Bulwark Takes - We Need USAID and NATO! How Trump Admin Puts Us All At Risk

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Ben Parker is joined by retired United States Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling to discuss the impacts and success USAID has had around the world, and the repercussions of withdrawing that much needed aid. Also, as Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Putin and Pete Hegseth meets with NATO leaders, where will Ukraine stand as the war continues and America’s support is pulled back?  Read More in The Bulwark:  How USAID Helped Us Defeat the Iraqi Insurgency  Team Trump Promises ‘Shock and Awe.’ Do They Know What That Means?

Welcome back, everyone. Ben Parker from the Bulwark here again with one of our favorite guys to talk to, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General, how are you? Good, Ben. How are you today? Lots going on, huh? Oh, that's for sure. None of it good. So we're going to talk a little bit later about what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said when he visited Brussels. A lot to say about Ukraine, about NATO. We've got a lot of thoughts about that. But we're going to start by talking about USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, which was one of the first targets of Elon Musk and Doge.

And they basically tried to take this multi-billion dollar, 10,000 person agency that does humanitarian aid and economic development all over the world. And in a matter of a few days, they tried to, what it must say, they tried to feed it into the wood chipper. So we'll see. It's caught up in a lot of legal battles where they've shut off a lot of funding and a lot of contracts aren't going through. And you wrote a great piece for us about how USAID helped defeat the insurgency in Iraq. So if you would tell us a little bit about when you went to Iraq and how you worked with USAID and how they helped you defeat the terrorists by handing out medicine and food and digging wells and that kind of thing. Well, first, what I'd say, Ben, is I narrowed my

scope quite a bit because I had been working with USAID not only in Iraq during a combat situation, but also in Europe and in Africa. Because when I was a commander of U.S. Army Europe, we had responsibility and oversight of what was happening in Africa as well. There are USAID employees, the servants of that organization, in about five different regions. One of them was European, their European region. Another one was the African. Another one was Middle East. We have the Far East and North Asia. that was created in 1961 by President Kennedy to really bring all of foreign aid under one umbrella,

as opposed to having different organizations hand it out. It has, as we stated in the article, about a $40 billion budget, which is 1% of the federal budget. And it does a lot of great work. When people like Mr. Musk say, hey, we've got to feed it into the wood chipper and get rid of it, what they're talking about is aid and assistance and democracy building and disease prevention and infrastructure creation in all of the nations where USAID is located. And I've seen part of it, but to get to your question, to get to your immediate question, I decided to use some examples from the time that USAID was our State Department partner

in northern Iraq when I was commanding First Armored Division and Multinational Division North, which is basically the area from Baghdad North up to the Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian border. In that area, which had suffered a great deal under Saddam Hussein, the various State Department, what we called PRTs, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, were working to help the citizens of Iraq see a new life and a new future. They were doing it in a variety of ways. I named a couple of projects in the article that were the big ticket items that we were able to do that were directly reflected in the kind of mission that I was given by my boss at the time, General, first General Petraeus, and then General Austin, who was the recent SecDef, about how do you not only counter an insurgency and a terrorist threat,

but how do you get the people, the 19 million people that were in northern Iraq, to come over to your side? In the old days, that was called building or creating the hearts and minds or ensuring hearts and mind came to your side. I banned that phrase in my headquarters, and we used the term creating trust and confidence in what we were doing. If they want to be like us, if you want to stop the insurgencies from ruining a country, you really have to give the people, the citizens, something to live for. And USAID was able to do that with literally hundreds of projects that benefited the people of northern Iraq. Yeah, I think this is a good image to keep in mind. You talk in your article about the conventional military forces you have, an armored division, about the special operations forces that were attached, and the sort of missions they could carry out, which, you have, an armored division, about the special operations forces that were attached, and the sort

of missions they could carry out, which, you know, as you say, is, you know, the very, very capable military command for killing bad guys. But there's something that the USAID teams could do without weapons, just walking into an area and giving away stuff for free that actually made your job easier. I might even say, correct me if I'm wrong, but made your job possible. So what was it that was special about USAID that opened doors for the mission you were doing? First of all, I'll correct you a little bit saying they never were giving away stuff for free. It was part of a mission intent to say, how do we make the lives better of the Iraqi citizens in our area? And for those of you, for those of your listeners who are, who understand this kind of stuff during the entire Iraq war, there was the strategy of clear hold and build. It was a counterinsurgency strategy. And the military can

only do two of those things. It can clear and get rid of the bad guys. It can hold the areas or secure the areas that the bad guys have left. But then you have to start building a strong government, a strong municipality, infrastructure that supports the people. And some of the biggest complaints by the Iraqi citizens in our area is they didn't have electricity because the U.S. bombed a lot of the substations. They didn't have clean water. The fields were going fallow because of some of the actions of the terrorists. So USAID would come in and with our assistance, we would partner and say, what are the kind of things that can bring the most people to our side? I'll give you an example of one that I think is pretty interesting. As we started generating intelligence in northern Iraq, one of the things we found that the majority of people that were planting roadside bombs were not terrorists.

They were not insurgents. They were young men who didn't have a job. So al-Qaeda in Iraq would go after these young people in the local cities and say, hey, if we give you $100, and I'm obviously making up the figures, but if we give you 100 dinars, could you plant this bomb by the side of the road? Well, that young man has to feed his family and provide the support that his family needs. So does he try and continue to get a job somewhere? Or does he just take that $100 and go out and plant a roadside bomb and kill Americans or Iraqi soldiers. That's what we were finding in terms of the majority of people who were planting bombs. So the big intent for USAID was help us create jobs for these people. And we did it in a variety

of ways, from farming to working on some of the infrastructure projects, employing Iraqi citizens to build walls. You know, there were some things that were somewhat crazy and ludicrous, but it gave them a job. And there was also, hey, enlist in the Iraqi army or the Iraqi police force. Well, USAID also helped us build barracks and the kinds of things you need for an army and a police force and a police station. So I'm getting excited about this, but it's the kinds of things that we saw that contributed to the build strategy part of clear hold and build. Yeah. And that's what eventually led to the reduction in violence that allowed the United States to decide maybe prematurely in 2011, like, okay, we're going to pull out. And unfortunately, a lot of that, especially northern Iraq was then, you know, overrun by ISIS later. But you know, that's not to say the

projects didn't work in the short term. And you know, there's still an Iraqi state today that didn't exist before USAID did all that work. But you also mentioned in the piece, the way that going into these communities and meeting people, reaching out to people helped generate intelligence and build partnerships for your commands. Talk a little bit about that, if you would. I can talk a lot about that. I've got to restrain myself from doing that. What I should say, first of all, Ben, is we had a two-pronged approach toward our operations in northern Iraq. One prong was kinetic operations, killing the bad guys. And we would call those, we would name them

Operation Hammer or Operation Iron. We would have operational names for a mission set where soldiers or special operators would literally go out on targeted raids using intelligence. The other part of our operation was the non-kinetic. And we actually had a person in our staff who eventually, by the way, he was a colonel at the time. He became a four-star general. He just retired last week, a guy named Darrell Williams, who was commanding my old job in Europe, U.S. Army Europe. But Darrell was the staff officer as a colonel, the G5 officer who would basically run the civil affairs portion of our operations. They were connected uniquely to the State

Department, USAID, and the various provincial government agencies, the mayors, the governors of the eight different, excuse me, the seven different provinces that are in our area, the police forces. So they would see what are the needs of the people. And that's how we acted. You know, I'll name one. We had a conference. We would have several conferences under this united and strong non-kinetic option is what we called it. So we would have conferences for police, for law enforcement, for doctors, for lawyers that were getting restarted in northern Iraq. And at the end of our tour, we even had a conference, a women's conference, believe it or not. In that women's conference, we had one woman come forward and literally during

this conference tell us why we couldn't basically counter a female suicide vest sell that was going on in one of our provinces. She gave us intel. She said, develop an Iraqi female police force, which we did. We put about 200 women in Iraqi police uniforms, and they were able to connect more with the people of the area. And they broke a suicide best sell that was basically the result of spouses of dead al-Qaeda soldiers who would be basically told, hey, you only have one lot in life left, and that's to blow up Americans and blow up citizens of Iraq. So we broke down that cell based on some things that USAID was doing. That's an incredibly impressive, incredible story. So you began your piece by

saying that you are a big fan of USAID as a retired officer, and that you think most senior military officers are fans of USAID. So let's say Trump and Musk are successful, and USAID, if it doesn't go away completely, it's significantly pared down. Putting yourself back in your old job, you're a senior military commander, you are responsible for going and, you know, accomplishing these kinds of missions you're given. What does that say to you? That like you're now saying like, go do the same thing, try to accomplish something like that. But USAID is gone. How does that change your perspective?

Well, one of the things I'll share with you is after the article was published this morning, I got a text message from an old soldier who is now a civilian working in Belgrade. And he said he was given 36 hours notice. He's a USAID employee now, 36 hour notice to get out of his facility and return to the United States. I don't know what he was doing in Belgrade, but I'm sure it was important work working with that government. And he is now completely shut down. So whatever projects they had, and this, you could probably go across the continent of Europe and say, where are the USAID folks? What are they doing? And what are they now not doing? I think it would surprise you. But one of the

things, and this is more in Africa than it was in Europe, And that's the whole PEPFAR initiative, which is stopping AIDS in Africa. Yeah, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief. Yeah, that was started during the Bush 43 administration. And it has been monumental in saving literally hundreds of thousands of lives through a variety of means that these USAID analysts and workers have determined are the best ways to stop AIDS, which they have basically done on the continent of Africa. I mean, there are still flare-ups and there are still people suffering from the disease. But, you know, when you say we're going to stop PEPFOR and stop all the things that are associated with it, how long will it take for an AIDS epidemic to overflow an area of low education and low income? It won't be long. Yeah. And that's not the kind of thing that in the long

run is good for the United States. And it's, you know, the program started with HIV and AIDS. I think last, I think they took the website down. I'm not sure. But yeah, last I last I was on it, they said there was an estimated 26 million lives saved due to that program. And they expanded on it to include things like tuberculosis and malaria. And you know, fighting diseases, as we learned just a few years ago, overseas helps to prevent them from spreading back here. And we learned this with Ebola. And, you know, if we had been able to, if the Chinese had done a better job isolating COVID, the world could be very different today. And now we're withdrawing all this help, which ultimately redounds to the security of the

United States. Well, what I'd say to you, I think this is a point to inject this, and that is, you know, the military is the arm of power, the kinetic force, the strength of it. You know, USAID, the State Department, is another arm of national power called diplomacy. It's soft power. It's how do you get other people to see the shining light on a hill that we hope to exhibit and say, they're good people and I want to connect with them, as opposed to some of the competitors we have in perhaps the lower income parts of the world. And you're not only talking about prevention of disease, you're also talking about contributing to the help of building democracies, making partners, understanding what right looks like in terms of national power. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. So we've talked a little bit about Europe. I think it's time we turn our attention to Europe,

where our new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was this week. He was speaking in Brussels. So a few pieces of news to get to. First, he said that any notion of Ukraine ever joining NATO is off the table. So I'm just going to tee that one up for you. What do you think about that? Well, I think, first of all, it was a terrible thing to say in an open forum in your first NATO ministerial. It was also something he walked back today and said, well, I don't want to get out in front of the president. I don't want to put politics. Well, he just did. I mean, he did it in front of all the NATO ministers in Brussels,

Belgium, the headquarters of NATO. So it's really hard to walk back a statement that says we are not going to support Ukraine going into NATO. And it also takes away a potential bargaining chip for someone who is part of an administration that says they're the best dealmakers ever. The one thing that any dealmaker knows is you don't put all of your chips on the table and show the enemy your hand. In this case, new Secretary Hegseth basically already contributed to a significant misunderstanding of whatever the policy might be by showing the hand of the president. And he knows he did it. And, you know, they may have had a conversation beforehand. And Secretary Heitzeth may have said, hey, I'm going to be brash and announce this here where I am. But the thing I'd point out, Ben, before he went to Brussels,

he spent a day in Stuttgart, Germany with General Cavalli. Now, General Cavalli is the NATO commander, but he's also the European command commander. So he wears two hats. I saw Secretary Hegseth walking in to the Stuttgart headquarters with General Cavoli. And I thought, OK, this is going to be the first opportunity for the new secretary to get a feel for what European Union does and just how big it is and how it is connected with General Cavoli being the commander of NATO as well, the SAC Europe. Evidently, John Cavoli was not very successful in persuading him or influencing him to kind of keep it on the down low in his first meeting with the NATO ministers. And you especially have in the background President Trump talking about speaking with both Putin

and Zelensky yesterday. And no one knows what those things were about, except we do know that there has evidently been some plans being developed where they can come together and meet. And Mr. Zelensky, President Zelensky, feels like he's being left out of this equation. And that's reinforced by a couple of things that President Trump said yesterday in open news conferences. So again, I'm concerned. I am a big supporter of Ukraine, as are many other people, in fact, the majority of the American population. And what we're seeing is at an inflection point in the Ukrainian-Russian war, where Russia has been the invader, and Mr. Putin has been accused of thousands of war crimes, that we are on the wrong side of this. Yeah. Trump said in the Oval Office that he didn't

think that it was a very smart war to get into for Ukraine, forgetting that Ukraine was invaded and that the whole point of the war is that Putin wants Ukraine not to exist as an independent, autonomous country, but as somewhere or another under the heel of Russia. And so they don't really have a choice. It's fight or cease to exist as an independent. One of the other things I'd say too, Ben, at the very beginning of the war on February 22nd, I was at CNN headquarters. They asked me to come up in the room. I knew I was going to be talking about the military operations. So when you talk about the military, you have to first understand the political objectives, the strategic objectives. And I listed five in my hotel room the night of the attack. And from the perspective of

Putin, one is to basically destroy the government of Ukraine, to kill the Ukrainian army or destroy them, to take over territory. But there were two other objectives, I think, one of which I'll talk about now, and that is to further divide NATO and the United States, because Putin knew he was going to have to divide it. Well, I mean, I would venture to say that there's a lot more divisiveness today in NATO headquarters by the fact that some of the things that Mr. Hegseth said in a variety of open speeches today. Yes, let's talk about that. He basically said to the Europeans, we're out. We've been here ever since the end of World War II. We've been the major security partner in Europe, not only ensuring that the Soviets or anyone else doesn't try to overrun the continent, but also, and this is an underappreciated part of what NATO does, also making sure that the Europeans don't fight each other. You know, this was the first political head of NATO said that the point was to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

That's sort of the joke he made. But now, Secretary Hegseth has said, we're just not interested in being involved in European security. So that's 80 years of practice out the door. And by the way, he says this to the Europeans, he says, this is all your responsibility. At the same time, he says, and later walked back, that Ukraine will never be in NATO. So it just sounds like a big middle finger to our most important security, our most important allies and our most important security partners, not just in Europe, but anywhere in the world. And you, when you were still in uniform, commanded U.S. Army Europe. You were in charge of all of the U.S. Army forces stationed in Europe. So, I mean, you're better situated to speak than almost anyone about

the importance of those alliances. Well, I'd like to say I am because I've worked with all of them, and especially the Ukrainians and some of the other that used to be a part of either the Warsaw Pact or the Conference of Independence, the CIS from Russia. Yeah. And I think most people, when they think of Europe, they think of a very peaceful land and everything's good and most countries look like Germany. What I'd say right now is there are 49 different countries inside of Europe. There are about 73 different languages and something like 123 different fault lines. There is tension in Europe. Every morning, even 10 years ago when I was still in the army, I would give a black book of intelligence talking about where the fault lines were eroding.

Most Americans don't know that there are already five frozen conflicts generated by the Russians in Europe. There's Narganokarabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There are South Ossetia and Ossetia in Germany. There is... In Georgia. I'm Georgia. I'm sorry. In Georgia. There is, you know, Moldova has the transnistria and then there are the two that existed since 2014 in Ukraine Every one of those has been generated by Russian action they have gone into a country taken a bite and then stayed there because no one pushed them out and What we're seeing is a Russian that's in

increasingly broadening their attempt to violate all of the new world order that we've had since World War II, that NATO is there and U.S. forces are there along with our NATO allies and partners to defend against because we know what they will do. And truthfully, Ben, even when I was there, I would testify before members of Congress saying what I saw Russians doing in 2011. And I was told that I was nothing but an old Cold War general and I didn't understand the realities of today.

Well, we saw what the realities of today look like over the last 10 years, and it's an increasingly expansion of the Russian attempt to take over parts of Europe. Yeah, couldn't have said it better. So I saved my hardest question for the last one, which is, it looks like the Trump administration is signaling that American support for Ukraine is basically done. I imagine that's political, I mean, certainly political support from what we can say, from what we can see already. It sounds like it may also be intelligence support, which for obvious reasons goes less reported on, but has

been crucial. And it may also be material support, things like logistics and ammunition and all the USAID supplies to help them keep their country running, which we just talked a little bit about. So how do you see the future of the war between Ukraine and Russia if the United States is saying, that's it, we're done, we're done helping you, and maybe we're even a little bit putting our thumb on the scale for the Russian side? Well, I'm going to go back to another article that we did together, and that was the shock and awe campaign article that was a couple of weeks ago that I

wrote for you. And what I'm seeing now is there's a lot of bluster, a lot more bluster about getting out of NATO. And I think if that did occur, what we would see if we weren't providing any assistance that most of the European nations who get a lot of their defense capability from us, and what I mean by that is they buy our stuff, there's going to be an economic downturn. There is going to be less looking upon a U.S.-European continent connection than we've had in the last 75 years. It is the third largest economy in the world if you put all of the NATO or all of the European countries together. So it's our third largest trading partner. If we continue, pardon my language, to piss off the Europeans, they are going to go elsewhere. And there are already some nations leaning that way that are losing trust in the United States to do

what we say we're going to do. And truthfully, Mr. Hegseth's comments today seem to indicate that in some cases, they wouldn't even, that we would not even support an Article 5 declaration of a security alliance that we'd been on for almost eight decades. That's troubling to me. What's most troubling, truthfully, having spent an awful lot of time over the last 10 years of my military career with the Ukrainians, with the Romanians, with the Baltic states, with Poland, is how much danger are they going to be in? These are not just countries on a map to me, Ben. These are colleagues and partners who had our back after 9-11 and who fought shoulder to shoulder with us in Afghanistan, who are now being treated very

poorly by a new administration, in my view. Yeah. Well, the bad news is that the world's going to hell in a handbasket. The good news is that gives us a lot more opportunities to talk. So we'll have to have you back soon. In the meantime, thanks, everyone, for watching. General Hertling, thanks so much again for joining me. Pleasure, Ben. Thank you so much.