CCMR Executive Program Consolidates Developing Democracies
Thursday, July 03, 2008

By Barbara Honegger Military Affairs Journalist

The timing couldn’t have been more opportune for the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Civil-Military Relations to illustrate civilian control of the military to high-ranking officers from new and developing democracies.

As more than 20 top defense

(left to right) Brig. Gen. Karl Schmidseder of Austria, Head of Strategy and Planning, Ministry of Defense; Col. Dimitaz Dimiltov of Bulgaria, Director for Military Standardization, Quality and Codification Directorate; and Emil Druc of Moldova, Deputy Head for Multilateral Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

decision makers from around the world gathered at the Naval Postgraduate School for the Center’s Executive Program in Defense Decision-Making, June 2-13, the top U.S. Department of Defense civilian, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, relieved the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff of their commands. 

“This is a great example of how civil-military relations works in the real world,” retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Goetze, Jr., told the officers from 14 allied and coalition nations.  Goetze served as Director of Strategic Targeting for the Single Integrated Operational Plan at Strategic Air Command and Vice Director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. “The fact that the Secretary of Defense fired both the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff shows that civil-military relations are working well in the U.S.”

Participants in the executive course were the Assistant to the Deputy Interior Minister for Support Forces, and the head of the Counter Terrorism Center, of Iraq; the Chief of Military Intelligence of Tanzania; the Deputy Air Force Commander, Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations and Air Defence and the Director for Electro-Mechanical Engineering of the Royal Jordanian Air Force; the Director of Air Transport and Maritime Systems Director of Air Transport and Maritime Systems of South Africa; the Commandant of the Defence Services Command and Staff College of Sri Lanka; the head of Strategy and Planning of the Ministry of Defense of Austria; the Head of the Defense Policy and Planning Department of the Republic of Moldova Ministry of Defense and the Deputy of the country’s Antiterrorist Center, Deputy Head for Multilateral Cooperation Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of strategy for the Main Staff of the National Army; the Director of the Recruiting Directorate, Branch of Army Headquarters of Nepal; the Training and Doctrine Command Commander and the representative of the Joint Staff Support Sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina; the Commander of Security Forces and of the Staff College of Sri Lanka; the Deputy Commandant of the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre; the Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs of Bangladesh; the Director for Military Standardization Quality and Codification Directorate of Bulgaria; and a member of the faculty of Argentina’s National Defense School.  Participants are selected by the Office of Defense Cooperation in U.S. embassies worldwide.

Over two weeks, NPS faculty members coordinated simulation exercises and presented briefs on civil-military relations, formulating and implementing a national strategy and net assessment, defense decision making and terrorism in the global context, global threats and the role of intelligence in identifying them, the roles and missions of ministries of defense and security forces, peace support operations and post-conflict stabilization, the roles of legislatures,  democratic control and oversight of national intelligence, the interagency process, security and the media, defense transformation, case studies in defense reform, professional military education, professionalism and private military contractors, homeland defense and security, and implications of the 2008 U.S. elections for global security.

“We’ve held the executive program for senior defense decision makers, mostly from new and developing democracies, once a year since the Center’s founding in 1994,” said CCMR program manager and former chairman of the Department of National Security Affairs and former director of CCMR, Prof. Tom Bruneau.  “What’s especially rewarding is that this is global gathering and it’s a two-way street in learning together:  because we all live in a similar professional organizational culture, though from all over the globe, they learn from us and we learn from them, and we incorporate a lot of what we learn from them in our publications and future courses.

“CCMR has worked hard to build a group of world class civil-military affairs experts in house here at NPS, to the point that we’re now a highly regarded academic and operational center for security studies,” added Bruneau.  “And this year, all three textbooks used for the course – Who Guards the Guardians, and How, which won the American Library Association Award for Outstanding Academic Title for 2007; Intelligence: Challenges to Democratic Control and Effectiveness; and Global Politics of Defense Reform – were produced by the Center.

“Whereas the previous emphasis was on democratic control of the military, we’re now redefining the whole field of civil-military relations by incorporating effectiveness and efficiency of the military, police and

intelligence agencies,” Bruneau noted.  “We’ve not only developed the concepts, but have great examples of how they actually work throughout the world.”

“Participating as a faculty member in the Executive Program in Defense Decision-Making is a privilege and an honor,” said Goetze, also deputy manager of CCMR’s Latin America program.  “It’s a unique opportunity to share the concepts and practical experience I’ve accumulated over five decades of service, teaching and learning from top-ranking defense decision makers from around the world who come to the Center to learn from our CCMR faculty, to learn from each other, and to establish relationships and bonds that will serve them for the rest of their lives.”  Goetze briefed the participants on the roles of defense ministries and the interagency process.  

“The way ahead in the global war on terror is enhanced international and interagency cooperation, which is why this seminar is so important, because it gives participants the chance to make links and create informal networks that may prove invaluable in the future,” said Navy Capt. Tim Doorey, NPS Senior Intelligence Officer, who briefed on terrorism in a global context.    

In the final discussion, participants agreed the course was valuable and had suggestions for making it even stronger.  

“This course has been very useful because it allows you to observe and integrate security and defense decision making from many different national perspectives, and the directness and objectivity of the interactions, which are strongly encouraged by Professor Bruneau and the other instructors, is very high,” said Prof. Maria Espona of Argentina’s National Defense School. 

Representative Congressman Sam Farr (D-Carmel, CA) joined the participants for the final course luncheon, and gave a short presentation followed by a question and answer period.  

CCMR faculty presenting briefs and conducting exercises were Professors Bruneau; Goetze; Doorey; James Wirtz, also Interim Dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies; Dan Moran; Chairman of the Department of National Security Affairs Harold Trinkunas; Kenneth Dombroski; Anne Clunan; J. Matthew Vaccaro; Jeanne Giraldo; Cris Matei; Scott Jasper; Richard Hoffman; and Ted Lewis.  Dr. Zoltan Barany, from the University of Texas and currently Hoover Institution National Fellow at Stanford University, spoke on case studies in defense reform. 

The Center for Civil-Military Relations was established in 1994 in an agreement between Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.  It provides graduate-level education to foreign civilian and military participants through resident and nonresident courses, assisting allied and coalition nations to resolve civil-military issues resulting from defense transformation, stability and support operations, the global war on terrorism, and other security challenges.  The Center conducts more than 140 programs each year, both at NPS and through Mobile Education Teams in a wide range of host countries.  For more information about CCMR and its programs, visit www.ccmr.org.

(left to right) Military and civilian senior defense decision makers compare the roles of their defense ministries during the two-week Center for Civil-Military Relation’s 2008 Executive Program in Defense Decision-Making held at NPS in June.  Left to right:  Maj. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya of Sri Lanka, Commandant of the Defence Services Command and Staff College; Col. Ahmad Mousa Atiyyat of Jordan, Director for Electro-Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical, Royal Jordanian Air Force; Capt. Lilian Spinu of Moldova, Deputy of the Anti-Terrorist Center; Col. Senad Kijajic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Joint Staff Support Sector; Emil Druc of Moldova, Deputy Head for Multilateral Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Brig. Gen. Paul Mella of Tanzania, Chief of Military Intelligence.