Adm. Craig Faller was among the first of the nation’s 11 combatant commanders to make public comments about the challenges facing the defense apparatus amid tumult at the Pentagon this week.
“We do transitions,” U.S. Southern Command’s Faller told the Washington Examiner in an invitation-only press conference limited to three journalists.
“In the military, we go to our mission, and we leave the policy to the policymakers,” he added. “Whoever will be the next secretary of defense, that’s what we do.”
Faller made the comments in a virtual joint press event at his Miami command headquarters alongside Ecuadorian Chief of Defense Lt. Gen. Luis Lara Jaramillo.
The south-facing command was working Tuesday to strengthen a frail partnership amid turmoil at the Pentagon.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper was fired. By the time Faller and Lara Jaramillo met, two more DOD undersecretaries had resigned in a house cleaning that is turning the Pentagon upside down.
Faller and the other combatant commanders represent the third-highest ranking defense officials in America after the president and secretary of defense.
He participated in a hastily called video teleconference Monday with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley and the other service chiefs. Faller was again on a secure teleconference Tuesday with the newly appointed Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, whom President Trump shifted over from his role as director of the National Counterintelligence Center.
A senior defense official told the Washington Examiner Monday that projecting calm to America’s allies and partners globally is front and center.
Strengthening partnerships amid turmoil
Ecuador is at a strategic trafficking point for cocaine produced by its northern neighbor, Colombia, and smuggled on Amazonian rivers to the Pacific Ocean en route to the United States.
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas are also known to have used its territory for safe haven and to launch attacks, including sabotaging oil pipelines in the jungle.
Relations with the South American partner suffered for a decade under far-left firebrand Rafael Correa, who canceled a U.S. basing agreement at the Manta Naval Base in 2009 and suspended U.S. counternarcotics cooperation.
Lara Jaramillo told the Washington Examiner that Ecuador’s period of isolation from the U.S. has ended.
“Our situation has changed,” he said.
“We have been isolated internationally,” he added. “There are risks and threats that are transnational, and they need a security cooperation and cooperative actions, [Southcom] needs our capabilities to be interoperability to combat them.”
As the two spoke, 13 ships from nine nations were conducting complex exercises off the coast of Ecuador, part of the longest-running multilateral naval exercise in the world, UNITAS.
Ecuador’s reintegration into the international community was demonstrated by its co-hosting of the exercise with U.S. Southern Command.
Great power competition is also at stake in the South American nation.
Ecuador has benefited from Chinese loans, military technological support and equipment, and patrol boats gifted by China, which vies with the U.S. for influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Southern Command can’t give away fast boats, but it can teach American know-how, cooperate to confront shared threats, and provide humanitarian assistance during a time of crisis.
Ecuador has been one of the South American nations hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Southcom has donated $1.2 million in equipment and supplies to treat COVID-19 patients, and on Tuesday, it announced the donation of two field hospitals.
Lara Jaramillo said the aid goes hand in hand with the military-to-military relationship.
“The help goes to combating these threats and to support humanitarian assistance,” he said. “The support from Southern Command has increased with the Ecuadorian Armed Forces.”
Faller told the Washington Examiner that the renewed relationship of friendship is part of Southcom’s mission in the hemisphere.
“Southcom emphasizes strengthening partnerships as the top priority,” he said. “Ecuador is one of our key partners, and we have laid out a number of objectives that we have shared with our partner mutually that have a longtime horizon.”
