Hail to Chief

NATO HQ is principally a civilian organisation. Granted its concerned with security issues and has a deep connection with the armed forces, but one of the founding values of the organisation is that at the end of the day it must be civilians who govern the military. This assumption is an unquestionable part of the organisation, soldiers are the servants of their government.

One of the key differences between the civilian world and the military one, is the notion of rank. As civilians, we don’t have ranks “per se” but instead have job titles and responsibilities. There is a system of seniority, but by and large all colleagues operate on a general basis of equality.

On various occasions this has led me to interesting situations. When visiting a delegation on any given task, I might need to speak with a military man in charge of something I’m working on. I believe the highest rank I’ve needed to work with would be at the level of a Colonel. Even though this older man stands opposite me in his uniform with the medals, pins, peaked hat, and probably routinely orders young men my age to do push-ups or rush into gunfire, in this particular context we speak as equals.

Even so, NATO still has a clear hierarchy. We may be equals as colleagues, but in so far as work is concerned, one always has a supervisor. That role is like a captain’s hat, and someone must always wear it. If the captain is gone, he passes it to the person right below him. And for a couple days, the hat got passed all the way to me!

It was a funny thing, sitting in the regular meeting of my section, everyone realized that their missions were overlapping. Despite their best attempts to avoid it, and my boss’ sentiment that they could “surely not” leave me on my own, a period of 2 days was unavoidable. In fairness, I had barely been doing the job for a month, but there was nothing to be done. The Friday before the weekend everyone briefed me on what they were doing, just in case anything came up, and I left that day knowing that Monday morning I would be the acting head of the Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and Contact Countries section, within Regional, Economic and Security Affairs within the Political Affairs and Security Policy division….now that’s a mouthful!

The first task was to be the notetaker for a meeting between our division’s deputy assistant sec-gen (DASG) and a delegation from Colombia including their Deputy Defence Minister and the Ambassador to Brussels. The meeting had fallen off the radar and Gilles had asked me to set up a quick meeting with someone also in the International Military Staff, I was luckily able to book time with a Turkish Admiral. I followed the secretary down to the main entrance where I found the Colombians waiting, feeling more than a little underqualified I hesitantly walked up and introduced myself. The minister is a younger man, I don’t know him, but if I were to judge him from appearance alone I would say ambitious technocrat, probably American educated. I guide them to the DASG’s office and then onwards for their meeting with an Admiral from the IMS. As I escort them back to the main doors the minister has a brief moment of small talk with me, letting me know I can contact him if ever I find myself in Colombia. On our way out we are intercepted by a German military officer, the man who will take them to the Supreme Headquarters (SHAPE) in Mons. Relieved to have the meeting done smoothly I return to my office to write my report of the meeting.

Day 2 was arranged to be a quiet one, and it almost was. The morning started with me sitting at my desk and getting a call from the secretary “Chris the Ambassador of Egypt has called for Alberto, may I put him through to you”
“Uhhhhhh……..”

The contents of that conversation, while amusing, remain in the realm of confidentiality. But that aside it was all going quite easily until that damn letter came.

At NATO they have introduced an interesting committee mechanism to facilitate the problems of multilateral diplomacy between 26 countries. Instead of having countries offer their approval on things, NATO operates under what is called a silence procedure. The silence procedure is a period during which any country may object, but assuming that no one does the motion will carry. A few weeks ago I had been asked to draft a document for the Political Committee, asking it to approve a few contact countries (non-NATO countries outside Europe), to participate in some NATO activities related to disarmament. Its quite common to invite some countries to these activities since it helps foster a practical working relationship and develops greater transparency and awareness of NATO. However the countries outside Europe are a somewhat controversial topic, as many NATO Allies have long term about the Alliance becoming a global organisation.

The letter is written in formal French, and its easy to see how French existed as the language of diplomacy for so long. The structure of the letter remains courteous and gracious, and subtly disguises the intention of being a deliberate pain in the butt. In fairness everyone is entitled to their opinions, but essentially the French were demanding that a bureaucratic procedure, which was deliberately being avoided due to an impending time constraint, notwithstanding demand it be observed. It created a big headache for me, since the issue had to be dealt with ASAP in order for the countries to still participate in the activity. But how can you be mad at a letter when it so eloquently ends with

“Je vous prie de croire, Monsieur le Président, en l’expression de ma parfaite considération”

The sentence loses its particular style when translated into English, but if I were to try, it would sound like

I beseech you to accept, Mr. Chairman, the assurances of my highest consideration

Well sure, 2 hours of work, sounds ok to me, you asked so nicely I couldn’t even begin to be bothered!

On the one plus side, it did require me to write a document and sign it myself, Chris Yung, Acting-Head, MICC/PASP, thereby providing paper evidence to live on in the NATO archive, possibly according to a colleague, as the youngest acting-head in the organisation’s history.

At the end of the day there is a meeting among all the section heads for a debriefing by the big division boss, the ASG. I attend the meeting, sitting opposite my former section head, once his intern, now heading a section of my own! Well…until the rest of the day at least.