Strategic Approach to Leadership with General David Petraeus Part II
Willy Walker: Welcome to part two of my discussion with the great General David Petraeus. It is a real joy to see you, General. Thanks for giving me another hour, which, given your incredibly busy schedule, I am deeply thankful for. You walked me through your travels since we last spoke. And I said I can't believe that your travel schedule over the last month has been busier than when you were running major military operations or running the CIA. And actually, given this travel schedule, you just walked through I'm actually pretty sure that that was probably the busiest month you've ever had.
General David Petraeus: I think it was actually and really quite extraordinary. And I guess it's a little bit of a testament to the situation we see around the world, conflict and competition everywhere we look. A real dramatic shift over the last decade or so from one of benign globalization to renewed great power rivalries, from economics driving geopolitics to geopolitics driving economics, the holiday from history is over. And we're in an era of renewed protectionism really, domestic economics, if you will. And investors recognize this. Our portfolio companies are trying to understand it. It's a period of really quite enormous demand for that kind of information, that kind of discussion. And it's a reminder of where we are right now and where we may be headed.
Willy Walker: You just said protectionist geopolitics if you will. And when I hear you say that I'm curious; it sort of gives me goosebumps. I'm somewhat reluctant to go here. But when I hear that, General, it makes me wonder whether Osama bin Laden won. And by that, I mean the attacks on 911, reversing the course of increased globalization, increased market economies, and having the world start to retreat. And here we are 23 years later from that awful day. And I just wonder about your thought as it relates to if you look back on that, not trying to sort of prop him up and say what he did was good. But as it relates to reversing the course of history, reversing the course of geopolitics is what he intended on doing, actually coming to bear.
General David Petraeus: I think it's debatable. And in all honesty, I think it’s bigger forces than that, actually. If you think about, again, where we were benign globalization. Globalization is measured by global trade going up like this. All the barriers to trade, investment, capital flows, and data flows being reduced to an era where geopolitics is back with a vengeance. All of those barriers are being increased, and globalization has become “slowbalization” and even regionalization within it. I think the forces are bigger than just those of Islamist extremism, although they are alive and well, and they require that we keep an eye and pressure on those groups that still exist around the world. At the end of the day, al Qaeda was defeated in a variety of different locations. He was killed. His successor was killed. That organization is really a shadow of its former self at its height. Yes, there is the Islamic State. Yes, there's a variety of other actors. Hamas, I think, would be in the category of an Islamist extremist organization as well. But the real forces here have to do with the return of great power rivalries. The further rise and further aggressive action by China in a variety of different ways in particular, but also obviously a revanchist, a revisionist grievance-filled vision of history by the Russian leader Kleptocrat, Vladimir Putin that has led him to deny the existence of his neighbor to exist as an independent country and to invade it in a particularly brutal and barbaric manner. And I think, though, that the rise of China and its actions against First Island chain countries, against other countries in the region, against India in the line of actual control, three separate fights in which dozens of Indian soldiers are killed, economic coercion against Australia, Wolf warrior diplomacy that was so off-putting that the EU put the investment accord that was resolved by then Chancellor Merkel in her final six months on hold. And now it is leading to, again, the increasing establishment of a variety of tariffs and sanctions, all kinds of actions that again are making it much more complex to invest, creating barriers to that and to invest with us. And it's not just the US and China or the US and Russia, obviously, it's the EU, it's individual countries, it's the major other countries of the world. That's really what's going on here, I think, far more than what Osama Bin Laden's attacks on 911 unleashed and the consequences of that.
Willy Walker: You mentioned both China and Russia in that response to the question. I've heard you, General, talk about the difference between the US-Soviet Union relations during the Cold War. US-China relations today most fundamentally pinned underneath the amount of commerce that goes on between the US and China versus the amount of commerce between the US and the former Soviet Union. Talk about that versus why it makes it so challenging and difficult at the same time.
General David Petraeus: Huge difference. This is why the Cold War analogy needs to be used with great care and a good degree of nuance. Yes, there are aspects of the US-China relationship, severe competition, as our National Security Advisor describes the relationship with other countries as well, our Western allies and partners together, and there are elements that are reminiscent of the Cold War. Undeniably. But there are elements that are very different. The biggest of those is what you just described, which is the amount of commerce between our two countries and between our partners and allies with China as well. The fact is that we are highly dependent on China to the extent that we cannot decouple from China. Certainly, we should de-risk in a variety of ways, and we are. And there are restrictions on what we can export, how we can take investment areas in which we cannot invest, entities in which we can't invest, technologies, all of this. However, China is our third largest trading partner after our two continental trading partners, Mexico and Canada, in that order. And I believe we are actually their largest destination. We're hugely dependent on them for a variety of goods and services. In some sectors, they dominate. And the fact is, by the way, they're hugely dependent on us. They cannot feed their people, nor can they feed their livestock without what they import from the United States. So there is a mutually dependent relationship here, along with a severe competition that's ongoing that we have to ensure doesn't erupt into actual confrontation. And that's where, of course, the elements of deterrence come in. Potential adversaries, assessment of your capabilities on the one hand, and your willingness to employ them on the other. But again, this is why that Cold War analogy has to be used with considerable care so that you don't overlook a crucial difference in the relationship between the contending competing countries. In this case, with that which existed between the US-led Western Bloc Naito and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.
Willy Walker: It would appear, General, that keeping China at bay is almost more art than science in the sense that how do you keep that line that says “We're here, we don't want you to cross the line and yet at the same time, let them understand that there's a very significant there are big consequences if it does go back to the Cold War.” But there were several decades there between the end of the Cold War and now where we are today, where military conflict was more, less nuanced if you will. How, as a military leader, do you deal with showing the force yet not being so aggressive that you kind of step over the line?
General David Petraeus: The big idea here is to be firm but not needlessly provocative. And in this case, it's art and science. Science is just the cold, hard realities of your capabilities. And they need to be transformed, by the way. What we're learning from the war in Ukraine is the enormous advent of massive numbers of unmanned systems that are fighting and starting to even fight each other, which eventually will evolve into unmanned systems that are not remotely piloted as they currently are but are arrhythmically piloted. And we need to transform some.
Willy Walker: Are you okay with that.
General David Petraeus: Yes, I am. To explain this, we already do this when it comes to certain air and ballistic missile defense systems. The role of the human is to allow the machine to act on its algorithms. It happens too rapidly when you're hitting a bullet with a bullet. The machine actually has to make certain decisions very rapidly, more rapidly, frankly, than humans can in certain cases. And you're going to, again, empower the machine. So the human in the loop, as we have right now, say, “With a remotely piloted system where it's the human who actually, in essence, pulls the trigger or directs the machine to take a kinetic action.” That's going to become the human on the loop where the human is designing, first of all, the objectives for that machine's mission, the conditions it has to meet before it takes a certain kinetic or non-kinetic action. But then, ultimately, it's going to be handed off to the algorithms in it to determine whether the conditions have been met. And I think machines can do that. In many cases, they can do it better than human beings, which should be a huge concern. There's a lot of ethical considerations, without question. But I think that's where this is eventually headed. And you're starting to see some of that already, for example, in Ukraine.
So the lesson here is that we have to transition from what might be described as very simplistic terms, but a small number of large platforms that are very heavily manned, incredibly capable, and also increasingly vulnerable and exorbitantly expensive to a massive number almost an incalculable number. Ukraine has produced 1.5 million drones in the last nine months. That kind of incalculable number of smaller, unmanned, but still quite capable systems. And what the Ukrainians have done is unequaled anywhere in the world, unprecedented anywhere else where they're producing very capable drones, but actually at a very low cost. And that's the real key. We have to get to that more rapidly than we are in the US. Noting the challenges that our military-industrial-congressional complex, as Senator McCain used to describe it, as elements in it that have vested interests in legacy systems, legacy basing arrangements, and legacy processes. And he current industrial age model for procurement essentially delivers yesterday's technologies for tomorrow's wars. Whereas what we see happening in Ukraine, where there's a direct partnership between the designers, the manufacturers, and those employing them, is so tight that they're actually producing tomorrow's technology for today's war. And that's pretty profound. I was just there. I just made my fourth trip to Ukraine in the last 17 months or so, and I was just blown away when spending an afternoon with a drone battalion there. But you've got to transition from what we have some of what we have because it's still awfully nice to have an aircraft carrier in the Gulf and the carrier task force and other systems like that. But ultimately, there are going to be drones and massive numbers, not just in the air but on the surface, both ground and at sea, subsurface, undersea, in outer space for that matter, cyberspace, the equivalent, etc. And the sooner we get there, the stronger deterrence will be because, again, it's about capabilities. And then we have to ensure the art part is to ensure that there is no question about our willingness to employ what it is that we have in certain conditions. Again, without being needlessly provocative and here I would just note that one of the points that Andrew Robertson draws out considerably in the book Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945, now to Gaza, in addition to what's about to come out in a week, second edition, is that what is done in one part of the world, influences perceptions in another part of the world. And this is about the potential adversaries' perception of your capabilities and your willingness to employ them. And if you have a red line in Syria about chemical weapons use, as it turns out not to be a red line, as the prime minister of Singapore told me a few days later after that episode. You know, General, that stuff reverberates out here. There are implications for the perceptions of those we are trying to ensure. Don't have questions. If you withdraw from Afghanistan when you have a sustainable approach. However frustrating and maddening the situation and our counterparts and others might have been. That undermines deterrence. And if it goes poorly as it did and chaotic, it undermines an assessment of how capable you are as well. In fact, President Xi seized on that and said, “Look at that, you can't count on the Americans are an undependable ally. And look how it went there, a great power in decline.”
Russia, I think, one of the factors that led Vladimir Putin, the only one, but that led Vladimir Putin to think that he could get away with what he did in Ukraine. What we were going to do in Ukraine was look at what we did in Afghanistan. If you couldn't sustain an operation that only had 2,500 troops, hadn't lost a soldier in 18 months, and cost a fraction of an $850 billion defense budget. And why would you think they're going to respond if he invades a neighboring country? Of course, he was assuming he would take it, at least the capital, within a few weeks and go home to a victory parade. That also proved to be a grave miscalculation. So understanding all of these dynamics, I think that's really important as we move forward because, as I mentioned earlier, severe competition is one thing. De-risking is one thing, but confrontation would be disastrous, not just for the countries involved but for the entire world.
Willy Walker: Before we transition to Israel and the Middle East, I just have one final question on sort of the, if you will, the retooling of the military-industrial-congressional complex, as you add in the congressional.
General David Petraeus: That was a maintained contribution.
Willy Walker: It's good.
General David Petraeus: He was at the belly of the beast.
Willy Walker: Does the influence of Elon Musk and StarLink on the Ukrainian conflict war concern you as it relates to a civilian having so much influence over a military conflict?
General David Petraeus: Only if he picks and chooses where he provides that support, which he has not done. There is one case in which that may have been the situation, something involving Crimea, but that has not been a feature since then. Again, as long as he's not trying to pick winners or losers or limit this side or that side, as long as they're on the side of the good guys as we define it, I don't see any real issue there any more than they're dependent on a certain piece of hardware or a certain piece of software which inevitably actually goes back to a manufacturer. I think the short answer is no, if.
Willy Walker: And so on that let's transition to Israel, the use of technology in Israel, I think has been making a lot of sort of people's eyes spin as it relates to how technologically sophisticated the Israelis have been and how they're using technology to prosecute this conflict. And as I ask you about Elon Musk and using StarLink, I think one of the big things that came out two weeks ago when all of the beepers exploded and blinded so many Hezbollah terrorists was somewhat mind-blowing in the sense of how sophisticated the Israelis had been to do that.
General David Petraeus: Then the walkie-talkies, so thousands of pagers which the Hezbollah leadership had resorted to when they realized that cell phones probably allowed geo tracking their location and so forth. They shift to pagers. That's the new command and control communication system those literally blow up in the hands of those to whom they were given, which decimates. This isn't just a decapitation of the senior leadership. It really decimates the leadership overall and denies them the communications component of command control and communications. And then the next day, the walkie-talkies, which were the next resort, started blowing up as well. So in terms of a sophisticated, diabolically creative, and clever supply chain operation this is almost unprecedented. You have to go back to the Trojan horse or something like that to find anything as significant as this. But and it's a but. And for all of the technology, all of the incredible targeting and precision munitions, and knowledge of when Hassan Nasrallah was in his headquarters and deeply buried, they can burrow down and take that out for all of that almost wizardry that's going on. At the end of the day, we see that you still have to go in on the ground if you're going to deny Hezbollah the territory from which they have been launching the bulk of the rockets that have terrorized northern Israel, keeping 65,000 Israelis from returning to their homes. And really, the cause of Israel's operation at this moment. And so they have dramatically degraded certain capabilities of Hezbollah, but there are still tens of thousands of still the most powerful non-state military or militia still supported by Iran. And it will reconstitute. And it still has the capacity to throw a lot of projectiles at Israel, nowhere near what it would have been if their communications system was still intact and the command and control had not been so disrupted. But that capability is still there. And at some point, there's going to have to be some kind of agreement similar to the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the war in 2006. Unfortunately, it has not been enforced because Hezbollah is not supposed to be between the northern border of Israel and the Litani River, about 20 miles north of that. Which is again where they can range these villages with the most ubiquitous of their rockets, 1 in 7, one 22 millimeter, and even some anti-tank guided missiles used in an indirect fire role and going in destroying those forces. And that infrastructure is difficult to sustain if you don't want to stay on the ground. And I don't think they want to. Again, for all of the extraordinary technology, for all of the ingenuity, and again, the diabolical creativity of a combination of their intelligence services and military and others, there are still some hard realities here. And one of those is that you can degrade Hezbollah. I don't think you can even defeat them, much less destroy them. And really, that's the challenge with Hamas, Willy. I If you look at Gaza, the Israelis have dramatically degraded Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but they haven't destroyed them because they're able to continue to reconstitute at least the personnel. And there are plenty of recruits, unfortunately for Hamas, given the enormous destruction that has taken place there. 60% of the buildings, if you look at satellite imagery carefully, have been destroyed. It's a very grave humanitarian situation. The good news is that Israel has sealed off the southern border, which they didn't control before, between Gaza and Egypt, and they're able to deny the use of the tunnels that used to go underneath that area into Gaza and often were used to smuggle in weapons, ammunition, arms, material for making weapons. Because a lot of it was actually made in these underground industrial facilities that Hamas built over the years. The challenge is, though, there's no security. And until you impose security and bring in Palestinian security forces from the West Bank, probably trained and equipped by the US, supervised by the Israelis, until you achieve security and bring that in, you don't have a way of delivering organized humanitarian assistance, restoring basic services, beginning reconstruction, bringing in NGOs and international organizations, getting Arab forces in there. The only way to do that, in my view, is to start in the north, go a mile in the east-west wall, couple North-South walls, and gated communities such as we created in cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, and other locations. During the surge in Iraq, when we began doing clear and hold as opposed to clear and leave, which is what Israel has been doing to Hamas in Gaza. They go in, they conduct a raid, they conduct major operations, and they clear large areas. But again if you leave, ultimately, that's a vacuum. The vacuum is being filled by remnants of Hamas criminal elements, remnants of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and so forth. And if you want to ensure that Hamas does not have influence, does not govern or run Gaza, again, you've got to go in, and you have to provide an alternative. You also need to have a vision of a better life for the Palestinian people that can ultimately achieve a circumstance in which Arabs and Jews are living side by side in Gaza and Israel, respectively.
Willy Walker: I'm surprised, General, that you say that... If I think back to 2007, when you were headed to lead the surge, at that time, there were plenty of people who didn't think that we could get rid of ISIS. And you fortunately believed that we could. And you fortunately went in. Why are Hezbollah and Hamas distinct from ISIS?
General David Petraeus: Hamas, I think, can be destroyed. I think if you go in and you actually do what we did in the surge, which is clear and hold, we went back into the neighborhoods. We literally reversed what we had been doing, which was leaving the neighborhoods, consolidating on big bases, driving around the neighborhood once a day, and then basically leaving it the night. The Islamic State at that time was still al-Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni insurgents and Shia militias supported by Iran would be controlling those areas and often fighting with each other with the citizens in them, and so forth. We went in, we stayed. We created gated communities. You do biometric ID cards to allow going in and out. Once you have security, anything is possible. Now you're getting very quickly restoring basic services, rebuilding schools, clinics, roads, bridges, markets, all of that. And all of a sudden, the people realize they have a better life, and they don't want al-Qaeda back in their neighborhood or the Sunni insurgents or the Shia militia. And we help them keep them out. And then we begin to essentially rebuild, reconstitute the Iraqi security forces who were beaten up so badly in the year prior to that during the ever-escalating violence of a Sunni-Shia civil war. You can do that in Gaza. It is manageable in that regard, even with an Israeli defense force that is very small in terms of its professional ranks and relies very heavily on reservists. I think that is doable.
The problem is that the territory that you look at when it comes to Lebanon is vast. You can't control it with the size of the forces that Israel has. They did this before. Let's remember. And they eventually had to withdraw in 2000. And the result was actually Hezbollah taking over the Shia areas of southern Lebanon and building itself with huge Iranian support into a quasi-government. It's not just the largest non-state military actor. It's also a shadow government. A parallel government to that of the rest of Lebanon, where they provide social services, often schools, clinics, governance, grievance resolution, and all the rest of this. Taking control of that is a very tall order. And it's one that, again, the Israelis, I think, recognize is just not possible. Each time they went into Lebanon again prior to 2000, the late 1990s, and 2006, even with limited incursion. Now again, they've already lost at least nine soldiers in the early fighting. And it's probably more than that now. This is hard. And this is why, eventually, if you can resolve Gaza, provide a better future for the Palestinian people there. You don't have to have sympathy attacks from Hezbollah on Israel. You can get some agreement with them. They will have sustained incredible damage from this. They're going to be rebuilding for at least the next decade. And that's before the campaign is even over. Keep in mind the Israelis have struck well over 3500 individual targets in the early weeks of this offensive operation. But it's really tough. And I don't think they even want to reoccupy the area between the northern border of Israel and the Litani River, much less go any farther than that.
Willy Walker: As I hear you talk all that through in such specificity, General, it makes me think about what you call the battle rhythm. And when you were in Iraq, you said, “A battle rhythm.” Talk for a moment about how you established battle rhythm. Let's transition from that into business because a lot of people listening to this are not military leaders. They're people who run businesses. And you work every day with KKR portfolio companies in creating if you will let's call them business rhythms rather than battle rhythms. But take on what you implemented there as they go into the corporate world and what is so important from a leadership standpoint to create a rhythm to what you do.
General David Petraeus: Again, let me start by revisiting the intellectual construct for strategic leadership that I developed between the three and four-star tours in Iraq and then employed for myself during the surge in Iraq at US Central Command in Afghanistan, CIA, and beyond. And very applicable to the business world. Now, this is for the leader at the very top. Although every leader performs the four tasks, I'm going to lay out. It's just that it's only the leader at the top who has a blank sheet when it comes to that first task, which is determining the big ideas.
- What strategy should be pursued? Having done that, it doesn't always work, of course, took us 13 years to get the big ideas in Vietnam. It took us seven or eight to get the right strategy in Afghanistan, another year or two to get the right inputs, and so forth. It is not axiomatic that somebody is always going to get it right. But having done that, you then have to communicate the big ideas through the breadth and depth of the organization and all who have a stake in the outcome of the endeavor, whether it is a war or a business.
- You then have to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. And this is where the concept of battle rhythm comes in. But this is hiring the best and brightest and keeping them. It's the energy, the inspiration, the example provided by the senior leader and leaders at all levels. It's the culture you're trying to build that is the organizational architecture that you establish for the endeavor in which you're engaged. It's allowing those not measuring up to move on to something else. It's the metrics that you use, and it is indeed your battle rhythm, how you use your time, your schedule of recurring activities, meetings, events, and so forth, which is crucial. We used to spend a fair amount of time determining how I should spend my time to be most productive and drive the execution of the campaign plan. That was the result of our first task and communicating in the second.
- And now we're overseeing its implementation in the third task. Again, that is crucially important. The recurring meetings that we had, what we did every day of the week, several times a week, actually. We would go out and actually join a unit after the initial briefings of the day and actually go on patrol with them, experience a little bit of what it is that they were experiencing outside the wire, sit and talk with the junior leaders, company commanders in particular, give my email address in case they're ever frustrated with their leadership over something because they heard at the last level that knows every soldier by face, not just by number or name and every casualty they're for as well. And they feel an intense responsibility to those great young men and women in uniform.
- Then, on that battle rhythm, there are events in activities and meetings that enable you to perform the fourth task of a strategic leader, which is to determine how you need to refine the big ideas so that you can do it again. As the situation evolves, context evolves, and so forth.
And you'll remember my illustration was with Netflix with Reed Hastings and his first big ideas. But movies and the customers without brick-and-mortar undersell Blockbuster. It goes out of business except for Bend, Oregon, which won’t let it’s blockbuster destination die, and it's great because I can take our grandkids there and show them what we used to do on a Friday night. The second big idea is now he recognizes the context has changed. Broadband speeds are faster, and you can get movies in the hands of customers by allowing them to download them. The third big idea is creating their own content. That's the big breakout moment. $100 million in House of Cards alone, all the other iconic series. The fourth big idea, even as they're going international, of course, as well. Another whole arguably big idea. But then the fourth one is we're going to make major motion pictures not one, but two movie studios three or four years ago earned more Academy Award nominations than any other major movie studio even if I did have the issues with Brad Pitt playing General Stanley McChrystal in a way that was really wooden and awkward and all that stuff. And besides my chagrin that he didn't hold out to play me.
So you get the idea here. Again, battle rhythm, how you spend your time, is a crucial subtask of a strategic leader in the performance of that third task, overseeing the implementation of the big ideas and the other three major tasks. But that's how you drive the implementation. And I'm sure that you experience this as every leader does, whether he or she explicitly approaches it with the same intellectual construct. Those that are successful are inevitably performing each of these major tasks and the subtasks are generally quite impressively.
Willy Walker: I've heard you talk about Ranger School being not just physically demanding but also incredible training for military leaders because it is making decisions under huge stress. And as I hear you talk about battle planning and the importance of big strategic thinking, I think back to the presidents from George H.W. Bush all the way through President Biden, with whom you have served and made strategic decisions. If you think back over that many presidents for many different political parties. I'm not playing politics with you, General, who, as a president, in your mind, understood the big strategic decisions best.
General David Petraeus: First of all, let me come back to Ranger School because there's a really important point here. And I think we actually touched on this in the previous session that we did. But this is a school that, again, is very physically demanding, just really tough. In fact, back in our day, which was physiologically foolish and stupid, we only got one meal a day for the final 10 to 14 days. Even though you're doing a lot of movement, you're often up to your mid-thighs in water, heavy rucksack missions, etc., and it grinds you down very significantly. And then, how do you perform under pressure? So it's physical, it's lack of sleep, it's hardship. All of this is to see whether or not this individual can make decisions and lead effectively under this kind of duress. When it comes to Ranger School, in any military school, there is competition to be the best. But interestingly, there is not only an award for the number one, the distinguished undergraduate. There's also an award that is largely determined by how your fellow Ranger students regard you. It's a combination of what are called peer ratings, your fellow Ranger students. Then, some land navigation scores are thrown in. And at the risk of sounding a bit immodest, I was really gratified to be the number one graduate. But also, to get this other award again for being the best Ranger buddy and also land nav. Because it seems to me that in life, which is competitive, you have to compete and embrace that concept, you want to not only be the best if you can or at least the best you can be. You want to do it while being the best team player you can be as well. And I think one of the big lessons is to be a great Ranger buddy as well as a great individual Ranger.
Willy Walker: Just one quick thing on that, General, because I was literally yesterday talking with a colleague of mine, Kris Mikkelson, who was an all-American golfer at Georgia Tech. And I mentioned what you just said. I said one of the things that I found so interesting from my conversations with General Petraeus was the need to compete as an individual at one moment and then compete as a team at the next.
General David Petraeus: Really brings together.
Willy Walker: Exactly.
General David Petraeus: The same time, to the extent you absolutely can.
Willy Walker: And what was interesting was Kris said, “In golf when he was at Georgia Tech, they had seven, two-time All-Americans on the golf team.” The way that they would practice was the coach would send them all out and say, “It's a match play; the top six will go on this weekend.” Every single weekend, when he was at Georgia Tech for his freshman and sophomore years, there was a two-time all-American who was left at home to go play. And what he was saying was that there was nothing like being in the military but that competition to win as an individual. But then when you lose, support the team by trying to win a national championship on his level. And I just thought that lesson was so interesting.
General David Petraeus: During the fight to Baghdad, I was privileged to command the Great 101st Airborne Division. I was a two-star general, about 20,000 great air assault troopers, and the largest helicopter fleet in the world by a factor of about three for any division. And our desire was to air assault into history. Our next rendezvous with destiny, a term that comes from general order number one of the division before it even entered World War II, where the then commander wrote the 101st Airborne Division has no history. It has a rendezvous with destiny. And our next rendezvous with destiny was north to Baghdad. I put out a radio call like this, and I actually made sure it was recorded, too. But then we wanted to air assault on the Baghdad International Airport. Seize it. That was seen to be the prize. By the way, the 82nd Airborne Division was leery, sleeping with their parachutes on the runway, hoping to jump on it. And then the armored division to our front, the armored and mechanized 3rd Infantry Division, was going to thunder run its way there. About halfway to Baghdad, I realized what our biggest contribution to the overall effort could be to perform what's called a follow-on support mission. This is not exactly your next rendezvous with destiny kind of stuff, but I realized our lines of communication, which were a couple 250 miles, were largely exposed, and the Armored Division and our helicopters, all 254 of them, were completely dependent on the fuel that was coming from hundreds of 5000-gallon tankers trundling back and forth and again, largely exposed. Then I realized we were also containing the enemy inside some cities. We just needed to go in and clear it out. They'd been blown through by the tanks, but they were still controlled by bad guys who could attack our lines of communication. I told that to our boss. I told the division commander of the unit to our front, and I said, “The answer to any request from you above, but 1-6.” I was Eagle Six, yes, and 1-6 called up and said, “Hey, can you spare 155 millimeter Howitzer ammunition, heavy artillery?” I said, “Not only can I spear it, but I'll give you the entire unit because the ammunition is already uploaded on the guns. It'll be a lot quicker to get it to you that way.” I asked, “What else do you need?” He said, “Could you spare an infantry battalion? We only had nine of these.” I said, “Absolutely. Where do you want it?” Baghdad International Airport. They have a tenuous grip on it, but we don't have any guys on the ground because it's all tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, and very few individuals coming out of the backs of those Bradleys. And so we sent an entire air assault infantry battalion up there, air assault it in. And lo and behold, that night with the thermal sites that they brought with them for their anti-tank-guided missiles several kilometers of range, they could see the enemy assembling, hit them before the enemy even knew that they could be seen. And it was quite a dramatic demonstration of the capability of light and heavy working together. But again, in other actions, whenever he asked for something, we provided it to him. And as I said, “We secured essentially his and also our lines of communication all the way back to Kuwait.” Then, the 82nd was brought in to deal with some of that as well. We went into the cities that they bypassed. They were still full of bad guys, so they cleared them and held them again so that they would not be fighting in multiple directions. That's what I think you have to do. As much as, again, I would have liked to have air assaulted in history by being the unit that took the airport instead of, frankly, the 3rd Infantry Division mechanized.
But to come back to those who really understood. Part of this is the times, of course. I think that George H.W. Bush was the right person at the right time and with the right team. Brent Scowcroft is on his second time as national security adviser, and Bob Gates is his deputy. Condi Rice that Russia, all of these different Jim Baker, George Shultz, etc. This is the all-star team that helped to bring about the end of the Cold War, which, of course, was brought about more by Gorbachev, as Max Boot's new book on Reagan argues, I think persuasively. But capitalizes on that opportunity and then very swiftly deals with all the ramifications of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, on and on. And they really got it. And, of course, also carried out operations in Panama, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, the Gulf War, etc. To be fair, I think the successor, again, much less experienced, certainly was never a CIA director, hadn’t been a member of Congress and governor of a Southern, but grew into that job as well. I think the same can be said of George W. Bush, noting that there were some actions along the way, particularly. In not focusing sufficiently on Afghanistan when the opportunity was really there, but then focusing on Iraq, and then some really egregious decisions early on in Iraq after toppling the regime, which was not to be fair, approved by the administration, by the president, or even I think the White House. But the firing of the Iraqi military, without telling them, how were you going to enable them to provide for their families and themselves? And then the firing of the bureaucrats, we needed to run a country we didn't sufficiently understand without an agreed reconciliation policy. These two failed that test of the sign that I always had on my wall and each of my five combat command headquarters, which asked, “Will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct.” And the same is true of policies. And those policies, on the one hand, created hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men with military training and weapons whose incentive was to oppose the new Iraq. And then tens of thousands of the largely Western-educated bureaucrats, the level four of the Ba'ath Party, was done away with, understandably. But, level four, we needed those individuals and should have had an agreed reconciliation policy to enable them to return to service to help us again with the country we didn't sufficiently understand. These were seriously bad, big ideas that, ultimately, we overcame. But then continued to set us back all the way until the surge when we finally had an organized reconciliation process. Finally, reluctantly agreed to by the Prime Minister and the government and by then, they had sorted out how to get a lot of the old soldiers back into the ranks and usefully employed rather than aiding and abetting the insurgency or the Iranian-supported Shia militia.
Again, some issues there, subsequent administration. A bit uneven, frankly. We want to get out of Iraq. Ok, fine. That's the war of choice. But we had the war of necessity. Afghanistan, supposedly, except that we announced a buildup there rightly, appropriately. And yet, in the same speech, we announced the drawdown date, which tells the enemy we really don't want to stay. The truth is, actually, when it came to Afghanistan, each of the administrations, four of them, including the most recent one that went along with the previous administration's shameful agreement with the Taliban to withdraw and force the Afghan government, which was not party to the talks, to release 5,500 Taliban detainees and leaders who went right back to the fight that ultimately simultaneous offensives collapsed the Afghan forces after our withdrawal, and they knew no one was coming to the rescue. In each of those administrations, when it came to Afghanistan, there was an inconsistency. It was never a commitment, hard and fast. It was the first great initial operation focused on Iraq. Incredible commitment to Iraq during the surge. President Bush was extraordinary in that regard overriding the concerns of just about everybody else on it, empowering the ambassador and me in a way no commander and ambassador in the field had ever been empowered before. 7:30, 8:30, every Monday morning, where is the president and national security team? In the West Wing of the White House in the Situation Room, doing a video conference with the two of us. Incredibly empowering for us. But when it came to Afghanistan again, I only later realized that we should be doing more there. The Obama administration's commitment and let's get out and communicate that to the enemy. Trump administration, same thing. The first two years were really strong, then let's get out. Then, the Biden administration, which decided to continue that agreement, extended the date for it, but I don't think they understood what was going to happen. When we did withdraw, all the coalition withdrew, and the maintenance workers who maintained the overly sophisticated US-provided helicopters pulled out that the operational readiness degradation would unhinge the entire defense strategy, which consisted of relatively modestly trained and equipped police and soldiers out protecting the critical infrastructure and major population centers. None of which the Taliban controlled at that time. And then 35,000 strong commandos would deploy out there when they got hit. Save the Day provides emergency medical evacuation, resupply, close air support, and reinforcements. Again, in Afghanistan, I think really all four of the administrations you can question at least some of the actions that they took with respect to consistency, commitment, and so on.
And then, just the failure to recognize what was likely to happen, I went on Fox and said, “I fear a catastrophic collapse of the Afghan security forces, especially to do it during the fighting season.” But then again, not to understand that this was sustainable. This was not Vietnam, where the entire country was in the streets, demonstrating and the institutions were under challenge and that norms were being challenged as well. At that time, we could not sustain what we were doing in Vietnam. We could have sustained 2,500 troops that hadn't taken a casualty in a year and a half, and it was a very modest cost compared to an $850 billion defense budget. It's interesting to look at all of that. But it's really the times, as much as the individuals, I think. Because the complexity of the times was very substantial.
I'd just end by noting that I do think that successive administrations crafted the right policy toward the most significant challenge of our time, which is the US and Western relationship with China once again, that we cannot get wrong, and where we have to ensure that deterrence is rock solid as we described at the outset. That is critically important. And with each successive administration, the rebalance to Asia is the correct term rather than pivot. Pivot away is scary to the Middle East, and it should be of the Obama administration. The change in the conversation on China by the Trump administration and then the buildout of a comprehensive, integrated whole of governments, the policy by the current administration toward China has shown considerable consistency. And to be fair, that is the most important of all of the relationships and issues that we have faced over the course of now, probably the better part of a decade.
Willy Walker: You and I have spoken in the past about the transition from the military to the CIA. And one of the things I asked you was when you got to the CIA, having engaged with them for many, many years, whether it was an eye-opening experience and paraphrasing, what you said to me, you kind of looked at me, and you said, “Yes, it was very eye-opening.” My question, General, without clearly going into any issues that you can't talk about. When you got in that seat, did you look backward at all, or is there so much going on that you must look forward?
General David Petraeus: No you do look backward. I look backward. So you remember the old adage that where you stand on a policy depends on where you sit in the organization, in the bureaucracy. For some, I had issues with the agency on specific subjects having to do with Islamist extremism in the war on terror. I won't get into the details. But I was frustrated by the CIA's position on them. Until I became the director of the CIA, and I completely understood why they were stonewalling me, objecting, or, in my view, obstructing what it was that we preferred to see done. There's that. And I think you do look back. You also look back at how you did your predecessor's things. We did a pretty exhaustive analysis of directors that came in from the outside in particular and how they came in, particularly military, because there's quite a number that have come in as four stars generally. Some brought huge entourages with them, which conveys a message that I don't value what you guys have, even though you've spent your whole life in the organization. I'm bringing in these outside consultants or experts or people who were with me in the military or in the Department of Defense. One came in from the Pentagon as a civilian. And it sends a very unhelpful message. I think it's also the wrong thing to do, actually.
In fact, one of the other revelations… Look, I worked intensely with the CIA station chiefs, the division chiefs, the senior leaders intensely for a decade. It started in Bosnia, where I was dual-hatted as a NATO one star but also as a US deputy commander of a clandestine joint task force doing the war criminal hunt with our special mission units. But also the biggest intelligence deployment in the world, and it includes a very integral partnership with the CIA and FBI, by the way, because we wanted to capture evidence, not just intelligence. And then we did the counterterrorism mission. The first operation after 9/11 was actually in Sarajevo, not in Afghanistan, and so forth. Then, of course, the invasion of Iraq had a CIA future. Multiple station chiefs with me for that, CIA base in our area. Then, three stars now, we're integrally working with them in all their activities with Iraqi counterparts and others, which are very much part and parcel. Obviously, four Star, you've literally got your own presidential daily briefer, the station chief and you are like this, and this is for years. And they would come out and see me. The director would keep in mind, by the way, that I broke formally with the agency with a DNI, really, of one of their large analyses when it came to Iraq at the six-month mark. And to be fair, they had had to close their books six weeks earlier, a dramatic reduction in violence. When the president asked me whether I agreed with the assessment in that particular national intelligence estimate of NIE, I said, “No,” fundamentally, no. But here's why. But then they came out immediately. How do we avoid this in the future? So, again, lots and lots of interaction, central Command, your own CIA, Afghanistan in bed with the two different station chiefs that I was privileged to have there and the different elements that were there. And then beyond that. But still, when I arrived, the quality of the people was just so extraordinary. It's the highest quality workforce, arguably in government. And they're quiet. They really are the silent warriors. And that is quite unique as well in that regard. But then it's also about just the sheer capabilities, the so-called sources and methods, some of which were just flat mind-blowing. And it was you've got to be kidding me moments.
Willy Walker: And on that.
General David Petraeus: Just unbelievable. The whole building is a skiff, a secure compartmented intelligence facility. Within it, there are closed-off places that are skiffs for certain at that time divisions, how you divided the world up, Mideast, near Asia, South Asia, etc., Eurasia. And then in those, you'd have some compartmented areas, in a couple of places where you actually had literally a broom closet in which there were no electric devices whatsoever. And they existed to essentially manage support from one source somewhere in the world. Again, this is a long time since so there's nothing obviously specific about this, only to note that some of these were just truly head-snapping. Again, you have got to be kidding me.
And then the same, frankly, with some of the technical capabilities, again, the methods that were also just jaw-dropping. And again, some of these literally a handful of people are aware of; even the president was not told the identity of some of the most sensitive sources and didn't need to know it, just needed to know how sensitive the position was of that individual source and what the reporting record was over the years, the credibility, the reliability, the access. That's what really mattered. And again, that was quite extraordinary. But I should note that I brought no one with me from the military whatsoever.
Willy Walker: Down from the military purposely.
General David Petraeus: I took the uniform off. There have been a number that stayed in uniform. Look, there would have been some advantages. I had to move out into the community. I can no longer stay on Fort Myers, Virginia. You don't have security for your family and yourself the way you did. I moved into a civilian home, not in our Name LLC. All the rest of the precautions. There are individuals inside the house 24/7. There's a skiff built into our fitness center downstairs. All the rest of this. But again, it was very clear to me and I discussed it with the president, I thought it was very important to take the uniform off. Being Director Petraeus, not General Petraeus, not bringing lots of people with me would show that I don't trust what they have. I need something they don't have. Ultimately, what was interesting is that the Navy captain who was the transition coordinator of all this stuff, was so impressive to him. When we needed to fill the chief of legislative liaison position, what he have been for me at Central Command and then in Afghanistan, on very short notice as well, that a month or so into the job, they said, “Hey, we need a new CLL. How about that guy who was helping you and used to do CLL for you, who is so impressive to us as a coordinator?” We brought him in, and he was absolutely magnificent in that job. But that was the agency's choice, not my choice. And I think it was a sound one, but that was also the right way to go about it.
Willy Walker: We're at the top of the hour. And I've got to let you go because you've been incredibly generous with your time. I'm going to figure out when I do part three, but I'm going to give a bigger break between part one and part two to part three.
General David Petraeus: It'll be a pleasure.
Willy Walker: My final one, though, General, as I think about your travels over the last month, all the things, where have you been in what you've seen. I'm just curious. You know so much about our world that someone like “I will never, ever know.” You're traveling through an airport, and there's some security system that is just in the background, which I have no idea exists. You're boarding a flight, and you see someone who worked in special ops that I don't know is special ops but is distressed, looking like me. And you know who that person is. Do you have those moments in your life where you are saying, “Wink at somebody or give them kind of a little like, I know you're there?” I can only imagine what will happen to you.
General David Petraeus: All the time. And because of these travels, still meeting with the individuals who are part of the largest stations in the world engaged in certain still sensitive activities. I mentor a lot of these people as well, just from over the years. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, I have four slots, 9:30 and 11:00 each day, during which I take calls from individuals who are either still in and want to discuss something or want to discuss life after government. And, yes, there are still lots of ties still. And I acknowledge an awareness of certain of your surroundings that not everyone will have, shall we say?
Willy Walker: Yeah. It's fascinating to me. It really is. As I think about your career and all you have seen and all you have done and all the people you have touched and all the people you have led, it's got to be really quite special when you have those moments of connectivity with somebody that the rest of us have no context for, and you get to acknowledge them. They acknowledge you knowing who they are, and none of us on the outside have any idea what's going on. It's a really neat piece to it all. And I'm sure it brings you great pride and joy.
General David Petraeus: It's gratifying, candidly. But now you're part of this, Willy, and I am part of your world, and I'm gratified by that as well. Thanks for it. This is a particularly enjoyable one. I don't know why. This is great. Thank you.
Willy Walker: I love it. Thank you so much, as always. Thanks, everyone, for joining us for part two of General David Petraeus. It's been a real honor, General, and I look forward to seeing you sometime soon.
General David Petraeus: You bet. Thanks, Willy
Willy Walker: Thanks. Bye.
