General David Petraeus - Conflict

30:12There's no question about the communist element of those forces of Ho Chi Minh. But there was also a greater component of nationalism present than we probably recognized at the time. We should keep in mind, of course, that we actually fought with Ho Chi Minh in World War II against the Japanese. The French first, of course, had a catastrophic end to their effort to reassert control over their former French colonial territory in Indochina. when they established a huge base at Dien Bien Phu. They were frustrated the guerrillas wouldn't come to fight. The Viet Minh, the communist forces, were very elusive guerrilla tactics.

31:04So they created this huge base at Dien Bien Phu, trying to attract them, their enemy, to come to battle. They did more than come to battle. It was a terribly bad, big idea. and they ultimately were defeated, had to surrender, went into captivity. Vietnam was partitioned into North and South. The U.S. entered as supporter of the South. And then the U.S. just didn't quite understand the nature of the war adequately. South Vietnamese leaders asked for U.S. assistance in dealing with challenges in the villages and hamlets that were essentially, again, guerrilla or insurgent-like activity of what would become known as the Viet Cong.

31:51And the U.S. said, no, you know, we're fresh from the battlefields of Korea. You need to be worried about an invasion across the demilitarized zone between North and South, such as we experienced in the Korean Peninsula. And so we're going to help you build divisions. That's what you need, It is major units that look like ours. And we helped them build nine divisions, each of them of some roughly 10 ,000 to 15 ,000 troops for large operations, not ideal for the actual security in the villages and hamlets that was eroding the South Vietnamese control of their country. We later brought in large U.S.

32:32units, divisions, and we pursued a strategy of attrition and search and destroy tactics that was not the proper approach. This is not to say you don't need to go out and find and kill the enemy in this kind of endeavor you do. But the focus should have been on securing the people again in the villages and hamlets in a very joined up comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign rather than the big war that we fought. And it wasn't until 1968 that General Abrams took over when you actually pulled all of this together, the U.S., the other coalition elements and the South Vietnamese forces and did focus on security of the villages and hamlets, but still had residual elements of the larger war.

33:23and actually did achieve quite considerable progress. But of course, by that time, in the wake of the Tet Offensive in early 1968, in which North Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong and the South all tried to take down the U.S. and Southern forces, It was such a surprise and so unexpected after there had been briefings that the light was seen at the end of the tunnel and so forth that we're making great progress. that although that tech was a major defeat for the Viet Cong and for the North Vietnamese forces, the erosion of popular support in the U.S. that resulted made it very difficult to continue the kind of campaign that was actually necessary.

34:15Yeah. Well, our next question, I'll touch on that. Yeah. So in 1968, I was 10 years old, but I was reading a lot of newspapers already. And Cole and I have been to - We've been to the museum. We've been to North and South Vietnam and Hanoi, speaking to CFA societies back in 2011. And so it's hard for someone like Cole at his age to understand how fearful everyone was of communism literally taking over the world in the same kind of way that Hitler tried to take over for Nazism. So could you flush the head a little bit for our listeners? Yeah, the operative theory at the time was a domino theory that these countries were a set of dominoes and that the communists might topple them again like dominoes.

35:10And communism would take over all of Southeast Asia. One can argue, and Henry Kissinger and a number of others do, that by supporting South Vietnam, even though it eventually did succumb to the invasion of the North, after we had withdrawn our forces and then Congress limited what we were able to do to support them, that nonetheless that support did enable a number of other countries in the area to survive and to prosper and not be taken over by the communists, although certainly several of those in Southeast Asia were. This theory was generally embraced in the United States, and it was one that did prompt our support for South Vietnam for a very long period of time in what is arguably the longest war that we've had.

36:11There's a debate about whether it was that or Afghanistan, depending on where we started to stopwatch in Vietnam, and one that was also very costly, obviously. That's a great lead-in to Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam. I enjoyed immensely. And one of the things I enjoyed the most was Senator Kennedy in the late 50s went to Vietnam on a fact-finding mission and came back and told his close advisors, boy, if I'm ever president, I won't get involved in that thing. And then Johnson, when he was vice president, told his advisors, boy, if I become president, I'm not getting involved in that thing.

36:51So how did these men that were wise, they were wise, they recognized the incredible difficulty associated there and both thought it was an unwinnable war. Take us through that, how that developed that way that took it out of their hands. Well, it wasn't taken out of their hands. They made the decisions to increase our involvement incrementally and then very substantially when it came to President Johnson's time in office. But even when President Kennedy was assassinated, there were already well over 10 ,000 advisors and quite substantial U.S. capabilities on the ground in Vietnam. The bottom line is that neither of those presidents nor their successor wanted to lose Vietnam, and they kept having to incrementally provide more forces to prevent that from happening.

37:47So for all of their protestations of explanations of what they might do, were they to become the president? Things look a little bit different when you're sitting at the head of the table in the white house. And when you're outside, second guessing goes on inside it. And having sat at the situation room table, I can tell you that you do feel different when you're at that table than when you're in a somewhat more detached mode outside. To not lose is not a very good goal, is it? Yeah, well, and to leave with honor is an even tougher task. I would say the other thing, and again, to hit back on this idea, because again, the great part about being in a democracy where the individual has liberties and freedoms is that, again, we have to debate those processes and what we're going to do as a country and a people group.

38:40So the problem, obviously, is that the North Vietnamese didn't have to go announce to everybody what they were intending to do and make it popular. We had to do that, particularly in the latest stages of Vietnam, especially when it was very against the will of the public sentiment. How tough was that for the commanders in Vietnam when everyone knows what they have to do in the end? Well, first and foremost, I think we should recognize that the U.S. supported that war and the U.S. public supported the war. Sure. Very solidly up through probably the Tet Offensive, I think, was a real milestone of a watershed that did erode public support.

39:24So there was very substantial commitment of resources, and it was really that we did not get the strategy right more than anything else. And I think the public started to realize that that was the case. We were not winning the war in their eyes. Tet basically punctured the notion that General Westmoreland had been propagating, that we're making a solid progress. And again, there's light at the end of the tunnel. So, again, you can't fool the American public overly long. One of the critical elements of the surge was to demonstrate, not just to the American public, but to the Iraqi public and the publics of our other coalition countries, that we actually could pull a country out of a civil war.

40:18We could get them on a path to a better future. We could drive down the violence very, very substantially. In other words, that we actually had the right big ideas. And I think that the American public, in the case of Vietnam, started to recognize that we didn't have the right big ideas. And it's just tragic that those who were actually commanding our forces on the battlefield, successive commanders, did not get the strategy right. and it was not right until, again, 13 years into the war, by which time public support had begun to erode so substantially that it was not going to be sustainable. I would contrast that, by the way, with Afghanistan, which at the end certainly was not what we hoped it would be.

41:07It was unsatisfactory. It was maddening. It was frustrating. Our local partners were very imperfect, et cetera. But that particular situation was sustainable in a way that Vietnam was not. We could have sustained 3 ,500 troops in Afghanistan forever, especially because we had lost a soldier in combat in a year and a half prior to terrible suicide bombing at the airfield during the evacuation. and even though the situation was not, again, what we hoped it would be, it was far better than what one could anticipate if the Taliban were able to take over, which they did. And I think the outcome is actually not just heartbreaking, but actually disastrous.

41:55And it didn't have to be that way. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's listening to this show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 in investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you are searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smead funds a look. Or better yet, reach out at SmeadCap.com. And don't forget to mention you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

42:28Investing involves risk, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. You know, I was getting out of college in 06, so I got to see the upfront, far left view of, you know, students, you know, in these conflicts we're discussing in the last 25 years. and the idea to your point just a second ago that Afghanistan on a human loss basis for the US military is anywhere close to prior conflict is just a farce.

43:08It's just impossibly a lie. But one thing I wanna touch on that because again, this was an issue in Vietnam that again, this is things the military has learned since then. Can you explain the typical tour for a US soldier and why that was so problematic in Vietnam? Well, in Vietnam, first of all, we fought it with a draftee army. So the soldier is called up, drafted, joins, goes to basic training and pretty quickly ends up in the jungles of Vietnam. And it's a year if the individual survives it, then goes home and then fairly quickly is probably going to be mustered out. But beyond that, the commission officers would only spend six months in actual leadership position, command, and would rotate to some staff assignment during their year in country.

44:03And because of this constant personnel rotation, the critical elements of small unit cohesion and training and so forth are just not present. We originally deployed the big units starting in 1965. And for that first year, you had the benefit of units that had trained together, that had deployed together, were serving together, and generally went home together. But then you begin individual replacement, as opposed to what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is unit replacement. We'd go for 12 to 15 months. During the surge, it was 15. So again, this constant rotation, and it meant that you just aren't learning the way that you should either.

44:54And then again, the fact that the commander, I mean, they just really start to understand the battlefield, the context, the human terrain, and they're rotated. Surprises shouldn't be surprising, as we saw with the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Despite this being true, can you talk about the punch through that Israel executed in that conflict? Because, I mean, what I read from your book, it seems like the most impressive military strategy you've almost ever seen. Well, the Israeli recovery from the surprise by the Egyptians in 73 was very, very considerable, but also on the other fronts of the war as well, including on the Golan, which is a very close-run affair with the Syrians and also with the Jordanian forces.

45:48The Egyptians were able to penetrate deep into the Sinai, which, of course, the Israelis had seized in the 1967 war, achieving very considerable surprise, despite actually signs of a buildup that were picked up by some of the Israeli intelligence officials. And this was actually a near existential threat at one point in time, had the Egyptians been able to exploit the success that they achieved with their surprise attack across the Suez. But they were unable to do so. The Israeli reserves were all called up. They responded very swiftly. And then Ariel Sharon in particular with armored forces mounted a very impressive counterattack through the Sinai and literally was on the road to Cairo when a ceasefire was brokered by Henry Kissinger, who was able to work with the prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, and the Egyptian president, Anwar Saddam.

46:56Ultimately, of course, this led to actual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, with the Sinai going back largely under Egyptian control, although there's still a multinational force in one portion of it. The Israelis also responded incredibly courageously in the Golan Heights. Again, the Syrians very close to taking control of that, and the Israelis counterattacking there as well. And with extraordinary individual initiative and bravery on the battlefield, were able to solidify their control of the Golan Heights. but quite an extraordinary moment in response to a very significant reverse at the outset of that campaign.

47:49The Iran-Iraq war serves as a stark counter argument to this theory, as it was less reminiscent of the Second World War than of the first, is a quote from the book. Is this the ideology that causes surprises, the recency and anchoring biases that we have to believe we won't go back to evil, what we do and can we see current examples of that with Russia? Yeah, the idea that, you know, we're evolving and we're not going to go back to the past evils, but it seems, General Petraeus, that we run into these evils more regularly than we'd like to think. Well, we do. And we see in certainly the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year that the revisionist, revanchist view of history by a grievance-filled leader, autocrat, kleptocrat, Vladimir Putin, is still present in today's day and age and galvanized the invasion of a neighboring country that Putin believes doesn't have a right to exist.

48:51Again, clearly the kinds of malevolent The ideas and mindset that led to the Iran-Iraq war and to some of the other wars that we recount in conflict, those still do exist tragically. And we still have to be on guard against them. And of course, the war in Ukraine is by no means over. It is a bit of a stalemate right now, to be sure. But Ukraine is under enormous pressure from a country that has more than three times its population and an economy that's nine or 10 times its size as well. I want to hit a bigger picture idea, kind of a framework thought that I took away from this book. And I think I ran into it the most poignantly in the second Gulf War.

49:43We obviously toppled Hussein very quickly and the government fell apart. Were we running into stigmas of Vietnam when it came to hold and build? I know you pointed out Rumsfeld did not want to commit a lot of troops to that process. And I guess is the danger for us is that we know we have great technologies and processes and systems to topple governments, but we might not actually want to solve the inherent problem in those geographies. Is that a fair question to ask? Well, the challenge in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and, as you noted, the rapid toppling of Saddam Hussein and his regime was that we had inadequate plans for the post-conflict phase.

50:29In fact, not only did they prove inadequate, we made some seriously bad decisions, some seriously bad big ideas, such as firing the Iraqi military without telling them how they're going to provide for their families. Yeah. After that, and then firing the Iraqi Ba 'ath Party down to the level of the bureaucrats, most of them Western educated, we actually needed to help run a country that we didn't understand sufficiently. I'm sure that created no enemies. It created hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose incentive was to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it. And that violates the precepts of, in fact, I always had a sign on the wall of my operations centers in my two, three, four-star commands that asked, will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct?

51:20Sure. If the answer to that is no, in other words, it'll create more bad guys than it takes off the street, you're not supposed to do it. The case of those two policies violated that in massive terms. So, again, we had inadequate plans, and then we created a one-off organization, the Coalition Provisional Authority, instead of just establishing an embassy. We used other ad hoc organizations instead of existing organizations, and that made that first 18 months in Iraq much more challenging and difficult than they needed to have been. We then did establish an embassy. We then got our organizational architecture right for the military forces.

52:04We crafted a strategy and approach that was sound until it was invalidated in 2006 by a catastrophic event, The bombing by the Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda, of a Shia shrine in a Sunni dominated area that set off a cycle of sectarian violence that resulted in Iraq being in an essential Sunni Shia civil war by the end of 2006, which necessitated the decision by President Bush to conduct a surge of forces. I selected a new commander and ambassador, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the best diplomat any soldier ever had as a partner. And of course, I was the commander and then empowered us to carry out a comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign, clear, hold and build the so-called oil spot theory where you clear an area, you hold it and then you clear further.

53:07Whether you expand the oil or ink spot, you rebuild it. And then over time, you also rebuild the institutions, local institutions and security forces and gradually transition. You thin out. You don't just hand off. And that process just continues around the country. We can't leave without allowing you to touch on Ukraine. You eloquently explained how quickly Putin thought he would win the conflict. But there are rumblings on both sides of the aisle already about the spending there. And I was watching Wilbur Ross speak at a conference in Miami a few weeks ago here, and he was pointing out how Ukraine as a spending category is obviously small on the overall deficit, let alone the budget of the United States of America.

53:55And so we're watching this. And I guess a big picture question is, does Putin have a timeline that Ukraine and the United States does not have on this subject? Well, it depends. It depends on the U.S. Congress, in which there is very strong bipartisan support in both houses or continued support for Ukraine. But because of the composition of the majority in the House of Representatives, a very small number of individuals can prevent this from going through. But you're correct. Wilter Ross is correct. $44 billion over two years for the United States in security assistance. This is a fraction of the two-year defense budget, much less the entire budget.

54:41The two-year defense budget would be some$1.7 trillion. So this is more than affordable for the United States. And the return on that investment and the European investment, they've now actually pledged even more than we have pledged at this point in time, has been extraordinary. 60 % of the Russian tank fleet has been destroyed, dramatically reducing the threat to the NATO of the Russians. In fact, the Russians have had to thin out or remove their forces from a number of other places around the world, including in the areas where there are Russia borders with NATO countries. Beyond that, this is clearly a case that cannot be allowed to stand.

55:25The redrawing of borders by force is something that Europe hasn't seen since the end of World War Two. And it needs to be. Ukraine deserves the support of democracies around the world, however imperfect its own democracy may be as it is fighting a very common enemy in the case of the NATO alliance countries. So there's a lot that we didn't discuss. Just to go through some of the things that readers should want to dig into, and I'll throw out some ideas that General Petraeus, if you disagree with, you can just tell me straight up. Abu Ghraib was un-American, just like Algiers was un-French, was a great picture I got out of your book as an example.

56:09There's so many others, you know, the discussion of the Balkans in the early 90s, as well as in the later 90s. You know, there's just there's such great things. Among the things we discussed, is there, you know, is there maybe one last thing that you think we missed or we didn't discuss yet that you think is a very, you know, highlight of your and Mr. Roberts' work? Well, in addition to the critical importance of strategic leadership is also a recognition that what happens in one part of the world reverberates in other parts. Sure. And the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way it was conducted, that was seized on by President Xi, who said, see, you can't count on the Americans.

56:53They are undependable allies. And look at how it was conducted. their great power and decline. I think, in fact, that Putin probably looked at Afghanistan, and that was one of the factors that led him to believe that he could do what he did in Ukraine without the kind of response that we have actually seen. The U.S. actually led, I think, a very effective response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It kept NATO united, didn't allow Russia to drive a wedge between North America and Europe. And in fact, I think it's accurate to say that Putin set out to make Russia great again. And what he's actually done is make NATO great again.

57:38But so, again, the idea that what takes place in one part of the world does actually resonate or reverberate in others is also very important. And we should remember that as we debate continued support for Ukraine, because that does have implications for the Indo-Pacific, which is the most important theater and relationship in the world. And where we have to be absolutely certain that there's no question about our capabilities or our willingness to employ them as those are the foundation pieces for deterrence. To your point, and I think I'm paraphrasing when I say this, but when Hitler was asked why he thought he could commit genocide against the Jews, he said, well, who remembers the Armenian genocide, which the world did not take angst with that.

58:25And therefore, he thought if they could pull that off in Turkey, why can't I pull this off in Germany, to your point? And also, the other thing about your point on Asia, it is the fastest growing population in the world to be, you know, call a spade a spade. So that's the other part. It's going to be the biggest group of people. We're investors, General Petraeus. You work for an investment firm. So one idea I just wanted to ask you quickly was, you know, in your work at KKR or you personally, what are some of the most interesting investment things you see out there today? Well, first of all, I just know that geopolitics is vastly more important during the investment process during diligence than it was 10 years ago.

59:04I agree, absolutely. The world has evolved from what might have been described as benign globalization to one of renewed great power rivalries. And again, the geopolitical component of risk analysis during the diligence process has become vastly more important over the course of the past 10 years or so. But within that, you see lots of different trends where in some cases it is near shoring, There's friend shoring. There is a need to diversify the locations of manufacturing and assembly. There are rising labor costs in certain areas that lead to opportunities in other areas. There's a rise of the robots.

59:50There's the weaponization of everything, which also has as its corollary the security of everything. So again, there's no shortage of these different developments in recent years in particular, especially with the pandemic, where we also found that just in time, logistics has to give way to just in case logistics. But when you play those different themes and trends out, then you start to see where you should be pursuing investments. Fantastic. We agree. General Petraeus, thank you for this conversation. Pleasure to be with you. Yeah, very fun. And your book makes me think a lot about execution, aligning interests, as I thought about the awakening part of your book in Iraq.

1:00:33Also the complexity and unpredictability of the world that requires, to your point from a leadership perspective, immense flexibility, not rigidity. Our listeners should go buy a copy of General Petraeus and Andrew Roberts' book, Conflict Today. It's a great history book and a great book to study leaders like General Petraeus. If you enjoyed this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs. Give us a review. tell others about the books and great authors like General Petraeus that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through. For our tribe, if you have a great book you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com.

1:01:08That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for a Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to a book with legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products at SmeadCap.com or by calling your financial advisor.