Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Future of Coalition Building and Irregular Warfare

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

In the aftermath of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the country's chaotic collapse, it is easy to forget the prominent role that the United States played in building, leading, and sustaining a forty-nation coalition for the war effort—a task that required some determined diplomacy and a sophisticated understanding of what each country brought to the table. As the United States pivots to the Indo-Pacific region and the competition with China for legitimacy and influence below the level of armed conflict, the question becomes whether coalition building is the right approach for new challenges and a new strategic environment. Retired US Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute and retired Australian Army Major General Duncan Lewis both have deep experience working with coalitions, both as senior officers and in diplomatic roles. They join this episode to share their experiences and lessons for the future.

If our policymakers can make us strong and also to appear strong, that will save us the agony of what weakness will deliver, because that will, I think, end up in some form of conflict, whether it be regional or global or whatever, I don't know. But I think that's the surest way to head to conflict. The basic element of deterrence is to understand first what your potential opponent values and then imagine ways that you can put at risk or place at risk those value components. What does the Chinese leadership value? And then begin to unpack a design, a deterrence approach based on placing those values at risk.

Welcome to episode 42 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm Andy Milburn, and I'll be your host today along with Kyle Atwell. In today's episode, we discuss the role that coalitions between allies and partners have played and will continue to play in irregular warfare. Our two guests have served at the highest levels of government in the United States and Australia. They argue that coalitions,

such as the more than 50 nation coalition that fought in Afghanistan, play an important role in many irregular warfare fights. We discuss why nations join a coalition in the first place, and they share some of their own lessons learned on how to lead a coalition to achieve its collective objectives while providing value to each member. Our guests conclude that moving forward, both the United States and Australia cannot afford to go it alone.

Instead, both countries will depend on building partnerships with like-minded nations as a bulwark against both state and non-state adversaries. Lieutenant General Douglas Lute retired from the U.S. Army in 2010 after 35 years of distinguished service. Ambassador Lute's military career concluded with six years in the White House, where he served under President George W. Bush as Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as coordinator for South Asia during the first term of the Obama-Biden administration. During the second term of the same administration, he was U.S. Ambassador to NATO, where he focused on the 30-nation alliance's response to new security challenges in Europe and the Middle East.

Alliance's response to new security challenges in Europe and the Middle East. Ambassador Duncan Lewis is a retired Australian military officer, diplomat, and intelligence chief. From 2014 to 2019, he was the Director General of Security for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Prior to that, he held the post of Australian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He has also served as the National Security Advisor to the Rudd Labor Government, the Secretary of the Australian Department of Defense, and led the Australian Special Operations Command. 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. And here is our conversation with Doug Lute and Duncan Lewis. Ambassador Douglas Lute and Ambassador Duncan Lewis, welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast. It's great to have you on today. It's good to be with you. It's great to have you on today. It's good to be with you. It's great to be here, Andy. Thank you very much for having me on. Well, gentlemen, today we're going to talk about coalition building. And Doug, I'm going to begin with you. You've had a great deal of experience building coalitions, so having a hand in that,

at least. And I'd like to hear your thoughts about what the most important lessons are that we should have learned over the last 20 years in Afghanistan that are now applicable to Indo-Pakom as we look to establish a bulwark against a resurgent China. Right. I think the answer to that question begins with another question. Why do states join coalitions? What's the value of a coalition approach? Because obviously it has some drawbacks as well, some complexities. And as I think about that, I think there are three fundamental reasons that states form and sustain coalitions. And these three reasons are interconnected, right?

Mutually dependent. First of all, coalitions obviously increase the means available. So military capacities, diplomatic means, foreign assistance, aid, money, local expertise, so different forms of capacities. And as you broaden the coalition participants, you bring in those capacities, those means. Second of all, coalitions increase the legitimacy of the effort. And this is especially important when coalitions are formed among states that have shared values. So sort of a democratic backbone to a coalition, for example, can increase the legitimacy of the effort. And in this way, more flags roughly equals more legitimacy.

And then finally, I think coalitions increase the durability, the staying power of the effort. And this is because the burden is shared. This is because they do have increased political legitimacy. And I think there's no better example than the effort in Afghanistan, for example, where even at the 20-year mark, we should remind ourselves that there were close to 40 countries still in the international NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan. So I think those are the fundamentals about coalitions. Yeah, I think that's right. It is good to start at why countries join coalitions. I mean, the reason why coalitions, in my view, have become such a significant feature of warfare is those three things you mentioned, the additional means, additional legitimacy and additional durability. legitimacy and additional durability. I'd also add to that that there is a circumstance now where as a direct result of globalisation and the fact that we are all connected to one another in one way or another to a degree we perhaps were not in the past, there's not much happens in the

world that doesn't affect most of us. So there is a sense of inclusivity, if you like, whenever things turn south. And the second thing I'd say is that nations, and certainly I speak for my own in this case, join coalitions because it is serving the national interest as determined by each participant. We'll come to this in a moment. That's the big rub point, of course, and we'll have an endless discussion about that, I'm sure. But when a nation comes to the view that it should act in a military way in order to protect its interests, to protect its citizens, if it's that direct, the value of being for Australia as a junior partner, if you like, a minor partner in a major coalition, there is the issue of alliance management with the

major ally, in this case, the United States. That is a major factor in our strategic calculus. And so all of that comes into the mix to cause a government to decide whether to be part of a coalition or not. But I must say, you've certainly got, having Doug on this podcast, you've got a person who managed for many, many years at the most senior level, some of the most complex coalition issues that I ever saw. And certainly your time in Brussels, Doug, it was fascinating to watch you managing the complexity of the coalition arrangements. That actually prompts the question, Duncan, I was going to ask is, it seems like the three reasons that Doug mentioned for coalitions are reasons that lead states kind of want to bring

on coalition members. It kind of increases their means, it increases their legitimacy. But I was going to ask, why do other states sign on? Is it always because there's some inherent national security risk and they feel an intervention support in a place like Afghanistan is central to the national security? Or is it more about, as you call it, I think, alliance management or issue linkage with other issues or other types of diplomatic leverage they're trying to get with the major lead power? My sense, Kyle, is that it varies from state to state. It depends on a country's position. I mean, if you were next door to Afghanistan, you might have a greater sense of urgency about what was happening there than

when you're down where we are in our corner of the earth. For Australia, the calculus around being a strong ally is important. And you might recall that when 9-11 went down, our Prime Minister, John Howard, was in Washington. He was actually meeting with George Bush at the time of President Bush. And in fact, the President provided a US military aircraft to get Howard out, and he was the first person out of the United States after the lockdown of air traffic. We invoked the ANZUS Treaty immediately at that point. It took a nanosecond for that decision to be taken. Howard was on board the

aircraft when the decision was taken. So we had a treaty. We saw it as a treaty obligation. The United States had been attacked and under the provisions of ANZUS, it should be invoked. And so we came on board. But I have to say that the exploration of national interest is something certainly worthwhile. You know, you need to go back to what is the national interest is something certainly worthwhile. You need to go back to what is the national interest. It comes back to values. I mean, there's some glaringly obvious ones. They're patently obvious, but there are others that are more difficult to identify, and they're more obtuse in their presentation. But I don't underestimate the issue of managing the alliance with the major ally and I was thinking

the other day as we were leading into this podcast on one or two occasions while we were in Brussels Doug was able to do things because he was the US ambassador but at the same time he was not able to do things because he was the US ambassador. And so this is where I think an ally such as Australia, and I don't speak for others, but we see ourselves as being as helpful and supportive as we can. And, you know, I do recall on a couple of occasions there, Doug, trying to, you know, take up the slack when you were having difficulty making headway because of who you were, the nation you represent, then it's time for other partners to sort of step up

and see if they can lubricate the coalition work. And that's, you know, Duncan, that's a good example of what I meant by diplomatic needs, you know, to have diplomatic partners who can not only follow, we're not looking for people to just, you know, willy nilly not underestimate the value of allies as a red team and the ability to provide behind closed doors candid feedback about courses of action and so forth i wanted though to come back to duncan's point about national interests and so forth you know i suppose the two big stimuli in the last 20 years for coalition formation were the attack on 9-11 and then the rise of the caliphate, the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

In both cases, they resulted in formation of seismic coalitions. In the case of 9-11, the day after 9-11, thanks to the six-hour time difference between Washington and Brussels, the NATO alliance invoked for the first time in its history, and to this day, the only time much a matter of defending themselves against a similar attack as it was sustaining the NATO alliance as a viable defense entity, which many, which I would argue most European allies, see as the sort of whole life insurance policy for their nations. So back to Duncan's point about national interests, it's not always a narrow national interest that I2 may be attacked or I2 may be a threat. It may be something broader than that, such as either the ANZUS treaty or the NATO treaty. Yeah, I think that's really significant, Doug. I mean, ANZUS, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of ANZUS this year. I was there in San Francisco for the 60th

anniversary. Ten years ago, we met with the then Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton. And I remember at the time thinking to myself, this is a 60, now 70-year-old alliance. This has some substance to it, but it needs constant work. It's a bit like a marriage. You need to constantly work at it. And I find the forming of coalitions, again, to sort of use the analogy of a marriage, are one of those times where you have an opportunity to really strengthen the relationship. Doug, from your experiences, and Duncan can kind of set you up for this one, but the fact that you have worked hard behind the scenes often keep coalitions alive and going. And both of you have talked very articulately about the advantages of coalitions,

why nations join them, and why it's in our benefit to do so. But, Doug, I'd be very interested in hearing some of your views about challenges, the challenges of forming and fighting with coalitions from the tactical to the political level. Sure. So let's start tactically, right? So at the tactical level, I think the biggest challenge is not dissimilar to two tactical units of the same nationality who are not accustomed to looking together, being tossed together, or perhaps sharing a common boundary tactically, right? And all the things that those two national units must come together on. Those sorts of tactical challenges, I think, are multiplied when different nationalities

as common members of a coalition are brought. So, you know, in NATO, there's this great word interoperability. And I think at the tactical level, that's the question. And it's a huge challenge. It can, because of lack of commonality, essentially amplify the old Clausewitz notion of friction. Right. So. So, you know, remember, Clausewitz famously said everything more is hard and everything is made harder by way of friction. It's already present in war, but in coalition war, I think it's amplified. So what are we talking about here?

In practical terms, we're talking about tactics, techniques, and procedures, how you do things. We're talking about common equipment or lack of common equipment, sometimes even language barriers, communications equipment that doesn't match, and intel sharing arrangements, all of these can impose tactical friction. And this is why NATO has a sort of a standing coalition, if you will, more properly, an alliance of 70 years. That's why NATO and ANSYS work so hard on stressing interoperability among the member

states so that you can begin to combat some of this tactical friction. I think at the strategic level, there are other concerns. At the strategic level, and I think Duncan alluded to this, states in a coalition, especially in a democratically based coalition, require domestic political support in order to sustain the coalition, to sustain their participation. And that domestic political support can change because of domestic conditions. An election, for example, can change domestic political tenor and therefore the conditions which led to the nation participating in the coalition.

And this could, in turn, lead the coalition member to increase or decrease its participation in the coalition, all based on these domestic conditions, despite what's happening on the ground in the fight. So, you know, if there are 40 members of the coalition in Afghanistan, there are 40 different domestic steps that support the participation of those 40 national troop contingents, and those are constantly shifting with the time. So that introduces a big complexity in terms of coalition management. And then also, because of domestic conditions and domestic traditions, nations often place operational restraints, or as NATO calls them, caveats, on their national contributions.

And these caveats, so for example, we won't operate at night, or we'll only operate with medevac available within 30 minutes, on 30 minutes notice, So conditions like that, right? And inside the operational set, those sorts of national conditions open up gaps and seams and redundancies that make coalition warfare inefficient. So you're talking at the very like tactical level, then you're talking like, hey, you have a German unit

and an American unit in the same battle space and the Americans need medical support, but maybe the Germans have a limitation to be able to go out on patrol during a certain window or something like that. Right. even a strategic level impact because they begin to imply or they begin to communicate even unintentionally just how far the coalition will go and the limits of national member state contributions or commitment to the coalition. And that can open up problems in terms of the haves and the have-nots and the doers and the do-nots. So that's a sort of delicate issue, which especially in Afghanistan, for example, we had to deal with consistently.

But Duncan's probably got views on this as well. Yeah, I think that's right, Doug. At the tactical level, it seemed to me one of the greatest challenges that we all faced was getting the force composition to be as useful as it could be, as good as it could be. Each country is sort of, you know, to be Marxist, they're contributing according to their means. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you end up from a military command point of view with the best balanced force that you might want. So the question needs to be addressed as to whether you accept the contribution

because it's a good thing to accept the contribution and recognise that it's limited, or whether you actually reject the contribution and in so doing, you know, offend one or another of the partners. The fact that junior partners, small partners of a coalition are inevitably contributing a niche capability means that those capabilities are operating dependent on support from others because they're niche by definition. And that's where this issue that Doug is alluding to comes in about whether country X will operate, you know, as you said, Kyle, by night, or whether they'll operate outside of a certain medevac umbrella, car by night, or whether they'll operate outside of a certain medevac umbrella, or whether they'll operate without a certain air cover umbrella of some sort, close air support. So those sort of

considerations are very real tactically. You also have these tactical kind of red lines which relate to boundaries, which I always found fascinating. I ran into this in Timor. Australia ran a coalition force in Timor with a number of our regional partners. And among other people, to my great surprise, I was up there as a commander. I found I had Irish soldiers under my command. And I tried to move, I think it was just a platoon of Irish soldiers from one hill to another and received a phone call from the Irish Prime Minister while I was in Timor to say what was going on here. I mean, it's bizarre from a military point of view. It was a joke. But nevertheless, that was the interest of the Irish government. So the strategic and the tactical, the political and the military actually come together quite quickly in a coalition setting

when you're talking about the sensitivity of the use of forces. So in some way, if I got it right, you're sometimes exchanging tactical or operational effectiveness for the political benefits of having coalition partners there, essentially. I think there is a certain amount of compromise to be had there, yes. Yeah, I think there's, in effect, a coalition tax that smart operational strategic leaders are willing to pay for the benefits that we outlined up front. But it is nonetheless a tax. You know, as I was listening to Duncan's description, it strikes me that the two basic ways to use coalition forces in an operational setting are either to divide the labor functionally and give particular coalition members niche functional responsibilities. And we did that rather well, I think, in Afghanistan and against ISIS with

special forces, right? Because here you can blend, mix and match, blend small special forces capabilities with larger special forces capability. And it really is a, you know, it's a positive sum of contribution. The other way is to take sort of medium-sized coalition members and assign them geographic responsibility. The challenge there is if you divide up Afghanistan, it's 34 provinces or so geographically among a couple handfuls or a handful or more of coalition members, you run the risk of having a very uneven operational set because national limitations and national caveats will constrain and impede sort of a common continuity across the campaign plan.

So that's a very delicate mix. And then you finally, you run the risk, if you assign geographic responsibility, of one of the member states, one of the coalition members, facing a dramatically different domestic political setting. And the next thing you know, you have a hole in the coalition because that coalition member departs. So this gets very tricky. And it's more than a full-time job to try to keep

track of how best to manage and sustain a coalition. Doug, based on what you just said, and looking back over the last two decades, but particularly perhaps over the last few years, are you concerned that the United States has lost its ability or its understanding, its will going ahead to build coalitions. We talked about all the lessons that we have learned, but do you see a danger that those lessons will be dissipated? Well, look, nobody will fundamentally that that changes allies, and I hope coalition members' opinions of the American ability to organize and sustain a coalition.

I mean, look, after all, August of 2021 came 20 years after we first went into Afghanistan. So this question of sustainability, look, we were there for 20 years. Okay. That's quite, and at the 20 year mark, I lose exact count, but we had 38 or 40 coalition members still contributing. So I think that is the data point that we should remember about Afghanistan. You know, I get questioned a lot about, so what's the impact on the American reputation

in the wake of August and the collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces? And it seems to me that a nation's reputation, and maybe here I'm being very national, we're not very American, but it rests on two pillars, right? national, we're not very American. But it rests on two pillars, right? The first pillar is that nation's values. And the second pillar is that nation's competence, ability to deliver. And I think in the case of Afghanistan writ large, we can applaud the values that we upheld for 20 years. And we can cite American competence, especially in the counterterrorism, less so in the counterinsurgency state building. But there are things to cite there

where we're better off 20 years later. But there's no question that the very public, dramatic, tragic images of Kabul International Airport are going to be with us for a while. But I don't think they're coming. Yeah, I would want to make a comment about this. I don't think that the United States' reputation as a country able to pull together and lead coalitions is diminished after this. I mean, we in Australia share the pain, you know, those terrible images of Kabul and so forth. There's not a sense here of, oh, well, that's a problem for the United States. That is a problem for us. You know, we've got all the Afghan refugees here and we've got also, you know, I've got a minority community here that's keeping all those things alive. So, no, I don't think

there's a problem there. And what makes me even more confident is that in the last couple of years, and I'd say perhaps the last four years, the emergence of China, and I know we'll get onto this in due course, but that is really changing a lot of nations' calculus. And the United States has the single largest role to play in that particular calculus, because we're talking about, you know, you call them near peer competitors. Sometimes in my most depressed moments, I call them peer competitors. And certainly as we come out of COVID, the Chinese position is not diminished, nor their objectives and aims changed in any way at all. In fact, they have a larger share of world trade now

coming out of COVID than they had going in. And their military modernisation program has not changed one bit. In fact, it might have even accelerated in the last year or two. So I think all of that is going to cause people not to doubt whether the United States can pull together a coalition or not, but to say the United States will be a central part of any coalition of the like-minded. To go to Doug's point about the values, I mean, we do share very substantial values in that pillar. And we believe in Australia we can make a contribution to the second pillar, which is the competence, that we can bring something to the party. We can't do it alone.

That's very clear. We have limitations in terms of size and our circumstance. But if we share values and we contribute to the competency pillar, then we believe we're know, we're kind of cooking the gas. It's reason for a positive look to the future. Duncan, is that why you said earlier that Australia needs to up its diplomatic game? Not earlier in this podcast, but worse to that effect in an interview.

And it seemed to be, to me, at least at the time you were talking about, part of that was talking about being a regional leader and building coalitions. What role do you see for both US and Australia in a coalition? And I'm talking really about focused against the near-peer threat, i.e. China. Yes, I mean, I've spoken publicly on this issue quite a bit here in Australia. As we go forward, when I look at what I perceive to be the United States national interest in the Indo-Pacific area, and then I look at Australia's interests, and then I also look at a whole range of other countries that are in the area, there is an awful lot of commonality of interest with respect to meeting what I see as Chinese assertiveness. Now, I am not one of those people who run around saying that some sort of military conflict is inevitable in the Pacific. I don't buy that. I think it's quite within the wit of man to manage around this and to keep the situation contained. But it would be imprudent in the extreme not to be laying off your bets and preparing for what might be required.

And the best way for us to do that is together. You have to look at the Quad. The Quad is a very interesting gathering of the four countries of India, Japan, Australia and the United States. That particular relationship, that partnership, if you like, was dead almost. It's been resuscitated essentially, taken off its deathbed and had life breathed into it only because of Chinese action, in my view. And the meeting held in the United States recently of the four quad leaders, I mean, that's a seminal kind of moment. And I think that that particular relationship has got some leaks. It'll be interesting to see how it goes because it's a mixed bag. As you know, there's some difficult relationships in that mix. But I think the number

of partnerships that we all should be developing is really important going forward because the Chinese, you know, if they had to pursue Xi's intentions right now are not entirely clear, but they are becoming clearer by the moment. And I think we need to face that particular situation with a collective front. So collective security is kind of the catch cry, I guess, in this part of the world now. We don't have a NATO here and that would not be possible, I think, to create a NATO situation here.

The history is not the same. But we do need to work very vigorously to create partnerships and that's why I think Australian diplomacy needs to lift. You know, we don't resource our diplomatic service to the level we probably should. You know, I've been part of it over the years. It's a very fine diplomatic service, but it needs to be bigger and to have greater heft. So just let me come in here on this question of the Quad, which I applaud as a diplomatic initiative. It makes a lot of sense to have these sort of four cornerstones of the region coming together prominently and talking about the ongoing competition with China. But it also demonstrates

the complexity of the Asian or Asia-Pacific Indo-Pac theater, right? Because from an American perspective, we have the Quad, but that's largely a diplomatic and perhaps sometime it will become an economic tool. Then we have our five bilateral treaty allies in the region. Then we have partners galore. They're very diverse politically, very diverse in terms of military capabilities. You don't have any organizing institution as you do in Europe. So with my experience, most recently in NATO, the challenge I think in Indo-Pacific theater is to make sense of it and to bring coherence to a very diverse group without overreaching, without aiming, for example, to form some sort of Indo-Pac-NATO. That's just not in the cards. But how do you bring

coherence, both diplomatic coherence, but actually diplomatic, economic, and military coherence? And all of those are enormously complex because we're missing, we're absent an organizing institution. So without a single unifying platform such as NATO, how does the United States go about building partnerships and Indo-Pacom specifically against China? Well, I think you have to chip away at this. I think the formation of the Quad is great because it brings India into the conversation. And I think that's enormously important. It won't be long before India is the most populous nation in the world. India is the largest democracy in the drawing of the lines on the map. And have we bitten off too much in terms of Indo-Pacific? Is it too large, too diverse to manage? And I think time will tell.

But it's clear that that's where our diplomatic main effort, our economic main effort, and our military main effort ought to be. main effort and a military main effort ought to be. I would also add that it's not just the countries in the region that have an interest in this. And it's been fascinating actually to watch the Europeans in the last year or two, as they've turned their attention to their interests in the Indo-Pacific. And several of them, as you know, have substantial interests in the Indo-Pacific. And several of them, as you know, have substantial interests in the Indo-Pacific. We talked about the importance of these relationships moving forward. And Duncan said we can manage this competition with China without going to warfare, which is, I to engage in competition with China below the level of armed conflict? What does that actually look like in practice? And what should we be thinking about with our military forces, but our broader

interagency and diplomatic tools moving forward? You know, it strikes me, you ask a very practical question, what can be done? And it strikes me here that given that we're lagging on the economic front and our military front is probably the most, the best resource, we might turn to diplomacy. And, you know, the NATO institution began short of being an institution with just a simple diplomatic agreement, the Atlantic Charter. And maybe what we need is an Indo-Pac charter, which is a simple, I mean, I'm talking a page, a page and a half, a statement of fundamental values. And so that the signatories, right, those countries that sign on, agree to something simple, like an Indo-Pacific region, which is open, free, and safe, or something like that. I mean, broad, right?

But something then that casts a relatively wide net, and it brings everybody on to one set of values, one set of principles. I think that would be enormously helpful. The Quad has a set of words similar to that. They does. You know, it almost fits the bill. Right. So what if we said we sprang from the Quad as the four sort

of leaders in the region, right, to say, look, we want to broaden the participation here. And this would not involve formal military commitments. It wouldn't involve anything on the economic front. It's a statement of political values, of political principles. I think that would be enormously positive and very helpful. And that's how these things start. They don't start by forming military alliances. They start on the political front. The basic military approach here will undoubtedly be deterrence.

I mean, we don't aim to get into a fight here. We aim to deter conflict. So the basic element of deterrence is to understand first what your potential opponent values, right? And then imagine ways that you can put at risk or place at risk those value components. So I think the first thing that would be very useful here would be for the major militaries, maybe we start with five treaty allies in the region to come together on a common view of what does the Chinese leadership value, and then begin to unpack or design a deterrence approach based on placing those values at risk. And look, I'm not talking here about regime change. I'm not saying that the CCP, its first basic principle is to stay in power. Therefore, we should challenge that. We

should place that at risk. But there are things like the cohesion of the Chinese state. There are things like control over the information space domestically in China. There are certain control elements of the CCP, which I think that if you start with what they value, you could place a little doubt in their minds and perhaps erode a little bit their self-confidence. I think, by the way, the same is true in Europe when NATO considers how to deter Russia. We're not going to deter Russia by threatening invasion, you know, seeking the overthrow of the Putin regime or anything like that. But there are things that Putin values that we ought to go to school on and be willing to subtly, perhaps even covertly signal that he's not as safe or he's not as secure as he might think. And here again,

I'm not talking about physical destruction or threatening lethal action. I think there are things short of that. And a lot of it falls into the information space, right? Both Putin's Russia and Xi's China rely on information dominance internally to protect their own positions. And what we should go to school on is how could we erode some of that self-confidence domestically? By the way, it's not entirely different than some of the game Russia has been playing against the United States internally by way of amplifying information seams and gaps and so forth. It seems to me that the dynamic in the

Indo-Pacific has been one of China pushing forward and others, including ourselves, being forced to kind of step back. So there's a certain momentum about the Chinese assertiveness and Chinese expansion. And I think it's the realisation of that danger in the minds of many governments in the region that have caused them to reassess what their strategic circumstances are. And we in Australia have been saying for many years that our strategic circumstance is more uncertain than it's ever been in my working lifetime. And that's a matter for concern. it's ever been in my working lifetime. And that's a matter for concern. Turning back to the quad for a moment, it's a cornerstone around which, you know, more can be built. And I think that will be important. But that's not to underplay the bilaterals, because I think the bilaterals

are important. And Doug, to the extent that we could get the bilateral partners, each of your bilateral partners, ourselves included, onto the same page, I think that's quite prospective. I mean, when you have a look at the work that Indo-Pakon does on the military front of getting those players together, there's all sorts of chods meetings and there's gatherings of all kinds of like minds around that. I think the equipment procurement and the commonality, the interoperability between those forces is not too bad. It's not as tied up as NATO, but there's something to work with there. So I think there is cause for optimism here, but we certainly have the job of work in

front of us. This is a major issue for the national security calculus of both the United States and Australia in our separate lanes. And certainly, we haven't talked about it today, but with my special forces background, I think that there is a significant future. There is a big future for irregular warfare, special warfare, call it what you will. It goes by many names. But I think this idea of kind of massed armies and navies it's always going to be there you can't get away from that but i think this issue of sort

of operation short of war hybrid warfare all the various permutations of it are going to be very significant you know one dimension that we haven't spoken much about is the intelligence sharing dimension and it also strikes me that there's room for improvement there. You know, for the United States, the Five Eyes arrangement has been the core of our trans theater cross global intelligence sharing network. But we may need to enlarge that, so that which would then enable the diplomacy, that, which would then enable the diplomacy, because with increased intelligence sharing, you can, over time, come to a common point of reference on the challenges, right?

So imagine if the South Korean voice were added to the Japanese voice, added to the Australian, New Zealand, and American voice, sort of a five big Indo-Pac Five Eyes among those five bilateral treaty allies. And then based on that common intelligence picture, which will take some time, this won't fall into our laps immediately because we have five very different perspectives, right? But that perspective on that shared common operating picture, you could then build some diplomacy and perhaps to take Duncan's point, use the quad as a starting point and then eventually enlarge the net. That's interesting on intelligence sharing

because it seems like a lot of times when we look at intelligence sharing from a military perspective or even within embassies, it seems like the objective is, hey, did we use this intelligence to accomplish some kind of like military objective? But the way you're describing it

is intelligence is a means or tool for achieving diplomatic harmony, essentially, which I think is a pretty important point because it changes the metrics for success when you say, not just in this region, but in Africa, when you're sharing intelligence with the partner government, like what are your objectives there? Are they some counterterrorism or is it really just to kind of build the relationship with that government? As a former head of an intelligence agency, I often get asked this question about the five eyes. I mean, it is an extraordinary gathering. Nothing else like that exists, to my knowledge, in the world. And the question is, inevitably, should it be enlarged? I mean, the actual five eyes itself, I think, needs to be kept in its pristine form. But should it have onion rings

running around the outside of it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And we often talk about the, you know, the seven eyes and the nine eyes and the 11 eyes and so on. You go on with adding eyes. But there are quite clearly three or four significant countries that orbit around the Five Eyes community and with whom any one of us has a relationship which is quite close.

And we should be able to bring that material together for the benefit of the whole. You know, James Clapper's got some very interesting views on all of this. And he certainly urged during his time as the D&I for the increased sharing of information. Technology is helping us in this regard in that, you know, you are able to put those onion rings technologically in place in a way that we probably weren't in the past. We're able to transmit the information more quickly than we could in the past. But I think when it certainly comes to the, you know, if you are turning your attentions to China and any concern that you might

have with Chinese action in the Indo-Pacific area, or in fact globally for that matter, then I think the more the merrier in terms of sharing of intelligence of what is going on to improve our situational awareness. Doug, you've commented in the past that institutions and agreements that previously grounded the international community are now showing signs of weakness. What did you mean by this? Well, I think I was talking mostly about the international institution I know best, which is NATO. And what I meant, what I mean to this day is that NATO faces an extraordinary set of challenges, both internal and external. So external, obviously, Russia is still there.

Putin is aggressive. NATO's got to figure out how to sustain deterrence against a more aggressive Russia. Increasingly, NATO externally has to contend with Chinese influence on the European continent. I mean, look, the destination of the Belt and Road Initiative, you take out a global map and you figure out where all these ports and railways and highways are headed. It isn't Turkmenistan. It's Western Europe. Why? 800 million people, a quarter of world GDP. That's the marketplace that the Belt and Road Initiative is headed to. And today you have very obvious Chinese commercial attempts, I call it commercial infiltration, into European infrastructure, transportation infrastructure. The Chinese own the Greek deepwater port of Piraeus, which controls the Eastern Med and the Aegean Sea. They own railways, they own energy infrastructure,

they own mass communications infrastructure. Think about the debate with Huawei and 5G, for example. And all that commercial influence today has two purposes. It has the practical purpose of marketplace and market dynamics and all that, but there's a downstream intent as well. And the downstream intent is commercial interests today will buy us political influence tomorrow. And you begin to see this by way of Chinese influence on some EU voting, and so forth, where there's an expectation that Chinese commercial investments will give them political payoff. So NATO's got to pay attention to this. Why? Because all this infrastructure is dual purpose infrastructure. I mean, there's no such thing as a NATO military rail network. It's all civilian. There are no NATO military ports alone. They're all civil military ports, likewise with mass communications. So if you're going to defend Western Europe, you have to rely on all that infrastructure. And so NATO's got to pay attention to that. And then internally, NATO's got challenges as well, perhaps more than any other time

in the alliance history. And here, I refer to the second sentence of the Washington Treaty. So this is the 1949 treaty that formed NATO, right, some 72 years ago. The second sentence says that all signatories adhere to the values of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Well, okay, wait a second. How are we doing? Read the last 10 years of Freedom House reports that measure democratic process and look at the trend lines in NATO allies like Turkey, like Orban's Hungary, or Kaczynski's Poland. And you see exactly what I mean in terms of democratic backsliding or drifting away from the core values. Why are these values so important? Because those values explain why NATO is still alive after 72 years. They're the glue that has

held the NATO alliance together. So when I rate the health of international institutions like NATO, I look at both internal and external challenges, and I think they're there. As we draw near the end of the episode, I'd like to hear from both of you what your thoughts are, what your advice is for policymakers in both of your respective countries going ahead. I think, firstly, it's an enormously challenging time for policymakers. I mean, no time's ever been easy for policymakers, but right now it is critical. I think that our way of life, going back to Doug's values point, our way of life is under challenge. The democracies of the world have faltered in terms of delivering for their citizens.

That's a generalisation in the extreme, but it is certainly a factor. We haven't delivered on the promise, if you like, for prosperity. So I think from that point of view, there is a requirement for a concerted effort among policymakers to bolster and to reinforce all of those things which we hold dear. We've been fighting, you know, wars that have been wars of choice over the years. There's a big difference between a war of choice and a war of necessity. But I think we're now faced with not a war, but certainly a necessity to bolster our position. We need to speak with one voice

to the extent we can. I mean, there will always be regional and national differences and so on, I get that. But to the extent that we can speak with one voice, I think we should to uphold those values. And we, in the kind of democratic world, you know, if you look at nation states in NATO, if you look at the, you look at those democracies in the Asia-Pacific, in the Indo-Pacific area, we need each other more now than we have for a very long time. If our policymakers can make us strong and also to appear strong, that will save us the agony of what weakness will deliver, because that will, I think, end up in some form of conflict, whether it be regional or global or whatever, I don't know. But I think

that's the surest way to head to conflict. I think there is a requirement to get a balance among our policymakers between the economic and the military. That is significant. There has been, certainly in my country, a great propensity to use the military. We can use the military for this, we can use them for that. You know, they're a kind of a fix-all that's really not going to cut it into the future. And I think that we need to be economically strong. We need to be technologically strong and I would implore policymakers to work harder at getting collaborative research and collaborative funding for research going. You know, there are some amazing niche researchers going on around the world and we should be harnessing those to the full extent for the betterment of the whole.

So let me just add to Duncan's thoughts. First of all, I strongly support his first point, which is that strength abroad, strength in the competition with China starts at home. And for the United States, maybe more so than many other nations around the world, we have a lot of homework to do here. You have only to look at January 6th and the insurrectionist attack on our own Capitol, which on January 5th would have been unimaginable. And I think there's nothing that better reminds Americans of what we have to do at home. So it has homework on the economic front, homework on the social equality front, and so forth. But our democracy needs to be brushed up and burnished so that it stands as a better example and it serves our people better.

Then, given that, as we look abroad, I think that we should, first of all, take a very sober look and appreciate what we have that the Chinese will never have. And that is essentially the topic of this podcast, right? The value of our alliance structures, the five in the Indo-Pac region, NATO allies in the West, the attraction of our model and our values to coalition members, far and wide. This is an asymmetric advantage in our favor that we have to take account of, and we have to nurture it. We have to treat it like the strategic crown jewels that they are, and we shouldn't dismiss them. And then finally, I'd offer that after 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, we need with strategy to go back to basics.

And by strategy, I use a relatively simple definition, which is the alignment of ends, ways, and means over time, right? So what you're trying to accomplish, the goals, the objectives, how you go about that. And here we've talked about the blend of different ways, right? So economic, diplomatic, military, information, intelligence sharing, and so forth. And then finally, drive that strategic process all the way down to the resources, the means. And what typically happens in Washington is that we're big and strong and public on ends, we sort of have to treat with a glancing blow the ways, and then we take a day off, right? We forget that we've got a marshall of resources to actually do this. And unless you get alignment, ends, ways, and means, right, which means driving all the way

through the process and checking it over time because it will fall out of alignment. Unless you do that in a very disciplined interagency way, you don't really have a strategy. And I think we've lost sight of some of that because CT over the last 20 years, even counterinsurgency over the last 20 years, are very sort of tactical. They're fundamentally tactical operations.

And it's time to remind ourselves about what strategy really means, because we're going to need a strategy to counter China. You said something really interesting. Some people have argued that China is better at long-term strategy because they don't have essentially an election cycle every four years compared to the U.S., where the strategic approach changes. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, and I'd like to kind of field this off of you, our strategic advantage is the concept of democracy and reinforcing a way of life that our allies and other countries would want to rally

around. And even if that comes at, you know, maybe some incongruence between administration, that's actually not the strategy. The strategy is our kind of democratic values. Is that kind of a fair assessment of what you're saying? Well, I would say the underpinnings of our strategy are democratic values. And why? Because it's those same democratic values which underpin our line structures. I mean, you go to the treaty, the wording of the treaties of all five of the bilateral treaties we have in the Pacific, and certainly the NATO treaty, right? And they all talk about the same values, right? So our ability to deliver those values at home are the underpinnings of our attraction and the glue that holds together our relationships overseas. So yeah, I think,

again, starting at home is the right place. And on that note, we have run out of time. So Ambassador Doug Luke and Ambassador Duncan Lewis, thank you very much for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We've really enjoyed this conversation. Andy and Kyle, thank you very much for having me on. It's a great privilege, great pleasure to reconnect with Doug. And I wish you all the best with the podcast. It's been really good and enjoyable conversation.

Thanks for having me. Thanks again for listening to episode 42 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Abigail and I discuss U.S. intervention and counterinsurgency with Dr. Jacqueline Hazleton and Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter.

The following week, Laura and Shana host Lieutenant General Jim Slife, Commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, and Dr. Richard Newton in an episode focused on the role of Air Force Special Operations Command in irregular warfare. Please be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. You can also follow and engage with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And check out the Irregular Warfare Initiative website, where you can find articles ranging from China and irregular warfare to security force assistance. One last note, what you hear in this episode are

the views of the participants and do not represent those of West Point, Princeton, or any agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.