 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 our seventh issues in national security lecture for academic year 22-23. I'm Commander Gary Ross and I'll serve as your host for today's event. Both Professor John Jackson and Radmal Shoshana Chaffield, president of the Naval War College are on a well-deserved vacation and I'm looking forward to hosting you here today. For anyone just joining us, this series was originally conceived 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. Over the past five years it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, and colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport. We will be offering eight additional lectures between now and May 2023, spaced about two weeks apart on a variety of national security topics and issues. An announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture will be sent by me both on email and posted on our website. Our next lecture will be on Tuesday, February 7th. We will be featuring an engaging discussion on homeland defense with military professor, Lieutenant Colonel Chahar Matisik. For each lecture, speakers will provide remarks for about 45 minutes and then for the remaining 15 minutes or so we'll answer questions from you. Okay, so on with the main event, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom and for those participating in the audience, please you'll be using your microphones and we will address those questions at the conclusion of the presentation. I am very pleased to introduce our speaker, Professor Hank Brightman, who will speak today about foreign humanitarian assistance and the interrelationship with strategic competition. The magnitude and complexity of recent disasters have dramatically altered the generally accepted roles for militaries engaged in international humanitarian response. Humanitarian civilian military coordination is increasingly at the forefront of natural disaster response in events such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes and typhoons. This lecture will discuss how and why coordination strategies are essential for protection of civilian populations, humanitarian organizations engaged in response, and militaries assigned to host nation stability operations. Special emphasis will be placed on the present day Russia-Ukraine conflict and how both the PRC and Russia differ in their delivery of humanitarian aid from the United States. He-Tank Brightman is the director and full professor in the civilian military humanitarian response program within the College of Maritime Operational Warfare and also serves as the EMC information chair at the U.S. Naval War College. From 2008 to 2016, he served as an associate professor, professor and director of applied research and analysis in the War Gaming Department. He is a captain in the Navy Reserve and the current commanding officer of Navy Information Operations Command, Georgia's Fort Dix Unit. In April 2023, he will be deploying to the Middle East in his military capacity to support Operation Inherent Resolve. I am pleased to pass the microphone over to Hank Brightman. Well, thank you Commander Ross. It's always great to be with you and thank you to everyone who's with us at home and of course here in person dodging various snowstorms before today and then apparently a little later on in the week. It's great to see our students from our elective series here today. Of course, a noted scholar, Brown global fellow, Johnny Robinson, who's here with us, his wife, Josie as well, and the rest of the leaders who are with us. So we are going to talk today about the issue of humanitarian response, specifically foreign humanitarian response within the context or container of strategic competition. What was formerly referred to as great power competition. Some of you may be familiar with that term as well. Of course, what I will share with you are my own thoughts, beliefs, opinions, not necessarily those of the U.S. government, the Naval War College or any other entity. That said, what's important to understand is that there's a reason why we're so focused today on foreign humanitarian assistance and a lot of it has to do with how the climate is indeed changing and how natural disasters have become a marker for much of what we deal with day to day in terms of our planning effort. And you can see from the slide here just what a substantial increase we have now because of climate change, because of some of the factors around the world that cause us to provide response in these kind of climactic conditions. But wait, of course, there's more. People have also started to move and what we've seen is much more of a movement towards the coast as waters rise, as sea levels rise. As the coasts become smaller, people become more densely compressed into those areas that you can see illustrated on the map here. We also have an increase in conflict and it's important to understand when we talk about foreign humanitarian assistance, we're talking about it through two lenses. Permissive environments, natural disasters, settings that many of us are familiar with, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, but also with increasing prevalence, complex emergencies, those conflict settings where resource scarcity has led to intensity and conflict. And when you look at this particular graphic, you can see around the world some of those various conflicts, the darker the color, in some cases the more intense those particular conflicts are. If you're wondering why you're seeing any in the U.S., many of these were taken from some of the various conflicts in terms of protest and post-protest kinds of events that have occurred shootings and other tragedies within the United States as well, holistically during this period. For us, as military members, we tend to live in this slide that you see here specifically in this little arch where this hump moves from left to right and that's because what militaries provide is they provide a response capability like no one else can. We have strategic lift, we have planning excellence, we can get aid to a population in need and in the case and context of what we're discussing today those populations are outside the United States. We're not talking about what we refer to as DISCA, Defense Support for Civil Authority, which are those responses within the U.S. but rather outside the United States and that's where our need and our value really plays out because we have the ability to support those populations. What's always important to remember however is we're only there to provide that immediate life-saving support that's necessary in the moment because we have missions to perform as well. So while yes, we are a global force for good, we have our own missions, our own warfighting capabilities and strategies that are important to keep our nation safe to defend the homeland. So to do that our job is to go in, provide that support at the behest of the host nation that's necessary to help that population in need, to alleviate suffering and to help sustain human life and then to depart. Examples of that you may be familiar with include Haiti, the Philippines and Nepal where we've seen these kinds of response operations and you can see from the graphic here just how much of that involves lift, strategic assets, aircraft, ships, other large vessels that allow us to provide aid quickly to a population in need and then the smaller airframes and smaller types of equipment that allow us to get that to those remote areas where a population in fact needs that support. In all cases as you can see in this graphic our goal is to get in as I said provide that support and transition out so that we're back performing those warfighting missions which are at the crux of our responsibilities. Towards that end we actually have a joint publication that helps underscore everything that we do in our US military and that's called Joint Publication 3-29, Foreign Humanitarian Assistance and for us our focus tends to be on foreign disaster relief as a subset of foreign humanitarian assistance and as you can see here this has taken right out of the publication these are the kinds of things that we tend to respond to to support those populations in need off of US soil. Specifically we're looking at foreign disaster relief so we're looking at how do we provide that assistance how do we alleviate human suffering how do we provide support for that population in need and when we do that we always want to be thinking again how do we transition out how do we make sure we don't overstay our welcome and return to those various operations that support our warfighting mission. We have some ways that we do that within the United States that differ from our foreign partners and we'll talk about that for just a few minutes because the US does have its own system the system that we use is born through the US Agency for International Development or USAID and USAID has a Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance that Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance coordinates all of that aid delivery for us outside of US borders and you can see here the kinds of roles that they play in terms of coordinating those efforts funding those efforts which we'll talk more about in a few minutes providing direct support and personnel which we call DART teams disaster assistance response teams that are small teams that actually help coordinate that response on the ground what's important to remember about this is our system is different than some of our partners and we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. There are four specific criteria that the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance requires that we meet the first one there has to be a need if there's no need then there's no value in us supporting that particular operation the emphasis has to be on saving lives reducing human suffering mitigating the impact of emergencies and helping those vulnerable populations the third one and I'll foot stop this is we have to be invited in we are there at the behest of the host nation so unless the host nation invites us in we cannot provide we cannot render that aid to that population whoever dire the circumstances might be I like to think of the US and our other nations as well as vampires and much like the proverbial vampire the vampire cannot come into someone's house unless invited in so that host nation has to allow us in and yes much like the vampire if we overstay our welcome they can get out their garlic or other relics and throw us out anytime they choose to do that that's true for us and other actors who are responding to humanitarian crises so it's important to remember that and the fourth piece and this is a part that some folks wrestle with that particular mission that particular operation has to be some US strategic objective it has to be within the best interest of the United States based on our national security strategy for us to be there yes we do of course help those nations often that we're not even friendly with but there has to be a reason why we're there supporting that nation just a little more on that so you can see exactly how the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance at USAID coordinates with the Department of Defense we have robust activities and lines of operation that allow us to support in a way that is cohesive and coherent that's important because if we don't organize this correctly we can actually harm people and much like the Hippocratic Oath which says do no harm we want to do no harm when we respond to humanitarian crises so it's very important that we have a process moving from the Department of Defense through our geographic combatant commanders and our task forces that aligns with those civilian entities that provide that support as well and you can see that part of that support is not just providing mechanisms but providing stuff and this slide actually shows you on the left hand side where that stuff is located and that stuff are things like water bottles, plastic sheeting, food materials, other shelter materials that are necessary to support a population in need all around the world as you can see there are these various warehouses these warehouses are stocked and continuously refreshed with these kinds of materials now what you may be wondering is how does that stuff get to that population in need and how do we support that population in need as soon as that host nation invites us in says yes we need help immediately the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance USAID can write a check for a hundred thousand dollars now I know a lot of folks are probably saying a hundred thousand dollars hank my mortgage is more than that how can a hundred thousand dollars help a population in need it's because a lot of these contracting mechanisms have already been built that allow for materials to be loaded quickly their relationships with cargo companies and other delivery handling systems that allow for these materials to go from the warehouses to that population in need in quick order so that hundred thousand dollars actually goes quite a long way because of how these systems are organized and in addition to the stuff as I mentioned there are people and our geographic combatant commanders are co-located with these humanitarian assistance folks these assets who provide that support often working at the headquarters for those geographic combatant commanders so they can liaise provide support and of course also talk with the Department of State including the U.S. Ambassador who is assigned to that particular country because they obviously have a huge role on the ground and coordinating with the National Command Authority back in Washington all of this comes together in a document and if you're squinting at this document I feel your pain many of us who've lived with this document know that while it may be difficult to see it's critically important this is called a my-tam and a my-tam is a mission tasking matrix it's basically a spreadsheet and it's a very rudimentary spreadsheet there are no pivot tables and v-lookups or all those kinds of things that many of us who spend time working with excel may be familiar with this is very very simple what it allows is that Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance member that dark team member on the ground to help coordinate what needs to go where and what the best mechanism is to get it there because often that joint task force commander has a particular preference they may have a particular platform a ship or aircraft that they grew up with that they trained with and they tend to have a bias towards that but that dart representative may know about other assets or other equipment or other gear or materials that are more appropriate or located more closely to support that population in need so that dark coordinator will actually coordinate all of those capabilities make sure that the right platform based on the need the capability is brought to bear where it needs to go to accomplish that mission but wait there's more what this task force my-tam does rather for the task force is it allows us to track money expenditures that are made supporting a population in need and for the Department of Defense that's critically important because there's a reimbursement process for DoD for the fleet commanders or the geographic and back commanders at the end of the day so much like you would not want to go to dinner and be stuck with the bill if someone else had said they'd pay what this allows is for someone else to pay the bill meaning not the fleet commander or the geographic and back commander of the Department of Defense this goes through a State Department USAID process I mentioned this earlier but it's certainly worth repeating we cannot we will not ever respond to support a population without the express consent of the host nation they are the first responders they are the primary responders and until they give that consent not just to the U.S. but any other actor who might want to respond to support that population we just can't be there in addition to us there are other critical folks who help support humanitarian response and just to show you some of those different types of people we have those special organizations you may be familiar with the international committee of the Red Cross the Red Crescent the International Federation think of these as those large humanitarian organizations that provide support to vulnerable populations in need not just in permissive environments not just in floods earthquakes and natural disasters but also in conflict settings and war-torn countries even providing support to detainees to ensure that they get the resources they need or combatants to ensure that they get the resources they need in prisoner war camps so that role is critical and the Red Crosses play that role the international Red Crosses as opposed to the more regionalized local like American Red Cross that many of us may be familiar with in the U.S. then there are the U.N. agencies and for us the one that we deal with the most is the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OSHA we'll talk more about OSHA and the critical role that it plays in just a few minutes but you can see some of the other critical organizations World Food Program, World Health Organization I know during the COVID era which is still very much a thing but certainly different than it was a few years ago in terms of its propagation World Health Organization played a critical role in trying to fight that particular disease during the pandemic the High Commissioner on refugees importantly understanding that a refugee is someone who has left their geographic borders and moved to another nation whereas an IDP an internally displaced person is someone who remains within the geographic borders of that country so a little bit on them and then below them what many of us are familiar with which are the international NGOs so those organizations that will support populations in need around the world Medicine, San Fransier, World Vision, Care, Action Against Hunger these are just a few of the many international non-governmental organizations that exist many of whom have a specialization obviously MSF whereas we more commonly call it doctors without borders has a medical focus contrasted with other organizations like Team Rubicon which tend to be more logistics tend to be more surveying and support so it really depends on their area of expertise how they can best support that population in need and below them but most critically important are the local non-governmental organizations these are the organizations that are on the ground who generally already reside within the border of that particular affected state and have the resources to provide aid through networks, through contacts, through communications in many cases they built up through many many years so those local NGOs really are the base of the pyramid in terms of making sure aid is provided those non-governmental organizations whether they're international or local have core humanitarian principles that they follow and it's important as you read through these to understand that not all non-governmental organizations are humanitarian organizations for example some organizations have a political perspective they lobby for certain types of policies they probably wouldn't fall within these four specific parameters to be designated as a humanitarian NGO because they may not have that neutrality or that impartiality that you see here many of course do have humanity in fact our militaries I believe have humanity as well but that doesn't mean we're following these principles all four of these principles so that's important to understand these four principles are really critical to identifying an NGO to determine whether it's a humanitarian NGO or something else so how does it all come together well earlier I mentioned OCHA the UN office OCHA serves if you will as the catalyst to help coordinate various sectors of support those sectors of support come together in a model that we call the cluster system now I know a lot of us in the US military myself included cluster tends to have a different connotation but within the humanitarian world the cluster system represented here works very very efficaciously it's broken up by particular types of disciplines or areas of expertise it's self-selecting self-seeding if you will in terms of where those NGOs tend to live and they coordinate very well through a collaborative mechanism through that civilian military coordinator through that process of coming together along these various areas to provide for a population in need and believe it or not even though you don't see the kind of a top-down model for command and control that many of us in the military sitting are used to because these folks work together so much and coordinate across sectors it's a highly highly effective method for coming together to support a population in need now you'll notice that the military is not represented in this left-hand graphic that's because we're outside of the cluster system to maintain those humanitarian principles militaries are not part of that construct because if you're medicine some frontier doctors without borders as soon as you start actively engaging with militaries what does that do to your neutrality what does that do to you in terms of how you're perceived by populations that may not be friendly to that military maybe not even in that setting maybe in a conflict halfway around the world so it's important to maintain that independence maintain those boundaries from militaries and that's critical to their success that said we do work together through processes where we provide aid and we work together through processes to provide aid by working through the host nation the host nation again always being in charge helps identify which of these critical resources these critical capabilities you see on the right hand side then fit best to support that population in need so there are different ways that that aid can be delivered and sometimes when we teach this class or when we have a chance to learn together i'll bring boxes of cookies with me and the reason that i'll do that is i'll ask folks what is the best way to deliver aid is it to hand someone a cookie is it to have boxes of cookies that are loaded onto a truck and then distributed to that population or is it to be helping build roadways and other kinds of projects that then allow trucks to get to that population in need generally speaking that direct support that cookie isn't the best way for us to deliver aid because again the host nation is in charge so if we're just handing out cookies as a military to people in some cases we're countermanding that host nation or undermining its authority if we build bridges and we build roadways which are critically important those tend to be longer term reconstruction projects now we may do some emergency bridges and things like that with engineering teams or cbs but these larger reconstruction efforts that's not what we're there to do because that's not immediately providing life-saving support to that population that's vulnerable and in need those projects do exist they exist within us agency for international development in other reconstruction efforts outside of bha what we tend to do and where we tend to live as militaries is in truck providing that support providing that aid to that population by having pallets or boxes of cookies that we then hand to the host nation so they can deliver it or disperse it appropriately often working with the ngo is to deliver that aid so you can see these different models and how they can come together and why truck again because we're there based on a U.S. interest to support that population need through the host nation truck tends to be our best approach for that just to kind of some summarize how all that comes together you can see here that big red bubble of the affected state the military is going to work through that coordination process that I mentioned you can see how there are different lines of effort that come together as we could coordinate through the clusters and how the international community interfaces with us as well so all of these things happen in a synchronistic way we practice this we have mechanisms for this like Pacific partnership where some folks may be familiar within here we practice with foreign militaries so that we can come together to provide this aid together and we of course do this many times each year that said remember that it's not just militaries who provide humanitarian aid there are other elements of the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development that provide aid as well and in fact the military is a smaller percentage of that overall aid delivery than other assets within the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance and the U.S. Agency for International Development at large I want to take a few minutes and just talk about how the U.S.'s model how we deliver aid differs from some of our strategic peer or near peer competitors and shout out to Mr. Johnny Robinson our Brown Global Fellow who I have the opportunity to work with each and every day and I feel truly blessed for that who's done much of this research so that can be with us here today what China PRC does very well is exploits opportunities and whereas for the U.S. our approach is always to make sure that the host nation is kept us the face of an operation which often means using that truck approach that I mentioned China PRC tends to follow that cookie model where even though it's a less efficacious way of delivering aid they want the photo op they want the picture to be taken they want to create the appearance of large-scale aid delivery and you can see some of the ways that they do that here by evacuating citizens by providing training by providing vaccine diplomacy which I'll talk more about in a second token aid delivery so often very little aid but strategically photographed in ways that appears that large amounts of aid are actually being delivered to a population in need because we're doing it all behind the scenes they're doing this smaller yet more photogenic aid delivery in a way that differs from ours so they do have some resources for that and they do use those resources but up to this point PRC has only done this within permissive environments not in conflict settings which is another distinguishing characteristic of PRC staying out of if you will the political foray of conflict contrast that if you will with Russia and the way that Russia delivers aid what I always like to show on this slide because it's striking in how bizarre it may seem to many of us is this cultural exchange piece with a Bolshoi ballet that you see here Russia very much considers any type of cultural exchange humanitarian aid so if the ballet comes to a particular country that's humanitarian aid in the view of Russia they do a lot of firefighting and they do it quite well mostly wildland firefighting and they provided a lot of support around the world in terms of wildland firefighting they're getting very good at that and it's a way for them to bolster their image again outside of conflicts by providing this support search and rescue you can see how they provide support there as well training as you saw with PRC and token aid delivery what differs with China versus Russia PRC versus Russia is that the aid delivery that PRC delivers is strategic it's well photographed even if it's token Russia tends to deliver aid but they're not as good at getting the messaging out there of the aid that they're delivering they don't have as good a strategic communications message as PRC does and often that aid doesn't really exist so you look at that bag there and and Johnny can talk to this too this actually is a picture from Syria and inside that bag I believe is an expired can of tuna fish and a couple other small items that really I think a bag of flour and maybe some sugar but very little aid that's actually a value to a population in need but it's in a really nice bag right so it kind of creates that appearance they also provide vaccines and I said I'd come back to PRC and the reason I will is the aid that they deliver both from Russia and from the PRC in terms of vaccines is not free and this is something people don't understand so when the US provided mass doses of COVID-19 vaccines around the world they provided them period here's your vaccine we hope that your population will thrive and survive both PRC and Russia will provide vaccines for a cost and if you don't have the money no worries particularly in the case of PRC just sign this document and eventually down the road we'll figure out a way to come to a place of consensus and often that consensus is through access to a port or to a resource rare earth materials you may be signing those away in some cases so what PRC vis-a-vis their Belt and Road initiative has gotten very very good at is creating strategic access points and resource opportunities for themselves through the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines Russia to a certain extent as well what's important to remember of course is the efficacy rate of both of those countries in terms of their vaccines is incredibly low compared to the US based and other western nation based vaccines what both countries do well is use disinformation so well Russia may not be good at the photo op in the way that the PRC is both the PRC and Russia are incredibly good at the way they use disinformation the example you can see here when you look at this graphic about who gives the most aid to Serbia who actually gave the most aid to Serbia was the EU by a large percentage but look at that how that contrasts with what the public thought in this particular graphic similarly if you spend any time in Africa and you talk to people in Africa today many of them blame the US for the rising price of wheat because in direct quote it's the US's fall for causing the invasion of Ukraine so this misinformation or disinformation campaign is a very real challenge that we face and bluntly something in my opinion we're not as good at countering the strategic messaging piece is something that both PRC and Russia do much better and they use their aid delivery as the vehicle to help rise them in that strategic communications context and they do that also because they don't worry about keeping the host nation necessarily as a face of that operation so it's this tension that we continue to have I want to spend just a minute or two talking specifically about Ukraine and Ukraine operations I had a chance in March to spend a little bit of time over in Navier in Italy in Naples with Six Flee looking at some of the resourcing for humanitarian operations in Ukraine and obviously a lot of concern about Ukraine a lot of that concern initially was that people in Ukraine who were displaced internally displaced persons would leave their geographic boundary again become refugees moved to Poland and never come back weirdly the conventional wisdom has been wrong for the most part and that many of those folks who have gone to Poland have come back to the Ukraine but of course come back to what there isn't a lot in many of these areas left and the need for aid is dire now while the US is providing some of that humanitarian aid they're probably not providing as much of it as they are other types of aid such as military aid to support the current conflict against the Russians what's concerning for many of us in the humanitarian sector for this is who will fill that void particularly post-conflict so let's imagine if you will after some period of time the conflict in Ukraine dies down Russia has annexed some portion of the country Ukraine remains whole in some some type of a way who provides for that's population in need and again world according to Hank my concern would be the PRC because now it's no longer a conflict setting PRC figures out a way to provide that aid and by providing that aid now has created access points in a part of the world that they no longer have to worry about having that resource and resourcing and accessing in a way that requires military use in a way that is currently perceived so these are the challenges that we have as we think about a post-conflict Ukraine and what that might look like and that's important to understand Russia also purportedly provides aid humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people I say purportedly because again my dear colleague Johnny Robinson ran a lot of the numbers because we were perplexed looking at the percentage of aid that Russia was allegedly giving to Ukraine we couldn't understand why the numbers were so high so we spent some time looking at them we figured it out well Johnny figured it out he's much smarter than me and what we figured out is that the reason those numbers were so high is that Russia was counting feeding its own troops who are in the Ukraine as part of that humanitarian aid delivery well I know I've been in the Navy now 19 years I haven't missed many meals but they certainly don't count feeding me as part of their humanitarian mission in the U.S. and again this is one of the things that you have to understand about how Russia strategically is able to use information in ways that we are not much like the PRC so what does all this mean why does all this matter why do we care about all this because if we do this right we deliver aid to support that population in need if we help the host nation be all that it needs to be to support its population it can meet key U.S. strategic objectives and it can also allow us opportunities particularly in permissive environments to exercise with our partners to develop that confidence should we have to move from our current competition phase into conflict to allow us to work together to know each other's airframes capabilities different types of ships and platforms that we have available so that we can work together it gives those operators experience running those platforms to be glad well asked 10,000 hours is 10,000 hours whether you're flying helicopters in a permissive environment like a hurricane or you're flying them in a combat condition so the more our operators get that experience doing it in a way that of course is safe and appropriate given the mission and conditions the better off we all are if we do it right we cause no harm and often we talk about a 1950s standard of care when we talk about humanitarian response because the last thing we would want is to provide for example medical care of the highest most sophisticated state to that population only to leave and then have that population questing its own medical infrastructure its own ability to provide for healthcare so we try and ascribe to the appropriate level of care for that population to make sure that we're doing no harm light footprint there's a big difference between being perceived as supportive and being perceived as an occupying force which also means leaving and transitioning out as quickly as you can so that you can return to your mission your war fighting missions if you're a military entity so that we're not depleting ourselves of those opportunities for power as well and then last but not least don't hesitate to use those mill mill relationships to save lives yes i've talked a lot about how we work through the host nation how we try and use that truck model that indirect aid model whenever possible but that doesn't mean we don't do the right thing it's it's not all pragmatic there's a level of appropriate idealism supporting a population in need as well and that's a big part of what we do within the humanitarian environment the last thing i wanted to share is our library guide so we actually have an amazing resource thanks to its original architect britney card who's now with bha usa id and currently managed brilliantly again by mr john robinson our library guide has all the resources that connected this presentation today scholarly papers lots of videos and resources across the entire landscape from permissive environments into conflict even into medical things such as cova 19 so highly encourage you to take a look at our library guide available off the naval war college page and i am happy to answer any questions you may have of course from our audience who came with us today or in the world of cyberspace as well so thank you very much and very much looking forward to your questions and having the opportunity to learn from you and with you people in zoom can hear uh yes i'm captain para skevopoulos from the helenic navy i actually have two questions if i may uh the first one is about the fourth prerequisite that you mentioned in order for the us to provide help and i was wondering if there is an available example that you can tell us regarding a case that finally the u.s didn't provide any help because of that and the second question or remark if you like is about the role of ngo's and specifically the local ones which in my country lately there has been a considerable consideration regarding their role there are too many and it seems that some of them the only reason for existence is to attract funding and also some of them are also uh responsible for human trafficking so if this is any kind of your consideration or not thank you right now great questions and thank you so much for being here today and if i may i'll start with the second one first there are many many entities that purport themselves to be non-governmental organizations assuredly any ngo that traffics and human beings is not meeting those humanitarian principles so it certainly is not the humanitarian ngo that said your point is very well taken hady is the classic example of where many well-meaning people came together very very quickly after the hady earthquake to try and help so a lot of church groups other folks got together and self declared themselves as ngo's showed up in hady in port-a-prince and other parts of the country and said hi i'm from hanks ngo i'm here with my my two colleagues where do we take a shower where do we eat where do we sleep only to be told we have none of those resources for you you're supposed to be helping us with that and now you're actually creating a drain on us by not having the resources you need to be self-sustaining to operate again according to those principles that allow you to have that independence so a lot of people claim to be ngo's that aren't necessarily ngo's there are all kinds of rules around that prohibit us from collecting any kind of intelligence or similar kinds of information on a population in need that let's be honest because russia this is a real issue will sometimes claim to have an ngo which is really an intelligence collection apparatus that can do more harm than good for targeting and things like that to support their missions so the second question is relatively easy to answer the first one isn't as easy to answer because it's almost like trying to prove a negative in that the places we haven't been we haven't been there is a large calculus that goes into that based on the national security strategy that sometimes may surprise you for example we've offered assistance in earthquakes in iran very rarely is it accepted but sometimes it is we offered assistance in indonesia after bandha at a time when in the post-911 era there was a lot of discussion and conversation about should we be providing that kind of support for that part of the world given all the things that al qaeda is doing and the u.s. government looked at it and said huh the population desperately needs us it's in our best interest to show that the u.s. is a caring people that cares about our neighbors and partners and even those who we may disagree with and that ultimately led to far more robust relationships than we had in the past with indonesia we now engage often in training and humanitarian operations with including an entire series of activities and exercises so the reality is it can be done but it's a very complex process to determine how that will be done both excellent questions and thank you any other questions yes different comment to mean the from shillanka so during the presentation you are mentioning about the military to military coordination like for instance if you go to some other country then maybe during the process of assistance it may helpful to work with some non-set of people like work with hand-to-hand so in that case combined training beforehand would be beneficial I guess so I know that you are conducting training but I would like to know the present situation like how you train or else combine kind of operations in the present situation and if you have some future plans like to enhance this kind of training hdr training with the other countries so the percentage if I understand a question right just to make sure I do the percentage of humanitarian aid delivery in Ukraine contrasting with other operations we've engaged in is that kind of what you're asking me am I getting that right no I'm asking about the training the training okay so the training piece of it that's something I can't answer because we have a substantial amount of training available through the U.S. not just for our U.S. military members but to support our multinational partners as well for example the j-hawk course the joint humanitarian operations course which shameless plug will be conducting here at the naval war college the week of the 6th through the 10th of March through USAID that training is available around the world using the dart teams as part of that training element to support militaries and other organizations that want to provide that kind of support we also have something called marhast which is our maritime humanitarian assistance survey team which is a training module that's part of the haste the humanitarian assistance survey team because often what will happen is even before a country invites us in we're there right and and we're ready to do port surveys and aerial surveys and runway surveys to ensure that we can get those resources in to provide support for that population in need so we do training around this in fact we have training around this here and in hawaii a little later on this year because of pacific partnership we'll be training multinational forces in that so a substantial percentage of our time is engaged in training as opposed to on the ground work that we're actually doing and we do most of that free of charge it's actually something that's important for us as we develop our capability set as planners so that's a big part of what we do and the planning courses we run here at the war college if you're in my part of the world the college of maritime operational warfare we have courses that focus exclusively on planning mobsi and msock as our two kind of primary examples of that and i am sock on the international side with our partners in the international programs office all of those programs have a humanitarian element to them so they can lean into training for forces to plan in humanitarian operations so hopefully that helps answer some of that thank you other questions from the audience we do have some questions on zoom great the first question that came in has to do with funding how does the federal government the u.s federal government determine who and what department in the federal government pays for the assistance and then if it's if it's a do d effort for some portion of it how does the combatant commander determine you know under what title those military operations are funded yeah great questions first of all do d aid as a percentage of rural aid is a very small percentage and i often will show a graphic where we show just what a small percentage of aid the do d element is compared to the rest of the u.s government the rest of the u.s government being predominantly u.s agency for international development including some of those larger reconstruction or bridge projects to use a cloak wheel as well as the department of state we're a small percentage of that when do d does operate in support of a crisis a humanitarian need we do that with the expectation that using that my tam process that i showed earlier there will be reimbursement the do d will be made whole so that that commander is in actually expending long term their own funds they may have to put those resources up front by using that my tam process to track reimbursement that's appropriate for that particular geographic combatant commander all right thank you the next question is how do you manage or how does a do d manage the accountability of aid delivered and they further describe that they've heard that supplies often do not get to those in need such as in Puerto Rico just a couple of years ago yeah so great question and there are multiple parts to that question in the other role that i have at the war college in addition to the role as the director of the civilian military humanitarian response program i'm also the emc informationist chair which focuses specifically on corruption and corruption control and mitigation strategies so we often get asked this question from the department of defense perspective what we have when we provide aid our inspector generals or the department of defense for our specific services and us agency for international development has its own inspector general as well which is not just looking for waste fraud and abuse in our programs but in the delivery of aid as well so there's a process where that's assessed and tracked there are 1811 special agents who actually do that kind of criminal work to investigate that from a law enforcement title 18 perspective as well as more from an auditing perspective that said the delivery of aid from humanitarian organizations is more often than not where we get asked this question so what happens is we get asked for example if you're using a stored value card basically a smart card that now has a cash value that you're giving to a population in need because there are enough resources for them to procure using those cards what they need in the area how do we know those cards are being used appropriately how is that aid being delivered efficaciously the answer is for most humanitarian organizations they don't care about that what they care about is is aid being delivered to a population in need and if that means that that local NGO is going to use black markets or other mechanisms to expeditiously get that aid delivered then that's what they're going to do they don't have that same kind of a waste fraud and abuse inspector general of 1978 model that we do because it's time is really the enemy they're trying to deliver aid as as quickly as they can to that population that said weirdly those stored value cards tend to be used correctly so as much as people think there might be a lot of fraud in the use of those cards there generally isn't as much as people might think all right and one final question does us aid reimburse duty for humanitarian assistance and is it reimbursed for all expenses and is this change if there was one a relatively recent development so the answer is as long as the dart team is engaged that disaster assistance response team is engaged through the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance and the my tam that mission tasking matrix is appropriately used to track those expenses DoD will be reimbursed if they don't then the commander may be on the on the hook for it and I'll give you a quick anecdote in one particular fleet there was a crisis that occurred a natural disaster occurred the fleet commander said I want you to get folks there to help this population in need spare no expense so crews gone underway delivered aid helped alleviate human suffering and then a bill came due and the fleet commander said well at least we have the my tam and bha for reimbursement and there were lots of crickets chirping because that process had not been followed which then cost that fleet commander millions of dollars in terms of of a loss of reimbursement mostly commanders don't have a lot of extra cash laying around it's one of the reasons we have this j-hawk course the joint humanitarian operations course and the other courses we run to help to get people to understand just how critical that my tam process is for reimbursement any other questions in the audience otherwise we'll close it out all right with that thank you everyone thank you professor breiman for a very informative and enlightening lecture tonight we certainly appreciate you providing this lecture to us on a Tuesday afternoon late in the day and best of luck on your future assignment overseas thank you commander thank you everyone for attending