Irregular Warfare Podcast - Armed Politics

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Episode 97 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast focuses on a theory of armed politics as proposed by General Sir Nick Carter and Dr. Joe Felter. Our guests begin by describing the shifting landscape of the international order from the Cold War to today, and the resultant impact on alliances, partnerships, and competition across the globe.  General Carter proposes a theory that emphasizes the need for those engaged in war today to deeply understand every level of politics, as neglecting this understanding can have catastrophic effects.  Our guests reflect on the challenges of implementation, including tactical trade-offs and measuring effects.  They conclude by considering the impact of rapidly evolving technology on this theory of armed politics, as well as the roles of the United States and United Kingdom in a world faced with disarray.

And what you have to do is you have to find a way of getting all of these stakeholders to come together behind a big idea and to connect them to governance, to protect them, and then to get them to feel that there is a greater cause to be had, which is about perhaps their local, regional, or national identity, and that that's where stability comes from. We inevitably created rather more insurgents than we needed to. I remember just how hard it was to go to these maneuver units and message the brigade commanders, battalion commanders, hey, you have to maybe restrain yourself on using that ordnance or artillery or things that are going to be more indiscriminate and create more civilian casualties because tactically you may win that battle, but you're going to undermine your strategic interests

as far as losing support of the population. Welcome to episode 97 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Sinnott, and my co-host today is Laura Jones. In this episode, General Sir Nick Carter introduces a theory of armed politics. We recorded this episode in late spring of last year during one of General Carter's visits to Stanford University as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Our guests begin by describing the shifting landscape of the international order from the Cold War to today and the resultant impact on alliances, partnerships, and competition across the globe. and the resultant impact on alliances, partnerships, and competition across the globe. General Carter proposes a theory that emphasizes the need for those engaged in war today to deeply understand every level of politics,

as neglecting this understanding can have catastrophic effects. Our guests reflect on the challenges of implementation, including tactical trade-offs and measuring effects. They conclude by considering the impact of rapidly evolving technology on this theory of armed politics, as well as the roles of the United States and the United Kingdom in a world faced with disarray. General Sir Nick Carter is a career British Army officer whose four-decade career culminated in his service as the Chief of Defense Staff for the United Kingdom. In this role, he was the Principal Military Advisor to the Prime Minister, the National Security Council, the Secretary of State for Defense, and the head of the UK Armed Forces.

He has commanded military operations at every level, including in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan. General Carter is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Dr. Joe Felter is a William J. Perry Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2017 to 2019, Dr. Felter served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

He is a co-director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the co-author of Small Wars, Big Data, the Information Revolution, and Modern Conflict. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here is our conversation with General Sir Nick Carter and Dr. Joe Felter. Nick, Joe, it's great to be with you here today at Stanford.

This is a conversation that Laura and I have very much been looking forward to, so we appreciate you making the time. Thank you very much. It's a great privilege to be with you. Thanks, Shauna. Thanks, Laura. Thanks for all you're doing. Nick, I'd like to start with you just to give us a little bit of background on why this topic is important. And your career has spanned many decades, many types of conflicts, all the way from the tactical level to coin operations, peacekeeping operations, up through your time as the chief of the defense staff. So what piqued your interest in looking more specifically at the interaction between war and politics from a theoretical perspective? I think it was probably the journey that I took from being a platoon commander in Northern Ireland, which of course was a classic counter insurgency problem, and therefore political by design,

through a period of stabilization operations, peace support operations, however we used to describe them in, first of all, Bosnia and then Kosovo as a battalion commander. And then I guess we ended up with 9-11 and all of the campaigns that followed that. And during the course of that journey, I think I began to realize that the sort of classic paradigm that we put in place at the beginning of Bosnia, which essentially saw three lines of operation, a line of operation that was focused on improving the secure environment to such a degree that you could leave and hand the problem over to the indigenous partners. The second line of operation, which was essentially about building the capacity of indigenous partners so that they were good enough to be able to take on the first line of

operation. And then, of course, a sort of bit of an afterthought, the third line of operation, which is always about development and the aid that came with all of that. And I moved through that paradigm, which we applied in the Balkans and then applied to a degree in Iraq, to realizing that none of that really got after the essential political dynamic of what one was trying to achieve. And that was brought very sharply into relief for me on my second tour in Afghanistan, where during the lead up to it, I kept pinching myself and trying to find out who people genuinely thought was the enemy in all of that. And it was that thinking really that took me towards thinking about perhaps a different

approach was needed. Jo, you come into this with a unique perspective as well. You have your academic training and point of reference, but you've also seen this on the ground. You were in Afghanistan at the same time with the opportunity to see how certain approaches were or were not working. So to what extent have you seen the consideration of politics as a core component of strategy, or should it be more? Yeah, sure. I think it's always been important. And the way Nick articulated it is spot on. I mean, he mentioned his service in Afghanistan under the ISAF command at the time, General McChrystal. I was also serving as a leader

of a counter-insurgency advisory team that General McChrystal stood up. But Nick mentioned, we were struggling with trying to identify who was the enemy, for example. And at the time, if you ask the people in the hinterlands of Afghanistan, the enemy may be a government in Kabul. And that was fundamentally put us up in a very difficult situation as a third party counterinsurgent, where we're trying to prop up a government that was fundamentally viewed as illegitimate by so many in the country. So maybe we're doomed to fail from the beginning, if you look at it that way. But the interaction between the political dynamic and warfare has always been significant, and certainly in the wars we've fought the last 20 years and will be in the wars we go forward.

Nick, can you talk to us a little bit about the current political context and kind of how the political context has shifted or changed over the past decades through your career, and how that affects the political mechanisms that affect the use of force? My take is that we're now living through an era of acute instability. It's complex and it's dynamic, and it's probably reminiscent of the 1930s. The only difference perhaps being that in the 1930s there weren't any nuclear weapons to be had. And I think there are probably three broad reasons why that's the case. The first reason, to my mind, is that we've returned to a multipolar world, a world in which great powers are competing with their blocs, with their clans, with their

allies against each other. And of course, we see, in a sense, assertive authoritarian rivals as part of that competition, which errs towards conflict from time to time, is a very different set of circumstances to the circumstances that my early career envisaged, where one was in the Cold War. It was a bipolar world. It was a very stable world. I think it will be an era that will be regarded by historians as a bit of a blip because of that stability. When, of course, the Cold War came to an end in the late 80s, early 90s, we then entered a period of unipolarity where US power was completely total. And in a sense, the US at that stage was also prepared to be the world's policeman. And we now find ourselves in a slightly different set of circumstances where having been distracted by

9-11 and the campaigns that followed that, we're now awakening from that moment and seeing this multipolarity, this era of great power competition again. And of course, the US is now much more focused on China. And the upshot of all of that is that it's probably left vacuums in parts of the world that we would hitherto have regarded as really important, not least the Gulf and the Middle East, for example. So I think that's the first phenomenon is that we're back to an era of great power competition, a multipolar world. And the world, and Ukraine is revealing this sharply, I think, is therefore breaking down probably into three broad groups of countries. There's the pro-Western group, there's an

anti-Western group, led by Russia and China. And then, of course, there is an increasing non-aligned group, who will profit from being able to play two ends off against the middle and probably profit from globalization in a way that the other two groups won't be able to profit from globalization to the same extent. I think the second reason why we've got this sort of phenomenal disorder at the moment is the rules-based order, which the United States was fundamental in designing post-World War II, Rules-based order, which the United States was fundamental in designing post-World War II, is now struggling. Arguably, it's not fit for purpose. But certainly what's going on is that that group of countries who are anti-Western, who have a revisionist view of history,

and who believe they've got a historic right of determination, are challenging it. And we see that with one member of the Security Council clearly at war at the moment. And then I think the third reason, which is really important to the conversation I know we're going to have, is that we find ourselves in a position now where the character of politics and the character of warfare are evolving very rapidly. And that's predominantly because of the very rapid pace of technological change, but it's also because the pervasiveness of information, and if you like, the democratization of information. And that has created these effects like some of the politics we see, the nationalism we see, and all that goes with that, and the populism that we see. And of course, it's also shaded the distinctions that

we used to have between peace and war, between state and non-state, between foreign and domestic policy, and of course, between virtual and reality. And the upshot of all of that is it's provided gray areas in which our more authoritarian rivals are able to exploit these gray areas in order to find ways of undermining our way of life. And we see that with disinformation, with misinformation, with new domains like cyber, what perhaps happens in space, the use of proxies, the use of militias, and some clandestine type activity like attacking the cables that connect our countries under the oceans and so on and so forth. zone, they call it hybrid warfare, the Chinese will call it political warfare. But understanding that phenomenon is really critical, I think, to how we might apply military force in the future, and how we might encourage governments to think much more holistically about how you

integrate all of the levers of national power, both public and private sector, to achieve effect in the environment I'm describing. When Nick said that we are back in this multipolar world or that we're back to great power competition, he has the memory here that's maybe spent a little more time in the Ivy Tower. I mean, people like Bob Mearshire, all the realist academics would say, we never left it. We just got distracted. Anarchy certainly characterizes the international system. Great power competition, we may not have been focused on it, but our competitors certainly were. And Nick emphasized that we not have been focused on it, but our competitors certainly were. And Nick emphasized that we may have been distracted with the wars of 9-11 in the last 20 years.

And certainly our competitors like China, for example, certainly took advantage of that. And they've been competing with this whole government approach, all in the interest of their national power, and we're going to have to respond accordingly. Nick outlined some of the different groups, if you will, in the international system, U.S. or Russia, China, others. From my experiences in OSD policy under Secretary, then Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, we would never ask any country to choose between the US and China. It's asking them to choose a vision for the future and to work with those countries that help them achieve that vision. Choose your own sovereignty and work with others that are going to help you to defend that. In this world, it's not like we're picking sides anymore. And I think it's bad to characterize that. But there certainly is countries that have a vision for the future that must be coerced and imposed. And I am talking about China. And then we like the United States has a vision for the

future, which is an enduring rules based order that we've helped establish and protect since the end of the Second World War. And I think that's really where we need to focus on as opposed to picking sides. If I can just jump in there real quick, Nick, something you said kind of really piqued my interest, which was you talked about the character of politics and the character of warfare. And often scholars of security studies or folks that read Clausewitz, they think about the character of warfare and how that changes. But I think it's very interesting to consider it and conceptualize it also within the character of politics. Yes. I mean, I think we've seen increasingly over the last five to 10 years, the notion of the sort of strong man leader

and the populist politician. And, you know, if you look around so-called democracies these days, you do see political figures who are much more inclined to reach out to their populations to get votes in a way that would have been unheard of in the days of George Shultz or Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. And of course, so much of that is actually about the technology and the information technology and the social media that enables people to touch populations in a very different way. I was told some fascinating statistics the other day. Shakespeare had a vocabulary of some 24,000 words.

James Joyce had a vocabulary of some 24,000 words. James Joyce had a vocabulary of some 12,000 words. And the average graduate leaving a top grade university like Stanford or Oxford these days probably has a vocabulary of between 4,000 and 6,000 words. The average student in secondary education now probably has a vocabulary of around 850 words. But of course, if you're a politician trying to engage people whose vocabulary is so limited, you're also going to use a limited vocabulary. And that means the nuance of the political debate is no longer as clear as it once was. Nick, you're now piecing together these lessons into a more informed theory of armed politics.

What are the components of that as you see it? There are two parts to it. There's the sense of political warfare or the gray zone hybrid challenge that falls out of the global strategic context that I described. But there's also something that's a bit more of a tactical phenomenon. There are many countries in the world who are encountering the same sorts of problems that we were up against in a place like Afghanistan. You only need to look at the Sahel and the countries that are adjacent to the Sahel, whether that's Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, these sorts of countries, they've got this problem. And the reality is that we do need, I think, to try and learn and therefore help others apply the lessons that we've deduced from Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree, perhaps Iraq. And to my mind, those lessons were very much about having the need, ab initio, to establish genuine insight and understanding of the local political context. We, I think, have become

seduced since probably the end of the Cold War by intelligence. And the reality is that intelligence isn't necessarily terribly useful when you want to have a conversation about insight, understanding, and politics. Because, of course, intelligence tends to be focused on your perception of who you think the enemy is. And in a campaign like Afghanistan, there are multiple stakeholders, multiple actors, and there are multiple people who might bear arms, but don't necessarily have to be your enemy. And what you have to do is you have to find a way of getting all of these stakeholders to come together behind a big idea and to connect them to governance, to protect them, and then to get them to feel that there is a greater cause to be had, which is about

perhaps their local, regional, or national identity, and that that's where stability comes from. We inevitably created rather more insurgence than we needed to, because often we were played off by one side against another side. And that, of course, contributed ultimately to the insurgency becoming extremely difficult to defeat. Had we, on the other hand, perhaps thought hard about our forebears and how they had derived their insight and understanding of the local, political, tribal, familial, clan-based scene, then we might have found life a little easier, I think, as we sought ultimately

to build the nation or rebuild the nation that was Afghanistan. From that, I came to the conclusion that British military doctrine was too enemy-focused. We always talked about something called the manoeuvrist approach, which the Germans call Auftragstaktik. And that essentially is focused on shattering the enemy's will and cohesion. It's focused often on an indirect approach as espoused by people like Fuller and Littleheart. That's all fine, and that is still all relevant. But of course, it's not necessarily the doctrine that you want to apply in the circumstances that I've described in Afghanistan. The doctrine that you want to apply in those circumstances is one where you start by working out what the outcome is that you're seeking to achieve. Then it's about analyzing all of the audiences that are relevant to the attainment of that outcome, not just your perception of who the enemy might be.

or stakeholders requires a different effect to be applied to them to realize that outcome. So the next thing you have to do, having analyzed those audiences, is to work out what effect you're trying to impart on those audiences. Then your task is really to look into your locker of methodologies, which will be everything from soft through to hard power on a spectrum, and to work out what is the best mix of soft through to hard power to impart effect onto audience to realise the outcome. Now, I call that doctrine integrated action. And it's now the doctrine that the British military applies to all problems in military terms, not to push the manoeuvrist approach to one side completely, but the broader sense of problems that you're trying to solve. And of course, what I'm laying out there is an

approach, an application you could take to solving what are essentially political problems, because politics is essentially about the interaction between human beings. Nick, maybe I could comment on just having worked at ISAF when you were a regional command south. You talk about the effects, you know, know this integrated action I think that's a great example of the importance of you talk about the hard and the soft approaches and you know my recollection of you working closely with General McChrystal and going to all the regional commands it's not just because you're on the podcast but I think you you definitely appreciated General McChrystal's intent and then one great example that may be relevant to this discussion is when a counter-insurgency fight when you're competing for the support of the population, but you're both for information

and support and so many other things that protecting that population is going to be critical. And to do that effectively, you're going to have to assume greater risk, certainly tactical level risk. And Nick, I remember just how hard it was to go to these maneuver units and message the brigade commanders, battalion commanders, hey, you have to maybe restrain yourself on using that ordinance or artillery or things that are going to be more indiscriminate and create more civilian casualties because tactically you may win that battle, but you're going to undermine your strategic interests as far as losing support of the population. But this is really hard. This balance is really hard. It's tough when you're that operational level commander, when you have to write those letters

home to grieving parents and spouses that, hey, we assumed risk because it was part of winning strategically. I agree with you on this effect space. What's the effect space? Do you want to get support from the population so you can win strategically or continually to win tactically and undermine your strategic interests? I do agree with you. I mean, it was very difficult to do. And of course, the challenge with it is that so many of the soldiers that deployed to Afghanistan and those veterans who were perhaps looking in on the campaign from the United States or in Europe or wherever else. Of course, for them, the campaign had been described in black and white terms to simplify it. This was all about defeating the Taliban. And of course, as we've alluded to earlier in this conversation,

it wasn't as simple as that. If it was simply defeating the Taliban in the same way that Ukraine might now view the defeat of the Russian army as its path to victory, it becomes a much more straightforward thing to explain to soldiers on the battlefield or to members of the public populations looking in from afar. And that, of course, is the challenge that political leaders have because, of course, they want to simplify the problem to get support for what they're trying to achieve. But in simplifying the problem, they actually make it much harder for the practitioners on the battlefield to actually prevail at the end of the day because these things are never black and white. They are invariably about shades of gray. And I think that that framing of it is

something that is very important to all of us. And it plays to one of the big lessons I'm sure that people would draw from all of this, which is if you don't make sure that the political objectives that policymakers set iteratively with the military leadership at the beginning of a campaign, if you don't set those political objectives in a way that they are militarily realizable and translate into military objectives, then you'll always lose. And that probably explains why over the course of the last couple of generations, we haven't often looked like we've won. Thank you, Nick. And Joe, what Nick's laid out for some of the drivers of looking at Afghanistan in

a way that wasn't really productive, those theoretical constructs and approaches and elements of doctrine, were those paralleled in the American experience for why the U.S. also struggled in some of these situations? I think the way Nick laid it out certainly applies to the U.S. I mean, he had U.S. forces there at regional command south when he was in charge. Yeah, this notion that we didn't really understand our political objectives, or at least it wasn't shared understanding done to the military commanders, really made it challenging. I mean, you can have a sense that you're winning as a military commander when you're not, or even worse, you're undermining your goals and objectives based on what you're doing on the battlefield.

And I mentioned that protecting the population is an example. Actually, General McChrystal actually made a term called courageous restraint, and he wanted to reward soldiers, individuals for demonstrating restraint, which, as you can imagine, culturally did not sit well with a lot of the folks on the battlefield at the sharp end of the spear. But it was hard to impress upon tactical commanders, operational-level commanders, the importance of working towards those strategic ends and what it took to make progress there and what type of actions undermine that progress.

When you're in the thick of a fight, it's understandable when you're taking casualties, but it's really difficult to really educate operational-level commanders on the strategic ends that we're trying to achieve and what type of actions can help that. Because sometimes they're at cross purposes with certain tactical success in the battlefield. I think that's kind of a natural segue into this idea of evoking Rupert Smith and his concept of the diminishing utility of force within more population-centric warfare and security contexts. So, Nick, does your idea build off of Rupert Smith's ideas? Is it population-centric in and security contexts. So Nick, does your idea build off of Rupert Smith's ideas? Is it population-centric in nature, your theory, or can you expand it into

broader geopolitical contexts? Or is your idea that all elements now of modern warfare will have these very, very political underpinnings that you have to define your ends within those contexts? Yes, I think that the advice that I would give to practitioners nowadays is that it's never been underpinnings that you have to define your ends within those contexts. Yes, I think that the advice that I would give to practitioners nowadays is that it's never been more important to understand the political context at every level. Because if you don't understand it at every level, then there is a risk that you will use force in a fashion that is counterproductive. Now, I think that what Rupert Smith was observing, predominantly through the 10 years of the Balkans experience, was that that context was very much a context that was about politics. And it was about,

if you like, war amongst the people. But again, it was necessary, I think, to go to another level and to understand that if force was less likely to be useful in that context, what would be useful? And he did observe, because he talked very much about the role of the media, and he talked very much about an analogy whereby, if you like, the commander was the producer, and that his troops, in a sense, were the actors. And of course, the audience was the population, and the media were there to help transmit that message. And in a way, I think I'm probably saying the same thing, but what I'm trying to do is to take it to a level where actually we have the doctrine, the concepts, and the tools to be able to do that. And that was one of the reasons why when I was given the luckless task of having to take a 20% cut in the British Army in 2011 and reform it,

one of the things that we created and I established was a information warfare brigade called 77 Brigade. And in essence, 77 Brigade was created to maintain or change the behavior on battlefields of audiences, and possibly your enemy, by non-lethal means. And they became and are now experts in using all types of modern media to impart effect onto the relevant audience in the battlefield context. And that development and the doctrine that underpinned it, I think, was taking Rupert Smith's thesis to the next level. And I also think that this adherence to understanding that political context is something that he espoused, but the extent to which I think it has been genuinely embraced by practitioners is a debatable

question. Nick, one of the unique things about your proposal is, you know, you were in a position to actually integrate this and test it. Were you able to measure any of the effects of shifting this perspective while you were commanding forces in Afghanistan? Yes, I think it was probably. One of our most successful operations, campaigns, it was a long thing to do, was in a district to the west of Kandahar city called Argandab. And Argandab was a really important piece of terrain. It was the traditional gate in historic terms to the city of Kandahar. It was an extraordinarily fertile valley, the River Argandar flowed through it, and it produced some of the best pomegranates one would get from any orchards the world over. But it had become a battlefield, and it had become a

battlefield in which a lot of American soldiers had either been wounded or sadly lost their lives. And we were not making a great deal of progress there when I took over command of regional command south in the November or late October of 2009. And I remember, first of all, changing the dispositions of the troops there because there was a striker battalion in there, which was totally the wrong capability to be deployed in what was effectively jungle on very narrow tracks. And we brought in airborne troops and gave them a sort of injection of some jungle training to understand the nature of the context that we're going to have to operate in. And we put a lot of money in there, put a lot of effort into it. We rebuilt a lot of the

infrastructure. And the American battalion worked very closely with the district governor, who is a man called Haji Jabbar, and his opposite number, who was the chief of police. And of course, this goes right back to my point about understanding the political dynamics and the opposite number, who was the chief of police. And of course, this goes right back to my point about understanding the political dynamics and the political context, because I still couldn't understand why we weren't making any progress. We should have been making progress. So radically, instead of putting the I-star, we had a lot of it onto the enemy, inverted commas, I put the I-star onto District Governor Haji Jabbar and the Chief of Police. And the act of that was that we discovered that they spent a great deal of the time

communicating via their mobile telephones with the leader of the predominant tribe in the area, a man called Mullah Naqib, and his enforcer, who was a man called Palwan. And of course, what was going on was this was one great big Ponzi scheme. And they were ripping off the American and Canadian governments. They were making a lot of money for themselves. They were encouraging the insurgents to behave as insurgents, but also others who frankly were part of their sort of rather more nefarious aims to suppress the population. They had kicked most of the elders out of the villages so that the traditional Afghan democratic system of district councils and shuras was no longer operating because it didn't suit their purposes for that to happen. Anyway, to cut a long story short,

with a bit of nefarious footwork, we managed to get the Afghans to get rid of Haji Jabbar, the district chief of police, and Afghans who were more likely to be connected to the local population and to the elders replaced them. The system of community councils and shuras was rebuilt over time and the elders came back from the city of Kandahar. And we essentially created a stable political context in which governance became connected to the population. context in which governance became connected to the population. Yes, it did require some lethal force to clear some bad people and some insurgents out of the areas adjacent to the river during the course of August and September of 2010. But I remember being very proud when James Terry, who took over from me with the 10th Mountain Division in November of 2010, he and I were able to go and have a picnic

in the Argandab. And every Thursday, women and children come from Kandahar and they swim in the river and they would also have picnics. And the reason for that was because we applied integrated action. We thought out of the box. We were lateral in our approach. And frankly, we got after the political context in a way that led to, I think, political-driven combat. And it was a fashion that I think is a very good illustration of what I'm trying to bring to life during the course of this conversation. Joe, if you want to talk about how you can take a direct outcome, but kind of a nebulous way to get there in terms of it wasn't bullets and number of firefights that got you to that point. It was politics and engagement and dialogue

and relationships that were built and influence and access gained. So when you're trying to communicate that as a military leader or commander on the ground back to a political center that understands metrics, how do you communicate that back as a battlefield effect, but also a political effect? Metrics are really difficult when measuring effectiveness and counterinsurgency. For example, I know spending time in Afghanistan and Iraq, both in the four star headquarters and out in the field, back in the FOB, if you will, behind the HESCO barriers, you look at, you know, let's say significant activities as an indicator of violence. You'll see areas that have a lot of attacks. You're assuming that there's some kind of a problem there, that maybe there's some instability, that maybe that's where we're losing or losing ground.

But think of this scenario like this. In Afghanistan, there may be a district or an area where there's no significant activities because the counterinsurgency forces, if you will, maybe staying behind the wire, not going out patrolling or doing anything, they've kind of ceded the space to the Taliban. And where, you know, I've been in a situation where you, a special force team, for example, might go into an area that was controlled by the Taliban, and they would try to wrest control back from the Taliban. And of course, violence would spike. And if you're looking at, again, back in Kabul, that spike in violence may suggest a problem or some outcome that you're concerned about.

It's really an indicator of effective counter-insurgency, of going out and doing the hard missions of coin, of patrolling and doing security. So the broad point here is that Nick said, you have to be careful what you measure and how you interpret what you measure in those metrics. And this is going maybe to my academic side. You got to really connect to the local context, which I think Nick emphasized really well and is absolutely spot on, because sterile metrics interpreted without context, far away from where the fight is, can really be misinterpreted and drive faulty decisions. And of course, so much of counterinsurgency is less about getting after the enemy. It's obviously about governance and protecting

the people, but it's also about getting after the causes of the insurgency. You know, one of the big measurements of effect that we used in southern Afghanistan was the population's freedom of movement. And the way in which the police system worked was that a district chief of police would apply for a job to the provincial chief of police. He would then probably hand over several tens of thousands of dollars to get his appointment. And then, of course, his business plan was to recoup that by owning a huge number of checkpoints on the different roads around his district, and probably, if he was very lucky, a main highway like Highway 1 running through his district as well. And of course, what he was doing was arranging for the population to be fleeced.

So he was making money, and therefore that paid off for his appointment. And that whole system worked all the way up through the Afghan police force and the Afghan military. It was a business scheme. And of course, as far as the population were concerned, it was a disaster, because it meant that every time they tried to drive from Lashkar Ghat, Kandahar, they would go through 40 checkpoints, they would be fleeced at every checkpoint. And it was hardly worth trying to sell your goods in the market in Kandahar because actually the business plan didn't work. So one of the things that we were determined to get after was freedom of movement. And we used to send civilians up and down the roads and monitor the extent to which the checkpoints had disappeared and the police were behaving properly. And indeed, we used synthetic aperture radar from a particular couple of airborne I-STAR platforms we had to measure the

amount of traffic that was moving on roads to get a sense of whether or not freedom of movement was generally occurring. So I think thinking really laterally about how your measurement of effect applies to your broader objectives in terms of getting after the causes of the insurgency is a really important point. And it's a sort of way of lateral thinking that's pretty fundamental to your objectives. That reminds me of an anecdote near Kandahar. We were talking to a village elder through an interpreter, and he said that we need the Taliban here to protect us from the police. And I thought that was an interpretation error. That is absolutely the case for reasons you just described. And that's what was kind of an aha moment for me as a third

party U.S. counterinsurgent, if you will, that the local population, they looked at these police checkpoints, that was part of the problem. And the Taliban wasn't the perfect answer, but it was an answer they provided. So that was when I realized, wow, we're propping up a government that's often viewed as not quite legitimate in the eyes of the population. And to your point, Nick, the focus is not on the fighting, but it's more on how to reduce corruption and ensure that the representatives of the central government are at a minimum not viewed as the enemy and ideally viewed as part of the solution. Nick, going to you next, based on what you've described with politics as an extension of warfare

and this very specific coin environment, is that the same way we should think about other types of conflict? Is that generally applicable to the spectrum of conflict, particularly when we look at state-on-state interaction? Or is that a different type of relationship between politics and warfare? No, I mean, it's still a political dimension to it. I mean, I think what's very striking about the current world disorder and the grey zone come hybrid come political warfare that's emerging from it between authoritarian rivals and perhaps Western democracies and for that matter, perhaps the people in between, is that there are now available different tools, tactics and techniques which enable countries that might want to use them to compete quite aggressively, quite assertively, below the threshold of what we would

have once described as war. And of course, the great difficulty that we have as Western democracies, and indeed, this is played right out through the NATO alliance, is that the thresholds that we apply in order to be able to set the appropriate regulatory framework in which we might apply force and the military instrument is enshrined in clear definitions. And if those clear definitions are no longer clear, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get the political will and the coordination in place to be able to compete with authoritarian rivals. And to bring that sort of slightly academic point to life, if you think about the NATO articles,

Article 5 is very clear. An attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on everybody. The question, of course, in what I've described is, what's the definition of an attack? And is an attack that undermines an outcome of an attack? And is an attack that undermines an outcome of an election? Is that an attack that might abuse Article 5? Discuss. Is a cyber attack, which might not take life, but might be extraordinarily damaging economically, is that something that breaches Article 5? I mean, at the moment, I don't think we know. At the moment, I think we're very clear that it has to be the use of conventional force that ultimately is a breach of Article 5. And the reality is, if we are going to deter our authoritarian rivals in the future from their nefarious behavior that undermines our way of life, we're going to have to think really hard about how we compete with them in this gray zone. And that competition is going to involve us using perhaps some of the tools, tactics, and techniques that they use. But we have to use

it in a way that doesn't undermine the very freedoms that we're trying to protect. Now, when you're competing, as I described at the beginning of this conversation, described at the beginning of this conversation for a large group of countries who are neither anti-West or pro-West, if you are, in a sense, competing for their attention, and if you are competing to try and make sure that they don't end up in the authoritarian ambit, then you probably also need to think about the sorts of tools that you might apply that are non-attributable and which give these countries a sort of fig leaf of respectability in relation to neutrality. Now, I'm not suggesting that we invent the Wagner Group, but I am suggesting that the use of Western-oriented private military security

companies and those sorts of NGOs to achieve effect that aligns with our values is something that we might want to reflect a bit on and might well be a very useful mechanism to achieve things. So you've got to compete, and that is the challenge of modern deterrence. You just simply can't show your resolve, although that's important because hard power has to back all of this. You've also got to roll your sleeves up and work out how you're going to compete in a equally mischievous way to that that your opponent is doing. You know, I think our comparative advantage truly is our dense network of allies and partners. And that's really, I think our opportunity to compete more effectively is to really leverage that. I mean, you look at the Indo-Pacific region, we've got five treaty allies, the United States

does. And China maybe has North Korea, maybe Pakistan on a good day. But it's really the comparative advantage we have. And again, maybe this hits home with the array warfare initiative roots, but you're working by, with, and through allies and partners. We can be more effective sometimes without putting a U.S. face out front, whether it's non-military, non-government, or just other countries that have a shared vision or more appropriate position to act. But if you look at U.S.-China competition head-to-head, it's pretty daunting. And in many cases, we're losing that competition. But if you add allies and partners that have a shared vision for the future, it's a lot more encouraging. And I think the challenge now is just how we can harness that and work by, with, and through those allies and

partners to ensure that we're competing. Joe, I want to build on that a little bit and also get Nick's take as well. And when we talk about modern deterrence and we talk about competing to win, but sometimes looking at, at least on the U.S. side, what the military services are doing right now, they're very much posturing for conflict and to win the China fight and focusing on technology and capabilities and material overmatch. But what a lot of this conversation has been has not been that. It's been understanding the political context, shoring up alliances, building access and influence, things like that. And how do you square the two? You know, how do you square what the services are focusing on right now and these ideas of more complex political understanding, understanding

how competition deters conflict? I would say Ukraine certainly emphasized that winning on the battlefield matters. You know, it's important to win. And the military can't divorce itself from the political objectives that we've been discussing so far. But it's really important to focus on Douglas MacArthur. You know, his famous duty on a country speech told the cadets in 1963 that, you know, their mission remains fixed and inviolable. It's to win our war. So I think the military really needs to focus on winning our wars.

And I think you mentioned the impact of technology. That's really a lot of change. I say that we have a huge lag time in so many ways. And Nick, you talked about this in our class last night. We are configured in the U.S. Defense Department as far as how we identify, adopt, and acquire weapons systems, defense platforms. We're still trying to win the Cold War as far as being configured to build incrementally better large end systems. You'll build a better aircraft carrier, fighter jet, submarine every 10 years, and we could edge the Soviets. But winning now requires

us to hold a world when the military relevant technologies are, it's not being developed in government labs or big defense primes, but right here in Silicon Valley, just a mile from here at Stanford University where I'm sitting now, arguably we're just not set up as a defense department to identify and adopt and deploy those technologies at the speed and scale we need. I mean, it's a hackneyed expression, but the trouble is, if you only have a hammer, you'll treat each problem as a nail. And I think the difficulty for the Department of Defense is it's got a beautifully designed hammer, and the risk is that it'll treat every problem as a nail. And the reality, of course, is that prevailing in the circumstances that we've been talking about is not really a Department of Defence problem. It's actually a problem for all of the instruments

of statecraft, both in the public and the private sector. And that requires, I think, a very different view on how you perhaps might execute grand strategy, because ultimately, it's going to require genuine integration across all of the relevant levers to be able to achieve the effect. It also requires genuine integration within the military to achieve effect. And how you actually get the most out of the traditional domains of maritime land, and then of course the new domains of space and cyber, is challenging, because it's partly about horizontal integration, but it's then also going to be about vertical integration down the levels

of command. And that requires a very different way of thinking, perhaps, than what we've traditionally done, where we believe that jointry came together at the operational level. The reality is that we're beyond jointry now. We're into integration, and integration has to happen at every level now clearly it's the information piece of this that's going to make those connections come together but that requires us to think rather more fundamentally about how we embrace modern technology because this is not going to be about platforms in the future or they will be very relevant in terms of demonstrating hard power it's actually going to be about software. And how do you make sure that the integration of software comes first and the platforms follow it when you are confronted with

a system of procurement that is, bless it, the same system of procurement that we've had for 75 years? Not easy problems to solve, particularly when you apply pork barrel politics to everything that's going on. But if we are going to prevail in the future, we've got to move much more towards a direction of travel in the military where we think about putting software front and center. As Nick laid out, the types of technologies that we're going to need to prevail in this current fight are coming out of the commercial technology base. And important advances in those technologies, it's not from government directives.

Here at Stanford and a lot of universities, just getting students interested in going out there, you can start a company that's got what we call the term dual-use technologies. There's nothing wrong with doing well and doing good. You can support the Defense Department, the U.S. government with your technology, but you can have opportunities to scale commercially. And I think that's a real sweet spot that we need to find and harness, get that engine of innovation going. I mean, when we talk about change and transformation, we talk about it through a paradigm, I think, of three things, which are technology, process, and people. And I don't think we probably spend enough time on the people ingredient of that,

because what fundamentally is going to have to happen with militaries, but also more broadly, is the skills agenda is going to be very much the thing that defines this. And when Joe and I were growing up in the military, there was something beautiful about being a generalist. And when Joe and I were growing up in the military, there was something beautiful about being a generalist. And our militaries were designed really around generalists. We didn't really worry about specialisms. And of course, the way the world is now going, specialisms are becoming, in a sense, the battle winners. And whether that's data scientists, data engineers, whatever else it might be, the reality is that these people are going to be critical components of our future capability. And our military career structures are not terribly well set up to embrace

those sorts of skills. But equally, the generalists who will lead our armed forces and command at every level are probably not that savvy at getting the best out of specialists, because they probably don't know enough to know what questions to ask of specialists and thus to be able to maximize the possibilities that specialists can provide. I think that brings us nicely kind of into the conclusion section of this conversation. And we talked a lot about these ideas as they apply to Afghanistan or to counterinsurgency, how we've worked through some of those lessons of the past couple decades. Nick, how do you see this and your ideas being put into practice in the future

as we've talked about the geopolitical context and warfare itself gets more complex? Well, what I think what we're seeing playing out in Ukraine emphasizes is that in order to prevail in this environment we've been talking about, you do need to have capabilities that take you across the spectrum from soft through to hard power if you're going to prevail. And I think that probably up until two or three years ago, I suspect that most Western countries rather thought they'd seen the end of the tank. They'd seen the end of what we would have called conventional warfare, or I'm not sure that term is necessarily very helpful any longer. Then actually, this was all about irregular or unconventional warfare and gray zone activity.

The reality, of course, is that it's not. It's about a spectrum of different approaches that are necessary to be able to prevail in modern deterrence and in the competition of modern deterrence, as I was saying earlier, probably suggests one needs to have. And I think that for practitioners in the future, it's going to be really important to understand the various political contexts in which one's operating. I think the military can no longer sit back and just think about itself as a hammer. It's got to think about itself in multiple ways to be applied to multiple different problem sets. And that requires it at every level to have a much broader understanding

of the political context. Nick mentioned Ukraine. That's our wake-up call. That's the wake-up call we need. You know, 200,000 dead Russians in their first year of fighting. We've seen how Russia has failed for so many reasons, one of which is the battlefield's changed. And we've talked about this use of commercial technology and how that changes how we fight and operate. But let's make Ukraine the wake-up call that drives change, certainly in the U.S. Defense Department and the reforms and reorganization we need to just operate in a new world where commercial technology plays such a prominent role. Let's not wait till we have 5,000 sailors sink to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait. Just as we start to close out, I'll ask

Joe and then Nick, what's your message for the practitioners out there who are dealing with this on the ground every day? Keep up the fight. The stakes are too high, you know, not to do all we can. You know, if we're going to protect and defend all that we hold dear in the world and give our next generation the benefits of all that, you know, ours and previous generations fought for, we need to focus on winning, focus on prevailing in the battlefield.

And it is a new environment. And we've talked about a lot of the changes as far as, you know, the world commercial technologies and some of the enduring attributes of the character war. My message would be, we still need our best and brightest to support, whether it's in uniform or in some way supporting the fight. the character war. My message would be, we still need our best and brightest to support, whether

it's in uniform or in some way supporting the fight. Yeah, I mean, I think the advice I'd give to practitioners in the context in which we now will find ourselves is that the political context has never been more important. And whilst our doctrine espouses understanding higher commanders intent to up, you need to go beyond that. You need to understand the political context. You need to understand that your actions will have an impact upon that political context. The pervasiveness of information means that all combat now is conducted in a fishbowl. And that fishbowl is ever-staring. And if you don't think about what people are looking at in relation to your actions on the ground, you will end up setting back the campaign. So understand that political context, recognizing that you're operating in a fishbowl

and that all your actions have an impact is really fundamental given the way in which the character of warfare has evolved. And that means you've got to have genuine insight and understanding of the environment in which you're operating. Don't just depend on intelligence because it won't help you that much. Make sure that you've got genuine insight and understanding of what is going on around you. This is a time when, you know, certainly China's narrative predicts that their narrative is that the U.S. is a declining power, that our power and influence is receding, that's just going to happen, and that's going to be the characteristics of this century. But, you know, Nick, I would ask you as our ally, what do you see as America's role as, you know,

a leader of the free world, if that's not too over the top, going forward? What should America's role in the future be? Are we a declining power or should we try to maintain our position of leadership? And what do our allies expect of us? They know it's not a declining power. So I think, you know, we need to regain our strategic confidence because the reality is that where America is always truly remarkable is its capacity to reinvent itself. I mean, Churchill, I think, observed, and I'll paraphrase that, you know, you can rest assured that the United States will get it wrong every time, but eventually it will learn from that and get it right. And that is always the way. And that is what great democracies do.

Authoritarian regimes cannot reinvent themselves in the same way. And that is what great democracies do. Authoritarian regimes cannot reinvent themselves in the same way. And I think as a dispassionate and loyal ally and friend looking in on the United States, I was very struck when last autumn, I visited the site where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1964. And there's a memorial to him there, which is a quote from the speech that he would have given had he made it to where he was giving that speech. And I'll just draw from it because I think it answers your question absolutely. And of course, he was writing this in 1964, but I don't think things have changed one jot since then. When he said, we in this country, in this generation, generation are, by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may

exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time, and for all time, the ancient vision of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. And to my mind, that is the role of the United States of America whether you like it or not and that's why we're your ally. General Sir Nick Carter, Dr. Joe Felter thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Irregular Warfare podcast. Laura and I learned a lot from this conversation and we're sure that our listeners are going to enjoy it as well.

No well thank you Shauna and Laura. Thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. And thank you for everything that you are doing to spread the word, because the word needs to be spread at the moment. Shauna and Laura, just thanks for all you're doing with the Irregular Warfare Initiative. It's just been extraordinary what you and the team have built

and the contributions you're making to this really important cause. So we just really appreciate all you're doing. Thank you again for joining us for episode 97 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Ben and Adam will discuss stay behind operations with Colonel Brian Pettit and Marta Kepi. Following that, Elisa and Matt will introduce a series on great power competition in irregular warfare with Dr. Jake Shapiro and Dr. Francis Brown. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

We are a team of volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, or at our website. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter for access to our written content, upcoming community events, and other resources. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the Irregular Warfare Podcast. And one last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of Princeton, West Point, or any agency of the U.S. government.

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