Jonathan Shaw - Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, British Army (2011-2012) HARDtalk

in the violence. Those are the headlines. Now on BBC News it's

time for HARDtalk. The security challenges facing nation states are

changing fast, so too are the strategic responses of today's

military chiefs. In this age of militant insurgency, robotic

weaponry and cyber-warfare, threats are unpredictable, unseen and

global. My guest is recently retired British Army General

Jonathan Shaw. He began his career fighting a traditional, bloody war

in the Falklands, he ended it in charge of the British military's

cyber-warfare strategy. Conventional armed forces must

adapt or wither, which will it be? Jonathon Shaw, welcome to HARDtalk.

Good afternoon. You recently retired as one of Britain's highest

ranking officers, were you finally relieved to be going? There is a

question. Yes, I was. I have had a great career. I do not regret a day

of it. I have met a lot of good people in the military. It is in

good hands. I am in -- looking forward to the future. It seems to

be a challenging time for the British military at the moment.

it is. One of the exciting things during my 32 years in the job, it

has always been challenging. That is what makes it fun. If you like

change, that is what makes it quite exciting. My last job inside the

cyber security programme was completely new to me. It was a

fabulous chance. I loved it. I want to talk about such as security and

money. Before that, I want to talk about the nature of recent warfare.

During your latter decades in the British Army, it was dominated by

long-term deployment. Long-term war fighting in Iraq, you were involved,

in Afghanistan as well. Do you think the British military when it

embarked on those deployment in 2001-2002, had any idea what they

were getting into? No, I do not think it did. They were looking at

the military fighting bid. The big surprise, if there is a lesson to

be learned from the past 10.5 years, we have over militarised these

campaigns. campaigns. ve seen through my career, a shift from traditional

war-fighting to top end political support and support of the

political process. That is what we have seen. There is a question of

over the last 15 years, since 9/11. I'm not sure that Whitehall has

fully adapted to the change. A lot of the problems the military has

had, it has felt the need to move from civil fighting and opposition

to the creative role of making nation-states and nation-building.

Should military has ever be asked to get into that potentially

political world? The outcome of the military clash is itself decisive.

1982 was exactly that type of war. The Falkland War, in which you're a

young officer, a lot of traditional, bloody battles. Correct. Those sort

of bloody battles, which in the end were decisive to the outcome, have

been rare. The goal for the 91, the original overthrow of the Al-Qaeda,

Taliban government, Saddam Hussein's government, those were

traditional was. After that it has been politics. The Bradman's it has

created across Whitehall and all coalition countries, we have not

fully learned the lessons. -- the problems. There is a subtext,

soldiers, you included, have been deployed to fight in conflicts

which are not winnable in the traditional sense. I do not like

that language. You are using the language of war. Why do not think

we should use the language of war. To call it a global war on terror

was ridiculous. Michael Howard wrote about this one week after

9/11. If you read it now it is absolutely cogent. To be specific

about your role. You were a very senior commanding officer in

southern Iraq for a while. Around 2007. You were leading men and they

were facing real danger and they were laying their lives on the line,

which you had to regard as not winnable. I do not like it. It was

a political conflict. You are a soldier, not a politician. I know I

am. The criteria for military action is not military effect but

political affect. If it is fascinating to cast our minds back

to 2007. In the end, it is now a matter of record, you got involved

in very delicate and sensitive negotiations with the so-called

army led by a Shia Muslim cleric supported by Iran. You were talking

to him about an understanding, which would allow his men to move

in and your men to move out of the city of Basra. It was a direct

negotiation with the enemy. When you did that. If you are involved

in an operation like this and you are looking towards a timed

withdrawal, you know you'll have to hand the country back to the locals.

You have to start thinking... the people characterise as the

enemy. I am disputing your whole language. You are looking at it

through a black and white, good and bad guys. That is completely

inappropriate. Afghanistan right now, we have to look to the post

coalition presence there and see who is going to be powerful enough

to hold this place together. For the fact that they are shooting you

at the moment, that does not mean they were not be a power base after

you have gone. -- they will. Those are the difficult political

negotiations that need to take place. You make a cogent case for a

different way of looking at what counter-insurgency is all about. It

is not even shared by people on the same side. If we go back to Iraq,

you were criticised for what you did. The Americans believed you

betrayed the cause. They believe he accepted defeat and ran away.

is a lot of political spin in that. If you look at what the Americans

did in Saada city they made an accommodation as well. Let me just

quote you. I want to substantiate this. A presidential adviser in

Iraq, he said, it was a huge mistake for the Brits to pull out

of Basra and leave the population to be brutalised by Iranian

surrogates. He is accusing the British Government of pulling out.

As a soldier I was following orders to pull out. You are a serving

soldier. One of the most senior in Britain. At what point did you feel

the orders you were receiving from your political masters were just

plain wrong? What I think of my orders is irrelevant. Orders are

orders and you carry on with them. The fact that I did not like them

is irrelevant. You take them and you crack on. You have quit now.

You can tell me. Did you like them? If you wind the clock back, it is

about if we went to Iraq in the first place. It is about original

sin. I do not think we should have done it. For my sake, it seemed to

me worrying that we did not answer any of the questions that George

Bush senior had asked about why he did not go on to Baghdad in 1991. I

was always worried about what happened after the invasion.

must have been tough for you in that situation, intellectually, you

felt the deployment was misguided. You had to follow orders. I am

thinking of Afghanistan. You have a lot of friends still in the

military, it must be very difficult for them to make sense of a poll on

the front line, many of them being killed by Afghan security forces

supposed to be their allies, at a time when they know the policy is

one of retreat. We are supposed to be out by 2014. They know the

politicians want to bring them out sooner. If it is very difficult. I

think it is fantastic out the soldiers are loyal to the mission.

They see themselves as making a difference. Most of the Afghans

they deal with like them being there. That is what bolsters them.

You are right. To be front, do you think your colleagues in arms in

your form in Afghanistan today, respect the decisions being made by

the politicians? I think they understand them. They understand

what is going on and the political direction they are getting. It is

not conducive to great morale to have this much mat between what the

soldiers think they are doing and the feeling of, pointlessness about

much of the military operation. does not seem pointless... Let me

ask you about a different aspect of the same declining in Afghanistan

and Iraq. -- deployment. Both have pitched US, UK soldiers into

situations where they are bound to see many of the resident local

population as potential enemies. It is one of those in certain

operations where there is a fundamental, sort of lack of

affinity between the incoming soldier and the people on the

ground. That seems to have been corrosive to morale amongst troops

and to standards of behaviour. Would you accept that? Can you

repeat the question? About the way in which these are counter-

insurgency operations seem to have been corrosive to morale in the

British military and have produced behaviour which falls far short of

what is expected. I do not recognise that. I do not think it

has been bad for morale. My experience, more -- morale is very

high. I would not, I have not got any evidence to show it is bad for

morale. In terms of behaviour. The challenge we face of fighting,

soldiers fighting in warlike conditions, yet judged against

criteria which are piece like, that poses Royal -- real challenges. I

think the discipline of soldiers has been remarkable. You are

implying there is a pressure on the sake of sausages in Afghanistan

which is unbearable? -- psyche of soldiers. There is enormous

pressure. How they keep their self discipline is a credit to them.

now know that discipline was not always maintained. We have

inquiries in Iraq, looking at video evidence of abusive interrogation

techniques, you must have been aware of the sort of interrogation

techniques being employed in southern Iraq? I was aware there

was an interrogation centre. We checked the processes and

everything was clear. I know of no specific allegation that occurred

during my time. I have nothing to add on that. They were filming the

interrogation. You were responsible. I did not watch any of the videos.

I am not sure they did videos. inquiry team has seen some of them.

Maybe you are talking about something I do not know anything

about. It is a little surprising given you were in command. None of

the incidents happened during my time. They would have asked me some

questions. No-one has ever approached me. I do not know

The British military has been very stretched by Iraq and Afghanistan.

What we now see is a covenant which faces of the pressures on public

finances, which has declared there will be severe cuts in military

personnel and the army. It will bring the regular force down to

just over 80,000. As somebody just out of the army, are you worried it

will leave the army incapable of doing the jobs that, in the last

few years, it has been asked to do? The government's aspiration is that

the British Army does not have to do those jobs. But that is

unknowable. Absolutely. The problem he faced during a defence review is

there is no... They have taken the risk. Taken the risk of the policy

of not getting into any more messy entanglement. That is the risk they

have taken. But they claim to still be able to deploy it on a

rotational basis at brigade strength. We will have to wait and

see. But I sense a lessening of political appetite to get engaged

in those kind of studies. We talked about your experience in the

Falklands. We have talked about Afghanistan and Iraq. These are

surprising and unpredictable military commitments. Nobody knew

how will any of them would last. It seems in the future we may not be

able to respond in the way we have done in the past. That is right. We

will have to respond differently. But with forces that are still

capable. We will have to hope that the future does not pan out as

pessimists would wish. If you don't have a concrete reality, on which

to judge how many troops you need, it is just an insurance policy.

has the government gone too far? will not judge the Government on

that. Many others have. We had former military chiefs right into

the Times, saying that on the current plan we could only deploy

the grade -- brigade for six or seven ships and aircraft for six

months, beyond that it would be difficult. They say Britain falls

short of the capability the US requires of remain alive. Villa I

have never seen that in writing. I have never see Americans put that

down into writing. But one suspects they would look at Britain and

think it would back them, back them with real force, as we have seen in

Iraq and Afghanistan. In the future, you seem to be saying that is

questionable. There is little appetite at the moment to get

engaged in long-term engagement. That is the hope of Whitehall and

we should create a force that is more likely to comply with that

kind of vision. If they are forced to do get engaged, that is a risk,

but that is what governments do. talk about visions of the future

and they are promised on less likelihood of the sort of

engagements we have seen. Let's talk about the vision of the future.

As the senior officer, you have been paid to do lots of strategic

thinking about armed forces and what they are for. One thing which

the British military and British politicians seem to still believe

is absolutely a cooler about offences is the independent nuclear

missile. -- absolutely appear lot of our defences. Do you think that

should be on the table as something we may need? It is always on the

table but it is something they have decided strongly in the

Conservative Party that we should keep. The Lib Dems take a different

view and there is another review going on. What is your view? That

it should be considered but I will not go public on that. I have not

got a hard and fast you on it myself. In that it should be

considered so that, des mac, it may be time to say, given the

constraints, given the public deficit, we can no longer afford

the massive expense, �20 billion, to renew it? Are you saying there

should be an option? Villa that is being considered all the time. It's

a political decision, not a military one. I am going to duck

fat. Let's see if this is one you will not duck. In the last couple

of years in uniform, you were spending a lot of time on cyber

security and so are the threats. Here is something the defence

secretary in the US said recently. -- cyber threat. He said enemies in

the US are going to launch site the strikes that could paralyse the

nation. Do you feel the same way about the side the threads in the

UK? The potential of cyber attacks are huge. -- cider threats. But it

is just the latest way... It is the connection between computers and

therefore this space is the latest medium through which to achieve

perfect and competition. Nations are competing in cyberspace, as

they have in others. The biggest threat is espionage. We shouldn't

be surprised by espionage, we shouldn't be surprised by hacking,

by intelligence, by a tax. It is just the latest avenue to which to

achieve effect. -- attacks. If -- we should be planning to see what

we can do to other people. That is exactly the sort of activity that

might give an indication... Do you mean the virus that was -- that

attacked the Iranian nuclear facility? That right. And that is

the sort of thing the British military should be looking at?

you look conceptually at the way... At cyberspace activity, there is no

hard and fast defence. You can't build a firewall that will protect

you in cyberspace. So if you want to get protection, you have to

build as strong protection as you can and be active in your defence.

But also, you have to go out and stop the person attacking you.

we on top of this particular challenge in the British military?

We are looking at it. But this is more than a military challenge,

this is not a military challenge, it's a national challenge and the

lead is held by other agencies, G C x Q Our World experts. You said not

long ago, my generation is too old for this. It is crucial to get the

kids on the streets on side with this counter strategy. Correct.

can you be sure these kinds of people you want to get involved

have the motivation and commitment to be reliable as part of a defence

strategy? That is the real question and it's a big challenge. How does

the UK Hymas these people? The military's role in this is limited.

It's a big national talent. -- harness. Obviously there is a big

financial element to this. We need to be careful we have the

inducements to get people to work for us, rather than criminal people.

A final thought on finances. You have left the military -- military

and you are involved in a digital company that works inside the

security. That company say they support the operations of

government and law enforcement agencies. Does that mean you will

now work for other guns? No, I do not work for other governments but

I give my advice to this company. But absolutely. It's a grey area,

where what we regard as the enterprises of states in defence

and security are entwined with private contractors, private

consultancies, such as the one you work for. It's a very grey area.

would not say it is grey. Other government's whose money you would

not take? I am not working for the government. But the government can

turn to a company like yours and take its advice. But this company

works in accordance with UK export laws. So, there are states and

governments you couldn't work for? Absolutely, yes. But some that

perhaps aren't friends of UK governments, you could work for?

There are prohibition there. As far as I understand, there are clearly

parts they can and can't do business with. Would you apply any

kind of personal ethics and morality to this, as well as