How to Understand the New Age of War: A Conversation With Lawrence D. Freedman

I'm Dan Kurtz-Phalen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview. My own view, maybe this is just a function of getting older, is that I'm less and less impressed with what you can do with military power. It just, the trouble with violence is it seems like it's definitive. It just sorts stuff out, and it rarely does. By some measures, there is more war in the world today than at any point since World War II. Today's wars have brought a level of destruction, disruption, and global risk that would have seemed hard to imagine not long ago, often in places where such combat seemed a thing of the past. Policymakers once again worry about nuclear use, and military planners once again contemplate war between great powers, including the U.S. and China, and NATO and Russia. And all of this comes as the Trump administration dismantles key pieces of the international system, and technology scrambles expectations about how wars start, unfold, and end. No one has left a greater mark on our understanding of wars past and present than Lawrence Friedman. Friedman has written a slew of definitive books on military strategy and history, and he has offered some of the most penetrating analysis of Iran, Ukraine, and more in the pages of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. I spoke with Friedman on Monday, September 14th, about the course of today's conflicts, about what is and is not changing in the nature of war, and about why policymakers, military officers, and strategists so often start wars based on bad assumptions, and how those bad assumptions explain some of the biggest calamities in global security today. Laurie, it's wonderful to have you back on the podcast. It's very good to be here. There's no shortage of reasons why I was eager to have you back. There are plenty of wars to talk about and plenty that you've written in our pages in recent years that continues to shed light on all of those wars. But there's an additional reason we wanted to have you on. It's a bittersweet one. You have been our military book reviewer for more than 20 years, and after our November-December issue, you will be stepping down from that post, though I hope still appearing in our pages with some frequency. I'm extremely excited about your successor, whom we will reveal soon, but we'll still miss having you in that role. And reflecting on those decades and looking back at your work over them, my mind goes to a very big question. At the start of that period in late 2002, we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, and we were talking about the war in Iran, in the early years of America's post-911 wars. I think that moment, if I can remember where the conversation was, Afghanistan seemed to be going pretty well, at least when viewed from Western capitals, and there was debate raging about Iraq. But I think few people in that debate really registered just how consequential the mistake of that war would be. But even with those, it was, I think, hard to imagine at that time just how much major war we'd be seeing a couple of decades later and the extent to which great power war is one of the most important things that we're going to see in the future. And I think that's something that we're going to see in the future. And I think that's something after a period in which it seemed, I think, at best. I mean, it's very sad, if nothing else. If you go back to the 90s, one can overstate the optimism of that decade because there were terrible things that happened in the 90s too, Rwanda being one obvious example. The Balkan wars ended up okay, I guess, but they seemed difficult at times. And again, there were some terrible events during those. But by and large, the feeling was that the West was on top. It had come out ahead in the Cold War. Other countries that had been our adversaries were adopting Western ways. That was the meaning of globalization. And that if we were going to use military force, it would be at our discretion. And I think the first thing that 9-11 shattered was the idea that this was up to us. Somebody brought the war to the United States in a dramatic way. And it's not that nobody had foretold that sort of event, but it seemed very worst case. And here we are when the worst case had happened. And I think that was the second impact of 9-11, is if you said, well, that's the worst case, people say, well, the worst case happened. Very fanciful scenarios were developed about how Iraq had developed the bomb, handed over to al-Qaeda, both of which required a lot of struggle. But you didn't dare to say that's impossible because the impossible had happened. And I think the decisions by the Bush administration to globalize the war on terror, to make it not about how you deal with this wretched al-Qaeda stuck somewhere in Afghanistan, but you'd make it a much bigger thing. You'd try and sort out all sorts of old scores and issues that hadn't been solved. That hadn't been done before. That's what got us into trouble. If it had been confined to al-Qaeda and Afghanistan, I think the outcomes would have been very different, including in Afghanistan. But ambition took over, and men hubris as well. If we turn to the war that is consuming the Middle East right now and a lot of American foreign policy attention, the one in Iran, you've been pretty unsparing about the extent of, of the Trump administration's error in both going to war and conducting it. You've called it a stupid war, which is much worse than a bad war. It does, however, seem, in keeping with some of the persistent American errors when it comes to the use of force, especially in that region. Do you see it as different in kind or just in kind of degree of error? And to the extent it is similar to those, why does the U.S. keep making this kind of mistake? I mean, it is a stupid war because, as the consequences were forecast, anybody who dealt with the Middle East who'd looked at the Iran issue, really, since the Bush administration, knew the two things that would happen would be the Straits of Hormuz and Hezbollah come back again. So it wasn't, there was no surprise there. You cannot argue, of course, that the Americans are not unique in making the sort of error that assumes that because you've got your really, really great power and you've got super military forces, that you can do what you want. And that as long as you get it over quickly, all will be well. So Trump, in that sense, made the same error as Putin. And obviously this is not yet, in terms of human life, death and destruction, as bad a war as Ukraine. But it's very consequential. And I think what, to me still is what's staggering about it is the, the lack of thought that went into it. I mean, to have Benjamin Netanyahu come along with a plan and then discuss that and decide, oh, that seems a good idea. I mean, even with Iraq, I mean, there was a year of active debate and discussion and it was based on false premises and they still got it wrong. But at least everybody knew what the issues were and where the risks were. And some attempt was made to mitigate them. But at least, you know, there was an active public debate. It just, this one just got everybody by surprise. There was no full discussion, even within the administration. And of course, you've got an administration that's been hollowed out. It doesn't have the capacity and expertise that previous administrations have. So this is the same old mistake of underestimating the enemy, believing that you can get it all sorted out quickly before all the bad things could happen. These are pretty standard mistakes. Yeah, not just for the United States. Other countries have made them, as well. But the legacy of this is going to be with us for many years, even assuming we can get through the immediate economic consequences, which are pretty serious. You wrote a fantastic piece for Foreign Affairs, I believe last year, called The Age of Forever Wars, where you talked about the short war fallacy, the way that this kind of assumption that decisive, overwhelming force will bring a quick victory. You wrote a follow-up recently called Iran and the Short War Fallacy, where you show, how this thinking is part of the era that led us to this point. What's the mindset that makes that such a frequent mistake by both American policymakers, but also others? I think the problem is that's what military planners plan for. I mean, nobody in their right mind plans to launch a long war. If you're going to go to war, you want it over quickly. And you assume that's true of your adversary as well. So the mindset of military planners is quite, quite short-term. And indeed, if you try to think about how to prepare for a protracted war, our societies would find it very difficult because you'd need far greater mobilization, more stocks. It would consume a lot more resources, whereas the hope is always with a short war, you get it over quick and you barely notice it. It's barely a blip in terms of the economy and industrial capacity and so on. And, you know, you look at Russia and you see how Russia has had to transform its economy for the worse because of its failure with its short war. So the problem is that military planners don't think about this, that they're focused on short war. They get excited by the late is technology and you can see that again with this one particularly with the targeting and the sort of the speed with which you get from and identifying targets to actually destroying them the role of AI and all of that and I think there was also a mindset which very strong in this pentagon which is you look at military force in terms of military objectives you don't look at in terms of the wider political objectives and so it took a long time before Pete Hegseth seemed to recognize this was not a victory even though they in terms of the loss of capability Iran appeared to have come off worse I mean boasting when the ceasefire was announced so this is a victory with a capital blow it'll be and so on looks you know downright embarrassing now so I think if you are going to fight a war you need to link them with what you're trying to achieve politically and I think the problem with with Iran is the political objectives were muddled it started with regime change then it was getting a better nuclear deal now it's opening the straits of Hormuz but there was never clarity on this particularly I mean I think the regime change in particular, was very problematic. I mean, the Israelis seem to have convinced themselves, as they do with a number of their adversaries, that if you take out sufficient numbers of the elite, if you decapitate, effectively they'll fall apart. But they don't. Not these countries. They've thought about it. And Iran was well aware of what might be coming up. And it's not even clear that, I mean, Trump seemed to have had in mind that if he took out the right people and left better people, that you could do a Venezuela-type deal with them, which was complete fantasy. So you could have got a better nuclear deal by negotiating. So you've got no nuclear deal at all at the moment. An Iranian regime that has been reminded of why it might want nuclear weapons. So for all these reasons, it was ill-thought-through, objectives poorly defined, and a military system. geared to the short term and taking out the enemy's military system, rather than trying to work out what's necessary to do to get to what we want to achieve. Has anything in Iran's military response particularly struck you? Have you been impressed in an amoral sense by their use of drones or the way they've escalated or anything else? I think from Iran's point of view, it was always going to be about survival. Once it was discovered that the Americans were not going to use ground forces, their tasks became a lot easier. So the issue was one of survival, which meant having replacements for senior people, in case they got killed, which many did, being prepared to suppress any popular protest. Well, it had already shown that they were prepared to slaughter their own people in the thousands, so they were well prepared for that. Protecting as much as possible of your missile, production, as well as launching capability, and they've been able to do that. And then I think what surprised people was the speed with which they went for the Strait of Hormuz, because in June 25, they'd had a much more cautious response. The Americans had concluded that the Iranians probably wouldn't fight very hard. The Iranians concluded that they needed to, so they were prepared. And once that happened, we were in a completely different conflict, for which there was no shortage of warning. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but there wasn't great preparation. There's a line in your Age of Forever Wars essay, you're right, when a short war plane does not produce the anticipated victory, the challenge for military leaders is to achieve a new alignment between means and ends. How would you do that in Iran at this point from a U.S. perspective? I think it's very difficult. Because, unfortunately, I don't think this is great for the Iranians. The hardliners have used the opportunity to take control. And if you were concerned about the plight of the Iranian people, they'd be interested in compromises. I mean, they can take income from the Strait of Hormuz if they get that sorted out at some point. But what they really need is Iranian assets to be unfrozen. And for the sense of the oil industry to be allowed to flourish. Now, all of that was made possible by the MOU. So there was a deal available, which was not a bad deal from the Iranian perspective. But I think they got fixated on the Strait of Hormuz as their leverage. And instead of taking the opportunity to let that open, and then really, I mean, they've shown that they can close it at any time. So there wasn't a lot of opportunity to close it. And so, you know, we're going to lose their leverage just by letting it open and allowing more negotiations to take place on the nuclear side and frozen assets and so on. Now we've got a real problem because you depend on debates within Tehran, of which we have very little influence or control, in which the hardliners certainly have the advantage. And we've used up a lot of our capacity. I mean, the United States can account for a lot of our capacity. We've used up a lot of our capacity. I mean, occasionally knock things out, tankers going to Iranian ports, but it can't make a material difference to Iranian capabilities at the moment. So you're relying on economic pressure, which is real, and you would wish the regime took it into account, but the regime has got other priorities. In my mind, but maybe this is too influenced by what happened with the hostage crisis, in 1980, they're waiting until after the midterms, a MMLC. I think they want to hurt Trump. He was part of the assassination of their comrades, mutilated the current Ayatollah and killed his father. They've been Israeli bombs, but the Americans are part of it. I think they want to punish. Just as they wanted to hurt Jimmy Carter. Famously, the hostages were only released as Reagan was inaugurated. - In going back and reading all of the excellent work you've done for foreign affairs over the years, I was struck by a line in a piece you wrote in 2006. This was after you'd done the UK's official history of the Falklands War. And in reflecting on kind of European or British views of the American approach to the use of force, you wrote, "The problem with Washington since World War II "has been not so much its predilection "for using military force as a first resort, "as its hesitation and uncertainty when going to war." Is that the kind of fight you're talking about? Is that the kind of flip side of the short war fallacy that it's kind of a lack of commitment to a serious war because of that delusion? Or is there some other dynamic intention with that? - It is a problem. It seems to be either one thing or the other, but not very nuanced in between. I mean, if you look back to, again, going back to the 1990s and the factors that influenced Blair, the British prime minister, after 9/11, Blair was very worried that the Americans were drifting away. I mean, a lot of the issues that we now worry about in terms of, in Europe, about the American commitment to our security and so on, were all present then. And if you look at, indeed, the famous article that Condoleezza Rice wrote for you during the 2000 campaign, clearly there was no great interest in humanitarian intervention at all. I mean, she thought it was not how the United States should comport itself, or what Colin Powell had said. So the idea that Blair was seized on, that Western countries had to take a far greater responsibility for making the world generally a better place, and that may include using military force. I mean, that was why, when 9/11 came, he thought this was the moment when he needed to persuade Bush that there were ways of doing this that would be more widely beneficial. And, you know, so it comes back to the old line about your allies' fears of either abandonment or entrapment, either the US ignores your problems and needs you to sort them out, even though you struggle to do so, or it gets so involved that you get caught up with things that actually increase the danger rather than ease them. The challenge of being a junior partner in an alliance. - You pointed out the ways in which Putin going into Ukraine was similarly subject to the short-war fallacy or the delusion. You've more recently described the situation in Ukraine as a, quote, "hurting stalemate," which means each side is trying to increase the pain and cost to the other side, and then hope that that affects decision-making. It's not clear that Putin has done the kind of recalibration you recommend for leaders when the short-war fallacy comes back to bite them. Looking at the short-war fallacy, it does seem like each side is trying to increase costs, especially to populations back at home, and hoping that affects decision-making. I think on the Ukrainian side, been more solidary in commitment than certainly most of us would have imagined five years ago before the war started, whether that can sustain through what will presumably be a very tough winter for Ukrainians is a separate question. But on the Russian side, this ultimately comes down to Putin and his own sense of his own interests and potential threats to his rule. What are you looking for here? What is your kind of theory of how this might proceed if you're trying to be optimistic from a Ukrainian perspective? And is that the kind of best theory of victory that we can come up with for the Ukrainians at this point? Yeah, I mean, the term hurting still made it's not mine. But the basic idea that it's not clear how either side wins in the way it wants to win. And they're both hurting in the process. That's true. So I think one of the first things I wrote on the full scale invasion, not for my sub stack, not for you, was, I said, this is a war Putin can't win, because I just couldn't see how he could occupy, subjugate all of Ukraine. And that remains the case. And it's still the case that even if he achieved the immediate military objectives, you have to wonder what sort of prize the Donbass is now. It's been ruined by the war, by the aggression. But Putin believes somehow that this is a thing that he has to win, because failure to do so will undermine the credibility of him as a leader. There will be an awful lot of explaining to do as to what this was all about, why the economy has been brought down in for really rather limited territorial gains. And so he's been very stubborn. And again, go back to the first thing I wrote, it was thinking about the difference between a democratic society and an authoritarian one. I mean, least still in our countries, when we screw up, we can talk about it, and urge our governments to find a way out or throw them out, if they fail to do so. That's not possible in Russia. Moreover, you've got a system, which, as far as we can tell, does not provide the leader with the truth. Now, he may know that is that his forces are not doing as well as claimed. He should have cottoned on by now that he's been forecasting imminent victory for a couple of years now, and may wonder why it hasn't yet happened. But he doesn't let on. And this causes Russian forces at the front some difficulties. And we've seen recently in Lyman and so on, some real setbacks for Russian forces, and over-egg it, but it's not trivial. So, I'm not going to go into too much detail on this. But I'm going to go into more detail on this. So, we're left with a question which we've had since the start. What is it that will persuade Putin that he should cut his losses and cut a deal? And so far, it just hasn't been prepared to do so, despite the degradation of the Russian economy, and so on. I think at the moment, the general view, it's a Ukrainian view, and I think probably a Russian view, is that we're into another six-month period. Can the Ukrainians cope with the winter? Can the Ukrainians find more money to fund their war, basically from Europe? Because as things stand, Russia has been pretty systematic about degrading the Ukrainian economy, as Ukraine has done its best to degrade the Russian economy. Will he still be far away or unable to take the fortress cities? And if that's the case, is somebody going to be able to say in the Kremlin, we've really got to stop this? If we can't succeed when the condition seems so propitious, and with the Ukrainians strengthening their hand, with the new ballistic missiles starting to come on stream and so on, they've shown real imagination, they've shown real originality in tactics and technologies and so on, really, it's time to get out. I mean, the American mediation efforts are pretty amateurish, but they're there if Putin wants them. I mean, I think that's, again, the Ukrainian view. It's not that they are that interested in American proposals. They just want to see if there's any concessions coming through, at which point I think they would quite like a ceasefire. But it has to be said, and we must keep this in mind, even if you wanted a ceasefire, and you weren't trying to solve all the different issues between Russia and Ukraine, a ceasefire would be a tremendously difficult thing to actually negotiate. Where is the front line? Both sides have different views about where it is. Who's going to decide? And, you know, the Russians go around planting flags, and then the people are planting the flags get killed, but the image is being taken. So they make claims about holding places that they don't hold. So I don't think a ceasefire would be very easy, or at least it wouldn't get beyond a cessation of a fire, but it wouldn't get into marking the line of contact. I think it's just going to be tremendously difficult. I remember the Russians all want economic sanctions eased and so on. So even if you don't want a big peace negotiation, which could take a year, even just getting a ceasefire agreement in place could be really difficult. And the Americans can't deliver it by themselves. And as soon as you start talking about sanctions, you've got to talk to the EU and the UK and Canada and so on. And given the tortured nature of relationships between the US and its allies, that's not going to be easy either. Are there historical parallels that are illuminating here of a person as leader like Putin, who seems almost suicidally dogged and unshakable until he's not? The examples that jump most immediately to mind suggest otherwise, that you end up in a self-destructive delusional spiral, but maybe there's something that points in the other direction. Well, I mean, you're talking about individual psychologies here. I mean, the obvious one is Hitler, who shot himself in his bunker. But we're not going to get to that stage with Russia, because Ukraine isn't going to invade and march to Moscow. We're not going to get to that stage with Russia, because Ukraine isn't going to invade and march to Moscow. I think everything needs to be looked at in its own terms. And I think, you know, one of the things this does, these wars does, both the Americans and the Russians, is it should be a reminder to IR theorists that you can have all the historical models that you like in the end when you've got these type of individuals in leadership positions, predictability becomes very difficult. It's just challenging in a moment when so many of the major powers are led by individuals who are similarly kind of personalistic in their approach. Well, it's just a lot of individuals, isn't it? I mean, you know, we don't talk about countries, we talk about Putin and Trump and Erdogan and Netanyahu and Xi and so on. Now, you know, there's always some restraints. They've all got to, in some ways, be sensitive to their wider political and economic situations. But, you know, people despise the great man theory of history. And these aren't particularly great men, but they're all men and they're all very powerful. How have you understood the conversation around Russian nuclear use in Ukraine? As you've kind of heard the fears expressed by policymakers, it's obviously hard to know exactly what intelligence they're seeing. But do you see that as a kind of plausible fear or something that Putin is doing to spook Western supporters of Ukraine? I'd be more sanguine on that than many other analysts. And I think the reason is because I think the nuclear arsenal is very important to Putin. I mean, it's what makes Russia a great power, because without it, it would be a very large and rather unsuccessful middling power. And without the nuclear capability, NATO probably would have come in and supported Ukraine. There would have been no massive risks in not doing so. So it's had a deterrent effect, which we shouldn't ignore. And Putin has always concentrated in his own commentary on the importance of NATO not sending its own troops, not fighting side by side with the Ukrainians. A lot of the other stuff has come from Medvedev and some media characters and analysts like Karaganov, who basically think that they haven't used their nuclear arsenal enough, or Medvedev's case, as long as you talk about Armageddon, that maybe you can stop the alliance sending particular weapons or agreeing new targeting rules, or Finland and Sweden can join the alliance. And it's just overused. I mean, there's so many threats, which were never followed through, that it's just lost all credibility, which I think was the best. I mean, there's so many threats, which were never followed through, that it's just lost all credibility, by some of the hardliners in Russia. So my view is that probably even if NATO forces did end up on Ukrainian soil, as they may do after a ceasefire, I still think Putin would be reluctant to start an nuclear war um i mean it's not a great idea it's not obvious what you gain from it people tend to assume that it panics uh well i think probably would panic the ukrainians it would panic people in moscow too i mean it is uh it wouldn't go down well in beijing so i i don't particularly think it it's high on putin's to-do list but it is it does have a deterrent effect to major intervention beyond that i i there's plenty of ways as putin has showed of escalating this war without having to use nukes so uh you know there was this period in september october 22 and we'll maybe at some point find out more about russian decision making but my view was then is that we shouldn't allow ourselves to get spooked and the sad thing is that a lot of things that might have been done for ukraine early on were not done because of some view that there were red lines that would be crossed and you know putin was never going to go to war because uh you're going to send tanks wrong instead of not just anti-tank missiles you know it just we we got ourselves i think taking it far too seriously as if you know he had his finger was hovering over the button all the time as we've taken that threat quite seriously it's striking how little reaction there's been to steps that putin has taken in in europe that get grouped into this category of hybrid war but that wouldn't be quite unthinkable without a you know major nato response uh a few years ago but he has been quite willing to take risks and escalate in that sense yeah and it's a worry and i think i think europeans are trying to get the measure of this problem um because how do you respond to all of this stuff i mean if you have uh russian agents going around europe doing stuff as they have been doing and some of it quite dangerous using explosives or cyber attacks or drone incursions or whatever do you respond in kind which is difficult and potentially provocative um we don't you know maybe we do respond in cyber stuff and you you and i don't know about it um but then what what are the messages you're trying to send what this is all about is because europe supports ukraine and then he's trying to stop europe supporting ukraine so the best answer is to keep supporting ukraine uh and i and that's the most straightforward thing to do and obviously he's got in mind that we may have a different europe quite soon with different governments in france potentially in germany eventually even the uk well again i think it's also adds to the urgency from a european point of view of helping ukraine as strongly as possible now because the longer this thing goes on the harder it becomes for everybody and the greater the hurt do you foresee changes in the role or prominence of nuclear weapons and global security in in the years ahead i think there's been kind of two different arguments that are going on and i think they're both going to be very important in the future and i think they're both going to be very important in the future and i think they're both going to be very important in the future and i think they're both going to be very important in the future intention if not in direct opposition one is that deterrence seems to be less solid than we might have thought given ukrainian attacks on the russian homeland and attacks on israel despite its its having nuclear weapons there was a pretty significant war between two nuclear powers in india pakistan not not long ago on the other hand watching iran and watching the north korean experience by by contrast you can imagine there are lots of other smaller countries that have an interest in getting their nuclear arsenals now what do you think that will mean in terms of the the role of nuclear weapons i mean it seems to me that there's two things that that are going on at the moment first call in all deterrence works nato has not joined in the war on ukraine decided to give ukraine a lot of support but it hasn't actually joined in equally russia you know it's getting closer has not attacked nato territory they have a perfectly good argument otherwise for um interdiction of supplies going into ukraine hasn't done that um nuclear weapons haven't been used which is not unimportant in india and pakistan we've had a number of fights now which have been contained i think they get harder each time but so far they've been contained and i think it's because the leadership groups on both sides are aware that at some point it could become hard to contain once once they're once the restraints are off uh then you're getting into very uncharted territory so i i don't buy the view that nuclear weapons and deterrence uh have not affected international behavior i think they have in quite important ways it's just if you have exaggerated views about the effects then then you can say you're disappointed i think we we think every time something bad happens it's a failure of deterrence even when there are things we didn't try to deter so i think we have to be very careful about how we talk about it so that's i don't think there's anything that's happened that is going to persuade existing nuclear powers not to carry on being nuclear powered uh and to talk about nuclear deterrence as the best guarantor of their security the other thing that's going on is what happens to countries that are not nuclear powers now obviously you'll you can hear ukrainians talk about the budapest memorandum of 1994 and you know wonder what would have happened if they'd stayed in the nuclear game you have a lot of countries wondering whether the guarantees from the united states which always had small print but the small print seems rather large at the moment can rely on them and this works out differently in the indo-pacific region than to how it does in europe in europe you've got the uk and france trying to work out how they can talk about their nuclear capabilities in such a way as to reinforce wider european security but for japan and south korea and so on it's it's it's a it's a more difficult problem so you may have more nuclear powers i mean that's always been the sort of the assumption that if alliance reassurances don't reassure uh and extended deterrence loses its credibility then the the natural next step is to is to look to your own potential nuclear capabilities and it wouldn't take japan or south korea that long to become nuclear weapons or you can see in the gulf now i mean you know the one of the consequences of the iran war is the us doesn't turn out to be a very uh helpful ally it it created a war uh in which its allies in the region get hurt and hasn't done an awful lot to come to their aid it was seen with uh the hooties and saudi arabia so i don't know whether donald trump at some point will will will want to just cut all alliance ties but it doesn't really matter i mean the the the idea anyway was was always there that threatening to go to nuclear war on behalf of other countries was a bit unnatural and that argument is now being reinforced in europe it's an issue but in the end the europeans should be able to to increasingly take over more of their own security given that russia may be in an aggressive mood but it's also weakened itself over the long term anyway but in in the indo-pacific i think it it's much more problematic so i don't know my nuclear weapons haven't gone away uh they'll still be there i think we'll reflect on the last few years and come to conclusions about the limitations as well as the possibilities of deterrence but sadly i think we're just stuck in the nuclear age we'll return to my conversation with lawrence friedman after a short break and we'll be right back this september independent 20th century presents more than 130 artists at the legendary broyu building at 945 madison avenue the show will fill four floors of the modernist landmark on museum mile see why art news magazine calls independent 20th century a staple of the season and experience historic modern art for the future of the art community and the future of the art community from around the world and one of new york's most iconic spaces september 24th to 27th to learn more visit independenthq.com did you know that foreign affairs has an app enjoy professionally narrated audio playlists and adjustable playback speeds for a personalized listening experience save your favorite pieces for later or listen on the go search for foreign affairs in the app store or visit foreignaffairs.com app do you worry about a failure of deterrence in the indo-pacific in the the coming years there's obviously been lots of reporting on the lack of serious american weaponry and ships and air defense and everything else in the region because of of iran and also ukraine to some extent i mean even i was in taiwan about two years ago and even then there was pretty grave concern that the us couldn't supply what it had promised to taiwan and then you also have of course everything that donald trump has done to cast a line commits into doubt along with the you know kind of short war fallacy that she could be subject to with taiwan so you add all that together it looks a little worrying yeah so i think that i mean the chinese are set on a course i don't particularly think that necessarily involves early war the chinese have got a long way by just being there and being vaguely menacing and sticking to their their sort of standard formulas they haven't pushed the issues along that much they've just held their positions and seen uh uh started to see things fall into place for them and i think that that that's what will carry on but but they could push their luck and they you know they take offense rather easily uh and if something starts to happen that they don't like then they're quite quick to start coming in with sanctions and and so on uh as we saw with australia and covet for example so i i i think it's just something that we um we we'll we'll end up watching and the americans are going to have to work out how much it matters to them that the alliance system that they created in the indian pacific which is far more complicated and tenuous i think than the one in europe uh how they bolster it and when this administration is done and dusted and the iran war is done and dusted hopefully where their military priorities lie what actually is this vast american military system for because if it's just to protect the united states you don't need that much so i think that i think these questions will will come to the fore and be hotly debated but with this administration it's just very difficult to do it because you just don't have sensible conversations with this president about international affairs all of us who have much less expertise and have spent much less time thinking about these issues than you have have watched the wars in ukraine and iran and even wars that are are less of the headlines don't go to karabakh sudan to some extent and been struck by the use of new technologies the way that appears to have changed warfare in certain ways i realize that you know lay observers tend to kind of see revolutions military affairs to use the technical term even when they're they're not really there and i you know there's a line about economists you know they predicted 10 of the last three recessions or something like that it's probably a similar line that could be said about military analysts watching uh technological changes in war as you've watched these wars are you struck by changes in the basic nature of war affairs we're seeing it now or does this look like just another turn uh in line with many that you've you've observed and studied wars in the past i mean the character of warfare does change it's uh you know the the west resorted to mass air raids through the second world war through korea into vietnam drones and other means of detection changed the nature of the battle for the field i mean i i'm a bit nervous about drawing too many lessons from this ukraine experience because all wars are unique and you know war involving taiwan would be very different and so on and so forth but you can see that the extraordinary development of drones does make a difference but of course you know all other countries are watching these developments and taking advantage too and so on so i think it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the future so i think it's not that the new technologies don't make a difference they do and it's study to pretend otherwise if precision uh weapons didn't exist uh wars will be fought in a very different way but what i think the mistake we made was to assume that precision mandated a certain sort of warfare because you didn't have to hit civilians there was a lower risk of collateral damage therefore other countries would fight in ways that just concentrated on you know according to the laws of war if you like they're just concentrated on other military forces and war isn't like that so i think just because the the capability exists doesn't mean it says it's going to be used in a particular way the same technology that allows you to avoid hospitals allows you to hit hospitals to put it crudely so i think in the end you've still got to look at back to the basics of political objectives the relationship between military power political objectives which is what the study of warfare at the end comes down to and our view of political objectives has changed as well we've always been through all sorts of shifts from the belief in the 90s that it was well belief in the cold war that was all about deterring world war iii to uh the counter insurgencies the humanitarian interventions to the fighting terrorists i mean it depends on your enemies and it depends on what you think a good solution is my own view maybe this is just a function of getting older is that i'm less and less with what you can less and less impressed with what you can do with military power it just the the trouble with violence is it seems like it's definitive it just sorts stuff out and it rarely does you know you can say the the borders of different countries have been shaped by military power india and pakistan the existence of bangladesh is a consequence of a successful use of military power we can argue back and forth about the consequences of the 1967 war the falklands is not part of argentina because of military power but it wasn't that britain wanted to go to war to defend the falklands the argentinians tried to take it so what one would hope for in people reflecting on the changes there's been is just how little military power is achieved uh for countries you can't just dismiss it it doesn't make you a pacifist but it should make you skeptical and i think you know the tragedies that we've seen very real tragedies over this decade have been caused by a lack of skepticism about how military power can and should be used uh not just just not asking the difficult questions not asking if that doesn't work what do you do instead i went back and read the first piece you ever wrote for foreign affairs which was in 1982 shortly after the the falklands war and there was a line that that jumped out at me quote the search is already underway for the lessons of the war if there are lessons to be learned they lie in recognizing that factors neglected informal presentations of a military balance are often decisive so this is in some sense a theme that that you have been developing in your work since that time yeah that's a broken record really on this no i think it's true i mean i i the the problem for for students of military power is you you're always going to look at the next big thing and fixate on it and assume that it can be transformational like people are doing with ai at the moment and and then you don't want to say that it's irrelevant or trivial or whatever a lot of time it isn't but there's basic features of military power both about the destruction it can cause but also the sheer difficulty of using it to occupy and subjugate other populations and if there's one lesson that should have been learned is that it's not that it can't be done but it's very difficult to do it's certainly very difficult to do as westerners and uh you know as the russians are finding with ukraine uh you know i think in afghanistan and iraq we tried to find ways of shaping a country future without being the government i mean we tried to be the government in iraq for for a while that didn't work out too well uh so you know we support democratic elections and so on but the interventions themselves were disappointing because they weren't authentic precisely because we were seen to be behind it so i think you know there's an awareness of that which is why that probably never occurred to trump to really send ground troops into iraq but if you're not prepared to do that then you can't do it by bombing alone so we've just got to ask the hard questions much more every time we think about uh using armed force uh about what it's going to achieve if somebody else has started the war then you're going to respond i mean that that's different but if you're the ones who want to start it then you're going to respond i mean that that's different but if you're the ones who want to start it if somebody else has started the war then you're going to respond i mean that that's different but if you're the ones who want to start it it or you're the ones who want to intervene in somebody else's conflict then you've got to be pretty sure about what you're doing because otherwise you may just end up making it worse as you anticipate the growing use of ai and both decision making about war and in all all parts of the the conduct of war how do you assess the opportunities for ai to improve some of these these decision-making processes and of course avoid some of these pitfalls, and to what extent do you worry that it'll just kind of reinforce all of these delusions? I think in terms of targeting, AI already makes a difference, and you see that in Ukraine, and this sort of thing about the speed from identifying targets, dating them, and so on, managing swarming and all these sort of things. So AI will make a difference. But, I mean, there's a danger in assuming that this stuff is so clever that it'll make great decisions for you, and it isn't, and it won't, because basically AI is going to be fighting AI. It doesn't eliminate the fog of war. The fog of war will still be there, just be taking a new form. So you've got the exaggerated expectations, and the fact that it's very rare that he's. That. One side will get a decisive, or, yeah, really decisive advantage in the technology. I mean, you know, everybody's using drones now. They've been used in Sudan, and so on. They're easy to use. That's what the Ukrainians have showed, and the Russians picked up, and now everybody else is doing it. Actually, even before this, in Syria, drones were being used in the Civil War. So there's a diffusion of these technologies, and. You know, the stories about how the Iranians and other groups have been using the easily available AI tools to do their stuff. I mean, it's just going to be there. I mean, the smartphone is full of stuff that was once unique to military. GPS, satellite imagery, instant communication. These were military privileges that other people didn't have. We've all got it now. So we shouldn't assume that there's going to be a special advantage accruing to us because of it. I think the other point that, you know, just we're left with after Iran, after Ukraine, Iran too, I guess, is just we've focused so much on quality, on having an absolutely amazing kit that can do tremendous things, that we've forgotten about mass. And numbers still matter. I think that's what one of the main lessons I would draw from Ukraine is that mass matters. And if you don't have it, then you can do amazing things in one part of the war, but you're going to still get overwhelmed somewhere else. So this takes you back to familiar questions and the sort of the issues that were first raised by Clausewitz about the defense being a stronger form of warfare. It's still an issue. It still seems to be a proposition that seems to have some force or that, you know, the bomber always gets through. Well, it doesn't always get through, but by and large, the defense is weaker when dealing with air threats than it is when dealing with land threats. So these are things, debates that Clausewitz would have recognized, even he would have been shocked by the technologies with which they're being assessed. That's a good segue to the question I wanted to end on. I've not counted just how many books you've reviewed for Foreign Affairs over the course of your tenure. Certainly upwards of 500. And you've probably looked at A few, yes. Yeah. Several thousand more as you've gone through the box of books we send your way several times a year and assessed which ones deserve some attention. The magazine, obviously, there are many more that deserve attention, but we didn't have the space for it. As you look back at those books, what are the few in that mix or what are a few in that mix? I'm sure there are more than a few. That stand out, not just as the best books, but ones that seem especially resonant or useful for both analysts and scholars, but also policymakers and military officers in trying to understand the challenge they're facing now. So the first book I ever did for you was Elliot Cohen's book on Supreme Command, which I thought was really good. And that was a long review. It wasn't a capsule. And in retrospect, the timing is quite interesting because it was 2002. And in retrospect, I might have been more circumspect about supporting the basic argument, which is what I still generally believe, which is that civilians do and have a right to shape how wars are fought. Now, in the light of how Donald Rumsfeld managed the Iraq war, there's a clear demonstration that civilians don't always have the right idea. But in principle, it remains important. And just thinking through, it's a theme that keeps on coming through in a number of books that I've reviewed thereafter. And I think especially in books coming from Americans, this question of civil military relations is a persistent one and interests me a lot. And obviously, with the current administration, it's taken a new twist, shall we say. A book that had a big effect on me, but isn't necessarily relevant to current debates, was Ernie Pyle, who was the great war correspondent. One of his books was reprinted, and I just sort of gobbled it up when I started reading it. And this is Ernie Pyle reporting on World War II or a range of wars? On World War II, yeah. Particularly going into Sicily and then on to the Italian campaign. It was very moving at times. He's talking to soldiers all the time. He gives their addresses, which of course you'd never do now. And it humanizes war. He didn't write particularly about ground strategy or operational moves or anything. It wasn't particularly about scoops. It was about what it was like to be in the fight. I mean, he was eventually killed towards the end of the Pacific War. But I've always found that partly because I'm not a war correspondent. I write about war, but stay well clear of them myself, is that it just demonstrated what a good correspondent can do. And the writing was very direct. It wasn't literary in a way, but it was very readable. A third book, just because we've talked about it already, it's an issue that's always been close to my heart, was Daniel Ellsberg's book on his time as one of the whiz kids, sort of an analyst at RAND in the late '50s and then consultant to the Kennedy administration, and his sort of alarm at what he's finding out about the way that SAC, as Strategic Air Command, was preparing for the sort of lack of controls over them. And I think why that made an impact on me, I mean, Ellsberg obviously was in his own way a controversial figure, but I think this was a particularly reasonably genuine, I'm sure it was a genuine memoir. And this is before Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers and become famous or infamous for that reason? Yeah, this is while he was making his career till he got into the position where he could be involved in the Pentagon Papers and leak them. And before he became the head of the Pentagon Papers, he was the head of the Pentagon Papers. And he became an anti-war activist, as it were, is that it demonstrated something that I should have been more aware of, or was aware of, but should have been more aware of, which was the disconnect between all the stuff that I'd spent my time reading and writing about in the earlier stages of my career and nuclear strategy and the shellings and the and the Wollstätters and the Brodies and so on. And what actually the people who were responsible for this stuff were doing, which was completely disconnected, completely disconnected. All this amazing strategic analysis that was going on at the time was really beside the point, because the people in charge of the actual systems dismissed it as being sort of a load of civilian pointy heads who didn't understand the first thing about military power. So I think it brought home to me, just as by describing what was going on, how different between somebody who writes and theorizes about these things, and what actually is going on in practice. But I mean, there are, you know, there are many more fascinating stories or books that I've come across that have prompted thoughts. I mean, it's not just a question of reviewing. As you review, hopefully, you pick up on trends in analysis, who's doing interesting work. I mean, I should say, I mean, it's not a particular book. One thing I've tried to do, and this isn't, this isn't being woke, is one of the issues that gets neglected is the importance of sexual abuse in the conduct of war, and in armies. And it's surprising how many books, well, a number of books have now been written on this, largely, inevitably, by women, which are really important. Because, again, I think one of the things that's easy for for people who are not fighting the wars and are theorising about them and analysing them from a distance, is the actual experience of warfare for those involved is pretty grim for those who get caught in armies on the move. And this isn't just what can happen in some of the nastier African wars. It was also the case as the Allies moved in to France and Germany at the end of the Second World War. It's just something that was not an issue in writing about military affairs, but over the course of the time I've been reviewing, it's become one. Well, Laurie, thank you for the hundreds of reviews you've done for Foreign Affairs over the years. I hope that we will continue to see you on our pages even in that capacity. I hope so too. And thanks so much for doing this today. It's been a fascinating conversation. Great talk to you. Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Adelaide Parker, Adrienne Feinberg, Elise Burr, and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Todd Yeager, and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Have fun and enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.