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| Hertling |
His book for everyone, because nearly everyone understands and values the importance of trust. Hertling shares many personal lessons and beliefs, including this gem:
“…Over the years, I've come to believe one thing. That life and leadership are forged by one's character. And character is molded by experiences but defined by integrity, shared trust, enumerated values, honest humility, and different kinds of love.” Shared trust!
“Trust,” along with the other qualities he lists, is a foundation of core values and good leadership. Hertling saw the value of trust in 1990/1991 during the First Gulf War, when he helped kick Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of Kuwait.
Trust in Unity
“Looking back now at Desert Storm, I see how trust was the thread running through it all. At the unit level, trust was instinctive and immediate. We built it in our squadron, and President George H.W. Bush [Navy World War II Veteran, left*] generated it in our citizens. Chairman Powell and Secretary of Defense Cheney reinforced it in their conversations with politicians and the American people. We often didn't have the same in our later conflicts.
George H. W. Bush In combat, you cannot hedge or calculate trust—it must be whole.
On a Bradley or Abrams tank crew, drivers trust commanders to navigate through the night; gunners trust leaders to identify targets; wingmen trust each other to cover their flanks. Once proven, that trust became indestructible. That was what carried us through exhaustion, confusion, and chaos. Desert Storm also enjoyed broad trust at home:
Its objectives were clear, the coalition strong, the war short. That was due, at least in part, to the fact that Desert Storm was a quick war, and Americans like quick wars, with a lot of explosions shown on TV.
By contrast, trust would not be as stable during our later counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars. Soldiers in combat zones continued to trust what they could see: their buddies beside them, their leaders in the field, their sense of mission, and their practiced competency. But they couldn’t personally affect the shifting political calculations in Washington, the support of the citizenry of the country, or the intelligence that shaped actions. The disadvantages of long wars — counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism fights that took much longer to generate success-and the fleeting attention span of our citizenry caused a loss of interest in what the professional military force (less than 1 percent of our nation) was accomplishing. And the results of Operation Iraqi Freedom (and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) stretched that trust thin, often to the breaking point. The false intelligence about chemical weapons, the changing conditions and mission creep, and the president's advice to citizens to keep going to the malls contributed to that deterioration of interest and trust.”
Trust in Your Eyes and Ears
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed gratitude to the Sailors aboard the carrier, but claimed news reports detailing poor living conditions and mental health struggles on the carrier were false or distorted and “completely misrepresented.”
But after a visit to USS Abraham Lincoln, Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander, U.S. Central Command, who is the top U.S. commander in the war with Iran, said, “I applaud Lincoln’s leadership –– the senior enlisted leaders in the Chief Petty Officers Mess in particular –– for stepping up and making mental health and crew resilience a leadership priority.”
In the face of rising prices and Americans’ concerns about the economy, Trump –– who along with his family is making billions of dollars while in office –– said several weeks ago, “"I don't think about Americans' financial situation, I don't think about anybody.”
Opinion polls show most Americans hear that lack of care and so have a lack of trust.
Trust in ‘Johari’
In “If I Don’t Return,” Hertling refers to more than a dozen other thinkers and authors. One of those authors is emergency medicine physician Dr. Omayra Mansfield, who wrote ‘The Trust Transformation.’
"In her book, Dr. Mansfield relayed a core message that is simple but profound: Before you can build trust in others –– your patients, their families, your colleagues and leaders—you must first trust yourself. Leadership requires clarity of individual values, consistency of action, and authenticity of presence. She knows this is true in an emergency room, and I know it is true in a combat zone. It is something that must also remain true for citizens and policymakers. When trust is absent –– when leaders are inconsistent, opaque, or self-deceiving, and when employees or citizens don't feel a part of the team — trust quickly collapses.
Many of those who study trust often revert to a model called the ‘Johari Window.’ It's a rhetorical tool used to explain self-awareness and trust between individuals. In combat, soldiers operate almost entirely in the ‘open quadrant’ of that theoretical window — we depend on what we know about each other, gained from close connection, shared hardship, and repetitive experiences that all lead toward trust. There are no illusions about fear, courage, or capabilities. But in other groups— larger teams in different situations — the Johari Window posits that participants often exist in the ‘hidden’ or ‘blind’ quadrants. Some individuals often withhold their full motives (hidden), fail to see their own limitations (blind), or are misled by information that is just not true.
The result is a breakdown in trust … I’m convinced that trust is the building block of relationships, leadership ... and life. Trust is gained in myriad ways, and, as I once heard someone say, trust is earned in drops but lost in buckets. Trust is relatively easy to build in small teams, if one knows what it takes to build it. But it is much harder to sustain when hidden motives, blind spots, egos, and personal agendas that are often present in larger teams enter the equation.
Interestingly, military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz described something similar in broader terms for warfare. He wrote of war as a paradoxical ‘trinity’ — a balance of passion, chance, and reason — that found its practical expression in the relationship between the government, its army, and its people. Each had to trust the other. Citizens had to believe their government's cause was just. Armies had to believe their political leaders would use their sacrifices wisely. And governments had to trust their soldiers to execute with discipline and competence. If one leg of that triangle fails or is even oft kilter, if confidence collapses, the nation that goes to war will suffer significant consequences. Ukraine's resistance to Russias invasion in 2022 illustrated this perfectly: Ukraine's people trusted their government, its army trusted both the people and their leaders, and the government trusted the army enough to unleash it with broad support. That synergy sustained Ukraine when the odds seemed impossible. Trust, in that sense, is not just personal — it is strategic.
As a nation — as a government, as citizens, and as an army — we were successful in building the trust needed to execute Desert Storm inside our units, between the government and the people, and between the people and the army. But during later wars, we found ourselves in a place where no military leader, and certainly no government, wants to be. Despite tough fighting by courageous soldiers, competent diplomacy of the State Department, and the desire of governmental officials to achieve stated goals, three of the other wars — Vietnam, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom — were failures. In my view, a big part of the reason boiled down to an unbalanced Clausewitzian triangle. A lack of trust.
To me, the lesson is simple. Trust is critical between people, between the citizenry of a nation and its government, and between governmental officials and their army. Find ways to build trust — improve communication, eliminate misinformation, define the mission, maintain humility, ensure competency and integrity, create understanding — and it will bring you closer to success. All seemingly easy, but to paraphrase Clausewitz, the simplest things are often the most difficult.”
Trust in Truth
Hertling writes, “What I learned from both Iraq and Ukraine is that opportunism thrives in the vacuum left by failed institutions. People who have no faith that their government will provide food, water, fuel, or security will take matters into their own hands.”
In the United States, great social change has been brought about both violently (the Civil War) and nonviolently (FDR’s New Deal after the Great Depression). MLK’s Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s achieved integration and LBJ’s Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act through a non-violent strategy but with violent repercussions
Hertling warns:
“In America, we've seen moments when institutions faltered and riots turned cities into places of fear and lawlessness. In those moments, ordinary people are swept up in mob behavior that tears at the fabric of community and civility.
The lesson is stark: Without trusted institutions, the human condition bends toward chaos. Leaders — whether military or civilian — must not only prepare to confront that chaos but also work tirelessly to prevent it by ensuring their people are cared for, protected, and respected. A government that cares for its people will always be more resilient than one that leaves them desperate.”
On a hopeful note, he writes, “… Chaos, if left unchecked, will consume everything. But with strong leadership, institutions built on trust, and the kind of professionalism modeled by leaders like Henadii Vorobiov in Ukraine, and later Barham Salih in Iraq, societies can resist the pull of opportunism and corruption and instead move toward stability and hope for the future.”
Trust in Communication
Hertling’s life’s path has led him into public affairs and journalism as a national security analyst. Again, “trust” is at the ore of communication with the public.
While serving in Iraq again in 2003 as an assistant division commander in the 1st Armored Division, his commanding general, Marty Dempsey, directed him to communicate with three distinct audiences in three very different ways. Above all, to do so with honesty and integrity, especially when communicating with the American people. Hertling received this directive: “Expand information operations, public affairs, and command information.”
“At the time, those three terms had distinct doctrinal meanings. Information operations referred to the full spectrum of activities designed to influence our enemies and protect our own decision-making. IO consisted of psychological operations, electronic warfare, deception, and information security. Public affairs was the communication of facts to the public, usually through the media, and it focused on telling the army's story truthfully and effectively. We were not allowed to use information operations against journalists. Finally, command information referred to internal communication within the force: that is, messaging that kept soldiers, families, and the army community informed so rumors didn't fill gaps.
Dempsey understood something few others did: In modern conflict, these three were interconnected. If we wanted to stabilize Iraq, we couldn't just fight insurgents; we had to protect information from the enemy, but we also had to win narratives, build trust, and tell the truth.”
Telling the truth is the foundation of building trust. And trust is, again, “earned in drops but lost in buckets.” The three pillars of communication may be interconnected, but they must be distinct to their audience. That’s why public affairs interaction to the public or internal communication with troops must never include lies or disinformation of “information operations,” strictly used against bonafide enemies. And the media are not "enemies of the people."
In 2026, we are right to demand leaders of good character who tell the truth and build trust.
[This is the second in a three-part series of reviews of this important book.]
*Former President George H.W. Bush departs the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Jan. 8, 2009. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joel S. Kolodziejczak)
Tank photo: BAGHDAD, Iraq An M1 Abrams Tank from B Company 1st Battalion 37th Infantry, attached to 1st Battalion,, 36th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division as part of Task Force 1/36 maintains perimeter security inside a traffic circle in the Rusafa district of Baghdad, April 2004. (Cpl. Benjamin Cossel)
