Major General Arthur Denaro CBE DL spent forty years as a British soldier. Born in Malaya and raised in County Donegal, he was commissioned into the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars in 1968, served as a young officer in the war in Dhofar in southern Oman alongside UK Special Forces, and commanded his regiment in the war to liberate Kuwait — leading the British division through sixteen kilometres of Iraqi minefield in the opening hours of the ground campaign. He was appointed OBE for the Gulf War in 1991 and CBE following his service in the former Yugoslavia, where he was Chief of Staff of some 44,000 multinational troops at the headquarters of the United Nations Protection Force.
He went on to become Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and until his retirement in 2003 was Middle East adviser to the UK Secretary of State for Defence. He was a trustee and council member of The Prince’s Trust from 2000 to 2008, adviser to the Crown Prince of Bahrain, and a senior adviser to the court of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and other governments in the Gulf. He formed an advisory board to the UK Ministry of Defence on Middle East issues which ran until 2020, and now works with Forward Thinking, a non-governmental organisation working in the UK and the Gulf-MENA region to resolve conflict through inclusive dialogue. He is an Extra Equerry to His Majesty The King and a retired Deputy Lieutenant for Herefordshire.
What emerges from a conversation with him is not the voice you might expect from a man who has spent a career in armoured warfare. It is a quietly insistent argument that war is a failure of communication, that the rules of warfare are not sentimentality but strategy, and that the most consequential lesson of his forty years came not from a battlefield victory but from a young Omani soldier who stood up in an ambush to say his prayers.
In this conversation, we spoke about the night before battle and the burden of choosing who leads, what politicians misunderstand about the use of force, the cruelty of the Balkans and the limits of peacekeeping, whether drones and robotics make war easier to enter, how conflicts actually end, and whether leadership can be taught or only refined.
He chairs an event at the Hereford Military History Festival, which runs in his home county from 25 to 27 September 2026.
Q: The starting point for me, because I was trying to think about learnings from your world that could be interesting or relevant to people who have never been in it, was that moment — the night before an operation, the night before a battle. Most people simply have never experienced that. As a leader, on that night, what goes through your mind? How do you make sense of what is about to happen?
[Arthur Denaro] Well, you are quite right to pick on it as one of the main issues for any leader, regardless of whether they have done it before or not. In my case, I had been into battle before, but on a much lower level, a much lower scale. But none of my soldiers had. None of them had been into battle.
We had sat out in that Saudi desert for about five months, working ourselves up, and frankly most of us never really expecting to have to go into war, because it was just madness on Saddam Hussein‘s part to take us on. He had demonstrated enough early on, and if he had negotiated carefully and pulled back, you know, he would not have suffered what he did suffer.
So from our point of view, it was, I suppose, a culmination that we had prepared for enormously well. We had huge self-confidence at that time as an army, I would suggest. Schwarzkopf was a great leader. We had Peter de la Billière running our thing, but also our outstanding divisional commander, Rupert Smith. And then Patrick Cordingley, who was our brigade commander, was also full of what we Irish Hussars really loved about a leader. He was a good communicator. He was fun, but he was also very professional. So we had real confidence in our leadership.
The other interesting thing was that we had huge confidence — or we felt the support — from the nation. And that was critical in this war. You asked me further on to tell you what lessons were learned. But anyway, the nation was behind us. Not just the nation: all over the world we were getting messages of support and goodwill from Irish people right across the piece. And that was very good for morale.
The other thing that was great for morale was that our whole system, our logistical system within the military, was working really well. We had not only been incredibly well supported and supplied by the logistics team, but we had also practised what we were going to do and trained very hard for it. So all these things made the crucial bit — going actually into battle, going through those sixteen kilometres of minefield in the right order, at the right time and with the right support — all that fell into place.
So as the boss, of course, I was so focused on it all. And anxious, of course — you know, it would have been foolish not to be. But I had had to make the difficult decision of who would lead my team, because we had been selected — the Irish had been selected — to lead the British division. And the British division was leading the whole of the American loop round to the west, and then in from the west. So it was critical that we did it well and got on with it.
For me, being selected to do that was in one way a considerable honour, but the other was that it was a real demanding task. I had to pick my best squadron, and that was difficult, because so often the best guy is the one you have become a great friend with. You knew his family, you knew he had kids and things like that. And I also knew that the lead team would be susceptible to the highest number of casualties. Talking it all through early on, they had been talking about twenty per cent casualties on the first day. A lot of guys. Actually, in this case, happily, there were not that many — but choosing the guy to lead into that was difficult.
Q: And from that decision-making, from that command chain, there is of course a political element to it too. You have worked with secretaries of state and with governments on when military force should be used, and you were in the unique position of also serving as a military officer. What do politicians misunderstand about war? And what do you try to impress upon them when they are talking about using force?
[Arthur Denaro] Yes, I saw that as one of your questions. A difficult one to answer, really, because of course politicians are different people, and some of them are brilliant, and some are less so. But at their level, war is the kind of win-or-lose issue. How it is done in detail is not their problem. And so in some ways it is easier for them, and in other ways it is much more difficult.
Interestingly, I have got to know John Major very well as a result of all this. Only a year or so ago I heard him speak at a book festival, where he reflected on his first few weeks as Prime Minister, when he came out to see us in the desert — because the changeover had happened whilst we were out there preparing to go in. And he came out, and he said, and he looked at us, and there was a tear in his eye. He looked at us, his soldiers out there, and realised that about seventy or eighty per cent of them were much the same age as his son. And he suddenly realised that, you know, if he was to deploy us, how many of us would be killed.
I was very touched when I heard him speak like that. And anyway, I have great respect for him, because although he was not a flamboyant leader, he had great, great integrity.
Others, dare I say it, barely listened to their military advisers. This was very much the case when I was the Middle East adviser before the second Gulf War. I always talk about our Gulf War as the war to liberate Kuwait, and I know we will come back to that in a moment — but the second Gulf War, and subsequently, as a result of bad decisions by politicians at the top end, we have left a shocking legacy in the Middle East.
Q: With that in mind, I remember when we talked about that liberation of Kuwait — exactly as you said at the top, there was very widespread public support. People saw it as the noble and right thing to do. But we have subsequently had decades of conflict and change in the region. Do you understand that original liberation of Kuwait differently today, seeing what has happened? And what do you think has been so different about the Middle East theatre, that means things have gone so off plan, for want of a better phrase?
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. I mean, it is a very important question, and it leads back to the whole issue of what I call just fighting — fighting in a just cause. And there was absolutely no question that the liberation of Kuwait was a just war, which is why we had international support, and why our families back at home were really almost proud that their kinsmen were out there fighting in a just cause. So different. So different from the next one.
By the time we went into the second Gulf War, I had been the Middle East adviser, advising strongly against it, and also bringing back from the Middle East — because that was part of my job — bringing back the vibes of those heading those Middle East countries, where there was absolutely no appetite for a war.
But I remember, as Colonel of the Regiment, going to see my lads going off into Iraq. And I was torn. What would I say? Because I knew that this was an illegal and unjust war, that was quite likely to lead to a lot of casualties on our side, and because there was no proper exit strategy. There were none of the critical issues that those of us who are experienced in this warfare business always maintain are the essential elements — which is why, of course, this latest Iran one is so crazy.
But going back, what I said to my soldiers was: listen, guys, just do your duty. Your duty is to serve our nation. Our nation has decided to go in. You have to go and do your duty. I would have been saying a considerably different thing if I had been talking to the Prime Minister at the time.
Q: If we look at a different type of conflict — and I know it is jumping across, but it feels relevant now — the Balkans, where you were Chief of Staff of 44,000 multinational troops in the former Yugoslavia. That was a part of the world that descended into the most extraordinary brutality, and relatively quickly. What did that teach you about the emergence of that kind of unrest and that kind of war, but also about how quickly what we would see as apparently civilised societies can break?
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. And to be honest, I am still puzzled and dismayed by that. I remember flying when I first arrived out there. It was midwinter and the snow was everywhere. But as we flew over the various little villages down in central Bosnia — perfect little villages — almost every other house had what I initially thought was a black roof. The others had snow on them. And the reason they had a black roof was because they had not got a roof at all. They had been burnt out. Every other house, almost.
I talked to various people about how families who had lived peacefully together, from the different sectarian groupings, who had in many cases intermarried, suddenly started tearing each other apart. And it is still unimaginable to me, all of that. Which made soldiering out there particularly difficult, because we had gone out there as United Nations troops. And that is absolutely right, in my view. I think the United Nations should intervene. If they are properly structured, trained and commanded, they should intervene more often in these conflicts, because they can, I believe, keep sides separate and allow time for political and diplomatic endeavours. And we come on to that later.
But going out there to try and keep a peace that did not exist was immensely difficult for my soldiers — particularly those who were witness to some of the worst atrocities. A lot of the British battalions faced these awful intersectarian, horrific forms of killing. I mean murder. Cruelty. I always say it was the cruellest war I have ever been involved in.
But it was important that we were there. And what we failed to do, despite my efforts, was to explain to the populations why we were there. They did not realise that we were trying to do our best to save them both. They just thought that we were interfering — and in many cases ineffectually, and in some cases corruptly. And keeping a handle, I think you mentioned it in one of your questions, keeping a handle on so many different troops from so many different nations was particularly difficult. Not least because I had a Russian brigade meant to be keeping the peace. Meant to be.
Q: That is an important point, actually, because from my lay research there were more than thirty nations in that group you were leading — different languages and cultures, very different military traditions, and also very different national interests. How, as a leader, do you create common purpose and trust amongst people who perhaps do not see the world the same way?
[Arthur Denaro] Yeah, I mean, well — I mean, it was immensely difficult. I mean, it was an incredible challenge, which I welcomed, but somehow, further up the line, you know, one was dismayed, because one was not getting the support that I needed. For example, you know, I tried to spread our message around both sides by leaflet drops and things like that. But that kind of idea was immediately discarded, because it was considered a psychological operation. Well, of course it was. It is just the wrong, the wrong word for it. It was not a psychological operation. It was good communication.
And of course, so many of these things, Vikas, come back to good communication. I spent most of my days there communicating with people, because apart from all these troops from different nations on the ground, each nation who supplied troops was entitled to supply somebody on the staff. And as quite a lot of them did not speak any English, that was a real challenge. But one got around it by just visiting, and talking, and laughing with them, you know, sharing their issues. It was a real challenge, but it was interesting, let us say.
Q: In your experience, how do conflicts finally approach resolution? Historically we have seen so many occasions where there comes a point at which you have to get across the table from the person you may regard as immoral or murderous, or who has done awful things to your own troops or nations. And it does seem often that this is an inevitable conclusion of war — with the exceptions of theatres like Rwanda, where in many ways they ran out of people to kill.
[Arthur Denaro] No, no — I mean, again, it is a really important point, and it is one that, yeah — almost every conflict I have been in has eventually been resolved by people talking to each other. And I think one has to start from the basis that — and it is a question you asked right at the end — the majority of people in this world do not want war.
The vast majority. And they do not want the worry of seeing their partner go off in the morning and not knowing whether they will come back. Of children going to school and worrying that they might be bombed. Of getting to the market themselves and never coming back. All these issues are things that the vast majority really do not want.
So if you start at that basis, then there is room for debate. Reconciliation is another topic — but there is room for debate, even with the hardest commanders. If they have any humanity in them, then they must know that their people want peace. Everybody wants peace. Everybody wants peace, you know. It is crazy, this war-torn world that we are in.
Q: It seems in many ways — and this is something that occurred to me as you were talking — that the human consequence of war is itself a deterrent to entering conflict. And I wonder whether the new theatres of conflict change that. We talk about cyber, about drone warfare where somebody sits in a shipping container in Vegas and drops something like a video game in the Middle East, about robotic warfare and autonomous and unmanned drones. Do they change the consequences? Because it feels as if it is removing a level of distance from conflict that maybe, dare I say, makes war seem more palatable or easier.
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. I mean, I have been watching it all with interest, of course, and with dismay. I mean, the robotics and the drones do in one way mean that it is safer for some elements of an army to fight, because they are not putting themselves in harm’s way. But as you say, that affects the nature of warfare.
And what is not really understood, as all these technocrats drive towards this high-tech war, is that actually, if you are fighting, you must presumably be fighting either to defend yourselves, or to attack and take ground from someone else. And the only way that you can actually secure ground is by having men — by having people on the ground. You know, in their tanks, or in their foxholes. The only real way to secure long-term ground is by having humans on it. And presumably that is what you fought for in the first place.
Actually, there is an interesting analogy. When I was a young officer fighting in the Oman, in Dhofar, with the SAS, our task was to help develop the civilian development of the country — which seems a curious thing to send fighting troops in to do. But what we had to do, and what we worked out was the best way, was that we would go out into enemy country and we would attack and secure a village. As soon as we had secured it, we confirmed that we would stay and be their security. We then brought in a drill to drill for water. We brought in a small shop. We brought in a medical setup. We even brought in vets to help them with their cattle and sheep and camels.
And once that had become established and became the status quo, then you could see that the enemy were sitting in a wadi, in a cave, with a Kalashnikov, whilst their mates were up on the jebel enjoying rather a nice life. Enjoying rather a nice life. I mean, that is a very simple chance, but that is exactly what we did.
Q: It also makes me think that in those theatres, and in the Middle East theatre in particular, there is an asymmetry of consideration of the rules of warfare. Allied troops broadly — and I think rightly so — will observe the general rules of warfare when engaging. But you are up against enemies, whether insurgents or other groups, who do not, or who will not, or who do not even know such rules exist, or who see death as a noble thing as opposed to a tragic thing. How, as a leader, do you deal with that asymmetry? It feels extremely complex, but also relatively new, because on my cursory reads of even the Second World War and onwards, in many of those conflicts at least both sides observed the basic rules of warfare.
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. I mean, it goes back to that point I made right at the beginning about just fighting. Because once you have got, say, the thumbs up that you are fighting in a just cause, then the next big question is — well, sorry, that gives us the right to fight. And the next question is: how do we fight?
And there are these rules of warfare. There are the rules of discrimination, of proportionality. There are the rules of, you know, the care for, and the respect for, the enemy if — you know, once captured. And actually, just as an aside, I remember right at the end of the Gulf War watching my soldiers caring for and medically treating the Iraqis, when only, you know, literally an hour before we had been trying to kill them. It all just seems so completely mad.
But the difficulty that you put your finger on is if you are — if one is fighting against people who simply do not obey those rules. And, you know, we have seen it. We have seen it in Ukraine. We have seen it, we see it all the time in Gaza. And it dismays all of us who sit back and say, you know what, what is happening? Because if these basic rules are ignored, then a kind of barbarity enters the equation. And that is — well, it is just appalling.
Q: I want to talk about leadership in a moment, but it feels an apt point to reflect a little philosophically on humanity, because I get the sense that even after four decades around war and politics, you still maintain a strong degree of faith in humanity. Has that come as a result of what war and leadership have taught you about humans, and about our basic needs and what we all want? Or is it something that has been instilled in you, to keep that faith? Because it must be very difficult.
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. I mean, the simple answer is yes, it has. And as I have grown, dare I say, wiser and more experienced, I realised that actually killing the enemy is not the best way of winning a war. You need to bring them over to your side, in one way or another. That is the lesson.
And just a small example was, again, fighting in the Oman, when I was lying with my own SAS guys, but also with a group of the young Omanis that we were training. And we had lain in an ambush for two days, and the enemy suddenly came into the killing area. And just before I gave the order to open fire, one of my young Arabs stood up and started saying his prayers. Of course the enemy saw this and ran. And of course the enemy saw this, and they ran. So, just mildly irritated, I shook him up and down by the throat, and I said, why did you do that? And he said: because one of them was my brother.
And literally two days later, that whole group surrendered and came in onto our side. And I realised — and it was such a good lesson, actually — that killing the enemy is half as effective as recruiting him.
I took this on into the Gulf War, when I was saying to my soldiers: we are going to hit them really hard as we go in, but as soon as they start to surrender, then we take their surrender and we deal with them very considerately. And some years later, you know — how did you, how did you, Schwarzkopf, win that war so quickly and convincingly? Well, because we did not kill too many people.
And I make the point that the army is designed to defend their nation. And if that involves going out to fight kind of outside your own boundaries, then, you know, that is a foreign and Commonwealth issue. But we are there to defend our nation. And soldiers do not like killing. You know, it is — yes, of course we are trained to do it. Trained to do it effectively and properly and professionally, if necessary — but far better to win and defend our country in a better way.
Q: I worry that some of the conflicts we have in the world now have almost crossed the point of no return. If I think about the world of the intensely studied Second World War, it took a nuclear bomb to make people realise this was all a bit silly and that we should probably talk. And I worry that the current conflicts in Ukraine, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in the African theatre will require something extremely silly to happen like that before people decide to talk.
[Arthur Denaro] Yes. Well, it is difficult to know just how awful that might be. I mean, maybe Mr Trump’s sanctions — I do not think so.
That whole business, actually, of bringing a halt to fighting and then seeking some form of reconciliation, which has to be part of a reconstruction — as you know, I am a bit involved in reconciliation, and I have always felt that. And of course my strong view is that if the fighting has been barbaric and the cruelty has been awful, then reconciliation is very, very difficult.
And people should recognise that — back into the just fighting bit — people should recognise, before they enter a conflict, that there has to be an end state. There has to be, first of all, an exit plan, which will depend on what your aims are in the first place. Because if you have not got any aims, it is difficult to see how to come out of it. But with a clear aim, and an understanding that life must be better afterwards. Otherwise you are fighting and losing so many people.
I mean, how can the Russians possibly think that things are going to be better after that invasion than they were before, which was pretty good? And there will be no reconciliation — never any reconciliation now between Russians and Ukrainians, in my view. Which is tragic, because they are two great countries.
Q: As a bit of a round-up, I wanted to come to leadership. You eventually became the Commandant at Sandhurst, which is probably the pre-eminent institution producing leaders. In your experience, can that true sense of leadership really be taught? Or are you refining qualities that are already there? And how do you ensure that rank and power do not distort judgement in the leaders you are creating?
[Arthur Denaro] Yeah, well, that is two separate issues there. So I will deal with the first one. The first one, which is, in my view, an easier one, although it is the constant question, is: are you born a leader, or can you develop into one? And my view, strongly held, is that there has to be a spark of leadership within somebody. Because, you know, an enormous number of people just do not want to lead. It is not in their makeup. And although they could be courageous — and I know you wanted to touch on that a bit — but although, you know, somebody who has no, no desire to lead can of course be, and is very often, a very courageous person.
The young person who comes to Sandhurst has been very carefully selected, through a pretty stringent selection system, tried and tested with time. And so when they arrive, they are desperately keen to become good at their job, because they know that within a year they could be leading soldiers into battle. So the answer is that I believe there has got to be that spark of leadership. And of course leadership is such a personal thing, and so different in so many ways from the next person along the line — but you take on board everything that we taught them.
I suppose a lot of it comes back to the values and standards that we would constantly stress at Sandhurst. I was quite often asked why we were training the despotic leaders of a foreign nation. And the answer, really, was that they were selected by the Foreign Office to come to us. But we hoped that they would leave Sandhurst with some of the values that a British soldier, a British officer, would have. So the values and standards are things that are really important, and they are constantly being stressed. So that is how we do that.
Now, your second question was: how do you stop somebody who is lucky enough to go to the top-ish from becoming an arrogant toff? Well, it is one of the Army Board’s great problems in selection. Because obviously generals have to be very sharp, very bright, very professional. But if they are overridingly conceited or arrogant, then their leadership is going to be flawed, in my view. And actually the system should have identified this on the way up.
So we do have a very strict confidential reporting system, and then boards that sit at every level to ensure — or to try to ensure — that somebody is, A, good enough, and B, well, I am not sure charismatic selection comes into it, but I do think it is important to have a touch of charisma. And, you know, there must not be an arrogance in it. And I mean, some of our great field marshals — Slim, Wavell, others — I mean, you know, they speak so well to the humble duty of leading our soldiers. So, so important.
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Major General Arthur Denaro is an Event Chair and Interviewer at the Hereford Military History Festival, which runs across Hereford from Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September 2026. He chairs Frank Gardner: Ballistic at St Peter’s Church on Friday 25 September at 7pm. The full programme and tickets are available online. More about his work in conflict resolution at Forward Thinking.
