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January 28, 2025 210: Andreas Eckel on NATO Civil Military Cooperation
Welcome to the One CA Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Gaines.
Today, Colonel Andreas Eckel, commander of the NATO CIMIC Center of Excellence, joins us to discuss the center's work to prepare the alliance for future crises or disasters.
So, let's get started.
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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at [email protected]
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org
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Great news!
Feedspot, the podcast industry ranking system rated One CA Podcast as one of the top 10 shows on foreign policy. Check it out at:
https://podcast.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
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Special thanks to Jan Křtitel Novák, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields for the original version of Diga Diga Do, which aired in 1928 and was then performed by Duke Ellington.
Ellington's version can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aJ_9IAIjQ&t=1s
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Transcript
00:00:05 JACK GAINES
Welcome to the One CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. Today, Colonel Andreas Echel, commander of the NATO Civic Center of Excellence, joins us to discuss the center's work to prepare the alliance for future crisis and disasters. So let's get started.
00:00:19 ANDREAS ECKEL
What we need to understand a little bit better, and I think that was a very brutal lesson we identified in Afghanistan and in Mali as well, is that military functions in different societies. very, very differently. We have an idea how military looks like and how it works. It might work more the Italian style or the German style or the US style. But basically, I think we have a common set of ideas how military works. And military works completely different in Mali than in Afghanistan than in Germany. And that is based on different societies. So how do we figure that out? It's a very good question. If I had a quick and sharp answer to that one, I think I would be the winner of the $1 million question. There are some ingredients to tackle that problem. And one of the ingredients is to understand the environment a little bit better. And that leads to civil military cooperation. The one centerpiece of civil military cooperation is to understand the environment better. to nest military activities in the civil environment in a better way. It creates more converging effects and creates less harm to the civil population. And I think the next thing is you need to have long -lasting relationships. Relationship that is built up, that's great. If it lasts one year, that's great. And if you just end it then, Basically, you have achieved almost nothing. So long -lasting relationships and to understand the civil environment better. And we have to understand that we are not the ivory tower of knowledge. What do we know? What does the military know about Mali and Afghanistan? Basically nothing. We have to be more and better in contact with the civil organizations, with academia, with knowledge centers. that are engaged in those areas since 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And we have to be in a dialogue with them and have to extract their knowledge about the key civil factors and have to integrate that better in military considerations.
00:02:32 JACK GAINES
So you have to be a diplomat in two directions because you've got to be reaching out to the partner nation like Mali, working with her counterparts there. You have to be a diplomat with partner agencies within the government and academia, as you were saying, or else you're going to miss a step. So you really have to work your way across the spectrum.
00:02:52 ANDREAS ECKEL
Yeah, I like your picture of being a diplomat because exactly as you mentioned, it's a diplomat in both ways, but you have to be a translator as well. So civil environment, civil actors, civil counterparts speak a different language than we. And we really have to make sure that what they say. is understood by the military and what the military means properly translated in how the civilians understand it.
00:03:17 JACK GAINES
You know, and that's a good point because I've seen civil affairs civic officers come in and try to brief leadership on certain issues. And if it wasn't absolutely clear and in the language that that matter knew, they usually were dismissed and it wasn't as effective an operation because of it.
00:03:34 ANDREAS ECKEL
And by the way, at the beginning of my career in the military function of CIMIC, it happened to me too. So one of my first appearance of the stage briefing the commander about some civil factors was a complete disaster because I underestimated how many minutes I only have to bring over some key messages to the commander. So I talked too long and did not come to the point. And I think that's the point where the CCOE is really in a responsibility. We have to provide in our courses the overview, the background, and we provide expertise and challenge them with tasks to apply the expertise. But at the very end of every course, we tell them, hey, CIMIC is important, and it is important to understand the environment, and it is important to integrate civil factors and military considerations. However, when you are confronted with decision makers, Your product needs to be crisp and sharp. If you provide a product to your commander, which exceeds three pages, then you can throw it in the dustbin. By the way, one page is better than three pages. And I think simakers have the tendency, and I include myself specifically into that one, to speak too long and to explain too long and not to come to the point. And if at the end of your statement there is no so what and what's next, well, then don't say anything. That's better.
00:05:08 JACK GAINES
Well, for this podcast, I appreciate you speaking too much. That's a good thing. But I also understand it's a challenge, but once you get used to it, I think it's super, super helpful.
00:05:19 ANDREAS ECKEL
helpful. What we both concluded coming to the point should not be mixed up with not doing your analysis. Only because you have two minutes to brief your commander about a major actor that will impact his operation. doesn't mean that your analysis should only be two minutes. So you have to provide the analysis for an in -depth briefing, if required, to integrate that knowledge and your assessment in the staff work of the other branches. So it needs to be both a very in -depth, precise analysis and assessment. And then it is your time on the stage. The light will shine on you for two minutes. That's it.
00:05:59 JACK GAINES
That brings up a story on my side. sent one of my pitch decks to a former boss. And he took it, he read it, and then he read all of the sources that I had put in the back. And so he knew the subject just as well as I did when we met. And I was like, holy cow. Yes, it's important to do good research before you put together your summary because you never know how deep somebody's going to dive into an issue. And if you've done bad research and they catch it, you're done. So one of the things that... Being that diplomat, both to the military and to other government bodies. One thing that I found at the Strategic Foresight Conference, and it was in your report as well, is that SIMIC needs clarification of capabilities in peace and crisis. And what feedback I got from meetings was that not all militaries have a strong relationship with their public. That's a big concern because if a military doesn't have the trust. When you get to a crisis or a disaster, you've got to really overcome a lot in order just to provide aid and support.
00:07:07 ANDREAS ECKEL
Yeah, that's a crucial point. I have two takes on that. The first one is we have nations that do allow, on the very lowest tactical level, the interaction between military and the civil world. But it is a question of being honest to ourselves. That is not applicable in all countries. Our countries in the alliance are very restrictive interaction with civil environment, with civil authorities, at least on the lower tactical level. And that brings me to my second point. It's a national responsibility. So when we talk about CIMIC as a military function, then we have to look at it from two sides. One is NATO CIMIC is embedded in a NATO command structure, NATO force structure. However, NATO is operating. on the soil of sovereign nations. So we promote and stimulate that nations build up, maintain, and integrate a kind of simic capability. We call that domestic simic. We made a proposal for what domestic simic is. However, nations are completely free to fill that skeleton with their structures. They can call it a domestic simic. They can call it territorial forces. They can call it Homeland Defense Forces. It doesn't matter how they fill in that skeleton as long as they do provide civil factor integration, as long as they execute civil -military interaction. And for the Alliance as a whole to plan and prepare and conduct successful operations, we need to plug in to the national simic domains and the domestic simic domains. And we have to do that. via the national military structures. So what we do in deterrence and defense -related scenarios is a little bit differing from what we have done in international crisis management in the past. When CIMIC teams from the alliance or whatever security force was implemented in that, we very often did the civil -military interaction with civil partners on the ground by ourselves without using any layer in between us. But when we do that now as NATO in Germany and Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and we have to plug into their military structures and via them with the civil actors on the ground. And nations consider that very differently. So there are nations that say, hey, great that you're in. Please feel free to speak to our civil organizations by yourself. It would be nice if you inform us afterwards. Everything's great. The nations are more restrictive and say, hey, guys. a ministry, whenever you talk to an organization, whenever you talk to civil partners, please do that via us and ask us first. So there is a variety of how nations would like to have that executed, and we as Symmakers have to adapt.
00:10:08 JACK GAINES
Right. What I've seen is that disaster relief and crisis coordination between the military and the civil governments is fairly good, but I'm not seeing the emotional side as much. What I mean is, We just had the Marine Corps Marathon. And people all crossed D .C. and around the country came. They ran their 24 miles. These kind of military events where people go, they see some type of form of patriotism, honor guards at sporting events or marathons or the military band performing on the park plots. Those things make a difference. And I don't know if that was also included in your... Have you seen anything like that?
00:10:55 ANDREAS ECKEL
In the last years, when we talked about the use of military assets in our nations, it was to overcome disasters. It was to provide military assistance to civil organizations to overcome flooding, fires, or whatever. But the situation has changed a little bit. And now it is not so much about military assistance in case of man -made big disasters. It's more about civil defense. It's more about stimulating the civil support to military operations and the mutual support in case of crisis and war. And I think that notion is quite new to many European countries. In Germany, it was... support of the military to the civil authorities in case of disasters. But when you look into Sweden, Norway, and Finland, they have since decades a kind of total defense strategy. They have a DNA about that the whole of the nation needs to be ready to defend the nation. And that starts already when you go into your cellar. Is there water? Is there food? Are there batteries? And when you do that in Finland, Sweden, Norway, the answer is yes, there is food and there is water. And I was quite astonished. A couple of years ago, I had a NATO course in Helsinki. At that time, when Helsinki was still a NATO partner and not a NATO nation. And it was an exported course from NATO School of Ammergau. And during the weekend, we had the opportunity to visit Helsinki. And we... came across a protection infrastructure was located to protect the civilians. And the lady asked us, do you have an idea for how many citizens of Helsinki we have shelter? And I said, well, 50%. And she was smiling and she was collecting all the numbers. And then she came up and said, for every citizen in Helsinki, there is shelter. And that's the difference. A regularly trained system of civil defense. And military defense working hand in hand. I think that makes a difference. And I see that coming up in Europe. And again, I would like to use the example of Germany. Since the last couple of years, a lot of more effort has been put into the training and the exchange of information and the exercising of those structures. And I think we are getting there. The point is... When you have dismantled those structures, those strategies since 1990, because our enemy was disappearing, never disappeared. He was just dormant and has been woken up a couple of years ago. But to reinstall that, reactivate that, revitalize that, that takes years and years. So we are at the beginning. I'm a very optimistic person. I strongly hope that we are getting to a point quick enough that when The Russian beer is looking again to Europe when he has solved his problem in Ukraine, that we are ready at that point. And there are substantial measurements that we need to be ready latest in four to five years. And CIMIC plays a role in that because your armed forces can be as good as possible when the civil environment is vulnerable and stays vulnerable and is not able to absorb shocks and to compensate the shocks at a better level after the shock. then you will lose the conflict. That's crystal clear. Even in that time in 2023, where it seemed, at least for some time, that the Ukrainians have regained the initiative, the Russians did attack the civil infrastructure, the energy infrastructure, the transport infrastructure, the health infrastructure. And they were still winning at that battlefield, although they had massive casualties on the fighting battlefield. And I think where Ukraine will run into massive problems this
26 min
January 21, 2025 209: Kurt Dykstra and Joshua Weikart on joining Civil Affairs
In this episode Brian Hancock talks with Kurt Dykstra and Joshua Weikart to discuss the 38 Golf Program, the Functional Specialty Team Construct, and the recent Functional Specialty Team Symposium. Major Dykstra and Captain Weikert, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here.
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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in current or former military personnel, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with the people and leadership of a partner nation.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at [email protected]
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
---
Great news!
Feedspot, the podcast industry ranking system rated One CA Podcast as one of the top 10 shows on foreign policy. Check it out at:
https://podcast.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
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Special thanks to Art Music for a sample from the song "January | Instrumental Background Music."
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E0orz_C33I
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Transcript
00:00:03 INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at [email protected] or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:39 BRIAN HANCOCK
I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we have with us Major Kurt Dykstra and Joshua Weikert and Joshua Weikert and Captain Joshua Weikert to discuss the 38 golf program and the recent Functional Specialty Team Symposium. Major Dykstra and Captain Weikert, welcome to the show. Thanks very much. Wonderful to be here. Thank you, sir.
00:01:26 BRIAN HANCOCK
A quick disclaimer while we're here that the remarks of myself and the participants are solely ours. All right, gentlemen, let's jump into it. From the beginning, what attracted you to U.S. Army civil affairs? Well, I can start that answer. So I'm a bit older, as you might have gathered from my bio.
00:01:43 KURT DYKSTRA
a bit older, as you might have gathered from my bio. And at various points in my adult life, I had thought about entering into military service. And for one reason or another, It just didn't happen. And it was always a great regret in my life that I had not served and saw it as something that I wish I would have done. And then about four or so years ago, I got a call from a friend of a friend who at the time was a major who was recruiting for this new golf program. And we really didn't know each other, but we sort of had moved in similar circles and knew the same people and those sorts of things. And my wife and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail and I was having breakfast one morning and got a phone call from Colonel Koinga, as he retells the story, I think within an hour or two, I said something like, sounds good to me, let's do it. Of course, I did talk with my wife and those sorts of things, but that's my pathway in and a bit unique perhaps, but I think a story that has some resonance with many of the other gulfs, particularly those who were not prior service, that this was fulfilling an opportunity that they had, that they had wished that they had taken earlier, which was to serve the country through the military.
00:02:51 BRIAN HANCOCK
the country through the military. Well, first of all, Kurt, you're not that old. You look very young and healthy to me. And so you're doing something right. So good for you. I'm thrilled that you have chosen to give both the Army and civil affairs a chance. We definitely need the type of skills that you bring to the table. Now, let me turn to you, Captain Weicker. Tell me a little bit about your journey getting here. Well, I was a prior service soldier.
00:03:16 JOSHUA WEIKERT
prior service soldier. Also being the pre -law advisor at my university, I had a pre -law student who was interested in the Army JAG program. And she had asked me to look into direct commissioning programs in the Army in general, knowing that I was a veteran and had some experience in this area. And I stumbled across the 38 Gulf page on the Army Talent Management website. And it was such an immediately obvious fit because I teach politics, but I also do politics. I work for the House of Representatives. And for that matter, when I go out looking for faculty members to hire, I like looking for people who are practitioners as well as being scholars. And this really dovetailed very nicely into that model. And it struck me as something with a very clear need. It also struck me as something that, especially as we think about lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan and 20 years of deployments, that this was an area where the Army could really bone up its skills and get more into capacity building both within our formations and also the places where we operate. So it struck me as something that was both important and extremely interesting.
00:04:13 BRIAN HANCOCK
Well, very glad that you're here. The background that you both have in politics and helping. do governance on an almost daily basis. It makes me wonder, how would we train something like transitional governance? This is one of our core capabilities. I don't know if the program does things like that. I think there's a big future for us in this area. And both of you have the background to help us move in that direction. Well, in the early 2000s,
00:04:44 JOSHUA WEIKERT
the DOD had... conducted a review of all the civil administration and civil affairs tasks that were out there that the Army engages in. And they came up with a list of something like 1 ,400 different tasks. And they combed through this list and started identifying things that are not currently met. So where are the areas where the Army needs help? And out of that derived these 18 skill identifiers within the 38 Gulf program, covering a broad range of civil skills. And these include things like... finance, education, and border security, and law, regulation, and policy, and this cultural heritage and property protection. And the goal of the program is essentially to enhance a commander's ability to operate in a stable civil environment, to foresee and address any likely challenges that should crop up, so that commanders can focus on accomplishing their primary image.
00:05:33 KURT DYKSTRA AND JOSHUA WEIKERT
Yeah, if I might jump in a little bit on that as well, either read the book or see the movie Monuments Men, then that gives you a little bit of a sense. In World War II, The U .S. were heading across Western Europe. They needed help to identify certain things, whether it's art, whether it's the significance of structures. And those are skills that the Army just didn't have. So the George Clooney's of the world, who at the time were art historians and museum curators, were brought into the Army's orbit to assist in those tasks. And that's kind of the history of the program that goes way back when, and then it was recently restarted in many ways and broadened as Captain Weigert. has been describing. So in some ways, I describe our role as consultants with specific civilian side expertise that the Army simply does not have to assist the Army to be able to do things that it otherwise might not be able to do. So we get called upon to assist in some of those areas that are more specialized than what the Army generally might have. And in other ways, like other civil affairs officers, you know, we're kind of the Army's diplomatic corps. So it's really those combinations, but the Gulf program specifically brings a very specific and in -depth civilian skill set to be used for Army purposes.
00:06:47 BRIAN HANCOCK
set to be used for Army purposes. It sounds a little bit similar to some of the specialists we have with surgeons and lawyers, but also different at the same time. When we were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we definitely could have used these capabilities in all of these special functional areas. The Department of State tries their best to fill that gap, but the reality is that they're a relatively small organization that isn't necessarily equipped to go to non -permissive environments for extended periods of time. So for transitional governments, I think the heavy lift tends to fall on the military, and you really can't rebuild a government without trying to rebuild the economy and those other threads that tie into that tapestry. I'm very excited for the future with you guys on board. One of the initial challenges is that there wasn't necessarily a clear career progression through every rank for these soldiers. They couldn't follow the 38 Alpha career progression. Has that been relooked at? We do have a quasi -path through your military education.
00:07:57 JOSHUA WEIKERT
a quasi -path through your military education. We do not yet have a basic officer leadership course, though we are currently piggybacking on Medical Services Bullock down here at Fort Sam. which is actually where they both are right now. But my understanding is that a 38 golf at CA Bullock course is in development, and I volunteered some of my time doing some of the course materials for that. And of course, we do have the civil affairs captain's course as well as an option. Beyond that, I'm not certain at all. But for Major Dykstra, if he has more information on that.
00:08:26 KURT DYKSTRA AND JOSHUA WEIKERT
Much of this has been like jazz. There's been a certain underlying beat that's there, and there's a lot of improvisation that happens along the way. And Captain Weikert is exactly correct that we do DCC largely with the JAG DCC. And then we sort of peg on BOLIC, either AG or AMED, and AMED seems to be the preferred course right now. And to me, this is an area for improvement. We've gone through two school experiences without having any sort of direct training for what it is that we do. And that feels to me like an area that we can improve upon. And I think that is in process, as Captain Weikert mentioned with. With large organizations, particularly the U.S. Army, all that sort of thing takes time. Yeah, it does. But I do think that as the program matures, as there are more people within it for longer periods of time, a lot of the questions about career path and specifics along those lines, frankly, either be worked out by doctrine or they'll be worked out by the process of having people going through these programs and through the ranks and getting OERs and those kinds of things. So I'm not as concerned about that. A ladder piece is what I think that it would be beneficial for the golf program to have better formal education laid out sooner as we see with most other MOCs.
00:09:37 BRIAN HANCOCK
other MOCs. It makes sense to me. It is clever, though, to piggyback on a professional MOS. Many reservists have a similar challenge who aren't 38 golfs because a lot of the professional military education that we funnel through. is geared towards combat arms. And of course, for reserve soldiers, what we do is largely support. But in terms of professional military education, understanding some of these other professions like medicine and pieces of logistics and information operations, professional military education historically has not been geared to advance the tradecraft of those individuals. So I think there's a larger movement within the Army at large, though, to create more specialized training. Unlike the Marine Corps, where they have fewer MOSs and folks have to be a little bit more of a generalist, the fact that we have so many specialty MOSs in the Army, I think, lends itself to the ability to stand up individual branches that can run its own training. And within the functional specialties of the 38 golf program, you might even need an entire course dedicated. to each of those functional areas because they're really quite different. 38 golfs are contained within the functional specialty team construct, like the building where they live within a civil affairs unit. Some folks tend to conflate the 38 golf program with the functional specialty team, not the same. But let's take it a step further. Since the functional specialty team which houses the 38 golf program is a military unit, It, of course, has non -commissioned officers in it as well as officers. Three of us happen to be officers, but non -commissioned officers are very important for us to get things done in the Army. What right now is the role of the non -commissioned officer within functional specialty teams? And gentlemen, where do you see that going? Go ahead, Captain Martin. I think that's exactly right.
00:11:40 JOSHUA WEIKERT
right. And in addition, the just traditional roles that NCOs play in almost any unit in formation in terms of like training plan development and... upward input and things like that. I think the role of NCOs is all the more valuable and important in an FXFB section that includes a significant number of direct commission officers. You need that reinforcing experience even more in that set. And also, as we found out at the symposium in April, many of we had NCOs in attendance, and many of these NCOs are themselves fairly accomplished within their careers on the civilian side. So they have SI. contributions to make as well. So they're an essential part of this formation.
00:12:19 KURT DYKSTRA AND JOSHUA WEIKERT
Yeah. One of our NCOs was a lawyer of 35 plus years, had done really remarkable things in the civilian side. So the idea that I, as a newly commissioned officer, would come in as the experienced person on the civilian side and he was more experienced on the Army side was true on the one hand, but it also was so much more than that because his civilian expertise was also first rate and really quite impressive.
00:12:41 BRIAN HANCOCK
first rate and really quite impressive. That's amazing. And I don't know if the functional specialty teams will select for that type of talent. It certainly exists, at least within the Army Reserve. We're very skill -rich. That is exciting to me. Now, prior to the establishment of the 38 golf program, who was ma
36 min
January 14, 2025 208: Grant Newsham on the Japan Defense Forces and PRC threat (Part II)
28 min
January 07, 2025 207: Grant Newsham on the Japan Defense Force and PRC threat (Part I)
23 min
December 31, 2024 Holiday Replay, 163: Sam Cooper on China political and Economic Warfare
Today, we welcome Sam Cooper, an author and journalist based in Ottawa.
He came in to talk about his reporting on PRC political and economic warfare, its impact on Canada and the United States, and how those tools are being used worldwide, including Taiwan, to undermine the rule of law and each nation's sovereignty.
This episode goes fast and has a lot of great information on how China sets conditions for winning without fighting.
The One CA Podcast is here to inspire anyone interested in working in US foreign relations. - Often called the last three feet of diplomacy. We bring in practitioners from all walks of foreign service including the military, diplomacy, nongovernmental, development, and field agents to talk about their experiences and work.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail (dot) com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
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Great news!
Feedspot, the podcast industry ranking system rated One CA Podcast as one of the top 10 shows on foreign policy. Check it out at:
https://podcast.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
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Special Thanks to Cafe Music BGM channel and their release, "Hip Hop Jazz & Smooth Jazz Instrumental." Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5yTtDZZiHg
----Transcript----
Transcript:
00:00:00 JACK GAINES
Today, we welcome Sam Cooper, author and journalist based out of Ottawa. He came in to talk about his reporting on PRC political and economic warfare and its impact on Canada and the United States and how those tools are being used around the world, including Taiwan, to undermine the rule of law and each nation's sovereignty. This episode goes fast and has a lot of great information on how China sets conditions for winning without fighting. So, let's get started.
00:00:27 SAM COOPER
In the course of reporting, I discovered the compound of Tiger Yuan, an individual that was directly investigated in this Chinese underground banking story, had the most weapons in Western Canada, if not across Canada, for a citizen. And so, when my sources said this person is or was PLA, this person has connectivity to the highest levels of organized crime. And this person is very politically connected, and their activity outside of organized crime appears to be directing Chinese state -friendly people what to do in Western Canada. That's when I really started to dig into and understand the Chinese interference story, starting on the West Coast and then moving across. Literally, I started reporting from Ottawa. That's when I got into the political side of it.
00:01:20 JACK GAINES
So how many weapons are you talking about? And are you talking about small arms, large arms, tactical, technicals? What was it that you were able to find?
00:01:29 SAM COOPER
I'll start with the big picture. I was directed to a compound in Chilliwack, British Columbia. This is very near the United States -Washington state border. It's just outside of Vancouver, and it was a compound of tremendous luxury. In an underground massive parking lot, there were about 80 luxury vehicles. that indicated huge-scale money laundering. There were American military jeeps and vintage machine guns. There was a fire truck. There was a diesel-type rig. There's Ferraris. And so, I was told that this person has vaults of restricted firearms. So, we're talking tactical weapons that you hold against your shoulder and extend your arm out as far as it can.
00:02:16 JACK GAINES
Yeah, long guns.
00:02:17 SAM COOPER
Right. Long guns. These are military-style weapons. I can't say they're AK -47s or Noriko. He didn't let you in there to mark all the numbers and he didn't give you the inventory sheets.
00:02:24 JACK GAINES
let you in there to mark all the numbers and he didn't give you the inventory sheets.
00:02:29 SAM COOPER
He didn't give me the inventory sheets, but Canada has to keep a log of the weapons out there as best as it can. And in an open-source photo, you've got a gangster sort of standing downstairs beside a luxury car with a, I believe it was sort of a burp gun. And then in the back corner, you could see an open door with just a room stacked with weapons. You could literally see a vintage machine gun, one of those ones that would have a sort of stand so you can shoot out of a trench, maybe back in the 50s or 60s. And my sources said, we know that this person has the largest cache of restricted and unrestricted weapons in Western Canada. As I wrote in Willful Blindness, this is... Chapo Guzman -style wealth in a Canadian property, and it makes no sense.
00:03:19 JACK GAINES
Well, it sounds like this person is a hub for gun running and money and probably drugs. Because if he's got storehouses for weapons, that means he can rotate them out for criminal groups that are moving through the area so that no one really gets tied to a weapon if there's ever a crime committed. But it also sounds like they've got connections
00:03:47 SAM COOPER
Yeah. Well, I would say you nailed everything in your question. And to unpack that, on the organized crime side, the information is this person is literally a revered hero from the People's Liberation Army. It's not that China did well in their border assault on Vietnam. They did pretty badly. But this person, Tiger Yuan, is glorified in various Chinese language documents. military veteran, is assessed by Canadian federal police to be in charge of gangs. He would be a person that is handling Chinese mafia in Canada and giving them directions to meet some of the Chinese Communist Party's political objectives.
00:04:30 JACK GAINES
So, he's a kingpin.
00:04:31 SAM COOPER
He's a kingpin, an intelligence handler involved in organized crime at the highest level and also with the capacity to direct these high -level triads. I think we're talking about what's known as the company. This is elite China -based triads that are active running weapons and drugs sentinel around the world and yet have connections at the highest level to military and intelligence and political figures for the parties. So yes, the type of person involved in trade -based money laundering, the ability to send weapons in and out of Canada, the ability to collect weapons from... Chinese visitors who happen to buy guns in Canada and then want to get rid of them. As you said, this military veteran can be a node to move them. I'm told through police sources; this person is suspected to be involved in the Chinese police station activity. So, as you know, that would include what was exposed by the FBI in New York, where we have purported community associations that are actually running these illegal...
00:05:38 JACK GAINES
Community police stations in other countries.
00:05:41 SAM COOPER
Exactly. And these would be used to harass dissidents, to go after Xi Jinping's so -called fox hunt targets. So, Tiger Yuan would be central to that. He would be central to meeting with Chinese language journalists. And I'm told giving them directions or coaching on the type of reporting they should be doing. He would be central to types of... fundraising activities that could blend legitimate business with illegitimate business and have those monies go into Canada's political system. Well,
00:06:17 JACK GAINES
after reading your book, Willful Blindness, one thing came to me, and that is that it looks like China has successfully mixed profiteering and foreign policy so that they can successfully tie the profits from narcotics to influence and persuasion in countries to achieve their foreign policy goals. I had John Cassara on recently, and he talked about that China has probably half of the global illicit trade profit coming into it. And when people measure China, they measure its GDP. They don't measure that black economy. Because most of it goes right back out into the world to fund these illicit criminal groups that are also complicit with the PRC and the money that goes to the pockets of people willing to take the influence dollars to do what PRC wants. But it was really your book that opened that perspective. And it sounds like what you're seeing is the tuning of that process. and how they're really bringing it to bear to see how far they can go and being successful in moving a country's orbit into the PRC influence space.
00:07:37 SAM COOPER
Yeah, I agree with everything you said there, and thank you for saying that. I do think my book had a little bit of a cognitive advance in showing people that when we're speaking about the mercantilism of the People's Republic of China and the trade mixed into that, by design, I believe, is trade -based money laundering in which, of course, there are some honest tycoons or almost as honest as you can be within China's system. But there are many that have both legitimate and underground casino facilitation, capital flake facilitation, direct narcotics trafficking, weapons. But China doesn't look at those people as the government should have a distance from them. China sees those people as ones that have connections abroad, ones that have great influence in diaspora communities. And business persons that are involved in organized crime in Beijing's playbook should be used to influence politicians that are looking for votes in the diaspora.
00:08:43 JACK GAINES
Do you think that Xi Jinping and the PRC allow a certain amount of wealth and influence or affluence? in these people that are expats around the world in exchange for conducting these types of operations?
00:09:00 SAM COOPER
Yes, I think there's a lot going on, and I'm always trying to clarify my understanding, but some have coined the term strategic corruption. This is what we saw in Ukraine for years before Putin made his move. We saw the oligarchs and the tycoons, people like Semyon Mogilev ich, had great control over the Ukrainian resource industries. A person named Boris Berstein, who settled in Toronto, was a major underground banker and money launderer with connectivity to the KGB. So, we've seen this playbook in Ukraine, having people with gang connections or direct intelligence connections corrupt foreign governments and try to pave the way. And I think China is doing a bigger and even more sophisticated variation on that now, where they want people that are, as I've reported in Canada, we have major real estate developers, major portions of Vancouver and Toronto are in fact Chinese or Hong Kong money. And these big real estate developers, there's no question that Beijing has relationships with them, that they will be protected in their illegitimate business activities if they deliver objectives. to Beijing. And there's so much more going on, but yes, in a nutshell, Beijing offers protection to the highest-level criminals in the world if they will deliver political objectives wherever they are.
00:10:27 JACK GAINES
Are you seeing a cohesion of operations between them? How closely tied are they to Beijing? Or is it decentralized to where they say, look, if you build influence and you just let us know who you have contacts with, we'll let you know if we need you. Is it more of a mafia style relationship? How closely tied are they?
00:10:46 SAM COOPER
Well, that is the trillion -dollar question. I mean, I'm always trying to get my understanding. And I'm sure they don't just show you.
00:10:52 JACK GAINES
I'm sure they don't just show you. Here, here's our relationship map now. I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about it.
00:10:55 SAM COOPER
here's our relationship map now. I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And as best as I can understand, and I'm always talking to experts to understand more. Sure. But it's not as hierarchical and rigid. I've been told that it is the most fluid. entrepreneurial system you can imagine. There's all types of competition. We have something called Guanxi, which is this very deep sort of transactional cultural relationships between people at high levels in China's system. And we have interrelationships of gangs, interrelationships of intelligence agencies. We have competition among both of those forces.
00:11:40 SAM COOPER
To boil it down, I don't think Xi Jinping is able to say, OK, mafia leader A, you're going to go to Canada, specifically Toronto, and achieve this. It's more that we have what you know is the united front system. That is, all these community groups at the end of the day have been co -opted by officials in consulates around the world so that the community groups are controlled directly by Chinese intelligence officials in embassies and consulates. And they have various levels of tasking to these community groups, who I am saying are almost exclusively involved, high -level tycoon type gang associates. And then within these United Front networks, you have intelligence handlers of the type to circle back to this BC case of this PLA veteran, Tiger Yuan, who is able to be like an area manager of legitimate and illegitimate. business activity in various regions. In my understanding, we have some bosses in Toronto, Ontario, for the Eastern Canada, who are this blend of an intelligence handler and a very high-level organized crime person. We have similar bosses in Western Canada. And I'm sure because I've read a corruption case involving a senator in San Francisco. We don't need to name the name, but this senator was allegedly involved in offshore arms trading, an FBI sting operation got him. He was involved in talking to the various families in that area. By families, I mean triads. And so, I have to believe in California, we have these very same type of PLA intelligence handlers that are into that fluid mix of gangsters, businesspersons, politicians. that one way or another, they'll get their guanxi from Beijing if they deliver objectives. Right.
00:13:40 JACK GAINES
And then you have the community police there to track people down if they take their wealth and disappear, or if they're not producing, or if they don't feel like they're part of the fold.
00:13:51 SAM COOPER
Yeah. The CCP police station really just made everything we're talking about in this fluid network much easier to understand because they had little bricks and mortar shops. Right. that the FBI and others have discovered have both gangsters and traveling CCP officials involved to look over the community.
00:14:11 JACK GAINES
Right. Because you have to have an enforcer. If you're going to run a
33 min
December 24, 2024 Holiday Replay, 171 Civil Military What?
Welcome to the One CA Podcast. In this episode Assad Raza hosts Henrique Garbino, Joao Mauricio Dias Lopes Valdetaro, and Jonathan Robinson as they discuss their paper and the competing concepts around civil military planning and operations.
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Great news!
Feedspot, the podcast industry ranking system rated One CA Podcast as one of the top 10 shows on foreign policy. Check it out at:
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---
You can find "Civil Military What?" online at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378267976_Civil-military_what_Making_sense_of_conflicting_civil-military_concepts

Special thanks for Nakaboncajon for posting pandeiro // bossa nova. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npixMWE0QWk
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00:00:06    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Also, today's guests would like to state that the comments in their interview are their opinions and represent themselves and no other organization. So let's get started.

00:00:52    ASSAD RAZA
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. I'm your host, Asad Raza. And today our guests are Henrique Gabino, Jonathan Robinson, and Jao Valdeterro. The authors of Civil Military What? Making Sense of Conflicting Civil Military Concepts. First, I really love your title. As a former civil affairs guy and working with the United Nations in the past, it really demonstrates the different perspectives that we have about civil military operations globally based off of these different lexicons that are out there. So before we start, can you quickly introduce yourselves with a little bit of background for our listeners?

00:01:29    ENRIQUE GARBINO
Yes, I can start, I guess. So Enrique Garbino and thank you for having us here. Before I start, kudos to João for the title. That's his creation. So I started off in the Brazilian Army as a combat engineer officer. So I was there for about 12 years. I joined to work with peacekeeping operations after my first deployment to Haiti. I worked with Show Brazil Peacekeeping Training Center, and there I was coordinating the military coordination course with João, who is here with us. And we realized there were a lot of confusions with different concepts, Brazilian concepts, UN concepts, American concepts, regarding civil military relations. I worked for different NGOs, for example, and was in The Hague Civil Military Cooperation Center of Exile, COE. I also worked with a comparison, conceptual analysis between EU and NATO civil military concepts. That was when the CCOE became the department head for semi -military cooperation for the EU as well. And now I'm at the Swedish Defense University, where I don't study semi -military relations, but I'm working the use of landmines by non -state groups, landmines, IEDs, booby traps, things like that.

00:02:42    JOHNNY ROBINSON
Thank you. Who wants to go next, John or Jao? Yeah, I don't mind jumping in. Johnny Robinson, and I'm porting the U .S. Naval War College's Humanitarian Response Program. So a global fellow at Brown University's Center for Human Rights Humanitarian Studies. For that, I spent almost a decade working in the Middle East for various humanitarian conflict resolution and private entities. We focused on aid worker security systems for civil military coordination analysis for the Carter Center, Caritas, Switzerland, the International NGO Safety Organization, amongst others. As you can tell from my accent, I'm not originally from the U .S., but I was born in the U .K., but ended up in Prince, Rhode Island, marrying my wife. So, yeah, and I got part of the project. And so, yeah, we've been on this journey together for a few years now.

00:03:34    ASSAD RAZA
Hey, John, thank you. One question. You talk about being a fellow at Brown University. Do you know Stanislava? Yes.

00:03:40    JOHNNY ROBINSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know Stanislav. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stanislav did an interview with her,

00:03:40    ASSAD RAZA
Yeah,

00:03:42    ASSAD RAZA
did an interview with her, I think, last year on her book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when Rambo meets the Red Cross kind of thing.

00:03:48    JOHNNY ROBINSON
meets the Red Cross kind of thing. Like, wow, really, really good. Yeah, no, it's great. Yeah, it's great. Perfect,

00:03:53    JOAO MAURICIO DIAS LOPES VALDETARO,
John. Thank you. Thanks, Ata, for having us. And my background's a little different from both of them. I'm still in the Army for the last 21 years. I'm a major engineer reg in the Brazilian Army. I've been working in peacekeeping issues for 10 years already. So I shared, we've got, you know, we worked structures back there in the Brazilian Peacekeeping Operations Center. Regarding Civil Affairs, I had two deployments in Haiti. One of them, I was a platoon commander, but dealt a lot with CEMEC inside the Peacekeeping Mission. And my second deployment, I was T3 of the Brazilian Engineering Company, and also had a lot of publics to attend to. I've also been deployed at Central Africa Republic. We literally set up the first CEMEC branch in the Central African Army. And that's it. This paper has been worked for a while already, and I guess it's almost ready to be published.

00:04:53    ASSAD RAZA
Jao, thank you for coming on. It seems like you have a wealth of experience. So let's get into the topic here. So in your opinion, based on your research, how have the definitions or applications of civil military concepts varied among the different organizations like the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO?

00:05:10    ENRIQUE GARBINO
This is Henrique. Could you take a quick look at the conceptual framework? like the concepts used by different organizations to organize the relationship between civilians and military actors there is room for a lot of confusion so i'm going to give us some examples so we can kind of visualize them more for example the u .s army civil affairs concept it's a military capability that tries to achieve the military mission through showing civilian actors right The UN civil -military coordination, so the concept used by military UN peacekeepers, is a similar approach. NATO civil -military cooperation is also similar. So you have civil affairs, military cooperation, civil -military coordination, three different terms that mean roughly the same thing. Of course, there are differences between them, but overall, they all mean the same military capability. And you can also have the same term that mean different things. For example, the UN mission has this semi -military coordination for military peacekeepers, but they also have the UN humanitarian semi -military coordination, which is a concept dedicated to promoting and preserving the humanitarian principles in the interaction between military and civilian humanitarian actors in crises and emergencies. So it's a very different thing. The European Union also have the semi -military coordination concept, so the same term, but it's about the coordination between the headquarters level, military bodies, and the civilian bodies in Brussels. So it's something completely different from the other two concepts. The same terms being used, meaning very different things. And then if you start a little digging deeper, you come up with different concepts that you don't really know in which basket you put them, like military civil fusion, a concept being used in China at the moment. Civic military unions, a concept we found in Venezuela. So it's really hard for someone who is not really familiar with that organization in particular to really understand what that term really means. It can get very confusing. And I think the irony here is that most of these civil military concepts, they have a shared understanding between civilians and military actors. The concepts cannot agree among themselves. So I think that's a bit ironic and that's a gap we try to fill.

00:07:34    ASSAD RAZA
And I think a lot of people are confused on the different concepts or the terminologies. I myself at times was a little confused. You know, I had the opportunity to work in northeastern Syria and we would coordinate the UN civil military coordination center that was in Jordan on humanitarian aid and trying to de -conflict HA that was coming in from the UN into Syria and some of our operations that not really having a good understanding could never got tied to what these organizations did at the time. So it was a bit confusing. But it was a British guy on the other end. So John, you know.

00:08:03    JOHNNY ROBINSON
Yeah, no, I was on the other side, as it were, from you. So I came in from the humanitarian community. And so we also got confused as well by all the different terminologies and civil affairs versus SIMCORD versus SIMIC versus humanitarian -military interaction. And so, yeah, it's a cool problem, right? I think it shows that. It gets complex quite quickly when you have these multinational civilian military environments.

00:08:30    ASSAD RAZA
Absolutely. So I know we talked about some of the challenges that you've experienced ourselves as practitioners on the ground. So is there any other challenges that we talk about that we might have missed?

00:08:40    JOAO MAURICIO DIAS LOPES VALDETARO,
Maybe you want to talk about Brazilian in Haiti. But it's the same as the Assad was saying. It was something that we used to do back in the old days, but we didn't call it civil affair. We had been doing that for a while. battalion to Haiti. The battalion commander was the man that, hey, send us your semi -mobster to the meeting. And then they were like, what's semi? We were dealing with local population. We were dealing with people in the Amazon forest. We were dealing with civil defense, but all different stuff. So when we arrived in Haiti, and we were teaching in the peacekeeping center, we had a lot of students who just arrived and say, oh yeah, we have this civil social action the army would do to the local population or dealing with local authorities. And when we started to study the UN SEMREC doctrine, it also developed through the time after the mission haze. Within the SEMREC doctrine, what we used to do as civil action, people were arriving in the mission in the beginning, and they were doing exactly the same that they were doing. back home, but we were able in the end to highlight what CIMIC was for them, and they started to do the right stuff. Not under the first contingent, but at least, I can say, half of the mission on, we were doing the right stuff in the head.

00:10:12    ENRIQUE GARBINO
I think another aspect of this issue is that what this is referring to is a military civic action. Before, it was done by a soldier in Damned Force. It's not a specialized function. You don't go to special training to do this. The army giving dental care or toys or food to the population. And then in the UN mission context, then you should do much more. You should partner with local organizations. You should not take the lead as a military actor. And those clashes of principles, clashes of modus operandi, that was visible. It's something you need to unlearn first so we could learn the new doctrine.

00:10:50    ASSAD RAZA
Yeah, it seems like a really big challenge because you're trying to learn on the fly, on the ground, which causes frustration with some of the other participating organizations, right? Kind of going back to the biases that some people have, especially in a nonprofit NGO organization, like don't want to work in the military because of some of those challenges. So let's go into talking about your analytical tool, your concept that you guys develop. I know the paper, you were talking about like the four core parameters. So can you guys talk about your analytical tool? Yes, of course. Well, the main goal of the project was to come up with a way to sort different concepts so we can see which concepts are similar from each other,

00:11:19    ENRIQUE GARBINO
goal of the project was to come up with a way to sort different concepts so we can see which concepts are similar from each other, which ones are different, and also why. So we can learn from each other when comparing, for example, civil affairs experiences with NATO -specific experiences, but we cannot really compare EU and SYNCORDS, so the EU and humanitarian and humanitarian coordination with civil affairs. So this was an abductive process. So we would study a specific concept in detail, like go to the guidance documents, try to break it down into what it means. Then do the same thing for the second concept and the third concept, and then try to find current aspects of that concept. And we tried maybe 20 different parameters, but it boiled out to four, which are the perspective that the concept takes, the scope of the relationship between civilians and military, The level of applicability and the structure. So for the perspective, is it mainly a military concept? It's a concept that serves the military mission. Or is it a civilian concept? A concept that serves the work of civilian organizations. Or is it a joint concept that serves both in an equal level? In terms of scope, to where the relationship between military and civilian actors are placed. For example, is it about internal coordination? For example, I mentioned the European Union concept of civil -military coordination, and that's an internal scope because it's about coordination within the EU, not between the EU and external actors. Other concepts are mainly external, so it's about, for example, the humanitarian organization dealing with military external actors. Some concepts are both internal and external. For example, if you take the UN civil -military coordination concept used by military peacekeepers, That has both an internal component, which is about facilitating the relationship between the UN military component within the mission
34 min
December 17, 2024 Holiday Replay, 179: Civil Affairs Innovation with Colonel Brad Hughes, part II
33 min
December 10, 2024 Holiday Replay, 178: Civil Affairs Innovation with Colonel Brad Hughes, part I
32 min
December 03, 2024 Holiday Replay, 160 Curtis Fox: Part I, Russian Hybrid Warfare
Today, we welcome Curtis Fox, author of Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict, which is hot off the presses and in stores now.
We discuss the book's concepts and how they apply to current events. This is part one of two, so sit back, enjoy and come back next week for part two.
Link to Biography: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-fox-mba-pmp-59b74223/
One CA Podcast aims to inspire people interested in working on-ground to forward U.S. foreign policy.
We bring in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences and recommendations for working the "last three feet" of foreign relations.
Have a story to tell? Email us to either speak or guest-host at: [email protected]
One CA Podcast is a product of the Civil Affairs Association: https://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/
Today's music is from the Disney film COCO and is a tribute to Ana Ofelia Murguia, whom I once met at a San Diego Latin Film Festival. Ana passed away this week at age 90, so this episode's music is her tribute. See you next week.
---
Great news!
Feedspot, the podcast industry ranking system rated One CA Podcast as one of the top 10 shows on foreign policy. Check it out at:
https://podcast.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/
---
Murguia: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/movies/ana-ofelia-murguia-coco-dead.html
Link to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJfoPUOUWBw
---
Transcript for Episode I&II
Introduction
Welcome to the One CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. One CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at [email protected]. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassoc.org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:41 CURTIS FOX
This is Curtis Fox.
00:00:43 JACK GAINES
Curtis! Jack Gaines, how you doing?
00:00:45 CURTIS FOX
Doing good, man. You're very punctual.
00:01:07 JACK GAINES
Russia and Syria is a great example of a combination of, as you say, hybrid operations evolving into the full scale kinetic operations.
00:01:35 JACK GAINES
For the listeners? Sure. I can't even pronounce them. And I did read them, but it would be better for you to describe them. I mean,
00:01:42 CURTIS FOX
I mean, I tell you what, I speak Russian and they're still hard for me to pronounce. Maybe the first term we can go into is Maskarovka, because this is one of the Russians' favorite terms. And that literally just translates to camouflage. This is the hidden hand approach that the Russians have in history done so well. They don't want these things to be directly attributable to Moscow.
00:02:06 CURTIS FOX
Just literally means activity. And what they mean by that is all of the little things that you do in the background to try to frustrate a target nation's institutions from responding to the intervention that you're conducting. You do not want them to be able to get forces in the field. Preferably, you'd have them stay in their barracks. And you want to set up blockades that frustrate public transit and encourage people to stay in their homes. Or maybe come out in mass protest, preferably in front of city hall or a police station so the political apparatus is frozen. And then vignettes at most is surprise. But it's surprise of, you know, like speedy movement. And what they mean by that is if they can use soft forces to rapidly deploy and establish some sort of a foothold on a limited number of key objectives. then they need the rapid maneuver of heavy ground forces to entrench those gains. This was the secret sauce that did so well in the Crimean annexation back in 2014. So the VDV, the Russian Airborne Services, those are really the elite trigger pullers of the Russian armed forces. And once a number of Spetsnaz battalions had advanced far enough up roads and blackaded positions coming into the peninsula, The VDB immediately used a number of secured local airstrips to move in forces in mass. And they spread rapidly throughout the peninsula and secured all those gains.
00:03:43 JACK GAINES
You know, it kind of reminds me of Bosnia and Kosovo during the conflict and how it has resulted in Kosovo having a Bosnian shadow government in part of the border towns.
00:03:53 CURTIS FOX
There's some real similarities in the way Russia continues to manipulate and maintain influence in Georgia. and the Serbian approach in Bosnia. That's probably where they get a lot of these ideas from. If you look at Georgia, there's an autonomous enclave called South Asatia, and then another one called the Bukazia, which is right up on the coast of the Black Sea. And the Russians would have us believe that these enclaves had ethnic Russians in them, that they would have you believe that they don't want anything to do with that government. And they want to remain segmented off and autonomous from the country with no trade and political independence.
00:04:33 JACK GAINES
I remember Lithuania had that issue, too. They were arguing that there are Russians in Lithuania that want nothing to do with Lithuania. I remember them posing the same argument there. So it must be a form of foothold mentality where they're saying, look, these are our people.
00:04:49 CURTIS FOX
Sure. Yeah. Vladimir Putin actually talks about it as a genuine tragedy that these are Russian citizens that have been scattered across the globe and isolated from the government in their mother country. Never really offers so many resources to come home if it's really that big of a tragedy. And they don't seem to want to migrate to Russia on their own dime. But this being a civil affairs podcast, it's probably also worthy to point out something the Russians do very well. is they figure out what influencers have their hands on which buttons. They're very good at understanding which individuals have access to what information and which individuals run X, Y, and Z departments and who would it be good to make friends with.
00:05:36 JACK GAINES
Right. They have good influence operations. They know how to map people and their networks and reach. So your book is really large.
00:05:44 JACK GAINES
book is really large.
00:05:48 JACK GAINES
And I appreciate it. I mean, it's what, 500 pages?
00:05:52 CURTIS FOX
I tell you what, my publisher made me take out three appendices and an additional chapter. I actually wrote a chapter. It was a comparative glance on U .S. doctrine to highlight how is the Russian apparatus, the political apparatus, how do they actually create authorizations for these interventions? And then, you know, how do they actually deploy military force? from the available units that they have in SOF. And then I compared that to how we would do it in the United States. So that whole chapter was removed. And then I had separate appendices on the Soviet arsenal that Russia inherited in 1991, including the nuclear ordinance.
00:06:35 JACK GAINES
Huge maintenance cost. Oh, my gosh.
00:06:37 CURTIS FOX
my gosh. And then I had an appendice on the state procurement programs, GPV 2020 and 2027. And I go through. All the hardware that they've been purchasing over the last 10, 12 years, you know, for Army, Navy, Air Force, Strategic Rocket Forces.
00:06:53 JACK GAINES
So are you going to push those into a second book or are you going to make those online dependencies for people who just want to learn more about it?
00:07:01 CURTIS FOX
So those are on the website right now. You can actually go read those. And, you know, if you're, I mean, you need to be an Uber nerd to get into them. But if you want to know which electronic warfare systems Moscow is running in Ukraine right now, it's all there.
00:07:15 JACK GAINES
Well, if I'm uber lazy, could you send me the link so I can post it on the website?
00:07:19 CURTIS FOX
For you, anything.
00:07:20 JACK GAINES
I'll put it in the show notes. That way people can check it out.
00:07:23 CURTIS FOX
I'd love to pivot from that and talk to you a little bit about some of the units that they actually need to execute these strategies. And the reason it's such a relevant conversation is because a lot of these units have been hollowed out now in the current war, the Russo -Ukrainian War. Oh,
00:07:41 JACK GAINES
wow.
00:07:44 CURTIS FOX
has taken such extraordinary casualties that it was combat ineffective by the end of last year.
00:07:51 JACK GAINES
Is it kind of like that old saying about soft? The best time to train a soft person is 10 years ago? The best time to train a new VZV person is 10 years ago? Is that what they're facing right now?
00:08:03 CURTIS FOX
It's a little bit of that. The other issue that they're running into is they just have nobody they can recruit into the ranks. They have an inverted demographic. in their country, and so they just have no healthy young people that can serve as soldiers. So they can go through and round up the homeless, and they can go through the prisons, and they can round those people up. They have a vicious, vicious narcotics crisis in Russia, and they can put people who are addicted to substances in the armed forces, and you can throw those people in as cannon fodder, but they don't perform the soft mission very well. And they certainly don't make good elite light infantry. So they're in a real pickle as far as deploying elite forces go. And you need those elite units to conduct hybrid warfare. So maybe that's a good starting point.
00:08:51 JACK GAINES
Are they recruiting other people than the White Caucus people from the steppes so they don't have a race issue that's also blocking it?
00:09:01 CURTIS FOX
It's entirely possible if they get desperate enough that, yeah, they'll start channeling them into elite units. I don't really have any direct evidence that they wouldn't have put people from an Asian disposition into, you know, let's say the 10th Spetsnaz Brigade.
00:09:14 JACK GAINES
Right.
00:09:15 CURTIS FOX
But the big one to watch are the Chechens. The ruling family in Chechnya is allied with Vladimir Putin, and they're very willing to contribute troops. But one of the unspoken realities about that is that the more Chechens are organized into, you know, the Volstok and Zapad battalions and pushed into foreign wars. The fewer Chechens there are at home to cause trouble for Moscow. And there are other ethnicities that start getting uppity. Moscow will absolutely adopt similar tactics.
00:09:46 JACK GAINES
Sure. Now, the trick is, though, the surviving Chechens that are battle -hardened to come back to Chechnya, what's the risk that they'll flip the nation back towards independence?
00:09:56 CURTIS FOX
It's definitely on Putin's mind. But the goal is, first off, those individuals are loyal to the family and basically rules Chechnya through a puppet governor, let's say. It operates almost as an autonomous vassal state. And so they would first have to fight their own people. And then the second issue is that Moscow has absolutely no qualms about sending a special missions unit down there to round somebody up in their home. I mean, you can go to their Wikipedia page and they're open and honest about saying they still conduct operations in Chechnya all the time.
00:10:35 JACK GAINES
Actively hunting people down. Actively hunting people down.
00:10:37 CURTIS FOX
people down. And they're on the southern end of Chechnya. And those guys will have no problem going up there and getting them. Okay.
00:10:45 JACK GAINES
Okay. So it's dangerous, but it's unlikely. It's less likely right now. Yeah. Unless Russia comes out of this Ukraine conflict so battered that everyone starts seeing the blood in the water. Right.
00:10:57 CURTIS FOX
The one thing that could create a real separatist movement in Chechnya is if Kardarov and his cronies decide that they're just going to switch allegiances. Sure. If he decides that Putin is weak or that serving Moscow is no longer in the family interest, that would change everything.
00:11:14 JACK GAINES
Okay. So we were talking about the development and evolution of hybrid warfare.
00:11:20 CURTIS FOX
Yeah, yeah. We got a little off track.
00:11:24 JACK GAINES
That's okay. We'll just play as is. It's fine.
00:11:27 CURTIS FOX
Well, and, you know, Chechnya is a good place to start for this because the first and second Chechen wars were so taxing on Russian and international standing and resources and manpower and so embarrassing for Moscow that they realized they needed to come up with another way to do this. They needed a way that would limit their investment, limit their risks, limit their attribution, and let's say stack the deck in their favor so it was more likely that they could slant the outcome to victory.
00:11:57 JACK GAINES
And they've had a long term intelligence practice. And so do you think that a lot of their successes in intelligence were just incorporated into a more military style that they just weaponized it a little bit more? to what we want, our desires for Russia.
00:12:29 CURTIS FOX
Russia. So let me kind of outline the framework here, I guess, and I think I'll answer your question. Sure. There is a ruling class in Russia of about 200 individuals. Right. Those 200 individuals, they call themselves Slovy. Most of them were educated during the Soviet era. The education system collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was never rebuilt. And so their talent pool that is constantly getting smaller and dwindling. A lot of these guys are into their mid -70s now. Some of them, like Sergei Lavrov, came from the Foreign Service, but a lot of them are simply KGB men like Putin.
00:13:08 JACK GAINES
So these aren't long -term families of Russia? No. They're
27 min
November 26, 2024 206: One CA Year in Review Part II
24 min

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