← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Been to Greenland once to a place called Tuli.
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C
How was it?
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B
Beautiful. And it was during the summer, and I froze my ass off. This is not a place you want to have a lot of troops to defend something.
- [01:10]
C
Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and we're doing something a little bit different here today. We're having a chat like we do normally for Bulwark Takes, but we're going to make it sort of distinct. We're going to talk with Mark Hertling, who you all know. I call him General Hurling, but he says I have to call him Mark. So for now, I'm going to call him Mark and we're going to talk about what's happening in Venezuela and maybe a little bit more than that. We're going to talk about what Donald Trump is doing on the world stage in what feels like to me, and maybe Mark can agree or disagree. Kind of a precarious moment, or at least a more dynamic one than we've had up to this point in this administration. Threats to take over different countries, including Greenland, talk of regime change in different countries, including Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, even. It's a lot. And we're fortunate enough to have Mark here who has a tremendous amount of experience in the military, with global affairs, and can basically unpack these things better than anyone in the business. So we thought about, I don't know, branding the show, Mark and I don't know, do you like what the Military hour Command post. Do you have any ideas about how this should go? Yeah, what it should be called?
- [02:23]
B
I kind of like command post. That harkens back to some deja vu that I just had some both good times and nightmares. So let's try that. What I think we're looking to do, Sam, as we talked about it earlier, is allow me to provide some information on just the military and the national security aspect of this from experiences and from things that I've done in the past and relate them from not only a military career, but even after that in terms of national security. And what I have to do is first have a caveat of saying I have no security clearance anymore. I used to have a top secret code word, but I gave that when I left the military. So this is all just experiential and kind of having a feel for what actually happens in these kind of scenarios when you're deploying troops or conducting affairs like we seem to be conducting right now all over the world.
- [03:18]
C
Well, look, I never had a security clearance and yet I talk with conviction as if I know what I'm saying. And that's all that it really takes. No, we were going to lean on you for your expertise. Let's start at the beginning because it's a good place to start. We woke up, I think it was Saturday morning, I want to say, and we had this incredible news alert that we had. The military gone into Caracas. They had taken Nicolas Maduro. It was unclear what the casualties were, what the damage was. We now have a little bit more insight into that. Dozens of people killed in Caracas. About seven US Troops were hurt during the operation. They're okay, no fatalities. Now that you've had some time to sort of study it, read about it, look at the footage of it. Walk us through exactly how it happened and what your takeaways were from it.
- [04:08]
B
Well, yeah, early Saturday morning I got a wake up call from some folks asking me to come on tv. And what we had initially was just, you know, the information on the special operations strike. And when I say special operations, you know, one of the purposes you asked me to do on this, on these streams is kind of give a little bit of insight into the military. When you say special operations, joint forces, you're talking about Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, each with different elements of that special operations. I would venture to say that all four of those units from the different services were all participating in the snatch and grab operation of President Maduro and his wife. At the same time. You had probably Air Force and Naval aviators coming in with fighters and even bombers to hit key targets. Now, there's been some description of the multiple targets they've hit, which are all the bases in and around Caracas, probably a couple of other bases. One of the things that's that air forces do coming in. They the first thing they want to strike and destroy are the air defenses. And Venezuela actually has some pretty good Russian air defense equipment. So they were all struck and destroyed. They turned out the lights. They had the capability to jam using cyber techniques to jam and jam radars, but also take out electricity and communications capabilities.
- [05:39]
C
I know this seems so trite and trivial, but it did pique my interest. The White House put out a couple photos of what was happening, I guess, in the version of the Situation Room that they have in Mar a Lago. And what was noticeable was that they had this screen behind them where on the board was Twitter and there was a search engine. And in the search engine there was the word Venezuela. And it was very evident from the screen that they were monitoring Twitter to see if anyone was noticing them coming in to Venezuela.
- [06:11]
B
Yeah.
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C
And one was the re. Were they did the military or whatever, the joint operations take out the ability for people to tweet? And two, I guess, more broadly, can you talk a little bit about that kind of component? Because obviously this has to be done in secrecy if you want it to be successful. And doing things in secrecy, especially in a capital city like Caracas, is really hard. I presume in the era of instant posting and things like that.
- [06:41]
B
Yeah, yeah. What they were more than likely looking at is what the military calls reflections. So it's not only getting classified information from a variety of sources. The dia, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, the commands, intelligence agencies within SOCOM and Southern Command, southcom. I don't want to throw those two phrases out there. So there's two commands down there that they're looking at, as well as some of the Air Force and Navy and maybe even the. The carrier strike group Ford that was in the area. So they were looking at classified information, but they also look at reflections. They want to see how things are reacting on the ground now. Yeah, the cyber attacks could have knocked out some of that equipment, so it couldn't be communicating, but you have other communications capabilities that people would be posting. News medias, embassies, what are we hearing from other nations? Embassies. So they're watching all of that to see exactly how effective the communication is. And sometimes, Sam, truthfully, and when I was in combat, we used to do this we used to. You lose. We used to allow some channels, some communication channels to remain open specifically so we could tell how the enemy was reacting. What kind of communications are going on between headquarters? Are they getting struck? Are they, are they maneuvering forces around? Are they turning machines on or off? So you want to get all that kind of information at a headquarters. Now, to your question, why the hell that screen was up at Mar a Lago? I have no idea. Because they have, you know, those are the kind of things that when you're in a big command post, and I guess we're going to call this the command post, right, we had all kinds of screens in front of us that not only gave us video feeds of UAVs, video feeds of the special operations going in off of helmet cameras, video feeds off of all sorts of devices where you're kind of getting a picture for exactly what's going on. So it gives you complete situational awareness.
- [08:50]
C
Now, let me ask you about the aftermath. So there's been tons of confusion. Now we're going to kind of venture into the geopolitical. There's been a lot of confusion about what the actual mission is here. And if you judged by what any member of the Cabinet says, you might get a different interpretation. So Trump thinks we're running the country. Marco Rubio says we're not. We're just sort of administering it. We do have a blockade. It's clear that we're dangling the threat of more military action over the interim government. And then the question is, can we, or are we trying to extract oil wealth from Venezuela to essentially pay for the administration of governance, but also to enrich the United States? How much do you think the U.S. if you had to guess right now, we're here, It's Wednesday afternoon, January 7th. We're just a couple days in. But if you had to guess how much US Military will be involved in the future of Venezuela over the weeks and months ahead, what would you wager and what would you say?
- [09:51]
B
I would say there's a very. I don't want to give a percentage, but I would say it's a high likelihood because you're talking about securing oil facilities, you're talking about securing supply chains, not only from the actual where the wells are and where it's being drilled, but the pipelines that come to there, to the ports, to the storage facilities where it's uploaded on tankers. So you're talking a lot of people, depending on what kind of people you put there. And truthfully, Sam, this is the one Concern I have. What are the tasks, what are we trying to do, and how many people do we need to do it? Not just the military, but State Department. In the old days, it used to be usaid. How much intelligence capabilities, Commerce Department, Treasury Department. Who's playing in this game and how.
- [10:41]
C
Many, you know, do we have any insight if. Do we know if they've done it? I mean, have you. Have you heard of anything yet or. No.
- [10:48]
B
You know, I'm sure they've done some planning, but truthfully, the administrations and all administrations seem to really rely more on the military. And then they kind of smack their forehead when they get into it, and they realize they haven't calculated the rest of the plan, you know, and we've seen past wars that's done that in Iraq going in, you know, there was a named Guy in 2003, a retired lieutenant general by the name of Garner who was supposed to take care of what occurred after the fight. You know, setting up the civil affairs mission, setting up the engineers to turn the lights back on, getting the railroads running, working with the government. And he was thwarted by the naming of Ambassador Brenner, who came in and took his place. And then later, there was fights between Rumsfeld and the general in charge, Tommy Franks. So this is the confusion on who's doing what to who. And my major scary moment was when President Trump was asked at the press conference on Monday or on Saturday morning, who's in charge? And he said, it's these guys behind us. Well, that. That ain't good enough for me. It's the belly button rule. Who, no kid is in charge, who's responsible for success or failure, who's dealing with the government, who's talking to the new vice president, who's getting the coordination with the oil companies to come in. Because if the president is inserting himself in all these things so he feels good and he feels like he's controlling it and using the oil companies at his discretion, there's going to be a whole lot of uncomfortable lack of coordination going on.
- [12:31]
C
We had this another breaking news alert off of what's happening in Venezuela, where apparently an oil tanker had evaded the blockade. It was, you know, there was a Russian submarine out there trying to escort it through the Atlantic, and then the US Ships were trying to find it. Apparently, we boarded it and took it over it. I don't know anything about how these operations work. It seems incredibly risky to me from the sense that we are, I don't know, increasing tensions at a minimum, but escalating with the Russians over this stuff. Talk a little bit about that.
- [13:08]
B
Yeah, well, first I think we ought to talk about the core rule. And I'm not a Navy guy, so I'm, I'm learning my Navy counterparts. But ships on the high sea are generally protected from interference. The kind of boarding that we're talking about, interdiction, is the exception. And the boarding of a ship, of any kind of ship has got to be justified by international law. Something called that I've learned from my Navy counterparts called flight flag, state consent. In other words, the nation that owns the ship can say, yeah, you can board that ship or for self defense. But the United nations, the Security Council, can authorize this kind of interdiction if it's done for arms embargo enforcement or if they know it's a boat or a ship that's violating sanctions, which all of these ships are because there's a sanction against Venezuelan oil going to Iran or Russia. If it's an unflagged ship, which is what occurred this morning, it was a change of flags as the ship moved through the water, or if it's part of a blockade like operation, which is a declared war element. We haven't declared a war, although it seems like we have a casus belli for a war. The other thing that's important to realize is the two ships that were interdicted this morning were in the North Atlantic. And we had intelligence from the Brits, our allies. So far, they're still our allies, but that's tenuous right now. That said, hey, these two ships you're looking for are in the North Atlantic just off the coast of Iceland. So one of these things is saying, you know, when you're talking about an interdiction, which the President and Marco Rubio said, hey, we're interdicting ship as part of our policy. Well, great, you've got it as a policy written down, but it's still got to be executed.
- [15:01]
C
Yeah, I mean, that's one question. I guess the question I had, and frankly, I'm assuming a lot of other people have, is what happens when there is an actual confrontation. Right. I was a little bit worried about the Russian submarine taking some sort of offensive action against us, and obviously it didn't happen. But this is oil that ostensibly is going to. To Iran, China, Russia, which is the reason for the administration to say, no, we're gonna, we're actually gonna intercept it. But it's not like those countries are just gonna sit back forever and say, yeah, you can just take it I assume at some point we're gonna be on the lookout for some sort of response or retaliation from those countries.
- [15:42]
B
Well, that's another part of the planning that I'm not sure we've considered. It's something called escalation dominance. If someone out there, a Russian ship, a Chinese ship, you know, an Iranian ship, I don't know, name that tune. A Russian submarine is interesting because they can certainly fire from below the surface. So you really don't know where it's come from. If it's in open waters and there's no submarine hunter out there trying to find out who's out there. If they're escorting a ship and they decide they don't want that ship to be boarded, you know, they, they can fire off a shot and then it's Katie, bar the door. That's escalation. Boom, boom. And that's how war spin up.
- [16:23]
C
Damn. I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot of these moments on this podcast where we're just sort of holding our breath. Bulwark Takes is sponsored by zocdoc. Finding a doctor you actually like feels like discovering a diamond in the rough. Sure, you want someone in network nearby with some open time slots, but let's be honest, that's just the start. You also deserve someone who really listens, makes you feel comfortable, calms your nerves, explains things, clearly tells you it's going to be okay, and frankly, remembers your kids names. Your diamond in the rough doctor does exist however. And while I like my doctor, I know ZocDoc is the first call whenever I need some kind of specialist. ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone who you love. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you're looking for, I don't know, dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care, or one of the other 200 plus specialties offered on Zocdoc. You can easily search by specialty or by symptom to build the care team that's just right for you. Stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to Zocdoc doc.com bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's z o c-o c.com bulwarktakes zocdoc.com bulwarktakes thanks Zocdoc for sponsoring this message. I guess the other thing that's happening right now and this one's really a head scratcher, is this whole conversation about Greenland, and this relates to what we're talking about, because obviously the ostensible reason for the administration to say we want Greenland is they think there's Arctic threats from Russia, from China, that we are just not in a position to deal with unless we have control ostensibly, of this massive island. And let's start with what actually we would gain if we were to, let's say, in theory, this is not necessarily going to happen. Get be granted Greenland from Denmark. Let's say they said, yes, you can have it, it's yours. You can rule the island. You can do whatever you want with it. Now, keeping aside, putting aside that we still. We do actually have a lot of capabilities to use Greenland, but what are the actual strategic benefits from that, Mark?
- [18:53]
B
Just proximity. And truthfully, we already have what we need on Greenland. Not only the base we have there, which is an Arctic base with a relatively small number of people, but we have our allies that are helping us out as well. But that seems to.
- [19:10]
C
Well, you say that they're allies now.
- [19:12]
B
But they're allies now. But certainly they've been insulted. But I'll ask you this question, Sam. Have you ever been to Greenland?
- [19:20]
C
I've been to Iceland, not Greenland.
- [19:25]
B
I've actually been to Greenland once to a place called Thule, and it was during the summer I froze my ass off. This is not a place you want to have a lot of troops to defend something. And it's a really big island, too. I mean, you know, comparatively speaking, but, you know, it's an outpost. It really is, to check the Arctic sea lanes. We have those in other locations, too. And, you know, in friendships with Canada, we share that responsibility. And truthfully, we don't have some of the capabilities you need to be on Griesland, Greenland, we don't have the kind of icebreakers that Denmark or Canada has. You know, manning a post on the landmass itself of Greenland is interesting, but I think this is. This is one of two things. Either it's for rare earth minerals, which I don't think it is, or it's a.
- [20:16]
C
You don't think so?
- [20:17]
B
No, I think it's a deflect.
- [20:19]
C
Come on.
- [20:19]
B
I think it's a defect.
- [20:21]
C
I mean, I just assume that everything they do is for natural resources. Honestly, I was under the impression. So for me, Venezuela, it was never about trend Aragua, it wasn't about fentanyl, because fentanyl really doesn't come from Venezuela. It was about oil, honestly. And I think everything post invasion has kind of affirmed my belief because it's all about how do we extract the oil. Did we talk to the oil executives? Can we get the security in there so that they can go in there for oil? And to me, that's the through line here, which is they look at Greenland as, I don't know, something for natural resources in addition to the added security benefits.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah, well, it could be. But if we can talk a little bit about oil in Venezuela for a second. All indicators in terms of a threat assessment and a cultural assessment and a geographic and a state of the Venezuelan oil fields. You know, again, I'm going to go back to some personal scar tissue. I have my last tour in Iraq was commander of Multinational Division north, which went from Baghdad up to the Syrian Turkish border. And in my area of operation, I had two of the three major Iraqi oil fields and refineries, the Beijing oil plant as well as the Kurdish oil fields. And I got to tell you, we tried bringing in oil executives from Chevron, BP and Shell. They came in, took a look around, said, we don't want any part of this because the facilities are in such bad shape, the security situation is so bad, and there's so much corruption and terrorist activity which exists in Venezuela as well. So I think we're going to see, you know, right now we're taking oil from storage tanks. When you get into the oil fields in the middle of the country, I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of oil execs going to say, yeah, we're going to do that.
- [22:12]
C
Well, that lends to your theory that eventually the military will have to get involved. Right. Because if you want to secure the sites, you have to have some sort of military footprint on the ground. All right, back to Greenland. So let's say in theory, we don't use military force, but we do tell Denmark, hey, we're buying it, and they acquiesce. I mean, it doesn't add much to the strategic portfolio necessarily. Let's say we do actually, though, take some sort of offensive action against Greenland and we try to invade it. You know, I was talking to Mark Warner about this the other day. He was basically like, that's the end of NATO. That's it. You can't, you can't do something like that and expect this, this alliance to continue on. Is that your assessment?
- [22:54]
B
Yes, absolutely. We're basically countering an ally in a major offensive move. I mean, if you buy it, if you attack it, if you put troops there that you're not supposed to. It's a slight against Denmark. And Denmark, by the way, you know, having served with the Danish soldiers, they, they were pretty, they were ponying up during Iraq and Afghanistan and in fact had the highest rate of casualties among any of our allies per capitol. So this is even more insulting than one would see at face value. This is not good. And when you're talking about Denmark, there's a new organization, a loosely formed organization called the Nordic Baltic 8. Denmark is one of the eight, and it's the new Swedish, Finland, Baltic countries. And, and Denmark is one of the eight, and they are some of the stronger elements of NATO right now in terms of the new NATO.
- [23:56]
C
All right, let's end with this the week ahead. What are the things you're looking out for with respect to Venezuela? Little nuggets or chestnuts that give you a sense of where we're heading and how this administration is thinking?
- [24:09]
B
Well, I, I'm still looking for who's in charge. I would like to know who that's going to be. I, I have a feeling that it's going to be the appointment of an envoy and a general of some type saying, go down there and do something and they're not going to be welcome. They're especially not going to be welcome because they're not going to have any forces on the ground. So they're just going to be a liaison basically with the Venezuelan government. The second thing I'd look for is some type of plan. What exactly are the coordinating points? Who's involved? What kind of things are they doing? How many more interdictions are we going to see of major ships? Not the small boats that have been bombed, but the major ships coming in and out of the ports of Venezuela? And the last thing I'm going to be looking at is what are the other countries in the region going to do? I mean, we've already seen protests by Colombia, Brazil and a couple in Mexico and a few others. How many others from Latin and South America are going to join into that? The last thing I'd say too is, I mean, we, we saw Admiral Halsey retire early because he was asked to do that as the Southern Command commander. The deputy commander, a three star, is in charge there. Have they placed a new guy in charge of that organization yet? I don't believe our Defense Department has. So are they just frittering away and we're leaving it up to South Special Operations Command and the carrier Ford Strike Group, or are we really looking at the entire region of South And Latin America, and I don't think we are just yet.
- [25:45]
C
All right, Mark, this was a pleasure. I will reiterate this. It is so great to have you at the Bulwark and at this moment in time. And I genuinely appreciate you providing your insights, not just on the podcasts and the YouTubes, but also writing for the site. This man is a multi dimensional media star. It's going to put us out of business.
- [26:06]
B
Oh, yeah.
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C
It's unbelievable. Mark, thank you so much, man. And for those who watched, subscribe to the feed so you can support what we're doing here and tell Mark how much you love him. Mark, take care, man.
- [26:18]
B
We're hoping to Sam, in the future to have people phoning in questions or writing in questions.
- [26:24]
C
Yeah, I should have mentioned that, you.
- [26:25]
B
Know, this is the reason I'm doing this is because there's 1% of America that serves in the military. So that means 99% doesn't quite understand what happens when you do kinetic operations like we did this week and the follow on effects. So hopefully what I can contribute is helping people at least better understand from an experiential standpoint what it is that we're doing in a different part of the world.
- [26:51]
C
Yeah, I should have mentioned that. I think the most the platonic ideal of the show is we explain somewhat difficult to understand but complex issues to people in an understandable way. We unpack critical military and geopolitical issues for them, but we also engage them, ask us questions and ideally we can bring in some other subject matter, matter experts as guests too. So as this product grows, we're going to experiment. We might not do everything right in the moment, but we promise to be open to changing and getting it right for you. And the other thing is we're going to try to do this weekly. We're not always great with keeping schedule, but we're going to be good about this one because, you know, Mark's a military guy and he keeps on schedule. So we're going to try to get this thing going for you. Thursday mornings is when we're going to aim to drop it if we don't do it. I promise, Mark. I do a bunch of sit ups and push ups. So there you go, the punishment. I will. Yeah, there you go.
- [27:45]
B
Yeah, you got to do pull ups like Secretary Hegsest, though.
- [27:50]
C
I'll try my best. I'm gonna go hit the gym after this.
- [27:53]
B
Okay.