years, we finally got it published.

00:03:49    SPEAKER_01
Well, congratulations. Two years. To a lot of people, it's probably fast to write a book. It seems like you guys took a lot of those articles and pieced them together and then worked collectively. How did you divide the work? By chapters and focus on different areas?

00:04:04    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so in the beginning, we outlined it by focus areas, chapters. Between two or three of us, we merged chapters. Yeah, it's tough. Four authors, making that coherent. flow throughout a book is quite the challenge. But Ben Jensen was kind of the principal. He's the best writer of us all, or the primary author, stitching everything together. And we met regularly to talk to get us back on. All four of us always agree on everything.

00:04:33    SPEAKER_00
on everything.

00:04:35    SPEAKER_02
But that book, at the end of it all, after two years, I think all of us can say that, yeah, that is definitely representative of all our ideas. And we're in violent agreement of what we're recommending in the book.

00:04:44    SPEAKER_01
That's wonderful. So I know your background in civil affairs. General Cleveland, I believe, is qualified. He's retired now, but was qualified in Special Forces for the Army. Do either Benjamin Jensen or Susan Bryant have a background in civil affairs?

00:04:58    SPEAKER_02
No. So Ben Jensen was a military intelligence officer, or he is a major in the Reserves. He teaches at the Marine Corps University and at American University. He's a prolific writer. He's writing about these topics regularly. Susan Bryant is a strategist. She's helped me become a strategist and influenced me to do it, as well as John Cleveland. She just retired recently as a colonel. She's had experience as a strategist, working with all different types of capabilities to include civil affairs.

00:05:27    SPEAKER_01
What has the response been so far when you're talking about the book and you're sharing with other people in the military community?

00:05:34    SPEAKER_02
It's been quite positive. I don't know if people just don't want to be honest or don't want to give critical feedback. So far on social media and as we marketed and talked to people, I've done a couple of speaking engagements and traveled to talk about the book. I mean, even in Kuwait, I went to a convention in Kuwait, and it was received pretty well, some of the ideas in the book. People kept coming up to me afterwards saying it makes total sense, and hopefully more people will continue to pick it up and read it.

00:06:00    SPEAKER_01
Good. Let's talk about some of the details of the book, and I want to start with the preface. In it, General Cleveland wrote, We lack organizations and leadership. at the highest levels oriented to the most prevalent forms of conflict, irregular and population -centric. Colonel David, why do you think that's the case?

00:06:18    SPEAKER_02
That's a good question. So that point was made early in the book for good reason. I mean, if you look at how things progressed in the global war on terror, there was a lot of initial success. It started with small special operations elements in Afghanistan with the infamous core soldiers with all these moves coming out now, in Iraq with 10th Group and General Cleveland. working alongside the Kurds and Peshmerga, and to the overlooked success of Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines and a similar effort in Colombia. These are all led by special warfare leadership at the operational and tactical levels, not necessarily your civil affairs, your PSYOP, special forces leadership, not necessarily your surgical strike types. They are instrumental to the fighting of irregular population -centric conflicts. But as these things grow in scale, You know, the military response is, you know, like if you look at what happened in Mosul and Iraq when we went back in just recently, I mean, the only things we have to offer are, you know, your brigade, the Beijing Corps, field army headquarters of conventional leaders who are, you know, are charged to lead and prosecute these wars amongst the people. It's not that they are not good leaders, but by no means, I mean, they are the best in the world, but they are the best at bringing the hammer and violence. And these types of conflicts require, you know, those most intimate with its conduct and understand its character. And so a lot of the leaders that, you know, whether it's your special forces group commander or what have you, they might rise up to be a TSOC commander, commanding general. But in terms of managing these larger efforts, I mean, it's not likely the way we're structured right now that they would be in charge of prosecuting that type of war.

00:07:50    SPEAKER_01
And when you look, so that's the U .S. When you look at some of our adversaries, do you think that they're succeeding in having the leadership organizations formed for irregular or population -centric warfare?

00:08:01    SPEAKER_02
and publish such warfare. I mean, it's like what's happened with the Taliban. I mean, even though they're getting some support or external support from whether it's Pakistan or elsewhere, how can we, with all these resources and tremendous might of NATO and the U .S., continue to struggle in dealing with the Taliban and they're able to recruit? So I think they're way effective at controlling the narrative, their information campaigns, the way they're connecting with the people. I mean, they're really good. And one to look out for right now. I mean, for quite some time is Iran. I mean, how they're able to mobilize massive networks of people all over the world with their reach, with Hezbollah and all these different groups that are connected to Iran. I mean, it's pretty impressive. I was at a conference the other day at Chaser at Sandhurst, and this was a big topic of discussion there.

00:08:53    SPEAKER_01
Are there any other adversaries who are doing it well?

00:08:56    SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so I mean, there's a host of them, right? The Chinese, they went without fighting. I mean, they're fighting in this threshold below armed conflict with the way they're creating these networks. I mean, we talk about in the book the One Belt, One Road project they have where they're just creating these flows, these big networks, and it's to increase their power and influence in that whole area, the One Belt, One Road, all the different areas it's moving through. Russia, of course, is hybrid warfare stuff that they're doing, trying to avoid. That's a similar threshold of Article 5 with NATO, are doing a number of things in cyberspace and disinformation campaigns, to name a few.

00:09:37    SPEAKER_01
Right. Colonel David, in the book you wrote, America's military needs to be part of a global security network optimized for 21st century influence campaigns backed by military force as opposed to fighting 20th century military campaigns backed by information operations that often do not match the local context. Sir, are you calling for influence before force?

00:10:01    SPEAKER_02
In some cases, yes. I think that the information objective should have primacy and lead off. Ultimately, it comes down to every circumstance is different, and it might be a matter of sequencing, but too often, you know, and I've watched this in a number of campaigns or places I've been on deployments, you know, they plan the kinetic effect or the lethal aspect of the fight, and then they're like, okay, let's sprinkle in some magical IO dust after the kinetic operation. or even to use a little bit of it before. But it might be the main thing, the main object that we need to pursue. So on my last deployment, I was asked as the CIG Chief for Special Operations Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Sajid Afay. I was asked by the CIG to look into information warfare and assess how well we were doing it across not just Sajid Afay, but Resilist Support with NATO and the Afghans. And so I brought a Sergeant Major from Asymmetric Warfare Group, AWG. And we'd go around as we're doing our assessment, and he had a good way, a clever way of explaining it. He would say, hey, if I was, you know, if I just walked up to you and slapped you in the face, you'd be like, why'd you just hit me? But if I said, hey, stop this behavior, and then I walk up and then punch you in the face, you know why it hits you, and then that's kind of the way, you know, what should lead out. So the IO objective or trying to explain, you know, whether it's trying to intimidate or influence or coerce or manipulate. That may lead. That might be the main thing. And then you might be able to accomplish your objectives without even having to physically fight. So I thought it was kind of a clever way of explaining information warfare and why it matters and what should come first, you know,

00:11:36    SPEAKER_01
if that answers the question.

00:11:37    SPEAKER_02
answers the question.

00:11:38    SPEAKER_01
I think it does, and that's built on your experiences and those of the other authors. So let's talk about the three policy recommendations in the book. First, you and the fellow authors advise that we define the human domain. So how would you define it?

00:11:52    SPEAKER_02
So, of course, we define it in the book. But simply put, I mean, it's the intersection of actors and interests, predominantly in the land and cyber. So, you know, the cyber domain is a thing right now that's kind of odd. But we're saying that, you know, if you look at the construct of all the domains and how we organize, I mean, really, it's huma
32 min
December 17, 201818: Translating Military Skills to Entrepreneurial Success with Michael Coates and Mark Grimes
Episode 018: Translating Military Skills to Entrepreneurial Success
Host John McElligott sits down with Michael Coates and Mark Grimes, serial entrepreneurs and co-founders of the Startup Radio Network, for a compelling conversation on how military veterans can transform leadership, adaptability, and mission focus into thriving businesses.

From bootstrapped startups to global founder communities, this episode explores the realities of veteran entrepreneurship and the power of serving others through business.

Whether you're a reservist with a side hustle or a retiree ready to launch a new idea, this episode offers practical insights and inspiration for navigating the transition from service to startup.

“Wealth is built by serving others...and that’s okay.”
—Michael Coates

🎧 About the Guests
Michael Coates: Business broker, startup advocate, and co-founder of Startup Radio Network. Known for launching Portland’s first Startup Weekend and championing inclusive founder communities.
Mark Grimes: Global entrepreneur and founder of Netspace and Arts Marketing Association. Specializes in building sustainable, mission-driven ventures and media platforms.

🎙️ About the Show
One CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association, featuring voices from the military, diplomatic corps, development agencies, and field operations. We spotlight real-world experiences in the “last three feet” of U.S. foreign relations—where policy meets people.
Transcript: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7392916882787500032/
📨 Contact: [email protected]
🌐 Learn more: civilaffairsassoc.org
🏆 Ranked Top 10 Foreign Policy Podcast by Feedspot: See the list

🎬 Production Credits
Host: John McElligot
Guests: Michael Coates & Mark Grimes
Produced by: Civil Affairs Association
Cover Art: Microsoft Copilot

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33 min
December 02, 2018 17: Rewriting the Playbook for Civil Affairs: Training for Tomorrow’s Conflicts with Max Steiner and Mazi Markel
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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Transcript: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rewriting-playbook-civil-affairs-training-tomorrows-conflicts-u9ple/
35 min
November 15, 2018 16: Diana Parzik, USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, we welcome Diana Parzik, Major in the Army Reserve, to discuss the role and capabilities of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation.
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Transcript:
00:00:00    SPEAKER_00
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00:00:14    SPEAKER_04
Our primary role is that we are USA's primary point of contact with the Department of Defense.

00:00:28    SPEAKER_02
Hi, welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined with Diana Parzik. She's staffer now at USAID and a major in the Army Reserve Civil Affairs, former company commander down in Virginia Beach, Virginia, now at the 353KCOM, and recently promoted at USAID. So Diana, welcome to the 1CA podcast.

00:00:49    SPEAKER_04
Hi, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. So we've known each other for several years now,

00:00:53    SPEAKER_02
known each other for several years now, and you used to be the I used to work in global health engagement and then more recently as the civil military coordinator for AFRICOM at USAID. What are you doing now?

00:01:07    SPEAKER_04
It's interesting that you mentioned this. As of this past week, I took on a new role as the acting division chief for policy plans division within the office of civil military cooperation. You mentioned I was the AFRICOM civil military coordinator. I've been with USAID for two years now, engaged in, and I'm also actually in a dual role capacity too. So not only am I in that supervisory role, That is looking at not just AFRICOM, but also INDOPACOM, SOCOM. It falls under my portfolio as a SOUTHCOM. All the different combatant commands and our civil -military relationship with all those different combatant commands across the interagency.

00:01:50    SPEAKER_02
So could you talk about the Office of Civil -Military Cooperation? You had a bunch of experience there. What's that office all about? What's its mission?

00:01:59    SPEAKER_04
Our primary role is that we are USAID's primary point of contact with the Department of Defense. And the way that what our objective there, you know, is that we are aimed to align our development and defense objectives and to leverage unique capabilities and our skill sets on both sides of USAID and DOD. So, you know, what that means, and, you know, I'll look at AFRICOM from. in my experience right now. We have a senior development advisor at AFRICOM and we have our deputy development advisor at AFRICOM. We actually have a USA person who also sits in the J5. With AFRICOM's, you know, approach and looking at the continent is in support of development and diplomacy objectives. And our colleagues that currently reside within the combatant commands really aim to put USAID on the table there in conversations. In a reciprocal relationship within USAID, we also have a number of military LNOs that reside within our office. So from all the different combat commands, we have a military LNO. I sit right next to my colleague who coordinates on AFRICOM and is a green suitor.

00:03:02    SPEAKER_00
a reciprocal

00:03:19    SPEAKER_02
Could you talk a little bit about those LNOs? What branches of the military did it come from? Does it matter in your opinion? Or sort of to the value of? of the office, what backgrounds they bring.

00:03:34    SPEAKER_04
We have had quite a variety, and so I think that the diversity in our office of not only services but of skill sets has really helped to enrich our conversation within USAID and teach USAID about what kind of skill sets the military has. So, you know, we've had Navy personnel, we've had Army personnel, we currently have Air Force personnel, we have folks that are, many of them actually are civil affairs. Both active and reserve component civil affairs have provided LNOs to help support this mission. And we have skill sets outside of that, foreign area officers and what have you. And I'm not even touching on the number of other military fellowship programs that are offered throughout the agency, too, that help to really inform USAID about what the military, their skill sets, their background, and how to coordinate with military.

00:04:29    SPEAKER_02
and how

00:04:33    SPEAKER_02
When I came into the Army, it was a steep learning curve for the lingo and all of the acronyms and the alphabet soup of what I had to try. And I'm still learning it, right? It never stops. And I would imagine it's a different world, a different language for someone from the military to come over to USAID.

00:04:49    SPEAKER_04
Absolutely. So I mentioned already for you to say, I've been with USAID now for two years.

00:04:54    SPEAKER_02
Right.

00:04:55    SPEAKER_04
And, you know, I can't. I can't tell you. There's, you know, every day that I'm learning something new and, you know, sometimes it's not just a definition, a new acronym for USA, but, you know, DOD has a different acronym and sometimes they have different acronyms that have two or three different meanings within the DOD itself. And, you know, and so you're constantly having that conversation and trying to translate. between the two languages. And I find myself in the middle oftentimes of having to train, you know, I, Now that I've been here for a little while, I feel like I almost speak two different languages within the two different agencies. And I often offer as like a translator. So there's another thing I think that I'm discussing a little bit later, but there's some different courses and stuff that we offer in USAID. And one of the courses is often taught with a foreign service officer who's had that technical experience in the field.

00:05:34    SPEAKER_00
often offer

00:05:54    SPEAKER_04
And I turned around when I got to teach civil affairs communities and I turned around and I was like, so this is what this means for you. And to really make sure that the conversation that it's a desk officer, a foreign service officer has a meaningful impression on the military community. And there's a. there's a connection there and there's something that really resonates and how, you know, that can make the military be more effective or enlighten them in another way that will provide them a more informed decision, you know, about USAID and what USAID brings when they're working together in the field.

00:06:33    SPEAKER_02
That's good to hear. I don't know how long it's been going on, but I think it's a... It's a no -brainer now. People would probably wonder, like, how could we get along without talking to each other and sitting in the next office or next cubicle and working together the way that AID and DOD have been doing for years. Diana, I would think that your previous work, and we mentioned global health engagement, and then your role as civil affairs officer, would really help to enhance what you do now at USAID. How would you say that previous work set you up for success?

00:07:03    SPEAKER_04
Yeah, so prior to coming to USAID, I worked with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs in the Office of International Health, and then I went on to work. That was another office in transformation under the Defense Health Agency and then Global Health Engagement very briefly before I took the job with USAID. And I think that my prior work there really helped me understand the way that duty policy is drafted. It helped me to understand the impacts of policy and when you're going through a capabilities -based assessment, what that means. At the time, we were involved in looking at the global health engagement as a piece that initially came from DODI 3000 .05, and then the health community came in and drafted their own DODI. policy on support to stabilization for the military health system, which then kind of morphed into global health engagement. And what does that look like? And what are the skill sets that are needed across the Army, Air Force, Navy to achieve this new mission set, this new capability within the medical community? And we know we've been doing it for a very long time in the DOD. But, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of skill sets, you know, and we got quite invested for a while in the .milpf process. So the doctor and the organization training, material leadership, education, personnel, and facilities, and looking at do we have the right skill set to achieve this engagement at, you know, at the combatant command level. And I think that... Like I said, it helped me to understand the policy level. But then I come here, and I'm working with USAID, and there's areas in which we intersect that are policy -based, like 3000 .05, again, stabilization. And there's other ones, too, on humanitarian assistance or foreign humanitarian assistance that, you know, it really has helped me to be able to, once again, translate. what DOD policy, how DOD policy works and how, you know, that, that takes effect into developing, you know, a capability or, you know, how that, how that translates down the road at the more tactical level for, for someone who's in the military.

00:09:35    SPEAKER_02
Do you find that your colleagues, if there's a question that's global health or health exchange related, they turn to you as the internal subject matter expert?

00:09:44    SPEAKER_04
Not anymore. And the reason why we actually have a person within the Office of Civil and Military that continues to... have that interchange with global health. And I mentioned one of our, you know, we have a number of LNOs. One of our LNOs is a military, is a Navy LNO, and that's, her background is in health. And so we have, we definitely have that piece of it covered down. And I think that USAID realizes that there is some overlap there with the DoD and global health and, you know,

00:10:06    SPEAKER_00
And so

00:10:12    SPEAKER_04
there is some overlap there with the DoD and global health and, you know, global health engagement.

00:10:16    SPEAKER_00
know,

00:10:18    SPEAKER_04
I can't speak to the most recent ways in which they've been engaged, but I know that that's a continued conversation that we have with the DOD.

00:10:27    SPEAKER_02
That's great. So what has surprised you about the work of USAID?

00:10:31    SPEAKER_04
You know, one of the things that I think that surprised me most about the agency was about how many technical skills that we have. It's really like, you know, we are an inch wide and a mile deep. And the number of people that we have in this organization that have PhDs and multiple, you know, master's degrees. And, you know, you can really talk to some people that have some very interesting subject matter expertise in agriculture or health or what have you. And it's always impressed me, you know, that this agency. that they have all those people from the field that there's questions that come back in Washington, that they have people that can offer them the most up -to -date research and what's going on and what the best practices are. And so I've really found that piece of it to be in our agency very interesting and sometimes very intimidating as well. Yeah,

00:11:36    SPEAKER_02
you're surrounded by a bunch of brainiacs.

00:11:39    SPEAKER_02
Yeah. That's good to hear, though, that you can draw on a lot of expertise, and the well is pretty deep. So I want to talk to you about the collaboration that happens between offices of civil cooperation and DOD. You know, the office touts using personnel exchanges, policy development, and training. I want to break those down a little bit and discuss each aspect. What are some current examples of personnel exchanges? I guess you'd mention the LNOs.

00:12:04    SPEAKER_04
Yeah. And I really think that's one of our strongest. One of our strongest aspects of our office is that we have, like I mentioned, our senior development advisors, our deputy development advisors, who reside at the combatant commands. And then sometimes we have more military personnel, like in Africa, and we have someone also in our J5. And then there are military LNOs that reside here. We also have folks that reside in the Pentagon. And really the point of this is that we make sure that our development objectives are lined with DODs and vice versa and making sure that our equities are represented in those conversations.

00:12:48    SPEAKER_02
And what would you say are policies jointly developed or routinely shared between AID and DOD?

00:12:57    SPEAKER_04
I mentioned one of the policies already, the DODI 3000 .05. I should also just mention, too, that USAID has a policy on cooperation with the Department of Defense. And then there's other policies, too, that CNC has worked on. One has been a memorandum in the past. About a year and a half now that it's been signed by our administrator, Mark Green, of mission civil military cooperation officers. And so each of the missions, each of our missions, now has this new, what we're referring to as an MC2, that is the point of contact for the Department of Defense, you know, on that level of engagement on the ground. So, and this is, I should also caveat and say this is outside of the humanitarian assistance. piece so there's they have there's someone else also at the mission the MDRO relief officer the mission disaster relief officer would handle disaster -related things. But this individual, if you want to collaborate, coordinate with USA on some sort of a MedCat, for example, or if there's radio towers or something like that, this is the person that is the point of contact within that mission to... really navigate through the mission and figure out who the best plans to contact are. So I mentioned previously, this kind of ties into the technical subject matter expertise that we have in the agency.

00:14:21    SPEAKER_03
So I

00:14:25    SPEAKER_04
matter expertise that we have in the agency. And, you know, a lot of times we don't, you know, coming from my DOD, my military experience as a CA officer, we don't know. who the best point of contact is. And it sometimes, you know, might not be the health person. It might be a program officer. It might be a person in education or what have you based on what you're,

00:14:39    SPEAKER_00
not be the

00:14:44    SPEAKER_04
or what have you based on what you're, you know, what you are interested in doing
31 min
November 03, 2018 15: Inside the S-9 Shop: Capt. Will Ibrahim on Integrating Civil Affairs
Welcome.
In this episode of the One CA Podcast,
John McElligott hosts Capt. Will Ibrahim discusses the challenges and opportunities of integrating Civil Affairs into a heavy Brigade Combat Team.
Ibrahim shares hard-earned insights on planning, communication, and the human terrain, from Combat Training Center rotations to non-lethal working groups.
His reflections underscore the strategic value of early engagement and doctrinal clarity, especially when CA teams operate as “one-man shows” inside complex formations.
This article distills the episode into modular sections, each with strategic commentary and AI-generated analysis.
The accompanying sketch, "Lone Soldier," was created by Copilot in a North African charcoal sketch style

See the podcast transcript at: hhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inside-s-9-shop-capt-ibrahim-integrating-civil-affairs-4ppre/?published=t

#CivilAffairs #OneCA #USACAA #USASOC #MilitaryDoctrine #S9Shop #StrategicMessaging #NonLethalEffects #CTCRotation #NTC #JRTC #HumanTerrain #LeadershipDevelopment #TacticalPlanning #BCTIntegration #2_1CAV #CombatTraining #NationalSecurity #IrregularWarfare #JointOperations #MilitaryPodcast #DefenseStrategy

24 min
October 16, 2018 14: What is Civil Affairs - AUSA Answers
Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, John McElligott interviews attendees of the 2018 AUSA Annual Meeting to answer the question, "What is Civil Affairs?"
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Transcript:
00:00:00    SPEAKER_04
From my perspective, it's kind of like sales with a gun. So, you know, you've got to go out into the community and make friends and meet people and learn who the movers and shakers are, but you're armed at the same time. So it's sort of a professional military sales group. All right, thank you.

00:00:22    SPEAKER_04
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligott, your host for today's episode.

00:00:33    SPEAKER_04
I had the opportunity to attend the 2018 AUSA Annual Meeting in Washington, D .C. I walked around the convention center and asked people what they knew about civil affairs. Here are their responses. Being a guy who's in special operations myself, we work very closely with CA as well as PSYOPs. So I really appreciate what they do. I really appreciate the fact that they have... the ability to engage on the local level by, with, and through in the same way we do partnered and enable operations for kinetic strikes. You guys are doing very similar work with hearts and minds on the ground. So we think it's a great fit, and we actually think that PSYOPs and CA should be used more and have more interaction with SOCOM as a whole. I don't know anything about civil affairs. All right. What do you know about civil affairs? I know nothing as well, sir. Sir, what do you know about civil affairs? Not much at all. So my understanding in terms of the civil affairs, I kind of lumped them together like civil affairs and psyops, that might be incorrect. But in terms of those community, if you look at across everything that has to get done in the conduct of war, they're going to be filling in a lot on the infrastructure side and with the population and with whatever government that we're working with in terms of fulfilling whatever that role is via some of the decisive action on the battlefield. Great, thank you. And sir, how about you? Yeah, I'm going to go with what he said. I've got to be honest, I really don't know much about them at all. Sorry. All right, thank you. From my understanding, civil affairs is sort of the military's opportunity to do sort of PR within other countries and sort of do community building and just generally understanding areas that we don't have a lot of information about or we want to start building better community -level relationships with. All right. Thank you. Civil Affairs are the gang that helps bring to fruition actual projects on the ground to help the host nation country. Things like building schools, building wells, things like that. Sir, what do you know about civil affairs? I know that civil affairs works infrastructure with different countries, going in and establishing what they need, building schools, promoting U .S. culture, integrating it with their own host country culture, and trying to make things better for them.

00:03:08    SPEAKER_01
I know quite a bit. I am a civil affairs officer in my secondary MOS, and I served as a primary civil affairs officer for five years, including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011.

00:03:22    SPEAKER_04
Was that with the Army or the Marine Corps?

00:03:26    SPEAKER_01
That was with the Marine Corps Reserve.

00:03:29    SPEAKER_04
My experience with civil affairs is that you guys are the multi -everything, you know, dealing with schools, government, police, fire, anything of that line or that sort. You help everybody else get established.

00:03:46    SPEAKER_03
Sir, what do you know about civil affairs? I know it's a... pretty small organization assigned to the U .S. Army here, and they're pretty valued asset to us when we deploy to either Afghanistan, Iraq, or any place in the world to help assist us along with the civilian populace here to kind of, so to speak, win the hearts and minds. of the fellow local citizens there but they're pretty much dispersed everywhere and without them it would probably be a little bit difficult to do our job.

00:04:21    SPEAKER_04
Well, I know quite a bit. I had the great honor and privilege of serving with two civil affairs brigades in Iraqi Freedom in 2008 and 2009. What I was able to see firsthand is how they can take skills, capacity building skills, go out end to end and really reinforce the efforts of the combat soldier. And then once things begin to stabilize, then they make magic happen. by getting water running or getting governance or getting rule of law or getting people just to get along. So a very valuable part of our service. Thank you very much. Yeah, cool. I don't know anything about civil affairs. I know they're special operations. All right, thank you. Not a whole lot. Civil Affairs does the civil -military coordination, so coordinating local resources with military and projects to help shape hearts and minds. Thank you. I don't know what else to say after that. Sir, what do you know about Civil Affairs? I'm looking to learn more today.

00:05:24    SPEAKER_03
else to say

00:05:32    SPEAKER_04
Ma 'am, what do you know about Civil Affairs? Civil affairs are the guys who are out there putting out the... Actually, I have no idea. All right, thank you. I know very little about civil affairs. Sir, what do you know about civil affairs? What I know of civil affairs, I'd refer to as CIMIC, and they are an arm or an entity that really assists with the civilian -military link, whether it be building bridges or developing wells or ensuring children go to school. And this would be within the context of the multi -block war approach, I believe.

00:06:13    SPEAKER_04
I have no idea what civil affairs do or what they're about. Thank you.

00:06:19    SPEAKER_04
I would say my experience with civil affairs is limited. I have deployed with some, not personally, but I've been out with teams that have been out with civil affairs. I know that they, in my, how I related to them, if our unit or a unit nearby somehow, they would kind of, how am I trying to put this? They were helping build the reputation again of our unit or the military if after we did something questionable or wrong, I guess, in a village out in Afghanistan, they would kind of go out and either help out with Do they give cash? I don't know if they'd give money to the civilians? I think that was my general thought of civil affairs. But also either spreading a message, either propaganda or something to a local populace. Either help the U .S., flee the area, we're going to come through. I think that's what I have. Alright, thank you. Civil Affairs is an organization or team that goes out in austere environments and helps develop and build infrastructure for those villages or cities that need it. All right, thank you.

00:07:41    SPEAKER_04
Sir, what do you know about civil affairs? Civil affairs engages with communities in various environments around the world to support and shape their communities in moving forward in their next levels.

00:07:47    SPEAKER_02
in various environments around the world to support and shape their communities in moving forward in their next levels.

00:07:53    SPEAKER_04
Great, thank you. Not much as I should, sir. I'll say that. From what I understand, is it close to public affairs, but just more of a civil aspect of it, working with the civilian populace? Working with the civilian populace, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes, sir? I mean, I got the concept. I got the concept. From my perspective, it's kind of like sales with a gun. So, you know, you've got to go out into the community and make friends and meet people and learn who the movers and shakers are, but you're armed at the same time. So it's sort of a professional military sales group. All right, thank you. What I learned about civil affairs is it's a group within the Army that... negotiates and interacts with civilians of foreign national countries when we go in and have missions. They help pay the way in order for the Army to accomplish their strategic goals and or mission.

00:08:57    SPEAKER_04
Well, I spent a year in Bosnia as a political advisor after I retired from the Army, and I worked very closely with the civil affairs unit that was attached to Task Force Eagle. Also the G5 who was usually a civil affairs officer. There was a guy named Toby Puckett. I don't know if you know his name, but he was actually an active duty civil affairs officer who was with the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Tuzla and then came back later as the G5 of the first... either m3 or armored division at the time i was with both of them but it was task force equal so he knew all the contacts and knew all the history of the area which was important because the civil affairs guys normally rotated every Six months. I think it was a year at that time. And what we really need in civil affairs and other folks is continuity. Well, with all the folks that we deploy. Because my experience as a retired foreign area officer with a lot of overseas experiences, we don't have that longevity. And, you know, every group that comes in has to start over and learn it again. And the locals kind of get a little... A little frustrated with us when they've got to help explain in detail what's what, what's not, how this works to the naive and very optimistic Americans as they come in. So my hat's off to UCA guys. Very important. I could talk for hours and hours, but that's probably enough. Thank you very much, sir.

00:10:27    SPEAKER_02
You know, I would say if I was to summarize it, building relationships. You know, I think you have to be able to build relationships internally and externally in civil affairs, so internally amongst those that wear a uniform or are part of other government agencies, you know, within DOD or in the U .S. government, and then externally, obviously, with partners or the civil component, you know. So I think building relationships is how I would summarize it down, and I think that's our capability. that we need to often sell to the commander that we're working for is how do we do that? And how do we build relationships that can be, you know, a force multiplier on the battlefield?

00:11:08    SPEAKER_00
Do you have an idea for an upcoming podcast or know someone who may be a good person to interview? Contact us at capodcasting at gmail .com.

00:11:27    SPEAKER_04
Thank you for spending some time with us. Please subscribe and come back for another installment of 1CA. Until then, be safe and secure the victory.
12 min

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