CAMP SURANAREE, Thailand – Senior officers from more than six countries convened at a Senior Leaders Seminar at Exercise Cobra Gold 2012 on Feb. 8 to discuss strategic topics and share lessons learn from real world experiences.

According to Maj. Andrew Merz, Future Operations Officer, III Marine Expeditionary Force, every joint-multinational exercise in the Pacific holds a Senior Leaders Seminar.

“The purpose of the Senior Leaders Seminar is to provide a venue for general officers to discuss relevant military political topics in a collegial forum,” he said.

The leaders discussed topics such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peace keeping and multinational operations.

“Some of the members we purposely include are former and current diplomats and members of the international humanitarian community to share their opinions on the topics,” Merz said.

These topics were discussed in an open forum with each country’s leaders being involved. First, an officer would give a period of instruction on a topic. Then, the leaders of different militaries would discuss and question different aspects of key points to become better informed.

The Thai and U.S. commanders approved these topics to ensure relevancy. One of the major topics discussed was humanitarian assistance in relation to last year’s Operation Tomodachi.

Capt. Yuzo Shibata, Operations Officer, Joint Staff, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, said the Senior Leader Engagement and forums are important to learning and preventing short comings in future unforeseen disaster.

“When Operation Tomodachi commenced, information dissemination was very important because there were a lot of things both Japan and the U.S. needed to know, but didn’t,” he said. “It was also a very difficult to pass information during that time, so the Senior Leadership Seminar is important because it gives a chance to share this information openly so that we all will be better informed in the future.”

He said without Japan’s friends, dealing with Operation Tomodachi would have been much harder.

“As with Tomodachi, only one nation cannot cope with such a natural disaster,” Shibata said. “We needed the multinational cooperation of our partners to be successful.”

According to Shibata, that’s one reason multinational cooperation is so important to Japan.

“For Japan, multinational cooperation is one of our main missions, which is why we participate in this multinational exercise.” he said.

After the leaders’ discussion, they all attended a social function where they went to dinner, and then went golfing.

“It’s very important to get together, face to face, like at the social event, and share things with one another,” Shibata said. “That’s the main goal for us here, to share information with each other and become better informed and build better relationships.”