And please help me welcome Ian and Kenneth. Thank you very much and thank you for coming along this evening and joining us here this for this conversation. I thought we might divide the evening into three. I thought I would begin by telling you how we came to write the book and something about the way we wrote the book and Ken will then tell you something about and give you some examples to illustrate the major point that we make in the book, the thesis and to demonstrate and then I though because we are dealing with 10 major wars and you are the audience you have probably got things you would like us to talk about or questions you have or point you would like to raise and so we will open it up for your discussion rather than us talking to you. Now this book came about in part because Ken and I have known each other for a very long time, we were graduate students together at the Claremont Graduate School as it then was in Claremont in Southern California, the Claremont Graduate University as it is now is and that's why we wear the same colored shirts and coats and so on. I wear these socks, Ken doesn't get into these socks but that's because he is an American and I am an Australian but we have known each other for a long time and we keep in we have kept in touch with each other and we we are talking as is inevitably the case about the situation in Iraq and how troubled we were by, how distressed and how disturbing the situation is. But we also knew as a result of our training at Claremont in American diplomatic history that this was not the first time that Americans had found themselves faced with consequences that were unexpected, unintended and undesirable after war. We were aware, in other words that in almost every major conflict, certainly every major conflict and almost all the minor conflicts the United States has been engaged in. Things have not worked out as the planners had expected, for a whole range of reasons which we will go into in a few moment. So we were talking about these matters and Ken sent me an attachment of one of his lecture notes from the War College at Monterey in which he looked at each of the wars and pointed out how they have been fought and so on and it occurred to me and to him when we were discussing these matters and we discussed them both by visiting each other and by that extraordinary device known as Skype which enables Skype users to speak at no cost to each other across the ocean. And without Skype the book would probably never have been written. But in any event we came to the notion that we could write a book about this in which we point out this pattern and that we thought it would contribute to discussion about whether or not how things were going and exit strategies and augmentations or surges or whatever one wishes to call, what the current administration is currently calling the insanity that its engaged in Iraq at the moment. So we began to write this book and the way we did it, it was to decide that rather than look at the cause of each war in detail we would simply take the statements by the president to congress or the congressional approval of declarations of war as a statement of the intention of the United States to enter that war. And those of you who are as old as we are will be cynical enough to think, in your weaker moments that that's always not always the whole truth. And that perhaps we are not being completely - the administration not being completely open with us when they tell us those things about war. But the reality is that if that is the case, then citizens need to be aware of it and need to constantly reminded of it. Because if there isn't trust and openness between the governed and the those who govern them, then democracy will quickly decay and will quickly breakdown. And it's important in other words for President and Congress to be frank and full and open with the American people about the reason for going to war. So, we looked at those reason and we said these were the stated reasons for going to war and what happened in the war and what were the consequences of it? Now rather than go on with that in any more detail, I am going to pass the microphone over to Ken, to give you some examples of what we discovered and the major thrust of the argument we make in the book. Thank you, Ian and ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. There was once an Agrarian reformer named "Sockless" Jerry Simpson, and I suggested that Ian emulate him rather than wearing the socks he did and I had no impact up on him. The - my focus is some what different than Ian's in some ways and that I teach midlevel Naval Officers, Marines and Air Force Officers, that would be Captains and Majors. And I become aware since 9/11 and especially since, you know, Iraqi invasion that they are many of them are very - very frustrated and feel deceived and wondering what's going on and why they're been asked to do horrible things and perhaps suffer horrible indignities to themselves. And I was I focused on Clausewitz increasing as I thought about this last six years. Now because Clausewitz has it's has in central position a proposition the argument that wars are continuation of policy by other means and that's widely accepted in the United States much more so now than prior to World War II and there is a correlation of a Clausewitz or several correlations and one of which is that big wars the way to go. Mast actions, overwhelming force and fire power, and this was inculcated re-inculcated into the US Army after Vietnam as a way of compensating for the disaster of Vietnam and trying to avoid something like that happening again in the future. So we have reached the conclusion and then I'll give you the methodology. We reached the conclusion where I did and then try to argue it in the book, is that the war in fact is not a rational continuation of policy by other means. And as we are finishing the book I will ask our guest Secretary General, Kofi Annan made the following statement regarding Israel's invasion of Lebanon. "War is not, he said I repeat, war is not the continuation of politics by other means. On the contrary it represents the catastrophic failure of political skill and imagination a dethronement of peaceful politics from the primacy of which should enjoy". So my central purpose in the book is to try to dethrone the idea that wars are rational continuation of politics by other means. And so what we do then is nonetheless, use a couple of concepts of Clausewitz against them as it were, always sees up on his concept or turning points or culminating points or you could do of course in today's terminology say tipping points. And we argue that in wars - every war, things happen that's a bad phrase perhaps but events takes place, decisions are made or battles are fought which in variably and permanently altered the nature of that war and it's conduct and later consequences which they those who went to war did not announce in their public statements, and probably are at least in many cases did not intend. So that's the technique that we use. One can argue that our examples - some of our examples are shaky. One can argue that some of them are very good, I regard this this is my personal opinion not as an effort on did research, pick up but rather as something of polemical history and it was quickly written thanks to Skype those of you who are here listening will probably reach the conclusion that Skype should be destroyed as an instrument of Australian American communications. On the other hand one or two of you may like it after we are done. Now I will give you a couple of examples of the kinds of turning points that we use, I am going to skip TED, because TED is a is an obvious one and comes to everybody's mind and so we so you didn't told I need not talk about it as a result of that therefore is a humble and obedient servant of our Australian ally I won't talk about it. But TED is a kind of example that we are thinking of during the war. The one that seems to have attracted most attention I base that on a single reader which is not bad, to have a single reader considering the fact that the book is, by some accounts not yet fully published. Some will say it hasn't been fully thought out but will let that one go. The one or at least I will let it go. The example that comes up is the American Revolution or the war for American Independence an unintended consequence of that war was in fact American Independence. Now how do we work this out? George Washington in January of 1776 decided that he was no longer going to fight for redress of grievances and continued membership within the British Empire but was going to fight hence forth, for the independence and against the king, the independence of the American colonies, their statehood and sovereignty. He made this decision partly on the basis of reading Tom Tom Paine in his Common Sense. But it can be dated within 10 day - 10 to 15 day period. Now that's a turning point. Another turning point that we would use would be the decoration of independence itself. It transforms the war. The war was for relief from taxation, quartering of soldiers and the idea was he would stay in the empire and of course it would have been easily resolved and that direction had the British given the American's parliamentary representation which they refused to do. Once it became a war for independence, it became a protracted conflict much more bitterly fought and after 1778 with the Battle of Saratoga in the entrance of the French, it became a worldwide war on the part of the British and felt back into the pattern that was familiar from previous wars and would be again on the polemic era. So then finally Americans achieved their independence as we know and I won't go into this, but the point is that this war begun with modest goals became transformed by Washington's decision and that's only representative and the Declaration of Independence into quite a different war. Another example is the Spanish-American War of the technique that we use in the book which I think is a a valid technique and that's one again which Clausewitz himself would applaud well he wouldn't applaud the idea that we are trying to demolish his central proposition about war is a continuation of politics where the mains and yet I am not too worried about what Clausewitz would himself think, what I do worry about is all the Clausewitzians who are in the American military and there in the American think tanks and they are in leading universities such as Princeton, Stanford, where people like Peter Paret and Sir Michael Howard, I have been trying Clausewitz in last 20 or 30 years through their publications and their arguments so I I worry about what their reaction would be much more than what the Clausewitz himself would be. Spanish-American War was fought according to McKinley the President to liberate the Cuban people from Spanish oppression. Clear and simple, straightforward and in fact so dedicated were the Americans to this proposition that an amendment was passed, The Teller Amendment to the declaration of war stipulating that the United State's result of that war could not annex Cuba. That's why you have the situation you have today. And McKinley accepted that because he wanted the war and he said he wanted the war simply to liberate the Cuban people. Now of course it's much more complex than that. But the assistant secretary in the Navy was Theodore Roosevelt and he told Commodore George Dewey with whom he used to dine at the Metropolitan club and climb in a Rock Creek Park. If war breaks out which he was hoping it would destroy the Spanish fleet on the pacific. Now Dewey he did that happily. He was looking for a fight like this and had been since he fought in civil war under Farragut. But he found the Spanish fleet anchored in Manila Bay, which is not what he necessarily expected. On May first he descended upon and destroyed the Spanish fleet. And then thereby did what Theodore Roosevelt said what he would do and it should be fairly simple then. He destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Pacific, sounds intentionally would destroy this pacific the Atlantic fleet a few months later and that would be that and you would free the Cuban people and it would all be over. However, by destroying the Spanish fleet but not taking Manila they were the Americans were faced with a difficult strategic problem which is what you do about the Spanish who have not yet surrendered in Manila although the fleet has been destroyed. The result was the Americans had to bring in the army. Now of course I do make light of this and don't speak too much about it at the Naval academy or the Naval War College because we know that the army is the enemy but in any case they brought in the army to besiege Manila and now to get the army to Manila you need to have watering holes or away stations, so you acquire they acquired Hawaii, Wake and Guam. They acquired Guam in a very civilized way, they sailed in, the Governor General said welcome, glad to see you Americans and we said we are taking over, quiet to the surprise of the Governor General. Thus was born a an empire in the Pacific. Now, McKinley could have given up the Philippines but he said that he got down on his knees and prayed and god told him that he could not give it up, now that's a remarkable thing for McKinley to have done not the getting down on your knees and praying but how he got up. Because he was really heavy, in any case and had gout, in any event, that's what he said that god said. Of course there were geopolitical, there were economic matters and so on but that's one of the things he said. Now with the Philippines then came all kinds of involvement in the far east, or we call it the far east, the Western Pacific for the rest of the century, including of course gentle and not so gentle confrontations with the Japanese who also had ambitions in the area. Thus our proposition is that a war to liberate Cuba is transformed by Dewey's Victory in Manila Bay partial victory in Manila Bay into an Trans-Pacific imperial war which the rich empire of course lasted and there is residue of which has lasted into the 21st century and there is no question but what, this was in Japanese, in the area of Japanese ambitions and you can trace the antagonism between the Americans and the Japanese from shortly after the Spanish American war right up to Pearl harbor. And that's a fairly monumental unintended consequence. If I have time I will give you one last one and that's Korea. Korea was entered into by our Truman President Truman during Poles invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans and Macarthur then landed it in turn to try to out flank the Korean army with North Korean army which was very successful in pressing south. He did so and then he came to the 38th Parallel, now many people think that Macarthur crossed the 38th parallel on his own, recklessly and too boldly in chase, in hot pursuit of the enemy. The truth is that Truman changed the war goal at the time Macarthur was crossing the 38th parallel from the repelling of the North Korean invasion to the liberation of North Korea and the unification of the entire peninsula under Western Auspices, UN Auspices, so called democratically elected. The thrust of the battle took them up to the Yalu, some of you in this room may remember that and the Chinese communists came in, the Chinese army came in and pushed the Americans back to the 38th parallel or thereabouts were a stalemate ensued for two years, another 20,000 Americans are gone and and many, tens or hundreds of thousands Korea's died during that stalemate and you have a situation then born of this change of war aims that is with you still. You are still occupying Korea, you still have a large army there, to this date there has not been a peace treaty between the United States and North Korea. Had the Americans stopped at the 38th parallel they would have achieved their initial war aims, one can think of the Gulf War in way where they achieved their aims and stopped and it would have been an entirely different situation. One could also say that the Americans - some of the Americans like Dean Atchison welcomed Korea because it was it would liberate and free congressional tight fist of this and prevent rearmament of the United States and NATO especially and that is indeed true. I don't think however any of those people thought about liberating Korea in the initial in the initial anguish over the attack and the desperation to get the North Koreans out. I think that was that took place in the heat of the battle, the enthusiasm in the Washington DC, the anticommunist for fervor and other passions of that sort. And I think it was unintended. Now one could look in the look in the documents and reach possibly a different conclusion and we are subject to revision and re-evaluation of what we are arguing and we are putting these up more as propositions than as final arguments. But we have reached the conclusion as I said at the beginning if these things happen in every war and we could document them and if the consequences are in many cases if not most cases unfortunate from the point of view of the policy makers, the American people and also other peoples around the world, then we surely should say that war as its now known are to be abandoned as an instrument of policy. I will leave you with one last conclusion, this one really shakes up - I have seven marines in class, this one shakes them all up. The United States has not won a major war since 1945. It lost Korea, by my standards, you can say it won, but you can also have to say it lost, it certainly lost in Vietnam and it is certainly loosing in my opinion today. Therefore in accord with the views of General Rupert Smith, the British General whose book is entitled "The Utility of Force", just published, its time to rethink what he calls industrial war and in our opinion or my opinion abandoned at least this kind of warfare, the big warfare of Clausewitz which seems to have magnetized Americans and attracted them and drawn them into these fairly large scale conflicts, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq and that's where we stand at the moment and I will turn it back to Ian. As you can see we we have tried to we have argued that wars do have these intended consequences and I am we will be happy to discuss those with you now but I just wanted to finish this segment by reading to you the last paragraph of the book. After all we are here to get some sense of this book and hope we have done that with what we have said but this is the last paragraph. We are arguing obviously that there are alternatives, there must be alternatives that Europe perhaps provides a model with the European Union and all the amenities have been controlled through negotiation and cooperation and collaboration and through the use of multilateral non government and worldwide organizations. And that's our last chapter and we end with this paragraph. "This may be a Utopian view point, this book however shows that war has never worked out as expected and has invariable raised as many problems as it dissolved, so why not suggest visionary alternatives. This book has shown repeatedly how the United States did not really benefit from its wars. Instead it had to deal with unintended consequences and it is time to try radical reductions of military spending a genuine commitment, a negotiation rather than the use of armed force and the rebuilding of dilapidated socio-economic infrastructure. We realize that some doubters will find and scoff at this suggestion finding it too visionary. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are among those who faced such criticisms." And let me immediately say we don't wish to think of placing ourselves in that company. But they are examples of those who have advocated as we have in this book, alternatives. "Yet even conservative diplomats like George F. Kennan appealed for the use of quiet patient diplomacy over the rattling of nuclear weapons. Our view is simply put a survey of the unintended consequences of the United States at war demonstrates that war is folly and is futile. Once this is admitted other possibilities become legion."
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