Episode 12. Tending The Garden: US Interests In The Mediterranean

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships in tackling some of our toughest national security challenges. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host of the series. Our guests today are Admiral Michelle Howard and Ambassador David Pearce. Our focus is going to be on the Mediterranean and Greece. We'll talk about the massive migrant flow that went into Europe in 2015 and 16, the role of the US in helping stem the crisis, as well as US strategic interests in the Mediterranean region. Ambassador Pearce, you were the US Ambassador to Greece from 2013 to 2016. You know the Mediterranean region very well, having been the ambassador to Algeria and the deputy chief of mission in Syria. You also served in senior leadership positions as the assistant chief of mission in Afghanistan and as the Department of State's deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Admiral Howard, you were the commander of US naval forces, Europe and Africa, responsible for an area covering more than 67% of the Earth's coastline and nearly 40% of the world's population. You previously served as vice chief of naval operations. You were also the first African American woman to command a ship, the USS Rushmore, and the first woman to become a four star admiral. You are currently the JB and Maurice C Shapiro, Professor of international affairs at the Elliott School at George Washington University. I wanted to jump right into the migration crisis that hit Europe, peaking in 2015. Hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as upheaval and poverty in parts of Africa. They came in huge numbers via Turkey, then crossed the Aegean in rickety boats to reach Greece. A number drowned. Those arriving in Europe included refugees as well as economic migrants. But there was also concern that terrorists were mixed in this wave. I understand that by August 2015, Greece was taking in as many as 12,500 migrants a day on various islands. Ambassador Pearce, these numbers are huge. How did the Greek government, the Greek people, handle all these arrivals?

Amb. Pearce: [00:02:30] Thanks, Deborah. It's great to be here. You and I were in Europe at the same time as Chiefs of Mission. And I know you know Greece very well since you were deputy chief of mission there in Athens. A little while before I got there. For years, there had been a pattern of illegal migration over the border between Turkey and Greece. But in 2015, that steady trickle became a steady stream, and by the summer it had become a real flood. By mid 2015, Greece had taken over from Italy as the chief route for migrants seeking entry to Europe. In that year, over a million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, and this heavy flow went on until the early winter of 2016, when the countries up north of Greece started to shut down their borders to transiting migrants. And when the European Union Turkey cooperation agreement was concluded, which also reduced the flow. So how did the Greeks handle it? It was tough. The response initially was handled as usual by the Greek Border Patrol and Coast Guard and local authorities. And at the time there was a brand new left wing government in Athens. It was inexperienced and totally preoccupied with an economic crisis that had beggared the country for the past five years. But this thing grew so far, so fast that really any government would have been overwhelmed. They set up welcome centers. They were called reception and identification centers.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:47] Oh, that's right. I remember.

Amb. Pearce: [00:03:49] They were established not just on the islands, but around Athens and up in the northern Greece near the border crossing points as well, to accommodate these big floating pools of people. So at first they came to the islands and they registered with the Greek authorities, but then they got on boats to the mainland, took a bus to the north and kept going across the border. Remember once in those days, anyway, once you were in an EU country, you were in all the EU countries. The key was getting over the line that first time and nobody wanted to stay in Greece because there was no work there. This was a border control issue, not just for Greece, but for the European Union as a whole. And what happened was, as the security concerns mounted and European states closed their frontiers and imposed more controls, that quick access to boats and trips to the mainland from the island stopped and conditions got to be pretty hard, particularly towards the end of 2015 and into the winter of 2016, as the numbers grew and the borders clanged shut and the weather got colder.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:41] As this was happening as you mentioned, over a million people crossed in a short amount of time. Admiral, this was happening when you were vice chief of operations for the Navy based in Washington. How was this migrant crisis perceived and was there any discussion taking place about having the US Navy or NATO help out?

Adm. Howard: [00:05:00] So 2014 starts the strikes into Iraq against ISIS. And so then when you start going through that timeframe, the military gets involved with the Ebola crisis. I don't think we wanted to do that, but it seemed to be the right answer in terms of helping to contain and. Pacific. China's acting up in the Spratlys were still in Afghanistan. A NATO is still providing a strong support in Afghanistan. And then we're just starting to see Russia really act up. So now we're coming into Crimea and Ukraine, and that's sort of the top priority focus. And then, you know, if you said what was below that, I would have said it was North Korea and Iran and how we're trying to get them to behave in terms of nuclear weapons development. Once you get through that list, my sense was for the leadership at the time, it's like this is clearly not a military issue and it's clearly within the capacities of either the EU or NATO or both to handle. And Libya was starting to come back during this timeframe.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:52] So it was a European border issue, not necessarily, as you said, a military issue.

Adm. Howard: [00:05:57] You've got Turkey taking in all these refugees. And by the time I got there, they had already taken in 2 million. One of the things I didn't understand until I was in theater is this anxiety between all the countries, whether they're in EU or NATO, is that some governments were using refugee flow as a diplomatic message or as a threat. That became very clear to me during that time frame. I was there. Norwegians told me that the Russians had opened up their single checkpoint and left 5000 Afghanis cross on bicycles in a week. And the reason they did that is you can't go through the checkpoint via car. And then when they finally got the flow turned off, then they weren't able to send the Afghanis back to Russia. Russia said, No, they're yours. You've got to figure out how to get into back Afghanistan. So then when you get to the Aegean and you've got this flow coming from the Med and then you've got this lack of clarity over who has what rights in the seas in the Aegean, it became clear that in order to dampen friction because all the different nations and the Greeks and the Turks are all in NATO, it made sense to have us all cooperate together in the Aegean.

Adm. Howard: [00:07:00] Now, when it comes to law of the Sea, if you pick up that person, ship masters are required to pick up people in distress. Then it becomes your government responsibility to figure out what to do with them. I don't think various members of NATO, you know, were quite ready to start saying, okay, I'll pick them up and then it'll be up to the Iceland government to figure out what to do with the people they've rescued. Normally, what you do is you go through a long period where you try and negotiate with a neighboring country to see if they'll take them. And that can take months. And I've had ships where we've had refugees in different parts of the world onboard the ship for eight weeks while the State Department was eight weeks. Yes. You're trying to feed them and take care of them and you're trying to find somebody who will take them because you don't want to take them back to America. The agreement was NATO ships would provide intelligence and provide spotting, identify where the refugees were at sea, and then either the Greeks or the Turks would go pick them up.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:53] Because of the sometimes prickly nature of relations between Greece and Turkey, particularly when it comes to their sea, land and airspace. Continued disputes where the US often plays a role. How did they work it out such that each stayed in their own space?

Amb. Pearce: [00:08:07] As you know well, Deborah, this is something which has gone on for a long, long time. The whole range of Greek, Turkish differences. This was constantly in play. And a complicating factor on top of the issues related to the flow and the reception and where people go. For example, there are a lot of small uninhabited islands and rocky outcroppings that are adjacent to inhabited Greek islands, but also close to the Turkish mainland. And some of these are in dispute. The two sides nearly went to war in 1996 over one such uninhabited set of rocks, which was called Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish. With all that in mind, imagine if a rubber boat loaded with migrants runs into rough weather and it gets washed up on one of these ledges. Whose job is it to respond? It could be Greek territory, but maybe the Turkish Coast Guard is closer in better position to get in there quickly. And then where they take them, do they go to Turkey from where they're trying to leave and which is closer and where the Turkish boats came from? Or do they go to Greece because they landed in Greek territory and therefore should be under Greek jurisdiction. And it also happens to be where they want to go. Basically, it came down to which boat they got on to. And I should add, we in Embassy Athens were in direct contact many, many times with senior officials in the Greek ministries of foreign affairs and defense and the prime minister's office and with our colleagues in Ankara who did the same in response to various scenarios to try to help prevent little frictions from becoming big problems.

Adm. Howard: [00:09:39] There were other issues during that timeframe that were complicating the relationships, though. So you have the attempted coup in Turkey and then you end up losing most of your senior military personnel. Well, the goodness of both those countries being in NATO is that when they serve together outside of Turkey and Greece and NATO commands, you build these relationships that when other communication paths fail, it's sometimes the military being able to talk to the military that prevents things from heating up. So in the end, after the coup, we were very fortunate. The Turkish. Chairman was still in place and he and the Greek chairman had a long standing relationship. Didn't mean that the Turkish chairman could sometimes do something about it because of government will, but they could still communicate.

Amb. Pearce: [00:10:24] Right. And that happened and was an important part of keeping things in line and in channels.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:29] Well, I wanted to ask a little bit about NATO support to Operation Sophia, which was a European Union naval effort to stop another flow coming through Libya and crossing the Mediterranean. How did we coordinate with that mission?

Adm. Howard: [00:10:44] So we just had normal maritime procedures where we would coordinate and then provide assistance if needed assistance. Then also the US, of course, has an ambassador to EU and they had worked through with the US Ambassador to NATO and the Ambassador to the EU. Our government had said we could, if need be, provide logistic support so we would sometimes resupply the EU ships on station with fuel. They would do the mission and then we were just providing direct support so that they could stay on station on the US side because for us it was about Libya. The coordination, the military was done through AFRICOM and so we facilitated a direct relationship between the mission leader of Ops Sophia and the AFRICOM staff, which was headquartered in Germany.

Amb. Pearce: [00:11:29] The facility at Souda Bay in Crete was important for all of the above. It's a really vital part of our relationship with Greece, and it's a facility that hosts. Michelle knows better than me, but I think hundreds of ship visits and thousands of military overflights. And I believe it's the only place between Norfolk and Dubai where a carrier can actually pull up pierside and get fully replenished.

Adm. Howard: [00:11:49] But the other thing is there's NATO facilities at Souda Bay, including a maritime training center. So then as Sophia's mission changed and they went on to try and do things like train the Libyan Coast Guard, the NATO is able to provide support with the maritime training center out of Greece as.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:05] The new government came in to Greece, which was an anti NATO anti US party, the city's a party you both had to work hard to establish a relationship with the new government. Can you tell us a little bit more how you went about working with this new government?

Amb. Pearce: [00:12:21] The economic crisis in Greece began in about 2009 and effectively over five years they lost a quarter of their GDP. There was severe austerity, ballooning debt, unemployment on the level of 19% for young people, 50%. And they were leaving the country in droves. What we were seeing was the destabilization of a NATO partner and key US defense partner. You can imagine after five years of this, people got fed up, right? And what they did was they threw out two traditional parties and elected a radical, really radical left wing party called Syriza to government. And this led to the prospect of is Greece going to default on its debt? Is it going to leave the eurozone, which in turn would have been destabilizing for Europe as a whole? And Europe, remember, is our biggest trading partner. This was something we really had our eye on, Although the economic crisis and the migrant crisis got a lot of headlines. What we had to be concerned about as well was the security aspect of things, the future of Greece and NATO and our defense partnership, which is enshrined in a mutual defense agreement that we renew every year routinely and without fanfare. But, you know, because these things are working, you shouldn't take them for granted. You have to show up and you have to listen and you have to hear what people's concerns are and work on that.

Amb. Pearce: [00:13:39] And Souda Bay, of course, was a very big part of this. But a lot of people don't realize how important Greece is to our military operations and law enforcement and counterterrorism operations throughout the whole region. The Greek military understood this because they knew very well the value of US Greek ties, but we had to build a new relationship of trust with a brand new government which had no experience of being in government. And the degree of difficulty was considerable. I mean, their political history, as you said, was anti-US, anti NATO anti basis. So we had to get to work. I think that the support that the United States showed for Greece, both during the economic and the migrant crises and on related issues like security, counterterrorism, law enforcement cooperation, this made a very good impression on a lot of Greek officials who were new to government and probably didn't realize the full extent of our relationship and our cooperation with Greece. And one of the things that we used to reinforce this message was senior level visits, because it's really important, as I said, for people to show up and listen and show that you care. So when Admiral Howard took over her command, our first woman, four star admiral, she came to Crete, to Souda Bay, right out of the blocks.

Adm. Howard: [00:14:55] That was my first country visit Greece when I got there, both on the NATO side because I had a NATO command. And on the US side we had a long discussion about where and when I should go first. And it didn't mean that just because the carrier was going there, although that is significant, that I needed to be the one to go. But should. I go knowing that if I was going to Greece first, I had to go to Turkey straight afterwards to balance things out. Yes.

Amb. Pearce: [00:15:19] Serendipity plays into these things, too, because the name of the carrier was the Harry S Truman. Harry Truman was the president who is most associated with our post World War II assistance to Greece and the Marshall Plan and all of that. So I was really happy to join Admiral Howard on the deck of that aircraft carrier. And we welcomed the Greek minister of defense and the chief of the Hellenic Armed Forces and a large group of other Greek civilian and military dignitaries in that really spectacular setting. And it was just a perfect occasion because it sent an unmistakable visual message that the US Greek Defense Partnership is in good working order. Indeed.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:57] Well, I wanted to turn a little bit now to the broader region and talk a little bit about Michelle, sort of the mission of the forces that you commanded, because they're engaged also in fighting ISIS, as well as conducting exercises with a number of North African countries. Can you tell us more about these missions?

Adm. Howard: [00:16:15] During that time frame, particularly, the Med was a lively place and was coming back up in terms of activity in ways that hadn't happened in probably over a decade. So one of the things we found was that instead of having the carrier operate out of the Gulf, we could have the carrier operate out of the East Med and the flight routes to get to Syria for strikes was about the same distance. What we gained was more operational time because the temperatures are cooler in the eastern Med. I see. So we could stay on station longer. You also get the benefit of you can pull into different ports and do engagement when the carrier needed to. So I think that was during a time frame when we had the second carrier in there. That was the first time we were able to have a carrier pull off of Israel and have a visit there in like 17 years in 2016, it had been ten years since we'd had a carrier operate in the Eastern Med. Well, then of course, the French were operating in the Eastern Med as well. And then that was the summer that towards the fall Kuznetsov came out. At one point we had three carriers trying to fight for space on that part of the Med and not get into some sort of miscommunication so that we escalated tensions between us and Russia. One of the things I talked about is, you know, with the US and the French and all these other ships out there to Russia, it looks like a NATO operation.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:33] Well, I was going to talk about Russia in just one second, but I wanted to ask you, David, when you were posted in Algeria, as I understand it, you helped very much pave the way for the US Africa Command to engage with that country, were the Algerians opened to a broader military relationship?

Amb. Pearce: [00:17:50] No.

Adm. Howard: [00:17:51] That was the word that came to my mind. I went to see them in 2017.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:57] So tell us about working them.

Amb. Pearce: [00:17:59] Well, you have to remember the history of Algeria. The Algerian military was pretty resistant to the very idea of a US Africa Command. This is a country that had fought an incredibly nasty, bitter war of liberation against France, which was constantly in their historical memory. And they were intensely nationalistic because of this difficult history. They were inherently skeptical about any kind of Western military role or intervention anywhere in Africa, let alone in Algeria. I got to know Kip Ward pretty well. General Ward was a great partner and it was well worth the effort because Algeria, which has about 42 million people, has a very long Mediterranean coastline and it's huge. It's the size of the eastern third of the United States. It takes longer to fly from Algiers in the north to Tamanrasset in the south than it does to fly from Algiers to London. So it's a big place and it's an important place. It looms very large in African affairs generally. So we began step by step, kind of chipping away. First of all, I had to get to know the government and military leadership, establish some trust, and we worked some other high level visits. We had Secretary of State Rice come Attorney General Holder, and gradually we expanded our counterterrorism cooperation. It then became a much more logical and natural thing for General Ward to make a visit. And he did. And by the time I left in 2011, we had moved from a really limited and occasional military to military pattern of contact to a much more regular and normalized schedule of meetings and exchanges.

Adm. Howard: [00:19:33] So probably based on that time frame before I got there, we were in a very frequent and routine US to Algeria exercise with the Navy, which was very important, and they had maintained the strength of the counterterrorism relationship. When I went to visit first, they were thrilled. I think I was the first four star admiral who had been to the country since the 80s. They were very reticent about trying to expand. The other thing we were trying to do because of surveillance and looking at illicit trafficking, whether it's terrorism or smuggling, we are trying to get to where we could do more exercises with the Algerians and the Moroccans at the same time. So that we could start creating information exchange between those two countries, which is what you're going to need if you really want to get after traffic that moves through the Med. So they were actually amenable to have that discussion. If just through the navies we can get the countries to cooperate at sea, that would be to the benefit to all the nations, not just there, because illicit trafficking tends to have a global pattern, but for everybody, everywhere.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:37] Well I wanted to turn now a little bit to the issue of the resurgent Russia across, Admiral, your area of responsibility. Russia's increased its presence. It now has, as I understand it, to 49 year leases for bases in Syria. It's also deployed equipment in that country. Also has a new draft agreement with Egypt, allowing it to use that country's airspace and military bases. What does this mean for US interests in the Mediterranean region and beyond?

Adm. Howard: [00:21:05] Do you remember that great book, Germs, Guns and Steel? Yes. So for the Russians, it's location, location, location. They don't have any warm water ports. And so when you get that port in Tartus for 49 year lease, which will probably automatically roll over to another 49 year lease, they give themselves refueling opportunities, food opportunities that allows them to stay on station. When the Kuznetsov came through with her escort ships, NATO held together. Spain refused to let them come in to refuel, and then Malta refused to let them come in. And so other countries started to say, hey, we're not going to support this carrier strike group. So then that allowed Putin to go, okay, well then I need to pursue facilities that I control, that I can make sure I can bring folks in and resupply my ships. To me, that was just the start. You could see he was wooing Libya and that's about oil energy as well as port access. And he was trying to build this string of ports along the Southern Med there so that you can hop along the coast and resupply as necessary.

Amb. Pearce: [00:22:05] When we think of the activities of Russia, we tend to think in terms of the most conspicuous places. But their policy has been for a very, very long time with regard to NATO. Divide, divide, divide, right? This business of interfering in elections is not a new thing anywhere. I mean, if you look at the Balkans, if you look at Eastern Europe, which of course you know better than I do, Deborah, the pattern of Russian activity throughout this area is something that really needs attention and needs attention on a micro level in every country where we work and serve, this is something that you just see in a million little ways. It's like micro tears. You see it in Putin's visit to Mount Athos. He visited Mount Athos because of the interest that they have in the Orthodox Church as a vector of influence. The Greeks and many other countries in the Balkans share the orthodox faith with the Russians. And of course, there's a whole history of conflict where the Russians supported one side and we supported another. In fact, this was the legacy of anti-Americanism in Greece on the part of the left goes back to the Greek civil war period.

Amb. Pearce: [00:23:13] One of the happy side benefits of our work with Greece, particularly during the economic crisis, we defined our mission as the US national interest. Is Greece emerging from its crisis stronger and playing a stabilizing role in the region? That's what we got up every day to do. I repeated this to the country team. I told every visitor this. We put it in cables to Washington, social media speeches every way we could, and pretty soon all members of the country team could recite this in their sleep. You know, after a while, the Greeks began to realize when they saw President Obama and Secretary Lew and others actually trying to help with their economic situation. Well, one of the side benefits of that was this did more than anything else to really change the pattern of anti-American feeling. Didn't eliminate it, but it really made people much more favorably disposed to the United States. And it was a kind of a historic shift in terms of public opinion. But all of this is just to say that the Russians have a lot of interest in and activity in countries all over Eastern Europe and the Balkans and elsewhere in the region.

Adm. Howard: [00:24:16] It's the entire region. And it's complicated because we were living in that part of the world. It's easy to forget it's Russia is an 11 time zone country with a Pacific and they are being mischievous in the Pacific. I had a strong discussion with my counterpart in the Pacific and some of the leaders we had down in Africa because they have large capacity in terms of either civilian agents or in terms of their military. So they were poking all over. Most disturbing to us is simultaneously trying to disrupt Montenegro coming into NATO, absolutely destabilizing that election with an attempted coup. And I think Montenegro has just started the trials on that and has hardcore evidence that those were Russian agents. When I went to visit Montenegro about two months before the formal joining, their government was being shut down almost like clockwork. On Fridays, no internet services. Things would just get shut down. They were just shrugging it off.

Amb. Pearce: [00:25:11] The lesson in this, to me, is that you don't take your friends for granted. We have great relationships all over the Mediterranean, from Spain to Italy to Greece and on, and not only in the Mediterranean, all over the world. But the thing is, these things don't take care of themselves. You have to tend the garden. You have to pay attention. You have to show up like Michelle did with her visits both in Greece and in Algeria. You have to show people that you're interested and you're listening to what their concerns are. You don't go to people just when you need something. You have to be there beforehand and have a good working relationship and build a relationship of trust so that they're there when you do need something.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:50] David, You've worked closely with our military in many incarnations and many assignments, and in particular you co-led with General H.R. McMaster, the 2007 Joint Assessment Team study that effectively rewrote the campaign plan for Iraq during the surge of 2007. And Michele, you've been involved in all of our major theatres across the globe, the Gulf to the Horn of Africa. What would each of you say are the two most important reasons our military and our diplomats need to work together to protect America's interests abroad?

Amb. Pearce: [00:26:24] The dictionary definition of diplomacy is managing international relations typically by a country's representatives abroad. Nowhere does it say only by the State Department or only by the Foreign Office. It's the job of all of our representatives abroad.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:39] Very good point.

Amb. Pearce: [00:26:40] So that's point one. Secondly, it's just common sense. I mean, I was in the Foreign Service for nearly 35 years, 34 years and ten months to be exact. Every single assignment I had in 11 countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, in every embassy, in every country, we work closely with the US military embassies or teams, Military commands or teams. Teams of teams on both counts and governments. Our teams of teams. So if you start to cut people out and you start to do things in little exclusive groups, whether it's inside an organization or between organizations, you make mistakes. We've seen this time and again, and when we're defending our country, which is what we do, we have an absolute responsibility to bring all the best expertise we have, whether it's civilian or military. So we have no choice but to work together every single day. And we do.

Adm. Howard: [00:27:30] So for the defense of the country. The best wars, the one you win without fighting. And so when you look at peace relationships, when we're not in conflict in an area, it is extremely important that the military understand who the ambassadors are and understand the intent of our country in trying to develop relationships with other countries, and that our activities when we're in an area where there's not conflict, support those end goals of the State Department and the US government. And then because militaries operate together within an alliance or within spontaneous operations, military members tend to have relationships that are very long lasting. We stay within the single career path and we need to allow the State Department personnel and the ambassadors to understand what opportunities and communication points we have so that they can leverage all of the different players that are in the area who are US assets basically to help develop whatever relationship they want to develop or get to whatever goal the US is trying to get to. And I think it's very easy because the way the military operates, we've divided the world into boundaries and regions and we put people in charge. We think we're in charge. It's very easy to fall down that path, but that in the end is to the detriment of, I think, what our government's trying to accomplish. And so it's essential to really understand what the government's interests are.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:55] And these political advisors, I know I've worked with them in different parts of the world. They're the endpoint, so to speak, for a number of the embassies. I would like to thank you for explaining to our audiences a little bit the partnership that you developed, the essential partnership that we need across all our team, and also underlining the importance of the fact that we have to be globally engaged to protect our interests and to protect our country. So thank you, David. Thank you, Michelle. It's been an excellent conversation. I really appreciate you participating.

Amb. Pearce: [00:29:27] Thank you. Thank you.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:36] This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador, A Conversation. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find the podcast on all major sites and on our website, GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome input and suggestions on the series. Please let us know your thoughts via General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.