Should we have PAO's dedicated to regions?

Foreign Area Officers (FAO) receive region training and language qualification. Civil Affairs does the same thing. Why not Public Affairs?

I say ‘yes’, and here are a couple reasons why.

Part of the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy is developing a ‘seasoned corps of expert officers‘, giving them language and cultural training and them assigning them to the area for up to 5 years. I know we have at least one Army PAO in the program and likely a few more to come down the road. We all know the reasons why, because it was recognized that continuity and experience in one area are needed in the long-term.

But this is especially important to PAO’s because of media relations. One of the things I picked up while working at Allied Command Transformation, and working with primarily U.S. Navy Public Affairs personnel, is the fact that the senior Navy PAO’s had developed great working relationships with the media. Why? One reason is because many of the Public Affairs positions are in one of their several large naval bases – Norfolk, San Diego, Hawaii, etc. Yes, they have lots of smaller bases, but they have a few very large bases where one could theoretically spend an entire career at (similar to a Ft Hood or Ft Bragg for us Army-folks). Because you have senior officers with long periods of time spent in one of several hubs, they have over the years developed great relationships with the local media. Many of the local media representatives, for the most part, have stayed in the area.

One of the Army PAO challenges is that we have many more bases all over the world. All of us jump from position to position, doing a PCS every 24 months (+/-), rarely developing great working relationship with the local media. And a media relationship, like any other relationship, takes time to develop.

On top of the media relationship aspect, you not only have local knowledge, but also command knowledge and command continuity. Every commander likes to have that one guy/gal who has been in or around the unit for a long time, why not let it be the PAO? (This is sometimes covered down on by our great civilian PAO corps, but there are times/places that a uniform is needed).

Finally look at the media themselves – they all have a ‘beat’ or a specialty based off of either geography or subject. You have the Middle East correspondent, the Asia correspondent, the Technology correspondent or the local military correspondent.

So my solution is: create a similar program to the Afghanistan/Pakistan program for Public Affairs but do it for all our main regions and open it up to volunteers. There are probably a few of us who would love to get some language and culture training, and then spend a large amount of time in one area. A PAO in Korea, who speaks Korean, knows the commands and because of time can develop relationships with the Korean press would be a good thing. Same goes for Europe, Middle East, etc.

I would say ‘volunteers’ because some of us joined the military so we could move around, experience new places and new cultures, but having a few subject matter experts in our various areas of operation would be a good thing. And just like the Afgh-Pak program, you really need people that want to do this, not forced to do this.

It would also help the other PAO’s that find themselves assigned to the given area by having a fellow green-suiter that possess some local knowledge, language ability and has developed some working relationships. And finally I say stick to geography first because the system of language and culture training is already in place for many of our other functional areas.

What say you?

Photo was taken during my first deployment to ISAF in 2004 of the weekly ISAF press conference.