Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
David Petraeus on Strategic Leadership
Read the Full Transcript
Few military officers ever command international coalitions in combat operations. Fewer still do it twice. General (retired) David Petraeus commanded coalition forces in Iraq from February 2007 to September 2008, and in Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011.
These two theater commands stand in a sustained sequence of command experience: in Iraq, as Commander of the 101st Airborne Division in the drive to Baghdad and in Mosul from 2003-04, and then as Commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command from 2004-05, responsible for developing the Iraqi Security Forces; as Commander of U.S. Central Command 2008-2010, responsible for operations across the Middle East; and finally, as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency until 2012.
This project aims to distill from the depth of General Petraeus’ experience his views on the role of the theater level commander, specifically from the perspective of strategic leadership: the link between policy and operations. Conducted over the 2014-15 academic year, the team worked with General Petraeus to draw out his views on strategic leadership in several interviews. The filmed version represents a distillation of this interaction.
We are fully aware that the vantage point of 2015 is one of (relatively recent) hindsight, which brings advantages and disadvantages, and that events in Iraq at this moment give us an additional perspective.
–Emile Simpson (Last Updated February 2016)
PREFACE
“The President started out by saying, with no small talk, ‘I am asking you, as your President and Commander-in-Chief, to take the position in Afghanistan and to become the commander of the International Security Assistance Force.’ And... the only answer to a question like that has to be yes.”
THE FOUR TASKS OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
“Strategic leadership is that which is exercised at a level of an organization where the individual is truly determining the azimuth for the organization, is actually charting the path. And you have one person like that, certainly in a military organization, and typically it’s the commander... He’s the one, again, that is developing the direction that the organization is going to go. And again, in essence there are four tasks. The first is to get the big ideas right. The second is to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. The third is to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. And the fourth is to determine how the big ideas need to be refined, changed, augmented, and then repeating the process over again and again and again.”
COMMUNICATING THE BIG IDEAS
“On arrival in Iraq I was summoned by the National Security Advisor [of Iraq]... and he levied a series of demands that he said were voiced by Prime Minister Maliki and which were essentially the opposite of everything that we intended to do in the surge. It was, once again, get out of the cities, consolidate on big bases, hand off to Iraqi forces faster, release detainees, reduce night raids, again 180 degrees different from what we intended to do and were starting to implement. And that is where I think you have to be quite seriously straightforward, and I was. I said Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie... if this is truly what the prime minister wants and is going to direct, I think he probably should communicate that to President Bush in his regularly scheduled video teleconference. I’ll be sitting in on it with him, as is customary with the ambassador, but he should know that if he does that he will implement that without me, because I’ll be on the next plane to the United States and I intend to take the policy with me. That was about as direct as it comes. There were only one or two other cases in which that kind of threat had to be put on the table, and indeed I never heard anything about those demands again, although I was sweating bullets in the video teleconference the next day.”
OVERSEEING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BIG IDEAS
“Every single day we had the battlefield update and analysis... at the end of which we had a small group meeting with a select group of the highest, most senior coalition leaders, and then ultimately a smaller group with just U.S. and UK, and then perhaps the smallest of the small groups, which was just Lieutenant General Odierno and me sitting there looking at each other asking when each of us thought this thing was going to turn in the early, very, very tough days.”
REVISING THE BIG IDEAS
“We had a riot one night early on in my time in command where there were some 10,000 detainees rioting. And there’s no fence in the world that can stop 10,000 detainees if they all work together. And we ended up mustering every single person at that particular camp, in riot control gear, with the fire engines and everything else we could. Every non-lethal munition we had, shot thousands of rubber bullets that evening, before finally getting it under control. And I realized something was seriously wrong. The new detainee joint task force commander had just taken over, and we underwent a very systematic assessment and we came up with a number of big ideas for detainee operations.”
LEADERSHIP
“One time a major told me, he said ‘Hey sir, you know we’ve got this particular development in our area, this one bad guy has already—all of a sudden decided that he wants to oppose Al Qaeda and he wants our support but folks are really nervous about it.’ And on the spot I said, ‘You support him, you get after it, I’ll take care of the chain of command between you and me and the Iraqi leadership. But you go back, tell your battalion commander, “Don’t let our bureaucracy stand in the way of supporting this individual.” You put him in the backs of your tracked vehicles, your fighting vehicles, you give him ammunition, you give him supplies, but help him, and again, I’ll make sure--I’ve got your back.’ ”
REFLECTIONS
“There are people over the years that said Petraeus was lucky. He got a break here and there and gosh he gets thrust into this situation and the country’s committed and he’s lucky and fortunate enough to be in that position. And there’s a lot to that. Again, life is about luck and timing, about being at a key position at a key time. And you know, there but for a year or two this way or the other, someone else would have taken the call. There’s a saying by a Roman philosopher that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I’d like to think that I was prepared, that I had worked assiduously, hard, academically, militarily, physically, whatever it may be, over the years to be ready if the call came.”
Research Team
- Emile Simpson, Project Editor
- Sam Ratner, Project Editor
- Michael Kleiman, Video Director
- Joshua Weinstein, Cinematographer
- Rachel Beck, Research Assistant
- John Chambers, Research Assistant
- William Denn, Research Assistant
- Julia Stern, Research Assistant
- Christina Hernandez, Research Assistant
- Howard Lim, Research Assistant
- Annah Weaver, Research Assistant
- Jessica Zucker, Research Assistant
References
Articles
- Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations by Nigel Aylwin-Foster, Military Review (2005)
- Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision by Richard Betts, Michael Desch, and Peter Feaver, International Security (2011)
- Dead End: Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice by Edward Luttwak, Harper’s Magazine (2007)
- Exit Petraeus – and His Famous Military Doctrine by Michael Crowley, Time (2012)
- Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy ‘fundamentally sound’ by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post (2010)
- General Petraeus: Bringing Myth Back to the Military by Grace Wyler, Business Insider (2011)
- How Maliki Ruined Iraq by Zaid Al-Ali, Foreign Policy (2014)
- Iraq In Hindsight: Views on the U.S. Withdrawal by Emma Sky, Center for a New American Security (2012)
- Iraq’s Sunnis In Crisis by Stephen Wicken, Institute for the Study of War (2013)
- Operational Art in Counterinsurgency: A View From the Inside by James Dubik, Institute for the Study of War (2012)
- Petraeus Cites Encouraging Examples of Iraqi Political Reconciliation by John Kruzel, Department of Defense (2007)
- Petraeus, Crocker Wrap Up Testimony Citing Progress, Challenges in Iraq by Donna Miles, Department of Defense (2007)
- Petraeus’s impossible mission in Afghanistan: armed nation-building by Gian Gentile, Christian Science Monitor (2010)
- Strategic Leadership: A Recommendation for Identifying and Developing the United States Army’s Future Strategic Leaders by Larry Burris, Combined Arms Center (2007)
- The Accidental Statesman: General Petraeus and the City of Mosul, Iraq by Kirsten Lundberg, Harvard Business School (2006)
- The Challenge Before Us by Zalmay Khalilzad, Wall Street Journal (2006)
- The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control by Peter Feaver, Armed Forces and Society (1996)
- The End of the Age of Petraeus: The Rise and Fall of Counterinsurgency by Fred Kaplan, Foreign Affairs (2013)
- The Legacy of David Petraeus and the Future of American War by Armin Rosen, The Atlantic (2012)
- The Professor of War by Mark Bowden, Vanity Fair (2010)
- The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision by Peter Feaver, International Security (2011)
- U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel by Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt, New York Times (2014)
Books
- All In: The Education of General David Petraeus by Paula Broadwell and Vernon Loeb (2012)
- Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations by Peter Feaver (2005)
- Decision Points by George W. Bush (2010)
- Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert Gates (2014)
- In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir by Richard Cheney and Liz Cheney (2011)
- Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa, Iraq, 2005-2007 by James Russell (2011)
- Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward (2010)
- Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War by Peter Mansoor (2013)
- The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor (2012)
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army by Greg Jaffe and David Cloud (2009)
- The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Thomas Ricks (2009)
- The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush by Dale Herspring (2005)
- The Surge: A Military History by Kimberly Kagan (2009)
- US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain by Mackubin Owens (2011)
Photo Credits
- AP Photo/Chris Hondros
- AP Photo/Jim Watson
- AP Photo/Manish Swarup
- AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo
- AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
- AP Photo/Wathiq Khuzaie
Presentations
- An Engine of Change: Enabling the Road to Deployment
- The Engines of Change
- Top 10 Thoughts on Leadership
- Afghanistan: Getting the Inputs Right
Speeches, Interviews, and Articles by Petraeus
- Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker: Diplomat and Partner Extraordinaire by David Petraeus, Army Magazine (2011)
- General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker Remark on Iraq by David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, Washington Post (2008)
- How We Won In Iraq by David Petraeus, Foreign Policy (2013)
- Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq by David Petraeus, Military Review (2006)
- Lessons of the Iraq War and Its Aftermath by David Petraeus, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2004)
- Petraeus: The Islamic State isn’t our biggest problem in Iraq by Liz Sly, Washington Post (2015)
- Reflections on the “Counterinsurgency Decade”: Small Wars Journal Interview with General David H. Petraeus by Octavian Manea, Small Wars Journal (2013)
- Reflections on the Counter-Insurgency Era by David Petraeus, RUSI Journal (2013)
- Remarks on Accepting the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy on May 28, 2009 by David Petraeus, American Foreign Policy Interests (2009)
- Shoulder to Shoulder in Afghanistan by David Petraeus, Policy Options (2010)
- Strategic Leadership and Old Nassau by David Petraeus, Princeton University (2010)
- The Surge of Ideas: COINdinistas and Change in the U.S. Army in 2006 by David Petraeus, American Enterprise Institute (2010)
Videos
Related
David H. Petraeus
- Alumnus
- Former Senior Fellow, Intelligence Project
- Recommended
- In the Spotlight
- Most Viewed
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Most Viewed
Report
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
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Paper
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
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Analysis & Opinions
- The Sunday Times
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Read the Full Transcript
Few military officers ever command international coalitions in combat operations. Fewer still do it twice. General (retired) David Petraeus commanded coalition forces in Iraq from February 2007 to September 2008, and in Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011.
These two theater commands stand in a sustained sequence of command experience: in Iraq, as Commander of the 101st Airborne Division in the drive to Baghdad and in Mosul from 2003-04, and then as Commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command from 2004-05, responsible for developing the Iraqi Security Forces; as Commander of U.S. Central Command 2008-2010, responsible for operations across the Middle East; and finally, as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency until 2012.
This project aims to distill from the depth of General Petraeus’ experience his views on the role of the theater level commander, specifically from the perspective of strategic leadership: the link between policy and operations. Conducted over the 2014-15 academic year, the team worked with General Petraeus to draw out his views on strategic leadership in several interviews. The filmed version represents a distillation of this interaction.
We are fully aware that the vantage point of 2015 is one of (relatively recent) hindsight, which brings advantages and disadvantages, and that events in Iraq at this moment give us an additional perspective.
–Emile Simpson (Last Updated February 2016)
PREFACE
“The President started out by saying, with no small talk, ‘I am asking you, as your President and Commander-in-Chief, to take the position in Afghanistan and to become the commander of the International Security Assistance Force.’ And... the only answer to a question like that has to be yes.”
THE FOUR TASKS OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
“Strategic leadership is that which is exercised at a level of an organization where the individual is truly determining the azimuth for the organization, is actually charting the path. And you have one person like that, certainly in a military organization, and typically it’s the commander... He’s the one, again, that is developing the direction that the organization is going to go. And again, in essence there are four tasks. The first is to get the big ideas right. The second is to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. The third is to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. And the fourth is to determine how the big ideas need to be refined, changed, augmented, and then repeating the process over again and again and again.”
COMMUNICATING THE BIG IDEAS
“On arrival in Iraq I was summoned by the National Security Advisor [of Iraq]... and he levied a series of demands that he said were voiced by Prime Minister Maliki and which were essentially the opposite of everything that we intended to do in the surge. It was, once again, get out of the cities, consolidate on big bases, hand off to Iraqi forces faster, release detainees, reduce night raids, again 180 degrees different from what we intended to do and were starting to implement. And that is where I think you have to be quite seriously straightforward, and I was. I said Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie... if this is truly what the prime minister wants and is going to direct, I think he probably should communicate that to President Bush in his regularly scheduled video teleconference. I’ll be sitting in on it with him, as is customary with the ambassador, but he should know that if he does that he will implement that without me, because I’ll be on the next plane to the United States and I intend to take the policy with me. That was about as direct as it comes. There were only one or two other cases in which that kind of threat had to be put on the table, and indeed I never heard anything about those demands again, although I was sweating bullets in the video teleconference the next day.”
OVERSEEING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BIG IDEAS
“Every single day we had the battlefield update and analysis... at the end of which we had a small group meeting with a select group of the highest, most senior coalition leaders, and then ultimately a smaller group with just U.S. and UK, and then perhaps the smallest of the small groups, which was just Lieutenant General Odierno and me sitting there looking at each other asking when each of us thought this thing was going to turn in the early, very, very tough days.”
REVISING THE BIG IDEAS
“We had a riot one night early on in my time in command where there were some 10,000 detainees rioting. And there’s no fence in the world that can stop 10,000 detainees if they all work together. And we ended up mustering every single person at that particular camp, in riot control gear, with the fire engines and everything else we could. Every non-lethal munition we had, shot thousands of rubber bullets that evening, before finally getting it under control. And I realized something was seriously wrong. The new detainee joint task force commander had just taken over, and we underwent a very systematic assessment and we came up with a number of big ideas for detainee operations.”
LEADERSHIP
“One time a major told me, he said ‘Hey sir, you know we’ve got this particular development in our area, this one bad guy has already—all of a sudden decided that he wants to oppose Al Qaeda and he wants our support but folks are really nervous about it.’ And on the spot I said, ‘You support him, you get after it, I’ll take care of the chain of command between you and me and the Iraqi leadership. But you go back, tell your battalion commander, “Don’t let our bureaucracy stand in the way of supporting this individual.” You put him in the backs of your tracked vehicles, your fighting vehicles, you give him ammunition, you give him supplies, but help him, and again, I’ll make sure--I’ve got your back.’ ”
REFLECTIONS
“There are people over the years that said Petraeus was lucky. He got a break here and there and gosh he gets thrust into this situation and the country’s committed and he’s lucky and fortunate enough to be in that position. And there’s a lot to that. Again, life is about luck and timing, about being at a key position at a key time. And you know, there but for a year or two this way or the other, someone else would have taken the call. There’s a saying by a Roman philosopher that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I’d like to think that I was prepared, that I had worked assiduously, hard, academically, militarily, physically, whatever it may be, over the years to be ready if the call came.”
Research Team
- Emile Simpson, Project Editor
- Sam Ratner, Project Editor
- Michael Kleiman, Video Director
- Joshua Weinstein, Cinematographer
- Rachel Beck, Research Assistant
- John Chambers, Research Assistant
- William Denn, Research Assistant
- Julia Stern, Research Assistant
- Christina Hernandez, Research Assistant
- Howard Lim, Research Assistant
- Annah Weaver, Research Assistant
- Jessica Zucker, Research Assistant
References
Articles
- Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations by Nigel Aylwin-Foster, Military Review (2005)
- Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision by Richard Betts, Michael Desch, and Peter Feaver, International Security (2011)
- Dead End: Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice by Edward Luttwak, Harper’s Magazine (2007)
- Exit Petraeus – and His Famous Military Doctrine by Michael Crowley, Time (2012)
- Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy ‘fundamentally sound’ by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post (2010)
- General Petraeus: Bringing Myth Back to the Military by Grace Wyler, Business Insider (2011)
- How Maliki Ruined Iraq by Zaid Al-Ali, Foreign Policy (2014)
- Iraq In Hindsight: Views on the U.S. Withdrawal by Emma Sky, Center for a New American Security (2012)
- Iraq’s Sunnis In Crisis by Stephen Wicken, Institute for the Study of War (2013)
- Operational Art in Counterinsurgency: A View From the Inside by James Dubik, Institute for the Study of War (2012)
- Petraeus Cites Encouraging Examples of Iraqi Political Reconciliation by John Kruzel, Department of Defense (2007)
- Petraeus, Crocker Wrap Up Testimony Citing Progress, Challenges in Iraq by Donna Miles, Department of Defense (2007)
- Petraeus’s impossible mission in Afghanistan: armed nation-building by Gian Gentile, Christian Science Monitor (2010)
- Strategic Leadership: A Recommendation for Identifying and Developing the United States Army’s Future Strategic Leaders by Larry Burris, Combined Arms Center (2007)
- The Accidental Statesman: General Petraeus and the City of Mosul, Iraq by Kirsten Lundberg, Harvard Business School (2006)
- The Challenge Before Us by Zalmay Khalilzad, Wall Street Journal (2006)
- The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control by Peter Feaver, Armed Forces and Society (1996)
- The End of the Age of Petraeus: The Rise and Fall of Counterinsurgency by Fred Kaplan, Foreign Affairs (2013)
- The Legacy of David Petraeus and the Future of American War by Armin Rosen, The Atlantic (2012)
- The Professor of War by Mark Bowden, Vanity Fair (2010)
- The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision by Peter Feaver, International Security (2011)
- U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel by Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt, New York Times (2014)
Books
- All In: The Education of General David Petraeus by Paula Broadwell and Vernon Loeb (2012)
- Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations by Peter Feaver (2005)
- Decision Points by George W. Bush (2010)
- Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert Gates (2014)
- In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir by Richard Cheney and Liz Cheney (2011)
- Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa, Iraq, 2005-2007 by James Russell (2011)
- Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward (2010)
- Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War by Peter Mansoor (2013)
- The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor (2012)
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army by Greg Jaffe and David Cloud (2009)
- The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Thomas Ricks (2009)
- The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush by Dale Herspring (2005)
- The Surge: A Military History by Kimberly Kagan (2009)
- US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain by Mackubin Owens (2011)
Photo Credits
- AP Photo/Chris Hondros
- AP Photo/Jim Watson
- AP Photo/Manish Swarup
- AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo
- AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
- AP Photo/Wathiq Khuzaie
Presentations
- An Engine of Change: Enabling the Road to Deployment
- The Engines of Change
- Top 10 Thoughts on Leadership
- Afghanistan: Getting the Inputs Right
Speeches, Interviews, and Articles by Petraeus
- Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker: Diplomat and Partner Extraordinaire by David Petraeus, Army Magazine (2011)
- General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker Remark on Iraq by David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, Washington Post (2008)
- How We Won In Iraq by David Petraeus, Foreign Policy (2013)
- Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq by David Petraeus, Military Review (2006)
- Lessons of the Iraq War and Its Aftermath by David Petraeus, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2004)
- Petraeus: The Islamic State isn’t our biggest problem in Iraq by Liz Sly, Washington Post (2015)
- Reflections on the “Counterinsurgency Decade”: Small Wars Journal Interview with General David H. Petraeus by Octavian Manea, Small Wars Journal (2013)
- Reflections on the Counter-Insurgency Era by David Petraeus, RUSI Journal (2013)
- Remarks on Accepting the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy on May 28, 2009 by David Petraeus, American Foreign Policy Interests (2009)
- Shoulder to Shoulder in Afghanistan by David Petraeus, Policy Options (2010)
- Strategic Leadership and Old Nassau by David Petraeus, Princeton University (2010)
- The Surge of Ideas: COINdinistas and Change in the U.S. Army in 2006 by David Petraeus, American Enterprise Institute (2010)
Videos
Related
David H. Petraeus
- Alumnus
- Former Senior Fellow, Intelligence Project
- Recommended
- In the Spotlight
- Most Viewed
Recommended
In the Spotlight
Most Viewed
Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
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Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
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Analysis & Opinions - The Sunday Times
China is Using Every Trick for World Domination
