Everything is Going to Hell Part II

Welcome to shield of the Republic of Podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that has strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic. Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic and budgetary assessments, Bulwark contributor, and a non resident fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m joined once again fresh from his book tour For by my partner in this enterprise Elliot Cohen to Robert E Ozgood professor of strategy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. And the Arleigh Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliot How goes the book tour?

Well, first, of course, you know, I’m still basking in the the glow of, the podcast that we did together on the book with with Ken Edelman. So everything was bound to be downhill from that. You know, the odd thing about, the way they do books now is, unless it’s gonna be some monumental seller. They don’t actually send you an on a real book tour. What you end up doing is a lot of podcasts.

And I’ve begun doing those and, you know, then various, lectures around town. But, most of the time, I sit here drumming my fingers on the desk, waiting for the reviews to drop. We’ve got a couple of very nice reviews in, American purpose and from, liberal patriot. But we’re waiting for the heavy hitters. And so, you know, just kinda wait for that.

But it is a very helpful distraction from What a miserable world it is out there, my friend.

Yeah. You know, the whole world on fire, you know, comes to mind. You know, let me ask you something. I, you know, I did a conversation with Bill Crystal, yesterday that posted today, and I I I’d put out a proposition. I’d I’d be interested if you agree or or not, which was I went back to the old broken window theory of James q Wilson and, George Kelly, a number of years back.

Who who writing in the context of domestic policy rather than international affairs, you know, which was that if you you know, if you’re in a neighborhood and there’s a broken window in a warehouse or a building and you don’t fix it right away pretty soon. You’re two broken windows and or not too long. There’s a a sense of disorder and and, lack of confidence in in the police that develops and and you end up with, you know, a crime ridden neighborhood. And I’ve always had the sense that, you know, broken window theory applied in the international seen as well, and that, you know, it takes a lot to maintain the global order, but once it starts to break down, you know, you start to see the breakdown sort of, you know, metastasized to other places. And when you kind of look around the globe now, whether it’s the biggest war in Europe since the end of world war two or, you know, potential for a major regional war.

In the Middle East or Chinese maritime militia, coast guard activity, and the second Thomas Shole, and, you know, the Philippines, and then, you know, a lot of a lot of other places around the world are are intrepid producer at a sub stack piece yesterday about all the other places where there is conflict, whether it’s the potential for the Nagorno Karbach conflict to spread because of Azerbaijan’s, increasing appetite for revanchism. I mean, all of this seems to me to be kind of, out there. So Two questions for you. One, does broken window theory apply here in your view? And second, as you know, there was a vogue of political science IR literature, you know, about twenty, thirty years ago, said territorial con conquest is passe.

You know, we live in a world of trading states, and states don’t really benefit from territorial conquest anymore. I don’t know. It seems to me that territorial conquest seems to be back on the agenda. So you know, just just curious about those two social science items and how they apply to the real world in your view.

Well, the just on the last, you know, the particularly vulgar impression of that was, Tom Friedman’s, big Mac thesis, which is, you know, countries with, with, which have McDonald’s don’t go to war with each other. And that of course, went out the window. I think it was during the, Bosnian conflict in the mid nineties. You know, on on broken windows, what’s interesting, of course, is, people paid attention to that for a while, and it may among other things. I think it that approach to policing made New York an infinitely more pleasant place than what I remember from when I first visited the nineteen seventies, and then everybody said that that’s awful.

And, stop doing it. And I think, you know, if you look at crime rates in our great cities, you’d say, you know, broken windows policing deserves a second look. I, for sure, I, I think it applies. You know, I you you reference political science and the, international relations literature. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why I think of myself as an historian and not a political scientist, but the the one exception of political philosophy.

And and that’s one reason. I’ve I’ve I believe I’ve mentioned this before in the podcast. I’m looking right now at my bookshelves, and there’s this phenomenal two volume work on, interwar diplomacy. By the great scholar, Sarah Longwell, who died not long ago. Volume one is the lights that failed, and the second volume is the triumph of the dark.

So I confess that my the way I’ve, you know, framed this mentally is, not so much in terms of our theory for which I have very little use. But in terms of history, and, you know, we’re are we in the nineteen thirties again? No. But but are there some disturbing parallels and similarities. Yes.

And of course, the the big difference well, there are many big differences. I mean, there isn’t really a a competing ideology out there, that there’s some very nasty ideologies. But the other thing is there’s you know, back in those days, you could say, well, you could hope. And maybe the United States will kinda jump in and rescue the situation. You know?

There’s no United States behind the United States. So so much of this really does fall on us. And what I what I find striking about our current predicament is, and you and I have discussed this a lot. And the Ron DeSantis administration does kind of do the right thing. It does it frequently does it too little or too late or does it and then pulls back.

And I would say that’s sort of the case with, Ukraine, with Israel with, with with China, But but what they have not been willing to do, is even though they’re willing to sort of talk to the American people to some extent, about the nature of these problems is to say, you know what? We we have a serious multi front challenge, and we have to think about it that way. And that may actually require that we spend a lot of money, and that we do things differently. So I think they’re I I what I The metaphor that troubles me more than, broken windows is, sleepwalking. I I still have a feeling that there’s there’s an element of sleepwalking in what we’re doing in the world.

And that’s what I find distressing. Now maybe we’ll get lucky and hang in there, but that’s, that’s my concern. It’s not that any of these problems are in Super Bowl. I don’t believe that any of them are. Do you?

No. I don’t but first of all, I think all problems with, you know, sufficient, will and with sufficient effort and a right mix of you know, approaches and capabilities can be dealt with. I mean, it was very fashionable for instance. A decade ago when the civil war in Syria was going on to say there is no military solution. And if we provide more, you know, aid to the Syrian, moderate opposition, such as it was, it’ll only prolong the suffering and the make the war go longer.

So we shouldn’t, you know, shouldn’t get involved. And we didn’t get involved. And, you know, that didn’t stop actually the suffering or, you know, shorten a conflict by any means. And then in twenty fifteen, summer of twenty fifteen, you know, together with with Gossum Soleimani, vladimir Putin said, oh, yeah. I know there is a military solution.

If you’re willing to ruthlessly apply military power, you know, you know, to the problem. And I say that because among other things, as horrible as the collateral damage undoubtedly is in Gaza today. Although, like president Biden, I don’t know that I, would accept at face value the, you know, numbers being bandied about by the Gaza you know, ministry of health, which I think has a terrible track record of providing numbers. But, you know, I think one can stipulate that there is you know, civilian suffering going on, and a lot of this is because of Hamas, of course, because they’re putting military, equipment, you know, that is gonna be targeted in the midst of, you know, hospitals or schools and all of that. But You know, the numbers of people killed in the Syrian Civil War, the number of hospitals bombed in the Syrian Civil War was you know, infinitely larger than what we’re seeing here.

And yet, you know, people are blithely throwing around terms like genocide, for what’s going on here when they were utterly and totally silent, a decade ago about what was going on in Syria, which I think is you know, I’m a mark of both the lack of intellectual seriousness with which a lot of people are, you know, dealing with these problems and and, commenting on them and the fact that there is no longer any kind of real governor on who gets to comment on anything because you know, while it’s good that, you know, modern social media has had a democratizing effect, it also has a downside, which is that you know, anybody’s opinion now can be amplified, you know, well beyond, what it’s worth. You know, Dean Attchison used to say, I don’t count heads in my staff meeting. I weigh them. You know?

What a great line. That’s all true, but I think there’s another element as well, which is, I mean, Israel has always come in for much more critical attention than other places. It’s occasionally deserved some of that, not all of it, but some of it for sure. But but I think you are seeing now. And, actually, maybe we could talk about that a little bit.

There’s a kind of virulence on the street, which is Let’s face it is about antisemitism. I mean, they’re, I think the the the extinction that is often being drawn between well, I’m I’m just hot critical of Israel, as opposed to, I have the thing about Jews is it was always somewhat specious, but I think now it really is. And we’re just seeing it in a number of very disturbing manifestations. You know, we see it in the streets. We see it in campuses.

You know, we see it in Namov in Sydney chanting gas the Jews. We see it in slogans, which are not about You know, we want a a different kind of two state solution than somebody else wants, but we want, you know, the the stuff Palestine will be free from the, ocean from the

river to the sea. Yeah.

What what that means is that means No Israel. Destroying the state of Israel. No Jews right there. That’s what it’s about. It’s, you know, people willfully disregarding all the things that are in the the mass covenant and and so on and so forth.

And, you know, and I know just from from family members and friends, you know, particularly on college campuses, a lot of there’s a lot of bad stuff going on. I mean, death threats, bomb threats, you know, really kind of open hostility, and it’s We’re not talking here about reasonable shades of disagreement about what Israel should do or something. It’s it’s something that’s vile and nasty. And pervasive. And I think most I I do believe most Jews look at this and say, no.

This is not just you know, people being unhappy with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It’s something much older, much darker much more menacing. And last I’ll just mention it, but we just saw this, you know, it’s it is around the world. You see it in a number of different place. Is, you know, in London, please tell Jewish kids don’t wear Yarmulkes.

And then we, you know, we just had an attempted pogrom in, Russia. I mean, a real program where you

In dagestan. Yeah.

Yeah. In dagestan, we have mobs, you know, storming planes saying, you know, we want the Jews. We wanna kill them.

Yeah. I mean, just the other night at my alma mater, I mean, there were, you know, serious threats against the center for Jewish living. Which now has campus police protection. I mean, the president of the university, after that did come out with a, you know, a pretty good statement about, you know, we won’t tolerate this, but to your point, the posts on this web forum that were so concerning. Weren’t about we oppose Israel’s policies and the Middle East.

It was about we’re gonna kill Jews. Yeah. And it’s it it is it is very concerning. And, I mean, I don’t wanna you know, I don’t want to just single out my alma mater. Yours hasn’t covered itself with glory either.

No. They actually I I I I’ve I’ve found the Harvard Presidents letter particularly offensive because she she’s always, you know, this university has a terrible history of dealing with the Jews. Now, you know, Her her predecessor was Jewish. Larry Summers, was Jewish. Henry Rasofsky was the dean of the faculty when I was there, Jewish, And and, you know, this stuff just happened to erupt on her watch, and you would think that there would be some sense of of personal accountability.

Yeah.

Now what I would like to say is, look, I mean, let me give you my bottom line, which is having thought hard about this, and among other things just living it as a, very identified Jew. Look, you know, I’m the guy who, when he goes to Rome, always makes a point of going to the arch of Titus. And looking at it, you know, with the relief of the, you know, all the,

Jewish slaves

paraphernalia of the, temple and Jewish slaves being lit off, judea, Kapta. It’s a and there’s a part of me that just says, okay, Empertitis. We’re still around. Where’s your freaking empire?

Right.

But so, you know, the Jews will survive and they will actually at a certain level flourish despite this. I mean, we’ve gone through worse things. But what I what I’d like to ask you, and I was wondering if we could talk about this. First, how much does it matter? And secondly, where does it come from?

Let me start with the first question. I’m not sure I have a good answer to the second. The first question is I do think it matters because if there’s anything that, you know, conservatives are supposed to believe, It’s what Richard Weaver argued many years ago, you know, ideas have consequences and words have consequences. And maybe it’s because so much of my recent reading has been, you know, focused on the third reich, you know, I’ve been reading, David Stahl’s book. Both of us, I think, have been looking at it, the, book about Operation Barber Rosa, and What’s interesting is how, you know, how much, you know, Hitler’s ideology ultimately really mattered.

Been reading the Brendan Simms biography, which is actually not so much a biography as it is a kind of ideological study of of Hitler. Which made me go back and look at Michael Burley’s, earlier a book on the racial state You know, these ideas get loose and people poo poo them and say, well, you know, only nut cases believe this or it’s very fringe, you know, or whatnot, you know, and then I, you know, pick up the financial times today, and I see that one of the AFD guys who got elected to the Bavarian parliament’s been arrested because, you know, he’s got Nazi literature. He was part of a, you know, you know, political group inside the AFD that was, you know, retailing Nazi political literature. So, I mean, I think and then you start seeing all these people making these threats. I mean, I I think it’s very concerning.

And and people ought to be concerned about it, and people ought to be denouncing it, by the way, on both sides of the aisle, because both parties have this, you know, in them, and You know, you and I have spent a lot of time in the last, you know, seven years denouncing people in a political movement we were involved in, you know, who have, you know, essentially become an anti democratic threat you know, they represent an anti democratic threat of authoritarianism. I think it’s time that on the other side of the aisle, people you know, started calling us out. Some of that’s begun to happen, but it’s still I just saw, for instance, that, you know, someone who is gonna run against Josh Holly has now decided he’s gonna run against Corey Bush. You know, for the house seat rather than the Senate, because of her position on, the Middle East. That’s great.

But I think there needs to be more of it. Where it comes from? I I you know, I’m not sure I can answer that, Elliot. I I I don’t know. I’m I think it comes from the same place that a lot of the other kind of lunatic ideas we see around come from.

Right? You know, some of the crazy anti vax stuff. Some of the, you know, Alex Jones conspiracy theories. I mean, all there all these things seem to always end up in anti Semitism or or adjacent to anti Semitism, but where it all comes from? I I just I don’t know.

So I, first, I’m maybe I’ll start the other way around with where it all comes from. It it is the oldest hatred I think. I mean, it’s present in many ways. It was a very, very good, issue of a journal that’s edited by our friend, Brett, Stephens. We ought to have on just on the subject of anti Semitism, and he has a quite an arresting thesis on this.

And then rather than try to summarize it, I think, would be good if we could bring Brett. Bring him to the yeah. I think and I’m sure Brett would be willing to do that. You know, it comes in many different flavors on the right and on the left. It is there are deep religious roots in both Christianity and Islam, not, you know, all the way through, but but they’re they’re definitely there, and they’ve always been there.

I mean, the idea that Islam was ever kind of pro Jewish, I think is not not really true, although Jews had somewhat easier time under some Muslim regimes in the middle ages than, under most Christian, regimes. You know, it’s taken a different form with the the hard left where I think actually now a lot of it’s, originating with some of the stuff that’s taught on University campuses. That’s kind of very sort of fashionable lefty. There is a way which actually, God help me. I’ll I’ll, quote Carl Mark sympathetically where he said it’s the socialism of fools.

I think it is an outlet for people who feel, no, carry an enormous amount of grievance that they don’t intend to do. They can’t really do a lot of bad so they’re gonna go after the other who’s sort of responsible for all the awful things in this world. And and I think that there’s a there’s there there’s that element too. Now having said all that, do does it matter? And on the one hand, you’re absolutely right.

I mean, if there’s one thing that the Jews, I would say, have learned is if somebody says they want to annihilate you, trust them. They wanna annihilate you. They will, you know, if they talk violence, they will probably resort to violence. And I agree with that.

The higher naivete if people tell you that repeatedly. You probably ought to take them at their word.

You really ought to take them at at at your at their word. Does it actually make as big a difference, particularly for what’s going on in Gaza right now. I’m not so sure. I one other thing, by the way, I should have mentioned, is just the utilitarian view of anti semitism, have reached out of China, which doesn’t really have a history of anti semitism. You know, the if there’s been some interesting

reports to speak of.

Yeah. Well, there’s a small But, you know, they’re they’ve now kind of indulged this with some of their, quote, unquote influencers. But it’s in that case, it’s purely utilitarian. I mean, it’s to serve a foreign policy. I think of allowing China to insert itself more effectively into the Middle East.

Does it make a real difference say to the Israel Gaza war, I don’t really think so actually. For two big reasons, One is that if you look at actually where Western governments are, they’ve been remarkably solid on the whole. And and I think it’s not simply out of sympathy and horror what happened on October seventh, but because they Hamas has successfully branded itself as ISIS. It’s actually different from Isis. It’s equally horrible, but but but there’s but there’s that.

And so, you know, a lot of the governments have been very good. And even, you know, people like Marine Le Pen, who’s certainly not my favorite French politician as come out saying some of the right things. But I think more importantly for what’s going on right now, the Israeli, and I’ve I’ve just have a piece in the Atlantic, which, will be out by the time we publish the podcast, I think. You know, the key thing to understand about where the Israeli head is right now is they’re kind of back to where they were fifty years ago in thinking there are existential threats to their existence. And it’s not just an Iranian nuclear weapon, although that’s potentially an existential threat.

But that if that know, they’re up against an enemy who really does just wants to kill them all and in horrible ways. And if they don’t just destroy them. I mean, like, literally destroy them. Then things will just get worse. They Will Saletan will try again, but you know, next time they might do it in conjunction with Hezbollah.

This is simply intolerable, you know, and it’s that moment when your back is against the wall, And, you know, if you get stern reproofs from mister gutierrez or, you know, some of the any of the the NGOs we could name or the pope or whatever. They’ll just say

talk to the hand.

Yeah. Fine. We’re we’re we’re fighting for our very existence. So I think I think there’s I think there’s that. I also think that in terms of more more broadly, this is going to cause and is already to some extent causing, just a further stage and the revulsion that a lot of normal people have for, Now, the the intellectual elites, that particularly the ones that dominate humanities and social sciences, in the universities and that dominate publications.

I mean, I I find the Washington Post these days practically unreadable. But a lot of those publications. And, you know, whenever that sort of thing happens, there is a reaction. There are newest institutions created. They’re, you know, so I I think there is gonna be a pendulum swing, but I I mean, weirdly enough.

I’m turning it to more of an optimist in my old age than I ever was in my youth. And I don’t know. Maybe it’s early onset dementia.

Well, I, I wanna get on to the military campaign in in Gaza as it’s unfolding in front of us right now. But I think it’s fair to say we could having made you know, various animate versions against our respective alma matters that we can agree or we could stipulate as lawyers would say that, you know, what we see on campuses, what you see revealed in polling of young people about, about the conflict itself. It is, indicative of a general failure of the professorial in the United States to teach its students how to think critically, about about these issues. And I, we, I don’t wanna get into it now, but I I would, you know, commend to everybody who’s listening and maybe will list it in the program notes. The Simon Montfury essay in the Atlantic excellent essay about why the, decolonization trope that you see all over social media is, you know, a very, wrong headed way to look at at at this conflict.

But let’s go to the unfolding Israeli offensive itself. I think a lot of us who wish Israel well and who agree with what, you know, you were saying, which is Israel has to, deal with this problem now, and not you know, be deterred by, calls for cease fires that don’t take into account, you know, the realities that Israel is facing. Nonetheless, I’ve been very, very concerned about the, degree of difficulty here. We, you know, which is to say when we reduced, ISIS’s control of Mosel a little bit less than a decade ago took us nine months, you know, and there were, like, roughly ten to twelve thousand you know, civilian, casualties. You know, people sometimes talk about the battle of, falluja, which, you know, went on well you know, I was in government.

I think it was a little bit before you got got there. But, you know, look, we told everybody in falluja to get get the hell out of dodge. And and almost all of them did. But, you know, this is not something. I mean, and the Israelis have tried to do that, of course, in the north and Gaza city, but their limits to where people can go.

And this was, you know, you know, Isis and and Moses had you know, maybe a couple of months to prepare and dig in, you know, Hamas’s got had sixteen years and, you know, spent million literally millions of dollars, maybe billions on building a network of, you know, hundreds of kilometers of tunnels underneath the place. I mean, This is really the most difficult kind of warfare. So what’s your sense of how it’s unfolding? How do you think the Israelis are doing? What should people be looking for as they, you know, as they watch all all this?

So let me, I’ll begin by stipulating. I think it’s it is gonna be very difficult. It’s it is going to unquestionably lead to a lot of civilian casualties. I have no doubt about that. And, you know, quite a few military, Israeli military casualties, and those are all terrible and regrettable.

But putting on my strategic analyst hat, what I would say is, first, we need to be careful of the tendency that everybody has to, go from thinking that the Israelis are superheroes to thinking that there are a bunch of morons. You know, I’ve I’ve I’ve seen that I when we were in government together, I saw that. I’m sure you saw that as well. It’s an old, it’s it’s happened many times before. Actually, people just forget about it.

And in many ways, people don’t fully understand the Israel defense forces. One of my lines has always been The story of the IDF is one of unremitting failure that is very, very quickly redeemed by adaptation, you know, deep resilience, adjustment and so on. I think that’s here too. Everything you say is true, but there are some countervailing points. First, part of the the failure of October seventh was brought about by, what I mean, if you believe the New York Times account is among other things, they just sort of stop paying attention to some things.

You know, they stopped monitor. The the thing that was in there, which I found staggering is that they just decide that there’s no point in continuing to monitor a lot of the cell phone communications. It was arrogance in terms of, you know, being confident while the wall has them penned in and not having adequate reserve forces available in case of an attempted breach and and so on and so forth. But does that That doesn’t change the basic fact, which is, which has these elements. First, the Israelis now have a lot of military power there.

It’s a big, very well equipped army. Secondly, they have had that place under surveillance in every possible way from human intelligence to electronic surveillance to electoral obstacles surveillance for a very long time. They ended as an extremely small area. In which where they have complete command of the air and a vast supply of all kinds of precision weapons. They’ve also They’ve been training for this fight for a long time.

And I think they if you look at what they’re doing now, as far as we can see, it’s they are not attempting to just kinda roll through the Gaza strip and occupy it in a blitz operation. They’re going very carefully They’re going incrementally. They’re taking one thing at a time. I am sure that there’s, you know, people Again, I I think it’s that it’s this kind of stupid pendulum of prejudice, say, you know, people saying, see, all this high technology stuff doesn’t work. Well, that’s not entirely true.

I mean, there’s a lot of high technology that does work and that is valuable. I mean, they, you know, Hamaz figured out ways to get through the wall and over the wall, but not under the wall. And and, you know, that was what the wall was there for.

So although, yeah, I don’t wanna interrupt you but to sort of anticipate some of our later conversation. It does seem that Hamas was paying a lot of attention to the lessons, from Ukraine and was using quad copters to drop there are grenades and other munitions on top of some of the, you know, some of the observation, towers disabling disabling the technology and the sensors with other technology. Yeah. With low end.

I mean, that’s but but that’s the nature, you know, I think that’s the nature of warfare. There’s a measure. There’re countermeasure. Or counter counter measures. But but, you know, at the end of the day, you know, if you’re gonna wanna say, well, let’s just get a bunch of quadcopters with hand grenades on them.

You know, you’d quickly find out that that wouldn’t that that wouldn’t work either. The other thing is, you know, they pulled off an amazing hideous coup, Hamas. But, you know, it’s one thing to launch that kind of massive, surprise attack, which had lots and lots of very small pieces that, you know, you then let people operate autonomously. If you’re finding a real, a more fluid battle where the other guy is doing stuff, And I’m sure the Israelis are doing everything in their power to do stuff that will surprise them or different than what they thought to. You’ve gotta react.

And, it is very hard to do that without communicating, you know, using the electromagnetic, spectrum. You know, also, I mean, as this goes on, what’s gonna happen? Landlines will be broken. People will be captured. Documents will be captured.

The the the very active interacting with an enemy generates a lot of intelligence. That’s a pattern in every single war. I mean, the if you remember going back to the first Gulf war, this is where it first really hit me. The first Gulf war are targetless, particularly for the Iraqi nuclear program. Talking about nineteen ninety one, kept on expanding.

And the reason why it kept on expanding is because you were turning on more intelligence assets And as you interacted with the Iraqis, you learned more. And that’s their parallels to that in World War two and in other wars. So I think all those things are going to, are going to happen. None of that means it’s gonna be easy. None of that means it’s gonna quick.

The the thing that I find most worrying is, I I am not getting a great sense that the Israelis have really thought through, what do you do with the civilian population of Gaza?

You mean after this. They’re not after this is over.

Well, or even during it because let’s say that they I mean, it’s clear that a lot of civilians remained in northern Gaza in the northern trip even after they were told to leave. K. What do you do with those people?

You

know, what are you gonna do? I’m sure Hamas has pull back a lot of its most valuable people to the southern part of the Gaza strip, wouldn’t you? Well, are you gonna go in there as well? So I think, you know, they’ll there will be those are very difficult questions, but my bottom line prediction is the Israelis will go at this incrementally, but relentlessly. And I think from now on, the rules are just gonna be different.

You know, if in the past, the Israelis as we did frequently in Afghanistan or Iraq passed up a chance to take a shot at somebody because they kept their kids with them in a car. I don’t think that rule is gonna apply anymore. You know? I think they will, you know, if they see a headquarters that’s put in a kindergarten, they will probably take it out. And that’s gonna be horrible.

It’s legitimate under the rules, the international humanitarian law. The Israelis have by and large observed?

Law of armed conflict.

Love love armed conflict. The Israelis by and large have observed the law of armed conflict they’ve gotta Old cadre of what we would call jags, judge advocate corps, officers. And

they use standards. Our jags would sometimes, you know, blanch out a little bit in in part.

Undoubtedly. And and they will they will push the edge of that envelope, but it last thing I just say, then I’ll stop ranting. You know, one of the things I say in the, in in the, in this piece is, let us remember that during our last existential war, which is World War two. We were perfectly happy to go out and annihilate the civilian populations of cities, and not just our enemies. I mean, there’s, incredible episode before the bomb running up to the bombing in the bombing campaign before the invasion of Normandy.

The allied tactical air forces were going after the railroad marshaling yards in France in order to disrupt german ability to resupply the front line. And Churchill approved a plan, which, you know, where the estimate was that we’re gonna kill ten thousand French civilians, and and he was very cold blooded about it. Now I don’t think the the Israelis are not gonna go you know, to Tokyo dressed in Hamburg, all things we did. But but they will go further than we have in wars, which were not existential for us, but this one is actually existential for them, I think.

So let me ask you Elliot about the escalation dynamic here, and then I wanna turn to to Ukraine because I worry quite a bit that you know, the focus understandably that’s shifted to Gaza, but, you know, there’s still plenty going on in Ukraine and it remains, you know, incredibly important. And in fact, these things are linked. As as president, Biden said in his Oval Office address and as, you know, secretary blinking, I think, yesterday on the hill were, you know, reiterated. So, what do you think the chances are of a northern front? You know, our our friend, Ray Teckay, and, Rewille Gerect had a piece.

I think it was in the Wall Street Journal. Basically saying, yeah, look, Iran is gonna have to escalate. Just, you know, stand by. It’s coming. I’m not a hundred percent sure that’s right.

Although one certainly can, you know, imagine that. What what is your sense?

Yeah. I I think I’m with you. I think, you know, there’s obviously very serious danger of it. And the logic that they laid out in that article, and we should put the link on the website. For that one too is that’s certainly plausible.

On the other hand, what strikes me is that Nacerala in particular has a sense of self press evasion. You know, the most revealing thing he said after the two thousand six wars, he said, you know, if I would start it with a kidnapping operation, essentially, that, boy, if I’d known the Israel were gonna do that, I wouldn’t have done this. And I think, you know, he they are in a somewhat different place. I I do think you know, American military posturing probably has some sort of deterrent effect. I think they also have, you know, that they are very shrewd and smart.

They have to know, you know, the Israelis have mobilized a large forest when you mobilize a forest that size and you give them time to train up, they get to be even more formidable, and they have to know too that the Israelis backs are against the wall, and that, of course, makes your opponent more difficult.

I I’m really interested in your view of this. It seems to me that from Tehran’s point of view, the hundred forty, hundred fifty thousand rock and missiles that has that they’ve provided essentially to Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border. Act is a very powerful deterrent against Israel thing against the Iranian, nuclear program, and striking directly at, what king the late king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called the head of the snake. And the risk for them is that’s a very powerful deterrent as long as you keep it sheath as it were. The sword

Right. Sheath.

Yeah. If you take it out, you you run the risk with the original and say, okay, we gotta you know, we gotta deal with this too now, and we gotta destroy this the way we destroyed, you know, or destroying Hamas and God’s that we gotta do both now. And they and then they’ve played the pawn and it’s been taken off the board.

I I I think I think that’s right. It was true of most deterrence, actually, if or many kinds of deterrent if if you think about it. I I think that’s right. They also look, they also have to worry whether the Americans with Arab support would would then go after them. I think in the, you know, in the ultimate case, they have to worry about getting nuked.

I mean, one way I I have no idea how the iranians are I mean, I’m sure they’re shortling with joy over October seventh. But there has to be another way in which well, there may be another way. I shouldn’t say there has to be. There may be another way, which they’re thinking, you know, maybe Hamas had catastrophic success, which I think we discussed before. And and I think that is what happened.

I think they had greater success probably than they anticipated with the result that, a, they’re getting a level of ferocity, which they may not have and and thoroughness, which they may not have expected, but they also ended up creating a different problem for themselves. I mean, when even know, Mohammed Dahlan, who, admittedly, they chased out of the Gaza strip, but he begins talking publicly about the post Hamasas future in the Gaza strip, that tells you something. I mean, not I don’t think that normally, somebody like Daghlaan, would have would have done that.

Yeah. This is, this is, you’re talking about Taqan’s interview in the economist.

Yeah. And this this guy’s the for essentially, I think the former police chief. I mean, a secret police chief. In the Palestinian, Palestinian authority.

A very accomplished smuggler.

Smuggler, crook, criminal. I mean, it’s all bad, but, but but one look, the Israelis can deal with that kind guy. He speaks fluent Hebrew. He has relationships with them. The that is one thing.

I’m he I think anybody looking at them realize, okay. Hamas is now put itself in a different place.

Right.

In the same way, we’re we’re not gonna negotiate with ISIS.

Yes. No more mowing the lawn, you know, no more Right. Hoping that they transform themselves into a responsible stakeholder. That’s all done.

Right. Yeah. Oh, that’s all gone. Should we talk about Ukraine? Yes.

What’s what’s your take on that?

So let me just make a couple of points. They’re not quite random, but so number one, I think one has to stipulate the, you know, the counter offensive has not accomplished as much as one would like, would have liked. Although I think there are a lot of reasons for that, some of which you know, we bear the onus on, which is, again, we took way too long to get them equipment. We still are holding back some things, etcetera. And the, you know, Russian defenses, and also the Russian ability to mobilize personnel may be even a little greater than, you know, some of us may have anticipated, six months a year ago.

You know, having said that, you know, the the Ukrainian have made some very, very, you know, incremental progress both around Bakmoot and also, you know, down in in the south. In the pocket that they’ve created between Rubotunya and Ververboville, haven’t been able to get to a place like Tokmak from which they could have ranged with High Mars artillery and, of course, the new attack homes that we’ve given them, the small number of new attack. So we’ve given them. You know, the entire coast of the sea as I was off and the and the ground line of communication that runs through through that on the mostly on the road Bulwark. So so there’s that.

I mean, on the other hand, they’ve also, wasted an enormous number of Russian assets during the course of this. A lot of attrition for the Russians and both, ammunition. I mean, lives, ammunition, equipment, which is making it, I think, very hard for the Russians to mount much offensive capability. The Russians have thrown tons of of people and equipment at, of of Dika in the in the east and and gotten, you know, may may marginal insignificant gains. The cranions have also driven the Blacky fleet essentially back into, you know, mostly into Novo Sysk, and so they’ve opened up, you know, a channel for grain exports to go out.

So they’ve had, you know, I would say some success, but, you know, it’s been, you know, somewhat I guess I would say disappointing. I still, for the life of me, don’t understand some of the decisions the US is making. So we’ve given them some twenty of these attack them missiles that are the cluster variant that only have a a range of a hundred sixty five kilometers as opposed to the unitary warhead that’s got a three hundred kilometer range. But but these cluster attackers, you know, they they are attackoms that have, you know, an old, a pretty old cluster warhead. And therefore, they’re never be used by the United States because they violate our policy of only using these things, only being willing to contemplate the use of these things.

If they have less than, a three percent dud or failure rate. These are way over that. Cost us more to demilitarize them at will to give them to the Ukrainians? Why don’t we just give them all to the Ukrainians? I don’t get it.

What’s what’s your take?

So, I’ll begin by putting a a plug for my second favorite podcast. So, I mean, obviously, there is nothing like shield public, never can be, never will be. But, there is a very good podcast that comes out of the daily telegraph called Ukraine the latest. And I really commend that to us. Like, it comes out every afternoon.

They’ve got some very, very sharp journalists. I have to say, by the way, I’ve been reading the telegraph regularly, and I find it’s actually a great compliment to my my morning read. And they cover things that you’re not gonna get even on in some of the premium, papers in the United States. And they had a great, session with our friend, Mick Ryan, who, who we’ve spoken with, who has been spending time in Ukraine and is written as an excellent substack that he Yes. Where he writes regularly about it.

And, you know, I thought he he he his judgments were very sound. So one was that the way to think about this war is, it’s in terms of a number of simultaneous campaigns, which is actually true of most wars. So the you know, that during world war two, there’s a strategic bombing campaign. There’s a ground of campaign in western Europe ground campaign in Eastern Europe and so on. Well, his point is that the ground campaign, long one of contact is one campaign, and it has not been as successful as some people hoped.

Although, they’ve had a lot of success in treating the Russians very heavily. And that’s not, that’s not inconsequential. The the way to think about what they’re doing the Bulwark Sea, that’s actually a separate campaign. It’s to push the Black Sea fleet back and to open up their windpipe so they can, export grain. That’s actually been very successful.

There’s a third campaign, which is a strike campaign into Russia, which, you know, they’re doing amazingly, without our help, But it’s consequential not because they’re they’re destroying so much, but, you know, the the Russians now have to divert lots of air defense assets all over the place. And I’m, you know, one of the things he says, and I think he’s completely right is the Russians will undoubtedly try to take down the electrical grid in Ukraine this winter. Guess what? I think there’ll be a lot of Russian cities that all of a sudden find their electrical supply having been inter by things going bang. And and, you know, there’s a strategic influence campaign and, and, and so on.

So all that said, and the, you know, I had had higher hopes, as a lot of people did. They were like you, I am baffled by the way we’ve treated the Ukrainians. I think we have just consistently it’s too little too late, and then we badmouth them for not fighting a war the way we would fight it without giving them the stuff that they would need to fight it the way we fight it. I mean, it’s and so many of these mistakes persist. You know, one of them is we we do not have a military advisory group on the ground.

It would make a huge difference if we had, I don’t know, thirty, fifty officers on the ground, we’re interacting regularly with the generals, the Ukrainian general staff there. I’m not talking about being on the front lines.

Not least because it would then make some of the training that Ukraineian troops are getting in places like Grafthenvere and elsewhere and in Europe from Yukon, more relevant. One of the things you hear from Ukrainians is the training we got was great, just not particularly relevant to the actual kind of fight we’re in.

Well, that I mean, that’s actually Mick is eloquent on that saying, you know, we’re training them in doctrine, which is old, which is cold war, base and which has rests a number of cold war era, technological assumptions, include, you know, not having not having, a lot of drones. I do worry, you know, I worry I mean, I know my own attention has shifted to, to enlarge pressure to Israel. It’s gonna recalibrate. The just last maybe this is the last thing we should talk about is American domestic politics. Yeah.

You know, the what’s happened is the Republicans partly from genuine sentiment, but partly, I think, to show that they’re not isolationists, can all be gung ho on sending aid to Israel. And and but then use this as an opportunity to, deny aid to Ukraine. And I don’t know if this is out of kind of a slavish commitment to, Donald Trump or just kind of isolationist ignorance, which is the case of Israel is kinda counterbalanced by evangelical fervor. But it’s it’s it’s dangerous. And it, and it goes back again.

I’ll stop them just, you know, let you react. You know, it all goes back again To me, at least, to the the the fact that the administration has just not made a consistent effort to explain to the American people why this is as important as it is. And it it continues to baffle me because know, if there’s one thing we learned from Biden’s speech after October seventh is, he actually can deliver a speech when he asked him.

It did too. Mean, one in Israel and one in the United States, both were excellent. Look, I think he he did make the case in the Oval address that these conflicts are linked, which they, you know, they clearly are. Iran in some sense is almost the universal joint linking them because it’s obviously providing crucial military assistance to Russia to carry this out and, obviously, also, the main external sponsor of of Hamas and involved in training and equipping Hamas to to do what it did. I would hope that for our Israeli friends, the scales have fallen from their eyes about, the Russian, role in all this, the fact that there were two Hamas allegations before the seventh of October meeting with Levarov and other Russian leaders.

And now there’s one there, either has been or soon will be there. And the statements made at the Security Council meeting by by Putin, which, you know, frankly could have been made by you know, any one of the Arab leaders who’ve denounced what Israel’s doing. I mean, you know, it’s just, goes on and on. To the point on on US politics, you know, the president made a speech, which was gr you know, which was good, Of course, in the context of Ukraine, it was about eighteen months too late. I mean, he should have given that speech, you know, a long time ago.

And of course, the Ukraine piece of it was somewhat diluted because it was an add on to what was basically a speech about, you know, the war in Gaza. And although he made, you know, there were a couple of throwaway lines, what I don’t understand is why the administration is not powerfully making the case that this you know, hundred billion dollar supplemental that they’re ask for asking for, which has, you know, forty billion dollars, for, Ukraine. Just at the point where Ukraine has for the first time in the last month sort of begun to have a higher volume of fire on a a daily basis than the Russians. Where the Russians are being forced to try and get you know, replenishment of their artillery stocks from, you know, North Korea, all of that. You know, this is the point at which we’re gonna pull the plug and and they’re not making the argument, which Biden did touch on, which is this money is gonna go to replenish American stocks, and go on contract to build things in the United States of America to to provide Israel.

All the money is gonna be spent here at home. And it’s gonna create good, high paying, high skilled jobs for Americans. And that is an important argument that by the way, if you ask Americans in polling, you know, do you know that we’re spending this very small amount of our defense budget? We’re destroying, you know, more than half of Russian military capability. And, oh, by the way, it spent in the United States and it creates jobs, does wonders for boosting the support for that goes go figure, you know, when people are asked to respond and I don’t understand why the administration is not making that case.

So I I’ve actually had a conversation with a member of the administration and and we’re talking about this because I mean, these are all things I I’ve kept on banging on, about with them. And I said, you know, why can’t the United States be the Arsenal of Democracy?

Well, the president said it in his speech. Well, he said we should be the Arsenal of Democracy.

But, well, you know, it’s a typical kind of thing where it’s like the president’s saying we’re gonna fight for Taiwan and then his aids, you know, get get anxious. But but it what’s clear is it’s because of the left of the democratic party. Mhmm. You know, the and, know, the next thing you know, they’ll begin nattering on about war profiteers and the military industrial complex and stuff. So they they the administration in this as in many other areas I think, gives not an entire veto to its left wing, but gives a a lot of influence to its left wing when what it really should be saying is, yeah, we’re gonna be building a lot of military hardware, and it’s a very, very good thing.

It’ll it’s actually not at all bad. It’s good for employment, but it’s more importantly it’s the right thing to do. And they’re they’re very afraid of doing that. And I think that’s I think that’s where that comes from. It’s it’s the fear of their left.

You know, Eric, if people would just listen to us

Yeah. Exactly. If only they listen to us, which is the subtitle of every good Washington memoir. Elliot. Great to see you.

I hope, I hope to sales and the reviews keep rolling in for the hollow crown. And, we’ll get together. Again, I hope next week and, in the meantime, try to keep your spirits up in a very dispiriting time.

You too. And, there’s always good good talking to you. Talk to you next week.