PfpSOC completed
Woohoo! I’ve just completed my NATO course. The past three weeks has been brilliant but right now I’m happy to be back in Enköping again. I’ve figured that as long as I am challenged and stimulated at work, I can live in a small city – at least for now.
The course has been incredibly intense with 12hour days and lots of social weekend activities. I’ve met so many great guys – and one great woman... we were only two women on the course. All international staff attending the course was either Majors or Captains with long and varied military backgrounds. It was fun with so many different uniforms gathered under one roof.
Since my Psyops colleague and I were the only civilians on the course, I’ve learnt a huge amount especially about tactical warfare.
Perhaps it sounds like a contradiction to mention warfare when the course was all about planning a peace support operation. But to carry out a peace support mission, you need to understand tactical warfare in order to predict, plan and counterbalance threats to the operation.
Aside from planning and presenting a fictional peace support operation practically, and learning about the NATO history, structure and interaction between different branches, I’m happy to also have gained knowledge about partnership organisations involved in a PSO.
Some of the guest lecturers really inspired me, particularly the UNHCR rep. who talked about UN's work for refugees around the world, but also the Dutch lawyer who discussed humanitarian law and the legal aspect of a peace support operation. It fascinates me how one detail can change the entire situation from legal to illegal, or reversed, and learning how to interpret the law.
We also spent a day getting media training, which was great fun as I got to play the Commander of the Multi National Brigade at the end of the day. According to the former spokesperson of Pentagon I did an excellent job during the press conference. The cultural differences lecture was also exciting and I would have loved to hear more about how subjectively we view the world because of our selective perception, interpretation and judgement!
Remember: A culture is a system of support for interpretation, understanding and communication. Nothing more and nothing less... In other words, don’t excuse or blame behaviours – on culture.
