BLACKFIVE: Roundtables: Allies Old and New

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Roundtables: Allies Old and New

Posted By Grim

We had two Roundtables recently that underline the importance of the US military's approach to building and training allies. The first was with Brigadier General Simeon Trombitas who is commanding US efforts to build Iraqi counterterrorist forces. (Transcript here). He expressed a high degree of confidence in these elite forces, and the ministry-level oversight that Iraq has developed to manage them. Our Special Forces don't hesistate to go out with them, he said, or to have them go on their own.

I noticed that he had been in El Salvador and Columbia, and asked a question about to what degree COIN theory is transferrable, and to what degree (because of cultural differences, or for other reasons) it has to be relearned from region to region. His answer touches on two important points we've discussed here.

Here is the question:

GRIM: General, I see from your bio that you were involved with a similar mission in El Salvador during the latter part of war that ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords in '91. And also you've been in Colombia. I'd like to ask you how much these kinds of training missions are transferable from one region or culture to another, how much you can take with you and how much you have to learn new every time.

GEN. TROMBITAS: Yeah, I think they're very transferable and I think the basics are extremely transferable. As special forces soldiers, wherever we go, we try to immerse ourselves in the culture, learn the language. I'll tell you one thing I'm missing here is the language piece, but we take the time to study the culture and try to work within the bounds of that as we get our mission accomplished. I'm extremely pleased in both of those places you mentioned.

I think that here recently a long-standing relationship with the United States special forces contributed greatly to the rescue mission in Colombia. I will tell you that right now there is a battalion of Salvadorans in combat here in Iraq, in the southern part of the country, and they're here due to our long presence in working with them, too. And I foresee that in the future of Iraq, that if we develop and they become a stable regional power, that we maintain a good relationship with their special operations force and achieve the same endgame with them.

The first of the two important things here is the gratitude of those to whom you have been a genuine ally in times of trouble. We've talked about the El Sals on several occasions now, but most memorably following the publication of this letter. As the author says, he remembers that we were there to help his nation out of chaos, and now wants to do the same for the people of Iraq.

The second is what he calls the "end state," in which he forsees Iraqi forces becoming partners with the Coalition in future efforts. As we begin to equip them with M-16s and train their NCO corps, the broader Iraqi army (as well as the elite counterterrorist units the general is developing) will be deployable alongside NATO or Coalition units. If they choose to do so, Iraq could be a critical ally should a state begin to fail inside the Arab-speaking world. Such an ally would repay the costs we have invested in Iraq, either by preventing such a failure and collapse from coming about, or by helping to rebuild one.

On the same subject, but in a wholly different part of the world, Army Major Matthew Smith was the speaker at our second roundtable (transcript here). He is in the Republic of Georgia (not the Great State of Georgia, my own beloved home) on a training exercise with some of our new post-Soviet allies including Georgians, the Albanians, Azerbaijani, Armenians and soldiers from the Ukraine. Just as the United States helped to pull El Salvador out of chaos, so its work here is making friendships among peoples recently bitter enemies:

PROF. ANDREW LUBIN: First of all, you've had the -- you got the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians, two groups of people who've hated each other for, you know, thousands of years, fought a war recently in Nagorno-Karabakh. How are they doing together?

MAJ. SMITH: You know, actually, they're all living on our floor of the barracks together. So they -- I guess by virtue of the fact that no blood has been shed yet, they're doing pretty well. They're actually participating in a different aspect of the overall exercise, which is a command post exercise that's being conducted. And from what I understand, you know, they all sit around the table together in the tent for 10 or 12 hours a day with no issues. So that aspect of the exercise has been going very well, too, from what I understand.

Also like in El Salvador, the Georgian Army has sent one of its three brigades to assist the effort in Iraq. Just as with our friends the Thais, we're able to take a little of the training time to do something good for their people. Capacity building is an important part of COIN, and so it strikes two birds with one stone when we can run an exercise like this:

GRIM: I would like to ask you, this year at Cobra Gold, down in Thailand, part of the training focused on civil affairs, where they were doing some preparatory work of the similar kind that your folks are doing, getting ready to go to Afghanistan. And one of the things they did, for example, was build a school for some local schoolchildren. Are you guys doing similar sort of civil affairs training or does this focus mostly on kinetics?

MAJ. SMITH: Our battalion specifically is doing both kinetic and nonkinetic training. However, for the task force -- the broader task force, there have been, from what I understand, some significant civil affairs projects that have taken place before and are still going on. And we are doing some community outreach with local orphanages around the Tbilisi area in the next week or so.

Thus these military forces become more compatible with ours, and more deployable with ours; and we are able to help their orphans, which is a good thing in itself, one that helps our people train in capacity-building, and one that is also a worthy way to treat an ally. The system of alliances gives us the capacity to work 'by, through and with' established friends to address crises throughout the world. Often it can prevent troubles that would otherwise create far greater problems if they developed. When it cannot, it gives us tried allies who stand ready to accompany us in putting things right.

If we finish as we have begun in Iraq, and honor their independence and wishes, they will be a valuable such ally in the future.