#69 Army General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal: "The Greatest Risk Is Us" - So What is the Solution?

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on retired Army General Stanley McChrystal, who reflects on leadership, building trust among soldiers, and the lessons learned from his military experiences, particularly in Afghanistan. He emphasizes the importance of understanding risk and addresses the critical challenges faced in modern military leadership, suggesting that the greatest threat often comes from within.

Key takeaways

• Leadership isn't about individual glory; it's about harnessing diverse perspectives for a shared mission.
• Empathy in leadership transforms understanding; it's the glue connecting unique life journeys to a common goal.
• Great leaders make tough decisions with limited information, embracing failure as a stepping stone, not a setback.
• Self-discipline in a leader reflects on their team; how you treat others sets the standard for performance.
• The best heroes are often unseen; military culture celebrates collective commitment over individual recognition.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Thomas (Host) · 9 min speaking
• Stanley McChrystal (Guest) · 22 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: United States Special Operations, Korean War
2. 15:00 – 20:00: Doha Accords, World War II
3. 20:00 – 25:00: World War II

Notable quotes from "#69 Army General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal: "The Greatest Risk Is Us" - So What is the Solution?"

• At inchon but I think the biggest strategic success that I was a part of was changing United States Special Operations in the early 2000s from a very narrowly focused entity…

  about United States Special Operations · at 2:07

• With you to the pakistanis that hey we're here and to the Taliban that we are here the final straw was the Doha Accords and once we made the decision to agree to every American…

  about Doha Accords · at 16:34

• That we're good at and then leave and let them sort it out for themselves but I would argue to people after World War II we did counterinsurgency we just did it after the war…

  about World War II · at 22:24

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Lynn Tomlin — Person · Host · 2 mentions
  Introduces the show and conducts the interview, guiding the conversation through leadership, Afghanistan, and the episode’s three takeaways.
  Hi everyone, it's Lynn Tomlin welcome to another episode...

Concepts & topics

• United States Special Operations — Concept · Strategy · 1 mention · first at 2:13
  Discussed as a key element in transforming military operations and achieving strategic success.

Places & events

• Doha Accords — Event · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 16:39
  Highlighted as a turning point that led to the loss of confidence among Afghan people and the eventual collapse of the government.
• World War II — Event · Referenced event · 2 mentions · first at 19:52
  Mentioned in the context of comparing post-war reconstruction efforts and the importance of governance.
• Korean War — Event · Referenced event · 1 mention · first at 1:52
  Referenced as an example of strategic risk and success in military history.
  It's not as much as I'd like but there's a certain Rhythm to life that we all have and that was just mine in 1950 General MacArthur took a huge strategic risk that changed the…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm delighted to be with General Stanley mistal he was commander of the joint Special Forces command that's special ops and later commander in Afghanistan Former Defense secretary Robert Gates has described General mccristal as quote perhaps the finest Warrior and leader of men in combat I have ever met unquote he's written two books one on leadership and one on risk and I'm looking forward to learning how he leads and builds trust so strong that his men will risk their lives for each

1:01 other I'm also looking forward to learning what the lessons from Afghanistan are and how he sees the future of the military welcome Stan and thanks so much for our conversation today thanks for having me Lynn I appreciate it my pleasure Stan you're reported to run seven or eight miles daily eat one meal per day and sleep 4 hours a night is that all true the one meal a day part is still true the Running part has been been modified since I had a series of back surgeries and back fusion so I now walk long distance so I'm guess I'm evolving into an old man and then I sleep when I can it's not as much as I'd like but there's a certain Rhythm to life that we all have and that was just mine in 1950 General MacArthur took a huge strategic risk that changed the course of the Korean War when he landed Marines at inchon in the rear of the North Korean soldiers and forced the North Korean soldiers to retreat

2:00 what do you view as your greatest strategic success certainly nothing approaching General MacArthur's landing at inchon but I think the biggest strategic success that I was a part of was changing United States Special Operations in the early 2000s from a very narrowly focused entity that did specific tasks into a Integrated Network that brought in not just the Special Operations forces but other parts of the US government and our allies used information in a way we never had before shared it and achieved speed and precision at the same time on a level that we had not envisioned before and I got to be part of that transformation and I'm most proud of that why do you think Former Defense secretary Robert Gates called you the finest Warrior and leader of men in combat I've ever met what makes you stand out as a warrior and leader of men in combat well I think secretary Gates is being overly generous

3:01 I'll say that up front because there are an awful lot of good people in combat I will say what I think makes a good leader in combat though and there are several things and I think the first starts with self-discipline and it almost gets back to how a leader conducts themselves because self-discipline isn't just whether you run a certain number of miles a day or sleep a number of hours or do things like that it's how you treat people it's how you think about the people that you lead and the mission that you have in the case of good combat commanders I find they tend to be very focused on the mission that they have they don't get distracted from that that doesn't mean narrowly focused with blinders but it means a Relentless commitment to get to where the objective they've been assigned is and then an understanding that you're not doing that alone it's not about you it's about this group of

3:47 people most of whom are much younger than you have a different perspective in life in many cases because theyve have different life Journeys and so you're asking them to be a part of something that they come at from a different angle and that's even more true for allies or members of other government agencies or where you're dealing with civilian entities the next is about having the empathy not sympathy but the empathy to be able to understand that other people have different perspectives that are rational and that if you'd had their life Journey you'd have their perspective as well and if a Combat Commander can understand that and then harness that and when I say harness it not in a negative way but inpire fire that cause people to believe that this shared objective for which we are going to risk much in many cases lives is worth it then I think suddenly that leader becomes capable of generating the

4:43 kind of energy and focus needed and then the last thing I'd say is effective combat commanders can make decisions and that seems simple we all make thousands of decisions every day what clothes to wear what to eat but we don't make thousands of decisions of huge import that sometimes affect livelihood or the well-being of people and a Combat Commander has got to be able to deal with limited information you can't mitigate risk to Zero by getting perfect knowledge because it just it's impractical and then you're going to make a certain number of decisions that don't work out so a good decision maker whether they're a Combat Commander or a leader of a university or a leader of a business is going to make decisions that don't work out and they can't get upset and go in a fetal position and SOB about it that didn't work out right that got to pick themselves up they got to make another decision and keep going and not

5:33 everybody does that the same and part of that I think is what things the person's born with and part of it is experience they've had and who's taught them to be a leader everybody's interested in inspiring people building culture building teamwork but not many people succeed quite the way the military does there aren't many people in the world today that we believe are heroes but in the military we see a disproportionate number of Heroes members of the military who risk their own lives to save and protect others and when asked why they do it what I've heard is that many say because they would have done it for me and the military men and women seem to have an amazingly high level of trust in each other are these Simply Better human beings that go into the military or do you build that in the military and how do you build that yeah L the military are actually better people than everyone else no no

6:35 it's the reality is the military is a subset of society so it its best the military should be a mirror of society so when you look in the mirror or you look at your military you should see part of your Society there so the answer is they're no better and they're no worse than Society now the military has some advantages when a military leader gets a mission they can wrap themselves in the flag because it is a National Mission typically we are doing something for the defense of the nation and that sort of thing now sometimes it's easier than others when you fight Foreign Wars that aren't popular it gets difficult because you start to have conflicted opinions from people in different levels of support but the reality is it's still the nation's business and then the other part is the military culture supports the idea of Heroes you wear uniforms you stand straight you are asked to do things that are frightening if not

7:30 actually dangerous in many cases very dangerous so you get a chance to demonstrate courage on a constant Basin so a leader in the military has the opportunity to build the kind of credibility with the people that are younger and working for them that many civilian leaders do not get a chance to do I mean think about it if you're the CEO of a Bagel Company and everybody likes bagels and that's a good thing and it gives people jobs but at the end of the day it's hard to stand up in front of everybody and say if we make a better Bagel it will be a better world and we will all be safer and secure and whatnot the military has a slightly simple thing and then there are a few other things that untalked about advantages the one in the military is money and you say well the military doesn't make money like civilian that's exactly the advantage in the military everybody gets paid what the pay scale is there are no

8:24 bonuses there are no raises you can't pull somebody in and suddenly give more money and they don't December worry about whether their bonus is as big as a person two desks away all that's taken off the table and you get enough money to live comfortably but not enough money to be obsessed with it and so that it's never in the discussion and so it's sort of purifies everybody feels as though they are doing service to the nation not in a huge sacrifice but in a quiet way and that makes it easier and then finally there are Moments When leaders need to make very difficult decisions and in the military they are well known we see movies about them I've seen business and government leaders make morally courageous decisions that are extraordinarily hard but they don't seem to crystallize as easily in the public imagination it's harder for that person who takes a really difficult vote in the Senate to be portrayed the same way as

9:21 the sergeant who Rises up and says follow me even though in some ways the same kind of Courage is required so it's not a bad thing that the military gets associated with Heroes although you got to dispel the idea that everyone in uniform is a hero but the reality is we do bring forth values and Ethos that are talked about and celebrated and I think that's a positive aspect and how do you lead in combat why do you think former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calls you the finest leader of men in combat I think that in the combat experience that I had I went first to Afghanistan in 2002 and then came back but then I led our counterterrorist forces for about five years and we were deployed the entire time in combat so we fought every night every single night at one point we were doing 300 raids a month in Iraq alone so 10 every night and the pace of that required a few things so I think one of the things that I saw in that

10:25 Force the best commanders in that force was this absolute focus on it I stayed for 5 years I went to the war and I stayed there and so part of it was commitment the force could see it secretary Gates could see it and here is another one of the leaders of which I was not the only one by any means was completely focused on getting this and I was willing to sacrifice a big chunk of my life and then the second was we were able to adapt the military has Doctrine and habits and they're like any other organization they were formed for logical reasons and then his conditions Chang at some point they become inappropriate but it's hard to shift because inertial momentum says an object in motion stays in motion at the same direction and velocity unless changed and that's really powerful think of the things in our lives that just keep doing the same way because we have we changed Special Operations during that period

11:19 fundamentally we took a very proud very I don't want to overstate it but almost arrogant Force because we were so good at what we did ostage rescue counter hijacking Precision operations you've seen them in the movies we were so good at that that changing the way we operate it was difficult because you're asking people the equivalent of a super bowl-winning football team to shift to basketball and we did that in the middle of the war and we did that it was bigger than a 90 degree turn it was almost 180 degree turn in how we operated culturally and procedurally and I think that he saw that adaptation and that willingness to do it in combat under pressure as reflecting the kind of things that he needed from military forces and so he gives me disproportionate credit but I was part of a team that did something pretty amazing Stan you always use the word we you never say I you commanded US forces

12:18 in Afghanistan and were responsible for the surge the US moved to a lighter footprint after your departure with less than 3,000 troops do you see the surge in retrospect yeah it's a great question ly I see the surge as necessary in retrospect now I would though because I was the person who advocated for it but let me explain to people why I did we went to Afghanistan in 2001 not at the invitation of the Afghan people but because it was in our interest to go after a sanctuary that Al-Qaeda had created and we asked the Taliban government to give them up and they wouldn't and so we went in and toppled the Taliban government in the process of going after Al-Qaeda and then we're there we the west but the United States primarily so we're there and then you have this question a lot of people say why didn't we leave immediately well because Afghanistan had been at War for two decades already 10 years of which

13:14 against the Soviets they've been a proxy for us in our Cold War struggle against the Soviets and that's the way the Afghans saw it and they lost 1.2 million Afghans in that effort and all we provided was money and weapons so you get 2001 we've almost got a moral requirement Afghanistan is absolutely in patters and we could have all walked away but they needed help to try to build a nation again and they wanted that so we made the decision for the first about eight years the West didn't do very much this is a misperception people think that we poured billions of dollars for 20 years the reality is for about the first eight years 2001 to about 2008 the level of effort was pretty modest and because it was modest and to be honest it wasn't really well organized or focused there were lots of flaws in how it went by 2008 the Taliban had achieved significant momentum in coming back because they were able to

14:08 point at weaknesses in the Afghan government and they were able to to go to the Afghan people say look this thing's a loser plus the West their occupiers they're not going to stay so the Taliban were making inroads so then I took command in 2009 the situation was as we used to say circling the drain the Afghan people had lost confidence the had gained confidence there was waning support in Europe and the United States for the war and yet we thought that if we were going to have an opportunity for Afghanistan to be able to be Sovereign to protect its own borders you needed to give them a bridge you need to create enough security for long enough for them to do that so the purpose of the surge was to take American and Allied Forces up to the level where we could provide that bridge while we did a very focused in intensified effort to build Afghan security forces and that's what we did then and to this day I think the two

15:04 choices were either to pull out and give up then or to try to do that and the security part we actually made a lot of progress where we didn't make the progress that needed to be made was in governance the government of Afghanistan just didn't get the kind of legitimacy and ability to produce for the Afghan people that it needed to so from then on from really 2010 or actually 11 when they started drawing down groups the idea was to continue to let the Afghan forces build up which actually went and it looked like it was going to be better than it turned out to be and then it was always this struggle to make the government of Afghanistan more conducted and credible to the people but during that period we kept talking about leaving for domestic political reasons a succession of leaders in America said we're going to get out as soon as we can we're going to end this forever War and the Afghans listened to that and they

15:57 got more and more insecure because they keep looking to the exit to see when the Americans going to leave and so the reality was we had an opportunity there but then we started to undercut the confidence of the Afghan people I think what we could have done and again this would have been a tough domestic political cell was to tell the Afghan people we will stay here as long as you need a strategic partner theoretically forever but we'll stay in a very small number we'll provide help we will be above a gesture but below any significant combat forces but just the signal to the Afghan people that were with you to the pakistanis that hey we're here and to the Taliban that we are here the final straw was the Doha Accords and once we made the decision to agree to every American Soldier the confidence in the Afghan people went out like air out of a balloon and from then they're just for the next 18 months they

16:54 know that all Americans going to leave and so it's a big question mark is this their government military up to it and they finally concluded with a lot of help from information Warfare on the part of the Taliban pretty well conducted they just concluded that it wasn't going to work and so the Taliban didn't conquer Afghanistan the government imploded and they occupied it they didn't have to conquer it they barely could drive fast enough to get to Cobble when the government actually all the confidence drained out why do you think that the US failed in building an independent and strong Afghan Army yeah obviously all of us who were involved in that do a lot of soul searching for several reasons the most fundamental is the Afghan State and the government just couldn't get credible enough legitimate enough a military doesn't exist in isolation it's not a mercenary force it exists based upon the

17:49 commitment The credibility of the government and the society and I think that became a very weak foundation and to be honest it was even weaker than I thought hoped it was and I think a lot of people were disappointed just how weak it was the military that we created aspects of it were actually pretty good but they've got a lot of weaknesses in the structure first we were starting from zero in 2002 when you're going to build a credible military you have to build leaders you have to build institutions for training Logistics all of these things but you have to build a culture and it's a culture of service it's a culture of values it's a culture of sacrifice that represents the entire country and I saw it at times I mean I was on the battlefield and saw Afghan soldiers fight with affectedness and courage so to say that they were all screwed up was not my experience but at the same time it's undeniable that there

18:48 were just systemic weaknesses still corruption in the force weaknesses in systems like Logistics and maintenance and those things and that critical lack of confidence they didn't believe they were as good as they were capable of being there were almost 300,000 of them there were only 70,000 Taliban in reality the Afghan military should have easily been able to at least contest that war indefinitely but again Wars are one in the minds of people they're not one in who's got the most bombs or guns the military seems very good at projecting power but less good at what comes after are we building one military but operating another yeah that's a good way of putting it very true the military is largely designed for the first mission to go in and win the fight and then there's always this idea that some other element is going to take over all the other things after rebuilding governance things that had to happen in

19:52 Europe after World War II and Japan and things like that but the US government doesn't really have the capacity in those other areas that are needed and it's also not an absolute it's not truncated neatly it's not war and then peace there's always an overlap there's a time when you still need a bunch of military doing security and whatnot and you already need other capacity diplomacy and build governance and those kinds of expertise but the US government is very heavily weighted military for a number of reasons one there's constituency for it when people are voting money and what so we are heavily overbalanced on that and also that's where people perceive the risk you can't afford to win the first one and then the theory is we'll sort of figure out that second phase as we go along and when we go to figure it out as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan we find out we're not very good at it and we don't have the

20:49 right people in Iraq when I was there I got there in the fall of 2003 people were being sent from the state department and other elements on 45 and 90day tours and they would be sent over there and they couldn't even figure out what day of the week it was before they're leaving and we were rotating these people through to do very important things like stand up the Iraqi stock market again I mean really important things and yet we were running a group of people through and many of which were not very well qualified and so when you have Amateur hour to do a very difficult task like that you get a predictable outcome and I don't criticize those people volunteered to go over there for a period of time and risk themselves and take on hard work but it's not the way to run a railroad and we pay a big price for that what are the lessons from Afghanistan and the last 20 years of war they're going to be in the

21:43 eye of the beholder if you simplify the lessons I think it's going to be the Blind Men and the Elephant everybody's going to see the part of the elephant that they touch there's going to be a certain narrative that says we can't do things like that in that part of the world we can't go get involved because it's too complicated it's too difficult it's too different culturally so we will just have nothing to do with it I don't buy into that but that's going to be one of the lessons people are going to try to take away another is we can't Nation build that we shouldn't do counter Insurgency because that's considered a synonym for nation building and so we shouldn't Nation Bill we should go in and bomb and do counterterrorist strikes and we should do those kinetic things that we're good at and then leave and let them sort it out for themselves but I would argue to people after World War II we did counterinsurgency we just did

22:32 it after the war we had to rebuild Europe because otherwise Europe would have slipped under Soviet Union domination just because of all the chaos and pain so the Marshall Plan was part of counter Insurgency that was the focus of it to strengthen the society so I think that there will be a temptation to say let's focus on what we're good at kinectic Short Term and go in and out and solve the problem and I think that that's unrealistic as well I think it briefs well as we would say I think some more appropriate lessons in my opinion is we will look for the big policy failure we will look for the person who made the bad decision in 2002 or in 2009 when we did a surge or you pick one and you say that was the moment we got it wrong and I don't think that's accurate what I saw was good people with good intention working hard and yet we got a bad outcome now that ought to frighten us more that ought to give us much more

23:36 pause because in the first case if it was a bunch of idiots or bad people you just say well we're not going to hire idiots next time or we're going to go fire him and move instead sort of like David halberstam the best and the brightest with Vietnam when you put the best and the brightest at something and it doesn't come out right you better look at what happened what was the the process what are the cultural things that limit the United States ability to do extended things like that of a complex nature that are cultural they are economic they're all these things what are the things that make us unable to have a very long-term view to have a strategic objective that's decades in the future and work patiently towards that and our domestic politics make that difficult if we really want to get at the lessons I think we're going to find answers that say we have to be able to engage in the world sometimes we're going to have to

24:32 engage in a messy kind of world where we're doing things to build Nations which may involve some military operations we're going to have to take on some problems that take Generations not just years and so we are going to have to say if we're going to build this we're going to have to take a very very patient approach to it all of which are tough pills for us to swallow because they're not the easy simple solution that we'd like to and yet I think we need to go to school on this and we need to push back against people who oversimplify the conclusions from that experience what do you see as the greatest risks facing the us right now well without question it's us we are dysfunctional politically right now and if you think about it we have a very difficult time making basic political decisions on both sides we've got a level of partisanship that has now turned into dysfunction in not just at

25:33 the national level but at local levels we've got Jerry Mander districts and we've got all kinds of things occurring in all three parts of government the courts the executive and the legislators are all a bit guilty in this and so the great problem is if you can't solve problems then every problem becomes a big problem because whether it's climate change or whether it's you name it if you just can't come together and do basic rational problem solving then you're sort of sunk and that is the essential threat so it's us now there are a lot of causes to it part of it is disinformation part of it is a media that takes a pretty shortterm view all of them because the profit and loss motive but if we can't get back to figure out what model works for us because we have basked in the satisfaction of being a functional working democracy and we say look at this we've been a functional working democracy for more than two centuries in

26:34 the world should all want to be us but in reality in the recent past the world is not moving towards us the world is moving toward more autocratic leaders presidents for life like Xi Jinping focused authoritarian regimes they don't wear swastikas and whatnot but they've got a common DNA with some of those elements and we you've got to understand that in the short term those kinds of regimes have advantages in the long term I would argue they don't they've got brittleness and inherent problems but the short term can matter an awful lot and if you've got very focused foes who can make quick decisions and focus on things then a democracy that is going through a period of dysfunction is extraordinarily vulnerable Stan before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already talked about well it would be sort of that the second part of

27:32 the biggest risk is us the biggest opportunity is us the great thing about knowing that we're the problem is we don't have to go out and find the problem and solve it we can look in a mirror and solve it so we are the greatest opportunity so it goes back to self-discipline at the beginning of our conversation a society like an individual leader needs to have self-discipline needs to have the ability to understand that there are certain norms there are things like property rights the basic rights of fellow citizens all of which have to be respected some of those Norms need to be in place because if you can't have the discipline to follow certain Norms then there are no rules if there's no rule of law then you and I will both carry guns to the grocery store because we'll have to fight our way back with our groceries because lawlessness now that's an hyperbolic example but the reality is we've got to have the discipline as a

28:28 Society to recognize and follow and enforce a number of those Norms so that we can operate Stan I thought you were going to talk about cyber so so surprised to hear that you believe the greatest threat is us what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today yeah they really go to what I said and that is the first is the greatest risk is us so don't look around for another wris don't pawn it off on other people don't say it's some other cause that's causing us it is our weak that makes things like covid cyber and other threats so dangerous to us the second takeaway is the greatest solution for that also is us which means there's an opportunity that means that we not only have the potential to solve our problems we have the responsibility to solve our problems we can't sit on the curb and wait for somebody else to come and do it and the last takeaway is it's leaders we had a period in history not

29:28 just in the United States where we had the great woman and great man theory of leadership and the idea is you put them on a pedestal and every so often this person comes and they Bend The Arc of History hopefully in a good way and the rest of us just benefit from that and so we wait around for those people to emerge well they ain't coming it is us and so what it really is going to require is leadership sometimes of a modest nature depending upon where you are it's going to require leadership that doesn't require a payback you don't necessarily get celebrity you don't necessarily get wealth you don't necessarily get thanked but it requires leadership that often looks a lot like good citizenship but it's really a little bit more than that because it is actually influencing other people to be good citizens as well and I think that's a third the leadership has got to come from inside us and it has to

30:21 start yesterday because we're behind Stan thank you so much this has been terrific my honor thank you Len if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that 3 takeaway.com is with the number three three is not spelled out see you soon at three takeaways tocom

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#69 Army General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal: "The Greatest Risk Is Us" - So What is the Solution?"?

Lynn Thomas (Host), Stanley McChrystal (Guest).

What is "#69 Army General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal: "The Greatest Risk Is Us" - So What is the Solution?" about?

The discussion centers on retired Army General Stanley McChrystal, who reflects on leadership, building trust among soldiers, and the lessons learned from his military experiences, particularly in Afghanistan. He emphasizes the importance of understanding risk and addresses the critical challenges faced in modern military leadership, suggesting that the greatest threat often comes from within.

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

5 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Lynn Tomlin, United States Special Operations, Doha Accords, World War II, Korean War. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#69 Army General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal: "The Greatest Risk Is Us" - So What is the Solution?"?

The episode runs 31 min; the transcript is about 5,582 words in 33 timestamped sections.

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