Episode 68. US Engagement in Somalia: A Comprehensive Approach with General Thomas Waldhauser and Ambassador Donald Yamamoto

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:17] Welcome to a conversation in the Academy of Diplomacy series, The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior U.S. diplomats and senior U.S. military leaders in conversations about their joint work to advance U.S. national security interests in different parts of the world. The General and the Ambassador, is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. Today we will focus on Somalia. And our very special guests are General Thomas Waldhauser, who is rejoining us and Ambassador Donald Yamamoto. General Waldhauser served as the commander of U.S. Africa Command from 2016 to 2019. He previously served as Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Commanding General, Marine Expeditionary Force and Commanding General United States Marine Forces, Central Command. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto was the U.S. Ambassador to Somalia from 2018 until 2021. Just prior, he was the acting assistant secretary of State for African Affairs. He also served as a U.S. ambassador to Djibouti, as well as to Ethiopia and in senior positions both in Washington and overseas, including in Eritrea and Afghanistan. Gentlemen, welcome to a new episode in the series, and I'm thrilled to have you both with us. I thought I'd start our podcast with sort of an introduction for our listeners, and bear with me in this condensed version of the country. Somalia is a small eastern African country with about 11 million people. It has been plagued by instability and periodic humanitarian crises after the collapse of the ruling regime in 1991. The U.S. closed its embassy for many years. The country descended into a civil war.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:02:12] The U.N. stepped in, as did other organizations. In 1992, the United States, with U.N. Security Council approval, led a multinational force to support the U.N. relief effort. At one point, the United States had almost 40,000 troops in country. When the U.S. mission ended, the U.N. took over again, but with U.S. military support. In 1993, during an operation led by the United States against a wanted warlord. A battle ensued in which U.S. helicopters were down and 18 service members were lost. The movie Black Hawk Down recounts the horrors of the battle of Mogadishu. President Clinton then ordered U.S. troops out of Somalia and the U.N. withdrew. A bit later, the U.N. then started going back into Somalia around 2007 by authorizing an African Union peacekeeping mission, which is still there with the establishment of a federal government in 2012. And in the face of the rise of the terrorist group al-Shabab, U.S. military operations began again with a limited on the ground presence. Later, the United States began strikes against al-Shabab. On the diplomatic side, the U.S. recognized the new federal government and began embassy operations not in country, but working out of the U.S. embassy in nearby Kenya. Finally, in 2018, the embassy reopened in Mogadishu. So I'd like to start by exploring our diplomatic and military engagement in the region. When you started working together, Don, you were not in country yet, but you were the acting assistant secretary for Africa. And Tom, you were the commander of U.S. Africa Command based in Stuttgart. Where does Somalia fit into U.S. interests in the region and especially the Horn of Africa?

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:04:08] Before we start, I just want to say thank you very much, and it's really great to be with General Waldhauser. He was my classmate at the National War College, and he was also my boss when I was at the National Defense University as senior vice president. And to have worked with him when he was the commanding general from Africa Command was just a great honor. And I really learned a great deal. And so going to your question, it really goes to the heart of what our policy was as an activist policy. It really started by Secretary Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Secretary Hillary Clinton. And what we did was you cannot allow any country which has an area of instability and where you have activities by an al Qaeda operative raising havoc in neighboring countries. And so it was our national strategic interest to go back into Somalia to try to stabilize and to work with the Somalis. And I'll give you one example. One of the reasons why we did this over the last two decades, because of the al-Shabab operations in Somalia, we saw terrorist activities not only in Uganda, Ethiopia, but particularly in Kenya and in Kenya, specifically from the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi, as well as in neighboring Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We also was followed up by the attacks at the U.S. Mall in Nairobi in 2013, the DusitD2 Nairobi Hotel in 2019, and a brazen attack at Manda Bay, which left three Americans, including a service member, dead all in told this havoc. The Shabab had 400 people perished and 4000 were injured from their attacks. And that is one of the reasons why we had to return and to try to stabilize this area.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:05:49] Hello, Deborah. Thanks very much for having me again. It's good to be with you. And Ambassador Yamamoto. It's good to see you again, my friend. Put another way, I suppose, is why is Somalia important to the US national interests? And I would say that starting in about the mid 2000, the common goal not only for the United States but the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, for example, was to support Somali led efforts to stabilize and rebuild their country along democratic and federal lines. Now, as Ambassador Yamamoto indicated, conflict in Somalia, primarily from al-Shabab, cross borders into Kenya and Uganda. So in other words, this made the entire Horn of Africa or East Africa region somewhat unstable. So a secure and stable and prosperous east. The African region was certainly in the US interests. Now al-Shabab, the Al Qaida affiliated terrorist group, certainly has aspirations outside Somalia. Their three main objectives is to overthrow the federal government of Somalia, get AMISOM to leave the area, and then expand their governance throughout the entire region. So in sum, a safe and secure environment for the Somali people. Deterring the terrorist organizations such as al-Shabab and to a lesser degree, ISIS's from expanding and promoting regional security was certainly within our US interests.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:11] Well, I wanted to ask Don, as you came into the country, what was it like to operate on the ground after such a long absence?

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:07:22] So when we started to look at how to stabilize Somalia, the first area was security. And that's as the general stated, we approached the various countries to form African Union peacekeeping operations. We approached President Museveni in Uganda to form the African Union called AMISOM back in 2007. But in conjunction with that, you just can't have just an African Union peacekeeping from outside. You have to have internal security. And so we worked with the Somalis and the various clans. And in London in May 11th, 2017, we got all the parties together to form the comprehensive agreement on security, the caste system. Thereby, it was the Somalis buying into a developing security on their own, working with partners and creating institutions to do this. And so as we looked at going into Somalia, we started to operate in Nairobi and then taking forays into Mogadishu. We want to get the security by AMISOM, the security by the Somalis up and running, and then we would continue to expand. I led a team in 2016 that really went into back and forth into Mogadishu. And then by 2018 one, 2017, 18, when I came back then we established a permanent presence in Mogadishu.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:08:47] And you describe the embassy as you found it as a "windowless sarcophagus." Can you tell us more about that?

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:08:55] The issue was security and how to protect the American diplomatic presence. We had a American contractor construct a windowless, very tightly fitting sarcophagus to house 50 people. In the beginning, we had eight American diplomats and contractors, but along with about 47 to 50 American security contractors, along with about two dozen Ugandan contract guards who provided security for us. And it was very tight fitting where one on top of each other. And one of the problems, of course, when we had COVID, that became a real major problem in how to address that, given that we had to be in this tightly fitting area, yet at the same time fight COVID, which was really spreading, but we were able to get it under control within a month and continue to do our diplomatic operations.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:09:48] If I may, just to clarify, during my time as the CCommander at US Africa Command in the summer of 2016, I had about a year with Ambassador Schwartz and then the next year or so with Chargé Marty Dale in the last year with Ambassador Yamamoto. And I just wanted to point out that during that time frame, especially the year or so, that we had a chargé in Somalia, it just underscores, again, the requirement, I think, for the United States to make sure that we have ambassadors in place. It's not that Chargé Dale did not do a good job. He was a fantastic counterpart and colleague. But the bottom line is, for over a year, at a critical point in what was going in Somalia, we did not have an ambassador on the ground. So, you know, the United States has a global leadership role to play. And our presence and contributions are very, very important. But it's important, I think, to point out that we, as us participants were certainly not the sole source present inside Somalia, as we previously discussed the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and individual countries at various times such as the UK, Turkey, the UAE, the Italians, these countries and organizations all participated in, all had a huge stake in what was going on in Somalia. So in sum, it's important for the US to be there as part of the leadership in that area. But I just wanted to underscore that there were a lot of other organizations and countries that were involved during this time frame.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:10] I wanted to shift to how you actually work together on the country. I know that you would come down periodically, Tom, to visit and engage and Don with consistent presence on the ground. How did you tag team on working on critical issues such as security and governance?

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:11:31] Let me begin by just trying to underscore and expand just a little bit on a point that Ambassador Yamamoto just. In the spring of 2017, the federal government of Somalia, along with the federal member states, agreed on a very aggressive and comprehensive national security architecture. And this, of course, was highlighted at the London conference in May of 2017, which I had the opportunity to attend. And Secretary of Defense Mattis was the senior participant from the United States. And at this particular conference, among other things, one of the one of the items that the United States committed to was training what was called a Danab force inside of Somalia. Danab is another word for lightning brigade. And prior to the spring of 2017, there had been a partnership with the US contractors and US military to begin training this organization. And this organization was supposed to be capable of offensive operations and then turning the ground over to the Somali national army once they had in fact completed the mission. And so the effort to expand and build these units into a battalion sized organization was agreed upon at the security conference and and and endorsed by Secretary of Defense Mattis. Now, there were many challenges, and Don and I certainly collaborated in many areas paying soldiers, equipping the soldiers, recruiting the soldiers, making sure the roles were all all the ghost soldiers on the Somali rolls were taken off, that the appropriate people were assigned to leadership positions. We tag team on that with the senior leadership President Farmajo Prime Minister Kiir and we did that all the time. And I would say that the Danab units that were trained were extremely proficient and they were very, very brave soldiers. But one of the drawbacks was the aggressive timeline to expand this unit, as agreed upon in the London conference, was something that was always a challenge.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:13:29] And let me just kind of build on on the security point, but also kind of give you some more approach on their policy issues. Not only the Danab was is really a small unit, about 1200 soldiers and we wanted to have them in each of the five federal member states. And the issue comes in is when you're when you have these small units fighting against a Shabab group, which is probably a couple of thousand strong and has a lot of strong networks, it becomes very difficult and challenging to kind of coordinate all these different units and different clans, different regions, into a very cohesive and coherent fighting force. The presence of the Department of Defense was critical, AFRICOM. The second area, too, is how does that weigh into our overall strategic approach to Somalia? Our Embassy in Africa command very unusual compared to any other embassy, I think, in the world. We developed a national strategic policy paper for Somalia that ties in to our overall national strategic interests developed by the White House and the National Security Council. And what we did was we had the general and his team look it over. They edited, cleared and approved it. And I want him and his team to approve it because this was a document that was going to guide, bound and direct all of our diplomatic and really our military approach to Somalia. And obviously, it needed the interagency approval back in Washington, which it did. And based on this, we had three approaches. One was on security.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:15:06] Security was critical, not only developing a comprehensive approach within these Danab, but also developing a Somali army. And we went in and worked with the president, the prime minister on recruitment reform and to make sure that we eliminated those soldiers who are not part of this process. And also, we brought in the European Union, the Italians did training, and of course, our military did a great job training. The second part was economic. If you have a country which is over 60 to 65% unemployed and you have illiteracy rates that are also staggeringly high, you have to have an economic approach. We came up with the idea on highly indebted poor country debt relief to eliminate their debt over 2 to $3 billion. And what we found out is that during the process, the Somalis did a terrific job. Of the 37 countries that reached decision point, Somalia was one of the best countries. And it was really remarkable how much a commitment they were working with us, working with the international organizations. And to this day, they are still in the throes of reform and reaching hopefully completion point within the next five years. The other area too, is that our and our political stability is that we want to see, as the general said, a peaceful transition in authority. And so we had two transitions and presidents we want to have a third. And that was going to be on the people of some. And now it's delayed, but we're hopeful that it can happen soon.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:41] Let me jump in on the issue of U.S. assistance for the U.S. Not the only country has provided a lot of aid to Somalia in recent years humanitarian assistance, security assistance. What kind of leverage does U.S. assistance give the United States in engaging with a country like Somalia?

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:17:01] One cannot see foreign assistance as a mechanism to leverage, though it is a part of to gain influence and also to execute and implement policy. But we do it in our own U.S. national strategic interest. And we we look at the foreign assistance. It is there to work with the not only our allied partners, and that's the European Union, Japan, other countries, to get them in the process, but also the Somalis themselves. And the other area, too, is in conjunction with the foreign assistance, is that Africa is very unique as a region. The Diaspora plays a very significant and important role. And in that, a lot of our officers in fact, I visited Minnesota, Seattle and Ohio to meet with the diaspora at least a dozen, two dozen times. And that gave me an understanding of what their interests were, but also the connection with all the clan elders going back to here. What is it that the Somalis themselves want? It's not what we want, but how is it that we can play a positive role? And our assistance was basically divided into three areas. Again, first it was on humanitarian. So each year we provide about 300 to $500 million to the food needs of 5.4 million Somalis out of a population of 11 million, and of which 2 million were near starvation.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:18:21] And that's because of the conflict, the Shabab, etc. And we worked with the United Nations, Japan, the EU and other countries to meet these needs. It was not just the U.S. alone. The second area is development. You got to have an area of giving people hope. And 40 to $60 million doesn't seem like enough, but it went a far way to a expand education among girls. And one of the things that we learned in Africa, if you can get education among girls in the communities above 40% or 50%, you're going to have really profound development down the road. And we were able to get that in many communities. And working with the Islamic clerics, they really helped and supported us, unlike some of our experiences in Afghanistan and other areas. The third area, of course, was security, and that is again working with developing the AMISOM to be an effective force, the Danab, and the Somali troops on their own.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:18] Tom, let me ask you, what were the challenges on building a Somali military? Given the context, which I don't think we've really explained to our listeners that they are member states as well as a federal government. Then you also have clan issues and differences there which make forming a national army rather difficult.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:19:40] Though we talked about the Somali national security architecture. One of the things that document did was established size of ground forces, air forces, maritime forces, who would be responsible for what, who would be responsible for pay and also numbers of those units and so forth. So on paper, it was very aggressive and a path for the way ahead. But in the execution phase of this, there certainly were some challenges. And I would just say, just to amplify this comprehensive approach to security, the development of the security institutions, in other words, defense force and a police force, there was far more to this document than just those two aspects, which is what we at AFRICOM were most involved with. There was work with AMISOM. As we've talked about, there was an area for community recovery and extension of the state authority. There was an area that had to do with countering and preventing violent extremism, and there is an area that had to do with integrating support and coordination that came from the overall world community. So it was a very comprehensive plan. In our piece of that was the development of the Defense Forces and primarily deniable. Now, having said that, one of the things that to amplify what Ambassador Yamamoto just talked about was when you're doing the security force assistance, especially in the area of defense, is accountability, equipment, dollars, etc., this is a huge responsibility and certainly a benchmark that needs to be watched closely, not only from United States contributions, but from the global community as well.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:21:11] And so there were several times prior to Ambassador Yamamoto's arrival where in in the case of Ambassador Schwartz, you know, halted some of the programs because the accountability is just simply wasn't there. So you have to spend some time with building the infrastructure within the federal government. You've got to remember at this time, if you were 21 years old or so in Somalia, you had never experienced a federal government. You don't know what a president is supposed to do. So the challenge in a country that's certainly governed and has challenges with tribes and clans and all that goes with that, this was a huge step to be building a military while at the same time trying to build a government from the bottom up. But accountability was one of those areas. And so, for example, I mentioned ghost soldiers, if I remember correctly, there were some they cleared some some number like 6000 off the payrolls of the Somali national army. And these were individuals who either were not certainly not in the army, maybe even deceased, but somebody was collecting their money. And so this was a huge thing that that President Farmajo and Prime Minister Kiir undertook.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:22:19] Moreover, they also did a pretty good job of trying to rid some of the older senior general officers who certainly had been around for a long time and perhaps were past their their prime and try to promote and advocate for more junior officers who were more energetic, understood kind of the intent of where the institution was supposed to go. And that was a serious challenge because the clan issues, the tribal ties and so forth within the national army was very, very difficult to break. And I would just say finally for this question is that all along our support was to provide eventually the Somali national army the opportunity to take over for themselves, the security issues in their country. AMISOM had been there at that time ten or 12 years. They had paid a high price in blood. Some numbers that I've seen, although difficult to confirm that during that period, that the countries that provided AMISOM troops had lost between 1202 thousand individuals. They had paid a serious price in blood and treasure as well. And the whole effort was designed to get the Somali national army up to speed, to take care of their own security challenges. And this, of course, is one of the areas that didn't proceed along the timeline of the certainly the national security architecture, but certainly along the timeline that AMISOM and others would have liked.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:23:44] So when Ambassador Yamamoto talks about the transition plan, what this transition plan from, from a military perspective was a campaign plan to rid lines of communication, roadways, lines that were used for for travel and cities certainly around Mogadishu, rid them of al-Shabab. That would allow then ultimately the federal government and federal member states of Somalia to take hold. There was never going to be a military solution to the problem in Somalia. The key was going to be the federal government and the federal member states getting together and coming up with solutions that made sense for everybody, not just for one clan, not just for one federal member state, but for the whole country as well. And this was a concept that in the federal member states and Ambassador Yamamoto knows this well, was sometimes very difficult to explain and understand because the federal member states and their leadership oftentimes felt they were giving up their power, giving up what they had earned to the federal government. So these conflicts at that level also were barriers in trying to build a Somali national army that in a given time frame was supposed to be able to take on the security efforts of al-Shabab.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:57] Well, I wanted to jump back into the issue of al-Shabab to explain to our listeners what its about, its ability, its force, its finances, which I know, Don, you and I talked a little bit about and to better for them to better understand what what the threat is.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:25:17] Shabab is is an al Qaeda affiliate, and it has international connections and ties. And but I think in Somalia, how it operates is is more like a criminal syndicate. What it does it it it makes about $120 million in profits a year. And that goes into the greater Al Qaida operation in the Middle East, which really makes it one of the most lucrative Al Qaida affiliates. And that's why it is so dangerous. It makes its money through extortions, through control of the cattle and agricultural products, which is 70% of the economy. And also the more important one is the cut, which is the religious contributions. So they control all these funding. And what we've been trying to do through the government, by fighting corruption, creating institutions, and also having the governments accountable to the people, that that could actually turn the tide and make it much more resonant to the and address the needs of the people. So right now, the Shabab, when we first got there in 2017, controlled really a large area of Somalia. And I think in the two years we made significant inroads into trying to limit that through poverty reduction programs and reforms fighting corruption. But again, a lot more is needed.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:26:38] Al-shabab has Ambassador Yamamoto just described as a very, very resilient and very, very, I think, complex organization. And it arose in the mid 2000. It's its name, Al-shabab, means the youth movement. It arose in the mid 2000 after the Islamic Court Union was essentially taken out of Mogadishu and the airport, etc. was was taken back by the Somali National Army with help from some of the countries that eventually became part of AMISOM. The al-Shabab is certainly waging jihad against any enemies of Islam. They're obviously linked to Al Qaida and they've pledged their allegiance to Al Qaida. They have Wahhabian roots. They're not a centralized organization in agenda or goals. And their members come from various clans throughout the country. And their numbers, depending on when you ask and who you ask, anywhere from 4000 to 10000, depending, I guess, on who you're talking to. We mentioned already that their objectives were to overthrow the federal government of Somalia, that they wanted AMISOM out of the country and they wanted to expand their governance and their influence throughout the region. But the bottom line on al-Shabab is they can be degraded by military pressure, but the ultimate defeat will come through a political solution that promotes a loss of support from the population, that encourages a breakdown in their internal coherence, and also is a set of negotiated arrangements with the federal government of Somalia. During my time at AFRICOM, the Somali leadership had different ways of trying to get at this goal of some type of political solution with with the al-Shabab. At one time, there was a huge effort to try to go after al-Shabab leadership with the intention of getting them to essentially turn themselves in and offer for negotiations.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:28:26] There was some limited success there. There's a gentleman by the name of Robow who gave himself up in August of 2017. But at the end of the day, instead of kind of capitalizing on what he could bring, that tactical operation didn't achieve any strategic success because he ultimately, after trying to run for office in one of the federal member states, the national government put him back in prison. So there were al-Shabab is a resilient group during our time there. It's hard to measure progress. It's certainly not in a straight line, one step forward and two steps back. And sometimes someone say, how can you have progress in Somalia in the same sentence? And that just depends on, to a certain degree, what day of the week it might be. We know that our efforts, along with the others there who are working with the military, is at times had put al-Shabab back on their heels. We know that we degraded their ability to move around. We had a significant impact on their ability to recruit. And at various times they were they were, I wouldn't say on the ropes, but at various times they had taken several steps back. That said, during the timeframe that we're talking about today, they would come up and conduct significant strikes. The strike in October 14th of 2017, where nearly 600 people were killed in downtown Mogadishu. This demonstrates the resiliency. This demonstrates al-Shabab's desire not to go away.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:29:45] And the difficulty of trying to find a political solution is is emphasized and underscored during these attacks that they have. So it's hard to measure the progress some. It's going in the right direction. Other days it's not. It's a resilient organization. But the endgame of our efforts from military perspective once again, was that the Somali national army and their security forces would be able to deal with the al-Shabab threat, which would mean that the AMISOM forces could leave and that the federal government and the federal member states got it together with regards to how to conduct security operations against al-Shabab. So there were several countries, the United Kingdom, Turkey and UAE at one point who assisted the effort in trying to raise the expertise of the Somali national security forces and, of course, the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, they were all certainly involved. And of course, the African Union's contribution of AMISOM, the African Union mission in Somalia consists of, for the most part, about five countries Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. And although it's difficult to determine the accuracy since 2007, there's been somewhere around the neighborhood of 1700 AMISOM forces who were killed in action in supporting the Somali national army. And by the way, I should take this opportunity to say that during my tenure there were two US service members who were killed Kyle Milliken, a Navy SEAL. Early on in my tenure and then Alexander Conrad, a soldier in July of 2018, paid the ultimate price in assisting the Somali national army in their efforts to combat al-Shabab.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:31:25] Just to add to to those points, that the fundamental issues and challenges is governance. The governance will be the key issue and turning the tide on, stabilizing the country, bringing peace and really addressing the Shabab threat. Shabab is very much tied to the clan dynamics as well, as well as trying to be inter or intra clan connections. So I'll give you example. Former Prime Minister Khaire is a Hawiye Murusade and that's also one of the leaders, leaderships in the southern part by the Shabab. And so the Shabab and the leadership of the federal government is in many ways the similar on the clan dynamics. And we do find some of the military generals who were in connections with the Shabab. And, you know, we ended that we we went after them. But we also said, you, the Somalis, you have to do that. And I'll give you one story we had with the president. You know, I went to him and said back in 2017 and in 2018, when I first went in, I said, you know, I have two children in the military. I am not going to have them be deployed to Somalia to fight your wars. You have to fight this war yourself.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:32:35] I wanted to ask about the effects of a decision that was made at the end of the Trump administration. Tom, you had left your position. But, Don, you were still you were still at post. And that is President Trump's decision to order US troops to leave Somalia almost immediately. How did it affect your relationships in-country, Don? And Tom, I wanted to get your assessment of the effects of the withdrawal in terms of helping against in the battle against al-Shabab.

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:33:05] So the decision was was made towards the time of the presidential elections. Whatever the president directs, we take an oath to the constitution. We obey that. But there was no interagency discussion about how we were going to have a U.S. presence in the war zones as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. And so my question to the interagency was, did you thoroughly discuss this on the interagency? If so, good. I made my views known that the removal of the US troops would. They're not there to provide the security for the US embassy directly, but indirectly because of their presence. It enable us to go towards using our contract airplanes to travel all across the country, to work with the communities and without the US military presence. That all came to an end. It was finished. But more important is that it also affected the Italian and the European Union training program for the military. We also had the after effects of COVID, which also limited. So those were some of the challenges. But the issue comes in is, is that it did ask an important question what is the goal and the purpose of our security presence? And those are things that are still being discussed within the interagency. But for us, after the troops, most of the troops left in January 2021, we still were able to continue our diplomatic mission. But it was really having all the officials come to Mogadishu or doing video conferencing. But we still maintain our connections. That never ended.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:34:38] When it comes down to it. US priorities, US national interests and the level of effort in Somalia are certainly fair questions that need to be discussed. At a recent posture hearing, the Commander of US Africa Command was asked a similar question to what you just asked me and his answer at the task. Was that I have let my thoughts be known to the leadership and that the Secretary is continuing to evaluate the global posture response. And I think that's a that's a fair answer. You know, the footprint was small, but when you're not there, virtually, you're probably actually absent. So again, it comes down to a level of effort. It comes down to priorities. It comes down to a global posture for the military where where our main effort is with regards to the strategy, readiness, deployment time and all those things. And these are very, very hard questions. So I think that if nothing else, it also allows a good discussion on Somalia. I think it maybe perhaps will bring some benchmarks into play. What is their level of effort? And have we just, by default, started to do things there because they either didn't want to or could not or just unwilling to do so? So I think it's healthy that there's a discussion of what our level of effort should be. And it we'll see what happens here in the near future when the secretary kind of lays out his over his revised global force posture.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:35:56] Well, to wrap up, I wanted to ask one last question, which is for those who are following in your footsteps as senior military and senior diplomatic leaders, what other key lessons would you pass on to them in terms of inheritance that both of your children did not choose the diplomatic service, but military service?

Amb. Yamamoto: [00:36:16] And of course, is that we taught for the ambassadors and our outgoing deputy chief of missions. We said, first of all, know yourself, be self-aware about who you are and your strength and your weaknesses. But more important is that your commitment to your staff because their development and mentoring and coaching them, because they're going to be the future leaders. The other issue, too, is always engage constructively with all your colleagues, not only within the department, but also overseas. And I note that some of the people who mentored me, I became their supervisors and vice versa. And you don't ever know you may need them down the road. So always treat everyone with respect. But more important is to be an effective leader and also to be a policymaker back in Washington is that you really need to work with and learn from all people. But going back to your issues is I have two children. They were really inspired by their two uncles who were in the relocation camps during World War Two, and they volunteered for the four four second Regimental Command 100th Infantry. But more important is when my son joined the Army and he was deployed, his sister is ten years younger than him, wore his dog tags every time he was deployed. And we thought she would be a she was at the Washington School of Ballet and she'd be a ballerina or something. But no, she says, I'm going to go to the Army. She went to West Point, graduated and is now in the Army Corps of Engineers, and her brother swore her in at her commissioning. It was great. It's wonderful and I'm proud of them.

 Gen. Waldhauser: [00:37:54] I would just say that it's important to get to know your colleagues who work, for example, within the Department of State. And so opportunities such as the War College are places where you need to take the time to get to know them. Ambassador Yamamoto and I were classmates in the National War College, and who would have thought that years later we'd be Ambassador and COCOM and so on and so forth? So you never, you never really know. So it's important to take the time to get to know someone outside your comfort zone when the opportunity arises. And then I would just say two final things is number one is that make sure that you're going out of your way to keep the diplomatic side informed of what the military is trying to do. I mean, the old argument that we're militarizing our diplomatic policies and so forth, because sometimes DOD is viewed as the £100 gorilla in the room, we need to make sure that we're keeping our State Department personnel informed and whatever level the chain of command you are because it is a team effort. And then finally, I would just say that at your at a COCOM, for example, or regardless of where you may serve, it's very, very important to include the Department of State, the USAID folks in all those colleagues, in whatever planning process that you have ongoing and whatever challenge that you're trying to to solve. It's very, very interesting to get a perspective from someone who is from those two agencies who may look at a military problem a little bit different. And oftentimes they have creative ideas. They can make significant contributions, but you have to include them in the planning process.

 Amb. McCarthy: [00:39:26] Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for for joining the general and the ambassador for for sharing lessons learned, for sharing your friendship, because obviously it goes back a long way and for talking about a very important region to the United States. So thank you very much. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UMC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find our podcasts on all sites and on our website, www.GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome feedback and suggestions and can be reached at General.ambassador.Podcast@gmail.com. We do answer the mail. Thank you for listening.