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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark.
- [00:02]
B
And hi, I'm Mark Hertling from the Bulwark.
- [00:05]
A
Welcome back to another episode of Command Post. We're basically going to be talking about the same things again today. What's going on in Iran and what's going on in Europe. What's going on in Europe really has not gotten a lot of enough attention both what's happening in Ukraine and also what our own military announcements have been lately. So we're going to talk about that. But first, General, we got to start off with an Iran update. We've had conflicting reports these last two days. The first was a couple days ago it was reported that NATO was going to come to the rescue and they were going to the cavalry. He was going to ride in over the horizon and open up the Strait of Hormuz. And then this morning, I think we have a screenshot of the producer. Matt can pull it up of the report. Margaret Ruta, the secretary general of NATO, saying, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah.
- [00:52]
B
What I'd say to this, Ben, this is really fascinating to watch because the president, President Trump continue insult NATO for not coming to the rescue and then he changes his tune. But truthfully, you know, one of the talking points he's used is, hey, we've helped NATO for 80 years and we're asking for their help now and they're not going to give it to us. But this is not the kind of thing NATO was built for. And when I say that, you know, Ruda has already clearly signaled that NATO is not preparing a collective naval operation in the, in the Gulf. They are designed, NATO is designed primarily for collective defense in the euro Atlantic region, although they have done out of theater operations. But there's also a practical issue. I think Ruda probably understands that the United States Navy, the most capable naval force in the world, is hesitant to escalate its own direct maritime role. Why would he, as the NATO Sec. Gen, ask you European nations to rush into this more dangerous mission, especially given the European armies are already supporting Ukraine, rebuilding their own militaries, improving their gdp, managing Baltic and Arctic security, and dealing with migration and domestic political pressures. So NATO certainly sees the Strait of Hormuz as strategically, critically, strategically critical rather. But that doesn't automatically trigger a NATO mission. A NATO mission is triggered by an attack on one is an attack on all this is us, the United States attacking other countries. Now, NATO may provide intelligence, sharing some maritime surveillance or participation by various nations that sign up to do this. But, but that's very different from declaring a formal NATO operation of the 32 different countries.
- [02:56]
A
Yeah. Ruta said that there are sort of informal talks among the allies. This is the kind of operation, and we've talked about the complications operating in Strait of Hormuz before. This is the kind of operation that maybe would have made sense if we had done. If we had planned it out beforehand and we had talked to our allies, we said, hey, you know, what might be useful in the Strait of Hormuz is some minesweeping capacity. You know, who has minesweeping capacity is our allies. Maybe we should talk to them about working together from the start. It doesn't make sense now if the US Navy is only very carefully sort of tiptoeing into the Strait of Hormuz for the NATO nations that do not have the same kind of naval capacity, that don't have the same kind of capacity to operate far from their home ports for extended periods, like we do, to come in now and say, oh, don't worry, we're going to clean up your mess. It's certainly a problem for them. But I just, Look, I'm not a naval expert, but I just don't see how they could do it well.
- [03:49]
B
But it goes beyond the naval piece, Ben. You know, this is a broader issue that coalition warfare requires consultation and trust, you know, and we've broken trust with NATO. I don't think anyone can debate that. We're going to. I think we're going to talk about that later on.
- [04:07]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [04:07]
B
But, you know, from the standpoint of just viewing how the allies have been disrespected by this administration and the stumble into this operation and a lack of strategy and a lack of communication, you just can't surprise allies diplomatically and military and then expect immediate military participation. It just doesn't work that way. And anyone with common sense knows, or anyone that's worked in either the military alliance field or the diplomatic field knows all that. So it's really kind of distressing to watch, you know, not only the fumbling around, but also the continuing insulting of countries that we've been pulling together for the last 80 years.
- [04:53]
A
You know, if I could think of the job, the one job in the world that I think I'd least like to have, it's. It would probably be as like a head accountant for a military force, because I'm thinking about it like this. The. The Trump administration is berating our NATO allies, saying you have to spend 5% of GDP on defense, which, by the way, we don't even do.
- [05:14]
B
Yeah, we don't, we don't spend half of that in Europe. We spend, on average, 3.2%. There are no countries in NATO, even though President Trump keeps saying that they're all reaching 5%. There are no countries reaching 5%. The closest is Poland. And I think we're going to talk about that in a minute. And that's. We're going to talk about that disrespected.
- [05:38]
A
So if I, if I, if I am, you know, the head of accounting for some European military force, and I'm saying, okay, the Americans really want US to spend 5% of GDP on defense. So, you know, we have our budget projections and we have a certain amount of money allocated to the military. And I want to spend that money on recruitment because that we have more people in the force and training those people. And I want to get some new technologies like drones and counter drones that are really important that we haven't bought enough of. And I want to make sure all the stuff that we have is well maintained and ready to fight. So it's not, you know, flat tires and broken tank treads. And also, now president is saying, no, no, also send your navy to the state of Hormuz. Well, where is that money coming from? How am I supposed to spend 5% of my GDP on defense for things that, like, are actually a threat to my country if the president is saying, well, now just, you know, send an extra ship or two to the Strait of Hormuz, parentheses, who knows what's going to happen to it? But also, you have to pay the people on the ship, and there's wear and tear on the ship, and you have to buy fuel, which is now very expensive. I mean, it just, it puts these people in an impossible position. Our allies. It is, it puts our allies in an impossible position.
- [06:51]
B
Well, and I keep going back to the fact that when we're talking about national security, it's very different than, you know, from talking about our national security and what we want to do versus imposing the same kind of requirements on other countries who have their own concerns and their own populations to deal with. And in many of the NATO countries, there are some real interesting tensions between the various governmental approaches to what people want to do between one party and another in any pick, any country. And the politicians in all of those other NATO countries are all walking a fine line between pleasing their population and, and contributing to a military event which they didn't start. So it just, it just doesn't make sense. And that's the thing that continues to come back and haunt us on this.
- [07:46]
A
Meanwhile, they have a war going on in their backyard. And what are the Americans been saying? Not our problem. You solve it, Europe, rebuild your own militaries, that you're responsible for your own defense, and you're now responsible for Ukraine's defense. But we want you to buy American weapons and help us out in the Strait of Hormuz. Oh, and by the way, we said we're going to talk about this too, so might as well throw it in now. There was just a drone warning over Vilnius. Not super clear what it was, but Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, not that far from Russia, borders Belarus, which militarily is basically an extension of Russia. So, you know, the Europeans are worried about Russian drones. We've had Russian drone incursions in Poland and other NATO countries. I think Romania too, at one point, or maybe that was missiles.
- [08:32]
B
So Moldova.
- [08:33]
A
Moldova, yeah. The Europeans are being pulled in all sorts of directions. They are finally, after years, I mean, after years of American encouragement, decades really under multiple administrations, they are finally really spending on their defense, partially because they take the threat of Putin and Russia seriously and partially because they can't trust the Americans anymore. And we're saying, oh, now, never mind. We don't want you just to take care of Ukraine and yourselves. We also want you to take care of Hormuz for us. I mean, what are they supposed to do?
- [09:01]
B
Yeah. Can I tell a quick story about Vilnius, if you don't mind?
- [09:04]
A
Please do.
- [09:05]
B
I spent as the commander of U.S. army Europe. I spent a lot of time in the Baltic countries because they were just beginning to form after several decades under the Soviet thumb. Vilnius, especially During January of 1991, while we were engaged in Operation Desert Storm, which sucked all the life out of our media watching us. You know, all three of the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were all pushing against the Russians who were trying to reestablish basically an occupation force in their country. I visited Vilnius one day in 2011, and, you know, after you do your normal embassy stuff and, you know, work with the militaries, they usually treat a commander like me at the time to a cultural exchange. So they had this young woman kind of touring me around the capital of Vilnius, a capital city of about 800,000 people, which, by the way, the entire population of Vilnius is, I think, around two and a half million or so. 2.8 million.
- [10:16]
A
The entire population. Lithuania?
- [10:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, Lithuania. But vilnius is about 800,000. So that's a sizable part of the country that lives in the capital. Anyway, this young woman was telling me and, and I asked the question, so what makes Lithuanians different? And she said, we're highly religious, we're very patriotic, and we won't let anybody push us around after the 1991 revolution. And I said, what are you talking about? Because I wasn't aware of it. I hadn't been spun up as much as I should have been. She told me a story about her father in the middle of the town square of Vilnius when the Russian tanks came in and his foot was run over by a tank. His buddies carried him back to his house. He was recovering for a couple of hours. And then this woman who was telling me this said she was about 8 years old at the time. And she said, suddenly he popped up and said, okay, let's go back. His wife grabbed him and said, what are you doing? You have three children, you almost died out there. You have to consider your family. And he said, it's because I'm considering my family. I have to go out and face the Russians. And they pushed them out, as did the other two Baltic states. So this is a country that understands the Russian threat. And they've seen cyber threats, GPS jamming, sabotage, airspace incursion. We have a Baltic air policing force out of NATO that makes sure Russian aircraft don't fly over the country. Uninhibited and intimidation. And now they're getting, no kidding, drones flying over. So this is not a theoretical conflict for any of these people in the Baltic states or for that matter, all of Europe.
- [12:03]
A
Yeah, absolutely not. And you know, I'll just add, when I was in grad school, I, for one of the classes I was taking, I did sort of a little mock up study of what a potential battle between Russia and NATO in the Baltic Sea would look like. Because this is right as Sweden and Finland were joining NATO. And you know, as much, you can't, you can't predict anything, but you can, you know, add up what you know, everyone has and, you know, figure out, you know, and the answer is, I said, okay, assume that the big NATO navies, starting with the Americans, but also the French and British, are occupied somewhere else, like Strait of Hormuz, for example. I didn't say that. But, you know, for example, yeah. What would a battle between NATO and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, sorry, Baltic Sea Fleet look like? And of course is not possible to predict. But basically what I found is NATO has a very sizable advantage. The addition of Sweden and Finland was huge. Sweden has a, by NATO standards, a pretty impressive Submarine fleet, which matters a lot. The. That that is the kind of thing that the NATO navies are prepared for and have been preparing for and are designed for to sail the Swedish submarines all the way to the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, that's not what they're preparing for. They're focused on the Russian threat, which is exactly what the administration said they should be doing. You take care of European security. That's not our problem anymore. But, like, it's like they want Europe to be the superpower, but also they want to antagonize them. Right. They want Europe in charge of Europe and the Middle east and Ukraine, and they don't want to be friends with them. Like, how does that make any sense?
- [13:39]
B
Yeah. Well, I'll add one more thing to that, that, you know, having been a cold warrior for about 20 years of my career and then turned into, you know, theater security cooperation guy on the western flank of Lithuania and why Vilnius is so important is a little place called Kaliningrad. That is where the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet, an air command and Marine command from the Russian military forces live, close to 500,000 of them. They're on the western side of NATO. And that little thing you were talking about is called the Suwalki Gap, and it is replaced the folder gap as the place most NATO members feel that if Russia attacks and tries to split the alliance, it will be from Belarus through the Suwalki Gap, which is about 30 miles long, into Lithuania. And again, that's what you just said. That's their problem right now. They're looking at defensive measures against Russia when they're trying to attack their own country, which they plan on doing. And Russia has had this on the books for a long time.
- [14:54]
A
So believe it or not, this was supposed to be the Iran segment of the show. Being who we are, we started immediately talking about Europe, which we're going to do more in the second half of the show, but. But we shouldn't move on before we address this story. That I think is just yet another example of the differences between having good tactics and good operational art and real strategy, which is that the. This is reported, I think, by the New York Times that the Israelis, in the beginning of this Iran war, originally planned to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian leader to succeed Khamenei and the others that the Israelis killed. If you remember Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it may be because he was almost a comically evil figure when he was president of Iran in the sort of late 2000, early 20 teens. My clearest memory of him, apart from being vicious and Holocaust denier. Someone once described his political views as the Holocaust. Never happened. But this time we're going to do it right.
- [16:00]
B
Yeah.
- [16:01]
A
But he also, he was invited to speak at Columbia University. I don't know if you remember this. He gave a speech at Columbia University in which he made the claim that there were no gay men in Iran. I'm trying to remember if I remember this clearly. And people started laughing because it's such a ridiculous claim that in a country of, you know, whatever it is, 80, 90 million people, there's not a single gay man. And he thought the laughter was support. And so he kept on saying it again and again and again. It was a bizarre. He's a bizarre dude. He also apparently is a fan of Donald Trump or at least tweeted like that. He's a weird guy. And apparently the Israeli plan was we will bomb his house to free him from house arrest because he had gotten on the wrong side of the regime since leaving office. And then he will become the leader of Iran. Question mark. I mean, what. What the hell kind of plan is this? Honestly?
- [16:58]
B
You know, I thought two words when I read this in the New York Times. And it. The two words weren't Charlie Foxtrot. No, well, that too. But the two words were not Mahmoud, If they were Ahmed Chalabi. Because this was another plan that the United States had that after the fall of Saddam, they would take this guy who had petitioned and had gained insider information in the Department of Defense, saying, hey, I want to be the leader. And even though I haven't been in the country for 30 years and I've been making a lot of money, I could go back and be the president of Iraq. So put me in coach. And it was a disaster. And it was the central planning effort in the Bush. Well, a central planning method in the Bush administration. But, man, if we haven't, you know, if we haven't determined after, well, let's say Iraq after Saddam, Libya after Gaddafi, Afghanistan after the Taliban, and even what would happen to Iraq after ISIS and Al Qaeda and done it the right way, we should have learned that we don't get to decide those kind of things. It takes a whole lot of diplomacy. And it's one thing it doesn't seem like we've attempted to approach with the current Iranian situation. We fractured a regime. We haven't destroyed it. We've seemingly rallied nationalism, at least by some. We've strengthened the hardliners in Iran, and to a degree, we've created A martyr narrative, which is never good in a Muslim country. All of those things are not good, Ben. And yet we still think we can restart a military campaign. I heard the testimony by Admiral Cooper yesterday, which was, truthfully for me, a little bit frightening at times, and it just seems that we are. One plan is to kill more people, and that's.
- [19:11]
A
It just sounds like Vietnam to me. I mean, that's just, you know, body counts. If we kill enough of the enemy, we'll win. I should, you know, it did say in this New York Times report that I should. I'm sorry, I should mention first that what apparently happened is that the bomb that fell on Ahmadinejad's house that was supposed to free him actually ended up injuring him. Who could have seen that coming? And he sort of went to ground and no one's heard from him. And certainly these. It seems like the Israelis haven't. So I guess that plan didn't work. What I wanted to mention was there's an Iranian historian, Iranian American historian named Reita K. Who's written really interesting stuff on the history of Iran. And one of the things he points out, I don't think he says this explicitly, but you can read his work as basically putting the Iranian people back into the history of Iran. Because when we hear the history of Iran, it's all about MI6 and the CIA and Kermit Roosevelt overthrew the government and all that. And if you get a little more into it, you get, oh, well, the Russians were trying to subvert the Iranians, blah, blah. And his point is, no, it's always been the Iranian people at the end of the day, who decided in the early 1900s to institute a democracy, who decided to first elect Mosaddegh and then he kind of lost the people. So the Iranian people really rose up against him. And it was really the Iranian people who deposed the Shah as well. And if there is something, when eventually there's going to be something that succeeds the. The Islamic Republic, and it's going to be up to the Iranian people to choose it. If I were telling the Israelis and the American government what they should do, it should be help the Iranian people change their government, right? There are clearly people who want to. They need help organizing, they need supplies. We actually had a lot of success doing this in Eastern Europe in the later Cold War, where we helped, you know, solidarnish solidarity and other and other organizations like that, Poland. But as you put it so well, just offing the guy in charge doesn't give you any say over who comes next. Because leadership isn't a title or the fact that you survived, it's who people follow. And we have no reason to suspect that people would have just followed Ahmad Ahmadinejad. That's just a total assumption.
- [21:35]
B
Yeah. Well, you know, the point that this all brings about is that operational victories, and what I mean by that is military victories often look spectacular on television. But true strategic success, that goes on behind the scenes, that success is usually measured in months, years. But its end state, the metric is all about stability of the population, political adherence, deterrence against other kind of threats, and whether the conflict actually ends. That's what I don't think we're focusing a lot on right now. With Iran, we had an inroad, and I hate to use the dirty word of jcpoa, but we had an inroad for potential with the JCPOA that took years, 15 months, I think, to execute. And just because it was done under the Obama administration, it wasn't good enough to continue to carry on and work from. That's what transformational leadership is, Ben. It's trying to build on things new every day. And we don't see that a lot with this administration. It's more transactional.
- [22:52]
A
Yeah. And it doesn't seem like they're trying to build anything. They're just trying to
- [22:58]
B
get their way.
- [22:59]
A
Exactly. And figure out how to spin every day as sort of a PR win rather than actual policy accomplishment. By the way, Sam is in California right now. Our California shows are coming up, if you want to join the shows in. I think they're Today and Tomorrow. I think it's Today and Tomorrow. They're very soon. I think there are a few seats left. Go to the bulwark.com events to get a ticket for LA or San Diego. We'd love to see you there. Okay. We should talk about Europe because you wrote very, very clearly and powerfully about the decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany last week or the week before. And now you've written again about the decision to draw withdraw another 4,000 from Poland. So once again, let's back up, lay the groundwork. Why do we send troops to Poland? What do they do there? What is their purpose? What do we get out of is,
- [23:56]
B
in my view, Ben, when I, you know, truthfully, when I left in 2011, the US Army, Europe and retired in 2012, I was under the opinion that Poland was the new center of gravity for NATO. It is a marvelous culture, first of all, great people, and they want to be with us, and they want to lead NATO in the future. My first interaction with Polish forces were in Iraq in 2003 and four, when they had a general by the name of Biennik who later became part of the NATO command infrastructure. And he was saying how after years under the Soviet thumb, Poland wanted to break free and they wanted to do things. The entire time I was in Europe from 2004 to 2012,