Counterinsurgency with John A. Nagl - Conversations with History

this program is presented by University of California television like what you learn visit our website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest uctv programs [Music] welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Chrysler of The Institute of international studies Our Guest today is Dr John Nigel who is the 2015 Nimitz lecturer on the Berkeley campus a soldier scholar and educator he is the ninth Headmaster of the haford school awarded two bronze stars for service in Iraq Dr Nagle retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel he is the author of knife fights A Memoir of modern war and theory and practice and learning to eat soup with a knife counterinsurgency lessons from M Malaya and Vietnam he was on the writing team that produced the US Army Marine greine Corps counterinsurgency Field Manual Dr Nogle was a road scholar and most recently the inaugural manura research professor at the UN at the US Naval Academy Dr Nagle was previously the president of the center for a new American Security in Washington DC John Welcome to our program it's delightful to be here where were you born and raised uh right here uh born at Mar Island Power Station Nuclear Station in Leo California my dad was a Submariner teaching electrical engineering nuclear power right down the street and looking back how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world my father was a very good electrical engineer there were right answers to every question my mom a registered nurse mother of six sainted already and she's not dead yet um Mom understood people and empathy and human emotions which were all um foreign territory a foreign country to my dad and I like to think I got Dad's analytics and Mom's empathy and and was it inevitable that you would uh look toward a military career or did that come later no it came uh came later I was I've got a 13-year-old son at home and I was not a lot older than he is when I started asking my dad where I should think about going to college he was first generation College he'd gone to Marquette uh on a naval Roc scholarship and he was enormously impressed by the Naval Academy graduates he met while while serving in the Navy and so recommended Annapolis to me and when you apply to one of the serviceis they encourage you to apply to all of them real very similar kids at each of the schools and and I was was lucky enough to get into the Coast Guard Academy into West Point and into Anapolis and my dad took me on a tour of those schools my junior year in high school and when I got to West Point I immediately fell in love with the place I just felt home and and there are few places in the world that I love more than the United States Military Academy at West Point it was a great choice for me what was most gratifying at your about your education at West Point what what stands out uh as to what they got right in terms of eding educating you as a soldier so uh West Point a remarkable institution and I was enormously forunate I I came to West Point intending to be an electrical engineer like my father but I fell under the sway of a man named Dan Coffman Dan was a Vietnam veteran armed cavalryman and Vietnam wounded um West Point graduate himself class of 1968 so exactly 20 years older than I was and Dan was the chair of the international relations program at West Point and he very quickly convinced me that I needed to drop my electrical engineering Ambitions and become a political science stist and the department he introduced me to the department of social sciences at West Point uh is the stuff of Legend and and I was taught by Giants among them uh then Captain David Petraeus and and so the the the the officers the mentors who didn't just educate me in politics and political science and and Military strategy and the history of War but also really inspired me to to see my calling as Service to America and and um gave me a love inspired in me or or nurtured in me a love of learning my my mom I think U um gave me some of that as well but it really flowered under the tutelage of these people and and ultimately West Point taught me how to answer questions that was an incomplete education but it was a very very good foundation and and this uh inspiration that came from the social Sciences department at West Point LED you to to seek a road scholarship and which you acquired and then went to Oxford to do an advanced uh degree that that that's all true I should uh I should give some credit of course to the Jesuits who had me before West Point and and who um taught me to be to Aspire to be a man for others and and also gave me some some analytics and some rigor and I'm thinking of my father hindelang my Latin teacher um I won the Latin prize at crap I was enormously proud of that and and and so the the Jesuits and uh West Point Dan Kaufman and the social department and then now for something entirely different Oxford University a very unstructured program and and so if West Point taught me how to find the answers to questions Oxford taught me to spend real time thinking about what questions were worth asking and and at Oxford I fell under the sway of another Vietnam veteran a remarkable man named Bob O'Neil who was the chle professor of the history of War at All Souls College Oxford which I think Remains the coolest job title on the planet uh so you you uh went to Oxford as a road scholar got an MA but then you went into service in in the first Iraq war almost immediately so I left Oxford I think in in June of of 1990 and was was on orders to the first cavalry at forthood Texas to become a tank platoon leader and and was supposed to arrive there in September I believe I was getting some refresher training on tanks first going back falling back into the hands of the army uh which which thought I might have lost my Army Edge a little bit while drinking warm beer at Oxford uh and and in the interim uh while that was all happening Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990 so as as a as a soldier now you are fighting uh a war which is very much conventional war and so you you have that experience under your build talk briefly about that very very much the war that the Army wanted to fight that the Army had been planning and preparing to fight for for literally Generations so it was a a conventional tank on tank clash in a desert uh almost exclusively devoid of civilians politics stopped the war started and then politics picked up again after the war was over we shot the tanks that didn't look like ours it was um physically difficult and and there was Math and Science involved and getting the artillery to strike at the right time and in the right place and and so that the airplanes could fly in so that they could do their business and then the tanks could do their business so it was it was not easy by any means but it was pure Army pure war of of the kind that that Napoleon would have understood and and approved of uh you're story is one of a remarkable balancing of scholarship and soldiering and uh let's before we talk about you're coming back to Oxford and the and the book that you wrote uh let's talk briefly about that what are the skills and temperament involved in in balancing these two uh different uh modalities of existence thinking being scholarship on the one hand and and being a soldier and fighting Wars on the other and and and so I would describe myself as uh for a soldier I think I was a very good scholar and for a scholar I'm a pretty good soldier right so so um I I I I hope I get the balance about right I wouldn't say that that I was uh exceptionally good at either but the combination is is I think rare and and somewhat interesting um I I I'm uh fortunate I guess to to be um reasonably robust to enjoy um Sports and and being a soldier is an outdoor Sport and and it involves building teams of people who share a common vision and and who uh make up for each other's weaknesses and enhance each other's strengths and work together to to to reach a common goal and and I enjoy all those things I like building teams I like inspiring people uh I I believe in in what the Army does and and so I I think I was able to do that reasonably well uh my scholarship is of a very practical nature and I I I think um the electrical engineer the analytics that I got from my father never really went away and and so when when you read my doctoral dissertation for instance which is which which I I would guess we're about to talk about you you can see um a a very cause and effect um almost mechanical understanding of how um societies form governments do their business Wars are conducted and and and so I I I I I think that the balance uh the combination of the two different skill sets and the two different perspectives is probably reasonably rare so so you go back to Oxford to work under uh Professor O'Neal again and as if he hadn't suffered enough that's right and uh you you then chose in your dissertation to focus on Insurgency and and talk a little about the picking of that topic and and uh the analysis you used so so I actually have to go back in time to do that I'm afraid so almost exactly a year after Desert Storm a my first war a great little war where we dismantled the Iraqi Army we turned it from the fourth largest in the world to the second largest in Iraq in a period of 100 hours and and I I as I reflected on that experience in the aftermath of that war I I had the opportunity to to almost EX a year later conduct a pretend War a training exercise at the Army's National Training Center in Fort Iran California and and we were preparing for another tank battle just like the one we'd fought in Desert Storm but we never got to fight that fight because during the night a band of guerillas insurgents came out out of the mountains and killed every one of our tanks with with light anti-tank weapons and with artillery fire with mortar fire and and and so I reflected on these two combat experiences is one of them real Combat uh the other simulated combat in in which the outcomes had been completely different and I I recognized that we were really really good at destroying other enemy tank armies but almost completely useless when confronted by confronted by insurgents terrorists gorillas who who fought Us in ways we didn't expect and so when the Army gave me the chance to to to go back to Oxford to get my PhD to make that sacrifice for a great nation uh I decided to look not at the kind of War we were really really good at on tank warfare but the kind of war that we were bad at because I was convinced that our enemies would not walk into our strengths I thought that they would attack us at our weakest point and and the good news is I was right and the bad news is I was right and so you you chose as your dissertation topic uh this question of uh counterinsurgency comparing the uh British experience in Malay which later became Malaysia and the American experience in Vietnam and uh I'm I'm intrigued by the the social science model you used to to explore this material so talk briefly about that in other words you you came to look at the US Army uh as a learning organization and and wound up not giving it good grades in comparison with the British talk little about that model and then what you saw so so the the interesting thing to me about the Malayan emergency in the Vietnam war they'd been compared before um but but um in in both cases an army that was organized designed trained and equipped to fight another Army a mirror image Force found itself confronting a Guerilla an Insurgent an enemy uh which it couldn't find often and and and to fight a kind of War for which it was completely unprepared by temperament by equipment by training by organization and and so the challenge of adapting an organization literally Under Fire to do something it hadn't been designed to do struck me as a really interesting leadership and and and organizational Challenge and and as I tried to to find a new lens with which to examine these two cases which had been compared before I I Came Upon organizational learning theory which looks at how organizations learn and adapt to changes in their environment and I I found it to be a a fascinating uh perspective from which to to view a two very dissimilar in many ways Wars but but both but Wars that presented the British Army in Malay and the American Army in Vietnam with similar challenges they really had to remake themselves while in combat and I thought the British army was far more successful at doing that in Malaya than was the American Army in Vietnam and and before we talk about uh this case study of C Insurgency which is the core of the book uh what can we talk a little about about the Army and its failings as a learning organization what what what what variables do you identify uh because you're you're uh it's uh it's tough love uh as you criticize the Army but but let's understand that so the the critical independent variable I I decided that explained the difference and outcomes that one Army was able to learn and adapt in time and the other was not was the organizational culture of the two institutions and I think that that affects whether organizations are able to learn how effectively how quickly they're able to learn and and the idea is that every organization has a culture that is a persistent patterned way of thinking about the central problems that the organization is designed to confront to deal with and and the the British army has a very long Colonial past doesn't have lots of material resources has has to really has to to to make do with what it has available to it and and has as a result I think a greater uh fingers Spitz geu for for uh um societies and cultures and I I think the long history of the British Empire has a lot to do with that I think the regimental tradition of the British army uh the smaller uh Army in which everyone knows each other and and in which class plays a real role among British officers which which in in some ways allows senior officers to encourage innovation in those Junior to them it doesn't matter that they're smarter necessarily uh the the the the the class structure and the rank structure Remains the American Army very very different um certainly the the uh American army of the the 1950s and the 1960s flush with victory in the second world war um but had all the the advantages and disadvantages of American culture um an excess of of Reliance upon technology and materials the the um US Army uh famous for for almost unlimited Firepower available to it artillery shells as far as the I could see the Great American industrial engine providing every material element of war that the American Army could possibly want but very little of the international relations experience that the British army had um an unwillingness to engage in in politics and and because of um uh the the the absence of the regimental system because of the absence of class structure in American society a much more rigid hierarchy among officers all of which I thought contributed to a failure to innovate and in particular to innovate in the ways required to win a very very political tribal War uh like the one we fought in Vietnam in in your in your newer book which uh uh called Night Fights A Memoir of a modern war in uh in theory and practice uh you mentioned another element which I thought was was interesting which now speaking more generally about the US Army you you say that because we rarely face an adversary we get hooked in a in a way which which becomes stagnant and so when the war comes we're ready to do the old way so uh businesses have the organizational learning theory drawn drawn largely from from business literature and and business thinking and and organizations like businesses uh compete every day for real and and they can tell literally at the end of every day how they're doing in relation to their competitors Dell computer knows every day whether it's it's um uh outselling or not outselling apple and it's not Apple's winning right and and and they know and that gives additional incentives to Dell computer to do things differently to innovate literally every day armies do what they do on a big scale perhaps once a generation and and so they don't have the competitive pressures they don't have the immediate feedback that business do to try to mitigate that problem armies set up training exercises they practice in in a simulated environment but they write their own rules and they devise their own enemy and so in the decade after Desert Storm after my first war uh I I engaged repeatedly in training exercises in which we we fought Mirror Image armies tank armies with artillery and air power and and we fought simulated World War II battles simulated Desert Storm battles over and over again despite the fact that no one in the world had those kind of resources or in their right mind would ever choose to fight us that way and and so in business you won't get it that far wrong or you'll go out of business in the Army writes its own tests and can go very very very far wrong and that's what happened to the American Army in the decade after Desert Storm so you're you're dissertation uh has an interesting title and you should tell us what where that title comes from learning to eat soup with a knife counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam uh where does the title come from and then tell us about uh the the mechanisms by which the Army forgot how to fight Insurgency mhm so um the the title comes from an observation from TE Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia who led a band of Arab gorillas during the first world war and he actually felt sorry for the enemy he was fighting against uh he he said uh for them we're a vapor we We rise up out of the sand congeal strike and dissolve back into the sand they're like a blind boxer they could kill us if they could only find us for them war on rebellion was messy and slow like eating soup with a knife and and I read that phrase and instantly knew that I had the title of my dissertation it was truly a Eureka moment for me I happened to be in the bathtub when I when I was reading Seven Pillars of wisdom as one does at Oxford and and and um this I was doing this I was was reading in the bathtub in 1995 or so the middle of of the Army's lost decade so after the collapse of the Soviet Union after the defeat of the Iraqi Army in Desert Storm when the world was changing dramatically the threats the United States faced were changing from State on St State thre threats to irregular warfare threats but the Army just kept on preparing to fight other conventional armies and and it did so I think in in large consequence as a result of the long Vietnam hangover a after Vietnam uh the Army was so burned by the experience of losing a counterinsurgency campaign that it it decided it was never going to fight that kind of War again Colin Powell uh um uh the great uh chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff l his name to along with Casper Weinberger the Secretary of Defense to the Powell Weinberger Doctrine which was a set of rules governing when the United States would intervene which essentially precluded us from ever fighting a Vietnam kind of counterinsurgency campaign again and and so when Insurgency and terrorism erupted as the primary threat to the United States uh starting I would argue as early as evident it should have been evident to us as early as 1993 with the first bombing of the World Trade Center certainly should have been evident to us in in 2000 with the the attack on the USS coal um asymmetric Warfare was rearing its ugly head but we continued preparing to fight other armies despite the fact that there was no conceivable way uh any of those armies would choose to fight us that way and and as a researcher now a scholar doing a dissertation at Oxford you you you uh your your your progress in that research uncovers this these wow moments where you discover there are certain texts that were written by the French the British uh and and even some analysis u in the US but but all of it really suppressed a in in the learning process of soldiers in in the various acmy and in in the training schools and and so uh the the nothing nothing I write is is original like like like my title which I stole from TE Lawrence my ideas about counterinsurgency are stolen from authors like David galula uh Sir Robert Thompson um um so so uh and and and almost all of the good writing on counterinsurgency comes from soldiers who have practiced it uh uh who who um have lived the the bitter grind that is a counterinsurgency campaign who understand that what armies want to do charge gloriously on across a field of open battle in the sunshine uh with the with the Cannons uh in the background and the the Cavalry guide on snapping in the breeze that that is not the real business of the vast majority of solding most of it is is what ruard Kipling called The Savage Wars of Peace small Wars on the fringes of Empire against enemies who won't fight us conventionally who fight us as assassins and gorillas and this is something that Americans ought to understand because this is how we became a country we fought the Red Coats the the the British Empire the greatest power in the world and we fought them as terrorists and insurgents and we did not fight according to the rules of the of of warfare conventionally accepted at the time and the Brits complained that they were fighting against an uncivilized tribe that didn't follow the rules of warfare and we said you're right but we won so so we have no excuse for not knowing how to fight these kind of Wars galula told us how to do it Robert Thompson taught us how to do it Edward Lansdale an American uh um uh taught us how to do it a bright shining lie Neil shien's wonderful book uh about um the Great American counterinsurgent in Vietnam the the literature was there the evidence was there that these were the kind of Wars we were going to fight but they weren't the kind of Wars we wanted to fight and and so we studiously focused on what we wanted to do not on what was actually there in front of us and as a scholar you you finished your dissertation and you had trouble finding a Publishers I understand I I I literally couldn't get uh soup published um I I got rejection letters for in the in the late 1990s from very good University presses asking me why I was studying a subject uh that that had no relevance to Modern National Security Affairs and and and and and asking me why I didn't study something with contemporary relevance and that didn't change until after the Attacks of September 11th made it clear that Insurgency and terrorism were back with a vengeance and so you finally found a a Prager as a publisher but but it was a limited circulation book and so so so Justus this side of a vanity press yeah so so at then begins your long Odyssey to to take an idea which uh uh you've worked through in your dissertation drawing on these other sources and and change actually the Army's thinking uh about the war so so uh what was that I mean that took a lot of guts right I mean or was it that you really believed it and and you were committed to the to to being a good soldier and you had been to war and had a sense of what might be coming uh so I I I certainly had a sense of what might be coming and again the good news is I was right and the bad news is I was right um I have to go back a little bit further to my decision to go back to Oxford to to to write the book that became soup and and I just commanded a cavalary troop in Germany and done reasonably well at it and and the Army wanted me to either become the aid to Camp to the Commanding General of the first Infantry Division or to command a second larger unit and and and and those would be the the typical decisions made by an officer in my position who wanted to become a general and and I wanted to go back to Oxford to to study counter Insurgency to study Warfare and and to earn my PhD and I did so against the express very explicit advice of my Branch detailer who told me that by doing so I was taking myself out of contention for General officer stars and I told him that if if studying my profession and learning about my profession at one of the world's great universities meant that I was not qualified to to be a senior leader in my profession my profession had some problems and I was willing to take that risk so so I I for For Better or For Worse I I I've been pigheaded for a long time uh but but during my studies of of uh Insurgency and terrorism and counterinsurgency and and obser in what was going on around me with the the uh World Trade Center uh bombing of 1993 with the coal bombing which happened while I was writing my Master's thesis at the command and general staff college at Fort lenworth Kansas on asymmetric threats to US National Security I did that over over the course of 2000 I finished in June 2001 uh W with with a paper called hitting us where we don't expect it asymmetric threats to US National Security uh to the year 2020 uh which argued that we weren't going to see this kind of enemy but we were very very certainly going to see this kind of enemy that was coming soon and again the good news is I was right and the bad news is I was right I I I was um primed I think to um experience the kind of war that I've been predicting for a decade at that point firsthand and and in this journey as a gadfly uh can you identify one or two turning turning points in I mean you went back to Iraq uh uh once after the invasion and uh so your PR what what you were doing in practice as a soldier confirmed your thinking absolutely absolutely so I I I I thought counterinsurgency was going to be hard I I titled my book on it learning to eat soup with a knife which doesn't sound like a vacation what I found out when I had to do it myself was it was Far Far harder than I'd ever imagined and and intellectually I understood what I wanted to do what I needed to do but every step I wanted to take I knew where I wanted to go but it was as if I was in mud up to my neck and and and every step of the way people I couldn't see were were setting off roadside bombs and and and and firing at us as snipers and putting mines in in in the roads and and uh assassinating the people we were working with to try to build a better Iraq and and so uh over the course of that incredibly difficult year 2003 2004 in alanar Iraq we had had 22 fine young men killed and 150 wounded and earned a valorous unit award and and at the end of the year we we were no further toward building stability and peace in Iraq toward toward St Augustine said the only purpose of a war is to build a better peace and boy were we not building a better peace in Iraq despite the extraordinary efforts and the extraordinary losses we had suffered and and so I I came away from that bitter bitter year of learning in Iraq that the most important Year of My Life um absolutely convinced that we were going to lose and um uh Shattered by the losses we'd suffered and and and by the the the the young men whose whose faces I still see when I'm falling asleep and absolutely determined uh to to try to use my education and my experience to help us do better so so in a in a way your the empathy skills uh that your mother taught you uh and and your ident your your identification your empathy for your fellow soldiers who were being screwed in essence by the the doctrine that was guiding uh the combat you go back to Washington and and your emotions uh uh as you try to change the system I mean talk a little about that because it must have been very frustrating to to realize that the the the the top Commanders the political leaders in Washington didn't get what was going on had no idea and and so one hopes when you're out on point for the nation when when your friends are getting killed and horribly wounded and and and you're you're eating sand you're walking through mud up to your neck all metaphors uh we were literally eating sand um um you hope that someone somewhere has a plan and that this is all part the the part you're seeing doesn't make sense but it's all part of a broader plan that does make sense when you get far enough away and can see the whole thing in perspective and it was unbelievably discouraging to return to a pentagon where the word Insurgency was not allowed to be used by R by by secretary by the Secretary of Defense himself forbid the use of the word Insurgency to describe the Insurgency in Iraq and and if if you don't admit you're an alcoholic you can't kill your alcoholism and if you can't don't admit you're fighting an Insurgency you will never have a counterinsurgency strategy and so we didn't and and uh we were we were absolutely making choices that were making it less likely that we were going to Ed and more and more of our sons and daughters were getting killed and and so I started trying to build a coalition of people who understood that what we were fighting was an Insurgency who understood that there are historical best practices to be used in trying to defeat an Insurgency and who believe that we could do better if we were given the chance for for the benefit of our audience could you give us a a a brief description of what is involved when you understand Insurgency I mean what is your goal and and what do you see so so an Insurgency is an illegal attempt to overthrow a government or change its policies through the use of force counterinsurgency is then all the efforts of a state or a coalition a state and its friends to defeat an Insurgency and and ultimately we we we when we wrote The counterinsurgency Field Manual we said that there are six logical lines of operation six six broad themes in conducting a counterinsurgency there is combat operations against the enemy when you can identify them that's the hard part they are they are fish swimming in the sea of the people to use mous phrase It's hard to figure out who they are uh but but you kill them when you can you capture them when you can there is building host nation Security Forces who are ultimately going to take over the fight for you building the Iraqi and Afghan Armed Forces there is providing good governance to the people giving them uh essential Services providing them with Economic Opportunity and most of all conducting effective information operations to change the minds of the people to convince them that they have a better future if they throw their hand in with the government and its allies with the counterinsurgent forces than if they do that with the insurgents and they can only make that decision if they believe that they are going to be safe and protected and so one of the real pillars of counterinsurgency strategy is very different from conventional military strategy so conventional military strategy says you focus on the enemy you kill or capture the enemy and you win the war counterinsurgency strategy believes that you have to kill and capture the the enemy but understands that to do that effectively first you have to protect the populace a very very different in my eyes far more complicated task and and I'm reminded of what Neil uh what speaker O'Neal said about all politics is local in a way you're suggesting that that all uh counterinsurgency is local all counterinsurgency is local and so it succeeding and it requires a very granular understanding of language and culture and politics ins inside each individual town and developing those language skills and that cultural understanding at at that granular level was a task of many years and we still have not as a nation developed the the language Specialists the culture Specialists the the people who understand the politics the tribal politics of of Iraq and Afghanistan of of Saudi Arabia of Yemen uh to to the extent that we desperately need and and in my last job as as a manura chair at the US Naval Academy this was my focus this was my goal to increase an appreciation for how important that cultural understanding is for success in Modern War so now you're back in the United States and on the one hand uh the public generally is seeing the disaster that Iraq is becoming as we're losing the War uh and you you upon your return uh wind up because I think what's really important here is this set of ideas was drawing strength from not only officers who had served in Vietnam and were learn I'm sorry who had served in Iraq and were learning but also from people in the United States in the military intellectuals who were seeing that this was the wrong course and so over the next couple of years years these people come to know each other they're uh attending conferences together and they are essentially coming up with a set of ideas similar to yours and talk a little about that because there was a an intellectual ferment occurring which is not to be expected from the army that you're describing but which was occurring of by uh on uh by individuals seeing what was going wrong absolutely right and we actually called ourselves an Insurgency we we viewed ourselves as Rebels against the system and and and and consciously use the techniques of Insurgency to try to defeat our own Army and get it to change its way of thinking and and interestingly these people some of the most important uh were were army officers who taught in in the social sciences Department of West Point David Petraeus who had written his doctoral dissertation on Vietnam and the American public reaction to Vietnam Conrad crane who had earned his PhD just down the road at Stanford a historian uh also taught at West Point uh also wrote on Vietnam uh and and uh I was the the the sort of Junior member of the team doctoral dissertation on Vietnam recent combat experience in lanbar and and we found others like us General James Mattis last year's Nimitz lecturer a phenomenal commander my commander uh commander of the first Marine Division in alanar in 2004 uh now in charge of thinking for the Marine Corps the Marine corps's Comm development command his his designated thinker um um and and uh uh external uh brain pack Frank Hoffman a marine uh with a really smart Marine uh who who understood irregular warfare who really coined the term hybrid Warfare and so this group of half a dozen or so of us came together and and uh were absolutely determined even as the war was being lost and being lost rapidly that we needed to do something different and help our army not lose its second consecutive counterinsurgency campaign and and Fortuna intervenes in a to a certain extent in the extense that betrus become is is sent to uh lenworth to to uh uh uh develop a new manual for combat um the story is a little more complicated and and and the the long hand of the social sciences Department of West Point continues so Mike me was was the head of the social sciences department at this time and advisor to the Secretary of the army and and uh uh Dave Petraeus was was by no means Secretary of Defense Don rumsfeld's favorite and Rumsfeld was going to send Petraeus to uh to be the superintendent at West Point a position for which Petraeus was very well qualified but something would have taken him completely out of the wars and and Mike me intervened through through Secretary of the army and and said why don't we send him to lenworth instead lenworth is even farther away from anything that matters than West Point is he he won't be able to do any damage out there and and and of course Mike me one of the insurgents knew that with Petraeus with his if you're going to change the Army Fort lenworth command to Fort lenworth is the place from which you can do it and and Petraeus was not sent to lenworth to write a new counterinsurgency manual far from it we still weren't allowed to use the word Insurgency or counterinsurgency um and in in in and but when uh his his announcement when his appointment to lenworth was announced I recognized the opportunity and pulled aside and said the first thing he needed to do and the most important thing he needed to do was write a new counter Insurgency Manuel he rather dryly said that the thought had crossed his mind too patted me on the head a little bit but said but but since you bring it up get to work Nogle and and and so um uh it it wasn't just good fortune there were there were minations a foot interestingly uh secretary Rumsfeld heard rumors that Petraeus was writing a new counterinsurgency manual he he described it as a new strategy for Iraq he sent one one of his famous snowflakes and and the Army wrote back and said uh nothing to see here boss these aren't the droids you're looking for this is just normal updating of army manuals nothing right don't so so normal um a manual generally takes about five years to get WR but you got we we turned this one in 13 months um we turned the first draft of it in in 6 weeks o over the Christmas holidays 2005 into 2006 and we held a vetting Conference of this draft so we started in November of 2005 in February of 2006 we held a vetting conference at Fort lenworth Kansas that was a whole new thing for the Army there were a hundred people in the room the the the session was co-chaired by Petraeus and by Sarah suul a professor of human rights at the Car Center in in in uh at Harvard University a road scholar a friend of mine now remarkable woman under Secretary of State um working for John KY and and so you've got a a pnik and and and a three star Army General infantryman sitting next to each other vetting an army field manual Army Marine Corps Field Manual in front of an audience of a 100 that includes uh Jim Fallows of of the Atlantic Monthly uh Greg jaffy of the Washington Post he may have still been at the Wall Street Journal then but but some of the best defense policy writers had George Packer from The New Yorker author of The Great Book the Assassins gate and so the most thoughtful some of the most thought thoughtful defense policy writers were in the room on a straight background basis and Petraeus knew right he was seeding the the the these intellectual ideas into the people who are going to popularize them to the American public after this Doctrine was published less than less than a year after that conference so the conference in February of 06 manual published December 15th 2006 and and then uh we moved to Washington and really there's a coup against uh uh uh secretary Rumsfeld uh not a coup there is an election C is too strong there there was a coup shaping up there was there was an extraordinary the the so-called Revolt of the generals so a number of retied retired generals over the course of 2006 uh bitter as I was at the course of the Iraq War convinced that secretary Rumsfeld was not helping um um started to to to to forment an Insurgency and Insurrection uh it didn't it never Rose to the level of cou uh them fighting words uh but but there was certainly pressure on secretary rosfeld but the real driver of change was the the midterm elections of 2006 and and so the American people God bless them figured it out and demanded change right uh uh uh through uh both houses out uh and and both the the House of Representatives and the Senate flipped from Republican to democratic control a a very clear message to President George W bush that he needed to make some changes and needed to make him now and he did he points uh Gates as Secretary of Defense and then in turn Petraeus is named commander in Iraq and uh I think uh we all know the the general history The anbar Awakening the implementation a lot of the counterinsurgency ideas and uh a surge which enables us to be in a better position uh to complete the mission or think we're completing the mission in Iraq uh in in your lecture so so we'll we won't go into the detail there because of the limits that story has been told yeah so so what what interests me is something you said in the lecture uh which is we we're getting counterinsurgency right but it's not clear that we've yet gotten the politics the national politics right and it's very important in terms of the this military Doctrine for there be an interface between the with the political iCal leadership and you said something you said that uh President George W bush got the intervention wrong badly wrong badly wrong badly wrong worst mistake very likely the worst mistake in American foreign policy history a disaster a fiasco an unnecessary War poorly conducted uh and then you said that President Obama uh got the leaving wrong uh talk a little about that because that brings us to the present situation the the the primary mistakes were were George W bush is uh in in in in a disaster of a war uh which which is putting on the credit card of the American people so so the the first war in history where we haven't had a draft and I'm not recommending a draft by no means I I we don't need one the all volunteer Force succeeding beyond our wildest dreams but also the first war in history for which we haven't had a tax increase and so the entire $4 trillion cost of of our generation's Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is being passed on to our sons and daughters and I think that's appalling uh and and and that's AAL policy mistake uh the the the Saving Grace for George W bush is in 2006 uh when when he replaced his his uh Secretary of Defense his commander on the field surged American troops changed strategy and and created out of a a a fiasco of a war an embarrassment of a war a disaster for American National Security objectives a huge strengthening the creation of alqaeda and Iraq U um the the the policies of of uh Gates and and the strategy of Petraeus uh implemented by Petraeus and his team on the ground The anbar Awakening uh the Sawa a 75% decrease in violence over over Petraeus is 18 months in command got us to a point where there was a more than reasonable chance of a reasonably Democratic Iraq a reasonably stable Iraq that with the long-term security guarantee of perhaps 15 or 20,000 American troops could have been a pillar of American foreign policy in a very difficult very dangerous part of the world and all President Obama needed to do to make that happen was keep 20,000 American troops largely advisers some special forces some air power stationed in Iraq for a generation and and he chose against the advice of his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton his secretary of defense the remarkable aforementioned Bob Gates best Secretary of Defense we've ever had his director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta no slouch uh his Central Command Commander at this time David Petraeus uh every National Security professional on the planet said leave 20,000 American troops in Iraq and in December of 2011 the President Obama chose to pull all the American troops out of Iraq disaster was widely foretold uh including By Me but by many smarter people than me and sure as shotin disaster resulted with with the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and and over the course of the last 18 months its capture of the western third of Iraq a territory that exceeds the United Kingdom in size giving it the biggest Geographic base any Terror organization has had in the history of man so so the non-intervention agenda which was uh uh driven in part by the dissatisfaction of the public now with the Iraq War the the concern about losing the war was in a way LED to an overreaction where we set a date we pull everything out so so we're it's like uh incompletion of the stabilization operation is that what you're saying so absolutely right so so when America fights a war when when it is when a situation in the world is important enough to Spill the blood and of of America's sons and daughters on that ground it is important enough then to leave American troops there for generations to come to keep whatever caused that war from happen from breaking out again and this is the policy we followed for the last 75 years we still have American troops in Germany Italy and Japan 75 years after the second world war American troops in South Korea 65 years after that war the former Yugoslavia 25 years after that war and and not we don't have in Vietnam because we lost that one but ironically the Vietnamese would love us to to home Port a carrier in camon Bay so the the real purpose of the American Army is not so much to win Wars as having won Wars to stay there and keep the next war from breaking out and we had every opportunity to do that in Iraq we failed to do so and predictably horrific consequences we may be failing to do that in Afghanistan so so literally today as we speak uh there there are news accounts that the the commander of American forces in Afghanistan in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense Ash Carter uh are are making uh noises that I hope have been cleared with the administration uh because it mean it means that the administration is going to cave and is going to leave a long-term American American Security presence in Afghanistan and if we don't if we fail to heed the lessons of of the past four years in Iraq I will personally guarantee that three years after the the departure of the last American troops from Afghanistan the Taliban will be back at the gates of Kabul and we will have to reinv in Afghanistan we'll have to fight another war in Afghanistan just as we are unnecessarily having to fight another war in Iraq because we didn't stick The Landing we failed to build a better peace we didn't leave that long-term presence of American troops to secure what we'd fought for and one now now your last assignment in the Army was uh attempting to train a core of military advisers who would be inserted in the stability operation inserted in the forces of of of the ruling government uh talk a little about that uh and and what the idea is so I I I mentioned the six logical lines of operation and counterinsurgency campaign the second one is is uh train and advise and equip host nation Security Forces so uh uh in a counterinsurgency campaign you're not going to kill or capture all of the insurgents they're still going to be there some of their root grievances are likely to endure for Generations these wars have long Tales T Lawrence said they're messy and slow so uh we don't want to stay there forever ourselves in large numbers as the combat forces we want their troops to do that however we can make them them far far more effective with small teams of American advisers and this is the the Special Forces a team model but we need a whole lot more of them than we have a teams available teams of a dozen or so American soldiers who provide access to intelligence that the host nation simply isn't going to have access to air power and control of air power access to Logistics assets including medical support all of these are combat multipliers so that an Iraqi Battalion or an Afghan Battalion with a 12-man American team embedded inside it is three or four or five times more effective in combat than that same Battalion is without the American advice and support and and so for pennies on the dollar for a very small number of American troops we can dramatically increase the effectiveness of these forces and and make them more politically reliable uh for for the the the government of Afghanistan or Iraq and and more capable counterterrorism forces as well uh uh I am reminded listening to your lecture and listening to you here of something that President Kennedy said in one of his last interviews and it was in the final analysis he was talking about Vietnam uh this is their War uh and and so and and I think you understand that but what I'm do do you have any thoughts about how you navigate uh The Limited stabilization operation that you just described how you limit that so it then doesn't become a massive intervention uh the the way you achieve that objective is by keeping the American troops on the ground for a generation and the the creation and extraordinary success of the all volunteer Force gives the president of the United States gives our foreign policy mechanism the tools we need to do that effectively so uh there is no ground swell of of um public anger there is no demand from the American people for a full American withdrawal from Iraq or from Afghanistan the American people I'm confident don't know that we still have troops in the former Yugoslavia and and that's success in these kinds of Wars is pulling the the the the news off of the front pages into the back pages and then completely out of the newspaper and and uh I see the the existence of the all volunteer Force the success of the all volunteer Force as a tool that will enable the United States to maintain stability and Security in Afghanistan for generations and by the way maintain Special Forces based inside Afghanistan and intelligence gathering stations inside Afghanistan which will allow us to keep an eye on Afghanistan's next door neighbor to the east the most dangerous state in the world for America I I see 20,000 American troops in Iraq not just stabilizing Iraq not just preventing the Islamic State from seizing territory uh from which to plan and conduct and execute attacks on us and our friends but also as a stabilizing basis and a and a special forces series of bases uh to enable us to conduct operations when necessary against radical islamists throughout the Middle East so there are huge benefits for the relatively small investment in in in Treasure and as time goes by the remarkably small investment in blood uh that will be required of these combat advisers and Special Forces teams that that I believe we need to station for the Long Haul in Iraq and Afghanistan one final question you uh uh your your theory in in a lot of your work is about creating learning organizations especially in the military talk briefly about the United States as a learning organization in other words what is the job of our political leaders in helping the public uh learn uh the kinds of things that that you've been articulating I I think we have a our political leaders have a very significant role in doing that and I give them a decidedly mixed review in how well they've done that um certainly the the uh invasion of Iraq was unnecessary in 2003 the um Attacks of September 11th in some ways predictable the the Richard Clark the National Security Council director for counterterrorism said the the dials were glowing red uh during the summer of 2001 we did do a good job of evaluating our mistakes uh in in the 9/11 commission report um um and and that was a very honest open assessment of our failures we have not had at the national level the same sort of of assessment of our failures in Iraq and in Afghanistan there have been a number of remarkably good books uh by journalists that have done so and I'm thinking of Tom Rick's Fiasco George Packers the Assassins gate are are two of the books that that do a wonderful job of of laying out the extraordinary mistakes we made I have to give George W bush credit during his speech after the midterms of 2006 in early 2007 when he announced the surge of American troops into Iraq to practice a new counterinsurgency strategy under the command of a new Commander David Petraeus George W bush admitted mistakes and admitted failings and and and did so honestly and painfully and and demonstrated uh I think a remarkable degree of learning during his tenure as president that that serves him well and that that is an example for future presidents I I what I am discouraged by is that this president President Obama who has not made nearly the as Grievous of errors as as did his predecessor uh with with with mistakes like U um uh failing to to intervene to prevent the Attacks of September 11th unnecessarily and poorly invading Iraq in 2003 the first three horribly mismanaged years of that war uh President Obama has made smaller mistakes but still very significant mistakes and and has not yet demonstrated uh an ability to admit those mistakes mes uh or to learn from them and we are only now in March of of uh 2015 starting to see some indications that he understands that the um premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq which enabled and empowered the return of Isis and the creation of this horrible Terror threat to the whole world was a mistake and and perhaps now uh a willingness to at least implicitly admit that mistake and change American policy in Afghanistan and so that we don't provide a home base for as radical Islamic extremists there if there is one basic principle of American counterterrorism strategy since September 11th it has been do not give our enemies a geographic base in which to plan prepare for from which to conduct attacks on us and our friends we failed that test in Iraq and it's going to take the lives of my friends and a whole lot of American treasure and a whole lot of Iraqi uh soldiers and civilians dying unnecessarily to undo that mistake God have mercy on us if we make the same mistake again in Afghanistan well Dr na Nagle thank you very much for taking the time uh to be with us and and discuss your really great books uh which I will recommend especially the new one to our audience uh KN fights uh and and thank you again it it was really an intellectual Odyssey for our audience not as complicated as the one that you took but but I think really helpful for public education thank you it was an honor to be here thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with [Music] [Music] history [Music] [Music]

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 22,330

Keywords: counterinsurgency, John Nagl, military, terrorism, guerilla warfare

Id: 47kJ5XqasOE

Length: 59min 25sec (3565 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2015