Bulwark Takes - Hertling and Kristol on Venezuela, Tensions in Europe, and a Pentagon Under Pressure

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Bill Kristol and Mark Hertling discuss Venezuela’s uncertain path, Europe’s evolving troubles, and growing discontent inside the Pentagon.

Hi, Bill Crystal here from the Bullwork with Bullwork Sunday Live with Mark Hurtling. My colleague now, very honored to have you abroad, I guess is the right to say that. And Mark obviously retired as Lieutenant General in 2013. It's become one of our leading military commentators, very useful and important for those of us who don't understand all these matters of military affairs and national security. And so thanks for joining me today, Mark. It's great to be with you, Bill. Always good on a Sunday morning to talk about. these kind of things.

Yeah, okay. Well, if it's not too upbeat, people can take a break and go watch a football game to cheer themselves up and then come back to worry about the real world. We were talking before about your book, which I think was just announced that it's available for free order. Say a word about it because it is so interesting. Yeah, I was kind of skeptical

when the publisher said they wanted to start pre-orders in November. And I said, boy, it's not going to be delivered until late February or early March. He says, well, it'll give us a feel for how. it's it seems to be selling quite well especially with the caveat that anyone that orders the pre-order will get a signed copy so uh that's gonna be fun i'm really excited about it it's it's a book that dives deeply into reflections and a journal from desert storm uh and then what happened over the next 35 years uh that the army adapted the nation adapted um so it's i was really glad our son kind of talked this talked me into doing it it's great and the name and the name so people can

it is if i don't return a father's wartime journal wow well that's great i i look forward to i fjordered but i haven't uh gotten it yet but um obviously no one's gotten it until february march but uh but i really look forward to to reading it so we'll talk that as well and we'll talk what's going on at the defense department talk a little bit about europe as well where you were your final your command of u.s army europe before you retired um but then as well at what's I mean, people say maybe we're going to war, maybe we're not. I mean, it seems to be in the past when they've been, you know, wars seem to be imminent. There's been a huge amount of public debate and briefing of Congress and often resolutions

and, you know, actual legislation in Congress to authorize the use of military force. It's kind of weird. We may be on the precipice of war or are we just on the precipice of threatening? I mean, what's going on with Venezuela? Presidents of war or a precipice of more precipices, I think. But, you know, it's been interesting because there's been a drumbeat. over the last couple of days. And I've noticed, excuse me, a lot of commentators in Twitter sphere and blue sky sphere

saying that it could happen as early as this weekend because the president was teasing options on Air Force One the other day. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the CJ, the chairman of joint chiefs and the Secretary of Defense presenting options to the president. Well, you know, Bill, from an insider's perspective, any senior commander that is told to breed prepared for someone. something usually sets up what they call courses of actions, potential courses of actions. And they brief those to the president and allow him to make decisions.

So, you know, you normally, you know, military commander will normally put together kiddingly what we call it as a baby bear, a mama bear, and a papa bear option, you know, growing in size and scope. And I'm sure there was more than three given to the president, anything from a couple of few kinetic strikes to an overall invasion. But what I'm hoping for is that whoever is briefing him, whether it be Dan Kane, the chairman of joint chiefs or Secretary HECF, that they give him the challenges associated with going into a place the size of Venezuela. I don't think, you know, there's been a lot of talk about this small little Latin American country. It ain't that small.

In fact, it's larger than Ukraine. It's about twice as large as the state of Texas. It has 30 million people inside with five major megacities. And it's bigger than Iraq by two. So when you're talking about invading a country, you better understand the size and requirements for military forces and what your mission is and what you're attempting to do. So explain a little how this process works

because who may not work quite this way in this administration, but still, on the one hand, one sees these stories and you think, oh, my God, they're presenting war plans. There's going to be a war. On the other hand, it's also said correctly, I suppose, that the Pentagon has a million, you know, contingency plans and one shouldn't be too much into this. And also, what does it mean? The admiral in charge of Southern Command retired. That was, I think, last time we talked about a month ago, about the implications of that. Wouldn't the combatant commander be very important in devising and presenting? this and how does it work with my experience i'll give you my experience because i was the the j7 on

the joint staff and at the time that was the individual chart in charge of one of our portfolios was contingency plans so we had all the contingency plans on the shelf so you worked with the chairman and you were in charge of making sure that contingency plans were assembled and staffed correctly and reviewed and analyzed and updated but it wasn't just with the chairman i mean uh it was usually with the Secretary of Defense at the time Secretary of Rumsfeld. What he would do would he, he would call in the combatant commanders and go through the war plans. And I was normally the guy that would spread them out in front, but also be the note taker

when the secretary said, hey, I want you to do this instead of this, or he would usually beat up the combatant commanders on their issues of assumptions. What were they assuming would happen in terms of the contingency plan? And for each contingency plan that the combat commanders had, it would literally take a half day or a full day to just review them one at a time. And as you just said, there were more than a hundred of these contingency plans on the shelves. And some of them not only had a contingency plan that had to do with combat, but in the same country or region, they would have to do with what happens if you had a regime implosion or an authoritarian change and the dynamics of the humanitarian issues involved with that. Those were, truthfully, Bill, some of the toughest contingency plans we had requiring more force than one might expect. But remember, this was during the time of 2002 and three when we had already gone into Afghanistan

and there was the consideration of going into Iraq, which we eventually did. And when the combat commander came in for that particular review, there were a lot of people in the room from other agencies. That's the thing that I'm not sure we have a firm grip on today in terms of how the Trump administration does the review or the analysis. Is it the principles committee in the Oval Office? And when I'm talking about that, is it is the Treasury Department there, is the State Department there, is Commerce there, is USA, you know, all the various agencies that bring the elements of national power to bear other than the military, which has the

kinetic option, the strike option. What happens afterwards with the State Department? How do you establish a government. Those are some of the things that go for weeks on end. And in fact, during the Iraq run-up, there was a, I think it was publicized, a very large conference at the National War College in Washington, D.C., where all the agencies came into a huge auditorium and reviewed what was going to happen, obviously a classified setting. But everybody had their ability to say, here's what I think I'm supposed to do, and here's how it's going to affect the country. I'm not sure, you know, with the kind of ad hocism we're seeing in the Trump administration, we see that same coordination, especially since the NSC has been gutted over the last

couple months. Which is supposed to do a lot of that coordinating, right? Right. Yeah. So what, I mean, let's, someone might say, well, look, come on, these, they're blowing up these boats. That's gone, okay. Leave aside the legality of it and the wisdom of it. But, I mean, they've done it and it's this with no U.S. casualties and not a, so far as one can tell, not a huge amount of side effects, so to speak, and other consequences. Maybe there are beneath the surface in the region, but this might be some strikes on, you know, military bases or other places in Venezuela, but we're not talking Iraq. We're not talking ground troops. So why can't they just, is that that hard to do? Do they really need the degree of

planning you're talking about? What if someone said to me said to you? So don't worry. so much, you know, this will be fine. Yeah, well, that's sort of the same thing they said about Iraq, wasn't it? Hey, this is going to go quick. You know, they're going to welcome us with open arms and give us Saddam immediately. So, you know, what I've learned over a 40-year career is wars start pretty quickly, but they don't end very well, unless you've got a very good plan. And what you're talking about, what we've seen is the striking of votes, the potential striking of ministries or government buildings inside of Venezuela, you know, those are tactical actions. What we haven't seen is what's the strategy? If the strategy is really, as it's been stated,

to deter narcotics flow or to defeat the introduction of fentanyl into the country, I think we're going after the wrong target in the wrong manner. You have to then start placing those tactical actions of blowing up a boat to more of a campaign plan that meets an overarching strategy. If we're talking a drug war, there better be a much bigger strategy than just blowing up boats because these things are pinpricks in terms of drug cartels. If it's something else like regime change or capturing oil fields or anything in that manner, we're not even being led down that path. And by the way, Congress hasn't authorized it. So if we're going to war, if we're going to start conducting kinetic strikes in another country, you know, there's

things like the rule of law and the rule of armed conflict that need to apply. But I remember Secretary Higgsuff kind of brushing those off at the meeting of the generals back at Conoco a few weeks ago. Yeah. And it's kind of, I am struck just by the lack, I mean, the lack of public debate and the lack of they're preparing the way here at home. I guess maybe they just assume that people don't like Maduro, people don't like drug smugglers, people don't care much if they're bombing operations that don't result, aren't likely to result in U.S. casualties or, you know, people being taken prisoner or something. So maybe they think they don't need to do what they, what has been done in other situations. But leaving aside, again, the legality and constitutionality and all that. But, yeah,

I do, these things aren't as easy to control and contain, right? And suddenly we're, yeah, I mean, I guess I wonder about that. I mean, do you think, but if you were called, you know, you had been on vacation for three months and they said, okay, here's the situation. We've blown up these votes. The USS Ford, I guess, has been moved to the region. The following assets seem to be there. The following rhetoric has been employed by the president and the SACDF.

What would you say? I mean, what do you think just is the most one or two or three most natural? likely implications of what's happened? Well, I'd first start talking about size, which I did a minute ago. I mean, Venezuela is enormous. It's roughly almost 900,000 square kilometers. Ukraine, in comparison, is about 580 square kilometers. It has a population of 31 million people.

There are large cities. When Russia went into Ukraine, remember they said they were going to be done in a week or two. They're there three years later, and it's a smaller country than Venezuela. You have some people comparing this to Panama, Operation Just Cause that occurred in 1989. But that's dangerously misleading. And I think, well, first of all, the size of Panama, about 75,000 square miles is smaller than the state of South Carolina. and you could fit 30 of them into Venezuela.

The Noriega government was taken down very quickly. He was truthfully proven to be a drug kingpin. But he also commanded a very small and brittle and corrupt military, which almost immediately folded. We're not going to see that same kind of thing in Venezuela. So if I were Dan Kane, those would be the kind of things I would, I would present to the president and say, you know, Russia had 190,000 people that they were soldiers that they were putting in the Ukraine back a couple of years ago. We've got 25,000 as part

of a naval task force in a country that's twice as large and much more complex than even Ukraine was at the time. So those were, those would be some of the comparisons. And then if the president says, well, I don't care. I want strike options. Then the joint staff would start putting together the baby bear, mama bear, papa bear options of little pink tricks like you were just saying, maybe strike an intelligence agency and see what happens. Or, you know, a massive air campaign based on the USS Ford having about 90 airplanes on their ship and having a bunch of naval vessels there too and anything in between. But again, what is the state, what are you trying to do? What is the reason for this conflict? And how many, you know,

what's the true casualty potential? How many soldiers and sailors and airmen and pilots are we going to lose in this kind of conflict? Remember, Russia at the time of their invasion in Ukraine was the fourth largest army in the world with high technology. And little Ukraine, comparatively speaking to Venezuela, has beaten Tim to a standstill over the last three-plus years. And that's really fascinating. I guess we should all hope that General Kane and his colleagues are presenting this and being listened to to some degree at least. So I guess let me just ask the question. The last way, we'll get off Venezuela. But as an analyst, just if someone said to you, okay, as a predictive matter, not as what should be done, but what could be done,

when you see the movements of the forces, when you see the rhetoric, do you think it's certain what we're, certainly it's not certain what we're going to do. What do you think the odds are, if I can put it simply, I mean, in terms of where are they going, do you think? Yeah, I go back to what I said about all I've heard this weekend. You know, there's been a lot of people saying it's probably going to come soon. Some have predicted today, okay, and I just think that's crazy because the 40s isn't even on station yet. You know, I just think it's a deterrent action. They're going to continue to strike these small. cigarette boats. But again, I don't see the connection to these tactical attacks against

drugboats in the overarching end state, the plan, the strategy that we don't know and that Congress doesn't know. So if both the American people who don't want to do this and Congress who's trying to persuade someone from the administration to tell them exactly what they are thinking of doing, and they haven't done it yet. If suddenly strikes start occurring, boy, if Katie bar the door, it's going to be ugly. Wow, that's really

chastening, I'd say, and worrisome. Final, I said that there'll be the last one, worry about whether he had a question is. Anymore clarity on what's been happening with the drugboats in terms of when we talked a month ago, we were uncertain, I think, about exactly what the chain of command was. Obviously, Admiral Hosey was unhappy. I take it was unhappy, at the least

unhappy isn't quite the variety, even. It was deeply troubled by what was happening. very unusually resigned a combatant command who'd assumed less than a year before. Do we have more information about who's doing what interest in hitting these votes? I mean, is it the agency? Is it the military? I mean, obviously, we don't want to talking about anything classified here, just any sense of what's happening. I mean, we don't, Bill, but one morning sign came up this week.

I think it was the Washington Post. It may have been the New York Times reported there were a bunch of military officers, and they didn't say where they were from, were these Pentagon officers or someone out of Southcom that were seeking outside legal advice. So if military folks are saying, hey, tell us what you think about this. Is this a violation of laws?

Is it illegal to be doing what we're doing? And are we going to be culpable if this turns out to be truly extrajudicial killings of criminals? We also have reporting that the British have pulled one of their officers off the task force that's in the region because they don't want to be held culpable. And we're seeing, in addition, this week, this last week, you'll see the Netherlands, France, and the UK all saying, in Colombia, saying that they're not going to pass intelligence to the United States when they're in, when they have this task force in the Caribbean. And I think that's telling because those three countries specifically, you know, I think it was Heggseth or Vance that basically said, what do I care what the Europeans think? Well, three of the four countries, the Netherlands, the U.K. and France have island protectorates in the region.

There are multiple islands in the Caribbean that fly those flags of those governments. And then you've got Colombia that's a neighbor of Venezuela saying we're not giving you any more counterfeiting. narcotics information either, or at least that's what's being reported. So when you see that kind of action, it tells you that the intelligence, and by the way, five eyes, you know, the Brits have said they're not sharing intelligence with the U.S. So those kind of things, which are brushed aside by some in the administrations, in my view as a military guy, that's a big deal. Those are really huge actions, and they're going under the radar, of most of our media who are reporting now that's so important interesting and important i had that

you know before but i mean i had that instinct that this is very unusual it's one thing countries have sometimes not often not agreed with us obviously sometimes that we're not participating in an operation iraq or whatever but to cut off intelligence in an ongoing situation i mean that's pretty rare isn't it i don't really recall but they're not just cutting off intelligence they're going to the u.n saying hey you know this isn't really right. And some of these are our European partners who are going to the U.N. saying, you know, the U.S. is basically doing the same thing Russia did when they invaded Ukraine. It is troubling, to say the least. Yeah. Speaking of Europe, I got a lot of reaction when we talked about

Romania last time at an issue that was talking about beneath the radar. That was like so far beneath the radar that no one knew anything about it. I barely did. But you were so interesting talking about it, we were, I guess, announced we were going to withdraw our troops from there, base, the closest base, I guess we have, the closest NATO base to the, to the Russian border. Am I right about that? Or at least very close. What's happened since? Well, it's interesting since the announcement, there was the conversation about pulling about 900 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division that was there on a rotational basis inside of Romania. Since that time, well, actually before that time, on the 27th of October,

didn't talk about this. We talked about this in early November, but on the 27th October, the first armored division, my old division, the division I commanded, which I'm very proud of, old Ironsides, formally transferred the authority to the third infantry division at M.K. Air Base in Romania, which is the main port, the base that we built when I was commander of U.S. Army Europe. And what's interesting is, what What those divisions have there are not the entire divisions, not even their headquarters. They have what's called a tax CP or a tactical command post. So it's a smaller headquarters that basically controls the forces that are in the area.

So on the 27th of October, you have a nine-month deployment of the third infantry division that wasn't stopped. So the tactical command post is the third infantry is the forward presence command post in the Black Sea region. Now, that's, again, like I said, it's a nine-month deployment. They have approximately 300, excuse me, 3,000 soldiers there. And they have them spread between the countries of Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. That was what our original plan was when we had this, what we call the Joint Task Force East, which is now under command of a U.S. Corps, the Fifth Corps.

Now, this centers around tasks that the U.S. and NATO gives them with things like command and control integration, crisis response, just the forward land forces presence, and it's all part of that eastern flank defense line. But, you know, again, even though the Pentagon is saying that they're pulling forces out, there's a new division headquarters that just arrived, and they're going to be there at least nine months with 3,000 soldiers. in four different countries, and there are still soldiers in the Baltic states of Estonia of Estonia, Latvia, and Marines in Norway and Denmark. So, again, it poses the question, what the hell is going on? What is really happening versus press releases in terms of the troops in the area? You know, that's the concern I have. In addition to, you not only are proclaiming the fact that you're pulling U.S. soldiers out of the region,

but you just had the USS Ford deploy out of the Mediterranean, which really is something that the Navy calls a 1-0 presence. When they have a 1-0 presence, that means they have a carrier strike group in an area 100% of the time. and when it leaves, someone else is replacing it. Well, you now have no carriers in the Mediterranean. The one carrier that was designated for the Med to watch over Europe, the Middle East and Africa is now outside of Venezuela. So dangerous moves, and that, in fact, has happened as the Ford steams into the Caribbean. Now, that's so interesting, and people don't, I didn't even,

I didn't understand that quite about the Ford, just leaving the Mediterranean, in an empty, so to speak, kind of an important part of the world. But, I mean, I guess one could be reassured that, as a word, their bark is worse than their bite over Texas Defense Department, and they're actually rotating the troops in and it's kind of business as usual, if you think, if one thinks it's like you and I do, that that's an important business to keep on doing. On the other hand, the confusion and the public statements to the other direction must alarm our allies and not be helpful to this project either, right?

I mean. Well, all at the same time, the good news is Secretary Hegseth is screwing in the plate that says Secretary of War outside the main entrance of the Pentagon. So those are the important things, I guess. But it's what you said. There is external communication. What is being said about what the U.S. is doing strategically versus internal confusion. And that's mostly the word I'm getting out of those I still know who are wearing the uniform. There is confusion inside the Pentagon. And, you know, even if the troops are there and are as capable as the troops that were there a year ago, let's just stipulate, you pay a price sometimes in the real world for the confusion, right, and for the misleading state of Dean Atchison famously with Korea, you know, not within our sphere of whatever it was, I can't remember how he said it, but, you know, implying that we wouldn't act if something happened there. And, you know, it might be that the troops didn't move. I'm not sure there are any actual, you know, so I do think people sometimes underestimate people, want to reassure themselves, say, well, in practice, it's not quite what it seems to be from their rhetoric, but rhetoric matters, I suppose. Well, and where do we get better information? We get them from Pentagon press briefings. And there hasn't been when, from Secretary HECS since mid-July, there hasn't been a Pentagon press briefing by their spokesperson since early August. And as you know, that most of the Pentagon press corps has been kicked out of the building, except for the ones like O-A-N and the Mike Liddell News Broadcast Network or whatever it's called.

So, you know, and we could talk about, you know, how military personnel react to being asked questions. It can sometimes be a pain in the ass, and I'll admit that. I have a whole chapter in my book about the media, so, you know, anybody that's interested in this perspective, both inside the military and outside when I joined a cable news network, But, you know, it can be a pain in the ass to talk to the press, but most senior ranking officials know that you've got to do that to inform the American people and to give them faith and competence and trust in their institution of the military. That's not happening right now. Yeah, it's one of those things that again is slightly sloughed off.

Well, sometimes those Pentagon Press briefings aren't that interesting. So why do we need to have them all the time? But, you know, it is, I say it's one thing for a combatant commander to choose how much she wants to be. visible or not so visible to the media as he's doing various things. But the Pentagon is kind of a, I mean, it's an important part of the U.S. government. And just like you'd think there'd be a certain necessity, your obligation to make certain to be available to answer questions and rebut false stories if they're out there and so forth. And also with military action, it's obviously very important to explain to people what you're

doing and not doing. But I'm amazed with the votes. I've got to say, I've been around for a while. and in government a bit, and then outside. I just can't remember anything of this magnitude. Sometimes annoy, your ones that didn't quite have clarity on what we were doing. And so the ISIS strikes in 2015, 16, and the media would grumble in the Obama administration. And then Trump would make some, obviously, there's something you can't make available

for national security reasons. But we would give you a little more light on what was happening. But there was never, I don't recall anything like this with just total black box, basically. I mean, obviously for really black, covert operations, that's one. But for a sustained campaign that the president of the United States and Secretary of Defense is announcing on Twitter every time there's a strike, and then to have no clarity at all about what's happening who's choosing targets, the justification, the endgame, how the tactics fit into a strategy. I don't really remember anything like this. I've got to say. I think that's the whole point.

If you are conducting covert operation, there's a reason that's called a covert operation. You don't talk about it. But like you just said, every time they strike a boat, it's on the 6 o'clock news or the cable news network immediately. And there's no rationale behind it. It's just another boat that the Secretary of Defense is saying, we struck another one and we kill three people. And they're at the bottom of the sea now and no more fentanyl coming into the country. It just for anyone that understands the logic of using the military for key tactical, operational, and strategic. reasons this does not fit in to any of those because there hasn't there hasn't a declared mission

hasn't been declared you know the the president is claiming one thing but it seems to be doing another and you know the fact the fact that they're still striking boats tells me they're not deterring anybody from you know floating around in the waters out there even though he keeps saying there's not even any fishing boats out there it's it's just crazy yeah that's not a Yeah. So it's interesting and again, worrisome. Finally, speaking of worrisome, on D.D. in general, there was that New York Times piece, I think it was the front page a week ago, 20 senior, very senior officers have been fired at this point, removed or induced to retire, and encouraged to retire and have chosen to retire, kind of unprecedented in the first, what, nine months,

10 months of administration, a lot of unhappiness, a lot of concern, a lot of worries. What do you, you talk to people in there more often? I mean, what, how serious the problem is that, or is it going to be, or is it just, you know, people griping because there's some turnover? No, this is more than just turnover. It really appears to me that there are some pejorative approaches to getting people who are connected to past individuals that Trump or Hegsef didn't like or it's on the basis of race or sex. There doesn't seem to be an evaluation of the capability of these people who are being retired or asked to resign or leave their position. it seems some of the best and the brightest are being cashiered.

I know quite a few of the individuals in that group of 20 you just talked about. And there are two or three that I know extremely well, personally, that I've served with in combat and in peacetime. And they're damn good at what they do. And they've had 35, 38 years of experience doing it. And they, they, you know, there's a seven army values that we possess that are driven into us from day one, Bill, and, and I could cite them, but I won't. I'll just cite one of them. One of them is personal courage. And it's not just the courage on the battlefield. It's speaking truth to power. And it's telling people what right looks like. And that's what military people do to politicians. They give them their best military advice. If the politician, you know, doesn't want to accept it, that's good. And that's fine. Disagreement is not disrespect. But that's what we're used to doing. And when the military, when they give that advice are ignored, or if they're cashiered because they're connected to someone whose personality didn't match with

the presidents, like many of them have been fired or have been told to resign because of when they were in line for other positions. It just, it's, it's waste of talent. And, you know, it's that, that's what's discouraging to me. Beyond the fact that these individuals understand that there is a civil military requirement to obey the lawful orders of the president. And if the president or the secretary of defense says, we don't want your services anymore, they don't have to provide a reason. They understand it's time to go. Okay, got it. It may be unfair, but that's what we sign up for. So that's the conundrum. I think a lot of Americans don't understand and why the generals and the admirals are mostly silent or are basically stoic, the active duty ones,

and hopefully guys like me can explain the rationale behind it. We don't do clues. No matter how much we dislike the individual in charge, they're the elected individual, and as long as they're given us legal and not illegal orders will continue to obey them. And that's the great space we're in right now between the legal and illegal orders. And Admiral Holsey's resignation really suggests that a very senior person in the actual combatant command that is an issue right now in terms of our using force or the main one. I would come back to him choosing to leave. That's just so unusual and not someone who had any reputation it wasn't like he's a troublemaker or he was some kind of dissident over the years or whatever right he was he worked his way up it was extremely

well thought of i think is very well thought of so that's that's concerning it is very concerned we will we will have to resume this conversation i'm so thrilled that you're part of the bulwark family because you'll be available to explain things maybe during the next week as as as as as events develop, certainly during the next week, but certainly beyond that as well. So thank you very much for this very enlightening conversation, Mark. Bill, thanks for having you on. Happy Sunday to you.

Happy Sunday to you, happy Sunday to you all. Thanks for joining us on Bullwark on Sunday. Thank you.