1 00:00:00,750 --> 00:00:03,360 I shouldn't have to introduce Rob Johnson. 2 00:00:03,720 --> 00:00:12,150 I'm introducing Rob Johnson, who is known as the director of educational programs and is therefore an entirely familiar face. 3 00:00:12,870 --> 00:00:17,100 Rob's most recent book is On the Afghan War. 4 00:00:17,580 --> 00:00:25,530 And of course, he thinks that he's particularly in Central Asia and in other aspects of British overseas policy. 5 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:29,580 Well, thank you. His focus today is not. 6 00:00:31,090 --> 00:00:42,920 Past, but future on his platform is planning future war and the graph of mathematical integrity. 7 00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:48,730 Well, thank you. This was not my idea. I shouldn't really be here. 8 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:54,130 The speaker we had in mind, unfortunately, ten days ago told us that he was unable to come. 9 00:00:54,700 --> 00:01:00,100 And as happens with the change capable program, because we are quite a thin organisation in terms of that. 10 00:01:00,820 --> 00:01:07,870 It felt for me to have to come back to work that's been going on at the moment and I am on difficult terrain, 11 00:01:08,650 --> 00:01:11,080 not least because I trained as historian. 12 00:01:11,350 --> 00:01:18,069 And one thing you learn very quickly as an undergraduate and story and onwards is that you don't tinker with the future. 13 00:01:18,070 --> 00:01:25,360 You don't attempt to make any kind of positive judgements about the future because you are going to lose your reputation pretty quickly. 14 00:01:25,420 --> 00:01:33,309 So this is me sticking my neck out brass necked approach to try and assess and 15 00:01:33,310 --> 00:01:39,520 understand not only not just the trends that people are very fond of to talk about, 16 00:01:39,940 --> 00:01:45,700 but what the caveats and obstacles and problems are with even beginning to assess this particular subject. 17 00:01:46,520 --> 00:01:55,060 Let me start, if I may, with with sort of three vignettes, because I think that illustrates the problem for me very dramatically. 18 00:01:55,660 --> 00:02:02,379 The first is under the heading, essentially terrorism, we have all been very familiar not only with the imagery, 19 00:02:02,380 --> 00:02:10,840 but also the detail of 911 of Bali, of Madrid, with attacks wholly on transport, infrastructures and finance. 20 00:02:11,380 --> 00:02:18,010 And then there's the sort of Mumbai Westgate full of terrorism, which seems to threaten to become ever more frequent. 21 00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:21,610 Look at what happened to Sharm el-Sheikh, for example, three years ago tonight. 22 00:02:22,270 --> 00:02:28,239 There appears to be something of a pattern emerging there of swarm attacks by irregulars who 23 00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:33,639 essentially already resigned themselves to their own destruction and the mass destruction, 24 00:02:33,640 --> 00:02:43,690 essentially, of others. That's one vignette. Then if I can put another mental image in your mind of advocacy by the technologists, the idea that, 25 00:02:43,690 --> 00:02:49,509 for example, in Japan and in the United States at the moment there is research going only to cloaking devices, 26 00:02:49,510 --> 00:02:59,229 almost literally cloaking devices, creating technology that can project forwards by like a data projector of hundreds of small cameras, 27 00:02:59,230 --> 00:03:04,630 which will project forward an image of what is on the back of a vehicle or a person. 28 00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:09,130 So from a distance, it looks as if that person is not even there at all. 29 00:03:09,810 --> 00:03:12,580 No developing system where that could be applied to a main battle tank. 30 00:03:12,910 --> 00:03:20,110 So at least visually, I think the heat signature and one would not actually be able to see the objects that you were looking towards, 31 00:03:20,770 --> 00:03:26,739 because also some of the technology body enhancement is being investigated by organisations 32 00:03:26,740 --> 00:03:32,190 like the Sunlight Dawn who want to find out all of the ways of enhancing of a human being, 33 00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:41,650 human physiology in such a way that we could enhance our endurance, possibly even replace body parts that have been blown away by IEDs and so on. 34 00:03:41,890 --> 00:03:44,140 And even alongside our exoskeletons, 35 00:03:44,140 --> 00:03:51,580 how can we create a structure around that human frame to give it greatest strength and agility than it has at the moment? 36 00:03:52,930 --> 00:03:58,239 I think another one that we're all familiar with this is an on the technology heading is space technology. 37 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:02,260 People. I know that Virgin, as a group, a corporation, 38 00:04:02,260 --> 00:04:10,630 are on the verge of launching a reusable A-frame that will be able to go to the upper atmosphere on the edge of space. 39 00:04:11,020 --> 00:04:13,450 And ultimately, if we can develop the technology in the right way, 40 00:04:13,450 --> 00:04:20,200 we'll be able to skip the upper atmosphere and make journey times from London to Beijing in the future, perhaps under 2 hours. 41 00:04:20,740 --> 00:04:24,280 Extraordinary phenomenon with all sorts of military potential. 42 00:04:25,090 --> 00:04:27,010 But there's also the absurdity of technology. 43 00:04:27,010 --> 00:04:31,989 And I can't and very tempted to mention to you that piece of technology is being developed in the United States. 44 00:04:31,990 --> 00:04:38,350 It's called Dog. Some of you are familiar with it, but it's a large mechanical horse like object without a head. 45 00:04:39,490 --> 00:04:44,080 It's driven by engine, which is extraordinarily loud, like a giant lawnmower. 46 00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:50,290 It can carry lots of water and ammunition behind a small unit as it approaches in urban spaces. 47 00:04:50,290 --> 00:04:57,340 It goes in so that if you get a bit of fabric for which you need a great deal of ammunition and water normally and medical equipment. 48 00:04:58,270 --> 00:05:02,170 I did sort of impotently point out to people the Taliban already have one of these pieces of technology. 49 00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:09,720 So an American friend of mine. He was astonished and said, I don't believe Afghans will ever have anything approaching this degree of expertise. 50 00:05:09,730 --> 00:05:15,130 I said, yes, it's called a mule. It is grass, it's silent and it goes up mountains. 51 00:05:16,630 --> 00:05:21,670 There's also, of course, the other theme that in the photograph I want to put in your mind before we get underway with this, 52 00:05:21,670 --> 00:05:30,550 which is one of traditional civil wars, as we turn on our televisions in the evening, every evening at the moment, what is. 53 00:05:30,710 --> 00:05:37,220 With images of Syria. But of course, we've also been through a decade of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia. 54 00:05:37,550 --> 00:05:40,340 I mean, I think we're all very familiar things that we familiar, frankly, 55 00:05:40,340 --> 00:05:45,560 to facilities of the the unchanging nature of war, of which we're all very familiar. 56 00:05:45,860 --> 00:05:54,590 On this program, it does seem, doesn't it, that perhaps in as we go into the future, the means and the ways are going to change significantly, 57 00:05:55,340 --> 00:06:00,260 whereas the ends or the nature will somehow remain very familiar, very much the same. 58 00:06:01,010 --> 00:06:05,510 So what am I going to try to do in the time, the half an hour or 40 minutes say that I've got? 59 00:06:06,260 --> 00:06:15,410 Well, try to assess the planning, a future war, hopefully drawing attention to some of these caveats and obstacles and problems that we face. 60 00:06:15,860 --> 00:06:22,450 Well, the sense you got there are three assertions I want to look at. Really. This is this is how an historic means factor with social science. 61 00:06:22,580 --> 00:06:28,340 You know, I'm no longer talk about historical narrative and analysis. I'm not talking about assertions as something something you've done. 62 00:06:28,340 --> 00:06:33,020 To me, the first decision is about is prediction is inherently problematic. 63 00:06:33,740 --> 00:06:40,969 But history can be a very useful guide in asking the right questions and in giving us some useful 64 00:06:40,970 --> 00:06:45,890 experience on which we can then springboard our own analysis of the present and the future. 65 00:06:46,980 --> 00:06:51,150 I think my second session is that the present is also a guide in the same way, 66 00:06:52,170 --> 00:06:56,880 but we still face this problem of what to select from the present or even the recent past. 67 00:06:57,360 --> 00:07:00,419 And I think what a lot, of course we've got, which is something that David Kilcullen, 68 00:07:00,420 --> 00:07:07,380 as recent drawn attention to the difficult difficulty of conceiving, of an era of accelerating change. 69 00:07:07,680 --> 00:07:11,400 How do we manage to understand that from the present? 70 00:07:12,510 --> 00:07:21,060 And the third assumption is that the trends of war appear to be identifiable in some of them in part, or identifiable. 71 00:07:21,300 --> 00:07:24,330 And it might be worth just having a look at some of those and testing those out. 72 00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:29,219 And I should say this is this, you know, discussion. There isn't a PowerPoint presentation. 73 00:07:29,220 --> 00:07:34,080 And even as I came upstairs, someone said to me, kind of have your PowerPoint slides back from today, please. 74 00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:41,220 Yes, he was from North America. All I would say about that is that this is in the spirit of flying kites. 75 00:07:41,250 --> 00:07:44,790 I genuinely I know speakers often say this when they haven't prepared properly. 76 00:07:45,990 --> 00:07:51,660 But I actually believe that genuinely we can exchange a few ideas and test out some thoughts. 77 00:07:51,720 --> 00:07:52,980 So let's start straightaway. 78 00:07:53,220 --> 00:08:01,590 Because what I won't have time to I will not do today is talk about the implications for defence in terms of organisation, decision making structure. 79 00:08:01,590 --> 00:08:06,720 I think that's really such a huge subject. But if we get to your question, answer if that's what you want to discuss. 80 00:08:07,020 --> 00:08:11,940 By all means, let's do so in terms of implications. But I think we should really get to this first three assertions today. 81 00:08:12,450 --> 00:08:16,830 Let's make a set assertion. One Predicting the future is problematic, but history is a sort of guide. 82 00:08:17,130 --> 00:08:28,050 Let's take a look at that. I think it would be true for us to say that changes are very hard to identify at the time. 83 00:08:28,110 --> 00:08:33,160 The period of history. You really are in the flux of history. It's very hard to pick things out. 84 00:08:33,180 --> 00:08:40,080 And often when contemporaries in the past, when they were looking at their own situation, trying to imagine the future, 85 00:08:40,410 --> 00:08:48,960 they always would select the the themes, what they thought about the future based on their own contemporary values and beliefs. 86 00:08:49,350 --> 00:08:52,499 And that's perhaps not surprising, is it? So they could be quite narrow. 87 00:08:52,500 --> 00:08:55,530 They could be their own norms that they thought would be important. 88 00:08:56,940 --> 00:09:00,780 But we do know that we could look at some of those things. We try not to be selective. 89 00:09:00,780 --> 00:09:03,790 We could look back at the past and say, well, let's look at we now know what happened. 90 00:09:03,810 --> 00:09:10,980 We can take a broader view. We could also look at some enduring principles of strategy or international relations in the past and say, 91 00:09:10,980 --> 00:09:17,520 look at how our historical forebears would invoke certain rules of the game of international relations. 92 00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:25,169 For example, if you go back to the 19th century, many of the people in the mid-19th century predicting what it would be like by 1900 93 00:09:25,170 --> 00:09:29,910 were saying there would need to be a balance of power between the great powers. 94 00:09:30,030 --> 00:09:33,890 That was the concept of international relations of the mid-19th century. 95 00:09:33,900 --> 00:09:38,340 So not surprisingly, they made use of it because they had no idea what was coming. 96 00:09:38,340 --> 00:09:44,670 They didn't know that initially what was going to happen. For example, I'm not really talking about power maximisation or security maximisation. 97 00:09:45,030 --> 00:09:46,080 That was all going to come later. 98 00:09:46,470 --> 00:09:55,379 So we should bear that in mind of clearly the past is subject to variable conditions and changes in application technology and dynamics of conflict. 99 00:09:55,380 --> 00:10:00,690 All of those made a difference to any accuracy that the people in the past could try and achieve. 100 00:10:01,290 --> 00:10:06,929 And yet what's so surprising for me is that there were so many bold assertions made in the past, and indeed, 101 00:10:06,930 --> 00:10:13,200 as they're being made in presence about the future, bold assertions that are usually extraordinarily dystopian. 102 00:10:13,500 --> 00:10:17,070 You know, we're facing a world that's going down the tubes. 103 00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:23,640 This Hobbesian world, we're told, is characterised will be characterised by multipolarity. 104 00:10:24,090 --> 00:10:35,790 And why is that fearful? Because it implies the erosion of Western hegemony, increasing legal constraints which will affect operational efficiency. 105 00:10:36,030 --> 00:10:39,720 Military commanders unable to make decisions because they'll be constrained by lawyers. 106 00:10:40,650 --> 00:10:45,680 Population growth at an exponential scale, causing famine, war and disease. 107 00:10:45,690 --> 00:10:50,550 You can almost hear the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping over the horizon towards us. 108 00:10:51,090 --> 00:10:58,829 Competition for resources leading to war. Fear of the rise of military power of near rivals in the present day. 109 00:10:58,830 --> 00:11:01,950 People fear that the rise of Chinese military power. 110 00:11:02,250 --> 00:11:10,740 You may be flattered to hear that colonels and also another one of related resources running 111 00:11:11,010 --> 00:11:15,180 in our own age is about oil and gas running and people talking about climate change. 112 00:11:16,260 --> 00:11:24,660 Strangely enough, if you go back historically and look at people's projections of future war, many of those themes conceptually were also true. 113 00:11:24,690 --> 00:11:28,320 People were afraid of the future because of its fundamental uncertainty. 114 00:11:29,100 --> 00:11:34,110 And if you look at some of the writers we've had over the last few decades Robert Kaplan, 115 00:11:34,110 --> 00:11:38,460 Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, David Kilcullen is outing himself to this list. 116 00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,720 They've all had a pretty bleak view of many aspects of the future. 117 00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:48,060 Martin Van Crutchfield talks about failure of state power being inevitable. 118 00:11:49,050 --> 00:11:54,720 Failed states are going to be a feature of the future. We've been discussing and talking about predicting that for decades, 119 00:11:55,170 --> 00:12:02,310 probably promises in most recent years by Rupert Smith's projections about war amongst the people because of state failure. 120 00:12:03,030 --> 00:12:09,329 So that's what we've got. But in the past, prediction was a contradictory it is today, 121 00:12:09,330 --> 00:12:16,470 because one of the interesting contradictions we're not guessing is if you go to Uppsala University and look at that War and Peace project, 122 00:12:17,070 --> 00:12:21,450 one of things they'll tell you is that we've got confidence. They look at the drivers that cause war. 123 00:12:21,720 --> 00:12:28,620 They say that we've we have predicted they said the next 50 years there's going to be a decline in both major and minor war. 124 00:12:30,210 --> 00:12:35,040 And this has been picked up, of course, famously by Steve Pinker, Andrew Mac over Tigre in Norway. 125 00:12:35,430 --> 00:12:42,660 All of them are pointing to the metrics which suggest there'll be less war by 2050 and certainly by the end of the century. 126 00:12:43,140 --> 00:12:48,990 They've looked at the drivers that they calculate, particularly if you if you interests or population growth, 127 00:12:48,990 --> 00:12:54,960 but particularly the youth bulge, you know, unemployed young men getting themselves engaged in warfare. 128 00:12:55,560 --> 00:13:00,630 The history of conflict really was in a state or a region, has had conflicts in the recent past. 129 00:13:00,990 --> 00:13:06,900 The driver factor is that they are more suggestions that they are more likely to have war in the near future. 130 00:13:07,980 --> 00:13:12,770 So if you were to look at years that a country has been at peace, it is more likely to remain at peace. 131 00:13:12,780 --> 00:13:17,729 This is a general thesis that they've put forward state creation of this kind of violence, 132 00:13:17,730 --> 00:13:22,230 they assume and state consolidation is normally a period of peace. 133 00:13:22,410 --> 00:13:30,140 They argue, I would dispute the story personally. And also they look at poverty and they suggest that poverty is a driver of conflict. 134 00:13:30,380 --> 00:13:34,920 I again, I think that requires some qualification personally. It seems to me that again, historically, 135 00:13:34,920 --> 00:13:42,030 the disparities of wealth and relative deprivation compared with available resources, that seems to be important. 136 00:13:42,510 --> 00:13:48,569 Why is it? I wondered to myself, why these great eminent writers who seem to attract greater attention, 137 00:13:48,570 --> 00:13:51,810 particularly United States, leave out these contradictions? 138 00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:56,490 Is it sensationalism? Is desire to sell books? What is what is really going on? 139 00:13:56,850 --> 00:14:05,280 And I say I went back to have a look at the past and find the same sorts of contradictions exist in the past when people try to imagine the future. 140 00:14:06,090 --> 00:14:10,020 It's clear that contemporaries held on to their values. 141 00:14:10,860 --> 00:14:19,200 The forces and equipment tend to last a lot longer than perhaps they should have done because of some special value they put upon them. 142 00:14:19,540 --> 00:14:21,419 You know, now I'm talking about cavalry. 143 00:14:21,420 --> 00:14:28,680 For example, cavalry as a military force survived a lot longer than perhaps it should have done because of its investment of value, 144 00:14:28,680 --> 00:14:36,510 about its mobility, shock of fact, its flexibility, its ability to operate in depth and so on, so it could find reasons why that should be. 145 00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:42,390 In other words, what I'm suggesting is that techniques become and cultured technology sometimes to becoming cultured as well, 146 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:50,840 and therefore they're difficult to shift. They also, of course, preferred particular assumptions in the past because it's what they value the most. 147 00:14:52,070 --> 00:14:54,560 Armies, for example, should be set up in a particular fashion. 148 00:14:54,770 --> 00:14:59,630 That's how they think they conceived an army is how to take the structure and format and way of behaving. 149 00:14:59,900 --> 00:15:07,910 And it's hard to move that the maxim that unpalatable truths can be downplayed, but equally that can be sensationalism. 150 00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:10,879 One of my favourite things, Hobbes, for example, 151 00:15:10,880 --> 00:15:18,260 when I'm exhausted or need to read something to entertain me and sees me is to look at invasion scale literature of the late 19th century. 152 00:15:18,290 --> 00:15:23,330 It is extraordinarily hilarious and entertaining. And then you combine that with German spy literature. 153 00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:28,399 British literature about German spies before the First World War. And you find yourself in fits of laughter. 154 00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:32,420 You have a very entertaining Christmas invasion scare literature. 155 00:15:32,420 --> 00:15:38,300 And of course, you know what great science fiction literature is, actually? 156 00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:43,729 We have seen some very and some recent worked on the United States now suggesting that science 157 00:15:43,730 --> 00:15:48,740 fiction grows the Enlightenment literature rather than actually out of invasion sky work. 158 00:15:48,740 --> 00:15:51,740 But I remain that to be open minded about that. 159 00:15:52,430 --> 00:15:58,760 If you look at H.G. Wells, for example, and in fact, all science fiction, of course you realise that nobody written about the future at all. 160 00:15:58,940 --> 00:16:05,269 That's what combined anxieties of the present and the invasion of Martians in War of the Worlds. 161 00:16:05,270 --> 00:16:08,510 It's actually got nothing to do with outer space at all. 162 00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:17,270 It's all expressing fears of the European powers invading the United Kingdom or somehow overnight circumventing the power of the Royal Navy. 163 00:16:18,740 --> 00:16:26,270 No, it's very easy, isn't it, to condemn absurdity in the past and to look at historical figures who've condemned absurd projects. 164 00:16:27,740 --> 00:16:32,240 I haven't got the imagery, or perhaps I should have the pamphlet position, but I know that's not really the done thing. 165 00:16:32,840 --> 00:16:43,040 There is amazing stuff engravings produced in the late 1790s in Britain that imagines French invasion barges coming to England. 166 00:16:43,550 --> 00:16:50,360 And these are huge rockets driven by windmills bristling with cannon and of course but somehow 167 00:16:50,420 --> 00:16:55,370 gets get to the 1820s people were already looking back at 1790s and say this was absurd. 168 00:16:55,370 --> 00:17:02,930 You know how how absurd. Well, what is a military hovercraft if it isn't a raft driven by windmills bristling with cannon? 169 00:17:03,920 --> 00:17:08,960 Equally, in the early 1800s, they were fearful in Britain about hot air balloons. 170 00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:15,610 You know, obviously from the early experiments, the submarine notice coming over to England and dropping bombs out of hot air balloons. 171 00:17:15,620 --> 00:17:21,140 Well, again, I would say, well, what is a Zeppelin in 1915 is if it isn't a hot air balloon dropping bombs. 172 00:17:21,500 --> 00:17:25,459 So some of these things were eventually realised at the time. 173 00:17:25,460 --> 00:17:31,110 They were dismissed as absurd and rantings of lunatics and beating apparently self-evidently wrong. 174 00:17:32,660 --> 00:17:38,920 The difficulty we have, of course, is rather like the people in the past is assessing trends and deciding, you know, 175 00:17:38,930 --> 00:17:44,180 which ones do we regard as having any legs and which pieces of technology or 176 00:17:44,180 --> 00:17:48,890 which techniques appear to be utterly absurd and have no real purchase at all? 177 00:17:49,340 --> 00:17:54,559 And we're not helped by the fact of the sheer variety of complex that we are studying don't make not easy. 178 00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:59,450 I mean, urban terrorism one end through to the potential for a nuclear exchange. 179 00:17:59,690 --> 00:18:05,959 The other. The difficulty I have with a lot of work that's being produced right now is the 180 00:18:05,960 --> 00:18:10,480 assumption is that all wars in the future will look a lot like the ones we're in now. 181 00:18:10,910 --> 00:18:19,640 So lots of people are talking about conflicts. The future will essentially be states waging war against irregular insurgent forces. 182 00:18:20,180 --> 00:18:25,730 And that's, you know, again, not surprising that we've come to those sorts of conclusions, but I think we should go well beyond that. 183 00:18:26,210 --> 00:18:27,350 Let me give an example of what I mean. 184 00:18:28,010 --> 00:18:33,530 And, you know, forgive me that maybe people run with the sort of authors are architects or contributors to this particular document reflecting. 185 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:41,240 But I'm going to be fairly critical because we can be it's a post piece of work if the United Kingdom future character of conflict documents, 186 00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:51,290 which is around 2009 and before, in other words, a document produced while the conflict in Afghanistan was ongoing, as it is today. 187 00:18:52,010 --> 00:18:56,630 It's driven not just, of course, by this background of what was going on in Afghanistan, but also, 188 00:18:56,660 --> 00:19:03,320 I have to say by personality politics, individuals involved in scheme wants to put themselves forward. 189 00:19:03,800 --> 00:19:10,310 There was also some departmental inputs by departments eager to show that they were worthy. 190 00:19:10,730 --> 00:19:16,610 I won't name them. And there are also some compromises made, not least on the as the document identifies. 191 00:19:17,090 --> 00:19:24,050 Now, I don't say these things just to sort of point the finger at colleagues and say, you know, have certain perhaps they should have done it better. 192 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:28,160 But I think we should be aware that in the formulation of all documentation of that type, 193 00:19:28,610 --> 00:19:34,730 that is normal documents of doctrine so intensely political, it seems to me. 194 00:19:35,570 --> 00:19:40,729 And if we're going to imagine the future, I think we all have to be just conscious of the fact that that's going to happen. 195 00:19:40,730 --> 00:19:44,030 There's going to be contemporary pressure on the documentation itself. 196 00:19:44,930 --> 00:19:47,899 Let me go further. What are assumptions in the future? 197 00:19:47,900 --> 00:19:55,550 Character of conflict document was that warfare would become more an emphasis on the word, more congested, cluttered, constrained. 198 00:19:56,750 --> 00:20:03,559 No, it seems, you know, not in doubt if you're looking at some of the conflicts going on in the recent experience of Iraq for Western forces, 199 00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:05,900 the conflict was more congested. It's often constrained. 200 00:20:06,380 --> 00:20:13,960 And if you look at, you know, unmanned aerial vehicle sort of operations would say, well, actually, I don't think they've been terribly constrained. 201 00:20:14,490 --> 00:20:22,400 If you look at the fact that there have been missile strikes from UVs in Yemen or Pakistan outside of operational areas. 202 00:20:22,670 --> 00:20:31,579 That was never a constraint. And I don't think, you know, we can say that every battlespace in Afghanistan has been congested or cluttered. 203 00:20:31,580 --> 00:20:35,560 In fact, one of the surprising things about the dust of southern Afghanistan is it's so open. 204 00:20:35,570 --> 00:20:39,500 I mean, there's very little to see. It's the opposite of congested or cluttered. 205 00:20:40,010 --> 00:20:45,140 And I think the other the other words that were used to describe future will be they should be more connected and more contested. 206 00:20:45,470 --> 00:20:50,790 Well, all battlefields and battle spaces are connected and all of them are contested. 207 00:20:50,810 --> 00:20:53,990 That's the point, isn't it? I mean, the idea if it's not contested, it's not a war. 208 00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:58,249 So I was surprised essentially what was going on. 209 00:20:58,250 --> 00:21:04,639 Then what is really expressed as this document is the legitimacy and utility and 210 00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:09,680 value of force nowadays is not really about future cultural conflict at all. 211 00:21:09,950 --> 00:21:13,640 It's about something else, and it's also about the value of allies. 212 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:21,020 At a time when it was great to the criticism of what the United Kingdom forces were doing and who they were working with. 213 00:21:21,140 --> 00:21:28,130 The criticism, to remind you, was over Iraq that the United Kingdom was too closely aligned to the policy of George W Bush 214 00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,720 and was not making independent judgements about its own strategic and national interests. 215 00:21:34,190 --> 00:21:38,149 Now, there are lots of things in this topic which I kind of briefly want to refer to, 216 00:21:38,150 --> 00:21:43,350 because they all are they have some influence on what we do next. And there's a great deal of emphasis on decision. 217 00:21:45,020 --> 00:21:50,840 No surprise that perhaps influenced by our culture of understanding and obeying Clausewitz, 218 00:21:50,890 --> 00:21:54,920 the sort of concepts that there was this emphasis on getting decision. 219 00:21:55,250 --> 00:21:59,990 But it also expresses this document fear, fear of time, 220 00:22:00,140 --> 00:22:07,700 particularly fear that time would run out because there's too little strategic patience amongst governments and that the public, 221 00:22:07,700 --> 00:22:13,850 the British public, to quickly exhaust their reservoir of tolerance of war. 222 00:22:14,240 --> 00:22:20,170 And therefore, if you can get decision, if you have decisive campaign, you avoid this problem, this fear of time. 223 00:22:21,260 --> 00:22:29,750 Of course, what it ignores is that you can achieve effect strategically, militarily, politically, by slow burn, by more protracted policy. 224 00:22:30,620 --> 00:22:34,700 I mean, an erosion of your adversary by by these means is one way. 225 00:22:35,300 --> 00:22:38,660 People are constantly saying to me about the campaign in Afghanistan that actually 226 00:22:38,810 --> 00:22:43,070 hasn't gone very well because this is happening d'expression about the you know, 227 00:22:43,070 --> 00:22:49,970 we've got all the watches and they go all the time. I totally disagree. If you vote in stabilisation, nation building your horizons 30 years out. 228 00:22:50,510 --> 00:22:54,620 So you need time. It's not it's not a shortage of time. 229 00:22:54,620 --> 00:23:02,900 That's the problem. There's no emphasis or very little emphasis in this document on deception, soft effects and other alternative ways. 230 00:23:02,930 --> 00:23:09,380 It's very much about the use of force. It assumes that the decision will always happen on the ground, which I think is very strong, 231 00:23:09,830 --> 00:23:13,640 land based sort of way of approaching a problem, ignoring, for example, 232 00:23:14,390 --> 00:23:19,490 the, you know, what comes out of atomic warfare 1945 is that dropping two atomic bombs 233 00:23:19,490 --> 00:23:23,570 essentially does make a decision for Japan is not about a land invasion at all. 234 00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:30,650 There's a lot of emphasis on threats that are almost exclusively in document about extremist non-state irregulars. 235 00:23:31,010 --> 00:23:34,040 But there is a passing reference to state failure. What that might mean. 236 00:23:34,580 --> 00:23:39,860 I find that curious in light of the fact that even before the document was written in the United Kingdom, 237 00:23:39,860 --> 00:23:43,610 terrorism was coming from within the seven seven bombings. 238 00:23:43,610 --> 00:23:47,479 2005 were from home-grown terrorists. 239 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:55,370 And indeed, only this week, a newspaper warnings that some jihadists, British jihadis now currently in Syria, 240 00:23:55,580 --> 00:24:01,850 are being encouraged to come back to the United Kingdom to wage a war against an infidel government in the United Kingdom. 241 00:24:02,750 --> 00:24:05,750 Home-grown Terrorism didn't really appear in this document. 242 00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:08,690 There's also a problem of conflation. 243 00:24:09,410 --> 00:24:18,350 There's a blurring of warfare between any wars, conventional and irregular, and those word, hybrid and chaotic, is used. 244 00:24:18,620 --> 00:24:22,970 I think this was just obfuscation of essentially what was an expression of uncertainty. 245 00:24:22,980 --> 00:24:28,190 People didn't know what future was going to look like. So simply called a chaotic could it hybrid. 246 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,930 You can't define it. It's too nebulous. And therefore that that's your expression of uncertainty. 247 00:24:33,650 --> 00:24:40,070 It ignores a lot of things missing in the document internal security, border integrity against a mumbai style attack. 248 00:24:40,790 --> 00:24:45,349 Nothing about cyber or bio warfare, nothing about blockades, selective targeting, 249 00:24:45,350 --> 00:24:50,480 dispersed battle spaces where opportunities like the opportunities afforded by social media, 250 00:24:50,750 --> 00:24:55,970 which David Kilcullen has most recently drawn attention to. And we can talk about another time, if you like. 251 00:24:57,500 --> 00:25:03,620 Most of all, the document expresses fear fear of weaker, less civilised enemies, proxies, 252 00:25:03,830 --> 00:25:10,970 hidden enemy forces with good equipment that break the law of armed conflicts almost seemingly powerless against it. 253 00:25:11,360 --> 00:25:19,159 There's a fear of media, largely because the bad press at the beginning of the Iraq campaign and the uncontrollable wild nature of the world's media. 254 00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:22,610 The 24 hour rolling news. There's also a fear of the future. 255 00:25:22,730 --> 00:25:31,430 By 2039, the document states, the United Kingdom will no longer have the ability to overmatch or even parity over near rivals middle sized powers. 256 00:25:33,700 --> 00:25:40,600 The solutions the document proposes are very, again, very vague reference to mobilising more levers of national power. 257 00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:50,770 Sort of like a sort of total war, kind of hints, I suppose, when actually probably more precise, more calibrated responses might be better. 258 00:25:52,580 --> 00:25:59,840 Why was all this express necessary? I think this has got a lot to do with a Clausewitz and sort of reading going on here, culture sort of view, 259 00:26:00,530 --> 00:26:05,390 if you want, and very specific issues in the context when that document was written. 260 00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,710 Now it's true to say. Prediction is necessary. 261 00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:16,520 Policymakers, practitioners have expensive equipment programs, long term training programs to think about. 262 00:26:17,030 --> 00:26:21,830 And they've got to get it roughly right, because the costs and efficiencies are so demanding on them. 263 00:26:23,310 --> 00:26:27,120 But the changing hands war is always conditional, it's context and it evolves. 264 00:26:27,270 --> 00:26:33,509 Things evolving in a conflict. But also we all know that can be these sheer events where you can get a 265 00:26:33,510 --> 00:26:38,549 breakthrough technology or breakthrough technique that will shift pretty quickly, 266 00:26:38,550 --> 00:26:45,060 pretty dramatically. What's going on. We don't have, as of calling them, revolutions in military affairs in recent decades. 267 00:26:45,060 --> 00:26:52,470 But I think that you can go back in history and find these sorts of events pretty readily, and we should be aware that they they happen. 268 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:58,290 We also might observe in terms of this need for longer term planning and accurate planning, 269 00:26:58,860 --> 00:27:04,830 that business links to defence, not just in the United Kingdom but in in the whole world and in particular Western world. 270 00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:10,229 Business links to defensive are strong, procurement programs are expensive. 271 00:27:10,230 --> 00:27:13,890 There needs to be a good sort of sense of understanding between both sides. 272 00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:19,769 But what I do object to and people who know me well here will know as I do, just this this business jargon. 273 00:27:19,770 --> 00:27:23,550 This is language which has crept in because of this industrial connection. 274 00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:31,299 I know you're familiar with competitive strategies, network centric warfare, full spectrum dominance of text based operations, 275 00:27:31,300 --> 00:27:41,010 and upstream engagement is just a handful of examples, most of which are vacuous and sometimes intrinsically self-contradictory without levers. 276 00:27:41,010 --> 00:27:49,770 Let's let's go to assertion number two. Let's leave the past for a moment and go to assertion to note is that war in the present can indicate trends, 277 00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:55,420 but it's difficult to conceive of accelerating change. Let's start with China. 278 00:27:56,570 --> 00:28:02,149 The overwhelming success of Chinese manufacturing and capital ventures has 279 00:28:02,150 --> 00:28:07,610 allowed China to develop its export economy and engage in rapid urbanisation. 280 00:28:09,070 --> 00:28:15,070 The assumption that falls out of that is that the world will be more multipolar, multi-polar. 281 00:28:16,180 --> 00:28:20,079 And you often hear this expressed, sometimes not always on paper, 282 00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:30,129 but I hear conversations with senior American colleagues who expressed some concern, rising anxiety about this great take off of China. 283 00:28:30,130 --> 00:28:37,150 Ironic, of course, because in the 1950s, the United States wanted China to join the rest of world in the capitalist economy. 284 00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:46,180 But I would argue that the American unipolar moment of the 1990 was never absolute and was pretty short lived even when it was there at all. 285 00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:52,450 And I think it's also we need to bear in mind that the rise of the People's Republic of China, economically speaking, 286 00:28:52,660 --> 00:28:58,840 does not automatically mean the relative economic decline of the West, even those expressed that way. 287 00:28:59,470 --> 00:29:04,930 Let me give you some idea to two things in particular, which I, you know, I would point to make us think about. 288 00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:17,440 One is that the vast population of China who live a standard living, which is below Western standards, could potentially, 289 00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:24,070 with the rising price of food over the next 40 years, arrest the further development of China quite significantly. 290 00:29:24,490 --> 00:29:29,920 And Chinese economists are very exercised by the idea that that might happen and they want to keep the momentum up. 291 00:29:30,610 --> 00:29:39,070 It's also true that most of the dot com growth, much of the world growth is occurring in the Western world at the moment, not in China. 292 00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:48,430 And that if we're to believe McKinsey statistics on this, that projection is that currently global GDP is about $50 trillion, 293 00:29:49,270 --> 00:29:54,640 is going to increase by 2050 to $150 trillion of global GDP, 294 00:29:55,270 --> 00:30:01,030 whereas most of that, well, it's going to go a significant proportion will go to this huge take off in China, 295 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,630 but the majority of that money will remain in the West. 296 00:30:05,780 --> 00:30:11,690 So these people are saying the rise of China threatens the automatic decline of the West in relative terms. 297 00:30:12,020 --> 00:30:17,720 I'm afraid it doesn't seem to agree with some of the statistics being put forward by economists. 298 00:30:18,260 --> 00:30:23,030 None of this is absolute, of course. Another one that always amuses me is that people talk about an ageing population as being a 299 00:30:23,030 --> 00:30:27,740 burden on the globe and the Western world is going to suffer the most with ageing population. 300 00:30:28,490 --> 00:30:36,080 Well, the solution to me is very simple. You make sure you teach everyone over the age of 60 how to do finance based on systems. 301 00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:44,680 Does that make sense to you? Because, of course, they can then be at home making an enormous sum of money through the dot com kind 302 00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:49,180 of phenomenon rather than actually necessarily going to work place in 95 basis. 303 00:30:49,690 --> 00:30:53,470 We have another is an industrial manufacturing mentality about how we use our workforces 304 00:30:53,890 --> 00:30:57,070 and we release of people over the age of 60 as if somehow that no longer productive. 305 00:30:57,670 --> 00:31:04,450 That may not be the case. Actually, an ageing population will always experience may be much more valuable to us than we think. 306 00:31:05,830 --> 00:31:11,900 There is, of course, a reason why this anxiety about China, this is rising military potential will come in. 307 00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:15,129 How many aircraft carriers have been launched by China in the next 12 months? 308 00:31:15,130 --> 00:31:16,330 But it's significant, I think, 309 00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:28,420 and there is enormous ambiguity over China's long term plans because it creates suspicion and there is a regular prediction of a collision, 310 00:31:28,420 --> 00:31:32,560 which you could almost argue has some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy to it. 311 00:31:32,980 --> 00:31:38,379 And I'm conscious that curiosity in front of me here as this phenomenon of the First World War studies, 312 00:31:38,380 --> 00:31:42,160 but at least my own saying this is that from my you know, 313 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:49,090 my old it was undergraduate Kabir Khan is telling me that actually the more you talk about something as inevitable, 314 00:31:49,390 --> 00:31:53,980 a collision between two countries, the more it seems to happen because you're reinforcing misunderstanding. 315 00:31:55,570 --> 00:32:01,440 It seems to me that the priority in terms of security for the People's Republic of China in the next 30 to 316 00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:08,110 40 years will be domestic security and will potentially be border integrity and not unreasonable assumption. 317 00:32:08,110 --> 00:32:17,410 If you imagine that the China's had to defend its borders vigorously in 1951, 1969, 62, and in 1979 or within the recent post. 318 00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:21,670 And China is now a significant trip to peacekeeping. 319 00:32:22,510 --> 00:32:28,479 And it may be that some rather than seeing a confrontation of Pacific going forward, what we might see, for example, 320 00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:34,090 is what Britain and the United States achieved in the Atlantic from the late 19th century into the early 20th century, 321 00:32:34,300 --> 00:32:36,580 which is closer cooperation and joint working. 322 00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:45,010 There are other aspects of this that some of this assertion about the present and trends we read and which ones we don't. 323 00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:48,640 John, let's move on to I'm to China for a moment, if I may. That's possible. 324 00:32:49,510 --> 00:32:54,070 And we just deal with a couple of the thoughts that come up. One is about legal constraints. 325 00:32:55,270 --> 00:33:01,959 We've mentioned that already. It does seem that there's a huge misunderstanding here about the role of international 326 00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,580 law and the role of armed conflicts in future conflicts is not that there will be, 327 00:33:06,790 --> 00:33:11,889 you know, legal handcuffs put on military officers and our officers or naval officers, 328 00:33:11,890 --> 00:33:17,560 but actually more that there's a sort of risk aversion culture which is evolving for which 329 00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:21,950 international law is held up as the sort of the reason why we have this risk aversion. 330 00:33:21,950 --> 00:33:30,550 It was law has been blamed for quite normal political fears about consequences and unwillingness to be engaged in certain issues. 331 00:33:30,940 --> 00:33:39,640 For example, I'll give you a couple examples. PSYOPS or psychological operations, surveillance and targeting, none of which are illegal, 332 00:33:39,790 --> 00:33:44,710 but, you know, tend to produce politicians in the cold sweat whenever they're mentioned. 333 00:33:46,810 --> 00:33:51,640 Another area under our heading of the present is the urban environment. 334 00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:59,440 We are warned by the likes of David Kilcullen that in the future, vast, dense, 335 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:09,670 vulnerable populations are subject to climatic and resource pressures are going to overwhelm the security forces of states. 336 00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:18,760 And that, you know, we are we are in danger of facing, I say, this sort of Hobbesian dystopian future of collapse and catastrophe. 337 00:34:20,570 --> 00:34:25,129 What is interesting, of course, is that if you look at the way that cities in the past and the present I deal 338 00:34:25,130 --> 00:34:29,300 with kind of pressures like this is they quite often seek alternative markets. 339 00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:36,050 If your resources are pressure from one direction, they diversify and they continue to grow and develop. 340 00:34:37,250 --> 00:34:44,840 It's very rare to find cities entirely abandoned. Yes, there are historical examples, not least from ancient history, but the fear of a mob, 341 00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:54,560 the fear of the unknown masses lurking in the back streets of urban spaces can be traced right back to the Roman era, if not before. 342 00:34:54,920 --> 00:35:01,010 And there's a sort of sense of which, you know, what is suspicion about determinism about urban spaces is that we fear cities 343 00:35:01,670 --> 00:35:05,660 and we've forgotten that in ancient history and indeed in early modern history, 344 00:35:06,170 --> 00:35:09,170 cities were the great paragons of civilisation. 345 00:35:09,170 --> 00:35:12,820 They were literally the civic tasks. That's where you became civilised. 346 00:35:12,850 --> 00:35:16,660 No longer the barber, the barbarian, the Greeks talked about. 347 00:35:16,670 --> 00:35:23,330 I think we should rediscover the sweetness of urban life as opposed to just fearing the mob. 348 00:35:24,700 --> 00:35:27,350 But that takes its course, doesn't neatly to irregulars and proxies. 349 00:35:27,370 --> 00:35:37,480 And again, we hear lots expressed about the fear of irregular forces with the threats to diaspora populations, 350 00:35:38,050 --> 00:35:43,210 expatriate communities, to vulnerable embassies, vulnerable infrastructures. 351 00:35:43,810 --> 00:35:49,240 And therefore, I would make about that is that is what characterises these sort of targets of 352 00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:52,809 these irregular forces that they're all very much non-military and conventional 353 00:35:52,810 --> 00:35:57,700 military forces seem to be extraordinarily badly equipped and set up and structured 354 00:35:58,060 --> 00:36:02,110 to protect these very vulnerable civilian structures in civilian populations. 355 00:36:03,940 --> 00:36:07,690 And then finally, I should just mention, in terms of the present technologies, 356 00:36:08,620 --> 00:36:14,380 because they are so, so much discussed into robotic warfare, space, weaponry, 357 00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:21,730 terrorists acquiring new hybrid forms of weapons of mass destruction, e warfare, 358 00:36:22,090 --> 00:36:26,830 drones and UAV doing battle with each other in the skies above the cities of the West or the world. 359 00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:33,340 Well, it does seem, doesn't it, that these new security environments require new types of defence. 360 00:36:33,340 --> 00:36:38,950 And I'm a very advocate of perhaps there being a new kind of form of civil defence forces set up in different countries. 361 00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:48,790 But people forget that these new technologies are themselves subject of our traditional problems of operator morale for the frictional force. 362 00:36:48,820 --> 00:36:53,590 How many of you in the last 12 months have had a computer problem where you switch and it can 363 00:36:53,590 --> 00:36:57,700 be so it's frozen or it's crashed or it's gone wrong or it hasn't done what you want to do. 364 00:36:58,300 --> 00:37:02,260 Somebody has experienced that. Why would it be any different in the stress of a combat environment? 365 00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:09,940 I suppose for me then, ending this particular session to say the irony for me is that we want this kind of security of prediction, 366 00:37:10,660 --> 00:37:16,030 which is why we focus on things like certainty and decisiveness and rapidity. 367 00:37:16,750 --> 00:37:26,440 But actually war is indecisive, often protracted, and it doesn't sort of fit our expectation of what we want it to be like. 368 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:31,000 We seem to be constantly disappointed that it's not not that way. 369 00:37:33,540 --> 00:37:37,169 Conscious of time, I'm going to just not go into these sort of forced structures on you. 370 00:37:37,170 --> 00:37:38,840 I wouldn't really have time for that, so I won't. 371 00:37:38,850 --> 00:37:47,700 But there are some interesting, real Western concerns which any future planner of war would need to put quite high up on their list. 372 00:37:47,700 --> 00:37:53,280 And I don't all see military doctrine documents, which I think is quite worrying what is protecting economies? 373 00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:56,040 The Western world, particularly in the world, is so large, 374 00:37:56,040 --> 00:38:04,800 has been through and is going through still one of the most far reaching recessions since the 1930s, certainly since 1870s. 375 00:38:05,610 --> 00:38:09,630 And it's quite clear that a critical national infrastructure is based around the economy. 376 00:38:10,410 --> 00:38:14,910 William Pitt once said, Trade is your last entrenchment. You must defend it or perish. 377 00:38:15,210 --> 00:38:18,810 And I think that would be true. The new interconnectedness of global commerce. 378 00:38:19,110 --> 00:38:23,970 Surely something should loom large in any future war planning doctrine. 379 00:38:25,260 --> 00:38:26,790 The other one is protecting the people, 380 00:38:27,300 --> 00:38:34,620 which has perhaps been higher on the agenda because of counterinsurgency campaigns waged by Western powers recently. 381 00:38:36,030 --> 00:38:42,689 But I suppose there are questions about, you know, how we do it in future, what methods are used, how do you enemies? 382 00:38:42,690 --> 00:38:49,950 I would say, I guess, how do you sort of, you know, Western militaries or military of the world get their enemies to the negotiating table? 383 00:38:50,340 --> 00:38:57,270 You often read doctrines about future war that talk about the need for the fact of the need for an outcome different end state. 384 00:38:57,870 --> 00:39:00,960 But what's missing is how you get your opponent to come and talk to you. 385 00:39:01,770 --> 00:39:05,009 And yet, most wars of the 18th century, as far as I understand, 386 00:39:05,010 --> 00:39:13,229 my own history books seem to suggest to me that negotiated settlements were normal, and we've got to get that back in to our understanding. 387 00:39:13,230 --> 00:39:20,100 What would you be future war? What do military forces do with a like footprint or a UAV led force? 388 00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:26,330 How do they get their opponents the negotiating table? And. 389 00:39:27,550 --> 00:39:33,040 There's also these issues in Social Security, which, again, I'm not we can pick up perhaps with or, you know, discussion later on. 390 00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:41,500 But some day Kilcullen has made a pretty bold, tough assertions that many of you came to the talk that he gave last term. 391 00:39:42,910 --> 00:39:48,010 His his real concern is to acknowledge whether there were there aren't continuities. 392 00:39:48,850 --> 00:39:54,400 He seems to think that we are going to be overwhelmed by this new collectivity and by these new megacities. 393 00:39:55,030 --> 00:40:01,360 His big concern is that we are unable to manage, even mentally, this race of accelerating change, 394 00:40:02,110 --> 00:40:10,570 either economically or through large numbers of the Global South, challenging the leading powers of the world. 395 00:40:12,250 --> 00:40:15,660 So this brings me to sort of the final segments, if you like, of this, 396 00:40:15,670 --> 00:40:24,100 the third and final assertion about the trends of war that might be identifiable from the past into the present, through the future. 397 00:40:25,670 --> 00:40:30,250 I'm going to put these out literally as possibilities for you to feed back to me. 398 00:40:31,110 --> 00:40:42,600 First of all, I'm. That if we do have irregular war in urban areas, that will attempt to exploit our infrastructural vulnerability, 399 00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:51,150 and that infrastructural vulnerability might be in forms of transport systems, it might be in forms of information management. 400 00:40:51,540 --> 00:40:54,990 But that does seem to be quite a likely trend. 401 00:40:55,710 --> 00:40:58,140 And actually, in a sense, it's not very futuristic at all, 402 00:40:58,140 --> 00:41:04,080 because if one looks back at Britain's experience in conducting operations against terrorist groups in Northern Ireland, 403 00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:11,340 one would be very quickly aware that the targets chosen by those fighters of the armed struggle, 404 00:41:11,340 --> 00:41:16,350 if I'm being polite about them, was usually soft targets individuals. 405 00:41:16,770 --> 00:41:23,370 And after a period of initial popular protest in the mid 1970s, a long, low intensity, 406 00:41:23,370 --> 00:41:30,059 protracted campaign of terrorism against often non-military targets in the future, 407 00:41:30,060 --> 00:41:35,280 we are concerned that the militias or groups like that will be better armed with antiaircraft weapons, 408 00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:39,570 surface to air missiles, anti-tank capabilities, chemical weapons, maybe in waves. 409 00:41:40,050 --> 00:41:46,680 And people have already points to the fact that Hezbollah as a movement, have this capability of UAV or sort of version of it. 410 00:41:47,690 --> 00:41:55,760 People also start to talk about contamination and huge dislocation of our infrastructure caused by these irregular forces. 411 00:41:57,020 --> 00:42:01,399 Another trend is, well, I I'm debating what words use. 412 00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,240 I mean, I'm tempted to use the word porosity and porousness, if you will. 413 00:42:05,900 --> 00:42:11,060 I've been advised that perhaps the word permeability would be more accurate from a geological point of view. 414 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:20,810 But the only thought of infiltration, sabotage, discrediting the recruitment of diaspora populations, causing mayhem internally. 415 00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:25,790 For sure, conventional border security and border controls have no defence is a possibility. 416 00:42:27,250 --> 00:42:32,320 Two of the themes that I should mention here also are dispersal and depth. 417 00:42:32,890 --> 00:42:38,200 We know that warfare is often compelled dispersal for survival or concealment. 418 00:42:39,070 --> 00:42:45,100 And we know that since the mid-19th century in terms of modern warfare, there's been greater involvement of depth. 419 00:42:46,060 --> 00:42:51,480 And I'm often happy to cites in my American colleagues in the Battle of Gettysburg happens across a campus of a few miles. 420 00:42:51,500 --> 00:42:56,070 The depth of a few miles by time gets the Second World War. 421 00:42:56,080 --> 00:43:02,470 We're talking about entire continents being sucked into a conflict, a battle space. 422 00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:08,380 China, notwithstanding the mobilisation of economies and ideas on a global scale. 423 00:43:09,190 --> 00:43:14,169 And we now know, of course, if you take in the present that international terrorism will be broadcast beams 424 00:43:14,170 --> 00:43:18,850 into the living rooms of people around the world within hours of it taking place. 425 00:43:20,130 --> 00:43:25,950 Another theme will be stealth. I'm always amused by the fact there's such a lot of money and time spent on 426 00:43:25,950 --> 00:43:30,390 getting the right kind of digital camouflage in American military uniforms. 427 00:43:30,990 --> 00:43:35,370 Missing the point entirely that camouflage is about consider yourself and your environment, 428 00:43:35,610 --> 00:43:40,740 not impressing other people unless you believe that by James Lever you are in uniforms around impressing the other sex. 429 00:43:41,490 --> 00:43:47,580 But anyway, I said, I sometimes wonder if he really understood the full implications of what stealth means because it makes them comfortable reading. 430 00:43:47,970 --> 00:43:52,950 If military force in the future are truly stealthy, they will be amongst us all the time. 431 00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:58,350 And that then raises enormous questions about the legality of the legal position and so on. 432 00:43:58,950 --> 00:44:01,380 Another thing would be the miniaturisation of combat power, 433 00:44:02,130 --> 00:44:07,320 which is a sort of slightly pompous way of saying that you can kill more people with smaller devices. 434 00:44:07,650 --> 00:44:13,050 And that's been a trend that's been going on, as you know, for many hundreds of years now, 435 00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:18,990 getting to the stage where we can create atomic devices and the size of a small suitcase or Semtex, 436 00:44:19,770 --> 00:44:24,210 a piece the size of my hand, which could destroy this room and everyone in it without too much difficulty. 437 00:44:25,510 --> 00:44:31,840 We've also got the problem of the trend of devolution, which many people, military electorates try to resist. 438 00:44:32,470 --> 00:44:36,450 We know that technology since the second war, if not since the First World War, 439 00:44:36,450 --> 00:44:41,590 was given the ability to devolve command and decision making to smaller and smaller call zones. 440 00:44:41,950 --> 00:44:48,820 And on the streets of Fallujah. Individuals and small groups of four teams of four men were making their own judgements. 441 00:44:49,210 --> 00:44:52,540 But being able to communicate that judgement or that situational awareness with each other, 442 00:44:53,020 --> 00:44:55,990 that devolving of command and control seems to me to be important. 443 00:44:56,350 --> 00:45:05,410 I would exploit at least the idea, the Small Unit Cohesion Research, which has been going on again since the 1950s to more noble, systemic trends. 444 00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:12,250 We know that systems are important. Ever since modern state in Iraq, we need a system of systems to defend ourselves. 445 00:45:13,030 --> 00:45:18,730 But we know that nodes are important. In the past, a node might have been a commander. 446 00:45:19,390 --> 00:45:23,800 He might have been the key figure you try and kill off or neutralise or discredit in some way. 447 00:45:24,070 --> 00:45:30,460 Sunset talks about the need to work out what makes your opponent come on attack because he was alive today. 448 00:45:30,820 --> 00:45:38,380 Loads are in all sorts of different systems, in vehicles, in communications and information technology that are everywhere. 449 00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:45,310 And I think the disruption or infiltration or Neutralisation device will become more important if only precision. 450 00:45:47,020 --> 00:45:51,580 We know that more precise weaponry has been characteristic of the last 30 years in warfare. 451 00:45:52,480 --> 00:46:01,900 If one can afford it, what appears to be the challenge now is acquiring new targets more precisely and faster. 452 00:46:02,470 --> 00:46:06,370 And that will be very difficult to do by huge urban space and looking for one individual. 453 00:46:06,610 --> 00:46:10,390 How will you achieve that degree of surveillance and target acquisition? 454 00:46:11,740 --> 00:46:18,160 There are also huge opportunities which don't get mentioned in any kind of construction of a future war. 455 00:46:19,180 --> 00:46:22,120 And that is. So let me give you just a couple examples. 456 00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:31,750 As we get towards the end, part one is that we're told that the urban space is going to become a sort of haven for terrorist organisations, 457 00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:33,490 and there's very little can do about them. 458 00:46:34,210 --> 00:46:42,280 It has all the sort of residents of Che Guevara, Carlos Malik, you know, kind of this it's fear of these cells embedded in these cities. 459 00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:47,980 Well, in a more connected world, terrorists will still need safe havens. 460 00:46:48,070 --> 00:46:49,270 And in the more connected world, 461 00:46:49,270 --> 00:46:56,980 it's more likely that they will be informed upon by loyal citizens who do not want to get themselves killed in mass casualty terrorism. 462 00:46:58,500 --> 00:47:05,520 So actually you could look at the other way. You can say more white societies are less vulnerable to this form of warfare. 463 00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,309 I mean, it poses to you as an alternative way of looking at the same problem rather than simply all fall into line with the group, 464 00:47:11,310 --> 00:47:17,040 think that cities are bad and all terrorism will flourish and cities come together. 465 00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:20,560 And Che Guevara actually near the end of their lives. 466 00:47:20,580 --> 00:47:24,360 Both admitted that actually city warfare, urban warfare, 467 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:28,560 urban guerrilla warfare flight was extraordinarily vulnerable and called us Pentagon, actually, 468 00:47:29,010 --> 00:47:35,820 despite a mini manual for urban guerrilla warfare, later disowned the concept and said it was far too vulnerable, which should not be done that way. 469 00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:43,059 Social media, again, is something that people fear a great deal. 470 00:47:43,060 --> 00:47:48,310 And I've been very impressed with some individuals who able to say actually is a great deal of benefit. 471 00:47:48,310 --> 00:47:55,510 It can be brought in terms of surveillance and control. I was even introduced to the concept of astroturfing by someone who works in government. 472 00:47:55,510 --> 00:48:01,239 I've heard of astroturfing in the social media space. Now I can't really. 473 00:48:01,240 --> 00:48:07,540 Astonishment is probably what happens is if you know that you've got a story coming up which is going to be pretty bad for your reputation, 474 00:48:07,540 --> 00:48:15,099 you and your party is concerned. What you can do is you can activate all your social media loyalists and get them to tweet retweets, retweets, 475 00:48:15,100 --> 00:48:22,270 retweets endlessly, hundreds of messages so that you actually overwhelmed by mass the other person's message. 476 00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:29,680 Astroturfing It's like you laid out a new surface that's so comprehensive and artificial that it's overwhelming. 477 00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:39,580 Well, that's astroturfing, simulation, situational awareness with new technologies, new apps in the modern language seems to be very likely. 478 00:48:40,390 --> 00:48:45,640 The spread of international norms in terms of international law and law of armed conflict would might 479 00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:51,910 mean less freedom of action for criminals and terrorists games than people fear about the future. 480 00:48:52,240 --> 00:48:54,520 Now, there are many of these sort of things that one could do and say, Gosh, 481 00:48:54,520 --> 00:49:01,840 look at all these opportunities we actually have, which are alternative way of thinking about central problem. 482 00:49:03,110 --> 00:49:11,750 Let me conclude by these kind of thoughts. The real vulnerability, it seems to me, for the world with global and regional economies. 483 00:49:11,930 --> 00:49:16,669 And I would like to see in any future war planning kind of thinking that the 484 00:49:16,670 --> 00:49:21,440 economists or real economics are part and parcel of discussions about future. 485 00:49:23,310 --> 00:49:31,950 The failure, for example, of the economy of China over the next 30 to 40 years would not only affect the West very badly, 486 00:49:31,950 --> 00:49:35,010 I think it would cause a global financial meltdown. 487 00:49:36,020 --> 00:49:43,550 Globally, we are interdependent. And that actually may be more of a to use an old expression, a good thing than a bad thing. 488 00:49:44,510 --> 00:49:46,310 They're also huge opportunities. 489 00:49:46,670 --> 00:49:55,070 Rather than only fearing the pandemic's the future brought on by climate change, as occurred in certain documents I saw only four or five years ago. 490 00:49:55,850 --> 00:50:01,760 Medical advances now are so rapid that they offer the opportunity of nipping these things in the butt. 491 00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:07,610 Genome sequencing, according to some statistics by McKinsey, it seems a few years ago, 492 00:50:07,610 --> 00:50:13,010 back in the early 2000, this costs about $50 million and would take several years to complete. 493 00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:17,720 Now we're told it can be completed in 24 hours and cost less than $4,000. 494 00:50:17,810 --> 00:50:21,860 Each individual human genome sequence. Imagine the implications for that. 495 00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:28,300 We are also told that there would be no new amplified grievances through social media and new media. 496 00:50:28,780 --> 00:50:32,260 But it also seems to me that solutions are being found a lot faster as well. 497 00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:41,620 So what am I saying to you? What I'm saying, I suppose, in the conclusion of these three assertions is the world has got some significant challenges, 498 00:50:41,620 --> 00:50:43,420 and I'm not going to tell you that it hasn't. 499 00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:52,270 But I am concerned that our past, our inculturation of certain ideas is becoming almost a sort of form of groupthink. 500 00:50:52,720 --> 00:50:55,360 And we must break out of that way of thinking. 501 00:50:55,360 --> 00:51:02,290 We must contemplate alternatives, however absurd they may seem today, because that has been the experience of the past. 502 00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:08,380 And that seems to me to be the lesson. If we are being taught one of the present and its most recent phenomenon, 503 00:51:08,830 --> 00:51:14,680 now I'm conscious I've not done any sort of great resounding one liner conclusion way that perhaps someone like Colin Grey would tell you. 504 00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:16,510 But you know, I'm not into that kind of thing. 505 00:51:16,870 --> 00:51:24,159 I would rather leave this with a sort of an ellipse of three dots, rather full stop, so as to offer the opportunity for you to come back to me. 506 00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:27,190 What I got wrong. Well, thank you very much indeed.