MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. I’m pleased to be joined today by General David Petraeus to talk about his recent book, “Conflict,” which is a very timely discussion of conflicts since 1945 that has obvious applications to the ones that are going on now so painfully in Gaza and Ukraine.
General Petraeus, welcome to Washington Post Live. Great to have you back.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Good to be with you, David. Thanks.
MR. IGNATIUS: So congratulations on the book. Your co-author, Andrew Roberts, can’t be with us today. I devoured it, have a well-thumbed and annotated copy here, as did my father, who you know who’s a World War II veteran, former Secretary of the Navy, who wanted me to tell you how much he loved it.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, thank you.
MR. IGNATIUS: The theme that runs through your book is the importance of “getting the big ideas right.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard you use many times over the last 20 years. Before we get to the specific conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine to Vietnam, say just a word about the importance of the big ideas and strategic leadership that can implement them.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, the biggest takeaway from the book is that strategic leadership really matters. It often has a determinative impact on a particular conflict, and this is leadership at the very top. It’s the top civilian–president of the United States, prime minister of the UK, what have you–and then it is the battlefield commander, the theater commander, who has to figure out the right strategy, get the big ideas right to achieve the policy objectives established by the senior civilian.
In essence, in short, a strategic leader has to perform four tasks superbly if that side is to have a chance to prevail. You do have to get the big ideas right. You have to understand the context, all the various aspects, the friendly forces, enemy forces, geographic terrain, human terrain, neighborhood, all the elements that affect that particular conflict, get it, to understand it, not make it what you’d like it to be, but develop the strategy that is appropriate for it.
Again, get the big ideas right, then accumulate–then communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization, then oversee the implementation of the big ideas. This is what we normally think of as leadership, by the way. This is the example that a leader provides the energy, the inspiration. It’s how the leader spends his or her time. That’s crucially important. That’s how you drive the implementation of a campaign plan.
It’s the metrics that you use. We’ll talk, I’m sure, about Vietnam and how the enemy body count was a flawed metric. It was not the right metric, and then it also, of course, increasingly lacked integrity. It’s attracting great people, keeping them, developing them, allowing those not measuring up to move on.
And then there’s a fourth task that is sometimes overlooked, and that is where the leader has to sit down formally and with events’ action-forcing mechanisms on the battle rhythm, then enable the leader to determine how the big ideas need to be changed as the context itself changes, as there’s progress or setbacks or new developments and so on, so that the big ideas remain accurate, correct, and you repeat the process again and again and again.
But it all starts, as you noted, with getting the big ideas right, and if the leader doesn’t do that, the conflict has a pretty dim chance of being successful for that particular side.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let’s turn now to the horrible cockpit of real conflict, starting with the war in Gaza, and I want to put it to you as directly as I can. Is Israel getting the big ideas right in Gaza? One big idea obviously is destroying Hamas. Is that achievable? And second, is there a way to pursue that big idea, that big mission, without killing so many civilians? This is a question asked by a member of our audience, my friend Marc Lynch who asked me to put that to you directly. So speak about Gaza and the big ideas for the IDF.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, first of all, thanks for your great reporting. As usual, you went out. You were on the front lines. You went inside Gaza. You wrote some terrific pieces on that, that I think have been very informative.
Clearly, the biggest of the big ideas that has been established by Prime Minister Netanyahu is the need to destroy Hamas. That’s based on an assessment that Hamas is akin to the Islamic State. In other words, it is an extremist organization, a terrorist army, if you will, in the same way that the assessment was made about the Islamic state when it established the first-ever extremist caliphate in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria. Yes, that’s an imperfect analogy. There are elements of Palestinian nationalism undeniably wrapped up in this, but given the barbaric, horrific, unspeakable actions taken by Hamas that precipitated all of this, again, I think that is a reasonable assessment.
And by the way, also another big idea, to dismantle the political wing of Hamas, and of course, when we say Hamas, we’re also including Islamic Jihad, the junior partner, even if that’s not always–they’re not always acting completely in concert but also another extremist element in Gaza.
Two huge ideas. I do believe that the military can destroy Hamas. The question is whether there are some other big ideas, and I think that is correct. There should be additional big ideas.
One is that this should be approached from a counterinsurgency perspective, if you will, campaign rather than just a conventional military campaign so that you are concerned with the people. There should be a vision for the Palestinians that if we can separate Hamas from you, if we can eliminate them from your lives, your lives will be better and then demonstrate that.
You’ll recall–you made many visits to Iraq over the years, David, but particularly during the surge–when we set about clearing Ramadi, Fallujah, Baqubah, Mosul, all these enormous cities that had Sunni extremists–al-Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni insurgents–we communicated to the people that we wanted to get these extremist groups out of their lives, and their lives would then be better, and that they should help us do that or at least not impede it. And then we set about not only destroying al-Qaeda in Iraq but also improving their lives very significantly.
And I think there has to be a vision for the Palestinians post-Hamas in Gaza. If you are eliminating the political wing, that means you’re taking out the government. There’s going to have–they have to come to grips, and you know and I know that there is a lot of work going on not just in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but in Washington and other capitals and in the Gulf States to try to figure out who could administer Gaza. But I fear that there is not a–the ideal would be a Palestinian entity that is competent, capable, trustworthy. I don’t think that exists. It’s not on prepare-to-deploy orders in Ramallah, waiting to go over there, and ride in on Israeli tanks. So there’s going to have to be something else.
There don’t seem to be hands going up in the Arab world to take that on, and I fear that, again, in a world where all decisions, all options have shortcomings or are in a sense bad, that Israel may end up owning this. You’ll recall Secretary Powell and his pottery house rules–or Pottery Barn rules, “You break it; you own it.” And again, if you start thinking about that now, as you’re carrying out the campaign, that you’re going to not just clear and destroy, you’re going to clear and hold and then rebuild, I think you’ll come at the campaign in a different manner.
And I think also very incumbent, David, without question, to do all of this with absolute minimal civilian loss of life and keeping the damage and destruction to a minimum as well, because again, you’re going to have to get civilians back into their homes. You’re going to own this.
Now, if all of that is correct, then I think the approach will be modified in certain respects. To be candid, I would have liked to have seen al-Shifa Hospital, instead of closed down and the individuals sent elsewhere, actually built back up, use it and to use it to take care of what inevitably there are civilian casualties, while trying to keep them to a minimum, but use that hospital to actually take care of them and continue to secure it so that it can’t be re-infiltrated by the enemy. Again, you have to clear every building, room, cellar, tunnel, fighting an enemy, as you well know, that doesn’t wear a uniform, uses civilians as human shields, has hostages. At some point, we’ll tragically probably begin to see suicide vest wearers, suicide car bombs. This is a fiendishly difficult–in fact, Andrew Roberts, again, my co-author, and I assess this is the most difficult urban operation in that period that we cover from 1945 and today. The additional big ideas, I think, are important.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask pointedly the question that’s ahead, which is whether Israel can conduct its clear phase of this operation, rooting out Hamas, with a lower level of civilian casualties. That’s the message that Secretary Blinken took to Israel on his most recent trip and apparently forcefully made the point to Prime Minister Netanyahu, but from a military standpoint, is that realistic? How do you take down an entrenched enemy at a lower level of civilian casualties? Explain how you do that.
GEN. PETRAEUS: You do it with precise operations. In some cases, you’re going to have to put your soldiers at greater risk to achieve that, but it’s a very important–not just a desire. It’s an obligation, I think, and I think the Israelis recognize this, David. You noted Secretary of State Blinken’s very public encouragement of this. There presumably, apparently have been discussions privately between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu as well, other discussions with other individuals engaged. And I think we’ll see, as this does continue, that there will be increasing use of precision munitions, the way the operations are carried out and so forth. But it will mean that there may be greater risk to the Israeli soldiers than otherwise would be the case.
And of course, there’s always this tension in the laws of land warfare as well, to which Israel subscribes and is committed, between military necessity and proportionality.
Keep in mind that the initial operations–this is an army that has a huge number of individuals brought back from reserve status, and I think that they will have spent this time of this cease-fire period or this period of pause while the hostage releases were carried out doing after-action reviews and examining how they can do this better. And again, if the mindset, as I mentioned, is again of clear and hold and actually get the civilians back into the areas–but you then have to control the security of those areas, as we did, as you’ll recall Fallujah, creating 12 separate neighborhoods, again, that were all controlled–I think that will also show the people, and as you well know, the Palestinians in Gaza were not hugely enamored of Hamas. The polling results were really quite minimal, much more popular in the West Bank, ironically. And if you can give them a better life and show that that is going to happen and then deliver it, I think that’s very powerful.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let’s talk about that a day after. It’s hard for me to imagine the Israelis conducting a counterinsurgency strategy with the people when–let’s be honest–even on the best days, Israelis are not welcomed in Gaza, even by Gazans who hate Hamas. My question about the day after and the transition, General Petraeus, is, what force will come in after the Israelis pull back, presumably towards the Gaza border? There’s a lot of talk about an international force that eventually would have Arab participation, initially might be a kind of coalition of the willing: Scandinavian nations, other nations that are prepared to go in, but they’re going to need to have very tough rules of engagement. They’re going to need to shoot people.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Exactly.
MR. IGNATIUS: I’ve never seen anything like that work very well. Have you? And if not, how do you get that big idea to work here?
GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, I think it’s very, very challenging.
And by the way, keep in mind, there’s one more mission, one more big idea that is needed, and that is, how do you keep Hamas from reconstituting? Keep in mind, we learned the hard way. We drove violence down by nearly 90 percent during the surge. It went down even gradually farther over the next three and a half years. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was becoming Islamic state, was destroyed. We pulled our combat forces out. The prime minister took highly sectarian actions, and all of a sudden, the Iraqi security forces take their eyes off the Islamic state, and two years later, there’s a caliphate. And we have to go back in and help them.
So there’s, you know, the military mission of destroy, which is what the task given to the Israeli Defense Forces is, says that you have to render the enemy incapable of accomplishing his mission without reconstitution. If there’s reconstitution you’re right back into a difficult spot, and again, that was what happened with the Islamic State. So who’s going to keep them from reconstituting? It’s not just who’s going to hand out humanitarian assistance and oversee the restoration of basic services, which, by the way, is going to require tens of thousands of Palestinians who are part of the bureaucracy, if you will, that was directed by Hamas. They’re not Hamas members per se, but you’re going to need them to help turn the lights back on, get the water going, get reconstruction started and so forth.
I have actually been part of a force that actually did this pretty well. It was nowhere near as challenging a situation as this, but I was the chief of operations for the United Nations force in Haiti, and it was very much a coalition endeavor. In fact, the U.S. forces would not go outside Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien. So we had to put the coalition forces to live with the people, sprinkled all around the portion of the island that is under the control of Haiti.
You can do this, but we had quite robust rules of engagement. In fact, we insisted that we could intervene in Haitian-on-Haitian violence. I don’t know that you’re–this is a U.S.-led force, though, and again, anytime you needed something in particular robust, we could use a U.S. Quick Reaction Force.
I don’t know where you could find a force that could do this against an enemy, remnants of which will still be there and will be trying to reconstitute. Again, Iran is going to try to do everything they can to help Hamas and, to a lesser degree, Islamic Jihad, rebuild themselves and do once again to Gaza, what they have done in the past, what they did after they won the election in 2006 and then either pushed or killed the other factions of the Palestinian movement out of that particular Gaza strip.
So I don’t see it, David. I just don’t know who could–and you have to have a base force. As you well know, you’ve covered all of these different conflicts, and generally, it requires the United States to be the foundational piece. So we saw this in Afghanistan. The minute we said we’re going to pull out our final 3,500 troops, all the other countries which wanted to stay in it and would have stayed had we continued, had to pull out as well, because without the U.S., you don’t have that. It’s conceivable there could be some country that could show that capability, but I’m not aware of it. And I’m a reasonably good observer of these different coalition possibilities, having commanded two different coalitions, the largest of which in Afghanistan had many, many dozens of countries from around the world.
MR. IGNATIUS: So one more quick question about Gaza, and then I want to move on, so many topics to cover. You have as good contacts as anyone I know in the Arab countries that would, in theory, contribute to an international force that would stabilize Gaza after Hamas is reduced–Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan. You can go down the list. I’m sure you talk regularly with folks in that part of the world. Do you think there’s a realistic hope that those countries would, in fact, join an international peacekeeping force if the U.S. provided leadership?
GEN. PETRAEUS: I think there’s a possibility, David, but I don’t think it’s the base case, certainly not right now. I’ve heard no enthusiasm for this. There’s a sense that Israel has, quote, “brought this on themselves.” That’s inaccurate, obviously, given that what precipitated all this was that horrific, barbaric attack by Hamas on 10/7. But there’s not a desire to be seen as helping Israel in this case.
By the way, what’s ironic, as you well know, because you’re a huge student of that world and a fellow traveler in it as well, is that they want to see Hamas and Islamic Jihad destroyed. Their biggest concerns are extremists and political Islam, and Hamas is a combination of both of those. But again, I don’t think that they want to be seen by their populations as, again, enabling what is going on now.
So I think it is not out of the question. I know that various diplomats from various countries, including ours, are exploring these options. But there’s also relatively limited capacity for some of these operations as well, if you walk your way around. I’ve had some of them contribute to various coalitions, and then, obviously, as the commander of Central Command, we were very heavily involved with these different countries’ forces. But there’s not a vast quantity, and this will take, I would think, tens of thousands, at least at the outset. And then at some point in time, of course, you’re going to want to start to develop local security forces that could be trustworthy, and that would not end up demonstrating the kinds of actions that, of course, have brought this on to Hamas.
MR. IGNATIUS: So I’m told, distressingly, that we have less than 10 minutes. Let’s turn to Ukraine. I’m sure you read the long piece that was published by the Ukrainian commander–
GEN. PETRAEUS: I did.
MR. IGNATIUS: –General Zaluzhnyi in The Economist a month or so ago in which he talked about the war moving to positional warfare, which everybody took to mean stalemate. And I want to ask you, first, what did you think his message was, both to his commander in chief, President Zelensky, and to the world about Ukraine’s situation, and what would you do to fix the situation that he was describing?
GEN. PETRAEUS: I’d get him the capabilities that he identified as being needed to break out of that positional situation, out of that stalemate, if you will.
Again, Ukraine did not achieve all that was hoped, certainly, for the summer offensive. You know, 2023 was the year in which everyone was watching to see if a breakthrough could be achieved by either side. Russia had its much-vaunted winter offensive. They eventually took Bakhmut, a very modest achievement at an incredible cost, and then the focus was on Ukraine and the summer offensive. Could they achieve a breakthrough in the south? And then we realized that, you know, our delays in providing them–you know, our tanks just got to them very recently, that our delay in deciding on the M-1s meant that the Germans delayed the approval of Leopard tanks. We delayed the decision on cluster munitions that could have been very helpful, longer-range systems for the multiple-launch rocket system, and above all, Western aircraft, because our doctrine says that to break through the kinds of defenses that we have seen now in the south–and I don’t think anyone achieved–anyone really realized or appreciated the depths of the minefields, that Russia did get the defensive piece of this very much right, the multiple lines of defenses and so forth, and our doctrine says you have to have air superiority to do that as well as lots of other capabilities. And we didn’t get those into Ukraine’s hands, and so unfortunately, they could not achieve the kind of breakthrough that was hoped for.
He explained all of that essentially, so that that tells why Ukraine is at this particular situation, and then he identified various capabilities that are needed, some of which the Ukrainians themselves, with a very impressive military-industrial complex that they have, a lot of it from old Soviet days, and then what they can make and then what we can provide as well to them to try to achieve a breakthrough next year when the weather conditions and so forth are a bit more advantageous than they will be during the winter.
MR. IGNATIUS: So that’s a good and pretty comprehensive answer.
Let me turn to Taiwan and ask you, in light of what we’re seeing in Ukraine, what big ideas we need to be developing ourselves, sharing with the Taiwanese military, to be well positioned for whatever may lie ahead? And as a sub-question to that, I noted that President Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, said this week that she didn’t think that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely anytime soon. Do you agree with that?
GEN. PETRAEUS: I do. Keep in mind that President Xi told his military to be ready in 2027, but that doesn’t mean they do it in 2027. So again, certainly not anytime soon. I think that’s an accurate assessment, although some of the pressure and other activities undoubtedly will continue.
But here, I think the biggest of the big ideas is what are the components of deterrence, and essentially, they are potential adversary’s assessment of your capabilities on the one hand and your willingness to employ them on the other. If you approach it from a U.S. perspective with our allies and partners in the region, our capabilities are quite solid, but we need to transform them. In very simplistic terms, from a very small number of very large platforms–sea, air, ground, elsewhere–to a massive number of much smaller systems that are increasingly, not just remotely piloted, but over time, essentially algorithmically piloted. That transformation needs to be accelerated, as do various other actions to disperse our forces, harden and improve the defenses, go underground, et cetera, et cetera, and build further the alliances and partnerships that we have and which would make, I think, some important progress in recent years.
And then the other component is the potential adversary’s assessment of your willingness to employ them, and here, we need to remember that what we do in one part of the world does reverberate in others. For example, if our Congress is unable to come to grips with the continued support of Ukraine, that will send a message out to the Indo-Pacific region, as have other episodes recently.
I think one reason Vladimir Putin probably thought he could get away with this more robust invasion of Ukraine is because we didn’t do that much after the occupation of Crimea. We pulled out of Afghanistan. He saw that. We didn’t have the strategic patience, et cetera, et cetera.
So this is why I think President Biden on four occasions, as you know, has essentially stated we would come to the aid of Taiwan.
Then there are also lessons, needless to say, about Taiwan itself, how it can make itself more formidable in the way that Ukraine did. The weapons systems, the training, extending the periods of enlistment, reserve service, all of this, I think there are very, very important lessons there.
And I’ll also note, I think that Ukraine has been a cautionary tale for China as well.
MR. IGNATIUS: So one of the fascinating parts of this book is your discussion of the Vietnam War. We think about the Vietnam War with particular focus this week with the death of Henry Kissinger, who was so deeply involved in trying to find a way to prevail there, unsuccessfully. I want to ask you the baseline question. You’re very critical of General Westmoreland and the body-count strategy. You’re pretty supportive of General Creighton Abrams and his more counterinsurgency-focused strategy, but the big question I come back to again and again is whether Vietnam was ever winnable as a counterinsurgency fight. If that strategy had been adopted from the beginning, do you think we would have had a different outcome?
GEN. PETRAEUS: It’s very much a question that I’ve wrestled with as well, David. In fact, I think you’ll find that I write in the book–because I wrote that chapter and also Iraq and Afghanistan, and then we both did all the rest of that, collaborated–I noted that we could have gotten everything right, and still, because the context and the challenges were so difficult, that we might not have been able to achieve the outcome that we saw. But we would have had a much better chance at that.
This is a case where we did not truly understand the nature of the conflict. We didn’t want to fight a counterinsurgency. We wanted to fight a big war, search and destroy, a war of attrition, which we could not win with the North Vietnamese who were bringing 200,000 new soldiers into their ranks every year and had a very different view of human life than we did.
It was ironic that–I reread some of the books that I’d read in an earlier time, when I was a battalion commander, for example, reading “We Were Soldiers Once…And Young,” and reading all about the battlefield leadership and the courage and so forth, the tactics and so on. And I went back and looked, and I had missed General Hal Moore’s reflections. He was the battalion commander at that climactic battle early on, that Westmoreland thought validated air mobility and attrition and so forth, and Moore said, you know, in this battle, every American lost–there were 10 or more on the side of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army. And he said General Westmoreland thought that that was a good exchange ratio, and Moore said, on reflection, “I’m not sure that the American public agreed with that.”
So we took a war that should have been focused on security of the people in the villages, hamlets, districts, provinces, and instead turned it into a big unit war and never gave that more appropriate focus, the emphasis that it should have received, until at least 1968. That’s 13 years into that war, despite the South Vietnamese at the outset asking for support to deal with the security in the hamlets and villages. And we said, “No, we’ve just fought the Korean war. You need to be worried about the North Vietnamese coming across the demilitarized zone. We’re going to help you build nine divisions that look just like ours.”
So this is a case where the strategic leader did not get the big ideas, right–successive strategic leaders, although certainly what General Westmoreland presided over the height of that war and the biggest of the buildup, taking us well over 500,000 American men and women on the ground alone. And it wasn’t until Abrams refashioned the strategy much more appropriate, but by that point in time, I think the decline, the erosion of domestic political support and public support was so substantial that we were, we’re not going to be able to achieve what it was that we might have done had we started sooner.
But to come back to your question, it is arguable, I think.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry that we have come to the end of our half hour. I could continue this with General Petraeus for a good long while. The book is called “Conflict.” I urge people to take a look.
General Petraeus, thank you so much for talking through these conflicts with us, and we’ll look forward to continuing that conversation in the future.
GEN. PETRAEUS: Great. Great to be with a fellow traveler and a fellow author and a great columnist, David. Thank you.
MR. IGNATIUS: Thank you.
And thanks to all of you for joining Washington Post Live. Please check out all the programming we’ve got coming in the future. Register for what interests you, and we’ll see you back on Washington Post Live soon. Thanks very much.
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