you that question of many of the people you interviewed. the said yes, she was happy. joy bahar, the co-host on the view, ish. there's no question she she was very proud of what she did and she was proud of the money she she had. but almost everyone else i talked to no, she was never happy. susan page. you. thank you. in. we are here tonight t petraeus s of bgria and this book, as

you also have seen, called conflictvofrom 1945 to ukraine. re introduce the authors, please note that this is being recorded by the lovely people at c-span. you very much for for coming and will be available to view in the coming wks lastly '0 minutes in conversation. and then the last 20 minutes will have a q&a. and i'm glad you all attended when you couldn't had your book signed, because unfortunately the authors do have an engagementmmediately after this. so they unfortunately won't be able to be around afterwards. so allow me tont authors, general david petraeus is a retired u.smyenhaving serv7 years. he graduated distinction from the u.s. military academy, earned a ph.d. from princeton. he ended his career with five consecutive of commands as general officer, including surge in iraq and the u.s. central command. and he then served the director of the cia, and he is currently a partner of kkr and chairs its

global institute. and lord roberts of belgravia, also known as andrew roberts for year for the name he book, is a biographer, a historian whose books include bestsellers about and george the third. certainly people that you know, you can think of. i don't him doing something you know something as small as like martin van buren or something like that any time soon. fence smarter than his in his and his ancestors. he's a fellow of the royal society of literature and the and but most importantly, he is a member, a proud member, if i can churchill society's board of directors. gentlemen, thank you vy mu for your time and for being here this evening to with you. thank you so. andrew, i'll begin with you. pretty softball question. w did this book come about? and could i saying how churchill

leadershipr. you are a great director. the icc is a fantastic gentlemen, it's it's it'wondl to be on the board of it as well. i i love the icc and. answer yot on to david shortly after the invasion of ukraine and said that i■h thought that there was there'd be interest in a book that place the russian in the ruso ukrainian war in military history its geopolitical political context and david jumped at the chance and went to harpercollins, the publishers. they of course, how we were going to divvy up the chapters and i said, well, david's going to write about all the countries he'só"aded. and wrote

the vietnam chapter, the crucial et a thai going to fill in the d what we did ce we'd written our chapters, we them backwards and forwardso thousands of emails in order to cr t product. you've said many of you have them very kindly bought today. i should just note that andrew and i have done number of events together over the years we don't remember when we firstet a admik like many of you who broug some of his earlier books. napoleon georgthirwfñ■d. what is he the most missed under misunderstood king of yeah, the last king of america came america. and so the first i think, was we churchill book. we had so much fun with the first one. i do a lot of events in 92nd street, y, both of whic' done for this book together.

and we had so much fun with the very first one that we decided, let's do another. and it was churchill in the military, of coursit w intellige and it was churchill in the royalit was churchill in buddies, which was the most now, about how the club that he started himself. the other his but as you can see andrew's oio historian biograph. he's also really a well that he was not baronf signed on with . i wasie or. no, no groupie or something like this. isam really, he had signed me up to be i, i will know that he constn in the house of lords. know, known for his beautiful white townhouses, only problem

is that about a third of the lights don't come on anymore at night because the ow a stuck in moscow. since invaded. and while i'm this role, let me also say what you're going to be ill leadership, having actually done the verified because the blacker the particur event and what a pleasure has been to be involved here over the years. and then also, of course, at mit spectacular museum as well. well, general petraeus, you know you are you were, if you will a a practitioner of what's discussed, it was now you're the examiner. what is the book. so, first of all, i should just note that the reason i jumped at this beyond the joy of actually

working with andrew and by the way, this is his 20th book but the only one in which he's ever had a coauthor, i feel quite oh, that's a hì1. that. i will do it again one day. now. yes. well,a new york times bestseller. it's the usa today bestseller. soon will is. but was looking for a place to write about iraq and afghanista frankly, obviously commanded both of those at the height the war. and whent mean, to star, a three star, four star central four star, and en cia. that was the entire period of to late 2011, when we withdrew our combat forall. i mean, it actually had these magnificent offer kind of that. and i just didn't want to go o cover it as objectively possiblehistt's worl see that when we sent it in and of crsoo traditional third perss

any history should be. and the editor very said when he read the iraq and afghanistan just doesn't work. you know, you can't write in third person and then general maliki and raised the following objections. top of the of the chapt that ya lot of back and forth with all of them into it inrson. and that was a good call the big big and it jumped1d■iso that we wend thentduction, bring out even more clearly the critica mponent of success, generally strategic leadership. this is leadership at the very top. it's the civilian, the very top. it's gg thatcher, george h.w. bush, who says the saddam's of kuwait,

this will not stand know. th back hindsight, it wasn't that easy, especially lklands. that was a much closer run affair. and theno, i becomes the military commander who's going to translates inhe battlefield e thk of say general is the chairman of the joint chiefs and general schwarzkopf he u.s. cenl command for the desert shield in desertfirst gulf war, i actually had an construc, strategic leadership that i developed between the three and four star tours in iraq, the same time when we did the counterinsurgency field manual overhaul and all of our professional development for commissioned noncommissioned officers int are 40 tasks of a strategic leader. in the private it is this is s in uniform you have to get

the big ideas right you have to really understand the context, the strengths and weaknesses. your forces, the enemy forces, all your coalition members, the physical terrain, the human terrain, all the otherth■battl'e that right.ry out a military. we have a quote from clausewitz about th important task of a military commander is you conflict as we recount, we didn't it took us a very long time to recognize that we had taken a small war and tried to turn it into a big war instead of focusing on the villages and the hamlets as the south asked us to help them do in the beginning. but we were imbued, no, you need divisions they're going to invade you across big. you got to get the big them

through the breadth and of the organization. if it's a military command. but really it is stake in the outcome of that conflict. and we can talk about in case o. ■trit now. and what do we think the big ideas, what additional big ideas should lot people that are watching that they have a stake in the outcome. then you have to do what we normally think of leadership. you tse implementation, the big ideas. this is how the example you provide energy, the inspiration is attracting great, it's those not measuring up to move on toom which you focus and they've got to be the dy count in vietnam was neither they have to be the right numbers that telj&l you whether really making progress or whether you're winning, losing and then the leader spends his or her time. c. when i in iraq and afghanistan,

basically the detailed schedule that has the recurring events, those that you do every single day of the week, do a few times a week, twice a week, a week, every other week, and. then you rigorouslyose meetings. that's how you case it includedt twice a week, right? the the morning update and the meetings. we would goialy join a unit somewhere in baghdad or helicopter or further out or a fixed wing plane or for as far south or for it yourself. you need to doing. they need to see you on your as and then there's a fourth task that's often overlooked. that's where you have to formally sit down events on your battle rhythm that force to do this to determine how you need to refine the big ideas and do again and again and again for

what it's worth. if you really want great deal of detail on this, it was a team of former officers of mine at harvard, at the kennedy school when i was i was a fellow there at the belfer center for six years, nonresident. and they wanted to helpistill and we did. so there's a website belfer center that org if you search ■■gic leadership with a lot more not onlyut,:ly s on how perform them the sort of tacticsg takeaway is you have got tobecause? if you don't do that, i don't care are. how marvelous. sp an example. it doesn't matter because you're building on a shaky intellectual foundation. we recount a number of cases in which the big ideas were serious flawed and then a number of others. the big ideas were actually quite powerful. let me just end by giving an example. one that was was indochina very frustratedcommunists battle.

they were very elusive guerrilla fighters insurgents and so forth. so theyecided you know what we'll do? we'll make a big base it way out there somewhere. so it would be why don't we pick place gambian food sort ofuntains and so forth and that will be a they'll come to battle. oh, by the way, let's have some and by the way, of course, since it's a french command, will name themfrench comma, indians work? they came to battle. all course, they they defeated the french who had to went into captivity for a period until there wasea which resolveh it. that'souot north and south vietnam, the partition of that country. and demilitarized zone. ain, if you don't get the big ideas right, all the rest of

that stuff doesn't much matter. andrew if i can ask you from a hi point, you know, you've you've research commanders, you've researched king's prime ministers and emperors but if we can briasng e into the present day, of course thone nfli"t yo book doesn't cover is a recent conflict in in israel, gaza. from a historians point of view, what lessons would youyou analys of these conflicts in your book? what lessons can you take away so immediately, if you can, this conflict? well, you know, david and i the other day because we couldn't book h and for the that has to the moment. yes, you can look. at the yom kippur war, which to

efoa few days at least in that october of 1973, did look as though it might become existential for his world, buttherwise there history is not providing huge numbers of precedents for this kind of opetion. obviously, there are a there are operations builtp areas, and even in large cities, mosul and fa,'m sure. david will will talk about those in a moment that even in terms of size, don't equate to gaza city and and the fthe horror uns something also we found it very difficult to find any precedent for as well. we are in i think the world at the moment is in pretty uncharted waters, frankly. and although i naturally as a historian believe that there's historicaleer

horror of what was unleashed on you have to go back a far earlier, you haveo medieval ti, even the dark ages, to see to such a delight in in the diof the hamas attack and to put this in context, we lost nearly 3000 innocent civilians. the 911 attacks, several different■9 locations. the israelis lost 1400. ou■í put that in american terms. so given how much larger our population be over 50,000 americans to put in rspective relative to the 9.3 million in israel, in the 212 hostages, that's over 7000. perspective and course, it is e holocaust.orst really since the other war, 67, 73, subsequent wars never approached

a loss. barbarity is unspeakable nature of what was some there are elementsn ok that do provide reminders, illumination. i that are worth revisiting i experience of them personally. yoow■] the fight to baghdad i remember down in kuwait i was a two staren commanding the 301st airborne division and is a little more detail on what happens after we get to baghdad and topple th regime and? there was two retired three stars were running the ction, humanitarian assistance, essentially. you just get us to baghdad we'll take it from there. obviously, planning for that■ ws nowhere near adequate. and then unfortunately the whole plan itself sort of founded on assumptions that we could watch beingnvalidated that's partly why i you know, uttered that phrase. and woulin and again

and again from congressional committees tell me how this ends, forgetting that rick atkinson and you know we're just friends but he was on duty. he was it was on the record he was my embedded journalist. so again what is the post-conflict plan? i think there has to be a vision out for that. in this cas i think inevitably is going to be that israel is goio overseee in ong hamas. the essentially a terrorist army is bigger than just terrorist cells. obviously, it's a very substantial organization. and the islamic jihad, which has several thousand, maybe many 5000 more, but they're also intent on hamas, and that is what administers objectr the military. and i think actually is an inescapable objective. think what has happened here shows you that which we've read

the founddome call for the destruction of israel, the killing of --. they really,ru are not a party m you negotiate, such as after the 73 war that henry was at a luncheon for us the other new york and reminded us all cease when, of course, the israelis hav benon an existential moment counter attack brilliantly, and we're literally on the road. cairvi the egyptian third army, he could make, you know, a few phone calls or visit for capitals. he could visit cairo, he could jerusalem could visit amman, jdan. he could go to damascus. and he could actuallyypt and the agreement that rni each other td so forth, so very, very different circumstance is these

e state elements or altermined qaida in iraq those days were which was■t irreconcilable wellf if the enemy irreconcilable you can't negotiate you can't strip them away and get them to pp government, as we did with the rank and file of many of the insurgent killed. so, again, destruction. but then what? because it israel is going to they should also announce the desire to transition it as but only when certainbviously to a palestine indian element that will have real supported. but keep in mind that whoeverisg out humanitarian assistance and overseeing reconstruction and that entity is also going to have have a hard edge to it with a lot of intelligence, because

hamas remnants, islamic back. iran will provide them funding, eq and weapons systems. therefore, to try to do that, they' g campaign, not just a peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance campaign and beyond that there certainly are lessons from urban ops. but i very much agree with andrew that there's nothing that we've seen, certainly in recent =8 is fiendishly difficult. this maybe way cityng. but even near the enemy didn't blow himself up to didn't have f tunnels underneath gaza city, didn't use human■i human. and ofase, the enemy lives there hasr at year,e months at defenses.

and if they are as■ carried these barbaric acts, this is going to be a very, very challenging. methodically.you to i i've seen ideas people saying that, youd do commando raids, know, can destroy hamas wit mmando raids. by the way the commando raids themselves will be incredibly da into the mogadishu mile very quickly. they're going to insomeere and'o have to fight their way out a little, like going into sadr city when we're g the top iranian supported shia militia leaders, but more so again, i think they there's no alivbut to every single ildilo room struggle and hold and you to leave forces behind there's sufficient that they can't get swarmeanturned i. you have to do it progivot expeh

that. we did that in ramadi or 400,000 fallujah, several hundred thousand mosul, over a million. but thisso challenges here are . and i think the most critical is to provide the vision, the post-conflict and also in l be like for the palestinians after shouldn't be life for the palestinians palesk as well. i see and i hope that this horrible event can be a catalt get serious about getting back to that as well so it's a paerjustl people about what happened when youred? yeah, i mean, we had a situation we're in the fight to baghdad that was threatening our lines of communication and. it was a city of three or

400,000. najaf is holi islam, very important. and so weldn't not even a neck in the gold dome mosque even though they were shooting deliberately at from either si s under construction. t eventuallyí we took it took several days of all three brigades converging on thisj ciy news. good news is we owe is i said we owe najaf.■s u want us to do with it? and i hope that, again, the post-conflict phase is a lot better. i know. look, i can tell i assure you, i' all done getting video conferences with folks tel aviv forth and they are feverishly working it. pr answer, especially israel doesnt to reoccupy, but i just don't see an alternative to that in the short term at least. so we have about another 10

minutes of of our question and an at into is i read the book, e way, so i to put thn record for good and qualifications, least i could do. so actually the least you could do it is in fact. yeah. yeah. so it's literally least you could welcome. so instead of going chronologically and going of conflict by conflict cause quita few in here, i want to talk about some of the individual themes. if i can and one theme, the first theme in andrew i'd love for you to to write morale is essential to victory and you write in israel it could be, you know, applied to any confli especially the american war of independence that that last king lost a couple hundred ago. but it could also applied to the the incredible bravery of the people of ukraine.

and so tell us about and i know you visited kiev, kiev, kiev and ukraine. tell us about how important morale is during this does come through very powerfully and in the book, it's one of the themes, one of the threads of, the booknd wd and avisited kiev in about four went meeting president zelensky, other minid&x■9 generals since then, we we recognized an extraordinary courage, of ukraine. you they have these marvelous size of buildings, these posters saying, be brave ukraine and thd they are not, uh, they're not willing to just simply of the horror of the last 18 months to, know, they, they do want to fight through to

ultimate victory whether or not will be will be have that in order be victorious and obviously where the national churchill leadership center the way in which winston churchill was able and afterwards to even though logicy and rationallyre wasn't one bece the united states wasn't in the war. e germans, the whole thing was a seemed to be completely at. if you can persuade the people and if the people in the end willing to believe as it were , things can be done that seemed to be totally and one of the things that we were hugely impressed with, of the leadership qualities. when davidqualities of presidend

and remble a hisan go back in e 945 period to look at strategic leaders and how they ca and and amongst all of them presidents. alinsky does stand out and of course what you on the other side a strategic leader in in vladimir putin, who's mistake after mistake. you know including the key one about getting the big wrong in this that he assumed ukraine was sort of roll over and and and give up a nation of 44 million people who it a um a prc leader who saw this churchill 'n called churchill with anvdxphone which is rather fabulous way of

doino yes there is that and now obviously recently the southern has started and the size of the minefields turn out to be much much lge than than expected. it's lt t mine when you have russian drones above above and so on. the chapter i think i'm right in saying in very well wih the one of the overall messages this book about morale and think of zelinski his first big ideas i don't want a ride i want ni pretty powerful big idea. i'm going to stay in kiev. my family is going t stay in key. we're going to defend kiev to. the males are going to stay in the country. anain,t just kept on going. and then he's got a very good military commander in chief general's illusionary. and i met with him four weeks or

sond is translated again into a very impressive campaign noting. obviously it's not over. the outcome is still but the russians have lost. ukrainians won the battle of e overriding objective is to take kiev, topple the government, replace esident zelenskiy with a pro-russian figure. they lost the battles of sie ancherny here in the northeast archive closest to the border. thought would fall as not. and nowy' of kharkiv oblast or province and the russian forces that had made it west of the dnipro there, east of the ip he. yes, again, very tough counteroffensive. but even there, the ukrainian ka the enemy it didn't so they adapted. so that's that fourth task and they've refined the big ideas and the big■ idea is instead of trying to do an armored breach

because they don't have air superiority to conduct they're into breach and certainly to make sure the enemy have drones right over top of artillery arey you 150 meters a day instead severalom a day. tree line to tree line. house, house and so on. it's it's truly impressive. and as andrew mentioned, putin's leaderip absolutely disastrous in that regard in almost eve ce,e got the big ideas wrong. again, how stout the ukrainian defense, be he thoug h better, y turned out to be. he also underestimated. th by the us, other nato countries, the wester and, then, you know, his communication to the outer world has not been particularly convincing and. even the examphaprovides know hd of a long table in a suit. ey're all down at the end of the table. almost need a microphone to be

he is out in the front lines have been changed to an oddrst f the war as up the suit ever since and of course zelinsky communicating brilliantly in each of these different encounters the first wartime leader to address congress since churchill both houses congress and so on. so it's wonder to compare and contrast the problem still ongoing, the outcomes in russia does size three and a half times the population of ukraine and an economy that's bigger■ so i'm ys general if i could follow up on on your points another theme i think ties in nicely is and that is of information so you know our dear friendhim in your booku say, quote, in wartime be by a bodyguard of lies. so can you describe a conflict in which this type hiding, but e

sort of of handling o information? who needs to know it when, what type of message are we what what confidence in mind for you5 that really key. i don't think you've seen a situation where the us and the released much finished to the public not it t just removing it and of course removing anything on sources and methods. so the trick is there's lot of declassification that's done. how do you do it w sources messe or jeopardizing that has unique aspect of ukraine is that t we've seen. by the way, it's going to be the same case is lot of challenges, because urban combat iserdamaging kill, innocent civilians.

to be very costly. and so cs ve to be aware of that. for what it's worth, we had big ideas for everything in the surge in iraq, and it ptured in the counterinsurgency guidance i drafted and then would reiss jut would go out to everyone and on g with the press. our big idea was be first with the truth. we want to headline. what we want to do with the truth we are not going to put lipstick on pigs. we're not going topir anything. we're just going to be objective and honest as w and if the first report was wrong, as sometimes i're going to go back out and correct it. and if we have a bad day,try to. we're going to say we had a horrible day today in baghdad, 150 innocent iraqi civilians wet markets which actually did happen. here's what we believe took place. here's what we think we need to

do to mitigate the risks this in the future. and w'tion as it comes so againarency in bd in which everyone has a internet access social media platforms intohich upload video and photos and so forth, that's a transform situation. and the ability to monitorry, vy challenging as well. if i can just add t, chapter ten, is about the future of and we go into drones, of course, cyber space and sensors, and a.i. robotics and on. but another really k of course disinformation and already seen in in the israel-hamas struggle with regard to the the hospital that that hamas claim■a hadn

bombed by the israelis. turned out it was islamic jihad. so you have a a sphere there which in the internet age is absolutely vital that you fight and. it's being fought through deepfakes and bots, all sorts of things, which frankla about and neitheet before 1945 either. war, is something that we go into in the book pretty seriously because it is a feat, a feature that we think is going to be seen more and more in future conflict. gentlemen, i'm now going to open up to to the audience i'm sure you have many questions. so here's at■ñ w we have quite few people here. i'm going to have my colleague alice we're going to take a few questions this side ofhe roo■#■4 ll take it from the others. ur hand. ask you both to to ase

and so this right here, alice, i thank you. i have a question for both are either of you about the american military and serve institutional and learning? do do you feel is there a tendency to sort of fight the last war have you have youat ine book, what's your take away abio learn and adapt to warfare as as it's evolved over time? i take that one. first of all, i think the adage, you know, the military tends to true sometimes. again, i mentioned the lessons of korea weighed on the us advi t insisted on providing the vietnamese forces with divis forces that could hae carried out what we would know as comprehenve counter

insurgency campaign because the threat was in the villag a hamlets at that time at least it certainly wasn't coming across the dnorth didn't have that kind of capability. then. but then there aomcases. you know, we've sought to consign the lessonsf hi aspin os after vietnam and the military never wanted to do anything like that■■ again. and this is partly why we didn't even doctrine for terinsurgency several years into the war in iraq. i mean, when i went home after the three starrs■determined thao produce a doctrinal manual provide the intellectual foundation that, frankly, we didn't have certain people peopn involved in stuff before. i'd been fortunate to be see of the stuff in central america to have served in haiti as the un ofo have spent a year in bosnia. none of these were full fledged ■■pcounterinsurgencies, but they all had elements of what you needed to do in a counterinsurgency.

and so we needed that. but we didn't have it because again, no one wanted to do it ever again. and therefore we were not as i we're much better than that now. i think we recognize that the american military has to do everything along the spectrum of il authorities, the u.s., through variousand disaster relief on up through various forms of irregular war, counterterrorism and, then up to conventional and ultimately to the, you know, peer competitor, icay, indo-pacific theater, which is and i believe that we think they to learn is absolutely. there. the other challenge is that the folks at the very top have to want to create d embrace a culture of learning. counterinsurgency manual we said

the side that learns the fastest typically prevails and we set out we had events on the battle rh facility too that you know i'd meet once a month with all the lessons d telear chiefs once a week with the strateg p require us. and then when we would have a meeting, say, of all the two star commanders, each of them had to give two lessons that he had learned or initiatives that be general to everyone else. but again, you to have it in, you have trrou people are willil you that the big ideas aren't as powerfve and as you might think they are. so i bring general mcmaster over. i brought the colonel over who had had theng an insurgency the first few months in and was thrown out of the air for it. m ba with me. so again, there has to be a again, a culture that iswhere ls and then it has to permeate the u have to take actions on your battle

rhythm to facilitate that. sz that the united states army has institutionalized this pretty well in the past. the yom kippur example prompted no fewer tha36■2 reports from different from different parts of the into that war, sending it soldiers out there to intew gene and seeings, checking out, what whether or not they could learn lessons that ultimately were able to use in another desert of crse, in in 1990 against in the gulf war. yes, sir. and that right there. yep. and more of a historical question, obviously, the title of the from this exploration starts with 1945, althougworld one ande profoundly impactful on the technol technological of talk to

why you started it in 1945? yeah, well, and what we what we discovered very much was that one of the most important themes of this war of this book was that warfare doesn't move in a linear way it it can forward leaps and bounds. have talked earlier about yom kippur and and ukraine, of course, which wereifting wars ut can sometimes get completely side tracked as in the iran iraq war, where neither khomeini or saddam hussein provided the of strategic leadership that davey was talking. and therefore, you have 2 million=people die in an eight g war. many of the features of which such as gas and and trenches and. barbed wire and so on. remind you of the first world war that was being fought nj;w so it struck us that the that

the th■a■ moment of 1945, that that momentends. and of course, you then get the umbrella where all wars are fought. limited however big they you've got the chinese civil war that killed million people but nonetheless you know the bomb has not been usednd thl area that that we thought would be■lu know, ukraine is this interesting. max boot captured this post columnist. he describes front, blade runner and. it is if you think about, again, in the trenches, why our reminiscent world war one tanks and armo world war actually the cold war. these the same systems that we had in germany, for example.

and on the other side, the same systems that russia is using here. and then but advanced drones a'e actually advanced during the course of this war. it's really developing quite pi you look at what the ukrainians have drone done with a domestically produced maritime drone that has done so much damage actually had to withdraw much of the black sea fleet from the sel because they theyy've had to move it to a russian seae agi said earlier, that transparent in the battlefield from smartphones, access and social media. 's not the rty is t definition of,but it again, well over a century's worth of different types of practices, all of which you see here. one more question on the side. is thereyep.

there's a there's a microphone up. you got me. so, gentlemen, thank you very much. 've got me thinking when you talk disinformation and the the the effects of it and and if you would, would you both comment on the on role of and the importance of governance, the system of governance that gives a putin for instance, or ■joviet leader the ability to throw human beings at this extraordinary numbers and and and world war two or a single message to the soviet or the russian people and what zelinsky, of course, has to work in the context of a democracy or where we have you havehe your your kind of free press. and we have our free press and ans at we what we tended to democracy is, um, thatzs■c

authoritarian totally syrian dictatorships were much betr starting wars, but that democr■2ieng ultimately and wing them partly because you can start a war with and surprise attack which happens in many circumstances thinks obviously of 911 and pearl harbor but six-day the yom kippur war theands war this hamas attack the attackn kuwait. exactly. in 1990. you know, it was said by paul qwolfowitz, um, that surprise attacks so often the surprising thing is still surprised by, ant it to create a it sort of sticks a fire under the people who have been most mostly

■hdemocracy. you know, in almost every one of these cases apart from six-day war, that was deac■÷and so the , essentiall i is bigger up of forces and cross cross border attack. so this lady right here, cat in the second row. to edit quite a bit content wise in the end. were t that you had to cut that you wish you could have included? you know,ere a couple of occasions where andrew and i remind each other that we were actually the authors of this bookistent at times uncertain of the items that we felt needed to be included. but i don't think there is anything. yes, we started i think we were thinking about 20 to 25000

r ended a good bit more than those in several of those ch. but again, you work with your editor and and we insisted on cl of certain very there were a number of actuallyes thai participated in. and i thought thisand so it stan to fit 70 plus years of of warfare into 500 pages is i think in itself quite an achievement we were with they were they were one o that that't make the cut because we would concentrate as i say, on the on the paradigming conflicts. we weren't just going to try and do a comprehensive history of. l of the 140 plus wars that they've have been since since 1945. and so if we found one classic example going back, your talk about the the tank, wheret the t

anti-tank weaponry was going to make the but only three weeks in three weeks time, it was from ariel sharon's surrounding of the egyptian that army that thetely a a a key wea. and ed great joke from an american general who that nk dinner jackets in that you don't need them very often, but when you do need them, nothing else will do. the gentleman right in the back palace or cap, i thank you. i'm currently finishing the first volume of manchester is the last lion and it jumped out at me and what roberts can correct me on the exact year 1920 something and where churchill was visiting ga and 150,000 arabs come to protest screaming death the -- and then a very churchillian way he thought they wereyes yes.

the historical animosity there, is there a military solution to this israel a hamas situation, or if militarily, t beat hamas, es thaen lead a peace between israelis and the and the palestinians? is the pa authority capable of taking over for hamas or is the hñanimosity deep that it's it's even beyond? and there's dreaded second part questions. there is about four questions. exand look, the bottom here, i laid this out earlier with respect military. force is necessary, but not there does have to the destruction of hamas. buts laid out, there has to be

a vision for the palestinian. it has to be operationally there has to be a thought about post conflict governance and all of these additional elements i laid out that should very clearly that military force. again, while vital, not. and that's often the occasionals are able to discover our military force can be both necessary and so i'm always cautious about that particular phrase, which is usually diplomats, not by s so why are you still reading william manchester? i you know, you should realize that the the the best single volume biography of the great manurch is l walking with destiny agreed here it could be be a matter of taste no. so there's a gentleman with the

glasses in black coat. thank you thank you you. at the beginning the importance of strategic leadership in the =x■conduct war. and i was wondering you think either of you think is responsive. well for the lack of strategic leadership in various contexts, is it ideological is it parochial this. lack of imagination, sheer pig headedness? you know what, the cause of lack of strategic conflicts? i think it's all of the abo, you just said, but it's generally a lack of understanding of nature, of the conflict, which we saw, for example, in vietnam. we saw it again to a degree. the french. and then when you do see it, exercise as well, it's again a recognition of this is what this

is, this is these are the objective factors. this is how we craft the strategy can enable us to achiev our. with military force andrequired. as is noted earlier, force is by no means always and sorry, can i also add, i think that short work against the thpaci people to see the big picture. ex algeria here in the 1950s where the french were attempting to put down the algerian uprising and they used torture deliberately went for routine use of torture, which very much went against the founder principles of the french republic, the declarations of the rights of maan so on and ano

revolted the the sense of what being a frenchman was all about so domestic proble also you didn't get actionable intelligence from the use of torture so so and you can understand how t term that was y was an absolute disaster. c questions. we're going to do this gentleman right here and th wbut please rt row. inor coming. general petraeus, thank you for yourai service and all the inspiration you've given me. two part question serve. do you think since the end of the cold, the united states has had grand strategy? and on that note, when it comes to the political that we have, military from the asia-pacific to the eastern med,

how do you rate the state of our military today? and do you think our politicians should perhaps recalculate some thank you.liti you know, had nothing compaeto , which was a grand strategy. there have been various efforts are elements of grand strategy, are people who actually believe we sdnt have a grand strategy. so, again, i think that first pretty straightforward nothing like what jn ibedgain in of containment and so forth. i inthe st of military is th obviously not just the recruiting challenge i would t we we have the greatest of challenges and the challenges at any time. the cold war, at least, be world

war two. and if you think of the united st a circus who has to keep a whole bunch of different plates spinning, you have a plate that represents the u.s. and western relationship with china that that's bigger than all tths in tent. can't lose sight of that one even as we are supportingsrael r partner ukraine. and we have allies and to help us with that. there's still a north korea plate. there is a iran maybe multiple plates for iran supporting tshi, missiles and rockets. there are cyber threat plates. there's obviously the russia plate there. there's a wholeagain, different. and i think the challenge for we, the ones uniquely who have to keep these with help, varying degrees for varying plates from various partners, that we have to have the ability to address all these different plates. keep in mind, there are still islamist extremists there, and we learned the hard way. if you don't keep an eye on an

organization, pressure on it as wh' happened with the islamic state. after we withdrew our combat ctarianand the prime minister of actions, took their eye off it. you'llour hands within a of years. that then eliminate. so i■ think how do you have forces that can do everything as we earlier as well all across the border you still need perte in counterinsurgency even as you are shiftingourwhic. exactly right. that hig we have to transform or forces more in a simplistic way would be desed a small number of large platforms to a massive number, large manned manned, expensive, exquisitely capable, al vulnerable to a massive systems, some

of which will be remotelincreasy piloted. the hu the loop is the human the software program and takes a particular action.e that is challenge to do in, but there are vested in the military industrial congressional complex th that mccain described and was always battling understandable. again, but we have to transformn because at the end of the day that most important plate requires deterrence, which is founded on a potential assessment of your capabilities on the one hand, and your willingness toloy em on the other. one other quick note with respect to that final element is in the book, we lay that what has of t world reverberates another. everything is connected. and if you have an episode here that shows a lack strategic

patience capable, it reverberates elsewhere. and that's really quite an o another theme of the book is that although deterrence is expensive. of course it is, especially on the american taxpayer. also chep compared to the alternative of icis war last question. if you give it to jim, thank you both for. an illuminating and enlightenin. i'd like to maybe wrap up with history. you've both looked at history straight in the eye tonight, and over the last 70 years to get them right, you need to study history. maybe youk little bit about political and military today and their great gasp of history is this something that's being taughtthmilitary academies. certainly we're not seeing as much history being absorbed.

perhaps in congress as we used to when when congressmen were militarily, for instance, maybe talk about the importance of hist work you've done with this book for, military leaders and for today. i set an exam, a for anybody who wanted to stand for public office. frankly, i it's a it should be an absolute prerequisite that people shoulha knowledge history that if they're to try and decide anything to do with the future. i'm not sure that many british litiul pass that exam, frankly. but then neither would our schoolchildren. we had the dayn, missouri the we had a question about winston churchill. schoolchildren thought that he was a fictional character. and that i worrying thing, especially here, of

course, in the national chñdl etc. it means that the job you do and the job that justin does is a tremendously centrally important one. that yes, of vital. you know, this of brings to min all these great aphorisms about history. you what's on who fail to study the past, doomed to repeat itwhatev i is? yeah, there's one i actually used in myissertation because it was the american military and the lessons of history that they sure those are the right lessons actually to take and i especially what are the joys of doing this book was my dissertation was done at t pthid yove scholarship and actually the declassification of papers of the major figures during that time. and so one of the comments i had in there was that you have to be aware that history obfuscate as

well illuminate it can, mislead you, it can weigh you down. actually. and i think that the lessons o vietnam very much weighed down our military leaders when came to recommendationsn, the use of force and so forth, and not always again iilluminating mann. sometimes that was not the case. p=■zi believe in the study of history. it is much still taught in our military academies and in the pre commissioning courses. ot entering the military as commission officers. it's wonderful to see all of you, your fellow students of history, or you would not be here. clearly, it is something that i es deserve more attention in our schools and universities and certainly those who are going to be when, it comes to the e frankly gentleme.

and before we wrap up, i jus sae intere in in you can grab the wy out. look forat alice colleagues. and please join me in thanking general petraeus and lord ros.■