Bulwark Takes - Trump Said “Total Blockade”—That’s Not Happening | Command Post

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this Command Post edition of Bulwark Takes, Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) examine the growing gap between political messaging and military reality, focusing on how Trump’s public statements often differ from what the military actually executes. They also break down what a “blockade” of the Strait of Hormuz really involves and why it’s far more complex and risky than it sounds in political rhetoric. Finally, they turn to Ukraine’s evolving war effort, highlighting how drone warfare and battlefield innovation are reshaping modern combat.Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too!Read more from Mark's piece: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-a-blockade-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-really-meansBen's book recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Tokyo-World-Making-Modern/dp/1101947101/?tag=bulwark08-20

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the bulwark. And hi, I'm Lieutenant General Mark Hirtland, contributor to the bulwark. And we are here with another episode of Command Post talking about national security and the military in today's world. Yeah, you know, General, when we started doing this, our thought was that we were going to talk sort of broadly about the culture and structure of the military and all the ways it was changing under this administration. And instead, we just end up talking mostly about all the different countries our president has unilaterally decided to invade or attack. But today I'm a little excited because we're going to be able to get back into some of those larger themes and issues. We got a jam-packed episode. We're going to try to hit three big subjects.

One is the blockade of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz about which you have an article up at the bulwark. It's called What a Blockade in the Strait of Hormuz really means. Very interesting. Everyone will talk a lot about that. We're going to talk a little bit about Victor Orban and Hungary. And what that means from not only a political perspective, but an alliance perspective, what that means for someone who's worked with our Hungarian and Inno allies before. And then we got to talk about Ukraine.

We have been, and a lot of people have been just not paying nearly enough attention. And it is an astonishing story of what they've accomplished. So why don't we dive in and talk a little bit about what you heard from your Navy friends about the blockade and Hormuz. Yeah, this was an interesting approach we took this week, Ben. And thank you for letting me do this. But I told Ben when we were putting together an article that I had talked to a bunch of Navy friends both in the United States and in some foreign navies as well, Allied navies.

And I just wanted to find out the dirty details of what a blockade consist of. I sort of knew what it was, but boy, these guys really enlightened me. And boy, it was also a little bit, it was not only impressive, it was also a little bit scary. It is a tough mission. And one of the friends I talked to understood Army stuff because he had been with me in one of our units as we were in Iraq. And he kind of laid it out what a blockade is in Navy terms and how it related to what I understood in Army terms. First, I will tell you that I think most Americans think a blockade is a wall that goes down and ships can't enter or leave. But it's

much more challenging than that. There are the same kinds of things the Army does. You do scouting missions. You look for obstacles in the case of a blockade. it's mostly mines, but also small crafts that could harm an issue. You bring in air defenders to make sure the enemy can't attack you with either missiles or rockets or aircraft of some type. Or drones. Or drones. You bring in the kind of ships that can shoot those down and at the same time collect

intelligence. You have a major command center where you're looking at the various both friendly and enemy ships, if you will, I don't mean to call them. but the things that you want to intercept, but also the things you let pass through. You have different procedures of either boarding or not boarding a ship based on some kind of issues. So you can see, and you have to have aircraft cover overhead, you have to have intelligence collectors. So when you start talking about all the pieces that fit into a blockade, It's much like a division commander in the army taken 20,000 soldiers and attacking, defending, scouting, gathering intelligence, thwarting the enemy, putting up the session methods, capturing POWs, all those kind of things.

It's a tough mission. And that's when it's limited, which is what CENTCOM or what we call NAVSENT, the naval forces of Central Command, are doing right now in the Strait of Hormuz. if we expand that even larger, like the president first reportedly said of conduct a complete blockade, you're talking about putting literally dozens of ships in different phases of the water as the straight is approached, and then also escorting everything, finding out who is there, what they're doing, if they're friendly or enemy, and I use that word loosely again, and then determining what to do with them. There's a very big difference between a complete blockade, which the president keeps saying, and a partial blockade, which is what naval forces of CENTCOM is doing right now. Yeah, and you describe in this article, first of all, how complicated and demanding those missions are, especially if you're talking not just about the Iranian ports that are on the Strait of Hormuz, which is what the mission seems to be focused on now, but blocking off the entire Strait of Hormuz itself, which doesn't seem to be the mission.

now, but who knows it might become in the future. There's a strain on the sailors, there's a strain on their families, there's wear and tear on the equipment, there's more depletion of munitions that we might need in other contingencies. It costs a lot. And there's obviously the opportunity cost of what else those ships, those sailors, those assets could be doing. You know, Ben, one of the things I'd say on that, because I left out a very important part, Whenever you're focusing a large military force in one particular area, and this is something I learned when I was a one star on the joint staff, you have to readjust all of your other worldly and global requirements. So you're bringing overhead platforms, intelligence platforms, satellites, drones, different types of aircraft. So you're not only depleting ammunition, but you're really refocusing a lot of equipment and people from other parts of the world in.

into your area of current operations, which is what's happening in Iran right now. Yeah. So I want to ask you the other point that you made there, which is there is this difference, this apparent, I don't even, if you'd call it a friction, there's a divergence between what the president says publicly and then what he apparently orders in private. So first he makes it sound like, we're going to cut off the straight of Hormuz. And we're going to do this to try to hurt the Iranians, leaving aside the question of whether all the sort of economic targets that the administration and the military focus on is actually what hurts the Iranians, which I'm skeptical of. In private, that seems to be not, he seems like actually

he ordered a much smaller mission, or at least I'm assuming that's what he ordered, because that seems to be what's happening. What is the effect on the military of that sort of gap there between what the president says to the American people and then what he actually orders to be done? Well, it generates a lack of trust, first of all. But secondly, I mean, we've, I was smiling when you said that, because I remember one time a sergeant major in a very polite way corrected me by saying, what the general meant to say was this. Well, we're getting that constantly from this administration. You know, the president will order something and it'll go out over his social media platforms or publicly in interviews with Barteramo or whoever he's talking to at any given time on Fox News.

And you say, oh, okay, that's what we're doing. And that scares the bejesus out of a lot of people. And it turns out that the Navy and Central Command is saying what the president meant to say was we're only doing a limited blockade. So it really creates, first of all, a communication issue, a huge communication gap, which is not a good thing to have in any organization, much less a government organization when you're sending people to war. You know, there's a business journal article that I read a few days ago that said that a poor communication in any organization is the number one cause for dysfunction and failure. We're seeing that in spades in this administration through the various interlocutors. We know that through reporting of people in the room that Vice President Vance was continuously

calling the president during that one-day summit earlier this week, 12 times in one day from Pakistan. So you're saying, okay, if there is not a freedom of action of your vice president to commit to different things that might be present in an exchange between a foreign government when you're trying to run a peacefire, if you don't have that freedom of maneuvering, you have to ask questions all the time. That's another indicator of an authoritarian administration that isn't allowing the people to do what they need to do to kind of solve problems. That's dangerous compounded by a lack of good communication. Right. And it means that they haven't communicated beforehand about these are the kind of things we're willing to negotiate on. These are our goals.

These are our tactics. They're just making it up as they go along, which is not a recipe for good communication. I did want to get to one listener question we had from James. He has to bunch of questions about the blockade. Really good questions. One, is a blockade an act of war? Yes, absolutely it is. James brought up the de facto, let's call it, blockade that we imposed on Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. They specifically called it a quarantine, not a blockade, to avoid saying it was an act of war. But that's actually what it was. We prevented ships from docking in Cuba, Soviet ships. So yeah, that was absolutely an active war. So are all of the things we've been doing to Iran. So is bombing someone's cities and, you know, attacking their

military and their bridges and all the other things? Well, I was going to say it's a great question, but it's too late to ask it because the blockade came after bombing all the cities and doing the other things that we're doing in terms of killing their leaders and destroying their facilities. Right. And the other point I wanted to make, we get a lot of questions about the legality of Trump's actions with the military. And they're really good questions. And they're really important questions. That's why we have our friend Margaret Donovan on to make us so much smarter about those things so quickly. But the point I want to make here is that those are not the only questions. And we know this from domestic politics too, right? We spent so long asking,

is that legal? Can Trump do that? Is that allowed? And those are important questions. They really are. But there are also important questions like, why does he want to do this? Why is he, what is he trying to accomplish? Is it likely to succeed? What are the likely effects? And I think those are a lot of the questions that we try to ask here because neither of us is a lawyer. And, you know, in terms of this blockade, like, I guess the way they're doing it, it's legal, assuming the war is legal, but also it might just fail. I don't see how it's going to accomplish what the administration wants it to accomplish, which is forcing Iran to concede that it's going to give up its nuclear weapons program, which they still say they don't have. Well, the other thing in terms of the

legality piece of it, and again, we're at a loss because Margaret isn't with us today, and we need to ask these questions of hers. But once you start an action, it could be considered in and of itself an illegal war. There are some that said our invasion of Iraq was an illegal war. Some might say that's true, unless you see the legal documents that are saying, here's why we can do this and why we should do this. We have not seen any of that. But the interesting part of that, Ben, is what we've seen with this administration is, whether it's legal or not, they'll do it, then try and fight it in court, and in many cases, they're losing. But the action has already occurred. I mean, we're, what, six weeks in, almost six weeks into this conflict.

And if it's not legal, no one's challenged it yet in terms of the international laws of war, invading sovereign territory of another country, doing the kinds of things that are going on. Usually what happens is the losers of any conflicts are the ones held accountable for illegal actions. You know, will someone hold us accountable for what we're doing today? I'm not sure. Again, I am not a lawyer. An international law to me is particularly complicated and sort of fuzzy because there is no government and there are no real courts. I mean, there are sort of courts, But again, it's very complicated. There is one interesting precedent, which is everyone knows about the Nuremberg trials after World War II,

where the Allies got together and tried the Nazis for war crimes, for crimes related to the Holocaust and other things. There was another set of trials in Tokyo where a bunch of the Allies from the Pacific Theater got together and tried a bunch of the senior Japanese officers. There's a really good book. We'll put a link in the show notes. It's a long read. It's in many ways a difficult read because you read about all the war crimes. crimes the Japanese committed. But those trials were a shambles. The Allies couldn't agree. There was a lot of fighting. It turned out to be a sort of weird split decision ruling. And one of the questions they

dealt with was, if Japan's attacks on a bunch of other countries, including the United States, were illegal. If they were unjustified acts of aggression, then does that mean that every subsequent act of war they committed every time they killed a soldier, every time they sunk a ship, every time they bomb anything, was a separate legal act? And if I have called correctly, the answer was no. The answer was you can't say that because you started an illegal war, that that means every subsequent person you killed in that war, that's a murder. They didn't say that. So is the blockade legal? Well, it's an act of war and we're at war. Is the war legal? That may be a separate legal question. I don't know. Yeah. We need Margaret today to talk us through these things. But I'll tell you,

it's interesting. You said the Japanese part of this, and that is a very interesting dynamic. I remember reading about what Japan did in China was the rape of Nanjing and the Holocaust that was committed there with over 250,000 Chinese citizens killed and put in a mass burial ground. Not many people know about that. But more recently, we had the Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia conflict. Again, war crimes were committed. People were held accountable for doing the things that they did, attacking another country, basically. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see any Americans end up in a court like that anytime soon, which is why I think it's so important to ask these other questions about what are they trying to do, why is it going to work? And, you know, is there a political solution for how to get a better,

better leadership in terms of the people who are commanding the American Armed Forces? Well, I'll say one more thing on that. We have legal standing and then we also have moral standing. And that's what we're losing, I believe, in a big way with our allies. And we're seeing allies do things that are separating themselves, not just from alliances with the United States, but actually going around us to do things that are contrary to what we think we should be accomplishing. Like we've seen it in the UK, in Canada, and in some other countries already, where they're saying we're not going to follow suit on any of these issues. and in fact, we're going to do just the opposite.

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Dalibu Rojach. It's called New Hungary is a huge opportunity for Europe. And he has one line in there that I think is particularly interesting. By the way, I always say this. If you like what we're doing here, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for watching the Bullwork takes feed on YouTube. Go to the bulwark.com. Become a Bulwark Plus member that helps us do more of this. It helps us grow what we're doing. It helps make sure we can do this for our day jobs.

And we really appreciate it. And you also get nice little goodies like members-only podcasts and newsletters and live events where you can meet us in person. Okay, now that I've done the plug, there's one little line in Dalibor's piece on the bulwark where he says that under Orban, Budapest capital in NATO, because they were so close with the Russians. So what was your experience working with the Hungarians and some of the other sort of tricky allies in NATO? Well, what's interesting is it's a familiar thing in terms of the approach of Prime Minister Orban,

because not many people know this. They know he's been in power for a very long time, like I think 12 years in his most recent reign. 16 years. 16 years. But he was also in power and then was booted out of power from 98 to 2002 because he was so crooked and the people stood up against them and elected a new government. Well, since then, he has not only been reelected as the prime minister, but he has taken the role of prime minister,

but he has really had an effect on destroying institutions within Hungary and creating grift and corruption throughout the nation. What's interesting to me, Ben, is that when I was commander of U.S. Army Europe, Hungary was in an area alongside Bulgaria and Romania, Those two countries, Bulgarian, Romania, were some of the most forward-leaning countries in the 49 countries in Europe. Hungary drifted away from that. And it was fascinating because it is a great culture. I've been there a couple of time.

I've been to Budapest. I've dealt with their military. I've dealt with their people. But it was before Orban really started getting crazy in terms of the things he was doing. The fascinating part of commentary on your leakage issue is there have been reports that even after the new government was elected, there were massive burning and shredding of documents inside their governmental buildings. And they were locked doors, people couldn't get in. And the insinuation is that a lot of these documents were directed toward conversations or deals made with Vladimir Putin in. Russia. Now, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist and say all that is true, but it certainly

comports with some of the intelligence I used to read back before I retired in 2013 in terms of what was going on in the Hungarian government. Yeah, certainly it doesn't mean that they were proud of what they were doing and willing to show even their own, you know, countrymen. You know, this is what we've been up to for 16 years. So how did you deal with that? I mean, if you were in a room with all the other, you know, NATO leaders, the NATO, you know, ground force commanders and you have our really good allies like the French and the Brits and you have the Germans and you have the Czechs and then you have the guy from Hungary sitting over there taking notes. How do you deal with that? Well, we actually, every year we had several events. The biggest one came every October and it was

called the CEA, the Conference of European Armies. And I could show you a picture. We'll flash that next time because I've got one of all of the commanders of the 49 countries within Europe. And in fact, we had 50 countries in 2011 because the Russians joined us. By my invite, this was before they started getting sporty. And it was actually fascinating to see how when we set up the seating diagram of where different people were going to sit, there were three or four that came up, said, I'm not sitting next to that country. One was Ukraine versus Russia. The other one was Romania next to Hungary. They were of the same cultural dynamics, I guess I could say. Not much of a difference in that area of the world.

They had all been under the thumb of the Soviet Union at one point in time. But there were about five countries that refused to sit next to each other. I don't want to name all of them, but you can imagine which ones they were. Greece and Macedonia. Well, I'll name a couple of them. Greece and Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo. Those are the kind of things we're talking about. And certainly no one wanted to sit next to the Hungarian chief of the ground forces.

That is so interesting. So, you know, obviously it's early days here. We still have a lot to learn about the new Hungarian government. But a lot of this, what Dalai Boroach has written for us is about how this could be transformational for central Europe. You've written a lot for us about the dynamics within NATO, about how the new leaders, especially on defense issues are the Nordic Baltic-8. He's saying you could now see a new central European engine, especially polls. and Hungary, if they can bring along Czech Republic and Slovakia, you could see a new sort of Central European engine that is really forward leaning against Russia and Russian influence and Russian

aggression in Ukraine. Is that something you see as possible here? I do. And what I'll tell you, Ben, I mentioned twice already that there were 49 countries that we dealt with in Europe. And what we did to make it easy is we put them in blocks, the Nordes, the Baltics, the Caucasus, the French Germany influence, you know, those kind of countries. What I see potentially, you mentioned the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I'm not sure they will fall into that same category with the Romanians. But I do see the potential of a Romanian, Moldovan, Bulgarian, Hungary, Hungary block in the near future and perhaps even extending it a little bit more, even though they're not a NATO country into Georgia and maybe even Azerbaijan, Armenia.

So we'll see the kinds of caucuses, near caucuses, countries, I think, coming together in a like-minded way now that they've thrown off, you know, Prime Minister Orban. Yeah, I hope we see the kind of change in Georgia that we see in Hungary because they used to be a great NATO partner and lately, not so much, but it's a subject for a different podcast. Yeah, that's really interesting. Here's hoping for all the best things for the new Hungarian government because they have not been such a great ally lately. And I hope they will become one. If people want to hear more about this, on the same Bulwark-Takes channel, Bill Crystal had an interview with David Pressman, who is U.S. ambassador to Hungary, knows a ton about the country.

Very interesting interview. I think people should check it out. That brings us to our next topic, which is one of the first things that the new prime minister, incoming prime minister of Hungary, Petter Majjar announced, is. that he is going to remove Victor Orban's block on the EU aid for Ukraine. So that means a whole tranche of financial assistance can go through. This is hugely important because I'm speaking very, very broadly here. But it seems like at this point, financial assistance is kind of the only kind of assistance Ukraine really needs. They are doing phenomenally well.

It's been a huge story that has been underappreciated. They keep on defying everyone's expectations. I cannot tell you the number of times I have seen in the past like 18 months or more, someone say, it's only a matter of time. The Russians are going to take Pukrovsk. And, you know, that's it. Then it's over. It's really about to happen any minute now.

It's going to happen. I promise. Pekrovsk has basically. Pekrovsk has taken. It's a double development. It's still there. And even if the Russians take Pekrovsk, which they may do in another 12 months, who knows, that like they're not winning the war.

The Russians are not winning. The Ukrainians are maybe not exactly winning either, but they keep on outperforming expectations, and it is just amazing to see. Although I will counter what you just said. The Ukrainians, I think, are actually conducting some terrific operations. They are regaining territory in a big way in very unique ways. They had an assault, I think it was two days ago, where they used nothing but robotics, not just the drones, the unmanned aerial systems, but also robots on the battlefield, delivering weapons,

and basically causing a bunch of Russians to surrender and taking a piece of land. So they have proven themselves to be the right now, I would say they are the ultimate fighting force in Europe. and it's not just the combination of their new technologies and their evolutions of what's going on on in the battlefield. It's the continued grit and the leadership dynamics of the people who are fighting in the force. Now, they have certainly suffered casualties and they have been traumatized. But what we see is a very proud nation continuing to fight for their territorial integrity. And anyone, in my view, who suggests that they should give up territory to get a peace deal, is out of their mind. Let me reemphasize that. They are fighting for their territorial integrity and

their sovereignty. And good Lord, isn't that what the United States fought for about, oh, I don't know, 250 years ago under some very difficult situations when a lot of people were saying, just give it up, give it back to the king. That's what Ukraine is doing today. And I'm proud to have always stood with them and realized from the very beginning that they were not going to take this line down. And they've proven to be hugely connected in the Clausewitzian way. That's my tribute to Clausewitz in this episode, Ben, that they have a great army. They had the support of the people. And they have a government that's doing the things that they need to do.

Totally right. We know from the very beginning of the war they've been active in using and developing drones of various types. We heard about the Turkish drones, the Bayrak tars, in the very early stages of the full-scale invasion. Obviously, the drone warfare that's gone on in the war since then is just, it's like the invention of the airplane during World War I. It is developing every single day. They have these naval drones that a country that almost didn't have a Navy, Ukraine, is now defeated the Russian Black Sea Fleet using these naval drones. And now they're using drones on land. These remotely piloted land vehicles.

I don't know what to call them. They're robots. Yeah. The robots. As someone who started his career in tanks, I mean, that must be like so futuristic. right? It's just another evolution. There's always going to be a requirement to put armor around people or to find ways to be protected when you go into the fight. And that's what's happening right now. And it's a combination, I think, of vehicles with robotic technologies that will allow battlefield success.

And by the way, as long as we're talking about this, I might mention we are gaining some information. We, the United States, are gaining some information from Ukraine on all these. things, but not as much as we should because of the dictates of our current Department of Defense, of not being associated. We should be been right in the middle of this, and we were for a very long time. We still have people there learning stuff and applying it into our doctrine and into our acquisition of equipment, but not nearly enough as we should be. Yeah.

I mean, this is a huge watershed moment in warfare. It is the first time in the history of the world that A. A, a unit of soldiers has surrendered to a unit of robots, and B, the first time in the history of the world, that a unit of robots has taken and held a position. And this is, I mean, obviously the technological developments are huge by themselves. But also, if you consider Ukraine's strategic position, one of the issues they've always had is manpower. And people have made too much of this, right? There have been people saying, you know, doom and gloom for years, that, you know, Ukraine doesn't have enough manpower, including our vice president.

They could never win because they have so little manpower. Well, one, manpower isn't just about numbers. It's about quality. And the Russians of all the manpower in the world and look what they're doing with it. Two, the Ukrainians intentionally don't recruit everyone they could for demographic reasons. They actually try to leave people who are in their, specifically men, who are in their prime childbearing years, for lack of a better word, sort of between 18 and 35-ish, undrafted. And so they draft people who are older, who, as I'm sure you could tell us, are not necessarily the best frontline soldiers. But by using

these robots, they get around some of those disadvantages. So it's a major breakthrough for them. And right now, what appears to be happening is that the Russians were gearing up to start their big spring offensive, and the Ukrainians crushed it. The Ukrainians attacked first. They got, they stopped them. They kept them off balance. And the Russian spring offensive so far, has net lost them ground. We're not talking about huge amounts of ground. We're still talking about relatively limited amounts. But it sounds like the Russians are already committing their strategic reserves for the summer,

and it's April, and they're losing ground. I mean, this is bad for the Russians. And we haven't even talked about the Ukrainian long-range strike campaign, where Donald Trump lifts sanctions on Russian oil. The Ukrainians take out the massive oil export terminals by St. Petersburg with their long-range strikes. And they say, nope, don't care that it's 1,000 kilometers from our borders. You can't export oil or 40% of your oil export is offline. The thing that amazes me is not only their grit and determination that you talked about,

but it is the fact that it seems like the entire country of Ukraine just refuses to be demoralized. They're so creative. I mean, to live through what they've lived through and still be creative and inventive and figuring out ingenious ways to solve these problems, to solve the problem of Russia trying to kill you. I mean, it is the mental fortitude is just, frankly, I'm envious. Frankly, I'm envious of Ukrainians. Yeah, I am too.

They really do have a good military. Their government is still working through some issues with corruption, but that's to be understood because they've grown up under the Soviet Union. But again, you know, we have talked about this a couple of times been the history and the culture of Ukraine is not Russia. And Russia continues to call Ukraine little Russia. Putin said that in a speech, the translation of a speech the other day, proclaimed Ukraine as little Russia, which gives an indication of how they are disrespected by a country that's trying to take them over to only gain the advantage of their mineral wealth and their agriculture. It is not the same culture at all.

It's not even close. And anybody that says, oh, well, they speak Russian in Donbos, so we should just give, which I heard the other day from a high-ranking official, I wanted to go nuts on that individual saying speaking Russia because you're near a border. And by the way, the Russians had during the time of the Halamador during World War II, prior to World War II, through World War II, Ukrainians were not allowed to speak their own language. It was a law that they had to speak Russian. It tells you that you've got a whole generation that's recovering from that.

And you've got a new generation that's fighting for their liberty and freedom. I wonder what those people who say, like, oh, well, they speak Russian, so they must, you know, want to belong to the Russian Federation, would say about the German-speaking minorities in places like Hungary and the Czech Republic or about all the countries in the Caribbean that speak English. What would they say about the United States? Because English isn't a language that's native to this continent. Right. You know, you apply that logic out and it really just falls apart. It is so stupid. The last thing I wanted to say on this topic of Ukraine is that, well, two things, really.

One is people can read another piece on the bulwark.com where you can become a bulwark plus member and support us and join our community. It's by Stephen Pfeiffer, who is U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, previous administrations. Trump keeps trying to pressure Ukraine. Zelensky doesn't care. And it is about all the ways that Trump keeps trying to force Ukraine to, as you said, give up territory in exchange for quote unquote peace as if that would ever work. And Zelensky's response at this point is, no, we don't need to listen to you. We can fight this war, right? I'm sure the intelligence we are providing is very useful to them.

And I'm sure in some ways that is one of the last things that probably they and the Europeans can't quite replicate. But the Ukrainian response is like, I mean, for lack of a better term, F off, man. Like, this is our war. We're going to fight it. And we're doing really well. So, like, we're not going to give anything up. And the last piece I'd add is that, as you said, the Ukrainians are now the foremost military in Europe. They are in terms of understanding what the new technology of warfare is and means.

I would say, well, they've got to be the most experienced and most advanced military on the planet, right? Because a lot of the stuff that we're using against Iran still dates from the Reagan, the Carter Reagan defense buildup. of the 70s and 80s. And they've totally reinvented their military just for the drone age over the past few years. So you know who's benefiting from that right now is Europe? Because Europe, especially like the German defense industry and all this money they're pouring in to the defense industrial base, they are integrating really closely with Ukraine. And they're saying, let's build factories together. Let's develop technology together. Let's share information and designs. And, you know, President Trump says he wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget. But as you said earlier,

it doesn't sound like we're going to be benefiting from everything the Ukrainians have learned. Well, I'm smiling because I just, as you were talking about the drones in Ukraine and the defense budgets of Europe, and I would also add the polls along with the Germans are actually leading the way. The polls have been doing that since 2004. But it struck me the other day in terms of the age of warfare, when we continue to show, and I'm not denigrating the Air Force or the B-52s, but we were showing the B-52s going into Iran dropping bombs, the B-52s are older than I am, which goes to show you how old they are. They were around when I was born almost, and they've been around for a very long time. So it's a good aircraft. It does its mission well, but it's

certainly not a modern age kind of airplane. So yeah, I think there are other countries who are leaning forward and understanding the implications of asymmetric warfare, how the economy is important, as well as the military and information and diplomacy. And we could learn a lot in terms of our acquisition approaches and what we have to do as a military in the United States that will bring us to the future as well. By the way, if I can add one more thing, the value of the of NATO to us. It isn't just us giving things to NATO. I would suggest, and I would ask anybody

to try and prove me wrong, that we gain just as much, if not more, from the, they know alliances that they gain from us. It's a lot more than what you spend on GDP on defense. It is a whole lot more in terms of alliances, as we're seeing right now, when some of our NATO allies are not joining us and what President Trump's wants them to join into. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And you've also written before

about how so much of what we are able to accomplish in the Middle East, including things like bombing Iran and blockading their ports, is because of the secure base essentially and the literal bases we have in Europe, where, you know, if there are Americans who are wounded, they're flown to hospitals in Germany. And if they're refueling aircraft, they're based in Italy, or, you know, if they're a quick reaction, the Navy has a big base in Spain, you know, all sorts of things. That wouldn't really be possible logistically if they were all, you know, starting out, sailing out of Norfolk, Virginia or whatever, you know, you need that presence in Europe. And the other thing is the United States is used to having a, I would say, the best defense industry in the world.

And, you know, we still make a lot of stuff that's really good. But look at what the Gulf states are doing in reaction to the Iraq. war. Those are people with a lot of money. They've got a lot of cash to spend. And they've just seen what our missile defense did against Iran. And where are they putting their money? Ukraine. They're going to Ukraine and they're saying, we need your missile defense. We need your drone defense. Because you know how to do it. Subtext, the Americans do not. The American patriot systems are great, but they're very expensive. And they don't necessarily work against huge numbers of very slow. moving drones. It's not what they were designed to do. American counter drone warfare seems to need a bit of an upgrade in the wake of the Iran war. And the Ukrainians know how to do it and are offering to help. And they're offering to help us. And the president said, we don't need your help. We know how to do it better than any other.

No, thanks. Yeah. It's hubris on steroids. I hope there are some people deep in the Pentagon who are very quietly taking these lessons and making the necessary adjustments. Because, um, It doesn't appear like our senior political leaders are interested in doing that. I will guarantee you that there are people in the Pentagon doing exactly that, but they are doing it all under the ways and in a subdued manner. I hope that's enough. General, thanks so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening to another command post. We'll be back next week.