Bulwark Takes - Why So Many Military Leaders Are Leaving Early (w/ Mark Hertling)

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Bill Kristol and General Mark Hertling discuss the sudden early retirement of Admiral Alvin Holsey raising concerns about U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean. Also, the legality and ethics of the attacks, the lack of oversight, and what Hosley’s departure reveals about deepening civil-military tensions within the administration.

Hi, Bill Crystal here. Editor at large of the Billwork. Very pleased to be joined by General Mark Hurtling, a frequent contributor to the bulwark and also to our podcasts and really a wonderful voice of experience and good judgment on not just on military things, foreign policy and the life in general, but especially, of course, military things, given your experience. So thanks, Mark, for joining me this afternoon. It's a pleasure, Bill. Thanks. Interesting times we find ourselves in. Yeah, so I thought of you. I wanted to do this because I read just like yesterday about the early retirement apparently of Admiral Albert Hosey, the four-star flag officer in charge of Southern Command and very unusual. I think, well, you'll tell me, but we're leaving, announcing that his resignation less than a year into what's normally a three-year posting, I believe, and certainly a position that's the very height of the military ladder being a combatant commander. So say a little bit about, what the position is and how struck you are by that news. Yeah, well, he's, I don't know Admiral Halsey. I've heard many good things about him from people that do know him. And obviously he's been promoted to four stars or been assigned as a four star slot. But he's one of the serving combatant commanders. And those are commanders, four stars, who are responsible for certain parts of the globe. There's European Command, there's Indo-Pacific Command, there's Central Command, which has the Middle East.

And Admiral Holsey is responsible for Southern Command, which is all of Latin and South America. Pretty big area of operation. It's one of the smaller and some might say more neglected combatant commands because there's not a whole lot of forces down there until recently. And we've seen, you know, a lot of naval forces move into the area, indicators, by the administration that they're putting more emphasis on Latin America and the South, especially Venezuela and some of the areas where drugs are produced and transferred from. This particular command bill is more of what has been known in the past as a theater security cooperation command. And what I mean by that is they work hand and glove with ambassadors

to engage with other countries, to try and form stronger alliances and partnerships with the countries. So this is really an example of a terrific civil military command, both military forces that are there in the various country, relatively small amount, but a lot more dependence on the ambassadors and the embassy teams in those countries. And this is his first four-star position. And I think I should clarify something in terms of both three and four-star generals. Not a whole lot of Americans know this, but they are not just promoted. They are promoted for a specific position. So he was promoted to four stars that is the position for the Southcom combatant commander. And if that doesn't make any sense, I can understand it. But, you know, it's not as if he says,

hey, I want to leave this command and there's no other four star position for him. So he doesn't go anywhere else. He either leaves or stays on board. And just to be clear, I mean, this I think also people don't quite understand. If I'm not mistaken, the combatant commanders are in the chain of authority, the line of authority of command, right below the, from the president to the sect deaf to the combatant commanders, right? That's a Goldwater Nichols thing, I think. It's not the chief of staff of the army or whatever. He does other things with Title X, we don't have to get. But I mean, I just talked to people this morning. They don't understand how senior a position this is. Yeah, this is a big deal, and you're right, that this is not a guy who reports directly to the chief of naval operations,

or the chair, obviously not the chairman of joint staff because, uh, chairman Kane does not have any command authority on any of the combatant commanders. This is a direct relationship from the president through the secretary of defense to the combatant commanders. That's the chain of command. And presumably he would have authority and responsibility for everything that occurs in his area. And most notably recently, these attacks on the, on the alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the New York Times report at least, which I don't think has been really contradicted at this point was that he was uncomfortable with the lawfulness or the

proof or with the wisdom at least, maybe both of these attacks. Yeah, that has been publicized as well as the uncomfortableness of other four stars and three star generals with what is going on in the administration. You know, the chief of staff of the Air Force was allegedly asked to retire because he didn't seem to be in agreement with the Secretary of Defense. And his disagreement centered on the fact that he thought that there was a narrowness of national security concerns about other parts of the world other than the United States, Latin America. And he believed that there were threats coming from other areas. And he thought the Defense Department or the War Department, depending on what you call it, was a little bit too narrow in their approach to national defense strategy. So that's why he was asked to retire early.

So there's been over a dozen senior officers, and I mean three stars and four star generals and admirals. None of them have been relieved. Some of them have been asked to retire early. And there's a big difference there between being fired versus retiring versus resigning in terms of retirement benefits, even for these three and four stars. But there's been over a dozen of them in different key positions that have left since the beginning of the current administration. And I think that's much, much more than has been the norm, at least in our in recent times. Is that right? Yeah. You know, it's interesting because this is a subject either retiring early or resigning your commission. It's a subject that's taught in a lot of senior military schools. Because truthfully, Bill, I mean, this is something that I think the American public should understand as well.

First of all, the leaders in these positions, by rules in the Constitution, they understand that the civilians are in control of the military, that they follow orders of the political party and their representatives. They do that willingly, even if sometimes they don't agree with the orders, they're taught that it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree, you execute those orders. and only think about either retiring or resigning early if you find yourself unable to execute those orders or that they're illegal orders and you won't execute them because of the illegalities. We don't know if any of these reasons or the cases in Admiral Halsey situation. It has happened in the past where generals and admirals have been released from the service because, I mean, I'll give you a couple examples. There was an Admiral by the name of Denfield during the late 40s that was leading the revolt of the admirals because he disagreed with Truman's

defense policy that favored the Air Force over the Army. There's obviously General Douglas MacArthur in Korea in 1951 who ignored Truman's limited war strategy in Korea. There's a guy named John LaVelle, General John LaVelle, an Air Force guy in Vietnam in 1972, who conducted unauthorized bombing missions over North Korean, and he was asked to resign or retire. John Singlob in 1977 in Korea, publicly criticized President Carter's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea saying it endangered the U.S. national security. There was one interesting one that I think the military focuses a lot of attention on from an ethical requirements. And that was General Harold K. Johnson, who was the Army chief of staff during the Vietnam conflict. He deeply disagreed with President Johnson's handling of Vietnam. He contemplating resigning in protest over what he saw as dishonesty and mismanagement of the war by the Johnson administration. But some folks talked him into staying in the post. And he later said after he did retire that he wished he had resigned because it might have made a difference in the Vietnam War. And then the final one I'll mention is Admiral Crowe, during the

Reagan Bush years was chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he opposed Reagan's nuclear policies and later criticized them after retirement, but he continued to serve honorably and didn't leave the office or the position. The interesting thing about all of these people, Bill and none of them were fired. Some of them were asked to resign. None of them resigned on their own accord, and that's pretty interesting, given the retirement of Admiral Holcomb, because it seems like he's right in the middle of a conflict right now. I mean, the conflict of what's going on in terms of the interception of these ships, it's been a couple of weeks since Secretary Hegsef pulled the admirals and the generals together in that theater in Quantico and told them, hey, if they

didn't like the way the administration was going, get out. Basically, you know, you can walk out the door now. This is pretty interesting this happening right now. And as you said, he's posted his retirement date as December, December the 12th. Now, I don't know if that means he's going to stay on in the position until the 12th of December. Is he going to take leave? Until then, you know, a lot of senior officers have leave built up that they can burn before they retire. That might be the case here. Just don't know. There's too many things that I can't comment on because I don't know. But it is striking, and it's so interesting to hear you describe this history. And, you know, there are obviously always military, civilian disputes between sometimes the military and the civilian leadership,

sometimes among the military, obviously, and taking sides with different aspects of the civilian leadership. But, for example, I gather now the lot of the chiefs and other senior military leaders are not thrilled with the way it looks like the national defense strategies, is that what it's called, the way it's going. It's been debated in the Pentagon, and it's running late and all this. But that's one thing, I mean, as you say, to be a combatant, commander in a theater that has live military action, so to speak, and to choose to leave when you're, you know, hopefully he's fine physically and all that. And I mean, and he's a responsible person who's made it to this very high position. It really is striking. I guess we'll, we'll see what we learn. But as I say, no one's really challenged the Times reporting that he was at the very least

uncomfortable with this policy of going after these boats and the way we are. And I mean, he would have, and what he took over there, he would have been well aware, much more than I am, or even you, that of what the traditional policy was, which was, you know, to have the Coast Guard supported by the Navy, I think, for these ships and turn them around or arrest people or seize the contraband or whatever. But that seems to have been abandoned in this case, right? And I gather the Coast Guard was kind of cut out of this operation and it's being done by special ops and so forth. It's interesting on that case, too, we don't know who is conducting the operation. And I throw that out there as another factor involved here, because this comes two days after the president said,

that the CIA was doing covert operations inside of Venezuela. And if they're covert, number one, they shouldn't be talked about. And number two, if there were covert operations and the combatant commander in the region did not know about them or hadn't coordinated with them, that's part of, you know, these four-star level requirements is to bring a whole of government approach to these theaters of operation, in this case, South America. So if there wasn't a knowledge that the CIA was operating, or if the administration gives up information saying, hey, there are CIA covert operations going on, and we're going to

publicize that. I mean, even that itself could cause a commander to say, you know, I hate to put it in this stark terms of what am I? Chopped liver here? This is my theater. These are the folks that are operating in the area that I'm supposed to be responsible for. Or I suppose there could be a finding sign that lays the ground for certain operations that this combatant commander thinks are unwise or unethical or illegal. Or illegal. That's an important point. Or illegal. Yeah, important point. And that he doesn't want to be responsible for, even if it were CIA operation,

he is the theater commander, right? So he would have to, it's really, you know. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. If I can point out a very small thing, in looking at Admiral Holsey's bio, he's had some really terrific jobs through his life. He's, as all four stars do. But one of the things that I zeroed in on is he's a graduate of Morehouse College.

And the reason I bring that up, knowing a couple of graduates from that school, they put a whole lot of focus in the undergraduate days on character development and really standing up and having personal courage for standing up for what's right. And so, you know, I mean, so does West Point, so to the Naval Academy. But it's interesting that this guy is coming from a school that doesn't have a typical ROTC program, Naval ROTC program. He's coming from a school that really places a lot of attention on that specific area. That is interesting. Do you think we will know more about, A, maybe his case in particular, but more broadly,

what is going on in the Pentagon in terms of debates about this policy, that who's conducting it, who's authorizing it, who's not being. There have been reports I've heard secondhand of people who would have, one would have expected to be read in and actually involved in discussions and debates about the legality or the wisdom of the policy. not knowing about it until they, you know, heard about it as the things happened. I mean, A, what's your sense of the policy of that in general? And B, will we, will we know more, do you think? Well, I think we will at one time or another no more. And what I say on that is this is another

issue that we should be bringing in Congress and oversight. I mean, I know Senator Jack Reed has called for some of these individuals who have been told to retire early and have a hearing with them. And I think this one especially will draw the attention of the Senate Armed Services Committee to find out what exactly is going on in a theater of operation, what is causing individuals to resign, what is the coordination that's going on between the military forces and organizations like the CIA. I mean, from the very beginning, I've said that we don't know what is striking these now six boats that have been destroyed. Are these military operations or are these CIA drones?

This is the same kind of issues we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the CIA was able to do some things that the military did not do because of authorities and responsibilities and legalities. Could those have all been CIA strikes versus military strikes because a military commander stepped forward and said, I'm not going to do this. This violates the laws of land warfare, which it seems that many of them could be based on what the administration is saying their claim of legality for striking these undefended boats that are heading north that don't pose an imminent threat. What a two of which I think were dead or one was trying to turn around, I think. One was dead in the water. One was not moving.

The most recent one, number six was not moving. And along with that, I just read a little while ago that they, in fact, have captured a couple of survivors of that ship. So we now have prisoners of war, criminal prisoners. I mean, what are these folks that have survived in international waters on a boat that was destroyed by someone from the American forces? It is, yeah, no, that's right. I saw that little story, too, and I thought, yeah, what are these people? And it's a war that the president thinks he's declared, but Congress has not declared or authorized or even gone along with. I mean, there were some gray areas and some things, you know, where you could say previous administrations or executive

branches stretched an authorization to go a little further maybe than, you know, it covered ISIS, not just al-Qaeda or whatever. But I mean, this is a totally different theater operations and totally different threat, if you want to call it that, of one that was traditionally understood to be a criminal threat. And leaving even aside whether it would still be in accord with the laws of war. If I can give you a little vignette, back when I was a brand-new one-star, I went on a what's called a capstone trip to work with other services. And I spent, along with a couple other folks from the different services, we spent about a week with the Coast Guard in Key West Florida. And this was during the day of humanitarian smuggling out of Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, some of the other

countries. And what the Coast Guard had found out, and this was something that I think the president said the other day that these boats go so fast, we can't catch them. Well, let me give you the story of what the Coast Guard usually does in situations like that that they did with. drug smugglers and human smuggling in the late 1990s, what they would do is they'd launch a helicopter off one of the Coast Guard cutters with a sniper leaning out the door on a small helicopter, and they would shoot out the engine of these GoFast boats, these cigarette boats. And then once they shot them out, which I watched them do on two occasions, they would send a smaller cruiser to capture the drug runner.

So it's a whole lot easier to capture these criminals than it is to destroy a boat like we've been seeing being done. So interesting. Yeah. And leaving aside, again, the ethics and the laws of war questions about destroying, killing people, you're not sure who they are and they're not really enemy combatants. And anyway, it'll be interesting to learn more about that. I mean, just generally speaking, I mean, you talk to all your former colleagues and people who you were, you mentored and who were junior to you, who now are three and four stars. I mean, how much discomfort do you think there is with the administration generally,

I understand. I don't like the foreign policy and various aspects. But that's one thing. But how much do they really worry about the fundamental sort of ethical soundness of what's happening? You mentioned before about the national defense strategy, which it's a key driver in all of these combatant command headquarters because they take that national defense strategy and say, okay, in the case with Southcom, what is my strategy for Southcom that is nested in this national defense strategy? But here's what we've left off. Whereas the national defense strategy has not been written, the national defense strategy is driven by the national security strategy, which comes out of the NSC. And there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of folks in the NSC working on

the greater national security strategy. It seems to be emanating primarily from the daily wishes of the president, which can cause subordinate units, both combatant command and even those below them, to be a little bit anxious about what they're doing and how they're doing it, because they don't have direction. Yeah, it's sort of amazing. And the first two, three months of any administration, it can be a little chaotic and you don't know quite know what changes, I suppose, are coming. But what are we in now? Almost nine months, right? And secretary's been there. He placed or I guess accepted the resignation of the previous chairman of the joint chiefs and so forth. His people are in there now. He's got his undersecretary for policy, you know, been there for quite a while.

So, yeah, now I think the objections now can't simply be that it's chaotic. I'm sure it is somewhat, but that there must be about the actual policies. would think. Right. Yeah, exactly. So we will keep a close eye on this, right? I mean, I guess this is the beginning of the story. This is definitely the beginning. We're much closer to the beginning than we are even to the middle. Too many more facts to find out exactly what happened. Why did he tender his retirement? And by the way, if they give him that retirement, he will more than likely retire as a three-star admiral as opposed to a four-star because he hasn't served in the position long enough. So he's really giving up a lot, actually. I mean, leaving aside some benefits,

but I mean, he's giving up that stature, which is something he worked very hard for, right? Right, exactly. So interesting and important and not entirely encouraging, but, look, we really depend on you to keep us informed on this, as to many TV viewers and others. So thank you so much for taking this time today, Mark, and let's keep you posted, and we'll do this again when there's new news.