This week, our guest is Karl Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, whose many titles include the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China, Commander of the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Because General Eikenberry has had such a long and fascinating career and often occupied key roles at important pivot points in U.S. policy, we decided to devote the whole interview to an examination of his biography.
This week, our guest is Karl Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, whose many titles include the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China, Commander of the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Because General Eikenberry has had such a long and fascinating career and often occupied key roles at important pivot points in U.S. policy, we decided to devote the whole interview to an examination of his biography.
*The Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
**The first twelve episodes of this podcast were published by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Peter: Hi, I'm Peter Slezkine, Director of the Monterey Trialogue, a program hosted by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Since the middle of the 20th century, relations among the United States, Russia, and China have had an enormous impact on each country separately and on the world as a whole. The purpose of the Monterey Trialogue is to better understand these extraordinarily complex and consequential relationship by directly engaging with experts from all three countries.
Today, we’re talking to Karl Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, whose many titles include the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China, Commander of the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Because General Eikenberry has had such a long and fascinating career and often occupied key roles at important pivot points in U.S. policy, we decided to devote the whole interview to an examination of his biography. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Welcome, Karl.
[00:01:03] Karl: Thanks, Peter. Good to be here.
[00:01:04] Peter: So, you were born in 1951 in Indiana at the very peak of the early Cold War, the Korean War was one year in. I will not ask you to give us your impressions from infancy of the Korean War, but perhaps, if you could tell us about your childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and ‘60s, what the Cold War meant to you, what you thought of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, communism.
[00:01:32] Karl: Growing up, moving around a lot of towns in the Midwest, didn't… it was not from a military family, but my father was a plant manager and pretty good at the job. And so, he was frequently asked to move to a, a new city where there was a plant that was in trouble in terms of profitability. And he was… turned out to be a pretty good turn-it-around guy. And I say that because there, in the Midwest, so-called middle America, you know, memories that I have from the Cold War going back to the famous, occasional, drill for nuclear attack, where I remember in elementary school, at least one or two occasions, the duck under the desk. And I'm not sure what that would have done, had a nuclear weapon gone off close by, and not sure I was even of an age where I could actually comprehend what, exactly, what we were doing.
But memories that I still have, clearly. Cuban Missile Crisis. My father was at Harvard Business School and taking an executive course, flew home, and suddenly appeared there with us. And I remember a serious talk with my sister and I, which, now, I could start to comprehend the dangers that we’re faced at a very personal level.
I remember, junior high school, high school years, images coming from China, from the cultural revolution. Two countries is the Soviet Union, China, far away, mysterious. Thinking about the Soviet Union, an understanding of the danger that the United States of America felt, and looking at China from a distance, and just incomprehensible to me as a young boy, with the chaos that was portrayed coming out of China at that time.
The final point would be, Peter, it's interesting, as you look back on life, accepted to the United States Military Academy, for the class of 1973, meaning, now I was in Goldsboro, North Carolina, had been accepted to the United States Military Academy. And then, in the spring of 1969, still at Goldsboro High, receiving a letter from the Military Academy, informing me that I would have to take two years of a foreign language when I arrived that fall and to give a choice of what my preference would be for language study. And looking over the list, I do distinctly recall that there was a set of romance languages. There was German, all sounded pretty interesting to me there in Goldsboro, North Carolina, this 17-year-old about to embark on an education at the United States Military Academy.
And there was, then, farther down the list, there was Russian language. And I thought that was pretty exotic. We were in the midst of the Cold War. I was going off to West Point, but below that was Mandarin Chinese. And now, to me, this was really exotic. There's, again, those images coming out of China at the time, didn't know a lot about Asia, had never traveled outside of the United States.
So, for that reason, just curiosity and how exotic it all seemed, I selected Mandarin Chinese, which proved to be a decision that would do a lot to shape my later professional life.
[00:05:08] Peter: How important was the ideological element? Was communism something that seemed threatening, if not in the U.S., then, in its potential spread around the world? Or, was it essentially a matter of nuclear missiles, ducking under the tables, Cuban Missile Crisis, in the threat of nuclear Armageddon?
[00:05:24] Karl: That's a great question, Peter. I, I don't know if the two could be, in my mind, could be separated, that there was the ideological struggle. It was communism versus the United States representing the free world or the leader of the free world, as it was labeled at that time. And then, you've got this dangerous ideology, so to speak, nuclear armed. So, I would look at them as I, you know, to the extent my memory, is, is a good one here and clear. I'd look at the two as intertwined threats.
[00:05:59] Peter: You mentioned the free world. Do you remember what… how you understood that concept in the '50s, '60s?
[00:06:04] Karl: Probably in, you know, rather simplistic black-and-white terms without nuance because as I'm growing up, then, the adults that I'm interacting with, many of them are veterans of the Second World War, having gone through that experience. And I think that many of them framed the world that I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as one that was divided into two blocks. There was the communist block. There was the free block. And then, the… with those two blocks trying to gain influence in the developing world or the so-called nonaligned world.
[00:06:42] Peter: So, then you went off to West Point. What got you into a military career? How did you make that decision?
[00:06:48] Karl: Peter, you know, you look back and, and we tend to think that, when we're going through life, that we're faced with decisions and there's one important factor that leads us to make an important life choice or professional choice, but I think, in most instances, it's contingency. There's luck and chance that's involved. For myself, I did grow up in a family which had a respect for the United States Armed Forces. My father was not a professional career officer, but he did serve, like, so many of his generation, in the Second World War in the Pacific. And his experiences that he had in the Army were very positive. I think that that was part of my motivation.
The idea of just having an opportunity to get a full scholarship and to be able to do this on my own, which, the military academies still offer. I was important. And then, perhaps, just a sense of adventure. There's a military that I could join and service would provide different opportunities for me. It was during the Vietnam War that I made my choice to go to West Point. So, I don't know if the Vietnam War, at that point, when I went in 1969 was at its height. I don't recall what kind of influence that that had on me, but by the time I went to West Point, certainly, within American domestic politics, the tide had turned and there was a growing opposition to the war.
[00:08:14] Peter: But so, you were in West Point from 1969 to 1973, so precisely as the tide was turning, Vietnam was becoming a non-popular war, society was riven by these arguments. Did you feel like you were, sort of, in a besieged bastion at West Point, that you had gone into a career that had been very respected? Your father had fought in the good war. And now, there was a big chunk of society that saw the American military in a very different light.
[00:08:46] Karl: Peter, when I went to West Point, I went from the, the appointment I received from a U.S. congressman, was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, and relatively, a conservative area of the United States. The opposition to the war was not as strong there. In fact, indeed, it was a so-called military town. There was the United States Air Force base there, Seymour Johnson, still there. And then, at West Point, I don't want to say we lived within a bubble, but you know, it was a, it was the United States Military Academy. So, the things that were going on in so many of our campuses at that point in time, you know, whether it was at Berkeley or at Kent State, those, kind of, visible displays of opposition to the war, of course, were not evident at West Point.
It did manifest itself, though, to our class, that it’s the impact of the war. I think, my class at West Point is a large class. We needed a lot of officers to go serve in the Vietnam War, so the numbers increased. And I think my class had about 1,400 who were admitted. And by the time I graduated in 1973, the attrition had taken us down to about 850. And I think that part of those numbers that we lost during that period of time is probably attributed to the larger society and the disaffection with the war and, probably, influence on some of those young men. I, I say young men, because at that point, from 1969 to 1973, my class, it was still a all-male institution.
[00:10:21] Peter: So, you graduated from West Point in 1973. The Vietnam War was winding down. Nixon had just gone to China. You had studied Mandarin. So, how did you see your future, your purpose as an American military officer in this peculiar period?
[00:10:41] Karl: Peter, if I recall, in the last class that actually served in Vietnam, and these were in small numbers, I think, primarily, in advisory roles. It was class of 1971. So, I was class of 1973. And none in my class or the class before me in 1972, none of the cadets graduating as second and commissioned as second lieutenants were to serve in the Vietnam War. So, if you're a young American military officer, you are looking to try to find an assignment which will better prepare you for future command. So, there was no active combat going on that the United States, serving in around the world. I put my choice in to go to Korea and serve with the 2nd Infantry Division.
The United States Army, coming out of the Vietnam War, was a demoralized force. We had racial problems. We had drug problems. We had disciplinary problems. It'd be hard for an American, young American, today to imagine the poor state that our army was in. And that, compounded by the fact that President Nixon made the decision, very supported by the American people, to convert from a draft army to a volunteer army. So, that's the army I entered. My experience in Korea was not a positive experience, given the nature of that army. But I was advised and recommended to go to a light infantry battalion that had been established in 1974. It was called the First Ranger Battalion. And it was, probably, one of the best units that the United States Army has ever established. It was filled with combat veterans from the Vietnam war, some of our best noncommissioned, commissioned officers. And that experience really turned me around in terms of my thinking about the United States Army, seeing what the art of the possible is.
And to get back to the Cold War, that was at a tactical level, but we had a group of officers that had come out of the Vietnam War, which would become known as the Never Again School. And this was a group of officers that were committed to rebuilding our army and to trying to set the conditions for a much more disciplined focus force and then the more strategic levels. And having learned from the Vietnam War, that, to get into a mission, like we found ourselves in Vietnam, which was the so-called mission creep, not clarity with the political objectives that we, as a army, with a group of officers, would not find ourselves in that position again.
And the army that we then tried to shape from the time I was a junior officer through the 1980s became an extraordinarily professional force with a singular focus on the Soviet Union. The main mission, although there were other missions, the main mission for our army for the first half of my career was being ready to fight the Soviet Union in Europe, if required, on short notice.
So, that was a very defining experience for me, operationally, that, still today, if you ask me questions about how a Soviet tank regiment would fight a battle with what kind of equipment, with what kind of capabilities, I could still do a pretty good job of answering most of those questions correctly.
[00:14:10] Peter: How did you get to China? And what did you think of the place in the 1980s?
[00:14:14] Karl: Well, I studied Chinese at the United States Military Academy for four years. And after graduating from the academy, as I had said, I went off and served as a young infantry officer in Korea, and then, with the rangers and with the mechanized unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and had reached the six-year point in my career. And as Army officers are given the option at about this point in time, if they want to have a specialty that they'd like to pursue, so, I was given the choice of becoming what was called, still called, a foreign area officer. And that was a specialty in some region of the world, some language. And given my West Point educational experience, with that opportunity, then, I raised my hand, said, “I'd like to become a China foreign area officer.” The Army was very generous to me and gave me two years at Harvard University for a master's degree in East Asia studies.
And then, for my language training, although I had gotten up to a third-year level at Harvard, was sent to Hong Kong. Well, why Hong Kong? Because this is 1981, 1982, and the United States is just starting to develop its formal relations with China. We have no military officers, very few Americans, who’s all studying in China. So, off to Hong Kong, were still under British control. The Brits had a, what was called the Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School. And so, I went there. My classmates were from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
So, a year of intensive Chinese there, living with the Chinese family, and was able to earn a interpreter's certificate from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. And then the army gave me one more year for in-country studies. Now, at this time, Peter, I’m still not married. So, I had a lot of agility, so to speak, in managing my life. And I raised my hand after doing some research and said I will go to Nanjing University as a young army captain. No really structured program there, a loose international program. But yeah, off I went to Nanjing University. I was proved to be not the very best student, in terms of how I was applying myself in the classroom. And the reason for that was I was spending most of the time riding trains around China learning, as much as I could at grassroots level. So, probably, went to every province in China during the years 1982 to ‘83. And a very, very formative experience. So, I came out of four years of pretty much deep immersion academically and in terms of life immersion, learning about the country, traveling around the country, learning about the people.
[00:17:10] Peter: So, you said you picked Mandarin originally because it seems so exotic.
[00:17:14] Karl: Exotic. It was exotic, yeah.
[00:17:15] Peter: And several years taking trains to every province, what did you think of the country now that you had explored it and discovered it?
[00:17:22] Karl: Boy, Peter, that, that experience that I had proved to me to, especially my one year in China, proved to be my most valuable experience later professionally, in terms of being able to, let's say on one hand, perhaps be a bridge between United States military and the Chinese military. And also, in terms of my own analysis of China, you know, it's hard to understand today, and perhaps later we'll talk about this, the very different nature of the United States-China relationship broadly, country to country, military to military, that existed in the 1980s.
Later, that relationship would start to be redefined and jumping ahead to where we are today, highly competitive. Then, you look at this highly so-called competitive relationship, as it becomes more intense, there can be a tendency, I think, on both sides to start to even dehumanize the group on the other side of the table. So, back to my experience in ‘82, ‘83, a lot of times, as I said, riding on, on trains with the hard seats getting out there and meeting people around the country, that becomes an experience where, from that point on, no matter how difficult the relationship becomes, you're looking at the other side of the table with a degree of empathy.
[00:18:46] Peter: Well, speaking of empathy, and you mentioned that, at that period, you weren't married yet, you later married a Chinese American, Taiwanese American woman. How did you meet? How did that affect your understanding of the country?
[00:19:00] Karl: After I left Nanjing University, I went to Hong Kong for a brief period of time and then straight to Korea. Again, I was still a bachelor and had a lot of agility and a lot of flexibility in my decisions.
Why Korea? Because after four years of studying in China, living in China, it was time for me to get back to troop units and keep my operational competence. So, off to Korea, and I was the deputy commander of a very elite infantry force, combined U.S., Republic of Korea, that was stationed just outside the demilitarized zone, what was called the joint security area, known more famously to people as Panmunjom. So, we were part of the U.S.-ROK, what was called the United Nations Command Security Force at Panmunjom. And fascinating assignment, a good troop unit.
And there, one day with our commander who was taking a very rare day of time away from our unit, the governor of Minnesota was visiting. And my later wife, Ching, was with the governor, and she was in charge of the Asia trade desk of the Minnesota State Trade Office. She organized the trip for the governor and the delegation, the business trip, trade mission to the Far East, which included Korea. So, they visited Panmunjom, and I was the acting commander. I met the governor. I talked to her. Turned out she had just been to China. China was just opening for her, too.
Her family, Peter, actually, were from Dongbei from the northeast. And towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, Ching is a small baby then, had left Manchuria and gone to Taiwan, where she ended up growing up. So, now, as a U.S. citizen, with the governor for the trade mission to the Far East, I meet her at Panmunjom. And we start talking, find out she's got a Chinese background. We're talking in Chinese, as well as English. We start writing letters to each other and, voila, you know, here we are, here we are, married.
[00:21:15] Peter: Fantastic. So, you have an 18th century novel, an epistolary romance.
[00:21:19] Karl: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's it.
[00:21:21] Peter: So, then, you lived in Beijing with Ching and became defense attaché.
[00:21:27] Karl: Yeah. Two tours in Beijing as a officer. ‘86 to ‘87, when I was the assistant army attaché in Beijing as a major. And then, marry Ching in 1989. So, my second tour of duty there with the United States embassy was as the defense attaché, as a brigadier general. That was 1997-2000.
[00:21:49] Peter: And so, during that period, did you feel like China was on a trajectory of convergence of some kind? Or, did you feel like it was a very different civilization and culture that you had grown to understand and appreciate, but that was going to stay separate?
[00:22:06] Karl: That's a great question. And I know people from, you know, from, of my age, my peers were, were asked that question a lot, that those that served in China or spent a lot of time in China during the great opening of the late 1970s and ‘80s, do you recall how it was? What were you thinking?
You know, two observations as a former military officer before talking about the political aspects of convergence was the security relationship. So, in the mid-1980s, China was shared a common view of the Soviet Union, which was a view that it was a threat. So, the military relationship that was forged between the United States and China in the mid-1980s, once again, probably, hard for people in this era to understand, but that was a relationship where the United States military, the Department of Defense was working very closely with the PLA in terms of training, intelligence, exchanges, even, having what were called foreign military sales, in other words, weapons sales to China, selling Black Hawk helicopters, counter battery radars, engines that could be used for Chinese jet fighters.
And then in the late 1990s, of course, now, the Cold War was over for almost for a decade. And it's a very different military relationship with China. More exchanges based upon trying to find areas we could operate together with, but also, concerns with China at that point. So, in the mid-1990s, when I was with the Office of Secretary of Defense, we had the Taiwan Strait Crises triggered by the election of President Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan. With regard to a convergence, I think, at least, you know, probably, everyone's got a different view of this. Memories are different. But Peter, I'd put it this way. That there, in this optimism that I saw in China, the energy that I saw that this grand opening that was occurring, this is prior to Tiananmen, to June the 4th of 1989 in the mid-1980s.
My view was that, no, I was aware enough that I wasn't predicting that China would become a Jeffersonian or a Westminster kind of a democracy. But was there a confidence that I recall on my part that it was moving in a direction where it would be a more open inclusive society politically? And then, the theory of the case being that, with that, it would lead to a more stable and cooperative relationship with the United States. And yeah, I did have that confidence. Even when I went back in the late 1990s, then, some eight, nine years after Tiananmen, I still believe that, if I'd been asked at that time, where would China be politically in 2024? I think that my analysis would have been that, probably, country is still led by the communist party. But a country in which it was a more open political system than was to be the case.
[00:25:26] Peter: You said yesterday that you were glad that you had not been in China during Tiananmen. Can you explain that?
[00:25:34] Karl: So, a lot of good state department friends and military colleagues that I've served with over the years, coming and going, that I've been together with in China, either together or we're passing or they were in China during three years and I was there three years later, more or less a, kind of, fraternity and sorority of China hands, so to speak, within our government and the armed forces. And Peter, it’s fascinating, those that served, they were actually in Beijing on June the 4th, 1989 and lived through those very terrible days. In many cases, I found that their views of China, or more pointedly, their view of the Communist Party, were understandably deeply shaped by that tragedy. And to the extent that, in some instances, I think it became very difficult for them to sit at the table and do what they're required to do and then practice diplomacy or practice military diplomacy. It was as if their, their trust of Chinese officials had been so severely violated by that event, that they found it difficult to do what had to be done.
At the end of the day, when you're in the service of your country, it's the interest that you bring to the table.. And it can't be your personal memories and your own judgments.
[00:27:05] Peter: And not having been there at the time allowed you to keep a slightly more analytical view of the matter, detached.
[00:27:12] Karl: I think so. When I was there in the late 1990s, we had the tragedy of a U.S. aircraft with a NATO mission that bombed the Chinese embassy in a horrible accident right here in Belgrade, where we’re talking right now. And that led to, understandably, a very sharp reaction from the Chinese government and some protests from the Chinese people in Beijing that were tolerated by the government, that were directed against our embassy. It was difficult, being the defense attaché, at the time with a pretty large defense attaché office with me and their families.
So, I went through that experience myself. And it was interesting, Peter, that, you know, you talk about how you try to apply your leadership over the course of your career. That was, that was a challenging time for me, you know. The families are… they're living in Beijing and they've got a very angry Chinese population. The Chinese are marching around our embassy and throwing rocks and paint through the windows and got a lot of members of my team that have got their offices that have been destroyed with their personal, a lot of their personal mementos that were destroyed.
So, even there are some of the members of my team, they were not to really recover from that mentally. And I could see it affected their, their performance later on. Maybe, just seasoned enough at that point in time and having been around the world a few times, you learn to try to take those personal experiences and you compartmentalize them, as you must, in order to continue with the mission.
[00:29:01] Peter: How important was the Belgrade bombing of the Chinese embassy here in changing Chinese attitudes toward the U.S.? Do you think it was a real turning point? You were talking about Tiananmen being a turning point in American attitudes towards China. Was the Belgrade bombing a real turning point or, sort of, a temporary but very difficult flare up to deal with?
[00:29:20] Karl: I would say, Peter, that, if I look from, you know, the 1990s to where we are today, I call it a, kind of, a downwards sine curve, that there's, you know, there's no one incident where you say this then leads to a real change of strategy, to a real change of feelings. It's cumulative. And so, having worked on U.S.-China relations for some decades and being in and out of assignments at various points of time, I would say that the defining events for the Chinese military would be the first Gulf War in 1991, where the United States, our military operation in Iraq was stunningly successful.
Chinese analysts in the early 1990s, as they were looking at the United States and the coalition getting ready to go in war, they were estimating 10,000, 20,000 Americans to be killed in this attack. It would be a really bloody fight. And then, within 72 hours, the United States crushes Saddam Hussein's forces and we have less than 300 killed and many of them in accidents.
So, that was the so-called wake up call, maybe, for the Chinese military and the leadership about how far behind they were and how lethal America's armed forces had become. Perhaps, the next seminal event was in the mid-1990s where China conducts military exercise to show its round Taiwan to include missile launches close to the island to show its displeasure over the election of Lee Teng-hui and Lee Teng-hui's platform, where they had looked at it as more of a pro-independence line. The United States intervened with a show of force with a couple of aircraft carriers, and China didn't have a military response to that. So, I think that was also important.
To get to the Belgrade bombing, militarily important, once again, a demonstration of American military prowess, but also, I think, it's beginning, if we go back again to the mid-1990s, two aircraft carriers, China doesn't have a response. Now, a bombing of the Chinese embassy with great precision, with the Chinese finding it very hard to believe that that was an accident, probably thinking that it was a deliberate attack, which it was not. I think, then, more of a stimulus for many Chinese, especially those within the military, the national security community, that they would develop a military where, if the United States decided that it was going to intervene, that the United States would have to pay a pretty significant cost for that.
So, Belgrade, I think more just from a nationalistic, point of view, say, you know, motivational, that, we're going to be able to look the Americans in the eye and the Americans are not going to be able to do this to us.
[00:32:25] Peter: So, you're giving us a sense of what the Chinese might have felt at the time. To be, I guess, a bit more concrete, who were your counterparts in China? Who did you deal with? What was your personal relationship like with these people? And how did it develop over time? Are there any who you still see all these years later?
[00:32:45] Karl: Peter, in the mid-1980s, as I was talking about, it was a very much of a cooperative military relationship, certainly not allies. But given the common threat of the Soviet Union, I would call it a military partnership, at least. Then, in the late 1990s, as a result of Tiananmen, no more weapon sales, restrictions on the Congress is starting to place on U.S.-Chinese military exchanges. But, that said, the relationship that the United States military had with the Chinese military in the, in the late 1990s, although no, although no weapon sales, a vast amount of exchanges – exchange military professional exchanges, functional exchanges, military medicine, disaster relief.
So, the contacts that I had, they actually go back to the mid-1980s. But the contacts that I had as the defense attaché, once again, something we could not imagine in the year 2024. So, my wife and I, the two of us, together, took our representational duties pretty seriously. And very frequently, Peter. We'd have, at our residence in Beijing, we'd have the president of the National Defense University of China, the head of the logistics department of China, a deputy chief of staff with the intelligence portfolio of the People's Liberation Army coming to our house very frequently. A lot of these senior leaders, ministers of defense, vice chairman of the Central Military Committee would travel to the United States. And when they would travel to the United States, if it was at a very senior level, I would go with them. And generally, they'd take their wives, Ching would go with them.
That's the kind of contact I had. Now, the day-to-day was through an organization that was called the Ministry of Defense Foreign Affairs Office. That was the portal, the official portal, for international military relations with the People's Liberation Army. So, I formally went through them, but the degree and the amount of contacts and interactions that we had with the PLA was such that, yes, formally would go through that office, but that my ability to access most any leader within the PLA up to a pretty senior level was pretty remarkable.
[00:35:11] Peter: So, you went to serve in NATO in a period in the 1990s, right?
[00:35:16] Karl: Peter, my NATO service was two direct NATO assignments. One is more tactical level in the later 1980s. I served in a NATO quick reaction force based in Vicenza, Italy.
[00:35:30] Peter: So, your first stint in NATO in Europe, the Soviet Union was still the organizing principle.
[00:35:34] Karl: Indeed. This is now with the United States military having recovered well from the Vietnam war and now transitioned into a pretty good fighting force. My assignment in Vicenza, Italy was with a pretty elite parachute battalion. And our particular mission, as part of a NATO Quick Reaction Force, was the contingency, if the Soviets were to mobilize and threaten Central Europe, the theory of the case was that one of the things that they would also do is mobilize on the southwestern flank, that is Turkish Thrace, Greece Thrace. So, NATO, as part of its deterrent plan, had put together this quick reaction force. And our mission was, on short notice, assemble a NATO force, and then move into battle positions in either Greek or Turkish Thrace, depending upon where the threat was coming from, and be a tripwire force against a Soviet. And we thought, probably, combined Bulgarian attack into the southwestern flank.
[00:36:39] Peter: And just a few years later, the Soviet Union ceases to exist.
[00:36:42] Karl: Yes.
[00:36:43] Peter: And what was your reaction? What did you… because you were saying that, after Vietnam, there was a refocusing on the single primary adversary. And now you've lost that focus, what did it mean to be an American military officer in the 1990s?
[00:36:58] Karl: Yeah, the moment of triumphalism that the Cold War had been won without a shot being fired, very quickly thereafter, you recall, there's the first Gulf War. So, the United States Army, as the Berlin Wall is coming down, is thinking it's going to lead to a major downsizing of our force because the force had been built up to deter a threat which no longer existed. But the army, then, was sent into the Gulf War. It was a volunteer force, so a lot of that volunteer force fought there.
It's really beginning, in about ‘92, ‘93, that the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union is felt within our armed forces. Within the United States Army, we did downsize, of course, and our volunteer army became smaller. We just didn't need the capabilities that we had at the height of the Cold War.
And then, Peter, also, there was the military in search of a mission. So, we had the singular focus on the Soviet Union. Now, we've got this magnificent military, so to speak. And what's to be done? We have no peer competitor. So, the United States, then, in the 1990s, is without peer competitor. Forces are sent into the Balkans, as Yugoslavia is disintegrating. Forces are frequently employed for humanitarian assistance, disaster, relief operations. Forces are standing at the ready for contingencies in the Middle East.
[00:38:38] Peter: Did that produce any pathologies? You say that it is a military in search of a mission. Is it the, in some sense, a hammer looking for a nail?
[00:38:46] Karl: I think that some might say, perhaps, that's too simplistic of characterization, but it's a framing that's worthy of consideration. You've got this very potent military, with all kinds of so-called expeditionary capabilities, that is the capability on short notice of going to almost any part of the world. You've got no peer competitor that's out there that's going to really be able to get in your way. With a volunteer force that is not, not a conscript force. So, good in terms of what the volunteer force does for professionalization and, indeed, for a capability. Not so good in that it's detached, then, from the American people, to an extent, and it's an easy force to commit if you're a political leader in Washington, D.C., because you don't have to be concerned that members of Congress from around the United States, if it were a draft force, might be calling the executive branch and asking for more clarity about why U.S. forces are being sent to a particular part of the world.
So, all of that coming together to where… I think we're, we were in an environment, increasingly, in the 1990s and then through the first decade of this century, where, with this potent capability without the political constraints of force employment, without peer competitors, that we go into a period of time where there's an overreliance on the use of military force in order to achieve diplomatic objectives.
[00:42:14] Peter: So, then, 9/11 does not produce a peer competitor, but it does provide serious motivation. What was the mission, then? How did you understand your objectives?
[00:40:35] Karl: Yeah. So, first of all, in 9/11, I happened to be in the Pentagon on that day serving on the army staff. So, I said I was there in Ground Zero in Washington, D.C. when Al Qaeda visited the United States of America. I knew very little about Afghanistan.
[00:40:52] Peter: Well, perhaps, let's talk about the day of 9/11. So, you said you were in the Pentagon on that day.
[00:40:57] Karl: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Peter: What sort of shock was it? What part of the building were you in?
[00:41:02] Karl: So, on 9/11, Peter, I was in my office in the Pentagon, which is in the outer side of the Pentagon office there on the third floor. And American Airlines Flight 77, then, hijacked and commandeered by, you know, the Al Qaeda terrorist team. American Airlines Flight 77, then, it impacted into the Pentagon, almost literally underneath my office where it hit at ground level. On my floor, there was two who were killed. Most of the casualties were on the first and second floor underneath me, but just two offices down from mine is where the two were killed.
Probably, the vertical stabilizer on the aircraft as it, kind of, nose-dived into the ground tore through the third floor, and just about 20 feet away is where we lost two. And then, below me is where the major casualties occurred. When the aircraft then hit, I was sitting in my office getting briefed by a major, and suddenly there was the shock. And I looked out the window, and it was orange. And that was the flame and felt the heat. And by the grace of God, about two months before, that wing of the Pentagon, the renovation had been completed. And so, the glass outside of my office was called Mylar, and it was shatterproof, put in for that reason. So, the glass did not break. Had it broken, I would not be here. We got outside of the office. The smoke was quite thick. And we stayed behind to get somebody out of their office where the bolt had been shut. By the time, we, we moved out ourselves, it was getting pretty late in the day. We managed to get down a corridor of the Pentagon, as we worked our way through the smoke, Peter, and finally got to a clearing.
We held for a period of time. There are a couple of officers that were still in pretty good shape. And we checked the areas that we came from. And then, we suddenly heard this roar and thunder. And that was the collapse of the section of the Pentagon that we had just come over to before we got to the cleared area. So, at that point in time, I was a young Army Brigadier General and told the team… yeah, we've done as good as we can. So, we got out at that period of time. But yeah, pretty dramatic day. I didn't… cellphone coverage knocked out because of the overload in the Washington, D.C. area, and didn't get home until about 5:00 in the afternoon. So, it was, you know, seven, eight hours after the attack. And my wife, Ching, she had received word that I had not made it out of the Pentagon. So, it was a pretty dramatic reunion with her at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
[00:43:55] Peter: Yeah. Man, that must have been terrifying. Dramatic days, certainly, an understatement.
[00:43:58] Karl: It was, yeah. You get, you get a new perspective on life.
[00:44:02] Peter: Certainly. Hours and days afterwards, as you discovered what had taken place, what reaction did you expect from the U.S. government? And what did you think would be a suitable reaction?
[00:44:15] Karl: I knew, Peter, that as the intelligence came in, that the Bush administration, any administration, certainly, if the Al Qaeda leadership was not turned over by the Taliban, which the Bush administration did seriously negotiate with the Taliban. not negotiate. It was, of course, a demand that they turn over the Al Qaeda leadership to the United States, that, when the Taliban government equivocated and then became clear would not do so, that there was no other course of action for the Bush administration, or as I said, any administration that would have been in office at that time, but to launch an attack into Afghanistan and to try to find Bin Laden.
The planning began immediately. Then, within the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command down in Tampa, Florida with the responsibility for that part of the world, the planning began for the intervention into Afghanistan. And I was secondarily involved in the planning. I was with the Army staff, the so-called joint staff in the Pentagon, was ones that would be doing the direct planning working with U.S. Central Command. But I was part of the team that was preparing the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army at that time for their meetings in their role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So, aware of the planning that was going on, but not one of the direct planners myself.
[00:45:42] Peter: So, then, you end up in Afghanistan and stay there for quite a long time. What was the objective? How did that change over time?
[00:45:50] Karl: So, I arrived in Afghanistan about a year after 9/11. I served on the Army staff and then was sent in as a major general to help the international committee. We're actually working very close with the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General, Lakhdar Brahimi, a really great Algerian diplomat, to help the key members of the United Nations team and work with our allies on the ground to help the Afghans establish a national army and a police force, help them with their efforts to stand up a judicial system. The term we use is security sector reform.
So, my first tour of duty of what were to be three in all two military and one is a diplomat, the first time I was there, Peter, was helping the Afghans to build capability. I wasn't an operational commander, so to speak. So, we had one mission within Afghanistan that was operationally focused. And that was, now that we did not get Bin Laden in the, the first wave when we began the attacks into Afghanistan in the late fall of 2001, the year prior, and so, we had had a brilliant tactical success but a strategic failure, as we look back at it, because whole point of sending the expedition to Afghanistan was to destroy Al Qaeda. And we disrupted Al Qaeda, but the leadership escaped into Pakistan.
So, now, we're in a position in Afghanistan where the operational mission is slowly transforming from find and destroy Al Qaeda to fight Taliban, which is starting to reconstitute itself. So, we're shifting from what had been a counter-terrorist focus, now slowly, very slowly in the initial years towards what would become then a counterinsurgency mission. And my role there, as I said, the first time was not operational. It was building, helping the Afghans to develop the security capabilities that they would need for U.S. forces to disengage. In other words, the capabilities for the Afghans to create a stable, self-governing country.
[00:48:09] Peter: So, you went in there to destroy Al Qaeda, didn’t quite get all the way there, then sought to train the Afghans in order to disengage. That, obviously, doesn't work out. Meanwhile, the Iraq War starts, and Bush declares the war on terror in general terms. So, do you remember at the time how you positioned yourself within this larger war on terror, what you were doing in Afghanistan relative to the war in Iraq?
[00:48:38] Karl: Yeah. So, the war in Afghanistan, as it proceeds, we are finding in Afghanistan that Taliban is reconstituting. And then, in parallel, the enterprise of helping to build a Afghan state is proving much, much more difficult than anyone had anticipated. And the two come together, because the more lethal and more disruptive the Taliban becomes and criminal networks become, it makes it correspondingly more difficult on the state building side. But that's starting to become clear by 2003. But in early 2003, the Bush administration then launches the war into Iraq. That proves to have a very, very different outcome than, than was predicted. So, in Iraq, very quickly, the United States finds itself in the midst of a quasi civil war insurgency, and it proves to be much more taxing in terms of demands on the United States military and our coalition partners than Afghanistan.
And so, more and more resources are committed to Iraq. And by 2007, when I'm in Afghanistan for my second tour of duty, now as an operational commander at the three star level, I recall that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time, Admiral Mike Mullen, was talking publicly and very candidly and said, in Iraq, we do what we must, and in Afghanistan, we do what we can.
So, the Afghanistan has become a secondary effort. And then, in total, though, the United States military, especially our Marines and our ground forces, but to an extent, the United States Air Force, we have almost all of our resources to include reinforcements from our national guard that are committed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the midst of that, Peter, getting back to our talk about China and Russia, that, in the midst of this, though, I take an assignment to U.S. Pacific Command or now called Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, their geographic area of responsibilities, the Asia Pacific region.
So, why is an Army officer being selected to go into this joint command, which is primarily air and maritime domain selected? Because I had operational experience in the Asia Pacific region, but more to the point that I had a background in China. At this point in time now, if you're in the Pacific Command, you're not focused on Afghanistan, Iraq. You're starting to get more concerned, though, with Chinese rising military capabilities. That's where I was posted in the midst of it. So, I'm in the middle of the war on terror, so to speak, and a lot of time in the Middle East and Central Asia. I am sent back to my original operational roots in the Asia Pacific region.
[00:51:51] Peter: And you also, then, end up 2007, 2008 in Brussels in NATO, just after or during, I guess, the moment where Putin makes his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
[00:52:03] Karl: That's right.
[00:52:03] Peter: And then the Russia Georgia War occurs and NATO promised to Georgia and Ukraine future membership at an undefined time. So, you are in the middle of the war on terror, you take a bit of time off to refocus on China, and then another break to go to Europe when Russia suddenly returns.
[00:52:23] Karl: You're, you're really flagging some seminal moments that, perhaps I have not reflected on it as well as you have. But yeah, that's absolutely right. I recall when the, the Russia-Georgian War begins, I was with the Danish military representative in Brussels, good friends with him. And we decided to take off for a weekend, went down to see the Verdun battlefield, both of us interested in military history. And we got a call, “Turn your car around and get back to Brussels.”
[00:52:54] Peter: And you were deputy chairman of the NATO military.
[00:52:56] Karl: Deputy chairman of the NATO military committee at the time, a part of my portfolio. The NATO was now fully engaged in the war in Afghanistan. So, part of the reason I'm sent there is because I've got the Afghanistan experience. I've got a little bit of NATO experience and looked at as some might be helpful. But, as I get into my job there, you're right, relations with Russia are deteriorating,
[00:53:22] Peter: What was the reaction in Brussels to Putin's speech in Munich? Was it sensed as a historic shift at the time?
[00:53:28] Karl: Yeah, that one was very clear, that we've got a new world, that with Putin's Munich Security Conference speech. And we see it right away. Peter, you know, again, hard to recall that, you know, at the end of the Cold War, the relations, initially, with Russia and Western Europe and the United States with the European Union, with NATO, there was a lot of positive interaction. But in my time at NATO headquarters, the relations begin to change dramatically.
So, for instance, we had a what was called the NATO Russia Council, where, I think every periodic basis, maybe every four, six months, we'd have a meeting between NATO and Russia at political level, between NATO and Russia at the military representative level. The tone, even in the period of time I was there from 2007 to 2009, it changed dramatically. It went from positive and professional at the table to just starting to get to be pretty nasty.
[00:54:28] Peter: During that period from, I don't know, 2007 through 2010, did you feel like the focus was still clearly Afghanistan, the Middle East, the war on terror, and Russia and China are coming back into the field of vision but are clearly secondary to the war that is ongoing? Or, was there a sense that one period was passing and the focus, really, had to seriously shift to big geopolitical competitors?
[00:54:53] Karl: You know, good question, Peter, that I would say that, probably, by 2000 late in my stay there at NATO headquarters, which goes till 2009, coming out of that, I go on to Afghanistan as the ambassador, but staying in very close touch with those in the Department of State and the National Security Council and our military and the intelligence agencies that are seeing the world, looking at the entire globe and not just at Afghanistan, Iraq. It's very clear, Peter, at that time that the worries are starting. People are starting to worry more about that our eyes off the ball, so to speak, that we were, perhaps, overly committed and, and even indeed even distracted by the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and that, as we continue to fight these wars, that we're not adequately investing in capabilities and thinking hard enough about deterrence with regard to China and Russia.
What we got extraordinarily good at after 9/11 through the year, let's say, 2012, ‘13, ‘14, during this period of time, on the spectrum of warfare from anything from, maybe, at the one end from humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peacekeeping operations to the high end, all-out conventional war, the United States, on that spectrum, had gotten very, very good at a very narrow part. And that was conducting counter-terrorist operations and, maybe, counter-insurgency operations. We're good at being able to locate small groups of terrorists or a small group of insurgents, and then with exquisite intelligence and precision, to be able to deal with that threat.
But those are not the capabilities that are needed for more intense conventional war. So, you know, as an example, how we were operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, we could employ our air systems without having to worry about our air superiority being challenged. And if you're now talking about a high-end conventional war, you can't assume that your air force can operate with impunity and unchallenged in any domain.
And so, we then started to, over time, assume that we would be able to operate as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan in any theater of the world. And that led to a kind of complacency, and it also led us to not focus on developing the full set of capabilities that would be needed for a conflict against a pure competitor.
[00:57:52] Peter: As the war on terror, the war in Afghanistan, was continuing, you had posts in the Pacific, in Europe, and there was a sense that Russia and China might matter once again. But you also, it sounds like, had contacts with representatives of the Russian and Chinese governments in Afghanistan, proper.
[00:58:09] Karl: Peter, just fascinating as you, you know, you look at how history works in mysterious ways and you find yourself at points in time where you're reflecting back on an earlier era and seems to echo or rhyme. So, in the case of China, when I was the three-star coalition commander from 2005 to 2007, there in Kabul, I got an invitation from the Chinese ambassador to join him for lunch. And I had no idea why the invitation was extended because we had good relations with China, but very little contact there in Afghanistan, that is.
And so, the call came and I had just assumed the reason he was inviting me is because of my prior service in China and more just a social gathering. And after a long lunch, what I was getting ready to go, that's what I then concluded, because we had talked of nothing of substance. But then he got down to the point of business very late, as I was getting ready to go, and he asked whether my U.S. coalition force had demining capability. And the reason he was asking is because the Afghan government, at that time, was asking the Chinese ambassador whether China could help restore a irrigation project on the Shomali Plain north of Kabul, which had been wildly successful back in the 1960s, as the Soviets and the United States at that time were competing everywhere in the world and to include Afghanistan. And China was competing there, too, as a third force. So, they had a lot of interesting projects, and that included this irrigation project.
Well, the problem was that they couldn't get access to this old irrigation project, because during the civil war in the 1990s, a lot of mines had been put out there by both sides of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. Now, here was the irony in all of this, Peter, that those mines were actually Chinese mines and they were sent to Afghanistan. When? In the 1980s. Given to the Mujahideen through Pakistan and who was a key enabler of this. It was the United States of America working with China against the common Soviet threat, now bogged down in Afghanistan. So, we had our intelligence agencies that were procuring Chinese mines and then helping them get shipped to Pakistan for provision to the Mujahideen. And as an assistant army attaché in Beijing in the mid-1980s, I was involved with that effort.
So, it's come full circle. Now, we are some 20 years later, and we're actually inside of Afghanistan, and we're talking about the possibility of the United States and China cooperating to get the mines that we had gotten there in the first place back out of Afghanistan.
Now, in the case of Russia, even more interesting, when I was the ambassador in 2009 to 2011, the Russian Federation ambassador, Andrey Avetisyan, he had reached out to me. And I knew him to be a very good diplomat at that time. Reached out to me, again, a pretty positive relationship of cooperation between, still, between Russia and the United States and Afghanistan. Not as good as it had been in 2001, ‘02, and ‘03, but still reasonably good. He had reached out and asked if Ching, my wife, and I would come over to his embassy and his residents, would have dinner together with Andrey and his wife. It turned out to be a fascinating evening.
Andrey, the ambassador, had served in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s as a political officer, or the political counselor, for the old Soviet embassy, and then in the early ‘90s, with the Russian Federation, as the Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two in the Russian embassy, had actually during the tough days of the Civil War, helped lead the evacuation of the Russian embassy as the security situation in Kabul deteriorated.
And then, I subsequently, Ching and I invited him and his wife over to our residence for a reciprocal dinner. What did we talk about? We talked about his experiences in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And Peter, it was eerie, because as he's talking about his experiences, it's resonating with my experiences formerly as a soldier and now as an ambassador in Afghanistan, in terms of what they were trying to accomplish, in terms of what the impediments were to their mission. There were… let's put it this way, there were a lot more similarities than there were differences.
[01:03:10] Peter: So, I hope you were able to remove the Chinese mines that you helped so years before.
[01:03:16] Karl: What I did is… we did not have that kind of large capability within our own forces, but I was able to help the ambassador steer him towards a very good NGO called HALO Trust, which was able to get the mission done.
[01:03:32] Peter: Well, that's good to hear. And in the case of relations with Russia, so, on one hand, there were clear parallels with the Soviet Union's experience in Afghanistan, but in the early 2000s, Russia was contending with its own terrorist problem, at least as they defined it in the caucasus, and felt a certain solidarity with American efforts. So, how deep was that cooperation?
[01:03:53] Karl: It was cooperative and it was helpful to the United States’ effort. The Russians provided the best intelligence that we think that they had in terms of anywhere from, you know, maps of Afghanistan, their knowledge of what was left behind when their forces evacuated or left Afghanistan, to real-time battlefield intelligence that they might have to access through former states of the Soviet Union where they were showing, not opposition, but generally supportive of efforts. So, we had transit points through Uzbekistan into Kyrgyzstan, and then the French had a base in Tajikistan in Dushanbe. The Russians did not oppose that and, indeed, allowing overflights and transit through Russia. So, it was, yeah, a very different world than we live in now.
[01:04:49] Peter: And things began to change after 2008.
[01:04:52] Karl: They really do. You asked about the Putin speech at the Munich Security Conference, and yeah, that's a real seminal moment. So, it's not that everything deteriorated. Thereafter, I talked in 2010 about meeting with the Russian Ambassador Avetisyan and still pretty cooperative, but the deeper, there's more deeper substenant cooperation that we had in 2001 to, maybe, 2004 and ‘05, that clearly had begun to evaporate.
[01:05:21] Peter: So, the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. War in Afghanistan, in some sense, paralleled the Soviet experience from a few decades before, and some of the actors were the same, weapons were the same, munitions were the same, as you were saying. To what extent did you, at the time, feel like there were any parallels with Vietnam? Obviously, the American force, volunteer force, is very different, but you're talking about mission creep, the absence of an obvious adversary seems to parallel the situation in Afghanistan a bit.
[01:05:46] Karl: Parallel, in, in many ways, in important ways, the differences are there. But in, two regards, Peter, the similarities. The one is that, to be engaged in a war in which military force is being used but there's no clear political objectives, and that sets the conditions, then, for the so-called Mission Creep, you know, the lesson being that, if you're going to commit force, you have to have clear political objectives for that force to be trying to achieve or supporting of a some kind of overall political mission. Otherwise, without that, once at least a democratic country commits force, it takes on a logic of its own. Without a clear political objective, then the objective becomes just fighting. Without clear war aims, that can lead to very bad outcomes.
And then the second would be that, when you go into a limited war, and in some instances the limited war may, may not be possible to avoid, but a risk is needing to continue to reevaluate where the national interests lie. And with your national interest, of course, you start with prioritizing, what are the existential threats? Or, what are the really great geopolitical threats that our country is facing?
As we go into Afghanistan and go into Iraq in 2001, ‘02, ‘03, during this period of time, we'd say militarily, at least, we have no peer competitors out there. And we reach a point, probably, by 2010, still fixated in the Middle East and Central Asia, and now starting to sleepwalk strategically, so to speak, where the Russia Federation is starting to develop capability and more aggressive designs and China's developing a lot of capability, but we're quite distracted.
[01:07:40] Peter: One last note on that distraction. Once the U.S. commits serious resources to a limited war with unclear political aims, is that already a dead-end path from which you can only hope to extract yourself, more or less, gracefully? Or, are there ways through?
[01:08:03] Karl: It’s contextual. So, let's say the Korean War, we go in with the idea that we're going to counter-attack into North Korea and, probably, the, the Korean Peninsula will now be unified under the Republic of Korea. With Chinese intervention, those war aims, then, are changed and modified. But the aim, then, of, at least, holding the line and now this becoming part of a greater Cold War contest and behind that shield the Republic of Korea will develop, that's… we look back at that and say that was a spectacular success, albeit, at some cost.
But there, at the end of the day, you still have a clear political mission that changes, the mission changes, understandably, but clarity. In the case of a limited war, such as Vietnam, where, initially, the assumption is you have a coherent South Vietnamese government with a degree of assistance, which will allow them to stabilize and eventually strengthen the country, that proves, over time, to become a more costly mission. And eventually, we realized with hindsight it was overreached and distracting us from the greater threat posed by the Soviet Union.
So, in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, when we go in, the mission is simply defeat Al Qaeda, topple Saddam Hussein, but there's not clarity on what follows. And so, you end up, then, with these very expansive counterinsurgency operations that are ongoing but without clearly defined political goals. Those can become very costly. And then, once you're in and you've used military force, it becomes very, very difficult to find a way back out again, because the argument is, we've invested so much already, we need to just keep fighting. And then hope becomes your strategy. And eventually, we'll find a way out of this. Then, things change. One day, the political leaders change. They wake up, and they realize that the costs are too great. But in the case of Afghanistan, that was about 20 years in the making. In the case of Iraq, it was about eight or nine years before the realization was there that we had to change course.
[01:10:34] Peter: Where does Ukraine fit into this pattern? Obviously, there are no American boots on the ground, but people talk about the Korean analogy — the Russians, clearly, had Afghanistan and Iraq in mind, in an assumption that American attention only lasts so long. So, these previous cases are clearly, in the imagination. So, where do you think it fits in this pattern?
[01:10:52] Karl: That's a great question, you know, we don't know… the, the big differences you led with there, Peter, is that we don't have U.S. forces engaged, which would make this a much more costly and existentially greater threat that we'd be facing at this time, a risk that we'd be facing. But where we are in the Ukraine War, it's not terribly costly to the United States. The amount of munitions and weapons that are being provided to Ukraine are in the greater scheme of the United States defense budget. And the tax burden on the American people is not significant. The greater risk comes in terms of escalation with Russia. But I don't know. This war looks like it's going to grind on for several more years, at least. And no one seems to be able to have clarity as to how this could come to an end, diplomatically.
[01:11:52] Peter: Thanks for listening to the Monterey Trialogue Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the show, so you don’t miss out on any episodes. I’m Peter Slezkine. The Monterey Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and produced by University FM.