• Login
• FAQs
• RSS
• Podcasts
• Find Us

Events
• Programme of events
• Previous Events

• The Event
• Additional info

Annual Chief of the Defence Staff Lecture and RUSI Christmas Party

Thank you, Chairman, and good afternoon, everybody.  It’s a great pleasure to be back here at RUSI for this annual lecture.  Something in the nature of an early Christmas present for me, although I do accept that if you’re on the receiving end you may not see it in quite the same pleasant light.  For my part, though, I’d reiterate two things I said in this hall twelve months ago.  First, it’s very useful to be able to pause and take stock as one moves from one year to another.  But secondly, there’s nothing special about this time of year – at least, not from a military perspective.  Tradition places this lecture in the run up to Christmas, not the rhythm of wider events.  And I make this point for a reason.

As humans we have a need to break things down into what we see as manageable segments.  We’re helped to do this to some extent by the laws of physics and by natural phenomena.  The earth rotates about its axis, and travels round the sun.  So we have days and years, and the natural flow of the seasons.  This gives our lives a structure, and gives us a sense of the passage of time.  But that structure is in many ways artificial.  It’s something that we impose on the universe, rather than the other way round.  And that artificial structure in turn affects the way we think.  In a few weeks, many people in this country will make promises, to themselves and others, in the form of New Year resolutions.  Promises that, in their heart of hearts, most know they have little chance of keeping for long.

And after all, why should they?  Why should they be able to effect often fundamental changes in their behaviour simply because of a particular date in the calendar?  Why is January the first so different from December the thirty-first?  The answer, of course, is that it isn’t.  There’s no reason to suppose that the move from 2007 to 2008 will bring with it some significant alteration in the real world.  Which is not to say that things don’t change; on the contrary, change is constant.  But it has a rhythm that’s unconnected to the one we invent to keep track of our lives.  So we have to be very careful not to muddle the two.  And this is particularly important when the human rhythm becomes exaggerated.  What do I mean by that?  Well, let me try and illustrate with this short piece of music.

Now in those long-vanished years when I actually knew something about popular music, Queen were pretty big.  And this particular song – or at least the part that I’ve just played – has been lurking unnoticed in the odd corners of my memory ever since, only to resurface recently as a strikingly resonant theme for our times.

It seems to me that we live in an era of impatience; when people tend to demand rapid, if not instant, gratification.  They want it all, and they want it now.  I’m not a sociolologist, and don’t really want to get drawn into why this might be so.  But look around.  One of our previous prime ministers famously remarked that a week is a long time in politics.  Those were slow and stately days indeed!  Today, just twenty-four hours can seem an eternity, not just in politics but in many other fields as well.

In this age of global media, rapid communication and intense competition, there’s considerable pressure to stay one step ahead.  In order to hold people’s attention, you have to keep coming up with something new: the next revelation; the next dramatic development; the exclusive.  Drama and conflict play much better than evolution or mature reflection.  I’m not suggesting that these are purely twenty-first century phenomena.  But I do think that the combination of technology and pace of life combine to produce a desire for instant answers.  The media play a key role in this, both stimulating and feeding the appetite.  I don’t say that in any way as a complaint, but as a recognition of the way things are.  It’s part of the strategic context.  We might wish it were otherwise, but we have to live in the world as it is rather than as we’d like it to be.

And when you combine this impulse for ready solutions with our sense of time passing, you can get some unfortunate consequences.  Instant answers tend to be simplistic.  There’s a temptation to focus on the short term without giving sufficient thought to how our actions may affect the long term.  With patience becoming a rare commodity in our societies, we’re less willing to accommodate the inevitable ups and downs that characterize all long-term endeavours.  And this in turn could make us increasingly less able to see such endeavours through to a successful conclusion.

Let me take the example of Afghanistan.  It’s perfectly possible to look at progress there from two perspectives and come up with entirely different answers.  I go to Afghanistan regularly.  Indeed, I was there less than a week ago, on my fourteenth visit in just over a year and a half.  And when I compare our position in, for example, Helmand province today with where we were at the start of the year, it’s clear that we’ve come a considerable distance.  But when I compare where we are today with where Afghanistan needs to be in the long term, there’s still so much of the journey left that it appears we’ve come hardly any distance at all.  Both of these perceptions are right.  It’s just that they’re set against different scales.  But understanding that is, it seems to me, crucial.  We would, after all, think it very odd if a marathon runner, at the end of the first mile, decided that there was still so far to go that it really wasn’t worth continuing, although that is probably the situation I find myself in.

On the other hand, we do need some measure of progress.  The marathon runner, for example, will look at distance against time elapsed.  We don’t have anything like such an easy calculus for Afghanistan, but we do need appropriate and realistic metrics by which we can judge progress across months in the context of a campaign that may last for many years.  As in most democracies, our strategic centre of gravity is the will of our governments and the people they represent to sustain the necessary scale of effort for long enough to achieve success.  If we lose that, we lose everything.  The military – at all levels – understand this better than anyone.

So we need to be able to judge our position in the long game without being distracted by the short-term vagaries of fortune.  Only then are we likely to sustain in our peoples and our coalitions the strategic patience to see through such enduring campaigns.  But the metrics themselves must be largely non-military, because the campaign itself must be largely non-military.

I don’t know whether any of you have read Adrian Goldsworthy’s excellent biography of Julius Caesar.  If not, I can thoroughly recommend it as an absorbing account of one of history’s most intriguing figures.  But I was particularly struck by what Goldsworthy had to say at the start of one of the chapters dealing with the Gallic campaigns.  He said: ‘successful imperial powers have always relied as much – or even more – on diplomacy and political settlement as on military force.  Armies could and can smash formal opposition, and were and are capable of curbing guerrilla warfare, although they may not be able to destroy it.  Yet if military actions were not to be constantly repeated, then a settlement needed to be reached which was acceptable to enough of the occupied people, and in particular those with power and influence.  This principle was as true for men like Wellesley in India or Bugeard in French North Africa as it was for Caesar in Gaul.’

Now Goldsworthy is talking here about imperial campaigns.  But the point he’s making is applicable to many of the situations in which we find ourselves today.  The key determinant, for me, is not that one is trying to incorporate territory into an empire.  Rather, it’s that one is dealing with a group of people whose identity – be it national, cultural, religious or all three – is different.  Any approach that fails to recognise this, and to put in place a political and social framework within which those concerned are prepared broadly to live and co-operate, cannot in the long term succeed.

So with that in mind, how are we doing in Afghanistan in our marathon?  Now in answering that question, it’s as well to be clear on who ‘we’ are.  We’re thirty-seven nations in ISAF, drawn from across the international community, assisting the Afghan government under the mandate of the United Nations, as set out in Security Council Resolution 1776.

And of course we have to remember that while we, the UK,  tend to concentrate on the south, and on Helmand in particular, there’s a lot more to the country than that.  The challenges are certainly greatest in the south and east, and I shall focus to some extent on those areas with which we’re most familiar.  But we have to bear in mind the wider context; that the larger ‘we’ is concerned with Afghanistan as a whole, not with just part of it.

The next thing to be clear about is our objective.  And it’s not to turn Afghanistan into some kind of Asian Switzerland.  That’s a worthy aspiration, but there are two major problems.  First, it’s something that only the Afghans themselves could do – if that’s what they wanted, which of course is another question entirely.  Secondly, it’s well beyond our time horizon.  It’s worth remembering that even if Afghanistan maintains today’s good rate of economic growth, it will take fifteen years to get to Bangladesh’s present level.

No, our objective has to be much more tightly defined.  And it has to be focused on getting the Afghans to a stage where they can plan and sustain progress by themselves; progress that will, of course, continue to require extensive international engagement.  So with that in mind, we aim: to reduce the insurgency to a level that poses no significant threat to progress in Afghanistan; to ensure that core Al-Qa’ida does not return to the country; and to ensure that Afghanistan remains a legitimate state and is able to handle its own security.  Even those limited objectives will take time to achieve, but we can point to some substantial progress over the last year.

On the military front, NATO has decisively defeated insurgent forces in every significant engagement.  In Helmand, we started the year essentially confined to the area around the capital, Lashkar Gah.  Thanks to the outstanding courage, determination and professionalism of our armed forces, we’ve now spread up the Helmand River to Gereshk and on to Sangin, with a commanding presence at Kajaki.   Meanwhile, many significant Taleban leaders, some of them highly capable and charismatic, have departed the scene over the course of 2007.  Not, I might add, by accident.  Their replacements have, in the main, been of significantly lesser quality, and this has had a noticeable effect on the morale of the insurgents.

So, in the south in particular, the Taliban have had a really bad year.  Their vaunted spring offensive failed to materialise – as a result of our success, rather than a lack of Taleban desire.  Their strategic coherence has been badly damaged, and their objectives are further from their grasp than ever.  Does this mean that they’re defeated?  Of course not.  Are they entirely without successes to their credit?  I make no such claim.  They’ve resorted to asymmetric tactics which have, on occasion, tested the Afghan government and Alliance nerve.  And – perhaps in part because of their setbacks in the south – they’ve been more active in the west.  But they’re under significant stress, and the fault lines are showing.

Nevertheless, we’ve always been clear that the insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone.  Lasting success depends on progress across a much wider front, on developments that persuade the Afghan people to turn their faces decisively against the Taleban in favour of accountable government.  And that in turn will depend on the Afghan government demonstrating its ability to provide for the security of its own citizens.

The Afghan National Army is making considerable strides.  It’s been fighting hard with ISAF for some time now, but more recently it’s started to mount independent operations at battalion level.  Its re-equipment programme is gathering momentum, and most recruit training is carried out by Afghan NCOs.  The army still has some way to go, but it’s developing well.  And for this, much credit has to go to the brave and resourceful members of the UK Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams, who stand side-by-side with their Afghan partners.

But security is not just a matter of fighting insurgents.  In recent polls, many Afghans were more worried about criminality than they were about the consequences of military action.  That’s why the criminal justice system and the Afghan police are so important.
 On the former, we’ve not yet done well enough.  The Rule of Law Conference held in Rome earlier this year confirmed that judiciary and penal reform had made little progress, and set work in hand to develop a strategy for addressing this.  But I can’t report that we’re really much further forward today.  This is an area to which we have to devote serious effort in 2008.

As far as the police are concerned, twelve months ago I was seriously worried about their lack of development too.  Today, though, I’m more encouraged.  The US-led Coalition Security Transition Command for Afghanistan has put real effort – and a very great deal of US money - into this recently.  They’ve driven a reform of the pay structure that will give Afghan policemen a decent living wage.  And the new system to deliver this electronically will reduce the risk of that pay being “taxed” by corrupt officials.  Police training has been improved, and these improvements are being rolled out to the existing force through a programme of focused district development.

Of course, the police haven’t been transformed overnight.  That was never going to be possible.  And Alliance nations have been distressingly backward in providing the large numbers of police mentors that are crucial to embedding success.  We must do better here.  But I was struck by what our police trainers in the south of Afghanistan told me just a few days ago.  They confirmed that there’s good material amongst the ranks of the Afghan police, as well as some not so good, and that they can build on this.  So while we still have a substantial challenge ahead, we can see a way forward.

There’s one particular dimension of criminality, though, that’s received a great deal of attention recently and attracted no little controversy into the bargain: counter-narcotics.  Let me be quite clear: I view success in this area as crucial to our success in our wider mission.  But that leads some to suggest that we should therefore focus on poppy eradication.  Now if you look at recent examples of effective counter-narcotics campaigns, such as in Pakistan, Thailand, and even some parts of Afghanistan itself, you find that governance is the key.  If you can establish the right degree of effective governance, then you can deal with narcotics.  Without governance, nothing is likely to work in the long term.

But our whole mission in Afghanistan is about governance.  So in a very real sense, everything we do contributes to a long-term resolution of the narcotics problem.  The question is: “what should we do when, and to what degree?”  Should we focus on reconstruction?  Or on counter-insurgency operations?  Or on poppy eradication, as some suggest?  Or on something else entirely?  The answer, of course, is that we should do all of these things, in the sequence and mixture that gives the best overall benefits for governance.  That’s exactly the approach we’ve been taking in Helmand.  We do, of course, need to demonstrate that we’re making some progress on the counter-narcotics strand.  But using hectares of poppies grown or destroyed as a metric makes little sense in the short term.  In my view, it’s the equivalent of using body count as a metric of military success.

But if progress on counter-narcotics depends on improvements in those wider areas that contribute to governance, it’s fair to ask how we’re doing on the latter.  Are Afghans seeing any improvements to their everyday lives and circumstances as a result of their government’s approach and our support?  Well, I would argue that yes, they’re starting to.   We have evidence to show that locals in Helmand are increasingly noticing the development activities that are now spreading from Lashkar Gah up the Sangin valley.  Irrigation has been improved, schools built and refurbished, clinics provided, roads built, and much else besides.  Now I don’t want to make too much of this.  These are relatively small steps compared to the scale of the overall challenge.  But they’re in the right direction.  And as I said, they’re beginning to be noticed.

Much of the actual work is being carried out by Afghan contractors, which of course helps to spur economic activity.  More widely, though, it’s important to develop Afghan capacity for planning and administration.  And naturally this is a challenge in a nation with very low levels of literacy, but one that’s being taken forward vigorously in Helmand through the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Team.  Their flexible and imaginative approach is finding ways around the numerous obstacles they encounter, and they are numerous.  Progress has certainly not been dramatic; for every couple of steps forward there’s often one backwards.  But painful progress is still progress.

In my view, though, we could move faster if we were able to make even more use of the outstanding civilians we have on the UK team.  It’s proving very difficult to get them into areas where there are still risks to security – which of course is where they’re most urgently needed.  Not because they’re unwilling; far from it.  But because their parent departments owe them a duty of care, and restrict them accordingly.  In a recent speech at Kansas State University, US Secretary of Defense Gates talked about the State Department’s initiative to raise a permanent corps of deployable experts – a civilian response corps.  Is it time to consider a similar approach here in the UK?  Such a body of people, with appropriately permissive terms and conditions of service, could make a big difference – provided, of course, that they had access to the necessary government funding.

Turning to politics – with a small p – and governance structures, we’ve had something of an uphill struggle here.  Part of the problem is the tribal structure and the complicated dynamics associated with it.  While we need a feel for these, we’re never going to be able to understand the nuances sufficiently to plot a way through them with any confidence.  That has to be a task for the Afghans themselves.  Afghan problems need solutions that Afghans recognise and accept.  But if we’re to go with the grain of these cultural differences – and we must – then we have to accept that the solutions on occasions will not look like ours.  And we’ll have to accept that on occasion the consequences may make us rather uncomfortable.

The notion of a strong central government is certainly not one that most Afghans recognise – nor, I suggest, one they will readily accept.  Regional, provincial and district approaches that acknowledge and leverage local circumstances and dynamics offer much better prospects.  But regional approaches that are nevertheless developed within an Afghan government framework.  This is a proposition that I believe has now gained wide acceptance, and as we approach the end of 2007 we’re starting to see it produce results in northern Helmand.  Afghan government work on tribal relationships is becoming an integral part of our approach there, and is driving the direction of some of our military and development activities.

Another necessary political activity that’s also started to feature more strongly in recent weeks is reconciliation.  This is an issue that can arouse strong feelings, but I’m very clear: reconciliation – or accommodation, call it what you will – is an essential part of any counter-insurgency campaign.  I’d make two points, though.  First, it requires movement on both sides; but it involves insurgents entering the governance structure, not the abandonment of that structure.  Secondly, it can only be affected through a two-pronged approach.  Reconciliation should offer opportunities and prospects to those who pursue it; but it should offer a bleak and short future to those who reject it.  The carrots must be worthwhile; but the stick must be heavy and relentlessly applied.

Now in trying to describe progress in Afghanistan, I’m only too conscious that some might accuse me of offering you far too an unduly rosy view.  That’s certainly not my intent.  I’ve looked back to the start to show that we have indeed moved forward.  Equally, I could look to the future and point out that we have a huge distance yet to go.  I’ve spoken about achievements.  But I could look in any direction and identify numerous daunting problems that still remain.

So even if I’m right, what next?  Where do we go from here?  What are our priorities now?  Well, I addressed our activities to date in the order in which they developed during the initial stages of the campaign.  But that certainly was not, and is not, the priority.  Indeed, it’s clear that development of the political and governance framework must lead the other activities. But there’s a problem.

In the military, we have a doctrine and processes for developing coherent campaign plans in pursuit of clear strategic objectives and end states.  The operational art amounts essentially to the prioritization and sequencing of various activities in time and space to achieve the best overall effect.  We may be able to point to examples where the process hasn’t been followed properly, or where it’s been imperfectly executed.  But a process there most certainly is.  Unfortunately, that is not true once one steps outside the purely military domain.  There, the effective co-ordination of the various lines of operation is much less certain.

But as I said earlier, our whole mission in Afghanistan is about governance.  We have to carry out a wide range of activities – of which the military strand is but one – and carry them out in the sequence and mixture that gives the optimum result.  In other words, we need a campaign plan, including but not restricted to military action that produces the best synergistic effect in terms of Afghan governance.  And we’ve yet to find an effective international mechanism for doing this effectively.  Why should this be, though, if Goldsworthy is right?  If Caesar and others since have faced the same problem, why haven’t we managed to work out a satisfactory solution?  We have, after all, had over two thousand years in which to think about this.  What’s so different about today?

The answer, I think, starts with the shrinking of the globe in terms of information.  In the past, the various lines of operation would have been very often under the hand of one vice-regal or pro-consular figure.  And that figure would often have been military – or at least closely associated with the military.  This made the development of a coherent approach, if not a racing certainty, at least a sporting chance.  Today, though, the rapid flow of information makes it possible for governments in capitals to maintain an overview of all this.  And in capitals you don’t have vice-regal figures.  You have people running ministries as separate entities rather than as elements of a single enterprise under one guiding hand.  So how do we get a cohesive and coherent cross-departmental approach in such circumstances?

For us in Whitehall, the role of the cabinet sub-committees has helped in the delivery of a shared understanding of the issues, and sometimes of the solutions.  At a working level, as many of you know, co-ordination between various departments has improved considerably in recent years.  Representatives from the Intelligence Services, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development attend all meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.  There’s a degree of openness and shared working which I find hugely encouraging.  And this approach has been expanded and refined in the case of Afghanistan in particular.

As a result of work carried out cross-departmentally and directed by the relevant ministers, we have a strategic approach to Afghanistan that’s both coherent and commonly owned.  It’s brought a unity of purpose to the UK’s wider effort that’s unique in my experience.  It emphasises the need for a political solution, and for it to condition the priorities and direction of military and development activities.  And it’s based on the requirement for this to be developed, owned and, ultimately, delivered by the Afghans themselves.  In essence, it provides the oversight and evolution of, what you might call, our grand strategy.

But of course we can’t just have a UK strategy for Afghanistan.  It’s an important step, but we’re part of an international effort.  And getting agreement at that level is, frankly, extraordinarily difficult.  This shouldn’t surprise us.  The challenges are large and complex; and such challenges rarely permit of simplistic solutions.  Under such conditions, is it any wonder that we have a wide variety of views?

For example, Oxfam and Senlis – organisations for which I have great respect – both published reports on Afghanistan recently.  Senlis advocated buying Afghan poppies for medical use; Oxfam rejected the notion of licensing cultivation for medical opiates.  Who’s right?  Well of course there are no easy answers.  And we’re never going to get everybody to agree on everything.  On the other hand, there are specific proposals in the Oxfam and Senlis reports on which many do agree; the problem is implementing them.  In any event, we can’t spend forever arguing about the perfect solution.  We have to come together and settle on an approach that, while it may have shortcomings, moves us forward.

So, the international community needs to agree and sustain its strategic approach.  But just as importantly, it then needs to give it effect.  To create a mechanism that will operationalize the strategy, and develop and execute the comprehensive campaign plan of which I spoke.  Those are my immediate priorities for 2008, and I’m increasingly confident that we’ll start to make progress in these areas as well.

But important though such developments are, they won’t have an immediate impact on the scale and pace at which we deliver improvements to the Afghan people.  And even when they begin to bear fruit, we won’t see any dramatic transformations.  The task is too large, too complex, too elusive.  At any time over the next several years, we’ll be able to point to specific areas that are unresolved and that often lead to unpalatable consequences.  They won’t disappear entirely until the journey’s done; a journey measured in decades rather than years, let alone months.

But a journey that’s too important to abandon; important for our security in this country, and for the international community more widely.  So it’s vital that we all demonstrate the staying power necessary to see through such a long-term endeavour, and not to be deflected by the short-term vagaries of tactical fortune.

Some of you may know George Bernard Shaw’s play ‘The Devil’s Disciple’.  The action is set in the American colonies during that unfortunate little revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.  In the final act, General Burgoyne remarks that the British soldier can stand up to anything – except the British War Office.  Some people might think that’s still true, but I would rephrase it today.  I would say that the British military can stand up to anything – except the thought that the British public do not understand and support them in what they do.  Notice I don’t say ‘support the military’ – in my mind that’s never been in doubt.  I say ‘support them in what they do – in the tasks they undertake’.

But such understanding and support has to be rooted in an appreciation of both the importance and scale of the task: an appreciation of why we should undertake it; of why the sacrifices of our people are justified; of where we aim to be in the long term; and of what we should realistically expect in the short term.

In Afghanistan, the tasks are both complex and dynamic.  Everything’s related to everything else.  There are no certainties; but there are opportunities.  Seizing those opportunities is crucial to the security of the UK and the international community.  But we can only do this successfully if we both agree and articulate the right strategic approach; and, crucially, if we all accept the fundamental need for strategic patience.  Thank you.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup
Chief of the Defence Staff
Lecture delivered at RUSI, 3 December 2007