20/02/2017 Newsnight

The Battle for Mosul started four months ago.

The anti-ISIS forces have taken the east of the city.

And now the struggle for the west is underway.

But the fighting around Mosul is only the start of it.

What is the plan to defeat so-called Islamic State altogether,

Well that blueprint awaits the new leadership in the Pentagon

and White House, something that came a step closer tonight

with the appointment of a new National Security adviser.

We'll talk through some of the options, and ask if there's

any good new idea waiting for President Trump to pursue.

A hundred years from the Russian February revolution.

It was displaced by the Communist one a few months later.

We'll ask what makes a revolution fail, or prevail.

And we used to be the world's top nation at civil engineering.

Are our politicians ready to rediscover their

I worked as a special adviser in government about politicians excited

about infrastructure. They wanted to get on and build it. They wanted to

be photographed as well in this orange kit. Like the Village people,

Westminster style. The fight against so-called

Islamic State in Mosul which was launched in October,

has made solid progress. The eastern part of the city has

been taken, and the militants are now holed up in the west,

effectively under siege, The offensive for that part

of the city is underway. Which means, we need to think

about the follow-through. IS have to be kept out,

and the city and the Iraq Now - Donald Trump gave himself 30

days to come up with a plan Well tonight he appointed

a new National Security Advisor, Let's talk to Mark Urban

our diplomatic editor. Tell us about General McMaster. It

is this if the workings of the Washington machine and state are

acting to wall in the Trump White House with sensible people. He is

highly respected. He wrote a book critiquing the failures of civil and

military leadership getting the country into the Vietnam War. So he

knows about high-level command. In Iraq at a time when there was no

good news, commanding a very complex battle very close to Mosul, that

brought him to the attention of general Petraeus who pushed him

through his promotion board to Brigadier general. He spent some

time in London as well at the International Institute for

strategic studies. A thoughtful and experienced man in the business of

the complexities of modern operations. How difficult was it for

President Trump to fill this post? Shockingly so, in a way. You

would've thought there would be any manner of sharp elbowed Washington

operatives wanting to get in there. But after the departure of general

Flynn and the circumstances of that, it seems that a couple people were

offered the job but did not take it, mainly it seems because they were

not given the right to hire and fire their own staff. And then of course

the choice settled on McMaster who as a serving officer could not

refuse. Mike the first couple of people who had been tapped up. So

Judy calls, he has been pushed forward and there are so many things

on his plate. Starting with the business you were referring to, 30

days to come up with the new plan and there still is not one. When

will there be some kind of plan? Mosul has been a battle

of two halves. Iraqi forces have now

launched the second phase. As they push around

the city, an anxious We are very worried that

in the days and weeks ahead, as the military campaign

intensifies, families Already there is a humanitarian

crisis in the Western districts, the prices of food

are skyrocketing, fuel is scarce, water is cut,

electricity is intermittent. We understand that half of all

the factories are already closed. The poorest families are forced

to sell their furniture, burn their furniture in order

to keep their houses. The Mosul offensive began four

months ago, initially with a push to take the north and east

of the city. By the beginning of this month,

they had cleared almost This week's attack aims to envelop

the west of Mosul prior to But while Mosul's fate remains

sealed, Isis still has There is an American backed militia

to the northern Syrian government But ramping up the US

effort is fraught with The key question that

this Administration is going to have to determine is how

quickly do they want to get to If they want to move on Raqqa

within the next four or five months, and they want to do that working

with local forces, they are likely going to have to provide more

assistance, even in terms of equipment and training or in terms

of direct US and coalition military combat support to the Kurds,

who are best positioned to isolate and seize Raqqa with

their partners on the During his campaign,

Donald Trump promised to put a swift Immediately after taking office,

I will ask my generals to present to meet a plan within 30 days

to defeat and destroy Isis. But now, 30 days after

the inauguration, there is little sign of a crushing

new American effort. Rather, the existing

Mosul plan put in place under Obama is coming to fruition

and the US Defence Secretary, visiting Iraq, was giving little

away when asked if additional American troops would

soon be dispatched. We will accommodate any request

from the field commanders Our allies are carrying,

as you can tell from the casualties list, the overwhelming

burden of this fight And we will work by,

with and through allies from the coalition, and that

coalition, as you know, has more than 60 nations

of varying levels. So we owe some degree of

confidentiality on how we're going to do that, and the

sequence of that fight. I would like to say what a privilege

it is to begin serving our While the Pentagon has prepared some

options for President Trump, the White House national

security machinery has stalled, awaiting the new leadership

announced tonight. What does strategic

planning look like in this The good news is that

the chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff is still in place,

Secretary Mateus is in and most of the monetary

leadership is still there. Another president will have

options, but how those options are vetted

is the real mystery. At the moment, America's Ground

Force in Syria consists of these lightly armed,

mainly Kurdish militias and a couple Giving them heavy weapons

or more direct US support The Trump administration

faces the same Sustaining or increasing air strikes

requires access through Turkey. Increasing pressure on the ground

through Allied Kurdish militias would annoy Turkey,

jeopardising that access. If you put more

American troops on the ground in Syria, that, too,

might antagonise Turkey, So for now, the US options appear

to involve more of the same, but if there is to be a radical departure,

it could be up to America's new national security adviser

to come up with it. Jon Finer was Chief of Staff

to Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of Policy Planning

at the State Department, Good evening. Can you give us your

impression of General McMaster is it a good appointment? By all accounts

it is. And I would agree. Before I worked in government I was a

reporter for the Washington Post and spent a couple of years in Iraq

covering the war. I spent about one month living and working alongside

General McMaster in one of the seminal battles of the Iraq War that

he was commander. He proved to be an innovative commander, trying some

new counterinsurgency targets that were then applied later in the

conflict and began to turn the war war in the direction of US coalition

forces. A lot of people have said it is rather chaotic and we have not

had a clear policy in many areas. Do you think now that Mike Flynn is out

of the way, do you think stability and a clear policy will now emanate

from this White House? I think it will be a lot harder than replacing

one person. As important a job as it is. This is an encouraging pic but

the real challenge has been so far President Trump has not been

inclined to empower the National Security adviser and Council and has

allowed to be established Parolo policy-making process run by Stephen

Bannon and Steve Miller and others. That is doing some of the serious

strategic thinking about national security issues that historically

has been done and should be done by the NSC. So the real challenge that

general McMaster will have, he will have mastered the issues and

perfectly well this most important battlefield in which US forces are

engaged in Mosul, but the question is does he have the trust of the

president such that he will be empowered to make policy. One

interesting thing is, the president said within 30 days I want to have a

plan, he used at one point the words, to wipe Isis off the face of

the earth. Can that be achieved? Where the president should begin and

I think where the Pentagon should start, with a plan already in place.

There has been extraordinary progress already made in the fight

against Isis. They had seized control of broad swathes of

territory in Anbar province. The Iraqi army has gone in with our help

and pushed Isis out of both major cities, Falluja and Ramadi. Now we

turned attention to Mosul, and we always knew that would be the

hardest fight in Iraq. At this stage half of the city has been liberated.

That took four months and that is the lesson populist heart of the

city. Isis by all accounts is well dug in in the western half of the

city. So this is still going to be difficult. Moving this more quickly

is going to require a greater investment of US forces. But will

also potentially produce more casualties. So will the White House

decided that it wants to get more invested or will it be comfortable

with the pace as things proceed which right now has been relatively

successful. When you take the battle into Syria there is a conundrum.

Either you have the ground war which could mean offending Turkey or the

air power through Turkey which leaves you helpless on the ground.

Or you send in your own guys and potentially upset quite a lot of

people. Is there a solution to that, do you think President Trump could

say I have an idea, it is not what Obama was doing, I have my own idea

and it will get quick results. Well you hit on one central problem of

the fight against Isis, we have an advantage in Iraq that we do not

have in Syria, namely a local partner, the Iraqi army. We have

trained and equipped them and they know how to fight. Not always

displayed as effectively as it should. But which has stood back up

and is now taking the fight to Isis. In Syria we do not have that ready

partner and so this difficult decision about whether to use

Kurdish forces effectively to fight in what is predominantly Sunni Arab

territory will be the hardest in many ways that the administration

will face. That will come at a cost in terms of relations with the Sunni

Muslims who are living in those areas. But at this stage there is no

other obvious fighting force for which to take cities like Raqqa.

Thank you very much. Major General Chip Chapman

was Senior British Military Advisor He worked under General Mattis, now

Donald Trump's Defense Secretary. Good evening. Do you know of a plan

that is radically different to the plan we heard described there, the

Obama plan, is there a plan sitting waiting to be had upon that is going

to wipe Isis of the face of the earth? Well there are two parts.

First the president? Missive to come up with a plan to defeat Isis in 30

days is not credible, defeat is a military mission verb and will not

lead to the religious ethnic, sectarian, ideological tensions

being put to bed. So partly this is to do with government and partly to

do with stabilisation. The higher headquarters running the Middle

East, do they have plans, of course they do. And it is their job to give

the president options from humanitarian support to putting in

the Marines over a beach. But will the American people go for that, I

do not think so. So the military part is simple, the stabilisation

and government part is the challenge. Give us insight into

general matters, the Defence Secretary. People speak highly of

him. Mad dog matters and names like that. What approached you think that

he will take? He's the thoughtful and wise person. The mad dog acronym

is the kind of media thing, cultural information put out there from when

he was a war fighter. In his latter career he was a warrior diplomat. If

you look at his confirmation hearing in the Senate, he said he looked

forward to working with all the other organisations of government

including state. Of course you have to look more widely than just the

military part. He is looking at grand strategy in terms of

diplomatic information, military and economic power and not just in a

short and narrow military context. How like Donald Trump is he? How

close in thinking do you think he is to the President? Is he a Trumper?

He never made any political pronouncements during the campaign,

and nor would he. One of the things that companies associated with this

having a much closer relationship with Russia and is Syria. You could

imagine that there are old school Americans that are saying, hang on a

minute, Russia are not allies. What side would Mattis beyond? He has

said on many occasions that the only thing worse than fighting with

allies is not fighting with allies. He is an internationalist and not

parole Russia at all. You will look at this through a grand strategic

lens of where Russia are a threat, because his job is no wider than the

Middle East. It is Russia, China, and a global forum. He is one of the

most well read menu could come across. He is a great strategic

thinker. But it takes more than a great strategic thinker to solve the

conundrum that every time you try to do something, you could troops there

or use air power or ground power, you are offending another player in

the region, who depend upon for flying troops in or whatever. It is

there a solution to this? I will give you two quotes from Mattis. He

always said that this is a wicked problem and sometimes, quoting

Winston Churchill, you can have too much water. A direct quote from him

on Syria was this. I am morally appalled outraged, but do you want

soldiers in Oslo and country shooting people? No, you need an

international mandate. We have that in Iraq but we do not have it in

Syria. To unlock Islamic State, you have to be successful in Iraq and

Syria. He putted very well. There are two relevant stories

in the news at the moment. One is discontent with

a revaluation of business rates It will have winners and losers,

and predictably the losers The other story is that

council tax across England is expected to rise in April -

most authorities will raise by as much as they can

without exceeding the limit at which they now trigger an

obligatory council tax referendum. It will go a small way to helping

fill the gap in social care funding. In fact, no taxes are very popular,

except the ones other people pay. But looking at the debate over

social care, and business rates one has to say that Britain's approach

to tax is very ad hoc. It seems to lurch from one

argument to another, reacting to the latest desperate

need rather than any Tax is like the tangle

of cables behind the TV. It just kind of builds up over time

and it's rarely convenient to most of us who have a life,

to sit down and comprehensively And in Britain, the tax tangle

results from too much tactical Do you remember this one? The

omnishambles budget? We will also address some of the loopholes and

anomalies in our VAT system. Takeaway food on the High Street has

been charged VAT for years but some hot supermarket food is not. That

became the pasty tax. VAT applied to all hot food, including pasties. It

caused a political fuss. When was the last time you bought a pasty in

Greggs? Ironically, Mr Osborne's hit on pasties was an attempt to think

strategically. It was an attempt to iron out a complicated anomaly but

it turned out to be politically inexpedient. It appeared to show

that he was out of touch with the pasty eating classes. A cardinal

sin. It was soon amended, a victory for tactical thinking over the

strategic. So what are the pressures for the tax tangle?

Its the asymmetry of winners and losers.

That creates a short-term political pressure which is irresistible

because politicians have to be short-term, which leads to a quick

Rupert Harrison was George Osborne's right-hand man at the Treasury at

the time of the omnishambles. There are some good reasons why you have

to have complexity. There are bad reasons. In the UK, sometimes the

pressure for announcements, an annual budget cycle, often the

Autumn Statement is a vehicle for announcements as well and sometimes

that can lead to unnecessary complexity. The people who think

about this, the people who work in institutes like the Institute for

government or the Institute for Fiscal Studies, they say that what

we need is for each Parliament, the government to set out its big

thoughts over the direction of the tax system. That way there will be

principles and we will see the government stick to them or break

them. If we were to have a big strategic discussion like that now,

one question would be, is social care adequately funded? And if not,

where is the extra money for it going to come from? Wheat can box to

keep up with demand, dump on council tax, as it is not the responsibility

of central government, or we could stand back and work out an approach,

but that would have the disadvantage of making it obvious to the losers

are. At least Britain is not uniquely dysfunctional. When you

look internationally, the UK does not look too bad, in my view. When

you look at the biggest economy in the world, the US economy, the tax

policy making system there is impossibly Byzantine compared to the

system we have in the UK. At the moment, US tax reform, and which tax

reform the US Congress is going to pass is probably more important for

the UK economy than anything happening in the UK. Tax is

something of a tangle everywhere, because the same forces apply.

But we do get the tax system we deserve.

And we are entering the budget season, as it is only 16 days away.

I dare say we will have a lot more to say about it before

The Telegraph reporting tomorrow that Philip Hammond will be making,

or will be taking measures to ease some of the pain of the business

rates revaluation. February 1917 - a hundred years

ago in other words - It didn't really work,

and so a few months later they had a second one that brought

the Communists to power. Some revolutions

prevail, others don't. Some prevail, but then

go on to fail. Before we mark the centenary

of Russia's revolutions, historian Orlando Figes -

a specialist on the Russian revolution - sets out

some of the lessons. It's difficult to generalise

about revolutions and come up They're too diverse in form

to follow general rules. But there are some

things we can say. First, revolutions

are unpredictable. Even when they're expected,

as the Russian Revolution On the evening of the 25th

February, after three days of mass demonstrations

in the Russian capital, Alexander Shliapnikov,

the leading Bolshevik in Petrograd, scoffed at the idea that this

could lead to revolution. "Give the workers a pound

of bread, and the movement The next day, the soldiers

of the czar shot in panic at the crowds and then

joined the people's side. Their mutiny immediately

turning the demonstrations into a full-fledged revolution that

would bring the czarist People's revolutions,

like the one in February 1917, The actions of the crowd,

uncontrolled by anyone, but influenced by rumours

and slogans or ideas such as freedom or justice,

that give them the illusion But in reality, they usually contain

the seeds of their own destruction. Their degeneration into civil war,

dictatorship, and terror, at the hands of demagogues

like the Bolsheviks, who came to power in October

by mobilising violence based October 1917 became the prototype

for all the revolutions of the 20th century,

from China to Iran. And in many ways the Bolsheviks

remain a model for the And that's the second

point I'd make. All revolutionaries look

to the revolutionaries of the past. The Bolsheviks modelled themselves

on the Jacobins and tried to learn the lessons of failed revolutions

in the 19th century. But the Leninist revolutionary

model, to organise a putsch, through a small vanguard

of militants, and then use dictatorship and civil war to build

a social base for the transformation of society, became a model

for revolutionaries in third world countries, where the democratic base

for a social revolution was too weak Revolutions are by

nature illegitimate. The violent overthrow

of divine kings and - at least in Russia -

elected parliaments. They need a foundation myth

to legitimise and sustain They need propaganda

images and symbols. The great October Revolution

as a mass uprising, the victory of the people in the Civil War,

the achievements of the five-year Three generations after the founding

of the Bolshevik regime, the founding myths of

the October Revolution meant very There was barely anybody left alive

who could remember October. And their grandchildren

increasingly took their values Orlando Figes - who you saw there

at the Royal Academy's Revolution exhibition on the art of the period

- joins me now with two other people who know a bit

about popular uprisings. Mustafa Nayyem, who was at

the forefront of the Ukrainian protests that overthrew

Victor Yanukovych in 2014. And Reem Assil, who was active

in movement against She fled the country

after being tortured. I want to start with you two, Reem

Assil, do you see the Russian Revolution is having any parallels

relevance, the history of it, of importance as Syria thinks about

revolution? I don't think so, to be honest. To start, I am not

knowledgeable when it comes to the Russian Revolution. But I think that

for the Syrian people, the idol of revolutions, if you like, is the

French Revolution. Back that far? Not the Iranians? No, no. People

aspire to the French Revolution. They wanted to have something like

it. Back in 2011, I totally agree with Orlando, the revolutions are

unpredictable. No-one would have believed that something like this

would take place in Syria until it actually happened. Orlando in his

piece said that all revolutions look to the past. Do you have one in the

Ukraine that you look to or still look to? Somehow, Revolution in

Ukraine, it recalls the revolution in Russia because actually the

Communists took power, and the revolution we had three years ago,

it was kind of in the spirit of freedom from that regime. For

Ukraine, this revolution was a fight for independence from that cage of

Soviet governance. Really, we look back but it was not an example,

definitely, because the revolution in the Ukraine was the revolution of

the middle class, first of all, sophisticated people, it is not a

people's revolution in the sense of a revolution in 1917. Let's talk

about what makes a revolution work. Orlando, how do you distinguish the

successful ones from the unsuccessful ones? There are two

notions, the ones that grab power and the ones that use power to serve

their own objectives. What defines the good ones and the bad ones? I

think Reem and Mustafa are looking back to a People's Revolution, a

democratic uprising that is much more sustainable now in the age of

social media. That was a big advantage to the Arab Spring, and no

doubt to my den two, to organise people in a way that was not

possible for most of the 20th century and certainly was not

possible on the 19th century when we had this all-powerful police state,

in the countries where revolution was planned by revolutionaries. So

that is a major breakthrough that I am glad to hear has meant that we

are looking back more to the tradition of 1589 and February of

1917. Perhaps that is what we should be celebrating this year, not

October, which I think even the Russians are ambiguous about, but

February, as a moment where people power could exercise itself on the

street. But you get chaos and that is wipe

the Bolsheviks could walk in into the vacuum of power left by perjury.

All popular revolutions contain the seeds of their own destruction

because the unleashed anger and hatred and no one can control that

exact perhaps a demagogue. And with the Syrian revolution, the nice guys

tend to be more gentle and then it is a bit chaotic? I agree. But in

Syria I think there is another added complication. It is not in the hands

of Syrians any more. They're not the ones to determine their fate, it has

become further complicated. And it is worrying in that sense. Do you

regret it, the revolution? Most of us would look at it and said it had

got to be better before this. So is the price that you are paying for

some unspecified hope of a better future worth the pain # absolutely.

Personally I do not regret it. I would do the same again. But the

thing is, in Syria it was a popular uprising. It was not well planned or

anything, the people took to the streets. It was like a pressure

cooker or stop it reached a point when the explosion was unavoidable.

But for six months, although as Orlando said there is a lot of

hatred with revolutions and negative energy but for six months in Syria

we had a peaceful revolution. People took to the streets and really

expressed their demand for freedom and justice, democracy. Then came

the brutality, the huge brutality applied. Is your revolution over,

Mustafa, or a work in progress question mark when we began our

revolution we had a specific goal, to sign an agreement with the

European Union. This really is the thing. The second thing is that

Ukraine started with a peaceful protest. No one attacked the

government. It is history now, two years ago. The violation of rules

and brutality began after the revolution. Then we had war with

Russia. So it was not only revolution but a fight for

independence. If you are asking about regret, that is the price.

Because look what happened in Belarussian. That is the virus of

Soviet style governance. How long does the revolution take, how long

did we give Syria before applying a judgment as to whether that settled

something? The Syrian revolution has become a civil war and you could say

that is the end of the revolution as such. You could also say that

revolutions go on until either as with the French Revolution they

become mainstream and get assimilated into political culture

as in the Republican friends of the 19th century. But I think because

revolutions have this problem with legitimacy, with internal, external

enemies, there is this unresolved tension and violence which tends to

perpetuate violence. It means that until some new resolution can be

found which often cannot be found, the revolution is constantly looking

for new bases of support, new vindication of its policies. A

revocation of opposition. So I would say in the Soviet case it did not

end really until 1991. You're still bend in the early days, Reem. I

think so. I have two disagree with the description of what has happened

with the Civil War. There is a conflict. It is undeniable. But

whenever we see even small ceasefires, people take to the

streets again demanding, peacefully, demanding freedom and justice,

democracy. So there is hope I think. But again there is this

responsibility of the international community that failed the Syrian

people. And that caused the revolution not to fail because it is

too soon in my opinion to judge it, but to go in a direction that was

not our dream. Taking us back to the point about unpredictability. Thank

you all. We don't feature enough

engineering on this programme, particularly the big civil

engineering projects. There is a sense that as nation

we were once brilliant at building bridges and railways,

but lost our nerve along the way and with it,

and lost our will to build. But infrasructure investment is very

fashionable now; so are we ready to rediscover our skills

at large scale construction? Well, there is a new book out

about Thomas Telford, called Man of Iron; it's

by Julian Glover, who was a former special advisor

at the Department for Transport. We asked him to look

at what history - and Thomas Telford -

tell us, about the Deep in the North Wales countryside,

lies an engineering More than 200 years ago engineers

in Britain were building extraordinary things,

including this by my An iron aqueduct high

above the River Dee. Sir Walter Scott, the great writer,

came and he called it Thomas Telford was arguably

Britain's first great civil His brilliant highways,

bridges and canals were Writing the story of his life,

I've been searching, where did the vision and daring

of those amazing 19th The noise of Farringdon in central

London, a world away When I wasn't writing history,

I worked in government, I found the politics

and bureaucracy maddening. He had real energy and ambition

and he was a searcher, he was constantly doing

really wonderful things. Like later people like Brunel,

Telford produced incredible detailed notes and sketches,

Brunel did, Stevenson did. And we have people like that out

there today, is it the whole time. But the system is so blanketing down

on people that there are so many We've just got to cut

through all that and get So if you list the enemies

of modern infrastructure, it would be accountants,

lawyers, civil servants? People who just prefer

to say no to things. But deep underneath Alan's

office, Europe's biggest engineering project,

Crossrail, is getting built at last. And Chloe Etheridge,

who joined four years ago as an apprentice,

thinks we could learn from it. There's a lot of big projects coming

up and I think that Crossrail has been a good kick-start to bringing

the skills through, particularly for apprenticeships

and investing in young people. That the skills and experience can

be carried on into the next big And when you started engineering,

did your friends sort of wonder why on earth you were doing it,

or were they, are they envious now? They must think this

is the most amazing, I think sometimes people don't

understand what we do. So I take pride in explaining

what I do as my career and try I worked as a special

adviser in government with politicians who were excited

about infrastructure, They wanted to be photographed, too,

in this orange kit with the big It's like the Village People,

Westminster style. Forget the wimpy suit and tie,

look at the butch diggers and mud. But sometimes projects

turn into a nightmare. As the chair of Network Rail,

Peter Hendy's got to totally Even while 54 million people

a year continue to use it. So Telford and his successors didn't

get it right all the time either. Brunel's great Western Railway cost

2.5 times what he said it would. History will judge

it in the long term. Of course we should be better

at doing it, but you still need Now I think Britain might be getting

a bit of that energy back. The stuff that joins things up,

keeps us moving, it always matters. Good roads, space on the train,

they don't happen by accident. Get it right, like Thomas Telford

did, and you create something But we can't leave you without

remembering Steve Hewlett, our sometime media correspondent,

whose accomplishment as a journalist extended far further

than this programme, and who sadly died this morning

of cancer, at the age of 58. It wasn't just his knowledge

of the media industry that was so valued,

but his judgement. At a time when news media

is in the public eye, We leave you with Steve

in full cry back in 2014, on the day that Rebekah Wade

and Andy Coulson were, respectively, acquitted and convicted of phone

hacking at the News of the World. This trial, whatever the outcome,

must surely mark the end of the As for the rest of the press,

well, they're not Not so much because

of hacking, and the regulation that will follow, but

because of declining circulations And as for the police,

well hacking has played into what have become much broader

questions of public confidence. But now the politicians,

they surely must have Hello. Back to feeling like February

later in