The Bulwark Podcast - Mark Hertling: Putin's Weakness

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Russia is on its weakest footing since it invaded Ukraine: Putin has destroyed his military, his economy is in the toilet, and the North Korean troops who've been deployed to help out are dying in waves on the battlefield. Why would the US bail Putin out? Meanwhile, MAGA world is trying to distract us with phony DEI issues in the military while we're dealing with some of the biggest challenges we've ever faced in the international space. Plus, with 180,000 US troops currently deployed overseas and 100+ Navy ships at sea, the DOD probably needs someone with a little more breadth of experience than a weekend talk show host on Fox. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling joins Tim Miller. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling joins Tim Miller. show notes Hertling's piece on the Army's and America's values Hertling's piece on North Korean troops fighting for Russia in Ukraine Tim and Sarah's live event with Reason magazine in DC Wednesday nigh

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Wednesday. I'm actually taping this Tuesday afternoon because Wednesday morning I'm flying to DC. Me and Sarah Longwell are doing a debate against the Libertarian Reason Bros over at the Howard Theater. So if you're in DC and want wanna come hang out and are listening to this on Wednesday afternoon, we're doing that tonight around 7 p.m. So in the meantime, I have a wonderful guest. So I'm excited to welcome back to the Bulwark to talk big picture,

view of what's happening here and around the world. He is a retired Lieutenant General and a CNN military analyst. He's a former commanding general of the US Army in Europe and the Seventh Army. He's a veteran of both Iraq wars. It's Mark Hartling. How are you doing, sir?

Hey, Tim, how are you? It's a pleasure to be on with you today. Let's talk some things. I'm excited to have you back. Hopefully you can illuminate some things for me. I don't know if I can do that, but we'll see. Much to discuss. And you've written, I want to get at the end, you've written for us as well, which I always

really appreciate. You wrote something beautifully about American values, what you've learned in the army and what maybe the citizenry needs to learn. You wrote that for us after the election. So I want to get to that at the end, but there's so much happening around the world. And usually I have a little outline of things I want to talk about. But given your breadth of experience, I actually thought the more interesting way to start would be I want to threat assessment from you.

You're looking at the domestic challenges we face with the incoming Trump administration some of his appointees, looking at what's happening with Syria and Iran and the Koreas and Ukraine. If you're getting a phone call, it's like, General, what do you think the biggest threat is that we face and what are you most concerned about? What's at the top of your list right now? You know, I tell you, Tim, it's interesting. I was at West Point last week.

The seniors of the class picked their branches, which means infantry, armor, artillery. And I had the young woman who's the president of the class ask me to give a presentation to a smaller group of people that were part of her command staff. And the first question they asked me is, what kind of threats are we going to face as new lieutenants going out into the field? So first of all, their heads on the right place. And secondly, I had to tell them is I have no frigging clue. One of the things you know as a military guy is, when I entered West Point in 1971, the Vietnam War was going on.

By the time I left there, Europe was red hot. During my time, we never fought a war in Europe except the Cold War, but during my time in Europe we went to Panama, Iraq in 1990, and then had a terrorist at the buildings. So you know, it changes and there's all kinds of black swans out there. That's my preview. Now what I'll tell you is what I'm concerned about is still an expanded war in the Middle East, even though it seems like Hamas is defeated or Hamas is destroyed, Hezbollah is partly defeated, Syria appears to get better right now, but you still have the Kurds wanting for their autonomous region that includes the areas within Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

So that's still a very dangerous area. Of course, Ukraine, what's going to happen next, I don't know, and it scares the hell out of me because we cannot allow Putin to get away with this invasion of a territory and sovereignty that he's been doing for the last almost three years now. He has to be stopped. And I'm afraid that some in our government will tend to placate him, which will only cause more frozen conflicts, which he's created five of the continent of Europe. The partnership between Putin and Kim is just horrible. And I think Kim's getting the worst of it now because reports this morning saying that, you know, he's sending waves of North Korean soldiers against Ukraine and

and they're being destroyed. So he may be getting missile parts for his intercontinental ballistic missiles in North Korea, but it's not going to help them in terms of doing anything for that country. And then of course, even though China's economy is in the toilet and going down faster, they're still a major threat because they've got the biggest military in the world and they have great ambitions. Is that all? No. That domestic terrorism, international terrorism,

climate change activities, and anybody that's scoffs at that, I'll tell you the Department of Defense has been looking at climate change for the last 30 years, and they know what the implications of that are. I mean, I could go on and on. It's a bad world out there. It's the worst that I've seen in my 40 years as a professional.

All right, so a lot there. There's some obvious threats I think they're going to get to, particularly Russia and Russian North Korea, which you also wrote about for us recently if you want to dig deeper on that. The most interesting thing you said there is you began with concerns about the Middle East. And there's one way to look at this, which is what's happened over the last half year or year really in the Middle East and say, well, Iran's influence is weakened, Hezbollah and Hamas are weakened, nearly eliminated, and Assad's been overthrown. Is it not possibly the case that the threats there are diminishing rather than increasing? Yeah, that's a huge possibility.

But what I've learned in the Middle East and the amount of time I spent there, whenever you think everything's about to go right, suddenly there's another car bomb somewhere and it causes more things to happen. So yeah, I would agree with you that Iran's capability, they have been embarrassed and their capability was always poor and they've lost all their proxies. So it could be good, but again, there's always a fight somewhere in the Middle East. Yeah, can I ask you, I just,

and I asked you in an Apple home about this on Friday and I've really been pondering the BB question and the Israel question because I'm a softy. And so some of the BB stuff, you know, said the Israel's prosecution of the war has at times made me very uncomfortable ranging towards upset. On the other hand, though, you know, they were responding to this just heinous, horrific attack. And what we have seen from the fact that Israel's military and Bibi have been unwilling to kind of respond to pressure from the globe because they've resisted that pressure,

just objectively, like they've successfully weakened these very serious threats around the region. So I wonder, you know, just from a military perspective, kind of how you assess the way that Israel has prosecuted the war over the last year. Yeah, boy, that's a great question. And there's been a couple of folks that see it from the stand. If you've never been to Israel, you don't understand it. I was in Israel in 2012 with my counterpart there near the place where the concert occurred, where the Gazan division was.

And we were just standing around talking on the outside and suddenly a couple of rockets started coming in. This was in 2012. And he said, this is a typical experience. When you have the kind of terrorist threats they do, and when you have the terrorists doing things that Hamas and Hezbollah have done, specifically create the victim's doctrine,

as they call it, in 2014, where everything that Israel does, we will call it the worst thing possible and take film of it and get it out on the world stage. And at the same time, they're building literally hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Palestinian citizens and wanting those citizens to be killed to put more blame on Israel. Yeah, you can understand both sides of the story. Israel has executed the war, in my view, very well. There's been a lot of horrendous casualties and killings, but they had no other choice

because they had a major terrorist organization Three miles from their citizens. They had to do so we would we would do the same I think and Katie bar the door if someone you know as far away as New Jersey started attacking Manhattan Island We would go in and bomb New Jersey to smithereens. So from a military perspective They probably the ex they executed the war the best way they could. It's the political perspective that why did it get to this point? What caused them to come to the conclusion of no intelligence, lack of interaction with the Palestinian people, doing the kinds of things they were doing on the West Bank and in Gaza to really subjugate those Palestinians. That all contributes and you've got to account for that as well.

I want to go back up to Ukraine. You know, when you, you were on with Charlie, gosh, a couple of years ago now, time is a flat circle. And I think we're pretty prescient in speaking about the weaknesses of the Russian military. I think you were more, because of your first-hand experience, I think more aware of the limitations, to say the least, that their military operation would have. You said the same thing about this.

You wrote the same thing for us about this partnership with North Korea that has allowed them to have kind of additional men coming in to the battlefield. I'm wondering how you assess the state of play now with the specter of Donald Trump coming in and whether you feel like that's changed at all, whether you think that Russia is maybe on a stronger footing or I guess just broadly what you think the state of play is. Now I think Russia is on the weakest footing they've been on since the start of the war began. I mean, truthfully, you've got Putin as a kleptocratic, authoritarian mafia boss who has destroyed his military.

I mean, about three quarters of his military, it's estimated, has been destroyed. His bond market just went flat yesterday. His economy's in the toilet. His GDP is on a war footing and it's paying nothing, but hopefully for regurgitation of more forces that are going to get destroyed on the battlefield and now he's using North Koreans as his cannon meat, their equivalent term for cannon fodder. So nothing has changed in terms of the way they've conducted operations other than getting

more fierce and more diabolical and more criminal. So the potential for a Putin collapse and a Russian collapse, which is dangerous in and of itself, I think is much higher today than it was three years ago. The problem is, if support for Zelensky and the Ukrainians dry up, then we've got potentially another frozen conflict where Russia has been able to grab 20% of a sovereign territory and get away with it and will potentially rebuild and grab more if they're allowed to do so. It does seem insane that we would take, we being the West, would take our foot off the gas here at this moment if what you're saying is right.

If they're in such a weak position for this to be the moment to say let's negotiate, it's just a gift to Putin. It's like it would be to bail him out. Yeah, I agree. You know, Putin is not the kind of guy you negotiate with for two reasons. First of all, he always wins. And secondly, he never lives up to his promises. He's a liar.

So when you put them in a position of the MISCA court or the Normandy conference or anything like that, He has lied every single time. And even a week before the invasion, he was telling everybody he wasn't going to invade. So how do you trust somebody like that and say, Oh yeah, we can move forward if we can just get them to the peace table and give him X amount of a Ukrainian territory and call it even. Oh, that's not what the Ukrainian people deserve. Yeah.

Why, why do you say that the first is he always wins just because he's not negotiating, he doesn't negotiate in good faith and the other side does. Yeah. He lies and doesn't negotiate in good faith, much like mother autocrats around the world. For people that are maybe new to us or just to refresh the memories for those from the last time you're around. And part of the reason why you were able to assess their weakness was,

seeing firsthand the type of military operation they were running. Why don't you just refresh folks' memory about that? Yeah, you know, I was able to go to Russia on four different occasions, and the first time was an exchange. I had the Russian chief of the ground forces, a three-star, visit me first. When would this have been? This was in, oh gosh, 2011, I think. This wasn't the first time I was in Russia, but it was the first

time we had this exchange. And when I went over to see his forces, everything I saw was a demonstration. Everything that he was telling me was a training event was just a rote exercise that people had practiced multiple times over and over for show. When I talked to the generals, they were almost always drunk. When I talked to the lieutenants and captains, they were obviously just obeying orders of the drunk generals. They had no sergeants corps. They didn't have a very good doctrine.

You could tell where most of their senior leaders were corrupt and stealing things from the government. They treated their soldiers like crap. I mean, I was in a training barracks one time where I literally saw one of the young officers beating up a soldier with a baton. I mean, just corporal punishment. So there's no trust between the military and the government, and there's no trust between the military and the government and there's no trust between the soldiers and their military leaders. I'm sorry General, I've got to interrupt you there because I've been told on Fox News and such that that's like how you do military right. That's the manly military, you know, beating up soldiers and it's just our woke pansy military

that doesn't do stuff like that. Is that not incorrect? Yeah, I guess. I can't comment on that because I'm one of the world generals. You know that, but you build trust and you build the capability to fight by treating people well and by building teams and understanding the complexities of modern war Russia doesn't do that. You know, it was interesting that the, I tell the story that the, the general Straka was his name, came to visit me in Germany. And after I showed him whatever he wanted to see and opened up every closet for him, as he was leaving, he said to me, Hey, you know, you've got a good military here. How can I make mine more like

yours? It was a really telling moment. And I said, general, you can't because you don't have professional values. You don't have an NCO Corps and all of your generals are high bound and crooked. And until you fix those issues, you can't, you can't defeat anybody on the battlefield. Let's be honest. What most people want for the holidays is to see their favorite people more often. Uh, you know, but not every year can you do that. You can't go and see everybody, especially when you've got friends and family all over

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This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays, terms and conditions apply. It takes us a little bit to the domestic side of this because like there is an underlying argument beneath the appointment of P-dex for example, uh, to secretary of defense at which you see in memes from Republicans like Ted Cruz and others, which is that the Russians and the Chinese and militaries abroad, they are tough. They care about being real men and that's men's values there. And here, we have weakened our military. We care too much about DEI or whatever, our struggle sessions.

You hear this a lot. And that truism is what underlines the rationale for making these appointments. And so I'm just curious, like, what you think about that and what you think the incoming administration might, how their changes might affect our readiness and our military. Well, I mean, first of all, is before the Russian invasion occurred, I saw the same kind of memes.

It was portraying Russian soldiers as these big strong guys that were bare chested and running through the cold and diving into lakes and all that other stuff. Fighting white tigers. Yeah. But, you know, and it was just ridiculous because that's not how modern militaries train or act.

They're a professional force. And it was interesting to me that almost in every case, the people who were posting those memes or talking that way, like you mentioned Ted Cruz a minute ago, have never served. So they don't know what the military is like. Even Tommy Tuberville,

when he was making the hold on all the generals saying, he really knew what the military is like. Even Tommy Tuberville, when he was making the hold on all the generals, saying he really knew what a military is like because his dad was a sergeant in World War II. And you just go, okay, yeah, whatever you say there, Tommy, coach. But the thing is, it takes a lot to train a modern military on complex equipment in very difficult operations. The Ukrainians have it right. They've got women on the battlefield. They're looking to train and they're not portraying themselves as woke or they're a diverse organization

and they're doing pretty good against the fourth largest army in the world, I think the Russians are. So yeah, it just doesn't hold up. There's no research behind any of those statements. It's just a feel for what they think it's supposed to be. It's just ridiculous. Obviously, most of the stuff is coming from, you know, keyboard tough guys like Ted Cruz. But there is some demand for this inside the military from some quarters.

So I want to read you something that happened on, I guess, Tuesday morning. The Trump transition put out a press release saying that 120 retired generals and admirals signed a letter supporting Pete Hegseth in the press release that has a couple of sentences here. He has studied and experienced the disastrous effects of diversity, equity, and inclusion on our military, and he's committed to expunging it from our armed forces. Prominent in Trump's mandate was making our military strong and lethal to include removing what is called wokeness from our armed forces. So, you know, it's over 120 guys who look at a weekend talk show host and say, he's the

right man for the job because he has expertise on DEI. What do you think about that? Well, first of all, I don't know who the 120 guys are that are shining up. I'd like to see the list. I haven't seen that list. Should I start reading them to you live? No, I don't want that list. Should I start reading them to you live? No. I don't want to count on them.

I would almost venture to say that most of them haven't served lately and haven't been in some of the tough fights over the last couple of years. The second thing I'd say in terms of DEI, I happen to teach an MBA course in my spare time. And if you look at every single research study that's conducted on diversity, equity, and inclusion, it tells you that it does nothing but make organizations better because it generates good ideas and new ideas. So I mean I don't want group think in any military organization I'm with.

You know, I want people contributing and the wokeness, you know, I want people contributing. And the Woke-ness, you know, I keep going back to that because I find it interesting. No one has defined it for me yet. And if Woke means caring for your soldiers, if Woke means knowing, you know, the values, as I talked about in that article the other day, about integrity and respect and trust in one another and giving everybody the potential to serve

when they want to serve, then color me, well, I'm good with that. What do you think just generally about whether, I don't know, the credibility question, I mean, how do you assess like somebody like, like an appointment like Hank Seth when there are just so many qualified people out there? Yeah, well, what I do first somebody like an appointment like Hague Seth, when there are just so many qualified people out there. Yeah.

Well, what I do first, and what I did before the election, or right after the election, and right after Mr. Trump was the president-elect, I posted something that said, what will be interesting is to see who he appoints to the key national security positions of DOD, state, CIA, Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence. Because those five cabinet posts, those five posts are the ones that keep us out of danger. And each one of them has to be pretty savvy in what they do. And especially the Defense Secretary, because I'd love to be in on the questioning of any nominee to say, what do you think the Defense Department does?

Just outline the list of what the Defense Department, the Secretary of Defense does. Because as a young brigadier general, it was my one and only time on the joint staff, and I had to see the Defense Secretary every Friday, along with one of the combatant commanders to go through contingency plans, what we call war plans. And you got to have a little bit more of a strategic view in terms of just the capability of what our contingencies are. But you also have to do acquisition, personnel management, logistics around the world. I mean, Tim, right now, today,

because I checked this morning, we've got 180,000 soldiers deployed outside the United States. There are over 100 ships sailing at sea, and the US Air Force has conducted 5,000 sorties of different aircraft today. You've got to manage all that, and that's just a daily thing.

You're talking about an $800 billion budget. I mean, I consider myself a pretty smart guy and pretty savvy in terms of military operations. I would not want to be the Secretary of Defense. It would be too hard for most mere mortals. You know, you're doing acquisition, defense spending. I mean, I could name the tasks that fall under the Secretary of Defense, and it would boggle most Americans' minds. And to say because a guy spent a couple of years in the military and then became a talk

show host that he has. I mean, I don't know what it takes. I don't know what other kind of nominee the president could make, the president-elect could make, but it better be a good one because like I said earlier, we're facing some of the biggest challenges I've ever seen in the international environment. Yeah, I just listened to that and you said something that is just something I've been wondering about somebody just, you know, doesn't doesn't have any experience in this world. It's like, if you're a Brigadier General, you know, like you said you were, and you're going in next February, and you've got to do a briefing on war planning

to the Secretary of Defense, as a guy that's been sitting on the couch for eight years on a weekend talk show. I mean, that has, I don't know what that does to morale, but I just, just painting that picture in my head, it feels ridiculous. I mean, even putting the politics of it aside, just as a question of seriousness and the type of person you would want in a job like this, it seems pretty preposterous when you think about the quality of people that are going to be reporting up to this person. There's a thing called the executive presence. And put the character piece aside, you know, what

you do and who you are. Don't even talk about that. But just from the standpoint of presence, someone with executive presence has gravitas, they know what they're doing, they have intellectual capability and emotional intelligence, they have a calmness about them, they listen more than they speak and they hear with empathy, what's going on in the organization. That's kind of what I want in a guy with a whole lot of experience to be a different cabinet secretary for a nation that is facing a lot of global security threats.

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I was talking to Michael Weiss about this the other week and he's talking about the intelligence side of this and on the list of those five cabinets you mentioned DNI. You know, on the list of those five cabinets you mentioned DNI. You know, yeah, and say what you want about Tulsi. She also served like Hagseth, but repeatedly she has demonstrated either sympathies or a willingness to advance pro-Russian messaging. And I do wonder how you think about that as far as the threats that are facing us domestically

and kind of the questions about whether how our allies are going to look at that as far as intelligence sharing and you know whether it might raise any questions about the strength of the alliance etc. Yeah it's interesting again going back to personal experiences because I've shared intelligence and been part of intelligence sharing organizations within the military and the government. And again, the first thing you have to generate is an element of trust, that things are going to be kept secret, that when an intelligence service tells you something that's important

and that they feel is critically related to something that might happen or that could cause problems, they're going to know you're going to keep it to yourself and you're not going to give them up, first of all. But secondly, they need to know you understand it. And truthfully, I've talked to a bunch of former comrades who used to be senior ranking people in other governments, they're scared about the transfer of intelligence to our country in the future too, because they've seen what's happened in the past and they don't know what's going to happen in the

future. So to counter that, many of them are telling me there's going to be changes in our intelligence system in terms of what we're going to share. And when that happens, the world becomes more dangerous. Yeah, I can think of the times in the past, I guess, referencing, like, the Lavrov, the example with Trump's sharing information that was with the Russians.

Oh, is it about Israel? Like, gosh, I can't remember. It's been a while. Israel, yeah. You're not exactly bringing up an uplifting analysis of what's happening here, General Erling. Oh yeah. You're not exactly bringing up an uplifting analysis of what's happening here, General Hartley. Let's talk something good. Okay, give me something.

What do you got? What's something good? Well. What's something good that's happening out there? We beat army this weekend, so I can't talk about that. Okay, yeah. I know. We had a good nuggets win last night.

You know, I think there is the potential for a real fast learning curve to take place because there could be a lot of disasters in our future. We've seen that in the past. I mean, our country has been through tough times before, not just recently, but in our history and every time there's a correction to get back to some norms, the folks like you were naming a few of them, I don't know who you should name to be the cabinet secretaries, but I know what the qualifications are and how you've got to have that, first of all, character, then that executive presence, and then at least a modicum of intelligence

to understand where you fit in, in the state of affairs of a country as powerful as ours. And if it's just going in to turn tables upside down and throw things against the wall, that's not a good approach for government. There's certainly some potential for changing things, for making things better, but it doesn't begin with just a complete destruction of our norms and our institutions.

That's what concerns me the most. How about this for something positive? You started by talking about these conversations you are having with, was it folks at West Point, did you say, young people getting to coming into the military now? What did you see from them? I mean, like, are they as wrapped up in all this culture war nonsense and political nonsense as the people at the top are? Like what, and what was their kind of mindset?

No, that's a great question. Maybe that is the positive. Because truthfully, Jim, whenever I need a shot in the arm, I go up there. Right. I go out and be with young people because my perception is they are not wrapped up in culture war. First of all, they're just, they're just looking to graduate. They're trying to get the hell out of there and go on to their first assignment as

lieutenants. But secondly, they raised their hand to serve the country. They want to be soldiers as all soldiers do. So this gets back to your wokeness and your DEI. You go to most units, they're not talking about this kind of stuff. They're talking about, you know, are their next training event or their next deployment or how do I take care of the kids? You know, they're looking at serving in uniform and being proud of it. And that's what I really like about the military is it was a family adhering to similar values

and doing the things for others that you signed up to do while supporting and defending the constitution. And that's why I wrote that other article about values in terms of getting back to what do we believe as a nation as opposed to all this divisiveness? All right, if you're listening to this episode and your blood pressure is rising, thinking about all of the threats that General Hurtling has identified throughout the world, I bet you could use a little taster from our next sponsor, Sol. This podcast is sponsored by Sol Sol's new out of office gummies are perfectly microdosed with hemp drive

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needs covered. Soul's products are grown right here in the USA. So this holiday season, give the gift of Soul, head to GetSoul.com and use code THEBULWARK for 30% off your order. That's 30% off your order using code THEBULWARK. One last time, GetSoul.com and code THEBULWARK for 30% off anywhere in the US of A. The article you wrote was about ethical education. It was

titled, I helped the Army remember its values. I wish I could do the same for the country. There was a mnemonic device, leadership, without the E and the A in there. So it was loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. Just talk about kind of what underlined that and what lessons we might want to take from it. Yeah, when you're part of any values-based organization, you're going to use those values to make decisions about things, about who you are and what you do. You're going to portray those seven values that you just named if you're a soldier, and

you're going to make your decisions based on your loyalty, your duty, and your respect for others as an example. You're going to serve because of selflessness. You're going to serve with honor and integrity. And when it comes down to it, you're going to stand up and use personal courage to say the right things or do the right things, whether it's in peacetime or combat. And it struck me that those seven values kind of drove my decision making. Whenever I had a thought where, what should I do in this situation? I would go back to those values and say, what do our values say we should do?

And it got me thinking about our national values. You can go back through our documents and our speeches and find things that our founding documents and speeches by great Americans said when they reflected on who we were or who we are. And if you're a values-based organization, and I truly believe that the United States is values-based, it was created out of a sense of values and ideas. You know, one of the things I'd like to talk about is, you know, soldiers or anybody in government, by the way, who raises their hand to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies

sworn and domestic. It's the only oath in the world that's given to a piece of paper. And that piece of paper reflects ideas and values and who we want to be and who we aspire to be. Other countries go motherland or fatherland or el presidente. We do ideas and values. So that's kind of what I wanted to portray in that paper. Do you worry that? I don't know, but there's an increased sense in the country that that stuff was all BS and that that is what kind of underlined the Trump rise.

I mean, you know, just the fact that America really should act like we're just any other country. We should go out and get ours. Isn't that kind of what underlines the nationalist impulse that over the national review, Rich Lowry is obsessed with this, like how America isn't an idea, actually, and we have interests like any other country. Do you worry that Trump's second victory is kind of a victory for that worldview and that maybe this kind of sense that there's something deeper about service to America is starting to disappear.

Well, that's where we get back to the good news story that you were asking about before. Because yeah, I am concerned about that, that too many people are falling into that trap. But I believe that because we are a nation of values and ideas, that those drive policies and policies drive strategies or at least they should. And if you don't have the ideas and the values of our great nation, our policies and our strategies are going to be a mishmash of a bunch of different things. And that's truthfully what's trying to happen. When people become windsocks on Capitol Hill, when you see different nominees going in and

having said something for a very long time or the last couple years and then suddenly when they get in front of the committees and the senators, they say completely the opposite, that tells me they're not basing their answers or who they are on values. I think we're going to get back to that. I truly believe that. I can't not believe that Jim, because that's what, yeah, I spent 40 years defending and I'm not ready to give it up. I hope you're right. I just, uh, I look at that list and it's like loyalty, duty, respect,

selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage. It's tough to see our president-elect on that list anywhere. You know, it was reminiscent to me of during the McCain funeral, a lot of people were giving oaths to him using many of the, talking about these many, any of these traits, right, that he had. And a lot of Trump's defenders at the time were like,

oh, they were, they're insulting him. They're attacking the president. And it's like, well, no, you know, odes to these values that he doesn't have are not necessarily negative attacks on him. They're just odes to, you know, what we actually value here. I think we're gonna go through a period now

over the next four years where it's gonna be tough to navigate that a little bit. We're seeing some of them like integrity and personal courage standing up to people, respect for all others. That's true. I mean, not just people we like, but you know, not just the 48% that voted for us, but the entire country you got to have respect for.

Integrity in terms of what you say and what you do and does the audio match the video? All of those things have application and I'm concerned if we lose them, that we could lose our country. It's a great piece. I hope people go and read it. I've got one more thing for you. And then I want to do a little St. Louis talk. I meant to ask you at the top, given your expertise, your amount of time in Europe,

dealing with our counterparties and our allies in Europe, if what you're saying is correct about the weakness of Russia right now and about the need to make sure we're backing our Ukrainian partners, we've seen the NATO secretary general calling for more assistance and for European partners to step up more and recognize a threat that they face. Is there anything to that? You know, like could the Western Alliance survive with a diminished role of the United States, you think? Or does the United States diminishing necessarily mean a weakening of the entire alliance and Putin continuing to kind of regather his strength?

Yeah, I just had that question from the thing I was just on with a bunch of national security professionals and that's why I'm wearing a tie today. And the same question came up about what will it mean to the alliance if the US pulls out? And first of all, it's more than just a military alliance. I mean, the partnership and the trust and the alliance is just magical. Yeah, there's a lot of problems with NATO. It's sometimes hard to get decisions when you're in Brussels, but boy,

it's stuck around for 80 years, doing some really good things in some really tough situations. Could the Europeans survive without the United States? Yeah, they could, but it wouldn't be the same alliance. I think they depend on us as much as we depend on them. And plus, if we pull out of NATO, which some have suggested,

I would think we'd lose the intelligence sharing, we're gonna lose the trust and the connection to the continent, we're gonna use an economic factor and a diplomatic factor that's part of national power. So, if you look at the four elements of national power, diplomacy, military, information, and economy, all of those will be decreased for us if we pull out of the alliance. And I don't think it's a very smart move.

Since your assessment of just the way that Russia has been degraded, I think is going to be greater than some of what maybe some of the conventional wisdom is out there. Do you concur with what Ruda said recently about how Europe doesn't know what they're in for and over a three, four, five year window, like Russia has ambitions potentially beyond Ukraine. Do you share that concern or do you think that they are too degraded to be able to execute

on even if they had greater ambitions that couldn't actually follow through on them? What's your assessment? I think they're degraded now, but hopefully, you know, for their sake, they would learn some lessons. And that's why I don't think we should, we, the United States or NATO should give them a break. We should not allow them to go to a peace talks because they're just going to pull back, We should not allow them to go to a peace talks because they're just gonna pull back, take their chunk of land and then determine how they're gonna move forward.

And three, four or five years from now, they're gonna invade somebody else that's less well equipped than Ukraine. All right. So you're St. Louis man, you went to Chaminade, which is a Catholic school. No, I went to CBC. You went to CBC, Christian Brothers.

Okay, so of my, so I've got, so my father and let's see, one, two, I'm doing a quick math of my head. One, two, three, four of my uncles went to SLU. I had one fellow CBC. My mother's youngest brother was CBC. Everybody else was SLU. So we have a little rivalry here. Well, back in the day, Slough and CBC were like major rivals. Yeah, absolutely. I know that the youngest brother that when my mother went and her brother

went to CBC is a little bit of a touchy subject actually around around the house since everybody else had gone to Slough. We moved, my parents moved me or moved us. I'm actually Denver. I rep Denver. But I have two huge Catholic families. And so I have 100 cousins who go to every who went everywhere. Though I don't think we had any CBCs. That's why I had Chaminade mixed up in my head. I did have a cousin went to Chaminade and uncle went to CBC. But a lot mostly slew across the board. Though a friend of mine is now the president of Dismount, Ronnie O'Dwyer. So we have a little St. Louis Catholic school rivalry happening. That is huge. I did not know that about you. I wish I had known that earlier. I would have

given you a hard time a whole hour earlier. But you've also, like me, we've migrated out of St. Louis. You're a Florida man now? A Florida man now, yeah. Are you at all concerned about the regime targeting you? There's a little bit of anxiety, but not much. I can handle it. All right. I have no doubts you can handle it.

Thank you, General Mark Hartling. I really appreciate it. We are richer for your analysis here and you've been a frequent visitor of the podcast and the site. We're really grateful to you and hope we can stay in touch. Hey, thanks, Tim. Appreciate it. It's been a pleasure.

Really appreciate it. All right. Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow. We got a first time guest on the podcast. Super pumped for it. We'll see you all then. Peace. And all their coterie They said that there's a battle raging all across the land They called their armies into war, but I don't understand Cause what they've all been saying isn't very smart Cause there's no war on Christmas when Christmas is in your heart It doesn't really matter if you use an X or a Z I doubt that Jesus would care, They both spell love to me So you can't wish me Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays

You're only saying peace on earth in many different ways So don't let all those bridges push us all apart The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown.