Episode 73. Projecting US Power: US Transportation Command

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:14] Welcome to a conversation in the American Academy of Diplomacy's podcast series, The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior U.S. diplomats and senior US defense officials in conversations about how they work together on a major international crisis or foreign policy challenge. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy and I'm the producer and host. Today we're going to talk about the US Transportation Command and its role in projecting U.S. military power across the globe. Our guests are General Darren McDew, former commander of TRANSCOM from 2015 to 2018, and Dr. Alan Misenheimer, former political advisor to the US Transportation commander from 2016 to 2018. General McDew served 36 years in the US Air Force in multiple operational leadership roles, commands and unique assignments, including as military aid to the President, Director, Air Force, Senate Liaison, Director of Air Force Public Affairs and Vice Director for Strategic Plans and Policy for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dr. Misenheimer served as a U.S. Foreign Service officer for 35 years, working in the Near East and North Africa. His senior assignments include Chargé at the US Embassy in Kuwait, deputy chief of Mission in Yemen, and Counselor for Peace and Reconstruction in Afghanistan. He recently completed his PhD at Georgetown, my alma mater, and is eagerly awaiting the release of his first book entitled The Ends of Justice Seeking Perpetual Peace in a Time of Endless War.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:51] The General and the Ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast has been sponsored by Data Miner, a leading artificial intelligence platform that delivers real time breaking news alerts to help you make critical decisions and respond with speed and confidence. General McDew, Dr. Misenheimer, welcome to the General and the Ambassador. We really appreciate your joining. It took a bit to pull all this together between travel and work schedules and a doctor. I know that you're joining us from your location in Europe. So as I said, we're going to focus on your work together during the period 2016 and 2018 when you partnered at TRANSCOM. For our listeners, the United States Transportation Command is responsible for providing air, land and sea transportation, as well as global patient movement to meet US national security needs, both in times of peace and in times of war. Transcom moves huge amounts of people, defense equipment and other cargo around the world. For the US military relying on both Department of Defense and commercial transportation assets. General, I'm sure this description does not capture the importance of TRANSCOM in terms of our country's ability to project its power. Can you give our listeners a better sense of the importance of this command and the assets that it has?

Gen. McDew: [00:03:16] First of all, thank you very much for including the little folks who live in the cornfields of Illinois US Transportation Command. Our biggest assets are the people who work in this enterprise who will never be written about in the history books. So on behalf of all of them, I still use the pronoun "we," we thank you. What I used to talk to our folks about was if you step back a little bit and climb US Transportation Command's mission was to provide options, options to the president that no other leader in the world has. So if you look at the landscape of multipolar world and you see that there are three great powers, and if you acknowledge that, most would acknowledge the fact that there's only one superpower, that superpower is us today. I would also say that it's under duress right now, but it's us today. And the reason that we're a superpower is not necessarily because we have the greatest bomber aircraft or the greatest aircraft carriers or the greatest infantry fighting forces. It's because we have the ability to range the globe and sustain an operation for decades, and we've proven that we can do that. That ability is the envy of the other great powers. And US Transportation Command underpins that ability to range the globe and sustain that effort.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:34] TRANSCOM works across the globe and needs secure access to land, sea lanes, airspace. Can you each talk a little bit about this global reach and how TRANSCOM actually is able to secure access? Who negotiates access? When is Department of Defense in the lead? When is Department of State? Who gets the clearances?

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:04:56] I can say a few words about that. The real expert, of course, is the General, but I would just begin by saying that as a new arrival at Transportation Command, it was astonishing to see the breadth and complexity of the operational briefing that the general receives on an ongoing basis, because having been a pilot in another regional command and an operational context in Iraq and having spent a lot of time around other military entities, I was familiar with those briefings. The TRANSCOM briefing is completely different because TRANSCOM has ships, planes, trucks, vehicles of every sort in 24 seven motion around the globe. So as a newcomer, just understanding the metrics by which TRANSCOM assesses its own performance, looking at all of these things and all of these flows of goods, of endless variety, all of them are related to operational requirements somewhere, It is just remarkable and difficult to characterize as someone who hasn't seen it. The only other thing I would say in a general way is if the American people could see the command group and transportation command and see how they question assumptions, look at historical models, devise new boxes outside of every box, they would say, yes, that's exactly the way I want my military to operate. It's just a remarkable, remarkable operation. And it does, as a general said, it undergirds the capacity of US military power to be brought to bear and in a sustaining way around the world.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:06:39] There's a wide variety of methodology that comes to bear. We have allies who are working with us, who are forward leaning in helping us to maintain our presence in the global commons and the Indo-Pacific, for example, and on the ground in Europe. In those areas, military channels are very, very well established, very, very well lubricated. They work quite efficiently. And so military channels come to the fore. But if we start in other areas where our relations with a host country are not so well developed, not so mature or just not so friendly, then other elements come to bear. Starting with the ambassador in the country team, and sometimes we found we could build consensus on an overflight arrangement or a passage arrangement. And I know we'll speak more about Afghanistan, but this was particularly important in the effort to resupply Afghanistan because it was necessary to transit both on the ground and through the air countries where we simply don't have great historical relationships. And they had to be built, rebuilt and reinvented on a recurring basis. And so that was very much a shared military and diplomatic task with the emphasis shifting according to the course of events.

Gen. McDew: [00:07:58] As Alan said, because the vast majority of the world, the military doesn't have those established relationships. The State Department is vital because we are in every corner of the globe every single day. Air Mobility Command likes to say the sun never sets on Air Mobility Command, which is a part of us TRANSCOM. And the only reason that can happen is because of our diplomatic presence in places that most Americans would never consider.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:08:22] Well, Alan, as we prepared for this podcast, you gave an outstanding example of where US diplomacy figured significantly in the work of TRANSCOM, and I believe it was related to Qatar.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:08:35] That's a one off sort of event, but it's just the kind of thing that's out there around the world that you have to be prepared and nimble to respond to. So when absolutely out of the blue in the middle of 2017, Saudi Arabia, along with several of its allies with Egypt and Bahrain and UAE, imposed strict sanctions of their own against the state of Qatar. We were not apprised ahead of time. We were not given any guidance from them as to how long this would be in place. So I recall vividly the general turning to me in one of the briefings and saying, "well, Alan, what does the State Department think of this?" So we put a lot of thought and a lot of effort over a period of quite a few weeks and months as this situation dragged on into answering a whole series of questions. But the most important and most immediate one is how long is this going to last? Because if our inability to move cargoes between, say, UAE and Qatar is going to be short term, then we can stand on our head for a little while and wait for the resumption of normal business. But if it's going to be long term, then new processes for managing the regional flow of goods of many, many different sorts must be devised. I'm pleased to say that based on what I knew of Qatar, I was able to immediately talk to all the right people, if not quite all, but many of the right people within a short time. And the people in the department and the people on the country team in the embassy and in the embassies around the region and report back to the general that even though you're not going to hear the US government say this because we don't want it to be true, this is going to be a long term phenomenon. It's not going to end quickly. So we helped place TRANSCOM in a position to make that call and to frame its response to this unexpected setback and change in the regional operating environment in what turned out to be the best possible way.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:29] I recall meeting you, General, when you visited Lithuania as TRANSCOM was seeking to find different ways to bring stuff out of Afghanistan, But you and Alan traveled to many countries to build or maintain the relationships to allow U.S. military personnel and equipment to transit. Can you give us some examples of memorable trips and how you work together and with our embassies on the ground?

Gen. McDew: [00:10:53] We probably each have our favorites. But one that jumps out for me is Vietnam. We had a request from the Ambassador to Vietnam to visit. We provide access to senior officials. Sometimes it's the diplomats can't get to. The beauty of TRANSCOM in particular is because we don't typically shoot things and we are seen as also economic engines for a particular country. We have airplanes that land their boats that may dock there, rail and cargo. There are many times the president of a country will want to meet with us because they think we bring money. And so the US ambassador actually asked us to come and help him with some access issues inside the country. And I found it a fascinating place to visit. But better yet, I found it fascinating and encouraging that the Ambassador would think of us.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:11:38] I think this is an illustration of one of the significant benefits that came out of the travel that the general made to so many different countries in every place. The preparation for the travel involved high level consultations, very specific and operational in the State Department, also meetings with the embassies of the destination countries in Washington so that the impact of the visit, the impact of the high level engagement could even begin to be felt before the traveling party even left the United States. And I think that was definitely true. In the case of Vietnam, they were very much anticipating your arrival, General, and it had a huge impact. You may have seen just this week, just yesterday or the day before China announced that they will be establishing a reliable supply chain, including Vietnam. The Chinese, of course, say a lot of things that they intend and may or may not ever do. But to the extent that they don't succeed in doing that, it will be in part a result of engagement with Vietnam over many years, including your visit there, to keep the Vietnamese looking in other directions and anticipating the benefits of collaboration with us and not just with the Chinese.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:55] Are there any examples of trips where you had to really defuse a situation?

Gen. McDew: [00:13:00] I don't know if defuse, that didn't come to my mind. Alan has a better memory. But I will say the symbology of our visit was impactful in many places, and I will use personally and professionally for me, any place we visited on the continent of Africa, for the African continent. And I can't speak for every single African, but I know for me, landing in Senegal, for example, in that big, beautiful blue and white airplane with United States of America on the side, and to see a black man and his wife come off that airplane is impactful. And then I dredged up the best elementary French I could have used, Ambassador, to to to say some French words. And I think I actually did an intro to an interview en francais, however, the French have been very embarrassed with how elementary it was.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:51] Alan, I wanted to teach you and to better explain what a political POLAD, a political adviser, does. As I have said to our listeners, it's the key interface between a commander and US ambassadors in their embassies. You both advise the commander and how to engage with embassies and explain to embassies what the commander is trying to achieve. Can you tell us what you saw were the most common problems between the command and embassies and how did you and your team help overcome these obstacles?

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:14:25] Yes, Ambassador, as the general has mentioned, we found and I hope it's less true today than it was at that time, but we found, just as he said, that many of our embassy colleagues were simply not very familiar with TRANSCOM, in part because of the lack of that shooting dimension. You're right about that, too, General. But we found, happily, that when we had occasion to reach out to our embassies and to explain what the TRANSCOM issue of the day was that involves their airspace or their maritime boundaries or some aspect of the policies of the host government. Their embassies, we found, were all too happy to engage with us and add us to their connectivity with the US military apparatus back home. So there were quite a few examples, most of them small, a few of them quite large. Where we made the contact, we began with sort of nonplussed, quizzical responses. What exactly is that? What exactly are you doing? But once we got past that, we found that there was a real willingness to engage and welcome for this additional dimension of connectivity through one of the major combatant commands outcome. For example, back to the example of Afghanistan, what became known as the Northern air corridor was a recurring problem from before my time at TRANSCOM, but certainly continued throughout the time that I was there.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:15:51] And there was one particular case, one of the overflight countries had a good overflight agreement that had been negotiated under my predecessors, and it was working very well. But then in the implementation, there was an inadvertent expression of what was going on that was inconsistent with the extremely precise and narrowly worded structure of that existing agreement. And it caused all kinds of friction and hand-wringing and doubt and the genuine prospect of cutoff of transport. So there were a number of phases of diplomatic activity, first to engineer a bit of cooling off without shutting down transport, and then to find ways to express and reestablish goodwill, goodwill being almost always necessary to any sort of good diplomatic outcome. But in the end, that came across and in the end we were back running more or less as before. But that was a really significant episode that went on for a long time and at various junctures appeared less than likely to end successfully. But in the end it did end successfully.

Gen. McDew: [00:17:01] Alan can make anything happen, and he's got to be the only POLAD that might have qualified for Purple Heart in one of our stops when he was injured and continued with the mission.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:17:11] I'm glad you reminded me, General, because that was a memorable event when we were going to Azerbaijan. It related, I think, in large measure to Afghanistan, because the Azerbaijanis have a very sophisticated capacity for cold storage and air transport. But unfortunately, unfortunately for me, when we arrived it was raining and there are apparently shocking to say no OSHA standards requiring a nonskid surface on the metal airplane stairs when you arrive in the rain and Azerbaijan. So as our travel party is disembarking, well, everyone is wearing very practical, appropriate shoes except for the POLAD who is wearing leather soled brogues or oxfords, I guess. And so as I'm taking my second step down the metal airplane stairs, I had a slip and fell all the way down. Hit my left hand very hard on the rail. Broke a bone in my hand and inflicted a pretty big cut. So it was bleeding spectacularly and was swelling insanely as we went into the lounge. I got a lot of help from my TRANSCOM colleagues who had the presence of mind to take off my wedding ring before I would have been unable to do so.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:18:22] And I was glad I had the presence of mind to say, "Wait a minute. Close the drain on the sink before taking it off," because when it came off naturally it got dropped and would have gone right down the drain if we hadn't closed the drain before doing so. But the Azerbaijanis came up with an ice pack, and so we went to your military meetings, General, which consisted of a really intensive to raid against Georgia. I've been given an agenda for that meeting, which the military counterparts did not follow at all. But then your meeting with the President was extremely productive. You had asked me to make a certain contribution in that meeting, which I had my hand under the table. By the time we were there, it looked like a small football. It was so swollen, but I was able to make my contribution and I appreciated your hosting me later that evening after I got back from Medecins Sans Frontieres. Having money in my hand. So that was that was a good outcome, but quite a memorable day.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:15] I wanted to dive a little bit more into the supply lines in and out of Afghanistan. As our listeners know, as a landlocked country, traditional supply routes have been through Pakistan, Russia and occasionally Central Asia. And the caucuses under the Obama administration into the Trump administration, there were ebbs and flows in our military presence in the country. My question is, is how did you manage these supply lines, given the ever changing directives on the level of our troops in the country?

Gen. McDew: [00:19:45] For most of that period of time, the numbers got smaller. There was the big increase at one point, which was not insignificant, but most of the time it got smaller. I'd like to back up a little bit on those supply line issues because as you know, and with Allen's experience and yours, this was decades of work. We sometimes popped in and got the chance to look successful in a day or two or a week or two. But if I go back just to Generals Duncan McNabb, Will Fraser and Paul Selva, Fraser and Selva both worked as assistance to the secretary of state. When they came in as a TRANSCOM commanders, they really had a leg up on a lot of experience from the diplomatic side and contacts in theater. So the command benefited from that. Then you bring in somebody like Alan in the POLADs we had before him and we also benefited. And on top of that, you have the the day to day folks in the embassy and the country team and the regional combatant commanders who also helped. So it was a big undertaking. And although we sometimes get a chance to go in and put out a fire, the only reason we can is because all that groundwork has been done day after day, month after month and year after year for an effort like this. As you saw, it was extremely volatile and ever changing.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:03] At the same time that we were slowly reducing our presence in Afghanistan. We did, in your time, rebuild our presence in Iraq. And we did do a great podcast with General McFarland, Ambassador Stu Jones, about managing that on the ground. What did the buildup mean for TRANSCOM?

Gen. McDew: [00:21:22] It's kind of hard to explain. So you have a certain amount of capacity on a given day. And that capacity, we look at it as a global capacity and what we do is we shift that capacity to where it's needed most. So it's not like we have a bunch of planes or a bunch of ships not sailing. It's that we direct them accordingly. So on a given day, we may have 100 and some odd airplanes flying and dozens of ships flowing. And then then all of a sudden you need hundreds of airplanes to go in one particular area. That's the beauty of the air component and being able to shift that quickly and then you move the the shipping lanes as well. And so the buildup was really shifting resources so that the balance may be one side of the world is imbalanced or out of balance for a period of time to get the buildup that you need and then you put the world back in balance again.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:14] Well, related to this, to better explain how TRANSCOM works, how do we work with allies like our NATO allies who were with us in Afghanistan, in Iraq? How do you coordinate their shipments?

Gen. McDew: [00:22:25] The majority of the countries that are in Iraq and Afghanistan that were not us, they handle their own supplies. And we augment any help they may need. The vast majority of that help comes from us. So if you look at NATO, for example, NATO countries have some capacity to move troops, equipment and cargo. We have a vast amount of equipment to be able to move troops, equipment and cargo. So our allies are extraordinarily helpful in making sure that they can do the maximum they can do. So when we all surge, they surge, too. We just have more to surge.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:23:01] And, Ambassador, one small answer to your question about what the allies do or what they need to do. One example of that that came up a number of times in the context of Europe is they need to have the same gauge of railroad tracks so that things can move compatibly from one country to another. For the most part, they've done that. But in the instances where that was an issue, I found it fascinating to see how my TRANSCOM colleagues found ways to work around that. But if all the Europeans could just go back in history and build all their railroads the same way, it would be great for us.

Gen. McDew: [00:23:34] If I may add one more piece to that as well, is we have a really well defined and developed process for selling arms to countries. What we don't have as developed is teaching some countries to do some things that are less sexy. So there's a component of mobility command that's a part of TRANSCOM that actually works with countries to improve their ability to handle logistics. So if a country out there cannot handle buying F-35s or C-17s, but they want to contribute to the allied effort, what they can do is learn how to be better logisticians. And there are several instances, particularly on the continent of Africa, where Air Mobility Command sent their training teams in, in coordination with some others, and they built up a resource of logisticians that made my eyes water. It was impressive how well they were able to handle a load out of equipment after just several weeks, and it's access to the training access to the equipment. And I believe this is just me speaking. We should sometimes turn off the spigot of arms and turn on the education arm that we can provide.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:44] We mentioned at the beginning that TRANSCOM is in the lead on Patient Movement. Can you explain what this means and give us some examples? Because I think that's an untold part of what you do.

Gen. McDew: [00:24:57] It is. So if you look at Iraq and Afghanistan and the the men and women who were hurt and injured and killed in that operation, we're the only nation in the world that can or will rally an entire force to move one patient from the battlefield all the way back to someplace where they can get competent medical care. There are dozens of stories of one patient being put in the back of a C-17 and flown halfway across the world because they needed lifesaving care, for example. But there was a young man that had a knife actually in his head, and he was saved because one was the army getting off the battlefield to a local hospital, to a casualty center, and then from there onto an airplane and back to Landstuhl in Germany. And they were able to save his life. And there are many of those examples.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:25:46] If I could cite an example of that from a slightly different context. When we made your trip to Korea, General, the moment of that trip coincided with a very high spiraling regional tensions because the North seemed to be on the verge of launching hostilities. The conversations you had were very different than they would have been if we had been there at a different time so that there was an intensive focus on the need to retrograde old ammunition that might be out of date, bringing in new ammunition so that it would be available when needed. But also, crucially, given the nightmarish nature of war projections in Korea, the expectation that the number of casualties would be very, very high in the early stages of an outbreak of war in Korea. The question of which air assets could be used as they're bringing in one cargo to take out a cargo of injured civilians or military personnel. Again, if the American people could see that, I think they would be favorably impressed, also horrified at what the future might look like.

Gen. McDew: [00:26:52] The capacity and balancing of the globe concern that we put on cargo and other things in TRANSCOM. We also put in the patient movement, as Alan alluded to, and to the extent that there's some American public listening to this podcast, and I'm sure they are, to know that the military relies upon the US civil hospital system in a large casualty situation would get some people's attention. So if you look at our country during the fall flu season and I won't even take into account COVID, but just the regular flu season, how many hospital beds across the country are filled? If we had a large operation and needed to get access to that? It would be nearly impossible to do. And what we're doing in many communities and across the country is shutting down hospitals because of economics. And so hospital bed availability is something we keep an eye on. And we also have the ability to build those field hospitals that people have seen and are used to are seeing in shows like MASH much better today. But we can do that, but we can't overtake the capacity the country needs to have to support its own citizenry in a non war time and the service members in a wartime.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:03] I wanted to turn now to some of the global challenges faced by TRANSCOM. As you noted, General, in your various testimonies to Congress when you were commander, the logistics mission of TRANSCOM is taking place increasingly in contested environments. The anti-access aerial denial capabilities of countries have increased and including in communications and cyberspace. Can you give us some examples of this challenge? I'm thinking, for example. Of the increased number of ports across the world that are under Chinese management.

Gen. McDew: [00:28:41] That's a very real and present danger that most people can understand. So the Chinese, because of their large population and their need for goods and services, have spanned the globe in their economic power, in taking access to ports, either buying the port outright or buying out significant holes in the port and then putting infrastructure in the countries to get minerals out and then get them to a port and then get them back to China. That's real. We have lost our ability in this country to get access to as many resources as we need in some circumstances, because we have outsourced much of our needs to China as well. And that's being addressed in a political way. But what we found out in addition to that, Ambassador, was. We ran the first contested environment war game in the history of TRANSCOM during our tenure. And it enlightened us, educated us and scared us to death. What we realized and I had grown up in the mobility system and transportation system in my entire career. No one ever accounts for attrition. We now have adversaries that can take out assets that we never had to deal with before, and both through the typical ways of shooting them down or through cyber attacks. And we went after looking at how would we plan for attrition and work around it? How would we protect our cyber vulnerabilities and actually illuminate what they happen to be? We need to be able to speed up mobilization of our Guard and Reserve, because most people don't understand how much of our assets are actually in the Guard and Reserve and the civilian sector and being able to speed up that mobilization process and access to that.

Gen. McDew: [00:30:23] And oh, while we were doing that, we made a trip out to Amazon, believe it or not, and we predicted before they did it that they were going to buy an airline. And I said, I can't stop you from buying it. And they weren't ready to actually admit that they were going to do it at that point. But I said, when you do realize you understand what your responsibilities are to the nation's defense and how much we'll need to use those airplanes in a time of crisis. And they were not aware at all of the civil reserve air fleet and that kind of thing. So those are some things that we went through and we tried to extend all of that discussion to what I call my fourth component. So TRANSCOM has an air component, Air Mobility Command has a Navy Sea component, Military Sealift Command, and an Army component. I dubbed the civilian industry our fourth component because I need as much from them as I do those others. I need to worry about their capacity, their readiness, and to the extent that I can, their financial viability.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:31:21] These relationships that TRANSCOM has and its reliance on private commercial air shipping and transportation companies, they also operate in communications systems that are their own and you have to rely on it. And you mentioned the challenge of cyber. Their communication systems can't be protected by the Department of Defense, and they don't necessarily have legal obligations to report breaches and attacks. How did you start addressing this vulnerability during your time, and what further steps do you think are needed?

Gen. McDew: [00:31:53] We started it with a great American we had running our acquisitions and our contracting area, Gail Jorgensen. Gail is an amazing professional, had been doing it for decades and we simply put in our contracts with all these agencies, cyber defense language. We were some of the first to do it, and I testified to that in Congress, and I got challenged, I think it was from the independent senator from the state of Maine who said, Why are you asking and just don't do it? I said, Because your constituents are going to come talk to you, but I will. So we did. We we inserted language in all of our contracts that they must at least comply with the basic framework, which was the 800 standard, which became our baseline. And that's where we started.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:32:39] Well, Alan, I wanted to ask you, in this era of contested spaces, what does the State Department bring to this issue?

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:32:47] I was just add on the communication with the private sector. The fourth component, this was a fascinating proposition to me and different from anything I had previously seen or encountered as a government official in my prior career. It was interesting as we interacted and we interacted a lot with private companies that were involved in aspects of TRANSCOM operations. Some of them were very forward leaning in really wanting to figure this out. Many of them, however, were sort of locked in wishful thinking, hoping that this just wouldn't be a big problem and that they could avoid costs that might come along with it. There is more of a need to rely on private sector assets than would have been the case even in the past. And so bringing them into some sort of secure communications network so that their activities can be coordinated, managed and just monitored during a time of mobilization is a real challenge. And I thought that during the time I was there, the ideas being brought to bear were very realistic, very concrete, but also really problematic. And it was not guaranteed that everything was going to work and that the private sector was going to get on board. So it was very much a dynamic issue still underway and just fascinating to see how that was being managed as a challenge that most Americans would not be aware of at all.

Gen. McDew: [00:34:06] One of the things, Ambassador, that I would ask of our diplomatic professionals and ambassadors is to engage the secretary of state as a cabinet official, because as a member of the cabinet, they are in meetings where they can have this discussion about the impact of X, Y or Z on commercial industry, which is also has an impact on national. Security and national defense. Most people separate the two. And don't understand how much they talk about the defense industrial base. When many people mention the defense industrial base, they're talking about those companies and organizations that build things for us. I include those people that do things for us. And over the last 20 years, we have many more companies that do things for the Department of Defense and the national security apparatus than most people understand.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:34:53] We could do a whole separate podcast on that alone. Well, I wanted to ask one question, and this is based a little bit on personal interest, and I normally don't do this, but I wanted to talk a little bit about U.S. sealift capability. I come from a family where my father was in the Merchant Marine and my brother was in the Navy Reserve. General, you have mentioned and warned about our shrinking US sealift capability, and you've also spoken very well of our Merchant Mariners, which my father would have been very proud of. Can you expand a bit on this and what it means in terms of national security?

Gen. McDew: [00:35:29] Absolutely. So on a given day during Desert Shield and Storm, we had approximately 150 ships sailing under the US flag every day. We couldn't produce, I want to say 60 US flagged ships today, not per day at all. And the ships that TRANSCOM has in their reserve are dwindling and are very old. At one point I was going to become the largest owner of steamships in the world and I told Congress, You don't want me to be the largest owner of steamships in the world. And most Americans don't understand the merchant marine contribution during World War Two and the losses they took during World War Two and the dedicated professionals that sail for us on the oceans. So we're not only missing the ships, we're missing people like your relatives who once sailed on those ships. And so all of that, once we were a seafaring nation and we don't put much on the law books anymore to actually support the fact that we still are a seafaring nation. And most of our goods and services come by sea. And we really do need to make sure that we have that enlightened so that we can protect it and grow it where necessary.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:42] You obviously developed a very good relationship during your time together, and my question is, as far as in practical terms, what should the Department of State and the Department of Defense be doing to increase coordination and understanding at the mid ranks?

Gen. McDew: [00:36:57] I'll start, if you don't mind. I would do more prisoner exchanges and we do some, but we do it fairly senior. I believe there need to be more developmental assignment opportunities for diplomats and military members to cross exchange and to get a better understanding for their abilities. I think the last 20 years of conflict in the Middle East have helped because military members have had to take on responsibilities and partner more than ever in our history. But I think just like how we got ourselves to that place, it can quickly go away. So systemically we need to make sure that that's part of both of our indoctrination and continuing education.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:37:35] I agree with the General and thank you for the question, Ambassador. I think it's a really important question. We all recall how Secretary Powell ramped up training in the department from the mid ranks up and I think in my time deepened our own understanding of who we are and what's unique about us and what we need to know about diplomacy. And I think that's part of the answer to your question, is not only more prisoner exchanges. Absolutely. Absolutely. We need to be interoperable and to know each other well so that we minimize the friction of becoming acquainted when we have to do serious, urgent business together. But I think for us on the state side to carry our end of that responsibility, we need a deep sense of who we are, what's our particular area of expertise, the dynamics of negotiation, the dynamics of diplomatic interaction, the history of what's been done in diplomacy and how it's done. That's a training responsibility and a knowledge responsibility that the State Department needs to take seriously and to build into the way we structure and build our human assets from the mid levels up. 

Amb. McCarthy: [00:38:42] Both of you have led many a team in your careers. What do you think is the skill set necessary to be a successful leader today in the field of international security?

Gen. McDew: [00:38:53] I believe personally that leadership is still leadership, character and trust. And so when you're in the international world, and you guys know this better than I, most humans want to be able to trust you want to be able to believe in what you say. And building America's trust in the world and building the fact that we still are that beacon of light for most countries around the world, I think is important. But at the human level, we've got to be people of credibility, regardless of what politics are happening around us. Personal trust, credibility are extremely important, and I would bank on that in any given day.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:39:31] I think those are great points, General, and I think I'm saying something similar, but maybe in a different way. I think that when it comes to leadership, which of course is mobilizing the human assets within the availability of a command or an operational cell to achieve an outcome when it comes to doing that knowledge and capacity to analyze our, I think, highly rated and rightly so. But I find that particularly in state to other aspects of leadership and character that I think are often undervalued are first of all, ethical clarity. I think that we don't often enough emphasize the need for an ethical dimension in the way we look at the formulation of policy. We simply take for granted that everything we're doing is always within the scope of what's ethical, and hopefully it is. Hopefully that's a valid assumption. But I think we've seen instances where it's not a valid assumption. We should do that with more self conscious intent. And secondly, I think humility is often underrated, which enables a leader to take on different roles within a partnership, within a team that the best leader doesn't need to be giving the orders. The best leader is the one who sees the capacity of the individuals within the team and can see most clearly how to mobilize all of them to achieve the outcome that all members of the team want to achieve.

Dr. Misenheimer: [00:40:50] Humility, I think, often keeps us on the right side of history, along with ethical clarity. And if I could just add to that, when we were visiting Togo, there was a day when the general was meeting with working level personnel who hadn't seen many four star visitors. But I want to tell you, within the first ten, 15 minutes there was a sort of electricity around the margins of that group because they realized they had someone who was talking to them in a different way. And this was supposed to be a 20 minute event. It went on for over an hour. And the depth of the exchange, the intensity of the engagement and the questions and answers was unlike anything I saw on any of our other trips, not because they didn't measure up, but because the context was such that it brought out that dimension. And that's leadership guided by humility and ethical clarity. That was really exciting to to those young military members. And it was exciting for me as a member of your team general, to see that happen before my eyes. It was remarkable. 

Amb. McCarthy: [00:41:49] Well, I want to thank you both for contributing to our ability to understand how leadership actually works on the ground, how we can inspire the next generation. The two of you certainly established incredible reputations in your careers. Thank you for joining us on the podcast series and for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and underlining the importance of what you did for our country and our nation. So thank you. This has been a new episode in the series The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast was produced with the support of Data Miner, a leading artificial intelligence platform that delivers real time breaking news alerts to help you make critical decisions and respond with speed and confidence. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites as well as on our website: GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome input and suggestions and you can email us directly at General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.