Yesterday President Obama laid out the strategy for Afghanistan, and announced the addition of 30,000 troops.  Today and Friday, the NATO Foreign Ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss a wide range of NATO topics, including Afghanistan of course.  Secretary Clinton will lead the U.S. delegation.  I will be there to brief the Foreign Ministers and I look forward to it.  I will be joined by General McChrystal and General Ramms, my key team leaders focused on Afghanistan. 

Early next week, at our headquarters here in Mons, Belgium, we will lead the “Force Generation Conference” at which all 28 NATO allies will pledge forces as did the U.S.  I am confident we’ll top 5,000 additional allied troops, and I expect more — hopefully several thousand more — in the months ahead. 

This is a team challenge in Afghanistan, and in addition to 28 NATO nations, there are 15 other significant contributing countries to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, for which we are grateful.  The United Nations supports this fully, with hundreds of workers “on the ground.”  This is indeed a global effort. more…

I just completed an excellent visit to Canada, our neighbor and NATO partner just north of the United States.  As every U.S. citizens learns in elementary school, we sit side-by-side along the longest undefended border in the world, completely at peace with good friends who live in a land of remarkable beauty and culture.

Every time I go to Canada, I am struck by the bilingual / bicultural nature of that nation of 33 million.  With a population that has both strong French (30%) and English (60%) linguistic roots, they carefully balance the language, education, government work, and laws to ensure that both languages and cultures are nurtured and protected.  In the Canadian military, for example, the more senior an individual becomes the greater requirement for facility in both French and English.  Living as I do now in the similarly bilingual country of Belgium (French and Flemish, principally), I know this is challenging but important.
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Lt Gen Richard Shirreff CBE - Commander Allied Rapid Reaction Corps

So ends the ARRC’s annual exercise – ARRCADE FUSION 09 (link to web page): ambitious, ground breaking and designed to test HQ ARRC’s ability to integrate planning and execution with key non-military players in a complex and demanding scenario in order to achieve unity of purpose and effort in hybrid conflict. The hard work of drawing out all the lessons and implementing them started with the After Action Review and there remains much to be done to ensure that we extract every ounce of value. However, from my perspective, I can say conclusively that the experimental restructuring of HQ ARRC has been a resounding success. The exercise highlighted many areas we need to get right and there were inevitable shortcomings which we need to work on. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of all who contributed to the exercise, both from within and without HQ ARRC and both civilian and military from across NATO, I really think we might be on the edge of something revolutionary in terms of command and control.

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