mess. by the mid-1970s so-called johnny appleseed were traipsing round the countryside sowing seeds and expectation of the utopian stone. in fact the phrase johnny appleseed and the pot will get to something like 10,000 hits on google. and so this constant reinvention continues into our own time and are distinctly modern interest in scaling back going local and preserving and conserving this wonderful creation we had been handed. two centuries before there was a simplicity movement john chapman had a creative lifestyle that was simplicity itself, level of consumption that would drive the national economy back to a bartering system widely practiced. ..

>> of names in the world basis from the divine origin and clothes were such formed to exist there to perfect their use to correspond with higher things. however it came to be there is the the more than a caustic accident and would

never label comes to the challenge, a secular greed and planetary survival, it does need someone to show us how to do a better path between the president in future and real and imagined ready to lead the way.

>> thank you all very, very much for coming. if you cease to do so please zhao to throw something out -- at me. but i just discovered that it is midnight in britain. if i start to dose of please there something at me but i'm looking forward to this is much more of a conversation as i look around the audience i go from one direction see somebody who has written a book about afghanistan and another that was in the

canadian embassy in afghanistan's i am surrounded none every side but experts who can contradict me. [laughter] as a way to get the conversation going, i will talk through a few of the elements of intervention which i think are important to. i believe the last 20 years has been the age of the intervention. of the end of the cold war led to a new universe. as a young infantry officer. in 1991, an army that had no idea what it was doing. many had not seen action. and since the korean war from the early fifties but fast forward 12 years i found myself standing in s

cemetery in southern iraq alongside of the officers of the same regiment who had in the intervening period in bosnia, kosovo, macedonia, a fghanistan then iraq. levying the military believing we would never go to war. i felt we were rehearsing for a play that would never be put on. two decades seems to be a movement initially from triumph and joy at the end of the cold war and the idea to a sudden moment of despair when confronting the four when we felt we were facing new forces that we were unable to control.

one-third of enact symbolized in 1994 when the international community seem to rediscover its confidence and there were a thing the soho it could do so as a young diplomat i left with the referendum to move on and i was participating in the high tide of the new idea we have the formula we could go into of the people's countries increate rule of law and end conflict. this of course, led to hubris. the trail that led us into a roth and afghanistan we were told we could not do it but we did when people said we could not do it in the iraq but we would prove them

wrong. and of course, a humiliating mess, the terrible realization of our live this. limits of power common knowledge, legitimacy, a sense of in the sense. i believe we should not come to the end of the two decades of despair and isolation. is suggested there are things the international community year capel of doing. even in afghanistan i believe we achieved the enormous amount but not for what we congratulate ourselves. but when i arrived in afghanistan is we were not doing enough and we had taken our eyes off the ball in 2003 people said be rid

distracted and we have not brought any of troops and many then handed too much power to human rights and they were fragmenting and we had not done enough. in retrospect, i that looks pretty good today. that period where we felt we were not doing enough in the whole thing was a mess in which 85% of afghans could access clinics that was an explosion in mobile telephony i swear my blackberry works better in kabul been in my district of northwest england. also the bank happened in the first in the fifth three or four years and we continue to boast about it today.

it is is not as bad we have 3 million more girls in school but talking about 2003 through 2005. however, we became frustrated park . and that story that did not begin in the united states to europe and britain that america had taken the of the ball to do counterinsurgency and deploy more money. i found myself at a kitchen table in kabul sitting down with a deputy head of the united nations and #2 the british embassy saying we're going to deploy troops into southern afghanistan. i was horrified. why would you want to do that? and currently there were sitting there not doing ed radio now wanted to send 3,000 soldiers.

and then to bring economic development and security to have an impact and i said i can assure you you cannot do any of those things. but this is not because i am a psychic. i failed to predict the mubarak would fall so quickly. i get a lot of things wrong. not because i knew an enormous amount but because i had been in iraq and i had seen the tendency over the last two years. you will not achieve any of those things. then you will say the problem is we don't have enough troops then you ask for more and more.

and they said they would write down on a piece of paper saying they would achieve the objectives within six months. and if they have not they would acknowledge this is the wrong decision and would not say we did not have enough troops, resources, but what actually happened spring 2006 we went from 300, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000 common none thousand, ultimately 32,000 foreign troops holding down an area that contains 3% of the population of afghanistan. and nothing sustainable was achieved. and to travel through common province with a single

foreigner safely. he speaks good foresee when agricultural expert and he traveled remember he stayed in areas which are now war zones. there is a huge debate with their employ eight -- employments many believe that there was no relationship between the trip deployments then my experience is it came after. it is difficult to prove that helped to cause the insurgency to present themselves to fight for afghanistan with a foreign

military occupation if you go on and taliban web sites sites, the basic propaganda message is we are against corruption and bombardment yen we live under a foreign military occupation. that is part of their mobilizing structure. what does this mean? one thing i have taken away is a sense of real confusion going to the heart of what it means to be a politician. i spent a long time arguing against troop increase since. i move to harvard for i was very lucky to have six people who between them had

spent over a century in afghanistan. and while they have worked in afghanistan as a peace corps volunteer and save the children and the evaluation unit, michael had been working there since so they staged a late 80's they spoke fluently and understood the international community well and had been saying consistently that the policy that surrounded the surge from 2007 was misguided. backed by sending more troops we would not improve the situation. fact it was not creating stability but often creating instability in the country. that we had opportunities and negotiation which we

were not taking but undermining. david mansfield gave brilliant arguments with her when growth in what we were not doing bigot nobody listened. here in washington d.c. i gathered some of these people around the table with ambassador holbrooke, general petraeus, the senior officials kindly listened. but in the end it seemed to make no difference at all. why was it that these people who have so much experience let me pause on that. you need to contrast this probably 54 earners like that and those who turned up

after 2001 had none of those experiences we served if we were lucky, in the british embassy you do o 10 or two year two lourdes. you are extremely restricted it is difficult to spend a night in the village house and do not speak plume a and assailed by an incredible amount of demands but you are diplomat working in an embassy you spend time sending emails back in dealing with a german request. even if you are on the front line talking to somebody who is a company commander, what are you really getting out of the afghan experience? you are the afghan amid -- afghan major maybe

you don't like afghans but you don't speak fluent languages you walk around in body armor people tried to shoot you and you sit down in a room try to have a meeting with afghan tribal or village chiefs and not know who these people are in out of the complicated horrible mess of the process you create two-- try to create a government and above all tried to make your career because what you do at the end of your six-month to work to say i am here today dismal situation i have no idea of my predecessor was doing it turns out the police chief was corrupt, the governor had no idea what he was doing, no basic employment and nobody went to the afghan government in dealing with the foreigners. i came into grasp the situation and we got rid of the police chief and brought in a deputy who was much

better. i understand the tribal structure like my predecessors didn't. only through employment you will solve the assert -- the insurgency. we did a good distribution in process at the end it was possible to walk through in a way that it was not possible before i arrived. and your successor i have no do you was doing he appointed this guy. [laughter] the guy he promoted from the deputy police and said the trading was fantastic but it turns eight none of 100 people could read or write to but it doesn't matter we have turned it around. new economic development situation. i saw this myself.

fifth returning to iraq in 2003, i returned 2005 and was briefed by the new colonel who was in my job only 12 months later and he said we have no idea what my predecessors were doing. [laughter] i of five tier it was a disaster hundreds of people lined up outside my a door and we said go to the government ice eight -- and i thought this is insane. everything i have done has collapsed and has been forgotten and they have no memory. so you should be listening to those people he should not be listening to people like me are others in the room who have less experience on the ground who see afghanistan and iraq to the peculiar view of a

diplomat or a soldier which is very distorting but nevertheless to the people who seem to know what is going on. why? this is what i will conclude then we will open to questions. why? what i realized in becoming a politician that everything i used to do whether as an academic or diplomat is a total waste of time. there is no point* of me turning up with a 60 page document arguing for the ideal policy. there is absolutely no point* in me to sit down with a senior general or ambassador this will not work because you have misunderstood the police chief in the different regions are you have to understand it is difficult

because of the inefficiency is so extreme. forget it. forget that details. of the things that matter, guilt, optimism and fear. these of anything is that seem to drive us. for instance fear a lot of what happens is driven by fear. afghanistan or i iraq or the number pro the existential threat to global security. and it turns out there are four kinds of fear. of the first is we are very frightened of that country or iraqis i wrap poses the existential threat or as president reagan observed in 1963, vietnam poses the

greatest threat that has ever faced man sun -- since it came from the swamp to the stars. second threat is we are not worried about the country itself but the foreigners who come into the country. we're not worried about afghanistan itself but al qaeda with the russian foreign mont -- foreign minister who said it is in the nature of civilized kate -- solaris to settle them if they do not they will pose a threat to the civilization. it is a failed state vacuum and it is not about the countryman but the facts on the nabors. fifth theory is if

afghanistan false thing getting their hands on nuclear weapons. are in the case, the domino theory. the fourth category of fear is the great thing of that structure is a encompass every conceivable kind of fear. the fourth is regardless, we will be defeated and humiliated. we are afraid of our reputation will not allow us to be defeated if we are seen to be defeated in afghanistan, the weakness will be exposed to the world. this is the argument made perfectly in the first and

second -- second afghan wars. 1842 in the british army retreats from kabul, 40,000 were massacred and the muskets why're from every boulder 3,000 people strung into a 5-mile area us tango lost man with being into jalalabad. then to said we cannot allow this to happen it eliminates the credibility of the british empire. but that was not me. [laughter] and the same thing in 1880. when we were defeated again. as wheat had the same central focus. and to seem to be defeated

we were able to overcome and for some reason it is possible for people to stand up and say, it is not that bad. the commanding general of david petraeus and the hero of the moment said "we have nothing to fear from afghanistan. offensive as it may be too our pride, the less they will this like us. [laughter] the second saying is gilts.

win new stand up to talk like i am talking now is when i was speaking to a group of british officers two months ago i was sitting in the front row a man missing both of his legs. are you suggesting we died in vain? i find as a politician, "this is it." the only question. there is no point* to stand up in the house of commons why i think things will not work the the only question people want to address is did the soldiers die in vain? and there are ways that you can answer the question. but they are not very good ways. i made a speech where i stood up to say no soldier

dies in favor. there was a time people thought like that. this is maybe inappropriate but by the copy of the elliott you don't get the belief that they die in vain. he does not think that a key these is fighting for a silly reason but that undermines the herewith some. there was a time we were able to honor and respect soldiers for the unit and the regiment and the country without having to connect it to the grand narrative. but that it is very difficult. today you have to say by

planning more corpses on top of their heads, but it is very difficult to answer and unless they cannot answer that you end up with the situation where you feel you are steep 10 so far that there is no turning back which brings me to the final of the three. fear and guilt and finally optimism. this is in the dna. making as a joke earlier about the fact since 2005, the most extraordinary secrets, coming in 2000 or to say and then to deliver the decisive the year and it

will be the year for the taliban. 2008, i will keep going almost endlessly. 2009 stanley mcchrystal be our need deep in the decisive year. 2010 the british foreign secretary, a decisive year. 2011 good german foreign minister this is the decisive year. so what is happening here? somewhere in our dna not just general's you can understand why you want the optimistic military to say this will be impossible the something about our culture that is true of american

culture that every problem has a solution has it completely an acceptable. what will we do about that situation? a very complicated ambassador holbrooke and. [laughter] he said it did is not good enough for our what you to go way to come back with a solution. i can totally understand how this happens. the situation in somalia and syria and you think this is horrible. pirates, terrace, famine, we have to sort this out.

and i feel that temptation most of which about situations i know the least about the more reliable i am to feel very clear what we need to do. the need to make sure but when it is something what i think i know about war the microbe of trying to rebuild a small section, but then somebody said the situation in south chicago is completely unacceptable and literacy and crime and sort it out in two years. maybe you are a community

organizer working there 20 years it is a complicated system. programs are already running and you say don't give me problems. give me solutions. how much money do you need? the problem with international interventionism is it is very difficult to deal with poverty of a housing project. they our society and we speak a common language and have a free media and politicians and journalists central service and we have order and some of the leaders and instruments that say even so the social problems and poverty and conflict defend the society.

but 5,000 miles across the world the universe you do not speak the language walk-in the embassy compound that the media does not operate that nobody is elected and nobody pays taxes. then you have a problem. yet to this is why i want to conclude with the optimism. for some reason, we seem to think those situations must be easier. so let me remind you there are three things. fear, guilt, optimism. thank you very much. [applause]

>> i am a child of vietnam. and admiral johnson and general mccain and abrams and the observation that are we so stupid? talking afghanistan are we really that stupid? [laughter] >> it is a good question. but somehow talking about fear and gilts and there is nothing wrong with the brains of the ambassadors

but it is something to do with the culture this is where i want to be pretentious but inouye if you are a commanding general there is a limit. in fact, i have enormous respect and admiration for general eikenberry who was the ambassador to afghanistan but as soon as he began to criticize now he criticizes the strategy now we will start whispering maybe he is not up to it. not because they are not good and what will prove to be correct in 20 years but as soon as you say this, something about our

structure means your immediate the discredited. it is not a question of intelligence. they are phenomenal. general petraeus can talk you up 75 ways with the statistics, analogies, examp les, why this is working. but the problem is he is in a role where that is the view. i don't know what to do as the public for politicians to escape that. my whole speech today sounds fine. people can apply here but in an instant i can have the tabloid to say the traits of politicians to insult the troops the flag draped coffin and i can be

destroyed. so long as a as that is true , i spent a few years and afghanistan if you imagine you are in a politician of the normal sort then to have the confidence to take on in the ambassadors and the think tanks it is extraordinary how good your times has been supporters of the surge in afghanistan. will use the that far outside of the establishment putting yourself into a situation. >> and politics 20 years from now i hope you remember your book. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you for coming and for all of the work i had the pleasure of meeting new annette -- in afghanistan

good to see you again. with any for the international community to get things right to understand what we know and what we don't, my question involves how you get the local population to work with you but to ask them what to do had been no one we are wrong and let the local government run? >> it is the fundamental question. of the we give a lot of money to afghan -- afghans we will spend $125 billion in afghanistan. just the united states.

that is so much money it is almost unimaginable. i was reading said gore vidal critique and he complained the united states would bankrupt itself because they would spend $8 billion per year there now spending $125 billion per year. but on the other hand, at least the elected president has the different idea how he wants to run afghanistan from our idea. president karzai has a traditional patrimony hillview, friends, enemies hillview, friends, enemies, work through his brother, a tribal chief, and what do we do? we contradict him to tell him you cannot have the police chief, not that governor, at your brother is a drug lord, if this is nonsense.

the recreated relationship spending $125 billion per year theoretic the supporting the country but at the same time have humiliated, undermined, micr omanage . manager and alienate him so he is now in a paranoid state criticizing the strategy undermining our appointments. we should be doing but you trust him and support him and delegate and let him run it as he wants to run it. and if not get rid of them but the worst is to keep running for elections while undermining him.

but the centocor is not without a program. i went to the british ambassador to see president karzai recently. he basically sat there 25 minutes to say it was a waste of time, alienating the afghan people he could understand why people joined the taliban he may be tempted to as well and then the ambassador said to me then we agree. [laughter] i now have an answer except to say maybe getting back to a positive message comment that we have this relationship a bit better. we did not attempt to micromanage and i can talk about refugee return and in

terms of the war crime treaty. thank you. >> you mentioned in three aspects of how it happens but one it is careers and you spoke about that. it is beyond me to understand how people like clayton powell who speak on memorial day and we forget it they stood up before the united nations to tell people about this stuff that got us into a war that appears to be a mistake. colin powell. that is one aspect. >> somebody tends to make money off of this stuff we

don't even know where billions of dollars have gone so to speak a little bit what is going on that we really don't see. >> that is a good point*. it is true that money matters. does not necessarily matter in the way, $125 billion per year, in a sense of almost corrupts everybody. what i mean by this is not the military industrial complex to tell the president what do. does not work like that. what happens is you create a huge industry where professors at universities,

everybody begins to be sucked and. the amount of money swimming around is beyond belief. there is almost possible to make between 500 and $1,000 per day as a consultant. i have never met anybody who has not been able. this is where money becomes more interesting. you can understand but it takes time to realize save the children, care, can and doris some of this. it is not that they are parts of the military but they will take money for good reasons to deliver humanitarian assistance.

they will be terrified about another civil war and will not want it to happen again. therefore it is very convenient to believe those in there taking the money know what they're doing. it is convenient to endorse the counterterrorism strategy because that is where the money comes from. the president of afghanistan said to me and we must be the number one terrorist threat in the world. i said why the of to be number one? because of not we will not get any money and treated like sub-saharan african country. this is the way that the curiosity works to create a situation where someone like me who is a critic is the

sale by could well meaning businessmen whose think i am on the side of the taliban and the women who think i endorse a bunch of terrorists and intellectuals who think they have to fly to pakistan from all the major nonprofit organizations to think i read to a mass exodus of funding that is a catastrophe. before you get to anywhere near in manufacturing. thank you. >> hello. could you talk about something i struggle with very much. a lot of people who did not get heard but felt that the time when the u.s. went back into afghanistan that it was a mistake. but now that we're there and have made a huge mess come is the answer too simply

have meant a complete failure to pull everything about whereby you may really damage the afghans to our left behind? i worked on the border with that in between period when the u.s. had abandoned them before they went back and and it is not a simple thing. but then what you do to get out of the mess? >> this is the central question which is raised by many people who love afghanistan and the answer is we don't have the answer. we can make up stories and what i'd like to say is with some luck we could achieve a

situation in by keeping 10 o or 20,000 soldiers we could decrease the likelihood of war and political settlement to create a situation where al qaeda could not harm the united states but we should also have political sentiment and a regional solution. but and it is very big, and none of it is guaranteed and are so difficult to achieve. it does not make sense norah does it make sense of the moral obligations to the world to continue to keep $125 billion per year. not to say that we don't care but 40 or 50 other

countries we need to think about. if we are worried about terrorism or simply human suffering or mystery. we cannot allow ourselves to feel a sense of obligation of which we're not improving but in the end we need to be able to say in 2015, we have been in the country 14/15 years. we have given it our shot we will start coming down and a sensible and moderate way and to contain the situation but treat afghanistan and the way we treat other countries from around the world will not imagine

because this is an existential threat we have to keep that presence. we have to do the things the united nations struggle to do. >> talk about money earlier. why so much? i know this united states 100,000 through $1 million for a less than a mile of road spirit the price has gone up. >> why so much? [laughter] >> because you bring that amount of money and you distort everything. every afghan that comes and inflation is spiraling the economy theoretically growing some approach 67% annual growth.

this is insane. but the entire taxation revenue is less than $1 billion per year. put another way, we're spending every year in afghanistan just to train the national army 12.$5 billion. just on training. the entire revenue to have a one month training course. if you start to do that you do that without results. >> you did say you felt it was a failure but also those accomplishments with regard to the health clinic and also noted the end goal was to create good gender sensitive multi-ethnic

centralize state based on democracy, in human rights and rule of law. was that achieved? [laughter] >> suppose same next week number 10 is on the phone to talk about a job in the government. just assume. [laughter] given what you have done in your interest what said of responsibilities would you be hoping they had in mind for you? [laughter] >> and ed is day harmful question. [laughter] i love running things and one of the things i loved is organizing things i was obsessed with management. i would like to have a go

but my biggest dream of all would be to rebuild and with the unthinkable we have three staff who could speak the afghan language of 350 people. at of policy in london not a single staff member would never been to afghanistan. the institution has gone bad. too much with management best practice less and less influence on language, knowledge, . >> good luck. [laughter] >> you spoke about many of the ways the motion has changed the current policy do know how that may dissuade us from the current path?

>> this is a wonderful question. one answer is if you could rebuild the state department who really did have deep expertise, and you found ways to listen and enable and promote to give them space, that is one important assistance but also to shift people's views of what these adventures are about. herein is an analogy. i think intervening is not the scientific process not like the rand corporation how many troops and how many here climb?

if somebody is stuck at the top of the mountain and you send a team to get them, it is like intervention there is some things you can do to prepare. you can have the pact, map, water, second, th ere is some dangers you can avoid that if you suddenly find a the frost is slippery you can work your way around that. but there is a whole set of dangers you cannot predict or avoid. fear it is an avalanche you cannot predict that or avoid it. the most important thing is to know then if you are a fire man or policemen and risk-taking you do not applied a fireman for the being blindly to go when two

of building or the policemen to go in front of a car. the basic deal should be intervention you will do your best to stop the humanitarian catastrophe but acknowledged something may happen when you hit the ground. said guy is stuck up there and that is what gets you killed. that a key message is to try to move back to be prudent. >> we have five minutes. >> let's ask three in a row. >> i want to take this in a slightly different direction in regard to air of spring

regarding libya you advise your commission and to not allow any combat boots on the field and the international community felt guilty said it could stop the troops from the gilts and the fear if we do not take action against gaddafi to be against the people so what this europe five ase? >> i will take that. >> >> by the way 10 years involved in afghanistan the first time was in the '80s but not making $500 per month excuse may not $500 a day.

i'm blind to complement that transferring power us soon as possible. the one fellow in afghanistan who did that superb this the special forces of the kandahar province that once he succeeded billion made to empower the tribes, and the other detachment area as. and was yanked out sent to iraq and the scene was broken up. one year ago "the washington post" said he was bringing in with the gates endorsement of everybody says this is the great thing but check with my special forces contacts in the bar. [laughter] none of that seems to have

filtered down this requires a detachment commander to be there not what the hell did you do before last year type of thing. have you heard of the strategy of one tribeca time? and what is happening that you can detect and is that a way to salvage with much less troops? >> thank you very much for explaining things because the matter how much until we understand that we are nowhere near the solution. on the fear and the gilts which was after the capture of bin laden which was the perfect vacation to deal with of the year and the gilts why did they realize to go back? >> that is a lovely question to end on.