Podcast: Iran, Hormuz and New Zealand’s readiness
In this episode, Oliver talks with retired Major General John Howard about his recent trip to Washington and what the conflict centred on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz reveals about American power and the international order. They then turn to New Zealand, where Howard argues the crisis exposed serious gaps in fuel resilience and intelligence, and a public service that struggled to match ministers' urgency.
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors. For the most accurate version of the conversation, please listen to the audio.
Oliver: Hello, and welcome to the New Zealand Initiative's podcast. My name is Oliver Hartwich, and I am once again joined in the studio by retired Major General John Howard. Hi, John.
John: Hello. Good afternoon.
Oliver: Great to have you back in the studio. You were overseas for a while. I think we last talked on this podcast about a month ago, and you were just about to leave for Washington, DC to catch up with your old mates, former colleagues, 'cause you worked in the US defense and security environment for a while, of course.
Shall we talk about your trip to the US, to Washington? All right. So Mr. Howard goes to Washington. What does he find?
John: Well, the cost of living there really shocked me more than I was expecting. So from an economic point of view, I was with my good friends and colleagues that I'd worked with for many years.
We went out and had a steak at a really nice house, steakhouse that it was, but, the bill for four of us came to just about 500 US dollars, so that really-
Oliver: Was it a five-course dinner?
John: No, it wasn't. It was a steak with a baked potato and a side.
Oliver: Glass of wine probably, knowing you.
John: Yeah.
Yeah. There was a glass of wine and a glass of whiskey to finish, but that cost really surprised me. Previously, I'd go there for four of us, and it might, it would be half of that. Yeah.
Oliver: Did that at least include the service fee?
John: It did, and interestingly, that service fee was automatically put on the bill at 20% without any question.
Previously it used to be cash on the table, or you'd decide, 5, 10, 15. I found everywhere I went that the cost of service, the cost of living had significantly increased.
Oliver: So you lived in DC until when?
John: Full time from January 2018 to January '21.
Oliver: So not that long ago.
John: No.
Oliver: But the price level has changed significantly.
John: It has, and I've been back several times since then. I would say on average every year since then I've been back, and last year I went back three times. So th- this time it was markedly real.
Oliver: And it wasn't just because the New Zealand dollar is performing so poorly- No ... that it actually hit you more, but it is, it's actually the prices have really gone up.
John: Yeah. Yep.
Oliver: What are your American colleagues saying?
John: Well, of course the price of fuel at the pump was a big discussion, 'cause that's-
Oliver: Well, that's still cheap in America compared to-
John: Well, it is ... everywhere else And they complain about $4 a gallon as opposed to- yeah ... what we nearly had here. They were starting to complain.
Their standard of living is being eroded and they know that. That was a conversation that I had with a range of friends that live inside the Beltway and some that live in other states.
Oliver: Okay. So that's one observation from Washington. Before we get into the really hard politics, let's talk about some other- observations. You mentioned that Washington had also changed just looking at things.
John: Yeah, so it's a cleaner, tidier city when you walk around these days compared to what I'd experienced before.
Oliver: And that is because?
John: That's clearly because of the administration's desire, as they've said, to clean up.
How they've cleaned up is you can see national guardsmen and service personnel openly on the streets. Crime is down. You feel comfortable walking openly and at night in places where you may not have before. The streets look cleaner and tidier. But
Oliver: the flip side is it feels a bit more like a police state?
John: It didn't- Or
Oliver: is that too far?
John: It's too far. No, look, it just didn't feel like the Washington, DC that I'd been in and admired for m- my professional career. It just, it felt a little bit different. Of course, when we walked past the White House when the cage was going up, so-
Oliver: Now, that would have been a spectacle.
John: there was a lot of spectacle going on in DC at the time. Yeah.
Oliver: A- and what about the pond?
John: Oh, I didn't get to the pond. You'd have to ask my wife. She went for a walk past that. I was busy talking with friends and colleagues.
Oliver: Okay, so now that we've talked about the atmosphere, what about the conversations you've had?
You presumably met with your old mates, your colleagues from the security apparatus. Yep. And what's the general mood? I mean, we're talking about America now in, what is it, the fourth or fifth month of this conflict with Iran. What has it done to the mood of the people you talk to?
John: Yeah.
Y- you're right. I met with former defense, national security, intelligence seniors. As always, the conversation gets geopolitical very quickly. The deep discussion around the Strait of Hormuz conflict, I won't call it a war it was about the military kinetic effects. The complexity of what they're seeing is not unlike what you and I have talked about privately the concept of what does the Middle East now look like?
What is, what will that mean for US national interests? And at the same time, what does that mean for European interests? 'Cause at that period, we also had discussions about US troops being pulled out of NATO alliance agreements US funding or not funding aid programs that were deeply entrenched and quite um, well developed.
Oliver: And presumably you talked to a range of people ranging from still serving and to probably recently retired?
John: Correct. Yeah, Yeah.
Oliver: And was there a difference between the different groups, or do they all see the conflict roughly the same way?
John: As always, in the US you g- you get a real melting pot of views and opinions.
The conversations I had with serving officers, I'll steer clear of what those conversations were. The conversations with those no longer in federal government were expressing what we see in the, in CNN and other front page papers around frustrations and emotions of why are we doing this and how are we getting out of it.
Oliver: So there is not much of a difference between what you see in the media and what people say privately, or would they just say this in stronger language?
John: I'd say the personal conversations were less guarded as is the case in the community. The the deeper consideration about what does good look like in- The next administration or how might that work, and what does it mean for the international standing of the US?
I mean, there are ... I'm a great believer in the shining light on the hill, the democracy that has defended our freedoms, and th- there's ... That country still exists.
Oliver: Does it?
John: It's just how do we explain some of the short-term narrative- ... which is problematic, especially from where we sit here and, as we say, poi- is comfortably poised like a dagger over the heart of Antarctica, a very different view.
Oliver: Okay. Well then let's talk about where the conflict now stands. I have a strange thought when I think about this conflict because as far as I know, this is the only war where the attacked party seems to be begging to prolong this conflict because they know that the longer this goes, the stronger they get, and they also know that the attackers actually can't continue this forever because of political pressure back at home.
So what I mean is Iran seems to have won, and the longer the conflict drags on, the better it is for Iran, whereas Tehran of course knows that Trump cannot continue this forever because there are the midterms coming. And so he wants to get out, and Iran simply won't let him. Is that such a wrong way of looking at it?
John: Yep. As a classically trained war fighter from the US Army War College the definition of victory is always an important thing. A- and we live in a post-modern society, especially in New Zealand, where we talk about winning and losing. The conflict hasn't ended. We don't have a victor. What we have is a negotiated pause, and I'd say let's use the sporting analogy.
The referee's walked on the field and blown maybe halftime, so everyone's gone back to the sheds. Everyone's thinking about what's next. At the moment, we have a pause to think about a negotiated settlement. It's not gonna be peace. War and peace is a very different concept, especially for our grandparents.
What we've got is fracture lines reemerging, realigning, reappearing around the Middle East, and if I look at the relationships with the Emiratis and the Israelis and their security deal, that's a- an example of something that 100 days ago we might not have been as quick to identify. W- what does victory look like?
I'll come back to your original point. You're looking for an example of a war where the person attacked actually wants it to contin- continue. Other than Sparta and going all the way back to the Peloponnesian Wars, it's really hard to find a victor and a vanquished where the tension is reversed remarkably.
... And that's a really challenging way to think about what will happen next.
Oliver: You said that people shouldn't really talk about victory anymore these days, at least not in the old categories, but there was one person who did at the beginning of the war, and that was the president. So I remember actually from the beginning of the conflict, it was Trump saying that he wants to see unconditional surrender, regime change, and very strong language.
So it was pretty clear what he wanted and what he thought was achievable. Well, four months on, it looks a little bit different.
John: Yep.
Oliver: What has he actually achieved?
John: Yeah, so i- there's a very old quote in the combat world which is, when you cross the start line and you advance towards the enemy, you g- you do not necessarily get to determine the outcome.
The enemy will have a say. So that means have a most likely and a most dangerous course of action be able to pivot and move towards your strategic objectives. Really hard to do when you've stood up and declared unconditional surrender, and unconditional surrender, remember it, that... Remember. It- unconditional surrender is a term that Eisenhower coined when they were talking about the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany- Yeah
not the defeat of Germany. So it's a really emotive term to bring into a modern context. So he, the president, had very clear red lines and objectives. I'm not sure if he has achieved those objectives to the level that he would have liked, especially because of- Well,
Oliver: quite obviously not, right?
John: Yeah. Well, I...
You gotta bring in the other part of this which is the Israeli operations and then what that more s- means for Iranian proxies. So what we've done is we've stirred a hornet's nest and now we're trying to work out how to either get away from it or how to settle it down before we go back in. And- Who wins, I'll use that word, who gains economic advantage?
Well, China maybe.
Oliver: Sure.
John: Russia maybe.
Oliver: Well, another way to ask the same question is actually to think about what Trump used to say about Obama's negotiations with Iran. Just a few days ago I saw a retweet of one of Trump's 2013 tweets.
John: Yeah.
Oliver: And Applebaum did that where he criticized Obama in very strong language for not having achieved anything and just being fooled around by the Iranian regime and...
yeah, okay. But basically that tweet was very current except it applied to Trump.
John: Yeah.
Oliver: So he's in some ways really fallen behind everything that previous American administrations together with European allies actually achieved in dealings with Iran.
John: Yeah it's true. I mean, that Obama settlement with which included European nations to get to a point took years of hard negotiations.
Oliver: And it was comprehensive.
John: It was indeed, and it was being complied with. Yes. So there was definitely a pathway towards what we may not see now for some time. Even the concept that we would have I think the vice president today was talking about the economic agency going in to validate stock holdings and levels of enrichment and all of those things.
That'll be a challenging negotiation going forward. So comes back to this concept of what's it gonna look like for New Zealand in the next 30, 90, 180 days heading to our election? Have we, as we discussed earlier, have we missed an opportunity to be really strategic? Were we too harsh when we still talked about these podcasts, or mid-February I think we started- Mm-hmm
talking about what, what's going to happen. Probably a good time to reflect and say, have we learnt what we need to learn as we go forward as a nation.
Oliver: Now but before we get to New Zealand, let's actually stay a little bit more with Iran. I mean, the other thing that Iran didn't have before was a weapon that is probably more potent than any nuclear weapon they could have-
John: Yeah
Oliver: which is control over the strait. Before there was a theoretical possibility they just might close it, but well, now it's a very real possibility, and there's a further possibility that in the future they will also of course extract tolls from that- Yeah ... which would set a precedent for other countries around the world.
John: Yeah you're quite right. The... We've said for many years in the intelligence national security domain that Iran has an economic advantage. We've talked about it openly with a range of actors and scenarios. Now we've proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that it's real. And that they can weaponize that with a toll.
They can weaponize that to get whatever strategic outcomes and effects they really want to. And interestingly enough, though, some of the negotiations have talked about how that might work with Oman, and what I really reflect on is seeing the Emiratis now building their own pipeline having a deal with the Israelis around national security issues and pulling out of OPEC.
So as my grandfather would say, the shifting sands of the Middle East continue to move and bring things into sharp reality and then hide things when you least expect it, so it's more complex than- Yeah and Saudi
Oliver: Arabia building another pipeline too.
John: Yeah, so they're gonna reinforce that one for obvious reasons.
They're building resilience. Why wouldn't they? Now, a- and it'll be interesting to see how effective that is as it goes all the way through to the other side of Arabia.
Oliver: But the broader damage has really been to the image of the United States. You mentioned the Shining City on the Hill. That was the idea and the ideal.
And at the beginning of the year, Trump, of course, famously said to the protesting Iranians that, "Help is on the way." Well, if you're an Iranian democracy activist you would feel betrayed now because 30,000 of your comrades have died because of the regimes fighting back against the uprising, and you probably trusted a little bit in America actually following through, help is on the way, and now you would feel absolutely left alone and with nowhere to go.
John: Yeah, de- definitely if you were in that position sitting inside Iran today I think you will probably got a lot worse.
Oliver: It would be extremely bleak because- ... previously you might have at least had some hope that at some stage someone would come to help you, but that is not going to happen any longer.
John: Not in the short term. And I, I guess my assessment would be clear. It, the regime knows that unless you've got boots on the ground, that is not gonna happen.
Oliver: And actually even worse, the regime seems to be strengthened because all the sanctions now are now going to be lifted.
John: Yeah.
Oliver: So that will provide f- fresh funds for the regime- Yeah
and it will make regime change even less likely.
John: Yeah. And probably empowered the extremist factions within the regime-
Oliver: Yeah ...
John: for an internal discussion that could be quite horrific.
Oliver: So what precedent are we watching here? I mean, previously America was the kind of world's policeman, and n- now it's actually been unmasked as a very important policeman.
John: So what are, what are we observing is exactly what I think the Canadian Prime Minister said at Davos. This, and I noticed his speech in New York today, which was interesting as well, where he's talking about finding another pathway for Canada and America to realign. The rupture of the rules-based international order has occurred and that rupture has not yet settled.
There's still a seismic event of it going around. So if you look at US history from its inception nearly 250 years ago, 'cause its birthday's coming up, the concept of whether it would go outside the border and be internationalist or inside, the nation has struggled with that in both world wars. Not so much in the Korean War, and then the other s- as we call smaller wars, they've gone away and done things, but at a much smaller US scale.
Of course, smaller nations have to suffer and experience those ripples. What we've seen is some of the tarnishing of that shining light on the hill, and the, what comes around the edges of that, of course, are China and Russia.
Oliver: Could go so far to say that America really got humiliated
John: I've seen commentary that says that.
Yeah, there's definitely,
Oliver: I believe- I've heard a German chancellor say exactly that Oh,
John: yeah, yep. I have, I've heard that.
Oliver: Yeah, Yeah. He was not wrong, except he probably shouldn't have said it.
John: Well, there's a time and a place.
Oliver: Exactly. Well, the place was actually he spoke at a school hall- Yeah ... somewhere in the provinces.
Well, maybe not the best opportunity to criticize the American president there.
John: Not at all.
Oliver: No. But I think nevertheless he was correct because it was a humiliation. By the way we speculated a lot earlier this year on where America might take this next ... I mean, there's Cuba, of course, is a possibility.
There was a lot of talk about Greenland. Do you think at least this Iranian adventure would have probably cautioned Trump in a way not to pursue further adventures? Yeah,
John: I I think there'll be a lot of calling of the heels, as they would say in America, inside the West Wing, inside the Oval Office, inside the Pentagon, inside the Department of State, which are all interconnected and reflections, 'cause there has been a financial cost to this, there's been an emotional cost and a loss of life and there's been the reputational issue.
And of course, as they head into the midterms, this will be part of the discussion, and was part of the current administration's platform as they went in. So no more wars was what they talked about, and now they've stepped away from that platform.
Oliver: And because that didn't work so well, it would probably also make it far less likely for America to come to Taiwan's defense.
John: Yeah, that would be a really challenging discussion if Xi's decision equation ticks even sharper than it is today. Looking at his energy reserves that he's held, the exercises since we last spoke and the Taiwanese firing of their long range precision Himars system there's a clock ticking there in my mind.
Oliver: And that's probably ticking faster these days.
John: Yeah. So I would say the words I'd use is his decision equation has sharpened in the last 100 days, and the determinants around that will be what's happening inside the midterms in the US where might US capability sit, how might it reset, reorientate, And how might it do that quickly?
'Cause of course when China takes Taiwan, it'll be a very deliberate process with some clear geopolitical signaling, and then we'll see probably a navy blockade, and all of that means what will Japan, what will South Korea, what will others, including the US, do?
Oliver: Actually, the one actor in this conflict we haven't talked about yet is Israel.
John: Yep.
Oliver: I'm sure you would have some reflections and observations and pos- opinions from your American colleagues on how Israel played this game as well.
John: Lots of reflections from them, but I wouldn't wanna talk about that one publicly.
Oliver: Okay. Then let's just speculate ourselves.
John: Yep.
Oliver: I mean, from the report in the New York Times, we have a relatively clear picture of how this all came about.
It was a visit from the Is- Israeli prime minister, I think, to Mar-a-Lago. He celebrated New Year's Eve with Trump, I believe, in Mar-a-Lago, and apparently it was Benjamin Netanyahu talking Trump into this adventure. Now whether Netanyahu actually believed it himself is a different matter, but he probably also felt under a lot of pressure politically, personally, to pursue all this.
And again, this is another party in the conflict that doesn't really want this to end because the Israelis, especially Be- Netanyahu himself, have an interest in keeping this conflict live.
John: Yeah. Yeah, ver- I mean, very r- real, and we saw Netanyahu's visit to Washington. I think we commented on that maybe in our-
Oliver: We did
John: second podcast. Yes. So the reality that, the indicator that something was close to happening was real.
Oliver: Yeah.
John: And the red lines or the objectives for the Israelis are very clear. The, the destruction or removal of any nuclear enriched material or capability or road to a capability, and that, that hasn't gone away, so that will still be sitting in the Tel Aviv equation.
And President Netanyahu's requirement to stay where he is domestically and internationally, he's he's in a really challenging position.
Oliver: Now you can give me a very unclassified answer. I mean, the Mossad is one of the world's best agencies, right?
John: Well-known, very capable agency. Yeah.
Oliver: Correct. And, And America, of course, has very well-known and very capable agencies, too. So when the Israeli prime minister tries to tell the US president, "Hey, we can do this, and it will take us 48 hours, and we'll have regime change," my naive assumption would be that neither country's services would have actually believed this.
John: That would be a fair assessment. And I come back to the comment I made before. On- once you cross the start line into war, you don't get to control the outcome.
Oliver: Yeah, but m- my point is actually this is a very political decision, and actually- Yep ... a very top-
John: Yeah ...
Oliver: political decision.
John: A- and, this is Clausewitz basic education, which is warfare is politics by another means.
So
Oliver: the- But where basically none of the kind of body of their institutions, their defense departments, their secret service community, i- or maybe even inside their cabinets would've actually believed the top leaders- Oh ... that was a realistic outcome, 48 hours and we're done.
John: Yeah. I'm... Look, I wasn't in the room for those discussions, but to answer your question, if I was in the room and someone said to me, "We can do this in 48 hours, 36 hours," to quote that great Australian movie, The Castle, I don't know if you're familiar with that one- Tell 'em they're dreaming.
"Tell 'em you're
Oliver: dreaming."
John: Yeah. Yeah.
Oliver: That's exactly what I thought. Okay. So we got into this for purely political reasons, for purely political reasons. Trump now needs to get out of it urgently. But how realistic is that? I mean, in all realism, I think we can expect this conflict because it's now been unleashed, and there, there are so many unsettled pieces.
That will take years to really form into something a little bit more stable again.
John: Yeah. I'd equate it to to an earthquake. We've had a seismic event. There will be aftershocks, and there could be another significant earthquake. W- the ground is unstable. There's tension in it. The fracture lines have become more exposed, and people's nations, national interests are Laid bare for all to see and act on.
And as I've said before, that's caused the Emiratis to make a deliberate decision, the Saudis to make a decision. Those living in Qatar are making similar decisions, and all of that will impact on us.
Oliver: And what does that actually mean, aftershocks? What time frames are we talking about? Is this for the next six months, year, or the next decade or two?
John: Yeah. In the short term, in the next six months, we will continue to see military effects. Weapons will be fired. People will be killed.
Oliver: Even close to the midterms?
John: Yep, all the way up, I think, for the next six months, because all we've got at the moment is a negotiated position in 60 days to talk about some form of enduring ceasefire.
Oliver: Mm-hmm.
John: So that's far from a settlement. It's far from an agreement, and anything can disrupt that. A a proxy from the IRGC doing something that triggers an Israeli response or ... and remember, we haven't even put on top of that someone doing something really stupid.
Oliver: Yeah.
John: So we could see just a really catastrophic strategic failure, a misstep, miscalculation if the Iranians are unable to pull all of the sea mines out of the Strait of Hormuz.
All of those things will have consequences, and then it ... You may find someone else poking and prodding from a flank.
Oliver: But Trump is a very unusual politician and not often playing by the usual rules. He might at some stage just declare victory and withdraw his entire fleet and say, "Well, okay, that wa- that was it."
John: Yeah. So look, we've seen former US presidents in my lifetime declare victory on aircraft carriers.
Oliver: Yes.
John: Those of us that have stood in harm's way and said we've haven't come close to victory will remember the blood and treasure that we invested in those a- misadventures. The US president can make any declaration he likes.
He has up to 10 Nimitz-class carriers. He can move the two that are on station further back. He's got one a little bit further back from there. The challenge will be refit, refuel, rearm. Where does he wanna go? What does he wanna do next? Or where does he want contingency forces positioned next? And that could mean cover the Strait of Hormuz and cover the Malacca Straits and the Straits of Taiwan.
Oliver: Well, in some ways I've heard people say that he has achieved all of his goals, and that was nobody talks about the Epstein files anymore.
John: Well, that was not part of my conversation in Washington, but, Politics, th- there's gonna be all sorts of those discussions ongoing.
Oliver: Okay. Well, let's move our focus then to New Zealand.
John: Yep.
Oliver: When we started this podcast series, we were quite concerned about our fuel supplies. Well, in hindsight, actually, we managed to get through this. I mean, okay, a bit more expensive at the pump, but at least we didn't run dry. Parts of the country found it a bit harder to access fuel, especially diesel, especially rural New Zealand.
But that aside, actually we got through this kind of all right. I mean, we didn't have to basically all walk to work, and our food logistics didn't s- didn't break down. So actually were we too pessimistic?
John: Well, I don't think I'd be as kind. I think we, we got to a point where we had a blinding reality that perhaps we needed an energy strategy, perhaps we needed better planning around s- holding fuel offshore by a commercial contract, and what our energy reserves look like.
And I would say my view would be that the companies that provide energy, fuel in this case worked really hard to try and get ahead of that, and I'd say that our elected officials declared that we needed to get ahead of it. And in the middle- We may have been a little lethargic with delivering robust, relevant policy that should have allowed us to be even more resilient.
So we're still struggling with where are our fuel reserves stored and what size and what capacity. And I really feel for rural New Zealand and business New Zealand who didn't get, I don't think, the detail of where energy sat. So if you're, as I talked earlier, if you're a forestry worker in the mid-North Island running a big business or you're a farmer in Southland, how much diesel have I got?
Where do I go to? What do I get? I know a, a particular family that I met down in Murchison, and he was a rural contractor, and he was told, "Go and find your own fuel," by the fuel supplier with no notice because they were retrenching and thinking differently. I don't think that we were pessimistic.
I don't think that we were naive. I think we identified early on that there was gonna be a problem. The problem accelerated towards us, and now people are thinking, "Oh, well, look, the price at the pump today is starting to drop. Things are gonna be okay." I would disagree. I would suggest that fuel's gonna go up again.
There's gonna be, if we do open the straits, there's gonna be a surge, so basic economics, we'll get supply and demand is gonna drive something. I can see China buying that surge. I can see us having another pendulum swing in a different direction in 12 months, and all of that, in my mind, talks to a national security system that needs to be a whole lot more agile and adaptive.
I'd, Not to go on about it, but I'd come back to our National Risk Register. W- It remains unchanged.
So it appears that our national security system has failed to be an adaptive learning organization to really structure so that the nation is forewarned, forearmed, and has the strategies to protect our national interests.
Oliver: I think there's another interesting aspect to all of this, and that is actually there was quite a, well, I would say disconnect between elected politicians, the elected government, and the permanent government of the public service. So the response to the crisis from our elected politicians was actually one of urgency because they, they were clearly worried.
They could see things coming. But the public service basically went into their usual kind of ways and did a process out of it. And if my information is correct it was actually a minister who leaked the insufficient preparations on part of the public service to the media because that minister was so frustrated with how slow things were and wanted to basically ring a very public alarm bell, and actually leaked the slow preparations to the media, which is kind of bizarre and almost unheard of, that you've got an elected minister actually creating a sense of urgency because the min- the ministry itself doesn't move fast enough.
Is that a fair characterization, and is it fair to say that actually on this occasion our elected politicians probably performed a lot better than the bureaucracy behind them?
John: Look, m- I've spoke to a range of colleagues as well. I'm left with the same assessment. My faith has been reinforced with our elected officials as we've worked through the last 100 days.
I have seen senior ministers publicly and privately making very clear demands, but I have not seen the public service supplying what I would call intelligence, strategic intelligence, decision-grade intelligence, situational awareness intelligence at the speed of relevance. I've seen officials striving to activate the national security system, which is ad hoc and archaic.
They are asking for information. In one case I heard where a chief executive was using a telephone conference, like a 1990s let's all get on the phone, 100 of us together, I'll talk to you for a bit, then you tell me what you're interested in and I'll fill out a Excel spreadsheet. I mean, that's an archaic way of solving real Crisis challenges.
I don't see modern technology, open source intelligence, and I do not see a learning organization at play. As I said probably at our fifth or sixth podcast, this crisis should not have surprised anyone at the executive of our national security system, and yet we still had ministers being forced to say there's a crisis.
Well,
Oliver: you know. It was also quite telling, actually, that I think the ministerial bureaucracy immediately tried to turn this into another kind of COVID with a four-stage plan.
John: Yep.
Oliver: And they were interested in sorting out the plan and figuring out how rationing of fuel would work in practice, whereas I think the politicians' priority was actually, "Where do we get the oil from?"
John: Yeah. "
Oliver: How can we import this?"
John: Yeah.
Oliver: So they actually had to drive the department away from kind of rationing exercises and preparing for that into something a little bit more proactive, actually trying to source different fuel and where can we get it from.
John: Yeah, I mean, and this is telling.
When we look at our national security system, the national exercise program hasn't been refreshed since 2018. We should have been exercising these decision activities. The government quite rightly said, "Where do we get fuel to support the nation?" And then there was this sort of sharp intake of breath and what I used to call analytical admiration of the challenge.
We, we didn't move at the speed of relevance against the opportunity, and as a small nation, we could afford to be more agile.
Oliver: Sure, but that would also require, of course, getting better information, and from what we both pick up, I think from our conversations with politicians, even at the highest level in cabinet ministers were flying blind because they didn't get the information they needed.
John: Yeah, and look I work with a couple of private companies in New Zealand who provide open source intelligence and it's real time, unclassified, and when I've discussed this with elected officials and seniors, they are blind to the capabilities. This is commercial off-the-shelf products that big business use all the time and other nations use all the time.
You... it does come back to the, the health of the public service at the strategic level. We've got a lot of a lot of individuals who may not have left the comfort of their sector, their environment, and the city for decades, and they go straight back to, "This is how we do things."
Oliver: There's, of course, nothing wrong with the city because it's not just housing the public service, but also some really innovative companies-
John: Yep
Oliver: like, Starboard Maritime.
John: Yep.
Oliver: So I found this remarkable, actually, in I mean, I still read German publications, of course, and suddenly I read Starboard Maritime quoted in a German magazine-
John: Yep ...
Oliver: as one of the world's leading trackers of shipments. I thought that's kind of cool because they're also set in Brandon Street like us
John: Well, they do.
They're not too far from where we sit, and- Exactly ... and they're giving unclassified real time maritime domain awareness. So we- So
Oliver: we've got world-class companies actually working
John: in
Oliver: Wellington Right here ... and f- 100 meters down the road we've got a government department that doesn't know what's going on.
John: So there's the other side of the coin, where MBIE's delivering twice a week a retrospective look of where ships were three days ago. Now- Yeah.
Oliver: Well ...
John: y- you wouldn't allow that if you were doing your online purchases. You get the delivery, you get the track, everything.
Oliver: Well, at least it didn't cost us $30 million and misled a few ministers.
John: Indeed.
Oliver: So where to from here? I mean, since you're back in the country, I guess we can have this podcast conversation a bit more regularly again. But looking ahead, where do you think we'll be in, say, two weeks time or in a month's time, or maybe by the time of the mid midterm elections? Midterms,
John: yeah.
So I think from a geopolitical position, if I use the Straits of Hormuz as the epicenter, we're gonna see seismic shifting aftershocks occurring for the next six to 12 months as the negotiated settlement tries to land.
The midterms will influence that negotiation to a certain extent. We've already seen Trump's declaration of what will happen if the agreement doesn't come to the fore.
And I think Xi's taken a lesson from all of this, and Putin's rubbing his hands together continually. And then somewhere in the middle of all of that, Don't 'cause nothing happens in isolation, of course. We here in New Zealand head towards our own election.
Oliver: Mm-hmm.
John: With all sorts of deep strategic issues, and maybe we could have an election where national security is on the agenda upfront for a discussion, and maybe if we're really mature, we could pause even for a day and say, "What are the strategic lessons from the last 100 days?
Do we need an energy strategy? Do we need a defense strategy?" 'Cause we still don't have one. We have a shopping list.
Oliver: Mm-hmm.
John: Let's get ahead and think about what we need, why we need it, and how we'll lead ourselves there.
Oliver: Final question. We have known each other for probably about a year. I think we first ran into each other at a conference in Christchurch around May, June last year.
Yeah. Yep. Sometimes it feels a lot longer, actually, but -
John: I'm sorry,
Oliver: but that, yeah ... but that, but no, that's good. No, I mean this as a compliment. But I've only known you really as someone who's relatively pessimistic, actually, on- ... defense, security, the state of the world as such, and I just wonder actually what's happened in the last 12 months basically since we first met, and especially in the last six months, beginning of this year.
Has that basically confirmed you, or has it actually made you more or less pessimistic?
John: Yeah, great question. My wife tells me that I'm too pessimistic when we go out to dinner and start talking with people.
Oliver: Usually that's what they say about economists ...
John: yeah. Well, so after 40 years of wearing the uniform of our nation and being in harm's way, you tend to get pessimistic the first time someone shoots at you, and you start to think differently.
Having taken my uniform off just over a year ago and when we met I view the world slightly differently. My frustrations are, why are we not as agile and adaptive as a nation that we should be? So where is the opportunity? Why are we not grasping and changing who we are, what we do, how do we go forward?
The world, I think, this decade of disruption, which started with Putin's second invasion into Ukraine, we're well into this decade of disruption, and now we've got to be able to n- navigate it at the speed of relevance. So by that I mean policy must be agile and adaptive. We need leadership that will allow us to go through with that, and we have exceptional New Zealanders in business and in government service that can do that.
We just need to elevate them to the right levels and empower them.
Oliver: Okay. In which case, I think I should still ask one final question.
John: Oh, okay.
Oliver: Since you mention it, I mean, since you took off the uniform, how, h- has your thinking really changed on these matters? Since you're now probably more exposed to also the world of business, and companies actually trying to operate in these environments- Yeah
has that perspective of yours changed, then?
John: Okay. Y- yes. My observations, my lessons are and the three things I'll take away is, one, the function of intelligence as a operating function to support strategic operational decision-making is not well understood in our small country.
Oliver: Mm-hmm.
John: At the boardroom, at the cabinet table, and in discussions as I go traveling around with chief executives and their executive leadership teams.
Oliver: But you're working on it. Yeah.
John: Yeah, we're working on that. And that's muscle memory being built. The next thing I would say as a veteran, and an old veteran, is w- we old soldiers, sailors, aviators are not good at explaining who we are and the value proposition that we bring. My experience in the US last week with my friends recently retired, they have some amazing opportunities.
They make a living, they add value, they're comfortable being in the geopolitical discussion. I've had any number of people come up to me saying, "Don't stop. Keep going. We need a voice. We need someone to allow that discussion to occur." I never thought I'd be in that position. And then after 40 years of doing what I did and thinking I can just quietly go into the bush and go to the West Coast and smoke some cigars, which are not politically correct, and drink some good whiskey I keep finding people ringing me up saying, "How about one more interview or one more podcast?"
If it's me, there are soldiers, sailors, and aviators better than me. I think of some of my good friends who've got jobs commercially. I'm not gonna use their names here because they'll just be embarrassed for who they are, but they know who they are. They've led our soldiers, sailors, and aviators on operations and done great things.
They have a role in private business and in public service that could be quite different.
Oliver: No doubt about that, but I'm very happy with having you on our podcast. Good.
John: Good. All right.
Oliver: Enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much, John, and I'm sure we'll talk again before too long.
John: Thanks, Ole.
Oliver: Thank you. See you.
John: Bye.