Podcast: Petraeus on America's Chief Global Threats

TRANSCRIPT: Petraeus on America's Chief Global Threats

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show, GZERO World on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show.

Ian Bremmer:

This week I sit down with General David Petraeus, retired four star general, former director of the CIA, and the world's leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare. Today we'll be talking about the extraordinary range of issues facing the world today, including ISIS and North Korea. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Here in New York City overlooking Central Park, KKR Offices and delighted to be with General David Petraeus. He was director of the CIA, ran Central Command in charge of American forces during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now is a partner here at KKR. Delighted to have General Petraeus here with us on GZERO World today. So General, let me start right in your work, which is War on Terror and Iraq, Syria, ISIS, how do you think it's really going right now?

General David Petraeus:

Well, obviously we're on the verge of defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria, so I think it's going quite well. It's taken a while to get going. The previous administration does deserve credit, I think, however reluctant they may have been, understandably, to put forces back on the ground in Iraq, having removed them back in the late part of 2011. Really developed an approach that I think is revolutionary, and slightly overlooked. We basically have enabled others to defeat the Islamic State. What we've done is we've reconstituted Iraqi forces that performed poorly and then advised and assisted, and most importantly, enabled them, with the use of our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, precision strike assets, and industrial strength ability to fuse in intelligence.

Ian Bremmer:

ISIS gotten more capable in your view in terms of adapting?

General David Petraeus:

ISIS is very different in certain respects. One of them is their ability in cyberspace. And so I think we have to point out that even though the ground caliphate is just about taken away from them, and the ISIS army has been defeated, there will still be a virtual caliphate. In cyberspace there will still be access to these various videos, and to exhortation, instructions on how to make explosives. So this is a generational struggle in which we're engaged. And why it's so important that we've been able to help others to do the fighting and defeat the Islamic state in Iraq and in Syria, is that we have to have a sustained commitment.

General David Petraeus:

This is not the fight of a decade, much less a few years, it's going to be many decades. There will be ups and downs. We've had some important battlefield successes, but this is going to continue, and so you have to have a sustainable strategy. Sustainability is measured in the expenditure of blood and treasure, and by enabling, by advising, assisting and enabling others, they're doing the fighting on the front lines, they're doing the fighting and dying for their country, frankly. It enables us, I think, to carry this forward and to do it for the duration of this struggle.

Ian Bremmer:

To what extent is that kind of political and military coordination sustainable, once there's no longer an act active fight on the ground against the caliphate?

General David Petraeus:

Well, we've got to work very hard to try to make it sustainable. I do think that the prime minister of Iraq very much wants US forces to continue to provide certain levels of assistance, to continue training and equipping, advising and assisting. There still is going to be a fight in Iraq. There will be a fight now, it will be against residual guerilla elements and certainly terrorist cells are still there, still trying to blow up innocent civilians in cities like Baghdad and elsewhere.

General David Petraeus:

And indeed, if there is not inclusive governance, there will be fertile fields for the replanting of the seeds of ISIS 3.0. So it's incumbent on the prime minister, the Iraq Parliament, and the other leaders of Iraq, to ensure that the Sunni community feels that their incentive is to support the new Iraq, rather than to oppose it as they have done on a number of occasions.

Ian Bremmer:

If you'd say that both the Obama administration and the Trump administration deserve a fair amount of credit for getting it right, both politically and militarily against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, where does the fight now turn? To what extent is there enough focus being placed on other areas, where counterinsurgency is going to be a big priority for the Americans?

General David Petraeus:

Sure. Well, first of all, I've always said that I had no doubt, in fact even in the darkest days for Iraq, that with US support, with US advice and assistance, that Iraqi forces reconstituted would be able to defeat the Islamic state. And that has turned out to be true. But I've also said that the battle that mattered most was not the battle against ISIS, the army, if you will. It's the battle after that. It's the battle for power and resources in the land of the two rivers. A country that has vast resources. Of course, not just energy, but also the unique amount of water. The only oil producing country of any magnitude that has that level of water in the Arab world, and a variety of other mineral blessings as well.

General David Petraeus:

And it has always been the case. This has always been about, again, who has that power in terms of government, and the ability to divvy up the resources?

Ian Bremmer:

So, we've done the driving, we've done the leading, we've been effective on the military front in Iraq. Would you argue that diplomatically the Iranians have actually been winning, so far?

General David Petraeus:

The Iranians are very good at spying a wave and surfing it, and they have made the most of their opportunities because of the Syrian Civil War, and because of the advent of ISIS in Iraq. Now Iraq knows that they always have to have a relationship with Iran, but just because they're two Shia countries, I think people shouldn't leap to the conclusion that Iraq wants to be, metaphorically speaking, the 51st state of Iran. They do not. They're very conscious of the differences in language and ethnic and everything else, but they do have to have a relationship.

Ian Bremmer:

So, on the other side of that obviously is Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a lot going on there. Before we talk about the domestic, let's talk about the geopolitical. Where do you give them good marks, or lousy marks, in their ability to counter what has clearly been a geopolitical wave against them over the past few years?

General David Petraeus:

Well, they've had limited ability to do certain actions in certain places, certainly. Although they have certainly been part of the coalition against the Islamic state, and a significant part of it. They have flown, they've dropped bombs, and they've been engaged in that. But of course they've had a major involvement in Yemen. And I'm one of those who I think I'm a bit more understanding of what's taken place there, perhaps, because I remember when Saudi Arabia was criticized as wanting to fight to the last American, and they decided here that the Shia Houthis, supported by Iran, who couldn't get what they wanted at the political bargaining tables in Sana, so they decided to get it with force of arms.

Ian Bremmer:

Are the Saudis going to face, in Yemen at the end of a military campaign, the same kind of problem that the Americans are facing in Iraq? But in a sense on a much worse scale, because the economy-

General David Petraeus:

The economy.

Ian Bremmer:

... is nowhere.

General David Petraeus:

I think it's more challenging. You don't have the prospect of a $100 billion of oil revenue and a variety of other mineral and natural gas assets.

Ian Bremmer:

YOu look at the state of the region as you've just described it, you look at the state of the economic and the governance problems. You see that the Iranians are gaining influence. Can you bet on the Saudis in that environment, and should the Americans be betting on them as much as they seem to be in the Trump administration?

General David Petraeus:

Well, we certainly need to have high hopes for them, and we need to help them in every way that we can. Let's recognize that Saudi Arabia is not, as someone asked me the other day, "How's the Saudi transition going?" This is not a transition. There are several revolutions ongoing in Saudi Arabia. Several of them very heartening, some others a bit less. So, the Crown Prince, who now has consolidated power with the support of his father, and the approval of his father, the king, is embarked on a revolution to completely retool the Saudi economy. They have to do that.

General David Petraeus:

You can do the math, take the amount of sovereign wealth fund, less than 500 billion, recognize they probably need to keep at least 200 of that untouched to keep the banking system and the currency, and so forth, solvent. And they're running deficits that are somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 to $60 billion a year, perhaps even a bit more. You can do the math. They have to transform this economy. They have to diversify it. They cannot continue to rely on just oil exports as the driver of that economy, especially with the expectation that prices are not going to rebound.

Ian Bremmer:

No. Clearly they need to make the changes.

General David Petraeus:

So that's a revolution.

Ian Bremmer:

Yes.

General David Petraeus:

But to enable that revolution, I'm pretty certain the Crown Prince realizes that he's got to drive it. It can't be done the way that they've done business in the past, which is relatively consensual, lots of meetings, discussions and very, very slow pace.

General David Petraeus:

The conservative forces have been quieted. Dozens of clerics have been removed, or silenced, and now of course there's a revolution in governance. Again, it used to be different, it's consolidated, and that's been facilitated by the removal of a number of individuals who might have been competitors to the now Crown Prince, including the previous Crown Prince. And most recently Prince Mutaib, the head of the National Guard. As you know, there's three different security organizations, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, and the National Guard. They used to be separate. Different elements of the family that take turns being Crown Prince, and so forth, worked it all out. This power is now concentrated in one individual, and he is going to drive this country and do the very best that he can to transform it, in the time that they have, which is certainly less than 10 years, before the money runs out and they have challenges in the world markets getting more.

Ian Bremmer:

Massive transformation they're trying to do understandable, at home, for reasons that, as you say, economically doesn't take a rocket scientist, they have to do it. Question is doing that at the same time that you're engaged in a pretty aggressive regional strategy, when the geopolitics are going against you. One, is that something that we should believe in? And two, do you think the American response so far has been appropriate?

General David Petraeus:

Look, we certainly don't have any love for Iran. This is a country responsible for the hundreds of our soldiers killed by Iranian provided explosively formed projectiles, when I was privileged to command the surge in Iraq. Lots of other blood on their hands for other attacks on US elements in the region, barracks and the rest. And a very different approach to how they would like to take the region. Clearly would like to be the hegemon, at the very least, in the Shia portions of the Middle East.

General David Petraeus:

I think the aggressive actions, this malign activity, does need to be resisted, and I think that's what we are about doing. I think we didn't do a sufficient amount of that at some times in the past. And I think that that not doing that has beget more aggressive actions. Again, like revisionist powers throughout history, if they're not met with firmness, they will continue to go until they meet something that is firm. The same is true, by the way, I would contend of Russia and of North Korea-

Ian Bremmer:

And China.

General David Petraeus:

... and even China, knowing that China is also our number one trading partner, as well as our number one strategic competitor and the relationship that is the most important in the entire world.

Ian Bremmer:

I was literally going there, which is that this notion that there are challenges out there and the Americans need to be assertive in checking them. And clearly you could make the same case of the Americans, vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine. You could make the same case the Americans, vis-a-vis China, North Korea. In that regard, do you think the strategies being offered right now by the Trump administration are up to the challenge?

General David Petraeus:

Well, I think we're still in the early stages, certainly of this administration, putting that strategy together. I do agree with the rebalance to Asia that was pursued by the previous administration, although sometimes it really was a pivot pf trying to get away from the Middle East and do something where the history of the next century will be written, of course, in the Asia Pacific. So it's still early days, I think, in that regard. It has to be pragmatic, has to be sustainable again, has to be prudent. Should be firm, but not provocative. And again, I think that is still all very much a work in progress. And the centerpiece right now, of course, is getting China's attention to do more about essentially a client state, at least in the sense that 90% of the trade goes to and from North Korea-

Ian Bremmer:

North Korea.

General David Petraeus:

... through China. And so getting China to do more to bring pressure on North Korea to stop the missile testing and stop the nuclear testing, I think is the imperative of the moment.

Ian Bremmer:

And you said perhaps South Korea, perhaps Vietnam, is this a multilateral strategy? There's a need to be a greater defense coordination that is institutionalized, with the Americans in Asia?

General David Petraeus:

I don't know how much more you can institutionalize. We obviously have alliance relationships with four of the countries there, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. We have defense agreements with several others, Philippines and so on. And India, which of course was non-aligned, now more clearly I think aligned with the United States, but by no means ready for any kind of alliance relationship. But who knows down the road how that partnership could evolve.

General David Petraeus:

So I certainly think that is an effort worth pursuing. Again, not in a way that's provocative to China, but certainly in a way that does show China that there are limits to its activities. Arguably, we should have shown that more firmly much earlier on, when the first island building began and certainly when the militarization of those islands began. The problem now is of course the facts on the ground are established, and you're not going to roll those-

Ian Bremmer:

And they're getting more established every day.

General David Petraeus:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

So, how do you effectively check China when their military capabilities in their backyard, and their economic capabilities, are growing so dramatically, and their willingness to develop political leadership to back that up is also behind it?

General David Petraeus:

I think this is the challenge of the next decades, if not longer. The rise of China has returned us to an era of great power rivalries. Something we didn't have for the 20 or 25 years after the fall of the wall, the disillusion of the Soviet Union and Operation Desert Storm. It's back now very significantly. I'm not prepared to say it's a bipolar moment, by any means. It's still very much evolving. And of course the resurgence of Russia is another complicating factor in this whole great power rivalry era that we've now entered. But for the next few decades or longer, this is going to be the challenge that we're going to have to deal with.

General David Petraeus:

It's a bit concerning to hear some of the rhetoric from the 19th Party Congress. How assertive it is, certainly not hiding the light under a bushel any longer, talking about aspirations to be the global leader and with certain timelines, and all the rest of that. Now recognizing this is our number one trading partner, as well as, again, our number one strategic competitor, we obviously have to get this right. There should be certainly more pressure on certain trade practices. There certainly should be concerns voiced about some of the other practices that are being implemented now.

General David Petraeus:

But it's a very, very interesting moment. And by the way, I've encouraged some old departments in which I taught, and so forth, in the past, to reestablish the comparative politics courses that went by at the end of history, again, in 1990, '91, because China's system is now a very viable, in the eyes of many, alternative to the US system. And so the sense that at the end of history, with the Soviet Union dissolution, that that system was completely invalidated, you see a competitive system now, single party rule, very different freedoms and so forth, but very successful, economically achieving something no other country in history has ever done, two decades straight of double digit GDP growth year after year.

Ian Bremmer:

So this brings me back to, in a sense, it's kind of like the discussion we had on Iraq where the Americans understand how to do the military piece, but dealing with the institutions, the politics are more challenging. Now we take this globally, on the China front, how do you think the Americans... Are we capable? And have we been capable under the Trump administration of responding to that challenge?

General David Petraeus:

Intellectually speaking, if you will, we're capable. We have the capability. The question is whether we can organize properly for this, whether we can get the big ideas fully right and fully developed. And then whether we can implement them. And so this is where you have to look at the State Department, and note that there are numerous of the assistant secretary positions, including Near East Affairs, Far East and so forth, that have not been filled, and to my knowledge, haven't even had people nominated in many of those cases.

General David Petraeus:

So when you get into a challenge, for example, say the Saudis and the Emiratis and their differences with Qatar, that's something an assistant secretary would go out and just travel back and forth, and maybe he brings in the secretary or the deputy, or an undersecretary, to seal a deal. But we've had three acting assistant secretaries of NEA, and none of those can go out with the kind of clout that you have if you are a Senate confirmed assistant secretary. So we've got to get on with that, to ensuring that we have the organizational capability.

Ian Bremmer:

So Tillerson's top priority as Secretary of State and the internal reorg and cutback, would not be your priority.

General David Petraeus:

That can be a priority, but he's got to populate these positions.

Ian Bremmer:

You want to say what's surprised you on the concern side over the last year? Where do you think the biggest holes are? And what the Americans need to be doing to check these threats around the world?

General David Petraeus:

I think one of the lessons that we learned in the past 16 years is that you cannot counter terrorists like ISIS and Al-Qaeda with just counter-terrorist force operations. Military action is often necessary, but it is seldom sufficient. You have to have a whole of government approach. Now, it's ideal that in Iraq and, lesser degrees, some of the other countries where we're engaged, that others are performing a lot of those other tasks, and indeed that it's their soldiers who are on the front lines in the fighting. That makes it more sustainable for us. And that's important because it's a sustained commitment.

Ian Bremmer:

Despite all the military successes, you don't want to see an unbalanced capacity of the United States, and the other pieces need to be prioritized just as much.

General David Petraeus:

I was one of those who was asked by successive secretaries of state, along with Admiral Mullen, I might add, to go up to Capitol Hill and to speak to the appropriation subcommittee that dealt with funding for the State Department, is because I was a champion for their budget as well as obviously for the defense budget. And the reason is if they can't do, or don't have the capability to do what we need them to do, the country needs them to do, and the military needs them to do, then oftentimes the military has to do it. And we may or may not be as good at that task as they are, the professionals, needless to say.

Ian Bremmer:

So, what surprised you from the Trump administration, in terms of foreign policy and national security, almost at one year right now.

General David Petraeus:

I know the team around the president exceedingly well. It's a superb national security team, so maybe it's less surprising to me than it might be to others, but I think many individuals have been struck by the fact that despite the campaign rhetoric, the post-campaign commentary, I think American foreign policy would be assessed as having more continuity than change. Certainly there are areas of change, although we're still not certain of how big that change will be, and those would be in trade climate and immigration policies.

Ian Bremmer:

But on national security policies?

General David Petraeus:

But on the broad national security policies, after criticism of NATO and so forth, ultimately embraced it.

Ian Bremmer:

Iraq.

General David Petraeus:

Criticized China, embraced the One China policy. Criticized Japan and Korea to a degree-

Ian Bremmer:

The alliances.

General David Petraeus:

... not bearing their share of this, and actually has now developed very good relationships. Continued, and I think doing better, in fact, in implementation of the fight against ISIS in Iraq and in Syria, removed some of the restrictions that were still there. Devolved some authority appropriately in my view. And contrary to his own inclinations, as he explained, he didn't want to stay in Afghanistan, much less reinforced, but came to the realization that we went to Afghanistan for a reason, it's because the 9/11 attacks were planned there, and the initial training of the attackers was conducted there when the Taliban controlled the bulk of the country.

General David Petraeus:

And we stayed for a reason to make sure that that sanctuary is not reestablished, which Al-Qaeda and ISIS have tried to do. There's something about Eastern Afghanistan that really appeals to them. So again, you can work your way around all of these different elements of American foreign policy, and generally it's a bit more continuity than change, despite the occasional-

Ian Bremmer:

To be fair, when Trump first came in, the national security team looked very different, right? You had Flynn, his national security advisor. You had Bannon, you had Gorka, you had a lot of people that would've raised views from lots of external observers that they'd be moving in a different direction. Those guys are all gone. The people that you're referring to that you know very well are folks that I think most observers would feel pretty comfortable with, actually, running the shop. So there has been a big personnel change too.

General David Petraeus:

Well, some of the early appointments as well, I think. Again, secretary Mattis, I think Secretary Tillerson substantively has been very solid, frankly, again, much more continuity than change in his approach. And in some of the areas where there have been slight changes, I think perhaps even for the better. But I think that's a bit jarring to some people who, obviously you have to read the tweets, but you can't get just riveted on those. You need to follow the troops, follow the money, and follow the substance of policies, and you'll see that in NATO Europe, there's more troops out in the Baltic states, and in Eastern Poland there's more money there for refurbishing and rebuilding some of the defense capabilities that we drew down in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the wall.

General David Petraeus:

There's even two new NATO commands going to be established. One to facilitate the logistics of getting out to Eastern Europe, and the other focused on maritime challenges that have reemerged with the resurgence of Russia.

Ian Bremmer:

General David Petraeus-

General David Petraeus:

Great to be with you.

Ian Bremmer:

Thank you very much. Good to see you friend.

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