A Conversation with General Mark Milley

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

MARK MILLEY: At some point people will figure out that the cost of continuing to execute this war through military means is extraordinarily challenging. It doesn't mean it can't be done. And I applaud the Ukrainian will and their courage and their resilience. But there's also the practical matter of being able to physically kick out every single Russian out of all of Ukraine. That's really hard to do militarily.

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah. You're about to hear a conversation about the future of conflict. How does the war in Ukraine end? How will the United States’ and China’s rivalry play out? And what military technology will shape these future conflicts? No one can fully predict the answers to these questions, but I recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of the best-positioned people to try: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.

Now, you might think because General Milley is the president's top military adviser and the highest-ranking military official in the country, that he's all business. But as fellow Massachusetts natives, there were a few other things we had to take care of up front.

MILLEY: Well, the fact that you're from the Cape Cod area is very impressive. And you already have a leg up on every other interview.

HANNAH: Fantastic. Thank you.

MILLEY: We could have this entire interview about the Boston Red Sox and Cape Cod.

HANNAH: Can we talk about the shark-y waters?

MILLEY: Yeah, we can do all that.

HANNAH: Are great white sharks a national security threat in your mind?

MILLEY: Great white sharks are there. I know they're there. And they're there in large numbers, and we're tracking them very, very frequently.

HANNAH: Here at the Pentagon.

MILLEY: Absolutely. All the time.

HANNAH: Fantastic.

MILLEY: That's right.

Did I ever tell you—? Here, I'll tell you a story.

HANNAH: Okay.

MILLEY: This is the late seventies. It was right after Jaws came out. My buddy and I—he had one of these little sailboats just big enough for two guys. We went sailing off Cape Cod, and the mast broke. And we're quite a ways off. We had to swim that ashore. One of us would take the line and jump in the water. The other guy would stay in the boat and look for sharks. And of course the guy on the on the boat would rotate, and the guy in the boat would start doing the Jaws song every time we're in the water. It took forever to do it. And we had no fins. I'm just thankful there were no great whites in those days. Not as many.

HANNAH: Yeah, I think one of your assistants mentioned they haven't attacked any SEALs, and I had to clarify that was a Navy SEAL.

Okay. Let's turn to something serious, which is the war in Ukraine.

MILLEY: Yes.

HANNAH: We just marked the one-year anniversary…

Okay, wait. Before we dive into our conversation about the war in Ukraine and other conflicts currently occupying America's attention, I want to first draw our attention to a conflict that occupied it not that long ago, the Iraq War. This week marks the 20th anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq. And I wanted to get Chairman Milley's reflection on that.

Do you have any kind of message to veterans who might be listening either about their service, or do you have a kind of key lesson you take away from America's experience of the war in Iraq? You served there. What's your take-away from that?

MILLEY: Look, I spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq and Afghanistan, lost a lot of soldiers in both. I am deeply invested at the emotional level and the psychological level as well as a professional level. And in neither case have outcomes been exactly what we would have preferred. But I can tell you that every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who served in those conflicts did extraordinarily well. And they fought with tremendous skill. And they fought for the right reasons, which was to protect the United States of America.

Now, the second thing going into Iraq has to do with is to free the Iraqi people of the yoke of tyranny and dictatorship that Saddam Hussein was. And I don't think a lot of people quite fully understand, unless you were in Iraq or you have relations with the Iraqi people, how brutal that dictatorship was. Saddam Hussein was vicious. And what he was doing to the Iraqi people was incredible. And that's not—bad things happen all over the world. That in and of itself is not justification for an invasion of the sort that we did. It has to be defensive in nature, and we thought at the time that we were defending ourselves.

HANNAH: Though there was plenty of evidence that Saddam Hussein led a brutal and oppressive regime, no evidence ever emerged that he, in fact, possessed weapons of mass destruction. This fact allows many to chalk up the failure in Iraq to faulty intelligence, and the reckoning that's happening on the anniversary this week—to the extent there is one—fails to consider whether the possession of those weapons would have made the war more strategically sound or less, more just or not. America's war in Iraq and the muddied reasoning behind it has raised enduring questions about America's involvement and motivations in all kinds of international conflicts, Ukraine included. That's why we sat down with General Milley to get his take on America's interests in defending Ukraine against Russia, a conflict which, with no end in sight, risks becoming yet another forever war. So, I asked Chairman Milley what America's main goal is for its support, its ongoing support, and its generous support for Ukraine.

MILLEY: The fundamental purpose, the interest of the United States—the reason why, if you will—has to do with the rules-based international order that was put in place at the end of World War II in order to prevent great power war. And rule number one, if you will, was that you can't conduct wars of aggression, and large powers cannot attack smaller powers without some sort of justification that justifies the defense of themselves. So, wars of aggression are definitely opposed by this rules-based order. So, what Putin has done is a frontal assault on that rules-based order by conducting a very large, very coordinated attack on a much smaller country, a country that presented no material or military threat to Russia. Ukraine was never going to invade Russia. Ukraine wasn't going to attack Russia. And yet Russia went ahead and without provocation, conducted a very significant war of aggression.

HANNAH: And that Russian motivation matters, too..

MILLEY: My analysis says in Russia's case, their essential causes belie as laid out in an article—a 17-page article which was written by Putin in the summer of ’21. And in July of ’21, he lays out his reasons or his justification. They’re deep historical linkages, he argues, with Ukraine and Russia. He argues that Ukraine is actually historically part of Russia—ancient roots sort of thing. And he argues that when the wall came down, the NATO boundary shifted from the inter-German border all the way to the east. So, now you have Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and other countries as members of NATO, and in their mind—in Putin's mind and Russia's mind—Ukraine was attempting to become a member of NATO. And he perceived that to be a threat. Fear, pride, and interest are what Thucydides tells us are the fundamental causes of war. And I'd say that's still pretty much true after two-and-a-half millennia from when he wrote it.

So, in the case of Russia, They don't have large oceans on either side of them. They don't have massive mountain ranges. So, there's not obvious physical barriers to invasion from the West. So, fear plays a fundamental role, I think, to explain—not excuse, but explain—Russia's actions. And then there's obviously interest with not only national security interests, but there's financial interests, etcetera, of oil and gas and so on. And then pride, because when the wall came down, the Soviet Union was a great power. And in Putin's mind—he was Lieutenant Colonel Putin at the time, KGB officer in East Germany. Watches the wall come down. And that ripped apart at Russian pride. And he says that was the worst event that occurs in the last century.

So, those three things, I think—fear, interest, and pride—help explain. And again, they don't excuse. This is a war of aggression. It's Putin's war. It's a war of choice. But I think it does help explain why they're doing what they're doing.

HANNAH: It's a complicated thing making sense of America's legacy in Iraq while contending with America's current role in Ukraine and the prospect of a Cold War, or potentially a hot conflict with China down the road.

Now, this week in particular leaves me wondering what the United States has learned, what it's gained, and what it's forgotten. One thing seems clear, at least with America's current response to the war in Ukraine, and that is: after decades of unsuccessful wars, the Biden administration seems more attentive to the limits of America's military might and more cautious about the use of force. But that could change as these conflicts evolve. General Milley has his own ideas on what it would take to cross that threshold and to putting U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, but also what it would take to draw down this and other seemingly intractable conflicts.

MILLEY: When you're in the seat, and you're making decisions—life and death decisions—you've got to weigh all of the factors. And I would argue that is exactly what happened, which was a very deliberative process. Every single day you're constantly calculating things in order to determine—is it escalatory, is it not? Is it provocative or not? What's going to be reaction, counteraction, and so on? There are no impulsive decisions in this business, and great powers don't bluff. So, it's a very, very deliberative process, a very mature process, and a very serious process, because there's not only thousands but millions of lives at stake when you're talking about countries that have nuclear weapons that pose existential threat not only to countries but to humanity, actually.

HANNAH: You said great powers don't bluff. And that's interesting. They do posture, though, right? And when Russia's changing the status of its nuclear weapons, or the United States is sending new service members over to Eastern Europe…

MILLEY: Those aren't bluffs.

HANNAH: They're not bluffs. They're a calculated act of deterrence.

MILLEY: That's right.

HANNAH: But presumably people in this building hope those service members don't end up being the trip wire that starts World War Three, right?

MILLEY: Of course. And that's the reason they went, because we have a commitment under NATO Article five, which is a Senate-ratified treaty. It's a “one for all, all for one” sort of thing to defend the signatories of the treaty. And very early on, decisions were made to go ahead and deploy additional U.S. forces, ground forces, to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, etcetera. And essentially every country that bordered Ukraine or Russia got additional U.S. military forces. So, if you go back to, say, September timeframe, we had about 60- to 70,000 troops of different kinds in Europe—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. But we quickly ramped that up through the fall and into the January-February timeframe to 100- to 110,000 troops. We increased the number of ships, the number of subs, the number of fighter squadrons, the number of brigades. We did that for a reason: to send a clear, unambiguous message to Russia that any violation of NATO Article five was going to end up in a very, very serious, potentially military response. President Biden said it I don't know how many times, but he said it a lot—that we, the United States, would defend every inch of NATO territory. And he was very serious about it. So, we deployed capabilities in order to deter any Russian advances into any NATO Article five country.

HANNAH: Do you think it was a strategic mistake to expand NATO to the extent the United States did? Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, Gorbachev—a lot of people cautioned against that.

MILLEY: No, I don't think it was a strategic mistake. I think first of all, NATO's an alliance where any nation state has the opportunity or the right to apply for membership if they meet certain standards. That's the first point. Secondly, I think Russia has proven themselves to be a continuously aggressive state against neighboring countries. Witness the war against Georgia. Look at what they're doing in Moldova. Look at the attack in 2014 in Crimea. Look at Donbas and so on.

HANNAH: Why aren’t supporting Georgia more? You mentioned the rules-based international order. But there are countries that have violated other countries’ sovereignty that we don't necessarily spring into action for. By we, I mean the West. Why is Ukraine and this invasion different than the invasion of Crimea in 2014 or Georgia?

MILLEY: I think each case gets evaluated on its own merits. And the size, scale, and scope of this invasion was unlike any other invasion we've seen. This is the largest land war in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945. This involved several hundred thousand Russian troops, several field armies, combined arms armies. It involved significant portions of their air force. It involved their navy. This was a very significant invasion. The size and scale and scope of this is so blatant and so aggressive, it required a different size, scale, and scope of response. And that's what we did.

HANNAH: Are we fighting a proxy war? I know if you had asked analysts nine months ago, we're supporting a democratic, free, and sovereign Ukraine. But I've seen a lot of mainstream analysis shift its tune to say this is essentially a proxy war. What's your take?

MILLEY: I don't think it is. I don't think we are using Ukraine in order to fight Russia. My view is that this is the United States and at least 50 or 60 other countries that are supporting a country that was a victim of a significant military attack. And all we're doing is giving them the means in order to defend themselves against external attack. We are not supporting an offensive attack against Russia into Russian territory. This is entirely defensive in nature, which is one of the fundamental principles or the Augustinian theories of just war, which is to fight a defensive war. This is a war between Ukraine and Russia. It is not a war between NATO and Russia. It’s not a war between the United States and Russia. And if the war expands into NATO Article five territory based on Russian aggression, then you're in a different place. But right now, this is clearly a war between Ukraine and Russia. We are helping Ukraine defend themselves.

HANNAH: And fight a just war.

MILLEY: And fight a just war of defense.

HANNAH: But the justness of the war, though an important consideration for American policymakers, doesn't necessarily make Ukraine's probability of victory go up simply because it's just or appropriate them to respond.

MILLEY: That's right.

HANNAH: You were one of the first people to say this war isn't going to end in an unconditional surrender, that there's going to be a negotiated settlement here. What can the United States do to accelerate that diplomatic agreement that ends this war?

MILLEY: All wars, as Clausewitz tells us, are politics by the use of organized violence in order to impose your political will on your opponent. So, in Russia's case, they decided to conduct a very broad, very significant invasion of Ukraine in order to topple the Zelensky government, in order to capture at least all of eastern Ukraine, east of the Danube River and arguably further west all the way out to the Carpathian Mountains. They failed in that. They failed strategically to achieve their political objectives through military means. So, it's my estimate that they probably will not be able to achieve their political objectives. It's very unlikely through military means if their political objectives are to secure and to seize all of Ukraine or even huge chunks of it. I think it'd be very, very unlikely they're going to able to do that. On the other side, on the Ukrainian side, their political objectives—totally justified. Totally in accordance with just war theories. It's a war of defense. And their political objectives are to liberate all of Ukraine, every inch of Ukraine, and get every Russian soldier out of every inch of Ukrainian territory..

HANNAH: Is that achievable?

MILLEY: Well, that's the question. Is that achievable through military means? And I would say this year—meaning the remainder of this year—I think that'll be a very difficult task. It's not impossible, but it's extremely difficult. And in the world of probabilities, I don't think it's likely. It could happen, but I don't think it's likely to happen. Therefore, you've got a state of nature where neither side, probably, can achieve their political objectives through military means. And that state of nature will exist for some period of time. You'll see offensive actions by one side or the other. You'll probably see some significant advances, hopefully—knock on wood—by the Ukrainians to liberate Ukraine. But the entire country—

HANNAH: Is this a frozen conflict?

MILLEY: I wouldn't say frozen. I would say it is unlikely to achieve their political objectives through military means this year.

HANNAH: And it's been reported that even Zelensky said, “Two to three years is the amount of time we need.” And if you're looking at trench warfare, that's a lot of bodies, and that's a lot of cost. That's a lot of cost of rebuilding as well after that time. So, the question, though, is… There have been peace plans proposed by Italy. Different countries have tried to become mediators—Turkey. China recently floated a peace plan. Should the United States take seriously or welcome any country that's going to try to bring an end to this war? Zelensky said he was awaiting details on the China plan, but he didn't dismiss it out of hand. Is there a way we should be advocating diplomatic negotiations no matter who is involved in those?

MILLEY: Well, first of all, you asked how this ends. I think given that neither side is likely to achieve their complete political objectives through military means—and that's just a military assessment—then it probably will end somewhere, somehow at a negotiating table. Every leader of Europe has said that. President Biden has said that. Zelensky himself has said that. The problem is neither side right now is willing to move to a negotiating table to start discussing what could be the terms at the end of the day.

So, President Zelensky has a set of a ten-point peace plan. Then he has laid out his conditions. President Putin has laid out his conditions. The Chinese have come in from the sidelines and said, “Here's a 12-point peace plan.” So, you mentioned Turkey and others—I don't know what the answer is going to be. I'm not a diplomat. I'm a soldier. But I believe the diplomats of the world, whomever they are, will somehow figure out—my guess is at some point in the future, maybe this summer or maybe next winter, who knows? I don't know when. But at some point people will figure out that the cost of continuing to execute this war through military means is extraordinarily challenging. It doesn't mean it can't be done. And I applaud the Ukrainian will and their courage and their resilience. But there's also the practical matter of being able to physically kick out every single Russian out of all of Ukraine. That's really hard to do militarily, and it's an enormous cost in blood and treasure. So, I think somewhere, somehow someone's going to figure out how to get to a negotiating table, and that's where this thing will get settled out eventually.

HANNAH: It was reported by the Economist, I think, that Ukraine is firing more shells in a month than we can produce or that we've been producing in a year. Is there a limit to what, just from a purely tactical standpoint, the United States is able to supply Ukraine with?

MILLEY: Well, remember, the U.S. is not doing this alone. There are 50 or 60 countries that are also contributing significantly to this effort in terms of material, whether it's ammunition or weapons or tanks or infantry fighting vehicles or even nonlethal capabilities. There's also a significant amount of financial aid that's going to Ukraine, because, remember, Ukraine has suffered tremendously. About a third of their economic output has been destroyed. Their energy output—about a third of that's down. About 25% of their agriculture—the land is no longer farmable. And then they've suffered—I think it's about 40,000 plus civilians killed. And that's out of a population of 40 million.

HANNAH: So, what you're saying essentially is, given their sacrifice—

MILLEY: It’s a huge sacrifice.

HANNAH: …Some Abrams tanks and shells are not necessarily—we shouldn't be too concerned about that or...?

MILLEY: No. What I'm saying is the sacrifice the Ukrainian people have put into this thing is enormous. And the ability of the West to continue to support them, I think, is—it's not unending in a theoretical sense. But I think the words of President Biden and others are valid, which is: we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes with as much as it takes. And the United States, along with our allies, have the capability to do that for a very long period of time. You said about our own stocks: we monitor that very, very closely. And we, the U.S. military, have enormous amounts of capabilities. We are not putting ourselves—the United States national defense—at risk with the supplies we're giving to the Ukrainians. Sometime down in the future that might not be the case. But right now, we're in good shape, and we'll be able to sustain Ukraine for a considerable length of time. So, it comes down to a matter of political will as opposed to the material assistance.

HANNAH: I want to get one question in here about China. It seems like American interests in Asia are manifold, and there are a lot of different ways we relate with China. They're still our number one trading partner. Do you see a conflict with China as historically inevitable? And do you worry that by talking about a new Cold War, we're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where our posture toward China and theirs toward us is adversarial rather than potentially competitive or cooperative?

MILLEY: Well, first, I think China is the most significant geopolitical threat or adversary the United States is facing, at least between now and mid-century and probably for the rest of the century. If you were a historian in the year 2123, and you were looking back on this century, the main geopolitical story of the century is going to be the relationship between the United States and China. The rise of China is the most historic geopolitical rise of a nation state since the rise of the United States, really. And it is enormous. What they've done since 1979, since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, is reformed their economy. They're no longer really a communist economy per se. They're really a capitalist society led by a communist government. And they have developed an enormous amount of wealth. And in the wake of that wealth, they are clearly developing a very, very capable world-class military. And that surely implies there could be armed conflict between China and the United States at some point in the future. I don't believe in historical determinism. I think armed conflict between the United States and China is possible. And we need to prepare for that, and we need to deter it from ever happening.

HANNAH: Do you think any gain China makes geopolitically in Asia or even in Africa or South America, in the global South, in the Belt and Road—do you think that is a net negative for the United States? In other words, is this a zero-sum competition where China's increasing affluence and geopolitical muscle flexing is going to necessarily threaten American interests?

MILLEY: I don't think every single move by adversarial countries are necessarily zero-sum, but a lot of them are. We are in a very tenuous position with China in the years ahead. And it's going to take every amount of energy, talent, and skill on both sides to prevent armed conflict. Remember that China is a great power. China is a large country, an enormous economy. We have huge trade interests with China, for better or worse. They've got a rapidly developing military. I think it's in our interests, and really the global interest, to make sure war between the United States and China does not happen. And we do that by making sure the United States military remains the strongest, largest, most significant, most capable military in history. And then in order to deter an opponent from wars of aggression, you have to have that capability. They have to know you have the capability. Then they have to know you have the will to use it. And if you have that—will, capability—then the probability of deterrence is higher. It's still not guaranteed, but it's higher. I believe war between the United States and China can be deterred, but it can only be deterred if the United States military stays really strong and stays well ahead of the Chinese.

HANNAH: Your term expires here in the fall. What are the major challenges facing the person who comes after you?

MILLEY: We are currently in the middle of a fundamental change in the character of war. The nature of war. the nature of war—as Clausewitz talks about the nature of war—that is: war is politics. It involves fear and friction, and it involves this relationship between the government, the army, and its people. And there's certain aspects of it that are immutable as long as human beings are involved in the conduct of war. But that's the nature of war. The character of war is different. The character war is the tactics, the techniques, the concepts, the organizations, the talent management, the weapons, the technologies. And character of war changes frequently. It changes every time you have a new weapon and so on. But fundamentally, it only changes once in a while. Today we are undergoing the most significant and most fundamental change in the character of war. And it's really, this time, being driven by technology.

For example, we know we can hit with great precision at very long range with the advent of precision-guided munitions—and they came on about 40 years ago at the end of Vietnam, when we start introducing precision guided munitions. And they're now they're prolific. Every military has those. Then you also have the ability to sense the environment, to see in ways humans have never been able to sense an environment before. Your ability to see and your ability to hit with precision munitions is unlike anything humans have ever witnessed before.

Then add in some other technologies—robotics, for example. We and most of the advanced countries’ militaries are now experimenting with unmanned maritime vessels, both surface and subsurface. We are looking at robotic tanks and ground vehicles. So, 5 or 10 or 15 years from now, you're going to see significant portions of armies and navies and air forces that will be robotic.

And then you've got a technology that is being developed very, very rapidly in the commercial sector and has military application—artificial intelligence. Decision-making in war is fundamental to outcomes. The more rapidly you are able to assimilate and absorb large amounts of information and then determine that relative to your opponent, then you're going to have a decisive advantage. You want to be ahead of your opponent in terms of decision-making, relative to your opponent's ability to act. Artificial intelligence can—has the potential anyway—allow you to do that, to absorb massive amounts of information about both your enemy and yourself. So, Sun Tzu: “See yourself. See the enemy. Win a thousand battles.” If you can see yourself and see the enemy, crunch all that information about how much fuel you have, how many casualties you have, what the status of your forces is… And you can do the same for the enemy. You're going to have a potentially decisive advantage.

All of those technologies are converging all at the same time, and they're all coming to fruition here in the next 10 or 15 years.

HANNAH: I appreciate it, General Milley. Thank you very much for making it.

MILLEY: Okay, Mark. Thank you. Go Sox.

HANNAH: Yeah, go Sox. Go Bruins, too.

MILLEY: That's right. Go Bruins.

HANNAH: This week, we'll hear reports of Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as China seeks to boost its diplomatic standing and promote its plan to end the war in Ukraine diplomatically. Whether it's China, the United States, Italy, or Turkey, we may begin to be seeing, as General Milley puts it, the diplomats of the world, whomever they are, figuring out a way to end this war.

I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. Special thanks, as always, go out to our None of the Above team. Thanks to our producer Caroline Gray, our associate producer and editor Sarah Leeson, and our sound engineer Andrew Logan. If you enjoyed what you've heard, we'd appreciate you subscribing to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Do rate and review us. If there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there. See you next time.

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