← Bulwark Takes
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- [01:30]
Ben Parker
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark
- [01:33]
Mark Hertling
and hi, I'm Mark Hertling from the Bulwark as a contributor, and we are here with another episode of Command Post and both Ben and I are extremely excited. We've got a lot of topics to cover, some sublime, some ridiculous. But we're also going to do a deep dive into my old dead uncle, Carl von Clausewitz. We have two different books that we're going to talk about and bring you up to speed on some wartime theory. What do we got?
- [02:03]
Ben Parker
Ben, if you were in the comments for last week's episode of Command post on the bulwark.com you saw that there was a suggestion for a clause of its book club. I don't know that we're going to commit to that because I read it all the way through once and I don't know that we want to do it again. Yeah, but we did get our copies down from the shelves and we'll do a little bit of Clausewitz at the end here. But first we have to talk about the Major news which, Matt, if we are ready to pull up the clip, we can let the Secretary of Defense announce for himself.
- [02:33]
F
New policy is simple. If you, an American warrior entrusted to defend this nation, believe that the flu vaccine is in your best interest, then you are free to take it. You should. But we will not force you because your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable. Your health, it's common sense. It's the kind of common sense approach we're undertaking in this department. Rest assured that under President Trump, the War Department will always honor our brave warriors and do everything we can to restore the American people's trust in their military for generations to come.
- [03:11]
Ben Parker
So service members, I guess, don't have to get the flu vaccine now, he introduced that by talking about how there was such an infringement on service members freedom when the terrible, awful Biden administration made all the service members get the COVID vaccine. But no more. We're putting freedom back in the force, stuff like that. General, you wrote about this in morning shots today. You had an, an item all about your reaction immediately to seeing this news. Why don't you explain that for us?
- [03:39]
Mark Hertling
Well, there, there are so many things that are coming out of the Department of Defense right now that are seem to be important enough to go on a podcast or a feed a stream from the Secretary of Defense. This one was one of them. He seems to really talk about many of the culture wars on these kind of themes. When I saw this one yesterday, all of them have been, in my view, dangerous. This one is not only dangerous for the force, but it also is certainly going to affect readiness. And I'm stating that from my view, as a former commander of large bodies of formations of troops, you know, I'm all for individual freedom, but when you're talking about a team sport, which is the US Military, you also have to talk about social responsibility and your and your reliance on not only responsibility toward each other, but an understanding of what the team concepts are all about. And, you know, I'd also suggest that the Secretary of Defense take a look at the environmental factors involved in this. You know, if you're an average citizen going to work every day, sure, it's up to you to decide whether or not you go. You're going to get a flu vaccine, and if you get the flu, whether or not you even stay home from work, which most of coworkers would say you ought to do. And that's part of freedom and liberty too, because you have a requirement to protect yourself from others who are ill or Sick. In the case of the military, you're talking about really a closed environment. You have soldiers living in barracks. You have tank crews, four person tank crews, 200 sailors on a submarine that are in close contact and they can't stay home from work. But if you expand it even beyond that, you've got military installations that, that when soldiers or sailors or airmen are sick and they take it home to their families, their families are using things like child care centers and church services and all that. So, you know, I'm glad Secretary Hegseth is making a big deal about this, but where there's other religious liberties that are involved, and I'll give an example, he is currently conducting actions against Sikhs, against Sikh soldiers, relatively few in the military, but there are some that are allowed to wear beards and turbans. It was an exception for religious matters. I'm wondering if they're going to get the same kind of respect in terms of these individual liberties versus team play that he's talking about for others. To be honest with you, Ben, this is a dangerous and extremely dangerous policy saying, hey, you can decide whether or not you get vaccines. The military has a long history of understanding what preventive maintenance and health within a formation means from a readiness perspective. And I think he's going to see very quickly that allowing individual soldiers to make their own decisions on whether or not they get a vaccination for something like the flu is going to affect other things like, oh, perhaps anthrax vaccines when you go into combat, or malaria vaccines when you go into those kind of areas that might have malaria. All of these things I, I don't think have been considered by the sec. Dev.
- [07:12]
Ben Parker
Yeah, no. I mean, my friends who are in the service have gotten all sorts of shots for various things because. And I'm sure you did too, right. When they were sending you to fight Saddam Hussein's army, they were worried that he would use anthrax weapons.
- [07:25]
Mark Hertling
Right.
- [07:25]
Ben Parker
So that they made you get the anthrax vaccine. But you used a word there right at the very beginning that I think it's worth explaining a little bit because this is really the whole point of your piece. Could you explain when people hear the word readiness, what that means and how this flu shot policy impacts military readiness?
- [07:46]
Mark Hertling
Well, when you're talking about readiness on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis, a unit commander is responsible for posting his readiness figures. What that means is how is your organization, your command under your charge prepared to fight? And it's evaluated in all sorts of things. And what I'd suggest I'LL talk a little bit about being a tanker. So if I were a tank company commander with 15 or 14 tanks in my particular company, I would have to say how ready are each one of my crews on things such as gunnery skills, maneuver skills, the basic warrior task, and battle drills, which are individual skills that crews have to perform whether or not they've gone through a gunnery skills test before they fire tank gunnery. So you can say, hey, Alpha 11, which designates a tank in a company is prepared for combat because they've qualified on a range and all their crew members are sufficient. When you start losing crew members to disease or anything else for that matter, they get kicked out of the service for disciplinary action, the requirement for the crew to meet those readiness standards deteriorates. So you no longer have Alpha 11 as a qualified crew. And as a commander, you have to say which crews are qualified on certain skills. That kind of training goes on all year long. The same is true for air crews, for ship crews, for Coast Guard crews, for Marine units. So commanders are really intense not only on status of equipment, like does your tank run, does it need a new engine or a new transmission? You also are very concerned about the individual training of each crew member to contribute to that unit readiness.
- [09:41]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I would highly recommend that people go read your article in Morning Shots today, all about this. You know, it's, it's one of the things you point out is that, you know, for units that are in training, if you have people missing days of work, and maybe that means going to the infirmary at the base, maybe that means just staying at home in the barracks where they're going to get everyone else sick. As you pointed out, if they have, if you have people missing days because they're sick, that means they're not getting trained as much. Which means that if they are deployed somewhere, if they're called into action, they don't have that extra day of training. Right. Which is a disadvantage. And maybe they're not as ready to fight, their readiness is lower. And if you're talking about units that are in combat or units that are deployed, the possible consequences can be even worse.
- [10:25]
Mark Hertling
Let me give you a vignette to drive it home to our listeners. One of the jobs I had as a general officer was commanding all of basic training. What we found in terms of the fitness level of new recruits, individuals that came out of the civilian sector, was they. Their dental care was not all that good. So we spent a lot of time fixing new recruits teeth. And the reason for that is as soon as they finish with basic training, they go to their unit and they could potentially go to combat. Well, you don't want a guy in combat who's having all kinds of tooth pains, you know, root canals or cavities that are driving them crazy, him or her crazy. So we fix them in basic training and, and dental readiness, going back to the word we used a minute ago, is something also that commanders, believe it or not, pay attention to because they don't want a soldier in combat having tooth issues. Well, you know, when we were putting them during that 10 week long basic training to have multiple doctor's appointments to get their teeth fixed, it tended to delay their graduation from basic training until they could get the mandatory training, which is squeezed into that 10 weeks in. We saw some soldiers who would enter basic and because they had delayed in their civilian sector getting their teeth fixed, that they would have to go through one cycle and perhaps two cycles of basic training just to get the mandatory training of a soldier in before they graduated from basic. So that's just a, a bizarre vignette on the kinds of many things that a commander has to consider when wondering about the readiness of their troops. And here's the important part. There aren't a whole lot of Secretary of Defenses who have been commanders in the army or in any service, but when they're not, they tend to listen to those who are in charge and say, here's what's right for our troops. I think Secretary Hegseth did serve time in the military and some time in the National Guard. He was never a commander, so he never had to worry about these kinds of things. And yet he's making what I would call rash decisions in terms of these kind of issues to please the base who are parts of the anti vax movement.
- [12:49]
Ben Parker
Hard to disagree with that. Now the old saying says that amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics. I think we really embody that here because I'm the amateur talking about strategy, you're going to be the professional talking about logistics. So we wanted to move on because you and I were talking about a couple different things we saw that we put next to each other and went, oh, wow, that's scary. One was, Matt, if we can bring up the, the tweet from the defense reporter. This is a list of munitions CNN reported that we are running low on because of the war in Iran, because we've been using so many of these high importance but scarce munitions. For people who are listening or can't see that, I'll just read 50% of our THAAD missile interceptors, 50% of our Patriot air defense interceptors, 45% of our precision strike missiles, 30% of our Tomahawk missiles, 20% of our joint air to surface standoff missiles. That's the Jassm, I believe. And 20% of our standard missiles 3 and 6, those are air defense missiles fired from Navy ships. So it's a lot of interceptor missiles, it's a lot of precision strike missiles. That is according to an estimate reported by cnn. And then I also just want to read this, Matt, if we can pull up the next thing. The commander of US Indo Pacific Command, the guy who would be in charge if there were a war between China and Taiwan, of the American response, was testifying before Congress yesterday in an open hearing and he specified certain munitions where he said basically we got to get our act together and start making more of these. Tell me if these names sound familiar. He included heavyweight torpedoes, the joint air to surface standoff missile, extended range, the JASSM er, long range anti ship missiles, Marheim strike, Tomahawk missiles, the precision strike missile and standard missiles 3 and 6. A bunch of those are the same ones that CNN reported. We have used a fifth or up to half on the war in Iran so far. And this guy's looking at possibly what to do about a war with China over Taiwan. And in the public hearing he's saying we're, we need to reinvigorate the defense industrial base. General, I want to ask you what your sense of this is, but also I know you've testified before Congress before you did when you were in uniform. If he's saying that in public, you know, we can reinvigorate the defense industrial base are making more of these weapons. What do you think the message is when they go to the closed door hearing and he says here's what's really going on.
- [15:17]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, Ben, I'm going to use the word again, the R word again. This is strategic readiness. You know, I was talking about that company commander who's worried about dental work and crew qualifications on a tank. This is a commander combatant commander of Indo Pacific Command which by the way is one of five combatant commanders that surround the world and he has the largest area of operations. So China, Taiwan is just one part of Indo Pacific Command. And he's basically saying from my requirements on all my contingency plans, I'm worried because there are so many pieces of equipment being used in this Iranian strike and it seems like people aren't noticing. But I may be short if you ever asked me to go to war. And so if he's asked sometime to go in and protect the straits between China and Taiwan and there's going to be a red flag that goes up that he says, I'm not sure I can do this because my war plans are now affected. My contingency plans. When I was the J7 on the Joint Staff back in, in the early 2000s, this was one of my jobs to compare and contrast different contingency plans when we were considering going into Iraq and we were already in Afghanistan to say how is it going to affect our plans against North Korea if they rise up or in Venezuela or if the Panama Canal is blocked or you can see so on and so on and so on and there's a whole bunch of contingency plans. So there are staff officers in the Pentagon who are trying to determine are we running low on things. And this is something, Ben, that you and I have talked about months ago that it seemed like we were using a lot. Now the supporters of the current administration will say, well, maybe we shouldn't have given as much as we gave to Ukraine. That's a whole different stockpile. That's a foreign military sales stockpile and it's specifically for foreign military sales. What we're talking about is our wartime contingency resource logistics. And when you start seeing numbers like the CNN reporter had and when you start hearing combatant commanders say, I'm not sure I can do my mission because the stock, the global stocks are being depleted, it's, it's time to raise a flag.
- [17:50]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I think the, the excuse about, well, we shouldn't have given so much to Ukraine is silly for a number of reasons. One, a lot of those munitions that the CNN report included and that the Indo PAYCOM commander talked about are not ones that we've given Ukraine. I, I want to double check this, but I think only Patriot interceptors from that list are things we've given Ukraine. I don't think we've given any of the others to them. So have we. I don't think we've given them thads. I could be wrong about that.
- [18:21]
Mark Hertling
I'm not sure there was a period of time where they were considering it and pulling some of the Thaad missile launchers, which is also an anti air, it's an air defense missile against ballistic missiles and other incoming rounds and aircraft. And there were some experimental units in the Pacific region, in Japan and in South Korea and I think some of them were being considered to move. I'm not sure if that ever happened.
- [18:47]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I think that's right. But most of these things that we're now running low on have nothing to do with Ukraine. And number two, you're in charge now, right? Like, yes, okay, maybe you disagreed with the policy before, but when this administration was in power, they had total access to all the information the Defense Department had on what weapons we had and what we didn't and all the war plans and everything. And they made their decisions. And so to say, oh, well, we made this decision ignoring everything that had happened the previous four years. Like, take some responsibility. You're in charge now. You made these decisions. Right. You can't blame it all. Well, you know, we, we. Because we gave so much of it to Ukraine. That's, that's silly. It already happened. It's a fact. You can't undo it.
- [19:30]
Mark Hertling
Well, my concern is you started off by saying amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics or. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, basically that's it. Well, we haven't seen a whole lot of talking of tactics or strategies in this effort against Iran and we certainly haven't seen a whole lot of discussion of logistics or we seem to be hand waving it. And as a former military guy, that concerns me because I can see the implications of it.
- [20:01]
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- [20:31]
Ben Parker
Right. And you know, we can. I'm just getting back to the Indo Paycom commander again. He doesn't just have to worry, as you said, about a, a possible China, Taiwan contingency. He's also got to worry about a North Korea, South Korea contingency.
- [20:46]
Mark Hertling
Right.
- [20:47]
Ben Parker
What if the north attacks South Korea? We have a bunch of American forces in Korea prepared for exactly that kind of battle. The Korean War is technically not ended. It's just in a long term ceasefire. And if the, if the North Koreans decide to invade one day, actually probably won't, but you never know. They decide to start lobbying missiles at South Korea. That's one place we had these, Thad, these terminal High altitude Air defense. I got some part of that wrong. Interceptors was for North Korean missiles and the report was, yes, we've now moved some of those THAAD batteries from South Korea to the Middle east to deal with on. Which means that South Korea is a little bit less protected now. So if I were the commander in public, I would be saving, I would be saying this is an opportunity to reinvigorate our defense industrial base and create jobs for Americans. In private, I'd be saying, you've given me a mission and not the means to accomplish it. I just, like, I don't know how I'm supposed to defend against these missiles without missile defense.
- [21:43]
Mark Hertling
Yeah. These kind of things, Ben, are called hdld. High demand, low density pieces of equipment. And there's a whole lot more than just THAAD missiles. There's also unmanned aerial platforms, satellites or intelligence collection. I mean, I could go down a list without threatening our national security and say we have a whole bunch of HDLD requirements through the various combatant commanders. And it seems when we talk about going into Venezuela, we've shifted a lot of forces there and a lot of HDLD equipment there. We also have done the same thing with Iran. And usually what you have is the calculation by people on the joint staff is how is this going to affect other theaters. You're now seeing a combatant commander testifying before Congress saying, I'm worried that's not a good thing. That's something that should be going through the Secretary of Defense first. But it just seems like the Secretary of Defense is more worried about giving people freedom from influenza vaccines.
- [22:43]
Ben Parker
Yeah, the freedom to get sick. This brings us to another aspect of logistics. You mentioned the Venezuela operation. We saw a huge naval buildup there for something like weeks, months. I forget what it was before that operation. And then we saw a month of naval buildup immediately after that before we attacked Iran on February 28. So people, when they think about combat, tend to think about the kind of combat you were in, ground combat. They don't tend to think of as much about the sailors on ships and submarines, about the pilots and the ground crews that keep the Air Force flying. But some of the reports we've seen of what these repeat deployments, first to Venezuela, then to Iran, staying in Iran much longer than anticipated. We're starting to see reports of what that's, of the effects that's having on some of the naval logistics. Matt, if we can pull up those pictures, these are from a, from social media. These are allegedly pictures that sailors took on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. If you're just listening, I'll try to describe it. It's a meal tray that you'd get in a cafeteria. Most of it is Empty. And what is on it is a little bit of gray or brownish meat, a single tortilla, maybe some carrots. It looks like it totals, I'm rough guessing here, maybe 400 calories, which means if you're getting three of those a day, you're getting not enough food by a long shot. And I also, it looks, I'm not, I'm not sure it looks safe to eat. Maybe it's delicious, I don't know. And I don't think these have been confirmed by the Navy that these are true and actual photos. But general, I mean, when you were a commander, how much of your time did you spend thinking about logistics and supply? And if you saw this kind of thing happening in and say, the first Armored Division, what would you have thought?
- [24:33]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, first of all, I can attest to the fact that those are definitely Navy cafeteria trays, because I've been on both an aircraft carrier and a submarine. And what I will also say is the cooks on board naval vessels are extremely good because they produce some very good meals. Because truthfully, you're, you're on, you're on a cruise, but it ain't the kind of cruise that you want to go on at times, you know, and, and the meals seem repetitive. And you're out there for a very long time, anywhere from six months to nine months at a time. And you get as much food as you can in different ships because the crew is operating continuously in a 24 hour or seven day a week cycle. There's no off days. So, you know, the cooks are really busy on these ships and they're excellent in terms of what they do. But these are supplied by other ships. Supply ships bring the food to the aircraft carriers and the destroyers and the cruisers and the submarines. And when you're in a combat area, those supply ships have to get the food from somewhere because they start their deployment, you know, usually anticipating six to nine months at sea. So there is certainly onboard supplies that they will transfer to the other vessels, but if they stay longer, they have to get them from some kinds of ports. There's not a whole lot of ports in the areas where they can get them from in some of these combat situations. So supply chains are reduced and their effects are not just food, but also petroleum products, weapons, ammunition for weapons. And those are the take priorities when you're talking about steaming in a combat zone. I don't know if those pictures accurately portray what's going on in the ships. I suspect they're closer to the truth than not. But again, I've been in a situation like this, Ben, in ground combat in 2003 and four, when the SADR uprising occurred in Iraq, all of our supply chains from Baghdad to the south to the ports where we were getting our food, our water, our petroleum, our ammunition were all blocked because it was running through a shia area where Mr. Sadar Makhtar Sadder had told his forces to interdict our supplies. So, so they were strangling us. So for a while we were very concerned. About a month, we were very concerned about even having water and MREs. I understand what's going on in these ships, I think to a degree, because they have a couple of supply ships, not the ships that shoot the missiles or launch the aircraft, but ones that are only worried about getting logistics to the war fighters and they have a tough mission. So I'm concerned they're. They're probably very constrained right now, especially in a couple of the carrier strike groups that have been, have taken out what was supposed to be a nine month deployment. They're now well over a year and they haven't returned to a whole lot of ports and they haven't had a whole bunch of port calls. So it's not only affecting the sailors on board. I would suspect it's also affecting the maintenance and the readiness, again using that word of the ship itself.
- [27:53]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I, Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach. I assume a navy also sails on its stomach. And in your book, which I think maybe it's definitely on the shelf behind me. I don't know if you can see it from this angle.
- [28:06]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, that's right there.
- [28:08]
Ben Parker
Oh, great. Yeah, there you go. It's on the shelf behind you too. That's even better. In your book you have a great chapter that is basically all about food and the, the old rations that you had at the beginning of your time in the army. But it's really about where morale comes from. And that's what I was thinking of when I saw these pictures. If you could talk a little bit about what it means to feed the troops.
- [28:28]
Mark Hertling
Well, yeah, there's a couple factors that really either drive up or drive down morale. Number one is the food. You've got to produce good food. And as a military, we produce, our cooks produce some of the best food in the world for any militaries. And I've experienced quite a few of them in some of my jobs. The second thing is contact with families. You know, in the old days it was letters and you're always waiting on mail call. Today it's computer Contact, cell phone contact. Those pictures probably came off of a Facebook page from some sailor, you know, writing home on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, to his or her spouse and saying, here's what is going on, and here's what we're eating. Now, sometimes those are elaborate photos to make people feel sorry for you, but the connection between families is also critical. And the third thing, truthfully, is, what's the mission? What are we doing out here? I mean, I can imagine there's a whole bunch of people in the military who are prepared to do whatever they're asked to do, but at the same time, there's a lot of wts going around. What are we doing, and how long are we going to be here? Again, an experience I had in 2004. We were all getting ready to come home, and in fact, we had already deployed about a third of a 20,000 Division task force back to home station. When the Secretary of defense extended the first armored division in Iraq, we were the first unit to be extended. So we had already been there 12 months, and we got a message saying, because of the Solder uprising, you're going to stay there longer. And we didn't know how long. I got to tell you, that was a morale factor. How do you talk soldiers who were thinking they were about to be going home into staying a little bit longer? But more importantly, what do you say to the family members? And there's a great story. General Dempsey, who was our division commander, grabbed me and said, hey, I'm sending you back to Germany to go to all the bases in Germany for three days and tell them what the heck we're doing here, because the families are pissed. And that's what I did for three days. And I got to tell you that I did not get a whole lot of warm receptions at each base I went to. There were a whole lot of upset spouses and children. And in fact, in one case we tell this story, there was one aviation battalion commander who had already arrived home. He had greeted his wife. They were given big hugs. Someone took a picture of it. It was in the Monday morning paper in Germany, the Stars and Stripes. And before that paper came out, he was back in Iraq, as we called him and his unit back. You can imagine what that does for morale. These sailors and these forces have been there for a very long time.
- [31:17]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I. I can only imagine the downstream effects on things like recruitment. Right. If the morale in the force isn't good, is that the kind of thing that you want to join and think that, you know, you're making a difference in the world. I remember when I was younger, the Navy's recruiting slogan was the US Navy a global force for good. They were trying to get people to join up by saying, you know, basically see the world and do good things in it. And now I don't know. That's probably a maybe a tougher sell.
- [31:46]
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- [32:06]
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- [32:16]
Ben Parker
But okay, before we, before we run out of time here, we have to get to our friend Carl. Okay, so for those of you who don't know, there are very few people who have written really successful works of sort of military philosophy or philosophy of war. One of them, the most ancient, was Sunset Master Son in China. I don't even know how many thousands of years ago who wrote in a sort of more aphoristic like little sort of pithy or clever quips. Clever is not the right word. They're deep. They're insightful quips about war. And then in the 19th century, a Prussian German officer named Carl von Clausewitz wrote a very thick, dense, classically sort of German treatise on war, which if you can make your way through it, is very rewarding for understanding how war works in a sort of theoretical, sociological, philosophical kind of way. And that's why all the nerds who, who actually read clausemits end up quoting him for the rest of their lives. And you just.
- [33:27]
Mark Hertling
And yes, we are one of the. And we are two of those nerds, right?
- [33:30]
Ben Parker
Absolutely. 100%, yeah. And this came up in the, in the comments section. If you're a Bulwark plus member, you can go to the bulwark.com and you can get in the comments and talk about Clausenets and other things with us after we post these videos. Um, but you wrote a piece for the Bulwark about how will wins wars. And that's a very clause of its argument that it's not just about all the things we've been talking about, the bean counting and the who has supplies and where and how do they move and all that. It's also about the force of will and who as the coaches always say. Right. Who wants it more? What made you think about that point? Looking at the world recently and then maybe we can go through some of what Clause of it says and apply it to the Presentation Day.
- [34:09]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, well, it's, it's a. Yeah. First of all, if I can, if I can add to your comments though, Ben, during the School of Advanced Military Studies, a one year course I did when I was a major, we studied all theoreticians. So it wasn't just Sunza and, and Clausewitz, it was also Jomini and Duhei for air and Mahan for naval. And I mean there, there are literally hundreds of these guys, but Clausewitz seems to be the one. It, it sort of is like the Bible, if you will. I mean, people keep coming back to this and unfortunately, just like the Bible, they cherry pick things if they really don't understand how this goes through. But within, within on war, his treaties, he says a lot of things about a lot of things, you know, that's for sure. Politics. Politics is war by, or war is politics by other means. He talks about fog and friction and chance. But one of the things he talks about is the combination of resources and will that create power in conflict. And he talks about how they level each other off and units should really take a look at one of the two of them or both of them combined in terms of how powerful you might be on the battlefield and with your politics. So there's an equation that bounces around the military that simplifies Clausewitz in the equation of P equals W times R and its power equals will times resources. And that just struck me as I was looking at some of the things in this current conflict in Iran because it relates to so many other conflicts. And I was on the battlefield at Gettysburg doing a staff ride a few weeks ago and that equation came up. I was having a conversation with a Vietnam vet and that conversation came up because it was really an issue of how one side or the other influences will or resources to win a fight. And both of them are as important. But the thing is, if you go in with a whole lot of will and you really want to beat somebody up on the battlefield and you don't have the resources to do it, you're going to lose. If you go in with the best army in the world or the best military in the world, and you don't have the will of not only the soldiers but also the politicians and the citizenry to support you, which is what Clausewitz calls the golden triangle, you're going to lose two. So you've got to have both of them in, in some measure and means compared to what the enemy is doing. And we can take any war that's going on today or anyone that's gone through history and you can see those two factors being the determinant of success or failure.
- [37:03]
Ben Parker
Yeah. So let's do that. Because you do a little bit of this in the piece you wrote for the Bull work. One great example. Russia, Ukraine.
- [37:12]
Mark Hertling
Russia, Ukraine, fourth largest army in the world. Russia attacks a small little country. Unfortunately, that small little country has a lot of will internally.
- [37:22]
Ben Parker
Unfortunately for the Russians. Yeah, yeah.
- [37:24]
Mark Hertling
Unfortunately for the Russians, that small little country of Ukraine. Ukraine has a lot of will internally because they have a president that people support. They have a citizenry that wants their freedom and liberty and their territorial and sovereignty. And I'll add to that, that small little country has the will of a lot of allies who are also providing the resources that that small little country didn't have at the beginning. So that both of those factors come in when the NATO forces said we're going to supply Ukraine with the means to fight to defend against this onslaught from this criminal nation that's committing crimes against their society. So that's an example and a good one.
- [38:09]
Ben Parker
Yeah. And I think on the other side you can start to see some indications and you reference this piece we had in the Bull Work from Bryn Tannehill is a military and foreign policy analyst pointing some indications that the will in Russia is diminishing. They are now losing more people than they're recruiting for the first time. The amounts they're having to pay to get people to sign up are just absolutely ballooning to the point that they can't really raise them anymore. And some of the people they're sending into combat are people who have already come back with terrible wounds and they're multiple amputees or they're people who are not really able bodied and able to like walk on their own. And they're sending these people into combat. So it's not like the will of the Russian population to see this thing through to victory is anywhere close to what it appears to be in Ukraine, where, yes, they have a manpower issue, but people are. People are focused on winning.
- [39:02]
Mark Hertling
Right.
- [39:03]
Ben Parker
So you can see the importance of will. Even a much larger country against a much smaller country. Just the size of your population or the size of your GDP doesn't necessarily matter as much as what's in people's hearts and minds. Right.
- [39:16]
Mark Hertling
Yep, exactly.
- [39:18]
Ben Parker
Okay, so another example of, well, before we Move on to. Our other example is going to be the United States and Iran, because you talked about that too. I just say that, you know, think about any fight. The question is always how do you get the other side to stop fighting? This is actually something our friend Carl von Clausewitz talks about in chapter one. He says the goal of war is to throw your opponent like a wrestling match, right. But if you think about getting into a physical fist fight with someone, right. How do you get them to stop fighting? In some cases they might just want to keep fighting, right. And so it's a, it's a, it's, you know, we think about winning militarily as applying more bombs and more destructive power. But it's much more difficult question to think like how do you actually get someone to stop fighting you? And if they want to, they can keep fighting you forever like the Taliban did with us, like the Vietnamese did with us, like we did with the British Empire back in the day. If we just want to keep fighting, we'll keep fighting. Right? I mean, so, so I, this seems to be getting back to the United States and Iran sort of. The Iranian strategy too is you can keep bombing us, you can keep your blockade or whatever. We're just not going to give up what we don't want to give up because we think that we, we'll out will you.
- [40:33]
Mark Hertling
We think our institutions are what we want for our nation. Our institutions of the, the ayatollahs, the irgc, the population being repressed. That's what Iran believes in. We believe, well, we've got the best army in the world, so we're going to make you give up. And as we've seen from the will versus resources implications, that isn't always the case. And besides what you also have in terms of the will of a nation, it doesn't just include their military force. It is their citizenry, it is their systems and it is their economics and their information and their diplomacy. Their. So when those things aren't considered in a whole of government approach in combat, you're, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. But I'll add one more thing to that, Ben, and this is where it becomes critical. Iran doesn't have a whole lot of allies except for Russia and China. We used to have a whole lot of allies and right now in this fight, we don't have any. And you know, as much as the president can bluster about not needing allies, as I've said before on this command post show, yes, you do. You need allies to give you the kinds of things that are not only the resources, but also the will that's encased in support for your operation. And right now, we don't seem to have that.
- [42:04]
Ben Parker
Yeah, I forget exactly the numbers, but in the first Gulf War that you served in, there was a very large. Dozens of countries participated in some way.
- [42:15]
Mark Hertling
Right.
- [42:17]
Ben Parker
In. In the. Our war in Afghanistan that eventually was. Was. The ISAF operation was taken over by NATO, so it was a few dozen countries helping out with that operation. The number of countries that at some point or another contributed to the war in Iraq, I think is 40. Or north of 40 somewhere.
- [42:31]
Mark Hertling
It was north of 40.
- [42:33]
Ben Parker
North of 40. These big coalitions, including Ukraine and Georgia and some others. These big coalitions contributing to these wars. We attacked Iran with Israel.
- [42:45]
Mark Hertling
And we didn't anymore.
- [42:46]
Ben Parker
Yeah, no, that was it. Got any more else? We. We apparently maybe told our NATO allies who are, by the way, the ones who actually, you know, like, need Middle Eastern oil more than we do. Like, just before the bomb started dropping, we gave them very little notice. We didn't give them an opportunity to participate. So why would they support us? Why would they add their will to ours? And as for our Gulf allies and partners like the UAE and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, they're. I mean, correct me if you disagree, but it looks to me like they're thinking we're gonna squeeze every drop of. Of. Of use we can out of the Americans right now while they're pummeling Iran, and then we are looking elsewhere because their missile defense didn't work that well for us. And we. We. The way it looks to us is they prioritize defending their bases over defending our populations. And, and now they're not even getting rid of the. The theocracy in Iran. We're gonna have to live with them for a long time. So it doesn't even do us any good to be allied with the United States against Iran. We're gonna have to make our peace with the. With the new leaders in Tehran.
- [43:51]
Mark Hertling
Yeah. What's interesting, I'll comment on one thing. Just that struck me when it occurred in the early days of the war when. When Iran sent a missile and some drones at a hotel in UAE and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, they're attacking a civilian infrastructure. No, they're doing the same thing that Russia did in Ukraine is they're spreading out the air defenses because you can't defend everywhere. And pretty soon, the leadership of the UAE is going to go to the President of the United States and say, hey, dude, you know, what's going on here. Our hotels are getting bombed. How about a little bit more air defense? And you can't provide the defenses to everywhere, so you have to make some tough decisions. This brings us back to a point, though, Ben, where we're talking about an administration that right now doesn't have a National Security advisor or a National Security Council that's supposed to think long term about those elements of strategy, the what if drills, the what happens when this happens or what happens if this occurs. And there's been millions of analysts on TV who have all said, and I'll reinforce this, that the war game with Iran has been going on for decades. And the first thing happens is that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. I mean, it was going to happen. It did happen. And yet we have a president said, ooh, I didn't know that was going to happen. That surprised everyone. Well, is that because there's unilateral decision making or is it because you're just not smart enough to have people around you that are going to, you know, look at what has been built within the defense establishment and some of the red teaming and war gaming that we've done?
- [45:39]
Ben Parker
Yeah. Our current National Security Advisor is Marco Rubio, who is also Secretary of State, who is also archivist of the United States, who, who for a while was also running usaid.
- [45:47]
Mark Hertling
But here I think who's also the envoy to Russia and all the other places with a couple of real estate advisors.
- [45:53]
Ben Parker
Yeah. With Steve Woodkopf, right?
- [45:54]
Mark Hertling
Yeah.
- [45:54]
Ben Parker
Yeah. Here's the other point that I guess is a bonus for people who listen this far into the show. It's been reported that the way the administration actually works is that there's not a person doing the job of the National Security Advisor and a person doing the job of the Secretary of the State and a person doing the job of Secretary of Defense. It's that actually these people sort of divided up the world to different roles. And so like Marco Rubio is in charge of policy for the Americas and Pete Hegseth is in charge of the war in Iran and someone else, maybe Steve Witkoff, is in charge of Russia, Ukraine, though that's not exactly clear. And weirdly, that is kind of also how Putin's government works. You have people with who are very personally close in a lot of cases to the President, and they have these titles like Minister of Defense or Chairman of the National Security Council or Foreign Minister or whatever, head of the security services, but actually they're just responsible for like, different pieces of the world and it doesn't really work well for them. It is. One of the reasons that their invasion of Ukraine went so badly is that they didn't have the Foreign Ministry and the military and the intelligence services all talking to and the economic advisers all talking together about Ukraine. It was just the, basically the spies and the FSB who were in charge of Ukraine and they said, we can do it easy, no problem. And they didn't talk to anyone else. And so look what happened. So I'm afraid that we're going down that same kind of road where Marco Rubio says, okay, I'm focused entirely in Venezuela and Cuba and I'm not going to think about what our allies need to be told before we attack Iran. And Pete Hexith is thinking, I really want to attack Iran and I'm not going to worry about what's going on in the Pacific because that's someone else's problem.
- [47:38]
Mark Hertling
Right? Yeah. And that's where we see the logistics starting to fall apart as well. So all of these things are combining to make some really dangerous times. There is not a, the decision making seems to be more episodic and ad hoc and when you have that instead of a long term strategy. And again, we've talked about this, the national security strategy. If anyone were to read that right now, they would just be amazed because there's no discussion at all about either Iran or even Venezuela in that. So I haven't seen the classified version of it, but if there's something about Iran or going into decapitated government alongside Israel, it's not in there that I saw.
- [48:30]
Ben Parker
Yeah, there definitely wasn't anything in there about starting a new war in the Middle east, that's for sure. I know we wanted to get into talking more about China and Taiwan, but I think we'll have to save that for later and maybe invite a special guest who's really an expert.
- [48:45]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, I think that'd be a great idea. And I've got a few people in mind that know that part of the world really well.
- [48:52]
Ben Parker
Excellent. Well, that's something to look forward to on the next command post. I'll say it again before we leave. 1. If you're not reading all the things we're talking about in the Bulwark online on the bulwark.com if you're not reading them online at thebullbrook.com, you're, you're missing a whole bunch of what we do. And if you're not a Bulwark plus member, then you're Also missing a bunch of what we do because we were in the comments last week, both you and I were talking to people, sharing our favorite strategists, answering people's questions. And there's a whole bunch else you get. It's, it's a membership you can sign up for. And I will add this if you see the price and it doesn't work for you, our pledges, send us an email, we'll work it out. The price of a subscription is just to help us grow and spread the word, but it shouldn't be a barrier to anyone joining our community. So go to the bulwark.com and sign up for Bullwork.
- [49:37]
Mark Hertling
Plus, there was another proud moment that I should mention, Ben, where you and I were slapping high fives because we had written an article on the moral high ground. And that very next day someone asked the press secretary in, in the White House about what's the moral high ground in terms of Iran. And I think that resonated. That article probably created that question. And what, what I'm seeing as I travel around, I'm getting a whole lot of attention because I work for the bull work now and I give you a lot of the credit for what we're doing. But it seems like the bull work is becoming the new thing within media because we're producing a whole lot of great products, we're on things very quickly and we're given some very good factually based on pieces within the online versions.
- [50:27]
Ben Parker
Yeah, well, I know people are always excited to hear from you General and they as am I. I'm very lucky that I get to ask you all my questions throughout the week. For those of you who don't work at the Bulwark and have that privilege again, you can go to the bulwark.com, become a member and ask your questions in the comments. Or you can join us for next week's command post.
- [50:45]
Mark Hertling
Yeah, or instead of us being self congratulatory like we're doing right now, tell us what you want us to talk about and we'll try and put some things together that satisfy your urges and your request.
- [50:56]
Ben Parker
Okay, we'll see you next time.
- [50:59]
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