1 00:00:01,380 --> 00:00:11,530 For her. I'm speaking very much as a a sort of practitioner who's dabbled in academia and certainly been involved in the military. 2 00:00:12,690 --> 00:00:16,190 I would call them think tanks, but doctrine and concepts and centres. 3 00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:24,660 So I hope I don't in any way tarnish the reputation of Oxford University over the next 6 minutes or so. 4 00:00:25,620 --> 00:00:32,610 The title Civilisation Security has been very much sort of buzzwords from sort of contemporary operations, 5 00:00:32,940 --> 00:00:40,560 or indeed maybe the way operations have been conducted in the near past as opposed to perhaps how they might be conducted in the future. 6 00:00:42,450 --> 00:00:47,770 What I'm trying to do is trying to develop the link between the way conflict is, 7 00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:54,720 is looked at and managed and what we can draw from maybe non conventional sources. 8 00:00:55,740 --> 00:01:06,690 Certainly the business schools originally drew their inspiration from from the military, but maybe there's a reverse flow that could take place now. 9 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:20,189 And social science in the broadest sense as as being as kind as becoming folk, certainly military circles in order to again, draw inspiration. 10 00:01:20,190 --> 00:01:30,510 So my underlying theme really is one of all the military innovation where we draw ideas from for framing conflict. 11 00:01:31,710 --> 00:01:37,950 And bear in mind that war now and conflicts are much sort of broader concepts and beyond the military as a result of our experiences. 12 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:47,940 I always feel that when we enter into a period of uncertainty, as perhaps we are now in terms of how we deal and frame conflict, 13 00:01:48,780 --> 00:01:55,739 my evidence for that is sort of I was a Defence Fellow at King's College London for the last nine months and on some of the big 14 00:01:55,740 --> 00:02:01,160 subjects I listened to some pretty distinguished people coming from entirely different directions on how it should progress. 15 00:02:01,290 --> 00:02:08,549 I think there's a degree of sort of some of the different ways in which we can navigate the complexity of operations. 16 00:02:08,550 --> 00:02:12,780 But I think as we as we enter into the sort of this period, 17 00:02:12,780 --> 00:02:21,330 that there's more there's a greater need to understand or to look at it from a conceptual point of view to do more conceptualisation. 18 00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:30,090 Well, at the moment, certainly in the British army, we focus in the last few years on writing doctrine based on the evidence from operations. 19 00:02:30,390 --> 00:02:35,070 I think perhaps now we need to start thinking conceptually about a number of things, 20 00:02:35,070 --> 00:02:41,550 which I'll touch on is the features of both the way conflict is is going on might say this looking back, 21 00:02:41,910 --> 00:02:50,250 I remember when I was a staff college student 20 odd years ago, and then conceptually there was only one book on the shelves. 22 00:02:50,250 --> 00:02:53,760 And this was a book by Richard Simpkin called Race the Swift. 23 00:02:54,630 --> 00:02:57,650 And I don't recall seeing any other sort of conceptual thinking. 24 00:02:57,660 --> 00:03:04,350 Most of our education was was lessons from history, which I'm sure Hugh Strong would would recommend, 25 00:03:04,740 --> 00:03:08,340 but in historical analysis was not enough, I don't think. 26 00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:12,389 But then again, you could say all our operations were relatively straightforward. 27 00:03:12,390 --> 00:03:19,170 And when you think about what happened on the North German plane, but it is his book. 28 00:03:19,170 --> 00:03:25,260 John Nagl draws attention to the fact that the British Army was going through a period of innovation, 29 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:29,190 was showing a high degree of imagination and flexibility, 30 00:03:29,190 --> 00:03:38,399 albeit tacitly in Northern Ireland as we fought that ongoing battle, that competition with the with the IRA and as Naval says, 31 00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:43,110 that that was probably in our DNA as a sort of throwback from colonial policing days. 32 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:50,940 You probably know of you might well know the way that military thinking has sort of progressed. 33 00:03:52,050 --> 00:03:56,700 We have the battle reforms that looked at other ways in which and we're talking about sort of eighties, 34 00:03:56,700 --> 00:04:02,640 nineties now, in which the military viewed the attritional battle, became a model of manoeuvre. 35 00:04:03,870 --> 00:04:10,410 However, when we were first took the division out to Gulf War One in the early nineties, 36 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:15,180 that division didn't look that much dissimilar from its World War Two predecessor. 37 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:26,850 And also, I think now of the the sort of renaissance of of information ops and psyops and all things to do with the information environment. 38 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:33,150 I recall that my site is sort of college where not only did we have I think it was a 45 day period on peacekeeping, 39 00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:40,140 but we had a multilateral from the only psychological operations officer in the Army, one lieutenant colonel on his load. 40 00:04:40,200 --> 00:04:48,570 So that was the that was the sole representation of this of this dedicate of this particular lost art, 41 00:04:48,630 --> 00:04:52,320 although General Smith did resurrect that as a result, 42 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:59,830 for all the the need for psychological operations, particularly deception, as a result of his experiences in Gulf War One. 43 00:05:01,130 --> 00:05:08,030 One thing happened in the nineties, which was the American Generation Revolution in military affairs, that sort of once again to simplify war. 44 00:05:08,440 --> 00:05:12,410 So if you recall the dominance of technology being able to see and manoeuvre 45 00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:17,329 and strike and that sort of reinforced at the time existing military cultures, 46 00:05:17,330 --> 00:05:23,240 particularly our forces and encouraged the military or reinforced military education that was based on the hard sciences. 47 00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:28,220 We had the Star College before we went to Starfleet. They went to the Royal College of Science. 48 00:05:28,580 --> 00:05:31,730 The winner, Social Sciences, though certainly not my experience. 49 00:05:32,420 --> 00:05:36,830 What changed the game was the obvious. The ball in Sierra Leone, in the Middle East, in recent operations. 50 00:05:37,410 --> 00:05:45,320 I think what I'm saying is we would have adapted our armed forces, our conventional forces and some of our thinking. 51 00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:53,660 But in the past has been one or two developments in conflict in the last few years that that require us to make a more talked 52 00:05:53,660 --> 00:06:02,530 about paradigm change just as a further jump leap into the dark rather than constantly adapting what we've what we've got, 53 00:06:02,540 --> 00:06:07,430 although we are very good. My personal view as an army, we are very good at adapting, adapting things. 54 00:06:08,690 --> 00:06:16,700 And so General General John Kinsley recently wrote about the post-modern warrior and starts looking 55 00:06:16,700 --> 00:06:21,620 at the nature of contemporary operations and how that as he was the head of the Defence Academy, 56 00:06:21,950 --> 00:06:28,609 how that might what would that mean in terms of preparing and training and educating a generation of 57 00:06:28,610 --> 00:06:34,819 officers and the challenges of wicked problems and underlying the sort of complexity that we see, 58 00:06:34,820 --> 00:06:44,990 see today. So there's a quote that sort of set me on this particular journey and it's it starts off and I, I won't read it all that says, 59 00:06:44,990 --> 00:06:50,420 just as law at its borders merges with history, politics, economics, sociology and psychology. 60 00:06:50,750 --> 00:06:59,660 So also does the military skill, because this person goes on, say the facts, like the lawyer and the doctor, he, the military practitioner, 61 00:06:59,930 --> 00:07:07,909 is continuously dealing with human beings, requires him to have a deeper understanding of human attitudes, 62 00:07:07,910 --> 00:07:12,470 motivation, behaviour, which a liberal education stimulates. 63 00:07:12,840 --> 00:07:27,229 Now, that was Samuel Huntington writing 50 years ago, and perhaps I had ahead of his time the in terms of where where is conflict going. 64 00:07:27,230 --> 00:07:36,260 Well and a clause of it says that in every age and this age is has its own features, its own peculiarities and nightmares. 65 00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:39,649 And I'll touch on some of those now, which I suspect you'll be familiar with. 66 00:07:39,650 --> 00:07:44,210 But I think they drive the next the next step is where do we gain our inspiration from? 67 00:07:44,870 --> 00:07:45,070 You know, 68 00:07:45,080 --> 00:07:56,360 which bookshelf do we go to see to pull out the to pull out the books to tell us or guide us how we might we might come out of these operations. 69 00:07:58,190 --> 00:08:04,339 We know that conflict itself is is the nature of the sea is unchanging. 70 00:08:04,340 --> 00:08:13,370 And again, that has an impact on how we act in terms of our ambitions are able to to conduct conduct operations. 71 00:08:13,370 --> 00:08:20,929 And I'll touch on that as well. I'm not suggesting for a moment the military have not thought hard, hard about them. 72 00:08:20,930 --> 00:08:28,370 The the the characteristic of of of contemporary conflicts or indeed future conflicts they have. 73 00:08:28,790 --> 00:08:32,089 The question is to what level of maturity as we reach some of the highlights, 74 00:08:32,090 --> 00:08:42,860 a number of areas that require require so and so in the the the foundation documents that was circulated around the his defence about nine months ago. 75 00:08:43,460 --> 00:08:51,500 There's quite a lot on cyber, the cyber cyberspace cyber, but it doesn't really sort of this is an area of immaturity in terms of conceptual thinking. 76 00:08:51,860 --> 00:08:55,270 Yeah, you know, sort of penetrate. Yeah, perhaps. Maybe it is. 77 00:08:55,460 --> 00:09:01,820 It's too early at all. It's ten years after the atom bombs dropped on Japan. 78 00:09:02,150 --> 00:09:10,280 Before we started to think in terms of nuclear theory, I think everyone talks about the present, the future. 79 00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:20,030 Certainly my my colleagues in King's College London, who would always quote Rupert Smith as perhaps a good spokesman for change. 80 00:09:20,940 --> 00:09:24,380 And if you recall, he said, the war as we know it no longer exists. 81 00:09:24,590 --> 00:09:28,640 It's an inner conflict of confrontation. Well, I would add to competition as well, 82 00:09:28,670 --> 00:09:34,880 because after all operations now we are trying to we're trying to outperform the opposition, not just kill them. 83 00:09:34,910 --> 00:09:41,899 And that's the sort of term that perhaps a businessman might use. And we know it's competitive because war is about relationships of power and ideas. 84 00:09:41,900 --> 00:09:45,830 It's a clash between powers to brands rather than just forces. 85 00:09:46,580 --> 00:09:51,020 And we know that these types of or of conflict irregular in nature. 86 00:09:51,020 --> 00:09:59,610 As T.E. Lawrence said, irregular warfare is far more intellectual and pain and charge, and therefore, we need to penetrate that. 87 00:10:00,670 --> 00:10:04,240 And and look at ways in which we can sort of navigate through it. 88 00:10:04,510 --> 00:10:08,200 Where do we draw inspiration from ideas for? And again, I'll touch on that. 89 00:10:09,670 --> 00:10:13,389 So war is more if it's a battle between two brands and perhaps it's a battle 90 00:10:13,390 --> 00:10:17,650 between narratives played out in the minds of populations connected globally 91 00:10:17,650 --> 00:10:25,030 by new media and inextricably linked to to the fact that this new media is 92 00:10:25,030 --> 00:10:30,130 empowering and mobilising masses cyber mobilisation where perception matters. 93 00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:35,260 So it's not just the and what you achieve, but it's also the way you play the game. 94 00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:44,110 This is nothing new. Robert Gates in 2007 was saying about American operations. 95 00:10:44,410 --> 00:10:47,500 It's about shaping behaviour, not just imposing one's will. 96 00:10:48,280 --> 00:10:57,040 So what I've begun to do is to frame war in perhaps a different language or a softer psychological language less less kinetic, 97 00:10:57,340 --> 00:10:59,950 perhaps less confident and less ambitious. 98 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:16,170 The So what we're asking really is that our practitioners, the broader perhaps we now have a broader description of of a conflict practitioner. 99 00:11:16,560 --> 00:11:20,940 And certainly we found from a military point of view that those leaders have to 100 00:11:20,940 --> 00:11:26,069 be in every man polymath and drawing from and familiar with the social sciences. 101 00:11:26,070 --> 00:11:35,820 As much as brand building, bandwidth and ballistics drawing parallels between war and business is nothing new. 102 00:11:35,850 --> 00:11:38,640 The Japanese view was that business is essentially war, 103 00:11:38,670 --> 00:11:46,380 and that led to business executives in the States in the nineties embracing Sun Tzu as a as a business guru grants strategic one. 104 00:11:47,550 --> 00:11:50,610 So businesses will always increasingly like business. 105 00:11:53,410 --> 00:12:01,229 If when I talked about the idea of that, the the military practitioner or the conflict practitioners as a much broader remit 106 00:12:01,230 --> 00:12:07,440 now drawing from a much broader sort of library full of books that will guide, 107 00:12:07,740 --> 00:12:14,850 guide that individual organisations, it does create a bit of what is the dilemma certainly for the military. 108 00:12:14,850 --> 00:12:21,180 Does the military in navigating through this complexity turn around and say, well, you know, we are what we are, we'll stick to our guns? 109 00:12:21,510 --> 00:12:28,980 Or does it? To what extent does it do other people's jobs or to what extent does it need to understand the wider context in which it operates? 110 00:12:29,610 --> 00:12:37,350 But it does have it it has and continues to have an impact on the way the military forces are designed in the future. 111 00:12:37,830 --> 00:12:44,489 And because perhaps there's a degree of uncertainty, there is a degree of uncertainty or confidence about how to adapt military forces. 112 00:12:44,490 --> 00:12:50,040 So therefore, some aspects that are a prominent in operations now are not necessarily as well 113 00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:53,610 developed in the military as there might be information operations being of. 114 00:12:58,780 --> 00:13:06,219 So Rupert Smith war amongst to plead people placing civilians as a target to be warned it's not dissimilar from 115 00:13:06,220 --> 00:13:13,210 any business in marketing its product or service in order to win customers and keep the stakeholders happy. 116 00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:21,839 And of course, outperforming the other brands. He also talks about the utility force in a conventional sense, that encouragement moves, 117 00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:26,430 we think is to to reflect on influencing various stakeholders in the conflict, 118 00:13:26,760 --> 00:13:32,580 using words and deeds where physical force has a role to be applied intelligently, 119 00:13:33,050 --> 00:13:40,910 and that the military commanders and the colleagues, civilian police on an operations can not afford to be one dimensional. 120 00:13:40,920 --> 00:13:50,130 But in terms of the way they are thinking, perhaps, and I've seen it written, is that we still tend to think in a logical, analytical way, 121 00:13:50,730 --> 00:13:57,630 looking at end states and looking at progression to end states and the sort of set piece battle rather than in an elastic, deductive way. 122 00:14:00,150 --> 00:14:07,890 And therefore, military commanders have got to be savvy in the heart of influence and not simply organising violence. 123 00:14:11,620 --> 00:14:16,719 Now at the same time as if we're drawing similarities with business or ideas from business. 124 00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:22,270 We know that business has progressed and has changed with the times we live in, the time of influence and not deference. 125 00:14:22,750 --> 00:14:26,080 Hierarchies have been flattened. Compliance has given way to commitment. 126 00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:31,720 Business understands the power of new media and building networks and creating partnerships. 127 00:14:32,140 --> 00:14:40,420 The structure of boardrooms, too, has changed, where reputation and goodwill are just important as a healthy balance sheet. 128 00:14:42,180 --> 00:14:46,839 And another connection with business is the fact that, as Christopher Coker says in his recent book, 129 00:14:46,840 --> 00:14:54,400 A War in the Age of Risk, is that we are in the age of risk where security and risk are more important than anything else. 130 00:14:54,820 --> 00:15:01,570 And therefore, risk becomes the language not only of conflict, but it is the language of business, politics and public policy. 131 00:15:03,640 --> 00:15:15,430 And the problem with taking a risk approach to conflict is that it does not lead necessarily to clear messaging, but tends to be one of ambiguity. 132 00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:26,870 Before I just jump into words. Social science and business can perhaps add some more inspiration to to thinking about conflict. 133 00:15:26,870 --> 00:15:31,820 I just want to touch on some of the drivers, some of the features of contemporary conflict, 134 00:15:32,150 --> 00:15:41,870 which which begin to affect the way that we think about strategy and the way in which we will organise ourselves. 135 00:15:42,860 --> 00:15:44,840 The first, obviously, is the information environment, 136 00:15:45,860 --> 00:15:54,590 and the fact is that conflict spills over out of areas of operation thanks to the information age and the idea of cyber in the cyber domain, 137 00:15:55,070 --> 00:15:59,610 characterised not only by electronic work networks, but also by communities. 138 00:16:00,110 --> 00:16:05,689 And Manuel Castells, the Spanish sociologist in his book Information Age, 139 00:16:05,690 --> 00:16:11,480 and the second book, Communication Power Coins The Networked Society and the Politics. 140 00:16:11,780 --> 00:16:21,229 Of course, you know, politics is war or war is politics by other means is played out in now in this media space and therefore influenced 141 00:16:21,230 --> 00:16:27,860 by the likes of media corporations and this new information doer the doer who operates in the blogosphere. 142 00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:33,590 This is highlighting this growing individualism and and predominately short termism, 143 00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:40,280 online informality that undermines deference and has implications for authority and also for the elites. 144 00:16:41,330 --> 00:16:46,100 People, whether friends or enemies, are free to connect in the source sociological process. 145 00:16:46,100 --> 00:16:56,900 And this has an impact on on conflict as we know it, this free flow of ideas, ideas and grievances that fuel conflict and indeed encourage revolution. 146 00:16:58,220 --> 00:17:01,190 Nick Gowan is a seasoned media practitioner, 147 00:17:01,430 --> 00:17:08,990 warns governments that the modern communications of modern communications expose surprise and affect their reputations. 148 00:17:09,380 --> 00:17:15,920 He further concludes that contemporary Western liberal democratic society, perhaps led by US media, 149 00:17:16,190 --> 00:17:24,290 is demanding greater transparency that complicates the working of elites and their messaging when managing conflict. 150 00:17:24,710 --> 00:17:32,090 And perhaps we see an element of that now where it is quite difficult to explain a strategic 151 00:17:32,090 --> 00:17:42,680 narrative because it because it may not be necessarily what what the public wants to hear, 152 00:17:42,740 --> 00:17:47,540 if indeed and therefore leads onto, as I'll talk about later, 153 00:17:47,540 --> 00:17:54,140 is in strategic communication makes street unification quite almost impossible and they need to rethink that through. 154 00:17:58,440 --> 00:18:05,090 What So in terms of the information age is that we're into the business now, 155 00:18:05,100 --> 00:18:12,190 targets which are no longer limited to power stations, military bases, but also softer targets. 156 00:18:12,190 --> 00:18:16,350 So target has become a legitimacy, authority and reputation. 157 00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:20,130 I keep returning back to this this business of reputation. 158 00:18:22,380 --> 00:18:27,160 The. And therefore in the battlespace. 159 00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:33,190 Now, the information element may well be the decisive, decisive part. 160 00:18:33,220 --> 00:18:38,950 It may well be that this begins to question the way we approach strategy, 161 00:18:38,950 --> 00:18:47,230 the way we approach communicating in in conflict, and particularly if the centre of gravity is not perceptual. 162 00:18:48,550 --> 00:18:53,020 So Information Age is the first one. The next one is culture. 163 00:18:53,740 --> 00:19:01,480 And this is sort of resurrection of culture within within conflict as a way of trying to explain what is going on or to give for further, 164 00:19:02,800 --> 00:19:05,740 I'll talk about later. Contextual Intelligence. 165 00:19:06,430 --> 00:19:13,810 Lawrence Friedman states that operations undertaken in politically complex settings can be full of surprises 166 00:19:14,050 --> 00:19:21,040 that often results from a failure to understand strategic cultures and agendas of both friends and enemies, 167 00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:25,060 and a mixture and the mixture of motives and attitudes that influence their actions. 168 00:19:25,420 --> 00:19:31,480 And he goes on to stress that coping with these new conditions presents substantial challenges to strategists. 169 00:19:32,810 --> 00:19:42,360 As as we have known. And that sort of leads on to the way in which understanding culture or the resurrection of both anthropologists, you might say, 170 00:19:42,360 --> 00:19:49,720 in conflict, has informed the way in which we do security, stabilisation and political resolution, which are in the title of the lecture. 171 00:19:51,280 --> 00:19:56,829 And the greatest manifestation of this has really been that the whole idea of nation 172 00:19:56,830 --> 00:20:08,229 building and whether or not we whether or not we have that particular solution, 173 00:20:08,230 --> 00:20:16,420 that template is the way in which we can we that we can apply now given the certain change, particularly in the information age. 174 00:20:16,420 --> 00:20:21,120 And that's what I again, I'll touch on again, Peter. So. 175 00:20:28,100 --> 00:20:31,889 In terms of nation building or stable stabilisation, 176 00:20:31,890 --> 00:20:40,160 a number of things themes have come out that begin to suggest that we need to draw from other sources of inspiration. 177 00:20:40,170 --> 00:20:44,370 So for example, the role of civil society was previously only sort of secondary. 178 00:20:44,370 --> 00:20:51,900 Important in conventional conflict is now of major significance in building stability because of governance, reconciliation, integration. 179 00:20:54,940 --> 00:21:03,070 Other areas are the fact that there are a lot of stakeholders involved in nation building and again, 180 00:21:03,790 --> 00:21:10,930 handling those and skills like negotiation are essentially non-military. 181 00:21:12,460 --> 00:21:16,240 In his book The Sword, Swords and Ploughshares, 182 00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:28,330 Paddy Ashdown suggests that we could get better at or more professional in terms of rebuilding states and suggests that that it's 183 00:21:28,750 --> 00:21:38,229 about the quality of people and the to the sort of people who have been heavily involved in this have been humanitarian workers, 184 00:21:38,230 --> 00:21:42,280 NGOs and foreign service personnel, not necessarily businessmen. 185 00:21:42,580 --> 00:21:49,989 And it's and it is quite possible that if these these missions were looked at more like a program and adopting a 186 00:21:49,990 --> 00:21:58,180 businessman's approach to programs that might provide a better structure in which a process in which they can be conducted, 187 00:22:01,360 --> 00:22:05,259 but also in the way that the West is approached, is nation building. 188 00:22:05,260 --> 00:22:07,180 In a particular way. We have a template, 189 00:22:07,180 --> 00:22:19,370 but that tends to build institutions at the top first when often certainly in Afghanistan and not suggesting that we template this well, 190 00:22:19,420 --> 00:22:24,340 perhaps the requirement was to build local institutions and it was only really 191 00:22:24,340 --> 00:22:29,290 through Petraeus who came in with adopted this whole low level idea of clear, 192 00:22:29,290 --> 00:22:32,320 hold and build where you can actually build, build, build, 193 00:22:32,860 --> 00:22:38,650 build up a society from from the bottom right rather than from the top and and 194 00:22:38,710 --> 00:22:44,380 from whether or not the the whole idea of spending years trying to put in top 195 00:22:44,380 --> 00:22:49,900 level institutions and legal reforms that are somewhat alien to that particular 196 00:22:49,900 --> 00:22:54,160 country was the best way to just sense that there is one for is one template. 197 00:22:54,520 --> 00:23:00,339 Why is there one template? I think it is because the it is very, very difficult internationally with donors, 198 00:23:00,340 --> 00:23:08,260 everything else to to offer them other than what is is the the standard way in which development takes place in in countries. 199 00:23:12,350 --> 00:23:21,650 So how might social science help inform from the cultural theme we've seen how 200 00:23:22,010 --> 00:23:28,700 anthropology has been drawn upon to to provide this sort of contextual intelligence. 201 00:23:29,630 --> 00:23:35,720 And bearing in mind that understanding the context is, well, 202 00:23:35,930 --> 00:23:43,970 what's the conflict practitioner or the military leader needs to do now is rather this much broader concept, the role than just intelligence. 203 00:23:44,730 --> 00:23:51,170 I think looking beyond the enemy that that has tested certainly military 204 00:23:51,170 --> 00:23:57,890 structures in order to to build this continue with this wider idea of context. 205 00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:02,840 Now, it's certainly been successful at a micro-level in things like the Helmand taskforce, 206 00:24:02,840 --> 00:24:06,890 where Britain has been able to bring it at a tactical level, 207 00:24:08,210 --> 00:24:16,130 a number of states or anthropologists or some social sciences who are on the government's payroll. 208 00:24:16,820 --> 00:24:20,540 And you'll know that the Human Terrain teams and the work of Montgomery McFate, 209 00:24:20,870 --> 00:24:28,639 the anthropologist with in the U.S., has has led to a number of a number of successes. 210 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:33,020 But also they paid the price, I think, to two anthropologists were killed on operations. 211 00:24:34,190 --> 00:24:45,350 At the macro level, I don't see any evidence of that taking place, this idea of building a much larger view of what is going on. 212 00:24:46,970 --> 00:24:50,960 And that may be simply because I haven't got access to the information. 213 00:24:52,520 --> 00:25:01,429 So what so embedded experts, usually anthropologists have been able to explain, explain the local culture and how important things like leadership, 214 00:25:01,430 --> 00:25:04,430 authority in power are managed, but more importantly, 215 00:25:04,430 --> 00:25:13,100 how local culture works in terms of motivation and how they view and understand and frame any external intervention force. 216 00:25:13,490 --> 00:25:16,280 So the way we position ourselves, you know, 217 00:25:16,490 --> 00:25:24,860 whether we go into these large bases and whether the fact is that what is the consequence of that is we send a message that we don't trust you, 218 00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:29,000 but we're here to protect you. Are we sending a message of occupation and repression? 219 00:25:29,370 --> 00:25:33,679 But have we thought through these things? And in fact, no, we do it for another reason. 220 00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:39,320 Is that you that is that it suggests that at this stage we are not you know, we are not part of a long term solution. 221 00:25:39,530 --> 00:25:46,580 But perhaps the indigenous forces and government is or is it do we do it by design or we just do it by default? 222 00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:52,850 Certainly developing the cultural adviser role, we've moved towards this idea of prison cells. 223 00:25:53,240 --> 00:26:01,100 But where where commanders can look at the problem through the through the eyes of local people, of local people. 224 00:26:02,570 --> 00:26:06,830 And that certainly has been effective at the tactical operational level. 225 00:26:10,820 --> 00:26:15,890 They and of course, drawing in terms of measuring effect and operations, 226 00:26:16,250 --> 00:26:21,530 a lot of the techniques that are used in marketing this sort of almost like the mystery shopper technique, 227 00:26:22,130 --> 00:26:29,060 are used to find the sort of to get the vibes from the ground, to get the atmospherics in a way that perhaps has not been done before, 228 00:26:29,300 --> 00:26:34,160 but is very familiar with those who have been operating in a marketing and advertising. 229 00:26:35,900 --> 00:26:39,500 What about sociology and social psychology? 230 00:26:39,500 --> 00:26:44,329 Well, social psychology has always, always had a connection with the military through psychological operations, 231 00:26:44,330 --> 00:26:48,020 more so in the states than than in the UK, 232 00:26:49,430 --> 00:26:57,380 although that does begin begin to bring a rather narrow view of of understanding the dynamics of of of an effective population, 233 00:26:57,980 --> 00:27:01,100 because social groups do influence individuals thinking. 234 00:27:01,730 --> 00:27:08,300 But there's always been a problem with sociology and social scientists in terms of of getting involved with the military, 235 00:27:08,570 --> 00:27:11,120 particularly because of their implicit liberalism. 236 00:27:11,900 --> 00:27:18,940 And it is quite difficult to identify, well, in sociology, the military or in fact, conflict is looked at. 237 00:27:19,050 --> 00:27:27,890 If you look at some of the work to to do with gender rather than assist or the ways in which they could perhaps explain why, 238 00:27:28,250 --> 00:27:34,670 why, why groups that hold the nexus between social groups and conflict. 239 00:27:37,310 --> 00:27:40,100 One other problem really for the practitioner is that some of the theories, 240 00:27:40,100 --> 00:27:43,820 psychological theories is far too abstract to be of immediate operational value. 241 00:27:44,090 --> 00:27:50,989 And it's this whole idea of trying to take academic work and sort of translate it to the practitioner who provides that bridge. 242 00:27:50,990 --> 00:28:01,450 How do we do it? And I see in military circles how what they've done is they've gone to some to an everyman psychology like Robert Cialdini is. 243 00:28:01,460 --> 00:28:01,970 Yes. 244 00:28:01,970 --> 00:28:11,090 50 seekers from science persuasion, which sort of gives some sort of easy to understand ways in which you can manipulate a situation to influence. 245 00:28:12,170 --> 00:28:20,809 But once again, is that as entered into the realm, realms of information operations? 246 00:28:20,810 --> 00:28:31,430 But but I can't see it sort of being brought into the understanding of how to do why wider operation while they're just information operations. 247 00:28:33,590 --> 00:28:38,990 So so war snow what does all this mean from a social science point of view? 248 00:28:39,230 --> 00:28:47,570 Is that for the moment? My experience is that, first of all, it's quite difficult to to draw from social science, 249 00:28:47,570 --> 00:28:57,140 to draw from academia in order to use all that thinking, to synthesise all that thinking and bring it bring it into the management of conflict. 250 00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:05,870 Often even within organisations, academic organisations need people to do the same thing, to even talk to each other. 251 00:29:05,870 --> 00:29:13,040 And some of that has to do with contracts. Certainly that is the case and I suspect is the case in the Defence Academy. 252 00:29:15,260 --> 00:29:21,979 If what we probably need is, is to draw this into certainly within the military but also into a wider conflict, 253 00:29:21,980 --> 00:29:25,250 practitioner's education and preparation. 254 00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:31,069 So how do we do that will certainly as part of this as it is falling into the realm of information operations 255 00:29:31,070 --> 00:29:37,760 or the sort of this idea of military influence is that we need to have I think we're going to take it forward. 256 00:29:38,060 --> 00:29:43,280 Then you need to have a champion, certainly within within military circles to lead for it. 257 00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:47,209 And this doesn't exist at the moment. There wasn't organisation to do this defence, 258 00:29:47,210 --> 00:29:53,060 but that dealt with cyber as well and quite naturally got moved into the more technical aspects of cyber defence. 259 00:29:53,900 --> 00:29:59,810 So it needs professionalised and institutionalised and perhaps we need a centre of excellence but not limited to the military. 260 00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:05,450 And there's quite problems in terms of labelling this or branding it a do we call it military sociology? 261 00:30:05,450 --> 00:30:11,510 Is this what it is or is it, as Darren Lawrence at Cranfield talked about, personal logic. 262 00:30:12,350 --> 00:30:18,320 Do we need a centre for military science that which might be less controversial than perhaps the Behaviour Warfare Centre? 263 00:30:19,820 --> 00:30:23,840 Okay, so that's a few ideas from social science. 264 00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:32,629 What about business theory? Well, business strategy has drawn quite something from from from the military over the years, 265 00:30:32,630 --> 00:30:42,140 but most about business strategy tends to be a one year plan and looking out three years and some businesses tend to not have a hard and fast plan. 266 00:30:42,260 --> 00:30:43,280 But like the Foreign Office, 267 00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:49,400 whether or not they don't have a full plan with an end to that with an end state win some means that way of doing strategy. 268 00:30:49,580 --> 00:30:53,420 What they essentially do is they look at the market, the fall in the market, and they're flexible. 269 00:30:53,730 --> 00:30:57,710 You might argue that the Foreign Office, hitherto criticised for being a bit like that, 270 00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:03,350 are not as well organised as the military in terms of stabilisation. 271 00:31:04,010 --> 00:31:06,680 Working back from an end state is that they're far, 272 00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:13,309 far more flexible and perhaps now with the onset of the way that the environment is being influenced by, 273 00:31:13,310 --> 00:31:23,630 by the information age, perhaps of the fall of this model of being a little bit more flexible and not necessarily having a clearly defined end state, 274 00:31:23,870 --> 00:31:30,320 but just moving towards as long as Friedman said recently, has rolled out a strategic narrative just to have a script, 275 00:31:30,650 --> 00:31:36,110 which I think is what William Hague has at the moment, works within some broad parameters of what is right and wrong. 276 00:31:36,290 --> 00:31:39,530 But he can't tell you where he's going in the interview. 277 00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:42,470 What he can tell you is what the next step is in the script. 278 00:31:43,460 --> 00:31:56,330 So the way business had actually taken some zu, for example, who, who said, you know, the broad in the broadest sense, 279 00:31:56,330 --> 00:32:03,680 you've got to understand politically, socially, physically to lead for success, you've got to be to avoid introspection. 280 00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,240 You've got to look from the other point of, you know, it's knowing yourself and knowing the opposition as well. 281 00:32:08,540 --> 00:32:13,850 Well, this is all true. And business, you know, embraced this through SWOT analysis and so on and so forth. 282 00:32:14,090 --> 00:32:21,110 And interesting SWOT analysis has been recently brought into military doctrine for the first time in a joint in publication and campaigning. 283 00:32:22,430 --> 00:32:30,740 So I think that's all all fine. And I think that that the the broadening the way in which we understand conflict, 284 00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:37,400 drawing from business methods, also helps us to view ourselves, which we we tend not to do. 285 00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:44,479 There's very little at the moment within doctrine about sitting back and just looking at one's self and looking at one's own weaknesses, 286 00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,930 one's own perspective, in order to shape how you're going to deal with a problem, 287 00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:54,979 mostly marketing or marketing business academics increasingly view the role of the 288 00:32:54,980 --> 00:32:59,440 corporate communications director who deals with marketing as well as being centre stage. 289 00:32:59,460 --> 00:33:03,650 They've been brought into the boardroom. This is because of the importance of perception, reputation. 290 00:33:04,010 --> 00:33:09,719 And I don't need to to highlight that because, you know, we didn't do what had to be paid to anyone. 291 00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:15,630 There's been really done on military marketing. Some work done a few years ago by the RAND Corporation called and listed Madison Avenue. 292 00:33:15,990 --> 00:33:24,540 But that starts to look at the ways in which marketing and advertising, branding and so on can be brought into the way we do operations now. 293 00:33:26,190 --> 00:33:27,510 Branding, for example, 294 00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:37,080 and is the art of conditioning an audience to an ad to associate with a given product to the personal or an idea with a desired emotional response. 295 00:33:37,770 --> 00:33:42,540 And there's a very good book by a guy called Walter Cole Fighting a war of ideas like the real war, 296 00:33:42,870 --> 00:33:48,300 in which he talks at length about about branding and the idea of commercial marketing. 297 00:33:48,540 --> 00:33:56,849 But the problem with trying to translate it is to to to the conflict sphere is that commercial marketing really is about a standard product, 298 00:33:56,850 --> 00:34:03,690 which you all know and you're marketing it. Political marketing is about a promise that at the time of the marketing you don't need to deliver on. 299 00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:09,840 But crisis marketing is quite is quite difficult because the situation is all fluid. 300 00:34:10,140 --> 00:34:14,970 People are making mistakes. You don't always know the you know exactly what you're trying to sell. 301 00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:18,170 And you've got some very distinct audiences. 302 00:34:18,300 --> 00:34:29,520 For example, while in the handling of the of the assassination or the killing of of bin Laden, it was quite interesting. 303 00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:35,080 And I was part of the debate about that. Why did President Obama tell the domestic audience first? 304 00:34:35,110 --> 00:34:43,080 Well, because there was the repercussions in the style it was given in, you know, why was that? 305 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:50,070 Well, it may well be because the obviously democratic population is, well, the centre of gravity in any irregular conflict. 306 00:34:51,540 --> 00:34:58,109 So I think that something that there's there's material within branding that is is quite useful in terms of the way 307 00:34:58,110 --> 00:35:04,530 the military and the civilian intervention force talk about managing perceptions and this idea of campaign authority, 308 00:35:04,530 --> 00:35:11,850 which I can talk about later. This is how the force presents itself and behaves to enable its strategy, often called presence, profile and posture. 309 00:35:13,380 --> 00:35:18,630 So for example, the Take the musical a few years ago was was branded as a as an Afghan operation. 310 00:35:19,490 --> 00:35:23,880 The Afghan symbols, the Afghan flag goes up as an icon at the time. 311 00:35:26,820 --> 00:35:28,290 What about the narrative I've touched on? 312 00:35:28,290 --> 00:35:34,949 The narrative narrative is simply, as Lawrence Freeman said, it's it's it's just a story, a compelling story. 313 00:35:34,950 --> 00:35:42,839 And and initially in his work in an Adelphi paper in 2006, he said, you know, how important within strategic affairs was? 314 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:48,000 This was the whole business of getting this narrative right, the story of why are you doing it? 315 00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:54,330 And one of the problems has been is that whilst the Americans might be able to, 316 00:35:54,330 --> 00:36:01,020 with their level of confidence and the fact being a global superpower can have a strategic narrative, 317 00:36:01,500 --> 00:36:09,540 I think in the UK we find it very difficult to craft a strategic narrative narrative that's come that's compelling because the idea is, 318 00:36:09,540 --> 00:36:11,219 is to leave no, no grey areas. 319 00:36:11,220 --> 00:36:19,950 It's supposed to be an alternative vision to to the opposition and perhaps that's something that could come out in discussions later. 320 00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:28,050 Reputation management is very much at the core of this, and that sort of links in ideas of image and branding as well. 321 00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,880 And it is core business for for any training, 322 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:40,860 for any commercial concern and is pretty much part of the success and failure of all of that particular business. 323 00:36:41,670 --> 00:36:45,450 We know the reputations can take years to build and could be destroyed in weeks. 324 00:36:45,780 --> 00:36:47,040 Abu Ghraib, you know, 325 00:36:47,340 --> 00:37:00,480 the problem is a sort of ideas or events that would challenge the reputation of what's been done by Gary Davis at Manchester Business School, 326 00:37:00,810 --> 00:37:06,030 which stresses the need to to match external cuts to the perception of an organisation, 327 00:37:06,330 --> 00:37:14,730 the internal customer facing employee perception of the business and and of organisational values and the idea that these two should be harmonised. 328 00:37:16,950 --> 00:37:24,450 So for example, operating in conflict zone where a brand, an image is important, if you are to be a force for good, 329 00:37:24,450 --> 00:37:33,030 then this requires target audience to understand that and for the players, our soldiers and civilians to match that in the way they behave. 330 00:37:34,500 --> 00:37:38,909 It may well be that they are not in that precise moment to be a force well, a force for good. 331 00:37:38,910 --> 00:37:43,530 But it may be that the posture has got to be one of a credible fighting military force. 332 00:37:43,770 --> 00:37:50,730 Again, that needs to be and for what they do, needs to reflect that there needs to be a lot of alignment, 333 00:37:51,030 --> 00:37:56,490 perhaps taking more risks as a result of a stakeholder management. 334 00:37:57,210 --> 00:38:02,200 We all we are doing that. Certainly my military education was in the 1970s. 335 00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:07,379 So I would ask the question, you know, where do I dig in? In the 1990s, I would ask the question, where is the enemy? 336 00:38:07,380 --> 00:38:11,170 And I suppose in the 2000 now is I in a conflict time? 337 00:38:11,230 --> 00:38:14,500 I would say, where are the stakeholders? Who are they? Who do I need to influence? 338 00:38:14,770 --> 00:38:18,700 I'm following Rupert Smith's advice. Who do I need to speak to first and who shouldn't I speak to? 339 00:38:20,710 --> 00:38:27,580 And that's for military operations and security stabilisation require commanders to identify stakeholders rather than the enemy. 340 00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:31,720 And that requires a degree of control over the contextual intelligence. 341 00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:38,290 And also it needs to be planned in terms of how to approach them, how to how to influence them. 342 00:38:38,500 --> 00:38:43,720 And therefore, it needs a high degree of target audience and target audience analysis. 343 00:38:44,050 --> 00:38:47,770 Now, in a company in a commercial company, a lot of money is spent. 344 00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:54,130 Thousands of people are employed in marketing in order that that engagement can be correct with the customer or the stakeholders. 345 00:38:55,540 --> 00:38:59,709 And I think, therefore, that's why in the military or in managing conflict, 346 00:38:59,710 --> 00:39:07,360 we've seen this expansion in the intelligence function in order that world expansion just in size but also in its nature, 347 00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:18,489 this contextual intelligence, in order that stakeholder management can be affected better and this is all about an engagement policy, 348 00:39:18,490 --> 00:39:24,760 certainly is in strategic community, in core communications. The idea is that it's not simply this is a building, a dialogue. 349 00:39:24,790 --> 00:39:30,279 Building partnerships is not just pushing and pumping out messages and therefore so it is on patrol. 350 00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:38,260 I'm talking about the lowest level now proactively engaged day to day with local people serving counter insurgency or in security operation. 351 00:39:38,770 --> 00:39:44,890 In a similar way in business, the emphasis is on the sort of customer salesmen salesperson relationship. 352 00:39:44,950 --> 00:39:50,110 Not all people will be naturally good at engagement and like business in the retail sector. 353 00:39:50,290 --> 00:39:54,880 So isn't commanders need to be schooled in how to do this. Some will be better than others. 354 00:39:55,780 --> 00:40:04,650 And I think this has been known. But it's it's a question of how it's brought brought in in the education and training and the salesperson needs, 355 00:40:04,660 --> 00:40:11,110 because the essence of the brand and the reputation and the narrative through each engagement to try and reinforce the message and build trust. 356 00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:17,800 And it's all about trust, any inconsistency between between the activity of a soldier or a commander. 357 00:40:18,550 --> 00:40:21,730 And and the what is essentially the brand? 358 00:40:21,820 --> 00:40:25,450 The brand and the narrative is, is going to create problems. 359 00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:29,560 And that intensity could be as a result of changing personalities over time. 360 00:40:31,090 --> 00:40:33,940 There's always limitations in the commercial approach. I touched on it earlier. 361 00:40:33,940 --> 00:40:39,400 This war and conflict is emotionally charged and there's a need to learn, need to be understood in those terms. 362 00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:40,690 But still, at the same time, 363 00:40:40,750 --> 00:40:48,940 I think there is a certain amount that can be drawn from social science and also from the from selectively from business management, 364 00:40:49,180 --> 00:40:56,710 particularly corporate communication, which includes marketing that can be brought into the way in which we conduct or we handle conflict. 365 00:40:57,580 --> 00:41:05,649 And some of the problems that they have in terms of getting over their narrative strategic narratives to some degree can be 366 00:41:05,650 --> 00:41:13,629 experienced for those of us who are conducting stabilisation operations and some of the things now getting into the DNA. 367 00:41:13,630 --> 00:41:14,830 Well, the first thing is your concept. 368 00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:19,780 You've got to go examine this, examine this, because you might have to say, yeah, some of this we're doing some of it. 369 00:41:19,780 --> 00:41:23,139 Actually, I just don't see any value in it. And it's an interesting idea. 370 00:41:23,140 --> 00:41:31,780 But, you know, we don't I don't think we will embrace this or it's something we need to discuss, keep alive, be thoughtful about. 371 00:41:31,780 --> 00:41:35,770 But we're not. We do. I can't see it being because of any practical use. 372 00:41:36,820 --> 00:41:41,170 You might just embrace it all. But I'm not for those who are not from a military background. 373 00:41:41,170 --> 00:41:49,450 I mean General David Richards when he was commander of the arc that's the formation of went up ISAF in Afghanistan. 374 00:41:49,720 --> 00:41:55,810 But he said the operation was essentially an information operation and he placed the idea of what could have been military marketing, 375 00:41:55,810 --> 00:41:59,860 the very centre of his thinking and his headquarters processes and business. 376 00:42:00,890 --> 00:42:05,110 And and this was all about this deeper understanding of target audiences, 377 00:42:05,350 --> 00:42:13,419 how they might be influenced and nudged to nudged forward towards preferred outcome with this sort of mixture of kinetic and non-kinetic, 378 00:42:13,420 --> 00:42:23,860 hard and soft approach of levers or effects, and using this sort of combination of words and deeds, 379 00:42:23,860 --> 00:42:29,379 you know, how what is said, how we say it, how are we going about saying it, who says it and how? 380 00:42:29,380 --> 00:42:34,960 In fact, expectations are managed, which all really is, comes from corporate communication thinking. 381 00:42:35,740 --> 00:42:39,550 So I'll leave you with a few, few thoughts. 382 00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:47,500 This body of knowledge, to what extent does this need to be taken from or almost sort of from normalcy? 383 00:42:47,500 --> 00:42:55,540 And now, as a week of the advanced course is a year long as one week that deals specifically with this this the subject I've been talking about, 384 00:42:55,930 --> 00:43:00,370 but particularly sort of how to influence populations using a lot of commercial ideas. 385 00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:09,250 The question is whether or not how do we bring this into to what extent do we bring the psychological aspect of conflict into a military education? 386 00:43:09,250 --> 00:43:15,450 And indeed, where do we teach? And is it just enough to have it within a military education? 387 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,830 There was in a recent government commissioned report from the Defence, 388 00:43:20,190 --> 00:43:25,049 a defence committee that said and acknowledged the need to establish relationships and 389 00:43:25,050 --> 00:43:28,680 cultural understanding through common training exercises and analysis and planning. 390 00:43:29,500 --> 00:43:33,780 That was a report that was 29 and ten, so not too long ago. 391 00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:40,680 The question is whether or not we want to try and bring this all together with a with an idea of a Whitehall academy 392 00:43:42,750 --> 00:43:49,350 in a sort of French model in which we can begin to view conflict and these other and drawing from other areas, 393 00:43:49,620 --> 00:43:54,150 but rather than simply having it in units in there in specific schools. 394 00:43:54,750 --> 00:43:59,190 So where does this all leave us? What is the military commander like in the future? 395 00:44:00,030 --> 00:44:07,080 Well, perhaps the military commander could be this sort of spending more time in the operations, maybe working for a PR agency at some point. 396 00:44:07,350 --> 00:44:16,430 We'll go into some Russell Group University and then maintaining his links within the alumni, virtually through Facebook or at least iPhone. 397 00:44:17,340 --> 00:44:24,360 This free flow of information drawing inspiration from business, academia, from military, from history, so on and so forth. 398 00:44:24,690 --> 00:44:29,850 This guy is a woman, is multi-skilled, multilingual, multidimensional, 399 00:44:30,350 --> 00:44:35,430 and would be as he's running a camp in Afghanistan, as would be securing the World Cup for Britain. 400 00:44:36,870 --> 00:44:45,200 Televisual. Charismatic. Authentic. Natural speaker linking the word and deed and pass. 401 00:44:46,430 --> 00:44:52,200 Been on the front page of Time magazine or or indeed having a profile in in the Sunday Times. 402 00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:55,650 So whether or not this is this is what we want. 403 00:44:56,400 --> 00:45:01,590 But there is there is a problem, because, of course, the whole idea is that this is supposed to be beyond the military. 404 00:45:02,210 --> 00:45:08,490 The war is too important to leave it to the to the general. Somebody once said calling is just acute politics. 405 00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:16,190 So I think there's this we've got to pass question whether or not the Petraeus factor is a good one, you know, 406 00:45:16,230 --> 00:45:21,900 because it's militarising what is hitherto not necessarily a military problem or are we quite 407 00:45:21,900 --> 00:45:25,590 content with that is that's just the way it is and it's not an awful lot we can do about it. 408 00:45:25,830 --> 00:45:33,540 Well, maybe they're more photogenic than others, so therefore I'll end with war is obviously still politics. 409 00:45:33,540 --> 00:45:36,960 COIN is acute. Politics is played out by human beings. 410 00:45:37,260 --> 00:45:43,020 It can be seen through the lens of social science with a sprinkling of ideas from business 411 00:45:43,260 --> 00:45:50,460 management where we're looking at changing behaviours or certainly maybe attitudes, 412 00:45:51,510 --> 00:45:57,750 using a better idea whether whether that's force money with words or deeds. 413 00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:06,510 And I think also is perhaps this less ambitious language of conflict and strategy. 414 00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:10,680 This limits, you know, this idea that we knew we thought we could nation build. 415 00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:13,010 But perhaps the more than this is too ambitious, 416 00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:17,710 perhaps we thought we could have a strategic narrative but split into maybe the Americans, Canada, the Brits. 417 00:46:17,730 --> 00:46:27,120 You know, we all find it difficult. So is is that we the language of of of of conflict becomes more limiting, 418 00:46:27,330 --> 00:46:36,900 less ambitious in this age of of of risk this age of risk and security, as far as poker said. 419 00:46:37,260 --> 00:46:45,690 And therefore, you know, we're trying like that, like the philosophy and we're trying to leave the stage with dignity, damage limitation. 420 00:46:45,690 --> 00:46:52,830 Our reputation is intact. And perhaps that's that's a better description rather than some hard end state 421 00:46:52,890 --> 00:46:57,870 that we find quite difficult to to reach and also difficult to communicate. 422 00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:05,280 And part of that, as I've tried to argue, is because I think from the information environment, 423 00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:09,630 the way is developing now, it could be an increasingly a game changer. 424 00:47:09,870 --> 00:47:12,929 And that's where we need to start looking conceptually about how it affects 425 00:47:12,930 --> 00:47:19,290 conflict rather than perhaps trying to refine the whole idea of nation building, 426 00:47:19,290 --> 00:47:23,720 which to some degree has been discredited. I've got no idea how much awful. 427 00:47:24,270 --> 00:47:31,150 I thought far too quickly. My script was screwed up. 428 00:47:31,410 --> 00:47:36,930 As I said by the beginning. Yes, I do. I do. I'm not I'm not I'm not a general. 429 00:47:37,230 --> 00:47:42,930 I am more of a nosy fellow like anybody else. 430 00:47:43,650 --> 00:47:54,629 You know, I've developed a view and one of the trends that one sees is that certainly within the military is that the younger officer now, 431 00:47:54,630 --> 00:47:59,910 perhaps because he can or she can, is wants to be able to tell them, give their experience, 432 00:47:59,910 --> 00:48:04,890 give their views, rather that view being been come down for on one time. 433 00:48:05,340 --> 00:48:10,770 So that that's my take on. 434 00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:19,830 The way I think conflict is and some of the problems that we've got of the practice is incredibly complex. 435 00:48:20,190 --> 00:48:27,310 As I said right at the beginning, I've listened to some people as well on several me and they have all argued against each other. 436 00:48:27,330 --> 00:48:34,320 There is no consensus and therefore I think there's a role for concepts rather than sort of applying, rigidity, applying.