No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
Strategic Lessons from Conflict: Military History, Leadership, and Adaptation with General David Petraeus
Discover the strategic insights of General David Petraeus as he shares lessons from his book, "Conflict," co-authored with Andrew Roberts. General Petraeus offers an in-depth look into the military historical context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, drawing from his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Listeners will gain a comprehensive understanding of his strategic leadership framework and learn how past conflicts, including Vietnam, shape modern military strategies.
Explore the importance of creating a culture of strategic leadership, drawing parallels between the military and business worlds. Reflect on the strategic missteps in the Afghan war and how these lessons apply to companies like Netflix that embrace change, contrasting with those like Blockbuster and Kodak that failed to adapt. Delight in a humorous critique of a Netflix movie's portrayal of military leadership, while understanding the critical role of big ideas, effective communication, and execution in achieving success.
Join the conversation on the evolution of military leadership training, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary skills. Understand how institutions like West Point prepare leaders to navigate complex challenges, balancing technical expertise with cultural and academic insights. General Petraeus reflects on the profound impact of historical figures like Ulysses S. Grant and celebrates the lasting influence of West Point on its alumni, weaving these elements into a rich tapestry of leadership lessons relevant across disciplines.
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Well, general David Petraeus, we really appreciate you coming on no Way Out to talk about your book Conflict, which Brian and I have both read. We love the book for a lot of reasons and we're also glad that this meeting had been scheduled before the Army-Navy game and we're glad that you didn't cancel it with a Marine and a Naval aviator.
GEN David Petraeus:That was a great game, except for the outcome, except for the outcome.
Mark McGrath:Well, our Army has certainly had its share the last few years, so it's nice to finally see Navy do something. So I had the good fortune to pick up an autographed copy of your book in the Strand here in Afghanistan. But we'd like to ask you first really to unfold your intellectual development of your ideas where the book, how the book came to be, and why you think because Brian and I believe, but why do you think it's so applicable to leaders of any discipline to read?
GEN David Petraeus:Well, it came about quite simply because my co-author, andrew Roberts now Lord Roberts of Belgravia called me up and said hey, russians have just invaded Ukraine. A lot of books that provide the geopolitical context for it, but there's no book that provides the military historical context. How would you like to do one that does that with me? That does that with me? I jumped at the chance this is his 20th book, by the way, and the first for which he ever had a co-author but I've been looking for a vehicle, an opportunity to think about and then write about the two wars that I was privileged to command at their height, iraq and Afghanistan, and also to revisit the war that was the subject of my dissertation at Princeton, a dissertation titled the American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam, and then also to lay out up front in the introduction in the book the intellectual construct for strategic leadership that I developed between my three and four-star tours in Iraq and then employed there during the surge in Iraq, when I commanded US Central Command, coalition of US Forces in Afghanistan, ci director and even now in the business world with KKR, as we're looking at companies and, as I have also done, individual well over 30 individual venture investments as well. This construct has four tasks get the big ideas right, communicate them effectively, oversee the implementation of them, determine how you need to refine them, to do it again and again. It's much more complex than that, in fact. If listeners want more detail on it and there's a lot they can go to the belvercenterorg. This is a Belver Center at Harvard in search for Petraeus on strategic leadership, and it'll pop up and we lay this construct out in the introduction and use it as the prism through which we examine each of the conflicts that we recount in the book.
GEN David Petraeus:And, by the way, now the second edition is out, which takes us all the way through Gaza and also updates on Ukraine and the future of warfare.
GEN David Petraeus:So I was very excited to have the opportunity to do that with him, then to update it and so forth, and it was a very, very intellectually stimulating endeavor and in some ways, somewhat educational for me.
GEN David Petraeus:Somewhat educational for me because I'd done the dissertation on Vietnam, the lessons of Vietnam and how they influenced our leaders during decisions on the use of force At the 10-year mark from that war. We're now many, many subsequent decades from that, and I knew that there were many additional biographies, autobiographies, analyses, histories and even the declassification of reams of official reports and so on, and so I was quite excited to revisit that, and I should note that it really solidified very substantially for me that our leaders there failed for something like 13 years to get the big ideas right on Vietnam, to perform the first task of a strategic leader, which is first and foremost and, above all, the most important task, because if you don't get that right, the rest of it doesn't matter. Your ability to communicate, your ability to oversee, to inspire, to energize, to get great people to allow those not measuring up to move on to something else. All the other tasks, how you spend your time and so on that stuff is immaterial if you don't get the overall strategy right up front.
Mark McGrath:We want to unpack that and apply it to really two of the case studies One that you were directly involved with, afghanistan, but really start with Vietnam. Vietnam seems to be the one that we just keep coming back to, that no one really seems to, by and large, learn the lessons of the training and the education that I got as a Marine officer and that Ponch got as a Naval officer. We spent a lot of time reading books that you cite, like the Army in Vietnam, by Andrew Kropenovich, also a West Pointer. I like to start in books, and the footnotes are the bibliography. I was not aware that you were not the only West Point grad that got a PhD, you just might be the one that didn't have a Heisman Trophy. And I was blown away to see that Pete Dawkins had authored a dissertation on Vietnam and the lessons that Andrew Kuprinovich and yourself kind of unpack. That was one of the most, and he did it at Princeton as well, of course.
GEN David Petraeus:He did it at Princeton as well and, by the way, a very, very good dissertation. I went and found it because in those days this was the days of sort of microfilm was how dissertations were published, If they didn't actually be published again in the public sector by a corporation. I think he probably maybe a little bit like with me. I said, yeah, I'm not sure I want to publish this thing because it gores a few oxes. Maybe I'd really need to do a considerable amount of additional work and allow those that I, of whom I'm a bit critical critical to at least give their side of the story if they were still alive. I just had run out of time. I just needed to get it done and go over to be one of the speechwriters for the new Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, as I ended up having to go there a year earlier than was expected. But so no, he wrote a superb dissertation the USS Army and the Other War in Vietnam, about the advisory effort, which should have been the main effort but which he convincingly laid out was very much the afterthought. It was really all about the big war. We turned what should have been a small war, counterinsurgency, into a big war. We thought we could win a war of attrition against North Vietnamese. It turned out we could not. They could escalate every time we could. We killed staggering numbers of them for every one of the soldiers that we lost. But, as another of the authors recognized in, we Were Soldiers Once and Young.
GEN David Petraeus:Lieutenant General Retired Hal Moore, a great hero of some of the early episodes of Battle of the Eidrang and so forth with the 1st Cavalry Division.
GEN David Petraeus:I'd actually read that when I was a battalion commander of an air assault infantry unit, 101st Airborne Division unit, and now I look, though, at his reflections later, much later in the book, and he said you know, general Westmoreland may have thought 10 for 1 was a pretty good exchange ratio, but on reflection I'm not sure America's mothers and fathers agreed.
GEN David Petraeus:And that was really what captured the essence of, in a sense, the futility of a large war against the North Vietnamese, as opposed to focusing on what the South Vietnamese leaders wanted us originally to help them with when we came in in the wake of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the partition between North and South, and that was to help them with security in the villages, hamlets, provinces, rather than thrashing around in the jungle with large units trying to find an elusive enemy, pummeling them when we did find them, but often causing lots of additional damage because of the almost indiscriminate use of air power and artillery and so on.
GEN David Petraeus:And again, two ephemeral effects We'd take Hamburger Hill, we'd take the Eidrang, whatever, and then it was not held after we left and so they'd be back in short order. And in the meantime we're ignoring what should have been the main effort, the focus, which was security of the people, for which small Vietnamese units should have been performing the tasks which meant we should have been supporting that training much more significantly, which was essentially the point of Pete Dawkins' dissertation.
Mark McGrath:And what was amazing about that is you, unpacked to what the Marines had been up to, like the Green Berets were with the CAP program.
GEN David Petraeus:Yeah, they did it superbly. They did it right, to the frustration of General S Moreland, who wanted them to aggregate and fight the big war. They broke down into very small units, lived with the people, actually got to know them, provided security for them where they lived, because the only way to secure the people, as we established during the surge in Iraq as well, is you can only do it by living with them. You can't clear and leave, you can't drive around the neighborhood a couple of times a day and then go back to your big, massive base for dinner and not expect the enemy to own the night. And so they got it right the CAP program.
GEN David Petraeus:And yet again it was not seen as an example. For the rest, despite very convincing metrics, as I recount in the book, it was seen as doing it wrong. But well, the Marines are going to do their own thing anyway. And there's something to that, by the way, as you well know, brian and I learned those lessons. I actually already had them when it came to the surge in Iraq and, to a degree, in Afghanistan as well.
GEN David Petraeus:So this is a case of failing in task number one, which is the most important of all for a strategic leader until late 1968, when General Abrams took over and finally, for the first time, established a strategy for a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign, everyone pulling together, all the civilian agencies, the CIA with the Phoenix program, which got a bad rap but had actually quite impressive outcomes in most respects. Some challenges, to be sure, but also the embassy, the development elements and, of course, the South Vietnamese and other coalition forces as well. Primarily the embassy, the development elements and, of course, the South Vietnamese and other coalition forces as well. Primarily, in fact, with respect to the South.
Mark McGrath:It seems to me that there were leaders that understood the mantra that terrain and machines do not fight wars. People do, and they use their minds.
GEN David Petraeus:Well, all of them fight war Again. In crafting the big ideas, you have to be keenly aware again of the nature of the war, the capabilities, limitations of your enemy, of your own forces, how the human terrain, the physical terrain and so forth all interact, the different elements of society, how the country is supposed to operate, how it really operates, the neighbors, everything you have to understand. And there just was insufficient appreciation of this. Frankly, there was a lot of lip service given to counterinsurgency. There were initiatives the Strategic Hamlet Program and others but the execution was so inadequate, in many cases corrupt. The reporting was corrupt in many respects and dishonest. The body count was often inflated, for example the number of strategic hamlets that had been established. All this turned out to be inaccurate, wildly inaccurate. And yet, if you'd carried out the right strategy, you'd have had your forces on the ground, as indeed did the Marines, and did so very impressively, but to the displeasure of the strategic leader rather than receiving commendation for it. And frankly, by the time that General Abrams took over and recrafted this strategy, the war in America, in many respects, was over. This is a war that was not sustainable. At the end of the day, the cost in blood and treasure to the US was just too great In contrast, by the way, I might note, to Afghanistan, where I've argued many times that that war was very sustainable from the US perspective.
GEN David Petraeus:There weren't hundreds of thousands or millions of peoples on America's streets demonstrating against our presence in Afghanistan, for a couple simple reasons. One, we hadn't even lost a soldier in combat in the final 18 months of the war until the tragic bombing at Abbey Gate during the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul Air Force bombing at Abbey Gate during the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul Air Force. And number two, the cost in treasure was very sustainable $25 billion out of an $850 billion defense budget. Yes, the situation was frustrated and had eroded somewhat in security terms, but the Taliban didn't control a single large metropolitan area at the time that we made the agreement, and it really well into just a couple months before the end of the war when our drawdown began. Frankly, I foresaw I stated on Fox News weeks before the withdrawal that I fear the psychological collapse of the Afghan security forces when they realized no one was coming to the rescue and I'm not talking about American forces, although drones are very, very helpful because we were no longer in the front lines.
GEN David Petraeus:That's why we didn't take a combat loss in the final 18 months, and it wasn't the agreement, we just weren't on the front lines. But it was more about the withdrawal of our contractors, 17,000 of them required to maintain the overly sophisticated American helicopters and planes which saddled them with an interest of buying America, contrary to what I insisted on doing during the time that I was the commander of Central Command and then the commander on the ground, which was to continue to buy old, refurbished Soviet Russian stuff analog that they could repair themselves, as opposed to continue to buy old, refurbished Soviet-Russian stuff analog that they could repair themselves, as opposed to having to bring in all these technicians, which was the case when we sold them the Blackhawks and C-130s and others. And that turned out to be the Achilles heel, because you couldn't get the 30,000 strong, highly trained, well-equipped, highly trained, well-equipped, motivated commandos out to reinforce the much less well-trained and equipped police and soldiers who were securing the different major centers of population and critical infrastructure.
Mark McGrath:So as we transition to talk about Afghanistan. Now, one of the things that emerged from the Afghan war was a paper by a Green Beret, Jim Gant, called One Tribe at a Time, that you're very familiar with and you include in the book.
GEN David Petraeus:Well, that was the foundation for the argument that I made for the need for the Afghan local police program. We should have started that years earlier. In fact, president Karzai should have started that years earlier. In fact, president Karzai wanted to start that years earlier. He was less enthusiastic when I brought it back up again some years after he originally did, but it was crucial.
GEN David Petraeus:I knew that we could not sustain the forces that we had there, that there was reluctance in Washington even to build up as we did had there, that there was reluctance in Washington even to build up as we did. And then, in the speech where the president announced the buildup at West Point and I was president as the central command commander we announced the drawdown date, which again seems strategically foolish, frankly, and certainly unhelpful to tell the enemy that you really don't want to stay, that you're going to begin a drawdown. So all you need to do is hang tough for a number of months. You know we didn't even get all the inputs right the inputs now in Afghanistan until late 2010. That coincided with the six-month mark of my time as a commander. A lot of this credit goes to Stan McChrystal. By inputs, I'm not just talking about the right big ideas, which he had largely gotten, although we added a number of others, such as the Afghan local police program, a reconciliation initiative, a bunch of anti-corruption efforts, a comprehensive counter-narcotics strategy and program and so forth. But it took us until that time again. So we're many years into this war.
GEN David Petraeus:Keep in mind we went in in late 2001.
GEN David Petraeus:Keep in mind that we went in in late 2001 after the 9-11 attacks, one after the 9-11 attacks.
GEN David Petraeus:We're now at 10 years, almost 10 years, nine years later, when we finally get we have the right big ideas, we get the right organization architecture, we have almost the right level of forces, we have generally the right leaders, we have almost the right level of diplomats, spies, development workers, rule of law, forensic, this and that, all that right level of coalition partners, spies, development workers, rule of law, forensic, this and that all that right level of coalition partners, the right preparation of our forces, all the rest of this. And again, it took us nine years to get that. And then we began the drawdown six months later, as announced in the speech at West Point, which again seemed to me to undermine to a considerable degree the announcement that we're building up. So, as we went through the war, we made a number of mistakes, some of those in my watch too. We rushed certain actions forward because we knew we wouldn't have the forces and the funding for that in the subsequent years, given the announcement that we were going to begin to draw down in all aspects of that war.
Ponch Rivera:General Petraeus a question on strategy. We have a lot of listeners that have background in business and they listen to our podcast to learn a little bit more about how to implement strategy, and you pointed out earlier that sometimes leaders have to get the strategy right from the onset.
GEN David Petraeus:However, you did talk about you have to get it right all the time, or else you're not going to succeed.
Ponch Rivera:So it could be adaptive as the landscape changes, as the environment changes.
GEN David Petraeus:It always should be Again keep in mind, get the big ideas right, communicate them, oversee their implementation, determine how to refine them and do it again and again. This applies very much in the business world, with Reed Hastings, one of the great strategic leaders of our time, etc. How Netflix evolved over his time four or five or more times, and did so very, very impressively each time. By the way, contrast that with Blockbuster, which is put out of business by Netflix, which first big idea, which was to put movies in the hands of customers without brick and mortar, and so it costs much less than using Blockbuster, it went out of business. Think of Kodak, for example, which failed to perform task number four as well. They were the champion of film, photography and services. They had over 2,000 patents on digital photography but failed to make that the new big idea early enough and they got put out of business in that world by others that got to digital photography first.
GEN David Petraeus:But Netflix is very interesting, you know. First big idea movies in the hands of customers throughout brick and mortar. Next one is well, the context is evolved. Broadband speed is much faster, we'll have download movies. Third is the breakout, that's, we're going to make our own content $100 million and House of Cards and all these other iconic series. Fourth one was we're going to make major motion pictures. They buy not one, but two major studios. Then there's more about going global. There's advertising, etc. Etc.
GEN David Petraeus:And that has continued even as he has handed off to the next strategic leader of Netflix, although there's one issue I've raised with him when I've discussed my intellectual construct for strategic leadership and how I think Netflix has done it so impressively. I did say that I did question the movie in which Brad Pitt played General Stan McChrystal, which just did not work in my view. Brad Pitt was like a little wooden soldier. He salutes stiffly all the time and awkwardly, has no sense of humor. He marches around and so on and beyond that. Again, I could never get over the fact that Brad Pitt didn't play me in that movie.
Ponch Rivera:That's a good one. So we called Netflix and Kodak their failures competency-induced failure. They were so fixated on what they knew, their assumptions about their strategy, their fixation on making money off of late rental fees and all that.
GEN David Petraeus:You're talking about Blockbuster, you mean? Blockbuster and Codex right, not Netflix Blockbuster. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes, yeah, why don't you start over with that? Actually?
Ponch Rivera:Try it again, yeah.
GEN David Petraeus:That's a good one.
Ponch Rivera:I was pointing out the competency-induced failure from Kodak and Blockbuster, where Blockbuster was fixated on making money from late fees.
Mark McGrath:The natural question that comes up to me, general, is you've been in the same position, theoretically, that General Westmoreland was years ago and, as a leader, you've been surrounded by great thinkers that are junior in rank, like Brian and myself Navy captain, marine captain and they have ideas and they see things. How do you, as a strategic leader, in these types of situations where the norm is volatility, uncertainty, complexity, chaos, ambiguity, aka VUCA how do you create an environment such that you're getting as many perspectives as you can as a leader, in order to ensure that the four points of your strategic construct are owned by everybody? And, at the same time, I can tell you something that I see that you're not aware of, and I'm not going to get clobbered because I'm a Marine captain and you're an Army four-star general.
GEN David Petraeus:Well, you do it by, first and foremost, trying to create a culture of learning, and you don't just announce it and say it, you actually do it. And there's a variety of different ways that you do that. So, for example, in my battle rhythm we had meetings every month. All the two-star division commanders and above the three stars and so forth would all sit around in a conference room and they just didn't share updates and what was going on in their area of responsibility with the other commanders. They also were required to give two initiatives that they had undertaken or lessons that they had learned that would be relevant to the other. So you're fostering learning. We had lessons learned teams all over the battlefield, army lessons learned, marine Corps lessons learned joint forces, joint forces, special operations, a counterinsurgency center, et cetera, and they would come together on the battle rhythm. We had an hour a month with them. It was the end of a process through which they went before finally meeting with me. We had a number of other actions where it was the task of others to challenge me or to provide truth to power. All these kinds of activities, then, you also bring around you, directly around you, those that have a history of speaking truth to power, sometimes to their detriment. There was a particular army intelligence colonel who had literally been thrown out of the theater in about several months into the first year of the war, where he had the temerity to suggest that we were facing an insurgency, and at that time the leader in the Pentagon didn't like that word insurgency. So they actually pulled him from Iraq and sent him back to the United States. I took him back with me and he was right in my inner circle. I had others that were in the inner circle. My executive officer was a brilliant guy, number one in his class at West Point, phd and so on, who had a history of again speaking truth to power. You had numbers of these like that. Hr McMaster, who was a colonel at the time, had had a superb colonel level command in Iraq but was pretty outspoken and was seen as not being a quote team player.
GEN David Petraeus:Instead of in his post-colonel command combat tour going to be the exec to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as I was, or executive chief staff of the Army or Central Command commander, he was sent, not even inside the Army, to the IISS, the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, in civilian clothes. So I found him, I brought him to Iraq. He just nonstop doing assessments for us. In the beginning, to stall for time, because I knew we needed time, I said, hey, take your time, because I can keep saying to the president every week well, we're not quite done with the assessment, sir, but you know so, and I thought nothing much was going to come out of these. And lo and behold, every single one that he did, usually joined by an ambassador on the civilian side, had something that caused us to smack our forehead and ask how did we miss this? The ambassador, great Ryan Crocker, and myself, and so and again, there are many others battalion who had so been displeasure of the senior leaders. When he accused the senior leaders of, you know, sort of inadequate intellectual heft I don't know if he was the one that said that we were intellectually flaccid or something like that, but so they deployed his entire battalion, batteries of it.
GEN David Petraeus:Now, to be fair, we weren't using all battalions in shooting mode. They sprinkled, some to do detainee affairs, some to do route clearance and security, some to do infantillary control and area. But they left him behind, and so I figured out a request for forces that only he could add. We brought him out there, got him in my inner circle, plus overseeing some of his forces and the detainee ops. So again, you have to actively bring right into your inner circle people who will tell the emperor that he is not fully clothed on a certain day. In other words, to challenge you intellectually. You want that, you foster, that, you welcome it. You don't always act on everything that they give you, because some of it is not always perhaps well-founded. But you need people to challenge the big ideas.
GEN David Petraeus:And then when I would go out two to three times a week and go on patrol with small units, at the end of those always it was sort of a template, we would always sit down. I would just with the company commanders, the captains, because I wanted to hear from the mature tactical level leaders that all had at least one tour in combat already. So they're not the kind of you know, still developing formative young lieutenants. They're experienced. They're the last level at which every casualty has a face, not just a name or a number.
GEN David Petraeus:And I would ask them, not just a name or a number. And I would ask them what do we have to sustain here? If money is really drawn? We must continue to do this and what should we improve? In other words, what do we need to take on?
GEN David Petraeus:And then I'd give them my personal email address for the secure internet protocol route, sipr, as you well know, the classified email, my personal address so that if they were ever really dissatisfied with those above them who weren't addressing the problem, that was very important to them, that they could access me directly and over time. Frankly, I'd get many emails per week, certainly two hands full per week, and then we'd try to protect the person that sent it in so that he or she wasn't seen as a whiner. But if it was important enough to them, I told them it's important to me. Again, they have a real obligation again in terms of again a face. This is life and death and it's serious, and if it's serious to them, it's serious to me. So again, all of these different tactics, techniques and procedures to operationalize the idea that learning is critical.
Mark McGrath:And, as we wrote in the counter-insurgency field manual which we developed again between the three and four-star tours in Iraq and then got to implement during the surge, the side that learns the fastest in this kind of war generally prevails and we wanted to learn the fastest and I would contend that we did during those periods of these two wars, when you look at business today and Brian and I we're adaptive strategy advisors to many, many leaders in business in many different domains what are some of your mentorship points that you give to say it's imperative that you create this environment and what are some of the maybe best practices that you've learned on how to coach and advise leaders and corporations or companies to create this kind of environment in order to make them more adaptive and more successful and more competitive?
GEN David Petraeus:Sure, look, mark, there's a number of these. I've laid out some of them. I would start actually just by again. If you're talking about fairly senior leaders, although all leaders perform the four tasks I've laid out, the difference is that the leader at the very top has a blank slate and everybody below the senior leader has, at the very top has a blank slate and everybody below the senior leader has, at the very least, what he or she has established as the overarching strategy within which they have to work. So if the overall leader says this is a big war, you're going to fight a big war. Now you might have components, a small war, train and equip missions, et cetera. But the focus, the main effort, is going to be on the big war, the large units as opposed to say small units, comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign.
GEN David Petraeus:Many deficiencies in the South, vietnamese leaders as well, who weren't that well connected with those out in the rice paddies, who were of different religions, different languages, different backgrounds and so forth. The elite in Saigon was quite elite, spoke French, went to Paris, was Catholic etc. And was quite corrupt. And then the challenging nature of that war and the commitment of the North. They saw it as a nationalist war, not just a war to propagate communism. We saw it as, again, the domino theory. It was in effect that if that communist regime took control of South Vietnam then these other dominoes would topple, etc. So again, we didn't have full understanding of this the way that we should have, and we didn't craft the right strategy. But it starts with getting the big ideas right, and one of those big ideas has to be again that we're going to be a learning organization, that the leader at the top wants your honest opinion.
GEN David Petraeus:When I became the CIA director, there was not really an overarching strategy for the agency. We had some components of it how to retake money from certain pots and put it in others, et cetera but the kind of really comprehensive overall strategy was not fully formulated. My predecessor noted that. Said, that's one of the focus. So we started out, we did a huge SharePoint site and we began with the questions what are the enduring missions of the agency, in other words those that we have to continue and perhaps in some cases resource even more?
GEN David Petraeus:What are the legacy issues in which we shouldn't focus as much as we have in the past and what are the emerging issues or missions? In the first weekend. Mind you, we got hundreds and hundreds of responses to that from the workforce, so they're welcome. Give me your honest view. And again, that's an organization, an agency, in which truth to power is absolutely vital, so that has to be a component of this. But what I'd suggest is that those that want to get into this a good bit more, into all the aspects of the intellectual construct for strategic leadership and for leadership at any level, again visit the website at belfercenterorg query Petraeus and strategic leadership and much more significant detail will pop up. Excellent.
Mark McGrath:From your vantage point now, after having had a long career and now being in the business world and you think back to your days as a cadet and with three of us here that are military officers from various levels tactical, operational, strategic what's your assessment of how officers are trained and prepared today and how have you seen it evolve over time? And the reason I asked this. The other day we were speaking with a strategist with an Air Force background and we were talking about how it's lamentable that a lot of the emphasis is put solely on tech, and I think back to study of reading of old days of, say, west Point or the Naval Academy, where, in addition to engineering, there were other things like culture, arts, languages and things like that that gave officers a little more of an edge in a broader interdisciplinary approach. So I guess we can go in a couple directions, but what's your general assessment of how officers are prepared today to lead with that sort of intellectual, academic background?
GEN David Petraeus:Well, first of all, I'd contend that it actually is an interdisciplinary effort. Now, to be sure, there are differences among the services and, of course, these are service academies at the end of the day US Military Academy, army Naval Academy, air Force Academy and so forth, and there is more tech in the latter two and I think it's understandable, therefore, that there has to be more of an emphasis. And then, depending on what field you go into, I mean, if you're going to go into nuclear submarines, you're going to spend a lot of time on nuclear power development, et cetera, and that's appropriate because you can't screw that up. If you're going to be a Marine, on the other hand, obviously you'll have a bit more of a focus on the individual, but that's, I think. Again, I would contend that they are all still very interdisciplinary, with a little bit more here or there or what have you. Second is, how has that evolution been? And just start with the service academies perhaps ROTC as well, for commissioned officers, future commissioned officers and I'd say it's evolved impressively.
GEN David Petraeus:The Mickey Mouse, the hazing, the trivia, the demeaning activities of West Point. When I went there, frankly, we were actually practicing leadership techniques that would get you shot in the military, the real army. They were completely contrary. You know, the senior, the first classman, the guy at the head of the table gets the final, the extra piece of pie. And again the hazing in particular was just sort of again infantile in many respects. And I was very proud when the department in which I taught the social sciences department, proud when the department in which I taught the social sciences department used the academic revalidation process. They volunteered to do it and then actually took on much more than just the academic component but the leadership development component as well. And now what is exercised, what is taught and implemented at West Point and I would condemn again the other service academies is much more professional and much more in tune with what you need to do in that actual service, in active duty, rather than what we used to do.
GEN David Petraeus:And I think that has been good. Now you can soften it too much you can. You know you can focus too much on these other activities. We occasionally get that a bit out of balance. I don't think it's anywhere near as significant as some of the critics from time to time but there's a little bit of back and forth and that kind of stuff. But at heart I think each of those service academies and, I'd contend, most of the ROTC programs are very much on track, and it's really, after all, about the undergraduate education that you're getting and, by and large, I think most of these require quite a degree of interdisciplinary academic subjects. I'm a believer in that. I think that you would need that as a foundation.
GEN David Petraeus:I'm a bit concerned sometimes people don't write as well as they used to. Maybe and I'm really concerned now that they'll rough something out and then turn it to chat and GBT and it'll be this eloquent, but they may or may not have the ability to do that. These are all sort of contemporary issues we need to come to grips with and I hope will, but I think by and large, that evolution has been solid. We do have challenges now, clearly, when it comes to manning the enlisted force, with the exception of the Marine Corps, which has generally met its recruiting and retention goals, but each of the other services has struggled from time to time, although seems to have come to grips with it now, but those are largely because of issues beyond the control of the services, such as the increase in obesity in America that can't pass the physical fitness test, activities, use of illegal narcotics and just a reduced propensity to serve at a time of very full unemployment in the country for an extended period of time.
GEN David Petraeus:But again, I think we're cracking the code on that. The Army, for example, has a great approach that says oh, can't pass the physical fitness test? We have a deal for you. We'll help you get in shape and come to the you know, the pre-basic basic course, um, and, by the way, we'll pay you and give you four, three square meals a day and and room and board. So, uh, again, that's a challenge, I think, and I hope that we can overcome those. I also hope that the um, the partisanship and the divide in our population to some degree doesn't believe that. He taught there as well, mcmaster, kropenovich and others, maybe I think even General West Clark Was Jack.
Mark McGrath:Jacobs teaching there when you and Dad were cadets. Medal of.
GEN David Petraeus:Honor recipient. Yes, absolutely, I mean again. I think there were three Medal of Honor recipients teaching in that department when I was a cadet. But it's well known, my father-in-law also went there and taught in that department as a young major as well, soldier, scholar, statesman, one of my great mentors and one of my great role models. So, again, really quite an extraordinary department. You can list all the different individuals that matriculated at West Point and then came back to teach in the department, as well as some that went to other schools and came there as well, quite selective, very competitive and so forth and, by the way, a department that very much welcomed intellectual debate in its ranks, and it had it.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I guess, sir, that was what I was to ask you is like, what is what has made that such an institution of such amazing thinkers like yourself and Uba Wastaseg and others? Like what, what has made that social department so amazing? And what was sort of the governing mantra or strategy or dictum or whatever that that allowed that to be such a place where minds could flourish and challenge assumptions and speak truth to power without fear of repercussion?
GEN David Petraeus:Well, it started, as always, with great leadership, and so the very first head of that department post-World War II actually took off a star to revert to being a full colonel, colonel Abe Lincoln, to be the head of that department. And over the years, the heads of that department have been really impressive. There have been great strategic leaders noting yes, they're not the superintendent of West Point, but they have such enormous latitude in that department that I would classify them as strategic leaders. They get the big ideas right, they communicate them, they oversee the implementation and they refine them and do it again and again, and again. And it's a culture that welcomes debate, that fosters. It doesn't take itself overly seriously, by the way. At the same time, one of the big ideas in the department was just be nice, which translated into okay, have fierce debates but be nice about it, respect each other, don't vilify those who don't see the world the way that you do. And then it also enables you to go to the most select schools in America.
GEN David Petraeus:So there are three elements within that department, if you will. There's the international relations, economics, and then what you might term political philosophy and government. The economics an awful lot of folks went to the great business schools of Harvard Business School and the others Stanford and so on. International relations, harvard, princeton, yale, stanford, again and others. And then same with the political philosophy, and I actually, because I've had an, and others. And then same with the political philosophy, and I actually, because I've had a interdisciplinary grad school at Princeton, ended up teaching both economics and international relations. So it was a sort of a bit of a switch hitter, which was fairly rare. You generally were in one of those tracks and you continued. You'd evolve to a more select. The different courses subsequent to the basic courses that all cadets had to take, so the different electives that the upperclassmen were taking.
Mark McGrath:It's an amazing story and it's produced so many. I guess it goes back to the when you think about it, the things that you talk about in the book, when you, when you highlight these things that have been very successful, you start to wonder why the things that you talk about in the book, when you highlight these things that have been very successful, you start to wonder why is it that in the institutional, military or the institutional corporation or whatever, these types of thinkers and innovators they get quashed, they get silenced or they're dismissed as radicals? That's a good question.
GEN David Petraeus:Yeah, look, I was told when I went to graduate school, instead of going to the Ranger Regiment, which was the other alternative, that I was committing professional suicide and I really wanted to go to the Rangers. That's the whole reason. I went to Fort Stewart after being in the Airborne Battalion in Vicenza as a lieutenant and then all of a sudden I got selected for CGSC a couple of years early. It was an experiment one year where captains were allowed to go. They never did it again and I had a boss at the time who was eventually a soldier, scholar, statesman as well. General Jack Galvin, who taught in the English department at West Point, had three books already under his belt when I was his aide as a division commander and he sat me down one time and he said have you ever considered raising your intellectual sights beyond the maximum effective range of an M60 machine gun, which was the longest range weapon organic to an infantry company at that time? And I got the point and so I chose graduate school over and again. The vehicle that allowed me to go to graduate school was selection to teach in the social sciences department. Subsequent to that graduate education and thankfully for career purposes, because I was away from infantry for six years. Cgs, kim and Joan, staff College, grad school, two years and then two years at West Point would have been six years. It was compressed to five because General Galvin pulled me out of it to go be a speechwriter when he was named to be the Supreme Alley Commander of Europe. So again, obviously it wasn't professional suicide, but there was a component of my branch in the Army, infantry and the Army in general that in some respect could be a little bit anti-intellectual. You know, it's just basically salute smartly hooah, roger, sir, yep, you know, whatever you were, the problem with that is as you get to more senior grades and all of a sudden you have to start to figure out what you need to do. You may or may not have that intellectual foundation, the capacity for individual thinking, creativity and so forth, which is, by the way, not always rewarded. You know, it really helps if you're failing in a war and if somebody hires you and then empowers you enormously. That allows you to make the kind of changes that are really dramatic that otherwise would generally not be permitted in normal times.
GEN David Petraeus:It's hard to foster innovation in a peacetime army when we see the many books have been written about innovation in the military. Most of those have taken place when the military or the country is struggling. I mean, look at the innovation in Ukraine. Well, it's forced. Now they have the raw materials for that, the human capital, the manufacturing capacity, design, all the rest of this but it's only because they're under such pressure by Russia that you have the kind of innovation that has been so impressive and was so necessary to where they're now able to throw thousands of drones at the Russians every day on the front lines without a Navy, to sink one third of the Russian Black Sea fleet with maritime drones that sink them after aerial drones find them. Now there's even maritime drones that can actually launch anti-aircraft projectiles, and they took down a couple of helicopters recently in the vicinity of Crimea.
GEN David Petraeus:So again, innovation is most easy when you're in a war and you're really pressed by it, and sure helps, by the way, in my case, when I was commanding surges in Iraq and Afghanistan and Central Command, if you have somebody like Secretary Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen as the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs respectively, who were willing to go out and take on the bureaucracy and force the acceleration of the production and fielding of the mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicle that I'm sure both of you remember as such a lifesaver, the all-terrain version of which was in Afghanistan.
GEN David Petraeus:Dramatic increase in the production and operationalization of drones, all the other advances that took place, but a lot of that because we were seen to be losing the war in Iraq. The civil war there between Sunni and Shia was at really quite significant levels. The country was out of control and therefore a change was needed, and that was what enabled me to reverse the big ideas for Iraq 180 degrees, to go from clear and leave operations to clear, hold and build, to live with the people, because that's the only way to secure them, as we discussed earlier, gated communities and all the rest of that.
Mark McGrath:Last question because we're coming up on time and before when we do end, we will stop recording and we want to just say one final thank you to you. I'm curious to know, from the day that you were commissioned at West Point in 1974, in June, and the day that you retired as a four-star general officer, before going on to the other things that you've done, be it CIA, be it KKR, what were the most influential books that you had read over the years, even from any age, up to that point that you found the most value that you would recommend to leaders today.
GEN David Petraeus:Oh gosh, there were a number of them over the years. I was particularly fascinated by counterinsurgency operations over those years, and so I devoured the books on the French in Indochina and Algeria, then the Americans in Vietnam, the British in Malaya, in Oman, the El Salvador Civil War and so forth and so on, and was able to observe some of these. I was actually in Central America during the summer of that period, again working for General Galvin when he was the Commander-in-Chief of US Southern Command. Then Haiti as the UN Chief of Operations, bosnia for a year, both NATO and a US hat that worked with special mission unit operations for the work of the Manhattan encounter, terrorism, et cetera, et cetera, and always reading again, trying to prepare for what it was that I was going to do.
GEN David Petraeus:But during the surge in Iraq I ended up reading Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton, one of the classic works in the Civil War. Somebody had given it to me. I didn't think much of it. Before I left Fort Leavenworth to go back to Iraq, ended up in a rucksack, ended up on my bedside table by my bunk. I started reading a few pages every night and it was really quite profound.
GEN David Petraeus:As you read about, I think, the greatest military leader in American military history, a man who was brilliant at the tactical level, the operational level and the strategic level, despite being a failure at everything else. Between the time he resigned his commission as a captain after a brilliant tour in Mexico and then comes back into uniform as a colonel and then a one-star and is again extraordinary on the battlefield. The man who saved the Union because the strategy that he established when he was brought east after the extraordinary victory at Vicksburg and then Chattanooga by Lincoln, who finally found his general after trying virtually all the other senior leaders in the army, mcclellan twice, and it was that strategy that achieved the victories in 1864, that ensured the most important event of the Civil War, which was the re-election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Because that his opponent won. He was going to sue for peace. We would not have the union that we have today.
GEN David Petraeus:But the indomitable will, the ability to see a battlefield in time and space, to issue the orders in a very clear, concise way, with extraordinary prose, very descriptive, but above all, again, the sheer determination. And at Bloody Shiloh, for example, where, after the first day of the war, which the first day of the battle, where the Union forces are almost driven back into the Tennessee River, sherman comes out of the dark, his most trusted lieutenant, if he will, throughout the war, and he says well, grant, we had the devil's own day, didn't we? And Grant takes a stub of a cigar out of his mouth and says, yep, lick them tomorrow, though, and put it back in. That's the kind of qualities that I think are absolutely crucial at all levels of leadership, but especially as a strategic leader, and I commend that. I commend other books about him more recently as well, because I think he's such an extraordinary figure. Yes, not universally successful as the president, he had a tendency to put too much trust into certain individuals that perhaps didn't merit that. Even in his post-government life, where he gave all of his life savings to his son's business partner, turned out to be the made-out of his day.
GEN David Petraeus:But I think, in uniform, the most extraordinary leader in our military history. And, yes, washington was a great political military leader. He held basically the revolutionary forces together, but again not particularly gifted tactically or even operationally or even to a degree strategically, until he recognized the opportunity to end the war. Eisenhower, again mostly a coalition general of extraordinary capability, but again never tactical, not great operationally in North Africa and even strategically missed the flag's pocket, but again, his genius was the coalition component of it, which was absolutely crucial.
GEN David Petraeus:But as a strictly battlefield, tactical, operational, strategic level commander, I think Grant is unequaled in our history and I just found that so relevant, inspirational. I'm not trying to make the war in Iraq into the civil war, very, very different in terms of its importance to our country, needless to say, but a leader who I found to be truly extraordinary, exemplary. Yes, he did some drinking. Lincoln heard about that. He said find out what he drinks and give it to the other generals. At least he fights. Yes, there were others, some shortcomings, but by and large, I think, the most impressive figure and absolutely again, the man who did save the Union at his hour of greatest need following the Revolutionary War.
Mark McGrath:That's phenomenal. Well, that will be. Maybe the next book idea would be General David Petraeus on books.
GEN David Petraeus:Well, I have actually the next book and I've already begun working my way through it.
GEN David Petraeus:Next book, and I've already begun working my way through it, and my great executive officer from the surge in Iraq, pete Monsoor, who wrote the book Surge later on and is now a prestigious chair at Ohio State University on military history, we're going to do a book collaborate together that will be titled From Battlefield to High Command, about the very small number of people in history and different forces around the world who were brilliant on the battlefield at the tactical and operational level and then became the great strategic leaders when they were elevated to that level, as well as very, very small number of individuals the Wellington kinds of individuals Ridgeway, by the way, we believe merits that Slim in Burma and Southeast Asia, but it's a very, very small number. Again, eisenhower doesn't get that, macarthur even arguably doesn't because of the flawed actions in Korea and also getting surprised in the beginning of World War II as well. Again, lots and lots of individuals who have extraordinary accomplishments in many respects but don't quite meet the threshold for brilliance at tactical, operational and then also strategic.
Mark McGrath:What's the date on that? What's the goal to get that out?
GEN David Petraeus:I think there may be a third edition of conflict to come out. We'll see First, okay.
Mark McGrath:All right, well, we'll keep our eye open for that.
GEN David Petraeus:Mark actually let me just say again the reason I'm on this is because, of course, your dad was my classmate and an extraordinary individual taken far too soon from us.
GEN David Petraeus:We not only went to West Point together, we served together and staff of the great chief of staff of the Army, general Carl Vono, at a really historic moment Panama and the Gulf War, etc. And a great friend on top of all that and, frankly, that's why I'm with you, frankly, that's why I'm with you. Lots of podcasts out there. Yours may be cut because of a personal relationship and great admiration and affection.
Mark McGrath:Well, I want to tell you personally, to your face, general, that even though I wound up a Marine officer, I have to tell you that the pride of the Corps and General MacArthur's speech and the influence I've had from my dad, of course, and you and John Gerazi and Frank Janoski and Rick Binger and the rest of the class of 74, who I had the honor of being with many of them last year at the 50th reunion Was there a 50th reunion year? Your 50th reunion year? It has been. Even though I wound up a marine, west point certainly has its place on me. It's had its effect on me for the first 18 years of my life that I was able to take and uh and and continue on and hopefully uh, have made you guys uh proud because it's been a big influence of my life.
GEN David Petraeus:Proud, proud of the core 74 there you go, and I know he was very proud of you and you can rest assured that you're his classmates are as well. Absolutely Semper Fi Marine.
Mark McGrath:Oh, thank you. We'll pause recording One second.
