David Petraeus on how the US should manage a world of overlapping crises
By Katherine Walla
Online Event
Fri, November 17, 2023 • 10:00 am ET
Europe & Eurasia Israel Middle East Security & Defense
With so many global challenges emerging, the United States seems like a circus performer keeping a bunch of plates spinning, former Central Intelligence Agency director and US Army General David Petraeus said Friday. And some of those plates are the most “challenging” that the country has seen “since the end of World War II,” he added.
At an Atlantic Council Front Page event, Petraeus discussed the threats facing the United States in the modern-day security environment, drawing from Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, his new book co-authored with historian Andrew Roberts.
Of the plates Washington is spinning, the West’s relationship with China is the biggest—or, even, “bigger than all the others in the [circus] tent put together,” according to Petraeus, a member of the Atlantic Council board of directors. Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is “the most important mission not just for the US,” he explained, “but really for the US and all of our allies and partners around the world. . . Were deterrence to break down into conflict there, the results would be catastrophic.”
But smaller plates also contribute to this “period of the greatest number of challenges and the greatest complexity of challenges,” Petraeus added, pointing to Russia’s aggression, the Israel-Hamas war, Islamist extremist groups, Iran, cyber threats, and climate change, among others.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/david-petraeus-on-how-the-us-should-manage-a-world-of-overlapping-crises/
