Last month, Secretary Mattis and his counterparts from across the Americas met in Mexico City for The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas to discuss shared regional defense challenges. The event was especially important for North American defense cooperation between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Secretary Mattis noted at the Conference that “Mexico continues to show important strategic leadership building trusted relationships between us based on respect, cooperation, and mutual understanding.”
From countering ballistic missile threats from North Korea from to partnering with Mexico to ensure persons of special interest and illicit goods do not make their way into the homeland to increasing continental critical infrastructure resiliency from cyber threats, the three North American nations cooperate deeply on a range of high priority challenges.
Few people know this better than U.S. Army Four Star General (Retired) Charles Jacoby. General Jacoby served as the fifth Commander of U.S. Northern Command and 22nd Commander of North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) from 2011 to 2014. He remains a tireless, thoughtful advocate for the importance of the Command’s mission and North American defense cooperation. We spoke with General Jacoby about the evolution of the threat and opportunities for deepening military partnerships with Canada and Mexico.
How do you define North American defense? What are the roles and missions of the United States, Mexico and Canada?
I defined defending North America similarly to other geographic combatant commanders as described in the Unified Command Plan and Title 10 US Code, with three notable exceptions:
- I had very limited strategic and operational space (in all domains) in the AOR (area of responsibility) and required extensive partnerships within and outside of the geographic AOR to gain strategic depth. Partnerships was our center of gravity.
- I had the unique and complicating issues of the legal and policy constraints and limitations on the use of federal military force in the homeland. The homeland required specific arrangements to insure it could transition rapidly and effectively from a Theater of Operations to a Theater of War. I did not find these conditions onerous, just part of the checks and balances on power that that defines us as a nation.
- I had a unique set of relationships with foreign allies, partners, and neighbors in the Northcom AOR. They occupied critical approaches to the homeland in all domains, requiring special collaborative relationships. NORAD had no defined AOR giving tremendous beneficial latitude in the aerospace and maritime warning domain.
How has the threat posture to North America changed over the years?
I came to the Command in 2011 fully expecting the bulk of my work to be focused on Defense Support to Civil Authorities, primarily with regards to natural and man-made disasters and routine theater engagement activities with the militaries of Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas. It became clear to me over my three and half years in command that the needle had swung around the compass and that my most important responsibilities and those of my successors would be defending the AOR and homeland against nation states and hybrid threats that included the continuation of the global terrorist threat.
How do you rack and stack nation-state threats like Russia, China and North Korea against non-traditional threats like terrorism, foreign influence operations, and organized crime?
Chairman Dunford’s original articulation of the 4 +1 threat construct (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and transnational violent extremism) has been helpful in correctly re-orienting our defense focus and priorities. I would rack and stack as I did when I left Command at the end of 2014; Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and terrorism. My one caveat would be that terrorism and transnational criminal organizations could be an integral and dangerous component of any of the main four and of course could move to the top of the list on any given day as was saw on 9-11.
I consider certain transnational criminal organizations as national security threats in and of themselves. There is ample evidence of dangerous collaboration between terrorists, large state actors, and specific transnational criminal organizations. There are political expedient reasons that this is not necessarily a widely held view. I am no longer watching the intel as closely as those officers responsible for defending the homeland and I am very much aware there may be changes in priorities, conditions, and the capabilities and intentions of threat actors that would cause me to adjust my racking and stacking.
Espionage and foreign influence operations have long been in the playbook of all of our threat countries. It is more available to state and non-state actors, more dynamic and empowered by technology, such as social media, than ever before. Capabilities have grown dramatically, but the use of espionage and intentions of it remain essentially the same. We should expect it as a component of any current and future threat vectors. Just as we might also consider terrorism and collaboration with criminal organizations. It is happening today in the homeland in multiple domains by multiple actors.
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We continue to invest considerable resources into border security and dissuading migration flows from Central America yet the numbers of those seeking illegal entry into the homeland remain steady year-after-year. Do you view border insecurity a national security threat to the homeland?
Yes, I consider border insecurity a national security issue. However, borders are tricky. That is where defend tasks become intermingled with safety and security tasks. It is where our interagency and intergovernmental cooperation needs to be at its best. Our land borders are avenues of approach to our country for commerce, legal immigration, and goodwill but they are also an avenue for nefarious activities and meaningful threats to the nation, from state sponsored unconventional warfare and espionage, to non-state terrorist and criminal threats.
Is there more we should be doing as a nation to increase our border integrity?
DOD needs to work closer with entities that have responsibilities and authorities along the border to help them detect, deter, and defeat the activities of state and non-state actors that would exploit weak border security. There is a clear need for improved interagency cooperation on the border, not competition, as well as mechanisms-from integrated command and control to broader funding authorities to breakdown resource stove pipes.
As a practical matter, it is a mistake to continue restricting DOD support to other agencies on the border to poorly supported counter-narcotics budgets. This approach fails to address the totality of the threat and underestimates the danger to national interests.
How comfortable are you with our missile defense capability vis-à-vis North Korea? If you could invest one more dollar in our homeland missile defense capability where would you spend it?
I was not satisfied when I left command in 2014. We were slow to wake up to the threat. We underestimated North Korea and we placed other priorities uncomfortably ahead of the missile defense of the nation. Progress has been made and real efforts are underway to come up with comprehensive, integrated, and global missile defense that meets the needs of all the combatant commands. This is a big task but an essential one when you consider the pace and global availability of missile and weapon technology and the obsolescence of multiple arms-control treaties, and failures of international sanctions and global non-proliferation efforts.
The myth that missile defenses undermine deterrence has to be debunked. Missile defenses can enhance deterrence and broaden it beyond the elites of the nuclear club. We need to modernize deterrence and fully develop our defenses. As I said to the Congress in 2014, if I had just one dollar to invest it would be towards intel collection directed at actors having or seeking to develop missiles and weapons that could threaten the nation. We must not be strategically surprised like we have been in the past. After that, the next dollar would go to modernizing our all domain early warning systems.
Canada is integral to North American missile threat detection but does not participate in the missile intercept mission. How large a void is this creating and do you envision a time Canada would take the next step in missile defense?
When I left command, the missile defense gap between Canada and the US was operationally manageable but undesirable. You could also sketch out a future direction of technological development that would make it harder to manage over time. However, this is really a strategic and political issue. In my view we have had no better partners than our Canadian allies. They punch above their weight in every fight they join, and Canadians have been with us in nearly every recent military endeavor. Evolving the missile defense of the region of North America that paces global threats is a more sensible strategic construct than patching together the homeland defense of the lower 48 states, Alaska, and Hawaii, focusing on pop-up rogue nations. This is as much about our two nations together managing the alliance while respecting each other’s sovereign interests. Managing national watch stations at NORAD HQ is not the problem. We have not paid close enough attention to this remarkable alliance and the NORAD agreement. We have not made a compelling case to the Canadians for their involvement and what that might consist of.
How important is Mexico to North American defense? Where are we at in defense cooperation? Are we able to insulate defense and security cooperation from troubles in the larger bilateral relationship?
Mexico is critical to our national security as I have talked about earlier. The quality of our security will be impacted by the quality of theirs and by the nature of our relationship. A friendly, prosperous and actively cooperative relationship with Mexico means better security for us and them. Isn’t it a no-brainer for us to be working together with Mexico?
When I left command, our cooperation with the Sedena (Army) and Semar (Navy) was on a strong, mutually agreed upon upward path. This was positive for both militaries and both countries. It was based on a foundation of growing trust and respect. It is one of the goals of all of our military-to-military relationships that they be such that the militaryrelationships transcend the ups and downs in political or economic disagreements. Defense cooperation can help both countries overcome other disputes because of the baseline trust generated by mutually beneficial security relationships.
What are we not talking about in North American defense that will be an issue for us down-the-road?
Opportunities.
No region of the world has the natural strength of its people, natural resources, geography, and history as North America. We don’t think of it that way but there is power in the idea of a closely cooperative and resilient North America. That doesn’t mean that every country agrees on everything, but it does mean we have the foresight, vision, and mechanisms to see and act as a region of like-minded and connected peoples where we can work together for the good of all the people in North America and be leaders in taking on world issues. I know it sounds a little pie in the sky but there is clearly no other region that can better leverage and compete in the global world or weather the problems and survive the turbulence of our global interconnectedness, than North America.
