Dan Snow's History Hit - The Gulf War: 30 Years On

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

On this day thirty years ago a ceasefire was declared bringing ground operations in the first Gulf War to an end. An overwhelmingly powerful coalition force had stormed across the desert driving Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait and concluding the ground campaign after only 100 hours of fighting. To commemorate this anniversary I am joined on the podcast by General Sir Rupert Smith who commanded the UK 1st Armoured Division during the conflict. We talk about his role during the war, the challenges of command and what we should understand about the changing nature of combat in the modern world.General Sir Rupert Smith joined the army in the 1960s and served on deployments across the world including Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Europe, Malaysia and Northern Ireland where he was decorated for gallantry. In October 1990 he was promoted to Major-General and assumed commanded of the 1st Armoured Division as it was being deployed to the Gulf in anticipation of the war. This was the largest British armoured force deployed in action since the Second World War. After the Gulf War Sir Rupert went on to serve with distinction in Bosnia and wrote a book called The Utility of Force which remains essential reading in military circles.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This podcast is first broadcast on the 28th of February 2021, which means it's 30

years on from the day President George Bush Senior declared a ceasefire, halted ground operations in what's become known as the first Gulf War in 1990, after only 100 hours of the ground campaign. 100 hours of the ground campaign. Over the previous few days, 30 years ago, an overwhelmingly powerful US-led coalition force, including Britain and other allies, stormed across the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait, driving Saddam Hussein's troops back, leading much quicker than everybody expected to the liberation of Kuwait. I'm very glad on this podcast to talk to one of the senior British officers who was in command at that time, General Sir Rupert Smith. General Sir Rupert Smith joined the army in the early 1960s. He served in various places in Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Northern Ireland, Europe, and Malaysia.

He was decorated for gallantry in Northern Ireland. And then in October 1990, he was promoted to Major General. He assumed command of the 1st Armoured Division, which at that time was in the process of being moved to Saudi Arabia to take part in the Gulf War. to Saudi Arabia to take part in the Gulf War. Rupert, therefore, found himself in charge of the largest British armoured force deployed in action since the Second World War. He's the perfect guy for me to talk to on this hugely important anniversary, particularly because his career didn't stop there. He served with distinction in Bosnia and wrote a book called The Utility of Force. That remains essential reading in military circles about how war is changing.

It's a huge honour to talk to Rupert Smith on this anniversary. If you want to go and watch documentaries about history, as well as listen to podcasts about history, please go and check out our new history channel, historyhit.tv. It's a subscriber channel with some of the world's best documentaries on there, new material being added all the time. You just head over to historyhit.tv and subscribe. Don't forget, we've got a live tour starting in the autumn, historyhit.com slash tour. You're going to love it. In the meantime, everyone, here is General Sir Rupert Smith. Sir Rupert, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Hello. It's the 28th of February,

30 years on from the ceasefire. Where were you 30 years ago right now? I was on the road that links Kuwait to Basra at about the time the ceasefire was called. The infamous road along which Iraqi troops were retreating and became clogged with destruction time the ceasefire was called. The infamous road along which Iraqi troops were retreating and became clogged with destruction. Yes, I was there. I was in it or on it. And my headquarters, the one that I had sent forward in the lead, was right up behind 7th Brigade. And as 7th Brigade cut the road, my headquarters went down and I wouldn't join them. As the commander of an armoured division, did you feel very lucky when your tenure as commander of the British First Armoured Division overlapped with that division being used in combat, the largest armoured unit to go into battle since the Second World War? I'm not sure I felt I was lucky in the sense that I understand that word. It was largely chance, wasn't it?

I'd been in command of this division for all of 10 days before I'd been told to take the headquarters to the Gulf. It was very rewarding. It's very stimulating to be given such responsibilities. But I didn't feel it was luck. But the timing was extraordinary, wasn't it? As you say, it was 10 days you the timing was extraordinary, wasn't it? As you say, it was 10 days you'd been in command. Is it a very different feeling to know that you're

going to potentially take that unit into combat than overseeing it in Germany during peacetime? I don't see it as a matter of feelings. It's of course different. You're doing what you've been training for as opposed to training for doing what you're about to do. That makes it different. But inside you, as it were, inside your head, is not that much different from having trained to go to Northern Ireland and then going to Northern Ireland. Speaking of Northern Ireland, you served there as a subaltern, I think it was. I mean, your career is a very good example of somebody having to do an extraordinary range of different military activities, domestic peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping in the Balkans conflict resolution, and then big armoured warfare in the deserts of the Middle East. That presumably was also quite a rewarding

aspect of a career in the army. I thoroughly enjoyed my 40 years covering all those sorts of events. But I'm not alone in that. All my comrades, the whole army was doing these things in this way. And during Operation Granby, Northern Ireland is still going on. There's 20,000 soldiers in Northern Ireland and a bit more than that in Saudi Arabia. The army was able to handle those things. I was just one of them. What are the things that are important, the constants, when you're doing all these different activities in different theatres, different geography, different people, what are the foundational skills that you need to develop to be a good soldier? You need to have a degree of endurance and those sorts of qualities, of course. But I think the question you're asking is how do you manage this range of activities? And in that sense,

I think you have to understand that your business is moving the appropriate firepower as fast as you can to where it is going to achieve the effect you want to achieve. Now, there's lots of variables there. And in each case, you have to think of them differently and from scratch. Talking of moving firepower fast, the first Gulf War, now famous for speed of the advanced, the hundred hours war, the minute you moved to the Gulf and started planning, did you think that you would enjoy such a technological and tactical operational edge over the enemy, or were you preparing for a different kind of war? We did have a technical edge, but in the ground forces, it wasn't as marked as the air forces. The battle we planned, in my division's case, was to take one of those

advantages that we had capacity to conduct warfare at a longer range than the Iraqis could manage. at a longer range than the Iraqis could manage. We could fight at a range of roughly 1,500 yards when they needed to get that much closer. We also had sighting systems that allowed us to see in bad light and up to a point in driving sand. So again, that gave us an advantage which we could exploit. And lastly, I had a lot of firepower. If you compare, I'm not sure it's a particularly good comparison,

but if you compared a 1945 Armoured Division to the division in the order of 30 times the weight of high explosive to my predecessor. And I could throw it a great deal further than he could. And the reason I say it's not a very good example is that you don't fight the formation in the same way, because you have this advantage in fat power. Let's explore the example because we've got lots of history fans listening to this podcast. In the Battle of El Alamein, the infantry were required to go in front of armour, clearing paths through minefields, skirmishing potentially with enemy infantry, and then the armour would move along these cleared pathways to try and engage the enemy armour that would be hulled down on the horizon. In quite a similar landscape,

how was it different in 1991? We didn't need to proceed with infantry in the way you've described, largely because the infantry were now in fighting vehicles of their own. So you could move the infantry at the same speed and in the same protection as your armour. And that, of course, makes a difference. Secondly, the capacity to deal with mines was all under armour as well. There wasn't the need to have rows of infantrymen with bayonets prodding the sand looking for mines. So the big obstacle we had to go through, which was dealt with by the

first United States Infantry Division, that was all done within vehicles. And people talk about air power a lot during the Gulf War, the air campaign against targets within Iraq. But how important was air power in a tactical sense for you on the battlefield? Well, firstly, the air battle had amongst its objectives, the reduction of the enemy forces deployed before us was to materially reduce the capacity of the Iraqi army in the field. Secondly, there were fighter ground attack A-10s in our support, and there was a whole system of how you called them in and so on and so forth. But the primary use of air power didn't start, from my point of view, till about 36 hours after we'd attacked because the weather was so appalling, you couldn't bring them in to be confident that they could see the target, not you. To your plan, air wasn't an essential component to your advance. A modern armoured division can advance under their own steam, as it were. I had a regiment of helicopters and missiles. That's air power. I've got my own air

power and use them. When you were planning this ambitious sweep through the desert to the west of Kuwait, what were the challenges? Did you think the main challenges would be logistical operating in that environment? Or was there a great concern about the famous Republican Guard divisions, for example? What kept you up at night? The answer to the very end of your question is nothing. I was busy enough to be tired enough to sleep perfectly well. There were considerable supply, maintenance, logistical difficulties that were going to have to be overcome. And not only the outload and so forth, this is something that is peculiar to being the lone allied division in a United States Army Corps. My logistic train ran all the way back to the port at Chebile, which was our mounting port.

port at Chebile, which was our mounting port. And the more I succeeded, the longer the elastic band got behind me and more stretched it got. In contrast, when a United States division succeeded, his rear boundary moved up and the Corps, and behind that, the United States Army, filled the space and looked after the logistics and so on and so forth. So as I succeeded, my logistical problem became increasingly difficult. And that, of course, we understood and we had the vehicles and commanders and so forth to be able to handle that. But that was something that I had to concern myself with in some detail. On top of that, there were all the casualty evacuation and so forth. That was a national responsibility. And that isn't to say that the Americans wouldn't have helped us. My fellow divisional commanders and the corps commander

were quite clear we'd all help each other. But in the end, the responsibility was national. So the whole business of making sure you've got field dressings and so forth stretched from the port all the way forward. And that was only going to get worse if we were winning. The second factor that was on the tactical side and just as problematic is that the divisional mission was to guard the southern flank of the US core, the US attack. Now, I had no idea what the enemy, the Iraqis, were going to do by way of a maneuver when this attack came in. So I couldn't decide on what to attack once I was through the breach and the Corps was conducting its attack. I had to be searching for the bit of the Iraqi army that was going to interfere with 7 U.S. Corps. And you no doubt, you have seen a map of the objectives we attacked. They all had names of metals, copper, brass, so on.

Those were not static geographical positions. Those were groups of enemy that we had identified. We didn't necessarily know who they were. And the first one that was going to start moving towards the core was going to be the thing I attacked. Now, in fact, in the end, they all stayed where they were. And we attacked them serially. But that wasn't what I planned. And what was planned and all the collection of information and so forth was to find, the phrase I used was out of the rugby field, I had to find the man with the ball and go for him. Whilst thinking about your logistics, whilst thinking about the overall plan, the enemy. You also presumably have to think a lot about the men under your command sitting in the desert. Is it difficult to sometimes maintain

your link with those men under your command, or should you be operating at that higher level and leaving that job to the more junior officers? You should be operating as a divisional commander at the level of a divisional commander. That's no question. But that doesn't stop you seeing what's going on and so forth. And it was my practice to spend most of my day out of my headquarters visiting units. What I wanted to do was talk to the commanders and understand them and what they thought they were doing and vice versa. But of course, you saw all the soldiers and so forth at the same time. And I would have my lunch in a different cookhouse every time so that as people got to know you and

recognize you and so forth, you'd start to have conversations over the meal with Sergeant this and Corporal that and so forth, all of whom had a story to tell you about the spare part that they couldn't get or whatever it was. And my staff were required to answer that soldier's question within 24 hours, even if it was to tell him there was never going to be a spare part coming, there had to be a sense that if you told me something, you'd get a response. I often wonder when you go into battle, how happy were you with the level of training that you'd been able to undertake with the preparation of those units? Had peacetime

training left those units battle ready? On the whole, yes. We'd said we were never going to go east of Suez sometime in the early 70s. So there were a whole range of things that needed to be relearned, that were environmentally dependent, if you like. That sort of training had to take place, which didn't take long, but you had to do it. A lot of our equipment needed to be adjusted, extra filters and so forth. Or you recognize the inadequacy of the piece of equipment and used it accordingly. That sort of training had to be conducted. It wasn't difficult, it just took a bit of time. The majority of the training was entirely appropriate

to what we were about to do. It was just doing it all together at the same time, and en masse, as it were, that was new to all of us. And it was to the greatest credit of the staff in my headquarters in particular, that they could handle this mass and keep it fed, keep it moving, keep the fuel coming, and so on and so forth. And it's not simple when you're doing this in a fight. Where's the best place for you and where were you once the start gun had been fired, once you advanced into Iraq? I commanded from, I think I'm correct in saying, five different positions during that time. My headquarters was split into two, a rear that dealt with all the maintenance, quartering, administration, logistics, and so forth.

And then my main, which dealt with the battle, the intelligence, the information, the firepower, the movement, and so forth. That main was split again into an Alpha and Bravo, and only six staff officers, I think I'm right in saying, one of which is me, had to move between those two parts of the main headquarters. I'll call them Alpha and Bravo for convenience. So Alpha's on the ground,

Bravo is moving up behind one or other of the brigades as they advance. And when I wanted to stop and I want to go forward to command from that place, they were told to go down, set up, and then I would fly or on the first night drive to join them. And we did that five times, as I recall. You're listening to Down Snow's History. It's the 30th anniversary of the end of the first Gulf War. I'm talking to General Sir Rupert Smith all about it. More coming up after this. that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists,

entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. And presumably another big difference from your forebears in North Africa in the Second World War is the ability to communicate and know where everybody else is all the time was revolutionized. We're not there then. GPS largely had been bought out of the maritime leisure industry, GPSs. Think back, I know your father sailed, you might have had a handheld GPS

in his boat in 1990. They were like a large house brick. Well, that's what we had. Every man didn't have them. Anyone who was laying mines or involved in firing artillery had them. And then there were enough to go around so that most units down to companies had a GPS. So I was confident people knew where they were going, but I didn't know where they were myself. The communications were another thing. Our communications in Big AOR were primarily good old-fashioned VHF net radio, which provided there's lots of bits of high ground, you can cover quite a large area with it.

The high ground was missing. And so we had a very limited range of some of those VHF radios unless you stopped and put a big mast up. So for example, on the night we attack, the weather is so bad, I can't fly forward from whichever one it was, Alpha to Bravo. So I have to drive. It was a four-hour drive. And every hour, we'd stop, we'd put up a 27-foot mast, and I could then talk to my chief of staff and find out what the hell was going on. And then we'd collapse the mast, and my ability to hear what was going on was probably about five miles. That was the radio limitation. Then we had a trunk communication system, which was excellent, but it had been maximized for the Northwest German Plain. And it was an area system. We were now stretched

from the port to wherever we were. And we had to turn, the Royal Signals had to turn their area system into a linear system so that we could communicate and of course every time you attacked you went out from underneath your communications and it had to be built up behind you similarly to the logistic problems and by about the second day, fortunately, we had the radios. We were back on the high frequency radios and fairly senior sergeants were having to remember their Morse because we hadn't been teaching the younger soldiers Morse for about five years by that time. On that first night, when you're going ahead and erecting that mast, were you pleased with the reports that you were hearing? Yes, we were making progress. I was trying to get up behind some brigade who had been told to start this attack towards an objective

called Copper, if I remember correctly. And was the speed of that advance quicker than you had hoped for, or was it about what you assumed? It was about what one expected. We'd had lots of time to practice and collect the data as to how long it took to do some of these things with all these vehicles in the sand. We had those calculations. We carefully worked them out, so the planning assumptions were the same across the force and the headquarters. You were out to the west of the Kuwaiti border. You weren't all the way on the far western flank, but what were the state of the Iraqi defences opposite you? I didn't attack those.

We went through the breach that the United States Infantry Division had made. They were extensive defences, linear trench works, in some depth similar to what one imagines the First World War trench systems were, with a big anti-tank obstacle in front of it. They had these groups behind the evident line of defense, which I called copper and all those things. And these looked like tactical reserves capable of reacting to any attack on those positions. And that's why I said that the objective names are collections of enemy rather than places. collections of enemy rather than places. And the reason copper got attacked was because it was the nearest one to seven corps attack as it advanced. When you did engage the enemy, how intense was that fighting or had their will to resist been thoroughly broken down by air assault and other

methods? We'd already begun to see evidence of evaporating morale with the number of prisoners and so forth that the 1st Infantry Division had taken. If I remember rightly, the attacks that we carried out in the first 36 hours or so, they didn't just roll over, they defended themselves, they did what they could. But this enormous weight of artillery fire, not all of it, but a lot of it was coming in on them as the armoured brigades went into the attack. And as I say, the substantial amount of firepower that was available to me, a very large portion of it was being fired into the enemy groups as they were attacked. So you had an ability to destroy the enemy at quite a great distance? sentry were dismounting and clearing them up. And there were one or two cases of warrior vehicles disgorging their infantry and positions being cleared. And these fights never lasted very long,

which was part of my design, because the quicker you can win a fight, the less casualties there are and the less resources that you've consumed. And therefore, over time, you move faster and faster. Were you heartened by the, thankfully, small number of casualties that your division sustained? And dare I say, were you even surprised by that? It was against the figures that could have been. We had very few. But as I say, I deliberately planned to fight lots of little battles very fast, which reduces casualties. So I was extremely pleased we had so few casualties. Yeah. The T-55 tanks, were you pleased with the way your vehicles performed against those Soviet tanks that you must have spent so much time training

and thinking about before the war during your time in the army previous to that? Yes. Remember, the T-55 was a generation older in comparison to what we would have faced in Germany. If a Challenger hit one of the T-55s, then it was knocked out and quite often had the turret knocked off it. But what stage did you realise that this war could be over really within a matter of hours? There's a wadi on all the maps called the Wadi al-Batin. This, I can tell you, is more significant on the map than it is on the ground. But we were closed up and crossing that wadi when it was clear to me that we were no longer

in the attack. We were now in pursuit. And this meant that you didn't deploy in quite the same way. So for that and other reasons, I brought the division into a column as opposed to attacking with the brigade side by side. And once you're in pursuit, you're moving ahead faster and faster and are prepared to take risks as a result. You talk about brigades of armour and moving them into a column. How many main battle tanks did you have approximately under your command at that time? About 170. I may be a bit high. That included

the reserve vehicles. And of course, there weren't any more. Earlier on, you asked me a question about the logistics and finding the right target to attack and so forth. Another factor was that everything that was available was already there with me. If I cocked it up, there was no replacement. And so one had to fight the division in vehicles, not as something that could be replaced, but a finite fleet that I had to keep on the road, which is rather like the Navy have to consider its ships. I had to consider the armoured vehicles, the guns and everything. I had very few replacements. How does that compare to today's British Army in terms of its armoured component? I couldn't tell you how many tanks the British Army have got at

the moment, but it's surely less than I had. Did you feel the history weighing on you at that moment when you go into column and to pursue the enemy, that you could be the last British general in history to command that size of an armoured unit in battle. Were you aware of that? No, I don't think that sort of thing occurred to me at all. Too busy with the job in hand. And what was your feeling upon the cessation of hostilities? I was absolutely knackered, trying to think what next to do in that it was a ceasefire. We didn't know it was all over. We that it was a ceasefire. We didn't know it was all over. We

knew it was a ceasefire. So my first concern was to get ourselves arranged so that we could carry on a fight if one occurred. Secondly, there was clearly casualties and things to be sorted out, and someone had to get on with that. And my next sort of feeling was getting the rest of the division who were behind me up as quick as we could. So those are the things I was concentrating at the time. It was an extraordinary atmosphere because all the oil wells had been set alight. The picture in my mind, and this was before the film was made,

was that it was like going into Mordor with this black smoke everywhere, the oily soot that came from it coating everything. It was a very grim scene. There was an optimism in the 1990s, the way the UN came together to eject Damascene from Kuwait. There was optimism despite terrible events in Rwanda, and indeed the events in the Balkans that you were also part of. But there was a sense in which we might be moving towards a world where

we'd enjoy a great peace dividend following the Cold War. This was perhaps naive, but there would be less conflict. And you've written so thoughtfully about the enduring nature of conflict in our society. Looking back 30 years ago, did you think that the 21st century would be as turbulent as it has been? Has it been a surprise to you? I think I would say that I would have shared the view that we had a new dawn, if you like, at the end of the Cold War, and that we, the United Nations, had done something in liberating Kuwait. decade, you could see that the assumptions on which the world order had been based in 1945 were the assumptions on which all these institutions had grown up. But they'd grown up in the Cold War. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the

poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist

who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians.

Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. And what we've seen to do in 1990 is to suppose that the assumptions of 1945 were still safe, were still valid. And we then went on and started to behave as though the Cold War hadn't happened, the economies hadn't changed, and so on and so on and so forth. And then slowly, the assumptions on which the United Nations and a world order construct began to break down. And nobody tried to re-establish the assumptions, perhaps because they couldn't. They're not there to be re-established. And we're probably continuing to live through this, what I would call a revolution,

a slow one, like the Industrial Revolution, or printing press and so on, at the moment. And is that revolution in reference to the rise of China? Are we talking about technology? They're all of a piece. You talk about the Gulf in 1990. And it was always remarkable to me how the reference point of people reporting on it at the time, or subsequently in commenting upon it, was always referenced to either trench warfare in the Somme, or the Battle of Britain, or Alamein. That was the reference points, so that they could do the broadcast quickly and so forth, they'd be understood. And yet it was a completely false picture. And I think that has largely continued. And the digital age has actually only made it

more discordant, because people can now see or think they're seeing what's actually going on and are trying to understand it in terms that have long passed. Take Syria. I've yet to hear any broadcaster explain what is actually happening in Syria. They can do all the, this is awful, this is a burning building, this person's been gassed. But what is actually happening, other than at that very granular level, is never covered. Because there's no capacity, I suspect, to be able to appeal in the three-minute slot to a memory or a picture to explain. In that case, you're talking to hundreds of thousands of people listening to this podcast.

What is a key thing to understand about the nature of the world today or conflict that you want to tell people about? What should we know? I call what we're living through at the moment as wars amongst the people. what we're living through at the moment, is wars amongst the people. Not only literally it takes place amongst the people, Syria being an example, but it also takes place within a theatre. The man who called the theatre of operations was very prescient. It has now become a drama, a theater that is played out amongst the people. And the level of the fighting can be as low as what you saw on Capitol Hill in Washington a few weeks ago, or as high as a armored division in the Yemen. But essentially, the understanding of what's happening and what one's trying to get across in using force in this way is to make your point in the drama. And if you can make your point

in the drama, you win the fight. And it has altered the nature of warfare. It's altered the way you run it. And most of our institutions, to go back to an answer to an earlier question, are all built on the past. And ministries of defenses, foreign offices, etc., etc., and their responsibilities and authorities were all constructed to handle a different form of war. And until we understand this institutional problem, we will fail in our wars amongst the people. So your successors have to be logisticians like you were. They have to be tacticians. They have to know about the technology. They have to know about the men under the command. But now they also have to be drama producers. Yes. And command of these

types of war is like being producer of some gladiatorial contest in a Roman amphitheater. Only there's another producer with another set of gladiators and a different script, trying to perform at the same time. And all around you in the amphitheater, the stands are stacked with a very partial audience who are paying attention by looking down the drinking straw of their Coca-Cola tin, which is my reference to television. And the drinking straws point to where it's noisiest, in the pit. And in the pit, mixed up with you and all the gladiators,

are the idiots who couldn't find the car park, the ticket touts and ice cream sellers and so forth. And you've got to act, tell, and write the most convincing script in the eyes of those people looking through their drinking straws. If you can do that, you win. You have to win the little fights. But if you take something like Afghanistan, I suspect the allies in Afghanistan have never lost a fight, but they haven't won the war. Well, that sounds completely exhausting. I'm going for a lie down. General Sir Rupert Smith, thank you very much indeed for coming on. Tell everyone what your book is called. The Utility of Force. And it's on sale now. Go and get it, everybody. I read it when

it first came out back in the day fresh out of university i couldn't believe my luck thank you very much indeed for coming on this podcast thank you hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you This part of the history of our country, all work out. And finish. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review. Purge yourself. Give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support i can get so that will

boost it up the chance it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you douglas adams the genius behind the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. you