The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1161: Pete and John Fieldhouse Interview William S. Lind

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

68 MinutesSFWWilliam S. Lind is a paleoconservative author and proponent of Fourth-Generation Warfare Theory. He has served has a legislative aide for various senators, was the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation and has written numerous articles and monographs for journals such as the Marine Corps Gazette and The American Conservative. Lind has written several books ranging from political commentary to fiction.Pete invited John Fieldhouse to co-host an interview with William S. Lind. They talk about the future of warfare, Israel-Palestine, and Trump's second term.traditionalRIGHTMr. Lind at The American ConservativeThe New Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Special Tactics Institute)Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignan show. I am pleased to have a guest here that I thought I had to have a co-host for. And I knew that my co-host, Mr. Fieldhouse, was a someone who was more well-read in Mr. Lynn's work than my own, than I am. So, sadly, I admit. Mr. William S. Lind. Are you done, Mr. Lynn? I'm doing well, thank you. Here in cold and snowy, Cleveland, Ohio.

Well, I'm in cold, central Alabama. but I assume it's not as cold as Cleveland. We actually went about freezing today, but the high Monday and Tuesday is to be five. So if it hits that in North Alabama, there's a problem. Central Alabama, too. We had four inches of snow last week, and people sort of freaked out.

All right, let's just jump in. John, I haven't talked to you in a while. How are you doing? Not bad. How you doing, brother? Good. Good. You have any questions to start off for Mr. Lin? Yeah, and just to correct in the beginning, I'm Dr. Admiral Fieldhouse, but peasants don't have to know this.

I'll talk to me out. Okay. Anyways, again, that's a joke. Since most people can't tell when I'm joking. So one of the things I think we're going to start off talking about fourth generation warfare, Dr. Lynn, or Mr. Lin, because we read one of your essays that have been published in one of the Castalia House. anthologies, I'm not sure if it was the Pornel one or the riding the red horse. My big things I want to start off with, because lots of people quote you, they just don't necessarily have read you and don't necessarily get your key points or miss some of your key points. What would you say is the main misunderstanding about the concept of fourth generation warfare that you run into, sir?

Well, I'd say the main misunderstanding is it's thought of as essentially a tactical problem. what it actually is is a contest for legitimacy between states, nation states, and entities that are not nation states, which can be Hamas and Hezbollah or Mexican drug cartels or ethnic groupings or the list is almost endless. the state essentially starting in the 1600s established a monopoly on legitimacy worldwide. And it's now losing that monopoly. And so fourth generation warfare is fundamentally a fight for legitimacy between states and alternatives to states. All right. I have a question.

So my friend, I've, thought this for a while and my friend my friend Thomas believes this as well is that what we're going to see in the United States is instead of the federal government getting someone sweeping in a Caesar or something like that and becoming an article two president and fixing taking us back to you know times of the past what we're basically going to see is we're going to see people have default kind of secessions. You're going to have people who

politically agree, people who have share values, religious values, they're going to find each other and they're going to break off into their own communities. And do you see that as a form of fourth generation warfare in the future?

Well, it can certainly turn into that. It can certainly feed that. What you're looking for to determine in effect which way the contest for legitimacy is going is to what or to whom do people give their primary loyalty, the loyalty for which they will willingly fight. And we're, of course, already seeing some of that in this country. You have America. who would never volunteer for the U.S. military, but will most certainly fight for their religion or for their race or ethnic group, for their ideology, for their cause, if you will, like environmentalism. So we're already seeing Americans, and have been seeing for some time,

Americans transfer their primary loyalty away from the state to other things. And that is, That's the ground on which fourth generation warfare is fought. So it's already happening. The question is, does it go so far as the country breaking up? Now, I think that was the road that we were on, but that President Trump's re-election gets us off that road, at least potentially. in my novel Victoria, which is fourth generation war in the United States, set in the year 2050, looking back, under the pen named Thomas Hobbes, because it's an update of his 17th century book Leviathan. What causes the country ultimately to break apart is the federal government using its massive power to force cultural Marxism down every American.

American's throat. And at a certain point, Americans just rebel against it. Well, they just did. They rebelled at the ballot box. And not only did Trump win the electoral vote, he also won the popular vote. And even Democrats are having to concede that the American people in this election rejected what's commonly called woke or political correctness or multiculturalism. It's actually the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School. So I think if President Trump's second term is successful, and his first term was on the whole fairly successful, but he was sabotaged constantly by the people who were supposed to be working for him. So I think this term could be a lot more successful. If it is, then I think we may have gotten

off the path that leads to a breakup of this country internally. But if his presidency is not successful and the cultural Marxists are able to come back, then I think we're back on that path again. And it becomes a civil war between, if you will, the culture of the coastal elites and their clients who depend on government large S against the heartland and the American middle class. And that's, again, that's the contest that in my novel rips America part. But I think the good news is we have gotten off that path with President Trump's re-election. Sir, I was going to say one of the points, especially some of the critics of yours and the greater military reform movement, is they misassert that the state or that you and company

are alleging that the state is just going to go away. And I don't think that's what you or Van Kreveld or Boyd at all had ever said. So is there any comment on that? Because I know, again, that's a common misconception that is directed towards you and company, sir. Well, the state is in a fight for its survival. The intensity of that fight varies enormously from one state to another, from places like Libya where the state has largely disappeared or Sudan. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th, because the little new brood.

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regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. To Nigeria, where it's just one gang among many, through states like the United States, where the state is still holding, but we do see a growing number of people transferring their primary loyalty to other things, two states that obviously are going to survive, either very unitary states like Japan, or states that have found ways to successfully accommodate their differences, such as Switzerland, which has four different ethnic groups in it.

It has all the kinds of tensions that one would think normally lead to fourth generation war, but it solved the problem through federalism, which is, by the way, one of the ways we can help solve our problem. The real government in Switzerland is the contonal level, the joke. is nobody can tell you who the, with the name of the, nobody in Switzerland can tell you the name of the Swiss president. And there's no reason why they should know it. Because the government is at the contonal level. And the people can overturn any government decision by referendum, and they frequently do. So they actually run the place. So, but across most of the spectrum, again, Japan and Switzerland would be at the far end, no, they're not going to break up.

But across most of the spectrum, the state is in a fight for its survival. Is it going to disappear everywhere? Of course not. It's going to win that fight in many cases, which is a good thing. As Hobbs reminds us, as Hobbs actually is the first to warn us, if the state disappears, life becomes nasty, brutish, and short. You can look at places where the state has disappeared, like Iraq and Syria and Libya, and so forth. And yes, that's what life is like. Hobbs nailed it about 400 years ago.

But yes, the state will survive in many places. And every conservative should be hoping the state survives, whether it's a democracy or not, doesn't matter. What the state arose to do, and the best book on this is Martin Van Krefeld, is the rise and decline of the state. What the state arose to do was bring order. Safety, persons and property. Nothing else. It forms nothing else when it was when it was in its rise. It's since taken on additional functions, which isn't necessarily a good thing. But the state remains of vital importance because without order, you can't have anything else. Everything you have, including your life, your family is life, your property, everything is at the mercy of

whoever comes along who is physically stronger and better armed or more numerous than you are. And as I said, as Hobbs said, that means life is nasty, British, and short. So conservatives should be focused on maintaining the state and should understand that the contest in the 21st century is not between autocracy and democracy. it's between border and disorder. And we need to be on the side of border. If I may, sir, is it fair to say that you think that an effective survivable state should either be something that is relatively small and homogeneous

or some kind of federalism that combine smaller units that are themselves homogenous and relatively small, sir? I would put it somewhat differently. I would say for a state to succeed, it needs to reflect the history and culture of its people or cultures of its people. Sometimes that means the unitary state, like Japan. Sometimes that means a federal state, like the United States. One of the things I have promoted for many years as part of trying to keep the state in the United States alive and functioning is,

returning to our pre-Civil War understanding of federalism. When the Constitution was ratified, no one could have imagined that the federal government would claim power to try to make life in, say, South Carolina and Massachusetts the same. If they had possibly imagined such a thing, they would never ratify it. The notion would have been absurd to them, and rightly so. We need to go back to that original understanding, as a conservative, I'm a great believer in original intent, that original understanding of federalism, where the federal government was small and weak.

It didn't. It was in charge of foreign policy, national defense, and not a great deal else. Its revenues were limited. And most matters were decided at the state level. and life in different states is different. So if you don't, for example, like life in California, you do what a great many Californians are now doing and move to Florida or Texas.

We're a mobile people. And with that kind of federalism, with that kind of decentralization, you greatly reduce the internal friction of the state and thereby increase its legitimacy. Because even though the outlook on life of someone in Massachusetts, someone in Alabama may be very different, they can all support the union because the union

protects all of them and perform certain vital functions like sound money and so forth that they all need without either being able to impose his views on the other. One of my college undergrad history professors made a point that still sticks with me that he talked about that prior to the creation of the income tax, American Central, the federal government tax policy was largely a question of who thought the larger share should be paid by tariffs and who thought the larger share should be paid by the wicksky tasks, which I really thought put it in perspective for me. But I didn't quite hear you there. Between those who believe it should be paid by tariffs and those who thought it should be paid by what? The excise tax on liquor.

Texas, yes, exactly, which tended to be a northern southern division. The Civil War isn't just about slavery. The South wanted low tariffs, the North wanted high tariffs, both for perfectly valid local economic reasons. So, yes, that was very much the debate. So we, go ahead, John. No, I was going to say, if you have a question, go right ahead, Pete. Okay. So we covered one of your longer articles on fourth generation warfare, and we wanted to ask with the suggestion of a concept of fifth generation warfare that has been floating around what your opinion is of it. Well, when you hear the term fifth generation warfare, you can be pretty certain that some company is trying to sell a widget.

I'm probably a very expensive one, saying we need it for fifth generation warfare. The concept is nonsense because the fourth generation, the contest between states and non-state entities for legitimacy is going to take at least a century to play itself out. Trying to visualize fifth generation warfare at this point is like trying to visualize the Middle Ages from the late Roman Empire. You may be able to visualize that the empire is going to fall and there's going to be a period of rising barbarism, the decay of civilization, the life becoming local, et cetera. But you can't possibly see how that resolves itself into what was the most successful attempt thus far to create a truly Christian society, which was the Middle Ages. And I have to add, almost everything people believe about the Middle Ages is wrong.

It's a caricature created by the misnamed Enlightenment of the 18th century, which hated the Middle Ages because the Middle Ages united faith and reason, whereas the Enlightenment put them, set them as opponents to one another, and of course was on the side of pure reason. The Middle Ages were a very successful society. incomes were rising. The population was growing rapidly, which is a sign of surpluses, agricultural surpluses. Cities were prospering. There was a good bit of technological innovation. And what brought it down was the plague. Well, we just got a little foretaste of that with COVID, didn't we? And we've now created a technology in genetic engineering that will allow people,

or perhaps artificial intelligence, to create plagues that might spread like the common cold, but have the death rate of the back black plague. When in six weeks you lose a third, a half, two-thirds, in some places, some villages, all of your population, everything changes. But to try to visualize the very successful society that was in the Middle Ages from the late Roman Empire was impossible. and it's similarly impossible for us to see beyond at this point the contest for legitimacy between the state and alternative primary loyalties. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest.

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So they seem to be defining it entirely as how a central authority would defeat fourth generation warfare tactics. And again, they see it almost entirely as a tactical modality. And they don't really define it as anything other than how you're going to use technology. Because, again, very often they're trying to sell you something. They're trying to sell you something precisely. Yeah. So again, I don't think they've read your book.

And I don't think they have a counter argument because they don't even understand your argument to begin with, sir. Yes. some of this confusion springs from Tom Hamas. Now I've known Tom for many years. He's very bright and he's written some very good stuff. But he gets fourth generation warfare wrong. He defines it simply as insurgency. Martin Ben-Krefeld put this best. He said, the fourth generation is not a change in how war is fought. It is a change in who fights and what they fight for. And that is a much larger change than changes in how war is fought. Tom and I spent a week together some years ago with the Royal Marines at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth.

And Tom was trying to come to grips with my definition of fourth generation war by saying, oh, well, that's really fifth generation. No, Tom, it's not, because insurgency is nothing new. It's not a new generation of war. And it does not represent the term generation, as I've explained in the past. is shorthand for a dialectically qualitative shift. Now, anyone who knows is Hegel knows that those occur only very infrequently. The problem is I was trying to use the four, initially the three and then the four generations framework

to explain maneuver warfare and for GW to Marines. Well, if you mentioned Hegel, they think he played shortstop for the Yankees in the 30s. You can't use terms like dialectically qualitative shift. So the term I came up with is generations. But no, insurgency does not represent a dialectically qualitative shift. The contest for legitimacy between the state and alternatives to the state does. John, did you want to ask a question about how Ukraine and Palestine plays in?

I think that's a good question. Yeah, one of the things that's running around the internet amongst your critics is they say that first they would argue that Ukraine completely disproves fourth generation warfare because it's essentially fought as a conventional warfare. And some of those same people would say that Palestine also refutes that. I don't think they're correct, but I would wonder what your response would be, sir. Well, generational breaks don't occur overnight. if they did, every state military in the world would be third generation. In fact, few, if any of them are because they can't break with the cultural border that comes out of the first generation. So when we look at Ukraine, we see is in a fight between two states?

Absolutely. It's not even third generation war. The Russians tried third generation war with their initial plan, and this is a constant problem, armies face, is they couldn't do tactically what the third generation operational plan required. They failed at the tactical level. The result has been second generation war, to the point where a lot of it looks like the Western Front in World War, World War I and not late World War I where the Germans have become a third generation force. This is the Somme and you pray on Pashtendale all over again, on a smaller scale, of course.

So the generational breaks don't occur. History doesn't work that way. But what we're seeing is that for both sides, this reversion to state-periodes, versus state warfare carried out in a second generation manner has been catastrophic. Both sides entered this war with a very serious demographic problem that they're now making vastly worse because of all the young Russians and Ukrainians who are being killed. This is a disaster for all of Christendom. Remember, Russia holds Christendom's whole flank stretching all the way from the black seat of Vladivostok.

If that plant collapses inward, that is a catastrophe for what's left of Christendom at this point, of which Russia is very much a part. So fortunately, President Trump realizes that this war, even though we're not in it, thank God yet, directly, needs to be brought to a conclusion quickly because the demographic effects on both Russia and Ukraine, both of which, which are strategically important to the United States, needs to stop. In the end, what you're going to have in the Ukraine-Russian war is both sides will have lost because of the casualties among an absolutely critical mass in their population, critical for reproduction, and that's all these young men. It's like Paris after World War I. There were no young men on the streets.

They were all dead. yeah as far i'm sorry i caught you off sir you were no i just i one of the things as when i do when i teach especially officers one of the things i try to emphasize is how bad the attrition uh the long-term effects of the attrition of the first world war with the weirdest example i can think of is in france there were sports that became extinct

because the the sector of society that played them had all been wiped out and it's like how many people have to die forever for a culture to loot forget how to play a sport? Well, the British Empire died in the mud of Flanders. I think it was 40% of the graduates, Oxford graduates of class of 1913 were killed. And of course, at the moral level, the most powerful level, after World War I, because when all this bloodletting was over, nobody could tell you what the war had been fought for, that no one in the West, in the elites, could believe in themselves anymore. because they brought about this utter catastrophe for no particular reason.

And that moral collapse is ultimately what brought the Western domination of the rest of the world to an end. I mean, Churchill said, I did not become prime minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire. But that's exactly what he did. And he did it because he was a howler for war in 1914. I'm no fan of Winston Churchill. And so, yes, when we see our part of the planet, Christendom, destroying itself in these civil wars, World War I and World War II were civil wars within Christendom. And idiotically, after the fall of communism in Russia, we have recreated a new cold war between

Eastern Christendom and Western Christian, the most idiotic strategic movement of the West has made since 1945, all done to keep the money flowing into the usual troughs in Washington. This needs to be brought to a quick end. And again, fortunately, President Trump realizes this. It is exactly like World War I. It is a demographic catastrophe with very long-term, very negative effect. Now, Palestine's a much more interesting situation. Here you have seen several non-state entities pitted against a state, Israel. And what we've seen play out is the usual when this happens. The state wins at the physical level and defeats itself at the moral level. Physically, Israel has inflicted enormous damage on the Gaza Strip.

46,000 mostly women and kids killed. Arabs don't have a demographic problem. They can absorb those losses relatively easy because they have tons of kids. Israel has found no matter what it does tactically, it cannot achieve its war aims of destroying Hamas militarily and politically. the chief spokesman for the IDF came out publicly a few months ago and said, I mean, this was extraordinary, and said, we cannot do anything to attain these objectives. The objectives Netanyahu said are unattainable. In the case of Hezbollah, the Hezbollah turned out to be, this was a big surprise to me, to have been completely penetrated by Israel. This was not true of Hamas, obviously, or they wouldn't have been surprised on October 7th.

But Hamas was totally penetrated, and it was defeated to the point where it had to ask for a ceasefire, although it was still very capable of defending on the ground. The Israeli casual, Israel didn't go far into Lebanon, and it suffered pretty severe casualties by its standards in doing so. Go ahead. I was just going to comment that Hezbollah, despite the fact they've had so many losses at their operation and strategic level leadership, their junior level leaders have done surprisingly well and been surprisingly resilient on the battlefield, which is the total opposite of what I would have expected from an Arab army, sir.

That's because it's not an Arab state army. And this is a non-state Arab entity where the people fighting are much more devoted to what they're fighting for that are Arab state armies. And they are also, these are combat experience troops from the fighting in Syria. So, yes, Israel is not eager to go deeper into Lebanon. It was a ceasefire that both sides wanted at this point. The really interesting development here, however, is what's happening in Syria, where a non-state entity, a Sunni group, I forget the initials right now, HTF or something like that,

that started off as a branch of Al-Qaeda and then repudiated both Al-Qaeda and ISIS with backing from a state, Turkey, that remembers the Ottoman Empire all too well, has just taken the important parts of Syria in a lightning campaign and put an end to the Assad government. Now, this is a disaster for Hezbollah on the strategic level, much more so than anything they suffered at the hands of the Israelis, because this puts an end of their supply line from Iran. But something very interesting is happening here, and other countries are grasping at this, while Israel is doing its best, of course, to stop it. A fourth generation entity that has succeeded,

instead of creating another caliphate where the Muslims themselves were under it suffered tremendously, like the way ISIS did, they are saying, we're just going to become a normal political party in a normal state. That is our objective, with toleration for other religions, with, there'll be Islamic notions of women's roles,

but the women won't have to wear black bags every time they go out of the house and be with a male relative or they're raped. And this is something that in the contest between states and non-state entities, every state should be supporting every way it can. we should be immediately lifting all of the sanctions on this new Syrian government. Other states are moving to do this, including both France and Germany and including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. We should be pouring aid in to support this because the guy, and I can't remember his name, the guy who is heading this operation, needs to be successful,

needs from the standpoint of our interest, the interest in maintaining the state system, to be successful. We need to show, not just say that, look, if you're a fourth generation entity that wants to become a normal state and a political party within that state, We'll support that. Whether you're a democracy or not, by the way, the Israelis are bombing the new

Syrian government because Netanyahu, who has always put his own career ahead of this interest of his country, needs wars in order to stay in power. And that's all he cares about. He's been forced into this ceasefire with Hamas, because, because Donald Trump is coming in, and Donald Trump wants to bring these wars, both in Ukraine and in the Middle East, to an end. But Netanyahu therefore wants to make sure the situation in Syria does not stabilize, and that Syria does not become an example of a fourth generation entity becoming a normal state, because he needs more wars to be in power.

He wants to turn Israel into a garrison. state that is permanently at war. And that, of course, totally destroys Israel at the moral level, as his tactics in Gaza have totally destroyed Israel at the moral level. Now, Boyd's point was, in his three levels of war, physical mental moral, the physical is the weakest, the moral is the strongest, and here's why states normally lose fourth generation wars. Because what they do to win at the tactical, physical level destroys them at the moral and strategic levels. That's exactly what Israel has done in Gaza. Like all the earlier crusader states, Israel only survives so long as it receives massive outside support. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up

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Make your awards more rewarding. Visit optionscar.i.e. today. And it has just alienated all of that support tremendously. And Netanyahu doesn't care because he's staying prime minister and thereby stayed out of jail. And that's all that matters to him. has been a disaster. To what degree do you think that's a product of having, in case of Netanyahu,

somebody who's fairly old by the standards of a head of government, as opposed to somebody, historically, we'd have somebody at least 20 years younger, just because it's like Hapa's argument about kings, that they're always concerned with the long-term multi-generational effect. But again, he's almost 70. Netanyahu is almost 70. So it's not like he's going to care about what happens 20, 30. years from now. Well, and he also doesn't have his son, his son is a homosexual and not having kids. I mean,

he really has no legacy. It almost appears as if what he's doing now he considers to be his legacy going forward. Well, as a monarchist, of course, I'm happy to agree that monarchies have a much longer range view. In a republic, nobody has much of a long range view because their time in office is limited. And their children are not likely to succeed them. The situation, however, isn't really just one of age. It is one of the fundamental dividing points among people at the moral level. This is something John Boyd talked about a lot.

It is between people who want to do something and people who want to be something. And you have both at all ages. There are plenty of young politicians, both in Tel Aviv and in Washington, who will do anything to become a big cheese, surrounded by bowing minions, guaranteed millions of millions of dollars once he leaves. leaves office, all of the rest of it. And at the same time, you have people of all ages who actually want to do something, and some of them at least, want to do things that would be helpful rather than harmful.

I think we've just elected a president in the United States, who's no spring chicken, who wants to do something, not simply be something. And Netanyahu's a guy who simply wanted to be something. Now, staying out of jail, so jail is an additional incentive to that. But all his life, he's been someone who just wants to be something. And he has sacrificed his country over and over to that end. Have anything more, John? I just wanted, before we move on from the issue of Syria,

and again, you said that we need to go or recommend the United States go and support the current head of the ISIS affiliate, former ISIS affiliate that is now the government. And again, I'm not accusing you of supporting the overthrow of the Syrian state, but is it fair to say that the state being overthrown, which you probably wouldn't have supported, that you think we have to go and support it, just because the reality of preventing the anarchic chaotic collapse of this region,

or am I probably putting so much it? Okay. No, that's exactly right. In other words, I was all in favor of supporting Assad state until it collapsed, because the name of the game in the contest between order and disorder is trying to maintain states. We've done an excellent job of destroying states, Iraq, Libya, Syria, but we find we can't recreate them. Well, here, again, almost miraculously, you have a fourth generation entity, says our object is to recreate a normal state and be a political party in that state.

Again, whether it's democracy or autocracy doesn't matter. And so now, if we are going to act in defense of the state system, that means we should be backing this group that's trying to transform itself with everything we've got. And that starts with telling the Israelis, in no uncertain terms, stop bombing. Syria. They're trying to destroy all of the equipment of the old Syrian military, but the new Syrian state is going to need some of that equipment anyway, because it's got a fight coming up with ISIS. So the problem is getting anybody in Washington to think in terms of what's going to be the great conflict of the 21st century. The state, it's going to be order versus disorder. The state,

versus stateless disorder. That's the divining line. And of course, if you're a member of the blob, the Washington foreign policy establishment, you don't dear even hint at that because you'll instantly cease to be a member of the blog. You have to live in this Wilsonian Volcom Kukuzheim, a cloud kukoo land, where everything is democracy and jacobinical definitions of human rights and so forth, This bears no relationship to reality whatsoever. Fortunately, our new president who takes office on Monday is a realist. So again, unusually for a conservative, I have some hope. How does Trump's history of his true sympathies to Israel as a state,

how do you think that plays into this if the state of Israel, wants to continue to be the anachronistic kind of entity that it is for a 21st century state? Well, I'm a supporter of Israel, too. I've been to Israel, fascinating country. I have Israeli friends, obviously Martin Vett Puffold and his wife. The problem isn't Israel, the problem is Netanyahu. And Trump recognizes this. see the exact quote, but apparently he went public fairly recently with a blast at Netanyahu.

And Trump's pretty smart in these kinds of things. And I think he judges Netanyahu very well. And he realizes that being pro-Israel at this point means being anti-Natinehu. Interesting. Well, if, go ahead, John. I was going to say it's an interesting case there right now, the fact that Trump being a New York real estate guy who spent his entire career dealing with the mafia is probably better prepared him for foreign policy than everything that exists to train somebody to be a foreign policy professional of the last. Yeah, certainly better than being at the Fletcher School or the Kennedy School or one of

these other places that turn out new members of the blob. Yeah, ironically. What happens if they get Netanyahu out of there? He goes to jail. Whatever his future is. and, you know, Ben-Gavir is the loudest voice there talking about, basically, it almost sounds like he would split Lakud or seek to kick the Netanyahu faction out of Lakud. What if they just keep this, they get the hostages back and they just continue to do what they're doing in Gaza? I mean, how does that play into, I mean, if you want Syria right there to be a, you know, to become a state and to become stable, how does this continued instability to itself help at all?

Again, I don't think Trump is going to let that happen because the United States can turn off the space. it to Israel anytime it wants to. Now, it should have done that as soon as it saw what Israel was going to do in Gaza. Not just for our interest, but for the long-term interests of Israel, we should have prevented this realm from destroying itself at the moral level, which it's done. But the Biden administration, all they would do say, oh, please, oh please, it was the usual pathetic mewing of the blog. Trump's not that kind of God. He will tell Israel not a dime, not a bullet, not a shell, not a bomb, not a spare part for an American-built aircraft until you do what you want you to.

Now, I think within Israel, the moral defeat that Israel has suffered in this war extends to Israeli internal politics as well. That's something people often overlook. John Boyd's moral level of war plays domestically as well as on the international seat. So you now have a morally unsustainable situation in Israeli politics, where you have two parties largely backed, well, three including Lakud, largely backed by the ultra-Orthodox, advocating and demanding that Israel, again, turn itself into a garrison, state involved in permanent war, while the ultra-Orthodox themselves do not serve in the army. And until I went to Israel, I didn't realize how bitter the political divisions are within Israel, and they've gotten a whole lot more bitter since I was there, which was some years ago. I was just going to say, sir, because I've casually watched translated Israeli media.

and even the extremely right wing, what we call extremely right wing, relatively secular, even though they're religious, orthodox, Jewish, mainstream conservatives, their vitriol towards Herodem who dodged the draft, and even when they created a separate battalion, just so Heretti soldiers could serve in segregated manner, so they didn't have to deal with issues that violated their religion, and they still refused that there's just so much vitriol within Israeli culture.

So despite the fact they need the Haredi in order to maintain the electoral majority, there is just so much tension there within greater Israeli society. Right. And that tension can rip Israel apart. I think when Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, who was killed long ago, said, we have Israel right where we want it, where we want it, he understood the way the Israel's approach to Gaza has ripped Israel apart internally.

And again, this is a morally unsustainable situation where you have a war hawk party, whether it's Netanyahu of somebody else coming from Lakud, who stays in power only with the boats of the ultra-Orthodoxs, who won't serve in the army. So in effect, secular Israelis are saying to the ultra-Orthodox, you vote for war, but send my kids to fight it, not your own. That is not morally sustainable. And this is going to play out in very interesting ways within Israel. This is why I say that to be pro-Israel at this point, and I count myself as pro-Israel, you have to be anti-the-war party, whether that's Netanyahu or if he's,

if he's tossed in the clink, someone else who follows the same policies, probably, again, coming out of liquid, this is simply going to rip Israel apart. It's already ripping Israel apart internally. Yeah. I was just going to comment from a viewer's perspective. It's become such a huge issue that even in cases where they've had draft process by Heratim, that have become near riots. One of the issues that's been brought up is Magav, the militarized border police are frequently the guys sent there to break them up as opposed to regular IDF soldiers, which to an American doesn't mean anything,

but the point's been made out that a large part of Magov, those soldiers are actually ethnic minorities, so they're Israeli Arabs and Druze and whatnot. So it's become... Yeah, so it's become an issue that what's essentially the Israeli Foreign Legion is now cracking the head.

of ultra-Orthodox Jews. So on every level, this becomes a greater problem that just seems to become a greater problem over time, sir. Yes. Well, when I was in Israel, which was, again, quite some years ago, it was already to the point where one secular Israeli said to me of the ultra-Orthodox, we should put them in the kind of camp where they only come out the smokestack. So you can imagine what the level of division is now. Yeah. On that note, too, I would say Israeli political media is how nasty it is the average American of any political stripe wouldn't understand that the was the 73 election when Monaco Magan became Prime Minister, the lead-up election to that, just the slogans thrown around from both sides read like more anti-Semitic than anything from mine comp. It's hard for the average American just to understand how nasty their elections can become. Again, I didn't realize this either until I went to Israel.

But yes, in a recent election, one party did have to withdraw an ad after it was generally recognized as being anti-Semitic. So it does get, it reaches a point where it's almost funny. But it's very serious within Israel. The other comment I was going to make, as Pete had talked about, what this could do to the electoral coalition's number one, which has been an ongoing problem. because Lakud proper does not usually have the electoral mandate, so they need associated parties. But even within Lakud internally, Americans make the mistake of thinking that this is the party that was founded day one of the creation of Israel, and it's not. It was the merger of the Liberal Party, essentially market liberals libertarians in Harout,

which were the revisionist Zionists and other parties. So it wasn't until, was it 83, 88, that it actually became a unified. party in my lifetime and it's nothing says it has to exist forever which is as Americans we tend to assume that a two-party system is going to exist forever and that's not the case with Israel. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online. or in person.

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The two-party system is an exception. But, yes, Americans tend not to understand that. It's very interesting if I look at the current coming election in February in Germany because the polls show the CDUCSU as expected to be in the lead, which is the establishment conservative party, which isn't really very conservative. The real conservative party, Alternative at Deutsche Deutschland, AFD, is polling second. because it's a multi-party system, it's very unlikely CDUCSU will be able to have a majority itself. It will have to go into coalition with someone, but the question is who.

Traditionally, it would be the free Democrats or the pro-business party, but they essentially soiled themselves by going into coalition with the socialists in the Greens. I'm not sure they're even going to meet the 5% threat. threshold for the Bundestag because they essentially, they lost a lot of their own base by going into that left-wing coalition. So after the election, will the CDUCSU find that the only viable coalition partner is AFD? Now they're saying they'll never go into coalition with AFD, but politicians like power. And when suddenly power is at stake, it's amazing how a new flexibility can arise on these

matters. This is already happening at the state level in Saxony between C.DU and AFD. They could also go the route of the Sweden Democrats where you have an establishment conservative government in Sweden, but it's a minority government and it depends on the votes of the Sweden Democrats, the real conservative party in Sweden, to stay in power. So the Sweden Democrats technically aren't in the government, but the conservative government has adopted their policies. Those are Sweden Democrats say, fine. Again, you want to be something or do something. These real conservative parties want to do something, not just be something.

So they've said, fine, as long as you're adopting and putting into effect the policies we advocate, we don't have to have seats in the cabinet. And in the meantime, you'll have our votes. But you only stay in office so long as you do have our support. That's very interesting. And again, the average American has no idea how a parliamentary system works, so we don't generally think of coalitions as something that have to happen in politics. I've done a little writing of late for a German conservative magazine.

One of the things I've learned is, and this is very encouraging to me, is that the highest support for monarchy, the return of the monarchy of Germany, is between voters aged 18 to 30. Young Germans are beginning to realize that they have been lied to about Germany's history. They've been told that everything is just leading up to the Third Reich, baloney. The Second Reich, the Kaiser Reich, 1871, 1918, Germany was Germany was a normal country and a good country. It had freedom of speech, frequent press. it had regular elections.

The government was responsible to the Kaiser, but it still had to be able to get its budget through parliament. So de facto, it was responsible to parliament. And young Germans are beginning to realize, no, we're the real victims in World War I. The Kaiser did not want war in 1914. He desperately tried to prevent it. have seen the actual last telegram in English, and to Dazar Nicholas II from

Go Home the Second, trying desperately to avoid war. The Kaiser ordered his foreign office to telegraph Vienna and say, take Belgrade and then stop. His foreign office never sent the telegram. So there's a rediscovery among Germans that the German past is very adamant. memorable, at least up until 1918. And there's growing interest in recovering this. There's also growing interest in the various little countries that made up the Austrian Empire in the House of Habsburg. Two Habsburg Archdukees are currently ambassadors from Hungary, one to the Vatican.

And the Habsburgs take the long view. This again, this is how a real monarchy works. A mere hundred years doesn't necessarily a matter a great deal to them. They're still there. And virtually all the people, and I talk to young people in these countries, virtually all the people in these countries realized the golden age was when they were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And a while the young people are saying, can't we get that back? So some very interesting developments are taking place that Americans are completely unaware of.

Yeah, I was going to say one of the interesting aspect of the old, especially the imperial states, especially German speaking, is they had a huge amount of federalism, even if they didn't call that, where local authorities had a huge domain in which they were, through whatever means, ruled. And that so long as they paid fealty to the higher authorities, very often the emperors were more than happy to stay out of their way. Well, the German Empire was very loosely federalized. There were still four separate armies, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Bouten-Grivenberg. They all adopted the Prussian model, but they were four separate. I have one of the Spike-Telma, but it's Bavarian as the crest of Bavaria on it, not the Prussian Eagle. Those countries still kept ambassadors in Berlin to, in effect, the government that they were also a part of. So it was a very loose federation.

In Austria, Archduke-Princebridenand wanted to go from the double monarchy to a triple monarchy, where the Slavs, all the Slavs, North Slavs and South Slavs, would have gotten their own parliament, their own, not independence, but their own autonomy within the empire. And the nationalist leaders in places like Bohemia and Moravia, which are now part of Czechos, that Slovakia is independent, all of those were saying, we don't want to get rid of the empire. We'd be this little tiny state that would be dominated by either Russia or Germany, who was ever stronger at the moment, which is exactly what's happened. We need the empire.

And they just wanted more autonomy for the Slavs within it. And that's exactly what Archduke Frantz Berdinand intended to do when he became Kaiser. I mean, I have a picture on the wall at home that a friend of mine took. in the Heiastis Museum in Vienna. If you ever go there, it's the Army History Museum. Make sure you go because there's a room there where you see the car in which the archdick was assassinated on the bloodstained uniform. And the caption on the picture is the day the world ended, because that's what happened. The question is...

Yes, the German, I'm in favor of whatever restores Deutsche, Deutsche, Deutsche, Hegemony over the continent. Well, again, this wasn't exactly hegemony. certainly within the Austrian Empire. It was moving, in effect, away from German hegemony toward a more loosely structured federal empire, and I think that's exactly what it needed to do to survive. But that June 28th, 1914 in Sarajevo, it was the end of the world.

Yeah, I was joking there, sir, but... Oh, okay. Never can tell with something. But there's no question that the people in Central Europe, particularly the young people, know that things were once a lot better. And there's growing interest in bringing back what made it better. And that includes the House of Hoinsaller and Hotsman. I think the failure of the EU to live up to its promises probably had a lot to do with that, sir. Well, now Ferguson, who the very well-known historian, has written as I have written,

that if Germany had won the First World War, the world would probably have had a much better 20th century, because what you would have gotten, and the Kaiser didn't want war, but once he was forced into it, his war aim was the creation of a United Europe, would have been under German leadership, as it is today, because Germany is the dominant economy. He said over and over, and he insisted Germany back down and crises over and over, he said that Germany is fated to dominate Europe economically.

The only thing that can derail out is war. And he was known derisively in Germany, in some circles, as the peace Kaiser, because in crisis after crisis, he insisted Germany back down to preserve peace. You would have had a 20th century without either Hitler or Lenin or Stalin. And you would have had a United Europe earlier under German leadership, as I say, it inevitably is going to be under German leadership.

And in fact, the leadership of the head of it right now is German. So 1914 was a catastrophe that continues to unroll. I very much agree with that, sir. And again, Pete, tell me. when I'm taking too much control of the conversation. I don't know how much longer you had, sir, but I've got one or two more military questions. I think I'll wrap up at this point. Okay, sir.

But go ahead. Real quick, I just wanted to ask, in terms of leader development, because that's a big thing that Boyd and the rest of the military reformers talked about. On the topic of training military leaders, what would you say is the one essential thing that the current military political management class doesn't understand and or if you had to make one recommendation and how you changed how military leaders were trained, what would it be, sir? The most essential change is to realize what the German army realized after World War I and what General Hans von Zieg embodied in the post-war regulations, which is that the modern battlefield requires a thinking soldier who takes initiative at

every level right down through the most junior private. In the German Army, of course the German Army developed mission type orders, mission orders tactics before World War I, this was in the 19th century, but it only extended down through officers. The World War I battlefield made them realize that no, the battlefield's now so decentralized that you have to have at every level, level, soldiers who understand what the commander, several levels up is trying to achieve in terms of the result he wants, and they take initiative to get that result.

They take, the initiative is more important than obedience. That is the number one change that's needed, and it's a change in institutional culture. The second generation, first and second generation institutional culture, and I talk about this in my latest book, the new maneuver warfare handbook, is. as inward focused on rules, processes, procedures, it wants imposed discipline, not self-discipline. It is overall, it wants what the Germans call Kadava-Ga-Hosemkite, the zombie-like obedience. The culture of a third generation, fourth-generation military is outward focused on the situation, and the result the situation requires and getting that result.

It wants initiative over obedience. It depends on imposed on self rather than imposed discipline. And decision making is very decentralized. So this has to start in training, and it has to start with the most junior soldier or marine. The best work on this by far has been Don Vandigrifts. And his books on what the terms changed over the years, adaptive leader training is, I think, the best term for it. And his books lay out very well exactly how to do it. But until you make this transition in training, you can have like the Marine Corps, third-generation doctrine.

But in terms of what you do, you will remain a second-generation military, as the Marine Corps today still is. All right, John, if you don't have anything else, I'm going to wrap up here and thank Mr. Lynn for joining us and ask. My pleasure. Oh, of course. Do you have to promote? You just mentioned your latest book, which is the new maneuver warfare handbook that came out April of last year. So is there anything else you would like to promote? I would just say that the two other places I write for are the American Conservative magazine.

I write for the print magazine. There are only six a year. But I write roughly every week or so for a website called traditional. right.com and I write on both political and military topics. So if people are interested in what I'm thinking on current events and so forth, those are good places to find it. Well, John, I appreciate your input today and your line of questioning that you brought to it. And Mr. Lynn, we appreciate you and hopefully sometime in the future you can come back on. Because we have, there's endless subjects to talk about. There is certainly no shortage of material these days. And I think

the transformations that I'm hoping for from the Trump administration will not only give us more material. It will give us something we haven't had at a very long time, which is some developments that are optimistic in what they portent. Well, I will keep in contact with the contact that got us together and maybe you can come on after the first hundred days and we can talk about what we've seen. I will be happy to. We will just hope those hundred days don't end of Waterloo this time. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate you.