PfP Consortium, CISS undertake joint effort for Black Sea region
February 11, 2007
Bucharest, Romania — Marshall Center faculty will join colleagues from other security and defense institutes in creating Traveling Contact Teams to conduct seminars in the Black Sea region in a new project coordinated by the PfP Consortium.
From left to right, Dr. Detlef Puhl, associate dean of the Marshall Center College of International and Security Studies, Dr. Fota Iulian, director of the National Defense College of Romania, Dr. Andrew Michta, Marshall Center professor, and George Niculescu, on the HQ NATO International staff, confer during the PfP Consortium’s Greater Black Sea Area Working Group meeting in Bucharest, Romania
Photo by Valerie Lofland
The development phase of the TCT project got under way at the PfP Consortium’s Greater Black Sea Area Working Group meeting Feb. 11 to 13 in Bucharest, Romania. Project members mapped out the development of a curriculum for three- to five-day seminars on common transnational threats to be taught by the multi-national teams several times a year at security and defense institutes in the Black Sea region.
Project members include Dr. Detlef Puhl, associate dean of the Marshall Center College of International and Security Studies, Dr. Andrew Michta, Marshall Center Professor, and Dr. Valerie Lofland, PfP Consortium international program manager, as well as representatives from EUCOM, the National Defense University and the national defense academies of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
The project, which originated with the working group’s chair, Maj. Gen. (ret) Mihail Ionescu of Romania, seeks to promote a common security and risk assessment curriculum among defense and security institutes in the Black Sea Region, according to Lofland, the project’s coordinator.
“In addition to enhancing our outreach efforts, we want to foster academic interoperability in the Black Sea area, especially among partner countries,” Lofland said.
The TCT seminars will focus on security sector reform, countering asymmetrical threats, crisis management and regional security. The target audience is lieutenant colonels, colonels, and civilian equivalents from defense and security establishments from NATO and partner countries in the region.
Project members will meet again in May in Sofia, Bulgaria, and are aiming to have the first team on the road in early 2008, according to Lofland.
