Key Reflections
* The 2012 Benghazi attack was a coordinated al-Qaeda operation against United States government facilities in Libya. Many of the culprits remain at large ten years later.
* Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was directly involved in the Benghazi plot. Contrary to some perceptions, al-Zawahiri was more than the figurehead of the terrorist group, but in fact, the operations chief.
* Libya has suffered conflicts, attacks, and assassinations since the overthrow of its dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Libya’s insecurity has knock-on effects for the Maghreb but also Sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean.
* Ayman al-Zawahiri’s discovery in a Haqqani Network safe house and subsequent death by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul demonstrates that the Taliban retains very close ties to al-Qaeda. It is likely that many other al-Qaeda figures are receiving sanctuary from Taliban factions.
* As conditions are conducive for radicalisation in Afghanistan, there remains a potential for foreign fighters to travel to the country for terrorist training before returning to their respective nations to plot and plan attacks.
* Russian private military companies (PMCs) are state-sponsored actors that have committed egregious human rights abuses and terror in Syria, Mali, and Ukraine. They are supported by Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
SA: Sarah Adams
SG: In this episode we speak to Sarah Adams who has held various positions within the U.S. governmental machinery including the Department of Defense, as well as private, and non-profit sectors. She also worked overseas on behalf of the U.S. Government’s intelligence missions in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Sarah previously served as a Senior Advisor for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Libya after being recruited as an executive appointment from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Prior to that, Sarah was a Targeting Analyst at the CIA.
Sarah Adams, thank you for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
SA: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
SG: It’s our pleasure.
I’ve known you for a little while and I know what you’ve done in your career, which is very extensive. But I think it’ll be interesting for our listeners to get a clearer understanding of your career. So, perhaps it would be helpful if you actually gave some of your background?
SA: Sure, I’ll just give a quick overview. So, my career started at the Central Intelligence Agency where I was a targeter. And then from there, I was recruited out to our U.S. House of Representatives, so that’s in Congress, and there I worked on a committee that looked into the Benghazi attacks. After that, I went into the private sector, and I worked in the aviation industry. And then I went back into the government, and I worked for our [U.S.] Department of Defense, and in the Department of Defense, I do research and development. So, I help build tools to look at big data problems. And then I spent a lot of time volunteering and right now, I’m a chief operations officer with a Ukrainian NGO.
SG: Well, it just shows you how varied and interesting your career has been covering so many different facets of security, and also humanitarian support as well.
Let’s touch on one of the things that you mentioned, which is the Benghazi attack that happened on September 11, 2012. That’s now some 10 years later, people still talk about it, why does it carry so much importance and relevance?
SA: Sure, I think it gets talked about a lot because it became so political, and a lot of conspiracy theories surrounded it. What’s important about it, though, is, as an American, we lost a U.S. ambassador, and that’s like losing your president that is sitting in another country. So, to us, it’s very heartfelt to lose someone at that level. He was a very beloved ambassador, as most people know, he went in on his own and helped fight during the revolution.
So, it matters now because, like you said, we’re 10 years out, and really the attackers haven’t been brought to justice. And the concern is, those attackers aren’t just a threat to Americans, they are a threat to pretty much anyone in North Africa; they’re a threat to Europeans, because they’ve gone to places like Turkey. So, it’s just important to highlight who actually was involved in these attacks.
SG: So, this is very significant what you’re saying and the ambassador, U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, was, as you said, a very respected diplomat. And it’s also worth pointing out that several other American nationals who provided security to him were also killed in that attack itself. Who was responsible for the Benghazi attack?
SA: Yeah, so that was an al-Qaeda directed attack on our U.S. consulate. There were actually several attacks that night, so, the ones that occurred on the US Consulate were core al-Qaeda, so they were directed by the now deceased Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Then there was a series of attacks on the CIA annex. So, that was a completely separate building about a mile away. And that actually was carried out by a local militia in Benghazi.
SG: And is that local militia tied to al-Qaeda? Did they receive instructions from al-Qaeda?
SA: So, they have since had relationships with al-Qaeda, they have some historic relations. I mean, if you think about it, these militias came together to fight in the revolution, but a lot of them had history. So, they fought with al-Qaeda, or they fought with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), they fought with a bunch of different groups in Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, name your war. So, they did have long historic relationships. After the attacks occurred, they became very close to al-Qaeda, and the person who directed the attack basically was then an al-Qaeda member, and pretty much the most renowned al-Qaeda member in Benghazi.
SG: All of this is extremely important. And you got my attention a while back when we spoke about this because of Ayman al-Zawahiri and, as you know, and as hopefully most people are beginning to know, I’ve been writing my book about him, which is due in 2023. This was, of course, written well, before al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul. So, this implies that Ayman al-Zawahiri was very hands-on and that he was helping to coordinate major al-Qaeda plots beyond just Afghanistan/Pakistan?
SA: Yeah, and the really interesting thing is, and you probably saw this, you’re way more of an expert on this than me, but this attack was so important to him that he went back in time and basically taped very long historic relations he had, back to the EIJ. So, he made sure the best of who he knew was involved in it, they were involved in the planning, they sent the right terrorists. So, he was really in the details. And I think that would surprise a lot of people. They think of him as more of a spiritual advisor, but this is an operations chief. He plans the attacks; he gets in the weeds of it. And I think that’s something that’s forgotten about him.
SG: Very much so. What do you say to the argument that some have that al-Zawahiri was too much of a micromanager, that he didn’t have bin Laden’s charisma, that he didn’t have the ability to organise and plot and plan attacks? Because I’ve heard that argument, but I’ve also heard what others have said, including yourself, which is that he was actually much more hands-on than perhaps some had perceived him to be.
SA: The way I look at that actually is I feel a lot of that messaging came out from ISIS and they were trying to almost do covert influence against al-Qaeda. You didn’t hear a lot of al-Qaeda members saying this, it was actually ISIS, but it was nuanced. So, if people weren’t paying attention, like, ‘hey, that’s actually an ISIS body saying this,’ they just thought, ‘oh, a lot of terrorists are complaining about al-Qaeda,’ when really it was just ISIS trying to push people away from al-Qaeda so they could get them to join their ranks, they could take al-Qaeda’s funding, and they did a really good job of pushing that narrative.
SG: Very much so, ISIS really did target Ayman al-Zawahiri and try to take control of the jihadist narrative, as you were mentioning. That’s a very important point that perhaps gets overlooked because, you’re right, when we often talk about other jihadists criticising Zawahiri, it tends to be ISIS and their own agenda was, of course, very apparent. You mentioned that many people in the Benghazi operation are still at large. So, where are they and what are they doing?
SA: Yeah, so the majority of them are basically, if they’re not detained, or deceased, as you noted, they’re in the Tripoli area, because a lot of them were pushed out of East Libya, where they’re from, so they were pushed out of the cities of Benghazi and Darna and so they’re mostly around Tripoli. And then the ones who actually fled Libya altogether are based in Turkey.
SG: This is quite concerning, because if you’ve got terrorists that have been responsible for devastating terrorist plots and they’re still active, that means that they may just be waiting for other opportunities to plot and plan, perhaps they’re lying low, because they don’t necessarily want to be detected. But it is very disconcerting that a lot of people still seem to be at large.
SA: Yes, it is. And the other thing that a lot of people don’t realise is that they’re not at large and not doing anything, even just two years after the Benghazi attacks, the same attackers kidnapped the Jordanian ambassador in Tripoli, Libya, to get some of their friends in jail released. That’s kind of what they want to do with Ambassador Stevens as well, ‘we’re going to kidnap him and ask for their [friends’] release.’ Most of the focus was on detainees that were al-Qaeda in Iraq, so most of the detainees were in Iraq. This detainee, for example, was actually in Jordanian custody, but his group was al-Qaeda in Iraq.
SG: So, the plot evolved to the extent that, originally it was supposed to be about capturing Ambassador Stevens, and then it resulted in his death. Did al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda give a lot of licence to these groups on the ground in terms of how the plot was supposed to unfold?
SA: No, I think what happened was, the death wasn’t supposed to occur. It was the fact that they couldn’t get inside of his villa. So, they set a fire and then him and then Sean Smith, the other American in the Consulate, both died in the smoke inhalation of the fire. So, that wasn’t part of the planning, even initially, when al-Qaeda ended the attack at the consulate and didn’t know it was over, they actually complained, they said ‘our attack was a failure, the kidnapping didn’t happen.’ So, until they heard Americans had died, they called it a failed attack. And then after the fact, they were like, ‘well, we, we had some success, but it wasn’t what we wanted.’ Because like I said, there were people that were really important to them to get out of prison and one person that they wanted to get out of prison, they never got out of prison, he actually ended up being executed in 2016. So, to them, it was a failure.
SG: This is very important insight and perspective that you’re providing, also very disturbing, because of the fact that these people, many of them, are still at large. What needs to be done by the international community to deal with these people that have been involved in some of the most horrific acts of terrorism in the Maghreb?
SA: Yes, I think it’s not just a problem in the U.S., unfortunately, we took our eye off the terrorists, and we didn’t focus on them. Another issue that happens is that these terrorists do get arrested in other places, be it Libya, be it Europe, and they don’t get held very long, it’s almost like a capture and release. And that’s why they were on the streets anyway. A lot of these terrorists should have been in, and they were in, prison for life. They got out during the Arab Spring, they took advantage of that situation, and went back to their old terrorist ways.
So, I do think we need to be a little tougher in like how we prosecute terrorists, so they stay in prison longer. We have a couple of the Benghazi attackers that were detained in Europe, one in Italy and one in France, and they were given long enough prison sentences to where they would have been in prison for the attacks, but then their prison sentences got lessened, and they were out and were able to commit the Benghazi attack. So, all those things have repercussions, unfortunately.
SG: Massive repercussions. In terms of your research that you’re doing for your book, is there anything else that you want to highlight about Benghazi that you think is important that people perhaps don’t pay attention to or may not even be aware of?
SA: I just think it’s the fact that—unfortunately it’s become a U.S. attack, and everyone focuses on this as a US problem. We fought these terrorists for one night, for the next eight years, the citizens of Benghazi had to suffer through attacks and assassinations from these terrorists; in 2014, a war started against these terrorists. They lost thousands of people in that city just because of this grouping of terrorists essentially. So, it’s just that fact that there’s a ripple effect when you let people get away with this, and you enable this, and you make them more powerful, they will keep going at you or other people are going to be impacted by them.
SG: Absolutely. And it’s important to remember that what’s happening in Libya cannot be seen in isolation, because it has knock-on effects for, not just the rest of the Maghreb, but also Sub-Saharan Africa, and also the Mediterranean as well, because many of them are involved not just in terrorism, but they’re involved in human trafficking and criminal enterprise as well. So, you’re absolutely right to point out the wider ramifications of what these individuals are potentially capable of doing and are actually doing as we speak.
The interesting thing I noticed about the Benghazi attack was that it wasn’t necessarily in isolation, because there were other incidents aimed at U.S. embassies in North Africa, in Cairo, as well as in Tunis, as well by jihadist entities, some of whom were also tied to al-Qaeda as well. So, were they all synchronised by al-Qaeda, or was this just opportunistic by groups on the ground that may have received some instructions by al-Qaeda?
SA: Sure, it wasn’t synchronised, but the people in Egypt, a lot of them that were involved in the protests, they knew the Benghazi attacks were going to occur that day. The Egypt protests were actually planned for the end of August, but they got shifted. The Benghazi attack started to be planned in June, it was predicated on the fact of when the ambassador was going to arrive in Benghazi. We think they probably found out about September 6, so they had about five days to plan and say, ‘here’s the day it’s going to be.’ Tunis, as you know, was actually September 14. So, they took advantage of obviously all these other issues, be it Benghazi, Cairo—Karachi had an issue. So, they then just took advantage. But the same people in Tunis, in Cairo, in Benghazi, do have links and associations, but they did not synchronise the three things to cause an issue for each other.
SG: What’s interesting in hearing how you’re unpacking this is the level of planning and intelligence that was involved in this, they were looking at it for a period of time, they were actually tracking the movements of U.S. officials and looking at the symbolic timeline as well in terms of plotting their attacks. So, I guess it shows that these are not a ragtag bunch of individuals, that there is a methodological approach to the strategy of terrorism.
SA: Yeah, and I think the best example for what you just said is—a lot of people don’t know this—but after the Benghazi attacks, a lot of the attackers fled to Syria. They fled to Syria on Libyan passports they had made prior to the attack. So, they had all their travel documentation to leave the country of Libya, on false names, with real passports, and to get out safely. So, they prepared for an aftermath that they thought would come from the U.S. and they fled. So, it just shows the pre-planning to even have planned your exit strategy.
SG: Wow. So, they were definitely well ahead of what they potentially could anticipate would be repercussions for them. And are many of them still in Syria?
SA: No. So, a lot of them went to Syria in 2012, some went to Syria in 2013. But when that war started in Benghazi, which was called the Battle of Benghazi or it was also called, the Libyan National Army called it, Operation Dignity, they all came back from Syria to obviously fight in Benghazi to keep their terrorist stronghold in Libya.
SG: So, they returned probably even more battle-hardened with more experience from the Syria campaign and then inflicted that menace onto the Libyan people further, providing greater devastation to the country.
If we look more at al-Qaeda itself, Ayman al-Zawahiri is now dead. He’s finally been found in Kabul, of all places, which seems to be a safe house of the Haqqani Network, unsurprisingly, because of the fact that he had such close ties with them. But I’m curious to get your perspective, what sticks out in terms of where he ended up and how it ended for him?
SA: Yeah, like you said, we’ve probably always assumed the Haqqanis were the ones protecting al-Zawahiri, just because they did such a good job. And that is the level you get from the Haqqanis. I think what is really surprising is that he actually thought within the year of the U.S. being gone that Kabul was already safe enough to move to, and it was safe enough for al-Qaeda. And that’s actually concerning, right? Because that means he’s not the only one. That means he went in well, after others went in and felt safe and started basically setting up training camps and doing al-Qaeda things again. So, he felt safe enough to go there and be with his family and put his family at risk. That’s really concerning, because for someone with his intelligence to decide this is now a safe haven for me, we should be concerned.
SG: Yes, as you mentioned, that he [al-Zawahiri], of all people, prioritised on his safety for the last 20 years, during the war on terrorism, he made sure that he would stay in wherever isolated place possible in order to evade detection. The fact that he was willing to come out to Kabul and stay in quite a well-known residential part of the city meant that he must have been given a strong degree of assurance about his safety, especially by the Haqqanis, who are ultimately the main power now not just in Kabul, but in Afghanistan, as well. So, here’s perhaps a very obvious question, I guess, does that mean we can’t trust the Taliban and the Haqqanis?
SA: Yeah, obviously, we never could trust the Haqqanis. I think there was a little bit of hope, during negotiations with the Taliban, that maybe the moderate end would lean in, that mullah Baradar angle of the Taliban. But obviously, once they started putting it together, it was pretty clear Haqqani strong-armed him, he didn’t really have a say, they got their places in the government. And that was what was going to happen, right? The most powerful faction in the Taliban was obviously going to have the biggest say at the table. So of course, we can’t trust the Taliban, we never could. They were patient, they knew this day would come, and they waited for it. And they knew they would take the government back, and they were successful at it.
SG: I should point out that, of course, a lot of credit, in terms of the elimination of al-Zawahiri has to go to the U.S. intelligence and defence communities, because the fact that they could pull this operation off without having any resources directly on the ground, just shows you the capability of counter-terrorism operations. Do you think that this is now the way of the future? In terms of how the U.S. may operate in terms of targeting potential activities of terrorism in Afghanistan, well-known members of al-Qaeda, and perhaps put everyone on edge on the terrorist front that, well, they can be tracked and found, even if they were thinking that the U.S. leaving meant that they were somewhat safer in Afghanistan.
SA: Yeah, I think we’re going to see more of this. What I worry is that we lean in too much to this. So, if we even look at the Benghazi attackers, obviously, we know the U.S. really didn’t focus on them. But let’s, let’s just look at numbers. So, there was a general in Libya, his name is, General Haftar, and he led a counter-terrorism operation against the terrorists. So, he’s on the ground, he’s targeting them, he is there, he’s collecting intelligence and he’s taking the bad guys off the battlefield. Now, the U.S. is doing the same thing, like you said, in Afghanistan. They’re doing airstrikes, targeted airstrikes, maybe the Libyan government’s given them a location and they’re targeting it. And in those strikes, that killed about seven Benghazi attackers over the years. Haftar, killed, I don’t know, 40 to 50.
So, there’s still going to always be the guys in the country, and you need to enable them to do the counter-terrorism, because you’re never going to get it good enough without the HUMINT (Human Intelligence). Also, you don’t want civilian casualties. You’ve got to get that piece right. So, I do think we’ll see more of it. I don’t know how successful it’ll be. I don’t know if we’ll take as many people off the battlefield, as we saw happen, in Waziristan, Pakistan. I think that was the heyday of ‘yes, we have the intelligence, we have the sources, we’re here locally, like this is how you do it correctly.’ We’re not going to get there again if we stay 10 feet away and up in the air.
SG: Yes, I think that remains the challenge and also the concern. Where do you see al-Qaeda developing now that Ayman al-Zawahiri is no more? In some ways he managed to hold the group together, the affiliates stayed loyal to him over the last 10 years, there were no divisions or breakaways within al-Qaeda on a major scale. But now, you’re looking at a kind of new era, effectively, where Zawahiri is no more, bin Laden, of course, died 10 years prior. And now you’ve got a new challenge for al-Qaeda in terms of what its agenda is going to be. Where do you see the terrorist group going?
SA: Yeah, I mean, you make a really interesting point, because it’s just not at his level, right? Even the head of al-Qaeda ‘s North Africa branch or the head of the Yemen branch, you know, those leaders who they fought with in Afghanistan, or whatever they had those past relationships with, they’re all gone. So, we’re kind of at like a second generation. So, they’re probably going to still maybe take a first-generation leader. A lot of people say it’s Saif al-Adel; who knows? But he still then has to reach out to that second generation. And we don’t know yet if the second generation has relationships, the first generation had. The first generation had those historic “we fought in Afghanistan, we fought in Algeria” …the second generation will probably have “we fought in Iraq, maybe “we fought in Syria.” Will those relationships be as strong? Will they be as loyal? I think that remains to be seen. There was a lot of loyalty around Zawahiri, because of the 30-40 years he was involved in everything. But will someone else have that background for people to grab onto? I think that’s going to be really interesting to see.
SG: Yes. And perhaps we will see that unfold in the next few months, especially as we move into this pandemic era, which is now seen as the new normal where people just are expected to live with it and travel resumes. And in relation to that, do you see the potential of foreign fighters moving to Afghanistan, like they did with Iraq and Syria post-Arab Spring, that they could want to use that as the base, their safe haven in some way like how they did with Iraq in the past? Or is this different in Afghanistan right now?
SA: You know, it’s really interesting, because at the end of the Libyan revolution, everyone was like, ‘Well, foreign fighters aren’t going to really come here. There’s no war for them to fight.’ But they actually travelled there to train. I think that’s what we should focus on. I think it will become a training base and foreign fighters will travel there to train. But that’s concerning then, right? They’re not going to stay in Afghanistan and fight. So, I do think we’re going to see a movement back to Afghanistan. How much, it depends on where they’re going to bring them to. So, like if they’re going to Afghanistan, and there’s actually a real pipeline to another war zone, like let’s say there’s a pipeline into Syria, it’s funded, their travel’s all set up, then it will work, right? But if someone hasn’t set up the actual pipeline to do it, it might buy us time and less will go there to train.
SG: Yes, that training dimension is something that is getting flagged by a lot of practitioners now, including yourself, and that is something that definitely needs the spotlight to remain. What do you say to the argument that some have concluded that basically the terrorist threat is no longer as concerning as it once was, that transnational terrorism is more in the rear window, and that the bigger threat remains now state actors, and therefore their priority and resources has to go on state actors, and that terrorism will just play a bit part role in that it won’t really be to the same scale as it had been in the past?
SA: Yeah, the way I look at that is I think governments hope that’s what happens, right? They’re just tired of CT, they’ve been doing it for 20 years, they’re like “Let’s focus on Russia. Let’s focus on China.” The thing is, a country like Russia is using terrorists, you know, Iran uses terrorists as a proxy. Even if you want to just say we’re going to only focus on the nation state actors, they’re smart enough to use with a hidden hand terrorist. I think we don’t get to choose who our enemy is and when they’re our enemy. So, I think terrorism is going to continue to be a problem. We didn’t take enough guys off the battlefield. During the Arab Spring, a lot of terrorists got out. Obviously, last year in Afghanistan, Bagram [air base] got emptied, Pul-e-Charkhi [prison] got emptied. Syria, ISIS attacking prisons there just to get the detainees out. So, we have extreme numbers of detained terrorists released who were like the worst of the worst. So, they’re not going to now just be like, “Okay, I’m going to go back to a normal life, raise a family.” If anything, they’re raising their family and their sons to continue this lifestyle. This is a generational thing.
SG: Most definitely. I think it would be very premature and very naive for anyone to assume that the terrorist threat has gone away, and that mistake was actually made post-Arab Spring, as well, which enabled the rise of ISIS and its growth, and we all suffered terribly as a result of that. So, I hope that those that are in the decision-making places around the world don’t repeat the errors of the past, especially when it comes to terrorists once again finding opportunities to grow and use that opportunity of complacency to basically reassert and reconstitute their ranks.
There was something you said that caught my attention that Russia is involved in terrorism. That is something that we often hear a lot increasingly because of what Russia is doing, not just in Ukraine, but in other parts of the world. But what do you interpret Russia’s activities with terrorism to entail?
SA: Sure. I mean, I think it’s [Russia’s] misuse of Private Military Companies (PMC). I know we call the Russian one’s private military companies—they’re not, right? They’re state-sponsored actors. They’re almost like Hezbollah. So basically, Russia uses them, yes, to make economic gains, but they do use them for terrorists, right? I mean, they have some major [incidents of] genocide in Mali, obviously, Syria, now we’re seeing it in Ukraine. So, Russia gets to use them and be like, “Oh, no, that’s like a PMC, I’m a step removed from that, I can’t handle what a company does.” No, they’re your company, they’re at your direction. And I think the more we let them get away with it and not designate them as terrorists, they’ll be able to keep doing it. And I think that’s a big problem. And I think a lot of the time, nobody wants to deal with it, because the word company is involved, right? So, it’s like, “Well, we can’t really designate a company a terrorist.” Fine, don’t call them a company then, they’re not. They’re basically a private military of Putin’s. So, call them what they are.
SG: So, when we talk about private military or ‘company’, are we referring to groups like the Wagner group, which seems to be very prevalent in Mali, Syria, and unfortunately, in Ukraine as well?
SA: Yeah, two of the biggest are Wagner, as you said, Patriot, there’s about maybe seven to eight that they deploy around the world that different oligarchs own. They all kind of have the same shtick, right, they might go in and help, they kind of take over some of the gold mining, they take over some of the security in a country. It basically uses Russian influence, but they get into where they are committing atrocities. There are assassinations. They move into the realm of terrorists.
SG: Well, certainly, the human rights abuses in various countries have caught a lot of attention, highly egregious actions, which go beyond any rules of engagement and war. It’s definitely something that has to be flagged and brought to greater attention because I don’t think many people really understand just how Russia uses different proxies to further its strategic objectives. There is this debate that’s going on in Europe right now about whether Russia should be declared as a state sponsor of terrorism. Where do you sit on this?
SA: Yeah, we’re having the same debate in our country [U.S]. Obviously, I do believe what we’ve seen in Ukraine for sure, just the atrocities they’ve committed against civilians, the fact that they’ve actually targeted solely civilians, right? You don’t have Russia’s capabilities and hit a supermarket accidentally, right? They’re choosing to hit those locations. Those are war crimes. They’re choosing to do the war crimes to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people, right? That just should not be allowed. And I do think we kind of tiptoe around Putin because he has nuclear weapons, but then it enables him and he’s like, ‘Hey, I can keep doing these.’ And so, it’s very…I know, it’s a very difficult decision to make…because then what’s he going to do? He’s not a rational actor. But we do need to put our foot down, because we are showing, ‘Hey, if you have nukes, you can do whatever you want.’ So, if you’re a country trying to get nukes, you’re like, ‘Hey, this is our top priority, we need to get nukes because look at the power we get from that.’
SG: Do you think that the West was too soft and complacent prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that perhaps there was a misreading of Putin, that if he’s left alone, he won’t launch the invasion and that the West basically was too soft in dealing with him in the first place?
SA: I think the West was too soft in dealing because I mean, this was even kind of intimated by our government, it’s kind of like our government thought Putin was going to go in and take a little land, it would be called a ceasefire, he’d be happy. Very strange, right? It’s like, this is Putin, he’s going to go for it all. Luckily, the will of the Ukrainian people stopped that. But yeah, there was just this belief, ‘We’ll let him do a little incursion and just kind of let it happen, put some sanctions on him.’ So, I do think the way we handled it was too weak, the way the Europeans handled it was too weak. And he knew he was going to get a weak response, and that’s why he got away with doing what he did.
SG: Do you feel that he’s been somewhat surprised by the reaction in that, yes, he definitely felt he could get away with this, and maybe he was also taking inspiration from the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, that he thought that the West would not react aggressively. But subsequently, we’ve seen a strengthening of NATO with also the imminent expansion with Sweden and Finland joining. Do you think that has surprised him?
SA: I think that surprised him. I think what probably surprised him the most, he would never admit to it, is how weak his military is, and it’s because there’s rampant corruption. His soldiers were not prepared to fight. His military did not have the strategy to go in. They didn’t send people in properly. They were telling people, they’re in a training exercise, and they’re selling off their gas. So, it’s pretty crazy that they’re basically one of the most powerful militaries in the world, and they could not perform. So, I think that’s what’s really surprising to him because the lack of performance is what I think allied the other countries. I think Putin would have gone in quick, like everyone said, within a month, taken what he wanted, ended it, everyone would have been like, ‘Okay, status quo. This part’s not Russia, let’s just try to make agreements, make peace.’ The failure of his own soldiers to get the job done, I think, is his biggest shock.
SG: And where do you feel this is going? Where is this going to end? How will this end? And how long do you think that this war is potentially going to last?
SA: I don’t know. I mean, early on, people said they weren’t going to have the funds to do the war. But sanctions haven’t really been effective. Gas has gone through the roof. And so, Russia has the money coming in to carry on the war. So, I think as long as Putin wants to do this, he’s going to do it. I mean, like I said, he’s irrational. And now we’ve hurt his ego, right? He really didn’t go storming in, taking the streets of Kiev. He’s embarrassed. And we don’t know what that means. It’s very difficult to embarrass somebody like him and not expect a logical response to that.
SG: Do you think one of the challenges is that he doesn’t particularly care about the loss of life for his own soldiers, let alone the Ukrainian people seem to be of zero concern to him, but when it comes to his own troops, it’s almost as if he’s willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of them, not even blink an eyelid as a result of that?
SA: Yeah, they’ve even said that back during the World War, right? Russia just sent in body after body after body, there was no strategy they sent them in to be slaughtered.
I think Putin feels the same way. I do think it’s a Russian mentality. Like we are here to suffer. He gets away with it because they are so used to that in their culture of their government using them in that way. And now there’s this talk that he wants to expand his military. So, I don’t know if it’s going to be a forced conscription. But it’s going to be more people kind of sent in as cannon fodder. I don’t think that’s changing, but I think even if it was a different leader, we’ve seen that happen again and again, in Russia that’s how they treat them, unfortunately. But as we saw, some of the soldiers weren’t happy with it. And they killed their own generals. A lot of Russian generals died in this war, and they were not all because Ukrainians killed them.
SG: Right, and that seems to be something the Kremlin is very keen to cover up and reluctant to talk about, but it is a fact that they have lost a significant number of generals. And they’re not just replaceable, because those are people in very important strategic positions. And the fact that the Russians have had to deal with fatalities at a very high military officer level just demonstrates some of the challenges they’re facing, not just by a very strong Ukrainian response, but also the challenges within their own military as well, of which they still don’t provide a full picture of,
SA: Right, yeah. What are the loyalties of everybody in their militaries? It’s very hard to understand.
SG: Do you think that Russia, Putin in particular, faces internal dissent because of this war? Will it encourage more defections, people wanting to say that, look, this is a war that is going to drag Russia into the abyss? Or does he have a very firm grip on power?
SA: So that’s a really interesting question. I think, obviously, the people most impacted are maybe the wealthy, right, they don’t get to live their normal lifestyle, how does that affect him? But what I think will be the issue is, like I said, when he starts forcing people into the military, what will that change? Because it isn’t entirely clear that the Russian people really believe in this war, but when it happened, they were kind of sold, ‘Hey, we need this war, we need this war.’ But once your sons start dying, your husband dies, that’s a whole different take, because then you really do start asking questions like, ‘What did they sacrifice for?’ And I do think with the right messaging, Putin is going to be in a tough spot among his people, if he keeps going and pushes it on to a long war.
SG: A long war that will only bring further misery to the people of Ukraine, but also to Russia as well. And I think only Putin ultimately knows, perhaps, the end date, and even then, maybe we’re not entirely sure where his mindset is at.
Today, we’ve spoken on the terrorism dynamics globally, we’ve spoken about the situation in Afghanistan, we’ve also now spoken about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Where do you think the world is going, Sarah, in terms of the challenges, what type of threats and concerns worry you in the next few years?
SA: Well, you know, because we become so interconnected, everything almost happening in the world somehow impacts you in some way, even if it’s as basic as supply chain, which we learned during COVID. It’s like, “Oh, this one issue stops my toilet paper. Now I’m really passionate about it.” So, it really seems like people have gotten more involved in paying attention to these conflicts. So then…we get more press on it, more reporting, more information. And we get to see all these things that were probably always going on, but now they’re being exaggerated, for good or bad, right? So…I mean, I don’t want to be negative, things do keep getting worse, relationships among countries are getting worse. We have been in war for so long it feels like, especially as an American, we just spent 20 years in a war, you know, people are fatigued. But they think, “What’s the next war? What’s the next war?” And it’s such a weird mentality, right? Like nobody thinks of when is the end of the wars? And I don’t know when we’re going to get back to kind of the whole, “Hey, what do we do for world peace or peace among some of these nations?” Like, I think we’re so far from that, we’re only planning for the next war.
SG: Well, that’s very depressing, indeed. I think it’s also very accurate in terms of how the situation is unfolding globally. Certainly, I would have hoped that we could be focusing on the challenges of the environment and global warming as well, which don’t really get a lot of attention. And we’re certainly seeing the effects of global warming now in many countries, including in the continent of Europe, which has really suffered in the last few months. But yes, I think Putin’s war machine tends to dominate the headlines, and what he may wish to do in the future I think only he knows, and even then, again, as I was mentioning earlier, somewhat unsure whether he does really know what he’s actually dragged his country into.
Well, thank you, Sarah Adams for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive. We’re very fortunate to have got your expertise, especially as you covered such a wide variety of issues and provided so much important insight. We’re most grateful for you spending the time with us.
SA: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.
SG: And we hope to have you again soon in the future.
SA: Sounds perfect.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.