Major Eric Neal, First B.D.F. Officer to Achieve Masters of Defense Studies

Major Eric Neal became the first Belize Defense Force officer to achieve a Masters of Defense Studies degree from the Royal Military College of Canada, following the completion of the Joint Command and Staff Programme in Toronto, Canada.  Today, the former aide-de-camp who spent twelve years of his professional life in the B.D.F. as the Governor General’s right hand graduated from the J.C.S.P. and we had a chance to chat to him about the milestone achievement.

Major Eric Neal, Belize Defense Force

“Today was the graduation ceremony for the professional military education aspect.  So it‘s a diploma from JCSP for professional military education and that is the requirement for consideration of promotion beyond the rank of major.  I am the sixth Belizean to attend this course and so far I am the only one that was accepted into the Masters of Defense Studies programme.  And as I said, I chose to major in institutional policy because in the military we lack some policies, you know.  If we strengthen our policies, if we strengthen our procedures everything will work well and so I thought it best, because we had three options; we could have looked at advanced joint war fighting, but we‘re not going to war.  There is also defense and security which prepares you more to be a military diplomat.  I already have a masters degree in strategic security studies which covered most of what DSS did and I said to myself it makes no sense me repeating what I have already done and then I looked at institutional policy studies, you know, and it‘s better because as straddling junior/senior leadership and being exposed to senior leadership, I have seen where most of our problems in the military are structural.  We lack policies and so it‘s best for me to study that so that if needs be and I am asked to assist in any way I can provide some assistance.”