Good morning and welcome once again to the breakfast on plus TV Africa. Our first major conversation for today is going to talk About the Nigerian inflation rate. We have caused the national Bureau of Statistics has made Revelation that it has dropped 0.37 percent consecutively in the last seven months of 2021 we're speaking this morning with an economist mr. Richard in no, yo To understand better what this means. Good morning beside no, yo Beside no, yo. Good morning. Can you hear us? Hide in we're very well. Thanks for joining us. I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes? Now we can Thanks for joining us So so let's get straight into it, you know and understand what exactly this means before we look into further details What does this mean to the average Nigerian when the NBS says that inflation? Yes, can you hear me beside no, yo I Can hear you please go ahead. All right, so I'm asking, you know If you can break it down for the common Nigerian What does it mean when the NBS says that inflation rate has dropped by 0.37 percent consecutively? What does that really mean? Richard in all your can you hear me? What is having issues that we can actually buy more goose now that's what it means and it real says simply means That'll be your money. You can actually buy more goose. It simply means the price of good Goose and service is cut generality of Nigerians That simply means it before you as I used to buy a particular item I simply means right now that item is so low So on the overall for Nigerian people is good But I'm also sure it's good for Some persons who are investing in the market because for them it's all about maximizing profits So the drop in price may not believe reflects as in so well with them and also it's also imply that They may have to start thinking of other ways to see how they can actually keep up as a revenue to their business And if there's not the kidney may end up laying off as in Staff but on the overall is good for the Nigerian people. That simply means you can actually buy more goose But very few amount of money in your wallets Okay, but let's also You know big father, do you think that this is a true reflection of The market reality. I mean looking at the fact that food prices The cost of services are Sorting across the country Well, let me start by saying the Nigerian inflation rates. It's more like the Stock exchange markets today. You have the price of stock going high to bury have it coming down below So oftentimes the war impact is not seen Okay in the day of declaration But I think it's going to take a lot of work on the path of CBN on the part of investors and also my endurance to sustain the fall a Prize of goods and services But I think the average investor won the price of goods and services to won't go high because that way they make more money Okay, so do I have enough money to pay their staff for every investment they put out there But for the average Nigerian, what we care about is to ensure that we are paying less Okay Okay for services and and goose out there So for me, I believe is a good thing in terms of the value of The research finding and reports it is up for economists across country to actually conduct the top part review as a research So as data confirm or discredit it, but as it is right now We're yet to have Dafa to suggest in the real sense that what's the as in the period of statistics actually says true Okay Also speak further on What really determines whether inflation rate increases or decreases and and is there things that you would say the CBN has done That has made it continue to decline according to the NBS over the last seven months Well first let me start by saying So The inflation rates basically reflect some extents the culture of demand and supply How much people buying and how much for selling? Outside the fact that the volume of money circulation could go a long way to actually influence what I call national spending From the angle of positive income But overall one would say that the policy of the CBN some extents might have contributed in this direction through probably the The lowest came the CBN bonds not only just to financial institutions Okay, where as in financial institutions to come credit solution as an administrator giving SMEs as in cheap loans Just a single digits of nine percent. I still think that policy might have played out in terms of a pin in Manufacturers to produce more goose and that we force in the price of goose and services downward. So yeah We could have that link, but also it could also be the Nigerians are not basically buying because they don't have the money Because when the man is no high the price of goose naturally falls as the price of goose basically responds high That simply means that it's possible. Okay seems to Be very weak and for that reason we're not buying so investors have no other reason other than just for that Bring down the price of goose last accommodates as a more as an purchase from different as in demography So it could be one direction to be in all the direction born over I still think the policy of the CBN in respect to offering cheap loans to as an XM is To some extent that contributed to this drop in the inflation rates Okay, but you you mentioned that you that the implication of the fact that 0.3% in seven months means that we can Nigerians can actually buy Things I mean they can buy goods and services at a very Affordable rate, but I really would like to ask is that the reality? Is it really true? Or this is just in paper Reach out in OU Well, we seem to have lost connection with reach out in OU Hoping that we can actually connect, but you know, it brings us back to the conversation that for every other time I think the next work is a little bit cool. Yes. Okay, so if you can hang me, please can you respond Just like I said basically It simply means that we cannot buy more goose but buying is the function of how much disposable you have Okay, how much money you have within your wallets? And if you don't have enough money that simply means that even the benefit that comes with a fall applies of goods and services You'll be able to find nested. So that's just the truth about it But I believe that governments spending in Nigeria as a whole is very weak So we have to look for ways to increase the amount of money we have in circulation So now we Nigerians can actually have more money in there as in pockets and wallets and then you seem to actually drive the Economic growth we need so but the fact that we've had falling rates in terms of the inflation rate does not really suggest That we're going to have more to buy What is going to actually drive as in portrays upward would be at the bits of money in the hands of my injures as long as we have An unemployment rate is around the tree 0.1% and where a lot of Nigerians away about 20 million Nigerians don't have jobs. That simply means that Those who don't have jobs won't even key in to this very benefits we've seen So it's just a function of how much money you have in circulation unnecessarily The opportunity that the drop in inflation rate actually brings to all Nigerians. So you're saying that it has nothing to do with the cost of you know the cost of food and Services the prices of food and services that inflation has nothing to do with that So this reduction has nothing to do with the fact that you know me going to buy it's a bins rise The price would have actually reduced What I'm trying to say in real sense is this I'm saying is a good thing that we've had falling rates But this falling rates can be as a real of several of the facts or one it could be that My injures are not buying so much and when people are not buying so much What that implies is that investors would want to look for a way to stay in business by reducing the price of their goods and services That's what it means It could also mean that the federal government has done so well by providing the capital solutions investors needs to push The fact was just a new eyes and that simply means floating the market with cheap goods and services and then get an endurance to buy Okay, so it's just two ways as in two way thing. We're yet to actually get the right Theory or what you call tastes is to back up why we are in this fall It could basically mean several things. So the routes to get into the points where you have lower inflation rates could be as a sort of general demand being very very poor It could also mean that investors seems to have more money and increase in the capacity of production seems to the price of goods and services downward All right, what are the things that you kids you would say the government may be able to do to ensure that these Decline continues because we're currently at about 15 point nine nine percent In what ways can the Nigerian government assist, you know the Nigerian economy to ensure that inflation continues to drop? Oh Let me start by saying there's several things government can actually do Okay, government can actually improve on our investments in capital infrastructure Okay, the truth here is that there's a research. I'm currently overseeing and that very research shows that Nigerians seems to have eye Human capital thought intelligence. That simply means we're not a short supply of intelligence What we have currently is that we don't have the right budgets Okay, and the right priority to empower Nigerians to do better and to increase our production line and expand our production sequence So what government can actually do first invest in infrastructure energy as a sector? Say I can improve our energy quality and get regular energy across domestic residential industrial markets That is one for me too I think the government also needs to focus more creating the right great solutions for young Nigerians and entrepreneurs out there Passionate about bringing their vision into reality, especially as regard the creation of essential goods and supply So government can actually look into that direction Then I think lastly what we all just needs to do is to ensure that was trained in our jewellery It's very important for us to have strong jewellery because at the end of the day if you can't get justice Probably through your investment or let's say the tax given to you is very high You cannot get justice in local courts. It's also impact negatively on how you view the Nigerian economy Strengthening our domestic markets in respect to building the right energy sequence increasing as a credit solution to Nigerians who wants money to actually expand or invest into their own business and put the strength in the Nigerian jewellery All of this I believe to a very large extent as it would go along with to improve on bringing the inflation rate down At the same time also strengthen our security because if at the end of the farmers can get the security they need to produce crops That simply means the price of goose As in in the area of our culture would keep increasing So I'm just of the view that a way to go is for us to see how can address all of these issues of race Improve our energy sequence Invest in the capital market in respect to credit solutions to entrepreneurs Improve our jewellery and strengthen national security Okay, well, let's also go back to some of the things you have mentioned you talked about having a better budget Can you please for better perspective explain what you mean by having a better budget? How that can help, you know the decline in inflation, right? now first you see The budget basically is not just the legal instruments as we all told it's not just the legal instruments It's basically the road map road map for implementation It is a reflection of the power release we have as a country and it goes to show to a very large extent What and what we're supposed to expect based on what we have on paper. So the policy sitting on domestic Policy documents basically means that we all just need to understand that if we get our budgets in rights and our financing right That simply means that we can actually build new economic centers Expound our mineral district and then increase the overall economic supply system We have in the country, but if we end up right outpising the wrong things like for instance look at the budgets been proposed 19 billionaire for software for me does not really make sense We can put that money to build what I call as a data and software development center And then we can generate more software for Nigerians rather than spending that money on just software It does not really it goes to show that we don't have the right priority as a country. Okay, so Budgeting the right way simply means consulting citizens Trying out what citizens actually wants and then creating the rights as in system to allow those things to come to be Currently what we have basically are state actors who seems ought to care about what the citizens need And so they're just making priorities in a way that's basically annoy or probably Angers the citizen. So I feel that what we need basically is to fix our budget in sequence and show that we are actually But it's in based on programs projects plans and proposals put forward by citizens and not necessarily just few persons in Highly placed as a sector Deciding what the country should look like and not able to listen into the generality of the Nigerian people who wants to see better infrastructural investment and then a better as a national security outlook that gives us what I call the privilege to actually have Access to inflation rates that is lower than that of other countries and then bring investors to do what we expect investors to do To improve on production and supplies Our great thing you brought in the Nigerian people because that's what I'm going next When Nigerians read these things in the pages of the newspapers they really have no idea how to relate with it because if they go to the market The price of food stuff is still pretty pretty high And so can you share your views on how Nigerians are coping? With you know, the cost of living today and the value of the anirah while the government tells them that Inflation rates are improving and they're getting lower Grace I think in 1976 as a professor somewhere around I think Blangadash that said that is not just a no-for-all start the code economy statistics We need to actually translate the statistics into real time development for people and to improve as in the quality of life They have I agree with you But the trick here is the Nigerians are not finding it easy even though this government is going around telling the old word That's our Nigerians are Enjoying the government and things seems to be improved. I've not really seen re-improvement Okay 30 years ago. I was a little boy. I used to scream up network Okay, 30 years plus. I still see kids in my neighborhood as a scream up network So that simply means that we're not able to even address an energy problem that we've had for more than as in three decades That's one and two if you look at our production line We don't really seems to have so much to do this basically in this country Most of the things we consume from our cars to our television sets our radio and both of you are basically imported That simply means we're creating jobs next way. So Nigerians are not really finding this government's In the shape the government basically thinks the government's basically looks in so I Will suggest that the better thing we all can actually do right now is to continue the conversation Okay, good information going to Plotters where this information's can have the most impacts and then get the government on the fragile to do more Because there's always room to do more and that is just what I believe in terms of lifestyle quality of life We have in my injury I don't think it's something that we all should basically put out of from our road next work We have several pop holes and local cities and and communities and all those centers to Our poor investment in our culture is one can really say Nigerians seems to be enjoying this very good. All right So what being joined by Justin Chukul this morning? Good morning. Thanks for joining us Let me John St. Chukul, John St. Chukul not Justin. Okay. Thank you John St. Chukul for joining us this morning Let's get straight to this conversation. We're looking at the Nigerians inflation rate and according to the reports by the National Bureau of Statistics, it's been dropped by zero point three seven percent and that has gone on for like seven months very straight Now some persons have queried the methodology of the Nigerian Bureau of statistics Because if you want to Compare the current reality of the market the prices of goods and services are still, you know skyrocketed and that's not You know we can relate with the actual reduction zero point three percent It really sounds and really feels very good. So what do you think is the methodology of the Nigerian Bureau of statistics? You have an idea? Yes, I do, but let me clear One misconception about inflation rates and that will obviously I resolve the concerns of Miss Anasani who have about inflation. That's what they call this inflation and that's what they call deflation What we are witnessing here is deflation which means The date at which inflation rate is increasing has moderated is moderating. What that means is a previous month of October September inflation rate bill by sixteen point six three percent That's what that is to put in the name as long as if you take an average basket of goods and services in September 2020 and take their price and compare those prices with the prices of similar products in the same basket in 2021 September it simply means you would have had an increase of sixteen point sixty percent in September So if you have a basket of goods that cost you hundred naira by September last I mean September last Even September this year. It would cost you hundred sixty three couple Similarly when you talk of a basket of goods and services that you had as at October 2020 And you compare the price of those same basket of goods as at October this year The price would have moved by an average of fifteen point nine nine percent Which means if you have bought both those basket for hundred naira you will spend hundred and fifteen naira Ninety nine couple two by the same set of goods and services So what this are witnessing is that you are seeing inflation rate is the high But at the rate at which goods and services are increasing the price of goods and services increasing is not at the same pace At which it was it increased the previous month. It's like a very good I spent a hundred kilometers power then this rate to eighty kilometers power is still not a high speed But it's not the same speed So you will see of the impact or speeding in case you had an accident Which is what I just have finished in seeing a deterioration in the The participation power of their money of their income But that deterioration is slow is deteriorated at a lower rate Not that it's no longer deteriorating what they used to buy they can no longer afford to buy with same amount of income But the rate at which that deterioration is increased is Gradually weakening and that's what I need a self to understand That's the difference between deflation and disinflation in terms of deflation deflation Which is when the person inflation are declined So they are thinking that when we take a deflation deflation We mean that if you bought a basket of goods at hundred naira the same time this time lucky Now you are buying for maybe 19 naira. So the price of goods as I was I've actually begin began to go down That's a pretty interesting way of witnessing of breaking it down deflation versus disinflation so it's not like a lot really has changed it is just that the pace with which it is going bad is slower than it was Absolutely Okay, all right, Mr. Chukwu. Let's let's talk further about you know, how long you know, you know the the reality on ground When the NBS puts out these statistics and these figures, how long on the average do you think it takes before the Nigerian might start to see that there's actually a difference in the price of goods and services When you talk about how long it takes Nigerians to realize this is a different Nigerians actually feel it before the NBS published it Nigerians go to the market on a daily basis and they change realize that they say change in the average Of course, I suppose take for instance the report from NBS for October inflation day on average basis the price of goods and services increased by 0.98% between September last the September this year and October this in which in a month month or month So you realize that even in years who go to the market if you take a whole basket of what it was as a business measured by NBS, you will realize that the average price had increased by 1% But because this price price increase and not uniform Unfortunately, the item that most Families consume are increasing at a higher rate. And that's why if you look at the NBS figure You realize that food items, which is a major component of household consumption in Nigeria increased by 18.34% So for that on average basis A family will have realized that the value of goods a natural natural but by it has almost increased by 20% And they will feed the impact on their pause So in as much as we're saying all our time inflation increased by only 15.99 percent an average household Would have witnessed an increase of close to 20% on their expenditure costs Because food items increased by 18.34% And so the average family on going to the market delivers they are the one that feed the impact of price increase They actually feed the impact before NBS reported NBS reporting based on historical fact somebody go to the market today measure The impact on the goods and services they buy into the and then NBS report these figures by the end of But this time next month. So the average people are the one who talk Who actually feel the pain who actually can give you what the market trend is? And because if you look at the basket of goods and services consumer average household The there is high dominance of food item because of a level of income And that's why most people find it a feeling the impact of This inflation before even the NBS deposits All right, miss I know you can you still hear us? Yeah, I'm with you. Let's go ahead. Okay. Sorry. We All right, so I want you to go ahead and we may you know also get Mr. Johnson to also share his thoughts on this one What can be blamed or can we still blame COVID-19? For Nigeria's inflation rate and where our economy currently is is that's something that can still be blamed? If no, then what else would you blame as a factor in you know, this inflation figures? Well, you can't actually sit down and say COVID-19 is still Influencing the economy domestically. No, because if you look across the country ready, we've lifted bound on Several protocols that basically kept people at home and business is not doing what they want to do So I can't really link the current situation. We find ourselves into COVID-19 I believe that our budget in from the one is wrong. Okay, we don't put the right party I have made it clear without number that the quality of reality going to have in any country the function of the quality of budget And priorities the country make so currently I've not seen that as an priority in in the right direction So what we're just saying is basically priority in the area of Meeting the needs of some very highly placed as in persons in Nigeria It's not necessarily designed to drive the Nigerian economy in the right direction Just like I did mention we have a budget where 19 billion with a spend on software. I believe that we're making billion It's not I say if I believe I know with 19 billion can create a software development center Well can produce all manner of software we need to be able to drive Whatever interest we might have at a national security or a production line or a public surveillance So I don't even think the problem we have is linked to COVID-19 on the overall We have a very weak political institution that seems not to be driven by anything in Respect to building the economy we need but seems to be driven by just excuses So we just have to go back to policy documents and find policies that can actually work for the Nigerian people for the Nigerian country And then see how we can actually use that to rally our people to better reality Mr. Jekyll do you agree and The same question to you. Do you think that COVID-19 can still be blamed somehow some way? Or are there other factors that the Nigerian government has, you know failed at that has led us to continue to be at this stage With inflation. Well, I would think that it has much as you may still have some Effect of COVID but I don't think there's a major factor now if you look at inflation figures we are talking of You realize I can say earlier that food inflation is 18.34 percent If you disagree with the food inflation and be a say that the major increases in food inflation We are from food items like cereals wheat bread Two bars including potato potato to ban other tubas are produced locally and Egg ordinarily we should be safe from eating egg and I'm not sure we're important egg today So you wouldn't look at the food inflation of 18.34% and ascribe it to COVID And principally the reason why we're still having high food inflation particularly as it relates to Cuba, which is a main Cuba and cities which has a main Step of food in this country is because we've seen displacement of farmers to some of the farming boats as a result of heightened level of insecurity in the country We've seen logistic cost quite high because Third price is quite high today. If you look at the price of AGO which it is or which is a major Fierce search for the college vehicles. You recognize the fact that that's impacting on the cost of Food items even as you look at urban and rural inflation Urban inflation is a hundred basis points above rural inflation in the country today Then if you look at the non-core The core inflation which is all item excluding volatile food items You realize with an inflation rate of that 10.24 percent that would likely be driven by the exchange rates We've seen a deterioration of exchange rates in the past. At some point we saw an exchange rate of about 570 Naira to $8. So that pastry effect of that high exchange rate will Certainly have impacted on core inflation. So and these factors are likely Indigeneals to the extent that look your inflation, your exchange rate is a result of your reserve and your import and export And your food inflation is a result of food production in your country because most of the food we eat are locally grown food items Okay I would also ask it would be a two-in-one I mean this question will go to you and Richard in all you now name all of this in all of this conversation the commandment is concerned about improved standard of living and if all that we constantly say there's a decline or There's an increase how is the standard of living of the people so my question now is what can government do because Looking at the reality. I mean going to the market and you know being on the street You would actually feel the pains of Nigeria the standard of leaving has dropped drastically What can government do? What can the people do? You know to improve the standard of living? Okay, what the government has to do is address the fact on Propel high inflation rates. I had mentioned the never-insecreted as worsening food production and also leading to low productivity in from the farm produce Which is what we have a food inflation rating point three five three four percent beyond that we need to address the logistic supply Chaining the country particularly say in fast-forward logistic logistic in the country the seaports Are a nightmare These are lead to increase in the cost of goods that come into the country because of the cost of the region will have you the Road network is very weak that leads to high cost of transportation and the absence of red transport in most locations So that's one the government has to fix those things to have a single-digit inflation We must address the issue of insecurity to have a lower level of inflation and then as it relates to import induced inflation rates Then that you have to look at your history. Of course, luckily, we've seen some moderation in dollar rates in the country We hope that trade will continue and that will translate obviously in lower cost of imported items But as per what we need to do the fact is that there are two things that are impeding The standard of living on the genius one is higher inflation to is unemployment And that's why we have a very high misery index because when you combine unemployment at and the high inflation rate You have a high in misery index. So we need to address the issue of unemployment and that Once you are this one employment, you also address the issue of productivity because higher productivity means mean that you are producing more goods and service to your country and when you have produce more goods and service in the country You realize that the inflation will naturally moderate on its own. So the government has to focus on these key issues All right, Rita, you know you do you share the same thoughts? Well, I actually do actually do but let me start by saying Infrastructure right now What we have is just 20 century infrastructure And what we need is to the first century infrastructure From the energy line to the translation system Down to a medical facility and what the view all of this just needs to improve Unfortunately, the government is not prioritizing in the right direction. So I strongly believe that what people can do basically is to start calling on political parties to Start holding the right ideology. We want to see manifestos. We want to see real thing and not just Lien people telling you they're going to do this and do that So you should be able to engage them interlock the issue and get them to tell you how And all of that then my endurance also needs to realize that even though they feel to some extent that politics is a death A thing I think the science of my endurance to come to realize that politics remain the only mechanism true wish We produce government sure we should produce our leaders So is it time for people to get involved in the political system and use their influence to Rally around to get the right leadership to address some of this problem because at the end of the day It's always on to leaders and the budgets they have for the people So if the budget faulty if the mindset leadership is faulty what you have is just what you're going to have so energy sequence Production quality transportation next walk and both of you all of the 20th century infrastructures we have currently that can't even address the issue of to the person who we are confronted with Goes to show that we have to do some to look into our leadership. Just like The very as intelligent as an guest to people have Mr. Chukwach is set There's need for us to also be for security which I've also as in gave reference to because without security especially in The agro belt belts of Nigeria where a lot of these crops are produced That simply means you're going to be having increase in the price of I cut your produce and don't forget as a country we spend about 56.65 percent on food items alone And if you look into that alone you get to understand there's need for also strengthening our security network and maybe we also just need to invest more in Epic Nigerians to live better life because at the end of the day The insecurity we face is a function of the mindset of Nigerians So you can invest in kinetic resources and due from the defense system By the end of the day the mind of Nigerians are not in good shape because they're not happy with the governments You're still going to have mass against security And those infrastructures those kinetic resources will basically be wasted killing as in gets the Nigerians to kill Nigerians So I'm just of the view that time for us to actually start looking forward is now We need to start investing in the right capital infrastructure building the right energy portfolio and sharing that we invest massively in our transition system go across the country the pot hole Especially in south part of Nigeria is just this big people And how do you expect farmers to move their goods from local communities down to urban centers? These are all issues that drive the cost of goods and services Then CBN also needs to do more to expand credit facilities and solutions to Entrepreneurs so that that way they can actually get the resources they need to be able to drive the business Objects it don't forget that the group for instance You there are three things you can actually do is either you actually get a job But when you don't have a job you're spent to either further your career or start a business And if you don't have the resources to set up business you need that simply means you'll be able to contribute meaningfully To the economic margin and for also its better finance position There's need for us to invest more into providing the cut-per-solution that's in which they drive the business vision into reality All right, um, Johnson Chukwu, let's bring you in There's a myth that once prices increase in Nigeria, they never come back down If you've of course looked across market prices for oil and for cereal and for You know can't can't Food and some of some very random things Um, these prices are figures that we've never seen before Um, you know sardine for example that used to be about 250 naira is currently selling above 600 naira Um, there are certain things that Nigerians will now describe as luxury that you know a couple of years ago We're very basic Um, so mr. Johnson Chukwu, would you expect That there is a possibility is there a possibility that these prices will ever go back to where they were a few years ago Well, uh, what I would say is that it is a myth in Nigeria, but it has Uh, we had a census where some countries have witnessed, uh deflation in the uh In in in their country and then we saw prices reverse to even below what they used to be Uh, but Nigeria's situation is a bit unique unique in the sense that We've seen consistently over year in year out an increase in the population Who had a commercial rate increase in productivity? So that means that the level of productive productivity is declining as well as population is increasing And the simple logic of inflation is that when too much money is pushing a few goods or a few goods So for you to have this deflation you need to produce more goods and services Uh, more than the money, uh increase in money in circulation That would not witness that one of the factors that are driving uh important use inflation because because we are an important dependent country We have consistently in our currency depreciate or the value against foreign currencies So as long as that trend continues It becomes difficult to for you to price Imported goods at a narrow value lower than what it used to be If you used to exchange Naira about four or five years ago at $198 Naira $3 And today you are exchanging at officially that $430 Naira $3 Any good you bought for one dollar then would have been costing you $107 Naira today it will cost you $430 Naira as you mean you're using official exchange rates Then it becomes impossible for you to have that same good Even if the price has not moved from way in a sporting country for you to still have a reverse to $198 $7 Naira so for us to ever have a reversal of inflation rates We have to locally produce more goods and services as to lead to local deflation in our economy and then you also have to see an appreciation of Your local currency against foreign currencies to the extent that they will reverse to what they used to be You and I know that based on our current microeconomy conditions those factors seem too far-fetched Or too unrealistic to when you want to expect that we should see a reversal of exchange rate to maybe $118 Naira as we had in the mid-20 The 2025 to 2005 2006 it was about $118 Naira $8 For us to achieve that we must have a major boost in our foreign exchange earnings beyond export of crude The economy will take some time to achieve that we have not even put the structures in place to lead to something other than As to strengthening the currency back to what it was Maybe 10 20 years ago Naira are we producing enough goods and services as a country as to lead to deflation where you have so much goods And the sellers of these goods are begging people to buy them at lower prices And you may have one or two instances where one or two products have Declining the market prices, but generally at the general level the macro level that would be It's all of that payment to explain that Okay Johnson Chico, I would also bring a richardy. No, you today's some persons have complained about artificial inflation And I'm asking can the government use price control mechanism You know to actually stop that or should we allow the market forces of demand and supply You know to continue to play Well first let me start by saying the chief of Control of the Niger economy so a very large extent is the president So I think the likes of the late vice to Bami delia too Basically so the federal government then to court and the minister Of petroleum then Ali samadhi came to court Saying that government can't answer totally when it comes to price control Subsidies for me is a global as an issue Where government across the globe subsidized products and that's for me is price control So I think what we need is force to actually manage both our price control mechanism as well as also Great same room for market forces to also some of this as an issues But on the overall there's no way any country can actually run without some level of subsidization In the built-ins also intervenes When it comes to the issue of rising price So we just have to find out the right policy mix So say I can actually bring Price control at the same time also Great since the necessary conditions for market forces to actually rise when they need a rise for us to actually have an economy That works for home. All right. Let's bring in johnson tucco. What are your thoughts on that? Do you agree with him or you share different thoughts? Okay, I think he dwells on Subsidia Which he said that every economy government subsidizes one of the some of the what he considers as critical to the economic Development of the society But I think your question is whether government can introduce price controls Uh, as a make imagine a mechanism to reduce inflationary total moderate price price levels Uh, I I know that price controls have never worked anywhere in the world At the basic thing and when you try to control price, of course, you are not controlling supply or demand You push that commodity to the parallel market or the black market will pay Prices where people pay premium beyond what the market prices would have offered the man. This is very simple This is how it works If we have as a country we are demanding 10 million units of particular product and we're only producing five million units of it And the demand daily demand is 10 million units and you want to put the price cap on that product So that you take people 10 million people want to buy it Uh, what will happen is that? because the people who are telling there are no fools the people will take the product out of supply And take it to the parallel market and people are going to buy those products much higher prices than they would have bought them If you are left smart, but if you leave them in the open market, what do you call market? Maybe instead of 10 million people wanting to buy prices will go up to some extent only five million people want to buy it Because only five five million people can afford it because they are actually five million on supply But if you say the 10 million people that desire of it, which is what you call the difference between effective demand And uh, and uh, want people that want an item Would ordinarily No may not have the resources to buy it if you put the price cap on them They will struggle to buy it But if you allow market forces to determine the price You have effective demand only those who have the resources to buy that product will buy it And then that will set a market price or what you call a equilibrium price But once you introduce force to say this product I mean we've seen this in the past there was a time when the current President when he was a minute ahead of state He they put in post price control. There was a price control, but they put prices on food items like milk And other states what happened those make vanish from the shelf floors And people have to go to the back end of the market to say okay this make that should have bought for 50 kubo I'm ready to buy for one naira because it can't even find it in the store on the floor of the market or the shelf floors So market price control can only work if the government has a way of boosting supply to meet demand So you must either do what? Constraint demand which is a very difficult into the if is something people really want But the most appropriate thing is stimulate increase in production so that the Value quantity of goods produced will meet the demand of the society and that's when prices will moderate I had talked about this earlier that the best way to Take inflation is to increase the level of production in an economy So that the quantity of goods for services produced will increase beyond the demand of the equivalent and then Those who are selling the product will begin to come and buy the products and the market power We move to the consumer so we now be bagging for lower prices But as you have no production market power remains with the supplier Who will determine the prices that they will say the goods all right? Richard in oil and john sinchuku Thank you both for being a part of the conversation this morning and speaking about niger as inflation rate Of course, I'm looking forward to other very interesting conversations with you too. Have a very beautiful Tuesday All right many thanks for joining us. We appreciate And that's where we will of course be saying goodbye this morning if you missed out on any of uh, well Very interesting conversations. Remember what to catch up. We will work towards having a conversation on the n-sides panel Hopefully some time tomorrow and of course also speak about it It's a plus TV Africa on facebook and instagram as well as youtube do have a great morning. I am messy


the I want to talk about My book Cassandra and I as counters for the future war which is really talking about the army and the Marine Corps trying to learn and Adapt to future to a current modern warfare under fire This this is actually this sign is outside that the main embassy in Baghdad that struck me is Is something kind of unusual? I don't know does that mean that everybody else was drinking while armed? I don't know That maybe some of the decisions that came out of that that particular structure. They may have been My background the term because I was actually named Xandra by a couple of reporters from National Public Radio looking at some of the things I had done before the war Back in 2001. I actually done a study called avoiding Vietnam looking at the American response to The war of Southeast Asia and said the American military Instead of deciding to learn from the experience their lesson really is we're just going to avoid these kind of wars anymore Instead of trying to learn how to do it better We're going to learn how to avoid them and I said it was time to develop a new counterinsurgency doctrine for the United States and then in 2000 and late 2002 I was put in charge of a joint in range C team for the army to figure out how to reconstruct Iraq and that George Oliver here from the night Naval War College faculty was also on that team and we came up with a plan to reconstruct Iraq It really was not in our purview to say not to do this But the consensus of the team was this is stupid, but that was not our purview So we came up with basically our goal was to show how hard it was going to be to reconstruct Iraq Problem was that we finished our study on the same day that Secretary Rumsfeld created the Office of Reconstruction Humanitarian Affairs under Jay Garner So the army was then no longer interested in our plan because the army no longer had the responsibility to reconstruct Iraq We did actually furnish it to the planners in in the Middle East and Kuwait Who are doing it and it did influence the what reconstruction plan was there But it all got derailed when Ambassador Bremmer showed up and started disbanding Iraqi army and some of the other decisions he made But we tried and because of these I got a certain amount of notoriety As somebody who had seen what was coming and had predicted it had just been ignored if you if you're aware that Anybody know Greek mythology the story of Cassandra Yeah, Cassandra is cursed by Apollo to always have to be tell truth to people and never be believed So that that's always the problem you can tell truth to power but getting hurt is the problem What happens though is in because of this and because of my connection to Dave Petraeus who was a classmate of For George and I he drew me in in late 2005 to become the author or the lead author for new counter-incernity doctrine He and James Mattis for the Marine Corps He came up with this idea of it was time to change the way the Army Marine Corps dealt with warfare. They're both veterans of Iraq They aunt they had seen the problems out there and they knew that the services needed to change To deal with the complexities of modern warfare. So this was kind of the Dave Petraeus model Which was basically built on getting a lot of teams out to the field to figure out what's going on and bring That information back to get into training education and also doctor and I tell people that you know my role in this is I was I was one tooth on one cog in Dave Petraeus's engine of Change, which is basically what I was and so I was going to be in charge of coming up with a new doctrine for counter-insurgency Which also become a driving intellectual force for other doctrinal changes to come It was a very atypical process to develop which is FM 324, which was the counter-insurgency manual the doctrine for the Army in the Marine Corps The it was done in less than a year, which is lightspeak if anybody who dealt with military bureaucracy and military doctrine And what wasn't just uniform people? We had all kinds of we had to surveying academics Montgomery McFate who's on the also the National Naval War College is anthropologist there was one of the key players on our team. We had the Army and Marine authors we had The Sarah Sewell who was the director of the the Center for the car Center for Human Rights at Harvard was one of the key players in the early Shaping phase of the manual we had people from think tanks. We had representatives the media Jim Fallows George Packer or Greg Jaffe Brought in so it was really a big general portray she's called his big tent We had a big tent if somebody criticized the manual you'd bring him into the tent try to make him part of the team We we had a vetting conference We're invited experts and look at it and I suggested that we have 30 smart people come in to talk about it The general portray said that's fine you can bring it up. I just want to pick who the 30 people are We ended up with 150 so his idea of 30 was much different than my idea of 30 But it was again there was less smart people from all over the United States. In fact international. We had Australians Brits a Lot of other countries were interested as well And they all contributed to it also the interagency. I got a lot of great ideas from the CIA for instance From Robert Smith William Smith and John Smith I I call him the Smith brothers But the bottom line is it was it was it was a big effort a lot of different people contributed General Petraeus read every word And I take he's a he's an SOB as an editor too. I'll say I sell a PTSD over what I call Petraeus pronouns If you ever write a sentence with this is or it is Make sure that the this or the it have a very clear precedent We had some many interesting discussions about some of the pronouns in the manual Now the intent of the manual was really to be focused on any kind of counterinsurgency, but because of the The way it was edited it really ended up focusing very much on Iraq the After the the final drafts were done. It was sent out to the field for Review we got 4,000 comments back from the field almost all of them focused on the soldier in Afghanistan Iraq and what they were seeing At that time also the last people to look at it in general general officers And they had all just come back from Iraq So the final version of the manual was focused very much on what was going on in Iraq and what would be needed in Iraq Any of you familiar with the doctor and what came out of it Well, it was it was different from the way we had approached it before it was Population centric was focused more on protecting a population and killing bad guys, but you still to kill bad guys, too It wasn't just focused on protecting the population But the first priority was protecting the people and the goal is to accept the government is legitimate Though the definition of legitimate is a hard one to come up with it's very much locally defined You know, it's we had some real battles over that in the writing team as well You got to be very careful how you apply force in this kind of war. You don't want to kill Five enemies and create 50 more because of the backlash and it's a mosaic war and I mean say it's a mosaic war It's different from village to village valley to valley town to town city to city. It's it's very hard to Understand the big picture because it varies from piece to piece. That's why I call it a mosaic war You need a lot of help military force is not going to be successful by itself. You need political help You need you know, it's essential services the economic development There's a lot of things involved need a lot of the civilian help bloody interagency help to be successful in this kind of war and Especially for you know, these are always away games for us. We're always going to leave So one of our big problems has always been we have to establish a host nation authority that's capable of sustaining itself once we leave We failed at that in Vietnam. We're having similar problems in Iraq and Afghanistan Now we the intelligence for the for the new doctrine was very different from the past. It's not your typical military intelligence It was very much cultural anthropology Very much social structures gender roles Political power who has political power and why how does how is this our decisions made? How do people interact? You had to really crack into the human networks to figure out how to fight this kind of war very different kind of intelligence And I'll talk about what campaign design a minute, but you've also one other problem of this kind of war What would the army that George and I entered you knew who the bad guys were it was the next Soviet rifle regiment coming over the hill Modern warfare is a lot different before you can start to plan You got to figure out what your problem set is and that's why you have to have this process called campaign design You've got a dissing you also are usually fighting a network of different enemies that take different approaches and you got to figure out what that is Information managing you got to manage information very carefully perceptions or reality in this kind of war. It's more important What people think you have done than what you have actually done? That's one of the problems we have dealing with something like al Qaeda and the Taliban They've been very good at manipulating the media to change the message. It's a battle over the narrative Again, it's what people believe happens is more important than what happens The main theme to learn and adapt well He is in the manual working with John Nagel especially one of the people on the writing team really push this idea You're learning in adapting. That's what modern warfare is all about That's what general Madison general Petraeus are trying to do for the Marine Corps in the army They're trying to make military forces that can learn and adapt The dominant approach is what we call clear-hold build you clear an area of the bad guys You figure out a way to hold it with some kind of security forces and you build institutions To give a people a better life. That's the way that you defeat an insurgency in the long run Though a lot of this is not just counterinsurgency. It also is modern warfare modern warfare amongst the people That's what it's all about these days very good the day of the You know, you're very rarely going to get the traditional tank-on-tank soldier-on-soldier combat Nowadays there's always going to be a lot of people involved a lot of more regular type forces This is a diagram kind of modern warfare really We have what we call lines of effort which are grouped Thematic actions for instance combat operations is one but it's not the only one you've also rebuilding host nation security forces Providing essential services the people improving governance to do an economic development These are all parts of your campaign plan and it's all wrapped in information operations. So people know what you're doing The idea is to change the populace Where a majority of the populace is supporting the government It's not just hearts and minds it's more than that you want to change you got to change people's behaviors Before you change their attitudes There are different parts of the anatomy sometimes you have to grab besides hearts and minds to make people change their behaviors and So there's some very coercive things that go on here as well But the bottom line is you're trying to change the people support for a legitimate governing authority You're trying to help and this is an example of how campaign design works this is the General Mattis when he was in the first Marine Division in Anbar province Realized that he had three different enemies. It's hard to determine if you're dealing with an insurgency or an insurgency Insurgencies and these kind of wars and he realized he had three different ones. He had a Sunni tribal insurgency He had a former Baptist insurgency and then he had al-Qaeda the foreign fighters coming from around there around the region to wreak havoc and And cause chaos and he understood he had to deal with each piece differently The Sunni tribes were just they were they were trying to feed their families kind of get back into society The Shi'at government had had basically pushed them out They were trying to re-establish themselves similar to the Bathas the Bathas has been kicked out of government by Bremer's orders The CP in the coalition prisoner authority. They were trying to find a way back in you could convert them if you approach them correctly The al-Qaeda fighters were different.  You're not going to bring them back in peacefully You're going to have to kill or capture them and so you've got different approaches For the different enemies and within each enemy group. You've also got a criminal element that had to be dealt with differently as well very complex problem set And what eventually happens over a couple years is we get these guys to kill those guys Eventually we get the tribes to turn on the foreign fighters and work with us I mean that's one of the nature I'll talk I'll show us off slide on this in a minute, but that That's the nature of this kind of warfare But we basically get these guys back into the system and these guys back into the system and they start taking out those guys And that's what happens in Anbar province part of the awakening there We had a lot of bureaucratic battles for the manual as well The just numbering the manual for instance, it's a it's 324 So initially it was 307 point 3-07 point 2 2 which meant it was a subset of stability operations Which is a different category of military Campaign much less violent than coin and I made the argument that we needed to Change that it was like a monk had walked into the Vatican told the Pope. I want to rewrite the Old Testament To people saying if you change the number of this manual the whole doctrinal system the US Army will collapse in a pile Two weeks later, Jenna Petraeus made the same suggestion and it was a good idea then So obviously they've been thinking about it the two weeks since I had given them the idea Same thing happens in reference bibliography I said we needed a reference bibliography to talk about suggested readings the lawyer said no You can't have a government publication recommending private works General Petraeus made the suggestion and again.  It's because they're supposed to be read quickly We made the argument that No, we're shooting at a bunch of college graduates at battalion staffs and higher so the reading level should be higher We won that argument too, so it's a much more sophisticated manual than most in fact It is been used as a textbook at many major American universities Big issue over the Abu Ghraib and the Taney ops at the time. We had to resolve that We had a battle the Air Force about the airpower appendix It ended up that we had that the army referring between the Marines and the Air Force about what was going to go in that appendix in the manual The intelligence people of Fort Wachuku were very uncomfortable with our social cultural intelligence approach. It was new They didn't like it. It wasn't their idea It took us two months to persuade them to agree to it and in the middle of that Ralph Peters jumped in with some very nasty editorials in the papers that the manual was too soft and didn't kill enough people Got invited out to Fort Leavenworth had a debate We changed seven sentences in the manual to reflect a little bit about more killing and when the manual came out in December 2006 Peters wrote an editorial and said this is the most improved government publication in the last ten years Of course six months later when his latest book came out he changed back to hating it But that's you know, that's Ralph Peters the other part that's caused controversy is the paradoxes Which was my contribution to some of the doctrine. I mean my most important one The idea was that for this kind of warfare you got to think differently Then conventional warfare and friends at the first one the more you protect your force the less secure you may be You can't stay inside your compound You got to get out patrol among the people take some risk or you're not going to get intelligence You're not going to protect him you're not going to find out what's going on You know sometimes the more forces use the less effective it is You know you can you can it doesn't pay to kill an insurgent and create 50 more because of the backlash Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction enemies will often do do actions just to prod you to do something that will make people angry Or hurt a community Some of the best weapons for coin do not shoot Ballots and dollars are often more effective than bullets and bombs and these kind of wars We want to teach the host nation to do something on their own instead of us doing it for them If a tactic works this week it might not work next week if it works in this problem might not work in the next The problem is our enemies are learning adapting to We found out that something would the enemy come to the new kind of explosive device in Afghanistan and two weeks later They'll be doing it in Iraq It was you know the bottom line is you've got to stay ahead of your enemy's learning curve The last one here the way I wrote it was most important decisions are not made by generals Guess who the last people are to review a doctrinal publication The generals are they change the dang thing at least they kept it but they changed the most to many In fact, they added all these quote initially I didn't have the qualifiers in here because I just wanted people to think about these things But there was fear people would take these as dogma and laws and so they put the qualifiers in there But like I said that one they changed at the last minute, but at least I got part of it in But as I get into later The most important decisions encounter insurance are not even made by military people really Now a lot of people didn't like it still don't like it There's one group said that this this you know it goes back to some of Ralph Peters critiques They said the only way you win these kind of wars is by killing all the bad guys Edward look walk actually wrote a piece he called a military malpractice and said you've got it The only way it can be successful if you make the people more afraid of you than they are of the bad guys And we're not going to fight that way. That's just not the way we operate He said we should fight the way the Nazis did in World War two We're not going to do that's just we're not going to do that again Peters thought we should really focus on the enemy There actually was a group I got ambushed at a conference at NYU I walked in to do a presentation and find out the theme of the conference was counterinsurgency the new imperialism I Was not ready for that one, but there are some people that see this just another way to you know to Increase Western dominance of the world Some people have argued that civil wars like in Iraq are not coin in reality There's they have a lot of the similar internal warfare characteristics Some people have said that it's all new. There's nothing old Even al-Qaeda uses Maoist terminology in their doctrine. I mean the old ideas are still relevant even though there's a lot new as well The the the arguments that have carried the most weight are the impossible and dangerous arguments a guy named Jeff record at the year War college has argued that America can't fight these kind of wars because they take too long That with our political system can't last beyond a four-year cycle American public gets bored easy The American military doesn't want to fight these kind of wars. Therefore, we should not fight them Kind of the argument we should ignore them. We should avoid them problem is the world doesn't work that way But that's the argument there We're always going to lose these kind of wars because we we can't last more than four years I mean we've already just proved that in Afghanistan The argument has been most successful and it really has won the day is the dangerous argument that that focusing too much on counterinsurgency has caused us to lose our conventional capabilities and We got to focus back on those and And we've been we've been we actually convinced ourselves too much that we were too good at this and Ended up getting embroiled in counterinsurgencies that are too long and too expensive And again that argument has really kind of won the day and washed in these days It is our as our National security strategy says we're not going to do any kind of long-term Nation-building efforts at all. No counterinsurgency. No stability ops, even though we're still in Afghanistan and we're going back to Iraq Then there's one service who will remain unnamed that says we don't use air power enough in the doctrine I'll let you figure that with it, but they have called me a Luddite for what I have written So what happens is though General Petraeus takes this doctrine to Iraq in 2007 to put it into application and And you all you're all aware of the surge now the thing is you got to understand it's there is not a surge There are surges Yeah, I met with him in February 07. He was headed over there and he said there are four surges I need I need a surd a military surge I Need a surge in Iraqi political will I need a surge in American political will and I need a civilian surge Of capacity to go along in the military surge He got the extra military troops which he and General Deirno used mostly to push the bad guys out of Baghdad and to clear the rat lines around Baghdad a Lot of Iraqis and over there said the most significant part of the surge was just the announcement it was coming a Lot of the reasons the awakening happens is because Iraqis have the courage or are there their urge to Rise up against the foreign fighters like al-Qaeda is Reinforced by the American announcement. We're coming back in force and they felt they could take the leap and And they would be supported by us One of the reasons the surge in Afghanistan didn't work is because President Obama announces the surge at the same time He announces a deadline Which is stupid I mean the reason for the surges that doesn't tell people you're coming and you're going to help them You don't say we're going to be there for a year and we're going to leave Because then they have no incentive to help you which is what happens in Afghanistan We also have it. We have a surge of political will at home partly because the creation of the doctrine which convinced everybody we knew how to fight these kind of wars also because a Michael Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack do an article in New York Times in late July 07 that says the surge is working Which changed the tenor of the democratic political debates from how we get out of Iraq How do we take advantage of the success of the surge so that changed the whole Discussion of what was going on in Iraq and gave General Petraeus general earn no more time for the military operations to work The most the least successful part was a civilian surge Interagency just couldn't provide any more General Petraeus received the partial achieved the partial partial surge by giving civilian the civilian Provincial reconstruction teams the military commanders to take care of attaching them to brigades He and Ambassador Crocker also joined at the hip. They very successfully worked with Maliki But the problem was is when Petraeus and Crocker left a lot of that fell apart and the new administration did not continue It so a lot of the civilian Connections got lost fairly quickly. So that part of the surge was not as successful as he wanted it to be Now a lot of things did work in our favor. You know by the time this is going on the Iraqis have been at war For four years. They're pretty tired of the violence The Sunnis come to realization that aren't that the Americans are there really only hope to get a position back in society We became in many ways We became the referees between the Sunnis and Shiites was almost like a hockey fight any hockey fans here You know hockey fight works, right? When does the referee step in? Everybody's kind of tired. They're starting to stumble Well, the Sunnis and the Shiites are both getting kind of tired and stumbling So the Americans kind of walk in and separate and play referee Al-Qaeda was also amazingly inept at insurgency. I Mean I talked to one shake over there and he said you know Al-Qaeda showed up and they said there are foreign There are foreigners coming and they're going to take your oil take your women and take away your religion So that Al-Qaeda shows up so six months later they say you know it's expensive protecting you people We're gonna have to start charging taxes and then in six months later. We're all lonely men far from home We need you we need your daughters as wives And then they then the last thing is they impose a very strict former Sharia law on the local the local Sunnis So the Sunnis say yeah, they were right there foreigners coming to take away our resources women in religion But it wasn't you guys it was them and so they turned they turned to us Amaze very good. I mean it's you should all be very proud of the soldiers sailors airmen and Marines that are over in Iraq In Afghanistan now and we're then because they have admit they have learned amazingly well how to do this How to disaggregate enemies and disaggregate friends because oftentimes our friends are a bigger problem than the enemies are Of course, I'd like to say it's because they read our doctrine and absorbed it in most cases because they're on their third or fourth tours They learn they learn over time We also helped that a lot of the Shiite militias pull themselves off the table And set up a truce a lot of that forced by Petraeus already are no actions But that helped us give it that less that took away one of our problem sets at a time was useful But unfortunately the gains were lost when we left Because the American forces were the glue of mosaic wars require mosaic peace The reasons you have peace in Anbar province are different from the reasons you have peace in Baghdad different from What reasons you have peace of the hour or Mosul and when the American forces pulled out and the diplomatic connections pulled out all those All those arbiters all the glue that held the piece together fell apart as well Now you get throughout some observations from Iraq and some of the things I saw and I was over there This is my mandatory. I know day Petraeus picture That's Dave. It's myself. That's a guy John Martin another classmate of ours Who is also over there working as an aide and this is? This is November 2007 in Baghdad What really struck me is that what we were putting on the shoulders are brigade commanders this kind of war is really a colonel's war It's their gate commanders war. It's not a general's war. It's a colonel's war This guy here is a guy named Ricky Gibbs. He was one of my students the Army War College and two years later I rend him he's in Iraq command of a brigade in South Baghdad. Here he is He's opening a hospital this Iraqi here is in charge of a new hospital open up in South Baghdad Colonel Gibbs's brigade Included 10 combat battalions, which is the same size as a division and his occupation zone was 1.5 million Iraqis That's a colonel in charge of that chunk of Iraq. It's amazing the responsibility put on those colonels They really we had to treat him like the British do and make the breeder generals probably but but it just did you know just It ties into the competence the people we had over there But also their immense responsibility we put on responsibilities we put on our leaders another betray us initiative Was to take people out of the forward operating bases You know that that great Tolkien term no more phobets Take them out of the forward operating bases put them out in these combat outposts This is a place called jerfo shocker About a hundred troops out there all by themselves about seven miles away from the nearest American base So they're really stuck out there on their own, but what happens is when they set up all these combat outposts like this With very competent soldiers, this is myself and general hantu and who's that going to be the Director of the army staff Steve Biddle An analyst from the council in form relations This is Boba cabbage now chief of staff at the work college John Henry Molts who was the captain in charge of jerfo shocker and Mike Garrett To eventually became a general officer who was the brigade commander at the time But we're all there. It was an immensely competent group They set up these combat outposts and what arises around these outposts or the Sons of Iraq This is a local shake who sent came down from to Crete to take charge of the Sons of Iraq Which are the local militia that rose up around these outposts mostly Sunni fighters some Shiites as well They start out being paid by us eventually some of them are paid by the Iraqi government Again remember that the the Mattis model for Anbar province that Sunni tribes are just looking to get paid It's paid to take care of their families get back into the into the system and this was one way to do it I'm out. I'm actually taking the picture. I'm out here with John Henry Molts the young captain And he turns to me as I'm taking his picture and he said, you know, I swear these guys were shooting at me last month And I said Captain Molts welcome to counterinsurgency Because that's what happens these so basically that the Sunnis turned to us and against Al-Qaeda Became our allies and not our enemies and of course the problem We had was then negotiating between the Sunnis and the Shiite government because the Shiite government was still scared stiff that if we gave Them weapons they would turn on the Shiite government very Tough diplomacy we had to do to get the Shiite government to accept these Sunni militias But again, they became a key fight a key tool in the battle against Al-Qaeda I'm not now this is general Hantun is not a slippery character. That is not the target of this Eventually went on to become superintendent West Point as well This is Al Boulani who is the interior minister for the Iraqis Interior ministry basically was creating Shiite desk squads of God and kill Sunnis You know, we were training the troops The police the problem was the police that the Ministry of Defense controlled the Army, but the Ministry interior controlled police and they were creating Shiite desk squads and so Al Boulani was had just replaced the current guy He was a very sick was very evil sectarian and he was trying to change that But we ended up having more intelligence on our friends and our enemies I mean one of the things you had to do is you had to figure out who was really a friend who was really Was really not and a lot of the people especially in the ministry and interior were really evil people And we had to get them out of there before we could really turn the police around We did pretty good with the army The training in army went pretty well Now the problem of course is when we left Maliki changed all leaders out and put his cronies back in and all the good People we had created were gone But we did pretty well with the army the police was the biggest problem and the key guy here was this guy This is a major general Hussain Who was a Iraqi two-star that was put in charge of national police And with our help eventually relieved every brigade and battalion commander in the national police Because they were there are Shiite sectarians or just have to kill Sunnis He was a big hero with the Americans He did a great job turned the national police into a very useful organ against the bad guys And something that the people of Iraq could be proud of As soon as we left Maliki promoted him upstairs Put him in charge of border guards Put his cronies back in charge of national police the national police disintegrated after that But when I was over there in 2007, it was a pretty good organization based because of what Hussain had done We also There's a two-star Marine general in charge of the main detention camp at Buka could name stone And he sets up these interesting programs of what a coin behind the wire Even when you captured a bad guy the counter-insurgency effort did not end. It just changed focus And we end up with is what they called coin behind the wire He set up basically what you do is you bring in Somebody into the detention camp and they had about 25,000 people there when I was over there in november 2007 He has separated them into reconcilables the irreconcilable zero of 5,000 people mostly russians, Chechens Uh some Saudis and a lot of foreign fighters they they were you just locked them away and threw away the key The other 20,000 though you felt you could you could kind of rehabilitate So what you did is you brought them in You teach them to read You bring in moderate imams to teach them a moderate form of the Koran you let them read the Koran themselves You also give them job programs to give them usable skills You give them a you set up a legal system review their cases And when they are released they're released back to the local shake who then signs a loyalty oath and says he'll take care of them And the other guys in the released individual also signed a loyalty oath that he would Listen to the shake and stay out of trouble And they were actually firing what they called moderate missiles back into Iraqi society When I was over there they had fired about 2200 back And two had only two had been recaptured for doing bad things Any prison in America would have been proud of that kind of recidivism rate So it was a very successful program while I was over there To try to get try to to reform these people and get them back into society And now the other thing we had we had to change the whole court system to do it The Iraqi legal system When we came over there that the way a Iraqi trial was conducted is individuals arrested A confession was beaten out of them And then the trial was the individual trying to prove his confession was not true So we'd basically to turn their legal system or an adversarial system This is one of the new courtrooms in Baghdad This is where the witnesses and this is where the defendant is I asked the question about how come the witness has a core in but the defendant does not And one of the Iraqi lawyers told me that's because the the defendants are expected to lie And we don't embarrass them by having to put their hand in the court room Again, we still had some work to do on their on their court proceedings We also do a lot of movement control a lot of coercive We do more ethnic divisions than al Qaeda does We separate areas of Baghdad. I mean Baghdad Baghdad was a very cosmopolitan city. It was not when we left We divided sectors ourselves because that was necessary for security and we put a lot of these walls up In this case the Iraqis had painted them but though that's a wall we put up to divide Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods This is the Iraqi electrical system What happens is you've got you've got the major lines which are the the free electricity You want to screw up an economic system give people free electricity? What happened is people get about eight hours of free electricity then it would run out because the man was too high All these wires here run to local generators So what happens is you've got these local generator guys that when the main Power goes out they would turn on the local generators this picture on the cover of the book Is actually Baghdad at night and all those lights are lights being driven by local generators So bang, you know even though the the the free electricity ran out they still had plenty of electricity But it was not exactly the most organized of wiring systems I actually asked one of the generator guys. I said, you know, you must be making money hand over fist What what else do you need from the government? He said I want a job I said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. What do you mean you want a job? Well in the Iraqi because the Iraqis have been living in a centralized economy so long For them it was not a job unless it was given to you by the government So if you did something on your own that was not a job So running is the generators was not seen as a job Even though he had boxes of dinars in his garage from all the money was making from his generator work We had to learn to accept local solutions that was a hard thing for us to do but The Iraqi solutions tended to be awkward. They tended to take a lot longer But they were also much more permanent than what we came up with This is I'm having a meeting here with the The this is the governing council of a town called al-Zabai near Basra in the south This is the local mayor. These are the Loki Sunni and Shiite Shakes who talked about how they had getting along fine and how great everything it was working This poor guy up here is getting beat up as a guy who runs the electricity Difficult, but but the basically they were talking about that the how they had Solved their own problems with a lot of a British military help as well But this was a local group to come up with their own solutions And and when we were listening to them Again, it was hard for us to do a lot of times We also had to deal with people that had blood on their hands When general Petraeus sent up his reconciliation cells to do that He often put British officers in charge instead of Americans because the Brits because they're working northern Ireland were They had a much easier time getting along with people who had been killed them the week before than the Americans did This is the cultural thing about the way that that structure often worked Now again, I talked about the fact that in 2011 we pull out One of the things you've got to understand about American military interventions If you want to accomplish national objectives, we are always going to be there a long time And you probably you're the right age. You remember Bill Clinton were going into Bosnia will be out here in six months You remember the I'm talking about pulling out of Iraq in four months That never happens If we're going to be someplace and really want to make you fix the problems We're going to be there for 30 years Korea. It took 30 years after the Korean war before Korea became a democracy It'll take a lot longer than that in Iraq and Afghanistan You know, we're still in Germany. We're still in japan. I mean if we're really going to accomplish our objectives We're going to have to stay there a long time Everything a rat unravels in Iraq And I know how the heck you're going to fix the Sunni Shiite Kurd differences without some kind of an outside arbiter I mean the Iraq is a mess. We all know that it wasn't just the military withdrawal though diplomatic withdrawal was just as important Petraeus and Crocker were dealing with maliki every day President Bush was was handled was had weekly VTCs of maliki to try to teach him how to be a democratic leader All that ended when the bomb administration came in in fact orders went out to American ambassadors that Ambassador crocker looked to be too subservient to general Petraeus and no American ambassador should be that cooperative with a military leader again Uh a terrible terrible order that had had nasty consequences in Afghanistan especially Again, we know Iraq is still a mess, but again to me that's that's a failure of foreign policy not counterinsurgency I mean it's counterinsurgency. It wasn't allowed to finish It had created a window for Iraqi political reconciliation to occur But then the Iraqis and ourselves dropped the ball and that did not happen And now we're dealing with the consequences in Iraq right now Now to throw this out one of the We work under this model in washington of how american military interventions work military goes in There's some kind of a crossover point Where civilian organizations take over or the united nations and then they handle a transition to civilian authority from the for the host nation That's the ideal never happens that way I mean never happens that way civilian organizations never have the capacity And when we have a successful reconstruction the american military carries the main brunt all the way to the end But that's just not a model anybody in washington including do d wants to recognize But that's the result if you look at germany japan Any successful occupation we've had any successful reconstruction operation And we're still in Bosnia and Kosovo At least the NATO or ourselves It always requires a major military effort to make these things work And these are just this is a diagram to show that how long we are in a country you can actually work out the success of our Intervention is is is directly attached to the number of years we are there in most cases This is an example of how long we have in different places after major conflicts If to be successfully you got to be there a long time if you're there a short time you usually fail Now we've got a number of things wrong. We were doing this doctrine The whole process was upside down You're supposed to start with the national security strategy that leads the national military strategy That leads to your joint doctrine, which leads to your service doctrine We did it upside down We started the service doctrine that eventually drove our national security strategy. That was not our intent But there was just a vacuum there that we filled And that's one of the reasons that counterinsurgency got oversold coin is not a strategy Counterinsurgency is a way to accomplish a somebody else's strategy. It's it's a way to accomplish ends And those ends are made by politicians and voters not by the military the The military had no say in setting those ends in Afghanistan and Afghanistan or Iraq We did not pick the form of government or the leaders And another thing that we got wrong in the manuals We really should have been more explicit that the goals of host nation leaders were supporting are not necessarily the same as ours They can actually be very different And we've had major problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan Getting those leaders to do what we think they ought to do In many cases because what we think they ought to do goes against their own interests Especially when they want to retain power Now just some general observations on modern war. I just got a couple slides left and open the questions The again as I said most of what we talk about as coin is really modern warfare Ending these conflicts is immensely difficult when you have all these different Enemies out there. You'll never get them all to agree to anything So you you know in most cases you just have to kind of manage the conflict most than Most than more than than win it Savane aides you still can't do everything to require in this kind of war I mean we still have more musicians in department defense and we inform service officers in the state department You could fit the whole foreign service corps of the state department on one aircraft carrier That's how small it is And because of that mission creepers self-inflicted wound the the military always ends up doing a lot of things Savane should be doing Decapitation strategies are two-edged sword a lot of times you need those you need to have leaders you can talk to If you kill them the person to replace them is normally somebody you can't talk to You got to be able to disaggregate your friends just like your enemies Because you don't you know who your friends are might not be very clear actually In irregular wars if you think you are winning you might be if you think you're losing you definitely are This is a big one for the air force who controls the ground controls the message If you do a bombing mission and don't control the ground The enemy is going to spin that to look like you kill women and children blew up mosques You have to worry about the information aspects of any operation actually the special operations forces are bigger Eat more have made more mistakes like this even than the air force has And then they've they've been succumbed too much to lure killing people direct action We've lost the green berets now everybody wants to be a seal or a ranger because that's they get in the movies And that's how you write books But in reality the most valuable stuff soft can do is You know we've had a reversal of roles You know foreign internal offense security force assistance and essential mission But nobody wants to do it. They used to be a special forces mission. They don't want to do it anymore Now if you want to do Provide advisors do counterinsurgency you grab a conventional soldier marine You want to kill somebody you go get a special operations guy That's the exact opposite of the way it used to be and I think we need to go back to that myself We're still fighting one-year wars or four or seven month wars We're terrible on transitions In vietnam they worried about individual replacements. It's worse with unit replacements You have complete breakdowns in these transitions So we still end up have a hard time We have a hard time learning because as an organization leaves it takes its knowledge with it and the organization starts from scratch Uh Everybody likes precision bombs. Sometimes it's b-52s. They're still lovely Every so often you got to hammer somebody. So, you know, yeah, we talk about using force precisely Sometimes you got to hammer people And this is why I've been quoted on this a number of times.  They're talking about everybody else which in some ways is a You know, again, I I think we misuse the term a lot But the bottom line is everybody's always looking for an edge. Nobody fights the same way You've always got to be be aware of the asymmetric aspects of any combat you're in Now some final dilemmas and counter-incerns you open into questions Again, I made this point a couple times US military interventions are always going to be long and costly to meet objectives Political leaders should be up front with that But they never are because they feel if they're honest that we're going to be there 20 years Nobody will approve the action Just because you can do counter-incernity does not mean that you should But counter to that just because you say you're doing counter-incernity does not mean that you are We never do counter-incernity in Afghanistan. We've been there now for 15 years. We have never done counter-incernity We've said we are but we've never committed the resources or done the actions that really are counter-incernity Again, this one is related to this one the most important decisions affecting coin are made by politicians and voters not generals I got this quote from general barbaro the j3 for general patreus in iraq in 07 I don't know if we have the wrong former government or the wrong people in it Talking about the iraqis Neither of those decisions the military had no role in either of those decisions We didn't have a pick. We didn't we didn't have any choice in leadership or the former government And yet that those are the really the key determinants of success and counter-incernity So the hand was already dealt to the military many aspects before they had to deal with it and again Much of what we call coin is really just modern warfare And and I actually been boy embroiled in a In a project for the partnership for peace for nato Trying to teach counter-incerned other nations and there were currently 37 nations signed up that want our instruction And I got to admit that talking about the frigant flyer miles of the 37 none of those places are what I would call garden spots Uh, I'm not So far I've been in nigeria and moldova and I'm not looking forward to some of the other countries on that list Uh, the last point though I'll make is an as an observation as a historian And again the current counter our current national security strategy says we're not going to do coin or stability operations again We have never been able to never do this again So as a caution everybody who says that we're not going to do this we will We always do


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Alright what's up you guys so I recently did a short not too long ago because one of my subscribers said that they like the PA career pre-op profession is no longer for them they've been like doing this for about three years now with no kind of end in sight and so you know some of you may be in that same boat somewhere but trying to figure out like okay should I do this should I continue with this or go on to something else so if that is you this video is for you so let's get into the video right now what's up you guys it's a down and welcome back to my channel so again like I said somebody stated the PA careers no longer for them which is fine okay it is okay because it is not for everybody and I just want to like put that out there and it's okay that it's not for everybody because at the end of the day you know each of us has our own path to follow but if you really believe in and truly desire like if you really believe that this careers for you and truly desire to get into this career I think that there are like some things that you like kind of need to look at and like keep in mind and and be aware of so yes the path is not easy especially if you're coming into this like secondary or you've made some like really poor decisions in your early like undergraduate years because all of those courses are compounded into your prerequisite requirements and so that's really what takes a lot of the time and getting into PA school is figuring out okay like how am I going to overcome this low GPA and so in this video I just wanted to kind of give you guys so a few things that you should really be looking at like two or three things that you should be looking at when trying to decide if you still want to be a PA okay and so the first thing is like if you've already like gone through one or two cycles like and you still haven't gotten like an interview or anything like that it's really important that you do a true self-assessment of your your PA stats and and your application and what I mean by that is like not just you looking at it because a lot of times that we can lie to we lie to ourselves like as human beings like you know we we do things and say things and lie to ourselves because you know we want we want to feel good we don't want to feel bad and so with that being said it's we're not the best barometer of like where we're going or or what we should be doing right so I think it's important for you to have somebody else look at your stats maybe have multiple people look at your stats that maybe reach out to an admissions counselor that can like help guide you in terms of like what it is that I should be doing or what areas am I lacking in and then the next thing that you should do is implement that now obviously you need to really be realistic in your time period right and so I'm saying this like no don't think like okay so I've gone through my stats and now I'm going to do this and get into pay school next year it doesn't always work like that and you really have to be able to be realistic with yourself and understand and know for yourself if that is okay for you is it okay for me where I'm at in my life to have to do three or four more years of schooling like really essentially go back to school again because I'm also working and trying to like support my life and maybe my family is it okay for me to do that and take that time out to get to this period PA career that I feel called to or is this really not for me and you have to be willing to like make those hard decisions and make those choices and then once you've like looked at your like done an assessment looked at your life started to implement those things then now it's time for you to apply but apply smartly smartly yeah apply with with intent so that's when you do all your view research and you find the schools that maybe look at the last 30 40 45 90 60 credits right you look at your developing programs that may have a little bit more leniency in some of the things that they're requiring in terms of like their healthcare hours because maybe you weren't able to get as many healthcare hours because you've been going to school so you really have to tailor make this application process for you and your stats and the best way to do that is by just doing your research it's gonna be a lot of work you guys it's not gonna be easy this path to be coming a PA is not always easy it's easy for some but for others who may have had some missteps it's not always easy but if you do feel called to it it is really worth it in the end okay so just a little bit of you know Sunday morning motivation for you because I don't want anybody to give up on their goals and I really want you guys to succeed and thrive but the best way to do that is first by being honest with yourself and then actually doing the work you know not being lazy not like trying to like skimp on the things that you need to do actually do the work that's going to get you to the point that you're trying to go which is ultimately the PA career or you know some other career if that is what you so choose all right if you guys have any other questions for me leave in the comment section below don't forget to like and subscribe follow me on Instagram and on the PA and on Instagram I get that see University thank you guys so much for watching I will talk to you guys next time