The second day of the two day conference involved more of everything including ... alas ... more jet lag. I missed the first half of the first panel thanks to sleeping late after much interrupted sleep. I don't think I have done that before. Last time I slept thru during a travel situation was probably our househunting trip in 1995 when we tried to save money by flying out of Montreal rather than Burlington to check out Lubbock. Oh my. That was quite a while ago.
Anyhow, the day had a few more panels. The jet lag limited my focus a bit so I took my best notes for Lindsay Cohn's and Chris Ankersen's presentations. Lindsay talked about the competing loyalties (and identities) that challenge any officer. What does it mean to be professional when the profession requires loyalties in different directions--to superiors, to subordinates, to civilians, to law, to democracy, to one's own moral code, etc. How to choose among bad choices? She used the case of the captain of the USS Teddy Roosevelt--the aircraft carrier that faced an early covid crisis that ultimately sank his career and that of the Secretary of the Navy.
Chris's computer had broken so his slides were wonderful pictures of his notes. His was most provocative as he invoked Weber and other interesting folks to argue that senior officers can become disenchanted with how things are going and rely either on cynicism or celebrity. That they can use their personal popularity to pursue their agendas. He cited a number of officers--mostly American but also Hillier of Canada--to show how many tried to influence the civilians and, yes, how many ultimately failed. I could not help but invoke the line from the Dark Knight: either you die a hero (Patton) or live long enough to become a villain (Petraeus, McCrystal, McMaster, etc). Powell was the only one I thought of who retired while still a hero. His "villainy" mostly came as SecState, his post-military career.
Carsten Roennfeldt discussed the civ-mil of Norway's Libya mission which brought me back to the Steve and Dave NATO book as we covered the Libya effort. It was very interesting to see the same case from a different angle. He argued that the Norwegian officers were given very little in the way of instructions when they were sent.
I am sorry that my note taking failed at that time. I did have a great lunch with a junior scholar whose talk I missed. She is working on the legal dynamics of some of the stuff in the aforementioned Steve and Dave book, so it was great to hear how the next generation of both scholars and work are doing.
The evening was an amazing experience--we got a tour of the Fredriksberg Palace. It is home ot army officer training and much conferencing and used to be home to the Danish royal family. So, I took many pics. Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller gave a very interesting talk on the stuff facing NATO these days. Then we had dinner with many different forms of alcohol. I got to chat with a Danish Major who was in charge of the institution than ran our event. After that, we had after dinner drinks and a pipe/drum moment. I learned a great deal over the past few days despite my jet lag/sleep deprivation. It was great to see the civ-mil folks and meet new people in the field. I really missed this kind of stuff. I am hoping we can do more of it as vax rates continue to increase. Now, time to fly home and start trying to catch up as the semester accelerates away from me and I have to start to prep the new term and, yes, write another grant.
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