In September 2021, a few weeks after the fall of Kabul, the Chief of the Defence Staff appeared on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show and said something unusual for a serving officer at the top of his profession. Asked whether military intelligence had been wrong about how quickly the Taliban would take Afghanistan, General Sir Nick Carter replied: "I think everybody got it wrong is the straight answer." He added: "It was the pace of it that surprised us and I don't think we realised quite what the Taliban were up to." The admission captured the moment at which Carter's career ended. He had served for 44 years, commanded on operations at every level from platoon to theatre, led the British Army through two defence reviews, and reached the summit as the professional head of all three armed forces. His final months in uniform were defined by the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country where he had spent more of his career than anywhere else, and by a warning he had been sounding for years: that the character of warfare was changing faster than Britain was adapting to it.
General Sir Nick Carter as Chief of the General Staff in 2018, shortly before he became Chief of the Defence Staff. Credit: Ministry of Defence, Open Government Licence via Wikimedia Commons.
Early life and commissioning
Nicholas Patrick Carter was born in Nairobi, in the Colony of Kenya, on 11 February 1959, the son of Gerald and Elspeth Carter. He was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He joined the Army in 1977, aged 18, and was commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets, a light infantry regiment, as a second lieutenant on 8 April 1978, initially on a short service commission. He was promoted to lieutenant on 8 April 1980, switched to a full career commission in 1982, and was promoted to captain on 8 October 1984.
His early regimental service took him to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, to Cyprus on United Nations peacekeeping duty, and to Germany with the British Army of the Rhine. He was promoted to major on 30 September 1991 and attended the Staff College at Camberley. He then commanded a company in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets, in 1992, and became military assistant to the Chief of the General Staff in 1994. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1996 New Year Honours, and joined the directing staff at the Staff College later that year. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 30 June 1996.
Battalion command in the Balkans
In 1998 Carter was appointed commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets. He deployed with the battalion to Bosnia in 1998 as part of the NATO Stabilisation Force, and to Kosovo in 1999 as part of the NATO Kosovo Force. For his service in Bosnia he was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service on 7 May 1999. He was advanced to Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 3 November 2000.
The Balkans were Carter's first experience of command on operations, and they shaped his thinking about the changing nature of conflict. The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo were not conventional wars between states. They involved peace enforcement, the protection of civilian populations, and the management of ethnic tensions under a NATO mandate. The skills they demanded, political awareness, restraint, and the ability to work alongside allies and civilian agencies, were ones Carter would draw on repeatedly in the decades that followed.
He was promoted to colonel on 31 December 2000 and advanced to Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 29 April 2003, following his service in Afghanistan. His first tour in Afghanistan was as Director of Plans within the US-led Combined Joint Task Force 180, the headquarters that directed the early stages of the campaign after the attacks of 11 September 2001. He then spent three months in the Cross Government Iraq Planning Unit before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Brigade command in Iraq
Carter was promoted to brigadier on 31 December 2003, and in 2004 he was given command of the 20th Armoured Brigade. He commanded British forces in Basra during a difficult period of the Iraq campaign, when the security situation was deteriorating and British troops were coming under sustained attack from militia groups. For his service in Iraq he was awarded a further Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service on 7 September 2004.
In 2006 he became Director of Army Resources and Plans at the Ministry of Defence, and on 1 February 2007 he was given the honorary appointment of Deputy Colonel of The Rifles, the successor regiment to the Royal Green Jackets, a post he held until 1 November 2009. He was promoted to major general on 23 January 2009 and became General Officer Commanding the 6th Division. The division was deployed to Afghanistan, with Carter as Commander of ISAF Regional Command South, based in Kandahar, during the surge of 2009 to 2010.
Regional Command South was one of the most demanding operational commands in the NATO mission. It covered six provinces, Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Daykundi and Nimruz, and at the height of the surge Carter commanded some 55,000 NATO troops, working under the overall command of the American general, David Petraeus. His task was to take the fight to the Taliban in their heartland while building the capacity of the Afghan security forces to take over. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in March 2011 for his service in Afghanistan.
Major General Nick Carter, commander of ISAF Regional Command South, at Forward Operating Base Wilson in Afghanistan on 21 September 2010. Credit: US Army photograph, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Architect of Army 2020
Carter became Director-General Land Warfare early in 2011. He was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed Commander Field Army in November 2011, the role being redesignated Deputy Commander Land Forces in January 2012. In that post he was the main architect of the Army 2020 concept, the restructuring of the British Army that followed the Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2010. He reported his recommendations in April 2012.
Army 2020 was the most significant reorganisation of the Army in a generation. It reduced the regular Army to around 82,000, integrated the reserves more closely into the force structure, and reorganised the Army into a Reaction Force and an Adaptable Force. The concept reflected Carter's belief that the Army had to become more flexible and more affordable, and that it had to be able to deploy quickly at a range of scales, from a small advisory team to a full division. Not all of Army 2020 survived contact with later reviews, and Carter's strong backing of the Strike Brigade concept in the Army 2020 Refine, with its emphasis on the Boxer armoured vehicle, was criticised by some as weakening the Army's heavy armoured capability. But the framework he designed shaped the Army's structure for the rest of the decade.
In September 2012 Carter returned to Afghanistan for his third tour, as Deputy Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, under the American general John R. Allen, and as the United Kingdom's national contingent commander, based in Kabul. In that role he led the transition process, working with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, to hand over security responsibility to the Afghan forces. He handed over his command at ISAF in July 2013 and became Commander Land Forces in November 2013.
He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 2014 New Year Honours. On 21 February 2014 it was announced that he would become Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army. He took up the post on 5 September 2014, succeeding General Sir Peter Wall, and was promoted to full general.
General Sir Nick Carter in 2018, photographed during a visit to the United States as Chief of the General Staff. Credit: US Army photograph, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Chief of the General Staff
As Chief of the General Staff from 2014 to 2018, Carter led the Army through the Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2015. The review confirmed the Army 2020 structure, committed the Army to a new warfighting division, and set out a programme of modernisation. Carter also oversaw the Army's contribution to the deterrence of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, with British troops deployed to Estonia as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence and to Poland as part of the United States-led battlegroup.
During his time as CGS, Carter became known for his emphasis on the changing character of warfare. He argued that the traditional distinctions between peace and war were breaking down, and that Britain's adversaries were increasingly operating below the threshold of conventional conflict, using cyber attacks, disinformation, economic pressure and proxy forces. He was awarded the United States Legion of Merit on 18 March 2016 for his services in Afghanistan.
Carter also drove cultural change within the Army. He instituted a programme of empowerment and maximising talent, and he made and won the case for legislation to be changed to open up all roles in the military to all people based on ability and potential rather than outdated notions of gender. For this work he was recognised by Business in the Community, which named him Gender Champion in 2017.
On 28 March 2018 it was announced that Carter would succeed Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach as Chief of the Defence Staff. He took up the post on 11 June 2018, becoming the professional head of all three armed forces and the principal military adviser to the Prime Minister, the National Security Council and the Secretary of State for Defence. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 2019 Birthday Honours.
Chief of the Defence Staff
As Chief of the Defence Staff from 2018 to 2021, Carter's central task was to set the vision for the future armed forces. He led the defence element of the Integrated Review, published in March 2021, which produced the largest uplift in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. The review was accompanied by the Defence Command Paper and by the Integrated Operating Concept, a document Carter regarded as essential to winning the argument for more resources, because it set out the conceptual basis for how the armed forces would fight in the future.
In his evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee in November 2021, Carter described the work that had been done under the Modernising Defence Programme. He explained that the armed forces had to become readier and more resilient, and that modernisation required difficult choices. The Integrated Review had adopted what he called a "sunset and sunrise" approach: taking capabilities such as the C-130 Hercules, the Puma helicopter, the Warrior infantry fighting vehicle and the Type 23 frigate out of service in order to create the headroom to invest in the capabilities of the future.
Carter's strategic warnings became sharper during his time as CDS. In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank in October 2020, he described Russia as an "acute threat" and China as a "chronic challenge". He warned that both countries were waging political warfare against the West, using cyber attacks, disinformation and mass surveillance, with the aim of winning without going to war, by breaking the West's willpower. He argued that Britain and its allies needed a "new Long Telegram", a reference to the strategy set out by the American diplomat George Kennan in 1946 for containing the Soviet Union. In his annual Chief of the Defence Staff Lecture, he said the way to win was to beat Russia and China at their own game, by competing below the threshold of war, escalating in the cyber dimension while toning down the posture in other dimensions.
He also oversaw the design of the Armed Forces' support to the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the deployment of military personnel to support testing, vaccination and logistics. In June 2021 he tested positive for COVID-19 himself.
Afghanistan: the final test
The defining event of Carter's time as CDS was the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. On 27 January 2021, at the NATO Chiefs of Defence meeting in Brussels, before President Biden had taken his decision, Carter told his fellow chiefs that the simple physics of withdrawal meant that NATO could not be out of Afghanistan in good order by 1 May, the date set in the Doha Agreement. He said that none of the military leaders could be content with the security situation on the ground, and that withdrawal under those circumstances would be perceived as a strategic victory for the Taliban. He advised that NATO should stay to buy time for a better political outcome.
The United States decided to withdraw by 31 August. Carter later told the Defence Committee that "we had to leave by 31 August because that was the deal that the Americans struck with the Taliban". The United Kingdom conducted detailed planning for an orderly withdrawal, and the drawdown of the majority of British forces was complete by July 2021. But the Taliban advance was far faster than anyone had predicted, and Kabul fell on 15 August. The United Kingdom then mounted Operation PITTING, the evacuation of more than 15,000 people from Kabul airport, including more than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members. Carter said he was proud of Operation PITTING, and that the evacuation had swung into motion very effectively.
In his appearance on the Andrew Marr Show in September 2021, Carter was asked whether military intelligence had been wrong. He replied that the government had received intelligence from a variety of sources, and that the central assessment had been that Kabul would fall, but not so quickly. "I think everybody got it wrong is the straight answer," he said. "Even the Taliban didn't expect things to change as quickly as they did." He denied that there had been a failure of military intelligence, but he did not disguise the scale of the surprise. "It was the pace of it that surprised us and I don't think we realised quite what the Taliban were up to."
The Defence Committee's report on the withdrawal, published in February 2023, noted that Carter had told the committee he did not believe the Government had ever had "a true understanding of the political dynamics on the ground" in Afghanistan. The Foreign Affairs Committee's report was more critical, describing the withdrawal as a disaster in terms of planning, execution and consequences. Carter's own position was that the decision to withdraw was a political one, taken in Washington, and that the British military had done its best within the constraints it was given.
Retirement and assessment
On 5 March 2021 the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, announced that Carter would be extended in post until the end of November 2021, to ensure continuity while the conclusions of the Integrated Review were implemented. He was succeeded as Chief of the Defence Staff by Admiral Sir Tony Radakin in November 2021, and he retired after 44 years of service.
In retirement, Carter became a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California from September 2022, a Strategic Counsellor at the Tony Blair Institute, and a member of the Atlantic Council's International Advisory Board. He has continued to speak and write about defence and security, warning that the world is entering an era of great power competition, that the United States is becoming more introspective and more focused on China, and that rapid technological change is blurring the traditional distinctions between peace and war, foreign and domestic policy, state and non-state actors, and the virtual and the real.
In his evidence to the Defence Committee in June 2023, two years after leaving office, Carter said that the security outlook was more complex and dangerous than at any time over the previous 30 years. He repeated his description of Russia as the acute threat and China as the chronic challenge, and he argued that the character of warfare was being brought sharply into focus, not just in Ukraine but more broadly.
General Sir Nick Carter's career spanned the whole of the post-Cold War era, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the withdrawal from Kabul. He commanded on operations at every level, from a company in the Royal Green Jackets to a NATO regional command of 55,000 troops, and he reached the top of his profession as the head of the British Army and then of all the armed forces. He was a moderniser who reshaped the Army's structure, a strategist who warned early about the changing character of warfare, and a commander who led British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. His final months in uniform were overshadowed by the fall of Kabul, an event he had warned might come too fast and which he admitted had surprised everyone, including the Taliban themselves. That admission, delivered on national television a few weeks after the evacuation, was characteristic of a soldier who had spent his career confronting difficult truths, and who understood that the first duty of a military leader is to tell it as it is.
Sources
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