Retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus (left) sits on stage with Peoria Area World Affairs Council’s Don Samford, during an Aug. 19 appearance at the Par-a-Dice Hotel and Conference Center. (Photo by Tim Alexander/for Chronicle Media)

During what was billed as a fireside chat followed by a book signing, former CIA director and retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus kept a large Peoria-area audience in rapt attention with tales of international conflict and his leadership roles during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Patraeus, now 71 and chairman of his own KKR Institute, also offered his opinion on current wars in Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere during his Aug. 19 appearance at the Par-a-Dice Hotel and Conference Center.

Over the course of the hour-long discussion (sans fireplace) hosted by Peoria Area World Affairs Council’s Don Samford, Patraeus sprinkled his narrative with anecdotes relating his leadership experiences while in the military (37 years) and as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (14 months) to leadership qualities and best practices in the private and nonprofit sectors.

This is a theme reflected in Patraues’ new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine”, which revisits leadership lessons learned from previous global conflict resolutions and relates them to modern wars and, by extension, to conflicts within the workplace.

“The most important (aspect) of the book, at least in a general sense, is the critical importance of strategic leadership,” Patraeus said when describing the central theme of the new release, which was available for $40 at the event check-in. “Strategic leadership is critical in any endeavor; the CEO of Caterpillar is a strategic leader. The commander of a theater of war is very much a strategic leader, as is the head of a nonprofit or a start-up.”

Patraeus, who led five combat commands, including the pivotal surge in Iraq, said the quality of strategic leadership is often the deciding factor between success and failure on the battlefield as well as in the workplace. The first tenet of successful strategic leadership, he said, is to get the “big ideas” right.

“Strategic leadership involves a brutally honest analysis of your forces, the enemy forces, the physical terrain and geography (and more),” said Patraeus, adding that failing to properly analyze a situation inevitably leads to poor ideas and decisions. “When I was a two-star general at the beginning of the war in Iraq commanding the 101st Airborne Division, we didn’t understand that country sufficiently before we invaded it. And then we made it even more difficult by firing the bureaucrats that we actually needed to help us run a country we didn’t understand. That was a terrible, misguided decision.”

Petraeus also leveled criticism on U.S. leadership decisions associated with the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

“We probably have some Vietnam veterans in here, and I can tell you we failed you for 13 years, from 1955 until late 1968, because we didn’t craft the right big ideas. We didn’t get the strategy right. We tried to turn a small war into a big war to fight a war of attrition with North Vietnam that we could not win,” he said.

Shifting gears, he offered examples of how private industry entrepreneurs parlayed their “big ideas” into multimillion-dollar corporations, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Reed Hastings, who established the streaming service Netflix.

“They took something from small beginnings; remember Jeff Bezos used to pack boxes of books in his garage to become the biggest online retailer in the world. Reed Hastings is the same. His big idea to his stakeholders was to put movies in the hands of customers without (a) brick and mortar (location), and do it for less money than Blockbuster,” said Petraeus.

“His second big idea (was to) recognize that broadband speeds had increased to the point that he could offer streaming, and big idea number three was to decide to make his own (original series programming) content. His big idea number four was to decide to make major motion pictures and buy two motion picture studios.”

Transitioning back into comparisons between wartime and civilian business leadership, Petraeus credited the Iraqi revolt to poor U.S. administrative decisions from the top of the political hierarchy.

“We had a spotty record in Iraq and Afghanistan. We did some things really well, like toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, and then we did some things really stupidly like firing the entire Iraqi military without telling them how we were going to enable them to provide for their families. As a two-star commander responsible for Mosul and northern Iraq, it cut us off at the knees and created the seeds of the insurgency that then inflicted Iraq until the surge,” he said.

More recently, Petraeus continued, the U.S.’ decision to pull all troops from Afghanistan was another example of poor decision making and a failure to grasp the big idea behind conflict resolution for the nation. Even more importantly, the drawdown in Afghanistan served to signal Vladimir Putin that Ukraine could be Russia’s for the taking, according to Petraeus.

“If you know that if you leave (Afghanistan) it’s going to collapse, which we should have known, why don’t you just stay? We hadn’t lost a soldier in 18 months … instead we decided to pull out and they did collapse,” he said. “I suspect that that was a major factor with Vladimir Putin thinking ‘hey, if they won’t even support a country they’ve been in for 20 years, they’re sure as hell not going to support Ukraine if we have a blitzkrieg there.”

The latter part of the program was devoted to a Q&A led by Samford, during which Petraeus said the U.S. should be “doing everything we possibly can” to help Ukraine maintain its independence and liberate the territory claimed by Russia. As for the war between Israel and the extremist group Hamas in Gaza, Petraeus said the U.S. is correct in supporting Israel. He hopes to see a temporary ceasefire along with the crafting of a political vision for Gaza in the coming weeks and months.

Although the get-together was supposed to include a post-presentation book signing, it was canceled due to “security reasons” according to Angela Weck, PAWAC director. The books, which sold out at the event, were instead signed by Petraeus in advance of his presentation.