Nature is stubborn, as much or more than history. The flood in the eastern part of the peninsula reminded us of this. There will be time to calmly analyze the before, during and after it. Know what was done well, what was done badly and also what was not done. The lives of more than two hundred compatriots and the future of hundreds of thousands more demand it. To follow what we have learned from naval doctrine until then, it is good to have a ‘first impressions report’ that allows us to make, on the fly, the unavoidable decisions, those that keep us from sinning by omission or from the disastrous habit of procrastinating when there is a shortage. the decision-making capacity. In these pages of ABC you can find those first perceptions. They are in the opinion forum that, under the title ‘We were wrong’, published by Admiral General García Sánchez, former Chief of the Defense Staff. The admiral’s experience in the profession gives solidity to what he says and a basis for correcting the errors he lists, but the will of those who have the obligation to correct them will be needed: those who legislate and organize. Looking at the same thing, it is well worth delving a little deeper into this military vision of what happened, and what is still happening, because it is convenient to recognize the foundations of the military structure after the flood that, with all certainty, seem to be affected. or, perhaps something else, damaged.
Every organization is susceptible to improvement, but the many changes without facts to justify them ultimately cause organic anarchy. It is better to keep what works than to establish an option because it is simply new. The French admiral De Belot said it: “Any organization is valid as long as you are respectful of it.”
I take as a starting point the convenience of accepting that emergencies are events that occur ‘per se’, caused by natural phenomena or accidents, born of involuntary and erroneous human action. To paraphrase Empedocles of Agrigento’s definition of nature, wind, fire, water and earth are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse that cause practically all emergencies. In the same way as accepting the idea of ’emergency’ as something fortuitous and explainable, we must also assume that any of them can be the trigger to generate a crisis, what academics define as the sudden and unexpected rupture of the ‘status quo’. , to impose a new context favorable to partisan interests. And it is on the border between the emergency and the crisis where different wills move with contrary interests that break the coordinated effort to face the consequences of the natural disaster, to generate an interested struggle where the higher purpose changes: the common good gives way to the plan. to beat the opponent.
The consequences of the flood caused by the cold drop, technically ‘isolated depression at high levels’ (DANA), generated an emergency manageable with the resources available to the Armed Forces, initially by the Military Emergency Unit (UME), but it escalated at levels of intensity that geographically affected at least three autonomous communities, functionally the land and air communications of half of the peninsular territory and militarily the deployment of units here and there, something that required technical command and control capabilities. control that exceeds the possibilities of that specialized engineering brigade, and also needed the accumulated experience that the Chief of the Defense Staff and his organization (Joint Staff and Operations Command) had at their disposal.
The qualitative and quantitative leap in the conduct of operations is well justified, on the one hand, because although the UME is made up of members of the different Armed Forces, it is a specific organization, equipped with defined means to undertake them, with a capacity to command and control oriented to carry out tasks of such a specific nature and strangely located under the direct dependence of the head of Defense, and on the other, because the size of the operations, the extent of the terrain to be covered, the number of units, the terrestrial nature, air and sea They and the logistics necessary to support them are part of the work and experience of the Jemad Operations Command, a capacity that took more than two decades to generate: joint action, a genuine way of combining different things to achieve the same goal. The catastrophes in Central America with Hurricane Mitch, the tsunami in Indonesia or the support after the earthquake in Haiti prove this.
Furthermore, already at its creation, the organic anomaly that its administrative situation entailed was debated, to which was added the operational one. With the successive organic changes that have occurred in recent years, the inconsistency of placing the Chief of the Defense Staff as a mere provider of resources for the head of the UME has reached the point of inconsistency, which means reversing the hierarchical pyramid. consubstantial with the military: a four-star general officer under the command of a three-star general officer?
On the other hand, the moral norm that a boss imposes and a subordinate waits consists of his commander giving him an order that he is capable of carrying out. Failure to do so leads to failure or, even worse, puts you at risk of losing your life. That which, in pure military jargon, is said: “With this one I’m going to war.” This pattern of behavior is part of the minimum of mutual loyalty present in the military institution and which, taken to the relationships between those who make political decisions and convert them into military orders, is also the minimum that is expected to be found when one is under orders. direct from a political authority. I lived it and experienced it for many years. With this premise, and with the presumption that whoever is in charge knows the command and control capabilities of the UME and the Operations Command of the Defense Staff, it is militarily difficult to understand the decision to opt for one and exclude the other, except If one wanted to deny the real evidence that this is an emergency that affects the entire nation, as evidence, for example, of the presence of military units, as well as professionals and volunteers from all parts of Spain, or on the contrary, It is assumed that it is more than an emergency, an induced crisis, where there is a disloyal desire to establish a situation that surpasses those on the ground and where the presence of a well-intentioned but uncoordinated popular action reduced the effectiveness of the military presence.
If all this affects essential elements that make up the military institution internally (hierarchy, unity, loyalty), it is also significant, externally, how the principle of political neutrality required of every soldier is blurred when the head general of the UME He makes statements and assessments from the press room of political power instead of presenting data and facts from his headquarters or on the ground. It is difficult to find the image of an American general addressing the media from the US president’s lectern in the White House. There will be time to technically analyze what happened, but until then the flood leaves me with the example of two soldiers: the honest and loyal silence of the Chief of the Defense Staff and the humane and brave presence of HM the King (qDg) in the theater of operations.
#Javier #Pery #Paredes #flood #leaves
