You're Touching an Absolutely Essential Point

I think a mistake we've made in the past and we go on making, is that although there has to be a military dimension, if you're going to do these interventions, the key thing is always cultural and social and economic. If you can't have some sort of cultural engagement with these societies in which you intervene, then you're completely wasting your time winning a firefight. I was always very struck by somebody who's become a friend, HR McMaster, more recently, was Donald Trump's national security adviser. He told me about all the great things that his arm and cavalry regiment had done in Iraq, and then he ended up by saying the trouble was there was nothing to join up