The Team House - Deep Dive on US Security Partnerships in Ukraine, and Beyond | Franky Matisek & Dr. Reno | Ep. 316

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Dr. William Reno is a professor and chair of the Political Science Department at Northwestern University. He has conducted fieldwork and interviews in conflict zones across Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for over thirty years, having authored three books: Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone, Warlord Politics and African States, and Warfare in Independent Africa. He has published over two hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals and policy-relevant periodicals, and edited volumes on civil wars, rebels, and military assistance. He is the principal investigator for the US Department of Defense Minerva-funded program studying how the United States can improve foreign military training. Lieutenant Colonel Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, PhD, (@JaharaMatisek) is a military professor in the national security affairs department at the United States Naval War College, research fellow with the European Resilience Initiative Center, and United States Department of Defense Minerva co–principal investigator for improving United States security assistance. He has published over one hundred articles and essays in peer-reviewed journals and policy-relevant outlets on strategy, warfare, and security assistance. He is a command pilot that was previously associate professor in the Military and Strategic Studies Department at the United States Air Force Academy.Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!Fabric Gerber Life Insurance ⬇️https://hello.meetfabric.com/term-life-insurance-partner-teamhouse?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=premium_podcast_vanityurl&utm_content=teamhouse____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]0:00 start #specialforcesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your hopes jack murphy and david park hey guys welcome to episode three hundred and six of the team house i'm jack here with Dave. We have some great guests here in studio tonight talking about a specific topic, talking about how the United States and specifically the Department of Defense partners with foreign nations. But we'll also hear a bit from these gentlemen as far as their backgrounds. We have Dr. and Lieutenant Colonel Frankie Mattiszek and Dr. William Reno.

Why don't you guys, well, we have a topic to kind of focus on on this show. But before we jump right into that. Let's hear a little bit from each of you with some introductions. Dave's going to do the show. We're going to do the adage real quick. We appreciate our supporter, the people supporting the show. Our first sponsor for tonight is Fabriced by Gerber Life. Hey, look, we've all lost friends. You know, that's not just part of getting older, but we're part of a generation that saw a lot of combat. And we know how hard it is. on the families when they're left behind. So, you know, life insurance, term life insurance,

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It's number one, right? In some of its categories, yeah. Available on Amazon, print or e-book, however you prefer. Look, if you don't read it, the commies win. Yeah, I mean, the only reason why you would not read it is if you hate the troops. Yeah, that's the only thing I can imagine. Or you hate freedom. You hate freedom.

Do it for our country. So, okay, before, I want to hear about both of you gentlemen, but I will think, Frankie, you want to give your disclaimer up front? Yes, the views of Lieutenant Colonel Manessig do not represent the official views of the Department of Defense, U.S. government, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So. That was very good, Frankie.

We'll see if that's enough to cover your ass through this interview. Exactly. You know, what is it? You know, they say, don't do anything your pay grade can't afford or something like that. That's a fantastic point. I was telling him before we kicked off the podcast here, I do not want to be a colonel, so anyone on the selection board watching this,

I am trying to ruin my career, so you are welcome to get angry at whatever I say tonight. So Blumenthal, go ahead and take everything out of context. Yeah, clip this stuff. Yeah. By the way, and from my back right now, U.S. Air Force pilot,

currently a professor teaching at the U.S. Naval War College right now. Well, that's not how we do it. So how did you grow up and what made you think about going to the military? And was it always a pilot? Oh, no, man. We got to go that deep. We're going that deep. We want to know you guys.

Oh, man. Will, this isn't going to get real deep because, like, he probably should have been in the military. And I should have just been, like, a Berkeley hippie just, like, protesting you people. Like, stop killing the babies and the baby seal. So you drop flowers from your... Yeah, so how did you grow up in? I grew up in San Francisco, man. Okay.

So I'm probably the most like, I don't know that this couch is going to catch on fire. I might be like the most like left wingy liberal person you'll ever have in this room. And yet. Yeah, it's a good thing. You don't want to be colonel because you're about to lose your job. Actually, I don't know that that actually, I don't know that that's a bad thing anymore. Losing your job? No.

No, being like being woke and I mean, that's. No, no, I mean, and I'm obviously saying ingest, but yeah, no, I grew up in the, in the, in the, I grew up in the, in the sexist's good bear. area. Single mom, group really poor, food stamps, et cetera. And just sort of like, at some point, my mom got me into Boy Scout. So I was an Eagle Scout. Also, Wilburne was also an Eagle Scout as well. A lot of four others in my family. Yeah. And so it just sort of like kind of came natural to me in one sense of like, I don't know what I want to do with myself. And then I got really, really dumb lucky that in high school, I got really good at wrestling in high school. I didn't know that it was even a sport until I got to high school

and got getting really lucky that I had a coach that was a Army reservist and was like, hey, you should join the military. And I'm like, no, I don't really want to be in a trench and do stuff like that. And he's like, oh, okay, maybe you should join the Air Force then. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want to like, no, no, no, you stay in hotels.

There's no trenches per diem. You can fly airplanes. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't sound so. Air conditioning, yeah. Yes. And so that's kind of how I end up actually go to the U.S. Air Force Academy. Okay. It was lucky that I was pretty good at wrestling.

I got recruited to wrestle there. Cool. And so I don't think I ever was supposed to ever served, per se, but it sort of, it matched me and that fit me. What airframe did they put you on? I ended up in the C-17. Okay. So I did that 2008

through 2011, so lots of Iraq and Afghan runs. I probably took you guys around as a point. Yeah. 2008, 2011, got over 2,000 hours in the jet, and then they sent me off to be an instructor pilot in the T6 and then I went off and got a Ph.G. That's where I met him as my advisor at Northwestern University. So I was in Northwestern. Flew a T6 up to Midway Airport and took the, took the

L in your flight suit. Yep. It was the coolest, I guess, interview you could ever do. It was like, yeah, I'm going to fly my own airplane up to your... 18 pack of beer. Yeah, up to Chicago and meet him and interviewed him. It was a perfect fit for us. I mean, it's hard to get pulled over for that, isn't it? If you're flying and... No, no. This is the best part of the... this whole trip of me going up to midway in my own military airplane along the way I stopped to go buy alcohol to go hang out with him and meet him because he was like yeah I like beer a police officer in Chicago by ends up buying me like a 24 pack of beer while I'm waiting in line to buy like my

alcohol he's like what are you doing because I'm in my flight soon he's like he's like I should buy you this I'm like no no no you're a police officer in in Chicago I should probably be buying you alcohol because this is a scary job yeah and then it was funny other people online were like hey you're buying him, you're buying the pilot, Air Force pilot, like, you know, like free alcohol, I'll chip in five, ten bucks. So like, literally, like, it was like a, like a crowdfunding effort to buy me alcohol. Meanwhile, I'm like, I'm here. I'm being paid per diem to be here. Like, this isn't actually costing me money, but I'm like, fine, you want to give me free alcohol. Take for, again, Air Force pilot. I have no problem you want to make all the chair force diva pilot jokes he wants. And I, it does not

offend me or bother me because I love the joint force. You guys do the shit that I don't want to do and I would never want to do and I embrace and I love what you guys have done. I just I'm surprised that they didn't like pack up premixed martinis for you on your trip like what the Air Force aside. They can't treat officers like that. Yeah, how dare they? So I have a question about about flying into Bogram because I know it's kind of in a bowl but is it really that difficult of a landing or were the Spaniards just assholes? The Spanish were probably being assholes. It's not that hard the land there. It's not. Like, at least in the C-17, if you wanted to do a proper, a proper tactical descent, you would just do the math and be like, all right, for every

thousand feet you are above the airfield elevation, you add a nautical mile for like your slowdown. So typically it's like, hey, you know, we're usually hanging out 23,000 feet coming into Bogram. All right, 20,000 feet. Airfield elevation there. Bogum was like, I think 4, 4,000-ish feet. So you'd be like, all right, 24 miles, you know, basically 24 miles because you want to use like a three to four mile slow down hanging out 20,000 feet above, 24 miles, idle, and just basically cruised down about 230 knots the whole way down. So can you do a stream? I thought you had to kind of do a loop a bit because of the wall.

We actually don't. Okay. We actually don't. So that was the bullshit thing. It was the speed. Yes. Yes. People, it was funny because I remember everyone kept talking about like, you have to do the

spider roll and avoid the man pads and the Dishka 12.7 millimeters. And then you actually do it and you're like, no, you can just do a straight in like 25 miles out for the Russians. Yeah, it's probably different for the Russians. Yeah. For a C-17, 24 miles out, idle, 230 knots, idle, and just throw out all your speed breaks, gear, flaps, everything and just do this whole thing and just do like a steep like five-degree fucking descent. Just glide it right in. So, William, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey. Where did you come from? You said you were an Eagle Scout? Yeah, I was an Eagle Scout along with four brothers. So we were a pack of Eagle Scout family members, good at camping.

I grew up in Baltimore, but traveled around quite a bit. And yeah, so just got into traveling to different places, doing the education thing. So I'm a professor at Northwestern University, but. work with Frankie here, looking at foreign military training. But I was going to say, just throw it out. He can trace like almost everyone, his whole family. His ancestors were all in the military, even going back to the Cussard's last stand.

If you want to talk about Major Reno, Major Reno did get in trouble, though, at Custer's last stand. Yeah, if anybody's a history buff, Major Marcus Reno, I'd say if he hadn't stood off on the other hillside with Custer, I probably would not be here. So where did you go for your post-doc work? How did that come about? Yeah, what was your course of study?

Like what were you interested in and why did you like choose education? Why I choose education? I guess I'm kind of the post-Vietnam generation. So I had different family members. I mean, you know, Colonel Reno, my grandfather and, you know, visiting. Port Mied to do the shopping at what they used to call the PX and that kind of stuff. And Uncle Jim who had the Green Beret thing. But, you know, all the signals I got was that the people I went to school with who went in the military was like to do drugs.

Yeah, it wasn't great. You know, hang out and have a good time in Germany or wherever. So I chose the education route and ended up as a professor at Northwestern University. I mean, which is a job I love because it's a great day job. It gives you the platform to be able to do all sorts of things. So Frankie and I, we got two Department of Defense grants. And, you know, I got a lot of students who are military, active military, that earn their PhDs and so forth. And, I mean, you know, my combination of camping is partly through.

now it's J-SAL, you know, the Special Operations University at Tampa. Back when it was at Hurlbird, it was what I would consider kind of more flexible and versatile things. So I'd worked with them and, you know, whichever elements wanted to request, I don't know, you know, you want to go camping in Afghanistan? How did you get to that point, though? Like, what was your major in and then what was your major in? and then what was your, like your, you know, your follow-on schooling,

and what were your interest? I mean, for the research that I did, I mean, I went to grad school and got Ph.D. like Frankie here. I went to go study some stupid thing in West Africa, but I was in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and then a war broke out, and we didn't have the Internet. that then. So I was kind of dumb animal and what I did was I just stayed. That became my research was in the politics and non-state armed groups. Oh, wow. Because that's who controlled the place

where I was living. Something called National Patriotic for Liberia, run by a guy named Charles Taylor. So, you know, he was a sheriff in the town that I lived and learned how to get along and those types of environments. Like I say, I'm good at camping. And that was a lot of camping out. And studying politics and non-state armed groups, working at, you know, different places like Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. So I'm the local context guy.

So you go to a place, you want to fight, you want to do whatever you want to do, you have to know like what's going on on the ground. I'm not kind of like the native guide, but I know enough stuff that I can point you in the right direction, maybe give you a few pointers about, you know, what you would do. Are you writing ethnographies? It's like ethnographies of armed groups.

Okay. Yeah, no, I was going to say he actually, and this is a lot, I'm so lucky I got to train under him in grad school under his, tutelage, if you will, because it's part political science, part sociology and part anthropology. Yeah, synchapology. So was there, so if I were to think of a non-state armed group, my level of thinking is very basic. What were some of the things that, like, stood out to you or that you, like, while you were there in Liberia, like, what were some of the things that were realizations that, that maybe, people like us wouldn't know.

I don't know. That's kind of a tough question because I think the realization is that you gain an understanding of the environment around you and when you shift from peacetime to work time, it's like you go from one culture to another culture and trying to get into the heads of the people

that live there, that fight there, and, you know, all the moms and pops and I don't know, guys who join militias and that kind of stuff, trying to figure out what makes it tick. Like, why are they doing what they do? And can you learn enough about it that you can anticipate what people are going to do and then advise outsiders how not to step into it?

Like being patient, being observant, looking at what's going on, being able to draw conclusions from that, and then being able to package that in some sort of way that's actually useful. So, you know, I think that, I mean, it's hard to explain in short form to an audience. Sure. In a way, you have to be there. Yeah.

And, you know, I think judging from your audience, there are a lot of people been there. And, you know, it's tough because you come home and you can't explain it. Right. So, I mean, I'm kind of caught in that. But as an academic, what I can do is I can try to formalize that as much as possible so that, you know, bullet points or some sort of longer form, something that people can understand, connect to flip that switch, make that transition into that environment and, you know, be able to understand. Because there's all sorts of stuff around you, you know, like official government things,

U.S. government regulations, and so forth, that once you move into that world, it's just like total unreality. And, you know, you got to, if you want to survive, you've got to know what the real rules are. And the main thing that in our research, when we go out to these countries, Africa, the Middle East or Europe, the number one problem we use you can, you know, we use the encounter are U.S. embassies basically being fucking clueless. Clueless, risk averse, you have comprobial. Oh, I mean,

make, I feel like my head's going to explode. Sometimes, you know, when you deal with folks like that. Because the U.S., like our power, there's such a narcissism that's associated with it. Yeah. So you get into a place. And, you know, it's like our way or

the highway. And you're like, uh-uh, no, that's not the rules here. that's not the way it works. And I mean, I think Frankie and I, we meet people in all sorts of official positions that realize sort of the way things really work. And they're very frustrated a lot of times because, you know, it's like the system doesn't allow them to actually use that information. And that's a big part of what we do, like our research, is that we're at that, kind of inflection point, I think, with DOD money, but we're going to use that money in a way to trick them. I mean, in a good way. Right. Because, you know, what we do is, you know, we're sort of

like the fish that can swim in the sea. You know, it's like for me as a civilian, like with the Ukraine stuff, I'm the guy who can go there, you know, and go see what our foreign military trainings actually doing out there on the battlefront and, you know, be able to deliver the hard reality the stark fist of reality the way it really is. And, you know, so that, back to the original question, I mean, that's my training. And, you know, so I'm the local context guy. The guy goes camping, figure out what's inside people's heads as best as I can.

And you probably, like both of you, probably have a certain level of authority that, Because I guarantee you that before we went into Iraq, there were probably some very brilliant analysts that were GS-12s, GS-13 saying, we don't have a plan for stabilizing this country. Like, we're going to destabilize it. We're going to give Iran. But who's going to listen to a GS-12

when it doesn't meet the threshold for what, like, the politics want, where you guys are kind of outside of that system? We're outside, but I don't know. Anybody listened to us either? And that's why, you know, I joked early on about, like, I don't care what happened, you know, I don't care about what we say because we've been writing highly critical articles for the last five plus years. Yeah, I mean, somehow this lieutenant colonel, I don't know how he surprised, but. I mean, I'm just a guy.

And from time and time, you get, you know, curious individuals that are generals, SES and other sort of hire at people in the food chain. and that we'll actually reach out to. It's like, thanks for writing this. I wish I could say this, but thanks for writing this. I'm going to use this in the next meeting. That's right. You get the voice in the wilderness,

people that have a sense of the reality that are sort of caught in the maze of the rules and regulations and so forth. I mean, I think, I mean, we can't overestimate the impact of the work that we do, but when we do get those types of contacts, and we can develop relationships with people like that that are in positions where, you know, maybe they are making decisions or influencing people make decisions,

then, you know, that's important. And what we want to do is as the environment changes, like as geopolitics changes, I mean, how to put it bluntly, you know, we want to win. And what we want to do is, you know, we want our knowledge, like the research that we do to be as useful as possible, you know, try to help our country do better. And I was going to put out too, and this is going to feel like your whole audience to realize it

because people don't actually realize how important this is. So since the year 2000, the U.S. has spent over $400 billion on security assistance, training and equipping all kinds of militaries around the world. $400 billion that basically comes out to at least-ish-20-ish billion a year since 2000. That's a lot of fucking money to basically have not done anything. Right. Right. That's something that, like, we tell people this.

I mean, we do stuff with it, you know, sir. But, I mean, it's, it's. We develop relationships. We arm the up-and-coming generation. We pay warlords for dump trucks. full of gravel. Yeah. We're really good at that.

Yeah. But sometimes, you know, sometimes we hit it right. Yes. And, but, you know, but that's always our... You can do it better. Yes. And that's our point. That's our whole objective.

That's our whole thing is, I think, I think about the Cold War. And Cold War was the last time we were competing. In the Cold War, we had to try harder. So, you know, we got our rules, which I think are very important because our rules are partly about our values, which is our national interest. So there are things that we will not do that our adversary will do.

And that's the way it should be. In that context, we should also be aware of where we have to be flexible, adaptable, have knowledge on the ground, and be able to move, and to be able to move intelligently.

And our system over the last three or four decades has forgotten how to do that. So our mission, like Frankie's and my mission is how to restore that kind of intelligence to the way that we conduct foreign military training. Do it with partners. Do it in a way that serves our national interest intelligently, adeptly, and, you know, depending on the context of small footprint or whatever, but... Is there... But not like we've been doing it in the past.

Are there, like, I know that every non-government armed group is going to be different. And is there a way to strip away the politics, the religion, you know, the tribes and things like that? are there some fundamental truths about these groups that we deal with? Yeah, I think there's some underlying fundamental truths. I've been doing this for a long time. He hung out with the Bush of the Dean back in the late 1980s in Afghanistan. So this isn't like, you know.

I was born in 83, by the way, just the people know. Yeah, the bad people. Like when this guy was crawling on a rug, I was in, you know, places like Coringale when they were the good people. and one of the things is that when you get into the heads of people, I think in different parts of the world, what you realize is there's a lot of commonalities. Like everybody cares about their kids.

Everybody cares about, you know, advancement and protecting what they have and these kinds of things. So I think that in a world where, you know, we're obsessed about, you know, who's a jihadist or who's fighting for freedom or these sorts of the issues which are referential to us, like there's certain commonalities. So when I think about foreign military training,

what I'm trying to think about, like when I go to Ukraine or whether it's in West Africa and Somalia or whatever, what are they fighting for? What's their will to fight? these kinds of basic things that I think are generalizable across conflicts, different people, different cultures, these kinds of things. These are the points of contact to start to understand what's really going on. And if our country is going to be successful to build relationships where we need to,

I don't give whatever about, you know, what their domestic policy is or, you know, what kind of garb their women wear or anything like this. Right. It's what are their interests, what are their objectives, where can we partner? How does anybody trust the United States to partner with them since we have been leaving our partner forces? since Vietnam. Well, I mean, again, that's kind of a Cold War versus post-Cold War. In Cold War, I think we were a better partner. Because in the Cold War, we understood what our interests were.

Since then, you know, we've had discretion. Yeah. You know, we can pick them and choose them and drop, you know, partner and then leave them and this kind of stuff. You know, I think that part of the challenge now in a more competitive geopolitical environment is understanding what our interests really are. And, you know, it's not that our partners,

we have to love them for now until the end of time. They need to understand that too. But the coincidence of interest is genuine. If we care about our interests, we'll stick with them. Does that, I mean, not to get partisan about it, but I mean, I imagine that, you know, this post-Cold War construct you're talking about, especially right now, it seems like we're internally divided about what our national values are. Yes. Yes, we certainly are. And that, I can only imagine that must reflect and express itself in these partnerships. No, no, and I think that's why we actually need to have this really tough conversation about, we're at a crossroads and the problem with the current crossroads we're at we keep lying to ourselves as Americans

about who we are about who we are yeah but also that we're not at war and that we can keep on lying and telling ourselves that we're living in this liberal rules-based international order that laws and norms matter and that as long as you keep doing this the u.s will triumph and the problem is we're not going to triumph and we keep doing the same dumb thing over and over again. So this actually takes us to the crossroads. We are trying to avoid the fork in the road

and I've been having this conversation with like my students at the Naval War College because I had this epiphany a couple weeks ago and I think you guys might appreciate this because we had this conversation and they all agreed as you guys are nodding along about like yeah, we're lying to ourselves about this liberal rules-based order

in the system and laws and norms matter the UN matters. None of this fucking matters anymore, but we keep lying to ourselves that it matters. The reason why I say it's a fork in the road is because we have two choices right now. We either just basically commit to World War III or we commit

to Cold War 2.0. Right. And Cold War 2.0 has benefits as is committing to World War III. Committing to World War III, basically, and it's not what you think, I know. I know what you're saying, yeah. No, you have two choices. If you commit to World War III, you're basically telling Moscow and Beijing,

we are fully mobilizing the West against you. What are you going to do about it? I'd like to bet they'd probably back down. You got to kind of do both. And Cold War... You've got to be credible. Yes. World War III.

If you challenge us, we'll challenge you. Right. Maybe long term is Cold War. And that's where... Cold War 2.0 becomes more sort of politically palatable. You know where World War III ends. Yes. So let's not do that.

So that's why Cold War 2.0 becomes a logical outcome at this point. Right. Because if we keep lying to ourselves about the liberal rules-based order options just ignoring we have to choose the fork in the road, you're going to actually going to get the World War III because we're going to stumble into dumb escalations. You actually have to choose, I mean, the path of least reasons right now to me is you have to choose Cold War II.

Cold War 2.0, and it means we have to start making hard choices and we go back to thinking like it's Cold War 1.0 and you have to start looking at the world in a way of great power politics. And yes, human rights and norms and laws matter. However, if we can do something in country X or region Y or this area of Z to counter and deter or, you know, spoil the ambitions or actions of Russia and China, you have to fucking do it. you have to do it. And that feels like, so, you know, I feel like both the doves and the Hawks,

and I want to lay it on a political party because it's kind of swapping every now and again. But the doves and the hawks have both gotten it wrong, right? That the doves are soft on the wrong stuff to be soft about, like cultural relevancy and, you know, these things, they don't matter. We think they matter, but to the people we're working with,

they don't, like, they have their own norms. They got their own world. I mean, this is part of narcissism, I think, of the U.S. You know, you get dominant and you have a relationship with some other country, and you go, okay, you know, we like you, but you've got to be exactly like us. Right. You know, here's LBGT Plus or whatever. Great, fine, wonderful in domestic U.S. politics.

That doesn't fly in a lot of other countries. or, you know, here's, I don't know, some other kind of rule that we think you should have. Right. Or expecting a country to have an exclusive relationship with America and not the Chinese and Russian, you know. Depending on where you are on the map, you can't. Well, yeah, and the best example, I love to give this,

and I wish I could remember how to say the word in Thai, but I had a Thai officer who talked about what it's like being competed over by the Americans and the Chinese. Yeah. And he's like, you know, he gave him. the expression in his language, but he's like, he's like, the word translates, the expression we have is we call ourselves the bamboo in the wind. A woman in the south would say she had many gentlemen callers. Yes. A gentleman callers. I mean, you know, you live in a particular place.

The United States is far away. Some other big countries close. That country's not moving anywhere. Right. In the United States, maybe there's going to be change of next election. They're going to move out. So what are they going to do? They're going to hedge your bets. So if you want to have a relationship with them, you know, they understand like the way the world works. So, you know, you have to accommodate to that. And that's all of the context too is, again, go back to like a Thai officer or even the Indians or any, you know, a lot of these countries that are in sort of like these areas of competition on the periphery between regional hegemon's is you speak to these people and they'll be like, yes, we want.

We want America here. We want to engage with the Americans, but the problem is we don't know how long term your commitment is. And go back to like that Thai officer, like the Thai officer would be basically telling our class. He's like, look, I'm here in America. I'm here.

I love this experience, everything about this. But at the end of the day, China was in our neighborhood 2,000 years ago and China will probably be in our neighborhood 2,000 years in the future. Right. America has barely been here. And there's a good chance.

There's a good chance they probably won't be here. I'd like to just ping you a little bit on, you know, what makes for a bad partnership versus a good one. Like, have you read, I think, Frank Sobchak's new book, Training for Victory? No. Okay, so he has five case studies in it. And he points to some positive examples. You know, Columbia, El Salvador, Philippines. Maybe you could, I would probably throw South Korea in there.

Yeah. Why are these ones effective? Why do they work? whereas the Afghanistan's, the Iraqs, the Somalia's. I mean, you've got a leadership in these countries that want the same thing we want. So you got a good coordination of interests. They're not going to undercut your effort

versus like Iraq, Afghanistan. You have members of the government. I mean, I work in Somalia. You know, Somalia is like the defense minister's cousin was al-Shabaab. How's that guy going to be credible? Yeah. And it's not that that guy hates the project that you have.

He has to think about his family, about who's going to be his strongest sheriff on the ground. So he's going to hedge his bets. He's going to be passing information to his relatives. You know, so he's part of the problem. Same thing in Afghanistan. You know, it's like the thing. thing that you want to change, the people who are in charge in that country are part of the problem.

Right. If they change, they're going to be out of a job. Right. In these other places, El Salvador, Colombia, South Korea, they want the same thing. So if you think about those circles, like, here's our interests, here's their interests. They intersect. There's a lot of intersection there. You know, I think that some of these other cases, you know, I think that some of these other cases,

could say the same thing about some of the programs that we studied in Sahel, Africa, like Molly, Niger, Chad, woo. It's like circles are completely apart. I mean, there's this film from the early 1990s, The Crying Game, and it's about two people love each other, but it turns out that the other partners, like, very different than the guy thought. How's so different today? in a weird perverse way.

You have to look it up on, you know, check the Wikipedia or whatever. Oh, wait, but we can't imagine ourselves not be in that relationship. Everybody else is saying, that's a terrible relationship. That partner's not right for you. And, you know, that's the way we were,

I think, in a lot of these relationships. I mean, I think for the future, you know, back to our research and, you know, stuff that we do, part of it is trying to identify what are good partners. Like, how do you pick those relationships, develop those relationships in a wise direction? So that, you know, it's not that you have to love each other,

but you have similar lines of effort. And that is a genuine relationship. relationship rather than trying too hard and deceiving yourself that, oh, I love you, but I can change you. Right. So like that never works. Yeah. Well, and I want to interject on this point because you mentioned obviously like the case

studies about, you know, even like Columbia and what makes our research very different from anyone else that does us for the most part, you use most people just go talk to U.S. and NATO advisors. Right. and just ask questions, we actually go talk to the other side and be like, hey, what's it like to work with the Americans? Yeah.

And then we delve up a little bit of rapport. It's a context thing. You know, it's like I'm like the squirrel on the ground or whatever. It's like, you know, it's like, let me see. You know, how's this working out for you guys on, you know, from your perspective? And so to that point, you know, I actually have asked, I actually asked a Colombian general, why did our efforts to train and equip you work better

than compared to Iraq and Afghanistan? And he gave me such a simple, simple answer that I still have yet to actually write this down or publish it because I just don't know how to put it because it was such a simple answer. He's just like, he's like, first off, we're just closer to your country. We are geographically closer to country.

And culturally, they're closer too. That's the fucking best part. He's like number two. And he's like, number two. That's the fucking best part. he's like number two and he's like we're just culturally more similar than you are to iraq and Afghanistan yeah and i'm like that's it he goes he's like as far as i'm concerned geography and culture that was literally like the columbian general's answer as to why we were

effective in training and equipping the columbians you know what we also had the same adversary right we wanted the same thing right we wanted the same outcome right and you know i think that look at some of these other relationships. The real kick in the balls, though, is though, after we have all this information and there are people like you that study it in depth, like we still feel like we need to have our sphere of influence in these countries. And I mean, the Middle East, we just can't quit you. We're in the ultimate toxic relationship.

I mean, my message, America, everybody listening here, America, you love too much. Are you probably America a home? She's not going to love you back. They're not going to love you back. This is why, you know, Cold War gets a bad rap. She's just not that into you. Cold War gets a bad rap a lot of times. But the Cold War was the last time we had to compete.

And one of the things about competition is it focuses your mind. And that's the point at which you say, what are we really interested in? What is our strategy? And, you know, part of the problem, I think with a lot of what we've done in the last 30 years, is we haven't actually had a strategy.

We're loving too much. Yeah. And, you know, it's like that isn't, like when I'm teaching my students, you know, about development, American military strategy or whatever, One of the things I keep telling them is, you know, it's like when you fight, if you're going to go fight for something, you have to be able to explain to people, what are you fighting for? Right.

That is your strategy. What do you actually want? And how do you justify that to the American people? And, you know, I think that gets at the core of developing these kinds of relationships. If you know what you're fighting for and you understand. what your partner is interested in, this is where you develop genuine relationships. You know, Colombia, you know,

beating the FARC rebels. We had different interests than the Colombian government did, but we understood each other. And we were fighting for the same thing. Like, we're going to beat those rebels. Colombians were good partners, not 100%, but, you know, it's like we were there

we could back them, they could understand us and knew that, you know. It seems like in some of those countries, Colombia and the Philippines are two that come to mind where it's actually preferable and good that they're like, hey, we're a sovereign nation. We don't want you guys in here with all these troops and stuff. We just want a little help, you know. Well, and if you're fighting for the same thing, I think you get a partner is a lot more confident. And, you know, it's good for us to make these.

kinds of strategic decisions because we don't want to waste our energies with bad partners. You know, I hear all the time, it's like, oh, Russians are in this country or that country. Central African Republic, we should go do something about it. What? Central African Republic? I guess I know where that is. It's central. It's in Africa.

It's a, well, it's not a republic. But, you know, look, if the Russians want to be there, good for this. them. You know, it's like, all right, I think that's a strategic win for us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see how that works out for them. Yeah. You know, let them make the mistake. Right. Not us make the mistake. China's learning that now, too, with their, you know, with their expansionism, with spending money in places where people are your friend today and they're not, you know, and they won't be tomorrow. We else let them learn a lesson we learned. Sorry, I lost my turn to thought. It's fascinating, though.

How do you feel as though China and Russia will be worried about the next Cold War when, and again, our hawks don't do it right either in the sense of people like the Houthis are just running rampant and basically doing what they want? Well, no, so I like who you pose that question because for Russia and China, they don't want us in Cold War 2.0 mode. They don't. They like us, they like us continuing on this like this path, this self-deception and lie that the rules-based order that every foreign affairs magazine talks about. Yeah, exactly. China and Russia want us to keep fucking believing this.

And unfortunately... They're changing the rules. Yes. They're changing the rules. Foreign affairs, foreign policy, keeps publishing these articles. Each admin seems to keep hiring these people that keep pushing this narrative.

Yeah. That we have to keep doubling down on rules-based order. And that's why I takes me back to this folk in the road. It's World War III or Cold War II. If you don't make that choice, you're going to just fucking lose it all. And that's my concern about this rules-based order

in Russia and China, which is, and also they have an incentive to actually shape the information space and influence operations, et cetera, to basically convince us that these things aren't worth actually fighting for. Right, right. So anytime any of you out there

read an article saying like, you know, no American should die in Ukraine, no American should die in Taiwan, no American should die in country X, if you're Russian or Chinese, you want to promote that narrative and that... If Russia or China didn't pay them to say that, they should.

Yes. And that's the other part of this competition. They want America to back off. Yes. Yes. You know, it's the United States. I mean, this is our critical juncture. Do we want to compete? Right.

Do we want to back off? And not just back off, but stay, like, completely disorganized. It's like we're walking down the street and we keep on getting hit by random people in the face and we're like, oh, just you wait. And then we just keep on walking. and nobody like people are not taking it seriously. Look, it's a hard road for me. I mean, I spend time in Ukraine.

You know, it's like I'm the guy who gets to go, look, what's foreign military training doing for Ukrainian forces in front line? And that is competition. That's competition. That's a major war in Europe. Right. Biggest war since 1945. It is bloody.

It's very different than, wars that Americans have fought. And when I'm there, I feel like I'm in the future. And then I come back here, I don't know. You know, I'm visiting a dream world. Yeah. Even anywhere in Eastern Europe, they're like, you know,

any part of Eastern Europe, you know, Poland, Romania, Hungary, it's like people are, you know, people are being killed by fucking Russian ballistic missiles a few hundred miles east of you. And yet it is business as normal Eastern Europe. Look, I just came back. Wednesday, I came back from Ukraine. You know, part of our work, what would I call it, embedding or whatever, I'm observing. A battalion.

60 days, 5% killed. Man. You look at the blood. I mean, it is hard, I mean, I don't know. How do I describe in words? you know, it's cold, there's snow. It's terrible. I mean, Americans have not experienced this since the First World War.

I don't think they experienced in the Second World War. Like the way that combat is organized, the way that people fight in the 21st century, in countries that are developed, that have technology that we have. and you know we live here we live in a dream world and you know i look at competition competition will find you you don't have discretion about whether you can opt out of this it will find you and you know it's like our choice at this moment how are we going to deal with this issue how do you prepare for defense how do you do you prepare to protect our national interests?

And what Frankie said, you know, there's a foreign interest in sort of seducing us into this complacency that, you know, it's like the 1930s. You can opt out. Right. And it will find you. You can opt out for a while. Yeah. But it will find you. And the best example of this actually, I'm glad you guys brought the

all up, it was because I submitted an article essay to like one of these traditional academic or not, you know, a foreign, I'm not going to name the outlet because you're going to, you're going to laugh at the fucking response. I basically wrote an essay basically saying that with what's going on in Syria right now, this is a great opportunity for the U.S. to basically make a better deal with the new Syrian rebel government to push the Russian bases out of all of Syria. That's right. The NATO-aligned Islamic State. Yeah. But that's important because, you know what, do we care how Syrians rule themselves?

Do we really care what their domestic policies are? Is that our national interest? No. Or is our national interest where they fit in a bigger geopolitics? political puzzle. No, and this way you guys will fucking love this shit. I don't mean there's, there's, uh, besides the two main Russian bases of in Tartis, like the big naval base and the big air base up there by Latakia, there's almost about 80 Russian bases throughout the entire country of Syria,

right? And most of those are all just a little outposts, a little bases. The response I got to this article from a very high-end outlet was, And my only argument was basically Washington needs to make a deal with the Syrian rebels to basically push the Russians out of Syria altogether. Give them a better deal than whatever Putin's going to offer.

To which if you are a fan of the Mediterranean or Europe in general, you do not want Russia having bases in the Mediterranean. That's the way the game is played. You got to compete. And the fucking response I got was

what makes you think Washington can tell Syria what to do with bases in their country? Well, we got a bunch in there now in Derizor in Altanaf. Well, you know what? And I was just so, I didn't know how to respond to this. I was like, whoa, wait. So we're this great American military power economic, like, we're this great American power. It just pans off on everything. You know what, Hillary Clinton, it's over.

We're moving on. It's time to compete. But that's a great example when we're bitching about foreign affairs, foreign policy and other sort of high-end outlets that just keep pushing the same narrative. I'm like, who do you think we are telling the Syrians? And it's like, we're not telling them. We're just accepting great power politics and reality. You know, it's like I read foreign affairs or foreign policy,

and I think, oh, this is really boring. It's the same stuff over and over and over again. Yeah, we repeat the same lessons. You know, it's a different world. And, you know, Frankie and I were studying foreign military training. It's about partnerships. Yeah. And partnerships with, you know, partners and allies, it's about competing.

And what we want to do is, like, our core mission is how to compete better. I mean, that's our little tab that we gave out, trained harder. trained harder maybe well it's actually we'll say from an academic perspective advise harder will advise harder are you sorry sorry i forgot i'm thinking more he's had a few drinks i'm thinking more in the field you know i'm thinking about training because um you know it's like you got to go observe but you know it's like advise harder and and you know it's like what we have to do is we have to recall an old craft that we had yeah and you know we've had a generation we've had a vacation from history, which has been wonderful.

And I wish the world would continue that way. But again, it's like it will come for you. If you don't prepare for it, you know, it will come for you. I want to dive deeper into Ukraine because you guys both have recent experience there. But one other thing I'd like to ask you about, you know, I talked to somebody who worked out of an embassy in Eastern Europe. and he pointed out to me the difference between how Americans do foreign military sales and the Russians, like they'll come to us and say we want like three Blacklock helicopters or three F-16s or whatever. Yeah, we'll say, okay, three years from now.

Yeah, exactly. If you're lucky. Where the Russians will say, we'll have it to you next week and you can pay us three years. Give us a list. What do you need? Yeah. What do you get? How does that influence these relationships?

It is the bane of our existence. And it's, I'm glad you mentioned like the FMS part. so that's for military sales because the Ukraine war has exposed over the last almost three years now this sort of disjuncture if you will in regards to what America says it can do

and what it can actually do and when I say that I mean that in the sense that it's very clear if we want to actually give a country a weapon system or capability we can we can't we can't it's not that we can't just don't want to.

So this, yes. This, we've been speculating and it's pure speculation. We've been speculating about this for a couple of years now as to whether there is an element within the government who sees this as an opportunity to bleed Russia and to drain Russia's resources. And so has been slow rolling the armament, you know, giving Ukraine the Ukraine. weapons, not necessarily what they need to actually get aggressive. I don't know. I mean, it's a speculation. No, no, interesting question.

I mean, you know, so if I try to get in the head of President Sullivan, and I'm trying to think. Leave Jake Sullivan alone, Will. You know, it's like, okay, slow escalation. You know, why don't we give the Ukrainians more to fight and so forth? I think that that's being too rash. in a way. I think that that is assuming that there's a larger plan. I think that like US policy in terms of equipping Ukrainians has been more reactive. Okay. That you know it's like, okay, the Russian invasion, you know, the full-scale invasion, they thought in Washington this is

going to be three-day war. Right. And you know, it turned out that that Ukrainians resisted. And what they've done is they've sort of played this catch-up to try to adapt. And, you know, it's like they draw their own red lines and so forth. I mean, if I try to get in their heads, I would worry about red lines because, I mean, this has pretty high consequences. Right. I mean, Russia's in nuclear armed power, so that's important.

But at the same time, I think that, saying that they're trying to bleed Russia as part of some kind of long-term strategic plan gives them too much credit. Okay. Because I don't think they really have a strategy. I think that what they're doing is they're playing this sort of, you know, chapter by chapter and adapting as the Ukrainians go on. And there's, I mean, this is part of the problem that we've had since the end of the

Cold War, there's not a coherent strategic vision. Right. Because if I ask the Sullivan administration, where does this end? What is your ends? Like, why are you doing this? I have a hard time answering that. Yeah, yeah. You know, and that's a big problem. And again, it's only like, I'll say it just for quick. Yeah. I mean, the average American taxpayer may be watching, thus far, it's only cost us 47 cents per day, per average American taxpayer to do this. We have weakened Russia. I mean, I'm totally for weakened in Russia. Like, I'm the guy who goes to Ukraine.

I'm the guy who does a front line thing. And, you know, so I'm kind of like irretrievably biased. There's a human cost to it that, and I'm not saying, I'm not at all saying that Ukraine should roll over to spare, you know, their young men and women. I'm saying that, you know, America. either needs the shit or got off the pot sometimes. And the thing is, when you say that there's no strategy, why would they, we couldn't even develop a strategy in a 20-year G-WAT.

Like, you know, people are kind of fretting over the idea of recalling generals and asking them, what did you do during the G-WAT to earn your money? Oh, no, no, no, that's a fantastic point because nothing pisses me off more than any time I have to go to, like, a ceremony or any sort of like formal sort of like, military or an academic thing. And they're like, and this person was in command of the train and equip mission to the Iraqis or the Afghans, where he's successfully and it's like, no, no, no, no. Yes, that's the Bronze Star he fucking got for doing that.

Right. But it was all built on a house of lies. Right. The amount of fucking people in Iraq and Afghanistan that submitted, as far as I'm concerned, false fucking mission reports. Yes. Yes. Yes.

You did train, you know, 10,000 Afghans or 10,000 Iraqis, but the quality you omit it intentionally. That's an entire generation of field officers who are groomed to believe it's okay to lie to their superiors. And, you know, it's not. It's not lying if you omit. That's the fucking. Playing the game. That's the fucking problem. And I saw that when I was in Afghanistan in 2020.

The amount of times I would see emails come out about how great the missions going with the Afghans when I was in Kandahar. 2020 well that's a that's a that's a that's a luxury that's a luxury it's it's how it's the job now because you know you can't blame bush or obama or trump or you know or whatever i mean presidents don't know everything they have to rely on you know on the people yeah but also i mean you can lie when it doesn't matter right right in the bar when you're talking to that girl what does it matter i mean it's like you know i mean ultimately when we we left Afghanistan? Should we have left 10 years earlier? I don't know. Would have been different. Probably, I don't, you know, there'd be few Americans killed in that country. Did the American way of life

changed after August 21? What was the outcome? Did our lives actually change? We have a Taliban government in Afghanistan. Are we worried about that? No. Does that satisfy us? Is that a problem for us? We're funding them, right? I thought we're giving them money, so. Right. So, you know, maybe we'll buy their Soviet weapons and give them to Ukraine. And we need a lithium to make fucking batteries anyways. Yeah. So there's a trillion of lithium in the Afghanistan. So, you know, there you go.

That's luxury. I mean, that is a vacation from strategy. Right. Let's jump into Ukraine. Yeah. Oh, yes. Tell us. Favorite topic.

Let's start sort of at the beginning-ish. The wall comes down. Ukraine is sort of, for a long time, on the, periphery of the European community. Oh, we're going back to 89. Like, yeah, if we start there, and where America starts a relationship with now what is a sovereign independent state, and we start moving forward from there. And Ukraine's relationship, like you said, some of these countries that are pitted between two great powers, Ukraine smack there between the West and Russia. How does that relationship begin to develop? Well, I mean, at least from a U.S. perspective,

you have the California National Guard have a relationship with them through the state partnership program, also known as the SPP, beginning in 1993. So in a weird way, and it was primarily Air National Guard relationship. So the Ukrainian Air Force, basically over three decades, developed a pretty good relationship with the California Air National Guard. And when we say developed a really good relationship, this is probably a good template of how,

if you want to do a security assistance cooperation, cooperation correctly, you go all in. And this may be uncomfortable, like for a couple of people to listen, you know, for everyone that is listening to this right now and the viewers. But like, when I say they all, like, they went all in, like, the current wing commander in California that is in charge of this mission to Ukraine, he speaks Ukrainian. And many pilots and other sort of, you know, Air National Guard personnel have married Ukrainian people they have met

while doing these missions in Ukraine. So they have fully gone in. And I'm not, and I don't think we're trying to say that we have to go like full T.E. Lawrence in these countries, but in a weird way, you actually kind of have to, if you think this matters and you want it to matter and you actually want to have impact and you want to, you want to impact an adversary intentionally, you kind of actually need to identify people in the U.S. who can be your T.E. Lawrence in that country, And for just micro pennies on the dollar, just devastate an adversary with minimal escalation.

Well, that's, I mean, that's back to the question of, are we using Ukraine to mess up the Russians? Right. And to what ends. Right. Yeah. And, I mean, you know, I spent some time in Ukraine and so forth. And I don't know. You know, I'm kind of conflicted because.

I want to, you know, be 100% with Ukrainian brothers. And, you know, I've had sort of on the ground experience with them. I just came back Wednesday from, you know, a place. And it was cold and changed my clothes after 10 days and still didn't smell because that's what it's like when it's really cold. You know, it's wet. You know, but, you know, what are the Ukrainians? fighting for and should we care. I think they're fighting for their freedom. I think that that impulse has become a lot stronger because one of the things about being invaded by Russia is that

even if they're Ukrainians who had a kind of Soviet mentality that being invaded by somebody and them kicking you in the face, it's kind of like you begin to think like Maybe we are people. Maybe we are different. Right. Yeah. And, you know, like, that's one thing that's really driving this. The famous, you know, Max Weber quote that war makes states and states make war. Charles Tilly.

It was Tilly? Yeah, but boy, that is really, that's a big thing. Because, you know, I'd go there, you know, linguistically, sort of my preparations, Russian. Ukrainian is not the same language as Russian. And, you know, you can understand stuff across the languages. So you think, well, what's really your difference? I mean, it's like Northern Ireland and Ireland. It's like, what, that's all that is?

You guys all kind of look alike and sound alike and so forth. It's like, what's your difference? And, you know, it's like war. I mean, that's one thing that really. really focuses people's minds. So I think our dilemma, like with our relationship, is that there's a special foundational thing that's going on with the Ukrainians.

But for the Americans, one of the things I have to decide is what's in it for them. You know, do we want to support this, not out of sentiment, but out of our national interest. Does this help us? Do we, you know, are we better off as Americans if the Ukrainians are able to resist Russia?

And, you know, for me, that's one of the things I'm really conflicted about because, like, I want to support Ukrainians. I mean, I go there partly support them. but sometimes I think I don't know you know I mean is this our fight I think it is

but when I think that I think it's kind of about values but if I'm more hard-headed I also have to think about you know geopolitics where are we in the world how does this help us

How does this protect our freedom, our prosperity? That's a harder question to answer. This has been part of the problem of the Biden administration. They've been supporting Ukraine, but they can't tell the American people why. Right. So what we call it the... That's a big problem. And we've written articles about, like, this is the anti-strategy.

You know, like, the Biden administration has basically been doing this anti-stratology, which is basically you are so afraid of escalation, you allow Moscow to escalate. That was the next thing I wanted to ask you guys to get into is this asinine conversation that we've been having for years now about the escalatory ladder and off ramps. We need to help Putin find off ramps. What the fuck do I need to help some foreign dictator find off ramps?

Explain that to me. Look, I, you know, I mean, okay, I got a chance to take a look into Russia in the latter time I was there. It really sucks. Hursk is not as pretty as you think it is, apparently. With the parts, you know, you don't have to have border control. Yeah, boy, you know, you blow past 20 red lines and so forth, so you find out what, you know, the adversary's actually made of.

But at some point there is a red line. Yeah. Right. And, you know, if I did try to put myself in the head of people in the White House, I think. Yeah. You know, I mean, maybe the Russians don't even know where the red line is. I go over there. I hope that one day is not, you know, 3,000 degrees in the intensical air.

Yeah. Because that's part of Russian doctrine, you know, escalate to deescalate. But even Russian nuclear doctrine right now is so, like, it's already been crossed. So, like, for example, you know, in theory, Russia per its, it's, it's original nuclear doctrine. They now should have been allowed to nuke Ukraine because you invaded Russian lands. Right. Per their original.

But then they updated it about two, three weeks ago after we made our announcement about allowing long range A-Tacom strikes. And I have to use long range because as an Air Force pilot, the idea of launching something 300 miles is not long range. That's a day trip. Or for me as an Air Force pilot, that's an hour or two of flying. That's an intermediate range. Yes. And so the reason why I find that, you know, and these narratives and this context matters is because when we talk about this and we talk about escalation, de-escalate, the fact that even in response to these Atacom's that we basically said, yes, Ukraine you can shoot them into, Russia changed its nuclear doctrine. Again, Ukraine had already crossed like the red line with Russia per their nuclear doctrine, which is they should have been legally allowed per their own doctrine to new.

the Ukrainians, they basically came up with new doctrine within two days, basically saying, like, well, an attack on Belarus is an attack on Russia, so we can use nukes. And then the other big thing that I thought was important about it, about their new doctrine, was basically if a country attacks Russia and they are trained and equipped and backed by a nuclear armed power, so that basically now makes the Brits, the French, and the Americans complicit. So what it does is it creates a riddle. Yes. and this is part of the problem of modern strategy.

So the riddle is you have a sort of second or quasi third world country. It's got 20 million more people than Mexico, but its economy is smaller, not dynamic, you know, has a hard time adapting, innovation, resource dependent, but it's got nuclear weapons. and you're challenging it. Is it going to fold? Is it going to be third world about the whole thing? Or at some point, is it going to stand up for itself? Is it going to be backed in a corner, get desperate,

do something that is going to be extremely unpleasant? And again, remember, Russia basically has an economy the size of Texas. They just happen to have 6,000 nukes. And that's, yeah, it's not in the top 10 economies in the world. I mean, I know I speak like a little cavalierly when I say some of these things, but do you think that's the logic of the government if there is an underlying logic that we are going to take these little baby steps? We're taking baby steps.

At some point, there is a red line, I think, for the Russians. Yeah. But we don't know where that is. So we're feeling it out. And that's a problem is that I don't think they know where it is. But we do think. That is actually a big problem. And, you know, thinking about assistance to the Ukrainians,

I don't think the Ukrainians are going to go invade Moscow. So, you know, I think that that would probably be a real red line. But, you know, we're Russian armies to collapse from exhaustion in some point. You know, domestic turmoil. I mean, here's a country that basically experienced a coup attempt a year ago. I mean, I was in Donbass region in Ukraine when... Progosion made his march. I mean, that was weird even for Russian.

Yeah. That was deeply weird. And, you know, it's like the passive aggressiveness of Russian politics that they could just like paper that over, you know, blow the guy I was going. Putin eulogized him and said like Progotion was a man with a complicated life. I feel like they should have had some folk singers marching along, you know, like,

like, uh, yeah, it's weird. Like dune. Yeah. But, you know, looking at world politics, I mean, this is kind of like this weird, fragile situation because, you know, we're moving into year three of the, you know, full-scale invasion war in Ukraine, which has been largely a stasis,

sort of the stalemate, but that's not sustainable. Right. Yeah. And, you know, what I would ask of, I think, the incoming political leadership in Washington is, what is the strategy? Like, what are we in this for? Right. Because I think to say that we're not in it,

that's not the correct answer. Because, as I say, it's like, competition will find you. you can decide to opt out but it will come for you well and honestly you know when you talk about is it our fight and is it in our interest night those are good questions because the idea of if Canada invaded the United States it's that we're you know more powerful the United States and invaded are we really different people I mean they're way too fucking but well no we'll know we'll figure that out right like we will decide that that question but but the other questions I have for

Ukraine is are they the right partner? I mean, you know, my Ukrainian friends are hopefully not watching this and excommunicate me, but like that society is not fully mobilized. Yeah. And, you know, if I'm in front lines, you know, like freezing my ass off last week or whatever this time, and I'm thinking about, it's like they're hipsters in Ukraine. They're not here. Are they treating it basically like people in the states treated the GY. That is something going on someplace else. Oh, it's more than that. It's more than that because they're getting attacked every day in their cities.

And they're getting, they are getting drafted. Yeah. And they are getting drafted. And, you know, but there are ways out for people there. So when I think about, I'm looking for a partner, I want to figure out if our interests and their interests aligned. And one of the things I want to see is, are they actually committed? Like, am I giving assistance to a society that wants to push hardest?

And, you know, I think that the question for me in Ukraine is they have not fully mobilized. Well, the question I want to pose to you guys about Ukraine is one that, you know, we had this conversation with Mike Vickers talking about during the Reagan administration. and, you know, we had this sort of strategy with the arming the Mujahideen during the 1980s of, let's deny the Soviets an easy victory in Afghanistan. But eventually some more aggressive people at the CIA and President Reagan had this question, okay, this is nice. How do we win it? And that's my question about Ukraine.

How do we go from bleeding the Russians to degrading the Russians? How do we win this thing? That's what I want to know. Well, I mean, it depends on your time horizon. I mean, we could say we want Ukraine to win in Ukraine's terms. And what Ukraine's terms would be, at least among some of them, is there is no Russia. Russia is like a big, you know, complicated knot. And you press on it and, you know, it's a big multi-ethnic empire.

and you create tensions in it, you know, through aggressive war in Ukraine, and the knot falls apart. But I'm sitting in Washington, and I'm thinking about a longer time horizon, and I'm thinking about China. Russia might actually be an ally, or not an ally, a partner. Yeah. Because Russia is like one-tenth the size of China. its partnership with China now is very dangerous for Russia because China could swallow Russia.

So I think if I want to contain China, I don't want to, I don't want Russia to get really ground down. But on the other hand, I don't want a nuclear armed power like Russia, dictating some settlement that involves the transatlure. of territory of a non-nuclear power. Like, that is also a very unpleasant world. Because what that tells me is, you know, we're back to some pre-1945 world where you can just do conquest.

Yeah. And, you know, I think about all the other countries in the world that might be ion the territory of their neighbor or whatever, and it's like, that's pretty ugly. So, you know, I want to deter Russia from doing that but I also want to preserve the option in the future of a Russia that is my partner against China. Like World War II where they were partnered. Look, we're a partner with Stalin's Russia and World War II.

Because we had a greater threat. Right. And we've actually, again, I've done sort of like many war games about what would the U.S. and the international rules-based order react to China invading parts of Russia that used to be part of China back in the 1800s. And if you don't know about the narratives

of the Chinese and how they think about... Yeah, like half of Russia was China. Yeah, and the fact that the Chinese have actually... Which it already is, because there are tons of ethnic Chinese and hop across the border and, you know, you get a pop-up city of 5 million people and somewhere in Siberia. Yeah, and the Chinese have already been, like,

producing maps and passing laws saying, you will refer to all these old places in current Russia by their old original Chinese name. So they're already shaping the battle space, if you will. Yeah, it's pretty chilling, I think, in Moscow. Yeah. So I think, you know, it's like Ukraine tread lightly. Tread lightly.

Now, that doesn't go into our work related to Ukraine, which also has to do with sort of how we fight wars in the future. And I actually think that's actually the most fascinating part is how much we spend time with, like, Ukrainians that are being trained to fight the current war, but also how much we also have to observe and watch U.S. and other NATO military train Ukrainians for a war. They don't actually know how to fight. I mean, segueing into a different yet somehow related topic, I think, you know, in terms of our work for our military training. looking at how Ukrainians use the skills and resources that we provide to them. I mean, that's also a wake-up call in terms of competition, because this is a partner that's fighting a peer adversary.

So what we're doing is we're providing support for something that we haven't had to do since up to 1945. And looking at what that looks like in the 21st century, and if that gives us clues as to the type of war that we might fight in the future, like that's like us. That's a laboratory, basically. Yeah. So that's a laboratory. And so when I go to Ukraine and I go to areas of combat,

you know, I'm like a time traveler. So I get to I get to travel into the future and go see what's going to look like. What's going on in the future? It's the past with groans. It's really bloody. I mean, it's, I mean, I came from a world where the battalion that I was sort of associated with, okay, 60 days, five percent of them were killed. It's wintertime there. So you get injured.

Hemorrhaging is a bigger problem when you're really cold. You get pretty badly messed up. There's no helicopter coming in. There's no one-hour evacuation. Which from a U.S. perspective, where you're still like, oh, you get fucking metaback? The golden hour. Yeah.

Yeah. That's all out of the golden hour. It doesn't exist. There's no goal in that or. Okay, so C1 medical care. So, you know, tactical, you know, medical care, it's soldier on soldier. You know, do what you can. You know, you got this environment where you're under a very constant attack.

And, you know, it is cold. And the cold, cold, cold, cold is always beaten down on you. and the only way you can organize an evacuation is, you know, it's like you're looking at the cloud cover. It's like, you know, what's your exposure to drone attack? You have about a 10-kilometer zone, you know, close to the contact line where, you know, you can't bring vehicles in. A lot of times evacuation is by foot, you know, for the injured person as well as anybody else. who's assisting. Maybe if the weather's really bad, you're lucky, you can bring a four-wheeler in. So you go to, you know, like frontline surgical areas and stuff like this, you know, some sort of

fortified medical assistance, you know, it's two, three days to get there. And, you know, it's like, American soldiers haven't experienced this. Right, for a long time, yeah. I mean, I don't want to brag, but I mean, I've got more front-line experience. I think than any American soldier, well, not any. But actual modern warfare, not just doing G-WAT, you know. Yeah, right, some 90-year-old guy, you know, who might have remembered fighting in France and across Germany. Yeah. So these are people, they don't have fobs. There's no green beans, whatever, you know, a place to go, relax. It's all in civilian housing. It's all in do-it-yourself fortified positions.

It's interesting, William, that you're not talking about quadcopter drones. You're not talking about electronic warfare or cyber. warfare or any of the things that like we're talking about here in the west a lot you're talking about old school warfare it's all the quadroca you know it's like i mean some of the pictures i sent you i sent you something with uh you know glide drone yeah glide bombs and i can't send you a drone pictures because i don't have clearance for those yet i mean that is you know it i mean it's like this hybrid world because on the one hand you have this high-tech where like there's no I don't know where the air littoral is because you got air littorals yeah because you got drones that are flying you know that are flying at 20,000 25,000 feet at 400 miles an hour that you know I don't know what that means for civilian aviation now in the future right um so it it's like

this whole scrambling. I mean, you know, it's like there's, there's no air power outside of drones. No helicopters, no aircraft, no evacuation, none of this. So in that way, you're kind of like in a World War I pre-Airpower battlefield. And, you know, but at the same time, like the ISR is intense. you know there's there's there's it's winter time i mean thank god for bad weather because you know it's like you've you've got an infrared and you can see everything otherwise it's like where the guy

pees uh you have to sit in a hole uh you know anything you do you got to have rev you know they're um you know, what they call electronic warfare. You know, it's like your anxieties are about battery power. Yeah. It's like, you know, how long's the equipment going to run? How long's the IW going to run? And so you're constantly embattled with this.

So that's the high-tech modern stuff. The low tech is that that modern stuff creates like a Civil War battlefield where it's just the humans. It's on foot. It's being 80 meters from the adversary. It's, yeah, you know, it's very human. The constant surveillance must be,

especially, you know, during the winter, you got thermals out there, so everything pops. But the constant surveillance of the drones, like you said, the ISR, it just must be, like, brutal. I mean, it's a lot of tension. I mean, I'm, like, still trying to unwind.

I mean, because you're always under surveillance. Like, there are times I want to go pee. I can't go, I can't take a piss. Right. You know, you want to go take a shit. You got 30 minutes of battery power. You have to go out and do it then. So, you know, it's like you're regimented by technology.

Right, right, right. Yeah. All of this kind of stuff. Yet you're in this world where you're under attack and you are no better off if you are injured than if you had a horse come and get you. Yeah. And even then, horse might be better. Yeah,

honestly, because it doesn't give off the same. Yeah, yeah. Fucking signal. Yeah. And that's what makes us so weird that we have to,

like, weirdly go back to how we fought in, like, the 1800s and, like, in 1915 because of these weird, fucked up dynamics, the fact that,

like, you have to go back to, like, that's the message I want to bring to American soldiers. Is, think about getting your arm blown off and waiting two days to get evacuated. In the cold where it's going to get necrotic even faster. Like any circulation that you stop, you know, it is, yeah, it's brutal.

No, no. And when we talked before, like, we even got here into, like, you know, like where we actually got here, like, again, maybe because I'm a typical chair force pilot, I was on the impressionant like, oh, when it's cold or outside and you get injured, it's actually better. like no. No, it's much worse. I thought like, oh yeah, it's colder. It's cold. Like, it'll freeze the blood. And he's like, no.

It's not. Typical chair force pilot. My apologies. You know, it's like, I mean, we were watching an evacuation and we were at C-2 collection point. And, you know, there's this young soldier who, you know, hadn't had a problem the day before.

and this guy, I mean, he was brought in on a four-wheeler. And, you know, I think it took about two hours to get there. And in the process, he had become hypothermic. What a mess. Yeah. I mean, it was terrible. Yeah. Yeah, because then even the rewarming process can create shock that will start a cascade.

And they had 30 people who came in that day. Do you think? I mean, just like that. I mean, that is a tempo. That is the type of conflict of the future. I mean, right now with the balance between, you know, sort of like the technology of offense and defense. So if we're thinking about, you know,

what if we have a conflict in, you know, Taiwan or something like that, and U.S. wants to become involved, we're not going to have that kind of, comfort that we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, it's going to be a real war. Yeah. So I think that, you know, the thing that Ukraine and that kind of thing, I mean, there are two dimensions of it.

One is, do we want to do it? Like, do we want to support them? You know, the higher level geopolitics. The other is, let's learn about how this stuff works now. And how do we prepare for this? so that we're more intelligent about how we approach it. And, you know, I think for us studying military training, we need to learn from them.

Yes. Because they are in a fight of our future, potentially. So we need to figure out how do we adapt to that type of situation where if we're in the fight a lot of America, Americans are going to get killed. And we're not going to be used to that. And, you know, like Ukraine's not that much different than us in terms of, like, how the society's organized, what kind of technology they have, the capabilities.

You know, it's not sort of, you know, I mean, no offense to Somali friends and so forth, but, you know, it's a lot more rugged there. And, you know, it's like Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian people, they don't think a lot differently than us about, you know, what they're willing to do, you know, what their will to fight is, these types of things. But that's the fight that they're in. And, I mean, it's very hard for me to paint a picture in words how bloody it is. No, and how much, how much blood on that snow. How much, how much, like, when you talk to soldiers who are in elements that are losing significant numbers, like, you know, they're going through comrades just one after another who are killed,

who are convinced they're going to die. Yet they fight. And what kind of support that that takes? that's a fight. I don't think we've had that. Even in World War II, you know, we had minds of support. World War I's brief for us.

I mean, it's a time that we don't recall. I mean, which is a civil war. Like the devastation that that caused in our people, the number, you know, the percentages of soldiers that were lost, the difficulties of those fights. And that's what Ukraine's going through. But that is warfare today. That is a hard reality.

And, you know, I think that that's part of the value of this type of observation. And I think that's part of the message that we have. Yeah. And the bigger point of this, too, is, and this is something that we've been trying to engage across, like, the broader DOD, the fact that, like, I don't think we've actually generated leaders that can accept losses of 5% over, over two months. Yeah. Because the way we racked. You know what? The offensive has not yet begun.

Yeah. This has been, this has been two months of kind of states. But you think there's going to be an offensive that the battle? Yeah, of course. Yeah, that they're going to change drastically. And I agree. I don't think our leaders have the will. They're all politicians at that point and, you know, they...

I mean, at some point it gets real. I mean, that's why I'm almost say agnostic or sitting on the fence in Ukraine, about whether it's our fight or, you know, whether we should leave it to Europeans. I'll leave that to other people. to decide. All I'm saying is when it is our fight, if it is our fight at some point, that is part of our future. And that speaks to, like, into my point about, like, do we have to reckon of leadership of this? Because you look back to World War II, and again, I'm throwing out the Air Force perspective here,

but, like, you had General Curtis LeMay that had no problem saying, I'm going to send out a bunch of bombers on this mission, and half are you going to die. Right. I can't imagine the pain and personal agony. He probably felt doing that. And we're going to kill a lot of civilians. Yes. During the bombing room.

Yes. And the fact that he could do that and maintain some composure, I can only assume it probably caused immense alcoholism and other sort of issues. But like, we are not ready to make these types of fucking decisions right now anywhere in the U.S. military because we have not trained or foster or developed people to accept the reality that you're going to send people to go

die. Like, like, not just like, oh, go do a combat convoy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah, you might get ambush and a few, but like, this is like, no, literally fucking half are you going to die? And, oh, by the way, if we're talking like an Indo-Pacific sort of China type of scenario, no, you're going to die. Even if you eject and survive, we can't get anything out there to do Cesar to rescue you. Right. Even if you do, because it's such a huge area. denial anti-access area. Yeah, we live in a dream world. Yes.

Fucking dream world. Do you think that, you know, we have been out, like you said, we have chosen not to engage in a lot of ways and we act like we are, but it's, we followed

the same plan we did during the G-WAT. Do you think that there's room for the next administration, the incoming administration, to, even even if we can't broker a piece and partly I feel we owe it

to Ukraine because when we told them to, when we encouraged them to get rid of their nukes, part of them getting rid of their nukes, part of their determined or deterrent was us saying we got you. Yes. There was a military guarantee though that we were going to protect them.

A security guarantee of the Brits and the French. It was a security guarantee. It wasn't a treaty. Yeah. But the assumption was that Russia, Russia friend. It was like, we got you, boo. Yeah, but not really. Because Russia is our friend. But so we owe them that.

But also, I think that people have become very hawkish in the United States without knowing. Like, nobody was crying about Crimea in 2014. Everybody just ignored it, for the most part. And now, you know, you hear people in the state saying, you know,

no, you know, like, no quarter given, like, Crimea, everything back. And it's like, where were you? Because the Ukrainians resist. We like resistance. I mean, it's like in 2014, they're not resistant. I understand the Ukrainians.

I'm wondering why people in the states are so hawkish about it. It's like if we can find a way. And so what I was wondering is, do you think there's a way for, because it just goes back to building our image, you know, to being a country that gets involved and gets involved in a positive manner, hopefully. But do you think there's a way to go to Russia and Ukraine and say, look, we don't know how to

stop this war. We want to work on some of this war. But how about we take these steps, these humane steps, that if you set up a field surgical team in this area, it can be this large, it can have this many people, will you both agree not to hit each other's field surgical teams? Oh boy, that'd be nice. I'd love that. But if you don't ask.

I mean, the pictures I didn't send you are of surgical, you know, tactical surgical teams in, you know, protected locations. They'd just be attacked. I mean, it's a word. It's a word. If you don't ask, if you don't ask, it's not going to happen. But if you can at all, like, bring people to the table. over something that is mutually beneficial to both of them. Like if a guy or girl is going to a surgical team,

if they're like messed up, let him go. No, no, I think it makes it. So to his point, what I think Dave is saying here is that I do, again, I'm speaking from a sort of a hypothetical perspective. Sure. But I'm pretty confident these conversations have. have been likely been made. Yeah, I mean this in the sense that there are certain hotels in Kiev in downtown Ukraine,

in downtown Kiev and Ukraine. Yeah, sure. They're not going to target the. That the Russians have not targeted these certain hotels. There are some hotels. If you were in Kiev, everyone to go visit Ukraine, there are some hotels in downtown Kiev. You are basically at 100% assured that you will not be hit by a Russian missile.

You only turn. You will not be targeted. And we are pretty confident the fact that there's probably been a conversation made that if you targeted or blew up these hotels, you would kill a lot of Americans and Europeans that may or may not be in government and military service. Right. Yeah, but that's so fucking retarded. I mean, yes, that's, this was fucking stupid about this. Yeah. Yeah.

But the problem is, we know this conversation must have been fucking had because if Russia wanted to kill American or European. forces in Ukraine, there's a few hotels in Kiev, they could easy fucking blow up. And they have to not. They know the address of the U.S. Embassy. Yes. Look, they don't even target Ukraine's government. Right. Yes. So that's why I think it's important to have that kind of conversation as well about, like,

are we prepared to have American and NATO forces die in Ukraine? Which also becomes this own little fucking discussion because everyone jumps so quickly to, like, NATO Article 5 and thinks like, oh, if an American or, you know, a Dutch, sure a German officer or personnel is killed in Ukraine, it automatically triggers Article 5 and I'm going to, you know, invoke the great Michael Kaufman

if I get killed in Ukraine, I want there to be nuclear war. Yeah. Yeah. But if you guys know who Michael Kaufman is, he always says, you know, when the times I'm on Michael Kaufman about like Article 5 is on a suicide pact. Like if you actually go and read

Article 5 and the whole NATO charter, it's not a suicide fact. Frankie, you keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reason why this is important to at least discuss is because everyone just says, like, oh, you know,

there was explosions in Romania from a drone from Russia or in Poland missile. And we automatically just sort of like, everyone just jumps up like, Article 5, Article 5. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Much like Klaus Fitz is on war, you know, often cited, rarely read. It's the same thing for NATO,

and the Article 5, which is everyone just assumes, like, you know, you think you know what it means, but it doesn't actually know what it means. It's like HIPAA. Yes, yes. And there's why I say this is because it basically says, like, there has to be a collective defense and military response

if you actually invoke Article 5. It's not automatic. You actually have to meet and talk about it. There's why it's important that we have that type of discussion as well about, like, what does it actually mean? is the fact that a military response can be something as fucking simple as just a mean tweet

and that's that's you know information warfare right people don't realize that article 5 can literally just be a tweet as a collective defense response and I think that's an important sort of thing that gets lost in the minutia of sort of like well what happened it seems like things happen to Romania and Poland all the time

with a missile or something like that and it's just people don't realize it it actually matters election interference then automatically sets that off right in the United States? No, because that's what's fucking comical about this is the fact that like

Russia can do all I say Russia any adversary can do all kinds of non-kinetic things against NATO countries and it doesn't there is no Article 5 mechanism for this. Really interesting. And that's something that again

that we talk about constantly by the fact that like there are things that can happen in space and cyber and attacks against our homeland in sort of the cyber domain, the space domain, that if Russia is trying to does it, which they already have at this point, we have to accept it. It's reality. We don't have an official mechanism to say like this is an active war. Right. Yeah, we don't treat it like a hostile activity.

We don't, and we actually should. And the problem is because we don't, and our doctrine doesn't reflect that, guess what? you exploit that as an asymmetric sort of loophole in the way we look at war legally. And so again, if you're Russian and China, you're just going to keep doing space and cyber shit against us because right now

as far as our doctrine and Article 5 exist, it does not result in that. And oh, by the way, again, like I said about you actually have to go fucking read like the article, you know, the articles in the NATO

charter. It also people don't realize like in theory China and or Russia could actually attack and invade Hawaii and Guam and because of the way the treaty is written because we were concerned about sort of all the colonies

being at risk of causing World War III they're actually omitted in the charter. Wow. So if you go look at actual charter they don't explicitly mention all these sort of like fucking colonies and territories but basically makes it very clear about like

Article 5 applies within like this very like concrete box. Like Conis. Yes, basically. Yeah. Conis America, these parts of Europe, and that's basically it. So if you get invaded in the Caribbean, you know, if I can St. Martin for the Dutch, sorry, Article 5 does apply in there. Same thing with Guam and Hawaii.

It does not apply to these sort of weird territories. That's wild. So again, and I'm not citing it perfectly, but I'm just telling you. you. The Chinese or Russians could easily invade fucking Guam or Hawaii or attack it, and we could not use Article 5 because it doesn't apply for those parts of American territory. That's fascinating. You reminded me with the cyber stuff. If you don't follow him, check him out, Andrew Thompson at

imposed cost. He talks about that all the time. Really? That the idea that the United States needs to come to grip with cyber as a hostile act. And these, you know, ransomware groups or whomever they are, like, we need to stop looking at it just in a, like, a law enforcement perspective. How does the whole, you know, when we talk, even not talking about Russian, Ukraine, when we talk about these non-government or non-state armed groups, cyber is a whole new arsenal for them. Yes. Right. It's, I, and they don't even have to be good.

They can hire people. They can, you know, get script kitties. They can, like, download stuff. How does that now figure into this asymmetrical situation and, and our relationship with, with these groups, whether they exist now or will? It takes the advantage of our strategic narcissistic. I mean, that you can be under attack and not acknowledge that you're under attack. I mean, that's the way it works. It's like it's asymmetric warfare.

How do you take a battle to a stronger adversary? I mean, the United States with all its power and its might do things that undermine it, but are under the radar enough that there's, no response. Right. So I think cyber warfare, information warfare, things like this. Is this, to your knowledge, is this something that you guys work on? And to your knowledge, is there anybody in the government that's raising alarms and saying,

look, we need to rethink these policies? Yeah, I think so. I mean, part of the problem is that if information warfare, if the attack surface are, you know, domestic groups in the United States. that are part of the legitimate political debate in the United States. If you want to counter it, you say, okay, well, you know, we're going to control that kind of information. Well, that's censorship.

Right. I mean, that's like checkmate. Right. That's where they get you. No, and a lot of like my research, you know, if I'm not doing like a security system and cooperation, I'm also doing information warfare. And, you know, Will is nice enough to like to use my book in one of his classes. Oh, yeah.

the old and new battle spaces book. If you want to have my students buy my book as well, that would be great. We defy. Yep, we defy. You want me to hold it up? No, it's okay. I'm just joking with it. No, no, no, no.

But you need the university edition, which is like $120. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of pick on those rich Northwestern kids. No, but, like, it's the fact that I think what's changed when it comes to information warfare is the fact that, like, American adversaries used to, like, go for, like, a political angle in the sense of like let's just promote communism our ideology our ideology and what now

they've gone towards the model is let's just chaos chaos there's a great term called schismogenesis which is basically just it's a fancy old anthropology term to basically cause schisms and divisions in a society and why is that important is the fact that like you want to just support everyone being crazy right right you support everyone being crazy take something that are already that sounds familiar Yeah, it's more than, something that's indigenous, something that already exists. Because it's too cheesy

if you try to insert as a Russian or a Chinese person, you know, your own agenda. It's like, no, just find the craziest shit. Right. Right. Like Texas exit that was known as Texas or Cal exit,

Cal exit, or as we saw it worked out in Britain, Brexit from the EU. And it actually fucking works. You just, you find these sort of these, you know, fucking grassroots operations. You try to find accelerants.

I mean, it's like a good, any good intelligence operation does not leave footprints. That what you want to do is you want to create the effect, but do it in a way that it appears to be entirely indigenous.

But does it, does it even at this point, does it even matter if they leave footprint? Like, if we know that the Chinese are funding an organization of U.S., we're not going to take action against the U.S., and then the people that are part of those organizations, they don't care where the money's coming from.

So does it even matter? Well, they may not even know where the money comes from. I mean, you get tough calls. I mean, okay, Tulsi Gabbard, she repeats, you know, it's like Moscow talking points. Is that legitimate? I mean, she's a legitimate part of American political discourse. Right.

Should I say, you know, she's an agent of Moscow? I don't know, you know. I mean, that's a tough one. I mean, yes, no. I act against her. I mean, you know, I'm doing a really messed up thing in domestic American politics. Checkmate. I mean, that's kind of.

I mean, that's a dilemma. You know, we have a First Amendment. We don't limit political speech. Right. We move to limit political speech because we think it's influenced by, you know, Russian or, you know, some other kind of foreign... It seems that we could do a better job, though,

of targeting foreign entities that are specifically trying to hurt America and Americans like TikTok and others that, like, why can't just get them the hell out? Yeah, no, no, no, no, but this is. is the other problem too is, you know, so I've talked to the folks at Northcom in the J-39. So the J-39 at Northcom is responsible for basically identifying and dealing with any sort of foreign adversarial influence operations against the U.S. The problem is if they identify something and it has a domestic IP address, they have to hand it

out the FBI. Right, right. They cannot touch it at Northcom. They cannot at that point. That becomes my problematic because does FBI have the resources or ability to even deal with this? and by the way, more than likely whoever is doing this or promoting it

is actually in Russia and China anyways. But they're coming in through a VPN, they're bouncing so like you don't know. I mean, we have our rules. We have a rules. What do you do about Tucker Carlson? I mean, Tucker Carlson, I think for any professional

and counterintelligence is like a security threat. And, you know, I mean, it's like, okay, there it is. I mean, you look at it. it, I don't know, you know, is it what it is? Yet, suppressing Tucker Carlson's speech is a big problem in our domestic politics. It defeats who we want, who we are. That's right.

Yeah. So what do you do? Do you educate the American public and say that this guy's, you know, recycling Moscow's talking points? Well, duh. but I don't know. You know, I mean, he also has points that are legitimate, I think, in terms of questions about. And this is where we have to leave with our values and transparency, and this is, this is becomes, this is very difficult for us to accept and handle. And I say this now having, again, taught at the Naval War College the last couple of years now, because I have officers from lots of other countries that have gone through a war call.

or a training education experience in Russia, China, etc. And I'll ask them, like, what was it like? And the thing I do appreciate is they feel comfortable enough. I create a very safe space. I'm very big, safe spaces. But, like, they'll admit that, like, yeah, you know, the Russians or the Chinese, when we go there for training education, tightly control us.

They only let us see what we're allowed to see. We can't ask questions. it's very sort of like transmission only we can't you know we're very controlled and you know as much as like we see the value in benefit of the Chinese and Russians in terms of our relationship when we're here in America you take us to Detroit you take us to Montgomery Alabama you take us you know obviously LA and other nicer parts of the country but you take these places and you don't control us right and you have us in these classrooms in the U.S. and you have these frankly honest open discussions with us in a way that no other country would never happen back

would ever have and never had I mean the best the best thing I ever heard was like an Algerian officer telling me I've been to Russian China so many times and I'm loving my experience here because you treat me like you're you treat me like I'm an American you talk to me like I'm an American and you don't hold back and you show me everything the Russian Chinese don't do that for us as Algerians. And that's our greatest fucking shrink. But the problem is at the same time, back to Bill's point, it's also easily targeted and it's a leverage point that if we don't, you know,

educate our own people on this, the fact that, like, it's easily attacked. Do we have questions for these guys? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to, though, in the sense of, because I don't, like, I don't listen to Tulsi or, or, um, Tarragulson in terms of, like, knowing what they're talking. points are. But it's tough too because if, like, if somebody

spoke out against the war, the invasion of Iraq, then we could have said that they were, you know, giving, you know, Hussein, or Iraqi talking points. So it's hard to say that's why it's like checkmate. Yeah. Yeah.

It's hard to say like, are they on that side or do they see things differently than the rest of us do? Like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, Scott Ritter. who has been a guest on this show oddly yes a number of years ago

many years ago many many moonsing spent a lot of time in Moscow he he was problematic but this was before he started hanging out with cataroff okay I'm like have you washed like the couch or the chairs have you sent a brother

it's a new studio you can go back in time and watch that three hour interview for yourself and you tell me what you think It's a new world. Yes, it is. What are these questions? Alex Bennett, thank you very much.

Hey, guys, I'm on an oil tanker in the North Pacific right now. The weather is really bad, but I should have a connection or at least part of the episode. Have a great time. Thanks, Alex, man. He's in the merchant marine. Oh, good for it. Yeah, man. Good on you for doing that shit, man.

Yeah. And Corbyn, thank you very much. By chance did you come across a Dr. George Babiott. Chuck. He is 72 years old, primary care physician for Northwest Indiana in Ukraine currently. I have not, but I was hunkered down in my little area. In part of our little research project on Ukraine, we've identified at least 500 civil society actors and groups that are doing NGO types of things like this in Ukraine. So if you want to actually send me that note, I can track him down.

down because we're like we're trying to actually code and identify every single sort of like organization person or group that is doing things are you tracking the foreign fighters also we're trying to yes it's a little tougher it's a little tougher but i said we're trying to i get it we're trying to so i no i that's i i really appreciate it because we're always i feel like every week a person's like do you know about this this person or doctor or organization or actor that's doing something in Ukraine and you're like half time it's like yes or no and please tell us more because we would actually love to know this person because we're always trying to figure out let you know what's going on there uh new bob dole thank you very much am i crazy had the epiphany part of the gwatt

motivation could be interpreted as a secular iteration of the crusades thus regionally counterproductive whoa a little a little throwback with a secular gwatt crusade i mean there's enough i think at least in terms of of data interviews polling and elite interviews to suggest that after 9-11 we just got really angry as a country and just wanted to fucking take it out on everybody that that wasn't on our side if you're brown you're down yeah and it's uh you're either with this or you're against this like it was one of those things of like like we had a uh a traumatic event over 3,000 Americans killed and it just is one of those

things of like you're either with us or you're against us or we're gonna fucking murder you and I honestly think when I say think to me I don't know as you will there seems to be enough sort of fucking research that's been done now like the consensus like because there's been so many articles done about this at this point at least in our field

the consensus basically seems to come down to the fact that like lots of bias in the Bush admin there was no conspiracy lots of just just plucked you know things that fucking support you know like your cause the good of war

ideological fever dreams yes and then you just basically go down the GWAT fucking you know fucking slide of just like yeah we're doing this because everyone needs to pay you know it has to be punished for this and that I mean it's a vacation from strategy you don't have to think about what you know

what hard choices you have to make everybody can be your enemy everybody can everything can be a threat the GWAT like the GWAT like the, not the G-WAT, the invasion of Afghanistan. Yeah. Was one of the best military actions we've had

in a very, very long time. It was well-planned, well-executed. We won, and we won our war. And when I say we, I mean America, I wasn't part of that invasion. Small footprint, lots of air power. We won that war, took out a queue in a very, very short period of time,

and then the party was over, and the hosts were trying to go to bed and we sat down on the couch and turned on the TV and then we, because the Taliban was never our enemy, right? That's right. So the war ended in 2004, 2005? Exactly. And then we're done. And then we just kicked it for a while. And this is the important thing that we have to talk about as well.

I think it's important for the audience and this all to acknowledge and recognize. There are a few groups that we call terrorists that actually aren't terrorists, they're just sort of like regional, local insurgents. And the reason I say the terminology matters is the fact that like... You know like the PKK? Yes, the PKK, even the Taliban, even Al-Shabaab in Somalia, even Boko Haram in West Africa.

They're not expeditionary. Yes. And the reason why I say why this actually fucking matters is because they don't follow us back home to the American homeland. This actually fucking matters. because in a weird way, they easily could, especially, like, for example, in Somali of Al-Shabaab. There's a big Somali population.

Up in Minnesota, St. Paul. Yeah, but what they fight for is they want to make Somali great again. Yes. You know, it's like, okay, all right, fine, whatever. Whatever your weird thing is and, you know, what you want to organize. I mean, look at the change now from G-Y. to Syria in, you know, recent days. I mean, here you got, like, affiliates of the Islamic State.

Are they the good Islamic State? Like, NATO-aligned Islamic State? Or are they the bad Islamic State? No, no, no. I think the best quote was from our buddy Michael Weiss. That he called them like the woke jihad or... or DEI jihadist.

We're the secular Islamist. Yeah, and it's a really funny joke in one context because the fact that like all they're saying is institutions, institutions, institutions, but you know what? Praise institutions. They read why nations fail. Believe it or not, there might be the Islamic State.

We'll be okay with them. As long as they're going to align in terms of our interests internationally, you know what, whatever they want to do in Somalia knock yourself out I mean in in Syria yeah but we're also thinking about

a fucking Somalia too as well whatever knock yourself out you know make Syria great again I don't care how you do it all I care about is you know how you align what your interests are what our interests are

and you know it's like that's a sign of the big change because G-WAT, it'd be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Just kill them all. Kill them all. You know, Islamic State. Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad.

And, you know, it's like we're not there now. Yeah. And that's a big point of inflection. And that's a really big change in terms of... Which, which again, takes us back to the original report earlier on, which is basically in Syria, we need to just engage. And the problem that pisses us both off right now. is the fact that like as far as we are aware and concerned right now,

there is no American presence on the ground, state or any other sort of like deilaternity as far as we're aware of right now. Why is that concerning? If we are not engaging the Syrians right now in this current moment other than the fucking CNN... Someone else's. Someone else's.

And again, it takes me back to my general point, which is I don't want Russian bases in Syria because that's a base of Russian military power in the Mediterranean, and it's an ability for them to project military power into Libya and beyond into Africa. It's also, though, I am curious because it's not bad to see Russia get tied up with the, like, they aren't going to get along with the Islamic State for very long. Oh, no, no, no, no.

And I think that's a good point as well, at this point, like, it's like, let them be like us, you know, back in the day. Let them step in it in all kinds of really bad relationships. But I also think there is, I think there is an inflection point that is, Russia is very weakened right now. 40% of their economy is tied up in just the war machine. Right. The ruble is in shambles.

Like, to me, if we have to, like earlier this week, I had to look into Russia, and I was not impressed. Granted, it was a war zone, but, yeah. The Ukrainian occupied part of Russia, but, yeah, I was. No, but I think that's important. The point is to point to the fact that, like, this is an affliction point, and it's like, if we're not acting right now and immediately and quickly and with allies and partners to basically push and box out the Russians from fucking serious.

and also even Libya. Like, you can force a really great fucking strategic dilemma on Putin in Moscow by basically saying, you know what? You can have your bases or you can keep your bases or you can lose your bases. But that's our choice.

And that can be determined how you decide to negotiate with us over Ukraine. Yeah, but also, I mean, in terms of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali, whatever, these places that Russia wants to engage, there are a lot of ways in which you can kind of mess them up with a much smaller footprint than they have. And, you know, they're in these places with partners that really didn't work out so well for us.

Yeah. And what you can say is it's like, okay, you know, give it a try. Let's see how that works out for you. And, you know, I think, like, recent events in Mali with the death of a lot of Russians at the hands of, you know, these separatists, it's like, it's not working out for them. Yeah. And Chinese trying to, like, set up economic deals in Afghanistan. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, get on with your bad self. It's like, yeah, we've been there, you know, been there, done that. GWAT, strategic overextension, you know, it's commitment in places where it's like bad, bad partners. And, you know, it's like what you can do is, like, if your adversary or competitor is, like, in committing self-inflicted harm, who are we to intervene and, you know, potentially disrupt that process? So I think that having, I mean, the bottom line, I think in a lot of this discussion is that for 30 years, we've not really had strategic focus. Right. And now we're at a point where we have to have that.

You know, I mean, it's our peril if we don't do that. So in all of these cases, it's like I tell this to my students. It's like in a serious engagement, you ask yourself the question, why do we fight? You have to be able to tell soldiers, you have to be able to tell the American public, why do we fight? But in a larger strategic sense, you have to be able to explain to the American people in a coherent fashion. why do we care? Why would we give assistance to Ukraine? Why do we care about whether, you know, Russians are in Mali or in Chad or something like this, rather than doing it as a reflexive thing? Right.

Because if it's totally reflexive, I mean, that's the invitation to mistakes. If you ask yourself the question, why do we fight? you know, why do we commit? Then you have an approach that, I mean, it's more conservative in a classical sense. And, you know, ultimately you end up with better partners, same lines of effort. And, you know, it's like that is a much better approach for competition. So this is where we are now. And, you know, as a people, I think that there's a major readjustment that's going on.

And, you know, new leadership in Washington. We'll see where this leads. Do we got more for these guys? Louis Vasquez, thank you very much. Thank you for another amazing podcast. Well, thank you for listening. M. Corby, thank you very much. I've been expecting the same for Kirstk.

How many battle-hardt fighters would we expect to see lost? Well, oh, how many... Okay, I mean, battalion that I was associated with, I mean, lost 5% in 60 days. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's a hard question. Yeah. I mean, the problem is the fact that, like,

you know, depending who you talk to on the front lines in Ukraine, like average, like, commander. Oh, sorry. My mic's bad. My back. Oh, shit. All right. I think, I mean, okay, Ukrainians that I've talked to, I mean, it's a weird war in Ukraine because there are a lot of people that aren't mobilized.

And then there are people who are mobilized who kind of get stuck being mobilized. mobilize because they never get relieved. Most of them expect to die. And there's a sort of fatalism that they see people all around them getting killed. I mean, I've been going back and forth for, you know, be coming on three years. There are all kinds of contacts, you know, people I've met, people I've become friendly with who are no longer alive. Yeah. And it's just, it's very different, you know, than American experience in warfare.

Do they share, because the Russians have almost like culturally that fatalism, you know, like, you know, you look at Lenagra, like you look at some of these big battles. Do the Ukraine's, is that something that they have in common culturally? I think they do. And, you know, Ukrainian folks might be. down on me, but, you know, they're also Soviet. And, you know, I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean, that country had a heroic struggle against Nazism, that the resistance was such a devastating impact on that collective society, Russian and Ukrainian, that is several generations away. But I think is ingrained in the consciousness.

Right. It's just a trauma. Yeah, so when they fight, to lose 5% of your population is a terrible thing, but it's one of the things that happens in warfare. And, you know, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, in the year to come, whether Ukrainians really will have to mobilize more. Yeah. But it's a battle that.

that, you know, here we are. I mean, it's a major land war in Europe of the scale that we have not seen since 1945. Do you get a sense from the general Ukrainian population, the young people? And I know that a lot of people are rogering up or they're getting drafted, they're going. But do you get a sense that if they were to get pressed

and the draft were to expand and the hardships increased, that they would want, that they would settle for a peaceful solution outside the border of their living experience. So, you know, out at the border of Ukraine or, you know. That's our question too. I mean, that's, I mean, when I come back to this country, people we talk to, they always ask, they say, what's your assessment about the will to fight? and the will of fight is contingent.

It's how much is the adversary in your face. And Russia is in their face in a way that's changed in the years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian cities are dark now. It's cold. The air alerts are constant. the hardship is increasing. That focuses people's minds. A lot of people left that country.

You know, I mean, there are millions of Ukrainians that live outside that are not part of the fight. But in some situations, you know, the fight comes to you. Yeah. And, you know, it's like that whole issue about, you know, the creation of a nation. This is the creation of a nation. Ukrainians are going to hate Russians for generations now.

Yeah. Whereas 10 years ago, the difference between Russians and Ukrainians, not so much. It was like Canada America. That's right. Yeah. Everyone had a cousin and relative in Canada. That border was open. But when you find somebody in your backyard threatening you who's in your face,

then that changes. the mentality, and I think it's true on the Russian side too, because they're Russian soldiers who thought that they were invading, people who forgot that they were Russian, who, I was that, wake up one day and discover that they're fighting a war in a foreign country. So for Ukrainians, the thing that they have is they have home turf advantage. They have a growing sense of nationalism. even if the United States steps away,

I think Eastern Europeans who are concerned about Russia are going to step in. And the war is going to get worse. And what that's going to do is that's going to have a counterbalancing effect, which is that Ukrainians are going to discover an even stronger sense of nationalism. And, you know, it's their country. they're fighting for their sovereignty, they're fighting for their freedom. Russians are fighting to subjugate a foreign country.

Right. That is a hard, hard battle for them to win. Right. And what history shows us over the last 150 years is nationalism, a sense of national identity, is very hard to crush. And for Russia, the fate, even if they can subjugate

that country and somehow incorporate it, it's going to become a virus. It's going to become a cancer in their own system. Yeah. And, you know, whether it's, you know, suicide bombers in the Moscow metro, you know, the millions of ethnic Ukrainians in Russia who, you know, begin to wonder about, you know, where they fit in this conflict, you know, it's a trillions. It, you know, it's a trillions. You know, it's a tragedy for Russia. It'll be like the IRA at an exponential level. Yeah, yeah, no. People who blend in, right?

Yeah, no, and that's, and that's what I think is really tough about this is the fact that, you know, like to Will's point, you know, again, I was there a few months before the war kicked off in August, August of 2021. And the fact that like every Ukrainian would, like, would tell me in my whole research team that the idea of. Russia invading us was so just not like a thing you would ever consider. Like it was just like it'd be like, and then they'd be like if you're a Canadian and the Americans invade you.

Right. It doesn't make sense. It's like we're all the same people basically. Right. And it's like and it made sense when I spent two, three weeks in Ukraine. And I would meet people and be like, oh yeah, I have a cousin or an uncle or a brother or a mother or a father or a a mother-in-law in Russia. And I'm in Ukraine and I interact with them, you know, with the Russian language.

Yeah. Which most people speak. Yeah. Which is not the same as Ukrainian. Yeah. But is integral to the way that they were raised. But the strength of the identity. Yes.

The formation of a sense of them as a people. And I mean, at a point, now where a country of, I don't know, maybe there are 35 million people who still live in Ukraine in which you have half a million of them are now casualties of war, with many more to come. That begins to transform their senses of people and, you know, to the question of what is the future of warfare there, the will to fight. Yeah. which over the last month,

polls have now come out in Ukraine that the average Ukrainian is actually more open to the idea of actually seeking peace. And when I say seek peace, it's basically, you know, it's not, you want peace, it's just like all we want is peace, like, like, the idea of, we're not going to surrender, but we want it.

Well, what they want is to want their country. Right. Yes. Right. And they don't want to be fucking dealing with the blackouts and the terror strikes against fucking schools, hospitals

and you have to like... But if they don't have peace, what are they going to do? Yeah. I mean, what if the adversary doesn't give them peace? Right. I mean, people are very, very tired. But they don't have a choice.

Right. They're going to fight. And, you know, because what's the alternative? I think for some people, you know, at least, I mean, I'm dealing with maybe a self-select group because I'm in, you know, among people who are fighting, that, you know, what they say is they say, well, what is peace in parts of Ukraine that are occupied by Russia? It's sort of this political cleansing. You know, adult males know what will happen to them. They know what their fate will be.

many of them judge it's better to die fighting than to live in that kind of subjugation yeah because they know that they will be subordinate in this empire and they also see the people who are called to fight against them you know people who are the dregs of russian society of people who are ethnic minorities people who are socially disadvantaged and they see what kind of system that is so yeah they're fighting for their freedom yeah so what do they have to lose and and and obviously back to like the losses question which was the reason part of the question was you know

depending who you talk to certain parts certain parts of the front that we've been able to interpret is like the losses is basically three Russian casualties to one Ukrainian some parts of the front it could be five to one and support parts of the front, it could be 15 or even 20 to 1. While that sounds awesome from American perspective, at least from a U.S. perspective... Yeah, well, Ukraine's about a quarter to sides of Russia, so who's going to run out of people first?

Yeah. But from a U.S. military perspective, we do love this sort of like, this weird standard of like, well, if you can maintain a 15 to 1 kill ratio or a fucking casualty ratio, it makes it better. It briefs well on PowerPoint. But it's like World War I. I mean, it's like who's, whose will to fight is going to break first? And, you know, I don't know. I mean, like I say, home turf advantage.

I mean, the Ukrainians have home turf advantage because they have nowhere to go. But I also think that... The Russians, they're invading a foreign country. They have a place to go back to Russia. Yeah. But I also think, you know, you have to always put. put an asterisk next to these fucking Russian losses because

these are not normal Russian losses either. When I say not normal Russian losses is the fact that like this isn't like like they're losing people from St. Petersburg or Moscow. Or like the VDV. But they're still losing Russians.

Yeah. Or they're losing people from the prison system or they're losing people from Molly and Niger and Syria. These people all have families. You know? Yeah. I mean, Yeah,

Yeah, or North Korea. Yeah, over North Korea now, but, like, but I think that's, that's the problem with this, this conversation as well.

I was like, cool, you can inflict 15 to 21, you know, 15 to 20, fucking losses on the Russians. If you're just killing off the, like,

like the prison population and a bunch of mercenaries, does it really have that much of impact? Because as far as we know from, like, I'm from Russian tactics, is the Russians just, you know,

like the VD, which is basically like, you know, like their version of like... Paratroopers. Yeah, paratrooper green berets. They basically force these meat wave assaults to be, you know, go attack these positions. They obviously don't say you're all going to die, but just go attack these positions. And they use drones to identify. What's the will to fight?

Yeah. I mean, when you have a command that the soldier next to you know, you know is expensive. versus a command where they're trying to motivate you to fight, but they're also trying to protect you. Yeah. I mean, that's a big difference. I mean, honestly, taking over Ukraine is probably the worst outcome for Russia at this point, because now you have a population that looks just like you. You can speak your language.

And everybody in the Moscow metro is a potential suicide bomb. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, it's a terrible war and it's a terrible strategic error on the part of the Russians. I mean, if it had been the three-day war, they had anticipated and it was a close thing. Right. Maybe at that point they could have imposed themselves, you know, indirectly forming a government of their preference for Ukraine. It's too late now. Yeah.

Because Ukrainians have gone through that experience. experience. They've, I mean, it's a tragedy and a liberation at the same time. Yeah. Because they've had the experience, the collective experience of oppression by a foreign or by a foreign government and the act of collective resistance. That's what I like about it. Yeah. When I go there. I mean, that's where I feel the freedom of, you know, my engagement with Ukrainian forces on front lines. I'm not sure that's in our national interest. By the way,

looking at our larger project in terms of foreign military training, are they the perfect partners and so forth? I think that that's a political decision for our leadership to decide. So, you know, yes, no, maybe. But looking at the situation for what it is, you know, that's, That's a stark fist of reality. At the very least, I think it's important for us to engage with it because the way that Ukrainians fight tell us a lot about what warfare in the 21st century is like against a peer adversary. It's horrifying. And it's new yet it's very old. And it's a reminder of us that our vacation.

from that type of warfare is over and that these things that we've relied upon, for example, air superiority, sort of, which is like almost an ingrained reflexiveness. You guys assume that Air Force will be there and you get it. Unless it's daytime. Well, but, I mean, this is what I see in terms of the medical part. You know, it's like tactical medicine, evacuation, these types of things. you realize it's like oh wait yeah that's so dependent on air power air supremacy and then when you have to do that when that's absent and and you know it's like okay drones and all these kinds of things are new

but um when you've got a 10 kilometer zone where the evacuation of the critically wounded soldier may be by foot you know that's like ancient Greece yeah you know fighting the persian or something like that, because that's what you have. I mean, you might have a few techniques and a few drugs and things like that that'll sustain in that. But that foot travel is just that. What else do we have for these guys? Because it's starting to get rid of it. Yeah, we got to get back to.

RS, thank you, Mesh. Dave, please let Malcolm Nance know that Sniper is out on all digital platforms. sniper is an outstanding film with Tom Barringer It's not a serious Yes You're deeper to the series I've seen all 10 Yes

I have my I have my card punched And I will let him know that I'm sure that he will have some Solid critique for the sniper tactics Used in that M Corbin, thank you very much Thank you for answering my question Do you know

Dee did we have anything on Patreon No Okay cool Guys both of your work is non-classified and published publicly. Where can people go to find, like, if they're interested in these topics and the types of things that you write about, where can they find you? I honestly, Will Reno and Jar, I'm at a sec? Yeah, I know.

We should keep a page and consolidate all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's... There's not a repository. Oh, good Lord. Caught us with our pants down. I mean, it's one of the things we've been thinking about. We've got to get it. We got to get it.

Yeah, we have to do it. But Google us, you know, what's our best and greatest? I mean, you and J. Man's book. I mean, like, war. Yeah, like, yeah, like we published in, you know, Wall Street Journal, foreign affairs, Modern War Institute, War in the Rocks. Like, I mean, like, the good thing for you guys, you know, if you're watching us right now, there's only one jihara madasek in the whole world so more than likely if you type in jihara mattesek

you'll find my stuff and you'll find will reno stuff because you'll find me but you know problem there's reno nevada yeah yeah that's always the problem so at least like you know just name for relative by and and it goes to my apologies that if you logged on hoping to see like an actual jihara i do not look like mea califa my apologies and if you're like Laughing about that, me Khalifa joke, you should delete your browser history. Our audience is well familiar. Wait, were we talking about? Mia Khalifa.

Yeah, way to play that one off, Dave. Way to play that off. Very smooth. I'm pure. You're teaching at Northwestern. What class can you teach? Where should students go to sign up for your classes? Well, I teach a course called the American Way of War.

and it's about the evolution of American military strategy and teach courses of politics of violence and other things that don't always fit neatly in the curriculum but things are like to engage students. Guys, final thoughts, we've kept you for like almost three hours here. No, this is impressive. I thought it was like 9 o'clock. It was a great conversation.

If you have any final thoughts, I'd love to hear you share them. But I think the final thing that I have anyways, I'd like to hear you articulate if you were President Sullivan and you had to articulate this argument or this point that you've made during this interview that it's important for our government to articulate to the public why we're supporting Ukraine and what the point is. If you were to make that argument to the American public, what would you say? and you're on the board of a major defense contractor,

so it's in your benefit to keep it going. No, if I'm honest about it, because I could have a Ukrainian point of view. Like a pragmatic point of view. Because I'm often there and among Ukrainians that are fighting. If I'm honest about it, I think that part of it's about credibility. I mean, we're in Russia's face,

at this point, so that's already an established fact, and we can't sort of back, sort of rerun that phase of history again. I think it's important to show China that our commitment to Ukraine may be like our commitment to Taiwan. So, you know, I think that that's a factor, or our commitment to Philippines or Japan or South Korea. So if we think that that's important, we should think that Ukraine is important. I think that solidarity with our NATO partners and allies, that that's a thing.

I think that withdrawing from Ukraine also inherently means withdrawing from Europe to some extent. So we have to think would Europe without American strategic presence be a better or worse place to be, you know, and would that affect us? So I think there'd be pretty serious consequences for that. But at the same time, our objectives are not the same as Ukraine's objectives. I don't think that our definition of winning is the same as theirs. Yep. So, yeah, I mean, that's part of it too. So I don't know where that ultimately leads,

but I think it's important to explain to the American people what all of this assistance is actually about, you know, why it should matter to them. you know, notice in my explanation I've tried not to be sentimental. Because I think that being sentimental, you know, which I will be on a personal level, very deeply so. But that's my commitment. That's not my country's commitment. My country's commitment is about its interests and about its security and, you know, its protection. So, you know, defining our engagement with Ukraine, you know, I think that that's,

ultimately what it's about. Yeah. And, you know, and if I had to, like, give sort of, like, my sort of more American military perspective is, yes, I want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, but what does that look like? And, you know, at a personal level, if I could be, you know, a general or a czar for the day

and basically dictate the events in Ukraine right now, it would in my mind what i think would be achievable was basically push all russian forces out of all of ukraine except for probably kermia and probably the far eastern parts of of ukraine as well so you have to almost accept the fact that like there are places like kremia even if we actually from a western perspective actually could actually put like that part of of ukraine under under duress and actually stress it and actually push, you know, all the Russians out, that's not really practical. It's not.

And, you know, so, you know, you have to live in the world of practicality and the fact that, like, yeah, at this point, you may have to accept at this critical juncture is you're going to fight for whatever ever land you can get until January 20th. when Trump becomes president, and then the next day, everything might just fucking freeze in place. And we have to accept it, and that might be what it becomes. And that's a harsh reality that I don't think enemies like, but it might become the reality. So, you know, if you're Russian or Ukrainian right now, that's what you're fighting for. You're fighting for leverage of whatever happens on January 20th, on the 20th and 21st is right now.

Well, the underlying factor, though, too, is their will to fight, yes. I mean, if we're going to assist the Ukrainians, I want to see evidence of their will to fight. Yeah. I don't want Afghanistan. I don't want Iraq or anything like that. Which means you have to mobilize younger people, not just right now the average age of the average conscript in Ukraine is like 45, 46. Wow. That's highly problematic.

Yeah, it makes me feel good, you know, when I'm there, because I'm, like, whoa, there are a lot of people like me. Wow, that's wow. It's an interesting experiment that do older soldiers make smarter soldiers? Which we've actually asked like the Brits and the Germans and the Poles, what's it like to train a younger Ukrainian versus an older Ukrainian? And they say, well, the younger the Ukrainian, the more cowboy they are, the older the Ukrainian, the more sort of like reserved and sort of like thinking through.

In this type of warfare. They think about it and they don't like taking risks. In this type of warfare with the technology of warfare, in some ways I think older might be better. It's not sort of hand-to-hand combat. It's, you know, looking at the technology, I mean, this last trip, you know, visiting Ukrainian bomb factories,

visiting drone innovation cells. and so forth. Like that type of skill, that type of expertise takes years of training. And, you know, it's not a war for 19 or 21-year-olds. It's, you know, it's a more adult war now. Mind you and, you know, when it's 10 degrees Fahrenheit and the snow's blowing and humidity is 100%. And you've been out there for a bunch of days,

know, when you're in your 40s and 50s, it's maybe a little different. Yeah, and your bones. It is in your bones. And I'm 62 years old, and I felt very cold. And I think I'm still fucking freezing. Fire maneuver must be very loud. I'll be, ugh. Hips popping.

Yeah. The groaning. It's, it's, you know, there are a lot underlying health conditions. Yeah, you know, you see all, I mean, you see soldiers that are having difficulties where at first you're kind of thinking it's about the situation that they're actually in. But then you realize it's like, oh, no, that's actually an underlying condition. Yeah, it's just arthritis and knees. Yes, the arthritis. And I mean, the oldest, I think we met in the training programs of 72.

and I've definitely met soldiers in their 60s. I've met Afghan war veterans. It warms my heart. People who are in Afghanistan, same time I was in Afghanistan, Soviet period, that are, you know, it's like, you know, I can have a reunion. And, you know, it's like you're warm as my war.

Yeah. This is fucking, again, how the world turns. You fought Afghanistan in the 80s, and now you're fighting Ukraine against Russia in 2024. That's fucking insane. I mean, one of the things I like to do is visit Afghan War memorials, you know, different Ukrainian towns. I mean, these are sort of, there's a Soviet aesthetic to them. But I always zero in on them and try to take a photo because, you know, it's like in a way, I don't, you know, do I feel kinship with Soviets or am I feeling kinship with Russians or Ukrainians?

It doesn't really matter because it's the Afghan war and, you know, that's the human aspect of it. Sort of the perversity of modern politics that here we are. Everybody pulling on the same thread at different points of time. Yep. Well, thank you guys for coming in and having this conversation with us. And, you know, hearing some point of views that people don't normally get to hear. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

All right, well, happy to Abledge. Yeah, I mean, I We thought we'd be here an hour in this Yeah, good luck. And I'm like almost like three hours. And I hope you're like your, you know, your fans have all jumped off.

No, no, this was a really great conversation. Yeah, it was fantastic. And, yeah, I would love to have you guys back again sometime. All right. Oh, no, it's awesome. It's fucking Russ. Well, his brother is Rusty Reno, who has his little, you know,

know, this little journal, you know, first, you know, first things, a little Catholic journal. A little Catholic journal. It's like the founding journal, the Catholic Church. The founding journal, the Catholic Church. About American foreign policy, but through a Catholic lens. No, no, this has actually been like really fucking fantastic. I didn't realize that we were about this stuff until like a fantastic conversation. We got to blow.

We got to get back. Yeah, his brother lips in. over in Manhattan. No shit. Okay. Awesome. Sutton Place. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

North of the U. This was fantastic because, like, we... We got to go to Germany tomorrow. We got to go to say... Oh, my God. We're about to go see Ukrainians get trained tomorrow. U.S. Army. Poveria.

Yeah. All right. Well, we'll let you guys go, man. Thank you for spending so long with us. Well, thanks for tolerating us. For Monday, we're going to be back with Wade Ishimoto. Here's a Planko. owner in Delta Force. I'm like two-thirds of the way through his book. It's called the In Toku

Code. Just got part through the Eagle Claw part of it. So that's coming up on Monday. Really excited to talk to him. And then on Friday, I believe it's Andrew Bragg. And I think you have his book. The 80-second. Oh, the 80-second airborne guy. So we'll have him on Friday. Otherwise, everyone have a nice weekend out there. Thanks for joining us tonight. All right. Take care. Cheers.