12. Roger Noble - A Major General’s Perspective

My guest today is Major General Roger Noble, AO DSC CSC, who recently retired from the Australian Defence Force as a senior officer in the Australian Army. During his extensive career, he has commanded the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the Al Muthanna Task Group in Iraq and was also Commander 3rd Brigade. Throughout his years of service, he has deployed six times on operations to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Most recently, General Noble was appointed as Australia's Ambassador for Counterterrorism and is responsible for leading international engagement and representation at bilateral, regional and multilateral forums in the field.

As you will hear, we covered a range of topics, some of which include:

• General Noble’s first deployment to Iraq in 1992 as part of the UN Special Commission to destroy Saddam’s WMDs
• Reflections on his return to Iraq in 2005 and 2016
• Context behind his three rules: ‘Be culturally aware, keep a low profile and stay in the corner of their eye’
• Negotiating with the ‘enemy’
• Importance of individual as well as organisational self-awareness
• The need for an anthropological understanding of our own culture, then of our friends and finally of our enemies
• Suggestion on how we improve our understanding of the human terrain in operational theatres
• Importance of on-the-ground personal experience within senior leaders
• Why the military is the go-to toolbox for Western democracies
• ‘He with the best narrative wins’
• The nature of contemporary war
• General Noble’s reflections on the true nature of war
• The risk of resting on our laurels

Finally, as you’ll hear about in the introduction of this episode, here is the link for a short survey on the podcast. Thank you for taking two minutes to complete it.

https://forms.gle/HzBzMeDnGuSGUJi89

I hope you enjoy the episode.