[R-G] A US military leader stresses ideas over firepower

Mon Jul 2 23:12:47 MDT 2007

Copyright 2007 The Christian Science Publishing Society
All Rights Reserved
Christian Science Monitor

July 3, 2007, Tuesday

SECTION: USA; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1192 words

HEADLINE: A US military leader stresses ideas over firepower

BYLINE: Gordon Lubold Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

DATELINE: Miami

BODY:

James Stavridis had a decision to make: fire a missile at an Iranian  
aircraft flying ever closer to his Aegis cruiser in the Arabian Gulf,  
or wait to see what the pilot would do. The young lieutenant  
commander, the tactical action officer on board, held both his fire  
and his breath. When the plane peeled off of its own accord, he  
sighed in relief and knew he'd made the right choice.

That was more than 20 years ago, during the "tanker war" between Iran  
and Iraq. But the experience has stayed with Mr. Stavridis, now a  
four-star admiral in charge of US Southern Command, as a reminder  
that the conventional militaristic approach isn't always the best  
course.

"The incident comes back to me at times because it tells you that, in  
the world we live in, it's good to hold back on the key sometimes,"  
says Stavridis, during a recent interview here.

At a time when a strain of "anti-yanquism" is on the rise in parts of  
Latin America, Stavridis is refashioning the Pentagon's combatant  
command for that region in a way he hopes will halt that trend. His  
aim is to influence countries using ideas instead of military might,  
demonstrating a US commitment to fixing problems there versus doing  
it by force.

That's why, under his command, the Navy hospital ship Comfort is  
making about a dozen port stops in the region and seeing as many as  
85,000 patients. It's why another flotilla of ships is conducting  
military-to-military training with several Latin American countries,  
a kind of gunboat diplomacy in reverse, in which US forces are there  
to teach and share rather than to demonstrate their lethal force.  
It's why Stavridis is reaching out to friends - and to foes,  
including senior members of Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela -  
to help stem the flow of illegal drugs.

Endemic poverty, inequality, and corruption are not lost on  
Stavridis, who in eight months at the helm of Southern Command has  
enlisted personnel from other agencies to play a role in this  
revamped US engagement with Latin America.

"We can't solve the problems down here with tanks and ships and high- 
priced aircraft," he says. "But we can solve problems here by getting  
shoulder to shoulder with the Department of State, Department of  
Justice, the Department of Treasury, bringing Defense Department  
assets to bear, and bringing in interagency [resources]."

Use of 'smart power'

This isn't the first time a military commander has thought to walk a  
bit more softly. But over the past several years, taking a so-called  
smart power approach to engage other nations was virtually banned  
from the Pentagon's vernacular.

The concept reemerged under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in  
the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, a four-year study of military  
capabilities and strategies. Now it's starting to take root.

"Even under Rumsfeld, civilian leadership came around to this idea of  
building partner capacity as the long pole in the tent," says analyst  
Michele Flournoy, cofounder of a new Washington think tank, The  
Center for a New American Security. "The instincts of Southern  
Command and others to try to engage, preconflict, to kind of shape  
the conflict, to build relationships, not only on the military side  
but using other instruments of national power, is a very good instinct."

"That," she adds, "is how we're going to gradually recover our  
standing in the region."

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another think  
tank in Washington, a "commission on smart power" is studying the  
approach. Many agencies outside the Defense Department have been  
starved for resources over the years, notes Rick Barton, a CSIS  
analyst who is on the commission. It will take some time to shift the  
mind-set - and the money - to what many believe is the more effective  
approach to addressing global problems, he says. He likens it to  
changing the course of a big ship.

"People are very much aware of needing a wiser mix, and Washington  
has picked that up," he says. "It's quite a supertanker."

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at center stage, Southern  
Command is in many ways the "forgotten command." Though its  
responsibilities include overseeing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about  
400 terrorism suspects are held, the command's focus has been on  
lower-profile missions like fighting drug smuggling and dispensing  
humanitarian aid in places like Honduras.

Why Latin America matters to US

But there are new reasons to pay attention there, say military and  
civilian analysts.

Venezuela's President Chavez continues his anti-US rant, and leaders  
in Ecuador and Nicaragua aren't friendly. Cuba's future remains an  
open question. Views of the US have become less favorable in Latin  
America over the past five years, according to a report released June  
27 by The Pew Global Attitudes Project in Washington.

US standing in places like Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia has  
declined sharply since 2002, according to the report, even if a  
majority of the publics in those countries still view the US  
favorably. But people in Brazil and Bolivia, for example, have  
largely negative opinions of the US, whereas five years ago,  
majorities in both nations felt favorable toward the US government  
and its leaders. In Argentina, the US has an unfavorability rating of  
72 percent, the report found.

Much of Latin America's problems are steeped in the fact that so many  
there are poor: Forty percent of people in the region live on less  
than $2 per day, and 20 percent live on less than $1 per day,  
according to officials. The contrast between that kind of poverty and  
America's wealth, combined with resentment about the US role in Iraq,  
has led many in the region to blame the US for Latin America's  
problems, Stavridis says.

In recent years, Muslim extremism has emerged as a small but  
worrisome threat to regional and US security in the so-called  
triborder area of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. More recently,  
intelligence analysts at Southern Command have cited extremist  
activity along the Caribbean coastline region.

Stavridis's approach may be mirrored an ocean away in Africa, where  
the Defense Department is planning for a new geographic combatant  
command focused solely on Africa. The command, dubbed "Africom," will  
not resemble other combatant commands such as Central Command or  
European Command in that it will have a stronger "interagency" focus,  
employing personnel from other agencies. There has even been talk  
that its deputy commanding officer could be a non-Defense Department  
civilian.

The smart power approach is more than just one admiral leading a  
small command with a new set of ideas, says Loren Thompson, an  
analyst who heads The Lexington Institute, another think tank in the  
Washington area. There is new recognition that an approach like  
Stavridis's can work elsewhere, including European Command, Pacific  
Command, and even, ultimately, Central Command, which oversees the  
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There is a sea change in the Bush administration," he says, "from  
ideologues who wanted to launch global crusades to more restrained  
and humble policymakers who try to work with the rest of the world on  
its own terms."