Retired Lt. Gen. E. John Deedrick served as the final commander of the Combined Security Transition Command –Afghanistan (CSTC-A). He also held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff for Security Assistance (DCOS SA) at the Headquarters of Resolute Support; the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
He was the United States Military Representative to NATO. He commanded 1st Special Forces Command. Spent time as the Military Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict. Most importantly, at least to me, he was my commander at 10th Special Forces Group.
The Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance outside of Bentonville, Arkansas. To kick off our combined investment in the development of our Special Operators post service, Fran Racioppi sat down with Lt. Gen. Deedrick to discuss his take on the Army today, where it came from and where it’s going.
As one of the last senior leaders in Afghanistan he gave his honest assessment of the withdrawal, the impact leaving has had on our allies and Special Forces Operators, and what the void left has done for the Taliban and American national security. They also discuss the importance of our allies, why NATO works, the Russian-North Korean Alliance in Ukraine, and counter-insurgency and counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism in the Grey Zone through integrated deterrence. Finally, they talk about the effect of politics on our military and why our leaders all want the same goal, but have different paths to get there.
Watch, listen or read our conversation from the UHP. Don’t miss our full Veterans Day coverage from UHP. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.—
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General Deedrick, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
We’re here at the University of Health & Performance in Bentonville, Arkansas on Veterans Day 2024. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.
AUSA not long ago, but to sit down and have a conversation, it has been a little while.
I will put it out, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you, you were very instrumental in my career as a young Special Forces officer. You were the group commander of the 10th group for the majority of my time as a team leader. You put me in the fortunate position to be the group assistant operations officer under great leaders like Gabe Szody and Mike Gates and made sure you got every dollar out of that from me.
We always got all the dollars out of everybody in the operation shop.
That was awesome. I appreciate that very much. You’ve had an amazing career. You’ve been out for a couple of years. We are sitting at an interesting time as America. We’ve gotten over probably the longest election in history, possibly in the world. 50% of the country is jumping for joy and 50% of the country is hiding in their rooms crying. The reality is that America is going to go on a different path. It didn’t matter who won but there was going to be some deviation of where we are from where we’re going.
You commanded the Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan. You held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff for the Security Assistance Headquarters Resolute Support in the NATO mission to Afghanistan. You were also the United States Military Representative to NATO. You commanded the 1st Special Forces Command. You spent time as a Military Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a critical role within the Pentagon.
We have a lot to talk about because you’ve got the experience and we have a world order that is challenged in so many ways, but I do want to start with national security. You were the Final Commander for the Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan. The mission there is to focus on the budget and the accountability of more than $50 billion in the Afghanistan Security Force funds, managing foreign Military cells to Afghanistan and all parts of their national defense forces, and then making sure that money and equipment were being used in the correct way by them.
The command was disbanded in July 2021. In August 2021, America left Afghanistan. We spent 20 years there and more than $2 trillion in Special Forces Special Operations. More broadly, we carried the load in a lot of ways in Afghanistan. We lost 2,500 service members and had over 20,000 who were wounded. Why did we leave?
When we first went in after 9/11, it was very clear to our policymakers that this is a vital national interest. How do we tap down, at that time, Al-Qaeda? How do we break the safe haven that Al-Qaeda had with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the cradle there of Bin Laden? He later fled over to Pakistan. The country was united. The policymakers were united. We were very clear.
When we got to 2021, the administration made a different change and decided, “This is no longer a vital national interest.” What was the Military advice? By the time we left, we were down at that point to about 3,000 American soldiers. NATO forces outnumbered us at that point in time. Even with the national caveats that they had and were doing as many direct combat operations, they were providing a lot of the back loan of the support that we did.
Two administrations made the decision, “This is no longer in our vital national interest to keep a US footprint and a US capability there in Afghanistan.” Do I agree with that decision? Yes. It was pretty low cost to keep an eye on Al-Qaeda and also the offshoots that are as dangerous or more dangerous there with the Islamic State or ISIS-K with the Khorasan. They made that decision.
I know that we as the Military leaders and the bosses that I worked for certainly expressed, “This is the cost and benefit of going.” Both administrations were adamant that we were going to leave. Frankly, it was tough. It was tough for all of us to see that because of the long partnerships that we’d had with our Afghan partners. “How do we get them out of there?” was another sense of urgency on our part. We were like, “We need to start identifying and moving them now.” There was a large discussion on, “Does that show a sign of weakness? What can we do? How quickly should we move it?” It was very difficult.
With all the equipment that I see the Taliban put on parade, I remember the Afghan Army and the Afghan National Defense Forces having that equipment. When the collapse came and the Taliban seized what we could not destroy or get out of the country, that was painful to watch. It was painful to watch our partners as some of them are still stuck in Afghanistan.
When we look at our partners in Afghanistan, one of the primary missions of Special Forces, and I’m talking about Green Berets and Army Special Forces, is to partner with foreign armies and subsets of militaries and train and equip them. The word partner is the most important one because we go to war with them. We enable them to conduct operations on our behalf in so many ways, and that relationship is built on trust. We’ve seen several times in American history where people will use the term we abandon our partners. We’ve heard that over the last couple of years. The Afghan partners that were left there, how do they feel?
First, there was a sense of unbelief, like, “You’re not going to leave us,” and then it was, “We are. Those decisions have been made that we are going to leave.” It was almost a sense of disbelief that came into a grudging set of, “They are leaving in reality.” The ones that are still there and the ones that we should have gotten out, that’s a shame on us.
I know there are a lot of great organizations out there. I know you interviewed Scott Mann not too long ago. It was great work they have done to get those people out. We all had a different hand. I was in Europe at that time and was burning up phone lines like, “How do we get people out?” That effort still continues with a lot of folks. Certainly, there was a sense on their part. Conversely, look at all we provided to the Afghan National Security Forces.
What I sometimes have a hard time reckoning in my mind is when we got to Afghanistan when the first tour of soldiers came in, we had fighters that were taking on armored formations in the back of Hiluxes with small arms. Somewhere along the line in our training with them, and I’m not talking specifically within the SOF community but the broader community of how we provided capability to them, we ended up with a force that was reluctant and reticent to leave a secure position to go conduct an operation without outrageous amounts of air support. It was not always necessarily within the SOF formations but the normal Army soldiers. It was very difficult to get them to move.
How did we get from the warrior spirit of guys fighting on horseback and the back of Hiluxes to a force that was a little bit reticent? We have to look at how we empowered them and how we enabled them. You want to give your partner everything you possibly can but they also have to have the impetus to go out forward and fight. That was tough.
The war dragged on for twenty years. They had lost far more soldiers than we did. Our losses were great. On Veterans Day, we remember all the veterans who served in all wars in Afghanistan as we’re having this discussion, but they were also worn out, tired, and not as eager sometimes to continue on. You always have the specter of corruption within Afghanistan that made it hard for the individual soldiers.
They were thinking, “What am I fighting for? Am I willing?” How do you imbue that within them? It was a difficult set of circumstances but we super-empowered them in a lot of ways. When we left, we were all very concerned, if not in some ways resigned, that parts were going to fail. Did we know it was going to fail that rapidly? No, that was surprising.
What’s the effect on the US Special Operators? US Forces writ large and all service components who serve there, but we talk about Green Berets primarily on this show. What is the effect? We have talked to Scott and a number of other folks who’ve been intimately involved in this. There’s a range of emotions.
Green Berets, first and foremost, need to be proud of their service. They need to be proud of what they did. When the Twin Towers went down and when we had the horrific attacks on 9/11, that was centered out of Afghanistan. The Special Operations Forces, the US Army, and our NATO allies under Article 5, the only time it has ever been enacted, went into Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was rendered incapable of doing external operations or planning operations from the safe haven to affect our homeland or the homeland of our allies in many ways. Did they lose all capability? No, but they were tamped down. From that aspect, we need to be proud of the service that we did.
It is tough. When you fought with guys and have been to Arlington, buried your friends, and rendered the Military honors to suddenly leave, that is a difficult pill to swallow. My overall point to all those who served and all the Green Berets who served in Afghanistan is to be proud of your service. You answered the call after Al-Qaeda attacked our homeland and rendered it impossible for them to do that again.
Let’s talk about Afghanistan. Reports are out there. Some are confirmed and some are unconfirmed, but the consensus is that the US has sent about $3 billion in cash to the Taliban since we left in August of 2021. It has been 3 years, so it’s about $80 million a month. I studied broadcast journalism so I didn’t have to study math, but I did do the math on that. You talked about the equipment that we left there that was billions of dollars. Reports out of Afghanistan from people we know are saying that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have lashed back up and that they are working together.
We have reports that Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, is in charge, and Afghanistan is once again becoming the terrorist center of training and operations in the world and their top priority is revenge on the US. The 9/11 Commission estimates that 9/11 cost about $500,000. I gave you the numbers on what we estimate is being spent in Afghanistan and is being put in there who wants to kill us. Are we paying the Taliban and Al-Qaeda not to attack us? What happens if that dries up?
I hope not. I’m not familiar with all the payments. You gave me a lot of facts and figures that I’m not as familiar with. We were naive. Although it was in the agreement signed between the US that Al-Qaeda and Taliban would not provide each other support that they would break, they are so ingrained from a philosophical and ideological position that it was a bit naive if we thought they were going to completely break off. They could hide it and act like they weren’t doing it for a certain period of time but they are brothers and are linked. They’re linked against ISIS-K, which is their mortal enemy. That’s the other terrorist affiliate that they don’t like, which has a sticky ideology.
I hope we’re not paying them not to attack us. It gets back to that decision. Was it a vital national interest to the US? I and a lot of us in the Military said, “Sure.” For that terrorist safe haven and for a small footprint that is reinforced by our allies, is the cost at which we could have even driven down lower? Is the cost worth it? I think it was. I’m sorry that we made the decisions we did but we followed the decisions that were given to us that we had to follow.
Everybody knows that when we look at Afghanistan and think about it over history, it’s been a quagmire for the Soviets. We’ve talked about our twenty years there. Everyone who seems to go to this landlocked country, the most difficult terrain on earth when you talk about the mountainous regions, everyone gets stuck there.
It is a critical location within that region of the world because it sits between Pakistan and Iran. It creates almost a check on Iran. When we look at the situation in the Middle East, and we’ll talk about that here in a second, we have them surrounded in many ways and have pulled away from there. As we’ve seen over the last couple of years, does that then allow Iran to be propped up a little bit?
Let’s broaden that discussion beyond Afghanistan. Let’s look at all of the nations that are there like Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Let’s look at all of the stans that are in that part of the world. They all live in a rough neighborhood. They border China, Iran, Russia, and Afghanistan. How do we work to develop the right relationships, the right Military partnerships, and the right help for those nations also to stand up? That can be done at a fairly efficient cost. You’re right. It’s important that we want to have a footprint and a strong partnership in those parts of the world and get them into at least the same technological space and understanding that we have within our Military. There’s certainly a big role for the State Department there in building those bridges as well.
I mentioned you served as the United States Military representative to NATO. You also brought up that Article 5 of NATO has only been invoked 1 time since April 1949 when the initial 12 countries formed NATO. It’s grown to more than 30. There are a few who are knocking at the door, principally Ukraine and the Russians are not excited about that. Everybody seemingly wants to be a part of NATO. It has been quite important as we look at our ability to form international coalitions to protect America and the broader West. Why through history has NATO been so important, and why do you think it’s more important now than ever?
NATO was formed after World War II so that we could have a collective defense capability within Europe. By that time, we’d figured out that while Russia was a great ally at a certain point in time in the war against Nazi Germany and the Axis, we were going to have a problem. How do you do collective defense to bring the nations together? It is the longest and probably most successful Military alliance that we’ve had in modern history. It is very important.
To broaden out, when we say NATO is the largest and the most effective Military alliance in history, that’s great, but there are a couple of things that I always remind people right off the bat when we start talking about NATO. First of all, you have the permanent representatives of the North Atlantic Council. Those are the ambassadors that each country provides to NATO. You then have the Military representatives to the NATO Military Committee, the longest title I ever had as a job description, which represents the Military policy and activities of NATO.
Nobody freelances at NATO. NATO is an expression of the sovereign will of their capitals. As the Military representative to NATO, when the lead-up to the invasion of Ukraine and after that happened, I was very clear on what the US position was. That is what I iterated to the Military committee and that is what the ambassador iterated to the NAC. We stayed very closely aligned in that. It’s the same for the German Mil rep on what Berlin says. For the Turkish, what does Ankara say? For the French, what does Paris say?
You know where you have wiggle room to discuss things on the margins but it is the sovereign will of capitals. That’s the first thing that people have to understand. We talk about 32 different nations with 32 different sets of concerns. When you think about what are the concerns of those nations, it is the same concerns that we went through this election.
Immigration is a gigantic concern, especially for the Southern-facing European continent which has migration flows from North Africa. Another is inflation, the cost of how much a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread cost. You then have to make those decisions. Are you going to make guns or are you going to buy butter? Those discussions and how each one of those nations looks at it are critically important. Sometimes, you have to step back and look at it.
I am very happy that 25 out of the 32 nations are over 2% of GDP defense spending. You’re supposed to spend 2% of your GDP on defense spending. The last number that I saw was that 25 out of the 32 have reached that. Do I think it should be all 32? Yeah. We need to make sure that 2% is a floor, not a ceiling. When we talk about scale, I hear a lot that the US provides all the capability in NATO. We do provide a vast amount. I have no doubt about it.
Proportionately, we have the highest GDP.
Proportionately, when you’re sitting at the table and looking around 32 different nations, what was always in the back of my head was, “Aside from three countries, the GDP of California is larger than every other nation sitting at this table.” Am I proud of that as an American? Sure, but that does give you what is the scale of what you’re dealing with. It is making sure that NATO stays strong and stays united. Working through a consensus and getting 32 people to agree on where they’re going to eat for dinner is difficult as well as getting 32 people to agree on a Military course of action.
NATO shouldn’t be providing Military courses of action. They should be listening to what SACEUR, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has to say and say, “How do we best support and do this correctly? What is the policy that we will move forward with?” Those policy decisions come down to guns or butter. Where we are going to spend our money is highly dependent on what’s going on in the economy and immigration. Russia weaponized immigration. They were taking plane loads of immigrants, shoving them into Belarus, and then pushing them towards the Polish and Lithuanian borders. A lot of dirty tricks that go on with the use of immigration as a weaponized system was what Russia was doing with Belarus at that time.
We’ve seen that in Africa, too, from our time there where you saw the Chinese taking plane loads of Chinese citizens and bringing them over there for infrastructure projects like building roads, building airports, and building buildings, and then all of a sudden, there’s no plane home.
They stick a gigantic plaque out there that says, “Courtesy of China.”
The funding around NATO and the willingness of NATO to come together has been front and center over the last couple of years. President Trump in his first administration was very adamant about what you talked about, which is getting the countries up to the 2% GDP. Would he ever go through with it? Who knows?
He is threatening not to support those countries that don’t pay. It is not to disband NATO and not to get rid of it but to say, “You got to pay. There could be repercussions.” Russia has challenged NATO since the formation of NATO but primarily since the invasion of Ukraine several years ago and they continue to do so. How has NATO done in your assessment of its ability to come together and combat the threat from Russia in Ukraine and broader Eastern Europe?
I remember the lead-up to Ukraine and the night before Ukraine in February 2022 when they attacked very clearly. Right before the Christmas break when I was still at NATO, I was given a set of talking points from the joint staff. The ambassador had a verbatim set of talking points. They were all run through the Office of National Intelligence. He said, “Before the Christmas break, we want you to tell the nations what we think.” We went out and said, “We think they’re going to invade, and here in broad terms is why we think they’re going to invade.” That was met with applause on one side, derision on the other side, and disbelief on some sides. It all depended on what their national beliefs were. Some were very slow to come around to our way of thinking.
The first thing that I would commend the United States for during that time frame was I have never seen intelligence declassified down to a NATO level that fast, ever. We led the way in providing real intelligence to NATO so that all the nations could see it. The intelligence architecture did a fabulous job. It was not only, “Here’s what we think, but here’s why we think it. If you have a counterpart point if you don’t believe that, then show us. Let’s have that discussion. Let’s have a fulsome discussion.”
NATO came together. I remember the night before the invasion, my office was a revolving door of other Military representatives coming in and saying, “What does the US think?” At 4:00, I had my last meeting. I had the Mil rep and the Deputy Mil rep from one of the countries which was the slowest to come along. I said, “Here’s what I’m doing. I’m going to be done being with you and I am going home. I am going to have dinner, sit down, read a book, and be asleep by about 8:00 tonight because we will not make it through the night. They will attack this evening.” Sure enough, the call came in and we all rushed in.
The intelligence is that clear because we’re used to looking for a terrorist within a network. That’s hard to find. How do you isolate cells and terrorist networks within a large population? It’s easy to find an Army car. Tanks show up. Bladders or fuel trucks show up. We knew very clearly. NATO came together quickly and approved all the plans that SACEUR needed to evolve a response.
The American response was amazing. There were 40,000 soldiers. We were up to twelve top-generation aircraft. We had two aircraft carriers at a different point in the med. The other nations, although slower, were also providing. There was a rush of, “We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to stand up for Ukraine. We’ve got to provide the capability.”
The US policy was very clear. It was, “1) We’re going to do everything that we can to support Ukraine and definitive sovereignty. 2) We’re going to do everything that we can to keep NATO united in that cause. 3) Don’t start a shooting war with Russia, the two nuclear powers. “That guidance was pretty clear. All the architecture came up around it through how we provide the equipment and the capabilities.
When you talk about resolve, you started to see it 90 days after the invasion, probably 120. Six months after the invasion, you started to hear, “What is the intelligence assessment of Russia? How capable is their ground force? How capable is their Military? Do we need to spend all this money on the re-arming and re-equipping of our capabilities with the stockpiles we all talked about in February or can we slow that down and push those horizons?”
Guns are butter. The cost starts to come up. That was a very interesting discussion. It was, “Don’t let them reset. Russia has been damaged as well as their ground forces tremendously but their Air Force hasn’t been touched. They haven’t used it. Nobody has gained air superiority there. Their nuclear arsenal is certainly untouched. Their Navy has been stung but is not largely untouched. Their Air Force is the big thing. Don’t all of a sudden look for reasons not to follow up on the promises that we made after the invasion. You’ve got to continue with your spending.”
“The hard part for a nation like this, and it’d be hard for anybody, is to give everything you’ve got to Ukraine. You’re offloading your 25-year-old or 30-year-old tanks, artillery systems, and integrated air defense systems. They’re going into Poland and Ukraine. To meet your minimum capability requirements, you have to replenish that. It costs X what you gave Ukraine and it costs XXXXX to replenish it.” That put a lot of countries in a fiscal hole too.
It exposed in a big way, which is something that the United States has to look at, our supply chains and the holes that we have in our supply chains. One of the greatest national security threats that we have within the United States of America is our inability to manufacture. We do not have the same manufacturing base that we had. I’m a free market guy as well, but when you are so reliant on other nations for your supply chains, you put yourself at risk.
That’s something that the new administration coming in and the administrations beyond that are going to have to wrestle with. How do you secure your supply chains? How do you make sure that we have the manufacturing critical to our well-being and our national defense here in the United States? Where are we in Ukraine? We’re years into this. We do have the new administration coming in. President Trump has been very vocal about ending it. As we sit here, he has already had a call with Putin where he warned him in some way having given the details on a readout not to escalate the situation in Ukraine. Where are we in this conflict? Where does it go? How does it end?
People have been asking me that question the entire 2 years I was at NATO and then have been retired for about 17 months. I get asked that question all the time. It will have to end in some kind of settlement, and it’s going to be a tough one. For Russia to buy off Ukraine is going to lose part of this territory. That is not something that President Zelenskyy has been able to say.
The chances of the Ukrainian Military being able to recapture that territory are very slim. The other thing is that Ukraine is also struggling with conscription and being able to get soldiers. They were never fully mobilized. They tried to keep their economy running as best they could away from the front areas but they’re having to dig a lot deeper to get the manpower that they require to do the fight.
You’ve got to go to North Korea to get weapons and get soldiers? That’s sad. I am interested to see how these North Korean soldiers do when put in it. I hope that we have South Korean soldiers on the other side with a loudspeaker going, “Come on over. The water’s good over here.” We’ve got a great opportunity for a PsyOps campaign there, but to get them to come across the lines, I don’t know.
I want to ask about that. We didn’t mention it upfront but you commanded a Special Operations Command. Is North Korea capable? What is their capability? We’ve always propped the Russians up. You talked about 3 months in or 6 months in, and all of a sudden, everybody’s like, “Maybe Russia’s not as strong as they are.” Where is North Korea?
Let me talk about Russia first. What you could visibly see was what looked like a professionalization of their foreign officers who were working as their defense attaches. It wasn’t the stereotypical vodka-swilling loud-mouth attache. They became much more polished. We could see the level of the exercises and the sophistication of what they were doing with their equipment.
What you can never tell from satellite imagery or what observations you have is what’s the degree of leadership and what’s the degree of battle mission command-type orders that give a mission without being too prescriptive. What we found out is that they’re terrible. They don’t have that NCO core that is the backbone of what you’ve got to be able to do to command formations. The larger the formation, the more important the non-commissioned officer becomes.
We saw they weren’t great. I expect even worse from North Korea. Those conscripts probably have no idea why they have shown up in Russia and are probably extremely confused. They are not going to speak the language. I have a feeling the Russians are not going to be particularly welcoming of how they are dealt with. At least with countries that train together, we have common SOPs. Even if they’re not perfectly oiled, we can figure them out. We can sit down and tabletop it out.
Can you imagine a Russian and a North Korean trying to tabletop out a movement? No. I don’t see that it’s going to go well. Do I think the North Korean Army is good? No, I don’t, but they are large. This is aside from the threat of North Korea to South Korea and what they can do with the artillery they have in the case of heights and their nuclear arsenals. Do I think individually throwing a couple of battalions and a couple of brigades of North Koreans? No, they’re going to have a very bad day.
What’s North Korea’s thought process?
If you’re Kim Jong-un, who are your friends? You’ve got three. You’ve got Russia, China, and Iran that you can work with. Even those nations look at them and go, “North Korea?” He’s got no friends. He’s got a horrible economy. He’s got people that every six months are coming out of a starvation diet. It’s such a blind kingdom from what’s going on outside. Those are their friends. If they can sell them drones, then that brings in money. If they can provide soldiers to Putin’s Army, then maybe they get some more favor. They’re playing to the only strengths they have. That’s a pretty sad state when those are your only three friends.
You joke that throughout your command, you were in some of the hottest places in terms of conflict. You commissioned it in 1988. You served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. You went to the Q course in 1994 and then commanded at every level. The Green Berets have evolved over the last couple of years in a lot of different ways. We’ve seen that. You’ve been a part of that. You’ve led that transformation in many different ways.
I’ve been fortunate since we’ve started the show to have a lot of support out of Special Forces Command and out of USASOC and been able to sit down with General Braga, General Ferguson, General Beaurpere, Sergeant Major Strong, and Sergeant Major of the Army, Weimer. We’ve talked about the SOFT mission. We’ve talked about where they come from and where they’re going. We’ve talked about their role in preventing the nation-state on nation-state war that would be the next World War. Why did you volunteer to be a Green Beret?
It’s because I wanted to work with partners and allies. I wanted to work with foreign Militaries. I also had a deep love for the unconventional warfare mission of how we would go in and build up a resistance, how we would build a guerrilla force, how we would build an intelligence network, and how we would build an auxiliary. The opportunity to learn those kinds of skills, practice those kinds of skills, and work with partners and allies, that’s what drove me towards being a Green Beret.
I’ve been part of teams my entire life, whether playing sports or then going into the Army. Trying to evolve that out to work with different people around the world with different allies and see how to get different perspectives is not only physically challenging but it’s intellectually stimulating. That’s what drove me to be a Green Beret.
I never say that a Green Beret is better than someone who serves in the conventional Army. I say they’re different. Why is it different? Why is a Green Beret different?
We’ve got to get back to a couple of things. What should make a Green Beret different? First of all, we have to train to be experts in the base. We have to be some of the best light infantry there is. Let’s start there. You have to be the best light infantry soldier that you can be. An ODA should be able to command, advise, and support up to a battalion. Do it. How do you do those skills to be the best infantryman you can be? You have to be able to do all those drills as well as an ODA. That’s number one.
I love all the theoretical diatribes and all the pictures I get. Is it unconventional warfare? Is it regular warfare? Is it asymmetric? No, it’s unconventional warfare. How do we walk in? How do we build a resistance organization? How do we build an underground? How do we build a guerrilla force? That also has to be married to how we use technology.
I think back to when I was a captain and General Schoomaker was out at 1st Special Forces Group and I was the assistant S3. I was the HAC commander so I got to come sit at the big boys’ table when he came in to give a little OPD. This would have been ‘97 or ‘98. He looked around the room and went, “You captains, at some point in your career, it may be more important what you can get onto the battlefield than what you do on the battlefield. What I’m talking about is robotics, drones, and things like this.” This is 1997. I was like, “Let me think about that.”
We’re entering that point. How do you marry being an expert at your infantry skills and being an expert at your unconventional warfare task and then marry that best with the best use of emerging technologies? That is a winning combination that provides a lot of value for our nation and can be a great force. How do you lash that into the higher formations, the other Army units, and the other joint force that especially could be providing you fires that are doing that? That’s where we’ve got to get.
It took almost 30 years from the point in time in which it was brought up to you as a captain for it to be a part of the force. In my conversations with General Beaurpere and General Ferguson, they’ve talked about a change to the MTO. As much as the ODAs have changed, doctrinally, by manning, they haven’t changed. It’s the exact same.
What we’ve done, and we’ve done very effectively because of the quality and the character of those who we recruit to become Green Berets, is we’ve always said, “Now, you have an additional duty. You have 2 duties so now you have 3 duties.” The consensus is we’ve gotten to a point where you cannot keep layering on duty after duty because then nothing gets done well. Is it time to change the MTO and recreate what an ODA looks like?
I’m not well enough to do a twelve-man ODA. Let’s start with one that everybody recognizes. JTACs or Joint Tactical Air Controllers, are we asking them now to do too much as an additional duty while they’re also still being the Echo on the team or the Charlie on the team? How do we bring those guys in and make that a full-time position? That’s a good idea. Are we going to have somebody that looks at how we do robotics and drones and how to control those and employ those on the battlefield? Are we doing enough of that as it is being proliferated that we need to make those changes in the MTO? I’m certainly not against that happening.
The guys at Bragg or Liberty will run all the tests and go through what are the exact skills that we require to do that. Is that an 18? Is that another MOS? I’ll let them figure that out but I am certainly not opposed to it. If you stand still, you will get passed. You have to be flexible enough and be open to new thoughts and new ideas.
The twelve-man ODA has served us well. It has done very well for us but we’ve always piled all kinds of enablers onto it, whether it was Special Operations, the SOD-As, the SIGINT Force, or different translation capabilities. We’ve always piled different enablers. If we want to have a coherent organization and bring those types of capabilities into the ODA, I have no problem with it.
The consensus is that we’re in this 1939 moment, an interwar period. In my conversations with so many of these senior leaders, I’ve heard them say over and over, “It isn’t a matter of if. This is a matter of when America ends up in the next conflict.” We’ve seen senior intelligence officials within the government like the Director of the FBI and the Director of Homeland Security all stand up and testify in front of Congress that the red lights are blinking in every capacity all over. We see conflict in every theater in the world.
American leaders since the withdrawal from Afghanistan have been very focused on this peer-to-peer fight. What does it look like if we go to war with Russia and China? General Votel was on with me. He talked a lot about the shipbuilding and weaponry capability and China’s ability to mass produce it at a much faster scale than we are.
We’ve seen Russia lashing up with our other enemies to enhance their capability. Iran is emboldened much more than they have been in quite a long time. Their arming, equipping of proxies, and putting those proxy forces to work throughout the Middle East is on a daily scale. What is America’s next fight? Is it the peer-to-peer fight or is it the terrorist organization that’s reconstituting potentially in Afghanistan who wants to come attack us on our homeland?
Look at our track record. If we say, “It’s going to be this,” you can guarantee it won’t be. It is both peer-to-peer and terrorist organizations. A lot of the problems are going on in the Middle East. They’re Iranian state-sponsored. That’s nothing new. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the different organizations that Iran and parts of the Iraqi Militias have put into Syria for all of these years. There is still a lot of state-sponsored terrorism out there that we have to deal with.
For the big capabilities, what do we use as our pacing item? That has to be China because China is evolving rapidly in its ability to field forces and its ability to provide Military equipment. God knows they have enough people. You have to work for your worst. The most difficult fight would be China. You have to use that as your pacing knight and optimize your fight for that.
Do you have the long-range artillery? Do you have the strike capability from the air? Do you have the right space? The importance of space forces grows. Do we have all that right? Get that fixed and make sure that we have the most lethality that we can get in the hands of our soldiers. Lethality on the battlefield is critical. Work towards that.
Does that mean that we get to put on blinders and solely focus on what we’re going to do in competition with China? No. The terrorist organizations are still out there. Whether they are state-sponsored or whether they are radicalized in their religious ideology, they’re still there. We still have to have capabilities that are resonant and capable of addressing those.
I’m from Tampa, Florida, I don’t think you could go down to CENTCOM Headquarters and tell them, “There’s nothing going on in the Middle East. We’re going to pivot everything to China.” You’d have a big disagreement there. What we see in the newspapers would be pretty clear on that. None of that’s going away. Optimize what your large force structure is going to be for the peer-to-peer conflict. I’m not saying we’re going to necessarily go to war with China. I hope that doesn’t happen. I don’t want what happened to the Taiwan Straits.
The other concept that I got out of NATO that was kicked around a ton was integrated deterrence. I don’t ever want to fall into a dogmatic approach of, “This is the size-fits-all,” but there is one thing that I also think is useful within an unconventional warfare concept. When you dig into integrated deterrence, it’s about how you impose a cost on an adversary, deny a benefit for an adversary, and make sure there’s a consequence for an action.
When you really dig into integrated deterrence, it’s about how you impose a cost on an adversary.
I like that. It’s a thought process. Whether it’s on integrated air missile defense capabilities if somebody’s building it or it’s what they’re going to put into space, or it’s a movement that they are doing into a zone that you don’t want them into, how do you impose a cost, deny a benefit, and ensure there’s a consequence for an action?
I like that as a thought process. I like that as a small modicum of rigor that you can put and go, “Let’s take a look at that, and then let’s do that against the risk equation,” and say, “It’s worth the risk, but is there a better way to bring the risk down as we all do and then figure out how to do those things?” That also opens up the aperture for a lot of what we would prefer to be doing with smaller forces or smaller footprints with this new fifteen-man ODA that you’re proposing.
That is the number, 15 or 16. You add in all the enablers. We’re almost there in a lot of ways. Let’s talk about the effect of domestic politics. It is no secret within the world that the American political system has become very divisive. Democracy is an ugly thing. Congressman Mike Waltz has been on a couple of times and he’s talked about that. It’s never been pretty. We’ve had other conversations where we’ve gone through the history of the political election cycles. When you go back to the 1800s, Aaron Burr tried to shoot somebody.
He shot Hamilton.
You have all these cases where you’ve seen this flare up, but at least in the modern day, this last election cycle has been a tough one. It went on for quite a long time, which doesn’t help. The Military has been able to stay distant from politics and remain apolitical but we’ve seen a lot of the politicization of the Military. We’ve seen generals be called in front of the Senate, whether it be to testify. We’ve seen their names be invoked by the presidential candidates at times. What effect does divisiveness within the domestic political environment have on the Military, especially its leadership?
First of all, the fact that we can have an election as we had with the voter turnout that we had and the ability to elect a presidential candidate, a new house, and a new Senate is a strength of our democracy. People vote and their voices are heard. Politics are fickle things. We’ll see in two years where we are at the midterm elections. I’m not advocating for a side but the ability to vote and do that is key.
What I would love to see is less personality and more policy. We’ve got to get beyond platitudes. We’ve got to get an electorate that is willing to read beyond the snap, the little snippet, or the little soundbite and say, “What is the actual policy that’s being proposed here?” I bet you if we had voters who could do that, we’d find a lot more common ground in terms of all the big campaign things that are out there, whether that’s immigration or the economy. I would hope that our leaders get into a position where we can have more policy discussions.
I try to stay very politically neutral. That’s usually the best course. Some of our senior leaders and some of the senior leaders that I incredibly respect an amazing amount have been dragged into it. Some were not as willing, and some thought they were standing up for friends. They’ve made their choices. In some cases, they did the right things as well by entering into the foray.
For the most part, unless we have a real interest that we’ve got to be drawn in, we try to stay politically neutral. Some haven’t had a choice when they get attacked or when their friends are attacked and they feel like they have to stand up and say something. You have that. If you’re running for office, then by all means. I have no problem with veterans and encourage them to run for office.
There’s been a lot of discussion over the last couple of months over the ability of an elected leader to use the Military domestically. We understand the regulations that have been in effect since the birth of the nation around Posse Comitatus that you cannot use active duty Military to target Americans, especially on American soil. Is there a situation where they could invoke some sort of requirement to use Military force within the United States?
I’m going to tell you that is a bad idea. I’m sure if we sat here in a war game for an hour or two, we could come up with a couple but it’s not one that I’m going to throw out there. It is a bad idea to use the active duty US Military to the best of its capability. Our allegiance is to the Constitution of the United States. The National Guard Units from those local areas are trained to do some of those kinds of things but the active duty component against that, nothing is jumping immediately to my mind that says, “We should use the American Military domestically.” Even most nations that share our same values feel exactly the same way. I’m not going to run down or talk about the hypotheticals. It’s a bad idea.
We’ve talked about it here. We’ve got enough work to be focused on externally. Our law enforcement organizations, whether it be at the federal level, the state level, or the local level, are prepared.
We’ve got great policemen and law enforcement officers all around the nation. They’ve got some of the toughest jobs out there. The more money and training that we can get them to deal with different situations, I’m in favor of that.
All commissioned officers go through their careers and are influenced heavily by the non-commissioned officers who serve with them and beside them. General Votel and the other senior leaders who I’ve spoken with have spent a lot of time talking about those who influenced them. I’ve come up with this term, “Who’s your sergeant?” Who was your sergeant?
I’ve got several. I’m not going to throw their names out here because they probably wouldn’t appreciate it. I talk regularly, probably once a week, to three of the guys who were on my first ODA. I at least text with them every week and probably talk on the phone to at least one of them every week because they showed me what a great non-commissioned officer can be. I appreciate their candor. They’re also the guys that’ll jerk me up and say, “Hey.” We disagree on some things as well. We have spirited debates on different aspects of things but I count them amongst my best friends. They are some of the great sergeant majors that I have worked with throughout my career.
I believe that good leaders when given the right information will make the right decision about 9% of the time. 5% of the time when they make a mistake, they’ll go back and change it. 5% of the time, they’re stubborn and you’re stuck with it. Great non-commissioned officers who will say, “You’re probably not asking the right question to get the right information,” or, “You’re leading the audience,” those are the kinds of very smart and forward-thinking leadership that you have to have.
How do you hold standards and still have empathy with your soldiers? You can do that. You can be a hard taskmaster and uphold the correct standards but still be empathetic to what’s going on in your soldiers’ lives and say, “I didn’t know that all this had happened. Let’s figure out how to fix that, but you still didn’t meet the standard so let’s make sure we get you on that path too.” The strength of the non-commissioned officer is why our Army does not fail and probably why the Russian Army is failing. I don’t think we have a crystal ball to look into the Chinese non-commissioned officer corps but I’d be interested to see what it looks like.
This is the last question, a test question. The Jedburghs as well as all forces had to have strong habits. Leaders have to have strong habits. We’re talking about the Jedburghs because when they jumped into occupied France starting the night before D-Day, they had to be able to shoot, move, and communicate. If they could do those three things effectively without thinking, then they could focus their attention on more complex challenges that were at hand like defeating the German Army. What are the three things that you do every day to be successful?
Number one, I do something physical. Number two, I read. Number three, especially as I get a little bit older, I’m conscious of my sleep. The reason those three things are so important to me is because they keep a balance in how I spend my time and they keep my intellectual curiosity. That’s what the reading part is.
I’ve usually got 3 or 4 books going. There are usually a couple on tape and at least two that I’m reading. 1 of them is usually a fun
book and 1 of them is usually a, “I’m going to be doing a lot of Googling to see what the heck that term means,” kind of book. You have to be intellectually curious and always looking at what’s the next thing or what’s the next field that you can be broad and learn about. That’s fascinating.
Sleep and physicality is to keep your mind ready. You have to keep your body ready. I hope everybody has a spiritual component so that they have time to sit down, reflect, and say, “Am I living my life on the path that I want others to emulate?” I can skip food every now and then but I cannot skip sleep anymore at this age.
It’s gotten a lot harder. Do something physical, read, and sleep. I love those three. Thank you for spending some time with me.
What a great place to do it here at UHP here in lovely Bentonville, Arkansas. We have a gorgeous day. Thanks.
Thanks.
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