Major Andrés H. Cáceres-Solari arrived at NATO’s Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands in the summer of 2013 after a successful company command in Japan. By the time he left two years later, he had lost his security clearance, faced a Board of Inquiry, and was on a path that ended with his involuntary separation from the Marine Corps.
In his recently published book, “Criminal Negligence in Command,” Cáceres-Solari says the turning point came after he repeatedly raised concerns about emerging threats that were being ignored by the highest officers in the NATO command.
Those concerns included indicators of unusual Russian military activity near the Ukrainian border, the resurgence of groups that later became the Islamic State, gaps between official reporting and conditions in Afghanistan, and early signs of Houthi missile capabilities.
What followed, according to Cáceres-Solari, was a series of professional actions against him that ultimately ended his career. His account raises questions about the real costs officers can face when they challenge prevailing assessments and complacency inside a large joint or coalition headquarters.
Raising Concerns
Cáceres-Solari served as a staff officer in the Joint Operations Center at Joint Force Command Brunssum, one of NATO’s two operational-level headquarters responsible for the northern region and, at the time, the higher headquarters for the Afghanistan mission. He describes spending significant time analyzing open-source reporting and trends that he believed pointed to growing risks.
In his account, he details how he briefed or attempted to brief senior leaders on several issues between late 2013 and 2015. He says he flagged the unusual massing of Russian forces along the Ukrainian border in the months before the February 2014 seizure of Crimea.
He also reported on the return of armed activity among Sunni groups in Iraq’s Anbar province and the strengthening of what became the Islamic State, as well as discrepancies he saw between official NATO reporting on Afghanistan and the accelerating Taliban advances on the ground.
In his telling, those assessments often met resistance or were simply set aside. He writes that senior officers canceled or limited certain briefs, directed that some information not be presented, and prioritized social activities in Europe.
Later public events (such as the rapid fall of Crimea, the Islamic State’s capture of Mosul and large parts of Iraq and Syria, and the Taliban’s steady gains that culminated in the 2021 collapse of the Afghan government) made those earlier indicators appear more significant in hindsight, he argues.
Cáceres-Solari’s experiences highlight how the process for elevating dissenting or inconvenient analysis inside a large multinational headquarters can be dangerous; and the professional risks for the officer who keeps pushing can be high.
The Professional Consequences
In the book, he describes how an investigation began in spring 2015. Accusations of misconduct were made against him, including claims he painstakingly disproves in the book. His security clearance was suspended. He was forcefully escorted from the headquarters building. A Board of Inquiry later recommended his separation from the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps ultimately separated him in 2017. Cáceres-Solari challenged the process through the Board for Correction of Naval Records and then in federal court. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the Federal Circuit upheld the separation.
Still, he maintains that the investigation and subsequent actions were driven more by his persistence in raising uncomfortable assessments than by any genuine misconduct.
He provides signed confessions and other documents he collected as evidence that, in his view, show key accusations against him were later walked back or contradicted, and evidence of senior officer perjury and evidence fabrication.
Those materials form a large portion of the appendices in the book. These documents paint the sequence of events: a successful company commander who had passed rigorous readiness inspections and received strong fitness reports found himself outside the service after a NATO staff tour in which he challenged the orthodoxy.
Lessons in Dissent
Cáceres-Solari’s experience, as he tells it, highlights a persistent tension inside large military organizations. Officers are expected to provide candid military advice and to surface problems early. At the same time, challenging a higher headquarters’ accepted, or desired, narrative can carry personal and professional cost.
The bigger issue is not unique to NATO. Service members who believe they see a gap between official assessments and ground reality face a practical choice: stay quiet, raise the issue through normal channels and accept the possibility of limited impact, or continue to press and risk becoming the problem.
Protected communications exist under U.S. law and regulation for a reason; but Cáceres-Solari’s experience shows that the process itself is both fraught with professional peril and so time-consuming that the critical lessons being advised upon may not be heeded until it’s too late.
For service members, Cáceres-Solari’s account is a cautionary one. The value of persistent, well-sourced analysis does not automatically protect the analyst. Career consequences can follow even when the officer can conclusively prove that the assessments later proved accurate.
That reality does not mean officers should stop raising hard questions. It does mean they should go in with open eyes about the institutional traps involved.
Cáceres-Solari now works as an academic and human rights lawyer in Europe. He continues to argue that the warnings he raised at Brunssum deserved more attention than they received.
The events he describes of an officer elevating concerns, the subsequent investigation and separation, and the later public confirmation of the threats he flagged, form a useful case study in the risks and responsibilities that come with speaking up inside the chain of command.
This article is based Andrés H. Cáceres-Solari’s 2025 book “Criminal Negligence in Command.” Claims regarding specific actions by individuals, the motivations behind those actions, and the interpretation of events are his own and are presented as such.
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