- Good evening, welcome
to Laurie Auditorium and to Trinity University's
Distinguished Lecture Series. My name is Danny Anderson
and I'm the president here at Trinity University. Our Distinguished Lecture
Series is made possible by the Walter F. Brown
family of San Antonio. I'd ask you to begin the
evening by joining me and showing our appreciation
for their generosity with a round of applause. (audience applauding) This lecture series
has a wonderful history of enlivening the cultural
and civic landscape in San Antonio, by bringing national and international leaders to our campus and to our community. Before I introduce tonight's speaker, just a few housekeeping announcements. Please take a moment
to silence your phones or mobile devices. Make sure I've done that. After the talk, there will
be time for a few questions. Trinity students may use
the microphone stage right, and guests may use the
microphone stage left. Please ask brief questions rather than sharing your own ideas. We would love to hear from our speaker. Also, please be aware that
we will only have time to take the first few
questions at each microphone, and I will give the signal when we're down to the last few questions. Shifting now to our guests, a few people have as much insight into the current state of
national and global affairs as General Stan McChrystal,
a four star general with a remarkable record of achievement. He is widely praised for
creating a revolution in warfare that fused
intelligence with operations. McChrystal is the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, and the former leader of Joint
Special Operations Command, which oversees the militaries
most sensitive forces. His leadership is credited
with the 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein and the 2006 location in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The son and grandson of army officers, McChrystal graduated
from West Point in 1976, and was commissioned
as an infantry officer. He later trained at the Special
Forces school in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and
spent much of his career commanding special operations
in airborne infantry units. From 2003 to 2008, as head of the Joint
Special Operations Command, he was responsible for leading the nation's deployed military
counter-terrorism efforts around the globe, assuming command of all international forces in
Afghanistan in June of 2009. President Obama's order for
an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was based
on the Crystal's assessment of the war. In 2010, General McChrystal
retired from the military and co founded the McChrystal Group, a global advisory services and leadership development firm. He also today chairs, a project called the
Service Year Alliance. And this is a program that works to make a year of paid full time service, a common expectation and an opportunity for all young Americans. He is a senior fellow at Yale
University's Jackson Institute for global affairs, where he teaches a popular course on leadership. So please join me in giving
General Stan McChrystal a warm Trinity University welcome. (audience applauding) - Thank you, thank you, please. (audience applauding) If you were standing where I am, you'd know that this is more
than a little intimidating. (audience laughing) A few years ago, I got to go and speak at Oxford University in Britain. And you know, it's older than our nation. And they've got it down to an art. The speaker gets taken
to the political union and first you walk by old
stone and polished wood, and they take you into what
they call the Green Room where they prep and they
basically make you nervous. And they talk about the
history of the place where you're gonna speak. And then as they walk out to speak, you pass a number of photographs. And on those photographs, the last one is a picture
of Teddy Roosevelt, speaking exactly where
you're about to speak. And it's not subtle, the message is, you
are no Teddy Roosevelt. (audience laughing) I got it, so I go in and I was nervous. And I start to speak. And as soon as I start to
speak a person in the crowd, goes, dead asleep. If you've never had that happen, it is really disconcerting. 'Cause what do you do? You try to look away from them 'cause you don't wanna see that but you can't help yourself
to keep looking around, hopefully they'll wake up. So I went through this. It wasn't till the end of the speech when people were kind enough to imply that the person woke up. So help me out. The person was my wife, Annie
and she sit right there. (audience laughing) So somebody give me the elbow cam. (audience applauding) We're gonna talk a little
bit about the world tonight. And all of us think a lot about it. Most of us have spent a
lifetime involved in it. But we're gonna talk about it in a way that hopefully makes us all think because there's not a single answer. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with something that hopefully doesn't make you uncomfortable. It doesn't make me uncomfortable. It's our national anthem. I'm gonna ask everyone if you
feel comfortable to stand. ♪ O say can you see by the dawn's ♪ Please feel free to sit. (audience applauding) - There's probably nothing more American than our national anthem, Air Force aircraft flying overhead and the Super Bowl. We think about how this makes us feel and we think about how our
nation in moments like that, and sometimes what do we think about? Most of us grew up with
the idea that our nation was dominant in the world. There was no nation, nearly equal to us. We had a world order
based on what came out of the Second World War, the Cold War, our success economically, and now it feels like that order is crumbling. It feels like things have changed. Back in 1991, we had extraordinary success in the first Gulf War, a
war that lasted 100 hours. I was there we started the war and literally, from the earliest moments, we knew that we would win, and
we would win fairly easily. Most of us have lived in a
world in which the United States was dominant economically. In 1960, we were 40%
of the world's economy. 174 nations and we're 40% of it. In industry, we think
of what our history was, we used to produce 40% of
all the steel in the world. That's an extraordinary amount. How did we get here? How did we get to the point
where the United States had this unassailable
position in the world? Well, it's fun to roll it back a bit. The United States at the
beginning of the 20th century, was already growing as an economic power. We were not yet a military dominant force. But economically as the
first world war came in, we went into the First World War, $4 billion in debt to Europe. When our troops came home in 1918, we were $10 billion owed to us by Europe in funds at that age. Armistice Day in the United States was a great celebration. We lost slightly over
100,000 lives in the war. The forces came home and we'd
go on and we'd help Europe, which we were very wary of
pull themselves together. And we are ushered in an era of the United (mumbles) 1920.
(classical music) It was pretty good times. Economic growth, the stock market went up. Production was extraordinary as we began the era of
true mass production. Suddenly, people could
own cars themselves. But that wasn't true for the other people who were involved in the First World War. Britain which was one of the
winners in the First World War staggered out economically, now in debt. They lost more than a million
soldiers in the fight. The empire which they had spent a century and a half building was starting to weaken perceptibly. Russia, which had lost its fight in the First World War
in 1917 had revolution. The monarchy fell, the Czar
and his family were killed. The Bolsheviks took
over in November of 1917 and began the era of the Soviet Union. Progress but extraordinarily
painful for our nation as well. Germany, who lost the war, of course came out weakened economically. The Versailles Treaty created
extraordinary reparations forced debt up Germany so
that the Vermont Republic was extraordinarily weak. Political unrest started. Young upstarts like Adolf Hitler on 1921 started to raise organizations
like the Nazi Party. China, which most people
didn't pay much attention to, it had a revolution in 1912. And the internet era of unrest,
which essentially lasted until after the communist
revolution in 1949. 20 years later, we have another world war. Many times worse for the world in terms of casualties and loss, but America came home victorious again. Look, American troops coming
home in 1945 and 1946, we had won. we had lost more than
400,000 Americans in the war. But when we got back, the industrial base, part of which had been energized
by war production took off. And America which had not
suffered internal damage, and it built up an industrial base became extraordinarily dominant, technologically and economically. It was aberrational in world history for a single nation to
have this kind of position. Our allies didn't fare so well. Britain which also won
the second world war limped out of that war. Again, with high casualties, but also destruction to
the physical infrastructure of the nation. And of course, the world
empire which it had was beginning to be
weakened in its legitimacy. And the movements for
independence increased. And so Britain was wobbly
from afar and wobbly inside. Most Americans don't realize but Britain still had
rationing until the mid 1950s. The Soviet Union suffered
27 million casualties in the Second World War. We suffered 400,000. 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed in the fighting. They came out victorious but much of the nation
had been badly damaged. Germany not only lost,
it was torn into pieces. The agreement at the end
of the Second World War created four separate zones. And it was, they were
controlled by the victors. China, which had suffered
war from 1931 on, went through the war. And then in 1949, the Chinese
communists won the fight against the nationalists and took over. And so China entered the
communist era in 1949, again, with extraordinary damage and loss of life in the period of about 15 years of war before that. If we think about that we came out of the Second World War
most of us in this room, remember the 1950s and
1960s, as we approach what might be called the
Apogee of American power. And when was that? Maybe it was the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989. Maybe it was the
beginning of our Cold War, adversary teetering and then falling, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Maybe it was success
in the first Gulf War. We were described as many of you remember as a hyper power by some
people in the world, some with resentment,
but with a fair amount of respect as well. But there were the rise
of other nations as well; Iran, North Korea, both of
which in the 1940s '50s '60s, we barely noticed. They were big players compared to the size of their arsenals and they've
grown bigger in our mindsets. Think about Korea, Korea
was occupied by the Japanese at the beginning of the 20th century. And for about 50 years, the Japanese were hard on the
Koreans, extraordinarily hard. There's great resentment today in Korea still about the Japanese occupation. Many Korean forces fought on
the Japanese side in the war because they were forced to. In 1945, Korea was split; North Korea and South Korea. Then in 1950, after
friction along the border, North Korea invaded South Korea and we'll remember that
the first weeks of the war were extraordinarily
painful as the North Koreans pushed all the way down
to the Pusan Perimeter. In the summer 1950, it
looked as though South Korea might not exist as a nation
and the United Nations forces which had initially deployed to help would be run out of Korea. That summer, my father in law landed in Korea with the first American tanks. They landed in the Pusan Perimeter, they were sent out to the line and they were told to go forward, just drive up this road
until the North Koreans can see that we now have tanks. They didn't even have
the radio frequencies to talk to the other American forces. It was so tight, just get there. He went all the way to the Yalu River. And then right before Thanksgiving, 1950, was pushed all the way
back to the 17th parallel, only officer in his company to survive. It was a bitter war that
lasted until the summer of 1953 with no clear winner. And North Korea remains
divided to this day. We sort of forget about Iran. Iran, of course, was the
ancient empire of Persia. In 1953, they elected
a man named Mosaddegh to be the Prime Minister. And then he was overthrown. He was overthrown in Iranian
memory, with the help of U.S. and British intelligence services. There were disagreements
over who owned the oil, he was moving to nationalize
the oil industry. He was replaced by the Shah
of Iran, the Peacock kingdom, who was put back in power
and the Shah became a bulwark of stability in the region. And from 1953 until the late 1970s, we considered the Shah of
Iran as that client state in the Middle East that
would help produce stability. He bought an extraordinary
number of American and other Western weapons. He seemed like a stable client ally, but inside Iran was viewed as a dictator. And the Slovakia secret police were viewed as an extraordinarily repressive force. In early 1970s, or 1978, he was forced out you
remember with sickness, and the Ayatollah Khomeini arrived. The Ayatollah came back
with the imposition of an Iranian Revolutionary government. And from the day he arrived,
he was against the West. He would say extraordinary
things about the West. And we began to view Iran as an enemy, just a year before it
had been a trusted ally, and now it was a bitter enemy. Iran did not have an easy time with it. Many Americans were looking the other way when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. And for all of the 1980s to 1988, Iran and Iraq fought a bitter war. A million Iranians were killed. We were really not on either side, although we did provide
intelligence to the Iraqis. This the government of Saddam Hussein. So the Iranians built
up greater resentment to the United States. And of course, remember,
in the middle of the 1980s, there were the tanker wars where they were attacking oil tankers. And then the U.S., U.S. has
then since made a mistake misidentified as a civilian
airliner as a hostile threat and shot down an Iranian
airliner 256 people aboard and more than 30 children. It was a mistake, but
in the minds of Iranians it was an act of war. What was in the past, what we grew up with whether the Cold War was difficult or not is not going to be the future. The world order has evolved. But where does it take us? What does it mean for us? First thing I would
argue, we need to think about is the democratization
of technology. What do I mean by this? For many years, the technology
which was impressive to us, cyber warfare, Global Positioning System, artificial intelligence,
weapons of mass destruction. They were all things that were owned and controlled by nation
states, advanced nation states. The ability to use
unmanned aerial vehicles belong first just to the United States. And now that technology is available not just to other nation states, it's available, literally to anyone. In Mosul, fighting against
ISIS a couple of years ago, American forces inside the city of Mosul, had small drones fly into windows with hand grenades attached and attacked. That's a precision strike weapon. Probably cost about 40 bucks flown by a person with
no particular training. And so suddenly the idea
that we used to have, long range missiles, advanced aircraft, the ability to see in the dark, the ability to talk securely, all of that suddenly is
available to everyone. And it's got some pretty
big implications for us. Certainly the advantages that we had even a few years ago in
Iraq and Afghanistan, to see the Battle of communicate,
to protect our forces, to do all of those things, is at risk. Think about the ability to
defend bases and other places that we consider important. Think about a swarm of
small, inexpensive drones, all with a small explosive charge coming in an aircraft
carrier, coming at a building, coming at the South
Lawn of the White House when the President is trying
to board a helicopter. Think about trying to stop
those kinds of threats with the kind of technology
we have right now. There are things being
designed to try to do that. But it's a leapfrog of technology
that's now democratized. You're not just competing
with your Russian enemy, or your Chinese enemy, you're competing almost with everyone. And so we talked about
potential adversaries, who do we have to think about? Of course, we have to think about Russia. Undoubtedly, we have to think about China. We need to think about non state actors. We even need to think about individuals. Now you say, well, we will
deter them from attacking us. But the principle of deterrence is based upon your ability to
hold your enemy at risk. If you think about nuclear
war, in the nuclear age, the entire idea of deterrence was based upon if you strike us,
we will have the ability to strike you in a way that
you don't think you can stand. And so, we deter you from taking action. Even in the days of large
fleets and large armies, it was all based on
holding your enemy at risk. And therefore, they had to do a calculus whether it is strike. A non state actor, a terrorist group or other element is very
difficult to hold it risk. You may not know who they are, where they are, or they may not care and to hold an individual at risk, particularly an individual willing to die. How do you deter that? How do you convince them don't do this because
the idea of deterrence is based upon rational actors? And suddenly, if you're
dealing with someone who doesn't compute rational
actor the same way we do, it's a different calculus. Think about North Korean
missile development in testing. We say well, we're going
to tell the North Koreans not to have nuclear weapons. We're gonna convince Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons. Why would he do that? I mean, what could we give him? The chances are, if he
gave up nuclear weapons, he would be overthrown by his own regime. Even if you don't buy that, he
certainly watch what happened to Gaddafi after he gave
up his nuclear program. And there's a calculus that says, the thing that keeps me alive,
this gives me credibility is some kind of disproportionate power that nuclear weapons give me. Now there's risk in it. There's risk because the United
States puts on sanctions, other pressures that also
if he pushes far enough to get a war then North
Korea is destroyed. But the reality is they've now
developed enough capability to make destroying them
an expensive proposition, one that we just haven't
been willing to pay to date. So if you put yourself in
Kim Jong-un's position, why wouldn't he just keep pushing, developing advanced capability
and going just far enough to advance himself but not
in Korea counter strike? Or Iran, why wouldn't Iran
want a nuclear weapon? If you were Iranians, wouldn't
you want a nuclear weapon? Probably would, even if
you're fairly liberal, it's just, it's a ticket into a club that gets you greater respect. Indian Pakistan both got greater respect when they became nuclear. So the reality is when
we step back and say, well, Iran shouldn't be nuclear, their response is who died
and left you in charge? How do you have the right to tell us we can't have something? And we say, well, you
might use it and they go, well, you're the only
person who's ever used it. You're the only country
that's ever used it. And so the counter
argument's pretty strong, particularly in a
country that's got pride. 80 million Iranians are
proud to be Iranians. They are not all aligned with
the government in any way. The United States is not even
unpopular with a great number of the Iranian population. But if we step back and
suddenly make ourselves Iranian, we look at recent history, look
at their place in the world. Why wouldn't they want that? I think we have to worry about this guy. You know, 20 years ago,
we would have said, we don't have to worry
about him or Russia. But in the short term,
he's playing a strong hand. Think about it at the end of the 1980s when Russia collapsed in 1991 they were at a point of
extraordinary humiliation. Vladimir Putin was an
intelligence officer, and he had been a part
of a very proud entity in the Soviet Union. Suddenly the Soviet Union is no more. Russia is bankrupt. And the West is telling
them sorry, tough for you. I mean think about how you'd
feel, remember Russian women were going around the world and essentially becoming
consorts with people all over the place. Think how humiliating that
is for a proud people. Suddenly, they're being told
they're not a world power. And starting with the
invasion of Chechnya, Vladimir Putin started
to reassert Russian pride and effectiveness, and
he's done it pretty well. In 1973, Henry Kissinger maneuvered Russia out of the Middle East after the 73 War. Now they're back. Now, there in Syria, they're
players, they will be involved. And whenever settlements happen in Syria, and we probably won't be at the table. So he's playing a pretty strong hand. Now, in the long term,
it's not that strong. Russia's got about 145 million people, but their demographics are shrinking, their population will go down over time. So the reality is, he has
a decreasing power base. And of course, it's an oil
based economy to a great degree. And as we transition to
other kinds of energy, there's every likelihood that Russia will either have to change
very rapidly or be behind. Russia has also got a
very corrupt government, a very corrupt dictatorial government. And in the short term
that tends to work well, in the long term, historically, more pluralistic
democratic regimes do well. But that's the long term and you know, in the long term, we'll all be dead. I think about China. For most of our lives, we'd say China actually had a pretty weak hand. They had a whole ton of people, but they were way behind
us technologically, they were way behind us in many areas where they are coming on
and they're coming on fast, very focused population, very
focused economic policies, President for life, not
much election cycle there. So their hand's really not weak anymore. And in the long term, you could argue that they have an
extraordinarily strong hand, a great position
geographically in the world, great potential economically in the world. But I would say I put
a question mark on that because China also has
some inherent weaknesses, the nature of the regime,
the pressure of population, the number of new jobs they
gotta create every day. They have to be an
export and import economy or it doesn't work. And so they've got some vulnerabilities over the long term that I
think we need to understand. We may not be able to do
anything about them directly. But we need to understand
and take those into account. So what do we do about it? I think everybody probably has an opinion. I'll tell you what I think we do. We invest. What do we invest in? First and foremost, I
think we invest in people. We invest in the things
that makes a society and economy work. That's the talent of our people. That's the education of our young people. That's the skills of our
workers in industries that are changing. We invest in infrastructure. Fly overseas and go into an airport in many third world countries
and you'll be embarrassed by many, what you see in
many American airports. They just opened a new airport in China that's extraordinary. We have bridges falling down, we have roads that need work. Those things all feed our economy, one of the great leap forward
in the American economy in productivity in the 1950s was the interstate highway system. Suddenly we could move
things more cheaply faster. Infrastructure is key. I think we invest in the modern economy. The world is going to electric vehicles. That's not a newsflash to any of us. It is going there. The people who make the best ones first, establish the market,
are going do very well. The people who sell yesterday's technology are not going to do very well. And so we need to think
about the modern economy in every aspect and
get out in front of it. Sometimes that's painful, because you dislocate things we like, we're comfortable with,
that are expensive. But we're in a global economy now. We're not competing with
other states in the union, we're competing in the world. We invest in relationships. This is not a world when single nations are gonna do very well. The great danger for
places like North Korea, and even Iran is our isolation. One of the great strengths
we had for many decades was a web of relationships
where people would do things foreign with the United States, because we maintained a
relationship with them. When I commanded in Afghanistan
as a NATO commander, there were 46 nations in the coalition. Now you can imagine
that maybe kind of hard to coordinate things. And there were times when people say, well, Americans are doing
all the heavy lifting. But when I did a look at the numbers, and I looked at casualty
rates, per capita, the highest casualty rate was Estonia. They were losing more soldiers
per capita than we were. And many of those countries
were in Afghanistan, not because they had
anything to gain from it, except that America asked them to come. We asked them to come and
be part of a coalition, many at great political
risk internally to do that. But the relationship with
America was so important. They said, we have got to do that. That there's a time you're
gonna need friends, everybody. And I think the years in the future are gonna be one of those times. So I think we invest in relationships. Things are changing. I don't think we'd waste our time trying to deny that. We don't waste our time trying to bring back
yesterday or the last decade. There's really no point in mourning it. Okay, it's gone. There's certainly no value
in complaining about it. Why isn't it like it used to be? Well, it's not. So what do you do? You do what Americans
do well, you compete. You step up. You get on the field. You take every bit of talent we have, every kind of person in our nation. (gentle music) I'd be honored to take any
questions you might have. Thank you.
(audience applauding) Student mic, you're up. - Good evening, General McChrystal. This actually isn't a question but I served under you in Afghanistan. - God bless you, thanks for doing that. - And you actually
called me on my birthday. (audience applauding) It was-- - When you turn 13, right? - 30, yes, but you worked
with my brother up in Kabul. And this was day two of
operation MOS: Track. And I was missing my family but you called and didn't take you seriously at first. And but you kind of relit my flame too because of everything that we were doing. And so I just want to say thank you. - You're so kind, and
thanks for your service and thank your brother.
(audience applauding) Is he okay? - He's great. - [Peter] General, my name-- - Tap that. - My name is Peter Thompson. I'm a trinity alumni, - Yes sir. - And I'm also a West pointer. In the 1960s, I was in
special ops in the army. And I'd like to know from
you how the integration went of army special ops,
navy special ops seals, air force or commandos, marine recon. You did that, you helped integrate these extremely different units. What have you produced? And how good are they? - Well, first off, they are amazing. And they've always been
amazing personally, as you know, the individuals
always been that. But what we had was we
had a series of silos, if JSCO was formed in
1981, after they failed they were on mission. And they took part of American
special ops into Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, the
Rangers, night stalkers, and they put them together. And the theory was you
take the dream team, you put them together, and poof, they're gonna be wonderful. And that is good in theory,
and I grew up in JSOC, and then I become the commander and what you find is actually, Delta didn't like the SEALs very much. The SEALs hated Delta. Both of them looked down at the Rangers and nobody wanted to talk to Aviators, 'cause why would you, right? (audience laughing) And so what we had was we
didn't have a team of teams, we had a tribe of tribes. Now in peacetime, we could
have never made the change. But what happened is, we
had the crucible of combat with a burning platform. We were losing to Al Qaeda in Iraq. And we realized that if we
didn't become a network, and we didn't work
together, we would lose. And I'd like to say I stood
up in front of everybody with my charisma in power
said do it and it happened. But it's not quite how it happened. It took, I was in command for five years I was supposed to be in for two years. And what we did was we
started taking the network, we started putting liaisons from the different organizations together. It was great resistance to that first, we started 14 cross-functional teams with Delta commander, SEAL
Deputy Ranger, Sergeant Major and then put them together
to force the interaction. And then we went to radical
transparency in the force. What the radical transparency did, we had 17 different task
forces in Iraq alone across the country. Every day we did a 90
minute video teleconference with the whole command. And so before you saw your part, you think we're the only
people with our act together, everybody else was to be screwed up. This video teleconference, you saw what everybody else is doing. You saw the good things,
you saw the failures. On the good things,
you saw best practices, and you started wanting
to do that to be equal. And you also develop the empathy because you'd have a SEAL
come up in Afghanistan and be dirty from the night
before maybe some blood on him, and he'd report, sir, we
did an operation last night, it didn't go well. And everybody sees that. And suddenly you realize there isn't the same problem we are. And somebody texts him
across the chat rooms and and says, hey, we've got something that we think can help. It took a long, long time, but
they started to meld together with the idea that
nobody's battling average, only the score on the big
fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan counted. So it was a painful process. And then I add in, you
got to bring the CIA, the National Security Agency, the FBI, all the other parts in as well, all of whom have a very different culture. And so yeah, got some people
who've been through this, you've got to create
the idea that everybody is equal and of the same. And you've got to create a meritocracy where just the biggest person
with the biggest shoulders and the best shooter is not,
you know, the most important because in reality, the
most important people can make organizations work together. That's more valuable than
the shooter or pilot, 'cause that's kind of a commodity. And so that was the journey we took. - And are you, it is working, ain't it? - JSOC is extraordinary. - Good. - Now, they have continued
on the rest of the military, there are places where
it's better than others. But there's certain muscle
memory in a big organization like the whole military. - Thank you, sir. You're kind sir, thank you very much. (audience applauding) All right, - Sir, good evening, I'm
gonna, I'm kind of tall. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Crystal
Blue, Nurse Corps Officer. My question for you, sir,
is as our military moves into a multi domain against
our near peer threats what are your recommendations
for myself and my colleagues as we take on increasingly
complex leadership challenges, while we're trying to bridge a very interesting generational gap? - Yeah, now, that's a good luck. (audience laughing) - That's why I'm asking you, sir. - Here's my opinion. And it's one guy's opinion. The first thing is, you've got to admit that this is very complex,
and the next world war will be completely different
from what we expect. Even when we study with
future command and everything, we're gonna get it wrong. Because every rational
actor will look and see what we prepare to do, and
they will do something else. So whatever we do guarantees
that's not the war we will fight. So we've got to develop
an attitude that says, we are gonna stumble into the next war sort of half prepared. So how do you prepare? I think you prepare an organization for problem solving and complexity. You don't prepare him to
do a single thing well. So the idea of doctrine that says, this is how we fight is
actually dangerous now, because it starts to convince people that there is a right answer to something, but the question will keep changing. And so I would argue that
what you really want is people who aren't constrained by doctrine that says the doctrine is, if it's stupid, and it works, it ain't stupid. - Absolutely. - So what we have to do is
develop an entire generation of people who look at these problems in an entirely different way, which I think means a
more diverse workforce, not just females and
males, but older, younger, you know, people with a
completely different background, all put into a military contract, because it's not a strictly
military fight in the old sense. It's the next war is gonna be won by influencing populations. And we've tried to do that for
years with strategic bombing and propaganda, but
influencing aside to do or not do something is who wins I think, and it's gonna be done by cyber, it's gonna be done by
some military operations, can be done by all kinds of things. So how do you understand
what will cause somebody to change their intentions? It's I mean, it's gonna take an entirely different effort. The one great thing I'd
say is the young people that I dealt within and I deal with now, they wanna be given problems. They wanna be given,
okay, here's a problem, not a set solution looking for a problem. And so I think when you
challenge them with that, you'll get a pretty good outcome. Thanks so much,
- Thanks you so much sir, thank you. - My pleasure. (audience applauding)
Ma'am. - Hi, good evening General. A few years ago, I attended
a lecture here at Trinity by Condoleezza Rice. And the thing I remember
most about her lecture, where she was speaking
about failed states, in particular in Mexico. Could you talk a little bit
about what countries you see are failed states that
are of the greatest risk in the United States? - Yeah, first, I'd say failed states are extraordinarily dangerous to us. And you say, well wait a minute, that state's a long way
away, it doesn't matter. So if Venezuela melts
down, kind of what we care, what we do because failed
states are sort of like a virus, and it starts to go because
they share their problem around the world, they share with migrants and share with crime, they
share with all the things that emanate from a failed state. The ones that worry me are those where the governance stops working. Venezuela jumps to mind, big countries that are fairly stable like Brazil, you've got a big thing. They can get in trouble pretty quickly. It doesn't take much to
suddenly be a problem. I'm not saying Brazil
is anywhere close there. But Venezuela clearly is. (lady speaks off the microphone) That's exactly right. Then you go further a foot. You go to places like Libya,
have a tremendous problem. And then places which
aren't failed right now. But look at Nigeria. If you look at the
population of Nigeria in 2050 I think the population is
going to be 750 million people. Now you go, wait a minute,
there is no way Nigeria can support 750 million people. So now you go, you can
see that problem coming. And so when we look at
those kinds of things that kind of failed state,
the world needs to realize that we have to do something about it. We can't say, we got our problems, you know, you guys, everybody
else, sort yourself out. Because if they don't, we pay for it. And so I think that,
looking at it that way, and of course, you can even look at places like Italy right now. Run the numbers on Italy, big problem. Now, very good population, fairly robust. Industrial base, but
the numbers don't work. And so unless they clean up their economy, there's a big problem. - If a (mumbles) is to fall on that, what can the united states
do to minimize (mumbles) risk from this? - Yeah, I think you've
got to do it forward. If you don't do it
forward, you'll do it here. And so I think we've got
to try to help those states and you say, wow, we hate foreign aid. We hate putting people out there. But think about health care. You wanna save money,
do prenatal health care. You wanna save money do early
child education and nutrition. If a child isn't reading by
age eight, they never catch up. That's a statistic. So the reality is you've
got to do those things which are preventative in nature, but aren't popular to do. They aren't, they are fun to
do to put money into that. But I think it's the best
investment we can make. And the same is in other countries, even though it's very frustrating. You'll invest relationship and all to try to improve governance
given economic output, and in many cases, it may not stick. I think it's still worth a
try because where it does, it makes such a difference. We talked about this earlier tonight with a group of students, people go, why can't it be like the good
old days like World War II that was clean? We landed in Normandy, we marched across, we took Berlin, good for us. We didn't do counterinsurgency
in World War II. Of course we did. We did it after the war,
we did the Marshall Plan. And we predicted or we
prevented all the things that would have happened, had
Europe continued to sink down. And yet there were people
who had doubts about it, but it was probably the best investment we could have ever made. So that's what one person thinks anyway. Thank you, Ma'am. - Welcome to San Antonio. - Thank you so much. (audience applauding) - General McChrystal, thank you very much and welcome to Military City U.S.A. And I wanna thank this
audience for coming out for your program tonight. You and I have been
corresponding through the day. - Yes, sir. - And I wanna thank
you very much for that. But my stick is is that the attitude of the public towards military service, it seems to be drifting apart. I did a radio program called Military City Radio, number of years ago, and I found that people in the military were really anxious to talk about that. And not only that, they
were hopeful that somebody would grab it and do something about it. And so suicide inside the
military is also very high. And I view that as part of the RIF. And so I'd like to ask you,
what can the community do to support the United States military so we can perpetuate our way of life? - Yes sir, thanks for that
job, thanks for asking. And thanks for the correspondence. Okay, who sends young people to war? You say the military does,
now I'm not sure that. The government does, now
the military government, doesn't, you do. You ask people to join
the military indirectly. You ask them to go to war, whatever it is they do. And you ask them to believe, you ask them to believe
in the American dream, you ask them to believe
in American values. You ask them to believe in patriotism. And you ask them to believe
in a covenant that says, if you go to war for our
nation, we'll take care of you. And they believe. They go forward and they do
it with extraordinary courage. Now, some of them don't think
it through quite like that but that's what's motivating them. Then they come home,
who's responsible for 'em? Someone says, well, the military is. Now, the military is got stuff to do. You are, communities are,
same people who went, who sent 'em. Now the problem is if you
go back to previous wars, like World War II with 12
million people in uniform and everybody else was
involved, that was natural. Everybody's brother,
sister, father, mother was in the service or connected to it. And so it was just comfortable to do that. Nowadays, it's such a
small part of our society that most people don't know anyone. Now they add, they say
thank you for your service, they're very generous with programs, which is deeply appreciated. But the reality is less than
1% of all American serve. And so you're just not
touched with it as closely. sent him to, (mumbles) more
than most places, obviously, but the American people aren't. And so while there's a sense of gratitude, there's not a sense of
absolute integration with our veterans. Our veterans are short of this group. And to be honest, it's pretty inbred now. Our military services are
extraordinarily the product of a limited part of the nation,
which enlisted high rates, and then sons and daughters of veterans, it's extraordinary in numbers. And that's not healthy. So the community is got, if we think about our nation's military, we ought to be able to look in the mirror and that's what we're seeing, 'cause it's got to be a
reflection of the nation. So we own it. And we got to think that way. So when a veteran comes back, we own them, meaning we're responsible. And it's hard when a veteran
comes back, it's scary. You go off for four years
or eight years or 30 years, you come back probably to your hometown. You just missed the last
four, eight or 30 years, your peers moved on, you try to step in, but you don't have the same relationship. You don't have the same background. You don't have the same skills
that they have developed or connections over many years. So it's intimidating. People will patch on the
back, buy you a beer. That's not what you need. You need to be integrated into networks. We talked about veteran
suicide, which is tragic. It's not primarily combat veterans. It's not people with PTSD. In fact, people there's no correlation between combat experience and suicide. It's dislocation from family,
dislocation from friends. It's a sense of isolation. And that's what I think we have to, we have to take ownership of, thank you, Sir. - Good evening, sir. You talk a little bit about China being one of our biggest threats specifically economically. One of the tools China's
using is their Belt and Road Initiative, which is sweeping across Southeast Asia,
into the Middle East. So I was wondering what your thoughts are on what the U.S. is missing
in its grand strategy in order to leverage
the instruments of power to lessen China's impact on everybody in that region? - What's our grand strategy? - That's why I'm asking you, sir. (audience laughing) - Then what are we missing? I mean, China has the
Belt and Road Initiative, which if you don't know,
is a series of connections across Asia, into
directing towards Europe. And what it is, is there
some infrastructure involved, but it's really global
economic connection. So you start to get economic pipelines growing, relationships growing. When we were, when I was
commanding in Afghanistan, there was the interact copper
mind, very valuable place. We couldn't get an American
firm to invest in it 'cause it was at unstable place. The Chinese bought it. They didn't even start mining. They just owned it. And what we needed was people to mine, to put money into the
enviro or into the economy, but they just don't have
because they're playing chess, gobbling up resources,
building relationships, getting people indebted to them. So I think that kind of strategy, I think, isn't evident in America. If we have it it's not clear to all of us. When I talk about compete, I'm
not talking about passively. I'm not talking about
letting American businesses, good luck, do a good job. I'm talking about a focused
American effort to understand if we don't go to compete
in the national side and things like education, infrastructure, and in businesses supporting
our businesses to do that we won't compete with one belt one road, even though countries may like us more, China's there and they're building things and I think it's really
important we think competitively. Maybe it's not shooting war. It's a competitive environment. Thanks so much. - Thank you, sir, Beat, Navy. - Whoo ahh! (audience laughing) That's a given. Sir. - General, thank you very
much for coming to Trinity. My name is Daniel Sandoval, I'm a sophomore here at the school. You mentioned something
about the investing in people and investing in the things
that will help our society. - Yes, sir. - And my big question to you was, how can we invest and
what would you recommend to the younger generations rising leaders in order to combat the inequalities in the United States? - Yeah, and I'm gonna give
you a one person's opinion. You know, we should give people nothing. We need to ask things for people. (audience applauding) So people say, everyone
should go to college. I'm all about that,
everybody should serve first, not in the military, in civilian ways. Everybody should invest in
the country with their time and effort and then they
should be invested in, in things like education. I think we need a society that instead of talking
to ourselves and saying, we got screwed, we're not getting this. What we need to do is
create opportunity and say, okay, go for it. But we got to create that opportunity. And we're not doing that
quite as well as we should. In the information age,
inequality is going to increase. Because if you think
back 50 or 100 years ago, a person's ability to work
was often physically based, even leaders ability to lead
was based on how many people they could reach talk to and influence. In the information age, one really clever person can
invent things, reach people and have a disproportionate
impact on the economy, and therefore make disproportionate money. And that's just fact. And so we got to temper that a bit. I'm a little bit of a
socialist in that way. We got to realize that
you've got to give everybody an opportunity to get up 'cause not everybody's
gonna get the same chances as other people, but
you're also not gonna, you don't wanna stop that. You don't wanna tell entrepreneurs, you can't be an entrepreneur because, you know, everybody's
got to get exactly the same. But at the same time, we've got to aggressively
create opportunity and push people to do it. Push them hard, and I would
push all parts of our society. Thank you so much. - Thank you very much, gentlemen. Last question.
(audience applauding) - Sir. - Thank you, sir, for being here. My name is Kevin Conway,
former Army sergeant. I was in Afghanistan as part of ISAF (mumbles)
- God bless you. And my question, in your earlier
part of the presentation, you help me pose my question without trying to give
it a larger context. So in view of all the things, the fact that we're gonna continue to fight the counter-terrorist
wars in Afghanistan or in the Middle East, in
general, and the fact that Russia, China and those countries
are investing in space and all of these weapon
systems, from what do you know, is our force structure,
particularly the army, are we in the right place
where the force structure, numbers of people, weapons development. - Yeah. - And then, yeah, just in general, are we in the right place to counteract or we prepare
to respond in military ways to all of these factors? Thank you. - Yeah, the answer is I'm sure we are not. But only because it's almost impossible for the United States to have it right. Because if you think about
most nations, think of Israel, they essentially have a
single problem, defend Israel. Think of other states,
their problems are narrower and more focused. They can focus what their needs are. We have this huge requirement, we have to defend the United States, we have to work with allies,
defend shipping lanes. So we've got this extraordinary
breadth of responsibilities from which we profit. I mean, the end of the day, the globalization at all has disproportionate really benefited us. But it makes the military
forces have to do everything from very low intensity warfare, all the way up to produce a nuclear and now a high-tech
warfare in space and all. So I'm quite sure we have it wrong, because it's almost
impossible to get it right. What we do have to do, though, I think is, as Lieutenant Colonel
last question earlier, one of the challenges is, when you build, people will obviously build something different from that, so that what you built
is not now effective, they won't fight that kind of war. So I think we need to create a capability to build very quickly
to iterate very quickly. Some of the things we build
are very, very expensive, take a very long time. And the problem is when
the war is different from what we expect, if
we're stuck with something that isn't right, it's gonna be really, really hard to change to that. And the nature of most militaries
in history is to try to do what you've prepared for. And I think that that
will, that will hurt us. Now, a lot of our opponents
have similar problems. So we can't say that we're the only people with that problem. The other part of it is
if the technology back 40 50 years ago, most technology
started in the government in the military, and then
progressed to the civilian side. Nowadays, it's the opposite. Most technologies
developed on civilian side then migrates to the military. The problem is, that
means that as a technology is being developed out here,
you got to be aware of it. You've got to figure out what works because even garage startups
are gonna figure it out maybe before you do. And so the challenge is
you could find yourself easily behind some gomer, you know, in his basement
creating something and selling it somebody else. That means a different connection
with our industrial base than we've had before. And we have sort of an archaic system of acquiring weapons
and we're gonna have to, I think we should be pushing to change it. There are people pushing that way. But it's hard. It's a hard move. Thanks for your service. - Thank you, sir. This better be great 'cause
you're the last question. (audience laughing) - Hi, my name is Jason Swoody, I'm a Political Science
major here at Trinity. My question is about,
I wanted your expert, your expertise in, or what
you think we should do when it comes to the Saudi
Arabia Iran conflict. - Yeah. - We seem to be treating
Saudi Arabia as an ally, despite their financial
support of Al Qaeda. - Yeah. - Because it seems that
we hate Iran so much. I know you briefly
mentioned in your speech, the oil wars. - Yeah. - Of the area. And I wanted to know what, how should we be treating Saudi Arabia? should they be an ally? Or should we just let them fight it out? Because at the moment, it seems to be that the current strategy is treat Saudi Arabia as an ally, even give troop support to Saudi Arabia and have Saudi Arabia direct our troops, which it doesn't make any sense to me. I wanted to know if it
made any sense to you. - All right, well, that
was the last question. So thank you. (audience laughing) - Yeah. That one's really hard. Here's, I'm gonna give
again, personal response. I think Saudi Arabia is an ally, but it's a problematic ally. I mean, Saudi Arabia has
built a relationship to us. It has, at times constricted oil '73, '78, but in other times, it's
ensured the flow of oil so they were viewed as critical to us. It's not as critical anymore because we don't have that
same requirement for that oil. They have worked very hard
to maintain good graces, although 15 of the 19 911
attackers were Saudis. And so, and they fund
through the Wahabi movement, they fund an incredible
amount of extremism. So I would maintain an allied relationship with Saudi Arabia. But it would not be, would
be more transactional. I actually think that Saudi
Arabia needs to be an ally, but doesn't need to have a blank check with the United States
and they work to do it. - So you believe they
should be economic allies, but not military and-- - Well, no, I think they
should be military allies. But what I'm saying is we
should be much more demanding of the Saudis than we
have been in the past. - And we are currently being now. - Absolutely, and I think that there's, now, I could be completely wrong because there's much to be
frustrated with the Iranians. I personally thought the Iranians, they think they've killed my people, we've killed their people. But I think we need to think
about a relationship with Iran long term going forward, and
not necessarily adversarial. They're gonna be a regional power. They just are, and maybe they should be. And so what we should be thinking
about is, how do we start to navigate away from absolutely
oppositional relationship. And the problem is the
Saudis and the Iranians are at each other's throats. So the degree to which
we fall in with just one, we almost guarantee the
antipathy of the other. I think we need to be involved there, I think we need to try to
pull closer to the Iranians. frustrating as that might
be in the near term, and be more transactional with the Saudis, - Stop prostituting our
troops to Saudi Arabia. - I can't judge that one
because I'm not involved in the decision. - All right, thank you so much. - That was a great
question, thanks so much. (audience applauding) Thank you sir. - So join me in giving a round of applause to General McChrystal. A great evening. - Thank you so much. (audience applauding) Thank you, it's my honor. Thank you so much. (audience applauding) (background noise drowns other sounds)
