Latest News - Defense Security Cooperation University

ISG Africa Regional Program Lead Dr. Whitney Grespin’s recently published an article titled, “Things Fall Apart: Soviet Assistance to the Somali Armed Forces, 1960–1977” in the latest issue of The Journal of African Military History. In this piece, Dr. Grespin and co-author Mr. Matthew Marchese noted, “As Cold War tensions rose, Soviet aid was offered to the nascent Somali government in pursuit of broader geopolitical machinations that were seen to supersede Somali interests, laying the groundwork for a decades-long mismatch between local intentions and Cold War superpower objectives in the Horn of Africa.” The result of this mismatch, they argue, “left Somalia with an unsustainable, corrupt, and repressive security structure as a direct result of high levels of foreign assistance that were not well coordinated with host nation sustainment capabilities.”

In this issue of The ISG Heron, the Institute reflects on the DSCA Director’s fruitful visit to ISG, applauds ISG's Resident Advisor to Lithuania for receiving the Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service, welcomes new colleagues, marks the successful conclusion of the two-year educating-the-educators mobile seminar series in Ghana, offers a standing ovation to Emergency Management & Resilience colleagues, highlights Resident Education in Logistics Capacity Building, spotlights ICB Advising achievements in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and many more newsworthy developments.

As the lead coordinating entity for 10th annual Exercise Gobi Wolf 2022, The Institute for Security Governance (ISG) brought together stakeholders from U.S. Army Pacific, the Alaska Air and Army National Guard, the U.S. Forest Service, and the international community to exchange expertise and best practices in disaster response. Taking place in early September in Bayankhongor, Mongolia, Exercise Gobi Wolf is part of the Pacific Resilience Disaster Response Exercise and Exchange (DREE) program, which focuses on interagency coordination and foreign humanitarian assistance. The six-day exercise featured three main events: an expert academic discussion, tabletop exercise, and field training exercise.

ISG’s Maritime Security Functional Lead, Tim Doorey and his team recently returned from leading a five-day Institutional Capacity Building workshop in Sri Lanka focused on comprehensive approaches to building Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). The event was in coordination with the United States Embassy in Sri Lanka, where 29 officers from the Sri Lanka Navy, Sri Lanka Coast Guard, Attorney General’s Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Merchant Shipping Secretariat and Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources took part in the training.

Topics covered in the training included: human capital development, community resource management, operation research tools for maritime search and interception, building MDA capabilities to enhance operational effectiveness, decision making at all levels, and developing and maintaining partner fusion centers. The course culminated with all 30 participants working a comprehensive tabletop exercise.

ISG Resident Advisor to the Republic of Lithuania, Mr. David Antonik, received the Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service from Vice Minister of Defense Mr. Vilius Semesk earlier this month. Bravo Zulu!

Mr. Antonik deployed to Vilnius, Lithuania in August 2021 to support the Lithuanian Military of Defense on strategic logistics matters. To learn more about Mr. Antonik's background, check out his bio.

In the 2022 Autumn issue of The U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Parameters, ISG Africa Regional Program Lead Dr. Whitney Grespin reviews Benedict Wilkinson’s Scripts of Terror: The Stories Terrorists Tell Themselves (Oxford University Press, 2020). In the review, she notes that, "the work reads primarily as academic. Wilkinson’s (admirable) observation of the central problem lacks a 'step further' approach." Nevertheless, Dr. Grespin goes on to say that, "Even with areas in need of improvement, Scripts of Terror could serve as a useful primer for VEO case studies. It could prepare practitioners as pre-deployment reading for a better understanding of the foundations and evolutions of potential adversaries." 

Read the full review here.