Closing Argument
Allied Relationships Should Start with Humility and Commitment
By Lieutenant Colonel Jay S. Burns
Governments create alliances and partnerships, but people create the
relationships that make those alliances and partnerships
effective.
Defender Europe 2021 was an exercise that involved twenty-six militaries
operating in twelve countries, airport operations in sixteen countries,
and port operations in five countries. To pull off such a massive
undertaking, hundreds of different agreements and arrangements and
thousands of hours of planning were required from the national down to
the unit level. However, the legacy of Defender Europe 2021 and any
similar undertaking is far more likely to manifest itself in the minds
and the lives of the 28,000 people who played some role in the exercise.
Because people—individuals—are ultimately the mechanism through which
alliances and partnerships are built, nurtured, and put into action, we
must pay particular attention to how we represent ourselves, our Army,
and our Nation’s people when engaging with allies and partners. The most
important aspects of that representation are maintaining humility and
demonstrating our commitment to our relationships.
Humility is absolutely essential at both the individual and collective
levels. Not every nation wants to be the United States; but the
patriotism and civic pride, concentrated further by the fact that we are
all people who chose to serve in the U.S. military, can frequently cloud
our awareness of the fact that our way is not the only way. The Army had
to develop cultural awareness training for key leader engagements
conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two decades to overcome
the inherent bias toward American values in how those key leader
engagements were being conducted. Humility requires an awareness that
ours is neither a perfect system nor the only viable system, and it also
requires acknowledging our own shortcomings. Now, more than any time in
recent memory, our affairs at home and abroad are receiving intense
scrutiny—especially in how we treat one another and how disadvantaged
groups of people have been mistreated throughout our history. Failing to
acknowledge this risks making us hypocrites and undermining our
credibility with our partners and allies; admitting failures,
demonstrating a sincere desire to improve in those areas, and taking
sincere and visible actions to improve ourselves can be a major part of
demonstrating American values.
All our efforts are wasted if we fail to actually demonstrate our
commitment when needs arise. Even now, a painful (yet important) example
of how we demonstrate that commitment is going on as Service members and
civilian teammates, along with assistance from many allies and partners
in at least three geographic combatant command areas of responsibility,
conduct continuous operations to bring tens of thousands of Afghans to
safety. Two decades of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan did not yield the
results many sought; but even as we withdrew the last troops under
challenging circumstances, the United States demonstrated—and continues
to demonstrate—its commitment to the Afghan allies who helped us in our
shared fight. Our ability to focus on the mission at hand when time is
critical while applying lessons from previous missions, both completed
and failed, is a key part of how we demonstrate that our commitment to
our allies and partners endures in both good times and bad. For those of
us in Europe, our Afghan evacuation operations in Germany, Spain, Italy,
and Kosovo serve as a visible reminder to our European allies that the
United States will stand by them too.
Strong relationships are especially important to the Soldiers, Sailors,
Airmen, Marines, and Guardians in the U.S. European Command area of
responsibility for another reason. Not only do we work alongside our
allies and partners on a daily basis both in peacetime and across the
full range of military operations, but we live with our families in the
same villages, towns, and cities as our comrades in arms. We shop at the
same stores, many of our children attend the same schools, and we rely
on the emergency services and other support from our host nations. Our
close and continuous connection to our host nations make us acutely
aware of how local host nation sentiment toward the United States
changes over time based on how we—Service members, our families, and our
nation—conduct ourselves both at home and around the rest of the world.
Every Soldier is an ambassador; let us fulfill that responsibility with
humility and commitment. TAL
LTC Burns is the Chief, National Security Law, for U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany.