214: Ismael Lopez on OHDACA and Humanitarian Relief (Part I)

Today, we welcome Mick Mulroy to discuss Fogbow, his new humanitarian NGO, and their work in Gaza, Sudan, and Syria. We also discuss the growing number of veteran humanitarian organizations getting involved in some of the most distressed places on Earth. --- 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 --- 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/ --- Special Thanks to Businside for the sample of Upbeat Background Music - Dance and Electronic Music. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/1MzdQLTBPPo?si=6cJR4qPYoJUaohh3 --- Rough transcript:  00:00:05    Open 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 capodcasting at gmail dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Today, we welcome Mick Mulroy to discuss Fogbow, his new humanitarian NGO, and their work in Gaza, Sudan, and Syria. We also discuss the growing number of veteran humanitarian organizations getting involved in some of the most distressed places on Earth. So let's get started. 00:00:57    MIC MULROY I've been to Syria several times, but I haven't been there recently and not since all of the Assad regime. So we are looking at the potential for what we as a group who supports humanitarian efforts can do in Syria. 00:01:11    JACK GAINES I hope Syria straightens out. The new government actually does build out something representative for the population and the economy, that it becomes more centrist. I have a lot of hope. I think we all should, 00:01:21    MIC MULROY have a lot of hope. I think we all should, right? It's a good thing, obviously, that Assad's... gone. I mean, hundreds of thousands of deaths are on his hands. So certainly a good thing. The question is whether the incoming crowd who took government control by force are going to be the reformers they say they are, or are they going to go back to their roots? I think the verdict is still out. We should all hope that's the case. I think the incoming or now the team that's in place is a bit more skeptical than the last. You can tell by whether they call them Jelani or Al -Shirar. That's the first indicator when I was doing my rounds on both the Hill Congress and the Trump team. I think there's criticism on just how inclusive they're going to be. But we should all hope that that is the case and that there's an election soon rather than the four years that I think they've been saying. But certainly when it comes to sections that are more related to Assad. They should be reconsidered, and we should look at what we're doing there long term. With the SDF during the defeat of ISIS, the crisis, if we pull out precipitously, both for our partners, the SDF and for the counterterrorism effort, but also our strategy against Iran and Russia to a certain extent, which right now, I think everybody would stay on their backside, especially when it comes to Syria. But when it comes to humanitarian assistance, there is a dire need, for sure. And I think that is something that a lot of groups are looking at, how they can contribute to the rebuilding of Syria and the promotion of a stable country that looks more inward. Their own people vice becoming a client state to actors don't have best interests Syrians like Russia. 00:03:10    JACK GAINES And it's interesting that with their change of government and Lebanon being able to form a government because Hezbollah has their fingers out of the pie right now. I see it as a real strategic opportunity because if Lebanon can get on its foot, Syria can get on its feet, there could be a whole sea change of policy in that region to where Iran's behaviors are balanced, Russia's behavior are balanced, the nations down there can actually rebuild and have a more stable government and a healthier international relationship. I agree with you, 00:03:40    MIC MULROY I agree with you, Derek. I think this is a very big opportunity for the United States. I use boxing analogies because I used to box. I used to coach boxing in the Marine Corps. This is a point where you see your opponent on the ropes, right? You don't back up. You go in and try to end the fight. I know we're not going to end the fight or the competition between us and Russia, but Ayoun is a partner, obviously the former commander of Lebanese Armed Forces. We have supported them for a long period of time. They were a very effective partner with us, and he was the head of it. So that's a huge opportunity right there. Iran, I think, has many strategic mistakes, and they realize that now, and they've seen it both in their major losses with leadership across the board, their capability, and of course in Syria. I mean, their corridor to fund and supply groups like Hamas and Hezbollah has been cut off, and they just don't have the platform that they have. And I think we should capitalize on that. Our policy should be... The promotion of U .S. interests, part of that, I believe, I don't know if we're going to today, is the promotion of democracy and human rights. But certainly, this is an opportunity to do both, our strategic interests and promotion of democratic values. 00:04:55    JACK GAINES With Fog Bow, you have a pretty heady team. Some folks that I've recognized from other efforts, some new. Ambassador Smith is awesome. Roger Thompson, you've got a lot of great people here. 00:05:06    MIC MULROY of great people here. 00:05:08    JACK GAINES By name only. 00:05:08    MIC MULROY name only. 00:05:10    JACK GAINES Well, Chris, he'd be right there with him. 00:05:11    MIC MULROY be right there with him. Yeah, so FABO is primarily veterans, but we have our humanitarian. And the skills that we have that I think are additive to the whole endeavor, which are air delivery. We've done that in Sudan. We've done maritime delivery in Gaza. We know Austere Logistics. We're a very small company, but we really focused on doing that. And that's why I said Roger's the MVP, right? So we have a lot of former SOF folks. We have a lot of... former special operations veterans, whose skill includes all the delivery and the planning and kind of figuring out hard problems where there's no easy solution. But Roger's done Marine Infantry, but he was also a Marine Logistics Officer. So that's why I say he's the MVP, because that's what we do essentially is logistics. Our mission accomplished, it's food delivered, people in need. 00:06:03    JACK GAINES Right. I've had a couple people on talk about the Triton Pier. Some of the challenges with prepping in Cyprus for it, putting the peer out, getting as much aid as possible out, and how the thing broke up. But similar to that, Fogbo seems to be focused on some of the harder areas to reach with aid. It's not a typical aid organization. You go into very restrictive areas that have real security challenges, and you help make sure that humanitarian effort arrives. so that people can continue to survive until conflicts, until crisis or disasters are resolved. That's a tough space to work in. And that's why we get requested to come in. 00:06:42    MIC MULROY to work in. And that's why we get requested to come in. When it comes to the pier, I would say this. We, Sam Mundy, Ricard General, you probably saw on the site, we briefed the last administration several times on the idea of bringing in aid. The Ameritimese, they came up with the JLOPS, the Joint Logistics on the Shore system. To be frank, we didn't think it was the best. Because of the sea states at the time, it could have been done a different way. But we're Americans, and by God, if the U .S. military is going to push up here from Virginia to Gaza, we're going to support it out of pocket. There's not a whole lot of countries that do something. In the United States, it did something, and it might not have been perfect, but it did still over 33 ,000 tons of food into Gaza when it's needed. So that's done, and we're still working to build facilities that can assist the storage of... Critical food aid, medical aid. For NGOs. The other point on how difficult, just to give you a highlight, in Sudan there was a very substantial population that got cut off from ground delivery of food because of that. Primarily the rainy season cut off the roads and the fighting, of course. They were out of food. And all it took was somebody who could come in there and deliver food via air in a very tightly controlled area because of the conflict. And that's where we fit in. That's de -conflicting battle space and airdrops, austere environments. That's what not just people in Fogbo, but that's what the U .S. military is pretty damn good at. So that's what we did for three months, and I think we did a lot of good. And now the situation has changed. It can get ground to leverage. But that's just an example of what we're doing. We're also looking to expand in others. And it's certainly not just about us. There's a lot of groups doing this out there. And if they see a need for our skill set, Give us a call. 00:08:35    JACK GAINES And I'll put it on the show notes as well. I'm sure this must be an adrenaline rush for a lot of the veterans to actually be out in the mix delivering humanitarian supplies, which is a great reward for the skills that a lot of people have. What kind of feedback have you gotten from your logistics teams, your pilots, your air crew, about what it's like to work for the organization? It really comes down to a mission, 00:08:56    MIC MULROY It really comes down to a mission, right? So we're all there because of mission, which is to enable humanitarian operations. We are a private company. That's why it's really incumbent on us to assist NGOs that are out there doing great work. I think the most feedback I've gotten is actually taking the skills that they learned over 20, sometimes 30 years, in our case, the U .S. military, a lot of it in conflict, and do something like this. So it's, and myself included, have really taken this mission on as important as any mission I've ever had. And that's what I hear. But of course, it isn't about us. I mean, there's other groups that are doing this, and there's certainly other groups that can do this, that get veterans that are really looking for something other than your standard jobs. This is an area where they can really have an impact really quick. 00:09:50    JACK GAINES The reason I bring it up is that I had Scott Mann on, and one of the things he really challenged with, we're all cause -based in the military. We work to a cause. We have a bigger thing we're trying to reach. And people get out. Some go to church, some start a business, some start a pizzeria or a workout joint. But some just struggle with trying to find that sense of cause and how they place it, what they can do with it. And his challenge was it drove him to suicide because he couldn't find his place in life after getting out of the military. And so that's why he looked into other things like acting and writing books and lectures and veterans of care programs. Veterans Without Orders, who does water delivery, because I want to show veterans that there are opportunities out there. We can apply that sense of cause to make a difference so that they don't feel like they're alone in this world. When I was talking to the Veterans Without Orders folks, what they found is being on the ground, a lot of the NGOs were surprised at how fast and efficient they were. They went to Haiti and some of the World Food Program folks were like, wow, how long have you guys been working together? It seems like you've been friends for years. And he's like, no, actually, We had a phone call for 20 minutes, landed, met, got on it. But we just have a common language. We understand what each other's doing. We know we're both here for the right reasons. And you just build that instant trust in order to do a mission. And that's what I assume you guys are seeing there as well. I worked pretty closely with him on the Afghan evacuation. 00:11:15    MIC MULROY I worked pretty closely with him on the Afghan evacuation. My group was called Dunkirk. We weren't a Team America Elite. We also did a lot with Scott. Because that was such a cause near and dear to their heart, that was the first. foray into humanitarian work. And I think that's stuck with a lot of them. And we're seeing a lot of that continue around the world where veterans say, oh, we can really do something here. I think that's great. 00:11:41    JACK GAINES With Kabul on the midst of collapsing, I saw a lot of veterans rallying together to figure out how to get private logistics in there, getting buses, getting private planes. One thing that I bumped into was a lot of NGOs that were desperately trying to get help because they had people that were working with aid and with state and with the military that were not represented on those lists that needed to get out of there because they were part of the cigar report or they were part of distribution and the Taliban knew who they were and they were going to come after them. My part was just plugging those NGOs in with veterans who had logistics, who had access to help them get some of those folks out. But I did notice that... Once people got involved, it's just almost like there was a light came on and said, oh, I don't have to wait for the U .S. government to order me to do something. I can actually go make a difference. I can take my skills and help be a part of the whole foreign policy scheme and actually do stuff. I can do it without having to be a part of aid o

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today, Brian Hancock interviewed Ismael Lopez about OHDACA and Humanitarian Relief and his experiences as a Marine Civil Affairs Officer.  Brian's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-j-hancock/ Ismael's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishrlopez/  Transcript available below. --- 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 --- 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/ --- Special Thanks to the creators of Jazz & Bossa Cafe for the sample of Positive March Music. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHeCxa0rMQ4 --- Transcript: 00:00:10 BRIAN HANCOCK Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today we have with us Major Ishmael Lopez to discuss civil affairs and the ongoing relief effort in the Gaza Strip. Let's talk a little bit more about that training piece. Part of readiness is being able to do your job. The Marine is an expeditionary force, perhaps becoming even more expeditionary with the expeditionary advanced base operations. construct, the chief of the Navy signed off on. So very interesting training opportunities for the fleet right now. And you mentioned Balakatan and some of those other exercise type missions that you've done. 00:00:53 BRIAN HANCOCK And I know you've probably done Marine Corps Warfighting exercise and mentioned JRTC. But what are some of these other missions you've done? You've talked about a dock up. A dock up is joined at the hip with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, HADR. The Navy has a huge role in HADR for just a whole bunch of reasons. Has your detachment participated in any HADR missions? Is that another training opportunity that you have with your Marines in detachment? 00:01:21 ISMAEL LOPEZ We as a detachment have not. However, I do have individual Marines who have participated in HADR missions. Not a whole lot of experience, but there's some resident within the detachment. And to your point, there is huge training opportunity there for understanding how to integrate into an HADR response specific to DOD's role in supporting the State Department. We do have the opportunities for training with USAID, but that's all classroom. And we try to get as much exposure to that as possible. But as far as real-world HADR scenarios where we're able to integrate with the State Department and even into a joint task force or a multinational task force, it is very limited. I know that that is being discussed for future iterations of Balakatan specifically to have a HADR response, which makes sense, right? Because Balakatan is becoming a massive multinational exercise that features activities across the spectrum of military operations. Once that piece of it is integrated, then it's truly a well -thought -out, deliberate exercise on how to integrate HADR, whereas right now it's sort of sprinkled on top. The Marines, sailors, and even the Army, civil affairs practitioners that are supporting, are supporting steady -state engineering projects. And I think that's a missed opportunity because there's so much more that we can provide than project management. And there are opportunities there, but... If I'm a commander sitting on top of a joint task force, that's not where I would place those assets because it's going to happen. They're not caught off guard and they understand, okay, where is the USAID person that I need to be linked up with? Who do I need to be syncing up with? Again, looking for those opportunities. 00:03:22 BRIAN HANCOCK opportunities. I hear you. I know you've done a fair amount of work in South America with all the attention on ACOM and sometimes UCOM. I don't think we talk enough about, I think there are many opportunities in South America to do great things. And if we take a look at the Tierra del Fuego with all the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the things happening there and climate change and disasters, there seems to me more disasters, which is going to increase the chance that our government is temporarily overwhelmed and might have to issue a diplomatic cable and request assistance. For us in Title X, that's probably just some of our unique capabilities like rotary wing, pull up a nuclear ship and just start giving power to a large area. There's amazing things that we can do. And I know that there are disasters happening in South American countries, which tend to be a little more fragile. Do we have those opportunities? Is that something that we just haven't mapped out? How would we go about helping our South American brothers? 00:04:25 ISMAEL LOPEZ struggle with this because like you, I see the opportunities that are down there and they're plentiful. I worked down at the embassy in Bogotá, Colombia for three years during my FAO tour. And while I was there, I was a counter -narcotics maritime operations planner. So really fancy title for managing Section 333 funding programming. But our partners in that region are all about working with us. training with us, opening up their countries for us to train. They want to fight with us. In Colombia, we were trying to organize an additional exercise outside of the standard unit toss that goes on in South America. So as we started trying to test, does this concept work? What are going to be some of the challenges? What does it look like for closing ship to shore in a contestant environment? Colombia has amazing terrain that is very similar to that that you will find in the first island chain, surprisingly. A lot of people wouldn't know that, but it's there. So when you consider distance and cost associated with being able to provide realistic training that mimics the future fight, you have it in the same hemisphere. The challenge is, the NDS calls out very specifically, services, your priority is... UCOM. Your priority is AFRICOM. Your priority is CENTCOM. Your priority is writ large is Indopaycom. We'll focus on that. And so that automatically causes the services to look elsewhere rather than looking down south. And so that means that resources, manpower, etc. are going to get pulled to support efforts down there because it's not called out specifically in the NDS. And now it's being focused on other parts of the world. Fortunately, Marine Forces Reserve has shifted from trying to compete with the active component to adding relevancy by focusing on developing those opportunities in Latin America. I know the Army does a lot with the TSOCs down there, but more can be done and should be done, in my opinion. I think the relevancy is there and transferable to other parts of the globe. It's just getting past the, hey, I understood that this document calls this out. but there are opportunities here that align to what we're trying to get after in the NDS. And the other piece of that too is when you consider if we're having assets down there, it reduces the number of available resources that can respond to contingencies. And I think that's part of that equation. 00:07:09 BRIAN HANCOCK I think so. It's really not a bridge too far from our existing mental models. The energy may be in PayCon, but at the same time, you're still going to JRTC. Is that the Deep Pacific? No, not at all. But there's still value in that training. If you can go to Columbia and move through similar islands, have similar river problem sets, similar terrain problem sets, and get that experience at a fraction of the cost of going to the Deep Pacific, that's not something we should overlook. And we can't ignore the fact that there's increasing levels of adversary activity in South America, I don't think we should take that for granted. And doing these mill to mill and working together side by side on various projects, there's nothing but good stuff there. So I'm hopeful that we may in the future put a little bit more energy into that theater. 00:08:02 ISMAEL LOPEZ Yeah. And the one last piece of it I think that we take for granted is the belief that our partners in the Western Hemisphere are going to stay aligned to us. because we have those shared values. But when you have our competitors knocking on the door and saying, hey, we want to train with you. We want to provide you money. We want to do all these things. And we're taking for granted that relationship. It's only going to last so much longer before the number of partners that we have on there are going to be very limited. Yeah. 00:08:33 BRIAN HANCOCK You know, it kind of reminds me of the Sims game. I don't know if you've played this. But there's a relationship meter. And if you want to have positive relationships with another avatar in this simulation, you have to interact with them. You have to do that fairly regularly because over time, that relationship meter decays. Relationships aren't static like that. They're usually moving forward or they're sliding backwards. And if we're not in that game and we have hungry competitors, we can see where that could go. Let's talk about some of your work as a foreign area officer. That's a very coveted job for civil affairs and folks who think they may have a future intent to work for Department of State. A lot of folks don't get there. What did you do as a foreign area officer, and how do you get involved in that kind of work? 00:09:25 ISMAEL LOPEZ For the Marine Corps, I was actually able to use my experience as a civil affairs officer to springboard. into becoming a Latin America FAO. So in the Marines, we have two different ways of becoming a foreign area officer. There is the experience track, which is the one I fell into. And then the other one is a study track. So either route, you have solicitation for candidates, individuals who have experiences overseas, working specifically on the civ. side of the house, not necessarily the mill -to -mill piece, right? Because we're looking at international relations, foreign relations, etc. And then you have the study track, which is you get selected, you get sent to Monterey to earn a master's degree in international relations. Then they send you to the language school, DLI, for a language, and you get assigned a region. And then you get sent either to combatant command to work as a desk officer. or you get sent to a country overseas and you're going to work out at the embassy. So for me, I was able to parlay my experiences as a civil affairs officer, and then the board selected me as a Latin America foreign area officer. And what that did was that it opened me up to that role in the embassy. So my wife's active duty Air Force, and she's also a Latin America foreign area officer. She got sent to Naval Postgraduate School, earned her master's. Didn't have to go to DLI because she already spoke Spanish. And then she got orders to the embassy in Columbia. Family and I obviously went along. And as we were doing our introduction with the scout chief, she mentions my husband's a civil affairs officer and a FAO. And his eyes just lit up. He's like, we haven't had a Marine sitting in the naval mission for the Section 333 program in quite some time because we just don't have them. Part of the challenge is the cost associated with bringing one down. But since I was already there, in his eyes, he was getting two fails for the price of one. So because I had that, I was able to meet the requirement for the billet. And then I was able to serve as the program manager for the Section 333 program for roughly three years. 00:11:38 BRIAN HANCOCK Well done. And what an exciting mission. If I was younger, I'd want to run off there too and do something like that. I mean, my Spanish needs to be a little bit better, but I know I could brush it up. Hey, let's talk about the... Very difficult situation in Gaza right now. I don't think we can approach that with anything but sympathy for all involved. Certainly there's great suffering there by many different parties. And I know you were one of those folks who raised his hand and said, hey, I will help with some of that Gaza relief and did that mission, at least for some time. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with the Gaza relief mission? And are you comfortable sharing any lessons learned from your time? 00:12:20 ISMAEL LOPEZ Yeah, so it was very interesting when the Gaza relief mission kicked off for several reasons, right? The challenge there, very, very dynamic event, very tragic event. And then on one hand, we have to support our ally in Israel. But on the other hand, great suffering occurring to the people in Gaza as a result of the mission out there. So the struggle within DOD at the time was, what should we do from an ATA perspective to help those that are suffering in Gaza? So when we look at it from within DSCA, we were really waiting for inputs from OSD and even the NSC as to what is an appropriate humanitarian aid response. One that's not going to undermine our partner. But at the same time, sending a strong message to the people in Gaza and the international community that the United States is not going to sit idly by while people are suffering. So it's a very delicate balance that had to be found. So from an access property standpoint, I was looking into what could we do and how close could we get to provide items from the inventory that could provide life -saving support or even just support for those that are being displaced. into neighboring countries. What ended up happening was we, DSCA, specifically the humanitarian aid and the humanitarian demining division, was ordered to reallocate all the ODACA funding that had already been provided to the combative commands and used to support the Gaza relief missions, specifically the maritime bridge. So we had to deliver the bad news to the combative commands, like, hey, Any money that you have not obligated at this point, we have to pull. You were going to utilize that specifically for this mission. Concurrently, we had

Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today, Brian Hancock interviewed Ismael Lopez about OHDACA and Humanitarian Relief and his experiences as a Marine Civil Affairs Officer.  Brian's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-j-hancock/ Ismael's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishrlopez/  Transcript available below. --- 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 --- 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/ --- Special Thanks to the creators of Jazz & Bossa Cafe for the sample of Positive March Music. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHeCxa0rMQ4 --- Transcript: 00:00:05 BRIAN HANCOCK Welcome to One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today we have with us Major Ismael Lopez to discuss civil affairs, special missions, and the ongoing relief effort in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Lopez is the Excess Property Program Manager for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. He's also a major in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. where he serves as the Latin American Foreign Area Officer and Detachment Commander with the 1st Civil Affairs Group. At DSCA, he oversees ODACA -funded Humanitarian Assistance, HA, supporting disaster relief and capacity -building efforts in over 28 countries, including the responses in the Afghanistan refugee crisis, the Ukrainian crisis, and humanitarian support to Gaza. In his expanded role, he acts as a liaison for civil affairs, focusing on training, project continuity, and aligning civil affairs efforts with strategic goals. 00:01:09 BRIAN HANCOCK With over 15 years of experience in security cooperation, Mr. Lopez has supported humanitarian assistance operations globally, including key relief efforts following Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Iota. Major Lopez, welcome to the show. 00:01:25 ISMAEL LOPEZ Thank you, Brian. 00:01:26 BRIAN HANCOCK Boy, you've been busy. 00:01:27 ISMAEL LOPEZ I certainly have. Unfortunately, I've been really busy to do the things that I love. 00:01:32 BRIAN HANCOCK Now, let's talk a little bit about this mysterious full -time job that you do, the excess property manager for a defense security cooperation agency. Security cooperation being one of the three most important missions in the world, in my opinion. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do as the excess property manager? And if you're in the business of giving away property, how do I sign up for this? 00:01:54 ISMAEL LOPEZ What's funny is that, as you mentioned that, There is a running joke down at the Southcom HA office where they say, if you need a new refrigerator, Ish is the guy to call. Basically, what I do in a nutshell is I work with the combat commands and all the way down to the country teams to identify partners, to provide them non -lethal excess property in an effort to achieve very specific objectives in the country. What the program does is it'll take items that are basically pretty much brand new to a little bit of wear and tear, which we can refurbish in our warehouses. And then we issue them out or we donate them to the partner with the intention of meeting a very specific objective in that country. So aside from that, I also support DOD humanitarian aid efforts for any initiatives that are... utilizing the overseas humanitarian disaster and civic aid. So in a nutshell, that's pretty much what I do. And yeah, if you need a fridge, if you need a microwave, if there is an effect that could be achieved by me donating it to you, sure. 00:03:06 BRIAN HANCOCK We're expanding NATO a little bit. And many of the NATO countries, about 32 of them, they're putting a little bit more money into defense these days for a wide variety of reasons. And if they decide they want to send up a new office somewhere in Poland or something like that, How would they go about saying, hey, all those esks and chairs and things that you have in Dermo, we'd like some of that. And who pays the shipping? 00:03:29 ISMAEL LOPEZ The folks sitting in NATO would have to work with ODC and Poland first. They will validate that requirement, then submit it on up to UCOM. UCOM will have their lawyers look at it. And then from there, it will make its way up to DSCA for execution. Now, what pays for all this is the Odaka appropriations that gets earmarked from the Odaka budget that provides transportation for this program. So the program comes at no cost. It's all funded exclusively through the Odaka appropriation. 00:04:05 BRIAN HANCOCK Awesome. Let me talk a little bit more about that and ask you a few questions. Odaka is kind of a hidden gem that a number of us in the civil affairs community know about. Many other people don't, and you can definitely achieve effects with this, especially in competition, which is something that we're, I think, as a joint combined army, really struggling with, is how we get after having those influence and deterrence effects in the competition phase. ODACA is one of those tools that's available to us. It's the Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic Aid Fund. Now, I have very limited experience with that program. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about the ODACA creation, how large it is, what it usually funds? 00:04:54 ISMAEL LOPEZ Yeah, absolutely. I'm able to see it from two perspectives, right? I'm able to see this from my seat at DSCA and then my seat in the reserve component as a civil affairs officer, where to your earlier point, ODACA is a bit of this hidden gem and it could be leveraged to help. achieving effects in the competition phase, but where there are issues is the lack of understanding of what you can and cannot do with the appropriation or how you can actually link it to creating those effects. And I get that because rewind the clock back to 2013 when I first delved into civil affairs, one of the metrics that are utilized to determine our success in country is How many projects can you nominate or how many projects did you complete? So then when you're aiming to achieve or hit that metric, you're not necessarily looking at the linkage. You're almost betting on that someone will create that linkage for you that you're providing the activity in support of. So Odaka, generally speaking, we're looking at about $26 to $30 million a year. But then that money... gets divvied up across the combatant commands and is prioritized based off of national defense strategy. So if it's called out very specifically country X or region Y is the priority when it comes to DoD humanitarian aid efforts, then preponderance of that money will be earmarked for that country or that region globally. Once you pull the thread on that, then there's different tiers. for the countries that are located in that combatant command or in that region of the world, and we're able to allocate money for those countries as well. Where it gets tricky is that what will factor into it is how proactive and how thorough the ODCs and the SCOs are with executing those HA projects and then the end -use monitoring piece of it. So their requirements are tied to these project nominations. The country team, the HA managers, the civil affairs teams that are assigned to or are deployed in that country are not providing the feedback necessary to determine the return on investment. Then the following year, what could end up happening is this country is a priority, but what we're not able to tell Congress is, are we actually achieving the effects that we're desiring in that country or in that region? And if we can't answer that with tangible metrics, then that will factor into a reduction of ODACA funding for the following year. Recently, in Indo -PACOM, the focus has been very heavy on the mill -to -mill engagement piece. What is starting to catch up now is the sieve mill piece. And so we have money allocated, but they're sort of playing catch up with the rest of the COCOMs as it pertains to. getting those funds and then executing projects and us being able to sustain them over an extended period of time. 00:08:01 BRIAN HANCOCK Yeah, it is a challenging problem set. One of the taskers that we get annually here in our command is to measure the strategic effect of DACA projects, which are largely tactical, in a bunch of different countries. and were given one week. Now you've got a rotational force here of about 15 civil affairs folks of various persuasions. Maybe a couple of them can be dedicated to that task. They had nothing to do with the inception of these projects. They were not part of the construction. They saw none of the... assessment or staff estimate documents related to them. All they saw was probably, if they're lucky, the proposal that went into the website to get them. And they don't have time to do extensive interviews or measurement. And it's pretty tricky to take something very tactical and then indicate not as an MOP you completed the project, but as an MOE it actually influenced the local populace towards U .S. and NATO objectives. That is a very tough thing to do mathematically, especially without the data, documents, and time to be able to do that. 00:09:18 ISMAEL LOPEZ is a 00:09:28 BRIAN HANCOCK What is the standard that is accepted by the panel who's controlling those funding and appropriations? What realistically do you have to prove? 00:09:39 ISMAEL LOPEZ So this has been a challenge for several years now. I saw it firsthand. As a civil affairs team leader in the South Com AOR, where I deployed to support a very specific commander, but as a, hey, by the way, while you're down there, there's these products that were funded several years ago. Do you mind taking a look? No context behind it. I can't do pre and post surveys on the local populace because I don't know what it was or what the baseline was prior to the construction or the completion. And then now. So it was very arbitrary. It was very much, yeah, it's good. Is the government still funding it? Sure. Are they employing people that are maintaining it? Sure. And I think back then, 2013, 2014 timeframe, I think the blanket answer to all that was, we're countering Russia, China. And so as long as you were saying that, then it was all gravy. And we've obviously have evolved from that to we're now tying these very tactical actions. to operational objectives, right? So are we supporting CoCom LOEs? And if we're supporting CoCom LOEs at the minimum, we understand that we should be integrated into strategic objectives, right? Because the LOEs are derived from those strategic documents. And we've gotten to that point, but now where we are able or unable to get that data or the metrics. really falls on the lack of funding to do it. So the easy button is, well, you have your security cooperation professionals that are assigned to the embassies. They should be. They can do that. Yeah. But the reality is all embassies, regardless of the size, they are overextended and under -resourced. So they're always dealing with VIP visitors. They're dealing with taskings from the State Department. They have their steady state activities they have to be supporting, and they're falling in on, let's just say, 30 projects over the last three years. And, oh, by the way, all these assessments need to be done, but your TDY funds are X. And there's no way of doing it. So then it trickles down to, hey, do we have any civil affairs teams coming downrange? Can they support? And I think we've gotten to a bit of a sweet spot. is this mutual understanding that civil affairs teams in country, as long as they're not being detracted from their main mission, are able to provide some sort of support in conducting those surveys and assessments. However, it's still not the right answer because they're falling in on rudimentary information, background information, and it's still very much from their perspective. At DSCA, we have increased our budget for AM &E purposes to help country teams that are in the red, so to speak, when it comes to conducting these assessments, especially countries that are a priority where we understand, hey, we need to continue engaging on the HA side of things and not the MIL side of things. So we need to get as close to valid or reality as we can. So we have contractors now that are assigned to the combat commands, folks within my office that can. be requested to go out and support. And again, we're working across the command and commands to see as appropriate where we can support. So a lot of work still has to be done there. But again, looking back to 10 years ago, even five years ago, I think across the board, DOD has gotten significantly better at providing metrics to validate activities vice. simply stating we're countering Russia and China and we're going to call it good. 00:13:35 BRIAN HANCOCK As they should. All of these projects should be tied to a line of effort, tied to a strategic effect that's in line both with the COCOM and the chief of mission. And then you would need a way to measure them at a granular level and then aggregate them to measure progress against a line of effort aligned to strategic intent. I don't think that framework has been built. I hope we eventually get there. If you ask some of the SCAs in the embassy, at best, they're going to give you anecdotal information. So there's a lot of things that we would have to do. And if we send a civil affairs team, depending on their training and background, that can be more or less successful. Now, you're probably tracking that in the Army side of civil affairs, we've built that 38 golf program where I can have an engineer with 20 years of experience. It seems to me that's the guy we should be attaching. to a civil affairs team to go do one of these assessments. What do you think? 00:14:33 ISMAEL LOPEZ I completely agree with that. And that's 100 % a step in the right direction. O

Today, we welcome Colleen Ryan from OSCE, border training and management. We brought her on today to discuss the current challenges of border security in Europe.  --- 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 --- 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/ --- Special thanks to the site "Rockstar Beats" for the sample of Taylor Seift "Midnight." Retrieved from: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXyd0iAdUYUWN7ifYYoqymNqJsaE0vEDC&si=-Vp6gUuRpqpHq66D   --- Transcript: 00:00:04    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 [email protected]. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassos.org. I'll have those in the show notes. 00:00:39    Colleen Ryan My name is Colleen Ryan. I'm currently the Border Advisor to the OSC in Vienna. I'm seconded by the United States. So I do need to make it clear that I'm not speaking on behalf of the OSC or on the broader political or organizational context right now. I'm specifically focusing on my work and my experiences. Wow. You're seconded? What does that mean? Yeah, I'm essentially loaned out by the U .S. to the OSCE to serve in this role. They pay my salary. 00:01:13    Jack Nice. How did you get nominated? Where do you normally work? 00:01:15    COLLEEN RYAN In a past life, I was a police officer back in the U .S. before transitioning to working internationally. So I came to find out about OSCE and opportunities while I was doing my master's back in the States. And then I just ended up applying for the special monitoring mission to Ukraine. So I was out there as a monitoring officer up until Russia's full -scale invasion. And then went back during the war with a non -governmental organization working on humanitarian protection in the South. And then made my way to this current role. That's great. So you've been part of living history in a way. Yeah, to be out in Donetsk up until a couple days before the invasion. Working with border guards all across Europe and the changing security landscape has been an interesting role so far. 00:02:04    JACK GAINES So you've lived what soldiers call the moment before. There's a feel in the air, and it makes you edgy, it makes you a little twitchy, because you know that you're about to go down with an enemy. And so did you get that sense? Did you get that feel that things were coming close in Donetsk? 00:02:23    COLLEEN RYAN We were there at the time to monitor the Minsk agreements, which was a ceasefire at the time. It wasn't until when the U .S. evacuated all U .S. personnel that you started to realize that, you know, it may actually happen. 00:02:36    JACK GAINES Right. And so your current position is now training the border guards of Ukraine. 00:02:44    COLLEEN RYAN Yes, I manage a project that trains border guards across the OSCE, specifically on detecting porch documents and imposters. So if it's a forged passport presented at the airport or at the road crossing or for the train, we train the border guards, whether it's from Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Albania. So it really depends on the needs of OSC participating states in this realm. It's obviously a field that requires recurrent training because travel documents like passports are constantly updated. that national authorities can stay ahead of forgers. So it is something that we have to continue training on. And with the current war against Ukraine, they have the most need. They're one of the bigger border services in Europe. And then just the need in terms of half their border guard is currently engaged in combat operations, while you have the rest who are working to secure their western and southern borders and the surge in western and southern border crossings with the closure of Ukraine's airspace. You know, all of that contributes to an ongoing need for these skills and updated training on detecting passport forgeries and detecting imposters. And then you see that on the flip side with Moldova, they've seen a surge in the border crossings because a lot evacuated from Ukraine into Moldova. A lot of humanitarian NGOs and other people now fly into Kijanel to go to Ukraine. And so they've seen just a huge... spike in terms of the number of travel documents and also diversity in terms of different countries, different types of documents. And so that's why we've also been training Moldovan border police as well. 00:04:29    JACK GAINES Sure. So you're there to teach them how to spot forged documents, but is there also a follow on either by that nation's foreign affairs office or their law enforcement that tries to find the forger and remove them? 00:04:43    COLLEEN RYAN Yeah, there is very likely follow on. in terms of criminal investigations when they find forged documents or if they identify an imposter. But our project primarily focuses on those who are working on the first line and second line document checks to just spot the person posing as someone else. And then we do some work with the forensic experts after the fact to make sure that they've got that next level of training as part of their investigations. But primarily it's focusing on the first and second line officers. 00:05:14    JACK GAINES I'm sure they see all kinds of crazy stuff. Everything from the amateur glue stick to people who actually have passport printer creating forged documents. 00:05:24    COLLEEN RYAN Yeah, it's sad and it's also really interesting, the surge in the use of artificial intelligence and seeing the ways that they're incorporating things like morphing into the passport to their forgeries where two people can now travel on one passport using morphing images and things like that. It really just shows how quickly this field in terms of document forgeries is evolving and how much border services are struggling to keep up and to maintain their training so they can spot these techniques. Right, which is why they're starting to put chips and other special films that have a radio signature and stuff like that. 00:05:53    JACK GAINES they're starting to put chips and other special films that have a radio signature and stuff like that. You could print it, but to actually find those films or chips that have that radio signature has got to be a lot tougher. 00:06:08    COLLEEN RYAN Yeah, and a lot of it is just down to, like, Order guards are under a lot of stress and pressure and they don't have much time to spot the fakes. They're getting crushed by people. Yeah. So a lot of it is just making sure that they can spot some of these easier to identify orgery trends and to make a quicker decision before it gets to the point of really having to do an in -depth examination of the document. 00:06:32    JACK GAINES Yeah, I would imagine that you would see forgery trends because people would be going to the same forger and they would be doing similar patterns until that turned away. 00:06:41    COLLEEN RYAN Yeah. 00:06:41    JACK GAINES And what's it like working with all these different border guards from different countries? I mean, everyone has got to be a little different, but the same. 00:06:49    COLLEEN RYAN For me, it's interesting because I'm one of the few who has worked in policing, worked in this operational arena, kind of understands a lot of what they've done. And so you kind of speak the same language. It's interesting to hear from them, like what they view as their biggest security challenges and what their biggest day -to -day challenges are in terms of their work life. Because you see common trends across a lot of the services. A lot of them can be underpaid and that contributes to staff turnover. And so then that means you go back to a country to do more training because you have new staffs. But then to see how a country's security... You know, their perspective in terms of their biggest border security threats in Albania, where I trained in June, might be different from Bulgaria, where I trained last month. But, you know, it's still the commonalities of document forgeries, imposters, making sure your airports are secure and things like that. So I like talking with the border guards, such a different perspective across each country. Right. 00:07:51    JACK GAINES I think that's really helpful that you have a law enforcement background. helps break that ice. 00:07:58    COLLEEN RYAN I understand the perspective, but we're really just there to help and to fill the gaps that their service might not have the time or the funding to provide additional training because they've got the whole spectrum of border security issues to deal with within their service. And so that's where our organization or other international organizations doing these types of projects come in is just fill the gaps and help them develop their capacity. Especially with some other countries we train for where Frontex, maybe they're not working in that country. So then we can help supplement other EU or Frontex or IOM or UN initiatives and help to harmonize border security standards across Europe, South Caucasus, Central Asia. 00:08:45    JACK GAINES I don't want to just keep circling around Ukraine. Is there any stories you have from some of the other countries you worked with? What's your favorite beer hall story on those? 00:08:53    COLLEEN RYAN Yeah, I mean, most of my stories are with Ukraine because I've trained Ukraine so much. So I'm happy to talk about that. Yeah, I feel very fortunate so far in the last year and a half to have trained almost 50 Ukraine border guards. And I was able to go to meet with their administration and their main forensic center in June to do a needs assessment to see how we could keep supporting. to make sure we weren't duplicating efforts from other international organizations or other bilateral initiatives there because we do know it's a crowded space there. 00:09:28    JACK GAINES I'm sure talking to them, you could figure out pretty quickly what those border guards needed, even if they were getting training from two or three organizations, if they weren't hitting it on the head. Yeah. And what was nice for us is we were able to actually shadow them on their train from out west as entered from. 00:09:38    COLLEEN RYAN was nice for us is we were able to actually shadow them on their train from out west as entered from. Shamashil, Poland, and went to Lviv. And so we got to board on the Ukrainian side and just seeing what they're dealing with in terms of doing document checks aboard the trains now and the different challenges they have with that as opposed to what it would be like to check a document at the airport. It's a very different perspective and it gives you insights on things like lighting and being able to see different security features in the passport. With the lighting on the train and the time of day when they're doing the document check, the technical equipment that they have aboard and that may not be connecting to the cell tower or have service as the train moves. And so it gives you a different perspective to actually be there and see it instead of just hearing about it over a Zoom call or in a sterile training environment. And so then building on that. We've been able to take some of those lessons learned and put them into our training where we're encouraging them and reminding them to say, hey, how would you see this in different types of light settings, running different types of simulations, so it more accurately reflects the conditions that they'll be doing the document checks in. So what's coming up next? 00:10:57    JACK GAINES What's the future of training? Do you have anything interesting coming up that you want to promote? 00:11:02    COLLEEN RYAN Yes, through the rest of the year, we have a couple more study visits. And these are important because they help the border guards to learn from other counterparts. They will look through how this country that they're visiting manages their forgery desk at an airport or in their border service. And it really helps with networking and sharing more information in terms of what they're seeing in terms of detecting trends or alerts on forged documents. We've got a couple of study visits coming up next week. I'll be in Madrid with another group from Ukraine. The following week, I'll be with Albania and Milan. And then a week after that, I'll be in Dublin, Ireland with forensic experts from Ukraine's border service to round out the year. So it's a busy stretch right now. That's very cool. 00:11:50    JACK GAINES Do these multinational engagements, do they ever end up with countries with border guards doing a bilateral agreement on border protection? Or do they ever work on... building something like Eurogest, where if they find a forger from multiple countries, they'll work together to try to find out where the route is. Is that multinational cooperation starting to build, or have you seen it? 00:12:14    COLLEEN RYAN On a smaller level with us, we do see that. So at the operational level with these border guards, even in -country, being able to message colleagues around their own country. Or the experts that do our trainings are active document experts serving in their border service. So now they've got another resource, say, if we're using experts from Spain or the Netherlands or UK or Italy, then these trainees now have another resource to flag potenti

Today, Sam Cooper, founder of the news outlet The Bureau, guest hosts Christopher Meyer, a former U.S. official and China expert during the Bush One and Two Administrations. Meyer currently serves as the head of the U.S. Micronesia Council and founded Wide Fountain, a platform for in-depth geopolitical analysis.  In this the second of a two-part episode, Sam and Christopher discuss PRC strategic corruption and political warfare. So, let's get started.  Sam Cooper's The Bureau: https://www.thebureau.news/ Christopher Meyer's Wide Fountain platform: https://widefountain.substack.com/ --- One CA is a product of the civil affairs association a 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 --- 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/ --- Special thanks to Cozy Ambience for a sample of "February Cafe Jazz - Instrumental Bossa Nova Music for Work, Study and Relax - Background Music" retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmq8Ht-sNwQ --- Today, Sam Cooper, founder of the news outlet The Bureau, guest hosts Christopher Meyer, a former U.S. official and China expert during the Bush One and Two Administrations. Meyer currently serves as the head of the U.S. Micronesia Council and founded Wide Fountain, a platform for in-depth geopolitical analysis.  In this the first of a two-part episode, Sam and Christopher discuss PRC strategic corruption and political warfare. So, let's get started.  Sam Cooper's The Bureau: https://www.thebureau.news/ Christopher Meyer's Wide Fountain platform: https://widefountain.substack.com/ --- One CA is a product of the civil affairs association a 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 --- Special thanks to Cozy Ambience for a sample of "February Cafe Jazz - Instrumental Bossa Nova Music for Work, Study and Relax - Background Music" retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmq8Ht-sNwQ --- Transcript 00:00:01    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. Today we welcome Sam Cooper, founder of the news outlet The Bureau, as he interviews Christopher Meyer, a former U.S. 00:00:44    SAM COOPER official and China expert during the Bush I and II administrations. Meyer currently serves as the head of the U.S. Micronesia Council and is the founder of Wide Fountain. a platform for in -depth geopolitical analysis. This is the first of a two -part episode. Sam and Christopher discuss PRC strategic corruption and political warfare. So let's get started. 00:01:07    SAM COOPER Today I'm excited to introduce Chris Myers. Chris is a longtime China expert and former U .S. government diplomatic and economic issues officer, and he explains how military intelligence and influence networks embedded deeply with organized crime are a central feature of the global strategy employed by the families that really are running communist China. And when I say that, we're going to discuss your research on the family of Xi Jinping, the Xi family, and you call it the Yezi clique. But first, tell our viewers your background in getting into China and your career. 00:01:46    CHRISTOPHER MEYER Thank you very much, Sam. I started a keen interest in China when I was 16. And I read the history of the opium wars and I was outraged. And I decided I wanted a career to be involved in business and diplomacy between the U .S. and China. And then as an undergrad student, I did research on the special economic zones. This was in the early 80s and the special economic zones were just announced. And my research led me to see the geopolitical aspects. There were some. across from Macau, across from Hong Kong, and across from Taiwan. So I sort of had an eye to that. And then I did business. I was, for five years, I was with a Fortune 500 company. And I had the opportunity to do some business in Xiaomon. And I saw some things that set off alarm bells in my mind. And I kind of filed that. And I had some experiences that informed my research later. I worked in the government in Bush 1 and Bush 2. I was involved in Indo -Pacific affairs. really helping American companies do business in the region, and then became a consultant to part of the government that administered our territories in the Pacific. So I saw some things there that, again, set off alarm bells in my mind. And in 2016, I happened to cross an old colleague who kind of gave me some more information. And basically from 2016 until 2022, I conducted a lot of independent research. I decided I wanted to know exactly what was going on because proxies in the region seemed emboldened to take on the U .S. And they didn't have a government portfolio, but they acted like they did. And so my research sort of started in Micronesia. I had the great opportunity to come across your book. You totally informed. parts of what I was looking at and kind of put the spotlight on what happened in Canada. And I kind of worked the two sides to the middle and conducted most recently research that kind of takes us from Mao Zedong's death until the 90s. And I believe that there was a click. I call it the yes, she click. There were scores to settle. There were powerful families that were on the cusp of greatness or recognition for all their good work, and they were purged. And it led some individuals to become extremely militant in their conduct of political warfare against the U .S. So that sort of sets the table for what we might be talking about. 00:04:28    SAM COOPER Yeah. So to get into this, let's start with the Ye family. They're mysterious, but for experts, they're very clearly a clan that has tremendous kingmaking power in China. So maybe let's start with who they are and then bridge into how they connect with Xi's father. 00:04:46    CHRISTOPHER MEYER So the patriarch, Lie Jianying, was literally the kingmaker of Mao Zedong. He came from Guangdong province, and he was involved in the very earliest movements of the Communist Party in China. And he fled one of those, I think it was the Guangzhou uprising, with Zhou Enlai, and they escaped to Hong Kong. So Ye Jianying is one of the original revolutionaries in China, and he had the title of Marshal Ye. And when he crossed paths with Mao Zedong, he was actually the aide -de -camp to a very powerful Communist Party operator out of Beijing who had an army of tens of thousands. And he rolled up to Mao and his very small group of long marchers and said, follow us, we're going to Sichuan province. And Mao was like, no, I don't think that's a safe bet. The locals are going to tear you up. And Ye Jianying kind of heard a truth in Mao and he deserted this powerful general and with him brought the code books. So Mao gets Ye Jianying and the code books and he's able to communicate with the Comintern. And lo and behold, that general did get wiped out in Sichuan. He returned to Mao's base. With a few thousand troops from then, Mao became the most powerful leader in the communist ecosystem. So Ye Jianying had a very high regard for Mao. Mao called him the savior of the Communist Party and the Communist Revolution. And so fast forward it right through the revolution. Ye gets a very top position as the party secretary for Guangdong province, the largest and economically most powerful province in the country. And Mao wants to conduct his land reform in Guangdong, just as he does everywhere. And it's a violent thing where landowners are hunted down and put to death. Yeah, because he was a native Cantonese, understood that the landowners in Guangdong were not of the same ilk as those throughout China. They actually worked the lands. They had a very cooperative relationship with labor. And he tried to resist. But Mao forced Lin Biao into Guangdong. And Ye lost his government role. And if he hadn't been in the military, he would have been completely out of power. But because he had a military portfolio, he was able to stay on the peripheries. And he was actually part of the small group that brought down the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution. So Ye Jianying went through the Mao Zedong grinder, but he did it so early in the 50s that he was able to... maintain power and have it going forward. Another Long March hero was Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhong Chun. And his claim to fame in the Communist Party was he maintained security over the area where Mao was camped in Yan 'an. And he was able to provide Mao and his group with enough security that they could camp there through a winter and survive. Not only that, but he negotiated and he conducted diplomacy with the tribesmen in the Northwest, in Qinghai, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. And he was loved. And he got a lot of rebels and insurgents among these minority populations to join the Communist Party. And Mao gave him great profs for that and referred to him as one of the heroes of the Three Kingdoms period. brilliant statesman who was able to ingratiate with the minorities and make them part of the Chinese nation. Unfortunately, though, Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongchun, he was purged, but he was purged later. He was purged in 1962. And from Xi Jinping's age nine until he was 25, Xi Jinping's father was under arrest. Without trial, it was just the culture revolution. He was under arrest because his office published a book that was deemed not flattering to Mao Zedong. Basically, he was promoting some thought within the Communist Party that Mao didn't like. So Xi's father is in jail from 62 to 78. And because Ye Senior and Xi Zhongchun had a relationship, Ye Jianying kind of became a godfather of sorts for Xi Jinping. Xi was sent to work in the countryside and he escaped and he tried to get back to Beijing and it wasn't safe for him to be reunited with his family. And Ye intervened. And Ye made sure that Xi joined the Communist Party, even though these tragedies were all around him, and made sure that he got the semblance of an education, although he really never did. He was a guide for Xi Jinping throughout his younger years. in place of his father. 00:10:02    Sam Cooper Before we continue how those families dovetail together, can you describe in China's political economy, what is the power of Marshal Ye? 00:10:13    CHRISTOPHER MEYER So in the 50s, he was jettisoned out of the political arena. His main work was in the PLA. He was a marshal and he became minister of defense in China. And he was responsible for procurement. And to sort of give you a sense, when the Korean War started, the United Nations put a blockade on trade with China because they were arming the North Korean army. Marshal Yeh was responsible for making sure that supplies got to North Korea. And that was a big role that he fulfilled. And his sons kind of brought that along. So it's curious because Marshal Yeh was one of the most powerful stars in the communist lineup, but he was also a minority. He was from Guangdong and he was a Haka Chinese. So some people would say that Haka Chinese within China, there's a lid sometimes on their ability to move up. And so perhaps he was never considered for the echelon, but he did arise very high. But in some ways, and his sons adopted this even more so, they had to become very combative. in their political dealings. But no doubt about it, Marshal Yeh had a chance to handle huge volumes of military supplies, and there was an opportunity to skim and generate great wealth, which probably was the case. The way that Marshal Yeh fulfilled the supply chains for the North Korean army was through organized crime. And it just happened that two of The individuals, Henry Falk and Stanley Ho, were also Hakka Chinese. And they became the kingpins of organized crime in Hong Kong and Macau. Both of them are on record as saying they made their fortunes supplying the Korean War. 00:12:15    SAM COOPER Right. So people that read my book are very familiar with Stanley Ho, according to U .S. government intelligence. the absolute king of Chinese international mafia with connectivity to casinos, banking, political influence operations in Canada, triad leadership in Canada. So I think we've set the table for the 90s in Guangdong, Fujian. Xi Jinping is now starting to come on the scene politically there. The Ye family, who were partners essentially of Xi's father. had a little bit of a godfather eye on Xi's movements within the party. We can say that they're the power behind a throne that they want to see continue to rise. So can you take us into the 90s, the sort of Stanley Ho connectivity to Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and how that combines the Hong Kong tycoons slash triad leaders with the communist powers in Fujian? 00:13:21    CHRISTOPHER MEYER Yes. Mao passed away in 78. Deng Xiaoping came to power. And Deng was all about economic reform and catching up to the West. So in southern China, Fujian and Guangdong province, Deng looked to Ye Jenying and his sons. His sons were in their 30s now. And he also looked to Xi Zhongshan. Xi Zhongshan became party secretary for Guangdong province. in the early 80s. And Deng kind of put toget

Today, Sam Cooper, founder of the news outlet The Bureau, guest hosts Christopher Meyer, a former U.S. official and China expert during the Bush One and Two Administrations. Meyer currently serves as the head of the U.S. Micronesia Council and founded Wide Fountain, a platform for in-depth geopolitical analysis.  In this the first of a two-part episode, Sam and Christopher discuss PRC strategic corruption and political warfare. So, let's get started.  Sam Cooper's The Bureau: https://www.thebureau.news/ Christopher Meyer's Wide Fountain platform: https://widefountain.substack.com/ --- One CA is a product of the civil affairs association a 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 --- 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/ --- Special thanks to Cozy Ambience for a sample of "February Cafe Jazz - Instrumental Bossa Nova Music for Work, Study and Relax - Background Music" retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmq8Ht-sNwQ --- Transcript 00:00:01    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. Today we welcome Sam Cooper, founder of the news outlet The Bureau, as he interviews Christopher Meyer, a former U.S. 00:00:44    SAM COOPER official and China expert during the Bush I and II administrations. Meyer currently serves as the head of the U.S. Micronesia Council and is the founder of Wide Fountain. a platform for in -depth geopolitical analysis. This is the first of a two -part episode. Sam and Christopher discuss PRC strategic corruption and political warfare. So let's get started. 00:01:07    SAM COOPER Today I'm excited to introduce Chris Myers. Chris is a longtime China expert and former U .S. government diplomatic and economic issues officer, and he explains how military intelligence and influence networks embedded deeply with organized crime are a central feature of the global strategy employed by the families that really are running communist China. And when I say that, we're going to discuss your research on the family of Xi Jinping, the Xi family, and you call it the Yezi clique. But first, tell our viewers your background in getting into China and your career. 00:01:46    CHRISTOPHER MEYER Thank you very much, Sam. I started a keen interest in China when I was 16. And I read the history of the opium wars and I was outraged. And I decided I wanted a career to be involved in business and diplomacy between the U .S. and China. And then as an undergrad student, I did research on the special economic zones. This was in the early 80s and the special economic zones were just announced. And my research led me to see the geopolitical aspects. There were some. across from Macau, across from Hong Kong, and across from Taiwan. So I sort of had an eye to that. And then I did business. I was, for five years, I was with a Fortune 500 company. And I had the opportunity to do some business in Xiaomon. And I saw some things that set off alarm bells in my mind. And I kind of filed that. And I had some experiences that informed my research later. I worked in the government in Bush 1 and Bush 2. I was involved in Indo -Pacific affairs. really helping American companies do business in the region, and then became a consultant to part of the government that administered our territories in the Pacific. So I saw some things there that, again, set off alarm bells in my mind. And in 2016, I happened to cross an old colleague who kind of gave me some more information. And basically from 2016 until 2022, I conducted a lot of independent research. I decided I wanted to know exactly what was going on because proxies in the region seemed emboldened to take on the U .S. And they didn't have a government portfolio, but they acted like they did. And so my research sort of started in Micronesia. I had the great opportunity to come across your book. You totally informed. parts of what I was looking at and kind of put the spotlight on what happened in Canada. And I kind of worked the two sides to the middle and conducted most recently research that kind of takes us from Mao Zedong's death until the 90s. And I believe that there was a click. I call it the yes, she click. There were scores to settle. There were powerful families that were on the cusp of greatness or recognition for all their good work, and they were purged. And it led some individuals to become extremely militant in their conduct of political warfare against the U .S. So that sort of sets the table for what we might be talking about. 00:04:28    SAM COOPER Yeah. So to get into this, let's start with the Ye family. They're mysterious, but for experts, they're very clearly a clan that has tremendous kingmaking power in China. So maybe let's start with who they are and then bridge into how they connect with Xi's father. 00:04:46    CHRISTOPHER MEYER So the patriarch, Lie Jianying, was literally the kingmaker of Mao Zedong. He came from Guangdong province, and he was involved in the very earliest movements of the Communist Party in China. And he fled one of those, I think it was the Guangzhou uprising, with Zhou Enlai, and they escaped to Hong Kong. So Ye Jianying is one of the original revolutionaries in China, and he had the title of Marshal Ye. And when he crossed paths with Mao Zedong, he was actually the aide -de -camp to a very powerful Communist Party operator out of Beijing who had an army of tens of thousands. And he rolled up to Mao and his very small group of long marchers and said, follow us, we're going to Sichuan province. And Mao was like, no, I don't think that's a safe bet. The locals are going to tear you up. And Ye Jianying kind of heard a truth in Mao and he deserted this powerful general and with him brought the code books. So Mao gets Ye Jianying and the code books and he's able to communicate with the Comintern. And lo and behold, that general did get wiped out in Sichuan. He returned to Mao's base. With a few thousand troops from then, Mao became the most powerful leader in the communist ecosystem. So Ye Jianying had a very high regard for Mao. Mao called him the savior of the Communist Party and the Communist Revolution. And so fast forward it right through the revolution. Ye gets a very top position as the party secretary for Guangdong province, the largest and economically most powerful province in the country. And Mao wants to conduct his land reform in Guangdong, just as he does everywhere. And it's a violent thing where landowners are hunted down and put to death. Yeah, because he was a native Cantonese, understood that the landowners in Guangdong were not of the same ilk as those throughout China. They actually worked the lands. They had a very cooperative relationship with labor. And he tried to resist. But Mao forced Lin Biao into Guangdong. And Ye lost his government role. And if he hadn't been in the military, he would have been completely out of power. But because he had a military portfolio, he was able to stay on the peripheries. And he was actually part of the small group that brought down the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution. So Ye Jianying went through the Mao Zedong grinder, but he did it so early in the 50s that he was able to... maintain power and have it going forward. Another Long March hero was Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhong Chun. And his claim to fame in the Communist Party was he maintained security over the area where Mao was camped in Yan 'an. And he was able to provide Mao and his group with enough security that they could camp there through a winter and survive. Not only that, but he negotiated and he conducted diplomacy with the tribesmen in the Northwest, in Qinghai, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. And he was loved. And he got a lot of rebels and insurgents among these minority populations to join the Communist Party. And Mao gave him great profs for that and referred to him as one of the heroes of the Three Kingdoms period. brilliant statesman who was able to ingratiate with the minorities and make them part of the Chinese nation. Unfortunately, though, Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongchun, he was purged, but he was purged later. He was purged in 1962. And from Xi Jinping's age nine until he was 25, Xi Jinping's father was under arrest. Without trial, it was just the culture revolution. He was under arrest because his office published a book that was deemed not flattering to Mao Zedong. Basically, he was promoting some thought within the Communist Party that Mao didn't like. So Xi's father is in jail from 62 to 78. And because Ye Senior and Xi Zhongchun had a relationship, Ye Jianying kind of became a godfather of sorts for Xi Jinping. Xi was sent to work in the countryside and he escaped and he tried to get back to Beijing and it wasn't safe for him to be reunited with his family. And Ye intervened. And Ye made sure that Xi joined the Communist Party, even though these tragedies were all around him, and made sure that he got the semblance of an education, although he really never did. He was a guide for Xi Jinping throughout his younger years. in place of his father. 00:10:02    Sam Cooper Before we continue how those families dovetail together, can you describe in China's political economy, what is the power of Marshal Ye? 00:10:13    CHRISTOPHER MEYER So in the 50s, he was jettisoned out of the political arena. His main work was in the PLA. He was a marshal and he became minister of defense in China. And he was responsible for procurement. And to sort of give you a sense, when the Korean War started, the United Nations put a blockade on trade with China because they were arming the North Korean army. Marshal Yeh was responsible for making sure that supplies got to North Korea. And that was a big role that he fulfilled. And his sons kind of brought that along. So it's curious because Marshal Yeh was one of the most powerful stars in the communist lineup, but he was also a minority. He was from Guangdong and he was a Haka Chinese. So some people would say that Haka Chinese within China, there's a lid sometimes on their ability to move up. And so perhaps he was never considered for the echelon, but he did arise very high. But in some ways, and his sons adopted this even more so, they had to become very combative. in their political dealings. But no doubt about it, Marshal Yeh had a chance to handle huge volumes of military supplies, and there was an opportunity to skim and generate great wealth, which probably was the case. The way that Marshal Yeh fulfilled the supply chains for the North Korean army was through organized crime. And it just happened that two of The individuals, Henry Falk and Stanley Ho, were also Hakka Chinese. And they became the kingpins of organized crime in Hong Kong and Macau. Both of them are on record as saying they made their fortunes supplying the Korean War. 00:12:15    SAM COOPER Right. So people that read my book are very familiar with Stanley Ho, according to U .S. government intelligence. the absolute king of Chinese international mafia with connectivity to casinos, banking, political influence operations in Canada, triad leadership in Canada. So I think we've set the table for the 90s in Guangdong, Fujian. Xi Jinping is now starting to come on the scene politically there. The Ye family, who were partners essentially of Xi's father. had a little bit of a godfather eye on Xi's movements within the party. We can say that they're the power behind a throne that they want to see continue to rise. So can you take us into the 90s, the sort of Stanley Ho connectivity to Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and how that combines the Hong Kong tycoons slash triad leaders with the communist powers in Fujian? 00:13:21    CHRISTOPHER MEYER Yes. Mao passed away in 78. Deng Xiaoping came to power. And Deng was all about economic reform and catching up to the West. So in southern China, Fujian and Guangdong province, Deng looked to Ye Jenying and his sons. His sons were in their 30s now. And he also looked to Xi Zhongshan. Xi Zhongshan became party secretary for Guangdong province. in the early 80s. And Deng kind of put together this group. The Ye's and the Xi's were family friends. They celebrated Chinese holidays together. The Xi's were northern Chinese, but they kind of encamped in Guangdong province after a certain amount of time. And that's where Xi's father retired. But in Guangdong, the son of Ye, his name was Ye Xuanping. Basically, he was mayor of Guangzhou and the governor of Guangdong. And very quickly, he was referred to as the emperor of the south. So in the 80s, he was running Guangdong province. And he became so powerful that the CCP sought to have him step down. And he actually threatened to withhold tax to Beijing from the province of Guangdong unless they negotiated with him. He wanted a vice chair of the CPPCC, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee. And he wants to be a vice governor of the CPPCC. And he wanted to be allowed to maintain his power base in Guangdong. And this is a rare case where the CCP actually deferred to these wishes. Just to get him out of running the most powerful province in China, they said okay. So he goes over the CPPCC. And he takes with him the kingpins of organized crime in Hong Kong and Macau. Stanley Ho never had a position, but Henry Falk and the other top lieutenants in these organized crime entities all wound up on the CPPCC. And to give you a sense of like, what was some of the magic Stanley Ho had when he won the monopoly on gaming in Macau? He devised this VIP room conc

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.  --- 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 --- 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/ --- 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 --- 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

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. --- 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/ --- 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 --- 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