Marine veteran and military analyst Jim Webb joins us to break down why the Strait of Hormuz is not just a map feature but a lever Iran has built strategy around for decades. We talk about the reality behind troop counts, why even highly defended radar and air defense sites can be vulnerable, and what that means for any plan that puts Americans in fixed positions near Iran’s shoreline or islands. Jim also explains how Marine Corps Force Design 2030 reshaped amphibious capability, and why a mission that looks “old school” can be dangerously mismatched with today’s equipment and doctrine.

We also get into the politics driving escalation: Israel’s role, how off-ramps get disrupted, and why Congress’s silence matters when an unpopular war expands without clear authorization. We close with a hard look at religious language from senior leaders and why just war theory draws bright lines around wars of choice. If you care about Iran, US foreign policy, military readiness, and the future of the Middle East, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who follows national security, and leave a review with the question you want us to tackle next.



We also pull the camera back to the bigger US foreign policy machine. If the same small circle is juggling Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza, what happens to preparation, credibility, and outcomes? We talk about the stalled “Board of Peace,” the pressure campaigns that reward escalation, and the eerie disconnect between Trump’s claims of “strong talks” and Iran’s denial that talks even happened. Along the way, we ask why major media scrutiny has been so limited when the stakes include a regional fire and a shattered negotiating channel.

Then we follow the consequences: the Strait of Hormuz disruption, oil prices, supply chain shock, and the political timeline that turns foreign policy into domestic risk. Public opinion is already souring on this war, including among Trump voters, raising a simple question: can bottom-up pressure force a real off ramp, or do allies and hawks still hold the veto? If you care about the Iran war, nuclear diplomacy, Israel’s role, and how decisions get made in Washington, this conversation connects the dots.

Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a comment with your take on what a credible exit should look like.

CHAPTERS:

• 0:26 Launching The New Live Show
• 1:16 Who Led The Iran Talks
• 4:19 Trust Networks And Israel Ties
• 7:03 Media Scrutiny And Competing Narratives
• 12:43 Ukraine Talks And No Expert Bench
• 16:09 Gaza Ceasefire And Board Of Peace
• 18:03 Trump Claims Secret Off Ramp Talks
• 24:05 War Hawks Push Regime Change
• 26:41 Strait Closure And Global Price Shock
• 29:23 Public Opinion Turns Against The War
• 33:38 Final Questions And Where To Follow

To say there is a lot to do before such an event could take place is an understatement. First, the backlash against Trump’s 28-point peace plan has been swift and vitriolic. Remember, the forces lined up to reject any plan that offers Russia concessions are at the levers of legacy mainstream media and in concert with Congressional megaphones and both are already promoting a narrative of appeasement and capitulation. For many Americans, this is the only message they are receiving from the media on ongoing negotiations this week.

Nevertheless, the 28-point plan has already shrunk to a 19-point plan after the Trump team met with Ukrainians in Geneva Monday. Trump officials, including fresh envoy, Secretary of Army Dan Discroll, have been meeting with Russians, too, trying to gauge what measures in either plan they will ultimately agree. It is fluid and fraught, and social media is covering it minute-to-minute so gossip, scoops, fake news and spin are all on the menu. 

Here to discuss all of this are two of the best analysts on the war and the potential end to it, Mark Episkopos and Mike Vlahos. Mark is a colleague of mine at Quincy where he is a research associate in our Eurasia program. Mike is a retired professor of military strategy and history and author of “Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change.”

By all accounts it’s not going so well. While the exchanges of live and dead hostages continue, the aid is not getting into the war- and famine-plagued population, which is now suffering from conditions not heard of since the turn of the last century, like scabies and scurvy (and much worse), as tons of uncollected refuge piles up and all drinking water is contaminated. 

Meanwhile, according to Al-Jazeera, the Israel government has violated the ceasefire 282 times as of Nov 11. 

Israel has shot at civilians 88 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 12 times, bombed Gaza 124 times, and demolished people’s properties on 52 occasions, according to Al Jazeera.

Israel still occupies 58% percent of the Strip and is hardening its presence behind the “yellow line” with what looks like permanent structures. Israeli-backed militias continue to skirmish with Hamas. News of talks about the second phase have dwindled,and Hamas seems no closer to disarmament or giving up governance, yet. This puts the progress of the agreement at a virtual standstill, since Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm before it leaves the territory.

Americans meanwhile have been standing up a multinational Civil-Military Coordination Center on the ground to help oversee the mandated flow of international humanitarian and security assistance into Gaza, and to monitor the ceasefire agreement. Details are scarce. Israeli and American media have reported that the Israelis are being sidelined a bit due to frustration with the fact that they have only let in a fraction of the aid that was agreed upon in Trump’s plan.

Meanwhile there are reports that Arab nations in the region will not participate in an international stabilization force planned for Gaza (even if it gets a UN blessing) because the conditions are too chaotic and violent in the strip today. There are also rumors of the U.S. building a base at the center, which is 20 miles outside of Gaza, and housing American troops there, a story that was quickly denied by the Pentagon.

If Washington was sidelining or pressuring Israel, it has yet to have an effect, and time is of the essence as more and more Palestinians are in mortal danger, if not by direct Israeli attacks but unsafe buildings at risk of collapse, disease, lack of food, medicine, and proper health care. More than 69,000 Palestinians have died in the war — that we know of — and this number is likely much, much higher and growing.

Here to talk about the deal, its failures and what might be next are my two Quincy Institute colleagues, Annelle Sheline and Khaled Elgindy. Annelle is a research fellow in the Middle East program, and Khaled Khaled Elgindy is a new senior fellow at Quincy and an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

They certainly aren’t the only assets in the region either. The USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group is on its way down to the region from the CENTCOM area of operations in the Middle East. It brings a host of weapons systems, not the least of which are F-35 and F-18 fighters with a range of missile capabilities, and accompanying destroyers that can fire Tomahawks and a likely Virginia class submarine also with the ability to launch Tomahawks.

According to the Washington Post:

The carrier will join an armada that has been assembled in the Caribbean. Other vessels there include the destroyers USS Jason Dunham, USS Gravely, USS Stockdale, the guided-missile cruiser Lake Erie, and the littoral combat ship Wichita. The Navy and Marine Corps also have combined to deploy the Iwo Jima amphibious ready group, a three-ship task force that includes additional sailors and Marines, off the coast of Venezuela.

The Marines are with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. It includes Harrier fighter jets, helicopters and a battalion with hundreds of infantry Marines.

The Pentagon in recent weeks also has deployed the MV Ocean Trader, a civilian ship converted into a floating Special Operations base that can dispatch troops on short notice.

The ship’s presence in the Caribbean coincided with the deployment of select aircraft from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, an elite helicopter unit that supports the most dangerous missions in the world.

Visuals analyzed by The Washington Post showed helicopters, including MH-6 Little Birds that commanders favor for Special Operations ground assaults, flying less than 90 miles from Venezuela’s coastline in early October.

When the USS Gerald Ford arrives there will be more than 10,000 U.S. military personnel in the region. Not enough for a proper invasion, but a growing footprint nonetheless, and no doubt troubling for Maduro and Venezuela’s neighbors who are now getting a sense of what Trump’s effort to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine is shaping up to look like. 

Is this war? Maximum pressure? Regime change (pushed by one of the most powerful people in his cabinet, today, Marco Rubio?). Here to talk to us this week are two informed critics of the U.S. moves in the region, which also include U.S. military strikes on 12 alleged narco boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and at least 50 dead that we know of, as of Tuesday. 

Jen Kavanagh is a senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities and Dan DePetris  syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek, and a fellow at Defense Priorities.

More from Jennifer:

After strong-arming a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump tries to do it again in Ukraine

Pushing regime change in Venezuela is a terrible idea

More from Dan:

Trump’s Foreign Policy of Short-Termism

Donald Trump brings the war on terrorism to the Caribbean

Before attending the signing ceremony in Egypt, Trump was feted in triumph by Israeli officials at the Knesset. Aside from bestowing on him the moniker “President of Peace” they said he would be remembered “as a giant of Jewish history, one for whom we must look back two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel. Cyrus the Great. Donald J Trump, you are a colossus who will join the pantheon of history,” said Amir Ohana, Speaker of the Knesset. He referred to the 6th century BC Persian King who liberated the Jews from Babylonia to create their own self-governing province in the Persian Empire, also known as the Second Temple period.

Benjamin Netanyahu was also met with thunderous applause and a long standing ovation, as was Steve Witkoff, whose name was even chanted. In his own remarks Trump went on for nearly an hour, charting the litany of things he had done for Israel since his first presidency, including recognizing the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and acknowledging right there that it was due to the aggressive lobbying of the billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson. They were strange speeches overall, in that the word “Palestinians” only came up once, even though the deal was to eventually afford the Palestinian people the same self-rule the Jewish people had enjoyed thanks to Cyrus in 540 BC.

The speeches, too, mentioned very little about the United States, other than Washington had given everything it could — including $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars — to the Israeli cause over the last two years. Trump even boasted that he had approved every weapon Netanyahu had asked for, even ones he never knew existed.

This week I brought in my friend Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor to the show, because after the dust settles, one wonders what any of this has to do with America and the vaunted America First foreign policy that Trump had been promising since 2016. For the last two years, Americans have been told this was “our fight too” but it was never properly explained. It’s been clear in polling that Americans haven’t been convinced either, even Republicans are waning more visibly in their support for giving Israel everything it wants in order to wage a war that has resulted in the collective punishment and deaths of more than 67,000 Gazans, most of them civilians. 

Today, Gaza is in ruins and we are being told it was worth it. Was it?

In his own words, Hegseth described it as “no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for war fighters.” 

“We are warriors. We are purpose built, not for fair weather, blue skies or calm seas. We're built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons of zodiacs in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul, to go to dangerous places to find to find those who would do our nation harm and deliver justice on behalf of the American people, in close and brutal combat, if necessary. You are different. We fight not because we hate what's in front of us. We fight because we love what's behind us.”

OUT are rules of engagement that restrict the necessary force, DEI, and “fat generals” walking the halls of the Pentagon. IN is a warrior ethos that only focuses on the “M” (military) and builds pride in that ethos. OUT is the word “defense.” IN is “killing and breaking things.”

Trump followed with a much less cogent speech, at one point saying he wanted to make American cities National Guard training grounds and talked about the “enemy within.” Given that he has or is threatening to send troops to a number of U.S. cities over crime and anti-ICE “rioting” this immediately sparked another wave of panic in the press and among American Constitutionalists. 

This also comes as the president and his administration appears to be leaning into a renewed Drug War, particularly military action against Venezuela, and proposals for a new Authorization for Military Force targeting “narco-terrorists” that could, in practice, see U.S. military force used in upwards of 60 countries if not the homeland itself. 

And, according to the New York Times this week, not only are there Marco Rubio-efforts within the administration to engage in a regime change operation in Venezuela, but on Thursday the paper reported that the administration has decided that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels that his team has labeled terrorist organizations, and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants.” This was conveyed by the administration in a confidential notice to Congress this week. 

There have been plenty of calls for military reform, even shaving the top officer ranks and instituting radical reforms to the culture of the institution, which has become sclerotic in its thinking, detached from American life and people, and unaccountable for its failures and corruptions.

But is what Trump is doing the right way to go? I put this question to two veterans I most respect. Brandan Buck is a scholar and fellow at the CATO institute and an Afghanistan veteran. Dan McKnight is the founder and director of “Bring Our Troops Home” and also a veteran of the Afghanistan War.

According to the Washington Post this week, it is euphemistically called the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust.

The proposal “was developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)” which is operating the Hunger Games-like food distribution centers at which more than 2000 Gazans have been killed, mostly from getting shot or shelled from Israeli military tanks. The financial planning and prospectus was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group, which has now distanced itself from the project. 

The plans, according to Washington Post, call for “a temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls ‘voluntary’ departures to another country or into restricted, secured zones inside the enclave during reconstruction.”

“Those who own land would be offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new ‘AI-powered, smart cities’ to be built in Gaza. Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food.”

The plan estimates that every individual departure from Gaza would save the trust $23,000, compared with the cost of housing them somewhere in the Strip while the reconstruction takes place — so a financial incentive to push as many Palestinians out of Gaza as possible.

Gaza’s western waterfront would be reserved for the “Gaza Trump Riviera,” boasting “world-class resorts” with the possibility of artificial islands similar to the palm-shaped ones built off the UAE city of Dubai.

For many who have been watching this nightmare in Gaza unfold, the details of the plan do not come as a surprise. Not only did Trump announce something like this was coming shortly after his inauguration, Kushner was interviewed at Harvard in March 2024 before Trump was elected saying there was “very valuable” potential in Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. 

Since then of course, tens of thousands more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli forces and they are being deliberately starved as the Netanyahu Government makes it untenable to live there. Families are being forced completely from the North of the Strip and from Gaza City as a military incursion began in earnest this week. There are no serious signs of the war abating or a ceasefire agreement coming into fruition.

The prospects of Kushner leading a real estate bonanza in this hellscape is, even beyond what we’ve seen over the last 22 months, a little hard to swallow. Here to talk about it with me are Jon Hoffman, a Middle East research fellow at the CATO Institute, and Rawan Abhari, who serves as an advocacy associate at the Quincy Institute.

Of course the fighting on the battlefield hasn’t stopped and all parties appear to acknowledge that an immediate ceasefire is not in the cards, at least not until some sort of framework with terms can be sealed. There is also a broad recognition that there will have to be some territorial concessions by Ukraine, which is losing on the battlefield, and some sort of security guarantees for Ukraine after the war short of NATO membership.

But as they say the devil is in the details. The mainstream press was as always skeptical of Trump’s approach but assessed that in a “master class in diplomacy” (I’ll call it butt kissing) Europe had largely gotten what it had wanted — that Trump was listening, and the so-called adults in the room had been heard. 

Others saw things a bit differently. They surmised that Putin would never go for the “Article 5” like guarantees that Trump and the Europeans had been banging on about in front of the press, and certainly Western peacekeepers in Ukraine was a no go. They guessed that Trump was being deliberately vague. Moreover, word on Wednesday was that Putin may never accept a “bilateral” meeting with Zelensky, despite Trump’s assurances that it would happen.

In short there was little substance to come out of the meeting, just a lot of solid if not good vibes. While there is nothing wrong with a positive momentum, the lack of detail could cause a whole lot of crossed wires and given the mistrust and hostilities built up over the years, it wouldn’t be too difficult to see this going south if given certain triggers. 

Two of the best analysts on the Ukraine war joined us this week to sort this all out. James Carden is a writer and publisher of the Realist Review. Mike Vlahos is a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and a weekly contributor on the John Batchelor Show. 

More from Carden: 

Sixty-Three Years, Nothing Has Changed

Presidents Trump and Putin Must Seize the Moment in Alaska

More from Vlahos:

Accepting the Truth About Ukrainian Casualties is the Only Real Path to Peace

America's Military Is in Big Trouble

Catholics including Sohrab Ahmari, who joins us here today, jumped on comments by people like Luke Moon of the Catholic Philos Project, who  lashed out against critics of Israel in the wake of the Holy Family church attack. In comments called “unacceptable” and a “bridge too far,” Moon said ““Church leaders are quick to blame Israel (and Israel has apologized),” he added. “They never speak so clearly about Islamists. They’re afraid to. It’s not courageous to attack the Jews. It’s easy. It’s been easy for almost 2000 years. One would think that the leaders of a billion member Church might not be so afraid, and yet they are.”

Meanwhile Evangelical Christian Joe Berry,  managing editor of the conservative Onion, the Babylon Bee, is probably regretting comments he made about the outcry after the church shelling. He went on a rant saying “this won’t be easy for people to hear, but there are only 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas.” 

“I don’t know about anyone else, but as a Catholic who supports and prays for my persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in Gaza and the Holy Land, I won’t be sharing or boosting anything produced by the Babylon Bee or its anti-Catholic, dispensationalist editors ever again,” wrote author and Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson.

Berry doubled down suggesting this was all an effort to turn Christians against Israel, calling it “​​evil forces trying to break up MAGA along racial and religious sectarian lines and it’s encouraging to know some people of wisdom and discernment see right through it.”

While polling still shows strong Republican support for Israel overall, there is a discernible drop overall of Americans’ tolerance for its war in Gaza after more than 22 months of civilian death, destruction and starvation. There is a notable shift in attitudes, even among Republicans, of Americans under 30. MAGA, which includes a strong faith based element, has been divided over the issue, as Berry said, but the blame, my guests here today are likely to say, are Israel actions and the Trump administration’s inability to stop them, more than “evil forces” trying to systematically divide the coalition.

The disillusionment of course goes far beyond the Catholics. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an Evangelical Christian, has come out to call what is going on in Gaza a genocide and has specifically invoked her faith to explain why she is speaking out so vociferously against the Israeli government on this front. “Yesterday I spoke to a Christian pastor from Gaza. There are children starving. And Christians have been killed and injured, as well as many innocent people. If you are an American Christian, this should be absolutely unacceptable to you,” he posted on X this week. 

Online outrage included Erik Prince, no pacifist or even critic of Israel, who actually accused Israel of taking “pot shots” at the cross on the top of the Holy Family Church. He too said he was finished supporting American funding for Israel’s war on Gaza. He said Hamas “need to die” but "But the real losers are the normal people in Gaza just trying to live.” 

So what is going on here? I wanted to drill down on how Christians and particularly Catholics on the conservative end of the spectrum are part of the backlash against Israel and may play a bigger role in potential policy change where the war is concerned — and what that might look like.

Joining me are the aforementioned Sohrab Ahmari, who is the US bureau chief of Unherd magazine, and author of Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty – and What to Do About It (2023).

Dave DeCamp, new editor of Antiwar.com and host of Antiwar News

And Andrew Day, writer and editor at the American Conservative magazine

These contractors are beginning to come forward with horror stories about their colleagues using live ammunition, stun grenades, and pepper spray in crowd control and may be responsible for shooting civilians. This is vehemently denied by the GHF and the American contracting companies — Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions — but the the reality is that armed American mercenaries are working alongside Israeli military in a combat zone and in a situation in which scores of civilians, desperate for food, are being shot at with guns, tanks, pepper spray and tear gas.

So whatever gave the U.S. government the idea that sending U.S. contractors to do this would be a good thing? While hired guns had been an integral part of U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror, and have worked with governments across the globe on humanitarian and rescue missions, even humanitarian work, this feels different. Biden and now Trump have vowed to keep U.S. military boots off the ground in Israel-Gaza, so is this a way to keep that pledge while assisting Israel directly in its military aims? Does that still make us co-beligerents? What happens if these contractors get hurt or killed while they are there, what if they kill Palestinians? What happens then?

Here to talk about all of this and more this week is Morgan Lerette, a former Blackwater contractor who worked for the company during its infamous time in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and later went back to Iraq as a commissioned Army intelligence officer. Lerette has since written a critical memoir called “Guns, Girls, and Greed: I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq”

#USmilitary #USmilitarycontractors #Gaza #Israel #GHF #foodaidGaza #MiddleEast #foreignpolicy #nationalsecurity #Blackwater #IDF

After months of roiling criticism over DOGE cuts and deportations, Trump has found himself in a situation in which his loyal base is revolting over his refusal to release the Epstein files. Not only that, his administration — including Attorney General Pam Bondi — has gone from saying an infamous Epstein client list does not exist, to asserting the files themselves were “created” by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and that there is essentially “nothing to see here” but more left-wing attacks whipping up against him.

It would seem that this time, the spin job is not working with MAGA. This follows what is becoming a long hot summer in which the president has seemingly taken a number of foreign policy turns against what many in his base had been expecting: he is now threatening Russian President Putin with tariffs and even bombing him, while pledging more weapons to Ukrainian president Zelensky and in June, decided to bomb Iran and boasted he destroyed its nuclear program when there is no evidence to support that claim. Essentially, no ending the war in Ukraine as promised, and no diplomacy over war in the Middle East as promised. In particular, the base sees deference to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel as the curious common denominator here, given his insistence on an ‘America First’ foreign policy. For many, it just doesn’t feel like it.

Here to talk with me about this are two of the most persistent and capable investigative reporters I know — Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil of the Grayzone. Max, the editor of the Grayzone, has had a long career in journalism publishing widely in the The Nation, Daily Beast, New York Times, Salon, and more, he has also written several books, including the latest The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump 

Anya is a journalist  for Greyzone and a documentary filmmaker whose reporting has taken her to a number of international hot spots and conflict zones including Honduras, the Palestinian territories, the Korean Peninsula and Venezuela. Her  book, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire was published in 2024.

One of the most interesting threads to come out of the last six months of new Trump foreign policy is that China has not been the focus, other than a tariff war which as of this writing, does not appear to have blown up in the catastrophic ways predicted in the press, at least not yet. While Trump has been perceived as “bullying” other countries into not doing business with Beijing, the U.S. and China last week came to an important trade agreement aimed at deescalating the tensions.

What has been missing is the escalation on the security front. Aside from boilerplate pronouncements by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that China may be an imminent threat to Taiwan and ongoing efforts to rally allies and partners in the region like the Philippines and Pacific Islands to the cause of playing hedge against Beijing, there seems to be a lagging interest in picking a fight with China on that level today.

One could say the administration has its hands full with Ukraine and the Middle East. The first Trump administration identified China as the “pacing threat” and began to shift all of the resources and energy of the military industrial complex in that direction. Realists now in the administration, like Elbridge Colby, now Undersecretary for Policy Planning at the DoD, have charged that the U.S. must extricate from the Ukraine War to focus on maintaining our interests in the Indo Pacific. 

So what happened? And more importantly, have the events of the last several months, including the decision to bomb Iran, changed the dynamics of the U.S. posture in other parts of the world, and, just as importantly, how China views the Trump administration strategically? Much has been written on trying to assess the impact of the Ukraine War on China’s calculations vis–a-vis the U.S. — so what is Xi Jinping thinking today?

We talk to two informed analysts on this topic: Ali Wyne, Senior Research and Advocacy Adviser, U.S.-China, at the International Crisis Group, also author of America’s Great-Power Opportunity, and Dan Grazier, director of the  National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center.

More from Wyne:

Three Potential Pitfalls of Trump’s Approach to China

Debating Whether China Is Getting Stronger or Weaker Won’t Make U.S. Policy More Sound

More from Grazier: 

Taiwan Up Close: Why Geography Complicates Invasion

Why US shipbuilding is the worst and more money won't save it

Wow, my head is spinning. I am lucky to have Retired Col. Douglas Magregor here to sort this all out for us and give us his always astute, always realist and common sense perspective. For some context, Col. Macgregor was the "squadron operations officer who essentially directed the Battle of 73 Easting" during the first Gulf War. He was also a military planner during the NATO intervention in the Bosnian war in 1999 and one of the most important critics of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad in 2003. He has been a solid voice for military reform and restraint for the last 25 years and is invaluable in his military and geopolitical analysis today.

Ukrainian military officials said 41 Russian aircraft were hit, including strategic bombers and surveillance planes, with some destroyed and others damaged. This unfortunately has unleashed a week of attacks on both sides, but the most fierce from Russia, which over the course of Monday and Tuesday, launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Kviv, Karkhiv, and Odessa, hitting civilian areas including one administrative building of a maternity ward. If the gloves weren’t off, they are coming off now with a seeming vengeance.

In a matter of days, the peace process, already struggling for oxygen, seems as if on life support. President Trump has threatened to walk away and has expressed his share of frustration with both Presidents Putin and Zelensky. The second round of talks in Istanbul seemed to have bore no fruit, with both sides issuing demands that the Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven called “completely mutually incompatible” suggesting “that at present neither side is in fact interested in an early peace.”

So where does this renewed fighting leave efforts to end this war? Will the Russians choose to just keep fighting and taking territory through the summer? How much can Ukraine take? Will the US at some point cut off aid? Will Europe be able to step in and fill the gap?

Here to talk about this on the show are two good friends and experts, George Beebe, the director of the Grand Strategy program at the Quincy Institute, and Mark Episkopos, Eurasia Research Fellow.

More from George:

What the giddy reaction to Ukraine's surprise attacks says about us

Trump’s strategy of peace

More from Mark:

Despite war, Moscow is booming

For US in Georgia, political meddling is a hard habit to break

The purge, or you can call it for dramatic purposes the Memorial Day weekend massacre, also comes on the heels of Trump re-assigning his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to represent the U.S. at the United Nations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been put into place as interim National Security Advisor and Andy Baker, foreign policy advisor to VP JD Vance, and Robert Gabriel, who advises Trump, have been appointed NSC deputies. Alex Wong, who was serving as Waltz’s deputy, has been reassigned elsewhere.

All of this is against the backdrop of international foreign policy developments of which the U.S. is at the center: a potential nuclear deal with Iran, ongoing attempts to bring the war to an end in Ukraine and a ceasefire and an end to the siege and killing in Gaza. 

To say that personnel is policy and that each hiring and firing of top people will have an effect on how each of these core issues is resolved is an understatement, especially when one considers the real split in the Trump base over what kind of approach the administration should take. On one hand, the Waltz’s of the world would rather Trump take a hard line on Putin, China, and even go to war with Iran. Vance’s orbit is more about clearly defining what the U.S. interest is in each — and then acting accordingly, preferably not rushing in with guns blazing and putting U.S. servicemembers in harm’s way.

Here to sort out all of these dynamics is my good friend Curt Mills who is the Executive Director and Editor of the American Conservative magazine. He has written and spoken extensively about the Trump orbit and the dramatic shift in Washington when it comes to Republican politics and who is driving the conversation and policy here in the Imperial City.

Meanwhile, Trump has promised a huge announcement on Gaza (which as of this recording we have yet to hear) and his administration is engaged in ongoing talks with Iran over a possible new nuclear deal. This all comes a week after Trump announced a truce with the Houthis in the Red Sea.

All of this is happening without direct input from Israel, by all accounts. In fact, the president and his team have made a number of statements over the last week that have the nerves of the Netanyahu government jangling. Perhaps the most telling was when Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to the UN who is probably the most Zionist of his senior team, said bluntly to reporters, “The U.S. doesn’t have to tell Israel everything that it is going to do.” 

Both Witkoff and Trump have said they want the war to end, while the U.S. has been engaging in direct talks with Hamas, getting Edan Alexander, an American hostage from Oct. 7, released this week as well. 

Rather than criticized, Trump seems to be gaining a lot of steam from his base on these recent moves, which one could say is 180-degree difference from the deferential treatment he gave Netanyahu and his government during the first Trump term. MAGA is not only split, but the most vocal of them appear very much attuned to the narrative that blind and unconditional fealty to Israel is not America First, and that a more realist foreign policy, one that puts U.S. interests first, is the course that they voted for and want Trump to take. 

They are also, like Trump in his prepared remarks in Riyadh this week, outwardly eschewing the influence of the neoconservatives in U.S. foreign policy.

This of course is the real “conservative foreign policy” — as my guests today will tell you. Please welcome Brandan Buck, senior fellow at the CATO institute, who will be soon publishing his PhD dissertation, Partisans of the Old Republic: Right-Wing Opposition to U.S. Foreign Policy; and Andrew Day, senior editor at the American Conservative magazine who is also a prolific writer and a PhD.

More from Andrew:

Trump’s Huge Middle East Opportunity

Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Reset

More from Brandan: 

The Inspiring Legacy of Anti-War Conservatism

The Cognitive Shift: How the Terrorist Label May Lead to Another Forever War

Trump then tried to bring about a ceasefire, which really didn’t work as both sides blamed each other for not keeping it. Meanwhile, Europe is seemingly determined to undermine all of it by continuing to call for more weapons and aid to Ukraine, despite all evidence on the ground that this war cannot be won on the battlefield, and the longer the war continues, Ukraine will be in a worse position at the bargaining table.

Most recently the Trump administration suggested a peace plan in which Russia would keep Crimea. This didn’t go down so well with the Ukrainians. More recently Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as part of Russia is an imperative to a peace deal, along with lifting sanctions, withdrawing lawsuits and cancelling arrest warrants, as well as returning Russian assets subjected to the so-called freeze in the West. Anything else, Sergei?

Everyone seemingly wants “to talk” but they don’t really want to talk, leaving Trump to say he will walk away from it all if he has to. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterating this said Sunday that the Trump administration will decide this week whether to continue pursuing a negotiated settlement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or to turn its attention to other matters.

This week will be “very important,” Mr. Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally if not more important in some cases.”

“But we want to see it happen,” he added. “There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic of course as well. We’re close, but we’re not close enough.”

Are they over their heads, or are these just negotiating gambits? What are the prospects that the admin actually does turn away to other priorities if Trump can't see winning here? And if so, what would happen.

Here to talk with us today are two extremely straight shooters on the subject of the Ukraine War, and have been from the beginning. Michael Vlahos, who has had a long career teaching military strategy and policy and has been a regular Sunday staple on the John Batchelor Show for over 20 years. James Carden is a writer and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord. Please check out their substacks!Where are the US-Russia and US-Ukraine peace talks going? For months now, the

The Trump administration has called this a threat to “US foreign policy” and claims the right to throw these scholars and students out of the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Bill of Rights is being tested like nothing before in recent history. Critics wonder how far it will go until citizens, particularly those working in advocacy and media organizations that deal specifically in foreign policy and national security, are caught in the crosshairs. 

My guest this week needs no introduction. John Kiriakou was a career CIA officer who ran afoul of the agency when he divulged its water boarding practices as “torture” during the Global War on Terror. He did time in prison for this, and rather than dissolve into the shadows after his nearly 3-year stint, came out more emboldened than ever to speak the truth and fight for others’ right to seek it. He has been an integral part of the whistleblower community, a podcaster and radio host, author, intelligence expert, and staunch defender of the U.S. Constitution.

We talked about the administration’s attack on free speech over the Israel issue, its attempts to deport Green Card and Student Visa holders, and what has happened to the once energized First Amendment movement on the Right. We also talked about President Trump’s moves to dismantle the Deep State, which John says is a good thing, and Trump’s seeming moves toward finding a diplomatic pathway, rather than war, with Iran.

More from John:

Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy

Pardon Me for Being Angry

Don’t miss Kiriakou on his new podcast with Michelle Witte and Ted Rall, the DeProgram Show

In recent months, as Trump has staked out a new direction for the U.S. policy on the war — toward a negotiated settlement and away from endlessly arming a war of attrition — the Europeans have dug further in.

First, they were gobsmacked when they were not invited to initial talks with Russian leadership in the first days of the administration. Then they were taken aback by the Trump team’s insistence that Europe had to take more responsibility for its defense. Leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France and Keir Starmer of the UK used this as an opening to push for more military assistance and support for Ukraine, even proposing a peacekeeping force of European soldiers, as well as suggesting boots on the ground if the Russians became more aggressive. This, especially, has been dismissed widely as even supporters acknowledge much could not be done without the backing of the U.S. military.

At the root of it all is that the majority of European leadership, particularly in the EU, has not moved very far, if at all, from their initial position that Vladimir Putin and the Russians pose an existential threat to Europe. That is much different from the Trump position that Russia needs to be brought in from isolation in order to end the war and plan for a new security reality in Europe that does not involve NATO closing in on Russia and leaving the region on a perpetual war footing.

Here to talk with me about this and more are two prolific writers on European security, diplomacy, and politics, who have rare, alternative takes on current affairs relating to the Ukraine War, NATO and the elite foreign policy establishment in Europe. Please welcome Ian Proud, who was a member of His Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019 and recently published his memoir, "A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019” and posts at his substack, The Peacemonger.

Also, Eldar Mamedov, he has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. From 2009 to 2022, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and was in charge of the EP delegations for inter-parliamentary relations with Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula.

More from Ian: 

US-Europe divide on SWIFT could derail Ukraine peace talks

Even if the war ended tomorrow, Ukraine could end up broke by 2026

Once never-Trump, Britain's leaders scrambling to stay relevant

More from Eldar:

What happens to EU's anti-war bloc without Marine Le Pen?

Cracks in European ‘unity’ on Ukraine

McCarthyism, European style: The elite crackdown on Ukraine dissent

Not surprisingly, the Houthis have responded with their own attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea. Their missiles have been intercepted, but — like the last 17 months — the constant volley of missiles has kept the American Navy busy, in harm’s way, and exhausting a lot of expensive missiles, nearly $2 billion worth of arms, since the end of last year.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears committed to fighting the Houthis in an open-ended exercise that looks and feels like a war, yet it has not been authorized by Congress and it has not been fully explained to the American people. To top it off, an embarrassing scandal exposing top officials’ use of a signal chat room to plan the initial attack on the Houthis in Yemen on March 15 has made the administration — in particular, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who appeared to let Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg “in” to the chat — amateurish and itching to flex militarily, even despite some push back from VP J.D. Vance.

This all has a broken record feel to it. President Obama enjoined the Saudi war against the Houthis in 2014; the conflict there, which the U.S. supported with weapons and other military assistance, crushed the population and continued all through the first Trump and the early Biden administration. Airstrikes against the Houthi militants were resumed after the Houthis said it would attack Israel-connected ships in the Red Sea after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel spurred the Israeli war in Gaza, which has now killed over 50,000 people. 

International shipping has been disrupted — which the Trump administration is now using as an excuse to pummel Yemen. But is it our fight? Is it a useless one?

Here to talk about this are my friends and experts Annelle Sheline, who is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, specializing in Middle East affairs, and Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities, who specializes in military affairs.

More from Annelle:

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival

Jordan’s Abdullah at White House, looking down the barrel of a gun

More from Jennifer: 

US airstrikes against Houthis show there's 'free riding' in Red Sea, too

Washington must get out of Europe’s way on defense

“Mad King Trump’s Tariff Disaster”

“Trump’s neofascism is here now. Here are 10 things you can do to resist”

“A Guide to Trump’s Fascist Presidency — From Ignoring Judge to Erasing History”

“Fit for a king? Trump’s moves challenge world order and U.S. bureaucracy.”

These are all headlines I found in five minutes this morning Googling “Trump fascist“ “Trump fascism” “Trump king” and “Is Trump a monarch?”

For weeks, the legacy media and mostly the left side of the commentariat has been declaring the end of American democracy, invariably calling Trump the resurrection of Hitler, Mussolini and/or Mad King George. Most of these proclamations are steeped in a “we told you so” energy, as every day brings new outrage over executive orders, constitutionally questionable detentions, and Trump’s seeming expansionist ambitions. 

But honestly, when do we stop blaming the symptom without looking for the cause? If Trump is the new emperor, we, with our cult worship of the presidency, and Congress, with its corruption and spinelessness, have given the White House the extraordinary powers with which to eschew the checks and balances of our Constitutional republic. 

In other words, did we ask for this?

Here to talk about this are two scholars in politics, history, and culture from two points on the political spectrum. Gene Healy comes from the libertarian perspective. He is vice president for policy at the Cato Institute and is a contributing editor to Liberty magazine. He is also the author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, which was updated in 2024. 

We also welcome Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige podcast. He is also the Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the University of Washington and is the author of Rethinking U.S. World Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations among other books.

Among the myriad criticisms about these firings is that Trump is not replacing these posts with the most qualified officers, but loyalists. This seems to be the complaint about Trump's choice last week to nominate Lt. Gen. Dan "Razin" Caine to replace Brown as his pick to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which writers at Military.com called “uncharted territory for the military.”

They say Caine, a retired three-star Air Force general, does not meet the legal requirements to serve as the chairman because he never served as the vice chairman, the head of a service branch, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command. His most recent assignment before retiring in 2024 was the Director of Special Programs and the Department of Defense Special Access Program Central Office at the Pentagon. 

The other complaint is that Trump and Hegseth have been vocal and active about dismantling the diversity and inclusion programs in the military and that Brown had been cited for engaging a quota system in the officer application pool (the military refers to them as goals) when he was Air Force Chief of Staff in 2022.  Trump’s advisors have also cited a video Brown made in the wake of the George Floyd death and ensuing protests as politicization, and what blew up his relations with Brown as well as then-chairman Mark Milley.

Hegseth is also being criticized for firing all of the judge advocate generals, also known as JAGs, the top military lawyers. Some say he wants pliancy rather than experts who can keep the military acting within the rule of the law. One of Hegseth’s big assertions is that the U.S. lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because their hands were tied due to overly stringent rules of engagement. On Friday, it was announced that he will be repealing restrictions on U.S. airstrikes, broadening the range of people who can be targeted in attacks and no longer solely focusing on striking senior leadership of terrorist organizations, as permitted under the Biden and Obama administrations.

This is a lot to unpack, as on one hand there have been complaints for years that the military brass is too top heavy, that the promotional system is broken and corruptible, and that it does not reward strategic competence and critical thinking. Rather, those who can maneuver up the food chain with political skill and high deference to doctrine and maintaining the static quo are the only ones who make it to the top. 

But what do we make of Hegseth’s moves here? Is he recognizing the real problem or is he firing these officers for completely different reasons, or a little of both? 

So we brought in friend of the show (Ret.) Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, military analyst for Defense Priorities and host of the Deep Dive podcast, to break it all down for us.

More from Danny Davis:

February 21, 2025

Ukraine’s NATO Fantasy Sparked a Nightmare War with Russia

Could Ukraine Have Avoided War with Russia?

It’s time for US troops to leave Syria

That seemed to be the spirit of the Paris summit on Monday, though it is not clear if anything was achieved. 

Here to talk about how NATO and European partners are reacting to all of this are two scholars who have been quite adamant all along that the NATO alliance has not only outlived its Cold War mission but in its desperation to remain relevant has actually escalated the conflict that it is supposedly providing security for today, namely Ukraine. Sumantra Maitra is the author of The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? And a 2023 policy brief, Pivoting the US Away from Europe to a Dormant NATO.

More from Sumantra: 

Out of Shape and Out of Control: Understanding and Reforming a “Woke” NATO

A Possible Path to Peace in Ukraine

More from Justin:

The Trump Administration Should Lay Down the Law to the Europeans

Just in Time for Valentine’s Day, Hegseth Takes the Romance Out of NATO

But that is only half the story. Americans not only lost their faith in news but have seemingly recoiled against the ideological bias of the elite media in ways that have left institutions like the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and MSNBC and CNN unmoored and left behind. Even more than their obvious preference for platforming liberal left politics, consumers are reacting to the disconnect of these organizations to the real lives and interests of people outside the wealthy bicoastal enclaves of the country. The yawning expanse of understanding between the wealthy and overeducated and the middle and working classes of the country found the former wrapped up in identity politics while the later struggled with the damage done by COVID lockdowns and inflation. When more than half the nation voted Trump the realization came like a punch in the face. Major news orgs like CNN, the Washington Post and NBC, bastions of the liberal center-left, started laying off workers and scrambling to adjust editorially. Moreover, Trump is determined to sideline them in traditional roles in Washington now too, squeezing them out of studio and desk space at the Pentagon and opening up to new media in the White House briefing room. 

This is quite the transformation to witness, especially for those like me and my guest today, Khody Akhavi, longtime journalist and video producer, who has lived and worked through the last two decades of traditional media domination. We talk about the breathtaking changes we are seeing in journalism and media and what it means for the culture, politics, and even foreign policy.

Recent videos produced by Khody:

Ending the Ukraine-Russia War

How Foreign Governments & Arms Dealers Try to Shape U.S. Policy

How Would Israel's West Bank Annexation Impact Jordan?

But now Trump is back. It would seem many of these nations just want to open up to trade, and provide security for their people without being forced to choose sides in any Great Power Competition or dynamic. What kind of approach will the new president take? Will the threat of tariffs right off the bat spoil any chance for productive relations? Are many of these countries — particularly in Latin America — already predisposed to an adversarial relationship with Trump? Are others happy he is back? 

Is there any real “Global South” in which they are acting on behalf of a collective realignment? 

I talk with my friends and colleagues Sarang Shidore director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, and Karthik Sankaran, senior research fellow in geoeconomics in the Global South program, to set the table on this highly textured issue, particularly has the world awaits Trump 2.0.

More from Sarang:

The Quiet Development Shaking America’s Power

The Return of the Global South

More from Karthik:

 Targeting China, Biden fires a big tech salvo at the entire world

The U.S. Dollar Is Riding High. Trump Could Put an End to All That.

He then issued a much awaited Executive Order on January 16 that directs the DNI – Director of National Intelligence – and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to release the remaining JFK records, and within 45 days a plan to release the RFK and MLK Jr. cases. But the response to this order has been deflation, not elation. 

My guest today is going to explain what this order says, what it does, and why it wasn’t what we had exactly hoped for. He will also walk us through what has and has not been released already, what he is looking for in the remaining classified and redacted documents, and most importantly why it is critical that all of the government records of the assassination, before and after November 22, 1963, are finally made public.

Jefferson Morley is a Washington author and veteran journalist who has been writing for decades about the JFK assassination within the context of official secrecy in Washington’s intelligence agencies. He is the author of several non–fiction histories, the most recent being Scorpions Dance: The President, The Spymaster and Watergate (2022), and The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (2017). He is the vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and publishes a popular Substack newsletter called JFK Facts. 

This week he previewed his own special edition, in which JFK Facts and the Mary Ferrell Foundation will be highlighting 12 essential documents believed to be covered in the Executive Order and how they might finally unlock the mysteries of the JFK assassination, including whether Harvey Lee Oswald was indeed the lone gunman, which is the official story of that day in Dallas, November 22, 1963. 

Read more in Jefferson Morley’s newsletter, JFK Facts

Where the 2016 election of Donald Trump brought on a wave of protest including the landmark women’s march, which brought over 450k demonstrators to the Nation’s Capitol ahead of his first inauguration, the one that took place on Saturday drew only a few thousand. Original protesters contacted by Politico said there was a mixture of fatigue and frustration within their activist ranks, that the feeling of righteousness was just not there. 

One organizer of the 2017 events told Politico that she was “not that type of progressive anymore” and was frustrated at what she views as a political left that is “completely cannibalizing itself.”

Mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post seem to be fitting that bill too, cannibalizing and/or imploding. Instead of lashing out to find boogeymen like Putin and Xi Jinping as having engineered the election, the progressive left and even Democratic party members have turned introspective. What does this mean for foreign policy? Well, this week saw the incoming Trump administration get credit for the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, while the Biden team struggled against the optics of protesters at every media appearance. There seems to be more acknowledgement than ever that the only way the Ukraine War will come to an end is through negotiations, and the incoming White House and Trump cabinet nominees seem more in line with that one issue than any other in the foreign policy portfolio.

But are there fissures in the MAGA world already emerging? This week it was reported that Steve Bannon, early New Right impresario who actually did time in prison defending Trump, called Elon Musk, who has been at Trump’s right hand for months through the election and after, “an evil person.” Where can we expect the fractures in the base to open and what does that portend for an effective overall political strategy from the man at the top? Will that bleed into foreign policy and national security? 

Here to talk with me about all of this are my friends and two of the best political analysts I know — political writer and commentator Jack Hunter  and Charles McElwee, reporter and editor for RealClearPennsylvania.

More from Jack Hunter

Neocons are melting down over JD Vance

A MAGA Left-Right Coalition?

More from Charles McElwee

Mainstreet of the Realignment

Tine to Retire Pennsylvania’s ‘Alabama’

The new governing authority under HTS is looking for the lifting of international sanctions so it can start rebuilding the country after over a decade of civil war. Also, questions remain over whether or not this new governing authority will be tolerant of the minorities in Syria, which include the Allawites, Christians and Druze peoples. But there are already reports of intermittent attacks on Allawites, revenge attacks on former police, military and former Assad operatives throughout the country. Whether these incidents are disparate or reflective of something more significant about the direction of the new leadership there, remains to be determined, as current leader Ahmed Al-Sharra insists he is in favor of a process that results in an inclusive, representative government.

The U.S. still has at least 2,000 soldiers stationed in the northeastern part of the country, ostensibly to fight ISIS. Turkey is launching attacks against the U.S.-supported Kurd-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) in that part of Syria and threaten to eliminate any of the strongholds that the SDF had maintained during the civil war. Meanwhile, Israel has taken over the UN-protected buffer zone in the Golan Heights, reportedly destroying property and threatening local villagers. How far will they go? How long will they stay?

These are just some of the questions as we move into 2025 — including what the kind of policy President Donald Trump will pursue when it comes to Syria — will he help to lift sanctions or be more skeptical of the Sunni-led HTS in Damascus?

Here to talk with me about this are my friends Matthew Petti, who is a reporter for Reason magazine and who has lived in the region,  and Connor Echols, who is the managing editor of the NonZero newsletter and has  also lived and studied in the region. 

More from Petti:

Is Biden Teeing up a war with Iran for Trump?

More from Echols:

Why do Biden and Blinken act like Israel’s lawyers?

In the West Bank, the situation is reaching a critical juncture. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far right government is now talking openly about fully annexing the territory. Right now there are some 670,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank – settlements that are considered illegal under international law. But the settlements keep expanding even as the U.S. has warned against them. 

Now hawkish Republican voices in the U.S., even those in Donald Trump’s inner circle, have suggested support for a complete annexation of the territory, which now houses some 2.7 million Palestinians, many of whom have been brutally attacked by extremist settlers in the last several years, particularly after Oct 7, 2023. Where will they go if they are squeezed out of their homes and villages? 

My guest Annelle Sheline, who is a Middle East fellow at the Quincy Institute, just published a new report on Jordan amid the turmoil, and an article this week at Responsible Statecraft that talks about how millions of refugees could be headed for Jordan and it could spell the end of the Hastemite monarchy if and when the West Bank is annexed. 

More from Annelle Sheline:

Jordan braces as Israeli annexation of West Bank looms

Opinion: Why I’m resigning from the State Department

Implications of Assad’s Fall for Syria and the Region

This is all happening as a new administration is poised to take over in January. Trump’s nominees for foreign policy and national security are certainly a mixed bag. But one, Tulsi Gabbard, who was nominated for Director of National Intelligence, seems to be igniting partisan fires like no other candidate. Interestingly, the Army reserve officer, former congresswoman and Iraq War veteran has been most prescient when it comes to US intervention in the Middle East. She has warned consistently about meddling in the politics of Syria, about taking sides in the internecine conflicts, and maintaining an aggressive military footprint inside the country. She to this day is drawing fire for her 2017 visit with Bashar Assad because in her words:

“ I did so because I felt that it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace…Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria. In order for any peace agreement, in order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur there has to be a conversation with him.”

Nevertheless nearly 100 former national security officials penned a letter saying they were “alarmed” at her nomination and urged closed door hearings to go over her record, saying that following her trip to Syria, “Ms. Gabbard aligned herself with Russian and Syrian officials." 

She has been called a traitor and a foreign agent by Democrats who want to tank her nomination. But more than 250 conservative military veterans responded Monday with their own letter, saying "Tulsi’s life exemplifies a rare blend of selflessness, courage, and leadership—qualities desperately needed to reform and strengthen our intelligence community," the signatories stated. 

"We are appalled by the baseless attacks questioning Tulsi’s loyalty to our great nation. For over 20 years and across multiple combat deployments, Tulsi has risked her life to defend the safety, security and freedom of the American people. These attacks insult not only her, but every one of us Veterans who have served our country."

Gabbard faces a hard road, but it is not difficult to see that she had been prescient in so many ways, as much of the American regime change wars of the last 40 years have come to destructive fruition just in the last few days. Today, the U.S. insists on keeping military forces in Syria to fight ISIS, a branch of the Islamists who Washington helped to create by its invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein 20 years ago. 

Here to talk about Gabbard’s road to confirmation ahead and what is going on in Syria today is Lyle Goldstein, director of China policy for Defense Priorities and head of the China Initiative at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and good friend of the show Michael Vlahos, who is a fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and former Naval War College professor.

Most specifically, Hezbollah had just signed a ceasefire with Israel days before the HTS attack and is spending much of its energy right now focused on its remaining elements and the political situation inside Lebanon. Russia has been assisting Assad with airstrikes over the last few days but it too, has limited resources due to its own war over the last two and a half years in Ukraine. Meanwhile the role of Turkey — whether direct or pulling strings — has also raised eyebrows. It is a NATO member, after all, and while the U.S. has no love lost for Assad, Ankara’s support for Al Qaeda inspired terrorists would be unhelpful to Washington. Or would it? Is Washington already stirring up trouble and if so, are our 900 troops in the country being placed further into harm’s way?

Here to walk us through this web of interests and traps is Professor Joshua Landis, who is the head of the Center for Middle East Studies and director of the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is a recognized expert on Syria politics and war, and his new book: Syria at Independence: Nationalism, Leadership, and Failure of Republicanism will be published by the Arab Center for research and Policy studies this coming year.

More from Landis:

US troops should have left Syria and Iraq long ago

The warnings come just days after the Biden administration gave permission to Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles, specifically Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMs, to attack inside Russia. This is the latest in a string of crossed “red lines” for the administration, and according to our guest this week, a big one. He also gave permission for the Pentagon to transfer antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine to use to stall Russian progression on the Ukrainian battlefield (Biden had publicly opposed such weapons as recently as 2020).

Ukraine has taken its new authority and is running hard with it, launching at least six ATACMs into Russia on Monday, hitting an ammunition facility in the Bryansk region in Southwestern part of the country. According to the New York Times, “the strike represented a demonstration of force for Ukraine as it tries to show Western allies that providing more powerful and sophisticated weapons will pay off — by degrading Russia’s combat capabilities and relieving pressure on Kyiv’s overstretched forces.”

But my colleague, Mark Episkospos, a research fellow in the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute and a scholar of Russian history and military strategy, says this is folly, that allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia not only prolongs a war that will never ultimately turn in Kyiv’s favor, but opens NATO countries up to Russian retaliation, even nuclear attack. 

To put a finer point on it, the Kremlin updated its nuclear doctrine this week, declaring nuclear retaliation on nuclear powers fair game if Russia is attacked with their weapons via a non-nuclear power like Ukraine.

Mark walks us through with why this red line may be the most dangerous yet.

More from Mark Episkopos:

Biden's ‘Last bang’: Allow long range missiles in Russia

Trump has a mandate to end the Ukraine War

Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Is a Two-Edged Sword

Ukraine & the West are crossing red lines. Why isn't Russia reacting?

Stefanik is a staunch Israel proponent who worked for the arch neoconservative organizations Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Bill Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative. 

Then word hit that Trump had planned to appoint Rep. Mike Waltz, another super hawk who not only didn’t want to end the war in Afghanistan, but has been open to attacking Iran and building up the military for a confrontation with China, as his National Security Advisor. 

Then word came down that Trump was expected to nominate Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, setting off a wave of repulsion from the restrainer crowd. Rubio, groomed by neocons, has been a career-long supporter of Israel and has been open to going to war with Iran. 

Where is this going? Should restrainers panic or take a deep breath and try to discern Trump’s strategy here? 

I talk to (Ret.) Lt. Col. Danny Davis of the Deep Dive podcast and Jack Hunter, a writer for Based Politics and Responsible Statecraft to get the insights from the right end of the non-interventionist dial.

More from Davis:

Israel’s conduct in the war will consume us all

NATO on the verge of sacrificing its core purpose: Self-defense

More from Hunter: 

Neocons are melting down over JD Vance

Harris' aversion to talks with dictators is more Bush than Obama

So while Kamala Harris has been campaigning with neoconservative Liz Cheney, blowing the minds of her progressive base, many of whom no doubt see the looming face of Dick Cheney and both father and daughter’s support for the Global War on Terror in every step they make on the campaign trail, Trump has been talking about peace in the Middle East, ending the War in Ukraine and reanimating his attacks on the George W. Bush administration.

His running mate Senator J.D. Vance, meanwhile, actually posted on X late last week that “Israel has the right to defend itself, but America's interest is sometimes going to be distinct. Sometimes we're going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we're going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran.”

He also criticized the Harris team squarely on Gaza. 

“Even though they say they want to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, they pursued the pathway that maximizes those casualties,” Vance said. “They say that they're pro-Israel. They've pursued the pathway that has prolonged the war as long as possible, which is bad for Israel.”

While Harris has been talking tough on foreign policy, indicating that she would not change Biden’s policies, multiple polling has found that Americans are more confident in Trump’s ability to steer foreign policy in 2025.

Why is this? My guess this week has written a great article about it and is in his own right a U.S. foreign policy expert. Peter Van Buren spent over two decades in the foreign service, including a stint in Iraq during the war, before retiring from the State Department in 2012. Today he is a regular columnist for The American Conservative and the author of three books, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper's War: A Novel of WWII Japan and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent.

More from Peter:

What Will Trump II Do for Foreign Policy?

Kerry’s Constitutional Confusion

A Pre-Debate Letter to Donald Trump

One could say this began shortly before the 2016 election when the Obama administration began investigating the Donald Trump campaign for links to the Russians. When Trump was elected, the Democrats, including the losing candidate Hillary Clinton, accused the Russians of colluding with Donald Trump to win. Aside from cyberhacking, the Russians were accused of manipulating our own social media to meddle and influence voters in favor of Trump (subsequent research has dispelled the notion that such manipulation even worked).

After an extensive investigation that roiled the country no Russian collusion with Trump was never found. 

The legalities have never quite mattered, as the narrative of collusion combined with Russia’s actual attempts to sway voters by deploying troll farms and fake accounts on social media, plus the usual spycraft that all major powers do by the way, combined for enough justification for agencies within the government — even while Trump was president — to create a massive weaponized apparatus dedicated to ferreting out and punishing what it saw was “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” 

In practice, these government entities, often working with quasi-government or government funded non-profit organizations, are monitoring speech on the most controversial highly politicized issues of our day: the war in Ukraine being one of the biggest examples. Also COVID. The attempts to control speech and how it was affecting the 2020 election were reported after the fact by Matt Taibbi and his team in the Twitter Files: reams of accounts and posts pulled down that were deemed Russian propaganda and/or COVID misinformation/disinformation, right down to the eve of the 2020 presidential with the Hunter Biden laptop story being blacked out right before polls opened. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, admitted as much and more recently he fessed up to the pressures he was put under by federal entities during the COVID pandemic.

What we are concerned about here is how the censorship industrial complex can chill domestic media dissent on issues of foreign policy and war. If reporters and analysts are challenging the company line on hyper-partisan issues like the Ukraine War and Israel, how long will it take before they are considered a threat to national security, too?

We talk to longtime author and all-around Big Government critic Jim Bovard. Jim is a regular columnist at the New York Post and published Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty in 2023. Also joining us is author Mike Vlahos, who has done a lot of work on the political and social dynamics that precede Constitutional crisis.

More from Jim Bovard:

Hillary Clinton, queen of disinformation, issues two-faced call for censorship

Supreme Court’s censorship ruling lets Biden muzzle us online — and meddle in the election

We can’t trust politicized FBI to handle probe of Trump assassination bid

A new generation of reporters and editors at Antiwar.com, which has been challenging U.S. national security policy and militarism since the Bosnia War, has been working non-stop to provide readers with comprehensive, independent news on Israel’s war on Gaza and now its neighbors, since Oct. 7. It represents the libertarian right, a stalwart non-interventionist orbit that draws in fellow travelers from across the ideological and political spectrum and counts as its lodestars Ron Paul and the late Justin Raimondo.

Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of the Conflicts of Interest podcast.

Dave DeCamp is host of the Antiwar News podcast, and news editor/writer at Antiwar.com

They join me to talk about what it is like to report on the war in this space, how libertarians are processing Israel’s war, and the frustration with Washington’s lack of ability or will to stop it (or at least American investment in it).

We have seen Israel redefine terror tactics by simultaneously blowing up pagers connected to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, killing scores and injuring thousands. They have assassinated top Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Naasrallah. They have invaded Lebanon on the ground, while pounding the country with unrelenting airstrikes, including central Beirut overnight on Thursday. Over 1400 Lebanese have been killed in the most recent strikes. Meanwhile, Israeli bombing of Gaza has not abated either, the most recent being attacks on an orphanage and shelter killing 17 on Wednesday.

In a brazen retaliatory move earlier this week, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at military targets in Israel, resulting in damage. The Israelis and their American partners have played down the impact of these strikes, but it is clear that some of the missiles had breached Israel’s vaunted missile defense systems and made direct hits.

Does this mean war with Iran? If that is the case, will the U.S. be dragged into it? Certainly there are hawks in Washington who have been salivating for that opportunity for a long time. 

We talk to Retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis about this and more. Danny is a retired member of the U.S. Army who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, and the host of the Deep Dive podcast. 

More from Danny:

Israel's conduct in the war will consume us all

Our last chance to avoid war in the Middle East

‘Blinking red’: The risk to America’s national security greater than appears

New York politics is exploding this week as its Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted  on charges of bribery, wire fraud, and seeking illegal campaign donations from foreign sources. In the latest revelations, gleaned from an unsealed indictment on Thursday, the Democratic mayor allegedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Turkish companies and the Turkey government before, during, and after his campaign in 2021. Not surprisingly, the Turks allegedly started asking for favors immediately after Adams won his election to what is probably the most powerful mayoral seat in the United States.

In a press conference the mayor was defiant. “I’m the mayor of the city of New York. From here, my attorneys will take care of the case so I can take care of the city. My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”

But the accusations against him come amid a litany of other scandals in which U.S. politicians can’t seem to say no to foreign influence, whether it be direct campaign contributions or luxury gifts, all in exchange for serving as a conduit for foreign interests in Washington, or in Adams’ case, the Big Apple.

To talk more about this are my Quincy Institute colleagues Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout. They both focus on campaign finance corruption, foreign influence, lobbying, transparency and the revolving door for our organizations Democratizing Foreign Policy project. 

From Nick and Ben:

 Foreign Lobbying in the U.S.

From Ben Freeman: 

NYC Mayor Adams charged in illegal foreign $$ scheme

Report: Razzle dazzle Deion's staff made play for Saudi cash

Menendez's corruption is just the tip of the iceberg

From Nick Cleveland-Stout:

Witnesses backed by military, foreign $$ hype war with Iran

'Poison' Ivy Lee, America's first foreign lobbying tycoon

DOD defies order to clean up 'forever chemicals' in Arizona

It is still not clear how many civilians and bystanders were among those killed and injured. According to the New York Times, current and former defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack say the Israelis were behind it, describing the operation as complex and long in the making.  While vocal supporters of Israel are calling the “Trojan Horse” attack “impressive” and “targeted,” others say it was sophisticated boobytrapping which is not only illegal under international law, but simply terrorism.

Meanwhile, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia said this week that the kingdom would not normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians have their own state, joining Oman in throwing cold water on President Biden’s “grand bargain” for the Abraham Accords. 

And in Iraq, a new deal to bring U.S. troops home for good is running smack into headlines that ISIS is enjoying a resurgence in the region, possibly due to the war in Gaza and upheaval in the region overall.

I Invited my Quincy Institute colleague Adam Weinstein to talk about all of this and more this week. Aside from being a very astute analyst of Middle East geopolitics, with a particular expertise in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Adam is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, having served in an Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company in the Afghanistan War in 2012. 

More from Adam: 

Troops in Peril: The Risks of Keeping U.S. Troops in Iraq and Syria

Shame: Afghanistan withdrawal politics miss the point of everything

Attacks on US troops in Middle East resume

You Can Go Home Again: A Proposal for Phased Military Withdrawal from Iraq and Normalizing U.S.–Iraq Relations

He recently published his memoir, A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019.

Simply put, he has the chops to talk about the degradation of diplomacy, not only in Western relations with Russia, but how the West mismanaged critical events, beginning with the Maidan revolution in Kyiv, the Russian takeover of Crimea, and the years leading up the current war in Ukraine.

Irish professor and author Geoff Roberts wrote recently that Proud is “a very welcome addition to the ranks” of Western ambassadors such as Jack Matlock and Chas Freeman in the United States, Britain’s Tony Brenton, and Tony Kevin in Australia. Why? Because they are “dissident voices that are needed more than ever amid fevered lobbying for yet further escalation of the (Ukraine) conflict.”

We tap into Proud’s experience and institutional wisdom this week to challenge the conventional narratives undergirding today’s headlines: the Ukrainian’s invasion of Kursk, the pressure to allow Ukraine to use U.S/UK weapons to strike deep into Russia, and the dangers of today’s aversion to “talking to dictators.” 

More from Ian Proud:

Russian asset seizure scheme will prolong war

Will Kursk be a sideshow that turns into tragedy for Ukraine?

“Walking slowly down the plane’s stairs, he struggled to step up into the SUV waiting to take him to the 8,000-acre Santa Barbara ranch where he and his family have just enjoyed a week-long vacation,” she wrote. “One of his Secret Service agents moved to shield him from the watching cameras, before giving him a helpful boost into the car.”

Biden’s apparently worsening condition, which plagued his July debate against Donald Trump and at least one speech given during the NATO anniversary that month in which he mixed up the names of Russian President Putin and Ukraine President Zelensksy and his VP Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, led to his replacement as Democratic nominee for a second presidential term. After endorsing Harris to take his place, Biden has all but slipped from view, albeit brief appearances, notably one with Harris on Labor Day in Pittsburgh.

Sure there are serious politics at play and we don’t dismiss that here, but let’s get down to brass tacks. There are currently two major, very bloody and brutal land wars being fueled by U.S. weapons and assistance, one in Ukraine and the other in Israel. There seems to be wide acceptance that Biden was not fit to run again for president, but little discussion about how he is running the country through these fraught foreign policy situations. Who is running the foreign policy if not him? Does it matter, or have we just put so much emphasis on the commander-in-chief that we’ve forgotten that this is a republic with balancing branches of government to prevent disaster if one is not able to perform at 100 percent? 

We talk to conservative Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age and — to show we are not making this a red-blue issue — James Carden, who writes for both the Nation and the American Conservative, about whether this is a unique moment in history as we ascertain who is really pulling the levers behind the curtain.

More from James Carden:

Will Philip Gordon Be President Harris’s National Security Adviser?

The Foreign Policy Establishment Licks Its Chops for Harris 

More from Dan McCarthy: 

Democracy Beyond Elections

From Reagan to the New Right

Stephen points out that the Biden administration had already greenlit more than 100 separate weapons deals for Israel, or about one every 36 hours, on average, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The total value is vague because the administration approved them at levels that are under the threshold for which Congress, and therefore the public, has to be notified. But we know that, according to the Israeli Defense ministry this week, 500 hundred transport planes and 107 ships have delivered more than 50,000 tons of weapons and military equipment from the US to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza. 

This would include U.S.-made aircraft like the F-35, F-16, and F-15 to drop U.S.-made bombs, including the MK-84 (2,000 pounds), MK-83 (1,000 pounds), MK-82 (500 pounds), and 250-pound “small diameter” bombs, which can be fitted with U.S.-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits. It also includes armored vehicles and fuel for all the planes. 

But the goal with this article was not so much to create a laundry list of all the weapons but how they are  being used in the war and to tie specific incidents in which likely war crimes were committed against Palestinians since Oct. 7 with U.S weaponry. 

More from Stephen:

Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier

Israel’s Priority Is Killing Gazans, Not Freeing Hostages

A Pentagon budget of $1 trillion is looming. Here’s how to stop it

My friend James Carden, a writer for The American Conservative and The Nation, and a keen observer of Washington politics, is in Chicago this week and is taking a few minutes to talk about what he is seeing there and more importantly, how the Gaza protests and foreign policy in general have been abusively sidelined by the party elites. 

More from James Carden:

Can Harris Bridge the Great Divide?

Will Philip Gordon Be President Harris’s National Security Adviser?

Neoconservatism by Another Name

It is also the reality that the military has dragged its feet in the clean-up and restitution of said problem, not surprisingly.

A major culprit of contamination is what is called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals." As of August 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed that more than 700 military bases are likely contaminated with PFAS, are described as “a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals that have been used in consumer products around the world since about the 1950s.” They are man-made, fire-resistant, and repel water, oil, and grease. They've been used in firefighting foam called AFFF on the bases since the mid-20th Century, but are also used in clothing and food containers to make them water and oil-repellent. 

PFAS don't break down over time and have contaminated drinking water and food. Research has linked them to cancer, heart and liver problems, developmental issues, and other illnesses. Water tests by the non-profit Environmental Working Group show nearly 3,000 private wells located near 63 active and former U.S. military bases are contaminated with “forever chemicals.” 

According to the group, which analyzed Department of Defense testing data in 2023, 2,805 wells spread across 29 states were contaminated with at least one of two PFAS, above 4 parts per trillion, which is the limit proposed earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, there is a trainwreck of a PFAS problem in Tucson where testing has revealed super high levels at the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site, which is “likely to enter into the Tucson public water system,” according to the EPA. These chemicals are suspected to come from the use of AFFF at nearby airports and military bases. Other chemicals may have migrated from a Raytheon (now RTX) weapons-making facility north of Tucson.

In this episode we will talk to my friend and Quincy Institute research fellow Nick Cleveland Stout who points out in a new Responsible Statecraft article, that the military is finding new and creative ways to avoid the full cost and energy of fulfilling cleanup and other mandates to prevent further contamination.

More from Nick:

DOD defies order to clean up 'forever chemicals' in Arizona

Space Force wants to 'Fly Me to the Moon'

Military officials:​ 'Widowmaker' Osprey will fly with a faulty clutch

Jet fuel in Hawaii's drinking water the latest example of military's negligence

One of the biggest question marks in these races is how the winner will staff his or her administration, and in my case, I’m interested in foreign policy and national security. Where Biden was a known quantity, his decision to step out of the race and endorse his Vice President Kamala Harris has opened up the guessing game on the Democratic side. We will talk about that in a future episode, but first we are going to talk about what might happen in a new Trump administration.

One of the biggest complaints about Trump’s first term is that he had a sloppy appointment process, he didn’t bring in the right people to help with the transition, and ended up putting hawks and neocons into positions of power, like Mike Pompeo as CIA director, then Secretary of State, and John Bolton as National Security Advisor. He kowtowed to the four stars – John Kelly, who he made his Chief of Staff, and Jim Mattis as his Secretary of Defense. None seemed to particularly like him very much, and when it came to serious matters of war and foreign policy, they counseled aggressive postures, particularly when it came to Iran, Syria, and especially staying in Afghanistan.

Now, some three years later, we are starting to hear from Trump supporters from all over the spectrum who appear to be jockeying for a new role if Trump were to win in November. And their messages should make any realist and restrainer wary. 

You have Robert O'Brien, former National Security Advisor after Bolton, writing a 2000- word piece for Foreign Affairs sub-titled “Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy” seeking to double down on anti-Iran policy and to start testing live fire nukes, not to mention decoupling our entire U.S. economy from China.

Mike Pompeo has also published a piece called “A Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine” which is just a long-winded way of promoting a continuation of the war. There’s Fred Fleitz, former deep stater and Trump’s National Security Council Chief of Staff and retired General Keith Kellogg, who have been peddling their own “America First Foreign Policy” and showing up in news articles here and abroad, speaking for Trump without officially speaking for him.

Bottom line, it is not clear what direction Trump could go this time around. To help me tease this out a bit, is John Gay, Executive Director of the John Quincy Adams Society, a national network of student groups centered on a vision of foreign policy restraint. He is a former managing editor of the National Interest, where his writing focused on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. He is also co-author, with Geoffrey Kemp, of War with Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences.

More from John Gay:

The Abraham Accords Are Not Dead

The Iraq War’s Worst Legacy: Endless Confrontation With Iran

Considering that we gave Ukraine some $175 billion over the last two and a half years, it’s not a stretch to think we may get to that trillion mark even sooner. 

So what are we spending it on? Aside from the pay and pensions and healthcare for active duty, retirees, and veterans, big ticket items that may or may not be efficient or even strategic are on the menu, year after year. The Navy’s Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and Constellation-class frigate, the Air Force’s B-21 Raider, the Navy’s F-35, and the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), are just a few of the big programs sucking away at your tax dollars today. There are big promises here, but the jury is out whether these programs, once complete, will rise to the hype or even meet the current moment.

Then there is the strategy and policy. In its newly released report, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a congressionally formed boondoggle that counts as its members the same Washington creatures who stand to make money hand over fist from their recommendations, say:

 “The U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare. They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt. They are not anticipating disruptions to their power, water, or access to all the goods on which they rely. They have not internalized the costs of the United States losing its position as a world superpower. A bipartisan “call to arms” is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The support and resolve of the American public are indispensable.” 

The report complains that the 2022 National Defense Strategy’s “force construct does not sufficiently account for global competition or the very real threat of simultaneous conflict in more than one theater.” Instead they are proposing a “Multiple Theater Force Construct. This “reflects the likelihood of simultaneous conflicts in multiple theaters because of the partnership of U.S. peer or near-peer adversaries and incorporates the U.S. system of alliances and partnerships. The United States must engage globally with a presence — military, diplomatic, and economic — to maintain stability and preserve influence worldwide, including across the Global South, where China and Russia are extending their reach.”

It goes on from there. This means a lot of money, a lot of weapons, a lot of personnel, contractors, consultants, program people, you name it. Big, big big.

My guest this week is author Michael Vlahos, former professor of war & strategy at the Naval War College and Johns Hopkins University graduate program. He says all of this is part of an elaborate prepping for war and for big demonstrations of military superiority, but on the inside, this great spectacle of superpower is quite hollow. The elaborate theater of prepping for war keeps the ecosystem going. That includes political support for American primacy across the globe, keeping industry flush, the courtiers paid and fat, the pork flowing to the districts. But after years of show, what happens when it escalates into something more real, will the U.S. military be able to fight? Or will all of its overly-produced, techno fantasies of grandeur crumble under the weight of hubris, because none of it was really designed for battle but for the idea of battle — in other words, just a mirage?

More from Vlahos

The Ukrainian Army is Breaking 

America’s Perilous Choice in Ukraine: How Proxy War Accelerates Great Power Decline

From Savior to Divine Trickster: The Theological Drive in U.S. Foreign Policy

Fighting Identify: Sacred War and World Change

I wanted to bring in the best analysts I know this week who can talk about the politics of the current moment against the backdrop of an extraordinary situation on the world front – two major wars in which the US is directly involved, not with boots on the ground, at least not yet, but with tens of billions of dollars and political and social capital that has put the reputation of the nation’s status as a superpower and moral leader to the ultimate test. 

Moreover this week, Vice President Kamala Harris is in the spotlight as she attempts to distance herself from the Biden administration’s policy on Israel-Gaza — at least enough to regain support from progressives and the Michigan vote — while not entirely alienating the pro-Israel members of her coalition. We’ll talk about how she is handling that balancing act against the backdrop of Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington and his remarks to Congress on Wednesday.

Matt Purple is a journalist and a writer, currently at Defense Priorities. We worked together at the American Conservative and he is a former editor for the Spectator. Dan Larison is a writer and also a former colleague at the American Conservative. He pens regular articles for me at Responsible Statecraft and writes daily for his own newsletter, Eunomia. This is a special episode in that all three of us launched the Empire has no Clothes podcast at the American Conservative back in 2019, and Dan and I hosted Crashing the War Party from April 2021 to late last year. 

More from Matt Purple: 

Why Conservatives Should Oppose Bombing Iran 

Turkey, Sweden, and NATO’s identity crisis

Don't like radical Houthis? Blame Bush's wars

More from Dan Larison:

Netanyahu’s dishonest propaganda speech

If there is a Harris foreign policy do we call it Biden-lite?

Houthis only emboldened by Israeli attacks

Add weapons and war to the mix and you have a lethal, out-of-control institution that does everything in its nature to protect itself and at any cost, grows bigger, badder and more entrenched in society every day. Even Ike would be aghast at what it has become today.

This week we are talking about how Artificial Intelligence is becoming the ‘it’ technology of the U.S. military and how it is being helped along by Silicon Valley and venture capitalists. Both entities have rightly observed that there are billions of dollars to be made in the military industrial complex when you can convince the Pentagon of what it needs. Right now, by all measure, the Department of Defense believes it needs AI technology to take its capabilities to the next level — like the replicator drone program, an (envisioned) swarm of small AI-enabled killer drones that are supposed to be the latest in our military quiver against China. 

There seems to be no backstop or brakes when money finds its mark in Washington, and there are plenty of people who are scared, rightly so, that AI weapons systems and their ability to “shorten the kill chain” will transform the battlefield, and the homeland, into a dystopian nightmare.

Here to talk about this are two great reporters and writers on the subject. Bill Hartung is a colleague of mine at the Quincy Institute where he is a senior fellow in our Democratizing Foreign Policy program. Stavroula Pabst is a reporter and freelance writer who has contributed to a number of publications on the issue of technology in the military, including several pieces for Responsible Statecraft.

More from Hartung:

Silicon Valley USA: Are these 'patriots' mere harbingers of doom?

The Pentagon is flirting with the dark side of AI

March of the Four–Stars: The Role of Retired Generals and Admirals in the Arms Industry

More from Pabst: 

Former NSA chief revolves through OpenAI's door

The US gives Israel $1.2B for giant laser beam weapon

Do venture capitalists want forever war?

But alas, no one really wants to talk about it in any meaningful way because it would mean addressing the massive failures happening in both conflicts. So joining me on the episode today to actually give these issues substance is my friend retired Col. Doug Macgregor, CEO of Our Country our Choice, a decorated combat veteran, an author of five books, a PhD, and a defense and foreign policy consultant. Doug has been providing straightforward, common sense, and much needed criticisms of the military and U.S. war policies since I met him during the early days of the Iraq War.

He walks us through the failing trajectory of the Ukraine War, the looming Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, and the weakness of Biden to stop the carnage in Gaza and a regional conflagration — with Washington sucked right into it.

More from Macgregor:

Ideas for candidates beyond talking points 

Is it game, set, match to Moscow? 

Would Israel go nuclear against Iran?

Will Israel’s war expand?

The project was supposed to have the blessing of the Israeli government and was to be open for business so to speak, in two months time. Well it did begin operations in May, but as for fulfilling the aid surge, well, the story takes quite a turn. Here to catch us up this week with what happened and how the Biden admin has been misleading the public on this project, is Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, a think tank that develops policy ideas for the working class. 

Semler also writes the Polygraph newsletter on Substack, and published a great piece on this topic for Responsible Statecraft entitled “Washington is not telling the truth about the Gaza pier.” I wrote that headline, and was toggling back and forth between “Washington” not telling the truth and the “Biden administration” not telling the truth. I went with Washington because it’s not just the administration, but the military and the compliant media, too, that have massaged this debacle so that the enormity of the failure and inevitable questioning of motives here are hidden. Stephen brings us up to speed with the project, and points out that less aid is getting into Gaza than when the “surge” pier opened – how does that work?

More on the Pentagon Pier project:

Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier

Alarming lack of detail in military's Gaza aid project

Where is the US military's $320M pier project?

$320M US military pier to open for business, but storms ahead

Our guests today, professors Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall, have co-authored two previous books on the issue of the national security state, including Manufacturing Militarism and Tyranny Comes Home. Their new one is a fresh take on Knight’s 1936 book, entitled How to Run Wars, which is being released this week. It is as pertinent as ever, as national security elites know they must control the narrative, the media, dissent, the purse strings and more to ensure the public’s support for Washington’s security policies — no matter how wrong they are.

I was able to get a preview copy and am very excited to talk about it here on the podcast. 

Chris is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the Associate Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center, and Abigail is an Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Tampa in Florida and a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute.

Yes, the majority and minority leaders of both the House and Senate, meaning both parties, including Mitch McConnel, Chuck Shumer, Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries, formally invited the Israeli PM to deliver a speech to joint chambers of Congress, an invitation typically bestowed as an honor, and usually to make some sort of unifying statement as a body. Ukrainian President Zelensky has made two such addresses in the last year. 

It was announced late Thursday that Netanyahu will speak to Congress on July 24. 

The invitation has drawn a swift rebuke considering that Israel has been accused in the ICC of genocide for the killing of thousands of Gazans, of withholding food and medicine, and for engaging in systematic attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals and places of sanctuary. Just two weeks ago, the Israelis struck civilian tent encampments in southern Gaza and then called it a “tragic mistake” when their missiles set off a fatal inferno. Senator Bernie Sanders, Democrat Rep. Jim McGovern, and supposedly other progressives have vowed to boycott the visit, the second by Netanyahu since 2015. Others like Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan argue that by boycotting, only staunch Bibi supporters will be left filling the seats. 

Here with us to talk about the political motivations — and implications — of this and more are two of my favorite reporters, Matt Petti, who writes for Reason, and Connor Echols, who writes for Responsible Statecraft. 

More from Matt and Connor:

House votes to sanction ICC for case against Israeli leaders (Echols)

Palestinian Students at Columbia Are Still Protesting. Is Anyone Listening? (Petti)

Drafter of Leahy law says it was never applied to Israel (Echols)

Democrats Surprised To Learn Bombs Are Used To Bomb People (Petti)

Israel using secret AI tech to target Palestinians (Echols)

Is America's Blank Check for Israel Ending? (Petti)

The deal reportedly on the table today would give the Saudis a security agreement, in which the U.S. would be obligated to defend Riyadh militarily if it were attacked.The U.S. would also agree to help the Saudi’s get a nuclear power program off the ground, ostensibly for civilian use. In exchange, the Saudis will think about normalization with Israel down the road and then maybe, just maybe, this will lead to a two-state solution for Israel Palestine. 

But those are a lot of maybes. The Israelis, however, don’t seem so interested so it may just be that Washington’s gives all these things anyway to Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that we know now had ties to the 9/11 hijackers and the killing and dismembership of Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, with little in exchange.

Here to talk about all this and more is Sarah Leah Whitson, an American lawyer and the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Danny Davis is a retired Army officer who served in the first Persian Gulf War as well as the Afghanistan War. He is  a senior fellow at Defense priorities and the host of the podcast Deep Dive.

More from Sarah and Danny

America is investing in Ukrainian Failure (Davis)

The two-state solution has failed. A true democracy is the Middle East’s only hope (Whitson)

Why are 600 Americans Still Languishing in Gaza?  (Davis)

America Should Help Israel Defend Itself and Avoid Escalation (Davis)

It’s Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords (Whitson)

We discuss, among other things, an article he did for Responsible Statecraft, “Feeling manipulated? How Uncle Sam perfected the information state,” to launch into a conversation about how the U.S. government marshaled all of its powers to frame the narrative, the messaging, and ensure support from the American people for World War I. This not only included propaganda, but manipulation (surprise!) of major news channels, overt censorship, and the surveillance of Americans organizing in dissent. 

This, despite the fact that most Americans had no idea why they should be sending their men to fight this war in the first place. Sound familiar?

He then talks about the backlash to that war effort, the softer propaganda machinery during World War II, and how Uncle Sam has taken it to the next level, deploying the disinformation Death Star for the post 9/11, Russiagate age. 

More from Brandan Buck:

The F-Word and its consequences

History Last, Polemics First: A Critical Review of Jacob Heilbrunn’s ‘America Last’

Beyond the Noise: NATO Debates, Past and Present

No 'Putin apologia' and certainly not new: the Old American Right on war

Deja vu: Republicans fracturing over Ukraine, just like Korea

Brett Heinz is a Security and Foreign Influence research assistant at the Quincy Institute. He and another colleague, Ben Freeman, recently published a report— a very well researched report, entitled, Subsidizing the Military-Industrial Complex: A Review of the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) Program. A pretty innocuous title, you might say, but what they found is much more compelling, and not in a good way. He joins us to talk about it today.

More from Brett Heinz:

The military is embedding officers in corporate America 

How the DC Metro is a tool for the military industrial complex

How Lockheed's $7.9B stock buyback bonanza is paid for by you

Dan is a Marine Corp veteran who served as a tank commander in the Iraq  and Afghanistan Wars, and Julia is a defense budget and policy analyst who likes to dig into the shadowy numbers game in the Pentagon. 

More from them here:

Biden wants to put the US on permanent war footing (Julia)

F-35: The Part-time fighter jet (Dan)

Pentagon can't account for 63% of nearly $4 trillion in assets (Julia)

Navy Shipbuilding struggles highlight need for alternatives (Dan)

Antle is the executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Mills is the executive director of The American Conservative.

More from them:

How Ohio became the center of the Republican world – Mills 

The vast right-wing conspiracy 2.0, Russia edition – Antle 

Republicans could keep the House in 2024 despite dysfunction – Antle

The New Nixonians – Mills

Scott and I have been talking about endless U.S. wars since the mid-2000s, hammering at American policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, then later Libya and Syria. I ask him to identify the threads of Washington War Party failures from before 9/11 all the way to the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel today. 

Turns out this is the darkest daisy chain ever — myopic anti-Russia strategy, coupled with the neoconservative plans hatched under the Project for a New American Century (and even earlier) have run parallel to one another and wreaked global havoc, since the 1990’s. Today’s wars are an apotheosis, but not likely the end.

More from Scott:

Hotter Than the Sun: Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2022)

Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism (2021)

The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019 (2019)

Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan (2017)

Michael joined us this week to talk about proxy wars — why and how are they successful, and when do they fail? He walks us through the history of the most famous successes and failures in modern military history, and why the US is losing it’s current one today in Ukraine.

More from Michael: 

A sitdown with Col. Doug Macgregor: Four episodes

Ukraine Shares Same Fate as the South in the American Civil War

We were made for Civil War

Katrina is a longtime writer and author and is currently the editorial director and publisher of The Nation. James is also a writer and appears frequently in magazines on both sides of the aisle, including the American Conservative and Responsible Statecraft.

More from Katrina and James:

Where is Joe Biden’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’? (James)

10 Years Later: Maidan’s missing US history 

The Moscow Terror Attack (Katrina)

Now is not the for Ukraine to join NATO

When facts cut through the fog of war