The National Guard's State Partnership Program started as a confidence-building measure between formerly hostile nations and has grown into solid, long-standing alliances, according to the chief of the National Guard Bureau.
"The relationship has matured well," Gen. Craig R. McKinley told participants attending the State Partnership Program Conference in Stuttgart, Germany, June 15.
He cited the example of the young lieutenant colonel from the Illinois Army National Guard who went to Poland in the early days of their partnership.
That lieutenant colonel is now Maj. Gen. William Enyart, the adjutant general of the state, and "the folks he met there and maintained contact with are now senior leaders in that nation's military."
Because of this long-standing relationship between Illinois and Poland, Polish armed forces deployed to Iraq, commanding a multi-national division.
"And the Illinois Guard went with them providing critical enabling capabilities," General McKinley said.
He said the SPP has matured in other ways too.
SPP partners have developed joint operational mentor liaison teams, which currently are deployed to Afghanistan, where they have embedded with Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police units.
"American and partner-nation forces are working side-by-side to bring security and stability to that troubled country," General McKinley said.
Expanding the military-to-military partnership into a military-civilian one is being manifested in other ways as well.
"We now have 13 states signed up to field agribusiness development teams in Afghanistan," he said. "We are leveraging the land grant institutions and farm bureaus in our 'farm states' to provide training through deployed Guard units to Afghan farmers."
General McKinley said that Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command commander, has asked National Guard officials to keep building this program.
"He can use as many of these teams as we can build," General McKinley said.
Building better State Partnership Programs is the purpose of this conference.
"This is a very important event for the National Guard," General McKinley said. "It is important that we get together to talk about the various strengths and weaknesses of our programs, because we're on a vector to make it better."
General McKinley said he is very proud of the program.
"For those of you who have participated in events around the world, you know how important the program is for building partnership capacity," he said.
It was the visionary leadership of retired Lt. Gen. John Conaway, a former chief of the National Guard Bureau, who along with Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, the former commander of European Command and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, created the program.
"Their vision together collectively ... shaped an environment so that we can today build on those roots," General McKinley said.
In the early 1990s, U.S. forces had just finished fighting a cold war that resulted in a changed world environment. The country also witnessed the rise of a solidarity movement, free elections in Poland, fall of Berlin Wall and the demise of Warsaw Pact.
"We had a small group of fragile nations struggling to adapt to democratic institutions and to develop armed forces that were self-reliant and transformed from the Soviet model," General McKinley said.
Both generals realized that generations of immigrants had come to America to establish new roots.
"Many had joined the National Guard and perhaps a synergy could be built and they created the state partnership initiative," General McKinley said.
There are several areas for SPP growth in the future, General McKinley said. DOD leaders have asked National Guard officials to use the SPP program to assist partner countries in their contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations around the world.
Joint Staff officials also envision National Guard representatives building partnership capacity programs into a $50 million endeavor. In fiscal 2009, the SPP is operating with a budget of about $8 million.
"Those are pretty exciting numbers when you think about where we have come from," he said.
While he is here, General McKinley also plans to meet with Army Gen. William E. Ward, the commander of Africa Command, about increasing the number of SPP relationships in his area of operations.
Finally, General McKinley encouraged the states to "keep doing what you are doing."
"Keep building these relationships," he said. "Maintain your basic military-to-military events, but look for new opportunities to do more in the military-civilian and civil-security cooperation areas. Continue to generate the good ideas. Your enhanced SPP approach is an impressive example of such forward thinking."
Ellen Krenke (AFNS)
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