← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Autotrader Mom
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]
Tom Nichols
Mommy, look.
- [00:24]
Autotrader Mom
I think kid is walking up the slide again.
- [00:27]
Tom Nichols
Really?
- [00:27]
Autotrader Mom
Autotrader, buy your car online. Really?
- [00:31]
Grainger Announcer
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- [01:00]
Ben
General, why don't you introduce yourself? Let's get going. Yeah.
- [01:03]
General Mark Hertling
And I'm General Mark Hertling, also on the Bulwark. And you've come into our space again for command post where we talk military stuff and national strategy. And we have a special guest today, Ben. You want to introduce him?
- [01:16]
Ben
Sure thing. Tom Nichols, our very special guest today is a professor emeritus national security affairs at the Naval War College where He taught for 25 years. He is now a staff writer at the Atlantic, author, contributor, author to the Atlantic Daily newsletter, and a former Jeopardy champion. So we are very, very lucky to be joined by Tom today. Tom, welcome.
- [01:37]
General Mark Hertling
Thank you.
- [01:38]
Tom Nichols
Thanks very much. Good to be with you.
- [01:39]
General Mark Hertling
And if I can, if I can chime in too. Tom is not only all those things Ben just said, but he's a very good friend of mine. He taught strategy at the war college, taught a bunch of other things. He's a Russian expert, speaks the language well. As a young man, he spent an awful lot of time in the Russian Federation. And I wanted to get Tom on here and Ben helped me do that because he is been talking a lot on the net about strategy, what's going on in the Department of Defense. And we're going to, we're going to speak to a few of those things today, Tom. But before we do, you know, they've asked me to do a quick glossary of tactical, operational and strategic. You know, tactical is the battle fights, the things where you see an airplane dropping a bomb, a soldier shooting at another person. Operational art or operations is when you link A bunch of battles together in a campaign to reach a certain strategy. And the strategy is the important part. And that's what we're going to drive Tom on today, because that's what they teach at the War Colleges. Tom was a professor, I was a student, not one of his. I went to the much better War College, the National war College in D.C. versus the Naval War College, but they teach a year of strategy. Tom, based on your teachings and your understanding and your connection with many officers and civilian leaders in the government, tell us what you think the strategy is today for Iran.
- [03:08]
Tom Nichols
Well, the first thing I'll say is a first rule of strategy that we always teach is maintain your alliances and don't proliferate your enemies. So I'm not going to comment on that shot at the Naval War College and the National War College.
- [03:20]
General Mark Hertling
So I'm going to let that go.
- [03:22]
Tom Nichols
The problem is that I don't know what the strategy is and I don't think that the White House does. I think that they went into this war and they said, look, let's drop a Super Bowl's worth of steel on everything in Iran. Let's blow up the leadership, let's take down their missile and nuclear capabilities and then, you know, dot, dot, dot, something good will happen. And that's not really a strategy. That, that's what you do when you have a lot of ordinance to put on target. But that you're not, that you're not thinking through why you're putting all these things together. And I think, Mark, that was a, that's such a useful primer about tactical, operational and strategic. Because what, as you well know, one of the classic mistakes of strategy is to mistake operational success for strategic success.
- [04:16]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, yeah. You can win every battle, you can win every fight, as we have done in many wars past in our history, and lose the war, lose the objectives. And it all gets to that key phrase of end state, Tom. And it's what the government or what the politicians are attempting to do. That's the critical point. And we've seen the changing dynamics and the descriptions. One of the things at the National War College, the last week we were there, we had a professor that pulled us all together and said, hey, you've gone through a year of understanding strategy. Let me give you a five minute lesson on what it really is. Always take the high ground. Logistics determines the art of the possible. Personalities matter and words are important, so be precise. We have heard a lot of words this week about what this operation is supposed to be and none of them Kind of seem to fit what the government is proclaiming they're doing.
- [05:14]
Ben
Well, I think we have a clip that, that illustrates that pretty well. Can we play our hegseth clip? Our first hegseth clip really quick?
- [05:20]
General Mark Hertling
That'd be great.
- [05:22]
Pete Hegseth
Of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump and President Trump got the last laugh. Now this is not a mission accomplished situation. This is simply a reality check. The combination of US and Israeli intelligence and combat power will control Iran and will control it soon. Sure, Iran will still be able to shoot some missiles and still be able to launch one way attack drones at civilian targets. And their proxies will attempt to attack our embassies, bases and soft targets. They are terrorists after all, and they need to target civilians because they can't fight toe to toe. But we will find them and we will kill them. This is what the fake news misses.
- [06:19]
Ben
Yeah, okay, that's find them, kill them, control the skies. To what end? What are we trying to accomplish? That's what he can't say.
- [06:27]
Tom Nichols
Right. And then what? You know, one of the reasons that we do the Pacific theater, as a case at the Naval War College, I'm sure you did it at national, which is almost as good as the War College is that, you know, for the first year and a half, two years, Japan had a string of operational successes. For the first year of the war, Germany had a string of operational successes. They were unbeatable. There's supposedly a quote, remember the quote on Harry Summers book about strategy? Now what? Supposedly it happened. But, and maybe it's a popular talking
- [07:03]
General Mark Hertling
about a colonel talking to the Vietnamese. Right, right.
- [07:06]
Tom Nichols
And he says, you know, this, this, he's supposedly an American colonel talking to a North Vietnamese army colonel. He says, you know, you never beat us on the battlefield. And the NVA colonel says, that's true. It's also irrelevant. And I'm, I'm a little worried that, you know, we could get into this situation where a year from now we're a lot worse off and the Iranian regime is still there and it's still killing a lot of people. And Pete Hegseth keeps coming out and saying, well, we control the skies. Yes, they still have drones. I like that he says drones on a one way mission. I didn't realize that there were like two way missions. Two way missions for kamikaze drones. And I don't inherently object to the idea of taking out bad guys in Iran. I don't think any of us do on either side of the political spectrum. I don't think anybody's crying any tears or, you know, beating their breast about the Iranian regime. But it has to be more than Pete Hegseth coming out and saying, we're going to find him and fix him and finish him and kill him. And, you know, that's not a strategy. That's just, that's. That's a performance from a secretary of defense. He needs to explain things more. But of course, the White House does. The last thing I'll say, because just before you were in that clip, it's not just that the government hasn't laid out its aims. It's that every part of the government seems to be laying out different aims at different times. The State Department, the Defense Department, the White House just can't seem to get on the same page. And when you're in the biggest war in 25 years, you kind of need to all be on the same page.
- [08:45]
General Mark Hertling
And that's my critique of Secretary Hegseth right now, because he took the place. His commentary. Tom, to be honest with you, while I was watching it, I thought it was the speech of a squad leader talking to 10 people. You know, find them, fix them, finish them. I mean, the knife hands and everything. And as a department head in the critical department, whenever you go to war, his main job, along with the chairman, is to take those tactics and those operations and, and match them to a strategy. But all they're concerned about right now is kinetic operations. And that's not good, in my view.
- [09:27]
Tom Nichols
He doesn't sound like. I mean, yes, he said to me, I was going to say he sounds like a guy who's just never gotten past 03. He's just like a eternal company commander talking to his guys. But when I heard that, I thought, he doesn't sound like a retired squad leader. Company commander sounds like a retired squad leader captain on Fox News, you know, trying to make a partisan point because, you know, that's something the fake news doesn't get. I mean, come on, man. Combat, major combat operations are underway. Six people are dead, one is missing. This is really what you want to talk about in a morning briefing to the American press, who are then going to take that message and have to explain it to the American people.
- [10:12]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah. And if I can say one thing, Ben, and then it's over to you.
- [10:16]
Ben
Sure.
- [10:16]
General Mark Hertling
The thing that I saw, interesting, you know, I thought the chairman's presentation was very professional, very precise, very succinct. He was talking about what was going on in the operation, what was not Stated was some of the. I don't want to call them defeats, but some of the things that imply that the enemy gets a vote. You know, there have been a lot of actions by the Iranians, not just against other governments in the region, but reports say that last night there were multiple radar domes in different countries that belong to the United States that cost an awful lot, that contribute to our success, that we're struck by Iranian missiles. None of that was talked. None of that was discussed. And from an operational perspective, you have to say we are fighting a very tough enemy. We are ensuring that we're protecting our forces, we're doing the things that we need to do. The campaign is adapting every second, as opposed to the hoorah, hoorah stuff that I think we heard in that. In that speech. Ben.
- [11:18]
Ben
Yeah, no, I think. I think that's exactly right. It's very similar, what I was going to say, which is that sort of, oh, well, maybe some missiles will get through, maybe some drones will get through. There's a kernel of truth to that. Right. The enemy always gets a vote in war. But it's not very reassuring if you're one of the Americans who works at the 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain where an American, where an Iranian missile landed, or if you're one of the Americans who got shot down and lost their life, or if you're one of the families of those Americans. Oh, you know, it happens. I don't really care. That's not the message that you want to be hearing from the Secretary of Defense who represents the United States government casualties. Who cares? That was incredibly disheartening, the words he
- [11:55]
Tom Nichols
used when he talked about this. He said, yeah, you guys are going to report on this because you want to make the President look bad. And he said, look, you know, it's true. Tragic things happen. When you're talking to the American people about 6 of their children being dead, you don't say, well, tragic things happen. Well, yes, but your job, Mr. Secretary, is to make sure the tragic things. As few of those tragic things happen as possible. And you don't. You don't just put it out there, as you said, Ben, some stuff's going to get through. You know, one of my colleagues was in the briefing room this morning, and she told me Nancy Youssef was there, and she said, well, you know, tragic things might happen. But they were pretty. They had eight security guys in that room. They swept it for explosives. I mean, you know, everyone takes their security seriously. So, as you guys are pointing out, you know, if you're in Bahrain or Kuwait or something. You don't want to hear the secretary of defense like, ah, well, you know, listen, it's going to happen. Stuff happens that is irresponsible and it's adolescent.
- [13:02]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah. And Tom, you know that I've shown you this before, but it's within arm's reach. I'm going to do it again because this is a box I have on my desk with the pictures of the 253 soldiers and sailors in one case under my command during a couple of combat missions who made the ultimate sacrifice. That's not things happening. Those things haunt me. Those pictures haunt me on a daily basis. And what haunts me even more is the mothers and fathers and spouses and children of those individuals who are part of the mission. Now, to the chairman's, to General Kaine's credit, he did mention them at the very beginning of the press conference,
- [13:45]
Tom Nichols
right at the top. And you know, with evident grief because
- [13:50]
General Mark Hertling
it weighs on him.
- [13:52]
Tom Nichols
The least that Pete Hegseth could have done would have been to suspend the kind of oily snarkiness that he brings to every one of his public performances and to say in a somber, sober way, to talk about these losses. And instead, all he did was hijack this event to air his beefs with the media, which really shows you sort of how that kind of narcissistic Trumpism has just leeched its way down into every aspect of the government. It was completely inappropriate and really shameful. I mean, really to the point where, I mean, I've said for a long time he should resign, but at the very least, that's worth an apology.
- [14:36]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah.
- [14:37]
Ben
Oh, 100%. And it's not just the, I mean, obviously the most important part of the people who have lost their lives, the people who've lost their loved ones. But there are real ramifications for the American economy, for America's national security, for the world economy that the administration just appears to be kind of ignoring. We've seen the price of gas spike because that's what happens when there's violence in the Middle east, including in the very important Strait of Hormuz, which I wrote about this morning in Morning Shots. We've discussed before that the point of strategy is not just to solve individual problems, like how do we kill Ayatollah Khamenei, but how do we make the country more secure?
- [15:19]
Grainger Announcer
If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know, having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering with on time restocks. Your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [15:48]
Ben
By the way, if you're just tuning in, this is Command Post on the Bulbourg feed. General Hertling and I do this every week. Normally this comes out on Thursdays where we're doing a special live with our friend Tom Nichols because of the events in Iran. Please send us your questions about Iran at Command post@the bulbourg.com we'll try to answer them in a future episode. But you know, I wanted to get to some of these bigger points about what exactly we're accomplishing and what the repercussions are. We've had unconfirmed reports that the very expensive Thaad missile defense system has been damaged by Iran. If I'm, for instance, a Chinese general looking at invading Taiwan, I'm licking my lips about that. And it's not exactly clear what we're accomplishing. Let's play the next clip of what it looks like in Tehran right about now. I mean, maybe that's regime change, but also it's not entirely clear to me that just because you can destroy, you can then build something that's better. So I mean, General, what do you, what do you see with your combat experience when you see a city like that?
- [17:06]
General Mark Hertling
Well, when I see something like that, Ben, it harkens back to 2003 when I went into Iraq with the 1st Armored Division. And you know, even this morning during the press conference, they made note of this is twice as large as the Shock and Awe campaign. And that's great. I mean, the military that's conducting these operations, there's targeting behind that. The targets that they strike are well analyzed. They're assessed. They're meant to hit a specific target to have a certain effect. All of that is great. And we were on the sidelines before the campaign, the shock and awe, and then went in and then spent the next 15 months in Baghdad trying to restore all of the kinds of things that were destroyed. So if you're talking about regime change and the administration has pooh, poohed that, they're saying it's not regime change, but someone's going to take over this nation of 90 million people and they're going to need institutions and they're going to need electricity and they're going to need all those kind of things. When you have that kind of destructive force, just like we saw the Israelis in Gaza against Hamas, there's nothing left. And so it's very difficult to rise from that afterwards. Not saying that those kind of strikes shouldn't happen, but it should be part of the end state that Tom was talking about earlier. What comes next after the last bomb drops, what's going to happen? And I don't think the administration's paid a whole lot of attention to that.
- [18:41]
Tom Nichols
There's a Somalia analog here, too, which is when you have this much destruction, the bad guys who are still there, it's in their interest not to reconstruct this stuff. It's in their interest to immiserate the population and to turn them against the people who did this, right? To say the water isn't on, the electricity isn't on, your children are going to starve, you're going to die. And the Americans did it because there are no Americans around them trying to fix it. This is what happened in Somalia because there was an American diplomat, a great line about this. He said, if you're a warlord and this could devolve into some kind of civil unrest with the irgc, the army, security, whoever's running around normalcy is the enemy because then it undercuts your case that the foreigners are the bad guys and that you want to be the good guy. So this is. We keep talking about regime change. It's regime destruction. And the only way you can replace a regime is with boots on the ground. But a really important point, and I think, Mark, you'd agree with this, they don't have to be our boots, but they have to be somebody's boots, right? I mean, they have someone. When Trump, the night of the war, when the president said, lay down your arms and surrender, all I could think of was surrender to home. Who's there to surrender to? And in Libya, there was an armed faction that after Gaddafi came down, they were able to take over, you know, cities and installations. Even in Serbia, which, you know, some, some folks are now hoping this is going to be like Serbia, right, where we kind of bomb them into submission and eventually they hand over their Milosevic to the Hague or something. But we, I mean, eventually we declared them terrorists, but we actually did have an army on the ground in Kosovo, wasn't ours.
- [20:40]
General Mark Hertling
And we still, and we still do have U.S. peacekeepers on the ground in Kosovo forever for right now. I mean, the ones that were supposed to leave in one year according to President Clinton are still there along other national forces. You know, Tom, you bring up a good point in terms of what happens next and the potential for chaos within a nation state and who are the people that build it up. You know, a lot of folks in the administration were suggesting that the Iranians rise up and take charge, and you've got to have some skills to take charge of a government and reinstitute the institutions. It just doesn't happen because you want it to happen. And that seems to be the repeated emphasis on hope is a method in terms of what happens as part of a strategy.
- [21:38]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, rise up and take over. In a country of 92 million people, rise up and take over would be a difficult assignment in a city of 9 million. In a country of 92 million. Rising up could mean that you get multiple governments in Isfahan or Mashad or Tabriz or wherever. And does that work in our advantage? I've written, I wrote the other day, there are some paths to success here. We could get lucky. We could pull the inside straight. But increasingly that looks unlikely, in part, as the president himself admitted, while we keep killing people that maybe could have been the people to take.
- [22:22]
Ben
Take over.
- [22:22]
Tom Nichols
Well, at some point, someone, as you say, someone, has to keep the lights on. And I suspect that what will happen now if the regime feels like it's really going down, that regime loyalists will say, no, no one's going to turn those lights on. We're going to make this as miserable as possible and, you know, terrorizing not only our neighbors, but our own people so that nobody can step forward and turn this into, you know, a pawn of the great Satan or whatever they're going to say about it.
- [22:50]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Yeah.
- [22:50]
Ben
I want to, if I can, I want to test out one thought about air power and hear your reactions to it. The sort of internal logic of air power in a situation like this is that we can do damage to you, but it's much harder for you to do damage to us. And so the alternate. And this, you know, this. As long as air power has been around, this has been part of the theory. If it's the Nazis bombing London or if it's Americans bombing Dresden in Tokyo or if it's what the Israelis did in Gaza, the theory is we can destroy you and, and keep our casualties as low as possible. And there is a logic to that. But on the other hand, the alternative, right, is if you want to go and take out the Iranian regime without incurring what have been reported as hundreds of civilian casualties. And I'm sure That number is rising. You have to go and sacrifice untold numbers of American lives to do it the dirty way, right on the ground. But the alternate. So we're destroying the Iranian regime. And I think this is part of the reason, that internal logic of air power is part of the reason why the Trump administration has so much trouble with strategies, because they don't think about trade offs. Right? They're not trying to accomplish anything, really. They're just trying to get something they can call a win without incurring too many casualties, sort of like they did in Iran last summer, like they were able to do in Venezuela, like they were able to do with the Soleimani strike in the first Trump administration. I think in a way there, what might be a commendable sensitivity to casualties is actually getting in the way of their clear thinking about ways, ends and means here. What do you think about that, Tom?
- [24:29]
Tom Nichols
Their whole strategy seems to boil down to look what we can do, like these very demonstrative, look at, look at this. We can destroy. Oh, the assembly of experts is meaning, well, we can blow that up. Kamini is over here. We can blow that up too. Well, okay, but you know, you guys know I've been getting, I've been taking a lot of static on social media about what war colleges teach. But one of the things they teach at all the war colleges is some pretty simple ideas like aircraft cannot hold ground. You know, naval bombard, Navy ships can do a lot of damage, but they can't actually hold territory. So that again, once you're done dropping all this ordinance on people, what is it that you want to hang on to? What is it that you think is going to happen? And I think, Ben, I don't even think they have that well reasoned view of what air power does. I think it's, you know, it's there, it's useful. They're going to use it because they can. And it keeps, yes, it keeps down casualties, although they keep saying they're not going to rule out ground forces. But I think their theory is that if enough punishment, enough destruction, enough pain delivered from the air means that something will emerge. And I, I don't, I mean, are there any Iran experts advising these guys? Are there anybody talking to them? Other, you know, who, who in the room is? I, I suspect, Mark your point about General Kane, he's the guy that gave the briefing this morning that gave us some, you know, some of the lowdown, some of the information is he or anybody else saying, here's some things to think about. I worry about that, because this White House, unlike Trump's first White House in this one, if you're not on the team or if you're perceived to be critical, you're out the door.
- [26:25]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah. One of the things, Ben, I'll add to that is all the, all the operations that you named were all conducted magnificently. I'm not slighting any of them, but they were all limited surgical strikes, equivalent to special operations forces doing their thing and then getting the hell out. And what one of the things I learned in Iraq, being a ground force commander, having special operations in my area of operation, they were very useful in doing things like that. Going in at nighttime, kicking in a door, killing the bad guy or capturing the bad guy, getting the heck out of there. But then we were left with the battle space. Later, to Tom's point, this is the first of all the things that the administration has done that's more than a special operations mission. And they're following the lead of the Israelis, who have a favorite expression of cutting the grass whenever the terrorists start to become overwhelming. Cutting the grass, killing people, doing things to knock them back. If that's what we're doing, and it seems like it is, okay. But again, as we've been talking about through this entire show, what's next? One of the things I'm going to take a U turn or a left turn real hard right here and talk about another thing that was said in the press conference this morning, and that's logistics. If you remember going back to my four things that summarize my one year at the War College, logistics determines the art of the possible. Now, having been a guy on the Joint Staff that had the requirement to do risk assessment of what was left for other theaters when we were going into Afghanistan and Iraq, I know that there's somebody, a bunch of bean counters in the Pentagon who are saying, hey, we're running low on some of these things. When you conduct the kind of operations that we just showed in that film where there's 2,000 airstrikes and a whole bunch of missiles going into a country, and you're using a whole lot of thaad batteries and Patriot batteries to defend not just your own forces, but the other Gulf nations, you do start running low. I'm not buying, and I'm sorry to say this, I'm not buying the Hegseth comment that we have tens of thousands of precision munitions left. And the reason I'm not buying it is because, which is what he said in today's press conference is because he published a National Defense strategy about a month ago. And the fourth priority was to rebuild the industrial base because we were low on ammunition. So you can't have it both ways, dude. You gotta tell me what the real deal is, Tom, what are your thoughts on that?
- [29:06]
Tom Nichols
Well, you could take the. You could also take the President's word and say, you know, the cupboard was bare. Well, if the covered was bare four years ago, it's not replenished now. And, you know, what is it? You know, what, what are you going to use the industrial base for? Are you going to replenish all these weapons or are you going to build stupid, you know, white elephant battleships?
- [29:29]
Ben
Battleships, yeah, or the Golden Dome.
- [29:31]
Tom Nichols
Or the Golden Dome, or invade Greenland or whatever it is, you know, I mean, right now I just saw that we're. We're engaged in some kind of special operations thing down in Ecuador.
- [29:41]
General Mark Hertling
Right, Great.
- [29:42]
Ben
That's what we needed.
- [29:43]
Tom Nichols
I mean, at some point. And I am a. I'm a cornucopian and, you know, as they used to call us, I believe that we have, like that. The American. When it bothered me when George H.W. bush said, we have. I'm gonna do my Bush. We have more will than wallet. And. And I like. No, we have. Sorry.
- [30:01]
General Mark Hertling
No, you're good. Okay.
- [30:05]
Tom Nichols
This is a PG13 podcast.
- [30:08]
General Mark Hertling
This is an MA podcast.
- [30:11]
Tom Nichols
We have plenty of wallet. We can do plenty of things. But if you're going to start spending all that stuff and expending it, then, yeah, Mark, as you pointed out, you can't have it both ways. You can't say, oh, I needed to come in and replenish the cupboard because we're running dry. And previous administration. Okay, fine. That's your beef against previous administrations. Well, you can't then say, we have tens of thousands of these things because apparently then you were full of crap the last time, because apparently somebody built them and stopped breaking news.
- [30:42]
Ben
Tom, I know we only have you for a couple more minutes, and we're going to take people's questions on Iran as after you have to drop off, but since you are a Russia specialist, Moshna Peruski, let's talk a little bit about Ukraine. Okay, let's just get your quick thoughts about what's going on in Ukraine. The reports of Ukraine's demise have been greatly exaggerated, but this doesn't seem like it's good for them, first of all, to have the attention taken off, and second, for us to be using all the weapons that we might, in theory, be giving them in the future. What do you think?
- [31:15]
Tom Nichols
Well, I Know where the Russians aren't going to get any more drones, although apparently the Russians do have the design for them and they're going to ramp up production. Look, it's. I think on this. Let me try as being as fair to the Trump administration as I can. It's bad for the Russians to lose a wealthy friend, right? A country that, you know, one of their few. I don't want to call them Russia, doesn't really have allies. They have clients and, you know, co conspirators. But to lose one of them, okay, that's bad. And they clearly gonna lose this one for a while. With that said, the Ukrainians, four years later, are still kicking the stuffing out of these guys.
- [31:59]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, they are.
- [32:01]
Tom Nichols
I mean, it's amazing. And in a way, it's almost a relief to see that the Europeans are doing their part, Ukrainians are doing their part. The Americans are at least not getting in the way. For now. We should be doing more.
- [32:17]
General Mark Hertling
But.
- [32:18]
Tom Nichols
But, you know, Mark, I'm willing to bet that the point you just made about logistics, that hex is tens of thousands of these things. Well, we should help with Ukraine. Oh, no, we're running out.
- [32:28]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, exactly right.
- [32:30]
Tom Nichols
They're gonna play that both ways. Oh, Ukraine. That's.
- [32:33]
General Mark Hertling
That's. Yeah, we can't do that.
- [32:36]
Tom Nichols
Can't do that. We're running low. The other thing I think, you know, somebody mentioned. I think we mentioned China earlier, maybe, but it's really entertaining to watch the Ukrainians winning. Not winning. I shouldn't say winning. The Ukrainians more than holding their own right now, while Bridge Colby is trying to hop around on a hot griddle in front of Congress because he was the guy that wanted to switch back to China, which is the clear beneficiary of all this. So I think the Russians. This is a net loss for the Russians. Ukrainians are doing well, and the Chinese are sitting back and saying, thank you for expending all that ammunition while we study your operations and we count how
- [33:19]
Ben
many interceptors you're using.
- [33:21]
Tom Nichols
Exactly as Mark said, there's a bean counter somewhere in the Pentagon, you know, ticking these things off. Don't think there's one in the Chinese Ministry of Defense sitting there with a pen and saying, okay, so how many you know today and how fast can they replace them? This was. This whole thing was embarked on, I think, for several reasons. The President, we started this discussion with strategy. I think the President said, I will become a glorious liberator of Iran. This will make me look great. The lesson I've learned from Venezuela is that going up against the country of 92 million people is just like kidnapping one guy in the middle of the night. And I think, you know, this is. This is a leadership failure from the top down. Does it mean that it all has to go wrong? No, because people like Dan Kane and all the other chiefs and the staff and all these extraordinarily professional military leaders are actually doing this while Pete Hegseth is at the podium bitching about the press. So if this gets pulled off, it'll be because of the incredible operational skill of US military, not because anybody above them knew what they were doing.
- [34:31]
Ben
Yeah. Amen.
- [34:32]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah. Tom, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining us. And it's good to see you, my old friend. Yeah, we'll have to probably have an adult beverage sometime real soon to talk more about in private, right?
- [34:48]
Tom Nichols
Absolutely. Much to discuss.
- [34:53]
Ben
Thanks so much. Bye Bye, General. Now you and I can. Can answer some of these audience questions. We got. We asked for people's questions.
- [35:00]
General Mark Hertling
Can I do one thing first, though, Ben? Can I tell a war that tags on to what Tom was saying? He mentioned China. In my war college, in the National War College. The end of the year, we take a trip, and I was lucky enough to get. They split the whole class up, they go different places, and then they come back in and report what's going on around the globe. My trip was. I was lucky enough to be a trip of six, and we went to China. This was in 1998. And it was the first mill to mill military to military event that they had had in about 10 years. I went with a professor who was much like Tom Nichols, a guy named Bud Cole. And when we went to the Chinese War College in Nanjing, they showed us their program of instruction, what they were doing, their tactical course to get back to the tactical Operational and Strategic course. The tactical course was how they would refight the Battle of Nanjing, which occurred in 1939, where the Chinese got their butts kicked by the Japanese. When I asked the question, well, what's your operational level course? In the second semester, there was a hesitation and they looked around the room. And this, by the way, this was in 1998. And one of the professors told a student, go ahead and tell the Americans what it is. And they said, well, we replay Desert Storm and we are the Iraqis against the Americans. And we try and beat them from lessons learned. And every lessons we learned of what they did in Desert Storm. In Desert Storm, we apply, and we've been kicking your ass in the Exercise words to that effect. I've hyper, hyperbolized it a little bit. But it struck me, struck me at that time that even in 1998, they were watching everything we did, especially the successes to how to counter them. To Tom's point, if you don't think they're countering them right now or finding ways to counter them, your head's in the sand. All right, back to you.
- [36:58]
Ben
No, listen, I will take a moment of privilege as well and say that I can't get over for all of Trump's talk about being tough on China, for all of Tom mentioned Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, whose whole thing has been, we got to focus on China to the exclusion of everything else. China, China, China. It's only China. Look, China is our biggest competitor and threat, I agree. But, like, there's a whole world out there.
- [37:21]
General Mark Hertling
But.
- [37:22]
Ben
And you know, part of the idea, like, I wrote about this in Morning Shots this morning in our newsletter, you can find it@the bulwark.com the idea that as Trump apparently announced, the navy might start escorting tanker ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which is this very narrow waterway right along Iran's coast. It's basically their navy's entire focus, very important for the oil trade. And to do that, we'd have to, I mean, there are a whole bunch of problems with it, but one of the things is we'd have to take so many ships away from places like the south and East China Seas, the Sea of Japan, the Strait of Malacca, places where the Chinese really want to have influence. If I, again, if I were one of those Chinese officials sitting in the Ministry of Defense, I'd think, oh, great. Now, instead of having to deal with, I'm making up numbers here, but, you know, 25American warships around Taiwan, I might only have to deal with five. And that's a much easier problem.
- [38:16]
General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [38:17]
Ben
All right, we should get to these questions. One is from Aaron o'. Grady. Thank you so much for sending us a great question. So I really don't know the answer to this. We'd have to sort of tease it out together. If Congress did get its act together and Trump got Trump to knock it off, and then Trump actually listened and stopped regarding the war in Iran, what then? What would it look like? Would we just go home? I mean, what, what would happen? I don't really know the answer, but it's interesting to think about.
- [38:46]
General Mark Hertling
Well, I mean, we've seen Congress attempt to thwart some of the things that President Trump has done. We have seen the Courts try and do the same thing. And what I would say is the, the first situation would probably be the administration would ignore it and keep going. But even if they said, okay, you're right, we need to give, we need to get out of here, and this is an excuse for an off ramp because we've finished what we wanted to do. You've left the results of that bomb strike you showed earlier. In a society that probably doesn't have a whole lot of leaders stepping out. And the people certainly aren't stepping up, that's for sure. So, as Tom mentioned, one of the things we look at in contingency plans, the toughest contingency plans that, that we do are ones where there's an implosion or whether, where there's a humanitarian disaster. That's what we would have in Iran right now. No one's in charge. The people don't have services. The people just want to get back to daily life. It's going to take a while. And we would see not just potentially an implosion of Iran as a nation, but potentially an explosion where there's going to be a whole lot of immigrants leaving the country and possibly going into Iraq, the other Gulf states, or even into Europe. So I think.
- [40:12]
Ben
Or north into Central Asia. Yeah, yeah, totally possible.
- [40:16]
General Mark Hertling
Name that place, just get the hell out of there would be probably what a lot of mothers and fathers are thinking. And there's going to be a lot of IRGC people who are left over, the Revolutionary Guard Corps. There's going to be Kurds in the north who have always wanted their own society combined between Iran, their own statehood. So it could get pretty sporty, let's just put it that way.
- [40:44]
Ben
Yeah, I'd say historical parallels are always tricky, but one way to start thinking about scenarios of what that could look like are the last three times. Basically, America just decided it was done with the war. One was Vietnam where we pulled out, and then Congress told the president, actually, not only are we ending our combat operations of Vietnam, you can't even continue to support the South Vietnamese. And within, what if a few years, North Vietnam took over and it's now one united country, South Vietnam collapsed, you've got Iraq. Another similar sort of story where we said, all right, deadline certain, but end December 31, 2011, we're going to be out and, you know, things teetered for a while. And then ISIS came in and you've got Afghanistan, where we said, that's it, all right, wash your hands, we're done, we're goodbye. And in all three cases, basically, the upshot is the bad guys win.
- [41:40]
General Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, and it's because of governance. In each one of those countries, it was because of the government was either crooked or corrupt. Now, in defense of Iraq, which I always stand up for, they recovered, but they had bad governance across the board. They were not paying their soldiers. Maliki was in charge. He created as much as we did by leaving the essence of ISIS that took over the country for a few days, and it caused an unbelievably humanitarian. Unbelievably tough humanitarian disaster.
- [42:11]
Ben
Yeah, in all three cases. Okay, we've got a great question. This one is all you. Peter Stone from Houston. What does coordinating with an allied military in an active war look like? Is what we are currently doing with Israel similar to what combined NATO operations would look like in terms of how our forces communicate? Is there, like a joint command? How are they deconflicting? How does all of that work?
- [42:34]
General Mark Hertling
Well, I'd suggest with the Israelis, it's a dual relationship, US and the Israelis there have often been in Israel other countries that have joined in with aircraft, with troops, with air defense. But I think it's primarily Israel and the US and, yeah, there was coordination. And I think in this particular case, there's a lot of either ground or airspace deconfliction. Israel, you take the north, we'll take the south. And in fact, General Kaine said that the other day that we were coming in from primarily the southern part of Iran. Israel was focusing on the capital and other places. And in fact, just a point of issue, that film we showed was Israeli bombings going into Tehran, not us.
- [43:18]
Ben
Thank you.
- [43:19]
General Mark Hertling
But when you have an expansive alliance like NATO, that's the importance of being there and being part of it. Because for years, you do training and exercises together with 32 other countries in NATO and actually some additional ancillary countries that aren't part of NATO like Ukraine. I mean, when I was commander in Europe, we would. We had an exercise. My last. My very last exercise in Europe as the commander was held in Ukraine at a place called Yabariv. 16 NATO members and 3,9 non NATO members were conducting that exercise together. So you get to understand each other. There's a feel for other armies, other navies, what they do, other, certainly other air forces. And you have to have, you know, a unified command center that synchronizes and collaborates on operations. And usually if you walk into one of those centers, there's people with all different kinds of uniform. It looks like the military, UN with different berets, and different uniforms. And usually they're all talking to one another, usually working off the same classified information when you share that. So it's pretty fascinating to watch how countries to come together. And I think it was Winston Churchill who once said, the only thing worse than working with. Working with allies is not working with allies. And that's where we're increasingly finding ourselves.
- [44:48]
Ben
But in this case, we're not expecting to see Israeli personnel in, like, the centcom headquarters of U.S. forces. Right. These are two. Oh, you think we are in this case?
- [44:56]
General Mark Hertling
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [44:57]
Ben
Okay, interesting.
- [44:58]
General Mark Hertling
They have to have liaison officers because you want to know what's happening. I would suggest. I don't know exactly what happened, but the Kuwaiti Air Force shoot down of our three aircraft was because there was a couple of missteps in that coordination. And there may not have been a Kuwaiti officer inside of the CENTCOM headquarters command post.
- [45:20]
Ben
Interesting. Okay, we've got another question from Susan K. Are there indeed regional groupings that can be empowered to take over some administrative initiatives? I assume you mean inside Iran. If the government, if the regime falls to. Do we even know who they are? Uh, there was, I think, a CNN report yesterday that the CIA was trying to work with some Kurdish groups. Uh, you know, the thing about Iran is most of its neighbors are Arab states. Iran is not an Arab state. They don't speak that language. It's not their culture. It is predominantly Persian, but not exclusively. There are a bunch of minorities like Azeris, like Kurds, like Balochis. Um, so, you know, it's not super clear who would come into Iran and they'd say, oh, thank God. It's these people are here to run our country.
- [46:06]
Tom Nichols
I don't.
- [46:07]
Ben
I. I don't. I mean, at least in this, like in the case of Gaza, you can imagine, okay, you know, if the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Kuwait, whatever, you know, the Jordanians, whatever, want to get together and do something for Gaza, they all. They all speak dialects of the same language. There's some cultural affinities. Maybe that's not the worst thing. In the case of Iran, I literally can't think of a single example.
- [46:27]
General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [46:27]
Ben
Can you?
- [46:28]
General Mark Hertling
And no, I can't. And there are hundreds of tribes and sects and fault lines and cultures inside of Iran. I'm not an Iranian expert, but I will compare it to Iraq. When. In 2007 and 8, when I was in northern Iraq, we went in knowing that we had Sunni and Shia Arabs in that part of the country. What we found when we got there as we did more analysis is we also had a significant number of Kurds. We also had Yazidis and Chaldeans. And you know, I can go on and on and not only that, but when you're fighting an enemy in this kind of environment, it's not just the good guys and the bad guys going against each other. It's not just the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the basige and some others. There are going to be individual gang members and cults. It's going to be like sharks and jets, you know, and if, if people don't know about the Kurdish region, the autonomous Kurdish region, it is a big circle that consumes part of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. And they're all the Kurdish culture. But there are different political parties and not all of them like each other. There are some even in the, in the Kurdish region that are kind of like Republicans and Democrats, that they can't stand each other. So that all adds additional complexity to any, any sort of operation that you would think you could sneak in a force like the Kurds and re establish solid leadership inside of Iran.
- [48:00]
Ben
All right, General, I got one last question for you before we have our special announcement. So stay, stay tuned for that. This is from Chantal. Excuse me if I'm pronouncing these names wrong, by the way. What would the morale of our soldiers be like right now? Do they know that this Iran war is unpopular and does that make a difference in their morale?
- [48:22]
General Mark Hertling
I saw a letter that Admiral Cooper wrote to all of his forces that are part of Sencount. It was a one page note. It was posted on X and it was extremely well done. And what he was doing in that note was telling his force, just like Dwight Eisenhower did before D day, that you're going in to a tough operation and the eyes of the world are on you. And again, we hearken back to that tactical and operational part. They're doing a magnificent job. But I would suggest, Ben, if there's any continued talk about soldiers on the ground, Marines on the ground inside of Iran, that is going to be an unbelievably hard mission. And I can't think of anybody that would be, to use the Marine expression, gung ho, about entering the port of Isfahan and heading toward Tehran because it's a whole lot longer march in Iran, which is three times the size of Iraq and there's a whole lot more mountains and forests and urban areas. It would be an extremely tough mission. And that again gets to a lack of planning by those who are executing this Operation geared toward the strategic objective of how does this end and what's next.
- [49:45]
Ben
Yeah, I would if. I can only imagine being in that position and being prepared to get those orders. But I would not be enthusiastic. Thank you again. If you're just joining us for the first time, this is Command Post, part of the Bull Work Takes feed. We do this every week. Usually we record this on Wednesdays, but there was too much news to record it, so we did it live. And we're going to be off next week for a very special reason, which is that, General, your book is coming out if I don't return A Father's Wartime Journal. I have been lucky enough to read it and it is unbelievably good. I recommend everyone go buy it. It is available for presale now.
- [50:21]
General Mark Hertling
Are you saying that just because we're on the bulwark together, Ben, or did you really like it?
- [50:26]
Ben
No, I just read the chapter about honesty and honest criticism and what it means to be straightforward with someone and build trust. So, no, I'm being absolutely honest. It. It is really, really good. Recommend everyone go buy it again if I don't return A Father's Wartime Journal coming out next week. It's available for pre order already. I highly recommend it. Please keep sending us your questions. We're probably going to be talking about Iran a lot more, but send us your questions about everything. Last episode we asked for questions about recruitment and who joins the military and why. We got some great, great, great questions. We're going to hopefully address that in a future episode. General, any parting words?
- [51:01]
General Mark Hertling
Now, this was an excellent command post because Tom Nichols is just a phenomenal individual. You know, a lot of people on social media call him a curmudgeon and he is. He's an old war college professor, but he's brilliant as well, and he has some real insight into how the government works and how war is conducted. So, Ben, you and I were really lucky to have him on this week and it's just always fun being alongside you as my battle buddy. So we won't be on next week, but we'll come back the week after that. I'll be in New York City hawking my book to a bunch of media outlets and some book signing events. But I'll miss you and I'll be back the week after that.
- [51:45]
Ben
Cheers. You too. Congratulations on the book. Good luck and we will talk to you in two weeks for another command post. Thanks for watching.