Good morning. Im mark moore, director for the center of military and diplomatic history here csis. We are delighted to host sir Lawrence Freedman this morning. I see some familiar faces as host of new ones which is great. As most of you in this got i think understand well, the idea of forcing the future in principle holds great appeal, so much of what we do in washington in terms of allocating resources, developing capabilities and dividing strategies is based upon our expectations of the military environment of the future. The trouble of course is that prediction is difficult. Some would even say impossible. Of course in reading this trip the book i was reminded of a saint by a chinese philosopher that those of knowledge did not predict, and those who predict did not have knowledge. Philip tadlock, the author of the bestselling book super forecasting contested active prediction is not impossible, at least in the shortterm, but he also emphasized that humans are extremely gullible when listening to those who claim to know the future. By simply telling tell a compeg story with conviction, he asserts, most anyone can get rich by selling forecast to Corporate Executives and government officials. He laments when a prediction turns out to be wrong there seldom a penalty to pay as the prediction by then has long been forgotten or has been explained away by the invitation of other factors. The ability of futurist to peddle new predictions about war without regard for the validity of past prediction has just taken a big hit thanks to todays featured speaker. A book on the subject i think its long overdue, especially delighted its been written by someone with such a distinction as todays speaker. The book is entitled the future of war a history, has just been published by public affairs, a copy of that you can see there but theres also copies it would be available for sale in signing after the event. I will now introduce our distinguished speaker. Sir Lawrence Freedman has been professor of war studies at king college of london since 1982, and vice principal since 19 2003. He was educated at the university of manchester, york and oxford. Before joining kingsfield Research Appointments at College Oxford iis as in the room is a tooth of international affairs. Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and awarded the command of the British Empire in 1996, he was appointed official or storing of of the campaign n 1997. Sir lawrence was awarded the night command of Saint Michael and st. George in 2003. He was appointed in june 2000 and to Service Member of the official inquiry into britain and the 2003 iraq war. Following his remarks he will be joined by Kathleen Hicks who is Senior Vice President of henry a. Kissinger chair and director of the International Security program at csis, and also previously served in a a numbef senior positions at the department of defense including Principal Deputy undersecretary for policy. So sir lawrence, welcome. [applause] thanks very much and thanks for much to csis for hosting this. Its a great opportunity especially as they see some friendly, the merry faces in the audience. So hello. I wont talk too long because i prefer to take questions and talk to kathy about whats in the book but let me just try to explain how the book is organized and what i was trying to do. So original is going to write a book on the future of war but i thought it would be quite interesting to start with just look at how people have done in the past. The first chapter will be the history of the future of war. Then when i i look at it i realized this is an awful lot of books written on the future of war. Many of them quite forgettable, probably to their authors relief. But also it was really quite revealing as one looked at these past books, because first you gg insight into the expectations of the time, about what really mattered, what motivated leaders and states, how conflict was expected to develop. But also you realize actually an awful lot of these books really not about prediction. Sometimes it were but a lot of the time they were about prescription. They were really saying if you dont do what i think you should do, this this is a mess were g to get ourselves into. So the resort of dystopian futures geared to making wise decisions. Just to give a contemporary example of this, i can think of two books by graham allison. What he wrote in 2004 on Nuclear Terrorism, almost inevitably. It really could happen in the next decade, and less we do these wise things which i suggest, and then more recently his book on the [inaudible] the United States and china headed for a tragic almost inevitable, however these are wise things i suggest, if you do that then they will not necessarily be war between the u. S. And china. Its quite an effective its a way of getting over a point of view, but it also carries risks because it suggests a particular set of policies, actions are going to move you from disaster to stability. In practice the things that make complex happen not necessarily going to be the things that you can anticipate, they will be the real leaders. Quite different things. Just again to give an example of things that you wouldnt anticipate causing so much problem, of all the things people talked about in 1991 after desert storm are probably one of the least controversial was happening in saudi arabia. The consequences about people didnt Pay Attention to it at the time. Or even you focus on Nuclear Terrorism as the great horror. You are not been talking about other things which more within their coverage of. There are risks for that sort of approach. Anyway, that was what interested me about looking back. But it also provides an opportunity to pick up some big themes of the way that we have viewed and thought about were over the last 150 years or so. One of them that really came home to me is that there of surprise attack on. Theres logic to this. In the 19 century in particular it was assumed the war was decided i battle and the aim was to get decisive battle. If you thought that was going to be the case, then you wanted to be better prepared than your opponent. Not largely met especially by the end of the 19 sense, mobilizing faster than your opponent which is what prussia did in 1870 against france, the big race to the start of the First World War in 1914. Its understandable that one should think that if war is going to, you want to start it on the best possible terms. A lot of the literature on future war which actually really gets going after the francoprussian war, i open with the battle of dorking, with those who know english is not a natural place for power, especially now. With brexit, who knows . [laughing] the battle of dorking, there was a book basically about army reform and the need for army reform which showed how the germans might be able to cross the channel, take out ships through minds. Then it would be this battle on the ridge which we would fight bravely but lose, we had seen in dunkirk as well. The literature came in and this is very much about surprise, this whole literature. After a development of the books, spies became important to getting information upon which the surprise attack could be launched. So the idea of the decisive early blow, with airpower the assumption if you get your attack in first, the civilian population will be so alarmed and distress that they he will immediately demand of the government that they capitulate. Thats not how the Second World War starts. You see within the Second World War the success of the german, the first blows, but the way they moved to france and holland and belgium and so on in may may 1940. Did seem to validate a lot of those assumptions. So then you get in 1941 that you great surprise attacks. Germany against soviet union and pearl harbor. And both of those occasions demonstrate the danger of surprise attack. In both cases they were pretty well executed. In both cases they made enormous progress. In neither case did they defeat the opponent. In both cases the penetrator was absolutely shattered as a result of the subsequent war. So you might have thought that stood as a warning of surprise attack. Yet if you look at the literature after the cycle of war, discussion particular, it keeps on coming back to pearl harbor. So with nuclear, first try, Nuclear First strike you worry about and is notable [inaudible] the first outline the dangers of Nuclear First strike is why he wrote a book on pearl harbor. You look forward to cyber, electronic pearl harbor and so on. This idea, the thing most to fear is a knockout blow, is very deeprooted. Whereas in practice its not necessarily going to be like this. They can be nasty and unpleasant and awkward and difficult and so on, but first it may not be this sort of dramatic surprise attack and secondly excepting for a particular circumstances it will be war winning in itself. So thats one of the themes that comes through. A second theme is, which is really one of the more difficult parts of the book to write, you have all of this thinking about future war between great powers. Really quite up to the end of the cold war. So in the 80s you have in my country tom clancy writing very vivid novels about these big future wars, uptodate on the latest technology and so on. But nobody is writing about a surprise peace. That didnt sell so many books i guess. There are any questions about why people cant surprise by the end of the soviet union. The key point is that nobody had really thought through was likely to come next. You have one body of literature which is looking for the next war, next big enemy. So you have famous article about back to the future and looking at germany, or you have my almost namesake George Friedman writing about the coming war with japan. It really takes quite a while for him to find a way to extract and suffer the idea that japan is going to remain in the of the United States in the future, as the japanese economy stagnates. Cory kennedy, good friend of somebody i admire nonetheless managed to get also japan pretty wrong in his book on the rise and fall of great powers, which is one reason why came to the conclusion historians should be very careful when predicting and stick to what they know about. So there is, that was one response, that eventually, eventually people settle on china, sort of the series threat we can all agree has to be looked at with care. It actually what brought people in the 90s, the start of the century, was how we intervened the wars. Theres no literature prior to 1990, no fiction writers, not even in academia on civil war to academics write about revolutions because they are quite keen on those, but they dont write about civil wars. And what you see after 1990 is a desperate attempt to catch up with events. The academics are always behind the curve. They are always behind the curve. Eventually i think after we really screwed up, they catch up. By the time we have screwed up the understand why we screwed up and understand how we could have done things better and different but it takes an awful lot of time to get there. So thats the second third of the book is that story of the developing attack in which i think a lot of very good work has now been done to understand intervention and the consequences of intervening, and how these things can be made successfully. The final third begins with these questions of whos next in terms of big threat, but it also tries to address these questions of cyber and Autonomous Vehicles and so on, the future of work, which is not really about where wars will come from but how they will be fought. And theres even been a revival of the sort of fiction which is one of the threads through the book because i think there are good fiction writers have been able to imagine things. Pete singer is a tanker, hosting one of the greatest advantages in this field and you want to write fiction, field chance you to write about sex. Not a lot of that in this book. Because you have to make it a bit racy. Its a way of making again an important point, the overreliance of the most advanced technologies at their particular vulnerabilities and sometimes basic things that matter. Just to conclude, i think obviously im looking, i look a little bit forward. The big issue, the two big issues i think about how this detective work but essentially one is about intervention, whether we still want to intervene. And if we do so on the ground, and if were not on the ground, with whom we are working and what are their agendas, and because we dont want to shape outcomes. Second, Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear is obviously shifted completely the discussion of future war after 1945. Because a lot of the literature was suddenly about either outlook it all go terribly wrong, not because of deliberate critical decision but because of malfunction or tracy generals and so on. Or the aftermath, how would human beings cope with everything destroyed around them, on the beach . But the fact is that despite expectations, Nuclear Weapons did have an effect. And the question is, how long does that effect still carry on . When a lot of the conditions which were behind the original Nuclear Deterrence no longer apply. We can talk about that perhaps later on, but obviously you see with north korea and so one, but the big issues are still around nuclear questions. Now in a proliferation since. Secondly, alliance. The Postwar International Order was held together not only because of Mutual Assurance of distraction, but because of the Alliance System which itself is surprising. Nato has lasted an extraordinarily long time. Nobody wouldve expected it. Because i cant think of a single event that would unsettle national politics, a network of alliances will start to be dismantled. So that again is sort of an important not prediction but question about the future. The last point is what i tried to stress throughout the book is if youre talking about war, a lot of books on the future of war have pictures of drones and exciting Autonomous Vehicle with no human beings inside. It becomes very bloodless, but actually war is bloody and violent. That always has to be kept in mind. If you are looking at the future of war, you are well to look at a continuity of whats been going on subsaharan africa, as you are at some sort of grand flash between the United States and china at some distant point. Because that may or may not happen. You cant rule it out. But one can be recently assured that those conflict sediment going on now for decades, which actually for most people define the experience of war, will carry on. And the consequences of impasse that affect millions of peoples lives on a regular basis. We havent really got very many good ideas about how to stop them. I will stop my point and say thank you very much indeed. [applause] as i said to sir lawrence the 40 came up, i read the book and he said did you get to the end . Not only dedicate to the end i started at the beginning again. There are so many things to pick up, several of which you opened with. But let me start with the broadest possible theme which is you go from beginning to end, should one lead with a sense of the idea forecasting is not worthwhile . What should be the take away in terms of how we can do better at thinking about war in the future . Its a good question. You have to think about it come here to think about the future. Yet as questions, you got to do something and then you look at what youre going to do, then you try to think about consequences and so on. But shut to do with humility and skepticism. Sometimes you just have to make a choice. People who talk with certainty about, get themselves into trouble because once you start thinking a certain conflict is inevitable, lets say we assume that a a war with north korea s inevitable, then that is consequences. If you think the choice is, the new act differently. You cant avoid forecasting. I think theres two pitfalls, one is trendlines to assume what is, if identified a trendline, just assume it will continue indefinitely. We may call this a fallacy. I start with taking down stephen anchors assumptions about decline. And secondly, the massive disruption, and everything that is gone before will be seen as being completely different. You have to say that the Nuclear Weapons moved all conversation two different level. But the fact is that after there are plenty of force that go on pretty reminiscent of ores that went on in the past. Just means a certain sort of war became less likely. One of the themes, and you talked about it, is on technology, and jeff this line which encapsulates it well on what i would characterize a sort of a tech obsession when one is looking at warfare. And you say is easy to anticipate the hardware than the politics. Do you think its a simple if you that, which is its the inhuman condition to look at that which we think we can put on a trendlines and predict and thats what we focus on the tech . And we just need to be realistic about the politics or do you think theres something more going on . Its really striking, really over the last 40 years, weve had a really good idea what technology is leaving, before we got there. More precision guidance, moores law and all of that. So discussion on cyborg gets going in the 1990s. Its not super new and all of that. We assume these things are going to be in production often earlier than they are. So technology is always interesting and i was informed, but it doesnt mandate a form of warfare. The example he gives is precision. Because if you know what your target is, you can attack it and be pretty sure its going to be destroyed. We think that means theres no reason to kill civilians, that we really ought to focus on military targets. But the same Technology