1) David Kilcullen is an Australian military strategist who helped plan counterinsurgency strategies for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2) Like T.E. Lawrence, he was a relatively junior officer who was influential in military campaigns. He helped salvage the US invasion of Iraq and wrote influential texts on counterinsurgency. 3) Kilcullen believes that to counter extremism, Western societies need to promote freedom and debate controversial security issues publicly rather than trading liberty for protection without discussion. He thinks addressing grievances and offering opportunity can discourage people from joining groups like ISIS.

1. 52
Weekend Fin | Lunch with The AFR
13-14 December 2014
TheAustralianFinancialReview | www.afr.com
T
here is a whiff of T.E.
Lawrence about David
Kilcullen’scareer.
Like Lawrence, he
was a relatively junior
officer plucked out to be
oneofthebrainsbehind
a successful military
campaignthatsweptacrossanArabnation.
Like Lawrence, he rewrote the book on the
unconventional warfare of insurgency and
counter-insurgencyintheprocess.
Unlike Lawrence, Kilcullen worked for
theoccupiersratherthantherebels.Asatop
strategist to United States Iraq supremo
General David Petraeus, and National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, he
helped to salvage the George W. Bush-led
invasionofIraqthatheoncedescribedinsol-
dierlylanguageas“f---ingstupid”.
In civilian life, he runs two Washington
DC-based companies, Caerus Associates
and First Mile Geo, which use big data
crunchingandpeopleonthegroundtopro-
vide detailed analyses of disaster-hit places
topotentialinvestorsandaidgroups.
In keeping, the lunch is to be one of
military precision. I have exactly one hour
with Kilcullen at the Westin, off Sydney’s
MartinPlace,beforeheheadsfortheairport
at12.30pmsharp.
The Mosaic Restaurant has arranged to
serve us half an hour before the usual
opening; our orders placed the day before
from an emailed menu. The staff have been
briefed and a discreet table kept at the back
foraquietchatinthebusyatrium.
When Kilcullen appears, just a few
minutes late, he is compact, powerful – still
the infantryman – but youthful behind the
beard. He also has a disarming, breezy
friendlinessIhadn’texpected.
Food arrives quickly. We have both
orderedMosaic’squicklunchplate,starters,
veggies and a fillet of barramundi with
asparagus,inneatmodularcontainers.Over
theprosciutto,Iaskhowhesuddenlyfound
himselfinwithWashington’sstrategicelite.
“Back in 2004, I wrote a paper for the
Australian Army, critiquing the then
strategyofthewaronterrorandsayingthere
isadifferentwaytothinkaboutthis.”
US deputy secretary of defence under
GeorgeW.Bush,PaulWolfowitz,readitand
wrotetotheAustralianGovernmentasking
ifthey“couldborrowDave.AndtheAustral-
ian Army actually said: ‘He’s only a colonel.
We have generals. You can have one of
those.’ And the Americans said, ‘No – we
wanttheguythatwrotethepaper.’”
The paper’s big idea was that al-Qaeda’s
jihadisaglobalnetworkofinsurgenciesthat
isgreaterthanthesumofitsparts.
Attack the links between the parts –
linkages of ideas, recruits, attacks, propa-
ganda, and grievances – and you take the
steamoutofthenetworkveryquickly.
At a time when there was no organising
principle for the war on al-Qaeda, it made a
big impact. So did Kilcullen’s observation
that much of the discontent in Sunni west-
ernIraqwaseconomic,becomingabasisfor
the successful 2007 US “surge” to tame the
insurgency, and for which he wrote the
executive plan. His practical guide to
counter-insurgency is still carried around
by officers in armies worldwide (it is even
translatedintoRussian)andbecamepartof
theUnitedStatesArmy’sofficialmanualon
thesubject.
“I didn’t really advise Petraeus. He didn’t
need my advice,” Kilcullen smiles.
Instead,heusesthejargonof“changeman-
agement” for his work, leaving me with a
slightly weird image of people trundling
the battlefields of Iraq spouting McKinsey-
ishbulletpoints.
He anticipates that thought: front-line
soliders react like everyone else to visiting
management wonks, he says. “Put yourself
in the circumstance of somebody who’s
been fighting in Iraq for a year. They have
lost a lot of people killed and you parachute
inwithlotsofbrilliantideasandthey’re,like,
hangonman,Iwanttogetthroughmytour
before I try anything new. So it was very
difficulttogetthemonboard...butoncewe
did,theychangeddramatically.”
Kilcullen thinks deeply on the nature of
war and muses over its biggest dilemma:
each war seems as bad as it can get; so
terminally horrible that there is never any
political will to think about the next one –
eventostopitslidingintosomethingworse.
“It’s the refuge of the scoundrel to mention
Hitler,butwedealwiththingswhentheyare
small, not when they are big and danger-
ous.” The problem is that our “normality
bias” kicks in, he says. We think “what it is
like now, is how it will always be,” so we
neverfightthewarsweexpect.“It’smyjobto
imagine this stuff,” he says with sudden
emphasis.
In May this year, President Barack
Obama was proclaiming the complete US
departure from Iraq, and largely from
Afghanistan, as big political wins. Two
weekslater–threeyearsafterwhatKilcullen
views as a premature exit there – ISIS
explodedacrosstheIraqideserttocarveout
its own jihadist state, shocking the world.
“Wouldn’t it have been awesome if we had
stayedinIraqandwewouldneverhavehad
to deal with ISIS,” he says. Islamic State is a
different beast from al-Qaeda, but Kilcullen
can see more terrible things than either of
them.
“The worst-case scenario is not that ISIS
and al-Qaeda continue to be rivals, it’s that
they pal up. You end up with a precipitate
withdrawal from Afghanistan, creating
spacefortheTalibantocomeback,justlike
ISIS did in Iraq, then al-Qaeda comes in on
thebackofthat,andthenyouhaveISISand
al-QaedaoneithersideofShiaIran,andthen
theSunni-Shiaregionalcivilwarison”–and
quitepossibly,hesays,“withnukes”.
I can see the big clock on the old Post
Office tower in Martin Place. It’s a little
after noon and we are already on to
Armageddon. Talking such catastrophe
over a piece of fish with this soldier-scholar
seemsmatteroffact,neithersillynorscary.
He was always heading for the army,
despite left-leaning academic parents,
growing up on Sydney’s north shore, then
Royal Military College, Duntroon at 17, the
infantry, then a PhD from the Australian
DefenceForceAcademy.
ChildhoodmemoriesoftheVietnamWar
on TV had inspired him. Its lessons shape
how Kilcullen thinks terrorism should be
fought now. The previous night, giving the
John Bonython lecture in Sydney for the
Centre for Independent Studies, he warned,
“We may destroy our free and open society
inordertosaveit:afullyprotectedstatelooks
alotlikeapolicestate.”
Hereallydoesthinkaterroristattackhere
is100percentlikelybutbelievesweneed“a
bigpublicdebate”onhowmuchprivacyand
freedomweshouldtradeoffforprotection.
Spookish security bureaucrats cannot
take that decision because they have vested
interests,hesays,anditcannotbepoliticians
because they are too easy to blame if it goes
wrong.“Youendupspendinglotsofmoney
and destroying things about your society
that you hold dear – and an attack happens
anyway.” That’s a risk “the public at large”
hastohelpdecidehowtomanage.
Kilcullen strongly believes Western lib-
eralvaluesarealsothebestanswertopeople
who leave here for the Middle East to
becomethoseterrorists.
AbadmistakeafterSeptember11,hesays,
was to deal with Muslim communities
through intermediaries – usually older
authoritarian men – which further segre-
gatedcommunitiesandencouragedthemto
seek special favours. It strands their young-
stersbetweendifferentworlds.
“WeneedtotreatAustralianMuslimslike
Australian Catholics, Australian Hindus or
any other Australian with all the rights,
freedoms, expectations and responsibilities
that come from free membership of a free
society,” he told his CIS audience: “The
answer to domestic radicalistion is more
freedom,notless.”
The people flocking to join ISIS are not
that different from those going to Spain in
the 1930s,” he suggests. They are mostly
adventurers rather than zealots “who want
to be part of something of world historical
importancethat’ssuccessful–andISISisthe
biggestgameintown.Wehavegottobesay-
ing‘wehaveagreatsocietyhereinAustralia.
You can makes something of yourself ...
whichyoucan’tinSyriaorIraq.Don’twaste
yourlifeonjihad.’”
It’s 12.20pm. Still OK for the plane. The
plates have long been cleared and we order
coffeeandtea.Hecheerfullysaysheisinthe
USasa“warbride”:hiswifeJanineDavidson
wasaseniorUSAirForcepilotwhowenton
to become the deputy assistant secretary of
defenceforplansatthePentagon.
Women now command major US naval
and air force units. But great generals and
admirals in history were also complete
bastards, I suggest, ruthless with their own
forcestoachievevictory.“Youmightgetinto
trouble answering this,” I say. “Do women
havethe,er,insensitivityneeded?”
“Most women are not ruthless or physi-
cally capable enough to be in combat,” he
says. “And neither are most men. It’s not a
gender thing. There’s always going to be a
certain minority in a population that is able
to do what it takes to suffer and inflict the
violencetokeepussafe.
“MywifewasthefirstwomantoflyC-130
transportplanesonoperationsintheUSAir
Force.Shehadaterribletimewithbasically
sexistdecisionsputinplaceinthe1950sand
that no one wanted to revisit ... if we now
genuinely think there is a climate to put
women into the infantry or special forces,
weshouldstructureitsothatwesetupthose
peopleforsuccess.”
I mention the famous study that found
that most US soldiers in the Normandy
campaign of World War II did not actually
firetheirrifles.“Eveninall-maleunitsunder
fire, the majority of men don’t feel ready to
take a life,” says Kilcullen, who has been in
firefights in East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan
andSomalia,andfiredback.“Thereisnoth-
ing like someone shooting at you to help
overcomeyourresistance.”
We do not give much help to those who
endupdoingtheshooting.“It’sonethingto
havebeenshotatonbehalfofyourcountry.
It’sanotherthingentirelytoshootsomeone
else. People come back, having been forced
to break a fundamental human taboo,
and their society does not necessarily
supportthem.”
Itis12.40pm.Wequicklymakeourgood-
byes,heonwardstotheMiddleEasttomeet
Iraqi and Syrian contacts, eager for more
newsthatmighthelptamemayhem.
THEMAN
FROM
ARMAGEDDON
The Australian army actually
said: ‘He’s only a colonel. We
have generals. You can have one
of those.’ And the Americans
said, ‘No – we want that guy.’
David Kilcullen is the high flying, plain spoken
Australian strategist who now thinks the unthinkable
about Islamist extremism, writes Kevin Chinnery.
MOSAIC
Westin Sydney,
Martin Place
2 barramundi
lunch plates, $76
1 bottle of San
Pellegrino, $18
1 double espresso, $9
1 English breakfast
tea, $9
Total: $112
Counter-insurgencyexpertDavidKilcullensaysWesternliberalvaluesarethe answer. PHOTO:LOUISEKENNERLEY
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