David Petraeus
Retired U.S. Army General; Chairman, KKR Global Institute
A strategic leader has to perform four tasks well to be successful … These are to get the big ideas right, to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization, to oversee their implementation, and to determine how to refine them in order to do it all again, and again, and again.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan is joined by a remarkable thinker and public servant who has led an exceptional career in the military, public sector, and private sector.
David Petraeus is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a retired four-star general in the U.S. Army. Across his 37 years of military service, General Petraeus held some of the Army’s most important leadership roles, serving as commander of U.S. Central Command as well as leading U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the nation’s most notable public intellectuals, he has served in positions at some of our nation’s premier academic institutions. In 2013, General Petraeus became the inaugural chairman of the KKR Global Institute, an arm of the global investment firm established to identify and cultivate over-the-horizon opportunities while also hedging against risk across a variety of fronts.
Through the course of their conversation, Alan and General Petraeus cover a wide variety of topics, including the general’s distinguished career in the U.S. Army, the leadership principles he has developed over the years, and the course he has charted for the KKR Global Institute as its head. At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions around the globe, General Petraeus offers deep insights into the challenges facing the United States that statesmen and business leaders alike will find helpful.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
General David H. Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) is a Partner at KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in May 2013. He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and OneStream, a Strategic Advisor for Sempra, a venture investor in more than 25 startups, and engaged in a variety of academic endeavors. Prior to joining KKR, General Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer , five of which were in combat, including command of the Surge in Iraq, command of U.S. Central Command, and command of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Following retirement from the military and after Senate confirmation by a vote of 94-0, he served as Director of the CIA during a period of significant achievements in the global war on terror, the establishment of important Agency digital initiatives, and substantial investments in the Agency’s most important asset, its human capital.
General Petraeus graduated with distinction from the U.S. Military Academy and is the only person in Army history to be the top graduate of both the demanding U.S. Army Ranger School and the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. He also earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
General Petraeus taught international relations and economics at the U.S. Military Academy in the mid-1980s, he was a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Honors College of the City University of New York from 2013 through 2016, and he was for 6 years a Judge Widney Professor at the University of Southern California and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. He is currently a Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute, Co-Chairman of the Global Advisory Council of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Senior Vice President of the Royal United Services Institute, and a Member of the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Aspen Strategy Group, as well as a member of the boards of the Atlantic Council, the Institute for the Study of War, and over a dozen veterans service organizations. He is also (to his amazement) a LinkedIn Top Voice.
Over the past 20 years, General Petraeus was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by U.S. News and World Report, a runner-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, the Daily Telegraph man of the year, a Time 100 selectee, Princeton University’s Madison Medalist, and one of Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 public intellectuals in three different years. General Petraeus has earned numerous honors, awards, and decorations, including four Defense Distinguished Service Medals, the Bronze Star Medal for Valor, two NATO Meritorious Service Medals, the Combat Action Badge, the Ranger Tab, and Master Parachutist and Air Assault Badges. He has also been decorated by 14 foreign countries and he is believed to be the only person who, while in uniform, threw out the first pitch of a World Series game and did the coin toss for a Super Bowl.
Clips from this Episode
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on Sirius XM, and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. Our guest today is a remarkable thinker, leader, and a public servant, who has led an exceptional career in the military, the public sector, and the private sector. David Petraeus is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency–the CIA–and retired four star general in the United States Army. Across his 37 years of military service, the general held some of the Army's most important leadership roles, serving as commander of the US Central Command as well as leading US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the nation's most notable public intellectuals, he has served in academic positions at some of our nation's premier academic institutions, including at Harvard, Georgetown, and at the US Military Academy, among many others. In 2013, General Petraeus became the inaugural chairman of the KKR Global Institute, an arm of the global investment firm, established to identify and cultivate ‘over the horizon opportunities,’ while also hedging against risk across a variety of fronts. He serves as a board member and strategic adviser to a variety of companies. And as a venture investor, he has backed more than two dozen startups.
I'm thrilled to have the general join us today. As geopolitical threats continue to proliferate across the globe, we all stand to benefit from the advice and wisdom of a leader like General Petraeus. General, it is wonderful to have you on “Leadership Matters.” I wanted to have you on for a long time. It is a pleasure to have you today.
David Petraeus
Great to be with you, Alan. Thank you.
Alan Fleischmann
Let's talk a little bit about the journey at the very beginning. You were born and raised in Cornwall-on-Hudson in New York. Your father was a Dutch immigrant and former Merchant Marine Captain, while your mother was a librarian. What was life like around the house growing up? How many brothers and sisters? Tell us a little bit about your parents? I would love to hear a bit about that.
David Petraeus
Well, my parents were deeply into books, into learning, and into history. They really both, I think, we're truly committed to a variety of intellectual pursuits. So they put a great deal of stock in academics. The community in which I grew up in, Cornwall-on-Hudson, and the town of Cornwall, which had the high school, was a wonderful place to be a kid. There were terrific programs, especially when it came to athletics. They're great schools.
It was seven miles north of West Point, which in a lot of ways overshadowed Cornwall. A lot of the community had ties to West Point in some variety or other. I remember when I was a newspaper boy for two and a half years in the morning, I think at least half of my customers were either retired West Point graduates or serving as officers on the staff and faculty at West Point or civilian members of the West Point Community. Our high school soccer coach, who coached us to the championship our senior year, glory days and all that actually had coached the West Point soccer team to the national championship when he had been in uniform.
So it's a great place to grow up. We were right on the Hudson. My dad, as you noted, was a former ship's captain. He came to the United States when the Nazis overran Holland. He was on a ship at that time, they all signed on with the US Merchant Marine. He ultimately was the captain of a US merchant marine liberty boat. He did a Murmansk run, which was very, very hazardous: half the ships in that convoy were sunk, but he survived the war. Again, despite being a captain at the age of 29, they could make ships but they couldn't produce captains and they were losing a lot of them in the early years to the U boats and the battleships and so forth off the coast of Norway, in particular.
As we grew up, my dad taught me how to sail. I had my own sailboat as a kid. We had a family boat, as well. There were lots of athletics: baseball, soccer, as I mentioned, which we eventually won a championship, and then I played for the West Point Ski Team. Same with that at West Point. It seems somewhat natural to do what I did in a way: I think a lot of what we do in life is because we admire others who have done it or are doing it, to be like Mike. And in my case, Mike was a West Point cadet, a West Point graduate, who led me to apply to West Point to go there, and to graduate from that. And that led, of course, to a military career. I found that I really enjoyed the combination at West Point, in the military, of an emphasis on three areas. The intellectual, if you will, academics at West Point, but that continues, even after you're commissioned as an officer; the athletic aspect, the physical component for an infantry officer obviously is very important–soldiering is still an outdoor sport, even now, and it very much was then and I was fortunate to be in some great units over the years; and then the leadership component, you're of course giving leadership opportunities at West Point, you're given phenomenal leadership opportunities at a young age as a commissioned officer.
I enjoyed that combination. Over the years, just when you say, “Okay, I've been under a rucksack for, I don't know what it was six or seven or eight years at this point in time, maybe doing something else would be interesting and stimulating.” You go to graduate school, in my case, I was allowed to go to Princeton. You immerse yourself in that after a couple of years, you're ready to get back under a rucksack again, you're given leadership opportunities, and so forth. So that combination, again, I found very rewarding, very stimulating, and frankly, I realized that I could perform quite well in those different elements.
At West Point, I was what's called a “star man”: top 5% of the class, a cadet captain, on the brigade staff, and varsity Letterman on the ski team at West Point–in there, we won our division every year, went to the eastern Collegiate Championships. This is when skiers were still truly there. We're not professionals, yet, it was still an “amateur sport,” in quotes. But we would go to the Easterns. And we'd see what the real skiers were all about, because they would come home from the World Cup circuit for the University of Vermont University, New Hampshire and one or two other schools. It was more than a bit humbling. But it was a phenomenal experience. When you put it all together, it just continued to be appealing to me as I made my way, first through West Point, and then through the early years in the Army. I was certainly thinking about what could you do on the outside and so forth, but was always drawn back to that unique combination.
Over time, the challenges, the rewarding aspects, the fulfillment of being a leader of larger and larger organizations, and of starting to perform the tasks of a strategic leader despite not being one yet–that means, at the very top of an organization, say commanding the surge in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or one of those kinds of positions but doing so within the confines of what the truly strategic leaders above you actually establish as the right and left limits–again, that was hugely rewarding over the years. I got to do it in some really great units, for example, commanding a battalion and a 101st Airborne Division, Air Assault Brigade and the 82nd Airborne Division. All really, hugely fortunate, truly privileged, and enormously enjoyable. Recognizing along the way, again, over and over, that life is a competitive endeavor. You really have to commit, you have to prepare for the moment that might arrive. If it does. And again, you have to strive for excellence, and I was fortunate along the way to establish a pretty good record in that regard. Including, for example, being the top graduate of my Ranger School class together with a lot of my great West Point classmates, and then the top graduate of the year long Command General Staff College Course, as well.
Alan Fleischmann
When did you know you wanted to go for graduate degrees as well?
David Petraeus
Well, it was interesting because I had a number of extraordinary mentors over the years. But one in particular was General Jack Galvin. I first worked for him when he was a two star general–a division commander of between 15 and 20,000 troops and also an installation, Fort Stewart, in the southeast of Georgia. He was a true soldier, scholar and ultimately, statesman. I worked for him three times personally over the years: first in that assignment as his aide when he was a two star general, then as a special assistant temporary duty when he was the commander in chief of US Southern Command, responsible for essentially all of Central and South America, based out of Panama, in a period when there are multiple insurgencies going on and my first introduction to that kind of warfare, and then a speechwriter for him when he was the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe.
Early on, he was someone again who I admired enormously: he had written several books, taught at West Point, and was a battlefield hero. He was exceedingly forthright, he had actually been fired in Vietnam for refusing to call in a body count that he hadn't verified, and he believed was inflated. So a truly great leader in every respect. I remember, he asked me as we were coming along in the year that I was his aide, ”Look, I know you have these great alternatives ahead of you, you could go to the Ranger Battalion.” That's the whole reason I got into Fort Stewart was to be there, and have a shot at that. And then they accepted me. “Or you can go to graduate school,” he said, “I know which one you'd sort of liked to do, because it probably would be more fun than the other. But have you ever thought about raising your intellectual sights farther than the maximum effective range of an M16 machine gun?” I somewhat jokingly said, “Well, no, I mean, if it's beyond that range, you have artillery or mortars or something like that.”
But I got the point. And it was really a very, very important decision, a very important juncture. It turned out I was actually chosen for the Staff College several years early: there was one year when this happened, where there were eight or nine of us captains who were selected to go as an experiment. We were the youngest in the class. By two years, there was no one in the year before us, all the others were majors. But so I had to do that. And then after that, I still had time to go to the Ranger Battalion, but I chose grad school.
Alan Fleischmann
We would just refer to it the Army's Command and General Staff College?
David Petraeus
Yes. And again, as I mentioned a little bit to my surprise, because they necessarily post your grades all the time, I ended up being the number one graduate. So ironically, I was the youngest student in the class and also the top graduate. So I went to graduate school and there decided that I don't want to just get a master's degree, I want to try to complete all the coursework, general exams, PhD dissertation proposal, and so forth, for a PhD, which required an enormous amount of additional work. But I made it through and then finished up when I was teaching at West Point. But that was a huge decision, as I mentioned, it really was one that was life changing, because the experience in graduate school where you very much learn a degree of intellectual humility, where you recognize that there are brilliant people in the world who just don't see it the way that you do, who come at it from a very different set of basic assumptions and departure point, that's really very salutary.
Years later, when people would ask me when I was a two-star in Mosul, “how is it that you seem to adapt to this, as well as you did? What was the inspiration for this? What did you draw on? Was it the example of General MacArthur and Japan or something like that?” And I said, “gosh, no, it was a couple of things.” But it was sort of Mayor Giuliani and the broken window concept that he had: you've got to keep the broken window from ultimately becoming the crack house.
Beyond that, I said it was in graduate school where I learned some very basic fundamentals about political philosophy and economics. And those have stood us in very good stead. So that was a life changing experience. As I mentioned, I went on to then be a speechwriter for him during the time of the intermediate nuclear force agreement, which was huge in that day and now a little bit of a footnote in history, but very significant for the Supreme Allied Commander. It resulted in lots of interface with President Reagan and Congress, with all the heads of government in Europe and so forth.
But all of this, again, I found very, very stimulating. Around the time that I'd get sort of tired of drafting speeches or what have you, I had an opportunity to go back to an infantry unit, put on a rucksack and, and hump with the troops again, to chase them, lead them, inspire them, motivate them and to upgrade my professional capabilities when it comes to performing the tasks of an infantry leader at increasing levels of responsibility.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. The combination of the intellectual building, the degrees, and being on the ground–actually commanding and starting to lead–that was a pretty extraordinary proposition. Was that common?
David Petraeus
It was not actually, to be true. I had a very non-standard career in a lot of ways. In fact, I often sought what I've later described as “out of my intellectual comfort zone experiences” to take the path less traveled and to do the different thing. I wasn't necessarily conscious of this in the beginning, but over time, it became, just to give you an example, instead of going to the infantry officer advanced course, as a young captain after several years in a unit, I said I'd like to go to the Armor Officer advanced course. And to increase my chances of doing that, I did the infantry officer advanced course by correspondence. So I checked that block, if you will: said I don't need to go back to Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the infantry, “send me to the home of armor,” I just sort of like to do something different.
Some years later, instead of doing the work college, I did a fellowship at Georgetown, as I mentioned, instead of just staying infantry after I did the graduate school at Princeton. And I was also extraordinarily fortunate to have what might be termed “vantage point positions.” You learn about leadership in a variety of different ways. One is just formal education. In the professional military education system, every few years you're back in a school, you study leadership in various concepts and tactics, techniques and procedures. Then you exercise leadership: you are a platoon leader, company commander, battalion commander, brigade commander, you study on your own, you read about other leaders, what did they do? What can you learn from the experiences of those who came before us? And then you watch others, whether it's in units or at very high levels, and I was privileged to have, again, some positions that provided a really a perspective–a vantage point–that was extraordinary. I was the aide and assistant executive officer for the chief of staff in the army for two years. “I didn't want the job,” I told him, so he said, “I wouldn't want you if you did. Report.” And I did and it happened to be for one of, I think, the Army's greatest chiefs ever, General Carl Vuono. I learned about training and readiness and doctrine and all of this and it all paid off in the invasion of Panama, the operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the The Gulf War.
Being at his right hand, literally, the guy who traveled with him–the executive officer didn't travel with him, I did and was with him literally from the moment that he stepped out of the house in the morning until we delivered him back to quarters at night–was an incredible experience to watch from that close of a position.
As I mentioned, being speech writer for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe: again, another extraordinary position. In my negotiation, when they asked me to do the job because they pulled me out of West Point a year early, I said “okay, but there's several conditions.” They said, “seriously, what? You’re a major and you're gonna have conditions for working with the four star NATO commander?” I said, “Yeah, and one of them is I have to ride with him to the speech because I knew him by now really well, I've worked for him as a two star than as a three star and when he was a four star in Latin America, and I understood that when he's going to a speech he needs the guy with him who drafted it, he doesn't need some other executive officer, he needs the guy that actually knows the details of speech because he getting spun up and you’ve got to get him fired up.” You’ve got to give him energy. Some of these long days, you’ve got to say, “hey, fire up boss. Eye of the tiger. I know e’ve already had you give four speeches already today. But this crowd is the first time they're ever gonna see you and probably the only time.” I'd been with him enough that I could do that and he would tolerate that. He also had me grade his speeches, which was really quite interesting, something I never could quite bring myself to do with my speech writers–I’d ask them how it went but I didn't ask for a specific grade to the way that he would.
So these vantage points were incredible. And then to be the executive officer, essentially the internal Chief of Staff for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for two years. Another incredible vantage point. And that was during Bosnia, Kosovo-era campaign, strikes on Saddam Hussein, strikes on Osama bin Laden, and a variety of other operations.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. How much of this actually was you're thinking it through strategically, “this is where I want to land,” or just filling out the whole leadership aspect so that you are ready for opportunity?
David Petraeus
Well, it's a bit of both, I think, you know, I think you have a sense of what would be a great follow on assignment. But the truth is that these are positions for which you have to be requested. You can't hold your hand up and say, “Hey, I'd like to be the executive to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Thank you very much.” We’ll let the chairman select his Exec. And so some of this is luck. Some of it is timing. But most of it is reputation. They don't hire you because you're a congenial fellow–at least my bosses didn't hire me because I played golf well or something like that–in fact, happily, none of them played golf, which I still think is a “good walk spoiled,” as someone once put it.
It's about can you produce? Can you help them expand their impact? Can you oversee what it is that they're going to do, and enable them to literally be all they can be in that position because of what you're going to add in terms of organization, in terms of interpersonal skills, and especially, frankly, in terms of intellectual contributions, helping them distill their ideas, helping them present them; oversee the speech writers, the legal counsels, the aides, the trip planners, the admin people, the schedulers, all of this stuff, and it goes on and on. And again, an extraordinary vantage point.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I would sit with him and receive the President's daily brief as he received it from the CIA, as an example. So these were great learning experiences. Certainly, again, I was alert to these possibilities. But at the end of the day, it's having a reputation that leads people when the chairman is asked who should be in this position. They say, “Hey, I know that person for that. And it's you.” So again, life, as I said, it's a competitive endeavor, you've got to achieve excellence. You do it not just in terms of personal excellence, but also as the best team player you can be. And then again, sometimes timing and luck play into it without question. But I've often noted that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. In fact, I think that's a famous Roman philosopher, who first offered that particular thought. And what I tried to do is just be ready for those opportunities as they came along.
Alan Fleischmann
Obviously, the combination of the academics–was that experience also practical as well?
David Petraeus
Very much so. There's a lot of substantive components to that, and just refining your writing and speaking skills is of enormous consequence. At the end of the day, that's what strategic leadership is all about. But it's also basic concepts of whatever it may be, political, philosophical, economic theory, organizational structures, and so forth.
Keep in mind that, at the very top, a strategic leader has to perform four tasks well to be successful. These are to get the big ideas right, to get the strategy right, to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization and to all other stakeholders, to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. That's what we normally think of as leadership, by the way, and that's what most people do, because they're not actually forming the biggest of the big ideas. They are receiving them and then they're translating into ideas at their level, which is equally important. But overseeing the implementation of the big idea, that's how do you spend your time? It's the example, energy, inspiration, motivation, what are the metrics that you use to tell you whether you're winning or losing? How do you attract great talent? How do you retain it? How do you develop it? How do you incentivize? How do you get rid of those that aren't measuring up, and so forth. It's all of that.
And then there's a fourth task often overlooked. That is to determine how you need to refine the big idea. So you can do it again. And again. And again. An example of a firm that didn't get that right is of course, Kodak, which was the greatest film photography company, in its day, and had 2000 patents on digital photography, but failed to perform task number four sufficiently quickly and to adopt as the new big idea, everything about digital photography. Others got there first, it never recovered, and has never been the company that it was. It's tried many times to find another big idea. But without the kind of success that it had when it was the greatest film photography company.
Netflix, on the other hand, under Reed Hastings, until now at least, has done so brilliantly. First, determining that we'll put Blockbuster out of business, because we'll get movies in the hands of customers without brick and mortar. They communicate that, implement it, get down here two years later, here we go. Well, Blockbuster is going out of business, but others are in this business. Well, let's have a new big idea. Have them download movies. Now, because broadband speeds are fast enough. That's the new big idea. A few years after that new big idea, we're going to produce content for 100 million dollars just on House of Cards alone and a bunch of other iconic series that we all revisited during the pandemic. Then a fourth big idea is that we're going to make major motion pictures, and we're going to go out and buy a bunch of movie studios. I think they bought two or so and ultimately had more Academy Awards a couple of years ago than any other motion picture studio. Now they're having to look for a new big idea because the pandemic's over, viewership is down a bit, or certainly not growing, its competition is much greater, others are producing content. It's a more crowded space. And so now they're exploring other ideas.
Reed Hastings has done this brilliantly. Even if they did produce as one of their first major motion pictures what is, I think, the worst movie that Brad Pitt was ever in, where he played General Stan McChrystal in a movie about Afghanistan. It was really, frankly, not that great, I've never even been able to stay awake to see my part in it when Russell Crowe plays me later on in the movie. Part of it is also that I've never gotten over the fact that Brad Pitt didn't play me! But I've communicated that to Reed.
So what is the academic component of the ability to get the big ideas, right, in particular? To communicate them effectively, to oversee their implementation, determine how to refine them, and do it again and again. If this is a factor of a number of different elements, then the academic pieces is one, the experiences are another, study is another, watching others is another, but it all comes together to produce the ability to perform these tasks properly.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. I love that you're focusing so much on the power of the word, and the power of messaging, because it's often not understood that even if you don’t have the greatest ideas in the world–
David Petraeus
It matters enormously. Think of the success of, for example, President Reagan. He settled on some very clear big ideas, communicated them brilliantly, oversaw their implementation pretty relentlessly, but happily through the happy warrior kind of approach, and determined how to refine them, because there were some setbacks and some shortcomings along the way, And then just kept doing it again and again and again, and achieved extraordinary success over the years, by his application–his performance–of these four tasks.
Alan Fleischmann
The fact that strategy needs to be messaged properly, obviously, positioning can only happen if there's great messaging and strategy. As you climbed through the ranks in the 90s in Haiti, Kuwait, Bosnia, and obviously, famously, leading the 101st airborne division through 2003. Tell us a little bit about that experience then, and then obviously in Iraq afterwards. All along, as you were establishing a name for your leadership, were you fulfilling what you envisioned and imagined you would do? Or was there a bit of surprise during any part of the journey?
David Petraeus
I don't know that you sit back and ask yourself, “Am I fulfilling when I’d hoped?” You're on a treadmill, you're moving, you're doing what is required of you. Certainly, you try to sit back and reflect, but I would sit back and reflect about the challenges at hand much more than you if I was fulfilling my destiny, or something as esoteric as that.
Look, I was very fortunate to take command of the 101st airborne division in the summer of 2002, to have the seven/eight months of preparation for deployment to Kuwait, and then the invasion of Iraq, and then the first year in Iraq. In particular, prior to that, to have watched counterinsurgency operations in Central America with General Galvin, to have been the United Nations Force Chief of Operations–not the US, so an international coalition position in Haiti–a year in Bosnia, a combination of peacekeeping with a very, very sophisticated and refined campaign plan with all of government's approach, which we haven't tried to implement in Iraq but without all the other organizations because they'd all been scared off unfortunately. Also, there was man hunting together with a clandestine Joint Task Force Justice Assured Forward, we were the forward element, I was the deputy commander of it. We had a constant rotation of special mission units and other special operations and intelligence forces, a great partnership with the CIA and FBI. All this is publicly known and been released, but at the time it was very closely held.
In that US hat I wore, we were going first after PIFWCs–persons indicted for war crimes–war criminals, essentially, who were going to be sent to the Hague. And then we turned our focus on extremists in the wake of 9/11: Islamist extremists, and found out that the country was a waypoint from Pakistan into the Schengen zone of Europe. And we endeavored to shut that down and go after four NGOs in particular that were supporting the movement of these extremists, in addition to a number of individual extremists who happened to be in the country after 9/11. That was of enormous value.
We arrived in Iraq and the conventional fight was tougher, I think, in some ways than people actually reflect back on now. The logistics of it were incredibly challenging, we had to enter 54 helicopters in the 101st airborne division. Just the fuel alone for that was staggering in quantities; we had to create our own refueling base out in the middle of the desert. It all worked. The troops were magnificent. Then we were sent north to Mosul in the northern part of Iraq, Ninewa province. Very, very short notice, I think it was about 36 hours or so worth of notice, because that area was completely out of control. There was a small marine battalion task force that just was not sufficient in capability, number, everything else to deal with the problems that were emerging. You'll recall our forces were prevented from going through Turkey, they would have come down through northern Iraq and left elements there, but they had to come through Kuwait and go north instead. And they never got beyond a point that was to the south of that area.
So we air assaulted up there, got it under control, and then began implementing what later would be known as a comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign, essentially applying, again, what I'd seen before in the sophisticated campaign plan in Bosnia, but with the military, performing even the civil tasks and the non military tasks, which included man hunting and other security force operations, but also reconciliation. All the elements of the ultimate surge in Iraq, actually, we tried out during that year, and were really quite successful until some of the elements were undermined by some of the really quite catastrophic policy decisions, including firing the Iraqi military without telling them what their future was, which caused enormous upheaval in the country. Then firing the Ba'ath Party, the party of Saddam, and you needed to go after Saddam, and we're wily proud, if you will, to have killed his two sons and a number of others that resisted detention in the deck of cards, as it was called, Saddam's inner circle.
But at a certain level, you needed the people, even though they were lower level Ba'ath-ists, that had to be to have positions in government, you needed them to actually run the country. And by firing all of them, without an agreed policy of reconciliation, what it did was create enormous upheaval and essentially cut off at the knees a lot of what it was we had already been successfully doing. In the north, we had to regroup. Just in our area, I was able to get us permission to conduct reconciliation as an experiment in Nainoa province from Ambassador Bremmer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and it worked very well, until we left. And then it was undermined by those in Baghdad who didn't want to see what were, in many cases, Sunni Arabs being allowed to return to bureaucratic positions in government, because the country was then going to be run by Shia Arabs.
Again, that first year was very instructive in an awful lot of ways. A lot of success in our area, including in training, host nation forces, and so forth and employing them that led actually to me being sent back within about a month and a half of my return by the Secretary of Defense to do a study of what had happened in the other areas during a particular Sunni and Shia uprising. I came back and briefed Secretary Rumsfeld, that led to sending me back as a three star about a month and a half after that to implement the recommendations that I provided in another 15 and a half months tour, establishing the multinational security Transition Command Iraq and also the NATO Training Mission in Iraq, which was essentially the train, equip, and advise a program for what would ultimately become nearly a million Iraqi, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, police, security force members, border guards, customs, you name it, the entire gamut of Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior elements, including the ministries themselves and all the institutional components, schools, training centers, bases, police stations, police academies, you name it, in an enormous undertaking.
Of course, after that I had 15 months at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas as the commander of the Combined Arms Center, which gave purview over all of the combat and combat support schools and centers. It was somewhere around 15 or 16 schools and centers throughout the army, as well as the Commanding General Staff College, the Center for Doctrine, the Center for Leadership, and a variety of others. It gave a tremendous opportunity for somebody who had spent not quite two and a half years in Iraq by that time, to write the field manual, oversee the writing of the field manual on counterinsurgency, and to overhaul every aspect of how we trained our forces in preparation for deployment, how we educated leaders, commissioning Warrant Officers–because we oversaw all these different schools and Senators–to add a lot about counterinsurgency to that, how we trained the two star and three star headquarters before they deployed, and to undertake a number of other initiatives having to do not just with doctrine, training, leader development, but also material requirements, union organization structure, and a variety of other aspects. And then, of course, I was selected by President Bush to go back to Iraq to command the surge when he made that very courageous decision, after replacing Secretary Rumsfeld with Secretary Gates, and then deciding to replace the commander and the ambassador in Iraq as well.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s incredible. You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on Sirius XM, and leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with David Petraeus, retired US Army General and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, discussing his journey and, frankly, his blueprint for leadership along the way, as he's been such a great example of it. Your military commands focused on both finding insurgencies while also trying to build up civic institutions. With the benefit of hindsight, how do you assess your strategy and your approach back then?
David Petraeus
Well, I think the general concepts were validated. Certainly they were implemented in challenging locations, particularly in Afghanistan, and I should have noted, for example, that when I was at the end of my three star tour in Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld came out and was uncharacteristically effusive in his praise, if you will, for what we'd accomplished during that 15 and a half month tour, or whatever it was. He said, “Oh, by the way, I'd like you to come home through Afghanistan,” and I said, “Really, Mr. Secretary, it’s not exactly the shortest route between Baghdad and my home.” But nonetheless, we put together a team, we went over there, did an assessment for him of the situation in general, and then also in particular about the train and equip mission there.
I realized that in a lot of ways, in fact, almost in all ways, even though the level of violence in Afghanistan at that point in time–this is 2005, September–was still much less than Iraq, that the context, the situation, was much more challenging. And I conveyed that to him. On slide one of the briefing–generals always communicate with PowerPoint–laid out a slide that was titled, “Afghanistan does not equal Iraq,” and then laid out the different areas in which you could assess the two countries. And in every single respect, almost, Afghanistan was tougher. It had, of course, an enemy that enjoyed a sanctuary outside the country that was very substantial in Pakistan. It had very high rates of illiteracy, and virtually no economic revenue, compared to Iraq which could generate $100 billion in a given year if we can get the oil infrastructure repaired and the electricity back on.
Afghanistan also had the Hindu Kush mountains, you had weather extremes, you had very limited infrastructure. Everything about it was very, very challenging. Not that Iraq was in any way easy. And Iraq was getting out of control, or starting to become more challenging. Then the subsequent year, there was an event that unhinged it and forced the changes in the strategy that we implemented in early 2007 as part of the surge. But that was quite important, laying that out for him. But by and large, I think the concepts were valid. They definitely were validated and proven in Iraq, where we were able to drive violence down by 85%, just in the course of the 18 months of the surge. Yes, later things came on hinge. But that was because of the actions of the Iraqi prime minister after our final combat forces left, not because of what we had done.
Afghanistan did prove more challenging. The host nation component of it also was a very big issu. There was corruption in both countries, but it was particularly challenging in Afghanistan, and because of what it did to the efforts of the host nation and local areas in a number of cases. But even there, I think, again, it was validated, certainly during the period I was privileged to command in Afghanistan, we were able to drive violence down year on year and able to not just hold the Taliban, but roll them back to create the time and space for the development of the Afghan Security Forces, to begin the transition of some security and other tasks to them and government institutions. The challenge in Afghanistan was, of course, that we'd never had consistency in our policy, even within administrations much less from administration to administration.
It took us nine years in Afghanistan just to get the inputs, right. And by inputs, I mean, the right big ideas, right concepts, the right strategy, the right level of resources–almost not quite, but almost, regarding military and civilian funding–the right organizational architecture to implement it, the right leaders, the right preparation of our units, soldiers, staffs, and commanders and so on, and all of that. We didn't actually get that until late 2010, which was nine years after we invaded Afghanistan and took down the Taliban when they refused to eliminate the al Qaeda sanctuary in which the 9/11 attacks were planned. And then we didn't keep it right for all that long. As was announced at the West Point speech in which the President announced the buildup in Afghanistan, he also announced the drawdown day, and that was within seven months or so of getting the inputs right for the first time. That continued drawdown in telling the enemy that we wanted to leave repeatedly is obviously not helpful if you're trying to put pressure on them to negotiate and to, to give in.
Ultimately, of course, a truly abysmal agreement was reached which gave the Taliban what they wanted: our commitment to leave, forced the Afghan government–which had not been part of the agreement or at the table: Taliban refused that and we accepted that–to force them to release well over 5000 Taliban fighters from the detention facilities, who went right back to the Taliban and enabled, in part, the comprehensive offensive that took down the country in the wake of our military withdrawal, and also of our contractors–about 70,000, who maintained the most critical element of the Afghan military, which was the helicopters and planes which enable them to respond to attacks throughout the country.
To come back to the question, I think that the concepts were valid. Certainly, the contexts in which they were implemented were very different from Iraq to Afghanistan. And, certainly, we had to tweak or change significant components, or at least the way that the concepts were applied, in those different locations. Ultimately, over time, very important to note that we figured out because of technology, because of the proliferation of drones, and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, precision munitions, and also the Intelligence Fusion, that we could help the host nation partners perform the missions rather than doing them ourselves in the frontlines. That was a hugely significant development. In other words, we could help them train and equip, we could fund, we could most importantly, advise, assist and enable, and sometimes with our airpower, our drones, our precision munitions, as well as what we're able to provide for them. You could have continued doing that. In the case of Afghanistan, there was an alternative to the withdrawal. And in Iraq, we proved that we could advise, assist, and enable the Iraqi and then also Syrian partners to defeat the Islamic State, to eliminate the caliphate, and at least to to destroy their army, if you will, noting that there still are insurgents, extremists,and terrorist elements from the Islamic State that bear very careful watching in Iraq and in Syria.
Alan Fleischmann
I’m thinking about the conflict in Ukraine and tensions with China. The US global leadership, in general, is facing major challenges, probably some of the most significant ones since the end of the Cold War. What is your response? What would you expect more from the US policymakers and the private sector?
David Petraeus
Well, first, let me just note that, having been critical of two-three administrations when it comes to Afghanistan, but particularly the agreement to withdrawal by the previous administration, and the decision to carry that out in this administration, I should acknowledge that I think that the current administration and Congress have done a very impressive job in leading the world in responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In helping to arm, train, equip, fund, and support Ukraine, both in terms of military and economic assistance, and also to impose enormous financial, economic, and personal sanctions on Russia, Putin, and his inner circle, as well as export controls.
Beyond that, I think the US-led approach to China, which is a comprehensive, integrated whole of governments with an S on the end, so all of our allies and partners together approach to China, is the appropriate approach as well. Certainly, there needs to be a trade component to the approach to China, which is missing and has been missing since the the Obama administration was unable to get the Trans Pacific Partnership all the way across the line. The previous administration walked away from it, and then this one hasn't been seeing it as possible to return to it.
But that said, broadly speaking, I think in both cases that the approach has been quite impressive. Certainly there are some elements I'd like to see added to the our support for Ukraine but $21.5 billion, just in arms, ammunition, and material is a staggering quantity and staggering amount of support for Ukraine. It has made all the difference together with the incredible spirit, skill, determination, will, and commitment of all Ukrainians. Not just those in uniform, but the entire country has been mobilized and engaged in fighting their war of independence. Along the way, of course, Russia, trying to make itself great again, has actually made NATO great again. So again, the US, I think, without question, has played the critical role, and it has been a very impressive role.
Private sector: first and foremost, I think you just have to acknowledge that the private sector is generally in business. Now, it should always conduct its business, legally and properly. So it's not just about what's allowed, it's whether that business is responsible. But at the end of the day, the private sector wallet often engages in various forms of essentially philanthropic endeavors, its role is to help our business community to succeed, and to ensure that it does. The key here is to partner with government where appropriate, where possible, and where helpful to pursue national interest, but noting that, again, businesses are in business to do what they always have sought to do in competitive free market economies. And I think you have to, again, understand that if you're going to encourage business, to engage, invest, and pursue opportunities in the most difficult places, there will have to be measures to de-risk that, to identify and then mitigate the risks in order to make it possible for them to do something which, deep down they might want to do, but otherwise would be prohibitive from a business perspective.
Alan Fleischmann
You come now with the private sector perspective. Tell us a little bit of what you're leading now at KKR, and how that has brought together a lot of your experiences in the past as well. What’s the mission?
David Petraeus
Yeah, so about nine and a half years ago, I was brought on by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, the co-founders at KKR, which, for the listeners, is one of the largest investment firms of our type–I think we're the second largest by assets under management, which have grown during the time, I've been at KKR from about $83 billion under management to about $500 billion, so nearly half a trillion dollars under management. We used to be just a pure private equity firm, and in other words, invested in private companies, helped them grow, and then ultimately, took them public or sold them or what have you, to a company that now certainly does that, but also much more in credit and capital markets and a whole variety of different ways like originating our own debt, which was required in the wake of the Great Recession, and has turned out to be a very, very helpful capability.
We now own about 120 companies around the world. And we have minority interests and at least another 100, probably a good bit more than 100, I would suspect. It's really an extraordinary firm, Henry and George recognize that geopolitics might become more important in the future. And boy, has that been true. During the time I've been there, we've gone from an era of benign globalization, if you will, in which economics largely drove geopolitics, to one that is now best described as great power rivalries in which geopolitics increasingly determines what's possible economically, financially, and in investment terms. This very much constrains and creates challenges for those endeavors. So we help the company navigate these issues.
Originally, this is the kind of thing that we did before we invested for the first time say in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, in Ethiopia, let's say Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Vietnam, Philippines, and a variety of other company countries in which we had not been invested at the time that the KKR Global Institute was founded. But now, increasingly, given the laws, the policies, and so forth on investing in China and also giving greater geopolitical challenges, this has become central to the investment process during the diligence phase. We help identify these risks, we work together with the global macroeconomic team and the environmental social governance issues analysis team, which, of course, simultaneous with the financial elements of the investment teams, and then present to the Investment Committee, “here are the risks, here's how we think we can mitigate them,” or in some cases–several cases–I've actually said this is not an investment we should make. In fact, I veto this investment. And that has happened, I have done that again on several occasions.
Once we make an investment, we help the companies that we own or are invested in to deal with unforeseen problems. That has become increasingly important as well. We work hard on our relationships around the world to enable that when that's necessary. Then we do a lot of work with our investors, those whose money we are managing, noting that a good amount of it is our own balance sheet. But also our limited partners in order to help all of us understand the world in which we're trying to invest in, together. So it has become a much more prominent part. I was made a partner after about a year and a half at the firm. It's been a truly stimulating endeavor. I'm on the boards of a couple of the companies we own and the strategic advisor for two more. And as you kindly noted, I've been a personal venture investor along the way. I think it’s 25 startups that we've invested in now, several of them are unicorns, happily.
And then all along, I've had academic appointments. I think since retiring, alone, I've done appointments at the City University in New York Honors College, University of Southern California, as a fellow at Harvard, now a fellow at Yale and a lecturer there–I co-teach a course on great power competition in the spring semester. So it's a wonderful portfolio, and then a variety of other activities with think tanks and various veterans organizations as well.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing. We're running out of time here, I knew we should have had two hours with you. You've led such an extraordinary career. Is there any advice in the last couple of minutes that we haven't covered, that you'd want to offer young men and women across the country? Who might one day want to follow in your footsteps. It doesn't mean that they have to serve necessarily in the military to follow in your footsteps, but to serve in some way, in private, public, or civil society sectors?
David Petraeus
First and foremost, there are many ways to serve, many ways to contribute. They're not all by any means in uniform or in the intelligence services, or in the private equity industry, or academic world, or whatever. It's a very broad list of opportunities that I would offer. But I think it comes back to a couple of these adages that I offered already. Most significantly, again, life is a competitive endeavor. And you have to acknowledge that and embrace it. Employers, soldiers, they don't want somebody who is too cool for school, they're not smitten with the idea of being led by somebody who got a gentleman’s ‘C.’ They want somebody who has really tried to be all that he or she could be, and in the case of combat organizations is going to get them home alive, accomplish the mission. In the case of the business world, someone who is going to help that business to thrive and succeed. They're looking for people who have achieved excellence. At the very least, you've got to truly commit to striving for that. If you aren't fully committed, don't expect to achieve the kind of success that others will who are truly committed. Then, beyond that, this idea that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
I don't want to say that I had some sense of destiny along the way and all this stuff and thought I could be whatever I ended up doing and being. But I did have a sense that I was certainly not going to make the most of opportunities if I didn't commit and prepare and try to develop myself in every different way that would be important if the call ever came. There was this old saying about Napoleon, that he said a corporal had a field marshal's baton in his rucksack. In other words, at any given time that call could come, “Petraeus for Field Marshal,” and you need to reach back, metaphorically speaking, and pull your Marshal's baton out. What that really is, is drawing on the intellectual capital, the physical components, the leadership capabilities, all the expertise broadly speaking, all of that, so that when that moment does arrive, you can meet it, you are prepared for it, you have spent your life developing the different qualities, attributes, skills, knowledge expertise, that will be necessary to give yourself a shot at success and to enable your organization to again to achieve its mission.
I think with those two big ideas about life in general, in succeeding in it, I think that's what I would offer. But it does come back to commitment, to sheer hard work, to application, to being very serious about it. You can be serious with a smile on your face and enjoy what you're doing, certainly in trying to convey that to others and share it. But at the end of the day, that's serious business. And I certainly understand those folks who perhaps choose not to be quite so committed and put other elements of life above that. And I've been very fortunate to have a wife and a family that put up with some of these tours. I think I celebrated eight of the final eleven July 4ths in uniform, deployed. I was gone for three years of our son's four years in high school. We moved him three times. They were very supportive during all of this. And that's not trivial either.
So I think that's what it comes down to. Certainly we all have a degree of native intellect and God given talents, and so forth. The key is, can you make the most of them? Are you really committed to trying to do that? And if so, at the very least, we will have achieved the best that we can. And that's what makes all the difference.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing advice, preparation, anticipation, and to be ready to raise your hand.
David Petraeus
Or to have your hand raised for you, and say yes when they do that.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right. Well, you've been listening to “Leadership Matters” on Sirius XM, and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. We've enjoyed this last hour with General David Petraeus, retired US Army General and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute. Your journey has been extraordinary, the journey ahead is probably just as extraordinary because I imagine you're not going to blink, you're going to keep going forward. For those of us who admire you, we are grateful for your service. And we're grateful for all that you do every day and I look forward to much more. Thank you.
David Petraeus
Thanks, Alan. It's been a pleasure.