Andrew Roberts on “Conflict: The Evolution of War from 1945 to Ukraine” | Uncommon Knowledge

the United States now finds itself involved in wars in Ukraine and Israel and plenty worried about the prospect of war in Taiwan what can the history of War tell us about conflict today military historian Andrew Roberts the Lord Roberts of Belgravia on uncommon knowledge [Music] now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson a graduate of gonville and keys Cambridge the historian Andrew Roberts is a visiting professor at King's College London a lman Institute distinguished fellow at the New York Historical Society and a fellow here at the Hoover institution at Stanford in 2022 Andrew Roberts entered the House of Lords as the baron Roberts of Belgravia Lord Roberts is the author of more than a dozen Major Works of History including Napoleon a life Churchill Walking With Destiny and the last king of America the Misunderstood reign of George III Andrew Roberts co-authored his newest book with General David Petraeus conflict the evolution of warfare from 1945 to Ukraine Andrew welcome back thank you it's great to be on the show again Peter you write books by yourself but this time you had a co-author how did that come come about um it was shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that I got on to David and uh who I'd met several times before knew fairly well and said look there are going to be lots of geopolitical books and political books about uh this war but let's write one um just on the military aspects of it only that and uh we got a publisher and the publisher understandably said how are you going to divvy up the chapters and I said well David's going to write about all the countries he's invaded and I will do everything else so he also did the Vietnam chater as well actually which he was too young to invade but uh um it was great we sent um we sent draft chapters backwards and forwards and worked on each other's and it actually turned out to be okay it did turn out to be okay chapter one in Conflict quote I'm quoting the chapter title the death of the dream of peace let me quote Franklin Roosevelt's closest adviser Harry Hopkins on the summit that f Dr Churchill and Stalin attended at Yalta toward the end of the second world war quote I'm quoting Harry Hopkins in our hearts we really believed a new day had dawned the Russians had proved they could be reasonable and farsighted and the president had not the slightest doubt that we could get on peaceably with them far into the future close quote instead we got a cold war that lasted 45 years what went wrong Stalin l that's all that happened at Yalta he promised the independence and the Integrity of Poland he had no intention whatsoever of allowing Poland or anywhere else in Eastern Europe to have genuine freedom and uh he essentially conned both FDR but also Winston Churchill who came back and told the cabinet and uh people in his Entourage that he too believed that Stalin was uh was going to be somebody that they could do business with yes this this brings us to the um the house votes this brings us I'm sorry I can't resist it because I love Churchill almost as much as you do but only almost because there is this this moment in Churchill when he returns from Yalta and really pushes hard to get the House of Commons to endorse the deal that he and Franklin Roosevelt cut with Stalin at Yalta which is to lay out the framework of the post-war Europe including a free Eastern Europe which of course never happened and it turns out to be quite a close run one thing and Churchill defends Stalin as trustworthy in a famous speech that he delivers in the House of Commons and the list of dissenters actually is a remarkable list of some of the most serious and impressive men in British politics at the time and and indeed uh later um the Prime Minister brief Douglas yes Alec Douglas Hume voted against yeah he did yeah so okay so hold that thought for a moment and let me quotee conflict again leaders need to grasp the overall strategic situation in a conflict and craft the appropriate strategic approach in essence to get the big Ideas right and here we have at the very onset of the Cold War there's a moment when even Churchill gets the Big Ideas wrong or you're not going to let that stand up no I am I am that's that's that's that's fine that is that is R exactly but by the time he delivers the Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton Missouri and by the Harry Truman delivers the what what becomes known as the um Trum thank you the Truman Doctrine 1947 so very very quickly they get the big could just discuss this how do they go from momentary confusion to getting something so right that they set in place the architecture the last 45 years um yes it is one of the most extraordinary years that period between yela in the February of 1945 and the Iron Curtain Speech on the fifth of March 1946 is a period of where Churchill's eyes are opened to the reality of what Stalin's wanting to do in in Europe and Beyond and uh he sees things like uh Hungarian Bishops being um being arrested and uh Czech politicians being arrested and some terrible things happening to the returning polls the Polish Army hugely brave people you know generals and Colonels suddenly being banged up by the uh communist authorities there and it Dawns on him far earlier than anybody else because the Iron Curtain Speech of course is denounced by the press and the and and in Parliament and in your Congress and uh and Harry Truman distan himself very much immediately from this and it's only after that that you get the Truman Doctrine and it's not really until the Berlin airlift of the May of 1948 that people really do recognize even people on the left recognize that uh that stannin is not the great Uncle Joe cuddley bear figure uh that he was made out to be understandably for political propaganda reasons during the second world war right so I want to take you on this kind of this is frustrating with your books particularly because one thought another one chapter leads your books are very carefully constructed even when you're working with a co-author they're very carefully constructed but this is television I have to take these at a Gallop so the notion here is to take a few chapters and treat them as fences and we'll go over them together if we if we can of course yeah so so here's something that's a kind of theme of the whole book you talked a moment ago about conflict being about the military aspects but it's about leadership and it's really about political leadership again and again isn't it um yes yes absolutely no you've you've you've um you've hit the nail on the head there because um soldiers have to be politicians as well not just in the countries that they're fighting in but also in a sense they have to be politicians back home domestically with regard to the way that they interact with the political situation at home you see this is classic example of course being Douglas MacArthur in Korea um but what we have tried to do with this book is to actually look at the the fighting on the ground and the way in which the leaders different leaders military and political but primarily military have tried to um get the big picture right you mentioned that that quote that is the most important sort of take away from this book is that a strategic leadership is so vital that it can lose a war where you start off with many more men and controlling the cities and having far better equipment and so on you can still lose if you have the Strategic leadership right classic example being the Chinese Civil War equally if you get it right you get certain things right you can you can win even though you don't have all those things uh Afghanistan terrorists attack the World Trade Towers in the Pentagon on September 11th 2001 the Bush Administration decides within a day to go into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and Destroy Al-Qaeda by September 26 a CIA team is on the ground it links up with the united front local forces that oppose the Taliban and on the night of November 12th the Taliban abandons cabul from the first forces on the ground to Victory in less than three weeks we can come in a moment to everything that went wrong in the years that followed yeah but those three weeks were an astonishing military achievement were they not you literally have to go back to Napoleon capturing ol in 1805 to see something that was just so well organized so swiftly done uh with such extraordinary um capacity for uh for as I say leadership but also the coordination of the American Force I mean and the Coalition forces but primarily American of course yeah it was a great Victory and how did that happen is this the moment where technology makes new events possible or is or are we seeing that the American Military has learned lessons from Vietnam about the Need for Speed and what's going on yes the Pentagon learned a lot of lessons not just from Vietnam but really from the first Gulf War uh in the early 1990s um you also actually although was a very Advanced uh technological um uh Weaponry of course you also had some of those CIA guys who are working with the Northern Alliance were actually on Horseback you know so you could go back to Napoleonic times essentially in the way in which some of these uh these guys were getting to where they needed to be the other of course very important aspect was the coordination of um intelligence with air power so what the CIA and others were able to do was to with was to give the uh to pinpoint the exact map locations of where the um Taliban were uh were concentrating and then they were taken out in massive air strike so yeah I mean they got it right in those opening weeks all right President Biden withdraws from Afghanistan in 2021 after the United States had kept troops on the ground and spent hundreds of billions would they be billions of dollars in aid for two decades yeah the government we had attempted to set up for 20 years collapsed immediately yeah and the Taliban recaptured control in a matter of hours conflict quote President Bush President George W Bush President Bush Chang the mission in Afghanistan to one of nation building and support for the nent Afghan government while unavoidable and necessary you don't give the reader an easy way out on this one while unavoidable and necessary this mission was never properly analyzed or resourced close quote well it was resourced as you say with hundreds of billions of of dollars but the actual U by the time that the Biden Administration um scuttled in my view from um from Afghanistan you'd actually got down to a situation where very very few um not a single American serviceman had died in the previous 18 months uh for example whereas you lost 13 Marines on one day uh once that decision had been taken um you were spending relatively small amounts I know 25 billion a year sounds like a huge amount but actually in the context of your $900 billion do a year defense budget it's it's peanuts frankly and you were able at that stage to um to uh keep the Taliban out of power from one decision by your president suddenly the whole thing gets overturned and you lose the entire country I I want to go back to this quotation President Bush changed the mission in Afghanistan to one of nation building and zort for the N Afghan government was that getting the big idea wrong no because the moment later you say well unavoidable and Ne and necessary no it wasn't getting wrong the big idea wrong the big idea that was got wrong was Biden leaving all right Iraq conflict quote air attacks on Iraq commenced on 19 March 2003 and the ground invasion was launched less than 24 hours later although not every aspect went according to plan the operation succeeded well beyond the most optimistic expectations of Coalition commanders the operation went so successfully that the United States captured Baghdad on April 9th another astonishing three weeks is that correct again up there with Napoleon at ol it really is a it really is a uh incredible thing saddam's overthrown of course they don't capture him until later on I think it's the December um that they actually find him hiding in the in the hole um where he'd gone back to his um Hometown but uh but essentially the um the apparatus had been uh had been dismantled okay General Petraeus I wrote the chapter on Iraq so I'm quoting and Afghanistan and Afghanistan I'm quoting him once again the Bush Administration embarked on regime change in Iraq for a number of reasons but on reflection especially given the intelligence failure regarding weapons of mass destruction one can ask whether any of those reasons represented an existential threat to the United States and its vital National interest close quote well coming from a man who commanded the Iraqi theater that is quite a statement it is it is a it is a major statement um I think it's uh I think it's right um but they didn't know that at the time that's the key thing um you know people who believed that there was existential threat that Ma weapons of mass destruction did exist um believed it wholeheartedly and uh and so that's the explanation really for why um it was not some kind of an evil War crime for America to do what it did so so let me ask you about the element of time because in Afghanistan and Iraq we have two brilliant beginnings I mean people were killed it was horrible it was it was war yeah but as a military matter you have two brilliant rapid accomplishments followed by years and years and years in which things go sideways yeah and so tell me why we should not conclude that the United States is good for a few moments but must avoid at all costs engagements that last years and years um because that really isn't the lesson we're able to learn the lessons of History that's the the key thing that's uh what um history is all about it's what it's for really and so what happened in uh Iraq where the bath party was um was sent home essentially um the Army itself was sent home with their weapons um they weren't paid properly all of the mistakes that were made in the immediate afterm of the fall of Baghdad would not be made again uh by anybody but certainly not by the United States all right now we come to the present day Ukraine um the Russian invasion of Ukraine massive Invasion it includes air strikes across the country and an attempt to capture the capital city of keev which is after all quite far in the west it's not close to the Russian border at all and this takes place in February 2022 but there was a precursor conflict quote on 18 March 2014 Putin ordered Russian forces to take control of the Crimean Peninsula this is the peninsula that extends from the main body of Ukraine down into the Black Sea I'm continuing the quotation an action the Ukrainian government decided not to resist the USA and Europe responded with a degree of timidity close quote now Crimea had been Russian well sasap pole is established as the Russian port on the Black Sea by Katherine the Great in 1783 so Lord Roberts does not wish us to suppose that we really ought we the ukrainians themselves really ought to have insisted on retaining a bit of the world that had been Russian since 5 years before we ratified the Constitution does he um yes yes he does in yes he does he does because um it's been Ukrainian for the last 30 years and um and that was agreed by the uh by the Russians it um was part of Ukraine when the um uh when the ukrainians ATT when the Russians attacked and took the donbass as well um in uh in 2022 um you have what is essentially a um incredibly aggressive neighbor ripping up um a a treaty that's been around for the majority almost the majority of the life of of uh most Russians so I think the last 30 years do matter enormously and uh you know um and you can see from what's happened since that they obviously matter enormously to the ukrainians as well all right um I'm quoting now professor John mimer of the University of Chicago quote the Russians now I'm departing a little bit from your book to push you around a bit I want to yes exactly I want to see what you really what yeah well let me just ask the question we'll see how you reply John mimer quote the Russians did not have enough forces to conquer Ukraine nor did they have enough forces to conquer keev they had a very small Force what the Russians were interested in doing was trying to coerce the ukrainians and Americans into accepting a neutral Ukraine Putin may have miscalculated but not in the way we so often suppose and that you and your co-authors suggest well he didn't go in and fail in an invasion he never wanted an invasion in the first place then why unleash 160 to 190,000 people across the uh across the border that was just to get our attention well I think um I I've read mim's views on this needless say I completely disagree with them and if that if it were true then if he when in the first three weeks or so when that great um Russian Convoy came to within 34 miles of Central keev and was turned back by the uh ukrainians that's the point if all he was trying to do was to gain our attention when he wouldn't when Putin wouldn't double down with the um large scale bombing of Civilian areas and residential districts uh and markets and so on in um Ukrainian towns this is the point at which he would have stopped the demarcation line and and stopped fighting essentially but he hasn't the last two years he's up the stakes every single time okay so now we depart no we don't depart from sorry there's something you said earlier right at the beginning when you said massive Invasion and you're absolutely right it was not a massive Invasion it was as I say you're you're fighting against a country of um 40 million people and you go in with 160,000 that is not a massive Invasion um and also he went in on five different axes and as we point out in in the book that's a a pretty stupid way to go about trying to uh carry out an invasion with relatively few forces but what they do have of course is massive amounts of ordinance and that's what we've seen as being the um the make or break in this war is artillery so what I mean I'm you'll know this I can't it's in your biography of Napoleon but Napoleon said to one of his Marshals if you mean to take Vienna take Vienna yes and the notion should have been to Putin if you mean to take Kev take Kev don't don't divide your forces into into five different aelan correct precisely that yeah so what did Putin want he simply did want to subdue the entire country he thought that he would be able to decapitate the um the leadership by taking ke that's why he um sent the um planes into hosal airport where he why he sent the um assassination gangs into uh Central ke right at the beginning uh because he thought that it would be the same thing as happened in um Afghanistan where the president stuffs his uh his um millions of dollars into a suitcase gets on a helicopter and gets out instead what he had was this tremendous churcher with an iPhone as Zen is called um who stays in keev keeps his family in keev tells um Ukrainian men they're not to leave the country and fights back got it all right so from this point on I'd like to use the book conflict as an instruction manual for the conflicts the United States faces today all right so we're departing from history and moving into the range into the realm of Applied history so to speak yeah okay so the war in Ukraine today and give me a just give me a moment with this if I may to set it up for you the war in Ukraine has now lasted more than two years this is two years during which the United States has provided some 30 billion in Aid and another 46 billion in military assistance and as we speak the Biden Administration is still urging Congress to approve another $60 billion for Ukraine but the Ukrainian counter offensive of last summer fizzled and here we are right where we've been for about 18 months with Russia occupying between a sixth and a fifth of Ukraine and the ukrainians unable to dislodge them so is yeah unable to dislodge them because they haven't been given the 60 because um the United States has the really Top Class kit the long range um Weaponry the weapon systems like the attacks that um that the ukrainians need in order to hit Russian territory far deep into Russian territory we've still got 300 billion that is tied up in Brussels in Euro clear of Russian frozen assets which the um uh previous World Bank chairman Bob zelik has uh pointed out is not going to have great legal or economic reasons if we were to sequester that and give it to the ukrainians to help fight their objections to sequester yeah yeah he's he's knocked them to um uh and demolish them um and obviously there's a huge moral reason why this Russian money should be used for uh for defeating the Russians especially now since the uh death of Alexi now Nali we know exactly what Putin's all about and historically you enjoyed your making your historical point so can I make mine um the um when in the summer of 2021 just before the uh a few months before The Invasion uh Putin wrote his 6500w article entitled on the historical Unity of the ukrainians and Russians trying to make out essentially that Russian sovereignty did that Ukrainian sovereignty didn't exist he mentioned Lithuania no no fewer than 17 times in that article so we aren't talking about somebody who if he were victorious in Ukraine would just stop Lithuania would be next you'd go after the Baltic states absolutely some of which have very large Russian populations um and uh and it would be classically uh irid dentist of them in that um in that part of the world which is yet another reason why we have to win um can I just give another couple of course you well you know return on investment for the United States yes you're right that you've um put 76 uh billion in out of the 1,800 billion that you spend on defense over the last last two years um but you've also taken out or at least the ukrainians have taken out without any American lives being lost 3,000 um Russian tanks the return on investment is extraordinary any previous um president would have leapt at the idea of spending such a relative ly small proportion of the American defense budget to destroy quite as much and degrade quite as much of the Russian um armor Fleet I am now going to open a debate between Lord Roberts and Senator JD Vance of Ohio and JD Vance gets to go first here he is writing in the financial times just last month quote the United States has provided security to Europe for far too long we ought to view the money Europe has hasn't spent on defense that's a sentence that follows he details the number of countries that have failed to come up to the 2% of GDP that all NATO members are pledged to spend and most don't or at least half roughly half don't we ought to view the money Europe hasn't spent on defense for what it really is attacks on the American people attack tax not not an attack a attack on the American people Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the war in Ukraine Europe is made of many great nations with productive economies there is frankly no good reason there is frankly no good reason that aid from the US should be needed close quote Andrew there are so many good reasons why not least because yes you're right Lithuania will only be paying 1.1 or something perc uh overall now it's 18 of the 31 NATO countries are up to the have got up to the 2% the Germans still are not there yet though no but Schultz at the Berlin um uh is it the was it the Berlin um conference they had one dresen conference where they the security one that they met in February said that Germany was going up to 2% and considering Germany as the third largest economy in the world that's obviously going to be a huge that means something it's going to be a huge amount but more importantly the reason that um JD Vance is is wrong is that um the United States is the leader of the Free World lonstein and Luxembourg and these other places that pay 1.1% are not um if you have created a global system which you did we were talking about yelta earlier in that period you have Breton Woods you have Dumbarton Oaks you have the creation of NATO in 1949 you have the the Marshal plan the exactly you have the institutions which uh create the post War settlement essentially and um and America is at the absolute heart of doing that it's the leader in doing that it then leads the Free World it wins the Cold War and you can't you can't just sort of abdicate um responsibility now if you've led the Free World because this is the key thing there's a great quote from Trotsky I wish I put it in the book which says that you might not be interested in war but War's interested in you and there's simply no way that the mullers in Iran are not going to um they're going to say oh well America has uh abdicated responsibility so we're not going to try and destroy the great Satan that the Chinese are not going to look at what's happening in um in Ukraine and see Western weakness especially American weakness and that will give them a um a boost you're not going to have the Russians themselves if they see that the United States just drops out of this in the in the same way that one of your presidential candidates couple of days ago said that um he was going to um that that is not going to be taken as a signal by the rest of the World by people who want to do America harm um as a green light for them okay so so let me we have in the Republican Party JD Vance is was of course elected as a republican JD Vance Josh Holly Tom Cotton uh the cheap or crude way of putting it is to say that they're becoming trumpy or that they're in some way or another ratifying Donald Trump's views um that is crude because in in those three men in particular JD Vance and Tom Cotton and Josh Holly you have highly intelligent individual would put them more to I I think I would be much more um kind to them and say that they are in the long tradition of like Charles Lindberg and the American first isolationist before the second world war maybe even you go back to the Washington um Farewell Address about not foreign entanglements exactly I mean there's there is a there's a respectable um argument that can be made for isolationism in the United States I think up until 1938 so but not today you know the world so much smaller so let me put the argument and then you tell me how you would address this tendency in the Republican party because I think well no let's just take this as well can you rely entirely on the Democrat party and it seems to me that you have Joe Biden being very careful particularly about Israel and Gaza because he's a Democrat and he's going to have a Left Flank of his own party so what I'm saying is you it's very important for the Republican party if you want your view to Prevail it's very important to persuade JD Vance and Josh Holly and Tom Cotton and the argument would go something like uh let me make their argument if I okay yeah as best I can and briefly you Ukraine isn't our business Germany does have the third biggest economy in the world it also is in Europe let them deal with it let them pull themselves together and deal with it U I'm paraphrasing JD Vance who said something striking the other day that we want allies in Europe not dependence we don't want us to establish crappies in Europe in Israel and Gaza we have a situation that could get very much worse very quickly very easily particularly if Hezbollah becomes activated in in Lebanon and we have Taiwan the United States armed forces used to be designed to operate in two theaters at once that a retrenchment has taken place under Secretary of Defense Mattis under Trump in in fact simply to uh equ equilibrate means with ends so that now actually it's designed to operate in one theater at once the North Atlantic with Ukraine the mediteran Iranian with Israel and Gaza the Pacific with Taiwan that is asking too much of our military establishment and of the American taxpayer firstly um actually the European this doesn't even phase you firstly well know the concept ultimately of um of of what might happen if you uh if uh that argument Prevail prevails phases me entirely of course it it's completely nerve-wracking um but uh but let's just look at some of the things ly the Europeans have actually spent more than the United States in Ukraine it's not true to say that the um uh that they haven't they with regard to both um kinetic and humanitarian assistance and economic assistance they've actually put in more money than the Americans have um and uh yes you're right geography does play a part but it plays a less and less smaller and smaller part as as history goes on as the um capacity to send missiles across o s um has uh been developing and that's only going to go one way and so to look at this in terms of of geography um is a um is a diminishing return historical mistake historical mistake and a diminishing return essentially um also the um the importance of Europe as a trading partner for the United States is is is vital you can't have a Europe where great chunks of a country like Ukraine and possibly as we mentioned earlier Lithuania if it goes badly um are um a taken out of um peaceloving democracies by a dictator like um Putin who obviously wants the uh Cold War I um in order to um get back what he what his country Lost In Cold War I and Cold War I Was Won by Ronald Reagan and by the United States and its allies and friends like Margaret Hatcher in Britain and if you let down your allies and friends which the United States has has done a bit in the past you know um Vietnam and now Afghanistan um if you continue to do that there will be a moment where a lot of um uh countries not Britain of course or or um you know Canada or New Zealand but Australia but um but other countries will think well hang on actually it's probably in our better long longterm interest to side with the Chinese here maybe there is a fulm moment here and the and the long wonderful history 100-year history of American um involvement in the world that was started by um by Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet in 1909 has come to an end and we ought to actually look at towards the the rising power and that is a would be a completely disastrous thing not just for America and uh the west but for Concepts like Civilization and democracy all right um Israel and then Taiwan Israel again I'll set it up to remind everyone remind myself October 7th of last year Hamas stages a brutal raid from Gaza into Israel killing some 12200 Israelis in response Israel has taken the war to Gaza determined to destroy Hamas even though Hamas has buried itself deep inside civilian structures such as Hospital and shopping malls and all the rest casualty reports vary but it seems clear that many thousands of Arabs some high multiple of the Israeli casualties have lost their lives now we have an exchange last month in the House of Lords even if we were to take hamas's statistics as um accurate the 27,500 figure and there's no reason why we should we don't do that with Putin we don't do that with Isis if one subtracts the number of gazin who've been killed by the quarter or so of Islamic Yad and Hamas rockets that fall short one's left with a fewer than 2:1 ratio of civilians to Hamas terrorists killed of whom there' have been over 9,000 so far my lords war is hell and every individual civilian death is a tragedy but speaking as a military historian less than 2 to one is an astonishingly low ratio for Modern urban Warfare where the terrorists routinely use use civilians as human Shields and it's a testament to the professionalism ethics and values of the Israeli Defense Forces a testament to the Israeli Defense Forces explain that ratio business again oh well it's pretty straightforward when the um if you divide the number of um people who've been killed in um innocent people who've been killed in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces by the number of Hamas terrorists that they've killed you get to a number that is less than 2:1 and this is an extraordinarily low number in terms of um Urban Warfare especially when uh Hamas uses its um as you mentioned earlier its uh you know hospitals and so on as a way of um trying to um have human Shields so the notion that the Israeli Defense Forces are engaged in indis Slaughter is demonstrably demonstrably false untr exactly and and and and in fact one need to go a little bit further you know I can't think of another um another Army including the British Army and the American Army who when faced with similar um uh similar um fighting uh in the past has actually managed to keep the numbers of civilians so low all right so let me ask now about Israel and this question to which we keep returning of leadership it's a book about the military you're a military historian but it keeps coming back to politics so we have in this country in Israel we have the amazing thing the remarkable thing not amazing but remarkable that before the the attack by Hamas Israel seemed deeply divided politically between on all kinds of fault lines religious versus secular um pro- Supreme Court and all of this now Israel appears completely United is this is this true it's it's United as a nation in its decision that it wants to fight uh to The Bitter End to take out uh Hamas and entirely and and Destroy when I say Hamas obviously I mean it's military capacity in Gaza you can't take it out as a political um unit all over the Arab world um but yes Israelis are not split at all on the ultimate need to essentially go into Rafa which is where six of the of the uh last of the battalions Hamas battalions are and to root them out and Destroy them it's not true of course to say that Israel is um United politically um because what I'm going to is the question is the question of true enough is the question of BB Netanyahu as prime minister conducting this war when the country seemed he'd been prime minister for a long time the country seemed tired of him uh he had Allied himself with the more religious parties so you have the split he's on one side of the split which means about half of the country is against him and he's blamed rightly or wrongly I don't know you may have seen intelligence or formed a judgment on this but he seems to be widely blamed for permitting Hamas to Stage an attack of that scale and scope on October 7th and yet here he is the man leading the country in war yes I mean he has the majority of the lud which is obviously the thing that um keeps him as prime minister I don't for one moment believe any of the conspiracy theories about him having the tiniest inkling that's nonsense this absolute nonsense and and really pretty sort of low and Despicable so what do we have here that's admirable we have we have the toughness and determination of BB net yaho that's admirable his refusal to um uh to have ceasefires until either the hostages are released which isn't going to happen or the um uh at least in the near term um or the destruction of um of Hamas in Rafa and then don't we also have to say that we also see admirable behavior on other members of the war cabinet which include Benny Gant who is a member of a different party from that ofah and don't we also have to say that the Israeli let's mention populist the voters the I mean the whole from top to bottom this politics you really seeing ad the whole thing is admirable it's fantastic I mean look look at look at what um some you know ordinary reservists did um whilst the Israeli Army was unfortunately taking quite a long time to respond to the 7th of October on the 7th of October you saw reservists just grabbing their rifles and and driving north to do whatever they could to sorry South to do whatever they could to um help the situation so immense bravery as I've already said the IDF I think are conducting an extremely impressive operation in Gaza also people like Ron durma um Ron dur is Ron durmer is the cabinet minister um from the L good party who's in the war cabinet with with BBY and is a tremendously impressive um performer I think a future Prime Minister of Israel perhaps one day um and as you say the other members of the war cabinet although they're having rouss about Inc incredibly important um aspects nonetheless this is this is what a war cabinet does you know I've I myself um discovered the verbatim accounts of Winston Churchill's War cabinet and they were going at it hammer and tongs the entire time and of course they were because there are the lives of thousands of of people at stake you know there's no um rule of War um and historian wrote um that says that men should die in battle but that staff officers should not be vexed and that was also true of course of cabinet ministers right so can I ask then about the Pol we're staying in Israel for a moment longer what do you make about the political leadership in this country where you have the Biden Administration continuing to support Israel in material terms but rhetorically seeming to want to have it both ways and indeed even sending a kind of series of envoys to Dearborn Michigan where there are a quarter of aill ion Arab Americans Michigan being an important state likely to prove a very important role in the presidential election so you have this rhetorically we have to have a ceasefire the Israelis must commit themselves to time certain uh Palestinian statehood all of this taking now again I repeat substantively as best I can make out we continue to give them the money and Equipment they need to wage this war but rhetorically so what do you make of this we we've got exactly the same thing in England um where the labor party has some 40 seats which um have very substantial um Muslim populations and we've got the situation where a um uh a Maverick politician George Galloway has just won a constituency Rochdale with a big swing um that was basically the whole thing was about Gaza and um and so understandably a lot of labor politicians are very worried that this is going to happen in their constituencies as well um the conservative party is I think a bit like the Republican Party um pretty solid and pro-israel um although there are people of course who um who aren't but overall I think that they've both been um pretty stalwart when it comes to supporting Israel all right Taiwan two quotations conflict I'm going back to the book the Chinese always astute students of history have probably seen what has transpired in Ukraine as a cautionary tale up till now this this was published this was published in October I'm now presently actually started this morning writing the um uh writing the paperback the up oh the update with with the new afterward or you're going incl new chap new chapters new chapters because there's a new chapter on Gaza that um that I've got to write and obviously there's also um a new chapter um regarding what XI will be thinking if um Ukraine goes wrong okay so so here's the question or the argument that's taking place here is on the one hand you've got the argument that that the defense of Taiwan runs through Ukraine on the other hand here's strategist elridge Colby brilliant person has written a marvelous book on strategy can't can't say we're we're not talking about some kind of Fringe figure here quote Europe is less important than Asia economically and geopolitically everything should be going to Asia to deal with the Chinese threat we ought to deprioritize everything else close quote you are a major world power you are the major world power you are able to uh operate on more than one front and if you're not then this is going to be utterly disastrous for you because you've got the you've got China you've got Russia you've got Iran in a lesser way you've got North Korea even Venezuela there are Lo loads of countries in the world who hate America and in order to um to uh keep them in their box you have to be up for opposing them in each of the theaters which you've managed to do for 70 plus years I can't see why suddenly there's this sort of collective nervous breakdown about America being able to uh fight in more than one place and by the way you're not even fighting that's the other thing you know there are no American troops who've died in um Ukraine none that have died in Gaza um and so far none that have died in Taiwan either you know it's not like the um Iraq and Afghanistan uh the war against um Terror where you actually have you know Americans bleeding and coming back in body bags all that these people all that the rest of the world needs at the moment free world that is is your money rather than your blood okay so I'm going to ask you since you make this argument I'm going to ask you to comment on the American psyche because the answer to and answer to the point you just made brilliantly eloquently as if you in the house of Lord I give you all of that but here's the answer you are asking us to go save the world when our own Southern border is has become open during the entire administration of Donald Trump as I recall the number about a million people came to this country illegally and that number fell during the administration as as the Trump people got the border under control and under the Biden Administration so far some 7 million people have entered this country legally 7 million people that's seven times the population of Wyoming it's as big as a major State and Americans just say I do not trust the federal government there is no Venture anywhere in the world that is as important as securing the rule of law to our own border there is obviously security aspects as well to this this um this massive uh Invasion on your um border we in Britain also have these small boats that have been bringing over tens of thousands of people illegally as well and the British government uh doesn't seem to be able to get a handle on that I'm voting on is actually next week we're trying to but um uh the opposition and U and the courts and the press and the BBC and so on seem to be uh completely opposed to us doing anything serious about it it so yeah I mean I'm certainly not going to wade into domestic American political argument over this not least because I don't want to put 50% of your viewers off uh buying my book but nonetheless nonetheless of course see the weight of the argument Le the psychological weight of the argument of course and not least because um in the American case it's not just as it was for a long time uh people from Southern America from South America and um and and uh nowadays you're getting people from all over the world including large numbers from China it turns out in recent months all right last questions but now let me return to the book I'll give you a few quotations from the book and ask you to expand upon them conflict quote a recurring theme of This Book Is that money spent on deterrence is seldom wasted well and Taiwan being the classic example of that and not least actually Taiwan should be doing more about its own deterrence it should have a proper conscription program for example by the way Israel spends about 5% of GDP probably higher now during the war but pre-war about 5% of GDP on defense and Taiwan is under 3% yeah well that's insane considering the threats um that very obvious um I mean one of the things you should learn from history is to listen to what dictators say when President X again and again U make straightforward statements about how the um China will be reunited and it'll be done by the time of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party we should be listening to him um the other thing is that uh is that I mean we slightly manipulate our figures uh we bring in things like War widows and intelligence to try and make sure that we are above the 2% there's a lot of of frankly sort of you know diddling the books about this we we in Britain and uh uh and so I totally understand why the American taxpayer might uh who who's paying twice as much as this in in defense might think that um that they're on a hiding to nothing but you are the great world power you are the leader of the Free World and you have therefore with that enormous um uh Power and and wealth comes responsibility Conflict by the late 1980s America had emerged as so far in the lead in military technology that the Soviet Union could barely compete do we possess any such lead over China today yes do yes you do absolutely your um your longrange missiles are as good as theirs your um Navy although you're cutting back your Navy in a extremely dangerous way and they're building up theirs but still any American aircraft carrier would be able to take on any Chinese aircraft carrier uh and obviously their supportive uh fleets um that's one of the reasons I suspect why X isn't trying a naval blockade because if it did turn into Ship by ship we still Ship by ship you're you're still better absolutely yes and in lots of other areas too in the high-tech but you also have to worry of course that the Chinese are stealing a lot of the technology uh and some of our universities um both in Britain and America seem to be falling over backwards to try and help them even in sensitive um defense areas conflict quote Plato was right only the dead have seen the end of War close quote um yeah it's a rather Grim comment from my usually cheerful friend it's a grim comment we blame Plato I suppose but um but um I know I don't think Human Nature has changed that dramatically it's one of the reasons that we still read ancient history and and and read fuses and Herodotus and so on is because human nature hasn't kept up with our technological um advances and so um war is going to be there which is why we need to um to study it and as I mentioned with the trosky quote you know um we might not be interested in it but it's interested in us a few last questions about well one question about the nature of History I don't know if this is if I were a student and you were a dawn you might bat this away as poorly formed but I'm going to ask it anyway how does history move such that we go from Margaret Thatcher figure of Staggering strength and importance and Clarity to Rishi sunak the current prime minister we go from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden we go from well this goes on and on but we go from Charles deal to Emanuel maon we go from uh helmet Cole to Olaf Schulz who doesn't he's fumbling around yeah how does it h where how did we feel how is it that we have lived to se what feels like a kind of decline to um two things first of all obviously I'm going to pick you up because my party leader rishie sonak is a highly intelligent and impressive man who does things strategically and he's not Margaret he's not Margaret Thatcher and I agree with I agree with that of course I do but the second he's a graduate of Stanford Business School by the way well exactly I I didn't just ch in that intelligent phrase he is highly intelligent that um but as you say he's not Margaret Thatcher and one of the reasons for that is that until recently until the essentially the recent rise of China over the last 15 years we haven't had the threats necessary to throw up the great um uh the great men and women look at um the 19 the time that produces the leader time that produces the leader so um look at the 1930s where the British prime ministers were Ramsey McDonald Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain but when you get the crisis you get Winston church so um your in your uh Revolution is the classic example where for you know 150 years or so you have some important and interesting um leaders up until the 1770s American leaders but then suddenly in one decade you have a constellation of giants you know um and um infuriating Jefferson Madison an yeah yeah um Franklin Hamilton you know they just go as you say Monroe they just go on and on and um it's infuriating that you did manage to do that by the way but in one look at periclean Athens for um for the previous um century and a half um there's very little that comes out of um Athens then you have the Mystic and kiman and Pericles and Giants you know alabes you can argue over but but you know it was Persia that brought them for it was Persia it was the threat from Persia exactly and battles like marathon and salamis let people recognize that they have to step forward the best people have to step forward we're not getting the best people stepping forward certainly in British politics at the moment we have personal threats we have um the Palestinian um uh organization that that demonstrates outside MP's homes we have the ghastly attacks on um uh on social media and so on that speech that you very kindly showed um earlier has I I've had lots of physical threats sent to me because of that because you Rose and spoke in the house of because I spoke in favor of of the of the Israeli um Defense Forces I mean people good people are not going into politics because it's a it's a you know pretty terrible job but they should be now because we are St in to see threats to the uh um to the Western Way of um the world that unless we do get good leaders we're not going to be able to survive so that old phrase cometh the hour cometh the man cometh the person I suppose we have to say now but that well margarth Hatcher cometh the woman cometh the woman cometh the woman the challenge brings forth calls forth the leaders it it should do but the trouble is obviously um if you have a system like we both have where you don't really get a chance to um to become uh leader of a country unless you're in your 40s or 50s in your case considerably older than than that in the case of the United States at the moment it takes some time for these leaders to um to to come forward they knew they need to have learned politics they need to have learned the crafts they need to have read history and read history um the role of the historian and exchange between Lord Roberts of Belgravia and a certain movie director this is you commenting on you the author of Napoleon Al life yeah which we discussed on a program here some years ago and this is you commenting on last year's big movie Napoleon quote this is just quote of the two hours and 38 minutes I'd say 38 minutes were accurate Ridley Scott who was the director of the movie Napoleon quote when I have issues with historians I ask excuse EXC me mate were you there no well shut thee up close quote I know I know amazing isn't it um I think that when he made Gladiator um he didn't need historians terribly much because we don't really know that much about um ancient Rome uh compared to Napoleon um but with Napoleon we have well over 500 sources of people who knew Napoleon worked with Napoleon served under Napoleon and um and wrote about him and wrote letters and Diaries and uh and so on and so actually we shouldn't be shutting the F up we should be looking at the sources which he could have done uh Ridley Scott when he was making this 300 plus million dollar movie a mere pittance for you is technical historical advisor was 1% of that less um probably 0.1% of that but instead he decided not to um not to hire any historians and um the result is a um a film with lots of very nice uniforms and dresses and palaces and so on but as far as the history is concerned it's complete trip from beginning to end all right last question Andrew back to military history as conflict makes clear the pace of change keeps increasing the crossbow becomes a common feature on the European battlefields in the 12th century gunpowder in the 14th two centuries you've got to adjust there uh but since 1945 we've seen the development of nuclear weapons of smart ordinance now of artificial intelligence conflict quote with AI Warfare will almost certainly evolve beyond recognition close quote now and space and space of and space so we added Dimension so to speak land sea air space now consider a passage I'm going to give this to you in a moment but I'm I'll finish setting it up now consider a passage from clus Fitz quote if one side uses Force without compunction that side will force the other to follow suit even the most civilized of peoples can be fired with passionate hatred of each other this thesis must be repeated war is an act of force and there is no logical limit to the application of that force close quote so we have Russia Israel China India Pakistan all nuclear Powers Iran seeking to become nuclear power and I think it's fair to say although I couldn't prove this maybe there's polling somewhere but I think it's fair to say that people feel there's a palpable sense of danger now in this country certainly I think that didn't exist 10 years ago this this the world is getting dangerous now this notion this kind of tit fortat notion you move he must move this is the logic of war and there's no ceiling on it against that we have the Cold War where the two major superpowers were both sitting on arsenals of thousands literally thousands of nuclear weapons and didn't use them so how does it all end well you're right I mean is there such a thing as the FUSD in trap as um as Graeme Allison so brilliantly explain that concept it's um um do fuses wrote about the pelian war in which Athens fought Sparta and argues that they had to fight because they were of equal um and competing strength and power and so you see uh sometimes in history Rising power like willine Germany Imperial Germany in 1914 taking on the established powers of Britain and France um because it can because it's it's sort of forced to by an ineluctable um uh drive but the the invention of nuclear weapons I think that film Oppenheimer shows this very well especially that last scene um should have essentially stopped all that should have um ensured that the uh FUSD and trap was something we could all Escape because we know that it ends ultimately in mutually assured destruction so the key thing is again and again to uh ensure that when President XI wakes up in the morning he thinks is today the day I'm going to invade Taiwan and he looks at the powers um and the deterrence that uh the United States and others have put forward and he always every single day says know and so this is goes back to your original point about the importance of deterrence in there is nothing that is um inherent in the human condition that wants to commit suicide and therefore we should be able to get through this Andrew Roberts co-author of conflict the evolution of warfare for 1945 to Ukraine now working on the paperback edition thank you for uncommon knowledge the Hoover institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter [Music] Robinson

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 107,449

Keywords: uncommon knowlege, andrew roberts, ukraine, russia, israel, gaza, hamas, history, world history, hoover institution, new book, book talk, peter robinson

Id: AF5m17OdC6o

Length: 63min 42sec (3822 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024