NOVEMBER 17, 2023
On November 17, 2023, the Atlantic Council hosted a virtual #ACFrontPage conversation with retired US Army General and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency David Petraeus on Israel, Ukraine, and the evolution of warfare.
In this moderated discussion, Petraeus explored the development of modern warfare, with a particular focus on lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war on Hamas. The conversation drew on Petraeus’s new book (co-authored with historian Andrew Roberts), Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. The discussion also dove into key questions about modern warfare: How has warfare changed since 1945? What do Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war portend about the future of modern warfare?
The conversation was live streamed on Atlantic Council TV, YouTube, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter).
We have so many new security challenges in the world because none of the Western nations had the right kind of leaders in the past decades. In particular, when we look at such characters as Clinton, Obama, Schröder, Merkel, Hollande, Sarkozy, and Trump, it should not be a surprise that we find ourselves where we are today.
We’ve made the biggest mistakes with mafia land, the West having largely ignored the country’s numerous brutal wars, its constant murders of various opposition people and journalists, even on the West’s own turf, its continued expansion of economic ties, its ignoring of massive cyberattacks on the West, and the obvious course of mafia land becoming an aggressive dictatorship.
We should’ve put a stop to all of this much sooner and with much more vehemence. You don’t wait for a fire to consume half the house before calling the fire department. The lessons that we were supposed to have learned in the post WWII epoch were either completely forgotten or completely ignored. Now, we must learn these lessons all over again. What is the most important one? That in a massive and brutal war, too little too late is never a viable strategy. NEVER!
As usual, Gen. Patraeus has a clear awareness of all political and military aspects in Ukraine. I wish we had this in the WH.
Patreous’s analytical skills are top notch and his collaborator Andrew Roberts is one of the best living historians.
However, consciously or unconsciously he seems to have ranked the threat in order of importance: China, the ME and Ukraine.
He doesn’t vary from the Biden line and in fact congratulates him on his putler policy.
He has kind things to say about Zel, but offers no solutions.
Only Gen Hodges, of the “brand name” military pundits offers solutions that can provide positive outcomes.
The time has come for someone important in the US hierarchy to say :
“Our Ukraine policy is wrong. We must enable a swift Ukraine victory. We owe it to them because we inflicted Budapest on them and allowed France and Germany to block Ukraine’s Nato membership. Therefore, apart from providing EVERYTHING that Gen Zaluzhnyi requested, we now must put boots on the ground and impose the NFZ.”
The matter is very urgent because Trump is surging at the moment. If Biden wants even a chance of victory in 2024, he must ensure a Ukrainian victory first.
“However, consciously or unconsciously he seems to have ranked the threat in order of importance: China, the ME and Ukraine.”
Of course, for us, Ukraine is the number one concern. This doesn’t make Patraeus’ viewpoint completely wrong. For good reasons, he says china is the top threat. The trash country’s enormous human resources and industrial capacity makes it so. As an example, imagine for every roach soldier, there are 10 chinese soldiers.
He places the ME as second, for the possibility that this will inflame the entire region with a much larger war, involving iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia and so on.
Europe is where two terrible world wars started. Because of failed US foreign policy since 2008, we have been stuck in 1939 since 2014.
I noted also that Patreous made an exception of the putrid violence of the Hamassholes crucially without mentioning that putinaZi violence in Ukraine is just as evil but on a more gigantic scale.
I’m therefore wondering if he is aware of the true scale and demonic nature of putinaZi atrocities in Ukraine, or just seeks to downplay it for some odd reason?
Maybe he just didn’t get around to mention it, since his focus was on the evolution of warfare. I can’t imagine that he isn’t aware of everything that’s going on in Ukraine. He’s perhaps more aware than we are.
There would have been no ME crisis if the West had put russia back in it’s cage, instead of showing fear every time Putler or one of his rabid dogs, mentioned nukes.
Exactly.