the brain goes as clickers goes. all connected. [laughter] good afternoon. welcome to the heir taj foundation and our lewis auditorium and and welcome those

on our heritage.org website and joining us on c-span booktv in the future. those here in house we would ask that courtesy check that our mobile devices of various sorts have been silenced or turned off. for those watching online you're welcome to sending questions or comepts at any time simply e-mailing us at speaker at heritage.org and, of course, we'll post the program on our heritage home page for your future reference as well. welcoming our guest today and leading our program is dakota woods senior register fellow for defense proposal and our center for national defense. mr. woods served nation for decades in u.s. marine corps. including service strategic analyst for the marine corps. and assignment at the assessment upon retirement he helped organize national bioviolent department of home lapd security effort for five years had he served as a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessment after which had he was a strategist for the

u.s. marine corps. special operations command. join me and welcoming dakota wood. dakota. [applause] a real pleasure enhave dr. krainl from carlisle we took the fastest run he's ever made to d.c. so we're glad that -- to have a lesson interruptful but biographical information and take just a moment of has time to are go over his background. it's -- it's remarkable. currently serves as chief of historic services at the army heritage education center up in carlisle bareic and you can see a trend here served as strategic studies institute for several years from work college from 2000 to 2003 where he also held

the general douglas macarthur chair of research. also held vandenberg chair for college so interested to have somebody's both an expert historian and land power and air power and being able to talk about intersection of both. all of this followed a 6-year career in the u.s. army. concluded with nine years as a professor of history of u.s. military academy and hold bachelor degree from military academy and then masters in degree from stanford, university and general staff college and a u.s. army war college by my account authored 11 book or monograves since year 2000. i don't know whether hobbies you might have. but -- >> rest assured. okay. we have at least 11 of them. civil war, world war ii vietnam and most recent work on reprizing and historic stuff and a putting in modern context from strategy and environments within

which that fold here in modern day context it was maimed one of "newsweek" people to watch in 2007. for his leading work in leading the team that authored f and 3 -- 24 on that army title to it. but i ignore this retired marine. november 2008 named international archivist of the foundation and just recently here in 2016, the select to receive the society of military history samuel elliot morrison prize for a lifetime contribution to the field of military history so a real pleasure to have mr. crane with us and look forward to your insight on where we've been and where we're at, and possibly where we're going and encountered stability operations. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. you know, it's aen your seat belts i have 30 slides to go through, and leave time for questions. i've got -- what i'm trying to do is not

satisfy so buy copies of the book and it is a lot cheaper out there than i can it so i highly recommend it is really good deal out there. this is a -- image of the book the also picture there is actually outside the embassy in baghdad that was sign struck me as fairly interesting gave a sense of the atmosphere over there. i often wondered who was walking in embassy drinking while they were armed. reason how i got into this, the term -- you remember aware cassandra was a figure from greek methodology to never get hurt and i got involved in a number of things in the early -- early years of millennium the red one on the riffs a piece i did avoiding vietnam where i talked about army spongs to vietnam which was not to learn how to fight wars better but to figure out how to avoid these kind of wars. and i close in 2002 with a plea

that we need to revisit counterdoctrine, the one on the left because of work and instability operation put in war with a college came up with a plan to rebuild iraq for mayor of baghdad this is in late 2002 when army thought therm going nb charge of redestruction and day we finished a report was day that secretary roosevelt created the humanitarian affairs under jennifer garner and sent to the people to the applicant planners in kuwait and used it to develop their plan and we know how that came out and we became much more famous for being ignored than we were for the plan wof done if people would have paid attention to it. because of that, when the time came to rewrite the doctrine -- my west point classmate asking me to be in charge to do that . what general petraeus and also

for the marine corps. we're really fortunate at this time in the -- in the history of those two services that they could pull two of the war and put them in position where they could really revise the training education for the services to bring they m into 21st city on war fight and general petraeus was the engine of change, which is a -- you know the idea is that you sending people out to the field you get your lessons -- as fast as you can and you bring them back into the training society and get them to collect them into training and doctrine i used to tell people you can see my position and engine of change i used to tell people i was one toots on one cog and dave is engine of change. i can call him dave as a classmate. but there were -- we had a number of arguments during the -- during development, doctrine we knew who the boss and i won a fw but not as many as he did. but again the whole idea that we're going to create a learning

organization for modern warfare he and general mattis doing that for the marine and army. it was atip it call process to develop this doctrine that was light speeds for anyone deal requesting military doctrine are. a lot of it because we have general petraeus as a champion we went around bureaucratic avenue to get it done but also a big tengt we called it a big tengt with a number of contradict tores from all over world involved in this. it was a joingt army marine effort a true effort each chapter had a army marine core author for it. we had a -- human rights as one of the major sponsors initial vetting conference she contradicted to manual as well and people gave us stuff people from academia. the media when we have our major vetting conference with jim there, and george pac or, you know tom is involved in some of the early stuff we tried to get

a lot of people involved in give ing us their ideas on how to better fight these kind of wars. we have a lot of help from think tanks, rand -- a number of others like that who also gave us their input. but in the end it was going to be the army and marine corps. authors who really sat down and figured out final form of this and general from officers i'll talk about this. general petraeus read every word that we did. she was the last guy to look out before it went out for general review for the forces. i still have pstd over what i call petraeus pronoun so if they use the phrase this is or it is -- you have to be real -- real sure what the this is or it refers back to. i have precedent nightmares about some of this stuff. but that tell its this this story say i'm not hard, yeah, you are.

the intent of the manual was to be applicable to anywhere and any time -- but the 2006 version especially ended up being shaped very much by iraq not just because he knew he was imponing to iraq because most of the inputs from krittics from soldier and marines out in the field giving us their ideas was shaped very much by iraq. so the 2006 version of the doctrine when you see it you have to understand this is very much a manual aimed at iraq. but details most of you may be made aware of these -- how it was different from a normal focus and in combat was population center. you have to protect the population first, an even people need to main goal is legitimate governorring authority you have to kill and capture people there's still a lot of force involved. but you have to be careful how you apply it in a mo somedayic war that differs valley and city to city and a you're not going

to win in military alone. you can't, general said you can't kill yourself to victory in these kind of wars. this takes a team effort with not only your own but also with the -- with the -- the home -- the host nation that has got to win a lot of its own war as well. intelligence gathering is more cull cherl angt apology in these kind of wars you have to understand how society, economies work and how politics, gender role a very different kind of intelligence process and you have to think all campaign design is and illustrate here in a second unlike old day when is i came into the army in the 70s, i knew who the enemy was. enemy was the next -- soviet motorized it over the hill maybe going back to those days not quite sure. but in the -- basically way they fought the war was beat along soviets, second an you nuke them and mod wars you don't know who the enemy is.

first step before the plan is figure out what's my problem set, a different kind of warfare so you have to have this process called campaign design which we introduced in which is now -- involved in all our doctrine. you've got to -- you're fighting a set of enemies not an enemy so you have to dig aggregate enemy and how to deal with each ore e-one differently. perception and what people think you do is more important than what you do in many cases. so you have to manage information and big -- dominant theme of the whole doctrine -- was learn and adapt. you have to learn to adapt faster than your enemy did. the dominant approach was clear hold build i'll talk about in in a little bit. it's expensive, time consuming but very effective and line of efforts which i'll illustrate here in a second. and again a point i'll make later of what is called counterinsurgency is modern warfare as much as we may not like it it is not going away because modern warfare is not

going away. this is where i talk about line of effort and modern war fire in a diagram what you've got is you've got -- a whole set of operations going out. not just combat operations. it is also developing those nations security forces, developing essentially restoring essential services. developing good governess, and also economic development. this is all a part of what it takes to be victorious these kind of wars because you're trying to change people's attitudes. you're trying to get more people to support the government than don't. this is not hearts and minds coin. artsz and minds get so it is a social society approach how you make everybody love you. we realize when we're doing doctrine there are other parts of the anatomy you have to grab sometimes to get people tods what yowpght them tods. so there's a bunch of cohearsive things you do as well as you use carrot and stick both. you want to change peoples

'behavior but most support the governing authority and everything is wrapped in information operations. everything you do has an information reaction. you've got to deal with that as well. so this is -- this is modern warfare in a simple diagram. way it looks on the ground this is a general mattis plan and province when he came in with the marines early in the iraq campaign. and he goes to move out and he had identified his problem set as three different enemies. three different insurntle cities when we were doing the doctrine never sure who we're talking about insurgent, but there was a tribal with the sunni tribes. there was a baptism from all of the people we threw out but they have to -- in 2003 and then there was i grew up from al qaeda, the foreign fighters -- and the idea was you have to deal with each of those prattly

that sunni tribes wanted to get back in society so attracted with jobs. baptist want to get back into the government and be with some political compromise. the foreign fighters they have to be killed or captured. eventually as we know what happens inprovince we get sunni tribes who kill al qaeda guys they turn. we turn the tribes it that come over to our side and -- about they help us take out the foreign fighters. that's way these kind of war tengd to go. now we have a number of battles within -- we have internal battles and external battles to try to get this doctrine done. one of them is numbering manual. manual set them 3 -- 24 initial memory for the manual was f mp3 -- 22, which meant it was the 22nd category under stability operations. we got in, and i showed up, i said this is among the team we talked about -- and we said this is difnlgt

because of the level of violence involved and we felt it need its own category. so to the director at fort leavenworth i said i want to change the number on the manual like a monkey walked into the vatican and asked the pope to rearrange the old testament it was mass panic. whole doctrine system will collapse if you change this number. [laughter] two weeks later -- general petraeus had had the same idea and i guess they thought thought about it for two weeks because when he made discussion it was a great ideas are. so the number changed. we also this is only manual you'll find in the u.s. government inventory that has a reference bibliography of civilian works civilian reading that implied government endorsement of civilian published works. again, that was the lawyer told us that, but when general petraeus asked they gave him a different answer so we have a reference to bibliography it in 324.

reading level -- army doctrine are is written normally at 8th grade reading level because idea is that it is going to be read quickly and absorbed quickly. the argument i made was that this is being for bah battalion staff and above and read a harder text so it is reading is up 12th grade level i think is where it ended up. so good it has been used as a college text an at the number of university a number of professors complain when manual got revised in 2014 that they were losing their best textbook and didn't want to change it and gives breaks. the opt it is that was a big debate eventually got resolved because of the mccain feingold bottom line is there was congress passed the regulations, the rules for it. another army manual became standard for it so we didn't have to deal with it because it was a real, tough not to deal with and a big keact with human

rights on that when we wrote manual and eventually decided we would not allow any gray areas in any kind of morality no torture, no waterboarding -- then man yule basically took a hard line on that and reenforced by what congress came up with. the air power appendix i decided we need it and air power because that got to understand the air roll better, marines didn't want to do it. i kind of force it on people's throats we wanted to get the air force involved in a -- air force didn't care until we start to get publicity and then they write and pose their own appendix and first thing they talked about was the air force controlling all air power. if you want to get marines trolling off the ceiling tell them you're going to that i can their airplanes away we have to do a basically a referee between air force and marines other how that would be. in the end, leans are probably right we probably end up doing more harm than good with the air force still -- i'm kind of anti-christ for putting them in the appendix and lucky they got that.

they got that if marines get their way but air force interested in this and done pretty good things since. same problem with the army intelligence center they were uneasy with our social cultural intelligence, and even which wily got them to come onboard but delayed manual two months and delayed by that ravel peters had a chance to write nasty editorial called manual wimpy and other things. petraeus approach if you bring it out, and draw them into the mix -- that a big debate between ralph and steve referee, we change 7 sentences in the manual. 7 sentences but that was good enough so when manual came the in december ralph peters called it most improved publication in the last decade. [laughter] but at the time the manual came out he actually supported it. in the last one was the paradox this was my idea to put the manual which is actually -- now a nato manual continued through doctrine to get peel to

realized this is a different kind of war you have to think about a different and there are some -- dilemma you have to fix and how you use force and conduct it. first one sometimes in order to protect your force you can't lock yourself in a base you can't be a ffabit you have to patrol an take some risk. you have to provide people security and they have to see you out there. you know, sometimes the more force you where use is used less effective it is it doesn't pay to five to backlash and createses 50 more you have to be careful how you do that. sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. some of the best weapons for coin do not shoot and ballot and dollars are more effective than bullets and bombs and if tactic work this is week it might not work next week and in this prorches may not in the next. why not? what is your enemy doing? they're learning and dapghting too the bastards you have people involved in war an they're continuing to change.

so you ever got to -- understand that if you something works mow it might not work in the next swirl is lag. enemy will department and when they find a good tactic in iraq it shows up in afghanistan a month later. the enemy is communicating as well a learning dapghting kind of war you've got to be in. the last one -- most important decisions are not made by generals who has the last say? the generals so they change that. but at least they kept it in and they change most of the many -- but again i'll get to another point later that -- it might revision my thoughts about this process after watching the doctrine many in action. that's really not right either that most important decisions are not made by any soldier at all. criticism a lot of people didn't like the doctrine. [laughter]

write an article called military malpractice way to do the way they did it against russians -- you have to make the people fear you more than they do -- the insurgent and enemy centric sz peters number of people say that i was surprised they got invited to give a precious at nyu, and i walk into the conference an they didn't tell me the name of the conference. the campus is new imperialism. i didn't realize i was doing that. to be honest but some see this as brutal and the way for the -- way to continue an they argue that civil wars are different and there are differences but also a lot of similarities and if there are kind of wars -- there's some said that there was too much mow in the doctrine and al qaeda used malice doctrine

but we have to still understand language he uses but most influential arguments have been impossible and dangerous ones with a record out there that war college argue that united states can't do coin because it always takes too long and we don't have the patience. political culture can't think beyond four years our society loses -- attention span of 30 seconds and army doesn't want to do this kind of war anyway so therefore we should not fight them and regard argument because we're going to lose. dangerous argument which was won in the argument which was that if we fobs too much on coin we're going to lose the conventional skills that are much more poargt and make our leaders much too overconfident always expensionive and takes long time and that argument is one now the washington where are defense planning guidance now says we will not do any kind of large scale stability option in the future. and we can hope --

this also one -- one service that will remain unnamed who is argued there's not enough air power in the doctrine. [laughter] that's -- charlie dunlap with his writings. now, of course petraeus takes this to iraq and one of the shaping influences for the surge. you have to understand that there's not just a surge there are surgets with petraeus and demilitary operations around baghdad there's also this is what i got from general petraeus he said i need four. military surgery surge, political war, american political will and civilian surge. you have the military surge. the announce of the of the surge created a surge in iraqi political will especially in the province and other places. most of the changes in anbar happen before troops get there and people turn against al qaeda but a lot of that i talked to iraqis a lot of that happened because they knew we were coming in for the long haul and worst thing you can do is announce

surge with a deadline. because what that does it takes away any incentive from the people supposed to help you're trying to help that stay with you because you're telling them they're going to lose and bad guys rngts going to it leave. so the surge and president bush announcement of support reenforce urge many in iraqis to rise up against al qaeda also you have the -- richard that change political debate from -- the candidates of how we're going to get out of o iraq we can and exploit the surge. and to be honest as naive at the time the doctrine itself was a major -- information weapon. sent out to college and major leaders and convinced army to fight this kind of war and convinced our enemies we knew how to also. so i didn't realized at the time i creating this massive information weapon but turned out to do that. and civilian tactical level we

get that because petraeus gives tome to commanders an says you take care of them and belong to you which is -- take care of military coordination and never did get the rate help he needed even though he and ambassador try best they could to make due with the resources they had and republican worked together joined at the hip. really terrific team petraeus and crocker they could have used more help from the rest of the inner agency. a lot of reasons for the excessive awakening iraqis tired of violence sunni realize they were losing. the competence of everybody al qaeda inseptember and antagonized the ambari to rise up against them, and again we with lose it all when we pull out in 2011. the gains get lost we were the glue of the mosaic peace the war --

and wasn't just a military but diplomats we pull them out as well that breaks down this -- peace that was achieved by really by about 2,000 mine. quick operation an iraq this is mandatory i know general petraeus picture this is his palace in baghdad 50*eu78 in the middle. that's dave on -- the left john was dave's liaison with the embassy. this is on the left there ricky gibbs i ran into in south baghdad. he had a brigade with ten battalion and a occupation zone of 1.25 million iraqis. this is a colonel that is a division sized element. the whole command strer in iraq was strange of you have divisions who were cored and brigade that were really divisions. massive occupation zone and opening up a hospital in the middle of iraqi hoping a hot in

south baghdad that's general david, next to him who was the -- going to be director of the army staff over on the trip with us. and i was there in the -- in october, november of '07 but in the night go right? and into south baghdad. one of the petraeus initiative was small combat outpost in 100 soldiers here pism talking with a chain that is guy with cabbage and a john henry in charge of that, with of that particular outpost and at the end of the table is mike the brigade commander and steve who are making a tour for petraeus to see how the doctrine is operates they have combat outpost and head up with these --

rise of the son of iraq these militia groups rise up around outpost to fight against al qaeda. the -- second fern from et left there is -- chief -- shake saaba shows up to run the local militia. he said he was nco i watched him operate i don't know he was in the iraqi army. but basically he became organizer of the -- local militia i'm outside the photo request the captain taking this picture and he turned to me an he said you know sir i can swear those guy were shooting at me two months ago. i said captain qk welcome to counterinsurgency that's the way it goes for the iraqi government -- the ministry in rasks big problem with sectarianism. you have to learn to identify

your friends as much as your enemies. we had bigger intelligence packets on our friends than enemies you have to know who you can trust and breaking up sectarianism many in industry is a big problem in iraq. we did really good training iraqi army. until -- maliki took leaders away after we left. but i think that was a police but we did better. this is general ha sane who reform ares qed national police and fires brigade and secretary shiite replaces them with moderate leaders, national police are real asset but when we left -- and when maliki after we left in threrch the first thing maliki did was take general and put him in charge of border post and one back in charge of the national police replace and put old commanders back in and national police went back and confidence

the way it was before we were there. we also did interesting things at buka at the -- cone behind the wire and 10,000 detainees that i was there. about 5,000 irreconcilable a lot to weigh with and a part of the camp that was very dangerous. but general stone major general stone a marine general there within of the startest guys i ran into and a lot of smart guys -- set up a program what you would do is you -- teach the moderate prisoners here how to read. you bring in a moderate to reach the qur'an and moderate form of islam and give them job skills. and eventually release them back to tribe to pledge with tribal leadser to stay local to the government. also some legal stuff involved in there as well but when i was over there they sent back and

released a little over 2,000 prisoners like that. two had come back -- and any prison in america would love that rate like that. but the process of working very well and it was interesting one of the -- one of the people there said they were firing moderate missiles back into iraqis society. this was a purpose was program. we have to help change lower iraqi legal system. iraqi legal system bakely based on cohearse confession the way trial ran to beat people up until they confess and this person trying to prove their confession wasn't true. we have to teach them a new iraqi courtroom -- and we have to set up a whole series of those over there -- to speed up the process of prisoners once they got they have to get their cases heard and get them and get them resolved and in a right amount of time. one of the problems general stone was found iraqis that had been detained longer than the --

not to trial yet but longer detained because they hasn't the goen to trial yet. we also did things for barrier and movement. a lot of sectarian -- a lot of ethnic divide, sectarian divide in iraq we imposed for security. baghdad was a much more -- gears city but we have to impose and we must use half of the world concrete in iraq for security it's all over the place and iraqis painted this one. after those wires above that that's the iraqi power grid. interests top wire if you want to screw up electricity people give people free electricity and then eight hour hads day of free electricity but once that ran oillet, those wires, those other wires wrapped around foal there are all wires to local generator operator, and so baghdad was -- was powered 24 hours day just --

a lot of time was by these local generator operates making money hand over fist but then consider that a real job. asked them what do i want from the government and you're making money and it is not what the government -- that's centralized economies the mindset they impose on people, we have to learn to accept local solutions -- this is a place called near pasra a meeting with the local -- the local -- counsel in the front there that's the sunni and shiite how well everything was here and how they have reconciled themselves and how everything was great and wanted people to buy their oranges -- so they did preeshts the fact that there was a british unit right nearby to help revise -- and we had to learn to let the iraqis develop their own solutions oftentimes they weren't, they were real what we would have done and often slower

and often more complex. but worked for them -- much better than imposed solutions we tried to put on them. and again we talk about total withdraw and if you're going to get success and intervention it always takes long time. it never never takes two or six months but it takes 20, 30 years -- my big example is korea. 30 years after 1953 and really -- what we would call a -- functional democracy to appear -- we were the glue that held together local cease-fires. not just soldiers diplomats as well. and actually there was a reaction against the -- new administration community in 2009 they told ambassadors that crocker was to petraeus and needed to bar in independence that cause problems in iraq and afghanistan. we know that -- you know the country is we know what's beginning on over there and i would argue this is

foreign policy and not counterinsurgency it was not aloud to be finished but it takes a long time. this is ideal transition how military intervention supposed to work. military goes in with ally there's a turnover point so organization -- and they a eventually this is ideal this is way people talk about in washington. and eventually civilian organizations hands over responsibility to the indigenous organization and return to the community of nations. the ideal situation we reare store reality this is the way it really happens. bottom line is you're a wish bone quarterback, and military and you take the bone and turn around there's nobody else -- you're stuck with it. and then when it works, it works because military maintains responsibility for major resources and governess nadia has a recent book and art of governess illustrates this even better than i can with a chart. bottom line is -- the military if you're going to be successful in military is

good, major responsibility for these interventions for many years. this is just a chart i'll leave this with the heritage foundation that can post it somewhere, i would add from you i got this chart from an army agency and degree with members but bottom line trying show if we're going to consolidate beyond conflict military is going to be there for a long time. and you can -- the amount of success we have -- is directly proportion gnat to how well the military stays there. no i perfect we have a number of things wrong when we did this new doctrine first one was documental process is upside dun and start with a national security strait ji that gives you gold of the nation and then military execute them, and then joint doctrine out of military force and service doctrine to approach the problemset. we did it upside down. army marine corps. got ahead of everybody an we develop the doctrine, which drove everybody else to develop it -- and many ways became a --

substitute nor gnarl security strategy and fill a national security vacuum and never designed to do that but a operational manual. pulling it a way that not a strategy. and it got oversold that respect john criticism of accurate coin was oversold is not an end coin is a way to achieve an engtd and somebody else has to set up where ends are. as i say on here most important decision is made by politicians and voters not generals. they set them. military had no say in iraq or afghanistan and form of government or who was going to lead it. clear hold and build takes a lot of time, resources with need to provide lower resource ways to successfully execute coin and we did not. the other big maybe the biggest mistake made was assumption that goal of the host of the nation of leaders supporting the same as ours. and we found them both in iraq and afghanistan that is not

true. often time we're working to cross purposes, and it is always difficult to get the people who were supporting to do what we think they need to do especially when that seems to threaten their power. and that we got badly wrong in the 2006 version of the doctrine. now i want to make some observations on modern war -- open, open it up to some questions -- and these kind of wars conflict termination become very, very complex when you're fighting against a set of memes and no one individual in control, it makes ending these conflict v., very difficult. best way is manage them and violence and never get everybody to agree on the same thing. we have a lack of a ability with americans i tell it to the u.s. government like a giant fiddler crab with you know giant claw with a department of defense.

and little teeny claw that says the inner agency. that is -- you can fit all of the foreign service officers -- in the state department on one aircraft carrier one fully manned aircraft carrier more on that than fs organization and state department. because of this lack of capability mission creep for the military is always a self-inflicted wound you're going to do more than than military anxious. and pick up other things to do especially in a violent situation where civilian agencies aren't equipped to deal request that but they have to pick up more responsibility and nontraditional realm even though -- defense planning guide says we won't. decapitation a reason we don't bomb emperor palace in tokyo in world war ii because we figure emperor involved in the war. be careful who you kill some you have to be prepared to talk to it and don't want to kill them

all and decapitation makes more enemies. you have to be careful how you do that. general says -- grow out of american you have to build american gun that's self-evaluate and you have to -- you can't do that with force but get people to change behavior with force but that takes a different approach. i talked about this friends and those enemy -- if you say in a regular war you think you're winning you might be if you're think you're losing you definitely are. this is a key one for those of us who like long range precision strike who control the ground and patrols message. one of the biggest problems we have is actually not the i was a with this but special operations forces. or go in and do a deep strike and leave collateral damage and enemy gets to spend these way that information gets rent who had controls the ground controls the message. and again special forces and my view is succumb to direct action

used to be counterininsurgency and you get to kill somebody you get a special forces guy. that's completely reverse from the way it used to be. i think we food a better balance. and for internal defense and assistance this revise and assist role is important mission but be nobody really accounts to do it. an we're still fighting one year wars or four month or seven month war i've heard from the army 12 months is as far as you can go from marines and seven months months is limit in air force and four months. in these kind of wars longevity countings and you have to have long or tours. i know there's some arguments about stress and other things, but personal relationships are important and can't establish those this in four months. precision not always the answer but nice to hammer somebody i love b52s sometimes they're useful not always.

and there are two forms of warfare asymmetric and -- but that's true. if nobody is going to fight us exactly the way we fight and to be honest we're the most asymmetric of all nobody can fight like us. we have to understand when we're studying warfare but it is the rest of the world how they fight i'm not sure if that is the right term to use. last one dilemma again u.s. military intervention will always be long and a costly hain octave and political leaders honest about that from the start. don't hold your breath. but we always say interventions are short if they're effective they never are. that's because you can't do counterinsurgency doesn't mean you should but that's buzz you say you're doing counterinsurnght city doesn't mean you are. in my view never done it in afghanistan. and never committed resources to

it and never developed we develop a strait ji until 2009 and been will for eight years. made by politicians and great quote from the j3 one of the operations officers under -- general petraeus in iraq i don't know and this is not iraq i don't know if we have the wrong form of government for the wrong people in it. describing our problem in iraq you think about both of those very complex problems -- and neither of them neither the military or responsibility really. and again, what we -- label as counterinsurgency is modern war amongst the people. and i got a whole lot of frequent flyer models out of it. involved in a project with a nato partnership for peace. where we have developed an exportable counterinsurgency curriculum to partner for peace nations there's a list of 35

nations that want to get it. and i've been told i will will get first call on the -- being on teaching team to go to all of these places so i look at list of 35 nations none are france or britain or places like that. they're not exactly guard garden spots i have to work on that. i've been nigeria. a lot of people interested and there's this sort of stuff but they have considerably big problems that work with the deal with and their different situation. my last point i'll make for dan roper who is over here in the audience who was one of the guys contributed it latter part of this effort we've never been able to never do this again. you can work on semantics of that but never been able to never do this again and defense planning guidance says, no long-term stability option no long-term coin. we have said that before, we said it after vietnam. you know, one of the -- i dedicate the book to -- young man who was killed in in

iraq and one of the purposes of the book is to make sure that when we do it again we will do this again that we do it better. so those are -- that finishes my prepared remarks and present most useful thing i have from the marines from this -- from this whole process. this neat slide about questions. [laughter] actually got a lot of great ideas for marines but they gave me this slide as well so open to the audience for any questions you might have. thank you very much. also broadcasting this to stay who you are and -- talk into the microphone. [inaudible conversations] let me ask you to elaborate are on that last point we will do this again. we will do it wrong an we won't stay long enough. are there lessons for how the army particularly can design themselves to basically have a crumple zone built in? we're going to be, you know, those fools will send us out and

again and not let us finish it and dot best we can and then pull us out. are there ways that u.s. army can be designed, you know, to be damaged tolerance, so to speak, and to do the best it can conceivably do given those constraints? >> steal a term from steve -- and it's a lousy bumper sticker but we need mediocrity and point there is conventional power of the american military is -- it is the hammer that gives us capability we can't lose that conventional hammer and fear that endangers opponent. at the same time, as one of my students observed at the work college this past semester, we have a -- an army and military that is designed to win nation battle not to win the nation's war. win nation wars you have to do all of other stuff so question is how do we want to design a military that win nation wars that means other capable which

is get beyond the conventional into govern and economic government all of those thing and it, obviously, needs a robust more robust inner agency and needs an army that is more willing to go into these things so -- when i talk about army mediocrity that means we have to have -- swiss army knives as general perkin calls them sol swrers to be prepared to turn mind set like general petraeus and said you're president of mosul university you have to reestablish that and this -- artillery colonel has to get people to figure out how to do that. it's -- it's, i mean, in many ways army is a big readiness kick we have to be ready for a lot of things and i -- thing i would add to readiness and general has a nice list of things that are important to readiness but one that needs to be added is intellectual readiness and immediate to train

our leaders to be intellectually agile to change missions to do these sort of things in a mindset willing to do them. it's -- you know we're trying to set up advise in precyst mission to do these better but we have so much force structure. and even with things like these regionally aligned units and forces set up question is is who does the second rotation. because these things always tack a long time so you have a long force it can do a lot of things and it's a tough, tough question to answer, i love to say more but we know budget problem with that, and all of the other problems we've got -- so i think the only real viable answer is we have got to have a agile force able to shift and train up for the missions they have and be prepared to learn to adapt and be agile that's not a real good answer but one that we have to live with. >> goldman --

can you talk about operate oing in the native language both in the media and can you just mention about the swiss army soldiers -- teaching ground troops in this case arabic. >> it is a dilemma -- one of the things that came out of our -- work was human terrain tome and a key player in all of our stuff. our cultural anthropologist and generate this idea that we need -- teams that go out to help us understand the culture and i ended up poxed too much on the anthropologist and said the ants apology. language is tricky if you give a soldier a month or two in arabic that won't be useful but you need real arabic speakers, that's a real process and i

think of services that army does the best at the foreign program, and developing people who really experts in areas that are never enough of them. but i think we need to expand that program a bit you have the important of cultural intelligence is -- under better but back to longevity you have to live with them to really understand them. >> infantry company they sent one person away for six months or so -- to work on arabic. and problem of the american army has is middle east is one theater of many, and i know there are attempts in regional align unit that focus all over the world. israel had advantage of being focused on a much smaller area but good yd. i know we're trying to do more of that but a lot of missions an places and while we've got so many people to deal with it. but those are good ideas,

though. >> dr. crane in the heritage foundation you talk about a very big tengt and i remember in your book you mentioned not just a conference room but actually like a meeting hall with over 100 people from different organization and did you -- now do you now have any regrets about the size of the group that you had to deal with to produce this manual? >> no, in fact, i would argue for anybody accounts to do a project this is a great model of how to do it and basically what happens is -- when first general petraeus -- november of 2003 i want to draft january but i said would you so negotiate to february. and then i had to get to marines to get everybody together but he said okay we talked about it and said when we get done with the draft bring a smart group of 30 to rake it over coals and talk about it. okay great idea i want to pick

with the 0 30 people are are, so then they sent out invitation and people said we're going to sending invitation to assume that most of the people will say no. everybody wanted to be in on this and people was 150 and couldn't fit them in a room so we ended up with a big auditorium in fort leavenworth and a lot of groups say well divide them into -- divide them into working groups and i said no we have 150 smart people here and put in a room and talk about this stuff together. i have to say it is hardest intellectual thing i've ever did but i felt like i was mention in the book i was remastered to stars here. i was in the middle of all of the people trying to tile awflg this together. general when we did is brought in each chapter arthur to do a brief on the chapght i brought in somebody to critique it who i knew would be hard on it and discussion among audience and

then at the close of it we told audience i know you've got more -- more to send us, and send us stuff by e-mail and through the mail. and we got deluge with stuff for a month and steve from the work college was -- texting me for the whole period every thought he had he sent me a text on it. that was not a design of the -- that i wanted. but people, most people, i mean, the sewell brought in human right ares people they paid for them. harvard fade to bring these people here and they really generate the big debate over torture initially and when they unked that we agreed with them that open up the conference to open up, everybody is listened to here, and i have a big packet of stuff from them that incorporate manual we have a bunch of gyres with the smith brothers all sat in the back they gave us great stuff as well. we have stuff from steve and stuff from other -- work colleges stuff from other

services we have about -- a other country there and lead speaker was there was a brit and how bad merngs americans and petraeus had him start off the thing with his pitch. kind of like you know waving red flag in front of the bull to get everybody going. he knew that was his role. you get up there and he took shots and -- got things rolling. idea was to got people thinking to generate thought and i thought 150 in iraq having 150 people in the room worked fine. it was hard. i was completely exhausted at the end of the two days. by i think we got great stuff out of it. but again, i've gone to other conferences to take on 150 smart people and break them into work groups. i think you lose the power of the die signal whik you break them up into little groups like that. it was just me 150 people in here and having somebody over here, somebody over o here, and

different ideas -- i wish more time but vent afterwards and send afterwards the dynamic of flow and flow gog afterwards. but i thought that was great, great event. >> name is mike at hair age foundation my question is -- in the united states you have a capability to -- institute counterinsurgency in nation building with -- our force so spread out among all do we have resources or o ability to have a long process of -- nation building? >> tough question always a difficult one in the end host nations have a final solution so ideally have host nation do a lot of their own stuff iraq with oil money that would -- a potential there for iraqis to do a lot own their own. if we could have got them

focused better, afghanistan is different problem. afghanistan is resource wise that's a really dilemma i think you blame countries who -- said they would donate and did not -- now that's not just an american figure but a world figure at the afghanistan problem. get bottom line is to rely on hope you have indigenous resources enough to pick up some of the slack. we can't -- you know, just a careful balance and if you try to do too much host nation will never try to do anything so how do you balance doing their own capacity that's why one paradox is -- it is better at the host nation does something tolerably than you do really well because you want to train host nation to do it on their own is it's an interesting balance -- you know nation building is one of those very -- weighty terms a lot of baggage with it. you definitely want to -- improve capacity indigenous

capacity. but i don't think you can do -- i'm not sure if you can really build a nation you can do state building. you can build state capacity and state institutions but building nation is -- that takes generations i think. i'm not -- i don't like that term. [inaudible conversations] one more. rntion one back here in the back corner. wesley federalist society you mention that people on the ground control the message. i was wondering how do you determine that the american message has been solidified and accepted and -- when our goals are achieved and whether that's a good process that we lead to continue -- continually add to in the future. thank you. >> good question information operations are e coo aspect to all of this but i talked about fact that you have to get people have to understand what you've done. dilemma you have to have so many different audiences you have international audience.

you have your own audience at home and audience on the ground and own soldier and enemy soldiers and you have to get a message that is king the among all of those different elements. so it is really hard to coordinate and we don't have -- as a nation we don't have a real goods way to coordinate all of those messages. ...

>> no, you lied to me. you purposely lied to me. so you've got to be careful. that's some of the problems with interagency. usaid will go in and promise something from a contract, and you in the military get stuck with a result that doesn't get done. so the bottom line is it's a difficult problem. as a nation, we've got to think about it. how do we coordinate these messages across all different levels? and you've got to be persistent. general petraeus had a couple of tenets, never put lipstick on a pig, be honest when things go wrong, be first with the truth. so we've also got to be up front with these things. one of the big problems with who controls the ground controls the message is we'll go out and

like, for instance, we'll go, we'll trade a special forces raid in a village in afghanistan up in the mountains. and we have the raid, and then we withdraw them, and they're gone. and then we go to assess what happened, and we drive in the next day, and you're in your jeep, and you've got some media with you, and you drive into the village. there's some parts of afghanistan where their main form of economics is an excuse for damage. we don't say we did anything wrong. so we hope is up in this village -- show up in this village in afghanistan, and everybody's lined up along the road with their arms in a sling because they all got wounded, and they've all got aunt margaret buried in the backyard. so the media says, wow, you've got 45 wounded and 15 dead can ann margarets. the taliban is a master as soon as we have a raid, within an hour there's something up on the screen that shows dead babies and a blown-up mosque and that

sort of stuff. so you've got to be proactive. we have got to think about the information aspects of what we do before we do it and already have the information and response prepared. so the military, actually, if you get into a military planning cell, it's amazing the care we take on a lot of these operations. but that's not the same through the whole u.s. government. we don't investigate things as well as we should, as fast as we should. that's a problem at every level, not just on the ground. and the question is how do we, the united states, coordinate our message to an international arena all the way down to some villager we're telling in afghanistan and make sure it's consistent. >> okay. >> join me in appreciating dr. crane. [applause] we do have some books more sale. i will be buying one -- for sale. i will be buying one, and we also have some refreshments. thank you very much for attending and hope that you stay tuned to other events we have coming up on the calendar. thank you very much.

>> like i said, you won't find a better chief anywhere else. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup:

>> that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. and now here's author peter doran on the rise of the royal dutch company. >> like duran duran, except there's just one of me. [inaudible conversations] >> all right, folks, thanks for joining us today. [inaudible] we're really excited to have peter doran here -- [inaudible] more those of you who know peter, he works for --