Download Pentagon Altruism Muscle and Comments

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/07/28/pentagon_flexes_its_altruism_muscle/
EIN Comments:
The Pentagon and Secretary of Defense mean well, but until this concept is backed up by
legislation and the “Pentagonizing” of the Department of State, along with the creation of both
an Open Source Agency under diplomatic auspices, and a Multinational Decision Support Center
in Tampa with mirrors in New York, Singapore, and Istanbul, it is nothing more than lip service.
No one in the US Government has a holistic strategy (ten threats, twelve policies, eight
challengers) and no one in the US Government is doing “decision support” across all aspects of
that holistic strategy. Until that changes, until we have an evidence-based national strategy with
actual budgetary and behavioral changes (including a balanced budget for our own fiscal health),
all of this is pie in the sky. A Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, best left in the obscurity he
deserves, once said: “Real men don’t do Operations Other Than War.” That attitude still prevails
among ALL of the four services
Furthermore, although it has been clearly established that we can eradicate all ten of the highlevel threats to humanity at a cost of roughly $230 billion a year (the world now spends $1.3
trillion a year on war and the capabilities for war), the fastest way to heal the Earth and all
nations is two-fold:
1. A Global Range of Gifts Table pioneered by a new Mutlianational Civil Affairs Corps led by
the new Army Civil Affairs Brigade, with an annual donors conference in which all US nonprofits are required to attend and contributute or lose their tax-exempt status; and
2. An end to US support for all dictators, with a five year buy out plan for those that agree to a
transition, and a five year eradication plan for those that do not. Similarly, we must end
corruption in the private sector with a national “Manhattan Project” to expose and publicize the
“true cost” of all products and services (e.g. Exxon externalizes $12 in cost to the climate and
future generations for EVERY gallon of gas they sell—Exxon is not making a profit, they are
looting the planet).. St.
Boston Globe
July 28, 2008
Pg. 1
Pentagon Flexes Its Altruism Muscle
Aims to win trust with soft power
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON -- Having learned the limits of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military
strategists are rewriting decades-old military doctrine to place humanitarian missions on par with
combat, part of a new effort to win over distrustful foreign populations and enlist new global
allies, according to top commanders and Pentagon officials.
The Defense Department is implementing a series of new directives to use the American arsenal
for more peaceful purposes even as it prepares for war, including a little-noticed revision this
year to a document called "Joint Operations," described as the "very core" of how the military
branches should be organized.
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The effort illustrates a growing recognition that, to combat radical ideologies and avert future
wars, the Pentagon must draw more heavily on its deep reserves of so-called soft power - its
ability to set up medical clinics in a remote part of the world, for example - to balance the more
traditional "hard power" of military force, according to more than a dozen US military officers in
several regions of the world and planners inside the Pentagon.
"Things have changed significantly," Jerry Lynes, a retired Marine Corps colonel who is now
chief of education and doctrine for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. "We have taken
our traditional principles of war and added to them."
The changes have already translated into new military operations. When a US military team
arrived by helicopter in Cambodia's rural Kampong Chhnang Province in late May, the imam
from the local mosque spread the word and hundreds of locals descended on the Americans.
But it was not confrontation they sought. It was free healthcare. The Friendship Clinic, offering
primary and vision care, dentistry, a women's health center, and medical training, was part of a
first-of-its kind humanitarian mission called Pacific Angel by the Honolulu-based 13th Air
Force.
In recent months, Navy war ships have been dispatched to some of the poorest nations to
administer medical aid, the Air Force is flying regular humanitarian flights, and teams of US
military personnel are helping rebuild schools in Latin America.
But while the change in emphasis is generally accepted as a positive development, some are also
warning that the military risks taking on nonmilitary missions that should be the purview of the
State Department and other civilian agencies.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who has called for greater emphasis on diplomatic and
economic tools to further American interests, warned in a speech this month about the
"militarization" of American foreign policy and repeated his calls for building new civilian
capacity for strengthening fragile states.
Others have also cautioned against using the military to perform jobs better suited to civilians,
such as democracy building and development aid.
"Our [foreign] policy is out of whack," said Kenneth Bacon, a former assistant secretary of
defense who now runs Refugees International, a nonprofit organization. "It is too dominated by
the military and we have too little civilian capacity."
Bacon is particularly concerned about Pentagon plans for a new US Africa Command. In a report
published this month, Refugees International called on the next administration to limit the
military's role in Africa to conducting security-related tasks, such as training foreign militaries
and providing critical humanitarian assistance - and to leave the rest to civilian specialists.
"The military should not take on what [the US Agency for International Development] does or
the State Department," Bacon said. Still, US military strategists believe they have an expanding
role to play in exerting America's soft power.
They began to embrace the concept - a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye - after the
South Asian tsunami in late 2004, when the United States mustered a flotilla of ships and dozens
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of aircraft to ferry aid to hundreds of thousands of people in coastal villages in Indonesia, the
world's largest Muslim nation.
"The standing of the United States in Indonesia had dropped very low as a result of the Iraq war
but went up impressively after the tsunami relief," said Nye, a former assistant secretary of
defense who now teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School.
As a result, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is now required to draft military doctrine for
how to conduct "stability" operations, including assisting countries in the event of an emergency,
and is formulating new curriculum for military training schools to elevate nonmilitary tasks in
the minds of the officer and enlisted ranks.
Meanwhile, the Navy's new maritime strategy, issued in late 2007, states that "preventing wars is
as important as winning wars."
The generals and admirals who oversee American forces around the world now regularly include
humanitarian and stability operations in their annual schedule of war games and day-to-day
operations.
One day this month, the commander of the 13th Air Force - the largest air combat unit in the
region - was helping coordinate disaster assistance across East Asia.
"More often than not out here in the Pacific we deal with disasters," said Lieutenant General
Loyd S. "Chip" Utterback, the 13th Air Force commander.
"If there is not an earthquake a day going on, there is certainly a volcano erupting. There are
landslides in the Philippines, floods in Vietnam and Burma. India and Bangladesh deal with
flooding, cyclones, typhoons. Those skills that we use to go to battle are easily transferable in
many cases."
To expand the soft power tools in its quiver the military is in the process of enlisting more
specialists and training a new generation of officers in the concept of "peacetime engagement."
"The time we are concentrating on it is huge," said Colonel Sean Murphy, an Air Force medical
doctor who recently organized a weeklong training course for health officials in Southeast Asia.
"We really believe this is pure preventative medicine, no different than taking cholesterol pills to
prevent that heart attack." But Bacon and others say there must be a similar expansion at the
State Department.
"The whole question of how we organize ourselves to interact with fragile and failing states is a
crucial one," Bacon said.
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