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Sir Lawrence Freedman

lines on the record: 37
first: 2022-10-24
most recent: 2022-10-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“As well. And, you know, a lot of that is not under the control of government a lot of the time. It's a control of large companies. And then if governments say, as with the Russians and Gazprom, try to use it for a political purpose, actually they end up undermining an important part of their economy because people don't trust it anymore on a commercial term. So I think there's a lot of fascinating issues there, but they take us away from old-fashioned military power.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what I think that you clearly can't have the quantities that you've had in the past, and it's worth noting, you know, compare what's going on with, say, the Battle of Kursk that took far not very far away from the current battlefield during the Second World War. This is low numbers. These are much smaller armies now because you just can't kit them out in the same sort of way. You're almost having to move to high quality because you're just not having the quantities that were there in the past. Obviously, going to be one of the issues with Russian mobilization. And then the other thought, which again, the one you've written about, is there's an awful lot of ways that conflicts can be conducted this way, these days, which don't require awful word kinetic. I mean, they don't require you to kill people that they're about influence and they're about disruption and they're about inducements.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's important to have the man or woman in the trench properly equipped with decent kit and body armor and weapons. But, you know, I think, again, one of the things we have seen in this war is that actually high-tech kit can work very well. I mean, especially very precise artillery that can operate over large distances. I think that that's made a real difference to how the war has developed. And the Russians were proclaiming as being real state of the art hasn't worked well at all.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Concerned about merchants of death and so on. I don't think that's the problem. But there is an issue about an establishment with shared assumptions that sometimes can get over excited about armed force. And a lot of what I've, not just this book, but other books is just people encourage people to check their assumptions on force. Sometimes you have to use it, particularly in defense, but it has great limitations.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it, I mean, I think there is a military establishment of which academics can be as important a part as industry. Somebody has noted in a review of my book, that share assumptions about threats and means of dealing with these threats and what military capabilities can do. Eisenhower was talking at a particular stage of the Cold War when all the emphasis was on a technological arms race and he was fed up with proposals for incredible new systems that would transform warfare forever, about which he was properly sceptical. So it was a complaint of a particular time and I don't think defense industry were well beyond the sort of turn of the 20th century.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tree that we'll need to call it a day because at some point this just becomes untenable for them. They've lost so much already by way of equipment, stocks, officer corps, elite units, reputation that if this carries on, when they still have other duties to perform in terms of national security, that is the point at which something may happen and change within Moscow, but you know more about Moscow than I do. And I think everybody's finding it pretty opaque at the moment. The second point is there will have to be negotiations at some point because there are still issues to be sorted out. I think the problem with Elon Musk's contribution, or there are many problems with it, is it's ignorant. I mean, it's ignorant of the history of the conflict and the role of Ukrainian.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first I put a proposition to which I would like your response, which is I think first, it doesn't end while Russia occupies Ukrainian territory because the Ukrainians will just keep on fighting. I think given everything that's happened to Ukrainians under occupation, they're not going to be satisfied while any Ukrainians seem to live under occupation. While Putin by this sort of foolish annexation just at the point where he was about to see territory taken away from Russian control has made it much harder for himself because now he's giving away what he claims to be Russia. So actually it needs the Russia to acknowledge defeat, I think. And that's not an easy thing. So my proposition is it's the military, the Russian military.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's an important point. I agree. I think they're parallel. I think Putin has relied a lot on economic coercion of the West. Does the West has relied on economic coercion of Russia? And neither has worked in the end. I think the West has impeded the Russian war effort quite a lot, largely because of microchips. Russia has caused a lot of pain to Europe because of the energy. has changed their basic political stances because it's such a sharp polarized conflict. It's not fuzzy, it's not grey, it's very black and white.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes things are set in motion that is very hard to extricate yourself from. So I think there is a problem. I don't think particularly Biden wants it. Biden's priority is China. And there he's got a much more substantial rival adversary to deal with. And Biden, I think, and many of his team would quite like this conflict to be over so they can get back to preparing for what they see as a much more substantial long-term competition. And in the sense Russia is a declining power that has now declined even more because of this action.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we're in a hot war and the net result of which I think diminishes Russia as a major power. It's still obviously got the nuclear weapons. And Biden, I think, has been very clear he wants to avoid giving Putin any reason for nuclear escalation, which means containing this war. But actually, I think we're in a very difficult situation with how we relate to Russia because the guy in charge has made himself an international pariah. It's just very hard to see how you have summit meetings and conferences and negotiations with somebody who's conducted himself and waged a war in this way. And that's a problem because at some point we need to get out of sanctions. We need to have proper dialogue. You want arms control talks to begin again and so on. So it would be unfortunate if we went back to that.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In some way surprisingly little, I think a Second World War commander, you know, would be surprised by a lot of the technology, but by and large we'd understand what was going on. He'd understand the folly of getting fixated by trying to take particular cities, of ignoring the possibility of encirclement, a reminder that logistics is critical in all wars, that you always use up more ammunition than you expected to use. All of these things I don't think would about surprising. I think what has been surprising in some way are the things that we expected to see, which we've seen.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Systems will not go out just being handled by somebody thousands of miles away, but actually will start to take decisions on their own because they can. I think we're somewhere away from that. What you are seeing already is very tactical decisions. I mean, a good example of something like Iron Dome, the Israeli defensive system, where incoming rockets are identified, those that are likely to something important are picked out, available systems to take them out and noted, and they're sent off all in seconds, which individuals couldn't do. So you're seeing that sort of thing and that area of depending on machines to manage tactical situations could well increase.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are trade-offs in all of this, but there was concern that you were getting to this sort of virtual war. Again, it was something that was very clear during the Obama administration, where Obama was essentially signing off on these sort of targeted killings, trying to give them a sort of veneer of legality. I think that was a very specific set of circumstances. It's still going to be relevant in forms of guerrilla warfare or anti-terrorist campaigns. But I think we've seen in the current war that drones are important when carrying weapons or just being used for surveillance, but they don't win wars all by themselves. And I suppose the final point to note, which is relevant to the idea of autonomous weapons, but the idea of machine learning, these robotic”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're in an anti-terrorist operation, essentially, and you find a group of people who you believe to be up to no good, and you can kill them. Now, that contains lots of dangers, of which the most obvious one is it turns out they're not up to no good, and you acted as executioner on the basis of pretty poor evidence. We know that happened. On the other hand, it may save a lot more lives than sending a great number of patrols out and trying to take these people and check out what they're actually doing. You often wonder what would have happened if drone technology had been working as it later was working, even after 9-11, if they could have just taken out bin Laden there and then what happened afterwards might have been a lot better for everybody.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there are layers of technology and the drone is an important layer, but helicopters are still important. Fixing the aircraft is still important. So it adds, it's most important role in big warfare is surveillance. If you want your artillery to pick out targets, it's quite helpful to have something loitering around that can identify the targets that need to be hit as quickly as possible but they can carry their own weapons now. And of course I think drones gained this sort of attention and what your student was telling you from that period in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Yemen, Somalia and other places as well, West Pakistan.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The current war, as you know, an awful lot of people have got situational awareness and are putting stuff out on Telegram posts and other social media, which isn't so good for operational security. So it's an incredibly complex operational environment. I think it is one of the things that's changed probably more than anything else over this period, other than nuclear weapons, which I think you're right to highlight as the big one.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both the media coverage of the war and the close interaction between the national capital and the generals and between the generals and the junior officers. Under Obama you have him sitting around with his National Security Council watching the operation to take out bin Laden. So there's enormous changes over this period. One of the issues is, and you actually again keep on coming back to it, we saw it in the early stages of the current war, is it's fine until your communication links get broken and that can happen and they can get disrupted. So a lot of effort now goes into disrupting these communications link, cyber attacks as well or inserting fake news into all of this. So as you have written yourself. All of this can be weaponized. And so it can confuse the information environment as well as give you clarity.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think it's one of the most important changes. It's different. I mean, it has pluses and minuses and it partly depends on common sense of those in these situations. So, you know, if you go back to the first couple of decades after the Second World War, communication technology hadn't changed. Even if you go up to the Falklands, there were enormous difficulties in secure communications between parts of the fleet so that Jeremy Moore, who was on the QE2, the land commander, traveling to the South Atlantic, the secure communications just went. So he was almost uncommunicado during a critical part of the war. Ten years later, Desert Storm, then you're starting to see the impact of communications technology.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Command that has to be aligned, you can get clashes of this sort. And in the end, I mean, the problem was that West Platt was right in his analysis of what the Russians were up to, but Jackson was right that he could deal with it as the man on the ground, which is what he was able to do. I don't think it was ever close to World War III, his little outverse suggested.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was constantly assuming that one of the other divisions under Southern command, which was led by one of the ruling parties. Was the problems of multilateral operations, of coalition operations. Jackson was a UK commander in charge of a NATO force, whereas Jackson was an overall charge of the NATO operation, but he was having trouble with that quote you suggest with his own senior officers who thought he was pushing for a more aggressive policy than the administration wanted. But the fact is that Jackson could get a red card from the British government if the British government were persuaded that it is being asked to do things that went against British policy. where there's more than one chain of”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Extremely good at that, but he always wanted to go too far or always wanted to get on with things. And of course, when he was in charge as Minister of Defence in 1982, this was catastrophic because there was nobody holding him back and he led Israel into this tragic war in the Lebanon. We're living with the consequences still. So people like Moshe Diane, who was superior to Chiron, were always trying to exercise control, but saw the virtues of him if you could control him. So the politics of it varies. So there's two interesting issues with both Sharon and Jackson. One of the issues with Sharon in 1973 during the October war is actually just been called back as a reservist to lead his division, having just become a politician, having just been one of the founders of the Likud Party.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's two parts to it, I think. The first is we do rely on. Junior officers and sometimes quite senior officers being prepared to take an initiative. Sometimes they have to. Communications have been cut. They're in a situation which nobody could have anticipated. There's no time to get better orders and so on. And that's an important quality. And we expect it, certainly in the West, where you lack it, it causes more problems because while people are waiting for better orders, they get overrun. This sort of mission command and delegation of command, that's quite an important quality. Then you get the sort of inherently insubordinate, like Sharon is a perfect example. Sharon had invariably had contempt for whoever was giving him orders. And it was only with great effort that he managed to be reined in. He happened to be a brilliant operational commander.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're not giving advice anymore in uniform, you're moving beyond giving advice to thinking actually you could do the political job better. And that's what leads to coups or can lead to coups.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Army felt they'd won, that they'd suppressed the FLN, that they'd using methods that were pretty brutal, including torture, they had beaten the enemy. And then they found that de Gaulle, who obviously was not short of military credibility himself, who they'd helped to bring to power because when the previous government looked like reneging on the commitment to Argerie Francais, they suddenly discovered he was going to do the same. And yet another coup was in the offing. So you do get this sense sometimes of those who are absolutely committed to the fight being absolutely furious with the political echelon who isn't giving it the support that they think it deserves. And if we talk about Ukraine, we can see this happening a bit in Russia at the moment. So there's a point where...”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Post. They spoke at conferences, all making this the obvious thing to do so that Obama began to feel bounced into doing something he wasn't sure about. And because, precisely because he had no military experience himself, he didn't feel that able to fight back. So that just led to protracted and long discussions and actually a rather unsatisfactory compromise at the end whereby they got the troops, but only for a limited time, which meant, of course, the Taliban didn't have to work out very hard what they had to do to see this out. They just had to wait. So that was a very good example of the military getting ahead of themselves. I mean, you mentioned the French decolonial wars, the wars of national liberation for the Vietnamese and the Algerians. So in the case of Algeria, the French...”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is an issue, and it's been an issue, particularly in the American system. It's happened a bit in the UK, but it's more in the American system. There's one particular example when Obama came to power. And he was under pressure to do something about Afghanistan. And it was a difficult one for him because he'd made a name for himself by denouncing the war in Iraq. But he sort of described Afghanistan as a good war. Yet actually, when he arrived, it was clearly not going very well. And Stanley Crystal was put in charge, General Stanley Crystal was put in charge of trying to find a way forward in Afghanistan. And he came up with a plan that was going to involve, did involve, tens of thousands extra troops going to Afghanistan. And they went on television. They gave interviews. They leaked stuff to the Washington.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Western military experience has got Vietnam and it's got Iraq and it's got Afghanistan. These weren't defeats in battle. These were getting into situations where you just weren't welcome in the places where you were occupied, where you get real defeats in battle, this is often because people assume that military power can achieve things for them that it really can't.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, democracies, as we know, could make big mistakes, so it doesn't guarantee that they don't make a necessary moves into warfare, but they have an ability to adjust and adapt thereafter. There are checks and balances, whereas I think the problem with dictators, autocrats, is that it gets surrounded by sycophants. You don't have that sort of still small voice saying, are you sure this is a good idea? Have you thought about this? What happens if they do that? You don't have that. So they can be bold, they can catch their opponents by surprise, but then all the pitfalls that they might have been alert to then catch them by surprise. And I believe it becomes hubris and they believe their own bravado. I think there are a number of examples of just this lack of self-awareness. And it is worth noting that though...”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With Saddam in the war with Iran that went on for much of the 1980s, he was losing. And he suddenly realized he actually did need people who understood how to run armies in charge. Another example is President Chu in South Vietnam, who didn't even want to see senior generals to confer with one another lest they stopped plotting when they did because there had been a succession of military coups, which is how he got to power. So it's an important aspect of why authoritarian regimes, not all of them, but often fall, often fail, is because they don't trust the generals to get on with fighting wars rather than plotting to take over the government.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“is really interesting because it happens particularly with dictators who claim to be field marshals or whatever by putting on a uniform like Mubutu in Zaire or Saddam Hussein in Iraq without actually having any particular relevant experience but if they put on a uniform they think they can give orders but precisely because of the way they've come to power they're nervous about people coming to power in the same way so instead of looking for professional competence in their leaders they look for loyalty instead and sometimes this can be absolutely disastrous because with Mabuto for example in the end you only really trusted relations with Saddam it had to be members of the Bath party and eventually when they get into a war”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go on in these sorts of hunters undermined their capacity to actually fight war. Galtieri had no serious relevant experience. Admiral and I, who ran the Argentine Navy sort of did, but he was a very hardline nationalist and took fright as soon as he lost one of his big ships.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One would. So I think on the British side, it's because there was a degree of deference to the Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Terry Lewin, who did understand Naval warfare, he also would see an experience during the Second World War. And basically he was very careful to give advice to the war cabinet, to get their judgment, but actually they left a lot to him. And he used the authority carefully and successfully. And he had a series of quite experienced admirals below him. On the hunter side, it's of an interesting example of the extent to which once you get drawn into running a country as opposed to running an army, your military experience tends to count for less with what the hunter had been doing had been persecuting opponents within Argentina rather than preparing to fight wars. And the factionalism and the sort of infighting that develops in the sort of power, constant power struggles that”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the Second World War, but she had no understanding at all of military things, but of the members of her war cabinet, two had got military crosses during the Second World War. Now that obviously wouldn't be the case now. And they were very important in saying this is how war goes, that tragedies do happen in war. They can't expect things to work exactly as planned. So I think it's an understanding of the pitfalls of war that is important. And while anybody who's watched our experience in this century knows plenty about pitfalls, it's connected with counterinsurgency, by and large. Whereas, of course, what we're seeing at the moment is completely different set of pitfalls, a sort of a conventional war of a sort we really haven't seen for a long time and a reminder of the things that can go very badly wrong in those sorts of wars. As well.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they've been through two pretty grueling experiences with Iraq and Afghanistan, if we're looking at the UK and the US. And I think it is the case, actually. There's a generation of politicians that include quite a number now who've had that sort of experience, who've had some experience of those wars. There was a period after basically George H. Bush, who had quite a distinguished career in the Air Force during the Second World War, none of the subsequent US presidents have military experience more to the point they'd avoided getting military experience by avoiding Vietnam, with the exception of Obama who was too young. So that did make a difference, and I think it created a tension in civil military relations. In the UK, when I was struck when looking at the Falklands, Thatcher obviously was of a generation who remembered.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was to look at that post nineteen forty five military history. There are excellent books being produced all the time on the First World War, on the Second World War, but not so much about the military history of the past eighty years. And I wanted to look more at that because there are a lot of absolutely fascinating conflicts that are known to specialist audiences, but not perhaps so well known to the general public. Okay, it's interesting.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. Well, the point of the book for me was a point that I've actually been bothering me for some time, which is the tendency for people when they're writing about military operations as opposed to grand strategy, to forget the politics, to look at questions of tactics and how you deploy your forces in isolation. Yet every conflict I've looked at, and unfortunately I've had opportunities to look at many now, the politics is crucial. It infuses everything that the generals do. So I wanted to bring that out. And also, I think it challenges the idea that civilians sort of set the objectives and the military just implement them in some way. The civilians when setting the objectives need to know what the military is saying, what they think is possible and not possible. So that was the underlying theme. And then the other point for me.”
2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2022-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · War and Politics in the 21st Century, with Sir Lawrence Freedman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT