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COL John McKay - SFAB Elements, Adv Partnering, & Forming Relationships - US Marine COL John McKay (ret) joins Pete A Turner on the Break It Down Show. As we continue our episodes focused on SFAB/MATA military advisor training, John and Pete talk about the element of "Advanced Partnering." The notes in this episode are valuable outside of the military as well.
The books John recommends in this episode are hard to find--but they are available at Sacred Rage by Robin Wright Doctrina de Acción Contrarevollucinaria John's been a frequent guest and we always recommend that you take the time to review his past episodes. His experiences are going to be chronicled in his upcoming autobiography. For the SFAB episodes featuring: Richard Ledet (Education as an Element) Pete A Turner (Advanced Interpreter Operations) Bill Mankins (Identifying or Becoming a Professional SFAB Warrior) Haiku Smartest in the room Learns nothing from their partner Succeed through culture Similar episodes: Robert Hunter & John McKay COL John McKay Col John McKay Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation. Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A Turner Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev Writer: Bojan Spasovski |
Transcript
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show. We've had Colonel john Mackay on several times if you haven't listened to his background episodes, let me do you a favor, go listen to his stuff, you're not gonna believe how this guy grew up and what he's experienced. Now, this falls into this week of shows that we're doing better designed for the folks that are going to be attending the military advisor training academy, and are going to work in f5, the security forces advisor brigades, these are people that are going to go abroad, from the military, to other militaries to other governmental organizations.
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show. We've had Colonel john Mackay on several times if you haven't listened to his background episodes, let me do you a favor, go listen to his stuff, you're not gonna believe how this guy grew up and what he's experienced. Now, this falls into this week of shows that we're doing better designed for the folks that are going to be attending the military advisor training academy, and are going to work in f5, the security forces advisor brigades, these are people that are going to go abroad, from the military, to other militaries to other governmental organizations.
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show. We've had Colonel john Mackay on several times if you haven't listened to his background episodes, let me do you a favor, go listen to his stuff, you're not gonna believe how this guy grew up and what he's experienced. Now, this falls into this week of shows that we're doing better designed for the folks that are going to be attending the military advisor training academy, and are going to work in f5, the security forces advisor brigades, these are people that are going to go abroad, from the military, to other militaries to other governmental organizations. And they're going to try to help build capacity, whether it's in direct boots on the ground combat type skills, or if it's how to run supply or logistics or partner in some way that helps our partners in filling the blank country out. Maybe they're in Jordan, maybe they're in Burma, maybe they're in Georgia, they're Georgia, not ours. wherever they go, they need these advisor skills. Well, there's nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody that I know, that has more experience in more places. Over cross more generations of time, then Colonel john mccain, john is an absolute master of international diplomacy. Now his home language is Spanish, but he also speaks catchweight. And he understands the nuance of culture, no matter where he goes anytime, anyplace anywhere, john can integrate himself and work within his partners mindset and mission to accomplish his own mission. And that's what makes him a master advisor. And that's why you were listening to what he has to say. Again, go check out his other episodes, we talked about this topic a lot. But there's very, very, very good stuff in here especially talks about the key attributes and what it is to be a good advisor, and where you need to put your priorities. This is a fantastic episode, you will get a lot out of it. If you love what we do. This is what we do. We bring ground truth to things we illustrate life. Right now we're illustrating how to partner whether you're in the military, or you're traveling or you're working in a country situation that you're not familiar with, or even within your own company, department or department, all of these advising skills, all these cultural skills, these are useful to you all. So I hope you can appreciate that this is not only good for art visors. But it's also good for you in the professional civilian world who say support the show go to break down, show calm, subscribe. That's the best way. If you're on Apple or iTunes and you're listening to the show there, subscribe rate, tell your friends about it. That's how you help us grow the show and make it something bigger. recommending the show to someone super, super valuable. Thank you so much. When you do that, if you're new to the show, hey, we don't just talk military stuff around here. We have so many musical producers coming up. We're going to have more filmmakers coming in. We've got a lot of different people creating a lot of content. I defy you to find a show that has more people producing content to a single simple show. You cannot find it I purposely built this thing to be broad, so you can always find a topic that you're interested in. Alright, listen, here comes the incredible mind of john McKay
Unknown Speaker 2:47
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:52
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring nakedly Sebastian Yo, this is Rick Murat, Stewart COPPA. This is Alexis Anderson. Hi, this is Scott Baxter,
Unknown Speaker 3:01
Gabby Reese, Rob bell. This is john Leon gray.
Pete Turner 3:03
And this is Pete a Turner.
john mckay 3:07
This is Colonel john McKay. And we're listening to the break it down show.
Pete Turner 3:14
So I'm having Colonel john Mackay come on the show because he's got an amazing background and experience as a marine working overseas. He's truly an internationalist. He understands the world at a level that many of us don't. And these shows are specifically designed for s fab warriors who are trying to figure out how to advise assist, and guide partner nations and partners specifically to a to a place of more capacity. So we're creating these there's there's ultimately going to be about five of these episodes that are going to be designed for that so there's a lot to pull from this but this is a very specific project talking to warriors who are going to interact and and liaison and guide Other people. So john, if you could give us a background on why you'd be qualified to talk about partnering with foreign nationals,
Unknown Speaker 4:08
be happy to do that. And look forward to doing show. I was reared in Latin America by THX I was bilingual Spanish practice effect spoke and felt more comfortable speaking Spanish than I did English. I also had as a blessing, my father's position was the corporation that he was working for, allowed him to put me out on the corporation's very, very extensive RC under system at the age of nine why during the summer and Christmas vacations, worked for room and board. I was the only American is the only English speaker and I was exposed to and was able to pick up certainly not fluently but pick up cachola the Indian language from Latin America, where I was now I was there until I was 15 years old. I came back and after I graduated high school, in 1962, joined, joined enlisted in the Marine Corps. I got a second appointment to the Naval Academy and graduated in 68. While at the Naval Academy I was picked up as an Olmstead scholar candidate that would not be evaluated until three years after graduation selection based on professional performance in uniform. I debarked almost immediately within seven months for Vietnam. I was I was wounded and medivac and put back together in a hospital which was which was lengthy Shortly after released from hospital I was selected as an offset scholar study two years in Spain and was completely immersed in, in in Spain Spanish culture, which young said foundation interested at that time. And I abided by after I got out. Finish that. And this is on topic. I'm not going to talk about my career as a very junior major. I was selected as the first official naval attache to the Republic of El Salvador, the very first and as the audience and the officers or men that are listening will recall well Psalm ago was him broiled in a very, very nasty show war guerrilla insurgency, while in El Salvador where I extended twice. It was a company tour. I stepped down there I'm not going to talk about anything there other than the fact that the US Ambassador who just recently died in him, accused me in a positive sense of having gone completely native. And I asked you to keep that in mind, because I think it's I think it's to the point. In fact, the ambassador had to remind me that it was appropriate that I, as a US Naval attache, show up at the Fourth of July celebration at the embassy, Nollywood is that the subsequent assignment was battalion commander JTF. Commander, while JTF commander, although this is not an advisory role, one of my collateral and I consider it one of the more pleasant and certainly important duties was direct note negotiation with the Cuban authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My counterpart was a Cuban Armed Forces, one star general. And we made tremendous progress. And at least was in the US military and I can only surmise was in the communist Cuban military. There was a desire to move forward. political forces decided otherwise. After Cuba. I retired from the Marine Corps in the late 90s. and got a job with a national intelligence agency and was dispatched almost immediately to train Palestinian security forces. That training was authorized and to a certain degree, encouraged under the 1973 Oslo Accords.
Unknown Speaker 8:58
This was a part of the world that My one big drawback and we can come back to this as Pete decide. My one big drawback working with the Palestinians was I do not speak Arabic. And I think that is a major, major drawback. On the positive side, I had a better one young better one kid who was superb and we, we hit it off. I mean, we I was breaking policy, I would say in Gaza, with him, usually sleeping on the floor, which stay in the West Bank. When we came to the Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, always make sure he bumped with me. I had that leeway. And Kalia What was his name and I I do not speak Arabic. Colonial was very, very good. The point being my work was exclusively, almost exclusively with the Palestinian security forces in Gaza, the West Bank, I had very little actual interaction with the Israelis, although they certainly knew what I was doing. I had just a little bit more interaction with the American authorities. I issue the US Embassy at that time was in Tel Aviv, I would go into my report, get my operational funds, and that was about it. Otherwise, I was in the field. And I was I think I'm being very conservative, where I was at least 85 to 90% of the time with with Arab forces with the Palestinian portion. And, though I didn't speak the language, again, we'll come back to that. I have since worked in West Africa. That was not an advisory role that was strictly commercial. You commercial interest working for private US companies that had a major contract. I was chosen because the country I worked in Equatorial Guinea is the only Sub Saharan country in Africa where Spanish is spoken. I would not and I would encourage the audience not to don't divorce survey and experience working with native indigenous personnel from what you're looking at to do in the military, a lot of lessons learned. And they're all positive lessons that you can take or discard as you see fit. But don't say I was a sorbet and john that doesn't cow doctrine. You're still dealing in native language dealing with native and you may not be looking at a military objective, but you do have a goal to accomplish and I will offer. That type of interaction is complimentary to what you're looking at in the military. Since then, I got picked up, I was in a special status with the Drug Enforcement Agency again, I was brought on board because of my Spanish up until 2010. I was working in Mexico for obvious reasons. I was in Mexico again, I would say in an advisory role, short term, very short term in the sense that it was six weeks. I had I was sent down to the Mexican Federal Police Academy in San Luis Potosi and good at all state in Mexico. And my my remit was to set up and teach a course in human rights to the young police cadets that were to graduate and go into the federal police force. Not Not rule police flourish not municipal police force but the national federal police force as a specialist,
Unknown Speaker 13:09
and there was very intense interaction both with the students. That was the authorities at the Mexican police academy, which needless to say, we're all officers. But experience actually stood me in very good stead against specifically military. No, it's police. But I would offer that that type of exposure is right up what the audience is thinking, considering. You know, we're not going into a Franco Prussian war situation where everybody lines up and charges each other. We're in a very murky situation. And we're the police authorities stops where the military's authority starts. is is is a very, very blurry blurry line. And then you go the other way, where does police authority start and stop? And where does the civil authority start? Again, a very, very blurry line. And it's not in line that you can say, oh, okay, well, today I'm going to be in this box. And I'm going to be playing my role as a military advisor. Right, not true, not true. You're going to go to work and say, Well, I'm going to be working with the department, the National local department of justice. And two hours later, you're down in the police station, interrogating a suspect, or you're down at the police station, advising how they should plan, a counter drug raid, how they should plan, an operation to take out a specific individual very, very, very Markey and I, the only thing I can say is keep yourself open minded, flexible and able to react as circumstances dictate. Because it's going to be very, very rare that you're going to get up in the morning and say, well, I'll go down and have a cup of coffee. And then I'm going to interrogate Jose, or I'm going to go down and have a cup of coffee. And the colonel and I are going to get together and we're going to decide how we're going to do special operations on it. It's not gonna work out that way. Okay. And if you can keep that in mind, I think it would stand you in tremendous stead.
Pete Turner 15:47
I wanted to ask you about what it takes to do these things to partner and to liaise to advise someone from a foreign country well, what what are the day to day things Because look, the reality is this Colonel The, the military doesn't have a handbook on this. They say build rapport, well, where's the FM? You know, develop trust? Well, you know, where again, where's the FM where's the course, is these things are all done, they aren't done institutionally, they're done individually. And it's hard to repeat your lessons without having some kind of program to go through. So and just to further illustrate this, if you had a bunch of young Marines who weren't hitting center mass on a target from the prone position, or from the kneeling position, that you can point to your Gunny and say, fix that. And he's got a list of steps that he can take to specifically break that action down until that marine is now firing center mass repeatedly on target 500 meters away from a variety of positions. That is not the case in partnering. So help us understand some of these things that you're like. This is the diamond washer drill of the, you know, of the partner world.
Unknown Speaker 17:06
As P and I have discussed in the past, I think one of the keys, really the golden key, if it all you can get it, and I think it should definitely be included in the manual is language fluency. And I fully understand and appreciate the fact that for the United States, that is not a fully embraced. idea. There's, there's, there's a certain hesitancy on the part of I would say mostly surveillance or ease, but there's a certain hesitancy to encourage a universal foreign language exposure for the population. And I don't think it's that much for the military, except for institutions ideal But I'm getting off track of the language I think is critical. Can you do the job without it? Yes, you can. Most the time you have to. But I think that that's number one okay. Number two and language helps out immensely here. But nevertheless you can you can do some for arm yourself with as in depth as possible knowledge of the culture. People painting I've spoken at certain cultures Middle East, even Latin American, believe it or not. There are certain do's and don'ts. Make yourself aware of those. Unfortunately, Americans tend to go there and somebody pulls up all boats for fall paw. There's there's sort of, you know, self conscious giggle and laugh at off type thing. Your host nation may not look at it that way.
Pete Turner 19:01
But how does one do that? How does one determine the culture? I mean, the military has quote unquote, cultural training, but let's be honest, it's not. It's not what I do. It's not what I do. I you know, I don't fear eating left handed in front of an Islamic guy, you know, I, I know I can I know, I'm not supposed to make the okay symbol in parts of the former Yugoslavia, because it's, you know, might indicate Serbian victory. But those are minor things. How does one learn a culture in advance without being there? Or how does one become culturally intelligent so that they can go to any place with little or no prep? and start to become, you know, so culturally adept.
john mckay 19:42
Oh, that yeah, that is that is it's an absolute critical, acute question. That deserves the best answer and I just appear I can't give it I think there's There's so much reading you can do there's so many videos you could there's so many audios you can listen to all helpful. Absolutely. I would say the next step up with or without language knowledge is get the get the officer get the get the Sergeant First Class get the short and major in country and and and I would offer that the service be an Army Navy Marine Corps God that whatever country you're looking at that they have some kind of I don't want to use the word regimented, but some type of scheduled structured program for familiarization of new people coming in. And I would assume when we're talking about the SF community special ops community, most of you guys are volunteers. Most of you should Going through some kind of screening process. You would go back as far as the screening and selection process. Does this person have the adaptability? Does he have any, you know, prejudices that would be contradictory to what we in the special ops or whatever community are aiming to do and aiming to use you as a screening process. And, you know, I'm getting away from peach question, how do you introduce them to the culture? How do you inoculate them with a sense of culture? Okay, well, let's flash forward and we get the individual and country. I think short of what I just mentioned, books, videos, audios, presentations, traveling roadshows, whatever you want to do. The next step is to get in country and have the person be Suppose to the maximum degree possible. And unfortunately, I'm editorializing here. Americans have a terrible, terrible time breaking away from other Americans. And that's not necessarily good. There are certainly circumstances. I was always trying to kill you. But it's really great to have a bunch of Americans around you, if you're trying to influence somebody else. Three guys walking in on a Palestinian Colonel, that are all Americans and they may not have shaved and they may not be uniformed. But it's, it's imposing, and and that kernel is made aware of that. Whereas a one on one situation where you're able to establish a rapport, and that's my next point, become culturally aware. Be able, hopefully the services are again through the screening process. are able to identify people that are comfortable and establishing a rapport with a foreign counterpart. And I don't mean we poor in the sense you go down how you look. And a couple of chuckles I'm talking about being able to sit down, have a mutual respect, be able to establish, grow and hopefully expand a bond of confidence and a bond of respect mutual. You don't, or you should not go in. I am an American captain. And you are extra country Colonel. You have to listen to me because I know more. as Pete and I've described, on a much, much bigger or macro Scale has not served us. Well, in the recent past,
Pete Turner 24:06
when I'm overseas, a lot of times I'm evaluating how we do things, you know, because we don't have this training. And if we're, again, if we're firing the rifle in such a way that it's hitting our partner in the bad way or missing them, you know, my job is to illustrate that for the command so they can start to try to fix that. So one of my instant responses is if I hear someone say, but my commander wants this, identify that person as being a no go at this station, and I go, Okay, how do we get this person to be oriented and of all of the things I learned how to Afghan elder, he's the senior guy, he is the government. And he says there's only room for one sword in the scabbard. And I present that to the infantry battalion commander who happens to be a foreign service officer, an FSO. And he goes, got it. He's the boss. We're going to do everything that he He wants to do. That's how we're going to provision them. And we're going to do as little as possible because he needs to be able to do this himself. Now, what the boss wants is something totally different. So how do we get away from that imposition of will from our hire on a on a partner? You can't serve these two masters.
Unknown Speaker 25:25
You're on therapy? That's a loaded question. Sherry Lee again, and the military doesn't like to hear this. And I speak from personal knowledge. Because I'm not current military and I retired almost 20 years ago, right. It was a different military then. I was fortunate. I felt that I was fortunate. Being in the Marine Corps and serving for sure. To get to the P pH question. You I would I would offer That the individuals enlisted our officers that you're sending in country, regardless of where it is in the world are individuals of a caliber and quality that one of their characteristics is the ability to work, operate and execute independently or semi independently. And allow me to suggest let's extrapolate that into intellect and somebody comes down lack of knowledge perhaps no fault of his own bias prejudice, a name it right but hey, captain for short and pay sharp major. Do this just the way we're going to do it. I would say you as the individual operator, the individual liaison you are this That you have a smart enough brain. And you can say, I can get that result by doing it this way. And I think short of fix Spanish go over the top. In the world we're talking about today, it's more more it is what Pete's just described. somebody telling you go get this, go get this done with your porn counterpart. I think the onus becomes upon you, the operator to not only say, this is my mission, but this is a way I'm going to accomplishment based on my cultural awareness, knowledge, rapport, and ability to work with my counterpart. I don't
Pete Turner 27:58
know. Yeah, well, there It seems like folks are going to do this kind of work need to have some ability to, you know, the mission command concept, you know, like, here's the intent of this mission, which requires commanders to, to allow the mission, allow the person to use mission command, of course, which takes some courage when you don't have someone you could put your hands on. They're 50 miles away, or whatever, and they're trying to get through it. But these these tools that that person sits with, one of them is a sense for it. And I've used this example before, but I mean, use it again. I was doing some work with with the army, and we went there, you know, later in the evening than we normally went. And all of the Iraqi army guys around the TV because it was Arab cup time, and they were all watching football. And this Lieutenant god bless him, was there to get his damn mission done, you know? And I kind of smacked him and I'm like, These guys are watching soccer. Why don't we watch soccer for a while. And, you know, those moments where, you know, your initial mission is OBE, you know, overcome by events for the audience. Your job today is to watch soccer and be fascinated by it and let these guys take. It's like walking into the Superbowl and saying, hey, never mind those two chiefs. Never mind that. Let's go talk about personnel issues.
Unknown Speaker 29:28
Right, exactly. Or, as something you and I have both talked about Pete, and I think fully agree with the attitude, particularly with Latins, and with Middle Eastern nations, the business of going in, in the bull in the china shop, American attitude. I'm going to get the job done. And you go in and say, I need this, this and this. Yeah. You talked earlier about what should we be Well, if you're in Latin, or if you're in the middle eastern world, a absolute requirement, if you want to get anything done is you go in, and you talk about nothing for a month. 20 minutes. How's the kids? How's the dog? Is the wife praises again? Did you how's the baby? How's the Nana? And how's the new coke working out? Now that doesn't have a damn thing to do with why you're there. But, excuse the profanity, you damn well better do it if you're gonna get results.
Pete Turner 30:36
And that isn't meant to be. We always have to qualify these things right? Like I have now spent 20 minutes engaging with rapport building conversation.
Unknown Speaker 30:47
Please, absolutely. It is 100% right. You are not running a clock. You're there to get a mission done and do it and do it appropriately. In order to get that mission done
Pete Turner 31:04
this sort of a game that I would play, john, I don't know if you've ever played it, but because I knew I was I was triggered to go and do my job and ask my questions. I would purposely wait as long as I could, I would ask another question about culture, about family about the area, you know, which is all in effect doing my job. But I wouldn't ask any business until my partner is like, Can we get down to work?
Unknown Speaker 31:28
But you're, again, pages extremely perceptive and obviously quite experienced. When I was in the Middle East when I was working with the Palestinians, I had a particular individual blue Rani been on educated Oxford, Palestinian actually better one. And he was he was always a property host. But he had he had some incredible things that were most helpful to me and If I did not Mark time on my calendar, I put down Yasser. Right. I could go in and we could have one. Sweet.
Pete Turner 32:12
Hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here. And if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan and show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm.
john mckay 32:32
Let me help. I want to hear about it. Right. I could go in and we could have one sweet, gooey sweet tea. Or we could have five. And what Pete is just said is the rule that I went by. As long as Joshua was saying, Would you like another cup of tea? You don't say? Hell no. We got to get to business that would be delicious. Thank you. And then he would set his little cup down and said, Is there some way I can help you perhaps? I don't think that would have happened if I bust into his office. Hey, yes, sir. Couple things here. Can you get it for me right away? And he would have been very nice, almost cherubic smile and say, Well, of course, john, and I would never hear anything. Yeah.
Pete Turner 33:39
Yeah. So these lessons, these things also are so okay. We have to have a linear timeline in our head of the fact that there's been units before us that have likely been there. Or that you are the last partner this person's ever going to have at least in this iteration of the military movement, right? Like so. We're going to close down Iraq and we're going to pull back. If you don't talk, if you don't think about the past partners, you're doing yourself a disservice. I'm going to give you a naked example. We had a general who worked in the area outside in the Baghdad province. And he was coming to our camp, aka, his camp. This is an Iraq general to an American colonels camp. We know we're allowed to stay there, you know, and we don't often take that view. And so the guards at the American camp sweated that General for hours outside the camera. Yeah, they wouldn't let him in. There was problems there was traffic Meanwhile, the next commander in doesn't know this story. And, and I tell him this story right after and this is this is the juxtaposition of this. We're all lined up and wraps everywhere. And the kernel Inside the camp trying to get out. And again, pardon my swearing, but this is the quote, he gets on the radio and says, everybody get the fuck out of my way. Because it was, it was a mess. And so guess whatever, dude, everybody got the fuck out of his way. And he left and I said, Let me tell you a story about the last commander that was here. And that general was angry for many colonels in a row about this, this, you know, you would never do that to any general and American camp, you know, like an American general.
john mckay 35:33
Absolutely not.
Pete Turner 35:34
But we had done it to this rocky one. And he held that grudge and he knew that myself in the interpreter that had been there for several commanders as well. He knew that we knew about it. And just when you think about that rock that's in your rough that you have no idea about? Yeah,
john mckay 35:49
absolutely.
Pete Turner 35:50
It. It changes and spending time doing that understanding what you know how it was, how was it with the last ones, what went well? What didn't go well? those kind of questions are these reports. Building questions where you actually act like you give it down you know about about the person that you're with. And I don't want to say you give up all of your personal information, but being genuine with your answers about your people. I've always found john to be a much better tact and say, Hi, my name is Drake. I have a daughter, she's 10 years old, and have all that stuff be false. It people are too savvy for that, especially in places that are conflict ridden.
john mckay 36:27
Again, I Well, it's not like Pete and I haven't talked before but Pete's absolutely, absolutely correct. I mean, there's two elements here. You asked about what what are you looking for and somebody wants to send to do liaison work, interpreter work, working with foreign counterparts and developing intelligent planning cetera. What do you want? Well, you certainly would like to have an ideal world language. You would also like to have hopefully, this Each font family from that region or from that particular country, these are all idealized roles that you're rarely ever, ever going to be able to reach. But what Pete has just said that it's individual. And I'm convinced it can be taught that the individual is going in and doing all those things I just checked on has the element of sincerity and genuineness has the ability to empathize with whoever his counterpart is, along with understanding that you don't go in and say Javi I need this right now. I Pete's right on I mean, we can all think of it you don't have to be in uniform to walk around Be it Serving offers a major department store. And there's a little ruckus. There's a little hubbub going on. And you could you can spot the pony. Well, let me tell you go overseas. If you're a phony, you stick out like a sore thumb. And you become your own worst enemy. and by extension, the country's own worst enemy.
Pete Turner 38:29
Can you wrap your hands around any of the other just universal values or lenses or perspectives that a person who wants to do this kind of work or Command these kind of people? Yeah, let's talk about the command element of it. How do we how do we do this? How do you get your people prepared? How do you let them do their job? Because I'll tell you right now, the way I do it, it's not going to be the way you do it. And you know, you have to be comfortable with that is a command.
john mckay 38:55
Yeah, but that's a good point. And and I'm afraid we're going to stray here, but this should be put in the manual and mission space. And there there are unclassified after actually reports that have brought this out. This is a concrete real world example they had a few years back with the insurgency in Colombia, you know, was was the escola drug cartel. As I said, we're going back a few years. scroll forward Mexico, same thing. The the ability of the United States with a little bit, a little bit of effort of being able to round up Spanish speakers, particularly at the at the troop operational level, is a fairly easy job. I mean, we have, I can't quote the census, but what's population native Spanish speakers in this country today pretty high. But going back to sensitivities Pete what I saw in Colombia, I saw it in Peru and these are real world operations. These aren't conceptualize or exam stuff I was involved in, at the national level or at the D od minimum at Department of Army, or headquarters Marine Corps, or whatever level the decision is made. The seeking was lacking because, oh, look at Jose with DeAndre speak Spanish. Well, Jose, Jose from Puerto Rico. Jose hangs out with a lot of Puerto Ricans and Jose is a good soldier, and etc, etc. Well, you know, we'll send five or seven Jose's down to train Colombian counterinsurgency forces Not good, not good. There's there there are societal. I hate to use it racial was in Latin America that people should be aware of Puerto Ricans or not and are not as well accepted as if you'd have gotten an Ecuadorian, or ideally, a bunch of Colombians. And when I was a battalion commander earlier, I had five Colombian kids. You know, none of them were officers, but these guys were great. I mean, born in Colombia, but that was at a different time where they're short, which would lead to their citizenship. I would not. I don't think even then, if somebody said, I need five minutes, we got to send her in Puerto Rico. I said, Okay, I got five Colombians. She's Spanish. Don't send them. Right. Would they not be able to do the job? No, not necessarily. But there would be a friction there that would not contribute to maximum efficiency and accomplishing the mission.
Pete Turner 42:11
And also, I've I've seen and gosh, you know, look, Sergeant Major, whoever it's gonna be this case, it's a sergeant major, I've seen the sergeant major say, we need to have our female engagement to go out. We don't have anybody and the sergeant major says, well, Miller's a female, she can do it. Technically, Yes, she's a female, she can do it. But Can she accomplished anything, you know, the training aspect of this is is absolutely critical to be even if you are Puerto Rican, and you go to the to the Colombians, and they hate Puerto Ricans, for example. It is a barrier that you know about and if you've been trained, you know how to work around that barrier or even make a joke of it and say, Hey, they sent the Puerto Rican two types of the Colombian and then boom, all the walls come down, and within a few words, you know, fast friends, if you've been trained on that, you know how to deal with these things. Yeah.
john mckay 43:06
Actually, I feel I feel stunted in the sense that by the time I left the service, integration, females into into standardized unit was was really just getting underway. I think I missed a tremendous opportunity to observe a revolutionary thing that is in the best interest of the services. And like up I was never overseas, where women who utilize in fact, my last command is the JTF commander was the only command I had that had a lot of women in that happened to be at Guantanamo. It was fortuitous that I had a lot of the best Spanish speakers were females. And I'm not, I'm not going to say what service because they weren't all services. My adjutant was a was, believe it or not, female Puerto Rican captain. I taught the they brought a lot to the table. That male did not. And I can only imagine an environment that you've been mature and exposed to, and understand that they could be a tremendous asset. Or they could be a very bad liability.
Pete Turner 44:39
Well, yeah. And when it's been a liability, it's not been because they were afraid, oh, it's because the institution has let them down and not prepare them properly for the job. You know, they've been sent out to do something and this is that whole conversation of effect is always better than effect, especially in this line of work. Right people bid to bid on effect being a noun but the reality is it can be used as a noun and when you when you seek, you know, the definition for effect as a noun is basically you're looking for a response to stimuli and emotional response. And if I can create trust, you can go have 100 meetings, I will win. That's correct because I've taken the time six months a year, however long it takes, it doesn't take a year and it doesn't take six months. But if I build that trust, I will get a lot more done and I will get to the especially as a collector, I will get to the the third level friends that are the ones that I need to talk right and again, build trust with.
Unknown Speaker 45:37
Absolutely, absolutely. And and, well, I'm not going to wander a feel but this business and and let's be frank we as a nation, we as a nation, are an impatient people and we the idea of Spending even six weeks, much less, six or nine months building rapport, so you can become very effective. sort of goes against our grain as a nation.
Pete Turner 46:15
Yeah. Yeah, and and that. So this brings up a good point one of those critical tasks that are skills that you need to build is is developing some calluses over our tender spots. And our impatience is certainly one of those areas where, you know, the more here's what I've learned, the more I injected myself and my ego into my partnership relationships, the worse I performed, the less me that was there, the more I could tease them out. And a lot of times were so dominant, we're the military, we have all the power we have all the money we have all the ideas. The more we do that we just run over the top of our partner just run them flat and smooth. And every partner teaches him that and so I would watch these guys physically, lean back and shield themselves. against the park against the American partner because it was just being inundated with ideas and thoughts and words. And there was just absolutely no room for them to act. So they were taught to not act. That's how they, that's how they were advised to do our actions. And
john mckay 47:16
I'll be so bold to say that you and I can extrapolate into those us vein agencies that do this type of thing. And you run into the same thing has nothing to do with wearing a uniform. It has to do with a national ethos and the training that they've been subjected to, and and, you know, I would say that saying, you know, I'm, I'm a sergeant major, I've got 27 years service, and you damn well better listen to me, that attitude can be just as easily found in some of the other ledger agencies. But translate is, I'm from DEA, I'm FBI. But I would, I would, I would jack it up one level. I'm American, I know more than you do. And that's that.
Pete Turner 48:17
Yeah, it is. And it's an easy trap to fall into. And I positively have both found ourselves in it and I get pissed at myself. I'm like, What am I doing? I know better, you know?
Unknown Speaker 48:27
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And but again, I would offer that consideration should be given of aggression that that too was in the manual that we're envisioning here.
Pete Turner 48:42
Yeah, yeah. So the ability to to withstand your own discomfort and and I like to call it miss comfort because the the prefix is better because this is just an unknown or unfamiliar comfort. You can get comfortable with working at a pace that works for their culture. Instead of just carrying them out of their culture and creating a new one for them or force them write down your gradual path. Let's find out how we can it's easier for us to move to theirs. And then because they want to learn, but don't make them learn a new cultural way to approach things and new system of learning, you know, all these things, figure out what's there and slowly improve upon that path that they're on already.
john mckay 49:22
Yeah. Yeah, I, again, we've talked before and there's, I think, a tremendous influence in our thinking and our thoughts on this. matter. The, the whole vision of being able to go in and lay is on or lays is predicated and all the things we've just talked about. I would also, we've talked around it. In fact, we just finished talking around I don't know how you teach or trained But I think you should put it in writing is the element of patience.
Pete Turner 50:08
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And easier said than done. Oh, and I guess this is this brings up the point. And in general, this kind of work is fraught with mistakes. And you slowly as you get better at it, you're just simply avoiding mistakes and taking, you know, the, the, the path that's proven to be less problematic than the way that we've tried before and again, inserting your ego inserting your commander,
Unknown Speaker 50:34
nice way to say, Okay, okay, moving right along.
Pete Turner 50:38
But that's but that's exactly, that's exactly where we need to be like, if you're not constantly making mistakes, then you are making the first mistake you're making you that is the first mistake right there is you have to constantly recognize that you don't know enough and asking the right questions, background, you could get into
Unknown Speaker 50:57
that challenge and I think something that you've brought Before peed in I, I haven't really held a second date. And I would ask that somewhere somebody in the manual, put in one of the ultimate unspoken truths, unless you go completely native, get out and live. And we've known people who've done that in the Philippines. And unless you do that, that's such a very, very, very essential ization of our population. Unless you do that. I would say in the manual, you got to put someplace in there, regardless how much time you spend with these people, regardless, unless, regardless of how close you have gotten, remember, you're in their country, not in ours. And ultimately, you're going to leave and they're going to stay
Pete Turner 52:01
That's right. And and when you one of my favorite questions as we were starting to wind down because I was in a lot of places, but we wound down was no foolin. We're leaving. There's not much time to do anything else. Has anyone talked to you about this? And what do you absolutely need? That's here right now. And the eyes, their eyes would be gigantic. Yeah. They're like, no, you're, you're you're kidding. You're not really leaving, like, I am telling you right now, because literally, like, how bad of a partner are we, when we don't inform our partner that we're leaving with all of our stuff? and giving them an idea transition plan. There's a whole paper we wrote called transition operations. As we transition out, what do you have to do and it's, it's a, it's akin to, you know, you can, you know, clear hold build, then, then let like, you have to transition away from that, but these kinds of lessons as as a partner, you know, winding down your relationship. Reading not just a good handoff, but a perfect handoff. Yeah, like really spending your time talking about that
Unknown Speaker 53:06
I, I don't have any personal experience of that. Show, whatever I say is is what I've read what I've theorized what I've thought about, I certainly cannot say I practiced this like you have. I think our recent history is replete, replete with examples of what we don't want to do. We don't have to name any wars or anything. We got an intelligent audience they can think about it themselves. And even more recently, where we've essentially put somebody or a group of people out on the limb, if not, unintentionally, halfway shot through the limp. Yeah, you're absolutely right and and, and I Even though we short a short of left Central America with the United States with a misplaced sense of Hawker, and that we had won, unquote, the consequences, and this is I am familiar with, particularly from being with da, the consequences of failing to look at a good exit strategy. I don't care if you do tail between legs, or you're walking down the hill, you say, with a crown whorls, you better have a transition plan you better have. Okay, Mr. Neal, we're going to be leaving here in three to six months. That is not my decision. But we have to work together and how best we can do that. That was not done in Central America. And I've written reports on that the consequences, I would argue, Pete, I would argue that because of that, of a certain national hook, as the French would say, we left El Salvador, we left Nicaragua, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, lush, Costa Rica, Guatemala, we left there, and now we're paying the price and the consequences of leaving the way we left. And I have argued in a couple of papers for a federal agency, to the effect that we're dealing with now. There's a plot from your judgment that we left in the mid to late 80s in Central America, and here it is 2010 that's when I wrote one of the papers 2010 and look what the hell we're dealing with. Yeah. Planning. Yeah. You know, the the old, a little bit about a line a little bit below here, the old, the chevron piece, you know, proper planning proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. We mouth that a lot. I'm not too sure how much we practice.
Pete Turner 56:25
Yeah, yeah, a lot to be said there for that because this is a, you know, this is actually the things is that that departure, that transition to something else often includes very simple things that that person needs. And they will shock you with their candor. And I promise you can take it, I promise. I promise you can take it when they look at you and say, how long would your government function without electricity, you have to net if you care. And as a good in as a good partner, you should care. As you look at that, you have to say Right, how do we get this person to generator something that we're likely to leave behind? You know, and yes, it's a paperwork fiasco. But if we're really trying to create not leave a bunch of debris field and our path as we leave, but getting that obsolete generator that no one wants does isn't worth the money it's gonna get put into a scrapyard and sold somewhere in Germany. Why not just write that thing off as lost or stolen? Or and I'm not saying commit crimes, but I'm saying is do the work and understand like, at a minimum, what do you need electricity. I can get by if I have that. And they'll have they'll know those things. You just have to ask them. What is it right that you need, right? Yeah,
john mckay 57:45
I'm sure you're here example. Like Trisha was, was premium because the girl is tactics of blowing up pylons, but in El Salvador, but I'm sure it was critically Much more critical in the part of the world that you're exposed to. Yeah, yeah, for sure to be able to, to take that type of thinking and saying, you know, you know the right people. You don't have to be in a combat zone. You can write off right here as excess here. And and what's the damage? You're going to be done visa v. You know, show him an extreme discount to a junkyard and Frankfurt, Germany or writing them off as inoperable or not sure. And giving them to a people that they rely on for survival. What? I'm not too sure there's a there's any choice there? Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Turner 58:54
And if you're worried about well, what if they sell the electricity or what if they What if they There's not enough of anything there. So yes, they're going to use it to their advantage to try to provide as much help and to as many people as possible and there might be a cost for that. But this in this particular case, this valley had no electricity in it. And and in Iraq, these guys are out in the hinterlands of the Baghdad district. They had no power at all and they were going to have reliable power you give them reliable power. Now they can try to beat or give them all this high speed laptop training and all that, but no, no ability to have reliable electricity. And it's an old Chevy 350 generator, you know, it's not we're not talking million dollar things here. Those kind of sales.
Unknown Speaker 59:44
We I when I was doing car garage improve the as Jada tribe was improving, Amazon tribes, it was probably probably in the area I was operating at the time was And, you know by, by American standards by washing I don't want to, I want to Smartsheet and ice age by Washington standards. These people are parameter extremely clever. And talking to the Peruvians. One of which I think really understood them, the others were not surprising, racist, superior, whatever. And, you know, he said, these are the things we need to get to them and they were basic things like, like medicine. I'm not talking penicillin. I'm not talking IVs I'm not I'm not even going up that level. I'm talking about, God forbid nobody showing what the hell it is. Law violate a pure Chrome. Huh? What's that? Those are medicines that survive in the jungle, don't need refrigeration. And they're very easy to teach on how to put them on you know, and, and This is my proving colleague. his comment was, do we send him to Harvard Business School? Because he's going to make his tribe better? Or do we give them things with which he can make his tribe better? Right? I mean, it sounds like philosophical. It's not. It's not a rhetorical. It's basic.
Pete Turner 1:01:22
Yeah. We're running out of time here. Two real quick questions for you. One. We have a tendency in the military to and we've talked about this. So you'll know where we're going with this. But we have a tendency to overvalue physical fitness, in terms of the ability to do these jobs because as you know, these are delicate, deliberate jobs, packed with failure, right, and the ability to do push ups or run three miles or flip over a tire, I would say are, you know, tertiary, maybe the fourth level of things but what is your sense of it like the humans I'm not saying don't make it don't meet a minimum standards, obviously someone who's physically fit. But where does that that drive that physical fitness? Where does that fit in terms of selection for someone to do these tasks?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:13
Well, again, I'll give you a concrete example because I like to see if I had a little bit of influence on this. We did have some SF people, and Tel Aviv. They didn't go out in the field, but there were a couple part of the male group as far as training Palestinians. And my comment was both these guys were good, and they were they were good. They were all right with the Palestinians. But they were. One was disarmed the senior Sergeant First Class army, and that usually is anyway I'd say. jokingly, I said, you know how many push ups and how many pull ups and how fast do you run? Does that make you a better trainer? The Palestinians? Well, of course his answers of course it does. And my retort to him is, so Charles Atlas shows up here. We're going to have top notch security for us, right. That was that was my that was my retort. Pete Yeah, it were in the military. There's no need for it to end crowded as our supreme goal. Nature is rethinking.
Pete Turner 1:03:33
And I would say also to the if you're going to be an alpha, and I think guys like us are alphas you can't be the alpha in that room. You have to be you have to be someone else. So
Unknown Speaker 1:03:52
that's why I use the trolls, trolls.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:56
Yeah, yeah. No, some some Some purely kids come along throw sand in his eyes. That's wonderful. But yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about early. We draw a certain type of individual bit man or woman into this into this millou that we're talking about this idea of liaison and assistant in training but shoulder to shoulder with foreign counterparts. You draw a certain type of individual that by and large you want to have I think it has to go into the manual along with the fact that you can do 50 pull ups does not make you de facto qualified for this job. Also, what needs to go in there Pete? is you know, you're an apple alpha male view of high school football Captain you this. Did the shock bug. But that is not assure me who qualified in fact, we may have to deprogram you because you really do have some great qualities. And that deprogram can Szish you're not the best guy in the room. You are there in a very humble position. And I think a good lead in going back to our initial part of the conversation. Good Legion with foreign counterparts is, I'm here to learn from you.
Pete Turner 1:05:31
Yeah. A humble position is a great note and
john mckay 1:05:35
not too many Apple alpha male, and they
Pete Turner 1:05:38
certainly can't this isn't that denigrate physical fitness,
john mckay 1:05:41
they can.
Pete Turner 1:05:42
Absolutely. You have to understand that you can never be the smartest person in the room. You can, you know, you have to always accept that you probably culturally at least the dumbest person in the room with with all of your partners. So oh
Unknown Speaker 1:05:58
I could I could ask literally make a plausible argument for that. I'll jump and say I could probably make a compelling argument for that.
Pete Turner 1:06:07
If you could have these folks read one book, and obviously there are many they should read, but what's your one book?
john mckay 1:06:16
Okay, that that. Believe it or not. Now, I'm not going to recommend it because it has not been translated. It's a it's a Spanish translation of a liaison, working with foreign powers that the French army put together during the Algerian War. And it's not what you think, or what you might think that it is. It does not go into torture doesn't do anything else it's talking about and this is a very odd mix. It's Talking about French army enlisted personnel being able to work with conjunction with extracting information intelligence for what was called the P as in law. And that was Algerian French people. Now they were torn. Some woman married Algerian women. They point both sides. But I thought it was. I think it is a provocative book, because if you can take about the complexity of going into someplace like Algeria, where you've been for 130 years, you've got freshmen that were born there, their children were born there. Their loyalties are there. You you've you've given him the sense that really helped Europeans become another province. Which course It can't be. Because the population dominance is Algerian and they want their own country. But think about gold Shanina liaison officer into that environment, not to work with the French, French forces against the Algerian insurgency. But to operate with a segment of that Algerian population that might be ambivalent might be very supportive, or might be counter to what the French government trying to do. That's, that's kind of a kind of an iffy situation. How successful were they? I don't know. I don't know. But, but especially financially, I'm looking forward to my bookshelf here. Give you a house. It was published in was published in Madrid, the Spanish version, but it's never been translated into Spanish. And what's the data on along with the original French title, but that that is certainly one of them. The other one, and I think this is is, again, I'm dating myself, there's probably several that are so much better. This is this is a book that I think given the situation Middle East again, it's somewhat David. The title of it is sacred rage, written by Robin right. Robin is a woman now is in the UK, but she was born raised in Lebanon, that again, particularly in this book, and I mentioned it because as you and I both know the demographic makeup level nine is absolutely fascinating not only from an ethnic point of view, but from a religious point of view, the dros the Christians, the Muslims, and then you want to throw in that little compound impact, sooner share. And I offer the books because will they? Will they make them better liaison officers, advisors, whatever you want to do, not necessarily but I would say both of them were sensitized to batch complexity of the world according to
Pete Turner 1:10:43
Well, that is a good lay down of partnering and getting into the liaising thing and just put those two books a heck one requires you to go ahead and get some language capacity if you don't have it already. But thanks a lot for john for doing this with me. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show and it's always great To discuss these things, because this isn't about anyone's intention or anyone's effort, we all make these mistakes. It's the institution is trying to improve. And it's not easy to build these things kind of on the fly. So that's why we're putting these lessons down so that someone who's at this symposium or the next one, or the next one, the next one, has a chance to build on the lessons that they have. Because these are it's the subtle things. I think that make the difference. The patient's being humble, building trust, if you focused on those three things, you'd already be ahead of 95% of the field.
john mckay 1:11:38
And, well, I can go on but thank you very much for having me. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your guidance and nautical terms, and much appreciate the rudder trucking. Thank you.
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show. We've had Colonel john Mackay on several times if you haven't listened to his background episodes, let me do you a favor, go listen to his stuff, you're not gonna believe how this guy grew up and what he's experienced. Now, this falls into this week of shows that we're doing better designed for the folks that are going to be attending the military advisor training academy, and are going to work in f5, the security forces advisor brigades, these are people that are going to go abroad, from the military, to other militaries to other governmental organizations. And they're going to try to help build capacity, whether it's in direct boots on the ground combat type skills, or if it's how to run supply or logistics or partner in some way that helps our partners in filling the blank country out. Maybe they're in Jordan, maybe they're in Burma, maybe they're in Georgia, they're Georgia, not ours. wherever they go, they need these advisor skills. Well, there's nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody that I know, that has more experience in more places. Over cross more generations of time, then Colonel john mccain, john is an absolute master of international diplomacy. Now his home language is Spanish, but he also speaks catchweight. And he understands the nuance of culture, no matter where he goes anytime, anyplace anywhere, john can integrate himself and work within his partners mindset and mission to accomplish his own mission. And that's what makes him a master advisor. And that's why you were listening to what he has to say. Again, go check out his other episodes, we talked about this topic a lot. But there's very, very, very good stuff in here especially talks about the key attributes and what it is to be a good advisor, and where you need to put your priorities. This is a fantastic episode, you will get a lot out of it. If you love what we do. This is what we do. We bring ground truth to things we illustrate life. Right now we're illustrating how to partner whether you're in the military, or you're traveling or you're working in a country situation that you're not familiar with, or even within your own company, department or department, all of these advising skills, all these cultural skills, these are useful to you all. So I hope you can appreciate that this is not only good for art visors. But it's also good for you in the professional civilian world who say support the show go to break down, show calm, subscribe. That's the best way. If you're on Apple or iTunes and you're listening to the show there, subscribe rate, tell your friends about it. That's how you help us grow the show and make it something bigger. recommending the show to someone super, super valuable. Thank you so much. When you do that, if you're new to the show, hey, we don't just talk military stuff around here. We have so many musical producers coming up. We're going to have more filmmakers coming in. We've got a lot of different people creating a lot of content. I defy you to find a show that has more people producing content to a single simple show. You cannot find it I purposely built this thing to be broad, so you can always find a topic that you're interested in. Alright, listen, here comes the incredible mind of john McKay
Unknown Speaker 2:47
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:52
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring nakedly Sebastian Yo, this is Rick Murat, Stewart COPPA. This is Alexis Anderson. Hi, this is Scott Baxter,
Unknown Speaker 3:01
Gabby Reese, Rob bell. This is john Leon gray.
Pete Turner 3:03
And this is Pete a Turner.
john mckay 3:07
This is Colonel john McKay. And we're listening to the break it down show.
Pete Turner 3:14
So I'm having Colonel john Mackay come on the show because he's got an amazing background and experience as a marine working overseas. He's truly an internationalist. He understands the world at a level that many of us don't. And these shows are specifically designed for s fab warriors who are trying to figure out how to advise assist, and guide partner nations and partners specifically to a to a place of more capacity. So we're creating these there's there's ultimately going to be about five of these episodes that are going to be designed for that so there's a lot to pull from this but this is a very specific project talking to warriors who are going to interact and and liaison and guide Other people. So john, if you could give us a background on why you'd be qualified to talk about partnering with foreign nationals,
Unknown Speaker 4:08
be happy to do that. And look forward to doing show. I was reared in Latin America by THX I was bilingual Spanish practice effect spoke and felt more comfortable speaking Spanish than I did English. I also had as a blessing, my father's position was the corporation that he was working for, allowed him to put me out on the corporation's very, very extensive RC under system at the age of nine why during the summer and Christmas vacations, worked for room and board. I was the only American is the only English speaker and I was exposed to and was able to pick up certainly not fluently but pick up cachola the Indian language from Latin America, where I was now I was there until I was 15 years old. I came back and after I graduated high school, in 1962, joined, joined enlisted in the Marine Corps. I got a second appointment to the Naval Academy and graduated in 68. While at the Naval Academy I was picked up as an Olmstead scholar candidate that would not be evaluated until three years after graduation selection based on professional performance in uniform. I debarked almost immediately within seven months for Vietnam. I was I was wounded and medivac and put back together in a hospital which was which was lengthy Shortly after released from hospital I was selected as an offset scholar study two years in Spain and was completely immersed in, in in Spain Spanish culture, which young said foundation interested at that time. And I abided by after I got out. Finish that. And this is on topic. I'm not going to talk about my career as a very junior major. I was selected as the first official naval attache to the Republic of El Salvador, the very first and as the audience and the officers or men that are listening will recall well Psalm ago was him broiled in a very, very nasty show war guerrilla insurgency, while in El Salvador where I extended twice. It was a company tour. I stepped down there I'm not going to talk about anything there other than the fact that the US Ambassador who just recently died in him, accused me in a positive sense of having gone completely native. And I asked you to keep that in mind, because I think it's I think it's to the point. In fact, the ambassador had to remind me that it was appropriate that I, as a US Naval attache, show up at the Fourth of July celebration at the embassy, Nollywood is that the subsequent assignment was battalion commander JTF. Commander, while JTF commander, although this is not an advisory role, one of my collateral and I consider it one of the more pleasant and certainly important duties was direct note negotiation with the Cuban authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My counterpart was a Cuban Armed Forces, one star general. And we made tremendous progress. And at least was in the US military and I can only surmise was in the communist Cuban military. There was a desire to move forward. political forces decided otherwise. After Cuba. I retired from the Marine Corps in the late 90s. and got a job with a national intelligence agency and was dispatched almost immediately to train Palestinian security forces. That training was authorized and to a certain degree, encouraged under the 1973 Oslo Accords.
Unknown Speaker 8:58
This was a part of the world that My one big drawback and we can come back to this as Pete decide. My one big drawback working with the Palestinians was I do not speak Arabic. And I think that is a major, major drawback. On the positive side, I had a better one young better one kid who was superb and we, we hit it off. I mean, we I was breaking policy, I would say in Gaza, with him, usually sleeping on the floor, which stay in the West Bank. When we came to the Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, always make sure he bumped with me. I had that leeway. And Kalia What was his name and I I do not speak Arabic. Colonial was very, very good. The point being my work was exclusively, almost exclusively with the Palestinian security forces in Gaza, the West Bank, I had very little actual interaction with the Israelis, although they certainly knew what I was doing. I had just a little bit more interaction with the American authorities. I issue the US Embassy at that time was in Tel Aviv, I would go into my report, get my operational funds, and that was about it. Otherwise, I was in the field. And I was I think I'm being very conservative, where I was at least 85 to 90% of the time with with Arab forces with the Palestinian portion. And, though I didn't speak the language, again, we'll come back to that. I have since worked in West Africa. That was not an advisory role that was strictly commercial. You commercial interest working for private US companies that had a major contract. I was chosen because the country I worked in Equatorial Guinea is the only Sub Saharan country in Africa where Spanish is spoken. I would not and I would encourage the audience not to don't divorce survey and experience working with native indigenous personnel from what you're looking at to do in the military, a lot of lessons learned. And they're all positive lessons that you can take or discard as you see fit. But don't say I was a sorbet and john that doesn't cow doctrine. You're still dealing in native language dealing with native and you may not be looking at a military objective, but you do have a goal to accomplish and I will offer. That type of interaction is complimentary to what you're looking at in the military. Since then, I got picked up, I was in a special status with the Drug Enforcement Agency again, I was brought on board because of my Spanish up until 2010. I was working in Mexico for obvious reasons. I was in Mexico again, I would say in an advisory role, short term, very short term in the sense that it was six weeks. I had I was sent down to the Mexican Federal Police Academy in San Luis Potosi and good at all state in Mexico. And my my remit was to set up and teach a course in human rights to the young police cadets that were to graduate and go into the federal police force. Not Not rule police flourish not municipal police force but the national federal police force as a specialist,
Unknown Speaker 13:09
and there was very intense interaction both with the students. That was the authorities at the Mexican police academy, which needless to say, we're all officers. But experience actually stood me in very good stead against specifically military. No, it's police. But I would offer that that type of exposure is right up what the audience is thinking, considering. You know, we're not going into a Franco Prussian war situation where everybody lines up and charges each other. We're in a very murky situation. And we're the police authorities stops where the military's authority starts. is is is a very, very blurry blurry line. And then you go the other way, where does police authority start and stop? And where does the civil authority start? Again, a very, very blurry line. And it's not in line that you can say, oh, okay, well, today I'm going to be in this box. And I'm going to be playing my role as a military advisor. Right, not true, not true. You're going to go to work and say, Well, I'm going to be working with the department, the National local department of justice. And two hours later, you're down in the police station, interrogating a suspect, or you're down at the police station, advising how they should plan, a counter drug raid, how they should plan, an operation to take out a specific individual very, very, very Markey and I, the only thing I can say is keep yourself open minded, flexible and able to react as circumstances dictate. Because it's going to be very, very rare that you're going to get up in the morning and say, well, I'll go down and have a cup of coffee. And then I'm going to interrogate Jose, or I'm going to go down and have a cup of coffee. And the colonel and I are going to get together and we're going to decide how we're going to do special operations on it. It's not gonna work out that way. Okay. And if you can keep that in mind, I think it would stand you in tremendous stead.
Pete Turner 15:47
I wanted to ask you about what it takes to do these things to partner and to liaise to advise someone from a foreign country well, what what are the day to day things Because look, the reality is this Colonel The, the military doesn't have a handbook on this. They say build rapport, well, where's the FM? You know, develop trust? Well, you know, where again, where's the FM where's the course, is these things are all done, they aren't done institutionally, they're done individually. And it's hard to repeat your lessons without having some kind of program to go through. So and just to further illustrate this, if you had a bunch of young Marines who weren't hitting center mass on a target from the prone position, or from the kneeling position, that you can point to your Gunny and say, fix that. And he's got a list of steps that he can take to specifically break that action down until that marine is now firing center mass repeatedly on target 500 meters away from a variety of positions. That is not the case in partnering. So help us understand some of these things that you're like. This is the diamond washer drill of the, you know, of the partner world.
Unknown Speaker 17:06
As P and I have discussed in the past, I think one of the keys, really the golden key, if it all you can get it, and I think it should definitely be included in the manual is language fluency. And I fully understand and appreciate the fact that for the United States, that is not a fully embraced. idea. There's, there's, there's a certain hesitancy on the part of I would say mostly surveillance or ease, but there's a certain hesitancy to encourage a universal foreign language exposure for the population. And I don't think it's that much for the military, except for institutions ideal But I'm getting off track of the language I think is critical. Can you do the job without it? Yes, you can. Most the time you have to. But I think that that's number one okay. Number two and language helps out immensely here. But nevertheless you can you can do some for arm yourself with as in depth as possible knowledge of the culture. People painting I've spoken at certain cultures Middle East, even Latin American, believe it or not. There are certain do's and don'ts. Make yourself aware of those. Unfortunately, Americans tend to go there and somebody pulls up all boats for fall paw. There's there's sort of, you know, self conscious giggle and laugh at off type thing. Your host nation may not look at it that way.
Pete Turner 19:01
But how does one do that? How does one determine the culture? I mean, the military has quote unquote, cultural training, but let's be honest, it's not. It's not what I do. It's not what I do. I you know, I don't fear eating left handed in front of an Islamic guy, you know, I, I know I can I know, I'm not supposed to make the okay symbol in parts of the former Yugoslavia, because it's, you know, might indicate Serbian victory. But those are minor things. How does one learn a culture in advance without being there? Or how does one become culturally intelligent so that they can go to any place with little or no prep? and start to become, you know, so culturally adept.
john mckay 19:42
Oh, that yeah, that is that is it's an absolute critical, acute question. That deserves the best answer and I just appear I can't give it I think there's There's so much reading you can do there's so many videos you could there's so many audios you can listen to all helpful. Absolutely. I would say the next step up with or without language knowledge is get the get the officer get the get the Sergeant First Class get the short and major in country and and and I would offer that the service be an Army Navy Marine Corps God that whatever country you're looking at that they have some kind of I don't want to use the word regimented, but some type of scheduled structured program for familiarization of new people coming in. And I would assume when we're talking about the SF community special ops community, most of you guys are volunteers. Most of you should Going through some kind of screening process. You would go back as far as the screening and selection process. Does this person have the adaptability? Does he have any, you know, prejudices that would be contradictory to what we in the special ops or whatever community are aiming to do and aiming to use you as a screening process. And, you know, I'm getting away from peach question, how do you introduce them to the culture? How do you inoculate them with a sense of culture? Okay, well, let's flash forward and we get the individual and country. I think short of what I just mentioned, books, videos, audios, presentations, traveling roadshows, whatever you want to do. The next step is to get in country and have the person be Suppose to the maximum degree possible. And unfortunately, I'm editorializing here. Americans have a terrible, terrible time breaking away from other Americans. And that's not necessarily good. There are certainly circumstances. I was always trying to kill you. But it's really great to have a bunch of Americans around you, if you're trying to influence somebody else. Three guys walking in on a Palestinian Colonel, that are all Americans and they may not have shaved and they may not be uniformed. But it's, it's imposing, and and that kernel is made aware of that. Whereas a one on one situation where you're able to establish a rapport, and that's my next point, become culturally aware. Be able, hopefully the services are again through the screening process. are able to identify people that are comfortable and establishing a rapport with a foreign counterpart. And I don't mean we poor in the sense you go down how you look. And a couple of chuckles I'm talking about being able to sit down, have a mutual respect, be able to establish, grow and hopefully expand a bond of confidence and a bond of respect mutual. You don't, or you should not go in. I am an American captain. And you are extra country Colonel. You have to listen to me because I know more. as Pete and I've described, on a much, much bigger or macro Scale has not served us. Well, in the recent past,
Pete Turner 24:06
when I'm overseas, a lot of times I'm evaluating how we do things, you know, because we don't have this training. And if we're, again, if we're firing the rifle in such a way that it's hitting our partner in the bad way or missing them, you know, my job is to illustrate that for the command so they can start to try to fix that. So one of my instant responses is if I hear someone say, but my commander wants this, identify that person as being a no go at this station, and I go, Okay, how do we get this person to be oriented and of all of the things I learned how to Afghan elder, he's the senior guy, he is the government. And he says there's only room for one sword in the scabbard. And I present that to the infantry battalion commander who happens to be a foreign service officer, an FSO. And he goes, got it. He's the boss. We're going to do everything that he He wants to do. That's how we're going to provision them. And we're going to do as little as possible because he needs to be able to do this himself. Now, what the boss wants is something totally different. So how do we get away from that imposition of will from our hire on a on a partner? You can't serve these two masters.
Unknown Speaker 25:25
You're on therapy? That's a loaded question. Sherry Lee again, and the military doesn't like to hear this. And I speak from personal knowledge. Because I'm not current military and I retired almost 20 years ago, right. It was a different military then. I was fortunate. I felt that I was fortunate. Being in the Marine Corps and serving for sure. To get to the P pH question. You I would I would offer That the individuals enlisted our officers that you're sending in country, regardless of where it is in the world are individuals of a caliber and quality that one of their characteristics is the ability to work, operate and execute independently or semi independently. And allow me to suggest let's extrapolate that into intellect and somebody comes down lack of knowledge perhaps no fault of his own bias prejudice, a name it right but hey, captain for short and pay sharp major. Do this just the way we're going to do it. I would say you as the individual operator, the individual liaison you are this That you have a smart enough brain. And you can say, I can get that result by doing it this way. And I think short of fix Spanish go over the top. In the world we're talking about today, it's more more it is what Pete's just described. somebody telling you go get this, go get this done with your porn counterpart. I think the onus becomes upon you, the operator to not only say, this is my mission, but this is a way I'm going to accomplishment based on my cultural awareness, knowledge, rapport, and ability to work with my counterpart. I don't
Pete Turner 27:58
know. Yeah, well, there It seems like folks are going to do this kind of work need to have some ability to, you know, the mission command concept, you know, like, here's the intent of this mission, which requires commanders to, to allow the mission, allow the person to use mission command, of course, which takes some courage when you don't have someone you could put your hands on. They're 50 miles away, or whatever, and they're trying to get through it. But these these tools that that person sits with, one of them is a sense for it. And I've used this example before, but I mean, use it again. I was doing some work with with the army, and we went there, you know, later in the evening than we normally went. And all of the Iraqi army guys around the TV because it was Arab cup time, and they were all watching football. And this Lieutenant god bless him, was there to get his damn mission done, you know? And I kind of smacked him and I'm like, These guys are watching soccer. Why don't we watch soccer for a while. And, you know, those moments where, you know, your initial mission is OBE, you know, overcome by events for the audience. Your job today is to watch soccer and be fascinated by it and let these guys take. It's like walking into the Superbowl and saying, hey, never mind those two chiefs. Never mind that. Let's go talk about personnel issues.
Unknown Speaker 29:28
Right, exactly. Or, as something you and I have both talked about Pete, and I think fully agree with the attitude, particularly with Latins, and with Middle Eastern nations, the business of going in, in the bull in the china shop, American attitude. I'm going to get the job done. And you go in and say, I need this, this and this. Yeah. You talked earlier about what should we be Well, if you're in Latin, or if you're in the middle eastern world, a absolute requirement, if you want to get anything done is you go in, and you talk about nothing for a month. 20 minutes. How's the kids? How's the dog? Is the wife praises again? Did you how's the baby? How's the Nana? And how's the new coke working out? Now that doesn't have a damn thing to do with why you're there. But, excuse the profanity, you damn well better do it if you're gonna get results.
Pete Turner 30:36
And that isn't meant to be. We always have to qualify these things right? Like I have now spent 20 minutes engaging with rapport building conversation.
Unknown Speaker 30:47
Please, absolutely. It is 100% right. You are not running a clock. You're there to get a mission done and do it and do it appropriately. In order to get that mission done
Pete Turner 31:04
this sort of a game that I would play, john, I don't know if you've ever played it, but because I knew I was I was triggered to go and do my job and ask my questions. I would purposely wait as long as I could, I would ask another question about culture, about family about the area, you know, which is all in effect doing my job. But I wouldn't ask any business until my partner is like, Can we get down to work?
Unknown Speaker 31:28
But you're, again, pages extremely perceptive and obviously quite experienced. When I was in the Middle East when I was working with the Palestinians, I had a particular individual blue Rani been on educated Oxford, Palestinian actually better one. And he was he was always a property host. But he had he had some incredible things that were most helpful to me and If I did not Mark time on my calendar, I put down Yasser. Right. I could go in and we could have one. Sweet.
Pete Turner 32:12
Hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here. And if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan and show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm.
john mckay 32:32
Let me help. I want to hear about it. Right. I could go in and we could have one sweet, gooey sweet tea. Or we could have five. And what Pete is just said is the rule that I went by. As long as Joshua was saying, Would you like another cup of tea? You don't say? Hell no. We got to get to business that would be delicious. Thank you. And then he would set his little cup down and said, Is there some way I can help you perhaps? I don't think that would have happened if I bust into his office. Hey, yes, sir. Couple things here. Can you get it for me right away? And he would have been very nice, almost cherubic smile and say, Well, of course, john, and I would never hear anything. Yeah.
Pete Turner 33:39
Yeah. So these lessons, these things also are so okay. We have to have a linear timeline in our head of the fact that there's been units before us that have likely been there. Or that you are the last partner this person's ever going to have at least in this iteration of the military movement, right? Like so. We're going to close down Iraq and we're going to pull back. If you don't talk, if you don't think about the past partners, you're doing yourself a disservice. I'm going to give you a naked example. We had a general who worked in the area outside in the Baghdad province. And he was coming to our camp, aka, his camp. This is an Iraq general to an American colonels camp. We know we're allowed to stay there, you know, and we don't often take that view. And so the guards at the American camp sweated that General for hours outside the camera. Yeah, they wouldn't let him in. There was problems there was traffic Meanwhile, the next commander in doesn't know this story. And, and I tell him this story right after and this is this is the juxtaposition of this. We're all lined up and wraps everywhere. And the kernel Inside the camp trying to get out. And again, pardon my swearing, but this is the quote, he gets on the radio and says, everybody get the fuck out of my way. Because it was, it was a mess. And so guess whatever, dude, everybody got the fuck out of his way. And he left and I said, Let me tell you a story about the last commander that was here. And that general was angry for many colonels in a row about this, this, you know, you would never do that to any general and American camp, you know, like an American general.
john mckay 35:33
Absolutely not.
Pete Turner 35:34
But we had done it to this rocky one. And he held that grudge and he knew that myself in the interpreter that had been there for several commanders as well. He knew that we knew about it. And just when you think about that rock that's in your rough that you have no idea about? Yeah,
john mckay 35:49
absolutely.
Pete Turner 35:50
It. It changes and spending time doing that understanding what you know how it was, how was it with the last ones, what went well? What didn't go well? those kind of questions are these reports. Building questions where you actually act like you give it down you know about about the person that you're with. And I don't want to say you give up all of your personal information, but being genuine with your answers about your people. I've always found john to be a much better tact and say, Hi, my name is Drake. I have a daughter, she's 10 years old, and have all that stuff be false. It people are too savvy for that, especially in places that are conflict ridden.
john mckay 36:27
Again, I Well, it's not like Pete and I haven't talked before but Pete's absolutely, absolutely correct. I mean, there's two elements here. You asked about what what are you looking for and somebody wants to send to do liaison work, interpreter work, working with foreign counterparts and developing intelligent planning cetera. What do you want? Well, you certainly would like to have an ideal world language. You would also like to have hopefully, this Each font family from that region or from that particular country, these are all idealized roles that you're rarely ever, ever going to be able to reach. But what Pete has just said that it's individual. And I'm convinced it can be taught that the individual is going in and doing all those things I just checked on has the element of sincerity and genuineness has the ability to empathize with whoever his counterpart is, along with understanding that you don't go in and say Javi I need this right now. I Pete's right on I mean, we can all think of it you don't have to be in uniform to walk around Be it Serving offers a major department store. And there's a little ruckus. There's a little hubbub going on. And you could you can spot the pony. Well, let me tell you go overseas. If you're a phony, you stick out like a sore thumb. And you become your own worst enemy. and by extension, the country's own worst enemy.
Pete Turner 38:29
Can you wrap your hands around any of the other just universal values or lenses or perspectives that a person who wants to do this kind of work or Command these kind of people? Yeah, let's talk about the command element of it. How do we how do we do this? How do you get your people prepared? How do you let them do their job? Because I'll tell you right now, the way I do it, it's not going to be the way you do it. And you know, you have to be comfortable with that is a command.
john mckay 38:55
Yeah, but that's a good point. And and I'm afraid we're going to stray here, but this should be put in the manual and mission space. And there there are unclassified after actually reports that have brought this out. This is a concrete real world example they had a few years back with the insurgency in Colombia, you know, was was the escola drug cartel. As I said, we're going back a few years. scroll forward Mexico, same thing. The the ability of the United States with a little bit, a little bit of effort of being able to round up Spanish speakers, particularly at the at the troop operational level, is a fairly easy job. I mean, we have, I can't quote the census, but what's population native Spanish speakers in this country today pretty high. But going back to sensitivities Pete what I saw in Colombia, I saw it in Peru and these are real world operations. These aren't conceptualize or exam stuff I was involved in, at the national level or at the D od minimum at Department of Army, or headquarters Marine Corps, or whatever level the decision is made. The seeking was lacking because, oh, look at Jose with DeAndre speak Spanish. Well, Jose, Jose from Puerto Rico. Jose hangs out with a lot of Puerto Ricans and Jose is a good soldier, and etc, etc. Well, you know, we'll send five or seven Jose's down to train Colombian counterinsurgency forces Not good, not good. There's there there are societal. I hate to use it racial was in Latin America that people should be aware of Puerto Ricans or not and are not as well accepted as if you'd have gotten an Ecuadorian, or ideally, a bunch of Colombians. And when I was a battalion commander earlier, I had five Colombian kids. You know, none of them were officers, but these guys were great. I mean, born in Colombia, but that was at a different time where they're short, which would lead to their citizenship. I would not. I don't think even then, if somebody said, I need five minutes, we got to send her in Puerto Rico. I said, Okay, I got five Colombians. She's Spanish. Don't send them. Right. Would they not be able to do the job? No, not necessarily. But there would be a friction there that would not contribute to maximum efficiency and accomplishing the mission.
Pete Turner 42:11
And also, I've I've seen and gosh, you know, look, Sergeant Major, whoever it's gonna be this case, it's a sergeant major, I've seen the sergeant major say, we need to have our female engagement to go out. We don't have anybody and the sergeant major says, well, Miller's a female, she can do it. Technically, Yes, she's a female, she can do it. But Can she accomplished anything, you know, the training aspect of this is is absolutely critical to be even if you are Puerto Rican, and you go to the to the Colombians, and they hate Puerto Ricans, for example. It is a barrier that you know about and if you've been trained, you know how to work around that barrier or even make a joke of it and say, Hey, they sent the Puerto Rican two types of the Colombian and then boom, all the walls come down, and within a few words, you know, fast friends, if you've been trained on that, you know how to deal with these things. Yeah.
john mckay 43:06
Actually, I feel I feel stunted in the sense that by the time I left the service, integration, females into into standardized unit was was really just getting underway. I think I missed a tremendous opportunity to observe a revolutionary thing that is in the best interest of the services. And like up I was never overseas, where women who utilize in fact, my last command is the JTF commander was the only command I had that had a lot of women in that happened to be at Guantanamo. It was fortuitous that I had a lot of the best Spanish speakers were females. And I'm not, I'm not going to say what service because they weren't all services. My adjutant was a was, believe it or not, female Puerto Rican captain. I taught the they brought a lot to the table. That male did not. And I can only imagine an environment that you've been mature and exposed to, and understand that they could be a tremendous asset. Or they could be a very bad liability.
Pete Turner 44:39
Well, yeah. And when it's been a liability, it's not been because they were afraid, oh, it's because the institution has let them down and not prepare them properly for the job. You know, they've been sent out to do something and this is that whole conversation of effect is always better than effect, especially in this line of work. Right people bid to bid on effect being a noun but the reality is it can be used as a noun and when you when you seek, you know, the definition for effect as a noun is basically you're looking for a response to stimuli and emotional response. And if I can create trust, you can go have 100 meetings, I will win. That's correct because I've taken the time six months a year, however long it takes, it doesn't take a year and it doesn't take six months. But if I build that trust, I will get a lot more done and I will get to the especially as a collector, I will get to the the third level friends that are the ones that I need to talk right and again, build trust with.
Unknown Speaker 45:37
Absolutely, absolutely. And and, well, I'm not going to wander a feel but this business and and let's be frank we as a nation, we as a nation, are an impatient people and we the idea of Spending even six weeks, much less, six or nine months building rapport, so you can become very effective. sort of goes against our grain as a nation.
Pete Turner 46:15
Yeah. Yeah, and and that. So this brings up a good point one of those critical tasks that are skills that you need to build is is developing some calluses over our tender spots. And our impatience is certainly one of those areas where, you know, the more here's what I've learned, the more I injected myself and my ego into my partnership relationships, the worse I performed, the less me that was there, the more I could tease them out. And a lot of times were so dominant, we're the military, we have all the power we have all the money we have all the ideas. The more we do that we just run over the top of our partner just run them flat and smooth. And every partner teaches him that and so I would watch these guys physically, lean back and shield themselves. against the park against the American partner because it was just being inundated with ideas and thoughts and words. And there was just absolutely no room for them to act. So they were taught to not act. That's how they, that's how they were advised to do our actions. And
john mckay 47:16
I'll be so bold to say that you and I can extrapolate into those us vein agencies that do this type of thing. And you run into the same thing has nothing to do with wearing a uniform. It has to do with a national ethos and the training that they've been subjected to, and and, you know, I would say that saying, you know, I'm, I'm a sergeant major, I've got 27 years service, and you damn well better listen to me, that attitude can be just as easily found in some of the other ledger agencies. But translate is, I'm from DEA, I'm FBI. But I would, I would, I would jack it up one level. I'm American, I know more than you do. And that's that.
Pete Turner 48:17
Yeah, it is. And it's an easy trap to fall into. And I positively have both found ourselves in it and I get pissed at myself. I'm like, What am I doing? I know better, you know?
Unknown Speaker 48:27
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And but again, I would offer that consideration should be given of aggression that that too was in the manual that we're envisioning here.
Pete Turner 48:42
Yeah, yeah. So the ability to to withstand your own discomfort and and I like to call it miss comfort because the the prefix is better because this is just an unknown or unfamiliar comfort. You can get comfortable with working at a pace that works for their culture. Instead of just carrying them out of their culture and creating a new one for them or force them write down your gradual path. Let's find out how we can it's easier for us to move to theirs. And then because they want to learn, but don't make them learn a new cultural way to approach things and new system of learning, you know, all these things, figure out what's there and slowly improve upon that path that they're on already.
john mckay 49:22
Yeah. Yeah, I, again, we've talked before and there's, I think, a tremendous influence in our thinking and our thoughts on this. matter. The, the whole vision of being able to go in and lay is on or lays is predicated and all the things we've just talked about. I would also, we've talked around it. In fact, we just finished talking around I don't know how you teach or trained But I think you should put it in writing is the element of patience.
Pete Turner 50:08
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And easier said than done. Oh, and I guess this is this brings up the point. And in general, this kind of work is fraught with mistakes. And you slowly as you get better at it, you're just simply avoiding mistakes and taking, you know, the, the, the path that's proven to be less problematic than the way that we've tried before and again, inserting your ego inserting your commander,
Unknown Speaker 50:34
nice way to say, Okay, okay, moving right along.
Pete Turner 50:38
But that's but that's exactly, that's exactly where we need to be like, if you're not constantly making mistakes, then you are making the first mistake you're making you that is the first mistake right there is you have to constantly recognize that you don't know enough and asking the right questions, background, you could get into
Unknown Speaker 50:57
that challenge and I think something that you've brought Before peed in I, I haven't really held a second date. And I would ask that somewhere somebody in the manual, put in one of the ultimate unspoken truths, unless you go completely native, get out and live. And we've known people who've done that in the Philippines. And unless you do that, that's such a very, very, very essential ization of our population. Unless you do that. I would say in the manual, you got to put someplace in there, regardless how much time you spend with these people, regardless, unless, regardless of how close you have gotten, remember, you're in their country, not in ours. And ultimately, you're going to leave and they're going to stay
Pete Turner 52:01
That's right. And and when you one of my favorite questions as we were starting to wind down because I was in a lot of places, but we wound down was no foolin. We're leaving. There's not much time to do anything else. Has anyone talked to you about this? And what do you absolutely need? That's here right now. And the eyes, their eyes would be gigantic. Yeah. They're like, no, you're, you're you're kidding. You're not really leaving, like, I am telling you right now, because literally, like, how bad of a partner are we, when we don't inform our partner that we're leaving with all of our stuff? and giving them an idea transition plan. There's a whole paper we wrote called transition operations. As we transition out, what do you have to do and it's, it's a, it's akin to, you know, you can, you know, clear hold build, then, then let like, you have to transition away from that, but these kinds of lessons as as a partner, you know, winding down your relationship. Reading not just a good handoff, but a perfect handoff. Yeah, like really spending your time talking about that
Unknown Speaker 53:06
I, I don't have any personal experience of that. Show, whatever I say is is what I've read what I've theorized what I've thought about, I certainly cannot say I practiced this like you have. I think our recent history is replete, replete with examples of what we don't want to do. We don't have to name any wars or anything. We got an intelligent audience they can think about it themselves. And even more recently, where we've essentially put somebody or a group of people out on the limb, if not, unintentionally, halfway shot through the limp. Yeah, you're absolutely right and and, and I Even though we short a short of left Central America with the United States with a misplaced sense of Hawker, and that we had won, unquote, the consequences, and this is I am familiar with, particularly from being with da, the consequences of failing to look at a good exit strategy. I don't care if you do tail between legs, or you're walking down the hill, you say, with a crown whorls, you better have a transition plan you better have. Okay, Mr. Neal, we're going to be leaving here in three to six months. That is not my decision. But we have to work together and how best we can do that. That was not done in Central America. And I've written reports on that the consequences, I would argue, Pete, I would argue that because of that, of a certain national hook, as the French would say, we left El Salvador, we left Nicaragua, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, lush, Costa Rica, Guatemala, we left there, and now we're paying the price and the consequences of leaving the way we left. And I have argued in a couple of papers for a federal agency, to the effect that we're dealing with now. There's a plot from your judgment that we left in the mid to late 80s in Central America, and here it is 2010 that's when I wrote one of the papers 2010 and look what the hell we're dealing with. Yeah. Planning. Yeah. You know, the the old, a little bit about a line a little bit below here, the old, the chevron piece, you know, proper planning proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. We mouth that a lot. I'm not too sure how much we practice.
Pete Turner 56:25
Yeah, yeah, a lot to be said there for that because this is a, you know, this is actually the things is that that departure, that transition to something else often includes very simple things that that person needs. And they will shock you with their candor. And I promise you can take it, I promise. I promise you can take it when they look at you and say, how long would your government function without electricity, you have to net if you care. And as a good in as a good partner, you should care. As you look at that, you have to say Right, how do we get this person to generator something that we're likely to leave behind? You know, and yes, it's a paperwork fiasco. But if we're really trying to create not leave a bunch of debris field and our path as we leave, but getting that obsolete generator that no one wants does isn't worth the money it's gonna get put into a scrapyard and sold somewhere in Germany. Why not just write that thing off as lost or stolen? Or and I'm not saying commit crimes, but I'm saying is do the work and understand like, at a minimum, what do you need electricity. I can get by if I have that. And they'll have they'll know those things. You just have to ask them. What is it right that you need, right? Yeah,
john mckay 57:45
I'm sure you're here example. Like Trisha was, was premium because the girl is tactics of blowing up pylons, but in El Salvador, but I'm sure it was critically Much more critical in the part of the world that you're exposed to. Yeah, yeah, for sure to be able to, to take that type of thinking and saying, you know, you know the right people. You don't have to be in a combat zone. You can write off right here as excess here. And and what's the damage? You're going to be done visa v. You know, show him an extreme discount to a junkyard and Frankfurt, Germany or writing them off as inoperable or not sure. And giving them to a people that they rely on for survival. What? I'm not too sure there's a there's any choice there? Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Turner 58:54
And if you're worried about well, what if they sell the electricity or what if they What if they There's not enough of anything there. So yes, they're going to use it to their advantage to try to provide as much help and to as many people as possible and there might be a cost for that. But this in this particular case, this valley had no electricity in it. And and in Iraq, these guys are out in the hinterlands of the Baghdad district. They had no power at all and they were going to have reliable power you give them reliable power. Now they can try to beat or give them all this high speed laptop training and all that, but no, no ability to have reliable electricity. And it's an old Chevy 350 generator, you know, it's not we're not talking million dollar things here. Those kind of sales.
Unknown Speaker 59:44
We I when I was doing car garage improve the as Jada tribe was improving, Amazon tribes, it was probably probably in the area I was operating at the time was And, you know by, by American standards by washing I don't want to, I want to Smartsheet and ice age by Washington standards. These people are parameter extremely clever. And talking to the Peruvians. One of which I think really understood them, the others were not surprising, racist, superior, whatever. And, you know, he said, these are the things we need to get to them and they were basic things like, like medicine. I'm not talking penicillin. I'm not talking IVs I'm not I'm not even going up that level. I'm talking about, God forbid nobody showing what the hell it is. Law violate a pure Chrome. Huh? What's that? Those are medicines that survive in the jungle, don't need refrigeration. And they're very easy to teach on how to put them on you know, and, and This is my proving colleague. his comment was, do we send him to Harvard Business School? Because he's going to make his tribe better? Or do we give them things with which he can make his tribe better? Right? I mean, it sounds like philosophical. It's not. It's not a rhetorical. It's basic.
Pete Turner 1:01:22
Yeah. We're running out of time here. Two real quick questions for you. One. We have a tendency in the military to and we've talked about this. So you'll know where we're going with this. But we have a tendency to overvalue physical fitness, in terms of the ability to do these jobs because as you know, these are delicate, deliberate jobs, packed with failure, right, and the ability to do push ups or run three miles or flip over a tire, I would say are, you know, tertiary, maybe the fourth level of things but what is your sense of it like the humans I'm not saying don't make it don't meet a minimum standards, obviously someone who's physically fit. But where does that that drive that physical fitness? Where does that fit in terms of selection for someone to do these tasks?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:13
Well, again, I'll give you a concrete example because I like to see if I had a little bit of influence on this. We did have some SF people, and Tel Aviv. They didn't go out in the field, but there were a couple part of the male group as far as training Palestinians. And my comment was both these guys were good, and they were they were good. They were all right with the Palestinians. But they were. One was disarmed the senior Sergeant First Class army, and that usually is anyway I'd say. jokingly, I said, you know how many push ups and how many pull ups and how fast do you run? Does that make you a better trainer? The Palestinians? Well, of course his answers of course it does. And my retort to him is, so Charles Atlas shows up here. We're going to have top notch security for us, right. That was that was my that was my retort. Pete Yeah, it were in the military. There's no need for it to end crowded as our supreme goal. Nature is rethinking.
Pete Turner 1:03:33
And I would say also to the if you're going to be an alpha, and I think guys like us are alphas you can't be the alpha in that room. You have to be you have to be someone else. So
Unknown Speaker 1:03:52
that's why I use the trolls, trolls.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:56
Yeah, yeah. No, some some Some purely kids come along throw sand in his eyes. That's wonderful. But yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about early. We draw a certain type of individual bit man or woman into this into this millou that we're talking about this idea of liaison and assistant in training but shoulder to shoulder with foreign counterparts. You draw a certain type of individual that by and large you want to have I think it has to go into the manual along with the fact that you can do 50 pull ups does not make you de facto qualified for this job. Also, what needs to go in there Pete? is you know, you're an apple alpha male view of high school football Captain you this. Did the shock bug. But that is not assure me who qualified in fact, we may have to deprogram you because you really do have some great qualities. And that deprogram can Szish you're not the best guy in the room. You are there in a very humble position. And I think a good lead in going back to our initial part of the conversation. Good Legion with foreign counterparts is, I'm here to learn from you.
Pete Turner 1:05:31
Yeah. A humble position is a great note and
john mckay 1:05:35
not too many Apple alpha male, and they
Pete Turner 1:05:38
certainly can't this isn't that denigrate physical fitness,
john mckay 1:05:41
they can.
Pete Turner 1:05:42
Absolutely. You have to understand that you can never be the smartest person in the room. You can, you know, you have to always accept that you probably culturally at least the dumbest person in the room with with all of your partners. So oh
Unknown Speaker 1:05:58
I could I could ask literally make a plausible argument for that. I'll jump and say I could probably make a compelling argument for that.
Pete Turner 1:06:07
If you could have these folks read one book, and obviously there are many they should read, but what's your one book?
john mckay 1:06:16
Okay, that that. Believe it or not. Now, I'm not going to recommend it because it has not been translated. It's a it's a Spanish translation of a liaison, working with foreign powers that the French army put together during the Algerian War. And it's not what you think, or what you might think that it is. It does not go into torture doesn't do anything else it's talking about and this is a very odd mix. It's Talking about French army enlisted personnel being able to work with conjunction with extracting information intelligence for what was called the P as in law. And that was Algerian French people. Now they were torn. Some woman married Algerian women. They point both sides. But I thought it was. I think it is a provocative book, because if you can take about the complexity of going into someplace like Algeria, where you've been for 130 years, you've got freshmen that were born there, their children were born there. Their loyalties are there. You you've you've given him the sense that really helped Europeans become another province. Which course It can't be. Because the population dominance is Algerian and they want their own country. But think about gold Shanina liaison officer into that environment, not to work with the French, French forces against the Algerian insurgency. But to operate with a segment of that Algerian population that might be ambivalent might be very supportive, or might be counter to what the French government trying to do. That's, that's kind of a kind of an iffy situation. How successful were they? I don't know. I don't know. But, but especially financially, I'm looking forward to my bookshelf here. Give you a house. It was published in was published in Madrid, the Spanish version, but it's never been translated into Spanish. And what's the data on along with the original French title, but that that is certainly one of them. The other one, and I think this is is, again, I'm dating myself, there's probably several that are so much better. This is this is a book that I think given the situation Middle East again, it's somewhat David. The title of it is sacred rage, written by Robin right. Robin is a woman now is in the UK, but she was born raised in Lebanon, that again, particularly in this book, and I mentioned it because as you and I both know the demographic makeup level nine is absolutely fascinating not only from an ethnic point of view, but from a religious point of view, the dros the Christians, the Muslims, and then you want to throw in that little compound impact, sooner share. And I offer the books because will they? Will they make them better liaison officers, advisors, whatever you want to do, not necessarily but I would say both of them were sensitized to batch complexity of the world according to
Pete Turner 1:10:43
Well, that is a good lay down of partnering and getting into the liaising thing and just put those two books a heck one requires you to go ahead and get some language capacity if you don't have it already. But thanks a lot for john for doing this with me. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show and it's always great To discuss these things, because this isn't about anyone's intention or anyone's effort, we all make these mistakes. It's the institution is trying to improve. And it's not easy to build these things kind of on the fly. So that's why we're putting these lessons down so that someone who's at this symposium or the next one, or the next one, the next one, has a chance to build on the lessons that they have. Because these are it's the subtle things. I think that make the difference. The patient's being humble, building trust, if you focused on those three things, you'd already be ahead of 95% of the field.
john mckay 1:11:38
And, well, I can go on but thank you very much for having me. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your guidance and nautical terms, and much appreciate the rudder trucking. Thank you.