← Bulwark Takes
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:00]
A
Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now? Really? At a playground? Yeah. Really? Look at these listings from dealers. Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really? And you just put in your info and boom, car's in your budget. Mom needs a second. Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.
- [00:23]
B
Mommy, look.
- [00:24]
A
I think kid is walking up the slide again. Really? Autotrader, buy your car online. Really?
- [00:30]
C
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark.
- [00:33]
B
And hi, I'm Mark Hertling with the Bulwark.
- [00:36]
C
Welcome back to another episode of Command Post on the Bulwark Takes feed. I always forget to say this at the beginning, but first of all, we are tracking possibly breaking news. Producer Matt is monitoring the situation very closely. If there is some sort of agreement or deal or concept of a deal or memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran while we are recording this, while we are live, we will immediately talk about it. A bunch of different outlets are reporting that it's very close. We don't know what that means, but if it happens, we will talk about it immediately. Also, if you like what we're doing here and you're watching on YouTube, like the Bulwark Takes Channel, you can follow all sorts of different analysis. We do Command Post every week. We'd really appreciate it. Comment on the video, like the video, and if you're watching on Substack, become a Bulwark plus member. You'll get all sorts of this stuff, including General Hertling's analysis that we're going to talk about a little later. But we're going to start with this breaking news, this Washington Post report that the damage that the Iranian drone and missile attacks did to American bases all over the Middle east was much worse than previously reported. This is an interesting report not only because it suggests that the full dimension of the costs of the war are greater than we knew, but because it raises some interesting questions about what sort of information the Defense Department should make public and why. Now, General, I want to get your perspective on this because on the one hand, you want to give the American people sort of an accurate idea of how the war is going and what the, you know, costs and benefits are. But also, you don't want to give the enemy more information that they could use to help their targeting to be more effective in fighting us. So how do you think about this?
- [02:24]
B
Yeah, it's. It's concerning, Ben, because when you look at those photos that appeared on the Washington Post this morning. They are pretty good indicators that Iran not only struck some key targets, one of those photos is Camp Buering in Kuwait. And that's a post that I've been through a couple of times. And I know what those buildings house and what some of the tents, the large tent structures, structures house as well. And they are important command and control features. But as you said, you don't want to show the enemy that they are so good with their precision weapons that they are striking targets that are critically important for the United States. On the other hand, I would say they probably already know what they've struck. And it's important to let the United States public understand that this isn't a one way war. This is not a one way conflict where we're the ones conducting all of the operations that are damaging Iranian material and bases. They're fighting back, the enemy's getting a vote. And the pictures and the story that the Washington Post printed this morning, I think was really the tip of the iceberg. As we watched the various actions throughout the conflict, there was open source intelligence on X and Blue sky and other places that were showing other US equipment damaged to the price tag of tens of millions, in fact, into the potential billions of dollars worth of destruction. We also know that Iranian missiles or drones have hit bases and injured or killed American soldiers. The American public should have that information. They should know that this is not a cakewalk, that the President and his administration is trying to portray this as a very one sided affair. And anybody that's been in combat knows there is no such thing as a one sided affair. When you're throwing bullets at each other.
- [04:24]
C
Yeah, for sure. And it almost seems counterproductive to hide this kind of stuff because you might get more support for the war if Americans thought, well, hey, they hit us pretty badly, we have to get them back. Right. If there's some sense that the outcome isn't predetermined. Instead, all the messaging from the Pentagon is we do whatever we want, no one can stop us. There's effectively no price to be paid. There's no struggle, really. There's no struggle in their depiction of the war, which is antithetical to everything that we know that war is. So I want to ask you as, as a former military commander, you know, you said that these, these are important buildings they're hitting. They're, they're not just targeting the bases, they're talk. They're targeting, it seems like command and control buildings on those bases, not the recreation areas, not the Latrines. When you see that, are you thinking they've got really good intelligence coming from maybe Russia or China or somewhere? How do they know which buildings are the important ones?
- [05:20]
B
There is no doubt in my mind. 0Ben, let me make that perfectly clear with 100% certainty. They are getting intelligence from somewhere. Now, whether it's agents within those countries or sleeper cells within those countries, proxy forces are major state actors like Russia or China, using satellite feeds, they are getting this information from somewhere. And it could lead to the possibility, and I can't say one way or the other on this, the Defense Intelligence Agency would know this. Has Iran somehow built the capability to provide information or intelligence like this to their own missile forces? Is this internal to the irgc? You know these, you know, sometimes Americans get the feel that these are third world countries that don't fight as well as we do, that don't have the intelligence. We've seen that not to be the case in many countries that we assume that we're much better than. And to hear some in the administration proclaim that this is a one sided fight, it never is. And in fact I would suggest Iran has capabilities that we know nothing about. Some instances indicate that in terms of some of the targets they've hit, not just on the ground but in the air as well.
- [06:46]
C
Yeah, there was, there was, I think it was an F35 jet that managed to get hit with some sort of anti air weapon. There were the long range missiles they fired all the way out into the Indian Ocean at Diego Garcia.
- [06:55]
B
Right.
- [06:55]
C
Apparently no one knew they had that capability. Yeah, it is, it is pretty distressing. And it suggests that they are more sophisticated than I think we anticipated. It is true that Iran as a country is not high income and is not technologically advanced. But part of the reason for that is that the government controls so much of the economy and directs so much of their money toward the military and toward the nuclear program, which leaves for the private sector. That's where all the money's going.
- [07:24]
B
Bingo. They know that they are in a bad neighborhood. Iran knows they're in a bad neighborhood. They're surrounded by Sunni nations. Their fellow Shia nations are farther away. And what we know is that they have had, you know, experience with other countries like the US and Israel and others attacking both them and their proxies. So when you're in that kind of situation and you have the power to control the budget of a country, instead of having a congress fighting over how much we can spend on national defense, they like other countries, Russia and China specifically are pouring a whole lot more money per capita into the, into their defense budgets than we are. And when I say overall defense budgets, it depends on what nation you're talking about and what they're focusing on. It doesn't always have to be high tech. It can be a mix of high tech and very low tech, which we've seen Iran do over the last decade or so, as they've produced literally hundreds, if not thousands of drones, as well as ballistic missiles that can strike targets in their region.
- [08:34]
C
Yeah, definitely. We like to get a little bit into some strategy theory on this show. So you and I were talking a little bit about what was the little heart term? The Basil little heart term. The. The. Is that not the asymmetric approach? I. I'm blanking on it. But he had this whole theory of you should. You should go around your enemy and attack them. Attack, not what they're expecting you to. The indirect approach.
- [08:59]
B
Okay, let's start over again with indirect approach. That's right. I couldn't get the phrase out. Okay.
- [09:04]
C
Yeah. Okay.
- [09:05]
B
All right, good.
- [09:05]
C
What we have done in Iran is choose the direct approach. They spend a huge amount of their budget and their energy and their time and their resources on their military preparing for exactly this sort of fight. Their real weakness before the war was their domestic population was almost, it seemed, on the verge of overthrowing the government. And so instead of forcing them to spend more time quelling their domestic unrest or worrying about their political stability at home, we focused on attacking the thing that they were most focused on. We used the direct approach. Whereas the indirect approach, which you could argue is what the Trump administration did in its first term, in the first Trump administration with the maximum pressure strategy, seemed to actually sort of be working. Do you agree with that?
- [09:53]
B
To a degree, yeah. I always think the indirect approach is usually a whole lot better than the direct approach. You can message the direct approach, but then you choose the indirect approach. And I think our listeners probably are confused by now, but let's just say that Iran is not only using the indirect approach, but they're using other elements of power other than the military. So this is truly what many people talk about when they mention the term asymmetric campaign. They are using non military forces, in this case, economics, pressure information means to try and influence their enemy, which is in this case the United States and Israel. All of those things seem to be working based on the fact where you look at what is the center of gravity. Another clause Witzian term that we've used a couple times of both the United States and Iran. The center of gravity in Iran, my contention is both their religious background and the irgc, their Special forces. We have not attacked them directly other than some might say, well, wait a minute, we, we killed their supreme leader, we have been bombing IRGC headquarters. But there's a whole lot more to those two institutions versus just the people that are involved than what meets the eye, where they've been attacking our center of gravity under the President Trump's administration. And that is economics. They are putting an entire different kind of pressure on the United States, not just from the economics of the US but, but the economics of our allies and friends. Because now they are starting to put pressure on our administration of get out of this thing any way you can and let's get back to normal. You started this, you ought to finish it in some way or get the hell out of there so we can have our supply chains rolling again.
- [11:55]
C
I want to ask you one more question related to this Washington Post report. But before we move on to talk about the 60 day clock and the War Powers act and how many operations are actually going on. But we talked about this a little bit in relation to some reporting, I think the New York Times did, about American ammunition magazines and then how many, how much ammunition we have left. You know, it seems like, and I'm reading between the lines here, there are people inside the Pentagon or maybe inside CENTCOM headquarters who are giving this information, leaking information about the state of the United States military to journalists, I assume because they think, and this came up in our comments section a few weeks ago, they think the big danger here is not that the Iranians or our other adversaries find out how weak we are. The big danger is that our, the American people don't know how weak we might be or what our weaknesses might be. Now, that's a very tricky sort of assessment for staff officers or wherever they may be to be taken into their own hands, but also their conclusion might be right. How do you, I mean, you, as a former commander, I know you hate leaks, but how do you think about weighing those sorts of things?
- [13:06]
B
Well, it's an indicator, how do I say this the right way? It's an indicator that no one is listening to the people that are providing the warnings. And if you give warnings so many times and you become increasingly frustrated and you're a true patriot within the ranks and you know what it's doing and you see the risk rising and your risk mitigation measures are not being listened to, you really take other actions. And some may say, well, it's unpatriotic or illegal to conduct leaks of classified information. And don't get me wrong, it most certainly is, but it is an indicator that there's not a whole lot of people listening. And Ben, to your point of what the New York Times reported in terms of percentages of various types of precision weapons that are being depleted, when I saw that list in the Times, I personally think it's probably very accurate. The stockpiles of ammunition. When you hear Secretary Hexa saying, broadly proclaiming and proudly proclaiming that we've used or we've hit 13,000 plus targets and I'm sure that that's increased over the years or over the weeks, you have to kind of say, yeah, those 13,000 hits were probably all precision weapons. And when you have that many strikes with precision weapons, your supply start starts to diminish. There are people inside the Pentagon in the various staff sections of the Joint Staff that are basically their responsibility is to compute this data, raise the flag to the chairman, the chairman raises it to the President and the Secretary of Defense, as is his requirement under the Goldwater Nichols Act. And if no one's listening to him and they keep telling them to drop bombs, or as the President even said this morning, if Iran doesn't approve the one page memo, they're going to start the war all over again. Okay, what are you going to hit next and how many more precision weapons are you going to use and how much further is it going to deplete the supplies for other theaters? It's interesting when I heard, Ben, this is kind of a segue, but it's the same issue. When I heard the Secretary of Defense's testimony before Congress the other day, he said something that was very interesting because he said, I can't. I guess the issue, I think it was the B47 bombers or the F47 fighters that they're looking to build. And he said, oh yeah, it's a great airplane and everybody wants one and all the combatant commanders are screaming for it and they all want one. Well, one of the key requirements of staff officers in the Pentagon is to say no combatant commander. This is not Burger King. You can't get everything the way you want it and when you want it. You have to kind of understand that we're constrained in terms of our resources and that logistics and sustainment and ammunition are constrained for warfare and for different contingency theaters. And if one theater like Central Command is, uses it all up, that means the other theaters like, oh, I don't know, Indo Pacific Command or others don't have anything left. You've just put the nation at risk to execute their global strategy.
- [16:40]
C
Yeah, we talked a little bit about that with the Indo Pacific commander testimony before Congress a couple episodes ago. Yeah, it's not a great sign that people feel like they have to go outside the normal channels to get their warnings heard, even if it is illegal. I mean, they're willing to take that risk because they're so worried that's not a good sign.
- [16:56]
B
Well, on that, on that point though, if I can say, please. There are other indicators too, that when people do say things that aren't accepted by various members of this administrations, we have proof that they've been told to retire or told to resign when they speak truth to power. And that's a bane of any organization, whether it be the military or the private sector. When you're being banned or fired because you're speaking truth to power, there's danger ahead, definitely.
- [17:29]
C
So I've always wondered, speaking of everything that's going on in Iran, let me back up. I've always wondered how these operations get their names. And I ask this because we apparently have three different operations going on in Iran right now or that have gone on recently. It's not entirely clear. Matt, if we can put up the first Trump tweet, please. So it looks here like we have Operation Epic Fury, which is one thing, and then we have the blockade, which is the second thing, and then we have Project, not Operation Project Freedom, the movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a third thing. And if we could put up the next Trump tweet. That one was from last night. This one's from this morning, Wednesday, May 6th. So Epic Fury is at an end, he said, but it will be at an end if they sign an agreement. So I guess it's not at an end. And then the horror Moons strait will be open to all, which. So obviously the point here is that the administration wants to blow past the 60 day deadline set by the War Powers act back in the 1970s. It says the president has to get approval from Congress after 60 days. So they're saying, oh well, it's a different conflict, it's a different conflict, the clock resets. But what effect does it have in the military when you have so much confusion about there's three different operations and one of them's ended and one of them's not. And also, how do they choose these names?
- [18:54]
B
How do they choose the names? You know Having worked in the Pentagon for one tour of two years in the Joint Staff, I have no clue. You know, it's. Someone once told me it was a random generator of two names. I'm not believing that.
- [19:07]
C
Yeah, I don't believe that.
- [19:09]
B
So when we're talking about Operation Epic Fury, I found that interesting because there was an immediate meme associated with it that said Operation ep. Is that Epic or ef? I'm sorry, Epic Fury? Or is it Epstein Files? And that was a tongue in cheek comment by a reporter. But when you're talking about any operation, it defines combat operations. I think the reason they've called this other one Project Freedom is because they wanted. They didn't want it to be associated with any kind of combat operations because it's then subjected to Article 25 of the Constitution.
- [19:56]
C
But there is actual combat going on. Right. I mean, there is actual, like, people are being shot at. There are Iranian fast boats that we've sunk and there are drones flying.
- [20:05]
B
Yeah. And shooting back. Yeah, yeah. There are rockets being launched at US Forces and at merchant ships. And we are fighting back in this operation or Project Freedom at fast boats that are coming in. So, yes, there are kinetic rounds flying. I don't know how to say it any other way. So it sure probably sounds to the sailors on those ships. It's loud and noisy and scary. So that means they're in combat. You know, you don't have to have a formal definition when you're on the ground. What is combat and what's a project?
- [20:41]
C
So have you ever heard of a project before?
- [20:44]
B
I have never heard of a project,
- [20:45]
C
no, not in this context. It's always either a mission or a plan. Right. Okay, great. So they are, as we have said for many weeks, kind of making it up as they go along just to avoid congressional oversight. It's probably worth adding.
- [21:00]
B
And can I comment on that? Because yesterday Secretary of State Rubio in a press conference said that the War Powers act is unconstitutional, which should have been a surprise to a lot of people because it's actually in the Constitution. But when he said that, he basically said, well, no president, since it's been established, has liked it or adhered to it.
- [21:26]
C
Which is true.
- [21:27]
B
Which is true. But it doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.
- [21:31]
C
No president has ever agreed that it's constitutional. Congress always thinks it's constitutional. That's not something that, like, the court has weighed in and decided for all time. And it is.
- [21:42]
B
It.
- [21:42]
C
We should be a little bit fair to the Trump administration that they are not the first ones to find, depending on how you view it, either clever or BS ways of circumventing these requirements. There are other administrations going back decades have said, oh well, you know, the clock restarts because we thought the conflict was over. Then we started a new one the next day. So it's all a matter of just what Congress is willing to enforce. And right now the Congress is not willing to enforce its war powers under the Constitution. So this is what we're left with.
- [22:15]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [22:17]
C
Real quick, we're going to have a quick word from our colleague Sam Stein and then we'll be right back to talk about the most underreported military story I think, which is that we pulled troops out of Germany. You had a great article about this and we need to talk about this more because it is a huge story that people are underappreciating.
- [22:34]
D
I think this ad is brought to you by Aura Frames Aura Frames is a great upgrade from your typical Mother's Day flowers. Trust me, I know this. I got an Aura Frame from my mother in law last Mother Day. She loved it. That's because flowers, they're nice, but they only last a few days. The perfect gift is one that lasts a lifetime and that gift is Aura Frames. Aura Frames are a great way to share all your favorite memories. From birthdays to vacations to kids sporting events and everything in between. There's free unlimited storage that allows you to add as many photos and videos as you want. My favorite part of Aura Frames is how easy it is to preload photos before it ships. You can keep adding photos and videos from anywhere anytime. It's really awesome and it's perfect for Mother's Day. A gift box is included. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. Name number one by Wirecutter. You can save on gifts for your mom or your mother in law by visiting or frames.com for a limited time. Listeners can get 25 off their best selling Carver matte frame with code Bulwark Takes. That's a U R A frames.com promo code bulwark Takes. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions do apply.
- [23:53]
C
Thank you for bearing with us through that. I can recommend Aura Frames. They're great. Also, before we talk about Germany, if you want to come to one of our Bulwark Live events, these are great. They are so much fun to be at. It is great to get the community together in real life where people can, you know, reach out and shake hands with each other. And our next tour stops are in California. They're in Southern California. Sarah, Tim and Sam will be in San Diego and LA later this month. There are still some seats available. So if you haven't gotten yours yet and you're going to be in San Diego or LA at the end of this month, go check that out before the seats are gone. You can get those tickets@the bulwark.com events. Again, that's the bulwark.com events. And we'll drop a link in the show notes, too. Now, let's talk about Germany. I want to start off with some just background because you laid this out really well in your article about this, which is the last time we withdrew troops from Europe, a war broke out. You also had multiple articles earlier this year about the value of NATO and the value of European base, the United States. One of them was called Europe is Our Secret Weapon. We had a question from Marta and Marta asked, why do we have troops in Germany right now in the first place? So I'm just going to put a quarter in the machine and let you answer that.
- [25:14]
B
Well, Since World War II, truthfully, a lot of U.S. forces, when they were rolling across the continent defeating the Nazi war machine, when the end of the war came, they basically stopped at different locations throughout the countries where they were maneuvering. Those locations usually had old Nazi or SS headquarters and barracks area that the US took over. So in that case, since World War II, because they were property that we kind of assumed during the occupation and then later during the Cold War, we stayed there. They became permanent bases starting in about the first time around 1992 and then the second time around when I was involved in 2004, we were ordered to reduce the size of the force, first from a quarter of a million down to 90,000 in the mid-1990s. And then in 2004, the Secretary of Defense said further reduced from 90,000 to to 30,000. Well, I can pause this right there real quick.
- [26:22]
C
Those are numbers just for the U.S. army presidency.
- [26:25]
B
Thank you for saying that. Just for the U.S. army. The U.S. air Force also was told to reduce their force structure. The Navy truthfully has the capability to come in and out of the Mediterranean or the Baltic area. So they don't have a whole lot of permanent bases. The Marines have a few smaller ones in different locations. But it was mainly the army and the Air Force that was told to reduce our foresight at the time. We put a plan together to move some of the forces out into what was called Joint Task Force east in Romania and Bulgaria and we started construction projects under the approval of Congress and the appropriation of establishing small bases in those two forward countries. In the 2005, 2006 timeframe, those bases were even further refined. And we didn't even use one of those bases after we built the complex in Bulgaria, but the one in Romania remained as a forward stationing headquarters on the Black Sea. Not to get too deeply into this, Ben, because it is a monstrous and complex task, but we reduced the number of bases into Germany from about 79 to four major hubs that had a command and control hub, a troop and training hub, a logistics hub, and then another hub that had basically more troops and special operators.
- [28:00]
C
So this is in the 2000s, right. As we're, as we're reducing more than half of the army presence in Europe, getting them out of Europe, we're reducing down to about four major bases in Germany, right?
- [28:09]
B
Right. Correct. Now, some of those bases we were living in were pretty old and pretty decrepit. So Congress appropriated more money since we were reducing and turning over those bases to the Germans that we were leaving. They gave us money to build new bases. So starting in 2006, there were major bases built with motor pools, headquarters, orderly rooms, housing areas, childcare centers, PXs, and literally billions of dollars were spent to refurbish those headquarters in Europe. Now, the question still remains, why Germany? Well, that's because that's where most of our soldiers were. And that was a key hub
- [28:58]
C
in
- [28:58]
B
coordination with other NATO members of where we should be. And we had been accepted by the Germans in those areas.
- [29:05]
C
We also, by the way, what were they doing there? What's the point of having troops in Europe in the first place?
- [29:10]
B
Well, that's the better question. The better question is it's no longer forces like I was during the Cold War, up on the border with rifles pretending, you know, defending against an incoming Soviet invasion. It was more to support U.S. requirements on the continent of Europe, on the continent of Africa, and even in the Middle East. Because it was a forward lily pod, we could move forces there. We had major logistics and command and control headquarters that looked at the east, not just in Europe and the different countries, but it was also the capability to train and exercise and work with our allies at the time, 30 different NATO partners, now 32. And it was expanding. And it gave us the potential for diplomatic approaches and something that's called tsc, another army abbreviation that stands for Theater Security Cooperation, that we were helping other nations grow to be democratic countries and democratic armies. We believe that was all to Our advantage at the time. Also we were asking for allied forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Many people don't know this, but a third of the number of forces in Afghanistan during our decades long fight there were what's called isaf, International Security Forces. The ISAF forces, majority of them came from NATO and non NATO countries. Even countries like Ukraine and Georgia were supplying forces there. But in order to prepare them for those missions that they were helping us, we had forces at the ready to help train them. Two combat brigades remained in Europe, two ground combat brigades and an aviation brigade. The majority of things that were remaining in Europe were in command and control headquarters, which became vital to not only the NATO mission, but also the Ukrainian mission when it came down, intelligence collection headquarters, which is a forward headquarters for looking at terrorism, looking at human trafficking, looking at what other countries are doing in three different continents, Europe, Africa and the Middle east, as well as logistics headquarters, and the support for other forces, even like the Air Force Cyber Command, Special Operations Command, Transportation Command, which runs airplanes in and out of Ramstein Air Base, which is an Air Force facility. And as we design this force, the last thing I say, because I'm on a soapbox now, Ben, sorry about that, but the last thing I'll say is it was a coordinated design with limited number of combat troops, but a significant number in the 20,000 or so support troops of Intelligence, Command and Control, Signal, Cyber, transportation, logistics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it all became very important and well designed to work with our allies in Europe. And truthfully, it was a pittance to pay our budget for our European force was a small percentage of our overall defense budget. So when you hear current members of the administration or others saying why are we paying to defend Germany from their enemies, we're not. We're paying for forward basing what we used to call lily pads to go other places with U.S. forces. Other places like where? Maybe Iran, maybe Iraq, maybe even Afghanistan, maybe even Africa when we had issues there. So these are all the things that build American power, not just in the military sense, but in the diplomatic and informational sense.
- [33:14]
C
Yeah, you had really good details in your article at the Bulwark about some of the things that we do at these bases in Germany. And it is not, as you said, a bunch of infantrymen and tankers sitting waiting for the Russians to invade. It's, you know, things like medical facilities, things like training. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think not only European command headquarters is in Germany, but so is the Africa Command headquarters.
- [33:37]
B
Africa Command. Yes. There's a Cyber command headquarters. There's certainly air bases that we help with things like silly things like delivering mail, pursuing help with the Air Force and the Navy, to getting driver's license for their soldiers that can drive in Europe. I mean, there's literally hundreds of things that the U.S. army in Europe does for our other commands as a support agency. And it also, I should say, supports all of the Embassies of the 49 countries in Europe, the 54 countries in Africa, and the dozens of countries in the Middle East.
- [34:14]
C
Yeah, there was a great line in the piece Eric Edelman and Frank Miller wrote for us. They're both very seasoned former civilian Pentagon officials. They said, basically, just for the operation operations. We're still not sure, plural, just for operation Epic theory. Let's say in Iran. If those facilities in Europe didn't already exist, we would have had to invent them. That's how important they are for the global logistics operation, the supply lines, the cooperation. We are relying on these very bases that we're on, these, on these troops that we have in Europe to conduct our operations in other parts of the world that seem unrelated. But the world is small. It's all related. It's a globe. And the last thing I, I think we should talk about on this subject before we get to a. A little bit, a few minutes to talk about Pete Hen culture is, you know, it seems like the decision to draw these troops out of Germany, 5,000 to start with, maybe more. The president hinted coming later, out of a total of about 35,000. It seems like the point is he got mad at the German chancellor, and so he said, well, we're going to withdraw the troops from Germany. As if that's hurting Germany. I mean, it's hurting us. It's an own goal. These are troops that are supporting our operations. It's not like Germany is any less safe because those troops are gone. Right, Right.
- [35:29]
B
Correct. And I'd say one other thing. Many may say it was a reaction to Chancellor Mertz's comments about the alliance, but I would suggest it also came after a phone call between President Trump and President Putin. And I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but President Putin has wanted all US Forces out of Europe for decades, and that's significant as well.
- [35:57]
C
Yeah, this is a, you know, this is a move that's going to make the United States marginally weaker. But in terms of the, the what it says about the direction of this topic, I keep returning to the, the transatlantic alliance, it's a Huge development. And you know, I don't want to spend too much time on this topic because I want to move on to talk about culture. But you point out that it also is a signaling mechanism and it sends very clear signals. And the last time we withdrew our last tank.
- [36:28]
B
Correct brigade.
- [36:29]
C
Thank you. I just want to say Bhutan, our last tank brigade out of Europe. Very soon thereafter, Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time and seized crime, started a war in the Donbass because Putin looked and saw the United States isn't really engaged. They're moving stuff elsewhere, they're focused elsewhere. And now we're sending that exact same signal again. And who knows what could happen? Okay. You also had a great piece for us. I. I love everything you write. This one was particularly fascinating for me because this is an element of strategy we don't talk about a lot, which is business strategy and the relationship between military strategy and business strategy. You mentioned that Secretary of Defense Hegseth was testifying before Congress last week and someone asked him, hey, Mr. Secretary, why do you keep firing all of these senior officials, uniformed and civilian, who happen to be disproportionately black and or female? And he said, well, I don't want to get into individual personnel decisions. Totally fine.
- [37:32]
B
Right.
- [37:32]
C
But it's very important that we change the culture of the military. And Europe basically said, huh. So walk us through your reaction.
- [37:44]
B
You want me to explain that?
- [37:45]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:46]
B
Well, yeah, I had a reaction to that in terms of changing the culture, because having studied culture, teaching culture now at a business school, and using some evidence from the military approach to how you build a strong culture, it just seemed to run contrary to everything I've learned. You don't change a culture by firing people. You try and help them adapt to the new culture you're trying to establish. And I don't know what culture it is the Secretary is trying to establish, but he keeps referring to greater lethality and increased adherence to standards and merit based promotions. And what I would suggest is all of those things have already been in place and have caused the US Military over the last several decades to grow into the force that Secretary Hegseth keeps saying is the best in the world. I mean, it didn't become the best in the world in the last 15 months he's been in office. I mean, this literally started with some transformation efforts after the Vietnam War, when our training environment was changed, our doctrinal base was changed. The way we promote officer Was officers and NCOs were changed, our school systems were established. So there's actually an acronym, Ben. If you're ready for this one, this will be a new one for you. It's called dotlam's pf okay.it stands for doctrine Organizations, Training Leader Development People, and Foundations. That has been in effect for over four decades. And in each one of the things the army does, it is measured on how it contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of the force is measured with those initials. And. And it's interesting to me, I haven't heard Secretary Hexa say anything that he's doing other than proclaiming things like lethality and not legality, which is sometimes a violation of international law or culture change because we're woke which has not been defined. These are the kind of things that I think the uninformed will on the Internet will proclaim as bots or trolls. Oh, yeah, Pete, go for it. You know, you're really fixing the military. The issue is he's not. He's firing a lot of people or relieving them or asking them to retire. And it's causing a great deal of angst. Sort of like we talked about early in the program in terms of reporting the truth, which is a hallmark, I think, of the military, that they do speak truth to power. Now, there are going to be some that debate that saying, well, if you speak truth, how come there were so many years in Afghanistan where the generals weren't proclaiming things the right way? What I would suggest is some of the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq were caused primarily by strategic misalignment from the civilian leaders and the military. But that's a whole nother episode of command post.
- [41:07]
C
Yeah. I hope one day things are calm enough that we can do a retrospective. That would be a good sign for the world. No, I think one of the. One of the great points you made in this reflection on Hegseth is that he says he wants to change the culture by firing people. He never says what he wants to change it to.
- [41:24]
B
Right.
- [41:24]
C
He doesn't. And if he could say, I want the culture to be more this or more that, and this person was not on board with that transformation, then that may or may not be something we agree with. But at least that's sort of like a plan to accomplish an objective here. He doesn't say what he wants to change the culture to. He doesn't say if these people were on board with it or not. And it's hard to escape the implication that when he talks about culture, he's not talking about organizational culture. And you had great citations from business school professors and business studies, about organizational culture and what it is and what it means and how important it is. It seems like he's talking about, like, domestic culture war things. Right. Because he says, well, these things are woke. Right? And if. If a black person got promoted, it's because of woke, not because, I don't know, maybe they were the best person for the job.
- [42:18]
B
Well, that's. That's what he will claim, that they didn't have the merit, they didn't meet the standards. We. We got kind of a preview of that during the Quantico meeting of the 800 generals, admirals, and senior enlisted advisors. But some of the things he said on that stage had to do more with standards. Okay. If you think the generals are too fat in the Pentagon, then counsel them on it and tell them they have to change their physical appearance. But that has nothing to do with culture. Culture is how you think, how you execute team projects, how you view the organization, the values you maintain, the kind of ethos you aspire to. And I haven't heard a whole lot of those kinds of dynamics coming from Secretary Hexsett.
- [43:12]
C
Yeah. And if you. If you really want more of your most senior officers spending less of their time thinking and planning and leading and more of their time on the treadmill, I guess that's an order you can give. If you're the second, that's fine.
- [43:25]
B
But. Yeah, but say that, you know, don't just say, hey, either lose the weight or get out. Because that, in effect, is, in some research journals, is called toxic culture or toxic leadership. So.
- [43:40]
C
And just to bring this full circle, it creates the kind of environment, as we were talking about at the top and as you just said, where people feel like they are not being listened to, their concerns aren't being taken, aren't being taken on board, their voice isn't being valued, their work isn't being valued. And so they find other ways to do the things that they think are important, like leaking to the press if they think that they're more likely to be heard that way.
- [44:02]
B
Yeah, well, and. And we'll use the example because this is the one that several senators on both the Democratic side and the Republican side mentioned during the hearings, and that's General Randy George, who was the chief of Staff of the Army. You know, when he was asked what was the reason for firing, he appropriately said, I'm not going to discuss this, but we're changing the culture. Well, that tells me that General George was deviating from the culture in some way. So tell me what he deviated from because this is a guy with 38 years of service, I think, who has fought in multiple wars and who's well respected and has a very charismatic leadership style and was beginning the transformation efforts. Is it just because of a disagreement over pulling people from a promotion list and adamant disagreement on that could be. Is part of the culture not questioning any kind of orders? And again, I go back to any organization where subordinates can't question why things are done is not usually a very good organization.
- [45:14]
C
I think that's a great point and I think we will leave it there for this episode of Command Post. Thank you everyone for watching. Remember to become a Bulwark plus member. If you're going to be in California at the end of this month, go to thebullwork.com events and join us next time for another Command Post. And until then, enjoy the rest of the Bulwark takes.