Adm. Craig Faller, head of U.S. Southern Command, the geographic combatant command responsible for U.S. interests in Central and South America and the Caribbean, lowered his camo mask for a recent Zoom video call with the Washington Examiner. The 11 combatant commanders represent the third-highest tier of defense officials following the commander in chief and the secretary of defense.
Faller, a western Pennsylvania native who has been at the Miami SOUTHCOM headquarters for 18 months, sees the hemisphere as a “neighborhood.” He defines his goals as strengthening military and strategic relationships and encouraging the return of democracy to those countries that have diverged from and even threaten the United States by partnering with adversaries and malign actors that want to do harm to America from near its shores.
Washington Examiner: What is China doing in the region that is threatening U.S. interests?
Faller: China, for them, it’s access for economics, for logistics, for resources, for their markets. And it’s the same sort of advantageous economic conditions that they’ve tried to create globally with “One Belt, One Road” and their very aggressive outreach.
It also concludes a significant cyber, 5G, and safe city/smart city effort to help nations with their security here in this hemisphere. They’re coming in with packages that allow the surveillance of cities, and then, of course, the downside of that for the city is the backdoor it provides China with all the intel. And there’s just a long list of countries and cities that are signing themselves up for that.
China’s also very quietly exercising [military-to-military] diplomacy, trying to sign agreements and offering training at their version of our Joint Professional Military Education. They’ve taken the book from places like Carlisle and Fort Leavenworth and rewritten it in Chinese and Spanish. And they’re bringing students over, just bringing them over in big groups.
In terms of mil. to mil., they’ve realized that nations don’t have a lot of cash. So, they’re just gifting significant chunks of mil. to mil. — kits, trucks, small boats, things of that nature — much larger than what anyone conceives or would want.
Washington Examiner: What are you seeing from Russia in the region?
Faller: Russia, on the other hand, some of their arms sales are on the decline, but what’s not on the decline is their disinformation campaign. Their Spanish language disinformation, by far their highest-volume effort outside of Russian language in their near abroad, is here in this hemisphere.
They’re intelligence-collecting last year was the highest number of ship visits in decades. And so is their outreach.
China and Russia’s involvement in Venezuela is concerning on all fronts, working right alongside Cuba. And now, unfortunately, Iran, they’ve done their best to take care of their interests and stymie the unified international voice of democracy.
Washington Examiner: How does SOUTHCOM limit great power influence in the hemisphere?
Faller: I’ll call China out and Russia out, but we do still have the best military education training system. And so, we make sure that those education slots at all our top schools are utilized and that they’re going to the right people and ensuring that we have the adequate level of resources there.
Education really is our single best way to ensure that we cement that long-term relationship and partnership, and that’s the bedrock from which you can do training on. Then, we have our exercise programs. So, ensuring that our exercise program remains relevant, it’s focused on the kind of skill sets that benefit U.S. units. Remember: Partnership is two ways. So, we want to benefit the U.S. unit and the partner units. So that’s what we focus on. And then equipment. Just think of these E’s: education, exercise, equipment.
Through a variety of security assistance programs, we supply some of that equipment. A key attribute of equipment is interoperability. Interoperability allows us to fight transnational criminal threats. It allows us to fight a terrorist threat. It allows us to fight a future threat — fill in the blank what that future threat might look like. And if we’re educated together, train together, exercise together, and we’re interoperable, that’s the best way to deter any kind of future conflict.
Our partners want to do that with us. We just have to be there. I never was in a sporting game yet that I won by not being on the field.
Washington Examiner: How does the SOUTHCOM mission align with the National Defense Strategy?
Faller: A key piece of the National Defense Strategy for us is that it calls out specifically to maintain a favorable regional balance of power. To me, that means partners who want to partner with us, and different from other parts of the globe, there isn’t this encroachment by the other great powers.
Also: Where do we locate forces? And what’s the right level of forces in the hemisphere for the exercises and for the ongoing operations? So, we want to reduce that threat, certainly disrupt and deter and defeat the current threat, so that it doesn’t provide an opening for China or Russia or somebody else.
If they need help, they’re going to need someone to help them. And who’s going to be there? One chief of defense said, “Look, we need a life ring. Is the U.S. going to throw us a life ringer? Or is it going to be China?”
Washington Examiner: How does SOUTHCOM manage a relationship with a partner like Brazil, whose president has been criticized for human rights violations and for speaking fondly of Brazil’s military dictatorship?
Faller: One thing I find remarkably aligned with all my partners is that we focus on readiness. We focus on strengthening our partnership, whether it’s intel-sharing, whether it’s the ability to exercise together, planning — and we stay out of policy and politics. And so when you do that, and if you’re aligned to that, then all those other things sort of take care of themselves, and they don’t really become an issue in that mil.-to-mil. relationship.
Washington Examiner: At the White House in April, President Trump announced a surge of ships for SOUTHCOM to fight narcotics in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said the coronavirus had created an opening for narcotraffickers. Is the coronavirus the reason why extra forces were needed?
Faller: It’s time to get after saving lives. It’s time to get after putting relentless pressure on the enemy, the transnational criminal organizations, the narcoterrorists that are there just crushing citizen security in you name the country — Colombia, Mexico, and here. And then, the products are crushing citizens here in the United States, 70,000 lives. They’re killing people, even in the remote stretches of North Carolina, my home state of Pennsylvania, and beyond.
It’s time. It’s a recognition that this threat has persisted and has grown over time and that we need to apply a higher level of resources to that threat, both intelligence resources and then endgame, force packages in the detection and monitoring, which is our mission set, so we can then hand it over to law enforcement. And it’s working.
Our long-term goal is to get partners involved in a higher percentage. And it goes back to that vicious circle. If you can’t trust the partners, you can’t get them involved. So, you’ve got to know that they’re corruption-free. They’re going to be all-in. They’re not going to sell you out. They’re going to be with you and have similarly aligned goals. The threat is that bad that the partners are all in. That didn’t start on April 1, but the extra resources and the commitment in that battlespace are very important.
Washington Examiner: Many of your counternarcotics assets are positioned in the Caribbean near Venezuela. Do these assets have a dual role of gathering intelligence?
Faller: Venezuela has become a paradise, a virtual paradise for narcotrafficking, narcoterrorism, any kind of illicit activity, as well as for external state actors that are the largest state sponsors of terrorism around the world, like Iran — and a living hell for their people. Our objective is not to directly impact that, but the indictments of Maduro and others show their involvement.
Our job, our role in support here, has been — we think of it this way: intelligence-sharing with our key partners, both our interagency partners and our partners in the region. So, think Colombia and Brazil. Intelligence is foundational to anything we do, any decision I make, any planning we do.
The counternarcotics operations are focused on the threat, the transnational criminal organization. And so the extent to which the assets are looking to confirm the pieces of the puzzle, it is all focused on that threat, that threat vector. So, we didn’t position assets in country X, Y, and Z to gather intelligence on Venezuela.
We have tangibly thickened our intelligence-sharing processes and procedures, and actually our understanding, and we benefit greatly from that. We get our best intelligence from our very capable partners, who are the neighbors, the near neighbors in this broader neighborhood.
Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
