The Belize Defense Force today held its third in a series of national security strategy formulation seminars. As we've reported before, a 15-year national plan will come out of these sessions. We today spoke with Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy, Leonard Hill and Brigadier General Lloyd Gillett who both outlined and underscored the need for a national security strategy.
Brig. Gen. Lloyd Gillett,
"Well this is the third seminar. The first seminar dealt with the vision and the national security goals, national interest. The second seminar dealt with the threats. This seminar will deal with the national security architecture that we need to develop to address these threats and also the need for coordination and assigning lead roles and supporting roles to address each of the threats. Most countries around the world have national security strategies and maybe this is what we've been lacking in Belize. Once we get and everybody understands what we are trying to achieve, then it will be easier to coordinate each agency and assign lead roles and supporting roles so that everybody understands that we are involved in one fight."
Leonard Hill, U.S. Embassy
"For any country, it is important, particularly democracies, to sit down from time to time and think through how all the elements of their national power, civilian, military, non-governmental organizations, how those all come together to situate them into the world and to help them deal with the risks and challenges that the country will face. The idea here, having the Army War College come, is that they have a lot of experience and ability in training people to think strategically and that is what this is really all about."
The strategy should be ready for presentation by the end of this year.
