I actually doing that. James taxable income.
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.
Check the price of admission fence and of course was from within the design of the time actually as well.
He's also been in diplomatic service as well, serving in York of nations.
But in Washington, some of the delegates and many of them,
as you may be aware of some of the reasonable people who want to hear of the baffled blame game,
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.
These reports, all depending on what people question, what British political affiliations do that someone has known,
obviously, and what is this relationship between senior leaders,
secret services and the civil service in this last year have eased, and obviously the last two most prominent countries were pretty complex.
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.
I mean, Miles go about the First World War.
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.
I also know that people there are now I'm turning myself into one I I've had a
career already in the Foreign Office and a few years in the Ministry of Defence.
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,
but is very much a practitioner's perspective and is the practitioners perspective from someone who not only did a lot of practice,
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.
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,
depending on the right people about the way that I decide,
politicians, senior military officers and civil servants, in my view, did not work well together during the last ten or 15 years.
And a little bit about some of the other things that have come out in this recent past.
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
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.
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.
But the main reason why I started taking an interest in this question of political military relations in the UK
is a sense really that we've had a very unsuccessful here in Britain in terms of our overseas military presence.
I think our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been fundamentally unsuccessful operations,
both in terms of their aims, but also in terms of the way that they were managed and organised and run.
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.
And my my attitude was really when things this wrong, first of all, I want to know what went wrong and why.
And secondly, I want to know how you can avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.
There's also a sense that I was hurt,
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,
given that there was a high degree of blame focussed on the role of the politicians,
in particular Tony Blair, who's kind of a demonic figure for me, which neglected the other elements of the British government,
which also have a very key part in this, both military and civilian.
And apart from a sense that this was wrong, that this was unfair,
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.
You're missing understanding, actually, of how things worked, which really worked.
And that was really the fundamental motivation for me to start looking at this subject.
It was also triggered a bit by my own experience in government work in the Ministry of Defence,
seeing how things really operated there, which was of course my own,
and the sense that within government there is,
there's a big gap between the way that people inside government and outside government and academia and the media think that things happen.
And in government, for example, everyone works on the assumption that the armed forces, for example, are powerful,
strong institutions which will work in political a political way to achieve their side, a consciously or unconsciously outside government.
I found often that there's this rather kind of, um,
black and white view that really it is mainly the people who are being questioned and criticised on this space program or NEWSNIGHT,
who tends people, officials who are primarily responsible for things.
And as the way that appears in this book,
that is the politicians who deal out the conflicts and it's really the general who are left to clean up the mess,
or as Jonathan Bailey and to quotation to reflect in my mind, the generals played their hand, but they didn't do it.
My announcement is that in many cases, in Britain's military campaigns in the last ten or 15 years,
the generals also played a strong role in claim land,
and it was partly a failure on the part of the politicians and civil servants that they didn't adopt more of that role.
And so now the generals ready to do that and that.
Now, the main themes of my my investigations are that the decision making process that
really worked quite successfully for Britain between the years of 1997 and 2000,
failed when it came from the pressure of the events of 911 and the change in the
US policy in terms of its nuclear operations and its practices and approaches,
which had worked well in the past, were not resilient enough to cope with the extraordinary pressures that were put on them after 911.
And I think it's worth emphasising that this really was a massive shock to the system.
I mean, I never experienced anything in my personal life, my experience in government that rivals to the dislocating shock,
which was which is experienced throughout the governmental system as well as through the country by the and the events of 911.
So this was was a big shock.
And to some degree it was it's not unexpected, but the government system should not have been resilient enough to cope with that.
But again, I think we need to recognise that, understand that rather than saying resort one sort of people's problems or another.
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,
how it might not work. And I think the failure of critical military relationship with that was part of that.
And I think also there was a lack of political control over what the armed forces were doing.
And this was particularly a problem because our system of democratic accountability is based on politicians
having have control over what the armed forces are to the national interest in the nation's name.
And if you don't have that degree of political control, how do you have proper accountability?
Now my research has been criticised by some people as being anti-military.
Specific reasons for country army because I talk a lot about generals in particular.
I would argue that this only comes across as criticism in comparison with the tone of a lot of the debates,
which says almost puts the military at a stall and as I say, demonises politicians.
And in fact, what my criticism is not so much directed at one of the people or not a lot of people,
whether they wear uniforms or suits, but actually as a criticism that really is focussed on the system.
In particular, I think that politicians, if not, assert themselves to exercise active control over energy operations.
Rather, they treat military as one constituency to be consolidated or pacified or exploited sometimes.
I think the Foreign Office institutionally did not really see wars that business.
They did not give advice in a way in which to ensure that military operations supported diplomatic means,
or that this would then support military operations beyond the most narrow attempt to build coalitions and maintain traditions.
I think the civilian side of the Ministry of Defence fails to ensure that this political military mechanism,
this link between religion operations and political aims, and there are a number of reasons for that.
And I think that elements within the armed forces, the British armed forces, actively lobby in a political way, including through the press,
to support their institutional interests and their own views in ways which were not necessarily in the national interest.
And one of the striking things that I found is that pretty much everyone involved, which I just criticised,
thought there were actually incorrect thought and acting properly and in the national interest.
Now that's on my paper and most of my research since I've looked at the number of examples of this,
and I will run through a number of you because I think even though my analysis in one or other cases may be wrong,
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.
One of the important examples I look at is the decision to contribute a British ground force to the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
so-called package three decision, when the government was thinking what it ought to do in terms if it was necessary to invade Iraq.
They looked at a number of different military options package one, package two,
package three, package, whether it was special forces, some intelligence activity,
but actually quite and remains package two was essentially Naval and Air Force three,
the forces that you have in the Gulf, but not really with any ground force component.
Package three was the one that eventually took place, which was all the American Special Forces and intelligence elements and the other two packages,
but also with a large ground force based around the British vision of around 34,000 personnel,
which as much as worked out, really represents almost a third of the entire coalition forces that went into Iraq.
Now, this is important not just militarily, but politically.
I mean, for one thing, it entailed a higher level of cost and potential risk to expenditure of lives.
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,
underpay conventions and perform for the security of the territory that it was passed from.
Therefore, everything that went wrong in Basra after the British invasion was the British responsibility.
Now one would expect, if things are working properly,
that a decision like that would be based on the press reasons that there would be some clear political
interest that meant that that sort of emergency course was what was necessary for most people.
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,
which kind of assumed that this was the sort of thing that you would do if you're faced with another war in Iraq.
In the 1997 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the structure forces that was mentioned in that review, which they might have done it,
imagine that the ground force of this size was the sort of thing you would be using in these circumstances.
So there's an element, I think,
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.
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,
that it was concerned that it would not be involved in, it was going to be left out.
As far as the documents that have been released through the so-called inquiry,
the Iraqi army show and the testimony of witnesses, the people ten were happy that Britain's political and strategic aims.
Just go ahead. More technology would be achieved through only using package one or package two.
So this aims to do something practical,
to deal with an item price do not to keep on side with the Americans to maintain
could be on the package to just an American special forces intelligence.
The reason why but they were very, very nervous about criticism from the army.
And there is there are a number of documents the Book of inquiry has published which show, for example,
quotations like minutes from officials within on the time saying there was another attempt by the Army to bounce you,
to take the decision to rush, to inspect decision on ground forces because it fits in with an institutional interest.
And there is in particular them say if we don't use them, we will face criticism from the UN.
There will be people in the army are unhappy and this unhappiness will come out in the media and the Chief of Defence Staff,
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
there isn't a clear chain of evidence to say when this decision package was taken.
On what grounds. But it does seem a very clear sign that this sort of lobbying had an impact on the
decision makers in number ten at a time when they were domestically pretty weak.
And they're pursuing a policy which was intense because they did not want to open
up another point to be criticised in the media by powerful institutional interest.
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.
And some say that the reason why Britain found itself fighting an unexpected counterinsurgency campaign,
Soviet Union was not because the State Department is necessary, but because the only lobbyist so as not to be left out of the.
The second example I look at is this is in Helmand, in Afghanistan in 2006,
the decision to move British forces from basically being concentrated around the conflict in the south, into the north,
into a much more contested area, which is a number of people are justified,
have the result of kicking off a major conflict involving the British army in a way which hasn't really been effective.
It radically reshape the mission of the British army.
And the British were famously John Reid, the Defence Secretary,
had said he would be pleased if we came out and said we found ourselves in a major, major mistake.
Now in contrast with the decision, this decision to move from the of peaceful capital in South Asia,
which was not taken by ministers under pressure from institutional interests, it seems to be taken without ministers being involved at all.
Testimony on this is controversial and there is a lack of clarity here.
But it does seem that this was the decision was taken by the military commander on the spot,
admittedly with some involvement in the local foreign office representatives, but without ministers being fully involved.
It happened at a time when one of the friends, Secretary John Reid, was handing over to another room.
And it seems to be clear record of documents and meetings that have since been publicly revealed.
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.
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.
It's a failure also in my mind, of the politicians to take an appropriate interest in the detail of the military operations.
John Reid, the Defence Secretary, is on record as saying to the House of Commons Defence Committee, which looked into precisely this question,
that he thought his role in thinking about the military planning for Helmand the same isn't
going to come in on budget and other government departments are going to be doing that.
It's important that he's not interested really in the operational details of what's happening
and whether that will or won't achieve the political objectives of becoming the central.
Does Brown's successor. My main position which is equally.
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.
But he thought the honourable thing to do as defence secretary to say yes,
I take full responsibility for this even though I wasn't involved in the decision.
Now it's one degree that is an honourable position.
It is difficult if Defence secretaries disassociate themselves from what the armed forces were doing.
But it does beg the question how do you have ministerial accountability?
How do you have democratic accountability for what is going on?
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.
How can you properly hold people accountable?
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.
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,
which led to an article being published called A Very Honest.
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.
And he lobbied for a reduction in British Social Security spending and an increase in the military budget.
But he did this really without briefing anyone else in government, let alone, you know, what he was doing.
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.
It also triggered concerns from Britain's allies and said, are you committed to Iraq or not?
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
and outflanked by a general whose job really was to support government policy on his side.
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.
The trade union representative to say things about what he thought when he thought the army was not being well treated.
But I don't think that's what happened. And in fact, he conducted this wasn't an isolated incident.
He's conducted a whole series of off the record briefings or on the record interviews, which said many of the same thing.
But we got to this point. He writes about this in his autobiography.
Now, one might think that when you have a head of government,
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.
Another tends not to do this. Townsend panel is chief of staff at the time of the fight.
He says in his book his account of the story. They do not want to make a martyr.
They thought that this would maintain the press interest in the story and turn it into a long running crisis.
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?
But also number ten, the principle of the fiscal direction, the ones who are democratically accountable,
feel they are not able to control senior public officials.
And because of that fear of what the press might say, because the press conference is.
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.
And this has been discussed in a number of books about the black and brown administrations,
particularly when they asked me, so what seems to happen this time?
You have the army, with the army, the armed forces, the Ministry of Defence.
We're making a case that British forces in Helmand ought to be reinforced to try and rescue something from
the difficult situation that was that of the Americans at the time when number ten was very concerned.
This was an unpopular war and where their instinct was to limit British might.
Now what seems to happen is that number ten eventually accepted military judgements.
And this was the argument, this was the government of Gordon Brown,
who was in a very weak situation and they accepted the military advice to reinforce in Helmand,
not because they agreed with the no fly zone, but because they were scared that if they didn't do so,
the military would then continue that briefing of the press, that the government policy was wrong.
They were very, very worried, rather, as as in the Pakistani decision that if they didn't keep the military happy,
this discontent would come into the media at the time when the government was weak and and cause problems.
Now, you may agree with the idea with maybe that the military was right.
Maybe they were right to say that in terms of achieving military objective fiscal military objectives in Helmand, reinforcing is necessary.
But it does seems to me an example of how the procedure did not work.
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,
of the armed forces of another time. Now, again, I would argue there is support from both sides,
but it is not the responsibility of politicians actively to exert themselves and not take the easy option when they do it.
But I also wonder about the correctness of the armed forces having this relationship with the press,
which enables them to relay this discontent in a way which rankles.
Now my last example is not in my paper because I read about it after the fact is drawn from a lecture
that was given to this group by Brigadier Justin of Jet Ski and also I think General Shearer,
that was probably a record. It's it's set out in this book.
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.
This was an operation which to my mind was essentially the initiative of the British commander in Iraq,
General Shepperd, against the policy of the British government and the Iraqi government.
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,
criminal gangs that were running the system.
He felt there was defeatism in Whitehall and that actually something needs to be done.
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.
He did not want to feel that the British army should emerge from Iraq with its reputation as having lost the war,
and that having this sort of assertive,
aggressive military operation to re-establish British control was one of the ways in which you could you could fix that.
Unsurprisingly, because this particular initiative is not getting the backing from London to join the protest because.
Deserters. It was special forces to establish a capability to train.
And in fact, the operation did not run exactly as planned.
But it seems to me astonishing that you could that you had an insurgency not just in Iraq against British forces,
but among, you know, important bands,
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.
I'm not really exactly exaggerations.
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.
That to me seems to be a problem in terms of democratic control and the problem in terms of strategy.
How can you possibly imagine that this country can deliver a coherent military fiscal strategy?
If you have confidence freelancing. Well, the thing that strikes one, as I said earlier, when you look at all these examples,
is that a lot of those involved could be doing the right thing for better or for worse.
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.
And in fact, as an analyst, I have my own views on a lot of what happened, which is very,
very difficult to say with any degree of authority who was right and who was wrong.
A lot of it is just a matter of judgement. And the reason why I find this,
I think this is very difficult is because there is no real established system of
and rules based on relations laid down rules the way that things take decisions.
But this on rules for judging whether a military officer is behaving correctly,
at what point you should go to the press for his views and what point he should follow his counsel maintain.
His consensus seems to be the British system works fine when the personalities involved get on with one another or sufficiently powerful to exert.
It works poorly when you don't have that, and that is one of the reasons why I collect my report.
Depending on the British system,
basically how it works functioning depends on the right sort of person being involved and having the right incentives.
When you have a system, as you did for situations you did in the late 1990s, when Prime Minister,
the Chief of Defence Staff, will come through government very well and mutual respect seem to understand how things work.
When you had a system in the late nineties and the early nineties where I was, Campbell,
the Prime Minister's Chief communications around an absolutely dominant controlling
system about what people in the Government were able to say to the press.
You didn't have this sort of problem with generals, people, you know, when you had people like General Douglas,
John Reid, disgruntled, who interpreted their roles in a different way.
And you acted in a different. You got problems and conflicts, as I say,
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,
defence secretary, foreign secretary, chief should actually cooperate together.
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.
And these were the limits. I think there's a contrast here with the US system where you do have some some laws.
You have the Goldwater-Nichols law which establishes a very clear line of control.
You have a whole range of experience from the founding of the US where there is, you know,
the relationship between the armed forces and Pakistan is a very key part of the national debate and you have repeated experience of
senior military officers being dismissed or never hand appointed by politicians who've been happy or unhappy with that performance.
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,
who are constantly discussing it constantly by debate in American the American political spectrum.
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.
I mean, particularly in this case, you know, in all the areas that the former examples that I talked about,
you could probably have examples of how the US system did not work.
Recently, Donald Rumsfeld used in a lot of the time the tone of the American debate to say these people have control.
Therefore, my views about what's the right way to wage this war, the correct ones, overruling measurements.
So it doesn't guarantee success, but it doesn't.
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.
And also because people are thinking about this and when they find themselves in a position as defence secretary,
as Prime Minister, as Chief Constable, you have a hinterland,
you have a preparation for the role that you want to occupy your thoughts about some
of these issues rather than just having to respond when the opportunity comes up,
and particularly when everyone is under enormous pressure because of some big international crisis,
which in the international environment and this is why I've really made some recommendations.
One is for the code of conduct somehow a way to govern this sort of relationship.
Now, to be honest, this code of conduct is a slight sort of talking points.
I haven't really looked into what the details ought to be, how great it is that's going to come.
But it's partly a way to trigger that debate about this issue,
but partly to say I make the argument that whatever we do, we need a more systematic approach.
We try and just continue to defend sector as a right.
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.
It does seem to me that a real discussion about the relationship, the discriminatory relationship,
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.
To my mind, this chief defence story in 2010 was fundamentally about re-establishing police, re-establishing in Pakistan.
It's about re-establishing control of the bunch of new industry trends,
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.
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.
But to my mind that was an essential act actually if you're going to ensure proper democracy.
In all the continuing military operations that Britain has been engaged in communication with Syria and its political military relationship.
There's also been is that in Libya,
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.
There was a question not very well concealed from the Chief of Defence Staff at the time about what was the British plan.
That's probably a good question to ask at the time, whether that should have been coming out publicly in the way of,
you know, safety concerns came out of the Lisbon Treaty about Syria and what's the plan?
Where do we go with this overstretched British forces?
And it was it was this time in the Libya debate in particular, that Prime Minister Cameron actually, you know,
famously said when asked about what sort of campaign that's coming up through the media message,
that if you do the fighting, I'll do the talking to my mind.
That is one of the very few statements from British press about how political manipulation.
That's what he's done.
But there was also a situation where, again, there was another attempt by the UN, by the armed forces, by the Ministry of Defence.
So this idea of, I mean, didn't rule out the future is a bad idea, makes us look, it makes no military sense.
It's a hostage fortune. Again,
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
that you suggest that actually relates to our overall goal to get out of Afghanistan which the degree of course was fundamentally important.
So all these issues are still sort of bubbling that all are strong political dimension.
I think there's the discussion about whether the changes in structures of government,
particularly the intention of the National Security Council, have changed my mind.
It hasn't really affected. Again, as I say, this lack of systematic approach.
You have an institution, but do you have the system to make that institution work?
From what one hears about National Security Council,
it does seem to function a sort of arbitration mechanism between the various different strands of opinion around Whitehall.
Sometimes military, sometimes foreign affairs. Sometimes of.
It is perhaps establishing a sort of common law of practice by that experience,
which will shape the way that Britain will approach these issues in the future.
But my concern is that once you have a change of course, now you have a change of government.
There is not enough business to make sure that the next group of people would come to a decision.
The National Security Council will behave in the same way. So again, is to me an example of this characteristic.
And you know that if you want to change something, you change the processes,
and that is good so far as it goes, but to my mind does not do anything like enough to change.
Say what is fundamentally a lack of a system.
So just to conclude, I think that this is a question of physical reservations or discriminatory to say this line.
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.
This strategy, this is actually an absolutely key element of any discussion about what Britain should be doing,
the terms and what most Western style democracy should be doing in return.
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.
And what I hope to do with this paper, with this sort of discussion of these sorts of debates, which I'm trying to.
Continue is to encourage a bit more of a debate about this and also for people to tell me my analysis as well.
Yeah, that would be good. Which would be an improvement from where we are.