Ep 66 | Why Hezbollah Is a Bigger Threat Than You Think

Summary

Zero Hour with James Poulos: Episode 66 | Why Hezbollah Is a Bigger Threat Than You Think

Release Date: September 29, 2024

In Episode 66 of Zero Hour, host James Poulos engages in a compelling and in-depth conversation with Mark Halperin, a multifaceted novelist, strategist, and veteran with service in the British Merchant Navy and the Israeli armed forces. The discussion navigates the intricate landscape of geopolitical tensions, focusing primarily on the escalating threats posed by Hezbollah and Iran, the precarious state of Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the existential challenges facing the United States.

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1. Israel’s Imminent Crisis and Netanyahu’s Position

Timestamp: [00:00 – 02:06]

The episode opens with Poulos introducing Mark Halperin, highlighting his extensive military background and expertise in geostrategic matters. The central focus is Israel's looming conflict with Hezbollah, deemed more significant than the immediate threats from Gaza. Halperin provides a nuanced assessment of Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership amidst this crisis.

Notable Quote:

“Israel is in a unique state of crisis. Regardless of where people stand on the wars, everyone can agree about that.”
— Mark Halperin [02:06]

Halperin emphasizes that Netanyahu’s actions are driven by the survival of Israel rather than personal gain. He suggests that Netanyahu is committed to ensuring Israel's longevity amidst a "seven front war," balancing the threats from Iran and Hezbollah while contending with internal political divisions.

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2. The Dual Threat of Iran and Hezbollah

Timestamp: [02:06 – 18:41]

Halperin delves deep into the strategic imperatives facing Israel, identifying Iran as the primary adversary due to its pursuit of nuclear capabilities. Hezbollah, empowered by Iranian support, is portrayed as a multifaceted threat with a vast missile arsenal capable of devastating Israel.

Notable Quotes:

“The first threat is Iran, which is making a nuclear weapon capability which can destroy Israel very easily if it's allowed to proceed.”
— Mark Halperin [02:06]

“Hezbollah has the capacity to almost destroy Israel with its 150,000 plus missiles.”
— Mark Halperin [04:30]

Halperin critiques past U.S. administrations for their handling of Iran, asserting that policies under George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden have inadvertently empowered Iran and, by extension, Hezbollah. He advocates for a proactive strategy where Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and Hezbollah’s missile capabilities to prevent further escalation.

Discussion on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions: Halperin underscores that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is not merely for deterrence but also aims to diminish Western influence in the Middle East. He warns of Iran's potential to establish missile-launch capabilities from naval platforms, posing a direct threat to the United States.

Notable Quote:

“Any state, any country would want the deterrent capability of their own nuclear weapons. That's understandable, but they extend it because what they want to do with the nuclear weapons that they will produce is to deter any action against them.”
— Mark Halperin [09:57]

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3. Assessing Israel’s Internal Stability

Timestamp: [18:41 – 26:13]

Poulos shifts the conversation to Israel’s internal dynamics, questioning Netanyahu’s political stability amidst ongoing conflicts and civil unrest. Halperin admits limited expertise in Israeli politics but provides reassurance about Netanyahu’s motivations and the resilience of Israel’s coalition government.

Notable Quote:

“Everything he's doing has to do with the important aims of allowing Israel to survive in this seven front war.”
— Mark Halperin [22:14]

He asserts that Netanyahu's leadership is fundamentally tied to Israel's survival rather than personal political ambitions, suggesting that the coalition government is likely to withstand current pressures due to the existential stakes involved.

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4. America's Existential Threats: Internal vs. External Challenges

Timestamp: [26:13 – 47:04]

The discussion pivots to the United States, where Halperin paints a stark picture of America's deteriorating defense infrastructure and waning global influence. He contrasts the external threats posed by China and Russia with internal challenges such as political polarization and neglect of military spending.

Notable Quotes:

“The chief hidden, lurking danger is internal versus external threats.”
— Mark Halperin [26:37]

“Our future as a sovereign, independent nation is in jeopardy.”
— Mark Halperin [32:45]

Halperin draws historical parallels with the fall of the Roman Empire and the British Empire, emphasizing that internal decay and neglect of external defense can lead to national decline. He criticizes both Democratic and Republican policies, highlighting democratic reluctance to invest in military and conservative isolationism, respectively.

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5. The Role of Technology and the Decline of the Arts

Timestamp: [44:26 – 55:37]

In the concluding segment, Poulos raises concerns about the cultural impact of technology on American society. Halperin attributes societal passivity and the erosion of the arts to the dominance of digital technology, which he argues diminishes active engagement and critical thinking.

Notable Quotes:

“When the image conquers the word, you're going to have to really retrench and be very careful.”
— Mark Halperin [47:04]

“High technology, you have to have it for military advancement so that you can keep up with the challenges.”
— Mark Halperin [53:10]

Halperin laments the shift from a word-centric culture to an image-centric one, suggesting that this transition fosters passivity and undermines intellectual rigor. He warns that without a balance between technological advancement and cultural enrichment, the United States risks both internal decay and vulnerability to external threats.

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6. Conclusion

Timestamp: [55:37 – End]

As the episode wraps up, Poulos acknowledges Halperin’s comprehensive analysis, underscoring the interconnectedness of internal stability and external defense. He emphasizes the critical need for a robust national strategy that addresses both arenas to ensure America’s continued sovereignty and global standing.

Closing Quote:

“Empires fall. Not that we're an empire, but there was the Pax Romana, the Pax Britannica, and the Pax Americana. This world order is disappearing now.”
— Mark Halperin [55:37]

Poulos thanks Halperin for his insightful contributions, highlighting the urgency of addressing the multifaceted threats discussed. The episode concludes with a somber reminder of the precarious state of global and national security.

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Key Takeaways:

• Hezbollah and Iran: Hezbollah, backed by Iran, represents a significant and multifaceted threat to Israel, with extensive missile capabilities and strategic positioning.

• Netanyahu’s Leadership: Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is portrayed as a leader focused on national survival rather than personal political gain, navigating a coalition government amidst severe external threats.

• U.S. Defense and Policy Critique: Halperin critiques U.S. defense policies, emphasizing the need for increased military spending and strategic alliances to counteract the growing influence of China and Russia.

• Internal vs. External Threats: The United States faces intertwined internal and external challenges, where neglecting one exacerbates the other, potentially leading to national decline.

• Impact of Technology on Society: The rise of digital technology is linked to cultural decline, promoting passivity and diminishing the role of the arts in fostering active, critical engagement.

This episode serves as a clarion call for policymakers and citizens alike to recognize and address the compounded threats to national and global stability, advocating for a balanced approach that fortifies both internal structures and external defenses.

Transcript

[A]

Novelist, strategist, soldier, and so much more. The great Mark Halperin is here. I'm James Polis. Welcome to Zero Hour. A legend in his own time, Mark Halperin has served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry and Air Force. Now he's an established writer, multiple novels and publications. Really a man for all seasons. Welcome, Mark, thanks so much for joining us.

[B]

Thank you. And since you're there and I'm here, I'd say I'm glad to be there.

[A]

Well, I'm glad to be there with you. So much going on in the world right now. I definitely want to spend a lot of time talking about the arts, what the arts can do for us in this time that we're in right now. But let's set the table first. As of right now, war with Hezbollah is imminent. Israel is really up to its neck in conflict. A very unusual and precarious time for the state of Israel. You served in the Israeli armed forces back in the 70s. You're intimately familiar with the country, how things are going, how they have been going. Your eye on geostrategic matters has been persistent and quite clear eyed. Having all kinds of work with Claremont, Claremont Instit. I've seen you in the back pages of the Claremont Review of Books for a long time. You've got it dialed in, so let's dive in. Israel is in a unique state of crisis. I think regardless of where people come down on the wars, everyone can agree about that. What is your assessment of where Netanyahu finds himself in this moment? Where the IDF is best allocating its resources and just how big of a war we're going to be facing as things heat up with Hezbollah.

[B]

Okay, you mentioned Claremont Review of Books last October, right after October 7th, I wrote a very long piece in it in which I laid out exactly what I can repeat now, although it's too late, nonetheless, it may offer a guide. What I said then was that in echoing Churchill's comment about meeting with Count Ciano and Mussolini, Count Ciano was Mussolini's foreign minister in the 30s. He said, why talk to the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room? In this case, the organ grinder is Iran. You have to prioritize the threats and any country would have to. Israel has to. And the first threat is Iran, which is making a nuclear weapon capability which can destroy Israel very easily if it's allowed to proceed. The second most terrible threat is Hezbollah, or Hezbollah as they pronounce it. Gaza was essentially a sideshow. And because of the nature of it because they kidnapped people and killed so many people in such a brutal way. It forced Israel politically to deal with Gaza first. But ISRA not have dealt with Gaza first. Gaza itself cannot be an existential threat to Israel, whereas Iran and Hezbollah can. I recommended then, and I have been, I actually have recommended for decades now that Israel strike the Iranian nuclear capability, the building capacity that Iran has, especially while it still can, and I believe in my detailed analysis that it can, at great risk to itself even without the help of the United States, and then strike Hezbollah, although it might have to strike Hezbollah first because Hezbollah has the capacity to almost destroy Israel with its 150,000 plus missiles. And therefore, if you strike Iran first, Hezbollah would be free to then launch its missiles to Israel, against which Israel unfortunately and blameably does not have an adequate defense because it was spending too much money on its internal needs and too enthused with its success in the technical fields, although those also may save it in the end the military technology that is associated with its civilian technical prowess. But what I recommended then was that Israel strikes Iran and Hezbollah and it's a delicate balance as to which he would do first and then go get Gaza. And Gaza would have been much different had Gaza's patron being Iran been eliminated first. The great threat of the nuclear threat eliminated first and then Hezbollah struck with the entirely different war. Well, they didn't do that for many reasons and now they're in a worse situation. They have, as they, they commonly say, a seven front war. The most challenging is Hezbollah. Now because of the way that they're armed, the way that they're dug in differently than Gaza, their experience, their greater number of soldiers, their tremendous missile arsenal and their long prepared defenses which dwarf those of Gaza. However, Israel is fully capable at great cost of invading Lebanon up to more than 18 miles. In other words, beyond the litany even, because Hezbollah, if it has any sense it has established bases and facilities beyond the litany, it's 18 miles from the Israeli border river. So I would say that now it has to bite the bullet. You know, you can put things off and put things off. Let us say, for instance, that now what the United States wants, what this administration wants, which is we don't want a wider war, we just don't want a wider war. Let's say that it's delayed. Let's say that they meet some sort of understanding with Hezbollah and essentially with Iran because Iran is the puppet master of Hezbollah and they don't have a war now with Hezbollah, what will happen? Hezbollah will Simply increase its armaments, have more, more capable missiles. The Houthis will do the same. And by the way, it's pronounced Houthi. It's Houthian. Houthiyan is the Arabic word, not Houthi, like Houthi and blowfish. And it will come eventually. Israel should go after them now and it has to bite the bullet. That's what I feel. And I also think that Israel should probably hit Iran. By the way, one of the. George W. Bush had a lot of failings vis a vis knowing how to conduct and win a war or even which war to enter. And one of the things that I was so disappointed with him was about was at the end of his term, he did not rid Iran of its nuclear weapons with which it intends to threaten not just Israel, but Europe and all the west, including us. And they stated every day we. What the Obama and then the Biden administrations have done vis a vis Iran, I cannot understand. They more or less have given them a path to nuclear weapons with which the Iranians intend and state their intentions. And you have to take them seriously to menace us in various ways, which I can get into, if you're curious, though it may take some time.

[A]

Well, yeah, let's peel off this Iran piece and look a little more closely. I mean, I think by any measure, it's just scandalous that the Houthis are lobbing those missiles in the Red Sea, basically redirecting all, almost all of the naval traffic out of Suez and all the way around the Cape of Good Hope, which is, of course, a much longer journey. US Tries to put a coalition together. They sail a few ships around. Most of the Europeans decide they're going to back out. Ships are still going down in the Red Sea. I think all very bad stuff just looks terrible for the US and it's more than optics, of course, but when you look at Iran and you look at the prospect of a nuclear weapon, obviously they'd like one. Who wouldn't? Nukes have proven to be very useful, even if you never use them. You look at North Korea, they achieved some sort of nuclear capability. No one seems to be too worried these days that the North Koreans are going to let the nukes fly. There's just so much more to be gained strategically from not letting the nukes fly. And then when you look at Iran, you've got to ask yourself, Russia, China, would they really allow Tehran to nuke Tel Aviv or really to nuke anyone? I mean, I think this is. I don't know the answer to this. Question. Obviously you're better safe than sorry. But what do you think? Do you think that if Iran does in fact get nuclear weapons, it's going to be a situation where they actually use them? Or are we just looking at more of that sort of nuclear saber rattling, using the threat of the nuke, as you said, to menace other countries in the area and just expand their regional reach?

[B]

Okay, well that's a very good summary. And what you said originally about the. You could understand why they would want them. Of course they would want them to their east, Pakistan has nuclear weapons to the north, Russia has nuclear weapons to the west. Israel has nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean. We have nuclear weapons. They're surrounded by nuclear weapons. Any state, any country would want the deterrent capability of their own nuclear weapons. That's understandable, but they extend it because what they want to do with the nuclear weapons that they will produce if we allow them, if Israel allows them, is to one separate, well, deter, deter any action against them, which by the way wouldn't come because there are 80 million people. The terrain is extremely difficult. We're never going to invade Iran by land. They don't really need nuclear weapons to prevent our war against them. In that sense, our war against them would be simply to eliminate their nuclear weapons. But beyond the deterrence that you mentioned, that would be understandable, perhaps there's a much greater ambition and that is one, to separate Europe from the United States vis a vis the Middle East. Because if they have, as they do have missilery which can reach Europe and they have nuclear weapons, they can essentially browbeat Europe and separate it from supporting the American aims in the Middle east, separate it from actually almost anything in the Middle east so that Iran itself can dominate the Middle East. And the second thing is a direct threat to the United States, which is, you know, we are the big Satan. Israel is just a little Satan. They I don't know if people generally don't know this, but both the United States and Russia had programs which only ended in the 80s and there were quite a few of them in which missiles were dropped from freighters into the sea and the water acted as a gantry to stabilize the launch of the missile. And so the missile was dropped into the water and then it leapt up and flew its trajectory. You don't need an ssbn, a ballistic missile, nuclear submarine in order to launch intercontinental or intermediate range or short range ballistic missiles. You can do it with a freighter just dropping a missile in the water from a freighter. We had this program. The Russians had the program. And even Iran has experimented in the Caspian with doing such things. That means that they could, if they wished, put a missile on a freighter, drop it in the water within range of the United States. If by that time they hadn't developed missile with the range to hit the United States and there would be a threat to us off our coast from we can't control every freighter that's in the ocean. We certainly don't do that. That's one way. There are other ways too. Sneaking nuclear weapons in, etc. And you wouldn't need a Soviet style or now coming Chinese style nuclear deterrent and capacity in order to really hit the United States. All you would need would be two nuclear weapons, one over each coast to make an EMP electromagnetic pulse that could more or less destroy the United States by stopping everything. And undoubtedly you know about electricity electromagnetic pulse and your listeners and watchers do too. The estimate from the Congressional committee is that there would be at least 90 million dead in the United States when everything shut down. So you only need two nuclear weapons and you can launch them from the sea. That may be an extreme case, but the mullahs in Iran work according to extreme thought. They are deeply religious, they believe in in martyrdom, they believe that they want to convert the entire world to Islam. And we see them marching toward this kind of thing steadily and with devotion. Unlike us, we don't do much in response. Take for example what the Houthis are doing. These people are attacking American warships time after time again, plus shipping, which is of course there's very little American shipping in the world, but it is indirectly because we own the ships, although they're under foreign flags, many of them, they have attacked American ships, they are attacking American warships. And what do we do? We just swat down what they do, purely defensively. Few raids onto the land. Look at the difference. Israel actually hit Hodeidah and exacted a cost from them. We haven't done that. We're very, very defensive. It matches what we do with Iran. Iran spits in our face and we give them billions and billions. When I say give, I mean release or don't enforce oil sanctions to their benefit of literally $100 billion with which they then arm the Houthis who shoot at our warships. So we are essentially financing attacks on our naval vessels. And this has been an Obama Biden thing since the beginning. I cannot understand it. It would be as if the Iranians had hypnotized these people. Obama and his people and Biden and Blinken. They act as if they are actually under mind control from Iran. I see no explanation other than that, which of course is not true. But what's going on with them? Don't know. I think what it comes down to is they don't really. They want Iran to dominate the Middle east because they're not smart enough to know what may result of that, and they have a deep animus against the United States. That's the only thing I can think of.

[A]

Well, you know, yeah, I mean, we can roll this all the way back to 2006 or 2007. And you wrote eloquently about how we would have been better off if the war in Iraq was more of a punitive expedition. You march to Baghdad, maybe you march on to Damascus. You tell everyone what's what, you pack up, you go home. Makes sense to me. That's not the way it worked out. So at the time, I thought it made sense also for Obama's team to roll in. And they say, look, this didn't work out the way we wanted it to. Maybe we need a geostrategic reset in the region. Maybe the Saudis aren't as much of our friends as we might like them to be. And what you saw play out with isis, maybe that kind of underscored some of the concerns about the Saudis. So maybe we figure out a way to incentivize Iran to come over to our side and we. We let the Saudis sort of sink down to a lower tier. It made sense on paper at the time that that was an option that could maybe be tried in a bad neighborhood, coming out of a bad set of strategic moves. Then you roll the clock forward and you say, okay, well, how did Team Obama, Biden do? Trying to run that play? And, well, they didn't do it. They didn't do it. They couldn't pull it off. It didn't work. We know for a fact that Iran got some moles pretty deep into, I think, the State Department, really embarrassing stuff. And so it's, you know, it's really a sort of double shame to see. Now we're a decade plus on trying to get Tehran to move away from the Chinese bloc and really just failing at every turn. So now we're looking at, okay, what do you do? Trying. Deterrence hasn't really worked. Israel's still stuck in a bad situation. You're looking at maybe taking out the Iranian nuclear program. We did stuxnet, or Israel did stuxnet, that seemed to have some real successes, just kind of hacking your way into their nuclear program, crashing the computers, messing up the centrifuges. Do we need to look at other means? Do you think that technology, sort of secret hacking and other kinds of tech attacks on the Iranian nuclear program are enough? Or have they figured out how to defeat that? And now if it's going to be taken out, it has to be done by more kinetic means.

[B]

One lesson that everyone should be aware of is that if a nation wants to build a, in its eyes, defensive or in some cases offensive capability vis a vis what weapons it will manufacture, stockpile, whatever, nothing will stop it except force. It doesn't work. If you're talking about maybe, let's say Libya, which wanted to foolishly to build a nuclear capacity, as if it could, but maybe it could have. That's one thing, because it was a small country with very few resources, close to Europe, sandwich between various military powers and also deployments. Maybe with Libya you could do that. Qaddafi, which is how it's pronounced, Qadvafi, gave up his nuclear weapons because he saw the writing on the wall. But a country like Iran, which is behind the vast mountain ranges that you cannot penetrate because there are only a few passes through there, you can't invade made Iran from the sea or even from the ground. If you established bases in Iraq or Kuwait, which in itself would be a problem, you can't do that with Iran. If they are determined to get a nuclear weapon, they will get a nuclear weapon. Look at the examples. Israel was determined to get a nuclear weapon and it did. Pakistan, same thing. India, same thing. A country which sees its vital interest as in acquiring a nuclear capability is going to do it. You cannot. When this started, I wrote many, many articles and pieces and also did a lot of advising, if you can call it that. And of course they just don't. They listen, but they don't do anything. It was foolish to think even that sanctions would do anything. Sanctions won't do any good. They will starve and build those weapons. And vis a vis the sanctions in particular, what I said decades ago, and it's on the record, is, look, you can't sanction adequately Iran enough to get it to give up this, what it considers to be in its essential interest, and I wrote this, it can get any material thing it wants from China and sell China as much oil as China will buy and it can get the weapons that it needs from Russia. I said this 20 years ago in vis a vis sanctions, and that's exactly what it's doing now. There's no way to stop Iran's nuclear march except by force.

[A]

All right, let's take a look at Israel before we re scope here. Netanyahu is in a tight spot. The unity government in Israel is creaking at best. Gaza isn't finished. Hezbollah looms. The opposition in Israel hasn't gone away. There are still protests out in the streets. There's still real divisions in civil society, divisions even in the intelligence services of Israel. Not really getting the coverage I think it deserves in the US Maybe for obvious reasons, given what's going on politically in the US but still help people understand where do things stand? How fragile is Israel right now? Can Netanyahu survive?

[B]

Well, I'm not very good at Israeli politics because my field is more military. And also although I was fluent in Hebrew when I was in the army and when I lived in Israel, I was never very good at reading the things. I could read the newspaper, basically, but I haven't in 50 years. So it was half a century ago and more. But. So I don't know too much about Israeli internal politics, but I do know several things. One of them is that it is simply insane for people to suggest, as many people in opposition in Israel do in the United States, States as well, that Netanyahu is interested primarily in preserving his own position. In other words, remaining prime minister so he can stay out of jail, so he can exercise power, so he can have the accoutrements of high office. That is insane, because what's the balance on the other side of that is actually the survival of Israel, which would mean There are 10 million people in Israel, 7 million Jews, and that is actually at stake, it's survival. And he's not going. Nobody, except for a madman like maybe Napoleon or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, would put his individual condition in the balance as against that. So everything he's doing, I insist and can guarantee you everything he's doing has to do with the important aims of allowing Israel to survive in this seven front war and in the greater and long, long term desire of the confrontation states and even states beyond confrontation states. I guess you'd have to call. We didn't used to that. You have to call Iran a confrontation state. Now everything is directed at Israel's survival in the United States. We don't understand that because our survival is not threatened. We think in the long term it is. And I thought maybe that's what we talk about too. But Israel's survival is threatened now directly. And Netanyahu is going to do whatever he can to forward that. And it's so small minded of either his foes there or here. To think that he's doing it for personal reasons, it's just ridiculous. Now, as to your question about whether or not his coalition will survive, I think it will. Because when push comes to shove, people like Benny Gantz or even his bitterest foes understand that this is something that has to do with survival. In war, there are always coalitions. The British had coalition government. In the United States, we don't have a parliamentary system, so we don't have coalition governments. But when wars break out, generally the parties come together and support the country, even if they're not totally happy with the way it's being. The war is being run. Again, if the war stretches out for a long, long, long time, then you get splintering and divisions and the opposition party makes itself more clearly understood and will even go to the extremes, such as in the Vietnam War, the Democrats taking away the financing for it and essentially making us withdraw. But in Israel, I think that this coalition will last. I may be totally wrong because again, I'm not very good in Israeli politics.

[A]

Well, it's hard to know the future for sure any day of the week and now more than ever. But let's talk about the US then. What is your prognosis for America's existential situation? People look around, they see a lot of slow motion collapse that seems to be accelerating. So what's, what's the biggest threat to our integrity, our survival as a nation, and can we make it through?

[B]

Well, that's of course a huge subject. I mean, that's right. You have volumes of gibbon about Rome and here we have a very small amount of time. But maybe we can address that by thinking of a theme. And the theme would be internal versus external, because right now that seems to me to be in a sense the chief hidden, lurking danger. Because both parties have decided to various extents and in different ways that we don't have to think of the external threats to us in the same way that we have to deal with the internal ones. And the. And in one case with the Democrats and the left, they've never wanted to spend the money on the military. And they think that actually the reason that there's problems abroad is because we're so bad that we essentially create them by being imperialistic or whatever they say we are. And on the right now we have this flirtation with isolationism. It's more than flirtation. The national conservative movement, and by the way, you'd think that they would not, they would name it something different or maybe they never heard of National Socialism, I don't know. But the national conservative movement, conservatism movement or conservative, I don't know which is which. It is, is full blown isolationist at this point because they say we have to take care of everything here, including the border. Why should we, why should we defend Ukraine's borders when our borders are being overrun by millions of people, including terrorist, drugs, et cetera? The lessons of history show that these things are inseparable. You cannot deal with the one if you don't deal with the other. They're mutually independent, interdependent. Take Rome for example. In Rome, Rome, as everyone knows from Gibbon, decayed internally. It just went to hell in the same way that we have the morals, mores, standards, the systems of government all essentially decayed and declined. And people say, well, that's why Rome fell. But on the other hand, people say, well, Rome fell because of the pressure of the barbarians and various people from the outside. Those two things were interlinked. For example, Rome began to rely because its citizenry was corrupt and soft, because they had too much success, too much wealth on hiring barbarians to defend it along its perimeter. It would essentially contract out what the Roman legions had done when Rome was in a healthy and expansive state. And those barbarians then turned against Rome and invaded it eventually. A couple of, maybe 10, 20 years ago in the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, there was an article which they stressed, a big article called the Thousand Ship Navy. And I, and I've been reading that this proceeding since 1967, every issue, cover to cover. And I saw that article, I thought, oh, maybe, maybe someone like Reagan is back, you know, John Lehman, 600 ship Navy. And someone's even more ambitious as I would be, let's have a thousand ship Navy. Okay. And then I read the article and it was, I think it was the chief of Naval Operations who wrote it, I don't remember. But anyway, it was a high admiral and the idea was, well, we actually have a thousand ship navy because if you count the navies of Britain and France and Japan and South Korea, South Korea's navy, by the way, is bigger than the Royal Navy. Now that's what happened to the Royal Navy if you count all our allies. Yeah, we have 1,000 ship Navy. So we don't have to have a bigger navy because you can't. And that's a really strange form of accounting because what it does, among other things, is it will fracture any alliance. If an alliance doesn't have a central pillar, then the Allies will not adhere to it. How do you think NATO, which needs unanimity of decision, reaches that? As it often, as it mostly does. It's because the United States has the power, because we are so much stronger than any of our allies in NATO and because we spend so much more to say, look this way. It's got to be. If everyone in an alliance were equal, it would break apart because various countries would disagree with other ones, and then they would perhaps seek another protector, such as China, if they felt that that was to their advantage. An alliance has to have a stronger central pillar in order for it to function correctly. Now, that's Rome. What about Britain? The theme is the external versus the internal. And my point is that you cannot separate the two. Just briefly, in Britain, why did the British Empire collapse? I think that the start of the collapse of the British Empire was when they lost the United States. The population of Great Britain at that time was 8 million of the colonies of the 13 colonies was 2 1/2 million. That's almost a third. And the area of the 13 colonies was four and a half times that of Britain. And it was much richer in resources. And then, you're not even counting all the way to the Mississippi and beyond us, eventually we expanded. The Brits were aware of that. They knew there were great resources in the Northwest Territories and all the way to the Mississippi. And when that was taken from them, that was the beginning of their decline. And by the way, for example, Napoleon came along soon thereafter, and George iii, who had lost the North American colonies, was the first king since the Hundred Years War to renounce his claim to France. Because the British king said, well, we own France too. They began to go down, even though in the Victorian period they were supposedly, you know, reached their peak. In some ways they did. But I think the decline began in America. And why did it. Why did it happen? Why did Britain lose the colonies when they had the greatest navy in the world, the professional armies, and lots of loyalists in the United States? The Revolution was really, really closely run, as everyone knows who studies it. We almost didn't make it. How was it that we did? The crucial element was France. If we didn't have the French navy covering for us, for instance, at Yorktown, Cornwallis would not have surrendered because the British ships, we used their cannon, and we would have lost. At Yorktown and in various ports, the British were able to blockade, et cetera, et cetera. But they couldn't do it to the extent that they wanted because of the French navy, which ran interference. If The British had, at the beginning, in 1776, they had 250 warships. If they had double that amount and they built during the war, but wasn't in time, if they had double that amount, they could have prevented the French navy from any kind of action in this area in the North American continent. And they could have prevented the supplies and armaments from France and the stuff from the Caribbean that kept us alive during the revolution. And we would have been British now. It would have been an anglosphere had they done this. A very simple thing, the strength of the navy it wasn't. They had a terrific navy, it was the best in the world, but it wasn't strong enough. That's an external thing which then helped with the internal thing. If you now think of the United States and think of the left, which doesn't want to spend on military because they only want every, you know, every toothbrush to have toothpaste on it and every pencil drawer to be nicely ordered and everyone to have everything they want and everyone to be completely happy internally before even looking externally. And then there's the right. And the right says, well, why should we spend money abroad when things are not perfect here? And the strongest case they have is the border. Millions of people coming over the border. But you know, the border a is an external thing, it's an external force and it's not treated as such. It's much like our forward defense throughout the world, only it's a little closer. And the second thing about the border is we could very easily close it hermetically as we should. You know, immigration is really good. It has built a country. Most of the people who come here work hard, responsible, law abiding and they really do help the economy and help the country. However, not one single one should be allowed into the United States without proper legal vetting and procedure. Not one. And we can do that. The border is very easy to seal hermetically. A few changes in law and it can be done. In terms of the practical, think of it this way. Israel has a border of 833 miles, including the sea border. The US Mexico border is 1954 miles, a little more than twice the length of Israel's border. But Israel has people who want to come over and kill people and more or less they keep them out, except for October 7th missiles flying over. But in terms of infiltration, such as we have, Israel has been successful for 75 years in keeping people out. But Israel has now, for example, we have 50 times the population of Israel and almost 60 times the GDP. If Israel can do that, and we can certainly do it with people who don't have bazookas, you know, on the other side of the border. And if you did that, you know, we have, we have fencing, we have the technical means. There are many natural barriers. A couple billion, $10 billion, and we could seal that border. We have 17,000 agents right now on the southern border. Double them. We have. There are 50 ports of entry on the southern border. Double, especially the big ones, double them. So that we could be more careful of letting people in, catch more drugs, catch more smugglers, catch more illegals. And then, to coin a phrase, if you build it, they will not come. If you shut it down, then people will stop coming. And then you could ease off on the expense and the enforcement because they would know that if they started to come, we reestablished the higher levels. So the border is not, it shouldn't be a trade off between the border and American defense, meaning particularly military spending. Let me make a point here which has from the years 1940 to 2000, in the peacetime years, not in World War II, not, not in Korea, not in Vietnam, not in the Gulf War, in the peacetime years, we spent an average of 5.6 or 5.7% of GDP on defense. In the last several decades, we've been spending about 3% and fighting wars here, there and everywhere which really degrade our equipment. If you look at our ships, they're rusty and the sailors are stressed, the ships run aground. It's pathetic. China's navy now is bigger than our navy and they keep on building and they're ahead of us in hypersonics and they're ahead of us in supercomputing. If we keep on in this way, then, and this is what people generally don't understand because we've been so successful up to this point, our future as a sovereign, independent nation is in jeopardy. If you have this building alliance between Russia and China, with Iran being a kind of a sidekick and North Korea being a sidekick, what will happen when I can almost guarantee you that there will be Chinese military bases in Latin America, why wouldn't it be? They have penetrated Latin America, as has Russia, and there's no reason why they wouldn't establish basis there. Why? Because we long ago abandoned the Monroe Doctrine. When we had the Monroe Doctrine, by the way. The Monroe Doctrine was originally addressed to the question of Russia in Alaska, but then it included the whole hemisphere. We couldn't have done it ourselves because we were weak at that during the time of President Monroe. But The British said, well, we agree with you. We don't want European powers messing around in the Western Hemisphere, so we'll help you do it. And since that time we've had the Monroe Doctrine. We then became perfectly able ourselves to enforce it. And now we can't enforce it. We have Russian and Chinese penetration of Latin America as well as Africa. Who's to say that there won't be Chinese or Russian bases in Latin America? You know, in the Zimmerman telegram was an intercepted telegram in which the Kaiser proposed to Mexico that Mexico entered the war, the first World War, on behalf of Germany, again against the United States. Japan, which invented. People don't know this, but Japan invented amphibious warfare before we did. Japan surveyed the coast of Mexico prior to World War II to see where landings could be made. They won't have to land. China won't have to land. It'll establish military bases. It controls most of the crucial ports all around the world. Even in Europe, our footing is dropping beneath us and we are not doing anything when one of the ways, the chief way, of course we have to get ourselves straight at home too. But the chief thing is to stop the external pressure in the same way that I mentioned had written expended the resources to double the size of the Royal Navy, then France would not have been able to pull us through the revolution and the British Empire would have been much different for much longer time, maybe even into the present. We are falling behind in every measure of defense, both high tech stuff and in the staples of defense, in the numbers of ships, the numbers of planes, the numbers of forces are industrial base. Whereas Russia and China are increasing. And I'll tell you, if Russia conquers Ukraine, then Europe is in jeopardy. And if we lose Europe, then we are gone because that means that we would not have control of the North Atlantic. China, Europe is our ally both militarily and economically. It's our biggest trading partner other than Mexico and Canada. And it's more important than Asia, although Asia is more of a threat in the very, very long term. We cannot lose Europe if we lose Europe. Europe, the international chess game goes much in favor of Russia and China. They will be encouraged to do even more and they will. If China dominates the Pacific, which at this point, if the trajectory holds between China's military buildup, which is like this and ours, which is like that, going down, you know, crossed swords are as pointing down. Then they will control the Pacific all the way up to California and Hawaii. Their ships will patrol the Pacific as once we, as even currently we do in The Western Pacific. Our allies in the Western Pacific, Japan, Australia, to some extent Taiwan will be. South Korea will be forced to fall under Chinese domination and, and more or less sever the ties with us. This may take a while, but it won't be that long. I probably won't see it, I'm 77. But you may, and certainly younger people will.

[A]

Well, I've let you go on here because it is so important and I wanted to be sure that we had the whole case for all the external challenges that the US faces. We got about 10 minutes left though. So I want to raise a point that I think is really at the heart of why so many Americans, whether they're at the elite tier or just among the ordinary people, feel like turning away from those nettlesome external challenges, which are a challenge, whether you're a sort of declining unipolar power or one of a few great powers in a multipolar mix, you're going to have those external challenges. Why are people turning away? You wrote a prescient book, I think a couple decades ago now at this point called Digital Barbarism, where you're talking about barbarians in the old style. In that book you talk about the sort of barbarism that sets in when digital technology kind of becomes a default. That leaves people with not much to contribute or a sense that they're becoming obsolete, or there's no point in working very hard. The machines will just take care of it for you. What I'm seeing is coming out of technology and a lot of technologists, at least more to their credit today, sort of standing up and saying, hey, we need to build those weapons. We need to ensure that America can face its external threats. The existing elite has failed. We're going to step up and do that. Okay, great. But a lot of what goes on beyond that sort of defense contractor layer is technologists saying, oh, okay, we're going to save America by replacing all of these decaying institutions and sort of decaying social structures. By turning people into gods and giving them God like powers through machines. You merge with the machines, all of your problems will be over. If an American looks at that and they say, you know what, I don't believe that that's gonna happen. Or if it did happen, it would actually be quite bad. Beyond that, there seems to be not much of an offer, not much of a value proposition, which would be strange. You think that we're Americans, we're good at tinkering, we're good at building things, good at innovation. Why is it that technology Today seems to be in opposition to the American people, where it's not offering them a return to a fuller, more vibrant kind of life. Do you feel that the arts, that culture, have been dealt sort of a death blow at this point by technology? And do you see hopes for fixing that balance and achieving a new kind of harmony so that Americans aren't stuck in that kind of internal layer, feeling like, if I can't figure out how to make my own life or my own society work, then how am I going to face the world at large?

[B]

Well, that's quite a complicated question, and there are many angles that you could approach it from. Let me just tell you a little story. My father was born in 1904, and the first time that he saw any kind of moving image was when he was in the nickelodeon. The cards flipped, and he saw a railroad train coming at him, and he was astounded by that. And then after that, there was film with the jerky movement of the film, people in the film. And then there was talkies, and then there was color, and then there was television, and then there was. And, you know, the process. He didn't know anything about Moore's Law. He hadn't heard of that. But in 1975, he and I had a conversation, and he said, look, he said, and I started publishing in a big sense, you know, making a living from it. And he said, I think you have maybe 25 years left, because with the advance of technology, in which more and more information can be compressed into means by which it's transmitted. And he was thinking, for instance, I mean, started with the flipping cards, and then it became. Well, he didn't have smartphones before he died, but color television, for example. He said, I think that you have about 25, maybe 30 years left, and then the image will conquer word. And when the image conquers the word, you're going to have to really retrench and be very careful. So save a lot. Save your money that you earn, because it's not going to go on forever. And he was absolutely right. Because what has happened to the word meaning? If you read a book, you really have to think. You have to work. Not with every book. Some books you have to work more than others. But any book, any kind of reading, requires active participation and work. The more you have imagery, such as, for instance, watching a movie, the more you. Or television, you just sit there like a lump, and you become passive. We are too passive a nation and also too susceptible to being educated. Now, when I say educated, what I mean is in the original Latin sense led. So the educational establishment, which is now from kindergarten all the way through the higher level university graduate programs, the professoriate has been infected with various ideas from Marcuse and Gramsci and Marx and Derrida and all these destructive theorists. Destructive and hostile to the west and to religion, to things that made America what it was. That's what we teach our children now, as any conservative would affirm. And liberals would say well no we don't. But then they would say but we should. That's very, very powerful and just about the power of technology. I have a very good friend who is actually an American patriot. He loves the country and he thinks, but he's extremely optimistic because he says we have, look at the iPhone that we have now. We have the iPhone. And I say to him the iPhone is not going to, it's not going to do it. Now high technology, you have to have it for military advancement so that you can keep up with the challenges. But it's. If you concentrate on the civilian sector, it's doing the opposite of what China does with China. What they say is it's essentially the civilian sector is there to power the military sector. And this is an ancient thing. It comes from a Chinese saying which the Japanese then adopted from the for themselves under the Meiji, which is in Japanese it's Fukoku kiyohei, strong country, strong arms. It's originally a Chinese construction from long before the Japanese adopted it. The Japanese said, okay, we'll steal, we'll copy western technology in order to build our military. And they did. They built the Japanese, the Imperial Japanese Navy, they built the army. They were full steam ahead in doing that as China has done recently. We have the reverse. We say, well you can hear people say the military research was okay because there were spin offs like the Internet and the iPhone. We're going in the opposite direction because somehow we feel that defending ourselves and asserting ourselves in the world and saying no, either you can't come here if we don't let you in, or no, we don't accept your view of us as being a colonial country or an evil country or whatever. If we've lost the ability to resist, to defend ourselves, the basic right, the basic human impulse, self defense. Then you, then you find people going off into all these utopian visions and also being very narrow minded with narrow vision about what things lie out there, excuse me. And people will say well you know, I can go to Starbucks. And during the Vietnam War there was a cartoon in the New York Times and it showed Viet Cong, with those funny hats and their black pajamas and weapons, AK47s in the subway in New York. And what that cartoon was saying was, look, there's no Vietcong here. We don't have to fight in Vietnam. Isn't that ridiculous? And that is the mindset now of most Americans who say, everything is fine. I can go to Starbucks, I can get my coffee. I don't see any threat out there. There's no problem. I can't see anything. And by the way, that's where the, where Silicon Valley really, really helps. Because in a negative way, because those people are making so much money, it blinds them to things. It blinds them to the extent that they think, for instance, such as this guy named Ray Kurzweil said that, I think 20 years ago or more, within five years, I think he said, we will be immortal because we'll be able to download our memories and thoughts into a computer. So we're going to have immortality. They're high on making money and their success. And I put that in quotation marks with their toys, and that's infected the whole country. You know, we think that as long as we're materially okay, everything's okay. But that's not the way it goes. Empires fall. Not that we're an empire, quite different from an empire, but there was the Pax Romana, the Pax Britannica, and the Pax Americana, meaning that the world order was such that it wasn't catastrophic world wars. Countries could trade. They were able to establish their own forms of government and not be conquered by others. This world order is disappearing now, and it's disappearing because we don't understand that it can disappear and that it is disappearing right in front of our eyes. And if we don't shape up both at home and abroad, they're totally mutually independent, then we will have the devil to pay. And not so long from now.

[A]

Well, they are mutually independent. Very few people at this point, I think, can cover as much ground as you can cover in just the way you do, showing that it all fits together. The word may be under siege, but I think we're going to need your voice for quite a while longer to come. So. Mark Halperin, thanks so much for joining us.

[B]

Thank you. I've had a great time. Thanks.

[A]

All right, that's all the time we've got. Thanks to Mark for calling in. Until next time around, I'm James Polis. This, this is Zero Hour, and may God have mercy on us all.