Episode 66. Afghanistan: Choosing to Lose & Moral Obligations

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:18] Welcome to another conversation in the Academy of Diplomacy series, The General and The Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior diplomats and senior military leaders in conversations about their partnership in different parts of the world. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. The General and the Ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UMC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we will focus on Afghanistan with two very special guests. General David Richards, who is joining us from south of London, and Ambassador Ronald Neumann joining here in Washington, D.C.. Originally we had scheduled to do this podcast last August in the midst of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Wise counsel prevailed, and we decided to wait and draw on the deep and long experience both General Richards and Ambassador Neumann bring to the conversation. General David Richards, Lord Richards, commanded the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007. Subsequently he commanded the British Army and from 2010 to 2013 was the chief of the Defense Staff, as well as the Prime Minister's Military Adviser and a member of the National Security Council. He currently sits in the House of Lords and among his many activities he is a visiting professor of Exeter University and an honorary fellow of both King's College, London and Cardiff University.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:54] Ambassador Ronald Neumann served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. His father also served as a U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Ambassador Neumann also served in senior positions in Iraq as Ambassador to Bahrain and to Algeria and as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near East Affairs. Among his many activities in support of U.S. diplomacy, he is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, the home of The General and Ambassador Podcast Series. Gentlemen, a warm welcome. And I'm so glad we were able to finally coordinate our schedules. I wanted to start by getting a few insights into your partnership. You overlapped in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007, and since then you've stayed in touch and closely followed our involvement and U.S. and British policy towards the country. Can you share with us how you met and developed your relationship?

Gen. Richards: [00:02:56] You want me to go first?

Amb. Neumann: [00:02:57] Yeah, David, go ahead.

Gen. Richards: [00:02:59] Great to see Ron in particular. But thank you very much, Deborah, for asking me on this. Back in 2004, Tony Blair had a NATO summit, agreed with President Bush. The NATO should take on a role in Afghanistan, a bigger role than they had at that time, in part. And I'm sure we'll come back to this to enable you in the USA to focus on Iraq. Little did I know, but it was around then that I was appointed to be the Commander of the Ace Rapid Reaction Corps. That was the headquarters that NATO decided should take on the role that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had agreed, along with all the other NATO countries. So fast forward after a lot of training and all the sort of things the military men do before they take headquarters to these places. I found myself on a reconnaissance visit to Kabul there. I met Ron for the first time, and then in May of 2006, I turned up in Kabul and very quickly realized that my most important collaborator and friend, I was going to be the US Ambassador.

Amb. Neumann: [00:04:15] David, it's a pleasure to be on the program with you as well. And there was not a lot of question that we were going to work together. There wasn't a lot of choice about that. There was, I suppose, a choice about how well we were going to do it. And I've been very was and am very happy with that result. One of the things that David did when he took over NATO was to tell his staff, as I learned from other sources, that the American Ambassador had to be treated as perimeter center person first among equals because of the role the United States played in Afghanistan. Now, if an American Commander of NATO's forces had said that, it would have been deemed a sinister cabal and a plot for American domination. But as a British General, David could say that and people could accept the reality of it, which didn't mean we dominated. It just was a recognition that we had to work extraordinarily closely together as we did. There were issues that we would probably get into, some of those of which we differed. I thought it was a very harmonious relationship. We spent a lot of time, you might say, offline, that is privately talking about things as well. We set up communications with each other and we were really in a situation, especially as we went in from May into the spring, summer, winter of 2006, where we knew things were going to get a great deal worse and we didn't have enough to deal with it. And an awful lot of the work was between both of us just scrabbling around for everything we could do to make our operations better, to find resources. David set up something called what was at the PAG, the?

Gen. Richards: [00:06:04] Policy Action

Amb. Neumann: [00:06:05] Policy Action Group, that I couldn't remember what the piece did for to try to harmonize Americans and British and Afghans. It worked pretty well, except that we discovered that Afghan staff work was somewhat lamentable and almost never briefed upwards.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:21] When you arrived in Afghanistan, what were your priorities and what was the context both in Afghanistan and obviously back in headquarters and capitals in which you were trying to carry them out?

Amb. Neumann: [00:06:33] In my case, I think priorities were less well defined than they probably were militarily. The American forces came into Afghanistan on a pure anti-terrorist mission. Just hunt terrorists, don't build anything. That frankly didn't work, because if you wanted to leave, you had to leave something behind. And that recognition gradually evolved into a larger mission. So it was one of building a government or helping a government to come in to being. It wasn't a question of building an Afghan state -- the Afghan nation, the Afghan nation existed. But it was a question of building a state in a totally shattered country, because if you ever wanted to leave, there had to be a state to take over.

Gen. Richards: [00:07:24] Yes, for me. I'll get back to what Ron just said. But to me, my priority militarily was very straightforward. It was to expand NATO's writ across the whole country. Before I arrived, it basically ran in Kabul, the quieter areas, the north and the west, but the south and the east, where the Taliban were beginning to build back up even as early as 2005, that was under, essentially under US control.

Amb. Neumann: [00:07:55] Without, one might add, having the troops to do anything about it.

Gen. Richards: [00:07:59] Yes, we say it was under their authority at a very loose way. But of course, one of the aims of the NATO's deployment was to try to bring more troops to Afghanistan, which only partially worked, and, of course, where you don't have the sufficient troops that can just stir things up. But essentially, I had to expand NATO's operation across the whole country. And I have to say, with a lot of excellent support amongst all my military subordinates, from all the nations that were contributing, but most especially from the US, because they could have made it difficult and there was a certain resentment that this Brit turned up. But actually we soon got over that and I'll be forever grateful to my military colleagues. We understood the common aim and we got on and we delivered it. And actually it was relatively straightforward. I think it was the 31st of July, and we taken the South under command. And then, although I think it was the 4th of October, it's interesting how these dates are seared in my memory. I took over from General Karl Eikenberry, the East, but often my day would be occupied by military things for about an hour or two. There were other days when it became much more part of my whole life, but I found much of my time. Increasingly, the majority of it was working at the diplomatic and political level with people like Ron and in particular with Ron. Because like you just said, I realized unless we could put the political conditions and economic conditions in place, the mission was bound to fail eventually. And there's the the nub, I think, of a misunderstanding about nation building versus what were sort of being asked to do in the minds of people that didn't understand the nuances of the mission we were on.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:52] I wanted to dive into this a little more deeply for U.S. and NATO's goals and priorities shifted over the 20 years of engagement. And as the United States pulled out this past August, President Biden said in his view, quote, "The mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation building or creating a unified central democracy. Our goal was to prevent terrorist attacks on the American homeland. I believe our focus always needed to be on counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency or nation building." So I'd like to start with you, Ron. Do you agree with the president's statement?

Amb. Neumann: [00:10:29] In a formal way? Yes, but in reality, no, because this was a completely impossible approach and it was the approach Obama tried as well. And it simply didn't understand that with a regenerative, non-state actor or multiple actors, you don't get a nice clean end. This sort of surrender on the decks of the Missouri if you're going to leave and leave the counterterrorist mission, not accomplished in a finished sense, but in a transition, then there has to be something to carry it on. And that really has to be the short run. That has to be it has to be army, but armies don't exist free floating in the ether. Army has to be anchored in the state needs of the economy. And so when you've denied that you're going to do anything, these things, instead of explaining them, you've left yourself at a very complicated position in terms of explaining your policy. So with Obama he said, we're only going to do the anti-terrorist mission and then proceeded to have this massive increase in developmental funding and the creation of the Afghan army. So it's a verbal pretzel. You can't explain what you're doing in the terms you've defined your mission. And so I think that confusion persisted right to the end. And the result is that we don't have a successful counterterrorist mission. We still have Al Qaida in Afghanistan. We have the Islamic State growing. We have the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a dozen or so other terrorist movements. How that will develop over time, much longer question, but the definition of we can only do this piece is simply a misunderstanding of the problem we all faced.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:17] Well, Lord Richards, do you sense that this view, President Biden's view, was shared by the British government?

Gen. Richards: [00:12:23] It's a good question, if I may. I just add quickly to what Ron said, that it very quickly became clear that nation building isn't a separate activity. It's a key part of a counter, a successful counterterrorism strategy for the very reasons that Ron just went through so clearly. So whether you liked it or not, we found ourselves being drawn into it to make sure that we could, apart from anything else to say to the Afghan people who otherwise we were just raiding bombs down on and shooting up occasionally that there was good to come out of this and there was a huge amount of good. I look at the number of children and women and girls in particular are educated. Their health system, their economy grew hugely, and look at the outpouring of almost the grief as we left the precipitately in August. But to go back to your point, I think it's it would be wrong. And we got British and other European and NATO politicians got to be very careful, they don't hide, if you like behind President Biden's skirts on this one. They could have argued much more strenuously against what he was proposing to do. They claim now that they knew that it wasn't the right decision. But I think if President Biden had 20 or 30 countries, members of NATO and countries like Australia arguing against it and explaining why coherently, for good reason, I think he would have been forced to modify his strategy, at least in some way. So I think it suited them politically to go along with it and say, well, we couldn't really do anything because the US were dominant and without the US we couldn't stay. That was true. But they could have argued that it was the wrong decision. They chose not to.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:12] There's been a lot of discussion and criticism of the ability of the U.S. and its allies to convey our goals to the Afghan people and the Afghan government. But there seems to be less coverage of how our government's messaged about goals to their own citizens. And looking back, what is your assessment of domestic messaging over the years and consequently on the public support for U.S. and British involvement in Afghanistan?

Amb. Neumann: [00:14:43] Well, on the American side, I will say that it was dismal. There was an initial strong message when we went into Afghanistan. But by 2003, when we went into Iraq, that message was now being lost because nobody was paying attention to it. And from that point on, no president owned the war to which he was sending American men and women to fight and in some cases, die. And I think this is a lamentable failure of leadership. If a president is going to send soldiers, troops to war, the president has to make the case and not just in one speech, but in a continuing series. Obama never did that. He never owned the war. And in fact, he changed the policy, by my count, five times over the eight years of the administration. And of course, by the time you got to Trump, he just wanted out. But he changed the policy twice. So no, you never had a clear articulation consistent over time that was persuasive.

Gen. Richards: [00:15:50] At the same applied here. I think David Cameron made one speech on Afghanistan quite early on. It was not actually that controversial amongst the British population. I think the media overplayed. The military particularly was victims of war in some way. But even at the height of the casualties we had inflicted on us in 2010 to 12, there was no real coherent opposition to our being there. But that was despite not because of political leadership. As I just said in the case of Cameron actually explaining why it was important and actually just moving fast forward to last August and the run up to that, I didn't detect either certainly in Britain nor in the States that there was any great enthusiasm for getting out. This was a decision taken by President Biden ultimately that our leaders went along with it the way we discussed a minute ago. So I absolutely agree with Ron that they lost the sense of ownership quite early on for this campaign. It just drifted when they should have been explaining just why it was so important. But even without that, there was no great opposition. So I think what they could have done if they articulated it properly.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:09] Well, for years, the U.S. sought a diplomatic solution to the war in Afghanistan. We've done some podcasts that covered those initial attempts. And in 2020, through the efforts of a U.S. diplomat, Ambassador Khalilzad, the agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan, known as the Doha Agreement, was signed between the U.S. and the Taliban. Can you comment on the efforts to come to a diplomatic solution to the war and the role of both the United States and the UK in the process?

Amb. Neumann: [00:17:42] It made sense to negotiate, but negotiations and military operations have to be intertwined. They're not separate domains. So we started, I think, rather late. And this is a long and complicated subject. But I think what one can say is the original theory of the case, when we signed the Doha agreement, did make some sense that the Taliban agreed to negotiate with the Afghan people. They didn't really agree to negotiate with the government. But the important thing is that we said when we started this that it's conditions based. That's what Secretary Pompeo said. That's what Defense Secretary Esper said. So it should have meant that if the Taliban don't negotiate in good faith, we're not continuing the withdrawal. Instead, we tore that up, we ignored it. We marched the withdrawal at a timeline faster. So to the extent that there was a coherent potential for peace in the Doha Agreement, we totally destroyed it by our actions thereafter.

Gen. Richards: [00:18:50] As Ron intimated, I really got nothing to add. I think it was a well thought out initial approach to combine talks with what we were doing, but that was clearly quite quickly lost sight of. I suspect, although you're in a better position to comment on it, but this was driven by President Biden's clear determination to get out regardless. And all I would say is in terms of right and wrong, while there's a sort of neutral element to the Afghan population, probably quite a sizable one, the way that people have responded to what happened last August says it all for me. Essentially, the vast majority of Afghans do not like being in the position they now find themselves in. And I should add, if you go back, while they often criticize, if you go back over to elections, the fact that the Afghan population very bravely took part in those elections, despite being hugely intimidated by the Taliban and their supporters, there has never been any popular desire to have the Taliban back in power in in Kabul. So I think we've let them down very badly. And this process, the Doha process, as Ron said, accelerated it towards the end. And we've now we are where we are.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:10] And that agreement was an agreement, as I noted, between the U.S. and the Taliban. It was not an agreement, for our listeners, between the U.S. and the Afghan government and between the Taliban and the government.

Amb. Neumann: [00:20:23] So we left them out entirely. In fact, we twisted their arm not only to accept it, but to do a huge prisoner release that they had not agreed to, many of whom apparently went back on the battlefield.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:36] Was the diplomat-- Couldn't help asking the following: our negotiator, Ambassador Khalilzad, is an Afghan born U.S. diplomat who also served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan. What advantages, Ron, do you think his background brought to the process?

Amb. Neumann: [00:20:54] In the early days after the invasion, when he was the ambassador, he had a vast knowledge of the country and of the players, and I think that was some advantage. In the end, I do not see this as having been an advantage. He ended up being being thoroughly distrusted. I don't know about whether the Taliban trust him or not. Some people have said no. But I can tell you, since I've maintained a broad acquaintanceship with Afghan politicians, that he is massively distrusted across the entire spectrum of the former leaders of the Afghan government. And since trust is the basic currency with which a diplomat works. When you don't have that, I don't see it as being a very effective diplomacy.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:43] Well, I wanted to turn to the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. Much has been written on it and focusing on issues such as the collapse of the Army, the hasty departure of the President, and obviously the evacuation effort in which an estimated 124,000 people were airlifted out in 17 days, possibly the largest airlift in history. For many who served in Afghanistan, the rescue operation was deeply personal. I quote here from British Minister of Defense Ben Wallace, who said, in fact, it was personal to him because, quote, "I'm a soldier. It's sad and the West has done what it's done. And we have to do our very best to get people out and stand by our obligations and 20 years of sacrifice," unquote. Can you each comment on the processes used by the U.S. and Britain to extract the thousands who had worked for our military and civilian agencies?

Gen. Richards: [00:22:41] I hang my head in shame that we ever got to this position. And as someone who served and commanded a lot of troops, both while I was myself, but also obviously subsequently as the Chief of Defense Staff. It is not what we at all those other veterans and all our diplomatic and development colleagues ever wanted. So we feel this generation of veterans feels very let down by their political masters. Many of our friends died and many were badly injured, and this is the result after 20 years of valiant effort. And I think that our political leaders sometimes forget that. And I think if it was played up more, they would be hopefully even more ashamed of what their decisions have led to. But in a narrow sense, having been involved as a commander in a few evacuation operations, it was tactically quite successful. So albeit it was a strategic defeat and a massive failure in one sense. We got out, as you said, 170,000 odd people learning. The British took out about 70 to 20000 of those. But we saw those awful sights of people clinging off aeroplanes and things like that and show you how chaotic the whole thing was. But we should never have it should never have been so chaotic. And it just shows how badly thought through the strategic and operational level decision making was that those charged with the extraction at the tactical level were left in that position. There's the whole question about whether it would have been sensible to keep Bagram Airfield running and to extract from Baghdad and Kabul. I don't know enough about the whys and wherefores of that, but it struck me that would have been a much more sensible and defendable perimeter and all those sort of things. So tactically a success, but an indication of an abject strategic failure?

Amb. Neumann: [00:24:44] Yes, I would certainly echo that. I've said to some that it's a little bit like cracking your ship on the rock, slamming the waterproof door in the face of all those you're leaving behind you and congratulating yourself on how well you handled the lifeboats. You know, the whole thing is pretty pathetic. And we got out a lot of people and that's good. And I think an enormous amount of credit is due to those who did the best job that could be done on the ground. In fact, I think at one point I have heard that the British were out bringing people into the airport when the Americans were under orders not to do so. So hats off to them. But we left behind a lot of people to whom we have a legal obligation who are not getting out. And we left behind a much larger contingent of people to whom I believe we have a moral obligation, people who believed in the things we were talking about, the women judges and journalists and television producers and women policemen and military who had put their lives on the line, not for us, for their country, but who believed in what we talked about. And our view on our departure was basically the hell with them. We're slamming the door behind us. It's a disgusting view morally, from my point of view. So I think that's sufficiently frank.

Gen. Richards: [00:26:02] Alright, couldn't agree more, Ron.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:04] Well, as we continue to analyze the Afghan war, I wanted to raise two issues drawing on your deep knowledge of the country, and that is the issues of the West's lack of cultural awareness and its intellectual arrogance. It has been said that the West did not understand the history and culture of Afghanistan, and then we tried to shape a government and a military in our own image. Would you agree? And how did this affect our ability to build a functional state that we could leave behind?

Amb. Neumann: [00:26:37] I think there's much to be said for the arrogance. The ignorance was inevitable. We went into a country we had not planned to fight it. That went in after 9/11 and you had to learn on the job. And some of that is true. Some of it, I think, is kind of bumper sticker criticism. Yes, we built an army probably too much in our image. But unless you're going to spend an awful lot of time figuring out another image, what are you going to do? You can't send thousands of people off to train and say, well, you guys just make it up on the ground. I think there were huge weaknesses in the Afghan leadership. That's what we had to we had the reality of what we had to work with, which I don't think was impossible. But the biggest thing is that to actually succeed in this mission, you needed a lot of time. And from beginning to end, we were trying in Washington and London and capitals, people wanted to do things on a timetable, which was unrealistic. It became even more unrealistic under the Obama goals. And yes, some of it's ignorance, but some of it is just this refusal to accept that things can't be done with the speed that capitals want it.

Gen. Richards: [00:27:48] I think if I may, as ever, you could see why Ron and I got on well together is he's absolutely put his finger on a key issue. When I took over as head of the army, I was up in Edinburgh. I was asked by the BBC who wanted to talk to the new head of the army about Afghanistan. And they said, How long do you think we'll be engaged in Afghanistan? And I said, probably for about another 30 years. As I said, this is in 2010. And quite a lot of the media dragged me over the coals about this. I did emphasize even in the interview, I was not expecting us to fight for 30 years, but I would expect us to remain engaged and helping them for about another 30 years. And of course, while some aspects of it we're ashamed of today, our involvement in Northern Ireland until Tony Blair reached his peace deal with the IRA, but also it still goes on today and has taken about 30 years. Our involvement in Cyprus has taken that sort of time and we're still there. These things do take time. The military phase hopefully is just a part of it, perhaps a dominant part early on, but then just gives it a sort of steady process. That's what I saw being the case in Afghanistan even back in 2010. And actually there was no reason why until Khalilzad started giving too much ground in the Doha process, and they started to get it'll be more successful. But even then there was no real reason why we couldn't sustain the operation in Afghanistan for another ten, 15, 20 years. It was not actually costing too much and we were making great progress and militarily it was achievable. But obviously President Biden wanted to get out and our own politicians in Europe and the rest of the NATO, if I think they were honest, also wanted to get out and went along with it. But there was no great pressure on us to do so politically or economically. And therefore, if we'd stayed with it. Ron and my analysis would have been, I think, vindicated.

Amb. Neumann: [00:29:57] You know, there's one, I think, fact that really underlines what David was saying. 2019 was the last year in which NATO was engaged militarily. After that, after the Doha agreement, the Taliban were not targeting us. 2019, we had 15 combat deaths. That's less than 20% of what we lost in a year in non-combat training deaths. So the idea that this was an unmanageable or unsustainable war is nonsense. Now, you might choose politically not to sustain it. We chose politically to lose it. But the idea that you couldn't sustain something with that lower level of casualties, 4500 troops on the ground declining to about 3500 by that point. That's nonsense.

Gen. Richards: [00:30:44] Yes, I should I think we last had a combat death in Afghanistan in about 2015-2016. It just wasn't an issue anymore. It could have been sustained. And most NATO nations were in the same situation. As you rightly said, Ron, we chose to lose this war. We weren't beatable.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:31:02] I wanted to turn to the world's engagement, slash non-engagement with the Taliban. We're now running the country. They have not been internationally recognized as a legitimate government and they remain under sanctions as a terrorist group. Their assets, the assets belonging to the previous government have been frozen. Today, it does receive international humanitarian assistance, but there's a shortage of food. The Biden administration recently filed the request to use a portion of the funds frozen in the U.S. for humanitarian assistance, but the funds are claimed by the families of the victims of 9/11. So my question is, do you think we need to recognize the Taliban government and normalize the economic relationship?

Amb. Neumann: [00:31:48] I think recognizing the Taliban government is premature. I think it is reasonable to hold to a demand for control of terrorism. First of all, it could be a threat to our nations as well as some of the issues of human rights. But I think it is a ghastly mistake to take that out on the Afghan people. And you already have people that are starving. You have people that are selling their children in order to buy food. And the biggest problem is not the level of aid. You can't sustain a whole country on foreign aid. But our biggest problem right now is the freezing of the banking system, which means that Afghans who have money can't get it. Afghans can't do commerce. They can't do all the things that they could do to feed themselves. And that's what we've got to get right much faster than this frozen assets issue.

Gen. Richards: [00:32:43] Yes, I did a TV interview recently in which I talked about how historically there's a wonderful phrase that we've been credited with living up to on more than one occasion, and that is: one should be magnanimous in victory. And often we have been. This is an occasion, in my judgment, we need to be magnanimous in defeat at the moment. We seem to be mean in defeat when we have no right to be. I agree with Ron about the timing of recognizing the Taliban, but I would be quite forward leaning in the belief that we need to engage very actively with them in order to influence the Taliban to do the right thing, because you cannot sustain a country through aid alone, as Ron just said, you have to have a functioning economy. Simply chucking aid money at Afghanistan won't work. And all the development agencies here in Britain keep telling me that, and I'm absolutely convinced of it. So you need to get the economy working. And that means that the banking system in particular has got to be liberated and start functioning again. So I would, on an early and active engagement to persuade the Taliban to do the right thing rather than relying on a residual threat. I'd put more carrot and stick into the formula. The other important dimension is that strategically, ironically, having spent 20 years there, we have lost a huge amount of influence in the region over Iran. Perhaps it's playing out to some degree in what we're seeing in Ukraine at the moment and loss of regard for the West and sadly for the US in particular, and people taking bigger chances with their own foreign policies. So I think the sooner we can get back in to Afghanistan, albeit through that route of early rather than too long a period before recognition takes place, and to start to lead them by the nose to a different approach to life. We can't do it militarily anymore. There's no appetite for that, clearly. But I think we can do it through the one thing which we still have a great deal of, which is money.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:35:08] Well, related to that, Ron, let me address this to you, is how do we use our diplomatic skills to build a new relationship not only with Afghanistan, but in the region?

Amb. Neumann: [00:35:19] It's pretty late in the day, having given away most of the leverage that we had. Then you want to start rebuilding. We need a regional strategy, yes. We need others. We need the UN in the lead on the humanitarian. We now have such a limited domestic base for engagement, and for going into an election year, this is a very tough period for the American administration to carry out. What I think David quite rightly described as the policy we ought to be on, because everything is subject to attack. So I think part of it is going to be we have got to have a very active effort at the U.N. We're going to have the U.N. cover, which depends heavily on our allies like the British and the French, in order to be acting in concert with that sort of cover, if you will, because I think the space for unilateral action is very small and frankly, the credibility is very low.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:18] Well, as we wrap up, I thought I'd ask one last question. What do you tell the rising leaders, diplomatic and military leaders in both our countries about the what you learned in your involvement in Afghanistan that can help shape their futures.

Amb. Neumann: [00:36:37] There was one thing I wanted to go back to in a way about David's and my working together, because I think it's one thing that's been badly reported in history, and yet it's sort of an illustration of how, in fact, one can work together with a multinational format. And that was this issue we had about a district called Musa Qala in Helmand. And there it was very violent, it was very bloody. There was a cease fire arrangement made, which I didn't like, which we were pretty confident the Taliban were violating. And it was much more complicated than that. But the basic thing was that I would have liked us and NATO to test this by doing what we were under the agreement allowed to do, sending back Afghan troops. And I pressed David pretty hard about that. But David made a very realistic point to me at the end, which is if I do this, I'm going to get into a very large battle, and I don't have enough soldiers to fight the battle. And in the end, he was right. He didn't have what it would have taken to make that engagement. And so we worked it out together, and I think it got very distorted in the public domain. But both then and now, I thought that it actually was an interesting example of how you get down to a level of detail that allows you to find reality and then you can get on with things.

Gen. Richards: [00:38:03] Yeah, I think that's a very good description of it. I had little option and it just explained to do as we did. If you remember the battles that we both had with our our respective hierarchies over shortage of resources to beat the mission we were given, I can't tell you how many pickings off I got down the NATO chain for upsetting the equilibrium of the Secretary General. And at one stage of your revered President Bush, who I was pleased to see three months later, having got this ticking off, you did actually quote something that I had said, which he approved of. So these things swing around a lot. But I think one of my big lessons just looking back on it, one is the total interdependence of the diplomat and the soldier in everything except total war. It was state-on-state war. And even then it's vital we work very closely together in Afghanistan and on other operations I was involved in, exactly the same applied. I remember if you go back to what we were doing in Bosnia and Kosovo, I then went to East Timor with the Australians and then Sierra Leone. On every occasion we were working very closely, and I think West Point and Sandhurst, this is not taught sufficiently or emphasized enough, but where we can and do work successfully together, you can actually create the conditions for long term success.

Gen. Richards: [00:39:34] The issue of sorry, I have to say this often, is about our political leadership not wanting, not understanding this, having no training in being above training and discussion. The number of times I tried to get David Cameron to at least do a crisis wargame or a crisis game in order to prepare him for the sort of things he then tried to lead us through, not least Libya that came along in 2011, where both he and President Sarkozy, I think, just weren't intellectually, maybe temperamentally prepared for doing what they had set themselves up to do. I think it was one big lesson for me comes out of all this is that diplomat and soldier, give or take, worked very well together and sympathetically. But we've got some persuade our political leaders to fall into line and at least be prepared to train in the way we all do.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:40:32] Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you, Ron, for your support of The General and The Ambassador. We wouldn't be here without you. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with USC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find our podcasts on all sites and on our website: www.GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.org. We welcome feedback and suggestions and can be reached at General.Ambassador.Podcast@gmail.com. We do answer the mail. Thank you for listening.