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Adm. Dennis C. Blair reviews one of the humanitarian school reconstruction projects underway by U.S. Navy Construction Battalion ("SeaBee") engineers in East Timor |
Our armed forces have logistic and other resources that can help in humanitarian assistance operations, especially in the early stages of a disaster. These operations are not our primary mission, but we are all being called on to do this type of work more and more, and we can improve our already good performance.
This quarter’s issue of FORUM highlights humanitarian missions: A major combined exercise that turned into a volcano eruption disaster relief mission ... multinational training in both peacekeeping and search-and-rescue techniques ... a school that has now fostered ties between fellows from 37 countries sponsoring a conference that addressed the changing roles of the military ... humanitarian demining operations and support ... and a conference with representatives from 18 countries that focused on the challenges of real-world peacekeeping.
What these events all have in common, in addition to the vital task of saving lives (or preparing and training to save lives), is that they could not have been done without multinational cooperation in a secure environment. Yet some who think of the future of the Asia-Pacific region still see emerging states competing with each other, building forces to threaten and bargain, shifting alliances and seeking to build their own power and increase freedom of action. We even see suspicions that humanitarian assistance operations are used by some governments for political gain.
That idea is clearly outdated - the concept of much of future military action, including humanitarian operations, is based on multinational cooperation for mutual benefit, while old-style conflicts have been based on gaining unilateral national advantage. To quote Harvard Professor Karl Deutch, "The single greatest power in the world is the power to change.... The most recklessly irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years."
Fortunately, the armed forces of today’s Asia-Pacific region cooperate daily to save lives. We certainly have the obligation to relieve any suffering of the citizens we serve, as our responsible countries have the obligation to help each other. With continued dedication towards strengthening our bilateral alliances and security arrangements, expanding these relationships into a web of enhanced regional cooperation, our capabilities to continue to successfully execute the huge number of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions in this region will improve.
When a disaster strikes, a region free of conflict is a much less challenging and costly environment in which to successfully conduct multinational operations – both for the affected area, and for those who would provide the assistance. It is the goal of the U.S. Pacific Command to improve dialogue among all of the armed forces of the region that share common goals, to build habits of cooperation and trust, and to improve regional readiness for combined operations. Those of us in leadership positions owe it to our troops and to our countries to work for a brighter future, toward creating a consistently secure region. This security will allow us all to advance in the spirit of successful humanitarian assistance, and avoid repeating the dismal pattern of an obsolete past.
