The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Last Line of Difference Between Military Battlefields and Civilian Space

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

With Israel declaring pagers and wallow-talkies as weapons of war, has a new line been crossed leaving civilians vulnerable?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, that means Janus Stein. Here's the question. Have we reached the last line of difference between a military background and civilian space? That's coming right up. And hello there, welcome to another week, welcome to The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge, it's Monday and that does mean Janice Stein. She'll be here in a moment, but first we've got some, what do we call it, housework to deal with. It was another very good week last week, and we thank you all for listening.

Whether you were listening on SiriusXM, channel 167, or whether you were listening on the podcast or watching on the YouTube channel where we replay Friday's Good Talk. And we're really happy with that YouTube angle as well. So good for all of you, no matter which platform you watch or listen to us on, we appreciate you joining us. This, you know how these weeks turn out. Thursdays is your turn. And we either do a

what's on your mind like last week or we pose a question. And when we pose a question, I give it out early in the week so you have time to think about it. Sometimes people bang. They're in with their offering before the program is even over on its first platform, which is SiriusXM. But anyway, whenever you write, I'm happy to take it. You write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

You must include your name and the location you're writing from, wherever it is, from Vancouver or Halifax or Prince George know, Prince George, you name it, please put it in the note. And then your note itself, your answer to the question of the week, keep it to, you know, a few thoughts. We're not looking for essays. We're looking for, you know, a short paragraph. Here's this week's question.

I think it's a timely one. For so many communities in the country, especially smaller communities, but not exclusively smaller communities. Some big cities as well are facing the same problem. And the problem, it's about your local newspaper. Here's the question. Because there's a challenge out there for newspaper owners and publishers. How do they keep their organization going and serving their community

when they're facing dropping circulation numbers and higher expenses? Here's the question. If you owned a newspaper, what would you do to improve circulation? Basically, what would you do to save your operation? Okay, the question again, if you owned a newspaper, what would you do to improve circulation? All right, I want you to think about that

because that is the dilemma. I mean, we can all sit here and whine and moan about the fact that newspapers are shutting down or cutting back drastically. And the reason? Nobody's picking them up. Nobody's reading them. So what would you do if you were there? If you were in control, what would you do to bump circulation? Be imaginative, be innovative. Let's hear what you have to say. All right. So that's for this week's Your Turn. Deadline, 6 p.m. Eastern time, Wednesday. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Don't forget your name and location. Keep it short.

All right. Time for Janice. Janice has got a lot to say this week. Because it was a big week on the two main stories that we've been covering with Janice for more than a year now. And that, of course, is the Middle East and the Ukraine-Russia. So without further ado, let's get right to it. Here she is, Dr. Janice Stein. Well, let's start on the Middle East. And, you know, there's a lot to talk about. And it mostly centers around Israel-Lebanon, that Israeli northern border, the issue with Hezbollah. Now, there's two ways of going about this. We can either talk about the new tech involved in the

last week or so with walkie-talkies and pagers, or we can talk about what I think is the more immediate threat right now, and that's the possibility because these two sides have been firing at each other constantly over the last 24, 48 hours in significant numbers with drones and missiles. The threat of a land invasion by Israel. How real is that at this point? I think that is the bigger story um is the razzle dazzle hack uh in fact a prelude to a serious escalation and a ground invasion normally you would think so peter when you get this kind of disruption of communication you look back at the history of warfare, it is almost always the prelude to an escalation.

In the air, on the ground, you set that up so that you confuse your adversary and you have a freer hand when you go in. Now, what's really surprising here to me is that neither side has yet crossed that red line, even though this is Monday and the fireworks took place in a sense on Tuesday and Wednesday. So why is that? We might ask ourselves. First of all, the Israelis are getting really good tactical intelligence all the time now because they've disrupted the usual communication plans and people have to talk to each other. Commanders have to talk to people. You can't fire missiles unless you're communicating and sending an order. And I would suspect they have to go back to cell phones because that's what they have, and those messages are being intercepted. So the Israelis were able to get at the commander of the elite force, the Radwan force, somebody that they had been trying to reach for months and didn't have good enough tactical intelligence. Well, they were able to kill 10 commanders of that force, which is really is the key force.

It's Hezbollah's key asset. I suspect they got the intelligence that way as well. So they're getting many of the benefits without going ahead with the costs right now of a ground invasion. For how long that will be the case, it is hard to stand up an effective communication network

in a very short period of time. There's no doubt about it. There's no doubt either that Israel was trying to get that main commander of that force for the last number of months, certainly since October 7th, because it's clear he was running part of, you know, the intelligence going into that fight between Hamas and Israel. But the Americans have been trying to get that same guy for 40 years. That's right.

You know, that was Ibrahim Akhil, and he was responsible. It is literally 40 years because those bombing attacks in Beirut took place in 1983, and they could not get him. These commanders, and this is in a sense, you know, the part that I don't think people are paying enough attention to. It's not the attacks. It's what happens inside Hezbollah the day after the attacks. These people are forced to come out in the open. And, of course, it goes without saying that you get Ibrahim al-Khiyam, somebody that the United States has wanted for 40 years because he killed American forces.

A lot of them. A lot of them, 200, 200 plus. You're not going to hear a howl of outrage from Washington, which you otherwise might about what Israeli forces are doing. It was very muted over the weekend, and I think part of the reason for that was that they got him. Operationally more significant is that they took out Ahmed Wabi, who's the commander of the Red One force. I mean, that is the force, Peter, through all these torturous negotiations that have gone on.

We've had a U.S. envoy, Amos Holstein, who's been back and forth. I've lost count of the number of times. And what was the key demand? It was that they pull back this elite fighting force, the Red One force, 10 kilometers back, 15 kilometers back. That would have been enough probably five months ago to get a ceasefire. And Hezbollah refused. Now, Hezbollah is not Hamas. No. And Lebanon is not Gaza. No.

And Israel does not have a great history of having to do land invasions in Lebanon. No. This wouldn't be the first one, but none of the others have gone, you know, swimmingly. They were failures, Peter. They were failures. I mean, Israel lost both those wars. And let's broaden the picture. The ground invasion of Gaza, yes, I think they have now, by now, succeeded in really badly damaging Hamas fighters. But I don't think anyone could conclude they won the war as soon as they withdraw from those urban areas. Hamas people are back. And that's part of why we're not seeing the ground invasion.

There's another dynamic going on here too, and you can literally see it. Each side, I think, is trying now to provoke the other to go first. So the Israelis now have this tactical advantage because of the intelligence they can connect. And they went into Beirut from the air to take out these two very senior commanders. And then they waited. And there's almost the expectation that Hezbollah will use some of its longer range missiles, and they came very close. The last attack was on the outskirts of Haifa, which is one of Israel's three major cities, the largest city in the north. And they're waiting because this is as much a political war as it is a military war, like all wars are.

Whoever crosses the red line first, the other at least has the advantage because they don't have to contend with the course of criticism that will come. Where's Iran on this at the moment? This is a nightmare for Iran, frankly. This is, you know, there's so much controversy on what Iran's role is in so many of these, you know, ranging from Hamas to Hezbollah to, frankly, demonstrations across North America that took place last year. That people are trying to get the evidence that will, you know, remove beyond the shadow of a doubt. In this case, I would suspect it's absolute nightmare for Iran. Iran has funded Hezbollah to build this missile force,

which they want Hezbollah to use only under one circumstance, and that is if they get intelligence that Israel, acting alone or with the United States, is about to strike directly at Iran, particularly its nuclear force. It is their forward deterrent, Peter. For Iran to face the prospect of that massive investment that they've made in Hezbollah, that they could lose it in a cross-border war between Israel and Hezbollah does not serve their strategic purpose. Let's deal with the, what did you call it, the razzle-dazzle of a couple of days ago.

I guess when you discuss discuss and we've discussed many times and so have many other strategists the you know the weapons of war one of the boxes that was never ticked was this idea of well let's just blow up their pagers and their walkie-talkies we can access those how does this change the game it does a game The game of war. Yes, it does. It does, Peter. So, you know, you could just say this was razzle-dazzle, and it was incredible razzle-dazzle. On the scale of razzle-dazzle,

it doesn't get any more technically complicated than this. You have to plan a very long time in advance. You have to do what the Mossad did which is hard which is set up a company that gets into the supply chain you have to sit and wait until you get the order and when you look back in Israel's comments well we're monitoring your phones.

We're getting good signals intelligence. Leads us well to make a famous speech. Get off your cell phones. This is a weapon in the hands of the enemy. You know, they're in the hands of your wives and children. Get off your cell phones. And to put an order through for 5,000 of these. And to be ready at the point as they come to you to take them apart, to have PTN, which is

the explosive, and it's hard to do in the sense that you can only put microscopic amounts in because the cases are not that big. And then to put code in there. It's two things they inserted into those units because you have to have code in order to trigger the explosion. You know, I just heard somebody from the CIA say there's probably no other agency in the world that could do this. Because they devote so much resources to it, and they're so singular,

whereas the other agencies of that kind spread themselves far, far thinner and are not as well-resourced as this. But this is a game-changer. This, to me, is a game changer. This to me is a game changer. You know, to just use a little bit of hype, it actually wipes out the last line between the civilian and the military battlefield. It does, right?

And all our institutions and all our laws of war are all based on the fact that we can distinguish between civilians and military. And even in Gaza, in which fighters hid in schools and melted into the population, we still at least could preserve some sense that we could distinguish between who a fighter is and who isn't, and where the battlefield is. When you do this, when personal, now, these were personal devices that were given by Hezbollah to Hezbollah's operatives. So to argue they're civilians is a stretch. On the other hand, those phones weren't homes.

Those phones weren't grocery stores. It was wherever the operatives were. And of course, civilians die in that kind of process. But I think it erases that line. Secondly, it has to shake every single military in the world. How do we communicate with each other? How do we communicate with each other? And there's a real irony here.

I mean, we may go back. You know, Sinmour may be the future, Peter. He's not using any electronics, anything. He writes the notes. He has three or four trusted couriers. And one of those couriers picks it up, and there's a network that they must trust because nobody's broken it yet, although it's only a matter of time. And we're back to pencil and paper, frankly, and to landlines. I hope you have a landline.

Yeah. Senoir, of course, just to remind listeners, is the Hamas leader. Underground in tunnels, and they have not been able to find him because he's not emitting any signal but you know you can only rely on on people carrying messages for you for so long as bin laden found out yeah um so there's always um there's always a threat there but i assume as you say intelligence agencies around the world will be not only looking at how do they defend themselves, but how do they get this weapon themselves? How do they get that technology? Now, that's hard, right? And what's hard about it, it's not sophisticated technology. As I was watching this unfold, Peter, I was at a meeting, one of those wonky academic meetings where we were talking about AI and advanced weaponry.

How is that going to change the battlefield? This is not sophisticated technology. PTN is a long-known explosive. Putting in a piece of code that is triggered by a message, there's nothing sophisticated about the technology. What's astounding is the patience, is the planning way, way up front to set up these companies so that you get inside the supply chain.

That was the key thing that enabled this. And then to be able to do this kind of, how many people were involved in this? 5,000 devices, right? And then to reinsert them into the supply chain, and nobody knew and nobody knew. Nobody knew. Now, interestingly enough, two operatives, as we know, suspected.

And they were sending those devices to Iran for inspection. So we're pre-looking for fingerprints here. That's one of the ways we find these fingerprints. And they must have seen, they must have talked about it, not on their secure devices, but on something else. And the Mossad picked up that conversation.

And that's what precipitated this on Tuesday and Wednesday. So even an operation like this, somebody cracked it. So the Hezbollah chain of command must be in total chaos now in terms of how do they communicate. Absolutely. If they thought it was just pagers, they found out the next day it was walkie-talkies as well. Who knows what else it is?

Yeah, that's the big issue. that's what has the psychological effect here. Oh, my God. We can't use cell phones. So, pagers, oh, no, it's walkie-talkies too. And how do they now, when we talk about escalation, the reason we're seeing almost this, I think, false quiet, they have to reorganize now. They have to be able to stand up some kind of command structure where they can communicate.

And until they do, Israel's reaping these intelligence benefits. That's why it hasn't gone over the edge yet. Okay. Before we move off this, I just want you to tell me why Israel would not take advantage of the situation now. I mean, we understand their history in southern Lebanon's not good, but they seem to have everything working for them right now in terms of the intelligence situation and the other side in chaos. Why would they not take advantage then? Well, I think for the reason you just mentioned, there is a bad history of ground invasions.

And so one could imagine they will go in, they will push the Red One Force back. That's not that hard, frankly. What next? Do they stay? It goes all over again, right? Do they stay? And if they don't stay, will they come back? is waiting to see if there's some sort of tacit pullback by the RAD1 force to see if there's a modus vivendi here without any formal negotiation.

You know, this is a negotiation. Let me put it to you that way. That's what's happening. But it's between the militaries with no intermediaries or nobody else involved here. Is there a tacit understanding that neither side has much to gain right now? And if the Red One forces pull back and the firing slows down, that's a gamble worth taking. How about Netanyahu? What has this done for his situation? Has the last week made things easier for him, harder for him?

No change. Easier for him. When you have this kind of dramatic tactical success, because that's what it is. It's a tactical success. And everybody all over the world is looking at this. And there's not an intelligence agency in the world, Peter, as you said, that isn't looking at this. And it's frankly not dazzled by it. That increases the support for the prime minister.

It doesn't any country when you have a success like this. But the real question you asked is, how do you turn that tactical success into a strategic success? And that's much, much, much harder. Much, much harder. Much, much harder. All right. Okay. This story, which is now approaching the one-year anniversary, right? Another couple of weeks. Ten days off. Yeah.

Okay. We're going to take a break, come back, and we have a couple of things to talk about. Two weeks off. Yeah. We'll take this break, and when we come back, we'll have something to talk about on the Ukraine side. So we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. Janice Stein is with us from the Munk School, the University of Toronto.

We've dealt with the Middle East situation up to date, and now we're going to look at the Ukraine-Russia story. You know, Zelensky's picking up more airline points this week as he's going back to Washington. And I don't know how ready Joe Biden is to talk to him after all the things that have been going on in the U.S. and his focus on the Middle East. What's at stake in this meeting, this latest trip for Zelensky to the U.S.?

Well, this is all about what kind of negotiation process do we get going now with Russia? You know, he's got this salient incurs that you and I have talked about. Russians are pushing back to some degree, but he still has it.

He's gotten some really needed financial assistance from both from the United States and from the European Union. It's possible to argue, Peter, it's really not going to get materially better for Ukraine unless, one, he gets permission to use those long-range missiles, which he didn't get, by the way, from the United States. And that's Joe Biden. I can tell you, that is Joe Biden.

Just on that, was it not permission to use them if he's going to fire at, you know, Russian cities or civilian targets, but it's okay if he's going to fire at military targets? Even the longest-range missiles that the United States has given, there's still restraints on using those longest range missiles against, you know, energy, power grids. And this is, I said, the biggest story for everyone, it's that line between civilian and military.

Is an energy grid, what is that? Is that a military asset or a civilian asset? That's not a new problem, by the way, if you think back to World War II and strategic bombing, right? Really, that's a civilian and a military asset. But that's where Biden personally is most nervous.

He's worried that there will be an attack on what could be construed as a civilian asset by Putin and that that would be sufficient to cause Putin to escalate. So he's really hedged on that. He still hasn't given the full green light

to use longer range American missiles against those kinds of targets. So I think Zelensky is going back to do two things. One, to push really hard because Biden is the last obstacle standing here, even inside Biden's team. It is Biden personally. And this is an interesting generational transition we're in, Peter. Biden has vivid memories of wars gone bad. Of wars were so easy to get in,

so easy to start them, and it's impossible to finish them. The next generation doesn't have those in the same way that a Joe Biden would be. Kamala Harris doesn't have that kind of, and he came to office absolutely determined to exercise restraint. And he has. I think that disappears when he leaves the Oval Office. It won't be there in the next team of national security advisors in the same way. And I won't be there with either of either a president Harris or president

Trump. I think Zelensky knows this. And it's coming to push as hard as he can now to get that permission. I mean, if it's quietly, but more important to have that discussion. What are the negotiating opportunities? Are there any now before Biden leaves office? He doesn't want the kind of peace plan, so-called peace plan that President Trump has put on the table, right? Well, you know, any American who goes into the Oval Office

just has to pick up the history books off the shelf and look at America's most recent ventures into foreign battles. You know, whether it was Afghanistan, which was, you know, it turned into a disaster. You can't say Iraq was a success. A disaster. You go back to Vietnam. I mean, this is not a good track record and quite frankly not good for us either i mean we were in afghanistan we face the same end result um so if he's if zelensky is trying to convince i mean because i you know when you watch what's

happening on the battlefield in Ukraine-Russia, they're pounding each other now with the latest technology. Not quite the latest in terms of what we see in Israel, but in terms of drones and missiles and tanks and regular army forces, they're pounding each other. So it would appear that Ukraine has the money once again, and the armaments, they're okay on that front. Yeah, for the moment, right?

For the next six months. The bigger question, Peter, again, is this sustainable, right? On either side. On either side. I mean, there is a heated conversation going on right now in Moscow about mobilization, which is something that Vladimir Putin does not want to do under any circumstances. untrained forces to push the Ukrainians back in Kursk. He's short of manpower. The Ukrainians are short of manpower. It doesn't matter who your allies are.

There are numbers coming out which I can't authenticate, frankly, and I find them stunning. And I think they co-mingle dead and wounded. But, you know, I saw a number just a few days ago, one million dead and wounded on both sides in this war. That's not sustainable for either country, frankly. So maybe this is what finally pushes them towards some kind of a negotiated settlement. Yeah.

I think that we are in the early stages of that now and that the primary driver for both of them is the political cost of mobilizing yet again, given the enormous rate of casualties that they're experiencing. We all talk all the time about how Ukraine is consuming shells and armaments at a rate that we haven't seen, frankly, since World War II. You know, it's ten times what the American Army does when it was deployed. I think it's manpower.

That is the biggest constraint these two are facing. And you're hearing, the language is changing. They don't agree on any of the terms, but they're both talking about negotiation, about a ceasefire, about what could make this work. Do you think that is in any way part of what could be discussed on this visit? Yeah, I do. I do, because Zelensky would be so averse to what Trump would do.

If there's any kind of window, if there's any back channel conversations, and the United States is, you know, contrary to public perception, there are regular conversations between senior U.S. military and senior Russian military as part of what we would what we call deconfliction, right? We just want to make sure that everybody understands who's on the road at what time. That's really what deconfliction is. But they do have channels. If there's any opportunity to get that, any kind of result before January, before the next president is inaugurated, that would clearly be Zelensky's event.

He wouldn't come back just to press him. I don't believe he wouldn't come back just to press him at the long-range missiles. No, it seems to me that if he's got the money and he's got the weapons, the issue about manpower is nothing the Americans can help him on. No. Which is the same problem that the other side's got.

They're not going to get help from China or Iran or whomever, North Korea, on manpower. So if it's approaching a stalemate, you know, this is what we've always assumed, that at a certain point there'd be a stalemate they'd have to negotiate, we may be heading in that direction. I think so. You know, I think we've known

that a stalemate was coming for a year. We knew after the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed. And then when the Russians had that opportunity in that weapons pause for six months, and you and I talked about the fact that they were advancing, frankly, by my standards, by inches. They couldn't take the advantage of the opportunity, Peter, and really break through. We're in a stalemate. And I think it's clear now to both of them that they're in a stalemate. And they're paying a huge price for it. Yeah, it really does in some ways appear to be the first time in a couple of years that one side hasn't had the advantage over the other. Now, it really does in some ways appear to be the first time in a couple of years that one side hasn't had the advantage over the other. Now, that may be temporary. That may change in a week.

Yeah. But right now, it does look that way, and it's going to need to be that way to get them to a table at some point. You know, that is what diplomats look for. They have all kinds of jargon. It doesn't matter what that jargon is. They always look for what they call a hurting stalemate. And you just described it. There's a hurting stalemate right now. The costs are huge. They can't really mobilize more men without paying a huge political price.

And they can't imagine a breakthrough. There's no opportunity right now to break through. Okay. Well, there's lots to think about, as usual, after our latest conversation with Janice Stein. Thanks for this, as always. Look forward to next week. See you next week, Peter.

Well, there you go. Jan Stein. Well, there's lots in there. And there is every week. I get letters from some of you every week. From a lot of you every week. But there's always a number in there.

Half a dozen or more that say, thank you so much, Regina Stein. Thank you, thank you, thank you. She makes sense of some different difficult things. Don't have to agree with her all the time. She's an analyst. This is what she does for a living. She's not always right, as she's the first to say, but she understands the issues.

And it's such a treat for us to have the opportunity to have her with us each Monday to talk about, well, as you've seen, in particular, the Middle East and the Ukraine-Russia story. Okay, we actually have a few minutes time. It's been a while since we've done an end bit,

so we're going to do one now. I like this one. This is like change of topic, totally, okay? The question is, I'm just trying to find it here. Got to be able to do that somewhere, right? Okay, my laptop is frozen. Do you ever have that trouble? Do you have that trouble? I do.

It drives me crazy. Here we go. Cookies, this cookie, that cookie. Okay, this is from CBS News. The question is, what is the best position to sleep in? Is it on your back? Is it on your side? Or is it on your stomach? Now, I don't know about you, but I've asked myself this question throughout my life. And I have different theories all the time.

So this is good to actually hear from some kind of a sleep expert. Sleeping on your back. Certain sleep conditions, like sleep apnea, are very positional, which can make some positions like back sleeping worse than others. This is the expert talking here now, not me. When you're on your back, you have a lot of gravity working against you. Your tongue tends to fall back. Things tend to relax, and you get more obstruction of the airway.

So if you're prone to airway obstruction, that's sometimes what causes snoring, right? It might not be the best option. Okay, how about sleeping on your side? Here's the deal on that one. Side sleeping, on the other hand, is pretty good for breathing, says the expert. The left side, in particular, is considered excellent for cardiovascular circulation, the return of the blood flow.

That's why it's often recommended for pregnancy as well. Sleeping on your left side, obviously, your heart is closer to the bed, right? Sleeping on your right side can also make heartburn, gastroesophageal reflex disease, symptoms worse, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. I know I pronounced that wrong. Sorry. Side sleeping can also be okay for spine alignment,

particularly when using pillows to keep things as neutral as possible. When you're on your side, it's really about filling in that little gap your neck makes. The other piece is lining up the hips. Putting a pillow between the legs is often comfortable for supporting a shoulder or an arm to keep that neutral alignment with the spine. This is starting to sound like the golf swing, you know, when you get somebody saying, oh, I should, you know, bend your knees a little more, move your left foot forward just a touch more,

maybe move it out in front of your right foot. Think of having a beach ball between your knees. This is what it's starting to sound like. Although side sleeping clearly has the advantage here. Finally, stomach sleeping. Stomach sleeping is considered the most problematic because it's hard to get that neutral spine and neck position. Your face is sort of pressed into the mattress or the pillow, so you have to turn your neck to one side or the other. Superficially, you can also get more wrinkles from stomach sleeping

because of the pressure of your face into your bed. All right. I don't know. I'm sure you have many theories about how to do this. Anyway, you can find this at CBS News. If you're really interested in it, there's a lot more in the article. And the title of the article is, What Sleeping Position is Best? A Sleep Specialist Explains. So she's on the CBS Morning News, or what they call themselves now, the CBS Mornings.

They're traditionally the third place show. I know I have a history with CBS on this, but they're traditionally the third place show. And as a result, their name has changed about 124 times over the course of the history of television. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Remember, way back at the top of the program, question of the week,

if you owned a newspaper, what would you do to drive its circulation up? Write to me. That's the question of the week. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Your name, your location. Keep your answers short and tight. Look forward to reading it when it comes in.

All right, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in about 24 hours.