The technical advantages enjoyed by the US military have been undermined by the Pentagon’s failure to develop strategies to exploit them, Gen David Petraeus has said in a strong criticism of Washington's approach to warfare.
The former commander of US forces in Afghanistan also condemned the American withdrawal from the country in 2021. “I do not believe we had to leave Afghanistan when we did, nor do I believe we should have done so,” he said.
In a strident speech at the UK’s House of Lords in London, the former head of US Central Command said the Ukraine war had demonstrated while western armies need drones and artificial intelligence, they also require a fundamentally different concept of warfare.
“Ukraine is the defining military laboratory of this century,” he told peers, arguing that the war demonstrated that technology was valuable only when combined with the right strategy.
While the US “innovation ecosystem remains the most dynamic in the world”, he questioned whether it was transforming its military rapidly enough “to exploit that innovation”.
“No nation will secure enduring strategic advantage simply by purchasing better technology,” he said, alluding to the US failure to bring Iran to terms despite having overwhelmingly advanced weaponry.
The US has yet to develop the “revolutionary new concept of warfare” required to exploit the current technology, said the former director of the CIA.
Meanwhile, with a lot less cash and fewer resources, Ukraine had demonstrated an extraordinary ability to use drones, adapt its software and create its own form of precision strike.
The Iran war, which has once again involved fire exchanged across the region, has exposed the limits of superior US military power, particularly when objectives are unclear, he said. With the conflict entering its seventh month, Washington has failed to translate tactical superiority into a decisive political outcome, raising questions over US President Donald Trump’s wider Middle East policy.
Errors in Afghanistan drawdown
Gen Petraeus, who led the 2007 “surge” in Iraq, was also strident in his argument that US forces should not have left Afghanistan in 2021.
He suggested the western coalition's military commitment had reached a sustainable level but its withdrawal of support, announced by then-president Joe Biden in April 2021, was a major factor in the collapse of Afghan forces.
He rejected the idea that two decades of conflict had made withdrawal inevitable, arguing that by 2020 the western military presence, including UK troops, had become sustainable at a relatively modest level.
Despite Britain’s military decline, accelerated by the Afghanistan war, the UK was “unusually well positioned” to adapt to the new form of warfare, Gen Petraeus said in his speech on Tuesday evening.
He urged the UK to become the first major western country to reorganise its armed forces around the lessons of Ukraine, stating the British had already shown “strategic clarity” in proposed defence reforms.
“That now presents Britain with another opportunity: to become the first major western nation to organise its defence institutions around the new concept of warfare that Ukraine has been pioneering and, in doing so, to help lead the transformation of Nato itself,” he said.
