 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to the 14th INS lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson, and I will serve as the host for today's event. Real Rammel Chatfield is unable to join us, but it's my pleasure to welcome you on her behalf. We've enjoyed bringing you this series as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. It has been expanded to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, including members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and participants from around the nation. Looking ahead, please join us on May 17th for the grand finale of this lecture series. We will feature the grandson of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Mr. Chester Nimitz-Lay, and the author of Nimitz at Ease, former Hawaiian Attorney General Captain Mike Lilly. These two speakers will provide an intimate look at the personal side of this great World War II hero. This is one event that's best shared in person, so we encourage as many people as possible to join us live in Spruin's Auditorium to hear and meet our distinguished speakers. Okay, on with the main event. During the presentation that follows, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom, and we'll get to as many as we can at the conclusion of the presentation. The magnitude and complexity of recent disasters have dramatically altered the generally accepted roles for militaries engaged in international humanitarian response. The nature and extent of military involvement in humanitarian assistance is context dependent. The purpose of this lecture will be to discuss how and why coordination and deconfliction strategies are essential for protection of civilian populations, humanitarian organizations engaged in response, and militaries assigned to host nations' stability operations. Heath Hank Breitman is the Director of the Civilian Military Humanitarian Response Program within the College of Maritime Operational Warfare, and also serves as the EMC Informationist Chair at the U.S. Naval War College. He is a commander in the Naval Reserve and the current commanding officer of the Navy Information Operations Command, Georgia's Fort Dix Unit. Lastly, he maintains a part-time private trauma and wellness practice in Newport, Rhode Island, where he specializes in complex trauma support and clinical hypnotherapy. Hank, over to you, sir. Well, thank you, John, and thank you, everyone, for being with us today. And for the folks who are here and the folks at home, it's great to be with you. Just amplifying something I heard from John a moment ago, it's absolutely incredible to me to think that we'll have a relative of Chester Nimitz here with us, so I know I'll be planning on attending that as well. One of the things that is really, really critical today is to understand the role of humanitarian response, because as we can see from events in Ukraine and other parts of the world, this is an area that continues to create challenges through a national security framework, through a humanitarian framework, and, of course, through military planning as well. So I'd like to share some thoughts with you on humanitarian assistance, realizing, of course, that everything I share with you today are my own views and opinions and really don't represent those of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense, but purely my own thoughts. So with that, why do we care about this? Why does it matter so much that we lean into the challenges of humanitarian response? Well, the world is changing. Climate change is a real thing, and it's something that has adversely impacted the way that we operate as a society and as a world. As resources become scarcer, that creates catalyst instability. And those catalysts manifest themselves, as you can see, through the prevalence of natural disasters. Those natural disasters often don't occur in a vacuum, but rather occur in connection with human conflict as well as the need to access those resources becomes greater. Taking all that into consideration, what we're also seeing is a substantial change in how the world actually lives, meaning that folks are becoming more and more urbanized. Now I know a lot of us, especially during the era of COVID that started to abate, said, hey, I'm just going to move to the back 40. I'm not going to live somewhere in a densely populated environment. Most people don't have that option. And indeed, as coastline erodes and waters rise, more and more people are moving towards the coast. Along with that, cities are becoming more densely populated. Indeed, the rise of mega cities, these cities have greater than 18 million people are becoming far more the norm than we've seen in the past. So taking these changes in climate, taking this resource scarcity and these catalyst instability, you can see why understanding humanitarian response is so critical to us today. Why does that matter to us? Why do militaries care anything about humanitarian response? Well, the main reason is what we offer that no one else offers is exquisite sustainment logistics capability. We have lift. We have ships. We have aircraft. We have a unique ability to provide material to a population in need. And although many countries have their own organic capabilities, and there are lots of private sector organizations and non-governmental organizations that support humanitarian efforts, and we'll talk about some of them, the reality is that we can get there first. We can get there with lots of stuff. And we have the ability to support a population in need. And as you can see in this graphic, that left-hand side, that crisis point, it's really militaries who provide that response. But our goal is to depart the pattern, to leave the theater as quickly as we arrive. Once we reach a point where there's stability, once we reach a point where the host nation can maintain its own operations, we want to leave as quickly as we can because our primary mission, military's mission, is not humanitarian response. We have our own war fighting opportunities and requirements that we have to meet. So hang on to that. Hang on to that left side and realize how this works. For example, in response to Typhoon Hyann, Yolanda, in response to the Nepal operation, both of which I provided to you here, you can see again on the left-hand side, and we provide that immediate response, that logistics piece, that sustainment piece, with the goal being ultimately, we'll turn that over to other organizations, of course, coordinated through the host nation, which I'll talk about in just a little bit as well, and then depart the pattern. But you can see on the left-hand side, just how critical that relief aspect is. And it's critical not just to support the population that has now suffered loss, but to prevent further loss. Again, each day that goes on, if those resources are not available, that creates more and more potentials for instability within the host nation. So what does that mean for us? Well, in our Navy, and within our Department of Defense, we have a joint publication, 329, that helps guide our efforts in foreign humanitarian assistance, and specifically helps to guide our efforts in foreign disaster response, which is a subset of foreign humanitarian assistance, because there's lots of things that fall under that umbrella. But for us today, we're really talking mostly about disaster response. We're really talking mostly about supporting a population in need, whether it's due to a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, some other kind of natural event, or some kind of a complex emergency, where maybe an armed group or some instability within a nation with rival factions has created challenges. So those complex emergencies and those natural disasters are both coordinated through Joint Publication 329. And we spend a lot of time here in Newport through our humanitarian response program, through the Joint Humanitarian Operations course, and other types of academic and practical activities, teaching folks how to respond following this framework. Why that matters is because we do it. And we don't do this as much as you might think. In fact, I'll share some data with you in just a little bit that shows that actually the Department of State manages many of these activities without military's engagement. But when we do respond, we respond quickly, we respond professionally, and we respond with the equipment and material we need to support a population in need. And the definition for foreign disaster relief that I've provided you here really emphasizes that immediate need to alleviate human suffering. And for us, that's really what it's all about. And making sure that when we arrive, there's a clearly defined end state. So as I said, returning to steady state, returning to operations, that's what it's all about for us. So there are three primary principles that we follow. And it's really important you understand these. And I'll kind of compress them into one thought. Any folks who might like old movies, like any of the old vampire movies or TV shows. And I know when I say twilight, some people will say, well, Hank, that's older, it's new, depending on your perspective. But whether you watch shows like Twilight, or you might watch a show True Blood that used to be on TV, any of these shows, one of the common characteristics of these shows is that the vampire couldn't just come into someone's house. They had to be invited into the house. And for the purposes of humanitarian response, and for the purposes of 329, we are that vampire, meaning the military, any government entity, any organization for that matter cannot just respond to a host nation. They have to be invited in by the host nation. And once they're invited in, much like that proverbial vampire, the owner of that house can go get some holy water or garlic strand or something else to chase the vampire away. They can send us home anytime they choose. So that's really important to understand that we are always there at the behest of the host nation. And as a military, we're there because there are specific strategic objectives we're trying to meet for the United States. So yes, there are things we do because they're the right thing to do, but we're doing them because our national security strategy tells us there's a reason to be there providing this support. Always remember that the host nation is always in charge and it's always in charge because we're supporting usually a government or another organization that doesn't have the ability to fully manage that crisis itself. There are lots of different types of responses where governments have great capability. There are lots of countries that have excellent capabilities as strong as our own FEMA. But the challenge is in a really catastrophic event, those can become overwhelmed. And that's when we get involved. As I said, we're really there because there's a need on the behalf of the US to meet a national security objective. So moving from there, we also talk about the role of the affected state. And the affected state, again, is always in charge. They are the first responder. They have that primary responsibility. And they have to allow us to come in, but not just us. Anyone who works within that setting, any international organization who's working within that country has to be invited in. And just like us, just like this vampire, we can be told or they can be told that they need to leave as well. And we'll talk more about some of those international governmental organizations and international humanitarian organizations in just a little bit. So for us, one of the things that is unique about the US system is we're actually coordinated through the Department of State. And we're coordinated through something called the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. Now, if you took a class a while ago in humanitarian response or HADR, you might have heard the term OFTA, which is not the name of a polka from Chicago. It's the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Well, OFTA actually was reinvented, reorganized under the last administration into the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. So we actually have an organization now that's laser focused on providing humanitarian response similar to OFTA, but with some slight nuances and some slight changes in terms of how they're organized. But that same mandate to save lives, to alleviate human suffering, and to mitigate the impact of disaster. What's important to understand is those same requirements still apply. The host nation has to ask for help. And again, that can be awkward. That can be challenging because some host nations are reluctant to seek that response from the US military or other military entities or from the US government at large. But once that's been requested and it's determined to be in the interests of the United States, we will always render that support. We render that support through that BHA asset, predominantly known as DART, the Disaster Assistance and Response Team. And I've actually provided a little graphic that I'll show you in a little bit that will show you how BHA is organized and how these DART teams work in the field to support certain regions of the country, where we tend to see a prevalence of natural disasters around the world. So those country teams work around the world in different areas. What I also want to mention too is everything we're talking about today, we're talking about foreign humanitarian assistance. Some folks may wonder about hurricanes in the US or natural disasters in the US. We're not talking about any of that. We're not talking about the US model, Defense Support for Civil Authority or DISCA. We're talking about foreign response, foreign humanitarian assistance under 329. So here are the three areas that they actually work under within BHA, funding, commodities, and personnel and services. And I'll touch on each of them briefly. The first one is funding, because money always matters. Now what's always interesting is when we talk about the money piece, a lot of people think of the US government as this vast checkbook. And if another country asks for support, of course the US is going to open its checkbook to support that country, provided it's in our own national strategic objectives to do so. But what's interesting is the amount that we can write that check for, again, if the host nation requests it, is not as large as you might think. It's $100,000. Maybe on $100,000, thank my mortgages more than that, $100,000. But believe it or not, that $100,000 goes a really long way. And the reason is we have these stockpiles pre-positioned all over the world, and I'll show you some of that in just a little bit, that we can access very quickly under contract to support that population in need. So a lot of this has been worked out in advance, and that $100,000 actually works pretty well in terms of a catalyst to provide that aid. The commodities that support that relief, I'll show you where those are located, give you that little schematic, and also where the personnel are located, including those BHA offices and those disaster assistance response teams that would support a population in need and service the US coordinating mechanism for response. So as I said, here are the commodities, here's the stockpiles, and you can see that many of them are located in parts of the world, where we tend to have a prevalence of natural disasters. Now, not exclusively, and certainly there are other catalyst instability beyond natural disasters, but you can see here why they're pre-positioned where they are, areas that we tend to have typhoons, tsunamis, hurricanes, other kinds of disasters. And the commodities themselves are actually set up in kits that can provide for that population, whether we're talking about shelter or water or hygiene, any of your basic sustainment of human life, including human dignity, and I'll talk about that momentarily. If you've never been to a BHA office or to a BHA warehouse, they're really, really cool, because they are truly Lean Six Sigma operations in process. You can really see how they pack every square foot, every square inch of these with materials in a way that's highly efficient to get that material then loaded onto vehicles, whether it's aircraft or trucks or other kinds of apparatus to provide for that population in need, but are really, really neat engineering feet the way that's actually done. And as I said, those stockpiles are actually organized based on need and based on assessment, and there's a process called the spear standards, and those spear standards actually tell us what we need to maintain human life and human dignity. So you can see here, I gave you some of the standards for water and sanitation hygiene, for shelter, for food, and for human health, and you can see here what those standards actually are. And again, those warehouses help provide these materials in a way that meets all of these spear standards. The human dignity part is very important. We don't always think about that, but certainly that's important. If we're going to create a facility or a location to help people after a disaster, we always want to be respectful of them. And we always want to think too about the cultural context of the aid we're providing. Are we providing a halal meal, for example, if it's a Muslim population or a kosher meal, if they happen to be of the Jewish faith, whatever their beliefs are, their dietary systems, their cultural context, all of that is considered too in the delivery of aid. So where are these folks located? Well, just to show you again on a map, you can see the parts of the developing world where there tends to be a greater prevalence due to a lack of existing assets, but other parts of the world as well where natural disasters tend to be prevalent. And again, you can see how we have full-time personnel. And then we also have people who are often co-located with the geographic combatant commanders. So they can provide support, not just back to the Department of State, but to answer those questions in a liaison capacity that the military geographic combatant commander may have as well. This all flows through a document. And that document is called a mitam, or mission-tasking matrix. And if it looks low-tech, that's because it is. This is literally a spreadsheet. And it's not a fancy spreadsheet with pivot tables and VLOOK-ups and all kinds of stuff. It's meant to run on a standalone laptop and allow that dark team member, allow that particular representative from BHA to input information very quickly in terms of what capabilities will meet whatever requirements are necessary to support that population in need. Now, this is one of the things that we talk a lot about in the courses we teach at the Naval War College in humanitarian response, because many commanders, they're used to certain airframes or ships or other kinds of platforms, and they like them. So they might say, Hank, I want three LSDs to go here. Well, what we work really hard to do in the humanitarian arena is not say, tell me what kind of platform you want. Tell me what effect you're trying to achieve. What's that end state? And then, actually, BHA does a really, really good job of help identifying what asset, what platform is appropriate based on that capability, based on that end state. So rather than dictating, for example, at the joint task force level, rather than dictating what ship or what type of equipment to use, the need is asked for. And once that need is determined, they can reverse engineer what might be the closest asset or appropriate asset to support that population in need. All of this is tracked and coordinated through this spreadsheet process. And if you're wondering why, well, one, it's so that we can really cross coordinate and deconflict. And the other reason, which may sound a little bit less important, but it is very much important, and Admiral Chatfield and I have talked about this in the past, is actually the money piece of this. Because by tracking all of this, we're tracking the money, how much money is spent on certain assets, on certain capabilities to support a population to need. And that's reimbursable to many of those combatant commanders. And if you don't think that a combatant commander cares about the money at the end of the day or a fleet commander cares about the money, at the end of the day, you better believe they do. Because they don't want to see that come out of their own operating budget when they have war fighting to do in their own right. So tracking the money, ensuring that we have an ability to manage in a fiscally responsible way, is also an important part of the Mitam process. And of course, we also have this matrix that really shows how aid is delivered. And I said this earlier. It might surprise you to see that the majority of responses that are up here are not military responses. There are other Department of State responses. So military responses are actually only a small part of overall natural disaster and humanitarian response assistance provided by the United States. We can get there quick. We can provide logistics and aid to a population in need. But for some of those longer sustainment projects, USAID, the US Agency for International Development, where BHA lives, actually manages a lot of those projects independent of any kind of a military entity being involved. Here are just some examples of the different types of cooperative activities that BHA and the military has been involved with. Overwhelmingly natural disasters, but there are some complex emergencies listed in here as well. And as you can see, going back in our minds to the earlier positioning of some of those commodities and also those personnel, you can see how those map, in many cases, to where these assets and personnel are located. Now, what I'd like to do is focus on this center in my little graphic here. Hopefully, you can see where I drew a little circle around the entity's requesting assistance as we start to move from BHA's role into understanding the humanitarian framework, specifically understanding how humanitarian organizations, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, support humanitarian relief. And they do that following a model that I'll share with you momentarily. But as you digest what you see here, you can see just what a large role organizations like the United Nations, those non-governmental organizations, and the host nation, of course, itself with its local NGO capabilities plays as well. Because this is all part of this complex ecosystem, the humanitarian ecosystem. And if this graphic looks like a living breathing thing, like a living organism, it's because it is. Because over time, it changes, it adapts, it evolves. At various points, you may see a military organization doing more. At various points, you may see a non-governmental organization, organizations doing more, depending on where we are in terms of the response. But all of this is occurring, if you will, within that larger organism of the host nation. And that's what you always want to remember. There are specific types of organizations that are involved in humanitarian response. And I've listed them here. There are some special kinds of organizations, like the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. You can see their role. Their role is really unique because many of these organizations tend to exist more in natural disasters. Whereas organizations like the ICRC, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, they tend to exist in both war and conflict settings, as well as natural disaster settings as well. So you'll see them involved in lots of different activities that you might not see some of these other non-governmental organizations or other entities involved with. Of course, you also have the United Nations entities as well. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees, you've probably heard a lot about them in the context of Ukraine. We'll talk about Ukraine in just a little bit. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, we'll talk about the role that they play in coordinating a system or process momentarily. World Food Program and World Health Organization, the latter of which you've probably heard a lot about in the context of COVID-19 response. And then below that, you can see here those international non-governmental organizations, but specifically humanitarian non-governmental organizations, MSF, MSF Medicine Saint-Polletier, known as Doctors Without Borders, World Vision. These are just an example of some of the humanitarian non-governmental organizations that exist. And at the bottom of this graphic, and the reason that that particular bar is as large as it is, are the local non-governmental organizations contrasted with the international governmental organizations. And these local NGOs are critical because many of them are resident within that host nation. They've spent years building relationships and interrelationships, including with the private sector in many cases, that allow them to support that population in need. And we've all heard the saying many times, especially in a military context, you can't search trust. They've already built that trust in many cases within the host nation as well. So as you can see from this relatively scary wire diagram that we have here, there's a fog of relief when we provide aid. And that fog of relief comes from all these different actors and entities being involved. And we'll talk about how we try and de-conflict some of these momentarily. But for our military folks who are listening in tonight, you're probably used to seeing nice, clean, organized command and control diagrams, wire diagrams with supported supporting relationships. And you're looking at this and this looks like your worst joint professional military education nightmare. But the reality is this model actually works pretty well that we'll talk about momentarily, because so many of these organizations, particularly the humanitarian organizations, have worked together so much that they actually are comfortable working within this fog of relief. The ones that often, in my opinion, have the greatest challenge with this are militaries because we're used to clear command and control authorities. You don't have that in this kind of a structure. You don't have that because you're dealing with lots of different stakeholders here. You're dealing with the host nation as a primary stakeholder and supported element. You're dealing with internally displaced persons, which are people that have now been displaced from their home, but are still within the geographic borders of that particular nation. And you're dealing often with refugees too, which are people who have now left that particular host nation. And the challenge is, of course, when someone becomes a refugee, when they leave the borders of their country, they may not come back. So we always try and support that population of internally displaced persons within the borders of that country to preclude them from leaving. And we'll talk more about that when we talk about the Ukraine in just a little bit. Those humanitarian non-governmental organizations follow these four core humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. And I want to stress this. Not all non-governmental organizations are humanitarian non-governmental organizations. And the reason for that is some have an advocacy role. Some have a particular political position. But if an organization is truly, truly a humanitarian non-governmental organization, all of these tenants apply and all these tenants are followed within that organization. In fact, you can go on the line and on web and look up some of these different kinds of organizations to see if in fact they're called a humanitarian organization, if they identify as one themselves, or if they're more of an advocacy organization, depending on the perspective that they may have. Militaries cannot be a humanitarian organization. There are things that we can do that are humanitarian like to support a population in need. But we can't follow these four principles because again, at the end of the day, we're always there to support the host nation. We're always there to meet that national security strategic objective that's set forth that has us have that relationship with the host nation. I mentioned OSHA earlier and the role that they play, they play a critical role in helping coordinate and work across the humanitarian space, work across the ecosystem. All of the other countries of the world, except of course for the United States, work almost hand in hand with OSHA. We're the kind of the odd duck here that has the Department of State and the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance with its dark coordinating mechanism that's different. But everyone else tends to work directly with this OSHA element as a coordinating function. It'll talk more about how they coordinate momentarily, but you can see they do everything from coordination to information management to financing and advocacy and policy development. They also do a lot of training. All of us who work within the humanitarian response program here at the Naval War College have gone through various types of civilian military coordination training that's sponsored by OSHA. And they do a lot of different kinds of courses and education and research with us as well. I mentioned that OSHA helps organize a process and that process is called the cluster system. Now, I know for a lot of us who come from a military background, cluster may have a different connotation, but specifically within the humanitarian arena, the cluster system refers to those specific sectors that work symbiotically to respond to a disaster, some type of an event, in a way that provides for that population in need and does that without following that traditional command and control model that many of us are used to in terms of military response. It's much more of a consensus based model. It's much more of a coordinating mechanism model. If you look at this, it looks almost like a trivial pursuit circle that would have little pie wedges in it. Those pie wedges, those sectors represent those key areas that are necessary to support a population in need. And for our military folks who are listening in who've studied the joint planning process, you can see how many of these actually align with the joint functions, the seven joint functions or six Navy functions that we look at in terms of planning as well. So there's a lot of alignment, but as you can see on the right-hand side, we don't specifically plug into this system because as a military, it would not be of anyone for us to be directly involved in this particular model because of those core humanitarian principles that those organizations must maintain those humanitarian NGOs. So we will have liaison, we'll coordinate effectively through someone who would usually be our humanitarian coordinator. We'll work through BHA and the U.S. Model through that DART team to help coordinate that with the MyTAM process that I spoke about earlier, but we don't directly engage in the cluster process. And just as an example of that, you can see a little map here, a little drawing, if you will, a picture of a particular meeting that was held in the Philippines and this is an actual cluster meeting. You can see in the middle that kind of little table there with little sticky notes. That's actually the opportunity to develop a common operating picture, some way to visualize the space that's very low-tech because, again, you may not have access to Wi-Fi or electricity for that matter. So this is actually how they coordinated those different sectors, those different parts of the pie chart. What you can't see here is way, way in the back there are some Canadian military officers who were invited in. That's really the exception. It's very, very rare that you'll see military members in a cluster meeting for those reasons that I mentioned to preserve those humanitarian principles because all it takes is the appearance of a military working in collusion or coordination with a humanitarian organization to impact its neutrality or ability to deliver aid elsewhere in the world or in a conflict setting. So we work really hard to de-conflict these wherever possible and, of course, humanitarian organizations insist on that. And I like this little quote I put down here at the bottom about unity of command. Again, in the military, we really like unity of command, but with the cluster model, it's much more about unity of effort than it is unity of command. So where do we fit in? Well, I already talked a little bit about this. I talked about the joint functions. I talked about what we provide in terms of supporting a population in need. You can see how just critically important logistics and sustainment are to supporting that population. Whether we're talking about medical support, whether we're talking about engineering, all of these things have a value in terms of supporting the cluster system and supporting that host nation who is always at the forefront of everything that we do. How we do that is through this middle circle. And if we were doing this live and in person with an audience here of a larger size, I'd probably walk around with boxes of cookies. I'd hand you cookies and people would look at me like I'm crazy. And the reason I do that is to show you that cookies are probably not the best approach to supporting a population in need. Because if you hand someone a cookie, they eat it and they walk away. And if we as a military hand people cookies, what we're basically doing is saying, hey, you can't take care of yourself, so we'll take care of you for you. And what we're also doing is saying that the host nation who we're there to support can't necessarily do that either. And that's the wrong message to send. So what we strive for instead is this truck approach, where rather than handing each person a cookie, we may have pallets of cookies that we're now delivering on a truck to the host nation. And the host nation is responsible now for delivering that aid efficaciously to that population in need. Whether they do that directly or they do that through NGOs or other entities is up to them. But from our purpose, again, we're really trying to always ensure the legitimacy and the credibility of the host nation. Bridge would be building the bridges that would make the trucks have a place that they could flow through to then deliver the cookies. We do some of that, but a lot of that is later phasing reconstruction kinds of activities. And that tends to be less of a military function than other facets of USAID. Again, not saying we never do it. Often there's critical infrastructure that has to be repaired very quickly. And we're very good at that. But overwhelmingly, our focus tends to be on the truck aspect to support the host nation when they're in need of our help. So all of this comes together, as you can see here in this little kind of vets diagram that I provided with the clusters in yellow near the bottom, with us supporting the affected state, realizing that at any time they can tell us that they've had enough of us or they have it and we can go home. And the country team as well, working with the ambassador in the Department of State, and of course also working with the host nation and the geographic combatant commander. You can see how the international community engages in this graphic as well. There may be other militaries beyond ours. There are different ways that multiple militaries can be utilized in terms of response. Sometimes we'll be by function. So if one military is better, for example, at providing information or creating opportunities for a data flow, they may do that, whereas another might be doing surveying in the ports. So it really depends on what capabilities that military brings, how they'll be organized and how they'll be deconflicted to support that response. So from there, I wanted to take just a few minutes and talk about some differences in aid delivery models and systems between what we see in the United States with this BHA model and what we see in other countries, for example, the People's Republic of China. And I'll spend a few minutes talking about the PRC and I'll spend a few minutes talking about Russia. What you always want to remember about China is China is, without question, the most transparent deliverer of aid there is. And anything you want to know about how China delivers aid, you can find out by reading the Belt and Road Initiative. China is wholly transparent in what its intent is. And that intent is to create access, to create opportunities for resource connectivity to further expand Chinese interests and influence around the world. They're very clear about it. And people say, no, it's not that. It can't be that simple. It is. Read the Belt and Road Initiative. They're very clear in why they deliver aid. They're very clear about what parts of the world they deliver aid to and why as well. Often those are parts of the world that have rare earth materials. Often those are parts of the world that have port access. Often those are parts of the world where if they can create access for themselves and maintain it, it may hamper other countries, including us, from having the ability to do that as well. So they're very transparent. They're also very careful because China only delivers aid at least at present in non-contested environments. So in natural disasters, not in those complex emergencies that I spoke about earlier, where there may be armed groups and armed actors or perhaps even armed combatants or engaged, they're much more involved in natural disaster response, whether it's in the Philippines, whether it's in Nepal or other parts of the world. And bluntly, again, in my opinion, the aid that they provide is a token and it's all for public affairs purposes. So what they're really doing is often showing boxes of materials like you see on the right here being provided to a population, doing it completely outside of the host nation and doing it in a way that really may not even best serve that population. But the public affairs footprint, if you will, the messaging that China is here to support really gets a lot of notice. So whereas a lot of what we're doing in the United States is behind the scenes supporting the host nation, China is doing this out in front with very small amounts of token aid. But in doing it, it looks like they're providing a lot of aid and we're not providing very much. That's one of the challenges that we face often in the way that we deliberate. And of course, their own vessels like the Peace Ark that you can see there on the left, they are providing aid, but certainly not to the level of extent that countries like the United States are. They see opportunity. And what's important to understand is whether we're talking about responding to a population in need after a natural disaster or in a pandemic, that aid always comes with a price. For example, the vaccine that China developed, which has now been distributed in many countries around the world for COVID-19 response, many people think it was free. Well, it wasn't free. If countries couldn't afford it, they basically signed a cheque that, hey, we'll come back at some point and we may ask you for something. If you remember the godfather with the wedding scene, kind of like that. You never know what's going to be asked for in terms of the favor. And of course, that's true whether the vaccine works or not. So the way that China manages their access is really, really about building out a footprint that aligns with the Belt and Road Initiative. Contrast that with Russia. And I'm very fortunate, you can't see him in the audience, but one of the preeminent scholars on Russia's aid delivery is with us here in the audience, Johnny Robinson. I'm very fortunate. I get to work with Mr. Robinson. He works with us in the humanitarian response program. And he's also a fellow at Brown. And a lot of what I'm working with now is actually the amazing work that he's produced as well. But what Russia does in terms of its aid delivery is their focus is always on soft power. So whereas China, it's really about access and influence. For Russia, at least this Russia, and I'll talk about that in a minute, it's really about showing that they can be anywhere, anytime to provide some type of soft power to create that presence, that forward presence. The reason that that's important to understand is there's a lot of mischaracterization about Russia of today, contrasted with the Soviet state. Russia of today has nothing to do with the USSR. Russia of today, revanchionist Russia, is an imperial Russia, a double-headed eagle Russia. No desire to turn into a Soviet state. No desire to turn back to that kind of a model, but rather an imperialist Russia, a czarist Russia. So soft power and power projection is an ability and a capability to try and create that appearance. Now, again, generally token aid delivery similar to China in that way, but with different types of aid delivered. One of the things that I always found mind blowing about Russian kinds of aid delivery is the way they define aid. And again, Mr. Robinson's done some great work on this and we laugh together a lot because one of the areas that Russia considers to be a huge source of aid is cultural diplomacy. So things like ballet, art, music, and that's all great, but not to a population who's in need. So their definition of aid is different than the kind of assistance that many of us think of. Also, their delivery of aid tends to come through their Ministry of Defense. So it tends to be a military focused model for aid delivery. Yes, they have their MRCOM, which is like their version of FEMA that provides some level of support, depending on where they're actually delivering aid, but Russia is very much a military aid delivery model. So very different than those other structures that we talked about earlier in the presentation. And as you can see in the lower right on this graphic, in terms of how they provide aid, 87% of that aid that's actually provided in that secular official state orientation matrix comes from the Ministry of Defense. So really a different model than what we tend to have in the U.S. where we're supporting the Department of State and the Bureau of Human Attorney Assistance. When we look at Russia's aid delivery, what we see about it is that they're not very good at doing multiple aid delivery opportunities at the same time. So they can focus on one conflict or one area or one type of aid response, but not multiple responses. They tend to deliver to urban areas as opposed to rural areas. They tend to just kind of drop aid as opposed to distribute aid in the way that we would tend to do using the planning processes that we have in place and working with OCHA and other entities as well. You can see in the upper right some examples in Syria of Russian aid delivery. And Johnny will be the first one to tell you that I think that bag had like a little thing of maybe bread or flour and sugar in it, but certainly not the kind of sustenance you saw in those BHA commodities kits that we talked about earlier. But it has a nice flag on it, and it makes a good public image in terms of direct aid delivery. And that's what it tends to be used at. In the lower right, you can actually see kind of this confluence or hybrid of a military member or a quasi-military member, humanitarian aid deliverer, kind of blurring the lines in terms of are they providing military aid or humanitarian aid? So it's really, really complex and really confusing to a population when they don't know where their aid is coming from and whether they can trust those who are delivering that aid. So for organizations like MSF, Medicines en Frontier, whose whole ability to deliver aid is based on trust and access, when folks like this start blurring the lines, it makes it much more difficult for them to do their job. I want to spend just a few minutes before we get into questions to talk about the Ukraine a little bit. And again, my own experiences, my own opinions, I did spend a little bit of time in March over at Navier Six Fleet in Naples, Italy, doing my best to support the humanitarian response to the ongoing challenges in the Ukraine. So I'll frame some of my comments through that particular perspective. I've also given you some visualizations here. On the left, you can see the issues that we have in terms of military assault, military affront, where we're currently seeing militaries engaged in the Ukraine. And on the right, you can actually see the refugee picture. Now remember, refugees, people who have now left Ukraine and gone over its borders, the other parts of the world contrasted with internally displaced persons, or those folks who are still within the borders of the Ukraine. My concern is that the more people that leave the Ukraine, the less likely it may be they come back. And depending on their ethnic composition, what that may mean is ultimately you're left with a preponderance of ethnic Russians in the Ukraine who are hungry and starving, all the easier than for the Ministry of Defense to come in and feed them and clothe them. And the next thing you know, they're waving the Russian Federation flag. So a concern that I have about the refugee push as opposed to supporting internally displaced persons, the challenging issue is it's really, really difficult to get aid into the Ukraine right now. Now, there are some places that are doing it. There are some NGOs that have been successful in navigating borders and Poland and Bulgaria and elsewhere to provide aid for some pockets of the population, but not to the extent that many of us would like to see at this point. And again, providing all that aid to Poland is great for the refugees who go to Poland, but not if you're trying to help IDPs within the border of the Ukraine. The other issue, of course, I'm worried about is what happens over time, assuming that those refugees do return and many of them have expressed an interest to return. Remember, at present, it's mostly women and children who have left the Ukraine. So their husbands, in many cases, are still fighting in the Ukraine under the hopes that they'll return to what? So the concern is that if the country is basically leveled and it has no infrastructure, who will rebuild that country enter China? And that's the concern I have going back to the earlier discussion we had about China and access and influence. So just imagine a world where you have a China hegemon now providing for later sustainment and stability in the Ukraine. And that's something that's troubling to me and something that honestly keeps me up at night. What's also interesting is you can't really believe a lot of the data that are out there in the field. Some of the UN data are wonderful. The Russian data, I will tell you bluntly, I don't believe any of it. We were talking in our office the other day about what Russia is asserting as its humanitarian aid delivery. And what's fascinating about Russia is the numbers are spiking and we figured out why we think that what Russia is doing is they're counting all of the aid that they provide to their own military forces to feed and clothe them as humanitarian aid. So kind of an interesting way to define aid, but something that we're actually seeing that is why we don't really trust any of those data. The last thing I share with you is that we have a robust capability, again thanks to Mr. Robinson, within our own humanitarian response program to manage data, to manage information and to share those data, whether it's the presentation I'm giving you now or the videos that we often produce or any of the games or simulations or exercises connected to humanitarian response. We have a central repository for all of that information and that's our library guide and it's publicly available. You can see it up here. You just need to go to the Naval War College site and happily click on things there and we're very happy when you do that because it lets us see how we're being a value to you. And with that I am happy to take any questions you may have for me. Thank you. Mr. Larroway. Thanks Dr. Brightman. Considering the unique role as you mentioned that the military can play in these events specifically in the early emergency phase logistics and sustainment, and then also considering the fact that the Navy is decommissioning its amphibious ships at a greater rate than we were building them and in some cases declining not to build them in favor of destroyers and submarines, those are very capable platforms for the primary mission war fighting but they don't necessarily offer capabilities of relief delivery. So should the services be considering HADR foreign humanitarian relief delivery more in how it shapes its future force? Yeah it's a great question. I am not the Chief of Naval Operations nor am I a member of the Joint Chief so I will just give you World Acorn Hank. I think that the answer you would probably get through a military war fighting lens is not our job. The global force for good bumper sticker if you will has waned and we're a war fighting force focused on war fighting and a strategic competition fight. That said from both the perspective of power projection similar to what we talked about with some of our peer competitors and humanitarian access or future access beyond humanitarian support it probably behooves us to offer more capabilities along humanitarian platforms. Whether we do that by partnering with certain non-governmental organizations to provide that capability through them or perhaps that gets readjusted as a Coast Guard mission set since many countries around the world are more comfortable working with traditional Coast Guards because of their role in their mission set which tends to align more with a Coast Guard mission that could be an option but I would say from a military from a Navy and from a DOD perspective right now I don't see that as a war fighting capability issue that we'd probably lean into. It's a great question. Good afternoon Professor Brightman. The first question that came in over Zoom was can you describe the importance and impact of long-term international service organizations in humanitarian assistance for example Rotary International and the eradication of polio across the globe a 30-plus year initiative? Yeah certainly many of the changes that have occurred both in public health and in medicine are due to partnerships thinking of things like the March of Dimes and other campaigns that were engaged in with non-governmental entities those are certainly still an important part of the relationships that we have. Again you tend to see those relationships more between non-governmental organizations and those other kinds of international service organizations rather than directly with the US government and I'll be blunt as someone who does his best to support every year the the CFC the combined federal campaign more often than not those private sector organizations can do it more efficiently and effectively from a cost perspective than partnering with the US government which probably isn't shocking to most folks so where those partnerships can occur between organizations as opposed to between and service organization and the US government that's probably a better marriage for the two. Another question that came in is can you wavetop the potential links between climate change and HADR events? Yeah well I'm certainly not a climatologist I've a degree in leisure studies all truth be told so really I do and what's interesting about that is that when we look at climate whether you believe that climate is increasing temperature or climate is increasing steady state of wave height whatever your particular area of focus is whether it's emission or ozone what you see with all this is resource scarcity so the wavetop piece of it is whether we're talking about depletion of fishery stocks whether we're talking about depletion of agricultural lands whether we're talking about water scarcity potable water and drinkable water as we're even seeing in parts of the United States right now right that becomes an issue that is very much aligned with climate change so regardless of people's views or focus areas on climate change it definitely will be adversely impacting habitat and will definitely be an area that we need to be planning towards in terms of humanitarian response in the future. And then one final question the state partnership program that being the states in the United States you know some of these states have relationships with different Eastern European countries including Ukraine California Ukraine I think was developed in 93 and Illinois and Poland in 93 are you seeing some of these states involved in support to their respective countries? Yeah it's a great question so any of the partnership programs and we actually talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago with some folks across the college because we have these partnership programs these state level partnership programs and I know when I used to be involved with the jack which is the joint enabling capabilities program that they have we always kind of chuckled that the state of Georgia in the United States was aligned with the country of Georgia and you saw similar kinds of partnerships with different states and different nations around the world I believe believe or not that Georgia is also aligned with the Ukraine as a state partner what we can do in terms of those state level partnerships is very very limited and codified very very heavily under title 10 and in federal law and as in many cases very very limited to security partnerships and security partnerships not meaning military combat training but rather security kinds of activities at a much more micro level so I am aware at least from what's reported in open source media that some states such as Florida I believe are producing and developing some training curricula and potentially even some field-based training with some Ukrainian forces that training is occurring outside of the Ukraine I believe in Germany there's a small contingent of personnel being trained but being trained as part of that very micro level security agreement within the auspices and confines of title 10 so that there's absolutely no spillover to a larger kind of war fighting beyond what those specific authorities allow all right well I am seeing some thumbs up from the back so thank you so much I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you please feel free to reach out to me and my team if we can be of any support to you in the future and thank you all so much okay two little admin remarks before we finish here once again reminder May 17th we'll learn an awful lot about Chester Nimitz from people who really knew him well secondly you may have seen the note in the announcement for this event about the certificates of participation anyone who has participated in at least 60% of the lectures that we have offered is entitled to get a certificate of participation it's on the honor system we're not going to check we're not going to give you a quiz we're going to accept your word if you believe you have qualified for that certificate of participation please send a note to commander Gary Ross in the public affairs office give us the name you'd like to see ins inscribed on the certificate and a snail mail address and we ultimately will put those in the mail to you so thank you very much for joining us that's it for tonight