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Today on Giant Ideas, we're joined by General Petraeus, one of the most influential generals in American history.
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From leading coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to running the CIA, General Petraeus has shaped the world on and off the battlefield.
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We explore his insights on global security, technological warfare, leadership under pressure, and what the future holds for geopolitics.
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This promises to be a rare and wide-ranging conversation with a man who has stood at the center of history.
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We're going to cover a lot of controversial topics.
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We won't have time to follow up and challenge on all of them, but I hope you enjoy the conversation.
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General, welcome to Giant Ideas. Thanks, Tommy.
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Cameron and I came of age in the '90s in a world which was becoming just progressively safer and and richer.
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It was dubbed the end of history.
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That's all completely changed now, and it feels like we're in an era of strongman populism, nationalism.
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We have war here on Europe's borders and and around the world.
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And I guess the sort of rules-based international order seems somewhat irrelevant to a lot of global leaders.
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Would you agree with that characterization?
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And is this the new world order we all just have to deal with? And is it here to stay?
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Well, geopolitics is back with a vengeance.
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And over the last 12 years or so, during which I've been the chairman of the KKR Global Institute, we've seen the world transformed from one that could be described as benign globalization in which all the barriers to trade and investment, capital flows, even technology and people flows were all being reduced.
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Globalization as measured by global trade was going up like this.
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And economics largely drove geopolitics.
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And now, as I mentioned, geopolitics is back with a vengeance.
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The holiday from history, as they say, is over.
1:49
All of those barriers are now going up instead of going down.
1:53
The threats of of now, most recently from the United States, causing significant uncertainty and and again inevitably will create further barriers again to trade, capital flows, investment, uh people, and technology flows.
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Uh so, all of that has transformed the the world situation.
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Uh and in fact, I think there's a speech there's a part of a speech by the Singaporean foreign minister that captures this brilliantly and I'll I'll I'll just read that to you if I could.
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The world is now shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity, from free trade to protectionism, from multilateralism to unilateralism, from globalization to hypernationalism, from openness to xenophobia, and from optimism to anxiety.
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Other than that, all's well, but no, your characterization is correct and obviously the Singaporean foreign minister very much agrees with that.
2:51
The chairman of our advisory board at Giant, David Miliband, who as you know was the former foreign secretary here in the UK, his characterization would be that we're in an era of chaotic globalization.
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Still still a global world, but one of of true chaos.
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I I guess another thing that was popular to say and think here in Europe in particular, I guess pre-Brexit and and pre-Trump first time, was that everything was about soft power, not hard power.
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And that suited us in the UK in particular because potentially we didn't have that much hard power, but we had a lot of soft power.
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Do Do you think it's fair to say we're now firmly living in a world of hard power rather than soft power?
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I think that there has been a shift in that direction.
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I mean, soft power still does matter very considerably.
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And soft power often can solidify the gains through hard power, if you will.
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And vice versa, they they can be complementary.
3:40
But yes, I think that there's much more hardball being played now uh than was the case again a decade or more ago.
3:47
Perhaps it's the truism that every generation thinks their era is particularly dangerous, particularly um anxious.
3:54
But, would you say it's objectively fair to say that the world is more dangerous today, more dangerous than any time perhaps since the Cuban missile crisis?
4:04
It is certainly more dangerous than any time since the end of the Cold War.
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Uh you can argue uh because of the complexity of the world right now, you know, it's not just East versus West, it's not just two Cold War antagonists facing off along the inner German border uh in Germany.
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Uh it's much more than that.
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Uh you see challenges everywhere you look in the world, uh and not just traditional challenges of Russia invading Ukraine, the challenges in the Middle East, uh most of which are sponsored by Iran, uh the issues in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
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It's much, much more than that.
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Uh you see challenges still with uh Islamist extremism, you see cyber threats that are much more complex and diabolically clever.
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Uh there are challenges of movement of people.
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Uh of course, think about what happened when all of these refugees from the Middle East and Africa descended on Europe and the effect that that has had on uh individual countries' politics.
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And again, the list goes on and on.
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Uh and so, without question, the world is much, much more complex, uh and I think it is definitely much more dangerous.
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And I think you can even make a case that it's more dangerous than at any time since the end of World War II.
5:27
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would likely not have bombed Iran. Trump just did.
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He's also talking openly about simply taking Greenland from an ally.
5:36
Yet, this seems at odds with the America first isolationism of the MAGA movement.
5:40
What is America's strategy?
5:43
Well, I think it's still emerging.
5:43
Uh I think there's still an internal debate going on within the party in power and keep in mind of course it's in power not just in the White House but in both houses of Congress and a majority of the Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican governments as well.
5:57
Uh, and it's really a debate between traditional Republicans um who I think would describe themselves as thoughtful internationalists and so forth and supporting values and principles etc.
6:12
And those who think that America again should be a bit more America first which can translate into America more isolated.
6:19
But that's not necessarily true and we're seeing even President Trump just in recent weeks um warm up to the idea that more should be done against Russia.
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There is potentially a speech coming today in which the president will announce that US will resume security assistance for Ukraine.
6:39
It will I hope champion the new changes in spending in NATO countries, a very substantial increase in that.
6:50
I would hope that it will also herald the approval by the White House of a variety of sanctions that have been put forward in the Senate by Senator Lindsey Graham and have support by over 85 of that 100 senators in Congress.
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So again I think very much internally there are those who want to retreat a bit more to fortress America.
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I think there are others who want to focus solely on the Indo-Pacific to the detriment of other locations.
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I would argue that that is unwise because what happens in the Indo-Pacific deterrence in particular rests upon potential adversaries assessment of your capabilities on the one hand and your willingness to employ them in the other.
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And if you show that you're unwilling to help others in need for example to provide continued assistance for Ukraine.
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If if help our allies and partners in the Middle East, that undermines that element of deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
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Keep in mind that everything obviously has to achieve some degree of balance, and you can't give all of your air and ballistic missile defense systems to Ukraine if you are going to need some of those elsewhere, Middle East or obviously Indo-Pacific.
8:01
So, again, very much I think a continuing debate within the administration, different elements trying to gain the president's ear, and right now it appears that he is inclined to support Ukraine again, given that Putin has not responded the way that he thought he would, actually, and hoped he would when he said he could end the war in a day or perhaps a few weeks.
8:26
How does China see all of this?
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Presumably, it's an opportunity for them to grow their influence around the world at a time when the US is hitting allies with tariffs and and threats.
8:36
Well, first and foremost, we should recognize that China is providing the lion's share of components to Russia for its renewed military industrial complex.
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complex. Russia's taking horrific losses on the battlefield, not just in soldiers, where they've sustained over 100,000 or where they've sustained over 1 million killed and wounded during the course of the war, but also in terms of tanks and armored personnel carriers and all the other hardware and so forth that's on the battlefield, given that Ukraine is pioneering, it's on the bleeding edge of the future of warfare, which is
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unmanned systems, remotely piloted air, ground, maritime systems, increasingly cleverly employed, such as in Operation Spider Web, where trucks went into the Russian Federation with drones in their roof, all of a sudden they're parked
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outside strategic airfields, some of them thousands of kilometers apart, the drones come out, and a million dollars worth of drones damages or destroys seven billion dollars worth of Russian strategic aircraft. And so the unmanned systems are truly
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And so the unmanned systems are truly changing the face of war.
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No man's lands now are the most lethal in world history.
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I think tanks and armor personnel carriers cannot even survive to go into them.
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So again as you look at all of this that's playing out in the world around us.
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First of all China is supporting Russia very substantially.
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It's also learning a great deal from what's going on there as are other countries around the world.
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Although I fear that the US, UK and others are not learning fast enough frankly.
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But China I think if you will understandably is opportunistic.
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It's had a number of initiatives whether it's a Belt and Road initiative or what have you to sew up supplies of critical minerals to achieve ports or bases or what have you other parts of the world to try to get countries to align with it through a variety of political and economic and so forth schemes and initiatives.
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Some of this is the regular actions of a country that is becoming an ever greater superpower.
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Some of it is a bit more aggressive than I think certainly should be for them if they were trying to achieve objectives without repelling others.
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Think about the European investment accord with China that was reached during the final months of Chancellor Merkel's time in Germany when she was a president of the European Commission I think it was that or the rotating body of the EU.
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And the wolf warrior diplomacy was so off-putting that EU put it on hold investment accord.
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It's also caused huge problems elsewhere and very aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas, Yellow Sea, the border if you will the between India and China where in three separate incidents dozens of Indian soldiers were killed.
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You know, it's up on the roof of the world, the line of actual control it's called and so forth and so on.
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And one questions whether they're learning from that sufficiently for their achievement of objectives or not because a lot of that behavior does continue.
11:55
You paint the picture of a chaotic multipolar world, but who do you think will be the dominant superpower of the 21st century?
12:05
Well, I think it's the United States, but it you know, I'm a former economics professor and so you always answer a question like that with two words, it depends.
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And it depends on the policies and actions and investments and so forth that the US makes.
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If we reduce over much of our R&D spending, if we employ overly damaging tariffs with countries, the ramifications of a lot of what is going on are very considerable.
12:33
At the heart of it though is a dynamism in the US that has made America great again and again and again.
12:42
The The incentives and critical masses of innovation and entrepreneurship are so significant here, the market size is so much and so forth that I think if we pursue pragmatic policies and initiatives and efforts around the world that this will continue to buoy the United States and to keep it the if you will the preeminent superpower.
13:05
But there's no question about the dynamism in the Chinese economy, the enormous output in certain sectors, the investment in many sectors that they're making, some of which leads to to accusations of unfair trade and so on.
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But again, you by no means can discount the extraordinary dynamism of parts of the Chinese economy even as they deal with major challenges, whether it's a demographic downturn that could turn into a death spiral.
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You know, they're losing I don't know, 5 to 10 million people out of their workforce a year and they're now actually starting to see their population reduce overall as a result of the lack of childbirth.
13:48
You see very substantial debt levels, especially at the subnational level.
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We're not sure how high they are the real estate sector is still in in considerable difficulty and that's anywhere from 30 to 35% of the economy depending on how you uh collate all the different sectors that are connected to it.
14:08
Um but no question that what China has achieved is truly extraordinary.
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I'm sure you all have been there and seen the incredible infrastructure that they have and so many of the other elements of a booming economy that they've built even as yes, the economy is slowing down.
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Yes, employment opportunities for university graduates and so forth are not what the graduates like to be in a again a variety of other challenges.
14:38
General, you've been really involved in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
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You've visited the region a lot.
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You've worked with the Ukrainians and I assume given them some advice.
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I would love to hear your view on how that conflict could be ended in a way that is satisfactory for the Ukrainian people.
14:56
I think there is definitely for Ukraine if and only if the US and the West writ large.
15:01
So it's certainly first and foremost the European countries and European members of NATO, but also all other countries in the world that cherish the kind of values that Ukraine also embraces.
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So again, democracy, vibrant free speech, capitalism and so forth.
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And not to say that all of these elements are by any means perfect in Ukraine.
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There are imperfections and so forth.
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But again, against a country that has invaded them without provocation and inflicted incredible loss, damage, and destruction on them while taking incredible casualties on its own side.
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As I noted earlier, over a million killed and wounded on the Russian side.
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And by the way, 500,000 of them so seriously wounded or killed that they cannot return to the front lines.
15:51
Look, as somebody who commanded two different wars and then a theater in which there were multiple wars, I can't comprehend these numbers.
15:57
I literally cannot get my head around them, if you will. They are so staggering.
16:01
But if we enable Ukraine to change the dynamic on the battlefield once and for all to prevent Russia from achieving any gains.
16:09
Right now, they're achieving only incremental gains to be sure.
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But they and they're taking horrific losses, but they are also inflicting, again, enormous damage and destruction on Ukrainian infrastructure and a host of different sectors.
16:23
But if we enable them sufficiently, and some of this is just providing them money to increase their military industrial capacity.
16:33
They they will produce 3.
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5 million drones this year alone.
16:35
By the way, do the math and you realize that they can actually do what the Ukrainian commander told me they did recently, a couple months ago when I was over there.
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I asked him, "How many drones did you employ yesterday against Russia?" He said, "7,000." Think about this.
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This is This is becoming their their artillery, their close air support, their infantry, all of this in one.
16:59
And it is, again, extraordinary what they're doing to these Russian offenses, but truly stopping them so that Putin cannot, even he cannot imagine being able to achieve additional gains on the ground, which again, they're doing right now, but in very, very small increments in a but it does add up over time.
17:20
And so that would be I think the goal. How do you do that?
17:23
Additional security assistance.
17:25
I'm pleased to hear that President Trump is going to figure out some mechanism, some way that will get additional anti-air and ballistic missile defense systems and interceptors in there.
17:36
Other countries are doing likewise.
17:38
That's very, very important, but it's across the board.
17:42
It's in a variety of other areas.
17:44
If European countries seized the nearly $300 billion in Russian reserves that are in their banks and just gave it to Ukraine.
17:52
They have done something already with the interest accrued on those $300 billion of reserves.
17:58
But if they gave that to Ukraine, Ukraine itself can actually make the implements of war that can enable it to change that dynamic that is so important as I mentioned.
18:07
I think you then at the very least would have a frozen conflict or at best you might actually achieve some kind of agreement, an armistice or what have you.
18:17
So that at least the fighting and damage and destruction are stopped.
18:23
Ukraine can achieve what I think is going to be an extraordinary future because of all that they have done during their war of survival, their war of independence, especially in the military sector.
18:35
They will emerge as not just the largest and most experienced and most competent army in Europe.
18:42
They will emerge as the the military in the world that is the most cutting edge when it comes to employing the systems of the future, which are right now remotely piloted air, maritime, and ground drones, robotics, and everything else, and will over time increasingly become AI enabled.
19:00
In other words, algorithmically piloted drones.
19:02
One thing that comes across from the description and and the picture you just painted is how much warfare has changed technologically.
19:12
And as venture capitalists, we get a small glimpse of that by investing in the future of defense tech.
19:18
And it's very clear, I think, that technology, not just drones and AI, is going to transform and is transforming how wars are fought across the world.
19:25
Um we get pitched by quantum computing startups who will be able to crack military codes.
19:29
Uh for example, inexpensive drones which allow Ukraine to launch and punch above its weight.
19:34
Uh or but of course those drones can help terrorists as well.
19:39
So, how do you think technology will reshape warfare?
19:45
Well, we're seeing it right in front of us actually.
19:47
And we're also seeing where traditional manned systems are still very, very valuable.
19:52
And I think there will still be a need for both.
19:56
Uh but what you see in Ukraine is the incredible uh capabilities that unmanned systems bring to a force, especially one that is at a manpower, very substantial manpower disadvantage.
20:05
Uh which is outmanned, outgunned, out everything else, out economied, if you will.
20:10
The Russian economy's 12 to 15 times that of the of Ukraine, and so on.
20:16
Uh but think about what they have done.
20:18
I mentioned Operation Spiderweb, and what an extraordinary strategic achievement that was.
20:24
But also look at the maritime drones and the aerial drones that have enabled Ukraine, a country without a traditional navy as we would know it, surface ships, uh to sink 1/3 of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and push them all the way out of the western Black Sea to enable Ukrainians to export grain by ship again, as opposed to the other much less efficient means.
20:45
Again, aerial drones found uh the ships, maritime drones sank them.
20:48
We recently saw a maritime drone off the west coast of the Crimean, occupied Crimean pen- peninsula, uh shoot two air defense missiles off the maritime drone and and shoot down uh two uh advanced uh SU-30 Russian fighters.
21:05
Uh and again, many other uh cases of real innovation.
21:07
I go out there fairly frequently.
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I just made my sixth trip there a few months ago, and I'll be back there in September.
21:16
Uh, and I always make a point to visit uh, one of the drone units to see the latest advances.
21:22
Uh, and they're just flat breathtaking.
21:24
Uh, even the modest drones now have four antennas on them to enable them to keep a command and control link, uh, a link to GPS, a link to Starlink, whatever else it may be to to work through the intense electronic warfare assets of Russia.
21:39
And they both sides have these, of course.
21:41
Uh, but now to counter that, they're actually spooling out little fiber optic cable behind them.
21:46
Like the like the most minute fishing line you can imagine, uh, which can't be jammed, of course. It can be cut.
21:52
There's actually a video of Russian soldiers running around with scissors trying to cut the the link that has been laid out behind a drone.
21:59
Uh, but again, these actions and reactions and and counteractions have all been very, very impressive.
22:06
And you can see where this is headed.
22:08
Now, if you turn to the the conflict that we all most want to prevent through deterrence, again, by having capabilities and a willingness to use them that the potential adversary sees, while not being needlessly provocative, uh, think about the Indo-Pacific.
22:23
Where the Indo-Pacific commander has publicly described something called Hellscape.
22:27
In other words, he wants to turn the Taiwan Strait.
22:31
This is a 110-mi pretty formidable amphibious operation if it were to take place.
22:38
Um, turn that into a hellscape.
22:38
And the way he would envisions doing that is with unmanned systems under the surface of the water.
22:46
Many, many, many of them.
22:46
Again, not small numbers, but huge swarms of them.
22:51
Uh, on the surface of the water, in the air, on ground, uh, in cyberspace and outer space, uh, in the cognitive space, you name it.
22:59
The equivalent in each of those.
23:01
Uh, and again, that is an extraordinary vision.
23:03
Now, it's not fully realized by any means, uh, but that's where all of this is headed.
23:07
And of course, AI is enabling every aspect uh, of command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, uh, and so on.
23:17
And many of these headquarters, uh, around the world of the US combatant commands, the geographic combatant commands, as I was when I was US Central Command commander of the greater Middle East, many of these headquarters are way down the road in introducing AI to help them perform the different functions, uh, of combat.
23:38
We we must go on to Iraq in the few minutes that we have remaining.
23:42
Obviously, an incredibly controversial war.
23:45
Um, what would you say, you know, I know we could talk about this for 2 hours, 3 hours, but we have a few minutes.
23:50
What would you say are some of the main lessons that you took away?
23:53
We should talk about the surge, which of course was a, you know, a huge thing that you did.
23:59
We would love to hear your reflections, your regrets, what you think went well.
24:04
So, first and foremost, I think is, uh, in each case, uh, it highlights the importance of what you literally are all about, which is big ideas.
24:11
In your case, giant ideas, I guess.
24:13
But you've got to get the big ideas right.
24:15
A strategic leader has to perform four tasks.
24:20
First and foremost, and far away the most important, is to craft the right strategy, to get the big ideas right, to understand the situation, uh, the physical terrain, the human terrain, the enemy, uh, the population, uh, geography, all of this, neighborhood, and so on.
24:36
And the nature of that war, and then to craft the right strategy for that.
24:43
Clausewitz reminds us, by the way, uh, that the first, the most important, the supreme task of a military commander is to understand the nature of the war that he's going to fight, uh, and not to make it what he'd like it to be, rather than what it actually is.
24:56
And we've learned this the hard way, not always admitting it, but it took us 13 years in Vietnam to get the big ideas right.
25:02
The French never got them right in Indochina or in Algeria.
25:07
Uh it took us arguably 7 years to get them right in Afghanistan and another year to get the inputs right to enable the big ideas to be implemented and the right architecture and so forth.
25:17
And we only kept them right for about about a year or so or less.
25:21
And then our drawdown started to be based on not on battlefield conditions in Afghanistan, but on political conditions in Washington, which is not necessarily the right way to go about it.
25:31
Uh in Iraq there were early on uh many impressive achievements, toppling of the government much quicker than most people thought.
25:38
I was a two-star general at the time commanding the great 101st Airborne Division in the fight to Baghdad.
25:43
Uh and then some colossally bad ideas that cut us off at the knees and hampered us for years until frankly the start of the surge in early 2007.
25:52
And these were firing the Iraqi military without telling them what their future was uh and or how we were going to enable them to provide for their families and themselves.
26:02
You created, you know, hundreds of thousands of individuals who now had an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it.
26:09
And then we compounded that by firing the Ba'ath Party, to be sure Saddam Hussein's party, but not just at the top level and the second or even the third level, but the fourth level, which is basically bureaucrats, tens of thousands of them, uh mostly Western-educated, by the way, much more inclined toward us than those who replaced them, who were much more Islamist.
26:30
Uh but these are the bureaucrats we needed to run a country and ministries that we didn't sufficiently understand.
26:35
So, by the way, lesson number one is you really ought to understand a country that you're going to invade in a very granular manner and avoid these kinds of horrifically bad decisions that create far more enemies than they take off the field by their conduct.
26:50
In fact, one of the big ideas about in my view about operations is was represented by a question that staring at me all the time from my operations center wall.
27:00
You know, you'd have the maps and all the digital and all this other stuff in displays and there's a question.
27:04
And every one of the I had five combat commands as a general officer and every one of these operations centers that question was there.
27:12
Will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct?
27:17
If the answer to that is no, you're you're supposed to go sit under a tree until the thought passes.
27:23
Those two policy decisions on firing the military and the bath party members down to level four violated that in the worst possible manner.
27:31
So again, you have to get the big ideas right.
27:36
And I'd argue that when we started the surge in Iraq, the big ideas were very wrong and that's why the Iraqi civil war between Sunni and Shia had grown to such terrifying levels of of loss and damage and and destruction and and and sheer attacks every single day.
27:52
There were 53 dead bodies of civilians in Iraq every day due to violence.
27:58
It capital that was out of control and we had to completely reverse what we've been doing 180 degrees.
28:07
So in many ways the surge that mattered most was not the additional 25 or 30,000 forces that were hugely important in enabling us to accelerate the achievements of the surge.
28:15
By the first six months we had violence down by some 50 five or 60% which enabled us to sustain the residual support we still had on Capitol Hill in Washington.
28:24
But again, what was really important here is that we instead of clearing and leaving operations in which case the enemy would move back in even if Iraqi forces took over because they'd been so badly beaten up and were combat ineffective.
28:39
We had to clear and hold.
28:41
So the big idea is secure and serve the people.
28:44
We can only do that by living with them.
28:47
Once again, we're going back downtown, we're going into the neighborhoods, and when we clear these neighborhoods, we're going to stay there with them, and we're going to create population control measures with an entry control point through which only people with biometric ID cards who belong in that neighborhood can transit, and the bad guys cannot get in.
29:06
And we did this on a massive scale.
29:09
Fallujah, city of only 300,000 people alone, we had 12 or 13 gated communities within it as we cleared it.
29:14
We told them in advance, "We're coming in, and this time, we're not just going to get Al-Qaeda out of your neighborhood, we're going to keep them out because we're going to stay in it.
29:22
You all will have biometric ID cards to come and go, and we'll control that entry control point."
29:28
And then gradually over time, uh after we provide humanitarian assistance, restore basic services, do reconstruction of damaged schools, homes, clinics, markets, and everything else, uh gradually transition control to Iraqi security forces, which in the end took many years.
29:43
Uh and actually was go went very, very well until unfortunately the prime minister unhinged all of it within 24 hours of our final four-star leaving by pursuing highly sectarian activities that that caused the problems that that ensued with the Islamic State finding relevance and and resonance and so on.
30:02
So again, it is all about that first task of a strategic leader.
30:06
Of course, there are three others, and I explicitly use this intellectual construct in my three four-star combat commands, uh Iraq, Central Command, and Afghanistan.
30:16
Get the big ideas right, communicate them effectively through the breadth and depth of the pop of the organization, and all who have a stake in the outcome.
30:23
That includes Iraqi citizens, Iraqi prime minister, the White House, number 10, Pentagon, and America's mothers and fathers who have a right to understand what we're trying to achieve uh with their sons and daughters.
30:35
Then you have to oversee the implementation of the big ideas, a whole bunch of tasks there, attracting the best and brightest, keeping them long as you can, letting those not measuring up to move on to something else, providing an example, energy, inspiration, getting the organizational architecture right.
30:49
The metrics have to tell you whether you're winning or losing, and they have to be objective and absolutely rock solid.
30:56
And then how you spend your time, your battle rhythm is crucial.
30:59
And on that battle rhythm of of the recurring activities, events, and so forth, there have to be a number that enable you to perform the fourth task, which is to determine how to refine the big ideas so that you can perform the process again and again and again.
31:11
So, what most significantly did we learn?
31:17
Get the strategy right, truly understand the situation in in doing so, and then of course you got to keep it right, and make sure that everybody understands what it is that you're trying to achieve at your level so they can translate it into concrete action at their level outside the wire, under body armor and Kevlar and weapon, doing what only they can do, which is to engage the population and also engage the enemy.
31:42
We end every podcast general by asking what qualities enabled our guest to rise to the highest levels of whatever path they've chosen to pursue.
31:52
You were in a rare show of cross-party support unanimously confirmed as the director of the CIA by the US Senate 94 to 0.
31:59
What do you think enabled you to rise to the highest levels of the US military and become the general you were?
32:06
Well, I think about generally as opposed to trying to describe myself, I think first and foremost that future leaders have to understand that life is a competitive endeavor. I mean that seriously.
32:18
I mean, people shrug their shoulders, say, "Of course it is."
32:19
Well, but an awful lot of people don't act that way.
32:23
There's a subset of West Point cadets that are proud to be average, as they say.
32:28
You know, happy with a gentleman's B.
32:30
Um Um future subordinates don't want somebody who's proud to be average leading them, especially not in combat.
32:37
They want somebody who's tenaciously committed to understanding his or her profession at that particular level and providing the very best leadership uh possible.
32:46
And that just involves a degree of enormous commitment.
32:49
Um you again, you have to try to achieve the very best overall if you can, at least the best you can be.
32:56
Uh but you also want to do it while being the best team player you can be.
33:01
I was really gratified at one point as a young lieutenant to go through Ranger School, one of the Army's toughest uh courses.
33:08
It's a leadership course, really, but it's the way you learn about leadership is by leading others in significant adversity.
33:15
Uh you know, inadequate sleep, rest, uh very very tired, physically beat up, and everything else.
33:22
Um and there was a you know, an award for the number one graduate.
33:25
I got that, but there was another one that was basically for being the best Ranger buddy.
33:30
You know, how did you help your your buddies?
33:31
Did you climb over their back or did you carry their rucksack when they needed you to help help them?
33:37
And it also land navigation in it, but I I got that one and I it seems to me that that captures what you should be trying uh to achieve.
33:43
So, you really have to have a degree of ambition that is a burning ambition, but it can't you know, it can't uh in incinerate others as you're going along with that.
33:55
Obviously, you've got to have a degree of of native intelligence and you want to build that and increase your intellectual capital in the areas that are most important.
34:03
Uh needless to say, you know, you have to work hard.
34:06
Uh there is a a degree degree again of significant commitment.
34:10
In some cases, uh families experience the sacrifice uh of what it is that the individual is doing.
34:17
You try to achieve a degree of balance, but those again who have gotten forward, inevitably, there is a a real focus uh on what it is that they are doing, uh which means that again, they're not lollygagging uh through life.
34:30
And then at the end of the day, though, uh it's all about that first task of the strategic leader.
34:36
Because you have a lot of people that have a exhibit the qualities and attributes that you look for in a leader, but but do they have judgment?
34:43
And the problem is you don't necessarily find out until they are the overall leader, uh until they are the commander of the multinational force in Iraq.
34:52
Um because up until that time, they are actually exercising leadership, determining the big ideas within the limits of the big ideas that their boss, the overall boss, the strategic leader has developed.
35:05
Uh if the strategic leader says, "We're going to fight a war of attrition against North Vietnam," it's not easier for those below that leader uh to implement, say, a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign.
35:18
Actually, the Marines did do that in Vietnam.
35:20
They just sort of blew off the guidance to a degree of General Westmoreland and showed what could have been achieved uh if the much bigger army forces there uh had pursued the right strategy uh much sooner than they did.
35:32
It wasn't until late 1968 you finally had a replacement for Westmoreland who got the big ideas right, but by then it was after Tet and it was too late uh in the US home front.
35:41
the US home front. So, again, what really matters at the end of the day, first and foremost, in the senior levels in particular, but also all the way up, it's getting the big ideas right, uh then it's about the ability to communicate them, the ability to oversee their implementation, and in in a way, the wisdom to recognize the need to constantly challenge the big ideas and
36:04
determine how they need to be refined or replaced or or what have you, uh and avoiding the situation of a Kodak, uh which had over 2,000 patents for digital photography when it was the champion uh of film photography and and processes and services, failed to make digital photography the new big idea for the firm, others got there first, and they never recovered from that experience. So, I think that's how I would capture
36:29
So, I think that's how I would capture this, uh, but it starts again, you know, so many people have said the harder I work the the more fortunate I get.
36:38
I used to say that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity and I truly did work very hard as I was coming up through the ranks, uh, to try to be as prepared as I possibly could be if the call came.
36:52
And inevitably or not inevitably, I guess, uh, and as it turned out, you know, I got called on six times as a general officer alone, uh, to hold a command and five of those were in combat.
37:08
Thank you so much for this wide-ranging conversation, General Petraeus, and thank you so much for joining us on the Giant Ideas podcast. Great to be with you.