Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, the adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard, receives an update on the African nation of Senegal at 17th Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on June 17, 2009. Vermont is paired with Senegal in the National Guard's State Partnership Program. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill) (Released)
By Army Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
National Guard Bureau
GERMANY — In June 2009, the adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard sat in a wood-paneled brie!ng room at Ramstein Air Force Base for an update on the African nation of Senegal.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie was making office calls with staff at U.S. Air Forces in Europe and 17th Air Force.
For 14 years, the Vermont National Guard has been in the National Guard’s State Partnership Program with the Balkan nation of Macedonia, part of the former Yugoslavia, and now Vermont also is partnered with Senegal.
USAFE’s area of responsibility includes Macedonia, and 17th Air Force supports U.S. Africa Command, which includes Senegal.
Adjutant generals are increasingly looking to Africa as the National Guard’s 16-year-old, 62-nation State Partnership Program expands.
Seven nations in Africa Command’s purview have partnerships and two more are on the horizon. The seven include: California and Nigeria, New York and South Africa, North Carolina and Botswana, North Dakota and Ghana, Utah and Morocco, Vermont and Senegal and Wyoming and Tunisia.
Partnerships with Liberia and Kenya are expected to be announced in the coming months, Guard officials said.
Adjutant generals view office calls like the one Dubie made as mandatory stops as they pursue SPP activities with their partner nations. The National Guard is one part of a larger team bent on improving partnership capacity.
“We’re talking about the integration between what their mission is in their area of responsibility and the State Partnership Program,” Dubie explained. “The State Partnership Program is one of the tools in their tool kit to further their goal—either on a bilateral or a multilateral basis—and we want to work on a collaborative basis and be an asset for (combatant commands) to accomplish whatever the (combatant commanders’) goals are.”
Macedonia is within U.S. European Command, which watched Africa until it spawned the creation of AFRICOM last year, a separate combatant command headed by Gen. William E. Ward, himself once EUCOM’s deputy
combatant commander.
It was with EUCOM nations that the SPP started back in 1993, following the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
State partnerships foster military-to-military, military-to-civilian and civilian-to-civilian cooperation.
“Since I’ve been doing this type of interaction for about 14 years, I can tell that AFRICOM has adopted the EUCOM model,” Dubie said. “Some of the other (combatant commands) haven’t quite adopted as aggressive a State Partnership Program.
“As AFRICOM develops into a more robust program on the continent, the relationships that are being built right now between different U.S. states and their African counterparts can help AFRICOM accomplish their theater strategic plan,” Dubie added. “It’s really important for the U.S. states in the State Partnership Program to always keep in mind what the (combatant commanders’) goals are, in addition to knowing the speci!c country team goals as articulated by each separate ambassador.”
The hyphenated pedigree of the Guardmember—citizen-Soldier or citizen-Airman—makes the National Guard unique in its ability to deliver, Ward has said.
“There’s only one branch of our services, one arm of our services, one component of our services that brings that to the table: that’s our Guard,” he said at the 2007 EUCOM SPP workshop. “The work that you all do is an absolutely critical element to our engagement strategy.”
So it’s no surprise that Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, the deputy for military operations at AFRICOM, already has been to a workshop in Vermont to meet with chiefs of defense from SPP nations.
“General Ward and the entire team at AFRICOM want to work on a very collaborative basis with the states,” Dubie said.
Meanwhile, Vermont hit the ground running with its latest partnership. It took several years for the state to move from military-to-military through military-to-civilian to civilian-to-civilian activities with Macedonia, but Dubie said that’s all happening at once with Senegal.
“We aggressively are trying to simultaneously implement events in all three venues. The fact that we are becoming smarter about world affairs and we’re building lasting relationships make it a success—and we haven’t even talked about the specifcs of military operations,” Dubie said. “It’s what the United States as a whole needs to do more. American society needs to understand other parts of the world better—and if we can start doing that by the Vermont National Guard, that’s a good thing for Vermont society andfor American society.
“Sometimes Americans, myself included, are quite myopic in our view and already in one year I look at world events through a different lens,” Dubie said. “Instead of that American-European lens we’re so used to, we’re starting to look at it through an American, European and African lens.”
– This report appeared in the February 2010 issue of Soldiers, the official U.S. Army magazine.
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