The Bulwark Podcast - Mark Hertling: How Dangerous Were the Trump Docs?

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

If Trump wanted to impress a memoir writer with classified documents, wouldn't he also want to do the same with Putin and MBS? Plus, will the US supply cluster munitions to Ukraine? And the nesting doll of dysfunction in Russia. Lt. Gen Mark Hertling joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is June 30th, 2023. What a huge news week, busy week at the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the independent state legislature

theory, big MAGA theory, and of course, Thursday's monumental decision on affirmative action. And then on Friday, we had the U.S. Supreme Court, again, a couple of major decisions protecting web designers who will not create gay wedding websites. But the big one on Friday, Supreme Court threw out President Biden's nearly half trillion dollar plan to forgive student loan debt. This is described by The Washington Post as the latest blow from a Supreme Court that has been dismissive of this administration's bold claims of power. So there's a lot of fallout from that, which we are covering extensively in the Bulwark. If you read my Morning Shots newsletter, we have interesting back and forth on the affirmative action decision. And of course, we'll have commentary about the student loan decision as well. But a couple of program notes, I'm going to be off for the next couple of weeks.

My colleagues will be sitting in here on the podcast and on my daily newsletter. And we have something very special coming on Monday. You may have read Will Salatan's magisterial deep dive into Lindsey Graham in the bulwark, well, we have now created a special podcast version of this, which we will debut on Monday. And here's a trailer of what you can expect. I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office. That was Lindsey Graham in 2016, talking about Donald Trump. And here's Graham in 2017. You know what concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook, not fit to be president.

How did Graham completely transform himself from a clear-eyed opponent of Trump to one of his chief apologists? And how did so many other Republicans undergo the same bizarre transformation? What happened to our country? I'm Will Salatin. To answer those questions, I set out to tell Graham's story in a way you've never heard before. It's a story about how the United States began to sink into the madness of authoritarianism. Join me for a new podcast series, The Corruption of Lindsey Graham. New episodes drop every Monday this summer, starting July 3rd on the Bulwark podcast feed. That's what you're going to expect next Monday. But the other big story of The Independent, where their chief correspondent, Trent Krim, I'm just joking, is reporting that prosecutors are

prepared to hit Trump and his allies with new charges, as many as 30 or more new charges related to the documents, including possibly bringing indictments in New Jersey. But let's start with the Trump tapes and the war plans, because I think one of the most important questions is how much of a threat does Donald Trump pose to national security? What kinds of documents is he sharing? How sensitive are they? And of course, I know you've heard this many times, but let's listen again to the former president of the United States bragging about having these top secret confidential war documents. Well, with Milley, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came out. Look.

This was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at something. This was him. This wasn't done by me. This was him. All sorts of stuff pages long wait a minute let's see here isn't that amazing this totally wins my case you know except it is like highly confidential

secret look at this your attack this was done by the military, given to me. I think we can probably get it. We'll have to see.

Yeah, we'll have to try to figure out a... See, as president, I could have de-classified, but now I can't. But this is classified. Now we have a problem. Isn't that interesting? It's so cool. I'm sorry, they just never guess old. So to break all of this down and take a deeper dive into what Donald Trump might have been talking about, we are very, very fortunate today to be joined by General Mark Hertling, retired Lieutenant General, military analyst, former commanding general of U.S. Army, Europe, and the Seventh Army.

Welcome back to the podcast, General. Charlie, it's great to be with you to discuss these very important and frustrating comments by our former president. Well, let's talk about this because you probably have some insight into the kinds of documents and their significance that Donald Trump was raving around. So what do you think he had there and how dangerous was it? Well, first, I would suggest there's a very high probability he did not have any war plans. You mentioned that I was the commander of U.S. forces

in Europe, but long before that, I was a staff officer on the joint staff as the J-7, a one-star general. And my job was to maintain all of the contingency plans, which many people refer to as war plans, for the United States military and for the United States government. And they come in huge binders, now electronic folders, that are probably hundreds, if not thousands of pages in length with various annexes from different departments of the government. So having said that as a lead-in, what I suspect he was waving around was probably a correspondence between General Milley and himself. Now, General Milley, according to the Goldwater-Nichols Act, is the principal advisor to the president and to

the secretary of defense. In that role, what he does is advise on military options. So Charlie, the first thing I disavow is there are no generals that would go to the president and say directly, you need to go to war. That's just not in the way the U.S. military does business, especially the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What the chairman does is provide options to the president when he asked for them. So what I suspect the president was waving around was General Milley and the Joint Staff's response to a question they received from the president or an order that he was potentially going to give. And they wanted to show him the positives and negatives of the potential execution of that order. That happens

all the time in correspondence between the chairman, the secretary of defense, and the president. It was not a war plan, but it would have certainly addressed some positives and negatives just to get the president understanding what he was asking for. Now, I'll carry on a little bit more on that, Charlie, and say, I suspect, now, certainly I wasn't in the room, I didn't see the document, but I suspect what happened was the former president said something a little bit bizarre and Chairman Milley, as I have done in the past, said, okay, we've got to disavow him of the easiness of this course of action. So Milley and his staff probably wrote down an assessment of what it would take, in this case, if it was a

request to attack Iran or do something to Iran, thinking he could get away with it very easily. It would probably be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming back saying, here's what we would do in terms of force allocations on an attack in Iran. Here are the anticipated requirements for doing something like that in terms of deployments of Army, Navy, and Air Force assets. Here's the potential casualty figures that that might incur. And here are some political downsides for us in the rest of the world in using our military in Iran. That's the kind of course of action assessment a chairman would give the president. And there have been many people that said this

was a four-page long document. In my view, that's probably about the right size to get the point across to someone that has very little familiarity with military operations to say, hey, if you're looking to do this, be prepared for the repercussions because here's what they might be. And here's the force you're going to have to use. And the American people aren't going to be real happy with it. I think that's a very important distinction. I mean, a war plan would be much more detailed. This is more like a prep assessment, right?

You know, what you would need to risk your objectives, whether you can do this legally, how many people might be wounded or killed in all of this. And the context, I think, is very plausible that General Milley, you know, wanted to talk Trump down from all of this, that he felt the idea of attacking Iran was monumentally stupid and dangerous and wanted him to reconsider. And this was his attempt to do that. And this is what Donald Trump was waving around at Bedminster. Yeah, that's exactly the way I see it. And the military jokingly says, we always give three courses of action, the most dangerous, the most likely, and the easiest, you know, the baby bear, the mama bear and the papa bear. And it's up to the political decision-making in our society. The civilians control the military,

the military don't control the civilians. So what I suspect General Milley was doing was saying, hey, this would be a monumental operation. Do you realize what would happen if we attacked Ukraine and be ready for the repercussions? And, oh, by the way, I mean, there's probably somewhere in that document that says, yes, Mr. President, we could do this because that's what the military always says, but here are the implications of doing such. And by the way, Charlie, it's interesting because I was involved in a dynamic like this when I was the J7 on the joint staff in 2002, and we were talking about the various pros and cons of diverting resources from Afghanistan to a war in Iraq. And there were many of us then saying, this is really kind of a crazy idea to do this because it's going to require you

shifting of very important resources. And it also violates a military maxim of when you're in a war, try not to open a second front. So even though this is not technically a war plan, the way you describe it, it sounds like it would have very, very sensitive information that if it would fall into the wrong hands, could be very damaging to national security because it would describe, at least in general terms, the military's capability and the upsides and the downsides. That's exactly right. Now, what I would say is it's probably not the most dangerous type of sensitive information, you know, the highest of categories, but certainly it would allow any kind of foe or even some of our allies and partners to

understand, like you just said, what are our capabilities? What are the things the U.S. is considering doing? And in and of themselves, those are dangerous actions that you want to keep secret. That's why they call them classified information. So do you have any sense of how this plays in the military among the flag rank officers who have to make these kinds of, you know, decisions of what to share with the president, what not to share with the president? You know, what do the other generals who served in the administration think about this? And wouldn't this be a moment for them to speak out

and say, look, this is serious. I mean, I know that others have spoken out on occasion, but I asked on one of the shows the other day, if not now, then when? I won't speak for all the generals and admirals, but I would suggest that all of the flag ranks are extremely upset about divulging sensitive information of any type because we know the seriousness of it. But to address your question, which I heard you say the other day, why aren't more generals speaking out? It's because active duty flag officers don't do that. They don't insult their civilian masters. We are under their control. We think things,

we give private advice. We say, hey, this is really dumb. Unfortunately, we have some civilian leaders that don't listen. That seemed to have been the case with Mr. Trump. But you will never see an active duty. Well, I won't say never, but you will rarely see an active duty general officer condemning the actions of a civilian master, unless it's illegal or unethical. I was thinking more of the retired generals who had served in the administration. So going back to this question of the danger and the sensitivity of these documents, I mean,

clearly he's sharing them with people that had no business seeing them at all. And of course, we know about this particular incident because we have the tape of what happened at Bedminster in this particular meeting. What we don't know, right, is who else and what else he might have shared with folks. I mean, this is kind of a little bit of, you know, lifting up the tent to look inside. And here's Donald Trump sharing this kind of information with folks. It seems unlikely. Do you agree with me? It seems unlikely this was the only document and this was the only incident of sharing. It certainly seems unlikely to me, Charlie, but I don't have proof. Here's what I will say, though. The fact that he's waving

it around in front of a group of writers, book publishers, whoever was in that specific room and were beginning to get clarity on who they were. Truthfully, between you and I, that's concerning, but it's not as concerning of who else may have been targeting Mr. Trump in this kind of information. I mean, truthfully, as I listened to the tape of what was going on in the room, I thought to myself, and I don't mean to be insulting, but the people he's showing these to are all idiots. They don't know what these documents are, what they contain. He's calling them war plans. They don't know the difference. So they don't know the details of actually what he's showing.

And what he's doing it for is just to attempt to impress. And titillate. And titillate, yeah. But I'd remind, we also have information where he shared very sensitive information with people who do understand this stuff, like Lavrov and others in his office. We don't know how much he gave Mr. Putin. We don't know how much he gave Mohammed bin Salman. We don't know how much he gave Netanyahu. If there is this approach of trying to impress with a couple of book writers, imagine what someone might be trying to do to impress someone else who is powerful on the

world stage. And in addition to that, the fact that these things were stored the way they were provide the opportunity for human intelligence sources to somehow get into Mar-a-Lago, which is not difficult to do, and find themselves in the same room as those boxes on the stage or the ones in the bathroom or the ones in the storage room that was not secure. And that's why the military and the government has so many strict rules about the handling and storage of this kind of information. Well, especially since he's, you know, rather flagrantly flourishing these documents saying, look what I have, look what I have, probably on the patio at Mar-a-Lago as well and using it to

impress people. So clearly people whose business it was to look for this sorts of thing knew that he had it and knew that it was there. This raises all kinds of questions. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a

daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. We're going to get through this together. I promise. All right, let's shift gears a little bit to talk about what's going on in Ukraine, what we know and what we don't know. Last weekend's rather bizarre mutiny in Russia. Do you have a theory about what happened there and why it fizzled out so quickly? The Wagner Group appeared to be on the march, this massive uprising. They took over one of the key headquarters of the Russian military without much opposition and appeared to be marching on

Moscow until they decided, yeah, maybe we ought to stand down. So what happened there? Do you have a theory? I have several theories. Probably a few of them are very wrong. Some of them may be close to the truth, but when you're talking about anything that's going on in Russia, you never really know. When I was the commander of US Army Europe on a daily basis, I got what was called a black book, which is a series of intelligence reports from different agencies within the US government, not just the military. And on a daily basis, I would read about what was going on across the European footprint. And always at the forefront was what was happening inside of Russian personnel dynamics and military dynamics. And whereas I can't certainly address any of the things that I read back then, what I will tell you on a daily basis, I would shake my head and say,

what the hell is wrong with the Russian military and doing the things that they would do? I'm serious. On a daily basis, I would do that. There would always be a story that you say, this is something out of fiction. So having said that, as a lead in, what I'll tell you is there is a longtime feud going back more than a decade between Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, our equivalent of the chairman of the joint chiefs, and Shoigu, the minister of defense on one side, versus some of these private mercenary groups or private military companies, whatever you use as the acronym for PMC, that are led by Prigozhin. Prigozhin also has friends in the military, and those friends are mostly brought about because of the sharing of grift and corruption

and the passing of money. So when you look at a Russian general, any Russian general, you never really know, are they serving the motherland as they vow to do, or are they serving themselves to try and get richer? I think that was the case with General Sovorikin, who's an Air Force general who has been very close to Prigozhin ever since Syria and Chechnya before that. Sovorikin back in the 1990s was also one of the people that were involved in the coup attempt against Yeltsin and Gorbachev. My first visit to Russia was in 1994. I was in Moscow and happened to see the tank round that fired on the Russian White House. There was still a black mark on the side of the building. And when you see those kind of

things close up and realize how close they came to a coup, first in 91 and then later in 93, and know that Siverikin, who was a player in this particular action, was a much younger lieutenant colonel at the time, and he was involved in this, that tells you there's a long history of these kinds of things going on. It's just plagued with corruption. And as I said the other day on CNN, it's a nesting doll of dysfunction within the Russian Federation and military. So the U.S. spy agencies think that that general knew in advance and that other generals may have known. And the assumption seems to be that Pogosian wouldn't have started the mutiny unless he thought that others might

come to his aid, which they didn't. But as CNN reported last night, Servarikin may have been a secret member of Wagner. You talked about this. I mean, if he was a member of Wagner, that could be a big deal or no big deal. I mean, that's bizarre. Yeah, I actually tweeted about this last night and said it could be a big deal or no big deal because it mean, that's bizarre. Yeah. I actually tweeted about this last night and said, it could be a big deal or no big deal because it could have just been an honorific saying, Hey, he's a VIP member of Wagner, which means that Prigozhin gave him a medal and told him he was a great guy and it was good to fight with him and all this other stuff. Or he could actually be sort of a conspirator. And the truth is somewhere between that very wide spectrum.

You know, Charlie, if any of your listeners haven't watched the movie Valkyrie with Tom Cruise, I think it was done in 2008 about von Stauffenberg's plan against Hitler in World War II. There's a fascinating correlation to this because truthfully, again, in the intelligence I used to read 10 years ago as commander of Europe, there were some Russian generals who were indicating that they didn't like things that Putin was doing. And that's only been exacerbated by the use of Putin of the army in this war. There are probably, I would suggest, a whole lot of Russian generals who are a lot like some of the Hitler generals in war. There are probably, I would suggest a whole lot of Russian generals

who are a lot like some of the Hitler generals in world war II, who said, this guy is destroying our nation. Does that lead to a coup attempt or does that lead to Bergoysian thinking he's going to have support? I don't know. That's speculation. And again, there's so much speculation in terms of this that you really never know what the truth is. And I'm sure a lot of intelligence agencies don no attention to the rules of land warfare or international law. This was not some liberal reformer or peacenik marching on Moscow. It certainly would not have been necessarily an upgrade if, in fact, he would have succeeded in toppling Vladimir Putin, which apparently was never going to happen. Right. Exactly right. Here's something else that we don't fully know, I don't think, but I want to get your take on this. Is Vladimir Putin weakened or strengthened by this failed coup attempt? I see both versions

out there. Yeah, I see both versions too. I would suggest because of all the actions we've seen by him over the last two days, he feels he's weakened and he's got to reinforce his credentials and his appearances. You know, he's been appearing at places where he hasn't appeared recently to try and shore up public support. He's been making speeches that have ranged from the rants to the calmness that he portrays on many occasions. I believe, and this is my belief only, no intelligence assessment behind this, that he probably feels he is weakened. But when you're dealing with a kleptocrat authoritarian who also happens to be a narcissist, they will always blame others for their weaknesses. That's what he's doing. And unfortunately, he still has the security services

that will support him and a media that is at his beck and call that can publicize to a willfully unknowing public for the most part, although that's changing as well, what's going on. At the same time, though, you see the support for Prigozhin over the weekend. You saw the film of him going into Rostov and being greeted like a conquering hero. So that tells me there's some real cracks in the Russian public. And that's why I think Mr. Putin has been energized to go to a lot of places over the last few days to reinforce his credentials and his visions. Does that make him more dangerous if he has to prove that, in fact, he is not weak, that he, in fact, is strong? That's certainly speculation for assessment, too. Do I believe that is highly probable? Yes, I do. That I believe because he is weakened, he feels like he has to do more extreme things.

I don't know what those extreme things could be, but we probably have some guesses on what some of them might entail. And that's why it's so dangerous dealing with a guy. You know, it's interesting because I just compared his generals to the Nazi generals of World War II doing a coup against Hitler. The difference is Hitler didn't have some of the power in terms of capability that this guy has. And you know what I'm talking about. I mean, Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. That's a game changer.

When you have that kind of power as part of your arsenal, it's always, I think, prudent to be a little bit more careful and how you're going to see this society react to what might occur. So let's talk about the implications for Ukraine. There have been reports that, you know, clearly this provides an opening for the Ukrainians, may have provided them with intelligence. So what is your assessment? Has this changed the dynamic on the ground in the battlefield with Ukraine, the fact that Russians were fighting Russians over the weekend, as opposed to just Ukrainians? It's interesting, Charlie, because I just a few minutes ago read the piece, I think it's in the Washington Post, of an interview with General Zeluzny, the head of

the Ukrainian military. He says it hasn't changed his dynamic, that he's still continuing with his military operations. In fact, what I gleaned from that article, from that interview, was the only thing that really concerns him now is the potential for the Wagner Group opening a northern front if they get the power in Belarus. So he's a little bit concerned with that, but he also said, hey, Wagner had already left the battlefield, so it doesn't really affect the force I'm going up against. As a military guy, I would debate him on that. I think because Wagner has left the battlefield, it has also left some holes that the Russian military is attempting to fill along the defensive line, the so-called Suvorovkin

fourth line of defense. So there is some movement on the Russian side, and that's certainly going to affect the force ratios. But in terms of the morale of the battlefield, Zeluzny was talking about the physical capabilities of the Russian force and how they might have changed due to what happened. What I would suggest is it has radically affected the morale of the Russian force. There is anecdotal evidence that their morale is increasingly being lowered because they see the stuff going on. Even though they're in defensive positions and they're in a tough fight, they also realize that their government is not very supportive of them and that their military leaders are distracted. And what I'd also say from a military standpoint, if you're seeing your head general being replaced and being under investigation like Suvarikin is right now, that has a trickle down effect on other generals.

And other generals will start second guessing what they're doing because they don't want to be killed or murdered. You know, this is the equivalent, Charlie, of during the surge in Iraq, which I was a part of, of just having General Petraeus fired and having a bunch of other generals who allegedly were conspiring with him fired. It can only negatively affect the forces because they're not going to get the right kind of communication. They're not going to get the right kind of orders to either withdraw or redeploy or move to a different position. So it is going to affect tactics and operations. So what is your assessment of the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive? As a layperson, it appears to be going slowly and there appears to be some concern that they need more. They need more

weaponry and because it is Groundhog Day always, we're back to the discussions that we've had over the last year about the need for the West to supply the Ukrainians with more offensive capabilities. So first of all, before we get to the weapon system, what is the state of play in this counteroffensive? They are gaining ground. They are gaining ground over tough territory against obstacles the Russians have been placed over the last six months. From a military perspective, I think their operations are going extremely well. They are gaining ground. They are feeling out their enemy. They are looking for places to attack. They have not committed. I've heard this from several people and it's been

reported, so it's open source, but they have not committed the units that have been trained by the Western forces. That tells me that they are looking for openings and they are looking for the right time and the right place to attack, which is the advantage of any attacker. You get to choose the time and the place of where you conduct the offensive. For the Western audience that is saying, why is it so slow? Why aren't they done yet? How come they haven't? I would say, okay, you try it sometime. Because one of my jobs, even before being in the Pentagon, my only time in the Pentagon was I was the commander of the ops group at our national training center, Charlie, out in California, where we practice war. And I was the main trainer there for brigades that would come through. And what I saw when you're doing an offensive operation against a complex obstacle belt, which is what Ukraine is facing right now, I saw US units take hours to

get through a very small piece of terrain and attack a defending enemy. And it was always with great amount of casualties, pseudo casualties. We were using the equivalent of laser tag and you could tell who was dying and who was not. The attacking force would always sustain massive amounts of casualties going into an obstacle belt. So what I think Ukraine is doing is very smartly maneuvering to find key holes in Russian defensive positions where they can then push the so-called nine brigades worth of Western trained organizations against the Russian main defensive belts. I think when that happens, we will all see some leaving of the battlefield by the Russians and some success by the Ukrainians. Well, none of this could be happening if the Russians had air superiority, which is, again, kind of a remarkable little point that, you know, here you have this, you know, massive air force and everything,

and they apparently do not. Why not? Well, and it's because of the same reasons that go into the argument about F-16s to the Ukrainians. The Russian air force does not want to go beyond their front lines. And the reason they don't is because of Ukrainian capability and air defense. And that was even before some of the things we provided to them. The Ukrainians also had the S-300, which is a very capable air defense piece of equipment. And I think the Russians, both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, are concerned about Ukrainian air defense capabilities that have only been reinforced by Western contributions like Stinger missiles, Gepards, Patriots, Avengers, things like that. So CNN also reported last night the Biden administration is strongly considering

sending cluster munitions to Ukraine because of the changing battlefield conditions. They're obviously seriously considering the option. Now, my understanding is that we've been reluctant to share these clustered munitions because of, you know, risk to civilians and because England, France, and Germany have bans on these types of weapons. So talk to me about that, why we would consider sending clustered munitions and what role they would play on the battlefield now? That is a very tough argument. And I have some biases toward that, Charlie, because I have to start off by saying I'm one of the few U.S. military members that has been under a cluster munition attack. And in fact, I'm still carrying around a couple of pieces of shrapnel of a cluster bomb in my right leg that is still

embedded there from the 1991 Desert Storm campaign when I was a young major. What I will tell you is this. The U.S. and the Ukrainians are not signatories to the banning of cluster munitions. Most of our NATO allies are, so there is an alliance issue with us giving them to them. Turkey is not. They have given cluster munitions to the Ukrainians and they've been using them. But there's a moral issue. We were excited when Russia was using cluster munitions against cities and towns and citizens and calling it a war crime. And the implications of cluster munitions because of dud rate of the munitions themselves. There have been cluster munitions used in the Donbass since 2014 by the Russians. And during that period, there have been about a thousand or more Ukrainian

citizens who have picked the duds up and have been killed by them because there is a dud rate to these things. Would these munitions help in a trench fight? Yeah, they would. But as soon as you start using them, you have the potential for not years, but perhaps decades of demining activity that you have to get rid of some of the duds as well as some of the Russian mines that are going to be in place. So the areas where they're used, you're not going to be able to have citizens there and it's going to be dangerous for everybody else for a very long time. Do I think they're going to get them? I do, but it's a tough argument and they're going to have to use them only on force concentrations. And even then, once you fire them into an area,

they don't disappear. So as a unit, after you fire clusters or DPICM, as they're called, it's very difficult for you to follow on into that area because all the duds are still on the ground. So if we do give them these cluster munitions, if the United States government does give these cluster munitions, will we retain control the kinds of distinctions that you're describing, or once they leave our hands, are they out of our power? Yeah, they're pretty much out of our hands. It's like saying, do we control where Ukraine is firing artillery? No, we don't.

We would control anything that goes into Russia, yes, or we would ask them not to do that. But we can't say, hey, you can't fire there, you can't fire here with something like a cluster munition, because it is literally an artillery shell. It is just another artillery shell. It just happens to be very different because of exploding above the ground for shrapnel purpose or exploding on the ground against a weapon system. What this does, a cluster munition opens up above the area and about, in the case of the artillery cluster, I think it's 64, don't hold me to that number, 64 small hand grenades come out of the canister and spread out over a large area. And the dud rate for those 64 on each artillery round is somewhere between one and 6%. So there's also this report in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. is considering long range missiles known as Army Tactical Missile Systems with the great

acronym of ATAKMS. Other military analysts are questioning the reporting on this. Again, we have this debate going on saying, okay, if we have the ATAKOMs, what's taking so long? We should give them to them. Other people are saying, hey, it's not quite so simple. So what do you think? Do you think that we should and will provide the ATAKOMs, these army tactical missile systems to the Ukrainians? I am of the opinion that they seem to be a very good weapon system that could be used for long range strikes. There are other reasons why we are not providing them. And again, I'm reverting back to my time as the chief war planner in the Pentagon and understanding the requirements for the U.S. military for keeping in reserve these kinds of relatively small number of missile systems for other contingencies. And plus, what I would also

say on the Ukrainian battlefield, a ballistic missile that rises up into the atmosphere and then comes down at supersonic sound is probably not the most effective or efficient way of striking deep targets. The Ukrainians now have the Storm Shadow from the UK, which is a cruise missile, which follows nap of the earth flight, which means it's close to the ground and follows contours and it hits a target without going up high that it could be struck down or electronically jammed. So it is a much better system for that. But it's interesting, Charlie, because everyone who's calling for the ATAKMS has no clue of its capabilities or its ineffectiveness. And both of those things exist in every single weapon system. General Mark Hertling is a retired Lieutenant General, military analyst for CNN,

a former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army. General, thank you so much for your time today and for coming back on the podcast. Yeah, it's a pleasure, Charlie. It's always good talking to you and having a calm conversation about important things. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I'll be back in a couple of weeks and we will do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.