Battlegrounds w/ H.R. McMaster | International Security: Past Lessons and Projections for the Future

America and other free and open societies face crucial challenges and opportunities abroad that affect security and prosperity at home this is a series of conversations with guests who bring deep understanding of today's Battlegrounds and creative ideas about how to compete overcome challenges capitalize on opportunities and secure a better future I am HR McMaster this is battlegrounds [Music] on today's episode of Battlegrounds our focus is on the United Kingdom and its Armed Forces Our Guest is General Sir Nick Carter an accomplished strategic leader with over 45 years of military experience General Carter served as the United Kingdom's chief of the defense staff from 2018 to 2021 in this position Carter led the British Armed Forces as the most senior uniformed military adviser to the British prime minister as chief of the defense staff General Carter oversaw the British Army's response to the Syrian Civil War the covid-19 pandemic and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan General Carter joined the British army at age 18. as part of the royal Green Jackets infantry regimen he served in West Germany during the end of the Cold War Northern Ireland during the troubles and in Bosnia and Kosovo during NATO peacekeeping operations Carter served multiple tours in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013. and commanded British forces in Basra Iraq in 2004. he helped design the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan which were humanitarian reconstruction and growth projects that aimed to establish stability and security during the 2009 surge of troops in Afghanistan General Carter commanded 55 000 NATO troops in 2013 Carter became Deputy commander of the International Security assistance force isaf isaf was a U.N mandated NATO mission to train Afghan National Security Forces to rebuild crucial government institutions provide security in Afghanistan and ensure that it would never again serve as a safe haven for terrorists we welcome General Carter today to discuss his experiences in the British military the war in Ukraine the implications of the U.S and Coalition withdrawal from Afghanistan and the future of warfare General Sir Nick Carter welcome to Battlegrounds it's so great to see you it's great to be with you Rachel thank you you know I mean since we've retired the world's going to hell so you know General Nick I mean I I I I'd love to talk with you uh you're really first about uh you know about geostrategic Dynamics but first I want to thank you for your leadership over the years it was a real privilege to serve alongside you in places like Afghanistan uh you know and to visit you and and your and your and your division at York I just got we have a lot of fond memories of of your uh leadership and service over the years and they will thank you and um you know I've followed your career with great interest and learned a lot from you during the course of the process um and I think the partnership that we've struck up in various Dusty places has been a very productive partnership it has and and yeah of course I know it's been heartbreaking for you to see some of the developments uh in in recent years and and months and and we'll talk about Afghanistan we serve together there uh but I'd like to First just talk to you about kind of the General geostrategic Dynamics as you see them you know the first major war in Europe since World War II was is ongoing uh there's an emerging geostrategic competition with two religious powers on the Eurasian land mass uh some are saying that there's the emergence of what we might call an axis of authoritarians including Russia and China but also Iran who's in the game now uh other countries around the world seem to be sizing up that competition and picking sides and and um and so I just like to ask you how do you understand the world today yes I mean I think I think we've returned to an Era that is probably reminiscent of the 1930s in terms of the level of disorder that we see and the level of instability and I think I put that down to three factors I mean you've mentioned this Global competition between great powers and we're up against now some revisionist Powers with Russia being the acute threat and of course China being in a sense of The Chronic Challenge and of course they've got an axis of clients around them who share their views on what the world order should look like and of course I think also we've seen developments in U.S foreign policy over the course of the last eight years or so and that's had a bearing I think on how that competition is playing out and I think the world is breaking down now in a sense into a framework where you've got three broad groupings of countries you've got those who are pro-west those that we've been talking about who are clearly anti-west and then you've got a lot of undecided or non-aligned who who are sitting there I think waiting to be influenced and of course those are countries a bit like India Indonesia yeah maybe Malaysia perhaps even Mexico Brazil South Africa and these are countries that are going to have a large amount of the global Humanity living within them and how they play into this debate I think is interesting and of course I think the second reason is is that you know the multilateral system that you and I've grown up in that rules-based order that the United States was so instrumental in constructing after the 1945 period that is now arguably no longer been respected and is arguably perhaps not fit for purpose so I think we're between orders and then when you then add on the third factor which is the way in which the character Warfare and politics is evolving so rapidly because of technological change and the democratization of of information you've got a cocktail of ingredients that lead to the disorder that we're now seeing well I'd like to talk about each of those I think it's interesting these the three groups of course there's there's a lot of variation within each of these groups but but you know the competitions that are playing out uh really play Out Among these three groups and I'd like to get your assessment of what you think the relative strengths and weaknesses are of these three groupings the the authoritarians you know the West are like-minded free market systems and free and open societies and then and where the competition between the two is largely playing out uh whether it's across you know what mckinder you know called the shatter zones of uh of of the Middle East and in Africa or here in in the Western Hemisphere but when we look at these these authoritarians you called it an acute threat with Russia and a chronic one with China uh how do you assess their trajectory and and their relative strengths and weaknesses I mean I think if you look for the slightly longer term I mean Russia is undoubted a declining power um not least because of demography but also I think because where it's money comes from which essentially is about fossil fuels that is something it's not going to endure forever so when you see a popular shrinking like the population is shrinking in Russia I think you know there are obvious longer term vulnerabilities there but the next 10 years are going to be difficult we can talk in a minute about how the war in Ukraine might play out but however it plays out Russia is going to be a factor in that equation and of course China is also confronted with some headwinds then when you think the working age population in China is going to decline by 10 in the next 10 years and by 30 over the next 30 to 40 years you can't change demography you know unless you're prepared to open your doors to immigration and we all know that China is unlikely to do that um it's somewhat xenophobic perhaps in its approach they've also got some difficult headwinds to cope with and of course they've got a a middle class that wants to be wealthy and wants to be you know productive and everything that goes with it and that's going to be quite a challenging Beast to keep going given that demography and how that demography is going to change um but you know we should be in no doubt that over the course of next 10 to 15 years China and what China is doing with its technology and much of what president Xi Jinping is saying publicly about where he wants China to be placed in the next decade means that there are some serious questions that we need to think about how we're going to answer certainly I think it's a cause for concern I'm thinking of his recent four speeches at the two sessions in which he seemed to be preparing the Chinese people for war and and uh I think when you read more and more of these these primary documents it's a cause for concern it does seem to me to uh Sir Nick that you know that that there is this perception on the part of these authoritarian regimes that we are weak we being you know are are our open Democratic societies and our free market economic systems uh I think the Declaration The Joint declaration that Xi Jinping and and Putin made right before the Beijing Olympics is telling and that really the message was hey you know you're over but I think Putin certainly was in for a surprise you know I think the at least the record is mixed I mean we have we have some would appear to be some cracks uh with I think you know president macron's visit to China may not have been the right message at this time uh but the the the NATO alliance has not only held together but has expanded uh you went through brexit but I think but I think European uh Unity on the issue of Ukraine and now the waking up even on the part of Germany uh for the need to compete with Russia and to take more responsibility for their defense to to do what Donald Trump was asking them to do actually during his presidency to share more to the of the burden and don't give coercive power over your economy to Russia and I think the transatlantic you know relationship in Alliance looks pretty strong to me but you know of course it's never going to be perfect um but we do have kind of a new conscience in Europe to a certain state in Eastern Europe centered maybe on Poland and I think the Scandinavian countries are quite strong what's your overall assessment of us us being the west and we could obviously talk about the relationship with Japan as well and others I mean I think that as you inferred I mean Putin will have been surprised as I suspect will Xi Jinping by the sense of Western cohesion that emerged um during the course of that Invasion last February um and I remember you know sitting around our National Security Council table um in the UK the previous year and whilst we were mentally wargaming what might play out in Ukraine I don't think anybody around that table would have imagined that we'd have been able to do the sort of actions that have followed in March only six months later when he invaded Ukraine you know expelling Russia from the Swift system banking system none of us I think would have imagined we'd ever have gone as far as that and of course we've gone even further in terms of those financial sanctions so I think they will have been surprised by that and of course we now see that China's do what it can to try and reduce its vulnerability to those sorts of approaches that we've done in economic terms but I think what of course they miss is that whilst you know the froth at the top of our politics is populist and looks like we're becoming decadent and we're missing the point the reality is that democracies like ours and particularly United States of America have this infinite ability to be able to reinvent itself and that's what the United States has always done um and you know we as your allies also feel that reinvention every time it occurs and I think in Reinventing you know that is our great strengths and our ability to be able to counter authoritarian regimes that can't reinvent themselves they are essentially fragile Putin's regime is fragile as is Xi jinping's because it's centralized and if you have a centralized relationship with your population like they both do that leads to vulnerabilities and it leads to fragility and we shouldn't lose sight of that and of course the thing that bothers both of those gentlemen are the prospects of color revolutions like we saw playing out as the Soviet Empire came to a conclusion and they mentioned it explicitly in their choice statement just recently as well there'll be no color revolutions we're against those and you know I'm thinking of what Wong on said he was a great American citizen Chinese immigrant to the United States and and and uh founded Wang computers and he basically said that you know democracies we we have our problems but what we have is we have mechanisms for self-correction short of Revolution we have a say in how we're governed and so I guess that's your point we'd look ugly you know from the from the out from the outside uh but I do think that we're more resilient than maybe our adversaries give us credit for and of course Russia looked pretty darn strong you know on Parade you know their military did and and it didn't they didn't actually fight very well in in February of of last year and and it's revealed you know really deficiencies in their military of course the reinvasion of Ukraine has been a galvanizing moment we're talking about the the west but uh but really the support for the ukrainians uh and the degree to which countries are willing to condemn uh the you know the The Invasion and uh and and condemn Russia's aggression has varied across that third grouping of countries you discussed I'm thinking of India and the Emirates and others who we thought we might have we might have uh you know we might have counted on how do you see that competition playing out the competition between the the authoritarian revisionist powers and and you know and and the West broadly playing out in the you know some people call it the global South but it's much more than that it involves the most populous country on Earth India the large democracy on Earth yes I mean I think I think we should um look at ourselves quite closely in the mirror on this particular issue um I mean I travel quite widely in my new life and I go to countries in Africa and also in South Asia and people will say to me what's the difference between what Mr Putin is doing in Ukraine and what you did in 2003 in Iraq and of course superficially you can see why they would ask that question and of course none of them are necessarily prepared to listen hard to the arguments that we might put across as to why Iraq actually is rather different to what took place in Ukraine and then I think if you also look at the way that we probably behave during covid where we made very sure that we'd inoculated our population three or four times over before we perhaps lent into you know what those countries might have needed in terms of vaccinations and everything associated with it you can see why there's a possibly a slightly cynical agenda a slightly cynical view as to our behavior and I think we therefore need to be reflecting on that and I think we need to remind our cells what western soft par was all about and we need to remind ourselves that the values that we espouse and the soft power that flows from those values needs to be given to these countries in a way that genuinely resonates and we need to think about our narrative and until we get that right we are going to have I think not necessarily the strongest hand to play in relation to the relationships we need to have with those sorts of countries and that requires a great deal of thought and I think we underestimate the power of our soft power and how that soft par should be applied globally to achieve that effect and that's what we've got to go back and think hard about I would suggest and I think maybe our greatest Assets in that connection are Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin I mean with uh obviously Vladimir Putin you know really perpetuating these serial episodes of of mass homicide in the Syrian Civil War and you know trying to pose both as arsonist and firemen in the region uh China's predatory lending practices for example and and uh and creation of servile relationships with corrupt governments and I think the more we can pull the curtain back on that and provide you know provide an alternative I think uh to you know to these uh to these various forms of of aggression is important um and and I think we just have not done a good job as you've mentioned in engaging others and and explaining you know really how you know this ideally should not be a choice between you know Washington and Beijing it should be a choice between sovereignty and servitude uh with us obviously being on the side of sovereignty you know in in that choice I'd like to ask you you know beyond soft power how about some good old-fashioned hard power right you know the the um you know the The Invasion uh reinvasion of of Ukraine obviously was not deterred uh I think that the preferred means of deterrence had been the threat of sanctions which turned out to be inadequate there were a number of actions taken in the lead-up to The Invasion pulling both of our our fleets out of the out of the Black Sea um assuring Putin about everything we weren't going to do uh to support uh to support the ukrainians uh and and it failed I think because Putin perceived weakness but could you really uh talk about what you think we should have learned from the reinvasion in terms of what is necessary for deterrence to be effective it's never been foolproof but as we look at really trying to restore playing a role at least in restoring peace and preventing further conflict what should we take away from Ukraine that we can apply more broadly um I mean I absolutely agree with you that soft par needs to be underpinned by hard power and of course and hard power ultimately is the essence of deterrence as we both know um I think that um going back to the point I made at the beginning about the character of warfare evolving um and what has happened during the course of that is that that has blurred the distinctions between peace and war between State and non-state between foreign domestic policy even between virtual and reality and that has given regimes like Mr Putin's regime and for that matter the Chinese regime the opportunity to use new tools tactics and techniques to undermine our way of life by exploiting those gray areas that have come as a consequence of that blurring and those distinctions and of course what that means is that um deterrence becomes harder because if you are engaged in computer network exploitation within the Cyber domain how do you actually deter without actually competing the answer is is that modern deterrence I think increasingly requires countries to compete you can't just sit back on your laurels as it were like this and say I've got this great force that if you do that I'll smack you because actually they ignore that because they've got other ways of undermining our way of life and making the sort of Mischief that they're making and we've seen that repeatedly over the course of the last 15 years with you know American elections being undermined probably the brexit campaign being supported and so on and so forth the anti-fracking movement in Europe to perpetuate dependency on Russian hydrocarbons so I think we need to we need to think a little differently about deterrence and the fact that deterrence actually requires us to compete now that's not easy for Western democracies and it's not easy for a western NATO alliance which has a series of Articles and processes that were designed for a different era you know that the articles in the NATO treaty which say an attack or one as an attack on you've got to nowadays work out what an attack is what is an attack and that is very difficult to do so I think you know the time is right for some serious academic study I would suggest HR uh that people like us probably need to do to work out how you play into a much more demanding strategic context and provide that sense of modern deterrence which will mean that people like Xi Jinping and Putin understand that they cannot get away with it right because the the most recent NATO strategic assessment made some of these points and I think you're writing as the historian Conrad crane has said there are two ways to fight asymmetrically and stupidly right and you hope your enemy picks stupidly like in the 1991 Gulf War for example but they're unlikely to do so and I think that's a lesson of 9 11 as well you know so so I what are your prescriptions I know that you've done quite a bit of work in innovating uh in in the defense space uh especially when you're a chief of the defense staff and and actually chief of the army when when you actually formed a brigade a brigade that was aimed at really competing more effectively in the information space for example and you exercise that Brigade to a certain extent during covid and I think probably learned some lessons from that but what do you think are the are the concrete adaptations uh that the countries can take to integrate all all elements of National Power to compete against this kind of what some people call hybrid Warfare or aggression that operates below the threshold of what might elicit a military response I mean I think the key word you use there is this word integration and certainly from a military perspective I think the Acme of modern military skill is the ability to be able to integrate across the traditional domains of land air and Maritime but also space and cyber and bring the information piece into it as well and if you can do that then not only will you be able to bring capability to bear at any point in time you'll be able to do it throughout the levels of command from the Strategic through the operational down to the Tactical and vice versa and that I think you know takes what you and I I would have described as jointry to another level and I think that's probably the Acme in military skill now but the challenge for it of course is to make it happen not only requires um human beings who are very skilled and able to be comfortable with decentralization and the chaos that comes with decentralization it also requires technology to be in the right place and I think we all know that the future is going to be about information Centric Technologies but picking the right combination of those Technologies is immensely challenging and we're not good at predicting the future our procurement processes are not very effective at dealing with the technology and the pace of that technological change but I think there's some interesting lessons that are coming out of Ukraine I mean it's always dangerous to learn lessons a year into a into a war or a campaign but I do think the way in which the ukrainians are exploiting and managing data is an extremely good example of what the future probably portends over the next five to ten years right I think also from Ukraine you can learn a lesson that the new doesn't completely replace the old that are often I mean almost always they've had they have to be combined and you see quite a bit of of kind of just blunt use of force right massive you know artillery uh you support use of use of artillery to the extent that we're almost running out of it you know um the importance of protected mobility and mobile protected Firepower and tier to layered air defense and long-range Precision strike and now of course with uh you know probably A Renewed Ukrainian offensive engineering capabilities you know integrated into maneuver formations and this is what we understand and understood across our career as combined arms air ground operations now augmented quite heavily with electronic warfare drones operations in cyberspace in the information domain what do you think that that the experience in Ukraine portends for future War and what would your priorities be today as chief of the defense staff um or as as Secretary of Defense here in the United States to really make sure that forces are prepared to deter conflict uh but if necessary to fight and win in future War I mean I think you know the the one thing that we've reminded ourselves about repeatedly over the course of the last year or so looking into Ukraine as the nature of War doesn't change it is essentially a political interaction between human beings it's visceral it's violent and it's bloody and it's very very challenging in terms of the friction that it brings with it and I think we've been repeatedly reminded of that throughout the throughout the last year or so um but the character of warfare is evolving and I think the extent to which the ukrainians are innovating the extent to which they've brought together the whole Enterprise of their society in order to be able to fight for their existence has been really rather remarkable and most impressive to see and of course they've used lots of things that are essentially available in your normal daily life whether that's 3D printing in back rooms that are creating small drones that are then brought forward by a girl on a bicycle too you know the soldier in the front line trench or whatever it might be they are I think demonstrating the level of Ingenuity that comes when you're faced by an existential challenge in the way that they obviously are so I think there's some good lessons there there but I think going back to my point about data I think how they have exploited data the way in which they have used commercial satellites provided by an American in order to be able to draw really quite interesting and real-time information from that Battlefield then to be able to translate that information into intelligence that can inform a targeting process in real time then to apply Uber Technologies to the way in which they've maneuvered their artillery pieces around that Battlefield in order to be able to strike high value targets and be selective about it I think is an indication of what our armed forces in the future again have to be able to do now the point I made a moment ago about our rather clunky procurement processes these are not going to enable that I mean what you crane has demonstrated because it's had to is you've got to be very agile in the way that you develop these things you know it is a laboratory in which they are experimenting and our militaries need to find a way of getting over the processes that we currently have in order to be able to embrace the level of technological experimentation and development that they're showing on the ground yeah and with a sense of urgency right and yeah of course we we uh served both of us in in Germany during the Cold War and and then saw the changes in European security that occurred after the end of the Cold War through the 1990s but then in the 2000s it seemed as if we failed to adapt to what was a growing and more discernible threat you know from a resurgent Russia or or a Russia that had designs to to threaten uh European security we continued um you know to reduce defense budgets uh European nations in particular and I know that it was difficult for you to see the severe reductions in the British army for example I mean Germany I think for all intents purposes you know unilaterally disarmed I mean you know the the bundesphere that we know is gone you know and uh and now there seems to be a recognition that that has to be reversed what what are what are your what are your predictions about about follow through on that on the ability to to not only to modernize more rapidly and have a sense of urgency about as you're mentioning but also maybe to increase the capacity of the Armed Forces under the recognition that they're in that it turned out to be inadequate for deterrence and maybe needed in the future and of course we hope not but but it does take really forces that have sufficient capability and capacity can operate for ample scale and duration to win and to demonstrate that to to a potential adversary so they don't have the temerity for aggression I mean I think you know it is it will be quite challenging uh notwithstanding the sort of the moment of the Ukraine war to reverse Decades of decline you know the peace dividend has been spent many times over already by European countries and two degree United States as well and someone has to reverse that and I think the thing that is most worrying is the extent to which European militaries are Hollow um because it's not the stuff you can necessarily see on display which matters leopard two tanks or attack helicopters what it might be it's what you've got in your ammunition bunkers it's what you've got in your locker of precision missiles and weapon systems it's all of that stuff from your car parts and exactly and and that of course we've seen in Spades in terms of from Russia's perspective as well I mean they're they were much more Hollow than any of us might have imagined but how you reverse that hollowness and how you therefore give yourself the basic resilience to be genuinely ready that is going to take a very long time to change not least because our defense Industries are not tooled to be able to do this and I was reading an article in the London Daily Telegraph last week about the U.S army Scranton ammunition Factory which makes 155 ammunition and at maximum capacity at the moment they can turn out 11 000 shells a month well the reality of course is that the ukrainians are going through seven thousand seven thousand shells a week well you know don't turn to Europe because our industry is certainly not going to be able to backfill any of that and it's those sorts of things which are dull and there aren't many votes in it which are are going to have to be addressed if we are serious about providing the sort of hard-powered deterrence which is going to be necessary against a Russia that's not going away anytime soon right and to generate the will to make those Investments and and um I think it's obviously the lead time as you're mentioning is machine tools for this particular plant and but then there's supply chain complications as well and uh well I hope you know I hope that we do generate the will but it remains to be to be seen uh in the US as you know there are more Investments now in the defense industrial base but they're inadequate in terms of in terms of the scale and once you give up you know capacity uh it's very tight it's very difficult to build it back you know I off you know you're mentioned already that war really is a contest of Wills and I and I when I when I look at really the the stain of 2021 of August 2021 and and the uh you know the humiliating withdrawal from Kabul uh I see that as as mainly a failure of will you know I we uh we heard for many years oh there's no military solution to Afghanistan but you know the Taliban came up with one and and they came up with one in large measure because I think we we engaged in self-defeat uh based on self-delusion in a number of areas you know the the Taliban were not terrorists you know there's a bold line between them and the haqqani network and Al Qaeda and so forth that the Taliban was really Taliban 2.0 you know though uh that they would be more benign and and respectful of of Human Rights and women's rights in in particular or that the Taliban uh you know was was uh was going to uh to somehow share power you know and and I think this all to me at the time seemed like a pipe dream uh but when we prioritized withdrawal over the achievement of an aim consistent with what brought us into that war to begin with back all the way back in 2001. um I think that that's when the writing was on the wall for what we saw was the humiliation but I just like to ask you if if you know if deterrence really is capability times will is our will Zero or can we rekindle our will and then and then also um reconstituted uh and what's your view of of that you know that difficult uh what what we witnessed in the Afghan people experienced um in terms of the the you know the the withdrawal and surrender I would say surrender withdrawal from Afghanistan yeah I mean I it was an extraordinarily painful moment and I was um I was the the CDs at the time so the equivalent of the chairman sitting over the top of it um and and I had spent you know about three years of my life in the country and many other years of my life devoted to the country so for me it was a very personally painful period to see that happen and I very much agree with you I mean I think it indicated a failure of political will and of course if you put that on top of the way that we performed from 2014 onwards in relation to Putin's invasion of Crimea Small Wonder that um he thought he could get away with what he's doing in Ukraine now um because it does demonstrate that extent to which you're um prepared to put up for what you really believe in now the it it's nonetheless a very complex question isn't it you know how the Afghan campaign unfolded and I think that you know the strategy that uh you developed when you were a national security advisor was a sustainable strategy and I think if that had been seen through I think it could have been done so at a level which was not only sustainable in terms of human lives but also sustainable in terms of the economics of it um and it's a sadness that didn't happen but I think you mentioned 2001 and of course the reality of all of this is that we know that Wars ultimately end in a conversation and the trick is to make sure that you have an inclusive conversation in order to be able to create an inclusive political solution at the end of that conversation and I think that we thought probably rather hubristically uh back in 2001 that we had defeated the enemy job done um and indeed you'll recall that um Donald Rumsfeld actually wanted us to leave pretty quickly right after I mean a lot of people remember the mission accomplished speeches of President Bush gave but forget that secretary Rumsfeld was making a very similar speech in Afghanistan that same day saying hey we're out we're out of here and of course you know maybe that would have been the right thing to do looking back on it but if you are going to stay and you are essentially going to get involved in nation bill which is of course what it became then you need to understand the local politics very comprehensively and you need to be very strategically patient in terms of how you're going to develop the country that you're trying to build because going back to when we were talking about democracies the reality of democracies they're based upon sound and solid institutions and when you look at Afghanistan you know we invested a lot of money in trying to build an Afghan Army as a key institution but we didn't invest much effort in building a civil service or in the other institutions that we take for granted in countries like yours and mine so I think you have to look at the whole campaign over a 20-year period to really understand what went wrong in 2021 and whether there was any way back I don't know but I do believe that the sort of things that you were talking about doing in 2017 were probably the the things that might have made a difference and even when we put those in place I wonder if they were too late I mean I think that you know this short-term approach to what was a long-term problem in Afghanistan actually lengthened the war and made and made it more costly and and I hope that we're just not learning the exact diametrically you know or the the opposite lessons the wrong lessons from from the war which is like hey we'll just never have to do that again and it just reminds me of the army I came into after Vietnam when the officers with whom I interacted as a Cadet at West Point never spoke of you enough and we were just never going to have to do that again that being a counterinsurgency and of course uh that the latter parts of our career were spent fighting counter surgeons I remember my my father telling me that um when he went through the Staff College at Camberley as a major in the 1960s World War one was not discussed you didn't talk about it it was a disaster now we all know having studied World War one since then but of course there were some amazingly positive lessons to be learned from that experience not least the 100-day campaign at the end of world war one so I absolutely agree with you I mean there is a there is a risk that we shelve these things and we don't learn and then importantly apply the lessons looking forward to whilst you know I think our politicians that wouldn't want to get involved in an intervention like Iraq or Afghanistan again the reality is that other countries are going to be involved in similar problems to the ones that we encountered in Afghanistan and you know when you go to many African nations now they will need advice on how to deal with Islamic insurgencies and Islamic extremism and the terrorism associated with it and the lessons that we have learned from our experience in Afghanistan will be useful to them to be applied in order to try and deal with their problems absolutely and I think that we have to avoid this false dilemma that you know what Afghanistan was in Denmark so there was a theory it didn't need to be Denmark and and I think nation building is a false errand especially if you try to nation building your own image but the consolidation of gains as you know has never been an optional phase you know in in in war unless it's a raid um but I'd like to I'd like to talk with you more about the writing that you're doing and the thinking that you're doing about about future War uh what are you what are you doing these days and and how are you organizing your thoughts about what you'd like to write and and explain to readers and and audiences about uh about future armed conflict and its relation to politics for example yes and and you know I'm absolutely thrilled to be with you here at Stanford and um indeed the director's just asking if I'll do another year so I'm really delighted about that um because you know what what better place to be able to get your thinking in order and what better basis of talent to draw upon to develop that thinking in the right direction and for me I think what I want to study perhaps it's less about the technology of future War a lot of people have written about artificial intelligence and drones and robots and all this sort of good stuff what I'm much more interested in is the political dimension of warfare um and what I would propose to do I think is to is to write a book probably in two parts a part where I would draw upon my 20 years experience in Afghanistan and then a part where I would draw probably the last 10 years of my military career where as a chief of staff and then ultimately as the chief of the defense staff one was engaged in the um challenge of modern deterrence and the threat that was coming from Russia particularly and the challenge that was coming from China and how one approaches that sense of deterrence in the context of political Warfare and everything that that stands for and how one then sought in a sense to try and get the Armed Forces to understand its role in a subordinate capacity to all of the instruments of statecraft that are necessary to Prevail in those circumstances on The Afghan thing I mean I um I mean I in many ways it probably quite tried to say it but I think that the class fits in dictum that war is an extension of politics is slightly reversed in Afghanistan and probably encounter insurgencies more generally where actually what you're really doing is armed politics and ironically in a way the politics is an extension of the war and what you have to do I think is to understand how you can therefore use tools often short of kinetic lethal Tools in order to be able to have the sorts of conversations that probably lead to stability and how that all plays through and much of what we achieved in southern Afghanistan from 2010 onwards was an essential political campaign rather more than a military campaign and I think that angle is something that is will be useful to countries that are struggling with that sort of Insurgency at the moment I think that's a really important Insight I mean I think was was necessary in Afghanistan was to harden Afghanistan against the regenerative capacity of the Taliban which led mainly across the border in Pakistan uh and to do that you had to strengthen government institutions and functions enough to uh to be able to withstand it and of course I think when we were talking to the Taliban in Doha we maybe ought to be we should have been talking to Afghans and and forcing Afghans to talk to one another to become stakeholders in in strength of institutions rather than many of them who would become stakeholders of State weakness as they pursued their own kind of particular stick agendas but as you know that you know that old Afghan joke gold came to Afghanistan several hundred years ago and saw the nature of the problem and he said to them don't do anything to like come back and of course that is always the challenge getting I I found in my many years in Afghanistan it was trying to get the Afghans to earn the problem and it was very difficult sometimes because I think they thought that you know you westerners knew the answer to all these problems but actually it was their answers that we really needed well you know what says for me is uh I would have been fine with this just leaving but I I was really disconcerted about the degree to which we seem to side with the Taliban against the Afghan government on our way out you know delivering blow after below like not having the Afghans with historian negotiations forcing them to release you know 5 000 and then 2 000 more prisoners withdrawing our Eris and intelligence support not actively targeting the Taliban removing our contractor support I mean um it seemed as if you know we were siding with the Taliban against the Afghan government I would and I would hear these complaints about you know Ashraf ghani who we both know very well and how would you say okay do you prefer habitual akinzada I mean really so so uh I think that was what was most disheartening for for me and uh it's going to take me a while obviously to get to get over this but uh but of course the Afghans are really the ones bearing the brunt of the consequences uh you know what do you think we we should be doing now uh in terms of what we've learned from everything we've discussed and that's why be that kind of the wrap up conversation here we've seen we've got the first major war in Europe since World War II we see an increasingly aggressive China I mean from bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death in the Homeland Frontier to trying to own the ocean and the South China Sea to threatening Taiwan uh we see us really uh Partnerships weakening with critical reliable Partners in Saudi Arabia and the emiratis and the Chinese extending their influence into the region this this peace deal between you know or not peace deal really it's really a re-establishment of of relationship between you know between uh Iran and and Saudi Arabia uh you know what can we learn from these recent experiences but what can we do about it what should we be prioritizing now we being you know the United States the UK Europe Japan uh Australia like-minded countries yes I mean I am I mean I think that um you'll recall George Cannon and that George can amendment when he sent The Long Telegram back in 1947 to the state department from Moscow making the point that he didn't think we will be able to live in peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union in the direction it was going and of course that led to the treatment Doctrine and the Truman Doctrine became a bipartisan Doctrine and of course we all as NATO allies got in behind it and of course history would judge that it was very successful as the cold war came to an end at the end of the 1980s and and I think in a way we we almost need another moment where we uh recognize the nature of the problem and as a collective group of like-minded Nations we work out what the strategy should be to deal with the problem and of course you're I mean very dangerous to use class fits twice in a conversation but I'm getting to use them again what do you expect from Watchdog generals this is as my daughter would say hashtag predictable but I think one of the things he did say was that the first um requirement on a on a leader or a commander is to work out what sort of War he's going to you're going to prosecute now I'm not suggesting we're going to war I hasten to add and we've got to do everything we can to avoid that happening but we need to work out what it is the problem and what we're going to do to solve that problem collectively and I my bet is that's going to require strategy and strategy is a word that policy makers don't necessarily like having thrown in their faces at the moment and I think it requires us to recognize that so much of the challenge we're up against is a technological Challenge and what China is doing to the world is deliberately putting its technology throughout the world and then what will follow from its technology will be its ideology and that is the challenge that we're up against um and the reality is that people are opening their arms to Chinese technology because it comes with not many strings attached you know this sort of so-called it's a great it's a great deal right yeah this is a great deal and you know and uh and you know you probably know this um Baidu which is their equivalent of of GPS means the Big Dipper you know it's extraordinarily accurate uh and that's the beginning of a city like Nairobi becoming a smart City using Chinese technology to become that smart city and pretty quickly surveillance will follow and what follows with surveillance is the opportunity for governments to behave like authoritarian governments and these are this is the sort of problem we're up against and if we if we don't think about how we're going to help others to avoid getting sucked into that technological dilemma then we've got a problem absolutely I mean the Philippines essentially did it now they're trying to figure out how the hell they get they get you know they uh reduce their their exposure to it well Jones for Nick Carter I can't thank you enough for helping us learn about Battlegrounds critical to our future and and hopefully a future of peace and prosperity and uh and it's just wonderful to have you here at Hoover great to see you thank you so much no well thanks HR it's a great privilege to be here and it's wonderful to be back with you Battlegrounds is a production of the Hoover institution where we advance ideas that Define a free Society for more information about our work to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content please visit hoover.org

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 88,397

Keywords: General Nick Carter, Battlegrounds, H. R. McMaster, Hoover Institution, Hoover Institute, atomic bomb, Japanese Americans, Axis populations, Mike Smith, World War II, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, China, China conflicts, affiliations, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Ukraine, NATO, democracy, authoritarianism, future army, Afghan withdrawal, strategic patience, military integration, US Withdrawal, Ukraine War, Second Cold War, goodfellows, Democracy, Alliance, Afghanistan

Id: nyd10I4MMXw

Length: 45min 28sec (2728 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023