Diálogo had the opportunity to speak with Brazilian Air Force Lieutenant General Flávio Luiz de Oliveira Pinto, director general of the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), during the U.S. Southern Command- (SOUTHCOM) sponsored Senior Leader Logistics Symposium, held at SOUTHCOM’s headquarters in Doral, Florida, in early June 2024. Lt. Gen. Flávio spoke about the organization’s contributions to logistics and its role in the region.
Diálogo: What is the Inter-American Defense Board?
Brazilian Air Force Lieutenant General Flávio Luiz de Oliveira Pinto, director general of the Inter-American Defense Board: First, let me thank you for being here, at SOUTHCOM, taking part in this important seminar, and also for this opportunity to speak to the Diálogo audience and present our Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), to talk a bit about what we do to promote hemispheric trust and security.
The Inter-American Defense Board was created in 1942, when the world was going through World War II, with the mission of thinking about the hemisphere’s defense. Over time, with the various changes in world geopolitics, this initial role evolved in 2006, when the IADB ceased to be an entirely independent body and became part of the structure of the Organization of American States (OAS).
Today, history shows that this change has led to an increase in the level of interaction between the IADB and other bodies and institutions. Thus, since 2006, the IADB no longer has a mission but a purpose, which is to provide the OAS and its member countries with technical, advisory, and educational advice on military and defense issues in compliance with the OAS Charter.
So that is our purpose, the reason of our existence. How are we organized to fulfill this purpose? Well, the IADB is administratively guided by a very peculiar leadership structure, tripartite, which certainly favors collegiate decision-making, dialogue, and integration among our member states. With this design, the three leaders, who are elected, are at the same level: the president of the Council of Delegates, Mexican Army Major General Marco Antonio Álvarez; the director general, myself, Lt. Gen. Flávio; and U.S. Army Major General Richard Heitkamp, director of the Inter-American Defense College. These three leadership positions represent the three main axes of our purpose: to provide technical advice — the director general’s task; consultative — an activity within the reach of the president of the Council; and educational — under the responsibility of the director of the Inter-American Defense College.
Everything we do within the framework of the IADB is always as a result of OAS mandates. There is always interaction between the IADB and the OAS in the year before the tasks are carried out to outline the issues most in demand by the 34 countries that today make up the OAS and in which the Board can contribute. This leads to the mandates for the following year. The IADB then receives and implements these mandates, which highlight the fields in which we should develop knowledge, seek out best practices, and exchange these best practices among our member states through the IADB’s large network of contacts.
Based on these mandates from the OAS, the IADB draws up an annual work plan, which must be approved by its Council of Delegates, where the Board’s member countries are represented. The General Secretariat then, in possession of this work program, develops these themes. For example, we are currently working, very hard, very strongly, in areas such as cyber defense and humanitarian demining. In the case of demining, in addition to seminars and conferences, we have two teams working on the ground in Colombia, contributing to humanitarian demining in the country.
The Women, Peace, and Security agenda is another topic we are currently hard at work, developing knowledge and promoting best practices. In addition to these areas, we can highlight others such as environmental protection, arms control, migratory flows, and maritime security. But I would also especially like to highlight, among these various areas — I repeat, all stemming from OAS mandates — cooperation in disasters, which is the reason we are here today. At the IADB, within the theme of cooperation in disasters, we are developing what is known as MECODE, which is our Mechanism for Cooperation in Disasters.
MECODE arose from a perceived demand from countries affected by disasters for aid from other nations. So, from the moment a country suffers a disaster and realizes that it needs foreign aid, it makes an international call, and for this aid to arrive in a coordinated and timely manner, we realized that we need coordination. For this coordination to be more effective, a prior study is necessary in which nomenclatures, concepts, processes, and procedures are established, as well as previously defined points of contact.
This year, 2024, in Lima, Peru, which volunteered to be the so-called affected country, we conducted exercise MECODEX 24, carried out for the first time with the support of CEPREDENAC, which is the Coordination Center for the Prevention of Disasters in Central America and the Dominican Republic, an institution that I would like to thank for providing us with a platform, developed by them, which greatly contributed to our ability to run the exercise.
The exercise was a success, the data is still to be compiled, but the information we received from our team, which concluded the exercise in Lima, is that a bit more than 70 percent of the country’s needs within the exercise were met in the first 48 hours, among other information that is still to be analyzed, which leads us to a promising future for MECODE.
Diálogo: How many countries took part in MECODEX 24 in Lima?
Lt. Gen. Flávio: There were nine countries taking part in this year’s exercise. Of course, all 28 countries will receive the reports at the end.
Diálogo: What are the region’s cybersecurity challenges?
Lt. Gen. Flávio: Cyber defense is certainly one of the most important areas of work for us today. We have seen a very strong demand from all countries, which are very interested in the courses we offer. As a rule, the IADB does not run these courses with its own staff, but with partners that we have developed over time. Incidentally, this is an opportunity to once again point out that the IADB’s main strength is its varied and competent network of contacts.
This is what we do in cyber defense: We organize seminars, conferences and, above all, we look for countries and entities capable of offering others training courses in this important area. We serve as a tool for integration in the hemisphere and as a channel for offering best practices, with the aim of strengthening our members’ cyber capabilities.
One example: One of the tools we developed was our Cyber Defense Challenge. Within this challenge, we found that, using the Capture the Flag model, which is highly established in the cyber defense field, only a small group of countries took part in all the competitions, always with a competition mindset not cooperation. A change was then made to the rules of the challenge, with the exclusion of the scoreboard and the creation of a knowledge-sharing system, thus fostering international cooperation and mutual trust. With the change, there was a significant increase in participation and the number of competitors increased fourfold. Translated into numbers: From four countries that always participated, we had 17 in the last exercise, strengthening the mindset of cooperation in cyber defense. Another important fact: Since 2021, we have impacted more than 10,000 people in this field.
Also in the field of Cyber Defense, we are, together with other sectors of the OAS, working on organizing a major cyber resilience exercise for critical infrastructures, a sector in which several countries in our hemisphere also demand knowledge.
Diálogo: How did the IADB participate in the rescue efforts in Rio Grande do Sul?
Lt. Gen. Flávio: Specifically, regarding the situation in Rio Grande do Sul, the IADB sent an observer. In this area, we had already been taking part in simulated exercises, but this was the first time that the IADB had sent an observer to a real situation. He went to Brazil, obviously, to contribute to the local authorities, trying to help to the best of our abilities, but also trying to identify the main difficulties encountered during the disaster, as well as best practices applied to resolve the problems, so that we could incorporate all these lessons learned into the MECODE system, which is currently being developed. We sent this observer so that in the future, with this further learning, we can promote an integration of best practices and difficulties encountered at a time as complicated as the one in Rio Grande do Sul and, at other times, in various nations in our hemisphere.
