Mark Hertling: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Gamer
Episode Notes
Transcript
The military runs on young soldiers, and sometimes, chatroom braggarts who want to share classified documents get recruited too. Plus, the real world damage in Ukraine from the leaks, and Putin’s paranoia. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling joins Charlie Sykes today.
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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is April thirteenth two thousand twenty three. We’re almost to the end of the week, there’s a lot of things that are going on. I don’t know how things could have turned out worse for the Tennessee Republican Party.
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They really become the poster state for political meltdown. Interesting development in Arizona where there was an election denier who was so extreme that even Republicans in the house decided they could do without her and she was expelled as the story of Liz Harris, an election denying Republican lawmaker who was expelled. On a bipartisan vote, Democrats have their own headaches with Diane Feinstein. The speculation is rising that she’s not actually going to come back to the senate depriving the Democrats of her vote, and there is now a push to get her to resign, which she is not doing so far. Meanwhile, if you ever wondered what witness intimidation and broad daylight look like Trump is suing his ex lawyer, Michael Cohen, at the moment that Cohen appears poised to become a star witness against him in a criminal trial in New York.
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The fight over abortion pills remains a complete cluster you know what. Fox News had another epically crappy day in court We’ll talk about that on tomorrow’s podcast. On the Grift Watch, new reports, the special council is focusing on Trump’s fundraising off false election claims. But let’s start with this story, which is just so mind bending. The story of the leaked Pentagon documents about Ukraine, and we are joined by retired Lieutenant General Mark Hurling General.
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Welcome back to the podcast. Charlie,
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it’s great to be with you once again. Some
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interesting news. Well, there’s a lot going on, and I just wanna get your sense of, you know, this leak, how it happened, how bad it is, what it tells us where we’re at. Let’s start with the breaking news out of the Washington Post whose journalism may be a little bit derivative of what Bulwark Cat ported a little bit earlier, but they believe they have identified the leaker of these secret documents, somebody who worked on a military base. Let me just read you the first couple of paragraphs. The man behind a massive leak of US government secrets that is exposed spying on allies revealed the grim prospect for Ukraine’s war with Russia, and the ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.
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United by their mutual love of guns, military, gear, and God, the group of roughly two dozen, mostly men and boys, you could have guessed that, formed an invitation only clubhouse in twenty twenty on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when a man called OG posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar and few people read the long note. One of the members explained, but he revered OG, the elder leader of the tiny tribe who claimed in no secrets the government withheld from ordinary people. So apparently he was it was depressed.
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He wasn’t getting enough attention, so he figured he was going to share this online with this group of guys, some general. You know, this is not Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy type stuff. This is not the KGB. This is a bunch of lonely bored guys on social media. So your thoughts about what we’re learning about this.
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You’re right. It isn’t Tinker, soldiers, sailors, spy. It’s more like Mickey’s playhouse. And what’s interesting, Charlie, is I had a short interaction with our mutual friend, Tom Nichols, about this last night. Mhmm.
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And Tom wrote a great article in the Atlantic about the quest for fame by young people. The desire not to be part of just the great unwashed, but actually standing out. Mhmm. And when I first read the Washington Post article last night, I just couldn’t help, but think Tom hit the nail right on the head with his piece a few weeks ago saying, this is it. It is an individual.
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And as the article stated, if the article is true, and we’ll caveat everything with saying, hey, this could be true. Yeah. The article stated, this guy is on a military base somewhere, and you asked me, what does that mean? I don’t know. It could be he could be a cleared intelligence Jonathan Last.
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He could be even a young officer. I doubt that he’s probably a specialist or a sergeant in the military or e four e five rank who likes to prove his value to his friends by citing that he knows how to get a hold of secret documents. And as we sometimes say, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Well, this guy’s about to lose an eye. Yeah.
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As the article states he was passing documents around this small group proving how important he was. And then somehow those articles or those documents were put on another social media network and sent to the world. And now, allegedly, the ending of the article claims that this individual is fearing for his freedom and fearing for his life and he’s gonna go in hiding because the deep state’s gonna take control And it’s just every single conspiracy type theory you could think of caught up in a group of young people. And it’s just absolutely crazy that these guys would open up the portals to our nation’s secrets and conversations and potentially even sources and methods that others could gain information about because he wanted to prove himself as an important character in the small group of of gun aficionados.
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When I introduced you, I should have mentioned, I reminded people that you were a former commanding general of the US Army, Europe, and the seventh Army. And I guess the question that is nagging this morning is how does an e four e five get their hands on this kind of top secret documentation? What does it say about this security and and the way in which these documents are circulated and
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protected? You know, that’s what everyone’s question is today. And, you know, these secret documents aren’t you know, typed in, printed out, and delivered by generals and colonels. The members of a staff, the intel analyst, the individuals that really do the deep dives into some things and put the stuff on paper, the so called PowerPoint Rangers as they’re sometimes called are lower ranking in individuals. So, you know, it does not surprise me that a sergeant might have a secret or a top secret clearance.
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You know, in my headquarters in Europe, in my division in Germany, and in Iraq, some of my best intel analysts were the younger ones because they would look at things from a different perspective. But the issue is, Charlie, these individuals go through the clearance procedures, they’re vetted, They have the background investigations, especially at the top secret level, that anyone else goes through. And they sign documents that state, hey, I know if I divulge any of the secrets that I’m made privy to, that I can suffer these kinds of consequences, x y and z, in terms of prison times, fines, the motion and rank court marshals, whatever you wanna say. Now, I’m assuming that the individual that’s part of this of the leader, the so called OG, as they call him in the article, is probably a military member. I doubt he’s a civilian.
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You don’t have civilians that young doing these kind of things, but the military really runs on young soldiers doing the kinds of things they need to do. And sometimes you have free floating electrons like this guy obviously was who wants to portray
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himself as more than he appears to be. Before we move on to the substance, just want to read from the Bellingcat report, this is the investigative collective research outlet that does fantastic work. And they reported bizarrely the discord channels in which the documents stated from March were posted focused on the Minecraft computer game and fandom for a Filipino YouTube celebrity. You can’t make this stuff up. Then they spread to other sites such as the ImageWare four Chan before appearing on Telegram, Twitter, and then major media publishers around the world in recent days.
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So let’s talk about the real world damage. How bad is this as a breach? I mean, the documents have been described as highly damaging, they include photos of anticipated weapons deliveries as well as troop and battalion strengths. I mean, the Pentagon is confirmed that some of this stuff is legitimate defense department documents. Maybe the numbers
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have been altered, but general, how bad is this? It’s interesting, Charlie, because in listening to the commentary and being part of the commentary, I’ve heard the spectrum of oh my god. This is horrible — Yeah. — all the way down to, yeah, no big deal. You know, people know we’re doing this.
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And probably it depends on the audience. I personally don’t think this will influence any kind of Ukrainian activity in their upcoming offensive. The kinds of things I read in the available documents the ones that were surprisingly republished in with document pictures in places like The New York Times, which surprised the hell out of me. In seeing some of the documents from a military perspective, even though they said top secret, no foreign at the top of the page, some of the information on those documents. Yeah.
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It’s important. It’s a critical assessment of capabilities. But I think that probably Russia knows most of these things. Ukraine knows that the other side, their enemies probably have a feel for what’s going on. There was some assessment of weapon systems and capabilities and, you know, the estimated by someone on the joint staff in the Pentagon when they would run out if they continued to use the weapons the way Ukraine was using them.
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But truthfully, you know, that’s true on both sides. Mhmm. So from the standpoint of operational intelligence leaking, I don’t think it’s a significant deal. But again, from another audience, from generating trust with our allies, and partners generating trust and ensuring we have trust with our partners on the battlefield, it’s not a good look. Right.
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In another audience when you’re talking about, oh, I don’t know, some of the comments that were made about Egypt, Japan, South Korea, you know, they all know that the United States is constantly collecting intelligence, not only on our foes, but on our friends. And maybe some of the things that were released, I’m gonna specifically point to the Egyptian potential for arranging a deal with Russia. That might be a good thing to send a message. Say, hey, we know what you’re doing, knock it off. We did that to Russia at the beginning of the war.
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They didn’t take our advice to knock it off. They continued with the invasion. Mhmm. I have been in situations. I think I may have shared this once before on this show where when I was in Iraq, I asked my boss at the time General Petrella’s if I could share photographs that were classified as top secret with my Iraqi and Kurdish Peshkabir colleagues because they were going at it against each other and lying to me about what they were doing.
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So when I showed them, hey, I know exactly what you’re doing, knock it off, they knocked it off. So I mean, you know, depending on the audience, depending on who reads this, it can be all the way from no big deal to an unfortunate loss of trust with the United States to another embarrassment on the world stage to possibly a good thing with some that need to be reminded. We know what they’re doing. So
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for the last year, we’ve had this ongoing conversation. Are we doing enough? Has Ukraine gotten enough of the equipment they need to win the war, to be successful. And, you know, among the things that that came out in this document dump, this is from a CNN report, Several of the classified documents warn that Ukraine’s medium range air defenses to protect frontline troops will be completely reduced by May twenty third, very specific. Suggesting that Russia could soon have aerial superiority and that Ukraine could lose the ability to amass ground forces in a counter offensive.
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That seems like a big deal. What should the consequences of that be, you know, not just for what we’re laying in the Russians perhaps, you know, but also from the point of view of policymakers. Yeah.
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A couple of things I’d point out in that statement and I read that article too. In fact, I think I’m quoted in that article. There are a lot of woods might, could, the kind of, language in that. Mhmm. And it’s all based on intelligence and logistics assessments based on what we know.
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Now, those assessments might be completely accurate. But I was also surprised that they put a specific date of May the twenty third when things were gonna run out. And it was, like, where did you get May twenty third? What if they have a free fire day where a whole lot more missiles come at. Could it be May 22nd or May May the twentieth?
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But when you’re looking at documents, and that’s one of the ones that was put in the the New York Times that I just mentioned. It’s like, okay, this is an intelligence officer and probably a logistical officer based on what they know saying, here is our assessment of where they could be. Now in the New York Times report, what I saw was nothing but Russian systems that were listed. So is Ukraine running out of their Russian systems? Absolutely, they are.
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That’s common sense. They’ve been using the hell out of them. Mhmm. But to get to your question, what is this due to policymakers? Well, the potential of how do we resupply very quickly to counter the potential for running out of equipment.
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But truthfully, Charlie, Ukraine and the West and NATO have known for a long time that the the use of munitions by the Ukrainian force just like the Russian force is unsustainable. So when the analysts take it one step further and say, hey, because of running out of ammunition, running out of air defense munitions, that the Russians now will have the capability to conduct an air campaign. That’s when commanders step in to the intelligence folks and say, Well, gee, that’s interesting because they haven’t conducted an air campaign yet. Tell me how the Russians are gonna do that because they’re scared to death to go beyond the forward line of troops of the Russian forces. So tell us why you think the running out of an s a eleven ammunition cash is gonna create a new approach to warfare on the part of the Russians.
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It could, but again, this is where you have to have both the assessments and the analysis and the pragmatic approach to trying to figure out what is going on in the battlefield. Does that make sense? It
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does. I mean, and let’s come back to the status on the battlefield. I’m gonna want to talk about this leak because in that CNN article, they were also comparing this to other major lakes, like, you know, Edward Snowden doing a document dump. Mhmm. But you made the point that in some ways this is worse because it is real time — Right.
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— and it is exposing sources and methods or at least it certainly could. One of the the scary things I think is the fact that it reveals that we seem to know a lot about what the Russians are going to do before they’re going to do it, which would suggest that our penetration, at least before this league, of, you know, Russian intelligence, Russian military was much more extensive than we might have imagined. The only
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thing I’d say to that is, yeah, probably.
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So what is the danger for the human assets or however it is that we’re gathering this information?
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You know, it would be as if you would say, hey, someone’s leaking secrets from inside the Pentagon, they must have a mole in there. Well, yeah, there’s twenty five thousand people that work at the Pentagon, let’s find the bowl. How do you do that? Yeah. When you’re talking about getting human sources, from inside other government.
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That is truly an art form. And it’s one of the reasons why you know, there is such caretaking with these kinds of documents. When you look at sources and methods, you’re never gonna name the person. You’re never gonna say what they are exactly doing. Mhmm.
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But usually there’s if you go into a classified document, it will state some kind of fact about a foreign army or a foreign government And then at the end of the sentence it will have in atalix, here’s where that came from. So as an example, me, as an intelligence user. When I’m reading my intelligence book every morning, I can say, oh, okay. That’s from an insider. That’s probably pretty good information.
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It’s a sole source resource. One person is saying this and I’ll put a certain amount of credence to that. But on the other hand, if the paragraph gives a long litany of things and then says, This is collected from multiple sources inside and outside the government from different resources, satellite imagery, and things like that. You say, oh, this is pretty good stuff. You know, I I can rely on that.
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So I’m kinda going down a rabbit hole a little bit on you, Charlie, and I apologize for that. But, you know, the point of the matter is, yes, we’ve had insiders in a lot of government, and this is, you know, this is open source. I’m not telling any secrets here. That provide us information. It depends on what the document says.
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And most of the secret documents, whereas they will state the source or the potential method, it won’t give you any more of a clue other than to say, oh, man, if I if I’m mister Putin, I’ve got somebody in my intelligence services or inside of the Kremlin that’s reporting this. But then again, he’s known that for a while because the CIA Director, I think, Bill Burns, went to Moscow before the war sergeant said, we know what you’re doing and we know what your intent is, we would highly recommend you not do it. So he has known for a long time that he has intelligent sources inside of his government. So
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this is an indication that I watched too many movies, but this strikes me that it can cut both ways that it it might expose some of our legitimate assets, but it also might sell a great deal more paranoia — Yeah. — from the Russians to think that you don’t know who to trust. You don’t know who’s listening to you. And given someone like Vladimir Putin in the enclosed hermetically sealed world of the Kremlin, that might be a little bit mind blowing for him.
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Well, let me connect a dot for you here. The jailing of a Wall Street Journal reporter alongside with the jailing of a lot of other inside reporters from Russia, tells me that mister Putin is quite paranoid about First of all, internal reporting, internal journalists, but now he’s increasingly becoming concerned about external journalists. So as I think a couple of news agencies and businesses have already said to their people, you might want to get out of Russia right now. Because as much as we want information inside the system, the threats against individuals that are too high But what is that gonna do? That’s gonna shut down some of our open source resources that a lot of journalists risk their lives to do because they’re afraid of being thrown in jail.
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Well, that’s interesting. The I guess, my read on on the arrest of the Wall Street Journal reporter was simply that there was blood and reputant taking another American hostage. Do you think they’re genuinely thinking or generally concerned that reporters like that are an intelligence resource or or in fact spying?
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No. I I’m not suggesting the Wall
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Street Journal reporter was an intelligence reason. No. No. I understand that, but whether they thought that they actually think when they arrested him that they were arresting a spy as opposed to, hey, this is a way to screw with with another American here. I
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think it’s all of the above. Okay. I think it’s, you know, screw with an American. We don’t want any kind of news reports getting on the front page of the Wall Street Journal because this guy’s in Moscow. It’s all of the above.
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You know, in a closed society, in a closed authoritarian society, the leader can shut down the media. And, you know, I personally don’t think the Wall Street Journal reporter is a spy. Don’t get me wrong. He’s just a reporter doing his thing, but mister Putin doesn’t like reporters doing their thing. He does not like freedom of the press.
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In
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an authoritarian society reporting and spying, you know, will look the same thing. Right? I mean, you know, if you wanna keep secrets, This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this show where everyday we try to help you make sense of the political world we live in and remind you that you are not the crazy one. If you enjoy this podcast, I’m sure you’re going to find my free morning shots newsletter, a great companion for understanding what is happening to us.
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And every morning as I prepare for this show, I share with my readers what’s trending and what to pay attention to, including my latest writing and essays on the events of the day. To sign up for my free morning shots newsletter. Go to the bulwark dot com slash morning shots. That’s the bulwark dot com slash morning shots. And I look forward to seeing you in your inbox soon.
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So
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let’s talk about the status of the war in Ukraine. You know, New York Times has a story about have the Ukrainians appear resolved to try to hang on to a neighborhood in Bock mood in Eastern Ukraine? A lot of the Allies are questioning why they’re fighting for this tiny, you know, little corner block by block, which is sustaining huge casualties. And the Ukrainians are saying that they’re doing it to wear down the Russian army while it pairs for the counter offensive. So your thoughts about that, whether or not that is worth it or whether that just become a symbolic, politically important goal that may act we be undermining the larger strategy, your thoughts?
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What
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I would tell you, it’s been a hell of a fight for the last four to six months in that area. The west has been focused on buckwheat. But as a guy that kinda watches this on a daily basis, I can name Volladar, Marinca, Adevica, Cremina, Lima, and Coupyanska as as challenging Battlefields as Bakmood is. It’s just that Bakmood has seemed to be the magnet for all the reporters that are getting good film out of there. So that entire front in the Don Bos has become critically important because President Zelensky has said, I will not give up more ground.
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And I’m gonna fight for it. And it is a strategic political approach that has unfortunately cause the sacrifice of a lot of brave Ukrainian soldiers, but it’s also caused the sacrifice times exponential of a lot of foolish Russian Wagner Group and others that have continued to press the assault. From a operational perspective, Charlie, I’ll tell you as a former commander, I would grade the fight as a very tough one. And I’m not sure if if I were the general in charge, if I would have withdrawn forces, conducted a retrograde, and attempted to attack from a different direction. But that would have given up ground.
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Mhmm. And I think that violates president Zelensky’s Dick done that he is wanting to take back sovereign territory. Mhmm. So there is that political inference to an operational commander saying, stay there, and fight, and don’t give up any more ground. And don’t give Pregoising the media opportunity to say, see that we won.
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Percogen has really taken a hit in the bock mood fight as well as some of the other ones that I mentioned. That’s a good thing because that’s caused more turmoil within the Kremlin. And I think that’s probably of great strategic value. So let’s go back
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to this question about ammunition. I mean, the Times, quote, the commander saying that they have a time to run low on ammunition, and they think the allies have been slow with deliveries. There are real challenges, aren’t there? Getting all of the ammunition, whether it’s from our stores or whether the Koreans have certain things, So what are the challenges? What’s going on?
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Do you think are we getting the ammunition fast enough? What’s slowing it down? Might that change? Do they have enough ammunition? To wage a counter offensive and effective counter offensive?
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Well, those are a bunch of questions. I’ll try and answer all of them.
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The first
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part is well, since about July, Both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been fighting an artillery battle. That is not the way the west and especially the US fights battles. We don’t rely only on artillery. We have combined armed forces of aircraft, helicopters, artillery, missiles, all the things that Ukraine doesn’t have. And we can talk about that in just a second too.
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So the Soviet artillery school used to be in Ukraine. Mhmm. So both the Russians and the Ukrainians have a long history of depending on the king of battle artillery. When all else fails fire more ammunition, Now Ukraine has adapted a little bit as soon as they got the m seven seventy sevens and the centurians and the high Mars, to say, hey, this precision weapons system is a whole lot better than just firing a bunch of rounds in an area which is what artillery does to try and disrupt psychologically and physically and advancing force. It’s a whole lot better if you go precision and actually strike the target and you use less stuff.
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Unfortunately, they only have enough of that either. They’ve got a lot of it, but not enough to hit every single target. Mhmm. So it’s a combination of just using the old Russian artillery that Ukraine has and firing the amount of stores of artillery rounds that they have while integrating some of the new systems that they’ve received from the West, which are more precision based without having the capability of a combined air ground fight with very good precision air strikes on key locations. That’s a mouthful that I’ve just given you.
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I wish I had a whiteboard that I could draw this out for
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you. In the last few days, this gruesome video showing Russian soldiers beheading a Ukrainian soldier probably over the summer. And the way in which the Russians appear to be more and more openly, and I’m talking about things on state media as well as, you know, social media, where they’re really, you know, embracing this kind of, you know, isis like Savage. I mean, the release of these videos you would not think would be in Russia’s interest, but they don’t seem to care. So what is the impact of this?
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Trying to remember the last time that we had a, you know, quote unquote, you know, civilized military engaging in this sort of behavior. But of course, we’re not dealing with the civilized
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military anymore our way. Yeah. No. I made no mistake. Russia is not a civilized military.
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They united here to the laws of land warfare. There have been multiple, I mean, literally hundreds, if not thousands of violations of all the protocols of the Geneva Convention and this is just another one. You don’t torture or mutilate enemy bodies dead or alive and may have done both. I don’t know what more information is needed, but the Ukrainians are gathering it day by day in terms of the amount of war crimes that I would say are on the if you look through historical examples, this has been, especially in an open source environment where there’s film and social media and back and forth, This has been just a dynamo of hate violations that people will be tried for. The president of Russia has been accused of being a war criminal for one specific thing, and that’s the transfer of children from Ukraine’s parents to Russia.
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But in my read of every single protocol, of the Geneva Convention. Russia has violated everything from battlefield to civilian abuse to journalist abuse to I mean, name that tune. The over a hundred articles of the protocols have all been violated. It’s just a I mean, Article fifty one and fifty four of Protocol one Geneva Convention says indiscriminate attacks on civilian population, destruction, of food, water, and other materials needed for survival is a violation of those two articles. Sure.
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Has Russia done that? Yes. Go through any of the other ones, and you’ll say the same thing. They’re all affirmative.
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And yet, this was the week when former president Donald Trump down with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, and there was a lot of things that that you talked about, but the one that I think has raised the most eyebrows is the once again you fawns on some of the world’s most brutal thugs, including Vladimir Putin, who he again described as this abs absolutely brilliant individual. And of course, he said the same things about Kim Jong Un and about president Xi of China. So no indication whatsoever that the genocide, the war crimes, any of this, changes his opinion of him. And it comes at a time as you point out when, you know, the evidence of the war crimes in Russia, you know, or or mounting it becoming, you know, a a fire hose, but it also comes at a time when we are heading toward, you know, a military standoff with China where they are clearly rattling their sabers. So what does it say to you?
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That the former president continues to be locked into this incredible admiration for some of the world’s worst actors, but also some of the more dangerous geopolitical foes that we face.
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It tells me first of all that I don’t understand his definition of brilliant Because every one of those three that he named in that interview had failed miserably in terms of either their military, their economy or just their status on the world stage. But secondly, it tells me that he admires them for some reason. Mhmm. And the admiration is probably centered on they get to do whatever they want. And they can squash all opposition.
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And they are above the law because each one of the three of them are within their own country. They’re all dictators. They’re authoritarian figures. In the case of Putin, he’s also a a kleptocrat. So I guess it just tells me what mister Trump admires, and that is the ability to do whatever the hell you want as a monarch or as a leader of a country that is not in line with our constitution.
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And I’d also refer back to the fact that every single elected official who might be supporting those actions or not going against it are violating their constitutional oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign domestic. You know, not just Trump, but anyone who refuses to counter him on that is not defending the constitution domestically. That’s my view. That’s perhaps a simple approach, but that’s kind of the way I see it as a soldier.
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Wanna talk about that. How you you see this as as a soldier? Because, you know, Donald Trump is just reminding us who he has busy. He said this before, but there are real world implications for this. Because he is running for president.
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He is the leading republican candidate for president. The timing is seems important because we are gearing up for some kind of a confrontation with president Xi, the Chinese, we have men and women in uniform, and their hearing Donald Trump praised how brilliant this guy is and how incredibly stupid and weak and slimy, whatever word you wanna use. That, you know, to describe our American commander in chief. I mean, how does this sound to hear the former president denigrating our military and our leadership at a time when he is praising the Chinese who are rattling their sabers.
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Well, I learned never to speak for all of the military, Charlie Sykes. And it’s because anyone that’s wearing the uniform of the country is pulled from the society. And the divisiveness we have in our society. The divisions that are there without a look at the logic reason and passion for ideology and what we believe in our so called American values. You know, that are stated in numerous documents, have been stated in various speeches throughout our history, things that we allegedly stand for It just seems that some haven’t really been thoughtful enough to say, do I stand for that or not?
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And this is a case that There are some in the military who probably think mister Trump is the greatest thing going because he’s strong and tough, which I personally don’t believe he’s either of those. That he’s thoughtful, which I personally don’t think, and that he has the best interest of making America great again, which I think is a catch phrase that’s not attached to reality. But I would also say there’s probably more within the military and we’re seeing polling data on that. That there has been a shift within the military since the Trump ages that says that there is an increasing lack of support for that kind of dialogue, for that kind of false strength, but I can’t say one hundred percent of the military is gonna be upset. But from a commander’s standpoint, what I’ll tell you is when I was commanding US Army Europe, and people would come up and ask me about different things that were going on in the United States, allies would come up and ask me about that.
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I had to be a representative And I can’t understand what our current uniform senior leaders went through when mister Trump was president and saying we should get out of NATO and withdraw our troops from different locations
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that are attached to security agreements. What does the rest of the world think about us? Now, what do our allies think how worried are they? Remember when Joe Biden became president, he said, you know, America is back, but there were people among our allies who said yes, but how long? So how does this look on the world stage when people are looking at the divisions in America, the the kinds of debates that we’re having?
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They the kind of backsliding on on issues like democracy. It feels like it’s like the best of times and the worst of times. We have this extraordinary moment where you have NATO really pulling together, you know, the, you know, having Finland joining NATO, these Western Alliance feeling stronger than ever. And yet at the same time, have to be looking over their shoulders going, what is going on in the United States? Where are you
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people headed? That is still happening. And I think from my travels and I’ve been to a few countries recently where there is a little bit more comfort. And I think this shows up in pollings at most nations especially the ones in Europe believe that America is back in a leadership role. There’s been a huge shift in terms of public polling in places.
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Toward supporting and realizing that America’s back. But at the senior leader level, there is still concern because they see gun violence. They see the debates on freedoms that aren’t seemingly crazy. You know, people are concerned about America. You know, and the thing is, Charlie, you know this because you’ve traveled significantly I don’t know what’s going on in Spain right now.
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I have a little bit of understanding because I watch a rock because I serve there, but I don’t know what’s going on in most countries. But I guarantee you that a vast number of people in every single country around the world watches the United States. Because they wanna see what we’re gonna do next. And their
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knowledge is often quite granular. You know, you talk to reporters from New Zealand or from Denmark or from Australia, and and they know far more about the internal workings of of American politics than the efforts American does right now. They’re watching it so closely. They absolutely do. So just one less thing I was looking back to the days when you were in in Europe.
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How amazing is it that Finland has joined NATO, extending the border by hundreds of miles. I grew up, you know, hearing the word finlandization, you know, a country that basically had to subordinate its foreign policy to its, you know, much bigger, much scarier neighbor. And they have little Finland standing up in this particular way
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is really one of these extraordinary moments in geopolitics, isn’t it? It really is. And I’ll share a personal anecdote. But the rationale, if Americans don’t see this, they should. And that is the fact that every NATO nation, every European nation, realizes based on this war that it would be very difficult to go it alone, that they’ve got to be part of something bigger if there’s the potential for bullies around the world looking to go back to the twentieth century or even the nineteenth century and invade your country.
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And they wanna be part of a security agreement. And make no mistake that countries in Europe who were once under Russia’s thumb the ones that were part of either the former Warsaw Pack or the Soviet satellite system never want to go back to that. And for Putin to say that anyone was coerced into joining NATO is an easily refutable claim because every single one of those nations that are now part of NATO had to work very hard to meet the requirements of the member’s access program, the map. To get in. And it’s because they don’t ever wanna go back to what they used to have under Russia.
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Finland doesn’t. The anecdote I was gonna tell you is I spent a lot of time in Sweden because we had a training center there as a partner. The chief of their ground forces was a guy by the name of Byrne Grundowich who became a very good friend of mine, three star general. And every time I went there, I said, so kidding me, said to him, so when are you guys gonna join NATO? And he said, well, he said our politicians don’t understand yet why we should.
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Now they understand. So the militaries have understood for a long time Sweden needs to get into, but that is kind of an indicator of why a collective security agreement in either Europe or other places in the world is very important.
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General Mark Hurley is a retired Lieutenant General and CNN military analyst. He is a former commanding general of US Army, Europe and the Seventh Army General. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. It
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is always a pleasure. Charlie Sykes, thanks for all the things you’re doing too.
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No. I always feel smarter after I talk with
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you. And
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thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again.
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The
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Boulevard Podcasts produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary and humor, useful idiots. With Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.
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Check out this story that comes via wedding planner, Georgia Mitchell. I tell that it’s a joke right if you were to catch your partner being breastfed by their mother. The thing is, she’s here in the second hand. So —
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Right. — and we’re really
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Did responsible journalist in you, Erin. It’s it’s an allegation. Yeah.
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None of my sources have confirmed this story. Right. So
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Terrible if true. Definitely a deal breaker.
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Useful
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idiots. Wherever you listen.
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