← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
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- [01:01]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Parker from the Bulwark, joined as always by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. This is Command Post on the Bulwark takes feed. Thanks for watching. We're addressing some breaking news. That's why we delayed starting a little bit because President Trump just finished up a interesting press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ankara for the NATO summit. We have to talk about Iran. We have to talk about the fact that we're at war. Again, question mark. But it's all related because there doesn't seem to be anyone at home upstairs, if you know what I mean. So yesterday, the United States Central Command announced the resumption of strikes on Iran. The Memorandum of Understanding. The ceasefire seems to be falling apart. General, I want to. I want to get your take on how we should understand what's going on because I really don't. But first, I think we owe it to the President to hear his explanation. So if we can play their scum. Mr. Producer, thank you.
- [02:06]
Donald Trump
It's a very interesting question to me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner but they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars.
- [02:42]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
General, is that clear strategic direction?
- [02:45]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
It is not, because I don't know what it's over means. Does that mean it's over in negotiations? Is the war over? Are we not going to deal with them anymore? Are we just going to destroy them because they're, quote, unquote, scum? It isn't an objective or an end state that I can parse together. It was just a very interesting press conference. And I watched most of it.
- [03:12]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
I. That was. Yeah, that it was. That wasn't even his press conference. As Zelensky, we should say. I think he said that yesterday. So he's just been on a. Been on a real tear so far in Ankara. I mentioned this when I was on the live stream with Bill Crystal yesterday. Our colleague that I've been rereading Churchill's history of World War II, and one of the things he points out in the first volume, which is all sort of the lead up to the war, the decade or so leading up, is that. Oh, sorry, I'm getting a correction. This is all from today. I'm sorry, this is all from today. He's really been on a chair today in Ankara. One of the things Churchill points out is that one of the things he wanted the British government to do before he was Prime Minister was be clear with the British public about what the danger was from Nazi Germany and say. And this is what Churchill ended up saying, like, there's a big task in front of us and it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun, but we have to do it because it's important, which is really, like most of a president's power. Right? It was the famous political scientist, I forget who, Hofstadter maybe, who said, the president's power is just the power to persuade at the end of the day. And we can play, well, not play this whole thing because it's kind of long, but we can play negotiations done. And hear what our president is saying to the American people, to the Iranian people, to the Iranian leaders and to the world. Let's play negotiations and that talks with
- [04:27]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Iran will not resume.
- [04:28]
Donald Trump
I don't care. They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys. I do it my whole life. That's all I do is deals. My whole life is. That's how I became president. I guess That's a deal, too, right?
- [04:39]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Interesting theory.
- [04:40]
Donald Trump
I made a lot of money. I had a lot of great success. Tremendous success. Everything I did, I was successful. And I deal with these guys and I say, this is from a different school. They're liars, they're cheats. They're sick people. They've hurt their people. They killed 54,000 people as of now that were protesting. You know when people say, how come they haven't taken over? They can't take over because they're dead. They killed them. Nobody's going to take over. They have no guns, and the other side has machine guns and they're killing them. The press doesn't report it, but they're bad people. They're bad people. And frankly, I don't want to waste my time with them. Now, I'll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don't see it. I don't like these people. You know that,
- [05:32]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
General, if you were the commander of CENTCOM and you heard that, what are you supposed to do about that? Or even if you're the National Security advisor or an American ambassador or an American ally, what do you make of that?
- [05:44]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
You know, the key whenever you go to war is understanding your enemy. President Trump has put all Iranians in the scum category, or he's at least put their government in the scum category. If you don't understand the culture, the dynamics, the history of the country, what they're trying to do. Going back to your commentary about influence, that's the key element of leadership, is it's not just your attributes and your competencies and the context you're placed into, but how do you influence other people to do what you'd like them to do? It's called leading up, leading sideways, leading down. To just wipe your hands and say, they've been our enemies for 47 years, but which the President has repeatedly done. Guess what? We have been their enemies for 47 years and more because we were the ones that led to a coup that occurred in Iran during the revolution. We have been attacking them for 47 years. So both sides have kind of. Yeah. As a military leader, you look at this, what are our powers? What are the powers of the nation that we're fighting? And. And I think Iran is using them quite accurately, because I'm going to go back to something else, Ben. We've had an MOU on the table that was supposed to be negotiated within two weeks. It is long past that two weeks now. There have been almost no negotiations that I can see have happened in terms of what the further talks would be. And as I said once, once before on command post. And MOU is sort of like the agenda items for a business meeting. That's your start point of what you're going to talk about and how you're going to address the issues. We haven't even gotten to that point yet, and we haven't seen any updates either in the media or from the White House or from the State Department or the Pentagon in terms of what has happened. We know Jerry Kushner and Steve Witkoff are over there. I don't know if Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is involved, don't know if the Defense Department is involved. Other than providing kinetic operations in the Gulf. We seem to think that the strait was going to be open soon. There were no indicators that there's been any negotiations of how to open those straits, whether we're using the northern side, which is the Iranian side, or the southern side, which is the Omani side, or the center, which is allegedly mine. Still, you know, I'm looking not only at national media, but at international media and Middle east media, and there is complete confusion about what has happened in the last couple weeks since the announcement of the mou. That certainly doesn't lead to any kind of process. So one might say, and I'll end it here, Ben, that's a long diatribe by me. One might say when ships started to try and bridge the Strait of Hormuz yesterday and they were fired upon by the Iranians, that's because one of the issues is transit of the Strait, and that has not been resolved yet. So it looks like these ships were trying to make a break for it. And Iran said, no, we haven't decided on that yet. So we're still at war. And oh, one more thing.
- [09:12]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah.
- [09:12]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
The president, on multiple occasions during this NATO conference has said, we are not at war. He has used the term military operations. This morning he used the term, is
- [09:24]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
it a special military operation?
- [09:26]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, that's what I thought. No, he didn't say special. He just said, it's not a war, it's a military operations. Then he said, what it's really all about is denuclearization. And that's the first time I've heard him say that, although allegedly he has said that before. So why are we getting upset when ships are moving through the strait? Well, that's because they haven't been addressed yet. To get to the point when you're talking about denuclearization so, Ben, this thing, as you and I have talked multiple times before, has been just chaotic and dysfunctional from the beginning, and it's not getting any better.
- [10:04]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. I. If I can. If I may. If I may. Before we do our last clip on Iran, I want to take a little bit of a victory lap, because on the first day of this war, February 28th, I think it was, when we started bombing, I wrote an article for the Bulborg in which I asked three major questions about the war. And one of them concerned how the nuclear issue fit into the larger issues in the war. What are our goals were, what the reasons for the war were? Basically our war aims. And I pointed out that in the case of Iraq, the nuclear issue sort of overwhelmed everything else, and people had trouble, partially because of the way the administration sold the war, partially because nuclear weapons sort of have such a, you know, powerful psychic imprint on people. Rightly so.
- [11:00]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
If I. If I may, Ben, you said Iraq. You meant Iran, I think.
- [11:02]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
No, no, I meant Iraq. I meant Iraq. Like. Yeah, yeah, Sor.
- [11:06]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry.
- [11:07]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
The. The nuclear issue in Iraq became so dominant that when there weren't nuclear weapons, all the other reasons that the administration internally had listed for the war were just gone. Like, you know, the fact that Saddam Hussein was a, you know, habitual menace and was invading his neighbors and was a huge problem. All this stuff, people got focused on the nuclear issue. That is happening now in reverse.
- [11:29]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [11:30]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
We started out with this whole list of war aims for Iran. We wanted them to. We wanted a regime change, or we wanted a regime transition, or we wanted them to respect the rights of their people, or we wanted their army and they're sorry their Navy and air Force destroyed one of them.
- [11:44]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Control their proxies. Control their proxies.
- [11:47]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Exactly the proxies. And now Trump has gone back to. Well, you know, of course, it's always really about nuclear weapons, which, if it were really about nuclear weapons, why didn't we just do Midnight Hammer Version 2? Why did. Why are we not striking the nuclear sites?
- [12:02]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Why?
- [12:02]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
You know, we've gotten ourselves into such a huge mess because we didn't have clear war aims. And Trump is leaning on this nuclear weapons thing because it has such a strong psychic impression on people and causes you to ignore everything else. That's my theory.
- [12:14]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And what's interesting about that is he. He brought up in today's press conference the pallets of cash again.
- [12:26]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Oh, yeah.
- [12:26]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
That were delivered as a result of the jcpoa. There are no indicators there was any pallets of cash, banks being raped of all their money in Maryland. And, you know, it's just a ludicrous commentary, but it gets back to the point of there was the first element of a nuclear deal under JCOOPOA, which Trump purposely tore up. Don't want to go back to that. But that is the case.
- [12:57]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, no, I think that's right. So I said we'd only have one more clip, but then our trumpet producer, Matt found something that Trump just said in his meeting with the President of Syria. So let's play that one. You just added, Matt, about nuclear material.
- [13:15]
Donald Trump
Yes, yes, ma'. Am.
- [13:16]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
You said that dealing with the Iranians is a waste of time.
- [13:19]
Donald Trump
How do you plan to get the
- [13:20]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
nuclear material and the nuclear assurances that you want?
- [13:23]
Donald Trump
Well, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground, nobody's going to be able to get it except us because we have the equipment that can get it. But I call it the nuclear dust. The nuclear material is so far down underneath the mountain. And now that's been determined that it would take massive machinery that we have that no other country has.
- [13:47]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
So you have no plans to go
- [13:48]
Donald Trump
in boots on the ground? Why would I go in now? I go in when they're completely. Either.
- [13:56]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
So it's just looking at our faces there on the camera. So, so it's. We, we have to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, but they can't get a nuclear weapon because only we could access their nuclear material. So it's very important that we keep bombing things that are at their nuclear sites to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon that they can't get. Do I have that right?
- [14:16]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
You do. And it, and now that you've kind of summarized it, Ben, it all makes sense to me completely. I, I'm, I now understand the war aims. This is the kind of thing we continue to hear. And because the president, God bless him, can't stop talking and can't stop giving the kind of off the cuff answers that make no sense. It's only confounding the issues. And I wish, God help us, I wish they would show the faces of, of Secretary Rubio, Besant, Witkoff, Cush, everybody else that's with them, because I think their faces would mirror what your face and my face just look like if they did.
- [15:01]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, we got one more short clip here. And this is the one I really, I really want to get your reaction to. Because. Is this an order? Let's play the big attack clip and see is this is. If this is an operational order from the President, be
- [15:17]
Donald Trump
a big attack and it'll knock out a lot of stuff. We don't knock out nothing. We knock out a lot.
- [15:28]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Okay, I'm glad they showed Zelensky's face on that, because this is a wartime president who understands another country coming into his country and knocking out a lot of stuff. So, yeah, from a military perspective, Ben, there would have to be a whole lot of war gaming and plans development to determine what knocking out a lot of stuff means. And then you have to go back to the commander with his commander's intent of knocking out a lot of stuff and saying, is this what you wanted us to do, or do you want us to do something different or. And truthfully, you know, the President said also in the conference this morning that he was a military history expert and he knows more about the history of warfare than anyone else. So if that's the case, then I'm sure he could give, after those course of actions are developed, a whole lot more precise guidance to his military commanders.
- [16:31]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. I just wanted to. Before we move on to other things the President has said recently, I just wanted to mention that there was one quote from an anonymous administration official that I saw circulating that really sort of set my hair on fire. And it was, and I know this is going to bother you, too, he said, the Iranians clearly aren't listening, so we're turning up the volume. They're not getting the message. So we're turning up the volume and you know, do you want to play a game? Let's play a game. The game is called you can't win. And you have to guess what the right answer is. Okay. The case is I am the American President and I am ordering the Air Force to bomb more things so that the enemy gets the message. Now, am I Truman or Eisenhower during the Korean War? Am I LBJ and Nixon during Vietnam? Am I Trump in Iran or am I Putin in Ukraine?
- [17:33]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I think we have all of the above, potentially.
- [17:36]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Ah, you did win. You won. You can't win. And the answer is, none of those were victories, bombs and messages, but all
- [17:44]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
of them were the approach.
- [17:45]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, that's right. It is so maddening that these people are like, ah, we're sending them a message with these. You can't send a message with a bomb. You can destroy things with a bomb, but a bomb doesn't have words.
- [17:57]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
The point of all this is that warfare always ends in some type of diplomatic action. What makes this case even more dysfunctional is the fact that there has been the admittance by many that these actions have depleted to a degree, and I don't know what the degree is, I have no access to the information. Complete depleted the ammunition stockpiles of the United States military to the point where one combatant commander, the one in Pacific Command basically said we no longer, we are very concerned about our capability to execute contingencies against other regions. That in and of itself is a blinding flash of the obvious that something's going wrong. So if you continue these massive attacks like they've never seen before, or if you bomb them into the Stone Age, or to put it in the President's word, or the administrative official, administration officials, words of turning up the volume, you're just going to waste more stuff. And it hasn't worked so far. And in fact, it's only compounding the issues inside of Iran.
- [19:13]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
I can, I totally agree. We're trying more of the same because we're out of ideas, as I keep saying. As you keep saying. And it's not working. I'm going to take about two minutes here to calm myself down, maybe get a drink of water. And while I do that, we have a message from a sponsor brought to
- [19:31]
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- [21:41]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
okay, General, we wanted to be serious about what's going on in the war with Iran, but I don't think we've done quite a good enough job of explaining just how unserious the President sounded. So we have to start before we move on to how he talked about Ukraine and NATO and Russia. We have to start with this clip of President Trump mentioning a country that doesn't exist.
- [22:03]
Donald Trump
Yesterday we had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of, of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier.
- [22:13]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
I'm sorry, the what? The what? The Islamic Republic of Japan.
- [22:22]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I think everyone who is ever on film or in this age of social media has at least one flub like that, but that's a pretty big one. I once said something that has come back in 2016, when which every time I make a comment and a lot on the right don't like it, they bring a film club up that I was in that I apologized for. I went on CNN and said I made a mistake in a comment. But yeah, the Islamic Republic of Japan. That's a, that's a pretty interesting one.
- [22:58]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
That's a pretty interesting one. No, I agree people can mess up their words, but really, if you don't watch the full video, we're trying to play, you know, fuller clips here so you can understand if you didn't watch the full press conference, what the president sounds like and he does not. Well, how about this? Let's just play drones in Moscow and we can hear the president talking about the Ukrainian deep strike campaign in their war with Russia. So let's just play that.
- [23:25]
Donald Trump
And listen, Putin said, I would love to meet in Moscow. And I said, I don't think, you know, I have to put myself in this position. I don't know that he'd go to Moscow. Maybe he would. Would you go to Moscow? It's difficult.
- [23:40]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there.
- [23:42]
Donald Trump
That's right. That.
- [23:49]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Matt, that is world class trolling right there. That, that's world class. And it kind of shows that Zelensky now has a bunch of cards. At one time, he may not have had cards, or according to some. He may not have had cards. He's got a bunch of cards. And I got to tell you, that was a great comment on his part.
- [24:08]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah. It. The difference between how sharp and like on it and you know, I thinking fast Zelinsky is versus well, how about this? Let's play, let's play the Abraham clip and listen to President.
- [24:29]
Donald Trump
We'd have great protection. I love the protection.
- [24:32]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
He's talking about air defense.
- [24:35]
Donald Trump
You'd never be hit. As an example in Kiev where they get hit with missiles. Those missiles, like what I said about the Abraham Lincoln, the missiles would be shot down. And I think you start making them pretty quickly. Right? You like the idea? No, no, I think everybody likes.
- [24:55]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
So he's talking here about Patriot missile batteries, which one Ukraine does have some of. But they are desperate for more interceptors because the Patriot is the only system, basically, they can shoot down some of the most advanced Russian ballistic missiles. And they've been desperate for these interceptors and have not been receiving them from the American government. So now Trump is saying, oh, well, if you had Patriot interceptors, you could shoot down anything. Right. And he's saying this to Zelensky like, if only you had Patriots. Ukrainians are livid that we used more Patriot interceptors in the first four weeks of the war in Iran than they've used in four years of war with Russia.
- [25:30]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, here's. Here's the other thing. And this is where I'll get into my military geekiness. The president in that clip or right after that clip as I was watching it, talked about the USS Abraham Lincoln and how they were attacked by over 100 drones and missiles in one night and they shot them all down. Well, the Abraham Lincoln is about a 1 square mile circumference target in the middle of an ocean, and it has multiple air defense systems on board. It's protecting the carrier. That's what it does. The nation of Ukraine is the size of the state of Texas, which means they're not a point target. The President mentioned Kiev, not Kiev and how it was being attacked. Well, 100 drones against the USS Abraham Lincoln compared to, oh, I don't know, the launching of anywhere from 4 to 800 drones per day at different targets inside the area of Ukraine is a whole lot more, it's a whole lot more, more difficult to defend. So again, the President, who's the expert at warfare, doesn't understand the difference between an aircraft carrier versus a nation protecting civilian infrastructure where you can't put air defense everywhere. And your point about what Ukraine has received, the other point the President made today, which was a complete surprise right after that pitch, he said a little birdie, his term, not mine, had told him that they were going to issue Ukraine the ability to build Patriot factory, Patriot factories inside of Ukraine to help them with their Patriot missiles. Now I would say if the first brick of that factory is laid today, it's probably going to be at least a year before the first Patriot comes out of that factory, at least. And that would also be an interesting intelligence dynamic for the Russian Republic hearing that we're now going to let Raytheon start building Patriot missiles inside of Ukraine. I think Raytheon is the manufacturer of Patriots. I think so. All of these things that come out in these kind of press conferences are just things that you don't want to say in public. But again, I go back to the point that the President can't help himself.
- [28:01]
Ben (Sponsor/Ad Host)
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- [28:32]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
just going to go ahead and quote Churchill again real quick because things may have changed. I'm not an expert on the defense industry, but he's talking about the late 1930s when Britain was finally preparing for war, finally thinking, oh no, we might have to fight again. And it's years behind the German rearmament. And he says munitions production is a four year process. In the first year you get nothing. In the second year you get a very little. In the third year you get a lot. And in the fourth year you get a flood. And Ukraine has already been four years since the full scale invasion. So they've already been fighting the full Scale high intensity war for four years. And before that, the original Russian invasion was in 2014. So it's been a long time and we're finally getting around to like, hey, maybe we should help you build the weapons you need. It's, it's infuriating. I'd also like to point out before we, before we play our last clip and then we, I want to do a lightning round at the end because you've written some really interesting articles for the Bulwark that I want to get your, your, your, some more of your thoughts on. But before we do that, before we play this next clip, I want to remind everyone how many times Donald Trump said he's running for president. The second time, I will end the war in Ukraine. I'll do it in my first year. I'll do it in my first 100 days. I'll do it on day one. We're going to end the war. We're going to make peace. I can do it. Only I can do it. He repeated it over and over and over again, and now he has completely lost interest. So let's play Secret Service and hear how he talks about the war in Ukraine. Will you go to Ukraine?
- [30:02]
Donald Trump
I would, yeah.
- [30:03]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Do you have any deadline when you want to reach?
- [30:05]
Donald Trump
I'd rather have the war be over. Do you have any Secret. Secret Service would be thrilled. And I mean, like Kiev. It would be nice to get it before any more damage is done, to be honest. It's such a beautiful city. Right. And yeah, I would go to Ukraine at the right time.
- [30:32]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah.
- [30:32]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
I'd like the war to be over. Correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't Joe Biden go to Ukraine?
- [30:37]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
He did.
- [30:39]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
You know, I'm not sure I would have bet on Joe Biden having more physical courage than Donald Trump in a situation like this, but I can't say I'm not surprised.
- [30:51]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, it was an unfortunate statement about saying the Secret Service wouldn't want me to go there because the Secret Service will make plans for a president to go anywhere. And as you said, President Biden did go to Ukraine on a very tenuous journey. Truthfully, back in the day when you had to take a train from Poland across the country as opposed to landing in one of their airports. Yeah, it, it. Ben, I'm at a loss on some of the things. I think you've summed it up by saying that the, the reason the President is talking about this is because he's meeting with Zelensky. Other than that, he has lost interest in a partner not an ally of the nation of Ukraine, fighting for their territorial sovereignty, their. Their democracy, even though they are still partially flawed in some of their. Their government activities. No doubt about it, a military that has been fighting with huge courage over the last four years, actually the last 12 years, since 2014, and the fact that Russia, who is on one side of this equation, continues to execute war crimes at the highest level, which they've been doing since day one, killing, targeting civilians, targeting civilian facilities, hospitals, churches, playhouses. It is just amazing to me that, that our values as a nation show through in not, first of all, offering Ukraine as much assistance as we can possibly give them. And secondly, the fact that he is treating Iran like scum. His word, not mine. That is not how you conduct international relations, even with enemies that you don't care for. I'll harken back the fact that, you know, wars in the past have shown that we fought against the Germans and the Italians in World War II. They are now some of our closest allies. We fought against Vietnam for over 10 years. They are now an ally in the Asia Pacific region. We can look down the list of every single nation we've conducted warfare against and say they, most of them are now our friends right now. Iraq, I mean, we invaded Iraq twice, and now they have established close to a fragile democratic republic. And yet we're still calling nations scum and using those kinds of terms. And with nations that are like, partners, we're not helping them as much as we should.
- [33:38]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
You know, we had a.
- [33:40]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Sorry for getting too philosophical there, but. No, no, that's a great point. Some thoughts from a soldier.
- [33:45]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
And look, we had a. We had a. We had an opportunity. When it became clear that Ukraine was not going to lose the war and certainly not going to lose it quickly. Back in 2022, 2023, we had a choice to make a new great ally or to make an enemy. And for a while, the Ukrainians thought, like, oh, yeah, the United States is great. They're helping us. They're helping us. And we were. But never quite as fast as they wanted, never quite as much as they needed. And they started to get the feeling during the Biden administration that, like, yeah, you're going to help us not lose. You're not interested in helping us win. You're not interested in helping us stop the slaughter. You're interested in sort of, kind of just not making Putin too angry, like. And the Trump administration has been even worse because of the way Trump cut off intelligence sharing, cut off a lot of aid. So I should Say, temporarily cut off intelligence sharing, cut off a lot of aid. And the way he just talks about Putin and talks about Ukraine as if they are morally equal. And this is a big part of how we're making enemies. You can see the way the Ukrainians behave towards the United States now, which is kind of like, yeah, thanks for what you did. But, like, yeah, we're not going to trust you and the rest of Europe, too. It's a big part of why our relationship with the rest of Europe has soured so much is that we didn't decide to be a. We decided not to be a good friend. And, you know, I'm, I am not of the belief that things can't be improved, but it's going to take a lot of time, it will take generations and huge amounts of investment and sacrifice to rebuild the kind of trust and to win back the kind of allies that we did.
- [35:20]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well. And yeah, if I can comment on two things related to that. First of all, Ukraine, having spent a lot of time there during my time in uniform, they, they wanted an entire army and an entire air force. And, and the nations of the world to include the United States, were stepping up as best they could, but they could not provide multiple cores of tanks, multiple squadrons of aircraft in exactly the timeframe that you were talking about. Yes. Now, though, I mean, if there is the ideology and the dynamics of we want to withdraw from NATO to a degree, but we still want to support the rest of the NATO nations, the European nations that are supporting Ukraine, and there are certainly most of them want to support Ukraine in this fight because they know they could be in the crosshairs next. We're not even doing that. I mean, we are almost trying to conduct a divorce and leave the children to, you know, the Europeans and not even pay child support in that case, I'll use that analogy. So that's number one. And we are becoming a little bit of a pariah in Europe. And I have talked to former government officials that I used to deal with and former military officials I used to deal with throughout the continent of the 49 nations that are there. And they all are confused about what the democracy on a hill is now doing. Europe thing two, let's transfer over to Iran now that we've noted how countries in Europe feel about us. And, and by the way, you could tell that in the NATO conference, because the NATO ministers were avoiding President Trump. You look at any of the photo ops, and they were staying away from him. They didn't want to be trapped in a conversation with him because they know they get beat up at that point, he's beaten up others. Okay, now let's transfer to Iran. The Iranian doctrine that they have post hoisted on their proxies is to trade space for time because messaging will eventually make your enemy, Israel and the United States a pariah on the world stage because they will do things that go against their values and their ideologies. We are now doing that. We have a president who's calling an entire nation scum, who has said they will wipe. He said he will wipe them off of the face of the earth. He doesn't care about them anymore. All of those things contribute, in my view, to the rest of the world looking at us in a very different way. If we claimed Iran was a pariah because of their actions on terrorism, we are becoming that same pariah in the Middle east because we are asking for help in the Middle east while they're getting destroyed, while they're getting bombed. We're asking for help from Europe when we haven't told them what we want to do. So they are seeing our administration right now as a pariah. And I would almost say just like Russia turned into a pariah with the invasion of Ukraine, we are eventually going to turn into more and more pariah as Iran trades space for time and we are further engaged in this action that is not to the benefit of the world or global democracy.
- [38:54]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, I think that's right. It's on a bad trajectory. Speaking of NATO, I did want to wrap up here by talking about some of the really interesting articles you've written for us recently. So let's start with the one about the NATO spending canard because we hear this thing about 5% of GDP and the Europeans have to spend 5% of GDP to pull our own weight. And Trump is obsessed with talking about the money in NATO, which doesn't fully understand. And your all piece is basically that doesn't matter that much. So tell us about why you wrote this article and what you say in it.
- [39:24]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, support. You know what I'd say, Ben, is support for national defense from all the 49 countries in Europe. The 32 countries in NATO is critically important. And that's the article that came out today. It's important, but it should not be the only measure because 5% to some nations is a waste of money. Let's take little Estonia. They're a nation of a couple of million people. They're a small country. They have fought above their weight class in terms of developing their military, both in the special Operations field, in their territorial defense field, and especially in cybersecurity. I mean, little. Estonia is the NATO cyber center of excellence for all of NATO. That doesn't cost all that much. It takes a lot of skills. It doesn't require a whole lot of money. On the other hand, Poland. Poland is, in my view, one of the major countries in Europe right now. And since 2004, they have been on a trajectory to transform their conventional military force. Tanks, infantry, fighting vehicles, aircraft, ships. They have said, we are going to build a big military conventional. They have spent a lot of money doing that. You can list the 31 other countries other than the United States and say, do they really need to spend 5% or are there other ways they can contribute? That's why this 5% is a canard. And most importantly, even though the President's saying he's been instrumental in getting everyone to 5%, there is zero nations in Europe that are spending 5% of their GDP on their national security. There is one that's above 4%, and that's Poland. The United States is at about 3.3%. 3.3. 3.4% of GDP goes into our national security. And if we were to ramp up to 5%, we would be spending another half a trillion dollars on the Defense Department every year. So, you know, the whole messaging of President Trump, a former marketer in the business community and a former landowner, is not quite working with those who really know the inside of NATO. And yet Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Rubio and Secretary Besant have all bought into this. And if you. If you were to get every nation in. In Europe to spend 5%, you would have a whole lot of wasted money and not a whole lot of capability, because it's like Europe. NATO is like a puzzle. There are some people, there are some nations that contribute Arctic war fighting. There are some, like Estonia, that contribute cyber security. There are some, like Germany, that contribute infrastructure and transportation networks. Not all of those are required to have such a large sum of money going into the defense industry. So these are the kind of things when you really understand that in. In the insights of NATO, that you understand the President is kind of making wild claims where he's not an expert on history or warfare on the European continent.
- [42:52]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, you know, you made such an excellent point that, that I'm gonna start making every time I think about this in my own head, which is, you know, you can say you should spend more money. It doesn't tell you what you should spend on. Right. Spend 5% of GDP through your defense Department. I don't know. Buying up candy and shopping carts, it doesn't make you an effective military. It matters what you buy. And we don't really seem to be telling the Europeans, you know, you should buy this and you should buy that. Apart from you should buy American, which may or may not help. Right. But like, it's actually not a strategic thought to say you should spend more. It should be, what are our goals? What do we need to accomplish our goals? And then, you know, how do we, how do we make it affordable to achieve them? Not just like, imagine if I said this to my wife. I'm going to go out and spend money. Oh, what are you going to buy? I don't know, Whatever. I just got to spend something. Like, that's not how we make decisions.
- [43:44]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, let's go one step further, because you made a comment there. I think that's important. So in our national security and national defense strategy, there's an indicator that the United States wants NATO, the nations of NATO and the nations of Europe to go it alone and build their own sustainment, but at the same time, buy from us. Yeah, any businessman that says, hey, we're going to pull out, we're going to leave you to your own divides, we think we're not going to help you at all. We think you should spend more on defense. And oh, by the way, the reason we're pulling out and asking you to spend more is so you can buy our equipment. And oh, by the way, the indicators lately, like we saw in Japan, where they had a Tomahawk order in, and we told them because we're using so many Tomahawks in Iran, that, hey, we can't fulfill that Tomahawk order for the next couple of years, when you have that kind of track record in your businesses, people are not going to buy from you. So it's counterintuitive what is happening in our defense and security strategy.
- [44:45]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
So this is all related as well to the force posture review the Defense Department is doing specifically in Europe. So if you could explain a little bit what force posture means and then also why you're skeptical of this review.
- [45:02]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, this was an article I wrote earlier in the week. And it has to do with. Force posture is where you place things, not what, not necessarily what you place there, but it is linked to the requirements of your national security strategy. So if you make a sweeping statement that, hey, we're going to do a force posture and review of Europe and we are thinking about removing and at the same time, the messaging Is we're going to remove troops from Europe. That tells me the strategy is just removing troops. It is not a forced posture review. It's not where the troops are. And the argument I tried to make in this article, and granted, Ben, you know this, I spent a lot of time in Europe, so I'm a huge fan of the European security agreements. When you talk about removing troops from bases that we have spent billions of dollars to build and designed them specifically to do certain things, and everybody thinks we have this massive force in Europe, we do not. The force during the Cold War was 300,000 soldiers. We reduced that to 90,000 soldiers at the end of the Cold War. We reduced it further in the early 2000s to 30,000 soldiers with a rotational force going in. It is a contribution not just to the military capability of all the other 49 countries there. It is also a contributor to diplomacy, to economics, and to information. So there literally are two brigades, two war fighting brigades, combat brigades of the United States on the European footprint. One is in Italy and one is in Germany. We have a rotational brigade going in every once in a while to Poland once a year. But the rest of the stuff in Europe are intelligence capabilities, logistics facilities, command and control, headquarters, medical facilities, the things that support a requirement for diplomacy, military economics and information, the national powers. So those who quickly want to dispense with anything in Europe don't realize how much of a strategic effect it would have if you start leaving the forces there. How do I know all this? Because I did it. I was a huge part of the force that went from 90,000 to 30,000 and designed what was at the different locations. We closed down 79 different bases. We have five major hubs right now, and I can name them, and they are all extremely valuable, and they are looked upon by our alliances as critical to the capabilities that they provide as well.
- [47:59]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, it really gives the game away when the administration has been saying for years, we want to leave Europe on its own, we want to have fewer troops in Europe. I should also pause there to mention beyond just the army presence, there is a major naval base in Spain. There are major air force bases in Italy and Turkey.
- [48:18]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
And Germany.
- [48:19]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah, Germany.
- [48:20]
Donald Trump
Right.
- [48:20]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Yeah. In Germany, a particularly sensitive air force base in Turkey that people don't talk all about. But, you know, that's the kind of thing that if you want to remove a lot of troops gets very complicated because they're, you know, if. If the. If you're messaging for two years, we just want fewer troops in Europe. And then all of a Sudden you say, we're going to review our force posture in Europe. Well, it's kind of clear you've already come up with solution before you identify the problem.
- [48:46]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Right, exactly.
- [48:48]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Which is not really how policy is supposed to work. Okay, last item. You've been getting some heat for this, but I think you're absolutely right. We have to talk about Major Jason Watson. This is the Air Force major who was arrested after participating in uniform in a protest on the steps of the U.S. capitol. He is now under investigation by the Air Force for basically breaking the rules about what kind of political, partisan stuff you're allowed to do while wearing the uniform of the United States military. A lot of people, he was. He was. I should explain, he was calling for the impeachment of the president and vice
- [49:26]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
president in uniform on the steps of the Capitol.
- [49:30]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
The Capitol. So a lot of people who agree with him, I guess, agree with him that Speaker Mike Johnson should be president. A lot of people who agree with him were saying, this is great. What a brave act. You know, more people should do this. You say, well, not so fast. Explain why.
- [49:46]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, because the military is, by design, in a democratic society, a bipartisan force. We take an oath to defend the Constitution. And all the naysayers have been telling me, well, he was defending the Constitution. He says that, you know, the president should be impeached. Okay, that's not defending the Constitution. The impeachment process comes through Congress. It doesn't come through a major standing on the steps of the Capitol. And the influence of a major in uniform on the steps of the Capitol isn't going to cause that impeachment to happen. Some people will say he was an incredibly brave guy. I would say he's an incredibly. He has an incredible conscience. But there's other ways to do this. I've. I've had. It's. The trolls have come out. Not trolls. I'm sorry. The counter argument. People have come out of the woodwork on this one, which just surprises me because most of the people who are defending him have never served in the military, and they don't understand that that guy right there in that photo wearing that Air Force uniform doesn't take sides. He's on one side. He's one side, and that's all Americans. So if you have 77 million Americans that have voted for Donald Trump and you have a Congress that isn't willing to impeach that one guy in an Air Force uniform, first of all, is basically tainting all others who wear Air Force uniforms who might like President Trump and might support President Trump. But we don't do that when we're in uniform because we are a bipartisan, a nonpartisan organization that actually defends all Americans. And as soon as you're seen wearing the uniform, going to one side or the other, you're wrong because you're taking the rest of the Air Force with you. And that's not right.
- [51:42]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
You know, we talk a lot about how difficult it is for members of the armed services to disobey illegal orders.
- [51:50]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [51:51]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
And if you are an airman under this major's command and he says, I am disobeying my orders from above because I think they're illegal, you may now have to wonder, are they or does he just. Or is he putting his political opinion on. I mean, are they actually illegal? They might be. You don't know. You should be able to trust him. Right. Because everyone is being nonpartisan and, and giving their honest, you know, down the middle interpretation, using their best judgment. But now you have to wonder since, you know, this guy's partisan political views, which he is allowed to have. He's totally allowed to have his views. Yeah. Now you have to wonder if he's.
- [52:32]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
And he can speak those views to others. He does have freedom of speech. Just not in uniform.
- [52:36]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
Just not in uniform. So you now have to wonder, is he saying, I think these views are illegal because they're actually illegal, and therefore I also, as his report, shouldn't follow them, or as someone in his command, I also shouldn't follow them? Or is he saying, I think they're illegal because I think the president should be impeached and that president gave the order, and therefore, if I also don't follow those orders, I could be put in jail. It makes the whole thing more confusing. So you're, I mean, it's both sides of it, as you said. So. Well, you don't want to politicize the military. You also don't want to let politics into the military and confuse the chain of command.
- [53:12]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, you know, it's been interesting because some of the comments I've gotten is saying, hey, you're talking about Major Watson politicizing the military, but that's exactly what Trump and Hegseth are doing. True, true. And there are, and that is very true. But there are means to counter that, and it's not by doing the exact thing on the other side. The question I would have for anybody that's supporting Major Watson, and I'm sure he's had a crisis of conscience on this, and it took A lot of his personal courage to do this. It's just not a smart thing to do. And it doesn't comport with the laws and directives of the military. But I would ask the question, okay, what would you have said if someone would have gotten on the steps of the Capitol during the Biden administration and says, impeach Biden because we don't like what he's doing on the southern border? You then turn the military into this, deciding which side you're on. And that's not what the military does. The military secures the nation and defends the Constitution. It doesn't pick sides in political debate. So I stand by what I said in that article. And by the way, one other thing that's interesting is a lot of the feedback I'm getting is that Major Watson had his lawyer standing next to him, giving him advice. He did have a lawyer, not a military lawyer. So you can't take the normal freedoms that Americans have and say they also apply to the military. Because when you sign up to wear that uniform, which. Which basically belongs to the nation, not to you, you're basically giving up some of those freedoms, one of which is freedom to speak about politics while you're wearing the uniform.
- [55:00]
Parker (Host from The Bulwark)
But you're certainly free not to get a flu shot. And with that, there you go. It's a long show. We could talk about this more, but, General, thank you so much for joining me again. Thanks, everyone, for watching Command Post, and we will talk to you next week.