On April 18th, fellow chapter member, CAPT David Foote, USNR (Ret.) will provide a unique “Insider’s Perspective” as he shares his extensive expertise on NATO to include the end of the Cold War, the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the newest NATO members Finland and Sweden. 

Born into an Army family in a small town in central Illinois, Foote attended secondary schools in San Francisco and graduated in Agricultural Economics from UC Berkeley in 1967. He was commissioned in the Navy Officer Candidate School (OCS) Newport RI in November 1968.

The following 30 years of his Navy career were rather atypical. He started out as an Executive Officer in each of his first two active-duty assignments. In the first, he was embarked on a Military Sealift Command troop transport carrying South Korean troops to and from Vietnam,   a ship   operated by  Merchant Marine  than Navy personnel. His ship completed 14 round trips between Korea and Vietnam, carrying more than 40,000 Korean soldiers in one year.  He was then reassigned as XO of MSC’s Office in Anchorage, AK.  He worked closely with contractors managing over-the-shore, mostly tug-and-barge, resupply of many dozens of remote military and civilian government installations on Alaska’s coast and inland waterways, from Ketchikan to Anchorage, to the outermost Aleutian Islands, and up into the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean.

Foote affiliated with the Naval Reserve in San Francisco in 1972 and spent his next seven years dealing with control and protection of allied merchant shipping in wartime. He then served as commanding officer of several communications, personnel mobilization, and naval base units, and additionally served as a staff officer on several flag staffs.  In October 1989, just hours before the San Francisco earthquake, he arrived at NATO HQ Brussels for a large Joint Chiefs of Staff Exercise.  Following that exercise, and on his own time, Foote found himself in Berlin the morning the Berlin Wall opened, one of the world’s greatest celebrations ever.

Foote and several other San Francisco based Naval Reservists were mobilized for Desert Storm in January 1991 and sent to NATO HQ to set up and staff a Joint Operations Center serving both U.S. military (DoD) and diplomatic (State Dept) activities during the conflict. Desert Storm ended victoriously within a few weeks, but Foote was retained on active-duty at NATO for the next year as an International Planner.

Upon return to Naval Reserve duty in 1992, he was assigned to a unique Politico-Military Affairs (PMA) reserve unit in San Francisco where he remained until retiring in 1998, eventually serving as both XO an CO of that unit. Foote and others from his unit constantly trained for and frequently served in diverse active-duty assignments at NATO HQ for periods ranging from a few days to several months.

Following his retirement and up through the present time, Foote serves as an active volunteer with the Interallied Confederation of Reserve Officers (CIOR), an officially sponsored NATO organization that reports to NATO’s Secretary General and advocates for smarter use of military reserve forces within the 32 countries of NATO and non-NATO countries in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.