United States and international militaries are called upon to assist the humanitarian community in responding to major sudden onset disasters when there is an acknowledged gap between the disaster needs that the relief community is being asked to satisfy and the resources available to meet them. While coordination between humanitarian and military actors has improved over the past decade, there is still a need for more effective coordination and collaboration to provide more efficacious responses. This panel will explore a broad range of strategies, concepts, education/training programs, and technological changes that can help improve coordination during civilian-military humanitarian responses.
Moderator: Tony Fox, Professor
U.S. Naval War College
Professor Fox serves as a civilian faculty at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) and teaches courses on strategic and operational planning. He specializes in military planning, intelligence operations, international law, and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. Professor Fox serves on the NWC Civilian-Military Humanitarian Response Program, which was established in 2015 to explore academic and research collaboration areas that can improve civilian military coordination during humanitarian responses to natural disasters and complex emergencies.
Vincenzo Bollettino, Research Associate and Director of Resilient Communities Program
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Dr. Bollettino is a Research Associate and former Executive Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He has over twenty years of professional and academic experience in international politics, humanitarian action, human security and peacebuilding. He has managed several large training and policy development initiatives related to international humanitarian law, responsibility to protect, and peace building operations and has designed several reporting systems and program evaluations for field security measures in complex emergencies. Dr. Bollettino has authored several publications related to disaster management and humanitarian assistance, and has consulted with numerous international nongovernmental organization and UN agencies. His most recent research focuses on civil-military engagement in response to natural disasters.
Commander Rodrigo Arancibia, Chilean Navy
International Fellow, U.S. Naval War College
Commander Arancibia is currently serving as an International Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College, where he teaches operational planning and co-founded the Civilian-Military Humanitarian Response Program. He graduated from the Chilean Naval Academy in 1993. As a submarine specialist, he has served on Type 209 Submarines and was part of the test crew and first crew of the Scorpene class submarine “Carrera.” Commander Arancibia has participated in the humanitarian relief planning efforts for the Chilean earthquakes and tsunamis that occurred in 2014 and 2015. He also is a Chilean Naval War College professor, specializing in operational planning for humanitarian operations.
Doug Wallace
Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Pacific Command
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
Doug Wallace serves as the deputy director of the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (CFE-DM). He is the principal assistant to the director for managing CFE-DM programs. Wallace joined the Center in January 2007. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel with more than 24 years of service, most of it in civil-military operations positions or related education and training programs. His last assignment was as the civil-military operations chief, U.S. Pacific Command. Wallace holds a bachelor’s degree in English from California State University and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.