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I actually doing that. James taxable income.

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He's obviously it isn't predictable. He's very scared of the public trust and perhaps he's had a great deal more experience than just working.

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Check the price of admission fence and of course was from within the design of the time actually as well.

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He's also been in diplomatic service as well, serving in York of nations.

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But in Washington, some of the delegates and many of them,

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as you may be aware of some of the reasonable people who want to hear of the baffled blame game,

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which, you know, very interesting ask about comparing the back of the blame game of the First World War with what's been going on in recent years.

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These reports, all depending on what people question, what British political affiliations do that someone has known,

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obviously, and what is this relationship between senior leaders,

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secret services and the civil service in this last year have eased, and obviously the last two most prominent countries were pretty complex.

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I know it was a more discussion topic, especially obviously we were sound so concerned about it, something had started to make it very much.

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I mean, Miles go about the First World War.

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I mean, I'm not something of an expert on the First World War, but rather like Hugh, it's a useful opportunity to make fun of.

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I also know that people there are now I'm turning myself into one I I've had a

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career already in the Foreign Office and a few years in the Ministry of Defence.

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And my approach to these issues is therefore one which may not have all the rigour and liberty and vision which I've come to associate with academics,

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but is very much a practitioner's perspective and is the practitioners perspective from someone who not only did a lot of practice,

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but also who was quite concerned about some of the things that we experienced in government and particularly a sense of what had gone wrong.

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And I'm going to talk to you a bit today about I'm principally someone material that's covered in my report that Rob mentioned,

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depending on the right people about the way that I decide,

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politicians, senior military officers and civil servants, in my view, did not work well together during the last ten or 15 years.

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And a little bit about some of the other things that have come out in this recent past.

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We one of the reasons why I'm pleased to be coming to address this group is that I think some of the other speakers you've had at these

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seminars over the years have both provided a lot of very useful material to people like me who are interested in how things function online.

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Presented some of the arguments which I would like to counter and resist, and I would expand a bit more about that as I go on.

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But the main reason why I started taking an interest in this question of political military relations in the UK

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is a sense really that we've had a very unsuccessful here in Britain in terms of our overseas military presence.

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I think our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been fundamentally unsuccessful operations,

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both in terms of their aims, but also in terms of the way that they were managed and organised and run.

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And my focus today is less on that, whether they were the right war, but more on this question of how they were they were managed.

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And my my attitude was really when things this wrong, first of all, I want to know what went wrong and why.

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And secondly, I want to know how you can avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.

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There's also a sense that I was hurt,

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that I had a sense of unfairness about the way a lot of the British debates about Iraq and Afghanistan had kind of have worked out,

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given that there was a high degree of blame focussed on the role of the politicians,

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in particular Tony Blair, who's kind of a demonic figure for me, which neglected the other elements of the British government,

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which also have a very key part in this, both military and civilian.

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And apart from a sense that this was wrong, that this was unfair,

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I also thought that if you are focusing solely on the personality of Tony Blair or the role of politicians, you're missing a trick.

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You're missing understanding, actually, of how things worked, which really worked.

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And that was really the fundamental motivation for me to start looking at this subject.

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It was also triggered a bit by my own experience in government work in the Ministry of Defence,

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seeing how things really operated there, which was of course my own,

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and the sense that within government there is,

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there's a big gap between the way that people inside government and outside government and academia and the media think that things happen.

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And in government, for example, everyone works on the assumption that the armed forces, for example, are powerful,

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strong institutions which will work in political a political way to achieve their side, a consciously or unconsciously outside government.

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I found often that there's this rather kind of, um,

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black and white view that really it is mainly the people who are being questioned and criticised on this space program or NEWSNIGHT,

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who tends people, officials who are primarily responsible for things.

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And as the way that appears in this book,

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that is the politicians who deal out the conflicts and it's really the general who are left to clean up the mess,

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or as Jonathan Bailey and to quotation to reflect in my mind, the generals played their hand, but they didn't do it.

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My announcement is that in many cases, in Britain's military campaigns in the last ten or 15 years,

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the generals also played a strong role in claim land,

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and it was partly a failure on the part of the politicians and civil servants that they didn't adopt more of that role.

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And so now the generals ready to do that and that.

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Now, the main themes of my my investigations are that the decision making process that

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really worked quite successfully for Britain between the years of 1997 and 2000,

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failed when it came from the pressure of the events of 911 and the change in the

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US policy in terms of its nuclear operations and its practices and approaches,

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which had worked well in the past, were not resilient enough to cope with the extraordinary pressures that were put on them after 911.

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And I think it's worth emphasising that this really was a massive shock to the system.

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I mean, I never experienced anything in my personal life, my experience in government that rivals to the dislocating shock,

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which was which is experienced throughout the governmental system as well as through the country by the and the events of 911.

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So this was was a big shock.

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And to some degree it was it's not unexpected, but the government system should not have been resilient enough to cope with that.

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But again, I think we need to recognise that, understand that rather than saying resort one sort of people's problems or another.

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I think it was also a failure to link military operations to that critical elements and here in others have their own recipe for why it's happened,

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how it might not work. And I think the failure of critical military relationship with that was part of that.

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And I think also there was a lack of political control over what the armed forces were doing.

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And this was particularly a problem because our system of democratic accountability is based on politicians

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having have control over what the armed forces are to the national interest in the nation's name.

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And if you don't have that degree of political control, how do you have proper accountability?

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Now my research has been criticised by some people as being anti-military.

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Specific reasons for country army because I talk a lot about generals in particular.

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I would argue that this only comes across as criticism in comparison with the tone of a lot of the debates,

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which says almost puts the military at a stall and as I say, demonises politicians.

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And in fact, what my criticism is not so much directed at one of the people or not a lot of people,

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whether they wear uniforms or suits, but actually as a criticism that really is focussed on the system.

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In particular, I think that politicians, if not, assert themselves to exercise active control over energy operations.

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Rather, they treat military as one constituency to be consolidated or pacified or exploited sometimes.

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I think the Foreign Office institutionally did not really see wars that business.

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They did not give advice in a way in which to ensure that military operations supported diplomatic means,

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or that this would then support military operations beyond the most narrow attempt to build coalitions and maintain traditions.

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I think the civilian side of the Ministry of Defence fails to ensure that this political military mechanism,

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this link between religion operations and political aims, and there are a number of reasons for that.

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And I think that elements within the armed forces, the British armed forces, actively lobby in a political way, including through the press,

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to support their institutional interests and their own views in ways which were not necessarily in the national interest.

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And one of the striking things that I found is that pretty much everyone involved, which I just criticised,

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thought there were actually incorrect thought and acting properly and in the national interest.

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Now that's on my paper and most of my research since I've looked at the number of examples of this,

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and I will run through a number of you because I think even though my analysis in one or other cases may be wrong,

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there's a sufficient case just in a number of problems. What I think is happening to that there is something wrong with the system.

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One of the important examples I look at is the decision to contribute a British ground force to the invasion of Iraq in 2003,

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so-called package three decision, when the government was thinking what it ought to do in terms if it was necessary to invade Iraq.

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They looked at a number of different military options package one, package two,

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package three, package, whether it was special forces, some intelligence activity,

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but actually quite and remains package two was essentially Naval and Air Force three,

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the forces that you have in the Gulf, but not really with any ground force component.

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Package three was the one that eventually took place, which was all the American Special Forces and intelligence elements and the other two packages,

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but also with a large ground force based around the British vision of around 34,000 personnel,

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which as much as worked out, really represents almost a third of the entire coalition forces that went into Iraq.

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Now, this is important not just militarily, but politically.

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I mean, for one thing, it entailed a higher level of cost and potential risk to expenditure of lives.

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But also, I mean, the fact that this ground force ended up being used to take control of a on a gave Britain full responsibility,

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underpay conventions and perform for the security of the territory that it was passed from.

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Therefore, everything that went wrong in Basra after the British invasion was the British responsibility.

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Now one would expect, if things are working properly,

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that a decision like that would be based on the press reasons that there would be some clear political

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interest that meant that that sort of emergency course was what was necessary for most people.

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To my mind, that didn't happen. This decision was not taken. There are a number of factors in play, one of which was military planning,

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which kind of assumed that this was the sort of thing that you would do if you're faced with another war in Iraq.

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In the 1997 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the structure forces that was mentioned in that review, which they might have done it,

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imagine that the ground force of this size was the sort of thing you would be using in these circumstances.

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So there's an element, I think,

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of the military picking plan itself and saying the circumstances that we thought about that was the way to deal with it with no real further analysis.

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But I think more critical to my mind was the question that this was a result of lobbying by the British Army to be engaged in a military operation,

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that it was concerned that it would not be involved in, it was going to be left out.

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As far as the documents that have been released through the so-called inquiry,

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the Iraqi army show and the testimony of witnesses, the people ten were happy that Britain's political and strategic aims.

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Just go ahead. More technology would be achieved through only using package one or package two.

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So this aims to do something practical,

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to deal with an item price do not to keep on side with the Americans to maintain

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could be on the package to just an American special forces intelligence.

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The reason why but they were very, very nervous about criticism from the army.

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And there is there are a number of documents the Book of inquiry has published which show, for example,

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quotations like minutes from officials within on the time saying there was another attempt by the Army to bounce you,

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to take the decision to rush, to inspect decision on ground forces because it fits in with an institutional interest.

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And there is in particular them say if we don't use them, we will face criticism from the UN.

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There will be people in the army are unhappy and this unhappiness will come out in the media and the Chief of Defence Staff,

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the top military adviser, the government is concerned about this. And one of the problems was saying this was in going from not is actually there is

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there isn't a clear chain of evidence to say when this decision package was taken.

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On what grounds. But it does seem a very clear sign that this sort of lobbying had an impact on the

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decision makers in number ten at a time when they were domestically pretty weak.

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And they're pursuing a policy which was intense because they did not want to open

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up another point to be criticised in the media by powerful institutional interest.

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And that does seem to my mind to be a key driving factor in this decision to launch a ground invasion of Iraq, to use British forces.

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And some say that the reason why Britain found itself fighting an unexpected counterinsurgency campaign,

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Soviet Union was not because the State Department is necessary, but because the only lobbyist so as not to be left out of the.

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The second example I look at is this is in Helmand, in Afghanistan in 2006,

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the decision to move British forces from basically being concentrated around the conflict in the south, into the north,

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into a much more contested area, which is a number of people are justified,

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have the result of kicking off a major conflict involving the British army in a way which hasn't really been effective.

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It radically reshape the mission of the British army.

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And the British were famously John Reid, the Defence Secretary,

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had said he would be pleased if we came out and said we found ourselves in a major, major mistake.

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Now in contrast with the decision, this decision to move from the of peaceful capital in South Asia,

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which was not taken by ministers under pressure from institutional interests, it seems to be taken without ministers being involved at all.

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Testimony on this is controversial and there is a lack of clarity here.

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But it does seem that this was the decision was taken by the military commander on the spot,

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admittedly with some involvement in the local foreign office representatives, but without ministers being fully involved.

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It happened at a time when one of the friends, Secretary John Reid, was handing over to another room.

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And it seems to be clear record of documents and meetings that have since been publicly revealed.

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No, I don't make the argument that this was made by this was a decision that was made by the Army supporters institutional interests.

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To me, this is a failure of the system and it's a failure of the military to realise the political consequences of what they were doing.

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It's a failure also in my mind, of the politicians to take an appropriate interest in the detail of the military operations.

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John Reid, the Defence Secretary, is on record as saying to the House of Commons Defence Committee, which looked into precisely this question,

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that he thought his role in thinking about the military planning for Helmand the same isn't

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going to come in on budget and other government departments are going to be doing that.

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It's important that he's not interested really in the operational details of what's happening

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and whether that will or won't achieve the political objectives of becoming the central.

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Does Brown's successor. My main position which is equally.

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That's what I hear criticism and that he took responsibility for the reason he wasn't involved in the decision making that they are behind this.

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But he thought the honourable thing to do as defence secretary to say yes,

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I take full responsibility for this even though I wasn't involved in the decision.

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Now it's one degree that is an honourable position.

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It is difficult if Defence secretaries disassociate themselves from what the armed forces were doing.

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But it does beg the question how do you have ministerial accountability?

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How do you have democratic accountability for what is going on?

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If ministers don't know what they want to do? They don't know what the people for whom they are responsible in this case.

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How can you properly hold people accountable?

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The third example I look at is the example of General Sir Richard that he was head of the British Army in the mid 2000.

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He was quite a controversial figure, but he one of the things he did was he gave an interview to The Daily Mail in 2006,

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which led to an article being published called A Very Honest.

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And in among other things, in this interview, he said that implies very clearly that the British should leave Iraq because they were having problems.

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And he lobbied for a reduction in British Social Security spending and an increase in the military budget.

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But he did this really without briefing anyone else in government, let alone, you know, what he was doing.

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This caused a big stir. It came at a time when the government was already under fire over its Afghan policy and its funding forces.

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It also triggered concerns from Britain's allies and said, are you committed to Iraq or not?

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What is this general saying? So it caused a stir in the town and among the fiscal folks who felt that they suddenly be surprised

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and outflanked by a general whose job really was to support government policy on his side.

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General Dynamics thought he was pretty justified because part of his job as head of the Pentagon was to act in a sort of way.

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The trade union representative to say things about what he thought when he thought the army was not being well treated.

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But I don't think that's what happened. And in fact, he conducted this wasn't an isolated incident.

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He's conducted a whole series of off the record briefings or on the record interviews, which said many of the same thing.

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But we got to this point. He writes about this in his autobiography.

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Now, one might think that when you have a head of government,

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a prime minister who thinks that one of his chief generals is saying something which is not in line with the policy that might be dismissed.

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Another tends not to do this. Townsend panel is chief of staff at the time of the fight.

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He says in his book his account of the story. They do not want to make a martyr.

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They thought that this would maintain the press interest in the story and turn it into a long running crisis.

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To me, that is another problem. I mean, not only is there some confusion about what the head of the Army thinks his job is and what number ten?

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But also number ten, the principle of the fiscal direction, the ones who are democratically accountable,

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feel they are not able to control senior public officials.

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And because of that fear of what the press might say, because the press conference is.

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That was also a factor in my vote, which is the argument that took place in 2008, 2009 over whether British forces should be reinforced.

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And this has been discussed in a number of books about the black and brown administrations,

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particularly when they asked me, so what seems to happen this time?

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You have the army, with the army, the armed forces, the Ministry of Defence.

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We're making a case that British forces in Helmand ought to be reinforced to try and rescue something from

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the difficult situation that was that of the Americans at the time when number ten was very concerned.

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This was an unpopular war and where their instinct was to limit British might.

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Now what seems to happen is that number ten eventually accepted military judgements.

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And this was the argument, this was the government of Gordon Brown,

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who was in a very weak situation and they accepted the military advice to reinforce in Helmand,

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not because they agreed with the no fly zone, but because they were scared that if they didn't do so,

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the military would then continue that briefing of the press, that the government policy was wrong.

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They were very, very worried, rather, as as in the Pakistani decision that if they didn't keep the military happy,

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this discontent would come into the media at the time when the government was weak and and cause problems.

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Now, you may agree with the idea with maybe that the military was right.

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Maybe they were right to say that in terms of achieving military objective fiscal military objectives in Helmand, reinforcing is necessary.

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But it does seems to me an example of how the procedure did not work.

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It seems to be wrong that decisions about the use of armed forces should be taken on the basis of the relative standard of the British media,

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of the armed forces of another time. Now, again, I would argue there is support from both sides,

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but it is not the responsibility of politicians actively to exert themselves and not take the easy option when they do it.

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But I also wonder about the correctness of the armed forces having this relationship with the press,

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which enables them to relay this discontent in a way which rankles.

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Now my last example is not in my paper because I read about it after the fact is drawn from a lecture

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that was given to this group by Brigadier Justin of Jet Ski and also I think General Shearer,

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that was probably a record. It's it's set out in this book.

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I'm very grateful and is about the conduct of Operation Sinbad, a very difficult and quite bloody British military operation in Basra in 2008, 2009.

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This was an operation which to my mind was essentially the initiative of the British commander in Iraq,

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General Shepperd, against the policy of the British government and the Iraqi government.

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He felt that, frankly, the British were not taking a strong ally in exerting their authority and their control over Basra in the face of the militias,

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criminal gangs that were running the system.

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He felt there was defeatism in Whitehall and that actually something needs to be done.

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And one of the reasons why he did this, according to become quite ambitious, is that he was concerned about the reputation of the British army.

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He did not want to feel that the British army should emerge from Iraq with its reputation as having lost the war,

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and that having this sort of assertive,

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aggressive military operation to re-establish British control was one of the ways in which you could you could fix that.

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Unsurprisingly, because this particular initiative is not getting the backing from London to join the protest because.

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Deserters. It was special forces to establish a capability to train.

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And in fact, the operation did not run exactly as planned.

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But it seems to me astonishing that you could that you had an insurgency not just in Iraq against British forces,

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but among, you know, important bands,

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the British army, who had the freedom to do something like that, which was in breach of British government policy and not be reined in.

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I'm not really exactly exaggerations.

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It does seem to me to be, according to the accounts of a sheriff and others involved, this does seem to be quite the things.

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That to me seems to be a problem in terms of democratic control and the problem in terms of strategy.

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How can you possibly imagine that this country can deliver a coherent military fiscal strategy?

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If you have confidence freelancing. Well, the thing that strikes one, as I said earlier, when you look at all these examples,

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is that a lot of those involved could be doing the right thing for better or for worse.

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In the case of Joshua, that he was correct in his assessment that it was important for the nation and the British army to maintain its reputation.

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And in fact, as an analyst, I have my own views on a lot of what happened, which is very,

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very difficult to say with any degree of authority who was right and who was wrong.

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A lot of it is just a matter of judgement. And the reason why I find this,

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I think this is very difficult is because there is no real established system of

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and rules based on relations laid down rules the way that things take decisions.

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But this on rules for judging whether a military officer is behaving correctly,

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at what point you should go to the press for his views and what point he should follow his counsel maintain.

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His consensus seems to be the British system works fine when the personalities involved get on with one another or sufficiently powerful to exert.

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It works poorly when you don't have that, and that is one of the reasons why I collect my report.

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Depending on the British system,

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basically how it works functioning depends on the right sort of person being involved and having the right incentives.

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When you have a system, as you did for situations you did in the late 1990s, when Prime Minister,

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the Chief of Defence Staff, will come through government very well and mutual respect seem to understand how things work.

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When you had a system in the late nineties and the early nineties where I was, Campbell,

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the Prime Minister's Chief communications around an absolutely dominant controlling

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system about what people in the Government were able to say to the press.

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You didn't have this sort of problem with generals, people, you know, when you had people like General Douglas,

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John Reid, disgruntled, who interpreted their roles in a different way.

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And you acted in a different. You got problems and conflicts, as I say,

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because there is no there's neither of reform law enforcement system in Britain for saying how people who are who occupy Israel's prime minister,

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defence secretary, foreign secretary, chief should actually cooperate together.

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There are formal structures, but there's very little software that says that your role to make this structure work should be taxed in this way.

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And these were the limits. I think there's a contrast here with the US system where you do have some some laws.

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You have the Goldwater-Nichols law which establishes a very clear line of control.

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You have a whole range of experience from the founding of the US where there is, you know,

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the relationship between the armed forces and Pakistan is a very key part of the national debate and you have repeated experience of

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senior military officers being dismissed or never hand appointed by politicians who've been happy or unhappy with that performance.

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And you have a very, very lively debate. And I have a lot of friends, intellectuals who engage in this, who write books about it,

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who are constantly discussing it constantly by debate in American the American political spectrum.

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Now, of course, this doesn't guarantee success. I mean, we're all aware of situations where discriminatory relations in the US have not worked.

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I mean, particularly in this case, you know, in all the areas that the former examples that I talked about,

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you could probably have examples of how the US system did not work.

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Recently, Donald Rumsfeld used in a lot of the time the tone of the American debate to say these people have control.

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Therefore, my views about what's the right way to wage this war, the correct ones, overruling measurements.

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So it doesn't guarantee success, but it doesn't.

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It does to me seem to be, first of all, a more healthy system when you this is a minor issue in the public debate.

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And also because people are thinking about this and when they find themselves in a position as defence secretary,

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as Prime Minister, as Chief Constable, you have a hinterland,

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you have a preparation for the role that you want to occupy your thoughts about some

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of these issues rather than just having to respond when the opportunity comes up,

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and particularly when everyone is under enormous pressure because of some big international crisis,

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which in the international environment and this is why I've really made some recommendations.

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One is for the code of conduct somehow a way to govern this sort of relationship.

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Now, to be honest, this code of conduct is a slight sort of talking points.

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I haven't really looked into what the details ought to be, how great it is that's going to come.

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But it's partly a way to trigger that debate about this issue,

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but partly to say I make the argument that whatever we do, we need a more systematic approach.

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We try and just continue to defend sector as a right.

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And as I say, one of the things I hope these recommendations trigger a bit more discussion about this, which again is one reason why I'm so pleased.

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It does seem to me that a real discussion about the relationship, the discriminatory relationship,

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is absent in the first thing that is still increasing is still very, very important if you look at a whole range of defence related issues.

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To my mind, this chief defence story in 2010 was fundamentally about re-establishing police, re-establishing in Pakistan.

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It's about re-establishing control of the bunch of new industry trends,

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but also saying this is going to be a century controlled exercise masterminded from what we from the armed forces have your say to engage.

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We're the ones who agreed to sign and that was to be the central control is one of the things that actually the review was criticised for.

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But to my mind that was an essential act actually if you're going to ensure proper democracy.

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In all the continuing military operations that Britain has been engaged in communication with Syria and its political military relationship.

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There's also been is that in Libya,

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there are a number of concerns about things that very senior admiral said about which we've overstretched the operations, putting on the armed forces.

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There was a question not very well concealed from the Chief of Defence Staff at the time about what was the British plan.

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That's probably a good question to ask at the time, whether that should have been coming out publicly in the way of,

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you know, safety concerns came out of the Lisbon Treaty about Syria and what's the plan?

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Where do we go with this overstretched British forces?

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And it was it was this time in the Libya debate in particular, that Prime Minister Cameron actually, you know,

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famously said when asked about what sort of campaign that's coming up through the media message,

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that if you do the fighting, I'll do the talking to my mind.

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That is one of the very few statements from British press about how political manipulation.

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That's what he's done.

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But there was also a situation where, again, there was another attempt by the UN, by the armed forces, by the Ministry of Defence.

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So this idea of, I mean, didn't rule out the future is a bad idea, makes us look, it makes no military sense.

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It's a hostage fortune. Again,

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not the term resisted that we're not going to have any we can carry on maintaining this end state that admittedly I heavily military problems

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that you suggest that actually relates to our overall goal to get out of Afghanistan which the degree of course was fundamentally important.

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So all these issues are still sort of bubbling that all are strong political dimension.

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I think there's the discussion about whether the changes in structures of government,

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particularly the intention of the National Security Council, have changed my mind.

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It hasn't really affected. Again, as I say, this lack of systematic approach.

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You have an institution, but do you have the system to make that institution work?

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From what one hears about National Security Council,

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it does seem to function a sort of arbitration mechanism between the various different strands of opinion around Whitehall.

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Sometimes military, sometimes foreign affairs. Sometimes of.

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It is perhaps establishing a sort of common law of practice by that experience,

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which will shape the way that Britain will approach these issues in the future.

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But my concern is that once you have a change of course, now you have a change of government.

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There is not enough business to make sure that the next group of people would come to a decision.

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The National Security Council will behave in the same way. So again, is to me an example of this characteristic.

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And you know that if you want to change something, you change the processes,

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and that is good so far as it goes, but to my mind does not do anything like enough to change.

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Say what is fundamentally a lack of a system.

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So just to conclude, I think that this is a question of physical reservations or discriminatory to say this line.

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Sure. Because as I say, I think that is a key role issue, is the role of civilian officials and diplomats and civilians in the Ministry of Defence.

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This strategy, this is actually an absolutely key element of any discussion about what Britain should be doing,

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the terms and what most Western style democracy should be doing in return.

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But I do think it's largely been neglected because it is often covered in a very black and white shorthand, superficial way, particularly in Egypt.

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And what I hope to do with this paper, with this sort of discussion of these sorts of debates, which I'm trying to.

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Continue is to encourage a bit more of a debate about this and also for people to tell me my analysis as well.

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Yeah, that would be good. Which would be an improvement from where we are.