So, today is such an exciting video. This is my official 100k subscribers video. So a lot, a lot, a lot has happened. Okay? First of all, I'm just going to go ahead and do my makeup. This is a get ready with me style, but it's not even about the makeup. I'm just going to talk so I will have all the products linked down below and then a little picture slide in to show you what products I'm using. A lot has happened recently. Of course, I hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, which for me is the most exciting. It's the one I've worked the hardest for. YouTube is my favorite social media platform. But as you can see, if you look down below at my subscriber count, I have 110,000 followers. So this video is not timely. I hit 100,000 followers a couple of weeks ago, but I hit it right around the time that I was preparing for my parents and my husband's parents to come into town for over two and a half weeks. So I didn't have time to squeeze in this video, so it's a bit delayed. I'm very, very blessed that I've grown faster than I've ever grown recently, but it really makes it seem like I'm super late on this video because I have 110,000 subscribers on YouTube. So first of all, I just want to say a huge, huge thank you to those of you who support me and have left all of your kind comments and liked and have allowed me to do this as my job, because I genuinely mean it when I say that I am really doing my dream job. I couldn't be happier doing anything else, and I think, you know, I'm pretty good at it. You know, I'm not perfect, of course, but I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. A huge thank you to you all for being a part of that. Obviously, numbers are in everything, but it just is kind of a really nice reminder that I'm doing things right and that you guys are enjoying my content. I think, you know, I've had a lot of growth recently, so I've also had to get used to a lot of opinions coming my way from people that I know do not support my channel. But this video was for the OG people. Now, before I really dive in, there's going to be giveaway details at the end of this video. I'm giving away quite a lot of packages and I'm really excited about. I don't like making giveaways a really big deal on my channel because people come out of the woodworks that I know don't follow me just to get prizes. And when it comes to giveaways, I really just want to give away to my true supporter, so we're not going to make a big deal out of it. But I did want to say, as you know, there's a ton of scam comments going around where scammers will pretend to be whatever YouTuber you're watching and comment that you want and tell you to telegram, WhatsApp, whatever. Please be aware of those comments. While this is a giveaway, I've been wary of doing it because of what's going on with scammers right now. So the only places I will contact you about winning are on Instagram from Morgan Turner Makeup or via email mturnermakeup at gmail.com. If anybody else or any other account tells you like WhatsApp, Telegram or whatever these scammers are using nowadays, that is not me. So yeah, I'll go over the details of the giveaway towards the end. But like I said, while I am excited about the giveaway, we're not going to make a big deal out of it until the my plan for today's video. I actually just want to take a step back and go over my YouTube journey with you guys, kind of where I started at, how I'm here, what in my life has changed all of that. Just a good walk down memory lane. Like I said, I've grown a lot recently. There's a lot of people who don't know my story, but I know a lot of you guys do, but maybe I can give you some different information that I've never given you before. But it really is a full celebratory video. I am honestly in disbelief and I'm so thankful for the growth they've had on social media lately because I did hit 100K here on YouTube. But I recently, a little bit before that hit 100K on TikTok. And then a few days ago, I hit 100K on Instagram. It is absolutely crazy. I've never had this kind of growth before. I've never had this number of comments before and opinions being thrown at me. So it's been a lot, but I don't know. I just feel really good, really inspired. So let's start off with how I got here, why I started my YouTube channel, all of that. So I started my YouTube channel probably four and a half years ago, almost five in January. What I actually started before my YouTube channel, though, was my Instagram, Morgan Turner makeup. And I started it because I wanted to start a YouTube channel, but I wasn't quite so confident yet. But I felt a little bit more comfortable starting an Instagram first. And I just wanted to post my makeup looks. I think I was a junior in college or beginning my senior year in college when I started my Instagram because I had a lot of girls complimenting my makeup at my school, and they would tell me to start a YouTube channel, or they would ask me a bunch of questions. So I started my Instagram first just to play around, get confident with being on social media, but also to advertise my business. So what I did on the side in college to make money in my senior year was I went to a makeup school. I'm really struggling with my brows right now. Ignore that, but I just had to go off camera and do my eyebrows because they were giving me trouble. Anyways, back to my stories. For my, I think it was my 21st birthday present. I asked if my parents would pay for me to go to a makeup school or a makeup certification program. So it wasn't like a statistician school or anything, but I did get a certificate for makeup school. And honestly, it was really good. I learned a lot about sanitation. That was the most important lessons that I learned, but I did that because I wanted to start doing makeup on other people, but I wanted to do it the right way. So I went to that school in the summer, and then I came back for my senior year of college, and I started using my Instagram that I had started to advertise to girls and sororities in my college and do their makeup. And I did their makeup for literally like $5 to $10, which if you look up the prices of makeup artists, that is an absolute steal, basically working for free, but I wanted to kind of build my portfolio because I was looking to get into doing makeup professionally once I got out of college. I didn't really care how much money I made, though I did make some decent side money, all things considered for being a college student doing that. So through doing makeup on girls at my college and posting about it online, kind of advertising it, my school was really small. So everybody already knew about it, but it was my outlet to create looks, post them, and to kind of ease myself into social media because I've always been interested in YouTube. By doing girls' makeup, I really did get the confidence to start a YouTube channel because they all suggested like Morgan, you should start a YouTube channel. And so I eventually did in my senior year of college, I was still at school when I started my YouTube channel. And you know, I always took it seriously. I knew that once I started my YouTube channel, that was it. It was going to be my new hobby. I didn't go into this expecting to ever have this be my full-time job. I remember having conversations with my mom and she would be like, gosh, could you imagine if you did this full-time? And I would be like, wow, that's such a crazy thought. It was never my goal because I never thought it was possible. And in my head, I was gonna be a PE teacher. And then if anything, if my YouTube grew to anything, I wanted it to at least just cover my expenses for buying the makeup because you guys know being a teacher doesn't make the biggest salary. The ultimate goal that I had for my YouTube channel was that it would pay for makeup that I bought. So I could buy what I wanted makeup-wise. For years of doing social media, that's all I ever thought it would be for me.  I get asked a lot, how was I able to afford to review products? So I didn't know when I started my YouTube channel what I really wanted to even do using the Ofra and Allie Dawson palette. By the way, that she came out with a collaboration palette with Ofra, so I'm really excited to play with this. I've used it a few times before, but I wanna do a colorful look today. Anyways, back to the story. When I started my YouTube channel, I wanted to give advice. I think me, at that point in my life, I was going to become a teacher, so I was always interested in teaching people, helping people giving product recommendations. And so I did a review of a Natasha Denona palette because my mom had bought it and it was new, so I was like, let me review it. I never thought I would become a review channel, but I really enjoyed it. I think it's because I was a teacher and I was going to school to be a teacher that I loved the idea of teaching in a review sense. So I noticed the Natasha Denona video that I had posted pretty good at the time for somebody who just started. And I was like, huh, I might be onto something and I really enjoyed it. So then blossomed me starting to review products. I was posting whatever I wanted. It wasn't anything I was taking too seriously, but I knew it was something I was always going to do. And slowly, but surely you guys, I really did notice my YouTube moving and growing followers. And so I continued to post reviews and started to learn kind of how YouTube worked, how I could grow and started building this community. And I was having so much fun. I didn't make money off of YouTube until probably a year later, by the way. Something that I get asked a lot was how I was able to afford makeup products to review. I still get asked that question, but especially in the beginning, you can't start social media thinking that you're going to earn any kind of money because you're not. I started when I was in college and how I was able to afford buying products was I would work dumb jobs on campus, like I would be the soccer ball girl. I did the scoreboard for volleyball a couple of times. I wasn't very good at it, but I did that. So I would pick up jobs like that while I was in college and I wasn't in college very long when I started my channel. So I didn't spend too much time working those little jobs, but once I graduated and moved back home, my mom who's also into makeup with me, she started going hapsies with me to buy new products for launches. She of course wanted the products, but I know she was totally motivated because she saw how happy my YouTube channel was making me, so we would go hapsies on new products. But you guys, I was also working a lot, a lot of jobs after I started my YouTube channel and after I graduated. I went to makeup school like I said earlier, so I applied to be a bridal and special events makeup artist for a company and I got hired and those jobs are only on the weekends, so that's how I spent my weekend and all of the money I made doing makeup for the first few months went right back into my YouTube channel. The makeup money I made would go back into buying makeup and I would say that's the biggest factor of how I made my money in the beginning to be a review channel because the wedding industry, it's expensive. I made really good money doing bridal makeup and I feel like it also made me a better reviewer because I was more familiar with different skin types, skin maturity, skin tones, all of that. So overall doing that has benefited me so much as a makeup review channel and then also to make some money, I was a high school lacrosse and field hockey coach. Like I said, I have a PE degree and of course I was teaching full time. So at one point in my life, in the very early stages, I wouldn't say in the first one to two years of doing YouTube, I worked four jobs. I would wake up in the morning, I would go to my teaching job all day, then I would drive to the high school that I coached at and I would coach my players and then I would come home late in the night and I would film and edit for my YouTube channel. On the weekends, I would go off and do wedding makeup in the early morning, Saturday and Sunday and then I would film and edit the rest of the evenings on Saturday and Sunday and then come summer and spring. I also was a youth league coach for multiple sports, you know, for my local parks and rec center. So I would do like toddler soccer and all of that. It really felt like a double life going from coaching sports to putting on makeup and putting makeup on others. But that's how I was able to afford my products.  I had zero free time to myself. And also I do want to acknowledge that I was living with my parents. I was very, very privileged to be able to work in my parents' house rent-free. So my full-time job essentially would pay for any bills that I had all my loans, all of that. And then money that I made doing makeup went back into my channel and then I would say about a year into my YouTube channel. I did start to make some money to supplement the products that I was buying and reviewing. And then ultimately, you know, I was making enough money from social media that I could let go of some of those jobs and have time to myself. So I stopped coaching. I stopped the parks and rec center work. And then for a while, you guys know, I was teaching full-time and coming home, doing my YouTube channel in the evenings. And then I also did bridal makeup up until I recently moved to Miami. It was really fun. I loved it. I love the grind. But I must say I'm really happy that I've gotten to the point now where I can slow everything down. I just do YouTube and then I can have free time.  I'm making so much short form videos as well with my YouTube. And then I was extra motivated to hit 100K. So I was posting even more long form content, but I am so, so lucky. And I will say one thing that helps my channel, which obviously I'm not happy that COVID happened, but I did take advantage of when COVID first started. I was teaching online to really focus on my channel because I had more time at home and all other after-school activities were canceled. So I did take advantage of that to grow my channel. And I didn't start to see the possibility of being able to go full-time on YouTube until probably towards the end of 2021. So think of it in the timeline, March 2020 COVID started. I think that's everybody's kind of benchmark point. That's when I first actually saw some growth in my channel because I had the time to actually increase my posting and put more serious time into my social media. And I would say I probably could have gone full-time early 2021 after that holiday season. That's kind of when I decided that it didn't make sense for me to teach and do YouTube because at that point I was pretty much working to full-time jobs. I was teaching, I was back in the classrooms, but I was making more money doing YouTube part-time. But I will say I was pretty much working full-time hours. So by the summer of 2021, I was ready. I knew I wanted to go full-time with YouTube. It was my passion and a year later, here we are now. I'm really struggling right now with talking and doing my makeup. If you are interested, I do have plans of doing kind of a Q and A video, answering your questions about doing YouTube full-time, channel growth, all of that, like YouTube related questions. I wasn't planning on answering them in this video. I need to ask them my Instagram story, but let me know if that's a video you'd be interested in. I really love being a teacher, so if I can help you guys grow social media, I would love to give my best tips. Just let me know if that's a video that you would be interested in because I do have people asking me all the time, you know, what equipment I use, any tips, all of that. It's just, I don't know, I feel like I'm not certified enough to like really teach somebody how to grow their social media. I'd be happy, you know, to go a little bit further into the strategies that I use in my best advice to get me to where I am today. And yeah, anyways, that's kind of how this happened and going full-time happened. It wasn't something that I had planned. It sort of just happened. It was never my goal to be in this position, but once the opportunity came to me, I was so thankful that I had the opportunity to make that decision for myself. And doing this, I mean, has proved to be the right decision. I do miss teaching, though. There are a lot of aspects about teaching that I miss. Overall, I would say I love doing what I do now, but there's a lot of difficulties in the education system that just make this job kind of a walk in the park.  It is objectively very easy. I asked somebody who was a teacher who taught hundreds of children and was responsible for the lives of 30 children at a time, eight hours a day and managing them and making sure they're safe and taking them outside, teaching them and everything. This job is easy. This job is so much more relaxing, but this job takes a lot of time. I work all the time because everything I do takes hours to do. So that's what I would say. Doing social media is easy, but it is very, very time consuming and that can get stressful because there's so much, you know, you want to get done as a content creator so much you don't want to miss out on, but you kind of have to just because of how long everything takes. This palette from Physicians Formula, I am loving it. I think it is so pretty. And this pastel rainbow look is also very, very pretty. So I'm going to quickly do this liner. I think my plan of action, so I'm going to do like my liner, my lashes off camera and then I'll be back to close up this video and then talk about the giveaway. Y'all, I was so focused to talking to you. I don't even know like what makeup I used, but it all looks so nice. It came together. I'm going to use Rare Beauty Lip Liner and then Christian Audette Bare Nectar, which was Tara Lynn's collaboration color. You guys, this was sent to my house. So it took forever to reroute it over to Miami, but I finally have it. I'm so excited. Anyways, it's just really crazy to look back out where I was in life four and a half years ago when I started, you know, I was like what, 21, 22, in school to be a PE teacher. That was in my eyes what I was going to end up doing. And then I ended up, you know, since then I quit teaching, I got married. And by the way, I started my YouTube channel before I met my husband. I met my husband in the beginning of starting my YouTube channel, but I think I had like a thousand subscribers when I met my husband. And now we live in Miami and I play with makeup all day. I just never saw this for myself and I am so, so grateful and so thankful to you guys for all of the support you've given me. I've had some of the kindest comments and really ones that I just, I can't believe people even watch me. I can't believe people take the time to listen to what I have to say. I can't believe, you know, people message me and tell them I've made their day better or they look forward to my videos or it's an activity for them. It's what they want to do. That is still so unbelievable to me. And this lipstick is perfect for this look. So give me a second, I'm gonna pull my hair down and let's get to the fun part. Let's get into the giveaway. All right, so let's go ahead and get into the giveaway of course for 100K on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. I wanted to give away a good number of prizes. So I put together about eight or nine packages that I'm going to send out to a number of you. I didn't want to send out one giant package to one person. I wanted more of my supporters to be able to receive some stuff. I don't make giveaways as big of a deal here. So I know I have three Pat McGrath palettes floating around in those packages. I have an Natasha Denona palette floating around in their Pat McGrath blush palette. I have some really beautiful Sydney Grace palettes and a lot of good stuff in these boxes. So there is like kind of like one big main palette in each box. And then the rest is, you know, PR that I didn't have overflow all of that is also going to be in those boxes. So here is how you win. First of all, you must be following me on TikTok, Instagram and of course subscribe to me on YouTube. My TikTok and Instagram are named Morgan Turner Makeup. If you don't have a TikTok, that's okay. You don't need to make one. I can't really check if you follow me on there or not. But I would appreciate it if you would follow me on Instagram and TikTok, Morgan Turner Makeup but I will definitely check if you're following me on Instagram because that's how I'm going to contact you. So make sure you subscribe to me here and are following me on Instagram, most important. But if you have a TikTok, shoot me a follow over there too. And to enter, you must comment where you are from because here's the main reason I'm going to be honest with you guys. This giveaway is open internationally and you guys know how expensive international shipping is. So I want to make sure I get a nice even mix of international and based in the US but you can enter if you're from a different country. That's fine. So comment where you're from and your most used and coveted beauty product. One, one that you can't live without. And you have to comment your Instagram handle because that is how I'm going to contact the winner. If you don't have an Instagram, you can also comment your email but I do prefer Instagram. So the only way that you will win is if Morgan Turner Makeup messages you on Instagram. Don't fall for those scammers or mturnermakeupatgmail.com. Email is the email that you provided for me. So the giveaway is going to end exactly one week from today. I will have the time and the exact date in the description box. Winners will all be contacted privately. I'm not going to make a big announcement or announce the names but I will contact everybody privately. So those are all the details. Like I said, just a quick reminder, follow me on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Just comment where you're from and your number one most favorite coveted beauty product in your Instagram handle and you are good to go. You know, I genuinely cannot thank you all enough for literally changing my life. I hope that I could at least provide you with a beauty review that was helpful for you.  That's all I want. That's my goal here. And so I hope I was able to at least do that for you with all that you guys have given me. So thank you guys so much for sitting down and watching this video and talking with me and kind of taking a walk around memory lane. It really is crazy how I got here and I'm so thankful for you guys. And you know, I don't really like talking about myself. So these kinds of videos are weird for me, but I had to do it. I had to have this one video. So anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Good luck in the giveaway and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye guys, have a good one.


Get out, get out. Yeah. We can make an archie. Yeah, you can't still. He's got a hundred percent. He's ready. On his white hair. On that red there. He's got you.  In the basement. Yeah, go away, sit on the mat. And look better. Good. Okay, knee up in the chair. No, I'm not. Cross. You know how I find this. Yes, guys, you come back. No, actually, you're right. Okay, guys, drinks. Let's have a talking session. Drinks for me. All right. He got it as well, by the way. He's fine, man. He's about 10 times as high.


Thank you very much. It really gives me great pleasure to be here. My father was a naval aviator, and in December 1941, after quite a tough time in Malta, he was in Jamaica, and after Pearl Harbor he was told to go over to the US and give some advice. There seems to be no trace of this advice. All I can find is a picture of him dancing for war bonds in New Jersey. So he did make a contribution. It's a great... I was enormously grateful, as you might imagine, for Admiral Greenett for his kind words about my book, and encouraging you to read it. Indeed, it may even have been in order. I wasn't quite sure. But it was particularly comforting, because I don't think what I'm going to say is going to be enormously at variance with what he says. It's one thing about giving advice. It's another thing about contradicting the chief of naval operations. But I think what I'm going to say is going to follow, but it's slightly different. And it's really to challenge some of the ways that we do think about strategy and try to suggest some ways forward. And I will indeed talk about the Dominion aspects of this. Strategy offers some sort of confidence that with the right measures, demanding objectives can be achieved on a regular basis. And that's how the word tends to be used. And there's a constant demand for more and better strategy and a common lament that it has become neglected by our leaders, their chastise for being myopic in short term. And if only they could rediscover the importance of strategy, then the country could be inspired by a vision and resources would be geared to well-crafted but realistic goals. Without strategy it would appear policy is doomed. It's going to be coherent and inchoate. And insert this magic ingredient and everything will fall into place. Sometimes it appears as if almost any strategy will do because at least then there will be clarity, although of course the demands for a strategy often assume have a very strong view of what the strategy would look like. Now, when all of this I'm a sceptic, Russia and China may have a view about a world that would be better accommodated to their interests, but the Americans and the British are essentially status quo powers and so their grand visions are always going to look like improved versions of the present with some of the nasty bits taken away. Also, we've got to be realistic about how strategy is going to come together. We shouldn't dismiss normal organisational practices of muddling through trial and error and consider them a strategic as the CNO explained. Budget still inevitably drives strategy and they do force people to make choices and work out their priorities. There's always going to be a need to forge consensus amongst government departments, negotiate with allies and anticipate opponents. Nor should we feel contentious if politicians worry about public opinion and future elections. They're the ones who have to explain the links between distant events and national wellbeing. Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorenson concluded that the quarantine was the best response to missiles in Cuba in 1962 because he couldn't write the alternative speech explaining airstrikes. There was a time when the big decisions of peace and war were matters for high policy and the public was excluded. This was the case, for example, in July 1914. Well, if political leaders had been required to make a compelling case to their people at that time, they might have been more careful in their choices. Autocrats often make terrible decisions, but it's precisely because they don't have to worry about accountability and those around them are too scared to make a challenge. So we have to be careful to avoid this sort of reification of strategy as some super-intelligent product around which all activity can be organised. It's about shifting political relationships and how to get the best outcome out of them. If strategy is presented as the setting of noble and ambitious objectives, we then find ourselves working backwards to work out how we can get there. We formulate a plan, a sequence of steps that is supposed to get us to the desired place. Von Malker's famous observation was that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I opened my book with Mike Tyson. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. It's the same basic problem. My argument is that we should recognise that whatever our goals, not saying we shouldn't have them by any means, strategy in the first instance will always be shaped by current circumstances and start with a specific problem at hand. And if there's no pressing problem, there'll be an absence of strategy. This is why, for status quo powers, strategy as often as not is quite reactive. We can distinguish between strategy as an orientation to our environment, which is something that can be written down in documents and thought about, and then strategy as a campaign, which is how I think the military inevitably are often going to think about it. I think these are two different ways of thinking about strategy. Obviously, if you thought about your environment properly, then your campaign should be getting off to a better start. The two are different. Strategy as a campaign can result either from a radical objective, a readiness yourself to destabilise the environment, or because somebody else has destabilised it and then it becomes a much more defensive reaction. Either way, in my view, it's likely to move forward in stages, each changing the environment and therefore requiring different response as one stage closes off and another one opens, and new possibilities arrive as well as old options no longer being available. So it's an argument basically for flexibility and a degree of improvisation. Now what I want to do in this lecture is take this view of strategy and look at the problems, particularly for a campaigning strategy that this creates for the armed forces. Before embarking on a campaign, we're told that the military like clear objectives, they're like clear objectives to be said. They want victory rather than a draw, certainly not a defeat. The enemy must be left with no way back, obliged to surrender and comply with our wishes. Now this view draws on a long-established conceptual framework. I call this the classical model largely because it derives quite explicitly from the classical works in our field. Even the more influential contemporary writers on strategic theory, John Boyd, Edward, Colin Gray, place themselves clearly in this classical tradition. It's a striking feature of our field. One can't imagine a contemporary business strategist insisting on the primacy of early 19th century texts when marketing new products or launching a takeover bid. A political strategist would find a guide to election campaigns from the 19th century quaint, but no more of historical interest. Yet few self-respecting military strategists feel able to ignore clouds of it. Many will go back to Sun Tzu, the daringly modern might get as far as basil little heart from the middle of the last century. Now there's good reason for this. Military strategy is still dominated by major wars and these are rare events. The most substantial were Napoleonic wars, which inspired the classics, and then the first and second world wars, one of which began a hundred years ago and the second of which ended 69 years ago. The arrival of nuclear weapons encouraged truly innovative thinking, but this was more concerned with deterring wars than fighting them, and the other subfield has been guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, which has had its own revival over the past decade, but by and large these have been seen as diversions from core business. The reassertion of classical military strategy in the 1970s was in some respects a reaction against the prevalence of a deterrence mentality in official thinking and the miserable experience of Vietnam. Although this reassertion was described in terms of military reform, in key respects it was reactionary. The ideal type of military practice was found well in the past. In forms of warfare, the pitted regular forces against each other, prized inspired commanders, kept non-combatants out of the frame and assumed that the fate of nations would be determined by the result. The complaint from the reformers was that the decades of preoccupation with irregular forms of warfare had led to the neglect of the classical warfare. At the senior levels they said that general ship had become about management had superseded general ship and systems analysis had superseded strategy. They had come to see warfare not as a chance to display the arts of high command but as a grand scheme of accounting with fire power as currency and body counts as outputs. This critique found a responsive audience as the American armed forces sought to rebuild after Vietnam. The classical approach was embraced, reflected in demands for more manoeuvre and less attrition, captured in field manuals and doctrinal developments such as Air Land Battle. In this approach we can note the influence of a number of great figures from the past. From Germany a conviction that battle could be decisive. From the elder von Molcher a belief that the operational conduct of war should be free from political interference. From Sun Tzu and Little Heart a preference for manoeuvre over attrition. And from Klausowitz a description of military objectives in terms of centres of gravity. The context was the return to, was the Cold War and the residual possibility of a third world war. The adversary in mind was the Warsaw Pact with its substantial armies and doctrines that can also be traced back to the 19th century thinking. The Soviet focus on the operational art and manoeuvre helped validate the Western approach. If these two great forces had clashed they would have been prepared to fight along comparable lines at least until the nuclear question came to be asked. But since the end of the Cold War there's been good reasons to doubt whether there will be another major war of this type and therefore whether these concepts will be of relevance. Meanwhile issues of nuclear deterrence and counter insurgency remain. Furthermore we've had examples of force being used in a great variety of distinctive ways for purposes of coercion to establish new facts in the ground that don't fit neatly into these established approaches. New forms of conflict, cyber war for example, are actively being explored. And from this one might conclude that the problem with the classical model is simply one of obsolescence. This is the suggestion for example behind claims that we've now entered a fourth generation of warfare. But that's not my argument. I'm not saying that we should ignore the classics or alternatively that they're now being rendered irrelevant as a result of some transformation in warfare. The activities associated with the fourth generation for example can be traced back to centuries while the possibility of major war still animates military preparations and it's not too difficult to think of contingencies where it might come back. Anyway, a mostly adherence of the classical model there's no suggestion that it is only for major war. It's created expectations for the conduct of all conflicts of which the armed forces are employed. My argument instead is that there is a flaw in the model derived from the classics, one that's been there from the start and has always caused problems. The flaw lies in the separation of the military and political strands of strategy. In ancient times individuals combined the two and of course they were also combined in the single person of Napoleon although he was much better at the military than the political. The separation of the two reflects the fact that there are distinct competences so that their integration is always going to be a challenge for civil military relations. Politicians who fancy themselves as generals have been almost as disastrous as generals who fancy themselves as politicians. The development of a special field that came to be known as strategy was a consequence of the steady professionalisation of western navies and armies and the increasingly complex tasks they faced in moving large fleets and mass armies or in understanding the technical demands of their fields, whether in gunnery or sieges. In the western tradition the fit between the political and military strands is seen as a top-down problem, an issue of civil military relations only at the highest level. The issue is raised directly in the Klaus Witzian axiom that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The problem lay in the assumption behind the classical model that once the politicians had handed down objectives for war the military should take full responsibility for actual conduct and expect a minimum of political interference while doing so. One reason for this was another assumption that political goals would best be delivered by the comprehensive defeat of enemy forces in battle. Victory would leave the enemy state no choice but to agree terms from military gains, political gains would follow naturally. And so at the heart of this model was the concept of the decisive battle as an encounter that would produce a clear result and shape the subsequent political settlement. This was elaborated with the greatest clarity by Jomani who was important, is overshadowed by Klaus Witz but in the 19th century he was the one to go to, particularly in the United States. We know of Dennis Mann's influence at West Point as a teacher of civil war generals and of course Alfred Thea Mann's influence over thinking about sea power and the younger Mann's influence over air power theorist such as Douay on how aircraft and air power should be used. The idea of a decisive battle was extremely influential and shaped thinking from a long way back and Jomani who wrote very clearly in a text booky sort of way was I think the main reason for this. But Klaus Witz didn't disagree although he was aware of circumstances where it might be hard to achieve a decisive result and this of course was where the German historian Delbroch came in building on these doubts of Klaus Witz and had a furious argument with the German general staff when he argued that maybe some wars might be won by exhaustion rather than by annihilation of enemy armies. To his opponents, to Delbroch's opponents annihilation of the enemy was the only satisfactory approach not least because they doubted whether they could cope with a prolonged campaign of exhaustion or attrition picking away its enemy's strength in the hope of wearing it down. Distaste for this form of warfare remains prevalent. Hence the focus in recent years on manoeuvre which has been celebrated as supposedly cleverer, less costly in casualties and much more likely to achieve a quick result. There's a crucial moment during the Franco-Prussian War. After von Wolcker, the great exponent of the decisive battle had achieved fantastic results first at Metz and then at Sedan and approaching Paris Bismarck wanted the battle over quickly because he was worried that the French might bring in allies if it started to drag on whereas von Wolcker wasn't happy with the idea of achieving what he wanted to achieve through bombardment. He thought it was possible to lay siege and eventually get the answer he wanted. The point was that he was furious of being overruled by Bismarck and the Emperor that his professional advice was not followed. So he drew two lessons from the episode one of which was a belief this was the time of the Paris Commune as well that social forces would now start to make regular warfare as he had known it more and more difficult which is one reason why he feared a future European war although his successors were very careful to play down this aspect of von Wolcker's thought but the other was very clearly that it was important that strategy must be fully independent of policy. He identified the operational level of war as one within which the commander must expect no political interference. For his successors this became a core principle I've just been reviewing as many others have the whole slew of books about the origins of the First World War and one has struck how little interrogation there was by political leaders of the military plans which they were being asked to implement. The Kaiser briefly asked whether it was really wise for the German forces to push through Belgium he was told it was essential and let the matter drop. The Tsar wondered whether the mobilisation that he was being asked to approve was a bit too aggressive but he was told it was essential and he let the matter drop. And even after the First World War this idea of the operational level in a politics free zone remained strongly in force. So in its ideal form this classical military model would have clear political objectives passed over to the military who would inflate knockout blow on the enemy preferably through a brilliant manoeuvre and then hammer defeated enemy back to the politicians to agree terms. And there are obvious and familiar problems with this model which I won't go through in detail but it's clearly hard always to win a truly decisive victory should one be achieved it can be equally hard to translate this into desired political effects. Pacifying opponents to the point where they're unable to resist your will is extremely demanding and rarely achieved. Battles can be inconclusive opponents unexpectedly resilient the balance of alliance can be as important as the balance of military strength conflicts can end in messy and unsatisfactory ways. Yet the classical model still persists and the most obvious example of this lies in the insistence that the planner's task is to identify an enemy's centre of gravity. Clasovitz's concept was taken from the physics of its day and became I think one of his most unsatisfactory contributions to strategic thought. In physics the centre of gravity represents the point at which the forces of gravity could be said to converge within an object where its weight was balanced in all directions. If struck there it could lose balance and fall but one obvious problem was that whereas it was quite easy to identify the centre of gravity of a solid and static object it was much harder to do so with a complicated shape made up of moving parts. For Clasovitz the centre of gravity represented the source of the opponent's power and strength and therefore the point against which all our energies should be directed. Here the application of force should result in the enemy's defeat. Unfortunately he was never wholly clear on the spot to look for. It could be a major concentration of physical strength and therefore a challenging place to mountain attack or a point where the enemy's forces came together and were given direction, might make more sense or perhaps it was something more political say a capital city or a particular member of an alliance that once defeated could cause the hole to crumble. Over the past few decades this has turned into a search for the knockout blow the limited but well directed and brilliantly executed thrust that could take down the enemy's forces without the bother of a prolonged and bloody campaign of attrition. Reflecting changing views about receiving and inflicting casualties it fitted in with the idea that strategy has to be smart and sophisticated avoiding the crude application of brute force. Now I don't want to spend time reviewing the very many versions and variations on the centre of gravity theme that have been explored by our armed forces over the past few decades I'm prepared to be corrected but I've seen no evidence that the effort has improved the conduct of military operations. There has been no consensus about what commanders should be looking for or the methodology required to find it is the aim to seek out or avoid the enemy's strengths. Was it about finding the enemy's weakest points but only if they represented a critical vulnerability rather than marginal assets. Now I've reviewed all this literature from my book it seemed to me the centre of gravity could refer to a target or a number of targets which might constitute a source of enemy strength and or critical vulnerability found in the physical, psychological or political spheres which might, if attacked, have by itself or alternatively in combination with other events a decisive effect or else possibly result in consequences with potentially decisive events. Countries, or indeed any political entities or their armed forces do not have centres of gravity. As a metaphor it encourages a search for some vital core that holds the enemy system together. If this core can be identified and successfully attacked it's supposed the enemy system will unravel. This assumes an interconnected and interdependent system incapable of adaption and regeneration. Once some key element is removed all systems don't necessarily collapse. There may be a transformation but possibly into something more robust and durable. The removal of an enemy regime for example may not result in a pliable and cooperative state but instead a new entity that is as unfriendly and less manageable. Could it be that there has been a tendency to look at what could be attacked most effectively and then work backwards and proclaim that these targets do indeed constitute the enemy's centre of gravity. All this therefore seems to me to reflect the classical assumption that the most important task of the armed forces must be to defeat those of the enemy. This may seem obvious to you but I just want you to think a bit that it isn't necessarily so. This follows from the conviction that the key to unlocking the enemy state was the elimination of the enemy army in order to impose a favourable political settlement. Yet this stage does not invariably have to be reached in order to achieve desired political effects especially in a campaign for limited objective short of all out war. There are roles for armed force in protecting civilians from danger intimidating and coercing comforting friends and reassuring allies prodding disputants to negotiations and strengthening bargaining. Force can have an instrumental value even when it is not decisive in itself. There is always a need to understand enemy objectives and capabilities but that does not always mandate ensuring a total collapse. Their forces might be deterred, denied, deflected and displaced without being threatened with a terminal defeat. So my argument is that the classical model has always been inadequate because of the separation of the military from the political strands of strategy and that the narrowly military focus has become even more problematic in contemporary circumstances. Reflecting my approach to strategy it must start with a problem at hand and move forward rather than consider the eventual goal and work backwards. Again perhaps for questions we can consider some of the current crop of crises but I think it's interesting to note how many of them have been prompted. They are not, I think, by some clearly thought out sequence of steps that lead you to the ultimate goal but a very clear sense of something needs to be done and this is what we are doing. Certainly I think this is how Putin has been operating in Ukraine where in response to a problem that he saw in Kiev he took a step and then one step leads to another and gets him to a position but I don't think he particularly wants to be. There was an interesting discussion before the break on China but China has got itself in the position where it is asserting its rights what it believes is its territorial boundaries by a series of measures without it seems to me thinking through about the consequences of the inevitable incidents at sea that are going to happen are going to be handled or we look at Iran and we find that a country that was slated to be next on the list of the axis of evil to be chopped off is now suddenly being spoken of as a potential partner not an ally in dealing with the deterioration of the position in Iraq. So we have plenty of evidence of political moves strategic moves involving the armed forces that are moving forward but without necessarily being clear where the end state is supposed to be and therefore providing lots of opportunities for creative imaginative sometimes bold sometimes cautious responses. So to conclude the classical model was revived during the Cold War in conditions of bipolarity with a political context that was well understood and not expected to change significantly. We are now in a very different context an international situation that's dynamic and uncertain with rising and falling powers competing economic systems and forms of government complex interdependencies and constant media coverage in intensive social networking that have been demonised one moment turn up at the next as potential partners and vice versa. All of this makes it difficult to set long term goals other than the most general sort. And the risk is if strategy is about problem solving that we'll take on an ad hoc character and become incoherent because of the interactions between these various sets of problems. And I think this is a real danger that I would follow. Nonetheless if we the way to get around this I think is to work for a much more intensive integration of the political and the military strands of strategy. If we fail to do this there'll always be the temptation in military rhetoric to promise definitive solutions to problems that can't be solved by military means and in political rhetoric to set aspirations that fit with core values and principles but far exceed available means of implementation. Let me make four quick suggestions that flow from the analysis. The first is that while it may be unrealistic to have some sort of grand vision of the future it is important to have a keen sense of the present and the core interest that might be under threat. I would say for the United States that these are to sustain its network of alliances and partnerships and an open trading system. This is not to exclude other interests whether promoting human rights easing distress but unavoidably there's going to have to be discretion about how they are addressed. My concern is only with too broad a definition of vital interests which risk staking American credibility on matters which are not essential and in areas where it can be difficult to get you away. We turn to armed force as a last resort when all else has failed and then expect a lot from it. Complicated and intractable disputes do not become simple and tractable just because force has been employed. Second, as a status quo power it's unlikely you'll be taking the initiative although it does happen. This means you'll be thinking you'll need to think of where potential crises could erupt. Part of the challenge for a national security establishment is to scour the world for problems and think about what they might mean. Even more important when a crisis does break the real challenge is to read it. This is quite different from the job of an intelligence agency which is to focus on intentions and behaviour of others. Reading a crisis requires understanding the interactions between all those involved including yourselves. This seems to me to be the height of the strategist's art. It's the area where experience really counts and judgement makes a difference. Third, making sense of a crisis requires, as I keep on saying, integrating the political with the military and puts demands on both. The idea that the political and military levels of strategy can only be strands of strategy, can only be brought together at the top is clearly outdated. We've become aware of the strategic corporal who's apparently tactical decisions are replete with wider implications. All down the chain of command should be habitual to be trying to understand these relationships. Fourth, lastly I've said that the wrong question to ask at the start of a campaign is what is the enemy centre of gravity? The term should henceforth be banned. See what happens. What should be put in its place? I have a suggestion which will undoubtedly strike you as being anti-climactic and banal. I'll pose a much more mundane, simple and straightforward question. What is the position you wish to reach? This presumes nothing about tasks and allows for the integration of the political and military strands. It's relevant to port visits and joint exercises as much as humanitarian missions and regular warfare. It can be asked at any level of command. I like the term position precisely because it means little and therefore requires the hard work to be done by those who must explain what they are doing and why. When considering a possible position questions can be asked about the options and risks it raises. The term in fact has a history. Positional war was associated with pre-Napoleonic forms. It appeared as pre-modern associated with the earlier age of more tentative confrontations, limited objectives, slower in tempo and cautious in method. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, Positional Warfare got a very bad press associated with weak and indecisive leaders and to be contrasted with a much bolder ways of maneuver of the modern era. Yet this seems to me to be an appropriate way to think about many contemporary conflicts. Above all, it reminds us that conflicts do develop through stages that the first move rarely turns into a knockout blow and that later moves depend on how the first moves affect the situation, including unintended consequences and the unanticipated responses of others. And but what counts is whether or not we can turn a situation to our advantage. This seems to me the promise and the challenge of strategy, not as a means of making our dreams come true or of bringing focus and vision to government, but as a reliable guide for the perplexed when dealing with situations which are challenging and complex, evaluating risks and responsibilities and then achieving much more than might have otherwise been expected given your available resources. So my concluding comment is out with centre of gravity welcome to position. Thank you very much. I don't know how long we've got ten minutes so any questions? Good morning sir, Jerry Pulaski in the South Fourth Fleet. With this forum gathered to roll up our sleeves on the current maritime strategy, I wonder if you could expand upon your four recommendations for practical advice for strategists. Specifically as a strategist, when looking at your strategy, what are some ways to tell that your strategy is no longer foundational but stale? And in turn developing new strategic games? What are some ways to tell that you're being truly an innovative visionary advice devolving into the world of a chaotic pride and reactionist? Somebody once asked me the difference between mindless eclecticism and creative synthesis. There aren't clear rules. The best way to develop a strategy is to start with the diagnosis of the problem. What is the problem you're trying to solve? If you've forgotten the problem you're trying to solve and you're doing things as a matter of routine then it may well be that the strategy has become stale. If this is the way we always do it sometimes that's because it's the right way. There's always talk about the need to think about the box. Sometimes there's lots of great stuff in the box and you need to know it. But it's got to be addressing the problem at hand. And I think that's where there's always the risk of routines and standard operating procedures and so on. And I think for navies I think there's I think that the advantage of this sort of approach I'm talking about for navies is actually an awful lot of what navies have to do is about presence is about is actually about establishing positions is reminding people of that you're around, that you've got capabilities of things that the CNO was talking about before and actually it's quite useful to have a way of incorporating that into a much more challenging idea of what happens if a crisis actually does develop because this may be just your first stage is having demonstrated an interest in a particular part of the world. But if you're doing that then again you have to think why am I going here for my presence rather than somewhere else? What is it that I'm trying to achieve with this visit that couldn't better be achieved somewhere else? That's all I'm really asking is for those sort of questions to say to the fore. That's very interesting. What I argue is that because my strategy is a word that's used for very trivial circumstances not a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King but how to bring up your children or fill in your tax forms which I appreciate in this country does lead extensive effort but it's not really a strategy. So what I to put boundaries on it I talk about when either you want to destabilise the environment or somebody else has done it and the interesting things about things about the people you mentioned Gandhi, Martin Luther King is that they were dissatisfied with the status quo but the challenge for them was to mobilise people. Now, Gandhi mobilised Martin Luther King came in as a mobilisation started and he provided a face and leadership for the movement. I gave a talk the other day on Mandela and I just want to leave because it's not in the book I wish it had been after I put some research into this but it's quite interesting. If Mandela had been executed in 1964 which was entirely possible he had a little speech prepared if that had been the court's decision then we would remember him as a failed Marxist revolutionary he was probably a member of the Communist Party at the time he'd read all the standards he'd been to Algeria for training and he wasn't very good at it he gave himself away far too easily but he didn't get executed and he went to prison and he describes this extraordinary moment in 1984 when he decides there has to be a negotiation with the nationalist party, with the government and what's extraordinary is he's taking opportunity of his incarceration to do this he wouldn't have been able to do it as an active leader of the ANC because he would have been told he couldn't he would have been told this was unacceptable that they hadn't agreed to our conditions equally he wasn't going to agree to the condition to put down by the nationalists he did it because he had the standing to make the move but also he decided he could be denounced if it all went wrong as a foolish old man this strikes me as an extraordinary example of leadership but it was quite autocratic and democratic at all later as things moved on he involved others it's circumstances that made this possible Martin Luther King would have been a pastor following in his father's footsteps were it not for the fact that a bus boycott had already been started and the church became available to provide the leadership so it's circumstances which which create these possibilities and I think one of the things just to bear in mind going back to the strategic corporal is that the leadership in these circumstances comes from unexpected places when the circumstances are there it's the leadership can be an unexpected individual can make all the difference


The President of the United States. With your excellencies, President Munang Bay, Secretary Regan, and members of the Congress and distinguished guests, one of the great pleasures of this office is that I often have a chance to do something unabashedly positive in nature. And I'm pleased to say that what we're about to do offers such an opportunity. Today we mark the new American partnership, as I'm sure Secretary Regan has told you, the people of Africa through our acceptance of membership in the African Development Bank. We take the step purposefully yet, and by it we underscore our commitment to African growth. The United States has always taken a far-sighted view to assist the growth of developing nations. At the Cancun Summit, October of 81, the United States laid out a broad-based program of trade, investment, and aid to meet the diverse needs of the developing countries. Last year we put this approach into practice in our Caribbean Basin Initiative for the Developing Countries of the Caribbean and Central America, and with this step today the United States reaches out to its developing nation partners in Africa. The United States and the African Development Bank are not new friends by any means. Since 68, the United States has provided technical assistance to the bank through the Agency of International Development, and since 76 we've channeled part of our development assistance to Africa through the bank's affiliates. After of, or affiliates I should say of the African Development Fund, and now by opening its membership to the non-African countries, the African Development Bank has given us the opportunity for even closer cooperation. I'm happy to say we accept the invitation and stand ready to do our share. We're painfully aware that Africa's economic development is encountering difficult obstacles. As the leader in the cause of progress, the African Development Bank Group, along with other assistance organizations, must strive for a more effective use of the limited development funds. The African governments who carry the heaviest responsibility for their own domestic economy or economic conditions must pursue a sound growth-oriented policy if progress is to be made. Far too often the governments of developing countries undermine their own private sector. One of the essentials for commercial and industrial expansion, only to see the standards of living decline in the countries that do that is the leaders of Africans nations recognize the critical role of private enterprise they can then expect to share in much more of the worldwide economic upturn that we think is now beginning in this country. We recognize both the special development needs and the great potential of Africa. African Development Bank Group symbolizes the determination of Africa and the international community to meet those needs and to achieve that potential. We in the United States are enthusiastic about this partnership, as I'm sure the Secretary has told you, and we look forward to seeing tangible results from this cooperative and very special effort. And now I am going to sign a letter to the President of the Bank and I am going to sign our action paper. President of the United States, Mr. Secretary of the Treasury and the Governor of the African Development Bank, distinguished senators and congressmen, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Board of Governors and the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank and on my own behalf, permit me to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the singular owner, you have done the bank and ourselves today in deciding to mark the signing of the former instruments of accession of the United States to membership of the African Development Bank with this special ceremony. Mr. President, the ceremony we have just witnessed is significant in many respects, but I think it's most obviously significant in that it marks the clearest commitment of the government and the people of this great country to the development objectives and aspirations of the African peoples as collectively expressed in their institutions that form the African Development Bank Group. Mr. President, we have long had clear and consistent proof of the sincerity and sympathy of the United States towards these institutions. Your country's assistance both in the form of funds and technical assistance to the bank has been a reliable and invaluable supplement to the bank's own efforts for nearly as long as the bank has been in existence. And this notwithstanding that for reasons that are now happily historical, the United States could not at the time be a member of the African Development Bank. The same history of great care and concern is even more amply evident in the clear leadership position that United States unreservedly accepted in terms of both direct contributions and indirect assistance when it became possible for this country to become a state participant in the African Development Fund a few years after its creation. Sir, today marks a further confirmation of the commitment of your people, your government, and we recognize it as an explicit assurance that is a long-term commitment. And because it's long-term in nature, it further underscores the concern of the people of this country for the plight of the people of Africa, which is the duty of the institutions of the bank group to help mitigate. On behalf of the governing bodies of the bank, it is my singular honor and pleasant duty to welcome the United States of America to membership of the bank. You will, Mr. President, have no doubt have been informed, at least in outline, of the long period of internal debate which preceded the decision of our governors to admit non-African countries to membership of the bank. In the end, what persuaded them was the consideration that non-African membership could create an opportunity on the continental level and under their own leadership for a more extensive dialogue and partnership between the two sides in combating Africa's endemic development problems. Mr. President, it is this opportunity which we, in the bank, with the assistance of countries like yours, have the responsibility to translate into reality. And I am confident that we will succeed in this endeavor. There can be no doubt that with the material and technical resources that will be made available to the bank as a result of this day's work, its effectiveness in manning this frontier and pushing it back is significantly enhanced. Mr. President, your decision to have present at this ceremony such a distinguished and broadly representative selection of the members of the executive, the legislature and the business and banking organs of the nation signifies clearly to all of us how essential is the participation of all these sectors of the nation before this great adventure in international cooperation can become a true success. Allow me, sir, to address a word of gratitude to the many concerned friends of Africa in the Senate and Congress whose consistent support for this program over all these years has today brought our efforts to fruition. Equal, sir, a word of thanks is due to the staffs of both the executive and the legislative who so tirelessly and patiently assisted us at all stages of our preparations. Mr. President, I would on this happy occasion go further and take this windfall opportunity on behalf of my colleagues, myself, the African Development Bank, personally to wish you a belated happy birthday and sincere good wishes for health, success and God's blessings in your future endeavors. Sir, on behalf of the boards of governors and directors of the bank group accept our most sincere welcome to the African Development Bank and our thanks to you and to the people of your great country. Thank you.