Latest / Five Questions for a General / Lieutenant General James Dubik

Transcript

Lieutenant General James Dubik · Five Questions for a General

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:03
  Speaker B: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the modern Morris Institute at West point. I am Dr. Charles Feint, the team lead for this podcast series, which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant, and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:24
  Speaker C: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I'm Cadet Nicholas Finke, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik. Lt. Gen. Retired James M. Dubik served over 37 years in the United States army, commanding at every level, from platoon to joint and multinational commands. A graduate from Gannon University, General Dubik later received an MA Degree in philosophy from John Hopkins University. General Dubik also came to West Point as a professor of philosophy. He's perhaps best known for commanding the multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, where he oversaw the development and advising of Iraqi security forces during a critical phase of the war. Following his retirement, General Dubik has remained a prominent voice in national security discourse as a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and the National Institute for Public Policy. General, welcome to the show.
• 1:18
  Speaker A: Thanks. Appreciate it.
• 1:20
  Speaker C: Sir, can we start by having you explain why you joined the Army?
• 1:24
  Speaker A: I joined the army when I left the seminary and realized I didn't want to be a priest. And I had, but I wanted to be a priest. From the time I was seven years old on, I didn't know what to do with my life. So I was going to enlist. This is 1968, and my dad, who was drafted in World War II, recalled active duty for the Korean War, said to me, jim, I know you become an officer. Do not enlist. This would not be a good thing for you. So I followed his advice, went to college, went to rotc, joined the army and pretty much loved it as soon as I joined.
• 2:02
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. Sir. The army continues to innovate, often increasing the distance between soldiers and violence on the battlefield. How do these developments impact the moral conscience of soldiers?
• 2:12
  Speaker A: Well, there may be more distance between soldiers on the battlefield. You can track that historically, but there's no distance between a soldier and his or her conscience. That distance has not expanded. It stayed just as small as it always has been. And there's no change to the fact that we lead human beings in uniform and we kill human beings in uniform. There's no separation from that. You might get more distance in how you kill, but the fact of the matter is still killing people, and sometimes those people are combatants. And Sometimes even with the best of intentions, they're not combatants. That moral space between a soldier and the act of killing has not expanded.
• 3:09
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. What was the most unique challenge you faced when standing up and leading the Army's 1st Striker Brigade Combat Team?
• 3:15
  Speaker A: I think there were two. There were a lot of challenges. A lot of challenges. Well, we had no money, we had no personnel. This was a year of execution activity. The chief had the idea and he wanted to execute it in this year. We, our money comes in five year hunks. So five years prior, there was no Striker idea, hence there was no money. But the chief, General Shinseki, figured out that well enough with the, with the Forscombe commander and trade off commander, we saw that. I think my first biggest challenge on behalf of the army was to create a sense of urgency. The chief wanted irreversible momentum toward a Striker brigade in one year. So my challenge was how to do that. Because bureaucracies drag things out. That's their nature. So the challenge was how do I create a sense of urgency? And we did that by pretty much destroying the third Brigade, second Division armor. And when we turned in all their equipment, they could no longer be an armored brigade. They were now C5. And nobody wants a C5 unit, undeployable unit. And that created a sense of urgency to move it from C5 back to C2 and C1. So that was the first one, first big challenge. But once we figured that out, which we did a Fort Benning early on, that got things moving pretty quick. Second was the brigade had a set of equipment that could act faster than the people. So the network we put into the, into the brigade was the fastest we had ever seen, but people were the same. So the second challenge is how do you retrain people to think and act faster so they could maximize, to the best extent possible, the, the network? And that was, that was the second big challenge. We had to recreate a training and leader development program within the brigade. And part of that was building trust. We did, for example, conduct a set of exercises for, let's say, battalions where the battalion commander, his staff would have a problem to solve. And then we created two other staffs, one out of NCOs and one out of mid grade officers and junior officers. And they had the same problems as the regular staff. Well, the first iteration, the staff won. But by the fourth iteration, there was big competition. And what that showed the battalion commanders is that there was a lot more potential in his organization than he realized. And once he could tap into that potential, he could accelerate the planning process, the decision making process and the execution process. And that was part of the way we got the brigade to be able to act as fast as the network would have allowed.
• 6:19
  Speaker C: Thank you, sir. Looking back across your decades of service, what leadership lesson proved true at every level from platoon to policy?
• 6:25
  Speaker A: Treat people with dignity and respect. Be humble. Don't think you know everything you don't. At various points in my career, there were more people that knew more about my organization than I did. And that's a very humbling position to be in. And to lead under those conditions is not the character characterization of leadership. I'm the leader. I know what has to be done. I tell you what to do and you do it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I learned that early as a platoon leader and I learned it again as a three star. There are ways to lead where you can tap into the expertise of your organization if you're humble enough to do it, sir.
• 7:08
  Speaker C: Drawing from your experience in Iraq advising and building partner forces, what is the United States greatest strength when building coalition partners?
• 7:16
  Speaker A: I'm going to go to the weakness first. We're impatient. How long does it take to build. Build an army? Yeah, exactly. The US doing, the nation expects that to be done in a matter of months, maybe years. And on the tip of the spear, the combat forces, you might be able to create some proficiency in a year or at 18 months, but you're not going to create the professional military education, institutional logistics, the personnel system, the recruiting system. That stuff takes a long time. We're impatient as Americans and so we set suspenses for ourselves that are unrealistic. And I think that's a detriment. Now on our strengths, we have the best training system on the face of the earth. We know how to train. You set the right conditions, you identify the task at hand, and you perform under those conditions until the standard is met. We know how to do that better than any other army. And so that strength can be used at the tip of the spear and immediately and relatively quickly start seeing proficiency at the combat fighting level. We don't have the same expertise at building institutions. And that's part of the weakness.
• 8:40
  Speaker C: Having served both in uniform and as a public intellectual after how should retired generals responsibly contribute to national security debates without undermining civilian authority?
• 8:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. And there are a bunch of answers. There's no universal answer to this for me. I tried to guide myself and as a retired person by the same. In the same way I did in uniform. I comment on policy. I don't comment on people. I don't make my arguments partisan, political arguments. They're doctrinal arguments. They're intellectual arguments. They're technical arguments. And I stay in that realm. I don't try to pretend, now that I'm a retired general, I'm smarter than I am. I don't talk about or write about things that I don't have personal knowledge or personal experience in. And I think that has, for me anyway, held me in very good stead in terms of what I publish and what I say.
• 9:40
  Speaker C: Sir, in an era of rapid technological change, what human quality do you believe will remain the decisive factor in future wars?
• 9:47
  Speaker A: Well, first off, I believe every era is an era of accelerated technological change. From that perspective, from the perspective of that era, I mean, think about the number of newspapers that accelerated during a Revolutionary War period. It's unbelievable. Think of World War I period. Unbelievable. So, yeah, we're living in one of those periods. But my belief is that as technology increases, so must the touch of the human touch increase. We should not fall to the false belief that you can substitute human presence with technological connectivity. You can't do that, at least not in our profession. You're asking people to risk their lives, you're asking people to take lives. And no amount of technology will substitute for face to face. I remember when we invaded Haiti, Lt. Tucker was a platoon leader that was going to have a particular tough task if we were opposed. We didn't have any idea whether we be opposed or not. Luckily, we're not. But he had the most, most difficult job if we were going to be opposed. And he looked at me one. One time during one of our rehearsals, and I could see in his eyes, sir, where are you going to be when I. When I have to breach this wall into the Haitian military compound, which luckily we didn't have to do. Where will you be? He didn't say that. I could just see it in his eyes. And I said to him, tucker, I'll be right behind you. If you need something, I'll get it for you. You can't do that. With technical connectivity, that touch will remain required regardless of how advanced technologically we become.
• 11:43
  Speaker C: I see. So in that situation, sir, is there a hope that Lt. Tucker would be independent on his own to be able to execute that mission without you being there?
• 11:53
  Speaker A: I have no doubt he would have done just fine. I wasn't there because I didn't trust him. I was there to show, to share his danger. I was There to show him he's not alone. I could have been 300, 400 yards away, 2, 4, 500 miles away, and he would have done a great job, and I would have trusted him to do that. There are times when you pick your spot as a commander not because you don't trust the person that's there, but because you want to. You want to be there with. With her. He retired as a colonel, Special Forces guy. Great guy. Lots of initiative within intent.
• 12:32
  Speaker C: Sir, yes, sir. While you're commanding the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, sir, you were in charge of multiple branches, multiple nations. How difficult was that, integrating their tasks, their missions, or was there no difficulty at all?
• 12:47
  Speaker A: It was the hardest job I had ever. So there were, I think, 13 nations. But even within Americans, I had civilians as well as military. Each of the services represented in my command, and furthermore, they rotated on different rotation schedules. It was like the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies. Maybe you've seen that, where he looks down and sees the floor moving. That was my command. It was always moving. It was like a bevy of snakes. And to get those, get that aligned was a very, very challenging leadership problem for me and my senior commanders. Plus, we were at, I think, 70 different locations in Iraq. And it wasn't like you could just get in your car and drive to these locations. These were dangerous places, and in between was dangerous. And so I had to figure out a way to increase the alignment among my subordinates and do it while we were executing. Because our. Our mission was to accelerate, not just to grow the. Accelerate the growth of the Iraqi security forces in size, capability and confidence, confidence that they had in themselves, confidence in the Iraqi people had in them, and confidence that they, the political leaders, had in their army. Now, we take that for granted, but I'm telling you, Prime Minister Maliki viewed the army as a coup machine and asked me at one point, why do I need such a big army? I said, well, Mr. Prime Minister, you have an insurgency to defeat, so you need an army. You know, this was a big deal on the confidence side, not just size, not just size and confidence, but size, confidence and competency. And it was very difficult to do that. Not just military forces, but the police forces, who themselves were part of the problem in the security arena. So, yeah, it was the hardest job I've ever had.
• 14:50
  Speaker C: Kind of follow on that, sir. In the beginning, when you're standing up Iraqi partner forces, how difficult was it to make the Iraqis understand that we weren't going to be there forever and that they couldn't always rely on our capabilities.
• 15:04
  Speaker A: Well, I operated in a time 2007 and 08, where it was clear to the Iraqis we weren't going to be there. Now, if I was there in 2003, 4, 5 was a different story. But by 2007, when I got there, they were clear. And if it wasn't clear, the following kinds of actions made it clear. I'm stopping my funding for feeding your army. On December 1, 2007, I and I. This is literally a memo I wrote to the Minister of defense. You have 90 days to figure out how to feed yourself because you're not getting another penny out of me. The first 60 days, he didn't believe me because it didn't happen before, it's not going to happen now. After day 62, he started to believe me. On day 89, he was panicked to the extent that they were thinking about buying sheep and having blocks follow their units so they'd have something to eat. But the money stopped in 90 days. You know, it's, it's up to us to do this. And it was part of my job to get them to, to realize that we were not going to be there forever and could not be there forever. Now my opinion is we left too soon, not in large numbers. We started winding down in 2009. That was, that was exactly the right time to do it. But we accelerated our own departure, I think too soon.
• 16:31
  Speaker C: Related that, sir, in your writing you've warned against the temptation to oversimplify complex wars. So why do you believe that democracy struggles so much with the strategic patience and nuance that you've mentioned previously?
• 16:42
  Speaker A: Well, look, I, I would be asked by some civilian leaders and political leaders and some military leaders, why has it taken so long to create a police force in Iraq? So I would ask in return, how long did it take for the United States to create a community based protect and serve police force? Did we have one in the west in 1870? No.
• 17:07
  Speaker C: No.
• 17:08
  Speaker A: How long does it take to do that? What's associated with a police force? Well, you have a body of law, you have enforcement capacity, you have confinement capacity, you got judicial capacity. So it's not just find some guys, put them in a different uniform, training like police, who put them on the corner. We don't understand that the complexity and difficulty of the task. We as a nation don't understand the complexity of the tasks we issue to our military and civilian forces. And then we have unreasonable expectations of task accomplished. That is a pretty big problem.
• 17:46
  Speaker C: After you took over command in Iraq, did you find that there were issues with the development of the Iraqi partner forces that you had to solve, or were you continuing an already existing mission?
• 17:56
  Speaker A: Solve is not a word I used, and I'll use analogy of an Etch A Sketch. Gabe, you know what? Etch a Sketch, when you're a little kid, you have little knobs.
• 18:05
  Speaker C: Yes, sir.
• 18:05
  Speaker A: And when you're tired of the mess that you made, you shake it. There's no shaking in when you're at war, if you get a mess, you got to figure out from the mess you can't shake and say, okay, I'm done. So I inherited a set of problems. That's my start point. And my predecessors inherited a set of problems. That was their start point. The guy that I handed off to, he had a set of problems. So the challenge you have in these kind of situations is to understand where you are, understand where you want to be, and make as much movement toward where you want to be as possible. That's not a solution. That's called resolution. You resolve it for a time, and then you hand it off to someone else and they try to fix it. Because quality is an iterative characteristic. We have a very high quality army. That doesn't mean next month we can't be better than last month. The improvement is the issue. And so for challenges like the Iraqi army and police force, you want to put them on a path where continual improvement, not solution, is the. Is the goal.
• 19:18
  Speaker C: I see, sir. I see, sir. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self?
• 19:25
  Speaker A: Oh, boy, that's a great question. I would give myself more time with my family, and I did, I think, a pretty good job. And I have to have my daughters here to, you know, really tell me whether I did a good job or not. But I think I did a pretty good job in balancing my various roles. I was a commander, but I also was a father and a husband and a son and an uncle and a brother. And each of these roles takes time. Their. Their relationships and relationships take time, commitment, and it's hard to sometimes get that balance right because the balance changes. When My daughters were 2, 3, 4, and 5, how I related to them was different when they were 15, 16, 17, 18. And so you have to, as a dad, you know, you have to make some adjustments. I think I would. I would like to do better in those adjustments. If I was going back in terms of my professional career, I was very blessed in having a mix of jobs that I asked for that I really loved and jobs that were shoved down my throat that I end up really love and learn just as much. I think again, if I was going back, I would tell myself, hey, just open your mouth and let them shove. It's going to be a good thing.
• 20:49
  Speaker C: I understand, sir. General Dubik, thank you for your time today and for an excellent discussion about professional education, military strategy, and preparing for tomorrow's wars. Today, on behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern war Institute, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, is my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted MWI coin.
• 21:09
  Speaker A: All right, thank you very much for the chance. Very good.
• 21:12
  Speaker C: Thanks, sir.
• 21:13
  Speaker A: Thanks.
• 21:17
  Speaker B: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download, like, subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.