← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
Mark Hertling
No idea what he just said, Ben. Truthfully, there there is no connection to World War II history and the things he said in terms of taking it and giving it back.
- [01:11]
Ben Parker
Hi everybody. I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark, and.
- [01:14]
Mark Hertling
I am Mark Hertling, Bulwark contributor and also a retired lieutenant general. This is the third edition of Command Post, something that we've been doing as part of Bulwark takes to really dig deep into the military aspects of some of the headlines we're seeing in the news.
- [01:31]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I think you put it very well in one of the previous videos. Only 1% of Americans serve in the armed forces, but what those people do is a big effect on the rest of us and vice versa. So we're trying to close the civilian military divide one video at a time. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about today. We had a whole list of topics planned, and then President Trump gave his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. We're going to talk later about domestic deployment of troops here in the United States in Minneapolis, and you've got some really interesting details on which troops are asking to deploy and what that means and why it's alarming. But first we got to talk about this speech and we have to talk about some of the text messages you've been getting from your former contacts back when you in charge of US Army Europe and their reactions to what President Trump said. And we're going to get into a lot of his quotes later. But first of all, what are the reactions you've been hearing?
- [02:25]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, Ben, I tell you, as you and I have talked offline before, I get an awful lot of message from former military officials from the 49 different countries that are in Europe. You know, there, there are Some of those, 30 of them are part of NATO. Canada and the United States are the ones that are outside of Europe that are part of NATO. But I have connections with quite a few. I won't name which countries they're from, but they are retired generals just like me. Sometimes they feed in some of their active duty subordinates who they mentored. And I get text messages from folks. One of those individuals asked me, is this a guy that America really supports in terms of national security concepts and strategy? And you know, it's tough for me, even as a retired general, to say, oh, hell no, we don't support this. But I try to couch my answer to some of those folks in terms of saying the challenges we are now going to face, what we have to continue to do in terms of the transatlantic alliance and especially those member nation states of NATO, you know, and it's going to be challenging for sure.
- [03:38]
Ben Parker
Yeah, it definitely is. We should, we should make sure to comment right here that we are recording at about 3pm Eastern on Wednesday afternoon. So for us, Trump just gave his speech this morning and this video will be published tomorrow. So things could change. Just for example, shortly before we started recording, the president announced that he now has it wasn't concepts of a plan. He had some other framework for an agreement, a concept for an agreement for Greenland. So he's now not going to impose the tariffs and we're going to be negotiating over access to the it's totally incomprehensible what's going to happen with Greenland. But that was a huge part of what he talked about today. He got up in Europe in front of all these business and financial and government leaders and talked about why the United States really needed Greenland. So like we let's play this first clip where he sort of tried to describe maybe the most basic fact about Greenland, where it's located.
- [04:39]
Donald Trump
Greenland is a vast, almost entirely uninhabited and undeveloped territory sitting undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia and China. That's exactly where it is, right smack in the middle.
- [04:57]
Mark Hertling
Unlike many people, I've had the opportunity to land in Greenland on two different occasions. Both were in my younger days as a soldier traveling to Europe. The international flights between New York and Frankfurt, Germany, sometimes stopped, especially if it was a military aircraft would stop at Thule, Greenland, which is on the northwest coast, the far northwest coast of Greenland. It's now pontificate space base, space station, where there are some radars, and it is a vast piece of ice, to be sure, and it's certainly between a couple different continents. The strategic value is important because it does connect with norad, the North American Air Defense Command, and it's connected to northcom Northern Command of the United States military, because there are early warning capabilities placed at that base to. To detect incoming missiles coming across the North Pole. So, yeah, it is strategic in nature, but what the president really danced around is the fact that Denmark and their island of Greenland have always given the United States access to those locations. And as part of the treaty, they say, as much more as you need, you can certainly lease from us. And. And the president made a big deal out of leasing, as if it's not something that's all that great. He'd much rather own it as opposed to lease it. And he compared it to a house renting or buying. And truthfully, Ben, that just knocked my socks off. Because if we want to start owning all the bases we occupy as a US Military, in terms of a global strategy, we're going to be paying a whole lot of money for those facilities versus leasing them with other countries. And that's the first thing I bring up. You know, when he's talking about not wanting to lease, it probably puts all of our allies where we do lease locations like naval bases, air bases, military bases, to include countries like Qatar, Germany, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea. It puts them with probably a raised eyebrow, I would think.
- [07:17]
Ben Parker
Definitely. The other thing that stood out to me about this was that he's actually giving. He's doing China a favor when he says that Greenland is near China. China is not an Arctic country, but it a few years ago declared itself to be one because the Arctic is a sort of new frontier of international trade and therefore geopolitics. And so China said, well, we want to be an Arctic country, too, so we're going to declare ourselves a near Arctic country, whatever that means. It's a term they made up. And here comes Donald Trump saying, oh, well, Greenland's right near China. So I guess if that's the case, then maybe China is an Arctic country after all. So, yeah, thanks for giving them a freebie, Mr. President. Um, you mentioned that he called Greenland a piece of ice, and that generated a little bit of a stumble later on when he confused it with a completely different country. Let's Listen to this one.
- [08:04]
Donald Trump
I'm helping Europe, I'm helping NATO. And I. And I've until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me Daddy, right? Last time, very smart man, said, he's our daddy. He's running it. I was like, running it. I went from running it to being a terrible human being. But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection.
- [08:38]
Ben Parker
Any thoughts, General?
- [08:40]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, it's the ultimate real estate salesman pitch. You don't need it, it's just a piece of ice. I would really like to have it. So why don't you give it to me? I mean, that's what I took away from his speech. This is again, the art of the deal. How do you couch it? Notwithstanding that there have been 60,000 Greenlanders living there for the last couple of centuries and that Norway has had a great relationship with that island and it is an important part of NATO. So having the US Own it is, I think, a whole lot less effective than having the 32 nations of Europe protecting it as part of an alliance. So, you know, that has to be part of the art of the deal, too. Do you trade off one individual country having responsibility for this key strategic location, which is relatively small, on an island that's large and that is truthfully frozen up to 100ft, you know, below the surface, or do you have 32 nations saying, we're going to protect the Greenland, Iceland, UK gap, as it was called during the world during the Cold War, in terms of strategic implications and perhaps sharing the information, as we do now with Canada, for airborne missiles coming over the Pole, any kind of attack that would come from Russia, would you rather have one country doing that, or like we've had for multiple decades, both Canada and the United States sharing that responsibility for our hemisphere and. And having the other NATO countries be involved in the intelligence sharing regarding what goes on?
- [10:23]
Ben Parker
Yeah, no question in my mind. It did stand out to me that he said it was poorly located, which, if it's so poorly located, why do we want it? That doesn't seem to make any sense. He did. This is maybe perhaps the most newsworthy part of what he said is that he did seem to say that military force was off the table in terms of how the United States would try to acquire Greenland. And we're going to get into this one a little bit after he says it, because you've been following this very closely, and I want to get your close read on this.
- [10:55]
Donald Trump
Never ask for anything and we never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay. Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland, where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago. After we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others In World War II, we gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.
- [11:49]
Mark Hertling
I have no idea what he just said, Ben. Truthfully, there is no connection to World War II history and the things he said in terms of taking it and giving it back or the fact that it appears he was saying we were using it for our purposes during World War II. And that could be true if you talk about the north. Excuse me, the North Atlantic shipping routes. But that was the Allies working against the Axis powers. You're right. His statement about I won't use force. We could use force, but I won't do it. What I noticed in that, because I watch his body language very carefully, and most of the time he reads the teleprompters and riffs off of the teleprompters. But in that take, you just showed he was looking down at the front row of the audience in the Davos forum. So he was either riffing or had been considering saying that for a while. But it doesn't comport with what he's been saying over the last month. As you know, because you're my editor, I've written two pieces on Greenland. The first one was when there was the rumor reported by many that the president had given JSOC the mission to look at operational campaign features and a mission analysis of going into Greenland. The second one was just recently when there was, you know, a lot of discussion from the administration about why they desperately needed Greenland and they would take it by force. That was repeated multiple times by both the vice President and the Secretary of State and also the Secretary of Defense. I even think Kristi Noem got involved in conversations about Greenland. So you can see across the board. Oh, and don't forget Scott Bessant and Howard Lucknick also commenting on the fact that we so desperately needed that we should take it. So those are not the words of a great ally or a great allies administration when they repeat those kind of statements.
- [13:53]
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- [14:52]
Ben Parker
This is just a theory. This is not reporting that I have done. This is not reporting that I've seen anyone do. But I'm trying to make sense of the tea leaves here. We know, and you've written about, as you just said, that the president asked the special Joint Special Operations Command for basically their plan to take over the island of Greenland, which is a weird thing to do. That's not what Joint Special Operations Command does. That's not what any military unit should do because it's arguably illegal and it makes no sense and Congress hasn't authorized it. There are a million reasons why. It's the wrong team for the wrong mission for the wrong reasons. There was also a report that the president, this just came out yesterday, the day before, the president had not asked the Pentagon to draft up plans for action against Greenland. Now, when I hear that, I think that's different from the guys at jsoc. That's like the people who had your old job where they're actually drafting up the formal military plans for the entire military. And so I think President Trump thought, well, maybe I'll see if I can do this on the cheap. But I'm not actually interested in doing what it would militarily take to actually take and secure and hold the island of Greenland. And that's connected. I think I want to connect this theory to this. These Next two clips, we're going to play about how he likes clean, perfect, immaculate military operations that are over in a relative instant and cost apparently nothing. So let's listen to these next two clips.
- [16:24]
Donald Trump
We are going to build a dome like no other. We did it. We did it for Israel. And by the way, I told Baby Bibi stop taking credit for the dome. That's our technology. That's our stuff. But they had a lot of courage and they were good fighters and they did a good job. And we wiped out the Iran nuclear threat like nobody can believe. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. That Venezuela taking down Soleimani, wiping out Al Baghdadi when he tried to reinstitute isis. We did a lot. I did a lot. A lot of big things, all perfectly executed. We did something that Operation Warp Speed, which some people say was one of the greatest military feats ever. We did a great job. Use our military. Use a lot of people.
- [17:13]
Ben Parker
So he likes these operations, including, interestingly, Operation Warp Speed, where he gets to accomplish something very specific, very finite, with minimal retaliation against Americans. We know he doesn't like thinking about people being injured or killed. We know this from a variety of examples. And so I think maybe someone got to him, whether it was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or our European allies, and said, hey, if you do make a move on Greenland, it's going to end up with Americans getting hurt or killed. And that may be why he seemed to have backed off. What do you think about that whole crazy tea leaf theory I just laid out?
- [17:49]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, that's possibly true, Ben. And I think from the standpoint of a military perspective, when the President orders the Defense Department to develop a plan, no matter how ridiculous that plan is, it's the job of the military to come back and try and make sense of it, to give the President options. So the military could have been ordered to make a contingency plan for invading Greenland or even just occupying Greenland. And when it goes back to the Joint Staff and you talk to the combatant commander who's responsible for the Western Hemisphere, which is now Northern Commander, they can put a plan together with normally three or four or five courses of actions. And the way you present it to the President is in such a way to say, this is going to cost. There are some opportunity costs, and the return on the investment is not that great. You know, the majority of people in Greenland live in the capital Nuke, and that majority is about 60,000 people. So when you put that majority of people, it's a relatively small city they don't have a defensive capability other than what's provided by Denmark if it's needed in that city, you know, militia arms, guards or whatever. And it looked like the European allies were getting ready to conduct an exercise inside of Nuke or in and around Nuke. So when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs then comes back and says, hey, look, our planners have taken a look at this, this is going to be very difficult. It's not going to be pretty. It's going to cause reaction on the world stage, and there are going to be some Americans likely killed if the, if we violate Article 5 or if Article 5 is called from NATO and all of the NATO members other than us come in and defend Greenland. Yeah, it's going to get pretty ugly no matter how effective our forces are. Now, to your other point, he has watched the immaculate conduct of operations by Special Forces and, and a kinetic strike against Iran and several kinetic strikes against terrorists. He keeps mentioning Al Baghdadi and Soleimani. I mean, those were assassination strikes. They were extremely well conducted by either the Air Force, by the CIA with their. With their killer drones, or in the case of Venezuela, with a very large body of special operating forces supported by aircraft. That's a whole lot different than invading a foreign country. And when he talks about the comparison. And one more thing I should add, Operation Warp Speed was a logistical operation to provide support during COVID as I recall. So that was getting the right things to the right places at the right time with a very good leader, in terms of the former materiel command commander, making sure the supply chains worked very well, and they had to depend on that guy to do it. When you're talking about invading another country and he says, we've seen nothing but perfect and great strikes and we have this capability, you may see that attacking or invading a country is a whole lot bigger than anything he's ever done before as president. And by the way, it's not just him doing it, it's the military acting upon his orders. And there is always chaos in battle and there will always be, you know, the enemy gets a vote, let's put it that way. And if you can take out the enemy as he did in some of these kinetic strikes that were relatively small, that's a good thing. But it was practiced by trained special operators. When you're putting conventional forces on the ground, it's a whole different ballgame.
- [21:43]
Ben Parker
Yeah, that gets right into this last clip. I want to play about his warning again about World War Three. And then after that, we'll get into some of the domestic military stuff. Let's play this World War Three clip.
- [21:54]
Donald Trump
But I think it's time that NATO step up. We're helping them with Ukraine. Without us, I think Putin would have gone all the way. I think we have it. I think Putin, I think that could have been a World War 3. If you want to know the truth of if Kamala was elected or Joe, any one of those, you know, those thinkers, I think you could have ended up in World War Three. And I will say Steve Witkoff has been dealing incredibly with. But we're not going to have World War Three.
- [22:21]
Ben Parker
This is sort of, I think, a contradiction to me because when I think when he's presented with options that he's told are very precise, very time limited, very tightly controlled, like those operations we were just talking about, he's very trigger happy. He likes to go with the beautiful, know the big assassination or the abduction or the strike in the Iranian nuclear program. But all of a sudden someone says, oh, you do this or that and it'll be World War Three. And that clearly spooks him. And Putin has clearly gotten to his head about this. And so Trump is really deterable. And I think maybe we've seen someone change his mind about what getting involved in agreement would mean. Not a sort of like Russia taking Crimea in 2014, like all of a sudden it just happens with a bunch of special operators, but a long, drawn out war. And maybe that's what changed his mind because we know that he's deterrable if you scare him.
- [23:13]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, I think that's true. And you know, in order to put a bow on that too, what I'd say is he basically will knock President Biden for every possible thing he can bring up in terms of the sleepy Joe aspect. And what I'll tell you from the standpoint of the operation in Ukraine, which I followed very closely over the first three years, and I'm still following it, it was a masterstroke of strategy to avoid the potential for a nuclear strike by Russia in either Europe or someplace else. And it walked the very fine line between defending Ukraine while providing equipment for Ukraine. And truthfully, I think the Biden administration, with not only the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, but also the CIA director managing that conflict for President Biden, it didn't expand the way it could have. There were a lot of people demanding more and more and more from the United States. And what you have to realize is that Russia's key trigger point is if they feel their homeland is threatened and if the NATO alliance had gone into Ukraine early on, before Russia had suffered the catastrophic battlefield defeats that they did, I think there would have been a push by President Putin to take a step beyond what is happening even now in Ukraine. And by the way, if we can go back to what he said early on in that statement just now, Russia has been devastatingly active in Ukraine over the last month since we have begun to ignore what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and Putin, it has his way. I got a message this morning from an individual who's in Ukraine that I know very well, and what she said was that several hundred thousands of citizens have left Kiev because it's unsustainable as they've eliminated their energy sources and their electricity, that their apartments are freezing and they are leaving now because they no longer have water even to flush their toilets because their toilets are frozen over. So we're seeing an exodus from Kyiv due to electrical problems. And this was from someone who's on the ground that saw it. So Russia and Putin have had their way over the last month since we've been focused on Venezuela and Greenland and troops in our cities and the mobilization of National Guard and active duty forces, we've tended to ignore with the devastating effect that Russia is having in terms of continuing to commit more war crimes throughout Ukraine, it really is terrible.
- [26:08]
Ben Parker
And what worries me is that this administration is not interrogating those threats. We're going to use nuclear weapons there. We're going to start World War Three. And it's just taking them at face value. And so Trump, you know, Putin can say, if I don't get everything I want, I'm going to start World War Three. I'm going to drop a nuclear weapon. And Trump doesn't think.
- [26:24]
Mark Hertling
Well, Trump believes him.
- [26:25]
Ben Parker
He just obeys.
- [26:26]
Mark Hertling
And Trump's. Yeah, and Trump's believable. Yeah.
- [26:29]
Ben Parker
Okay, so we have two reports here shifting to domestic military news. One is that the Pentagon has ordered elements of the 11th Airborne Division to possibly prepare to deploy to Minneapolis and that area. And the other is that they are asking military police troops from North Carolina to prepare to deploy also to Minnesota. So what does it mean to you that they're asking those forces in particular, and what should we expect?
- [27:01]
Mark Hertling
Well, it makes no sense to me to put on a prepare to deploy order, what the military calls a ptdo. Units from Alaska that are part of an airborne division. Airborne divisions spend a lot of time practicing their parachuting and jumping in and seizing airfields, seizing certain terrain features, because once they hit the ground or once they are delivered to the targets through their parachutes. They can't move around a whole lot. There's not a whole lot of maneuver capability. Now, certainly they would send trucks later on or have trucks ready for them, but it just seems that base in Alaska, where they would be coming from is 3,000 miles away from Minnesota. I did the calculation this morning. There are at least four other bases, major bases that have troops closer to Minnesota. And I'll name them Fort Lewis, Washington has an entire striper division there that could have their own vehicles, load them up on trains or even drive them there and get there like they did in operations in Iraq. Fort Hood, Texas, I hate to mention that that's one of the bigger bases in the country, is only a couple of hundred miles away from Minnesota. So we're talking about time, distance factors. And the fact that he would. That the Pentagon would put an airborne division that's 3,000 miles away on P.T.D.O just makes no sense whatsoever to me.
- [28:28]
Ben Parker
And what about the military police?
- [28:30]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, that's another dangerous aspect of this because usually when military units are asked to provide support for civilian authorities, it's a mission, SCA support for civilian authorities. That means a military force, no matter who they are, truck drivers, infantry, artillery, armor guys, they go into town or into a place and they support the local law enforcement or the mayor of the town or the county commissioner or whoever it is. But they guard buildings, they make sure things aren't destroyed. They are not going to be active police forces. So when you hear about mobilizing a military police brigade out of the 18th Airborne Corps, these guys are cops. I mean, these are police men and women in that brigade. So they have training in law enforcement. But again, unless the Insurrection act is called, those military police men and women soldiers cannot conduct policing action because of PASA Comatitis. They are not allowed to touch civilians, arrest civilians, process civilians. They are only allowed when they go in, unless the Insurrection act is called, is to guard building. So when you put a military police brigade on prepare to deploy orders, that means he's thinking about using them as part of an active force, which means the Insurrection act has been called.
- [30:03]
Ben Parker
Yeah, you and I did a whole other video on the Insurrection act and what it would mean not only for the people of Minnesota where that act could be invoked, but also what it would mean for the people of the military who would be forced to carry out those orders or be put in a terrible position of refusing illegal orders, trying to figure out if the orders are legal or not. It would be a whole mess. I recommend people watch that video next. In any case, thanks so much for watching this Bulwark take and make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel and go to thebullwork.com and become a Bulwark plus member.
- [30:34]
Mark Hertling
Thanks for coming to another episode of Command Post.