In this episode of EUCOMversations, Mr. Mike Ryan, the EUCOM J9 Interagency Partnering Director, discusses "exit strategies" and how working with other government and non-government organizations helps the military do its job.
As we wrap up high summer, it's a sensible time to look ahead at the fall and think about the big tasks facing the NATO Alliance and US European Command. The Olympics and the Jubilee fade to memory, and hopefully most folks have managed to break away for a short vacation to recharge. The autumn will be a busy time.
Imagine a global security driven by collaboration -- among agencies, government, the private sector and the public. That's not just the distant hope of open-source fans, it's the vision of James Stavridis, the Supreme Commander of NATO, who shares vivid moments from recent military history to explain why security of the future should be built with bridges rather than walls. TedTalks
In the world of security, we are generally focused on "risk." We worry about the chances of war, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the likelihood of a ballistic missile attack, or the possibility of a biologic contagion. Understanding risk allows us to calculate how much we should spend on defense compared to what our potential opponents are spending.
I'm thinking about how to connect public and private efforts to create security. In this turbulent 21st century, security is not about creating walls. We won't deliver a secure world strictly from the barrel of a gun.
We know that cyber attacks are employed not just for cyber crime (i.e. to access your bank account), but also to discredit national agencies and governments (i.e. the cyber attacks against Estonia and Georgia). It is incumbent on all of us to “know our enemy” to best defend against such attacks. The best means for doing so is for governments to regularly partner with academia and the private sector (i.e. with IT safety enterprises) to form a sort of cyber coalition.
"2011 Soft Power Symposium" hosted by Pepperdine University and the League for Hope, an NGO that promotes public-private partnership to foster educational, medical, and commercial opportunities for disadvantaged populations.
Over 25 years ago our defense establishment – pushed by Congress – started the process of creating a “joint” military – where services plan, train for, and execute military missions together. Then about five years after that, mainly because we found we needed better coordination among agencies conducting peace and stability operations, the government started to work on creating an interagency culture and process.
