Episode 3. Europe: The European Command & The Bang For The Buck Of US Military Training In Europe

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:14] Today as part of our series at the Academy of Diplomacy of the General and the Ambassador, we are joined by General John Gardner and Ambassador Catherine Canavan. When Jack Gardner served as a deputy commander of the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, Kate Canavan served as a civilian deputy to the commander. Today we will focus on how they collaborated at Ucam, the European Command, in its critical challenges to advance US interests and protect America. Jack Gardner served in the Army for 36 years. Prior to being in Germany, he commanded a task force in Iraq and had many other important assignments around the globe. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University. Kate served in our diplomatic corps for more than 35 years and was ambassador twice as well as holding other high level positions in Washington, including leading the department's foreign affairs training center. Can you describe what your responsibilities were?

Amb. Canavan: [00:01:19] I had previously been the foreign policy adviser, but as the civilian deputy, which was a three star equivalent position, which also coincided with my Foreign Service rank as well, was an important step in making sure that the civilian component and the interagency component was fully supported within the command.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:51] Jack as deputy commander at EUCOM, you were responsible for all the military components within the command. How did you partner with Kate in advancing the mission? And can you give us some concrete examples of where the partnership made a difference?

Gen. Gardner: [00:02:04] I think it allowed every CoCom has a senior policy adviser, foreign policy advisor, in many cases a former ambassador. But I think having that person as a as a as a deputy commander, so to speak, as opposed to just an advisor, empowered Kate and her successor to to play a larger role in terms of kind of driving the whole government process inside the headquarters. It helped better link our theater campaign plan to the embassy plans because of the link and established the relationship she had with the embassies and the ambassadors. And I think it helped drive not just US Department of State interaction, but also USAID, Treasury, all the other agencies that represent our headquarters. Having a, you know, a senior government official, civilian official as a deputy commander that could actually drive the staff and not just provide advice. I think on crises, whether it was, you know, the Israeli wildfires, the Russian wildfires, our efforts in Libya. Having a senior civilian that actually had the authority inside. Yeah. And had more credibility than just an advisor played paid incredible dividends.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:13] Can you talk a little bit about the the AOR, so to speak, of EUCOM, what EUCOM covers?

Gen. Gardner: [00:03:20] Many people may not recognize the military has commands that kind of represent or work with regions around the world. EUCOM had basically Europe kind of Mediterranean and we had a relationship with Israel. So it was Europe and kind of part of Eurasia, including Western Europe and Eastern Europe and Mediterranean and Israel. And CentCom has. Yeah, a lot of countries. Our responsibility was to, you know, our our day to day operations were how do you help militaries? The first problem was how do we provide kind of stability and capabilities to the NATO alliance. And part of that was the forces we had in place were kind of the US first response in case there was a need for NATO to do something and then also to help drive the NATO exercise program so that all the military state a certain level of training. And then also the Eastern European countries, many of which have now joined NATO. How do you help them kind of modernize as they transfer from or transition from Warsaw Pact days to kind of modern Western militaries that have certain training standards, certain resourcing standards, and.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:25] And you both work to integrate help integrate these new members to to NATO?

Gen. Gardner: [00:04:30] Yeah. I think

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:31] Talk a little bit about that.

Gen. Gardner: [00:04:31] One of the things you did over time and a lot of this happened long before I got there was how do you how do you take a military that's that's operated in a completely different system? You know, the promotions weren't necessarily based on merit. They trained differently their relationship inside the government. And, you know, the military's role in the government was much different than in a democracy. How do you help the institution change and how do you help individuals change? And, you know, later we'll get into the financing. But the IMET or International Military Education and Training program.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:01] Very important.

Gen. Gardner: [00:05:02] You know, we use it in every region of the world, but it was central to having to bringing, you know, Eastern European officers and NCOs as they transition from one system to another to the US and exercises and help them make the transition to how do you how do you run a professional military or the military responds to civilian and democratic authority.

Amb. Canavan: [00:05:24] And the IMET program is actually run by our embassies. So it was very important for our embassies to work very closely with the combatant command, in this case, the European command, to make sure that the programs that were being recommended by the embassy or the individuals groups that were being recommended for the embassy and the kind of training met with what the military what our military was trying to do as well. One of one of the key training issues that I found that the former Soviet bloc countries were. Interested in was training NCOs, non-commissioned officers. Non-commissioned officers are key to how our military runs, and that's something that did not exist under the Warsaw Pact. The embassies were key. You know, our ambassadors are the personal representatives of the president and are charged with coordinating all US government programs in the country, including the military programs. So it was key to have the military representatives, the defense attachés and the offices of Military Cooperation work extremely closely with the combatant commands that were able to provide the programs and the training. There's always a huge demand.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:49] I remember when I was in Lithuania, the fact that we did do training through IMET, the fact that we conducted exercises and we had such a tight relationship made it such that when the ask came for contributing to what we were doing in Afghanistan, they have been out there from the beginning with us. Well, let's talk a little bit more about coordination with embassies. I call our embassies bases overseas because they house so many agencies, including representatives from various parts of DOD. Can you explain how you coordinate with embassies? And then we'll talk a little bit about Jack and his team coordinated with with the embassies in conducting exercises and negotiations and other aspects.

Amb. Canavan: [00:07:36] We had a number of exercises every year. It was part of the responsibility of my office to engage with the ambassador and what the ambassador's team, which we call the country team, to help coordinate these exercises, to get high level support for what the military was trying to do in coordinating these exercises. We did an exercise where we included a number of the Baltic countries at a very high level in an exercise. And again, that was one of the key elements to making that work was the fact that we were dealing with both the ambassador as well as the military commitment at any one time, our troops in Europe, anywhere from 25 to 50% of them were deployed to Afghanistan. So they weren't there all the time. But when they were in Europe, they were able to do regular exercising. We learned that the US Army back in Washington was keen to take half of the army forces that were in Europe, and once they rotated to Afghanistan, they would not rotate back to Europe. They would go back to the United States, reducing our footprint. Yes, the commander of the US Army in Europe obviously was not very happy about this situation and he came to us and said, you know, is there anything we can do about this? So we said, Well, gosh, this affects a lot of our individual country support programs and it also affects our ability to meet our NATO commitments. So my office immediately got in touch with embassies throughout Europe and our NATO to do a push back and say, do you realize that this is happening? And what it would mean? And if this is an issue for you all, please get in touch with the State Department and be sure to copy DOD.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:50] And weigh in on the interagency back in Washington making decisions.

Amb. Canavan: [00:09:54] The decision was made to rotate only one of the four units back to the states. In hindsight, with what's happened with Russia not only invading Georgia, but then the Crimea and their activities in Ukraine have made us rethink what we should have done there.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:18] Well, let me ask you, Jack exercises to explain to those following the podcast why do we exercise.

Gen. Gardner: [00:10:26] You know, stability in Europe and to help the successful transformation of Eastern European countries into stable democracies and part of the West are all in our best interest economically, politically, militarily, our exercise program.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:38] Help secure our frontiers so to speak.

Gen. Gardner: [00:10:40] Yeah. And and, you know, the frontier where we trade with we have strong economic ties, we have strong cultural ties. And it's in our best interest that that region succeed and be stable. And our presence is part of our effort to do that. And the exercise program does a couple of things. One, it makes sure that in our case, Ucam was able to respond either in a NATO crisis or a US. The crisis so that we had the capabilities and we could execute them successfully. The second was how do you sustain NATO and keep NATO at a high level of training readiness and exercise program, help do that. And then also the countries are not NATO, but that were friends of ours, some of the Eastern European countries that have not yet joined NATO, but also support us in Afghanistan.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:24] And many have contributed to Afghanistan over the years. Again and again and again, I certainly saw it in, you know, in the Baltics. Well, let's turn and talk a little bit about the challenge that was and is Russia to to Ukraine. You both served at a time when Russia had gone into Georgia and and continued to try to make efforts, continued efforts to try to influence events in the eastern part East, former Eastern Europe and the former countries that were formerly under the Soviets. How how did we handle that? How did you work on that challenge?

Gen. Gardner: [00:12:03] And to go back to what Kate was talking about, about reduction in forces, you know, at the end of the Cold War, it was reasonable to reduce. We didn't need a couple hundred thousand military. We didn't need hundreds of bases scattered around Europe. But I think in hindsight, we realized we downsized probably too quickly and didn't leave certain capabilities that one allow us to exercise to the range of exercises that we need to stay ready and also to to help our allies stay trained and ready, but also to deter the deter the Russians. And and their threats can be just intimidation. They've intimidated most of their neighbors, either through energy policy, you know, or exercises on borders that are just difficult to understand and.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:45] Massive exercises in some cases.

Gen. Gardner: [00:12:47] What level of forces do we need to deter them and also to reassure our friends and allies. We we realize we went down too fast. And fortunately, we're in the process of adding some capability back, rotational and permanent. We also have incredible logistics capability. That's part of that whole package. And a couple of years ago, when the Ebola crisis surfaced, you know, it had nothing to do with NATO, had nothing to do with military, but we had the ability to very quickly send supplies down. We state that we supply out of a distribution center or DOD distribution center.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:20] And that made a huge difference in stemming the Ebola crisis.

Gen. Gardner: [00:13:23] In the same capability was used when the the refugee camps were first established, the Syrian refugee camps on the Turkish border. And so having a presence overseas and having an infrastructure that has a range of capabilities provides capabilities that we often don't know when we're going to need them. And as a as a captain and a major in army exercises, many years ago, there was one of the senior mentors that would help explain things to us. He had he had a talk about how do you maintain it, a tactical setting, you know, an army, tactical setting on the ground, the proper balance and stance. So you you're prepared for different options that you may not foresee and you don't get caught flat footed. And if you take that to a strategic setting, not an army tactical setting on the ground, what what balance and stance and what footprint do we need overseas, whether it's military or whether it's USAID supplies or Treasury or US or Department of State that makes sure the United States has the right balance of stance, We don't get surprised. We can respond whether it's militarily or whether it's humanitarian disaster relief.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:29] And that's a great part of what the United States does overseas. We are incredible in humanitarian crises precisely because of what we have deployed, how we pull together through through the interagency.

Amb. Canavan: [00:14:41] One of the things I would like to say about our humanitarian efforts is that while the military and the in in this case, in the case of Georgia and the case of a number of other situations, the European Command provided the logistical support, the folks on the ground that were actually from the US government were generally USAID and also the embassy staff. Georgia was a difficult issue for us. What it created was a whole bunch of internally displaced persons, in effect, internal refugees.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:23] People forget that and we've got them in Ukraine as well, the refugees.

Amb. Canavan: [00:15:29] Refugees internally, so basically what the European Command was able to do was to provide humanitarian assistance to help the government take care of these internally displaced folks. We were limited by something called the Montoro convention. We wanted to bring in a hospital ship. We were not able to do that. We were also not able to bring in a supply ship because the tonnage was too large. So we did bring some smaller ships in with relief supplies I wanted to talk about. Another issue, and that was planning for a non-combatant evacuation from Lebanon. Things were not looking particularly good at this time. So I took a team from the European Command. We went to our embassy in Beirut and we talked to the ambassador in the country team. We looked at assembly points. We looked at potentials for evacuation. We also worked very closely with our embassy in Cyprus, which was going to be the place.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:41] The place where everybody would go before they go home.

Amb. Canavan: [00:16:42] But they had to evacuate folks, too. Unfortunately, we didn't have to do one. There were a number of situations where I was able to fill in for Jack on committees and organizations events where I was able to represent the European Command. Things as simple as DOD Schools has a committee that meets twice a year at the three star level.

Gen. Gardner: [00:17:13] Okay. Just hit a couple examples where the you know, there was a difference between having a former ambassador or senior advisor to the command and the staff and a former ambassador who was had some command, responsibility and authority. And both with the Lebanese planning, the planning for the potential Neo and the ability to work with different organizations and the ability to to run meetings in the headquarters and direct people to do things and also to represent the headquarters in in, as you just described, was very, very useful.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:42] Now I'd like to turn and delve into a little bit into your backgrounds and ask you maybe, Jack, if you want to start, what made you join our military? Did you come from a military family?

Gen. Gardner: [00:17:53] My my dad, my uncle and my grandpa. My grandfather served in World War One as a medic, Got out, got called back in World War Two. My dad and my uncle served in World War Two, got out. You know, it wasn't a career in no history of career military. And when I was in high school, it sounded exciting. I thought I could see parts of the world I'd never get to see. You did. And. And at the time, you know, 1971, 72, 73, there weren't a lot of military wasn't particularly popular. So I thought, maybe I'll go try it. And I thought I'd stay five years. I owed five years after the military academy and I and my relatives thought I'd get out and do something more legitimate afterwards. And I woke up and it was 20. And then I woke up and it was 36. So time goes fast.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:18:38] But you did go to so many different parts of the world. I mean, Army South.

Gen. Gardner: [00:18:41] And I got to see a huge part of the world, just like just like people at our work in our government or international business. And I had an aunt as a kid who traveled a lot. She came back from a trip in Europe. I was just like the mid 60s and said, When you travel overseas, a place you learn about the most is your own country. And years later, I realized how accurate she was.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:03] I think she's right. I certainly learned a lot about my own when I went out. So, Kate, what made you join the diplomatic corps?

Amb. Canavan: [00:19:11] Well, it was sort of interesting. My junior year in college, I had the opportunity, I went to university in California, and one of my professors was from South Carolina, and he set up an extramural education program for us. And I took advantage of it. And I spent four months in Beaufort, South Carolina. My dad was was a veteran of World War Two. My one of my best friends in high school. His father had retired from the Air Force as a colonel. And but other than that, I had never met anyone who wore a uniform who was currently on active duty. I had never been to the South. I went to South Carolina and worked lived with a local family and worked for the Neighborhood Youth Corps and the South at that time. This is spring of 1970, which is Cambodia, Kent State, all of that was going on. There are two major military bases in Beaufort, Parris Island and also Marine Corps Air Station. So I became friends with a number of both family members and Marines. I got to see their perspective as opposed to the perspective of my university after I graduated from university. And I had no idea at the time that I was interested in Foreign Service, but I decided I should travel. So among the places I ended up going was then Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, to visit a college friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:55] Also it was the college connection to get there.

Amb. Canavan: [00:20:57] And I ended up I was planning to stay a few weeks. I ended up staying. Eight months, fell in love with the Peace Corps and Africa and ended up spending three years in the Peace Corps in then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A number of the people I met while I was in the Peace Corps worked for the State Department and our consulates and embassies and encouraged me to take the Foreign Service exam. So I did. I didn't pass the first time I took it in Bukavu.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:29] I, I knew somebody who took it seven times and eventually got in. So if you don't get it the first time, you go again.

Amb. Canavan: [00:21:35] So I took it. The second time passed. Went back and took the oral exam between my second and third year in the Peace Corps and then got an offer of an appointment. And I came in and I can't imagine anything I would rather have done for 35 years than be in the Foreign Service.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:57] What would you say today to those who are interested in foreign affairs, whether going in and serving in a military career, in a diplomatic career, about the need to work together? Because that's one of the points we've been making, is working Our military colleagues and our diplomatic colleagues have to work together, particularly overseas, to protect America, to advance our interests.

Gen. Gardner: [00:22:22] 20 years ago, the Army sent me to Boston for a year, and I had a small apartment and I lived next door to the cook, Julia Child, the French chef. You are so lucky. I had a number of conversations with a very fascinating lady, but I didn't realize I knew she was a cook and I'd watched her on TV. I didn't realize she'd been in the OSS in World War Two, and she'd served in the China-burma-india Theater. And in one of the conversations with her, she described how she had met most of the senior military in the Pacific in World War Two, and that the ones who had worked with the C.c.c., the Conservation Corps during the Depression, she thought were the most effective because the solutions weren't just military solution. It was a more holistic. They'd worked in an environment that was not one dimensional. By working in the c.c.c., you worked with local communities, federal government, state government and in the China Burma, India Theater. To her that translated to they could see past just a one dimensional solution. And those that didn't have that experience weren't as effective. And years later, I thought about this. She's right. You know, if our goal is for the United States to be secure and stable and for Americans to have prosperous lifestyles and a high standard of living, what's it take internationally to to facilitate that and military presence around the world, whether it's exercises or training and all the things we discussed in the last hour are a piece of that.

Gen. Gardner: [00:23:47] But it isn't one dimensional. It's multidimensional. It's the whole government. And how do you make how does DOD support Department of State, USAID, Treasury, DHS, so that our long term plans and our near-term plans and actions are all mutually supporting? I spent the first almost 15, 18 years just in the military. I had no interagency experience until I became a colonel. And but then it happened very quickly. You know, the Goldwater-Nichols forced us to be joint, but it didn't force us to be interagency. And there's really been no equivalent but what the two conflicts. The good thing out of them, I guess, is that captains and majors and staff sergeants have been forced to be interagency at a much younger age than I did. And the question now that the conflicts are about over and these folks are now either, you know, cancer majors or tenant colonels, colonels or brigadier generals or whatever, how do we sustain that? So we continue to have the norm as interagency and it's mutually supporting. And how do you sustain that when money starts to get short? Because right now we have a lot of activities and people position in different places, whether it's military work in other agencies or vice versa. How do you sustain that long term in it's essential to everybody, to every rank to to push that because again, everything as Julia Child said, it's it's not one dimensional. It's multi dimensional.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:04] And one challenge today is on the civilian side for some of the agencies, you know, their budgets are being cut.

Amb. Canavan: [00:25:10] I agree with Jack. And I think the earlier that the civilian agencies and the government and particularly State Department can work with military counterparts, the better. When I was teaching the junior officer course at the State Department early in my relatively early in my career, I learned that in a five week course there was one hour on the military. That's all. That's all. And in the junior officer, the 100 course. So I set about trying to organize a at least a half day event where the class went to the Pentagon and met people and got briefings and had a chance to ask more questions. Jack Klein, who then was actually the foreign policy adviser to the chief of staff. The Air Force helped me do that, and that established a long term relationship that that he and I had. There are a lot of similarities with military officers and foreign Service officers. We we both have presidential commissions. We have an up or out system. We have we carry our rank in person. We get moved around the world in general. Military operations have have an end state. Okay. We have a mission. We need to complete this mission. And we have certain goals. And once we complete those goals, we're finished. Diplomacy tends to be a much more long term. We're working out there. We have not a particular end state, but we're working toward improving a particular situation, whether it's improving.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:03] Sometimes it takes a long term investment.

Amb. Canavan: [00:27:04] To get a long term investment.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:06] The joint efforts together, which is one of the points of of our series here, makes America safer. Absolutely. And pushes out the frontiers in.

Amb. Canavan: [00:27:16] Everything we do as a government. Overseas is designed, as Jack says, to promote security and prosperity for the United States first. But that also requires security and prosperity for other countries.

Gen. Gardner: [00:27:34] You know, as a kid, I always wondered I knew about the Marshall Plan, the amount of money we spent to help Europe. And I kind of understood the amount of money that was broadly called foreign aid when I was little. But I never understood the impact until until I was stationed overseas in the military. And most Americans are probably familiar with the money we provide to Israel, which I think is essential. But a lot of money goes to Israel a fair amount now goes to Iraq and Afghanistan because of the conflicts, a fair amount to Jordan, because of the difficult situation there in Egypt. But the part that most people don't realize and I didn't recognize with areas that are relatively small pots of money, have a huge impact. And one of them I mentioned, I'm at the international military education and training will bring officers and NCOs and soldiers from different countries to our schools and train them on basic technical skills. But equally as important, how do you operate as an officer or an NCO or a soldier in a military, in a democracy? And for Latin American countries that have been making that transition for a couple of decades, it's essential for the European countries that are still kind of making that transition. It's essential, and that's a relatively small sum for the return we get on it. And then on top of that, in addition to influencing the development of militaries in those countries, it leads back to the stability Kate just mentioned. We've also I can think of a dozen cases where the the personal relationships we had were an officer or a senior NCO had come to us course, understood the US and now was in an important position in their country and we needed some assistance to further one of our interests. And we could go to that individual and say, you know, I know you, you know, we have a relationship.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:11] We were together.

Gen. Gardner: [00:29:12] Yeah. And we need we need to work together. And you can't measure that. So you can't quantify it when you're trying to defend the budget. But it's critical. And another one, it's I saw in Europe a USAID role in helping a dozen or so countries transition from the Soviet era to, you know, open democratic market systems. And now out of the 20 or so that were working with about a dozen now have made it into the EU or the World Trade Organization.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:39] Not an easy hurdle to get over.

Gen. Gardner: [00:29:40] Yeah. And that's it was a relatively small sum of money. But those countries are on a better path to succeed, and that leads trading partners.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:48] We work with them on all sorts of issues across the would.

Gen. Gardner: [00:29:50] And you can't, but it's hard to measure that. So it's hard to defend that in terms of budget decisions.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:56] Well, I always say sometimes it also gets down to sometimes they're the critical votes and organizations such as the UN and others. So sometimes it translates the repercussions are long term on the positive side. And it's not all in one place. So. Well, Kate and Jack, thank you very much. This was a great conversation. I think we understand a lot more how both sides work together in a critical area of the world. And thank you for your service again.